Parking Lot Quotes

I stand in this parking lot, realizing that I’ve never been this far from home, and here is this girl I love and cannot follow. I hope this is the hero’s errand, because not following her is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

It wasn’t until I’d walked halfway across the parking lot that I realized: 1. I wasn’t wearing shoes. A. Or a shirt. 2. I didn’t bring my keys                       A. Or anything really. 3. I’d just left a complete stranger in my apartment.                       A. Naked. Whoever said one-night stands were supposed to be simple with no strings attached had clearly never met the disaster that was me.

It’s better to be in the arena, getting stomped by the bull, than to be up in the stands or out in the parking lot.

First, Lord: No tattoos. May neither Chinese symbol for truth nor Winnie-the-Pooh holding the FSU logo stain her tender haunches. May she be Beautiful but not Damaged, for it’s the Damage that draws the creepy soccer coach’s eye, not the Beauty. When the Crystal Meth is offered, May she remember the parents who cut her grapes in half And stick with Beer. Guide her, protect her When crossing the street, stepping onto boats, swimming in the ocean, swimming in pools, walking near pools, standing on the subway platform, crossing 86th Street, stepping off of boats, using mall restrooms, getting on and off escalators, driving on country roads while arguing, leaning on large windows, walking in parking lots, riding Ferris wheels, roller-coasters, log flumes, or anything called “Hell Drop,” “Tower of Torture,” or “The Death Spiral Rock ‘N Zero G Roll featuring Aerosmith,” and standing on any kind of balcony ever, anywhere, at any age. Lead her away from Acting but not all the way to Finance. Something where she can make her own hours but still feel intellectually fulfilled and get outside sometimes And not have to wear high heels. What would that be, Lord? Architecture? Midwifery? Golf course design? I’m asking You, because if I knew, I’d be doing it, Youdammit. May she play the Drums to the fiery rhythm of her Own Heart with the sinewy strength of her Own Arms, so she need Not Lie With Drummers. Grant her a Rough Patch from twelve to seventeen. Let her draw horses and be interested in Barbies for much too long, For childhood is short – a Tiger Flower blooming Magenta for one day – And adulthood is long and dry-humping in cars will wait. O Lord, break the Internet forever, That she may be spared the misspelled invective of her peers And the online marketing campaign for Rape Hostel V: Girls Just Wanna Get Stabbed. And when she one day turns on me and calls me a Bitch in front of Hollister, Give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in front of her friends, For I will not have that Shit. I will not have it. And should she choose to be a Mother one day, be my eyes, Lord, that I may see her, lying on a blanket on the floor at 4:50 A.M., all-at-once exhausted, bored, and in love with the little creature whose poop is leaking up its back. “My mother did this for me once,” she will realize as she cleans feces off her baby’s neck. “My mother did this for me.” And the delayed gratitude will wash over her as it does each generation and she will make a Mental Note to call me. And she will forget. But I’ll know, because I peeped it with Your God eyes.

Yep, she called to me from the parking lot of abandoned cars. The sun was shining though her windows like a beacon of hope." Chubs groaned. "Why are you so weird?" "Because my weird has to be able to cancel out your weird, Lady Cross-stitch.

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

Well, at least you know it works this time," she said, getting on behind him. "If we crash into the parking lot of a Key Food, I'll kill you, you know that?" "Don't be ridiculous," said Jace. "There are no parking lots on the Upper East Side. Why drive when you can get your groceries delivered?

Oh my God, I sent a picture of my boobs to Jim," I moaned as a fresh wave of nausea rolled through me. "You also threw up in the emergency room parking lot, called Drew and told him you were the Donkey Punch Dick Queen and filled out a Last Will and Testament on a Burger King napkin and then asked the drive-thru worker to notarize it.

She is close enough to me that I can see her, because even now there is the outward sign of visible light, even at night in this parking lot on the outskirts of Algoe. After we kiss, our foreheads touch as we stare at each other. Yes, I can see her almost perfectly in this cracked darkness.

Now I wish she'd never broken any of her rules. I understood why she held to them so hard. Once you broke the first one, they all broke, one by one, like firecrackers exploding in your face in a parking lot on the Fourth of July.

My name is Olivia King I am five years old. My mother bought me a balloon. I remember the day she walked through the front door with it. The curly hot pink ribbon trickling down her arm, wrapped around her wrist. She was smiling at me as she untied the ribbon and wrapped it around my hand. “Here Livie, I bought this for you.” She called me Livie. I was so happy. I’d never had a balloon before. I mean, I always saw balloons wrapped around other kids wrists in the parking lot of Wal-Mart, but I never dreamed I would have my very own. My very own pink balloon.

My knee radiated heat. As I watched him pull himself from the car and walk casually across the brightly lit parking lot, I thought dumb things. I will never wash my knee again. I will never wash these jeans again. I will cut the knee out of these jeans and sew a pillow to sleep on every night, just to have a molecule of him in my bed with me.

Why aren't you in school? I see you every day wandering around." "Oh, they don't miss me," she said. "I'm antisocial, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this." She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. "Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don't; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film-teacher. That's not social to me at all. It's a lot of funnels and lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it's wine when it's not. They run us so ragged by the end of the day we can't do anything but go to bed or head for a Fun Park to bully people around, break windowpanes in the Window Smasher place or wreck cars in the Car Wrecker place with the big steel ball. Or go out in the cars and race on the streets, trying to see how close you can get to lampposts, playing 'chicken' and 'knock hubcaps.' I guess I'm everything they say I am, all right. I haven't any friends. That's supposed to prove I'm abnormal. But everyone I know is either shouting or dancing around like wild or beating up one another. Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays?

People who don't see you every day have a hard time understanding how on some days--good days--you can run three miles, but can barely walk across the parking lot on other days,' [my mom] said quietly.

1. I’m lonely so I do lonely things 2. Loving you was like going to war; I never came back the same. 3. You hate women, just like your father and his father, so it runs in your blood. 4. I was wandering the derelict car park of your heart looking for a ride home. 5. You’re a ghost town I’m too patriotic to leave. 6. I stay because you’re the beginning of the dream I want to remember. 7. I didn’t call him back because he likes his girls voiceless. 8. It’s not that he wants to be a liar; it’s just that he doesn’t know the truth. 9. I couldn’t love you, you were a small war. 10. We covered the smell of loss with jokes. 11. I didn’t want to fail at love like our parents. 12. You made the nomad in me build a house and stay. 13. I’m not a dog. 14. We were trying to prove our blood wrong. 15. I was still lonely so I did even lonelier things. 16. Yes, I’m insecure, but so was my mother and her mother. 17. No, he loves me he just makes me cry a lot. 18. He knows all of my secrets and still wants to kiss me. 19. You were too cruel to love for a long time. 20. It just didn’t work out. 21. My dad walked out one afternoon and never came back. 22. I can’t sleep because I can still taste him in my mouth. 23. I cut him out at the root, he was my favorite tree, rotting, threatening the foundations of my home. 24. The women in my family die waiting. 25. Because I didn’t want to die waiting for you. 26. I had to leave, I felt lonely when he held me. 27. You’re the song I rewind until I know all the words and I feel sick. 28. He sent me a text that said “I love you so bad.” 29. His heart wasn’t as beautiful as his smile 30. We emotionally manipulated one another until we thought it was love. 31. Forgive me, I was lonely so I chose you. 32. I’m a lover without a lover. 33. I’m lovely and lonely. 34. I belong deeply to myself .

Radar revs the engine as to say hustle, and we are running through the parking lot, Ben's robe flowing in the wind so that he looks vaguely like a dark wizard, except that his pale skinny legs are visible, and his arms hug plastic bags. I can see the back of Lacey's legs beneath her dress, her calves tight in midstride. I don't know how I look, but I know how I feel: Young. Goofy. Infinite.

Next thing you know she'll be on the bus and selling T-shirts in the parking lot, showing off her boobs to get in the stage door." "At least she has boobs to show," Jess said. "I have boobs," Chloe said, pointing to her chest. "Just because they're not weighing me down doesn't mean they're not substantial." "Okay, B cup," Jess said, taking a sip of her drink. "I have boobs!" Chloe said again, a bit too loudly--she'd already had a couple of minibottles at the Spot. "My boobs are great, goddammit. You know that? They're fantastic! My boobs are amazing.

Look, we're trying to explore other options to your retirement," the whitecoat said. "You might be useful to us in other ways." Because we're not that useful dead,"Nudge said thoughtfully. No," I agreed. "Well, maybe as doorstops." The whitecat made an "eew" expression. Or those things in a parking lot that show where the cars should stop," suggested Iggy. He closed his eyes and went stiff, to demonstrate what it would look like. Also an option.

The world is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. The ride goes up and down, around and around, it has thrills and chills, and it's very brightly colored, and it's very loud, and it's fun for a while. Many people have been on the ride a long time, and they begin to wonder, "Hey, is this real, or is this just a ride?" And other people have remembered, and they come back to us and say, "Hey, don't worry; don't be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride." And we … kill those people. "Shut him up! I've got a lot invested in this ride, shut him up! Look at my furrows of worry, look at my big bank account, and my family. This has to be real." It's just a ride. But we always kill the good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok … But it doesn't matter, because it's just a ride. And we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money. Just a simple choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one. Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.

Hey, Adam,” I said. I thought you’d want to know that Warren and Darryl made it out of the vampire den alive.” I sucked in my breath. “You didn’t actually agree to their meeting on Marsilia’s grounds?” He laughed. “No, it just sounded better than saying they made it out of Denny’s alive. It might not be romantic, but it’s open all night and set in the middle of a brightly lit parking lot with no dark places for skulking parties to ambush from.

Say no to parking lots!

Karrin." She looked up at me. She looked very young somehow. "Remember what I said yesterday," I said. "You're hurt. But you'll get through it. You'll be okay." She closed her eyes tightly. "I'm scared. So scared I'm sick." "You'll get through it." "What if I don't?" I squeezed her fingers. "Then I will personally make fun of you every day for the rest of your life," I said. "I will call you a sissy girl in front of everyone you know, tie frilly aprons on your car, and lurk in the parking lot at CPD and whistle and tell you to shake it, baby. Every. Single. Day." Murphy's breath escaped in something like a hiccup. She opened her eyes, a mix of anger and wary amusement easing into them in place of fear. "You do realize I'm holding a gun, right?

Your demons may have been ejected from the building, but they’re out in the parking lot, doing push-ups.”)

Eleanor had never thought about killing herself – ever – but she thought a lot about stopping. Just running until she couldn’t run anymore. Jumping from something so high that she’d never hit the bottom.

Death is like a parking lot. You stay there for just a bit and then go somewhere else.

The bookstore was a parking lot for used graveyards. Thousands of graveyards were parked in rows like cars. Most of the books were out of print, and no one wanted to read them any more and the people who had read the books had died or forgotten about them, but through the organic process of music the books had become virgins again.

This place is packed," Vee complained. "Where am I supposed to park?" She steered down an alley and slowed to a stop behind a bookstore. "This looks good. Lots of parking back here." "The sign says employee parking only." "How are they going to know that we aren't employees? The Neon blends right in. All these cars speak low class." "The sign says violators will be towed." "They just say that to scare people like you and me away. It's an empty threat. Nothing to worry about." ....... Vee came to a halt. "What is THAT?" We were standing in the parking lot behind the bookstore, a few feet from the Neon, and we were staring at a large piece of metal attached to the left rear tire. "I think it's a car boot," I said. "I can see that. What's it doing on my car?" "I guess when they say all violators will be towed, they mean it.

GUESS WHERE I AM. CLUE? she texted back SWEAR U WON'T TELL A SOUL? U HAVE 2 ASK? I reluctantly texted,@ DINNER W. MARCIE'S DAD. #?@#$?!& MY MOM IS DATING HIM. TRAITOR! IF THEY GET MARRIED, U & MARCIE... COULD USE A LITTLE CONSOLATION HERE! DOES HE KNOW UR TEXTING ME? Vee asked . NO. THEY R INSIDE. I'M IN THE PARKING LOT ----COOPERSMITHS. THE PIMP. 2 GOOD 4 APPLEBEE'S, I SEE. I'M GOING 2 ORDER THE MOST EXPENSIVE THINGS ON THE MENU. IF ALL GOES WELL,HIM GOING TO THROW HANK'S DRINK IN HIS FACE 2.

Whatever it is you seek, you have to put in the time, the practice, the effort. You must give up a lot to get it. It has to be very important to you. And once you have attained it, it is your power. It can't be given away : it resides in you. It is literally the result of your discipline.

Did I hurt you in the parking lot?" "No, m'lady. I fell, so I could put a tracker on your car." Great.

Making benches is no walk in the park. It takes one a lot of love to make a bench, and then it takes two to make love on that bench.

WHAT WAS LOST IN THE COLLAPSE: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty. Twilight in the altered world, a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in a parking lot in the mysteriously named town of St. Deborah by the Water, Lake Michigan shining a half mile away.

I was in the parking lot, with the key in the car, and I thought to myself: If this is my last night on earth, would I rather spend it at a business meeting or with this woman? I ran across the parking lot, asked her if she'd have dinner with me. She said yes, we walked into town, and we've been together ever since.

Lots of people think things would be better some other way. That's why the world's lousy with theme parks.

and give me insults, give me economic discrimination, give me the darkened parking lot of a windowless queer bar, give me fleets of bigots and books banned in libraries across america, feed the world with lies about my life and plop a second helping of oppression on my plate and thank you for not making me straight.

I watched his taillights until they got more and more distant and then faded from view entirely. I realized, in that moment, that I hadn't needed to destroy Bryan's sunglasses in the Paradise parking lot. Because it was clear to me now that I'd already broken something.

What’s important is the time we spent working on it together. What’s important is that Sam is the kind of guy who will trade notes on a sketchpad and teach me how to make tuna melts and drop everything to drive to a parking lot when I need him and throw stones at my window to make sure I’m okay.

If it's us", she whispered, "how come you get to decide?" When he didn't answer - couldn't answer - she turned and stared out the front window. As it turned out, they were still in the parking lot. They hadn't gotten anywhere at all.

So what name would you rather I call you? she asked as she headed out of the parking lot. Ias or Alexion. He gave her a devilish grin that set fire to her hormones. I would rather you call me lover. He wagged his eyebrows playfully at her. Danger rolled her eyes. Like all men with a onetrack mind, he was incorrigible. Don't blame me, Alexion said in an almost offended tone. I can't help it. You should see the way you fight. It really turned me on. Could you tell me how to turn you off? -Danger and Alexion

Artists talk a lot about freedom. So, recalling the expression "free as a bird," Morton Feldman went to a park one day and spent some time watching our feathered friends. When he came back, he said, "You know? They're not free: they're fighting over bits of food.

Hunter leaned close. "Just to be clear: I'd know exactly what to do if you threw yourself at me." Then he was in his car, starting the ignition, leaving her in the parking lot, nothing more than a melted puddle of hot, bothered, and seriously pissed off.

Wilderness and motors are incompatible and the former can best be experienced, understood and enjoyed when the machines are left behind where they belong -- on the superhighways and in the parking lots, on the reservoirs and in the marinas.

At that age, time moves slow. You're eager for something to happen, passing time in parking lots, hands deep in your pockets, trying to figure out where to go next. Life happened elsewhere, it was simply a matter of finding a map that led there. Or maybe, at that age, time moves fast; you're so desperate for action that you forget to remember things as they happen. A day felt like forever, a year was a geological era.

Do you know where Jason is?” she asked Dmitri when they exited the morgue. Dmitri pressed the car remote to unlock the flame red Ferrari parked in the employees-only lot. “Tired of your Bluebell already?” A tendril of champagne circled around her senses, cut with something far harder. Never had she felt that harsh edge in Dmitri’s scent. She pitied the woman he took to his bed today. “Yeah, that’s it. I’m building a harem.

I didn't want to do it,' Kiala said. 'The universe just kind of conspired to force me to make a fool of myself. It does that quite a lot, actually.

It quickly became a tracking operation, though. My chariot could not keep up with his truck. By the time I caught up with him, his truck was parked in one of those asphalt wastelands. What are they called again"? The Tuatha De Danann have no problem asking Druids for information. That's what we're for, after all. The secret to becoming an Old Druid instead of a dead Druid is to betray nary a hint of condescension when answering even the simplest questions. "They are called parking lots," I replied. "Ah, yes, thank you. He came out of a building called 'Crussh', holding one of these potions. Are you familar with the building, Druid?" "I belive that is a smoothie bar in England." "Quite right. So after I killed him and stowed his body next to the doe, I sampled his smooth concoction in the parking lot and found it to be quite delicious". See, sentences like that are why I nurture a healthy fear of the Tuatha De Danann.

My daughter, Carly, has been in and out of drug treatment facilities since she was thirteen. Every time she goes away, I have a routine: I go through her room and search for drugs she may have left behind. We have a laugh these days because Carly says, “So you were lookingfor drugs I might have left behind? I’m a drug addict, Mother. We don’t leave drugs behind, especially if we’re going into treatment. We do all the drugs. We don’t save drugs back for later. If I have drugs, I do them. All of them. If I had my way, we would stop for more drugs on the way to rehab, and I would do them in the parking lot of the treatment center.

I tell you this not as aimless revelation but because I want you to know, as you read me, precisely who I am and where I am and what is on my mind. I want you to understand exactly what you are getting: you are getting a woman who for some time now has felt radically separated from most of the ideas that seem to interest people. You are getting a woman who somewhere along the line misplaced whatever slight faith she ever had in the social contract, in the meliorative principle, in the whole grand pattern of human endeavor. Quite often during the past several years I have felt myself a sleepwalker, moving through the world unconscious of the moment’s high issues, oblivious to its data, alert only to the stuff of bad dreams, the children burning in the locked car in the supermarket parking lot, the bike boys stripping down stolen cars on the captive cripple’s ranch, the freeway sniper who feels “real bad” about picking off the family of five, the hustlers, the insane, the cunning Okie faces that turn up in military investigations, the sullen lurkers in doorways, the lost children, all the ignorant armies jostling in the night. Acquaintances read The New York Times, and try to tell me the news of the world. I listen to call-in shows.

I pulled into the Grand Union parking lot and drove to the end of the mall where the bank was located. I parked at a safe distance from other cars, exited the BMW, and set the alarm. You want me to stay with the car in case someone's riding around with a bomb in his backseat looking for a place to put it?" Lula asked. Not necessary. Ranger says the car has sensors." Ranger give you a car with bomb sensors? The head of the CIA don't even have a car with bomb sensors. I hear they give him a stick with a mirror on the end of it.

And in a small house five miles away was a man who held my mud-encrusted charm bracelet out to his wife. Look what I found at the old industrial park," he said. "A construction guy said they were bulldozing the whole lot. They're afraid of sink holes like that one that swallowed the cars." His wife poured him some water from the sink as he fingered the tiny bike and the ballet shoe, the flower basket and the thimble. He held out the muddy bracelet as she set down his glass. This little girl's grown up by now," she said. Almost. Not quite. I wish you all a long and happy life.

Consider A Move The steady time of being unknown, in solitude, without friends, is not a steadiness that sustains. I hear your voice waver on the phone: Haven't talked to anyone for days. I drive around. I sit in parking lots. The voice zeroes through my ear, and waits. What should I say? There are ways to meet people you will want to love? I know of none. You come out stronger having gone through this? I no longer believe that, if I once did. Consider a move, a change, a job, a new place to live, someplace you'd like to be. That's not it, you say. Now time turns back. We almost touch. Then what is? I ask. What is?

She blew a stream of smoke up at the empty clotheslines. 'These silly dreams you have when you're young. I mean, what, Katie and Brendan Harris were going ot make a life in Las Vegas? How long would that little Eden have lasted? Maybe they'd be on their second trailer park, second kid, but it would have hit them sooner or later - life isn't happily ever after and golden sunsets and shit like that. It's work. The person you love is rarely worthy of how big your love is. Because no one is worthy of that and maybe no one deserves the burden of it, either. You'll be let down. You'll be disappointed and have your trust broken and have a lot of real sucky days. You lose more than you win. You hate the person you love as much as you love him. But, shit, you roll up your sleeves and work - at everything -because that's what growing older is.

She was breaking her rules. They weren't stone after all, only small and fragile as paper cranes.... I understood why she held to them so hard. Once you break the first one, they all broke, one by one, like firecrackers exploding in your face in a parking lot on the Fourth of July.

That's when Sam grabbed my hand. "I love this song!" She led me to the dance floor. And she started dancing. And I started dancing. It was a fast song, so I wasn't very good, but she didn't seem to mind. We were just dancing, and that was enough. The song ended, and then a slow one came on. She looked at me. I looked at her. Then, she took my hands and pulled me in to dance slow. I don't know how to dance slow very well either, but I do know how to sway. Her whisper smelled like cranberry juice and vodka. "I looked for you in the parking lot today." I hoped mine still smelled like toothpaste. "I was looking for you, too." Then, we were quiet for the rest of the song. She held me a little closer. I held her a little closer. And we kept dancing. It was the one time all day that I really wanted the clock to stop. And just be there for a long time.

When I reached him, I anchored my hands on my hips and glared. "Do not get into anymore fights on my behalf." I didn't want him suspended-or worse. "Now give me your keys." He gently flicked the end of my nose. "Haven't you heard? I do what I want, when I want, and there's nothing anyone can do to stop me." I could knee him between the legs and simply steal his keys, proving otherwise, but all I said was, "Believe me, I've witnessed that firsthand," and held out my hands. "Now be a good boy and do what I want you to do." He lifted the sunglasses and I saw a bright gleam in those violet eyes. "And what is it, exactly, that Little Ali wants?" Little Ali. Ugh. "I said give me your keys." No reason to play nice. He certainly wasn't. "And if you call me Little Ali again, I'll smash your trachea the way I hear you like to to others." Suddenly suspicious, he snapped out a quick "Why?" "Because I hate it." "Not the name. The keys." "Hello. Because I want to stab you with them, why else?" "Why?"He insisted. Fine. "Because I need to practice my driving, and I promised my grandparents I would." "You're telling me..." The glasses slid back into place as he cupped the back of my neck and dragged me closer to him, peering down at me sternly. "That you Don't know how to drive?" "Of course I know how to drive. Now, if you ask me if I know how to drive well, the answer will be different." He choked out a laugh, but backed away and tossed me the keys. "Just wait until the parking lot is empty before putting my precious life in danger.

Now, here's what we do. You and I will find a back way out of this place. If we come across someone else, we make like a couple of lovesick teenagers. People generally hurry past heavy breathers. I get you to the parking lot, you vanish. Got it?" He nodded. "There's just one thing I've got to do before we go," he said. Before I could inquire, he grabbed me and planted a kiss square on my mouth. It was short but fiery, despite the grape flavoring, and when he let me go I wan panting. Holy crap!" He smiled, not at all apologetically, and said, "I've wanted to do that ever since I saw my first Bond movie.

Look. I see it. You can go to all the movies and watch all the television you want. I am the end of all time. I'm not hooked up to the machine. I don't care about being labelled a misogynist, misanthropic hate addict. I don't give a fuck if some human organism calls me politically incorrect. I like the idea of people getting killed in parking lots. I stab every person who passes me. In my mind, I stab them in the face with a fucking knife. If I thought I could get away with it, I would skin you alive. I only fear prison if I get caught killing one of you humans. I hate you all. I don't know anyone. I am the enemy of humans. I am that which spits in the face of humanity.

I wish we lived like children. Run till you are out of breath, flop on the grass, stare at clouds, jump up again, chase a squirrel around every tree in the park, walk on your hands because the world looks different upside down, climb little hills and roll down the other side, do somersaults . . . just because you can. What do we do instead? We surround ourselves with all these big and small blinking screens, while our bodies and minds slowly forget how to tumble, how to wonder, how to live.

Aurora,” Mom sharpened her tone, “I thought you were having dinner. Why are you in the parking lot?” A new voice on the phone snorted, “Parking, obviously... Sorry. This pregnancy is frying my motherboard. And speaking of babies—” Here it comes. “—that’s what parking with your boyfriend leads to, Aurora. Save yourself the agony. My bladder will never be the same.” “I’m not parking with my boyfriend!” I screeched.

The white-haired wonder leading what had to, by now, be a blocks-long parade must've finally turned on her hearing aid. Because she finally pulled into the United Methodist Church parking lot, praise God, leaving the rest of us free to party until some other octogenarian found it necessary to take to the streets after dark. In Ohio, old folks know better than to drive at night. Yet another reason Cleveland rocks.

I’m falling in love with you, Mike Haines.” As I spoke, with every word his arms got tighter and tighter and his face, already close, became a breath away. “Angel, you’re already gone.” I blinked and asked, “Sorry?” “I read your diaries. I caught your pass in that hotel room. I listened to your offer to stay. I saw you wave good-bye at the airport and got your call before I’d pulled out of the parking lot. You fell with a kiss. I know, honey, because I was right there with you.

Clay, did you ever love me?" I'm studying a billboard and say that I didn't hear what she said. "I asked if you ever loved me?" On the terrace the sun bursts into my eyes and for one blinding moment I see myself clearly. I remember the first time we made love, in the house in Palm Springs, her body tan and wet, lying against cool, white sheets. "Don't do this, Blair," I tell her. "Just tell me." I don't say anything. "Is it such a hard question to answer?" I look at her straight on. "Yes or no?" "Why?" "Damnit, Clay," she sighs. "Yeah, sure, I guess." "Don't lie to me." "What in the fuck do you want to hear?" "Just tell me," she says, her voice rising. "No," I almost shout. "I never did." I almost start to laugh. She draws in a breath and says, "Thank you. That's all I wanted to know." She sips her wine. "Did you ever love me?" I ask her back, though by now I can't even care. She pauses. "I thought about it and yeah, I did once. I mean I really did. Everything was all right for a while. You were kind." She looks down and then goes on. "But it was like you weren't there. Oh shit, this isn't going to make any sense." She stops. I look at her, waiting for her to go on, looking up at the billboard. Disappear Here. "I don't know if any other person I've been with has been really there, either ... but at least they tried." I finger the menu; put the cigarette out. "You never did. Other people made an effort and you just ... It was just beyond you." She takes another sip of her wine. "You were never there. I felt sorry for you for a little while, but then I found it hard to. You're a beautiful boy, Clay, but that's about it." I watch the cars pass by on Sunset. "It's hard to feel sorry for someone who doesn't care." "Yeah?" I ask. "What do you care about? What makes you happy?" "Nothing. Nothing makes me happy. I like nothing," I tell her. "Did you ever care about me, Clay?" I don't say anything, look back at the menu. "Did you ever care about me?" she asks again. "I don't want to care. If I care about things, it'll just be worse, it'll just be another thing to worry about. It's less painful if I don't care." "I cared about you for a little while." I don't say anything. She takes off her sunglasses and finally says, "I'll see you later, Clay." She gets up. "Where are you going?" I suddenly don't want to leave Blair here. I almost want to take her back with me. "Have to meet someone for lunch." "But what about us?" "What about us?" She stands there for a moment, waiting. I keep staring at the billboard until it begins to blur and when my vision becomes clearer I watch as Blair's car glides out of the parking lot and becomes lost in the haze of traffic on Sunset. The waiter comes over and asks, "Is everything okay, sir?" I look up and put my sunglasses on and try to smile. "Yeah.

Most kinds of power require a substantial sacrifice by whoever wants the power. There is an apprenticeship, a discipline lasting many years. Whatever kind of power you want. President of the company. Black belt in karate. Spiritual guru. Whatever it is you seek, you have to put in the time, the practice, the effort. You must give up a lot to get it. It has to be very important to you. And once you have attained it, it is your power. It can’t be given away: it resides in you. It is literally the result of your discipline.

I told him what my dad had said. That got him laughing and as we pulled into the school parking lot, even the sight of Rafe waiting for me only made him roll his eyes. We got out. I glanced at Daniel. He sighed. "Go on." "You sound like you're giving a five-year-old permission to play with an unsuitable friend." "If the shoe fits..." I flipped him off. "Watch it or I won't marry you," he said. "Truck of no truck." I laughed and jogged over to Rafe. "Did he just say...?" Rafe began.

Why me?” she finally asked. Sighing, I touched the end of her hair, fingering it slightly. It felt so silky. “You were the first person I saw at this school. I’d parked in the lot and was walking past the auditorium and saw this gorgeous girl come out of the music room. The sun hit your stunning red hair, and it shone so brightly it almost looked like you had a halo. You were staring down at some music you were holding, and you started humming something. I froze. I just stood there and watched you walk by. You were so engrossed you didn’t even notice me.” I twisted the loop of her hair around my finger.

What are the dead, anyway, but waves and energy? Light shining from a dead star? That, by the way, is a phrase of Julian's. I remember it from a lecture of his on the Iliad, when Patroklos appears to Achilles in a dream. There is a very moving passage where Achilles overjoyed at the sight of the apparition – tries to throw his arms around the ghost of his old friend, and it vanishes. The dead appear to us in dreams, said Julian, because that's the only way they can make us see them; what we see is only a projection, beamed from a great distance, light shining at us from a dead star… Which reminds me, by the way, of a dream I had a couple of weeks ago. I found myself in a strange deserted city – an old city, like London – underpopulated by war or disease. It was night; the streets were dark, bombed-out, abandoned. For a long time, I wandered aimlessly – past ruined parks, blasted statuary, vacant lots overgrown with weeds and collapsed apartment houses with rusted girders poking out of their sides like ribs. But here and there, interspersed among the desolate shells of the heavy old public buildings, I began to see new buildings, too, which were connected by futuristic walkways lit from beneath. Long, cool perspectives of modern architecture, rising phosphorescent and eerie from the rubble. I went inside one of these new buildings. It was like a laboratory, maybe, or a museum. My footsteps echoed on the tile floors.There was a cluster of men, all smoking pipes, gathered around an exhibit in a glass case that gleamed in the dim light and lit their faces ghoulishly from below. I drew nearer. In the case was a machine revolving slowly on a turntable, a machine with metal parts that slid in and out and collapsed in upon themselves to form new images. An Inca temple… click click click… the Pyramids… the Parthenon. History passing beneath my very eyes, changing every moment. 'I thought I'd find you here,' said a voice at my elbow. It was Henry. His gaze was steady and impassive in the dim light. Above his ear, beneath the wire stem of his spectacles, I could just make out the powder burn and the dark hole in his right temple. I was glad to see him, though not exactly surprised. 'You know,' I said to him, 'everybody is saying that you're dead.' He stared down at the machine. The Colosseum… click click click… the Pantheon. 'I'm not dead,' he said. 'I'm only having a bit of trouble with my passport.' 'What?' He cleared his throat. 'My movements are restricted,' he said. 'I no longer have the ability to travel as freely as I would like.' Hagia Sophia. St. Mark's, in Venice. 'What is this place?' I asked him. 'That information is classified, I'm afraid.' 1 looked around curiously. It seemed that I was the only visitor. 'Is it open to the public?' I said. 'Not generally, no.' I looked at him. There was so much I wanted to ask him, so much I wanted to say; but somehow I knew there wasn't time and even if there was, that it was all, somehow, beside the point. 'Are you happy here?' I said at last. He considered this for a moment. 'Not particularly,' he said. 'But you're not very happy where you are, either.' St. Basil's, in Moscow. Chartres. Salisbury and Amiens. He glanced at his watch. 'I hope you'll excuse me,' he said, 'but I'm late for an appointment.' He turned from me and walked away. I watched his back receding down the long, gleaming hall.

Besides my professional goals, I have a couple of private ones, my man. One of those is to pet a kangaroo before I leave Australia. I understand there's lots of Eastern Grays around this area. What do you say? Are you in?' Bergman looked at him like he'd just made the worst financial investment of his life. 'Kangaroos are wild animals. I've heard they claw like girl fighters and kick like jackhammers. You're going to get your skull crushed.' Cole held up a finger. 'Or I'm going to pet a kangaroo. How cool would that be?

I look at these people and can't quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention? To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. "Can I interest you in the chicken?" she asks. "Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it? To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

What is love? Great minds have been grappling with this question through the ages, and in the modern era, they have come up with many different answers. According to the Western philosopher Pat Benatar, love is a battlefield. Her paisan Frank Sinatra would add the corollary that love is a tender trap. The stoner kids who spent the summer of 1978 looking cool on the hoods of their Trans Ams in the Pierce Elementary School parking lot used to scare us little kids by blasting the Sweet hit “Love Is Like Oxygen”—you get too much, you get too high, not enough and you’re gonna die. Love hurts. Love stinks. Love bites, love bleeds, love is the drug. The troubadours of our times all agree: They want to know what love is, and they want you to show them. But the answer is simple. Love is a mix tape.

My own kind. I'm not sure there's a name for us. I suspect we're born this way: our hearts screwed in tight, already a little broken. We hate sentimentality and yet we're deeply sentimental. Low-grade Romantics. Tough but susceptible. Afflicted by parking lots, empty courtyards, nostalgic pop music. When we cried for no reason as babies, just hauled off and wailed, our parents seemed to know, instinctively, that it wasn't diaper rash or colic. It was something deeper that they couldn't find a comfort for, though the good ones tried mightily, shaking rattles like maniacs and singing, "Happy Birthday" a little louder than called for. We weren't morose little kids. We could be really happy.

I don't know how to fit you in my world without hurting you too." The truth in my words revealed more than he'd ever know. "Don't worry about hurting me," he replied calmly. "I like being a part of your world, and I understand that it's more complicated than you're willing to share with me. But I'll respect that, for now." He pulled into the parking lot of a drugstore and put the car in park. Evan seemed nervous as he turned to speak to ne. He released a quick breath before he spoke. My chest tightened, afraid to hear what he had to say." "I don't do this." His hands gestured between us. My eyes narrowed, trying to inerpret his meaning. He exhaled and looked out the windshield. "I don't stay, and I'm used to that. And I'm always prepared to leave-because I have to eventually. He stopped again, frustrated with himself. I sat motionless, absolutely convinced I didn't want him to continue - but I couldn't bring myself to ask him to stop. "I want to stay here," he finally decalred. "It would bother me if I left. I mean, I've already unpacked.

As I pulled into the parking lot, I reflected that odds were that not a lot of clandestine meetings involving mystical assassination, theft of arcane power, and the balance of power in the realms of the supernatural had taken place in a Wal-Mart Super Center. But then again, maybe they had. Hell, for all I knew, the Mole Men used the changing rooms as a place to discuss plans for world domination with the Psychic Jellyfish from Planet X and the Disembodied Brains-in-a-Jar from the Klaatuu Nebula. I know I wouldn't have looked for them there.

A uniform cordoned off the area with crime scene tape. The M.E. pulled in and parked. There were two EMT trucks idling at the edge of the lot. I’d stayed close to the back door, and one of the Rangeman guys had taken a position two feet from me, standing at parade rest. No doubt in my mind he’d take a bullet for me rather than face Ranger over a dead Stephanie.

I’d felt this before, when my granddad was in the hospital before he died. We all camped out in the waiting room, eating our meals together, most of us sleeping in the chairs every night. Family from far-flung places would arrive at odd hours and we’d all stand and stretch, hug, get reacquainted, and pass the babies around. A faint, pale stream of beauty and joy flowed through the heavy sludge of fear and grief. It was kind of like those puddles of oil you see in parking lots that look ugly until the sun hits them and you see rainbows pulling together in the middle of the mess. And wasn’t that just how life usually felt—a confusing swirl of ugly and rainbow?

Shapes began to appear in the mist as it thickened. Clary saw herself and Simon as children, holding hands, crossing a street in Brooklyn,; she had barrettes in her hair and Simon was adorably rumpled, his glasses sliding off his nose. There they were again, throwing snowballs in Prospect Park; and at Luke's farmhouse, tanned from summer, hanging upside down from tree branches. She saw them in Java Jones, listening to Eric's terrible poetry, and on the back of a flying motorcycle as it crashed into a parking lot, with Jace there, looking at them, his eyes squinted against the sun. And there was Simon with Isabelle, his hands curved around her face, kissing her, and she could see Isabelle as Simon saw her: fragile and strong, and so, so beautiful. And there was Valentine's ship, Simon kneeling on Jace, blood on his mouth and shirt, and blood at Jace's throat, and there was the cell in Idris, and Hodge's weathered face, and Simon and Clary again, Clary etching the Mark of Cain onto his forehead. Maureen, and her blood on the floor, and her little pink hat, and the rooftop in Manhattan where Lilith had raised Sebastian, and Clary was passing him a gold ring across a table, and an Angel was rising out of a lake before him and he was kissing Isabelle...

Ronan pointed at the cart. "Get in there." "What?" He just continued pointing. Adam said, "Give me a break. This is a public parking lot." "Don't make this ugly, Parrish." As an old lady headed past them, Adam sighed and climbed into the basket of the shopping cart. He drew his knees up so that he would fit. He was full of the knowledge that this was probably going to end with scabs. Ronan gripped the handle with the skittish concentration of a motorcycle racer and eyed the line between them and the BMW parked on the far side of the lot. "What do you think the grade is on this parking lot?" "C plus, maybe a B. Oh. I don't know. Ten degrees?" Adam held the sides of the cart and then thought better of it. He held himself instead. With a savage smile, Ronan shoved the cart off the curb and belted towards the BMW. As they picked up speed, Ronan called out a joyful and awful swear and then jumped on to the back of the cart himself. As they hurtled towards the BMW, Adam realised that Ronan, as usual, had no intention of stopping before something bad happened. He cupped a hand over his nose just as they glanced off the side of the BMW. The unseated cart wobbled once, twice, and then tipped catastrophically on to its side. It kept skidding, the boys skidding along with it. The three of them came to a stop. "Oh, God," Adam said, touching the road burn on his elbow. It wasn't that bad, really. "God, God. I can feel my teeth." Ronan lay on his back a few feet away. A box of toothpaste rested on his chest and the cart keeled beside him. He looked profoundly happy. "You should tell me what you've found out about Greenmantle," Ronan said, "so that I can get started on my dreaming." Adam picked himself up before he got driven over. "When?" Ronan grinned.

Yawn... I believe that I love sleep much more than anybody I’ve ever met. I have the ability to sleep for 2 or 3 days and nights. I will go to bed at any given moment. I often confused my girlfriends this way— say it would be about onethirty in the afternoon: “well, I’m going to bed now, I’m going to sleep…” most of them wouldn’t mind, they would go to bed with me thinking I was hinting for sex but I would just turn my back and snore off. this, of course, could explain why so many of my girlfriends left me. as for doctors, they were never any help: “listen, I have this desire to go to bed and sleep, almost all the time. what is wrong with me?” “do you get enough exercise?” “yes…” “are you getting enough nourishment?” “yes…” they always handed me a prescription which I threw away between the office and the parking lot. it’s a curious malady because I can’t sleep between 6 p.m. and midnight. it must occur after midnight and when I arise it can never be before noon. and should the phone ring say at 10:30 a.m. I go into a mad rage don’t even ask who the caller is scream into the phone: “WHAT ARE YOU CALLING ME FOR AT THIS HOUR!” hang up… every person, I suppose, has their eccentricities but in an effort to be normal in the world’s eye they overcome them and therefore destroy their special calling. I’ve kept mine and do believe that they have lent generously to my existence. I think it’s the main reason I decided to become a writer: I can type anytime and sleep when I damn well please.

I have found that some of the simplest things have given me the most pleasure. They didn't cost me a lot of money either. They just worked on my senses. Did you ever pick very large blueberries after a summer rain Walk through a grove of cottonwoods, open like a park, and see the blue sky beyond the shimmering gold of the leaves? Pull on dry woolen socks after you've peeled off the wet ones? Come in out of the subzero and shiver yourself warm in front of a wood fire? The world is full of such things.

While they waited, Ronan decided to finally take up the task of teaching Adam how to drive a stick shift. For several minutes, it seemed to be going well, as the BMW had an easy clutch, Ronan was brief and to the point with his instruction, and Adam was a quick study with no ego to get in the way. From a safe vantage point beside the building, Gansey and Noah huddled and watched as Adam began to make ever quicker circles around the parking lot. Every so often their hoots were audible through the open windows of the BMW. Then—it had to happen eventually—Adam stalled the car. It was a pretty magnificent beast, as far as stalls went, with lots of noise and death spasms on the part of the car. From the passenger seat, Ronan began to swear at Adam. It was a long, involved swear, using every forbidden word possible, often in compound-word form. As Adam stared at his lap, penitent, he mused that there was something musical about Ronan when he swore, a careful and loving precision to the way he fit the words together, a black-painted poetry. It was far less hateful sounding than when he didn’t swear. Ronan finished with, “For the love of . . . Parrish, take some care, this is not your mother’s 1971 Honda Civic.” Adam lifted his head and said, “They didn’t start making the Civic until ’73.” There was a flash of fangs from the passenger seat, but before Ronan truly had time to strike, they both heard Gansey call warmly, “Jane! I thought you’d never show up. Ronan is tutoring Adam in the ways of manual transmissions.” Blue, her hair pulled every which way by the wind, stuck her head in the driver’s side window. The scent of wildflowers accompanied her presence. As Adam catalogued the scent in the mental file of things that made Blue attractive, she said brightly, “Looks like it’s going well. Is that what that smell is?” Without replying, Ronan climbed out of the car and slammed the door. Noah appeared beside Blue. He looked joyful and adoring, like a Labrador retriever. Noah had decided almost immediately that he would do anything for Blue, a fact that would’ve needled Adam if it had been anyone other than Noah. Blue permitted Noah to pet the crazy tufts of her hair, something Adam would have also liked to do, but felt would mean something far different coming from him.

One day we came home from some errands to find a grocery sack of [zucchini] hanging on our mailbox. The perpetrator, of course, was nowhere in sight ... Garrison Keillor says July is the only time of year when country people lock our cars in the church parking lot, so people won't put squash on the front seat. I used to think that was a joke ... It's a relaxed atmosphere in our little town, plus our neighbors keep an eye out and will, if asked, tell us the make and model of every vehicle that ever enters the lane to our farm. So the family was a bit surprised when I started double-checking the security of doors and gates any time we all were about to leave the premises. "Do I have to explain the obvious?" I asked impatiently. "Somebody might break in and put zucchini in our house.

Yeah, that’s my experience. Humbling to the point where you have major regrets about some of the stupid things you said, some of the things you thought were right. You keep going to these countries, and it’s like, you forgot the lesson from the last time. Because the first person you encounter kind of bitch-slaps you upside the head in the most wonderful, innocent way and you realize, God, I’m still an asshole. And this guy, by doing nothing except being broke and so incredibly polite—it takes you aback, you realize, I’m still not there yet. I still have like eight miles to go before I can even get into the parking lot of humility. I have to keep going back. It’s like going back to a chiropractor to get a readjustment. That’s me in Africa, that’s me in Southeast Asia. You come back humbled and you bring that into your life. It’s made me much more tolerant of other peoples—and I’m not saying I used to be a misogynist, or I used to be a racist, that was never my problem. But I can be extremely headstrong, impatient, rude. Like, “Hurry up, man. What’s your problem? Get out of my way.” That sentiment comes easy to me. Going to these countries, you realize none of that is necessary, none of it’s cool, it’s nothing Abraham Lincoln would do, and so why are you doing it? Those are the lessons I’ve learned.

Morning Poem" I've got to tell you how I love you always I think of it on grey mornings with death in my mouth the tea is never hot enough then and the cigarette dry the maroon robe chills me I need you and look out the window at the noiseless snow At night on the dock the buses glow like clouds and I am lonely thinking of flutes I miss you always when I go to the beach the sand is wet with tears that seem mine although I never weep and hold you in my heart with a very real humor you'd be proud of the parking lot is crowded and I stand rattling my keys the car is empty as a bicycle what are you doing now where did you eat your lunch and were there lots of anchovies it is difficult to think of you without me in the sentence you depress me when you are alone Last night the stars were numerous and today snow is their calling card I'll not be cordial there is nothing that distracts me music is only a crossword puzzle do you know how it is when you are the only passenger if there is a place further from me I beg you do not go

Before she leaves, my new friend tells me to look out of the big picture window at the parking lot. "See that purple Harley out there—that big gorgeous one? That's mine. I used to ride behind my husband, and never took the road on my own. Then after the kids were grown, I put my foot down. It was hard, but we finally got to be partners. Now he says he likes it better this way. He doesn't have to worry about his bike breaking down or getting a heart attach and totaling us both. I even put 'Ms.' on my license plate—and you should see my grandkids' faces when Grandma rides up on her purple Harley!" On my own again, I look out at the barren sand and tortured rocks of the Badlands, stretching for miles. I've walked there, and I know that, close up, the barren sand reveals layers of pale rose and beige and cream, and the rocks turn out to have intricate womblike openings. Even in the distant cliffs, caves of rescue appear. What seems to be one thing from a distance is very different close up. I tell you this story because it's the kind of lesson that can be learned only on the road. And also because I've come to believe that, inside, each of us has a purple motorcycle. We have only to discover it—and ride.

I imagine this conversation after a stranger is told No by a woman he has approached: MAN: What a bitch. What’s your problem, lady? I was just trying to offer a little help to a pretty woman. What are you so paranoid about? WOMAN: You’re right. I shouldn’t be wary. I’m overreacting about nothing. I mean, just because a man makes an unsolicited and persistent approach in an underground parking lot in a society where crimes against women have risen four times faster than the general crime rate, and three out of four women will suffer a violent crime; and just because I’ve personally heard horror stories from every female friend I’ve ever had; and just because I have to consider where I park, where I walk, whom I talk to, and whom I date in the context of whether someone will kill me or rape me or scare me half to death; and just because several times a week someone makes an inappropriate remark, stares at me, harasses me, follows me, or drives alongside my car pacing me; and just because I have to deal with the apartment manager who gives me the creeps for reasons I haven’t figured out, yet I can tell by the way he looks at me that given an opportunity he’d do something that would get us both on the evening news; and just because these are life-and-death issues most men know nothing about so that I’m made to feel foolish for being cautious even though I live at the center of a swirl of possible hazards DOESN’T MEAN A WOMAN SHOULD BE WARY OF A STRANGER WHO IGNORES THE WORD ‘NO’.

Many textbooks point out that no animal has evolved wheels and cite the fact as an example of how evolution is often incapable of finding the optimal solution to an engineering problem. But it is not a good example at all. Even if nature could have evolved a moose on wheels, it surely would have opted not to. Wheels are good only in a world with roads and rails. They bog down in any terrain that is soft, slippery, steep, or uneven. Legs are better. Wheels have to roll along an unbroken supporting ridge, but legs can be placed on a series of separate footholds, an extreme example being a ladder. Legs can also be placed to minimize lurching and to step over obstacles. Even today, when it seems as if the world has become a parking lot, only about half of the earth's land is accessible to vehicles with wheels or tracks, but most of the earth's land is accessible to vehicles with feet: animals, the vehicles designed by natural selection.

Pink Balloons My name is Olivia King I am five years old My mother bought me a balloon. I remember the day she walked through the front door with it. The curly hot pink ribbon trickling down her arm, wrapped around her wrist . She was smiling at me as she untied the ribbon and wrapped it around my hand. "Here Livie, I bought this for you." She called me Livie. I was so happy . I'd never had a balloon before. I mean, I always saw balloon wrapped around other kids wrist in the parking lot of Wal-Mart , but I never dreamed I would have my very own. My very own pink balloon. I was excited! So ecstatic! So thrilled! i couldn't believe my mother bought me something! She'd never bought me anything before! I played with it for hours . It was full of helium and it danced and swayed and floated as I drug it around from room to room with me, thinking of places to take it. Thinking of places the balloon had never been before. I took it in the bathroom , the closet , the laundry room , the kitchen , the living room . I wanted my new best friend to see everything I saw! I took it to my mother's bedroom! My mothers Bedroom? Where I wasn't supposed to be? With my pink balloon... I covered my ears as she screamed at me, wiping the evidence off her nose! She slapped me across the face as she told me how bad I was! How much I misbehaved! How I never listened! She shoved me into the hallways and slammed the door, locking my pink balloon inside with her. I wanted him back! He was my best friend! Not her! The pink ribbon was still tied around my wrist so I pulled and pulled , trying to get my new best friend away from her. And it popped. My name is Eddie. I'm seventeen years old. My birthday is next week. I'll be big One-Eight. My foster dad is buying me these boots I've been wanting. I'm sure my friends will take me out to eat. My boyfriend will buy me a gift, maybe even take me to a movie. I'll even get a nice little card from my foster care worker, wishing me a happy eighteenth birthday, informing me I've aged out of the system. I'll have a good time. I know I will. But there's one thing I know for sure I better not get any shitty ass pink balloons!

Try to roll with the punches. Keep your chin up. Don’t take any wooden nickels. Vote Democrat in every election. Ride your bike in the park. Dream about my perfect, golden body. Take your vitamins. Drink eight glasses of water a day. Pull for the Mets. Watch a lot of movies. Don’t work too hard at your job. Take a trip to Paris with me. Come to the hospital when Rachel has her baby and hold my grandchild in your arms. Brush your teeth after every meal. Don’t cross the street on a red light. Defend the little guy. Stick up for yourself. Remember how beautiful you are. Remember how much I love you. Drink one Scotch on the rocks every day. Breathe deeply. Keep your eyes open. Stay away from fatty foods. Sleep the sleep of the just. Remember how much I love you.

The three of us do not go out very often as the three of us. I think Daniel is perfect for Jed, which is the highest compliment I can give. But my friendship isn't with him, and Jed understands that. When we hit the road, we hit it together alone. We get to the bridge, out undestined destination. Even though there's no sign, no arrow, Jed turns at the last minute and parks us in a verge right before the bridge leaves the ground. The trunk pops open, and Jed runs round back to retrieve a bag of oranges and a sweatshirt that fits me better. Shall we make like lizards and leap? he asks. I never felt the urge to jump off a bridge, but there are times I have wanted to jump out of my life, out of my skin. Would you stroll me down the promenade instead? I ask back. Most certainly, my splendid. There is no word for our kind of friendship. Two people tho don't see each other a lot, but can make each other effortlessly happy.

IT'S MORNING, TIME to get up, so get up, Arturo, and look for a job. Get out there and look for what you'll never find. You're a thief and you're a crab-killer and a lover of women in clothes closets. You'll never find a job! Every morning I got up feeling like that. Now I've got to find a job, damn it to hell. I ate breakfast, put a book under my arm, pencils in my pocket, and started out. Down the stairs I went, down the street, sometimes hot and sometimes cold, sometimes foggy and sometimes clear. It never mattered, with a book under my arm, looking for a job. What job, Arturo? Ho ho! A job for you? Think of what you are, my boy! A crab-killer. A thief. You look at naked women in clothes closets. And you expect to get a job! How funny! But there he goes, the idiot, with a big book. Where the devil are you going, Arturo? Why do you go up this street and not that? Why go east - why not go west? Answer me, you thief! Who'll give you a job, you swine - who? But there's a park across town, Arturo. It's called Banning Park. There are a lot of beautiful eucalyptus trees in it, and green lawns. What a place to read! Go there, Arturo. Read Nietzsche. Read Schopenhauer. Get into the company of the mighty. A job? fooey! Go sit under a eucalyptus tree reading a book looking for a job.

One thing which even the most seasoned and discerning masters of the art of choice do not and cannot choose, is the society to be born into - and so we are all in travel, whether we like it or not. We have not been asked about our feelings anyway. Thrown into a vast open sea with no navigation charts and all the marker buoys sunk and barely visible, we have only two choices left: we may rejoice in the breath-taking vistas of new discoveries - or we may tremble out of fear of drowning. One option not really realistic is to claim sanctuary in a safe harbour; one could bet that what seems to be a tranquil haven today will be soon modernized, and a theme park, amusement promenade or crowded marina will replace the sedate boat sheds. The third option not thus being available, which of the two other options will be chosen or become the lot of the sailor depends in no small measure on the ship's quality and the navigation skills of the sailors. Not all ships are seaworthy, however. And so the larger the expanse of free sailing, the more the sailor's fate tends to be polarized and the deeper the chasm between the poles. A pleasurable adventure for the well-equipped yacht may prove a dangerous trap for a tattered dinghy. In the last account, the difference between the two is that between life and death.

Suppose we were planning to impose a dictatorial regime upon the American people—the following preparations would be essential: 1. Concentrate the populace in megalopolitan masses so that they can be kept under close surveillance and where, in case of trouble, they can be bombed, burned, gassed or machine-gunned with a minimum of expense and waste. 2. Mechanize agriculture to the highest degree of refinement, thus forcing most of the scattered farm and ranching population into the cities. Such a policy is desirable because farmers, woodsmen, cowboys, Indians, fishermen and other relatively self-sufficient types are difficult to manage unless displaced from their natural environment. 3. Restrict the possession of firearms to the police and the regular military organizations. 4. Encourage or at least fail to discourage population growth. Large masses of people are more easily manipulated and dominated than scattered individuals. 5. Continue military conscription. Nothing excels military training for creating in young men an attitude of prompt, cheerful obedience to officially constituted authority. 6. Divert attention from deep conflicts within the society by engaging in foreign wars; make support of these wars a test of loyalty, thereby exposing and isolating potential opposition to the new order. 7. Overlay the nation with a finely reticulated network of communications, airlines and interstate autobahns. 8. Raze the wilderness. Dam the rivers, flood the canyons, drain the swamps, log the forests, strip-mine the hills, bulldoze the mountains, irrigate the deserts and improve the national parks into national parking lots. Idle speculations, feeble and hopeless protest. It was all foreseen nearly half a century ago by the most cold-eyed and clear-eyed of our national poets, on California’s shore, at the end of the open road. Shine, perishing republic.

Outside I hopped into our vehicle, the taint of vampiric magic clinging to me like greasy smoke. “I feel soiled.” “Like walking into a room after a day of work, falling into bed, and realizing the sheets are covered in cold K-Y jelly,” Raphael said. I just stared at him. “With a funky smell,” he added. My Order conditioning failed me. “Ew.” Raphael grinned. “I‟m not even going to ask if that‟s happened to you.” I started the vehicle. “Has that happened to you?” “Yes.” Ew. “Where?” “In the bouda house. I was really tired and you‟ve seen that place: everything smells like sex . . .” “I don‟t want to know.” I peeled out of the parking lot. "So where are we going?” “To Spider Lynn‟s house. We‟re going to dig through her trash, and if that doesn‟t work, we‟ll do some breaking and entering.” Raphael frowned. “Do you know where she lives?” “Yes. I memorized the addresses of all the Masters of the Dead in the city. I have a lot of time on my hands.” He squinted at me, looking remarkably like a gentleman pirate from my favorite romance novels. “What else do you store in your head?” “This and that. I remember the first thing you ever said to me. You know, when you carried me from the cart into the tub so your mother could fix me.” “I imagine it was something very romantic,” he said. “Something along the lines of „I‟ve got you‟ or „I won‟t let you die.‟ “I was bleeding in the bathtub, trying to realign my bones, and my hyena glands voided from the pain. You said, „Don‟t worry, we have an excellent filtration system.‟” The look on his face was priceless. “That can‟t be the first thing.” “It was.” We drove in silence. “About the K-Y,” Raphael said. “I don‟t want to know!‟ “Once I washed it out of my hair—” “Raphael, why are you doing this?” “I want to make you go "Ew‟ again.” “Why in the world would you want to do that?” “It‟s an irrepressible male impulse. It just has to be done. As I was saying, once I washed it out—” “Raphael!” “No, wait, you‟ll like the next part.

Give me the strongest cheese, the one that stinks best; and I want the good wine, the swirl in crystal surrendering the bruised scent of blackberries, or cherries, the rich spurt in the back of the throat, the holding it there before swallowing. Give me the lover who yanks open the door of his house and presses me to the wall in the dim hallway, and keeps me there until I’m drenched and shaking, whose kisses arrive by the boatload and begin their delicious diaspora through the cities and small towns of my body. To hell with the saints, with martyrs of my childhood meant to instruct me in the power of endurance and faith, to hell with the next world and its pallid angels swooning and sighing like Victorian girls. I want this world. I want to walk into the ocean and feel it trying to drag me along like I’m nothing but a broken bit of scratched glass, and I want to resist it. I want to go staggering and flailing my way through the bars and back rooms, through the gleaming hotels and weedy lots of abandoned sunflowers and the parks where dogs are let off their leashes in spite of the signs, where they sniff each other and roll together in the grass, I want to lie down somewhere and suffer for love until it nearly kills me, and then I want to get up again and put on that little black dress and wait for you, yes you, to come over here and get down on your knees and tell me just how fucking good I look. - “For Desire

We must try, all of us, a lot of the time, our best, and we must keep trying. We do not understand anything but we should try our best to understand each other. We should swim and walk in parks, thinking. We should watch movies and think about what might happen. We should buy food and think about where it comes from, and we should listen to music and wonder what it means. We should have conversations, real and imaginary, with translators handy so that everybody might understand everything we say. We may feel native to where we are, or feel displaced, or both, the way someone going on a journey is also a stranger in town, but nevertheless we should keep reading. We must read mysterious literature, and be as bewildered by it as we are by the world, and we should write down our ideas, turning our stories, as if by magic, into literature.

Have you ever wondered What happens to all the poems people write? The poems they never let anyone else read? Perhaps they are Too private and personal Perhaps they are just not good enough. Perhaps the prospect of such a heartfelt expression being seen as clumsy shallow silly pretentious saccharine unoriginal sentimental trite boring overwrought obscure stupid pointless or simply embarrassing is enough to give any aspiring poet good reason to hide their work from public view. forever. Naturally many poems are IMMEDIATELY DESTROYED. Burnt shredded flushed away Occasionally they are folded Into little squares And wedged under the corner of An unstable piece of furniture (So actually quite useful) Others are hidden behind a loose brick or drainpipe or sealed into the back of an old alarm clock or put between the pages of AN OBSCURE BOOK that is unlikely to ever be opened. someone might find them one day, BUT PROBABLY NOT The truth is that unread poetry Will almost always be just that. DOOMED to join a vast invisible river of waste that flows out of suburbia. well Almost always. On rare occasions, Some especially insistent pieces of writing will escape into a backyard or a laneway be blown along a roadside embankment and finally come to rest in a shopping center parking lot as so many things do It is here that something quite Remarkable takes place two or more pieces of poetry drift toward each other through a strange force of attraction unknown to science and ever so slowly cling together to form a tiny, shapeless ball. Left undisturbed, this ball gradually becomes larger and rounder as other free verses confessions secrets stray musings wishes and unsent love letters attach themselves one by one. Such a ball creeps through the streets Like a tumbleweed for months even years If it comes out only at night it has a good Chance of surviving traffic and children and through a slow rolling motion AVOIDS SNAILS (its number one predator) At a certain size, it instinctively shelters from bad weather, unnoticed but otherwise roams the streets searching for scraps of forgotten thought and feeling. Given time and luck the poetry ball becomes large HUGE ENORMOUS: A vast accumulation of papery bits That ultimately takes to the air, levitating by The sheer force of so much unspoken emotion. It floats gently above suburban rooftops when everybody is asleep inspiring lonely dogs to bark in the middle of the night. Sadly a big ball of paper no matter how large and buoyant, is still a fragile thing. Sooner or LATER it will be surprised by a sudden gust of wind Beaten by driving rain and REDUCED in a matter of minutes to a billion soggy shreds. One morning everyone will wake up to find a pulpy mess covering front lawns clogging up gutters and plastering car windscreens. Traffic will be delayed children delighted adults baffled unable to figure out where it all came from Stranger still Will be the Discovery that Every lump of Wet paper Contains various faded words pressed into accidental verse. Barely visible but undeniably present To each reader they will whisper something different something joyful something sad truthful absurd hilarious profound and perfect No one will be able to explain the Strange feeling of weightlessness or the private smile that remains Long after the street sweepers have come and gone.

You know what's wrong with scientific power?... It's a form of inherited wealth... Most kinds of power require a substantial sacrifice by whoever wants the power. There is an apprenticeship, a discipline lasting many years. Whatever kind of power you want. President of the company. Black belt in karate. Spiritual Guru. Whatever it is you seek, you have to put in the time, the practice, the effort. You must give up a lot to get it. It has to be very important to you. And once you have attained it, it is your power. It can't be given away: it resides in you. It is literally the result of your discipline. Now, what is interesting about this process is that, by the time someone has acquired the ability to his with his bare hands, he has also matured to the point where he won't use it unwisely. So that kind of power has a built-in control. The discipline of the getting the power changes you so that you won't abuse it. But scientific power is like inherited wealth: attained without discipline. You read what others have done, and you take the next step... There is no discipline... no mastery: old scientists are ignored. There is no humility before nature... A karate master does not kill people with his bare hands. He does not lose his temper and kill his wife. The person who kills is the person who has no discipline, no restraint, and who has purchased his power in the form of a Saturday night special. And that is the kind of power that science fosters, and permits.

A change in direction was required. The story you finished was perhaps never the one you began. Yes! He would take charge of his life anew, binding his breaking selves together. Those changes in himself that he sought, he himself would initiate and make them. No more of this miasmic, absent drift. How had he ever persuaded himself that his money-mad burg would rescue him all by itself, this Gotham in which Jokers and Penguins were running riot with no Batman (or even Robin) to frustrate their schemes, this Metropolis built of Kryptonite in which no Superman dared set foot, where wealth was mistaken for riches and the joy of possession for happiness, where people lived such polished lives that the great rough truths of raw existence had been rubbed and buffed away, and in which human souls had wandered so separately for so long that they barely remembered how to touch; this city whose fabled electricity powered the electric fences that were being erected between men and men, and men and women, too? Rome did not fall because her armies weakened but because Romans forgot what being Roman meant. Might this new Rome actually be more provincial than its provinces; might these new Romans have forgotten what and how to value, or had they never known? Were all empires so undeserving, or was this one particularly crass? Was nobody in all this bustling endeavor and material plenitude engaged, any longer, on the deep quarry-work of the mind and heart? O Dream-America, was civilization's quest to end in obesity and trivia, at Roy Rogers and Planet Hollywood, in USA Today and on E!; or in million-dollar-game-show greed or fly-on-the-wall voyeurism; or in the eternal confessional booth of Ricki and Oprah and Jerry, whose guests murdered each other after the show; or in a spurt of gross-out dumb-and-dumber comedies designed for young people who sat in darkness howling their ignorance at the silver screen; or even at the unattainable tables of Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Alain Ducasse? What of the search for the hidden keys that unlock the doors of exaltation? Who demolished the City on the Hill and put in its place a row of electric chairs, those dealers in death's democracy, where everyone, the innocent, the mentally deficient, the guilty, could come to die side by side? Who paved Paradise and put up a parking lot? Who settled for George W. Gush's boredom and Al Bore's gush? Who let Charlton Heston out of his cage and then asked why children were getting shot? What, America, of the Grail? O ye Yankee Galahads, ye Hoosier Lancelots, O Parsifals of the stockyards, what of the Table Round? He felt a flood bursting in him and did not hold back. Yes, it had seduced him, America; yes, its brilliance aroused him, and its vast potency too, and he was compromised by this seduction. What he opposed in it he must also attack in himself. It made him want what it promised and eternally withheld. Everyone was an American now, or at least Americanized: Indians, Uzbeks, Japanese, Lilliputians, all. America was the world's playing field, its rule book, umpire, and ball. Even anti-Americanism was Americanism in disguise, conceding, as it did, that America was the only game in town and the matter of America the only business at hand; and so, like everyone, Malik Solanka now walked its high corridors cap in hand, a supplicant at its feast; but that did not mean he could not look it in the eye. Arthur had fallen, Excalibur was lost and dark Mordred was king. Beside him on the throne of Camelot sat the queen, his sister, the witch Morgan le Fay.

Life is like the big wheel at Luna Park. You pay five francs and go into a room with tiers of seats all around, and in the centre the floor is made of a great disc of polished wood that revolves quickly. At first you sit down and watch the others. They are all trying to sit in the wheel, and they keep getting flung off, and that makes them laugh too. It's great fun. You see, the nearer you can get to the hub of the wheel the slower it is moving and the easier it is to stay on. There's generally someone in the centre who stands up and sometimes does a sort of dance. Often he's paid by the management, though, or, at any rate, he's allowed in free. Of course at the very centre there's a point completely at rest, if one could only find it; I'm not very near that point myself. Of course the professional men get in the way. Lots of people just enjoy scrambling on and being whisked off and scrambling on again. How they all shriek and giggle! Then there are others, like Margot, who sit as far out as they can and hold on for dear life and enjoy that. But the whole point about the wheel is that you needn't get on it at all, if you don't want to. People get hold of ideas about life, and that makes them think they've got to join in the game, even if they don't enjoy it. It doesn't suit everyone. People don't see that when they say "life" they mean two different things. They can mean simply existence, with its physiological implications of growth and organic change. They can't escape that - even by death, but because that's inevitable they think the other idea of life is too - the scrambling and excitement and bumps and the effort to get to the middle, and when we do get to the middle, it's just as if we never started. It's so odd. Now you're a person who was clearly meant to stay in the seats and sit still and if you get bored watch the others. Somehow you got on to the wheel, and you got thrown off again at once with a hard bump. It's all right for Margot, who can cling on, and for me, at the centre, but you're static. Instead of this absurd division into sexes they ought to class people as static and dynamic. There's a real distinction there, though I can't tell you how it comes. I think we're probably two quite different species spiritually.

The children in my dreams speak in Gujarati turn their trusting faces to the sun say to me care for us nurture us in my dreams I shudder and I run. I am six in a playground of white children Darkie, sing us an Indian song! Eight in a roomful of elders all mock my broken Gujarati English girl! Twelve, I tunnel into books forge an armor of English words. Eighteen, shaved head combat boots - shamed by masis in white saris neon judgments singe my western head. Mother tongue. Matrubhasha tongue of the mother I murder in myself. Through the years I watch Gujarati swell the swaggering egos of men mirror them over and over at twice their natural size. Through the years I watch Gujarati dissolve bones and teeth of women, break them on anvils of duty and service, burn them to skeletal ash. Words that don't exist in Gujarati : Self-expression. Individual. Lesbian. English rises in my throat rapier flashed at yuppie boys who claim their people “civilized” mine. Thunderbolt hurled at cab drivers yelling Dirty black bastard! Force-field against teenage hoods hissing F****ing Paki bitch! Their tongue - or mine? Have I become the enemy? Listen: my father speaks Urdu language of dancing peacocks rosewater fountains even its curses are beautiful. He speaks Hindi suave and melodic earthy Punjabi salty rich as saag paneer coastal Kiswahili laced with Arabic, he speaks Gujarati solid ancestral pride. Five languages five different worlds yet English shrinks him down before white men who think their flat cold spiky words make the only reality. Words that don't exist in English: Najjar Garba Arati. If we cannot name it does it exist? When we lose language does culture die? What happens to a tongue of milk-heavy cows, earthen pots jingling anklets, temple bells, when its children grow up in Silicon Valley to become programmers? Then there's American: Kin'uh get some service? Dontcha have ice? Not: May I have please? Ben, mane madhath karso? Tafadhali nipe rafiki Donnez-moi, s'il vous plait Puedo tener….. Hello, I said can I get some service?! Like, where's the line for Ay-mericans in this goddamn airport? Words that atomized two hundred thousand Iraqis: Didja see how we kicked some major ass in the Gulf? Lit up Bagdad like the fourth a' July! Whupped those sand-niggers into a parking lot! The children in my dreams speak in Gujarati bright as butter succulent cherries sounds I can paint on the air with my breath dance through like a Sufi mystic words I can weep and howl and devour words I can kiss and taste and dream this tongue I take back.

We entered the cool cave of the practice space with all the long-haired, goateed boys stoned on clouds of pot and playing with power tools. I tossed my fluffy coat into the hollow of my bass drum and lay on the carpet with my worn newspaper. A shirtless boy came in and told us he had to cut the power for a minute, and I thought about being along in the cool black room with Joey. Let's go smoke, she said, and I grabbed the cigarettes off the amp. She started talking to me about Wonder Woman. I feel like something big is happening, but I don't know what to do about it. With The Straight Girl? I asked in the blankest voice possible. With everything. Back in the sun we walked to the edge of the parking lot where a black Impala convertible sat, rusted and rotting, looking like it just got dredged from a swamp. Rainwater pooling on the floor. We climbed up onto it and sat our butts backward on the edge of the windshield, feet stretched into the front seat. Before she even joined the band, I would think of her each time I passed the car, the little round medallions with the red and black racing flags affixed to the dash. On the rusting Chevy, Joey told me about her date the other night with a girl she used to like who she maybe liked again. How her heart was shut off and it felt pretty good. How she just wanted to play around with this girl and that girl and this girl and I smoked my cigarette and went Uh-Huh. The sun made me feel like a restless country girl even though I'd never been on a farm. I knew what I stood for, even if nobody else did. I knew the piece of me on the inside, truer than all the rest, that never comes out. Doesn't everyone have one? Some kind of grand inner princess waiting to toss her hair down, forever waiting at the tower window. Some jungle animal so noble and fierce you had to crawl on your belly through dangerous grasses to get a glimpse. I gave Joey my cigarette so I could unlace the ratty green laces of my boots, pull them off, tug the linty wool tights off my legs. I stretched them pale over the car, the hair springing like weeds and my big toenail looking cracked and ugly. I knew exactly who I was when the sun came back and the air turned warm. Joey climbed over the hood of the car, dusty black, and said Let's lie down, I love lying in the sun, but there wasn't any sun there. We moved across the street onto the shining white sidewalk and she stretched out, eyes closed. I smoked my cigarette, tossed it into the gutter and lay down beside her. She said she was sick of all the people who thought she felt too much, who wanted her to be calm and contained. Who? I asked. All the flowers, the superheroes. I thought about how she had kissed me the other night, quick and hard, before taking off on a date in her leather chaps, hankies flying, and I sat on the couch and cried at everything she didn't know about how much I liked her, and someone put an arm around me and said, You're feeling things, that's good. Yeah, I said to Joey on the sidewalk, I Feel Like I Could Calm Down Some. Awww, you're perfect. She flipped her hand over and touched my head. Listen, we're barely here at all, I wanted to tell her, rolling over, looking into her face, we're barely here at all and everything goes so fast can't you just kiss me? My eyes were shut and the cars sounded close when they passed. The sun was weak but it baked the grime on my skin and made it smell delicious. A little kid smell. We sat up to pop some candy into our mouths, and then Joey lay her head on my lap, spent from sugar and coffee. Her arm curled back around me and my fingers fell into her slippery hair. On the February sidewalk that felt like spring.