Opening A Can Of Worms Quotes

Caged Bird A free bird leaps on the back of the wind and floats downstream till the current ends and dips his wing in the orange suns rays and dares to claim the sky. But a bird that stalks down his narrow cage can seldom see through his bars of rage his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing. The caged bird sings with a fearful trill of things unknown but longed for still and his tune is heard on the distant hill for the caged bird sings of freedom. The free bird thinks of another breeze and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn and he names the sky his own. But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing. The caged bird sings with a fearful trill of things unknown but longed for still and his tune is heard on the distant hill for the caged bird sings of freedom.

Where lies the strangling fruit that came from the hand of the sinner I shall bring forth the seeds of the dead to share with the worms that gather in the darkness and surround the world with the power of their lives while from the dimlit halls of other places forms that never were and never could be writhe for the impatience of the few who never saw what could have been. In the black water with the sun shining at midnight, those fruit shall come ripe and in the darkness of that which is golden shall split open to reveal the revelation of the fatal softness in the earth. The shadows of the abyss are like the petals of a monstrous flower that shall blossom within the skull and expand the mind beyond what any man can bear, but whether it decays under the earth or above on green fields, or out to sea or in the very air, all shall come to revelation, and to revel, in the knowledge of the strangling fruit—and the hand of the sinner shall rejoice, for there is no sin in shadow or in light that the seeds of the dead cannot forgive. And there shall be in the planting in the shadows a grace and a mercy from which shall blossom dark flowers, and their teeth shall devour and sustain and herald the passing of an age. That which dies shall still know life in death for all that decays is not forgotten and reanimated it shall walk the world in the bliss of not-knowing. And then there shall be a fire that knows the naming of you, and in the presence of the strangling fruit, its dark flame shall acquire every part of you that remains.

If you have ever opened a can of worms, boxed yourself into a corner, ended up in hot water, or found yourself in a pretty pickle, you already know that life is rarely (if ever) just a bowl of cherries.

Julie looked like she was about to cry and waved her arms. "Whatever. Look, I'm not stupid. I know things! Adult things." - "Like what?" "Like sex. I know about sex." I just stared at her. I wasn't opening that can of worms.

Hey you ! out there in the cold Getting lonely, getting old, can you feel me Hey you ! Standing in the aisles With itchy feet and fading smiles, can you feel me Hey you ! don't help them to bury the light Don't give in without a fight. Hey you ! out there on your own sitting naked by the phone would you touch me Hey you ! with your ear against the wall Waiting for someone to call out would you touch me Hey you ! would you help me to carry the stone Open your heart, I'm coming home But it was only a fantasy The wall was too high as you can see No matter how he tried he could not break free And the worms ate into his brain. Hey you ! out there on the road Always doing what you're told, can you help me Hey you ! out there beyond the wall Breaking bottles in the hall, can you help me Hey you ! don't tell me there's no hope at all Together we stand, divided we fall.

How can the poem and the stink and the grating noise - the quality of light, the tone, the habit and the dream - be set down alive? When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to capture whole, for they break and tatter under the touch. You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will onto a knife blade and then lift them gently into your bottle of sea water. And perhaps that might be the way to write this book - to open the page and let the stories crawl in by themselves.

If you have ever opened a can of worms, boxed yourself into a corner, ended up in hot water, or found yourself in a pretty pickle, you already know that life is rarely (if ever) just a bowl of cherries. It is far more likely to be a bowl of problems, worries, and difficulties. This is normal and should not be cause for alarm.

We can shape-shift whenever we like." She made a face. "You mean all those hideous stories are true? Rats and bats and slimy worm things?" "Now, why would I want to be a slimy worm thing?" He was openly laughing. The sound startled him; he couldn't remember laughing aloud.

Where lies the strangling fruit that came from the hand of the sinner I shall bring forth the seeds of the dead to share with the worms that gather in the darkness and surround the world with the power of their lives while from the dim-lit halls of other places forms that never could be writhe for the impatience of the few who have never seen or been seen. In the black water with the sun shining at midnight, those fruit shall come ripe and in the darkness of that which is golden shall split open to reveal the revelation of the fatal softness in the earth. The shadows of the abyss are like the petals of a monstrous flower that shall blossom within the skull and expand the mind beyond what any man can bear

I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp, and as a gasping person loves a glass of brandy to calm their nerves, and as a glass of brandy loves to shatter on the floor, and as the noise of glass shattering loves to make someone else gasp, and as someone else gasping loves a nearby desk to lean against, even if leaning against it presses a lever that loves to open a drawer and reveal a secret compartment. I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and until all the secrets have gone gasping into the world. I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled. I will love you until every fire is extinguished and until every home is rebuilt form the handsomest and most susceptible of woods, and until every criminal is handcuffed by the laziest of policemen. I will love you until M. hates snakes and J. hates grammar, and I will love you until C. realizes S. is not worthy of his love and N. realizes he is not worthy of the V. I will love you until the bird hates a nest and the worm hates an apple, and until the apple hates a tree and the tree hates a nest, and until a bird hates a tree and an apple hates a nest, although honestly I cannot imagine that last occurrence no matter how hard I try. I will love you as we grow older, which has just happened, and has happened again, and happened several days ago, continuously, and then several years before that, and will continue to happen as the spinning hands of every clock and the flipping pages of every calendar mark the passage of time, except for the clocks that people have forgotten to wind and the calendars that people have forgotten to place in a highly visible area. I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where once we were so close that we could slip the curved straw, and the long, slender spoon, between our lips and fingers respectively. I will love you until the chances of us running into one another slip from skim to zero, and until your face is fogged by distant memory, and your memory faced by distant fog, and your fog memorized by a distant face, and your distance distanced by the memorized memory of a foggy fog. I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, no matter where you avoid and who you don’t see, and no matter who sees you avoiding where you go. I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this, and no matter how I am discovered after what happens to me happens to me as I am discovering this. I will love you if you don’t marry me. I will love you if you marry someone else – your co-star, perhaps, or Y., or even O., or anyone Z. through A., even R. although sadly I believe it will be quite some time before two women can be allowed to marry – and I will love you if you have a child, and I will love you if you have two children, or three children, or even more, although I personally think three is plenty, and I will love you if you never marry at all, and never have children, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all, and I must say that on late, cold nights I prefer this scenario out of all the scenarios I have mentioned. That, Beatrice, is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.

Never open a can of worms unless you are prepared to consume the contents.

Disabled, in the eyes of many is a dirty word because it shines a light on the differences of our world, and when we acknowledge difference, we must acknowledge privilege - and that opens a whole other can of worms.

draft a plan to move the capital. My first choice would be Lander. Hell, even Casper would be better than Cheyenne. But Casper would open its own can of worms, if you know what I mean. Or maybe I’d have some fun and piss almost everybody off and propose moving it to Jackson.

I find film in its modern form to be quite bullying. It spoon-feeds us, which has the effect of watering down our collective cultural imagination. It is as if we are freshly hatched birds looking up with our mouths open waiting for Hollywood to feed us more regurgitated worms. The 'Watchmen' film sounds like more regurgitated worms. I for one am sick of worms. Can’t we get something else? Perhaps some takeout? Even Chinese worms would be a nice change.

I first met Winston Churchill in the early summer of 1906 at a dinner party to which I went as a very young girl. Our hostess was Lady Wemyss and I remember that Arthur Balfour, George Wyndman, Hilaire Belloc and Charles Whibley were among the guests… I found myself sitting next to this young man who seemed to me quite different from any other young man I had ever met. For a long time he seemed sunk in abstraction. Then he appeared to become suddenly aware of my existence. He turned on me a lowering gaze and asked me abruptly how old I was. I replied that I was nineteen. “And I,” he said despairingly, “am thirty-two already. Younger than anyone else who counts, though, “he added, as if to comfort himself. Then savagely: “Curse ruthless time! Curse our mortality. How cruelly short is this allotted span for all we must cram into it!” And he burst forth into an eloquent diatribe on the shortness of human life, the immensity of possible human accomplishment—a theme so well exploited by the poets, prophets, and philosophers of all ages that it might seem difficult to invest it with new and startling significance. Yet for me he did so, in a torrent of magnificent language which appeared to be both effortless and inexhaustible and ended up with the words I shall always remember: “We are all worms. But I do believe that I am a glow worm.” By this time I was convinced of it—and my conviction remained unshaken throughout the years that followed. Later he asked me whether I thought that words had a magic and music quite independent of their meaning. I said I certainly thought so, and I quoted as a classic though familiar instance the first lines that came into my head. Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. His eyes blazed with excitement. “Say that again,” he said, “say it again—it is marvelous!” “But I objected, “You know these lines. You know the ‘Ode to a Nightengale.’ ” He had apparently never read or heard of it before (I must, however, add that next time I met him he had not learned not merely this but all of the odes to Keats by heart—and he recited them quite mercilessly from start to finish, not sparing me a syllable). Finding that he liked poetry, I quoted to him from one of my own favorite poets, Blake. He listened avidly, repeating some lines to himself with varying emphases and stresses, then added meditatively: “I never knew that old Admiral had found so much time to write such good poetry.” I was astounded that he, with his acute susceptibility to words and power of using them, should have left such tracts of English literature entirely unexplored. But however it happened he had lost nothing by it, when he approached books it was “with a hungry, empty mind and with fairly srong jaws, and what I got I *bit*.” And his ear for the beauty of language needed no tuning fork. Until the end of dinner I listened to him spellbound. I can remember thinking: This is what people mean when they talk of seeing stars. That is what I am doing now. I do not to this day know who was on my other side. Good manners, social obligation, duty—all had gone with the wind. I was transfixed, transported into a new element. I knew only that I had seen a great light. I recognized it as the light of genius… I cannot attempt to analyze, still less transmit, the light of genius. But I will try to set down, as I remember them, some of the differences which struck me between him and all the others, young and old, whom I have known. First and foremost he was incalculable. He ran true to no form. There lurked in his every thought and world the ambush of the unexpected. I felt also that the impact of life, ideas and even words upon his mind, was not only vivid and immediate, but direct. Between him and them there was no shock absorber of vicarious thought or precedent gleaned either from books or other minds. His relationship wit

Here come warm gusts of decomposing leaves, of rotting vegetation. We are in a swamp now; in a malarial jungle. There is an elephant white with maggots, killed by an arrow shot dead in its eye. The bright eyes of hopping-birds—eagles, vultures—are apparent. They take us for fallen trees. They pick at a worm—that is a hooded cobra—and leave it with a festering brown scar to be mauled by lions. This is our world, lit with crescents and stars of light; and great petals half transparent block the openings like purple windows. Everything is strange. Things are huge and very small. The stalks of flowers are thick as oak trees. Leaves are high as the domes of vast cathedrals. We are giants, lying here, who can make forests quiver.

We are small worms, Zorba, very small worms on the tiniest leaf of a gigantic tree. This tiny leaf is our earth; the other leaves are the stars you see moving at night. We drag ourselves along on our tiny leaf, eagerly ferreting around in it. We smell it: it has an odor. We taste it: it can be eaten. We strike it: it resounds, shouting like a living thing. Some of us human beings, the most fearless, reach the edge of the leaf. We bend over this edge with open eyes and ears, observing chaos below. We shudder. We divine the terrible drop beneath us, occasionally hear a sound made by the gigantic tree’s other leaves, sense the sap rising from the roots, swelling our hearts. In this way, leaning over the abyss, we realize with all our body and soul that we are being overcome by terror. What begins at that moment is—” I stopped. I had wanted to say, “What begins at that moment is poetry,” but Zorba would not have understood, so I kept silent. “What begins?” asked Zorba eagerly. “Why did you stop?” “At that moment, Zorba, begins the great danger,” I replied. “Some become dazed and delirious; others, growing afraid, take great pains to discover an answer that will brace their heart. These say, ‘God.’ Still others, calmly, bravely, look down at the drop from the leaf’s edge and say, ‘I like it.’ 

I can give no adequate description of the Horror Camp in which my men and myself were to spend the next month of our lives. It was just a barren wilderness, as bare as a chicken run. Corpses lay everywhere, some in huge piles, sometimes they lay singly or in pairs where they had fallen. It took a little time to get used to seeing men women and children collapse as you walked by them and to restrain oneself from going to their assistance. One had to get used early to the idea that the individual just did not count. One knew that five hundred a day were dying and that five hundred a day were going on dying for weeks before anything we could do would have the slightest effect. It was, however, not easy to watch a child choking to death from diphtheria when you knew a tracheotomy and nursing would save it, one saw women drowning in their own vomit because they were too weak to turn over, and men eating worms as they clutched a half loaf of bread purely because they had to eat worms to live and now could scarcely tell the difference. Piles of corpses, naked and obscene, with a woman too weak to stand propping herself against them as she cooked the food we had given her over an open fire; men and women crouching down just anywhere in the open relieving themselves of the dysentery which was scouring their bowels, a woman standing stark naked washing herself with some issue soap in water from a tank in which the remains of a child floated. It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not at all what we men wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I don't know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for these internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the postmortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tattooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity.

Justin… I know that we do not care for clichés, but this is a rather large can of worms that you are attempting to pry open using a rusty can opener.” “Like one of those old creaky ones you’d find in a summer rental home? With the super skinny handles that hurt?” Celeste laughed. “Yes. Like that.” “I like worms. You can let the worms out. But only if you want. I won’t make you talk about anything you don’t want to.

While you're alive it's shameful to worm your way into the Calendar of Saints. Disbelief in yourself is more saintly. It takes real talent not to dread being terrified by your own agonizing lack of talent. Disbelief in yourself is indispensable. Indispensable to us is the loneliness of being gripped in the vise, so that in the darkest night the sky will enter you and skin your temples with the stars, so that streetcars will crash into the room, wheels cutting across your face, so the dangling rope, terrible and alive, will float into the room and dance invitingly in the air. Indispensable is any mangy ghost in tattered, overplayed stage rags, and if even the ghosts are capricious, I swear, they are no more capricious than those who are alive. Indispensable amidst babbling boredom are the deadly fear of uttering the right words and the fear of shaving, because across your cheekbone graveyard grass already grows. It is indispensable to be sleeplessly delirious, to fail, to leap into emptiness. Probably, only in despair is it possible to speak all the truth to this age. It is indispensable, after throwing out dirty drafts, to explode yourself and crawl before ridicule, to reassemble your shattered hands from fingers that rolled under the dresser. Indispensable is the cowardice to be cruel and the observation of the small mercies, when a step toward falsely high goals makes the trampled stars squeal out. It's indispensable, with a misfit's hunger, to gnaw a verb right down to the bone. Only one who is by nature from the naked poor is neither naked nor poor before fastidious eternity. And if from out of the dirt, you have become a prince, but without principles, unprince yourself and consider how much less dirt there was before, when you were in the real, pure dirt. Our self-esteem is such baseness.... The Creator raises to the heights only those who, even with tiny movements, tremble with the fear of uncertainty. Better to cut open your veins with a can opener, to lie like a wino on a spit-spattered bench in the park, than to come to that very comfortable belief in your own special significance. Blessed is the madcap artist, who smashes his sculpture with relish- hungry and cold-but free from degrading belief in himself.

I'll tell you if you tell me," I say, washing my hands of maturity. I'm tired of the double standard-she keeps secrets, but I'm not allowed. Also, I'm tired, period. I need sleep. Which means I need answers. "What do you mean? Tell you what?" "I'll tell you what we were really doing out there. After you tell me who my real parents are." There, I opened it. A chunky can of wiggling worms. She laughs, just like I expect her to. "Are you serious?" I nod. "I know I'm adopted. I want to know how. Why. When." She laughs again, but there's something false in it, as if it wasn't her first reaction. "So that's what this is about? You're rebelling because you think you're adopted? Why on earth would you think that?" I fold my hands in front of me on the table. "Look at me. We both know I'm different. I don't look like you or Dad." "That's not true. You have my chin and mouth. And there's no disinheriting the McIntosh nose.

Tom was curious about the Cynthia connection. That was a can of worms, if the Pritchards or anybody else—especially Cynthia Gradnor, who knew as well as the Buckmaster Gallery people that the last sixty-odd “Derwatts” were forgeries—ever opened it, and told the truth. No use trying to put the lid back on, because all those very expensive paintings would become next to worthless, except for eccentric collectors who were amused by good forgeries; like Tom, in fact, but how many people in the world were like him, with a cynical attitude toward justice and veracity?

Mothering and birding a child are the same. Children don't ask to be born. They don't owe anybody anything. This is one area your mother and I never saw eye to eye on, frankly. I'm down for her cause -- no American can truly be free while we still have colonies. If your rights are less because you're born in one place, not another, how meaningful are those rights in the first place? But, and this is a big but, that's why you should talk to this Richard dude, not because you owe your mother anything. If you've got a good thing going on and this business opens a whole can of worms... well, all I'm saying is, it's okay to choose yourself.

Doctors are for sick people and Taft isn’t sick. Once they start looking it opens up a whole can of worms. They find things wrong, one thing and then another until you’re dead. That’s the way it went with his father. He went in to see about a simple cough and came back with cancer. The more those doctors looked, the more they found. They said his father was shot through with it. They said they needed to explore. The exploring took them deeper down the mine shaft, into veins stuffed with cancer. They said he wouldn’t live six months, and so he didn’t. Taft believes people are like wells, clear water with some sediment on the bottom. As long as you don’t disturb them, they’re going to be fine.

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky-tonks, restaurants and whore-houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flop-houses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, "whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches," by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peep-hole he might have said: "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men," and he would have meant the same thing. In the morning when the sardine fleet has made a catch, the purse-seiners waddle heavily into the bay blowing their whistles. The deep-laden boats pull in against the coast where the canneries dip their tails into the bay. The figure is advisedly chosen, for if the canneries dipped their mouths into the bay the canned sardines which emerge from the other end would be metaphorically, at least, even more horrifying. Then cannery whistles scream and all over the town men and women scramble into their clothes and come running down to the Row to go to work. Then shining cars bring the upper classes down: superintendents, accountants, owners who disappear into offices. Then from the town pour Wops and Chinamen and Polaks, men and women in trousers and rubber coats and oilcloth aprons. They come running to clean and cut and pack and cook and can the fish. The whole street rumbles and groans and screams and rattles while the silver rivers of fish pour in out of the boats and the boats rise higher and higher in the water until they are empty. The canneries rumble and rattle and squeak until the last fish is cleaned and cut and cooked and canned and then the whistles scream again and the dripping, smelly, tired Wops and Chinamen and Polaks, men and women, straggle out and droop their ways up the hill into the town and Cannery Row becomes itself again-quiet and magical. Its normal life returns. The bums who retired in disgust under the black cypress-tree come out to sit on the rusty pipes in the vacant lot. The girls from Dora's emerge for a bit of sun if there is any. Doc strolls from the Western Biological Laboratory and crosses the street to Lee Chong's grocery for two quarts of beer. Henri the painter noses like an Airedale through the junk in the grass-grown lot for some pan or piece of wood or metal he needs for the boat he is building. Then the darkness edges in and the street light comes on in front of Dora's-- the lamp which makes perpetual moonlight in Cannery Row. Callers arrive at Western Biological to see Doc, and he crosses the street to Lee Chong's for five quarts of beer. How can the poem and the stink and the grating noise-- the quality of light, the tone, the habit and the dream-- be set down alive? When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to capture whole, for they break and tatter under the touch. You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will on to a knife blade and then lift them gently into your bottle of sea water. And perhaps that might be the way to write this book-- to open the page and to let the stories crawl in by themselves.

Do not worry,” the Rebbe told me, or rather I told myself using the image of that aged Jew who was dressed as a rabbi. “Loneliness means not knowing how to be with oneself.” Of course, I do not mean to imply that a child of seven years can speak in such a fashion. But I understood these things, albeit not in a rational manner. The Rebbe, being an internal image, put things into my mind that were not intellectual. He made me feel something that I swallowed, in the way that a newly hatched eaglet, its eyes still closed, swallows the worm that is placed in its beak. Much later as an adult I began to find words to translate things that were, at that young age—how can I explain it?—openings into other planes of reality. “You are not alone. Remember last week when you were surprised to see a sunflower growing in the courtyard? You concluded that the wind had blown a seed there. A seed, though it looks insignificant, contains the future flower. This seed somehow knew what plant it was going to be, and this plant was not just in the future: although immaterial, although only a design, the sunflower existed there, in that seed, blowing in the wind over hundreds of kilometers. And not only was the plant there, but also the love of light, the turning in search of the sun, the mysterious union with the pole star, and—why not?—a form of consciousness. You are not different. All that you are going to be, you are. What you will know, you already know. What you will search for, you are already seeking: it is in you. I may not be real, but the old man who you now see, although he has my inconsistent appearance, is real because he is you, which is to say, he is what you will be.

Decontamination jobs did not lack consequences. “We were told not to have children for five years because of our work,” remembers Igor, a conscripted Liquidator who helped evacuate families and strip radioactive topsoil.222 “How do you explain that to your wife or girlfriend? Most of us didn’t and hoped we’d be all right. We had to remove the top layers of soil and load it up on trucks. I thought the burial dumps would be complicated engineering places, but they were like open pits, not even lined with anything! We lifted out the topsoil in one big roll like a carpet with all the worms and bugs and spiders inside. But you can’t skin the whole country; you can’t take everything that lives in the earth. We stripped thousands of kilometers, not just of earth but of orchards, houses, schools - everything. At night we drank so hard. Otherwise we couldn’t do it.” Drinking became very common amongst the Liquidators, especially because they were led to believe that vodka helped protect them from the radiation.

There is some quite trivial, distant noise; a sound, moreover, which has nothin to do with me, to which there is not the slightest need for me to pay any attention; yet it suffices to wake me, and in no gentle way, either, but savagely, violently, shockingly, like an air raid alarm. The wheels, my masters, are already vibrating with incipient motion; the whole mechanism is preparing to begin the monotonous, hateful functioning of which I am the dispirited slave. I began to feel that if I did not succeed in breaking out of the loathsome circle I should suddenly become mad, scream, perpetrate some shocking act of violence in the open street. But worst of all was the knowledge that the laws of my temperament would forbid me even a relief of this kind. I was inexorably imprisoned behind my own determination to display no emotion whatever. Now I saw that I was in a street which I did not know very well. Night had fallen, the lights glowed mistily through a thin haze. It was as though, in some mysterious way, I had become the central point around which the night scene revolved. People walking on the pavement looked at me as they passed. Some with pity, some with detached interest, some with more morbid curiosity. Some appeared to make small, concealed sights, but whether these were intended for warning or encouragement I could not be sure. The windows lighted or unlighted, were like eyes more or less piercing, but all focused upon me. The houses, the traffic, everything in sight, seemed to be watching to see what I would do. To wait — with no living soul in whom to confide one's doubt, one's fears, one's relentless hope. Some secret court must have tried and condemned me, unheard, to this heavy sentence. Coiling itself round me it knows I cannot escape. Imprisoned in its very fabric, I am like a small worm, a parasite, which the host harbors not altogether unwillingly. A human being can only endure depression up to a certain point. When this point of saturation is reached it becomes necessary for him to discover some element of pleasure. No matter how humble or on how low a level, in his environment if he is to go on living at all.

How can you say such things?!' demanded Kon Fiji. 'Our lives may have changed, but death has not. Respect for the elderly and honor given for a life well lived connect us to the accumulated wisdom of the past. When you die, do you wish to be buried as a common peasant instead of as a great scholar worthy of admiration?' 'In a hundred years, Master Kon Fiji, you and I will both be dust, and even the worms and birds who feast on our flesh will also have traveled through multiple revolutions of the wheel of life. Our lives are finite, but the universe is infinite. We are but flashes of lightning bugs on a summer night against the eternal stars. When I die, I wish to be laid out in the open so that the Big Island will act as my coffin, and the River of Heavenly Pearls my shroud; the cicadas will play my funeral possession, and the blooming flowers will be my incense burners; my flesh will feed ten thousand lives, and my bones will enrich the soil. I will return to the great Flow of the universe. Such honor can never be matched by mortal rites enacted by those obeying dead words copied out of a book.

Children also use all kinds of mental tricks to dodge death, starting by simply declining to think about it. Three-year-old Jane, in her budding awareness of death, worriedly asked her mother whether dead people opened their eyes again, whether they spoke, ate, and wore clothes. “Suddenly, in the middle of all these questions and tears,” her mother reported, “she said, ‘Now I will go on with my tea.’ ” Similarly, after his mother told five-year-old Richard that he wouldn’t die for a long time, the little boy smiled and said, “That’s all right. I’ve been worried, and now I can get happy.” Then he said he would like to dream about “going shopping and buying things.” These diversionary tactics are strikingly similar to what happens when adults think about themselves dying. They react by trying to stop thinking about death and distracting themselves with mundane concerns. Research finds that after a reminder of death, adults also search for “don’t worry, be happy” thoughts. And it is quite common for adults to react to thoughts of death by turning to comfort foods and luxury goods: “Let’s do lunch and go shopping!

—and I say you still haven't answered my question, Father Bleu." "Haven't I, dear lady? I thought I stated that death is merely the beginning of—" "No, no, no!" Her voice was as high as a harpy's. "Don't go all gooey and metaphysical. I mean to ask, what is death the act, the situation, the moment?" She watched him foxily. The priest in turn struggled to remain polite. "Madame, I'm not positive I follow." "Let me say it another way. Most people are afraid of dying, yes?" "I disagree. Not those who find mystical union with the body of Christ in—" "Oh, come off it!" Madame Kagle shrilled. "People are frightened of it, Father Bleu. Frightened and screaming their fear silently every hour of every day they live. Now I put it to you. Of what are they afraid? Are they afraid of the end of consciousness? The ultimate blackout, so to speak? Or are they afraid of another aspect of death? The one which they can't begin to foresee or understand?" "What aspect is that, Madame Kagle?" "The pain." She glared. "The pain, Father. Possibly sudden. Possibly horrible. Waiting, always waiting somewhere ahead, at an unguessable junction of time and place. Like that bootboy tonight. How it must have hurt. One blinding instant when his head hit, eh? I suggest, Father Bleu, that is what we're afraid of, that is the wholly unknowable part of dying—the screaming, hurting how, of which the when is only a lesser part. The how is the part we never know. Unless we experience it." She slurped champagne in the silence. She eyed him defiantly. "Well, Father? What have you got to say?" Discreetly Father Bleu coughed into his closed fist. "Theologically, Madame, I find the attempt to separate the mystical act of dying into neat little compartments rather a matter of hairsplitting. And furthermore—" "If that's how you feel," she interrupted, "you're just not thinking it out." "My good woman!" said Father Bleu gently. "Pay attention to me!" Madame Wanda Kagle glared furiously. "I say you pay attention! Because you have never stopped to think about it, have you? If death resembles going to sleep, why, that's an idea your mind can get hold of, isn't it? You may be afraid of it, yes. Afraid of the end of everything. But at least you can get hold of some notion of something of what it's like. Sleep. But can you get hold of anything of what it must feel like to experience the most agonizing of deaths? Your head popping open like that bootboy's tonight, say? A thousand worms of pain inside every part of you for a second long as eternity? Can you grasp that? No, you can't, Father Bleu. And that's what death is at it's worst—the unknown, the possibly harrowing pain ahead." She clamped her lips together smugly. She held out her champagne glass for a refill. A woman in furs clapped a hand over her fashionably green lips and rushed from the group. Though puzzled, Joy was still all eyes and ears. "Even your blessed St. Paul bears me out, Father." The priest glanced up, startled. "What?" "The first letter to the Corinthians, if I remember. The grave has a victory, all right. But it's death that has the sting." In the pause the furnace door behind her eyes opened wide, and hell shone out. "I know what I'm talking about, Father. I've been there." Slowly she closed her fingers, crushing the champagne glass in her hand. Weeping, blood drooling from her palm down her frail veined arms, she had to be carried out. The party broke up at once.

New trout, having never seen rain on the river, rise eagerly to ripples on the Mink. Some windows close against the moist and some open for the music. Rain slips and slides along hawsers and chains and ropes and cables and gladdens the cells of mosses and weighs down the wings of moths. It maketh the willow shiver its fingers and thrums on doors of dens in the fens. It falls on hats and cats and trucks and ducks and cars and bars and clover and plover. It grayeth the sand on the beach and fills thousands of flowers to the brim. It thrills worms and depresses damselflies. Slides down every window rilling and murmuring. Wakes the ancient mud and mutter of the swamp, which has been cracked and hard for months. Falls gently on leeks and creeks and bills and rills and the last shriveled blackberries like tiny dried purple brains on the bristles of bushes. On the young bear trundling through a copse of oaks in the woods snorffling up acorns. On ferns and fawns, cubs and kits, sheds and redds. On salmon as long as your arm thrashing and roiling in the river. On roof and hoof, doe and hoe, fox and fence, duck and muck. On a slight man in a yellow slicker crouched by the river with his recording equipment all covered against the rain with plastic wrap from the grocery store and after he figures out how to get the plastic from making crinkling sounds when he turns the machine on he settles himself in a little bed of ferns and says to the crow huddled patiently in rain, okay, now, here we go, Oral History Project, what the rain says to the river as the wet season opens, project number …something or other … where’s the fecking start button? …I can’t see anything … can you see a green light? yes? is it on? damn my eyes … okay! there it is! it’s working! rain and the river! here we go!

Billy pulled her snug against his body, forgetting his arousal in the urgent need to give her comfort. He felt her stiffen, sought the reason, and realized she must have felt his erection. She shoved him away with the flat of her palms and stared up at him, her eyes wide with surprise. Or maybe shock was a better word. Billy knew instantly what he’d lost. The wariness in her gaze spoke for itself. She’d always trusted him implicitly. Like a brother. But it was a lover’s body she’d felt. He could see she was astonished that he’d become aroused by touching her. He let his hands drop to his sides. He didn’t think excuses would work, but he was willing to give them a try. His mouth curled up on one side in a cock-eyed grin. “Sorry about that. The feel of a female body does that to a man, whether he wants it to happen or not.” “It shouldn’t happen between us,” she said with certainty. “We’re friends.” He shrugged. “You’re female. I’m male. Sometimes it happens.” “Not to us,” she insisted. She stared into his face suspiciously. “Or has it?” “It might have happened once or twice. No big deal.” She stared at the visible bulge in his jeans, then glanced up at him, her face flushed and said, “It looks pretty big to me.” Billy couldn’t help grinning. “Summer, you can’t be this naïve. This is how a man reacts when he’s around an attractive woman.” “You find me attractive?” He saw the startled interest in her eyes and realized he’d opened another can of worms. He didn’t want her judging him as a prospective suitor. There was no way he could match up to the men her father presented to her on a silver platter. “Any man would find a pretty girl like you attractive,” he said, backpedaling as fast as he could. He flipped one of her golden curls back from her shoulder and said, “Curls this bouncy, and eyes like topaz jewels, and a nose this nosy.” He tapped her playfully on the nose. “What man wouldn’t react like I did?

He eases himself down to die. He thinks, others can do it and so can I. He inhales something: sweet raw smell of sawdust; from some-where, the scent of the Frescobaldi kitchen, wild garlic and cloves. He sees the movement from the corner of his eye as the spectators kneel and avert their faces. His mouth is dry, but he thinks, while I breathe I pray. 'All my confidence hope and trust, is in thy most merciful goodness...’ In the sky he senses movement. A shadow falls across his view. His father Walter is here, voice in the air. 'So now get up.' He lies broken on the cobbles of the yard of the house where he was born. His whole body is shuddering. 'So now get up. So now get up.' The pain is acute, a raw stinging, a ripping, a throb. He can taste his death: slow, metallic, not come yet. In his terror he tries to obey his father, but his hands cannot get a purchase, nor can he crawl. He is an eel, he is a worm on a hook, his strength has ebbed and leaked away beneath him and it seems a long time ago now since he gave his permission to be dead; no one has told his heart, and he feels it writhe in his chest, trying to beat. His cheek rests on nothing, it rests on red. He thinks, follow. Walter says, ‘That's right, boy, spew everywhere, spew everywhere on my good cobbles. Come on, boy, get up. By the blood of creeping Christ, stand on your feet?' He is very cold. People imagine the cold comes after but it is now. He thinks, winter is here. I am at Launde. I have stumbled deep into the crisp white snow. I flail my arms in angel shape, but now I am crystal, I am ice and sinking deep: now I am water. Beneath him the ground upheaves. The river tugs him; he looks for the quick-moving Pattern, for the flitting, liquid scarlet. Between a pulse-beat and the next he shifts, going out on crimson with the tide of his inner sea. He is far from England now, far from these islands, from the waters salt and fresh. He has vanished; he is the slippery stones underfoot, he is the last faint ripple in the wake of himself. He feels for an opening, blinded, looking for a door: tracking the light along the wall.

Jenks and I stood there like statues watching him twitch, his eyes rolling up in his head. He clutched at his clothes pulling the wooden pole they hung from down on top of him. Slowly his right hand came scrambling out away from his body to clutch at my left leg. Without thinking I shoved my crucifix at him and he pulled his hand back with a hiss, shielding his face again. As quickly as I could, I dug my tubes of Holy Water out of my coat pocket and emptied them on his head. He shrieked again and clawed at his face. Jenks followed suit, pouring his two vials on Skorzeny's body and legs. Skorzeny started to foam and bubble before our eyes. I was paralyzed. I couldn't quite believe what was happening. Those books hadn't described any of this. I was feeling dizzy and sick. The shrieks turned to groans and a gurgling deep in his throat. He pulled his hands away from his face and it looked like the disintegrating Portrait of Dorian Gray. I looked over to Jenks who had an odd expression on his face. I looked over to Jenks who had on odd expression on his face. He motioned to me and reached for my left hand which, I noticed, was still clutching the airline hag with the stake and hammer in it. I dropped it and he grabbed it off the floor, moving over to the smoking form still squirming in the closet which smelled even more foul than before, and oozing a greenish yellow pus from the crumpled clothing on his scarecrow frame. Jenks looked back at me and handed me the stake and hammer. 'Go ahead. This was your idea. Finish it.' I declined, turning away. Jenks spun me around violently and thrust the stake into my left hand. He pushed me toward what was left of Skorzeny and forced me to my knees. He forced my hand toward Skorzeny, positioning the stake over the man's chest. Then he stuck the hammer in my right hand. 'Do it, you gutless sonofabitch. Finish it... now!' And he stepped away. I looked at him and back at Skorzeny. Then I gave one vicious swing and hit the stake dead center. The thing made a gurgling grunt, like a pig snuffling for food, and started to regurgitate a blackish fluid from its mouth. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and hit the stake three more times. Then I fell back and threw up. When I looked back, Skorzeny's hands, or what was left of them, clutched at the stake trying to pull it out. Suddenly, he emitted a kind of moaning, sucking sound, gagged and more bile-colored liquid flecked with black and red came coiling up in a viscous rope like some evil worm from his mouth. And he stopped moving, his hands still clutching the stake. Then a sort of gaseous mist started to rise from his body and it was so much worse than the original smell that I pushed Jenks aside and ran from the house. I ran all the way to a patrol car where I slumped against the left front wheel as Jenks slowly strolled toward me. He walked past me, ignoring me, and opened his trunk, taking out a couple of small gas cans, and headed back to the house. I wasn't paying much attention until he left the house again and I saw it was aflame.

Men always complain that the minute they think they’ve got a woman figured out, the woman does something to completely confuse the man again.”  Daniel nodded. “I would agree with that.” “Well, that’s because men are simple-minded and uncomplicated.” Why was she having this conversation with him?  “All a man needs is food and . . .” she stopped herself. Oh, she really didn’t want to go there! Why did she have to open this can of worms? “Food and what?” Daniel pressed. She took a deep breath. “Give a man food and sex” – there I said it – “and they’re as happy as clams.” Daniel coughed and almost choked on a piece of venison. A split second later, a thoroughly devilish smile spread across his face as he intently peered up at her from across the table. She held her breath. God, why did he have to be so damn good-looking, especially with that heart-stopping smile of his! “Well, your cooking’s been real good so far,” he drawled. His eyes smoldered as he stared at her. She waved her hands in front of her, palms out, and abruptly left the table. “Okay, this conversation has gone far enough. You are a typical man, Daniel, and it brings me to my final point,” “Point?” “Men are pigs.

Holding each other, the rain cooling their bodies, they laughed like children. “I expected steam this time,” Jacques said, crushing her to him. “Can you do that?” Shea fit the back of her head into the niche of his sternum. One hand idly slid over the heavy muscles of his chest. “Make us so hot we turn the rain to steam?” He grinned boyishly down at her, for the first time so carefree that he forgot for a moment the torment he had suffered. She made him invincible. She made him vulnerable. Most of all, she made him alive. “No, really— what they did, those others. They were like fog or mist. Can you really do that?” Shea persisted. “I mean, you said you could, but I thought maybe you were delusional.” His eyebrows shot up. “Delusional?” Jacques flashed a cocky grin, held out his arm, and watched as fur rippled along the length of it, as the fingers curved and extended into claws. He had to make a grab for Shea as she scrambled away from him, her eyes enormous. Jacques was careful not to hurt her with his strength. “Stop laughing at me, you brute. That’s not exactly normal.” A slow smile was beginning to curve her soft mouth. She couldn’t help but be happy for the innocent joy he found in each piece of information that came to him, each new memory of his gifts. “It is normal for us, love. We can shape-shift whenever we like.” She made a face. “You mean all those hideous stories are true? Rats and bats and slimy worm things?” “Now, why would I want to be a slimy worm thing?” He was openly laughing. The sound startled him; he couldn’t remember laughing aloud. “Very funny, Jacques. I’m so glad you find this amusing.

Madoc says you will duel for love,' I say. 'Whose?' he asks, frowning. There is no banquet too abundant for a starving man. I shake my head. 'It's you I love,' he says. 'I spent much of my life guarding my heart. I guarded it so well that I could behave as though I didn't have one at all. Even now, it is a shabby, worm-eaten, and scabrous thing. But it is yours.' He walks to the door to the royal chambers as though to end the conversation. 'You probably guessed as much,' he says. 'But just in case you didn't.' He opens the door to prevent me from responding. Abruptly, we are no longer alone. ... I can't believe he said that and then just walked out, leaving me reeling. I am going to strangle him.

Fiorito’s lab was arranged with two rows of tanks lining a central walkway, one octopus in each tank. (Octopuses are generally not social creatures and can even be cannibalistic.) On this particular day, David had chosen a tank in the left-hand row, about halfway along. When I walked in to see what was going on, I was astonished to see all the octopuses on the other side of the walkway pressed up against the glass of their tanks, every one of them staring intently at David while he repeatedly lowered his objects into his chosen tank. The observing octopuses seemed to be trying to figure out what was going on for no other reason than the sheer interest of it. Being among octopuses, even for a short time, left me with an impression of an intelligence, and a conscious presence, very different from any other – and certainly very different from our own human incarnation. This of course was a subjective impression, necessarily tainted by the biases of anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism, and open to the charge of taking intelligence as a sign of sentience. But the octopus is objectively remarkable too, and spending some time with them can push our intuitions about how different a non-human consciousness might be. The most recent common ancestor of humans and octopuses lived about 600 million years ago. Little is known about this ancient creature. Perhaps it was some kind of flattened worm. Whatever it looked like, it must have been a very simple animal. Octopus minds are not aquatic spinoffs from our own, or indeed from any other species with a backbone, past or present. The mind of an octopus is an independently created evolutionary experiment, as close to the mind of an alien as we are likely to encounter on this planet. As scuba-diving philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith put it, ‘If we want to understand other minds, the minds of cephalopods are the most other of all.

But there was no guarantee his mother wanted him back. She’d clearly moved on. Did Noah want to open up that can of worms? Did she want Noah ruining her rebuilt life? What if her new family didn’t even know he’d ever existed?

I think we opened a Pandora’s box, took out a can of worms, and threw it at a hornet’s nest.” “You can say that again.” But I didn’t. I said, “We’ve been cut loose.” I thought a moment, then added, “But I think we can go it alone.” “I guess we have no choice. But I still want to know about West Point.

Over and over again, growing increasingly hostile as he went, he blackened the earth, drawing with the magnet of his rage the storm of the bloody century to my demesne. Worms screamed in anguish as they burned. Moles, disturbed from slumber, whimpered once then crumbled to ash. I suffered the soft implosion of larvae not yet formed enough to rue the beauty they were losing; subterranean life in all its dark, earthy grandeur. The occasional burrowing snake hissed defiance as it was seared to death. Sean O’Bannion walks—the earth turns black, barren, and everything in it dies, a dozen feet down. Hell of a princely power. Again, what the fuck was the Unseelie king thinking? Was he? Incensed by failure, Sean insisted hotly, as we stood in the bloody deluge—it wasn’t raining, that scarce-restrained ocean that parked itself above Ireland at the dawn of time and proceeded to leak incessantly, lured by the siren-song of Sean’s broodiness decamped to Scotland and split wide open—that I was either lying or it didn’t work the same for each prince. Patiently (okay, downright pissily, but, for fuck’s sake, I could be having sex again and gave that up to help him), I explained it did work the same for each of us but, because he wasn’t druid-trained, it might take time for him to understand how to tap into it. Like learning to meditate. Such focus doesn’t come easy, nor does it come all at once. Practice is key. He refused to believe me. He stormed thunderously and soddenly off, great ebon wings dripping rivers of water, lightning bolts biting into the earth at his heels, Kat trailing sadly at a safe distance behind. I was raised from birth to be in harmony with the natural world. Humans are the unnatural part of it. Animals lack the passel of idiotic emotions we suffer. I’ve never seen an animal feel sorry for itself. While other children played indoors with games or toys, my da led me deep into the forest and taught me to become part of the infinite web of beating hearts that fill the universe, from the birds in the trees to the insects buzzing about my head, to the fox chasing her cubs up a hillside and into a cool, splashing stream, to the earthworms tunneling blissfully through the vibrant soil. By the age of five, it was hard for me to understand anyone who didn’t feel such things as a part of everyday life. As I matured, when a great horned owl perched nightly in a tree beyond my window, Uncle Dageus taught me to cast myself within it (gently, never usurping) to peer out from its eyes. Life was everywhere, and it was beautiful. Animals, unlike humans, can’t lie. We humans are pros at it, especially when it comes to lying to ourselves.

Yeah, I should have probably reported his ass long ago, but up until last night he’d never taken the harassment that far. Besides, I never wanted to be that girl. You know, the one the entire office ostracizes because she can’t take a joke. Or can’t tell the difference between what’s said in seriousness and what’s said just for fun. Corporations may be required by law to educate us about sexual harassment, and encourage us to report it, but actually reporting it can open a whole messed up can of social worms.

There is more to life than friends. Eight small steps between now and then. Between what she knew and what she'd grow to wish she'd never known. Between the past and the future, between a small moment of peacefulness and the worst moment of her life. That's the sort of thing that can give you cancer, you know, sitting on a wound like that, not dealing with it... There's a metaphorical can of metaphorical worms just sitting there waiting to be praised open and gawped at. The human memory is such a cruel, frustrating thing, the way it just discards things without asking permission, precious things. You couldn't really get to know someone without having the inevitable 'So have you got any brothers and sisters?' He saw them everyday, men like his dad, old and tired and scared of the women at home, terrified themselves to be rejected. They came here, to the other side of the world, and they found women who made them feel as though it was OK to be a loser.

I knew I was opening a can of worms, but offered, “The shower’s still seeing its fair share of action. It’s just not of the solo variety any longer.” “Now we’re talking!” Hannah’s voice was full of laughter. “Is he into anything kinky? Please tell me that brooding hulk of a man is pierced.

I cannot approach any kind of writing with my English teacher brain. That’s the brain that wants to analyze, find themes and metaphors and motifs and irony and resonance, to deconstruct and reify and measure authorial distance. That brain expects perfect and immediate cohesion (or deliberate disruption) of all fictional elements. That brain needs to be banished from the process—or at least from writing the first draft. Because that brain cannot create a thing. All it can do is dissect and evaluate and criticize. When you are writing something new, when you are in the blank-page stage, what you need, all you need, is your creative, sensual, wide-open brain. Your creator, not your critic. Your worm on the ground.

Most animals can't tap into these open-source adaptations deliberately. The flies didn't seek out Spiroplasma to solve their worm problem. Woodrats didn't go looking for the creosote-defusing microbes so they could widen their diet. They must rely on luck to endow them with the right partners. But we humans aren't so restricted. We are innovators, planners, and problem-solvers. And we have one huge advantage that all other animals lack: we know that microbes exist! We have devised instruments that can see them. We can deliberately grow them. We have tools that can decipher the rules that govern their existence, and the nature of their partnerships with us. And that gives us the power to manipulate those partnerships intentionally. We can replace faltering communities of microbes with new ones that will lead to better health. We can create new symbioses that fight disease. And we can break age-old alliances that threaten our lives.

Now it's time to reveal the secret ingredient to be included in our second type of bread. This can be made of any type of dough, but must prominently feature whatever is in this basket." The crowd hushes and he opens the lid, removes two containers, and holds them in the air so all can see. "Chèvre," he declares. "Goat cheese." Jude looks at me. "What a joke. I thought you would get something good, like sour gummy worms or turkey feet or something." Jonathan speaks to the camera as he works a new lump of dough, explaining how he's using the same base formula as his baguettes, but adding the sweet twist of maple syrup and apples.

Expect, at some point, to want to run away from all this. It’s a little like opening a can of worms, or maybe caterpillars—you may want to shove them all back inside. But as you walk this path, you will also have glimpses of feeling freer, of a more direct connection to your life and the people in it. And once the pull of that greater freedom and authenticity takes hold, it becomes harder to turn back. It’s as though an inner volcano has started to erupt, and despite the danger, we welcome the release. The pain of the truth still feels better than the pain of self-deception. As we settle into the process, at some point we tend to go through a natural grieving as we let go of old identities, familiar habits and ways of being. Eventually those caterpillars disperse, weaving themselves into protective cocoons while shedding their former identity. Unraveling the membranes of our schema patterns, we too begin to emerge from our cocoons, feeling lighter and more alive—as if, metaphorically, we were growing wings.

Zac uttered the word ‘homosexuality’.               My chaperone had vociferated, “Do you know that homosexuality is an offense in Sharjah?”               “We were taught that at the Bahriji,” came Andy’s response.               Coraline chimed, “We know that adultery and fornication in this country are punishable by lashes and death. Therefore, we have to be secretive about what we do in private.”               “Aren’t these ‘crimes’ committed by the same people who created these laws?” Narnia remarked.               Zac riposted instantaneously, “These rules and regulations are created by the Brits and the Islamic clerics to control the masses, and to bring fear to the people they govern.”               Andy declared, “We also know that the rich and the elite live double lives. Most of them say one thing but live by another. They can do whatever they like, as long as it’s hidden behind closed doors.”              Albert opined, “Can they commit murder and get away with it?”               As if the lad had opened a can of worms, our discussion came to an abrupt silence. Finally, Andy put an end to that question, “Well, boy, I don’t think we’ll go there.

On one occasion, after a particularly long spell away from home, I got Shara to fly into the mountains we were filming in. “Bring the boys, my love, I miss you.” That night, I hitched a lift with the crew, jumped into the helicopter that was extracting them back to base, and went to the lodge they were staying in. Shara was there, waiting. I spent the night in my family’s arms and went back to film the next day. Reckless, I know. But the press got wind of it, as they do, and they went for the jugular. It made for a killer headline. I totally understood. But who hasn’t made the odd mistake? In hindsight, it was more than reckless--it was an error, and it opened a can of worms for the papers to feed on. But, for the record, it had been total heaven to see Shara and the boys. So which do I value more--being a hero or being a father? There’s a third option, Bear. It is called patience. I know. It is never my strong point. So this was another moment that could have sunk the show, but Channel 4 and Discovery backed me. They knew all too well how hard I work and the risks I take every day. And the best response to the critics was the show’s subsequent runaway success.

In the Bible, God called Gideon a mighty man of (fearless) courage. Gideon looked around and said, “Who’s He talking to? That’s not me.” God had an assignment for Gideon, something great for him to accomplish, but Gideon had not renewed his mind. He had these toxic thoughts. God saw him as strong, but Gideon saw himself as weak, defeated, not able to. God wanted him to lead the people of Israel and to defeat an opposing army, but Gideon said, “God, I can’t do that. I’m the least one in my father’s house. I come from the poorest family. I don’t have the education, the skills, the courage.” Notice how Gideon perceived himself compared to how God saw him. God said he was a mighty man of fearless courage. If God were to call your name today, He wouldn’t say, “Hello, you weak worm of the dust. Hello, you failure. Hello, you ol’ sinner. How’s My loser doing today?” God would say the same sort of thing to you that He said to Gideon: “Hello, Mary, you mighty woman of fearless courage.” Or “Hello, Bob, you mighty man of fearless courage.” I wonder if you would be like Gideon and say, “God, who are You talking to? Don’t You know what family I come from? Haven’t You seen the mistakes I’ve made? Let me remind You of some of them. God, You know I’m not that talented. Why are You calling me a mighty man?” The problem is, you have allowed these wrong thoughts to infect your thinking. But thank God this is a new day. You are beginning a new diet. You are starting a fast by cutting out every negative, discouraging, can’t do it thought. When those wrong thoughts come up, instead of saying like Gideon, “I’m not able. Who am I?” Turn it around and say, “I know who I am. I am well able. I’m ready for my assignment. God I am who You say I am.” I believe in the coming days God will present you with new opportunities. New doors will open. New people will come across your path. Maybe there will even be a new career opportunity. If you are to reach a new level, you must have a new way of thinking. You have to clean out the old so you’ll have room for the new. I’m asking you to detox all the garbage telling you what you’re not and what you can’t do. Remove all those strongholds. Detox little dreams. Detox low self-esteem. Detox the negative words. Stay on your diet. Every morning go through a good cleanse. Start the day off in faith. If you’ll guard your mind and instead of letting it get toxic keep it full of faith-filled thoughts, God promises you’ll overcome every obstacle, you’ll defeat every enemy, and every dream and every desire God has put in your heart will come to pass.

Don't open the can of worms unless you're prepared to eat the contents.

If you are going to open a can of worms, you better be prepared to go fishing!

He hesitated, then arranged the gold medallion of the Cetagandan Order of Merit on its colorful ribbon, properly, around the tunic’s high collar. It was cool and heavy under his hand. He could be one of the few soldiers in history ever to be decorated by both sides in the same war . . . though to be truthful, the Order of Merit had come later, and actually had been presented to Lord Vorkosigan, not the little Admiral for a change. When they were all arranged, the effect was just short of loony. Separated into all the little secret compartments, he hadn’t realized just how much he’d accumulated, till he put it all together again. No, not again. For the first time. Let’s lay it all on the line. Smiling grimly, he fastened them down. He donned the white silk shirt that went underneath, the silver-embroidered suspenders, the brown trousers with the silver side-piping, the gleaming riding boots. Lastly, the heavy tunic. He fastened his grandfather’s dagger in its cloisonné sheath, with the Vorkosigan seal in the jeweled hilt, on its proper belt around his waist. He combed his hair, and stepped back to regard himself, glittering in his mirror. Going native, are we? The sarcastic voice was growing fainter. “If you expect to open a can of worms,” he spoke aloud for the first time, “you’d best trouble to pack a can-opener.” *

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To hear the effect of height, what you should do is mouth, in order, the vowels in meet [i], mate [e], met and Matt [æ]. Don’t actually pronounce them. While doing this, take your thumb and forefinger and flick the skin underneath your back jaw. This will produce a hollow popping sound (something like clapping your palm over an open bottle). As you move from the higher vowel to the lower vowel, the tone of that hollow popping sound will actually get higher. You can repeat the example with moot [u], moat [o] and mot and hear the same result.

I went through extreme consternation the two years  after our separation. Your presence has always been my strength during trials. In order for me to grow in spirit and propriety, I concluded that it was best to cope with my personal difficulties alone. Still, my overwhelming urges to contact you were decisively irresistible. During our time together, you taught me valuable spiritual lessons to withstand calamity and your masterful mentorship opened my eyes to truthful honesty (both to myself and to others), which I had often omitted through my delusional ordeal. Yet my journey of self-recovery was not easy. I am still unsure if our reconnection is a good idea, even though my abience told me no but my urge impelled me otherwise. I’m afraid to reopen the hurtful can of worms which I had kept hidden for so long. Being truthfully honest with you, my dearest lover, I’m scared of your presence.

But nature has protected the lower animal by endowing them with instincts. An instinct is a programmed perception that calls into play a programmed reaction. It is very simple. Animals are not moved by what they cannot react to. They live in a tiny world, a sliver of reality, one neuro-chemical program that keeps them walking behind their nose and shuts out everything else. But look at man, the impossible creature! Here nature seems to have thrown caution to the winds along with the programmed instincts. She created an animal who has no defense against full perception of the external world, an animal completely open to experience. Not only in front of his nose, in his umwelt, but in many umwelten. He can relate not only to animals in his own species, but in some ways to all other species. He can contemplate not only what is edible for him, but everything that grows. He not only lives in this moment, but expands his inner self to yesterday, his curiosity to centuries ago, his fears to five billion years from now when the sun will cool, his hopes to an eternity from now. He lives not only on a tiny territory, nor even on an entire planet, but in a galaxy, in a universe, and in dimensions beyond visible universes. It is appalling, the burden that man bears, the experiential burden. As we saw in the last chapter, man can't even take his own body for granted as can other animals. It is not just hind feet, a tail that he drags, that are just "there," limbs to be used and taken for granted or chewed off when caught in a trap and when they give pain and prevent movement. Man's body is a problem to him that has to be explained. Not only his body is strange, but also its inner landscape, the memories and dreams. Man's very insides-his self-are foreign to him. He doesn't know who he is, why he was born, what he is doing on the planet, what he is supposed to do, what he can expect. His own existence is incomprehensible to him, a miracle just like the rest of creation, closer to him, right near his pounding heart, but for that reason all the more strange. Each thing is a problem, and man can shut out nothing. As Maslow has well said, "It is precisely the godlike in ourselves that we are ambivalent about, fascinated by and fearful of, motivated to and defensive against. This is one aspect of the basic human predicament, that we are simultaneously worms and gods." There it is again: gods with anuses.

As for the other central vowels, do you know the song “Better Man” by Pearl Jam? (No judgment if not; they’ve done better.) See if you can find it on YouTube. Listen to the part of the chorus where Eddie Vedder sings “Can’t find a better man.” Hear how his voices changes—how it kind of sounds huskier? This is something you heard a lot in the nineties (Scott Weiland did it; Shakira does it a lot; Dave Matthews did a lot [or Dave, as his true fans call him]). What Eddie Vedder is actually doing is centralizing all the front vowels. His typical pronunciation of “can’t find a better” is something I’d transcribe as . Naturally, he doesn’t always sing this way. Every so often he simply feels the need to kick it into overdrive, and so he centralizes all the vowels. It’s a noticeably different sound. As for why, the only thing I can come up with is that it obscures a lot of the vocalic variety of English (there are fewer distinctions for central vowels than for front vowels), and makes it easier to hold a tone. It’s also why baby comes out babay a lot of times ([e] is lower than [i], which means your mouth is open wider). Anyway, if you’re trying to nail central vowels, remember Eddie Vedder (but hopefully for “Corduroy,” “Yellow Ledbetter,” “Black,” “Guaranteed,” “Oceans,” and “I Got Id” rather than “Better Man”).

Replying, I attempted to make my companion understand the meaning of sacred terror. "We are small worms, Zorba, very small worms on the tiniest leaf of a gigantic tree. This tiny leaf is our earth; the other leaves are the stars you see moving at night. We drag ourselves along on our tiny lea, eagerly ferreting around in it. We smell it: it has an odor. We taste it: it can be eaten. We strike it: it resounds, shouting like a living thing. Some of us human beings, the most fearless, reach the edge of the leaf. We bend over this edge with open eyes and ears, observing chaos below. We shudder. We divine the terrible drop beneath us, occasionally hear a sound made by the gigantic tree's other leaves, sense the sap rising from the roots, swelling our hearts. In this way, leaning over the abyss, we realize with all our body and soul that we are being overcome by terror. What begins at that moment is-" I stopped. I had wanted to say, "What begins at that moment is poetry," but Zorba would not have understood, so I kept silent. "What begins?" asked Zorba eagerly. "Why did you stop?" "At that moment, Zorba, begins the great danger," I replied. "Some become dazed and delirious; others, growing afraid, take great pains to discover an answer that will brace their heart. These say, 'God.' Still others, calmly, bravely, look down at the drop from the leaf's edge and say, 'I like it.'" Zorba thought for a long time, probing deeply in order to understand. "I look down at death continually," he said at last. "I look at it and am not afraid. Never, however, do I say, 'I like it.' No, I do not like it, not at all. I am free, am I not? I don't sign!

He felt her open to him, her mind and heart and soul, softly feminine, exquisitely woman, all his. Her pleasure matched his own beat for beat, shudder for shudder. He had to hold her to keep himself on his feet, and they collapsed together into the soaked vegetation. Holding each other, the rain cooling their bodies, they laughed like children. “I expected steam this time,” Jacques said, crushing her to him. “Can you do that?” Shea fit the back of her head into the niche of his sternum. One hand idly slid over the heavy muscles of his chest. “Make us so hot we turn the rain to steam?” He grinned boyishly down at her, for the first time so carefree that he forgot for a moment the torment he had suffered. She made him invincible. She made him vulnerable. Most of all, she made him alive. “No, really--what they did, those others. They were like fog or mist. Can you really do that?” Shea persisted. “I mean, you said you could, but I thought maybe you were delusional.” His eyebrows shot up. “Delusional?” Jacques flashed a cocky grin, held out his arm, and watched as fur rippled along the length of it, as the fingers curved and extended into claws. He had to make a grab for Shea as she scrambled away from him, her eyes enormous. Jacques was careful not to hurt her with his strength. “Stop laughing at me, you brute. That’s not exactly normal.” A slow smile was beginning to curve her soft mouth. She couldn’t help but be happy for the innocent joy he found in each piece of information that came to him, each new memory of his gifts. “It is normal for us, love. We can shape-shift whenever we like.” She made a face. “You mean all those hideous stories are true? Rats and bats and slimy worm things?” “Now, why would I want to be a slimy worm thing?” He was openly laughing. The sound startled him; he couldn’t remember laughing aloud. “Very funny, Jacques. I’m so glad you find this amusing. Those people actually formed themselves out of fog, like something in a movie.” She gave a punch to his arm for emphasis. “Explain it.” “Shape-shifting is easy once you are strong. When I said we run with the wolf, I meant it literally. We run with the pack. We can fly with the owl and become the air.

I have found rotting to be a revelation. The whole process has opened my eyes and helped me understand the simple workings of the natural world. I cannot get over the fact that I can grow an herb on my deck (with compost), feed its stalk to my worms, use their castings to grow more herbs, and use their “compost tea” to boost the growth of my houseplants, which in turn improve our home’s air quality by absorbing pollutants such as formaldehyde and benzene. Their trimmings, along with the dust bunnies that I sweep, will also get composted and benefit the environment. Rotting represents the kind of big closed-loop waste cycle upon which our manufacturing model should have been based from the beginning.

I can tell from the crack of a rifle shot the type of weapon fired and what direction the bullet is traveling. I can listen to a mortar pop and know its size, how far away it is. I know instinctively when I should prep a treeline with artillery before I move into it. I know which draws and fields should be crossed on line, which should be assaulted, and which are safe to cross in column. I know where to place my men when we stop and form a perimeter. I can shoot a rifle and throw a grenade and direct air and artillery onto any target, under any circumstances. I can dress any type of wound, I have dressed all types of wounds, watered protruding intestines with my canteen to keep them from cracking under sunbake, patched sucking chests with plastic, tied off stumps with field-expedient tourniquets. I can call in medevac helicopters, talk them, cajole them, dare them into any zone. I do these things, experience these things, repeatedly, daily. Their terrors and miseries are so compelling, and yet so regular, that I have ascended to a high emotion that is nonetheless a crusted numbness. I am an automaton, bent on survival, agent and prisoner of my misery. How terribly exciting. And how, to what purpose, will these skills serve me when this madness ends? What lies on the other side of all this? It frightens me. I haven’t thought about it. I haven’t prepared for it. I am so good, so ready for these things that were my birthright. I do not enjoy them. I know they have warped me. But it will be so hard to deal with a life empty of them. And there are the daily sufferings. You ghosts have known them, but who else? I can sleep in the rain, wrapped inside my poncho, listening to the drops beat on the rubber like small explosions, then feeling the water pour in rivulets inside my poncho, soaking me as I lie in the mud. I can live in the dirt, sit and lie and sleep in the dirt, it is my chair and my bed, my floor and my walls, this clay. And like all of you, I have endured diarrhea as only an animal should endure it, squatting a yard off a trail and relieving myself unceremoniously, naturally, animally. Deprivations of food. Festering, open sores. Worms. Heat. Aching crotch that nags for fulfillment, any emptying hole that will relieve it. Who appreciates my sufferings? Who do I suffer for?

pretended I didn’t mind the worms.’ And then she closes her eyes, murmuring about how strange it is to see him again. A few minutes later she opens her eyes again. ‘I thought my dad was here. It’s so odd… I can’t tell what’s real any more.’ ‘Maybe it’s all real,’ I offer, and she smiles.

For a woman, having a baby can open the floodgates of repressed or hidden emotions. That is often when mothers have a breakdown, as in postpartum depression, or come to me with feelings of depression or anxiety that may be delayed postpartum depression responses. Repression is a great thing if it holds, but like the proverbial can of worms, when the defenses that a person has used her whole life break down, all of the sadness and loss that is connected to feeling your mother was not there enough when you were little starts leaking out of the lockbox of the unconscious

It is normal for us, love. We can shape-shift whenever we like.” She made a face. “You mean all those hideous stories are true? Rats and bats and slimy worm things?” “Now, why would I want to be a slimy worm thing?” He was openly laughing. The sound startled him; he couldn’t remember laughing aloud. “Very funny, Jacques. I’m so glad you find this amusing. Those people actually formed themselves out of fog, like something in a movie.” She gave a punch to his arm for emphasis. “Explain it.” “Shape-shifting is easy once you are strong. When I said we run with the wolf, I meant it literally. We run with the pack. We can fly with the owl and become the air.

It was a stupid question. She knew it was stupid even as she voiced it, but it was one of those damned questions that sat there and begged to be asked so it could watch the cat being let out of the bag or the can of worms finally opened up and turned on its side.

Hieroglyphics on a Branch of Peach Once, a woman made love to me through the slippery dark. Her brother was dying, her sisters were shooting heroin in the bathroom as she moved her tongue like sadness on my skin, and I felt how all the sweet explosions, summer, orgasm, a ripe peach in the mouth, connect unfailingly to the barren fields. What we have learned about love in this life can never be removed from us. Not one minute pried from any of the days -- and yet, there was a worm which entered the live branch, lived and ate and tunneled through the wooden heart, and with its body wrote new language through the lost years. So there must be another, more convincing name for innocence, the kind the body never lost, the grace of stumbling through an open door.

Well, in case you were wondering, my first impression of you was that you were very well-dressed.” That’d been my second impression. My first impression had actually been that face. So perfectly chiseled and symmetrical it should be stamped inside textbooks as a prime example of the golden ratio. But I wouldn’t admit that even if Christian put a gun to my head. If I did, he might think I was flirting with him, and that would open a can of worms I didn’t want to deal with.