Pins And Needles Quotes

Pirate Dreams Needles and pins, Needles and pins, Sew me a sail to catch me the wind. Sew me a sail strong as the gale, Carpenter, bring out your hammers and nails. Hammers and nails, hammers and nails, Build me a boat to go chasing the whales. Chasing the whales, sailing the blue Find me a captain and sign me a crew. Captain and crew, captain and crew, Take me, oh take me to anywhere new.

..You always have to choose between the path of needles and the path of pins. When a dress is torn, you know, you can just pin it up, or you can take the time to sew it together. That's what it means. The quick and easy way or the painful way that works.

In all your life, your only choice is the path of needles or the path of pins.

Cecilia knew she could not go on wasting her days in the stews of her untidied room, lying on her bed in a haze of smoke, chin propped on her hand, pins and needles spreading up through her arm as she read her way through Richardson's Clarissa.

Which was worse? To feel nothing, or to grieve for something you no longer remembered? Surely when you forgot, you’d forget to be sad, or what was the point? And yet that numbness would take part of your self away, it would be like having pins-and-needles in your soul … I took a deep breath.

We got out of the car and made our way toward the door inscribed with ‘Pins and Needles’ in classy simple font.

Solar Eclipse Each morning I wake invisible. I make a needle from a porcupine quill, sew feet to legs, lift spine onto my thighs. I put on my rib and collarbone. I pin an ear to my head, hear the waxwing's yellow cry. I open my mouth for purple berries, stick on periwinkle eyes. I almost know what it is to be seen. My throat enlarges from anger. I make a hand to hold my pain. My heart a hole the size of the sun's eclipse. I push through the dark circle's tattered edge of light. All day I struggle with one hair after another until the moon moves from the face of the sun and there is a strange light as though from a kerosene lamp in a cabin. I pun on a dress, a shawl over my shoulders. My threads knotted and scissors gleaming. Now I know I am seen. I have a shadow. I extend my arms, dance and chant in the sun's new light. I put a hat and coat on my shadow, another larger dress. I put on more shawls and blouses and underskirts until even the shadow has substance

I hear you calling and it's needles and pins (And pins) I want to hurt you just to hear you screaming my name Don't want to touch you but you're under my skin (Deep in) I want to kiss you but your lips are venomous poison

Like all sentient beings, Fat Charlie had a weirdness quotient. For some days the needle had been over in the red, occasionally banging jerkily against the pin. Now the meter broke.

Ah, mistress, you’re an angel. Sure there’s not a drop left? I might have remembered one more person….” “Up yours,” I said rudely with another belch. “It’s empty. You should tell me the name anyway, after making me drink all that sewage.” Winston gave me a devious smile. “Come back with a full bottle and I will.” “Selfish spook,” I mumbled, and staggered away. I’d made it a few feet when I felt that distinct pins-and-needles sensation again, only this time it wasn’t in my throat. “Hey!” I looked down in time to see Winston’s grinning, transparent form fly out of my pants. He was chuckling even as I smacked at myself and hopped up and down furiously. “Drunken filthy pig!” I spat. “Bastard!” “And a good eve’in’ to you, too, mistress!” he called out, his edges starting to blur and fade. “Come back soon!” “I hope worms shit on your corpse!” was my reply. A ghost had just gotten to third base with me. Could I sink any lower?

He extended his fingers and felt them tingle, like they were waking up—pins and needles. Then flames flickered to life, curls of red-hot fire dancing across his palm.

In all your life, your only choice,” Aunt Léonie said to her once, “is the path of needles or the path of pins.” Rachelle remembered that, the day that she killed her.

Ean seems like the ‘not here to make friends’ type, but I don’t think anyone could go through this without getting close to someone. It’s too hard. As difficult as it is for me, I know it’s just as bad for you all.” “We definitely get the better end of the deal though,” he said, winking at my reflection. I tilted my head. “I don’t know about that. The more I think about it, the sadder I get about having to send all but one of you away. I’ll miss having you here.” “Have you considered a harem?” he said, deadpan. I bent over in laughter and was rewarded with a pin stabbing my waist. “Ow!” “Sorry! I shouldn’t joke when there are needles around.

There is a little verse I remember from a child: Needles and pins, needles and pins, When a man marries his trouble begins. It doesn’t say when a woman’s trouble begins.

My organs are dead, my bones are cracked, my skin is a sieve, punctured by pins and needles of pain.

Sometimes I get tired of pins and needles Facades are fire on the skin And I'm growing find of broken people As I see that I'm one of them

As people, other people, living in a house who . . . borrow things?" Mrs. May laid down her work. "What do you think?" she asked. "I don't know," Kate said, pulling hard at her shoe button. "There can't be. And yet"-she raised her head-"and yet sometimes I think there must be." "Why do you think there must be?" asked Mrs. May. "Because of all the things that disappear. Safety pins, for instance. Factories go on making safety pins, and every day people go on buying safety pins and yet, somehow, there never is a safety pin just when you want one. Where are they all? Now, at this minute? Where do they go to? Take needles," she went on. "All the needles my mother ever bought-there must be hundreds-can't just be lying about this house." "Not lying about the house, no," agreed Mrs. May. "And all the other things we keep on buying. Again and again and again. Like pencils and match boxes and sealing-wax and hairpins and drawing pins and thimbles-

It’s all strange to me. I know I live on a fierce and magical planet, which sheds or surrenders rain or even flings it off in whipstroke after whipstroke, which fires out bolts of electric gold into the firmament at 186,000 miles per second, which with a single shrug of its tectonic plates can erect a city in half an hour. Creation … is easy, is quick. There’s also a universe, apparently. But I cannot bear to see the stars, even though I know they’re there all right, and I do see them, because Tod looks upward at night, as everybody does, and coos and points. The Plough. Sirius, the dog. The stars, to me, are like pins and needles, are like the routemap of a nightmare. Don’t join the dots.… Of the stars, one alone can I contemplate without pain. And that’s a planet. The planet they call the evening star, the morning star. Intense Venus.

Fat Charlie was thirsty and his head hurt and his mouth tasted evil and his eyes were too tight in his head and all his teeth twinged and his stomach burned and his back was aching in a way that started around his knees and went up to his forehead and his brains had been removed and replaced with cotton balls and needles and pins which was why it hurt to try and think, and his eyes were not just too tight in his head but they must have rolled out in the night and been reattached with roofing nails; and now he noticed that anything louder than the gentle Brownian motion of air molecules drifting softly past each other was above his pain threshold. Also, he wished he were dead.

She said that you always had to choose between the path of needles and the path of pins. When a dress is torn, you know, you can just pin it up, or you can take the time to sew it together. That’s what it means. The quick and easy way, or the painful way that works.

The Eye-Mote Blameless as daylight I stood looking At a field of horses, necks bent, manes blown, Tails streaming against the green Backdrop of sycamores. Sun was striking White chapel pinnacles over the roofs, Holding the horses, the clouds, the leaves Steadily rooted though they were all flowing Away to the left like reeds in a sea When the splinter flew in and stuck my eye, Needling it dark. Then I was seeing A melding of shapes in a hot rain: Horses warped on the altering green, Outlandish as double-humped camels or unicorns, Grazing at the margins of a bad monochrome, Beasts of oasis, a better time. Abrading my lid, the small grain burns: Red cinder around which I myself, Horses, planets and spires revolve. Neither tears nor the easing flush Of eyebaths can unseat the speck: It sticks, and it has stuck a week. I wear the present itch for flesh, Blind to what will be and what was. I dream that I am Oedipus. What I want back is what I was Before the bed, before the knife, Before the brooch-pin and the salve Fixed me in this parenthesis; Horses fluent in the wind, A place, a time gone out of mind. --written 1959

But let me have silence always, in the centre of the shouting—that is essential! Let me have silence so that no pin may drop and not be heard, and not a whisper escape us for all our spouting, nor the needle's scratching upon this gramophone of a circular cosmic spot. Hear me! Mark me! Learn me! Throw the mind's ear open—shut up the mind's eye—all will be music!

Like all sentient beings, Fat Charlie had a weirdness quotient. For some days the needle had been over in the red, occasionally banging jerkily against the pin. Now the meter broke. From this moment on, he suspected, nothing would surprise him. He could no longer be outweirded. He was done. He was wrong, of course.

Why are those needles and pins sticking out of your head?” asked the Tin Woodman. “That is proof that he is sharp,” remarked the Lion.

Pushing himself to his feet, Sam grimaced at the pins and needles in his calves.

But emotional numbness can last for years. “And the longer you are detached,” he explained, “the more painful waking up will be. The longer you are asleep, then the more intense the wake-up process. You’ll have to fight through that pins and needles feeling, shake yourself and start circulating again. Because to remain detached is to die. Slowly. Painlessly numb.”15 God

Those clothes are Susie's,' my father said calmly when he reached him. Buckley looked down at my blackwatch dress that he held in his hand. My father stepped closer, took the dress from my brother, and then, without speaking, he gathered the rest of my clothes, which Buckley had piled on the lawn. As he turned in silence toward the house, hardly breathing, clutching my clothes to him, it sparked. I was the only one to see the colors. Just near Buckley's ears and on the tips of his cheeks and chin he was a little orange somehow, a little red. Why can't I use them?' he asked. It landed in my father's back like a fist. Why can't I use those clothes to stake my tomatoes?' My father turned around. He saw his son standing there, behind him the perfect plot of muddy, churned-up earth spotted with tiny seedlings. 'How can you ask me that question?' You have to choose. It's not fair,' my brother said. Buck?' My father held my clothes against his chest. I watched Buckley flare and light. Behind him was the sun of the goldenrod hedge, twice as tall as it had been at my death. I'm tired of it!' Buckley blared. 'Keesha's dad died and she's okay?' Is Keesha a girl at school?' Yes!' My father was frozen. He could feel the dew that had gathered on his bare ankles and feet, could feel the ground underneath him, cold and moist and stirring with possibility. I'm sorry. When did this happen?' That's not the point, Dad! You don't get it.' Buckley turned around on his heel and started stomping the tender tomato shoots with his foot. Buck, stop!' my father cried. My brother turned. You don't get it, Dad,' he said. I'm sorry,' my father said. These are Susie's clothes and I just... It may not make sense, but they're hers-something she wore.' ... You act like she was yours only!' Tell me what you want to say. What's this about your friend Keesha's dad?' Put the clothes down.' My father laid them gently on the ground. It isn't about Keesha's dad.' Tell me what it is about.' My father was now all immediacy. He went back to the place he had been after his knee surgery, coming up out of the druggie sleep of painkillers to see his then-five-year-old son sitting near him, waiting for his eyes to flicker open so he could say, 'Peek-a-boo, Daddy.' She's dead.' It never ceased to hurt. 'I know that.' But you don't act that way.' Keesha's dad died when she was six. Keesha said she barely even thinks of him.' She will,' my father said. But what about us?' Who?' Us, Dad. Me and Lindsey. Mom left becasue she couldn't take it.' Calm down, Buck,' my father said. He was being as generous as he could as the air from his lungs evaporated out into his chest. Then a little voice in him said, Let go, let go, let go. 'What?' my father said. I didn't say anything.' Let go. Let go. Let go. I'm sorry,' my father said. 'I'm not feeling very well.' His feet had grown unbelievably cold in the damp grass. His chest felt hollow, bugs flying around an excavated cavity. There was an echo in there, and it drummed up into his ears. Let go. My father dropped down to his knees. His arm began to tingle on and off as if it had fallen asleep. Pins and needles up and down. My brother rushed to him. Dad?' Son.' There was a quaver in his voice and a grasping outward toward my brother. I'll get Grandma.' And Buckley ran. My father whispered faintly as he lay on his side with his face twisted in the direction of my old clothes: 'You can never choose. I've loved all three of you.

Oh my God, Michelle thought, I think we’re making love. It was a term everyone barfed at. No one wanted to make love, people wanted to fuck, to take each other’s skin apart with knives and pin it back together with needles.

The only time they ever throw anything away is when it's really and truly broken, and then they make a big deal about it. They save up all their bent pins and broken sewing needles and once a year they do a whole memorial service for them, chanting and then sticking them into a block of tofu so they will have a nice soft place to rest. Jiko says that everything has a spirit, even if it is old and useless, and we must console and honor the things that have served us well.

I felt, suddenly, pinned in place. Without breath. Without time or motion - like a butterfly stuck to a board with a needle through its thorax. What is anger, anyway? What does anger do? My mother was not an angry person. Or at least I don't think she was. My aunt was so angry that it became too much for her own body. It destroyed her house and swallowed her husband and left a broken family behind. I didn't want that, but I didn't know what to do with my anger. I felt the wold shake, and I felt my skin burn, and I let out a volcano of words that rattled my teeth as they came out.

I realized I’d been on pins and needles waiting to see how he’d react to being penned up again. I’ll never understand that. How can I be on pins and needles and not even know it? It sounds like a thing that shouldn’t exist in the world at all, but there it is. It’s discouraging to be in the middle of a life that’s impossible to explain.

Dorothy looked at him curiously. His head was quite bulged out at the top with brains. "How do you feel?" she asked. "I feel wise indeed," he answered earnestly. "When I get used to my brains I shall know everything." "Why are those needles and pins sticking out of your head?" asked the Tin Woodman. "That is proof that he is sharp," remarked the Lion.

That

Needles and pins, needles and pins, When a man marries his trouble begins.

we always went back to my grandma’s pockets, because she carried in them everything you would need to get through the day or start life in a new state. You wanted hard candy, loose change, a little pencil, a bobby pin, a safety pin, a pre-threaded needle, an aspirin, Band-Aids, stamps or rubber bands? She had them on her person at all times. Those pockets carried what are now carried at bodegas.

He leaned in closer, and on stepping back, I almost became one with the cupboard, afraid that if he came any closer, I would lose the little control I still possessed.His one arm extended above me, resting against the cupboard door, giving me a good whiff of his bewitching scent. I pinned my hands behind my back, restraining myself against the metal cupboard. As his hand brushed my damp hair back, and then his fingertips trailed down my shoulder – pins and needles gave way to warm and cold waves washing over me. The pins and needles ran down my spine, and then over my entire body. I kept my eyes on his chiseled, eight-pack abs. I struggled to breathe with him so close, virtually on top of me. He smiled on a whisper. “I just wanted this moment, us together like this, this feeling in my stomach – like I am falling.

When my avocation became my vocation I was set free. Writing, at first, was a hobby that I loved dearly. It turned into a serious endeavor several years ago when I started writing screenplays. Unfortunately selling one out of every ten was not very lucrative. Success comes in many forms and my poor returns from screenplays matured my writing style, ultimately affording me the ability to author hundreds of magazine articles that generated a decent paycheck. Fast forward to today and I have published my first novel “The Alchemist’s Notebook.” It is a whirlwind story in the style of H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos that takes the reader from Vietnam to Innsmouth then Arkham and eventually to Europe wherein chaos and screaming terror awaits all living creatures on our planet. I pledge to keep the reader on pins and needles hoping that sanity and normalcy will return. “The Alchemist’s Notebook” and all future novels along with my blogs will deal exclusively with that genre.

Is it true it takes thirteen months for a female to carry and give birth?” “Minimum.” He said it with such casual dismissal that Bella laughed. “That’s easy for you to say. You don’t have to lug the kid around inside of you all that time. You, just like your human counterparts, have the fun part over with like that.” She snapped her fingers in front of his face. His dark eyes narrowed and he reached to enclose her hand in his, pulling her wrist up to the slow, purposeful brush of his lips even as he maintained a sensual eye contact that was far too full of promises. Isabella caught her breath as an insidious sensation of heated pins and needles stitched its way up her arm. “I promise you, Bella, a male Demon’s part in a mating is never over like this.” He mimicked her snap, making her jump in time to her kick-starting heartbeat. “Well”—she cleared her throat—“I guess I’ll have to take your word on that.” Jacob did not respond in agreement, and that unnerved her even further. Instinctively, she changed tack. “So, what brings you down into the dusty atmosphere of the great Demon library?” she asked, knowing she sounded like a brightly animated cartoon. “You.” Oh, how that singular word was pregnant with meaning, intent, and devastatingly blatant honesty. Isabella was forced to remind herself of the whole Demon-human mating taboo as the forbidden response of heat continued to writhe around beneath her skin, growing exponentially in intensity every moment he hovered close. She tried to picture all kinds of scary things that could happen if she did not quit egging him on like she was. How she was, she didn’t know, but she was always certain she was egging him on. “Why did you want to see me?” she asked, breaking away from him and bending to retrieve the book she had dropped. It was huge and heavy and she grunted softly under the weight of it. It landed with a slam and another puff of dust on the table she had made into her own private study station. “Because I cannot seem to help myself, lovely little Bella.

Tomino’s Hell Elder sister vomits blood, younger sister’s breathing fire while sweet little Tomino just spits up the jewels. All alone does Tomino go falling into that hell, a hell of utter darkness, without even flowers. Is Tomino’s big sister the one who whips him? The purpose of the scourging hangs dark in his mind. Lashing and thrashing him, ah! But never quite shattering. One sure path to Avici, the eternal hell. Into that blackest of hells guide him now, I pray— to the golden sheep, to the nightingale. How much did he put in that leather pouch to prepare for his trek to the eternal hell? Spring is coming to the valley, to the wood, to the spiraling chasms of the blackest hell. The nightingale in her cage, the sheep aboard the wagon, and tears well up in the eyes of sweet little Tomino. Sing, o nightingale, in the vast, misty forest— he screams he only misses his little sister. His wailing desperation echoes throughout hell— a fox peony opens its golden petals. Down past the seven mountains and seven rivers of hell— the solitary journey of sweet little Tomino. If in this hell they be found, may they then come to me, please, those sharp spikes of punishment from Needle Mountain. Not just on some empty whim Is flesh pierced with blood-red pins: they serve as hellish signposts for sweet little Tomino. —translated by David Bowles June 29, 2014

Many speak of the legendary and gigantic starship Titanic, a majestic and luxurious cruise liner launched from the great shipbuilding asteroid complexes of Artrifactovol some hundreds of years ago now, and with good reason. It was sensationally beautiful, staggeringly huge and more pleasantly equipped than any ship in what now remains of history (see page 113 [on the Campaign for Real Time]) but it had the misfortune to be built in the very earliest days of Improbability Physics, long before this difficult and cussed branch of knowledge was fully, or at all, understood. The designers and engineers decided, in their innocence, to build a prototype Improbability Field into it, which was meant, supposedly, to ensure that it was Infinitely Improbable that anything would ever go wrong with any pan of the ship. They did not realize that because of the quasi-reciprocal and circular nature of all Improbability calculations, anything that was Infinitely Improbable was actually very likely to happen almost immediately. The starship Titanic was a monstrously pretty sight as it lay beached like a silver Arcturan Megavoidwhale among the laserlit tracery of its construction gantries, a brilliant cloud of pins and needles of light against the deep interstellar blackness; but when launched, it did not even manage to complete its very first radio message—an SOS—before undergoing a sudden and gratuitous total existence failure.

got mixed with their own whites. He was a mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish, dear fellow,— a sort of Hercules in strength, and also in weakness. My sister, Mrs. Joe, with black hair and eyes, had such a prevailing redness of skin that I sometimes used to wonder whether it was possible she washed herself with a nutmeg-grater instead of soap. She was tall and bony, and almost always wore a coarse apron, fastened over her figure behind with two loops, and having a square impregnable bib in front, that was stuck full of pins and needles. She made it a powerful merit in herself, and a strong reproach against Joe, that she wore this apron so much. Though I really see no reason why she should have worn

FAT CHARLIE WAS THIRSTY. Fat Charlie was thirsty and his head hurt. Fat Charlie was thirsty and his head hurt and his mouth tasted evil and his eyes were too tight in his head and all his teeth twinged and his stomach burned and his back was aching in a way that started around his knees and went up to his forehead and his brains had been removed and replaced with cotton balls and needles and pins which was why it hurt to try and think, and his eyes were not just too tight in his head but they must have rolled out in the night and been reattached with roofing nails; and now he noticed that anything louder than the gentle Brownian motion of air molecules drifting softly past each other was above his pain threshold. Also, he wished he were dead.

For the briefest of instants, a miles-wide hole appeared from the middle of the Earth to the top of the sky. The Moho rang like a tuning fork in harmonic response to the billion megaton impact. Seismic waves propagated in all directions, some dampening as normal, others amplified harmonically as Earth’s interior quivered like a bowl of pudding. Seismometers spiked wildly, their needles bouncing back and forth like pin-balls. A billion megatons exploded outward from the depths of the quivering Moho blasting a crater eighty-five miles in diameter and spewing billions of tons of superheated rock twelve hundred miles into space. In the blink of an eye the Earth grew a tail, as a mushroom cloud visible from Mars formed and spread, black as the Devil's eye.

You're a regular wreck with a crick in your neck and no wonder you snore for your head's on the floor and you've needles and pins form your sole to your shins and your flesh is a-creep for your left leg's asleep and you've cramp in your toes and a fly on your nose you've got fluff in you lung and a feverish tongue and a thirst that's intense and a general sense that you haven't been sleeping in clover...

The designers and engineers decided, in their innocence, to build a prototype Improbability Field into it, which was meant, supposedly, to ensure that it was Infinitely Improbable that anything would ever go wrong with any pan of the ship. They did not realize that because of the quasi-reciprocal and circular nature of all Improbability calculations, anything that was Infinitely Improbable was actually very likely to happen almost immediately. The starship Titanic was a monstrously pretty sight as it lay beached like a silver Arcturan Megavoidwhale among the laserlit tracery of its construction gantries, a brilliant cloud of pins and needles of light against the deep interstellar blackness; but when launched, it did not even manage to complete its very first radio message—an SOS—before undergoing a sudden and gratuitous total existence failure.

Names etched on the head of a pin, one name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel. A blue name needled into the skin, names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers, the bright-eyed daughter, the quick son; alphabet of names in a green field, names in the small tracks of birds, names lifted from a hat or balanced on the tip of the tongue, names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory. So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.

Sichuan pepper is the original Chinese pepper, used long before the more familiar black or white pepper stole in over the tortuous land routes of the old Silk Road. It is not hot to taste, like the chilli, but makes your lips cool and tingly. In Chinese they call it ma, this sensation; the same word is used for pins-and-needles and anaesthesia. The strange, fizzing effect of Sichuan pepper, paired with the heat of chillies, is one of the hallmarks of modern Sichuanese cookery. The

Whatever the weather, Bjartur always left the others when the meal was over. He would lie down on a truss of hay with his hat over his face and fall asleep at once. As soon as he moved in his sleep he would roll off the truss, sometimes into a pool, and would be awake immediately, which pleased him greatly. He considered that it was proper for a man to sleep for four minutes during the daytime, and he was always in a bad temper if he slept longer. The womenfolk wormed in under the hay-rick when they had finished eating. Then the shivering would begin, for they were sitting on wet grass, and they would rise with hands benumbed and pins and needles in their legs and go to look for their rakes. And if Bjartur heard them complaining about the damp, he would reply that it was pretty miserable wretches that minded at all whether they were wet or dry. He could not understand why such people had been born. 'It's nothing but damned eccentricity to want to be dry,' he would say. 'I've been wet more than half my life and never been a whit the worse for it.

Night Swimming by Viktor Elsin Black velvet night, pinned wide and high By pinprick stars. Faces under moonlight. Faint echoes float atop the river. Our reckless splashes toss them here and there. How very young we were, one floating year ago. Wet tresses draped our ears. And in the air, the hum of crickets chanting Apologies we could not, did not, hear. Gone, gone, the forest's past perfection: Patchwork shade, pine needle carpet, Ocher-resin drops of sun. The air Hums...Unseen, the nightingale, too late, Thrums its stubborn song- caught somewhere Between the deep black water and sky.

But in other instances, he made so much sense that it hurt, like his post on why “well-meaning white folks” were sometimes far worse than white folks who wore their racist hearts on their sleeves. So, as Nella considered why she distrusted Needles and Pins so much, she also considered what Jesse had said about white people who went out of their way to present “diversity”: “With heightened awareness of cultural sensitivity comes great responsibility. If we’re not careful, ‘diversity’ might become an item people start checking off a list and nothing more—a shallow, shadowy thing with but one dimension.

This woman, who had once been beautiful, seemed to be about forty years of age; but her blue eyes, deprived of the fire which happiness puts there, told plainly that she had long renounced the world. Her dress, as well as her whole air and demeanor, indicated a mother wholly devoted to her household and her son. If the strings of her bonnet were faded, the shape betrayed that it was several years old. The shawl was fastened by a broken needle converted into a pin by a bead of sealing-wax. She was waiting impatiently for Pierrotin, wishing to recommend to his special care her son, who was doubtless travelling for the first time, and with whom she had come to the coach-office as much from doubt of his ability as from maternal affection.

I didn’t answer, occupied in dissolving the penicillin tablets in the vial of sterile water. I selected a glass barrel, fitted a needle, and pressed the tip through the rubber covering the mouth of the bottle. Holding it up to the light, I pulled back slowly on the plunger, watching the thick white liquid fill the barrel, checking for bubbles. Then pulling the needle free, I depressed the plunger slightly until a drop of liquid pearled from the point and rolled slowly down the length of the spike. “Roll onto your good side,” I said, turning to Jamie, “and pull up your shirt.” He eyed the needle in my hand with keen suspicion, but reluctantly obeyed. I surveyed the terrain with approval. “Your bottom hasn’t changed a bit in twenty years,” I remarked, admiring the muscular curves. “Neither has yours,” he replied courteously, “but I’m no insisting you expose it. Are ye suffering a sudden attack of lustfulness?” “Not just at present,” I said evenly, swabbing a patch of skin with a cloth soaked in brandy. “That’s a verra nice make of brandy,” he said, peering back over his shoulder, “but I’m more accustomed to apply it at the other end.” “It’s also the best source of alcohol available. Hold still now, and relax.” I jabbed deftly and pressed the plunger slowly in. “Ouch!” Jamie rubbed his posterior resentfully. “It’ll stop stinging in a minute.” I poured an inch of brandy into the cup. “Now you can have a bit to drink—a very little bit.” He drained the cup without comment, watching me roll up the collection of syringes. Finally he said, “I thought ye stuck pins in ill-wish dolls when ye meant to witch someone; not in the people themselves.” “It’s not a pin, it’s a hypodermic syringe.” “I dinna care what ye call it; it felt like a bloody horseshoe nail. Would ye care to tell me why jabbing pins in my arse is going to help my arm?” I took a deep breath. “Well, do you remember my once telling you about germs?” He looked quite blank. “Little beasts too small to see,” I elaborated. “They can get into your body through bad food or water, or through open wounds, and if they do, they can make you ill.” He stared at his arm with interest. “I’ve germs in my arm, have I?” “You very definitely have.” I tapped a finger on the small flat box. “The medicine I just shot into your backside kills germs, though. You get another shot every four hours ’til this time tomorrow, and then we’ll see how you’re doing.” I paused. Jamie was staring at me, shaking his head. “Do you understand?” I asked. He nodded slowly. “Aye, I do. I should ha’ let them burn ye, twenty years ago.

When I come down the stairs, Peter is sitting on the couch with his mom. He is shaking his knee up and down, which is how I know he’s nervous too. As soon as he sees me, he stands up. He raises his eyebrows. “You look--wow.” For the past week, he’s been asking for details on what my dress looks like, and I held him at bay for the surprise, which I’m glad I did, because it was worth it to see the look on his face. “You look wow too.” His tux fits him so nicely, you’d think it was custom, but it’s not; it’s a rental from After Hours Formal Wear. I wonder if Mrs. Kavinsky made a few sly adjustments. She’s a marvel with a needle and thread. I wish guys could wear tuxedos more often, though I suppose that would take some of the thrill away. Peter slides my corsage on my wrist; it is white ranunculus and baby’s breath, and it’s the exact corsage I would have picked for myself. I’m already thinking of how I’ll hang it over my bed so it dries just so. Kitty is dressed up too; she has on her favorite dress, so she can be in the pictures. When Peter pins a daisy corsage on her, her face goes pink with pleasure, and he winks at me. We take a picture of me and her, one of me and Peter and her, and then she says in her bossy way, “Now just one of me and Peter,” and I’m pushed off to the side with Trina, who laughs. “The boys her age are in for it,” she says to me and Peter’s mom, who is smiling too. “Why am I not in any of these pictures?” Daddy wonders, so of course we do a round with him too, and a few with Trina and Mrs. Kavinsky. Then we take pictures outside, by the dogwood tree, by Peter’s car, on the front steps, until Peter says, “Enough pictures! We’re going to miss the whole thing.” When we go to his car, he opens the door for me gallantly. On the way over, he keeps looking at me. I keep my eyes trained straight ahead, but I can see him in my periphery. I’ve never felt so admired. This must be how Stormy felt all the time.

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. . .

means of dealing with the Three Furies before they drove her crazy or assassinated each other with rolling pin or knitting needle.

Dorothy looked at him curiously. His head was quite bulged out at the top with brains. "How do you feel?" she asked. "I feel wise indeed," he answered earnestly. "When I get used to my brains I shall know everything." "Why are those needles and pins sticking out of your head?" asked the Tin Woodman. "That is proof that he is sharp," remarked the Lion.

I don't think it's any help that it's your habit. What would you think of a person who went about sticking pins and needles into people and saying, `Excuse me, you mustn't mind it. . .it's just a habit I've got.' You'd think he was crazy, wouldn't you?

As for the tomato, it comes from the belief that placing ripe tomatoes on the mantel of a new home would guarantee future prosperity and ward off evil spirits. When fresh tomatoes were not available, stitchers used a little bit of red fabric, thread, and some sawdust or stuffing to create a substitute. While it hasn’t been proved, I’d bet that using a tomato as a pincushion started when a busy stitcher couldn’t find her needle case and, rather than stopping her stitching to look for it, simply used the tomato on the mantel.

The only relief from Win’s growing tension was in watching the antics of Beatrix’s ferret, Dodger, who seemed enamored of Miss Marks, despite—or perhaps because of—her obvious antipathy. He kept creeping up to the governess and trying to steal one of her knitting needles, while she watched him with narrowed eyes. “Don’t even consider it,” Miss Marks told the hopeful ferret with chilling calm. “Or I’ll cut off your tail with a carving knife.” Beatrix grinned. “I thought that only happened to blind mice, Miss Marks.” “It works on any offending rodent,” Miss Marks returned darkly. “Ferrets are not rodents, actually,” Beatrix said. “They’re classified as mustelidae. Weasels. So one might say the ferret is a distant cousin of the mouse.” “It’s not a family I’d care to become closely acquainted with,” Poppy said. Dodger draped himself across the arm of the settee and pinned a love-struck gaze on Miss Marks, who ignored him.

She glanced over her shoulder, pinning the hapless patrolman on a needle-pointed gaze, wondering which of her notories occupied his attention.

The Ramones give Needles & Pins the possibility of irony, but the irony doesn’t undercut the song’s emotion, it makes it stronger and more true.

You think I would pin you with over one hundred acupuncture needles, create an optimum temperature room and wear inappropriate clothing just to tease you in the process?" She said watching every inch of my face. "That's exactly what I think." I answered honestly.

No one would call it beautiful, but that hardly mattered to Zofia. Beauty did not move her. But the Eiffel Tower did. It was immensely awkward. If the streets looked sewn together with a neat hand, la Tour Eiffel was the ungainly needle pinning it all into place. It lanced through the grand boulevards, elegant cupolas, and buildings draped in sculpted gods. It would never blend in, but always demand witnessing. Zofia suspected that if la Tour Eiffel could talk, they would understand each other perfectly.

The cochlea of all mammals matches the spiraling design of a seashell, while the shape of our outer ears echoes the curled-up embryos of humans and many other animals-a feature utilized by acupuncturists who treat ailments in various body parts by pinning needles into the location on the ear that corresponds to those body parts.

crocus

Voodoo I'm phobic about pins and needles. Can I just stick a voodoo doll in the microwave?

We were on pins and needles.

Polly Jefferson rolled off her left arm, which had gone numb from the full weight of her body for the previous several hours that she had been asleep. She tapped her fingers on her leg, feeling the pins and needles, and looked at the clock, which blinked 6:30 in lurid red LCD. Instinctively she craned her head towards the other side of the bed, but she knew already what she would find there. The sheets were rumpled but empty and cold, and her husband’s briefcase, which had been leaning against the dresser the night before, was gone. He had already left for London.

For really it was the refinement of civilized cruelty, this spick, span, and ingenious affair of shining leather and gleaming steel, which hoisted you and tilted you and fitted reassuringly into the small of your back and cupped your head tenderly between padded cushions. It ensured for you a more complete muscular relaxation than any armchair that you could buy for your own home: but it left your tormented nerves without even the solace of a counter-irritant. In the old days the victim's attention had at least been distracted by an ache in the back, a crick in the neck, pins and needles in the legs, and the uneasy tickling of plush under the palm. But now, too efficiently suspended between heaven and earth, you were at liberty to concentrate on hell.

With one minute to spare, Madison arrived at the Space Needle. Her rose was hastily clipped into her short dark hair. Her cheeks were red from all of the mad rushing around. But she had made it on time. So had Jeremy. Once again he was waiting by the elevator that rode up to the top of the Space Needle. A somewhat faded blue carnation was pinned to the lapel of his jacket. Madison, who usually overplanned everything, hadn’t taken one second to plan what she would say when she finally met “Blue” face-to-face. A man with a bouquet of balloons passed by, and she ducked out of sight behind them. As she ran alongside the vendor, she hastily tried to collect her thoughts. So much was riding on this meeting, and she didn’t want to blow it. When the balloon man got close to the elevator tower, Madison jumped out from behind the balloons and hid by a corner of the tower. Her mind was still a complete blank. But she couldn’t leave Jeremy standing there for another minute. So she inched her way along the wall until she was safely hidden behind the post he was leaning against. Madison checked the TechnoMarine watch she’d borrowed from Piper. It was nearly five minutes after four. Time was running out! She had to say something. But what? Barely a foot away, she heard Jeremy exhale in frustration, and her heart sank. When he made a move to leave, her hand shot out from behind the pillar and caught hold of his. “Blue?” she whispered. “Please don’t turn around.” Jeremy didn’t move. “Okay,” he said warily. “I’m trying to find the words to tell you what our letters have meant to me,” she whispered. “And how much your friendship means to me.” Jeremy nodded. “It’s been important to me, too.” He started to turn around, but Madison tugged his arm, hard. “Don’t look, yet. Please!” Jeremy quickly turned his head away. “All right, but--” Madison didn’t let him finish. She squeezed her eyes shut and started babbling. “I didn’t know who you were until last Friday--which, incidentally, turned out to be about the most important day of my life. And when I knew it was you, I just didn’t know how to tell you that I was me. You once told me I was cold and heartless, and I just couldn’t bear it if you said it again. Everything has been so perfect, I just don’t want to blow it, and now that we’re standing here holding hands, I don’t want to let go--” “So don’t,” a voice whispered, very close to her cheek.

Holly Berries A Confederate Christmas Story by Refugitta There was, first, behind the clear crystal pane, a mammoth turkey, so fat that it must have submitted to be killed from sheer inability to eat and move, hung all around with sausage balls and embowered in crisp white celery with its feathered tops. Many a belated housekeeper or father of a family, passing by, cast loving glances at the monster bird, and turned away with their hands on depleted purses and arms full of brown paper parcels. Then there were straw baskets of eggs, white and shining with the delightful prospect of translation into future eggnogs; pale yellow butter stamped with ears of corn, bee hives, and statuesque cows with their tails in an attitude. But these were all substantials, and the principal attraction was the opposition window, where great pyramids of golden oranges, scaly brown pineapples, festoons of bananas, boxes of figs and raisins with their covers thrown temptingly aside, foreign sauces and pickles, cheeses, and gilded walnuts were arranged in picturesque regularity, jut, as it seemed, almost within reach of one’s olfactories and mouth, until a closer proximity realized the fact of that thick plate glass between. Inside it was just the same: there were barrels and boxes in a perfect wilderness; curious old foreign packages and chests, savory of rare teas and rarer jellies; cinnamon odors like gales from Araby meeting you at every turn; but yet everything, from the shining mahogany counter under the brilliant gaslight, up to the broad, clean, round face of the jolly grocer Pin, was so neat and orderly and inviting that you felt inclined to believe yourself requested to come in and take off things by the pocketful, without paying a solitary cent. I acknowledge that it was an unreasonable distribution of favors for Mr. Pin to own, all to himself, this abundance of good things. Now, in my opinion, little children ought to be the shop keepers when there are apples and oranges to be sold, and I know they will all agree with me, for I well remember my earliest ambition was that my papa would turn confectioner, and then I could eat my way right through the store. But our friend John Pin was an appreciative person, and not by any means forgetful of his benefits. All day long and throughout the short afternoon, his domain had been thronged with busy buyers, old and young, and himself and his assistant (a meager-looking young man of about the dimensions of a knitting needle) constantly employed in supplying their demands. From the Southern Illustrated News.

Oh, y'know, magic stuff is full of weird vibrations!" said Dane. "Makes your palm sweat, gives you that pins and needles sensation when you hold it! Maybe something running up your arm." He paused. "Something that isn't a spider or a bug. Something running up your arm that's an invisible sensation. But not an invisible spider. Like an invisible feeling that's pins and needly. Maybe more needles than pins." "Are you sure that's not a heart attack?" said Jaya.

Museum of Miniatures PRAGUE The artistic works in this collection are not displayed on canvases, but on poppy seeds, insects, needles, and strands of hair. Viewable by magnifying glass or telescope, the creations include animals painted on the leg of a mosquito, a chessboard with chess pieces on the head of a pin, and a parade of camels marching through the eye of a needle. Some of the insects on display are also dressed and decorated, such as a flea wearing horseshoes and wielding a pair of scissors, a key, and a padlock. The steady-handed creators of these marvels, including Siberian micro-miniaturist Anatoly Konenko, work between heartbeats to prevent hand tremors from ruining their paintings. Strahovské nádvoří 11, Prague. Get a tram to Pohořelec. 50.087046 14.388449

He went through sort of a mental checklist of his body parts. Toes? Check. Fingers? Check. Legs? Check. Arms? Check. Body? Check. He wiggled his toes, or at least he thought he did... it felt right. He wiggled his fingers and felt something on his forehead. His hand was still there from when he tried to rub his eyes, and his fingers were wiggling. “Okay, that’s a little odd.” He said it to himself, out loud again. He tried to move his arm, and it flopped off his head back to his side, feeling numb as if he had been laying on it all night, but without the pins and needles. He could control individual joints like his fingers or his elbow but when he tried to coordinate more than one thing he felt... disconnected.

Beerlight was a blown circuit, where to kill a man was less a murder than a mannerism. Every major landmark was a pincushion of snipers. Cop tanks navigated a graffiti-rashed riot of needle bars, oil-scabbed neon and diced rubble. Fragile laws were shattered without effort or intent and the cops considered false arrest a moral duty. Integrity was no more than a fierce dream. Crime was the new and only art form. The authorities portrayed shock and outrage but never described what it was they had been expecting. Anyone trying to adapt was persecuted. One woman had given birth to a bulletproof child. Other denizens were bomb zombies, pocketing grenades and wandering gaunt and vacant for days before winding down and pulling the pin on themselves. There was no beach under the sidewalk. Yet in dealing with this environment the one strategy common to all was the assumption that it could be dealt with.

giving him pins and needles already, and

waiting on pins and needles to see how their human subject is going to react in the latest edition of an ongoing experiment called, "How much can one human mother take until she totally and completely loses her shit?

When GOD drops needles and pins along ur path in LIFE, dont stay away, instead pick them up and collect them, they were designed to be STRONG!

The secret to life is to be a balloon And fly. Fly very high Out of the range of needles and pins Out of the range of BB guns rifles FLY Fly very very high, my Friends And never stop soaring

The moment the earthquake hits, Ted has a premonition: a burning sensation on his feet. Not the pins and needles from sitting cross-legged for too long, but like the restlessness of the soles after standing on the subway for an hour. Like the blood wants to burst from his skin. No blinding vision, no sudden trance—it’s not until weeks later that he realizes what the feeling was. But in the future, he won’t tell the story this way.

The stainless-steel mold gives the cheese its disc shape, about ten inches thick and two feet in diameter. But the mold serves another increasingly important function, as an anticounterfeiting measure. The molds are specially produced by the Consorzio Parmigiano-Reggiano, an independent and self-regulating industry group funded by fees levied on cheese producers. Carefully tracked and numbered, molds are supplied only to licensed and inspected dairies, and each is lined with Braille-like needles that crate a pinpoint pattern instantly recognizable to foodies, spelling out the name of the cheese over and over again in a pattern forever imprinted on its rind. A similar raised-pin mold made of plastic is slipped between the steel and the cheese to permanently number the rind of every lot so that any wheel can be traced back to a particular dairy and day of origin. Like a tattoo, these numbers and the words Parmigiano-Reggiano become part of the skin. Later in its life, because counterfeiting the King of Cheeses has become a global pastime, this will be augmented with security holograms... One night, friends came to town and invited Alice out to dinner at celebrity chef Mario Batali's vaunted flagship Italian eatery, Babbo. As Alice told me this story, at one point during their meal, the waiter displayed a grater and a large wedge of cheese with great flourish, asking her if she wanted Parmigiano-Reggiano on her pasta. She did not say yes. She did not say no. Instead Alice looked at the cheese and asked, "Are you sure that's Parmigiano-Reggiano?" Her replied with certainty, "Yes." "You're sure?" "Yes." She then asked to see the cheese. The waiter panicked, mumbled some excuse, and fled into the kitchen. He returned a few minutes later with a different and much smaller chunk of cheese, which he handed over for examination. The new speck was old, dry, and long past its useful shelf-life, but it was real Parmigiano-Reggiano, evidenced by the pin-dot pattern. "The first one was Grana Padano," she explained. "I could clearly read the rind. They must have gone searching through all the drawers in the kitchen in a panic until they found this forgotten crumb of Parmigiano-Reggiano." Alice Fixx was the wrong person to try this kind of bait and switch on, but she is the exception, and I wonder how many other expense-account diners swallowed a cheaper substitute. This occurred at one of the most famous and expensive Italian eateries in the country. What do you think happens at other restaurants?

But Michael was out of sight. She waited. Were it not for the ballast of her big belly, she would casually stand, stretch a bit, casually stretch her neck until she got a glimpse of him. Casually because her husband said she worried too much, fretted too much, and would eventually infect their boys with her fearfulness—had, perhaps, already, in Jacob’s case, infected them with her fearfulness. So she waited, trusting, but feeling, too, the pins-and-needles prick of blown sand on her cheek and her forearm (was the wind changing?) until, sure enough, there was the top of his head, the tip of his plastic machine gun, just over the next dune.

I’m on pins and needles,

And why are you keeping my secrets?” I ask carefully. We’re already so far down this gully, I figure why not go a little further? This might be the only chance we have at such open honesty, while our walls are splintered beneath a paper torn night. “Because it suits me to do so.” I’m pinned with the pierce of his eyes just like a needle to a moth’s wings, and the sting is the same. Like pebbles on an ocean floor, disappointment settles in the bottom of my gut.

She rose heavily from her chair and motioned to me to follow. I walked very close to her, these days—she didn’t seem completely steady on her feet, and frequently listed to one side, like a badly loaded ship in high seas. But she made it, her hand trailing the wall for extra stability. “Under that bed, dear. No, there. There are two chests. That’s it.” I knelt and wrenched out two heavy wooden boxes with lids. Opening them, I found them filled to the brim with rows of buttons, zippers, tapes, and fringes. There were hooks and eyes, fastenings of every type, all neatly separated and labeled, brass naval buttons and tiny Chinese ones, covered with bright silk, bone, and shell, sewn neatly onto little strips of card. In the cushioned lid sat sprays of pins, rows of different-sized needles, and an assortment of silk threads on tiny pegs. I ran my

Alright, I will have them waiting for him. Ohhhh, shit! Do you think you’re pregnant again? Remember you were like this when you were pregnant with Aniya! Bihhhhhhhhhh!!!! When you were bustin’ it open for a real nigga did you use protection? Lawdddd please say you did ‘cause babbbbyyyy, this shit bout to get realer than a muthafucka, and I think I want to rent me a place across the street from you. I can’t miss none of this muthafuckin’ hot ass tea!” I was sitting on pins and needles waiting for her ass to answer the damn question.

It was difficult in the ’70s to get hypodermics in America. So when I traveled I would wear a hat and use a needle to fix a little feather to the hatband, so it was just a hat pin. I would put the trilby with the red, green and gold feather in the hat bag. So the minute James turned up, I got the shit. OK, but now I need the syringe. My trick was, I’d order a cup of coffee, because I needed a spoon for cooking up. And then I’d go down to FAO Schwarz, the toy shop right across Fifth Avenue from the Plaza. And if you went to the third floor, you could buy a doctor and nurse play set, a little plastic box with a red cross on it. That had the barrel and the syringe that fitted the needle that I’d brought. I’d go round, “I’ll have three teddy bears, I’ll have that remote-control car, oh, and give me two doctor and nurse kits! My niece, you know, she’s really into that. Must encourage her.” FAO Schwarz was my connection. Rush back to the room, hook it up and fix it.

Walking over the moonlit bridge, Tom found himself drawn deeper and deeper into the world of the market. Here, it was crowded, noisy; buzzing with scents both familiar and strange. The sharp aroma of some herbal stuff seemed to dominate this part of the bridge; the scented smoke was strongest around a little stall named Madcap, from which a pipe-smoking vendor was selling brightly colored pouches, marked at the price of Three days a twist. Next to him, a person of indeterminate gender was folding sheets of colored paper into origami birds, which they released into the air with a papery flutter of wings. In spite of the crow woman's warning, Tom snapped a few more pictures. A dancer on the side of the bridge, her wings spread wide against the night. A diminutive woman with a whole haberdasher's shop balanced on her head: tiny drawers full of bobbins and lace, and packs of slender needles, and pincushions, and safety pins, and multicolored twists of silk. Next to her, cross-legged on the ground, an old woman in a drab overcoat was making garlands and buttonholes from baskets of strange-looking flowers that released an unfamiliar, intoxicating aroma. Her brown face lit up when she caught sight of Tom. 'Collector! What's it to be today? Another adventure? Your heart's desire? I know. True love!' And she picked up a white flower from one of her baskets and held it out to him with a smile. Its scent was complex, dark and sweet; the scent of a summer garden at night.

Chris’ second letter was less noble. She started off by rhapsodizing once again about Dick’s face: “I started looking at your face that night in the restaurant—oh wow, isn’t that like the first line in the Ramones song, ‘Needles & Pins’? ‘I saw your face/It was the face I loved/And I knew’—and I got the same feeling from it that I get every-time I hear that song, and when you called my heart was pounding and then I thought that maybe we could do something together, something that is to adolescent romance what the Ramone’s cover of the song is to the original. The Ramones give ‘Needles & Pins’ the possibility of irony, but the irony doesn’t undercut the song’s emotion, it makes it stronger and more true. Søren Kierkegaard called this “the Third Remove.” In his book ‘The Crisis In The Life Of An Actress’, he claims no actress can play 14-year-old Juliette until she’s at least 32. Because acting’s art, and art involves reaching through some distance. Playing the vibrations between here and there and then and now. And don’t you think reality is best attained through dialectics? PS, Your face is mobile, craggy, beautiful…

What is it about love that makes us forget everything, and accept every flaw of our beloved?

Your worst battle is between what you feel and what you know; and you know you made the right decision when even after you picked the hardest and most painful choice, you are at peace.

From inside the thick of her grief, Lydia read. She read without lifting her eyes...only pausing when the ache in her shoulder or the pins and needles in her foot forced her to lift her eyes from the page, shift the pillows and turn the other way. Then her gaze would fall on the wallpaper with its pattern of roses and she would blink and wonder where in the world she was. Then, as she started to remember, thank God, there was the book, and she would slip under again, a sigh in her throat.

If the streets looked sewn together with a neat hand, la Tour Eiffel was the ungainly needle pinning it all into place. It lanced through the grand boulevards, elegant cupolas, and buildings draped in sculpted gods. It would never blend in, but always demand witnessing. Zofia suspected that if la Tour Eiffel could talk, they would understand each other perfectly.

The invitation came from Studio Morra in Naples: Come and perform whatever you want. It was early 1975. With the scandalized reactions of the Belgrade press fresh in my mind, I planned a piece in which the audience would provide the action. I would merely be the object, the receptacle. My plan was to go to the gallery and just stand there, in black trousers and a black T-shirt, behind a table containing seventy-two objects: A hammer. A saw. A feather. A fork. A bottle of perfume. A bowler hat. An ax. A rose. A bell. Scissors. Needles. A pen. Honey. A lamb bone. A carving knife. A mirror. A newspaper. A shawl. Pins. Lipstick. Sugar. A Polaroid camera. Various other things. And a pistol, and one bullet lying next to it. When a big crowd had gathered at eight P.M., they found these instructions on the table: There are 72 objects on the table that one can use on me as desired. I am the object. During this period I take full responsibility. Duration: 6 hours (8pm - 2am) Slowly at first and then quickly, things began to happen. It was very interesting: for the most part, the women in the gallery would tell the men what to do to me, rather than do it themselves (although later on, when someone stuck a pin into me, one woman wiped the tears from my eyes). For the most part, these were just normal members of the Italian art establishment and their wives. Ultimately I think the reason I wasn’t raped was that the wives were there. As evening turned into late night, a certain air of sexuality arose in the room. This came not from me but from the audience. We were in southern Italy, where the Catholic Church was so powerful, and there was this strong Madonna/whore dichotomy in attitudes toward women. After three hours, one man cut my shirt apart with the scissors and took it off. People manipulated me into various poses. If they turned my head down, I kept it down; if they turned it up, I kept it that way. I was a puppet—entirely passive. Bare-breasted, I stood there, and someone put the bowler hat on my head. With the lipstick, someone else wrote IO SONO LIBERO—“I am free”—on the mirror and stuck it in my hand. Someone else took the lipstick and wrote END across my forehead. A guy took Polaroids of me and stuck them in my hand, like playing cards. Things got more intense. A couple of people picked me up and carried me around. They put me on the table, spread my legs, stuck the knife in the table close to my crotch. Someone stuck pins into me. Someone else slowly poured a glass of water over my head. Someone cut my neck with the knife and sucked the blood. I still have the scar. There was one man—a very small man—who just stood very close to me, breathing heavily. This man scared me. Nobody else, nothing else, did. But he did. After a while, he put the bullet in the pistol and put the pistol in my right hand. He moved the pistol toward my neck and touched the trigger. There was a murmur in the crowd, and someone grabbed him. A scuffle broke out. Some of the audience obviously wanted to protect me; others wanted the performance to continue. This being southern Italy, voices were raised; tempers flared. The little man was hustled out of the gallery and the piece continued. In fact, the audience became more and more active, as if in a trance. And then, at two A.M., the gallerist came and told me the six hours were up. I stopped staring and looked directly at the audience. “The performance is over,” the gallerist said. “Thank you.” I looked like hell. I was half naked and bleeding; my hair was wet. And a strange thing happened: at this moment, the people who were still there suddenly became afraid of me. As I walked toward them, they ran out of the gallery.

If you are languid, dear gentle eyes, who can continue, who can just gaze? Such woe I suffer it makes me groan, gone is my reason, my soul’s undone. Who can express, enchanting eyes, to show your laughter? It’s paradise. My pressure rises and my head spins. I am all needles, I am all pins. How many tears, beloved eyes, must I still weep? How many sighs? For my sad state to pity yield. Come now, start smiling, and I’ll be healed!

I feel like I’m sitting on pins and needles. I am so thrilled.” To add to her remarks, she flashed a 16-carat diamond wedding ring that she claimed she could not wear often because of its weight. She also announced that the count had given her all the jewelry and heirlooms belonging to his royal family.

Needles and pins, needles and pins, When a man marries his trouble begins (Old nursery rhyme)

Recorded instructions for creating a Witch bottle advised one to “stop the urine of the Patient close up in a Bottle, and put into it three Nails, Pins, or Needles, with a little white Salt, keeping the urine always warm.” 33 The magical theory behind the bottle is that it acts as a representation of the ill-wisher’s bladder. The cork prevents them from passing urine while the pins cause them great pain, which would be exacerbated by the bottle being placed on a fire. It is thought that the guilty person would become so anguished that they would be forced to reverse their hex.

Bank loan is romance with high blood pressure. You will be put to pins and needles till you go crazy. To go for a loan is to borrow trouble.

It somehow made it easier for her to participate in life knowing it could be all real and unreal at the same time. She saw herself as different people, she wrote about feelings those weren’t hers, about things that didn’t entirely happen to her.