San Juan Quotes

Sounds of a San Juan night, drifting across the city through layers of humid air; sounds of life and movement, people getting ready and people giving up, the sound of hope and the sound of hanging on, and behind them all, the quiet, deadly ticking of a thousand hungry clocks, the lonely sound of time passing in the long Caribbean night.

The past--the wild charge at the head of his men up San Juan Hill; the first years of his marriage when he worked late into the summer dusk down in the busy city for young Hildegarde whom he loved; the days before that when he sat smoking far into the night in the gloomy old Button house on Monroe Street with his grandfather-all these had faded like unsubstantial dreams from his mind as though they had never been. He did not remember.

Mi Amado, las montañas, los valles solitarios nemorosos, las ínsulas extrañas, los ríos sonorosos, el silbo de los aires amorosos, la noche sosegada en par de los levantes de la aurora, la música callada, la soledad sonora, la cena que recrea y enamora. ~ San Juan de la Cruz

San Juan points out that the two great enemies of integration within man are his mind and his emotions.

This is a very interesting point, because all knowledge indicates man’s ignorance. Knowledge is assumed to be given to the ignorant, but as they grow further, they discover the ignorance in the knowledge itself. They find they have not found the answer. They have become learned, but not good; they have learned to be strong, but not to love; they have found many things, but they have not found God. And San Juan points out that when the knowledge becomes great enough, it so increases the confusion of the mind that it is even more difficult to find God.

Demons never die quietly, and a week ago the storm was a proper demon, sweeping through the Caribbean after her long ocean crossing from Africa, a category five when she finally came ashore at San Juan before moving on to Santo Domingo and then Cuba and Florida. But now she's grown very old, as her kind measures age, and these are her death throes. So she holds tightly to this night, hanging on with the desperate fury of any dying thing, any dying thing that might once have thought itself invincible.

which, according to San Juan, is the mystery of the great alchemistical transmutation; the attainment of the true stability of the psychic life. Without this internal stability, all other labor is in vain.

Sala called for more drink and Sweep brought four rums, saying they were on the house. We thanked him and sat for another half hour, saying nothing. Down on the waterfront I could hear the slow clang of a ship’s bell as it eased against the pier, and somewhere in the city a motorcycle roared through the narrow streets, sending its echo up the hill to Calle O’Leary. Voices rose and fell in the house next door and the raucous sound of a jukebox came from a bar down the street. Sounds of a San Juan night, drifting across the city through layers of humid air; sounds of life and movement, people getting ready and people giving up, the sound of hope and the sound of hanging on, and behind them all, the quiet, deadly ticking of a thousand hungry clocks, the lonely sound of time passing in the long Caribbean night.

San Juan develops his wonderful commentary upon the seven poems that constitute the journey of the soul. He calls this “The Dark Night of the Soul” because he says every individual seeking an internal life must pass through a sphere of psychic darkness. The soul itself must go through a mystery of death and regeneration; a mystery of the detachment of itself from its own objective nature. It must die out of its own confusion and be born again into the grace of God. This long, dark journey of the inner self is one which each truth seeker must make in order to achieve his final end.

This is the first and principal benefit caused by this arid and dark night of contemplation: the knowledge of oneself and of one’s misery.

He blamed television, movies, and books for his love of ghosts. It was a fascination that’s been with him since his youth. He always loved watching or reading anything that had to do with ghosts and haunted locations, especially historic sites like New Orleans, Salem, Tombstone, Gettysburg, and Old San Juan.

This is Barrachina,’ Reyna said. ‘What kind of bear?’ Hedge opened a jar of maraschino cherries and chugged them down. ‘It’s a famous restaurant,’ Reyna said, ‘in the middle of Old San Juan. They invented the piña colada here, back in the 1960s, I think.’ Nico pitched out of his chair, curled up on the floor and started snoring. Coach Hedge belched. ‘Well, it looks like we’re staying for a while. If they haven’t invented any new drinks since the sixties, they’re overdue. I’ll get to work!

La puta, la gran puta, la grandísima puta, la santurrona, la simoníaca, la inquisidora, la falsificadora, la asesina, la fea, la loca, la mala; la del Santo Oficio y el Índice de Libros Prohibidos; la de las Cruzadas y la noche de San Bartolomé; la que saqueó Constantinopla y bañó de sangre Jerusalén; la que exterminó a albigenses y a los veinte mil habitantes de Beziers; la que arrasó con las culturas indígenas de América; la que quemó a Segarelli en Parma, a Juan Hus en Constanza y a Giordano Bruno en Roma; la detractora de la ciencia, la enemiga de la verdad, la adulteradora de la Historia; la perseguidora de judíos, la encendedora de hogueras, la quemadora de herejes y brujas...

In giving us his Son, his only and definitive word, God spoke everything to us at once in this sole word, and he has no more to say.

Christianity is a lifestyle, not a set of rules for judging others.

piragua—cold syrup trickled over crushed ice—her favorite treat from her childhood in Viejo San Juan.

DEDICATORIA A TODOS/AS NUESTROS PACIENTES A NUESTROS ESTUDIANTES A NUESTRO GLORIOSO HOSPITAL GENERAL SAN JUAN DE DIOS

To save his soul from the annihilation of being a father, he at last went back to San Juan.

Ser devoto tuyo, ¡oh María! -dice San Juan Damasceno-, es un arma de salvación que Dios ofrece a los que quiere salvar

Orcas can be spotted from the shores of Seattle, Tacoma, Port Angeles, Bellingham, and the popular San Juan Islands in Washington State; and Vancouver, Victoria, Nanaimo, Campbell River, and other cities in BC. These venues not only offer easy access to the whales, they are scenic and pleasant places to live: Researchers who study orcas tend to gravitate more toward this region than, say, Iceland.

Yo y mi Padre somos uno... pero mi Padre es mayor que yo" (Evangelio según San Juan 14:28), por lo que su poder para crear, por muy grande que sea, no podría ser tan grande como la fuente de ese poder creativo; sin embargo, son uno.

All the while I had been in San Juan I'd condemned it without really disliking it. I felt that sooner or later I would see that third dimension, that depth that makes a city real and that you never see until you've been there awhile.

A particularly intriguing case is that of an eleven-year-old girl, Meera, who was kidnapped from India’s west coast and then sold to the Spanish in Manila. She was then taken to Mexico where she is remembered as Catarina de San Juan.

...it was the very government and the way they treated us that started us on that road. For example, in my case, when they beat me in the DIC cells for being a “communist” and an “extremist” and all that, they awoke a great curiosity in me: “What is communism? What is socialism?” Every day they beat me over the head with that. And I began to ask myself: “What’s a socialist country? How are problems solved there? How do people live there? Are the miners massacred there?” And then I began to analyze: “What have I done? What do I want? What do I think? Why am I here? I only asked for justice for the people, I only asked for education to be better, I asked that there be no more massacres like the terrible San Juan massacre. Is that socialism? Is that communism?

San Juan points out that the life of mysticism begins with this great love which in itself overcomes all confusion, both of the soul and of the body. He says that the dark journey of the soul is man’s soul gradually striving toward its goal, which is the pure and complete power to love. For as the mind gives man the power of reason, so the psychic life gives him the power of perpetual emotional activity. It gives him the power to feel so great and inevitably an intensity that everything else is overwhelmed.

Mrs. Armitage had been different, although she was old too. That was in New York at the San Juan Laundry on Fifteenth Street. Puerto Ricans. Suds overflowing onto the floor. I was a young mother then and washed diapers on Thursday mornings. She lived above me, in 4-C. One morning at the laundry she gave me a key and I took it. She said that if I didn’t see her on Thursdays it meant she was dead and would I please go find her body. That was a terrible thing to ask of someone; also then I had to do my laundry on Thursdays.

La soledad y el sufrimiento acumulado por años, el peso de toda una vida, nos había llevado a este punto. Éramos náufragos que compartían la misma balsa en el océano de las calles de San Juan y estaba claro que sin esta indigencia jamás nos hubiéramos encontrado.

The next day they had lunch, followed by a stroll along the cobblestone streets of old San Juan. When the discussion turned to Cas9, Charpentier became excited. “We have to figure out exactly how it works,” she urged Doudna. “What’s the exact mechanism it uses to cut DNA?

San Juan points out the problem of disciplining the small child. He tells us, for example, that it is not reasonable or practical or good that the small child should simply do as it pleases. That it should have opportunity for self-expression is good, but that it should grow without discipline, means that ultimately it will place a heavy burden upon society. It is not good that the child should regard every restriction upon its action as a frustration. It must learn to recognize that many so-called frustrations actually are, or must become, voluntary sacrifices for the common good.

That summer, there was a Name the Babies contest, an annual event organized by the Whale Museum on San Juan Island. A young girl from Bellingham submitted the winning entry. The little orca should be named "Luna", she wrote, because "the whale explores the ocean like the moon explores the Earth.

Mi alma se ha empleado, Y todo mi caudal, en su servicio, Ya no guardo ganado Ni ya tengo otro oficio; Que ya sólo en amar es mi ejercicio. 29.

delectable life

No task is too small to not chase perfection and excellence!

I find rest days such a waste when all I do is rest!

Remember the past and work for the future... But never forget to live today!

Para ir a donde no se sabe, hay que ir por donde no se sabe.

Seamos lo que debemos, que Dios nos dará lo que hubiésemos menester

His axiom is that the soul must empty itself of self in order to be filled with God, that it must be purified of the last traces of earthly dross before it is fit to become united with God. In

Desde que existieron éste y los demás pescadores, las enseñanzas de Pitágoras y Platón, que antes obtenían el primer lugar, han quedado en silencio, y la mayor parte de la gente ni siquiera conoce esos nombres

Ana had experienced reactions like Ramon's in the mirrored salons of Sevilla society, in the waxed halls of the Convento de las Buenas Madres, on the streets of Cadiz and San Juan. It was a look that said, "I see you, but I deign not to speak to you." It said, "I see you but I do not share the high opinion you have of yourself." It said, "I see you but you're not who I want to see." It said, "To me, you don't exist.

Sonidos de la noche de San Juan, sonidos que iban de un lado a otro de la ciudad a través de capas de aire húmedo; sonidos de vida y movimiento, de gente que se aprestaba para las cosas y de gente que tiraba la toalla, sonidos de esperanza y sonidos de perseverancia, y, detrás de todos ellos, el tictac callado y mortecino de un millar de relojes famélicos, el sonido solitario del paso del tiempo en la larga noche del Caribe.

On January 12, on a firing range located in a small valley called San Juan, at the end of the island in the province of Oriente, hundreds of soldiers from the defeated army of Batista had been lined up in a trench knee-deep and more than fifty yards long. Their hands were tied behind their backs, and they were machine-gunned there where they stood. Then with bulldozers the trenches were turned into mass graves. There had been no trial of any kind for those men.

Yea, if a man possess all things he cannot be content,—the greater his possessions the less will be his contentment, for the heart cannot be satisfied with possessions, but rather in detachment from all things and in poverty of spirit.

Hay momentos que son una noche oscura del alma. Para San Juan de la Cruz es a través de ellos como el alma puede encontrar la paz cuando se entrega a su destino, Dios, y así se ilumina. Para Thomas Moore (2005), teólogo y psicoterapeuta son las circunstancias que permiten iniciar el misterioso viaje a lo desconocido lo que aporta la más profunda comprensión del sentido de la vida, muestran una nueva forma de vivir, facilitan que se elimine todo lo superfluo y ayudan a recomenzar de nuevo.

For contemplation is naught else than a secret, peaceful and loving infusion from God, which, if it be permitted, enkindles the soul with the spirit of love, according as the soul declares in the next lines, namely: Kindled in love with yearnings.

Si el fruto que debemos producir es el amor, una condición previa es precisamente este «permanecer», que tiene que ver profundamente con esa fe que no se aparta del Señor. En Jn 15,7 se habla de la oración como un factor esencial de este permanecer.

The wind was fair, and the small fleet hugged the shore, sailing past the Alvarado and the Banderas rivers, where Grijalva had traded beads for gold, past the Island of Sacrifices, where Grijalva’s men had seen the bloody altars, and finally anchored off the island of San Juan de Ulúa, in the harbor of present-day Veracruz, on Holy Thursday, 1519. On Good Friday, Cortés and his expedition disembarked, built a small camp, and made contact with the local Indians, members of a powerful nation called the Aztecs.

La Media Luna estaba sola, en silencio. Se caminaba con los pies descalzos; se hablaba en voz baja. Enterraron a Susana San Juan y pocos en Comala se enteraron. Allá había feria. Se jugaba a los gallos, se oía la música; los gritos de los borrachos y de loterías. Hasta acá llegaba la luz del pueblo, que parecía una aureola sobre el cielo gris. Porque fueron días grises, tristes para la Media Luna. Don Pedro no hablaba. No salía de su cuarto. Juró vengarse de Comala: -Me cruzaré de brazos y Comala se morirá de hambre. Y así lo hizo.

though the hand of God is of itself so light and gentle, the soul should now feel it to be so heavy and so contrary,115 though it neither weighs it down nor rests upon it, but only touches it, and that mercifully, since He does this in order to grant the soul favours and not to chastise it.

There is so much melancholy involved with remembering, isn’t there? We have this ability to recall the things we once loved above all else, but lack the ability to actually relive those moments. It’s like the cruelest of mirages. We see it as it was, but know it shall never be again. It makes one wish to never have remembered it at all.

In poverty, and without protection or support in all the apprehensions of my soul—that is, in the darkness of my understanding and the constraint of my will, in affliction and anguish with respect to memory, remaining in the dark in pure faith, which is dark night for the said natural faculties, the will alone being touched by grief and afflictions and yearnings for the love of God—I went

House of Angels" Where San Juan and Chacabuco intersect I saw the blues houses, the houses that wear the color of adventure. They were like banners and deep as the dawn that frees the outlying quarters. Some are daybreak color, and some are dawn color: their cool readiance is a passion before the oblique face of any drab, discouraged corner. I think of the women who will be looking skyward from their burning dooryards. I think of the pale arms that make evening glimmer and of the blackness of braids: I think of the grave delight of being mirrored in their deep eyes, like arbors of night. I will push the gate of iron entering the dooryard and there will be a fair girl, already mine, in the room. And the two of us will hush, trembling like flames, and the present joy will grow quiet in that passed.

oversized grave with a granite obelisk for a headstone. Scattered around it were faded wreathes and crushed bouquets of plastic flowers, which made the place seem even sadder. Aurum and Argentum were playing keep-away in the woods with one of the coach’s handballs. Ever since getting repaired by the Amazons, the metal dogs had been frisky and full of energy – unlike their owner. Reyna sat cross-legged at the entrance of the tent, staring at the memorial obelisk. She hadn’t said much since they fled San Juan two days ago. They’d also not encountered any monsters, which made Nico uneasy. They’d had no further word from the Hunters or the Amazons. They didn’t know what had happened to Hylla, or Thalia, or the giant Orion. Nico didn’t like the Hunters of Artemis. Tragedy followed them as surely as their dogs and birds of

Where would the would-be “purists” draw the line between native and alien elements? This whole planet was altered by the hand of man. A birder who scorned the alien Sky Larks might stand on San Juan and salute the native eagles . . . but some of those eagles had been released here; and they were living on an unnaturally high population of rabbits, from another continent, introduced here. The rabbits, in turn, were probably feeding on alien plants from other lands that were naturalized here — if the San Juan roadsides were anything like all the other roadsides in North America. And we birders of European descent were introduced here also, a few generations back. Even my Native American friends of the night before could claim to be “native” in only a relative sense; their ancestors had come across the Bering land bridge from Asia. None of us is native here.

The way in which they are to conduct themselves in this night of sense is to devote themselves not at all to reasoning and meditation, since this is not the time for it, but to allow the soul to remain in peace and quietness, although it may seem clear to them that they are doing nothing and are wasting their time, and although it may appear to them that it is because of their weakness that they have no desire in that state to think of anything. The

Natasha, my boss at Ducat, was in her early thirties. She hired me on the spot when I came in for an interview the summer I finished school. I was twenty-two. I barely remember our conversation, but I know I wore a cream silk blouse, tight black jeans, flats—in case I was taller than Natasha, which I was by half an inch—and a huge green glass necklace that thudded against my chest so hard it actually gave me bruises when I ran down the subway stairs. I knew not to wear a dress or look too prim or feminine. That would only elicit patronizing contempt. Natasha wore the same kind of outfit every day—a YSL blazer and tight leather pants, no makeup. She was the kind of mysteriously ethnic woman who would blend in easily in almost any country. She could have been from Istanbul or Paris or Morocco or Moscow or New York or San Juan or even Phnom Penh in a certain light, depending on how she wore her hair. She spoke four languages fluently and had once been married to an Italian aristocrat, a baron or a count, or so I’d heard.

No me mueve, mi Dios, para quererte el Cielo que me tienes prometido ni me mueve el Infierno tan temido para dejar por eso de ofenderte. Tú me mueves, Señor. Múeveme el verte clavado en una cruz y escarnecido; muéveme el ver tu cuerpo tan herido, muévenme tus afrentas, y tu muerte. Muéveme, en fin, tu amor, y en tal manera, que, aunque no hubiera Cielo, yo te amara, y, aunque no hubiera Infierno, te temiera. No me tienes que dar porque te quiera, pues, aunque lo que espero no esperara, lo mismo que te quiero te quisiera

Así ha resumido Juan el significado más profundo de las genealogías, y nos ha enseñado a entenderlas también como una explicación de nuestro propio origen, de nuestra verdadera «genealogía». De la misma manera que, al final, las genealogías se interrumpen, puesto que Jesús no fue generado por José, sino que nació de modo totalmente real de la Virgen María por obra del Espíritu Santo, así esto vale también ahora para nosotros: nuestra verdadera «genealogía» es la fe en Jesús, que nos da una nueva proveniencia, nos hace nacer «de Dios».

Separated from everyone, in the fifteenth dungeon, was a small man with fiery brown eyes and wet towels wrapped around his head. For several days his legs had been black, and his gums were bleeding. Fifty-nine years old and exhausted beyond measure, he paced silently up and down, always the same five steps, back and forth. One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . an interminable shuffle between the wall and door of his cell. He had no work, no books, nothing to write on. And so he walked. One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . His dungeon was next door to La Fortaleza, the governor’s mansion in Old San Juan, less than two hundred feet away. The governor had been his friend and had even voted for him for the Puerto Rican legislature in 1932. This didn’t help much now. The governor had ordered his arrest. One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . Life had turned him into a pendulum; it had all been mathematically worked out. This shuttle back and forth in his cell comprised his entire universe. He had no other choice. His transformation into a living corpse suited his captors perfectly. One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . Fourteen hours of walking: to master this art of endless movement, he’d learned to keep his head down, hands behind his back, stepping neither too fast nor too slow, every stride the same length. He’d also learned to chew tobacco and smear the nicotined saliva on his face and neck to keep the mosquitoes away. One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . The heat was so stifling, he needed to take off his clothes, but he couldn’t. He wrapped even more towels around his head and looked up as the guard’s shadow hit the wall. He felt like an animal in a pit, watched by the hunter who had just ensnared him. One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . Far away, he could hear the ocean breaking on the rocks of San Juan’s harbor and the screams of demented inmates as they cried and howled in the quarantine gallery. A tropical rain splashed the iron roof nearly every day. The dungeons dripped with a stifling humidity that saturated everything, and mosquitoes invaded during every rainfall. Green mold crept along the cracks of his cell, and scarab beetles marched single file, along the mold lines, and into his bathroom bucket. The murderer started screaming. The lunatic in dungeon seven had flung his own feces over the ceiling rail. It landed in dungeon five and frightened the Puerto Rico Upland gecko. The murderer, of course, was threatening to kill the lunatic. One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . The man started walking again. It was his only world. The grass had grown thick over the grave of his youth. He was no longer a human being, no longer a man. Prison had entered him, and he had become the prison. He fought this feeling every day. One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . He was a lawyer, journalist, chemical engineer, and president of the Nationalist Party. He was the first Puerto Rican to graduate from Harvard College and Harvard Law School and spoke six languages. He had served as a first lieutenant in World War I and led a company of two hundred men. He had served as president of the Cosmopolitan Club at Harvard and helped Éamon de Valera draft the constitution of the Free State of Ireland.5 One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . He would spend twenty-five years in prison—many of them in this dungeon, in the belly of La Princesa. He walked back and forth for decades, with wet towels wrapped around his head. The guards all laughed, declared him insane, and called him El Rey de las Toallas. The King of the Towels. His name was Pedro Albizu Campos.

LE FEU DES DIEUX Ô vous-autres voyez comment les années tombent toutes avec fracas et forment un nuage, et l'oiseau sur sa branche se moque des rêves de l'homme, tandis que tout expire comme des écailles. Ce feu, que le propre Prométhée ne rédime pas, douleur mise sur le front pour qu'elle soit éternelle, ô voyez-le croître sur les ruines, les cendres qui restent de son brasier muet. Nous parcourons les heures sans regarder leur visage, ces lèvres qui parfois nous appellent de si loin. Ô si nous pouvions penser à l'autre songe et si la flamme s'élevait enfin vers le repos oscillant pour toujours au milieu de la Beauté !

On April 30, 1921, President Warren G. Harding appointed Reily, a former assistant postmaster in Kansas City, governor of Puerto Rico as a political payoff. Reily took his oath of office in Kansas City, then attended to “personal business” for another two and a half months before finally showing up for work on July 30.24 By that time, he had already announced to the island press that (1) he was “the boss now,” (2) the island must become a US state, (3) any Puerto Rican who opposed statehood was a professional agitator, (4) there were thousands of abandoned children in Puerto Rico, and (5) the governorship of Puerto Rico was “the best appointment that President Harding could award” because its salary and “perquisites” would total $54,000 a year.25 Just a few hours after disembarking, the assistant postmaster marched into San Juan’s Municipal Theater and uncorked one of the most reviled inaugural speeches in Puerto Rican history. He announced that there was “no room on this island for any flag other than the Stars and Stripes. So long as Old Glory waves over the United States, it will continue to wave over Puerto Rico.” He then pledged to fire anyone who lacked “Americanism.” He promised to make “English, the language of Washington, Lincoln and Harding, the primary one in Puerto Rican schools

Major General Leonard Wood Leonard Wood was an army officer and physician, born October 9, 1860 in Winchester, New Hampshire. His first assignment was in 1886 at Fort Huachuca, Arizona where he fought in the last campaign against the fierce Apache warrior Geronimo. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for carrying dispatches 100 miles through hostile territory and was promoted to the rank of Captain, commanding a detachment of the 8th Infantry. From 1887 to 1898, he served as a medical officer in a number of positions, the last of which was as the personal physician to President William McKinley. In 1898 at the beginning of the war with Spain, he was given command of the 1st Volunteer Cavalry. The regiment was soon to be known as the “Rough Riders." Wood lead his men on the famous charge up San Juan Hill and was given a field promotion to brigadier general. In 1898 he was appointed the Military Governor of Santiago de Cuba. In 1920, as a retired Major General, Wood ran as the Republican candidate for the presidency of the United States, losing to Warren Harding. In 1921 following his defeat, General Wood accepted the post of Governor General of the Philippines. He held this position from 1921 to 1927, when he died of a brain tumor in Boston, on 7 August 1927, at 66 years of age after which he was buried, with full honors, in Arlington National Cemetery.

December 9: The Mexican literary mafia has nothing on the Mexican bookseller mafia. Bookstores visited: the Librería del Sótano, in a basement on Avenida Juárez where the clerks (numerous and neatly uniformed) kept me under strict surveillance and from which I managed to leave with volumes by Roque Dalton, Lezama Lima, and Enrique Lihn. The Librería Mexicana, staffed by three samurais, on Calle Aranda, near the Plaza de San Juan, where I stole a book by Othón, a book by Amado Nervo (wonderful!), and a chapbook by Efraín Huerta. The Librería Pacífico, at Bolívar and 16 de Septiembre, where I stole an anthology of American poets translated by Alberto Girri and a book by Ernesto Cardenal. And in the evening, after reading, writing, and a little fucking: the Viejo Horacio, on Correo Mayor, staffed by twins, from which I left with Gamboa's Santa, a novel to give to Rosario; an anthology of poems by Kenneth Fearing, translated and with a prologue by someone called Doctor Julio Antonio Vila, in which Doctor Vila talks in a vague, question mark-filled way about a trip that Fearing took to Mexico in the 1950s, "an ominous and fruitful trip," writes Doctor Vila; and a book on Buddhism written by the Televisa adventurer Alberto Montes. Instead of the book by Montes I would have preferred the autobiography of the ex-featherweight world champion Adalberto Redondo, but one of the inconveniences of stealing books - especially for a novice like myself - is that sometimes you have to take what you can get.

He had been a timid child in New York City, cut off from schoolboy society by illness, wealth, and private tutors. Inspired by a leonine father, he had labored with weights to build up his strength. Simultaneously, he had built up his courage “by sheer dint of practicing fearlessness.” With every ounce of new muscle, with every point scored over pugilistic, romantic, and political rivals, his personal impetus (likened by many observers to that of a steam train) had accelerated. Experiences had flashed by him in such number that he was obviously destined to travel a larger landscape of life than were his fellows. He had been a published author at eighteen, a husband at twenty-two, an acclaimed historian and New York State Assemblyman at twenty-three, a father and a widower at twenty-five, a ranchman at twenty-six, a candidate for Mayor of New York at twenty-seven, a husband again at twenty-eight, a Civil Service Commissioner of the United States at thirty. By then he was producing book after book, and child after child, and cultivating every scientist, politician, artist, and intellectual of repute in Washington. His career had gathered further speed: Police Commissioner of New York City at thirty-six, Assistant Secretary of the Navy at thirty-eight, Colonel of the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, the “Rough Riders,” at thirty-nine. At last, in Cuba, had come the consummating “crowded hour.” A rush, a roar, the sting of his own blood, a surge toward the sky, a smoking pistol in his hand, a soldier in light blue doubling up “neatly as a jackrabbit” … When the smoke cleared, he had found himself atop Kettle Hill on the Heights of San Juan, with a vanquished empire at his feet.

Como «Evangelio pneumático», el Evangelio de Juan no sólo proporciona una especie de transcripción taquigráfica de las palabras y del camino de Jesús, sino que, en virtud de la comprensión que se obtiene en el recordar, nos acompaña más allá del aspecto exterior hasta la profundidad de la palabra y de los acontecimientos, esa profundidad que viene de Dios y nos conduce a Él. El Evangelio es, como tal, «recuerdo», y eso significa: se atiene a la realidad que ha sucedido y no es una composición épica sobre Jesús, una alteración de los sucesos históricos. Más bien nos muestra verdaderamente a Jesús, tal como era y, precisamente de este modo, nos muestra a Aquel que no sólo era, sino que es; Aquel que en todos los tiempos puede decir en presente: «Yo soy». «Os aseguro que antes de que Abraham naciera, Yo soy» (Jn 8, 58). Este Evangelio nos muestra al verdadero Jesús, y lo podemos utilizar tranquilamente como fuente sobre Jesús.

¿QUIÉN DESATÓ LA VIOLENCIA EN GUATEMALA?   En 1944, Ubico cayó de su pedestal, barrido por los vientos de una revolución de sello liberal que encabezaron algunos jóvenes oficiales y universitarios de la clase media. Juan José Arévalo, elegido presidente, puso en marcha un vigoroso plan de educación y dictó un nuevo Código del Trabajo para proteger a los obreros del campo y de las ciudades. Nacieron varios sindicatos; la United Fruit Co., dueña de vastas tierras, el ferrocarril y el puerto, virtualmente exonerada de impuestos y libre de controles, dejó de ser omnipotente en sus propiedades. En 1951, en su discurso de despedida, Arévalo reveló que había debido sortear treinta y dos conspiraciones financiadas por la empresa. El gobierno de Jacobo Arbenz continuó y profundizó el ciclo de reformas. Las carreteras y el nuevo puerto de San José rompían el monopolio de la frutera sobre los transportes y la exportación. Con capital nacional, y sin tender la mano ante ningún banco extranjero, se pusieron en marcha diversos proyectos de desarrollo que conducían a la conquista de la independencia. En junio de 1952, se aprobó la reforma agraria, que llegó a beneficiar a más de cien mil familias, aunque sólo afectaba a las tierras improductivas y pagaba indemnización, en bonos, a los propietarios expropiados. La United Fruit sólo cultivaba el ocho por ciento de sus tierras, extendidas entre ambos océanos. La reforma agraria se proponía «desarrollar la economía capitalista campesina y la economía capitalista de la agricultura en general», pero una furiosa campaña de propaganda internacional se desencadenó contra Guatemala: «La cortina de hierro está descendiendo sobre Guatemala», vociferaban las radios, los diarios y los próceres de la OEA[97]. El coronel Castillo Armas, graduado en Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, abatió sobre su propio país las tropas entrenadas y pertrechadas, al efecto, en los Estados Unidos. El bombardeo de los F-47, con aviadores norteamericanos, respaldó la invasión. «Tuvimos que deshacernos de un gobierno comunista que había asumido el poder», diría, nueve años más tarde, Dwight Eisenhower[98]. Las declaraciones del embajador norteamericano en Honduras ante una subcomisión del Senado de los Estados Unidos, revelaron el 27 de julio de 1961 que la operación libertadora de 1954 había sido realizada por un equipo del que formaban parte, además de él mismo, los embajadores ante Guatemala, Costa Rica y Nicaragua. Allen Dulles, que en aquella época era el hombre número uno de la CIA, les había enviado telegramas de felicitación por la faena cumplida. Anteriormente, el bueno de Allen había integrado el directorio de la United Fruit Co. Su sillón fue ocupado, un año después de la invasión, por otro directivo de la CIA, el general Walter Bedell Smith. Foster Dulles, hermano de Allen, se había encendido de impaciencia en la conferencia de la OEA que dio el visto bueno a la expedición militar contra Guatemala. Casualmente, en sus escritorios de abogado habían sido redactados, en tiempos del dictador Ubico, los borradores de los contratos de la United Fruit. La caída de Arbenz marcó a fuego

In Argentina, such as in most of the New World wine producing countries, there is no controlled designation of origin system, although some winemakers are working towards establishing a structure where the region in which wines are made can become more distinguished. Argentina is the fifth largest wine producing country in the world, and has three main wine regions: the northern region which includes Salta, Catamarca and la Rioja; the central region, where San Juan, Mendoza and Córdoba are located; and the south, with Río Negro and Neuquén. More than 50% of Argentina's wine is produced in Mendoza.

«lo mismo da que el pajarillo del alma esté atado a una maroma o a un hilillo fino, el caso es que no vuela».

Il fut donc à la fois profondément rassuré et attristé lorsqu'il atteignirent la camionnette et qu'ils purent monter et démarrer sans qu'un seul coup de feu fût tiré. C'était, par une fois, une révolution authentique et nouvelle, qui méritait de gagner et de durer, comme celle de Juan Bosch, mais qui allait perdre, parce qu'elle était trop belle. Elle allait durer ce que durent les roses.

Disueltas por la luz; los

Había una vez un Santo muy preocupado porque nadie le rezaba... La gente le rezaba a San José, a San Pedro, a San Isidro; pero nadie a él... Así que pidió una reunión con Dios y éste le recomendó: Haz unas tarjetas de presentación y repártelas por todo el mundo. Di que haces milagros por encargo, pero, eso sí, no se las des ni a los GAYS, ni a las mujeres de VIDA FÁCIL. Pregunta… ¿Cómo se llamaba el Santo? ¿¿¿ …, …, ??? ¡¡¡ Piensa!!! ¡¡¡ … !!! ¡Ah! ¡¡¡ Já, Já !!! No te dieron tarjeta, ¡eh!

Taking quick looks behind him on the trail, Lew Basnight was apt to see things that weren’t necessarily there. Mounted figure in a black duster and hat, always still, turned sidewise in the hard, sunlit distance, horse bent to the barren ground. No real beam of attention, if anything a withdrawal into its own lopsided star-shaped silhouette, as if that were all it had ever aspired to. It did not take long to convince himself that the presence behind him now, always just out of eyeball range, belonged to one and the same subject, the notorious dynamiter of the San Juans known as the Kieselguhr Kid. The Kid happened to be of prime interest to White City Investigations. Just around the time Lew was stepping off the train at the Union Station in Denver, and the troubles up in the Coeur d’Alene were starting to bleed over everywhere in the mining country, where already hardly a day passed without an unscheduled dynamite blast in it someplace, the philosophy among larger, city-based detective agencies like Pinkerton’s and Thiel’s began to change, being as they now found themselves with far too much work on their hands. On the theory that they could look at their unsolved cases the way a banker might at instruments of debt, they began selling off to less-established and accordingly hungrier outfits like White City their higher-risk tickets, including that of the long-sought Kieselguhr Kid. It was the only name anybody seemed to know him by, “Kieselguhr” being a kind of fine clay, used to soak up nitroglycerine and stabilize it into dynamite. The Kid’s family had supposedly come over as refugees from Germany shortly after the reaction of 1849, settling at first near San Antonio, which the Kid-to-be, having developed a restlessness for higher ground, soon left, and then after a spell in the Sangre de Cristos, so it went, heading west again, the San Juans his dream, though not for the silver-mine money, nor the trouble he could get into, both of those, he was old enough by then to appreciate, easy enough to come by. No, it was for something else. Different tellers of the tale had different thoughts on what. “Don’t carry pistols, don’t own a shotgun nor a rifle—no, his trade-mark, what you’ll find him packing in those tooled holsters, is always these twin sticks of dynamite, with a dozen more—” “Couple dozen, in big bandoliers across his chest.” “Easy fellow to recognize, then.” “You’d think so, but no two eyewitnesses have ever agreed. It’s like all that blasting rattles it loose from everybody’s memory.” “But say, couldn’t even a slow hand just gun him before he could get a fuse lit?” “Wouldn’t bet on it. Got this clever wind-proof kind of striker rig on to each holster, like a safety match, so all’s he has to do’s draw, and the ‘sucker’s all lit and ready to throw.” “Fast fuses, too. Some boys down the Uncompahgre found out about that just last August, nothin left to bury but spurs and belt buckles. Even old Butch Cassidy and them’ll begin to coo like a barn full of pigeons whenever the Kid’s in the county.” Of course, nobody ever’d been sure about who was in Butch Cassidy’s gang either. No shortage of legendary deeds up here, but eyewitnesses could never swear beyond a doubt who in each case, exactly, had done which, and, more than fear of retaliation—it was as if physical appearance actually shifted, causing not only aliases to be inconsistently assigned but identity itself to change. Did something, something essential, happen to human personality above a certain removal from sea level? Many quoted Dr. Lombroso’s observation about how lowland folks tended to be placid and law-abiding while mountain country bred revolutionaries and outlaws. That was over in Italy, of course. Theorizers about the recently discovered subconscious mind, reluctant to leave out any variable that might seem helpful, couldn’t avoid the altitude, and the barometric pressure that went with it. This was spirit, after all.

After the Spanish American War, the United States appointed military governors for Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Cuba, as well as the Panama Canal Zone, which had been wrested away from Colombia. Leonard Wood was a physician who served as a line officer when he commanded the Rough Riders during the Battle of San Juan Hill, for which he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. In 1898, he was appointed the Military Governor of Santiago de Cuba. Major General John R. Brooke served in the United States Army during both the American Civil War, where he was seriously wounded and later in the Spanish American War. After the war with Spain he was appointed to be the Governor of Puerto Rico after which he became the first Military Governor of Cuba, a position he held from January 1, 1899, until December 23, 1899.

NEXT TIME LEW got up into the embattled altitudes of the San Juans, he noticed out on the trail that besides the usual strikebreaking vigilantes there were now cavalry units of the Colorado National Guard, in uniform, out ranging the slopes and creeksides. He had thought to obtain, through one of the least trustworthy of his contacts in the Mine Owners Association, a safe-passage document, which he kept in a leather billfold along with his detective licenses. More than once he ran into ragged groups of miners, some with deeply bruised or swelling faces, coatless, hatless, shoeless, being herded toward some borderline by mounted troopers. Or the Captain said some borderline. Lew wondered what he should be doing. This was wrong in so many ways, and bombings might help but would not begin to fix it. It wasn’t long before one day he found himself surrounded—one minute aspen-filtered shadows, the next a band of Ku Klux Klan night-riders, and here it was still daytime. Seeing these sheet-sporting vigilantes out in the sunlight, their attire displaying all sorts of laundering deficiencies, including cigar burns, food spills, piss blotches, and shit streaks, Lew found, you’d say, a certain de-emphasis of the sinister, pointy hoods or not. “Howdy, fellers!” he called out, friendly enough. “Don’t look like no nigger,” commented one. “Too tall for a miner,” said another. “Heeled, too. Think I saw him on a poster someplace.” “What do we do? Shoot him? Hang him?” “Nail his dick to a stump, and, and then, set him on fahr,” eagerly accompanied by a quantity of drool visibly soaking the speaker’s hood. “You all are doing a fine job of security here,” Lew beamed, riding through them easy as a herd of sheep, “and I’ll be sure to pass that along to Buck Wells when next I see him.” The name of the mine manager and cavalry commander at Telluride worked its magic. “Don’t forget my name!” hollered the drooler, “Clovis Yutts!” “Shh! Clovis, you hamhead, you ain’t supposed to tell em your name.” What in Creation could be going on up here, Lew couldn’t figure. He had a distinct, sleep-wrecking impression that he ought to just be getting his backside to the trackside, head on down to Denver, and not come up here again till it was all over. Whatever it was. It sure ‘s hell looked like war, and that must be what was keeping him here, he calculated, that possibility. Something like wanting to find out which side he was on without all these doubts. . . .

A fines de agosto nuestra delegación, junto con la portorriqueña, que era más numerosa, subió a bordo de un carguero cubano en el que habríamos de cubrir la primera etapa de nuestro regreso, hasta las Antillas francesas, adonde el barco llevaba una carga de cemento. Al atardecer zarpamos de la bahía de Santiago. Cuando nos alejamos de la isla era ya noche cerrada, y no se veía la tierra ni el mar, pues no había luna. Nos instalamos y empezamos a orientarnos en el barco y, al igual que los portorriqueños que venían con nosotros, trabamos conversación con la tripulación. El capitán era un antiguo estudiante de Filosofía de veintiséis años, con quien me apresuré a hablar de nuestro común tema de estudio. Era su primer viaje al mando de aquel barco y, como nosotros, debía familiarizarse con él y con la tripulación. De pronto, cuando estábamos en alta mar, en plena oscuridad, un avión sobrevoló el barco a muy baja altitud y a gran velocidad. Antes de enterarme de lo que ocurría, el avión cruzó otra vez por encima de nosotros. Cuando Kendra y yo corríamos al puente para preguntar al capitán qué pasaba, un miembro de la tripulación nos explicó tranquilamente que se trataba de un acto hostil por parte de un portaaviones norteamericano de los que controlaban el bloqueo económico. Con sus luces, el portaaviones empezó a hacer señales a nuestro barco pidiéndole que se identificara y explicase su misión. Naturalmente, podían ver la bandera cubana; todo aquello no era más que el rutinario hostigamiento que habían de soportar los barcos cubanos cada vez que salían de sus aguas territoriales. Mediante señales, el barco cubano comunicó que, antes de identificarse, quería saber el nombre y la misión de quienes deseaban aquella información. Durante aquellos momentos una cierta diversión había acompañado al nerviosismo. Pero después, de pronto, no lejos del barco, un extraño y silencioso estallido de luz rompió la oscuridad de la noche. Al principio semejaba una nubecilla en forma de hongo, pero un segundo después pareció desplazarse directamente hacia nosotros. Yo me asusté tanto que no pregunté lo que ocurría; pensé que, si aquello era gas letal, no podríamos escapar. La nube de luz inundó el barco e iluminó toda la zona circundante como un sol de mediodía. Un miembro de la tripulación dijo entonces que seguramente se trataba de un nuevo proyectil luminoso que estaba siendo experimentado por Estados Unidos aprovechando el bloqueo. Por fin nos libramos de los militares norteamericanos y pudimos disfrutar durante unos días de la legendaria belleza del Caribe. Pasamos junto a Haití y Santo Domingo, países no tan hermosos desde el punto de vista político, y después el barco recibió instrucciones de atracar en Guadalupe. Aunque no me gustaba la idea de encargarme de las relaciones con los nativos de la isla, yo era la única persona a bordo que sabía francés, de modo que no tuve alternativa. Nuestra delegación llevaba muy poco equipaje, pero los portorriqueños traían varias cajas de libros que les habían regalado los cubanos para su librería de San Juan. Tuve la precaución de preguntar a los funcionarios de la aduana si se proponían inspeccionar todos los equipajes

Mano mėgiamiausi poetai? Karalius Dovydas, Karalius Saliamonas, Ekleziastas; Lamartine, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Lautreamont, Valéry, Marie Noël, Jouve; Angelus Silesius, Goethe, Hölderlin, Nietzsche, George, Hofmannsthal, Rilke, Traki, Langgasser; Leopardi, Campana, Montale; San Juan de la Cruz, Garcia Lorca, Blake, Keats, Hopkins, Yeats; Donelaitis, Maironis, Putinas, Aistis (pirmos 4 knygos). Bet mano preferencijos nuolat kinta Mano mėgiamiausi tapytojai? Piero della Francesca, Benozzo Gozzoli, Botticelli, Tiziano, Piero di Cosimo, Magnasco; Claude Lorrain, Georges de la Tour, Watteau, Fragonard, Chardin, Manet, Renoir, Soutine, Duffy, Chagall, Sérafine; Brueghel (Senasis), Memling, Hobbema, Vermeer; Dürer, Lucas Cranach (Senasis), Kokoschka; Gainsborough, Palmer; El Greco, Velazquez, Goya, Dali; Galdikas, Samuolis, Vizgirda, Valeška, Gudaitis.

En primer término, porque también el coronel Juan Vicente Bolívar, su padre, había tenido que padecer varias actas y sumarias ante el obispo del pueblo de San Mateo, por supuestas violaciones de mayores y menores de edad,

One of the books on our reading list to make a profound impression on me was Oscar Lewis’s La Vida. It was a contentious inclusion, an anthropological study of one family that stretched from the slums of San Juan to those of New York.

I would tell her that I would rather be a great man of few words, than simply another man of too many.

Few things are as attractive or profitable as human tragedy.

«Es otra vez como la noche de San Juan de Payara», dijo. «Sin Reina María Luisa, por desgracia.»

«Donde no hay amor, pon amor y sacarás amor», dice San Juan de la Cruz56

Un vespre quan l'estiu obria els ulls per aquells carrers on tu i jo ens hem fet grans, on vam aprendre a córrer, damunt un pam de sorra s'alçava una foguera per Sant Joan. Una tarde cuando el verano abría los ojos por aquellas calles donde hemos crecido donde aprendimos a correr, sobre un palmo de arena se alzaba una hoguera de San Juan Llavors un tros de fusta era un tresor i amb una taula vella ja érem rics. Pels carrers i les places anàvem de casa en casa per fer-ho cremar tot aquella nit de Sant Joan. En aquel tiempo un trozo de madera era un tesoro y con una mesa vieja ya eras rico. Por las calles y plazas ibamos de casa en casa para hacerlo quemar todo aquella noche de San Juan

9. In conclusion, individuals must not fix the eyes of their souls on that rind of the figure and object supernaturally accorded to the exterior senses, such as locutions and words to the sense of hearing; visions of saints and beautifully resplendent lights to the sense of sight; fragrance to the sense of smell; delicious and sweet tastes to the palate; and other delights, usually derived from the spirit, to the sense of touch, as is more commonly the case with spiritual persons. Neither must they place their eyes on interior imaginative visions. They must instead renounce all these things. They

The method of some directors is sufficient to encumber souls receiving these visions, or even to lead them astray. They do not guide them along the paths of humility, and they give them a free hand in this matter, which causes a want of the true spirit of faith. Neither do these directors ground their disciples in faith, for they frequently make these visions a topic of conversation. Consequently, the individuals get the idea that their directors are setting store by their visions, and as a result they do the same and stay attached to them,

14. People should not imagine that just because God and the saints converse amiably with them on many subjects, they will be told their particular faults, for they can come to the knowledge of these through other means. Hence there is no motive for assurance, for we read in the Acts of the Apostles what happened to St. Peter. Though he was a prince of the Church and received immediate instruction from God, he was mistaken about a certain ceremony practiced among the Gentiles.

promotions to more

Lo que nos falta es, sobre todo, la convicción de que «el amor de Dios saca provecho de todo, del bien y del mal que se encuentra en mí» (Santa Teresa de Lisieux, inspirándose en San Juan de la Cruz).

Do you think that was the reason he came here, to just get a copy of Dante’s Inferno?” Suze shook her head after taking another sip of coffee. “No, not at all. I know why he came here. It wasn’t to buy a book. It was to experience a place he knew his wife loved to visit. He wanted to see the world through her eyes so as not to forget her. He’s trying to keep her memory alive because if he fails to do that, he will have lost her twice.

It wasn’t just the quiet solitude of the four thousand square foot space that appealed to her, but the smell of the newspapers, magazines, and various other publications that were housed within massive and carefully organized rolling shelves by date and title. It was the aged paper scent of once-living and breathing moments that were, through the cruelty that is the passage of time, demoted to mere remnants of history that she found so fascinating to look over and study.

«Cuanto hicisteis a uno de estos mis hermanos más pequeños, a mí me lo hicisteis». Esas palabras del Señor nos enseñan que «a la caída de la tarde nos examinarán en el amor» (San Juan de la Cruz), y en especial del amor a nuestros hermanos necesitados. Es una llamada a la compasión.

Men are good for little, and little good for anyone but themselves, but Phillip is better than most.

«Donde no hay amor, pon amor y sacarás amor», dice San Juan de la Cruz

¿qué solemos responder frecuentemente cuando no nos gusta lo que enseña la Iglesia? Nos escondemos detrás de nuestra «conciencia» y nos imaginamos que Dios acepta lo que nosotros queremos. Pero ese es un dios de Dios, es un ídolo.

¿POR QUÉ ESCRIBE USTED? Porque mañana porque ayer porque hoy porque mañana porque sí porque no Porque el principio porque la bestia porque el fin porque la bomba porque el medio porque el jardín Porque góngora porque la tierra porque el sol porque san juan porque la luna porque rimbaud Porque el claro porque la sangre porque el papel porque la carne porque la tinta porque la piel Porque la noche porque me odio porque la luz porque el infierno porque el cielo porque tú Porque casi porque nada porque la sed porque el amor porque el grito porque no sé Porque la muerte porque apenas porque más porque algún día porque todos porque quizás

«El sufrimiento puede doblegarnos y quebrarnos. Pero también puede quebrarnos para que nos abramos, para llegar a ser las personas que Dios quiere que seamos. Depende de lo que hagamos con el dolor. Si lo ofrecemos de vuelta a Dios, Él lo usará para hacer grandes cosas en y por medio de nosotros, porque el sufrimiento es fértil[158]».

Nuestras obras buenas o malas van con nosotros, pues ningún acto nuestro pasa, antes permanece en nuestra alma indeleblemente modelándola; y ese moldeo del alma cesa al separarse ella del cuerpo, fijándose en una decisión irrevocable de la voluntad; pues sólo su unión con la materia la hace mudable y versátil en esta vida. De suyo un solo acto de elección acerca del Último Fin fijaría la voluntad para siempre –como pasa en el Ángel– si durante la vida no viésemos nuestro último fin sino como entre brumas. Un profundo análisis psicológico de Santo Tomás, bien conocido, confirma con la razón esta verdad revelada. Hacia dónde cae el árbol, allí para siempre queda. Los que dicen fútilmente: «un solo acto momentáneo no puede merecer un castigo eterno» pasan por alto que lo momentáneo nuestro está conectado con lo eterno: el «Instante» del hombre se hace de una sustancia que no es perecedera, como largamente especuló Soeren Kirkegor.

The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too. SAMUEL BUTLER ELEVEN Two days later, Fiona started her day with a call on a missing elderly man who’d wandered out of his daughter’s home on San Juan Island.

There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not Man the less, but Nature more. —Lord Byron

Glory, isn’t it”—she caught her breath, waved her hand in front of her face, decoratively—“exciting!” Alexa asked what. “The bombing.” “Bombing?” “Oh, you haven’t heard. They’re bombing New York. They showed it on teevee, where it landed. These steps!” She collapsed beside Alexa with a great huff. The smell that had seemed so appetizing outside Big San Juan’s had lost its savor. “But they couldn’t show”—she waved her hand and it was still, Alexa had to admit, a lovely and a graceful hand—“the actual airplane itself. Because of the fog, you know.” “Who’s bombing New York?” “The radicals, I suppose. It’s some kind of protest. Against something.” Lottie Hanson watched her breasts lift and fall. The importance of the news she bore made her feel pleased with herself. She waited for the next question all aglow. But Alexa had begun calculating with no more input than she had already. The notion had seemed, from Lottie’s first words, inevitable. The city cried out to be bombed. The amazing thing was that no one had ever thought to do it before. When she did at last ask Lottie a question, it came from an unexpected direction. “Are you afraid?” “No, not a bit. It’s funny, because usually, you know, I’m just a bundle of nerves. Are you afraid?” “No. Just the opposite. I feel…” She had to stop and think what it was that she did feel.