Reuniting With An Old Love Quotes

It gave him the same vibe he used to get back at the Barns some nights, when he got trapped in one particular train of thought, where he imagined he and Adam had been together for a very long time and then Ronan died of old age or bad choices and Adam found someone else and later they all three were reunited in the afterlife, and rather than getting to spend the rest of eternity together, Adam had to split his time between Ronan and this stupid usurper he'd fallen in love with as a widower, which completely ruined the point of Heaven. And that was before Ronan even got to worrying if Adam made it to the afterlife at all, with his agnostic tendencies.

I stood back up and looked down at my feces. A lovely snail-shell architecture, still steaming. Borromini. My bowels must be in good shape, because everyone knows you have nothing to worry about unless your feces are to soft or downright liquid. I was seeing my shit for the first time (in the city you sit on the bowl, then flush right away, without looking). I was now calling it shit, which I think is what people call it. Shit is the most personal and private thing we have. Anyone can get to know the rest - your facial expression, your gaze, your gestures. Even your naked body: at the beach, at the doctor's, making love. Even your thoughts, since usually you express them, or else others guess them from the way you look at them or appear embarrassed. Of course, there are such things as secret thoughts... but in general thoughts too are revealed. Shit, however, is not. Except for an extremely brief period of your life, when your mother is still changing your diapers, it is all yours. And since my shit at that moment must not have been all that different from what I had produced over the course of my past life, I was in that instant reuniting with my old, forgotten self, undergoing the first experience capable of merging with countless previous experiences, even those from when I did my business in the vineyards as a boy. Perhaps if I took a god look around, I would find the remains of those shits past, and then, triangulating properly, Clarabelle's treasure. But I stopped there. Shit was not my linden-blossom tea, of course not, how could I have expected to conduct my recherche with my sphincter? In order to rediscover lost time, one should have not diarrhea but asthma. Asthma is pneumatic, it is the breath (however labored) of the spirit: it is for the rich, who can afford cork-lined rooms. The poor, in the fields, attend less to spiritual than to bodily functions. And yet I felt not disinherited but content, and I mean truly content, in a way I had not felt since reawakening. The ways of the Lord are infinite, I said to myself, they go even through the butthole.

Even if your all alone, God's still there. He loves you. and you don't have to be perfect. You can make mistakes. God still loves you. He'll never leave you. Even if you do the naughtiest thing ever, He still loves you and won't leave you (Amy to four-year-old Ruby)~ page 127

It wasn’t until the final years of her life that Neville and Patsie became almost reunited. Neville now lived a few hundred yards from the house that I grew up in as a teenager on the Isle of Wight, and Patsie in her old age would spend long summers living with us there as well. The two of them would take walks together and sit on the bench overlooking the sea. But Neville always struggled to let her in close again, despite her warmth and tenderness to him. Neville had held fifty years of pain after losing her, and such pain is hard to ignore. As a young man I would often watch her slip her fingers into his giant hand, and it was beautiful to see. I learned two very strong lessons from them: the grass isn’t always greener elsewhere, and true love is worth fighting for.

In early August, Bill Virdon was fired and replaced by Billy Martin. Virdon’s dismissal left Elston with mixed feelings: He was glad to be reunited with Billy, his old friend and teammate, but once again he was hurt because he had been snubbed for the job he so badly wanted. We loved Billy. At heart, he was a nice person, very generous. Billy’s problem was that he was an alcoholic. One time we were in Kansas City for the playoffs; he joined us for breakfast and ordered eggs and scotch. When Billy was drunk he could be a pretty rotten person; he got into fights. But

Ronan didn't care to think about this. It gave him the same vibe he used to get back at the Barns some nights, when he got trapped in one particular train of thought, where he imagined he and Adam had been together a very long time and then Ronan died of old age or bad choices and Adam found someone else and later they all three died and were reunited in the afterlife, and rather than getting to spend the rest of eternity together, Adam had to split his time between Ronan and this stupid usurper he'd fallen in love with as a widower, which completely ruined the point of Heaven. And that was before Ronan even got to worrying if Adam made it to the afterlife at all, with his agnostic tendencies.

My ideal man," Malak said ponderingly. "I'm not sure what that means. I don't want the ideal. I want complexity. I want passion. I want imperfection. "My ideal man is not ideal. But," she said, leaning forward, "I'll tell you about him." "I want him to have lunch at home. I want him to help me with my own mind. I want him to be bookish, wise, cunning, and exemplary. I want him to be a good storyteller, and always on my side." "Yes, I want him to be near me. A good conversationalist, proud, not afraid of the lofty heights." "I want him to be a singer, one who knows and loves a good song, can play an instrument, the oud or the ney, and preferably both. I want him to be a good mourner, know how to attend to the pain of others, a consoler who could assuage the grief I have for all those I loved and befriended and who are no longer here. I want him to be a healer, an expert in all that troubles me. I want him to be a fire that annihilates all danger that lies ahead and behind me and that which I have, somehow, without his help, found a way to avoid. I want him to be faithful---" "Incapable of deception. I want him to be constant__" "Constant in his love and in his prayers and, when those prayers are not answered, I want him to change reality with his own hands. I want him to be my lord-" "For all the world to see. I want him to make me proud, to make vanish old and fresh longings, new and unremembered regrets. I want him to be vigilant-" "To protect me from sorrows even once their great heights have passed. I want him to know how to deal with the past. I want him to be occasionally gripped by fear-" "The fear of losing me. I want him to be patient, to help me to endure the injustices visited upon the houses of those I love. But I also want him to be impatient-" "To lose all reason and hurry off, forgetting his shoes and hat, and ride-" "His horse flanked by wings of angry dust, galloping, if need be, all night to find the traitorous, to change my fortunes and avenge me." "And then I want him to return to me, to prosper by my side. I want to take him to the clearest stream, one only I know the way to, and there quench his thirst. I want him to look at me sometimes as if he does not know who I am. But I want to be forever recognized by him, come what may, to point me out in a crowd when, after the passage, we are reunited." "I want him to see me when I cannot see myself.

to look at Louisa, stroked her cheek, and was rewarded by a dazzling smile. She had been surprised by how light-skinned the child was. Her features were much more like Eva’s than Bill’s. A small turned-up nose, big hazel eyes, and long dark eyelashes. Her golden-brown hair protruded from under the deep peak of her bonnet in a cascade of ringlets. “Do you think she’d come to me?” Cathy asked. “You can try.” Eva handed her over. “She’s got so heavy, she’s making my arms ache!” She gave a nervous laugh as she took the parcel from Cathy and peered at the postmark. “What’s that, Mam?” David craned his neck and gave a short rasping cough. “Is it sweets?” “No, my love.” Eva and Cathy exchanged glances. “It’s just something Auntie Cathy’s brought from the old house. Are you going to show Mikey your flags?” The boy dug eagerly in his pocket, and before long he and Michael were walking ahead, deep in conversation about the paper flags Eva had bought for them to decorate sand castles. Louisa didn’t cry when Eva handed her over. She seemed fascinated by Cathy’s hair, and as they walked along, Cathy amused her by singing “Old MacDonald.” The beach was only a short walk from the station, and it wasn’t long before the boys were filling their buckets with sand. “I hardly dare open it,” Eva said, fingering the string on the parcel. “I know. I was desperate to open it myself.” Cathy looked at her. “I hope you haven’t built up your hopes, too much, Eva. I’m so worried it might be . . . you know.” Eva nodded quickly. “I thought of that too.” She untied the string, her fingers trembling. The paper fell away to reveal a box with the words “Benson’s Baby Wear” written across it in gold italic script. Eva lifted the lid. Inside was an exquisite pink lace dress with matching bootees and a hat. The label said, “Age 2–3 Years.” Beneath it was a handwritten note:   Dear Eva, This is a little something for our baby girl from her daddy. I don’t know the exact date of her birthday, but I wanted you to know that I haven’t forgotten. I hope things are going well for you and your husband. Please thank him from me for what he’s doing for our daughter: he’s a fine man and I don’t blame you for wanting to start over with him. I’m back in the army now, traveling around. I’m due to be posted overseas soon, but I don’t know where yet. I’ll write and let you know when I get my new address. It would be terrific if I could have a photograph of her in this little dress, if your husband doesn’t mind. Best wishes to you all, Bill   For several seconds they sat staring at the piece of paper. When Eva spoke, her voice was tight with emotion. “Cathy, he thinks I chose to stay with Eddie!” Cathy nodded, her mind reeling. “Eddie showed me the letter he sent. Bill wouldn’t have known you were in Wales, would he? He would have assumed you and Eddie had already been reunited—that he’d written with your consent on behalf of you both.” She was afraid to look at Eva. “What are you going to do?” Eva’s face had gone very pale. “I don’t know.” She glanced at David, who was jabbing a Welsh flag into a sand castle. “He said he was going to be posted overseas. Suppose they send him to Britain?” Cathy bit her lip. “It could be anywhere, couldn’t it? It could be the other side of the world.” She could see what was going through Eva’s mind. “You think if he came here, you and he could be together without . . .” Her eyes went to the boys. Eva gave a quick, almost imperceptible nod, as if she was afraid someone might see her. “What about Eddie?” “I don’t know!” The tone of her voice made David look up. She put on a smile, which disappeared the

The pragmatic mood is already visible in the Odyssey. The poem opens with Odysseus living on a remote island ruled by a nymph who offers him immortality if he will remain as her consort. A bit surprisingly to anyone steeped in the orthodox Western religio-philosophical-scientific tradition, he refuses, preferring mortality and a dangerous struggle to regain his position as the king of a small, rocky island and be reunited with his son, aging wife, and old father. He turns down what the orthodox tradition says we should desire above all else, the peace that comes from overcoming the transience and vicissitudes of mortality, whether that peace takes the form of personal immortality or of communing with eternal verities, moral or scientific—in either case ushering us to the still point of the turning world. Odysseus prefers going to arriving, struggle to rest, exploring to achieving—curiosity is one of his most marked traits—and risk to certainty. The Odyssey situates Calypso’s enchanted isle in the far west, the land of the setting sun, and describes the isle in images redolent of death. In contrast, Odysseus’s arrival at his own island, far to the east, a land of the rising sun, is depicted in imagery suggestive of rebirth. Another thing that is odd about the protagonist, and the implicit values, of the Odyssey from the orthodox standpoint is that Odysseus is not a conventional hero, the kind depicted in the Iliad. He is strong, brave, and skillful in fighting, but he is no Achilles (who had a divine mother) or even Ajax; and he relies on guile, trickery, and outright deception to a degree inconsistent with what we have come to think of as heroism or with its depiction in the Iliad. His dominant trait is skill in coping with his environment rather than ability to impose himself upon it by brute force. He is the most intelligent person in the Odyssey but his intelligence is thoroughly practical, adaptive. Unlike Achilles in the Iliad, who is given to reflection, notably about the heroic ethic itself, Odysseus is pragmatic. He is an instrumental reasoner rather than a speculative one. He is also, it is true, distinctly pious, a trait that the Odyssey harps on and modern readers tend to overlook. But piety in Homeric religion is a coping mechanism. Homeric religion is proto-scientific; it is an attempt to understand and control the natural world. The gods personify nature and men manipulate it by “using” the gods in the proper way. One sacrifices to them in order to purchase their intervention in one’s affairs—this is religion as magic, the ancestor of modern technology—and also to obtain clues to what is going to happen next; this is the predictive use of religion and corresponds to modern science. The gods’ own rivalries, mirroring (in Homeric thought, personifying or causing) the violent clash of the forces of nature, prevent human beings from perfecting their control over the environment. By the same token, these rivalries underscore the dynamic and competitive character of human existence and the unrealism of supposing that peace and permanence, a safe and static life, are man’s lot. Odysseus’s piety has nothing to do with loving God as creator or redeemer, or as the name, site, metaphysical underwriter, or repository of the eternal or the unchanging, or of absolutes (such as omniscience and omnipotence) and universals (numbers, words, concepts). Odysseus’s piety is pragmatic because his religion is naturalistic—is simply the most efficacious means known to his society for controlling the environment, just as science and technology are the most efficacious means by which modern people control their environment.

This wasn’t two old friends reuniting. This wasn’t even two lovers reminding each other what they needed tonight. It was...more.

MY LOVE, The day Prometheus breathed life into the new me, was the day you arrived in a little box. A shiny, futuristic black box, Pandora's box, despite my doubts I couldn't help but open it to finally meet you. Doubts, because I was happy with who I was, with who I saw looking at me through the eyes of others I presented myself to in everyday life. But I was seduced by the worlds that were promised to me if I let you into my life, who I would be with you in my pocket. As soon as the lid came off and I swiped my fingers over your radiant surface for the first time, the world and I were bursting at the seams. What a creation we were together, to what sized we grew! My brain an encyclopedia, my body an unerring compass, my eyes and ears reaching infinitely with you as an extension of myself. Through you, I, the cyborg, could enter bewilderingly virtual spaces in which I was presently absent, meanwhile absently present in the material world of boring train rides, waiting lines, and mindless chit chats with others. I felt invincible, transformed into a citizen of the world because of you, an intellectual of unimaginable proportions for the vast sea of knowledge you allowed me to surf on, a public speaker and influencer of significance because my words and visual snippets of my days could be launched into the world with the flick of a finger, likes enticing and confirming me. How intoxicating! How wonderfully, pleasantly, intoxicating! But I can't help but sometimes lie awake at night, my internal clock slowing down with your seductive blue light illuminating my face with 2, 457, 600 (1920×1080) LED suns. In those moments, as my eyes are captivated by your glow, I can't help thinking about the time before you arrived, and how I sometimes miss my low definition self. You were always there, sometimes it feels like we are in fact one — finally reunited with my other Plato's half, fused into not a circle but a perfect black rectangle. Through your eyes I see the world and myself in Ultra-HD, my pixel density has never been so high. But you are sometimes vicious, my dear — a viper, a temptress, when then again with sweet codes you reflect my most beautiful self, and I cannot help but love me through your gaze, then again with suffocating algorithms you fragment my self and blow it up to grotesque self-distortions, hurling me into an endless me-loop, that eventually disgusts and alienates me. In those moments you are a distorting mirror, a frightening black box, a black hole that swallows my attention in ways I can't see through. I see my old self disappearing in the vague, dark reflection of myself, with double chin and dull eyes, which I sometimes catch in your black glass when your suns stop dazzling me for a split second. And I can't help but wonder if my 'self' in times of its digital recombination, in which the 'I' is a fragmented multitude of pixels that never fully touch at their sides, a simulacrum, maybe has lost some of its aura. But in the morning all is forgotten, my love, all is well. As soon as we merge back into one, as soon as I, panicked, reach for my pocket on the train, only to discover with a glow of relief that you were there after all, I can't imagine an "I" without you. Artificial by nature my self resides within your screen, I would be lost without you.

My ideal man," Malak said ponderingly. "I'm not sure what that means. I don't want the ideal. I want complexity. I want passion. I want imperfection. My ideal man is not ideal. But," she said, leaning forward, "I'll tell you about him." "I want him to have lunch at home. I want him to help me with my own mind. I want him to be bookish, wise, cunning, and exemplary. I want him to be a good storyteller, and always on my side." "Yes, I want him to be near me. A good conversationalist, proud, not afraid of the lofty heights." "I want him to be a singer, one who knows and loves a good song, can play an instrument, the oud or the ney, and preferably both. I want him to be a good mourner, know how to attend to the pain of others, a consoler who could assuage the grief I have for all those I loved and befriended and who are no longer here. I want him to be a healer, an expert in all that troubles me. I want him to be a fire that annihilates all danger that lies ahead and behind me and that which I have, somehow, without his help, found a way to avoid. I want him to be faithful---" "Incapable of deception. I want him to be constant__" "Constant in his love and in his prayers and, when those prayers are not answered, I want him to change reality with his own hands. I want him to be my lord-" "For all the world to see. I want him to make me proud, to make vanish old and fresh longings, new and unremembered regrets. I want him to be vigilant_" "To protect me from sorrows even once their great heights have passed. I want him to know how to deal with the past. I want him to be occasionally gripped by fear-" "The fear of losing me. I want him to be patient, to help me to endure the injustices visited upon the houses of those I love. But I also want him to be impatient_" "To lose all reason and hurry off, forgetting his shoes and hat, and ride-" "His horse flanked by wings of angry dust, galloping, if need be, all night to find the traitorous, to change my fortunes and avenge me." "And then I want him to return to me, to prosper by my side. I want to take him to the clearest stream, one only I know the way to, and there quench his thirst. I want him to look at me sometimes as if he does not know who I am. But I want to be forever recognized by him, come what may, to point me out in a crowd when, after the passage, we are reunited." "I want him to see me when I cannot see myself.

Temple was lanky, fun-loving, and as disorganized as most 15-year-olds. Much correspondence was spent reuniting him with personal items he had left in the wrong place. As his stepmother noted, “You are extremely unlucky in your clothes.” William tried hard to keep up the pretense of family harmony and included kind words about Franklin in all his letters to Temple. He also tried to keep up with Temple’s frequent requests for more money; in the tug-of-war for his affections, the lad got fewer lectures about frugality than other members of his family had.

etc." I have been searching for my self everywhere, but I can’t find it! I can’t even remember when exactly I lost it… I search for it in everything I love and hate in foreign and familiar cities in all the kind, exhausted, and mean faces… I search for my self near water springs and along river shores On mountaintops and in the scent of wildflowers… Between the branches of olive and fig trees, but without any trace or hope… I search in teacups, in the corners of old cafés In songs and interludes… In books In the memories of everyone who ever knew me Everyone I betrayed or was betrayed by… I search in lines and sentences, But all in vain… I even search unsuccessfully in the sentences that list options, including the examples and each “etc.” after each list of options… I keep wondering how did I so quietly lose it? And each time I ask the loved ones about my strong desire to reunite with my lost self, I realize they have no leads other than long and wide lists of places, things, activities, individuals, and hobbies where I may possibly “find” my self… In each list they suggest, I find countless options and countless lines ending with “etc.” They don’t understand that I have turned every rock and searched behind every “etc.” And today I finally realized That my self wasn’t from here, and thus, it was never here… That, all along, I have been searching for an illusion that never existed… [Original poem published in Arabic on March 11, 2024 at ahewar.org]

Which character do you most identify with: Cooper, Daley, Cooper’s dad, or Big-Big? Why? 2. “Music washes us from the inside out. It heals what nothing else can.” Have you found that to be true in your own life? If so, share some of the lyrics and how they provided healing for you. 3. It’s much more difficult for Cooper to forgive himself than it was for his father to forgive him. Why do you think that is? 4. Cooper didn’t tell Daley the truth about the fire and the shooting when it happened, and he doesn’t tell her again when they reunite in Buena Vista. Nor does he tell her about his illness. His reasoning is that he loves her too much. Do you think he made the right decision? 5. The old traditional hymns are sung and discussed throughout the book. What role do they play in the story? Do you have a favorite hymn? What do its words and melody mean to you? 6. Cooper’s dad says, “Music cuts people free. It silences the thing that’s trying to kill us.” How does music cut each of the characters free in this novel? 7. In the sermon he delivers when Cooper leaves, his father challenges Cooper and the listeners at the tent meeting: “Question is, what and who do you worship?” How do you think that convicted Cooper? Did it cause you to consider what and who you worship? 8. What are some of the reasons Cooper creates in Nashville to justify not going home? Do you think they are valid? Can you identify with his struggle and his feeling that he has to make things right before he can go back to his father? 9. After Daley learns of Cooper’s liver condition, she tells him, “I will not let the fear of what might be rob me of the promise of what can be.” How do you think aspects of her story impacted her passion to be with Cooper, despite the fear? Are there times in your life when you have let fear rob you? 10. How does the theme of “No gone is too far gone” play out in each character’s life? Do you believe that no gone is too far gone?

We Called Him Monsieur R. Dovid Aaron Neuman currently lives with his family in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. He was interviewed in November, 2013, and shared the following remarkable story which happened during the war. “...In the midst of all this chaos and upheaval, my family was forced to split up.... I was sent to an orphanage in Marseilles. The orphanage housed some forty or maybe fifty children, many of them as young as three and four years old. Some of them knew that their parents had been killed; others didn’t know what became of them. Often, you would hear children crying, calling out for their parents who were not there to answer. As the days wore on, the situation grew more and more desperate, and food became more and more scarce. Many a day we went hungry. “And then, in the beginning of the summer of 1941, a man came to the rescue. We did not know his name; we just called him “Monsieur,” which is French for “Mister.” Every day, Monsieur would arrive with bags of bread—the long French baguettes—and tuna or sardines, sometimes potatoes as well. He would stay until every child had eaten. Some of the kids were so despondent that they didn’t want to eat. He used to put those children on his lap, tell them a story, sing to them, and feed them by hand. He made sure everyone was fed. With some of the kids, he’d sit next to them on the floor and cajole them to eat, even feeding them with a spoon, if need be. He was like a father to these sad little children. He knew every child by name, even though we didn’t know his. We loved him and looked forward to his coming. Monsieur came back day after day for several weeks. And I would say that many of the children who lived in the orphanage at that time owe their lives to him. If not for him, I, for one, wouldn’t be here. Eventually the war ended, and I was reunited with my family. We left Europe and began our lives anew. In 1957, I came to live in New York, and that’s when my uncle suggested that I meet the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Of course I agreed and scheduled a time for an audience with the Rebbe’s secretary. At the appointed date, I came to the Chabad Headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway and sat down to wait. I read some Psalms and watched the parade of men and women from all walks of life who had come to see the Rebbe. Finally, I was told it was my turn, and I walked into the Rebbe’s office. He was smiling, and immediately greeted me: “Dos iz Dovidele!—It’s Dovidele!” I thought, “How does he know my name?” And then I nearly fainted. I was looking at Monsieur. The Rebbe was Monsieur! And he had recognized me before I had recognized him.

I begin my life. I live again. I meet a young girl called Valeria. She smiles easily. She laughs tender sounds that pull at my heart. I’m too young to be profound but she makes me feel so safe. So cherished. I am thirty years old. I bump into a woman I knew when she was a girl. Valeria looks annoyed to see me. She lives in the future. Where the world is turning. I live within the past. Where the people are trapped and screaming and alone. I live within the past when Valeria and I were in love. She’s waiting for the cab to come, her foot tapping against the sidewalk. Her eyes glancing at her watch every few minutes. I’m eager to reunite our lives through some kind of friendship. I’m so eager to know her again, as she was when she was a child. But Valeria lives within the future. I live within the past. Have the two ever gotten along? Have they ever even met?