Personalized Picture Frames With Quotes

No respect for beauty – that was characteristic of today’s society. The works of the great masters were at most employed as ironic references, or used in advertising. Michelangelo’s ‘The Creation of Adam’, where you see a pair of jeans in place of the spark. The whole point of the picture, at least as he saw it, was that these two monumental bodies each came to an end in two index fingers that almost, but not quite, touched. There was a space between them a millimetre or so wide. And in this space – life. The sculptural size and richness of detail of this picture was simply a frame, a backdrop, to emphasise the crucial void in its centre. The point of emptiness that contained everything. And in its place a person had superimposed a pair of jeans.

There is no canonical way to think of our own past. In the endless quest for order and structure, we grasp at whatever picture is floating by and put our past into its frame.

During those times, they'd stand there watching me watching them. I'd pray, please. Put a pillow to my face. Clench a hand around my throat. Stab me. Shoot me. Put me out of everyone's misery. Why did you give birth to such a loser? Why didn't you admit I was hopeless and fat and stop trying to make me fit in? This world wasn't meant for me. I was born too soon or too late. Too defective. I wish I could tell my parents, "If you want to help me, help me die." I wonder, Are they required to fill out a 24-hour suicide watch form? Is the Defect at home? Check. Is It alive? Check. Why did they bother with the constructive surgery on my throat anyway? Waste of money. They threw away or hid from me everything with sharp edges or breakables. Picture frames. Pottery. Did they think they could suicide-proof this place? I want to tell them, "Chip, Kim, there is no way to suicide-proof a person

Fumbling in the dark, Josie reached underneath the frame of her bed for the plastic bag she’d stashed-her supply of sleeping pills. She was no better than any of the other stupid people in this world who thought if they pretended hard enough, they could make it so. She’d thought that death could be an answer, because she was too immature to realize it was the biggest question of all. Yesterday, she hadn’t known what patterns blood could make when it sprayed on a whitewashed wall. She hadn’t understood that life left a person’s lungs first, and their eyes last. She had pictured suicide as a final statement, a fuck you to the people who hadn’t understood how hard it was for her to be the Josie they wanted her to be. She’d somehow thought that if she killed herself, she’d be able to watch everyone else’s reaction; that she’d get the last laugh. Until yesterday, she hadn’t really understood. Dead was dead. When you died, you did not get to come back and see what you were missing. You didn’t get to apologize. You didn’t get a second chance. Death wasn’t something you could control. In fact, it would always have the upper hand.

When I arrived home from Boston, I realized there were no pictures on my mantel. I set down my suitcase and walked into the living room and looked across to the fireplace, and it felt empty. Empty of real stories. I went to my bedroom where the bed was made, and on my desk there were no pictures in frames and on the end tables there were no pictures. There was a framed picture of Yankee Stadium above the toilet in the bathroom, and there was some art I’d picked up in my travels, but there was little evidence of an actual character living an actual life. My home felt like a stage on which props had been set for a face story rather than a place where a person lived an actual human narrative. It’s an odd feeling to be awakened from a life of fantasy. You stand there looking at a bare mantel and the house gets an eerie feel, as though it were haunted by a kind of nothingness, an absence of something that could have been, an absence of people who could have been living here, interacting with me, forcing me out of my daydreams. I stood for a while and heard the voices of children who didn’t exist and felt the tender touch of a wife who wanted me to listen to her. I felt, at once, the absent glory of a life that could have been.

But even while Rome is burning, there’s somehow time for shopping at IKEA. Social imperatives are a merciless bitch. Everyone is attempting to buy what no one can sell.  See, when I moved out of the house earlier this week, trawling my many personal belongings in large bins and boxes and fifty-gallon garbage bags, my first inclination was, of course, to purchase the things I still “needed” for my new place. You know, the basics: food, hygiene products, a shower curtain, towels, a bed, and umm … oh, I need a couch and a matching leather chair and a love seat and a lamp and a desk and desk chair and another lamp for over there, and oh yeah don’t forget the sideboard that matches the desk and a dresser for the bedroom and oh I need a coffeetable and a couple end tables and a TV-stand for the TV I still need to buy, and don’t these look nice, whadda you call ’em, throat pillows? Oh, throw pillows. Well that makes more sense. And now that I think about it I’m going to want my apartment to be “my style,” you know: my own motif, so I need certain decoratives to spruce up the decor, but wait, what is my style exactly, and do these stainless-steel picture frames embody that particular style? Does this replica Matisse sketch accurately capture my edgy-but-professional vibe? Exactly how “edgy” am I? What espresso maker defines me as a man? Does the fact that I’m even asking these questions mean I lack the dangling brass pendulum that’d make me a “man’s man”? How many plates/cups/bowls/spoons should a man own? I guess I need a diningroom table too, right? And a rug for the entryway and bathroom rugs (bath mats?) and what about that one thing, that thing that’s like a rug but longer? Yeah, a runner; I need one of those, and I’m also going to need…

And yet out of the thousands of pictures that Navidson took, there not exist a single frame without a person in it. Navidson never snapped scenery. People mattered most to him, whether soldiers, lepers, medics, or newlyweds eating dinner at a trattoria in Rome, or even a family of tailors swimming alone at some sandy cove north of Rio. Navidson religiously studied others. The world around only mattered because people lived there and sometimes, in spite of the pain, tragedy and degradation, even managed to triumph there.

There was a muffled tap again, and I heard a familiar voice whisper faintly, “Kelsey, it’s me.” I unlocked the door and peeked out. Ren was standing there dressed in his white clothes, barefoot, with a triumphant grin on his face. I pulled him inside and hissed out thickly, “What are you doing here? It’s dangerous coming into town! You could have been seen, and they’d send hunters out after you!” He shrugged his shoulders and grinned. “I missed you.” My mouth quirked up in a half smile. “I missed you too.” He leaned a shoulder nonchalantly against the doorframe. “Does that mean you’ll let me stay here? I’ll sleep on the floor and leave before daylight. No one will see me. I promise.” I let out a deep breath. “Okay, but promise you’ll leave early. I don’t like you risking yourself like this.” “I promise.” He sat down on the bed, took my hand, and pulled me down to sit beside him. “I don’t like sleeping in the dark jungle by myself.” “I wouldn’t either.” He looked down at our entwined hands. “When I’m with you, I feel like a man again. When I’m out there all alone, I feel like a beast, an animal.” His eyes darted up to mine. I squeezed his hand. “I understand. It’s fine. Really.” He grinned. “You were hard to track, you know. Lucky for me you two decided to walk to dinner, so I could follow your scent right to your door.” Something on the nightstand caught his attention. Leaning around me, he reached over and picked up my open journal. I had drawn a new picture of a tiger-my tiger. My circus drawings were okay, but this latest one was more personal and full of life. Ren stared at it for a moment while a bright crimson flush colored my cheeks. He traced the tiger with his finger, and then whispered gently, "Someday, I'll give you a portrait of the real me." Setting the journal down carefully, he took both of my hands in his, turned to me with an intense expression, and said, "I don't want you to see only a tiger when you look at me. I want you to see me. The man." Reaching out, he almost touched my cheek but he stopped and withdrew his hand. "I've worn the tiger's face for far too many years. He's stolen my humanity." I nodded while he squeezed my hands and whispered quietly, "Kells, I don't want to be him anymore. I want to be me. I want to have a life." "I know," I said softly. I reached up to stroke his cheek. "Ren, I-" I froze in place as he pulled my hand slowly down to his lips and kissed my palm. My hand tingled. His blue eyes searched my face desperately, wanting, needing something from me. I wanted to say something to reassure him. I wanted to offer him comfort. I just couldn't frame the words. His supplication stirred me. I felt a deep bond with him, a strong connection. I wanted to help him, I wanted to be his friend, and I wanted...maybe something more. I tried to identify and categorize my reactions to him. What I felt for him seemed too complicated to define, but it soon became obvious to me that the strongest emotion I felt, the one that was stirring my heart, was...love.

Uncertainty and failure might look like the end of the road to you. But uncertainty is a part of life. Facing uncertainty and failure doesn’t always make people weaker and weaker until they give up. Sometimes it wakes them up, and it’s like they can see the beauty around them for the first time. Sometimes losing everything makes you realize how little you actually need. Sometimes losing everything sends you out into the world to breathe in the air, to pick some flowery weeds, to take in a new day. Because this life is full of promise, always. It’s full of beads and dolls and chipped plates; it’s full of twinklings and twinges. It is possible to admit that life is a struggle and also embrace the fact that small things—like sons who call you and beloved dogs in framed pictures and birds that tell you to drink your fucking tea—matter. They matter a lot. Stop trying to make sense of things. You can’t think your way through this. Open your heart and drink in this glorious day. You are young, and you will find little things that will make you grateful to be alive. Believe in what you love now, with all of your heart, and you will love more and more until everything around you is love. Love yourself now, exactly as sad and scared and flawed as you are, and you will grow up and live a rich life and show up for other people, and you’ll know exactly how big that is. Let’s celebrate this moment together. There are twinklings and twinges, right here, in this moment. It is enough. Let’s find the eastern towhee.

The language we use is extremely powerful. It is the frame through which we perceive and describe ourselves and our picture of the world.

The offices were like a national holding center for the trainably banal, occupied by people who decorated their cubicles with quilted, heart-shaped picture frames and those tiny plush bears with the fierce spring grip that cling to lamps and computer terminals, personalized to read “Terri’s bear” or “I wuv you very beary much!

Brutality is boring. Over and over, hell night after hell night, the same old dumb, tedious, bestial routine: making men crawl; making men groan, hanging men from the bars; shoving men; slapping men; freezing men in the showers; running men into walls; displaying shackled fathers to their sons and sons to their fathers. And if it turned out that you'd been given the wrong man, when you were done making his life unforgettably small and nasty, you allowed him to be your janitor and pick up the other prisoners' trash. There was always another prisoner, and another. Faceless men under hoods: you stripped them of their clothes, you stripped them of their pride. There wasn't much more you could take away from them, but people are inventive: one night some soldiers took a razor to one of Saddam's former general in Tier 1A and shaved off his eyebrows. He was an old man. "He looked like a grandfather and seemed like a nice guy," Sabrina Harman said, and she had tried to console him, telling him he looked younger and slipping him a few cigarettes. Then she had to make him stand at attention facing a boom box blasting the rapper Eminem, singing about raping his mother, or committing arson, or sneering at suicides, something like that⁠—these were some of the best-selling songs in American history. "Eminem is pretty much torture all in himself, and if one person's getting tortured, everybody is, because that music's horrible," Harman said. The general maintained his bearing against the onslaught of noise. "He looked so sad," Harman said. "I felt so bad for the guy." In fact, she said, "Out of everything I saw, that's the worst." This seems implausible, or at least illogical, until you think about it. The MI block was a place where a dead guy was just a dead guy. And a guy hanging from a window frame or a guy forced to drag his nakedness over a wet concrete floor⁠—well, how could you relate to that, except maybe to take a picture? But a man who kept his chin up while you blasted him with rape anthems, and old man shorn of his eyebrows whose very presence made you think of his grandkids--you could let that get to you, especially if you had to share in his punishment: "Slut, you think I won't choke no whore / til the vocal cords don't work in her throat no more!..." or whatever the song was.

...I drag the kids to the farmers' market and fill out the week's cheap supermarket haul with a few vivid bunches of organic produce...Once home, I set out fresh flowers and put the fruit in a jadeite bowl. A jam jar of garden growth even adorns the chartreuse kids' table...I found some used toddler-sized chairs to go around it...It sits right in front of the tall bookcases...When the kids are eating or coloring there, with the cluster or mismatched picture frames hanging just to their left, my son with his mop of sandy hair, my daughter just growing out of babyhood...they look like they could be in a Scandinavian design magazine. I think to myself that maybe motherhood is just this, creating these frames, the little vistas you can take in that look like pictures from magazines, like any number of images that could be filed under familial happiness. They reflect back to you that you're doing it - doing something - right. In my case, these scenes are like a momentary vacation from the actual circumstances of my current life. Children, clean and clad in brightly striped clothing, snacking on slices of organic plum. My son drawing happy gel pen houses, the flourishing clump of smiley-faced flowers beneath a yellow flat sun. To counter the creeping worry that I am a no-good person, I must collect a lot of these images, postage-stamp moments I can gaze upon and think, I can't be fucking up that bad. Can I?

He had, he said, floated off from a very ordinary series of dream-pictures into a scene whose strangeness was related to nothing he had ever read. It was of this world, and yet not of it—a shadowy geometrical confusion in which could be seen elements of familiar things in most unfamiliar and perturbing combinations. There was a suggestion of queerly disordered pictures superimposed one upon another; an arrangement in which the essentials of time as well as of space seemed dissolved and mixed in the most illogical fashion. In this kaleidoscopic vortex of phantasmal images were occasional snapshots, if one might use the term, of singular clearness but unaccountable heterogeneity. Once my uncle thought he lay in a carelessly dug open pit, with a crowd of angry faces framed by straggling locks and three-cornered hats frowning down on him. Again he seemed to be in the interior of a house—an old house, apparently—but the details and inhabitants were constantly changing, and he could never be certain of the faces or the furniture, or even of the room itself, since doors and windows seemed in just as great a state of flux as the more presumably mobile objects. It was queer—damnably queer—and my uncle spoke almost sheepishly, as if half expecting not to be believed, when he declared that of the strange faces many had unmistakably borne the features of the Harris family. And all the while there was a personal sensation of choking, as if some pervasive presence had spread itself through his body and sought to possess itself of his vital processes.

They came in to look. I watched them. Most people go through museums like they do Macy's: eyes sweeping the display, stopping only if something really grabs their attention. These two looked at everything. They both clearly liked the bicycle picture. Yup, Dutch, I decided. He was a few steps ahead when he got to my favorite painting there. Diana and the Moon. It was-surprise surprise-of Diana, framed by a big open window, the moon dominating the sky outside. She was perched on the windowsill, dressed in a gauzy wrap that could have been nightclothes or a nod to her goddess namesake. She looked beautiful, of course, and happy, but if you looked for more than a second, you could see that her smile had a teasing curve to it and one of her hands was actually wrapped around the outside frame. I thought she looked like she might swing her legs over the sill and jump, turning into a moth or owl or breath of wind even before she was completely out of the room. I thought she looked, too, like she was daring the viewer to come along. Or at least to try. The Dutch guy didn't say anything. He just reached out a hand. His girlfriend stepped in, folding herself into the circle of his outsretched arm. They stood like that, in front of the painting, for a full minute. Then he sneezed. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a tissue.He took in and, without letting go of her, did a surprisingly graceful one-handed blow. Then he crumpled the tissue and looked around for a trash can. There wasn't one in sight. She held out her free hand; he passed over the tissue, and she stuck it right back into her pocket. I wanted to be grossed out. Instead, I had the surprising thought that I really really wanted someone who would do that: put my used Kleenex in his pocket. It seemed like a declaration of something pretty big. Finally,they finished their examination of Diana and moved on.There wasn't much else, just the arrogant Willings and the overblown sunrise. They came over to examine the bronzes. She saw my book. "Excuse me. You know this artist?" Intimately just didn't seem as true anymore. "Pretty well," I answered. "He is famous here?" "Not very." "I like him." she said thoughtfully. "He has...oh, the word...personism?" "Personality?" I offered. "Yes!" she said, delighted. "Personality." She reached behind her without looking. Her boyfriend immediately twined his fingers with hers. They left, unfolding the map again as they went, she chattering cheerfully. I think she was telling him he had personality. They might as well have had exhibit information plaques on their backs: "COUPLE." CONTEMPORARY DUTCH. COURTESY OF THE ESTATE OF LOVE, FOR THE VIEWING PLEASURE (OR NOT) OF ANYONE AND EVERYONE.

To those who have looked at Rome with the quickening power of a knowledge which breathes a growing soul into all historic shapes, and traces out the suppressed transitions which unite all contrasts, Rome may still be the spiritual centre and interpreter of the world. But let them conceive one more historical contrast: the gigantic broken revelations of that Imperial and Papal city thrust abruptly on the notions of a girl who had been brought up in English and Swiss Puritanism, fed on meagre Protestant histories and on art chiefly of the hand-screen sort; a girl whose ardent nature turned all her small allowance of knowledge into principles, fusing her actions into their mould, and whose quick emotions gave the most abstract things the quality of a pleasure or a pain; a girl who had lately become a wife, and from the enthusiastic acceptance of untried duty found herself plunged in tumultuous preoccupation with her personal lot. The weight of unintelligible Rome might lie easily on bright nymphs to whom it formed a background for the brilliant picnic of Anglo-foreign society; but Dorothea had no such defence against deep impressions. Ruins and basilicas, palaces and colossi, set in the midst of a sordid present, where all that was living and warm-blooded seemed sunk in the deep degeneracy of a superstition divorced from reverence; the dimmer but yet eager Titanic life gazing and struggling on walls and ceilings; the long vistas of white forms whose marble eyes seemed to hold the monotonous light of an alien world: all this vast wreck of ambitious ideals, sensuous and spiritual, mixed confusedly with the signs of breathing forgetfulness and degradation, at first jarred her as with an electric shock, and then urged themselves on her with that ache belonging to a glut of confused ideas which check the flow of emotion. Forms both pale and glowing took possession of her young sense, and fixed themselves in her memory even when she was not thinking of them, preparing strange associations which remained through her after-years. Our moods are apt to bring with them images which succeed each other like the magic-lantern pictures of a doze; and in certain states of dull forlornness Dorothea all her life continued to see the vastness of St. Peter's, the huge bronze canopy, the excited intention in the attitudes and garments of the prophets and evangelists in the mosaics above, and the red drapery which was being hung for Christmas spreading itself everywhere like a disease of the retina. Not that this inward amazement of Dorothea's was anything very exceptional: many souls in their young nudity are tumbled out among incongruities and left to "find their feet" among them, while their elders go about their business. Nor can I suppose that when Mrs. Casaubon is discovered in a fit of weeping six weeks after her wedding, the situation will be regarded as tragic. Some discouragement, some faintness of heart at the new real future which replaces the imaginary, is not unusual, and we do not expect people to be deeply moved by what is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.

One by one, in a methodical clockwise direction, each person gave their individual reaction to my playing of the song. The first person said he was soothed by the melody, the second that she was inspired by the words. The third person said she had felt touched as it reminded her of someone precious that she loved. And on around it went, each person telling of a different need that was met, or another way he had been touched by my song. Dr. Rosenberg said he had felt inspired because I had mucked up the song a little in one place and had kept playing and finished it. When everyone had shared, strong feelings began to pour into my body and up into my throat. Gratitude and relief? No. Joy? No. Sorrow. Great sorrow, for all the years that I had not been playing. For all the people that could have been touched or inspired, had I given them the chance. For all the attention and connection I could have received but did not. As the sorrow eventually subsided like a passing rainstorm, warm powerful rays of sunny resolution began to radiate in my heart. It was a resolution and a clarity of commitment to myself to “perfect my selfishness.” In a moment, I saw how playing the miserable martyr’s role, sacrificing my passion to avoid disturbing other people, had too high a price. It also ripped other people off, by denying them what I had to give them. I swore then and there that I was not going to do that to me again. I Don’t Want To Do That To Me Again by Ruth Bebermeyer No use wasting life saying that I should have known better. No use wasting time regretting what has been. I just know I felt uneasy and I couldn’t settle down, Like my picture couldn’t fit into that frame. And I don’t, don’t want to do that to me again. No use wishing now that I had not had to learn this way. No use wasting time regretting what has been. I just know I wasn’t easy and I wasn’t who I am, But I guess I had to do it to see plain. And I don’t want to do that to me again. I just want to go on singing the same tune I’m playing. I want my self and my doing all the same. And I want to walk in rhythm to the beat of my own soul. When I’m out of step with me I’m into pain. And I don’t don’t want to do that to me again. The Treasure of Transparency Recently I held a potluck dinner at my house for a group of friends, most of whom had been learning and practicing the techniques of Nonviolent Communication. After we had finished eating, a woman asked if the group would like to hear a story she wrote. At first no one answered, but then a couple of people asked how long the story was and whether the essence of it could just be told to them. Finally an agreement was reached about how the gift of the story could be given so that the group’s needs for connecting with each other and relaxing at the party could also be met. I was struck by how rare it is in this culture for individuals

...I conducted a number of experiments to get in touch with my future self. Here are my favorite three: • Fire up AgingBooth. While hiring a programmer to create a 3-D virtual reality simulator is probably out of your price range, I personally love an app called AgingBooth, which transforms a picture of your face into what you will look like in several decades. There are also other apps like it, like Merrill Edge’s web app that shows you a live avatar of what you’ll look like at retirement (faceretirement.merilledge.com). AgingBooth is my favorite of them all, and it’s available for both Android and iOS, and it’s free. On the website for this book (productivityprojectbook.com), you can see what to expect out of the app—I’ve framed a picture of myself that hangs above my computer in my office, where I see it every day. Visitors are usually freaked out. • Send a letter to your future self. Like the letter I wrote at camp, writing and sending a letter to yourself in the future is a great way to bridge the gap between you and your future self. I frequently use FutureMe.org to send emails to myself in the future, particularly when I see myself being unfair to future me. • Create a future memory. I’m not a fan of hocus-pocus visualizations, so I hope this doesn’t sound like one. In her brilliant book The Wallpaper Instinct, Kelly McGonigal recommends creating a memory of yourself in the future—like one where you don’t put off a report you’re procrastinating on, or one where you read ten interesting books because you staved off the temptation of binge-watching three seasons of House of Cards on Netflix. Simply imagining a better, more productive version of yourself down the line has been shown to be enough to motivate you to act in ways that are helpful for your future self.

Doom, meanwhile, had a long-term impact on the world of gaming far exceeding even that of Myst. The latest of a series of experiments with interactive 3D graphics by id programmer John Carmack, Doom shares with Myst only its immersive first-person point of view; in all other respects, this fast-paced, ultraviolent shooter is the polar opposite of the cerebral Myst. Whereas the world of Myst is presented as a collection of static nodes that the player can move among, each represented by a relatively static picture of its own, the world of Doom is contiguous. As the player roams about, Doom must continually recalculate in real time the view of the world that it presents to her on the screen, in effect drawing for her a completely new picture with every frame using a vastly simplified version of the 3D-rendering techniques that Eric Graham began experimenting with on the Amiga back in 1986. First-person viewpoints had certainly existed in games previously, but mostly in the context of flight simulators, of puzzle-oriented adventures such as Myst, or of space-combat games such as Elite. Doom has a special quality that those earlier efforts lack in that the player embodies her avatar as she moves through 3D space in a way that feels shockingly, almost physically real. She does not view the world through a windscreen, is not separated from it by an adventure game’s point-and-click mechanics and static artificiality. Doom marks a revolutionary change in action gaming, the most significant to come about between the videogame’s inception and the present. If the player directs the action in a game such as Menace, Doom makes her feel as if she is in the action, in the game’s world. Given the Amiga platform’s importance as a tool for noninteractive 3D rendering, it is ironic that the Amiga is uniquely unsuited to Doom and the many iterations and clones of it that would follow. Most of the Amiga attributes that we employed in the Menace reconstruction—its scrolling playfields, its copper, its sprites—are of no use to a 3D-engine programmer. Indeed, the Intel-based machines on which Carmack created Doom possess none of these features. Even the Amiga’s bitplane-based playfields, the source of so many useful graphical tricks and hacks when programming a 2D game such as Menace, are an impediment and annoyance in a game such as Doom. Much preferable are the Intel-based machines’ straightforward chunky playfields because these layouts are much easier to work with when every frame of video must be drawn afresh from scratch. What is required most of all for a game such as Doom is sufficient raw processing power to perform the necessary thousands of calculations needed to render each frame quickly enough to support the frenetic action for which the game is known. By 1993, the plebian Intel-based computer, so long derided by Amiga owners for its inefficiencies and lack of design imagination, at last possessed this raw power. The Amiga simply had no answer to the Intel 80486s and Pentiums that powered this new, revolutionary genre of first-person shooters. Throughout

A person who has found his or her True Self has learned how to live in the big picture, as a part of deep time and all of history. This change of frame and venue is called living in “the kingdom of God” by Jesus, and it is indeed a major about-face.

Change in fashion is simply the expression of an awakened intellect, groping in small things as in great for something better than it has known; and the use for a manual of fashion, such as we offer is, not to dictate to women any rule which they must blindly follow, but to afford such knowledge of varying costumes, and the manner of making them, that each may clothe herself appropriately, according to her appearance of age, or even mood. Why should not a woman's purity of mind, her quick eye for color, her aesthetic sense of fitness, be disclosed in her attire as well as in the pictures on her walls or her garden? Very few of us will ever carve a great statue, or paint a great picture but we all have clothes to wear; and it is a duty we owe to ourselves and those around us, to so drape the bodies that God has given us, as to make no discord in this beautiful, pleasant world. All of us have friends, or, it may be, children, with whom we would have a fair and tender memory. Carelessness and bad taste in dress, so far from being indicative of strength of mind, argues a certain vulgarity of feeling, just as vanity and foppery, on the other hand, prove a weak brain. Wise men or women make their dress so thoroughly in accordance with their person and character, that nobody notices it any more than the frame of a picture; but to be clothed shabbily, in the hopes that our inner perfections will overshadow our dress, is but the extreme of vanity. Peterson's Magazine, June 1873

Piers Morgan Piers Morgan is a British journalist best known for his editorial work for the Daily Mirror from 1995 through 2004. He is also a successful author and television personality whose recent credits include a recurring role as a judge on NBC’s America’s Got Talent. A controversial member of the tabloid press during Diana’s lifetime, Piers Morgan established a uniquely close relationship with the Princess during the 1990s. Lunch with Diana. A big day--a massive, humongous day, in fact. I got there ten minutes early, feeling decidedly nervous. The Kensington Palace front door was opened by her beaming butler. He walked me up the stairs, chatting cheerfully about the weather and my journey, as if a tabloid editor prowling around Diana’s home was a perfectly normal occurrence. He said that the “Boss” was running a bit late, joking that “she’ll be furious you are here first!” and invited me to have a drink. “What does she have?” I asked. “Water, usually,” he replied, “but wouldn’t you rather have a nice glass of wine? She won’t mind in the slightest.” I readily agreed, if only to calm my racing heartbeat. He then left me alone in the suitably regal sitting room. Diana had a perfectly normal piano covered in perfectly normal family snaps. It’s just that this family was the most photographed on the planet. Lots of pictures of her boys, the young heirs, perhaps the men who will kill off, or secure, the very future of the monarchy. To us, they were just soap opera stars, semi-real figments of tabloid headlines and the occasional palace balcony wave. But here they were, her boys, in picture frames, like any other adored sons. Just sitting in her private room was fascinating. Her magazines lay on the table, from Vogue to Hello, as well as her newspapers--the Daily Mail at the top of the pile, obviously, if distressingly. After I had spent ten minutes on my own, she swept in, gushing: “I’m so sorry to have kept you, Piers. I hope Paul has been looking after you all right.” And then came what was surely one of the most needless requests of all time: “Would you mind awfully if William joins us for lunch? He’s on an exeat from Eton, and I just thought that given you are a bit younger than most editors, it might be good for both of you to get to know each other.” “I’m sorry, but that would be terribly inconvenient,” I replied sternly. Diana blushed slightly and started a stuttering “Yes, of course, I’m so sorry…” apology, when I burst out laughing. “Yes, ma’am, I think I can stretch to allowing the future king to join us for lunch.” The absurdity of this conversation held no apparent bounds.

There was a framed photograph hung on the wall in front of me, and when I said your name I saw you in the picture. Well, I saw your back, and your ling, bright ponytail fluttering. The image is black and white, and you're running, and you cast a number of shadows that cluster about you like a bouquet. There's a figure running a little ahead of you and at first that figure seems to be a shadow too, except that it casts a backward glance that establishes an entirely separate personality. The figure's features are wooden, but mobile-some sort of sprite moves within, not gently, but convulsively. A beauty that rattles you until you're in tears, that was my introduction to Rowan Wayland. You and the puppet-I decided it was a puppet- were leaping through an open door, and in the corner of that distant room was a cupboard, fallen onto its side There was a sign on the cupboard door. (I tilted my head: The sign read TOYS.) It's a photo in which lines abruptly draw back from each other and the ceilings and floors spin off in different directions, but for all the world that's pictured doesn't seem to be ending. You were both running in place, you blurred around the edges, and the puppet hardly blurred at all, and the puppet was looking back, not at you, but at me. It felt like the two of you were running for your lives, for fear I'd take them Or you could've been racing eaxh other home. TOYS, the sign reads, but signs aren't guarantees. Either way I wanted to go too, and wished the puppet would hold out its hand to me, or beckon me, or do something more than return my gaze with that strange tolerance

A Professional Image The image you project begins with the first phone call you make. If you feel some initial anxiety, remind yourself that other people are calling too; you are entitled to inquire as well. Be professional, giving your name and the reason for your call, and then ask the name of the appropriate person to contact. At smaller establishments, the person who answers the phone may well be the person doing the hiring, so you should project a professional image from the outset. Your phone manner, including language, tone of voice, and level of assertiveness, is reflected even in a short telephone conversation. That first phone call is what may or may not get you in the door for an interview. If you don’t conduct yourself professionally, that may be as far as it goes. For example, I once received a phone call from someone interested in a position I had advertised. The man who called about the job—who may not have realized that “the boss” himself would answer the phone—was eating as he spoke to me. If he cared so little about the position that he could not make the effort to behave professionally, how would he act on the job? It wasn’t worth my time to find out! To prepare yourself mentally for the initial phone call, determine first of all how you would like to be perceived. This behavior rehearsal exercise will help to put you in the proper frame of mind for making the call. Sit back in a comfortable chair, close your eyes, take a deep breath . . . let go. Now, use the TV screen in your head to picture yourself making the phone call. See, hear, smell, touch the scene. See yourself being confident, communicating clearly, and receiving a favorable response. Above all, you are relaxed and natural.

I’d like to share with you a parable: the parable of Bob the Angel. A girl was walking down a darkly lit city street late at night. A man jumped out from the shadows and attacked her, suddenly she was suffocating and disoriented as hands clasped around her neck and the force of his attack started to push her down. She tried to yell as she struggled to pull his arms from her neck while she crumpled backwards to the ground, “God . . . help me!” The next thing she remembers—just as the fear consumed her, and right as she disappeared into the misery and despair of helplessness—was a loud crash and an explosion of glass which rained down upon her and her attacker. The assailant’s lifeless body was suspended above her, held from collapsing on her by an unknown force, and then pulled away from hovering over her and dropped onto the pavement beside her. She opened her eyes in the faint shadowy light, to see black matted hair and a long, black beard framing the eyes of a man. The smell of alcohol on his breath would have knocked her out if the adrenaline was not still trilling through her veins. There he stood, God’s angel, off-kilter and drunk, with a broken whiskey bottle in his hand. “You probably shouldn’t be walking through here this late at night,” was all he said as he turned away. “Wait! What’s your name?” she asked, still stunned half sitting up on the ground. All she heard as he walked away was his trailing voice calling, “Bob’s as good as any. . . .” An angel is a messenger, and sometimes we only want letters sent in white envelopes with beautiful gold print, when sometimes a simple “no” on the back of a gum wrapper is what we are offered. Every postcard from heaven does not come with a picture of the sunset there, nor should it. If it is an answer we want, an answer we will get. As far as pretty postcards, there are many others willing to send us that. If not harps and gold-tipped wings, what then is the mark of an angel? An answer which pierces your soul, and which inspires a question that invites you to look outside of yourself and up to God. God is very objective; He wants to make us think, to engage the faculties we have been given, and to learn from the messengers he sends us. He wants us in the ark before the flood; he could come himself—or send a Noah—but most of the time he sends Bob. Bob is in you, Bob is in me, Bob is in the emotionalized, sarcastic, mocking, patronizing, proud or foolish person which points out meaningful things to us in the worst possible moments, or in the worst possible way.

age. Andrew had once shown us pictures of his mother as a young woman: young Andrea McDougal at the 1921 Ashes, a toothy smile framed by blonde curls, white skin bright even in the sepia photograph. Thomas had said that she had been, in her time, “a tall drink of water.” I wouldn’t admit this to Thom or anybody else but personally I thought Lady Fife was actually more striking now. She seemed more serious, no more toothy grins, her curls pinned back in a no-nonsense style, but she had a knowing quality that I couldn’t help but be drawn to. Lady Fife came to us, smiling. Her smile dropped when she saw the shattered statue. Whispers stated that Andrea McDougal was a scryer, a foreseer, a practitioner of the illegal art of divination. I was grimly pleased that she seemed surprised by this turn of events. Next to me the maid sucked in her breath through clenched teeth. I certainly didn’t envy her having Lady Fife as a mistress. I might have had to deal with her frosty acquaintance, but we were merely that—acquaintances. The laws of decorum demanded that we be polite and civil to each other regardless of our

A sensitive and honest-minded man, if he’s concerned about evil and injustice in the world, will naturally begin his campaign against them by eliminating them at their nearest source: his own person. This task will take his entire life. Everything, for us, is in our concept of the world. To modify our concept of the world is to modify the world for us, or simply to modify the world, since it will never be, for us, anything but what it is for us. That inner justice we summon to write a fluent and beautiful page, that true reformation of enlivening our dead sensibility – these things are the truth, our truth, the only truth. Everything else in the world is scenery, picture frames for our feelings, book bindings for our thoughts.

see,” she said. I noticed her looking around the room. Her eyes quickly went over the rustic wood paneling and expensive artwork by artists with names I couldn’t pronounce. Bethany bought them because she thought they were cool. If push came to shove, they would be the first things I put up for auction to raise money. I hated the damn things. “I don’t see any pictures of your daughter,” she said, letting her eyes settle on me with a frown. I looked around the room. She was right. There was not a single framed picture of my daughter. In fact, there were no personal photos at all. None in the den, none in my office, and none in my bedroom. There had once been lots of pictures of Bethany and me at various stages of our relationship. I had thrown them in the trash long ago, expensive frames and all.

English and half Nigerian, Stacey had never set foot outside the United Kingdom. Her tight black hair was cut short and close to her head following the removal of her last weave. The smooth caramel skin suited the haircut well. Stacey’s work area was organised and clear. Anything not in the labelled trays was stacked in meticulous piles along the top edge of her desk. Not far behind was Detective Sergeant Bryant who mumbled a ‘Morning, Guv,’ as he glanced into The Bowl. His six foot frame looked immaculate, as though he had been dressed for Sunday school by his mother. Immediately the suit jacket landed on the back of his chair. By the end of the day his tie would have dropped a couple of floors, the top button of his shirt would be open and his shirt sleeves would be rolled up just below his elbows. She saw him glance at her desk, seeking evidence of a coffee mug. When he saw that she already had coffee he filled the mug labelled ‘World’s Best Taxi Driver’, a present from his nineteen-year-old daughter. His filing was not a system that anyone else understood but Kim had yet to request any piece of paper that was not in her hands within a few seconds. At the top of his desk was a framed picture of himself and his wife taken at their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. A picture of his daughter snuggled in his wallet. DS Kevin Dawson, the third member of her team, didn’t keep a photo of anyone special on his desk. Had he wanted to display a picture of the person for whom he felt most affection he would have been greeted by his own likeness throughout his working day. ‘Sorry I’m late, Guv,’ Dawson called as he slid into his seat opposite Wood and completed her team. He wasn’t officially late. The shift didn’t start until eight a.m. but she liked them all in early for a briefing, especially at the beginning of a new case. Kim didn’t like to stick to a roster and people who did lasted a very short time on her team. ‘Hey, Stacey, you gonna get me a coffee or what?’ Dawson asked, checking his mobile phone. ‘Of course, Kev, how’d yer like it: milk, two sugars and in yer lap?’ she asked sweetly, in her strong Black Country accent.

That’s what it all comes down to in the end,” he said. “A person spends his life saying good-bye to other people. How does he say good-bye to himself?” I threw away picture-frame wire, metal bookends, cork coasters, plastic key tags, dusty bottles of Mercurochrome and Vaseline, crusted paintbrushes, caked shoe brushes, clotted correction fluid. I threw away candle stubs, laminated placemats, frayed pot holders. I went after the padded clothes hangers, the magnetic memo clipboards. I was in a vengeful and near savage state. I bore a personal grudge against these things. Somehow they’d put me in this fix. They’d dragged me down, made escape impossible.

The only sounds at the late hour were the faint jingle of a phone ringing in the nurses’ station, the ping of an elevator, the faraway sound of the wheels of a cart, and the gentle beep of Brandon’s vital signs monitor. They wouldn’t allow any flowers or personal items in the ICU, but Sloan had snuck in an engagement photo. It sat on the table next to the bed. Her and Brandon on the beach, the surf crashing around their feet, her tattooed arm over his shoulder, them looking at each other. Both of them laughing. I looked back at him and sighed. “You’re going to have some gnarly scars, buddy.” They’d started the skin grafts for the road rash on his arm. “But you’ll get to do everything you planned to do with your life. One of us is going to get the girl. I’ll help you any way I can. Even if I have to wheel your ass to the altar.” I could picture his smile. With any luck I’d see it in a few hours. A knock on the door frame turned me around in my chair. “Hey, cutie.” Valerie came into the room for her vitals check. She turned the lights up, and I stood and stretched. As if sleeping in a chair wasn’t hard enough, the activity every two hours was the final kicker. I wouldn’t call anything I did on these overnight shifts sleeping. Maybe napping, but not sleeping. Every two hours Brandon was moved. They checked his airways, changed out bags, looked at his vitals. I don’t know how Sloan was handling doing this almost nightly for the last three weeks. Sloan was a good woman. I’d always liked her, but now she’d earned my respect, and I was grateful Brandon and Kristen had her. “Did you decide what day you want to bring the kids to the station?” I asked Valerie, yawning. She cycled the blood pressure cuff on Brandon’s arm and smiled. “I’m thinking Tuesday. You on shift Tuesday?” “Yup.” She wrote down some notes on Brandon’s chart and then gave me a raised eyebrow. “Any updates with your lady friend?” I laughed a little. “No.” The whole nursing staff knew about my depressing love life. I’d gotten hit on a few too many times by some of the younger nurses. I couldn’t claim to have a girlfriend, and I wasn’t married, so it was either “I’m gay” or “I’m in love with that girl over there.” I’d gone with the latter, and now I wished I’d said I was gay. They didn’t know why Kristen wouldn’t date me, just that she wouldn’t. It had turned into the favorite topic of the ICU. A real-life episode of Grey’s Anatomy. I rarely got through a Brandon visit without it coming up. The drama escalated when Kristen had been hit on by the nurses’ favorite single orthopedic surgeon. According to the nurses’ gossip circuit, Kristen told him to go fuck himself. And apparently she’d actually said, “Go fuck yourself.” After that everyone was sure she was holding out for me. Only I knew better.

When we reached the last room, I asked Katy which picture was her favorite. She led me back to the one that had stumped her in the synonym department. Her sister, Emily, who’s fourteen and had been off wandering through the Met’s collection of European paintings, then showed me her favorite piece in the museum: a Monet water lily (the first she’d ever seen) from 1919. This is when I let each girl in on a secret: It can be yours. No different from falling in love with a song, one may fall in love with a work of art and claim it as one’s own. Ownership does not come free. One must spend time with it; visit at different times of the day or evening; and bring to it one’s full attention. The investment will be repaid as one discovers something new with each viewing—say, a detail in the background, a person nearly cropped from the picture frame, or a tiny patch of canvas left unpainted, deliberately so, one may assume, as if to remind you not to take all the painted parts for granted. This is true not just for New Yorkers but for anyone anywhere with art to be visited—art being a relative term, in my definition. Your Monet may, in fact, be an unpolished gemstone or mineral element. Natural history museums are filled with beauties fairly begging to be adopted. Stay alert. Next time a tattered Egyptian mummy speaks to you across the ages, don’t walk away. Stay awhile. Spend some time with it. Give it a proper name: Yours. But don’t be hasty. You must be sure you are besotted. When it happens, you will know.

There are a series of philosophical problems known as Zeno’s paradoxes. One of them says that as you attempt to leave a room, you must first reach the midpoint between you and the exit. As you continue toward the doorway, you will again reach the new midpoint, with each successive attempt to exit the room requiring you to reach the next midpoint. The paradox is that you should be unable to leave a room because you can infinitely halve the distance to the exit without ever getting out of the room. You may often feel like you are the person trying to leave the room when facing tasks on your Daily To-Do List inasmuch as it seems as though you can never get them started. We use the Zeno’s paradox example to illustrate that most tasks you will encounter can be broken down into ever-smaller component steps. More importantly, taking the right first step on a task gives you the sense that “I can do this,” a seemingly small matter that holds big rewards. When setting out your priority tasks, you will encounter some undertakings that activate a sense of dread, an overwhelmed feeling, or thoughts that you cannot deal with them. Rather than automatically avoiding them (“I can’t handle this now!”), the first step is to consider what you want to accomplish and if your task, at least as you currently think of it, is too big or vague. The overall objective is still important, such as “organize my room” or “work on paper for school,” but framed in such broad terms it is hard to picture a way to get started.

I threw away picture-frame wire, metal bookends, cork coasters, plastic key tags, dusty bottles of Mercurochrome and Vaseline, crusted paintbrushes, caked shoe brushes, clotted correction fluid. I threw away candle stubs, laminated placemats, frayed pot holders. I went after the padded clothes hangers, the magnetic memo clipboards. I was in a vengeful and near savage state. I bore a personal grudge against these things. Somehow they’d put me in this fix. They’d dragged me down, made escape impossible. The two girls followed me around, observing a respectful silence. I threw away my battered khaki canteen, my ridiculous hip boots. I threw away diplomas, certificates, awards and citations. When the girls stopped me, I was working the bathrooms, discarding used bars of soap, damp towels, shampoo bottles with streaked labels and missing caps.

Being general, the categories never address us as individuals. At best our individuality is lost in the generality. At worst, it is contradicted and denied. Such categories force us to lie on their Procrustean bed, and anything about us that doesn't fit they lop off. They trim the picture of our personalities to fit their mass-produced frames.

Eve taught me to look at the overall picture, to read the cards as art and intuition as much as a science. Women were more in touch with that innate sense than men. Women resonated with the cards. Rather than read the cards in order, I let the entire pattern seep in. I understood the 8 of Clubs and the Ace of Spades. The Queen of Diamonds, I sensed, would be a real person to provide the essentials of life. Then my heart sank when I saw the two Jacks, the Pretenders, the Liars who would upset my balance on the one hand, and try to exert power over me on the other. They framed the 2 of hearts. The Jacks would jeopardize my love life. I’d have to be wary in that domain. It had been quite a while since I had taken a lover. With this news, I would wait. I’d return to New York City, and meet two people who would be my Ace and my Queen. I took the calendar from the wall near the telephone, and sat down on Nestor’s chair. I stared at it, unbelieving; it had been six months since Nestor’s passing. I had spent half a year sorting through Nestor’s things, working, making no new friends, and taking no lovers. I had performed my duties, including marking the calendar mechanically. I operated in a daze. Several people had asked me if they could help. I didn’t understand, but now I knew. I had lost all sense of time and of myself, and I needed to rejoin life. My nineteenth birthday was just six months away. I would stay in Key West until then. In the interim, I would decide what I wanted to keep from Nestor’s legacy and, as he wished, place the rest.

When a house is personalized, buyers feel like they're intruding into another's den. Instead, mimic a model home. Pictures of the wedding, fridge magnets from the Jamaican honeymoon, and the thousand frames of Junior's grin gotta go.

I’m going to visit you every day. And then someday, when they find a way to reverse your condition scientifically, medically, we’ll buy some land with wonderful trees and build treehouses in every one of them. And we could have a bunch of kids, and read plays together, as a family, and on clear nights, we’ll look at the stars. Can you picture it? And if you decide you don’t want kids, Totally okay, totally fine. We’ll read every book and watch every show and sleep in and travel and make money and art and love all the time, whenever we want. Or we could adopt a couple big dogs. You’ve always wanted big dogs, right?” Lewis stared at her blankly as his tail swished in the surf behind him. “Why aren’t you saying anything? Please say something,” Wren begged, clutching him harder. “I’m not the person I used to be. I’m not the man you married.” “What do you mean?” Lewis wished he could embrace her back, wrap two human arms around her small, shivering frame. He tried to do the best he could with words: “It’s like standing in my childhood bedroom, looking around at the comic books, action figures, and school yearbooks with signatures from all the girls, and remembering how that tiny room used to be my only stake in the world. I don’t know how else to explain it. There are things I cannot unsee.