Road Warrior Quotes

It's a long hard road ahead for you, little warrior. Enjoy a happy day while you can. —Boldred

You have touched my soul, and I have seen your heart, and I know I am forever changed by the essence of you.

The truth is, who wouldn't fall for you, when you are like the brightest star on the darkest night? You shine with a love as big as the galaxy.

I have never met another like you. You are an original masterpiece.

It's as if I've stepped through a time portal into a place where acceptance is the norm, so unreal.

Wow, you must be in love if you are willing to sacrifice your manhood for the ultimate chick flick.

I looked up into his emerald eyes where I think I could spend forever and managed to breathe out, "Ditto.

Do you like my name? he asked. "yes, I do," I replied. "Good, because one day soon, I want to give it to you.

The mountains were breathtakingly beautiful. It was so serene and tranquil. The rising sun with other balloons around it painted the sky with a silhouette that was major eye candy.

The Free Hawks is fighters, I says. Warriors, she says, like you. An occasional highway robbers.

Logan gave me a sultry kiss that should have fogged the windows.

Maddy: "Um.....William?" she said, driving up the narrow dirt road. "Is there a particular reason you keep a sword behind your backseat?" William: "Because I don't own a gun yet

When a country is defeated, there remain only mountains and rivers, and on a ruined castle in spring only grasses thrive. I sat down on my hat and wept bitterly till I almost forgot time. A thicket of summer grass Is all that remains Of the dreams and ambitions Of ancient warriors.

Loving a warrior is hard. Dying in the line of duty is an honor to them. They would rather take that road than to dishonor their sacred oath

It is a man’s world in which we live, Skraeda. Let them think us lambs, when truly, we are wolves.

The louder the dogs bark the less a lion feels threatened.

In the moment of decision, may you hear the voice of the Creator saying, ‘This is right road, travel on it.

I will never accept life for what it is. I don't need an easy life. My road was meant to be hard because anything worth having in this world will take me to the very edge of myself. I will overcome everything I have ever gone through and will make my future the one God intended me to have. I will pick up the pieces of this pain and sculpt it into art. I am not ordinary and never was. I walk into my birthright as a queen with her head held high. I was born to do this!

I am Welcomed in the Home of Ravens and Other Scavengers in the Wake of Warriors," Ringil recited for him, hollowly. "I am Friend to Carrion Crows and Wolves. I am Carry Me and Kill with Me, and Die with Me Where the Road Ends. I am not the Honeyed Promise of Length of Life in Years to Come, I am the Iron Promise of Never Being a Slave.

Why did the warrior cross the road? [Koldo] That’s easy. To kill the guy on the other side. [Nicola] A bud of amusement had her smiling. Knock, knock. [Koldo] Who’s there? [Nicola] Donut. Donut who? Donut run from me, puny girl.

The open road. Seemingly my only friend for years upon end since leaving war. The road embraced me, let me breathe, and more importantly, did not judge me.

A nation is not conquered, Until the hearts of it's women Are on the ground. then it is done, no matter How brave it's warriors, Or how strong it's weapons.

Praying for the people that hurt you may not change them, but it will change you.

Stephanie Plum, off-road warrior. Now this was the way it should be, I thought. Taking action. Hauling ass in the woods behind Diesel. Well, okay – truthfully, I wanted to be in front of Diesel. I wanted to ride point, lead the charge, be the big kahuna. Unfortunately, Diesel was the one who’d memorized the aerial map. And he was supposedly the one with super senses. ‘Big whoop-de-do, super senses,’ I said. ‘I heard that,’ Diesel yelled back to me. ‘No, you didn’t.’ ‘Yes. I did.

Most people avoid me, easily leaving two feet between us, and here is this little warrior trudging into battle without armor. Terrified I’ll break her, I weave my arms around her and hug her back. My eyes shut when she settles furthering into me. I rest my cheek on her head and simply breathe.

My first thought is to tell him to take his "help" and shove it so far between his [butt] cheeks he'll waddle down the road—I stopped speaking like a princess the day I began training as a warrior—but I bite my lip.

Out of the city and over the hill, Into the spaces where Time stands still, Under the tall trees, touching old wood, Taking the way where warriors once stood; Crossing the little bridge, losing my way, But finding a friendly place where I can stay. Those were the days, friend, when we were strong And strode down the road to an old marching song When the dew on the grass was fresh every morn, And we woke to the call of the ring-dove at dawn. The years have gone by, and sometimes I falter, But still I set out for a stroll or a saunter, For the wind is as fresh as it was in my youth, And the peach and the pear, still the sweetest of fruit, So cast away care and come roaming with me, Where the grass is still green and the air is still free.

It was Aileron who saw the light blaze in Arthur's face. The Warrior leaped from his horse down into the road and, at the top of his great voice, cried 'Cavall!' Bracing his legs, he opened wide his arms and was knocked flying, nonetheless, by the wild leap of the dog. Over and over they rolled, the dog yelping in intoxicated delight, the Warrior mock growling in his chest. . . . This is' asked Aileron with gentle irony, 'your dog?

I wanted to see the moment he realized that everything he had done to me—every slap, every punch, every kick—was kindling. It built me up into a raging wildfire, and now it was time for him to burn.

Two roads diverged in a wood and I - I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. Robert Frost

we are all afraid. We are all confident. We are all warriors on this road of life, and we’re all a mess sometimes. Girls are multifaceted, complicated, layered, and emotional beings. So who better to understand us than other girls?

Step by step walk the thousand-mile road. Study strategy over the years and achieve the spirit of the warrior. Today is victory over yourself of yesterday; tomorrow is your victory over lesser men.

Fuck anyone who thinks anything on someone like you could ever be anything beautiful. You should be proud of them, baby.” “Proud?” “Yes, proud. They make you powerful. Each line is a road travelled, an experience you had, whether it was good or bad. Each mark is proof of pain in the past, not the present. You are a survivor, you are a warrior. These are the scalps hanging from your fucking belt. You took the beatings and here you are, in front of me. You are fucking amazing.

They make you powerful. Each line is a road traveled, an experience you had, whether it was good or bad. Each mark is proof of pain in the past, not the present. You are a survivor, you are a warrior.

Dervishes died as the bullets smacked into them, but the rest never even thought of pausing. In a society where bravery and reputation counted for much more than mere wealth, the warrior creed drove them forward. Ancient blades flashed in the sunlight and swung again, now covered in fresh blood. In short order the ground was littered with torn and mangled Egyptian corpses and the battle was over.

Once there was magic, wandering free in roads of sky and paths of sea and in that timeless long gone hour words of nonsense still had power doors still flew and birds still talked witches grinned and giants walked we had magic wands and magic wings and we lost our hearts to impossible things Unbelievable thoughts, unsensible ends for wizards and warriors might be friends. In a world where impossible things are true, I don't know why we forgot the spell when we lost the way how the forest fell but now we are old, we can vanish too. And I see once more the invisible track that will lead us home and take us back so find your wands and spread your wings I'll sing your love of impossible things and when you take my vanished hand, we'll both go back to that magic land where we lost our hearts several lifetimes ago when we were wizards, once.

Each time I drew my blade, I imagined the look of fear in his eyes when I returned for him. When he realized the wife whose arm he had cut off and left for dead would be the one to end him. I wanted him to know—he did not break me, as that was never his choice to make. I wanted to see the moment he realized that everything he had done to me—every slap, every punch, every kick—was kindling. It built me up into a raging wildfire, and now it was time for him to burn.

Don’t try to hurry,” he said. “You’ll know in due time and then you will be on your own, by yourself.” “Do you mean that I won’t see you any more, don Juan?” “Not ever again,” he said. “Genaro and I will be then what we always have been, dust on the road.” I had a jolt in the pit of my stomach. “What are you saying, don Juan?” “I’m saying that we all are unfathomable beings, luminous and boundless. You, Genaro and I are stuck together by a purpose that is not our decision.” “What purpose are you talking about?” “Learning the warrior’s way. You can’t get out of it, but neither can we. As long as our achievement is pending you will find me or Genaro, but once it is accomplished, you will fly freely and no one knows where the force of your life will take you.” “What is don Genaro doing in this?” “That subject is not in your realm yet,” he said. “Today I have to pound the nail that Genaro put in, the fact that we are luminous beings. We are perceivers. We are an awareness; we are not objects; we have no solidity. We are boundless. The world of objects and solidity is a way of making our passage on earth convenient. It is only a description that was created to help us. We, or rather our reason, forget that the description is only a description and thus we entrap the totality of ourselves in a vicious circle from which we rarely emerge in our lifetime.

She told him ... how her heart had fairly skipped a beat when she'd seen him standing in the middle of the road dressed as a true Highland warrior. "If I hadna been in love wi' you already, I'd have fallen in love wi' you then." He grinned, his whiskery face unbearably bonnie even with its cuts and bruises. "So you like the sight of me in a pladdie, aye?" "Aye--and wi' braids in your hair." She leaned down and kissed him. "But I think red paint looks silly.

The diversity of sounds rule my ever presence with their highs and blows, encompassing the totality of sensual experience. I'm a child of the sirens of knowledge, a warrior for the truth in a world of washed perspectives and harsh realities. My voice cries the initial cry of the unborn into the perplexing illusion. I long for the realization of the human drama, the defeat of the dogs war, and the unity of existence. The beloved Gods of virtue have been undersold for the bleeding bread of empathy. I now awaist the triumphant roar of destiny, dressed in the inviting hand of a mother, perplexed by discovering, aroused by spirit. The door is open, the road transformed. The exit code to civilization is hacked beyond dispair, chased but the moon toward the freeing sun, on our journey to light. This is an open plea to the beautiful insanity of your hearts. It is time to consummate the kiss of oblivion into the obsidian of love!

God isn't a place of fresh starts. He isn't a hideout. He is not a destination. He is not a clean break. He is not a cop out for indecision. He is not a straight line. He is a circle. He will take you back to whatever you ran from if he needs you to heal your scars and others. He is a God of justice and compassion. The greatest growth a soul can experience doesn't come from doing service to strangers that have no impact on your life. It comes from doing service to people that have hurt you or you have hurt them. To truly devote yourself to God is to travel down roads that are hard to revisit. However, he will keep taking you there, until you have healed yourself or others.

You needn’t be a warrior,” said Hekla, splashing water onto her cheeks one-handed, “but if you do not learn to defend yourself, you give power to your enemies. And with that power, they’ll make decisions on your behalf. You put your fate in the hands of others.

In every man’s life comes a road sign warning him of a dark path ahead but he goes down it anyhow.

A couple of days ago, I saw a rig big enough to haul that tanker. You wanna get outta here? You talk to me.

When someone yells "STOP," I never know if it's in the name of love, if it's Hammertime or if I should collaborate and listen... (borrowed from Pinterest.)

The rabbit comes easily to the clever wolf who waits.

The American male is convinced that he is a great warrior, a great statesman, and a great lover. Spot checks prove that he is as deluded as she is. Or worse. Historo-culturally speaking, there is strong evidence that the American male, rather than the female, murdered sex in your country.

- You said that going on the Road to Santiago is important. For it, one must give up everything for some time: family, work, projects. And I don't know whether I'll find everything the same when

Above all else, be true to yourself. Do what YOU want to do. Walk alone and be your own judge. It’ll be a bumpy road sometimes, but you’ll carry yourself a little taller at the end of each and every journey. In the end nobody except you cares whether you run your life at the beck and call of everyone else or whether you choose to be a Warrior-Sage, living your own life. And that’s the way it should be.

I watch Stewart. He has the most interesting face. It is beautiful, young, almost childlike, and yet with a power and authority in his features. In another time he would have been a young warrior, a Lost Prince exiled from his kingdom. But he's from this time, this place, so he's just some "at risk" kid who can't find a place for himself in the straight world.

We are the last generation that can experience true wilderness. Already the world has shrunk dramatically. To a Frenchman, the Pyrenees are “wild.” To a kid living in a New York City ghetto, Central Park is “wilderness,” the way Griffith Park in Burbank was to me when I was a kid. Even travelers in Patagonia forget that its giant, wild-looking estancias are really just overgrazed sheep farms. New Zealand and Scotland were once forested and populated with long-forgotten animals. The place in the lower forty-eight states that is farthest away from a road or habitation is at the headwaters of the Snake River in Wyoming, and it’s still only twenty-five miles. So if you define wilderness as a place that is more than a day’s walk from civilization, there is no true wilderness left in North America, except in parts of Alaska and Canada. In a true Earth-radical group, concern for wilderness preservation must be the keystone. The idea of wilderness, after all, is the most radical in human thought—more radical than Paine, than Marx, than Mao. Wilderness says: Human beings are not paramount, Earth is not for Homo sapiens alone, human life is but one life form on the planet and has no right to take exclusive possession. Yes, wilderness for its own sake, without any need to justify it for human benefit. Wilderness for wilderness. For bears and whales and titmice and rattlesnakes and stink bugs. And…wilderness for human beings…. Because it is home. —Dave Foreman, Confessions of an Eco-Warrior We need to protect these areas of unaltered wildness and diversity to have a baseline, so we never forget what the real world is like—in perfect balance, the way nature intended the earth to be. This is the model we need to keep in mind on our way toward sustainability.

Fine, fuck it," Clay said, tossing the plate into the yard. The chicken parts bounced nicely, breading themselves with a light coating of sand, ants, and dried grass. "When did chicken become like plutonium anyway, for Christ's sake? You can't let it touch you or it's certain fucking death. And eggs and hamburgers kill you unless you cook them to the consistency of limestone! And if you turn on your fucking cell phone, the plane is going to plunge out of the sky in a ball of flames? And kids can't take a dump anymore but they have to have a helmet and pads on make them look like the Road Warrior. Right? Right? What the fuck happened to the world? When did everything get so goddamn deadly? Huh? I've been going to sea for thirty damned years, and nothing's killed me. I've swum with everything that can bite, sting, or eat you, and I've done every stupid thing at depth that any human can -- and I'm still alive. Fuck, Clair, I was unconscious for an hour underwater less than a week ago, and it didn't kill me. Now you're going to tell me that I'm going to get whacked by a fucking chicken leg? Well, just fuck it then!

Do not start any sentences with the phrase “at least,” for you will then witness my miraculous transformation into Grief Warrior. I will spout grief theory at you, tell you that Kübler-Ross was misinterpreted, that there is no timeline, no road or path in grief. We are all on our own here, in the gloom.

Why did the chicken cross the road.” Vera ignored him. “To get to the idiot’s house... Knock knock.” “Who’s there,” said Vera. “The chicken.

God never abandons His children, but His purposes are unfathomable, and He builds the road with our own steps.

Are you a warrior or are you just some monstrosity? Follow your own road.

夏草や 兵どもが 夢の跡 The summer grasses— For many brave warriors The aftermath of dreams. - Donald Keene, Travelers of a Hundred Ages, New York, 1999, p. 316 (Translation: Donald Keene)

Not magic—just the laws of nature, and yet to one untrained, there really was no difference at all.

But true mastery in The Martial Way involves more than mere physical prowess and expertise. The master warrior is a man of character, a man of wisdom and insight. These goals are far more elusive than those regarding technical expertise. Elusive they may be, but you can begin the long road towards character development by learning to recognize and pursue internal versus external objectives.

He creates a new kind of hero: not warriors, corporate executives, or politicians, but brave and determined activists for preemptive peace, willing to suffer with Him in the prophetic tradition of justice.

To think that all we’ve known to be true is not necessarily an absolute is unsettling and almost incomprehensible, and so to walk the road of acceptance and peace often takes more courage than the way of the warrior.

At evening the autumnal forests resound With deadly weapons, the golden plains And blue lakes, above them the sun Rolls more darkly by; night enfolds The dying warriors, the wild lament Of their broken mouths. But in the grassy vale the spilled blood, Red clouds in which an angry god lives, Gathers softly, lunar coldness; All roads lead to black decay. Beneath the golden boughs of night and stars The sister’s shadow reels through the silent grove To greet the ghosts of heroes, their bleeding heads; And the dark flutes of autumn sound softly in the reeds. O prouder sorrow! you brazen altars Today an immense anguish feeds the mind’s hot flame, The unborn descendants.

In my travels on the surface, I once met a man who wore his religious beliefs like a badge of honor upon the sleeves of his tunic. "I am a Gondsman!" he proudly told me as we sat beside eachother at a tavern bar, I sipping my wind, and he, I fear, partaking a bit too much of his more potent drink. He went on to explain the premise of his religion, his very reason for being, that all things were based in science, in mechanics and in discovery. He even asked if he could take a piece of my flesh, that he might study it to determine why the skin of the drow elf is black. "What element is missing," he wondered, "that makes your race different from your surface kin?" I think that the Gondsman honestly believed his claim that if he could merely find the various elements that comprised the drow skin, he might affect a change in that pigmentation to make the dark elves more akin to their surface relatives. And, given his devotion, almost fanaticism, it seemed to me as if he felt he could affect a change in more than physical appearance. Because, in his view of the world, all things could be so explained and corrected. How could i even begin to enlighten him to the complexity? How could i show him the variations between drow and surface elf in the very view of the world resulting from eons of walking widely disparate roads? To a Gondsman fanatic, everything can be broken down, taken apart and put back together. Even a wizard's magic might be no more than a way of conveying universal energies - and that, too, might one day be replicated. My Gondsman companion promised me that he and his fellow inventor priests would one day replicate every spell in any wizard's repertoire, using natural elements in the proper combinations. But there was no mention of the discipline any wizard must attain as he perfects his craft. There was no mention of the fact that powerful wizardly magic is not given to anyone, but rather, is earned, day by day, year by year and decade by decade. It is a lifelong pursuit with gradual increase in power, as mystical as it is secular. So it is with the warrior. The Gondsman spoke of some weapon called an arquebus, a tubular missile thrower with many times the power of the strongest crossbow. Such a weapon strikes terror into the heart of the true warrior, and not because he fears that he will fall victim to it, or even that he fears it will one day replace him. Such weapons offend because the true warrior understands that while one is learning how to use a sword, one should also be learning why and when to use a sword. To grant the power of a weapon master to anyone at all, without effort, without training and proof that the lessons have taken hold, is to deny the responsibility that comes with such power. Of course, there are wizards and warriors who perfect their craft without learning the level of emotional discipline to accompany it, and certainly there are those who attain great prowess in either profession to the detriment of all the world - Artemis Entreri seems a perfect example - but these individuals are, thankfully, rare, and mostly because their emotional lacking will be revealed early in their careers, and it often brings about a fairly abrupt downfall. But if the Gondsman has his way, if his errant view of paradise should come to fruition, then all the years of training will mean little. Any fool could pick up an arquebus or some other powerful weapon and summarily destroy a skilled warrior. Or any child could utilize a Gondsman's magic machine and replicate a firebal, perhaps, and burn down half a city. When I pointed out some of my fears to the Gondsman, he seemed shocked - not at the devastating possibilities, but rather, at my, as he put it, arrogance. "The inventions of the priests of Gond will make all equal!" he declared. "We will lift up the lowly peasant

When did chicken become like plutonium anyway, for Christ’s sake? You can’t let it touch you or it’s certain fucking death. And eggs and hamburgers kill you unless you cook them to the consistency of limestone! And if you turn on your fucking cell phone, the plane is going to plunge out of the sky in a ball of flames? And kids can’t take a dump anymore but they have to have a helmet and pads on make them look like the Road Warrior. Right? Right? What the fuck happened to the world?

It was Art3mis. She wore a suit of scaled gunmetal-blue armor that looked more sci-fi than fantasy. Twin blaster pistols were slung low on her hips in quickdraw holsters, and there was a long, curved elvish sword in a scabbard across her back. She wore fingerless Road Warrior–style racing gloves and a pair of classic Ray-Ban shades. Overall, she seemed to be going for a sort of mid-’80s postapocalyptic cyberpunk girl-next-door look. And it was working for me, in a big way. In a word: hot.

There is no bitterness in Wind In His Hair's heart," he began. "Our minds may choose different paths, but some part of every heart will always be as one. All my life I have been a warrior, and I will not change. I will not die as anything else. "The whites have taken much from me. They have taken my brothers, my wives, my children. Now they want to take me off the earth upon which I walk. Maybe they will kill me now, and if they do, so be it. I will not take their hands. I will keep my ponies' tails tied up for war." - Wind In His Hair

Rise baby rise. Don't let the bad things happening in your life...keep you down. Bring the warrior out of your soul and keep moving forward in life. Don't look back at the pain. Look forward to the joy and pleasure ahead. Great things are awaiting for you down the road...if you believe!

The wrecked town of Gaza lay silent and empty. It had once been among the finest cities of the Near East: a stopping point on the coastal road from Syria through Palestine to Egypt, made rich by a thriving market and renowned for its mosques, churches and massive airy houses built in marble.1 But in 1149 only its natural wells and reservoirs remained to indicate that this was once a place where people of many religions had thrived. War had swept through the elegant streets and emptied Gaza, seemingly for good. ‘It was now in ruins’, wrote William of Tyre, ‘and entirely uninhabited.

I am Welcomed in the Home of Ravens and Other Scavengers in the Wake of Warriors,” Ringil recited for him, hollowly. “I am Friend to Carrion Crows and Wolves. I am Carry Me and Kill with Me, and Die with Me Where the Road Ends. I am not the Honeyed Promise of Length of Life in Years to Come, I am the Iron Promise of Never Being a Slave.

Back in the time before Columbus, there were only Indians here, no skyscrapers, no automobiles, no streets. Of course, we didn't use the words Indian or Native American then; we were just people. We didn't know we were supposedly drunks or lazy or savages. I wondered what it was like to live without that weight on your shoulders, the weight of the murdered ancestors, the stolen land, the abused children, the burden every Native person carries. We were told in movies and books that Indians had a sacred relationship with the land, that we worshipped and nurtured it. But staring at Nathan, I didn't feel any mystical bond with the rez. I hated our shitty unpaved roads and our falling-down houses and the snarling packs of dogs that roamed freely in the streets and alleys. But most of all, I hated that kids like Nathan - good kids, decent kids - got involved with drugs and crime and gangs, because there was nothing for them to do here. No after-school jobs, no clubs, no tennis lessons. Every month in the Lakota Times newspaper there was an obituary for another teen suicide, another family in the Burned Thigh Nation who'd had their heart taken away from them. In the old days, the eyapaha was the town crier, the person who would meet incoming warriors after a battle, ask them what happened so they wouldn't have to speak of their own glories, then tell the people the news. Now the eyapaha, our local newspaper, announced losses and harms too often, victories and triumphs too rarely.

This is the real work of woman of color feminism: to resist acquiescence to fatality and guilt, to become warriors of conscience and action who resist death in all its myriad manifestations: poverty, cultural assimilation, child abuse, motherless mothering, gentrification, mental illness, welfare cuts, the prison system, racial profiling, immigrant and queer bashing, invasion and imperialism at home and at war. To fight any kind of war, Kahente Horn-Miller writes. "The Biggest single requirement is fighting spirit." I thought much of this as I read Colonize This! since this collection appears in print at a time of escalating world-wide war--In Colombia, Afghanistan, Palestine. But is there ever a time of no-war for women of color? Is there ever a time when our home (our body, our land of origin) is not subject to violent occupation, violent invasion? If I retain any image to hold the heart-intention of this book, it is found in what Horn-Miller calls the necessity of the war dance. This book is one rite of passage, one ceremony of preparedness on the road to consciousness, on the "the war path of greater empowerment.

A woman in combat? Yes. Since when? Since Native American warrior Buffalo Calf Road Woman knocked that prick General George Custer off of his horse. Since Pantea Arteshbod propelled herself to become one of the greatest Persian commanders during the reign of Cyrus the Great. Since Hua Mulan disguised herself as a male to engage in combat and became one of China’s most respected heroines.

Here’s a typical list: Song of Solomon (for Michael Jordan), Things Fall Apart (Bill Cartwright), Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (John Paxson), The Ways of White Folks (Scottie Pippen), Joshua: A Parable for Today (Horace Grant), Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (B.J. Armstrong), Way of the Peaceful Warrior (Craig Hodges), On the Road (Will Perdue), and Beavis & Butt-Head: This Book Sucks (Stacey King). Some players read every

I began to think about all the generals’ proclamation concerning this war: that we’d be home before Christmas, that the Chinese would not intervene, that we’d hold here or hold there. All of it was bullshit, and I started to wonder how they could possibly make so many dumb statements when each, invariably, fell apart when put to the test. Then I thought, Well, maybe they just don’t know—we never saw a general on the front. We seldom saw a colonel, a lieutenant colonel, or a major either. And at squad level, we only on the rarest occasion saw a captain. So how could the brass know how defeated its army was if they weren’t there to see an exhausted guy lie down on the road and just give up? How could they know how cold and ill equipped we were if they weren’t there to see blue, gloveless hands stick to the frozen metal of weapons? How could they know how steep and rugged the terrain was if they never climbed a hill?

What is this mysterious masculine force which spurs you onwards, whence comes this will, this heroic initiative which seems to precede the start of the great journey? This is what prevents you turning back on the path. If you were to do so, if you failed to travel the path to its end, you would be guilty, because the practices of your initiation have mobilised enormous forces which destroy men and drive them insane if they are not aimed in the right direction. The signs will help you open a way for yourself in the virgin forest where no roads exist. 'Even the Gods are your enemies; because their impersonal lives are at risk in this war. You will have to overcome the Archetypes, dethrone them, reincorporating their tremendous numinous energies within yourself. Do you remember the Greek legend? Man was a circular androgynous. He began to roll up Mount Olympus. The Gods were frightened, fearing defeat, and so they resorted to artifice: they divided the man-sphere in half. The result was that he was so busy trying to find his other half that he had no time to make war with them. But, luckily, the Gods made a mistake. Because one day we will bring them back to life as well, giving them a face. 'When the water runs downhill, it gives rise to Samsara and human generations, to the circular movement of the involuted earth; when it runs uphill, the opposite direction, it provokes the mutation of the Gods themselves, the divinisation of the hero; it creates a free, eternal race, without Gods, without a king. This is the Road of the Warrior.

The first battle in Fallujah happens three months later, in April. Some Blackwater guys riding in an up-armored Chevy Suburban stop on a road by the bridge at the entrance to the gates of Fallujah when they’re approached by a group of kids selling gum, candy, soda, and fake Rolexes. A guy rolls down the window to buy some candy, and a kid drops a frag grenade into the Suburban. The burned, charred bodies of four Americans are dragged from the wreckage and strung up by the bridge. The insurgents declare an all-out war against the Americans in Iraq.

HAVE YOU EVER sailed in a longship? Not a stubby, robust knörr laden with trade goods and wallowing like a packhorse across the sea, but a sleek, deathly quick, terror-stirring thing – a dragon ship. Have you ever stood at the bow with the salt wind whipping your hair as Rán’s white-haired daughters cream beneath the beast’s strong, curving chest? Have you travelled the whale road with wind-burnt warriors whose rare skill with axe and sword is a gift from mighty Óðin, Lord of War? Men whose death work feeds the wolf and the eagle and the raven? I have done all this. It has been my life and though it would make those skirt-wearing White Christ followers sick with disgust (and fear, I shouldn’t wonder) I have been happy with my lot. For some men are born closer to the gods than others. By the well of Urd, beneath one of the roots of the great life tree Yggdrasil, the Norns, those sisters of fate, of present and future, take the threads of men’s lives and weave them into patterns full of pain and suffering, glory and riches, and death. And their ancient fingers must have tired at the spinning of my life.

The grasslands are endless, And summer sings on, And Goldmoon the princess Loves a poor man’s son. Her father the chieftain Makes long roads between them: The grasslands are endless, and summer sings on. The grasslands are waving, The sky’s rim is gray, The chieftain sends Riverwind East and away, To search for strong magic At the lip of the morning, The grasslands are waving, the sky’s rim is gray. O Riverwind, where have you gone? O Riverwind, autumn comes on. I sit by the river And look to the sunrise, But the sun rises over the mountains alone. The grasslands are fading, The summer wind dies, He comes back, the darkness Of stones in his eyes. He carries a blue staff As bright as a glacier: The grasslands are fading, the summer wind dies. The grasslands are fragile, As yellow as flame, The chieftain makes mockery Of Riverwind’s claim. He orders the people To stone the young warrior: The grasslands are fragile, as yellow as flame. The grassland has faded, And autumn is here. The girl joins her lover, The stones whistle near, The staff flares in blue light And both of them vanish: The grasslands are faded, and autumn is here.

The answer was simple and direct, as it had been throughout the period of white contact with the red men. First, make them dependent. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark saw this in a flash after their initial encounter with the Sioux, of whom they said, “These are the vilest miscreants of the savage race, and must ever remain the pirates of the Missouri, until such measures are pursued, by our government, as will make them feel a dependence on its will for their supply of merchandise.”22 All that would then be needed to put the Indian on the road to civilization was, in the words of Henry Knox, the Secretary of War in 1789, to give the Indian “a love for exclusive property.”23

The Tang Dynasty has always held a special lure for me. This was a time when women rose to the highest ranks as warriors, courtesans and scholars. Anyone with the will and the perseverance to excel could make it. The imperial capital of Changan emerged as a cosmopolitan center of trade and culture. The most famous love stories, the most beautiful poetry and the most elegant fashions came from this era. The Silk Road which connected East to West was at its height during the eighth century and the empire embraced different cultures to a greater extent than ever before. I wanted to know what it was like to wear silk and travel to the edges of the empire during this golden age. And I wanted sword fights!

We were, as I have said, returning from a dip, and half-way up the High Street a cat darted out from one of the houses in front of us, and began to trot across the road. Montmorency gave a cry of joy – the cry of a stern warrior who sees his enemy given over to his hands – the sort of cry Cromwell might have uttered when the Scots came down the hill – and flew after his prey. His victim was a large black Tom. I never saw a larger cat, nor a more disreputable-looking cat. It had lost half its tail, one of its ears, and a fairly appreciable proportion of its nose. It was a long, sinewy- looking animal. It had a calm, contented air about it. Montmorency went for that poor cat at the rate of twenty miles an hour; but the cat did not hurry up – did not seem to have grasped the idea that its life was in danger. It trotted quietly on until its would-be assassin was within a yard of it, and then it turned round and sat down in the middle of the road, and looked at Montmorency with a gentle, inquiring expression, that said: “Yes! You want me?” Montmorency does not lack pluck; but there was something about the look of that cat that might have chilled the heart of the boldest dog. He stopped abruptly, and looked back at Tom. Neither spoke; but the conversation that one could imagine was clearly as follows:- THE CAT: “Can I do anything for you?” MONTMORENCY: “No – no, thanks.” THE CAT: “Don’t you mind speaking, if you really want anything, you know.” MONTMORENCY (BACKING DOWN THE HIGH STREET): “Oh, no – not at all – certainly – don’t you trouble. I – I am afraid I’ve made a mistake. I thought I knew you. Sorry I disturbed you.” THE CAT: “Not at all – quite a pleasure. Sure you don’t want anything, now?” MONTMORENCY (STILL BACKING): “Not at all, thanks – not at all – very kind of you. Good morning.” THE CAT: “Good-morning.” Then the cat rose, and continued his trot; and Montmorency, fitting what he calls his tail carefully into its groove, came back to us, and took up an unimportant position in the rear. To this day, if you say the word “Cats!” to Montmorency, he will visibly shrink and look up piteously at you, as if to say: “Please don’t.

Didn’t matter where you went, there the bottles would be, calling him with their mute beauty, their amusing shapes, their sharp-colored labels that all read one thing: “Drink Me!” I want to, he thought. It built, it rolled uphill, it crushed all before it, the beast called The Thirst was pure mercy for the woeful, the terminally depressed, the abandoned warrior. It made the voices go away, the pictures stop, the throbbing in his steel hip quiet down. Death—but, before that, disgrace—was also on the road, and he knew it. And he knew it didn’t matter. Death sometime, even soon and in shame, weighed little against the mercy of the now. Most days he wasn’t strong enough to fight it off, and today hadn’t been decided yet.

Life sometimes is like tossing a coin in the air calling heads or tails, but it doesn’t matter what side it lands on; life goes on. It is hard when you’ve lost the will to fight because you’ve been fighting for so long. You are smothered by the pain. Mentally, you are drained. Physically, you are weak. Emotionally, you are weighed down. Spiritually, you do not have one tiny mustard seed of faith. The common denominator is that other people’s problems have clouded your mind with all of their negativity. You cannot feel anything; you are numb. You do not have the energy to surrender, and you choose not to escape because you feel safe when you are closed in. As you move throughout the day, you do just enough to get by. Your mindset has changed from giving it your all to—well, something is better than nothing. You move in slow motion like a zombie, and there isn’t any color, just black and white, with every now and then a shade of gray. You’ve shut everyone out and crawled back into the rabbit hole. Life passes you by as you feel like you cannot go on. You look around for help; for someone to take the pain away and to share your suffering, but no one is there. You feel alone, you drift away when you glance ahead and see that there are more uphill battles ahead of you. You do not have the option to turn around because all of the roads are blocked. You stand exactly where you are without making a step. You try to think of something, but you are emotionally bankrupt. Where do you go from here? You do not have a clue. Standing still isn’t helping because you’ve welcomed unwanted visitors; voices are in your head, asking, “What are you waiting for? Take the leap. Jump.” They go on to say, “You’ve had enough. Your burdens are too heavy.” You walk towards the cliff; you turn your head and look at the steep hill towards the mountain. The view isn’t helping; not only do you have to climb the steep hill, but you have to climb up the mountain too. You take a step; rocks and dust fall off the cliff. You stumble and you move forward. The voices in your head call you a coward. You are beginning to second-guess yourself because you want to throw in the towel. You close your eyes; a tear falls and travels to your chin. As your eyes are closed the Great Divine’s voice is louder; yet, calmer, soothing; and you feel peace instantly. Your mind feels light, and your body feels balanced. The Great Divine whispers gently and softly in your ear: “Fallen Warrior, I know you have given everything you’ve got, and you feel like you have nothing left to give. Fallen Warrior, I know it’s been a while since you smiled. Fallen Warrior, I see that you are hurting, and I feel your pain. Fallen Warrior, this is not the end. This is the start of your new beginning. Fallen Warrior, do not doubt My or your abilities; you have more going for you than you have going against you. Fallen Warrior, keep moving, you have what it takes; perseverance is your middle name. Fallen Warrior, you are not the victim! You are the victor! You step back because you know why you are here. You know why you are alive. Sometimes you have to be your own Shero. As a fallen warrior, you are human; and you have your moments. There are days when you have more ups than downs, and some days you have more downs than ups. I most definitely can relate. I was floating through life, but I had to change my mindset. During my worst days, I felt horrible, and when I started to think negatively I felt like I was dishonoring myself. I felt sick, I felt afraid, fear began to control my every move. I felt like demons were trying to break in and take over my life.

Dog Talk … I have seen Ben place his nose meticulously into the shallow dampness of a deer’s hoofprint and shut his eyes as if listening. But it is smell he is listening to. The wild, high music of smell, that we know so little about. Tonight Ben charges up the yard; Bear follows. They run into the field and are gone. A soft wind, like a belt of silk, wraps the house. I follow them to the end of the field where I hear the long-eared owl, at wood’s edge, in one of the tall pines. All night the owl will sit there inventing his catty racket, except when he opens pale wings and drifts moth-like over the grass. I have seen both dogs look up as the bird floats by, and I suppose the field mouse hears it too, in the pebble of his tiny heart. Though I hear nothing. Bear is small and white with a curly tail. He was meant to be idle and pretty but learned instead to love the world, and to romp roughly with the big dogs. The brotherliness of the two, Ben and Bear, increases with each year. They have their separate habits, their own favorite sleeping places, for example, yet each worries without letup if the other is missing. They both bark rapturously and in support of each other. They both sneeze to express plea- sure, and yawn in humorous admittance of embarrassment. In the car, when we are getting close to home and the smell of the ocean begins to surround them, they both sit bolt upright and hum. With what vigor and intention to please himself the little white dog flings himself into every puddle on the muddy road. Somethings are unchangeably wild, others are stolid tame. The tiger is wild, the coyote, and the owl. I am tame, you are tame. The wild things that have been altered, but only into a semblance of tameness, it is no real change. But the dog lives in both worlds. Ben is devoted, he hates the door between us, is afraid of separation. But he had, for a number of years, a dog friend to whom he was also loyal. Every day they and a few others gathered into a noisy gang, and some of their games were bloody. Dog is docile, and then forgets. Dog promises then forgets. Voices call him. Wolf faces appear in dreams. He finds himself running over incredible lush or barren stretches of land, nothing any of us has ever seen. Deep in the dream, his paws twitch, his lip lifts. The dreaming dog leaps through the underbrush, enters the earth through a narrow tunnel, and is home. The dog wakes and the disturbance in his eyes when you say his name is a recognizable cloud. How glad he is to see you, and he sneezes a little to tell you so. But ah! the falling-back, fading dream where he was almost there again, in the pure, rocky weather-ruled beginning. Where he was almost wild again, and knew nothing else but that life, no other possibility. A world of trees and dogs and the white moon, the nest, the breast, the heart-warming milk! The thick-mantled ferocity at the end of the tunnel, known as father, a warrior he himself would grow to be. …

The Old Man’s voice sinks to a minor. It puts on mourning, it drips unction. A sudden tremor passes over the black flock of masters. Their faces show self-control, solemnity. —“But especially we would remember those fallen sons of our foundation who hastened joyfully to the defence of their homeland and who have remained upon the field of honour. Twenty-one comrades are with us no more;—twenty-one warriors have met the glorious death of arms; twenty-one heroes have found rest from the clamour of battle under foreign soil and sleep the long sleep beneath the green grasses——” There is a sudden, booming laughter. The principal stops short in pained perplexity. The laughter comes from Willy, standing there, big and gaunt, like an immense wardrobe. His face is red as a turkey’s, he is so furious. “Green grasses! —Green grasses!” he stutters. “Long sleep? In the mud of shell holes they are lying, knocked rotten, ripped in pieces, gone down into the bog—Green grasses! This is not a singing lesson!” His arms are whirling like a windmill in a gale. “Hero’s death! And what sort of a thing do you suppose that was, I wonder? Would you like to know how young Hoyer died? All day long he lay out in the wire screaming, and his guts hanging out of his belly like macaroni. Then a bit of shell took off his fingers and a couple of hours later another chunk off his leg, and still he lived; and with his other hand he would keep trying to pack back his intestines, and when night fell at last he was done. And when it was dark we went out to get him and he was full of holes as a nutmeg grater. —Now you go and tell his mother how he died,—if you have so much courage.

Kamimura has been whispering all week of a sacred twenty-four-hour ramen spot located on a two-lane highway in Kurume where truckers go for the taste of true ramen. The shop is massive by ramen standards, big enough to fit a few trucks along with those drivers, and in the midafternoon a loose assortment of castaways and road warriors sit slurping their noodles. Near the entrance a thick, sweaty cauldron boils so aggressively that a haze of pork fat hangs over the kitchen like waterfall mist. While few are audacious enough to claim ramen is healthy, tonkotsu enthusiasts love to point out that the collagen in pork bones is great for the skin. "Look at their faces!" says Kamimura. "They're almost seventy years old and not a wrinkle! That's the collagen. Where there is tonkotsu, there is rarely a wrinkle." He's right: the woman wears a faded purple bandana and sad, sunken eyes, but even then she doesn't look a day over fifty. She's stirring a massive cauldron of broth, and I ask her how long it's been simmering for. "Sixty years," she says flatly. This isn't hyperbole, not exactly. Kurume treats tonkotsu like a French country baker treats a sourdough starter- feeding it, regenerating, keeping some small fraction of the original soup alive in perpetuity. Old bones out, new bones in, but the base never changes. The mother of all ramen. Maruboshi Ramen opened in 1958, and you can taste every one of those years in the simple bowl they serve. There is no fancy tare, no double broth, no secret spice or unexpected toppings: just pork bones, noodles, and three generations of constant simmering. The flavor is pig in its purest form, a milky broth with no aromatics or condiments to mitigate the purity of its porcine essence.

Sherman was a warrior, not a scholar, but he thought deeply about the issues posed by war. The Marches were to Sherman fundamentally a moral expression of Union military power, even a moral equivalent of battle. That is to say, they were designed to humiliate the South and especially secessionist leaders, to humble its swaggering warriors, and to leave them in a state of despair contemplating unavoidable defeat. As the South had been humiliated, Northern arms should henceforth be treated with respect. The Marches thus sought a propaganda or moral victory aimed at the Confederate military and civil will. They would reveal to the world, not only to the South, that a tremendous change had occurred in the Civil War's military balance. Despite its redoubtable resistance throughout 1864, any Confederate success would prove transient⁠—another road pointing to defeat.

Never in his life had he seen his village from such a height and distance, and it amazed him. It was like an object he could pick up in his hand, and he flexed his fingers experimentally over the view in the afternoon haze. The old woman, who had watched his ascent with anxiety, was still at the foot of the tree, calling up to him to climb no further. But Edwin ignored her, for he knew trees better than anyone. When the warrior had ordered him to keep watch, he had selected the elm with care, knowing that for all its sickly appearance, it would possess its own subtle strength and welcome him. It commanded, moreover, the best view of the bridge, and of the mountain road leading up to it, and he could see clearly the three soldiers talking to the rider. The latter had now dismounted, and holding his restless horse by the bridle, was arguing fiercely with the soldiers

Once, on the road, Prim met a meditating sage who had spent most of his life on top of a flat rock. They had black bread and shared some ajash, as was custom. The sage was thankful, as the road was not very frequently traveled in those days and he was very near the point of starvation. During his conversation, he was delighted to learn of Prim’s extensive mastery of Empty Palms and the fifty five earthly purities. Delighted, and as payment for his meal, he taught Prim the meaning of watchfulness. This was the old breathing and cold-atum technique often used by warrior monks in those days. It ran through the following methodology: Build a tower, and make it impregnable. Make every stone so tightly sealed that no insect can squeeze through, no grain of sand can make it inside. Your tower must have no windows or doors. It must not accept passage by friend or foe. No weapon, no act of violence, and not one mote of love may penetrate its stony interior. “Why build the tower this way?” said Prim? “It will make you invincible,” said the sage, “This is the way of Ya-at slave monks. Their skin is like iron, and so are their hearts. They are inured to death and fear. Grief shall never find them, and neither shall weakness.” Prim thought a moment, and came upon a realization, for she was wise, obedient, and an excellent daughter. “If a man built a tower this way, he would quickly starve, no matter how strong he became.” The sage was even more delighted. “Yes,” he said, “There is a better way, and I will teach it to you: Once you have built your tower, you must deconstruct it, brick by brick, stone by stone. You must do it meticulously and carefully, so that while you leave no physical trace of it remaining, your tower is still built in your mind and your heart, ready to spring anew at a moment’s notice. You can enjoy the fresh air, and eat fine meals, and enjoy a good drink with your friends, but all the while your tower remains standing. You are both prisoner and warden. This is the hardest way, but the strongest.” Prim saw the wisdom in this, and quickly made to return to the road, but the sage stopped her before she left. “As you to your earlier remark,” the sage said, “The man who builds his tower but cannot take it apart again – that man is at the pinnacle of his strength. But that man will surely perish.” – Prim Masters the Road

connection. “So, the short skirts…they’d be to help them run more easily?” he suggested. Halt nodded in his turn. “It would certainly be a more sensible form of dress than long skirts, if you wanted to do a lot of running.” He shot a quick look at Horace to see if his gentle teasing was not being turned back on himself—to see if, in fact, the boy realized Halt was talking nonsense and was simply leading him on. Horace’s face, however, was open and believing. “I suppose so,” Horace replied finally, then added, in a softer voice, “They certainly look a lot better that way too.” Again, Halt shot him a look. But Horace seemed to be content with the answer. For a moment, Halt regretted his deception, feeling a slight pang of guilt. Horace was, after all, totally trusting and it was so easy to tease him like this. Then the Ranger looked at those clear blue eyes and the contented, honest face of the warrior apprentice and any sense of regret was stifled. Horace had plenty of time to learn about the seamier side of life, he thought. He could retain his innocence for a little while longer. They left La Rivage by its northern gate and headed into the farm country surrounding it. Horace’s curiosity remained as strong as ever, and he peered from side to side as the road took them past fields and crops

WILL WORK FOR FOOD © 2013 Lyrics & Music by Michele Jennae There he was with a cardboard sign, Will Work For Food Saw him on the roadside, As I took my kids to school I really didn’t have time to stop, Already running late Found myself pulling over, Into the hands of fate The look in his eyes was empty, But he held out his hand I knew my kids were watching, As I gave him all I had My heart in my throat I had to ask, “What brought you here?” He looked up and straight into my eyes, I wanted to disappear. CHORUS He said… Do you think I really saw myself, Standing in this light Forgotten by society, After fighting for your rights WILL WORK FOR FOOD, WILL DIE FOR YOU I AM JUST A FORGOTTEN SOLDIER, I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO v. 2 He put the money in his pocket, Then he took me by the hand Thank you dear for stopping by, I am sure that you have plans He nodded toward my children, Watching from afar It’s time they were off to school, You should get in the car My eyes welled up and tears fell down, I couldn’t say a word Here this man with nothing to his name, Showing me his concern I knew then that the lesson, That today must be taught Wouldn’t come from textbooks, And it could not be bought CHORUS He said… Do you think I really saw myself, Standing in this light Forgotten by society, After fighting for your rights WILL WORK FOR FOOD, WILL DIE FOR YOU I AM JUST A FORGOTTEN SOLDIER, I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO v. 3 I told him then that I had a job, That I could give him work And in return he’d have a meal, And something to quench his thirst He looked at me and shrugged a bit, And followed me to the car We went right over to a little café, Just up the road not too far After I ordered our food he looked at me, And asked about the kids “Shouldn’t these tykes be in school, And about that job you said.” “Your job,” I said, “is to school my girls, In the ways of the world Explain to them your service, And how your life unfurled.” He said… Do you think I really saw myself, Standing in this light Forgotten by society, After fighting for your rights WILL WORK FOR FOOD, WILL DIE FOR YOU I AM JUST A FORGOTTEN SOLDIER, I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO v. 4He wasn’t sure quite what to do, As he ate his food And began to tell us all about his life… the bad… the good. He wiped his own tears from his eyes, His story all but done My girls and I all choked up, Hugged him one by one Understanding his sacrifice, But not his current plight We resolved then and there that day, That for him, we would fight. We offered him our friendship, And anything else we had He wasn’t sure how to accept it, But we made him understand LAST CHORUS That we had not really seen before, Him standing in the light No longer forgotten by us, We are now fighting for his rights He had… WORKED FOR FOOD HE HAD ALL BUT DIED FOR ME AND YOU NOT FORGOTTEN ANYMORE BUT STILL A SOLDIER IN TRUST

In every case, the road into unity is not the road of doctrinal disputation and discussion; it is the acknowledging of the Lord Jesus Christ in His glory, in His authority, in His headship and in every aspect of His ministry. As we acknowledge Christ in all that He is to the Church, we are brought into the unity of the faith.

No straw-death, but the death of a hero.

that night filling potholes along one of the smaller village roads. They’d used a dirt moving and packing juju that Anatov had taught them that very night. For days, Sunny was digging muck from beneath her nails and sweeping dirt from her bedroom.

Then a terrible cry of distress rose to heaven from the procession of mourners, man after man collapsed, until the whole line of mourners lay in the road wrestling with death, until there was no more life among them and a heap of dead lay around the coffin, as bold warriors lie around their flag when overcome by greater forces.

When we originally descended to the docking bay in the United States, I could see green areas and swathes of sparkling ocean, so I suppose there is a chance I will encounter more attractive parts of the planet. Until then, I find myself in a place called New Jersey. I cannot imagine what the Old Jersey must have been if the modern version consists of ugly black roads and block-shaped architecture.

Know the smallest things and the biggest things, the shallowest things and the deepest things. As if it were a straight road mapped out on the ground ... These things cannot be explained in detail. From one thing, know ten thousand things. When you attain the Way of strategy there will not be one thing you cannot see. You must study hard

POEMS “Song of the Open Road”—Walt Whitman “The Tyger”—William Blake “I Thought of You”—Sara Teasdale “Sonnet 140”—William Shakespeare “A Clear Midnight”—Walt Whitman “Something Left Undone”—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow “A Prayer for My Daughter”—William Butler Yeats “My Little March Girl”—Paul Laurence Dunbar “The Mountain Sat Upon the Plain”—Emily Dickinson “The Song of Wandering Aengus”—William Butler Yeats “Jabberwocky”—Lewis Carroll “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”—Robert Frost “Continent’s End”—Robinson Jeffers “Forgiveness”—George MacDonald “O Me! O Life!”—Walt Whitman “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”—Robert Herrick “In Memoriam A.H.H.”—Alfred Lord Tennyson “i like my body when it is with your”—E. E. Cummings “A Psalm of Life”—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”—William Butler Yeats “Three Marching Songs”—William Butler Yeats “Song of Myself”—Walt Whitman “in the rain”—E. E. Cummings “When All Is Done”—Paul Laurence Dunbar “The Wanderings of Oisin”—William Butler Yeats “The Cloud-Islands”—Clark Ashton Smith “love is more thicker than forget”—E. E. Cummings “Hymn to the North Star”—William Cullen Bryant “Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun”—Walt Whitman “The Young Man’s Song”—William Butler Yeats “If”—Rudyard Kipling “Character of the Happy Warrior”—William Wordsworth

near the doorway that led to the courtyard, suddenly reminding me of when he and I departed down that eastern road so many days ago... I turned and smiled. “Goodbye for now,” I said to the Minecraftians. “Bye, Skeleton Steve,” Xenocide99 said. “You want some more arrows?” “Sure,” I said, and I took what he gave me and stuffed the ammo into my pack. “Goodbye, Skeleton Steve!” LuckyMist said with a smile and wet eyes. She rushed me and gave me a fierce hug! My bones clunked. “We’ll visit soon, okay??” “You’ll be on a huge, weird mountain north of a zombie-infested village to the east, huh?” WolfBroJake asked, clapping me on the shoulder with an armored hand. “Yeah, basically,” I replied. “There’s also a really big, blue lake. And the tower is on the smaller of the two huge peaks.” “Take care, bro,” the warrior said. “See you soon.” “Bye, Slinger!!” LuckyMist exclaimed. “Take care of Skeleton Steve!” Slinger clicked his fangs together and smiled. “I will. Goodbye for now, Minecraftians!” The female Minecraftian then ran up to Elias and gave the Enderman a huge hug as well. “Goodbye again, Elias! Visit us soon, okay??” “I will, LuckyMist...” the Enderman ninja replied, returning the hug and cupping her cheek with a large, black hand. “Goodbye, my friends; Xenocide99, WolfBroJake...” “Bye, Elias,” the warrior replied. “Goodbye for now,” I said again to all of them. With that, I hopped onto Slinger’s back in the courtyard colored by the late afternoon sun, and we—along with Elias, Eridar, and Eirzon—departed to the east...

Still feel sick?” Cullyn said. “I don’t. I didn’t think blood would smell like that.” “Well, it does, and it runs like that, too. Why do you think I didn’t want you riding with us?” “Did you know someone would get killed?” “I was hoping I could stop it, but I was ready for it. I always am, because I have to be. I truly did think those lads would break sooner than they did, you see, but there was one young wolf in the pack of rabbits. Poor bastard. That’s what he gets for his honor.” “Da? Are you sorry for him?” “I am. I’ll tell you something, my sweet, that no other man in Deverry would admit: I’m sorry for every man I ever killed, somewhere deep in my heart. But it was his Wyrd, and there’s nothing a man can do about his own Wyrd, much less someone else’s. Someday my own Wyrd will take me, and I’ve no doubt it’ll be the same one I’ve brought to many a man. It’s like a bargain with the gods. Every warrior makes it. Do you understand?” “Sort of. Your life for theirs, you mean?” “Just that. There’s nothing else a man can do.” Jill began to feel better. Thinking of it as Wyrd made it seem clean again. “It’s the only honor left to me, my bargain with my Wyrd,” Cullyn went on. “I told you once, never dishonor yourself. If ever you’re tempted to do the slightest bit of a dishonorable thing, you remember your father, and what one dishonor brought him—the long road and shame in the eyes of every honest man.” “But wasn’t it your Wyrd to have the dagger?” “It wasn’t.” Cullyn allowed himself a brief smile. “A man can’t make his Wyrd better, but it’s in his hands to make it worse.

Indigenous Lives Holding Our World Together, by Brenda J. Child American Indian Stories, by Zitkala-Sa A History of My Brief Body, by Billy-Ray Belcourt The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman, by Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert Apple: Skin to the Core, by Eric Gansworth Heart Berries, by Terese Marie Mailhot The Blue Sky, by Galsan Tschinag Crazy Brave, by Joy Harjo Standoff, by Jacqueline Keeler Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me, by Sherman Alexie Spirit Car, by Diane Wilson Two Old Women, by Velma Wallis Pipestone: My Life in an Indian Boarding School, by Adam Fortunate Eagle Split Tooth, by Tanya Tagaq Walking the Rez Road, by Jim Northrup Mamaskatch, by Darrel J. McLeod Indigenous Poetry Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, by Joy Harjo Ghost River (Wakpá Wanági), by Trevino L. Brings Plenty The Book of Medicines, by Linda Hogan The Smoke That Settled, by Jay Thomas Bad Heart Bull The Crooked Beak of Love, by Duane Niatum Whereas, by Layli Long Soldier Little Big Bully, by Heid E. Erdrich A Half-Life of Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation, by Eric Gansworth NDN Coping Mechanisms, by Billy-Ray Belcourt The Invisible Musician, by Ray A. Young Bear When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through, edited by Joy Harjo New Poets of Native Nations, edited by Heid E. Erdrich The Failure of Certain Charms, by Gordon Henry Jr. Indigenous History and Nonfiction Everything You Know About Indians Is Wrong, by Paul Chaat Smith Decolonizing Methodologies, by Linda Tuhiwai Smith Through Dakota Eyes: Narrative Accounts of the Minnesota Indian War of 1862, edited by Gary Clayton Anderson and Alan R. Woodworth Being Dakota, by Amos E. Oneroad and Alanson B. Skinner Boarding School Blues, edited by Clifford E. Trafzer, Jean A. Keller, and Lorene Sisquoc Masters of Empire, by Michael A. McDonnell Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee, by Paul Chaat Smith and Robert Allen Warrior Boarding School Seasons, by Brenda J. Child They Called It Prairie Light, by K. Tsianina Lomawaima To Be a Water Protector, by Winona LaDuke Minneapolis: An Urban Biography, by Tom Weber

to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but one,”—Monty pointed at the brightest orb—“the last one, is the warrior, and he will bring the others back.” With another wave of his hand, the orbs vanished. “Heraclitus,

She tears at the souls of warriors as they pass through her chamber on the soul road,” Grend said, “all know this. This is why we must die with a weapon in our fists, to fight her as we pass through Vergelmir, her dark chamber. It is the warriors’ last test.

(35) About “One Strike” （一、一つの打と云事） “One strike”13 is the surest way to victory. It cannot be understood without a solid grounding in strategy. Training diligently in “one strike” will lead to the embodiment of the combat mind and you will win in any fight. Training is the key. (36) About “Direct Transmission” （一、直通のくらひと云事） “Direct transmission” is what I convey to he who has mastered the true Way of the School of Two Swords as One. Temper your body so that it becomes [a weapon for] strategy. Study this well. Other details will be conveyed orally. This scroll is a summary of the teachings of my school. To beat people with swords in combat, you must first study the “five external forms” in conjunction with knowing the “five stances” and master the “pathway” of the sword. This way your body will move spontaneously and nimbly. Your mind will perceive the striking rhythms of combat, and the flow of your sword and techniques will be instinctively flawless as you have learned to move unrestrainedly with your body, feet and mind in unison. The principles of strategy will be realized when you defeat one foe or two, and you will come to understand what are strengths and weaknesses in combat. Analyze the content of this scroll article by article as you train and test yourself against various opponents. You will gradually become familiar with the principles of the Way. Be relentless in your study and be patient as you learn the virtue of all phenomena utilizing every opportunity to accumulate actual experience. Engage all and sundry and know their minds. Traverse the thousand-mile road one step at a time. Haste not in your training in the knowledge that this is the warrior’s calling. Seek victory today over the self of yesterday. Tomorrow, conquer your shortcomings and then [build] your strong points. Practice all I have written here, mindful of not veering from the path. Even if you defeat the most daunting of adversaries, if your victories are not in accord with the principles contained within these scrolls, then they cannot be considered true to the Way. Embracing the principles of the Way, you can prevail over dozens of men. With the accretion of wisdom in sword work, you will master the art of combat for individual duels and large-scale strategy for battle. One thousand days of training to forge, ten thousand days of training to refine. Be mindful of this.

Forging Mettle In popular depictions of Musashi’s life, he is portrayed as having played a part in the decisive Battle of Sekigahara on October 21, 1600, which preceded the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate. A more likely hypothesis is that he was in Kyushu fighting as an ally of Tokugawa Ieyasu under Kuroda Yoshitaka Jōsui at the Battle of Ishigakibaru on September 13, 1600. Musashi was linked to the Kuroda clan through his biological birth family who were formerly in the service of the Kodera clan before Harima fell to Hideyoshi.27 In the aftermath of Sekigahara, Japan was teeming with unemployed warriors (rōnin). There are estimates that up to 500,000 masterless samurai roamed the countryside. Peace was tenuous and warlords sought out skilled instructors in the arts of war. The fifteen years between Sekigahara and the first siege of Osaka Castle in 161528 was a golden age for musha-shugyō, the samurai warrior’s ascetic walkabout, but was also a perilous time to trek the country roads. Some rōnin found employment as retainers under new masters, some hung up their swords altogether to become farmers, but many continued roving the provinces looking for opportunities to make a name for themselves, which often meant trouble. It was at this point that Musashi embarked on his “warrior pilgrimage” and made his way to Kyoto. Two years after arriving in Kyoto, Musashi challenged the very same Yoshioka family that Munisai had bettered years before. In 1604, he defeated the head of the family, Yoshioka Seijūrō. In a second encounter, he successfully overpowered Seijūrō’s younger brother, Denshichirō. His third and last duel was against Seijūrō’s son, Matashichirō, who was accompanied by followers of the Yoshioka-ryū school. Again, Musashi was victorious, and this is where his legend really starts to escalate. Such exploits against a celebrated house of martial artists did not go unnoticed. Allies of the Yoshioka clan wrote unflattering accounts of how Musashi used guile and deceit to win with dishonorable ploys. Meanwhile, Musashi declared himself Tenka Ichi (“Champion of the Realm”) and must have felt he no longer needed to dwell in the shadow of his father. On the Kokura Monument, Iori wrote that the Yoshioka disciples conspired to ambush Musashi with “several hundred men.” When confronted, Musashi dealt with them with ruthless resolve, one man against many. Although this representation is thought to be relatively accurate, the idea of hundreds of men lying in wait was obviously an exaggeration. Several men, however, would not be hard to believe. Tested and triumphant, Musashi was now confident enough to start his own school. He called it Enmei-ryū. He also wrote, as confirmed by Uozumi, his first treatise, Heidōkyō (1605), to record the techniques and rationale behind them. He included a section in Heidōkyō on fighting single-handedly against “multiple enemies,” so presumably the third duel was a multi-foe affair.

They rode through the forest, the path of the behemoth making its own kind of road. “Did you guys in the Watersect have to fight many behemoths?” Ridge asked Wei-Vi. The warrior nodded. “They are especially dangerous in the depths of the ocean. If one breaches our domes, it can spell disaster.

It was these holy men and women who began the process of bringing their enormously popular brand of Hindu devotion to the southern tip of the Indian peninsula, which since the time of Ashoka had been dominated by the more austere Buddhists and Jains, and before that the cult of warrior heroes and megaliths. According to Xuanzang, in his time the Pallava capital of Kanchipuram was still one of the main Buddhist centres in India, with thousands of monks and a scholarly reputation that Xuanzang said was second only to that of Nalanda.12

I will still help ye, lass,” he said and winced at the desperate note in his voice. Firmer, he said, “Did ye hear me, Malina? I said I will keep my word to you.” Determined to face her wrath like the warrior he was, he caught her arm. She spun around, and to his dismay, tears stained her cheeks. She swatted at them and wouldn’t look him in the eye. His stomach contracted with regret. Och, he’d never meant to make her weep. He shouldna have pretended ire with her, even if it meant angering Steafan. “Malina—” Her shiny eyes flashed. “Don’t you call me that ever again! You bastard!” He nearly recoiled from the whip of her anger, but he’d faced enough Gunn and MacKay to stand his ground against a wee, fiery woman. “Haud your wheesht, wife,” he growled as he pulled her to him. She’d draw the attention of the whole village, and the last thing he wanted were more witnesses to the debacle he’d landed himself in. Come to think of it, he was not some repentant mutt who ought to be whimpering for his sins. He didn’t regret keeping her and her unborn bairn safe from Steafan’s stocks tonight. He didn’t regret taking full and permanent responsibility for a woman with child lost in a strange land. He didn’t exactly expect her thanks, but he didn’t appreciate his bride calling him a bastard on their wedding night, either. “I willna have ye maligning me for the whole of Ackergill to hear.” “Oh, you willna, will you? And just how do you plan to stop me? Will you dole out your husbandly discipline and make your uncle proud?” “Och, woman. I am not your enemy.” He darted a glance around the road to make sure no one was gawking at them. “You’re not my friend, either, Darcy Keith,” she said in a respectable volume, though the sparks in her eyes suggested she’d prefer yelling at him some more. “You betrayed me. You told me I had to meet the laird in order to spend the night here. You made it sound like a formality. You didn’t say anything about ending up married. Married! Damn it, Darcy.

After helping Husayn’s son Feisal to re-organise the Hashemite troops into a series of small, fast-moving and effective guerrilla units, on July 6th T. E. Lawrence, leading a small force of these Arab fighters, seized the port of Aqaba, thus preparing the way for the British to fight their way out of Sinai and into Palestine and opening the road for an allied advance towards Jerusalem and Damascus. With

I've never seen a battle like this. Never." He gaped at Carah, his hand over his heart as he stared, open-mouthed, in complete adoration of the maiden warrior. "She. Is. So...." He didn't seem able to finish his thought. Carah turned and gave him a crooked, knowing smile. "What did you think of that, young warrior?" 'That..." Jerin stammered, "That was sooo completely amazing." She winked. "You bet'cha it was.

Battles (as soldiers know, and newspaper editors do not) are usually fought, not as they ought to be fought, but as they can be fought; and while the literary man is laying down the law at his desk as to how many troops should be moved here, and what rivers should be crossed there, and where the cavalry should have been brought up, and when the flank should have been turned, the wretched man who has to do the work finds the matter settled for him by pestilence, want of shoes, empty stomachs, bad roads, heavy rains, hot suns, and a thousand other stern warriors who never show on paper. So

Lie on your back and close your eyes. Let me chase your fear away. With nothing to fear, there is no need to die, eh?” “No.” She tried to push him away. “No.” He slipped an arm under her knees and drew her down the bed onto her back. She propped herself up on her elbows, trying to evade his lips as they nibbled their way down her neck to her collarbone. And lower. Panic welled within her. She couldn’t fight him. Not when she trembled like this. Not when the world tipped sideways. He slid the tip of his tongue under the leather to trace wet circles on her chest--just above her breasts. Her nipples sprang taut, sensitized to the soft leather that grazed them when she oved. Never before had Loretta actually felt the blood drain from her face; she did now. Sucking in a draft of air, she tried to twist sideways, but his arm, roped with muscle and tensed against her, blocked her escape. As she shifted position, his lips found her ear and, in unison with his teeth and tongue, learned its texture, its taste, its shape, discovering with unerring accuracy the sensitive places. His warm breath made chills run over her. “Habbe…” Her voice trailed off. She wanted desperately to distract him, but instead it was she who couldn’t seem to concentrate. “Your name, wha--what was it? Habbe what? What does it mean?” “Habbe Esa, Road to the Wolf, Hunter of the Wolf. My brother the wolf showed his face in my name dream.” “Y-your name dream?” She wriggled away and shoved the heel of her hand against his chin so she could sit up. “Wh-what’s a name dream?” His eyes gleamed down at her as he drew back his head. “A dream a man seeks when he becomes a warrior. In the dream, he learns his name. A woman has no need. She is named by others.” He dipped his head and captured her thumb between his teeth. Mesmerized, Loretta felt his tongue flick across her knuckles. Dear God, she was going to faint. And while she was unconscious, he would--he would…She felt herself tip sideways. His arm caught her from falling. He released her thumb. “Blue Eyes?” Loretta licked her bottom lip, trying desperately to right herself, to stay conscious. She couldn’t pass out--she just couldn’t. His face blurred. And his voice seemed distant. “Hah-ich-ka ein, where are you, Blue Eyes?” Loretta blinked, but it did no good. Was this how it felt to die? All floaty and distant from everything? Hah-ich-ka ein, where are you, Blue Eyes? She tried to answer. Couldn’t.

Your name, wha--what was it? Habbe what? What does it mean?” “Habbe Esa, Road to the Wolf, Hunter of the Wolf. My brother the wolf showed his face in my name dream.” “Y-your name dream?” She wriggled away and shoved the heel of her hand against his chin so she could sit up. “Wh-what’s a name dream?” His eyes gleamed down at her as he drew back his head. “A dream a man seeks when he becomes a warrior. In the dream, he learns his name. A woman has no need. She is named by others.

head of him was the access road, a blacked-out Suburban parked behind his car, blocking his exit. The figure of a man standing there in front of the vehicle, the glow of the cigar in his mouth visible in the early morning twilight. Kranemeyer slowed instinctively, his hand slipping into his jacket, toward the butt of the Heckler & Koch USP .45 holstered on his hip in a cross-draw position

Horseshit? Fuck you. I will defend my Belle and Mulan awesome warrior princess road comedy fan fiction to the fucking death.

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The wind howled furiously, and the driving snow beat in their faces; but little cared they for wind or snow as they hurried on their road, eager for revenge.

Have you been travelling, my young friend? Come in out of the darkness and rain. Sit by the fire, eat, drink and rest yourself. Life is one long journey from beginning to end, you know. We all walk different roads, both with our bodies and our minds. Some of us lose heart and fall by the wayside, whilst others go on to realise their dreams and desires. Let me tell you a story of travellers, and the paths they followed. Of young ones, like yourself, sometimes uncertain of their direction, and often reluctant to listen to the voices of sense and wisdom. Of a mighty warrior, set on a course of destiny and vengeance, unstoppable in his resolve. Of an evil one and his crew, cruel and ruthless, bound on a march of destruction and conquest. Of a simple maid and her friends, homebodies whose only aims were peace and well-being for all. Of wicked, foolish wanderers, chasing fantasies and fables, consumed by their own greed. Of small babes who dreamed small dreams, not knowing what the future held in store for them. And, finally, of two friends, faithful and true, who had roamed many highways and together chose their own way. The lives I will tell you of are intertwined by fate—good and evil bringing their just rewards to each, as they merited them. Listen whilst I relate this story. For am I not the Teller of Tales, the Weaver of Dreams!

I went straight back to my room, surprising Mora and one of her staff in the act of packing up my trunk. Apologizing, I hastily unlaced the traveling gown and reached for my riding gear. Mora gave me a slight smile as she curtsied. “That’s my job, my lady,” she said. “You needn’t apologize.” I grinned at her as I pulled on the tunic. “Maybe it’s not very courtly, but I feel bad when I make someone do a job twice.” Mora only smiled as she made a sign to the other servant, who reached for the traveling gown and began folding it up. I thrust my feet into my riding boots, smashed my fancy new riding hat onto my head, and dashed out again. The Marquis was waiting in the courtyard, standing between two fresh mares. I was relieved that he did not have that fleet-footed gray I remembered from the year before. On his offering me my pick, I grabbed the reins of the nearest mount and swung up into the saddle. The animal danced and sidled as I watched Bran and Nimiar come out of the inn hand in hand. They climbed into the coach, solicitously seen to by the innkeeper himself. The Marquis looked across at me. “Let’s go.” And he was off, with me right on his heels. At first all I was aware of was the cold rain on my chin and the exhilaration of speed. The road was paved, enabling the horses to dash along at the gallop, sending mud and water splashing. Before long I was soaked to the skin everywhere except my head, which was hot under my riding hat, and when we bolted down the road toward the Akaeriki, I had to laugh aloud at how strange life is! Last year at this very time I was running rain-sodden for my life in the opposite direction, chased by the very same man now racing neck and neck beside me. The thought caused me to look at him, though there was little to see beyond flying light hair under the broad-brimmed black hat and that long black cloak. He glanced over, saw me laughing, and I looked away again, urging my mount to greater efforts. At the same pace still, we reached the first staging point. Together we clattered into the innyard and swung down from the saddle. At once two plain-dressed young men came out of the inn, bowed, and handed Shevraeth a blackweave bag. It was obvious from their bearing that they were trained warriors, probably from Renselaeus. For a moment the Marquis stood conversing with them, a tall mud-splashed and anonymously dressed figure. Did anyone else know who he was? Or who I was? Or that we’d been enemies last year? Again laughter welled up inside me. When I saw stablehands bring forth two fresh mounts, I sprang forward, taking the reins of one, and mounted up. Then I waited until Shevraeth turned my way, stuck my tongue out at him, and rode out at the gallop, laughing all the way.

The Israel Defense Forces were routinely experiencing ambushes along Sidon Road, their main supply route, that resulted in high casualties. The Marines’ assigned position at BIA was adjacent to the MSR, which led to several ugly confrontations between the IDF and the Marines. Prior to our mission in Lebanon, the Marine-IDF relationship reflected a mutual respect between two warrior cultures. Many Israelis were U.S. citizens, had attended our service schools, and enjoyed a hard-earned reputation for winning decisive victories on the field of battle. The Marines were not alone in embracing the Israelis’ demonstrated courage and sacrifice in defense of their homeland. However, this relationship changed in Lebanon. The Israelis had a long-established policy of mercilessly responding to any attack against them, even minor ones. A sniper round from a village would cause the IDF to open up with .50-caliber machine gun fire from a convoy in many directions. This indiscriminate fire caused numerous civilian casualties, which

series Weekend Warriors (2003) (Amazon) Payback (2004) (Amazon) Vendetta (2005) (Amazon) The Jury (2005) (Amazon) Sweet Revenge (2006) (Amazon) Lethal Justice (2006) (Amazon) Free Fall (2007) (Amazon) Hide and Seek (2007) (Amazon) Hokus Pokus (2007) (Amazon) Fast Track (2008) (Amazon) Collateral Damage (2008) (Amazon) Final Justice (2008) (Amazon) Under the Radar (2009) (Amazon) Razor Sharp (2009) (Amazon) Vanishing Act (2009) (Amazon) Deadly Deals (2009) (Amazon) Game Over (2010) (Amazon) Cross Roads (2010) (Amazon) Deja Vu (2010) (Amazon) Home Free (2011) (Amazon) Gotcha! (2013) (

There have also been a number of movie cycles, of which the most populous featured Alien imitators, cyborgs or post-holocaust road warriors. Such trends are to be expected in a global cinema dominated by the particular production, distribution and exhibition practices of the New Hollywood, with its drive to produce event movies to be resold in various forms in multiple markets. Pre-sold titles, exploitable contents and images, and hybrid narratives with an ability to appeal to multiple audience segments have become the goal.

Message of Joan of Arc The crucible of love is carried forth in your hearts. The pain and sorrow of past injustices are being transformed through each loving word and deed. As the past merges with the present, physical and emotional bodies respond. There is so much that you carry, so much you transform. The conscious awareness of your soul’s purpose, the knowledge that you have come again to aid in this most transforming time magnifies the outcome of each mission. As past injustices merge with present injustices you respond with an awakening, an awakening of remembrance of all that has gone before and all that feels familiar in your lives and your world of today. And as you perceive and awaken, and as a betrayal or injustice today brings back those of times past, you feel, you weep, you cry out, and you may fall. Then the power within rises, the feminine power of love, the feminine power of strength, the alchemical magic awakens and rises with a power and strength stronger than the past, more powerful than a memory or injustice of today. And as the power rises within, and as you feel, acknowledge and respond, you choose the path of the spiritual warrior with a feminine strength present throughout the ages. For you are bearers of truth and soldiers of freedom. And through your awareness so vigilant and so true, through each conscious kindness, each voice raised in truth, you transform one by one, a hardened heart or bitter injustice. Yes the task is mighty and the road long, and you have walked this path again and again but I ask you now to feel in your heart, the power of love and the root of forgiveness. For only these shall usher in the New World, only these shall move you into the fullness of your true spiritual nature. Walk the path with your head held high feeling and knowing your power and strength. Know that battles once fought for truth and for freedom carry you forth in this time and this place. Feel the protection of your spiritual armour, carry the sword of truth and enlightenment. Work your alchemical magic as you transform and transcend all worldly concerns. Bring forth the balance of masculine and feminine, the strength of the armour and the beauty of love. Know, that which you endure and overcome shall strengthen you…. and that which you forgive shall free you." I (…state name aloud.) bow my head and consecrate my heart and with the greatest love and power I breathe in the Breath of The Holy Spirit and breathe out the names Isis and Magdalene.

Cheer up O faint-hearted warrior. Not only has Christ traveled the road—but He has slain your enemies!

There was no room on this new road for Crazy Horse, the greatest warrior of them all. Perhaps Touch-the-Clouds had this in mind as he looked down on those courageous, confused people. "It s well," he said quietly, reassuringly. "He has looked for death and it has come." The Oglalas filed away, silently, into the night.

This trail is never-changing, it won’t lead you astray. It won’t always be easy to follow and at times it will look too narrow for your paws. Follow it anyway, and you’ll overcome every challenge you face.” -Faolan

Steps 7-12 in the Native Way   We are familiar with carrying backpacks of anger, hate and resentment.  The spiritual warrior carries a backpack filled with solutions, a love-based thought system, and values that move us toward a life of harmony and balance.  Others will want to join this walk, strengthening the Healing Forest that we all share together.   W

who we are finally walking with. In Step 7 we will really begin to change from a negative to a positive warrior. There is no greater ill than being spiritually sick! When we realize the Great Spirit is the only solution to our insanity, we must give in to our Higher Power. In an act of rebirth our Mother Earth floods everything, from the sickened forest to the beautiful meadow, until all is back in balance. We, too, must start over in every area of our lives. Humility is an attitude that will help us start fresh in everything we do. Humility

I notice being noticed immediately – I’m a freeway goddess! In the past five minutes of gridlock, I have been checked out by a bald man in convertible Mustang, a cowboy in an F-150, and a body-builder in a Lincoln Navigator. Watch out road warriors! I don’t want to be responsible for any accidents. If only I had a car decal that advertised: Available – if you meet my eligibility criteria!

I’d never planned my career. I’d never looked down the road. I just kept focused on doing the best I could in the job I had, throwing my heart and mind into every assignment.

These were not Methodist Indians but warriors with a lineage that owed nothing to the white man. We did not live upon the same earth that they did and we flatter ourselves when we think we understand them. To pity these men is to pity the gods.

Praise the rain; the seagull dive The curl of plant, the raven talk— Praise the hurt, the house slack The stand of trees, the dignity— Praise the dark, the moon cradle The sky fall, the bear sleep— Praise the mist, the warrior name The earth eclipse, the fired leap— Praise the backwards, upward sky The baby cry, the spirit food— Praise canoe, the fish rush The hole for frog, the upside-down— Praise the day, the cloud cup The mind flat, forget it all— Praise crazy. Praise sad. Praise the path on which we're led. Praise the roads on earth and water. Praise the eater and the eaten. Praise beginnings; praise the end. Praise the song and praise the singer. Praise the rain; it brings more rain. Praise the rain; it brings more rain.

The Christian School has a team called the Warriors--WELCOME BACK WARRIORS! shouts the banner over the road. But the billboard in front of the school says the "Trait for the Week" is peace. Victor feels alarmed about entering such a facility. He may come out confused. He may emerge wearing a black armband, carrying a spear.

She took a deep breath and struggled out of the pain. She’d promised herself, after her mother had left, that she wouldn’t let bitterness eat away at her. That she would embrace life, hang-ups and all. Sometimes it was a struggle, but she’d always pushed through before, and she didn’t intend to stop now. No matter how hard the road got, or what stood in her way—including whatever this was—she would keep going until she realized her dreams, one way or another.

Does Bhisma care about women and their fate? Do all women have to be fierce warriors and die like men, as Rosa Luxemburg did, to earn his respect? Does he care about the mountains, behind which every day the sun rises and sets, about life on the side of the road, about the color of twilight in certain clear afternoons, so beautiful it is almost unendurable?

a network that fans out in every direction, routes along which pilgrims and warriors, nomads and merchants have travelled, goods and produce have been bought and sold, and ideas exchanged, adapted and refined. They have carried not only prosperity, but also death and violence, disease and disaster. In the late nineteenth century, this sprawling web of connections was given a name by an eminent German geologist, Ferdinand von Richthofen (uncle of the First World War flying ace the “Red Baron”) that has stuck ever since: “Seidenstraßen”—the Silk Roads.

A book can only strengthen a person’s understanding so far; it is only a guide. The only proof that is absolute is your own experience of the Self. It is through practice and self-effort alone that one experiences the truth.

The unborn, the eternal, the indestructible, that which is beyond the material never dies.

Everyone is a victim of circumstances, and everyone is suffering. They are all coming from a dark place of ignorance. Driving out the darkness is not done by reacting to others, but by being the light in that darkness.

One must surrender one’s identity, which is attached to the ego and become empty before one can fill it up with the universe.

There is a tale, you really wish to hear it?” “Yes, we want to hear it!” “This I’ve got to hear,” Fez says, downing another shot of green-mist. Æther tells the tale… “It is the late nineteenth century, the last days of the Silk Road in China,” he grabs his staff and stomps it to the ground. “It was a time of great change on Terra, but the old ways still flourished—the ways of the warrior! “Now a merchant’s caravan was making the perilous journey along the Silk Road accompanied by bodyguards, an infamous Chinese boxer and his band of brothers. Stopped in their tracks they did, on seeing from the west a strong wind picking up, a sandstorm brewing. Unseen by the travellers, high in the sky a flying saucer flew overhead—the Yún! In the distance it landed, then no sooner had it started, the sandstorm began to dissipate, as if it had never been. The sand cloud cleared to reveal a lone figure, a Grey. The Ascetic known as Oracle of the Four Winds. The one that never dies, whom for the sake of this account we shall call Lives-a-long-time. “The story goes on to tell how Lives-a-long-time held up a hand for the caravan to stop, upon which the leader dismounted from his camel, and said to the Ascetic, ‘What is it you want demon, you dare to stop Wang-Yin?’ ‘I do!’ said Lives-a-longtime, at which Wang-Yin roared: ‘Then prepare to taste my ironpalm heavy-as-the-world!

Too many people in the HDA frowned on the Gospel Warriors; the atheists and cynics, mocking the old concepts of faith. He’d long ago learned not to mention his devotion to the Lord to his fellow officers

By the time King João II finally inherited the throne, he noted with disgust that the only property his father had left him by right was the land under the roads.

We all know that the telling of history is a continual unfolding of the past. It is never static, never finished. -Authors' Note

Turn right in one hundred feet,” the navigational system’s Scottish voice cut through Claire’s response. “Being interrupted by a Scottish accent sounds more sexy than rude,” she laughed, picturing a kilted Highlander warrior as the man behind the voice. “Very Outlander-ish.” Suggie giggled along. “I agree. It’s impossible to be angry at a sexy, exotic GPS voice telling you where to go. It’s not road rage. It’s road romance.

As one of the motorbikes came towards me, I let a big heavy right go, and knocked the rider’s head clean off his shoulders! Fucking hell, the guy’s head was still in his helmet and it was clattering all the way down the road.

We know from the experience of the last twenty years,” wrote Lewis in 1944, “that a terrified and angry pacifism is one of the roads that lead to war.”28 Tolkien decried “the utter stupid waste of war,” yet admitted “it will be necessary to face it in an evil world.”29 Their recourse was to draw us back to the heroic tradition: a mode of thought tempered by the realities of combat and fortified by belief in a God of justice and mercy. Perhaps the character of Faramir, the Captain of Gondor in The Lord of the Rings, expresses it best.30 He possesses humility as well as great courage—a warrior with a “grave tenderness in his eyes”—who takes no delight in the prospect of battle. As such, he conveys a message that bears repeating at the present moment, in a world that is no stranger to the sorrows and ravages of war. “War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all,” he explains. “But I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”31

Does moping actually help humans feel better?” We’ve been whispering since we saw the victims on the road. “I’m not moping,” I whisper back. “Of course you’re not. A girl like you, spending time with a warrior demigod like me. What’s to mope about? Leaving a wheelchair behind couldn’t possibly show up on the radar compared to that.” I nearly stumble over a fallen branch. “You have got to be kidding me.” “I never kid about my warrior demigod status.” “Oh. My. God.” I lower my voice, having forgotten to whisper. “You are nothing but a bird with an attitude. Okay, so you have a few muscles, I’ll grant you that. But you know, a bird is nothing but a barely evolved lizard. That’s what you are.

Roman armies could move faster than the Gauls, especially over long distances, because of two advantages: superior engineering and better discipline. The Romans were not stopped by natural obstacles, because their engineers could quickly improvise a bridge across a river. The Gauls were taken by surprise because they regarded high mountain passes as impassable during winter, but Caesar’s soldiers, who were more like construction workers than soldiers, worked in teams to clear away deep snow. Gauls liked fighting but they thought the dirty work of building roads and fortifications was beneath their dignity as warriors. Romans did everything they were asked because their troops were highly disciplined. Roman soldiers knew that the faster they did these routine tasks, the more surely they would win, even against armies much bigger than themselves.

57. Every Time You Surprise Yourself…You Inspire Yourself SAS selection is designed to test you. Any mental flaw, any physical failing will be exposed by the relentless series of challenges aimed at finding your breaking point. Lung-bursting cross-mountain marches through the snow, uphill sprints, carrying another recruit in a fireman’s lift up and down steep hills, often in driving rain, sometimes in sub-zero temperatures. As selection goes on, these ‘beasting’ sessions get harder and harder. And yet I also found that the more of them I came through in one piece (albeit exhausted and battered), the more easily I could cope with them. It was the SAS way of testing our mental resolve through physical battering. Selection is all about realizing that the pain never lasts for ever. And every time I was tested and I hung on in there, the better I understood that it was just a question of doing it again - one more time - until someone eventually said it was the end, and I had passed. I now know that unless you really, truly test yourself, you’ll never have any idea just how capable you can be. And with each small achievement, your confidence will grow. Most people never reach their limit because they are never sufficiently tested. This means I’ve got two good pieces of news for you. The first is that whenever you do something beyond your ‘comfort zone’ and realize you are still standing, the more you will believe that the impossible is actually possible. And on the road to success, belief is everything. And the second piece of news is that we all have much further to push ourselves than we might initially imagine. Inside us all, just waiting to be tested, is a better, bolder, braver version of who we think we are. All you have to do is give it an opportunity to be unleashed. So pick big targets and surprise yourself with how capable you really are deep down. Remember David and Goliath? Rather than David, the young shepherd boy, looking at this giant of a warrior and thinking, ‘Yikes, he’s huge, I’m beat’ - he thought, ‘With a target that big, how can I possibly miss!’ Success, in life and adventure, is dependent on the retraining of our mind.

When the filly, the maiden, the boy and the warrior are ready to take up their Destinies, each will know it. The filly will become a mare, the maiden a woman, the boy a man. The Warrior, however, will pick up a stick and walk from his mother, his people, and his land, and never once remove his eyes from the true red road that lies beneath his feet. And yet, he will never know that he is on his Path. (From Brothers of Light)

Angelic warrior

Shout-out to your idiot friends/siblings who, as children, would call all vampires “Draculas.

They say all roads led to the imperial city. Of course that was true - all roads linked up with other roads and would ultimately take you anyplace you wished to go. This road did in fact become the Imperial Way, though, and was busy enough that they could follow Tyrus unnoticed. "Oh, he's noticed," Ronan said when Ashyn commented. "But he hasn't looked back once." "No, we haven't seen him look back. He's a prince and a warrior, Ash. He's not going to glance about like a nervous trader with a full purse. He acts as if no one would dare attack him, so they give him a wide berth. But he's fully aware of his surroundings. He knows we're here. He's jut not going to do anything about it unless we come closer.

there would have been no warfare. One of the great Indian warriors of history was Red Cloud of the Oglala Dakota Sioux tribe, who had a reputation for daring and ferocity. In June of 1866, Sherman called Red Cloud and several other Lakota Sioux leaders to Fort Laramie to discuss a new treaty to permit a new road to be built through Sioux territory. Even before an agreement had been reached, however, a battalion

The time will come when you need to make a choice. A choice that concerns the rest of your life, and more importantly, her life. To save Charity’s life—to give her a life—you must take the hard road, sacrifice your heart, and let her go.

And I work your body with a skill and expertise that I’m sure you more than appreciate.” I released a laugh. “All roads lead to your dick.” “I mean, it is one of my best qualities.

The beautifully flawed survivor, because that is who I am. A survivor. A warrior. A queen. A Viper. I am all of those and so much more. When my path took me down the darkest of roads, I found the strength to go on at the very blackest of times. When I knew my parents didn’t love me, when they broke my heart, I went on. When I was alone for the first time, when fear was my constant…I chose to go on. Or

The origins of the term Left-Hand Path is from the Sanskrit phrase Vama Marga. This ancient Tantric term refers to attaining Bodhana (Sanskrit meaning ‘Awakening’) essentially by the individualistic way of opposite-doing. To conceptualize this rational understanding as an introduction, the Left-Hand Path was for the elite few who possessed a small ‘spark’ of strength, will and determination to awaken from being as all humans are, Pashu (Sanskrit ‘herd animals’) who in their natural state exist in Supta (Sanskrit ‘Sleep’). This state of the herd or masses is one of a very low level of consciousness; believing what society and the media tells them is true, religion is a simplistic safety-net from the fears of the unknown and satisfied with meaningless pleasures. Left-Hand Path is for the strong-willed individual who, like the gods and heroes of old, seeks to conquer and endure the struggle and ecstasy of the transformative, awakening path of opposite-doing. Vira (Sanskrit ‘Warrior’) is fit for the individual who has the conquering energy to struggle and oppose via a dedicated, self-determined Liberation from the sleeping and low levels of consciousness. The Vira is of the Left-Hand Path as is the Divya (Sanskrit ‘Divine’) who have the fiery illumination and power inherent of the Black Flame. Luciferians seek to forge their own mental weapons to cut their own road on the LHP to Apotheosis or Bodhana.

Today, Ghuri is remembered as one of the worst temple-breakers in Indian history, and within a century Persian chronicles would label him a ‘Ghazi’ – a religiously inspired holy warrior.

Throughout life man is constantly adjusting his assemblage point unconsciously. However, in doing so, he ‘forgets’ many of his experiences and the means by which he has arrived at that knowledge. To understand this it should be realised that the assemblage point is very much like the dial on a tuner. The purpose of such a dial is to enable us to access certain radio frequencies which give us a particular broadcasting station. Every time we move the dial we will access another band of frequencies which will of course constitute another station. The assemblage point of man works in exactly the same way in that it gives us access to certain energy fields which constitute our view of the world. Under the impact of this view we gain certain experiences and knowledge which are peculiar only to that particular view. If then we access other energy fields we also access another view. This new view causes us to lose contact with or to ‘forget’ the experiences and knowledge gained previously. Needless to say, we do not really forget. It is just that our old view becomes overlaid with the impact of our new view and its attendant experiences. When knowledge becomes overlaid in this manner it becomes what has been termed subliminal or subconscious. The fact that knowledge is subconscious does not imply that it ceases to influence our actions. On the contrary, our thoughts and feelings, and consequently also our actions, are continuously being influenced by this subconscious knowledge. This is why an apprentice will often struggle to break an old habit. Such subconscious knowledge has the tendency to pop up most unexpectedly, and the apprentice finds himself having concluded an act triggered by this subliminal knowledge even before he realises what he is doing. It therefore stands to reason that in order to have total recall and also to be able successfully to practise not-doing, it is necessary to be able to move the assemblage point back to all of its former positions. Only by accessing these former positions can we recall the knowledge gained there, and the habits initiated by those experiences. It is vital to grasp that it does not matter if at first we meet only with apparent failure. Paradoxical as it may sound, success in walking the Path of Knowledge does not lie in the outcome of our struggle, but only in how impeccably we struggle, because it is this struggle which forces us to move the assemblage point. Once we can move the assemblage point everything falls into place smoothly and effortlessly. The only thing which is a struggle is to make the assemblage point move in the first place. Once this has been accomplished the road lies clear ahead.

His past lives had begun to conquer him. I saw that he had not told me the whole truth. I saw his other images. I saw a murderer in Rome, a poetess in Spain, a falconer among the Aztecs, a whore in Sudan, a priestess in old Kenya, a one-eyed white ship captain who believed in God and wrote beautiful hymns and who made his fortune capturing slaves in the Gold Coast. I even saw a famed samurai warrior in ancient Japan, and a mother of ten in Greece.

I’ve accepted my death. The path I’ve chosen is one that goes beyond dangerous. It is closer to suicidal. I am going to die doing this work. It will happen to me as it has happened to others. We are warriors born, and we have chosen not to stray from that path. So I accept Death as my inevitable bedfellow, and by doing so, I am free to live until he claims me. I never know when he’ll call my name, and therefore, I live every minute I have left to the fullest. One day, Angela, if you join me on this road, you’ll have to make a choice too. Ignore the truth like most and find a modicum of peace in the illusion, or accept your own death and revel in the freedom that provides. No matter what you pick, though, know that I’ll be proud of you just for following the rest of us down this crazy path.

My tragedy is not contagious; you will not catch your children’s death from me. I know you don’t know what to say. I wouldn’t have a few months ago, either. A little advice? Don’t platitude me. Do not start any sentences with the phrase “at least,” for you will then witness my miraculous transformation into Grief Warrior. I will spout grief theory at you, tell you that Kübler-Ross was misinterpreted, that there is no timeline, no road or path in grief. We are all on our own here, in the gloom. I will ask you to please talk about my daughter. That I am terrified that she will be forgotten, that I will somehow forget her. I will remind you that I might tear up, or sob, but it’s OK; this is my life now. This is how I exist, in the here-and-not-now. LAURIE KRUG, Writing Your Grief student, on the death of her daughter, Kat

We had arrived together in Lee’s Chrysler station wagon. He was staggering drunk. I begged him to let me drive. “Fuck you.” He drew back a fist. He had a whole repertoire of violent gestures, many of them cribbed from his hero, Toshiro Mifune. I tried to grab the keys, but he slashed me with his imaginary samurai sword. These were movie blows. The stopped an inch short of your neck or chin. I snatched the keys and got into the driver’s seat, the women in the back. “Get in, Lee.” Another battle of wills. How could he meekly submit, this warrior, this conqueror? We pleaded with him. He stalked and staggered round the car, raining blows on it. Finally he found a way of saving face. He climbed up and crouched on the roof rack. Despite our entreaties, he would not come down. I decided to drive slowly down the pier, hoping that the cool ocean air might sober him up. I stopped as we got to the public road. I got out. He snarled at me, would not get down. I was at my wits’ end. The streets were deserted. I drove slowly down the Pacific Coast Highway towards Malibu. Flashing lights in my rear- view mirror — sirens. I pulled over. The patrolman approached the car, warily loosening his revolver holster. He looked up, then at me. “Do you know you have Lee Marvin on your roof?

Step by step walk the thousand-mile road. Study strategy over the years and achieve the spirit of the warrior. Today is victory over yourself of yesterday; tomorrow is your victory over lesser men.

THE WRECKED TOWN of Gaza lay silent and empty. It had once been among the finest cities of the Near East: a stopping point on the coastal road from Syria through Palestine to Egypt, made rich by a thriving market and renowned for its mosques, churches and massive, airy houses built in marble.1 But in 1149 only its natural wells and reservoirs remained to indicate that this was once a place where people of many religions had thrived. War had swept through the elegant streets and emptied Gaza, seemingly for good. “It was now in ruins,” wrote William of Tyre, “and entirely uninhabited.”2 Its vacant and shattered buildings bore out the words of one of the city’s finest native poets, Abu Ishaq al-Ghazzi: “The past is gone. . . . You have but the moment in which you exist.”3