Roots Run Deep Quotes

As much as his heart remained rooted here, what lay beyond his country, beyond his nation, called to him like a cord buried deep within, pulling taut, drawing him away.

But guilt is guilt. It doesn't go away. It can't be nullified. It can't even be fully understood, I'm certain - it's roots run too deep into private and long-standing karma. About the only thing that saves my neck when I get to feeling this way is that guilt is an imperfect form of knowledge. Just because it isn't perfect doesn't mean that it can't be used. The hard thing to do is to put it to practical use, before it gets around to paralyzing you.

Somewhere deeper in the city a motor is running, a distant, earthy growl, like an animal panting. in a few hours the bright blush of morning will push through all that darkness, and shapes will reassert themselves, and people will wake up and yawn and brew coffee and get ready for work, everything the same as usual. Life will go on. Something aches at the very core of me, something ancient and deep and stronger than words: the filament that joins each of us to the root of existence, that ancient thing unfurling and resisting and grappling, desperately for a foothold, a way to stay here, breathe, keep going.

My family tree has many branches, both living and dead... but all equally important. I cherish the memories that make its roots run deep.

Our roots run deep and are strong to the core. I am proud to see women taking a stand. Many times, we have been fallen warriors; there have been plenty of times we have been wounded warriors, but we are still standing. We are standing up for our rights. We are standing up for a cause. We are standing up for movements that empower us to be heard, respected and appreciated! We are bold! We are courageous! We are thankful! We are grateful! We are blessed!

I love the color black is because my roots run deep, and my core is strong.

Don’t let anyone tell you that Apartheid has nothing to do with South Africa now. Those roots run deep and tangled and we’ll be tripping over them for many generations to come.

It was easy to root for the winners. No, he liked the punch-drunk ones, half walking at mile twenty-three, tongues flapping like Labradors. Tumbling across the finish line by hook or by crook, feet pounded to bloody meat in their Nikes. The laggards and limpers who weren’t running the course but running deep into their character—down into the cave to return to the light with what they found. By the time they got to Columbus Circle, the TV crews have split, the cone cups of water and Gatorade litter the course like daisies in a pasture, and the silver space blankets twist in the wind. Maybe they had someone waiting for them and maybe they didn’t. Who wouldn’t celebrate that?

How do you bear it?" he said. My eyes gave off a faint light, and by it I could see his face, It was a surprise to realise that he was waiting for an answer. I believed I had one. I thought of another dim room, with another prisoner. He had been a craftsman also. On the foundation of his knowledge, civilisation had been built. Prometheus' words deep-running as roots, had waited in me all this time. "We bear it as best we can," I said.

I lean into him and I want him. He is solid. He reminds me of a tree—roots that run deep.

The roots of shame run deep.

I think the roots of this antagonism to science run very deep. They're ancient. We see them in Genesis, this first story, this founding myth of ours, in which the first humans are doomed and cursed eternally for asking a question, for partaking of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. It's puzzling that Eden is synonymous with paradise when, if you think about it at all, it's more like a maximum-security prison with twenty-four hour surveillance. It's a horrible place. Adam and Eve have no childhood. They awaken full-grown. What is a human being without a childhood? Our long childhood is a critical feature of our species. It differentiates us, to a degree, from most other species. We take a longer time to mature. We depend upon these formative years and the social fabric to learn many of the things we need to know.

Here one comes upon an all-important English trait: the respect for constituitionalism and legality, the belief in 'the law' as something above the state and above the individual, something which is cruel and stupid, of course, but at any rate incorruptible. It is not that anyone imagines the law to be just. Everyone knows that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. But no one accepts the implications of this, everyone takes for granted that the law, such as it is, will be respected, and feels a sense of outrage when it is not. Remarks like 'They can't run me in; I haven't done anything wrong', or 'They can't do that; it's against the law', are part of the atmosphere of England. The professed enemies of society have this feeling as strongly as anyone else. One sees it in prison-books like Wilfred Macartney's Walls Have Mouths or Jim Phelan's Jail Journey, in the solemn idiocies that take places at the trials of conscientious objectors, in letters to the papers from eminent Marxist professors, pointing out that this or that is a 'miscarriage of British justice'. Everyone believes in his heart that the law can be, ought to be, and, on the whole, will be impartially administered. The totalitarian idea that there is no such thing as law, there is only power, has never taken root. Even the intelligentsia have only accepted it in theory. An illusion can become a half-truth, a mask can alter the expression of a face. The familiar arguments to the effect that democracy is 'just the same as' or 'just as bad as' totalitarianism never take account of this fact. All such arguments boil down to saying that half a loaf is the same as no bread. In England such concepts as justice, liberty and objective truth are still believed in. They may be illusions, but they are powerful illusions. The belief in them influences conduct,national life is different because of them. In proof of which, look about you. Where are the rubber truncheons, where is the caster oil? The sword is still in the scabbard, and while it stays corruption cannot go beyond a certain point. The English electoral system, for instance, is an all but open fraud. In a dozen obvious ways it is gerrymandered in the interest of the moneyed class. But until some deep change has occurred in the public mind, it cannot become completely corrupt. You do not arrive at the polling booth to find men with revolvers telling you which way to vote, nor are the votes miscounted, nor is there any direct bribery. Even hypocrisy is powerful safeguard. The hanging judge, that evil old man in scarlet robe and horse-hair wig,whom nothing short of dynamite will ever teach what century he is living in, but who will at any rate interpret the law according to the books and will in no circumstances take a money bribe,is one of the symbolic figures of England. He is a symbol of the strange mixture of reality and illusion, democracy and privilege, humbug and decency, the subtle network of compromises, by which the nation keeps itself in its familiar shape.

Prometheus’ words, deep-running as roots, had waited in me all this time. “We bear it as best we can,” I said.

It’s as if loosening that knot I’d never noticed before had slackened my interest along with it. At the same time that I’d lost something, something new had also taken root deep within me.

He continued his call, but his answers shortened to single words—yes, no, fine—as I wrapped my hands around the base and lowered my head to run my tongue from root to tip before going in whole hog and deep throating him for the win. I was in a go-big-or-go-home mood. His choked-out, “Fuck. No, excuse me. Sorry. Wasn’t talking to you,” had me humming a little giggle around his cock.

I love the color black because my roots run deep, and my core is strong. All of the hurt and pain I’ve been through, I never gave up. Life isn’t about pleasing others. To be honest, we think we lose a lot when we do not do what others want us to do—we might lose a lot at the moment because we are not walking in their line. However, when all is said and done, we stole from ourselves, and we lost the war. We cheated ourselves because we didn’t love ourselves enough. We have to have faith in ourselves and not in other people. They will leave you high and dry, and what you did for them wasn’t enough. After they rob you of everything, you and only you would be the only one sorting out the pieces.

The association of the wild and the wood also run deep in etymology. The two words are thought to have grown out of the root word wald and the old Teutonic word walthus, meaning 'forest.' Walthus entered Old English in its variant forms of 'weald,' 'wald,' and 'wold,' which were used to designate both 'a wild place' and 'a wooded place,' in which wild creatures -- wolves, foxes, bears -- survived. The wild and wood also graft together in the Latin word silva, which means 'forest,' and from which emerged the idea of 'savage,' with its connotations of fertility....

It's like this, Bunny Boy, if you walk up to an oak tree or a bloody elm or something - you know, one of those big bastards - one with a thick, heavy trunk with giant roots that grow deep in the soil and great branches that are covered in leaves, right, and you walk up to it and give the tree a shake, well, what happens?' (...) 'I really don't know, Dad,' (...) 'Well, nothing bloody happens, of course!' (...) 'You can stand there shaking it till the cows come home and all that will happen is your arms will get tired. Right?' (...) 'Right, Dad,' he says. (...) 'But if you go up to a skinny, dry, fucked-up little tree, with a withered trunk and a few leaves clinging on for dear life, and you put your hands around it and shake the shit out of it - as we say in the trade - those bloody leaves will come flying off! Yeah?' 'OK, Dad,' says the boy (...) 'Now, the big oak tree is the rich bastard, right, and the skinny tree is the poor cunt who hasn't got any money. Are you with me?' Bunny Junior nods. 'Now, that sounds easier than it actually is, Bunny Boy. Do you want to know why?' 'OK, Dad.' 'Because every fucking bastard and his dog has got hold of the little tree and is shaking it for all that it's worth - the government, the bloody landlord, the lottery they don't have a chance in hell of winning, the council, their bloody exes, their hundred snotty-nosed brats running around because they are too bloody stupid to exercise a bit of self-control, all the useless shit they see on TV, fucking Tesco, parking fines, insurance on this and insurance on that, the boozer, the fruit machines, the bookies - every bastard and his three-legged, one-eyed, pox-riden dog are shaking this little tree,' says Bunny, clamping his hands together and making like he is throttling someone. 'So what do you go and do, Dad?' says Bunny Junior. 'Well, you've got to have something they think they need, you know, above all else.' 'And what's that, Dad?' 'Hope... you know... the dream. You've got to sell them the dream.

Sometimes, in moments like this, there was so much I wanted to say to Max that the prospect of forcing all of that emotion into mere syllables seemed laughable. I had spent my entire life being ripped from what I loved. My heart never could grow roots, because every few years they would be hacked away. You learn to live without them. You learn to find love where it doesn’t exist, like in the superficial kindnesses of a cruel man. You learn to accept the loss as a part of you, and pretend you don’t mourn every severed connection. I had forgotten that it was possible for the roots of someone’s affection to run so deep, so solid. I could build a life in the branches of this tree. I could cradle a generation’s future nestled in its leaves.

We remain in the air, the empty space, in the dusty roots and deep earth, in the echo and stories, the songs of the time and place we have inhabited. My clan, my blood, my place, my people.

Somehow, in our language and in our psyches, we have come to equate good with light and evil with darkness. The symbolism runs deep. We see it in our poetry, our religion, our songs, and our cultural mythology.

I would like there to exist spaces that are stable, unmoving, intangible, untouched and almost untouchable, unchanging, deep-rooted; places that might be points of reference, of departure, of origin: My birthpalce, the cradle of my family, the house where I may have been born, the tree I may have seen grow (that my father may have planted the day I was born), the attic of my childhood filled with intact memories . . . Such places don't exist, and it's because they do'nt exist that space becomes a question, ceases to be self-evident, ceases to be incorporated, ceases to be appropriated. Space is a doubt: I have constantly to mark it, to designate it, It is never mine, never given to me, I have to conquer it. My spaces are fragile: time is going to wear them away, to destroy them. Nothing will any longer reseble waht was, my memories will betray me, oblivion will infiltrate my memory, I shall look at a few old yellowing photographs with broken edges without recognising them. The words 'Phone directory available within' or 'Snacks served at any hour' will no longer be written up in a semi-circle in white porcelain letter on the window of the little café in the Rue Coquillière. Space melts like sand running through one's fingers. Time bears it away and leaves me only Shapeless shreds: To write: to try meticulously to retain something, to cause something to survive; to wrest a few precise scraps from the void as it grows, to leave somewhere a furrow, a trace, a mark or a few signs. Paris 1973-1974

This false ego, which you have created by not looking in, by continuously looking out, is the root cause of fear. You will be afraid of all those spaces in which you have to look. You will be afraid of beauty because beauty simply throws you within. A beautiful sunset, and all those luminous colors in the clouds, and you will be afraid to look at it because such great beauty is bound to throw you inside yourself. Such great beauty stops your thinking: For a moment the mind is in such awe, it forgets how to think, how to go on spinning and weaving. The inner talk comes to a stop, a halt, and you are suddenly in. People are afraid of great music, people are afraid of great poetry, people are afraid of deep intimacy. People’s love affairs are just hit-and-run affairs. They don’t go deep into each other’s being because going deep into each other’s being, the fear is there—the other’s pool of being will reflect you. In that pool, in that mirror of the other’s being, if you are not found, if the mirror remains empty, if it reflects nothing, then what?

When it comes to green energy investigations, I conclude that the internal opposition I face has its origins in the personal beliefs of those who decide which stories go on the air and which are kept off. The purpose of the stories I propose isn’t to examine the general merits or shortfalls of the technology, ideology, or movement. They’re financial stories delving into possible waste, abuse, and questionable spending of tax dollars. What I didn’t anticipate is that some colleagues and managers, unable to disconnect their personal viewpoints from their duty as journalists, would view this line of reporting as damaging to a cause about which they hold deep-rooted beliefs. Fearful that the stories would discourage rather than promote green energy, they want to prevent the public from seeing them at all. It’s a paternalistic attitude that results in de facto censorship. Simply put: they decide that it’s best for you to not hear a story at all rather than run the risk that you might see it and form the “wrong” opinion. (By that, I mean an opinion that differs from theirs.)

Do not doubt your ability to remove the root cause of the disturbance inside of you. It really can go away. You can look deep within yourself, to the core of your being, and decide that you don’t want the weakest part of you running your life. You want to be free of this.

Because Not All Men, right? I mean, we'd hate to make them feel bad. If men are genuine allies to women - if they are genuinely invested in our liberation and equality - why should they feel entitled to any kind of acknowledgement or reward? More to the point, why do we feel constantly pressured to give it to them? The roots of patriarchy run very, very deep. Some feminists fear that if we don't mollycoddle sympathetic men, they'll throw a tantrum and go home. But doesn't this urge to placate and flatter simply replicate the same power dynamics that underpin our oppression in the first place?

It is striking how many spiritual writers react to the specificity of real prayer. It runs deeper than Greek Neoplatonism and the influence of Buddhist spirituality. Frankly, God makes us nervous when he gets too close. We don’t want a physical dependence on him. It feels hokey, like we are controlling God. Deep down we just don’t like grace. We don’t want to risk our prayer not being answered. We prefer the safety of isolation to engaging the living God. To embrace the Father and thus prayer is to accept what one pastor called “the sting of particularity.”4 Our dislike of asking is rooted in our desire for independence.

Resolve runs out of me. I touch the ribbon. I look at the face of my husband, the beginning and end of his desires all etched there. He is not a bad man, and that, I realize suddenly, is the root of my hurt. He is not a bad man at all. To describe him as evil or wicked or corrupted would do a deep disservice to him. And yet—

I would like there to exist places that are stable, unmoving, intangible, untouched and almost untouchable, unchanging, deep-rooted; places that might be points of reference, of departure, of origin: My birthplace, the cradle of my family, the house where I may have been born, the tree I may have seen grow (that my father may have planted the day I was born), the attic of my childhood filled with intact memories… My spaces are fragile: time is going to wear them away, to destroy them. Nothing will any longer resemble what was, my memories will betray me, oblivion will infiltrate my memory, I shall look at a few old yellowing photographs with broken edges without recognising them… Space melts like sand running through one’s fingers. Time bears it away and leaves me only shapeless shreds: To write: To try meticulously to retain something, to cause something to survive; to wrest a few precise scraps from the void as it grows, to leave somewhere a furrow, a trace, a mark or a few signs.

It was easy to root for the winners. No, he liked the punch-drunk ones, half walking at mile twenty-three, tongues flapping like Labradors. Tumbling across the finish line by hook or by crook, feet pounded to bloody meat in their Nikes. The laggards and limpers who weren’t running the course but running deep into their character—down into the cave to return to the light with what they found.

Barcelona has always been more a city of capital and labor than of nobility and commoners; its democratic roots are old and run very deep. Its medieval charter of citizens’ rights, the Usatges, grew from a nucleus which antedated the Magna Carta by more than a hundred years. Its government, the Consell de Cent (Council of One Hundred), had been the oldest protodemocratic political body in Spain.

With bare feet in the dirt, fulmia, ten times with conviction, will shake the earth to its roots, if you have the strength, Jaga’s book had told me, and the Dragon had believed it enough not to let me try it anywhere near the tower. I had felt doubtful, anyway, about conviction: I hadn’t believed I had any business shaking the earth to its roots. But now I fell to the ground and dug away the snow and the fallen leaves and rot and moss until I came to the hard-frozen dirt. I pried up a large stone and began to smash at the earth, again and again, breaking up the dirt and breathing on it to make it softer, pounding in the snow that melted around my hands, pounding in the hot tears that dripped from my eyes as I worked. Kasia was above me with her head flung up, her mouth open in its soundless cry like a statue in a church. “Fulmia,” I said, my fingers deep in the dirt, crushing the solid clods between my fingers. “Fulmia, fulmia,” I chanted over and over, bleeding from broken nails, and I felt the earth hear me, uneasily. Even the earth was tainted here, poisoned, but I spat on the dirt and screamed, “Fulmia,” and imagined my magic running into the ground like water, finding cracks and weaknesses, spreading out beneath my hands, beneath my cold wet knees: and the earth shuddered and turned over. A low trembling began where my hands drove into the ground, and it followed me as I started prying at the roots of the tree. The frozen dirt began to break up into small chunks all around them, the tremors going on and on like waves. The branches above me were waving wildly as if in alarm, the whispering of the leaves becoming a muted roaring. I straightened up on my knees. “Let her out!” I screamed at the tree: I beat on its trunk with my muddy fists. “Let her out, or I’ll bring you down! Fulmia!” I cried out in rage, and threw myself back down at the ground, and where my fists hit, the ground rose and swelled like a river rising with the rain. Magic was pouring out of me, a torrent: every warning the Dragon had ever given me forgotten and ignored. I would have spent every drop of myself and died there, just to bring that horrible tree down: I couldn’t imagine a world where I lived, where I left this behind me, Kasia’s life and heart feeding this corrupt monstrous thing. I would rather have died, crushed in my own earthquake, and brought it down with me. I tore at the ground ready to break open a pit to swallow us all.

Last year I had a very unusual experience. I was awake, with my eyes closed, when I had a dream. It was a small dream about time. I was dead, I guess, in deep black space high up among many white stars. My own consciousness had been disclosed to me, and I was happy. Then I saw far below me a long, curved band of color. As I came closer, I saw that it stretched endlessly in either direction, and I understood that I was seeing all the time of the planet where I had lived. It looked like a woman’s tweed scarf; the longer I studied any one spot, the more dots of color I saw. There was no end to the deepness and variety of the dots. At length, I started to look for my time, but, although more and more specks of color and deeper and more intricate textures appeared in the fabric, I couldn’t find my time, or any time at all that I recognized as being near my time. I couldn’t make out so much as a pyramid. Yet as I looked at the band of time, all the individual people, I understood with special clarity, were living at the very moment with great emotion, in intricate detail, in their individual times and places, and they were dying and being replaced by ever more people, one by one, like stitches in which whole worlds of feeling and energy were wrapped, in a never-ending cloth. I remembered suddenly the color and texture of our life as we knew it- these things had been utterly forgotten- and I thought as I searched for it on the limitless band, “that was a good time then, a good time to be living.” And I began to remember our time. I recalled green fields with carrots growing, one by one, in slender rows. Men and women in bright vests and scarves came and pulled the carrots out of the soil and carried them in baskets to shaded kitchens, where they scrubbed them with yellow brushes under running water…I saw may apples in forest, erupting through leaf-strewn paths. Cells on the root hairs of sycamores split and divided and apples grew striped and spotted in the fall. Mountains kept their cool caves, and squirrels raced home to their nests through sunlight and shade. I remembered the ocean, and I seemed to be in the ocean myself, swimming over orange crabs that looked like coral, or off the deep Atlantic banks where whitefish school. Or again I saw the tops of poplars, and the whole sky brushed with clouds in pallid streaks, under which wilds ducks flew, and called, one by one, and flew on. All these things I saw. Scenes grew in depth and sunlit detail before my eyes, and were replaced by ever more scenes, as I remembered the life of my time with increasing feeling. At last I saw the earth as a globe in space, and I recalled the ocean’s shape and the form of continents, saying to myself with surprise as I looked at the planet, “Yes, that’s how it was then, that part there we called ‘France’”. I was filled with the deep affection of nostalgia- and then I opened my eyes.

It is like this: Some people care deeply but they don't know how to say it; then some people say words to make it seem like they care deeply, but in reality they don't. Some people care deeply only in the moment, like seeds which last in the soil for three days until dying out; and others can't see the moments, but their roots do run deep. Some people can imitate what it looks like to care deeply and they can fabricate that for a while though they never did feel anything on the inside of them; while others are incapable of showing outwardly how they feel on the inside, it is a monster they struggle with, their feelings so strong they cannot even let those beasts out of their cages, they fear their own creatures! Some people care deeply here, and over there, and all over the place, you never really know where they belong because they seem to belong to everyone and to everything; while others don't care about anybody but you can see where they belong, who they belong to, there is always this one person or those two people and small places. Some people belong to themselves only and if you want to be a part of their lives, you'll have to become a part of them and after you do, they will never leave you because you are inside of their bones now; while others don't even know who they are or where they're going and if you belong to someone like that, you could be here today and gone tomorrow! Some people don't care and don't act like they care and we don't believe them until they make us believe them; while others care and they act like they care and we don't believe them until it's too late. We are often wounded and torn, because we never know which kind of a person they are until we are either wounded and torn, or until we have found a home. It's either or, always either or, and neither of these outcomes are easy ones because either one will change your life.

Confusion over how a person's extraordinary skill is developed runs deep. The heated debate over writer Malcolm Gladwell's "10,000 hour rule," as put forth i his popular book Outliers: The Story of Success, indicates that it is not just refeerees who get tongue-tied trying to pinpoint the fundaments of their expertise. Proficiency in activities from musicianship to athletics, Gladwell contends, can be achieved only through vast amount of practice (10,000 hours was the ballpark figure he cited, applying it to the triumphs of Bill Gates and the Beatles, among others.)

COMMITMENT is like rain in Oregon. You wake up every morning and there it is. It cups your house in its liquid hands and fills your gutters to overflowing. It makes green things grow tall and lush, rivers run deep and invincible. On sunny days it seeps up through petals and pine needles, roots and aqueducts. Other days, it makes mud too thick for walking, and you cannot leave the house. You pace the house, restless and lonely. Then you smell its perfume in a dry, empty room and part the curtains, watch it finger the window with long, slow rivulets. From 'A Compendium of Miniatures

And the cost of those injuries? Fatal disease in epidemic proportions. “Humans really are obligatorily required to do aerobic exercise in order to stay healthy, and I think that has deep roots in our evolutionary history,” Dr. Lieberman said. “If there’s any magic bullet to make human beings healthy, it’s to run.” Magic bullet? The last time a scientist with Dr. Lieberman’s credentials used that term, he’d just created penicillin. Dr. Lieberman knew it, and meant it. If running shoes never existed, he was saying, more people would be running. If more people ran, fewer would be dying of degenerative heart disease, sudden cardiac arrest, hypertension, blocked arteries, diabetes, and most other deadly ailments of the Western world. That’s a staggering amount of guilt to lay at Nike’s feet. But the most remarkable part? Nike already knew it. In

People end up using their relationships to hide their thorns. If you care for each other, you are expected to adjust your behavior to avoid bumping into each other’s soft spots. This is what people do. They let the fear of their inner thorns affect their behavior. They end up limiting their lives just like someone living with an external thorn. Ultimately, if there is something disturbing inside of you, you have to make a choice. You can compensate for the disturbance by going outside in an attempt to avoid feeling it, or you can simply remove the thorn and not focus your life around it. Do not doubt your ability to remove the root cause of the disturbance inside of you. It really can go away. You can look deep within yourself, to the core of your being, and decide that you don’t want the weakest part of you running your life. You want to be free of this.

Everything in this world that you think you own is not really yours, Zeidy says. It can be taken from you at any moment. Small comfort, to think that my few possessions can be stolen in the night. A parent, a sibling, a house, a dress—all of those things are possessions; in the long run, they don’t matter. Zeidy says he knows this because he knows what it is like to lose everything. He says that the only thing of value one can achieve in this life is menuchas hanefesh, the deep, inner serenity that prevails even in the face of persecution. Our ancestors were so strong, they could maintain complete calm even under the gravest of circumstances; grievous bodily torture and unspeakable anguish did nothing to sway them from their tranquil position. When you have faith, Zeidy says, you can grasp how meaningless life is, in terms of the bigger picture. From the perspective of heaven, our suffering is minuscule, but if your soul is so weighed down that you cannot see beyond what’s in front of you, then you can never be happy.

Spirit Is an Old, Old World The earliest meaning of spirit that we can trace derives from the world 'breath' - 'breath' of the body {'closer than breathing'}, 'breath' of life, then later 'wind' of the cosmos. The root form in Hebrew is 'ruach,' of feminine gender. However 'spirit' appears to be far older than the Hebrew language. Breath {spirit} was seen as provided by the mother at birth. Broadened to cosmic dimension the image became that of the early Goddess - the source and nurturer of all living. Out of her very dust came the first creature and in the stirring dust breathed the living energy {spirit} of life. In this creation, the body is not separated from spirit, nor spirit separated from woman, nor history separated from nature. Of the same movement derives 'transcending' - rising up out of what already is. The ancient and proud history of spirit may be seen as a clear thread - a deep subliminal stratum of the feminine - running through patriarchal literature, suppressed and distorted but never entirely snuffed out.

Statement Preliminary to the Invention of Solace Whether they bend as compliantly as black leaves Curved and hanging in the heavy dew in the grey dawn, Or whether they wait as motionless as ice-coated Insects and spears of roots on a northern cliff; Whether they tighten once like the last white edge Of primrose taken suddenly skyward By a gust of frost, or swallow as hard as stones Careened and scattered by a current of river; Whether they mourn by the bright light of grief Running like a spine of grass straight through the sound Of their songs, or whether they fall quietly Through indefinite darkness like a seed of sorrel Bound alive beneath snow; whether they mourn in multitudes, blessed like a congregation of winter forest moaning for the white drifting children of storms they can never remember, or whether they grieve separately, divided even from themselves, parted like golden plovers blown and calling over a buffeted sea; something must come to them, something as clear and fair and continuous as the eye of the bluegill open in calm water, something as silent as the essential spaces of breath heard inside the voice naming all of their wishes, something touching them in the same way the sun deep in the pit of the pear touches the spring sky by the light of its own leaf. A comfort understood like that must be present now and possible.

how difficult it is to say, “Boy, did I mess up,” without the protective postscript of self-justification—to say “I dropped a routine fly ball with the bases loaded” rather than “I dropped the ball because the sun was in my eyes” or “because a bird flew by” or “because it was windy” or “because a fan called me a jerk.” A friend returning from a day in traffic school told us that as participants went around the room, reporting the violations that had brought them there, a miraculous coincidence had occurred: Not one of them had broken the law! They all had justifications for speeding, ignoring a stop sign, running a red light, or making an illegal U-turn. He became so dismayed (and amused) by the litany of flimsy excuses that, when his turn came, he was embarrassed to give in to the same impulse. He said, “I didn’t stop at a stop sign. I was entirely wrong and I got caught.” There was a moment’s silence, and then the room erupted in cheers for his candor. There are plenty of good reasons for admitting mistakes, starting with the simple fact that you will probably be found out anyway—by your family, your company, your colleagues, your enemies, your biographer. But there are more positive reasons for owning up. Other people will like you more. Someone else may be able to pick up your fumble and run with it; your error might inspire someone else’s solution. Children will realize that everyone screws up on occasion and that even adults have to say “I’m sorry.” And if you can admit a mistake when it is the size of an acorn, it will be easier to repair than if you wait until it becomes the size of a tree, with deep, wide-ranging roots.

My very good sir,” said the little quarto, yawning most drearily in my face, “excuse my interrupting you, but I perceive you are rather given to prose. I would ask the fate of an author who was making some noise just as I left the world. His reputation, however, was considered quite temporary. The learned shook their heads at him, for he was a poor, half-educated varlet, that knew little of Latin, and nothing of Greek, and had been obliged to run the country for deer-stealing. I think his name was Shakespeare. I presume he soon sunk into oblivion.” “On the contrary,” said I, “it is owing to that very man that the literature of his period has experienced a duration beyond the ordinary term of English literature. There rise authors now and then who seem proof against the mutability of language because they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature. They are like gigantic trees that we sometimes see on the banks of a stream, which by their vast and deep roots, penetrating through the mere surface and laying hold on the very foundations of the earth, preserve the soil around them from being swept away by the ever-flowing current, and hold up many a neighboring plant, and perhaps worthless weed, to perpetuity. Such is the case with Shakespeare, whom we behold defying the encroachments of time, retaining in modern use the language and literature of his day, and giving duration to many an indifferent author, merely from having flourished in his vicinity. But even he, I grieve to say, is gradually assuming the tint of age, and his whole form is overrun by a profusion of commentators, who, like clambering vines and creepers, almost bury the noble plant that upholds them.

In your war, the first, how did you endure?" asked Sebastian. "My war was nothing," said Hilary hastily, "nothing at all compared with yours, or even David's. Yet I had a way, then, that helped with other things later. For there is always the Thing, you know, the hidden Thing, some fear or pain or shame, temptation or bit of self-knowledge that you can never explain to another. . . . And even in those very few healthy insensitives who do not seem to suffer, a love of something—of their work, perhaps—that they would not want to talk about and could not if they would. For it is the essence of it that it is, humanly speaking, a lonely thing. . . . Returning to the sensitives, if you just endure it simply because you must, like a boil on the neck, or fret yourself to pieces trying to get rid of it, or cadge sympathy for it, then it can break you. But if you accept it as a secret burden borne secretly for the love of Christ, it can become your hidden treasure. For it is your point of contact with Him, your point of contact with that fountain of refreshment down at the root of things. "Oh Lord, thou fountain of living waters.' That fountain of life is what Christians mean by grace. That is all. Nothing new, for it brings us back to where we were before. In those deep green pastures where cool waters are there is no separation. Our point of contact with the suffering Christ is our point of contact with every other suffering man and woman, and is the source of our life. " "You could put it another way," said Sebastian. "We are all the branches of the vine, and the wine runs red for the cleansing of the world." "The symbols are endless," agreed Hilary. "Too many, perhaps. They complicate the simplicity of that one act of secret acceptance and dedication.

Gian Pero Frau, one of the most important characters in the supporting cast surrounding S'Apposentu, runs an experimental farm down the road from the restaurant. His vegetable garden looks like nature's version of a teenager's bedroom, a rebellious mess of branches and leaves and twisted barnyard wire. A low, droning buzz fills the air. "Sorry about the bugs," he says, a cartoonish cloud orbiting his head. But beneath the chaos a bloom of biodynamic order sprouts from the earth. He uses nothing but dirt and water and careful observation to sustain life here. Every leaf and branch has its place in this garden; nothing is random. Pockets of lettuce, cabbage, fennel, and flowers grow in dense clusters together; on the other end, summer squash, carrots, and eggplant do their leafy dance. "This garden is built on synergy. You plant four or five plants in a close space, and they support each other. It might take thirty or forty days instead of twenty to get it right, but the flavor is deeper." (There's a metaphor in here somewhere, about his new life Roberto is forging in the Sardinian countryside.) "He's my hero," says Roberto about Gian Piero. "He listens, quietly processes what I'm asking for, then brings it to life. Which doesn't happen in places like Siddi." Together, they're creating a new expression of Sardinian terreno, crossing genetic material, drying vegetables and legumes under a variety of conditions, and experimenting with harvesting times that give Roberto a whole new tool kit back in the kitchen. We stand in the center of the garden, crunching on celery and lettuce leaves, biting into zucchini and popping peas from their shells- an improvised salad, a biodynamic breakfast that tastes of some future slowly forming in the tangle of roots and leaves around us.

Last year I had a very unusual experience. I was awake, with my eyes closed, when I had a dream. It was a small dream about time. I was dead, I guess, in deep blank space high up above many white stars. My own consciousness had been disclosed to me, and I was happy. Then I saw far below me a long, curved band of color. As I came closer, I saw that it stretched endlessly in either direction, and I understood that I was seeing all the time of the planet where I had lived. It looked like a woman’s tweed scarf; the longer I studied any one spot, the more dots of color I saw. There was no end to the deepness and variety of dots. At length I started to look for my time, but, although more and more specks of color and deeper and more intricate textures appeared in the fabric, I couldn’t find my time, or any time at all that I recognized as being near my time. I couldn’t make out so much as a pyramid. Yet as I looked at the band of time, all the individual people, I understood with special clarity, were living at that very moment with great emotion, in intricate, detail, in their individual times and places, and they were dying and being replaced by ever more people, one by one, like stitches in which wholly worlds of feeling and energy were wrapped in a never-ending cloth. I remembered suddenly the color and texture of our life as we knew it- these things had been utterly forgotten- and I thought as I searched for it on the limitless band, “that was a good time then, a good time to be living.” And I began to remember our time. I recalled green fields with carrots growing, one by one, in slender rows. Men and women in bright vests and scarves came and pulled the carrots out of the soil and carried them in baskets to shaded kitchens, where they scrubbed them with yellow brushes under running water. I saw white-faced cattle lowing and wading in creeks. I saw May apples in forests, erupting through leaf-strewn paths. Cells on the root hairs of sycamores split and divided, and apples grew spotted and striped in the fall. Mountains kept their cool caves and squirrels raced home to their nests through sunlight and shade. I remembered the ocean, and I seemed to be in the ocean myself, swimming over orange crabs that looked like coral, or off the deep Atlantic banks where whitefish school. Or again I saw the tops of poplars, and the whole sky brushed with clouds in pallid streaks, under which wild ducks flew with outstretched necks, and called, one by one, and flew on. All these things I saw. Scenes grew in depth and sunlit detail before my eyes, and were replaced by ever more scenes, as I remember the life of my time with increasing feeling. At last I saw the earth as a globe in space, and I recalled the ocean’s shape and the form of continents, saying to myself with surprise as I looked at the planet, “yes, that’s how it was then, that part there was called France.” I was filled with the deep affection of nostalgia- and then I opened my eyes. We all ought to be able to conjure up sights like these at will, so that we can keep in mind the scope of texture’s motion in time.

Yes, I run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, I pray and I meditate as well. I just believe in the old saying “Nothing ventured, nothing gained”. Why I do this? Well, there is a deep-rooted imperfection in me which nested in my DNA and causes a linear interference that affects my consciousness. As a result I don’t feel at home at any religion and still I believe in God, the infinite energy of our creation.

Can you smell that black dirt over there Hank?” Hank tested the wind and nodded as Rock continued on. “Yeah. Me too. Just plowed it yesterday. You can’t smell that in the city. There are roots in that dirt. Roots that run deep and strong. I grew up in the country surrounded by dirt like that, and after I retired, well, it just felt natural to get back out into the real America, back into the heartland where real people live and breathe and can smell the rich, black dirt of the earth.

But the only thing she’d ever wanted was to run the Cupid Botanical Gardens and spend her life studying the mesmerizing plants of the Trans-Pecos region. Her roots ran deep in this arid soil, and family was important to her,

In the past few years a critical mass of new observations of animal responses to death has bubbled to the surface, leading me to a startling conclusion: cetaceans, great apes, elephants, and a host of other species ranging from farm animals to domestic pets may, depending on circumstances and their own individual personalities, grieve when a relative or close friend dies. That such a broad range of species—including some quite distantly related to humans—lament the passing of loved ones hints that the roots of our own capacity for grief run very deep indeed.

I'd never seen anyone quite like him before. Roger's flesh was the colour of potatoes, with deep furrows running along his forehead and cheeks, as if you could grow root vegetables in the lines of his face.

The Rose asserts her right to the title of the “queen of flowers” through her very exclusiveness. She insists upon being grown apart from other plants; otherwise she sulks and is coy, refusing to yield more than an occasional bloom. I speak from experience, having tried several times to grow Roses in the front of wide borders, where soil and sun and everything except the proximity of other plants was propitious. But they scarcely bloomed at all. Now, the same bushes, planted in rows so that a cultivator may be run between them, flourish satisfactorily. Grow Roses, then, in beds by themselves or in rows. If one has but half a dozen Roses, let them be grown apart from other plants. [126] Pansies, however, can be grown in the Rose beds, as I have elsewhere described; Gladioli can also be planted among them without detriment to either. The reason for this is that the roots of these two flowers are not deep and do not interfere with the nourishment of the Roses.

How tall is your sunflower? That’s what most people seem to care about. How big a brand, how much market share, how many online followers. Too many marketers spend most of their time running a hype show, trying to get just a little bigger. The thing is, tall sunflowers have deep and complex root systems. Without them, they’d never get very high.

Not exactly. Having been enslaved for 250 years, black people were not left to their own devices. They were terrorized. In the Deep South, a second slavery ruled. In the North, legislatures, mayors, civic associations, banks, and citizens all colluded to pin black people into ghettos, where they were overcrowded, overcharged, and undereducated. Businesses discriminated against them, awarding them the worst jobs and the worst wages. Police brutalized them in the streets. And the notion that black lives, black bodies, and black wealth were rightful targets remained deeply rooted in the broader society. Now we have half-stepped away from our long centuries of despoilment, promising, “Never again.” But still we are haunted. It is as though we have run up a credit card bill and, having pledged to charge no more, remain befuddled that the balance does not disappear. The effects of that balance, interest accruing daily, are all around us.

Men and women complement each other’s strengths well. However, when a male perspective dominates female ones, the world ends up living narratives that may be successful in some situations but simply cannot get us the results we want in others. For example, if we want peace, why do we keep telling war stories? Why don’t we turn to the half of the human race that has fostered other means of resolving conflict? Force can stop violent behaviors temporarily, but authentic sharing through story, which often has been nurtured by women, can move antagonists toward understanding one another and building the trust that leads to lasting peace. Similarly, in our politics, warlike competition prevails when candidates run for office, but to govern successfully, they need to utilize more feminine modes, reaching across the aisle to solve problems together. All of the major religions in the world instruct us to love one another as a road to a better collective and personal quality of life. Jesus repeated this decree over and over, in slightly different words: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34, NIV). “If you love me, feed my sheep” (adapted from John 21:17). And quoting the Torah, “Love thy neighbor as thyself” (Lev. 19:18; Matt. 22:39, ASV). It was his major message. Rabbi Sefer Baal Shem Tov, founder of Hasidic Judaism, spoke to the deep roots of love in the Hebrew faith: “‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’ Why? Because every human being has a root in the Unity, and to reject the minutest particle of the Unity is to reject it all.”1 The sayings of Muhammad, selected and translated by the Sufi Kabir Helminski, include the very strong statement, “You will not enter paradise until you believe, and you will not believe until you love one another.”2 Rumi, the thirteenth-century Sufi mystic and poet, proclaimed, “It is Love that holds everything together.”3 The Buddha enjoined us to “radiate boundless love towards the entire world—above, below, and across—unhindered, without ill will, without enmity.”4 Loving-kindness remains a cardinal practice of modern Buddhism. In the Hindu tradition, love also is the religion’s central tenet. Swami Sivananda sums this up in these words: “Your duty is to treat everybody with love as a manifestation of the Lord.”5

Other women say they can climax best with the application of pressure deep within the vagina, which led the gynecologist Ernst Grafenberg and his partisans to propose the existence of a Grafenberg, or G, spot, a sort of second, internalized clitoris. The G spot is said to be a two-inch cushion of highly erogenous tissue located on the front wall of the vagina, right where the vagina wraps around the urethra, the tube that carries urine from the bladder. Some have said that the G spot is embedded in the so-called Skene’s glands, which generate mucus to help lubricate the urethral tract. Others have said that the gee-whiz spot is actually the sphincter muscle, which keeps the urethra clamped shut until you’re ready to void. Still others question the existence of a discrete G spot altogether. Let’s not bother inventing novel erogenous loci, they say, when the existing infrastructure will do. The roots of the clitoris run deep, after all, and very likely can be tickled through posterior agitation. In other words, the G spot may be nothing more than the back end of the clitoris.

She was surprised to find that the more psychological safety a team felt, the higher its error rates. It appeared that psychological safety could breed complacency. When trust runs deep in a team, people might not feel the need to question their colleagues or double-check their own work. But Edmondson soon recognized a major limitation of the data: the errors were all self-reported. To get an unbiased measure of mistakes, she sent a covert observer into the units. When she analyzed those data, the results flipped: psychologically safe teams reported more errors, but they actually made fewer errors. By freely admitting their mistakes, they were then able to learn what had caused them and eliminate them moving forward. In psychologically unsafe teams, people hid their mishaps to avoid penalties, which made it difficult for anyone to diagnose the root causes and prevent future problems. They kept repeating the same mistakes.

Humans really are obligatorily required to do aerobic exercise in order to stay healthy, and I think that has deep roots in our evolutionary history,” Dr. Lieberman said. “If there’s any magic bullet to make human beings healthy, it’s to run.

The essence of humankind runs very deep, and we are all connected by our roots under the soil. He knew well that humans desire to live in beautiful worlds, but he also knew that we make the worlds we live in look terribly ugly.

The Word didn’t become flesh to establish a new religion. He became one of us to restore a broken relationship. He came to restore the true worship of God, which doesn’t presume to earn His blessing through good deeds but rejoices in the unmerited favor He delights to give. Unfortunately, the roots of pride run deep into our flesh; therefore, the ability to accept grace does not come naturally, only supernaturally.

The man had already halved the distance to the lake. “He’s going to make it!” As much as Spike hated the criminals when he was a kid, he now saw them as the underdog. Besides, he knew what the diseased were and he couldn’t bring himself to root for them. Not like he might have done as a younger boy. Crack! A diseased exploded from nowhere and clattered into the man’s side. Spike winced at what sounded like bones breaking on impact. Despite their withered appearance, the creatures were both fast and strong. The diseased who’d taken the man down snarled as it bit into him. Another crunch, this time from where its teeth sank into flesh and bone. The bite turned the man limp. The diseased who were running after the man just seconds before stopped as if he no longer existed. The one who’d taken him down got to its feet. Feral and with blood coating its maw, its eyes glistened a deep crimson and were spread wide on its wrinkled face. It walked away from the downed man, leaving him in the long grass. Now it had bitten him, it had done its job. No matter how many times he’d watched it, Spike couldn’t ever look away from someone who’d been taken down. They always started with a pulsing twitch. Violent in how it threw their limbs away from them. The man’s right leg went first. Then an arm. Like many before him, the disease ripped through his frame, spasming and snapping his form. Seconds later, he jumped to his feet, blood coursing from his eyes like those of his diseased brethren. No more than fifty feet between him and the water’s edge, as much as Spike knew the man to be a criminal in some way, his heart hurt for him. “He got so close.

We are born travellers. We travel each and every day. Some of us travel along the pulsating blood vessels of the vicinity in which we live, while others, along the pathways that their thoughts lead them, oftentimes entering into invisible worlds, displaced from reality. I do not know about you, but I am a traveller of both tendencies. I am both here and elsewhere. I often travel to my past, to distant alternate universes, and to the elusive future. These are voyages fuelled by a sense of nostalgia, possibility, and hope. These are places that run on lost time, missed opportunities, and deep-rooted aspirations. Come along with me. Let us go wandering. There are countless stories awaiting our discovery.

We are born travellers. We travel each and every day. Some of us travel along the pulsating blood vessels of the vicinity in which we live, while others, along the pathways that their thoughts lead them, oftentimes entering into invisible worlds, displaced from reality. I do not know about you, but I am a traveller of both tendencies. I am both here and elsewhere. I often travel to my past, to distant alternate universes, and to the elusive future. These are voyages fuelled by a sense of nostalgia, possibility, and hope. These are places that run on lost time, missed opportunities, and deep-rooted aspirations.

It’s always easier to resist the winds of change if your roots run deep in God’s truth.

I had forgotten that it was possible for the roots of someone’s affection to run so deep, so solid. I could build a life in the branches of this tree. I could cradle a generation’s future nestled in its leaves.

XVII. Thinking, Tangling Shadows" Thinking, tangling shadows in the deep solitude. You are far away too, oh farther than anyone. Thinking, freeing birds, dissolving images, burying lamps. Belfry of fogs, how far away, up there! Stifling laments, milling shadowy hopes, taciturn miller, night falls on you face downward, far from the city. You presence is foreign, as strange to me as a thing. I think, I explore great tracts of my life before you. My life before anyone, my harsh life. The shout facing the sea, among the rocks, running free, mad, in the sea-spray. The sad rage, the shout, the solitude of the sea. Headlong, violent, stretched towards the sky. You, woman, what were you there, what ray, what vane of that immense fan? You were as far as you are now. Fire in the forest! Burn in blue crosses. Burn, burn, flame up, sparkle in trees of light. It collapses, crackling. Fire. Fire. And my soul dances, seared with curls of fire. Who calls? What silence peopled with echoes? Hour of nostalgia, hour of happiness, hour of solitude, hour that is mine from among them all! Hunting horn through which the wind passes singing. Such a passion of weeping tied to my bedy. Shaking of all the roots, attack of all the waves! My soul wandered, happy, sad, unending. Thinking, burying lamps in the deep solitude. Who are you, who are you?

Departure" Be it sight, sound, the smell, the touch. There's something, Inside that we need so much, The sight of a touch, or the scent of a sound, Or the strength of an Oak with roots deep in the ground. The wonder of flowers, to be covered, and then to burst up, Thru tarmack, to the sun again, Or to fly to the sun without burning a wing, To lie in the meadow and hear the grass sing, To have all these things in our memories hoard, And to use them, To help us, To find... God... "Ride My See-Saw" Ride, ride my see-saw, Take this place On this trip Just for me. Ride, take a free ride, Take my place Have my seat It's for free. I worked like a slave for years, Sweat so hard just to end my fears. Not to end my life a poor man, But by now, I know I should have run. Run, run my last race, Take my place Have this number Of mine. Run, run like a fire, Don't you run in In the lanes Run for time. Left school with a first class pass, Started work but as second class. School taught one and one is two. But right now, that answer just ain't true. Ah ah ah ah, ah ah ah ah, ah ah ah ah ah Ah ah ah ah, ah ah ah ah, ah ah ah ah ah My world is spinning around, Everything is lost that I found. People run, come ride with me, Let's find another place that's free. Ride, ride my see-saw, Take this place On this trip Just for me. Ride, take a free ride, Take my place Have my seat It's for free. Ride, my see-saw. Ride, ride, ride, my see-saw. Ride, my see-saw... The Moody Blues, In Search Of The Lost Chord (1968)

Children's voices, soft and sweet, "Meethi meethi baatein," a nightly treat. Even at 2 o'clock, when the world's asleep, In those whispers, love runs deep.

Use your love and good instincts to know when to growl, to pounce, to take a swipe, when to kill, when to retreat, when to bay till dawn. To live as closely as possible to the numinous wild a woman must do more head tossing, more brimming, have more sniffing intuition, more creative life, more “get-down-dirty,” more solitude, more women’s company, more natural life, more fire, more spirit, more cooking of words and ideas. She must do more recognition of sorority, more seeding, more root stock–keeping, more kindness to men, more neighborhood revolution, more poetry, more painting of fables and facts, longer reaches into the wild feminine. More terrorist sewing circles, and more howling. And, especially, much more canto hondo, much more deep song.

Here are a few of the defenses that many people carry inside, sometimes for the rest of their lives: AVOIDANCE. Avoidance is usually about fear. Emotions and relationships have hurt me, so I will minimize emotions and relationships. People who are avoidant feel most comfortable when the conversation stays superficial. They often overintellectualize life. They retreat to work. They try to be self-sufficient and pretend they don’t have needs. Often, they have not had close relationships as kids and have lowered their expectations about future relationships. A person who fears intimacy in this way may be always on the move, preferring not to be rooted or pinned down; they are sometimes relentlessly positive so as not to display vulnerability; they engineer things so they are the strong one others turn to but never the one who turns to others. DEPRIVATION. Some children are raised around people so self-centered that the needs of the child are ignored. The child naturally learns the lesson “My needs won’t be met.” It is a short step from that to “I’m not worthy.” A person haunted by a deprivation schema can experience feelings of worthlessness throughout life no matter how many amazing successes they achieve. They often carry the idea that there is some flaw deep within themselves, that if other people knew it, it would cause them to run away. When they are treated badly, they are likely to blame themselves. (Of course he had an affair; I’m a pathetic wife.) They sometimes grapple with a fierce inner critic. OVERREACTIVITY. Children who are abused and threatened grow up in a dangerous world. The person afflicted in this way often has, deep in their nervous system, a hyperactive threat-detection system. Such people interpret ambivalent situations as menacing situations, neutral faces as angry faces. They are trapped in a hyperactive mind theater in which the world is dangerous. They overreact to things and fail to understand why they did so. PASSIVE AGGRESSION. Passive aggression is the indirect expression of anger. It is a way to sidestep direct communication by a person who fears conflict, who has trouble dealing with negative emotions. It’s possible such a person grew up in a home where anger was terrifying, where emotions were not addressed, or where love was conditional and the lesson was that direct communication would lead to the withdrawal of affection. Passive aggression is thus a form of emotional manipulation, a subtle power play to extract guilt and affection. A husband with passive-aggressive tendencies may encourage his wife to go on a weekend outing with her friends, feeling himself to be a selfless martyr, but then get angry with her in the days before the outing and through the weekend. He’ll let her know by various acts of withdrawal and self-pity that she’s a selfish person and he’s an innocent victim. —

I had spent my entire life being ripped from what I loved. My heart never could grow roots, because every few years they would be hacked away. You learn to live without them. You learn to find love where it doesn’t exist, like in the superficial kindnesses of a cruel man. You learn to accept the loss as a part of you, and pretend you don’t mourn every severed connection. I had forgotten that it was possible for the roots of someone’s affection to run so deep, so solid. I could build a life in the branches of this tree. I could cradle a generation’s future nestled in its leaves. But I still had so many scars. And it’s hard to dream when you’re surrounded by the ashes of loss. Hard not to wonder if whatever scraps you have left over are even worth offering someone who deserves so much.

Do not doubt your ability to remove the root cause of the disturbance inside of you. It really can go away. You can look deep within yourself, to the core of your being, and decide that you don't want the weakest part of you running your life. You want to be free of this.

Do not doubt your ability to remove the root cause of the disturbance inside of you. It really can go away. You can look deep within yourself, to the core of your being, and decide that you don’t want the weakest part of you running your life.

Such faith does not begin with creed , it rises from a soil where roots run centuries deep and water seeps to surface demanding neither firm belief nor promise to moisten a dry spirit’s thirst .

Under my spine, the sycamore roots suck watery salts. Root tips thrust and squirm between particles of soil, probing minutely; from their roving, burgeoning tissues spring infinitesimal root hairs, transparent and hollow, which affix themselves to specks of grit and sip. These runnels run silent and deep; the whole earth trembles, rent and fissured, hurled and drained. I wonder what happens to root systems when trees die. Do those spread blind networks starve, starve in the midst

Her fingers stiffened, going wide, and suddenly her veins ran brilliant green in her arms. Drops of sap burst trickling from her eyes and nose in rivulets down her face like tears, the bright fresh sweet smell horribly wrong. Her mouth hung open in a silent cry, and then tiny white rootlets crept out from beneath her nails, like an oak-tree growing overnight. They climbed with sudden horrible speed all over the manacles, hardening into grey wood even as they went, and with a noise like ice breaking in midsummer, the chains broke. I did nothing. There was no time to do anything: it happened quicker than I could even see it. One moment Kasia was chained, the next she was leaping for me. She was impossibly strong, flinging me to the ground. I caught her shoulders and held her off with a scream. Sap was running from her face, staining her dress, and it fell on me with a pattering like rain. It crawled over my skin, beading up against my protection spell. Her lips peeled back from her teeth in a snarl. Her hands closed around my throat like brands, hot, burning hot, and those strangling rootlets began to crawl over me. I looked up into Kasia’s face, hungry for one last sight of her, but the Wood looked out of her eyes at me: black rage, full of smoke, burning, roots planted too deep to uproot.

Women in this stage often begin to feel both desperate and adamant to go on this inward journey, no matter what. And so they do, as they leave one life for another, or one stage of life for another, or sometimes even one lover for no other lover than themselves. Progressing from adolescence to young womanhood, or from married woman to spinster, or from mid-age to older, crossing over the crone line, setting out wounded but with one’s own new value system—that is death and resurgence. Leaving a relationship or the home of one’s parents, leaving behind outmoded values, becoming one’s own person, and sometimes, driving deep into the wildlands because one just must, all these are the fortune of the descent. So off we go down into a different light, under a different sky, with unfamiliar ground beneath our boots. And yet we go vulnerably, for we have no grasping, no holding on to, no clinging to, no knowing—for we have no hands.

The first otter to go into deep water had felt the same fear that Tarka felt that night; for his ancestors, thousands of years ago, had been hunters in woods and along the banks of rivers, running the scent of blooded creatures on the earth, like all the members of the weasel race to which they belonged. This race had several tribes in the country of the Two Rivers. Biggest were the brocks, a tribe of badgers who lived in holts scratched among the roots of trees and bushes, and rarely went to water except to drink. They were related to the fitches or stoats, who chased rabbits and jumped upon birds on the earth; and to the vairs or weasels, who sucked the blood of mice and dragged fledgelings from the nest; and to the grey fitches or polecats, so rare in the forests; and to the pine-martens, a tribe so harried by men that one only remained, and he had found sanctuary in a wood where a gin was never tilled and a gun was never fired, where the red deer was never roused and the fox never chased. He was old; his canine teeth worn down. Otters knew the ponds in this wood and they played in them by day, while herons stalked in the shallows and nothing feared the old lady who sometimes sat on the bank, watching the wild creatures which she thought of as the small and persecuted kinsfolk of man.

there are parts of you that run so deep they root you in place no matter how fast or far away you try to fly.

During this Black Genius History Month, let us remember that our roots run deep, our histories are rich, and our cultures are vibrant. We are not just a part of history, we are the makers of it. #BGHM

In Hilo, we are the `āina. Its mist is our breath, its rain our tears, its waters our blood. Our veins run deep, our song louder than their noise. Roots too deep to extract. That’s the thing about hula. Burn your books, rewrite your history, build walls, plant flags. Hula is written within the swirls of our feet. It’s our umbilical cord, our pulse. Our battle cry, our death rattle, our moment of conception. The chants are archived in the stars. Hula is the heat rising from within our volcanoes. It is the pull of the tides, the beat of the surf against our cliffs. It is our hair, our teeth, our bones. Our DNA. You can steal a kingdom, but the kingdom will never belong to you

Let my power take root. Let it spread deep in the earth, in the wind in the trees, in the fire on the mountain, in the running of the stream. Let it send the darkness back, back, until the rivers run clear and the flowers bud and bloom and our people are free.