Old Version Of Me Quotes

I've apparently been the victim of growing up, which apparently happens to all of us at one point or another. It's been going on for quite some time now, without me knowing it. I've found that growing up can mean a lot of things. For me, it doesn't mean I should become somebody completely new and stop loving the things I used to love. It means I've just added more things to my list. Like for example, I'm still beyond obsessed with the winter season and I still start putting up strings of lights in September. I still love sparkles and grocery shopping and really old cats that are only nice to you half the time. I still love writing in my journal and wearing dresses all the time and staring at chandeliers. But some new things I've fallen in love with -- mismatched everything. Mismatched chairs, mismatched colors, mismatched personalities. I love spraying perfumes I used to wear when I was in high school. It brings me back to the days of trying to get a close parking spot at school, trying to get noticed by soccer players, and trying to figure out how to avoid doing or saying anything uncool, and wishing every minute of every day that one day maybe I'd get a chance to win a Grammy. Or something crazy and out of reach like that. ;) I love old buildings with the paint chipping off the walls and my dad's stories about college. I love the freedom of living alone, but I also love things that make me feel seven again. Back then naivety was the norm and skepticism was a foreign language, and I just think every once in a while you need fries and a chocolate milkshake and your mom. I love picking up a cookbook and closing my eyes and opening it to a random page, then attempting to make that recipe. I've loved my fans from the very first day, but they've said things and done things recently that make me feel like they're my friends -- more now than ever before. I'll never go a day without thinking about our memories together.

Live your life like you're 80 looking back on your teenager years. You know if your dad calls you at eight in the morning and asks if you want to go out for breakfast. As a teenager you're like no, I want to sleep. But as an eighty year old looking back you have that breakfast with your dad. It just little things like that, that helped me when I was a teenager in terms of making choices you won't regret.

If you will tell me when God permits a Christian to lay aside his armour, I will tell you when Satan has left off temptation. Like the old knights in war time, we must sleep with helmet and breastplate buckled on, for the arch-deceiver will seize our first unguarded hour to make us his prey. The Lord keep us watchful in all seasons, and give us a final escape from the jaw of the lion and the paw of the bear.

There are things I need to ask her. Not what happened, back then in the time I lost, because now I know that. I need to ask her why. If she remembers. Perhaps she’s forgotten the bad things, what she said to me, what she did. Or she does remember them, but in a minor way, as if remembering a game, or a single prank, a single trivial secret, of the kind girls tell and then forget. She will have her own version. I am not the centre of her story, because she herself is that. But I could give her something you can never have, except from another person: what you look like from outside. A reflection. This is part of herself I could give back to her. We are like the twins in old fables, each of whom has been given half a key.

Call me old-fashioned," Deepak said, "but I've always believed that hard work pays off. My version of the Beatitudes. Do the right thing, put up with unfairness, selfishness, stay true to yourself... one day it all works out. Of course, I don't know that people who wronged you suffer or get their just deserts. I don't think it works that way. But I do think that one day you get your reward.

When historians in the future ask a really old version of me about this pandemic, I’m gonna tell them that Trump’s MAGA minions were the only ones who had no idea what was happening, while the rest of America stared into the abyss.

I wished I was old. I was tired of being so young, so stupidly knowing, so stupidly forgetful. I was tired of having to be anything at all. I felt like the Internet, full of every kind of information but none of it mattering more than any of it, and all of its little links like thin white roots on a broken plant dug out of the soil, lying drying on its side. And whenever I tried to access myself, whenever I'd try to click on me, try to go any deeper than a single fast-loading page on Facebook or MySpace, it was as if I knew that one morning I'd wake up and try to log on to find that not even that version of I existed any more, because the servers all over the world were all down. And that's how rootless. And that's how fragile.

Then, for no reason I could tell you, I tossed the spool again, even though Elaine had asked me not to. Maybe only because, in a way, him chasing a spool was like old people having their slow and careful version of sex - you might not want to watch it , you who are young and convinced that, when it comes to old age, an exception will be made in your case, but they still want to do it.

the answer is to just let go the betrayal is to the past the cocoon dangles empty the desire outlasts the object the effort lingers the frustration is in how pointless the effort was the ghost does not make itself transparent the heart knows nothing except its own mind the ideas are not enough the jealousy is always there the killing blow is sometimes the softest the life you lead can be detoured the moment you know cannot be taken back the new you will try to bury the old me the opportunity has passed the past is inopportune the questions all grow from why the reality will always be contended the sadness will ebb the trouble is the time it might take the ugly words cannot be erased, only discredited the versions are never the same the wonder is that we make it through the x is the unknown variable the yesterday cannot be repeated the zenith is the point when you look down and realize you’re no longer below

But a part of me wants to fling the cloak off and put Elias’s back on. I know I’m acting the fool, but somehow Elias’s cloak made me feel good. Perhaps because more than reminding me of him, it reminded me of who I was around him. Braver. Stronger. Flawed, certainly, but unafraid. I miss that girl. That Laia. That version of myself that burned brightest when Elias Veturius was near. The Laia who made mistakes. The Laia whose mistakes led to needless death. How could I forget? I thank Keenan quietly and stuff the old cloak in my bag. Then I pull the new one closer and tell myself that it’s warmer.

Before I grad her book and mine, I go sit next to her on the organ bench and she gives me a big grandma hug - her special version, made from strong arms, old-fashioned perfume, and years of practice. The kind that makes you think you've won the best prize in the world. For love and safety, find your grandma. (76)

We would prefer to say that such people cannot exist, that there aren't any," writes Solzhenitsyn. "To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good, or else that it's a well-considered act in conformity with natural law." This is the foundation of the Dream -- its adherents must not just believe in it but believe that it is just, believe that their possession of the Dream is the natural result of grit, honor, and good works. There is some passing acknowledgment of the bad old days, which, by the way, we're not so bad as to have any ongoing effect on our present. The mettle that it takes to look away from the horror of our prison system, from police forces transformed into armies, from the long war against the black body, is not forged overnight. This is the practiced habit of jabbing out one's eyes and forgetting the work of one's hands. To acknowledge these horrors means turning away from the brightly rendered version of your country as it has always declared itself and turning toward something murkier and unknown. It is still too difficult for most Americans to do this. But that is your work. It must be, if only to preserve the sanctity of your mind.

Finally, I cry for all the versions of myself that have existed through the years. Confused five-year-old. Sullen child of divorce. Furious nine-year-old. Inquisitive me. Defiant me. Dutiful me. So many incarnations, each one seeking answers, leading me to right here, to right now, to a potential truth I have no idea how to handle.

This was all of it, no doubt, the strange passing feeling that had come to me in the boat. Age. Vanity. The impossibility of accepting the new versions of oneself that life kept offering. The impossibility of the old version’s vanishing.

The tears that come out of me feel as if they were decades in the making. It feels as if some old version of me is leaking out, letting go, saying good-bye in the effort of making room for a new me. One that is stronger and somehow both more cynical about people and also more optimistic about my place in the world.

Can you be sure that others have not come before you and destroyed the pristine state of the native myth? Can you be sure that the natives are not humoring you or pulling your leg? Bronislaw Malinowski thought he had discovered a people in the Trobriant Islands who had not worked out the connection between sexual intercourse and childbirth. When asked how children were conceived, they supplied him with an elaborate mythic structure prominently featuring celestial intervention. Amazed, Malinowski objected that was not how it was done at all, and supplied them instead with the version so popular in the West today – including a nine-month gestation period. “Impossible,” replied the Melanesians. “Do you not see that woman over there with her six-month-old child? Her husband has been on an extended voyage to another island for two years.” Is it more likely that the Melanesians were ignorant of the begetting of children or that they were gently chiding Malinowski? If some peculiar-looking stranger came into my town and asked ME where babies came from, I’d certainly be tempted to tell him about storks and cabbages. Prescientific people are people. Individually they are as clever as we are.

Lately I have been feeling hulihudu. And everything around me seemed to be heimongmong. These were words I had never thought about in English terms. I suppose the closest in meaning would be "confused" and "dark fog." But really, the words mean much more than that. Maybe they can't be easily translated because they refer to a sensation that only Chinese people have, as if you were falling headfirst through Old Mr. Chou's [Mr. Sandman's] door, then trying to find your way back. But you're so scared you can't open your eyes, so you get on your hands and knees and grope in the dark, listening for voices to tell you which way to go. I had been talking to too may people...to each person I told a different story. Yet each version was true, I was certain of it, at least at the moment I told it.

delete that old version of me in your head, it's expired.

The old me is gone. I cut all ties of the old me. That is not me. I want to bring forth the me, that wants to represent who I am as a woman, that though I may have had traumas in my life, I won't let that define who I am. I am going to be the better version of who I am, truly inspired to wear the invisible badges of strength, confidence, courage, compassion, empowerment and fearlessness.

Once upon a time there was a small-town girl who lived in a small world. She was perfectly happy, or at least she told herself she was. Like many girls, she loved to try different looks, to be someone she wasn't. But, like too many girls, life had chipped away at her until, instead of finding what truly suited her, she camouflaged herself, hid the bits that made her different. For a while she let the world bruise her until she decided it was safer not to be herself at all. There are so many versions of ourselves we can choose to be. Once, my life was destined to be measured out in the most ordinary of steps. I learnt differently from a man who refused to accept the version of himself he'd been left with, and an old lady who saw, conversely, that she could transform herself, right up to a point when many people would have said there was nothing left to be done. I had a choice. I was Louisa Clark from New York, or Stortfold. Or there might be a whole other Louisa I hadn't met yet. The key was making sure that anyone you allowed to walk beside you didn't get to decide which you were, and pin you down like a butterfly in a case. The key was to know that you could always somehow find a way to reinvent yourself again.

I had a bizarre rapport with this mirror and spent a lot of time gazing into the glass to see who was there. Sometimes it looked like me. At other times, I could see someone similar but different in the reflection. A few times, I caught the switch in mid-stare, my expression re-forming like melting rubber, the creases and features of my face softening or hardening until the mutation was complete. Jekyll to Hyde, or Hyde to Jekyll. I felt my inner core change at the same time. I would feel more confident or less confident; mature or childlike; freezing cold or sticky hot, a state that would drive Mum mad as I escaped to the bathroom where I would remain for two hours scrubbing my skin until it was raw. The change was triggered by different emotions: on hearing a particular piece of music; the sight of my father, the smell of his brand of aftershave. I would pick up a book with the certainty that I had not read it before and hear the words as I read them like an echo inside my head. Like Alice in the Lewis Carroll story, I slipped into the depths of the looking glass and couldn’t be sure if it was me standing there or an impostor, a lookalike. I felt fully awake most of the time, but sometimes while I was awake it felt as if I were dreaming. In this dream state I didn’t feel like me, the real me. I felt numb. My fingers prickled. My eyes in the mirror’s reflection were glazed like the eyes of a mannequin in a shop window, my colour, my shape, but without light or focus. These changes were described by Dr Purvis as mood swings and by Mother as floods, but I knew better. All teenagers are moody when it suits them. My Switches could take place when I was alone, transforming me from a bright sixteen-year-old doing her homework into a sobbing child curled on the bed staring at the wall. The weeping fit would pass and I would drag myself back to the mirror expecting to see a child version of myself. ‘Who are you?’ I’d ask. I could hear the words; it sounded like me but it wasn’t me. I’d watch my lips moving and say it again, ‘Who are you?

abridged list of things to let go if you want to be happy: old versions of yourself / ideas about who and what you were supposed to be / other people’s expectations of you / societal expectations of you / gender norms / heteronormativity / internalized ideas about what your life is supposed to look like / the idea that romantic love makes you whole / relationships that cause you more grief than they’re worth / people who cross your boundaries / family that makes you feel unsafe or unwelcome / the need to make your happiness look like everyone else’s

My little brother's greatest fear was that the one person who meant so much to him would go away. He loved Lindsey and Grandma Lynn and Samuel and Hal, but my father kept him stepping lightly, son gingerly monitoring father every morning and every evening as if, without such vigilance, he would lose him. We stood- the dead child and the living- on either side of my father, both wanting the same thing. To have him to ourselves forver. To please us both was an impossibility. ... 'Please don't let Daddy die, Susie,' he whispered. 'I need him.' When I left my brother, I walked out past the gazebo and under the lights hanging down like berries, and I saw the brick paths branching out as I advanced. I walked until the bricks turned to flat stones and then to small, sharp rocks and then to nothing but churned earth for miles adn miles around me. I stood there. I had been in heaven long enough to know that something would be revealed. And as the light began to fade and the sky to turn a dark, sweet blue as it had on the night of my death, I saw something walking into view, so far away I could not at first make out if it was man or woman, child or adult. But as moonlight reached this figure I could make out a man and, frightened now, my breathing shallow, I raced just far enough to see. Was it my father? Was it what I had wanted all this time so deperately? 'Susie,' the man said as I approached and then stopped a few feet from where he stood. He raised his arms up toward me. 'Remember?' he said. I found myself small again, age six and in a living room in Illinois. Now, as I had done then, I placed my feet on top of his feet. 'Granddaddy,' I said. And because we were all alone and both in heaven, I was light enough to move as I had moved when I was six and in a living room in Illinois. Now, as I had done then, I placed my feet on top of his feet. 'Granddaddy,' I said. And because we were all alone and both in heaven, I was light enough to move as I had moved when I was six and he was fifty-six and my father had taken us to visit. We danced so slowly to a song that on Earth had always made my grandfather cry. 'Do you remember?' he asked. 'Barber!' 'Adagio for Strings,' he said. But as we danced and spun- none of the herky-jerky awkwardness of Earth- what I remembered was how I'd found him crying to this music and asked him why. 'Sometimes you cry,' Susie, even when someone you love has been gone a long time.' He had held me against him then, just briefly, and then I had run outside to play again with Lindsey in what seemed like my grandfather's huge backyard. We didn't speak any more that night, but we danced for hours in that timeless blue light. I knew as we danced that something was happening on Earth and in heaven. A shifting. The sort of slow-to-sudden movement that we'd read about in science class one year. Seismic, impossible, a rending and tearing of time and space. I pressed myself into my grandfather's chest and smelled the old-man smell of him, the mothball version of my own father, the blood on Earth, the sky in heaven. The kumquat, skunk, grade-A tobacco. When the music stopped, it cold have been forever since we'd begun. My grandfateher took a step back, and the light grew yellow at his back. 'I'm going,' he said. 'Where?' I asked. 'Don't worry, sweetheart. You're so close.' He turned and walked away, disappearing rapidly into spots and dust. Infinity.

All the same, it strikes me as unfair that I still have to defend myself against her moral judgements. My continuing need for her approbation is pathetic. Twice now I have stopped myself on the street to remonstrate with her, a crazy old coot talking to himself.

What is there left for me after my purgatory of solitude?...I welcome death as a version of life in which I will not be myself. There is a fallacy here which I ought to see but will not. For when I wake on the ocean floor it will be the same old voice that drones out of me...

Perhaps we should explore some other options before swanning off to Ireland,” Dad said, pushing his glasses up. “After all, Sophie, you’ve been through quite the ordeal.” “I’ll nap on the plane. Look, we are dealing with the possibility of an army of demons. I don’t know about you guys, but those words are right up there with ‘root canal’ and ‘school on Saturdays’ in terms of things that terrify me. Were already three weeks behind. We don’t have time to just sit here and explore options or read more books or listen to more half-assed prophecies from this jerk,” I said, pointing to Torin. He made a gesture that I think was the old-timey version of flipping me off. “So, yeah,” I continued. “Maybe this is a totally stupid idea. But if there’s even a chance one of us can get into the underworld, then we have to take it.” “Okay, I do like you,” Finley said, flashing me a grin.

This paying attention is the foundational act of empathy, of listening, of seeing, of imagining experiences other than one's own, of getting out of the boundaries of one's own experience. There's a currently popular argument that books help us feel empathy, but if they do so they do it by helping us imagine that we are people we are not. Or to go deeper within ourselves, to be more aware of what it means to be heartbroken, or ill, or six, or ninety-six, or completely lost. Not just versions of our self rendered awesome and eternally justified and always right, living in a world in which other people only exist to help reinforce our magnificence, though those kinds of books and movies exist in abundance to cater to the male imagination. Which is a reminder that literature and art can also help us fail at empathy if it sequesters us in the Big Old Fortress of Magnificent Me.

What he didn’t do was control me, or try to mold me into a little wife, some old-fashioned, muted version of who I was. I saw many men do that to many women I knew. They would choose these vibrant, talented, beautiful women, and suck the life and passion and beauty out of them by bullying them into submission.

Tiff like in Breakfast at Tiffany's,' he says. 'Right?' I couldn't be more shocked. 'Um... yes, that's right - it's an old movie.' 'Is it? Don't watch that much TV. I've only heard of the book - got it at home. I bought it 'cause Truman Capote wrote it. I was stoked by In Cold Blood. He wrote that, too. You read it?' 'No.' 'Aw, you gotta. It rocks.' I look away as if I've been suddenly distracted by something out the window. It's my version of the pause button. There's a lot of information to process. Here's a boy my own age; he shakes my hand, he talks to me - not just to ask directions to the toilet - and he reads books. Heathcliff?

They were Chinese vampires. They were discovered during renovation work at the Bok Kai Temple in Old Sacramento. One of the priests there told his brother about them. The brother's whatever the Chinese version of mobbed up is. Alex here thinks he's using them to distract the Nortenos and the Black Dragons long enough to take over the marijuana trade in Sacramento using the stuff they're making in a bunch of grow houses in Elk Grove." Ted stared at me. "And will the Chinese vampires be joined by legions of Korean werewolves who have been cooking meth in trailer parks in Truckee? "No. The werewolves are refusing to get involved. Trust me, I've tried to talk them into helping. They'll have nothing to do with it.

And Abraham was an hundred years old, when his son Isaac was born unto him. 6 f And Sarah said, God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me.

I am. I always was. I always am. I shall always be. The past and the future meet in the eternal now. I am the eternal now. I exist. I am. I am in the past. I am in the future. I am in the now. One is all, and all are one. We are one. Everything I see is a part of myself. Everything I can imagine is a part of myself. I could not imagine something that is not. Everyone I interact with is a part of myself. Whatever I put out, I get it back. My state of being matters, it crystallises in my circumstances. The way I respond to my circumstances reinforces my state of being. When I see an echo of an old belief I respond with peace in my heart. My actions are matched with the highest version of myself I can imagine in that moment. Everything changes, and everything transforms from one form of life to yet another. It is a constant flow of life. It is the heart of all existence. Nothing can perish, nothing can cease being. I am always new. I am always history free. I am always consequence free. Yet I can create an illusion of consequence. Everything is possible, yet not everything is probable. It all depends on my synchronicity. What I choose to explore shall present itself to me. What I believe to be true, is true. All illusions are made out of different beliefs. Yet there is only one knowledge. It is the wisdom of old, yet new. The thought gains the power, when it merges with the feeling. I feel what I desire. I always receive what I ask for. I always manifest instantly with no effort. My wisdom is to be aware of what I request. So it be. So it is. I ask for love, and I welcome bliss.

MIC5.2 But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.

He pulled free of Ruza and turned to face it, but still he hesitated. "My boy," he heard in his mind - old Master Hyrrokkin's words, kindly meant. "I hardly think he's recruiting librarians, boy." And always, there was Thyon Nero's voice. "Enlighten me, Strange. In what version of the would could you possibly help? What version of the world? The dream version, in which he could do anything, even fly. Even reshape mesarthium. Even hold Sarai in his arms.

I think I’m seeing the old Kai tonight and that version scares me. The confidence, the self-assurance mixed with the new Kai—thoughtful, kind. He’s a lethal combination, and not only does my body recognize it, but so does my heart.

There’s a reason most cultures have some version of marriage, some kind of lifelong commitment. People need the security of knowing their partner will stick with them regardless of what kind of uptight ogre they turn into in old age.

See, this is the thing about history. His story. That’s all it is. The Old Man’s version of events, which basically the rest of us are supposed to accept as the undisputed truth. Well, call me cynical, but I’ve never been one to take things on trust, and I happen to know that history is nothing but spin and metaphor, which is what all yarns are made up of, when you strip them down to the underlay. And what makes a hit or a myth, of course, is how that story is told, and by whom.

Ecclesiastes This is a book of the Old Testament. I don't believe I've ever read this section of the Bible - I know my Genesis pretty well and my Ten Commandments (I like lists), but I'm hazy on a lot of the other parts. Here, the Britannica provides a handy Cliff Notes version of Ecclesiastes: [the author's] observations on life convinced him that 'the race is not swift, nor the battle strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all' (9:11). Man's fate, the author maintains, does not depend on righteous or wicked conduct but is an inscrutable mystery that remains hidden in God (9:1). All attempts to penetrate this mystery and thereby gain the wisdom necessary to secure one's fate are 'vanity' or futile. In the face of such uncertainty, the author's counsel is to enjoy the good things that God provides while one has them to enjoy. This is great. I've accumulated hundreds of facts in the last seven thousand pages, but i've been craving profundity and perspective. Yes, there was that Dyer poem, but that was just cynical. This is the real thing: the deepest paragraph I've read so far in the encyclopedia. Instant wisdom. It couldn't be more true: the race does not go to the swift. How else to explain the mouth-breathing cretins I knew in high school who now have multimillion-dollar salaries? How else to explain my brilliant friends who are stuck selling wheatgrass juice at health food stores? How else to explain Vin Diesel's show business career? Yes, life is desperately, insanely, absurdly unfair. But Ecclesiastes offers exactly the correct reaction to that fact. There's nothing to be done about it, so enjoy what you can. Take pleasure in the small things - like, for me, Julie's laugh, some nice onion dip, the insanely comfortable beat-up leather chair in our living room. I keep thinking about Ecclesiastes in the days that follow. What if this is the best the encyclopedia has to offer? What if I found the meaning of life on page 347 of the E volume? The Britannica is not a traditional book, so there's no reason why the big revelation should be at the end.

The old master oil paintings were usually done in transparent oil colors on top of a black-and-white underpainting, which was often painted in egg temperas. My version of this technique was to start with a watercolor underpainting, which is fast drying like tempera, but I have an easier time controlling it. Then I seal the underpainting with a coat of clear, matte acrylic medium. That keeps the oil paints, which come next, from soaking into the paper, where they would turn dull and flat. Instead, thin layers of transparent oil paint can be smoothed into glowing colors and bold, glossy surfaces, with a depth and space that I don’t think can be gotten any other way. It isn’t easy to do, but when it works, the results can still surprise me.

Until… Chase stood. The restaurant, which had been a loud rumble, suddenly quieted. Everything after that happened in slow motion. All of our family and friends faded away as the man I love got down on one knee. I heard and saw nothing but him. “I had this whole thing to say planned out in my head, but the minute I saw your face, I completely forgot every word. So I’m just going to wing it here. Reese Elizabeth Annesley, since the first time I laid eyes on you on that bus in middle school, I’ve been crazy about you.” I smiled and shook my head. “You got the crazy part right.” Chase took my hand, and it was then I noticed his was shaking. My cocky, always-confident bossman was nervous. If it was possible, I fell a little more in love with him in that moment. I squeezed his hand, offering reassurance, and he steadied. That’s what we did for each other. I was the balance to his unsteadiness. He was the courage to my fear. He continued. “Maybe it wasn’t a school bus or middle school, but I fell hard for you in the hall, that much I’m sure of. From the moment I saw your beautiful face light up that dark hallway a year ago, I was done. I didn’t even care that we were both on dates with other people, I just needed to be closer to you any way I could. Since then, you’ve distracted me every day whether you’re near me or not. You brought me back to life, and there’s nothing I want to do more than build that life with you. I want to be the man to look under your bed every night and wake up next to you in it every morning. You’ve changed me. When I’m with you, I’m myself, only a better version, because you make me want to be a better man. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and I want it to start yesterday. So, please tell me you’ll be my wife because I’ve already been waiting for you my entire life, and I don’t want to wait any more.” I pressed my forehead to his as tears streamed down my face. “You know I’m going to be even crazier once we live together, and probably even worse when we have our own family. Three locks might turn to seven, and doing my check in that big house of yours is going to take a long time. It might get old and tiring. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to change any of that.” Chase reached behind me and bunched my hair into his hand, cupping it along with the nape of my neck. “I don’t want you to change. Not any of it. I love everything about you. There’s not a single thing I’d change if I could. Well, except your last name.

As I make the ten-minute drive into town, I curse O’Shea for forcing this volunteer gig on me and ponder the authenticity of voodoo dolls. Eventually I decide it doesn’t matter if they’re real or not. It’d still be fun to poke needles into a teeny doll version of Frank O’Shea. Once it starts falling apart from all the holes, I can use the head as a stress ball. At a red light, I shoot a quick text to my teammate Fitzy—Hey, do u know how 2 make a voodoo doll? His response doesn’t come until I reach the small arena across the street from the school. Him: I’d think u were fcking with me, but the question is stupid enuff to feel legit. No idea how to make v-doll. Can prolly use any old doll? Challenge will be finding a voodoo witch to link it to your target. Me: That makes sense. Him: Does it?? Me: Voodoo implies magic, hexes, etc. I don’t think any doll would work. Otherwise every doll is a v-doll, right? Him: Right. Me: Anyway. Thx. Thought u might know. Him: Why the fuck would *I* know? Me: Ur into all those fantasy role-play games. U know magic. Him: I’m not Harry Potter, ffs. Me: HP is a nerd. Ur a nerd. Ergo, ur a boy wizard. He sends a middle-finger emoji, then says, Bday beers at Malone’s 2nite. U still down? Me: Yup. Him: C U ltr

To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law.’ This is the foundation of the Dream--its adherents must not just believe in it but believe that it is just, believe that their possession of the Dream is the natural result of grit, honor, and good works. There is some passing acknowledgment of the bad old days, which, by the way, were not so bad as to have any ongoing effect on our present. The mettle that it takes to look away from the horror of our prison system, from police forces transformed into armies, from the long war against the black body, is not forged overnight. This is the practiced habit of jabbing out one’s eyes and forgetting the work of one’s hands. To acknowledge these horrors means turning away from the brightly rendered version of your country as it has always declared itself and turning toward something murkier and unknown. Its is still too difficult for most Americans to do this. But that is your work. It must be, if only to preserve the sanctity of your mind.

Lovin’ in My Baby’s Eyes” is playing, and Peter takes my hand and leads me out to the lawn. We’ve never danced to this kind of song before. It’s the kind of song where you sway together and make a lot of eye contact and smile. It feels different, like we’re already older versions of Peter and Lara Jean. Across the dance floor, Trina and Kitty and Margot are dancing in a circle, with Grandma in the middle. Haven is dancing with my dad. She catches my eye and mouths, He’s so cute. Peter, not my dad. He is. He is so, so cute. I will never forget tonight, not for as long as I live. One day, if I’m lucky, I’ll tell some young girl all my stories, just like Stormy told me hers. And I’ll get to live them again. When I’m old and gray, I will look back on this night, and I will remember it just as it was. Is. We’re still here. It’s not the future yet.

redeems my soul in safety         from the battle that I wage,         for  b many are arrayed against me. 19    God will give ear and humble them,         he who is  c enthroned from of old, Selah     because they do not  d change         and do not fear God.     20 My companion [2]  e stretched

Q (Quiller-Couch) was all by himself my college education. I went down to the public library one day when I was seventeen looking for books on the art of writing, and found five books of lectures which Q had delivered to his students of writing at Cambridge. "Just what I need!" I congratulated myself. I hurried home with the first volume and started reading and got to page 3 and hit a snag: Q was lecturing to young men educated at Eton and Harrow. He therefore assumed his students − including me − had read Paradise Lost as a matter of course and would understand his analysis of the "Invocation to Light" in Book 9. So I said, "Wait here," and went down to the library and got Paradise Lost and took it home and started reading it and got to page 3, when I hit a snag: Milton assumed I'd read the Christian version of Isaiah and the New Testament and had learned all about Lucifer and the War in Heaven, and since I'd been reared in Judaism I hadn't. So I said, "Wait here," and borrowed a Christian Bible and read about Lucifer and so forth, and then went back to Milton and read Paradise Lost, and then finally got back to Q, page 3. On page 4 or 5, I discovered that the point of the sentence at the top of the page was in Latin and the long quotation at the bottom of the page was in Greek. So I advertised in the Saturday Review for somebody to teach me Latin and Greek, and went back to Q meanwhile, and discovered he assumed I not only knew all the plays by Shakespeare, and Boswell's Johnson, but also the Second books of Esdras, which is not in the Old Testament and not in the New Testament, it's in the Apocrypha, which is a set of books nobody had ever thought to tell me existed. So what with one thing and another and an average of three "Wait here's" a week, it took me eleven years to get through Q's five books of lectures.

Friedrich Hayek knew that it was much easier to accept inequalities if one can claim that they result from an impersonal blind force: the good thing about the ‘irrationality’ of the market and success or failure in capitalism is that it allows me precisely to perceive my failure or success as ‘undeserved’, contingent.16 Remember the old motif of the market as the modern version of an imponderable fate. The fact that capitalism is not ‘just’ is thus a key feature of what makes it acceptable to the majority. I can live with my failure much more easily if I know that it is not due to my inferior qualities, but to chance.

Listen to me, O house of Jacob,         all the remnant of the house of Israel,      q who have been borne by me from before your birth,         carried from the womb; 4     r even to your old age I am he,         and to gray hairs I will carry you.     I have made, and I will bear;         I will carry and will save.

Surely none of the men who came up out of Egypt,  cfrom twenty years old and upward, shall see the land that I swore to give  dto Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, because they have not wholly followed me, 12none except Caleb the son of Jephunneh the  eKenizzite and Joshua the son of Nun, for  fthey have wholly followed the LORD.

There had been two dates between us. Mistake. It made working together more awkward, and he couldn’t cope with me being a female version of him. He had this old southern idea of what a lady should be. A lady should not carry a gun and spend most of her time covered in blood and corpses. I had two words for that attitude. Yeah, those are the words. There

On average, odd years have been the best for me. I’m at a point where everyone I meet looks like a version of someone I already know. Without fail, fall makes me nostalgic for things I’ve never experienced. The sky is molting. I don’t know if this is global warming or if the atmosphere is reconfiguring itself to accommodate all the new bright suffering. I am struck by an overwhelming need to go to Iceland. Despite all awful variables, we are still full of ideas as possible as unsexed fruit. I was terribly sorry to be the one to explain to the first graders the connection between the sunset and pollution. On Venus you and I are not even a year old. Then there were two skies. The one we fly through and the one we bury ourselves in. I appreciate my wide beveled spatula which fulfills the moment I realized I would grow up and own such things. I am glad I do not yet want sexy bathroom accessories. Such things. In the story we were together every time. On his wedding day, the stone in his chest not fully melted but enough. Sometimes I feel like there are birds flying out of me.

The old me is gone. I cut all ties of the old me. That is not me. I want to bring forth the me, that wants to represent who I am as a woman, that thoughI may have had traumas in my life, I won't let that define who I am. I am going to be the better version of who I am, truly inspired to wear the invisible badges of strength, confidence, courage, compassion, empowerment and fearlessness.

The chronological sorting of memories is an interesting business. Prior to this first weekend in the country, my recollections of that fall are distant and blurry: from here on out, they come into a sharp, delightful focus. It is here that the stilted mannequins of my initial acquaintance begin to yawn and stretch and come to life. It was months before the gloss and mystery of newness, which kept me from seeing them with much objectivity, would wear entirely off - though their reality was far more interesting than any idealized version could possibly be - but it is here, in my memory, that they cease being totally foreign and being to appear, for the first time, in shapes very like their bright old selves. I too appear as something of a stranger in these early memories.

ALL THIS happened ten years ago. In the first few years after Hanna’s death, I was tormented by the old questions of whether I had denied and betrayed her, whether I owed her something, whether I was guilty for having loved her. Sometimes I asked myself if I was responsible for her death. And sometimes I was in a rage at her and at what she had done to me. Until finally the rage faded and the questions ceased to matter. Whatever I had done or not done, whatever she had done or not to me—it was the path my life had taken. Soon after her death, I decided to write the story of me and Hanna. Since then I’ve done it many times in my head, each time a little differently, each time with new images, and new strands of action and thought. Thus there are many different stories in addition to the one I have written. The guarantee that the written one is the right one lies in the fact that I wrote it and not the other versions. The written version wanted to be written, the many others did not. At first I wanted to write our story in order to be free of it. But the memories wouldn’t come back for that. Then I realized our story was slipping away from me and I wanted to recapture it by writing, but that didn’t coax up the memories either. For the last few years I’ve left our story alone. I’ve made peace with it. And it came back, detail by detail and in such a fully rounded fashion, with its own direction and its own sense of completion, that it no longer makes me sad. What a sad story, I thought for so long. Not that I now think it was happy. But I think it is true, and thus the question of whether it is sad or happy has no meaning whatever.

But the truth was, I didn’t feel accepted. I didn’t feel acknowledged for my service in raising the next generation, for my active role in the community, or even for being human sometimes. I felt utterly ignored. I felt invisible or, worse, frowned upon. Most of the time, when I looked in the mirror, I saw only my flaws. I saw all the things that advertisements and social media said was wrong with me. I wanted to focus on what was right about this version of myself, like the way I’d learned to take life a little slower and enjoy each moment. Like my appreciation for people’s differences, and for beauty found in unlikely places. For my friendships, new and old. I wanted it to be okay that I wasn’t worried about beauty anymore, or worried about looking young. I just wanted to look like me, however me looked in any given year.

This was Lincoln’s final version of his Farewell Address: My friends—No one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe every thing. Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young to an old man. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being, who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in Him, who can go with me, and remain with you and be every where for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.

I wanted to focus on what was right about this version of myself, like the way I’d learned to take life a little slower and enjoy each moment. Like my appreciation for people’s differences, and for beauty found in unlikely places. For my friendships, new and old. I wanted it to be okay that I wasn’t worried about beauty anymore, or worried about looking young. I just wanted to look like me, however me looked in any given year.

They say,' she announced - 'they say that when you get old, as I am, your body slows down. I don't believe it. No, I think that is quite wrong. I have a theory that you do not slow down at all, but that life slows down for you. You understand me? Everything becomes languid, as it were, and you can notice so much more when things are in slow motion. The things you see! The extraordinary things that happen all around you, that you never even suspected before I It is really a delightful adventure, quite delightfulI'.

Take one of the dishes you will be eating tonight, fritto misto. The old butcher who sold me the meat was most insistent that it should be cooked the old way---so brains, for example, are always poached in vegetables, then left to cool before being sliced and deep-fried in batter. But then you think, this batter is not so different from Japanese tempura, and tempura can be served with a sweet chile and soy dipping sauce, so why not make an Italian version of that, perhaps with balsamic vinegar from Modena instead of soy, and see what happens

And what if many-even if most-of the Slothropian stars are proved, some distant day, to refer to sexual fantasies instead of real events? This would hardly invalidate our approach, any more than it did young Sigmund Freud's, back there in old Vienna, facing a similar violation of probability-all those Papi-has-raped-me stories, which might have been lies evidentially, but were certainly the truth clinically. You must realize: we are concerned, at PISCES, with a rather strictly defined, clinical version of truth. We seek no wider agency in this.

There is nothing that the media could say to me that would justify the way they’ve acted. You can hound me. You can follow me, but in no way should you frighten those around me. To harm my wife and potentially harm my daughter—there is no excuse that could put any of you on the right side of morality. I met Rose when I was fifteen and she was fourteen, and through what she would call fate and I’d call circumstance of our hobbies, we’d cross paths dozens of times over the course of a decade. At seventeen, I attended the same national Model UN conference as Rose, and a delegate for Greenland locked us in a janitorial closet. He also stole our phones. He had to beat us dishonorably because he couldn’t beat us any other way. Rose said being locked in a confined space with me was the worst two hours of her life" They look bemused, brows furrowing. I can’t help but smile. “You’re confused because you don’t know whether she was exaggerating or whether she was being truthful. But the truth is that we are complex people with the ability to love to hate and to hate to love, and I wouldn’t trade her for any other person. So that day, stuck beside mops and dirtied towels, I could’ve picked the lock five minutes in and let her go. Instead, I purposefully spent two hours with a girl who wore passion like a dress made of diamonds and hair made of flames. Every day of my life, I am enamored. Every day of my life, I am bewitched. And every day of my life, I spend it with her.” My chest swells with more power, lifting me higher. “I’ve slept with many different kinds of people, and yes, the three that spoke to the press are among them. Rose is the only person I’ve ever loved, and through that love, we married and started a family. There is no other meaning behind this, and for you to conjure one is nothing less than a malicious attack against my marriage and my child. Anything else has no relevance. I can’t be what you need me to be. So you’ll have to accept this version or waste your time questioning something that has no answer. I know acceptance isn’t easy when you’re unsure of what you’re accepting, but all I can say is that you’re accepting me as me. I leave them with a quote from Sylvia Plath. “‘I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart.’” My lips pull higher, into a livelier smile. “‘I am, I am, I am.’” With this, I step away from the podium, and I exit to a cacophony of journalists shouting and asking me to clarify. Adapt to me. I’m satisfied, more than I even predicted. Some people will rewind this conference on their television, to listen closely and try to understand me. I don’t need their understanding, but my daughter will—and I hope the minds of her peers are wide open with vibrant hues of passion. I hope they all paint the world with color.

After a day filled with talking, laughing, reminiscing and making future plans, Evie had returned to Eversby Priory in high spirits. She was full of news to share with her husband... including the fact that the protagonist of Daisy's current novel in progress had been partly inspired by him. "I had the idea when the subject of your husband came up at a dinner party a few months ago, Evie," Daisy had explained, dabbing at a tiny stain left by a strawberry that had fallen onto her bodice. "Someone remarked that Kingston was still the handsomest man in England, and how unfair it was that he never ages. And Lillian said he must be a vampire, and everyone laughed. It started me thinking about that old novel The Vampyre, published about fifty years ago. I decided to write something similar, only a romantic version." Lillian had shaken her head at the notion. "I told Daisy no one would want to read about a vampire lover. Blood... teeth..." She grimaced and shivered. "He enslaves women with his charismatic power," Daisy protested. "He's also a rich, handsome duke- just like Evie's husband." Annabelle spoke then, her blue eyes twinkling. "In light of all that, one could forgive a bad habit or two." Lillian gave her a skeptical glance. "Annabelle, could you really overlook a husband who went around sucking the life out of people?" After pondering the question, Annabelle asked Daisy, "How rich is he?" She ducked with a smothered laugh as Lillian pelted her with a biscuit. Laughing at her friends' antics, Evie had asked Daisy, "What's the title?" "The Duke's Deadly Embrace." "I suggested The Duke Was a Pain in the Neck," Lillian had said, "but Daisy thought it lacked romance.

Just because I look like a human being doesn’t mean I am. This body has more genetic material that’s not strictly human than it does material that is human. And it heavily integrates machines as well. My blood is actually a bunch of nanobots in a fluid. I am and every other CDF soldier is a genetically-modified cyborg.” “But you’re still you, right?” Lowen asked. “You’re still the same person you were when you left Earth. Still the same consciousness.” “That’s a question of some contention among us soldiers,” Wilson said, setting his arm back down. “When you transfer over to the new body, the machine that does the transfer makes it at least seem like for an instant you’re in two bodies at once. It feels like you as a person make the transfer. But I think it’s equally possible that what happens is that memories are transferred over to a brain specially prepared for them, it wakes up, and there’s just enough cross talk between the two separate brains to give the illusion of a transfer before the old one shuts down.” “In which case, you’re actually dead,” Lowen said. “The real you. And this you is a fake.” “Right.” Wilson took another sip of his drink. “Mind you, the CDF could show you graphs and charts that show that actual consciousness transfer happens. But I think this is one of those things you can’t really model from the outside. I have to accept the possibility that I could be a fake Harry Wilson.” “And this doesn’t bother you,” Lowen said. “In a metaphysical sense, sure,” Wilson said. “But in a day-to-day sense, I don’t think about it much. On the inside, it sure feels like I’ve been around for ninety years, and ultimately this version of me likes being alive. So.

Four military guards, real-life versions of Emmet and Brennan’s toys, sit eating some food. They’re strapping soldiers, dressed in black tunics with silver spheres marking their chests, with wands and swords at their sides. It has to be my aunt’s carriage—it can’t possibly be anyone else’s. My aunt is a member of our ruling High Mage Council, and she always travels with an armed entourage. A rush of excitement flashes through me, and I quicken my pace, wondering what on all of Erthia could have possibly brought my powerful aunt to remote Halfix, of all places. I haven’t seen her since I was five years old.

My mother was in charge of language. My father had never really learned to read - he could manage slowly, with his fingers on the line, but he had left school at twelve and gone to work at the Liverpool docks. Before he was twelve, no one had bothered to read to him. His own father had been a drunk who often took his small son to the pub with him, left him outside, staggered out hours later and walked home, and forgot my dad, asleep in a doorway. Dad loved Mrs Winterson reading out loud - and I did too. She always stood up while we two sat down, and it was intimate and impressive all at the same time. She read the Bible every night for half an hour, starting at the beginning, and making her way through all sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments. When she got to her favourite bit, the Book of Revelation, and the Apocalypse, and everyone being exploded and the Devil in the bottomless pit, she gave us all a week off to think about things. Then she started again, Genesis Chapter One. 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth...' It seemed to me to be a lot of work to make a whole planet, a whole universe, and blow it up, but that is one of the problems with the literal-minded versions of Christianity; why look after the planet when you know it is all going to end in pieces?

After shedding my old self, I didn’t suddenly discover a more authentic version underneath. When you carve yourself out of your entire life, you are not left with much. It takes a decade to build both a new self and a life to go with it, and had somebody told me how hard it would be, I might not have undertaken the challenge at all. Yet I never expected it to be easy either. I had no fairy-tale ending in my head and I think that helped. Happiness has a way of playing hide-and-seek when you actively pursue it, but it often surprises you when you least expect it. I found my version of happiness in Berlin. If someone had predicted that ten years ago, I would have found the thought hilarious bordering on insane.

I don't know what will happen in the future. Maybe my worries are unfounded, but lately I've been hearing talk that sounds like it has bubbled up from the history of a time before I was born, talk about people who belong and people who don't, about real people and the others, who ought to be pushed out. The old word cosmopolitan has once again become a sly insult, along with a newer version, globalist. Migrant, which used to be a neutral word, is a term of abuse. We - you, me, your mother, your sister - are migrants. That is our history. Because of that history, because of who we (and our parents) chose to lose and where they chose to go, we are cosmopolitan. It's something I feel proud of, but for others, it seems to be an incitement, a rebuke.

What I found was an ability to enjoy writing again, because I stopped making it about wanting to be the best, or wanting to be better than some past version of myself, or better than other people I admire a lot who write YA fiction. Instead of seeing it as a pyramid, or something that you're trying to get to the top of; I started seeing it as a huge ball that I'm trying to, like, contribute one layer of paint to. Lots of other people are contributing layers of paint, and through that the ball gets more beautiful and more interesting, and also bigger. And instead of me needing to be at the top of my game somehow, what I can really do I think in the end, is contribute in a small way to a very big conversation that's very old. And that's what art is for me.

Tina was hosting. She's a thirty-five-year-old version of Sienne, only bottle blonde.Same blind-you lipstick, same taste in clothes,same complete disregard for anyone else's opinion on anything. They hate each other. "You hate me!" Sienna wailed. It wasn't Tina's voice that snapped back, but Dad's, "Oh,no. I am not playing that game with you. Do you have any idea what a hundred pounds of filet is gonna cost me? And now you want lobster?" "But it's my wedding! Daddy-" "Don't you Daddy me, princess! I'm already five grand in the hole for the damned hotel,not to mention two for the dress, and every time I turn around, you and your mother have added a new guest, bridesmaid,or crustacean!" First of all,Dad was yelling.Almost. Second,he was swearing.Even damn is fighting talk for him.I set down my pizza and debated the best route for a sealthy escape. I'd seen the dress.Pretty, in a Disney-princess, twenty-yards-of-tulle, boobs-shaped-into-missiles sort of way. Sienne looked deliriously happy in it. She looked beautiful.The less said about the bridesmaids' dressed, I'd decided, on seeing the purple sateen,the better. "No lobster!" he yelled. There was a dramatic howl, followed by the bang of the back door. When I peeked out,it was like a photo. Everything was frozen.Dad was standing over the massive pasta pot, red-faced and scowling, wooden spoon brandished like a sword. Leo and Ricky had retreated to the doorway of the freezer. Nonna had her eyes turned heavenward, and Tina was halfway through the dining room door, smirking a little.

I remember something Louis de Bernieres has written about a relationship that endured into old age: 'we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.' As someone lucky to live in a long love, I recognize that gradual growing-towards and subterranean intertwining; the things that do not need to be said between us, the unspoken communication which can sometimes tilt troublingly towards silence, and the sharing of both happiness and pain. I think of good love as something that roots, not rots, over time, and of the hyphae that are weaving through the ground below me, reaching out through the soil in search of mergings. Theirs, too, seems to me then a version of love's work.

GEN17.10 This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised. GEN17.11 And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you. GEN17.12 And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man child in your generations, he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any stranger, which is not of thy seed. GEN17.13 He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised: and my covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. GEN17.14 And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant.

I wished I was old. I was tired of being so young, so stupidly knowing, so stupidly forgetful. I was tired of having to be anything at all. I felt like the internet, full of every kind of information but none of it mattering more than any of it, and all of its little links like thin white roots on a broken plant dug out of the soil, lying drying on its side. And whenever I tried to access myself, whenever I’d try to click on me, try to go any deeper when it can to the meaning of ‘I’, I mean deeper than a single fast-loading page on Facebook or MySpace, it was as if I knew that one morning I’d wake up and try to log on to find that not even _that_ version of ‘I’ existed any more, because the servers all over the world were all down. And that’s how rootless. And that’s how fragile. And what would poor Anthea do then, poor thing?

I was going to ask you,’ Nita said, ‘whether all that was what I thought it was.’ ‘If you thought that dogs now finally have their own version of the One,’ said the Transcendent Pig, ‘then the answer is yes.’ Kit was shaking his head. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he whispered. ‘Are you trying to tell me that my dog—my dog was—’ ‘Is. Yes, it’s the “spell-it-backward” joke again,’ the Pig said, with some resignation. ‘The One just loves those old jokes. The older, the better.’ It raised its bristly eyebrows. ‘Making a big BANG! and running off to hide behind the nearest chunk of physical existence, like some kid ringing the doorbell at Halloween. And the puns. Don’t get It started on the puns...you’ll be there forever.’ It smiled. ‘Literally. But what did you expect? Your dog started making universes out of nothing. That wasn’t a slight tip-off?’ ‘And not just making them,’ Nita said. ‘Saving them.’ ‘Or saving one person,’ Kit said. ‘It’s the same thing, I’m told,’ said the Pig, and it vanished.

In our favorite version of an ancient Buddhist parable, several monks are returning to their monastery after a long pilgrimage. Over high mountains and across low valleys they trek, honoring their vow of silence outside the monastery. One day they come to a raging river where a beautiful young woman stands. She approaches the eldest monk and says, “Forgive me, Roshi, but would you be so kind as to carry me across the river? I cannot swim, and if I remain here or attempt to cross on my own, I shall surely perish.” The old monk smiles at her warmly and says, “Of course I will help you.” With that, he picks her up and carries her across the river. On the other side, he gently sets her down. She thanks him, departs, and the monks continue their wordless journey. After five more days of arduous travel, the monks arrive at their monastery, and the moment they do, they turn on the elder in a fury. “How could you do that?” they admonish him. “You broke your vows! You not only spoke to that woman, you touched her! You not only touched her, you picked her up!” The elder replies, “I only carried her across the river. You have been carrying her for five days.

After two weeks came the first letter from Alexander. Tatiasha, Can there be anything harder than this? Missing you is a physical aching that grips me early in the morning and does not leave me, not even as I draw my last waking breath. My solace in these waning empty summer days is the knowledge that you’re safe, and alive, and healthy, and that the worst that you have to go through is serfdom for four well-meaning old women. The wood piles I’ve left are the lightest in the front. The heaviest ones are for the winter. Use them last, and if you need help carrying them, God help me, ask Vova. Don’t hurt yourself. And don’t fill the water pails all the way to the top. They’re too heavy. Getting back was rough, and as soon as I came back, I was sent right out to the Neva, where for six days we planned our attack and then made a move in boats across the river and were completely crushed in two hours. We didn’t stand a chance. The Germans bombed the boats with the Vanyushas, their version of my rocket launcher, the boats all sank. We were left with a thousand fewer men and were no closer to crossing the river. We’re now looking at other places we can cross. I’m fine, except for the fact that it’s rained here for ten days straight and I’ve been hip deep in mud for all that time. There is nowhere to sleep, except in the mud. We put our trench coats down and hope it stops raining soon. All black and wet, I almost felt sorry for myself until I thought of you during the blockade. I’ve decided to do that from now on. Every time I think I have it so tough, I’m going to think of you burying your sister in Lake Ladoga. I wish you had been given a lighter cross than Leningrad to carry through your life. Things are going to be relatively quiet here for the next few weeks, until we regroup. Yesterday a bomb fell in the commandant’s bunker. The commandant wasn’t there at the time. Yet the anxiety doesn’t go away. When is it going to come again? I play cards and soccer. And I smoke. And I think of you. I sent you money. Go to Molotov at the end of August. Don’t forget to eat well, my warm bun, my midnight sun, and kiss your hand for me, right in the palm and then press it against your heart. Alexander Tatiana read Alexander’s letter a hundred times, memorizing every word. She slept with her face on the letter, which renewed her strength.

Chang opened the door and checked the hallway. She said, “Let’s go.” She opened the door wider. There was a guy standing there. Eyewitness testimony was suspect because of preconditions, and cognitive bias, and suggestibility. It was suspect because people see what they expect to see. Reacher was no different. He was human. The front part of his brain wasted the first precious split second working on the image of the guy at the door, trying to rearrange it into a plausible version of a theoretical McCann. Which was not an easy mental task, because McCann was supposed to be sixty years old and thin and gaunt, whereas the guy at the door was clearly twenty years younger than that, and twice as solid. But still Reacher tried, instinctively, because who else could it be, but McCann? Who else could be at McCann’s door, in McCann’s building, in McCann’s city? Then half a second later the back part of Reacher’s brain took over, and the image resolved itself, crisp and clear, not a potential McCann at all, not even remotely a contender, but the familiar twice-glimpsed face, now three times seen, first in the diner, next in the Town Car, and finally in the there and then, in a dim upstairs hallway in a three-floor walk-up.

6Then King Rehoboam took counsel with the old men, who had stood before Solomon his father while he was yet alive, saying, “How do you advise me to answer this people?” 7And they said to him, “If you will be a servant to this people today and serve them, and speak good words to them when you answer them, then they will be your servants forever.” 8But he abandoned the counsel that the old men gave him and took counsel with the young men who had grown up with him and stood before him. 9And he said to them, “What do you advise that we answer this people who have said to me, ‘Lighten the yoke that your father put on us’?” 10And the young men who had grown up with him said to him, “Thus shall you speak to this people who said to you, ‘Your father made our yoke heavy, but you lighten it for us,’ thus shall you say to them, ‘My little finger is thicker than my father’s thighs. 11And now, whereas  mmy father laid on you a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions.’” 12So Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam the third day, as the king said,  o“Come to me again the third day.” 13And the king answered the people harshly, and forsaking the counsel that the old men had given him,

A woman was stabbed after she rebuffed a man’s sexual advances while she walked in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood late Monday night, a police spokesman said today. The 33-year-old victim was walking down the street when a stranger approached her and propositioned her, police spokesman Officer Albie Esparza said. When she rejected him, the man became very upset and slashed the victim in the face and stabbed her in the arm, Esparza said. The man, in other words, framed the situation as one in which his chosen victim had no rights and liberties, while he had the right to control and punish her. This should remind us that violence is first of all authoritarian. It begins with this premise: I have the right to control you. Murder is the extreme version of that authoritarianism, where the murderer asserts he has the right to decide whether you live or die, the ultimate means of controlling someone.  This may be true even if you are obedient, because the desire to control comes out of a rage that obedience can’t assuage. Whatever fears, whatever sense of vulnerability may underlie such behavior, it also comes out of entitlement, the entitlement to inflict suffering and even death on other people. It breeds misery in the perpetrator and the victims.

There are wonderful examples in Scripture of the power of prayer. Nothing seems to be too great, too hard, or too difficult for prayer to do. It has obtained things that seemed impossible and out of reach. It has won victories over fire, air, earth, and water. Prayer opened the Red Sea. Prayer brought water from the rock and bread from heaven. Prayer made the sun stand still. Prayer brought fire from the sky on Elijah's sacrifice. Prayer turned the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness. Prayer overthrew the army of Sennacherib. Well might Mary, Queen of Scots, say, "I fear John Knox's prayers more than an army of ten thousand men." Prayer has healed the sick. Prayer has raised the dead. Prayer has procured the conversion of souls. "The child of many prayers," said an old Christian to Augustine's mother, "shall never perish." Prayer, pains, and faith can do anything. Nothing seems impossible when a man has the Spirit of adoption. "Let me alone," is the remarkable saying of God to Moses, when Moses was about to intercede for the children of Israel. (Exod. xxxii. 10.) The Chaldee version has it "Leave off praying." So long as Abraham asked mercy for Sodom, the Lord went on giving. He never ceased to give till Abraham ceased to pray. Think of this. Is not this encouragement?

Abhed, my father had called heredity-"indivisible." There is an old trope in popular culture of the "crazy genius," a mind split between madness and brilliance, oscillating between the two states at the throw of a single switch. But Rajesh had no switch. There was no split or oscillation, no pendulum. The magic and the mania were perfectly contiguous-bordering kingdoms with no passports. They were part of the same whole, indivisible. "We of the craft are all crazy," Lord Byron, the high priest of crazies, wrote. "Some are affected by gaiety, others by melancholy, but all are more or less touched." Versions of this story have been tool, over and over, with bipolar disease, with some variants of schizophrenia, and with rare cases of autism; all are "more or less touched." It is tempting to romanticize psychotic illness, so let me emphasize that the men and women with these mental disorders experience paralyzing cognitive, social, and psychological disturbances that send gashes of devastation through their lives. But also indubitably, some patients with these syndromes possess exceptional and unusual abilities. The effervescence of bipolar disease has long been linked to extraordinary creativity; at times, the heightened creative impulse is manifest during the throes of mania.

Lies flee in the presence of truth. And the Devil turns powerless when our minds turn to our all-powerful God. Here’s where I become quite fascinated. Jesus had access to thousands of scriptures from the Old Testament. He knew them. He could have used any of them. But He chose three specific ones. I’ve decided I want these three to be at the top of my mind. I Want a Promise for My Problem of Feeling Empty Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. (Deuteronomy 8:3) My soul was hand designed to be richly satisfied in deep places by the Word of God. When I go without the nourishment of truth, I will crave filling my spiritual hunger with temporary physical pleasures, thinking they will somehow treat the loneliness inside. These physical pleasures can’t fill me, but they can numb me. Numb souls are never growing souls. They wake up one day feeling so very distant from God and wondering how in the world they got there. Since Satan’s goal is to separate us from the Lord, this is exactly where he wants us to stay. But the minute we turn to His Word is the minute the gap between us and God is closed. He is always near. His Word is full and fully able to reach those deep places inside us desperate for truth. I Want a Promise for My Problem of Feeling Deprived “Fear the LORD your God, serve him only and take your oaths in his name” (Deuteronomy 6:13). Another version of this verse says, “Worship Him, your True God, and serve Him.” (THE VOICE) When we worship God, we reverence Him above all else. A great question to ask: Is my attention being held by something sacred or something secret? What is holding my attention the most is what I’m truly worshipping. Sacred worship is all about God. Is my attention being held by something sacred or something secret? Secret worship is all about something in this world that seems so attractive on the outside but will devour you on the inside. Pornography, sex outside of marriage, trading your character to claw your way to a position of power, fueling your sense of worth with your child’s successes, and spending outside of your means to constantly dress your life in the next new thing—all things we do to counteract feelings of being left out of and not invited to the good things God has given others—these are just some of the ways lust sneaks in and wreaks havoc. Two words that characterize misplaced worship or lust are secret excess. God says if we will direct our worship to Him, He will give us strength to turn from the mistakes of yesterday and provide portions for our needs of today. Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. (PSALM 73:25–26) And I Certainly Want a Promise for My Problem of Feeling Rejected Do not put the LORD your God to the test. (Deuteronomy 6:16)

IT is worth remembering that the rise of what we call literary fiction happened at a time when the revealed, authenticated account of the beginning was losing its authority. Now that changes in things as they are change beginnings to make them fit, beginnings have lost their mythical rigidity. There are, it is true, modern attempts to restore this rigidity. But on the whole there is a correlation between subtlety and variety in our fictions and remoteness and doubtfulness about ends and origins. There is a necessary relation between the fictions by which we order our world and the increasing complexity of what we take to be the 'real' history of that world. I propose in this talk to ask some questions about an early and very interesting example of this relation. There was a long-established opinion that the beginning was as described in Genesis, and that the end is to be as obscurely predicted in Revelation. But what if this came to seem doubtful? Supposing reason proved capable of a quite different account of the matter, an account contradicting that of faith? On the argument of these talks so far as they have gone, you would expect two developments: there should be generated fictions of concord between the old and the new explanations; and there should be consequential changes in fictive accounts of the world. And of course I should not be troubling you with all this if I did not think that such developments occurred. The changes to which I refer came with a new wave of Greek influence on Christian philosophy. The provision of accommodations between Greek and Hebrew thought is an old story, and a story of concord-fictions--necessary, as Berdyaev says, because to the Greeks the world was a cosmos, but to the Hebrews a history. But this is too enormous a tract in the history of ideas for me to wander in. I shall make do with my single illustration, and speak of what happened in the thirteenth century when Christian philosophers grappled with the view of the Aristotelians that nothing can come of nothing--ex nihilo nihil fit--so that the world must be thought to be eternal. In the Bible the world is made out of nothing. For the Aristotelians, however, it is eternal, without beginning or end. To examine the Aristotelian arguments impartially one would need to behave as if the Bible might be wrong. And this was done. The thirteenth-century rediscovery of Aristotle led to the invention of double-truth. It takes a good deal of sophistication to do what certain philosophers then did, namely, to pursue with vigour rational enquiries the validity of which one is obliged to deny. And the eternity of the world was, of course, more than a question in a scholarly game. It called into question all that might seem ragged and implausible in the usual accounts of the temporal structure of the world, the relation of time to eternity (certainly untidy and discordant compared with the Neo-Platonic version) and of heaven to hell.

What I find difficult, when I read, is to encounter other people’s achievements passed off as one’s own. I find it difficult to discover literary tradition so warmly embraced and coddled, as if artists existed merely to have flagrant intercourse with the past, guaranteed to draw a crowd but also certain to cover that crowd in an old, heavy breading. I find it difficult when a narrative veers toward soap opera, when characters are explained by their childhoods, when setting is used as spackle to hold together chicken-wire characters who couldn’t even stand up to an artificial wind, when depictions of landscape are intermissions while the author catches his breath and gets another scene ready. I find writing difficult that too readily subscribes to the artistic ideas of other writers, that willingly accepts language as a tool that must be seen and not heard, that believes in happy endings, easy revelations, and bittersweet moments of self-understanding. I find writing difficult that could have been written by anyone. That’s difficult to me, horribly so. Mr. Difficult? It’s not Gaddis. Mr. Difficult is the writer willing to sell short the aims of literature, to serve as its fuming, unwanted ambassador, to apologize for its excesses or near misses, its blind alleys, to insult the reading public with film-ready versions of reality and experience and inner sensations, scenes flying jauntily by under the banner of realism, which lately grants it full critical immunity.

I wanted to be Feinberg's student, but I didn't know how to go about it. Since it was premature for formal arrangements and since I was naturally reticent and shy, I simply began to greet him very politely whenever our paths crossed. Graduate school was a small community. In corridors and elevators and on campus, I was soon running into Feinberg several times a day, always giving him a polite hello and a nice smile. He would reciprocate similarly with a sort of nervous curling of the lips. As time passed, this limbo of flirtatious foreplay continued unabated. I could never find the courage to broach the question of being his student; I supposed I must have hoped it would just happen wordlessly. Every time I saw him I smiled; every time I smiled he bared his lips back at me with greater awkwardness. Our facial manipulations bore increasingly less resemblance to anything like a real smile; each of our reciprocated gestures was a caricature, a Greek theatrical mask signaling friendliness. One day, on about the fifth intersection of our paths on that particular day, I could stand it no longer. I saw him heading towards me down one of the long dark, old-fashioned Pupin corridors, and immediately turned towards the nearest stairwell and went up one floor to avoid him. Having succeeded at this once, I was compelled to do it repeatedly. Soon I was moving upstairs or downstairs to another floor as soon as I saw him approaching, like the protagonist in some ghastly version of the video game Lode Runner.

Is It True? English is a really a form of Plattdeutsch or Lowland German, the way it was spoken during the 5th century. It all happened when Germanic invaders crossed the English Channel and the North Sea from northwest Germany, Denmark and Scandinavia to what is now Scotland or Anglo Saxon better identified as Anglo-Celtic. English was also influenced by the conquering Normans who came from what is now France and whose language was Old Norman, which became Anglo-Norman. Christianity solidified the English language, when the King James Version of the Bible was repetitively transcribed by diligent Catholic monks. Old English was very complex, where nouns had three genders with der, die and das denoting the male, female and neuter genders. Oh yes, it also had strong and weak verbs, little understood and most often ignored by the masses. In Germany these grammatical rules survive to this day, whereas in Britain the rules became simplified and der, die and das became da, later refined to the article the! It is interesting where our words came from, many of which can be traced to their early roots. “History” started out as his story and when a “Brontosaurus Steak” was offered to a cave man, he uttered me eat! Which has now become meat and of course, when our cave man ventured to the beach and asked his friend if he saw any food, the friend replied “me see food,” referring to the multitude of fish or seafood! Most English swear words, which Goodreads will definitely not allow me to write, are also of early Anglo-Saxon origin. Either way they obeyed their king to multiply and had a fling, with the result being that we now have 7.6 Billion people on Earth.

And for the four remaining days - the ninety-six remaining hours - we mapped out a future away from everything we knew. When the walls of the map were breached, we gave one another courage to build them again. And we imagined our home an old stone barn filled with junk and wine and paintings, surrounded by fields of wildflowers and bees. I remember our final day in the villa. We were supposed to be going that evening, taking the sleeper back to England. I was on edge, a mix of nerves and excitement, looking out to see if he made the slightest move toward leaving, but he didn’t. Toiletries remained on the bathroom shelves, clothes stayed scattered across the floor. We went to the beach as usual, lay side by side in our usual spot. The heat was intense and we said little, certainly nothing of our plans to move up to Provence, to the lavender and light. To the fields of sunflowers. I looked at my watch. We were almost there. It was happening. I kept saying to myself, he’s going to do it. I left him on the bed dozing, and went out to the shop to get water and peaches. I walked the streets as if they were my new home. Bonjour to everyone, me walking barefoot, oh so confident, free. And I imagined how we’d go out later to eat, and we’d celebrate at our bar. And I’d phone Mabel and Mabel would say, I understand. I raced back to the villa, ran up the stairs and died. Our rucksacks were open on the bed, our shoes already packed away inside. I watched him from the door. He was silent, his eyes red. He folded his clothes meticulously, dirty washing in separate bags. I wanted to howl. I wanted to put my arms around him, hold him there until the train had left the station. I’ve got peaches and water for the journey, I said. Thank you, he said. You think of everything. Because I love you, I said. He didn’t look at me. The change was happening too quickly. Is there a taxi coming? My voice was weak, breaking. Madame Cournier’s taking us. I went to open the window, the scent of tuberose strong. I lit a cigarette and looked at the sky. An airplane cast out a vivid orange wake that ripped across the violet wash. And I remember thinking, how cruel it was that our plans were out there somewhere. Another version of our future, out there somewhere, in perpetual orbit. The bottle of pastis? he said. I smiled at him. You take it, I said. We lay in our bunks as the sleeper rattled north and retraced the journey of ten days before. The cabin was dark, an occasional light from the corridor bled under the door. The room was hot and airless, smelled of sweat. In the darkness, he dropped his hand down to me and waited. I couldn’t help myself, I reached up and held it. Noticed my fingertips were numb. We’ll be OK, I remember thinking. Whatever we are, we’ll be OK. We didn’t see each other for a while back in Oxford. We both suffered, I know we did, but differently. And sometimes, when the day loomed gray, I’d sit at my desk and remember the heat of that summer. I’d remember the smells of tuberose that were carried by the wind, and the smell of octopus cooking on the stinking griddles. I’d remember the sound of our laughter and the sound of a doughnut seller, and I’d remember the red canvas shoes I lost in the sea, and the taste of pastis and the taste of his skin, and a sky so blue it would defy anything else to be blue again. And I’d remember my love for a man that almost made everything possible./

When everyone is seated, Galen uses a pot holder to remove the lid from the huge speckled pan in the center of the table. And I almost upchuck. Fish. Crabs. And...is that squid hair? Before I can think of a polite version of the truth-I'd rather eat my own pinky finger than seafood-Galen plops the biggest piece of fish on my plate, then scoops a mixture of crabmeat and scallops on top of it. As the steam wafts its way to my nose, my chances of staying polite dwindle. The only think I can think of is to make it look like I'm hiccupping instead of gagging. What did I smell earlier that almost had me salivating? It couldn't have been this. I fork the fillet and twist, but it feels like twisting my own gut. Mush it, dice it, mix it all up. No matter what I do, how it looks, I can't bring it near my mouth. A promise is a promise, dream or no dream. Even if real fish didn't save me in Granny's pond, the fake ones my imagination conjured up sure comforted me until help arrived. And now I'm expected to eat their cousins? No can do. I set the fork down and sip some water. I sense Galen is watching. Out of my peripheral, I see the others shoveling the chum into their faces. But not Galen. He sits still, head tilted, waiting for me to take a bite first. Of all the times to be a gentleman! What happened to the guy who sprawled me over his lap like a three-year-old just a few minutes ago? Still, I can't do it. And they don't even have a dog for me to feed under the table, which used to be my go-to plan at Chloe's grandmother's house. One time Chloe even started a food fight to get me out of it. I glance around the table, but Rayna's the only person I'd aim this slop at. Plus, I'd risk getting the stuff on me, which is almost as bad as in me. Galen nudges me with his elbow. "Aren't you hungry? You're not feeling bad again, are you?" This gets the others' attention. The commotion of eating stops. Everyone stares. Rayna, irritated that her gluttony has been interrupted. Toraf smirking like I've done something funny. Galen's mom wearing the same concerned look he is. Can I lie? Should I lie? What if I'm invited over again, and they fix seafood because I lied about it just this once? Telling Galen my head hurts doesn't get me out of future seafood buffets. And telling him I'm not hungry would be pointless since my stomach keeps gurgling like an emptying drain. No, I can't lie. Not if I ever want to come back here. Which I do. I sigh and set the fork down. "I hate seafood," I tell him. Toraf's sudden cough startles me. The sound of him choking reminds me of a cat struggling with a hair ball. I train my eyes on Galen, who has stiffened to a near statue. Jeez, is this all his mom knows how to make? Or have I just shunned the Forza family's prize-winning recipe for grouper? "You...you mean you don't like this kind of fish, Emma?" Galen says diplomatically. I desperately want to nod, to say, "Yes, that's it, not this kind of fish"-but that doesn't get me out of eating the crabmeat-and-scallop mountain on my plate. I shake my head. "No. Not just this kind of fish. I hate it all. I can't eat any of it. Can hardly stand to smell it." Way to go for the jugular there, stupid! Couldn't I just say I don't care for it? Did I have to say I hate it? Hate even the smell of it? And why am I blushing? It's not a crime to gag on seafood. And for God's sakes, I won't eat anything that still has its eyeballs.

It's hard to form a lasting connection when your permanent address is an eight-inch mailbox in the UPS store. Still,as I inch my way closer, I can't help the way my breath hitches, the way my insides thrum and swirl. And when he turns,flashing me that slow, languorous smile that's about to make him world famous,his eyes meeting mine when he says, "Hey,Daire-Happy Sweet Sixteen," I can't help but think of the millions of girls who would do just about anything to stand in my pointy blue babouches. I return the smile, flick a little wave of my hand, then bury it in the side pocket of the olive-green army jacket I always wear. Pretending not to notice the way his gaze roams over me, straying from my waist-length brown hair peeking out from my scarf, to the tie-dyed tank top that clings under my jacket,to the skinny dark denim jeans,all the way down to the brand-new slippers I wear on my feet. "Nice." He places his foot beside mine, providing me with a view of the his-and-hers version of the very same shoe. Laughing when he adds, "Maybe we can start a trend when we head back to the States.What do you think?" We. There is no we. I know it.He knows it.And it bugs me that he tries to pretend otherwise. The cameras stopped rolling hours ago, and yet here he is,still playing a role. Acting as though our brief, on-location hookup means something more. Acting like we won't really end long before our passports are stamped RETURN. And that's all it takes for those annoyingly soft girly feelings to vanish as quickly as a flame in the rain. Allowing the Daire I know,the Daire I've honed myself to be, to stand in her palce. "Doubtful." I smirk,kicking his shoe with mine.A little harder then necessary, but then again,he deserves it for thinking I'm lame enough to fall for his act. "So,what do you say-food? I'm dying for one of those beef brochettes,maybe even a sausage one too.Oh-and some fries would be good!" I make for the food stalls,but Vane has another idea. His hand reaches for mine,fingers entwining until they're laced nice and tight. "In a minute," he says,pulling me so close my hip bumps against his. "I thought we might do something special-in honor of your birthday and all.What do you think about matching tattoos?" I gape.Surely he's joking. "Yeah,you know,mehndi. Nothing permanent.Still,I thought it could be kinda cool." He arcs his left brow in his trademark Vane Wick wau,and I have to fight not to frown in return. Nothing permanent. That's my theme song-my mission statement,if you will. Still,mehndi's not quite the same as a press-on. It has its own life span. One that will linger long after Vane's studio-financed, private jet lifts him high into the sky and right out of my life. Though I don't mention any of that, instead I just say, "You know the director will kill you if you show up on set tomorrow covered in henna." Vane shrugs. Shrugs in a way I've seen too many times, on too many young actors before him.He's in full-on star-power mode.Think he's indispensable. That he's the only seventeen-year-old guy with a hint of talent,golden skin, wavy blond hair, and piercing blue eyes that can light up a screen and make the girls (and most of their moms) swoon. It's a dangerous way to see yourself-especially when you make your living in Hollywood. It's the kind of thinking that leads straight to multiple rehab stints, trashy reality TV shows, desperate ghostwritten memoirs, and low-budget movies that go straight to DVD.

I push my eye farther into the crack, smushing my cheek. The door rattles. Her arm freezes. The needle stops. Instantly, her shadow fills the room, a mountain on the wall. “Leidah?” I hold my breath. No hiding in the wood-box this time. Before I even have time to pull my eye away, the door opens. My mother's face, like the moon in the dark hallway. She squints and takes a step toward me. “Lei-lee?” I want to tell her I’ve had a nightmare about the Sisters, that I can’t sleep with all this whispering and worrying from her—and what are you sewing in the dark, Mamma? I try to move my lips, but I have no mouth. My tongue is gone; my nose is gone. I don’t have a face anymore. It has happened again. I am lying on my back, flatter than bread. My mother’s bare feet slap against my skin, across my belly, my chest. She digs her heel in, at my throat that isn’t there. I can see her head turning toward her bedroom. Snores crawl under the closed door. The door to my room is open, but she can’t see my bed from where she stands, can’t see that my bed is empty. She nods to herself: everything as it should be. Her foot grinds into my chin. The door to the sewing room closes behind her. I struggle to sit up. I wiggle my hips and jiggle my legs. It is no use. I am stuck, pressed flat into the grain of wood under me. But it’s not under me. It is me. I have become the floor. I know it’s true, even as I tell myself I am dreaming, that I am still in bed under the covers. My blood whirls inside the wood knots, spinning and rushing, sucking me down and down. The nicks of boot prints stomp and kick at my bones, like a bruise. I feel the clunk of one board to the next, like bumps of a wheel over stone. And then I am all of it, every knot, grain, and sliver, running down the hall, whooshing like a river, ever so fast, over the edge and down a waterfall, rushing from room to room. I pour myself under and over and through, feeling objects brush against me as I pass by. Bookshelves, bedposts, Pappa’s slippers, a fallen dressing gown, the stubby ends of an old chair. A mouse hiding inside a hole in the wall. Mor’s needle bobbing up and down. How is this possible? I am so wide, I can see both Mor and Far at the same time, even though they are in different rooms, one wide awake, the other fast asleep. I feel my father’s breath easily, sinking through the bed into me, while Mor’s breath fights against me, against the floor. In and out, each breath swimming away, away, at the speed of her needle, up up up in out in out outoutout—let me out, get me out, I want out. That’s what Mamma is thinking, and I hear it, loud and clear. I strain my ears against the wood to get back into my own body. Nothing happens. I try again, but this time push hard with my arms that aren’t there. Nothing at all. I stop and sink, letting go, giving myself into the floor. Seven, soon to be eight… it’s time, time’s up, time to go. The needle is singing, as sure as stitches on a seam. I am inside the thread, inside her head. Mamma is ticking—onetwothreefourfivesix— Seven. Seven what? And why is it time to go? Don’t leave me, Mamma. I beg her feet, her knees, her hips, her chest, her heart, my begging spreading like a big squid into the very skin of her. It’s then that I feel it. Something is happening to Mamma. Something neither Pappa nor I have noticed. She is becoming dust. She is drier than the wood I have become. - Becoming Leidah Quoted by copying text from the epub version using BlueFire e-reader.

✓My music had roots which I'd dug up from my own childhood, musical roots buried in the darkest soil. ✓What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man ✓What is a soul? It's like electricity - we don't really know what it is, but it's a force that can light a room ✓There are many spokes on the wheel of life. First, we're here to explore new possibilities. ✓I did it to myself. It wasn't society... it wasn't a pusher, it wasn't being blind or being black or being poor. It was all my doing. ✓What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man. ✓There's nothing written in the Bible, Old or New testament, that says, 'If you believe in Me, you ain't going to have no troubles.' ✓Music to me is like breathing. I don't get tired of breathing, I don't get tired of music. ✓Just because you can't see anything , doesn't mean you should shut your eyes. ✓Don't go backwards - you've already been there. ✓Affluence separates people. Poverty knits 'em together. You got some sugar and I don't; I borrow some of yours. Next month you might not have any flour; well, I'll give you some of mine. ✓Sometimes my dreams are so deep that I dream that I'm dreaming. ✓I don't think any of us really knows why we're here. But I think we're supposed to believe we're here for a purpose. ✓I'd like to think that when I sing a song, I can let you know all about the heartbreak, struggle, lies and kicks in the ass I've gotten over the years for being black and everything else, without actually saying a word about it. ✓.There's nothing written in the Bible, Old or New testament, that says, 'If you believe in Me, you ain't going to have no troubles.' ✓Other arms reach out to me, Other eyes smile tenderly, Still in peaceful dreams I see, The road leads back to you. ✓I can't help what I sound like. What I sound like is what i am. You know? I cannot be anything other that what I am. ✓Music is about the only thing left that people don't fight over. ✓My version of 'Georgia' became the state song of Georgia. That was a big thing for me, man. It really touched me. Here is a state that used to lynch people like me suddenly declaring my version of a song as its state song. That is touching. ✓Absence makes the heart grow fonder and tears are only rain to make love grow. ✓If you can play the blues, you can do anything. ✓I never considered myself part of rock 'n' roll. My stuff was more adult. It was more difficult for teenagers to relate to; my stuff was filled with more despair than anything you'd associate with rock 'n' roll. Since I couldn't see people dancing, I didn't write jitterbugs or twists. I wrote rhythms that moved me. My style requires pure heart singing. ✓It's like Duke Ellington said, there are only two kinds of music - good and bad. And you can tell when something is good. ✓Rhythm and blues used to be called race music. ... This music was going on for years, but nobody paid any attention to it. ✓Crying's always been a way for me to get things out which are buried deep, deep down. When I sing, I often cry. Crying is feeling, and feeling is being human. ✓I cant retire from music any more than I can retire from my liver. Youd have to remove the music from me surgically—like you were taking out my appendix. ✓The words to country songs are very earthy like the blues. They're not as dressed up and the people are very honest and say, 'Look, I miss you darlin', so I went out and got drunk in this bar.' That's the way you say it. Where in Tin Pan Alley they would say, 'Oh I missed you darling, so I went to this restaurant and I sat down and had a dinn

Well, it was a kind of back-to-front program. It’s funny how many of the best ideas are just an old idea back-to-front. You see there have already been several programs written that help you to arrive at decisions by properly ordering and analysing all the relevant facts so that they then point naturally towards the right decision. The drawback with these is that the decision which all the properly ordered and analysed facts point to is not necessarily the one you want.’ ‘Yeeeess...’ said Reg’s voice from the kitchen. ‘Well, Gordon’s great insight was to design a program which allowed you to specify in advance what decision you wished it to reach, and only then to give it all the facts. The program’s task, which it was able to accomplish with consummate ease, was simply to construct a plausible series of logical-sounding steps to connect the premises with the conclusion. ‘And I have to say that it worked brilliantly. Gordon was able to buy himself a Porsche almost immediately despite being completely broke and a hopeless driver. Even his bank manager was unable to find fault with his reasoning. Even when Gordon wrote it off three weeks later.’ ‘Heavens. And did the program sell very well?’ ‘No. We never sold a single copy.’ ‘You astonish me. It sounds like a real winner to me.’ ‘It was,’ said Richard hesitantly. ‘The entire project was bought up, lock, stock and barrel, by the Pentagon. The deal put WayForward on a very sound financial foundation. Its moral foundation, on the other hand, is not something I would want to trust my weight to. I’ve recently been analysing a lot of the arguments put forward in favour of the Star Wars project, and if you know what you’re looking for, the pattern of the algorithms is very clear. ‘So much so, in fact, that looking at Pentagon policies over the last couple of years I think I can be fairly sure that the US Navy is using version 2.00 of the program, while the Air Force for some reason only has the beta-test version of 1.5. Odd, that.

See how cruel the whites look. Their lips are thin, their noses sharp, their faces furrowed and dis­torted by folds. Their eyes have a staring expression; they are always seeking something. What are they seeking? The whites always want something; they are always uneasy and restless. We do not know what they want. We do not understand them. We think that they are mad." I asked him why he thought the whites were all mad. "They say that they think with their heads," he replied. "Why of course. What do you think with?" I asked him in surprise. "We think here," he said, indicating his heart. I fell into a long meditation. For the first time in my life, so it seemed to me, someone had drawn for me a picture of the real white man. It was as though until now I had seen nothing but sentimental, prettified color prints. This Indian had struck our vulnerable spot, unveiled a truth to which we are blind. I felt rising within me like a shapeless mist something unknown and yet deeply familiar. And out of this mist, image upon image detached itself: first Roman legions smashing into the cities of Gaul, and the keenly incised features of Julius Caesar, Scipio Africanus, and Pompey. I saw the Roman eagle on the North Sea and on the banks of the White Nile. Then I saw St. Augus­tine transmitting the Christian creed to the Britons on the tips of Roman lances, and Charlemagne's most glorious forced con­versions of the heathen; then the pillaging and murdering bands of the Crusading armies. With a secret stab I realized the hol­lowness of that old romanticism about the Crusades. Then fol­lowed Columbus, Cortes, and the other conquistadors who with fire, sword, torture, and Christianity came down upon even these remote pueblos dreaming peacefully in the Sun, their Father. I saw, too, the peoples of the Pacific islands decimated by firewater, syphilis, and scarlet fever carried in the clothes the missionaries forced on them. It was enough. What we from our point of view call coloniza­tion, missions to the heathen, spread of civilization, etc., has another face - the face of a bird of prey seeking with cruel in­tentness for distant quarry - a face worthy of a race of pirates and highwaymen. All the eagles and other predatory creatures that adorn our coats of arms seem to me apt psychological representatives of our true nature.

Now, before you invade a foreign city. Here’s the law: Offer the fools a peace treaty. They can remain in their city as your slaves doing forced labor for you. And if they refuse your generosity? Kill every goddamned one of their men. And take their women, children, livestock, and wealth as plunder.” The same guy raised his hand and yelled, “Can we fuck these women, too?” It was a stupid question, but Moses replied patiently, “Of course. Fuck them—use them as footstools, punching bags, scarecrows—who cares? They’re slaves! Do whatever you want with them. “Just remember, all you have to do is obey Yahweh. Then you will have no worries and nothing to fear. He will take care of you. But be careful, because Yahweh will test you. He will send false prophets and phony dream interpreters. “If you encounter one? And his predictions come true? And he wants you to worship another god? Don’t be impressed! Beware! Yahweh sent him to tempt you. “So kill anyone who prophesies in the name of another god. “And kill anyone who pretends to be a prophet and is not! “And if you find a town worshipping another god—kill everyone in it! And kill their livestock! Plunder their homes! Burn that despicable town to the ground and never rebuild it! Make it a perpetual burnt offering to Yahweh. “And whatever you do, for god’s sake, do not imitate the detestable Canaanite religions! Do not incinerate your children, or practice sorcery, or witchcraft. And don’t interpret omens. These practices are detestable to Yahweh. “Above all, DO NOT worship their gods! Don’t worship the sun! Or the moon! Or the stars in the sky! Yahweh gave those to the suckers in other nations as their gods. If you worship just one of them—just one time…” Moses shuddered at the thought. “Well, let’s just say, Yahweh is jealous—real jealous! If he catches you worshipping another god, I have to tell you that the gigs up. He’ll kick your asses out of the Promised Land. And scatter you among the other nations like snake shit scattered about the desert.”   Obey Yahweh and you will live in paradise   “Just obey Yahweh. You hear me? Obey him, and you will live in paradise. He will protect you from your enemies. Send rain for your crops. Nurture your herds. You will have abundant food and wine. Maybe free dance lessons—who knows? There is no limit to Yahweh’s love! Obey him, and your lives will be perfect. Disobey him, and you are fucked! It’s just that simple.” Moses waited for the impact of this essential truth to resister in their brains. Regretfully, it did not. But he concluded, “Anyhow, I’m one-hundred and twenty years old. I cannot lead you into the Promised Land. Joshua will lead you.” He again found Joshua in the crowd. “Joshua, come on up here!” Joshua, startled awake, elbowed his way through the crowd and

Good God, Miss Butterfield,” Lord Jarret said. “Don’t tell me you read Minerva’s Gothic horrors.” “They’re not Gothic horrors!” Maria protested. “They’re wonderful books! And yes, I’ve read every single one, more than once.” “Well, that explains a few things,” Oliver remarked. “I suppose I have my sister to thank for turning a sword on me at the brothel.” Lord Gabriel laughed. “You took a sword to old Oliver? Oh, God, that’s rich!” Lord Jarret sipped some wine. “At least the mystery of the ‘weapons at her disposal’ is now solved.” “He was misbehaving,” Maria said, with a warning glance for Oliver. Did he want them to know everything, for pity’s sake? “He left me no choice.” “Oh, Maria’s always doing things like that,” Freddy said through a mouth full of eel. “That’s why we won’t teach her to shoot. She always goes off half-cocked.” Maria thrust out her chin. “A woman has to stand up for herself.” “Hear, hear!” Lady Celia raised her goblet of wine to Maria. “Don’t mind these clod-pates. What can you expect from a group of men? They would prefer we let them run roughshod over us.” “No, we wouldn’t,” Lord Gabriel protested. “I like a woman with a little fire. Of course, I can’t speak for Oliver-“ “I assure you, I rarely feel the need to run roughshod over a woman,” Oliver drawled. An arch smile touched his lips as his gaze locked with Maria’s. “I’ve kissed one or two when they weren’t prepared for it, but every man does that.” Lady Minerva snorted. “Yes, and most of them get slapped, but not you, I expect. Even when you misbehave, you have a talent for turning ladies up sweet. How else would you go from having a sword thrust at you to gaining Miss Butterfield’s consent to be your bride-eh, Miss Butterfield?” Maria didn’t answer. Something was nagging at the back of her brain-a vaguely familiar line from one of Lady Minerva’s books: “He had a talent for turning ladies up sweet, which both thrilled and alarmed her.” “Heavens alive.” She stared at Oliver. “You’re the Marquess of Rockton!” She hardly realized she’d said it aloud until his brothers and sisters laughed. A pained look crossed Oliver’s face. “Don’t remind me.” Sparing a glare for his sister, Oliver muttered, “You have no idea how my friends revel in the fact that my sister made me a villain in her novel.” “They only revel because she made them into heroes,” Lord Jarret pointed out, eyes twinkling. “Foxmoor got quite a big head over it, and Kirkwood’s been strutting around ever since the last one came out. He loved that he got to trounce you.” “That’s because he knows he couldn’t trounce me in real life,” Oliver remarked. “Though he keeps suggesting we should have a ‘rapier duel’ to prove whether he could.” Maria stared at them agape. “Do you mean that the Viscount Churchgrove is real? And Foxmoor…great heavens, that’s Wolfplain!” “Yes.” Oliver rolled his eyes. “Churchgrove is my friend, the Viscount Kirkwood, and Wolfplain is another friend, the Duke of Foxmoor. Apparently Minerva has trouble coming up with original characters.” “You know perfectly well that I only used a version of their names,” Lady Minerva said smoothly. “The characters are my own.” “Except for you, Oliver,” Lord Jarret remarked. “You’re clearly Rockton.

The true turning point came when I was about fourteen years old. I bought a copy of PC Plus magazine which included a cover CD featuring a full version of Borland C++ Builder. I installed it and carefully followed the "hello world" tutorial which was helpfully included in the magazine. This was it. A new world opened up before me. The restrictions imposed upon my imagination by the material world were gone. My creativity unshackled, the cathedrals in my mind would be made manifest! To what lofty end should I put this new-found tool? It was obvious. The Fuck Generator. As simple as it was elegant, the Fuck Generator (fgen.exe) was a command-line program, and my first advance beyond "hello world." Upon starting, it would prompt the user for a number. With this number n, it would then print out the string "fuck," n times. Finally the user was given the option to repeat the exercise, or quit. Perhaps a little limited in use, I nevertheless was hooked on the power that I had tasted. It is a particular joy that any programmer will know well, to see the machine do your bidding, no matter how simple a task that may be. It works, and it works because you understand how to make it work.

Katie appeared as a ghost and cradled him in her arms and carried him, a frail dying version of her old husband, to heaven. The radio which was powered off suddenly comes on and played their song Follow Me. Nobody could see her only Ronan and he smiled and says “I knew you would come back for me love

I have a complicated spiritual history. Here's the short version: I was born into a Mass-going Roman Catholic family, but my parents left the church when I was in the fifth grade and joined a Southern Baptist church—yes, in Connecticut. I am an alumnus of Wheaton College—Billy Graham's alma mater in Illinois, not the Seven Sisters school in Massachusetts—and the summer between my junior and senior year of (Christian) high school, I spent a couple of months on a missions trip performing in whiteface as a mime-for-the-Lord on the streets of London's West End. Once I left home for Wheaton, I ended up worshiping variously (and when I could haul my lazy tuckus out of bed) at the nondenominational Bible church next to the college, a Christian hippie commune in inner-city Chicago left over from the Jesus Freak movement of the 1960s, and an artsy-fartsy suburban Episcopal parish that ended up splitting over same-sex issues. My husband of more than a decade likes to describe himself as a “collapsed Catholic,” and for more than twenty-five years, I have been a born-again Christian. Groan, I know. But there's really no better term in the current popular lexicon to describe my seminal spiritual experience. It happened in the summer of 1980 when I was about to turn ten years old. My parents had both had born-again experiences themselves about six months earlier, shortly before our family left the Catholic church—much to the shock and dismay of the rest of our extended Irish and/or Italian Catholic family—and started worshiping in a rented public grade school gymnasium with the Southern Baptists. My mother had told me all about what she'd experienced with God and how I needed to give my heart to Jesus so I could spend eternity with him in heaven and not frying in hell. I was an intellectually stubborn and precocious child, so I didn't just kneel down with her and pray the first time she told me about what was going on with her and Daddy and Jesus. If something similar was going to happen to me, it was going to happen in my own sweet time. A few months into our family's new spiritual adventure, after hearing many lectures from Mom and sitting through any number of sermons at the Baptist church—each ending with an altar call and an invitation to make Jesus the Lord of my life—I got up from bed late one Sunday night and went downstairs to the den where my mother was watching television. I couldn't sleep, which was unusual for me as a child. I was a champion snoozer. In hindsight I realize something must have been troubling my spirit. Mom went into the kitchen for a cup of tea and left me alone with the television, which she had tuned to a church service. I don't remember exactly what the preacher said in his impassioned, sweaty sermon, but I do recall three things crystal clearly: The preacher was Jimmy Swaggart; he gave an altar call, inviting the folks in the congregation in front of him and at home in TV land to pray a simple prayer asking Jesus to come into their hearts; and that I prayed that prayer then and there, alone in the den in front of the idiot box. Seriously. That is precisely how I got “saved.” Alone. Watching Jimmy Swaggart on late-night TV. I also spent a painful vacation with my family one summer at Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's Heritage USA Christian theme park in South Carolina. But that's a whole other book…

These portraits were extraordinary enough, but dominating the whole room was a painting the like of which I’d never seen before, of a small girl, perhaps four or five years old, encased in a stiff satin dress as wide as a table at the hips, very strange on a child. Las Meninas, it was called, which means The Maids of Honour, and sure enough the princess was surrounded by courtiers, a nun, a finely dressed female dwarf and a small boy, or perhaps he was another dwarf, prodding a dog with his foot. To the left, a painter with a comically Spanish moustache – a likeness, I supposed, of Velázquez himself – stood in front of a huge canvas, facing out as if he was painting not the little girl but the viewer, specifically me, Douglas Timothy Petersen, the illusion so convincing that I wanted to crane around the canvas to see what he’d made of my nose. A mirror on the back wall showed two other figures, the girl’s parents I guessed, Mariana and Philip IV, the large-chinned gentleman on the wall to my left. Despite being distant and blurred, it seemed that they were the true subject of the artist’s portrait, but nevertheless the artist, the little girl, the female dwarf all seemed to stare out of the painting at me with such level intensity that I began to feel rather self-conscious, and confused, too, as to how a painting could have so many subjects: the little princess, the ladies in waiting, the artist, the royal couple, and me. It was as disorientating as the moment when you step between two mirrors and see infinite versions of yourself stretching into, well, infinity. Clearly there was ‘a lot going on’ in this painting too, and I’d return with Albie soon.

The Great Expansion has come to Earth at last. We will celebrate Mogadorian Progress together, granddaughter.’ 2 From the cracked second-floor window of an abandoned textile factory, I watch an old man in a ragged trench coat and filthy jeans crouch down in the doorway of the boarded-up building across the street. Once he’s settled, the man pulls a brown-bagged bottle from his coat and starts drinking. It’s the middle of the afternoon – I’m on watch – and he’s the only living soul I’ve seen in this abandoned part of Baltimore since we got here yesterday. It’s a quiet, deserted place, and yet it’s still preferable to the version of Washington, D.C. I saw in Ella’s vision. For now at least, it doesn’t look like the Mogadorians have pursued us from Chicago. Although, technically, they wouldn’t have to. There’s already a Mogadorian among us. Behind me, Sarah stomps her foot. We’re in what used to be the foreman’s office, dust everywhere, the floorboards swollen and mildewed. I turn around just in time to see her frowning at the remains of a cockroach on the bottom of her sneaker. ‘Careful. You might go crashing right through the floor,’ I tell her, only half joking. ‘I guess it was too much to ask for all your secret bases to be in penthouse apartments, huh?’ Sarah asks, fixing me with a teasing smile. We slept in this old factory last night, our sleeping bags laid on the sunken floorboards. Both of us are filthy, it’s been a couple of days since our last real shower, and Sarah’s blond hair is caked with dirt. She’s still beautiful to me. Without her at my side, I might’ve totally lost it

Come Clean with God It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all. —1 TIMOTHY 1:15 NASB     One of the most watched TV series in recent years has been Donald Trump’s The Apprentice. The highlight of the program is when Mr. Trump delights in saying, “You’re fired!” This format has been so well received in America that other networks quickly introduced their versions. While we never want to hear our bosses utter, “You’re fired!” it could happen. But thankfully, we will only hear Jesus say, “You’re hired.” He gives us new life. But in order for us to be hired, we must humble ourselves and come clean with God. The apostle Paul had the same dilemma when he was challenged to deal with God’s grace. Some of these struggles can be found in his writings: • 1 Corinthians 15:9—I am the least of all the apostles. • Ephesians 3:8—I am the least deserving Christian there is. • 1 Timothy 1:15—I am the worst sinner of all. Paul was humbled by his past and wanted to change his direction in life. At one time in my life I had to make a decision. I had to let old things pass away and then turn to eternal values. As I faced decisions about how I lived and what I wanted, I had to ask, How do I come close to God? Examine Paul’s challenge in 1 Timothy 2:1-4: Here are my directions: Pray much for others; plead for God’s mercy upon them; give thanks for all he is going to do for them.   Pray in this way for kings and all others who are in authority over us, or are in places of high responsibility, so that we can live in peace and quietness, spending our time in godly living and thinking much about the Lord. This is good and pleases God our Savior, for he longs for all to be saved (TLB). Paul gives us three very valuable challenges and instructions: (1) pray for your needs, (2) pray for others, and (3) pray for thanksgiving. Notice that we are instructed to go from our internal needs first and then move to prayers for others and then thanksgiving to God. We are a very narcissistic

When George first told me about the title, I wasn’t so sure he was serious,” Burtt says. “It seemed like such an extreme-sounding pulp title. But that’s what we were making: a big version of those old serials, with names like ‘Fate Takes the Wheel’ or ‘The Crimson Ghost Strikes Out.’