Pushed To Breaking Point Quotes

You think my first instinct is to protect you. Because you're small, or a girl, or a Stiff. But you're wrong." He leans his face close to mine and wraps his fingers around my chin. His hand smells like metal. When was the last time he held a gun, or a knife? My skin tingles at the point of contact, like he's transmitting electricity through his skin. "My first instinct is to push you until you break, just to see how hard I have to press." he says, his fingers squeezing at the word break. My body tenses at the edge in his voice, so I am coiled as tight as a spring, and I forget to breathe. His dark eyes lifting to mine, he adds, "But I resist it." "Why..." I swallow hard. "Why is that your first instinct?" "Fear doesn't shut you down; it wakes you up. I've seen it. It's fascinating." He releases me but doesn't pull away, his hand grazing my jaw, my neck. "Sometimes I just want to see it again. Want to see you awake.

I don't know about your true form, but the weight of your ego sure is pushing the crust of the earth toward the breaking point.

From this point forward, you don’t even know how to quit in life.” ~ Aaron Lauritsen, ‘100 Days Drive

At some point, you just gotta forgive the past, your happiness hinges on it.

If we push in the right spots - then we've moved things to the breaking point. The the future becomes fluid, and change is possible. History isn't a premed tapestry that we've got to suffer, a closed world with no exit. We can form it. Make it. We just have to choose to make it.

You think my first instinct is to protect you. Because you're small, or a girl, or a Stiff. But you're wrong." He leans his face close to mine and wraps his fingers around my chin. His hand smells like metal. When was the last time he held a gun, or a knife? My skin tingles at the point of contact, like he's transmitting electricity through his skin. "My first instinct is to push you until you break, just to see how hard I have to press." he says, his fingers squeezing at the word break. My body tenses at the edge in his voice, so I am coiled as tight as a spring, and I forget to breathe.

One of the things that strikes me most though is how some people don't realise they're self-harming. The phrase 'self-harm' brings up thoughts of 'cutting', but that's only a small portion of it. When you drink excessively to drown your sorrows to the point you throw up and can't see straight and/or, like a girl at my school, ended up being driven to hospital to have her stomach pumped, you've brought harm to yourself. If you take drugs to feel numb and it becomes an addiction that you can't break, you've self-harmed. When you starve yourself or binge eat to fit the latest fashions, you're pushing your body further than it can go. We need to start treating ourselves how we deserve to be treated, even if you feel that no one else does. Prove to the world you ARE worth something by treating yourself with the utmost respect and hope that other people will follow your example. And even if they don't, at least one person in the world is treating you well: YOU.

Awakened by the oppressive midday heat, Zach opened his eyes to see a small blue and tan lizard doing what looked like push-ups about a foot away from his face.

It takes a long time to push me to the limit but once I've reached my breaking point, good luck winning me back.

The silent killer ties our children’s tongues to the extent that our children do not seek help. It numbs our children’s minds to only think negative thoughts. The silent killer hypnotizes their lives to the point that our children cannot recognize themselves anymore. The darkness of the silent killer pushes our children to their breaking point, and sometimes to the point of death.

At some point they show their true colors After the break up After the trial After the contract is signed and broken Their true colors stink These days I find it hard to get along with them I want to push them until the colors come out And sometimes I hate them so much, I push and see I do the same to the ones I like The ones I don’t care about I smile at real nice

But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade.

It’s not going to be easy. I’ll push you to your breaking point to prepare you.

If we don’t push ourselves to the breaking point, we haven’t tried hard enough.

If we push in the right spots – if we create losses where the Empire can’t stand to suffer them – then we’ve moved things to the breaking point. Then the future becomes fluid, and change is possible. History isn’t a premade tapestry that we’ve got to suffer, a closed world with no exit. We can form it. Make it. We just have to choose to make it.

Almost as an article of faith, some individuals believe that conspiracies are either kooky fantasies or unimportant aberrations. To be sure, wacko conspiracy theories do exist. There are people who believe that the United States has been invaded by a secret United Nations army equipped with black helicopters, or that the country is secretly controlled by Jews or gays or feminists or black nationalists or communists or extraterrestrial aliens. But it does not logically follow that all conspiracies are imaginary. Conspiracy is a legitimate concept in law: the collusion of two or more people pursuing illegal means to effect some illegal or immoral end. People go to jail for committing conspiratorial acts. Conspiracies are a matter of public record, and some are of real political significance. The Watergate break-in was a conspiracy, as was the Watergate cover-up, which led to Nixon’s downfall. Iran-contra was a conspiracy of immense scope, much of it still uncovered. The savings and loan scandal was described by the Justice Department as “a thousand conspiracies of fraud, theft, and bribery,” the greatest financial crime in history. Often the term “conspiracy” is applied dismissively whenever one suggests that people who occupy positions of political and economic power are consciously dedicated to advancing their elite interests. Even when they openly profess their designs, there are those who deny that intent is involved. In 1994, the officers of the Federal Reserve announced they would pursue monetary policies designed to maintain a high level of unemployment in order to safeguard against “overheating” the economy. Like any creditor class, they preferred a deflationary course. When an acquaintance of mine mentioned this to friends, he was greeted skeptically, “Do you think the Fed bankers are deliberately trying to keep people unemployed?” In fact, not only did he think it, it was announced on the financial pages of the press. Still, his friends assumed he was imagining a conspiracy because he ascribed self-interested collusion to powerful people. At a World Affairs Council meeting in San Francisco, I remarked to a participant that U.S. leaders were pushing hard for the reinstatement of capitalism in the former communist countries. He said, “Do you really think they carry it to that level of conscious intent?” I pointed out it was not a conjecture on my part. They have repeatedly announced their commitment to seeing that “free-market reforms” are introduced in Eastern Europe. Their economic aid is channeled almost exclusively into the private sector. The same policy holds for the monies intended for other countries. Thus, as of the end of 1995, “more than $4.5 million U.S. aid to Haiti has been put on hold because the Aristide government has failed to make progress on a program to privatize state-owned companies” (New York Times 11/25/95). Those who suffer from conspiracy phobia are fond of saying: “Do you actually think there’s a group of people sitting around in a room plotting things?” For some reason that image is assumed to be so patently absurd as to invite only disclaimers. But where else would people of power get together – on park benches or carousels? Indeed, they meet in rooms: corporate boardrooms, Pentagon command rooms, at the Bohemian Grove, in the choice dining rooms at the best restaurants, resorts, hotels, and estates, in the many conference rooms at the White House, the NSA, the CIA, or wherever. And, yes, they consciously plot – though they call it “planning” and “strategizing” – and they do so in great secrecy, often resisting all efforts at public disclosure. No one confabulates and plans more than political and corporate elites and their hired specialists. To make the world safe for those who own it, politically active elements of the owning class have created a national security state that expends billions of dollars and enlists the efforts of vast numbers of people.

Hopes were high. But just like a balloon pushed past its breaking point, hope is fragile. One lungful of air too many and the balloon bursts leaving ugly, shriveled fragments behind, impossible to piece back together.

Being strong means allowing yourself to cry over the things you can't change; laugh when things are funny; smile when you're happy. It means understanding where your breaking point is, and yet, going further and still remaining whole. Strong people push themselves to the limits of pain and joy. They fall to their knees in agony, then they lift up their faces to find the beautiful morning rays shining down on them, and they rise to their feet. Being strong means never giving up, no matter how crushed you are, and finding happiness in the smallest parts of life.

When you learn how to re-parent yourself, you will stop attempting to complete the past by setting up others to be your parents.” When you constantly seek validation from other people or when you push to the point of exhaustion, you’re “setting up others to be your parents.

If he hadn’t made me play without water that day, if he hadn’t singled me out for especially harsh treatment when I was in that group of little kids learning the game, if I hadn’t cried as I did at the injustice and abuse he heaped on me, maybe I would not be the player I am today. He always stressed the importance of endurance. “Endure, put up with whatever comes your way, learn to overcome weakness and pain, push yourself to breaking point but never cave in. If you don’t learn that lesson, you’ll never succeed as an elite athlete”: that was what he taught me.

It’s me,” he says softly. “Stop listening to everything else. Remember the way you feel when I’m kissing you and touching you. Don’t think with your head. You know me. And when my lips are on yours, you trust me.” As if to make his point, he dips his head and brushes his mouth over mine. Sparks fly between us. As always. “You trust me, when my hands are on your skin.” He runs his palms down my arms and then over to my waist where he pushes them up under the edge of my shirt. Chills break out down my back. “You trust me when you turn your mind off, when you just feel.

It’s junctures like that where we have control. If we push in the right spots – if we create losses where the Empire can’t stand to suffer them – then we’ve moved things to the breaking point. Then the future becomes fluid, and change is possible. History isn’t a premade tapestry that we’ve got to suffer, a closed world with no exit. We can form it. Make it. We just have to choose to make it.

I’m sorry about what happened to your store. But you were there. It didn’t start out about looting or all that. Did them news people show up before, when they was having a peaceful protest? Was anybody listening when they tried to approach things in a civil manner? No. But when shops start burning down, here they come. I’m not defending looters, but you’re not even trying to understand. When you push people to their breaking point, and they ain’t got no power, they’ll find a way to take it. What’s so wrong with that?

I’m not punishing you baby. I’m just struggling with this. He loves you Layla. It’s in his eyes when he looks at you. Every time I turn around he’s gazing at you and I can see it. I should know. It’s exactly how I feel every minute of every day. He wants you and I’m terrified that one day you’re going to choose him. I couldn’t take it Layla. I’m close to breaking point as it is with that fucker pushing every button I have. He needs to get it into his thick head that you’re mine and I won’t let you go without a fight.

How he led is no mystery. His techniques were time-honored. He knew his men. He saw to it that they had dry socks, enough food, sufficient clothing. He pushed them to but never beyond the breaking point. He got out of them more than they knew they had to give. His concern for them was that of a father for his son. He was the head of a family. He

Magnus, his silver mask pushed back into his hair, intercepted the New York vampires before they could fully depart. Alec heard Magnus pitch his voice low. Alec felt guilty for listening in, but he couldn’t just turn off his Shadowhunter instincts. “How are you, Raphael?” asked Magnus. “Annoyed,” said Raphael. “As usual.” “I’m familiar with the emotion,” said Magnus. “I experience it whenever we speak. What I meant was, I know that you and Ragnor were often in contact.” There was a beat, in which Magnus studied Raphael with an expression of concern, and Raphael regarded Magnus with obvious scorn. “Oh, you’re asking if I am prostrate with grief over the warlock that the Shadowhunters killed?” Alec opened his mouth to point out the evil Shadowhunter Sebastian Morgenstern had killed the warlock Ragnor Fell in the recent war, as he had killed Alec’s own brother. Then he remembered Raphael sitting alone and texting a number saved as RF, and never getting any texts back. Ragnor Fell. Alec felt a sudden and unexpected pang of sympathy for Raphael, recognizing his loneliness. He was at a party surrounded by hundreds of people, and there he sat texting a dead man over and over, knowing he’d never get a message back. There must have been very few people in Raphael’s life he’d ever counted as friends. “I do not like it,” said Raphael, “when Shadowhunters murder my colleagues, but it’s not as if that hasn’t happened before. It happens all the time. It’s their hobby. Thank you for asking. Of course one wishes to break down on a heart-shaped sofa and weep into one’s lace handkerchief, but I am somehow managing to hold it together. After all, I still have a warlock contact.” Magnus inclined his head with a slight smile. “Tessa Gray,” said Raphael. “Very dignified lady. Very well-read. I think you know her?” Magnus made a face at him. “It’s not being a sass-monkey that I object to. That I like. It’s the joyless attitude. One of the chief pleasures of life is mocking others, so occasionally show some glee about doing it. Have some joie de vivre.” “I’m undead,” said Raphael. “What about joie de unvivre?” Raphael eyed him coldly. Magnus gestured his own question aside, his rings and trails of leftover magic leaving a sweep of sparks in the night air, and sighed. “Tessa,” Magnus said with a long exhale. “She is a harbinger of ill news and I will be annoyed with her for dumping this problem in my lap for weeks. At least.” “What problem? Are you in trouble?” asked Raphael. “Nothing I can’t handle,” said Magnus. “Pity,” said Raphael. “I was planning to point and laugh. Well, time to go. I’d say good luck with your dead-body bad-news thing, but . . . I don’t care.” “Take care of yourself, Raphael,” said Magnus. Raphael waved a dismissive hand over his shoulder. “I always do.

Unfortunately, parents who put a priority on saving kids from frustration and teachers who put a priority on challenging their students often butt heads, and consequently, the parent-teacher partnership has reached a breaking point. Teaching has become a push and pull between opposing forces in which parents want teachers to educate their children with increasing rigor, but reject those rigorous lessons as “too hard” or “too frustrating” for their children to endure. Parents rightly feel protective of their children’s self-esteem, but teachers too often bear the brunt of parental ire.

To be real on this path you must be humble -- If you look down at others you'll get pushed down the stairs. If your heart goes around on high, you fly far from this path. There's no use hiding it -- What's inside always leaks outside. Even the one with the long white beard, the one who looks so wise -- If he breaks a single heart, why bother going to Mecca? If he has no compassion, what's the point? My heart is the throne of the Beloved, the Beloved the heart's destiny: Whoever breaks another's heart will find no homecoming in this world or any other. The ones who know say very little while the beasts are always speaking volumes; One word is enough for one who knows. If there is any meaning in the holy books, it is this: Whatever is good for you, grant it to others too -- Whoever comes to this earth migrates back; Whoever drinks the wine of love understands what I say -- Yunus, don't look down at the world in scorn -- Keep your eyes fixed on your Beloved's face, then you will not see the bridge on Judgment Day.

What are you doing here?” I asked him point blank. His shaking hand pushed his hair impatiently back from his face. “I’m here for the same reason I always come back to you. I’ve come for scraps. Anything you’ll give me. I’ve come because I can’t stay away.” His voice was low and hoarse from the drink, but thick and dark with emotion. “I tried to. Don’t you know that I’m always trying to stay away? It doesn’t matter. It never works.

There - the chandelier, choked with dust and webs. A single rivulet of red had trickled from the ceiling, down the central column, and out along a curving crystal arm. At its lowest point, a new pendant of blood was slowly building. 'It - it can't do that,' I stammered. 'We're inside the iron.' 'Move out of the way!' Lockwood pushed me back just as the drop fell, spattering on the floor in the center of the circle. We were all standing almost atop the iron chains. 'We've made it too big,' he said. 'The power of the iron doesn't extend into the very center. It's weak there, and this Visitor's strong enough to overcome it.' 'Adjust the chains inward-' George began. 'If we make the circle smaller,' Lockwood said, 'we'll be squeezed in a tiny space. It's scarcely midnight; we've seven hours till dawn and this thing's just gotten started. No, we've got to break out

Violet,' Xaden groans against my mouth. The plea in his tone floods my veins with a whole different form of power. Knowing he's just as affected by our attraction as I am is a rush. 'This isn't what you want.' 'It's exactly what I want,' I counter. I want to replace the anger with lust, the death of the day with the pulse-pounding assurance of my own life, and I know he's capable of delivering all that and more. 'You said to do whatever I need.' I arch my back, pressing the tips of my breasts against his chest. His breathing changes, and there's a war in his eyes that I'm determined to win. It's time to stop dancing around this unbearable tension and break it. He leans down, his mouth only inches from mine. 'And I'm telling you that I'm the last thing you need.' The barely leashed growl of his voice rumbles up through his chest, and every nerve ending in my body flares to life. 'Are you suggesting someone else?' My heart races as I chance calling his bluff. 'Fuck no.' The unmistakable flare of jealousy narrows his eyes for a heartbeat before his hips pin mine to the door, and my instant relief at his answer is replaced by a jolt of pure lust. I can see that infamous control of his hovering on the edge, balancing precariously on the point of a knife. All he needs is one. Little. Push. And I'm about to shamelessly shove. 'Good.' I tilt my head up to his and draw his bottom lip between mine, sucking before gently nipping him with my teeth. 'Because I only want you, Xaden.' The words breach something within him, and he gives. Finally. One mouths collide, and the kiss is hot and hard and completely out of our control.

She had been bullied and tormented by Leena for a long time and she wasn’t going to take it anymore. She was tired of being pushed around. She wanted to be strong for herself and be the type of person who her daughter would’ve wanted to have as a mother.

How much could the person you love change, and still remain the same person to whom you'd made your promise? We don't expect our lovers to remain the same over the course of a long relationship. In fact, if you're married at sixty-five to the same person you married when you were twenty, your marriage has probably failed. But there are changes, over time, that spell doom for a marriage, although exactly what these are, and to what degree, varies from couple to couple. For some people, vast changes over time make no difference to the fundamental sense of devotion one soul has for another. But for others, relatively small changes can push things to the breaking point: gaining or losing weight, gaining or losing faith, gaining or losing wealth. How does any relationship survive in the end, when change is the only constant?

At every step, we must demand not only more than they are willing to concede us, but more than they are capable of conceding us, such that the limitations of the present society are exposed and pushed towards their breaking point. After all, at the moment, it is the ruling class which demands of us more than we can give - what is "reasonable" to it is the sacrifice of thousands upon thousands to a global pandemic and impending climate catastrophe. In such a case, being unreasonably ambitious is the bare minimum. One may doubt whether a global revolutionary movement is still possible, but one cannot doubt that it is necessary.

When I was little, I loved running in the rain. There was something almost freeing about it. The exhilaration of your blood pumping, the quick shallow breaths, and the way the wind brushes past your body. Want to know my most favorite part? That unstoppable feeling from pushing myself to the breaking point gets me every time. Now though? Well…it’s complicated.

This is not about how hot you are. That doesn’t make someone any more or any less desirable. I believe there is a soul mate for everyone because I found mine. Attraction is only the smallest part of when it happens to you. It may be the initiating factor, but it isn’t what seals you to them. There is a deep, sad part of you that opens showing what you are all about inside and out. First, you are afraid. Then, that fear and sadness gets pushed out by an overwhelming urge to give everything of yourself. Yet, you still hold back. At some point, you come to reality and it hits you who you’re with. It’s the one you’ve been waiting for. The one who can break you into a thousand pieces with one look. One word. One action. Cas can destroy me if he really wanted to.

The United States is also losing the rugged pioneering spirit that once defined it. In 1850, Herman Melville boasted that “we are the pioneers of the world, the advance-guard, sent on through the wilderness of untried things, to break a new path in the New World.”7 Today many of the descendants of these pioneers are too terrified of tripping up to set foot on any new path. The problem starts with school. In 2013, a school district in Maryland banned, among other things, pushing children on swings, bringing homemade food into school, and distributing birthday invitations on school grounds.8 It continues in college, where professors have provided their charges with “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings.” It extends to every aspect of daily life. McDonald’s prints warning signs on its cups of coffee pointing out that “this liquid may be hot.” Winston Churchill once said to his fellow countrymen, “We have not journeyed across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar candy.”9 Today, thanks to a malign combination of litigation, regulation, and pedagogical fashion, sugar-candy people are everywhere.

Before I can blink, the knife placed beside Paedyn's plate is now raised in front of her chest, its point aimed at her heart. The sight sends a shock of anger through me, but my voice is far cooler than my sudden rage as I say, "Easy, ladies." Borrowing the Tele ability, I push the knife back down onto the table with a clatter while ignoring the glare Blair shoots me. "I'm not normally the one breaking up fights, but let's not try to kill each other before the Trials even start.

You’ve heard the expression “total war”; it’s pretty common throughout human history. Every generation or so, some gasbag likes to spout about how his people have declared “total war” against an enemy, meaning that every man, woman, and child within his nation was committing every second of their lives to victory. That is bullshit on two basic levels. First of all, no country or group is ever 100 percent committed to war; it’s just not physically possible. You can have a high percentage, so many people working so hard for so long, but all of the people, all of the time? What about the malingerers, or the conscientious objectors? What about the sick, the injured, the very old, the very young? What about when you’re sleeping, eating, taking a shower, or taking a dump? Is that a “dump for victory”? That’s the first reason total war is impossible for humans. The second is that all nations have their limits. There might be individuals within that group who are willing to sacrifice their lives; it might even be a relatively high number for the population, but that population as a whole will eventually reach its maximum emotional and physiological breaking point. The Japanese reached theirs with a couple of American atomic bombs. The Vietnamese might have reached theirs if we’d dropped a couple more, 2 but, thank all holy Christ, our will broke before it came to that. That is the nature of human warfare, two sides trying to push the other past its limit of endurance, and no matter how much we like to talk about total war, that limit is always there…unless you’re the living dead. For the first time in history, we faced an enemy that was actively waging total war. They had no limits of endurance. They would never negotiate, never surrender. They would fight until the very end because, unlike us, every single one of them, every second of every day, was devoted to consuming all life on Earth. That’s the kind of enemy that was waiting for us beyond the Rockies. That’s the kind of war we had to fight.

If it were an ordinary company in the old days he’d have been yelling at them by now, calling them shit-for-brains, ordering them to reach deep, find the character, torquing their emotions to the breaking point and telling them to use the resulting blood and pain, use it! But these are fragile egos. Some have taken anger management therapy, so yelling by him would set a bad example. For others, depression is never far. Push them too much and they’ll collapse. They’ll give up, even his key players. They’ll walk out. It’s happened before.

That much hope had brought Max to his knees. Apparently if he didn’t let himself weep like a little girl to relieve this emotional pressure building inside of him, he was in danger of hitting the ground in a dead faint. Jules crouched beside him, checking for his pulse. “Are you okay? You’re not, like, having a heart attack or a stroke, are you?” “Fuck you,” Max managed, swatting his hand away. “I’m not that old.” “If you really think heart disease is about age, then you definitely need to make an appointment with a cardiologist, like tomorrow—” “I just . . . tripped,” Max said, but when he tried to get up, he found he still hadn’t regained his equilibrium. Shit. “Or maybe you needed to get on your knees to pray,” Jules said as Max put his head down and waited for the dizziness to pass. “That excuse sounds a little more believable, if you want to know the truth. ‘Hello God? It’s me, Max. I know I’ve been lax in my attention to You over the past forty-mmph years, but if You give me a second chance, I’ll make absolutely certain this time around I’ll tell Gina just how much I love her. Because withholding that information sure as hell didn’t do either of us one bit of good, now did it?’” “I did what I—“ Max stopped himself. To hell with that. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.” “That’s right, you don’t.” Jules ignored Max’s attempt to push him away, and helped him to his feet. “But you might want to work up some kind of Forgive-Me-For-Being-a-Butthead speech for when you come face to face with Gina. Although, I’ve got to admit that the falling to the knees thing might make an impact. You’ll definitely get big points for drama.

You have to stop letting me do this,” he bit off, half-angrily. “If you’ll stop leaning on me so that I can get my hands on a blunt object, I’ll be happy to…!” He kissed the words into oblivion. “It isn’t a joke,” he murmured into her mouth. His hips moved in a gentle, sensuous sweep against her hips. He felt her shiver. “That’s…new,” she said with a strained attempt at humor. “It isn’t,” he corrected. “I’ve just never let you feel it before.” He kissed her slowly, savoring the submission of her soft, warm lips. His hands swept under the blouse and up under her breasts in their lacy covering. He was going over the edge. If he did, he was going to take her with him, and it would damage both of them. He had to stop it, now, while he could. “Is this what Colby gets when he comes to see you?” he whispered with deliberate sarcasm. It worked. She stepped on his foot as hard as she could with her bare instep. It surprised him more than it hurt him, but while he recoiled, she pushed him and tore out of his arms. Her eyes were lividly green through her glasses, her hair in disarray. She glared at him like a female panther. “What Colby gets is none of your business! You get out of my apartment!” she raged at him. She was magnificent, he thought, watching her with helpless delight. There wasn’t a man alive who could cow her, or bend her to his will. Even her drunken, brutal stepfather hadn’t been able to force her to do something she didn’t want to do. “Oh, I hate that damned smug grin,” she threw at him, swallowing her fury. “Man, the conqueror!” “That isn’t what I was thinking at all.” He sobered little by little. “My mother was a meek little thing when she was younger,” he recalled. “But she was forever throwing herself in front of me to keep my father from killing me. It was a long time until I grew big enough to protect her.” She stared at him curiously, still shaken. “I don’t understand.” “You have a fierce spirit,” he said quietly. “I admire it, even when it exasperates me. But it wouldn’t be enough to save you from a man bent on hurting you.” He sighed heavily. “You’ve been…my responsibility…for a long time,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “No matter how old you grow, I’ll still feel protective about you. It’s the way I’m made.” He meant to comfort, but the words hurt. She smiled anyway. “I can take care of myself.” “Can you?” he said softly. He searched her eyes. “In a weak moment…” “I don’t have too many of those. Mostly, you’re responsible for them,” she said with black humor. “Will you go away? I’m supposed to try to seduce you, not the reverse. You’re breaking the rules.” His eyebrow lifted. Her sense of humor seemed to mend what was wrong between them. “You stopped trying to seduce me.” “You kept turning me down,” she pointed out. “A woman’s ego can only take so much rejection.

I gestured upward, which told Adam to tell my brother to speed up. Adam knew what I planned to do and shook his head at me. What a pain, to stop the boat and argue with him about it. He didn’t consult anyone before he tried a trick and busted ass. If we stopped, Sean would insist my turn was over, and I’d be done for the day. I wasn’t done. So I nodded my head vigorously. Adam shook his finger at me, scolding. Then he turned around and spoke to my brother. The drone pitched higher as the boat sped up. I relaxed, relaxed, relaxed and let the boat and the wave do the work for me. My muscles remembered what they’d tried to do last summer, and this time they were able to do it. I caught miles of air, a huge thrill, and one glance at the boat: four boys with their mouths open. Then I almost panicked as I lost my balance when my board hit its high point behind me. Almost- but I kept myself together. I rode gravity down the opposite wave. Immediately I arced out and back to pick up speed, and did a 360 with a grab. Landed it. Then a 540. Landed it. I thought I might be pushing my luck. I’d probably break my leg climbing back into the boat.

The difficulties connected with my criterion of demarcation (D) are important, but must not be exaggerated. It is vague, since it is a methodological rule, and since the demarcation between science and nonscience is vague. But it is more than sharp enough to make a distinction between many physical theories on the one hand, and metaphysical theories, such as psychoanalysis, or Marxism (in its present form), on the other. This is, of course, one of my main theses; and nobody who has not understood it can be said to have understood my theory. The situation with Marxism is, incidentally, very different from that with psychoanalysis. Marxism was once a scientific theory: it predicted that capitalism would lead to increasing misery and, through a more or less mild revolution, to socialism; it predicted that this would happen first in the technically highest developed countries; and it predicted that the technical evolution of the 'means of production' would lead to social, political, and ideological developments, rather than the other way round. But the (so-called) socialist revolution came first in one of the technically backward countries. And instead of the means of production producing a new ideology, it was Lenin's and Stalin's ideology that Russia must push forward with its industrialization ('Socialism is dictatorship of the proletariat plus electrification') which promoted the new development of the means of production. Thus one might say that Marxism was once a science, but one which was refuted by some of the facts which happened to clash with its predictions (I have here mentioned just a few of these facts). However, Marxism is no longer a science; for it broke the methodological rule that we must accept falsification, and it immunized itself against the most blatant refutations of its predictions. Ever since then, it can be described only as nonscience—as a metaphysical dream, if you like, married to a cruel reality. Psychoanalysis is a very different case. It is an interesting psychological metaphysics (and no doubt there is some truth in it, as there is so often in metaphysical ideas), but it never was a science. There may be lots of people who are Freudian or Adlerian cases: Freud himself was clearly a Freudian case, and Adler an Adlerian case. But what prevents their theories from being scientific in the sense here described is, very simply, that they do not exclude any physically possible human behaviour. Whatever anybody may do is, in principle, explicable in Freudian or Adlerian terms. (Adler's break with Freud was more Adlerian than Freudian, but Freud never looked on it as a refutation of his theory.) The point is very clear. Neither Freud nor Adler excludes any particular person's acting in any particular way, whatever the outward circumstances. Whether a man sacrificed his life to rescue a drowning, child (a case of sublimation) or whether he murdered the child by drowning him (a case of repression) could not possibly be predicted or excluded by Freud's theory; the theory was compatible with everything that could happen—even without any special immunization treatment. Thus while Marxism became non-scientific by its adoption of an immunizing strategy, psychoanalysis was immune to start with, and remained so. In contrast, most physical theories are pretty free of immunizing tactics and highly falsifiable to start with. As a rule, they exclude an infinity of conceivable possibilities.

Metalearning: First Draw a Map. Start by learning how to learn the subject or skill you want to tackle. Discover how to do good research and how to draw on your past competencies to learn new skills more easily. Focus: Sharpen Your Knife. Cultivate the ability to concentrate. Carve out chunks of time when you can focus on learning, and make it easy to just do it. Directness: Go Straight Ahead. Learn by doing the thing you want to become good at. Don’t trade it off for other tasks, just because those are more convenient or comfortable. Drill: Attack Your Weakest Point. Be ruthless in improving your weakest points. Break down complex skills into small parts; then master those parts and build them back together again. Retrieval: Test to Learn. Testing isn’t simply a way of assessing knowledge but a way of creating it. Test yourself before you feel confident, and push yourself to actively recall information rather than passively review it. Feedback: Don’t Dodge the Punches. Feedback is harsh and uncomfortable. Know how to use it without letting your ego get in the way. Extract the signal from the noise, so you know what to pay attention to and what to ignore. Retention: Don’t Fill a Leaky Bucket. Understand what you forget and why. Learn to remember things not just for now but forever. Intuition: Dig Deep Before Building Up. Develop your intuition through play and exploration of concepts and skills. Understand how understanding works, and don’t recourse to cheap tricks of memorization to avoid deeply knowing things. Experimentation: Explore Outside Your Comfort Zone. All of these principles are only starting points. True mastery comes not just from following the path trodden by others but from exploring possibilities they haven’t yet imagined.

Once I made weapons carved from stone, I tied the weight to a wooden handle, a club to break the bones of my enemy. Then I became wiser... and sharpened the stone to a point and then fastened it to a stick; my arrow. I bent wood and hitched string to it; my bow. I kill my enemy with skill Then I became wiser... and made weapons forged from steel and took care to sharpen the blade of my sword. I kill my enemy with a stroke. Then I became wiser... and made the rifle that would, by exploding gunpowder, shoot balls of lead faster than the eye could see. I kill my enemy with but the pull of a trigger. Then I became wiser... and I built flying machine that could transport bombs to drop over the homes of my enemy. I kill my enemy from the sky. Then I became wiser... and created the drone, now I can guide a plane by remote control from one country and kill my enemy in another. I am a proficient killer Then I became wiser...  and I found a way to split the atom and found the power of God hidden within. I kill the ground, scorch the sky, pollute the wind and kill my enemy with the push of a button. Then I became wiser... And I found that there is nothing more foolish than a "Wise Man of War

A primary goal of food science is to create products that are more attractive to consumers. Nearly every food in a bag, box, or jar has been enhanced in some way, if only with additional flavoring. Companies spend millions of dollars to discover the most satisfying level of crunch in a potato chip or the perfect amount of fizz in a soda. Entire departments are dedicated to optimizing how a product feels in your mouth—a quality known as orosensation. French fries, for example, are a potent combination—golden brown and crunchy on the outside, light and smooth on the inside. Other processed foods enhance dynamic contrast, which refers to items with a combination of sensations, like crunchy and creamy. Imagine the gooeyness of melted cheese on top of a crispy pizza crust, or the crunch of an Oreo cookie combined with its smooth center. With natural, unprocessed foods, you tend to experience the same sensations over and over—how’s that seventeenth bite of kale taste? After a few minutes, your brain loses interest and you begin to feel full. But foods that are high in dynamic contrast keep the experience novel and interesting, encouraging you to eat more. Ultimately, such strategies enable food scientists to find the “bliss point” for each product—the precise combination of salt, sugar, and fat that excites your brain and keeps you coming back for more. The result, of course, is that you overeat because hyperpalatable foods are more attractive to the human brain. As Stephan Guyenet, a neuroscientist who specializes in eating behavior and obesity, says, “We’ve gotten too good at pushing our own buttons.” The modern food industry, and the overeating habits it has spawned, is just one example of the 2nd Law of Behavior Change: Make it attractive. The more attractive an opportunity is, the more likely it is to become habit-forming.

Risking a glance at the dignified young man beside her- what was his name?- Mr. Arthurson, Arterton?- Pandora decided to try her hand at some small talk. "It was very fine weather today, wasn't it?" she said. He set down his flatware and dabbed at both corners of his mouth with his napkin before replying. "Yes, quite fine." Encouraged, Pandora asked, "What kind of clouds do you like better- cumulus or stratocumulus?" He regarded her with a slight frown. After a long pause, he asked, "What is the difference?" "Well, cumulus are the fluffier, rounder clouds, like this heap of potatoes on my plate." Using her fork, Pandora spread, swirled, and dabbed the potatoes. "Stratocumulus are flatter and can form lines or waves- like this- and can either form a large mass or break into smaller pieces." He was expressionless as he watched her. "I prefer flat clouds that look like a blanket." "Altostratus?" Pandora asked in surprise, setting down her fork. "But those are the boring clouds. Why do you like them?" "They usually mean it's going to rain. I like rain." This showed promise of actually turning into a conversation. "I like to walk in the rain, too," Pandora exclaimed. "No, I don't like to walk in it. I like to stay in the house." After casting a disapproving glance at her plate, the man returned his attention to eating. Chastened, Pandora let out a noiseless sigh. Picking up her fork, she tried to inconspicuously push her potatoes into a proper heap again. Fact #64 Never sculpt your food to illustrate a point during small talk. Men don't like it. As Pandora looked up, she discovered Phoebe's gaze on her. She braced inwardly for a sarcastic remark. But Phoebe's voice was gentle as she spoke. "Henry and I once saw a cloud over the English Channel that was shaped in a perfect cylinder. It went on as far as the eye could see. Like someone had rolled up a great white carpet and set it in the sky." It was the first time Pandora had ever heard Phoebe mention her late husband's name. Tentatively, she asked, "Did you and he ever try to find shapes in the clouds?" "Oh, all the time. Henry was very clever- he could find dolphins, ships, elephants, and roosters. I could never see a shape until he pointed it out. But then it would appear as if by magic." Phoebe's gray eyes turned crystalline with infinite variations of tenderness and wistfulness. Although Pandora had experienced grief before, having lost both parents and a brother, she understood that this was a different kind of loss, a heavier weight of pain. Filled with compassion and sympathy, she dared to say, "He... he sounds like a lovely man." Phoebe smiled faintly, their gazes meeting in a moment of warm connection. "He was," she said. "Someday I'll tell you about him." And finally Pandora understood where a little small talk about the weather might lead.

At some point the Indian Act system will go. But that will be the result of a broad conversation involving Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals over how to settle the outstanding treaty, land and other issues. This won’t necessarily require a protracted debate. What it will require is that Canadians engage in the conversation instead of sitting back as if it doesn’t concern them. We have to be involved because what is needed is a serious transfer of responsibility and money, the exact opposite of dragging out treaty negotiations one by one. We need to do more than empower our governments to act. We need to push them. We need to make this a make-or-break issue. We need to elect or defeat them with these indigenous issues in mind.

The natural world gives us many examples of the great effectiveness of this way. The Chinese philosophy of which judo itself is an expression—Taoism—drew attention to the power of water to overcome all obstacles by its gentleness and pliability. It showed how the supple willow survives the tough pine in a snowstorm, for whereas the unyielding branches of the pine accumulate snow until they crack, the springy boughs of the willow bend under its weight, drop the snow, and jump back again. If, when swimming, you are caught in a strong current, it is fatal to resist. You must swim with it and gradually edge to the side. One who falls from a height with stiff limbs will break them, but if he relaxes like a cat he will fall safely. A building without 'give' in its structure will easily collapse in storm or earthquake, and a car without the cushioning of tires and springs will soon come apart on the road. The mind has just the same powers, for it has give and can absorb shocks like water or a cushion. But this giving way to an opposing force is not at all the same thing as running away. A body of water does not run away when you push it; it simply gives at the point of the push and encloses your hand. A shock absorber does not fall down like a bowling-pin when struck; it gives, and yet stays in the same place. To run away is the only defense of something rigid against an overwhelming force. Therefore the good shock absorber has not only 'give,' but also stability or 'weight.

I pulled Slayer from its sheath and pushed the door open with my fingertips. It swung soundlessly on well-greased hinges. Through the hallway, I saw the living room lamp glowing with soothing yellow light. I smelled coffee. Who breaks into a house, turns on the lights, and makes coffee? I padded into the living room on soft feet, Slayer ready. “Loud and clumsy, like a baby rhino,” said a familiar voice. I stepped into the living room. Curran sat on my couch, reading my favorite paperback. His hair was back to its normal short length. His face was clean shaven. He looked nothing like the dark, demonic figure who shook a would-be god’s head on a field a month ago. I thought he had forgotten about me. I had been quite happy to stay forgotten. “The Princess Bride?” he said, flipping the book over. “What are you doing in my house?” Let himself in, had he? Made himself comfortable, as if he owned the place. “Did everything go well with Julie?” “Yes. She didn’t want to stay, but she’ll make friends quickly, and the staff seems sensible.” I watched him, not quite sure where we stood. “I meant to tell you but haven’t gotten a chance. Sorry about Bran. I didn’t like him, but he died well.” “Yes, he did. I’m sorry about your people. Many losses?” A shadow darkened his face. “A third.” He had taken a hundred with him. At least thirty people had never come back. The weight of their deaths pressed on both of us. Curran turned the book over in his hands. “You own words of power.” He knew what a word of power was. Lovely. I shrugged. “Picked up a couple here and there. What happened in the Gap was a one shot deal. I won’t be that powerful again.” At least not until the next flare. “You’re an interesting woman,” he said. “Your interest has been duly noted.” I pointed to the door. He put the book down. “As you wish.” He rose and walked past me. I lowered my sword, expecting him to pass, but suddenly he stepped in dangerously close. “Welcome home. I’m glad you made it. There is coffee in the kitchen for you.” My mouth gaped open. He inhaled my scent, bent close, about to kiss me . . . I just stood there like an idiot. Curran smirked and whispered in my ear instead. “Psych.” And just like that, he was out the door and gone. Oh boy.

For his lunch break, Alex decided to sit outside for a smoke. There was no break room to speak of, just a backdoor that led to a neglected parking lot and an old payphone. There was an upturned crate by the door used to hold the door open or to sit on if one so desired. But Alex couldn't sit down, even though he had been standing for the past four hours, his anxious mind kept his feet moving. He paced back and forth, smoking his cigarette with the speed of an anxious drug addict. The cool but faint breeze pushed the smoke away from him and dissipated it into nothing. He still felt angry about the run-in with Gonzalez. It had consistently poked at him like a curious sadist with a pointed stick ever since he walked away from the door slammed in his face.

Consider expanding this practice to relationships as well. When a collaborator’s feedback or method seems questionable and conflicts with your default setting, reframe this as an exciting opportunity. Do all you can to see from their perspective and understand their point of view, instead of defending your own. In addition to solving the problem at hand, you may uncover something new about yourself and become aware of the limits boxing you in. The heart of open-mindedness is curiosity. Curiosity doesn’t take sides or insist on a single way of doing things. It explores all perspectives. Always open to new ways, always seeking to arrive at original insights. Craving constant expansion, it looks upon the outer limits of the mind with wonder. It pushes to expose falsely set boundaries and break through to new frontiers.

What about the Valorian children?” she demanded. “What have you done with them? Have they been poisoned, too?” “No. Kestrel, no, of course not. They will be cared for. In comfort. By their nurses. This was always part of the plan. Do you think we’re monsters?” “I think you are.” Arin’s fingers curled against the door. He shoved it open. He led her to the dressing room, opened the wardrobe, and riffled through her clothes. He pulled out a black tunic, leggings, and jacket and thrust them at Kestrel. Coolly she said, “This is a ceremonial fighting uniform. Do you expect me to fight a duel on the docks?” “You’re too noticeable.” There was something strange about his voice. “In the dark. You…you look like an open flame.” He found another black tunic and tore it between his hands. “Here. Wrap this around your hair.” Kestrel stood still, the black cloth limp in her arms as she remembered the last time she had worn such clothes. “Get dressed,” said Arin. “Get out.” He shook his head. “I won’t look.” “That’s right. You won’t, because you are going to get out.” “I can’t leave you alone.” “Don’t be absurd. What am I going to do, take back the city single-handedly from the comfort of my dressing room?” Arin dragged a hand through his hair. “You might kill yourself.” Bitterly, she said, “I should think it was clear from the way I let you and your friend push me around that I want to stay alive.” “You might change your mind.” “And do what, exactly?” “You could hang yourself with your dagger belt.” “So take it away.” “You’ll use clothes. The leggings.” “Hanging is an undignified way to die.” “You’ll break the mirror to your dressing table and cut yourself.” Again Arin’s voice seemed foreign. “Kestrel, I won’t look.” She realized why his words sounded rough. She had switched, at some point, to speaking in Valorian, and he had followed her. It was his accent that she heard. “I promise,” he said. “Your promises are worth nothing.” Kestrel turned and began to undress.

This book has pushed back against the randomness thesis, emphasizing instead the skill in venture capital. It has done so for four reasons. First, the existence of path dependency does not actually prove that skill is absent. Venture capitalists need skill to enter the game: as the authors of the NBER paper say, path dependency can only influence which among the many skilled players gets to be the winner. Nor is it clear that path dependency explains why some skilled operators beat other ones. The finding that a partnership’s future IPO rate rises by 1.6 percentage points is not particularly strong, and the history recounted in these pages shows that path dependency is frequently disrupted.[5] Despite his powerful reputation, Arthur Rock was unsuccessful after his Apple investment. Mayfield was a leading force during the 1980s; it too faded. Kleiner Perkins proves that you can dominate the Valley for a quarter of a century and then decline precipitously. Accel succeeded early, hit a rough patch, and then built itself back. In an effort to maintain its sense of paranoia and vigilance, Sequoia once produced a slide listing numerous venture partnerships that flourished and then failed. “The Departed,” it called them. The second reason to believe in skill lies in the origin story of some partnerships. Occasionally a newcomer breaks into the venture elite in such a way that skill obviously does matter. Kleiner Perkins became a leader in the business because of Tandem and Genentech. Both companies were hatched from within the KP office and actively shaped by Tom Perkins; there was nothing lucky about this. Tiger Global and Yuri Milner invented the art of late-stage venture capital. They had a genuinely novel approach to tech investing; they offered much more than the equivalent of another catchy tune competing against others. Paul Graham’s batch-processing method at Y Combinator offered an equally original approach to seed-stage investing. A clever innovation, not random fortune, explains Graham’s place in venture history.

Get dressed,” said Arin. “Get out.” He shook his head. “I won’t look.” “That’s right. You won’t, because you are going to get out.” “I can’t leave you alone.” “Don’t be absurd. What am I going to do, take back the city single-handedly from the comfort of my dressing room?” Arin dragged a hand through his hair. “You might kill yourself.” Bitterly, she said, “I should think it was clear from the way I let you and your friend push me around that I want to stay alive.” “You might change your mind.” “And do what, exactly?” “You could hang yourself with your dagger belt.” “So take it away.” “You’ll use clothes. The leggings.” “Hanging is an undignified way to die.” “You’ll break the mirror to your dressing table and cut yourself.” Again Arin’s voice seemed foreign. “Kestrel, I won’t look.” She realized why his words sounded rough. She had switched, at some point, to speaking in Valorian, and he had followed her. It was his accent that she heard. “I promise,” he said. “Your promises are worth nothing.” Kestrel turned and began to undress.

Alice's Cutie Code TM Version 2.1 - Colour Expansion Pack (aka Because this stuff won’t stop being confusing and my friends are mean edition) From Red to Green, with all the colours in between (wait, okay, that rhymes, but green to red makes more sense. Dang.) From Green to Red, with all the colours in between Friend Sampling Group: Fennie, Casey, Logan, Aisha and Jocelyn Green  Friends’ Reaction: Induces a minimum amount of warm and fuzzies. If you don’t say “aw”, you’re “dead inside”  My Reaction: Sort of agree with friends minus the “dead inside” but because that’s a really awful thing to say. Puppies are a good example. So is Walter Bishop. Green-Yellow  Friends’ Reaction: A noticeable step up from Green warm and fuzzies. Transitioning from cute to slightly attractive. Acceptable crush material. “Kissing.”  My Reaction: A good dance song. Inspirational nature photos. Stuff that makes me laugh. Pairing: Madison and Allen from splash Yellow  Friends’ Reaction: Something that makes you super happy but you don’t know why. “Really pretty, but not too pretty.” Acceptable dating material. People you’d want to “bang on sight.”  My Reaction: Love songs for sure! Cookies for some reason or a really good meal. Makes me feel like it’s possible to hold sunshine, I think. Character: Maxon from the selection series. Music: Carly Rae Jepsen Yellow-Orange  Friends’ Reaction: (When asked for non-sexual examples, no one had an answer. From an objective perspective, *pushes up glasses* this is the breaking point. Answers definitely skew toward romantic or sexual after this.)  My Reaction: Something that really gets me in my feels. Also art – oil paintings of landscapes in particular. (What is with me and scenery? Maybe I should take an art class) Character: Dean Winchester. Model: Liu Wren. Orange  Friends’ Reaction: “So pretty it makes you jealous. Or gay.”  “Definitely agree about the gay part. No homo, though. There’s just some really hot dudes out there.”(Feenie’s side-eye was so intense while the others were answering this part LOLOLOLOLOL.) A really good first date with someone you’d want to see again.  My Reaction: People I would consider very beautiful. A near-perfect season finale. I’ve also cried at this level, which was interesting. o Possible tie-in to romantic feels? Not sure yet. Orange-Red  Friends’ Reaction: “When lust and love collide.” “That Japanese saying ‘koi no yokan.’ It’s kind of like love at first sight but not really. You meet someone and you know you two have a future, like someday you’ll fall in love. Just not right now.” (<-- I like this answer best, yes.) “If I really, really like a girl and I’m interested in her as a person, guess. I’d be cool if she liked the same games as me so we could play together.”  My Reaction: Something that gives me chills or has that time-stopping factor. Lots of staring. An extremely well-decorated room. Singers who have really good voices and can hit and hold superb high notes, like Whitney Houston. Model: Jasmine Tooke. Paring: Abbie and Ichabod from Sleepy Hollow o Romantic thoughts? Someday my prince (or princess, because who am I kidding?) will come? Red (aka the most controversial code)  Friends’ Reaction: “Panty-dropping levels” (<-- wtf Casey???).  “Naked girls.” ”Ryan. And ripped dudes who like to cook topless.”  “K-pop and anime girls.” (<-- Dear. God. The whole table went silent after he said that. Jocelyn was SO UNCOMFORTABLE but tried to hide it OMG it was bad. Fennie literally tried to slap some sense into him.)  My Reaction: Uncontrollable staring. Urge to touch is strong, which I must fight because not everyone is cool with that. There may even be slack-jawed drooling involved. I think that’s what would happen. I’ve never seen or experienced anything that I would give Red to.

To survive in this place, you had to want to die. That was the way of the world as remade by toubab, and Samuel‘s list of grievances was long: they pushed people into the mud and then called them filthy. They forbade people from accessing any knowledge of the world and then called them simple. They worked people until their empty hands were twisted, bleeding, and could do no more, then called them lazy. They forced people to eat innards from troughs and then called them uncivilized. They kidnapped babies and shattered families and then called them incapable of love. They raped and lynched and cut up people into parts, and then called the pieces savage. They stepped on people’s throats with all their might and asked why the people couldn’t breathe. And then, when people made an attempt to break the foot, or cut it off one, they screamed “CHAOS!” and claimed that mass murder was the only way to restore order. They praised every daisy and then called every blackberry stain. They bled the color from God’s face, gave it a dangle between its legs, and called it holy. Then, when they were done breaking things, they pointed at the sky and called the color of the universe itself a sin. And the whole world believed them, even some of Samuel’ s people. Especially some of Samuel’s people. This was untoward and made it hard to open your heart, to feel a sense of loyalty that wasn’t a strategy. It was easier to just seal yourself up and rock yourself to sleep.

Back home, Chris struggled to readjust, physically and mentally. He also faced another decision-reenlist, or leave the Navy and start a new life in the civilian world. This time, he seemed to be leaning toward getting out-he'd been discussing other jobs and had already talked to people about what he might do next. It was his decision, one way or another. But if I’d been resigned to his reenlistment last go-around, this time I was far more determined to let him know I thought he should get out. There were two important reasons for him to leave-our children. They really needed to have him around as they grew. And I made that a big part of my argument. But the most urgent reason was Chris himself. I saw what the war was doing to him physically. His body was breaking down with multiple injuries, big and small. There were rings under his eyes even when he had slept. His blood pressure was through the roof. He had to wall himself off more and more. I didn’t think he could survive another deployment. “I’ll support you whatever you decide,” I told him. “I want to be married to you. But the only way I can keep making sense of this is…I need to do the best for the kids and me. If you have to keep doing what is best for you and those you serve, at some point I owe it to myself and those I serve to do the same. For me, that is moving to Oregon.” For me, that meant moving from San Diego to Oregon, where we could live near my folks. That would give our son a grandfather to be close to and model himself after-very important things, in my mind, for a boy. I didn’t harp on the fact that the military was taking its toll. That argument would never persuade Chris. He lived for others, not himself. It didn’t feel like an ultimatum to me. In fact, when he described it that way later on, I was shocked. “It was an ultimatum,” he said. He felt my attitude toward him would change so dramatically that the marriage would be over. There would also be a physical separation that would make it hard to stay together. Even if he wasn’t overseas, he was still likely to be based somewhere other than Oregon. We’d end up having a marriage only in name. I guess looked at one way, it was an ultimatum-us or the Navy. But it didn’t feel like that to me at the time. I asked him if he could stay in and get an assignment overseas where we could all go, but Chris reminded me there was never a guarantee with the military-and noted he wasn’t in it to sit behind a desk. Some men have a heart condition they know will kill them, but they don’t want to go to the doctor; it’s only when their wives tell them to go that they go. It’s a poor metaphor, but I felt that getting out of the Navy was as important for Chris as it was for us. In the end, he opted to leave. Later, when Chris would give advice to guys thinking about leaving the military, he would tell them it would be a difficult decision. He wouldn’t push them one way or the other, but he would be open about his experiences. “There’ll be hard times at first,” he’d admit. “But if that is the thing you decide, those times will pass. And you’ll be able to enjoy things you never could in the service. And some of them will be a lot better. The joy you get from your family will be twice as great as the pleasure you had in the military.” Ultimatum or not, he’d come to realize retiring from the service was a good choice for all of us.

I keep a crumpled yellow note from that night; not all of the writing is decipherable, but some of it reads like this: "Pretty girl about 25 lying on wooden floor, two or three on her all the time, one kneeling between her legs, one sitting on her face and somebody else holding her feet...teeth and tongues and pubic hair, dim light in a wooden shack, sweat and semen gleaming on her thighs and stomach, red and white dress pushed up around her chest...people standing around yelling, wearing no pants, waiting first, second or third turns...girl jerking and moaning, not fighting, clinging, seems drunk, incoherent, not knowing, drowning..." It was not a particularly sexual scene. The impression I had at the time was one of vengeance. The atmosphere in the room was harsh and brittle, almost hysterical. Most people took a single turn, then either watched or wandered back to the party. But a hard core of eight or ten kept at her for several hours. /In all, she was penetrated in various ways no less than fifty times, and probably more. At one point, when the action slowed down, some of the Angels went out and got the girls's ex-husband, who was stumbling drunk. They led him into the shack and insisted he take his own turn. The room got nervous, for only a few of the outlaws were anxious to carry things that far. But the sight of her former old man brought the girl out of her daze just enough to break the silent tension. She leaned forward, resting on her elbows, and asked him to kiss her. He did, and then groggily took his turn while the others cheered. Afterward the girl rested for a while and then wandered around the party in a blank sort of way and danced with several people. Later she was taken back for another session. When she finally reappeared I saw her trying to dance with her ex-husband, but all she could do was hang on his neck and sway back and forth. She didn't even seem to heat the music. What would a jury make of that one?

The Peloponnesians arranged their ships in such a manner as to make the largest possible circle without leaving space to break through, turning their prows outwards and their sterns inwards; within the circle they placed the smaller craft which accompanied them, and five of their swiftest ships that they might be close at hand and row out at whatever point the enemy charged them. The Athenians ranged their ships in a single line and sailed round and round the Peloponnesian fleet, which they drove into a narrower and narrower space, almost touching as they passed, and leading the crews to suppose that they were on the point of charging. But they had been warned by Phormio not to begin until he gave the signal, for he was hoping that the enemy's ships, not having the steadiness of an army on land, would soon fall into disorder and run foul of one another; they would be embarrassed by the small craft, and if the usual morning breeze, for which he continued waiting as he sailed round them, came down from the gulf, they would not be able to keep still for a moment. He could attack whenever he pleased, because his ships were better sailers; and he knew that this would be the right time. When the breeze began to blow, the ships, which were by this time crowded into a narrow space and were distressed at once by the force of the wind and by the small craft which were knocking up against them, fell into confusion; ship dashed against ship, and they kept pushing one another away with long poles; there were cries of 'keep off' and noisy abuse, so that nothing could be heard either of the word of command or of the coxswains' giving the time; and the difficulty which unpractised rowers had in clearing the water in a heavy sea made the vessels disobedient to the helm.At that moment Phormio gave the signal; the Athenians, falling upon the enemy, began by sinking one of the admirals' vessels, and then wherever they went made havoc of them. (Book 2 Chapter 83.5-84.3)

Our only limits are those we set for ourselves. To break down and break free from those illusory limits, we must push ourselves. When we challenge the boundaries of our comfort zone, we expand it. What once seemed extraordinary becomes our new ordinary. When we push ourselves, we explore our human potential. When we push ourselves, we grow. Our breaking point is our making point.

She has a point,” Caleb’s voice came from the shadows behind the massive Dragon who was taking all of my attention and I turned my head to find him, Seth and Max all watching this exchange with interest. That would explain the stars not smiting us or whatever other bullshit they might want to do. Though I was guessing I should really stop touching him…not that I did. “You did this to…help him?” Darius asked like he couldn’t understand why the fuck I’d do that and I narrowed my eyes at him. “I’m only an asshole like, ninety percent of the time,” I said, rolling my eyes at him. “The other ten percent I’m a fucking saint. So yes, I did it to help him. Turns out I only hold two members of your family in low regard.” “You pushed my brother out of a fucking window,” he growled. “I would have caught him with my air magic if I had to. Besides, this way Daddy Acrux can’t try and claim he was in on it. It’s a genius plan and you know it. Plus, your mom told me to post it so I don’t have to explain myself to you.” “Mother?” Darius scoffed. “She hardly notices anything beyond appearances. The last thing she’d encourage is a scandal like this. She-” “That’s not true, she loves you, she just…” I trailed off as the deal I’d made with Catalina stayed my tongue. I’d sworn not to tell a soul about the way I’d freed herfrom Lionel’s Dark Coercion and I wasn’t going to take even more punishment from the stars by breaking my word. “Just what?” Darius demanded. Phoenix fire burned hot beneath my skin and my palms twitched against his chest as a thought occurred to me. One I really should have considered before now if I hadn’t been so caught up with studying, the shadows, cheer practice and just plain old pining away for this monster before me to think of it. “Do you trust me?” I asked, my fingers shifting on his skin just enough to draw his attention. “Why?” “I want to try something. Something I did for your mother. But you’ll have to stay still while I do it.” Darius looked at me for a long moment and a faint tremor in the ground beneath my feet let me know that the stars had realised just how close we were to one another. Even with company they didn’t like us to touch each other, though it seemed to take them a lot longer to notice if we were. Darius exhaled angrily but his eyes shifted back as he managed to rein in some of his temper, their deep brown colour ringed with black once again. “I trust you,” he growled and the other Heirs muttered something behind him, but I didn’t care to hear it because there had been a sincerity in his words which reached out and touched my soul. He meant it. For whatever reason, despite everything we’d been through, he was still able to put his trust in me. I offered him the hint of a smile as my Phoenix fire reared up to the surface of my skin before I guided it into his flesh where I touched him. His muscles tightened beneath my hands, his eyes widening as he looked at me but he didn’t pull back, waiting as the liquid fire tore beneath his skin and sought out any signs of Lionel placing restrictions on his soul. ... “You…” Darius lifted me into his arms, staring at me with wide eyes like he didn’t even have words to explain what I’d just done for him. ,,, “She…I think she…but I don’t understand how-” “Phoenix fire burns through bullshit,” I supplied. “I just released him from every Dark Coercion spell Lionel has ever placed on him.” The Heirs all turned to stare at me like I’d just told them an alien named Clive lived up my butt and I sighed as I leaned my head back against Caleb’s shoulder. I felt like I’d just gone ten rounds in the ring against a Dragon with toothache. My eyes were hooded already and I was pretty sure that if we stood here much longer I’d fall asleep. “Thank you, Roxy,” Darius breathed and the look he was giving me made my heart do a weird squeezing kind of thing as I bit down on my bottom lip. (Tory POV)

Darius grunted irritably. “You let me in last time,” he reminded me in a low voice. “Why did you trust me then and not now?” I cleared my throat uncomfortably. “I didn’t trust you then either. I just had to push past my natural inclination to protect myself from sociopaths. You’ll have to give me a moment before I can easily do so again.” I bit my lip as his grip on my hands tightened and he tugged me closer again, our chests almost brushing as I looked up at him. “Stop power fucking her and start working on what Pyro wants,” Caleb called and I flinched, yanking my magic back again as I looked around at him and Darcy. “Are you afraid I’m going to steal her attention from you, Cal?” Darius asked Caleb with the hint of a smile playing around his lips. “Not likely,” Caleb replied dismissively but his eyes narrowed. “I’m still here,” I reminded them irritably. “And neither of you are interesting enough to keep my attention for long so there’s no point in you getting your panties in a twist over it. Maybe we should just get on with this class?” Darius smirked at Caleb tauntingly and I rolled my eyes at him. “Well I’m happy enough to practice without help if you wanna leave me to it?” Darcy suggested, not-so-subtly trying to tug her hand out of Caleb’s grip. “Don’t worry, sweetheart, I promise to be gentle with you,” he said, ignoring her attempts to break free. My sister obviously had reservations about this activity and I couldn’t really blame her. She shot me a look which basically said she’d rather be pretty much anywhere else than holding Caleb’s hand and I glanced at Darius before raising an eyebrow at her as if to say ‘who’s got it worse?’. Darcy snorted a laugh and the two Heirs looked between us like they were trying to figure out what we’d just communicated to each other. “Come on, Roxy, let’s see what you’ve got,” Darius said, releasing one of my hands so that I could cast with it. He didn’t need any further encouragement and stepped forward to grip my waist like he had before. This time I didn’t press my body to his though and instead focused on harnessing my magic in the way I wanted. My frustration meant I threw more power at the task than I’d intended and I yanked on Darius’s magic too. A full sized motorbike materialised in the flames before me and with a surge of triumph, I sent it tearing across the arena. Pyro stopped what she was doing and actually applauded me and I grinned to myself as more than a few of my classmates joined in. I started making the bike weave between the students as it did a circuit of the arena and Darius leaned close to my ear as he maintained his grip on me. “Congratulations, Roxy. Looks like we’ve got a date Wednesday night then.” I ignored the flutter in my chest as he called it a date because it absolutely didn’t take place. “Maybe I’ve already got plans Wednesday,” I said. “Yeah, you do. With me.” He released his grip on my waist and my control over the magic faltered as the bike burst apart into a thousand flaming tendrils which burnt out quickly without anything to maintain them. (tory)

Blue I emerge from our yellow linoleum bathroom blue at one end of our single-wide trailer and I have the length of narrow hallway to consider before reaching the living room blue Blue!? And I know my mother is furious You look ridiculous it’s all she says and I do I had torn the pages from a magazine lined my bedroom floor with them and studied those punk rock spiked hair white teeth high fashion popped collar leather studded glossy photos strewn across my small space like a spread of tarot cards telling me a future I would never get to not out here not in the white trailer rusting amber thick of trees stretch of reservation of highway that stood between me and whatever else was out there record stores the mall parking lots where kids were skateboarding and smoking pot probably kids with boom boxes and bottles of beer out there were beaches with bands playing on them and these faces these shining faces with pink green purple and blue hair blue I could get that at least I could mix seventeen packets of blue raspberry Kool-Aid with a little water and I could get that it was alchemy it was potion-making but no one told me about the bleach about my dark hair needing to lift to lighten in order to get that blue no one told me that the mess of Kool-Aid would only run down my scalp my face my neck would stain me blue Blue is what you taste like he says still holding me on the twin bed in the glow of dawn my teenage curiosity has pushed me to ask What does my body taste like to you his fingers travel from neck to navel breath on my thigh and here in our sacred space he answers simply Blue you taste blue and I wonder if what he means is sad you taste sad taqʷšəblu the name is given to me when I am three to understand it my child brain has to break it apart taqʷšəblu talk as in talking as in to tell as in story sha as in the second syllable of my English name as in half of me blue as in the taste of me blue as in sad my grandmother was taqʷšəblu before me and now I am taqʷšəblu too

You are pushed into falling backwards. You need to keep important information on your mind. First, you want to avoid sending your hand backward, since you can easily dislocate your shoulders doing this. Second, you do not want your head to hit the ground as it may cause a concussion or smash your skull. Third, you do not want to fall on your ass, breaking your coccyx bone. In Krav Maga, students learn to fall on concrete floors while avoiding damage to their bodies. 1.     Lying on the ground, keep your hands at thirty degrees to the sides of the body. Lift your head and look at your belt. Apply pressure to the ground with your palms, leaving elbows locked and lifted off. Lift one leg off the ground, bringing your knee to your chest. In this position, your head and shoulders are not touching the ground. In addition, your coccyx bone is not touching the ground. The only contact you have with the ground at this point is the large muscles in your lower back. This is the position you will end up in when you finish softening your fall. Relax and put your head, shoulders and leg back on to the ground. Repeat this step about ten times. You are getting accustomed to instantly reaching the desired position. Keep one heel on the ground to prevent anyone from kicking your groin. 2.     From a squatting position, cross your hands over your knees. Sit backwards, close to your heels, and lift one leg. Continue to the position described in step one. As you sit and roll your body backwards, keep your torso leaning forward. Release your hands only after completing the fall. Repeat this step about ten times. 3.     From a standing position, step backwards on one foot, and squat on it close to the heel. Keep your hands crossed over your chest, lifting one leg as you come down. Continue to get through all prior steps until you come to a complete stop on the ground. All through your fall, you need to shift your weight forward as you roll your torso forward to soften your fall. Avoid reaching your hands backwards since you could dislocate your shoulders this way. 4. Your training partner is pushing you and making you lose your balance. 5. Step backwards, as you lower your center of gravity forward while falling. 6.     Land close to your heel, keeping one knee up to avoid the coccyx contacting the ground. 7. Keep your head forward by looking at your belt. 8.     Your elbows should be locked if your hands are touching the ground, and your shoulders lifted up. 9. Kick up from the floor. Keep in mind that the only contact with the ground should be your heel, and your wide lower back without the coccyx bone. You are now in a perfect position to kick your opponent upwards, if needed.

Defense against Gunpoint from the Front with the Barrel Pushed into the Forehead From this position, you should hope your opponent will tell you to raise your hands up, since it takes longer to bring them from your waist to the opponent’s wrist. Do not complain if you are not asked to raise your hands up. Start your motion by violently tilting your neck away from the barrel. Never move both hands toward the barrel at once, since you are making your intentions obvious to your attacker, slowing down your motion and your ability to move your body away. 1. The attacker points a pistol at the defender’s forehead. 2. The defender violently tilts his neck towards his left shoulder. 3.     The defender raises his left hand and taps the attacker’s wrist. At the same time, the defender’s head leans to the left, followed by his body moving forward. (This is preferable and more comfortable than grabbing the barrel and having to lean backwards). 4.     The defender slides his left hand along the attacker’s wrist and forearm, moving his head with it. This will also ensure a less loud noise if a shot is dispensed. The defender is hooking the weapon with his right arm, by tapping the attacker's shoulder and then sliding his hand on the attacker's arm, until his wrist gets hooked to the defender's chest. Executing a simultaneous strike to the opponent’s groin is a matter of judgment in this scenario. You want to buy time and ensure he would not attack you with his free hand, but at the same time you want to immediately hook the weapon. 5. The defender executes a counterattack with his left hand. 6.     The defender’s left arm, fingers pointed down, hand turned clockwise reaches for the weapon’s barrel. The defender extracts the weapon by breaking the barrel down. 7.     The defender proceeds to strike the opponent’s temple with the barrel of the pistol.

what message are we giving our students through our facial expressions, tone of voice and body language? That we are tired, worn out and close to breaking point? If we do, there is a good chance they will either ignore us or push a little harder

Naturally, we even made snow angels in the backyard as we stumbled around, and passed out. No one cared what we did really, thus far that was the fun of it all. Oh, and Kenneth was just the boy that only wanted one thing from Jenny. He had no personality to speak of… he would hit on me all the time, and sometimes he would get it from me too, or I would be out of the group by her if he said I was the one that wanted it from him. We could break widows out of old buildings and homes, and who would stop us. Sure, we got chased by the cops, yet that was the fun of it too. There is nothing else for us to do. I remember Maddie leaving her handprints in the wet mud, Jenny her butt, and some of her lady-ness, when the town thought it was time for new sidewalks. Yet we all did, something that would last forever, we thought. Maddie drew a few other things too. You can get the picture! All inappropriate… all there for life. She was just crazy like that, like squatting down pissing, and doing number two in the old man Jackups yard. She has more balls than most guys… I knew. Old man Jackups called us, ‘Mindless slutty hooligans’ So that was payback. At the time- I thought like what is wrong with that, we're just having some fun here… your old windbag, like go and sit on your cane! You know what I mean… I think? I remember being so smashed at my sweet sixteen too, that I don’t even remember it. Yet that is what having a good time was all about, so they say. Bumping and grinding on all the boys with loud music. And as the twinkling lights shine on your skin, that lights the way up to your bedroom. You know that your puffy dress is going to be pushed up a couple of times on that night. I just don’t remember how many times it was, and I didn’t remember who it was with, I am not even sure if I know them at all… all of them or not. All I know is I did it all and was happy to do whatever they asked me to do. But- but I thought I was having the time of my life. I was the birthday girl that had the rosiest pink lipstick on most boys at the party. I thought it was such a horror. In my mind at the time, I thought that I high-jacked the rainbow, and crashed into a pot of gold! All the girls my age did it, yet I was the best at it! I recall the time Liv and I went trick or treating. I was dressed as Hermione from the Harry Potter movies. Liv was a sexy witch! With the pointed hat. So, original…! That is what I told her. That was the night we scared the pants off of Ray in the not-so-scary haunted house. And before you ask, he was dressed as Harry. So, I wanted to play with his wand, that's why I dressed the way I did at the time. Liv was one of those good friends… I thought, which would tell everyone what you all did the day after, to all the girls at the lunch table. She can text faster than anyone I know. Anyways… we jumped out at him, and he nearly craps his nicely pressed pants. I am sure there was a skid mark on his tighty- whities or something. Yet he did yack on Liv’s chest, and that was hilarious to me. She was dancing around, and flapping her hands doing the funky chicken while yelling, ‘Ou- ou- ou- wah!’ As I dibble over in lather, I guess it was funnier when it doesn’t happen to you too many times.

Even well-lived lives can, of course, be warped and hurt and twisted by illness and infirmity and uncontrollable catastrophe. Depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, like cancer, all involve biological factors beyond the individual’s immediate control. The difficulties intrinsic to life itself are sufficient to weaken and overwhelm each of us, pushing us beyond our limits, breaking us at our weakest point. Not even the best-lived life provides an absolute defence against vulnerability. But the family that fights in the ruins of their earthquake-devastated dwelling place is much less likely to rebuild than the family made strong by mutual trust and devotion. Any natural weakness or existential challenge, no matter how minor, can be magnified into a serious crisis with enough deceit in the individual, family or culture.

At this point I should pause for a moment to mention the universe does not care at all who is the attacker and who is the defender in any given situation. If you generate some momentum or some energy, the universe is not going to say, “Good for you. I will now damage your opponent with it.” The universe just takes whatever you generate and spends it in the easiest possible manner. If it is easier to move your opponent back after you punch him with a high-momentum strike, he will move back, but if it is easier to move yourself back after the punch (if he is up against a brick wall), you will push yourself back instead. The same thing goes for energy. If it is easier to compress tissue in your opponent’s body, you will, but if it is easier to spend that energy breaking your own hand (if you punch a brick wall), your hand will suffer the damages. This complete indifference from the universe shows up all the time in physics, including Newton’s third law of motion, which states every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This indifference means your ability to transfer energy and momentum into your opponent depends on how well grounded you are, as well as how compressible you are.

There is a difference between working out and training,” he started.  “So far, you just work out.  You sweat a little and get a good amount of exercise.  Yes, you do get a little better, a little stronger and a little smarter, but mostly your skills are derived from your natural abilities.  Training is very different.  When you train, you have to push your body and your fighting spirit to the point of breaking every time. When you train, you have to go right up to the limits where your physical being and your spiritual self scream ‘no more.’ And at that barrier, which naturally evolved throughout your lifetime as protection against possible physical harm and mental anguish, you must force through or be forced through into a world of seemingly unreasonable pain in order to glimpse and then realize another level beyond your current abilities.  This must happen over and over again in order to truly progress on this journey.  And of course, the cruelty of all this is that the next level itself is illusory, as is the one after that, and the successive barriers you must force your way through will seem boundless.” “Even for the strongest person, training extracts a heavy and oftentimes damaging toll on your body and on your psychic health, which is why I rarely push my students that hard,” he continued.  “The harmful effects of such hard training is also why you need a trustworthy guide and teacher, someone who can catalyze your training but, more importantly, someone who can pull you from the abyss and show you that the white hot pressure to advance and constantly surpass your previous achievements is also an illusion in and of itself.

The Primary Act. As they entered the cinema, Dr Nathan confided to Captain Webster, ‘Talbert has accepted in absolute terms the logic of the sexual union. For him all junctions, whether of our own soft biologies or the hard geometries of these walls and ceilings, are equivalent to one another. What Talbert is searching for is the primary act of intercourse, the first apposition of the dimensions of time and space. In the multiplied body of the film actress - one of the few valid landscapes of our age - he finds what seems to be a neutral ground. For the most part the phenomenology of the world is a nightmarish excrescence. Our bodies, for example, are for him monstrous extensions of puffy tissue he can barely tolerate. The inventory of the young woman is in reality a death kit.’ Webster watched the images of the young woman on the screen, sections of her body intercut with pieces of modern architecture. All these buildings. What did Talbert want to do - sodomize the Festival Hall? Pressure Points. Koester ran towards the road as the helicopter roared overhead, its fans churning up a storm of pine needles and cigarette cartons. He shouted at Catherine Austin, who was squatting on the nylon blanket, steering her body stocking around her waist. Two hundred yards beyond the pines was the perimeter fence. She followed Koester along the verge, the pressure of his hands and loins still marking her body. These zones formed an inventory as sterile as the items in Talbert’s kit. With a smile she watched Koester trip clumsily over a discarded tyre. This unattractive and obsessed young man - why had she made love to him? Perhaps, like Koester, she was merely a vector in Talbert’s dreams. Central Casting. Dr Nathan edged unsteadily along the catwalk, waiting until Webster had reached the next section. He looked down at the huge geometric structure that occupied the central lot of the studio, now serving as the labyrinth in an elegant film version of The Minotaur . In a sequel to Faustus and The Shrew , the film actress and her husband would play Ariadne and Theseus. In a remarkable way the structure resembled her body, an exact formalization of each curve and cleavage. Indeed, the technicians had already christened it ‘Elizabeth’. He steadied himself on the wooden rail as the helicopter appeared above the pines and sped towards them. So the Daedalus in this neural drama had at last arrived. An Unpleasant Orifice. Shielding his eyes, Webster pushed through the camera crew. He stared up at the young woman standing on the roof of the maze, helplessly trying to hide her naked body behind her slim hands. Eyeing her pleasantly, Webster debated whether to climb on to the structure, but the chances of breaking a leg and falling into some unpleasant orifice seemed too great. He stood back as a bearded young man with a tight mouth and eyes ran forwards. Meanwhile Talbert strolled in the centre of the maze, oblivious of the crowd below, calmly waiting to see if the young woman could break the code of this immense body. All too clearly there had been a serious piece of miscasting. ‘Alternate’ Death. The helicopter was burning briskly. As the fuel tank exploded, Dr Nathan stumbled across the cables. The aircraft had fallen on to the edge of the maze, crushing one of the cameras. A cascade of foam poured over the heads of the retreating technicians, boiling on the hot concrete around the helicopter. The body of the young woman lay beside the controls like a figure in a tableau sculpture, the foam forming a white fleece around her naked shoulders.

In the case of a standing arm bar there is no stationary point to use as a fulcrum, so you need to apply two separate forces to make it work (pull up on the wrist, and push down just above the elbow). When it comes to the juji gatame, there are at least three distinct applied forces at play: pulling back on the arm at the wrist, pushing your opponent’s shoulders down on the mat by extending your legs, and extending your hips upward to raise the fulcrum at the same time. In order to keep all this straight in our heads with so much going on, we need to break it down into pieces. Every point of contact you have with your opponent has a purpose. When you are training a technique that uses leverage in one form or another, go through each point of contact with your opponent and ask yourself if this is meant to be a firm (possibly moving) fulcrum, an applied force, or a preventive measure against an escape or counterattack. Even the most complicated techniques boil down to basic components.

Even the rope of steel breaks once overwhelmed with too much tension; how much more flesh and blood? Everybody has a breaking point, so do not push too much.

In the example of the boy and his grandmother, the boy was domesticated to the idea that he must finish all his food, even though that idea wasn't true for him. And as an adult, he adhered to the idea that he should finish his food even if his body is indicating something to the contrary. As a result, he is now also attached to that idea. The difference to understand is this: attachment doesn't always come from domestication, but domestication left unchecked always leads to attachment. Here's what the evolution from domestication to attachment looks like: 1. Domestication. You are domesticated to an idea through interaction with others in the Dream of the Planet. (A grandmother domesticates her grandson to the idea that it's a sin not to finish all the food on his plate.) 2. Self-domestication. Once this idea is lodged inside you and accepted, it becomes a belief. You no longer need an outside domesticator to enforce this idea; you will do it yourself. This is self-domestication in action. (The grandson grows up and habitually finishes all the food on his plate even when he isn't hungry.) 3. Attachment. You are now attached to this belief, and depending on how strong your attachment is, your acceptance of yourself and others is contingent upon fulfillment of the belief. (The grandson feels guilty if he doesn't finish the food on his plate; he admonishes his friends for not finishing their food, and he domesticates his children to the same idea.) As you can see, attachments can often arise from domestication. The irony is that when this happens, you become attached to an idea that you didn't even agree with initially but only adopted because of domestication. The end result is that without awareness, you will adhere to ideas that aren't even true for you (as well as push them on others)! Domestication and attachment work hand in hand to keep you separated from your Authentic Self, lost in the fog and smoke, trapped in the drama of the party. This cycle (domestication, self-domestication, attachment) can continue for generations until you transform into a Master of Self and break the chain. The following exercises will help you begin to identify your own domestications and attachments. Once you have recognized them, you can then decide if you are ready to let them go or not. Noticing Your Domestications Take a moment to look back over your life. What are some ideas that were instilled in you as a child that you later discarded as no longer true for you? These could be ideas about education and career, money and material possessions, politics, religion, or any number of other areas. Remember, the point here isn't to judge or become resentful of those who initially domesticated you to those ideas, but rather to see where domestication occurred and how you broke free. By noticing where you have already spotted and released domestication in your life, you prove to yourself that you have all the power you need inside you to break free again and again.

Coming out of the dark lane, I was blinded by the brilliant sunlight beating down into the principal plaza. The wind whooshed into me, flinging my hair into my eyes, and blinding me further. It was no wonder that I did not see the wall of flesh until I had smacked into it. There was no pathway there, no crevice between the close-pressed bodies. I pushed against them furiously, fighting the hands that shoved back. I heard exclamations of irritation and even pain as I battled my way through, All the same, and all, none were in a language I understood. The faces were a blur of anger and surprise, surrounded by the ever-present red. A young dark brown hair woman scowled at me, and the green and white scarf coiled around her neck looked like a gruesome wound. A child, lifted on a man's shoulders to see over the crowd, grinned down at me, his lips distended over a set of plastic angel fangs. The throng jostled around me, spinning me in the wrong direction. I was glad the clock was so visible, or I would never keep my course straight. All the same and all, both hands on the clock pointed up toward the merciless sun, and, though I shoved viciously against the crowd, I knew I was too late. I was not halfway across. I was not going to make it. I was stupid and slow and human even if I am not always, and we were all going to die because of it. I hoped Olivia would get out. I hoped that she would see me from some dark shadow and know that I had failed, so she could go home to Ray. I listened, above the angry exclamations, trying to hear the sound of discovery: the gasp, maybe the scream, as Marcel came into someone's view. Nevertheless, there was a break in the crowd- I could see a bubble of space ahead. I pushed frantically toward it, not realizing until I bruised my shins against the bricks that there was a wide, square fountain set into the center of the plaza. I was almost crying with relief as I flung my leg over the edge and ran through the knee-deep water. It sprayed all around me as I thrashed my way across the pool. Even in the sun, the wind was glacial, and the wet made the cold painful.

To see the power of kinship, consider that pushing down cousin marriage prevalence from 40 percent to zero is associated with an increase of 40 points on individualism (going from India to the United States, say). Notice that in Figure 6.4A, countries high on KII are always low on individualism, but those low on KII span the full range of individualism. Many of the countries that have both low KII and low individualism are in Latin America. This suggests that breaking down intensive kinship opens the door to developing the full individualism complex, but that other institutions—and perhaps other factors—are necessary to really drive up individualism.

Like a virus, the need for Amy had taken root inside my body, and I felt powerless to stop the inevitable. At some point, being near Amy would push me past the breaking point, and I’d be unable to control making her mine in every sense of the word.

It's about time I start pushing everyone to their breaking point because their best simply isn't good enough for me.

Does It “Really” Need to Be an Email? By this point, you’ve probably figured out that I love email. Well, in spite of my love for email marketing, not every communication needs to be an email. In fact, there are times when emails really aren’t the best solution. So, if not email, what else? Other solutions include: In-App messages like popups, sidebars, site notifications, chat messages, browser or push notifications, desktop notifications, text messages, and even product tours and onboarding flows. Email is great when the user isn’t currently using your product. It’s great to drive them back in, but when they are right there using your product, you can’t expect them to be checking their emails at the same time. Before setting up a new email campaign, ask yourself if email is the best way to achieve your objective and drive the user behavior you seek. Maybe a popup or site notification would be more effective. Users can’t typically unsubscribe from popups, sidebars, site notifications, chat messages, or onboarding flows. They are usually better embedded into your app and more contextual. Because of this, they tend to reach users more directly than email can. That means that they can often be more effective to influence user behaviors. Push notifications, desktop notifications, and text messages still have some novelty to them. They can also reach users in different contexts from email. Although sometimes it’s better to use a different communication type, sometimes combining email with other options is the best way to go. For this reason, it’s important to consider the mix. For example, an email followed on-site by an In-App message, or an onboarding flow followed by an email summing up the process may be more effective than a single email. It will allow you to follow up on user actions, and make it really clear what needs to get done. By breaking down the steps one at a time, there’s more chances for users to learn. At LANDR, we often followed feature launch emails on-site with In-App messages. This helped to keep communications simple and goal-focused (one goal per message). The email was about getting people in the product, while the In-App message was about getting them to engage with the product. This approach allows you to evaluate and optimize each step of the process independently. Automation platforms like Intercom, ActiveCampaign and HubSpot generally allow you to combine messaging types. If your platform doesn’t currently have site messaging or onboarding functionalities, you may have to use multiple tools in conjunction in order to maximize results. This will make it trickier to track pacing, sequencing, and goals but it isn’t impossible. You also need to consider tracking effort when adding new communication types to your mix. As your program becomes more complex, it can be easy to lose track of the overall user experience: Are your users getting spammed? Are you creating a disjointed customer experience? Test things from your users’ perspective. Keep an eye out for social media messages and support requests as you do. In the next chapter we will look at setting up automations to minimize issues and maximize outcomes.

How, you may wonder, did this happen. What, you may ask, pushes an otherwise controlled woman to a point where she feels compelled to break into her best friend’s loft at three a.m. on a Wednesday night in the middle of January, a meat cleaver in her purse, and no plan beyond the solid certainty that her friend must die. What makes a careful and calculated, if psychopathic, woman give in to the call of hot blood spatter and raw id. To be honest— and, really, when have I been anything but—I’m not sure I know, not even now. I sit on my narrow bunk in Bedford Hills and I think on it more than I like to admit. Emma, I thought, had to die so that I could live. It became almost an algebraic formula in its clarity and self-evidence.

She tossed a coin backward, then used it to Push herself slightly up and to the right. She landed on a low stone wall, barely breaking stride as she ran spryly along the wall’s top. Burning pewter enhanced more than muscles—it increased all the body’s physical abilities. Keeping pewter at a low burn gave her a sense of balance that any night burglar would have envied. The wall turned north, and Vin paused at the corner. She fell into a crouch, bare feet and sensitive fingers gripping the chill stone. Her copper on to hide her Allomancy, she flared tin to strain her senses. Stillness. Aspens made insubstantial ranks in the mist, like emaciated skaa standing in their work lines. Estates rolled in the distance—each one walled, manicured, and well guarded. There were far fewer dots of light in this city than there were in Luthadel. Many of the homes were only part-time residences, their masters away visiting some other sliver of the Final Empire. Blue lines suddenly appeared before her—one end of each pointing at her chest, the other disappearing into the mists. Vin immediately jumped to the side, dodging as a pair of coins shot past in the night air, leaving trails in the mist. She flared pewter, landing on the cobbled street beside the wall. Her tin-enhanced ears picked out a scraping sound; then a dark form shot into the sky, a

Of course, Adam was still counting days the old way, as Sunday was the first day of the week, so he was misinforming me as to which day his father actually arrived in Spain, seemingly by accident, by mistake. Perhaps it was a mistake that Adam had confused the European calendar with the Israeli calendar from time to time; perhaps it was not a mistake. Ferran actually arrived the following day, Tuesday, according to the Gregorian calendar and not Monday, when we had all been preparing for his arrival with Martina in vain. I had wanted to introduce her to the old man nicely. However, Tuesday, when he was scheduled to arrive, Mario Larese - Mister Twister - showed up, banging the glass of the store-front door, echoing throughout the entire store and upstairs apartment, as if he was about to break the glass if I did not go down to open it. He was knocking on the plain, large glass of the door with either a lighter or with his metal ring; I don't know which, but it was terrible. I knew Ferran could arrive at any moment, so I told Martina it might be best if she went home to Paola and let me take care of the business. I couldn't ignore Mario, who was almost breaking the glass, seemingly because he had seen my scooter parked in front of the store. I opened the door and he started pushing his way inside, saying, “Let's smoke a joint and drink a coffee.” I replied, “Slow down, cowboy. I've got company, I'm expecting more company, and I just woke up. I have no time now; sorry, Mario.” He kept banging the door because he wanted to smoke somewhere early in the morning, and Canale Vuo was still closed. I was so tempted to slap him. Unintentionally, I let slip that I was expecting Ferran, which only increased his refusal to leave. Theatrical. Dramatic. He wasn't going to get out of my store, my way, my day, my life, my struggle, or my schedule. Meanwhile, the same time, Nico was bugging me on the phone to make sure I delivered a box of 1,000 cones for La Silla because they needed it to make pre-rolled joints for their smokers. They sold 2-3,000 pre-rolled joints a week, ordering two boxes weekly, thus making me waste my time for free. I started to think it had all been planned just to make me lose time every week. They sold 3,000 joints a week and yet couldn't afford more than two boxes of cones to purchase to keep up. Tuesday morning was so urgent for La Silla to get those 1,000 brown cones right then. Just for Nico's 5-euro commission and so he wouldn't be embarrassed in front of his friends at La Silla with his sales performance - no problem. I couldn't kick out Mario, and I didn't want to kick out Martina, who apparently didn't want to leave. I asked them to leave, but Mario was leaning on the kitchen table and unable to look up or turn toward me to meet my gaze. Martina was looking at me angrily. So, I told them both, “OK then, stay here; let the old man inside once he arrives. I have to deliver this box of cones to La Silla right away, but I will be right back. 20 minutes tops.” Adam had also failed to inform me that he had copied a set of keys for his dad at one point, and he had somehow sent them to Israel by mail, I guess. Martina did not need to stay in the store to let Ferran in, but I did not know that. Adam was always secretive and brief with his words, as if it cost him money to say words out of his mouth or dictate to Rachel what to write in an email or what he was supposed to tell me on the phone. I thought that Martina had to stay to let Ferran into the store in case he arrived just when I went to La Mesa to do a favor for Nico. I was on my way back to Urgell from La Silla, when Adam suddenly called me from Amsterdam, screaming on the phone.

Eventually it’s time for bed, so Mack and I walk back to the farmhouse. We don’t say much, but he reaches over to squeeze my hand at one point. I’m not sure why, but I don’t let his go, so we’re holding hands for the rest of the walk back. By the time we reach our pretty guestroom, I’m feeling closer to him than I’ve ever felt to anyone in my entire life. And I’m also holding back tears because it feels so much like I’m about to lose him. He’ll leave in the morning, and I’ll risk my life in this attack. There’s a chance we’ll never see each other again, and even if we do, it won’t be like it’s been in these past two months. Tonight might be our last. Maybe Mack is experiencing something similar. He’s subdued when he finally releases my hand as we stand in our bedroom. They don’t have showers here. They have to pump water manually to fill tubs, and most of the time they use a basin and pitcher of water in rooms to wash up the way they do at New Haven. We get as clean as we can and get ready for bed. I change into a simple knit nightgown while Mack takes off all his clothes. We switch off the lantern on the bedside table and climb into bed. Mack still hasn’t said anything as he pulls me closer and rolls on top. He stares down at me in the dark for a minute before he finally lowers his head so he can kiss me. I kiss him back, wrapping my arms around him and softening my lips. He slides his tongue into my mouth. As our kiss deepens, I move my hands over his body, stroking his smooth scalp, caressing my way down his back, running my fingers over his large frame, his developed muscles, his tight skin. Every part of him is big and strong and solid and warm. Every part of him is perfect for me, exactly what I want to feel under my hands. We kiss for a really long time. His body slowly tenses up, and eventually his erection is poking into me. But he doesn’t rush to the main event. He seems to need this—this intimate, needy kiss—as much as anything else. I need it too. I’m hotly aroused and filled with so much more in my heart when he finally breaks his mouth away, gasping and ducking his head to suck on the pulse in my throat. “Mack!” His name on my lips is a whispered gasp. He makes a guttural sound as he pushes up my nightgown so he can get his mouth on my breasts. He teases and sucks until I’m squirming. I hold on to his head until I can’t take any more. “Mack!” I’m still keeping my voice soft so no one can hear us through the walls. We aren’t in our little cabin right now where it doesn’t matter how loud we get.

the idea of turning Lisa into a human jack o’lantern thrilled me. The hardest part will be breaking through the skull to get out her brains without cutting off my own hand. Can I stab a blade through bones? Sure, I’m strong enough, but it’s the control behind the stab that is required. If I shatter her skull, her head will be one lopsided jack o’lantern. I haven’t made one since my mom died. I’m surprised I still know how to do it. Only this time I won’t be cooking Lisa’s brains. That’s not my sort of delicacy. Blood and flesh fall out of her slacked mouth as I work to get everything out. Once I reach the point where I can, I push her eyeballs out and they fall to the table before rolling off. Oh, well. Chunky Monkey can eat them if she wants. Less I have to dispose of.

I can’t get to Melaina--she doesn’t keep regular rooms at the college. But you could…watch her, follow her maybe. And maybe we should go to the college, follow Neomar or break into his rooms or something.” “Breaking and entering,” Kiernan said wryly. He had been watching me rub my head with a worried expression on his face. “I’m not sure those are the kind of wild oats my parents want me to get rid of, but they’ll do in a pinch.” I laughed, which I think was what he wanted, but as the laughter subsided, he said, “But you’re sure we can’t go to the king and queen? They’ll be able to…do it properly. Haul people in and question them, search Neomar’s and Melaina’s rooms openly.” “We can’t. They’ll think that I’m mad, or bent on revenge, and that I’ve--I don’t know--used my wiles on you to make you believe me.” Kiernan raised an eyebrow. “Your wiles?” I flushed, but pushed on. “The point is, they won’t believe us. It sounds crazy.

A loud clearing of Enrique’s throat tears us apart. Alex looks at me with intense passion. “I have to get back to work,” he says, his breathing ragged. “Oh. Well, sure.” Suddenly embarrassed at our PDA, I step back. “Can I see you later today?” he asks. “My friend Sierra is coming over for dinner.” “The one who looks in her purse a lot?” “Um, yeah.” I need to change the subject or I’ll be tempted to invite him, too. I can see it all now--my mom seething in disgust at Alex and his tattoos. “My cousin Elena is gettin’ married on Sunday. Go with me to the wedding,” he says. I look at the ground. “I can’t have my friends know about us. Or my parents.” “I won’t tell ’em.” “What about people at the wedding? They’ll all see us together.” “Nobody from school will be there. Except my family, and I’ll make sure they keep their mouths shut.” I can’t. Lying and sneaking around has never been my strong point. I push him away. “I can’t think when you’re standing that close.” “Good. Now about that wedding.” God, looking at him makes me want to go. “What time?” “Noon. It’ll be an experience you won’t forget. Trust me. I’ll pick you up at eleven.” “I didn’t say ‘yes’ yet.” “Ah, but you were about to,” he says in his dark, smooth voice. “Why don’t I meet you here at eleven,” I suggest, gesturing to the body shop. If my mom finds out about us, all hell will break loose. He lifts my chin up to face him. “Why aren’t you afraid of bein’ with me?” “Are you kidding? I’m terrified.” I focus on the tattoos running up and down his arms. “I can’t pretend to live a squeaky-clean life.” He holds up my hand so it’s palm against palm with his. Is he thinking about the difference in the color of our skin, his rough fingers against the nail polish on the tips of mine? “In some ways we’re so opposite,” he says. I thread my fingers through his. “Yeah, but in other ways we’re so similar.” That gets a smile out of him, until Enrique clears his throat again. “I’ll meet you here at eleven on Sunday,” I say. Alex backs away, nods, and winks. “This time it’s a date.

Listen, I have to tell you something.” Her drowsy eyes opened. “I don’t want to push you into anything, take your time about me, but you have to know—I feel pretty strongly about monogamy.” Her eyes widened. “You can’t think I’d be with another man! I wasn’t even going to be with you! But there is one thing you have to do for me,” she said. “Anything that makes you happy,” he promised. “I want this to be only between us.” “Sure. Of course. It’s personal. I agree.” “I don’t want anyone around here to know it’s like this between us. I just work for you, that’s all.” He frowned. “We don’t have to share our personal lives with anyone, but we don’t have to hide the fact that we care about each other.” “Yeah, we do, Noah. No one can know about this. About us.” “Ellie, why? Are you embarrassed to find yourself attracted to a man who’s a minister?” She laughed a little bit. “No. But no one would ever believe you seduced me. And you did, Noah. You did and I loved it. Not only are you the sexiest minister alive, you might be the sexiest man alive. But people will think I trapped you. They’ll think I ruined your purity and dirtied you up. And I don’t need that right now.” “Come on, you’re wrong…” “I’m right,” she said. “No matter how much I try to do the right thing, no matter how determined I am to do the right thing, everything that happens ends up being my fault. And when people around here find out you like me…they’re going to think I cast an evil spell on you and made you break your vows.” “Honey, I didn’t take a vow of chastity. I didn’t promise not to love a woman. I never said I wouldn’t have a perfectly normal sex drive. I’m not fifteen, Ellie, I’m thirty-five and I’ve missed passion. Passion and intimacy, two things that are really healthy for a normal man. Don’t argue with a man with seven years of theological training.” “People don’t get that about you like I do. They think of you as different. As a minister. Please, Noah. Let’s just act like I work for you, and that we’re casual friends.” “We can do that, if that’s what you need. Or we could change the way things have been for you. We could be honest without being indiscreet. We could hold hands, you could let me put my arm around your shoulders, smile at you like you’re special. Treat you like the woman of my choice while I enjoy being the man of yours.” “You don’t get it, do you, Noah?” she asked, shaking her head. “Don’t you see how fragile this is? How much hangs in the balance for both of us? At some point—maybe sooner, maybe later—the people here are going to figure me out. They’ll know I come from a dirt-poor background, that the men who gave me my children didn’t marry me, that I was a stripper when you hired me. What if they hate me? What if they treat my kids like trash because of me?” “I won’t let anyone—” “Don’t you see it’s your future in this town, too? What if they ask themselves what kind of minister you could be if you’d choose a woman like me? Oh, Noah,” she said, running her fingers through his thick, dark hair. “We’d get along okay in a bigger town where no one knows us all that well, where I’m not hooked up with the local preacher. But here—you and me? It could ruin us all.” “No,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s not going to be that way.” She smiled at him. “You’re just a fool,” she said. “It usually is that way.” He

Everyone has a breaking point.

Step 2: Work Out WHY You're Procrastinating This can depend on both you and the task. But it's important to understand which of the two is relevant in a given situation, so that you can select the best approach for overcoming your reluctance to get going. One reason is that people find a particular job unpleasant, and try to avoid it because of that. Most jobs have unpleasant or boring aspects to them, and often the best way of dealing with these is to get them over and done with quickly, so that you can focus on the more enjoyable aspects of the job. Another cause is that people are disorganized. Organized people manage to fend off the temptation, because they will have things like prioritized to-do lists and schedules which emphasize how important the piece work is, and identify precisely when it’s due. They’ll also have planned how long a task will take to do, and will have worked back from that point to identify when they need to get started in order to avoid it being late. Organized people are also better placed to avoid procrastination, because they know how to break the work down into manageable “next steps”. Even if you’re organized, you can feel overwhelmed by the task. You may doubt that you have the skills or resources you think you need, so you seek comfort in doing tasks you know you're capable of completing. Unfortunately, the big task isn't going to go away – truly important tasks rarely do. You may also fear success as much as failure. For example, you may think that success will lead to you being swamped with more requests to do this type of task, or that you’ll be pushed to take on things that you feel are beyond you. Surprisingly, perfectionists are often procrastinators, as they can tend to think "I don't have the right skills or resources to do this perfectly now, so I won't do it at all." One final major cause is having underdeveloped decision-making skills. If you simply can’t decide what to do, you’re likely to put off taking action in case you do the wrong thing.

She headed out into the hall and knocked quietly on his door. “Come in!” Megan took a deep breath and stepped inside. “Hey.” Finn looked up from his desk as if startled. “Hi,” he replied, pushing his hands against the thighs of his jeans. He glanced past her at the hallway, but when Megan turned around, she found they were alone. “What’s up?” Megan asked. “You really shouldn’t be in here,” Finn said. Megan’s heart dropped like a stone. “I know your parents are mad, but do you think they really expect us not to talk?” “Yeah…no…I don’t know,” Finn said, turning in his chair. “I just…Don’t you think we should let things calm down a little first?” “Yeah, like that’s ever going to happen in this house,” Megan joked lamely. Finn didn’t laugh. She swallowed against a lump in her throat and looked around uncertainly. She had come in here so that Finn could reassure her and make her feel better like he always did, but the evasive way he was acting was just making her feel worse. “Look, it’s just…being around you is…it’s not easy,” Finn said, looking everywhere but at her. He might as well have thrown cold water in her face. “Oh, well, I’m sorry,” Megan replied, backing out. “I guess that’s easily solved.” “No, Megan, wait,” Finn said. But she was dangerously close to tears and there was no way she was going to break down in front of him. “No, seriously, I’ll go,” Megan said. Finn swallowed and looked like he wanted to say something. For a split second, Megan’s heart dared to hope, but then he turned away and looked down at his notes again. “Yeah…okay,” he said. Finn focused pointedly on his work. This was really happening. Finn really didn’t want to have anything to do with her. Finally, feeling like the biggest idiot on earth, Megan made herself move.

Tell me," he demanded as he pushed me further under the water so he could share it with me too. "Tell me what the look was about," he added so I couldn't use confusion as a stalling tactic again. "It's nothing it's just..." I exhaled loud enough to call it a sigh as I shrugged a shoulder. "I'm... happy." "Really?" he asked, rolling his eyes. "Happy? That's what all the fuss is about? Pretty sure I wouldn't want you to be miserable around me, sweetheart." "It's not that. It's..." I trailed off, uncomfortable. How do you tell someone that you had only known a couple weeks that being around them gave you a soul-deep kind of contentedness? I was pretty sure there was no way to say that without coming off as clingy or batshit crazy. "I make you happy," he guessed, no inflection in his voice pointing at anything but understanding. "I guess that's how I would put it." "And that'd be a problem because," he prompted, reaching past me for a bar of soap and sudsing it up in his hands. When I didn't say anything, he reached out toward me and started soaping up my shoulders, breasts, belly. "Look Maddy, that's the point of being with someone, isn't it? To find some kind of happiness there?" "Yeah, it just seems a little, I don't know... soon." "Because of the break-up or just in general?" That was a good question. Maybe both. "Can I ask you something?" he asked at my silence. "Sure." "We've known each other for weeks. Granted, the physical part of this is new, but we've talked about everything from food and TV to books and politics. How can this feel too soon?" He had a point. "I guess you're right," I admitted as his soapy hand moved lower. "Good, now we got that shit out of the way," he said as his fingers slid between my thighs and up, working soapy circles over my clit until my hands had to slap down on his shoulders to stay upright. So then he made sure I was thoroughly clean. And then we went to bed and he made me dirty all over again. I fell asleep thinking he was right; it wasn't too soon. And while it was smart to be prudent, as Brant yanked me onto his chest and fell asleep with his hand in my hair because he had been absentmindedly stroking it when he passed out, I decided to remember that I couldn't let fear make me ration out my feelings. I wasn't going to sabotage something that made me happy.

Declan had a dozen different moods to fit his desires.  Sometimes he would be relentless; rough and damn near domineering as he pushed the boundaries in his demand to get us both to the breaking point.  Other times he would be playful, teasing.  And then finally he would catch me by surprise with soft tenderness as he worshipped me utterly and whispered things a woman dreamed of hearing from her man.

Incidentally, there's a little historical footnote here, if you're interested. The oil company that was authorized by the Treasury Department under Bush and Clinton to ship oil to the Haitian coup leaders happened to be Texaco. And people of about my age who were attuned to these sorts of things might remember back to the 1930s, when the Roosevelt administration was trying to undermine the Spanish Republic at the time of the Spanish Revolution in 1936 and '37―you'll remember that Texaco also played a role. See, the Western powers were strongly opposed to the Spanish Republican forces at that point during the Spanish Civil War―because the Republican side was aligned with a popular revolution, the anarcho-syndicalist revolution that was breaking out in Spain, and there was a danger that that revolution might take root and spread to other countries. After the anarcho-syndicalist organizations were put down by force, the Western powers didn't care so much anymore [anarcho-syndicalism is a sort of non-Leninist or libertarian socialism]. But while the revolution was still going on in Spain and the Republican forces were at war with General Franco and his Fascist army―who were being actively supported by Hitler and Mussolini, remember―the Western countries and Stalinist Russia all wanted to see the Republican forces just gotten rid of. And one of the ways in which the Roosevelt administration helped to see that they were gotten rid of was through what was called the "Neutrality Act"―you know, we're going to be neutral, we're not going to send any support to either the Republican side or the Fascist side, we're just going to let them fight their own war. Except the "Neutrality Act" was only 50 percent applied in this case. You see, the Fascists were getting all the guns they needed from Germany, but they didn't have enough oil. So therefore the Texaco Oil Company―which happened to be run by an outright Nazi at the time [Captain Thorkild Rieber], something that wasn't so unusual in those days, actually―simply terminated its existing oil contracts with the Spanish Republic and redirected its tankers in mid-ocean to start sending the Fascists the oil they needed, in July 1936. It was all totally illegal, of course, but the Roosevelt administration never pushed the issue. And again, the entire American press at the time was never able to discover it―except the small left-wing press: somehow they were able to find out about it. So if you read the small left-wing press in the United States back in 1937, they were reporting this all the time, but the big American newspapers just have never had the resources to find out about things like this, so they never said a word. I mean, years later people writing diplomatic history sort of mention these facts in the margins―but at the time there was nothing in the mainstream.

Kenzie agreed to meet him at the park in the morning. Early. Linc sat in his car, waiting for her and watching the sun come up. She pulled in less than five minutes later. They ran some laps, and she told him what Jim had said. Then she ran ahead. He lengthened his strides to catch up, concentrating on the running so he could think. She outpaced him several more times. Feeling frisky. She seemed to have bounced back from her near breakdown at the climbing gym over that ugly card. He caught up again and flung himself across an imaginary ribbon. “And the winner is!” “Cheater,” she yelled, laughing. He loped off the track toward the exercise structures and she followed. Linc grabbed the pull-up bar and swung himself up, doing several. “Jim’s not crazy, Kenzie. Five.” The pull-ups hurt his arms, but it felt good. He’d been spending too much time sitting in front of laptops. Kenzie leaned against the metal frame of the structure, looking around absently at the small park. “I guess he was just thinking out loud. I never saw him get that steamed, though.” He let himself down with excruciating slowness and went up again. “Six. You can understand why.” “Yeah, I do.” “Seven.” He went for some fast ones. “Eight. Nine. Ten.” He sucked in a breath, tightening his abs, and let it out with a whoosh. “Going to the media is an idea. I considered it myself. But--eleven--it won’t work for us. Not at this point.” “Don’t forget about Randy Holt. She didn’t want to go public.” “Twelve.” His biceps bulged as he stayed up, swinging a little in midair. He thought he detected a flicker of interest in Kenzie’s eyes. About time. He was killing himself. She swung her arms to warm up. “Are you done showing off?” “Are you impressed yet?” Small smile. Okay, she had a lot on her mind. He wouldn’t push it. Then--Linc almost lost his grip when she walked over and put a hand on his chest. “Don’t forget to breathe,” she said mischievously. Linc gasped. He wasn’t sure whether to drop to the ground and take her in his arms, or lose the challenge. “Thirteen. Fourteen. And…fifteen.” He dropped to the ground with bent knees, more winded than he expected. “Your turn.” Kenzie reached high to grab the bar before he could grab her and did several without breaking a sweat, her ankles crossed. Perfect form. In more ways than one.

Honey, I handed you the world’s worst ad, stomped up and down, and screamed at you. Shouldn’t you be pushing 98 degrees?” I still wasn’t getting it. “Hot?” She paused. “Angry with me? Aren’t you ticked off? Pissed? Something?” She had a point. “You need to break it down every now and then. Stand up for yourself. Somewhere you got the idea that saying what you want is a sin right up there with murder and sour notes, but, honey, you’ve got to get over it. You’re running a business. You can’t make everyone happy. Shouldn’t even want to.” She pointed at me with an inch-long nail. “You have to watch out for you.

An hour later we were pulling into the hospital parking lot. Sparkly and shiny from my hair and makeup job, I had to stop and bend over six times between the car and the front door of the hospital. I literally couldn’t take a step until each contraction ended. Within an hour after checking in, I was writhing on a hospital bed in all-encompassing pain and wishing once again that I’d gone ahead and moved to Chicago. It had become my default response when things got rough in my life: morning sickness? I should have moved to Chicago. Cow manure in my yard? Chicago would have been a better choice. Contractions less than a minute apart? Windy City, come and get me. Finally, I reached my breaking point. It’s an indescribable feeling, the throes of hard labor--that mind-numbing total body cramp whose origin you can’t even begin to wrap your head around. After trying to be strong and tough in front of Marlboro Man, I finally gave up and gripped the bedsheet and clenched my teeth. I groaned and moaned and pushed the nurse button and whimpered to Marlboro Man, “I can’t do this anymore.” When the nurse came into the room moments later, I begged her to put me out of my misery. My salvation arrived five minutes later in the form of an eight-inch needle, and when the medicine hit I nearly began to cry. The relief was indescribably sweet. I was so blissfully pain-free, I fell asleep. And when I woke up confused and disoriented an hour later, a nurse named Heidi was telling me it was time to push. Almost immediately, Dr. Oliver entered the room, fully scrubbed and wearing a mask. “Are you ready, Mama?” Marlboro Man asked, standing near my shoulders as the nurse draped my legs and adjusted the fetal monitor, which was strapped around my middle. I felt like I’d woken up in the middle of a party. But the weirdest party ever--one where the hostess was putting my feet in stirrups. I ordered Marlboro Man to remain north of my belly button as nurses scurried into place. I’d made it clear beforehand: I didn’t want him down there. I wanted him to continue to get to know me the old-fashioned way--and besides, that’s what we were paying the doctor for. “Go ahead and push once for me,” Dr. Oliver said. I did, but only hard enough to ensure that nothing accidental or embarrassing would slip out. I could think of no greater humiliation. “Okay, that’s not going to work at all,” Dr. Oliver scolded. I pushed again. “Ree,” Dr. Oliver said, looking up at me through the space between my legs. “You can do way better than that.” He’d watched me grow up in the ballet company in our town. He’d watched me contort and leap and spin in everything from The Nutcracker to Swan Lake to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He knew I had the fortitude to will a baby from my loins. That’s when Marlboro Man grabbed my hand, as if to impart to me, his sweaty and slightly weary wife, a measure of his strength and endurance. “Come on, honey,” he said. “You can do it.” A few tense moments later, our baby was born. Except it wasn’t a baby boy. It was a seven-pound, twenty-one-inch baby girl. It was the most important moment of my life. And more ways than one, it was a pivotal moment for Marlboro Man.

At one point when I was in the middle of the first season, I asked myself why I would want to watch a conservative Democrat destroy teachers’ unions and have joyless sex with a woman who looks like a very young teenager. I still had not answered the question when Claire pushed things to the next level in a scene so intensely creepy that it might count as the most revolting thing I have ever witnessed on television. A longtime member of the couple’s Secret Service security detail is dying of cancer, and Claire goes to visit him alone. On his deathbed, he reveals that he was always secretly in love with her and thought that Frank wasn’t good enough for her. Her response is almost incomprehensible in its cruelty—she mocks and taunts him for thinking he could ever attain a woman like her, and then puts her hand down his pants and begins to give him a handjob, all the while saying, in true perverse style, “This is what you wanted, right?” Surely Claire doesn’t have to emotionally destroy a man who is dying of cancer—and yet perhaps in a way she does, because she uses it as a way of convincing herself that Frank really is the right man for her. Not only could an average, hardworking, sentimental man never satisfy her, but she would destroy him. By contrast, Frank not only can take her abuse, but actively thrives on it, as she does on his. Few images of marriage as a true partnership of equals are as convincing as this constant power struggle between two perverse creeps. Claire is not the first wife in the “high-quality TV drama” genre to administer a humiliating handjob. In fact, she is not even the first wife to administer a humiliating handjob to a man who is dying of cancer. That distinction belongs to Skyler White of Breaking Bad, who does the honors in the show’s pilot. It is intended as a birthday treat for her husband Walt, who is presumably sexually deprived due to his wife’s advanced pregnancy, and so in contrast to Claire’s, it would count as a generous gesture if not for the fact that Skyler continues to work on her laptop the entire time, barely even acknowledging Walt’s presence in the room. In her own way, Skyler is performing her dominance just as much as Claire was with her cancer patient, but Skyler’s detachment from the act makes it somehow even creepier than Claire’s.

What did I discover during my solo—besides learning to unwrap my energy bar ahead of time? That you ask yourself a lot of questions when you're alone on a bike for that long. One question more than others: Why the heck am I doing this? When I was done, I think I had found the answer: For the satisfaction that comes with pushing your body to the breaking point and conquering the unknown.