Pulling In The Same Direction Quotes

It's a shame that we humans are never able to pull in the same direction . . . [n]ot even when confronted by infinity.

But fear and fascination are yokefellows, oxen out of step but pulling in the same direction...

The hemulen woke up slowly and recognised himself and wished he had been someone he didn't know. He felt even tireder than when he went to bed, and here it was -- another day which would go on until evening and then there would be another one and another one which would be the same as all days are when they are lived by a hemulen. He crept under the bedcover and buried his nose in the pillow, then he shifted his stomach to the edge of the bed where the sheets were cool. He took possession of the whole bed with outstretched arms and legs he was waiting for a nice dream that wouldn't come. He curled up and made himself small but it didn't help a bit. He tried being the hemulen that everybody like, he tried being the hemulen that no one liked. But however hard he tried he remained a hemulen doing his best without anything really coming off. In the end he got up and pulled on his trousers. The Hemulen didn't like getting dressed and undressed, it gave him a feeling that the days passed without anything of importance happening. Even so, he spent the whole day arranging, organising and directing things from morning till night! All around him there were people living slipshod and aimless lives, wherever he looked there was something to be put to rights and he worked his fingers to the bone trying to get them to see how they ought to live. It's as though they don't want to live well, the Hemulen thought sadly as he brushed his teeth. He looked at the photograph of himself with his boat which was been taken when the boat was launched. It was a beautiful picture but it made him feel even sadder. I ought to learn how to sail, the Hemulen thought. But I've never got enough time... Moominvalley in November Chapter 5, THE HEMULEN

CAUSE AND EFFECT You can give a man who has never given you a good word, Volumes of knowledge. And you can give a man who has never given you a gift, A thousand gifts. You can give that same man who has never given you a blessing, A thousand blessings. And you can offer that same man who has never Offered a hand to help you grow, Seeds to help him grow a garden. And while you have never seen true kindness from his direction, You still offer to help push him up. And in the end, He only wants to be the hand that pulls you down. Do not worry, my friends. Cause and effect was written by the stars of the universe. He who passes suffering onto others Will also have that suffering passed onto his own children. Gifts he feels he should have in the next lifetime will be unobtainable. And the help he needs to grow in the next lifetime will be unavailable. And the people he cuts down that were good to him, Will cut him down in the next lifetime. What goes around does come back again, Even through your children. There is a vibrational effect In every action, Just as there is A vibration that rings From every letter In every word. No cause occurs without effect And no effect occurs without cause. No unjust action goes without penalty And no action or thought Flows unnoticed Throughout The universe.

Kaz snagged her wrist. "Inej." His gloved thumb moved over her pulse, traced the top of the feather tattoo. "If we don't make it out, I want you to know..." She waited. She felt hope rustling its wings inside her, ready to take flight at the right words from Kaz. She willed that hope in to stillness. Those words would never come. The heart is an arrow. She reached up and touched his cheek. She thought he might flinch again, even knock her hand away. In nearly two years of battling side by side with Kaz, of late-night scheming, impossible heists, clandestine errands, and harried meals of fried potatoes and hutspot gobbled down as they rushed from one place to another, this was the first time she had touched him skin to skin, without the barrier of gloves or coat or shirtsleeve. She let her hand cup his cheek. His skin was cool and damp from the rain. He stayed still, but she saw a tremor pass through him, as if he were waging a war with himself. "If we don't die this night, I will die unafraid, Kaz. Can you say the same?" His eyes were nearly black, the pupils dilated. She could see it took every last bit of his terrible will for him to remain still beneath her touch. And yet, he did not pull away. She knew it was the best he could offer. It was not enough. She dropped her hand. He took a deep breath. Kaz had said he didn't want her prayers and she wouldn't speak them, but she wished him safe nonetheless. She had her aim now, her heart had direction, and though it hurt to know that path led away from him, she could endure it.

There are times the lies get to me, times I weary of battering myself against the obstacles of denial, hatred, fear-induced stupidity, and greed, times I want to curl up and fall into the problem, let it sweep me away as it so obviously sweeps away so many others. I remember a spring day a few years ago, a spring day much like this one, only a little more sun, and warmer. I sat on this same couch and looked out this same window at the same ponderosa pine. I was frightened, and lonely. Frightened of a future that looks dark, and darker with each passing species, and lonely because for every person actively trying to shut down the timber industry, stop abuse, or otherwise bring about a sustainable and sane way of living, there are thousands who are helping along this not-so-slow train to oblivion. I began to cry. The tears stopped soon enough. I realized we are not so outnumbered. We are not outnumbered at all. I looked closely, and saw one blade of wild grass, and another. I saw the sun reflecting bright off the needles of pine trees, and I heard the hum of flies. I saw ants walking single file through the dust, and a spider crawling toward the corner of the ceiling. I knew in that moment, as I've known ever since, that it is no longer possible to be lonely, that every creature on earth is pulling in the direction of life--every grasshopper, every struggling salmon, every unhatched chick, every cell of every blue whale--and it is only our own fear that sets us apart. All humans, too, are struggling to be sane, struggling to live in harmony with our surroundings, but it's really hard to let go. And so we lie, destroy, rape, murder, experiment, and extirpate, all to control this wildly uncontrollable symphony, and failing that, to destroy it.

How are you giving it magic?” he said, through his teeth. “I already found the path!” I said. “I’m just staying on it. Can’t you—feel it?” I asked abruptly, and held my hand cupping the flower out towards him; he frowned and put his hands around it, and then he said, “Vadiya rusha ilikad tuhi,” and a second illusion laid itself over mine, two roses in the same space—his, predictably, had three rings of perfect petals, and a delicate fragrance. “Try and match it,” he said absently, his fingers moving slightly, and by lurching steps we brought our illusions closer together until it was nearly impossible to tell them one from another, and then he said, “Ah,” suddenly, just as I began to glimpse his spell: almost exactly like that strange clockwork on the middle of his table, all shining moving parts. On an impulse I tried to align our workings: I envisioned his like the water-wheel of a mill, and mine the rushing stream driving it around. “What are you—” he began, and then abruptly we had only a single rose, and it began to grow. And not only the rose: vines were climbing up the bookshelves in every direction, twining themselves around ancient tomes and reaching out the window; the tall slender columns that made the arch of the doorway were lost among rising birches, spreading out long finger-branches; moss and violets were springing up across the floor, delicate ferns unfurling. Flowers were blooming everywhere: flowers I had never seen, strange blooms dangling and others with sharp points, brilliantly colored, and the room was thick with their fragrance, with the smell of crushed leaves and pungent herbs. I looked around myself alight with wonder, my magic still flowing easily. “Is this what you meant?” I asked him: it really wasn’t any more difficult than making the single flower had been. But he was staring at the riot of flowers all around us, as astonished as I was. He looked at me, baffled and for the first time uncertain, as though he had stumbled into something, unprepared. His long narrow hands were cradled around mine, both of us holding the rose together. Magic was singing in me, through me; I felt the murmur of his power singing back that same song. I was abruptly too hot, and strangely conscious of myself. I pulled my hands free.

How are you supposed to get everyone to pull in the same direction when they are all pulling primarily for themselves?

I would've had an easier time if my emotions had all pulled me in the same direction, but it wasn't so simple. I'd been blown about like a scrap of paper in the wind.

Dalinar took a deep breath, then forced himself to open his arms and pull back. “If you had hoped to soothe my worries for the day, then this didn’t help.” She folded her arms. He could still feel where her safehand had touched him on the back. A tender touch, reserved for a family member. “I’m not here to soothe you, Dalinar. Quite the opposite.” “Please. I do need time to think.” “I won’t let you put me away. I won’t ignore that this happened. I won’t—” “Navani,” he gently cut her off, “I will not abandon you. I promise.” She eyed him, then a wry smile crept onto her face. “Very well. But you began something today.” “I began it?” he asked, amused, elated, confused, worried, and ashamed at the same time. “The kiss was yours, Dalinar,” she said idly, pulling open the door and entering his antechamber. “You seduced me to it.” “What? Seduced?” She glanced back at him. “Dalinar, I’ve never been more open and honest in my life.” “I know,” Dalinar said, smiling. “That was the seductive part.” He closed the door softly, then let out a sigh. Blood of my fathers, he thought, why can’t these things ever be simple? And yet, in direct contrast with his thoughts, he felt as if the entire world had somehow become more right for having gone wrong.

...The spiritual Oriental teachers say a person has three forms of mind,'' Beatrice was explaining to him once, while they were on break between one lesson and another at university, ''which are the dense mind, the subtle level and the ultra-subtle mind. Primary Consciousness, or the dense mind, is that existential, Sartrean mind which is related to our senses and so it is guided directly by human primitive instincts; in Sanskrit, this is referred to as ālaya-vijñāna which is directly tied to the brain. The subtle mind comes into effect when we begin to be aware of our true nature or that which in Sanskrit is called Ātman or self-existent essence that eventually leads us to the spiritual dimension. Ultimately there is the Consciousness-Only or the Vijñapti-Mātra, an ultra-subtle mind which goes beyond what the other two levels of mind can fabricate, precisely because this particular mind is not a by-product of the human brain but a part of the Cosmic Consciousness of the Absolute, known in Sanskrit as Tathāgatagarbha, and it is at this profound level of Consciousness that we are able to achieve access to the Divine Wisdom and become one with it in an Enlightened State.'' ''This spiritual subject really fascinates me,'' the Professor would declare, amazed at the extraordinary knowledge that Beatrice possessed.'' ''In other words, a human being recognises itself from its eternal essence and not from its existence,'' Beatrice replied, smiling, as she gently touched the tip of his nose with the tip of her finger, as if she was making a symbolic gesture like when children are corrected by their teachers. ''See, here,'' she had said once, pulling at the sleeve of his t-shirt to make him look at her book. ''For example, in the Preface to the 1960 Notes on Dhamma, the Buddhist philosopher from the University of Cambridge, Ñāṇavīra Thera, maintains those that have understood Buddhist teachings have gone way beyond Existential Thought. And on this same theme, the German scholar of Buddhist texts, Edward Conze, said that the possible similarity that exists between Buddhist and Existential Thought lies only on the preliminary level. He said that in terms of the Four Noble Truths, or in Sanskrit Catvāri Āryasatyāni, the Existentialists have only the first, which teaches everything is ill. Of the second - which assigns the origin of ill to craving - they have a very imperfect grasp. As for the third and fourth, which consist of letting go of craving, and the Noble Eightfold Path that leads to liberation from the cycle of rebirth in the form of Nirvāṇa - these are unheard of. Knowing no way out, the Existentialists are manufacturers of their own woes...

It’s a shame that we humans are never able to pull in the same direction, Nicole said to herself. Not even when confronted by infinity.

But chaos is the natural state of things, for men pull always in their own directions. It is those who want the world to march all the same way that give themselves the challenge.

When two oxen are yoked together, they must pull in the same direction, Marcus. If one pulls to the right, and the other to the left, what happens?

Their other hands flipped up, palm to palm, and Merik’s only consolation as he and the domna slid into the next movement of the dance was that her chest heaved as much as his did. Merik’s right hand gripped the girl’s, and with no small amount of ferocity, he twisted her around to face the same direction as he before wrenching her to his chest. His hand slipped over her stomach, fingers splayed. Her left hand snapped up—and he caught it. Then the real difficulty of the dance began. The skipping of feet in a tide of alternating hops and directions. The writhing of hips countered the movement of their feet like a ship upon stormy seas. The trickling tap of Merik’s fingers down the girl’s arms, her ribs, her waist—like the rain against a ship’s sail. On and on, they moved to the music until they were both sweating. Until they hit the third movement. Merik flipped the girl around to face him once more. Her chest slammed against his—and by the Wells, she was tall. He hadn’t realized just how tall until this precise moment when her eyes stared evenly into his and her panting breaths fought against his own. Then the music swelled once more, her legs twined into his, and he forgot all about who she was or what she was or why he had begun the dance in the first place. Because those eyes of hers were the color of the sky after a storm. Without realizing what he did, his Windwitchery flickered to life. Something in this moment awoke the wilder parts of his power. Each heave of his lungs sent a breeze swirling in. It lifted the girl’s hair. Kicked at her wild skirts. She showed no reaction at all. In fact, she didn’t break her gaze from Merik, and there was a fierceness there—a challenge that sent Merik further beneath the waves of the dance. Of the music. Of those eyes. Each leap backward of her body—a movement like the tidal tug of the sea against the river—led to a violent slam as Merik snatched her back against him. For each leap and slam, the girl added in an extra flourishing beat with her heels. Another challenge that Merik had never seen, yet rose to, rose above. Wind crashed around them like a growing hurricane, and he and this girl were at its eye. And the girl never looked away. Never backed down. Not even when the final measures of the song began—that abrupt shift from the sliding cyclone of strings to the simple plucking bass that follows every storm—did Merik soften how hard he pushed himself against this girl. Figuratively. Literally. Their bodies were flush, their hearts hammering against each other’s rib cages. He walked his fingers down her back, over her shoulders, and out to her hands. The last drops of a harsh rain. The music slowed. She pulled away first, slinking back the required four steps. Merik didn’t look away from her face, and he only distantly noticed that, as she pulled away, his Windwitchery seemed to settle. Her skirts stopped swishing, her hair fluttered back to her shoulders. Then he slid backward four steps and folded his arms over his chest. The music came to a close. And Merik returned to his brain with a sickening certainty that Noden and His Hagfishes laughed at him from the bottom of the sea.

1 The summer our marriage failed we picked sage to sweeten our hot dark car. We sat in the yard with heavy glasses of iced tea, talking about which seeds to sow when the soil was cool. Praising our large, smooth spinach leaves, free this year of Fusarium wilt, downy mildew, blue mold. And then we spoke of flowers, and there was a joke, you said, about old florists who were forced to make other arrangements. Delphiniums flared along the back fence. All summer it hurt to look at you. 2 I heard a woman on the bus say, “He and I were going in different directions.” As if it had something to do with a latitude or a pole. Trying to write down how love empties itself from a house, how a view changes, how the sign for infinity turns into a noose for a couple. Trying to say that weather weighed down all the streets we traveled on, that if gravel sinks, it keeps sinking. How can I blame you who kneeled day after day in wet soil, pulling slugs from the seedlings? You who built a ten-foot arch for the beans, who hated a bird feeder left unfilled. You who gave carrots to a gang of girls on bicycles. 3 On our last trip we drove through rain to a town lit with vacancies. We’d come to watch whales. At the dock we met five other couples—all of us fluorescent, waterproof, ready for the pitch and frequency of the motor that would lure these great mammals near. The boat chugged forward—trailing a long, creamy wake. The captain spoke from a loudspeaker: In winter gray whales love Laguna Guerrero; it’s warm and calm, no killer whales gulp down their calves. Today we’ll see them on their way to Alaska. If we get close enough, observe their eyes—they’re bigger than baseballs, but can only look down. Whales can communicate at a distance of 300 miles—but it’s my guess they’re all saying, Can you hear me? His laughter crackled. When he told us Pink Floyd is slang for a whale’s two-foot penis, I stopped listening. The boat rocked, and for two hours our eyes were lost in the waves—but no whales surfaced, blowing or breaching or expelling water through baleen plates. Again and again you patiently wiped the spray from your glasses. We smiled to each other, good troopers used to disappointment. On the way back you pointed at cormorants riding the waves— you knew them by name: the Brants, the Pelagic, the double-breasted. I only said, I’m sure whales were swimming under us by the dozens. 4 Trying to write that I loved the work of an argument, the exhaustion of forgiving, the next morning, washing our handprints off the wineglasses. How I loved sitting with our friends under the plum trees, in the white wire chairs, at the glass table. How you stood by the grill, delicately broiling the fish. How the dill grew tall by the window. Trying to explain how camellias spoil and bloom at the same time, how their perfume makes lovers ache. Trying to describe the ways sex darkens and dies, how two bodies can lie together, entwined, out of habit. Finding themselves later, tired, by a fire, on an old couch that no longer reassures. The night we eloped we drove to the rainforest and found ourselves in fog so thick our lights were useless. There’s no choice, you said, we must have faith in our blindness. How I believed you. Trying to imagine the road beneath us, we inched forward, honking, gently, again and again.

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. - We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind." (10) Bernays and his CPI co-conspirators portray the American war effort as a holy crusade "to make the world safe for democracy", while at the same time spreading vile hate-filled propaganda directed towards Germany and its Emperor, Wilhelm II.

I have something for you,” she said as she pulled his leather gloves from the sleeve of her prison tunic. He stared at them. “How—” “I got them from the discarded clothes. Before I made the climb.” “Six stories in the dark.” She nodded. She wasn’t going to wait for thanks. Not for the climb, or the gloves, or for anything ever again. He pulled the gloves on slowly, and she watched his pale, vulnerable hands disappear beneath the leather. They were trickster hands—long, graceful fingers made for prying open locks, hiding coins, making things vanish. “When we get back to Ketterdam, I’m taking my share, and I’m leaving the Dregs.” He looked away. “You should. You were always too good for the Barrel.” It was time to go. “Saints’ speed, Kaz.” Kaz snagged her wrist. “Inej.” His gloved thumb moved over her pulse, traced the top of the feather tattoo. “If we don’t make it out, I want you to know…” She waited. She felt hope rustling its wings inside her, ready to take flight at the right words from Kaz. She willed that hope into stillness. Those words would never come. The heart is an arrow. She reached up and touched his cheek. She thought he might flinch again, even knock her hand away. In nearly two years of battling side by side with Kaz, of late-night scheming, impossible heists, clandestine errands, and harried meals of fried potatoes and hutspot gobbled down as they rushed from one place to another, this was the first time she had touched him skin to skin, without the barrier of gloves or coat or shirtsleeve. She let her hand cup his cheek. His skin was cool and damp from the rain. He stayed still, but she saw a tremor pass through him, as if he were waging a war with himself. “If we don’t survive this night, I will die unafraid, Kaz. Can you say the same?” His eyes were nearly black, the pupils dilated. She could see it took every last bit of his terrible will for him to remain still beneath her touch. And yet, he did not pull away. She knew it was the best he could offer. It was not enough. She dropped her hand. He took a deep breath. Kaz had said he didn’t want her prayers and she wouldn’t speak them, but she wished him safe nonetheless. She had her aim now, her heart had direction, and though it hurt to know that path led away from him, she could endure it.

This is the part of the country that invokes terrible nostalgia, a morbid and phlegm-induced retrospective of parties, clubs, drugs, shows, people, and is the goiter of my Boston days. I wouldn't have a clue as to who I'd ever care to see in this town, though I've done time here. If it weren't for Daughters and company, I'd feel like a compete tourist in a ghostly, plot-less town...pulling hoods up and heads around, opposite directions, if I ever saw someone I thought I might have known. Young people feeling really cool in bathrooms, dancing to the same songs in the same clubs, with the same dropout students, artists, thugs, bullies, jocks, all game in the search for one's self and sex.

There is an old Greek saying that men are tormented not by things themselves but by what they think about them. If that assertion could be proved to be always true everywhere it would be an important point gained of the comforting of our wretched human condition. For if ills can only enter us through our judgemente it would seem to be in our power either to despise them or to deflect them towards the good: if the things actually do trow themselves on our mercy why do we not act as their masters and accomodate them to our advantage? If what we call evil or torment are only evil or torment insofar as our mental apprehension endows them with those qualities when it lies within our power to change those qualities. And if we did have such a choice and were free from constraint we would be curiously mad to pull in the direction which hurst us most, endowing sickness, poverty or insolence with a bad and bitter taste when we could give them a pleasent one, Fortune simply furnishing us with the matter and leaving it to us to supply the form. Let us see whether a case can be made for what we call evil not being an evil in itself or (since it amounts to the same) whether at least it is up to us to endow it with a different savour and aspect.

My prolonged study of these photographs led me to appreciate the importance of preserving certain moments for prosperity, and as time moved forwards I also came to see what a powerful influence these framed scenes exerted over us as we went about our daily lives. To watch my uncle pose my brother a maths problem, and at the same time to see him in a picture taken thirty-two years earlier; to watch my father scanning the newspaper and trying, with a half-smile, to catch the tail of a joke rippling across the crowded room, and at that very same moment to see a picture of him to me that my grandmother had framed and frozen these memories so that we could weave them into the present.When, in the tones ordinarily preserved for discussing the founding of a nation, my grandmother spoke of my grandfather who had died so young, and pointed at the frames on the tables and the walls, it seemed that she, like me, was pulled in two direction , wanting to get on with life but also longing to capture the moment of perfection, savouring the ordinary life but still honouring the ideal. But even as I pondered these dilemmas-if you plucked a special moment from life and framed it, were you defying death, decay and the passage of time, or were you submitting to them? - I grew very bored with them.

I felt a warm hand touch mine. “Are you okay?” “If you mean am I injured, then the answer is no. If you mean am I ‘okay’ as in am-I-confident-I’m-still-sane, the answer is still no.” Ren frowned. “We have to find a way to get across the chasm.” “You’re certainly welcome to give it a try.” I waved him off and went back to drinking my water. He moved to the edge and peered across, looking speculatively at the distance. Changing back to a tiger, he trotted a few paces back in the direction we had come from, turned, and ran at full speed toward the hole. “Ren, no!” I screamed. He leapt, clearing the hole easily, and landed lightly on his front paws. Then he trotted a short distance away and did the same thing to come back. He landed at my feet and changed back to human form. “Kells, I have an idea.” “Oh, this I’ve got to hear. I just hope you don’t plan on including me in this scheme of yours. Ah. Let me guess. I know. You want to tie a rope to your tail, leap across, tie it off, and then have me pull my body across the rope, right?” He cocked his head as if considering it, and then shook his head. “No, you don’t have the strength to do something like that. Plus, we have no rope and nothing to tie a rope to.” “Right. So what’s the plan?” He held my hands and explained. “What I’m proposing will be much easier. Do you trust me?” I was going to be sick. “I trust you. It’s just-“ I looked into his concerned blue eyes and sighed. “Okay, what do I have to do?” “You saw that I was able to clear the gap pretty well as a tiger, right? So what I need you to do is to stand right at the edge and wait for me. I’ll run to the end of the tunnel, build up speed, and leap as a tiger. At the same time, I want you to jump up and grab me around my neck. I’ll change to a man in midair so that I can hold onto you, and we’ll fall together to the other side.” I snorted noisily and laughed. “You’re kidding, right?” He ignored my skepticism. “We’ll have to time it precisely, and you’ll have to jump too, in the same direction, because if you don’t, I’ll just hit you full power and drive us both over the edge.” “You’re serious? You seriously want me to do this?” “Yes, I’m serious. Now stand here while I make a few practice runs.” “Can’t we just find another corridor or something?” “There aren’t any. This is the right way.” Reluctantly, I stood near the edge and watched him leap back and forth a few times. Observing the rhythm of his running and jumping, I began to grasp the idea of what he wanted me to do. All too quickly Ren was back in front of me again. “I can’t believe you’ve talked me into doing this. Are you sure?” I asked. “Yes, I’m sure. Are you ready?” “No! Give me a minute to mentally write a last will and testament.” “Kells, it’ll be fine.” “Sure it will. Alright, let me take in my surroundings. I want to make sure I can record every minute of this experience in my journal. Of course, that’s probably a moot point because I’m assuming that I’m going to die in the jump anyway.” Ren put his hand on my cheek, looked in my eyes, and said fiercely, “Kelsey, trust me. I will not let you fall.

Lucy always said that the greatest friends have nothing and everything in common all at once. Y’all girls are different versions of the same story, she would say. But these last two months, I feel like we’re being pulled in different directions, and I’m the only one who seems to notice.

In the living room Derek sprawled on the floor on a blanket, his eyes closed, his body human, corded with hard muscle, and covered only with a strategically placed towel. Julie knelt by him, long tweezers in her hand. “What’s going on?” “Quills,” she said. “Very thin quills. There was a magic plant and he decided it would be a good idea to give it a hug. Because he is smart that way.” So they had taken Julie with them. Considering where I’d gone and what I did while there, I didn’t have room to talk. Derek didn’t bother opening his eyes. “I wasn’t giving it a hug. I was shielding Ella.” “Mm-hm.” Julie plucked a thin needle from his stomach. “You shielded her really well. Because it’s not like we didn’t have Carlos with us.” Carlos was a firebug. The plant must’ve gotten torched. “We’ll need to work on mixed-unit tactics,” Curran said. He looked tired. It must’ve been hell. “So what did you do in Mishmar?” Umm. Ehh. In my head I had somehow expected Erra to stay in Mishmar. “I saw my father,” I said. Start small. “How was that?” Curran asked. “He’s a little upset with me.” “Aha.” “I broke Mishmar a little bit.” The three of them looked at me. “But it was mostly my grandmother who did it.” “How much is a little bit?” Derek asked. “There might be a crack. About maybe seven feet at the widest point.” Derek laughed. “And what else?” Curran asked. Perceptive bastard. “And this.” I pulled out the dagger and showed it to him. “You made a magic knife?” he asked. “Yes. In a manner of speaking.” “But you still have to get close enough to stab Roland with it,” Derek said. “That’s not how it works.” Help me, somebody. Curran was looking right at me. “Kate?” “It’s more of an advising kind of knife.” “You should come clean,” he said. “Whatever it is, it’s done and we can handle it.” My aunt tore into existence in the center of the room. “Hello, half-breed.” Curran exploded into a leap. Unfortunately, Derek also exploded at exactly the same time but from the opposite direction. They collided in Erra’s translucent body with a loud thud. Derek fell back and Curran stumbled a few steps. Erra pointed at Curran with her thumb. “You want to marry this? Is there a shortage of men?” Curran leapt forward and swiped at her head. His hand passed through my aunt’s face. Derek jumped to his feet and circled Erra, his eyes glowing. “I fear for my grandnephew,” Erra said. “He will be an idiot.

What happens when your mind wars with your heart? Your soul burns. That’s me right now. My soul is on fucking fire. My mind is rationaling, clinging desperately to logic. My heart is crying. I don’t know how to process it. I’m feeling everything and nothing at once. Blessed and cursed in the same breath. I want to cry and revel in the chaos simultaneously. As if every emotion is tangled in a knot, pulling in every direction. What the fuck do I do? No clear answer. Only a void, deep in my heart, aching profusely. Back in my residence (because I can’t call it home), I roam the house like an unfeeling pile of limbs.

The summer my daughters were six and four, we were at the beach one day and went for a long walk. It was astonishingly hot, and the sun, bouncing off a clear sea and blinding sand, was relentless. Wearing bikini bottoms but no tops, my children alternated between making sandpiles and running into the sea to cool off. The beach was empty. Eventually a woman and her son appeared in the distance, moving lazily in our direction. The boy seemed to be around the same age. Eventually the children came together, playing in the water with on another but not talking. His mother and I, farther back in each direction, waved and smiled. I thought we would just keep walking, but when we got close to the children, she said loudly, 'You really should put tops on them.' At first, I didn't understand her. 'Thanks,' I replied. 'They're covered in sunscreen.' 'They're girls,' she said. It wasn't until she was near my daughters that she'd realized this. I was dumbfounded. She might have been equally dumbfounded if I had taken the time to explain that her statement was an overtly sexist sexualization. The four children were physically indistinguishable, physically active on a hot beach. When I made no move toward shielding her son from the girls' scary, tempting, and corrupting bodies, she pulled him out of the water by the arm. They rushed down the beach before it crossed my mind to whip off my own top. Aggression takes many forms.

So, just as all Fords rolling off the assembly line in a given week might have serial numbers beginning with the same few characters, all the network chips in a given batch would start with the same few hex digits. Some of Dinah’s chips were cheap off-the-shelf hardware made for terrestrial use, but she also had some rad-hard ones, which she hoarded in a shielded box in a drawer beneath her workstation. She opened that drawer, pulled out that box, and took out a little green PC board, about the size of a stick of gum, with an assortment of chips mounted to it. Printed in white capital letters directly on the board was its MAC address. And its first half-dozen digits matched those in the transmission coming from the Space Troll.

Newton supposed that the case of the planet was similar to that of [a ball spun around on the end of an elastic string]; that it was always pulled in the direction of the sun, and that this attraction or pulling of the sun produced the revolution of the planet, in the same way that the traction or pulling of the elastic string produces the revolution of the ball. What there is between the sun and the planet that makes each of them pull the other, Newton did not know; nobody knows to this day; and all we are now able to assert positively is that the known motion of the planet is precisely what would be produced if it were fastened to the sun by an elastic string, having a certain law of elasticity. Now observe the nature of this discovery, the greatest in its consequences that has ever yet been made in physical science:— I. It begins with an hypothesis, by supposing that there is an analogy between the motion of a planet and the motion of a ball at the end of a string. II. Science becomes independent of the hypothesis, for we merely use it to investigate the properties of the motion, and do not trouble ourselves further about the cause of it.

He slammed his cup down. Coffee splashed over the rim and puddled around the base. “What on earth gave you the idea I want space? I want you here. With me. All the time. I want to come home and hear the shower running and get excited because I know you’re in it. I want to struggle every morning to get up and go to the gym because I hate the idea of leaving your warm body behind in bed. I want to hear a key turn in the lock and feel contented knowing you’re home. I don’t want fucking space, Harper.” Harper laughed. “What’s funny?” “I didn’t mean space. I meant space, like closet space, a drawer in the bedroom, part of the counter in the bathroom.” Trent’s mouth twitched, a slight smile making its way to his lips. “Like a compromise. A commitment that I want more. I seem to recall you telling me in the car about something being a step in the right direction to a goal we both agreed on. Well, I want all those things you just said, with you, eventually. And if we start to leave things at each other’s places, it’s a step, right?” Trent reached up, flexing his delicious tattooed bicep, and scratched the side of his head. Without speaking, he leapt to his feet, grabbing Harper and pulling her into a fireman’s lift. “Trent,” she squealed, kicking her feet to get free. “What are you doing?” He slapped her butt playfully and laughed as he carried her down the hallway. Reaching the bedroom, Trent threw her onto the bed. “We’re doing space. Today, right now.” He started pulling open his drawers, looking inside each one before pulling stuff out of the top drawer and dividing it between the others. “Okay, this is for your underwear. I need to see bras, panties, and whatever other girly shit you have in here before the end of the day.” Like a panther on the prowl, Trent launched himself at the bed, grabbing her ankle and pulling her to the edge of the bed before sweeping her into his arms to walk to the bathroom. He perched her on the corner of the vanity, where his stuff was spread across the two sinks. “Pick one.” “Pick one what?” “Sink. Which do you want?” “You’re giving me a whole sink? Wait … stop…” Trent grabbed her and started tickling her. Harper didn’t recognize the girly giggles that escaped her. Pointing to the sink farthest away from the door, she watched as he pushed his toothbrush, toothpaste, and styling products to the other side of the vanity. He did the same thing with the vanity drawers and created some space under the sink. “I expect to see toothbrush, toothpaste, your shampoo, and whatever it is that makes you smell like vanilla in here.” “You like the vanilla?” It never ceased to surprise her, the details he remembered. Turning, he grabbed her cheeks in both hands and kissed her hard. He trailed kisses behind her ear and inhaled deeply before returning to face her. “Absolutely. I fucking love vanilla,” he murmured against her lips before kissing her again, softly this time. “Oh and I’d better see a box of tampons too.” “Oh my goodness, you are beyond!” Harper blushed furiously. “I want you for so much more than just sex, Harper.

Charming, happy, generous with his favors to his friends, Draco wasn't a psychopath. That was the sad and awful part, knowing human psychology well enough to know that Draco wasn't a monster. There had been ten thousand societies over the history of the world where this conversation could have happened. No, the world would have been a very different place indeed, if it took an evil mutant to say what Draco had said. It was very simple, very human, it was the default if nothing else intervened. To Draco, his enemies weren't people. And in the slowed time of this slowed country, here and now as in the darkness-before-dawn prior to the Age of Reason, the son of a sufficiently powerful noble would simply take for granted that he was above the law, at least when it came to some peasant girl. There were places in Muggle-land where it was still the same way, countries where that sort of nobility still existed and still thought like that, or even grimmer lands where it wasn't just the nobility. It was like that in every place and time that didn't descend directly from the Enlightenment. A line of descent, it seemed, which didn't quite include magical Britain, for all that there had been cross-cultural contamination of things like ring-pull drinks cans.

This seat taken?" My eyes grazing over the only other occupant, a guy with long glossy dark hair with his head bent over a book. "It's all yours," he says. And when he lifts his head and smiles,my heart just about leaps from my chest. It's the boy from my dreams. The boy from the Rabbit Hole,the gas station,and the cave-sitting before me with those same amazing,icy-blue eues, those same alluring lips I've kissed multiple times-but only in slumber, never in waking life. I scold my heart to settle,but it doesn't obey. I admonish myself to sit,to act normal, casual-and I just barely succeed. Stealing a series of surreptitious looks as I search through my backpack, taking in his square chin,wide generous lips,strong brow,defined cheekbones, and smooth brown skin-the exact same features as Cade. "You're the new girl,right?" He abandons his book,tilting his head in a way that causes his hair to stream over his shoulder,so glossy and inviting it takes all of my will not to lean across the table and touch it. I nod in reply,or at least I think I do.I can't be too sure.I'm too stricken by his gaze-the way it mirrors mine-trying to determine if he knows me, recognizes me,if he's surprised to find me here.Wishing Paloma had better prepared me-focused more on him and less on his brother. I force my gaze from his.Bang my knee hard against the table as I swivel in my seat.Feeling so odd and unsettled,I wish I'd picked another place to sit, though it's pretty clear no other table would have me. He buries his smile and returns to the book.Allowing a few minutes to pass,not nearly enough time for me to get a grip on myself,when he looks up and says, "Are you staring at me because you've seen my doppelganer roaming the halls,playing king of the cafeteria? Or because you need to borrow a pencil and you're too shy to ask?" I clear the lump from my throat, push the words past my lips when I say, "No one's ever accused me of being shy." A statement that,while steeped in truth, stands at direct odds with the way I feel now,sitting so close to him. "So I guess it's your twin-or doppelganer,as you say." I keep my voice light, as though I'm not at all affected by his presence,but the trill note at the end gives me away.Every part of me now vibrating with the most intense surge of energy-like I've been plugged into the wall and switched on-and it's all I can do to keep from grabbing hold of his shirt, demanding to know if he dreamed the dreams too. He nods,allowing an easy,cool smile to widen his lips. "We're identical," he says. "As I'm sure you've guessed. Though it's easy enough to tell us apart. For one thing,he keeps his hair short.For another-" "The eyes-" I blurt,regretting the words the instant they're out.From the look on his face,he has no idea what I'm talking about. "Yours are...kinder." My cheeks burn so hot I force myself to look away,as words of reproach stampede my brain. Why am I acting like such an inept loser? Why do I insist on embarrassing myself-in front of him-of all people? I have to pull it together.I have to remember who I am-what I am-and what I was born to do.Which is basically to crush him and his kind-or,at the very least,to temper the damage they do.

The beauty and challenge of long-term relationships is that you change and shift at different times in different directions, side by side under the same roof. Most often, these changes are subtle and you’re subconsciously adapting all the time to the constant but gentle shifting of another human being that you’re so connected to; like two shape-shifters battling to coincide, for better or worse. Remain who you are while they alter, or change with them. Inspire them to go in another direction, gently push, pull, mould, tear at, nurture. Wait.

Ambivalence is often intensified by deficiencies outside the family--officials cannot find a missing person or medical experts cannot clearly diagnose or cure a devastating illness. Because of the ambiguity, loved ones can't make sense out of their situation and emotionally are pulled in opposite directions --love and hate for the same person, acceptance and rejection of their caregiving role, affirmation and denial of their loss. Often people feel they must withhold their emotions and control their aggressive feelings... This is the bind...

She pulls up to the drive way Parks the car, Gets Out, Walks up to the door, And embraces me with an iron hold She is a friend and hugs me the same way she used to, Her hands sliding into their old creases along my body I let her into the house, knowing I could never refuse As she walks through my doors, she reminds me why she stands in my living room She tells me that she has returned because of my actions I didn’t learn from the last time Its my fault I should have been better, she berates me I should have let people in, she tells me I should not have gotten mad, she shares with me I should not have locked myself away, she lets me know I silently bear all the responsibility for her return As we start to get deep into conversation, I realize she has brought her bags Suitcase after suitcase lets me know she is here to stay She tells me she will run my life from now on She will make my schedule She will direct how I act She has come to my doors, breached my walls, destroyed my defenses, and announced her ownership. Crownless in my own kingdom I am defeated. This old friend is called Loneliness

Boney freckled knees pressed into bits of bark and stone, refusing to feel any more pain. Her faded t-shirt hugged her protruding ribs as she held on, hunched in silence. A lone tear followed the lumpy tracks down her cheek, jumped from her quivering jaw onto a thirsty browned leaf with a thunderous plop. Then the screen door squeaked open and she took flight. Crispy twigs snapped beneath her bare feet as she ran deeper and deeper into the woods behind the house. She heard him rumbling and calling her name, his voice fueling her tired muscles to go faster, to survive. He knew her path by now. He was ready for the hunt. The clanging unbuckled belt boomed in her ears as he gained on her. The woods were thin this time of year, not much to hide behind. If she couldn’t outrun him, up she would go. Young trees teased her in this direction, so she moved east towards the evergreens. Hunger and hurt left her no choice, she had to stop running soon. She grabbed the first tree with a branch low enough to reach, and up she went. The pine trees were taller here, older, but the branches were too far apart for her to reach. She chose the wrong tree. His footsteps pounded close by. She stood as tall as her little legs could, her bloodied fingers reaching, stretching, to no avail. A cry of defeat slipped from her lips, a knowing laugh barked from his. She would pay for this dearly. She didn’t know whether the price was more than she could bear. Her eyes closed, her next breath came out as Please, and an inky hand reached down from the lush needles above, wound its many fingers around hers, and pulled her up. Another hand, then another, grabbing her arms, her legs, firmly but gently, pulling her up, up, up. The rush of green pine needles and black limbs blurred together, then a flash of cobalt blue fluttered by, heading down. She looked beyond her dangling bare feet to see a flock of peculiar birds settle on the branches below her, their glossy feathers flickered at once and changed to the same greens and grays of the tree they perched upon, camouflaging her ascension. Her father’s footsteps below came to a stomping end, and she knew he was listening for her. Tracking her, trapping her, like he did the other beasts of the forest. He called her name once, twice. The third time’s tone not quite as friendly. The familiar slide–click sound of him readying his gun made her flinch before he had his chance to shoot at the sky. A warning. He wasn’t done with her. His feet crunched in circles around the tree, eventually heading back home. Finally, she exhaled and looked up. Dozens of golden-eyed creatures surrounded her from above. Covered in indigo pelts, with long limbs tipped with mint-colored claws, they seemed to move as one, like a heartbeat. As if they shared a pulse, a train of thought, a common sense. “Thank you,” she whispered, and the beasts moved in a wave to carefully place her on a thick branch.

I suddenly remember being about seven, riding beside him in the car, and asking him how grown-ups found their way to places. After all, I had never seen him pull out a map. "I guess we just get used to taking the same turns," he said, but I wasn't satisfied. "Then what about the first time you go somewhere?" "Well," he said, "we get directions." But what I want to know is who got them the very first time? What if no one's ever been where you're going? "Dad?" I ask, "is it true that you can use stars like a map?" "Yeah, if you understand celestial navigation." "Is it hard?" I'm thinking maybe I should learn. A backup plan, for all those times I feel like I'm just wandering in circles. "It's pretty jazzy math—you have to measure the altitude of a star, figure out its position using a nautical almanac, figure out what you think the altitude should be and what direction the star should be in based on where you think you are, and compare the altitude you measured with the one you calculated. Then you plot this on a chart, as a line of position. You get several lines of position to cross, and that's where you go." My father takes one look at my face and smiles. "Exactly," he laughs. "Never leave home without your GPS.

There is an old Greek saying that men are tormented not by things themselves but by what they think about them. If that assertion could be proved to be always true everywhere it would be an important point gained for the comforting of our wretched human condition. For if ills can only enter us through our judgement it would seem to be in our power either to despise them or to deflect them towards the good: if the things actually do throw themselves on our mercy why do we not act as their masters and accomodate them to our advantage? If what we call evil or torment are only evil or torment insofar as our mental apprehension endows them with those qualities when it lies within our power to change those qualities. And if we did have such a choice and were free from constraint we would be curiously mad to pull in the direction which hurts us most, endowing sickness, poverty or insolence with a bad and bitter taste when we could give them a pleasent one, Fortune simply furnishing us with the matter and leaving it to us to supply the form. Let us see whether a case can be made for what we call evil not being an evil in itself or (since it amounts to the same) whether at least it is up to us to endow it with a different savour and aspect.

There is an old Greek saying that men are tormented not by things themselves but by what they think about them. If that assertion could be proved to be always true everywhere it would be an important point gained for the comforting of our wretched human condition. For if ills can only enter us through our judgement it would seem to be in our power either to despise them or to deflect them towards the good: if the things actually do throw themselves on our mercy why do we not act as their masters and accomodate them to our advantage? If what we call evil or torment are only evil or torment insofar as our mental apprehension endows them with those qualities then it lies within our power to change those qualities. And if we did have such a choice and were free from constraint we would be curiously mad to pull in the direction which hurts us most, endowing sickness, poverty or insolence with a bad and bitter taste when we could give them a pleasent one, Fortune simply furnishing us with the matter and leaving it to us to supply the form. Let us see whether a case can be made for what we call evil not being an evil in itself or (since it amounts to the same) whether at least it is up to us to endow it with a different savour and aspect.

The meerkats looked away. They did it like one man, all of them turning in the same direction at exactly the same time. I pulled myself out to see what it was. It was Richard Parker. He confirmed what I had suspected, that these meerkats had gone for so many generations without predators that any notion of flight distance, of flight, of plain fear, had been genetically weeded out of them. He was moving through them, blazing a trail of murder and mayhem, devouring one meerkat after another, blood dripping from his mouth, and they, cheek to jowl with a tiger, were jumping up and down on the spot, as if crying, “My turn! My turn! My turn!

There is, by the way, an area in which a man's feelings are more rational than in his mind, and it is precisely in that area that his will is pulled in several directions at the same time. You might sneer at this, but I know now. I was pulled this way and that for longer than I can remember. And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone's way but my own. I have also been called one thing and then another while no one really wished to hear what I called myself. So after years of trying to adopt the opinions of others I finally rebelled. I am an invisible man. Thus, I have come a long way and returned and boomeranged a long way from the point in society toward which I originally aspired.

He decided to poll the room on that question. “He pulled off this clever maneuver,” Jobs recalled, still smarting twenty-five years later. “It was at the executive committee meeting, and he said, ‘It’s me or Steve, who do you vote for?’ He set the whole thing up so that you’d kind of have to be an idiot to vote for me.” Suddenly the frozen onlookers began to squirm. Del Yocam had to go first. He said he loved Jobs, wanted him to continue to play some role in the company, but he worked up the nerve to conclude, with Jobs staring at him, that he “respected” Sculley and would support him to run the company. Eisenstat faced Jobs directly and said much the same thing: He liked Jobs but was supporting Sculley.

MIT, the researchers gave a group of four-year-olds exactly the same toy, and only varied the method with which they introduced it to the children. In one group, the researcher acted naïve and clueless when she demonstrated one of the functions of the toy, whereas the other group was given direct instruction by the researcher on how to use it. When left alone with the toy, all the children in the study were able to replicate what the “teacher” had done—pull on one of the toy’s tubes to make it squeak—but the children in the first group played with the toy longer and discovered more of its functions. They were simply more curious and more likely to discover new information than the children who had been told by the teacher how to use the toy.

A moth is such a simple machine in the animal world - the go-kart to the modern car - and it takes a lot of glitches to prevent it going. It's this intriguing simplicity, the idea that you could pull it into its constituent parts and put it back together in the same rainy day, that if you pulled back the skin, you could watch the inner workings, that makes a moth such an absorbing creature to study. Moths have a universal character: there are no individuals. Each reacts to a precise condition or stimulus in a predictable and replicable way. They are pre-programmed robots, unable to learn from experience. For instance, we know they will allways react to a smell, a pheromone or a particular spectrum of light in the same way. I can mimic the scent of a flower so that a moth will direct itself towards that scent ...

Swift came to the table and bowed politely. “My lady,” he said to Lillian, “what a pleasure it is to see you again. May I offer my renewed congratulations on your marriage to Lord Westcliff, and…” He hesitated, for although Lillian was obviously pregnant, it would be impolite to refer to her condition. “…you are looking quite well,” he finished. “I’m the size of a barn,” Lillian said flatly, puncturing his attempt at diplomacy. Swift’s mouth firmed as if he was fighting to suppress a grin. “Not at all,” he said mildly, and glanced at Annabelle and Evie. They all waited for Lillian to make the introductions. Lillian complied grudgingly. “This is Mr. Swift,” she muttered, waving her hand in his direction. “Mrs. Simon Hunt and Lady St. Vincent.” Swift bent deftly over Annabelle’s hand. He would have done the same for Evie except she was holding the baby. Isabelle’s grunts and whimpers were escalating and would soon become a full-out wail unless something was done about it. “That is my daughter Isabelle,” Annabelle said apologetically. “She’s teething.” That should get rid of him quickly, Daisy thought. Men were terrified of crying babies. “Ah.” Swift reached into his coat and rummaged through a rattling collection of articles. What on earth did he have in there? She watched as he pulled out his pen-knife, a bit of fishing line and a clean white handkerchief. “Mr. Swift, what are you doing?” Evie asked with a quizzical smile. “Improvising something.” He spooned some crushed ice into the center of the handkerchief, gathered the fabric tightly around it, and tied it off with fishing line. After replacing the knife in his pocket, he reached for the baby without one trace of self-consciusness. Wide-eyed, Evie surrendered the infant. The four women watched in astonishment as Swift took Isabelle against his shoulder with practiced ease. He gave the baby the ice-filled handkerchief, which she proceeded to gnaw madly even as she continued to cry. Seeming oblivious to the fascinated stares of everyone in the room, Swift wandered to the window and murmured softly to the baby. It appeared he was telling her a story of some kind. After a minute or two the child quieted. When Swift returned to the table Isabelle was half-drowsing and sighing, her mouth clamped firmly on the makeshift ice pouch. “Oh, Mr. Swift,” Annabelle said gratefully, taking the baby back in her arms, “how clever of you! Thank you.” “What were you saying to her?” Lillian demanded. He glanced at her and replied blandly, “I thought I would distract her long enough for the ice to numb her gums. So I gave her a detailed explanation of the Buttonwood agreement of 1792.” Daisy spoke to him for the first time. “What was that?” Swift glanced at her then, his face smooth and polite, and for a second Daisy half-believed that she had dreamed the events of that morning. But her skin and nerves still retained the sensation of him, the hard imprint of his body. “The Buttonwood agreement led to the formation of the New York Stock and Exchange Board,” Swift said. “I thought I was quite informative, but it seemed Miss Isabelle lost interest when I started on the fee-structuring compromise.” “I see,” Daisy said. “You bored the poor baby to sleep.” “You should hear my account of the imbalance of market forces leading to the crash of ’37,” Swift said. “I’ve been told it’s better than laudanum.

Here are some of the things I learned while living in New York: That you shouldn’t interpret direct and efficient communication as rudeness. That a sidewalk operates by the same rules as a highway: if you walk slow, walk in the right lane, and if you have to stop, pull over. I learned that once the late June sunshine hits the streets, pretty girls in summer dresses come out of the woodwork. I also learned that summer brings with it the inescapable smell of marinating garbage and human urine. In the city, you can get weed delivered to your front door by a hipster on a bicycle or pick up a screwdriver in the dead of the night at a twenty-four-hour hardware store. I learned that the city has resilience like no other city during natural (or man-made) disasters, and that the people of New York generally coexist peacefully, which is impressive, considering there are 27,352 people per square mile.

But Harry had eyes only for the man who stood in the largest portrait directly behind the headmaster’s chair. Tears were sliding down from behind the half-moon spectacles into the long silver beard, and the pride and the gratitude emanating from him filled Harry with the same balm as phoenix song. At last, Harry held up his hands, and the portraits fell respectfully silent, beaming and mopping their eyes and waiting eagerly for him to speak. He directed his words at Dumbledore, however, and chose them with enormous care. Exhausted and bleary-eyed though he was, he must make one last effort, seeking one last piece of advice. “The thing that was hidden in the Snitch,” he began, “I dropped it in the forest. I don’t know exactly where, but I’m not going to go looking for it again. Do you agree?” “My dear boy, I do,” said Dumbledore, while his fellow pictures looked confused and curious. “A wise and courageous decision, but no less than I would have expected of you. Does anyone else know where it fell?” “No one,” said Harry, and Dumbledore nodded his satisfaction. “I’m going to keep Ignotus’s present, though,” said Harry, and Dumbledore beamed. “But of course, Harry, it is yours forever, until you pass it on!” “And then there’s this.” Harry held up the Elder Wand, and Ron and Hermione looked at it with a reverence that, even in his befuddled and sleep-deprived state, Harry did not like to see. “I don’t want it,” said Harry. “What?” said Ron loudly. “Are you mental?” “I know it’s powerful,” said Harry wearily. “But I was happier with mine. So…” He rummaged in the pouch hung around his neck, and pulled out the two halves of holly still just connected by the finest thread of phoenix feather. Hermione had said that they could not be repaired, that the damage was too severe. All he knew was that if this did not work, nothing would. He laid the broken wand upon the headmaster’s desk, touched it with the very tip of the Elder Wand, and said, “Reparo.” As his wand resealed, red sparks flew out of its end. Harry knew that he had succeeded. He picked up the holly and phoenix wand and felt a sudden warmth in his fingers, as though wand and hand were rejoicing at their reunion. “I’m putting the Elder Wand,” he told Dumbledore, who was watching him with enormous affection and admiration, “back where it came from. It can stay there. If I die a natural death like Ignotus, its power will be broken, won’t it? The previous master will never have been defeated. That’ll be the end of it.” Dumbledore nodded. They smiled at each other. “Are you sure?” said Ron. There was the faintest trace of longing in his voice as he looked at the Elder Wand. “I think Harry’s right,” said Hermione quietly. “That wand’s more trouble than it’s worth,” said Harry. “And quite honestly,” he turned away from the painted portraits, thinking now only of the four-poster bed lying waiting for him in Gryffindor Tower, and wondering whether Kreacher might bring him a sandwich there, “I’ve had enough trouble for a lifetime.

I try to plan my exits from the office so that I don’t need to talk to anyone else on the way out. There are always so many questions. What are you up to tonight? Plans for the weekend? Booked a holiday yet? I’ve no idea why other people are always so interested in my schedule. I’d timed it all perfectly, and was maneuvering my shopper over the threshold when I realized that someone had pulled the door back and was holding it open for me. I turned around. “All right, Eleanor?” the man said, smiling patiently as I unraveled the string on my mittens from my sleeve. Even though they were not required in the current temperate atmosphere, I keep them in situ, ready to don as the eventual change in season requires. “Yes,” I said, and then, remembering my manners, I muttered, “Thank you, Raymond.” “No bother,” he said. Annoyingly, we began walking down the path at the same time. “Where are you headed?” he asked. I nodded vaguely in the direction of the hill. “Me too,” he said. I bent down and pretended to refasten the Velcro on my shoe. I took as long as I could, hoping that he would take the hint.

Transportation from One Place to Another Once whilst Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jilani (r.a) was delivering one of his spiritually enlightening lectures, a person by the name of Abul Mu’aali was present in this gathering. He was seated directly in front of the great Saint. During the course of the lecture, Abul Mu’aali found that he needed to answer the call of nature (relieve himself). He tried to suppress this need because he found it disrespectful to leave the gathering of al-Ghawth al-A’zam (r.a) He controlled the urge to the best of his ability, but when he could not do so any longer, he decided to leave. As he was about to stand, he saw the great Ghawth (r.a) walking down the first stair of the pulpit (Mimbar) onto the second stair. As the Saint came to the second stair, Abul Mu’aali saw an image of the great Saint on the mimbar. Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jilani (r.a) came down to him and threw his shawl over him. As this happened, Abul Mu’aali found that he was no longer in the gathering, but rather in a valley with beautiful lush vegetation. It was beautified even more by a stream, which flowed through it. He immediately answered the call of nature, performed Wudhu and then prayed two Rakaats Salaah. As he completed the Salaah, Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jilani (r.a) pulled the shawl off him. When Abul Mu’aali looked, he found to his amazement that he was still in the gathering of the great Saint (r.a) and he had not even missed one word of the lecture of the great Saint. However, much later Abul Mu’aali discovered that he did not have his set of keys with him. He then remembered that when he was transported to the valley by Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jilani (r.a), he had hung his key ring on the branch of a tree beside the stream. Abul Mu’aali states that some time after this incident, he had the opportunity to go on a business expedition. During this journey, Abul Mu’aali reached a valley and rested there. He then noticed that the valley was the exact same place where the great Saint had transported him during his lecture. When he went beside the tree, he found that his missing keys were still hanging on the branch of the tree. Subhan-Allah! The business trip took fourteen days to complete. This miracle of al-Ghawth al-A’zam (r.a) shows that not only did he transport Abul Mu’aali spiritually, but also physically.

Perhaps he can avoid being stretched by falling in a horizontal position, legs and head at the same altitude. Yet when the giant tries it, he finds a new discomfort; the stretching sensation is replaced by an equal feeling of compression. He feels as if his head is being pressed toward his feet. To understand why this is so, let’s temporarily imagine that the Earth is flat. Here is what it would look like. The vertical lines, together with the arrows, indicate the direction of the gravitational force—not surprisingly, straight down. But more than that, the strength of the gravitational pull is entirely uniform. The 2,000-Mile Man would have no trouble in this environment, whether he fell vertically or horizontally—not until he hit the ground anyway. But the Earth is not flat. Both the strength and the direction of gravity vary. Instead of pulling in a single direction, gravity pulls directly toward the center of the planet, like this: This creates a new problem for the giant if he falls horizontally. The force on his head and feet will not be the same because gravity, as it pulls toward the center of the Earth, will push his head toward his feet, leading to the strange sensation of being compressed. Let’s return

It's like the difference between looking at a person and looking through their eyes." "That's how I feel about eating," Sirine interjects, and some of them laugh. Aziz lifts his chin and lowers his eyes silkily. "Please tell us more." "Well, I mean..." She fumbles for words and tears apart a slice of bread, trying to think what she means. "Something like... tasting a piece of bread that someone bought is like looking at that person, but tasting a piece of bread that they baked is like looking out of their eyes." "Fabulous metaphor," Aziz says. Nathan lifts his head. "That's giving other people power over you." "No more than usual," Aziz says. "Somebody's always going to have the power, and somebody's always got to bake the bread." He turns and smiles suavely at Sirine. "You've got the soul of a poet! Cooking and tasting is a metaphor for seeing. Your cooking reveals America to us non-Americans. And vice versa." "Chef isn't an American cook," Victor Hernandez says. "Not like the way Americans do food- just dumping salt into the pot. All the flavors go in the same direction. Chef cooks like we do. In Mexico, we put cinnamon in with the chocolate and pepper in the sweetcakes, so things pull apart, you know, make it bigger?

This is a perfect example of how a control drama interferes,” he said. “You were so aloof you didn’t allow an important coincidence to take place.” I must have appeared defensive. “It’s all right,” he said, “everyone plays a drama of one kind or another. At least now you understand how yours works.” “I don’t understand!” I said. “What exactly am I doing?” “Your way of controlling people and situations,” he explained, “in order to get energy coming your way, is to create this drama in your mind during which you withdraw and look mysterious and secretive. You tell yourself that you’re being cautious but what you’re really doing is hoping someone will be pulled into this drama and will try to figure out what’s going on with you. When someone does, you remain vague, forcing them to struggle and dig and try to discern your true feelings. “As they do so, they give you their full attention and that sends their energy to you. The longer you can keep them interested and mystified, the more energy you receive. Unfortunately, when you play aloof, your life tends to evolve very slowly because you’re repeating this same scene over and over again. If you had opened up to Rolando, your life movie would have taken off in a new and meaningful direction.

So let’s say you wake up in the morning and have a list of people to call, a list of errands to run, 35 texts to respond to, and all these e-mails to answer. If the first thing you do every morning is start thinking about all of those things that you have to do, your body is already in the future. When you sit down to meditate, your mind may naturally want to go in that direction. And if you allowed it, then your brain and body would be in that same predictable future, because you’d be anticipating an outcome based on your same past experience from yesterday. So the moment you start to notice your mind wanting to go in that direction, you just pull the reins in, settle your body down, and bring it back to the present moment—just as I do when I ride my stallion. And then, in the next moment, if you start thinking, Yeah, but you have to do this, you forgot about that, and you need to do the thing you didn’t get to yesterday, just bring your mind back to the present moment again. And if it keeps happening and that brings up the emotions of frustration, impatience, worry, and so on, just remember that whatever emotion you’re experiencing is merely part of the past. So you just notice it; you become aware: Ah, my body-mind wants to go to the past. All right. Let’s settle down and relax back into the present.

During Bill Clinton’s presidency, the Palestinian terrorist Yasser Arafat was invited to spend more time in the White House than any other foreign leader—thirteen invitations.303 Clinton was dead set on helping the Israelis and Palestinians achieve a lasting peace. He pushed the Israelis to grant ever-greater concessions until the Israelis were willing to grant the Palestinians up to 98 percent of all the territory they requested. And what was the Palestinian response? They walked away from the bargaining table and launched the wave of suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks known as the Second Intifada. And what of Osama bin Laden? Even while America was granting concessions to Palestinians—and thereby theoretically easing the conditions that provided much of the pretext for Muslim terror—bin Laden was bombing U.S. embassies in Africa, almost sank the USS Cole in Yemen, and was well into the planning stages of the catastrophic attacks of September 11, 2001. After President George W. Bush ordered U.S. forces to invade Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003, respectively, bringing American troops into direct ground combat with jihadists half a world away, many Americans quickly forgot the recent past and blamed American acts of self-defense for “inflaming” jihad. One of those Americans was Barack Obama. Soon after his election, Obama traveled to Cairo, Egypt, where he delivered a now-infamous speech that signaled America’s massive policy shifts. The United States pulled entirely out of Iraq despite the pleas of “all the major Iraqi parties.”304 In Egypt, the United States actually backed the Muslim Brotherhood government, going so far as agreeing to give it advanced F-16 fighters and M1 Abrams main battle tanks, even as the Muslim Brotherhood government was violating its peace treaty with Israel and persecuting Egypt’s ancient Coptic Christian community. The Obama administration continued supporting the Brotherhood, even when it stood aside and allowed jihadists to storm the American embassy, raising the black flag of jihad over an American diplomatic facility. In Libya, the United States persuaded its allies to come to the aid of a motley group of rebels, including jihadists. Then many of these same jihadists promptly turned their anger on the United States, attacking our diplomatic compound in Benghazi the afternoon and evening of September 11, 2012—killing the American ambassador and three more brave Americans. Compounding this disaster, the administration had steadfastly refused to reinforce the American security presence in spite of a deteriorating security situation, afraid that it would anger the local population. This naïve and foolish administration decision cost American lives.

Let’s return to the question of the ocean tides. The cause of the twice-daily rising and falling of the seas is exactly the same as the cause of the 2,000-Mile Man’s discomfort: the non-uniformity of gravity. But in this case, it’s the Moon’s gravity, not the Earth’s. The Moon’s pull on the oceans is strongest on the side of the Earth facing the Moon and weakest on the far side. You might expect the Moon to create a single oceanic bulge on the closer side, but that’s wrong. For the same reason that the tall man’s head is pulled away from his feet, the water on both sides of the Earth—near and far—bulges away from it. One way to think about this is that on the near side, the Moon pulls the water away from the Earth, but on the far side, it pulls the Earth away from the water. The result is two bulges on opposite sides of the Earth, one facing toward the Moon and the other facing away. As the Earth turns one revolution under the bulges, each point experiences two high tides. The distorting forces caused by variations in the strength and direction of gravity are called tidal forces, whether they are due to the Moon, Earth, Sun, or any other astronomical mass. Can humans of normal size feel tidal forces—for example, when jumping from a diving board? No, we cannot, but only because we are so small that the Earth’s gravitational field hardly varies across the length of our bodies. Descent

She looked thoughtful. “Who knows? Perhaps now is the time to see through the habit. Accidents, illness, healing, they’re all more mysterious than any of us ever imagined. I believe that we have an undiscovered ability to influence what happens to us in the future, including whether we are healthy—although, again, the power has to remain with the individual patient. “There was a reason that I didn’t offer an opinion concerning how badly you were hurt. We in the medical establishment have learned that medical opinions have to be offered very carefully. Over the years the public has developed almost a worship of doctors, and when a physician says something, patients have tended to take these opinions totally to heart. The country doctors of a hundred years ago knew this, and would use this principle to actually paint an overly optimistic picture of any health situation. If the doctor said that the patient would get better, very often the patient would internalize this idea in his or her mind and actually defy all odds to recover. In later years, however, ethical considerations have prevented such distortions, and the establishment has felt that the patient is entitled to a cold scientific assessment of his or her situation. “Unfortunately when this was given, sometimes patients dropped dead right before our eyes, just because they were told their condition was terminal. We know now that we have to be very careful with these assessments, because of the power of our minds. We want to focus this power in a positive direction. The body is capable of miraculous regeneration. Body parts thought of in the past as solid forms are actually energy systems that can transform overnight. Have you read the latest research on prayer? The simple fact that this kind of spiritual visualization is being scientifically proven to work totally undermines our old physical model of healing. We’re having to work out a new model.” She paused and poured more water on the towel around my ankle, then continued, “I believe the first step in the process is to identify the fear with which the medical problem seems to be connected; this opens up the energy block in your body to conscious healing. The next step is to pull in as much energy as possible and focus it at the exact location of the block.” I was about to ask how this was done, but she stopped me. “Go ahead and raise your energy level as much as you can.” Accepting her guidance, I began to observe the beauty around me and to concentrate on a spiritual connection within, evoking a heightened sensation of love. Gradually the colors became more vivid and everything in my awareness increased in presence. I could tell that she was raising her own energy at the same time. When I felt as though my vibration had increased as much as possible, I looked at her. She smiled back at me. “Okay, now you can focus the energy on the block.” “How do I do that?” I asked. “You use the pain. That’s why it’s there, to help you focus.

Can't you just let it go? Move on?" His face darkened. His eyes glared in response and he was silent a long time while his jaw worked over a toothpick. She'd used the same line that the prophet and his representatives had been using for years. Even if these things did happen, there is no point in being bitter. You should forgive and forget and let bygones be bygones. Kind of galling, considering the insistence upon forgiveness was being made by the people who had done the hurting and done nothing to make up for it. But then, that was the standard 'blame the victim' abuser mentally, and to be expected. Gideon seemed to work through this slap in the face and let it slide. He said, "For a while I thought maybe, you know, if I could talk to the people responsible. If I could show them how difficult life has been because of them, that maybe they would care. I don't know. I thought maybe if they apologized, it would be so much easier to forget this shit. You know? To do what they say and 'let it go'. But nobody will take any personal responsibility. My own parents have nothing to offer but a bunch of whiny excuses. They try to convince me that my life wasn't as bad as I remember it." "Fuck that," he said, "They weren't even there. They don't even know what went on with me. I just..." He paused and pulled his fingers through his hair. "Christ," he said. He paused again, eyes to the sky, and then back to her. "Even the people who never personally raised a hand against me still propped up the regime that made it happen. They stood by and allowed it. Played a part. All of them. Every single one was a participant. Either directly or by looking away. Institutionally, doctrinally, they abused us. Sent us into the streets to beg, denied us an education, had us beaten, starved, exorcised, and separated from our parents. They broke up our families, gave our bodies to perverts, and stole our future. And then they turn around and say we're supposed to just forget it happened and move on from it. If instead we bring up the past, then they'll call us liars. Say we're exaggerating or making it up completely. Why the hell would be make any of this shit up? What's the point in that? To make our lives seem worse than they were? Not that I would, but do you have any idea how much exaggeration it would take for the average person to even begin to grasp how fucking miserable it was? And then, if they ever do admit to any of it, they say that 'mistakes were made'. " "Mistakes." he said. He was leaning forward again, punctuating the air with his finger. "Michael, they commit crimes against children. You know, those things people in society go to jail for when they're caught. And then to the public they do what they always do. Deny. Deny. Deny. And we're left more raped than ever. Victimized first by what they did, and again by their refusal to admit that it happened. They paint us as bitter apostates and liars to a world that not only doesn't give a shit, but also couldn't possibly understand even if it did." "I do," Munroe said. And Gideon stopped.

Jobs later explained, “We discussed whether it was correct before we ran it. It’s grammatical, if you think about what we’re trying to say. It’s not think the same, it’s think different. Think a little different, think a lot different, think different. ‘Think differently’ wouldn’t hit the meaning for me.” In order to evoke the spirit of Dead Poets Society, Clow and Jobs wanted to get Robin Williams to read the narration. His agent said that Williams didn’t do ads, so Jobs tried to call him directly. He got through to Williams’s wife, who would not let him talk to the actor because she knew how persuasive he could be. They also considered Maya Angelou and Tom Hanks. At a fund-raising dinner featuring Bill Clinton that fall, Jobs pulled the president aside and asked him to telephone Hanks to talk him into it, but the president pocket-vetoed the request. They ended up with Richard Dreyfuss, who was a dedicated Apple fan. In addition to the television commercials, they created one of the most memorable print campaigns in history. Each ad featured a black-and-white portrait of an iconic historical figure with just the Apple logo and the words “Think Different” in the corner. Making it particularly engaging was that the faces were not captioned. Some of them—Einstein, Gandhi, Lennon, Dylan, Picasso, Edison, Chaplin, King—were easy to identify. But others caused people to pause, puzzle, and maybe ask a friend to put a name to the face: Martha Graham, Ansel Adams, Richard Feynman, Maria Callas, Frank Lloyd Wright, James Watson, Amelia Earhart. Most were Jobs’s personal heroes. They tended to be creative people who had taken risks, defied failure, and bet their career on doing things in a different way.

Whatever doesn’t kill you only serves to make you stronger. And in the grand scheme of life, I had survived and grown stronger, at least mentally, if not physically. I had come within an inch of losing all my movement and, by the grace of God, still lived to tell the tale. I had learned so much, but above all, I had gained an understanding of the cards I had been playing with. The problem now was that I had no job and no income. Earning a living and following your heart can so often pull you in different directions, and I knew I wasn’t the first person to feel that strain. My decision to climb Everest was a bit of a “do or die” mission. If I climbed it and became one of the youngest climbers ever to have reached the summit, then I had at least a sporting chance of getting some sort of job in the expedition world afterward--either doing talks or leading treks. I would be able to use it as a springboard to raise sponsorship to do some other expeditions. But on the other hand, if I failed, I would either be dead on the mountain or back home and broke--with no job and no qualifications. The reality was that it wasn’t a hard decision for me to make. Deep down in my bones, I just knew it was the right thing to do: to go for it. Plus I have never been one to be too scared of that old imposter: failure. I had never climbed for people’s admiration; I had always climbed because I was half-decent at it--and now I had an avenue, through Everest, to explore that talent further. I also figured that if I failed, well at least I would fail while attempting something big and bold. I liked that. What’s more, if I could start a part-time university degree course at the same time (to be done by e-mail from Everest), then whatever the outcome on the mountain, at least I had an opening back at M15. (It’s sometimes good to not entirely burn all your bridges.)

we neared Liverpool’s Lime Street station, we passed through a culvert with walls that appeared to rise up at least thirty feet, high enough to block out the sun. They were as smooth as Navajo sandstone. This had been bored out in 1836 and had been in continuous use ever since, the conductor told me. “All the more impressive,” he said, “when you consider it was all done by Irish navvies working with wheelbarrows and picks.” I couldn’t place his accent and asked if he himself was Irish, but he gave me a disapproving look and told me he was a native of Liverpool. He had been talking about the ragged class of nineteenth-century laborers, usually illiterate farmhands, known as “navvies”—hard-drinking and risk-taking men who were hired in gangs to smash the right-of-way in a direct line from station to station. Many of them had experienced digging canals and were known by the euphemism “navigators.” They wore the diminutive “navvy” as a term of pride. Polite society shunned them, but these magnificent railways would have been impossible without their contributions of sweat and blood. Their primary task was cleaving the hillsides so that tracks could be laid on a level plain for the weak locomotive engines of the day. Teams of navvies known as “butty gangs” blasted a route with gunpowder and then hauled the dirt out with the same kind of harness that so many children were then using in the coal mines: a man at the back of a full wheelbarrow would buckle a thick belt around his waist, then attach that to a rope dangling from the top of the slope and allow himself to be pulled up by a horse. This was how the Lime Street approach had been dug out, and it was dangerous. One 1827 fatality happened as “the poor fellow was in the act of undermining a heavy head of clay, fourteen or fifteen feet high, when the mass fell upon him and literally crushed his bowels out of his body,” as a Liverpool paper told it. The navvies wrecked old England along with themselves, erecting a bizarre new kingdom of tracks. In a passage from his 1848 novel Dombey and Son, Charles Dickens gives a snapshot of the scene outside London: Everywhere

I looked around and realized we were headed down a different road than Marlboro Man would normally take. “I have to give you your wedding present,” Marlboro Man said before I could ask where we were going. “I can’t wait a month before I give it to you.” Butterflies fluttered in my stomach. “But…,” I stammered. “I haven’t gotten yours yet.” Marlboro Man clasped my hand, continuing to look forward at the road. “Yes you have,” he said, bringing my hand to his lips and turning me to a pool of melted butter right in his big Ford truck. We wound through several curves in the road, and I tried to discern whether I’d been there before. My sense of direction was lousy; everything looked the same to me. Finally, just as the sun was dipping below the horizon, we came upon an old barn. Marlboro Man pulled up beside it and parked. Confused, I looked around. He got me a barn? “What…what are we doing here?” I asked. Marlboro Man didn’t answer. Instead, he just turned off the pickup, turned to me…and smiled. “What is it?” I asked as Marlboro Man and I exited the pickup and walked toward the barn. “You’ll see,” he replied. He definitely had something up his sleeve. I was nervous. I always hated opening gifts in front of the person who gave them to me. It made me uncomfortable, as if I were sitting in a dark room with a huge spotlight shining on my head. I squirmed with discomfort. I wanted to turn and run away. Hide in his pickup. Hide in the pasture. Lie low for a few weeks. I didn’t want a wedding present. I was weird that way. “But…but…,” I said, trying to back out. “But I don’t have your wedding present yet.” As if anything would have derailed him at that point. “Don’t worry about that,” Marlboro Man replied, hugging me around the waist as we walked. He smelled so good, and I inhaled deeply. “Besides, we can share this one.” That’s strange, I thought. Any fleeting ideas I’d had that he’d be giving me a shiny bracelet or sparkly necklace or other bauble suddenly seemed far-fetched. How could he and I share the same tennis bracelet? Maybe he got me one of those two-necklace sets, the ones with the halved hearts, I thought, and he’ll wear one half and I’ll wear the other. I couldn’t exactly picture it, but Marlboro Man had never been above surprising me. Then again, we were walking toward a barn.

Live seeking God, and then you will not live without God." And more than ever before, all within me and around me lit up, and the light did not again abandon me. And I was saved from suicide. When and how this change occurred I could not say. As imperceptibly and gradually the force of life in me had been destroyed and I had reached the impossibility of living, a cessation of life and the necessity of suicide, so imperceptibly and gradually did that force of life return to me. And strange to say the strength of life which returned to me was not new, but quite old the same that had borne me along in my earliest days. I quite returned to what belonged to my earliest childhood and youth. I returned to the belief in that Will which produced me and desires something of me. I returned to the belief that the chief and only aim of my life is to be better, i.e. to live in accord with that Will, and I returned to the belief that I can find the expression of that Will in what humanity, in the distant past hidden from, has produced for its guidance: that is to say, I returned to a belief in God, in moral perfection, and in a tradition transmitting the meaning of life. There was only this difference, that then all this was accepted unconsciously, while now I knew that without it I could not live. What happened to me was something like this: I was put into a boat (I do not remember when) and pushed off from an unknown shore, shown the direction of the opposite shore, had oars put into my unpracticed hands, and was left alone. I rowed as best I could and moved forward; but the further I advanced towards the middle of the stream the more rapid grew the current bearing me away from my goal and the more frequently did I encounter others, like myself, borne away by the stream. There were a few rowers who continued to row, there were others who had abandoned their oars; there were large boats and immense vessels full of people. Some struggled against the current, others yielded to it. And the further I went the more, seeing the progress down the current of all those who were adrift, I forgot the direction given me. In the very centre of the stream, amid the crowd of boats and vessels which were being borne down-stream, I quite lost my direction and abandoned my oars. Around me on all sides, with mirth and rejoicing, people with sails and oars were borne down the stream, assuring me and each other that no other direction was possible. And I believed them and floated with them. And I was carried far; so far that I heard the roar of the rapids in which I must be shattered, and I saw boats shattered in them. And I recollected myself. I was long unable to understand what had happened to me. I saw before me nothing but destruction, towards which I was rushing and which I feared. I saw no safety anywhere and did not know what to do; but, looking back, I perceived innumerable boats which unceasingly and strenuously pushed across the stream, and I remembered about the shore, the oars, and the direction, and began to pull back upwards against the stream and towards the shore. That shore was God; that direction was tradition; the oars were the freedom given me to pull for the shore and unite with God. And so the force of life was renewed in me and I again began to live.

I hadn’t noticed, through all my inner torture and turmoil, that Marlboro Man and the horses had been walking closer to me. Before I knew it, Marlboro Man’s right arm was wrapped around my waist while his other hand held the reins of the two horses. In another instant, he pulled me toward him in a tight grip and leaned in for a sweet, tender kiss--a kiss he seemed to savor even after our lips parted. “Good morning,” he said sweetly, grinning that magical grin. My knees went weak. I wasn’t sure if it was the kiss itself…or the dread of riding. We mounted our horses and began walking slowly up the hillside. When we reached the top, Marlboro Man pointed across a vast prairie. “See that thicket of trees over there?” he said. “That’s where we’re headed.” Almost immediately, he gave his horse a kick and began to trot across the flat plain. With no prompting from me at all, my horse followed suit. I braced myself, becoming stiff and rigid and resigning myself to looking like a freak in front of my love and also to at least a week of being too sore to move. I held on to the saddle, the reins, and my life as my horse took off in the same direction as Marlboro Man’s. Not two minutes into our ride, my horse slightly faltered after stepping in a shallow hole. Having no experience with this kind of thing, I reacted, shrieking loudly and pulling wildly on my reins, simultaneously stiffening my body further. The combination didn’t suit my horse, who decided, understandably, that he pretty much didn’t want me on his back anymore. He began to buck, and my life flashed before my eyes--for the first time, I was deathly afraid of horses. I held on for dear life as the huge creature underneath me bounced and reared, but my body caught air, and I knew it was only a matter of time before I’d go flying. In the distance, I heard Marlboro Man’s voice. “Pull up on the reins! Pull up! Pull up!” My body acted immediately--it was used to responding instantly to that voice, after all--and I pulled up tightly on the horse’s reins. This forced its head to an upright position, which made bucking virtually impossible for the horse. Problem was, I pulled up too tightly and quickly, and the horse reared up. I leaned forward and hugged the saddle, praying I wouldn’t fall off backward and sustain a massive head injury. I liked my head. I wasn’t ready to say good-bye to it. By the time the horse’s front legs hit the ground, my left leg was dangling out of its stirrup, even as all my dignity was dangling by a thread. Using my balletic agility, I quickly hopped off the horse, tripping and stumbling away the second my feet hit the ground. Instinctively, I began hurriedly walking away--from the horse, from the ranch, from the burning. I didn’t know where I was going--back to L.A., I figured, or maybe I’d go through with Chicago after all. I didn’t care; I just knew I had to keep walking. In the meantime, Marlboro Man had arrived at the scene and quickly calmed my horse, who by now was eating a leisurely morning snack of dead winter grass that had yet to be burned. The nag. “You okay?” Marlboro Man called out. I didn’t answer. I just kept on walking, determined to get the hell out of Dodge. It took him about five seconds to catch up with me; I wasn’t a very fast walker. “Hey,” he said, grabbing me around the waist and whipping me around so I was facing him. “Aww, it’s okay. It happens.

That was when it dawned on her--Dom wanted to unearth her secrets. Nancy’s secrets. Just as Jane had feared, he really had deduced that she hid some. A shiver ran down her spine, and she jerked her gaze from him, fighting to hide her consternation. “Merely the same reason I gave you before. Nancy could be in trouble. And it’s your duty as her brother-in-law to keep her safe.” “From what?” he demanded. “From whom? Is there more to this than you’re saying?” Ooh, the fact that he was so determined to unveil the truth about Nancy while hiding his former collusion with her scraped Jane raw. “I could ask the same of you,” she said primly. “You’re obviously holding something back. You have some reason for your determination to believe ill of Nancy. I wonder what that might be.” Two can play your game, Almighty Dom. Hah! He was silent so long that she ventured a glance at him to find him looking rather discomfited. Good! It was about time. “I am merely keeping an open mind about your cousin, which is more than I can say for you,” Dom finally answered. “She isn’t the woman you think she is.” “Because she wouldn’t give in to your advances twelve years ago, you mean?” She would make him admit the truth about that night if it was the last thing she did! “Perhaps that’s why you’re determined to blacken her character. You’re angry that she resisted you and married your brother instead.” “That’s a lie!” When several people on the street turned to look in his direction, Dom lowered his voice. “It wasn’t like that.” She stifled a smile of satisfaction. At last she was getting a reaction from him that was something other than levelheaded logic. “Wasn’t it? If you’d convinced Nancy to marry you, you might not have had to go off to be a Bow Street runner. You could have had an easier life, a better life in high society than you could have had with me if you’d married me. Without being able to access my fortune, I could only have dragged you down.” “You don’t really believe that I wanted to marry her for her money,” he gritted out. “It’s either that or assume that you fell madly in love with her in the few weeks we were apart.” They were nearly to the inn now, so she added a plaintive note to her voice. “Or perhaps it was her you wanted all along. You knew my uncle would never accept a second son as a husband for his rich heiress of a daughter, so you courted me to get close to her. Nancy was always so beautiful, so--” “Enough!” Without warning, he dragged her into one of the many alleyways that crisscrossed York. This one was deeply shadowed, the houses leaning into each other overhead, and as he pulled her around to face him, the brilliance of his eyes shone starkly in the dim light. “I never cared one whit about Nancy.” She tamped down her triumph--he hadn’t admitted the whole truth yet. “It certainly didn’t look that way to me. It looked like you had already forgotten me, forgotten what we meant to each--” “The hell I had.” He shoved his face close to hers. “I never forgot you for one day, one hour, one moment. It was you--always you. Everything I did was for you, damn it. No one else.” The passionate profession threw her off course. Dom had never been the sort to say such sweet things. But the fervent look in his eyes roused memories of how he used to look at her. And his hands gripping her arms, his body angling in closer, were so painfully familiar... “I don’t…believe you,” she lied, her blood running wild through her veins. His gleaming gaze impaled her. “Then believe this.” And suddenly his mouth was on hers.

There were eight of us, but since me and Jamie were so close in age, we stuck together. Strength in numbers. Anyway, one night we kept finding all these frogs roaming around the campground. It was like someone sent out a signal and frogs were everywhere. So we got one of those big five-gallon buckets and started tossing them in. No plan. We just kept catching them and tossing them in the bucket. Eventually, we caught so many frogs we had to drape a towel over the top to keep them from escaping. The bucket became so overloaded we could hardly carry it anymore, so we put it down. Some people walked by, coming from the communal showers. It was nighttime,” Reisman said, frowning. “Not sure if I mentioned that or not. Me and Jamie looked up at the bathrooms and then back at our bucket of frogs at the same time.” Reisman started laughing. “We knew better than to head directly toward it, so we circled around, using the woods for cover, and ended up on the women’s side of the bathroom. We waited until the coast was clear and bolted to the door. We could hear the girls in the stalls and showers, but no one saw us in the doorway. We each took a side of the bucket and heaved it back like a battering ram. My little brother Jamie pulled the towel off at the last second and we must have sent hundreds of frogs into the bathroom,” Reisman said, breaking off in fits of laughter, and Connor joined in. “We hauled ass out of there so fast I think we lost the bucket. Within a minute or two we heard shrieking from the women’s bathroom and then the park ranger came driving up to investigate. God, that was so much fun,” Reisman said and sighed. “Did they ever figure out it was you guys?” Connor asked. Reisman shook his head. “Well, the next morning my dad asked us about the bucket that had gone missing, but before Jamie or I could make something up, he said something about hearing raccoons coming through the campsite the night before. He winked at us and kept whipping up some eggs for breakfast. We got some extra bacon that morning.” Connor snorted.

You tend to think that you are mainly the big blotches on the canvas: the big splashes that you want to draw attention to (you're aiming for the Olympics one day, you're into drag racing, you're working for a luxury company in Paris, so on and so forth). But those big blotches that you want to draw attention to aren't you, at the end of the day. At the end of the day, you are the tiny dots that you've pulled together, the small dots on your canvas which you've pulled together that make up the fundamental person that you are: the way you put a flower on your slice of cake, the way you mop your floor three times because once isn't good enough, the way that you nurture another person who is growing on the same path you have already been through, so on and so forth. You are the accumulation of the attention that you put into your daily, mundane actions which lend life to your existence. Or character to your daily life. That is you. That is what you have to give. That is your energy. Your big blotches have no power if your little dots are not accounted for.

Tomasello gave the toddlers and chimps a tube containing a reward that could be extracted only if both ends of the tube were pulled on at the same time. Children as young as eighteen months understood that they needed to cooperate with someone else to release the reward, and were able to direct the attention of a potential collaborator who initially acted as if they did not understand what they had to do. The chimps could not do this: they may have had an inkling of causality, but they failed in abstract causal representations—they could not take the perspective of another chimp and see their role in regard to the other.

A government — or an administration, or whatever — isn’t really the sum of its parts like people think, because all of those parts are competing for their own interests and pulling in opposite directions at the same time. It’s like an organism at war with itself.

A 4-year-old loves her toy puppy’s golden brown fur. Her teenage brother is annoyed by its loud bark. Her mom sees it as a tool to keep the 4-year-old busy. Her baby sister finds the puppy’s big teeth scary. Her dad considers it an overpriced piece of plastic. The same toy evokes different feelings depending on how one looks at it. We see what we seek. When you don’t attend to attention — when you’re inattentive — life may pass you by. The tulips come and go, the seasons change, and the baby climbs out of the crib, off the bunk bed and on to the college dorm. We forget that joy is in the details. As a Jewish prayer says, “Days pass, and the years vanish, and we walk sightless among miracles.” Intentional trained attention is directed by your will. This trained attention pulls you away from distractions to savor a more wholesome morsel of life. Trained attention doesn’t deny or repress reality. It gives you temporary freedom from negativity. You stop carrying the entire load of the past and the future in your head. Trained attention is focused, relaxed, compassionate, nonjudgmental, sustained, deep and intentional. This meditative attention is essential to experiencing flow. Its optimal practice helps you forget yourself, immerses you in the world’s novelty, and frees your mind for creativity and joy.

We’ve never shared any girl,” Aaron adds, and I feel my focus on Vic snap. Wow. Blinking, I try to clear my head and focus on them both at the same time. They pull me in opposite directions; I’ll have to be strong enough to pull them toward me instead. “Not once.” My body flushes with heat, but I turn quickly back toward the backyard, finishing my cigarette. I’ve never heard anything more romantic in my entire life. My Havoc Boys. Mine.

Actually . . . the way he leads me through the dances reminds me of the way he rode that horse. Directing it so subtly and gently that the horse thought it had the freedom to run, while all the time it was doing exactly what he wanted. He’s doing the same thing now. Directing and training me without me even noticing. He’s got the lead, and I’m totally under his control. I stiffen up, resisting his motion. Raylan puts his hand on the small of my back and pulls me closer, trying to swing me around in his orbit. But now I’m pulling away from him, my pleasure in dancing evaporating. I don’t want to be trained. I don’t want to be broken.

There were two horses in the soul, she thought, as Socrates had said in Phaedrus—the one, unruly, governed by passions, pulling in the direction of self-indulgence; the other, restrained, dutiful, governed by a sense of shame. And Auden had felt the same, she thought; he was a dualist who knew the struggle between the dark and the light sides of the self, the struggle that all of us know to a greater or lesser extent.

You need to learn to identify the danger and move fast, taking advantage of the short window of opportunity. Note that you have to do it while training your body in quick chain reactions. Consider your opponent’s capability in using straight attacks from a greater distance and circular attacks from a shorter distance. If the starting point is from a greater distance, and your opponent has paused for a moment, you might have time to move your whole body and meet him halfway either with a kick or a hand defense. If the attacker is lunging forward with a straight stab, start with throwing your forearm toward his wrist and pulling the rest of your body away. Land forward as you counterattack and then try to grab his wrist for further control and safety. At this point, you control his arm and he cannot use the blade against you. If your opponent is attacking with a straight stab, it would be faster for him to lunge with the blade forward than for you to move your body out of the way. Yet remember that with a straight stab stance, he can lunge and stab you from two to three steps away in a split second. Stand still and just deflect his knife-holding wrist with the inside of your forearm by spinning it inward. Your arm motion will pull your torso at a horizontal forty-five degree pivot. Immediately after, deflect your opponent’s wrist, and fall forward as you can plan your landing position while in motion. You can also grab his retracting hand at its exit point, not giving him the freedom of movement. Remember that you are looking to strike him with your free hand at the same time. If, during training, your opponent or training partner knows what to expect from you, he will pull his arm behind his back so you cannot grab his wrist. Punching his face will foil any attempts to bring his arm back and try to poke you anywhere in your body. Obviously you can hit him lightly to buy yourself a second or two and then grab his arm. Or, you can hit him lightly again until you get control over the knife. If you are caught by surprise from a short distance and you manage to see the motion of a hand, but you don't have time to determine whether the hand has a blade or not, your blocks should be instinctively directed to your opponent’s wrists. You should counterattack with your free hand immediately after. If you see that your opponent is or might be holding a knife, you can kick and stop him before he plans to stab.

If I’d learned nothing from my first marriage except for one thing, it was this: A marriage can’t be successful unless the spouses are pulling in the same direction.

He had become aware of the eyes of the Daylight Folk on him. Hopeful, expectant, suspicious or dazed, they watched him from the parapet and from the crenellations of the Natural History Museum, their wings spread like banners against the sky. And now he could see the Midnight Folk, too, drawn by whatever mystery had been at work on these rooftops: Atlas, and Luna, and Diamondback, and Cinnabar. For a moment, Cinnabar stood aloof on the parapet. Then Brimstone held out his hand to her, and she went to join him. My people, Tom thought to himself, and put up his hand to cover a smile. It was ridiculous, of course, and yet it felt so natural. As natural as being in love. As natural as flying. Spider pulled at the silver thread again. Between his fingers, Tom now saw an intricate cat's cradle of light that seemed to extend in multiple directions. 'With this, you can go anywhere,' said Spider, lifting the cradle of light. 'You could stay here, in London Before. You could go back to the London you know. Or you could reclaim your Kingdom, and lead your people home. Your choice.' He passed the cat's cradle over Tom's head. As it touched him, the net of light settled over Tom's shoulders, becoming a kind of mantle: golden, soft as spider silk, light as woven thistledown. He made the same gesture over Charissa, and she too was draped in gossamer. And with the mantle came a scent of green woods and of summertime; of distant spices, unnamed blooms, and blackberries, and honeycomb.

As you’ll see, different movements require different positions to build true strength. But these four habits always apply to get you into ideal alignment: 1.  Keep your feet parallel to each other. Make sure your toes do not point out at all. Imagine a line going from the center of your heel to the center of all five toes. Place your feet so these lines run parallel. This may feel strange at first, but it’s vital to proper alignment. 2.  Keep your knees pointing in the same direction as your toes. (These two control your hips, ensuring they are neutrally rotated, meaning neither externally rotated nor internally rotated, which is essential to safe and efficient locomotion.) 3.  When your legs are elevated, fully dorsiflex your ankles (pull your feet and toes toward your face). (This allows you to more easily see whether or not your feet are parallel. It also strengthens your shin muscles while improving ankle mobility.) 4.  Maintain a long, neutral spine. (A neutral spine is in the middle, neither flexed nor extended.) Don’t worry, we’ll get you into correct posture step by step. You’ll soon have an intuitive understanding of where the middle is and how to get there.

As she continued to mull over these thoughts, a deduction made her shudder: Is it possible that the relationship between humanity and evil is similar to the relationship between the ocean and an iceberg floating on its surface? Both the ocean and the iceberg are made of the same material. That the iceberg seems separate is only because it is in a different form. In reality, it is but a part of the vast ocean.… It was impossible to expect a moral awakening from humankind itself, just like it was impossible to expect humans to lift off the earth by pulling up on their own hair. To achieve moral awakening required a force outside the human race. This thought determined the entire direction of Ye’s life.

We lay on our backs on hot sand and baked in the sun. Salt-crusted, preserved. Later, in the darkness of the green dome I felt his hand brush against my thigh, and with it the same electric pulse of need there had always been. Silence descended; everything stopped; I didn’t move, afraid to ignite a want that wouldn’t be satisfied, or lose a hope I’d held on to forever. He hesitated for a long moment, his hand stretching hot against my cold skin, a moment that hung between us in an unanswered question. Days passed. Clouds moved in from the south-west, white rolling cumuli disappearing inland. Winds changed direction: damp and light from the west; dry and cooling from the east; colder from the north-west, carrying hints of another season soon behind; then gently from the south, summer not quite yet spent. The heat reflected off the flat rocks, less jagged than those that surrounded them in the cove. We dried clothes on them, sat the stove flat on them to cook limpets, cracked an egg on them in the hope that it might fry, but when it didn’t, scraped it up and scrambled it, picking out bits of sand and grit. We lay on them, crisping to leathery brown. Bodies that fourteen months earlier were hunched and tired, soft and pale, were now lean and tanned, with a refound muscularity that we’d thought lost forever. Our hair was fried and falling out, our nails broken, clothes worn to a thread, but we were alive. Not just breathing through the thirty thousand or so days between life and death, but knowing each minute as it passed, swirling around in an exploration of time. The rock gave back the heat as it followed the arc of the sun, gulls called in differing tones as the tide left the shore and then returned, my hands wrinkled with age and my thighs changed to a new shape with passing miles, but when he pulled me to him and kissed me with an urgency that wasn’t in doubt, with a fervour that wouldn’t fail, time turned. I was ten million minutes and nineteen years ago, I was in the bus stop about to go back to his house, knowing his parents weren’t home, I was a mother of toddlers stealing moments in a walk-in wardrobe, we were us, every second of us, a long-marinated stew of life’s ingredients. We were everything we wanted to be and everything we didn’t. And we were free, free to be all those things, and stronger because of them. Skin on longed-for skin, life could wait, time could wait, death could wait. This second in the millions of seconds was the only one, the only one that we could live in. I was home, there was nothing left to search for, he was my home.

The meerkats looked away. They did it like one man, all of them turning in the same direction at exactly the same time. I pulled myself out to see what it was. It was Richard Parker. He confirmed what I had suspected, that these meerkats had gone for so many generations without predators that any notion of flight distance, of flight, of plain fear, had been genetically weeded out of them. He was moving through them, blazing a trail of murder and mayhem, devouring one meerkat after another, blood dripping from his mouth, and they, cheek to jowl with a tiger, were jumping up and down on the spot, as if crying, “My turn! My turn! My turn!

It was just tiresome thinking about folks having to fight for the least little thing. I loved my people for fighting, but hated the reason why, and that left me with that crosscut notion of pride and anger pulling in different directions, two kinds of muscle fighting for the same piece of bone.

Why don’t you have a girlfriend, Matt?” I ask. And I really want to know, because it’s unfathomable to me that he’s single. He’s handsome, and he’s so kind. He shakes a finger at me. “There’s a story there,” he says. I settle into the sofa a little deeper and turn so that my feet are pointed toward him, my legs extended. My toes almost touch his thigh. But then he lifts my feet and slides under them, scooting closer to me. “I was in love with a girl. For a long time.” “What happened to her?” I ask. He starts to tickle across my toes, and then his fingertips drag down the top of my foot. It’s a gentle sweep, and it feels so good that I don’t want him to stop. His fingers play absently as he starts to talk. “When I got the diagnosis,” he says, “she couldn’t deal with it.” “Cancer?” I ask. He nods. His fingers drag up and down my shin, and he slides around to stroke the back of my knee. I don’t stop him when his hand slides beneath my skirt, although I do tense up. He smiles when he finds the top of my thigh-highs, and he unclips the little fastener that attaches them to my garters. He repeats the action on the other side, his hands teasing the sensitive skin of my inner thigh as he frees the stocking and rolls it down. He pulls it all the way over my foot, and does the same with the other side. I am suddenly really glad I shaved my legs this morning. I wiggle my toes at him, and he starts to stroke me again. I don’t ever want him to stop. “This okay?” he asks. But he’s not looking at my face. He’s looking at my legs. “Yeah,” I breathe. “Keep talking. You got diagnosed…” “I got diagnosed, and the prognosis wasn’t good. I went through chemo and got a little better. But then I needed a second round. Things didn’t look good, and we were flat broke. I couldn’t work at the tattoo parlor anymore because my immune system was too weak, so I had no money coming in. I was poor and sick, and she didn’t love me enough to walk the path with me.” He shrugs, but I can tell he’s serious. “She cheated with my best friend.” He shrugs again. “And that’s the end of that sad story.” “You still love her?” I ask. I don’t breathe, waiting for his answer. He shakes his head and looks up. “I did love her for a long time. And I haven’t been looking for a relationship. I haven’t dated anyone since her. But I’m not in love with her anymore. I know that now.” “Why now?” I ask. He looks directly into my eyes and says, “Because I met you, and I feel really hopeful that you’ll want to go after something real with me. I know we just met and all, but I was serious about making you fall in love with me.” He laughs. “Then you hit me in the nose tonight, and I knew it was meant to be.” “What?” I have no idea what he’s talking about. “When my brother Logan met Emily, she punched him in the face. And when Pete and Reagan first started dating, she hit him in the nose.” He reaches up and touches his nose gently. “So, when you hit me tonight, I just knew it was meant to be.” He grins. “I hope you feel the same way, because I really want to see where this thing is going to go.” “So the women your brothers fell in love with, they committed bodily harm to them and that’s how you guys knew it was real?” “We kind of have a rule. If a woman punches you in the face, you have to marry her.” He laughs. “I didn’t punch you.” “Same difference,” he says. “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

I feel that the government should uphold the concept that it is there for us, “We the People.” That it does what we alone cannot do. By standing unified and proud, we have strength because of our numbers and the power to do what is right. That we always remain on the right side of history and care for and respect our less fortunate. Now, you may think that I’m just spouting out a lot of patriotic nonsense, which you are entitled to do, however I did serve my country actively in both the Navy and Army for a total of forty years, six months and seven days as a reservist and feel that I have an equal vested interest in these United States. If we don’t like what is happening we have responsible ways and means to change things. We have Constitutional, “First Amendment Rights to Freedom of Speech.” There are many things I would like to see change and there are ways that we can do this. To start with we have to protect our First Amendment Rights and protect the media from government interference…. I also believe in protecting our individual freedom…. I believe in one person, one vote…. Corporations are not people, for one they have no human feelings…. That although our government may be misdirected it is not the enemy…. I want reasonable regulations to protect us from harm…. That we not privatize everything in sight such as prisons, schools, roads, social security, Medicare, libraries etc.….. Entitlements that have been earned should not be tampered with…. That college education should be free or at least reasonable…. That health care becomes free or very reasonable priced for all…. That lobbyist be limited in how they can manipulate our lawmakers…. That people, not corporations or political action committees (PAC’s), can only give limited amounts of money to candidates…. That our taxes be simplified, fair and on a graduated scale without loop holes….That government stays out of our personal lives, unless our actions affect others…. That our government stays out of women’s issues, other than to insure equal rights…. That the law (police) respects all people and treats them with the dignity they deserve…. That we no longer have a death penalty…. That our military observe the Geneva Conventions and never resort to any form of torture…. That the Police, FBI, CIA or other government entities be limited in their actions, and that they never bully or disrespect people that are in their charge or care…. That we never harbor prisoners overseas to avoid their protection by American law…. That everyone, without exception, is equal…. And, in a general way, that we constantly strive for a more perfect Union and consider ourselves members of a greater American family, or at the very least, as guests in our country. As Americans we are better than what we have witnessed lately. The idea that we will go beyond our rights is insane and should be discouraged and outlawed. As a country let us look forward to a bright and productive future, and let us find common ground, pulling in the same direction. We all deserve to feel safe from persecution and/or our enemies. We should also be open minded enough to see what works in other countries. If we are going to “Make America Great Again” we should start by being more civil and kinder to each other. Now this is all just a thought, but it’s a start…. “We’re Still Here!

Imagine if you met someone sitting at a train station who told everyone how great it is to go West. ‘West is the way of the future,’ he says, ‘we should all keep moving in that direction.’ A year later you pass the same station and the same guy is there, in the exact same spot, still telling everyone they should go West. ‘You need to move West to achieve a meaningful life,’ he proclaims, ‘it is the path to happiness and satisfaction.’ A year later you pass the same station and the guy is still there. Right there. He hasn’t moved one inch in a westerly direction. This time you stop and ask him why he is such a big fan of going West, and he tells you about all the things he has read about the direction West, recommends some useful websites, and even shows you some pictures he has cut out of pamphlets, depicting things you will see if you go West. You ask him what is the best thing he has ever seen while travelling West, and he shakes his head. ‘I’ve never been any more West than here, too many bumps along the way. I’m waiting for them to fix up the track so it will be a smoother journey,’ he tells you. ‘But,’ he adds proudly, ‘I haven’t moved even one inch East in the past few years.’ How seriously would you take that man’s advice to go West? If West is the way to go, maybe it’s worth travelling over some bumps to make progress in that direction? Values are like compass directions. They’re meaningless unless you move. Saying that you really like going West doesn’t mean a whole lot if you don’t take at least a small step in that direction. That doesn’t mean it’s always going to be easy to move West or that you can move miles in that direction every day. Some days it feels like there are things pulling you in every direction or stopping you from moving at all. The blocks might be thoughts, feelings, memories, physiological sensations or other people and their rules. But it’s still worthwhile to move in the directions you care about even if sometimes you are only able to take tiny steps. (Stuff that Sucks, p 50)

For God’s sake, Eve Windham, it was just a kiss under the mistletoe, probably inspired by your papa’s wassail more than anything else.” She had to put her hand on his arm while the feeling of the ground shifting beneath her feet swept over her. “My brothers said it was white rum.” “The occasional tot makes the holiday socializing less tedious. You really do not look well.” The last observation was grudging, almost worried. “I did not mean to swill from your glass, Deene. You should have stopped me.” They had to get to the coach. The night felt like it was closing in, and Deene’s voice—a perfect example of male aristocratic euphony—was swelling and shrinking in the oddest way. “I might have stopped you, except you downed the whole drink before I realized what was afoot, and then you were accosting me in the most passionate—” Eve clutched his arm and swayed into him, breathing shallowly through her mouth. “If you insist on arguing with me, my lord, I will be ill all over these bushes.” “Why didn’t you say so?” He slipped an arm around her waist and promenaded her down the steps. By the time they got to the garden gate, the nausea was subsiding, though Eve was leaning heavily on her escort. She had the notion that the scents of cedar and lavender coming from Deene’s jacket might have helped quiet her stomach. Deene ushered her through the gate, which put them on a quiet, mercifully dark side street. “How often do these headaches befall you?” “Too often. Sometimes I go for months between attacks, sometimes only days. The worst is when it hits on one side, subsides for a day, then strikes on the other.” Deene pulled one of his gloves off with his teeth, then used two fingers to give a piercing, three-blast whistle. “Sorry.” All the while he kept his arm around Eve’s waist, a solid, warm—and quite unexpected—bulwark against complete disability. “The coach will here in moments. Is there anything that helps?” “Absolute quiet, absolute dark, time.” Though her mother used to rub her neck, and that had helped the most. He said nothing more—Deene wasn’t stupid—and Eve just leaned on him. Her grandmother had apparently suffered from these same headaches, though neither Eve’s parents nor her siblings were afflicted. The clip-clop of hooves sounded like so much gunfire in Eve’s head, but it was the sound of privacy, so Eve tried to welcome it. Deene gave the coachy directions to the Windham mansion and climbed in after Eve. “Shall I sit beside you, my lady?” An odd little courtesy, that he would even ask. “Please. The less I move, the less uncomfortable I am.” He settled beside her and looped an arm around her shoulders. Without a single thought for dignity, skirmishes, or propriety, Eve laid her head on his shoulder, closed her eyes, and was grateful. ***

How did you know where I live?” Deanna asked when he turned onto her street. “I run by here on my way to the gym. I’ve seen you a few times.” That was the absolute truth. He did run by on his way to the gym. And he’d seen her a few times. He’d also asked around and known where to look. “Oh, okay.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “I don’t think that’s the whole story.” Normally, being caught in a partial truth wouldn’t have been high up on the list of things Lucky liked, but the fact that she knew, or at least had a feeling, that he wasn’t being totally forthright made him happy. He liked that she had called him out. “I may have asked Sue Ann, Nikki, and then finally Lauren, who hooked me up with my rental, if anyone knew where you were staying.” He smiled the smile that usually got him out of the stickiest of spots. He called it “old faithful.” And it didn’t let him down. A smile spread across Deanna’s face even as she was shaking her head. “Jessie’s right. You’re not as cute as you think you are.” “Does that mean you think I’m cute?” “I think you’re trouble.” She blushed as her hand reached for the door. “Goodnight.” “What?” he asked, purposely sounding offended. “You’re not even going to ask if I want to come in for coffee?” She stared at the door handle and licked her lips, which made his solider stand at attention. With only the moonlight streaming in through the window, he could tell by her hesitancy that she was battling an internal war of whether or not she should. He waited. Though he wanted to use his charms to give her a gentle, or not so gentle, shove in the direction of green-light-go, he didn’t want her to do anything she didn’t want to. So, as much as it killed him to know that, within a few sentences, he could have her laughing and inviting him in, he remained quiet. After inhaling deeply through her nose, she opened the door, and his heart sank as his balls turned bluer than a Smurf. He smiled up at her to hide his discomfort and disappointment. He would walk her to the door, but he didn’t trust himself to be that close to her and not touch her or kiss her or do a lot of other things he’d been dying to do to her. Things he knew she wanted and, with a little encouragement, would be begging for. But that’s not how he wanted this to be. Not with her. She was too special. This was too special. “Goodnight. Thank you for coming with me today. You were great with the kids. They loved you. I…” He stopped himself. Had he been about to say that he loved her? No. Maybe? Shit. He didn’t have time to think about that. Trying to play it off, he finished his thought, “I really loved having you there.” A small grin pulled at her lips. “Fine. You can come in for coffee.” He didn’t need to be asked twice. He was out of the SUV and beside her so fast that it made her laugh. “Okay,” he agreed. “I’ll come in, but only because you asked so nicely.” She was still chuckling and shaking her head at him—which she did a lot—as they made their way up to the door. Once she’d opened it, he stepped inside. Small and cozy, it smelled like clean and fresh, just like Deanna. A small couch rested against the far wall, and a longer one, with a knit blanket thrown over it, was near the window. A flat screen television was on the wall opposite the larger couch, and a small fireplace took up one corner. Lucky could picture Deanna curled up on the couch, in sweats with her hair pulled up, showcasing her sexy neck, the fire roaring as she watched television. At the thought, the same word that continued to pop up in his mind made an appearance. Mine. “Do you want decaf or…” she asked over her shoulder as she closed the door. “Oh, I don’t want coffee, but thanks.” He grinned and took a step closer to her. Stepping back, she was flat against the door. Then she pointed accusatorily at him. “You said you wanted coffee.” “No. I didn’t.

On the ninth anniversary celebration of the Moncada Barracks Attack, Castro gave a speech in Santiago stating that the only thing Cuba had to fear was a direct attack by the United States. At the same time, the Russians were off-loading men and equipment from ships at the small, hardly-noticed port of Mariel. They transported their equipment, mostly at night, into a thickly wooded area in the mountains near San Cristóbal, which was 26 miles away from the port and approximately 50 miles from Havana. The CIA received a report that a twenty-six foot missile had been seen being transported on Cuban Highway A 1. This was twice the size of a SAM missile and the CIA deemed it highly unlikely that the Soviet Union would send offensive weapons of this size to Cuba. However, with the cold war in high gear, Khrushchev thought that he could change the balance of power between the United States and the Soviet Union by placing missiles on Cuban soil. This operation was conducted in strict secrecy, with Castro reluctantly agreeing to it. Castro still felt that Cuba’s alliance with the Soviet’s was risky and that this was a negative compromise undermining Cuban autonomy. Their secret however became confirmed by an Air Force U 2 surveillance aircraft, sent on a reconnaissance mission, dispatched over the western part of the island. The United States and the Soviet Union agreed on a deal. In return for pulling the Russian missiles out of Cuba the U.S. agreed to pull its missiles out of Turkey.

Government — or an administration — isn’t really the sum of its parts like people think, because all of those parts are competing for their own interests and pulling in opposite directions at the same time. It’s like an organism at war with itself.

The United States became engaged in hostilities with North Vietnam on November 1, 1955, when President Eisenhower deployed the Military Assistance Advisory Group as advisors to train the army of South Vietnam, better known as the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. Things escalated in 1960, which was about the same time that Cuba established diplomatic relations with Vietnam, the communist country at war with the United States. In May of 1961 President Kennedy sent 400 United States Army Special Forces personnel to South Vietnam for the purpose of training South Vietnamese troops. By November of 1963 when he was killed, President Kennedy had increased the number of military personnel from the original 400 to 900 troops for training purposes. Direct U.S. intervention started with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in August of 1964. As things heated up, the number of American troops started including combat units and escalated to 16,000 troops, just before Kennedy’s death. During the early hours of April 30, 1975, the fighting ended abruptly, as South Vietnamese President Duong Van Minh delivered an unconditional surrender to the Communists. Between 195,000 to 430,000 South Vietnamese civilians died in the war and 50,000 to 65,000 North Vietnamese civilians died. The Army of the Republic of Vietnam lost somewhere between 171,331 and 220,357 men during the war. The Communist military forces lost approximately 444,000 men. It is estimated that between 200,000 and 300,000 Cambodians died and another 60,000 Laotians died during this war. In all 58,220 U.S. service members were killed. The last two American servicemen to die in Vietnam were killed during the evacuation of Saigon, when their helicopter crashed. After the United States pulled out of South Vietnam, the two sections of the country came together under Communist rule. Vietnam has since become Cuba’s largest trading partner next to China, and the United States has also returned to a normalized trade relationship with Vietnam.

near-deserted parking lot, both buildings looking freshly painted and hopeful for a marina in which there were no yachts. The biggest boat moored at the dock looked to be a forty-footer. Most of the others looked to be lobster boats, aged and constructed of wood. A few of the newer ones were fiberglass. The nicest of those was about thirty-five feet long, the hull painted blue, the wheelhouse painted white, the deck a honey teak. She paid attention to it because her husband stood on it, bathed in their headlights. Caleb exited the car fast. He pointed back at her, told Brian his wife was not taking things well. Rachel was happy to note Caleb limped even as he speed-walked to the boat. She, on the other hand, moved slowly, her eyes on Brian. His gaze barely left hers except for the occasional flicks in the direction of Caleb. If she’d known she’d end up killing him, would she have boarded the boat? She could turn around and go to the police. My husband is an impostor, she’d say. She imagined some smarmy desk sergeant replying, “Aren’t we all, ma’am?” Yes, she was certain, it was a crime to impersonate someone and a crime to keep two wives, but were those serious crimes? In the end, wouldn’t Brian just take a plea and it would all go away? She’d be left the laughingstock never-was, the failed print reporter who’d become a pill-addicted broadcast reporter who’d become a punch line and then a shut-in and who would keep the local comics stocked with weeks of fresh material once it was discovered that Meltdown Media Chick had married a con man with another wife and another life. She followed Caleb up the ramp to the boat. He stepped aboard. When she went to do the same, Brian offered his hand. She stared at it until he dropped it. He noticed the gun she carried. “Should I show you mine? So I feel safer?” “Be my guest.” She stepped aboard. As she did, Brian caught her by the wrist and stripped the gun from her hand in the same motion. He pulled his own gun, a .38 snub-nosed revolver, from under the flaps of his shirt and then laid them both on a table by the

Are you writing in your diary?” Even through the whisper I can tell he’s laughing. “No.” I feel in the dark for my backpack and cram the journal inside. “Please. Just admit you were drawing hearts around someone’s name.” “I didn’t even do that in junior high,” I say, my high-pitched whisper threatening to break into full voice. “Like I believe that.” He whisper-laughs again. A mattress spring creaks and I can hear movement near the head of his bed. A second later I can just make out Darren’s outline as he folds a pillow in half and lies on his side, facing me. I grab my own pillow and mirror him. Nina’s snoring deepens and Tate rolls over. I hold my head perfectly still and sense Darren do the same. It feels like we’re about to get caught breaking some kind of rule, lying on our beds the wrong direction. We’re quiet for so long, I’m sure Darren’s fallen back to sleep. I let my eyes close and start counting my toes again. “I keep a journal too.” His whisper seems much closer than I expected. In the soft light from above, I can see the glisten of his eyes looking right at me. I swallow and my throat makes an embarrassingly loud gurgling noise. “Is it full of hearts?” I manage to ask. The corner of his mouth pulls up. “That’s pretty much all I put in there. Hearts and flowers and more hearts.” My bed shakes from the chuckle I’m containing. “Hey, as long as it’s not poetry.” “What’s wrong with poetry?” “Nothing.” I bite my lip, worried I offended him. “You write poems?” “Sure. I’ve won awards for it.” “Oh. Wow. That’s…cool,” I manage, reluctant to admit that poetry’s one of those things I don’t understand. At all. And people who do “get” it enough to write their own make me nervous with their intellectual prowess. “Kiddiiiiing,” he draws out in a gravelly breath. “Make up your mind,” I tease, secretly hoping he really is kidding. “Do you or don’t you?” Eyes completely adjusted now, I can see him raise his hand and cross his fingers. “Don’t. Scout’s honor.” “Funny,” I say, snatching his hand and yanking it down. “Did you already forget how to promise?” I worm my pinkie around his and squeeze. He squeezes back and lowers our joined hands to the bed. My heartbeat is strong in my ears. Do I pull away first? Do I wait for him to? What if he doesn’t? What if we fall asleep like this?

I can’t believe I’m thirty-one-years-old, lying on my back on a pier in broad daylight--in my own hometown, I might add--trying to figure out a place to go make out.” “Is that what the kids are calling it these days?” When she stuck her tongue out at him, he took full advantage until both of them were a little breathless. He really needed to employ that method more often. It was surprisingly effective. Not to mention fun. “I also have a car, which can drive us in any direction you’d like to go. Another town, a private inlet, surely you’ve got the inside line on that.” “I don’t know what kind of teenager you thought I was, but you forget, I left here at eighteen, before I ever had reason to find anyone’s inside line, much less where best to go play with it.” Now he made a face, and they both laughed. He rolled up to a seated position and pulled her up along with him. They both looked out at the water, then back to each other. “Boat it is,” they said at the same time.

hawk, he would have been bankrupt years ago. I like to build cars and make movies. If you ask me, we would have been better off directing our resources toward making movies than putting up a fancy new building.” “Why did you go along with the plan?” “I didn’t have any choice. I told my father I thought it was a bad idea. He had the final vote. Did you and your father agree on everything when you were growing up?” “Of course not.” “Who usually won the arguments?” “My dad.” He gives me a knowing smile. “Same here. My father wanted to build his dream studio. It was his money. Do you think my opinion on the economic viability of the project carried any weight? He spent his life being told he was a genius. That word isn’t generally used when people talk about me. Now it’s going to cost us a fortune to get out.” Families. Rosie keeps her eye on the ball. “Richard, you told us you left your father’s house around two o’clock. Who was still there?” “My dad, Angelina, and Marty Kent.” “Do you know what time Kent left?” “No.” “Do you have any idea what happened to him?” “I understand he jumped.” Rosie lays the cards on the table. “Do you think he killed your father?” He starts mixing paint again. “I think Angelina killed my father. Then again, nothing Marty did would have surprised me. He was a self-righteous ass. He thought he was the brains behind the operation, and my dad and I were just pawns. And he was really ticked off.” The venom in his tone surprises me. He tells us Kent and his father had been fighting about the China Basin project for months. “Marty thought he was getting screwed. My dad went to the other investors to try to negotiate a bonus for him.” “Did something happen on Friday night?” “Yes. My dad told him that the other investors had vetoed the bonus.” This jibes with the information from Ward. He adds, “There was something else. Marty decided to try to pull some strings at city hall. He hired a consultant to help him get the approvals for the China Basin project.” I decide to play coy. “Do you know his name?” “Armando Rios. Some money may have changed hands. Marty never told me about it. Marty never told me

I reached the end of the street and turned right. There they were, about twelve meters away. The Japanese guy had his left side to me. He was talking to the American. The American was facing me, an unlit cigarette in his mouth. He was holding a lighter at waist level, flicking it, trying to get it going. I forced myself to keep my pace casual, just another pedestrian. My heart began to beat harder. I could feel it pounding in my chest, behind my ears. Ten meters. I popped the plastic lid off the paper cup with my thumb. I felt it tumble across the back of my hand. Seven meters. Adrenaline was slowing down my perception of the scene. The Japanese guy glanced in my direction. He looked at my face. His eyes began to widen. Five meters. The Japanese guy reached out for the American, the gesture urgent even through my adrenalized slow-motion vision. He grabbed the American’s arm and started pulling on it. Three meters. The American looked up and saw me. The cigarette dangled from his lips. There was no recognition in his eyes. Two meters. I stepped in and flung the cup forward. Its contents of ninety-eight degrees centigrade Earl Gray tea exited and caught the American directly in the face and neck. His hands flew up and he shrieked. I turned to the Japanese. His eyes were popped all the way open, his head rotating back and forth in the universal gesture of negation. He started to raise his hands as though to ward me off. I grabbed his shoulders and shoved him into the wall. Using the same forward momentum, I stepped in and kneed him squarely in the balls. He grunted and doubled over. I turned back to the American. He was bent forward, staggering, his hands clutching at his face. I grabbed the collar of his jacket and the back of his trousers and accelerated him headfirst into the wall like a matador with a bull. His body shuddered from the impact and he dropped to the ground. The Japanese guy was lying on his side, clutching his crotch, gasping. I hauled him up by the lapels and shoved his back against the wall. I looked left, then right. It was just the three of us. “Tell me who you are,” I said in Japanese. He made retching noises. I could see he was going to need a minute. Keeping my left hand pressed against his throat, I patted him down to confirm he didn’t have a weapon, then checked his ears and jacket to ensure he wasn’t wired for sound. He was clean. I reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a wallet. I flipped it open. The ID was right in front, in a slip-in laminated protector. Tomohisa Kanezaki. Second Secretary, Consular Affairs, U.S. Embassy. The bald eagle logo of the U.S. Department of State showed blue and yellow in the background.

No,’ she smiled enigmatically, ‘not dreaming. Is all real.’ She leaned in on one elbow and looked directly into his eyes. ‘No regrets I hope?’ ‘Em now, let me see…I wake up to the sexiest communist on earth, who claims to love me, though for what reason I can’t imagine. The same communist is attending to my every need, and all it’s costing me is the rent of my shirt. I’d have to say now…in all fairness…eh…no regrets.’ He pulled her into his

What did you say?” Jentry said in low, terrifying tone from somewhere behind me. The edge in his voice was enough to make Linda and me stiffen for a few seconds before Linda’s head snapped up and she turned on her mom charm. “Oh, you know how ladies are, always standing around gossipin’. Go on now, son, just put the food anywhere.” He set the large dishes down on the counter closest to the door, then took slow steps toward us. “What the fuck did you just say,” he demanded again; this time it was no longer a question. “Jentry, don’t,” I pleaded as he neared us. “Young man!” Linda said in a horrified tone. “I am so very disappointed in what has come out of your mouth this weekend. I raised yo—” “Raised me better? Is that what you were going to say?” Jentry huffed as he took the last few steps to place himself between us. “Really, don’t,” I said through clenched teeth, and rocked forward so I could reach for his arm to pull him away, but he held a hand out behind him to stop me. When he continued speaking, his dangerous tone was laced with disappointment. “In a few days I’ve seen more than enough from you to know that you aren’t the woman who raised me. The woman who raised me wasn’t so threatened by her son’s girlfriend that she’d pretend she wasn’t there. The woman who raised me wasn’t so heartless that she’d tear down the same girl every chance she got just because she was hurting. We’re all hurting. Rorie’s fucking hurting, too.” “She has ruined this family!” Linda seethed; her entire frame shook from her anger. Jentry took a step back toward me. His hand was still outstretched, but now looked like it was reaching for me. “You know, I’ve been going crazy trying to figure some things out since I got home, but I’m starting to put a lot together just from this conversation. The woman who raised me also taught me to respect women. And I do. I respect women who deserve it, and Rorie does. Because she loves Declan, too. She’s grieving, too. And throughout everything you’ve done, she’s never said a word. She wouldn’t tell me what you were doing even when I figured out that it was you, and when I did, she said it was deserved. What kind of woman makes a girl think she deserves the bullshit you’ve put her through?” Jentry grabbed on to my forearm and pulled me close to him as he took another step back, away from Linda, toward the door leading out of the kitchen area. Linda watched our movements with a mixture of emotions. There was shock and hurt at Jentry’s words, but whenever her eyes flickered back in my direction, anger unlike anything I’d yet to see from her burned there. Jentry turned us around and came to a halt when we found Kurt standing just inside the doorway holding two dishes, staring at us in shock and confusion. “Do you want to tell me why you’re talking to your mother that way?” he asked. Jentry’s head tilted to the side. “No.” “No?” Kurt’s tone was rougher and rang with authority as Jentry began leading us out of the room. “No,” Jentry confirmed. “Because if I tell you now, I’m gonna say a lot that I’ll regret.” Jentry

You never told him?” Taylor whispered quickly, but loud enough that both guys heard. “No, she didn’t,” Declan answered for me. “You were there looking for another guy?” It took all of my energy to keep my eyes from going back to Jentry as I silently pleaded for Declan to understand. I tried to keep my voice from shaking and my tone nonchalant. “It was nothing, really. I’d just talked with him the week before—” Taylor snorted. “And when was this?” Jentry asked. “Beginning of September,” Declan answered without taking his eyes from me. “So about the time I was there,” Jentry said with a guessing tone. I wanted nothing more than to shoot a glare in his direction. Declan finally looked at Jentry as he thought for a second, then shrugged. “Yeah, I think I met Rorie a week or two after you visited me at Duke.” “Huh.” Jentry sent me another challenging smirk. “Guess I’d just missed meeting you back then.” “Guess so,” I bit out with a smile. At that same instant, Taylor’s hand slapped down on my thigh and squeezed. Declan looked back at me, his brows pulled low over his eyes. “If it wasn’t a big deal, why didn’t you tell me why you’d been there? I thought you’d been there for Taylor.” “Well, hey!” Taylor interjected—her hand was squeezing my leg so tightly, I didn’t know if I would have feeling when she let go. “If we hadn’t gone back to find him, she never would’ve met you. Right? Right. Moving on.” I

I got you some stuff,” he said gruffly and set the food and drinks down at his feet before walking over to stand directly in front of me. I watched as he opened the first bag and began pulling out deodorant, a toothbrush and toothpaste, a hairbrush and ponytail holders, girly shampoo, conditioner, a razor, and soap—since whatever I’d been using was definitely meant for men. The next bag opened and he pulled out large packs of men’s undershirts and boxer-briefs. I raised an eyebrow at first when he sat them down next to me, but I didn’t say anything. “There’s no way in hell I was going to be able to pick out a bra for you, and women have too many different kinds of underwear. This was easiest, but they might be too big on you.” I couldn’t even complain. My throat was closing up, my eyes were burning, and it was taking everything in me not to reach out and run my hands over it all. I hadn’t brushed my teeth since the night before I was taken, and I hadn’t put deodorant on or brushed my hair since the same time. Even though I was able to take showers every day, I had to put my old underwear, sleep shirt, and little shorts on once I was done; and it felt like I was never getting clean. If I could have clean clothes, even men’s clothes, I didn’t care. The last bag opened, and a shaky smile crossed my face for the first time since I’d had the unfortunate pleasure of meeting Taylor, as he pulled out different colored nail polishes. “I don’t know if you like these colors, but I watched you pick off what you had on your nails. So . . . here.” A package of pens followed, and the smile fell as confusion set in; but then he brought out a journal, and my stomach dropped. “I had to watch you for a long time, I don’t know what you wrote about, but I know you used to write every day. Anyway, that’s it,” he said and took a step away from the mattress. I picked up the journal and ran my hand over the front of it as tears fell down my cheeks. I knew sometime later I would be creeped out and put Taylor in the same zone Blake had been in, since Blake had people following me, and somehow had gotten cameras into our apartment. But right now, all I could think about was that I was going to be able to write to my parents again. It’d been over four and a half years since my parents died, and for four years I’d been writing in journals to them every day. Not being able to talk to them had been about as hard as not being with Kash. My

Wake up! Stop—fuck! Wake up!” “Stop, please! Get off me!” I screamed, and thrashed wildly. Another curse came from him when I connected with his face again. “Wake up!” My eyes flew open and blinked quickly against the blinding light in the room to find Taylor directly above me. He’d grabbed at my arms to pin my wrists down above my head, the other was pressing down on my hips to keep me from bucking against him. “Get off me,” I pleaded hoarsely. Taylor’s form blurred as tears gathered in my eyes, and eventually fell. When I could see him again, I noticed his dark eyes fixed on my chest, a look of horror on his face. Slowly, his eyes went up to where my arms were being held down. They widened marginally, and bounced back and forth a few times before coming down to rest on my face. “Please let me go.” His face morphed into an expression I didn’t understand as he released me and sat back on the ground. I quickly pulled at the large shirt I was wearing to cover my chest. The V-neck collar wasn’t deep and usually hid the scarred MINE; but I knew with it being stretched down, he’d seen it just then. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice gruff. “You were screaming this time, and I—I just . . . I don’t know. I’m sorry.” “This time? W-what do you mean this time?” “I hear you beg me to stop. Every. Night. The same words you screamed when I took you and kept you from escaping. I won’t hurt you,” he assured me. “I know you don’t believe me, but all I want to do is keep you safe.” My

Before I could scream, his free hand slammed down on my throat and his face was directly above mine again. He growled as his blue eyes turned to ice and he just stared at me as I gasped for air. “You’re going to regret doing that, sweetheart.” My vision blurred from my tears; the outer edges were turning black as I struggled to stay conscious. Blake’s breathing deepened and the look that crossed his painfully handsome face terrified me. My mouth opened and shut, but I couldn’t pull in any air and I couldn’t make a sound. My arms gave up their fight seconds before my bucking hips did the same, and soon I could hardly focus on Blake at all. I prayed that someone would come and save me as the hand that had been holding my hands down on the mattress slid down and cupped me through my thin yoga pants. I felt his hot breath on my ear. “I’ll make sure you never want to fight me again, Rachel.” The

Is . . . everything proceeding as it should? With . . . the baby?” The smile in her eyes deepened. “Yes, everything is fine. It’s normal to have these pains. I had the same with Andrew.” “And how many weeks are left before the baby is expected?” “Five, at least. Andrew came three weeks early but I’d been sick with him. The doctor said that had a lot to do with it. And as you can see, I’m fit as a fiddle now.” She shrugged. “A very big fiddle.” He smiled at the look on her face. “I can’t imagine you being any more beautiful than you are right now, Aletta. You . . . shine from the inside out.” She shook her head. “That’s probably just perspiration from building the nativity.” They laughed, then she looked down at her hand still tucked in his. She gently started to pull away, but he brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. Once, twice, her skin like silk. Her gaze lowered from his eyes to his mouth, and the simple gesture sent something akin to a thunderbolt through him. There’d been plenty of times when he’d looked at her and wished he’d earned the liberty to kiss her, to hold her close. But never more so than right at that moment. As though she’d read his thoughts, her cheeks flushed crimson. Jake traced a feather path with his thumb across her lower lip, and her mouth opened slightly. He told himself to move slowly where this woman was concerned. But when she closed her eyes, that was all the answer he needed. He kissed her gently at first, her mouth softer, sweeter than he’d imagined. But when a soft sigh rose in her throat, he drew her closer and she slipped her arms around his neck. He deepened the kiss, weaving his hands into her hair and— “Mama! We’re here to help with the star!” Jake drew back slightly and broke the kiss, hearing the boys barreling in their direction. Aletta looked up at him and smiled, and whatever determination he’d had to move slowly where she was concerned vanished completely. “Mama?” Andrew called. “I’m coming,” she answered and stood, smoothing the sides of her hair then the front of her dress. Jake rose along with her and reached over and tucked a wayward curl back into place, then kissed her on the forehead.

Don’t show the second y-axis. Instead, label the data points that belong on this axis directly. Pull the graphs apart vertically and have a separate y-axis for each (both along the left) but leverage the same x-axis across both. Figure 2.27 illustrates these options. Figure 2.27 Strategies for avoiding a secondary y-axis