Radiator Move Quotes

He tilts his forehead down to rest against mine and pulls me closer. His skin, his whole being radiates heat from being so near the fire, and I close my eyes, soaking in his warmth. I breathe in the smell of snow-dampened leather and smoke and apples, the smell of all those wintry days we shared before the Games. I don't try to move away. Why should I anyway? His voice drops to a whisper. "I love you." That's why.

You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity. Let me tell you about our planet. Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. There's been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later the first multicellular life, then the first complex creatures in the sea, on the land. Then finally the great sweeping ages of animals, the amphibians, the dinosaurs, at last the mammals, each one enduring millions on millions of years, great dynasties of creatures rising, flourishing, dying away -- all this against a background of continuous and violent upheaval. Mountain ranges thrust up, eroded away, cometary impacts, volcano eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving, an endless, constant, violent change, colliding, buckling to make mountains over millions of years. Earth has survived everything in its time. It will certainly survive us. If all the nuclear weapons in the world went off at once and all the plants, all the animals died and the earth was sizzling hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive, somewhere: under the soil, frozen in Arctic ice. Sooner or later, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would spread again. The evolutionary process would begin again. It might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. Of course, it would be very different from what it is now, but the earth would survive our folly, only we would not. If the ozone layer gets thinner, ultraviolet radiation sears the earth, so what? Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It's powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation. Many others will die out. Do you think this is the first time that's happened? Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison, a corrosive glass, like fluorine. When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on earth took care of itself. In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time. A hundred years ago we didn't have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can't imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven't got the humility to try. We've been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we're gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.

This is my favorite place. Buried in you," he murmurs against my skin. "Please, move," I plead. "Slow, Mrs. Grey." He flexes his hips again and pleasure radiates through me. I cup his face and kiss him, consuming him. "Love me. Please, Christian.

I felt a trembling along my skin, a treaveling current that moved up my spine, down my arms, pulsing out from my fingertips. I was practically radiating. The body knows things a long time before the mind catches up to them. I was wondering what my body knew that I didn't.

Not easy when you can't talk, is it?" I grinned. "Well, not easy for you but I could get used to it." He grumbled, but I could see relif in his eyes, like he was glad to see me smile. "SO i was right, wasn't I? It's still youm even in wolf form." He grunted. "No sudden uncontrollable urges to go kill something?" He rolled his eyes. "Hey, you're the one who was worried." I paused. "And i don't smell like dinner, right?" I got a real look for that one. "Just covering all the bases." He gave a rumbling groul, like a chuckle, and settled in, lowering his head to his front paws, gaze on me. I tried to get comfortable, but the ground was ice-cold through his swearshirt, and i was wearing only my new pajamas, a light jacket, and sneakers. Seeing me shiver, he stretched a front leg toward the swearshirt, pawing the edge and snarling when he realized he couldnt grab it. "The lack of opposanle thumbs is going to take some getting used to, huh?" He motioned me closer with his muzzel. When I pretended not to understand, he twisted and gingerly took the hem of the swearshirt between his teeth, lips curled in discust as he tugged it. "Okay, okay. I'm just trying not to croud you." That wasnt the only reason i was uncomfortanle getting too cozy with him now, but he just grunted, again seeming to say it was fine. i moved over beside himm. He shifted, his torso making a partial wind block, the boddy heat from the change still blasting like a furnace. He grunted. "Yes, thats better.thanks. now get some rest." i had no idea what would happen now. i doubted derek did either. he'd been focused on getting through the change. what i did know was that this was only half the process. he had to change back, and he'd need time and rest for that. and how would it happen? did he have to wait until his body was ready, like he did with the change to a wolf? how long would that be?hours?days? Feeling his gaze on me, i forced a smile and pushed back my worries. it would be okat. he could change. that was the important thing. when i relaxed, he shifted closer, fur brushing my hand. i tentatively touched it, feeling the coarse top layer and soft undercoar. he leaned against my hand, as if to sat it was okaym and i buried my hand in his fur, his skin so hot from the change it was like putting my numb hands on a radiator. my cool fingers must have felt just as good, because he closed his eyes and shifte until i was leaning on him. within minutes he was asleep. i closed my eyes, meaning to rest for just a moment, but the next thing i knew, i was waking up, curled on my side, using derek as a pillow. i jumped. he looked over at me. "S-sorry, I didn't mean-" He cut me short with a growl, telling me off for apologizing.

The supermarket shelves have been rearranged. It happened one day without warning. There is agitation and panic in the aisles, dismay in the faces of older shoppers.[…]They scrutinize the small print on packages, wary of a second level of betrayal. The men scan for stamped dates, the women for ingredients. Many have trouble making out the words. Smeared print, ghost images. In the altered shelves, the ambient roar, in the plain and heartless fact of their decline, they try to work their way through confusion. But in the end it doesn’t matter what they see or think they see. The terminals are equipped with holographic scanners, which decode the binary secret of every item, infallibly. This is the language of waves and radiation, or how the dead speak to the living. And this is where we wait together, regardless of our age, our carts stocked with brightly colored goods. A slowly moving line, satisfying, giving us time to glance at the tabloids in the racks. Everything we need that is not food or love is here in the tabloid racks. The tales of the supernatural and the extraterrestrial. The miracle vitamins, the cures for cancer, the remedies for obesity. The cults of the famous and the dead.

How I miss wandering around with old souls, Aimlessly moving from one place to another How I miss all our dreams and our goals And how we've lost ourselves to find each other Seems like a playful game of hide-n-seek But that's how we'll forever play this life Loving and living the truth that we seek Until embraced we find our way to strive Gazing into strangers' eyes to find our soul mates, Knowing we're so much closer than we thought. Our heart keeps the light that forever radiates Through all the darkness, 'til love is taught And yet again we look into the skies, We see the stars, the moon, that light Missing our home beyond the nights Living in love until the end of the fight.

God, everything about him radiated sex, from the strength in his body to the way he moved to the smell of his skin.

The Divine has created this moment in time. It is a very powerful moment, where there is only one way and that way is that you completely let go. Completely let go of what is known, what is safe, and move into the space of beauty.

You must make a choice,” the Goddess said. “Is that my only choice – to choose between men?” I asked. “I want what Mother had!” “Your mother chose two men,” she said with light laughter. “No! She chose independence for her country. She chose power and freedom,” I yelled. Almost as if in response, a pulsating energy moved up from the ground into my bare feet. It thrummed up my body and radiated out in a bright light, first from my toes, then from my fingertips, then the top of my head. “I choose power,” I said. “I choose freedom.

Lila stretches the hem of her tank top over her hips as she moves toward me. When she sits, it's with her thigh melting against mine. Her heat radiates past my jeans to my skin. Every single cell within my body sizzles to life. Play this right, Lincoln. She deserves a man, not a boy.

He was not going to move a muscle, and he was going to read near a radiator, and he would not have to see Serene’s relief that the situation was resolved, and he would not almost get anyone killed. He would not have to try so hard because his father would not notice anything he did, and perhaps he would finally stop feeling cold.

Over the plains of Ethiopia the sun rose as I had not seen it in seven years. A big, cool, empty sky flushed a little above a rim of dark mountains. The landscape 20,000 feet below gathered itself from the dark and showed a pale gleam of grass, a sheen of water. The red deepened and pulsed, radiating streaks of fire. There hung the sun, like a luminous spider's egg, or a white pearl, just below the rim of the mountains. Suddenly it swelled, turned red, roared over the horizon and drove up the sky like a train engine. I knew how far below in the swelling heat the birds were an orchestra in the trees about the villages of mud huts; how the long grass was straightening while dangling locks of dewdrops dwindled and dried; how the people were moving out into the fields about the business of herding and hoeing.

Sometimes Duane imagined that he was the single crewman on a receding starship, already light-years from Earth, unable to turn around, doomed never to return, unable even to reach his destination in a human lifetime, but still connected by this expanding arc of electromagnetic radiation, rising now through the onionlike layers of old radio shows, traveling back in time as he traveled forward in space, listening to voices whose owners had long since died, moving back toward Marconi and then silence.

When your words and actions are unified you radiate a sense of integrity.

I made a choice between you and the King, and I chose you," Loki said. "In the garden, we were alone. I could've knocked you out and thrown you over my shoulder, then taken you back to the King. He would've spared me if I had. "But I didn't." He stepped closer to me, and I could feel the heat radiating from his body. "He told me what he'd do to me if I didn't return you to him, but I couldn't do it." He lifted his other hand, so he held my face in his hands. His skin was warm against mine, and even if he wasn't holding me, I wouldn't have looked away. There was something in his eyes, a longing and warmth, that took my breath away. "Do you understand now?" Loki asked, his voice husky. "I would do it again for you, Wendy. I would go through hell and back for you. Even knowing how much you hate me right now." I was so caught up in the moment I didn't even notice how close the passing SUV had gotten until it squealed to a stop next to us, nearly hitting our Cadillac. Loki moved toward me, and Tove jumped out of the driver's seat. Finn ran around the car and charged at Loki.

If your face is being illuminated by your television or computer screen, then you should increase the illumination in your environment by moving closer to the window or by using filament light bulbs.

He watched her face, and her eyes never shifted; they were with him while she moved out of her clothes and while she slipped his jeans down his legs, stroking his thighs. She unbuttoned his shirt, and all he was aware of was the heat of his own breathing and the warmth radiating from his belly, pulsing between his legs. He was afraid of being lost, so he repeated trail marks to himself: this is my mouth tasting the salt of her brown breasts; this is my voice calling out to her. He eased himself deeper within her and felt the warmth close around him like river sand, softly giving way under foot, then closing firmly around the ankle in cloudy warm water. But he did not get lost, and he smiled at her as she held his hips and pulled him closer. He let the motion carry him, and he could feel the momentum within, at first almost imperceptible, gathering in his belly. When it came, it was the edge of a steep riverbank crumbling under the downpour until suddenly it all broke loose and collapsed into itself.

Take It Easy" That the light stalks your skin, no, that your skin makes it: a radiating hum, jive, a freedom, a beehive packed just as much with honey as does it hazard; also, a balm for where the sting sits, a treaty, country upon which I first laid my claim, but was usurped; where carefully do I move to cross it again. Now here come my lips to it, pink over your body’s good bark. Now here is my mouth, entire. I’m scared of you, baby, it says, scared like a god is of his faithful, and like the faithful. Light -struck. Delighted. Terrorstruck. Come, lift up your gates, your countenance spread like a lily upon me: whip me, I am so whipped. These are my eyes.

By the time we reached the front door of the party house—a total mansion, like Harrison had said—Nathan was far behind us. Well, he’d promised to stay out of our hair. “Wow,” I heard Bailey gasp as the front door swung open for us, though I wasn’t sure if that was her reaction to the freakishly large house or to the drop-dead-gorgeous guy standing in front of us. “Good evening, ladies,” he said, stepping aside to let us enter. Automatically, I found myself standing up taller and sliding my shoulder blades back for optimum cleavage exposure. It was like a flirting reflex. I just wished I wasn’t all sunburned. “Hello to you.” He grinned at me. A cocky, sexy grin. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” he said. He glanced at Bailey then. “Any of us. I’m sure I’d remember those pretty faces.” I swear, Bailey was blushing so hard I could feel the heat radiating from her body. “Oh, you’d remember,” I agreed, tossing back my hair and putting a hand on my hip. “I’m Whi—” “Whitley!” I jumped and spun around involuntarily. Harrison was standing beside me, looking thoroughly delighted. “Hello again, darling. You look gorgeous—and the lack of flip-flops is making my day. Those slingbacks are perfect!” I nodded, glancing over my shoulder at the hot guy, but he’d already moved on and was chatting with a group of kids a few feet away. Goddamn it. “Wesley is just so busy,” Harrison said, following my gaze. “You have to give him credit for being a great host. He talks to everyone. Seems like way too much work to me.

You can always spot a woman in love, that temporary type of lucid beauty… Her eyes are focused and she is gazing inwards… lips curved in the subtlest of smiles… She radiates the world’s unknown, and the aura that shields her makes you move away when you pass her by… You feel that she cannot be accidentally touched.

His skin, his whole being, radiates heat from being so near the fire, and I close my eyes, soaking in his warmth. I breathe in the smell of snow-dampened leather and smoke and apples, the smell of all those wintry days we shared before the Games. I don’t try to move away. Why should I, anyway? His voice drops to a whisper. “I love you.

May Divine Wisdom, Unconditional Love, and Grace move through, around and radiate out from me.

It was never about surrendering to reality and tossing away your dreams. It has always been about sticking to your life vision even in the most terrifying times till it radiates in your reality.

HAZEL WASN’T PROUD OF CRYING. After the tunnel collapsed, she wept and screamed like a two-year-old throwing a tantrum. She couldn’t move the debris that separated her and Leo from the others. If the earth shifted any more, the entire complex might collapse on their heads. Still, she pounded her fists against the stones and yelled curses that would’ve earned her a mouth-washing with lye soap back at St. Agnes Academy. Leo stared at her, wide-eyed and speechless. She wasn’t being fair to him. The last time the two of them had been together, she’d zapped him into her past and shown him Sammy, his great-grandfather—Hazel’s first boyfriend. She’d burdened him with emotional baggage he didn’t need, and left him so dazed they had almost gotten killed by a giant shrimp monster. Now here they were, alone again, while their friends might be dying at the hands of a monster army, and she was throwing a fit. “Sorry.” She wiped her face. “Hey, you know…” Leo shrugged. “I’ve attacked a few rocks in my day.” She swallowed with difficulty. “Frank is…he’s—” “Listen,” Leo said. “Frank Zhang has moves. He’s probably gonna turn into a kangaroo and do some marsupial jujitsu on their ugly faces.” He helped her to her feet. Despite the panic simmering inside her, she knew Leo was right. Frank and the others weren’t helpless. They would find a way to survive. The best thing she and Leo could do was carry on. She studied Leo. His hair had grown out longer and shaggier, and his face was leaner, so he looked less like an imp and more like one of those willowy elves in the fairy tales. The biggest difference was his eyes. They constantly drifted, as if Leo was trying to spot something over the horizon. “Leo, I’m sorry,” she said. He raised an eyebrow. “Okay. For what?” “For…” She gestured around her helplessly. “Everything. For thinking you were Sammy, for leading you on. I mean, I didn’t mean to, but if I did—” “Hey.” He squeezed her hand, though Hazel sensed nothing romantic in the gesture. “Machines are designed to work.” “Uh, what?” “I figure the universe is basically like a machine. I don’t know who made it, if it was the Fates, or the gods, or capital-G God, or whatever. But it chugs along the way it’s supposed to most of the time. Sure, little pieces break and stuff goes haywire once in a while, but mostly…things happen for a reason. Like you and me meeting.” “Leo Valdez,” Hazel marveled, “you’re a philosopher.” “Nah,” he said. “I’m just a mechanic. But I figure my bisabuelo Sammy knew what was what. He let you go, Hazel. My job is to tell you that it’s okay. You and Frank—you’re good together. We’re all going to get through this. I hope you guys get a chance to be happy. Besides, Zhang couldn’t tie his shoes without your help.” “That’s mean,” Hazel chided, but she felt like something was untangling inside her—a knot of tension she’d been carrying for weeks. Leo really had changed. Hazel was starting to think she’d found a good friend. “What happened to you when you were on your own?” she asked. “Who did you meet?” Leo’s eye twitched. “Long story. I’ll tell you sometime, but I’m still waiting to see how it shakes out.” “The universe is a machine,” Hazel said, “so it’ll be fine.” “Hopefully.” “As long as it’s not one of your machines,” Hazel added. “Because your machines never do what they’re supposed to.” “Yeah, ha-ha.” Leo summoned fire into his hand. “Now, which way, Miss Underground?” Hazel scanned the path in front of them. About thirty feet down, the tunnel split into four smaller arteries, each one identical, but the one on the left radiated cold. “That way,” she decided. “It feels the most dangerous.” “I’m sold,” said Leo. They began their descent.

With his back to Neferet, Kalona buried his face in his hands. How could I have ever thought she, or any other woman, could supplant Nyx's place in my heart? I have spent centuries as a broken shell of myself, attempting to fill what was missing within me through violence and lust and power. Nothing! Nothing has worked! He felt her hands on his shoulders. They were soft and warm and seemed to radiate kindness. Gently, ever so gently, she turned him, coaxing Kalona to face her. When he lifted his head his body went very still. Neferet had not followed him. She had not moved. She could not have touched him. Neferet had never touched him with such kindness. But Nyx had.

I used to picture time as a rope you followed along, hand over hand, into the distance, but it's nothing like that. It moves outward but holds everything that's come before. Cut me open and I'm a tree trunk, rings of nostalgia radiating inward. All the years are nested inside me like I'm my own personal one-woman matryoshka doll. I guess that's true for everybody, but then I drive everybody crazy with my nostalgia and happiness. I am bittersweet personified.

I know that he’s watching me with attentive interest while wielding his flogger with casual, yet expert skill. He moves closer. Heat, sexual tension and pent up fury radiate from his body. My Master’s darker nature is fucking scary.

It has become more about identifying the needs I didn’t have access to as a child that may be preventing me from living a wholesome life as an adult. It is more of unlearning and acknowledging so I can move forward. I longed for love and belonging as a child, but all I ever did was just exist in the presence of those who couldn’t offer me the love I so desperately needed. I became an adult who begged for love because I had no clue what healthy love looked like.

An asteroid or comet traveling at cosmic velocities would enter the Earth’s atmosphere at such a speed that the air beneath it couldn’t get out of the way and would be compressed, as in a bicycle pump. As anyone who has used such a pump knows, compressed air grows swiftly hot, and the temperature below it would rise to some 60,000 Kelvin, or ten times the surface temperature of the Sun. In this instant of its arrival in our atmosphere, everything in the meteor’s path—people, houses, factories, cars—would crinkle and vanish like cellophane in a flame. One second after entering the atmosphere, the meteorite would slam into the Earth’s surface, where the people of Manson had a moment before been going about their business. The meteorite itself would vaporize instantly, but the blast would blow out a thousand cubic kilometers of rock, earth, and superheated gases. Every living thing within 150 miles that hadn’t been killed by the heat of entry would now be killed by the blast. Radiating outward at almost the speed of light would be the initial shock wave, sweeping everything before it. For those outside the zone of immediate devastation, the first inkling of catastrophe would be a flash of blinding light—the brightest ever seen by human eyes—followed an instant to a minute or two later by an apocalyptic sight of unimaginable grandeur: a roiling wall of darkness reaching high into the heavens, filling an entire field of view and traveling at thousands of miles an hour. Its approach would be eerily silent since it would be moving far beyond the speed of sound. Anyone in a tall building in Omaha or Des Moines, say, who chanced to look in the right direction would see a bewildering veil of turmoil followed by instantaneous oblivion. Within minutes, over an area stretching from Denver to Detroit and encompassing what had once been Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, the Twin Cities—the whole of the Midwest, in short—nearly every standing thing would be flattened or on fire, and nearly every living thing would be dead. People up to a thousand miles away would be knocked off their feet and sliced or clobbered by a blizzard of flying projectiles. Beyond a thousand miles the devastation from the blast would gradually diminish. But that’s just the initial shockwave. No one can do more than guess what the associated damage would be, other than that it would be brisk and global. The impact would almost certainly set off a chain of devastating earthquakes. Volcanoes across the globe would begin to rumble and spew. Tsunamis would rise up and head devastatingly for distant shores. Within an hour, a cloud of blackness would cover the planet, and burning rock and other debris would be pelting down everywhere, setting much of the planet ablaze. It has been estimated that at least a billion and a half people would be dead by the end of the first day. The massive disturbances to the ionosphere would knock out communications systems everywhere, so survivors would have no idea what was happening elsewhere or where to turn. It would hardly matter. As one commentator has put it, fleeing would mean “selecting a slow death over a quick one. The death toll would be very little affected by any plausible relocation effort, since Earth’s ability to support life would be universally diminished.

They set off. After a few seconds the Luggage got carefully to its feet and started to follow. “Psst!” It turned carefully, little legs moving in a complicated pattern, and appeared to look up. “Is it good, being joinery?” said the tree, anxiously. “Did it hurt?” The Luggage seemed to think about this. Every brass handle, every knothole, radiated extreme concentration. Then it shrugged its lid and waddled away. The tree sighed, and shook a few dead leaves out of its twigs.

Something statuesque is approaching her. It radiates a field of dynamic tension that grows more intense the closer it comes, its shadow lengthening upon the floor. Still, she cannot turn around to see the horror behind her, for at this point she cannot move her body, which is stiff-jointed and rigid. Perhaps she can scream, she thinks, and makes an attempt to do so. But this fails, because by then there is already a firm and tepid hand that has covered her mouth from behind. The fingers on her lips feel like thick, naked crayons.

I let the monster take over. My lips moved and I spoke the words I’d heard before, words that would unlock the ultimate power—words that Alex spoke once before. I didn’t understand how this worked. I also didn’t care. “Θάρρος.” Courage. A shock rippled across my body, followed by a wealth of warmth. Determination poured into my chest. “Δύναµη,” I said. Strength. Another jolt of power hit me, charging me up. The warmth turned to heat, invading my muscles, breaking them down and rebuilding them rapidly. Someone shouted, a high-pitched scream. There was a yell, a rougher and heavier gasp. I kept going as I stepped forward, through the shades circling Atlas. “Απόλυτη εξουσία.” Absolute power. Amber light radiated through the room. Screams pitched higher as every cell in my body hummed with power. Glyphs appeared on my skin, swirling fast. The shades flew backward, revealing a transfixed Atlas. I finished it. “Αήττητο.

When you walk, how can you let go of your old habits of tension and move as an expression of the love you feel you are at depth? At your job, how can you work as the love you truly are? What changes do you need to make in your daily life-rituals so that love can radiate through your every breath, action, and relationship?

There is something vibrantly beautiful, a glow, that radiates from someone who is actively moving towards their goals and dreams. I’m not sure what it is, but I know I love it, I’m attracted to it, and I surround myself with people who have it. The courageous few who dare to radiate this life essence... those are my people.

Tips and Pointers for Building a Spiritual Life from Scratch Pray Meditate Be aware / Stay awake Bow Practice yoga Feel Chant and sing Breathe and smile Relax / Enjoy / Laugh / Play Create / Envision Let go / Forgive / Accept Walk / Exercise / Move Work / Serve / Contribute Listen / Learn / Inquire Consider / Reflect Cultivate oneself / Enhance competencies Cultivate contentment Cultivate flexibility Cultivate friendship and collaboration Open up / Expand / Include Lighten up Dream Celebrate and appreciate Give thanks Evolve Love Share / Give / Receive Walk softly / Live gently Expand / Radiate / Dissolve Simplify Surrender / Trust Be born anew

Dark Energy is poorly understood and it is clear that we are currently moving into exploring the complete electromagnetic spectrum that also includes the study of atmospheric pressure waves, atmospheric voltage effects on the cellular system, and the biological effects of the various forms of atmospheric radiation transmission.

WAS THERE STILL SOMETHING MURMURING? WAS IT still the kind murmuring of Plotius, protecting and kind and strong? oh, Plotius, oh, that it might endure, oh, that it might endure murmuringly, quiet and quieting, welling up from the unfathomable depths within and without, now that the labor was over, now that the labor sufficed, now that nothing need follow, oh, that it might go on forever! and verily it went on, murmuring and murmuring, rolling in softly in endlessness, murmur-wave after murmur-wave, each of them tiny yet all of them radiating in a boundless cycle; it was simply there, no sort of hearkening, no effort whatsoever was needed to hold on to it, indeed this murmurousness was not to be held onto, for it strove onward, mingled with the trickling of the fountain, with the trickling of the waters, merged with them in the vast and colorless might of a rest-bearing stream, itself the thing carried, itself rest, itself a moving stream, softly lapping the keel and sides of the boat with slithering foam.

A couple moved off the dance floor, leaving just enough of a window for us to see clearly, Candace and Thea. My heart skipped at the sight of her. "Magnificent," I whispered. Heather looked at me from the corner of her eye. "What does that mean?" she asked. "She radiates it." I waved at the dance floor. "One way or another, she was meant to be a part of our world.

I knew that the town had been evacuated forever,” wrote Legasov in his memoirs, two years later, “but I couldn’t find the moral strength to tell it to the people. Besides, if we told them that they were leaving forever, it would take them quite a while to pack their bags. The radiation levels were already very dangerous, so we told them it was a temporary move.”172

What else can you do with the law of gravitation? If we look at the moons of Jupiter we can understand everything about the way they move around that planet. Incidentally, there was once a certain difficulty with the moons of Jupiter that is worth remarking on. These satellites were studied very carefully by Rømer, who noticed that the moons sometimes seemed to be ahead of schedule, and sometimes behind. (One can find their schedules by waiting a very long time and finding out how long it takes on the average for the moons to go around.) Now they were ahead when Jupiter was particularly close to the earth and they were behind when Jupiter was farther from the earth. This would have been a very difficult thing to explain according to the law of gravitation—it would have been, in fact, the death of this wonderful theory if there were no other explanation. If a law does not work even in one place where it ought to, it is just wrong. But the reason for this discrepancy was very simple and beautiful: it takes a little while to see the moons of Jupiter because of the time it takes light to travel from Jupiter to the earth. When Jupiter is closer to the earth the time is a little less, and when it is farther from the earth, the time is more. This is why moons appear to be, on the average, a little ahead or a little behind, depending on whether they are closer to or farther from the earth. This phenomenon showed that light does not travel instantaneously, and furnished the first estimate of the speed of light. This was done in 1676.

And soon all the people who had accompanied me through life would be gone, too, and then even the people who had known us, and no one would remain on earth who had ever seen us, and those descended from us perhaps would know stories about us, perhaps once in a while they would pass by buildings where where we had lived and they would mention that we had lived there. And then the stories would fade, and our graves would go untended, and no one would guess what it had been like to wake before dawn in our breath-warmed bedrooms as the radiators clanked and our wives and husbands and children slept. And we would move from the nearer regions of the dead who are remembered into the farther regions of he forgotten, an on past those, into a space as while and big as the sky replicated forever.

Pham Nuwen spent years learning to program/explore. Programming went back to the beginning of time. It was a little like the midden out back of his father’s castle. Where the creek had worn that away, ten meters down, there were the crumpled hulks of machines—flying machines, the peasants said—from the great days of Canberra’s original colonial era. But the castle midden was clean and fresh compared to what lay within the Reprise’s local net. There were programs here that had been written five thousand years ago, before Humankind ever left Earth. The wonder of it—the horror of it, Sura said—was that unlike the useless wrecks of Canberra’s past, these programs still worked! And via a million million circuitous threads of inheritance, many of the oldest programs still ran in the bowels of the Qeng Ho system. Take the Traders’ method of timekeeping. The frame corrections were incredibly complex—and down at the very bottom of it was a little program that ran a counter. Second by second, the Qeng Ho counted from the instant that a human had first set foot on Old Earth’s moon. But if you looked at it still more closely. . .the starting instant was actually some hundred million seconds later, the 0-second of one of Humankind’s first computer operating systems. So behind all the top-level interfaces was layer under layer of support. Some of that software had been designed for wildly different situations. Every so often, the inconsistencies caused fatal accidents. Despite the romance of spaceflight, the most common accidents were simply caused by ancient, misused programs finally getting their revenge. “We should rewrite it all,” said Pham. “It’s been done,” said Sura, not looking up. She was preparing to go off-Watch, and had spent the last four days trying to root a problem out of the coldsleep automation. “It’s been tried,” corrected Bret, just back from the freezers. “But even the top levels of fleet system code are enormous. You and a thousand of your friends would have to work for a century or so to reproduce it.” Trinli grinned evilly. “And guess what—even if you did, by the time you finished, you’d have your own set of inconsistencies. And you still wouldn’t be consistent with all the applications that might be needed now and then.” Sura gave up on her debugging for the moment. “The word for all this is ‘mature programming environment.’ Basically, when hardware performance has been pushed to its final limit, and programmers have had several centuries to code, you reach a point where there is far more signicant code than can be rationalized. The best you can do is understand the overall layering, and know how to search for the oddball tool that may come in handy—take the situation I have here.” She waved at the dependency chart she had been working on. “We are low on working fluid for the coffins. Like a million other things, there was none for sale on dear old Canberra. Well, the obvious thing is to move the coffins near the aft hull, and cool by direct radiation. We don’t have the proper equipment to support this—so lately, I’ve been doing my share of archeology. It seems that five hundred years ago, a similar thing happened after an in-system war at Torma. They hacked together a temperature maintenance package that is precisely what we need.” “Almost precisely.

It’s a strange irony that most people who are truly creative don’t really know where their ideas come from. To be a writer, just like all crafts, is an art form. You can take evening classes in writing at the local library, where you go along every Tuesday night and read out your weekly piece, and that can serve to improve your expertise a little, but to be a Wrong Planet writer you have to first of all be an artist. The art of searching for words radiates from deep inside the writer, and I truly feel that when a true writer is sitting quietly at his desk his movements are beautifully interwoven. His breathing will even come with an effortless grace. The ability to move fluidly in his study in this manner begins with a truly intuitive knowledge, although if the truth were known, there’s a little bit of insanity in the writer that does everyone an awful lot of good.

Lad, the Fish-Suit was one of the Special Forces during Corp Wars. They don't give off much electromagnetic radiation and they are quiet to move about in, if the user chooses. They were the sabotage units. Not much use in a fight, but they'd go in and wreck the enemies capability before the battle even started. More civilians died to them than were collateral damage in any battle," he said. "There was a time when they weren't liked by any side.

I’m sure. I’m completely, entirely, one hundred percent sure.” He tilts his forehead down to rest against mine and pulls me closer. His skin, his whole being, radiates heat from being so near the fire, and I close my eyes, soaking in his warmth. I breathe in the smell of snow-dampened leather and smoke and apples, the smell of all those wintry days we shared before the Games. I don’t try to move away. Why should I, anyway? His voice drops to a whisper. “I love you.

A throbbing ache started to grow in her womb. She wanted more, wanted something... "Rothbury, please," she begged. "Please." And then his fingers were there, delving inside, spreading her moisture up and down and around her opening. Her hips circled and dipped along with his movements. She moaned, saying his name. He groaned, panting along with her. Expertly, he handled her. Rhythmically, sweetly, he tortured her. "Open my trousers," he breathed. She complied. Soon he was freed, his hardness jutting upward, seeking her heat. "Look at me," he bit out through his teeth. As if through a haze, she met his heated, intense gaze. "This is the only time in my life I will ever hurt you." Her brow scrunched and it was on the tip of her tongue to ask him just what exactly he meant, when the tip of his manhood pulsed at the opening of her center. "Hold on," he said, his voice strained. Charlotte gripped his shoulders. Rothbury gripped her hips. Lifting her, he hesitated for a moment. "Do you want it?" She nodded and made some sort of noise, half whimper and half the word "yes." He bent his head to suckle one of her breasts again. For long moments, he held her poised above him as he toyed with her nipples, flicking, lapping, and gently running the bottom row of his teeth against them. When she started to wriggle, he impaled her in one smooth, swift motion. She cried out, nearly surging off of him. "Shh. Shh." He kissed her eyelids, the apples of her cheeks. "Only this time, my angel. Only this time it hurts." He kept very still, waiting for some sort of response from her, she imagined. Where there was once only pleasure, she now felt a stabbing pain. It seemed to radiate around his arousal. Her breathing slowed. This couldn't be it. There had to be more... And then she felt a sort of tickling. She looked down at their joined bodies to find Rothbury using his thumb to flick quickly against a tiny nubbin of flesh hidden in her folds. It felt... wonderful. Like magic, her hips began to move of their own accord. Her breathing increased and the throbbing, damp pleasure returned. She rocked against him. "There you are, Charlotte," he murmured against her throat. "Better?" She nodded shakily, tiny shivers shimmering down her upper body as he nipped at her earlobe. His large hands held her backside tightly against him, controlling, rolling her with him in a primal rhythm.

Who calls the Prince of the Mud?' … The snapping turtle snapped. Its head shot out to maximum extension—Eliot wouldn’t have believed anything that big could move that fast. It was like a Mack truck coming straight at them. As it bit it turned its head on one side, to take them both in one movement. Eliot reacted fast. His reaction was to crouch down and cover his face with his arms. From the relative safety of this position he felt the day grow colder around them, and he heard a crackle, which at first he took for the pier splintering in the turtle’s jaws. But the end didn’t come. 'You DARE?' Janet said. Her voice was loud now—it made the boards vibrate sympathetically under his feet. He looked up at her. She’d gone airborne, floating two feet above the pier, and her clothes were rimmed with frost. She radiated cold; mist sheeted off her skin as it would off dry ice. Her arms were spread wide, and she had an axe in each hand. They were those twin staves she wore on her back, each one now topped with an axe-head of clear ice. The turtle was trapped in mid-lunge. She’d stopped it cold; the swamp was frozen solid around it. Janet had called down winter, and the water of the Northern Marsh was solid ice as far as he could see, cracked and buckled up in waves. The turtle was stuck fast in it. It struggled, its head banging back and forth impotently. 'Jesus,' Eliot said. He stood up out of his defensive crouch. 'Nice one.' 'You DARE?' Janet said again, all imperious power. 'Marvel that you live, Prince of Shit!

Everything we say to one another, we also say to souls absent. We continually speak to the speech that comes after our voice, forever prepare those who would listen. No truth spoken is true simply because words have consequences, because voices move souls and souls move voices, a great radiation. This is why we so readily admit to corpses what we dare not confess to the living. This why only the executioner can speak without care of consequence. Our speech finds freedom only when the speaker is at an end. This

The official record for the fastest manmade object is the Helios 2 probe, which reached about 70 km/s in a close swing around the Sun. But it’s possible the actual holder of that title is a two-ton metal manhole cover. The cover sat atop a shaft at an underground nuclear test site operated by Los Alamos as part of Operation Plumbbob. When the 1-kiloton nuke went off below, the facility effectively became a nuclear potato cannon, giving the cap a gigantic kick. A high-speed camera trained on the lid caught only one frame of it moving upward before it vanished—which means it was moving at a minimum of 66 km/s. The cap was never found. Now, 66 km/s is about six times escape velocity, but contrary to common speculation, it’s unlikely the cap ever reached space. Newton’s impact depth approximation suggests that it was either destroyed completely by impact with the air or slowed and fell back to Earth. When we turn it back on, our reactivated hair dryer box, bobbing in lake water, undergoes a similar process. The heated steam below it expands outward, and as the box rises into the air, the entire surface of the lake turns to steam. The steam, heated to a plasma by the flood of radiation, accelerates the box faster and faster. Photo courtesy of Commander Hadfield Rather than slam into the atmosphere like the manhole cover, the box flies through a bubble of expanding plasma that offers little resistance. It exits the atmosphere and continues away, slowly fading from second sun to dim star. Much of the Northwest Territories is burning, but the Earth has survived.

A week of blue water that grew clearer and more tranquil daily, of sun that grew warmer, radiating the ship and her passengers, filling them with good humour and ease; blue water that caught the sun in a thousand brilliant points, dazzling the eyes as they searched for porpoises and flying fish; clear blue water in the shallows revealing its bed of silver sand and smooth pebble, fathoms down; soft warm shade on deck under the awnings; the ship moved amid unbroken horizons on a vast blue disc of blue, sparkling with sunlight.

Early December saw the first of the great blizzards of that year. The wind howling down out of the Canadian wilds a few hundred miles to the north had screamed over frozen Lake Michigan and hit Hohman, laying on the town great drifts of snow and long, story-high icicles, and sub-zero temperatures where the air cracked and sang. Streetcar wires creaked under caked ice and kids plodded to school through forty-five-mile-an-hour gales, tilting forward like tiny furred radiator ornaments, moving stiffly over the barren, clattering ground.

She sucked in a breath as their gazes clashed and his face altered. She could see the sweat beading the line of his close-cropped dark hair, could feel the heat radiating off his bulky shoulders, and smell the tang of hard work rising from his chest. A work belt clung to his hips. A smattering of hair flecked his gleaming pectorals above the singlet. With his chiselled face, his impressive biceps and long legs, he could have been a pin-up for one of those beefcake calendars. Mr November, with those grey Scorpio eyes watching her every move.

Barbara and I had arrived early, so I got to admire everyone’s entrance. We were seated at tables around a dance floor that had been set up on the lawn behind the house. Barbara and I shared a table with Deborah Kerr and her husband. Deborah, a lovely English redhead, had been brought to Hollywood to play opposite Clark Gable in The Hucksters. Louis B. Mayer needed a cool, refined beauty to replace the enormously popular redhead, Greer Garson, who had married a wealthy oil magnate and retired from the screen in the mid-fifties. Deborah, like her predecessor, had an ultra-ladylike air about her that was misleading. In fact, she was quick, sharp, and very funny. She and Barbara got along like old school chums. Jimmy Stewart was also there with his wife. It was the first time I’d seen him since we’d worked for Hitchcock. It was a treat talking to him, and I felt closer to him than I ever did on the set of Rope. He was so genuinely happy for my success in Strangers on a Train that I was quite moved. Clark Gable arrived late, and it was a star entrance to remember. He stopped for a moment at the top of the steps that led down to the garden. He was alone, tanned, and wearing a white suit. He radiated charisma. He really was the King. The party was elegant. Hot Polynesian hors d’oeuvres were passed around during drinks. Dinner was very French, with consommé madrilène as a first course followed by cold poached salmon and asparagus hollandaise. During dessert, a lemon soufflé, and coffee, the cocktail pianist by the pool, who had been playing through dinner, was discreetly augmented by a rhythm section, and they became a small combo for dancing. The dance floor was set up on the lawn near an open bar, and the whole garden glowed with colored paper lanterns. Later in the evening, I managed a subdued jitterbug with Deborah Kerr, who was much livelier than her cool on-screen image. She had not yet done From Here to Eternity, in which she and Burt Lancaster steamed up the screen with their love scene in the surf. I was, of course, extremely impressed to be there with Hollywood royalty that evening, but as far as parties go, I realized that I had a lot more fun at Gene Kelly’s open houses.

Ionizing radiation takes three principal forms: alpha particles, beta particles, and gamma rays. Alpha particles are relatively large, heavy, and slow moving and cannot penetrate the skin; even a sheet of paper could block their path. But if they do manage to find their way inside the body by other means—if swallowed or inhaled—alpha particles can cause massive chromosomal damage and death. Radon 222, which gathers as a gas in unventilated basements, releases alpha particles into the lungs, where it causes cancer. Polonium 210, a powerful alpha emitter, is one of the carcinogens in cigarette smoke. It was also the poison slipped into the cup of tea that killed former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006. Beta particles are smaller and faster moving than alpha particles and can penetrate more deeply into living tissue, causing visible burns on the skin and lasting genetic damage. A piece of paper won’t provide protection from beta particles, but aluminum foil—or separation by sufficient distance—will. Beyond a range of ten feet, beta particles can cause little damage, but they prove dangerous if ingested in any way. Mistaken by the body for essential elements, beta-emitting radioisotopes can become fatally concentrated in specific organs: strontium 90, a member of the same chemical family as calcium, is retained in the bones; ruthenium is absorbed by the intestine; iodine 131 lodges particularly in the thyroid of children, where it can cause cancer. Gamma rays—high-frequency electromagnetic waves traveling at the speed of light—are the most energetic of all. They can traverse large distances, penetrate anything short of thick pieces of concrete or lead, and destroy electronics. Gamma rays pass straight through a human being without slowing down, smashing through cells like a fusillade of microscopic bullets. Severe exposure to all ionizing radiation results in acute radiation syndrome (ARS), in which the fabric of the human body is unpicked, rearranged, and destroyed at the most minute levels. Symptoms include nausea, vomiting, hemorrhaging, and hair loss, followed by a collapse of the immune system, exhaustion of bone marrow, disintegration of internal organs, and, finally, death.

What about frozen planes, which could be safe from heat-seeking missiles? What about subway turnstiles that were also radiation detectors? What about incredibly long ambulances that connected every building to a hospital? What about parachutes in fanny packs? What about guns with sensors in the handles that could detect if you were angry, and if you were, they wouldn't fire, even if you were a police officer? What about Kevlar overalls? What about skyscrapers made with moving parts, so they could rearrange themselves when they had to, and even open holes in their middles for planes to fly through?

You say respect my elders, but what you mean is respecting my betters, is that not right? Are you so full of your own arrogance that you need me to bow and kowtow to you like some throwback fledgling? Or perhaps we should reinstate the role of concubines in our society. Then you may have the pleasure of claiming me and forcing me to fall to my knees, bowing low in respect of your masculine eminence!” Gideon watched as she did just that, her gown billowing around her as she gracefully kneeled before him, so close to him that her knees touched the tips of his boots. She swept her hands to her sides, bowing her head until her forehead brushed the leather, her hair spilling like reams of heavy silk around his ankles. The Ancient found himself unusually speechless, the strangest sensation creeping through him as he looked down at the exposed nape of her neck, the elegant line of her back. Unable to curb the impulse, Gideon lowered himself into a crouch, reaching beneath the cloak of coffee-colored hair to touch her flushed cheek. The heat of her anger radiated against his touch and he recognized it long before she turned her face up to him. “Does this satisfy you, my lord Gideon?” she whispered fiercely, her eyes flashing like flinted steel and hard jade. Gideon found himself searching her face intently, his eyes roaming over the high, aristocratic curves of her cheekbones, the amazingly full sculpture of her lips, the wide, accusing eyes that lay behind extraordinarily thick lashes. He cupped her chin between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, his fingertips fanning softly over her angrily flushed cheek. “You do enjoy mocking me,” he murmured softly to her, the breath of his words close enough to skim across her face. “No more than you seem to enjoy condescending to me,” she replied, her clipped words coming out on quick, heated breaths. Gideon absorbed this latest venom with a blink of lengthy lashes. They kept their gazes locked, each seemingly waiting for the other to look away. “You have never forgiven me,” he said suddenly, softly. “Forgiven you?” She laughed bitterly. “Gideon, you are not important enough to earn my forgiveness.” “Is your ego so fragile, Legna, that a small slight to it is irreparable?” “Stop talking to me as if I were a temperamental child!” Legna hissed, moving to jerk her head back but finding his grip quite secure. “There was nothing slight about the way you treated me. I will never forget it, and I most certainly will never forget it!

Anyway, no matter how calm one thinks one is when in love, the love in one’s heart is always in unstable equilibrium. The smallest thing can move it into the positive position: one radiates happiness, one is overcome with tenderness, not for the beloved but for those who have set her in a good light, who have kept her away from wicked temptations; one believes oneself safe, and a single word: “Gilberte isn’t coming,” “Mlle Vinteuil has been invited,” is enough to make the planned happiness toward which one was surging crumble away, to make the sun go in, the wind change and the inner storm break against which one day one will no longer be able to stand.

He was the drop-dead-toe-curling-panty-melting-alpha variety. His deep-set green eyes were hypnotic, with ridiculously thick lashes that would’ve looked odd on a guy yet surprisingly looked arresting on him. He had a chiseled jawline, a strong, masculine nose and a sensual mouth that lived to its promise. Physically, he was a ten. But he was so much more than a handsome face. Those olive orbs blazed with obvious intelligence and undeniable confidence.He radiated an intense aura of danger and ruthlessness. A devilish, ‘I-don’t-care-what-people-think-of-me’ air. In her mind’s eye she could imagine him walking in a room full of people and every single one would be compelled to watch his every move.

(IMRT) has an advantage. The newer, high-dose, conformally directed, external-beam techniques for radiation therapy such as IMRT have been in widespread use for less than ten years; IGRT has been around for an even shorter time. However, some reports of long-term success are now emerging. New studies suggest that at ten years, high radiation doses alone can produce PSA control or cure rates in 93 percent of men with low-risk prostate cancer. What about more aggressive prostate cancer? As we discussed in chapter 9, the best treatment regimen for men with intermediate- and high-risk prostate cancer is still a moving target, but it will likely turn out to be a combination of high-dose radiation and short- or long-term hormonal therapy.

He danced well, as if it were natural and joyous in him to dance... Gertrude herself was rather contemptuous of dancing: she had not the slightest inclination towards that accomplishment, and had never learned even a Roger de Coverley... Therefore the dusky, golden softness of this man's sensuous flame of life, that flowed from off his flesh like the flame from a candle, not baffled and gripped into incandescence by thought and spirit as her life was, seemed to her something wonderful, beyond her. He came and bowed above her. A warmth radiated through her as if she had drunk wine. "Now do come and have this one wi' me," he said, caressively. "It's easy, you know. I'm pining to see you dance." She had told him before she could not dance. She glanced at his humility, and smiled. Her smile was very beautiful. It moved the man so that he forgot everything. "No, I won't dance," she said softly. Her words came clean and ringing. Not knowing what he was doing - he often did the right thing, by instinct - he sat beside her, inclining reverentially. "But you mustn't miss your dance," she reproved. "Nay, I don't want to dance that - it's not one as I care about." "Yet you invited me to it." He laughed very heartily at this. "I never thought o' that. Tha'rt not long in taking the curl out of me." It was her turn to laugh quickly. "You don't look as if you'd come much uncurled," she said. "I'm a pig's tail, I curl because I canna help it," he laughed - rather boisterously.

On the cold winter afternoon of 2 December 1942, in a disused doubles squash court under the stands of the University of Chicago football stadium, the Nobel laureate physicist Enrico Fermi, a refugee from Fascist Italy, calmly initiated the world’s first controlled nuclear-fission chain reaction. Other than hand-operated cadmium control rods, nothing visibly moved in the garage-sized graphite and natural uranium assembly Fermi and his crew had stacked up by hand over the preceding two months. (Fermi called the assembly a “pile” in amused reference to its stacked arrangement.) The reactor required no radiation shielding. The energy it produced by splitting—“fissioning”—uranium atoms, held to a mere 200 watts, was not even enough to warm the unheated court.

If, uh, Luce wants to get out, someone's gonna have to help her down from the window." She drummed her fingers on the table, looking sheepish. "I made a library book barricade near the entrance in case any of the Sword & Cross-eyeds felt inclined to disrupt us." "Dibs." Cam already had his arm slipped through the crook of Luce's elbow. She started to argue, but none of the other angels seemed to think it was a bad idea. Daniel didn't even notice. Near the back exit, Shelby and Miles both mouthed Be careful to Luce with varying degrees of fierceness. Cam walked her to the window, radiating warmth with his smile. He slid the glass pane up and together they looked out at the campus where they'd met, where they'd grown close, where he'd tricked her into kissing him. They weren't all bad memories... He hopped through the window first, landing smoothly on the ledge, and he held out a hand for hers. "Milady." His grip was strong and it made her feel tiny and weightless as Cam drifted down from the ledge, two stories in two seconds. His wings were concealed, but he still moved as gracefully as if he were flying. They landed softly on the dewy grass. "I take it you don't want my company," he said. "At the cemetery-not, you know, in general." "Right. No, thanks." He looked away and reached into his pocket, pulled out a tiny silver bell. It looked ancient, with Hebrew writing on it. He handed it to her. "Just ring when you want a lift back up." "Cam," Luce said. "What is my role in all of this?" Cam reached out to touch her cheek, then seemed to think better of it. His hand hovered in the air. "Daniel's right. It isn't our place to tell you." He didn't wait for her response-just bent his knees and soared off the ground. He didn't even look back.

We grasp external space through our bodily situation. A "corporeal or postural schema" gives us at every moment a global, practical, and implicit notion of the relation between our body and things, of our hold on them. A system of possible movements, or "motor projects* radiates from us to our environment. Our body is not in space like things; it inhabits or haunts space. It applies itself to space like a hand to an instrument, and when we wish to move about we do not move the body as we move an object. We transport it without instruments as if by magic, since it is ours and because through it we have direct access to space. For us the body is much more than an instrument or a means; it is our expression in the world, the visible form of our intentions. Even our most secret affective movements, those most deeply tied to the humoral infrastructure, help to shape our perception of things.

Although Daisy was the mildest-tempered of all the Bowmans, she was by no means a coward. And she would not accept defeat without a fight. “You’re forcing me to take desperate measures,” she said. His reply was very soft. “There’s nothing you can do.” He had left her no choice. Daisy turned the key in the lock and carefully withdrew it. The decisive click was abnormally loud in the silence of the room. Calmly Daisy tugged the top edge of her bodice away from her chest. She held the key above the narrow gap. Matthew’s eyes widened as he understood what she intended. “You wouldn’t.” As he started around the dresser, Daisy dropped the key into her bodice, making certain it slipped beneath her corset. She sucked in her stomach and midriff until she felt the cold metal slide to her navel. “Damn it!” Matthew reached her with startling speed. He reached out to touch her, then jerked his hands back as if he had just encountered open flame. “Take it out,” he commanded, his face dark with outrage. “I can’t.” “I mean it, Daisy!” “It’s fallen too far down. I’ll have to take my dress off.” It was obvious he wanted to kill her. But she could also feel the force of his longing. His lungs were working like bellows, and scorching heat radiated from his body. His whisper contained the ferocity of a roar. “Don’t do this to me.” Daisy waited patiently. The next move was his. He turned his back to her, the seams of his coat straining over bunched muscles. His fists clenched as he struggled to master himself. He took a shuddering breath, and another, and when he spoke his voice sounded thick, as if he had just awakened from a heavy sleep. “Take off your gown.” Trying not to antagonize him any more than was necessary, Daisy replied in an apologetic tone. “I can’t do it by myself. It buttons up the back.” Matthew said something in a muffled voice that sounded very foul. After an eternity of silence he turned to face her. His jaw could have been cast in iron. “I’m not going to fall apart that easily. I can resist you, Daisy. I’ve had years of practice. Turn around.” Daisy obeyed. As she bent her head forward, she could actually feel his gaze travel over the endless row of pearl buttons. “How do you ever get undressed?” he muttered. “I’ve never seen so many blasted buttons on one garment.” “It’s fashionable.” “It’s ridiculous.” “You can send a letter of protest to Godey’s Lady’s Book,” she suggested. Giving a scornful snort, Matthew began on the top button. He tried to unfasten it while avoiding contact with her body. “It helps if you slide your fingers beneath the placket,” Daisy said. “And then you can pop the button through the—” “Quiet,” he snapped. She closed her mouth.

For starters, of the four so-called weapons of mass destruction, three are far less massively destructive than good old-fashioned explosives.272 Radiological or “dirty” bombs, which are conventional explosives wrapped in radioactive material (obtained, for example, from medical waste), would yield only minor and short-lived elevations of radiation, comparable to moving to a city at a higher altitude. Chemical weapons, unless they are released in an enclosed space like a subway (where they would still not do as much damage as conventional explosives), dissipate quickly, drift in the wind, and are broken down by sunlight. (Recall that poison gas was responsible for a tiny fraction of the casualties in World War I.) Biological weapons capable of causing epidemics would be prohibitively expensive to develop and deploy, as well as dangerous to the typically bungling amateur labs that would develop them.

That night, I took a while falling asleep and when I did, I had a strange dream. She was sitting in my rocking chair and rocking herself, her dead eyes fixed on me. I lay on my bed, paralysed with fear, unable to move, unable to scream, my limbs refusing to move to my command. The room was suddenly freezing cold, the heater had probably stopped working in the night because the electricity supply had been cut and the inverter too had run out. At one point, I was uncertain whether I was dreaming or awake, or in that strange space between dreaming and wakefulness, where the soul wanders out of the body and explores other dimensions. What I knew was that I was chilled to the bones, chilled in a way that made it impossible for me to move myself, to lever myself to a sitting position in order to switch the bedside lamp on and check whether this was really happening. I could hear her in my head. Her voice was faint, feathery, and sibilant, as if she was whispering through a curtain of rain. Her words were indistinct, she called my name, she said words that pierced through my ears, words that meshed into ice slivers in my brain and when I thought finally that I would freeze to death an ice cold tiny body climbed into the quilt with me, putting frigidly chilly arms around me, and whispered, ‘Mother, I’m cold.’ Icicles shot up my spine, and I sat up, bolt upright in my bed, feeling the covers fall from me and a small indent in the mattress where something had been, a moment ago. There was a sudden click, the red light of the heater lit up, the bed and blanket warmer began radiating life-giving heat again and I felt myself thaw out, emerge from the scary limbo which marks one’s descent into another dimension, and the shadow faded out from the rocking chair right in front of me into complete transparency and the icy presence in the bed faded away to nothingness.

After a few moments of silence, he said, "Why don't you come over here? More comfortable than the chair. Warmer, too, closer to the radiator." "I'm fine." "Hard to talk to you over there, across the room." He moved down to the end of the couch, though there'd already been plenty of room. He put his arm along the back. He tried for a smile and didn't really manage it, but my heart still did a little flip. He’s sorry, Chloe. He really is a sweet guy. Don’t be a bitch about this. And don’t screw it up. Just go over there. Give him a chance and, in no time, you’ll forget everything else. And that’s exactly why I stayed in my chair. I didn’t want to forget everything else, or the next thing I knew, he’d be back on that roof, putting his life in danger. “You don’t get to do this,” I said finally. “Do what?” He asked the question innocently enough, but his gaze dipped slightly. “I”m sorry. That’s what I’m trying to say, Chloe. That I’m sorry.” “For what?” He looked up, confused. “Making you mad.”

A few days later, from a wall along the river, Martha Gellhorn watched the Soviet troops move on. ‘The army came in like a flood; it had no special form, there were no orders given. It came and rolled over the stone quays and out onto the roads like water rising, like ants, like locusts. What was moving along there was not so much an army, but a whole world.’ Many of the soldiers were wearing medals from the Battle of Stalingrad, and the entire group had fought its way at least 4,000 kilometres to the west in the last few years, most of it on foot. The trucks were kept rolling with impromptu repairs, the countless female soldiers looked like professional boxers, the sway-backed horses were driven along as though by Ben Hur himself, there seemed to be neither order nor plan, but according to Gellhorn it was impossible ‘to describe the sense of power radiating from this chaos of soldiers and broken-down equipment’. And she thought how sorry the Germans must be that they had ever started a war with the Russians.

He told me to stay away from you.” Strong hands roamed her back in the most comforting fashion. “You should have listened.” Rose raised her face to look at him. “But then I would not have known what it was to be truly happy.” Grey’s eyes widened, and for a moment he looked young and vulnerable. “Don’t say that. I’ve made you miserable.” She smiled sadly. “True, but those nights with you at Saint’s Row? That was happiness for me. The most I’ve ever known.” His mouth opened and she pressed her fingers again his lips to close them. “You don’t have to say anything. I already know it’s not what I want to hear.” Grey frowned, and reached up to move her hand from his face. He held her fingers within his. He gave off more heat than the fire she’d fried herself in front of earlier. Heat that went straight to her bones, right to the very center of her being, radiating out into her limbs. There was nothing seductive about their embrace and yet she ached inside, that wet and willing part of herself desperate to take him inside once more. She wanted to claim him, mark him. Ruin him for anyone else. “I was happy too,” he said softly. So softly she wouldn’t have known it was him who spoke were she not watching his beautiful lips as they formed the words. “God help me, you make me forget every vow and promise I’ve ever made.” Heart pounding, Rose didn’t resist as he dropped her hand to thread his fingers in her hair, pressing against her scalp. “You make me feel like someone else,” he told her gruffly. “A good man. A worthy man, and not a selfish bastard too corrupted to ever be loved.” Her eyes burned, but Rose managed to hold the tears at bay. She bit her lip, staring at him, she knew, with her heart in her eyes. She didn’t care. “You are a good man,” she whispered. “The best I know.” Who else would cut himself off from almost all contact with people simply to keep himself from returning to a way of life he wanted to leave behind? “You shouldn’t say things like that.” “Why not? I believe them.” “Because when you say them, I want to believe them.” And then he lowered his head and captured her mouth with his own.

Hunter filled the opening in the privacy curtains. He wore green scrubs like the doctors and nurses who had scraped me off the pavement. For a split second I mistook him for an adorable doctor who looked a lot like Hunter. I knew it was Hunter when he gaped at me with a mixture of outrage and horror, his face pale, and demanded, “What did you do?” “Crossed the street,” I said. “Badly.” Wincing, I eased up from the gurney, putting my weight on my hand and my good hip. Only a few minutes had passed since they had brought me in, ascertained I wasn’t dying, and dumped me here. I still felt very shaky from the shock of being hit. But I didn’t want to face Hunter lying down. In two steps he bent over me and wrapped his arms around me. He was careful not to press on my hospital gown low against my back where the road rash was, but his touch on my shoulders radiated pain to the raw parts. I winced again. “Oh, God. I’m sorry.” He let me go but hovered over me, placing his big hands on my shoulder blades. He was so close that the air felt hot between us. “What did you hurt?” “This is just where I skidded across the road.” I gestured behind my back and then flinched at the sting in my skin as I moved my arm. “How far down does it go?” My back felt cold as he lifted on flap of my paper gown and looked. I kept my head down, my red cheeks hidden. He was peering at my back where my skin was missing. What could be sexier? Even if the circumstances had been happier, I was wearing no makeup and I was sure my hair was matted from my scarf. There was no reason for my blood to heat as if we were on a date instead of a gurney. But my body did not listen to logic when it came to Hunter. He was no examining my wound. He was captivated by the sight of my lovely and unblemished bottom. I was a novelist. I could dream, couldn’t I? Lightly I asked, “Are you asking whether I have gravel embedded in my ass? By the grace of God, no.” Hunter let my gown go and stood up “The doc said the car hit your hip,” he insisted. “Is it broken?” I rolled on my side to face him. “It really hurts,” I said. “If it were broken, I think it would hurt worse.” He nodded. “When I broke my ribs, I couldn’t breathe.” “That’s because your ribs punctured your lung.” He pointed at me. “True.” Then he cocked his head to one side, blond hair falling into his eyes. “I’m surprised you remember that.

He continued to move forward, skirting a pocket of radiation that had not died in the four years since last he had come this way. They came upon a place where the sands were fused into a glassy sea, and he slowed as he began its passage, peering ahead after the craters and chasms it contained. Three more rockfalls assailed him before the heavens split themselves open and revealed a bright-blue light, edged with violet. The dark curtains rolled back toward the Poles, and the roaring and the gunfire reports diminished. A lavender glow remained in the north, and a green sun dipped toward the horizon at his back. They had ridden it out, and he killed the infras, pushed back his goggles, and switched on the normal night lamps. The desert would be bad enough, all by itself. Something big and batlike swooped through the tunnel of his lights and was gone. He ignored its passage. Five minutes later it made a second pass, this time much closer, and he fired a magnesium flare. A black shape, perhaps forty feet across, was illuminated, and he gave it two five-second bursts from the fifty-calibers, and it fell to the ground and did not return again. To the squares, this was Damnation Alley. To Hell Tanner, this was still the parking lot.

Once again, he was deducing a theory from principles and postulates, not trying to explain the empirical data that experimental physicists studying cathode rays had begun to gather about the relation of mass to the velocity of particles. Coupling Maxwell’s theory with the relativity theory, he began (not surprisingly) with a thought experiment. He calculated the properties of two light pulses emitted in opposite directions by a body at rest. He then calculated the properties of these light pulses when observed from a moving frame of reference. From this he came up with equations regarding the relationship between speed and mass. The result was an elegant conclusion: mass and energy are different manifestations of the same thing. There is a fundamental interchangeability between the two. As he put it in his paper, “The mass of a body is a measure of its energy content.” The formula he used to describe this relationship was also strikingly simple: “If a body emits the energy L in the form of radiation, its mass decreases by L/V 2.” Or, to express the same equation in a different manner: L=mV 2. Einstein used the letter L to represent energy until 1912, when he crossed it out in a manuscript and replaced it with the more common E. He also used V to represent the velocity of light, before changing to the more common c. So, using the letters that soon became standard, Einstein had come up with his memorable equation: E=mc2

Radioactive reactor fuel and graphite lay everywhere. Part of the roof had collapsed into Unit 4’s section of the turbine hall, setting turbine 7 on fire and breaking an oil pipe, which spread the fire still further and set the hall’s roof alight. Falling debris had broken the pressure valve on a feed pump, which was gushing out boiling, radioactive water.135 Men and women rushed past chunks of uranium fuel as they battled to contain the blaze, isolate electrical systems, and manually open oil-drain and cooling-water valves. Many of these brave souls later died, unaware they had been running among pieces of reactor fuel. For their part, Akimov and Toptunov stayed at the plant after the morning shift relieved them from duty at 6am, choosing to join the desperate effort to salvage the situation. The pair decided water flow to the reactor must be blocked by a closed valve somewhere, so they went together to the half-destroyed feedwater room, where they opened valves on the two feedwater lines. Next, they moved to another room, where they stood knee-deep in a highly radioactive mixture of fuel and water for hours, turning half-submerged valves by hand until the radiation drained their strength and they were evacuated to Pripyat’s hospital.136 Their noble efforts were in vain. The water lines had been destroyed along with the reactor - they were opening valves to nowhere - yet still the control room operators continued redirecting water towards the reactor even six hours after the explosion.

else can you do with the law of gravitation? If we look at the moons of Jupiter we can understand everything about the way they move around that planet. Incidentally, there was once a certain difficulty with the moons of Jupiter that is worth remarking on. These satellites were studied very carefully by Rømer, who noticed that the moons sometimes seemed to be ahead of schedule, and sometimes behind. (One can find their schedules by waiting a very long time and finding out how long it takes on the average for the moons to go around.) Now they were ahead when Jupiter was particularly close to the earth and they were behind when Jupiter was farther from the earth. This would have been a very difficult thing to explain according to the law of gravitation—it would have been, in fact, the death of this wonderful theory if there were no other explanation. If a law does not work even in one place where it ought to, it is just wrong. But the reason for this discrepancy was very simple and beautiful: it takes a little while to see the moons of Jupiter because of the time it takes light to travel from Jupiter to the earth. When Jupiter is closer to the earth the time is a little less, and when it is farther from the earth, the time is more. This is why moons appear to be, on the average, a little ahead or a little behind, depending on whether they are closer to or farther from the earth. This phenomenon showed that light does not travel instantaneously, and furnished the first estimate of the speed of light. This was done in 1676.

I look at you and know what a miracle you are. The feel of your skin, soft and inviting, the way you move, like water flowing, the brush of your hair like silk, the feel of your body surrounding mine, completing me, giving me the strength I need to continue a task that seems so hopeless, but so necessary. I look at the way you are made, so beautiful, your body so perfect, made for mine.” Raven stirred restlessly, but his hands held her captive, tilting her chin so that she had no choice but to meet his black eyes. “But it is not your body that holds me, Raven, not your flawless skin or the perfection of the combination of our bodies when we come together. It is when I merge with you and see who you really are that I realize what a miracle really is. I can tell you who you are. You are compassion. You are gentleness. You are a woman who is so courageous you are willing to risk your life for complete strangers. You are a woman willing to use a gift that causes you great pain for the benefit of others. There is no hesitation in your giving, it is who you are. There is such a light in you, it shines through your eyes and radiates through your skin, so that anyone seeing you can easily see your goodness.” Raven could only stare at him helplessly, lost in his mesmerizing eyes. Mikhail took her hand, pressed a kiss in the exact center of her palm, slipped her hand beneath his shirt, and held it over his steadily beating heart. “Look beyond my skin, Raven. Look into my heart and soul. Merge your mind with mine, see me for what I am. Know me for who I am.

He opened an eye and smiled lazily at me. 'That willow's singing always puts me to sleep.' 'The what of what?' I said, propping myself on my elbows to stare at the tree above us.' Tamlin pointed toward the willow. The branches sighed as they moved in the breeze. 'It sings.' 'I suppose it sings war-camp limericks, too?' He smiled and half sat up, twisting to look at me. 'You're human,' he said and I rolled my eyes. 'Your senses are still sealed off from everything.' I made a face. 'Just another of my many shortcomings.' But the word- shortcomings- had somehow stopped finding its mark. He plucked a strand of grass from my hair. Heat radiated from my face as his fingers grazed my cheek. 'I could make you able to see it,' he said. His fingers lingered at the end of my braid, twirling the curl of hair around. 'See my world- hear it, smell it.' My breathing became shallow as he sat up. 'Taste it.' His eyes flicked to the fading bruise on my neck. 'How?' I asked, heat blooming as he crouched before me. 'Every gift comes with a price.' I frowned, and he grinned. 'A kiss.' 'Absolutely not!' But my blood raced, and I had to clench my hands in the grass to keep from touching him. 'Don't you think it puts me at a disadvantage to not be able to see all this?' 'I'm one of the High Fae- we don't give anything without gaining something from it.' To my own surprise, I said, 'Fine.' He blinked, probably expecting me to have fought a little harder. I hid my smile and sat up so that I faced him, our knees touching as we knelt in the grass. I licked my lips, my heart fluttering so quickly it felt as if I had a hummingbird inside my chest. 'Close your eyes,' he said, and I obeyed, my fingers grappling onto the grass. The birds chattered, and the willow branches sighed. The grass crunched as Tamlin rose up on his knees. I braced myself at the brush of his mouth on one of my eyelids, then on the other. He pulled away, and I was left breathless, the kisses still lingering on my skin.

Fanning my arms to the side, I draw my pointe shoe forward. As I make my way towards the sea, more twinkles of music unfurl with each step, adding to the present melody. I take a breath, mustering the courage to walk on water. An aquamarine ripple flecked with golden stardust flickers to life beneath me, glowing brightly. I drag my other foot forward. The ocean sparkles, as if accepting the magic I offer. When I find comfort on the water, I relevé--- bringing myself onto pointe. My arms extend in a port de bras, and I begin a series of quick bourrée steps. A ribbon of stardust unravels from my feet, kissing the ocean with that glittering aqua glow. I embrace the beauty I've created, tilting into an arabesque. When I send my arm into the sky, the night illuminates. Stars explode like a shimmering tapestry woven from my body. I smile--- proudly owning the stage--- or in this case, the sea. I ignite the ocean with a piqué manège before leaping into a grand jeté, sending shooting stars as I fly. When I land, I fall into a series of chaîné turns before transitioning into more bourrée steps. Every move leads me closer and closer to Damien. The emptiness between us disappears as I leap into his arms. He lifts me towards the sky, moonlight showering us, before I fall into a fish dive--- my face towards the sea and my legs swept into the air. I glide my fingertips through the water, painting even more color into the night. The ocean radiates with undernotes of jade and lavender, shimmers of bright cyan and pearl. He gently places me down, guiding me into a pirouette. I tether my vision to his as the symphony of the sea blooms into a crescendo. Together, we burst into an allegro--- our own medley of fast, brisk movement. I surrender to his familiar hands around my waist, feeling weightless as he lifts me, as if I'm becoming an angel myself. Damien gives me wings, and I fly across the ocean. The once-black waves have transformed entirely. Plumes of stardust swirl like milk in water, feathering out into a soft iridescence.

The knowledge of death came to me that night, from the dying that engulfs the world. I saw how we live toward death, how the swaying golden wheat sinks together under the scythe of the reaper, like a smooth wave on the sea-beach. He who abides in common life becomes aware of death with fear. Thus the fear of death drives him towards singleness. He does not live there, but he becomes aware of life and is happy, since in singleness he is one who becomes, and has overcome death. He overcomes death through overcoming common life. He does not live his individual being, since he is not what he is, but what he becomes. One who becomes grows aware of life, whereas one who simply exists never will, since he is in the midst of life. He needs the heights and singleness to become aware of life. But in life he becomes aware of death. And it is good that you become aware of collective death, since then you know why your singleness and your heights are good. Your heights are like the moon that luminously wanders alone and through the night looks eternally clear. Sometimes it covers itself and then your are totally in the darkness of the earth, but time and again it fills itself out with light. The death of the earth is foreign to it. Motionless and clear, it sees the life of the earth from afar, without enveloping haze and streaming oceans. Its unchanging form has been solid from eternity. It is the solitary clear light of the night, the individual being, and the near fragment of eternity. From there you look out, cold, motionless, and radiating. With otherworldly silvery light and green twilights, you pour out into the distant horror. You see it but your gaze is clear and cold. Your hands are red from living blood, but the moonlight of your gaze is motionless. It is the life blood of your brother, yes, it is your own blood, but your gaze remains luminous and embraces the entire horror and the earth’s round. Your gaze rests on silvery seas, on snowy peaks, on blue valleys, and you do not hear the groaning and howling of the human animal. The moon is dead. Your soul went to the moon, to the preserver of souls. Thus the soul moved toward death. I went into the inner death and saw that outer dying is better than inner death. And I decided to die outside and to live within. For that reason I turned away and sought the place of the inner life.

Archangel Raphael This is the realm of healing Love. As natural healers from the heart, you who carry this realm innately project blue healing rays through your hands. As a Raphaelite, the way your Soul emanates its gifts is through this healing energy. You don’t need to do anything outwardly for healing Love to be radiated to others. Raphaelites have a tendency to overexert this healing influence unnecessarily. It works on the level of being, not doing. In essence, healing naturally occurs wherever the frequency of Love is present. You Raphaelites can overextend yourselves based on your feeling that everything needs healing, feeling that it’s your job to bring that healing Love wherever it is lacking. That is an endless, exhausting, fruitless task. Love is the same energy as life force. You are here to help us to return to the natural state of wholeness through the power of healing Love. You are always present with understanding and care. You are loving individuals who have a tendency to deplete yourselves by attempting to fill the seemingly endless needs of others. Your challenge is to discern who is part of your Soul plan to extend your energy toward and how to do it in a way that does not leave you depleted. You are here to show people that Love is an infinite commodity universally available. It is not yours to personally give to others. When a Raphaelite feels the need to personally give the divine Love they inherently feel connected to, to another, as though it belongs solely to them, it can become a caretaking exchange, which is disempowering to both people. This caretaking level of love is different than the frequency of divine Love. Healing as Love is not meant to be at the level of caretaking. It is not for you to say, “I’ll give all I have to you, because it feels so natural to do so, and it doesn’t matter if I get anything in return.” This state can lead to the expectation for others that you are here to fill their needs for Love. The Raphaelite is here to remind us that divine Love is the healing force moving through everyone. You must visualize or feel an umbilical cord from your heart to the source of divine Love. This is how Love, in fact, feeds us all. The channel from our Creator to our heart is filled with divine Love. When we feel thanksgiving for the eternal presence of Love, it ignites the miracle of healing that hasn’t held a place for Love. We can co-create as Love with those around us freely and appropriately from this place and this place alone. Remember, healer, to heal yourself first in this way and you will have much to give and will be rewarded joyously in return for that gift. The Raphael realm can be tapped into any time by anyone requesting the healing balm of Love that is vital to our life nourishment. We are designed to know this healing Love as a natural flow of our heart’s expression.

One evening in April a thirty-two-year-old woman, unconscious and severely injured, was admitted to the hospital in a provincial town south of Copenhagen. She had a concussion and internal bleeding, her legs and arms were broken in several places, and she had deep lesions in her face. A gas station attendant in a neighboring village, beside the bridge over the highway to Copenhagen, had seen her go the wrong way up the exit and drive at high speed into the oncoming traffic. The first three approaching cars managed to maneuver around her, but about 200 meters after the junction she collided head-on with a truck. The Dutch driver was admitted for observation but released the next day. According to his statement he started to brake a good 100 meters before the crash, while the car seemed to actually increase its speed over the last stretch. The front of the vehicle was totally crushed, part of the radiator was stuck between the road and the truck's bumper, and the woman had to be cut free. The spokesman for emergency services said it was a miracle she had survived. On arrival at the hospital the woman was in very critical condition, and it was twenty-four hours before she was out of serious danger. Her eyes were so badly damaged that she lost her sight. Her name was Lucca. Lucca Montale. Despite the name there was nothing particularly Italian about her appearance. She had auburn hair and green eyes in a narrow face with high cheek-bones. She was slim and fairly tall. It turned out she was Danish, born in Copenhagen. Her husband, Andreas Bark, arrived with their small son while she was still on the operating table. The couple's home was an isolated old farmhouse in the woods seven kilometers from the site of the accident. Andreas Bark told the police he had tried to stop his wife from driving. He thought she had just gone out for a breath of air when he heard the car start. By the time he got outside he saw it disappearing along the road. She had been drinking a lot. They had had a marital disagreement. Those were the words he used; he was not questioned further on that point. Early in the morning, when Lucca Montale was moved from the operating room into intensive care, her husband was still in the waiting room with the sleeping boy's head on his lap. He was looking out at the sky and the dark trees when Robert sat down next to him. Andreas Bark went on staring into the gray morning light with an exhausted, absent gaze. He seemed slightly younger than Robert, in his late thirties. He had dark, wavy hair and a prominent chin, his eyes were narrow and deep-set, and he was wearing a shabby leather jacket. Robert rested his hands on his knees in the green cotton trousers and looked down at the perforations in the leather uppers of his white clogs. He realized he had forgotten to take off his plastic cap after the operation. The thin plastic crackled between his hands. Andreas looked at him and Robert straightened up to meet his gaze. The boy woke.

His eyes flickered with amusement, reflecting sunlight and shade. The rough beard on his chin gave him a wild, dangerous look. Stiffly, she lifted herself onto her toes, bracing a hand against his shoulders. He was steel beneath her grasp. Did he have to watch her so intently? She closed her eyes. It was the only way she would have the courage to do this. Still he waited. It would be a brief meeting of lips. Nothing to be afraid of. If only her heart would remember to keep beating. Holding her breath, she let her lips brush over his. It was the first time she’d ever kissed a man and her mind raced with it. She hardly had a sense of his mouth at all, though the shock of the single touch rushed like liquid fire to her toes. Her part of the bargain was fulfilled. It could be done and over right then. Recklessly, after a moment’s hesitation, she touched her lips once again to him. This time she lingered, exploring the feel of him little by little. His mouth was warm and smooth and wonderful, all of it new and unexpected. He still hadn’t moved, even though her knees threatened to crumble and her heart beat like a thunder drum. Finally he responded with the barest hint of pressure. The warmth of his breath mingled with hers. Without thinking, she let her fingers dig into the sleek muscle of his arms. A low, husky sound rumbled in his throat before he wrapped his arms around her. Heaven and earth. She hadn’t been kissing him at all. The thin ribbon of resistance uncoiled within her as he took control of the kiss. His stubble scraped against her mouth, raking a raw path of sensation through her. She could do nothing but melt against him, clutching the front of his tunic to stay on her feet. A delicious heat radiated from him. His hands sank low against the small of her back to draw her close as he teased her mouth open. His breath mingled with hers for one anguished second before his tongue slipped past her lips to taste her in a slow, indulgent caress. A sigh of surrender escaped from her lips, a sound she hadn’t imagined she was capable of uttering. His hands slipped from her abruptly and she opened her eyes to see his gaze fixed on her. ‘Well,’ he breathed, ‘you do honour your bets.’ Though he no longer touched her, it was as if the kiss hadn’t ended. He was still so close, filling every sense and thought. She stumbled as she tried to step away and he caught her, a knowing smile playing over his mouth. Her balance was impeccable. She never lost her footing like that, just standing there. His grip tightened briefly before he let her go. Even that tiny, innocent touch filled her with renewed longing. In a daze, she bent to pick up her fallen swords. Her pulse throbbed as if she had run a li without stopping. In her head she was still running, flying fast. ‘Now that our bargain is settled…’ she began hoarsely ‘…we should be going.’ To her horror her hands would not stop shaking. Brushing past him, she gathered up her knapsack and slung it over her shoulder. ‘You said the next town was hours from here?’ He collected his sword while a slow grin spread over his face. She couldn’t look at him without conjuring the feel and the taste of him. Head down, she ploughed through the tall grass. ‘A good match,’ she attempted. He caught up to her easily with his long stride. ‘Yes, quite good,’ he replied, the tone rife with meaning. Her cheeks burned hot as she forced her gaze on the road ahead. She could barely tell day from night, couldn’t give her own name if asked. She had to get home and denounce Li Tao. Warn her father. She had thought of nothing else since her escape, until this blue-eyed barbarian had appeared. It was fortunate they were parting when they reached town. When he wasn’t looking she pressed her fingers over her lips, which were still swollen from that first kiss. She was outmatched, much more outmatched than when they had crossed swords.

The thought of thoughts, the cogito, the pure appearance of something to someone--and first of all of myself to myself--cannot be taken literally and as the testimony of a being whose whole essence is to know itself, that is to say, of a consciousness. It is always through the thickness of a field of existence that my presentation to myself takes place. The mind is always thinking, not because it is always in the process of constituting ideas but because it is always directly or indirectly tuned in on the world and in cycle with history. Like perceived things, my tasks are presented to me, not as objects or ends, but as reliefs and configurations, that is to say, in the landscape of praxis. And just as, when I bring an object closer or move it further away, when I turn it in my hands, I do not need to relate its appearances to a single scale to understand what I observe, in the same way action inhabits its field so fully that anything that appears there is immediately meaningful for it, without analysis or transposition, and calls for its response. If one takes into account a consciousness thus engaged, which is joined again with itself only across its historical and worldly field, which does not touch itself or coincide with itself but rather is divined and glimpsed in the present experience, of which it is the invisible steward, the relationships between consciousnesses take on a completely new aspect. For if the subject is not the sun from which the world radiates or the demiurge of my pure objects, if its signifying activity is rather the perception of a difference between two or several meanings--inconceivable, then, without the dimensions, levels, and perspectives which the world and history establish around me--then its action and all actions are possible only as they follow the course of the world, just as I can change the spectacle of the perceived world only by taking as my observation post one of the places revealed to me by perception. There is perception only because I am part of this world through my body, and I give a meaning to history only because I occupy a certain vantage point in it, because other possible vantage points have already been indicated to me by the historical landscape, and because all these perspectives already depend on a truth in which they would be integrated. At the very heart of my perspective, I realize that my private world is already being used, that there is ''behavior" that concerns it, and that the other's place in it is already prepared, because I find other historical situations to be occupiable by me. A consciousness that is truly engaged in a world and a history on which it has a hold but which go beyond it is not insular. Already in the thickness of the sensible and historical fabric it feels other presences moving, just as the group of men who dig a tunnel hear the work of another group coming toward them. Unlike the Sartrean consciousness, it is not visible only for the other: consciousness can see him, at least out of the corner of its eye. Between its perspective and that of the other there is a link and an established way of crossing over, and this for the single reason that each perspective claims to envelop the others. Neither in private nor in public history is the formula of these relationships "either him or me," the alternative of solipsism or pure abnegation, because these relationships are no longer the encounter of two For-Itselfs but are the meshing of two experiences which, without ever coinciding, belong to a single world.

Water. Drinking water, water purification system (or tablets), and a water bottle or canteen. Food. Anything that is long lasting, lightweight, and nutritious such as protein bars, dehydrated meals, MREs24, certain canned goods, rice, and beans. Clothing. Assure it’s appropriate to a wide range of temperatures and environments, including gloves, raingear, and multiple layers that can be taken on or off as needed. Shelter. This may include a tarp or tent, sleeping bag or survival blanket, and ground pad or yoga mat. A camper or trailer is a fantastic, portable shelter, with many of the comforts of home. If you own one keep it stocked with supplies to facilitate leaving in a hurry, as it can take several hours load up and move out if you’re not ready. In certain circumstances that might mean having to leave it behind. Heat source. Lighter or other reliable ignition source (e.g., magnesium striker), tinder, and waterproof storage. Include a rocket stove or biomass burner if possible, they’re inexpensive, take very little fuel, and incredibly useful in an emergency. Self-defense/hunting gear. Firearm(s) and ammunition, fishing gear, multi-tool/knife, maps, and compass, and GPS (it’s not a good idea to rely solely on a GPS as you may find yourself operating without a battery or charger). First aid. First aid kit, first aid book, insect repellant, suntan lotion, and any needed medicines you have been prescribed. If possible add potassium iodide (for radiation emergencies) and antibiotics (for bio attacks) to your kit. Hygiene. Hand soap, sanitizer, toilet paper, towel, toothbrush, toothpaste, dental floss, and garbage bags. Tools. Hatchet (preferably) or machete, can opener, cooking tools (e.g., portable stove, pot, frying pan, utensils, and fuel), rope, duct tape, sunglasses, rubber tubing, and sewing kit. Lighting and communications. LED headlamp, glow sticks, candles, cell phone, charger (preferably hand crank or solar), emergency radio (preferably with hand crank that covers AM, FM, and Marine frequencies) and extra batteries, writing implements, and paper. Cash or barter. You never know how long an emergency will last. Extensive power outages mean no cash machines, so keep a few hundred dollars in small bills, gold or silver coins, or other valuables on hand.

Fae of the match,” she said and I flinched in surprise as her voice rang out over the whole stadium. “Goes to Geraldine Grus.” I could finally let my smile free as I looked around to see Geraldine leaping out of her spot in the line up, her eyes glimmering with emotion. “Oh sweet onion balls!” she gasped as she rushed towards us. “Congratulations!” I said enthusiastically as I placed the medal over her head. She crushed me in an embrace, lifting me clean off of my feet as she celebrated. Darcy wrapped her arms around us too and we laughed as Geraldine descended into happy tears. “And congratulations to the winners of the match: Starlight Academy!” Nova added loudly when we didn’t seem likely to break free of Geraldine any time soon. The crowd from Starlight went crazy, their applause deafening as the team jumped up and down in ecstatic celebration. A low growl caught my attention and I glanced to my right where Darius stood almost close enough to touch. His jaw was locked tight, his spine rigid and his eyes burning with rage. I looked away from him quickly, though I couldn’t help but feel glad that this was upsetting him. Poor little Darius lost his favourite game. Imagine how bad you’d feel if someone tried to drown you though? Not that I’m bitter at all... Nova passed Darcy a bunch of flowers and gave me a medal on a green ribbon as the Starlight Airstriker stepped up to claim them. The guy pulled both of us into an exuberant hug as he claimed his prizes and I couldn’t help but feel a bit pleased for the team as we worked our way through the line, handing over flowers and medals to each of them as they approached. I imagined beating a team filled with the Celestial Heirs was something that none of them would ever forget. I could feel heat radiating off of Darius beside me as he fought to maintain his composure while the line worked its way past us but I didn’t look his way again. The last Starlight player to approach us was the Captain, Quentin. He smiled widely as he accepted the flowers from Darcy, tossing her a wink. As I placed the medal around his neck he pulled me into a tight hug, his hand skimming my ass less than accidentally. I pushed him off with a laugh, his excitement infectious in a way that made me think he was a Siren but it didn’t feel invasive like the way it always did with Max. Maybe because he wasn’t trying to force any emotions onto me, just sharing his own. “Why don’t you two girls come back and party with us at Starlight tonight?” he offered and I didn’t miss his suggestive tone. “Why don’t you fuck off while you’ve still got some teeth left?” Darius said before we could respond. I frowned at him but his gaze was locked on Quentin. To my surprise, Quentin laughed tauntingly. “And to think, we were worried about facing off against the Celestial Heirs,” he said, aiming his comments at me and Darcy. “Turns out they really aren’t that impressive after all. It would be a shame if Solaria ended up in their loser hands. Maybe the two of you should reconsider the idea of taking up your crown?” I laughed at his brazen behaviour, wondering how much more it would take for Darius to snap. “Yeah,” I replied jokingly. “Maybe we should take our crowns back after all.” Darcy laughed too, flicking her long hair. “Oh yeah,” she agreed. “I think a crown would suit me actually.” Quentin yelled out in surprise as a shot of heated energy slammed into him like a freight train and he was catapulted halfway across the pitch before falling into a heap on the ground. Before I could react in any way, I found a severely pissed off Dragon Shifter snarling in my face. My breath caught in my lungs and I blinked up at him as he growled at me. Seth moved in on Darcy beside me, his face set with the same enraged scowl while the other two drew close behind them. “Do you want to say that again?” Darius asked, his voice low, the threat in it sending a tremor right through my core. (tory)

That peculiar light just before sunset, before gloaming: it is then that Essa sees for the first time the famous dunes at Avanue, which roll like fat people in their sleep, and shift restlessly forever. “They cast long shadows, these sleeping giants, and Essa shivers. She has walked too far—after the trip north she was so grateful to be out of hospital—her hands and feet are cold, and she is dizzy with exhaustion. She sits down on the ragged grass at the edge of the bluff which overlooks the dunes, and tries not to hate them. “Her mother’s words, remembered in a dream, sound like water flowing in her thoughts. There is no water here. The grasses under her are dry and stiff, and they grow in sand so fine it grits through her clothing against the skin of her ass. The sea is too far away to see or smell. But at least she is alone. “Though she is shivering, it is still a hot day, and the sun has warmed the sand. The ground radiates heat into her body. She lies down flat on her belly, her head to one side so that she can still see the dunes, and puts her hands beneath her; gradually they warm. “Gradually her body comes back into balance and she starts to see an eerie beauty before her. The sun is fully down when she sits up, brushes the sand away as well as she can, and hugs her knees to her chest. She puts her chin on her knees and watches darkness descend over the low rolling landscape. “This is unlike any cliff on which she has rested yet. It is low and gives no perspective. The dunes come up almost to her feet. Yet the demarcation is quite abrupt: there is no grass growing anywhere after this brief crumbling drop-off, and she can see as the land-breeze begins to quicken that ahead of her the sand is moving. In fact, she realizes, she can hear it, a low sweeping sound which has mounted from inaudibility until it inexorably backs every other sound: sounds of grasses moving, insects scraping, birds calling from the invisible sea far beyond her viewpoint are all subsumed in one great sand-song. “It is a sound so relentlessly sad that Essa can hardly bear to listen, but so persistent that she cannot ignore it now that she has become aware of its susurration. She pulls her sweater—the one her mother made by her knitting—around her and waits. “When it is fully dark and the wind has died again, she rises and begins the long walk back to town in the dim light of stars and crescent moon.

When I saw her! It was mid day, it was a sunny noon, When she passed through, I felt the shimmer of the moon, And for a moment I believed everything about her was true, Her eyes that radiated with the charm of the day, Her wavy arms that moved like the waves of calm and graceful sea, Her beautiful face that you would notice anyway, And when she passed by, you hoped this is what you would always and forever see, Her every step that led her somewhere, Made you forget your errands and just be with her, Wherever she went, just anywhere, And you imagined a life with her, only with her, And when she spoke to someone else, You cursed the skies for this prejudice, For in that moment you wanted to be this someone, and not anyone else, And you wanted to rewrite the fate’s treatise, So that whenever she talked, she only talked to you, Whenever she passed by someone in the street, She always passed staring at you, And wherever she went, it was just you she intended to meet, But right now, she just passed by and I saw her walk away, Until she had reached far, and become a distant star, And now I only keep gazing at the sky every night and day, And I deal with the never ending inner war, Where she still peeps through all my memories, Where she still makes me believe what I saw was true, And I feel like these helpless daisies, Who can do nothing, but just wait for the winter to pass and hope the sky will once again turn blue, So I am a flower that is rooted in its place and its faith, And I only grow in the field of her beauty, That is what my heart feels and that is what my mind always sayeth, For sometimes to love and to believe is the noblest duty! And I love her still although she is a star so distant, Rescued by my memories that form the only bridge, Between what I felt then , what I so long to feel now, ah it is a feeling so eminent, But I have to live with the star and its distance and volunteer myself for this daily emotional sacrilege! But then, living loving someone is a beautiful feeling, Maybe that is why daisies bloom every year, To witness the kiss of the summer, that magical thing, And for its sake bearing the pain of winter, seems nothing, every year, and every next year!

When I saw her! It was mid day, it was a sunny noon, When she passed through, I felt the shimmer of the moon, And for a moment I believed everything about her was true, Her eyes that radiated with the charm of the day, Her wavy arms that moved like the waves of calm and graceful sea, Her beautiful face that you would notice anyway, And when she passed by, you hoped this is what you would always and forever see, Her every step that led her somewhere, Made you forget your errands, because you only wished to be with her, Wherever she went, just anywhere, And you imagined a life with her, only with her, And when she spoke to someone else, You cursed the skies for this prejudice, For in that moment you wanted to be this someone, and not anyone else, And you wanted to rewrite the fate’s treatise, So that whenever she talked, she only talked to you, Whenever she passed by someone in the street, She first ogled at you, And felt the desire that you were the only one she wished to meet, But right now, she just passed by and I saw her walk away, Until she had reached far, and become a distant star, And now I only keep gazing at the sky every night and day, And I deal with the never ending inner war, Where she still peeps through all my memories, Where she still makes me believe what I saw, and felt in that moment was true, And it makes me feel like these helpless daisies, Who can do nothing, but just wait for the winter to pass and hope the sky will once again turn blue, So I am a flower that is rooted in its place and its faith, And I only grow in the field of her beauty, That is what my heart feels and that is what my mind always sayeth, For sometimes to love and to believe is the noblest duty! And I love her still although she is a star so distant, Rescued by my memories that form the only bridge, Between what I felt then, what I so long to feel now, ah it is a feeling so eminent, But I have to live with the star and its distance and volunteer myself for this daily emotional sacrilege! But then, living loving someone is a beautiful feeling, Maybe that is why daisies bloom every year, To witness the kiss of the summer, that magical thing, And for its sake bearing the pain of winter, seems nothing, every year, and every next year!

The door opened. I stopped. Beyond it, orks lined both sides of the corridor. They had been watching for me. The moment I appeared, they roared their approval. They did not attack. They simply stood, clashed guns against blades, and hooted brute enthusiasm. I had been subjected to too many celebratory parades on Armageddon not to recognise one when it confronted me. I went numb from the unreality before me. I stepped forward, though. I had no choice. I walked. It was the most obscene victory march of my life. I moved through corridor, hold and bay, and the massed ranks of the greenskins hailed my passage. I saw the evidence of the destruction I had caused around every bend. Scorch marks, patched ruptures, buckled flooring, collapsed ceilings. But it hadn’t been enough. Not nearly enough. Only enough for this… this… At length, I arrived at a launch bay. There was a ship on the pad before the door. It was human, a small in-system shuttle. It was not built for long voyages. No matter, as long as its vox-system was still operative. I knew that it would be. Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka awaited me beside the ship’s access ramp. I did not let my confusion or the sense that I had slipped into an endless waking nightmare slow my stride. I did not hesitate as I strode towards the monster. I stopped before him. I met his gaze with all the cold hatred of my soul. He radiated delight. Then he leaned forward, a colossus of armour and bestial strength. Our faces were mere centimetres apart. My soul bears many scars from the days and months of my defeat and captivity. But there is one memory that, above all others, haunts me. By day, it is a goad to action. By night, it murders sleep. It lives with me always, the proof that there could hardly be a more terrible threat to the Imperium than this ork. Thraka spoke to me. Not in orkish. Not even in Low Gothic. In High Gothic. ‘A great fight,’ he said. He extended a huge, clawed finger and tapped me once on the chest. ‘My best enemy.’ He stepped aside and gestured to the ramp. ‘Go to Armageddon,’ he said. ‘Make ready for the greatest fight.’ I entered the ship, my being marked by words whose full measure of horror lay not in their content, but in the fact of their existence. I stumbled to the cockpit, and discovered that I had a pilot. It was Commander Rogge. His mouth was parted in a scream, but there was no sound. He had no vocal cords any longer. There was very little of his body recognisable. He had been opened up, reorganised, fused with the ship’s control and guidance systems. He had been transformed into a fully aware servitor. ‘Take us out of here,’ I ordered. The rumble of the ship’s engines powering up was drowned by the even greater roar of the orks. I knew that roar for what it was: the promise of war beyond description.

I focused on staying positive every day, despite the money issues, health challenges, and constant reminders of the fire. It took every bit of focus I possessed. Six months after the fire, in the middle of the financial crisis, after one morning’s meditation, I wrote these words in my journal: I woke up this morning feeling like I’m being cradled in the arms of God. The energy of Spirit fills every part of me with blessing. The universe radiates perfection all around me. I am cradled in this field of blessing. It holds us always in love and joy. It nudges us daily to experience the light and beauty at the core of our being. I realize that I’m 100% spiritually successful. I enjoy a life of attunement to the universe. Daily, I celebrate oneness between my human consciousness and the greater consciousness of which I am a part. That’s the ultimate goal of every life, and I’ve lived it from the beginning. I choose to remind myself of this when I’m mesmerized by the things that haven’t materialized in my material world after so many years of visioning and hard work. As I tune in to the universe’s energy, I feel mine change in response. My thoughts become ordered and inspired. I start the day feeling optimistic, positive, enthusiastic, and creative. I embody prosperity. I attune daily to the energy of prosperity, as I have been doing for so many years. I know that material reality arranges itself around the signal that my consciousness produces. The truth is that I am abundant in every possible way, including money. I choose to maintain the joy of that vibration. I celebrate every manifestation of success in my world, no matter how small. I am grateful for my life just the way it is. I remain positive no matter what. I have the most important thing attainable in any life: Oneness with the universe! I attune to its music every morning in meditation. My mind, cells, and energy field come into resonance with its song. I then move into my day inspired and aligned. What a wonderful life. After writing those words, I decided to bask in the experience. I lay down in bed and visualized the experience turning from a delicious but intangible feeling into a hardwired neural fact in my body.

If a mouse rustles, a dog barks, or a tree falls in a forest, it produces waves of pressure that radiate outward. As these waves travel, the air molecules in their path repeatedly bunch up and spread out. These movements, which occur in the same direction as the wave’s line of travel, are what we call sound. The number of times the molecules compress and disperse in a second determines the sound’s frequency—its pitch, which is measured in hertz (Hz). The extent to which they move determines the sound’s amplitude—its loudness, which is measured in decibels (dB). Hearing is the sense that detects those movements. Your ear consists of three parts—the outer, middle, and inner ears. Your outer ear greets incoming sound waves, collecting them with a fleshy flap and sending them down the ear canal. At the end of the canal, they vibrate a thin, taut membrane called the eardrum. Those vibrations are amplified by the three small bones of the middle ear, which we met in the last chapter, and transmitted to the inner ear—specifically, into a long fluid-filled tube called the cochlea. There, the vibrations are finally detected by a strip of movement-sensitive hair cells, which send signals to the brain. A sound is heard.[*1]

Amidst the meeting of their lips, Zhao Jiangui suddenly heard the sound of fireworks, the bloom of them shortly filling up the sky. Caught off guard, he moved away a little and turned his face to the side to look, slightly surprised. “Are there fireworks in town today, too?” he had to ask. As he sat beside him, Ji Han looked askance at all the fireworks, a faint smile on his lips. Upon hearing him ask that, he turned his head back to him. “There’s no fireworks in town.” Zhao Jiangui was confused. “Then…” “None will be there today,” Ji Han said clearly, his eyes burning, practically radiating light, “because I set these all of these off for you alone.

seems to me that the observations associated with blackbody radiation, fluorescence, the production of cathode rays by ultraviolet light, and other related phenomena connected with the emission or transformation of light are more readily understood if one assumes that the energy of light is discontinuously distributed in space. In accordance with the assumption to be considered here, the energy of a light ray spreading out from a point source is not continuously distributed over an increasing space but consists of a finite number of “energy quanta” which are localized at points in space, which move without dividing, and which can only be produced and absorbed as complete

At the fierce energy both he and Carter radiate. While Carter has his sexy maniac glint, Killian’s power is a dark, heavy one. That does it. I’m telling Carter I’m allergic to the Bentley’s leather later today. Anything to avoid this from repeating itself. “I didn’t fucking order you to move in to please Carter. I meant it.

He deserved more than a girl who couldn’t tell him how she felt. He was perfect, and I was flawed. “Promise me.” His lips touched my temple, his warm breath sending shivers down my body. Shivers that felt different—like they filled my lower belly with lava. Promise him what? I wondered. I nodded yes anyway, eager to please him, though he hadn’t completed his sentence. My lips moved. “I promise. I promise. I promise.” Maybe that’s why he didn’t trust me. Why he’d sneak into my bedroom that night—and every night, for the next six years—and wrap his arms around me, making sure I was really okay. Sometimes he smelled of alcohol. Sometimes of another girl. Fruity and sweet and different. Oftentimes, he smelled of my heartbreak. But he was always making sure I was safe. And he always left before my dad knocked on my door to wake me up. For the next six years, before jumping through my window, Knight would drop a kiss on my forehead in the exact same spot where shortly thereafter Dad would kiss me good morning, the heat of Knight’s lips still on my skin, making my face radiate.

I started to see a serious decline in health in high altitude professional astronomy. Most noticeable was the onset of constant fatigue, memory issues and confusion. The condition progressed during my time in the commercial and utility solar industry where I started falling asleep at work and developed hot skin. The doctors tested me and said I had shift work disorder in 2008 and vitamin D and Vitamin B12 deficiencies in 2011. In 2015 I had a COVID-19 like sickness that made everyone in the family really sick. I never recovered and this started regular visits to the doctors. They diagnosed severe sleep apnea and mental illness and prescribed a CPAP machine. Under the care of the doctors I became much sicker on their prescription drugs and treatments. I eventually got smart and figured out I was not going to recover under their care and they may actually kill me! In 2021, moving to Hawaii island revealed that I had ‘Altitude Hypersensitivity’ and a high altitude commuting disease called ‘Magee’s Disease’. By the end of 2023 I had developed the treatments for these conditions and made a reasonable recovery. There is no cure for either condition. They are life-long illnesses. I now have to live well below 1,000 feet near sea level and take the treatments for the rest of my life. I documented the conditions in the books ‘Toxic Altitude’ and ‘Magee’s Disease’. The treatments for the hypoxic high altitude damage appeared transferable into COVID-19 and Long COVID and these are documented in the books “COVID Supplements” and ‘Long COVID Supplements’.

I'm still not afraid of you,' I replied, briefly glancing down. There was only a minor bit of relief when I saw several pale strands of hair plastered to my chest. They didn't hide nearly enough, but it was better than nothing. 'Well, I'm a little afraid of you,' he said, and he was somehow closer without seeming to have moved. He wasn't even a foot from me now, and an icy heat radiated from him, pressing against my flesh. His closeness heightened the sensitivity of every inch of skin. 'You want to claw my eyes out.

But if I stop begging, get up and stand on my two feet, and turn around and look within myself, I will begin to see an ocean of worthwhile love that moves in waves. This love will not take away my appetite for connection; instead, it will guide me into other oceans of love where I drown in pleasant moments.

Unfortunately, life doesn’t wait for you to get over your ex; it will carry on.

It was a warm summer evening and the rooftop asphalt radiated heat. Below us the sounds of the city spelled a lazy Sunday in slow-moving traffic, windows down, music blaring, youths hanging out on street corners, and the distant chargrilled smells of barbecues on other rooftops.