Sack Up Quotes

Butterfly. What a beautiful word What a delicate creature. Delicate like the cruel words that flow right out of your mouths and the food that flies right out of your hands… Does it make you feel better? Does it make you feel good ? Does picking on a girl make you more of a man? Well, I’m standing up for myself Like I should have done before I’m not putting up with your Butterfly anymore." (Kiersten slides the sack off her wrist and opens it, pulling out a handful of hand-made butterflies. She takes the microphone out of the stand and begins walking down the stairs as she continues speaking.) “I’d like to extend to others what others have extended to me.” (She walks up to Mrs. Brill first and holds out a butterfly) “Butterfly you, Mrs. Brill.” (Mrs. Brill smiles at her and takes the butterfly out of her hands. Lake laughs out loud and I have to nudge her to get her to be quiet. Kiersten walks around the room, passing out butterflies to several of the students, including the three from the lunchroom.) “Butterfly you, Mark. Butterfly you, Brendan. Butterfly you, Colby.” (When she finishes passing out the butterflies, she walks back onto the stage and places the microphone back into the stand.) “I have one thing to say to you And I’m not referring to the bullies Or the ones they pursue. I’m referring to those of you that just stand by The ones who don’t take up for those of us that cry Those of you who just…turn a blind eye. After all it’s not you it’s happening to You aren’t the one being bullied And you aren’t the one being rude It isn’t your hand that’s throwing the food But…it is your mouth not speaking up It is your feet not taking a stand It is your arm not lending a hand It is your heart Not giving a damn. So take up for yourself Take up for your friends I challenge you to be someone Who doesn’t give in. Don’t give in. Don’t let them win.

You can’t blame a fella for kissing the prettiest girl in New York, can you, sister?” Sam’s grin was anything but apologetic. Evie brought up her knee quickly and decisively, and he dropped to the floor like a grain sack. “You can’t blame a girl for her quick reflexes now, can you, pal?

I wonder which is preferable, to walk around all your life swollen up with your own secrets until you burst from the pressure of them, or to have them sucked out of you, every paragraph, every sentence, every word of them, so at the end you're depleted of all that was once as precious to you as hoarded gold, as close to you as your skin - everything that was of the deepest importance to you, everything that made you cringe and wish to conceal, everything that belonged to you alone - and must spend the rest of your days like an empty sack flapping in the wind, an empty sack branded with a bright fluorescent label so that everyone will know what sort of secrets used to be inside you?

I knelt and opened up my lute case. Moving the lute aside, I pressed the lid of the secret compartment and twisted it open. I slid Threpe's sealed letter inside, where it joined the hollow horn with Nina's drawing and a small sack of dried apple I had stowed there. There was nothing special about the dried apple, but in my opinion if you have a secret compartment in your lute case and don't use it to hide things, there is something terribly, terribly wrong with you.

(Talon pulled another beignet from the sack and held it up for her to eat.) That stuff is hazardous to your health. (Sunshine) Baby, life is hazardous to your health. (Talon)

A nice pickle they were all in now: all neatly tied up in sacks, with three angry trolls (and two with burns and bashes to remember) sitting by them, arguing whether they should roast them slowly, or mince them fine and boil them, or just sit on them one by one and squash them into jelly.

Grandpa always used to make me ride in the bed of his pickup truck, so he could keep up his conversations with the 100-pound sack of manure he kept buckled up in the passenger seat. Grandpa said all they ever talked about was grass, but I know Grandpa used to do a little flirting, too.

There was so much I should have told you. I just didn't have time. I didn't know. I didn't know I'd have to say: A sword doesn't hold an edge on its own, you sack of Ninth House garbage. I didn't know I'd have to say, if you dip a sword into melty bone, the metal gets more pitted than an iron mine, you cross-patched necromantic shit. I think the main thing I should have said was, You sawed open your skull rather than be beholden to someone. You turned your brain into soup to escape anything less than 100 percent freedom. You put me in a box and buried me rather than give up your own goddamned agenda. Harrowhark, I gave you my whole life and you didn't even want it. Actually, scratch that, the main thing I should have said was, SQUATS ARE A START, OR A COUPLE OF STAR JUMPS, THEY'RE NOT DIFFICULT.

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but paranoia was what tied it up in a sack and buried it in wet concrete.

Auri took it, and peered inside the small leather sack. “Why this is lovely, Kvothe. What lives in the salt?” Trace minerals, I thought. Chromium, bassal, malium, iodine . . . everything your body needs but probably can’t get from apples and bread and whatever you manage to scrounge up when I can’t find you. “The dreams of fish,” I said. “And sailor’s songs.

Chili, spice of red Thursday, which is the day of reckoning. Day which invites us to pick up the sack of our existence and shake it inside out. Day of suicide, day of murder.

Andrea turned her back to Desandra and rolled her eyes. Raphael grimaced. They both looked scandalized. Dear God, what could she have said to scandalize a bouda... “No, really!” Desandra nodded. “Okay, so most guys don’t have a nice ball sack, right? It looks all hairy and wrinkled like some small animal died between their legs, but Gerardo’s is like two plums in a velvet bag...” Derek, who’d been lingering in the doorway, took a careful step to the left behind the wall and disappeared from my view. Kill me, somebody. I raised my hand. “Hold that thought. I need to borrow Andrea for a minute.” I grabbed her arm and pulled her into the hallway. Behind us Raphael growled, “Don’t leave me!” Andrea leaned towards me. “Plums.” “Listen...” Andrea raised her hands, imitating holding plums the size of small coconuts, and moved them up and down.

Zaira had no dealings with children. Not even Arrow children. “What am I supposed to do?” she said to Aden. “Pick her up.” “Like a sack of supplies?” “A bit more carefully.

If it is a human thing to do to put something you want, because it's useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag, or a basket, or a bit of rolled bark or leaf, or a net woven of your own hair, or what have you, and then take it home with you, home being another, larger kind of pouch or bag, a container for people, and then later on you take it out and eat it or share it or store it up for winter in a solider container or put it in the medicine bundle or the shrine or the museum, the holy place, the area that contains what is sacred, and then the next day you probably do much the same again—if to do that is human, if that's what it takes, then I am a human being after all. Fully, freely, gladly, for the first time.... [T]he proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us." —"The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction

He should have risked more. It has taken him his whole life to accept himself, and he is surprised to understand that now that he can, he does not long for one more year, one more month: eighty-six years has been enough. In a life you accumulate so many memories, your brain constantly winnowing through them, weighing consequence, burying pain, but somehow by the time you’re this age you still end up dragging a monumental sack of memories behind you, a burden as heavy as a continent, and eventually it becomes time to take them out of the world.

I've always been a quitter. I quit the Boy Scouts, the glee club, the marching band. Gave up my paper route, turned my back on the church, stuffed the basketball team. I dropped out of college, sidestepped the army with a 4-F on the grounds of mental instability, went back to school, made a go of it, entered a Ph.D. program in nineteenth-century British literature, sat in the front row, took notes assiduously, bought a pair of horn-rims, and quit on the eve of my comprehensive exams. I got married, separated, divorced. Quit smoking, quit jogging, quit eating red meat. I quit jobs: digging graves, pumping gas, selling insurance, showing pornographic films in an art theater in Boston. When I was nineteen I made frantic love to a pinch-faced, sack-bosomed girl I'd known from high school. She got pregnant. I quit town.

I had imagined a kind, ugly, intuitive man looking up and saying "Ah!" in an encouraging way, as if he could see something I couldn't and then I would find words to tell him how I was so scared, as I were being stuffed farther and farther into a black, airless sack with no way out. Then he would lean back in his chair and match the tips of his fingers together in a little steeple and tell me why I couldn't sleep and why I couldn't read and why I couldn't eat and why everything people did seemed so silly, because they only died in the end. And then, I thought, he would help me, step by step, to be myself again.

Friends, I was pretty sure, lift their friends up; they don't weigh them down like a sack full of stones

My legs gave way and the Darkling caught me up against his body with one surprisingly strong arm. “I guess you only look like a mouse,” he whispered in my ear, and then beckoned to one of his personal guard. “Take her,” he said, handing me over to the oprichnik who reached out his arm to support me. I felt myself flush at the indignity of being handed over like a sack of potatoes, but I was too shaky and confused to protest. Blood was running down my arm from the cut the Darkling had given me.

I had imagined a kind, ugly, intuitive man looking up and say, 'Ah!' in an encouraging way, as if he could see something I couldn't, and then I would find words to tell him how I was so scared, as if I were being stuffed farther and farther into a black, airless sack with no way out.

Towards that small and ghostly hour, [Mr. Cruncher] rose up from his chair, took a key out of his pocket, opened a locked cupboard, and brought forth a sack, a crowbar of convenient size, a rope and chain, and other fishing tackle of that nature.

This is an ode to all of those that have never asked for one. A thank you in words to all of those that do not do what they do so well for the thanking. This is to the mothers. This is to the ones who match our first scream with their loudest scream; who harmonize in our shared pain and joy and terrified wonder when life begins. This is to the mothers. To the ones who stay up late and wake up early and always know the distance between their soft humming song and our tired ears. To the lips that find their way to our foreheads and know, somehow always know, if too much heat is living in our skin. To the hands that spread the jam on the bread and the mesmerizing patient removal of the crust we just cannot stomach. This is to the mothers. To the ones who shout the loudest and fight the hardest and sacrifice the most to keep the smiles glued to our faces and the magic spinning through our days. To the pride they have for us that cannot fit inside after all they have endured. To the leaking of it out their eyes and onto the backs of their hands, to the trails of makeup left behind as they smile through those tears and somehow always manage a laugh. This is to the patience and perseverance and unyielding promise that at any moment they would give up their lives to protect ours. This is to the mothers. To the single mom’s working four jobs to put the cheese in the mac and the apple back into the juice so their children, like birds in a nest, can find food in their mouths and pillows under their heads. To the dreams put on hold and the complete and total rearrangement of all priority. This is to the stay-at-home moms and those that find the energy to go to work every day; to the widows and the happily married. To the young mothers and those that deal with the unexpected announcement of a new arrival far later than they ever anticipated. This is to the mothers. This is to the sack lunches and sleepover parties, to the soccer games and oranges slices at halftime. This is to the hot chocolate after snowy walks and the arguing with the umpire at the little league game. To the frosting ofbirthday cakes and the candles that are always lit on time; to the Easter egg hunts, the slip-n-slides and the iced tea on summer days. This is to the ones that show us the way to finding our own way. To the cutting of the cord, quite literally the first time and even more painfully and metaphorically the second time around. To the mothers who become grandmothers and great-grandmothers and if time is gentle enough, live to see the children of their children have children of their own. To the love. My goodness to the love that never stops and comes from somewhere only mothers have seen and know the secret location of. To the love that grows stronger as their hands grow weaker and the spread of jam becomes slower and the Easter eggs get easier to find and sack lunches no longer need making. This is to the way the tears look falling from the smile lines around their eyes and the mascara that just might always be smeared with the remains of their pride for all they have created. This is to the mothers.

Shrivel up and die, you putrescent sack of larva!

Well, I'm glad you're so amused," I said, running my fingers across the railing. Maxon hopped up to sit on the railing, looking very relaxed. "You're always amusing. Get used to it." Hmm. He was almost being funny. "So...about what you said...," he started tentatively. "Which part? The part about me calling you names or fighting with my mom or saying food was my motivation?" I rolled my eyes. He laughed once. "The part about me being good..." "Oh. What about it?" Those few sentences suddenly seemed more embarrassing than anything else I'd said. I ducked my head down and twisted a piece of my dress. "I appreciate you making things look authentic, but you didn't need to go that far." My head snapped up. How could he think that? "Maxon, that wasn't for the sake of the show. If you had asked me a month ago what my honest opinion of you was, it would have been very different. But now I know you, and I know the truth, and you are everything I said you were. And more." He was quiet, but there was a small smile on his face. "Thank you," he finally said. "Anytime." Maxon cleared his throat. "He'll be lucky, too." He got down from his makeshift seat and walked to my side of the balcony. "Huh?" "Your boyfriend. When he comes to his senses and begs you to take him back," Maxon said matter-of-factly. I had to laugh. No such thing would happen in y world. "he's not my boyfriend anymore. And he made it pretty clear he was gone with me." Even I could hear the tiny bit of hope in my voice. "Not possible. He'll have seen you on TV by now and fallen for you all over again. Though, in my opinion, you're still much too good for the dog." Maxon spoke almost as if he was bored, like he'd seen this happen a million times. "Speaking of which!" he said a bit louder. "If you don't want me to be in love with you, you're going to have to stop looking so lovely. First thing tomorrow I'm having your maids sew some potato sacks together for you." I hit his arm. "Shut up, Maxon." "I'm not kidding. You're too beautiful for your own good. Once you leave, we'll have to send some of the guards with you. You'll never survive on your own, poor thing." He said all this with mock pity. "I can't help it." I sighed. "One can never help being born into perfection." I fanned my face as if being so pretty was exhausting. "No, I don't suppose you can help it.

If you choose to believe me, good. Now I will tell you how Octavia, the spider-web city, is made. There is a precipice between two steep mountains: the city is over the void, bound to the two crests with ropes and chains and catwalks. You walk on the little wooden ties, careful not to set your foot in the open spaces, or you cling to the hempen strands. Below there is nothing for hundreds and hundreds of feet: a few clouds glide past; farther down you can glimpse the chasm's bed. This is the foundation of the city: a net which serves as passage and as support. All the rest, instead of rising up, is hung below: rope ladders, hammocks, houses made like sacks, clothes hangers, terraces like gondolas, skins of water, gas jets, spits, baskets on strings, dumb-waiters, showers, trapezes and rings for children's games, cable cars, chandeliers, pots with trailing plants. Suspended over the abyss, the life of Octavia's inhabitants is less uncertain than in other cities. They know the net will only last so long.

Scott’s crown reached Tad’s prostate but didn’t stop, instead grinding across it as it made its way by. “Unnngh-UH!” The last of Tad’s groan came out on a burst. Licking bliss tore up his channel and straight into his dick. Blood pumped furiously along the veins of his shaft, his sack fighting futilely to lift. But that fucking ball ring wouldn’t yield at all. Tad grimaced, pelvis writhing. Scott growled and gripped his hips tighter. “Fuck, Tad. The way your ass is letting me in… Accepting me… Swallowing me down… I’ve never seen anything so hot.

Old Flossie settle down on the other side of What-the-Dickens and dragged some handiwork out of a sack. She armed herself with two thorns shaped into knitting needles. A wodge of curlicued metallic scrubbing pad supplied the threat. 'I knit handcuffs as a hobby,' explained Old Flossie happily, and set to work. 'Idle hands get up to no good, so I like to be prepared in case I meet up with any idle hands.

Taggle looked up at her, his amber eyes as deep as the loneliness Kate had felt before he became her friend. "The traditional thing," he said slowly, "involves the river and a sack.

Everybody uses everybody until we're all just a bunch of used up shit sacks waiting to go to dirt.

I cocked an ear, but there was nothing much to hear. A girl was on the phone next door, complaining about some guy to a girlfriend, and someone down a floor was either talking to his cat or having a psychotic episode, but both voices were clearer than the soft noises coming from the living room. The vamps were presumably cleaning the wounds better than I’d been able to do at the bar, and bandaging him up. I knew nobody was planning a snack– it would be like offering people used to Beluga caviar and Dom Perignon a sack of stale Fritos and a flat Coke. Sloppy seconds weren’t likely to appeal.

Other freshmen were already moving into their dormitory rooms when we arrived, with their parents helping haul. I saw boxes of paperbacks, stereo equipment, Dylan albums and varnished acoustic guitars, home-knitted afghans, none as brilliant as mine, Janis posters, Bowie posters, Day-Glo bedsheets, hacky sacks, stuffed bears. But as we carried my trunk up two flights of stairs terror invaded me. Although I was studying French because I dreamed of going to Paris, I actually dreaded leaving home, and in the end my parents did not want me to leave, either. But this is how children are sacrificed into their futures: I had to go, and here I was. We walked back down the stairs. I was too numb to cry, but I watched my mother and father as they stood beside the car and waved. That moment is a still image; I can call it up as if it were a photograph. My father, so thin and athletic, looked almost frail with shock, while my mother, whose beauty was still remarkable, and who was known on the reservation for her silence and reserve, had left off her characteristic gravity. Her face and my father's were naked with love. It wasn't something thatwe talked about—love. But they allowed me this one clear look at it. It blazed from them. And then they left.

The train bore me away, through the monstrous scenery of slag-heaps, chimneys, piled scrap-iron, foul canals, paths of cindery mud criss-crossed by the prints of clogs. This was March, but the weather had been horribly cold and everywhere there were mounds of blackened snow. As we moved slowly through the outskirts of the town we passed row after row of little grey slum houses running at right angles to the embankment. At the back of one of the houses a young woman was kneeling on the stones, poking a stick up the leaden waste-pipe which ran from the sink inside and which I suppose was blocked. I had time to see everything about her—her sacking apron, her clumsy clogs, her arms reddened by the cold. She looked up as the train passed, and I was almost near enough to catch her eye. She had a round pale face, the usual exhausted face of the slum girl who is twenty-five and looks forty, thanks to miscarriages and drudgery; and it wore, for the second in which I saw it, the most desolate, hopeless expression I have ever-seen. It struck me then that we are mistaken when we say that ‘It isn’t the same for them as it would be for us,’ and that people bred in the slums can imagine nothing but the slums. For what I saw in her face was not the ignorant suffering of an animal. She knew well enough what was happening to her—understood as well as I did how dreadful a destiny it was to be kneeling there in the bitter cold, on the slimy stones of a slum backyard, poking a stick up a foul drain-pipe.

She shakes my hand in a friendly grip. “Lovely to meet you, sweets. Tell me, are you a virgin?” Nicholas groans. “Ezzy.” “What? I’m just making conversation.” She elbows him. “If you want a shot at this sorry sack, the V-card has to be in pristine condition. Is it, Olivia?” I stand up tall. “Does anal count? If it does, I qualify.” Esmerelda’s red lips open wide in a contagious laugh. “I like this one, Nicky.

This past, this endless struggle to achieve and reveal and confirm a human identity, human authority, yet contains, for all its horror, something very beautiful. I do not mean to be sentimental about suffering – enough is certainly as good as a feast – but people who cannot suffer can never grow up, can never discover who they are. That man who is forced each day to snatch his manhood, his identity, out of the fire of human cruelty that rages to destroy it knows, if he survives his effort, and even if he does not survive it, something about himself and human life that no school on earth – and indeed, no church – can teach. He achieves his own authority, and that is unshakable. This is because, in order to save his life, he is forced to look beneath appearances, to take nothing for granted, to hear the meaning behind the words. If one is continually surviving the worse that life can bring, one eventually ceases to be controlled by a fear of what life can bring; whatever it brings must be borne. And at this level of experience one’s bitterness begins to be palatable, and hatred becomes too heavy a sack to carry.

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.

Uncle Aidan?” Percy began. “Yeah?” “Don’t you think you ought to marry Emma?” Aidan jerked his head up, slamming it against the trunk lid. “FUCK!” he shouted as he saw stars before his eyes. A few more expletives escaped his lips as pain raged through his skull. “Nice mouth you got there,” John chided. Gritting his teeth, Aidan rubbed his aching head. “You mention that one to your mom, and I’ll tell her about your ball-sack comment.” John’s eyes widened. “Dude, that is so not cool!” “Yeah, well, deal with it.” Aidan started to resume gathering up the bags when he noticed Percy staring expectantly at him for an answer. Aidan sighed. “Perce—” His blonde brows knitted together. “Don’t you love her?” “Oh Christ,” Aidan muttered, raking his hand through his hair. He winced as pain once again shot through his head. “Did your mom put you up to this or something?” “No. When I asked her the same question, she just said that you were a cad.” Percy shrugged. “I don’t even know what that means.” “I’m pretty sure it’s a dude who acts like a douchebag to women,” John said. Aidan glared over at John. “I am not a cad!

I'm afraid it's not nonsense," Genghis said, shaking his turbaned head and continuing his story. "As I was saying before the little girl interrupted me, the baby didn't dash off with the other orphans. She just sat there like a sack of flour. So I walked over to her and gave her a kick to get her moving." "Excellent idea!" Nero said. "What a wonderful story this is! And then what happened?" "Well, at first it seemed like I'd kicked a big hole in the baby," Genghis said, his eyes shining, "which seemed lucky, because Sunny was a terrible athlete and it would have been a blessing to put her out of her misery." Nero clapped his hands. "I know just what you mean, Genghis," he said. "She's a terrible secretary as well." "But she did all that stapling," Mr. Remora protested. "Shut up and let the coach finish his story," Nero said. "But when I looked down," Genghis continued, "I saw that I hadn't kicked a hole in a baby. I'd kicked a hole in a bag of flour! I'd been tricked!" "That's terrible!" Nero cried.

In a life you accumulate so many memories, your brain constantly winnowing through them, weighing consequence, burying pain, but somehow by the time you’re this age you still end up dragging a monumental sack of memories behind you, a burden as heavy as a continent, and eventually it becomes time to take them out of the world.

Even as the brain is dying, it refuses to stop generating a narrative, the scaffolding upon which it weaves cause and effect, memory and experience, feeling and cognition. Narrative is so important to survival that it is literally the last thing you give up before becoming a sack of meat.

Ain't I been trying to tell you that you can't be holding grudges against people? Didn't you hear me say that? What do you think Jesus is gonna say if we come walking up to those pearly gates carrying a whole sackful of grievances and grudges on our backs? Jesus is gonna ask, What's that you toting on your back? Do you want to be opening that sack and showing Him all those ugly thing? He's dressed all in white and shining like the sun, and you're coming in with a load a hate in your your arms? Umm hmm. I can't imagine doing that.

Charlie Brown: I think lunchtime is about the worst time of day for me. Always having to sit here alone. Of course, sometimes, mornings aren't so pleasant either. Waking up and wondering if anyone would really miss me if I never got out of bed. Then there's the night, too. Lying there and thinking about all the stupid things I've done during the day. And all those hours in between when I do all those stupid things. Well, lunchtime is among the worst times of the day for me. Well, I guess I'd better see what I've got. Peanut butter. Some psychiatrists say that people who eat peanut butter sandwiches are lonely...I guess they're right. And when you're really lonely, the peanut butter sticks to the roof of your mouth. There's that cute little red-headed girl eating her lunch over there. I wonder what she would do if I went over and asked her if I could sit and have lunch with her?...She'd probably laugh right in my face...it's hard on a face when it gets laughed in. There's an empty place next to her on the bench. There's no reason why I couldn't just go over and sit there. I could do that right now. All I have to do is stand up...I'm standing up!...I'm sitting down. I'm a coward. I'm so much of a coward, she wouldn't even think of looking at me. She hardly ever does look at me. In fact, I can't remember her ever looking at me. Why shouldn't she look at me? Is there any reason in the world why she shouldn't look at me? Is she so great, and I'm so small, that she can't spare one little moment?...SHE'S LOOKING AT ME!! SHE'S LOOKING AT ME!! (he puts his lunchbag over his head.) ...Lunchtime is among the worst times of the day for me. If that little red-headed girl is looking at me with this stupid bag over my head she must think I'm the biggest fool alive. But, if she isn't looking at me, then maybe I could take it off quickly and she'd never notice it. On the other hand...I can't tell if she's looking, until I take it off! Then again, if I never take it off I'll never have to know if she was looking or not. On the other hand...it's very hard to breathe in here. (he removes his sack) Whew! She's not looking at me! I wonder why she never looks at me? Oh well, another lunch hour over with...only 2,863 to go.

Death turned to leave the room, but stopped when Hex began to write furiously. He went back and looked at the emerging paper. +++ Dear Hogfather, For Hogswatch I Want OH, NO. YOU CAN'T WRITE LETT... Death paused, and then said, YOU CAN, CAN'T YOU. +++ Yes. I Am Entitled +++ Death waited until the pen had stopped, and picked up the paper. BUT YOU ARE A MACHINE. THINGS HAVE NO DESIRES. A DOORKNOB WANTS NOTHING, EVEN THOUGH IT IS A COMPLEX MACHINE. +++ All Things Strive +++ YOU HAVE A POINT, said Death. He thought of tiny red petals in the black depths, and read to the end of the list. I DON'T KNOW WHAT MOST OF THESE THINGS ARE. I DON'T THINK THE SACK WILL, EITHER. +++ I Regret This +++ BUT WE WILL DO THE BEST WE CAN, said Death. FRANKLY, I SHALL BE CLAD WHEN TONIGHT'S OVER. IT'S MUCH HARDER TO GIVE THAN TO RECEIVE. He rummaged in his sack. LET ME SEE... HOW OLD ARE YOU?

The sun was up, the room already too warm. Light filtered in through the net curtains, hanging suspended in the air, sediment in a pond. My head felt like a sack of pulp. Still in my nightgown, damp from some fright I'd pushed aside like foliage, I pulled myself up and out of my tangled bed, then forced myself through the usual dawn rituals - the ceremonies we perform to make ourselves look sane and acceptable to other people. The hair must be smoothed down after whatever apparitions have made it stand on end during the night, the expression of staring disbelief washed from the eyes. The teeth brushed, such as they are. God knows what bones I'd been gnawing in my sleep.

Patients with various other types of movement disorders may also be able to pick up the rhythmic movement or kinetic melody of an animal, so, for example, equestrian therapy may have startling effectiveness for people with parkinsonism, Tourette’s syndrome, chorea, or dystonia.

Chicken’s been soaking in the buttermilk,” I say. “Now mix up the dry.” I pour flour, salt, more salt, pepper, paprika, and a pinch of cayenne into a doubled paper sack.

In the Banda Islands, ten pounds of nutmeg cost less than one English penny. In London, that same spice sold for more than £2.10s. – a mark-up of a staggering 60,000 per cent. A small sackful was enough to set a man up for life, buying him a gabled dwelling in Holborn and a servant to attend to his needs

Masters, this won’t go anywhere.” He draws back slightly and frowns. “Is that how you think of me? As Masters? I’m not your teammate.” “I’m not anything to you.” The side of his mouth quirks up. “That’s what you think.

Feeling in control makes most people feel secure and safe. It doesn’t matter how much actual control we have. Every human is technically a meaningless sack of carbon clinging to a rock hurtling through the uncaring void around trillions of tonnes of nuclear fire, but that’s too big for a single human to be aware of.

Football players are all different, but their focus is the same— winning, whether it’s on the field or off.” “Yeah,” Riley sighs. “It’s the same everywhere. Most of the guys I’ve met just want to hook up.” “I think I’d marry the first guy who hit on me in the bookstore.

As inexplicable as the accidents that set it off, our imagination is a crucial privilege. I've tried my whole life simply to accept the images that present themselves to me without trying to analyze them. I remember when we were shooting That Obscure Object of Desire in Seville and I suddenly found myself telling Fernando Rey, at the end of a scene, to pick up a big sack filled with tools lying on a bench, sling it over his shoulder, and walk away. The action was completely irrational, yet it seemed absolutely right to me. Still, I was worried about it, so I shot two versions of the scene: one with the sack, one without. But during the rushes the following day, the whole crew agreed that the scene was much better with the sack. Why? I can't explain it, and I don't enjoy rummaging around in the cliches of psychoanalysis.

As soon as I put my uniform on, the rest of my life solidified around me like a plaster cast. From that moment on, my friends were anyone who could put up with the disgrace; my occupation, any job from which I was not given the sack; my playground, any cafe or restaurant from which I was not barred or any street corner from which the police did not move me on.

If I tried to mail our love, it’s irregular shape and unknowable dimensions would make it difficult to box up. That’s why I’d chop it up and stuff it in a garbage bag, like it was a common body that needed to be dumped. Speaking of that, my neighbor hasn’t seen my other neighbor in days, and he was asking too many questions. Looks like I’ll need to get out another trash sack.


The sea is full of saints. You know that? You know that: you're a big boy. The sea's full of saints and it's been full of saints for years. Since longer than anything. Saints were there before there were even gods. They were waiting for them, and they're still there now. Saints eat fish and shellfish. Some of them catch jellyfish and some of them eat rubbish. Some saints eat anything they can find. They hide under rocks; they turn themselves inside out: they spit up spirals. There's nothing saints don't do. Make this shape with your hands. Like that. Move your fingers. There, you made a saint. Look out, here come another one! Now they're fighting! Yours won. There aren't any big corkscrew saints anymore, but there are still ones like sacks and ones like coils, and ones like robes with flapping sleeves. What's your favourite saint? I'll tell you mine. But wait a minute, first, do you know what it is makes them all saints? They're all a holy family, they're all cousins. Of each other, and of ... you know what else they're cousins of? That's right. Of gods. Alright now. Who was it made you? You know what to say. Who made you?

The only thing constantly changing is change The living only become dead Your hair falling out Your liver swelled up Your teeth rot your gums and your chin Your ass starts to sag Your balls shrivel up Your cock swallowed up in its sack The only thing constantly changing is change And it's always change on your back.

The frantic summer fishermen who pay a price and glut the decks with fish in the afternoon wonder vaguely what to do with them, sacks and baskets and mountains of porgies and blows and blackfish, sea robins, and even slender dogfish, all to be torn up greedily, to die, and to be thrown back for the waiting gulls. The gulls swarm and wait, knowing the summer fisherman will sicken of their plenty. Who wants to clean and scale a sack of fish? It's harder to give away fish than it is to catch them.

Opening up their sack, the children chorus, “Oh Snowman, what have we found?” They lift out the objects, hold them up as if offering them for sale: a hubcap, a piano key, a chunk of pale-green pop bottle smoothed by the ocean. A plastic BlyssPluss container, empty; a ChickieNobs Bucket O’Nubbins, ditto. A computer mouse, or the busted remains of one, with a long wiry tail.

At the end of our visit, Fleisher agreed to play something on my piano, a beautiful old 1894 Bechstein concert grand that I had grown up with, my father's piano. Fleisher sat at the piano and carefully, tenderly, stretched each finger in turn, and then, with arms and hands almost flat, he started to play. He played a piano transcription of Bach's "Sheep May Safely Graze," as arranged for piano by Egon Petri. Never in its 112 years, I thought, had this piano been played by such a master-I had the feeling that Fleisher has sized up the piano's character and perhaps its idiosyncrasies within seconds, that he had matched his playing to the instrument, to bring out its greatest potential, its particularity. Fleisher seemed to distill the beauty, drop by drop, like an alchemist, into flowing notes of an almost unbearable beauty-and, after this, there was nothing more to be said.

Earth life is giant field day where we willingly choose the limitation of racing with both feet in a potato sack, or sometimes we join up with another and agree to the limitation of racing as a team where each person has one leg tied to the leg of the other....Agreeing to run a race with limitations or live a life with limitations doesn't mean you're slow, clumsy, or unenlightened. It just means you're showing up on field day, participating, and if you're really good, you try your best despite the obstacles.

Woman . . . I do the best I can do. I come in here every Friday. I carry a sack of potatoes and a bucket of lard. You all line up at the door with your hands out. I give you the lint from my pockets. I give you my sweat and my blood. I ain't got no tears. I done spent them. We go upstairs in that room at night . . . and I fall down on you and try to blast a hole into forever. I get up Monday morning . . . find my lunch on the table. I go out. Make my way. Find my strength to carry me through to the next Friday.

The Mozart sonata Dad picked out begins to play. When we hear the first note, we open the sacks and the ladybugs escape through the opening, taking flight. It's as if someone has dumped rubies from heaven. Soon they will land on the plants in search of bollworm eggs. But right now they are magic-red ribbons flying over our heads, weaving against the pink sky, dancing up there with Mozart.

His August Majesty chided the bureaucrats for failing to understand a simple principle: the principle of the second bag. Because the people never revolt just because they have to carry a heavy load, or because of exploitation. They don't know life without exploitation, they don't even know that such a life exists. How can they desire what they cannot imagine? The people will rvolt only when, in a single movement, someone tries to throw a second burden, a second heavy bag, onto their backs. The peasant will fall face down into the mud - and then spring up and grab an ax. He'll grab an ax, my gracious sir, not because he simply can't sustain this new burden - he could carry it - he will rise because he feels that, in throwing the second burden onto his back suddenly and stealthily, you have tried to cheat him, you have treated him like an unthinking animal, you have trampled what remains of his already strangled dignity, taken him for an idiot who doesn't see, feel, or understand. A man doesn't seize an ax in defense of his wallet, but in defense of his dignity, and that, dear sir, is why His Majesty scolded the clerks. For their own convenience and vanity, instead of adding the burden bit by bit, in little bags, they tried to heave a whole big sack on at once.

Those who arrive at Thekla can see little of the city, beyond the plank fences, the sackcloth screens, the scaffoldings, the metal armatures, the wooden catwalks hanging from ropes or supported by sawhorses, the ladders, the trestles. If you ask, “Why is Thekla’s construction taking such a long time?” the inhabitants continue hoisting sacks, lowering leaded strings, moving long brushes up and down, as they answer, “So that its destruction cannot begin.

There were usually not nearly as many sick people inside the hospital as Yossarian saw outside the hospital, and there were generally fewer people inside the hospital who were seriously sick. There was a much lower death rate inside the hospital than outside the hospital, and a much healthier death rate. Few people died unnecessarily. People knew a lot more about dying inside the hospital and made a much neater job of it. They couldn’t dominate Death inside the hospital, but they certainly made her behave. They had taught her manners. They couldn’t keep Death out, but while she was there she had to act like a lady. People gave up the ghost with delicacy and taste inside the hospital. There was none of that crude, ugly ostentation about dying that was so common outside of the hospital. They did not blow-up in mid-air like Kraft or the dead man in Yossarian’s tent, or freeze to death in the blazing summertime the way Snowden had frozen to death after spilling his secret to Yossarian in the back of the plane. “I’m cold,” Snowden had whimpered. “I’m cold.” “There, there,” Yossarian had tried to comfort him. “There, there.” They didn’t take it on the lam weirdly inside a cloud the way Clevinger had done. They didn’t explode into blood and clotted matter. They didn’t drown or get struck by lightning, mangled by machinery or crushed in landslides. They didn’t get shot to death in hold-ups, strangled to death in rapes, stabbed to death in saloons, blugeoned to death with axes by parents or children, or die summarily by some other act of God. Nobody choked to death. People bled to death like gentlemen in an operating room or expired without comment in an oxygen tent. There was none of that tricky now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t business so much in vogue outside the hospital, none of that now-I-am-and-now-I-ain’t. There were no famines or floods. Children didn’t suffocate in cradles or iceboxes or fall under trucks. No one was beaten to death. People didn’t stick their heads into ovens with the gas on, jump in front of subway trains or come plummeting like dead weights out of hotel windows with a whoosh!, accelerating at the rate of thirty-two feet per second to land with a hideous plop! on the sidewalk and die disgustingly there in public like an alpaca sack full of hairy strawberry ice cream, bleeding, pink toes awry.

I am blood. I am death, I am vengeance,” she said, her voice flat, empty. Then she wiped the seax clean and slipped it into her belt, finally placing timber and stone on to the barrow, sealing Thorkel inside. She stooped, lifted her sack and picked up her spear, then strode out through the gateway. With a hiss of wings Vesli flew around her, hovered over her. “Vesli come with you, help mistress get Breca back,” the tennúr said. “No,” Orka said. “Death is my only companion. Stay and help Spert.” Vesli looked at the two seaxes that had slain Thorkel, thrust inside Orka’s belt. “What are you going to do with them, mistress?” the tennúr asked. Orka looked out, over the sloping hills and down to Fellur village, a smear far below. “I’m going to find the owner of these blades, and give them back to him,” Orka snarled.

I'm tired of people using their cars as biographical information centers, informing the world of their sad-sack lives and boring interests. Keep that shit to yourself. I don't want to know what college you went to, who you intend to vote for or what your plan is for world peace. I don't care if you visited the Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore or the birthplace of Wink Martindale. And I'm not interested in what radio station you listen to or what bands you like. In fact, I'm not interested in you in any way, except to see you in my rearview mirror. Furthermore, I can do without your profession of faith in God, Allah, Jehova, Yahweh, Peter Cottonail or whoever the fuck it is you've turned your life over to; please keep your superstitions private. I can't tell how happy it would make me to someday drive up to a flaming auto wreck and see smoke curling up around one of those little fish symbols with Jesus written inside it. And as far as I'm concerned you can include the Darwin/fish-with-feet-evolution symbol too. Far too cute for my taste. So keep the personal and autobiographical messages to yourself. Here's an idea: maybe you could paste them up inside your car, where you can see them and I can't.

At some point in this course, perhaps even tonight, you will read something difficult, something you only partially understand, and your verdict will be this is stupid. Will I argue when you advance that opinion in class the next day? Why would I do such a useless ting? My time with you in short, only thirty-four weeks of classes, and I will not waste it arguing about the merits of this short story or that poem. Why would I, when all such opinions are subjective, and no final resolution can ever be reached?' Some of the kids - Gloria was one of them - now looked lost, but Pete understood exactly what Mr. Ricker, aka Ricky the Hippie, was talking about... 'Time is the answer," Mr Ricker said on the first day of Pete's sophomore year. He strode back and forth, antique bellbottoms swishing, occasionally waving his arms. "Yes! Time mercilessly culls away the is-stupid from the not-stupid." ... "It will occur for you, young ladies and gentlemen, although I will be in your rear-view mirror by the time it happens. Shall I tell you how it happens? You will read something - perhaps 'Dulce et Decorum Est,' by Wilfred Owen. Shall we use that as an example? Why not?' Then, in a deeper voice that sent chills up Pete's back and tightened his throat, Mr. Ricker cried, " 'Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge...' And son on. Cetra-cetra. Some of you will say, This is stupid." .... 'And yet!" Up went the finger. "Time will pass! Tempus will fugit! Owen's poem may fall away from your mind, in which case your verdict of is-stupid will have turned out to be correct. For you, at least. But for some of you, it will recur. And recur. Each time it does, the steady march of your maturity will deepen its resonance. Each time that poem sneaks back into your mind, it will seem a little less stupid and a little more vital. A little more important. Until it shines, young ladies and gentlemen. Until it shines.

The school year progressed slowly. I felt as if I had been in the sixth grade for years, yet it was only October. Halloween was approaching. Coming from Ireland, we had never thought of it as a big holiday, though Sarah and I usually went out trick-or treating. For the last couple of years I had been too sick to go out, but this year Halloween fell on a day when I felt quiet fine. My mother was the one who came up with the Eskimo idea. I put on a winter coat, made a fish out of paper, which I hung on the end of a stick, and wrapped my face up in a scarf. My hair was growing in, and I loved the way the top of the hood rubbed against it. By this time my hat had become part of me; I took it off only at home. Sometimes kids would make fun of me, run past me, knock my hat off, and call me Baldy. I hated this, but I assumed that one day my hair would grow in, and on that day the teasing would end. We walked around the neighborhood with our pillowcase sacks, running into other groups of kids and comparing notes: the house three doors down gave whole candy bars, while the house next to that gave only cheap mints. I felt wonderful. It was only as the night wore on and the moon came out and the older kids, the big kids, went on their rounds that I began to realize why I felt so good. No one could see me clearly. No one could see my face.

Ready?” she asked. Nina clutched the rope. “To be lowered like a sack of flour into the heart of witchhunter power?” “This was your idea. We can still turn around.” “Do not second-guess the sack of flour. The sack of flour is wise beyond her years.” Hanne rolled her eyes and braced her feet against the edge of the roof, and Nina stepped out into nothing. Hanne released a grunt, but the rope stayed steady. Slowly, she lowered Nina down. The first two windows she tried were locked tight, but the third gave way and she wiggled inside, landing on the carpeted floor with a thud. She was in a stairway. For a moment, she couldn’t orient herself, but she descended another story, and soon she was at the door to Brum’s office. This time, she didn’t have a key. It had been too risky to steal it again, so she would have to pick the lock. It took an embarrassingly long time. She could almost hear Kaz laughing at her. Shut up, Brekker. Talk to me when you’ve done something about that terrible haircut. Maybe he had by now. She hoped so for Inej’s sake.

I'm not sure I handled it well," he sais,his face so open,gaze filled with such raw regret,my heart aches on his behalf. "Considering the circumstances, I think you did fine.Besides,it's not like you stood a chance,her mind was make up the moment she saw you." Dace jerks back,his expression slighted,voice unsure when he says, "I don't understand..." I fumble with my lunch sack,wondering why I can never say the right thing around him.Having no way to explain in a way that won't sound completely embarrassing,when Xotichl steps in. "What's not to get? You're hot-Daire's gorgeous-it's a recipe for parental distress if there ever was one.

In historical terms women, black people in general, were very attracted to very bright-colored clothing. Most people are frightened by color anyway...They just are. In this culture quiet colors are considered elegant. Civilized Western people wouldn’t buy bloodred sheets or dishes. There may be something more to it than what I am suggesting. But the slave population had no access even to what color there was, because they wore slave clothes, hand-me-downs, work clothes made out of burlap and sacking. For them a colored dress would be luxurious; it wouldn’t matter whether it was rich or poor cloth . . . just to have a red or a yellow dress. I stripped Beloved of color so that there are only the small moments when Sethe runs amok buying ribbons and bows, enjoying herself the way children enjoy that kind of color. The whole business of color was why slavery was able to last such a long time. It wasn’t as though you had a class of convicts who could dress themselves up and pass themselves off. No, these were people marked because of their skin color, as well as other features. So color is a signifying mark. Baby Suggs dreams of color and says, “Bring me a little lavender.” It is a kind of luxury. We are so inundated with color and visuals. I just wanted to pull it back so that one could feel that hunger and that delight.

Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. "When you pick up that box of portable yogurt tubes, or eat something with 15 ingredients you can't pronounce, ask yourself, "What are those things doing there?" Pollan says. Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients, or ingredients you can't pronounce. Stay out of the middle of the supermarket; shop on the perimeter of the store. Real food tends to be on the outer edge of the store near the loading docks, where it can be replaced with fresh foods when it goes bad. Don't eat anything that won't eventually rot. "There are exceptions -- honey -- but as a rule, things like Twinkies that never go bad aren't food," Pollan says. It is not just what you eat but how you eat. "Always leave the table a little hungry," Pollan says. "Many cultures have rules that you stop eating before you are full. In Japan, they say eat until you are four-fifths full. Islamic culture has a similar rule, and in German culture they say, 'Tie off the sack before it's full.'" Families traditionally ate together, around a table and not a TV, at regular meal times. It's a good tradition. Enjoy meals with the people you love. "Remember when eating between meals felt wrong?" Pollan asks. Don't buy food where you buy your gasoline. In the U.S., 20% of food is eaten in the car.

Then they had grown. Edging into life from the back door. Becoming. Everybody in the world was in a position to give them orders. White women said, "Do this." White children said, "Give me that." White men said. "Come here." Black men said, "Lay down." The only people they need not take orders from were black children and each other. But they took all of that and re-created it in their own image. They ran the houses of white people, and knew it. When white men beat their men, they cleaned up the book and went home to receive abuse from the victim. They beat their children with one hand and stole for them with the other. The hangs that felled trees also cut umbilical cords; the hands that wrung the necks of chickens and butchered hogs also nudged African violets into bloom; the arms that loaded sheaves, bales, and sacks rocked babies into sleep. They patted biscuits into flaky ovals of innocence--and shrouded the dead. They plowed all day and came home to nestle like plums under the limbs of their men, The legs that straddled a mule's back were the same ones that straddled their men's hips. And the difference was all the difference there was.

We’ve been lucky. The autumn happened to be dry and warm. We managed to dig the potatoes before the rain and cold set in. Minus what we owed and returned to the Mikulitsyns, we have up to twenty sacks, and it is all in the main bin of the cellar, covered above, over the floor, with straw and old, torn blankets. Down there, under the floor, we also put two barrels of Tonya’s salted cucumbers and another two of cabbage she has pickled. The fresh cabbage is hung from the crossbeams, head to head, tied in pairs. The supply of carrots is buried in dry sand. As is a sufficient amount of harvested black radishes, beets, and turnips, and upstairs in the house there is a quantity of peas and beans. The firewood stored up in the shed will last till spring.

didn’t bother them that the corpses would arrive at their doors, to quote Ruth Richardson, “compressed into boxes, packed in sawdust,…trussed up in sacks, roped up like hams…” So similar in their treatment were the dead to ordinary items of commerce that every now and then boxes would be mixed up in transit. James Moores Ball, author of The Sack-’Em-Up Men, tells the tale of the flummoxed anatomist who opened a crate delivered to his lab expecting a cadaver but found instead “a very fine ham, a large cheese, a basket of eggs, and a huge ball of yarn.” One can only imagine the surprise and very special disappointment of the party expecting very fine ham, cheese, eggs, or a huge ball of yarn, who found instead a well-packed but quite dead Englishman.

What you have heard is true. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was some talk of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go f--- themselves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.

When Brueggemann writes about the Jewish people at one historic point in their story, the sacking of Jerusalem and the loss of the temple in 597, he uses the word relinquish.6 It becomes a metaphor for the opening up to the new gifts and new forms of life given by God that become possible just when everything seems to have come to an end. Of course there is loss and it is right to grieve and not to pretend otherwise. Insecurity makes certitude attractive, and it is in times like these that I want to harness God to my preferred scheme of things, for it is risky to be so vulnerable. Yet it is this vulnerability that asks for trust and hope in God's plans, not mine. So I try to learn each time that I am called upon to move forward to hand over the past freely, putting it behind me, and moving on with hands open and ready for the new.

Pommes de Terre” The plow; the raw September earth; the massive-haunched and mighty-hoofed old bay clomping and farting down the furrow; Father holding the plow, my brother the reins, and me with a sack following, gathering the fruits of the overturned soil – the earth apples… Richly abundant, brown fat potatoes, thick as stars, appearing like miracles out of the barren, weedy, stony patch, thousands of big hefty solid spuds, bushel after bushel, a hundred bushels per acre, a mass of treasure from the earth… How our hands and eyes delighted in that harvest, how gladly we dragged our bulging gunnysacks to the wagon…a wagonful of potatoes! Dark, crusted with dirt, soil, earth, cool to the touch, good to eat even raw; we plowed the shabby-looking field and turned up nuggets, plenty, abundance, more than we needed, riches unimagined…

The energetic kender had already grabbed hold of the dwarf's boot and heaved, propelling Flint head first right into the hard-muscled body of the young bronze dragon. Hands flailing wildly, Flint caught hold of the harness on the dragon's neck and hung on for dear life, revolving slowly in the air like a sack on a hook. "What are you doing?" Tas asked in disgust, gazing up at Flint. "This is no time to play! Here, let me help--" "Stop it! Let go!" roared Flint, kicking at Tasselhoff's hands. "Get back! Get back, I say!" "Get up yourself then," Tas said, hurt, backing up. Puffing and red-faced, the dwarf dropped to the ground. "I'll get on in my own good time!" he said, glaring at the kender. "Without help from you!" ...The dwarf cast a glance back at the big bronze dragon and folded his arms across his chest stubbornly. "I've got to give this some thought--" "Oh, come on, Flint!" Tas begged. "You're only stalling. I want to fly! Please, Flint, hurry!" The kender brightened. "I could go by myself..." ... Khirsah, the dragon, gazed down at the two with amused impatience... yet, young as he was, the bronze dragon held a great reverence and respect for the elders of the world. Though vastly older than the dwarf in years, Khirsah saw in Flint one who had led a long, full, rich life; one worthy of respect. But, Khirsah thought with a sigh, if I don't do something, the kender's right--the battle will be over.

Rooster here has missed Ned a few times himself, horse and all,' said the captain. 'I reckon his is on his way now to missing him again.' Rooster was holding a bottle with a little whiskey in it. He said, 'You keep on thinking that.' He drained off the whiskey in about three swallows and tapped the cork back in and tossed the bottle up in the air. He pulled his revolver and fired at it twice and missed. The bottle fell and rolled and Rooster shot at it two or three more times and broke it on the ground. He got out his sack of cartridges and reloaded his pistol. He said, 'The Chinaman is running them cheap shells in on me again.' LaBoeuf said, 'I thought maybe the sun was in your eyes. That is to say, your eye.' Rooster swung the cylinder back in his revolver and said, 'Eyes, is it? I'll show you eyes!' He jerked the sack of corn dodgers free from his saddle baggage. He got one of the dodgers out and flung it in the air and fired at it and missed. Then he flung another one up and he hit it. The corn dodger exploded. He was pleased with himself and he got a fresh bottle of whiskey from his baggage and treated himself to a drink. LaBoeuf pulled one of his revolvers and got two dodgers out of the sack and tossed them both up. He fired very rapidly but he only hit one. Captain Finch tried it with two and missed both of them. Then he tried with one and made a successful shot. Rooster shot at two and hit one. They drank whiskey and used up about sixty corn dodgers like that. None of them ever hit two at one throw with a revolver but Captain Finch finally did it with his Winchester repeating rifle, with somebody else throwing. It was entertaining for a while but there was nothing educational about it. I grew more and more impatient with them. I said, 'Come on, I have had my bait of this. I am ready to go. Shooting cornbread out here on this prairie is not taking us anywhere.' By then Rooster was using his rifle and the captain was throwing for him. 'Chunk high and not so far out this time,' said he.

What is the opposite of a perfect storm? That is what this was, one of those rare moments when the world seems to shed all shyness and display every possible permutation of beauty. Oliver said it well as we took up our plates and began heading back downstairs: “I’m glad I’m not dead.” This came out rather loudly, as he is a bit deaf. Even so, he looked surprised by his own utterance, as if it were something he was feeling but didn’t really mean to say aloud—a thought turned into an exclamation. “I’m glad you’re not dead, too,” said a neighbor gaily, taking up the refrain. “I’m glad we’re all not dead,” said another. There followed a spontaneous raising of glasses on the rooftop, a toast to the setting sun, a toast to us.

I’m a maker of ballads right pretty I write them right here in the street You can buy them all over the city yours for a penny a sheet I’m a word pecker out of the printers out of the dens of Gin Lane I’ll write up a scene on a counter - confessions and sins in the main, boys confessions and sins in the main Then you’ll find me in Madame Geneva’s keeping the demons at bay There’s nothing like gin for drowning them in but they’ll always be back on a hanging day, on a hanging day They come rattling over the cobbles they sit on their coffins of black Some are struck dumb, some gabble top-heavy on brandy or sack The pews are all full of fine fellows and the hawker has set up her shop As they’re turning them off at the gallows she’ll be selling right under the drop, boys selling right under the drop Then you’ll find me in Madame Geneva’s keeping the demons at bay There’s nothing like gin for drowning them in but they’ll always be back on a hanging day, on a hanging day

Where I lived at Pencey, I lived in the Ossenburger Memorial Wing of the new dorms. It was only for juniors and seniors. I was a junior. My roommate was a senior. It was named after this guy Ossenburger that went to Pencey. He made a pot of dough in the undertaking business after he got out of Pencey. What he did, he started these undertaking parlors all over the country that you could get members of your family buried for about five bucks apiece. You should see old Ossenburger. He probably just shoves them in a sack and dumps them in the river. Anyway, he gave Pencey a pile of dough, and they named our wing alter him. The first football game of the year, he came up to school in this big goddam Cadillac, and we all had to stand up in the grandstand and give him a locomotive—that's a cheer. Then, the next morning, in chapel, he made a speech that lasted about ten hours. He started off with about fifty corny jokes, just to show us what a regular guy he was. Very big deal. Then he started telling us how he was never ashamed, when he was in some kind of trouble or something, to get right down his knees and pray to God. He told us we should always pray to God—talk to Him and all—wherever we were. He told us we ought to think of Jesus as our buddy and all. He said he talked to Jesus all the time. Even when he was driving his car. That killed me. I can just see the big phony bastard shifting into first gear and asking Jesus to send him a few more stiffs. The only good part of his speech was right in the middle of it. He was telling us all about what a swell guy he was, what a hotshot and all, then all of a sudden this guy sitting in the row in front of me, Edgar Marsalla, laid this terrific fart. It was a very crude thing to do, in chapel and all, but it was also quite amusing. Old Marsalla. He damn near blew the roof off. Hardly anybody laughed out loud, and old Ossenburger made out like he didn't even hear it, but old Thurmer, the headmaster, was sitting right next to him on the rostrum and all, and you could tell he heard it. Boy, was he sore. He didn't say anything then, but the next night he made us have compulsory study hall in the academic building and he came up and made a speech. He said that the boy that had created the disturbance in chapel wasn't fit to go to Pencey. We tried to get old Marsalla to rip off another one, right while old Thurmer was making his speech, but be wasn't in the right mood.

Down the pool they went until finally they were bunched and crowded against the end. And the feet and wildly plunging bodies followed them. A few frogs lost their heads and floundered among the feet and got through and these were saved. But the majority decided to leave this pool forever, to find a new home in a new country where this kind of thing didn’t happen. A wave of frantic, frustrated frogs, big ones, little ones, brown ones, green ones, men frogs and women frogs, a wave of them broke over the bank, crawled, leaped, scrambled. They clambered up the grass, they dutched at each other, little ones rode on big ones, And then — horror on horror — the flashlights found them. Two men gathered them like berries. The line came out of the water and closed in on their rear and gathered them like potatoes. Tens and fifties of them were flung into the gunny sacks, and the sacks filled with tired, frightened, and disillusioned frogs, with dripping whimpering frogs. Some got away, of course, and some had been saved in the pool. But never in frog history had such an execution taken place.

I never got to take you to the prom. You went with Henry Featherstone. And you wore a peach-colored dress.” “How could you possibly know that?” Callie asked. “Because I saw you walk in with him.” “You didn’t know I was alive in high school,” Callie scoffed. “You had algebra first period, across the hall from my trig class. You ate a sack lunch with the same three girls every day, Lou Ann, Becky and Robbie Sue. You spent your free period in the library reading Hemingway and Steinbeck. And you went straight home after school without doing any extracurricular activities, except on Thursdays. For some reason, on Thursdays you showed up at football practice. Why was that, Callie?” Callie was confused. How could Trace possibly know so much about her activities in high school? They hadn’t even met until she showed up at the University of Texas campus. “I don’t understand,” she said. “You haven’t answered my question. Why did you come to football practice on Thursdays?” “Because that was the day I did the grocery shopping, and I didn’t have to be home until later.” “Why were you there, Calllie?” Callie stared into his eyes, afraid to admit the truth. But what difference could it possibly make now? She swallowed hard and said, “I was there to see you.” He gave a sigh of satisfaction. “I hoped that was it. But I never knew for sure.” Callie’s brow furrowed. “You wanted me to notice you?” “I noticed you. Couldn’t you feel my eyes on you? Didn’t you ever sense the force of my boyish lust? I had it bad for you my senior year. I couldn’t walk past you in the hall without needing to hold my books in my lap when I saw down in the next class.” “You’re kidding, right?” Trace chuckled. “I wish I were.” “Then it wasn’t an accident, our meeting like that at UT?” “That’s the miracle of it,” Trace said. “It was entirely by accident. Fate. Kisma. Karma. Whatever you want to call it.

But . . . I did have something over Jotun. I straightened and said, “You can’t harm me. The king has ordered it.” Jotun stopped in his tracks. I celebrated my victory but didn’t press him further. Oh, but I wanted to. Jotun, remember that time the king hit you and you whimpered like an animal? Remember the other day when Lord Irrik, the guy you hate who also happens to be your dad, gave you the biggest butt-whipping of all time? “Jotun, your face is like a masticated, spat out piece of grisly meat.” I smiled at my witty inner dialogue, shrieking in surprised fright a second later when Jotun roared and charged at me. I glanced down, picked up the chamber pot, and swung with all my might. No one was more surprised than I when it connected with his head. Jotun’s eyes widened then rolled back in his head, and he hit the ground like a sack of rotten spuds. I stared at the chamber pot in shock and then at Jotun. His finger twitched, I swear, and I screeched a second time, bringing the pot down on his head again. “Having fun?” Lord Irrik drawled, leaning against the bars. I jumped and moved away from Jotun, but the Drae just snorted, eyeing the chamber pot in my hands.

I love McNab." Even as she turned toward Peabody, Eve could feel the muscle under her right eye vibrating toward a twitch. "Oh man. Do you have to do this?" "Yeah. I love McNab," Peabody repeated. "It took me a while to realize it, or get there, however it works. But he's the one. If you were to drop down dead, and Roarke decided I could comfort him with wild sex I probably wouldn't do it. Probably. But even if I did, I'd still love McNab." "At least I'm dead in your sexual fantasy." "It's only fair. I wouldn't cheat on my partner. So I probably wouldn't have sex with Roarke, should the opportunity arise, unless both you and McNab were killed in a freak accident." "Thanks, Peabody. I feel a lot better now." ''And we'd probably wait a decent interval. Like two weeks. If we could control ourselves." "It just gets better and better," Eve remarked. "In a way, we'd really be celebrating your lives, and our love for you both." "Maybe you're the ones who die in a freak accident," Eve tossed back. "Then me and McNab... No, Jesus. No." She visibly shuddered. "I don't love you that much." "Aw, that's not very nice. Too bad for you, because McNab's an airjack in the sack." "Shut up now. Save yourself.

There isn’t a word for walking out of the grocery store with a gallon jug of milk in a plastic sack that should have been bagged in double layers —so that before you are even out the door you feel the weight of the jug dragging the bag down, stretching the thin plastic handles longer and longer and you know it’s only a matter of time until bottom suddenly splits. There is no single, unimpeachable word for that vague sensation of something moving away from you as it exceeds its elastic capacity —which is too bad, because that is the word I would like to use to describe standing on the street chatting with an old friend as the awareness grows in me that he is no longer a friend, but only an acquaintance, a person with whom I never made the effort— until this moment, when as we say goodbye I think we share a feeling of relief, a recognition that we have reached the end of a pretense, though to tell the truth what I already am thinking about is my gratitude for language— how it will stretch just so much and no farther; how there are some holes it will not cover up; how it will move, if not inside, then around the circumference of almost anything— how, over the years, it has given me back all the hours and days, all the plodding love and faith, all the misunderstandings and secrets I have willingly poured into it.

Epistle to Miss Blount, On Her Leaving the Town, After the Coronation" As some fond virgin, whom her mother’s care Drags from the town to wholesome country air, Just when she learns to roll a melting eye, And hear a spark, yet think no danger nigh; From the dear man unwillingly she must sever, Yet takes one kiss before she parts for ever: Thus from the world fair Zephalinda flew, Saw others happy, and with sighs withdrew; Not that their pleasures caused her discontent, She sighed not that They stayed, but that She went. She went, to plain-work, and to purling brooks, Old-fashioned halls, dull aunts, and croaking rooks, She went from Opera, park, assembly, play, To morning walks, and prayers three hours a day; To pass her time ‘twixt reading and Bohea, To muse, and spill her solitary tea, Or o’er cold coffee trifle with the spoon, Count the slow clock, and dine exact at noon; Divert her eyes with pictures in the fire, Hum half a tune, tell stories to the squire; Up to her godly garret after seven, There starve and pray, for that’s the way to heaven. Some Squire, perhaps, you take a delight to rack; Whose game is Whisk, whose treat a toast in sack, Who visits with a gun, presents you birds, Then gives a smacking buss, and cries – No words! Or with his hound comes hollowing from the stable, Makes love with nods, and knees beneath a table; Whose laughs are hearty, tho’ his jests are coarse, And loves you best of all things – but his horse. In some fair evening, on your elbow laid, Your dream of triumphs in the rural shade; In pensive thought recall the fancied scene, See Coronations rise on every green; Before you pass th’ imaginary sights Of Lords, and Earls, and Dukes, and gartered Knights; While the spread fan o’ershades your closing eyes; Then give one flirt, and all the vision flies. Thus vanish scepters, coronets, and balls, And leave you in lone woods, or empty walls. So when your slave, at some dear, idle time, (Not plagued with headaches, or the want of rhyme) Stands in the streets, abstracted from the crew, And while he seems to study, thinks of you: Just when his fancy points your sprightly eyes, Or sees the blush of soft Parthenia rise, Gay pats my shoulder, and you vanish quite; Streets, chairs, and coxcombs rush upon my sight; Vexed to be still in town, I knit my brow, Look sour, and hum a tune – as you may now.

In two days they began to come upon bones and cast-off apparel. They saw halfburied skeletons of mules with the bones so white and polished they seemed incandescent even in that blazing heat and they saw panniers and packsaddles and the bones of men and they saw a mule entire, the dried and blackened carcass hard as iron. They rode on. The white noon saw them through the waste like a ghost army, so pale they were with dust, like shades of figures erased upon a board. The wolves loped paler yet and grouped and skittered and lifted their lean snouts on the air. At night the horses were fed by hand from sacks of meal and watered from buckets. There was no more sickness. The survivors lay quietly in that cratered void and watched the whitehot stars go rifling down the dark. Or slept with their alien hearts beating in the sand like pilgrims exhausted upon the face of the planet Anareta, clutched to a namelessness wheeling in the night. They moved on and the iron of the wagontires grew polished bright as chrome in the pumice. To the south the blue cordilleras stood footed in their paler image on the sand like reflections in a lake and there were no wolves now. They took to riding by night, silent jornadas save for the trundling of the wagons and the wheeze of the animals. Under the moonlight a strange party of elders with the white dust thick on their moustaches and their eyebrows. They moved on and the stars jostled and arced across the firmament and died beyond the inkblack mountains. They came to know the nightskies well. Western eyes that read more geometric constructions than those names given by the ancients. Tethered to the polestar they rode the Dipper round while Orion rose in the southwest like a great electric kite. The sand lay blue in the moonlight and the iron tires of the wagons rolled among the shapes of the riders in gleaming hoops that veered and wheeled woundedly and vaguely navigational like slender astrolabes and the polished shoes of the horses kept hasping up like a myriad of eyes winking across the desert floor. They watched storms out there so distant they could not be heard, the silent lightning flaring sheetwise and the thin black spine of the mountain chain fluttering and sucked away again in the dark. They saw wild horses racing on the plain, pounding their shadows down the night and leaving in the moonlight a vaporous dust like the palest stain of their passing.

It ascended by levels: Da's cameo recessed against the glow of the tuner's parade,the drawer of utensils withdrawn past its fulcrum, the disembodied face of my brother miming and distorting my desperate attempt by expression alone to make Mum look up from me and see him, I no longer feeling my features' movements so much as seeing them on that writhing white face against the pantry's black, the throttle-popped eyes and cheeks ballooning against the gag's restraint, Mum squatting chairside to even my ears, my face before us bother farther and farther from my own control as I saw in his twin face what all lolly-smeared hand-held brats must see in the fun-house mirror- the gross and pitiless sameness, the distortion in which there is, tiny, at the center, something cruelly true about the we who leer and woggle at stick necks and and concave skulls, goggling eyes that swell to the edges- as the mimicry ascended reflected levels to become finally the burlesque of a wet hysteria that plastered cut strands to a wet white brow, the strangled man's sobs blocked by cloth, storm's thrum and electric hiss and Da's mutter against the lalation of shears meant for lambs, an unseen fit that sent my eyes upward again and again into their own shocked white, knowing past sight that my twin's face would show the same, to mock it- until the last refuge was slackness, giving up the ghost completely for a blank sack gagged mask's mindless stare-un seen and seeing- into a mirror I could not know or feel myself without. No not ever again.

Tatiasha, my wife, I got cookies from you and Janie, anxious medical advice from Gordon Pasha (tell him you gave me a gallon of silver nitrate), some sharp sticks from Harry (nearly cried). I’m saddling up, I’m good to go. From you I got a letter that I could tell you wrote very late at night. It was filled with the sorts of things a wife of twenty-seven years should not write to her far-away and desperate husband, though this husband was glad and grateful to read and re-read them. Tom Richter saw the care package you sent with the preacher cookies and said, “Wow, man. You must still be doing something right.” I leveled a long look at him and said, “It’s good to know nothing’s changed in the army in twenty years.” Imagine what he might have said had he been privy to the fervent sentiments in your letter. No, I have not eaten any poison berries, or poison mushrooms, or poison anything. The U.S. Army feeds its men. Have you seen a C-ration? Franks and beans, beefsteak, crackers, fruit, cheese, peanut butter, coffee, cocoa, sacks of sugar(!). It’s enough to make a Soviet blockade girl cry. We’re going out on a little scoping mission early tomorrow morning. I’ll call when I come back. I tried to call you today, but the phone lines were jammed. It’s unbelievable. No wonder Ant only called once a year. I would’ve liked to hear your voice though: you know, one word from you before battle, that sort of thing . . . Preacher cookies, by the way, BIG success among war-weary soldiers. Say hi to the kids. Stop teaching Janie back flip dives. Do you remember what you’re supposed to do now? Kiss the palm of your hand and press it against your heart.   Alexander   P.S. I’m getting off the boat at Coconut Grove. It’s six and you’re not on the dock. I finish up, and start walking home, thinking you’re tied up making dinner, and then I see you and Ant hurrying down the promenade. He is running and you’re running after him. You’re wearing a yellow dress. He jumps on me, and you stop shyly, and I say to you, come on, tadpole, show me what you got, and you laugh and run and jump into my arms. Such a good memory. I love you, babe.

Yes. Do you remember?” Once more a shrug of the shoulders. “How should I remember? We have questioned thousands—” “Questioned! Beaten into unconsciousness, kidneys crushed, bones broken, thrown into cellars like sacks, dragged up again, faces torn, testicles crushed—that was what you called questioning! The hot frightful moaning of those who were no longer able to cry—questioned! The whimpering between unconsciousness and consciousness, kicks in the belly, rubber clubs, whips—yes, all that you innocently called ‘questioning’!” “Don’t move your hands! Or I’ll shoot you down! Do you remember little Max Rosenberg who lay beside me in the cellar with his torn body and who tried to smash his head on the cement wall to keep from being questioned again—questioned, why? Because he was a democrat! And Willmann who passed blood and had no teeth and only one eye left after he had been questioned by you for two hours—questioned, why? Because he was a Catholic and did not believe your Fuehrer was the new Messiah. And Riesenfeld whose head and back looked like raw lumps of flesh and who implored us to bite open his arteries because he was toothless and no longer able to do it himself after he had been questioned by you—questioned, why? Because he was against war and did not believe that culture is most perfectly expressed by bombs and flame throwers. Questioned! Thousands have been questioned, yes—don’t move your hands, you swine! And now finally I’ve got you and we are driving to a house with thick walls and we will be all alone and I’ll question you—slowly, slowly, for days, the Rosenberg treatment

Leta walked to the door and opened it with a ready smile for Colby Lane. And found herself looking straight into the eye of a man she hadn’t seen face-to-face in thirty-six years. Matt Holden matched her face against his memories of a young, slight, beautiful woman whose eyes loved him every time they looked at him. His heart spun like a cartwheel in his chest. “Cecily said it was Colby,” Leta said unsteadily. “Strange. She phoned me and asked if I was free this evening.” His broad shoulders shrugged and he smiled faintly. “I’m free every evening.” “That doesn’t sound like the life of a playboy widower,” Leta said caustically. “My wife was a vampire,” he said. “She sucked me dry of life and hope. Her drinking wore me down. Her death was a relief for both of us. Do I get to come in?” he added, glancing down the hall. “I’m going to collect dust if I stand out here much longer, and I’m hungry. A sack of McDonald’s hamburgers and fries doesn’t do a lot for me.” “I hear it’s a presidential favorite,” Cecily mused, joining them. “Come in, Senator Holden.” “It was Matt before,” he pointed out. “Or are you trying to butter me up for a bigger donation to the museum?” She shrugged. “Pick a reason.” He looked at Leta, who was uncomfortable. “Well, at least you can’t hang up on me here. You’ll be glad to know that our son isn’t speaking to me. He isn’t speaking to you, either, or so he said,” he added. “I suppose he won’t talk to you?” he added to Cecily. “He said goodbye very finally, after telling me that I was an idiot to think he’d change his mind and want to marry me just because he turned out to have mixed blood,” she said, not relating the shocking intimacy that had prefaced his remarks. “I’ll punch him for that,” Matt said darkly. “Ex-special forces,” Leta spoke up with a faint attempt at humor, nodding toward Matt. “He was in uniform when we went on our first date.” “You wore a white cotton dress with a tiered skirt,” he recalled, “and let your hair down. Hair…” He turned back to Cecily and grimaced. “Good God, what did you do that for?” “Tate likes long hair, that’s what I did it for,” she said, venom in her whole look. “I can’t wait for him to see it, even if I have to settle for sending him a photo!” “I hope you never get mad at me,” Matt said. “Fat chance.

If Colonel Lowe doesn’t treat you like a goddess, he’ll have me to answer to,” he said gruffly. She mustered a little laugh. “Please, no basket of fish on his desk.” “Trust me, I’ll be far more creative if he hurts you.” The diamond powder weighed in his hands. “You will want this,” he said as he extended the sack to her. “Zack, I don’t want any gifts.” He picked up her hand and pressed it into her palm. “It’s diamond powder. I heard you were in short supply, and Caleb Magruder has a mill that can produce it.” Her eyes widened in surprise, and she peeked inside. It looked as if she was about to cry as she pulled the drawstrings closed. “Zack, I can’t accept this. It wouldn’t be right.” “Take it. What would I do with diamond powder?” He tried to sound light-hearted, as if this glorious woman had not just trampled on the dreams he had been building for three years. She still looked hesitant, which was insane because he knew she craved that diamond powder like a drowning man craved a life raft. He sighed impatiently. “If you don’t take it, I’ll throw it in the lake. You know I will.” She must have believed him, because she relented and accepted the gift. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “Thank you for everything, Zack.” “You deserve it,” he said bluntly. “I’ve never seen anyone work as hard as you.” “Don’t be nice to me,” she said. “I’ll start bawling like a watering pot if you do.” His hand looked big and clumsy against her delicate cheek. He was such a sap where this woman was concerned. Had been from the first time he ever clapped eyes on her. “Don’t shed any tears over me. I’m not worth it.” He had to get out of there before he made a complete fool of himself. Before he fell to his knees and begged her not to fling herself at a man who would never feel a fraction of the soaring love he had for her. Stepping aside and letting Richard Lowe court his woman made his gut tie itself into knots, but it had to be done.

I wonder where they’ll go,” Jake continued, frowning a little. “There’s wolves out there, and all sorts of beasts.” “No self-respecting wolf would dare to confront that duenna of hers, not with that umbrella she wields,” Ian snapped, but he felt a little uneasy. “Oho!” said Jake with a hearty laugh. “So that’s what she was? I thought they’d come to court you together. Personally, I’d be afraid to close my eyes with that gray-haired hag in bed next to me.” Ian was not listening. Idly he unfolded the note, knowing that Elizabeth Cameron probably wasn’t foolish enough to have written it in her own girlish, illegible scrawl. His first thought as he scanned the neat, scratchy script was that she’d gotten someone else to write it for her…but then he recognized the words, which were strangely familiar, because he’d spoken them himself: Your suggestion has merit. I’m leaving for Scotland on the first of next month and cannot delay the trip again. Would prefer the meeting take place there, in any case. A map is enclosed for direction to the cottage. Cordially-Ian. “God help that silly bastard if he ever crosses my path!” Ian said savagely. “Who d’you mean?” “Peters!” “Peters?” Jake said, gaping. “Your secretary? The one you sacked for mixin’ up all your letters?” “I should have strangled him! This is the note I meant for Dickinson Verley. He sent it to Cameron instead.” In furious disgust Ian raked his hand through his hair. As much as he wanted Elizabeth Cameron out of his sight and out of his life, he could not cause two women to spend the night in their carriage or whatever vehicle they’d brought, when it was his fault they’d come here. He nodded curtly to Jake. “Go and get them.” “Me? Why me?” “Because,” Ian said bitterly, walking over to the cabinet and putting away the gun, “it’s starting to rain, for one thing. For another, if you don’t bring them back, you’ll be doing the cooking.” “If I have to go after that woman, I want a stout glass of something fortifying first. They’re carrying a trunk, so they won’t get much ahead of me.” “On foot?” Ian asked in surprise. “How did you think they got up here?” “I was too angry to think.

It is true. I did fall asleep at the wheel. We nearly went right off a cliff down into a gorge. But there were extenuating circumstances.” Ian snickered. “Are you going to pull out the cry-baby card? He had a little bitty wound he forgot to tell us about, that’s how small it was. Ever since he fell asleep he’s been trying to make us believe that contributed.” “It wasn’t little. I have a scar. A knife fight.” Sam was righteous about it. “He barely nicked you,” Ian sneered. “A tiny little slice that looked like a paper cut.” Sam extended his arm to Azami so she could see the evidence of the two-inch line of white marring his darker skin. “I bled profusely. I was weak and we hadn’t slept in days.” “Profusely?” Ian echoed. “Ha! Two drops of blood is not profuse bleeding, Knight. We hadn’t slept in days, that much is true, but the rest . . .” He trailed off, shaking his head and rolling his eyes at Azami. Azami examined the barely there scar. The knife hadn’t inflicted much damage, and Sam knew she’d seen evidence of much worse wounds. “Had you been drinking?” she asked, her eyes wide with innocence. Those long lashes fanned her cheeks as she gaze at him until his heart tripped all over itself. Sam groaned. “Don’t listen to him. I wasn’t drinking, but once we were pretty much in the middle of a hurricane in the South Pacific on a rescue mission and Ian here decides he has to go into this bar . . .” “Oh, no.” Ian burst out laughing. “You’re not telling her that story.” “You did, man. He made us all go in there, with the dirtbag we’d rescued, by the way,” Sam told Azami. “We had to climb out the windows and get on the roof at one point when the place flooded. I swear ther was a crocodile as big as a house coming right at us. We were running for our lives, laughing and trying to keep that idiot Frenchman alive.” “You said to throw him to the crocs,” Ian reminded. “What was in the bar that you had to go in?” Azami asked, clearly puzzled. “Crocodiles,” Sam and Ian said simultaneously. They both burst out laughing. Azami shook her head. “You two could be crazy. Are you making these stories up?” “Ryland wishes we made them up,” Sam said. “Seriously, we’re sneaking past this bar right in the middle of an enemy-occupied village and there’s this sign on the bar that says swim with the crocs and if you survive, free drinks forever. The wind is howling and trees are bent almost double and we’re carrying the sack of shit . . . er . . . our prize because the dirtbag refuses to run even to save his own life—” “The man is seriously heavy,” Ian interrupted. “He was kidnapped and held for ransom for two years. I guess he decided to cook for his captors so they wouldn’t treat him bad. He tried to hide in the closet when we came for him. He didn’t want to go out in the rain.” “He was the biggest pain in the ass you could imagine,” Sam continued, laughing at the memory. “He squealed every time we slipped in the mud and went down.” “The river had flooded the village,” Sam added. “We were walking through a couple of feet of water. We’re all muddy and he’s wiggling and squeaking in a high-pitched voice and Ian spots this sign hanging on the bar.

bombs poured down from the sky exploding across trachimbrod in bursts of light and heat those watching the festivities hollered ran frantically they jumped into the bubbling splashing frantically dynamic water not after the sack of gold buy to save themselves they stayed under as long as they could they surfaced to seize air and look for loved ones my safran picked up his wife and carried her like a newlywed into the water which seemed amid the falling trees and hackling crackling explosions the safest place hundreds of bodies poured into the brod that river with my name I embraced them with open arms come to me come I wanted to save them all to save everybody from everybody the bombs rained from the sky and it was not the explosions or scattering shrapnel that would be our death not the heckling cinders not the laughing debris but all of the bodies bodies flailing and grabbing hold of one another bodies looking something to hold on to my safran lost sight of his wife who was carried deeper into me by the pull of the bodies the silent shrieks were carried in bubbles to the surface where they popped PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE the kicking in zosha’s belly became more and more PLEASE PLEASE the baby refused to die like this PLEASE the bombs came down cackling smoldering and my safran was able to break free from the human mass and float downstream over the small falls to clearer waters zosha was pulled down PLEASE and the baby refusing to die like this was pulled up and out of her body turning the waters around her red she surfaced like a bubble to the light to oxygen to life to life WAWAWAWAWAWA she cried she was perfectly healthy and she would have lived except for the umbilical cord that pulled her back under toward her mother who was barely conscious but conscious of the cord and tried to break it with her hands and then bite it with her teeth but could not it would not be broken and she died with her perfectly healthy nameless baby in her arms she held it to her chest the crowd pulled itself into itself long after the bombing ceased the confused the frightened the desperate mass of babies children teenagers adults elderly all pulled at each other to survive but pulled each other into me drowning each other killing each other the bodies began to rise one at a time until I couldn’t be seen through all of the bodies blue skin open white eyes I was invisible under them I was the carcass they were the butterflies white eyes blue skin this is what we’ve done we’ve killed our own babies to save them

In 1976, a doctoral student at the University of Nottingham in England demonstrated that randomizing letters in the middle of words had no effect on the ability of readers to understand sentences. In tihs setncene, for emalxpe, ervey scarbelmd wrod rmenias bcilasaly leibgle. Why? Because we are deeply accustomed to seeing letters arranged in certain patterns. Because the eye is in a rush, and the brain, eager to locate meaning, makes assumptions. This is true of phrases, too. An author writes “crack of dawn” or “sidelong glance” or “crystal clear” and the reader’s eye continues on, at ease with combinations of words it has encountered innumerable times before. But does the reader, or the writer, actually expend the energy to see what is cracking at dawn or what is clear about a crystal? The mind craves ease; it encourages the senses to recognize symbols, to gloss. It makes maps of our kitchen drawers and neighborhood streets; it fashions a sort of algebra out of life. And this is useful, even essential—X is the route to work, Y is the heft and feel of a nickel between your fingers. Without habit, the beauty of the world would overwhelm us. We’d pass out every time we saw—actually saw—a flower. Imagine if we only got to see a cumulonimbus cloud or Cassiopeia or a snowfall once a century: there’d be pandemonium in the streets. People would lie by the thousands in the fields on their backs. We need habit to get through a day, to get to work, to feed our children. But habit is dangerous, too. The act of seeing can quickly become unconscious and automatic. The eye sees something—gray-brown bark, say, fissured into broad, vertical plates—and the brain spits out tree trunk and the eye moves on. But did I really take the time to see the tree? I glimpse hazel hair, high cheekbones, a field of freckles, and I think Shauna. But did I take the time to see my wife? “Habitualization,” a Russian army-commissar-turned-literary-critic named Viktor Shklovsky wrote in 1917, “devours works, clothes, furniture, one’s wife, and the fear of war.” What he argued is that, over time, we stop perceiving familiar things—words, friends, apartments—as they truly are. To eat a banana for the thousandth time is nothing like eating a banana for the first time. To have sex with somebody for the thousandth time is nothing like having sex with that person for the first time. The easier an experience, or the more entrenched, or the more familiar, the fainter our sensation of it becomes. This is true of chocolate and marriages and hometowns and narrative structures. Complexities wane, miracles become unremarkable, and if we’re not careful, pretty soon we’re gazing out at our lives as if through a burlap sack. In the Tom Andrews Studio I open my journal and stare out at the trunk of the umbrella pine and do my best to fight off the atrophy that comes from seeing things too frequently. I try to shape a few sentences around this tiny corner of Rome; I try to force my eye to slow down. A good journal entry—like a good song, or sketch, or photograph—ought to break up the habitual and lift away the film that forms over the eye, the finger, the tongue, the heart. A good journal entry ought be a love letter to the world. Leave home, leave the country, leave the familiar. Only then can routine experience—buying bread, eating vegetables, even saying hello—become new all over again.

You know, one time I saw Tiger down at the water hole: he had the biggest testicles of any animal, and the sharpest claws, and two front teeth as long as knives and as sharp as blades. And I said to him, Brother Tiger, you go for a swim, I’ll look after your balls for you. He was so proud of his balls. So he got into the water hole for a swim, and I put his balls on, and left him my own little spider balls. And then, you know what I did? I ran away, fast as my legs would take me “I didn’t stop till I got to the next town, And I saw Old Monkey there. You lookin’ mighty fine, Anansi, said Old Monkey. I said to him, You know what they all singin’ in the town over there? What are they singin’? he asks me. They singin’ the funniest song, I told him. Then I did a dance, and I sings, Tiger’s balls, yeah, I ate Tiger’s balls Now ain’t nobody gonna stop me ever at all Nobody put me up against the big black wall ’Cos I ate that Tiger’s testimonials I ate Tiger’s balls. “Old Monkey he laughs fit to bust, holding his side and shakin’, and stampin’, then he starts singin’ Tiger’s balls, I ate Tiger’s balls, snappin’ his fingers, spinnin’ around on his two feet. That’s a fine song, he says, I’m goin’ to sing it to all my friends. You do that, I tell him, and I head back to the water hole. “There’s Tiger, down by the water hole, walkin’ up and down, with his tail switchin’ and swishin’ and his ears and the fur on his neck up as far as they can go, and he’s snappin’ at every insect comes by with his huge old saber teeth, and his eyes flashin’ orange fire. He looks mean and scary and big, but danglin’ between his legs, there’s the littlest balls in the littlest blackest most wrinkledy ball-sack you ever did see. “Hey, Anansi, he says, when he sees me. You were supposed to be guarding my balls while I went swimming. But when I got out of the swimming hole, there was nothing on the side of the bank but these little black shriveled-up good-for-nothing spider balls I’m wearing. “I done my best, I tells him, but it was those monkeys, they come by and eat your balls all up, and when I tell them off, then they pulled off my own little balls. And I was so ashamed I ran away. “You a liar, Anansi, says Tiger. I’m going to eat your liver. But then he hears the monkeys coming from their town to the water hole. A dozen happy monkeys, boppin’ down the path, clickin’ their fingers and singin’ as loud as they could sing, Tiger’s balls, yeah, I ate Tiger’s balls Now ain’t nobody gonna stop me ever at all Nobody put me up against the big black wall ’Cos I ate that Tiger’s testimonials I ate Tiger’s balls. “And Tiger, he growls, and he roars and he’s off into the forest after them, and the monkeys screech and head for the highest trees. And I scratch my nice new big balls, and damn they felt good hangin’ between my skinny legs, and I walk on home. And even today, Tiger keeps chasin’ monkeys. So you all remember: just because you’re small, doesn’t mean you got no power.

The tornadic bundle of legs and arms and feet and hands push farther into the kitchen until only the occasional flailing limb is visible from the living room, where I can’t believe I’m still standing. A spectator in my own life, I watch the supernova of my two worlds colliding: Mom and Galen. Human and Syrena. Poseidon and Triton. But what can I do? Who should I help? Mom, who lied to me for eighteen years, then tried to shank my boyfriend? Galen, who forgot this little thing called “tact” when he accused my mom of being a runaway fish-princess? Toraf, who…what the heck is Toraf doing, anyway? And did he really just sack my mom like an opposing quarterback? The urgency level for a quick decision elevates to right-freaking-now. I decide that screaming is still best for everyone-it’s nonviolent, distracting, and one of the things I’m very, very good at. I open my mouth, but Rayna beats me to it-only, her scream is much more valuable than mine would have been, because she includes words with it. “Stop it right now, or I’ll kill you all!” She pushed past me with a decrepit, rusty harpoon from God-knows-what century, probably pillaged from one of her shipwreck excursions. She waves it at the three of them like a crazed fisherman in a Jaws movie. I hope they don’t notice she’s got it pointed backward and that if she fires it, she’ll skewer our couch and Grandma’s first attempt at quilting. It works. The bare feet and tennis shoes stop scuffling-out of fear or shock, I’m not sure-and Toraf’s head appears at the top of the counter. “Princess,” he says, breathless. “I told you to stay outside.” “Emma, run!” Mom yells. Toraf disappears again, followed by a symphony of scraping and knocking and thumping and cussing. Rayna rolls her eyes at me, grumbling to herself as she stomps into the kitchen. She adjusts the harpoon to a more deadly position, scraping the popcorn ceiling and sending rust and Sheetrock and tetanus flaking onto the floor like dirty snow. Aiming it at the mound of struggling limbs, she says, “One of you is about to die, and right now I don’t really care who it is.” Thank God for Rayna. People like Rayna get things done. People like me watch people like Rayna get things done. Then people like me round the corner of the counter as if they helped, as if they didn’t stand there and let everyone they love beat the shizzle out of one another. I peer down at the three of them all tangled up. Crossing my arms, I try to mimic Rayna’s impressive rage, but I’m pretty sure my face is only capable of what-the-crap-was-that. Mom looks up at me, nostrils flaring like moth wings. “Emma, I told you to run,” she grinds out before elbowing Toraf in the mouth so hard I think he might swallow a tooth. Then she kicks Galen in the ribs. He groans, but catches her foot before she can re-up. Toraf spits blood on the linoleum beside him and grabs Mom’s arms. She writhes and wriggles, bristling like a trapped badger and cussing like sailor on crack. Mom has never been girlie. Finally she stops, her arms and legs slumping to the floor in defeat. Tears puddle in her eyes. “Let her go,” she sobs. “She’s got nothing to do with this. She doesn’t even know about us. Take me and leave her out of this. I’ll do anything.” Which reinforces, right here and now, that my mom is Nalia. Nalia is my mom. Also, holy crap.