“
Suicide. It's something I've been thinking about. Not too seriously, but I have been thinking about it.”
That's the note. Word for word. And I know it's word for word because I wrote it dozens of times before delivering it. I'd write it, throw it away, write it, crumple it up, throw it away.
But why was I writing it to begin with? I asked myself that question every time I printed the words onto a new sheet of paper. Why was I writing this note? It was a lie. I hadn't been thinking about it. Not really. Not in detail. The thought would come into my head and I'd push it away.
But I pushed it away a lot.
”
”
Jay Asher (Thirteen Reasons Why)
“
Don't give up when dark times come. The more storms you face in life, the stronger you'll be. Hold on. Your greater is coming.
”
”
Germany Kent
“
Do not limit yourself to your own preconceptions of yourself, but throw yourself out onto a blank page that you haven't written on yet, and see what you find out about you, see what story unfolds, see what happens! I always do this, and sometimes it can be very frightening! To very often have a blank page with nothing written on it yet! I feel as though I am a soul with a single covering–my body of skin– and that's the only thing between me on the inside and the rest of the world! It's quite frightening to begin each day on a blank page, forgetting your own preconceptions of yourself and allowing your mind to embrace the new! It is like meeting yourself for the first time, over and over again!
”
”
C. JoyBell C.
“
This is an ode to all of those that have never asked for one.
A thank you in words to all of those that do not do
what they do so well for the thanking.
This is to the mothers.
This is to the ones who match our first scream
with their loudest scream; who harmonize in our shared pain
and joy and terrified wonder when life begins.
This is to the mothers.
To the ones who stay up late and wake up early and always know
the distance between their soft humming song and our tired ears.
To the lips that find their way to our foreheads and know,
somehow always know, if too much heat is living in our skin.
To the hands that spread the jam on the bread and the mesmerizing
patient removal of the crust we just cannot stomach.
This is to the mothers.
To the ones who shout the loudest and fight the hardest and sacrifice
the most to keep the smiles glued to our faces and the magic
spinning through our days. To the pride they have for us
that cannot fit inside after all they have endured.
To the leaking of it out their eyes and onto the backs of their
hands, to the trails of makeup left behind as they smile
through those tears and somehow always manage a laugh.
This is to the patience and perseverance and unyielding promise
that at any moment they would give up their lives to protect ours.
This is to the mothers.
To the single mom’s working four jobs to put the cheese in the mac
and the apple back into the juice so their children, like birds in
a nest, can find food in their mouths and pillows under their heads.
To the dreams put on hold and the complete and total rearrangement
of all priority. This is to the stay-at-home moms and those that
find the energy to go to work every day; to the widows and the
happily married.
To the young mothers and those that deal with the unexpected
announcement of a new arrival far later than they ever anticipated.
This is to the mothers.
This is to the sack lunches and sleepover parties, to the soccer games
and oranges slices at halftime. This is to the hot chocolate
after snowy walks and the arguing with the umpire
at the little league game. To the frosting ofbirthday cakes
and the candles that are always lit on time; to the Easter egg hunts,
the slip-n-slides and the iced tea on summer days.
This is to the ones that show us the way to finding our own way.
To the cutting of the cord, quite literally the first time
and even more painfully and metaphorically the second time around.
To the mothers who become grandmothers and great-grandmothers
and if time is gentle enough, live to see the children of their children
have children of their own. To the love.
My goodness to the love that never stops and comes from somewhere
only mothers have seen and know the secret location of.
To the love that grows stronger as their hands grow weaker
and the spread of jam becomes slower and the Easter eggs get easier
to find and sack lunches no longer need making.
This is to the way the tears look falling from the smile lines
around their eyes and the mascara that just might always be
smeared with the remains of their pride for all they have created.
This is to the mothers.
”
”
Tyler Knott Gregson
“
I flopped back onto my pillows. I wanted to begin loathing the new day in comfort.
”
”
Chuck Barris
“
For a New Beginning
In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.
It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.
Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.
Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.
Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.
”
”
John O'Donohue
“
I know you told me you'd wait for me, but I don't want either of us to wait anymore. Especially when I knew from the first moment I saw you that you were special. I feel like I've been running my whole life, speeding from small town into a big city, jumping from one place to the next for years until they all blurred together. And right when I decided it was time to finally stop running and set down some roots, there you were. My new beginning." Her eyes filled with tears as she smiled up at him and slid her arms around his neck to pull him closer. "My love."
Jack sank down onto the couch with Mary, her curves soft beneath his muscles. "I'll always be yours, Angel. Forever.
”
”
Bella Andre (Kissing Under the Mistletoe (San Francisco Sullivans, #9; The Sullivans, #9))
“
always that feeling when you walk out the door and onto the street in New York that today, no matter what happened yesterday, you can begin again.
”
”
Sari Botton (Never Can Say Goodbye: Writers on Their Unshakable Love for New York)
“
Death isn’t a final ending, Wallace. It is an ending, sure, but only to prepare you for a new beginning.” He was stunned when he felt a tear trickle down onto his cheek. He brushed it away, not able to look at Mei as he did so. “You’re awfully strange.” He heard the smile in her voice. “Thank you. That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me. You’re awfully strange too, Wallace Price.
”
”
T.J. Klune (Under the Whispering Door)
“
New Mexico is my favorite state,” I declared as we pulled onto I-40.
“I'm waiting to see it all before I decide. And by the way, your driving isn't half bad. I expected to be terrified.”
“Why?”
“I imagined a timid, overly cautious little angel, but you've got an impressive lead foot.”
Whoops.
“Your car drives so quietly,” I said, "I don't realize how fast I'm going. I'll set the cruise control from now on.”
“Don't worry. I'll keep an ear out for cops,” he told me.
“Will we be passing the Grand Canyon?” I asked. “I've always wanted to see it.”
Kaidan pulled out the map and studied it.
“It's a bit out of the way, more than an hour. But how about this? We can go on the way back, since we won't have a time crunch.”
I didn't know if it was the desert air or what, but I felt at ease. I still had a thousand questions for Kaidan, but I wasn't in the mood for another heavy conversation just yet. I liked talking to him. We were still guarded, and it wasn't nearly as carefree as talking with Jay, but I was beginning to imagine keeping Kaidan in my life as a friend after this trip. Time would help us forget the kiss. My crush on him would fade. If I could stop analyzing every touch and every look, then maybe it could work. I vowed to myself at that moment: No more jealousy. No more flirting. No more lustful longing for the elusive Kaidan Rowe.
”
”
Wendy Higgins (Sweet Evil (Sweet, #1))
“
So now, as the Maiden form of the Goddess whispers to us of hope and new beginnings at the festival of Imbolc, it is on a cold February morning that you are invited to step onto the ‘Wheel of the Year.
”
”
Carole Carlton (Mrs Darley's Pagan Whispers: A Celebration of Pagan Festivals, Sacred Days, Spirituality and Traditions of the Year)
“
dear samantha
i’m sorry
we have to get a divorce
i know that seems like an odd way to start a love letter but let me explain:
it’s not you
it sure as hell isn’t me
it’s just human beings don’t love as well as insects do
i love you.. far too much to let what we have be ruined by the failings of our species
i saw the way you looked at the waiter last night
i know you would never DO anything, you never do but..
i saw the way you looked at the waiter last night
did you know that when a female fly accepts the pheromones put off by a male fly, it re-writes her brain, destroys the receptors that receive pheromones, sensing the change, the male fly does the same. when two flies love each other they do it so hard, they will never love anything else ever again. if either one of them dies before procreation can happen both sets of genetic code are lost forever. now that… is dedication.
after Elizabeth and i broke up we spent three days dividing everything we had bought together
like if i knew what pots were mine like if i knew which drapes were mine somehow the pain would go away
this is not true
after two praying mantises mate, the nervous system of the male begins to shut down
while he still has control over his motor functions
he flops onto his back, exposing his soft underbelly up to his lover like a gift
she then proceeds to lovingly dice him into tiny cubes
spooning every morsel into her mouth
she wastes nothing
even the exoskeleton goes
she does this so that once their children are born she has something to regurgitate to feed them
now that.. is selflessness
i could never do that for you
so i have a new plan
i’m gonna leave you now
i’m gonna spend the rest of my life committing petty injustices
i hope you do the same
i will jay walk at every opportunity
i will steal things i could easily afford
i will be rude to strangers
i hope you do the same
i hope reincarnation is real
i hope our petty crimes are enough to cause us to be reborn as lesser creatures
i hope we are reborn as flies
so that we can love each other as hard as we were meant to.
”
”
Jared Singer
“
We do not know what our pets are thinking. This lack of knowledge allows us to project onto our pets our own thoughts and feelings, and thereby to feel an emotional closeness with them which may not correspond to reality at all. Second, we find our pets satisfactory only insofar as their wills coincide with ours. This is the basis on which we generally select our pets, and if their wills begin to diverge significantly from our own, we get rid of them. We don’t keep pets around very long when they protest or fight back against us.
”
”
M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth)
“
Fatally, the term 'barbarian' is the password that opens up the archives of the twentieth century. It refers to the despiser of achievement, the vandal, the status denier, the iconoclast, who refuses to acknowledge any ranking rules or hierarchy. Whoever wishes to understand the twentieth century must always keep the barbaric factor in view. Precisely in more recent modernity, it was and still is typical to allow an alliance between barbarism and success before a large audience, initially more in the form of insensitive imperialism, and today in the costumes of that invasive vulgarity which advances into virtually all areas through the vehicle of popular culture. That the barbaric position in twentieth-century Europe was even considered the way forward among the purveyors of high culture for a time, extending to a messianism of uneducatedness, indeed the utopia of a new beginning on the clean slate of ignorance, illustrates the extent of the civilizatory crisis this continent has gone through in the last century and a half - including the cultural revolution downwards, which runs through the twentieth century in our climes and casts its shadow ahead onto the twenty-first.
”
”
Peter Sloterdijk
“
It was nice to hear someone familiar. 'How have you been?' Hazel cleared her throat. 'So I need to start networking a little, as they say. Do you have the phone number of anyone who might be looking to hire some help?'
'I don't have a phone,' Liver answered.
Hazel felt her pulse speed up.
'No phone? Of any kind?' Her voice was nearly cracking with excitement. 'So how do people get ahold of you? Your family? Your friends?'
'I've succumbed to neither affliction,' he answered.
'What about women?' she asked, admittedly changing her voice to be a little flirtatious. Hazel decided she'd misjudged him. Anyone getting through life without a phone had skills she wanted to acquire. Rare capabilities that attracted the new Hazel.
'I just meet women in this bar. Mainly they use me to help them reach bottom. I'm like a brick they grab onto midair. Sleeping with me helps them admit their lives have become unmanageable. They realize they want and deserve something more, and then their recovery process can begin. I get laid in the meantime. Win-win.
”
”
Alissa Nutting (Made for Love)
“
And so all the time the European brain has held onto two contradictory things. The first is the dominant established narrative of a generation: that anyone in the world can come to Europe and become a European, and that in order to become a European you merely need to be a person in Europe. The other part of the European brain has spent these years watching and waiting. This part could always recognise that the new arrivals were not only coming in unprecedented numbers but were bringing with them customs that, if not all unprecedented, had certainly not existed in Europe for a long time. The first part of the brain insists that the newcomers will assimilate and that, given time, even the most hard-to-swallow aspects of the culture of the new arrivals will become more recognisably European. Optimism favours the first part of the brain. Events favour the second, which increasingly begins to wonder whether anyone has the time for the changes that are meant to happen.
”
”
Douglas Murray (The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam)
“
All forms of writing are an act of conception; writing must lead to creation. Each time that we write, we begin again. Writing is an act of self-affirmation. Each time that we place our thoughts onto paper, we receive a new opportunity to claim our reality. Writing is also an act of explication and deconstruction. Writing empowers us to shape and modify our fiery constitutions. Writing allows us to explore the essential ingredients that lead to a life of serenity by exhibiting compassion, love, patience, generosity, and forgiveness.
”
”
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
“
I finally understood — the past belongs in the past.
What we hold onto as fantasy doesn’t always survive reality.
”
”
Carla J Brooks
“
dear samantha
i’m sorry
we have to get a divorce
i know that seems like an odd way to start a love letter but let me explain:
it’s not you
it sure as hell isn’t me
it’s just human beings don’t love as well as insects do
i love you.. far too much to let what we have be ruined by the failings of our species
i saw the way you looked at the waiter last night
i know you would never DO anything, you never do but..
i saw the way you looked at the waiter last night
did you know that when a female fly accepts the pheromones put off by a male fly, it re-writes her brain, destroys the receptors that receive pheromones, sensing the change, the male fly does the same. when two flies love each other they do it so hard, they will never love anything else ever again. if either one of them dies before procreation can happen both sets of genetic code are lost forever. now that… is dedication.
after Elizabeth and i broke up we spent three days dividing everything we had bought together
like if i knew what pots were mine like if i knew which drapes were mine somehow the pain would go away
this is not true
after two praying mantises mate, the nervous system of the male begins to shut down
while he still has control over his motor functions
he flops onto his back, exposing his soft underbelly up to his lover like a gift
she then proceeds to lovingly dice him into tiny cubes
spooning every morsel into her mouth
she wastes nothing
even the exoskeleton goes
she does this so that once their children are born she has something to regurgitate to feed them
now that.. is selflessness
i could never do that for you
so i have a new plan
i’m gonna leave you now
i’m gonna spend the rest of my life committing petty injustices
i hope you do the same
i will jay walk at every opportunity
i will steal things i could easily afford
i will be rude to strangers
i hope you do the same
i hope reincarnation is real
i hope our petty crimes are enough to cause us to be reborn as lesser creatures
i hope we are reborn as flies
so that we can love each other as hard as we were meant to
”
”
Jared Singer
“
Say you could view a time lapse film of our planet: what would you see?
Transparent images moving through light, “an infinite storm of beauty.”
The beginning is swaddled in mists, blasted by random blinding flashes. Lava pours and cools; seas boil and flood. Clouds materialize and shift; now you can see the earth’s face through only random patches of clarity. The land shudders and splits, like pack ice rent by widening lead. Mountains burst up, jutting, and dull and soften before your eyes, clothed in forests like felt. The ice rolls up, grinding green land under water forever; the ice rolls back. Forests erupt and disappear like fairy rings. The ice rolls up- mountains are mowed into lakes, land rises wet from the sea like a surfacing whale- the ice rolls back.
A blue-green streaks the highest ridges, a yellow-green spreads from the south like a wave up a strand. A red dye seems to leak from the north down the ridges and into the valleys, seeping south; a white follows the red, then yellow-green washes north, then red spreads again, then white, over and over, making patterns of color too intricate to follow. Slow the film. You see dust storms, locusts, floods, in dizzying flash-frames.
Zero in on a well-watered shore and see smoke from fires drifting. Stone cities rise, spread, and crumble, like paths of alpine blossoms that flourish for a day an inch above the permafrost, that iced earth no root can suck, and wither in a hour. New cities appear, and rivers sift silt onto their rooftops; more cities emerge and spread in lobes like lichen on rock. The great human figures of history, those intricate, spirited tissues whose split second in the light was too brief an exposure to yield any image but the hunched shadowless figures of ghosts.
Slow it down more, come closer still. A dot appears, a flesh-flake. It swells like a balloon; it moves, circles, slows, and vanishes. This is your life.
”
”
Annie Dillard (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek)
“
Baby girl, this is your mother. I know I’ve given you explicit instructions to trace this into your yearbook, but they’re my words. That means this is from me, my heart, and my love for you. There’s so many things I want to say to you, things I want you to hear, to know, but let’s start with the reason I’m having you put these words in your senior yearbook. First of all, this book is everything. It may be pictures, some names of people you won’t remember in five years, ten years, or longer, but this book is more important than you can imagine. It’s the first book that’s the culmination of your first chapter in life. You will have many. So many! But this book is the physical manifestation of your first part in life. Keep it. Treasure it. Whether you enjoyed school or not, it’s done. It’s in your past. These were the times you were a part of society from a child to who you are now, a young adult woman. When you leave for college, you’re continuing your education, but you’re moving onto your next chapter in life. The beginning of adulthood. This yearbook is your bridge. Keep this as a memento forever. It sums up who you grew up with. It houses images of the buildings where your mind first began to learn things, where you first began to dream, to set goals, to yearn for the road ahead. It’s so bittersweet, but those memories were your foundation to set you up for who you will become in the future. Whether they brought pain or happiness, it’s important not to forget. From here, you will go on and you will learn the growing pains of becoming an adult. You will refine your dreams. You will set new limits. Change your mind. You will hurt. You will laugh. You will cry, but the most important is that you will grow. Always, always grow, honey. Challenge yourself. Put yourself in uncomfortable situations (BUT BE SAFE!) and push yourself not to think about yourself, your friends, your family, but to think about the world. Think about others. Understand others, and if you can’t understand, then learn more about them. It’s so very important. Once you have the key to understanding why someone else hurts or dreams or survives, then you have ultimate knowledge. You have empathy. Oh, honey. As I’m writing this, I can see you on the couch reading a book. You are so very beautiful, but you are so very humble. You don’t see your beauty, and I want you to see your beauty. Not just physical, but your inner kindness and soul. It’s blinding to me. That’s how truly stunning you are. Never let anyone dim your light. Here are some words I want you to know as you go through the rest of your life: Live. Learn. Love. Laugh. And, honey, know. Just know that I am with you always.
”
”
Tijan (Enemies)
“
When Krispy Kreme opens in a new town, they begin by giving away thousands of donuts. Of course, the people most likely to show up for a free hot donut are those who have heard the legend of Krispy Kreme and are delighted that they’re finally in town. These sneezers are quick to tell their friends, sell their friends, even drag their friends to a store. And that’s where the second phase kicks in. Krispy Kreme is obsessed with dominating the donut conversation. Once they’ve opened their flagship stores in an area, they rush to do deals with gas stations, coffee shops, and delis. The goal? To make it easy for someone to stumble onto the product. They start with people who will drive twenty miles, and finish with people too lazy to cross the street.
”
”
Seth Godin (Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable)
“
Joe was the only constant thing in my life. And I loved him like a brother. But that phrase has a very precise meaning. A lot of those stock sayings do. Like when people say they slept like a baby. Do they mean they slept well? Or do they mean they woke up every ten minutes, screaming? I loved Joe like a brother, which meant a lot of things in our family. The truth was I never knew for sure if I loved him or not. And he never knew for sure if he loved me or not, either. We were only two years apart, but he was born in the fifties and I was born in the sixties. That seemed to make a lot more than two years’ worth of a difference to us. And like any pair of brothers two years apart, we irritated the hell out of each other. We fought and bickered and sullenly waited to grow up and get out from under. Most of those sixteen years, we didn’t know if we loved each other or hated each other. But we had the thing that army families have. Your family was your unit. The men on the bases were taught total loyalty to their units. It was the most fundamental thing in their lives. The boys copied them. They translated that same intense loyalty onto their families. So time to time you might hate your brother, but you didn’t let anybody mess with him. That was what we had, Joe and I. We had that unconditional loyalty. We stood back to back in every new schoolyard and punched our way out of trouble together. I watched out for him, and he watched out for me, like brothers did. For sixteen years. Not much of a normal childhood, but it was the only childhood I was ever going to get. And Joe was just about the beginning and end of it. And now somebody had killed him. I sat there in the back of the police Chevrolet listening to a tiny voice in my head asking me what the hell I was going to do about that.
”
”
Lee Child (Killing Floor (Jack Reacher, #1))
“
Say you could view a time-lapse film of our planet: what would you see? Transparent images moving through light, “an infinite storm of beauty.”
The beginning is swaddled in mists, blasted by random blinding flashes. Lava pours and cools; seas boil and flood. Clouds materialize and shift; now you can see the earth’s face through only random patches of clarity. The land shudders and splits, like pack ice rent by a widening lead. Mountains burst up, jutting and dull and soften before your eyes, clothed in forests like felt. The ice rolls up, grinding green land under water forever; the ice rolls back. Forests erupt and disappear like fairy rings. The ice rolls up-mountains are mowed into lakes, land rises wet from the sea like a surfacing whale- the ice rolls back.
A blue-green streaks the highest ridges, a yellow-green spreads from the south like a wave up a strand. A red dye seems to leak from the north down the ridges and into the valleys, seeping south; a white follows the red, then yellow-green washes north, then red spreads again, then white, over and over, making patterns of color too swift and intricate to follow. Slow the film. You see dust storms, locusts, floods, in dizzying flash frames.
Zero in on a well-watered shore and see smoke from fires drifting. Stone cities rise, spread, and then crumble, like patches of alpine blossoms that flourish for a day an inch above the permafrost, that iced earth no root can suck, and wither in a hour. New cities appear, and rivers sift silt onto their rooftops; more cities emerge and spread in lobes like lichen on rock. The great human figures of history, those intricate, spirited tissues that roamed the earth’s surface, are a wavering blur whose split second in the light was too brief an exposure to yield any images. The great herds of caribou pour into the valleys and trickle back, and pour, a brown fluid.
Slow it down more, come closer still. A dot appears, like a flesh-flake. It swells like a balloon; it moves, circles, slows, and vanishes. This is your life.
”
”
Annie Dillard (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek)
“
FOR A NEW BEGINNING In out-of-the-way places of the heart, Where your thoughts never think to wander, This beginning has been quietly forming, Waiting until you were ready to emerge. For a long time it has watched your desire, Feeling the emptiness growing inside you, Noticing how you willed yourself on, Still unable to leave what you had outgrown. It watched you play with the seduction of safety And the gray promises that sameness whispered, Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent, Wondered would you always live like this. Then the delight, when your courage kindled, And out you stepped onto new ground, Your eyes young again with energy and dream, A path of plenitude opening before you. Though your destination is not yet clear You can trust the promise of this opening; Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning That is at one with your life’s desire. Awaken your spirit to adventure; Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk; Soon you will be home in a new rhythm, For your soul senses the world that awaits you.
”
”
John O'Donohue (To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings)
“
FOR A NEW BEGINNING
In out of the way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you have outgrown.
It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.
Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.
”
”
John O'Donohue (Walking in Wonder: Eternal Wisdom for a Modern World)
“
I know you,” he added, helping to arrange the blanket over my shoulders. “You won’t drop the subject until I agree to check on your cousin, so I’ll do it. But only under one condition.”
“John,” I said, whirling around to clutch his arm again.
“Don’t get too excited,” he warned. “You haven’t heard the condition.”
“Oh,” I said, eagerly. “Whatever it is, I’ll do it. Thank you. Alex has never had a very good life-his mother ran away when he was a baby, and his dad spent most of his life in jail…But, John, what is all this?” I swept my free hand out to indicate the people remaining on the dock, waiting for the boat John had said was arriving soon. I’d noticed some of them had blankets like the one he’d wrapped around me. “A new customer service initiative?”
John looked surprised at my change of topic…then uncomfortable. He stooped to reach for the driftwood Typhon had dashed up to drop at his feet. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said, stiffly.
“You’re giving blankets away to keep them warm while they wait. When did this start happening?”
“You mentioned some things when you were here the last time….” He avoided meeting my gaze by tossing the stick for his dog. “They stayed with me.”
My eyes widened. “Things I said?”
“About how I should treat the people who end up here.” He paused at the approach of a wave-though it was yards off-and made quite a production of moving me, and my delicate slippers, out of its path. “So I decided to make a few changes.”
It felt as if one of the kind of flowers I liked-a wild daisy, perhaps-had suddenly blossomed inside my heart.
“Oh, John,” I said, and rose onto my toes to kiss his cheek.
He looked more than a little surprised by the kiss. I thought I might actually have seen some color come into his cheeks.
“What was that for?” he asked.
“Henry said nothing was the same after I left. I assumed he meant everything was much worse. I couldn’t imagine it was the opposite, that things were better.”
John’s discomfort at having been caught doing something kind-instead of reckless or violet-was sweet.
“Henry talks too much,” he muttered. “But I’m glad you like it. Not that it hasn’t been a lot of added work. I’ll admit it’s cut down on the complaints, though, and even the fighting amongst our rowdier passengers. So you were right. Your suggestions helped.”
I beamed up at him.
Keeper of the dead. That’s how Mr. Smith, the cemetery sexton, had referred to John once, and that’s what he was. Although the title “protector of the dead” seemed more applicable.
It was totally silly how much hope I was filled with by the fact that he’d remembered something I’d said so long ago-like maybe this whole consort thing might work out after all.
I gasped a moment later when there was a sudden rush of white feathers, and the bird he’d given me emerged from the grizzly gray fog seeming to engulf the whole beach, plopping down onto the sand beside us with a disgruntled little humph.
“Oh, Hope,” I said, dashing tears of laughter from my eyes. Apparently I had only to feel the emotion, and she showed up. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to leave you behind. It was his fault, you know.” I pointed at John.
The bird ignored us both, poking around in the flotsam washed ashore by the waves, looking, as always, for something to eat.
“Her name is Hope?” John asked, the corners of his mouth beginning to tug upwards.
“No.” I bristled, thinking he was making fun of me. Then I realized I’d been caught. “Well, all right…so what if it is? I’m not going to name her after some depressing aspect of the Underworld like you do all your pets. I looked up the name Alastor. That was the name of one of the death horses that drew Hades’s chariot. And Typhon?” I glanced at the dog, cavorting in and out of the waves, seemingly oblivious of the cold. “I can only imagine, but I’m sure it means something equally unpleasant.
”
”
Meg Cabot (Underworld (Abandon, #2))
“
American Indians share a magnificent history — rich in its astounding diversity, its integrity, its spirituality, its ongoing unique culture and dynamic tradition. It's also rich, I'm saddened to say, in tragedy, deceit, and genocide. Our sovereignty, our nationhood, our very identity — along with our sacred lands — have been stolen from us in one of the great thefts of human history. And I am referring not just to the thefts of previous centuries but to the great thefts that are still being perpetrated upon us today, at this very moment. Our human rights as indigenous peoples are being violated every day of our lives — and by the very same people who loudly and sanctimoniously proclaim to other nations the moral necessity of such rights.
Over the centuries our sacred lands have been repeatedly and routinely stolen from us by the governments and peoples of the United States and Canada. They callously pushed us onto remote reservations on what they thought was worthless wasteland, trying to sweep us under the rug of history. But today, that so-called wasteland has surprisingly become enormously valuable as the relentless technology of white society continues its determined assault on Mother Earth. White society would now like to terminate us as peoples and push us off our reservations so they can steal our remaining mineral and oil resources. It's nothing new for them to steal from nonwhite peoples. When the oppressors succeed with their illegal thefts and depredations, it's called colonialism. When their efforts to colonize indigenous peoples are met with resistance or anything but abject surrender, it's called war. When the colonized peoples attempt to resist their oppression and defend themselves, we're called criminals.
I write this book to bring about a greater understanding of what being an Indian means, of who we are as human beings. We're not quaint curiosities or stereotypical figures in a movie, but ordinary — and, yes, at times, extraordinary — human beings. Just like you. We feel. We bleed. We are born. We die. We aren't stuffed dummies in front of a souvenir shop; we aren't sports mascots for teams like the Redskins or the Indians or the Braves or a thousand others who steal and distort and ridicule our likeness. Imagine if they called their teams the Washington Whiteskins or the Washington Blackskins! Then you'd see a protest! With all else that's been taken from us, we ask that you leave us our name, our self-respect, our sense of belonging to the great human family of which we are all part.
Our voice, our collective voice, our eagle's cry, is just beginning to be heard. We call out to all of humanity. Hear us!
”
”
Leonard Peltier (Prison Writings)
“
Death appears as the harsh victory of the law of our ancestors of the dimension of our becoming. It is a fact that, as productivity increases, each succeeding generation becomes smaller in stature. The defeat of our fathers is revisited upon us as the limits of our world. Yes, structure is human, it is the monumentalization of congealed sweat, sweat squeezed from old exploitation and represented as nature, the world we inhabit, the objective ground. We do not, in our insect-like comings and going, make the immediate world in which we live, we do not make a contribution, on the contrary we are set in motion by it; a generation will pass before what we have done, as an exploited class, will seep through as an effect of objectivity. (Our wealth is laid down in heaven.) The structure of the world has been built by the dead, they were paid in wages, and when the wages were spent and they were in the ground, what they had made continued to exist, these cities, roads and factories are their calcified bones. They had nothing but their wages to show for what they had done, who they were and what they did has been cancelled out. But what they made has continued into our present, their burial and decay is our present. This is the definition of class hatred. We are no closer now to rest, to freedom, to communism than they were, their sacrifice has brought us nothing, what they did counted for nothing, we have inherited nothing, but they did produce value, they did make the world in which we now live, the world that now oppresses us is constructed from the wealth they made, wealth that was taken from them as soon as they were paid a wage, taken and owned by someone else, owned and used to define the nature of class domination. We too must work, and the value we produce leaks away from us, from each only a trickle but in all a sea of it and that, for the next generation, will thicken into wealth for others to own and as a congealed structure it will be used to frame new enterprises in different directions. The violence of what they produced becomes the structure that dominates our existence. Our lives begin amidst the desecration of our ancestors, millions of people who went to their graves as failures, and forever denied experiences of a full human existence, their simply being canceled out; as our parents die, we can say truly that their lives were for nothing, that the black earth that is thrown down onto them blacks out our sky.
”
”
frére dupont
“
There were lots of ways to lose your farm. In the beginning it was mostly violent. Now, though, the process had become highly formal, and in many ways more chilling. Ordinary citizens who supported the ruling party and claimed they wanted to farm simply applied to the Registrar of Deeds for a farm and, if approved, got what was called an offer letter. This applicant, known as an A2 farmer, simply drove onto the farm he had been allocated, handed his letter to the farmer if he was still on the land, and told him he was the new owner. “It’s like winning the lottery, except you don’t even have to buy a ticket,” Dad told me.
”
”
Douglas Rogers (The Last Resort: A Memoir of Mischief and Mayhem on a Family Farm in Africa)
“
Captured in Africa, beginning in the fifteen hundreds, they were marched for months across savannah and rainforest to the coast where slave ships waited to transport them to the New World. At the notorious “slave castles” that dotted (and still dot) the coast of Africa they were forced to kneel before a statue of Jesus, have water sprinkled over their shaven heads by a priest, and have their “old” names taken from them. They were given Christian names that went with their new summarily acquired (with the help of the lash and the threat of annihilation) religion, and then, having been branded on face or body, they were prodded onto the ships, packed, as the cliché goes, like sardines in a can. We will never know how many died of grief, or disease, or starvation. Or how many made the despairing leap into the sea.
”
”
Alice Walker (The Color Purple (The Color Purple Collection, #1))
“
Comparing marriage to football is no insult. I come from the South where football is sacred. I would never belittle marriage by saying it is like soccer, bowling, or playing bridge, never. Those images would never work, only football is passionate enough to be compared to marriage. In other sports, players walk onto the field, in football they run onto the field, in high school ripping through some paper, in college (for those who are fortunate enough) they touch the rock and run down the hill onto the field in the middle of the band. In other sports, fans cheer, in football they scream. In other sports, players ‘high five’, in football they chest, smash shoulder pads, and pat your rear. Football is a passionate sport, and marriage is about passion.
In football, two teams send players onto the field to determine which athletes will win and which will lose, in marriage two families send their representatives forward to see which family will survive and which family will be lost into oblivion with their traditions, patterns, and values lost and forgotten.
Preparing for this struggle for survival, the bride and groom are each set up. Each has been led to believe that their family’s patterns are all ‘normal,’ and anyone who differs is dense, naïve, or stupid because, no matter what the issue, the way their family has always done it is the ‘right’ way. For the premarital bride and groom in their twenties, as soon as they say, “I do,” these ‘right’ ways of doing things are about to collide like two three hundred and fifty pound linemen at the hiking of the ball. From “I do” forward, if not before, every decision, every action, every goal will be like the line of scrimmage.
Where will the family patterns collide?
In the kitchen. Here the new couple will be faced with the difficult decision of “Where do the cereal bowls go?” Likely, one family’s is high, and the others is low. Where will they go now?
In the bathroom. The bathroom is a battleground unmatched in the potential conflicts. Will the toilet paper roll over the top or underneath? Will the acceptable residing position for the lid be up or down? And, of course, what about the toothpaste? Squeeze it from the middle or the end?
But the skirmishes don’t stop in the rooms of the house, they are not only locational they are seasonal. The classic battles come home for the holidays.
Thanksgiving. Which family will they spend the noon meal with and which family, if close enough, will have to wait until the nighttime meal, or just dessert if at all?
Christmas. Whose home will they visit first, if at all? How much money will they spend on gifts for his family? for hers?
Then comes for many couples an even bigger challenge – children of their own!
At the wedding, many couples take two candles and light just one often extinguishing their candle as a sign of devotion. The image is Biblical. The Bible is quoted a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one. What few prepare them for is the upcoming struggle, the conflict over the unanswered question: the two shall become one, but which one? Two families, two patterns, two ways of doing things, which family’s patterns will survive to play another day, in another generation, and which will be lost forever? Let the games begin.
”
”
David W. Jones (The Enlightenment of Jesus: Practical Steps to Life Awake)
“
Near the exit to the blue patio, DeCoverley Pox and Joaquin Stick stand by a concrete scale model of the Jungfrau, ... socking the slopes of the famous mountain with red rubber hot-water bags full of ice cubes, the idea being to pulverize the ice for Pirate's banana frappes. With their nights' growths of beard, matted hair, bloodshot eyes, miasmata of foul breath, DeCoverley and Joaquin are wasted gods urging on a tardy glacier.
Elsewhere in the maisonette, other drinking companions disentangle from blankets (one spilling wind from his, dreaming of a parachute), piss into bathroom sinks, look at themselves with dismay in concave shaving mirrors, slab water with no clear plan in mind onto heads of thinning hair, struggle into Sam Brownes, dub shoes against rain later in the day with hand muscles already weary of it, sing snatches of popular songs whose tunes they don't always know, lie, believing themselves warmed, in what patches of the new sunlight come between the mullions, begin tentatively to talk shop as a way of easing into whatever it is they'll have to be doing in less than an hour, lather necks and faces, yawn, pick their noses, search cabinets or bookcases for the hair of the dog that not without provocation and much prior conditioning bit them last night.
Now there grows among all the rooms, replacing the night's old smoke, alcohol and sweat, the fragile, musaceous odor of Breakfast:flowery, permeating, surprising, more than the color of winter sunlight, taking over not so much through any brute pungency or volume as by the high intricacy to the weaving of its molecules, sharing the conjuror's secret by which-- though it is not often Death is told so clearly to fuck off--- the genetic chains prove labyrinthine enough to preserve some human face down ten or twenty generations. . . so the same assertion-through-structure allows this war morning's banana fragrance to meander, repossess, prevail. Is there any reason not to open every window, and let the kind scent blanket all Chelsea? As a spell, against falling objects. . . .
”
”
Thomas Pynchon
“
Out of the fog that shrouded the countryside, softening the outlines of people and things, demonstrators emerged, flags waved and speakers rose spontaneously to address spontaneous gatherings. Mostly they were people who had not been allowed to speak for years. They clambered on to piles of rock, balanced on the rims of fountains and on pedestals of statues whose removal they demanded, just as they demanded the removal of those who had bowed down before these statues. They spun visions of how everyone's life, including Pavel's own, would quickly be transformed and rise above the poverty in which it had for so long been mired. Others, who preferred actions to words, climbed onto rooftops to remove the snow-covered symbols of yesterday's power. They pulled down street signs and fastened in their place new plaques scrawled with names that until recently had been unmentionable, and they sometimes gathered threateningly under the windows of abandoned Party secretariats, ready to break in and begin, or rather complete, the purging. In every face he saw a kind of ecstasy that looked almost sexual.
”
”
Ivan Klíma (Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light)
“
On the train I had a lot of time to think. I thought how in the thirty years of my life I had seldom gotten on a train in America without being conscious of my color. In the South, there are Jim Crow cars and Negroes must ride separate from the whites, usually in a filthy antiquated coach next to the engine, getting all the smoke and bumps and dirt. In the South, we cannot buy sleeping car tickets. Such comforts are only for white folks. And in the North where segregated travel is not the law, colored people have, nevertheless, many difficulties. In auto buses they must take the seats in the rear, over the wheels. On the boats they must occupy the worst cabins. The ticket agents always say that all other accommodations are sold. On trains, if one sits down by a white person, the white person will sometimes get up, flinging back an insult at the Negro who has dared to take a seat beside him. Thus it is that in America, if you are yellow, brown, or black, you can never travel anywhere without being reminded of your color, and oft-times suffering great inconveniences.
I sat in the comfortable sleeping car on my first day out of Moscow and remembered many things about trips I had taken in America. I remembered how, once as a youngster going alone to see my father who was working in Mexico, I went into the dining car of the train to eat. I sat down at a table with a white man. The man looked at me and said, "You're a nigger, ain't you?" and left the table. It was beneath his dignity to eat with a Negro child. At St. Louis I went onto the station platform to buy a glass of milk. The clerk behind the counter said, “We don't serve niggers," and refused to sell me anything. As I grew older I learned to expect this often when traveling. So when I went South to lecture on my poetry at Negro universities, I carried my own food because I knew I could not go into the dining cars. Once from Washington to New Orleans, I lived all the way on the train on cold food. I remembered this miserable trip as I sat eating a hot dinner on the diner of the Moscow-Tashkent express.
Traveling South from New York, at Washington, the capital of our country, the official Jim Crow begins. There the conductor comes through the train and, if you are a Negro, touches you on the shoulder and says, "The last coach forward is the car for colored people." Then you must move your baggage and yourself up near the engine, because when the train crosses the Potomac River into Virginia, and the dome of the Capitol disappears, it is illegal any longer for white people and colored people to ride together. (Or to eat together, or sleep together, or in some places even to work together.) Now I am riding South from Moscow and am not Jim-Crowed, and none of the darker people on the train with me are Jim-Crowed, so I make a happy mental note in the back of my mind to write home to the Negro papers: "There is no Jim Crow on the trains of the Soviet Union.
”
”
Langston Hughes (Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings)
“
Outlawing drugs in order to solve drug problems is much like outlawing sex in order to win the war against AIDS. We recognize that people will continue to have sex for nonreproductive reasons despite the laws and mores. Therefore, we try to make sexual practices as safe as possible in order to minimize the spread of the AIDS viruses. In a similar way, we continually try to make our drinking water, foods, and even our pharmaceutical medicines safer. The ubiquity of chemical intoxicants in our lives is undeniable evidence of the continuing universal need for safer medicines with such applications. While use may not always be for an approved medical purpose, or prudent, or even legal, it is fulfilling the relentless drive we all have to change the way we feel, to alter our behavior and consciousness, and, yes, to intoxicate ourselves. We must recognize that intoxicants are medicines, treatments for the human condition. Then we must make them as safe and risk free and as healthy as possible. Dream with me for a moment. What would be wrong if we had perfectly safe intoxicants? I mean drugs that delivered the same effects as our most popular ones but never caused dependency, disease, dysfunction, or death. Imagine an alcohol-type substance that never caused addiction, liver disease, hangovers, impaired driving, or workplace problems. Would you care to inhale a perfumed mist that is as enjoyable as marijuana or tobacco but as harmless as clean air? How would you like a pain-killer as effective as morphine but safer than aspirin, a mood enhancer that dissolves on your tongue and is more appealing than cocaine and less harmful than caffeine, a tranquilizer less addicting than Valium and more relaxing than a martini, or a safe sleeping pill that allows you to choose to dream or not? Perhaps you would like to munch on a user friendly hallucinogen that is as brief and benign as a good movie? This is not science fiction. As described in the following pages, there are such intoxicants available right now that are far safer than the ones we currently use. If smokers can switch from tobacco cigarettes to nicotine gum, why can’t crack users chew a cocaine gum that has already been tested on animals and found to be relatively safe? Even safer substances may be just around the corner. But we must begin by recognizing that there is a legitimate place in our society for intoxication. Then we must join together in building new, perfectly safe intoxicants for a world that will be ready to discard the old ones like the junk they really are. This book is your guide to that future. It is a field guide to that silent spring of intoxicants and all the animals and peoples who have sipped its waters. We can no more stop the flow than we can prevent ourselves from drinking. But, by cleaning up the waters we can leave the morass that has been the endless war on drugs and step onto the shores of a healthy tomorrow. Use this book to find the way.
”
”
Ronald K. Siegel (Intoxication: The Universal Drive for Mind-Altering Substances)
“
The Hunter:
“Your future refuses to behave.” Coo-yôn yanked off the jacket he’d sourced for me. Up was down. Then he stepped back. And released me—
I toppled over, falling out of my seat onto the ground. Was the sosie dumping me on the side of the road? ’Cause I was about to die? “Now, let’s just talk . . . ’bout this, coo-yôn.”
He caught hold of my good ankle, then dragged me farther away from the truck. He’d hauled me into . . . a bank of snow.
_______________
The Empress:
I’d thought the sight of snow—and all the emotions it brought—would make me less likely to be with Aric.
Just the opposite; because I could see my future so clearly. If he died before I did, some symbol—like snow—would mark the end of his existence. Later I would experience that waypoint (because everything was connected) and wish to God I’d taken a different path.
I decided then that I would map my own journey and mark my own waypoints. The snow would symbolize both the end of one story and the beginning of another.
A new slate. But not a blank one. The red ribbon would be a cherished remembrance, but I wouldn’t keep it with me at all times.
I lay in the snow and lifted my hand to the sky. Flakes landed on my damp face. Each one was a cool kiss good-bye.
_____________
The Hunter
Lying in that bank of snow, I gazed up at the falling flakes. They drifted over my face. Soft, soft. Like Evie’s lips. With effort, I lifted my scarred hand to the sky. I closed my eyes and pretended my Evangeline was caring for me.
J’ai savouré. I savored each cold kiss. . . .
”
”
Kresley Cole (Arcana Rising (The Arcana Chronicles, #4))
“
Understand: we can never really experience what other people are experiencing. We always remain on the outside looking in, and this is the cause of so many misunderstandings and conflicts. But the primal source of human intelligence comes from the development of mirror neurons (see here), which gives us the ability to place ourselves in the skin of another and imagine their experience. Through continual exposure to people and by attempting to think inside them we can gain an increasing sense of their perspective, but this requires effort on our part. Our natural tendency is to project onto other people our own beliefs and value systems, in ways in which we are not even aware. When it comes to studying another culture, it is only through the use of our empathic powers and by participating in their lives that we can begin to overcome these natural projections and arrive at the reality of their experience. To do so we must overcome our great fear of the Other and the unfamiliarity of their ways. We must enter their belief and value systems, their guiding myths, their way of seeing the world. Slowly, the distorted lens through which we first viewed them starts to clear up.
Going deeper into their Otherness, feeling what they feel, we can discover what makes them different and learn about human nature. This applies to cultures, individuals, and even writers of books. As Nietzsche once wrote, “As soon as you feel yourself against me you have ceased to understand my position and consequently my arguments! You have to be the victim of the same passion.
”
”
Robert Greene (Mastery)
“
Morvidus; and in the richness of his reign, commerce prospered, the town around the castle growing great, and newe fangled habits did arise among the young and old. But after a time the people did say, that the old customs were gone out from the land; and that, with the coming of the new, the old had been washed away. Greatly did folk rue the passing of their customs, saying, that a kingdom ruled by thankless men, would, in short measure, become a kingdom unremembered; and men did complain, when they gathered, at how few remained who yet could call to mind the noble names of the gods. Those gods, they said, had once sustained this land; but they might forget as well as be forgotten, as would be seen. And then did the rains begin: those long rains, of which it was sayd, their like had never fallen; and the streams did overflow their banks, and flood the fields. And the ditches filled with mud, overflowing onto the roads, that none might pass in safety. And vermin did breed in the still water by night; and many infants were delivered still-born, for that the rains had so drenched the roadways, that mid-wives might by no means traverse them in their ladies’ time of need. Which seemed a very omen; and some did wonder, how best to please the gods who had served them so. In this time was delivered of her nine-months’ burden, good Queen Argoel, who in time would bear King Morvidus five children. As the rains battered the castle wall, the child began to kick within her womb, saying,—Mother, my time is come; yet, with the storm still upon the land, she lay abed unattended in her toil.
”
”
John Darnielle (Devil House)
“
The neighborhood of Indian Village lay just twelve blocks west of Hurlbut, but it was a different world altogether. The four grand streets of Burns, Iroquois, Seminole, and Adams (even in Indian Village the White Man had taken half the names) were lined with stately houses built in eclectic styles. Red-brick Georgian rose next to English Tudor, which gave onto French Provincial. The houses in Indian Village had big yards, important walkways, picturesquely oxidizing cupolas, lawn jockeys (whose days were numbered), and burglar alarms (whose popularity was only just beginning). My grandfather remained silent, however, as he toured his son’s impressive new home. “How do you like the size of this living room?” Milton was asking him. “Here, sit down. Make yourself comfortable. Tessie and I want you and Ma to feel like this is your house, too. Now that you’re retired—” “What do you mean retired?” “Okay, semiretired. Now that you can take it a little bit easy, you’ll be able to do all the things you always wanted to do. Look, in here’s the library. You want to come over and work on your translations, you can do it right here. How about that table? Big enough for you? And the shelves are built right into the wall.” Pushed out of the daily operations at the Zebra Room, my grandfather began to spend his days driving around the city. He drove downtown to the Public Library to read the foreign newspapers. Afterward, he stopped to play backgammon at a coffee house in Greektown. At fifty-four, Lefty Stephanides was still in good shape. He walked three miles a day for exercise. He ate sensibly and had less of a belly than his son. Nevertheless
”
”
Jeffrey Eugenides (Middlesex)
“
Why did you come here tonight?” she asked. “Other than the fact that you’ve finally come to your senses and realize you love me.”
Chuckling, Grey reached up and untied the ribbons that held her mask. The pretty silk fell away to reveal the beautiful face beneath. “I missed you,” he replied honestly. “And you were right-about everything. I’m tired of drifting through life. I want to live again-with you.”
A lone tear trickled down her cheek. “I think that might be the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me.”
He grinned. “I have more.”
She pressed her fingers to his lips. “I’m tired of talking.” She kissed him, teasing his lips with the ripe curves of hers, sliding her tongue inside to rub against his in a sensual rhythm that had him fisting his hands in her skirts.
By the time they reached Mayfair, Grey’s hair was mussed, Rose’s skirts crushed, and he was harder than an oratory competition for mutes.
“I can’t believe you came,” she told him as the entered the house, arms wrapped around each other. “I’m so proud of you.”
“I wouldn’t have done it without you.”
She shook her head. “You did it for yourself not for me.”
Perhaps that was true, and perhaps it wasn’t. He had no interest in discussing it tonight. “It’s just the beginning,” he promised. “I’m going to go wherever you want to go from now on. Within reason.”
She laughed. “Of course. We can’t have you attending a musicale just to please me, can we?” She gazed up at him. “You know, I think I’m going to want to spend plenty of evenings at home as well. That time I spent out of society had some very soothing moments.”
“Of course,” he agreed, thinking about all the things they could do to one another at home. Alone. “There has to be moderation.”
Upstairs in their bedroom, he undressed her, unbuttoning each tiny button one by one until she sighed in exasperation. “In a hurry?” he teased.
His wife got her revenge, when clad only in her chemise and stockings, she turned those nimble fingers of hers to his cravat, working the knot so slowly he thought he might go mad. She worsened the torment by slowly rubbing her hips against his thigh. His cock was so rigid he could hang clothes on it, and the need to bury himself inside her consumed him.
Still, a skilled lover knows when to have patience-and a man in love knows that his woman’s pleasure comes far, far before his own. So, as ready as he was, Grey was in no hurry to let this night end, not when it might prove to be the best of his new-found life.
Wearing only his trousers, he took Rose’s hand and led her to their bed. He climbed onto the mattress and pulled her down beside him, lying so that they were face-to-face.
Warm fingers came up to gently touch the scar that ran down his face. Odd, but he hadn’t thought of it at all that evening. In fact, he’d almost forgot about it.
“I heard you that night,” he admitted. “When you told me you loved me.”
Her head tilted. “I thought you were asleep.”
“No.” He held her gaze as he raised his own hand to brush the softness of her cheek. “I should have said it then, but I love you too, Rose. So much.”
Her smile was smug. “I know.” She kissed him again. “Make love to me.”
His entire body pulsed. “I intend to, but there’s one thing I have to do first.”
Rose frowned. “What’s that?”
Grey pulled the brand-new copy of Voluptuous from beneath the pillow where he’d hidden it before going to the ball. “There’s a story in here that I want to read to you.
”
”
Kathryn Smith (When Seducing a Duke (Victorian Soap Opera, #1))
“
At the time of the Fourth Fire, the history of another people came to be braided into ours. Two prophets arose among the people, foretelling the coming of the light-skinned people in ships from the east, but their visions differed in what was to follow. The path was
not clear, as it cannot be with the future. The first prophet said that if the offshore people, the zaaganaash, came in brotherhood, they
would bring great knowledge. Combined with Anishinaabe ways of knowing, this would form a great new nation. But the second prophet sounded a warning: He said that what looks like the face of brotherhood might be the face of death. These new people might come with brotherhood, or they might come with greed for the riches of our land. How would we know which face is the true one?
If the fish became poisoned and the water unfit to drink, we would know which face they wore.
And for their actions the zaaganaash
came to be known instead as chimokman—Vne long-knife people.
The prophecies described what eventually became history. They warned the people of those who would come among them with
black robes and black books, with promises of joy and salvation. The prophets said that if the people turned against their own sacred ways and followed this black-robe path, then the people would suffer for many generations. Indeed, the burial of our spiritual teachings in the time of the Fifth Fire nearly broke the hoop of the nation. People became separated from their homelands and from each other as they were forced onto reservations. Their children
were taken from them to learn the zaaganaash ways. Forbidden by law to practice their own religion, they nearly lost an ancient worldview. Forbidden to speak their languages, a universe of knowing vanished in a generation. The land was fragmented, the people separated, the old ways blowing away in the wind; even the
plants and animals began to turn their faces away from us. The time was foretold when the children would turn away from the elders; people would lose their way and their purpose in life. They prophesied that, in the time of the Sixth Fire, “the cup of life would almost become the cup of grief.” And yet, even after all of this, there is something that remains, a coal that has not been extinguished. At the First Fire, so long ago, the people were told
that it is their spiritual lives that will keep them strong.
They say that a prophet appeared with a strange and distant light in his eyes. The young man came to the people with the message that in the time of the seventh fire, a new people would emerge with a sacred purpose. It would not be easy for them. They would have to be strong and determined in their work, for they stood at a crossroads.
The ancestors look to them from the flickering light of distant fires. In this time, the young would turn back to the elders for teachings and find that many had nothing to give. The people of the Seventh Fire do not yet walk forward; rather, they are told to turn around and retrace the steps of the ones who brought us here. Their sacred purpose is to walk back along the red road of our ancestors’ path and to gather up all the fragments that lay
scattered along the trail. Fragments of land, tatters of language, bits of songs, stories, sacred teachings—all that was dropped along
the way. Our elders say that we live in the time of the seventh fire. We are the ones the ancestors spoke of, the ones who will bend to
the task of putting things back together to rekindle the flames of the sacred fire, to begin the rebirth of a nation.
”
”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants)
“
Moore’s Law, the rule of thumb in the technology industry, tells us that processor chips—the small circuit boards that form the backbone of every computing device—double in speed every eighteen months. That means a computer in 2025 will be sixty-four times faster than it is in 2013. Another predictive law, this one of photonics (regarding the transmission of information), tells us that the amount of data coming out of fiber-optic cables, the fastest form of connectivity, doubles roughly every nine months. Even if these laws have natural limits, the promise of exponential growth unleashes possibilities in graphics and virtual reality that will make the online experience as real as real life, or perhaps even better. Imagine having the holodeck from the world of Star Trek, which was a fully immersive virtual-reality environment for those aboard a ship, but this one is able to both project a beach landscape and re-create a famous Elvis Presley performance in front of your eyes. Indeed, the next moments in our technological evolution promise to turn a host of popular science-fiction concepts into science facts: driverless cars, thought-controlled robotic motion, artificial intelligence (AI) and fully integrated augmented reality, which promises a visual overlay of digital information onto our physical environment. Such developments will join with and enhance elements of our natural world. This is our future, and these remarkable things are already beginning to take shape. That is what makes working in the technology industry so exciting today. It’s not just because we have a chance to invent and build amazing new devices or because of the scale of technological and intellectual challenges we will try to conquer; it’s because of what these developments will mean for the world.
”
”
Eric Schmidt (The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business)
“
A Tale of Two Parking Requirements The impact of parking requirements becomes clearer when we compare the parking requirements of San Francisco and Los Angeles. San Francisco limits off-street parking, while LA requires it. Take, for example, the different parking requirements for concert halls. For a downtown concert hall, Los Angeles requires, as a minimum, fifty times more parking than San Francisco allows as its maximum. Thus the San Francisco Symphony built its home, Louise Davies Hall, without a parking garage, while Disney Hall, the new home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, did not open until seven years after its parking garage was built. Disney Hall's six-level, 2,188-space underground garage cost $110 million to build (about $50,000 per space). Financially troubled Los Angeles County, which built the garage, went into debt to finance it, expecting that parking revenues would repay the borrowed money. But the garage was completed in 1996, and Disney Hall—which suffered from a budget less grand than its vision—became knotted in delays and didn't open until late 2003. During the seven years in between, parking revenue fell far short of debt payments (few people park in an underground structure if there is nothing above it) and the county, by that point nearly bankrupt, had to subsidize the garage even as it laid employees off. The money spent on parking shifted Disney Hall's design toward drivers and away from pedestrians. The presence of a six-story subterranean garage means most concert patrons arrive from underneath the hall, rather than from the sidewalk. The hall's designers clearly understood this, and so while the hall has a fairly impressive street entrance, its more magisterial gateway is an "escalator cascade" that flows up from the parking structure and ends in the foyer. This has profound implications for street life. A concertgoer can now drive to Disney Hall, park beneath it, ride up into it, see a show, and then reverse the whole process—and never set foot on a sidewalk in downtown LA. The full experience of an iconic Los Angeles building begins and ends in its parking garage, not in the city itself. Visitors to downtown San Francisco have a different experience. When a concert or theater performance lets out in San Francisco, people stream onto the sidewalks, strolling past the restaurants, bars, bookstores, and flower shops that are open and well-lit. For those who have driven, it is a long walk to the car, which is probably in a public facility unattached to any specific restaurant or shop. The presence of open shops and people on the street encourages other people to be out as well. People want to be on streets with other people on them, and they avoid streets that are empty, because empty streets are eerie and menacing at night. Although the absence of parking requirements does not guarantee a vibrant area, their presence certainly inhibits it. "The more downtown is broken up and interspersed with parking lots and garages," Jane Jacobs argued in 1961, "the duller and deader it becomes ... and there is nothing more repellent than a dead downtown.
”
”
Donald C. Shoup (There Ain't No Such Thing as Free Parking (Cato Unbound Book 42011))
“
IT’S FUNNY: it isn’t the fire that kills you, it’s the smoke. There you are, pounding on the windows, climbing higher and higher through your burning home, trying to get away, to get out, hoping that if you can just avoid the flames, perhaps you’ll survive the fire, but all the time you’re suffocating slowly, your lungs filling with smoke. There you are, waiting for the horrors to come from some there, from some other, from without, and all the while you’re dying, bit by airless bit, from within. You buy a handgun—for protection, you say—and drop dead that night from a heart attack. You put locks on your doors. You put bars on your windows. You put gates around your house. The doctor phones: It’s cancer, he says. Swimming frantically up to the surface to escape from a menacing shark, you get the bends and drown. You resolve, one sunny New Year’s Day, to get back into shape. This is the year, you insist. A new beginning. A new start. A stronger you, a tougher you. At the health club the following morning, just as you’re beginning your third set of bench presses, your muscles cramp and the barbell collapses onto your neck, crushing your windpipe. You can’t cry out. Your face turns blue. Your arms go limp. There, on a poster on the wall beside you, are the last words you see before your eyes close and darkness envelopes you for eternity: Feel the Burn.
”
”
Shalom Auslander (Hope: A Tragedy)
“
IT’S FUNNY: it isn’t the fire that kills you, it’s the smoke. There you are, pounding on the windows, climbing higher and higher through your burning home, trying to get away, to get out, hoping that if you can just avoid the flames, perhaps you’ll survive the fire, but all the time you’re suffocating slowly, your lungs filling with smoke. There you are, waiting for the horrors to come from some there, from some other, from without, and all the while you’re dying, bit by airless bit, from within. You buy a handgun—for protection, you say—and drop dead that night from a heart attack. You put locks on your doors. You put bars on your windows. You put gates around your house. The doctor phones: It’s cancer, he says. Swimming frantically up to the surface to escape from a menacing shark, you get the bends and drown. You resolve, one sunny New Year’s Day, to get back into shape. This is the year, you insist. A new beginning. A new start. A stronger you, a tougher you. At the health club the following morning, just as you’re beginning your third set of bench presses, your muscles cramp and the barbell collapses onto your neck, crushing your windpipe. You can’t cry out. Your face turns blue. Your arms go limp. There, on a poster on the wall beside you, are the last words you see before your eyes close and darkness envelopes you for eternity: Feel the Burn. It’s funny.
”
”
Shalom Auslander (Hope: A Tragedy)
“
If Tivo marks the beginning of the shift from the Brand Age to the Product Age, the summer of 2020 saw the Brand Age’s end. The killing of George Floyd and subsequent protests briefly displaced the pandemic in the front and center of our national consciousness, making obvious the passing of the Brand Age into history. Seemingly every brand company did what they always do when America’s sins are pulled out from the back of the closet where we try to keep them hidden: they called up their agencies and posted inspiring words, arresting images, and black rectangles. Message: We care. Only this time, it didn’t resonate. Their brand magic fizzled. First on social media, then tumbling from there onto newspapers and evening news, activists and customers started using the tools of the new age to compare these companies’ carefully crafted brand messages with the reality of their operations. “This you?” became the Twitter meme that exposed the brand wizards. Companies who posted about their “support” for black empowerment were called out when their own websites revealed the music did not match the words. The NFL claimed it celebrates protest, and the internet tweeted back, “This you?” under a picture of Colin Kaepernick kneeling. L’Oréal posted that “speaking out is worth it” and got clapped back with stories about dropping a model just three years earlier for speaking out against racism. The performative wokeness across brands felt forced and hollow. Systemic racism is a serious issue, and a 30-second spot during The Masked Singer doesn’t prove you are serious about systemic racism. That’s always been true, about ads on any issue, but social media and the ease of access to data on the internet has made it much harder for companies to pretend.
”
”
Scott Galloway (Post Corona: From Crisis to Opportunity)
“
Luther had outfoxed his enemies; he had made the speech he was to have been prevented from making, and by his account at least von der Ecken was furious and shouted at him. He had not answered the question. The imperial officer attacked with a litany of names, heresies already condemned in the past that Luther was now resurrecting as if they were new discoveries. Heretics had always claimed the support of scripture against the church, he said. The worst heresies were those in which a little error was mixed with a lot of true doctrine-perhaps a slap against those in the room like Glapion who had said that Luther's books contained much good. Luther was a man who could stumble and err, and scripture could not be interpreted by one fallible man.
We cannot draw things into doubt and dispute that the Catholic Church has judged already, things that have passed into usage, rite, and observance, things that our fathers held onto with firm faith, for which they suffered pain and torture, for which even thousands suffered death rather than reject one of them! And now you want to seduce us from the way to which our fathers were true! And what would the Jews and Turks and Saracens and the other enemies of our faith say when they heard about it? Why, they would burst into scornful laughter! Here are we Christians beginning to argue whether we have believed correctly until now! Do not deceive yourself, Martin. You are not the only one who knows the scripture, not the only one who has struggled to convey the true meaning of holy scripture-not after so many holy doctors have worked day and night to explain holy writ! Do not set your judgment over that of so many famous men. Do not imagine you know more than all of them. Do not throw the most sacred orthodox faith into doubt, the faith that Christ the most perfect lawgiver ordained, the faith that the apostles spread over the world, the faith confirmed by miracles, the faith that martyrs strengthened with their red blood ... You wait in vain, Martin, for a disputation over things that you are obligated to believe with certain and professing
Von der Ecken's assumption was one of the great medieval myths, a myth taken for granted for so long that only when it was sternly questioned did those who accepted it see how fragile it was. The myth was that history was a positive and progressive force, shaped by divinity, and that revelation became more certain and more detailed with the passage of time. It seems clear from this speech that von der Ecken recognized the fragility of the assumptions
that give faith plausibility and how Luther's attack threatened to bring them all down. In a room now filling with darkness, the voice of the imperial orator must have been a cry against a greater darkness that von der Ecken saw creeping over the world. If Luther was right, was anything certain? How could one man set himself against history?
”
”
Richard Marius (Martin Luther: The Christian between God and Death)
“
Women turn up at the beginning of every important wave in technology. We're not ancillary; we're central, often hiding in plain sight. Some of the most wondrous contributions . . . .bloomed in the grubby medians of the information superhighway. Before a new field developed its authorities, and long before there was money to be made, women experimented with new technologies and pushed them beyond their design. Again and again, women did the jobs nobody thought were important, until they were. Even computer programming was initially passed off onto the girls hired to patch cables and nothing more - until the cables became patterns, and the patterns became language, and suddenly programming was something worth mastering.
”
”
Claire L Evans
“
One must die at the present level to be reborn onto a higher plane not just in the physical state, but also in the conscious and emotional state.
”
”
Brandon Garic Notch (Death Is Only the Beginning: Making Way For the New)
“
When I was in prison, I had this dream that my life was a rolling canvas. Every day it rolled off the sheet, bleached white, onto the beach of my life. Come sunup, I’d begin to paint it with my thoughts and actions. My breathing, my living, and my dying. Some days the pictures pleased me, maybe even pleased others, pleased God himself, but some days, some months, even some years, they didn’t, and I didn’t ever want to look at them again. But the thing is this . . . every day, no matter what I’d painted the day before, I got a new canvas, washed white. ’Cause each night the tide rolled in, scrubbed it clean, and receded, taking the stains with it. And in my dreams . . . I just stood on the beach and watched all that stuff wash out to sea.
”
”
Charles Martin (Chasing Fireflies)
“
Automatic thoughts occur because the subconscious mind stores information that is meant to protect you. However, it also stores negative associations better than positive ones because it acts as a safety mechanism. Although this is effective from an evolutionary standpoint, it unfortunately perpetuates a lot of anxious and hopeless thoughts. Also keep in mind that since the subconscious mind is programmed through repetition and emotion, the more we perpetuate beliefs, the more deeply ingrained they become over time. So, how do we identify automatic thoughts and the core triggers that created them? Well, the brain is always looking for information to support what it believes. This is called supportive evidence. Supportive evidence is the information that the brain picks out of its environment to reinforce its existing thoughts. In the context of reprogramming your subconscious, this is a negative practice. An example of this may occur if Connor were to go to a work party—remember that he believes that he is fundamentally unworthy of emotional connection. When he walks in, his automatic thoughts include “No one likes me, and no one wants me here.” The brain then begins to look for supportive evidence: Someone frowning in conversation while looking in his direction, to Connor, means that they hate him and want him to leave. With Suneel, supportive evidence may occur when Suneel makes grammatical corrections in the project they’re working on together. To Connor, this may again reinforce that Suneel is trying to undermine him. A powerful aspect of supportive evidence to consider is that it occurs every day and everywhere in our lives. Our mind is constantly looking for supportive evidence of what our subconscious believes. When the subconscious stores fundamentally painful beliefs, they become projected onto our reality everywhere we look. Therefore, it is essential to begin looking for contradictory evidence for our core wounds to reprogram our subconscious and heal our everyday perspectives. Contradictory evidence is information that disproves existing beliefs. Since memory is colored by emotion, finding contradictory evidence in our past and present and pairing it with the emotions associated with that experience allows us to begin reprogramming our subconscious. Essentially, finding proof of the opposite helps to equilibrate our subconscious, and from there, it can be taught new and updated beliefs.
”
”
Thais Gibson (Attachment Theory: A Guide to Strengthening the Relationships in Your Life)
“
In the heart of the valley, where the green grass grows,
There's a whisper of hope, in the river that flows.
It sings of the strength, that comes after the rain,
Of new beginnings, beyond the pain.
Hope is the anthem, of our soul's refrain,
A melody of promise, in life's vast domain.
It's the light in the tunnel, the break of dawn,
The reason we keep, keepin' on.
When the night's at its darkest, just before the morn,
Hope is the feeling, that helps us be reborn.
It's the hand that we hold, when we're lost and scared,
A reminder of love, and the moments we've shared.
Hope is the anthem, of our soul's refrain,
A beacon in the darkness, a relieving balm for pain.
It's the courage in our hearts, the unwavering song,
The power to move forward to where we belong.
It's not just a word, it's a force that's true,
A fire inside, that sees us through.
Through trials and troubles, it leads the way,
To brighter paths, come what may.
Hope is the anthem, of our soul's refrain,
A steadfast companion, on life's winding train.
It's the spark in our spirit, the undying flame,
The essence of life, in every name.
So let's hold onto hope, with all our might,
Through the struggles, through the fight.
For with hope in our hearts, we'll find the scope,
To climb every mountain, to conquer every slope.
May this uplift your spirit and fill you with a sense of hope for the future.
”
”
James Hilton-Cowboy
“
Ryan’s right. You do need a new guitar.” I drop onto the seat across from him, shifting forward to trace a finger across the body of his instrument. The wood is cheap to begin with, and it’s banged up. “Yeah, well, they don't exactly grow on trees.” I blink up at him. “They do. They're wood.
”
”
Piper Lawson (A Love Song for Liars (Rivals, #1))
“
If you could go back to Trehaug, would you want to?”
“What?”
“Last night you said you couldn’t go home. I wondered if that was what you really wanted to do.” He followed her silently for a time, then added, “Because if it was, I’d find a way to take you there.”
She stopped, turned and met his eyes. He seemed so earnest, and she suddenly felt so old. “Tats. If that was what I really wanted to do, I’d find a way to do it. If I left now…well. It all would have been for nothing, wouldn’t it? I’d just be Thymara, slinking back home, to live in my father’s house and abide by my mother’s rules.”
He furrowed his brow. “ ‘Just Thymara.’ I don’t think that’s such a bad thing to be. What do you want to be?”
That stumped her. “I don’t know. But I know that I want to be something more than just my father’s daughter. I want to prove myself somehow. That’s what I told my da when he asked why I wanted to go on this expedition. And it’s still true.”
They’d come to the next trunk and Thymara started up it, digging her claws into the bark. The same claws that had condemned her to a half life in Trehaug might be her salvation out here, she thought.
Tats came behind her, more slowly. When Thymara reached a likely branch, she paused and waited for him. When he caught up with her, his face was misted with sweat. “I thought only boys felt things like that.”
“Like what?”
“That we have to prove ourselves, so people would know we were men now, not boys any longer.”
“Why wouldn’t a girl feel that?” Her eyes had caught a glint of yellow. She pointed toward it, and he nodded. At the end of this branch, out over the river, a parasitic vine garlanded the tree. The weight of hanging yellow fruit sagged both vine and branches. It swayed and she saw the flicker of wings. Birds were feeding there, a sure sign the fruit was ripe. “I don’t know if the branches will take your weight.”
“I’ll find out.”
“Your choice. But don’t follow me too closely.”
“I’ll be careful. And I’ll stick to my own branch.”
And he was. She ventured out onto the branch, and he transferred to one beside it. She crouched, digging her claws in as she ventured toward the vine. The farther she went, the more the branch sagged.
“It’s a long drop to the river, and shallow down there,” Tats reminded her.
“Like I don’t know,” she muttered. She glanced over at him. He was belly down on his branch, inching out doggedly. She could tell he was afraid. And she knew that he wouldn’t go back until she did.
Proving himself.
“Why wouldn’t a girl want to prove herself?”
“Well.” He gave a grunt and inched himself along. She had to admire his nerve. He was heavier than she was, and his branch was already beginning to droop with his weight. “A girl doesn’t have to prove herself. No one expects it of her. She just has to, you know, be a girl.”
“Get married, have babies,” she said.
“Well. Something like that. Not right away, the having babies part. But, well, I guess no one expects a girl to, well—”
“Do anything,” she supplied for him. She was as far out as she dared to go, but the fruit was barely within her reach. She reached out and took a cautious grip on a leaf of the vine. She pulled it slowly toward her, careful not to pull the leaf off. When it was near enough, she hooked the vine itself with her free hand. Carefully she scooted back on the parasitic vines had very tough and sturdy stemwork. She’d be able to pull it from here and pluck as much fruit as she wanted.
Tats saw that, and she credited his intelligence that he stopped risking himself immediately and backed along the branch. He sighed slightly, watching her. “You know what I mean.”
“I do. It didn’t used to be like that, with the early Traders. Women were among the toughest of the new settlers. They had to be, not only to live but to raise their children.
”
”
Robin Hobb (City of Dragons (Rain Wild Chronicles, #3))
“
With a deep breath, I extend my arms, beginning with an adagio, syncing with the melody of the flowers. When I find comfort in the rhythm, I dip into a cambré, sweeping my body into a whirlpool as I rise. I hesitate as plumes of color emerge from the ground, encompassing me in a veil of fuchsia, amber, and gold. The colors gather me, and I move with them like the language of fire--- hot, quick steps, languid and elegant.
The forest begins to change, and my eyes widen. When I began my bourrée steps, foxgloves sprout like lace-crafted trumpets, marrying the sound of blooming hibiscuses, rattling like tambourines. With every step I take, more flowers grow, kissing the earth with their velvet lips. I almost swear I hear the ground sing back, harmonizing with the forest's song.
I guess the angel was right.
With a glimmer of confidence, I burst into a grand jeté, and golden hummingbirds mimic me, tracing my every move as I dive into a piqué manège. Damien's eyes glisten, and it fills my spirit.With every chassé, the forest unravels in color.
Fireflies come to life and kiss my cheeks, circling my body in a lattice as I pirouette. New colors rise from the ground--- topaz, lazuli, and chartreuse--- dancing with me like my own ensemble, I transition into my fouettés, leaning into an arabesque, as if to touch the rising moon.
I lose all sense of self, leaping into the air. My body transcends into a wind-like creature, moving wildly with mild grace. New life sprouts, as if this world belongs to me and not the angels. Tiny stars emerge in a trail behind my feet, and I climb them like stairs. Damien smiles. I reach for his hand and lift him onto the steps.
His hands wrap around my waist, and together we spin higher into the sky. My grip around his shoulders tenses as we rise closer and closer to the Heavens. I can feel Luna radiating over me. I'm in command. Here, I'm free. I wish I could hold on to this moment forever.
”
”
Kiana Krystle (Dance of the Starlit Sea)
“
Pressing myself as deep as I can one last time, hitting the piercing against the back of her smooth throat, I pull back. Stroking my cock a few times, a throaty grunt escapes me and euphoria finds me as I release myself on her face, pumping all the cum from my tight balls onto her pretty little face. Her eyes close tightly as she gasps for air, the mix of cum, tears, and mascara creating the most beautiful image before me. My filthy girl finally covered in me. Placing my semi-limp cock back in my pants, I take two fingers, wiping the cum that’s dripping down her cheek, coating them. She blinks up at me, her eyes wet with tears as a sob leaves her. Taking the cum, I make the sign of the cross on her forehead. “In the name of Aero, your new god, I baptize you, Briony Strait.” I take the rest and wipe it over her lips as she stares at me in horrified disbelief. “Your new life begins now.
”
”
Jescie Hall (That Sik Luv)
“
But I was stuck for a long time by myself at Abraham Lincoln's portrait, standing in the middle of the huge hall as people moved all around me with mostly children. I felt as if time had stopped as I watched Lincoln, facing him, while watching the woman’s back as she was looking out the window. I felt wronged, so much like Truman from the movie, standing there in the middle of the museum alone. I was wondering what would Abraham Lincoln do if he realized he was the slave in his own cotton fields, being robbed by evil thieves, nazis.
I had taken numerous photos of Martina from behind, as well as silhouettes of her shadow. I remember standing there, watching as she stood in front of the window; it was almost as if she was admiring the view of the mountains from our new home, as I did take such pictures of her, with a very similar composition to that of the female depicted in the iconic Lincoln portrait looking outwards from the window. I hadn't realized how many photographs I snapped of Martina with her back turned towards me while we travelled to picturesque places. Fernanda and I walked side-by-side in utter silence, admiring painting after painting of Dali's, without exchanging a single word. Meanwhile, Luis and Martina had got lost somewhere in the museum. When I finally found her, she was taking pictures outside of the Rainy Cadillac. We both felt something was amiss without having to say it, as Fernanda knew things I didn't and vice versa. We couldn't bring ourselves to discuss it though, not because we lacked any legal authority between me and Martina, but because neither Fernanda or myself had much parental authority over the young lady. It felt like when our marriages and divorces had dissolved, it was almost as if our parenting didn't matter anymore. It was as if I were unwittingly part of a secret screenplay, like Jim Carrey's character in The Truman Show, living in a fabricated reality made solely for him. I was beginning to feel a strange nauseous feeling, as if someone was trying to force something surreal down my throat, as if I were living something not of this world, making me want to vomit onto the painted canvas of the personalised image crafted just for me. I couldn't help but wonder if Fernanda felt the same way, if she was aware of the magnitude of what was happening, or if, just like me, she was completely oblivious, occasionally getting flashes of truth or reality for a moment or two. I took some amazing photographs of her in Port Lligat in Dali's yard in the port, and in Cap Creus, but I'd rather not even try to describe them—they were almost like Dali's paintings which make all sense now. As if all the pieces are coming together. She was walking by the water and I was walking a bit further up on the same beach on pebbles, parallel to each other as we walked away from Dali's house in the port. I looked towards her and there were two boats flipped over on the two sides of my view.
I told her: “Run, Bunny! Run!
”
”
Tomas Adam Nyapi (BARCELONA MARIJUANA MAFIA)
“
In the midst of this desolate landscape, I am reminded of the fragility of love. The echoes of our laughter may have faded, but the memories still linger, reminding me of the joy we once shared. I yearn for the warmth of your touch, the comfort of your embrace, but I understand that those moments are now distant memories.
The colors that once painted our love story have dulled, reflecting the fading flame within us. Each passing day brings a subtle ache, a constant reminder of what could have been. The changing seasons serve as a cruel reminder of the missed opportunities, the moments we let slip away. It is a deep ache, a throbbing void in my heart, as I desperately try to hold onto the fragments of our once beautiful connection.
But deep down, I know the truth. Our love has cooled, replaced by an insurmountable distance. The vibrant hues of summer have transformed into the earthy tones of autumn, mirroring the gradual demise of our relationship. As the leaves fall, so does our passion. And with each falling leaf, I am reminded of the inevitable end.
Yet, amidst the ache and heartbreak, I find solace in the knowledge that this season too shall pass. The earthy hues of autumn will make way for the stark beauty of winter, and with it, the hope of new beginnings. In the meantime, I will cherish the memories we did create, however fleeting they may have been.
As the seasons change, I will strive to heal the void within my heart, knowing that love, in all its forms, has the power to transform and bloom anew. I will embrace the fading love, the changing seasons, and the lessons learned. And as I watch the leaves dance their way to the ground, I will find strength in knowing that, just as nature finds a way to renew itself, so too shall I find the courage to let go and embrace the possibility of a brighter tomorrow.
”
”
Michella Augusta
“
Thus, unlike the previous Pluralistic View, the Integral View is truly holistic, not in any New Age woo-woo sense but as being evidence of a deeply interwoven and interconnected and conscious Kosmos. The Pluralistic View, we saw, wants to be holistic and all-inclusive and nonmarginalizing, but it loathes the modern Rational View, absolutely cannot abide the traditional Mythic View, goes apoplectic when faced with a truly Integral View. But the Integral stages are truly and genuinely inclusive. First, all of the previous structure-rungs are literally included as components of the Integral structure-rung, or vision-logic, a fact that is intuited at this stage. Views, of course, are negated, and so somebody at an Integral View is not including directly a Magic View, a Mythic View, a Rational View, and so on. By definition, that is impossible. A View is generated when the central self exclusively identifies with a particular rung of development. Somebody at a Rational View is exclusively identified with the corresponding rung at that stage—namely, formal operational. To have access directly to, say, a Magic View—which means the View of the world when exclusively identified with the impulsive or emotional-sexual rung—the individual would have to give up Rationality, give up the concrete mind, give up the representational mind, give up language itself, and regress totally to the impulsive mind (something that won’t happen without severe brain damage). The Rational person still has complete access to the emotional-sexual rung, but not the exclusive View from that rung. As we saw, rungs are included, Views are negated. (Just like on a real ladder—if you’re at, say, the 7th rung in the ladder, all previous 6 rungs are still present and still in existence, holding up the 7th rung; but, while you are standing on the 7th rung, you can’t directly see what the world looks like from those earlier rungs. Those were gone when you stepped off those rungs onto higher ones, and so at this point you have all the rungs, but only the View from the highest rung you’re on, in this case, the 7th-rung View.) So a person at Integral doesn’t directly, in their own makeup, have immediate access to earlier Views (archaic, magic, mythic, and so on), but they do have access to all the earlier corresponding rungs (snsorimotor, emotional-sexual, conceptual, rule/role, and so on), and thus they can generally intuit what rung a particular person’s center of gravity is at, and thus indirectly be able to understand what View or worldview that person is expressing (magic, mythic, rational, pluralistic, and so on). And by “include those worldviews” what is meant is that the Integral levels actively tolerate and make room for those Views in their own holistic outreach. They might not agree fully with them (they don’t do so in their own makeup, having transcended and negated junior Views), but they intuitively understand the significance and importance of all Views in the unfolding sweep of evolutionary development. Further, they understand that a person has the right to stop growing at virtually any View, and thus each particular View will become, for some people, an actual station in Life, and their values, needs, and motivations will be expressions of that particular View in Life. And thus a truly enlightened, inclusive society will make some sort of room for traditional values, modern values, postmodern values, and so on. Everybody is born at square 1 and thus begins their development of Views at the lowest rung and continues from there, so every society will consist of a different mix of percentages of people at different altitude rungs and Views of the overall spectrum. In most Western countries, for example—and this varies depending on exactly how you measure it—but generally, about 10% of the population is at Magic, 40% at traditional Mythic, 40%-50% at modern Rational, 20% at postmodern Pluralistic, 5% at Holistic/Integral, and less than 1% at Super-Integral.
”
”
Ken Wilber (The Fourth Turning: Imagining the Evolution of an Integral Buddhism)
“
For God acknowledged that it is not good that man should be alone. Marriage is a new beginning to a new life now shared with another person. A fresh start. It is not humanly possible to forget what came before, but as new couples, you should strive to lay to rest the pain, affliction, and strife of the past and move forward into your new life with a clean slate. Hold onto the good memories you have already created together but let go of the bad things. Begin again, not as two separate persons, but two halves of one whole. Allow the old things to pass away as all things become new.” Soft amens sifted through the couples. William
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C.J. Bishop (I Thee Wed (The Phoenix Wedding, #6))
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One who is new to fasting can begin by skipping a meal during the day. From there a person can move onto juice fasting and eventually spring water fasting. People suffering
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Joshua Eagle (Mind Nutrition)
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Finally, every society develops a system of aesthetic standards that get manifested in everything from decorative art, music, and dance to the architecture and planning of buildings and communities. There are many different ways we could examine artistic systems. One way of thinking about it is to observe the degree to which a society's aesthetics reflect clear lines and solid boundaries versus fluid ones. Many Western cultures favor clean, tight boundaries whereas many Eastern cultures prefer more fluid, indiscriminate lines. In most Western homes, kitchen drawers are organized so that forks are with forks and knives are with knives. The walls of a room are usually uniform in color, and when a creative shift in color does occur, it usually happens at a corner or along a straight line midway down the wall. Pictures are framed with straight edges, molding covers up seams in the wall, and lawns are edged to form a clear line between the sidewalk and the lawn. Why? Because we view life in terms of classifications, categories, and taxonomies. And cleanliness itself is largely defined by the degree of order that exists. It has little to do with sanitation and far more to do with whether things appear to be in their proper place. Maintaining boundaries is essential in the Western world; otherwise categories begin to disintegrate and chaos sets in.13 Most Americans want dandelion-free lawns and roads with clear lanes prescribing where to drive and where not to drive. Men wear ties to cover the adjoining fabric on the shirts that they put on before going to the symphony, where they listen to classical music based on a scale with seven notes and five half steps. Each note has a fixed pitch, defined in terms of the lengths of the sound waves it produces.14 A good performance occurs when the musicians hit the notes precisely. In contrast, many Eastern cultures have little concern in everyday life for sharp boundaries and uniform categories. Different colors of paint may be used at various places on the same wall. And the paint may well “spill” over onto the window glass and ceiling. Meals are a fascinating array of ingredients where food is best enjoyed when mixed together on your plate. Roads and driving patterns are flexible. The lanes ebb and flow as needed depending on the volume of traffic. In a place like Cambodia or Nigeria, the road space is available for whichever direction a vehicle needs it most, whatever the time of day. And people often meander along the road in their vehicles the same way they walk along a path. There are many other ways aesthetics between one place and another could be contrasted. But the important point is some basic understanding of how cultures differ within the realm of aesthetics. Soak in the local art of a place and chalk it up to informing your strategy for international business.
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David Livermore (Leading with Cultural Intelligence: The New Secret to Success)
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How to scale and enter the risen path was largely unknown. It all might begin in darkness, but it cast a shadow that, when viewed from the ground, was too bleak. Demolition was once a question not of “whether, but when,” until one photographer spent a year on the trail documenting what was there. 4 The scenes were “hallucinatory”—wildflowers, Queen Anne’s lace, irises, and grasses wafted next to hardwood ailanthus trees that bolted up from the soil on railroad tracks, on which rust had accumulated over the decades. 5 Steel played willing host to an exuberant, spontaneous garden that showed fealty to its unusual roots. Tulips shared the soilbed with a single pine tree outfitted with lights for the winter holidays, planted outside of a building window that opened onto the iron-bottomed greenway with views of the Hudson River and the Statue of Liberty to the left and traffic, buildings, and Tenth Avenue to the right. 6 Wading through waist-high Queen Anne’s lace was like seeing “another world right in the middle of Manhattan.” 7 The scene was a kind of wildering, the German idea of ortsbewüstung, an ongoing sense of nature reclaiming its ground. 8 “You think of hidden things as small. That is how they stay hidden. But this hidden thing was huge. A huge space in New York City that had somehow escaped everybody’s notice,” said Joshua David, who cofounded a nonprofit organization with Robert Hammonds to save the railroad. 9 They called it the High Line. “It was beautiful refuse, which is kind of a scary thing because you find yourself looking forward and looking backwards at the same time,” architect Liz Diller told me in our conversation about the conversion of the tracks into a public space, done in a partnership with her architectural firm, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and James Corner, Principal of Field Operations, and Dutch planting designer Piet Oudolf. Other architectural plans proposed turning the High Line into a “Street in the Air” with biking, art galleries, and restaurants, but their team “saw that the ruinous state was really alive.” Joel Sternfeld, the “poet-keeper” of the walkway, put the High Line’s resonance best: “It’s more of a path than a park. And more of a Path than a path.” 10
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Sarah Lewis (The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery)
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A farmer’s crops weren’t doing well. He had tried everything he could with the land and soil he had, but no matter what he did, year after year, his harvest grew smaller, his bounty less plentiful. So, he up and moved, searching for a new land, a new beginning. After a long journey, he came upon the most ideal, freshest, nutrient-rich soil on earth. Living there in prosperity, he felt the urge to plant something to pass onto future generations so they could see what he was blessed with. He tilled the soil, and with tender love and care, he planted an acorn. He watched as the tree broke the soil, making its way upward. Young, healthy, and free. Year after year, he saw it expand, stretching its branches in all directions, letting it be, never pruning it, never tending to it. Under its own direction, it took off, soaring upward and outward, becoming the mighty oak seen from all directions. “People traveled from far and wide to admire the tree, wanting one for themselves. They all asked the farmer, ‘What did you do to grow such a majestic oak tree?’ “His answer, always the same. ‘I don’t do a thing, I just let it grow on its own.’ “Most turned away, perplexed by his explanation, convinced he was hiding something from them. Others, however, listened, reproducing the same results. “Time passed and eventually the farmer was no longer, but the tree remained a steadfast fixture on the farmer’s land. Eventually, more people moved into the area. They were different from the man. They considered themselves to be more educated, more advanced than a simple farmer. They disliked his gigantic symbol of individual success. “So they hatched a plan. They conspired with each other and decided to stop making it about the tree. Why don’t they turn the people’s attention to the branches? Brilliant. So, year after year, they would rev up the citizens over a blemish on a branch. One was crooked, another’s bark was too thick, some had too many leaves, others didn’t have enough. The people who cared passionately about more foliage fought with those who wanted less. Citizens who wouldn’t stand for crooked branches ganged up on those who only wanted them to be straight. All the while, the elites stood back, stirring the pot, and achieving their plan to eliminate the tree. Every once in a while a side would win, and a branch would be cut off. Others would chop one off from spite and anger. As the years passed, branch after branch not escaping the scourge of the bickering groups, the tree finally was nothing more than a trunk. The people who were so used to fighting with each other gazed upon one another from either side of the pathetic, devoured symbol. They realized they had destroyed the once extraordinary, grand oak. But it was too late. The elites got what they wanted.
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Eula McGrevey (Progatory (Book 2 of The Progtopia Trilogy))
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3. There is a good scared and a bad scared. Try to learn the difference. The wrong kind of fear will feel like driving into a storm, stepping onto a boat and feeling it begin to sink, knowing you don't have a life jacket. If that's what you feel, something needs to change. But the right kind of fear is more like meeting a friend of a friend you've been told you would love, or visiting a new country you don't know well- you might not understand the language, but you still want to learn. Good scared means you're growing. Know the difference. 4.
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Elizabeth McNamara (Drumbeat for the Mending)
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Out of fear, I held onto what was easy and familiar for years even though it was at odds with what my soul longed to do – I wanted to be free. I also couldn’t shake the feeling that something just wasn’t right with my life at that point.
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Kristin Addis (A Thousand New Beginnings: Tales of Solo Female Travel Through Southeast Asia)
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Instructions: Row 1 Forward Pass: This pass is worked from left to right. Pull up the active loop on the hook, and place it onto the end of the needle without twisting. Remove the hook. In the next st to the right work into the back loop only, yarn over and pull up a loop, and place it onto the needle, removing the hook. Repeat in each st across, working to the right and into the back loop only of each st. At the end of this pass you'll have as many loops on the needle as you had sc sts in the previous row. Do not turn. Row 2 Return Pass: This pass is worked from right to left. Carefully pull 3 loops off the end of the needle with your hook. Be sure to keep the loops taut so they keep their height. Ch 1 and work 3 sc into the loops, going through the center of the loops to make each st. (The reason we work 3 sc here is because we are working a group of 3 loops.) Pull the next group of 3 loops off the hook and work 3 sc through the center of these 3 loops (do not ch 1 again - the only ch 1 is at the very beginning of this pass). Continue working
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Prime Publishing (8 Different Crochet Stitches: Learn to Crochet Something New with Crochet Patterns)
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Trust God Roll your works upon the Lord [commit and trust them wholly to Him; He will cause your thoughts to become agreeable to His will, and] so shall your plans be established and succeed. PROVERBS 16:3 AMP Many people make resolutions at the beginning of a new year . . . only to break them before the month is complete. Others set goals, then lay out detailed plans to accomplish them. In fact, January sees a plethora of self-help courses, webinars, blog posts, and other venues that emphasize how goals and/or resolutions will lead to success if we can manage not to break them or throw out the goals. There’s nothing wrong with these things, except too many times we forget to include God in our plans. In the first chapter of Joshua we read of God’s charge to Joshua after Moses was dead. It was time to lead the children of Israel into the Promised Land. God tells Joshua the secret to success: “Be sure to obey all the teachings my servant Moses gave you. If you follow them exactly, you will be successful in everything you do. Always remember what is written in the Book of the Teachings. Study it day and night to be sure to obey everything that is written there. If you do this, you will be wise and successful in everything” (Joshua 1:7–8 NCV). Solomon writes that we are to roll all our plans and goals onto the Lord. If they are in accordance with God’s plan, then He will establish our plans and help us make them reality. Father, I commit my plans to You today.
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Various (Daily Wisdom for Women 2015 Devotional Collection - January (None))
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Orion's Tips for Sane Witchcraft (Ponder and Apply to Living) Know your boundaries. Find time for stillness. Look within! Do not confuse spirituality with egotism. Don't abuse power or give it to those who would abuse you with it. Live your life as an expression of conscious creation and divine revelation. Seek counsel daily with your source, your center, and your ancestors. Don't get lazy, crazy, or otherwise in your own way. Remember grace! It brings wisdom and unlocks more vast knowledge. Be sincere in all that you do. Never compromise (especially your integrity) or be compromised. If you lose yourself, you have nothing. Choose what matters and feed it. (Starve the bane, feed the blessing.) Get the lesson and get on with life. Too often life is what happens when you are busy doing something else. Maintain an attitude of thanksgiving. For in doing so, you give gratitude to source and maintain inner fertile space to receive more. Thank the source and its good spirits at the beginning and ending of each day. If you wake up in the morning, your day has already started out good . . . build from that position. Don't wait for a reason to be happy when it is right in front of you. Claim the direction of your spirit! Fall in love with being you. The seed of divinity is within you; live your truth. Give no enduring interest to what is not spirit while seeking spiritual truth in everything. Do not stray away from your faith in yourself and the source (for in truth they are one). You are guided by the source. Do not be bandied about by the waves of life or you will crash onto the rocks of doubt. Daily, reaffirm your connection with spirit. Renew yourself on the new moment and release the fetters of yesterday to their rightful home . . . yesterday. Weave your web to attract that which you desire . . . then seize it. A witch need not hunt when he or she can attract. If you fall down . . . move what tripped you, get up, dust yourself off, and above all, don't give up walking. In chaotic times, seek the eye of the storm, poise yourself there, and find the wisdom in the stillness. Give thanks for all opportunities to grow.
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Orion Foxwood (The Flame in the Cauldron: A Book of Old-Style Witchery)
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A new revolutionary grammar also begins with a cold defense of hopelessness. One of the system’s most effective tricks is the cruel lie of reform. Hope gives life to the system, prolonging its brutal existence. It breeds nostalgia. The system—with a new president, a new prime minister, and so on—will be redeemed. Liberal democracy can get a reboot. It can still deliver on its emancipatory promises. Hopelessness interrupts this postpolitical calculus. Without this sense of hopelessness, we would never demand something qualitatively different. Politics as such would be inexistent. Hopelessness opens onto pessimism, onto a critical and skeptical hermeneutics. Pessimism is a political doing; it embodies an active and vigilant disposition vis-à-vis power. We might recall here Foucault’s insistence that power doesn’t mean “that everything is bad,” but rather “that everything is dangerous” (1983, 231–32). And more importantly, what follows from this apprehension is not despair or apathy (power is all there is; there is no outside-power), but a resolve to confront any configuration of power identified as dangerous by adopting what Foucault suggestively terms “a hyper- and pessimistic activism” (1983, 232). In Lacanese, power is non-all. Žižek repeats this kind of “hyper- and pessimistic activism” when he stresses the lack of transcendence from within. The antidote to the “slow death” (Berlant 2011, 102) of quotidian life is decidedly not reform but revolution. Against the liberal model of incremental change, the experience of change without change, a universal politics affirms the sober vision that there is no light at the end of the tunnel; on the contrary, as Žižek puts it, if there is a light, what we are actually seeing is another train bearing down on us (2017a, xi–xii). In this respect, “the courage of hopelessness” is counterintuitively “the height of optimism” (Agamben 2014).
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Zahi Zalloua (Universal Politics)
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A new revolutionary grammar also begins with a cold defense of hopelessness. One of the system’s most effective tricks is the cruel lie of reform. Hope gives life to the system, prolonging its brutal existence. It breeds nostalgia. The system—with a new president, a new prime minister, and so on—will be redeemed. Liberal democracy can get a reboot. It can still deliver on its emancipatory promises. Hopelessness interrupts this postpolitical calculus. Without this sense of hopelessness, we would never demand something qualitatively different. Politics as such would be inexistent. Hopelessness opens onto pessimism, onto a critical and skeptical hermeneutics. Pessimism is a political doing; it embodies an active and vigilant disposition vis-à-vis power.
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Zahi Zalloua (Universal Politics)
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Men of this type often had strong mother figures in their childhood. They became good, obedient boys, excellent students at school. Consciously they are attracted to well-educated women, to those who seem good and perfect. But unconsciously they are drawn to women who are imperfect, bad, of dubious character. They secretly crave what is the opposite of themselves. It is the classic split of the mother/whore—they want the mother figure for a wife but feel a much stronger physical attraction to the whore, the Fallen Woman, the type who likes to display her body. They have repressed the playful, sensual, and earthy sides of the character they had as boys. They are too rigid and civilized. The only way they can relate to these qualities is through women who appear to be so different from themselves. Like Swann, they find a way to idealize them with some highbrow reference that has no relation to reality. They project onto such women weakness and vulnerability. They tell themselves they want to help and protect them. But what really attracts them is the danger and naughty pleasures these women seem to promise. Underestimating the strength of such women, they often end up as their pawns. Their anima is passive and masochistic. Men who engage in this kind of projection need to develop the less conventional sides of their character. They need to move outside their comfort zone and try new experiences on their own. They require more challenges, and even a bit of danger that will help loosen them up. Perhaps they need to take more risks at work. They also need to develop the more physical and sensual side of their character. Not having to get what they crave by looking for the Fallen Woman type, they can actually begin to satisfy their urges with any type of woman, not passively waiting for her to lead them astray but actively initiating the guilty pleasures.
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Robert Greene (The Laws of Human Nature)
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Enhancing our memory is just the beginning. When you express an idea in writing, it’s not just a matter of transferring the exact contents of your mind into paper or digital form. Writing creates new knowledge that wasn’t there before. Each word you write triggers mental cascades and internal associations, leading to further ideas, all of which can come tumbling out onto the page or screen.V Thinking doesn’t just produce writing; writing also enriches thinking. There is even significant evidence that expressing our thoughts in writing can lead to benefits for our health and well-being.11 One of the most cited psychology papers of the 1990s found that “translating emotional events into words leads to profound social, psychological, and neural changes.” In a wide range of controlled studies, writing about one’s inner experiences led to a drop in visits to the doctor, improved immune systems, and reductions in distress. Students who wrote about emotional topics showed improvements in their grades, professionals who had been laid off found new jobs more quickly, and staff members were absent from work at lower rates. The most amazing thing about these findings is that they didn’t rely on input from others. No one had to read or respond to what these people wrote down—the benefits came just from the act of writing.
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Tiago Forte (Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential)
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Agriculture determined this yearly cycle, which would make March an excellent choice for the start of a new year. The god Mars gave the month its name. This Mars, however, was not the god of war but the divine guardian of fields.9 Yet ancient sources also declare that January was, since earliest times, the year’s 1st month. The easiest explanation would be that a 12-month solar cycle was grafted onto a 10-month seasonal system, which itself might have replaced a lunar system of marking time.10 The 2 months that were introduced were January and February, by first assigning them to eleventh and twelfth position and later moving them to first and second place. The original introduction happened in the sixth century BCE when Rome was in Etruscan hands, and the later change occurred in 153 BCE at the latest, when the beginning of the new and civil year was moved from the Ides of March to the Kalends of January.
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Sarolta A. Takács (Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion)
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Is there something you’d like to do instead?” he said.
I wanted to lie down on his bed while he lay next to me, but that’s not a profession.
“No,” I said. “I don’t know.”
“Well,” he said. “You don’t have to know what you want in order to know what you don’t want.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what I don’t want either, not really,” I said, sighing, beginning to be exhausted with my own not knowing. None of my questions ever have answers that create new questions; nothing is moving along here.
Linny smiled. Then he started chuckling, with no maliciousness, just humor, and maybe fondness too. He lay back, pulling Bir onto his stomach. While he laughed, Bir bounced around, blinking his copper eyes crossly.
“Hava,” Linny said, “you’re my favorite.”
“Because my problems are so amusing?” I said dryly.
“No,” he said, “because you’re wonderful. I can’t explain it.
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Kristin Cashore (Seasparrow (Graceling Realm, #5))
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When he’d first tried his hand at jazz, it was a mess. Like most classically trained musicians who relied on strict training, he was most comfortable following the road map that a composer laid out. Ray would pour himself onto the classical route, which had clear signposts and a yellow line down one side. With jazz, there were no signs; the GPS just said, “Go.” Jazz charts provided a simple melody he was just supposed to riff from—he wanted to read every note, lock in on each finger pattern. How would he even begin? He started by listening to the opening melody of a song, then adding a few notes in the same key, then changing the key for a while, then somehow, miraculously, returning to the original key, all while making it seem effortless. This took a lot of practice. When he thought he had it, he had to think again. It was fun, challenging, and exercised new muscles in his playing.
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Brendan Slocumb (The Violin Conspiracy)
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Half a long pepper and lastly a teaspoon of troll fat.' 'Yuck,' Stef said, as she looked down at the small bowl of fat. 'Yes, it is a bit gross, but it's very effective,' Miss Maker said, as she walked over to the front row and paused by a cauldron that belonged to a girl with red hair. 'That looks fantastic, Patricia.' 'How does she know all our names?' Gerty whispered to Charlotte, forgetting that Miss Maker could hear them. 'Gerty, Charlotte, how are you getting on?' She smiled over at them. 'Erm, okay,' Gerty muttered quietly. Yeah, okay I think,' Charlotte added. 'Great!' Miss Maker walked back to the front of the room. 'Now take your spoons and place them into the cauldron, careful not to splash any of the potion. Turn it in a clockwise direction twenty times, like this’ She began to turn her spoon, counting the turns aloud. 'When you've done that, carefully remove your spoon.' 'Now take your wand out and say, 'strength potion make me strong.' Then add one cup of cranberry juice and stir another ten times in a clockwise direction. Pour a glass and drink up girls. This spell will only last for three hours, and then your body’s strength will return to normal.' Stef was the first to drink her potion, followed by Margaret and then Demi. Charlotte and Gerty exchanged looks before they picked up their glasses and drank the liquid. Charlotte looked down to see her arms begin to bulk up under her cardigan until large muscles were visible. 'Look, look!' Gerty lifted her blouse, revealing a six-pack of muscles on her tummy. ''Whoa,' Charlotte said, as she looked down at her own stomach and legs and saw that they were changing too. 'My thighs are huge,' Alice said disgustedly, clutching hold of her muscled leg. 'I feel so strong,' Gerty giggled, as she reached out and lifted Charlotte with one hand and balanced her above her head, spinning her around like a spinning top. 'I feel weaker Miss Maker, what's happening?' Stef asked, as she stumbled and gripped onto the table for support before looking down at herself. Her arms and legs had become much smaller, and she looked skinny and haggard. There were gasps at Stef's appearance as the other girls gathered around her. 'Can you show me what direction is clockwise?' Miss Maker passed Stef a spoon. Stef nodded as she put the spoon into the cauldron and stirred to her left. 'Oh dear.' Miss Maker shook her head. 'That is anti-clockwise, you're lucky the spell is only for three hours.' She led Stef over to the comfy chair that was behind her desk and then addressed the other girls. 'This is a perfect example of how careful you must be when brewing potions and a great lesson for us all. Now, we have to tidy up. Please be careful when cleaning the cauldrons and glasses, don't forget your new strength.' 'Have you seen Demi's muscles? They're huge!' A girl with black hair pointed to Demi's arms.
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Katrina Kahler (Witch School, Book 1)
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Welcome to the first dinner of this academic year, we shall start as we always do by saying the witches’ creed,' Miss Moffat said. As she began to speak, the other witches joined in: 'Witches old and witches young owls and bats and black cats too. Come together in this castle to bring out the best in you. With perfect love and perfect trust we learn the spells and witches' rules. Acting for the good of all now let’s eat in this great hall.' Charlotte looked at Stef, and they exchanged awkward glances because everyone else around them seemed to know the words to the creed, including Gerty and even Alice, although she only joined in on the last few sentences. Charlotte knew that she'd need to learn it for next time so that she didn't stand out and reminded herself to ask Gerty to teach it to her and Stef later. As soon as the witch’s creed had finished the bats flew into the room carrying bowls of broth and baskets of bread rolls. They went to the teacher's table first before they brought in food for the girls. Charlotte watched, and she was incredibly impressed as two bats quickly but precisely placed the bowl of orangey red broth down in front of her. On seeing Stef begin to eat and Gerty grab a roll out of the basket in front of them, she also took a roll and then placed her spoon into her broth. Picking up the silver goblet in front of her, she saw that it was now full of cranberry juice, even though she was sure it had been empty when she'd first sat down. The main course was a selection of steamed meats, and freshly cooked vegetables and dessert was an array of fruits and mini cakes that the bats brought in on three-tiered stands. The food was so delicious that even Alice hadn't complained once, although when Charlotte thought about it, she realized that Alice hadn't said anything since she'd sat down. When everyone had finished eating Molly stood up and said 'luculentam' as she waved her wand. All the dirty dishes, goblets and cutlery immediately vanished, and the tables were perfectly tidy. 'I so need to learn that spell,' Stef said, and Charlotte and Gerty nodded in agreement. 'Now that dinner is over it is your free time to do as you wish, may you use it wisely. I request the new students to stay behind, and Molly will give you a tour of the Academy. As for the rest of you, you're now free to leave,' Miss Moffat said. She got onto the broomstick that was floating behind her chair and led the rest of the teachers and older students out of the room. Charlotte watched as the room became quieter. Then she followed the others over to where Molly was standing in front of the platform, her blonde-hair now tied into bunches. 'I don't see why I need a tour, I know where my room is, and the meeting hall is easy to find. Surely servants should be on call to show me the remaining rooms as and when I need to see them,' Alice said, breaking her short bout of silence. 'This castle is huge, and I'm excited to see more of it,' Charlotte whispered to Gerty.
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Katrina Kahler (Witch School, Book 1)
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listening, and nobody’s leg was bouncing around. Not even Sketch’s. Unc continued, “When I was in prison, I had this dream that my life was a rolling canvas. Every day it rolled off the sheet, bleached white, onto the beach of my life. Come sunup, I’d begin to paint it with my thoughts and actions. My breathing, my living, and my dying. Some days the pictures pleased me, maybe even pleased others, pleased God himself, but some days, some months, even some years, they didn’t, and I didn’t ever want to look at them again. But the thing is this . . . every day, no matter what I’d painted the day before, I got a new canvas, washed white. ’Cause each night the tide rolled in, scrubbed it clean, and receded, taking the stains with it. And in my dreams . . . I just stood on the beach and watched all that stuff wash out to sea.
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Charles Martin (Chasing Fireflies)
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Another way to understand the difference between equality and equity is to realize that addressing equity issues strikes at the source of the problem rather than dealing with the symptoms, one by one. Our attachment to the myth of meritocracy—which is the notion that companies are structured to reward only the most talented and determined individuals15—is increasingly being viewed as out of touch because it doesn’t acknowledge our very real differences, and how much harder the journey up the ladder, or even onto the ladder, is for some. An insightful article by author Amy Sun makes this clear: Treating everyone exactly the same actually is not fair. What equal treatment does do is erase our differences and promote privilege. Equity is giving everyone what they need to be successful. Equality is treating everyone the same.16 Surrounding Yourself with a Trusted Few If you’ve recognized some of yourself in this chapter, you’re likely feeling motivated to take a closer look at your potential to be a more inclusive leader. Similarly, if you want to support your colleagues in their journey out of Unawareness, this chapter has likely provided many points of entry to transformational conversations. It’s important to note that this stage of your journey might be somewhat private. If you realize you haven’t given certain people a fair chance, you might not want to broadcast that to your colleagues. (Not only would this be damaging to your reputation, it could also make other people feel bad.) But as you become aware of your biases, you’ll start to understand how you can do things differently to better support others. It is a learning process, and it helps to have support from people you trust. When you’re ready, seek out conversations with a trusted few who can help you find your balance, your vocabulary, and begin to identify new skills.
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Jennifer Brown (How to Be an Inclusive Leader: Your Role in Creating Cultures of Belonging Where Everyone Can Thrive)
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after two praying mantises mate, the nervous system of the male begins to shut down
while he still has control over his motor functions
he flops onto his back, exposing his soft underbelly up to his lover like a gift
she then proceeds to lovingly dice him into tiny cubes
spooning every morsel into her mouth
she wastes nothing
even the exoskeleton goes
she does this so that once their children are born she has something to regurgitate to feed them
now that.. is selflessness
i could never do that for you
so i have a new plan
i’m gonna leave you now
i’m gonna spend the rest of my life committing petty injustices
i hope you do the same
i will jay walk at every opportunity
i will steal things i could easily afford
i will be rude to strangers
i hope you do the same
i hope reincarnation is real
i hope our petty crimes are enough to cause us to be reborn as lesser creatures
i hope we are reborn as flies
so that we can love each other as hard as we were meant to.
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Jared Singer
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May 19th 2031_
Eleven months before_ I opened my eyes to see darkness and the sound of my alarm beeping. 0400 hours. I turned it off and got up. I looked for my glasses on my bedside cabinet and put them on. "Alexa, Good morning roll," I said loudly in the dark room. The lights came on and the curtains opened, the speaker turned on and started playing my Spotify playlist. I slowly got dressed and made myself breakfast. After breakfast, I downed a 500ml bottle of zero coke. I leaned to one side and burped. I looked around my kitchen. The dark marble counter and white cupboards, walls and ceiling matched with each other. I looked outside the kitchen window at the traffic down below. I was about 6 floors high, if you were to jump off from that high, there is a very high chance you might die. And if you were lucky to survive, you would be immobilised from your broken legs and hip and ribs. I turned around and sat on the black leathery sofa and switched on the TV. I looked on Netflix at old World War Two films that I could watch before bed. I scrolled through the list. From 'Dunkirk' to 'Unbroken' to a lot more films. I chose a couple and switched the TV onto the news. The reporter said that there was a knife crime in Redding earlier. I sighed but was relieved that it wasn't me. It is a low chance that I would get murdered by someone or people with knives in England but it's still a possibility. I turned the TV off and looked at my phone. There was nothing new on Discord and nothing new on WhatsApp. I checked my Snapchat and opened a few Snaps from my friends at work. I took a selfie of myself in my apartment not working. I sent it off and was happy that I don't work on
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John Struckman (2032: The Beginning)
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The prince jumped up from the chair in new fright. When Rogozhin quieted down (and he did suddenly quiet down), the prince quietly bent over him, sat down beside him, and with a pounding heart, breathing heavily, began to examine him. Rogozhin did not turn his head to him and seemed to forget about him. The prince watched and waited; time passed, it began to grow light. Now and then Rogozhin sometimes suddenly began to mutter, loudly, abruptly, and incoherently; began to exclaim and laugh; then the prince would reach out his trembling hand to him and quietly touch his head, his hair, stroke it and stroke his cheeks there was nothing more he could do! He was beginning to tremble again himself, and again he suddenly lost the use of his legs. Some completely new feeling wrung his heart with infinite anguish. Meanwhile it had grown quite
light; he finally lay down on the pillows, as if quite strengthless now and in despair, and pressed his face to the pale and motionless face of Rogozhin; tears flowed from his eyes onto Rogozhin's cheeks, but perhaps by then he no longer felt his own tears and knew nothing about them …
In any case, when, after many hours, the door opened and people came in, they found the murderer totally unconscious and delirious. The prince was sitting motionless on the bed beside him, and each time the sick man had a burst of shouting or raving, he quietly hastened to pass his trembling hand over his hair and cheeks, as if caressing and soothing him. But he no longer understood anything of what they asked him about, and did not recognise the people who came in and surrounded him. And if Schneider himself had come now from Switzerland to have a look at his former pupil and patient, he, too, recalling the state the prince had sometimes been in during the first year of his treatment in Switzerland, would have waved his hand now and said, as he did then: "An idiot!
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”
Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Idiot)
“
If we overlay the four steps of CODE onto the model of divergence and convergence, we arrive at a powerful template for the creative process in our time. The first two steps of CODE, Capture and Organize, make up divergence. They are about gathering seeds of imagination carried on the wind and storing them in a secure place. This is where you research, explore, and add ideas. The final two steps, Distill and Express, are about convergence. They help us shut the door to new ideas and begin constructing something new out of the knowledge building blocks we’ve assembled.
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Tiago Forte (Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential)
“
Faced with the choice between loving me for my short lifetime and beginning an upward climb with the rich and beautiful Freyda, he had made the practical decision. I’d always known that Eric was a pragmatist. There was a quiet knock at the back door. Bill, checking on my well-being. I went out onto the porch and flung the door open, saying, “I just can’t talk . . .” Eric stood on the steps. The moonlight was kind to him, of course, gilding the blond mane and the handsome face. “What the fuck are you doing here?” I looked over his shoulder. Bill was nowhere in sight. “Now that I’m not your wife, I thought you and Freyda would be . . . consummating your new relationship.” “I told you not to pay attention to what happened,” he said. He took a small step forward. “I told you it meant nothing to me.” I didn’t invite him in. “Pretty hard to believe it meant nothing to your king. And Freyda.” “I can keep you,” he said, with absolute confidence. “I can work out a way. You may not be my wife in name, but you are in my heart.” I felt like a pancake that had just been flipped over on the griddle. I had to go through this again? I snapped. “Not just no, but hell no. Don’t you hear yourself? You’re lying to me and to yourself.” I wanted to smack his face so badly my hand hurt. “Sookie, you’re mine.” He was beginning to be angry. “I am not. You said that in front of everyone.” “But I told you, I came to you in the night and told you I would—” “You told me that you loved me as much as you were able,” I said, almost bouncing on the balls of my feet in agitation. “It seems pretty clear that you’re not able.” “Sookie, I would never have dismissed you like that, so publicly, if I hadn’t been sure you understood that the ceremony was for the benefit of the others.
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”
Charlaine Harris (Dead Ever After (Sookie Stackhouse, #13))
“
A LITTLE BOY sat on the dirt floor with a bowl of millet porridge between his legs. He screamed at the top of his lungs.
“Nay t’a fay! Nay t’aka sari fay! I don’t like it! I don’t like your porridge! It has no sugar. It has no milk.”
“Eat it, Baba Wagué,” Grandma Sabou said gently. “It is good for you.”
The boy kicked his legs wildly. “Nay hay taa n’fa fey. I want to go back to n’fa — my father! He has everything!”
This was the beginning of Baba’s new life in the village. Before this, he had lived with his parents in the city, with its rich variety of food.
Every time Baba behaved in this manner, Grandma Sabou would calmly get up and go to rest on her bamboo bed, letting the boy cry until he was exhausted. Then Baba’s forehead would slowly drift onto his right knee, and he would sleep for a good hour.
When he awoke, he would be hungry enough to eat the entire bowl of sticky porridge.
Grandma would smile and say, “The best time to do something is when you are willing to do it. Baba, you did a good job.”
page 7
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Baba Wagué Diakité (A Gift from Childhood: Memories of an African Boyhood)
“
MT: These texts are at one and the same time very beautiful and obscure; they need to be explicated, clarified. “What is hidden will be revealed.” Why must Revelation be hidden? RG: It's not that it must be hidden, actually it's not hidden at all. It's mankind that is blind. We're inside the closure of representation, everyone is in the fishbowl of his or her culture. In other words, mankind doesn't see what I was saying earlier, the principle of illusion that governs our viewpoint. Even after the Revelation, we still don't understand. MT: Does that mean that things are going to emerge gradually, but that at first they're incomprehensible? RG: They seem incomprehensible because mankind lives under the sign of Satan, lives a lie and lives in fear of the lie, in fear of liars. The reversal performed by the Passion has yet to occur. MT: Insofar as the Church itself has been mistaken for two thousand years and has been practicing a sacrificial reading of the Passion of the Christ, that reading is a way of hiding Revelation. RG: I'm not saying that the Church is mistaken. The reading that I'm proposing is in line with all the great dogmas, but it endows them with an anthropological underpinning that had gone unnoticed. MT: Why not just clean up our bad habits by sweeping them away once and for all in the year zero, making way for an era of love and infinite peace? RG: Because the world wouldn't have been able to take it! Since the sacrificial principle is the fundamental principle of the human order—up to a certain point human beings need to pour out their violence and tensions onto scapegoats—destroying it all at once is impossible. That's why Christianity is made in such a way as to allow for transitions. This is no doubt one of the reasons why it is at once so far from and so close to myth, and always susceptible to being interpreted a bit mythically. When Nietzsche says that Christianity is impossible, that it can only lead to absurdities, to outrageous, insane things, it can be said that he's superficially right, even if ultimately he's wrong. You can't get rid of the sacrificial principle by just flicking it away as if it were a piece of dust. History isn't finished. Every day very interesting things, changes in outlook, are happening right before our eyes. In the United States and everywhere, a lot of current cultural phenomena can be unified by describing them as the discovery of new victims, or rather as their concrete rehabilitation, for in truth we've known about them for a long time: women, children, the elderly, the insane, the physically and mentally handicapped, and so forth. For example, the question of abortion, which has great importance in American debates, is no longer formulated except in the following terms: “Who is the real victim? Is it the child or is it the mother?” You can no longer defend a given position, or indeed any of them, except by making it into a contribution to the anti-victimary crusade. MT
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René Girard (When These Things Begin: Conversations with Michel Treguer (Studies in Violence, Mimesis, & Culture))
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The unindividualized, shifting mass of everyone else would be a screen, distributed throughout the city, onto which he'd project the movie of his uninterrupted imagination. Because he'd appear to, and be able to pretend he was\, but never actually be a part of the mass, maybe he'd begin to feel a kind of needless intimacy, not unlike being in the same room as a significant other and feeling affection without touching or speaking. An earnest assembling of the backup life he'd sketched and constructed the blueprints and substructures (during the average of six weeks per year, spread throughout his life, that he'd been in Taiwan) would begin, at some point, after which, months and years later, one morning, he would sense the independent organization of a second, itinerant consciousness—lured here by the new, unoccupied structures—toward which he'd begin sending the data of his sensory perception.
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Tao Lin, Taipei
“
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AcMarket
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George Mumford, a Newton-based mindfulness teacher, one such moment took place in 1993, at the Omega Institute, a holistic learning center in Rhinebeck, New York. The center was hosting a retreat devoted to mindfulness meditation, the clear-your-head habit in which participants sit quietly and focus on their breathing. Leading the session: meditation megastar Jon Kabat-Zinn. Originally trained as a molecular biologist at MIT, Kabat-Zinn had gone on to revolutionize the meditation world in the 1970s by creating a more secularized version of the practice, one focused less on Buddhism and more on stress reduction and other health benefits. After dinner one night, Kabat-Zinn was giving a talk about his work, clicking through a slide show to give the audience something to look at. At one point he displayed a slide of Mumford. Mumford had been a star high school basketball player who’d subsequently hit hard times as a heroin addict, Kabat-Zinn explained. By the early 1980s, however, he’d embraced meditation and gotten sober. Now Mumford taught meditation to prison inmates and other unlikely students. Kabat-Zinn explained how they were able to relate to Mumford because of his tough upbringing, his openness about his addiction — and because, like many inmates, he’s African-American. Kabat-Zinn’s description of Mumford didn’t seem to affect most Omega visitors, but one participant immediately took notice: June Jackson, whose husband had just coached the Chicago Bulls to their third consecutive NBA championship. Phil Jackson had spent years studying Buddhism and Native American spirituality and was a devoted meditator. Yet his efforts to get Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and their teammates to embrace mindfulness was meeting with only limited success. “June took one look at George and said, ‘He could totally connect with Phil’s players,’ ’’ Kabat-Zinn recalls. So he provided an introduction. Soon Mumford was in Chicago, gathering some of the world’s most famous athletes in a darkened room and telling them to focus on their breathing. Mumford spent the next five years working with the Bulls, frequently sitting behind the bench, as they won three more championships. In 1999 Mumford followed Phil Jackson to the Los Angeles Lakers, where he helped turn Kobe Bryant into an outspoken adherent of meditation. Last year, as Jackson began rebuilding the moribund New York Knicks as president, Mumford signed on for a third tour of duty. He won’t speak about the specific work he’s doing in New York, but it surely involves helping a new team adjust to Jackson’s sensibilities, his controversial triangle offense, and the particular stress that comes with compiling the worst record in the NBA. Late one April afternoon just as the NBA playoffs are beginning, Mumford is sitting at a table in O’Hara’s, a Newton pub. Sober for more than 30 years, he sips Perrier. It’s Marathon Monday, and as police begin allowing traffic back onto Commonwealth Avenue, early finishers surround us, un-showered and drinking beer. No one recognizes Mumford, but that’s hardly unusual. While most NBA fans are aware that Jackson is serious about meditation — his nickname is the Zen Master — few outside his locker rooms can name the consultant he employs. And Mumford hasn’t done much to change that. He has no office and does no marketing, and his recently launched website, mindfulathlete.org, is mired deep in search-engine results. Mumford has worked with teams that have won six championships, but, one friend jokes, he remains the world’s most famous completely unknown meditation teacher. That may soon change. This month, Mumford published his first book, The Mindful Athlete, which is part memoir and part instruction guide, and he has agreed to give a series of talks and book signings
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”
Anonymous
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The act of going up into Full Arm Balance combines elements of physics and biomechanics. Joint rhythm couples with momentum, so that the body floats up into the pose with control. Begin in Downward Facing Dog Pose. Then step one foot forward, keeping the knee bent. This shifts the center of gravity and brings the weight forward into the hands, taking the arms into a more vertical position. Pause here if you are new to the pose. Get used to positioning the arm bones so that the mechanical and anatomical axes align with one another. Start to rock the weight over the hands in a 1-2-3 type of rhythm; then engage the thigh, buttocks, and lower back muscles to lift the back leg straight up onto the wall. Combine the momentum generated by rocking forward and back with the force of the spinal extensor muscles to lift the other leg.
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Ray Long (Anatomy for Arm Balances and Inversions: Yoga Mat Companion 4)
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I know the food isn’t…okay but…” he tells his father. Trying to pacify Mr. Wylder is beginning to seem an impossible task and to Dane’s credit, he’s been having this conversation since the crack of dawn and hasn’t lost his temper once.
Side note: it hasn’t escaped my notice that witnessing how patient he is with his father means he’ll be patient with our child. I grasp onto this discovery with both hands and hold it close to my heart.
“No, you’re not. And if you give me one more minute of grief, Stella and I are gettin’ on the next flight back to New York…that’s what I thought…okay. We’ll see you in a couple of hours. Yep.”
I stand corrected.
Ending the call, he exhales tiredly. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“That was a bit harsh, don’t you think?”
“He was seconds from runnin’ out of there bare-assed. I had to steal his clothes last night ’cause I knew what was coming.”
“Oh,” is all I can say, a smile overtaking my face.
”
”
P. Dangelico (Baby Maker (It Takes Two, #1))
“
Stacy McKee (who is one of the new head writers at Grey’s Anatomy but started out way back in the beginning as the assistant on the show) IS the kind of mom who does crafts with her kids and puts photos of them up on Pinterest and Instagram. She works long, hard hours but still, you go into her office and as she’s talking scripts and story, she’s hot-gluing beads onto a princess cape for her daughter. I always furrow my brow and ask her why the hell she is doing this. Why? Or why the hell is she delicately hand-painting vistas onto Easter eggs? Or why is she doing any number of crazy amazing crafty things Stacy does for her kids? For the love of wine, why? Stacy will furrow her brow back at me, equally confused. “Why wouldn’t I?” she says. See, Stacy LOVES doing this stuff. She’d probably do it even if she didn’t have kids. Oh wait. I knew her back when she didn’t have kids and she WAS doing it. Stacy once spent days making incredibly lifelike renderings of all the Grey’s Anatomy characters out of pipe cleaners. PIPE CLEANERS. So it’s not about working moms vs. nonworking moms. It’s about people who love hot-gluing beads on capes vs. people who do not know what a hot-glue gun is. And it’s not even that. It’s about the non–glue gun people not assuming the glue gun people are judging them, and vice versa. Maybe don’t start out with your weapons raised. Maybe that Perfect PTA Mom didn’t even realize that homemade brownies could be a hardship. Maybe instead of yelling obscenities at the mention of homemade brownies, it would be better to stand up and gently point out that not everyone has the time or the bandwidth to make brownies.
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Shonda Rhimes (Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person)
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the cause of the Civil War was not primarily the defense of slavery where it existed already, but the protection of the spread of slavery into new and future territories of the United States. Slavery was not only an extremely lucrative form of labor that was beneficial to the enormously profitable style of agriculture in the Deep South, but the internal slave trade was a big business onto itself. After the United States closed the African slave trade and forbade the importation of slaves in 1807, the four million slaves in the country themselves became much more valuable.
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Henry Freeman (American Civil War: A History From Beginning to End)
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I follow her into the kitchen where she begins unloading the two brown paper bags onto the butcher-block island. I stand there watching as she pulls out a huge, freshly smoked mozzarella, which, by the way she handles it, I can tell is still warm. She sets it down on the cutting board along with the loaf of ciabatta. While I'm considering my next line of questioning, Renata explains, "Jake called to tell me he forgot to show you the postcard I sent out last week listing some new specialty vinegars I'm offering. He asked me to tell you he's interested in sampling some of the blood orange." I stand there looking puzzled, having been only momentarily distracted by the salad possibilities afforded by the aforementioned specialty vinegars. Perhaps a mild goat cheese, encrusted in herbs, baked and drizzled with a fruity olive oil and blood orange vinaigrette.
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Meredith Mileti (Aftertaste: A Novel in Five Courses)
“
After reading each of the statements, write the number that corresponds to the following: 0 = Never1 = Not often2 = Occasionally3 = Frequently4 = Always 1.I feel like I am intrinsically flawed. 2.I set high standards for myself. 3.I feel terrible about myself when I get out of control. 4.I push myself to work very hard so I can achieve my goals. 5.When I think of trying something new and challenging, I give up before I begin. 6.I am ashamed of everything about myself. 7.I am troubled by something I have done that I cannot forgive myself for. 8.I know who I ought to be, and I’m hard on myself when I act differently. 9.I expend a great deal of effort trying to control my impulsive behavior. 10.My self-confidence is so low that I don’t believe I can succeed at anything. 11.I attack myself when I make a mistake. 12.I have trouble holding onto a positive sense of myself. 13.I have a hard time feeling OK about myself when I’m not acting in accordance with my childhood programming. 14.There is no end to the things I have to do. 15.I do things to people that I feel terribly guilty for. 16.There are indulgent parts of me that take over and get me into trouble, and then I punish myself for it. 17.I believe that it is safer not to try than to fail. 18.I get anxious and self-critical when things don’t come out just right. 19.I feel ashamed when I don’t measure up to others’ expectations. 20.I tell myself that, if I were a good person, I would take better care of people I care about. 21.At a deep level I feel like I don’t have the right to exist. 22.I feel bad because I am too lazy to really make it in the world. 23.I feel really ashamed of some of my habits. 24.I spend much more time than is needed on a project in order to make it as good as possible. 25.I have a nagging feeling that I am bad. 26.I try really hard to overcome my tendency to avoid doing tasks. 27.I feel bad because I can’t be what my family or culture expects of me. 28.I feel that I don’t have what it takes to succeed.
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Jay Earley (Freedom from Your Inner Critic: A Self-Therapy Approach)
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He looked up, and as he stepped off the ramp onto the level ground he stumbled and nearly fell. He thought of death, in that gap between the beginning of a step and its completion, and at the end of the step he stood on a new earth.
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Ursula K. Le Guin (The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia)
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he carried that aura of a successful, attractive, middle-aged lawyer: polished, classy and rich. I smiled back as he smiled at me, slipping my hand onto his arm, doing my best impression of the perfect gala girlfriend. Onstage, my dad stood at the podium, thanking everyone for their generosity and explaining how their donations would support MarineTech’s mission to preserve marine biodiversity. I snorted in disbelief. The hypocrisy was off the charts—his company is one of South Korea’s largest producers of industrial seaweed, a business that directly contributed to the loss of marine biodiversity. The night wore on as we mingled with VIPs, chatted with Ji-yong and Yumi, and exchanged sarcastic jokes in hushed tones with my sister, Yae-rin. I did my best not to yawn too openly. Finally, a little before midnight, once the ‘mandatory attendance’ time had passed, Min-seok and I said our goodbyes, citing early morning plan. My parents and sister stayed at the party, which meant I could finally have some alone time with Min-seok for a while.
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Odessa E. Taner (From Paris to Seoul (K-Drama Love Story))
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Over the course of several decades, this group of revolutionary professors, journalists, film writers, and others began slowly to change the way Americans thought about culture. They exploited their new avenues of transmission to great effect. Along the way, the original tenets of Marxism—which, in the beginning, applied mostly to economics—began to mutate. The new revolutionaries found that the core idea of Marxism—namely, that the world was a battleground between oppressed people and their oppressors—could be mapped not only onto warring economic classes (what Marx called the “proletariat” and the “bourgeoisie”) but onto races as well.9
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Ted Cruz (Unwoke: How to Defeat Cultural Marxism in America)
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their mouths and eyes, piums hovered over them in thick clouds, and ants and termites regularly raided their camp and devoured their few belongings. Worse even than the insects that fed on their hammocks and undershirts were those that wanted to feed on the men themselves. The barefoot camaradas were vulnerable to intestinal worms, which usually enter the body through the soles of the feet, and all of the men had to watch out for grubs and botflies. As Rondon had learned during earlier expeditions, flies, with their long, sharp ovipositors, or egg-laying organs, could easily deposit grubs into human flesh, even through clothing. Botflies were, if possible, even more loathsome than grubs. As big as a bumblebee, a botfly can snatch a mosquito out of the air as it is flying by and paste its eggs onto the mosquito’s abdomen. The mosquito then rubs the botfly’s eggs onto a human being as it extracts his blood. As soon as the eggs hatch on the warm, wet skin, the new maggots begin to burrow into their host. A botfly maggot can
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Candice Millard (The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey)
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Having been separated from her mother and all other elephants at such a young age, Rara was scared of the park herd. She had no basic elephant culture; she was at a loss when it came to approaching new elephants and didn't know how to show affection or express herself in a nonthreatening way. Because of this, the other elephants were skeptical of her. Rara preferred to spend time with the park's human guests, particularly white women, who had been the font of bananas and affection at the Sheraton. She disliked Thai men, except Gawn, whom she loved fiercely. The rest of the park's male staff gave her a wide berth. Once, when Gawn was unable to come to work and Rara was given a new mahout for the day, she terrified the park employees by throwing an elephant-size tantrum that resulted in a smashed car and overturned baskets of produce.
This behavior isn't particularly surprising if Rara's life history is taken into account. Elephants learn from their mothers, aunties, and other herd members how to be elephants: how to show joy and anger, what to eat and how to eat it, the best ways to stroke a companion, and how to physically protect themselves. Like humans, they're not born knowing how to behave. In the herd Rara also would have been disciplined when she acted inappropriately. After she was taken from her mother, the only teachers she had were humans. She spent most of her time confined, and when she was free it was only to be stroked by tourists and given treats. She interacted with new humans all the time, and each of these people responded to her differently, some with affection and others with fear. The most important relationships, those that would have taught her how to be an elephant, were taken from her. As a result, Rara grew into a sort of human-elephant hybrid, an outsider in both worlds.
And yet she was lovely. I learned to rumble like she did, a sort of rolled-R throaty hum, and she would respond in kind. If I was gone for just a few hours and then ran into her and Gawn in the park, she treated me like a long-lost friend, running her trunk over my head and face, blowing air onto my crotch, rumbling and squeaking, ready to begin whatever game we'd last played. I hoped that she would learn to be an elephant among elephants, but I admit I also enjoyed the fact that she liked me. It's wonderful to make a new human friend, but it's even better to be friends with an elephant. It was also a bit depressing. Didn't human-elephant friendships usually end poorly, with the elephants winding up in circuses or as crop raiders? Shouldn't Rara be less fond of the species that took her from her mother and kept her chained for years? Why on earth did she still like people?
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Laurel Braitman (Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves)
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