Piercing Related Quotes

Any kind of modification, whether it’s to alter physical features, like cosmetic surgery, or to decorate, like piercings and tattoos, cause some degree of discomfort. But that’s the point, isn’t it? It’s cathartic because it’s the promise of change in some form or another. My tattoos give the memory related to the art a place to exist outside of my head, on my body. At least that’s my interpretation, but not everyone feels the same way I do.

Literature is, to my mind, the great teaching power of the world, the ultimate creator of all values, and it is this, not only in the sacred books whose power everybody acknowledges, but by every movement of imagination in song or story or drama that height of intensity and sincerity has made literature at all. Literature must take the responsibility of its power, and keep all its freedom: it must be like the spirit and like the wind that blows where it listeth; it must claim its right to pierce through every crevice of human nature, and to descrive the relation of the soul and the heart to the facts of life and of law, and to describe that relation as it is, not as we would have it be...

We could stay. You could sleep it off and we can still go to Disney with everyone tomorrow. Don’t you want to go to Fantasyland?” I batted my eyelashes. Jackson ran his thumb and forefinger over his lip, catching his grin and a speck of dried blood at once. The second that grin appeared, it was as if the entire evening’s events evaporated. “Why, Emma Pierce, do you want me to take you to Fantasyland and make all of your dreams come true?” He winked with his good eye. It was painfully adorable.

Idealism, though just in its premises, and often daring and honest in their application, is stultified by the exclusive intellectualism of its own methods: by its fatal trust in the squirrel-work of the industrious brain instead of the piercing vision of the desirous heart. It interests man, but does not involve him in its processes: does not catch him up to the new and more real life which it describes. Hence the thing that matters, the living thing, has somehow escaped it; and its observations bear the same relation to reality as the art of the anatomist does to the mystery of birth.

Swift is her walk, more swift her winged haste: A monstrous phantom, horrible and vast. As many plumes as raise her lofty flight, So many piercing eyes inlarge her sight; Millions of opening mouths to Fame belong, And ev'ry mouth is furnish'd with a tongue, And round with list'ning ears the flying plague is hung. She fills the peaceful universe with cries; No slumbers ever close her wakeful eyes; By day, from lofty tow'rs her head she shews, And spreads thro' trembling crowds disastrous news; With court informers haunts, and royal spies; Things done relates, not done she feigns, and mingles truth with lies. Talk is her business, and her chief delight To tell of prodigies and cause affright.

I was trying to protext you.” He lifted his eyes, and they pierced through me. “You wanted to keep me safe?” “Yes”. I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “Not that it turned out that way in the end, but when I found out Blake and Vaughn were related, all I could think was that he played me – I let myself be played. And he knew how close we were. They’d do to you what they did to Dawson. There is no way I could have lived with that.” …………….. “You should’ve never been worried about me getting hurt.” He stood, running both hands through his hair. “You know I can take care of myself. You know I can handle my own.” “I know,” I said. “But I wasn’t going to knowingly put you at risk. You mean too much to me.

the relation of mathematics to the world of temporal change and of phenomenal particularity is direct: less by induction than by what Pierce called abduction – an imaginative jumping off from an open-ended series of particulars.

However he said before I came: To him who brought you up relate How you have broken honor's ties, And say,- his prompt response I wait!' 'Distressed am I to bear your words; And humbled low I am by fate. For honor's sake I must revenge The wrong done Batu and his mate.' Then slowly on one upraised knee He placed with care his loaded gun; Ten aimed at Sapar-beg whom he Had reared, and loved more than a son 'O Sapar-beg,' he gravely said, 'Unworthy even for death are you. 'Tis I who am unfit to live For bringing up a man like you' A sudden flash… a bursting shot… A bullet pierce through temples gray… And on the ground in wreaths of smoke Haji-Iusub lifeless lay.

Pierce also blamed the nation’s deepening divide on “wild and chimerical schemes of social change” and “a fanatical devotion to the supposed interests of the relatively few Africans in the United States.” Rarely had the U.S. government’s acquiescence to the Slave Power been so plainly expressed—and done so by a dough-faced Yankee from New Hampshire.

The wife of the dead man had thrown herself down in the mud, and her wails were so piercing that several of the policemen couldn’t tolerate the sound and had moved away. To his surprise, Wallander saw that the only one who was able to handle the grieving woman and the anguished children was Martinsson. The youngest policeman on the force, who so far in his career had never even been forced to notify someone of a relative’s death. He had held the woman, kneeling in the mud, and in some way the two were able to understand each other across the language barrier.

Blessedness is within us all It lies upon the long scaffold Patrols the vaporous hall In our pursuits, though still, we venture forth Hoping to grasp a handful of cloud and return Unscathed, cloud in hand. We encounter Space, fist, violin, or this — an immaculate face Of a boy, somewhat wild, smiling in the sun. He raises his hand, as if in carefree salute Shading eyes that contain the thread of God. Soon they will gather power, disenchantment They will reflect enlightenment, agony They will reveal the process of love They will, in an hour alone, shed tears. His mouth a circlet, a baptismal font Opening wide as the lips of a damsel Sounding the dizzying extremes. The relativity of vein, the hip of unrest For the sake of wing there is shoulder. For symmetry there is blade. He kneels, humiliates, he pierces her side. Offering spleen to the wolves of the forest. He races across the tiles, the human board. Virility, coquetry all a game — well played. Immersed in luminous disgrace, he lifts As a slave, a nymph, a fabulous hood As a rose, a thief of life, he will parade Nude crowned with leaves, immortal. He will sing of the body, his truth He will increase the shining neck Pluck airs toward our delight Of the waning The blossoming The violent charade But who will sing of him? Who will sing of his blessedness? The blameless eye, the radiant grin For he, his own messenger, is gone He has leapt through the orphic glass To wander eternally In search of perfection His blue ankles tattooed with stars.

In the time of chimpanzees, I was a monkey Butane in my veins and I'm out to cut the junkie With the plastic eyeballs, spray paint the vegetables Dog food stalls with the beefcake pantyhose Kill the headlights and put it in neutral Stock car flamin' with a loser in the cruise control Baby's in Reno with the Vitamin D Got a couple of couches, sleep on the love seat Someone came in sayin' I'm insane to complain About a shotgun wedding and a stain on my shirt Don't believe everything that you breathe You get a parking violation and a maggot on your sleeve So shave your face with some mace in the dark Savin' all your food stamps and burnin' down the trailer park Yo, cut it Soy un perdedor I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me? (Double barrel buckshot) Soy un perdedor I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me? Forces of evil on a bozo nightmare Ban all the music with a phony gas chamber 'Cause one's got a weasel and the other's got a flag One's on the pole, shove the other in a bag With the rerun shows and the cocaine nose-job The daytime crap of the folksinger slob He hung himself with a guitar string A slab of turkey neck and it's hangin' from a pigeon wing You can't write if you can't relate Trade the cash for the beef, for the body, for the hate And my time is a piece of wax fallin' on a termite That's chokin' on the splinters Soy un perdedor I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me? (Get crazy with the cheese whiz) Soy un perdedor I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me? (Drive-by body pierce) Yo, bring it on down I'm a driver, I'm a winner Things are gonna change, I can feel it Soy un perdedor I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me? (I can't believe you) Soy un perdedor I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me? Soy un perdedor I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me? (Sprechen sie Deutsche, baby) Soy un perdedor I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me? (Know what I'm sayin'?)

A Prescription for a Simple Life 1. Write in a journal daily, or almost daily. 2. Take three to four months off every few years and go live in some very different place, preferably a foreign country. 3. Limit your work (outside of the home) to 30 hours a week, 20 if you are a parent. 4. Don't let any material thing come into your home unless you absolutely love it and want to keep it for the rest of your life or until it is beyond repair. 5. Spend at least an hour a week in a natural setting, away from crowds of people, traffic, and buildings. Three to four hours of nature time each week is even better. 6. Live in a home with only those rooms that you or someone in your family use every day. 7. Select a home and place of work no more than 30 minutes away from each other. 8. Do whatever you need to do to connect with a sense of spirit in your life, whether it be prayer, religious services, meditation, spiritually-related reading, or walking in nature. 9. Seek the support of others who want to simplify their lives. Join or start a simplicity circle if you enjoy group interaction. 10. Practice saying no. Say no to those things that don't bring you inner peace and fulfillment, whether it be more things, more career responsibility, or more social activities.

Now, if we are made for heaven, the desire for our proper place will be already in us, but not yet attached to the true object, and will even appear as the rival of that object ... If a transtemporal, transfinite good is our real destiny, then any other good on which our desire fixes must be in some degree fallacious, must bear at best only a symbolical relation to what will truly satisfy. In speaking of this desire for our own faroff country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a � name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter.

For those who live in Kashmir, the expectations of justice, rarely fulfilled in the Indian subcontinent, are more than optimistic; they belong to fantasy. It makes it all the more difficult for the victims to bear their human losses. At Dalal's house, the once carefully tended plants and hedges were already running wild just a few weeks after his murder, the fish in the pond were mostly dead, and few men sat slumped on the floor in a bare hall under the Islamic calendar of mourning. His mother, persuaded by her male relatives to emerge from the dark room where she had taken to since her son's death, broke down as soon as she noticed the photos of Dalal I had been studying. The pictures showed a young man in dark glasses and trendy clothes, a happy, contented man, someone who had managed to find, amid the relentless violence of the insurgency, a new style and identity for himself, and when Dalal's mother, still crying, while her mother, Dalal's grandmother, sat beside her, quietly wiping her tears with the frayed end of her headscarf, asked what was the point of talking to the press, of speaking about her son to me- he was gone and wouldn't come back; the people who had killed him were too powerful- it was hard not to feel pierced by the truth of what she was saying, hard not to be moved by her grief, and the pain, amid the great human waste of Kashmir, of her helplessness.

Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!" --As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lost his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated?--Thus they yelled and laughed. The madman jumped into their minds and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him--you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions. Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as though an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Had it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. "How shall we comfort ourselves. the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under out knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us--for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto." Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightening and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars--and yet they have done it themselves" It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said to always have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not tombs and sepulchers of God?

My father had a sister, Mady, who had married badly and ‘ruined her life.’ Her story was a classic. She had fallen in love before the war with an American adventurer, married him against her family’s wishes, and been disinherited by my grandfather. Mady followed her husband romantically across the sea. In America he promptly abandoned her. By the time my parents arrived in America Mady was already a broken woman, sick and prematurely old, living a life two steps removed from destitution. My father, of course, immediately put her on an allowance and made her welcome in his home. But the iron laws of Victorian transgression had been set in motion and it was really all over for Mady. You know what it meant for a woman to have been so disgraced and disinherited in those years? She had the mark of Cain on her. She would live, barely tolerated, on the edge of respectable society for the rest of her life. A year after we arrived in America, I was eleven years old, a cousin of mine was married out of our house. We lived then in a lovely brownstone on New York’s Upper West Side. The entire house had been cleaned and decorated for the wedding. Everything sparkled and shone, from the basement kitchen to the third-floor bedrooms. In a small room on the second floor the women gathered around the bride, preening, fixing their dresses, distributing bouquets of flowers. I was allowed to be there because I was only a child. There was a bunch of long-stemmed roses lying on the bed, blood-red and beautiful, each rose perfection. Mady walked over to them. I remember the other women were wearing magnificent dresses, embroidered and bejeweled. Mady was wearing only a simple white satin blouse and a long black skirt with no ornamentation whatever. She picked up one of the roses, sniffed deeply at it, held it against her face. Then she walked over to a mirror and held the rose against her white blouse. Immediately, the entire look of her plain costume was altered; the rose transferred its color to Mady’s face, brightening her eyes. Suddenly, she looked lovely, and young again. She found a long needle-like pin and began to pin the rose to her blouse. My mother noticed what Mady was doing and walked over to her. Imperiously, she took the rose out of Mady’s hand and said, ‘No, Mady, those flowers are for the bride.’ Mady hastily said, ‘Oh, of course, I’m sorry, how stupid of me not to have realized that,’ and her face instantly assumed its usual mask of patient obligation. “I experienced in that moment an intensity of pain against which I have measured every subsequent pain of life. My heart ached so for Mady I thought I would perish on the spot. Loneliness broke, wave after wave, over my young head and one word burned in my brain. Over and over again, through my tears, I murmured, ‘Unjust! Unjust!’ I knew that if Mady had been one of the ‘ladies’ of the house my mother would never have taken the rose out of her hand in that manner. The memory of what had happened in the bedroom pierced me repeatedly throughout that whole long day, making me feel ill and wounded each time it returned. Mady’s loneliness became mine. I felt connected, as though by an invisible thread, to her alone of all the people in the house. But the odd thing was I never actually went near her all that day. I wanted to comfort her, let her know that I at least loved her and felt for her. But I couldn’t. In fact, I avoided her. In spite of everything, I felt her to be a pariah, and that my attachment to her made me a pariah, also. It was as though we were floating, two pariahs, through the house, among all those relations, related to no one, not even to each other. It was an extraordinary experience, one I can still taste to this day. I was never again able to address myself directly to Mady’s loneliness until I joined the Communist Party. When I joined the Party the stifled memory of that strange wedding day came back to me. . .

In fact, the circuit may fail entirely to transmit sine waves of some frequencies. Thus, corresponding to an input signal made up of several sinusoidal components, there will be an output signal having components of the same frequencies but of different relative phases or delays and of different amplitudes.

Thus, in general the shape of the output signal will be different from the shape of the input signal. However, the difference can be thought of as caused by the changes in the relative delays and amplitudes of the various components, differences associated with their different frequencies. If the attenuation and delay of a circuit is the same for all frequencies, the shape of the output wave will be the same as that of the input wave; such a circuit is distortionless.

Adam inclined his head toward Owen. “Two questions. Was I Fabio in that scenario? And who is Fabio?” Brown eyes rolled. “Yes, and Google that shit.” And he did. “Ho! My nose is way smaller!” Cam grabbed the smartphone out of Adam’s hand. “Look at those baby blues, though. Piercing. Erotic, even. You could totally be related.” A grin tipped Adam’s mouth. “Really?” Cam slapped the phone against Adam’s chest. “Dude. No. Not really.

The torment of personal relations. Nothing new there except in the disguise, and in the escape on the wings of adjectives. Sweet to be pierced by daggers at the end of paragraphs.

The first of the tests is the overcoming of appetite. This involves their doing a two days’ walk or hunt without food, and then being brought suddenly before a fire on which some choice kangaroo steak or other native delicacy is being cooked. They are required to take only a small portion of this. The next is the test of pain. The young boys and girls submit to having their noses pierced, their bodies marked, and to being laid down upon hot embers thinly covered with boughs. The third is the test of fear. The young people are told awesome and hair-raising stories about ghosts and the muldarpe, the Evil Spirit or the Devil-devil. After all these tests they are put to sleep in a lonely place, or near the burial-place of the tribe. During the night the elders, who are made hideous with white clay and bark headdresses, appear, making weird noises. Those of the candidates who show no signs of having had a disturbed night are then admitted as fully initiated members of the tribe. No youth or maiden is allowed to marry without having passed these tests. A proposed marriage is talked over first by all the old members of the tribe. The uncle on the mother’s side is the most important relative, and it is he who finally selects the wife. The actual marriage ceremony takes place during the time of festivals. The husband does not look at or speak to his mother-in-law, although he is husband in name to all his sisters-in-law.

There are almost no trees in Iceland, and the few that exist are all in the cemeteries; as if there were no dead without trees, as if there were no trees without the dead. They are not planted alongside the grave, as in idyllic Central Europe, but right in the center of it, to force a passerby to imagine the roots down below piercing the body. I am walking with Elvar D. in the Reykjavik cemetery; he stops at a grave whose tree is still quite small; barely a year ago his friend was buried; he starts reminiscing aloud about him: his private life was marked by some secret, probably a sexual one. "Because secrets excite such irritated curiosity, my wife, my daughters, the people around me, all insisted I tell them about it. To such an extent that my relations with my wife have been bad ever since. I couldn't forgive her aggressive curiosity, and she couldn't forgive my silence, which to her was evidence of how little I trusted her." He smiled, and then: "I divulged nothing," he said. "Because I had nothing to divulge. I had forbidden myself to want to know my friends secrets, and I didn't know them." I listened to him with fascination: since childhood I had heard it said that a friend is the person with whom you share your secrets and who even has the right, in the name of friendship, to insist on knowing them. For my Icelander, friendship is something else: it is standing guard at the door behind which your friend keeps his private life hidden; it is being the person who never opens that door; who allows no one else to open it.

Is this what birds feel like?” Britta shouts excitedly. “No wonder they never wanted us to run.” And I stumble, the reminder as piercing as an arrow. The Infinite Wisdoms forbid running, as they do most things that don’t prepare girls for marriage and serving their families. Girls can’t shout, drink, ride horses, go to school, learn a trade, learn to fight, move about without a male guardian—we can’t do anything that doesn’t somehow relate to having a husband and family and serving them. Elder Durkas always told us that’s because they’re trying to show us how to live happy, righteous lives. What if they were meant to cage us instead?

​Kindness requires creativity. We have to witness the world and the people in it as boats with open sails, ready to be pushed by the wind of thoughtfulness. God, to my amazement, has put this power in our hands. And so this, too, is a gift we give to others. As with the other gifts of the Spirit, it’s relational, interpersonal. It’s a gift that helps us thrive in God’s giving circle.

For the past millennia, all Hebrew bibles say: “Like a lion are my hands and feet.” Or, in other words: my hands and my feet are like those of a lion. It doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, does it? 1,000 years ago, the Masoretes who made the “Masoretic text” that Israelis all use today, changed one single letter in this verse: They shortened the letter VAV ( ו ) into the letter YUD  ( י ). Originally, the text actually read: “They have mined (bore a hole) in my hands and feet,” Meaning, they have pierced my hands and my feet. The original Hebrew word means to mine or bore, to make a hole or dig a pit.

For example, in Exodus 21:33 or in 2 Chronicles 16:14. However, seeing as this description of boring holes in the Messiah’s hands and feet sounded a little too much like Jesus for the rabbis, they decided to shorten the letter VAV ( ו ) to become the letter YUD  ( י ). Any person who reads any ancient version of the Old Testament, such as the Septuagint or the Dead Sea Scrolls, will see for themselves that the original text doesn’t say “like a lion”, but rather “they have bored / pierced.” The Dead Sea Scrolls, dated hundreds of years before the time of Jesus or as in the New Testament, were written at least 1,200 years prior to the Masoretic text.

That description is remarkably similar to the one in Zechariah 12, verse 10: “When they look on me, on Him whom they have pierced” as well as to the description in Isaiah 53 where the Messiah is said to be “pierced for our transgressions” (Isaiah 53:5).

When was the last time you and Daniel laughed together?' 'I can't remember, Nancy said. It's like living with a stalker. He follows me from room to room. Sometimes he sits there staring at me. Do you know what I mean? There's that fine line that separates eye contact and the piercing stare of a psychopath. He often crosses it.

Some of this diversity in animal feeling is surely related to enculturation (we in the United States tend to love dogs and be disgusted by the thought of eating them; other cultures farm dogs like we do pigs and relish the thought of grilled dog with hot chili sauce).

Okay…” “While this is a domestic abuse case, it is also a homicide case. When we get inside, there’s going to be a body. A relatively fresh one.” “Oh…” she said, unable to contain her shock. “I know it’s more than you were expecting. But there was some discussion when you came in. Discussions to maybe let you peek behind the curtain right from the start.

The Self is not conscious in the ordinary sense of the word. However, it is also not unconscious. It is, rather, pure Awareness or Superconsciousness (cit). All other attributes are simply superimpositions, projections of the mind. For the Self to reveal itself in its native splendor, all these projections must be withdrawn, or pierced through. This is achieved by means of the via negativa of the neti neti method. This approach of negation is succinctly illustrated in the Nirvāna-Shatka (Six [Stanzas] on Extinction), which is one of the many didactic poems attributed to Shankara. The full text reads as follows: I am not the mind or the wisdom faculty (buddhi), the I-sense, or thought; neither hearing nor the tongue; neither the nose nor the eyes; nor am I ether, earth, fire, or air. I am Shiva in the form of Awareness (cit) and Bliss (ānanda). I am Shiva. I am not what is called the life force (prāna), nor am I the five airs [circulating in the body]; nor the seven [bodily] constituents; nor the five [bodily] sheaths. I am also not mouth, hands, feet, genitals, and anus. I am Shiva in the form of Awareness and Bliss. I am Shiva. I am Shiva. I have neither hatred nor passion, neither greed nor delusion; neither exhilaration nor the mood of envy. I am without virtue or prosperity, without lust or liberation. I am Shiva in the form of Awareness and Bliss. I am Shiva. [In me there is] neither good nor evil, neither happiness nor suffering, neither mantra nor pilgrimage, neither the Vedas nor sacrifices. I am not food, the eater, or eating. I am Shiva in the form of Awareness and Bliss. I am Shiva. I am not [subject to] death, fear, or category of birth. I have no father or mother; [in fact, I have] no birth. I have no relatives or friends, no teacher or pupils. I am Shiva in the form of Awareness and Bliss. I am Shiva I am undifferentiated, of formless form. Due to [my] omnipresence I am everywhere [present for the benefit of all the senses. I am neither in bondage nor in liberation. [I am] immeasurable. I am Shiva in the form of Awareness and Bliss. I am Shiva.

Flower killers ( Part 2 ) And if you visit the fence and look at the metallic vampire, You will notice something strange in this tragedy’s ultimate empire, Bullets where the address is still the same: kill, Who? Just anyone do it at your free will, The flower had no name, the bee that loved it and the butterfly that romanced it, Have all died with it, forever dead with it, The garden of tragedies invokes a morbid feeling, It is as if asking the angel of death to rescue life’s last hope its last feeling, But the bullets still travel through the garden of tragedies, Only that now there are no casualties, Do you know why? Because now there is no one left to kill, and no one left to die, The young flower has fallen, others with it fell too, But a bullet with no address, still has a job to do, Because its address reads: Kill anyone at your free will, And that is what it did yesterday, it will do so today too, because it has mad man’s wish to fulfil, Who directs its anonymity and its every act, But the bullet in the fence has a different fact, The bullet is not the killer of the flower, It is someone else, whom the garden of tragedies knows as “The Bullet Lover!” Men have died, women have been killed, flowers murdered, But the mad man’s will has not surrendered, It may not ever, it may never, Because he is on a quest to find a bullet that can travel forever, Through desires, hopes, wishes and feelings of love, And kill them all one by one, for the sake of his mad love, Where exaltation is sought via phoney acts, Always feeding on a desire that never detracts, From being the seminal factor in everything related with misery, So it kills with a delusional passion bearing vigour missionary, And if you happen to visit the garden of tragedies to see the bullet in the fence, Towards the bullet, please hold not feelings of lament or any offence, Because it obeys the shooter, Who has never been a lover! That is why the bullet lies pierced in the wall, Because it no more wants to obey the mad man’s call, And be known as the killer of the young flowers, Murderer of many passionate lovers!

Some of our greatest trials are related to a spirit of infirmity. This spirit produces weakness. Whether our problem is moral, spiritual or physical, we need a Healer. Sickness takes a great toll on our lives. Disease can produce tremendous confusion and havoc. Disease is no respecter of persons or class. During these time of infirmity, we need the Healer.

Time doesn’t pass; its relativity is ever-present. It is we who pass by and are pierced by it. Like the slow fall of sand through an hourglass, our breath marks the rhythm of our fleeting existence.

I saw the massive stone altar first begin to glow like a ruby; then it was a heart of liquid gold like a solid single-crystal chrysoprase: the gold intensified into ice-cold emerald and passed into the dark sapphire of an arctic sky; this again withdrew into a violet so deep that the visual purple of the eye itself seemed absorbed in that depth, that abyss of color in which sight was being drowned. And as this intensification of vibrancy seemed to sweep across the visible spectrum up to those ranges where energy absorbs all mass and that which can pierce the most solid is itself fine beyond all substance, so it seemed with hearing. That abyss of sound which I had been thinking of as only depth, it, too, seemed to rise or, rather, I suppose I was carried up on some rising wave which explored the deep of the height. As the light drew toward the invisible, I experienced a sound so acute that I can only remember feeling to myself that this was the note emitted when the visible universe returns to the unmanifest—this was the consummatum est of creation. I knew that an aperture was opening in the solid manifold. The things of sense were passing with the music of their own transmutation, out of sight. Veil after veil was evaporating under the blaze of the final Radiance. Suddenly I knew terror as never before. The only words which will go near to recreating in me some hint of that actual mode are those which feebly point toward the periphery of panic by saying that all things men dread are made actually friendly by this ultimate awfulness. Every human horror, every evil that the physical body may suffer, seemed, beside this that loomed before me, friendly, homely, safe. The rage of a leaping tiger would have been a warm embrace. The hell of a forest wrapped in a hurricane of fire, the subzero desolation of the antarctic blizzard, would have been only the familiar motions of a simple well-known world. Yes, even the worst, most cunning and cruel evil would only be the normal reassuring behavior of a well-understood, much-sympathized-with child. Against This, the ultimate Absolute, how friendly became anything less, anything relative.

What does he look like?” “Quite handsome, actually. He’s very tall, and—” “As tall as Merripen?” Kev Merripen had come to live with the Hathaways after his tribe had been attacked by Englishmen who had wished to drive the Gypsies out of the county. The boy had been left for dead, but the Hathaways had taken him in, and he had stayed for good. Recently he had married the second oldest sister, Winnifred. Merripen had undertaken the monumental task of running the Ramsay estate in Leo’s absence. The newlyweds were both quite happy to stay in Hampshire during the season, enjoying the beauty and relative privacy of Ramsay House. “No one’s as tall as Merripen,” Poppy said. “But Mr. Rutledge is tall nonetheless, and he has dark hair and piercing green eyes . . .” Her stomach gave an unexpected little leap as she remembered. “Did you like him?” Poppy hesitated. “Mr. Rutledge is . . . unsettling. He’s charming, but one has the feeling he’s capable of nearly anything. He’s like some wicked angel from a William Blake poem.

Above, in discussing the perceptive notions of Jesus, remarkable concepts of Plato or the highly introspective lessons of Gautama and Lao Tzu, it took considerable discussion to explore the meaning and relate it to How Life Works. Islam presents no such deep pool of thought to pierce.

The impulse to be looking constantly with central vision is part of a psychophysical syndrome which includes spinal fixation as another characteristic. Tunnel vision -- the use of the macula, or central portion of the retina, to the relative exclusion of the surrounding area -- is hard on/eyes and diminishes their visual potential; it accentuates selective fixation upon objects one after another, missing the whole view and seeing objects as separate from their larger context. It accompanies and fortifies a tunneling habit of mind, a tendency to, fasten onto particular issues or circumstances, to hold doggedly and sometimes with exaggerated emotionality to a point of view, and to be unable to contextualize or to find fresh responses.

pierce. The understanding of this Hebrew verb is problematic. Traditionally translated “pierce,” this Hebrew verb occurs only here, and can only be translated here as “pierce” if it is emended. As it stands, it indicates that the psalmist’s hands and feet are “like a lion” (see NIV text note), which some commentators have interpreted to mean that the psalmist’s hands and feet were trussed up on a stick as a captured lion would be. Unfortunately, despite all the lion hunting scenes that are preserved and described, no lion is shown being transported this way. If a verb is desirable here, a suitable candidate must be found among the related Semitic languages. The most likely one is similar to Akkadian and Syriac cognates that have the meaning “shrink” or “shrivel.” Akkadian medical texts speak of a symptom in which the hands and feet are shrunken. Although Mt 27 uses several other lines from this psalm (e.g., Mt 27:35, 39, 43, 46), Mt 27 is of no help here, because it does not refer to this verse. Since Matthew omits it, he likely did not read the psalm as referring to the piercing of hands and feet.

*The Dead Sea Scrolls. These were copies of the Old Testament books found in an area called Qumran. It’s located at the northern end of the Dead Sea. Since these were copies of the Old Testament from before Jesus was born, we know the prophecies about Him weren’t “written in” later: Isaiah 7:14—The Messiah will be born of a virgin. Isaiah 53—The Messiah will have the iniquity of us all laid on Him, and he will take the sin punishment for His people. Daniel 9:24–27—Daniel predicts, to the exact day, when Jesus will ride into Jerusalem (as Messiah the Prince) and then die. Daniel claims that this will happen exactly 483 years after the command to rebuild Jerusalem was given. Check it out for yourself. Micah 5:2—The Messiah will be born in Bethlehem. Genesis 49:10—The Messiah will be from the tribe of Judah. 2 Samuel 7:12—The Messiah will be related to King David. Psalm 22:16—The Messiah will be pierced in His hands and feet. Zechariah 9:9—The Messiah will come into Jerusalem while riding on a donkey.

As John Pierce later explained, “The laser is to ordinary light as a broadcast signal is to static.” Ordinary light radiates in a chaotic and scattershot manner. The laser does not. From the perspective of a communications engineer, it is coherent—meaning it is intense and ordered and nearly all one frequency, which are important qualities for carrying information. “In principle it makes it possible to do everything with light that one does with radio waves,” Pierce added. What’s more, the great advantage is that the “bandwidth” of such light—which is related to its capacity—“is hundreds or thousands of times greater than we now have.” The very title of the Townes and Schawlow patent suggested a clear direction.9 Bell Labs’ claim for the laser was that it was a new method for communication.

Pierce added that “when something as closely related to signaling and communication as this comes along, and something is new and little understood, and you have the people who can do something about it, you’d just better do it, and worry later just about the details of why you went into it.

The words of our closest relatives literally become our words, until we develop words of our own.

Snakebird (colloquial): any bird of the genus Anhinga, so called for its serpentine neck. A predatory waterfowl able to alter its natural buoyancy when in water, sometimes showing only its head above the surface. Generally silent. Subsists on fish, which it impales upon its sharp, piercing bill. Often seen with wings upraised and outstretched in a fan over its head, for which reason it is often confused with a related species, the cormorant.

Pierce considered himself conservative about any satellite gambit. He wasn’t certain that Bell engineers knew enough yet to build a foolproof and durable active satellite—one that could operate for more than a few weeks or months. He also knew that the small research department at Bell Labs, unlike the huge development department, lacked the manpower and budget necessary for an active project. “There’s a difference, you see, in thinking idly about something, and in setting out to do something,” he explained to an interviewer in the early 1960s. “You begin to see what the problems are when you set out to do things, and that’s why we thought [passive] would be a good idea.” A passive satellite, he added, probably wouldn’t be useful in terms of the business of communications. But it tested the possibility of orbiting relays before they were developed into something more. A passive satellite, in other words, was an experiment. Ten years earlier, Pierce had witnessed how problems with the transistor didn’t show up until the device entered the development and production stage. Here, too, was a relatively low-risk opportunity to confront and solve the practical challenges of this new technology—“to get one’s hands dirty”—before making a slew of big and expensive mistakes.

Roberts and Kyllonen (1999) explored the relation of morningness to cognitive ability. Using 420 U.S. Air Force recruits in the sixth week of basic training, they found that cognitive ability was positively correlated with eveningness and negatively correlated with morningness. They cite Sternberg’s doctrine that flexibility is associated with intelligence, and that adapting to the electrically lighted evening hours would be an example of such flexibility. Interesting, that those of us who, evolutionarily speaking, have adapted to become night owls, and not rigidly adhered to thousands of years of early to rise, early to bed routine, show greater signs of intelligence.

Children displaced from their families, unconnected to their teachers, and not yet mature enough to relate to one another as separate beings, automatically regroup to satisfy their instinctive drive for attachment. The culture of the group is either invented or borrowed from the peer culture at large. It does not take children very long to know what tribe they belong to, what the rules are, whom they can talk to, and whom they must keep at a distance. Despite our attempts to teach our children respect for individual differences and to instill in them a sense of belonging to a cohesive civilization, we are fragmenting at an alarming rate into tribal chaos. Our very own children are leading the way. The time we as parents and educators spend trying to teach our children social tolerance, acceptance, and etiquette would be much better invested in cultivating a connection with them. Children nurtured in traditional hierarchies of attachment are not nearly as susceptible to the spontaneous forces of tribalization. The social values we wish to inculcate can be transmitted only across existing lines of attachment. The culture created by peer orientation does not mix well with other cultures. Because peer orientation exists unto itself, so does the culture it creates. It operates much more like a cult than a culture. Immature beings who embrace the culture generated by peer orientation become cut off from people of other cultures. Peer-oriented youth actually glory in excluding traditional values and historical connections. People from differing cultures that have been transmitted vertically retain the capacity to relate to one another respectfully, even if in practice that capacity is often overwhelmed by the historical or political conflicts in which human beings become caught up. Beneath the particular cultural expressions they can mutually recognize the universality of human values and cherish the richness of diversity. Peer-oriented kids are, however, inclined to hang out with one another exclusively. They set themselves apart from those not like them. As our peer-oriented children reach adolescence, many parents find themselves feeling as if their very own children are barely recognizable with their tribal music, clothing, language, rituals, and body decorations. “Tattooing and piercing, once shocking, are now merely generational signposts in a culture that constantly redraws the line between acceptable and disallowed behavior,” a Canadian journalist pointed out in 2003. Many of our children are growing up bereft of the universal culture that produced the timeless creations of humankind: The Bhagavad Gita; the writings of Rumi and Dante, Shakespeare and Cervantes and Faulkner, or of the best and most innovative of living authors; the music of Beethoven and Mahler; or even the great translations of the Bible. They know only what is current and popular, appreciate only what they can share with their peers. True universality in the positive sense of mutual respect, curiosity, and shared human values does not require a globalized culture created by peer-orientation. It requires psychological maturity — a maturity that cannot result from didactic education, only from healthy development. Only adults can help children grow up in this way. And only in healthy relationships with adult mentors — parents, teachers, elders, artistic, musical and intellectual creators — can children receive their birthright, the universal and age-honored cultural legacy of humankind. Only in such relationships can they fully develop their own capacities for free and individual and fresh cultural expression.

A dancer in the indestructible stream of magical illusion. The unifier of the welter of inconsistencies and absurdities. Wielder of power turning the wheel of bliss and emptiness. A hero perceiving all things as deception. Nauseous recalcitrant disgusted with temporal attachment. A yogin piercing others illusory projections. Vagabond selling Samsara short. Light-traveller making his lodging his home. Fortunate wayfarer perceiving his mind as the Lama. Champion of understanding, comprehending that all appearance is the mind. Diviner of relativity knowing unity as multiplicity. Naljorpa tasting dabbling in and tasting the flavor of all things. These are a few of the masks that I wear.

A dancer in the indestructible stream of magical illusion. The unifier of of inconsistencies and absurdities. Wielder of power turning the wheel of bliss and emptiness. A hero perceiving all things as deception. Recalcitrant nauseated and disgusted with temporal attachment. Yogin piercing others illusory projections. Vagabond selling Samsara short. Light-traveller making his lodging his home. Fortunate wayfarer perceiving his mind as the Lama. Champion of understanding, comprehending that all appearance is the Mind. Diviner of relativity knowing unity as multiplicity. Naljorpa tasting dabbling in and tasting the flavor of all things. A few of the masks I wear.

Go easy on her," I snarled. Fuck! I pulled at my hair. Why did I say that? "Is there a point to this call? I appreciate the secretary. I don't appreciate being told how to run my business. I assume when you recommended Hannah you felt she was capable of—" "Pam, sorry. Listen. Forget that. She's a friend. That's why I'm calling. This goes almost without saying, but it's imperative that..." I stopped pacing. I rubbed my neck as I searched for words. For once in her life, Pam didn't seize my silence as an opportunity to interject. Even that unnerved me. Was she curious about my relation to Hannah? Pam did a good job of disguising any interest in me and my life, but she was also one of the most cunning people I knew. She had probably figured out a lot about me over the years. God, now I was analyzing Pam. Was Pam analyzing me? Fuck, I just needed to eat. My morning coffee on an empty stomach was giving me the shakes. "Imperative that she... not know who I am," I stumbled. Awesome phrasing. Way to go bestselling author. "Ah, that is, documents and... things you might have with my name... in connection with..." Pam let me flounder. I despised her for it. "Pam, I know you take my privacy as seriously as I do, but in this circumstance I..." Finally, the steely bitch spoke up. God damn, I was glad to have Pam Wing as a friend and not an enemy.

got a lot of energy,” she said, trying to sound admiring. “I’d like to bottle it.” “Yeah,” Mel agreed. “He’s a piece of work. But I love him. It’s weird how stuff that annoys other people is charming when it’s your kid. You’ll see what I mean when it happens to you. Assuming that’s what you want, I mean.” “It is,” Jessie said. “We’ve talked about it for a while. There have just been some…hiccups along the way. But we’re hoping the change of scenery will help.” “Well, I should warn you. The topic is likely to come up often among the women you’ll be meeting today. They love to talk about kids and everything kid-related. You’ll probably get asked about your plans. But don’t sweat it. That’s kind of the default, go-to conversation around here.” “Thanks for heads-up,” Jessie said as they reached the end of the path. She stopped for a moment to take in the view. They were at the edge of a cliff overlooking Balboa Island and Promontory Bay. Beyond that was the Balboa Peninsula, the last chunk of land before the Pacific Ocean. The deep blue water extended as far as she could see, eventually merging with the lighter cerulean sky, dotted with a few puffy white clouds. It was breathtaking. Closer in, she saw the busy marina, with boats

Chloe laughed and when she entered the apartment she was surprised to find the place relatively tidy. The living area was sparsely furnished, just a couch, a TV and TV stand, a coffee table, and a lamp. Chloe knew the rest of the place would be the same. Danielle was the sort of person who lived on only the minimal amount of belongings. The exception, if she hadn’t changed since her teen years (and it seemed she hadn’t) was music and books. It made Chloe nearly feel guilty for the spacious and elaborate home she had recently purchased with Steven.

Please forgive me for inconveniencing you, Mr. Winterborne. I don’t intend to stay long.” “Does anyone know you’re here?” he asked curtly. “No.” “Speak your piece, then, and make it fast.” “Very well. I--” “But if it has anything to do with Lady Helen,” he interrupted, “then leave now. She can come to me herself if there’s something that needs to be discussed.” “I’m afraid Helen can’t go anywhere at the moment. She’s been in bed all day, ill with a nervous condition.” His eyes changed, some unfathomable emotion spangling the dark depths. “A nervous condition,” he repeated, his voice iced with scorn. “That seems a common complaint among aristocratic ladies. Someday I’d like to know what makes you all so nervous.” Kathleen would have expected a show of sympathy or a few words of concern for the woman he was betrothed to. “I’m afraid you are the cause of Helen’s distress,” she said bluntly. “Your visit yesterday put her in a state.” Winterborne was silent, his eyes black and piercing. “She told me only a little about what happened,” Kathleen continued. “But it’s clear that there is much you don’t understand about Helen. My late husband’s parents kept all three of their daughters very secluded. More than was good for them. As a result, all three are quite young for their age. Helen is one-and-twenty, but she hasn’t had the same experiences, or seasoning, as other girls her age. She knows nothing of the world outside Eversby Priory. Everything is new to her. Everything. The only men she has ever associated with have been a handful of close relations, the servants, and the occasional visitor to the estate. Most of what she knows about men has been from books and fairy tales.” “No one can be that sheltered,” Winterborne said flatly. “Not in your world. But at an estate like Eversby Priory, it’s entirely possible.” Kathleen paused. “In my opinion, it’s too soon for Helen to marry anyone, but when she does…she will need a husband with a placid temperament. One who will allow her to develop at her own pace.” “And you assume I wouldn’t,” he said rather than asked. “I think you will command and govern a wife just as you do everything else. I don’t believe you would ever harm her physically, but you’ll whittle her to fit your life, and make her exceedingly unhappy. This environment--London, the crowds, the department store--is so ill suited to her nature that she would wither like a transplanted orchid. I’m afraid I can’t support the idea of marriage for you and Helen.” Pausing, she took a long breath before saying, “I believe it’s in her best interest for the engagement to be broken.