Physically Tired Quotes

Role models who push us to exceed our limits, physical training that removes our spare tires, and risks that expand our sphere of comfortable action are all examples of eustress—stress that is healthful and the stimulus for growth.

We must pray when prayer seems dry as dust; we must write when we are physically tired, when our hearts are heavy, when our bodies are in pain.

People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.

To the untrained eye ego-climbing and selfless climbing may appear identical. Both kinds of climbers place one foot in front of the other. Both breathe in and out at the same rate. Both stop when tired. Both go forward when rested. But what a difference! The ego-climber is like an instrument that’s out of adjustment. He puts his foot down an instant too soon or too late. He’s likely to miss a beautiful passage of sunlight through the trees. He goes on when the sloppiness of his step shows he’s tired. He rests at odd times. He looks up the trail trying to see what’s ahead even when he knows what’s ahead because he just looked a second before. He goes too fast or too slow for the conditions and when he talks his talk is forever about somewhere else, something else. He’s here but he’s not here. He rejects the here, he’s unhappy with it, wants to be farther up the trail but when he gets there will be just as unhappy because then *it* will be “here”. What he’s looking for, what he wants, is all around him, but he doesn’t want that because it *is* all around him. Every step’s an effort, both physically and spiritually, because he imagines his goal to be external and distant.

I see how it is,” I snapped. “You were all in favor of me breaking the tattoo and thinking on my own—but that’s only okay if it’s convenient for you, huh? Just like your ‘loving from afar’ only works if you don’t have an opportunity to get your hands all over me. And your lips. And . . . stuff.” Adrian rarely got mad, and I wouldn’t quite say he was now. But he was definitely exasperated. “Are you seriously in this much self-denial, Sydney? Like do you actually believe yourself when you say you don’t feel anything? Especially after what’s been happening between us?” “Nothing’s happening between us,” I said automatically. “Physical attraction isn’t the same as love. You of all people should know that.” “Ouch,” he said. His expression hadn’t changed, but I saw hurt in his eyes. I’d wounded him. “Is that what bothers you? My past? That maybe I’m an expert in an area you aren’t?” “One I’m sure you’d just love to educate me in. One more girl to add to your list of conquests.” He was speechless for a few moments and then held up one finger. “First, I don’t have a list.” Another finger, “Second, if I did have a list, I could find someone a hell of lot less frustrating to add to it.” For the third finger, he leaned toward me. “And finally, I know that you know you’re no conquest, so don’t act like you seriously think that. You and I have been through too much together. We’re too close, too connected. I wasn’t that crazy on spirit when I said you’re my flame in the dark. We chase away the shadows around each other. Our backgrounds don’t matter. What we have is bigger than that. I love you, and beneath all that logic, calculation, and superstition, I know you love me too. Running away and fleeing all your problems isn’t going to change that. You’re just going to end up scared and confused.” “I already feel that way,” I said quietly. Adrian moved back and leaned into his seat, looking tired. “Well, that’s the most accurate thing you’ve said so far.” I grabbed the basket and jerked open the car door. Without another word, I stormed off, refusing to look back in case he saw the tears that had inexplicably appeared in my eyes. Only, I wasn’t sure exactly which part of our conversation I was most upset about.

But I can tell you this, Mr. James, I refuse to be treated with disrespect." "Disrespect?" Burnett growled. And then everything went to hell. Burnett and Hayden exchanged colourful verbal blows. According to Hayden, Burnett was a prick, and according to Burnett, Hayden was an overconfident jerk who had lied. She didn't know if she felt confident the tension wouldn't elevate to physical blows, or if she was simply too tired to care anymore. If they broke each other's noses, so be it.

How are you coming with your home library? Do you need some good ammunition on why it's so important to read? The last time I checked the statistics...I think they indicated that only four percent of the adults in this country have bought a book within the past year. That's dangerous. It's extremely important that we keep ourselves in the top five or six percent. In one of the Monthly Letters from the Royal Bank of Canada it was pointed out that reading good books is not something to be indulged in as a luxury. It is a necessity for anyone who intends to give his life and work a touch of quality. The most real wealth is not what we put into our piggy banks but what we develop in our heads. Books instruct us without anger, threats and harsh discipline. They do not sneer at our ignorance or grumble at our mistakes. They ask only that we spend some time in the company of greatness so that we may absorb some of its attributes. You do not read a book for the book's sake, but for your own. You may read because in your high-pressure life, studded with problems and emergencies, you need periods of relief and yet recognize that peace of mind does not mean numbness of mind. You may read because you never had an opportunity to go to college, and books give you a chance to get something you missed. You may read because your job is routine, and books give you a feeling of depth in life. You may read because you did go to college. You may read because you see social, economic and philosophical problems which need solution, and you believe that the best thinking of all past ages may be useful in your age, too. You may read because you are tired of the shallowness of contemporary life, bored by the current conversational commonplaces, and wearied of shop talk and gossip about people. Whatever your dominant personal reason, you will find that reading gives knowledge, creative power, satisfaction and relaxation. It cultivates your mind by calling its faculties into exercise. Books are a source of pleasure - the purest and the most lasting. They enhance your sensation of the interestingness of life. Reading them is not a violent pleasure like the gross enjoyment of an uncultivated mind, but a subtle delight. Reading dispels prejudices which hem our minds within narrow spaces. One of the things that will surprise you as you read good books from all over the world and from all times of man is that human nature is much the same today as it has been ever since writing began to tell us about it. Some people act as if it were demeaning to their manhood to wish to be well-read but you can no more be a healthy person mentally without reading substantial books than you can be a vigorous person physically without eating solid food. Books should be chosen, not for their freedom from evil, but for their possession of good. Dr. Johnson said: "Whilst you stand deliberating which book your son shall read first, another boy has read both.

People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, [...] the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.

I was tired all the time, because trying to function while you're trying to ignore all those swirling thoughts is physically and mentally draining.

Does the work get easier once you know what you are doing?" "Your lungs grow thick with stone dust and your eyes bleary from the sun and fragments thrown up by the chisel. You pour your lifeblood out into works of stone for Romans who will take your money in taxes to feed soldiers who will nail your people to crosses for wanting to be free. Your back breaks, your bones creak, your wife screeches at you, and your children torment you with open begging mouths, like greedy baby birds in the nest. You go to bed every night so tired and beaten that you pray to the Lord to send the angel of death to take you in your sleep so you don't have to face another morning. It also has its downside.

…–now, be happy. But I’m not. I feel nothing. When I ‘m honest with myself, I know that the only emotion I’ve felt in years is being tired. Not physically tired. Just tired. It’s as if…as if there were nobody there to feel any more. But that’s not all. There’s something much worse. It’s doing something horrible to me. I’m beginning to hate people…

We are, on earth, two distinct races. Those who have need of others, whom others amuse, engage soothe, whom solitude harasses, pains, stupefies, like the movement of a terrible glacier or the traversing of the desert; and those, on the contrary, whom others weary, tire, bore, silently torture, whom isolation calms and bathes in the repose of independency, and plunges into the humors of their own thoughts. In fine, there is here a normal, physical phenomenon. Some are constituted to live a life outside of themselves, others, to live a life within themselves. As for me, my exterior associations are abruptly and painfully short-lived, and, as they reach their limits, I experience in my whole body and in my whole intelligence an intolerable uneasiness.

Physics says: go to sleep. Of course you’re tired. Every atom in you has been dancing the shimmy in silver shoes nonstop from mitosis to now. Quit tapping your feet. They’ll dance inside themselves without you. Go to sleep. Geology says: it will be all right. Slow inch by inch America is giving itself to the ocean. Go to sleep. Let darkness lap at your sides. Give darkness an inch. You aren’t alone. All of the continents used to be one body. You aren’t alone. Go to sleep. Astronomy says: the sun will rise tomorrow, Zoology says: on rainbow-fish and lithe gazelle, Psychology says: but first it has to be night, so Biology says: the body-clocks are stopped all over town and History says: here are the blankets, layer on layer, down and down.

Regret was an emotional cancer, destroying you from the inside out. Eating at your most vital parts until there was nothing left but scar tissue and sorrow. It chipped away at you in small increments, shattering your defenses and tiring you out. But, unlike a physical cancer, which might eventually go into remission or be cut out with a few careful strokes of a surgeon’s scalpel, regret would stay with you forever. It was chronic, but not terminal — a constant companion that would haunt you until your deathbed. And there were no cures to diminish its influence. No salves to counteract its effects. Regret didn’t break your body. It crushed your spirit. Mine had just been broken beyond repair.

Someone should write an erudite essay on the moral, physical, and esthetic effect of the Model T Ford on the American nation. Two generations of Americans knew more about the Ford coil than the clitoris, about the planetary system of gears than the solar system of stars. With the Model T, part of the concept of private property disappeared. Pliers ceased to be privately owned and a tire pump belonged to the last man who had picked it up. Most of the babies of the period were conceived in Model T Fords and not a few were born in them. The theory of the Anglo Saxon home became so warped that it never quite recovered.

Intensive mothering is the ultimate female Olympics: We are all in powerful competition with each other, in constant danger of being trumped by the mom down the street, or in the magazine we're reading. The competition isn't just over who's a good mother--it's over who's the best. We compete with each other; we compete with ourselves. The best mothers always put their kids' needs before their own, period. The best mothers are the main caregivers. For the best mothers, their kids are the center of the universe. The best mothers always smile. They always understand. They are never tired. They never lose their temper. They never say, "Go to the neighbor's house and play while Mommy has a beer." Their love for their children is boundless, unflagging, flawless, total. Mothers today cannot just respond to their kids' needs, they must predict them--and with the telepathic accuracy of Houdini. They must memorize verbatim the books of all the child-care experts and know which approaches are developmentally appropriate at different ages. They are supposed to treat their two-year-olds with "respect." If mothers screw up and fail to do this on any given day, they should apologize to their kids, because any misstep leads to permanent psychological and/or physical damage. Anyone who questions whether this is the best and the necessary way to raise kids is an insensitive, ignorant brute. This is just common sense, right?

I want more with you. I can’t promise you what that is or where it will go, but it’s more than just physical. I’m attracted to everything about you – you’re smart, honest, funny, brave, a little nutty – and you make me smile for no reason. There’s no denying I want you in my bed. I think you’ve caught on to that part by now. But I want this, too. I’m tired of looking back. It’s been a long time since I’ve wanted to live in the moment.

If you lose your ego, you lose the thread of that narrative you call your Self. Humans, however, can't live very long without some sense of a continuing story. Such stories go beyond the limited rational system (or the systematic rationality) with which you surround yourself; they are crucial keys to sharing time-experience with others. Now a narrative is a story, not a logic, nor ethics, nor philosophy. It is a dream you keep having, whether you realize it or not. Just as surely as you breathe, you go on ceaselessly dreaming your story. And in these stories you wear two faces. You are simultaneously subject and object. You are a whole and you are a part. You are real and you are shadow. "Storyteller" and at the same time "character". It is through such multilayering of roles in our stories that we heal the loneliness of being an isolated individual in the world. Yet without a proper ego nobody can create a personal narrative, any more than you can drive a car without an engine, or cast a shadow without a real physical object. But once you've consigned your ego to someone else, where on earth do you go from there? At this point you receive a new narrative from the person to whom you have entrusted your ego. You've handed over the real thing, so what comes back is a shadow. And once your ego has merged with another ego, your narrative will necessarily take on the narrative created by that ego. Just what kind of narrative? It needn't be anything particularly fancy, nothing complicated or refined. You don't need to have literary ambitions. In fact, the sketchier and simpler the better. Junk, a leftover rehash will do. Anyway, most people are tired of complex, multilayered scenarios-they are a potential letdown. It's precisely because people can't find any fixed point within their own multilayered schemes that they're tossing aside their own self-identity.

Physical pleasure is a sensual experience no different from pure seeing or the pure sensation with which a fine fruit fills the tongue; it is a great unending experience, which is given us, a knowing of the world, the fullness and the glory of all knowing. And not our acceptance of it is bad; the bad thing is that most people misuse and squander this experience and apply it as a stimulant at the tired spots of their lives and as distraction instead of a rallying toward exalted moments.

He was tired, he realized, emotionally and physically. He wanted to lie down and turn off the world and sleep for a week.

Recovery through sleep isn’t going to happen if the majority of the components of your being aren’t getting enough stimulation or resistance to work against. Your brain may be tired after work, but if your body and emotions haven’t been challenged through the day, they’re going to keep irritating you even if you’re asleep. They don’t need rest; they need work for real recovery to take place.

I have a proposition for you,” I said. “No.” She didn’t look up from her screen. “I propose we form a mutually beneficial arrangement,” I continued, ignoring her flat rejection. “As much as it pains me to admit, you weren’t terrible in bed, and I know I’m not terrible in bed. We’re both too busy to date or deal with the online dating scene. Therefore, we should enter a friends with benefits agreement. Minus the friends part.” It was genius, if I did say so myself. The physical chemistry was there, and neither of us had to worry about the other catching feelings. We could just fuck until we got tired of it.

Greenstone is cursed. We had mines, but they shut. Ships used to dock, now they sail past. Our water tower comes loose and rolls over people, our congressman gets leprosy, Bob Dylan drives through and gets two flat tires.” Ann glowed as the idea coalesced—she couldn’t have been more incandescent if she’d physically caught fire. “Hard luck! That’s our legacy.

This may be set as a criterion to any-yes, 'to all: When such an experiment, such a trial, draws or tires, or makes the mind foggy or dull or become as a drain upon the physical energies, know you are attuning wrong-and static has entered, from some source! For the universal consciousness is constructive, not destructive in any manner-but ever constructive in its activity with the elements that make up an entity's experience in the physical consciousness. 792-2

A weary soul is one that many have, but few talk about; confusing it for solely physical.

Are you looking for the ultimate laws of physics?" No, I'm not. I'm just looking to find out more about the world and if it turns out there is a simple ultimate law which explains everything, so be it; that would be very nice to discover. If it turns out it's like an onion with millions of layers and we're just sick and tired of looking at the layers, then that's the way it is. ... My interest in science is to simply find out more about the world.

Yet so far his mind had produced little; it turned and turned, but the turning, though arduous, was sterile. Some great man had said, ‘A thought is like a flash between two dark nights’: at present Stephen’s nights were running into one uninterrupted darkness, lit by no gleams at all. The coca-leaves he chewed had the property of doing away with hunger and fatigue, giving some degree of euphoria, and making one feel clever and even witty; he certainly had no appetite and he did not feel physically tired, but as for the rest he might have been eating hay.

All my life people have told me how strong I am, like it’s the best thing I’ve got to offer. I know they mean it in all the ways—physically, emotionally, mentally—and I am. But I’m also tired, worn out from hurting and being expected to come out on top of everything—even a car crash. I’m exhausted in all the ways I’m supposed to be strong...

He smiled all the way to physics class. He almost laughed out loud when he passed through the door and saw her shadowy, hunched-over form casting around for a seat in the back. She was in his class; this was excellent. Maybe she’d call him a name if he struck up another conversation. Even curse him out. That might fun. God, he’d probably earn himself a restraining order if he tried to sit next to her. He was so tired of saccharine smiles and cloying tones of voice. People always plastered their eyes to his face for fear of looking anywhere else. He was fed up with everybody being so goddamned nice. That’s why he’d already fallen in love with this weird, maladjusted, beautiful girl who carried a chip the size of Ohio on her shoulder. Because nobody was ever mean to the guy in the wheelchair.

Sometimes I get so tired, even in the water. It’s like physical things don’t make me physically tired, but they make me mentally tired. Mental things make me feel that way too.” “Everything is just so much,” I said. “All the time.

My name is CRPS, or so they say But I actually go by; a few different names. I was once called causalgia, nearly 150 years ago And then I had a new name It was RSD, apparently so. I went by that name because the burn lived inside of me. Now I am called CRPS, because I have so much to say I struggle to be free. I don't have one symptom and this is where I change, I attack the home of where I live; with shooting/burning pains. Depression fills the mind of the body I belong, it starts to speak harsh to self, negativity growing strong. Then I start to annoy them; with the issues with sensitivity, You'd think the pain enough; but no, it wants to make you aware of its trembling disability. I silently make my move; but the screams are loud and clear, Because I enter your physical reality and you can't disappear. I confuse your thoughts; I contain apart of your memory, I cover your perspective, the fog makes it sometimes unbearable to see. I play with your temperature levels, I make you nervous all the time - I take away your independance and take away your pride. I stay with you by the day & I remind you by the night, I am an awful journey and you will struggle with this fight. Then there's a side to me; not many understand, I have the ability to heal and you can be my friend. Help yourself find the strength to fight me with all you have, because eventually I'll get tired of making you grow mad. It will take some time; remember I mainly live inside your brain, Curing me is hard work but I promise you, You can beat me if you feed love to my pain. Find the strength to carry on and feed the fears with light; hold on to the seat because, like I said, it's going to be a fight. But I hope to meet you, when your healthy and healed, & you will silenty say to me - I did this, I am cured is this real? That day could possibly come; closer than I want- After all I am a disease and im fighting for my spot. I won't deny from my medical angle, I am close to losing the " incurable " battle.

People say to me, “Are you looking for the ultimate laws of physics?” No, I’m not. I’m just looking to find out more about the world, and if it turns out there is a simple ultimate law that explains everything, so be it. That would be very nice to discover. If it turns out it’s like an onion with millions of layers, and we’re sick and tired of looking at layers, then that’s the way it is . . . My interest in science is to simply find out more about the world, and the more I find out, the better it is. I like to find out.

Thinking and deciding what to do about the person only serves to suppress the anger. Even though you think the anger is over, it will manifest itself in other ways. Your communication will be less honest and spontaneous; you may be more critical of him; you may find being with him more physically tiring, forget appointments with him, and find yourself inexplicably angry at him more and more. After a while, your friendship may feel more superficial than before and you may not like spending as much time with him as you used to.

However we resolve the issue in our individual homes, the moral challenge is, put simply, to make work visible again: not only the scrubbing and vacuuming, but all the hoeing, stacking, hammering, drilling, bending, and lifting that goes into creating and maintaining a livable habitat. In an ever more economically unequal world, where so many of the affluent devote their lives to ghostly pursuits like stock trading, image making, and opinion polling, real work, in the old-fashioned sense of labor that engages hand as well as eye, that tires the body and directly alters the physical world tends to vanish from sight. The feminists of my generation tried to bring some of it into the light of day, but, like busy professional women fleeing the house in the morning, they left the project unfinished, the debate broken off in mid-sentence, the noble intentions unfulfilled. Sooner or later, someone else will have to finish the job.

We are as tired of each other's company as we are of the cold monotony of the black night and of the unpalatable sameness of our food. Physically, mentally, and perhaps morally, then, we are depressed, and from my past experience... I know that this depression will increase.

You’ve had sex with that girl!” He blinked at my tone and my words, then his face heated. “And?” I blinked that he didn’t even try and deny it. “And…and…” Not having a real argument, I sighed and hung my head. “And I’m tired of running into girls who know what making love to you feels like. “ He sighed and stepped into me, cupping my face. His voice and face softer, he shook his head. “No one but you knows what making love to me feels like.” Raising his eyebrows, he rested his head against mine. “I didn’t even know what making love was like until you.” Pulling back, he tilted his head at the building. “What happened with that girl…was just sex. A mindless, physical act that had no meaning or feeling behind it. It was just pleasure…and I don’t even really remember it.” Squatting down, he met my eye. “I remember every single time with you. Even before we were together, being with you haunted my dreams. I couldn’t forget, even when I wanted to…” His thumbs brushed over my cheeks as I felt tears falling down them. “You…seared me. That’s making love. That is something that none of them have over you. You are…unforgettable…and I love you.” Sniffling, I swallowed a couple times before I could finally say, “I love you, too.

Bruce had me up to three miles a day, really at a good pace. We’d run the three miles in twenty-one or twenty-two minutes. Just under eight minutes a mile [Note: when running on his own in 1968, Lee would get his time down to six-and-a-half minutes per mile]. So this morning he said to me “We’re going to go five.” I said, “Bruce, I can’t go five. I’m a helluva lot older than you are, and I can’t do five.” He said, “When we get to three, we’ll shift gears and it’s only two more and you’ll do it. ” I said “Okay, hell, I’ll go for it.” So we get to three, we go into the fourth mile and I’m okay for three or four minutes, and then I really begin to give out. I’m tired, my heart’s pounding, I can’t go any more and so I say to him, “Bruce if I run any more,”—and we’re still running—“if I run any more I’m liable to have a heart attack and die.” He said, “Then die.” It made me so mad that I went the full five miles. Afterward I went to the shower and then I wanted to talk to him about it. I said, you know, ‘“Why did you say that?” He said, “Because you might as well be dead. Seriously, if you always put limits on what you can do, physical or anything else, it’ll spread over into the rest of your life. It’ll spread into your work, into your morality, into your entire being. There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level.

When we are tired, it is often because we are bored. When no real challenge faces us, a mental and physical lethargy sets in. “Sometimes death only comes from a lack of energy,” Napoleon once said, and lack of energy comes from a lack of challenges, comes when we have taken on less than we are capable of.

Don’t look down on death, but welcome it. It too is one of the things required by nature. Like youth and old age. Like growth and maturity. Like a new set of teeth, a beard, the first gray hair. Like sex and pregnancy and childbirth. Like all the other physical changes at each stage of life, our dissolution is no different. So this is how a thoughtful person should await death: not with indifference, not with impatience, not with disdain, but simply viewing it as one of the things that happen to us. Now you anticipate the child’s emergence from its mother’s womb; that’s how you should await the hour when your soul will emerge from its compartment. Or perhaps you need some tidy aphorism to tuck away in the back of your mind. Well, consider two things that should reconcile you to death: the nature of the things you’ll leave behind you, and the kind of people you’ll no longer be mixed up with. There’s no need to feel resentment toward them—in fact, you should look out for their well-being, and be gentle with them—but keep in mind that everything you believe is meaningless to those you leave behind. Because that’s all that could restrain us (if anything could)—the only thing that could make us want to stay here: the chance to live with those who share our vision. But now? Look how tiring it is—this cacophony we live in. Enough to make you say to death, “Come quickly. Before I start to forget myself, like them.

Then we could collate all the possibles and go to work with the holy trinity of detectives everywhere: means, motive, opportunity. Means and opportunity wouldn’t signify much. By definition nobody would be on the possibles list unless they had been proved to have opportunity. And everybody in the army was physically capable of swinging a tire iron or a crowbar against the back of an unsuspecting victim’s head. It was probably a rough equivalent of the most basic entry requirement.

The typical image of a depressed, lazy and tired person is someone hunched over and inert. Often, the assumption is that if one had more enthusiasm and inspiration, he would then stand up straight and move. In many cases, this equation is backward. But, as with everything related to one’s physicality, balance is the key. An overly erect and rigid posture may convey confidence and power to some, but it also causes a subtle accumulation of tension and rigidity on various levels, including psychological and emotional.

He felt not hungry, not thirsty, not tired, not even remotely bored, simply above all physical concern, in communion with the movement of time and the world’s steady turning, and he wondered if this was how it felt to be immortal, to know that life had a definite vessel, a tangible purpose: caretaker and courier of the rare, the valuable, the beloved.

Simon, the mystery of him, and somehow as I looked out the taxi window I started to think about his physical presence in the city, that somewhere inside the city’s structure, standing or sitting, holding his arms one way or another, dressed or undressed, he was present, and Dublin was like an advent calendar concealing him behind one of its million windows, and the quality of the air was instilled, the temperature was instilled, with his presence, and with youre mail, and with this message I was writing back to you in my head even then. The world seemed capable of including these things, and my eyes were capable, my brain was capable, of receiving and understanding them. I was tired, it was late, I was sitting half-asleep in the back of a taxi, remembering strangely that wherever I go, you are with me, and so is he, and that as long as you both live the world will be beautiful to me.

He was tired, it was not a physical fatigue, but a draining lassitude that numbed the margins of his mind.

When you are tired.Rest! Tired mentaly, physically, spiritually. Rest can take on many forms

It’s a physical urge, stronger than thirst or sex. Halfway back on the left side of my head there is a spot that longs for the jolt of a bullet, that yearns for that fire, that final empty rip. I want to be let out of this cavern, to open myself up to the ease of not-living. I am tired of sorrow and struggle and worry. I am tired of my sad sister. I want to turn out the last light.

How was my day? It was a lifetime. It was the best of times and the worst of times. I was both lonely and never alone. I was simultaneously bored out of my skull and completely overwhelmed. I was saturated with touch—desperate to get the baby off of me and the second I put her down I yearned to smell her sweet skin again. This day required more than I’m physically and emotionally capable of, while requiring nothing from my brain. I had thoughts today, ideas, real things to say and no one to hear them. I felt manic all day, alternating between love and fury. At least once an hour I looked at their faces and thought I might not survive the tenderness of my love for them. The next moment I was furious. I felt like a dormant volcano, steady on the outside but ready to explode and spew hot lava at any moment. And then I noticed that Amma’s foot doesn’t fit into her Onesie anymore, and I started to panic at the reminder that this will be over soon, that it’s fleeting—that this hardest time of my life is supposed to be the best time of my life. That this brutal time is also the most beautiful time. Am I enjoying it enough? Am I missing the best time of my life? Am I too tired to be properly in love? That fear and shame felt like adding a heavy, itchy blanket on top of all the hard. But I’m not complaining, so please don’t try to fix it. I wouldn’t have my day or my life any other way. I’m just saying—it’s a hell of a hard thing to explain—an entire day with lots of babies. It’s far too much and not even close to enough. But

He began to cry then, clutching LB. The tears came easily. He had not cried tears of such distilled regret since his son had gone missing. LB was going limp, either spent, tired of fighting, or resigned to her fate. Luke hugged her so, so tight. He wanted LB to remember his touch. The warmth and love that radiated from his whole body, coupled with the sadness that she was being ripped away from him. He wanted her to take that one physical memory with her wherever she was going. The imprint of his hands on her. He wished it to be a reminder that she was a good creature, and loved, and that there were places on the continuum where love and kindness still existed, even if she did not share that world presently. She did not deserve this. But things happened. They happened.

I gave a weak smile; he came close and put an arm around my shoulders; I clung to him and wept quietly. The warm physical pleasure of tears running down my cheek. What a relief! It is so tiring to hate someone you love.

This is my brother we’re talking about, Maximus.” “You’ll take his part before mine?” Oh, he knew it was a mistake even before the words left his lips. Her shoulders squared. “If I must. We shared a womb. We’re flesh and blood, tied together forever, both physically and spiritually. I love my brother.” “As you don’t me?” She stopped, her chemise in her hands before her. For a moment her shoulders slumped and then she raised her head. His goddess. His Diana. “When you’ve tired of me,” she said softly, precisely, “Apollo will still be my brother. Will still be there for me.” “I’ll never tire of you,” he said, knowing with every thread of his soul that he spoke the absolute truth.

Mister Geoffrey, my experiment shows that the dynamo and the bulb are both working properly," I said. "So why won't the radio play?" "I don't know," he said. "Try connecting them here." He was pointing toward a socket on the radio labeled "AC," and when I shoved the wires inside, the radio came to life. We shouted with excitement. As I pedaled the bicycle, I could hear the great Billy Kaunda playing his happy music on Radio Two, and that made Geoffrey start to dance. "Keep pedaling," he said. "That's it, just keep pedaling." "Hey, I want to dance, too." "You'll have to wait your turn." Without realizing it, I'd just discovered the difference between alternating and direct current. Of course, I wouldn't know what this meant until much later. After a few minutes of pedaling this upside-down bike by hand, my arm grew tired and the radio slowly died. So I began thinking, "What can do the pedaling for us so Geoffrey and I can dance?

In her TED Talk “The Real Reason We Are Tired and What to Do About It,” Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith talks about how we have incorrectly combined the concepts of sleep and rest, when sleep is simply one of the seven types of rest we need: physical,

Take driving, for instance. Say you need to drive ten miles to visit a friend. You might consider the trip itself as in-between time, something to get over with. Or you could take it as an opportunity for the practice of mastery. In that case, you would approach your car in a state of full awareness, conscious of the time of day, the temperature, the wind speed and direction, the angle of the sun, or the presence of rain, snow, or sleet. Let this awareness extend to your own mental, physical, and emotional condition. Take a moment to walk around the car and check its external condition, especially that of the tires. Make sure the windshield and windows are clean enough to provide good visibility. Check the oil and other fluid levels if it’s time to do so.

Physically he was tired and his body relaxed throughout its entire length; his mind was in much the same state, floating free, detached, as though he had taken his old favourite, the tincture of laudanum. He felt no particular anxiety. The attempt must either succeed or fail: he hoped with all his heart for success, but 'all his heart' did not amount to a great deal now that some essential part of its core seemed to have died. Yet on the other hand he felt more able to command success in that it meant no less to him - to command it with a strength that arose not from a fundamental indifference to his own fate but from something resembling it that he could not define; it had a resemblance to despair, but a despair long past, with the horror taken out of it.

Tired as I was of conflict, I felt that I must not shrink from the fight, nor abandon in cowardice the attempt to prove, as no theories could ever satisfactorily prove without examples, that marriage and motherhood need never tame the mind, nor swamp and undermine ability and training, nor trammel and domesticise political perception and social judgement. Today, as never before, it was urgent for individual women to show that life was enriched, mentally and spiritually as well as physically and socially, by marriage and children; that these experiences rendered the woman who accepted them the more and not the less able to take the world's pulse, to estimate its tendencies, to play some definite, hard-headed, hard-working part in furthering the constructive ends of a political civilisation

Don’t be too smart. Don’t admit you’re smart. Don’t think you’re smart. Be brilliant. Make some mistakes. Give your opinion. Don’t make any mistakes. Stop trying to be perfect. Don’t talk so much. Talk more. Don’t be too nice. Be nice. Smile. Don’t smile so much. Act like a man. Act like a woman. Be assertive. Don’t be emotional. Be sensitive. Not too assertive. Be nice to my friends. Don’t lead them on. Let them down gently. I was so tired of walking a tightrope, at work, here, with my family, with everyone. Enough. I’d had enough.

When it comes to fighting, physical strength really has very little to do with it. One of the tenets that judo is founded upon is “Maximum efficiency, minimum effort.” That has really defined my career. It is the foundation of all the techniques and everything I do. It’s one reason why I don’t get tired. It’s one reason why I am able to fight girls who are a head taller than me, or chicks who are on steroids. People who cheat or dope lack the one thing every true champion must have: belief. No drug or amount of money or favoritism can ever give you belief in yourself.

lower her to my side and pull her against me so that her head is resting on my jacket. Her breath tastes like starburst and it makes me want to keep kissing her until I can identify every single flavor. Her hand touches my arm and she gives it a tight squeeze just as my tongue slips inside her mouth. That would be strawberry on the tip of her tongue. She keeps her hand on my arm, periodically moving it to the back of my head, then returning it to my arm. I keep my hand on her waist, never once moving it to touch any other part of her. The only thing we explore is each other’s mouths. We kiss without making another sound. We kiss until the alarm sounds off on my phone. Despite the noise, neither of us stops kissing. We don’t even hesitate. We kiss for another solid minute until the bell rings in the hallway outside and suddenly lockers are slamming shut and people are talking and everything about our moment is stolen from us by all the inconvenient external factors of school. I still my lips against hers, then slowly pull back. “I have to get to class,” she whispers. I nod, even though she can’t see me. “Me, too,” I reply. She begins to scoot out from beneath me. When I roll onto my back, I feel her move closer to me. Her mouth briefly meets mine one more time, then she pulls away and stands up. The second she opens the door, the light from the hallway pours in and I squeeze my eyes shut, throwing my arm over my face. I hear the door shut behind her and by the time I adjust to the brightness, the light is gone again. I sigh heavily. I also remain on the floor until my physical reaction to her subsides. I don’t know who the hell she was or why the hell she ended up here, but I hope to God she comes back. I need a whole hell of a lot more of that. • • • She didn’t come back the next day. Or the day after that. In fact, today marks exactly a week since she literally fell into my arms, and I’ve convinced myself that maybe that whole day was a dream. I did stay up most of the night before watching zombie movies with Chunk, but even though I was going on two hours of sleep, I don’t know that I would have been able to imagine that. My fantasies aren’t that fun. Whether she comes back or not, I still don’t have a fifth period and until someone calls me out on it, I’ll keep hiding out in here. I actually slept way too much last night, so I’m not tired. I pull my phone out to text Holder when the door to the closet begins to open. “Are you in here, kid?” I hear her whisper. My heart immediately picks up pace and I can’t tell if it’s that she came back or if it’s because the

In every interview I’m asked what’s the most important quality a novelist has to have. It’s pretty obvious: talent. Now matter how much enthusiasm and effort you put into writing, if you totally lack literary talent you can forget about being a novelist. This is more of a prerequisite than a necessary quality. If you don’t have any fuel, even the best car won’t run.The problem with talent, though, is that in most cases the person involved can’t control its amount or quality. You might find the amount isn’t enough and you want to increase it, or you might try to be frugal and make it last longer, but in neither case do things work out that easily. Talent has a mind of its own and wells up when it wants to, and once it dries up, that’s it. Of course, certain poets and rock singers whose genius went out in a blaze of glory—people like Schubert and Mozart, whose dramatic early deaths turned them into legends—have a certain appeal, but for the vast majority of us this isn’t the model we follow. If I’m asked what the next most important quality is for a novelist, that’s easy too: focus—the ability to concentrate all your limited talents on whatever’s critical at the moment. Without that you can’t accomplish anything of value, while, if you can focus effectively, you’ll be able to compensate for an erratic talent or even a shortage of it. I generally concentrate on work for three or four hours every morning. I sit at my desk and focus totally on what I’m writing. I don’t see anything else, I don’t think about anything else. … After focus, the next most important thing for a novelist is, hands down, endurance. If you concentrate on writing three or four hours a day and feel tired after a week of this, you’re not going to be able to write a long work. What’s needed of the writer of fiction—at least one who hopes to write a novel—is the energy to focus every day for half a year, or a year, or two years. … Fortunately, these two disciplines—focus and endurance—are different from talent, since they can be acquired and sharpened through training. You’ll naturally learn both concentration and endurance when you sit down every day at your desk and train yourself to focus on one point. This is a lot like the training of muscles I wrote of a moment ago. You have to continually transmit the object of your focus to your entire body, and make sure it thoroughly assimilates the information necessary for you to write every single day and concentrate on the work at hand. And gradually you’ll expand the limits of what you’re able to do. Almost imperceptibly you’ll make the bar rise. This involves the same process as jogging every day to strengthen your muscles and develop a runner’s physique. Add a stimulus and keep it up. And repeat. Patience is a must in this process, but I guarantee results will come. In private correspondence the great mystery writer Raymond Chandler once confessed that even if he didn’t write anything, he made sure he sat down at his desk every single day and concentrated. I understand the purpose behind his doing this. This is the way Chandler gave himself the physical stamina a professional writer needs, quietly strengthening his willpower. This sort of daily training was indispensable to him. … Most of what I know about writing I’ve learned through running every day. These are practical, physical lessons. How much can I push myself? How much rest is appropriate—and how much is too much? How far can I take something and still keep it decent and consistent? When does it become narrow-minded and inflexible? How much should I be aware of the world outside, and how much should I focus on my inner world? To what extent should I be confident in my abilities, and when should I start doubting myself? I know that if I hadn’t become a long-distance runner when I became a novelist, my work would have been vastly different. How different? Hard to say. But something would definitely have been different.

We are the center. In each of our minds - some may call it arrogance, or selfishness - we are the center, and all the world moves about us, and for us, and because of us. This is the paradox of community, the one and the whole, the desires of the one often in direct conflict with the needs of the whole. Who among us has not wondered if all the world is no more than a personal dream? I do not believe that such thoughts are arrogant or selfish. It is simply a matter of perception; we can empathize with someone else, but we cannot truly see the world as another person sees it, or judge events as they affect the mind and the heart of another, even a friend. But we must try. For the sake of all the world, we must try. This is the test of altruism, the most basic and undeniable ingredient for society. Therein lies the paradox, for ultimately, logically, we each must care more about ourselves than about others, and yet, if, as rational beings we follow that logical course, we place our needs and desires above the needs of our society, and then there is no community. I come from Menzoberranzan, city of drow, city of self. I have seen that way of selfishness. I have seen it fail miserably. When self-indulgence rules, then all the community loses, and in the end, those striving for personal gains are left with nothing of any real value. Because everything of value that we will know in this life comes from our relationships with those around us. Because there is nothing material that measures against the intangibles of love and friendship. Thus, we must overcome that selfishness and we must try, we must care. I saw this truth plainly following the attack on Captain Deudermont in Watership. My first inclination was to believe that my past had precipitated the trouble, that my life course had again brought pain to a friend. I could not bear this thought. I felt old and I felt tired. Subsequently learning that the trouble was possibly brought on by Deudermont's old enemies, not my own, gave me more heart for the fight. Why is that? The danger to me was no less, nor was the danger to Deudermont, or to Catti-brie or any of the others about us. Yet my emotions were real, very real, and I recognized and understood them, if not their source. Now, in reflection, I recognize that source, and take pride in it. I have seen the failure of self-indulgence; I have run from such a world. I would rather die because of Deudermont's past than have him die because of my own. I would suffer the physical pains, even the end of my life. Better that than watch one I love suffer and die because of me. I would rather have my physical heart torn from my chest, than have my heart of hearts, the essence of love, the empathy and the need to belong to something bigger than my corporeal form, destroyed. They are a curious thing, these emotions. How they fly in the face of logic, how they overrule the most basic instincts. Because, in the measure of time, in the measure of humanity, we sense those self-indulgent instincts to be a weakness, we sense that the needs of the community must outweigh the desires of the one. Only when we admit to our failures and recognize our weaknesses can we rise above them. Together.

SINCE ATLANTA, SHE had looked out the dining-car window with a delight almost physical. Over her breakfast coffee, she watched the last of Georgia’s hills recede and the red earth appear, and with it tin-roofed houses set in the middle of swept yards, and in the yards the inevitable verbena grew, surrounded by whitewashed tires.

This is the heart of it, the scared woman who does not want to go alone to the man any longer, because when she does, when she takes of her baggy dress, displaying to him rancid breasts each almost as big as his own head, or no breasts, or mammectomized scar tissues taped over with old tennis balls to give her the right curves; when, vending her flesh, she stands or squats waiting, congealing the air firstly with her greasy cheesey stench of unwashed feet confined in week-old socks, secondly with her perfume of leotards and panties also a week old, crusted with semen and urine, brown-greased with the filth of alleys; thirdly with the odor of her dress also worn for a week, emblazoned with beer-spills and cigarette-ash and salted with the smelly sweat of sex, dread, fever, addiction—when she goes to the man, and is accepted by him, when all these stinking skins of hers have come off (either quickly, to get it over with, or slowly like a big truck pulling into a weigh station because she is tired), when she nakedly presents her soul’s ageing soul, exhaling from every pore physical and ectoplasmic her fourth and supreme smell which makes eyes water more than any queen of red onions—rotten waxy smell from between her breasts, I said, bloody pissy shitty smell from between her legs, sweat-smell and underarm-smell, all blended into her halo, generalized sweetish smell of unwashed flesh; when she hunkers painfully down with her customer on bed or a floor or in an alley, then she expects her own death. Her smell is enough to keep him from knowing the heart of her, and the heart of her is not the heart of it. The heart of it is that she is scared.

Rain is the last thing you want when you're chasing someone in Miami. They drive shitty enough as it is, but on top of that, snow is a foreign concept, which means they never got the crash course in traction judgment for when pavement slickness turns less than ideal. And because of the land-sea temperature differential, Florida has regular afternoon rain showers. Nothing big, over in a jiff. But minutes later, all major intersections in Miami-Dade are clogged with debris from spectacular smash-ups. In Northern states, snow teaches drivers real fast about the Newtonian physics of large moving objects. I haven't seen snow either, but I drink coffee, so the calculus of tire-grip ratio is intuitive to my body.

Have you experienced feeling drained or tired after a few minutes of dealing with a certain person? The person has sucked your vital life energy. This is not done with malice or a bad intention. This is usually done subconsciously because the person is physically weak or sick. Due to this, he has a tendency to “vampirize” pranic energy or life energy from other people around him.

Whereas males of both species played the field in similar ways, a human marriage had nothing on a vampire mating. A marriage could be dissolved by a judge with a little slip of paper. A marriage could be ended in a blink if the humans got tired of each other or fell out of love. With vampires, there was no dissolving a mating. A mated pair didn't grow tired of one another, and they certainly didn't fall out of love. When two vampires mated, a link formed to tether them to one another on a level that transcended the physical plane and fused them into one on a spiritual and emotional level, which was why the loss of a mate left a male in a state of despair if it didn't kill him outright. A mating was for life and plainly demonstrated the vampire race's link to the animal kingdom.

Throwing the leg of lamb out the window may have been Aunt Carol's outward expression of the process going on within her soul: the reclaiming of herself. Perhaps it was her way of saying how tired she was of waiting on her family, of signaling to them that she was past the cook/chauffeur/dishwasher stage of life. For many women, if not most, part of this reclamation process includes getting in touch with anger and, perhaps, blowing up at loved ones for the first time.

DO YOU HAVE OR HAVE YOU EXPERIENCED IN THE PAST SIX MONTHS . . . — PART A — ■ A feeling you’re constantly racing from one task to the next? ■ Feeling wired yet tired? ■ A struggle calming down before bedtime, or a second wind that keeps you up late? ■ Difficulty falling asleep or disrupted sleep? ■ A feeling of anxiety or nervousness—can’t stop worrying about things beyond your control? ■ A quickness to feel anger or rage—frequent screaming or yelling? ■ Memory lapses or feeling distracted, especially under duress? ■ Sugar cravings (you need “a little something” after each meal, usually of the chocolate variety)? ■ Increased abdominal circumference, greater than 35 inches (the dreaded abdominal fat, or muffin top—not bloating)? ■ Skin conditions such as eczema or thin skin (sometimes physiologically and psychologically)? ■ Bone loss (perhaps your doctor uses scarier terms, such as osteopenia or osteoporosis)? ■ High blood pressure or rapid heartbeat unrelated to those cute red shoes in the store window? ■ High blood sugar (maybe your clinician has mentioned the words prediabetes or even diabetes or insulin resistance)? Shakiness between meals, also known as blood sugar instability? ■ Indigestion, ulcers, or GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease)? ■ More difficulty recovering from physical injury than in the past? ■ Unexplained pink to purple stretch marks on your belly or back? ■ Irregular menstrual cycles? ■ Decreased fertility?

I chose people who made me feel anxious and insecure and re-created my childhood circumstances of getting erratic attention. I gravitated toward people who were either physically or emotionally unavailable to subconsciously ensure I was getting a constant hit from my “internal drug cabinet.” Instead of heroin or cocaine, I used to be addicted to cortisol and adrenaline (which turns into dopamine! Yay!). That drove me to pick people who couldn’t give me safety or stability, which caused those chemicals to go buck wild on my brain. You live in London? Yes, please. You work until three A.M., and when you are available, you’re super tired, so every time we have the chance to connect, your eyes are half closed? Sure, let’s move in together. One day you tell me you’re in love with me, but then you disappear and go on a week-long bender on Long Island? Absolutely. You travel for four months at a time in places that have horrible cell service? Don’t mind if I do marry ya.

Experiential versus the God eye! Possessing ‘ego vision’, a person’s view through her/his physical eyes is quite versatile; able to discern wide and varied vistas over huge distances or scrutinizing the minutest of details. Ego’s very nature: capable of relatively expansive, detailed, and yet individualistic perspective is crucial. Separating itself out from the God Force, ego extracts infinite unique experiences, integral to humanity’s process of spiritualizing matter. Incarnating on the earth, achieving individualism is therefore critical for attainment of divinity. Individualism may cause momentary estrangement from the God Self. However, this person has forgotten that they are everything in the mirror, the ‘sliver’ and the ‘ball of light’,” continues Kuan Yin. During this complex passage Lena was inundated by infinite rapid-fire visuals: emanations from the God Mind. “Further and unfortunately, wrong assumptions are made about suffering. Some individuals even believe that it is required, that suffering brings one closer to salvation. Quite the contrary,” disputes Kuan Yin, “the God Force likes to play. Therefore, if all individuals could unite creating a real sense of community many problems could be healed. The God Force is separate and not separate, whole and not whole at the same time. Really, it is not ‘sliceable’, not reducible. Even when it is sliced into individual energies, it does not diminish the total God Force or the power of the individual. Each of you has the potential for the God Force potency. However, no individual can overcome the God Force. There is a misinterpretation, (by some) that Satan is as powerful as God. Limited energy cannot live on its own. Every experience must exist and yet they (the limiting forces) can never exist on their own. Limited energy, then, is the experience of the absence of the God Force. Therefore, there is no need to fear it. Those choosing such experiences have a need to understand how it feels to believe evil powers exist. Again, I say those who pursue this route are taking it too personally. They believe the story they’ve made up about themselves. It is similar to a person going into an ice cream store and only choosing one flavor from many. Preoccupied with tasting that flavor for a very long time, they are probably quite sick and tired of it. Still, they don’t want to believe there are any other flavors available. The ‘agreement’, then, is to continue to believe in that particular flavor. Here’s where reincarnation and its opportunity for experiencing a vast array of perspectives, “agreements”, enters in. Another life offers another opportunity, a chance to ‘switch flavors’ so to speak. Taking oneself too personally, however, can cause a soul to get caught up, stuck in redundancy: in a particular (and perhaps unfortunate) flavor. In such instances, the individual is forgetting one has the ability to choose his or her flavors, lives,” contends Kuan Yin.

In the first year of Martha`s life I discovered that I no longer loved my husband. A hard year, the baby barely slept and wouldn`t let me sleep. Physical tiredness is a magnifying glass. I was too tired to study, to think, to laugh, to cry, to love that man who was too intelligent, too stubbornly involved in his wager with life, too absent. Love required energy, I hand none left. When he began with caresses and kisses, I became anxious, I felt that I was a stimulus abused for his solitary pleasures.

The New Testament uses a similar word—“weaker”—to reinforce that women are the softer, more vulnerable ones. This does not at all imply that women are inferior to men. However, women are physically and emotionally more tender, and are thus more susceptible to being hurt. According to 1 Peter 3:7, God expects men to honor them for this beautiful feminine trait. He warns men not to treat women like “one of the guys.” God expects men to handle women like Swarovski crystal, and not like Bridgestone tires!

No sooner, in fact, had I sent it off than a curious reaction came over me. It seemed to me that I had given away my capacity for belief in the Willie Hughes theory of the Sonnets, that something had gone out of me, as it were, and that I was perfectly indifferent to the whole subject. What was it that had happened? It is difficult to say, perhaps, by finding perfect expression for a passion I had exhausted the passion itself. Emotional forces, like the forces of physical life, have their positive limitations. Perhaps the mere effort to convert any one to a theory involves some form of renunciation of the power of credence. Perhaps I was simply tired of the whole thing, and, my enthusiasm having burnt out, my reason was left to its own unimpassioned judgment. However it came about, and I cannot pretend to explain it, there was no doubt that Willie Hughes suddenly became to me a mere myth, an idle dream, the boyish fancy of a young man who, like most ardent spirits, was more anxious to convince others than to be himself convinced.

What is love? To the old, it is companionship, loyalty, and memories. To the young, it is excitement and physical attraction. Many liken love to a fire. It begins with kindling that ignites quickly with sparks and brightness, but a fire made of kindling requires one to constantly search for more fuel. Some couples tire of the effort, and the fire dies. But wise couples know that adding a log will make the fire endure. It may not have the same spark of kindling, but it provides warmth and light that will see them through the long nights ahead.

What I didn’t know back then was that everyone has a subtle energy field surrounding their body, a subtle radiant light that penetrates and extends beyond it a distance of inches or even feet. These fields communicate information such as emotions and physical well-being or distress. When we are in crowded places, the energy fields of others overlap with ours. I picked up all of these intense sensations, but I had absolutely no idea what they were or how to interpret them. I just felt anxious and tired in crowds. And most of all, I wanted to escape.

All their lives they had slaved at some kind of dull, heavy labor, behind desks and counters, in the fields and at tedious machines of all sorts, saving their pennies and dreaming of the leisure that would be theirs when they had enough. Finally that day came. They could draw a weekly income of ten or fifteen dollars. Where else should they go but California, the land of sunshine and oranges? Once there, they discover that sunshine isn’t enough. They get tired of oranges, even of avocado pears and passion fruit. Nothing happens. They don’t know what to do with their time. They haven’t the mental equipment for leisure, the money nor the physical equipment for pleasure. Did they slave so long just to go to an occasional Iowa picnic? What else is there? They watch the waves come in at Venice. There wasn’t any ocean where most of them came from, but after you’ve seen one wave, you’ve seen them all. The same is true of the airplanes at Glendale. If only a plane would crash once in a while so that they could watch the passengers being consumed in a “holocaust of flame,” as the newspapers put it. But the planes never crash. Their boredom becomes more and more terrible. They realize that they’ve been tricked and burn with resentment. Every day of their lives they read the newspapers and went to the movies. Both fed them on lynchings, murder, sex crimes, explosions, wrecks, love nests, fires, miracles, revolutions, wars. Their daily diet made sophisticates of them. The sun is a joke. Oranges can’t titillate their jaded palates. Nothing can ever be violent enough to make taut their slack minds and bodies. They have been cheated and betrayed. They have slaved and saved for nothing.

Step 7. Alter Your Coping Mechanisms Instead of gorging on chocolate pie when you’re hungry, angry, lonely, or tired, fill up on leftover Mexican Potato Salad or “Fried” Rice. Better yet, go for a walk; play your favorite sport; start working on an enjoyable project or hobby; visit a friend or go to a movie (and eat popcorn without butter). The best responses are those that involve physical activity, since they do double duty by reducing intake of fat calories and increasing calorie expenditure. If you must alleviate your frustration by eating, eat the right foods.

Part 2 Etienne: I cheated on her every day. In my mind, I thought of you in ways I shouldn’t have, again and again. She was nothing compared to you. I’ve never felt this way about anybody before… Anna: But… Etienne: The first day of school. We weren’t physics partners by accident. I saw Professeur Wakefield assigning lab parnters based on where people were sitting, so I leaned forward to borrow a pencil form you at just the right moment so he’dt think we were next to each other. Anna, I wanted to be your partner the first day. Anna: But … Etienne: I bought you love poetry! „I love you as certain dark things are loved, secretly, between the shadow and the soul.“ Neruda. I starred the pasasge. God. Why didn’t you open it? Anna: Because you said it was for school Etienne: I said you were beautiful. I slept in your bed! Anna: You never made a move! You had a girlfriend! Etienne: No matter what a terrible boyfriend I was, I wouldn’t actually cheat on her. But I thought you’d know. With me being there, I thought you’d know. Anna: How could I know if you never said anything? Etienne: How could I know if you never said anything? Anna: You had Ellie! Etienne: You had Toph! And Dave! Anna. I’m sorry for what happened in Luxembourg Gardens. Not because of the kiss – I’ve never had a kiss like that in my life – but because I didn’t tell you why I was running away. I chased after Meredith because of you. All I could think about was what that bastard did to you last Christmas. Toph never tired to explain or apologize. How could I do that to Mer? And I ought to have called you before I went to Ellie’s, but I was so anxious to just end it, once and for all, that i wasn’t thinking straight.

I was surprised to learn that there was yet another type of tired. On Seram we'd had physical tired. The type of tired when a thousand muscles are screaming at you to quit walking, sweat's running off you, and only the energy you manage to generate from gritting your teeth helps you take the next step. That type of tired can keep the emotional tired safely at bay-the tired when sadness is a physical weight, a thick smothering, aching thing. That was the dangerous type of tired we couldn't afford on Seram. That's the type of tired that makes you want to sit still and listen to despair.

The journey is too much for you. (1 Kings 19:7) What did God do with Elijah, His tired servant? He allowed him to sleep and then gave him something good to eat. Elijah had done tremendous work and in his excitement had run “ahead of Ahab[’s chariot] all the way to Jezreel” (1 Kings 18:46). But the run had been too much for him and had sapped his physical strength, ultimately causing him to become depressed. Just as others in this condition need sleep and want their ailments treated, Elijah’s physical requirements needed to be met. There are many wonderful people who end up where Elijah did—“under a juniper tree” (1 Kings 19:4 KJV)! When this happens, the words of the Master are very soothing: “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.” In other words, “I am going to refresh you.” Therefore may we never confuse physical weariness with spiritual weakness. I’m too tired to trust and too tired to pray, Said I, as my overtaxed strength gave way. The one conscious thought that my mind possessed, Is, oh, could I just drop it all and rest. Will God forgive me, do you suppose, If I go right to sleep as a baby goes, Without questioning if I may, Without even trying to trust and pray? Will God forgive you? Think back, dear heart,

Saturday evening, on a quiet lazy afternoon, I went to watch a bullfight in Las Ventas, one of Madrid's most famous bullrings. I went there out of curiosity. I had long been haunted by the image of the matador with its custom made torero suit, embroidered with golden threads, looking spectacular in his "suit of light" or traje de luces as they call it in Spain. I was curious to see the dance of death unfold in front of me, to test my humanity in the midst of blood and gold, and to see in which state my soul will come out of the arena, whether it will be shaken and stirred, furious and angry, or a little bit aware of the life embedded in every death. Being an avid fan of Hemingway, and a proponent of his famous sentence "About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after,” I went there willingly to test myself. I had heard atrocities about bullfighting yet I had this immense desire to be part of what I partially had an inclination to call a bloody piece of cultural experience. As I sat there, in front of the empty arena, I felt a grandiose feeling of belonging to something bigger than anything I experienced during my stay in Spain. Few minutes and I'll be witnessing a painting being carefully drawn in front of me, few minutes and I will be part of an art form deeply entrenched in the Spanish cultural heritage: the art of defying death. But to sit there, and to watch the bull enter the arena… To watch one bull surrounded by a matador and his six assistants. To watch the matador confronting the bull with the capote, performing a series of passes, just before the picador on a horse stabs the bull's neck, weakening the neck muscles and leading to the animal's first loss of blood... Starting a game with only one side having decided fully to engage in while making sure all the odds will be in the favor of him being a predetermined winner. It was this moment precisely that made me feel part of something immoral. The unfair rules of the game. The indifferent bull being begged to react, being pushed to the edge of fury. The bull, tired and peaceful. The bull, being teased relentlessly. The bull being pushed to a game he isn't interested in. And the matador getting credits for an unfair game he set. As I left the arena, people looked at me with mocking eyes. Yes, I went to watch a bull fight and yes the play of colors is marvelous. The matador’s costume is breathtaking and to be sitting in an arena fills your lungs with the sands of time. But to see the amount of claps the spill of blood is getting was beyond what I can endure. To hear the amount of claps injustice brings is astonishing. You understand a lot about human nature, about the wars taking place every day, about poverty and starvation. You understand a lot about racial discrimination and abuse (verbal and physical), sex trafficking, and everything that stirs the wounds of this world wide open. You understand a lot about humans’ thirst for injustice and violence as a way to empower hidden insecurities. Replace the bull and replace the matador. And the arena will still be there. And you'll hear the claps. You've been hearing them ever since you opened your eyes.

Having Reasonable Expectations for Myself • I’ll keep in mind that being perfect isn’t always necessary. I’ll get stuff done rather than obsess over getting things done perfectly. • When I get tired, I’ll rest or do something different. My level of physical energy will tell me when I’ve been doing too much. I won’t wait for an accident or illness to make me stop. • When I make a mistake, I’ll chalk it up to being human. Even if I think I’ve anticipated everything, there will be outcomes I don’t expect. • I’ll remember that everyone is responsible for their own feelings and for expressing their needs clearly. Beyond common courtesy, it isn’t up to me to guess what others want.

Then the events leading up to her collapse came back to her in a flash. Her hands flew automatically to her belly and she was only partially reassured to feel the tight ball there. Was her baby okay? Was she herself okay? She blinked harder to bring the room more into focus. There was light shining through a crack in the bathroom door. A glance at the blinds told her that it was dark outside. Then her gaze fell on the chair beside her bed and she found Ryan staring at her, his gaze intense. She flinched away from the raw emotion shining in his blue eyes. “Hey,” he said quietly. “How are you feeling?” “Numb,” she answered before she could think better of it. “Kind of blank. My head doesn’t hurt anymore. Are my feet still swollen?” He carefully picked up the sheet and pushed it over her feet. “Maybe a little. Not as bad as they were. They’ve been giving you meds and they’re monitoring the baby.” “How is she?” Kelly asked, a knot of fear in her throat. “For now, she’s doing fine. Your blood pressure stabilized, but they might have to do a C-section if it goes back up or if the baby starts showing signs of distress.” Kelly closed her eyes and then suddenly Ryan was close to her, holding her, his lips pressed against her temple. “Don’t worry, love,” he murmured. “You’re supposed to stay calm. You’re getting the best possible care. I’ve made sure of it. They’re monitoring you round-the-clock. And the doctor said the baby has an excellent prognosis at thirty-four weeks’ gestation.” She sagged against the pillow and closed her eyes. Relief pulsed through her but she was so tired she couldn’t muster the energy to do anything more than lie there thanking God that her baby was okay. “I’m going to take care of you, Kell,” Ryan said softly against her temple. “You and our baby. Nothing will ever hurt you again. I swear it.” Tears burned her eyelids. She was emotionally and physically exhausted and didn’t have the strength to argue. Something inside her was broken and she had no idea how to fix it. She felt so…disconnected.

The flat tire that threw Julio into a temporary panic and the divorce that almost killed Jim don’t act directly as physical causes producing a physical effect—as, for instance, one billiard ball hitting another and making it carom in a predictable direction. The outside event appears in consciousness purely as information, without necessarily having a positive or negative value attached to it. It is the self that interprets that raw information in the context of its own interests, and determines whether it is harmful or not. For instance, if Julio had had more money or some credit, his problem would have been perfectly innocuous. If in the past he had invested more psychic energy in making friends on the job, the flat tire would not have created panic, because he could have always asked one of his co-workers to give him a ride for a few days. And if he had had a stronger sense of self-confidence, the temporary setback would not have affected him as much because he would have trusted his ability to overcome it eventually. Similarly, if Jim had been more independent, the divorce would not have affected him as deeply. But at his age his goals must have still been bound up too closely with those of his mother and father, so that the split between them also split his sense of self. Had he had closer friends or a longer record of goals successfully achieved, his self would have had the strength to maintain its integrity. He was lucky that after the breakdown his parents realized the predicament and sought help for themselves and their son, reestablishing a stable enough relationship with Jim to allow him to go on with the task of building a sturdy self. Every piece of information we process gets evaluated for its bearing on the self. Does it threaten our goals, does it support them, or is it neutral? News of the fall of the stock market will upset the banker, but it might reinforce the sense of self of the political activist. A new piece of information will either create disorder in consciousness, by getting us all worked up to face the threat, or it will reinforce our goals, thereby freeing up psychic energy.

We feel Divine Love entering us firstly through gentle, soft, humbling, kind and loving feelings, independent of any other person. This can be experienced as gently overwhelming as it increases, dependent on the depth of our desire for It. As we heal further, and more of our negative, repressed emotions and causal soul wounds are removed, the entering of Divine Love into our souls becomes stronger and stronger, bringing deep tears, powerful sensations and expansions in the heart and soul in immense gratitude, humility and feelings of great love and even more yearning for God. There may also be whole body tingling and sensations, crown chakra and heart explosions, feelings of being fully bathed in love and light, great feelings of humility, awe and wonder at the indescribable nature of God’s Love, and at how much He loves you. Receiving Divine Love can feel like being immersed in a bath of love all over, in every part of you, every cell. Deep peace, joy and waves of ecstasy, rapture and bliss arise and flow all over, and great humility washes over the soul. Immense love for God as the most wondrous, awe inspiring Soul that He Is is felt. A deepening into the essence of your pure soul occurs, along with the deep desire to give more of your soul to God. You feel deeply nurtured and embraced in God’s Arms. There is nothing better than resting and dropping into This. You feel the purity of His Love that is the most pleasurable feeling your soul will ever experience. Heat, pressure, inner and outer movements, pulsing, physical shifts and alignments can occur as you open and embody more Divine Love and the feeling of Blessedness this brings. This Blessedness also arises in felt feelings of forgiveness and mercy. Divine Love is Perfect in its trust and tenderness. We become more and more like a child; innocent, joyful, playful and beautiful as we were created to Be. This play is a pure and glorious sensation, wishing to share itself freely and touching all others. Receiving Divine Love can also become so powerful that we are brought to our knees in immense gratitude, rapture, pain and bliss, sometimes all at once. Receiving Divine Love in its fullness is overwhelming, and can even be physically painful in the heart as it inflows to such a degree that the heart actually stretches to accommodate It all. It is both rapturous and ecstatic, as the body may rock, sway and stretch as it receives more and more Divine Love.8 There is no better feeling in all universes than to receive this Greatest Love of all loves, the most pleasurable feelings a soul can experience as it has actually been designed this way, yet our physical bodies cannot take too much of it at one time! When I receive Divine Love in a rapturous way, it is blissful to the soul yet sometimes painful to the physical. Sometimes I have to stop praying as the body becomes too tired.

Being Willing to Ask for Help • I’ll ask for help whenever I need to. • I’ll remind myself that if I need something, most people will be glad to help if they can. • I’ll use clear, intimate communication to ask for what I want, explaining my feelings and the reasons for my request. • I’ll trust that most people will listen if I ask them to. Being Myself, Whether People Accept Me or Not • When I state my thoughts clearly and politely, without malice, I won’t try to control how people take it. • I won’t give more energy than I really have. • Instead of trying to please, I’ll give other people a true indication of how I feel. • I won’t volunteer for something if I think I’ll resent it later. • If someone says something I find offensive, I’ll offer an alternative viewpoint. I won’t try to change the other person’s mind; I just won’t let the statement go unremarked upon. Sustaining and Appreciating Emotional Connections • I’ll make a point of keeping in touch with special people I care about and returning their calls or electronic messages. • I’ll think of myself as a strong person who deserves to give and receive help from my community of friends. • Even when people aren’t saying the “right” thing, I’ll tune in to whether they’re trying to help me. If their effort makes me feel emotionally nurtured, I’ll express my gratitude. • When I’m irritated with someone, I’ll think about what I want to say that could improve our relationship. I’ll wait until I cool off and then ask if the other person is willing to listen to my feelings. Having Reasonable Expectations for Myself • I’ll keep in mind that being perfect isn’t always necessary. I’ll get stuff done rather than obsess over getting things done perfectly. • When I get tired, I’ll rest or do something different. My level of physical energy will tell me when I’ve been doing too much. I won’t wait for an accident or illness to make me stop. • When I make a mistake, I’ll chalk it up to being human. Even if I think I’ve anticipated everything, there will be outcomes I don’t expect. • I’ll remember that everyone is responsible for their own feelings and for expressing their needs clearly. Beyond common courtesy, it isn’t up to me to guess what others want.

The ego-climber is like an instrument that’s out of adjustment. He puts his foot down an instant too soon or too late. He’s likely to miss a beautiful passage of sunlight through the trees. He goes on when the sloppiness of his step shows he’s tired. He rests at odd times. He looks up the trail trying to see what’s ahead even when he knows what’s ahead because he just looked a second before. He goes too fast or too slow for the conditions and when he talks his talk is forever about somewhere else, something else. He’s here but he’s not here. He rejects the here, is unhappy with it, wants to be farther up the trail but when he gets there will be just as unhappy because then it will be “here.” What he’s looking for, what he wants, is all around him, but he doesn’t want that because it is all around him. Every step’s an effort, both physically and spiritually, because he imagines his goal to be external and distant.

DEATH’S DIARY: THE PARISIANS Summer came. For the book thief, everything was going nicely. For me, the sky was the color of Jews. When their bodies had finished scouring for gaps in the door, their souls rose up. When their fingernails had scratched at the wood and in some cases were nailed into it by the sheer force of desperation, their spirits came toward me, into my arms, and we climbed out of those shower facilities, onto the roof and up, into eternity’s certain breadth. They just kept feeding me. Minute after minute. Shower after shower. I’ll never forget the first day in Auschwitz, the first time in Mauthausen. At that second place, as time wore on, I also picked them up from the bottom of the great cliff, when their escapes fell awfully awry. There were broken bodies and dead, sweet hearts. Still, it was better than the gas. Some of them I caught when they were only halfway down. Saved you, I’d think, holding their souls in midair as the rest of their being—their physical shells—plummeted to the earth. All of them were light, like the cases of empty walnuts. Smoky sky in those places. The smell like a stove, but still so cold. I shiver when I remember—as I try to de-realize it. I blow warm air into my hands, to heat them up. But it’s hard to keep them warm when the souls still shiver. God. I always say that name when I think of it. God. Twice, I speak it. I say His name in a futile attempt to understand. “But it’s not your job to understand.” That’s me who answers. God never says anything. You think you’re the only one he never answers? “Your job is to …” And I stop listening to me, because to put it bluntly, I tire me. When I start thinking like that, I become so exhausted, and I don’t have the luxury of indulging fatigue. I’m compelled to continue on, because although it’s not true for every person on earth, it’s true for the vast majority—that death waits for no man—and if he does, he doesn’t usually wait very long. On June 23, 1942, there was a group of French Jews in a German prison, on Polish soil. The first person I took was close to the door, his mind racing, then reduced to pacing, then slowing down, slowing down …. Please believe me when I tell you that I picked up each soul that day as if it were newly born. I even kissed a few weary, poisoned cheeks. I listened to their last, gasping cries. Their vanishing words. I watched their love visions and freed them from their fear. I took them all away, and if ever there was a time I needed distraction, this was it. In complete desolation, I looked at the world above. I watched the sky as it turned from silver to gray to the color of rain. Even the clouds were trying to get away. Sometimes I imagined how everything looked above those clouds, knowing without question that the sun was blond, and the endless atmosphere was a giant blue eye. They were French, they were Jews, and they were you.

The writer Louis Lomax once called King the “foremost interpreter of the Negro’s tiredness.” King had proved it true many times, beginning with his first big speech in Montgomery, when he had said, “There comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression … when people get tired of being plunged into the abyss of humiliation.” But not only did King interpret the weariness of his people; he also transformed it. He told people that if they endured, they would see better days. He sounded weary himself, at times, but never hopeless. He told a St. Augustine audience: You know, they threaten us occasionally with more than beatings … They threaten us with actual physical death. They think that this will stop the movement. I got word way out in California that a plan was underway to take my life in St. Augustine, Florida. Well, if physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brother and all of my brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive.

Indeed, it was delightful to read a man's writing again. It was so direct, so straightforward after the writing of women. It indicated such freedom of mind, such liberty of person, such confidence in himself. One had a sense of physical well-being, free mind, which had never been thwarted or opposed, but had had full liberty from birth to stretch itself in whatever way it liked. All this was admirable. But after reading a chapter or two a shadow seemed to lie across the page. It was a straight dark bar, a shadow shaped something like the letter "I." One began dodging this way and that to catch a glimpse of the landscape behind it. Whether that was indeed a tree or a woman walking I was not quite sure. Back one was always hailed to the letter "I." One began to be tired of "I." Not but what this "I" was a most respectable "I"; honest and logical; as hard as a nut, and polished for centuries by good teaching and good feeding. I respect and admire that "I" from the bottom of my heart. But- here I turned a page or two, looking for something or other - the worst of it is that in the shadow of the letter "I" all is shapeless as mist. Is that a tree? No, it is a woman. But... she has not a bone in her body.

The very first dram Ronan had ever been truly proud of, truly euphoric over, had been a copy. It had been in high school. Ronan wasn't good at surviving high school and he wasn't good at surviving friendship, and so while his friend Gansey's back was turned, he'd stolen Gansey's car. It was a beautiful car. A 1973 bright orange Camaro with stripes right up its hood and straight down its ass. Ronan had wanted to drive it for months, despite Gansey forbidding it. Maybe because of him forbidding it. Within hours of stealing it, Ronan had totaled it. Gansey hadn't wanted him to drive it because he thought he'd grind the clutch, or curb it, or burn out the tires, or maybe, maybe blow the engine. And here Ronan had totaled it. Ronan had loved Richard C. Gansey III far more than he loved himself at that point, and he hadn't known how he was ever going to face him when he returned from out of town. And then, Joseph Kavinsky had taught him to dream a copy. Before that, all of Ronan's dreams--that he knew about, Matthew didn't count--had been accidents and knickknacks, the bizarre and the useless. When he'd successfully copied a car, an entire car, he'd been out of his mind with glee. The dreamt car had been perfect down to the last detail. Exactly like the original. The pinnacle of dreaming. Now a copy was the least impressive thing to him. He could copy anything he put his mind to. That just made him a very ethereal photocopier. A one-man 3-D printer. The dreams he was proud of now were the dreams that were originals. Dreams that couldn't exist in any other way. Dreams that took full advantage of the impossibility of dreamspace in a way that was cunning or lovely or effective or all of the above. The sundogs. Lindenmere. Dreams that had to be dreams. In the past, all his good dreams like this were gifts from Lindenmere or accidents rather than things he had consciously constructed. He was beginning to realize, after listening to Bryde, that this was because he'd been thinking too small. His consciousness was slowly becoming the shape of the concrete, waking world, and it was shrinking all his dreams to the probable. He needed to start realizing that possible and impossible didn't mean the same thing for him as they did for other people. He needed to break himself of the habit of rules, of doubts, of physics. His "what if" had grown so tame. "You are made of dreams and this world is not for you." He would not let the nightwash take him and Matthew. He would not let this world kill him slowly. He deserved a place here, too. He woke.

He pulled her to the bed, undoing his trousers and hitching up her skirt as he did. Dragging down the top of her dress, he feasted on her breasts again, entering her with her thousand-pound dress tangled all round her waist. He thrust into her frantically and she came fast and furiously. They lay together breathing heavily and then she felt him harden again. Peeling her dress from her, he then lifted her from the bed, bending her over the chair by the dressing table. He came into her from behind, rutting like a dog, where she could see herself in the mirror, legs trembling, her breasts squeezed tight in his hands, being fucked by this handsome stranger. Lifting her again, he sat her on the dressing table, pressing her thighs around him as he pushed into her. She laid back, grasping at the table, scattering her jewelry to the floor, knocking over the table lamps, and came again. "Better now?" he said, with a smile. "Yes," she breathed. "Yes." He took her hand and led her to the bed. "Want to open that champagne?" "No." She curled up on the bed, This was what she'd wanted. Anonymous fucking with no chitchat, no foreplay, no commitment. It would be better now if he just left. "I'm tired." The truth was, she was exhausted. Physically and emotionally spent. He lay down beside her, still stroking her butt. "You're one hell of a sexy woman," he said.

We were both quiet for a bit. With my last brilliant idea a failure, the reality that maybe we could never fix this hung like a chain around my neck, cutting off the air. I’d fought so hard to get—really get—Lend. From escaping the Center to stopping Vivian to overcoming my own stupid issues, I’d been fighting for this relationship since the day I first saw water eyes. I couldn’t have come this far just to lose him physically forever. It wasn’t fair. And I was sick and tired of things not being fair. “So, where’s my present?” I wiped under my eyes. “Oh, right. You have your laptop in there?” “Yeah.” Smiling, I grabbed my laptop off the coffee table and emailed him the link, then waited. “Ooh, I’ve got mail.” After a few seconds I heard the video playing, and Lend laughed. “How long did this take you?” “I had a lot of time on my hands while you were in finals.” I leaned my head against the wall as I heard the soundtrack to the clips. I’d gone through all four seasons of Easton Heights and found every single time any of the characters said “I love you,” then (with copious amounts of help from Arianna) pieced them all together back to back, with one of Lend’s favorite songs as the soundtrack. “I love you!” “I love you. “I LOVE YOU, idiot!” “You are so—I hate you! I love you!” “Shut up and tell me you love me.” “Te amo!” Ah, yes, the quest arc of the Spanish hottie. That was a good season. Given the number of relationships that show cycled through, the video lasted several minutes. When it ended, I heard Lend’s laptop closing. “Well?” I asked. “I love you,” he answered. “I love you, too.” I put my palm against the wall, fingers splayed out.

As we were getting Mia’s things ready for her discharge, her nurse started to excuse herself to get a wheelchair to transport Mia to the car. Instantly, Mia said, “I’m not riding in a wheelchair.” “Yes, you are, Mia. It’s a hospital regulation,” I said, believing that was true. “Mom,” she protested, “they said I’m supposed to walk as much as possible. I’m walking to the car.” I saw a certain look in Mia’s eyes as she made this announcement, the look that says “I am going to push hard for this.” I knew she was determined, and I would fight a losing battle to try to talk her out of it. “I’m walking out of here,” she said again. I guess the medical staff noticed that look too because they allowed her to try to walk, with a nurse close beside her. Seeing that little girl limp her way down the hall, holding Reed’s hand, was one of the proudest moments of my life. I was absolutely amazed by her spunk and determination. I grabbed my cell phone from my purse and snapped a picture. She is such a fighter, I thought as Jase and I followed her. Visually, she looked roughed up, as though she had been through about fifteen rounds in a boxing match. But in that moment, she showed a level of toughness and resilience I have never seen in a child. Remembering the information we were told on that first visit to ICI when Mia was seventeen days old, that she would need physical therapy to help her walk again after this surgery, I thanked God as I watched our daughter walk right out of the hospital twenty-four hours postoperation! When we got into the car, Jase asked Mia, “Well, what do you think about that?” “I’m a little tired, but I made it,” she replied. Indeed she did.

This reaction to the work was obviously a misunderstanding. It ignores the fact that the future Buddha was also of noble origins, that he was the son of a king and heir to the throne and had been raised with the expectation that one day he would inherit the crown. He had been taught martial arts and the art of government, and having reached the right age, he had married and had a son. All of these things would be more typical of the physical and mental formation of a future samurai than of a seminarian ready to take holy orders. A man like Julius Evola was particularly suitable to dispel such a misconception. He did so on two fronts in his Doctrine: on the one hand, he did not cease to recall the origins of the Buddha, Prince Siddhartha, who was destined to the throne of Kapilavastu: on the other hand, he attempted to demonstrate that Buddhist asceticism is not a cowardly resignation before life's vicissitudes, but rather a struggle of a spiritual kind, which is not any less heroic than the struggle of a knight on the battlefield. As Buddha himself said (Mahavagga, 2.15): 'It is better to die fighting than to live as one vanquished.' This resolution is in accord with Evola's ideal of overcoming natural resistances in order to achieve the Awakening through meditation; it should he noted, however, that the warrior terminology is contained in the oldest writings of Buddhism, which are those that best reflect the living teaching of the master. Evola works tirelessly in his hook to erase the Western view of a languid and dull doctrine that in fact was originally regarded as aristocratic and reserved for real 'champions.' After Schopenhauer, the unfounded idea arose in Western culture that Buddhism involved a renunciation of the world and the adoption of a passive attitude: 'Let things go their way; who cares anyway.' Since in this inferior world 'everything is evil,' the wise person is the one who, like Simeon the Stylite, withdraws, if not to the top of a pillar; at least to an isolated place of meditation. Moreover, the most widespread view of Buddhists is that of monks dressed in orange robes, begging for their food; people suppose that the only activity these monks are devoted to is reciting memorized texts, since they shun prayers; thus, their religion appears to an outsider as a form of atheism. Evola successfully demonstrates that this view is profoundly distorted by a series of prejudices. Passivity? Inaction? On the contrary, Buddha never tired of exhorting his disciples to 'work toward victory'; he himself, at the end of his life, said with pride: katam karaniyam, 'done is what needed to he done!' Pessimism? It is true that Buddha, picking up a formula of Brahmanism, the religion in which he had been raised prior to his departure from Kapilavastu, affirmed that everything on earth is 'suffering.' But he also clarified for us that this is the case because we are always yearning to reap concrete benefits from our actions. For example, warriors risk their lives because they long for the pleasure of victory and for the spoils, and yet in the end they are always disappointed: the pillaging is never enough and what has been gained is quickly squandered. Also, the taste of victory soon fades away. But if one becomes aware of this state of affairs (this is one aspect of the Awakening), the pessimism is dispelled since reality is what it is, neither good nor bad in itself; reality is inscribed in Becoming, which cannot be interrupted. Thus, one must live and act with the awareness that the only thing that matters is each and every moment. Thus, duty (dhamma) is claimed to be the only valid reference point: 'Do your duty,' that is. 'let your every action he totally disinterested.

This was my first rebirth into a body of the same species. I found the transfer much more difficult than changing planets because I had so many expectations about being human already in place. Also, I’d inherited a lot of things from Petals Open to the Moon, and not all of them were pleasant. I’d inherited a great deal of grief for Cloud Spinner. I missed the mother I’d never known and mourned for her suffering now. Perhaps there could be no joy on this planet without an equal weight of pain to balance it out on some unknown scale. I’d inherited unexpected limitations. I was used to a body that was strong and fast and tall—a body that could run for miles, go without food and water, lift heavy weights, and reach high shelves. This body was weak—and not just physically. This body seized up with crippling shyness every time I was unsure of myself, which seemed to be often these days. I’d inherited a different role in the human community. People carried things for me now and let me pass first into a room. They gave me the easiest chores and then, half the time, took the work right out of my hands anyway. Worse than that, I needed the help. My muscles were soft and not used to labor. I tired easily, and my attempts to hide that fooled no one. I probably couldn’t have run a mile without stopping. There was more to this easy treatment than just my physical weakness, though. I was used to a pretty face, but one that people were able to look at with fear, mistrust, even hatred. My new face defied such emotions. People touched my cheeks often, or put their fingers under my chin, holding my face up to see it better. I was frequently patted on my head (which was in easy reach, since I was shorter than everyone but the children), and my hair was stroked so regularly that I stopped noticing when it happened. Those who had never accepted me before did this as often as my friends.

Another howl ruptured the quiet, still too far away to be a threat. The Beast Lord, the leader, the alpha male, had to enforce his position as much by will as by physical force. He would have to answer any challenges to his rule, so it was unlikely that he turned into a wolf. A wolf would have little chance against a cat. Wolves hunted in a pack, bleeding their victim and running them into exhaustion, while cats were solitary killing machines, designed to murder swiftly and with deadly precision. No, the Beast Lord would have to be a cat, a jaguar or a leopard. Perhaps a tiger, although all known cases of weretigers occurred in Asia and could be counted without involving toes. I had heard a rumor of the Kodiak of Atlanta, a legend of an enormous, battle-scarred bear roaming the streets in search of Pack criminals. The Pack, like any social organization, had its lawbreakers. The Kodiak was their Executioner. Perhaps his Majesty turned into a bear. Damn. I should have brought some honey. My left leg was tiring. I shifted from foot to foot . . . A low, warning growl froze me in midmove. It came from the dark gaping hole in the building across the street and rolled through the ruins, awakening ancient memories of a time when humans were pathetic, hairless creatures cowering by the weak flame of the first fire and scanning the night with frightened eyes, for it held monstrous hungry killers. My subconscious screamed in panic. I held it in check and cracked my neck, slowly, one side then another. A lean shadow flickered in the corner of my eye. On the left and above me a graceful jaguar stretched on the jutting block of concrete, an elegant statue encased in the liquid metal of moonlight. Homo Panthera onca. The killer who takes its prey in a single bound. Hello, Jim. The jaguar looked at me with amber eyes. Feline lips stretched in a startlingly human smirk. He could laugh if he wanted. He didn’t know what was at stake. Jim turned his head and began washing his paw. My saber firmly in hand, I marched across the street and stepped through the opening. The darkness swallowed me whole. The lingering musky scent of a cat hit me. So, not a bear after all. Where was he? I scanned the building, peering into the gloom. Moonlight filtered through the gaps in the walls, creating a mirage of twilight and complete darkness. I knew he was watching me. Enjoying himself. Diplomacy was never my strong suit and my patience had run dry. I crouched and called out, “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty.” Two golden eyes ignited at the opposite wall. A shape stirred within the darkness and rose, carrying the eyes up and up and up until they towered above me. A single enormous paw moved into the moonlight, disturbing the dust on the filthy floor. Wicked claws shot forth and withdrew. A massive shoulder followed, its gray fur marked by faint smoky stripes. The huge body shifted forward, coming at me, and I lost my balance and fell on my ass into the dirt. Dear God, this wasn’t just a lion. This thing had to be at least five feet at the shoulder. And why was it striped? The colossal cat circled me, half in the light, half in the shadow, the dark mane trembling as he moved. I scrambled to my feet and almost bumped into the gray muzzle. We looked at each other, the lion and I, our gazes level. Then I twisted around and began dusting off my jeans in a most undignified manner. The lion vanished into a dark corner. A whisper of power pulsed through the room, tugging at my senses. If I did not know better, I would say that he had just changed. “Kitty, kitty?” asked a level male voice. I jumped. No shapechanger went from a beast into a human without a nap. Into a midform, yes, but beast-men had trouble talking. “Yeah,” I said. “You’ve caught me unprepared. Next time I’ll bring cream and catnip toys.” “If there is a next time.

Phaedrus wrote a letter from India about a pilgrimage to holy Mount Kailas, the source of the Ganges and the abode of Shiva, high in the Himalayas, in the company of a holy man and his adherents. He never reached the mountain. After the third day he gave up, exhausted, and the pilgrimage went on without him. He said he had the physical strength but that physical strength wasn’t enough. He had the intellectual motivation but that wasn’t enough either. He didn’t think he had been arrogant but thought that he was undertaking the pilgrimage to broaden his experience, to gain understanding for himself. He was trying to use the mountain for his own purposes and the pilgrimage too. He regarded himself as the fixed entity, not the pilgrimage or the mountain, and thus wasn’t ready for it. He speculated that the other pilgrims, the ones who reached the mountain, probably sensed the holiness of the mountain so intensely that each footstep was an act of devotion, an act of submission to this holiness. The holiness of the mountain infused into their own spirits enabled them to endure far more than anything he, with his greater physical strength, could take. To the untrained eye ego-climbing and selfless climbing may appear identical. Both kinds of climbers place one foot in front of the other. Both breathe in and out at the same rate. Both stop when tired. Both go forward when rested. But what a difference! The ego-climber is like an instrument that’s out of adjustment. He puts his foot down an instant too soon or too late. He’s likely to miss a beautiful passage of sunlight through the trees. He goes on when the sloppiness of his step shows he’s tired. He rests at odd times. He looks up the trail trying to see what’s ahead even when he knows what’s ahead because he just looked a second before. He goes too fast or too slow for the conditions and when he talks his talk is forever about somewhere else, something else. He’s here but he’s not here. He rejects the here, is unhappy with it, wants to be farther up the trail but when he gets there will be just as unhappy because then it will be “here.” What he’s looking for, what he wants, is all around him, but he doesn’t want that because it is all around him. Every step’s an effort, both physically and spiritually, because he imagines his goal to be external and distant.

Action Step: Nourished by “Light” You can prove to yourself how nourishing a new word can be once it begins to be your personal theme. Let’s use the word light. Since it’s the opposite of heavy, this word is one of the best for our purposes. The more you bring light into your life, the easier it will be to lose weight. Why? Because light covers so many positive experiences. Look at the following usages: Lighthearted Light-handed Enlightened Feeling light and bright The light of inspiration Lightness of being The light of the soul The light of God If you had these things in your life, it would be much easier for your body to be light. Your mind would be sending messages that are the opposite of heavy, dull, inert, tired, bored, dark, unenlightened. Start to rid yourself of those messages and let your body conform to lightness and all of its positive connotations. With this background, you can proceed to use light in various ways, beginning with the physical sensation of being light. Exercise: Filling with Light Sit in a quiet room by yourself. Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths until you feel centered and ready. (It’s best to sit upright if you can rather than lounging back in your chair.) Breathing normally, visualize light filling your chest each time you inhale. The light is soft, warm, and white. Watch it suffuse your chest. Now exhale normally, but leave the light inside. On your next breath, take in more light. See the light filling your chest now begin to suffuse the rest of your body, moving down into your abdomen. Don’t force the visualization, and don’t worry if you have trouble seeing the light—even a faint sense of white light is good enough. With each breath, let the light suffuse your arms, then your hands all the way to the fingertips. Let it suffuse your legs down to your toes. Finally, send the light into your head and out the top in a beam that reaches high. Sit with the light for a few moments, then lift your arms, letting them float upward as if the light is causing them to rise. You are like a balloon filled completely with light. Enjoy the sensation, then open your eyes. This is a good exercise to counteract feelings of dullness, heaviness, fatigue, and sadness. The sensation of being physically light, paired with the visualization of inner light, creates a big change in how you relate to your body.

Mr. Hazlit!” She kept her voice down with effort, but when a man sneaked up behind a lady and slid his arms around her waist, some exclamation was in order. “Hush.” He turned her in his arms, though part of Maggie was strongly admonishing herself to wrestle free. He’d let her go. She trusted him that far, when a servant was likely to appear any moment with a tea tray. “Something has you in a dither. Tell me.” His embrace was the most beguiling, irresistible mockery of a kindness. Gayle had offered her a hug a few days ago, a brusque, brotherly gesture as careful as it was brief. This was different. This was… Benjamin Hazlit’s warm, strong male body, available for her comfort. No conditions, no awkwardness, no dissembling for the benefit of an audience. She sighed and tucked her face against his throat, unwilling—or unable—to deny herself what he offered. For a few moments, she was going to pretend she wasn’t alone in a sea of trouble. She was going to pretend they were friends—cousins, maybe—and stealing this from him was permitted. She was going to hold on to the fiction that she was as entitled to dream of children and a husband to dote upon as the next woman. “You are wound as tight as a fiddle string, Maggie Windham.” Hazlit’s hand settled on her neck, kneading gently. “Are the domestics feuding, or has Her Grace been hounding you?” “She never hounds or scolds.” Maggie rested her forehead on his shoulder, her bones turning to butter at his touch. “She looks at us, disappointment in the prettiest green eyes you’ve ever seen, and you want to disappear into the ground, never to emerge until you can make her smile again. His Grace says it’s the same for him.” When she was held like this, Maggie could detect a unique scent about Hazlit’s person: honeysuckle and spice, like an exotic incense. It clung to his clothing, and when she turned her head to rest her cheek on the wool of his coat, she caught the same fragrance rising from the exposed flesh of his neck. That hand of his went wandering, over her shoulder blades, down her spine. “You are tired,” he said, his voice resonating through her physically. “What is disturbing your sleep, Maggie? And don’t think I’ll be distracted by more hissing and arching your back.” “I’m not a cat.” “You’ve cat eyes.” He turned her so his arm was around her waist. “Let’s sit by the fire, and you can tell me your troubles.” Such

We needed to drive down the road a couple of miles to meet the rest of the cowboys and gather the cattle from there. “Mom, why don’t you and Ree go ahead in her car and we’ll be right behind you,” Marlboro Man directed. His mother and I walked outside, climbed in the car, and headed down the road. We exchanged pleasant small talk. She was poised and genuine, and I chattered away, relieved that she was so approachable. Then, about a mile into our journey, she casually mentioned, “You might watch that turn up ahead; it’s a little sharp.” “Oh, okay,” I replied, not really listening. Clearly she didn’t know I’d been an L.A. driver for years. Driving was not a problem for me. Almost immediately, I saw a ninety-degree turn right in front of my face, pointing its finger at me and laughing--cackling--at my predicament. I whipped the steering wheel to the left as quickly as I could, skidding on the gravel and stirring up dust. But it was no use--the turn got the better of me, and my car came to rest awkwardly in the ditch, the passenger side a good four feet lower than mine. Marlboro Man’s mother was fine. Lucky for her, there’s really nothing with which to collide on an isolated cattle ranch--no overpasses or concrete dividers or retaining walls or other vehicles. I was fine, too--physically, anyway. My hands were trembling violently. My armpits began to gush perspiration. My car was stuck, the right two tires wedged inextricably in a deep crevice of earth on the side of the road. On the list of the Top Ten Things I’d Want Not to Happen on the First Meeting Between My Boyfriend’s Mother and Me, this would rate about number four. “Oh my word,” I said. “I’m sorry about that.” “Oh, don’t worry about it,” she reassured, looking out the window. “I just hope your car’s okay.” Marlboro Man and his dad pulled up beside us, and they both hopped out of the pickup. Opening my door, Marlboro Man said, “You guys okay?” “We’re fine,” his mother said. “We just got a little busy talking.” I was Lucille Ball. Lucille Ball on steroids and speed and vodka. I was a joke, a caricature, a freak. This couldn’t possibly be happening to me. Not today. Not now. “Okay, I’ll just go home now,” I said, covering my face with my hands. I wanted to be someone else. A normal person, maybe. A good driver, perhaps. Marlboro Man examined my tires, which were completely torn up. “You’re not goin’ anywhere, actually. You guys hop in the pickup.” My car was down for the count.