Scrapbooking Quotes

I waited patiently - years - for the pendulum to swing the other way, for men to start reading Jane Austen, learn how to knit, pretend to love cosmos, organize scrapbook parties, and make out with each other while we leer. And then we'd say, Yeah, he's a Cool Guy.

And I'll dance with you in Vienna, I'll be wearing a river's disguise. The hyacinth wild on my shoulder my mouth on the dew of your thighs. And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook, with the photographs there and the moss. And I'll yield to the flood of your beauty, my cheap violin and my cross.

There are a few moments in your life when you are truly and completely happy, and you remember to give thanks. Even as it happens you are nostalgic for the moment, you are tucking it away in your scrapbook.

DESTINY is a feeling you have that you know something about yourself nobody else does. The picture you have in your own mind of what you're about WILL COME TRUE. It's a kind of a thing you kind of have to keep to your own self, because it's a fragile feeling, and you put it out there, then someone will kill it. It's best to keep that all inside.

Let me ask you one question Is your money that good Will it buy you forgiveness Do you think that it could I think you will find When your death takes its toll All the money you made Will never buy back your soul

YOU YOU YOU your eyes, thick as a high school scrapbook crackling and yellow, curling at the edges a book of myths in which i do not appear.

How many people make a career out of writing anyway?' Cath snapped. She felt like everything inside her was snapping. Her nerves. Her temper. Her esophagus. 'I'll write because I love it, the way other people knit or . . . or scrapbook. And I'll find some other way to make money.

If we want to make meaning, we need to make art. Cook, write, draw, doodle, paint, scrapbook, take pictures, collage, knit, rebuild an engine, sculpt, dance, decorate, act, sing—it doesn’t matter. As long as we’re creating, we’re cultivating meaning.

It is shocking how many crimes the Bible contains. The Governor's wife should cut them all out and paste them into her scrapbook.

Sherlock: You're keeping a SCRAPBOOK. Only old ladies and pre-pubescent girls keep scrapbooks, John. John: It's not a scrapbook, Sherlock. I'm collecting papers relevant to the cases. It helps me remember the details. And it was locked away in my desk drawer. Sherlock: The lock on your desk drawer was insulting me with its pretense at security.

Just because I give you my all, doesn't mean I'm a pushover. Don't make the mistake of underestimating me. Push too hard and you'll see how strong I really am!

Pauline kept a scrapbook into which she pasted important articles that she had cut out of the newspapers. These were about the courageous deeds that had been done by people even if they only had one leg or couldn't see or had been dropped on their heads when they were babies. 'It's to make me brave,' she'd explained to Annika.

When I awoke it was daylight. The inside of my tent was coated in a curious flaky rime, which I realized after a moment was all of my nighttime snores, condensed and frozen and pasted to the fabric, as if into a scrapbook of respiratory memories.

The Truth is out there

as anyone who's ever scrapbooked knows, Rome wasn't built in a day. You could spend a year or more working on one scrapbook.

Scrapbooking didn’t work; watching endless romance films didn’t work; embroidering and quilting didn’t work; and writing a list of all of his cons definitely didn’t work because he had none.

A Grandmother thinks of her grandchildren day and night, even when they are not with her.She will always love them more than anyone would understand.

I'll keep it," she said. "Then, when you get back, after you and the dark one are done making out and planning a future filled with blond-haired, green-eyed, pigment-challeneged rug rats, I'll bring it over and you can add it to your scrapbook, right before you start cooking me dinner. I like vegetarian lasagna with cottage cheese instead of ricotta." "Gwen?" "And don't forget the mushrooms. Garlic bread, too, please. That is, as long as your vampire lover doesn't object." "I want to say thank you," Isobel said. "For... everything." "No," Gwen said. "Thank you for the delicious dinner. I can almost taste the baklava you and Darth Vader will be making for dessert. Something tells me you're gonna have to look that one up, though.

She’d wanted to completely shave her head: I don’t want long hair, I don’t want short hair, I don’t want hair at all, and I don’t want to be a girl or a boy, I want to be a yellow and orange leaf some little kid picks up and pastes in his scrapbook.

Alec furrowed his brow. “So you’re scrapbooking?” Magnus made a face. “To the lay observer, what I’m doing might look similar, yes.

I’ve always found the idea of 'saving' your virginity intriguing: it’s not as if we’re packing our Saran-wrapped hymens away in the freezer, after all, or pasting them in scrapbooks. But packed-away virginities aside, the interesting — and dangerous — idea at play here is that of 'morality.” When young women are taught about morality, there’s not often talk of compassion, kindness, courage, or integrity. There is, however, a lot of talk about hymens (though the preferred words are undoubtedly more refined — think 'virginity' and 'chastity'): if we have them, when we’ll lose them, and under what circumstances we’ll be rid of them.

I will never have a photograph of her to carry around in my pocket. I will never have a letter in her handwriting, or a scrap-book of everything we've done. I will never share an apartment with her in the city. I will never know if we are listening to the same song at the same time. We will not grow old together. I will not be the person she calls when she's in trouble. She will not be the person I call when I have stories to tell. I will never be able to keep anything she's given to me.

Lara Jean and Peter's amended contract *Peter will write a letter to Lara Jean once a week. A real handwritten letter, not an e-mail. *Lara Jean will call Peter once a day. Preferably the last call of the night, befero she goes to bed. *Lara Jean will put up a picture of Peter's choosing on her wall. *Peter will keep the scrapbook out on his desk so any interested parties will see tha he is taken. *Peter and Lara Jean will always tell each other te truth, even when it's hard. *Peter will love Lara Jean with all his heart, always.

Ultimately, the main reasons why I will be chubby for life are (1) I have virtually no hobbies except dieting. I can’t speak any non-English languages, knit, ski, scrapbook, or cook. I have no pets. I don’t know how to do drugs. I lost my passport three years ago when I moved into my house and never got it renewed. Video games scare me because they all seem to simulate situations I’d hate to be in, like war or stealing cars. So if I ever lost weight I would also lose my only hobby; (2) I have no discipline; I’m like if Private Benjamin had never toughened up but, in fact, got worse; (3) Guys I’ve dated have been into me the way I am; and (4) I’m pretty happy with the way I look, so long as I don’t break a beach chair.

I love crafting. Knitting, decoupage, scrapbooking, any "lady-ish" art form, I'm a fan. For about six months each. Then I shove all the supplies in a closet, alongside the skeletons of long dead New Year's resolutions, like saber fencing, playing the ukulele, and Japanese brush painting.

Like cross stich scrapbook cook take my dogs for walks.injoying making new nook friends

And the day inevitably comes when the scrapbook of summer, smeared with ice cream slurps and sweat stains, gives way to that new clean white notebook, spine unbroken, begging to be smudged with the enthusiasm of a number two pencil and a mind open to the possibilities.

Actually, judging by Pinterest alone, I'm pretty sure a lot of people would look forward to hanging out in such a beautiful library. Just not people Peter knows. He thinks I'm so quirky. I'm not planning on being the one to break the news to him that I'm actually not that quirky, that in fact lots of people like to stay home and bake cookies and scrapbook and hang out in libraries. Most of them are probably in their fifties, but still. I like the way he looks at me, like I am a wood nymph that he happened upon one day and just had to take home to keep.

Women KNOW, we just know. Even if we didn't know, we would know. Men won't get this, but women will..because we KNOW

There is something that happens to the mind in moments of terror. Perhaps we figure it's the last we'll ever have and we record it for the rest of our long journey. We take perfect snapshots an album to despair over. We trim the edges and place them in plastic. We tuck the scrapbook away to take out in our ruined times.

I am not pulling you on a sled!” “Why not? I dare say you’re strong enough.“ She sputtered. “It would get into the papers.” “I hope so. I’d want to save a clipping. I could put it in my scrapbook,...

IT SEEMS DIFFICULT TO IMAGINE, but there was once a time when human beings did not feel the need to share their every waking moment with hundreds of millions, even billions, of complete and utter strangers. If one went to a shopping mall to purchase an article of clothing, one did not post minute-by-minute details on a social networking site; and if one made a fool of oneself at a party, one did not leave a photographic record of the sorry episode in a digital scrapbook that would survive for all eternity. But now, in the era of lost inhibition, it seemed no detail of life was too mundane or humiliating to share. In the online age, it was more important to live out loud than to live with dignity. Internet followers were more treasured than flesh-and-blood friends, for they held the illusive promise of celebrity, even immortality. Were Descartes alive today, he might have written: I tweet, therefore I am.

Now my sole function in this world is to serve as receptacle for the proof that I am inconsequential; every experience I accrete is only another stroke of an eraser.

And that's an even greater love: to love somebody when he's a little...worn at the edges. —Teddy Bear

Showing STRENGTH doesn't mean we have to fight a battle...Sometimes it's far better to WALK AWAY from all the nonsense and those who indulge in it

There is in this valley a beating heart. It is always and ever there. And when I am gone, it will beat for you and when you are gone, it will beat for your children and theirs, forever. Forever. Until there is no water, no air, no green in the spring or gold in the autumn, no stars in the sky or wind from the north. And when you cannot speak, it will speak for you. When you cannot see, it will be your eyes. When you cannot remember, it will be your memory. It will never forget you. And when you cannot be faithful, it will save a place for your return. This is a gift to you. It cannot be taken away. It is yours forever. It is the narrative of this world, and the scrapbook of your own small life, and, when you are gone into ash and darkness and the grave, it will tell your story.

There are moments in my life that stick to my memory. I suppose it's the same for everyone—snippets of life pasted in a scrapbook for you to look over every once in a while. You look back sometimes and relive an event, a smell or a sight. You catalog these things in your head and never really look at the whole. I think you miss something grand when you don't step back and examine everything together.

It's not that we have more patience as we grow older, it's just that we're too tired to care about all the pointless drama

I think about the Old Ones, that they have a past but no history. I think about the inevitability of death, and whether it’s not that very inevitability that inspires us to take photographs and make scrapbooks and tell stories. That that’s how we humans find our way to immortality. This is not a new thought; I’ve had such thoughts before. But I have a new thought now. That that’s how we find our way toward meaning. Meaning. If you’re going to die, you want to find meaning in life. You want to connect the dots.

Nature's a balance. There's always a price. For every give, there's a take, and for every success, a sacrifice.

I go up to my room to put the finishing touches on Margot’s scrapbook and listen to only the slow songs from Dirty Dancing,

There was such a hullabaloo going on it was difficult to write up the notes in his scrapbook.

At Dachau. We had a wonderful pool for the garrison children. It was even heated. But that was before we were transferred. Dachau was ever so much nicer than Auschwitz. But then, it was in the Reich. See my trophies there. The one in the middle, the big one. That was presented to me by the Reich Youth Leader himself, Baldur von Schirach. Let me show you my scrapbook.

At the college where I teach, I'm surrounded by circus people. We aren't tightrope walkers or acrobats. We don't breathe fire or swallow swords. We're gypsies, moving wherever there's work to be found. Our scrapbooks and photo albums bear witness to our vagabond lives: college years, grad-school years, instructor-mill years, first-job years. In between each stage is a picture of old friends helping to fill a truck with boxes and furniture. We pitch our tents, and that place becomes home for a while. We make families from colleagues and students, lovers and neighbors. And when that place is no longer working, we don't just make do. We move on to the place that's next. No place is home. Every place is home. Home is our stuff. As much as I love the Cumberland Valley at twilight, I probably won't live there forever, and this doesn't really scare me. That's how I know I'm circus people.

Yes Please is an attempt to present an open scrapbook that includes a sense of what I am thinking and feeling right now. But mostly, let’s call this book what it really is: an obvious money grab to support my notorious online shopping addiction. I have already spent the advance on fancy washcloths from Amazon, so I need this book to really sell a lot of copies or else I am in trouble. Chop-chop, people.

Ninety-six per cent of juvenile prostitutes are fugitives from abusive domestic situations; 66 per cent began working before they turned 16. (Prostitution is their only perceived means of survival.) Millions of children work as prostitutes around the world. A third are male. One study revealed that over 50 per cent of prostitutes are the children of alcoholics or substance abusers, and 90 per cent are deflowered through incest or rape. Ninety-one per cent of prostitutes do not speak of the abuse. (The truth of life is told through the language of behavior.) Abused children suffer Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, guilt, self-destructive impulses, suspicion, fear. Seventy-five per cent of prostitutes attempt suicide. (Imagine their scrapbook of memories.)

Life has little bits of magic at nearly every turn, if you're looking closely enough. Scrapbooking has refined myselses. it's made me hungry to use it before I lose it. It's made me remember that I don't remember what it was like to be nine years old. And that I will never live in a Pottery Barn house. And that as tiny as I am in the scope of the universe, no one lives a life like mine. Not even the people whose meals I cook, whose laundry I fold, and whose cheeks I kiss at night.

Whatever the situation, the answer is not in the fridge.

[B]etter the beauty of struggle and futility than the illusion of accomplishment; for as we struggle, he would seem to say, so are we beautiful.

Grief is love with no place to go

He’s a tourist. He vacations in people’s lives, takes pictures, puts them in his scrapbook, and moves on. All he’s interested in are stories. Basically, Leslie, he’s selfish. And you’re not. That’s why you don’t like him.

Georgette was a hip queer. She (he) didn't try to disguise or conceal it with marriage and mans talk, satisfying her homosexuality with the keeping of a secret scrapbook of pictures of favorite male actors or athletes or by supervising activities of young boys or visiting turkish baths or mens locker rooms, leering sidely while seeking protection behind a carefully guarded guise of virility (fearing that moment at a cocktail party or in a bar when this front may start crumbling from alcohol and be completely disintegrated with an attempted kiss or groping of an attractive young man and being repelled with a punch and - rotten fairy - followed with hysteria and incoherent apologies and excuses and running from the room) but, took a pride in being a homosexual by feeling intellectually and esthetically superior to those (especially women) who weren't gay (look at all the great artists who were fairies!); and with the wearing of womens panties, lipstick, eye makeup (this including occasionally gold and silver - stardust - on the lids),long marcelled hair, manicured and polished fingernails, the wearing of womens clothes complete with a padded bra, high heels and wig (one of her biggest thrills was going to BOP CITY dressed as a tall stately blond ( she was 6'4 in heels) in the company of a negro (he was a big beautiful black bastard and when he floated in all the cats in the place jumped and the squares bugged. We were at crazy pad before going and were blasting like crazy, and were up so high that I just didnt give ashit for anyone honey, let me tell you!); and the occasional wearing of menstrual napkin.

Mama parted with these Divine Secrets because I asked her to, Sidda thought. the reason I feel like crying, Sidda realized, is not just because this scrapbook is vulnerable, but because Mama, whether she knows it or not, has made herself so vulnerable to me.

While you were out JUDGING others, you left your closet door open...and guess what fell out!....Ooops

Those who know me never doubt me..Those who doubt me, never knew me.

Take every chance you get in life ... because some things only happen once!

You can’t decide to value your child sometimes, and then put a game of Farmville, or golf, or a scrapbooking session before kids on other days. Values are non-negotiable like that.

I wonder what kind of decorations Hobby Lobby sells to ornament the pages dedicated to serial killers in a scrapbook. Lanny

snapshots to remember in our mental scrapbooks and throw away the bad? Perhaps all photo albums should bear the subtitle “The Past—The Way You Want to Remember It.

When it was raining we would sit at this table and draw in our scrapbooks with crayons or colored pencils, anything we liked. In school you had to do what the rest were doing.

mental scrapbooks form our tastes, and our tastes influence our work.

If there is a heaven, I suppose there we can weep over the scrapbook of our lives while we wait for the living to climb the constellations.

If you wish to be part of my life, the door is always open.The door remains open if you choose to leave..but don't just hover in the doorway with indecision because you're blocking the traffic!

Looking back was like flipping through a scrapbook underwater, a blurred collection of mementos stretching from May to August. Washed-out sepia tones. Pages stuck together, melding days into weeks. Weeks into months.

Let's face it -- if I could scrap in a full-length bodysuit, I would.

If you don't tell your stories, who will?

It's great if you can help others, but seriously ... don't lose YOURSELF in the process!

Tate was more than her first love: he shared her devotion to the marsh, had taught her to read, and was the only connection, however small, to her vanished family. He was a page of time, a clipping pasted in a scrapbook because it was all she had.

Mama parted with these Divine Secrets because I asked her to, Sidda thought. The reason I feel like crying, Sidda realized, is not just because this scrapbook is vulnerable, but because Mama, whether she knows it or not, has made herself so vulnerable to

I printed out the best-looking photo of him, a joke he’d posted, and some information about his siblings. The scrapbooks weren’t things I liked to carry in public, so I placed my papers neatly in my bag to take home. Sorry, Warner. I swear, it wasn’t me you died for.

THE TWINS WERE eighteen months old now, walking (and standing and staring and screaming and sitting) just like other children more or less their age, and Andy found herself increasingly preoccupied with those baby scrapbooks her brother’s wife had sent when they were born. Andy had gotten Janny’s to the six-month mark—the last photo was of her sitting up in the baby bath with her fingers in her mouth. Richie’s and Michael’s—not even birth pictures. Birth pictures of the twins existed, but they reminded Andy more of mug shots than of baby photos, naked in incubators, little skinny limbs and odd heads, no hair except where it shouldn’t be, on arms and back, like monkeys. She had stuffed the scrapbooks onto the upper shelf in the closet in Richie and Michael’s room, and every time she slid open that door, she would see their spines, white, pink, and blue, the silliest objects in her very modern house, ready to get thrown out.

My heart has been broken a million times by the same hand, yet I would let it happen a million times again if it meant it was by you. I was weaker than I thought / my heart sagging like the stems of uncut, unkempt flowers because of the sunlight you held in your faraway heart / Maybe you weren't mine to love / I think I'm falling The wallpaper above her bed frame was glued in my brain the way it was glued against her walls / I got so close to running my fingers against it / I wish I felt the confidence to tell you the truth, as strongly as I felt stubborn to hide it Do you hear that? That's my heart knocking against my chest at the sight of you / I've never heard anything more terrifying / how could you provide me air and suffocate me at the same time? Blue hydrangeas, pink tulips, red bleeding hearts / it's all you ever loved, but never yourself / I never understood why anyone spoke poorly of the color brown, it was a dream on you And that kiss... I think about it all the time / was it wrong of me to think of you when you were never mine? / I feel lucky to have had you, but dismayed to know what life is like without you Don't worry if the flowers pass, I'll be right there to plant you more / and when the soil grows old, I'll comfort it in the chaos of the storm Am I a ghost in your story? / because you look at me with conviction when I don't even know the crime I committed Burden me with your secrets / so I can carry the weight you're so fearful of letting go To be close to you was to be haunted by what I couldn't have and to be reminded of how much I truly wanted you / and I'd be lying if I said I never thought about where my hands would take me across your body Midnights and daydreaming hours of retracing steps to how we possibly got here / how did I ever let time pass this long without seeing you? / my heart was so full of our memories that painted my body like a scrapbook I tried to stop loving you, but along the way, you found your way into the sound of my laugh, the style of my writing, and the threads of my clothes / I would've gone down on my knees just to hear you say yes Neck stiff, legs weak, eyes set on what we could've looked like if you hadn't left / 'moving on' was a broken record that I never had the strength to lift the needle off of / If hearts were meant to love then why did mine feel so empty? / and suddenly, I fell Glances, gazes, eyes following places they shouldn't have seen / intimacy was to be seen by you; free falling was to be touched by you / there was no such thing as a crowded room where you stood She lives in between the pinks and yellows of the world / where a beautiful color is unknown to others / and when she speaks, I become a bee enthralled in a field of daisies

The men of Easy Company lined the rails to see the Statue of Liberty slip astern. For nearly every one of them, it was his first trip outside the United States. A certain homesickness set in, coupled with a realization, as the regimental scrapbook Currahee put it, of “how wonderful the last year had been.

In reality, life outside of orderly institutions like schools, jobs, and prisons is lacking in “gold star” moments; it passes by in a not-so-dignified way, and nobody tells us whether we’re getting it right or wrong. But publish your experience online and an institutional approval system rises to meet it—your photo is “liked,” your status is gilded with commentary. It’s even a way to gain some sense of immortality, since online publishing creates a lasting record, a living scrapbook. This furthers our enjoyable sense of an ordered life. We become consistent, we are approved, we are a known and sanctioned quantity.

I've got my Motown girl-group music playing, and my supplies are laid out all around me in a semicircle. My heart hole punch, pages and pages of scrapbook paper, pictures I've cut out of magazines, glue gun, my tape dispenser with all my different colored washi tapes. Souvenirs like the playbill from when we saw Wicked in New York, receipts, pictures. Ribbon, buttons, stickers, charms. A good scrapbook has texture. It's thick and chunky and doesn't close all the way.

Become a documentarian of what you do. Start a work journal: Write your thoughts down in a notebook, or speak them into an audio recorder. Keep a scrapbook. Take a lot of photographs of your work at different stages in your process. Shoot video of you working. This isn’t about making art, it’s about simply keeping track of what’s going on around you. Take advantage of all the cheap, easy tools at your disposal—these days, most of us carry a fully functional multimedia studio around in our smartphones.

I waited patiently—years—for the pendulum to swing the other way, for men to start reading Jane Austen, learn how to knit, pretend to love cosmos, organize scrapbook parties, and make out with each other while we leer. And then we’d say, Yeah, he’s a Cool Guy. But it never happened. Instead, women across the nation colluded in our degradation!

[L]et them be their own Rorschach tests[.]

-So how about you?, I said: what do you do, if you don't mind my asking; -Not at all, he said: I'm into mitosis; -Aren't we all, I said;-

Solitude is addictive. Being alone, but not lonely, is peaceful and inspiring. It gives you the strength to go back and deal with all the nonsense.

Remember this... No amount of guilt can change the past and no amount of stress can alter the future, so relax an live each day as it comes.

Life is BETTER when you're SMILING!

We're alive because we're lucky, noy because we're better.

My mother, by now, clings to life like a yellowing piece of Scotch tape in a scrapbook.

...but as anyone who's ever scrapbooked knows, Rome wasn't built in a day. You could spend a year or more working on one scrapbook.

Hef holds the Guinness Book of World Records title for largest scrapbook collection at over 2,000 volumes.

He was a page of time, a clipping pasted in a scrapbook because it was all she had. Her heart pounded as the fury dissipated.

He was a page of time, a clipping pasted in a scrapbook because it was all she had.

We need different eyes, a different mind. One that lifts us above the seen and our short time here, above the fears that invade our lives, above the snapshots in our scrapbooks.

A good scrapbook has texture. It's thick and chunky and doesn't close all the way.

He was a page of time, a clipping pasted in a scrapbook because it was she had.

thoughtful scrapbook for me, in which they gathered little notes of love and appreciation from other artists or celebrities they worked with or saw in their travels. Joey Lawrence (remember Joey from Blossom?), who was such a heartthrob at the time, apparently left a significantly sweet message. Well, Tommy saw the lovefest of a book, ripped it up, and burned it in the fireplace before I was able to see it—a childish act of cruelty, especially to Billy and Syd, who went through all that effort to prove to me how big I was even among the stars.

Everett and his mom broke up with me,thank you very much." "You shouldn't have made out with him in his mother's scrapbooking room," Liz said sagely. "We're seventeen,"I snapped, "and Everett and I had been dating for two months when that happened.What were we supposed to do,eat dinner with his family and keep our hands on the table where everyone could see them?I mean, you and Davis are Mr. and Mrs. Polite Reserve, and even you were macking in the hot tub an hour ago." I picked up a pink fuzzy pillow that had fallen from he bed and threw it at Liz. "You were?" Chloe gushed. "You what? Hello,I need the details of Liz and Davis." "Hayden!" Liz squealed, ducking behind Chloe. "I'm not saying you shouldn't have made out with Everett.I'm saying you shouldn't have done it in his mother's scrapbooking room.Location, location,location.You might have disorganized her supplies.Some people are very particular about their chipboard getting mixed up with their cardstock." I closed my eyes,inhaled through my nose,and felt my lungs fill with air. My blood spread the life-giving oxygen throughout my body. "Watch out,"Chloe whispered to Liz. "She's doing yoga." My eyes snapped open.So much for controlling my temper. "Why the hell didn't you tell me Nick's mother left before I went into the sauna with him?" I hollered at Chloe. "We didn't know he was here!" Liz came to Chloe's defense. "And if we'd warned you about him before he got here," Chloe explained, "You would have known he was coming.We didn't want you to leave.The two of you are surprisingly hard to throw together,let me tell you." "I'm not buying it," I informed Chloe. "You were distracted.You had your mind on taking inventory." Liz giggled,turned red, and fell back to the pillows. "Taking inventory requires enormous concentration!" Chloe said with a straight face,but she was blushing,too.

Let me sum up what I’ve learned about creativity from the world of Wholehearted living and loving: “I’m not very creative” doesn’t work. There’s no such thing as creative people and non-creative people. There are only people who use their creativity and people who don’t. Unused creativity doesn’t just disappear. It lives within us until it’s expressed, neglected to death, or suffocated by resentment and fear. The only unique contribution that we will ever make in this world will be born of our creativity. If we want to make meaning, we need to make art. Cook, write, draw, doodle, paint, scrapbook, take pictures, collage, knit, rebuild an engine, sculpt, dance, decorate, act, sing—it doesn’t matter. As long as we’re creating, we’re cultivating meaning. Literally

Wow, she was obessed," Vivi said as she turned the pages. "She never talked about it. She never wanted us to talk about it either. And the whole time she was scrapbooking like a bored housewife?

The Imagination is the Manifestation of the Visible from the Invisible. It is the Engine of the Unconscious, and it is there that all desires, all dreams, all plans, and all achievements are born.

Computers, however, have nothing better to do; keeping track is their only job. They don't lose the scrapbook, or travel, or get drunk, or grow senile, or even blink. They just sit there and remember.

And the man then said Oh, please: Just let me know if you come upon bark textures that recall the erosion patterns of human hope...And then he disappeared behind a tree...and the forest fell into silence...

There was a time in my life when I did a fair bit of work for the tempestuous Lucretia Stewart, then editor of the American Express travel magazine, Departures. Together, we evolved a harmless satire of the slightly driveling style employed by the journalists of tourism. 'Land of Contrasts' was our shorthand for it. ('Jerusalem: an enthralling blend of old and new.' 'South Africa: a harmony in black and white.' 'Belfast, where ancient meets modern.') It was as you can see, no difficult task. I began to notice a few weeks ago that my enemies in the 'peace' movement had decided to borrow from this tattered style book. The mantra, especially in the letters to this newspaper, was: 'Afghanistan, where the world's richest country rains bombs on the world's poorest country.' Poor fools. They should never have tried to beat me at this game. What about, 'Afghanistan, where the world's most open society confronts the world's most closed one'? 'Where American women pilots kill the men who enslave women.' 'Where the world's most indiscriminate bombers are bombed by the world's most accurate ones.' 'Where the largest number of poor people applaud the bombing of their own regime.' I could go on. (I think number four may need a little work.) But there are some suggested contrasts for the 'doves' to paste into their scrapbook. Incidentally, when they look at their scrapbooks they will be able to re-read themselves saying things like, 'The bombing of Kosovo is driving the Serbs into the arms of Milosevic.

Our childhood memories are often fragments, brief moments or encounters, which together form the scrapbook of our life. They are all we have left to understand the story we have come to tell ourselves about who we are.

Every day we all make little MISTAKES in life, but that doesn't mean we have to pay for them for the rest of our lives.Sometimes GOOD people make BAD choices, but that doesn't mean we are BAD people...It just means we are HUMAN!

My dad takes most of the pictures in our family, and he makes scrapbooks. This means he gets to figure out what's important for us to remember... I guess my mom could make a scrapbook, but she doesn't. And I could do it and so could my brothers, but then we would need extra pictures. Plus we're just kids and we don't have time for that. I know the scrapbooks we'd make would be different from Dad's. But the person who does the work gets to write the history.

Who are they for? Friends. Not necessarily neighbor friends: indeed, the larger share is intended for persons we've met maybe once, perhaps not at all. People who've struck our fancy. Like President Roosevelt. Like the Reverend and Mrs. J. C. Lucey, Baptist missionaries to Borneo who lectured here last winter. Or the little knife grinder who comes through town twice a year. Or Abner Packer, the driver of the six o'clock bus from Mobile, who exchanges waves with us every day as he passes in a dust-cloud whoosh. Or the young Wistons, a California couple whose car one afternoon broke down outside the house and who spent a pleasant hour chatting with us on the porch (young Mr. Wiston snapped our picture, the only one we've ever had taken). Is it because my friend is shy with everyone except strangers that these strangers, and merest acquaintances, seem to us our truest friends? I think yes. Also, the scrapbooks we keep of thank-you's on White House stationery, time-to-time communications from California and Borneo, the knife grinder's penny post cards, make us feel connected to eventful worlds beyond the kitchen with its view of a sky that stops.

All of us at times have mistaken people who say they have our backs for people who really have our backs. Words and actions are two very different things. The people who are there for the good times are great, but the people who are there for the bad times are better. It is vital to realize the difference between friends and onlookers in your life. Onlookers will rush to join you in the limo; real friends will rush to your aid when the limo breaks down. Onlookers will see a brief snapshot of your life and think they know the “real” you; real friends will keep a scrapbook of both your bad and good moments and will love you through both. Onlookers will line up to benefit from your favor and influence; real friends know what it took to get you there. In short, let the onlookers do what they’re there to do: look. Then celebrate the people in your life who are there because they love you for no other reason than because you are you.

I go up to my room to change out of my dress. Sitting on the bed is my yearbook. I flip to the back of the book, and there it is, Peter’s message to me. Only, it’s not a message, it’s a contract. Lara Jean and Peter’s Amended Contract Peter will write a letter to Lara Jean once a week. A real handwritten letter, not an e-mail. Lara Jean will call Peter once a day. Preferably the last call of the night, before she goes to bed. Lara Jean will put up a picture of Peter’s choosing on her wall. Peter will keep the scrapbook out on his desk so any interested parties will see that he is taken. Peter and Lara Jean will always tell each other the truth, even when it’s hard. Peter will love Lara Jean with all his heart, always.

and all I could see was a teary streaking of lights and little bubbles of color before I had to close up again, to shut myself in; so it couldn't be, it couldn't be the case, there's no way that all this was moving around me, Einstein was wrong-

And while she read her cards and muttered to herself, I would leaf through my collection of cookery cards, incanting the names of never-tasted dishes like mantras, like the secret formulae of life. Boeuf en daube. Champignons farcis à la grèque. Escalopes à la Reine. Crème caramel. Schokoladentorte. Tiramisu. In the secret kitchen of my imagination I made them all, tested, tasted them, added to my collection of recipes wherever we went, pasted them into my scrapbook like photographs of old friends. They gave weight to my wanderings, the glossy clippings shining out from between the smeary pages like signposts along our erratic path. I bring them out now like long-lost friends. Soupe de tomates à la gasconne, served with fresh basil and a slice of tartelette méridonale, made on biscuit-thin pâte brisée and lush with the flavors of olive oil and anchovy and the rich local tomatoes, garnished with olives and roasted slowly to produce a concentration of flavors that seems almost impossible.

and I attempted, above all, to get at the truth, not the masquerade that declares itself as genuineness when, habitually, the truth is invoked, but a wholesale leveling of the artifices of personality, a selfless plunge into...into what I had thought must remain forever hidden, to the substance of what I had always kept in shadow ... to that point where self becomes sorrow ...

Let me sum up what I’ve learned about creativity from the world of Wholehearted living and loving: “I’m not very creative” doesn’t work. There’s no such thing as creative people and non-creative people. There are only people who use their creativity and people who don’t. Unused creativity doesn’t just disappear. It lives within us until it’s expressed, neglected to death, or suffocated by resentment and fear. The only unique contribution that we will ever make in this world will be born of our creativity. If we want to make meaning, we need to make art. Cook, write, draw, doodle, paint, scrapbook, take pictures, collage, knit, rebuild an engine, sculpt, dance, decorate, act, sing—it doesn’t matter. As long as we’re creating, we’re cultivating meaning.

I waited patiently—years—for the pendulum to swing the other way, for men to start reading Jane Austen, learn how to knit, pretend to love cosmos, organize scrapbook parties, and make out with each other while we leer. And then we’d say, Yeah, he’s a Cool Guy.

waited patiently – years – for the pendulum to swing the other way, for men to start reading Jane Austen, learn how to knit, pretend to love cosmos, organize scrapbook parties, and make out with each other while we leer. And then we’d say, Yeah, he’s a Cool Guy.

I waited patiently – years – for the pendulum to swing the other way, for men to start reading Jane Austen, learn how to knit, pretend to love cosmos, organize scrapbook parties, and make out with each other while we leer. And then we’d say, Yeah, he’s a Cool Guy.

This book is, in a way, a scrapbook of my writing life. From shopping the cathedral flea market in Barcelona with David Sedaris to having drinks at Cognac with Nora Ephron just months before she died. To the years of sporadic correspondence I had with Thom Jones and Ira Levin. I’ve stalked my share of mentors, asking for advice. Therefore, if you came back another day and asked me to teach you, I’d tell you that becoming an author involves more than talent and skill. I’ve known fantastic writers who never finished a project. And writers who launched incredible ideas, then never fully executed them. And I’ve seen writers who sold a single book and became so disillusioned by the process that they never wrote another. I’d paraphrase the writer Joy Williams, who says that writers must be smart enough to hatch a brilliant idea—but dull enough to research it, keyboard it, edit and re-edit it, market the manuscript, revise it, revise it, re-revise it, review the copy edit, proofread the typeset galleys, slog through the interviews and write the essays to promote it, and finally to show up in a dozen cities and autograph copies for thousands or tens of thousands of people… And then I’d tell you, “Now get off my porch.” But if you came back to me a third time, I’d say, “Kid…” I’d say, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I didn’t tell you because you’re my girlfriend, not the police commissioner. And because it really isn’t any of your business.” Carmela was taken aback for a moment. By his abruptness and his choice of words. “Your girlfriend? Is that what I am?” “I guess so,” said Babcock. He let loose a warm, throaty chuckle, then added, “Face it, we weren’t exactly playing tiddlywinks last night.” “Well, no,” said Carmela. “But girlfriend just sounds so formal.” “Friend?” suggested Babcock. “No, no,” said Carmela. “I really do prefer the former.

He thinks I’m so quirky. I’m not planning on being the one to break the news to him that I’m actually not that quirky, that in fact lots of people like to stay home and bake cookies and scrapbook and hang out in libraries. Most of them are probably in their fifties, but still.

That night, after all the guests have gone, after the chairs have been stacked back up, and the leftovers put in the fridge, I go up to my room to change out of my dress. Sitting on the bed is my yearbook. I flip to the back of the book, and there it is, Peter’s message to me. Only, it’s not a message, it’s a contract. Lara Jean and Peter’s Amended Contract Peter will write a letter to Lara Jean once a week. A real handwritten letter, not an e-mail. Lara Jean will call Peter once a day. Preferably the last call of the night, before she goes to bed. Lara Jean will put up a picture of Peter’s choosing on her wall. Peter will keep the scrapbook out on his desk so any interested parties will see that he is taken. Peter and Lara Jean will always tell each other the truth, even when it’s hard. Peter will love Lara Jean with all his heart, always.

It takes me forever to clean out my locker. I find random notes I saved from Peter, which I promptly put in my bag so I can add them to his scrapbook. An old granola bar. Dusty black hair ties, which is ironic because you can never seem to find a hair tie when you need one. “I’m sad to throw any of this stuff away, even this old granola bar,” I say to Lucas, who is sitting on the floor keeping me company. “I’ve seen it there at the bottom of my locker every day. It’s like an old pal. Should we split it, to commemorate this day?” “Sick,” Lucas says. “It’s probably got mold.

Something had shifted between us, faintly, but the change was almost palpable. Our friendship had sat lightly between us, an ephemeral thing, without weight or gravity. Once, in the Boboli Gardens, under the shadow of a cypress tree on an achingly beautiful October afternoon, he had kissed me, a solemnly sweet and respectful kiss. But weeks had passed and we had not spoken of it. I had attributed it to the sunlight, shimmering gold like Danaë's shower, and had pressed it into the scrapbook of memory, to be taken out and admired now and then, but not to be dwelled upon too seriously. Perhaps I had been mistaken.

Destroyed, that is, were not only men, women and thousands of children but also restaurants and inns, laundries, theater groups, sports clubs, sewing clubs, boys’ clubs, girls’ clubs, love affairs, trees and gardens, grass, gates, gravestones, temples and shrines, family heirlooms, radios, classmates, books, courts of law, clothes, pets, groceries and markets, telephones, personal letters, automobiles, bicycles, horses—120 war-horses—musical instruments, medicines and medical equipment, life savings, eyeglasses, city records, sidewalks, family scrapbooks, monuments, engagements, marriages, employees, clocks and watches, public transportation, street signs, parents, works of art. “The whole of society,” concludes the Japanese study, “was laid waste to its very foundations.”2698 Lifton’s history professor saw not even foundations left. “Such a weapon,” he told the American psychiatrist, “has the power to make everything into nothing.

Still, who, I wondered, owns the disappearing story that, in, part, they tell? The story of the teacher and the children lives now in so few places: on that weather-beaten wall, in scrapbooks filled with photographs. History isn't a sculptured cup; it's more like a sieve through which so many stories pass and disappear.

Everything old people say about time is true. For starters, it flies. As a kid living through semi-eternal summer vacations, this is hard to believe. But as an adult? Get married. Have children. And then sit back, stunned, watching an absolute roar of gorgeous moments and hilarious moments and exhausting moments disappear—quickly and in tragedy or marching off at the traditional pace, but disappear they must. Snap a photo or two. Read verses about futility. Watching one’s small humans age and grow up packs a serious punch. It’s like being stuck in a dream unable to speak, like being a ghost that can see but not touch, like standing on a huge grate while a storm rains oiled diamonds, like collecting feathers in a storm. Parents in love with their kids are all amnesiacs, trying to remember, trying to cherish moments, ghosts trying to hold the world. Being mortals, having a finite mind when surrounded by joy that is perpetually rolling back into the rear view is like always having something important on the tips of our tongues, something on the tips of our fingers, always slipping away, always ducking our embrace. No matter how many pictures we take, no matter how many scrapbooks we make, no matter how many moments we invade with a rolling camera, we will die. We will vanish. We cannot grab and hold.

...I couldn't help wondering what would happen if the little pea-eating angel ever saw that scrapbook...can you imagine what the boy would think if he found out how exceptional and momentous his every move was in the life of his parents? Do you think he might develop a little bit of an overblown ego? I would be worried about that if I were the mom.

Native/Indigenous Peoples believe that hair holds strength and power. Some tribes may be different in how they wear their hair and the specific traditions they honor, but a common thread across many Indigenous cultures is the importance of hair. Hair is a physical manifestation of the spirit. Cutting, burying, and burning hair carries strong significance and meaning. In some tribes, it is a tradition to cut your hair and bury it with a loved one for them to bring energies along on their spirit journey. Hair is an extension of Native Peoples and holds dreams, memories, joys, trials, tribulations, and triumphs. Hair is a living "scrapbook" always carried with us, giving strength and courage.

DREAM SEQUENCE What are dreams? What does it mean? When I go to that place. Traveling to galaxies Flying through time and space. When I'm awake, I can't relate. Where did I just go? Was that real, Or was that fake? Feels as if I'll never know. When I dream It doesn't seem Like I'm so alone. I see their faces And all those places. Suddenly I'm home.

A forced smile covers many struggles and has the power to improve perspective. Despite any difficulties, a smile can change everything!

What you focus your mind on is the key to what you unlock in life

Take care with the words you speak, it's best to keep them sweet..... because you never know when you might have to eat them!

What doesn't kill you makes you CRAZY, GRUMPY, MAD AS EVER? NO it makes you STRONGER! Yep,you'll get there eventually!

FATE decides who you meet in your life, your HEART chooses who you want in your life, but your CHOICES decide who will stay

Appreciate what is in front of you, cherish your family and friends. tell them you love them each and every day! Remember, it can all change in the blink of an eye. Live without regret!

You can come with me to the McGregor Room,” I say. “But you have to promise to be quiet.” Affectionately Peter says, “Lara Jean, only you would look forward to hanging out in a library.” Actually, judging by Pinterest alone, I’m pretty sure a lot of people would look forward to hanging out in such a beautiful library. Just not people Peter knows. He thinks I’m so quirky. I’m not planning on being the one to break the news to him that I’m actually not that quirky, that in fact lots of people like to stay home and bake cookies and scrapbook and hang out in libraries. Most of them are probably in their fifties, but still. I like the way he looks at me, like I am a wood nymph that he happened upon one day and just had to take home to keep.

I grieve to think that closeness requires some measure of distance as its preserver, if only as a safety measure, because it certainly seems as if connection, in a deeper sense, introduces a specter of estrangement; for to come into contact with someone is to change her—there is that certainty; it reminds me of a game that Robin told me about told me about one day after school, as we were walking down Annatta Road certainly twenty years ago: find a word, a familiar word, on a page, and then stare at it for a while, just let your eyes linger upon it; and soon enough, sometimes after no more than a few seconds, the word comes to look misspelled, or badly transcribed, or as if there are other things wrong with it; so I tried it once, with the most familiar word there is: love, first verb in the Latin primer, the word known to all men; and after no more than five seconds I could swear that it wasn't the same word I had always known: it looked odd, misshapen, and as if it had all kinds of different pronunciations, except the one I had always believed was correct, and had always used; and so there was dissonance...

...but what I am not interested in, Ms. Clipboard- or Mr. Canker or Mrs. Murmur or Call-me-Carol, all of you- is your questions; even your pointing and tipping Enoch pencils have six sides, my dear definers: pay heed whereon you pinch!; I am interested, almost exclusively, in being interested, and your reductivist probings are only intended to cordon off wings of my mansion;

That night at the Brooklyn party, I was playing the girl who was in style, the girl a man like Nick wants: the Cool Girl. Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl. Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men—friends, coworkers, strangers—giddy over these awful pretender women, and I’d want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who’d like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them. I’d want to grab the poor guy by his lapels or messenger bag and say: The bitch doesn’t really love chili dogs that much—no one loves chili dogs that much! And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: They’re not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be. Oh, and if you’re not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesn’t want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version—maybe he’s a vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe he’s a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics. There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn’t ever complain. (How do you know you’re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: “I like strong women.” If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because “I like strong women” is code for “I hate strong women.”) I waited patiently—years—for the pendulum to swing the other way, for men to start reading Jane Austen, learn how to knit, pretend to love cosmos, organize scrapbook parties, and make out with each other while we leer. And then we’d say, Yeah, he’s a Cool Guy. But it never happened. Instead, women across the nation colluded in our degradation! Pretty soon Cool Girl became the standard girl. Men believed she existed—she wasn’t just a dreamgirl one in a million. Every girl was supposed to be this girl, and if you weren’t, then there was something wrong with you. But it’s tempting to be Cool Girl. For someone like me, who likes to win, it’s tempting to want to be the girl every guy wants. When I met Nick, I knew immediately that was what he wanted, and for him, I guess I was willing to try. I will accept my portion of blame. The thing is, I was crazy about him at first. I found him perversely exotic, a good ole Missouri boy. He was so damn nice to be around. He teased things out in me that I didn’t know existed: a lightness, a humor, an ease. It was as if he hollowed me out and filled me with feathers. He helped me be Cool

DECEMBER 31 Honor the Ending “How was your trip?” a friend asked, as my trip drew to a close. I thought for a moment, then the answer came easily. “It had its ups and downs,” I said. “There were times I felt exhilarated and sure I was on track. Other days I felt lost. Confused. I’d fall into bed at night certain that this whole trip was a mistake and a waste. But I’d wake up in the morning, something would happen, and I’d see how I’d been guided all along.” The journey of a year is drawing to a close. Cherish the moments, all of them, even the ups and downs. Cherish the places you’ve visited, the people you’ve seen. Say good-bye to those whose journeys have called them someplace else. Know you can always call them back by thinking loving thoughts. Know all those you love will be there for you when you need them most. Honor the lessons you’ve learned, and the people who helped you learn them. Honor the journey your soul mapped out for you. Trust all the places you’ve been. Make a scrapbook in your heart to help you remember. Look back for a moment. Reflect in peace. Then let this year draw to a close. All parts of the journey are sacred and holy. You’ve learned that by now. Take time to honor this ending—though it’s never really the end. Go to sleep tonight. When you wake up tomorrow a new adventure will begin. Remember the words you were told when this last adventure began, the words whispered quietly to your heart: Let the journey unfold. Let it be magical. The way has been prepared. People will be expecting you.

he got up and went and picked up this book, an oversized photo album, and brought it back to the table. “I’ve been following you,” he said, and he opened it up. It was a scrapbook of everything I had ever done, every time my name was mentioned in a newspaper, everything from magazine covers to the tiniest club listings, from the beginning of my career all the way through to that week.

I'll tell you why I keep my scrapbooks. It's in case my real father shows up .I never met him, don't even know his name...I've got this feeling he's out there searching for me. When he bursts through the door and tells me he's spent a fortune on detectives looking all over the world for me, I'm not going to sit there like a dumb cluck when he asks me what I've been doing. I'm going to yank out my eleven scrapbooks filled with my experiences and inner-most thoughts on life lived in three time zones in America. I was a Girl Scout for three months when we lived in Atlanta. I couldn't get those square knots down for anything, but I got the big concept. Be prepared. Addie always told me, "It's more important to get the big concept than to be an expert in the small stuff.

I mean, Ken has a policy of never taking even a one-granule snort when he's doing a show, and, though he's never said anything, it's assumed he expects the same from us; but there it is, God's terrestrial goodness, in exceedingly admirable quantity, and all of us just start giggling because, well, we just can't believe it... ; and we're all just standing there with our brains salivating, and then Kenny, y'know, while kind of looking down at the ground, Kenny hauls off and says: -Aw, what th' fuck ... ; it's our last week, i'n' it...? and he heads to the table in the corner and sits down;

I see that there will be no end to imperfection, or to doing things the wrong way. Even if you grow up, no matter how hard you scrub, whatever you do, there will always be some other stain or spot on your face or stupid act, somebody frowning. But it pleases me somehow to cut out all these imperfect women, with their forehead wrinkles that show how worried they are, and fix them into my scrapbook.

I’m talking about those times when you're driving out on the Interstate at night, when the darkness is such that you feel as if you’re sailing out into the void, through virtually coordinate-free space.

For her, being an American was loathing America, but loving America was something he could not let go of any more than he could let go of loving his father and his mother, any more than he could have let go of his decency. How could she "hate" this country when she had no conception of this country? How could a child of his be so blind as to revile the "rotten system" that had given her own family every opportunity to succeed? To revile her "capitalist" parents as though their wealth were the product of anything other than the unstinting industry of three generations. The men of three generations, including even himself, slogging through the slime and stink of a tannery. The family that started out in a tannery, at one with, side by side with, the lowest of the low - now to her "capitalist dogs." There wasn't much difference and she knew it, between hating America and hating them. He loved the America she hated and blamed for everything that was imperfect in life and wanted violently to overturn, he loved the "bourgeois values" she hated and ridiculed and wanted to subvert, he loved the mother she hated and had all but murdered by doing what she did. Ignorant fucking bitch! The price they had paid! Why shouldn't he tear up this Rita Cohen letter? They were back! The sadistic mischief-makers with their bottomless talent for antagonism who had extorted from him the Audrey Hepburn scrapbook, the stuttering diary, and the ballet shoes, these delinquent young brutes calling themselves "revolutionaries" who had so viciously played with his hopes five years back had decided the time had again rolled around to laugh at Swede Levov.

Is it because my friend is shy with everyone except strangers that these strangers, and merest acquaintances, seem to us our truest friends? I think yes. Also, the scrapbooks we keep of thank-you's on White House stationery, time-to-time communications from California and Borneo, the knife grinder's penny post cards, make us feel connected to eventful worlds beyond the kitchen with its view of a sky that stops.

Gah, I bet she secretly takes pictures of him and puts them on her inspiration board of men she wants to f*ck. I bet she calls it her f*cket list. And once she gets them to fall for her boob-flopping ways, she puts them in a scrapbook and looks through that book every night, reminiscing on the penises that once stuffed her vagina. Well, not Andrew. There is no way she's getting her reconstructed nipples on my guy.

there was once a time when human beings did not feel the need to share their every waking moment with hundreds of millions, even billions, of complete and utter strangers. If one went to a shopping mall to purchase an article of clothing, one did not post minute-by-minute details on a social networking site; and if one made a fool of oneself at a party, one did not leave a photographic record of the sorry episode in a digital scrapbook that would survive for all eternity. But now, in the era of lost inhibition, it seemed no detail of life was too mundane or humiliating to share. In the online age, it was more important to live out loud than to live with dignity. Internet followers were more treasured than flesh-and-blood friends, for they held the illusive promise of celebrity, even immortality. Were Descartes alive today, he might have written: I tweet, therefore I am.

...for I have read about oceanic feelings, but I know about dying of thirst in the middle of the ocean... and I have heard about the thousand points of light, but I have seen that they provide no warmth, no canopying glow ...

It is the fight for control that has us all tied up, while it’s really an illusion anyway. We control because we are afraid of what may happen if we let go. Do we really think we are better captains of our lives than a God who sees everything and deeply loves us? So we pursue our scrapbook dreams, distracted, too busy to see he’s already with us and has our steps planned. The days and pictures and people he puts in our scrapbooks are seemingly chaotic but perfectly planned.

Ollie appeared, a cellphone in one hand and Raphael wiggling in the other. “Smile!” he shouted as he snapped a picture on his phone. “It’s like my two kids are going to prom.” Both Cam and I were dumbstruck. Ollie beamed. “Putting this in my scrapbook. Have fun!” He popped back into their apartment, closing the door behind him. “Um…” Cam laughed loudly. “Oh God, that was different.” “He doesn’t normally do that?” “No.” He laughed again, putting his hand on my lower back.

[D}o not ask me to choose classical philology over industrial catering when they both seem such powerful fun; I want to be a forensic epidemiologist and a floorwalker in men's hosiery-look at how those size l0-to-13's drape over their tiny 2-shaped hangers...

Don’t you wish somebody came up to you today and gave you a scrapbook called ‘The Life of Leo Borlock’? And it’s a record, like a journal, of what you did on such-and-such a date when you were little. From the days you can’t remember anymore. And there’s pictures, and even stuff that you dropped or threw away, like a candy wrapper. And it was all done by some neighbor across the street, and you didn’t even know she was doing it. Don’t you think when you’re fifty or sixty you’d give a fortune to have such a thing?

...so I just finished stuffing my bike with invisible air and went home; and thus ended my career as a hostage- briefly, inconclusively, with consummate inconsequentiality: a nonevent realizing its full potential, brave new currents in con­temporary invisibility-

it's true what they sang in that song, that video killed the radio star-how in the long war between the senses, the eye, in its unstoppable scorched-earth campaign, has mobilized a kind of technologi­cal Gresham's Law against radio, and has almost entirely sidelined it;

I tell him I’d better get going, because Margot’s coming home from Scotland tonight, and I want to stock the fridge with all her favorite foods. Peter’s face falls. “You don’t want to hang out a little longer? I can take you to the store.” “I still have to clean up the upstairs, too,” I say, standing up. He tugs on my shirt and tries to pull me back onto the bed. “Come on, five more minutes.” I lie back down next to him and he cuddles in close, but I’m still thinking about the yearbook. I’ve been working on his scrapbook for months; the least he can do is write me a nice yearbook message. “This is good practice for college,” he murmurs, pulling me toward him, wrapping his arms around me. “The beds are small at UVA. How big are the beds at UNC?” My back to him, I say, “I don’t know. I didn’t get to see the dorms.” He tucks his head in the space between my neck and shoulder. “That was a trick question,” he says, and I can feel him smile against my neck. “To check and see if you visited a random UNC guy’s dorm room with Chris. Congrats, you passed the test.” I can’t help but laugh.

Where do you get your inspiration? What sorts of things do you fill your head with? What do you read? Do you subscribe to anything? What sites do you visit on the Internet? What music do you listen to? What movies do you see? Do you look at art? What do you collect? What’s inside your scrapbook? What do you pin to the corkboard above your desk? What do you stick on your refrigerator? Who’s done work that you admire? Who do you steal ideas from? Do you have any heroes? Who do you follow online? Who are the practitioners you look up to in your field?

Actually, judging by Pinterest alone, I’m pretty sure a lot of people would look forward to hanging out in such a beautiful library. Just not people Peter knows. He thinks I’m so quirky. I’m not planning on being the one to break the news to him that I’m actually not that quirky, that in fact lots of people like to stay home and bake cookies and scrapbook and hang out in libraries. Most of them are probably in their fifties, but still. I like the way he looks a me, like I am a wood nymph that he happened upon one day and just had to take home to keep.

Thus, in short, in sum, in all, it was but a babystep for Chomsky, graced with this understanding of the ineffable richness of our bio-abilities, to become the universalist that he be, to extend his understanding to the political realm ...and to leap, by bio-necessity, into his political work-

The man holding me had a pistol in his other hand; I saw it in the comer of my eye just before I felt its cold hardness crunch into my temple; pressed against my face, the pistol was hard in a way that seemed absolute, bone-smashing, beyond argument, and cold in a way that seemed perfect and permanent;

...and I was thinking of what it would be like to have such a wound, to lift up the bottom of my shirt at school and have bandages to show, white brushstrokes on belly, when a horrendous force Huhhh catapulted me forward and my neck whipped back and I crumbled down to the pavement and my entire face began to cry;

Destiny is a feeling you have that you know something about yourself nobody else does. The picture you have in your own mind of what you’re about will come true. It’s a kind of a thing you kind of have to keep to your own self, because it’s a fragile feeling, and you put it out there, then someone will kill it. It’s best to keep that all inside.

She still has quite a few things but she knows what they are, has deliberately chosen what to keep and what to give away. She can’t believe how light she feels, how hopeful. She no longer feels mired in all the stuff that was keeping her anchored here, all the unknown quantities that felt heavy and mysterious. Everything is in its proper place at last.

Could you ever love me the way you love them?' Confusion settles on his face. 'Who is them?' I clutch my scrapbook journal tight. 'All the girls you're always talking to.' 'You're my best friend,' he says. 'I know you like ... love me. But ... like....?' His eyes widen––a mix of surprise and I don't know... 'oh,' is all he can manage. 'Never mind. Forget I said anything.' 'That's not something you can just forget, Lana.' 'It's cool ... it's fine.' I turn away from him. He grabs my hand. 'Stop––' His voice gets serious. There's no leftover laughter. 'I don't want to play this game anymore.' I'm biting back tears, ready to run out of here. He pulls me closer. ' You don't get to say something like that and run off.

To enjoy a book like [Froissart’s Chronicles] thoroughly I find I have to treat it as a sort of hobby and set about it seriously. I begin by making a map on one of the end leafs: then I put in a genealogical tree or two. Then I put a running headline at the top of each page: finally I index at the end all the passages I have for any reason underlined. I often wonder — considering how people enjoy themselves developing photos or making scrapbooks — why so few people make a hobby of their reading in this way. Many an otherwise dull book which I had to read have I enjoyed in this way, with a fine-nibbed pen in my hand: one is making something all the time and a book so read acquires the charm of a toy without losing that of a book.

...when I read to her, her quietness, her peacefulness, was what I sought to hear, and it echoed in me as if in an expanding cavern, and often left me trembling with love; and so, then and there, after taking a final gulp of my decaf, I decided to indulge in even more self-pampering: I lifted my legs down from the chair, and, with lightness and celerity, stole upstairs...

...but what is vibrato if not a breaking down of the rigid divisions between pitches, a temporary ending of our sundered musical segmentation; we evoke the deepest and richest of our feelings by bending tones between the line spectrum of the Western scale, by ending its divisiveness; we locate what is most human in between, where we are no longer quantized, constrained...

...meanwhile, throughout this orchestrated space, harmonious hundreds of people were milling, window shopping, pushing strollers, and holding soda cans in round keep-' em-cool sleeves, while their abundant children, in large sneakers, straggled along or spir­ited about -and a piped-in rendition of Let It Be, performed by a high-cholesterol string ensemble, made the whole thing look like affectless, Nijinskian choreography...

He could know them again. Back on the other earth, his alter-Arthur would be doing the same thing. But as that Arthur came to understand the nature of the universe, the world he inhabited would start to unravel. Eventually, that place would cease to exist. Somewhere in his body he already felt the loss. He wanted his Eliza, longed to share everything he knew with her as well. There was only hope for now, that he, Arthur, could live this life with the knowledge of what it was, and that he would not be alone. He could learn this world, take part in it with his new understanding. The books in front of him were a start. Sharing them with Rachel was another way of finding her. He scooped Rachel’s fingers with his own and held them tight. ‘Ready?’ he asked. ‘Ready,’ she answered. Together, they turned the first page of the scrapbook and began to save the world.

The name Mary Jo Quinn was written neatly in faded blue marker on the front of the scrapbook, its gray edges frayed with age and wear, as though it had been handled often. Such a memento was a strange thing to find in a used bookstore, especially when one considered its contents. I’d discovered the handmade tome buried on the bottom shelf on the back wall of a little musty-smelling shop in the tiny resort town of Copper Harbor. This picturesque community is the gateway to Isle Royale National Park, an island in the western quarter of Lake Superior that beckoned to hikers, kayakers and canoers. Copper Harbor is the northern-most bastion of civilization in Michigan on a crooked finger of land called the Keweenaw Peninsula. Its remote, pristine shoreline provided an excellent respite from a hellacious year for my best friend from high school and me on a late September weekend.

...because the guy was oblivious, anyway, he was so into what he was doing: rooting through the ranks of rubbish, sorting it out, putting some on the central worktable, then moving some of that selected shit around, stacking it, arraying it, then circulating around the table and sizing the shitpile up, from different angles, with incendiary eyes ... ; and then, the next evening, I saw there was more shit, the guy must have been bringing it in...

...And all the while, accompanying my every step, The Photographer is sounding in my head, purling incessantly through my clamped-on Walkman; it's a good piece, Glass's homage to Muybridge, minimalism used to maximal effect: with its repeating rhythms, endlessly rechurning, the music resembles a wave that doesn't move, a standing wave; that's what you listen to, the change and unchange of the wave, not any emergent melody: listening not above, but within;

The nurse brought out some knitting, and clicked her needles sharply. She turned to me, very bright, very cheerful. “How are you liking Manderley, Mrs. de Winter?” “Very much, thank you,” I said. “It’s a beautiful spot, isn’t it?” she said, the needles jabbing one another. “Of course we don’t get over there now, she’s not up to it. I am sorry, I used to love our days at Manderley.” “You must come over yourself sometime,” I said. “Thank you, I should love to. Mr. de Winter is well, I suppose?” “Yes, very well.” “You spent your honeymoon in Italy, didn’t you? We were so pleased with the picture-postcard Mr. de Winter sent.” I wondered whether she used “we” in the royal sense, or if she meant that Maxim’s grandmother and herself were one. “Did he send one? I can’t remember.” “Oh, yes, it was quite an excitement. We love anything like that. We keep a scrapbook you know, and paste anything to do with the family inside it. Anything pleasant, that is.

and I again turned through the magazine's first few pages, past the Guess Jeans ads and Eternity by Calvin Klein ads and pitches for Crisca clothes, filled with beautiful people imitating suffering; and then words came to me, words arrived in my mind, quickly and insistently, words representing the real sound of my feeling: The shot has been lost; the experiment has not been worth it; the species does not deserve to continue; it is much too late ...; I took a single step, and suddenly wanted to weep:

or is that too straightforward a statement, have I been insuffi­ciently artful in encoding my sentiments...in camouflaging them for esthetic effect. well, too fucking bad...my life has convinced me of few things, but the absoluteness of the negative is one of them... light bends, it diffracts, it scatters, but darkness fucking endures... it is what remains when the strayed-in rays and scintillas have long disappeared... it is the fundament, the ground... and I am one who can tell you this: behold my black body..

and it goes, the music just goes, without faltering, without hesitation, not depleted through repetition, but enriched; and as it goes- without faltering, without hesitation- the rapid-rushing piece instantly becomes the soundtrack to what I am looking at, regardless of what it may be: the varied tilts of oldsters' hats, wind-gusts corduroying the park's grass, the sparkling of pram wheels, children stepping onto the water fountain's access ledge and hunchbacking behind their button-pushing hand and jutting lips;

One more question.” Henry waited until Faith put her finger down before continuing. “Do you ever remember your father wearing a baseball hat?” Like a kid flipping through the pages of a scrapbook, she ran through images of her father in her mind. No baseball cap. But it didn’t matter. Faith just wanted to stop seeing the man the world believed killed her sister. Yet the tighter she closed her eyes, the faster the images came. Her father at her horse show, sitting in the stands at Kim’s soccer game, his smiling face as he pushed her on the swing . . . Faith pressed her palms against the sides of her head and started screaming. The office door flew open. Dr. Rodgers, Titus, and two men in navy-blue suits rushed into the room. Like a boxer against the ropes, the images rained down on Faith like blows, but she was helpless to stop them. Each one sent her head reeling until she felt like she was falling—tumbling into oblivion, welcoming the darkness and an end to the pain. She felt Titus’s strong arms around her, carrying her back to her room.

was no one else there to comfort her. There was only him. The real him. She stepped forward and laid her head against his chest. Samantha: I’ll never forget the moment when Perry and Celeste walked into the trivia night. There was like this ripple across the room. Everyone just stopped and stared. 23. Isn’t this FANTASTIC!” cried Madeline to Chloe as they took their really very excellent seats in front of the giant ice rink. “You can feel the cold from the ice! Brrr! Oh! Can you hear the music? I wonder where the princesses—” Chloe had reached over and placed one hand gently over her mother’s mouth. “Shhh.” Madeline knew she was talking too much because she was feeling anxious and ever so slightly guilty. Today needed to be stupendous to make it worth the rift she’d created between herself and Renata. Eight kindergarten children, who would otherwise be attending Amabella’s party, were here watching Disney On Ice because of Madeline. Madeline looked past Chloe at Ziggy, who was nursing a giant stuffed toy on his lap. Ziggy was the reason they were here today, she reminded herself. Poor Ziggy wouldn’t have been at the party. Dear little fatherless Ziggy. Who was possibly a secret psychopathic bully . . . but still! “Are you taking care of Harry the Hippo this weekend, Ziggy?” she said brightly. Harry the Hippo was the class toy. Every weekend it went home with a different child, along with a scrapbook that had to be returned with a little story about the weekend, accompanied by photos. Ziggy nodded mutely. A child of few words. Jane leaned forward, discreetly chewing gum as always. “It’s quite stressful having Harry to stay. We have to give Harry a good time. Last weekend he went on a roller coaster— Ow!” Jane recoiled as one of the twins, who was sitting next to her and fighting his brother, elbowed her in the back of the head. “Josh!” said Celeste sharply. “Max! Just stop it!” Madeline wondered if Celeste was OK today. She looked pale and tired, with purplish shadows under her eyes, although on Celeste they looked like an artful makeup effect that everyone should try. The lights in the auditorium began to dim, and then went to black. Chloe clutched Madeline’s arm. The music began to pound, so loud that Madeline could feel the vibrations. The ice rink filled with an

i didn’t know it for most of my growing up… but my mama had dreams. dreams that weren’t of ring shapes and dress colors. she had dreams that were drenched in art and tasted like adventure… ones that felt like being kissed until her heart burst… ones that opened up her whole soul like a wildflower on fire. but i didn’t know it. i didn’t know it because she tucked them away in pretty memory boxes and hid them in tattered journals that she pushed aside for perfectly-scripted scrapbooks, and she buried all her burning desires under yes ma’ams and sunday dresses and sweet, supportive smiles, while any part of her that ever maybe might could’ve known that she mattered… by herself, for herself, and belonging. to. herself. suffocated quietly under the white noise of all those voices that had told her that all that really mattered was that she had been chosen… by him. and when i started to see that inside of her was a whole other woman that she ached to be… i knew i couldn’t go through my life aching for the me i’d never be, in that same way. so all i’ve ever wanted… is to know that i matter. by myself. for myself. and belonging to myself. chosen by no one, but me.

...and as he swigged another dose, it just kind of came clear to me that the guy was nothing but sadness, really nothing but that, the weakest link in the Great Chain of Being, and that if when raging he was pathetic then in triumph he was tragic; and it also seemed as if, at some level, the guy knew this, that he also was aware that the whole package he had put together for himself had been misconceived, and that any effort to refashion it would just reconfirm its faultiness; and that the zone he inhabited was one that he himself had built, but as a barrier, of course to prevent the world from getting too close but also to forestall any seepage of self, whose effects on other folks he could too easily foresee; and that the poor loonster had become addicted to the language of communication because he knew that each word showed just how hopeless he was-and that people would sense this, and so would stay even further away ...; the guy, in short, had built himself a quicksand situation, a real no­winner, and I just figured OK: give him what he wants and keep the fuck away; don't only ignore him, but force yourself to forget; acknowledge his desire and leave him to his internal exile...

The place to take the true measure of a man is not in the darkest place or in the amen corner, nor the cornfield, but by his own fireside. There he lays aside his mask and you may learn whether he is an imp or an angel, cur or king, hero or humbug. I care not what the world says of him: whether it crowns him boss or pelts him with bad eggs. I care not a copper what his reputation or religion may be: if his babies dread his homecoming and his better half swallows her heart every time she has to ask him for a five-dollar bill, he is a fraud of the first water, even though he prays night and morning until he is black in the face. But if his children rush to the front door to meet him and love's sunshine illuminates the face of his wife every time she hears his footfall, you can take it for granted that he is pure, for his home is a heaven. I can forgive much in that fellow mortal who would rather make men swear than women weep; who would rather have the hate of the whole world than the contempt of his wife; who would rather call anger to the eyes of a king than fear to the face of a child (W. C. Brann, “A Man’s Real Measure,” in Elbert Hubbard’s Scrapbook, New York: Wm. H. Wise and Co., 1923, p. 16)

He had in his head a scrapbook of the tastes that had impacted him the most during his travels: goat cheese and olive oil in California, the tropical fruits and chilies of South America, everything that had touched his lips in Japan. When Angelo and Paolo talk about their travels, they turn to the memories- the parties, the people, the crazy times had, always with the metronome of mozzarella beating in the background. But what followed Vito were the flavors- the dishes, the ingredients, and techniques unknown to most of Italy. "When I came back from Japan, there were six kilos of matcha, two kilos of coconut powder, and twelve bottles of Nikka whiskey in my bag. In Rome they stopped me and opened the bag. They thought they had caught me with cocaine. I told the guy to open up the bag and taste." Vito didn't drink Nikka (he and his brothers rarely drink alcohol); instead, he emptied all twelve bottles into a wooden bucket, where he now soaks blue cheese made from sheep's milk to make what he calls formaggio clandestino. He stirs up a spoon of high-grade matcha powder into Dicecca's fresh goat yogurt and sells it in clear plastic tubs, anxious for anyone- a loyal client, a stranger, a disheveled writer- to taste something new.

-So, OK, that's part of it, he said: but for me, the more significant thing is that, every time, the Coyote just comes back: the world somehow allows him another chance; he's always given another shot, as if he had not just killed himself; that's what matters in these films;...You see the puff of dust, but he just comes back with another, identical story, and then it all begins again; and that's why I find these films literally miraculous: they're miracle plays, pathologically repeated, in which all the vio­lence and destruction have very little to do with the central premise- this miraculous capacity for coming back;

in fact, while I was sitting there, listening to all the voices painting the quiet living room, the situation reminded me, somewhat, of a movie I once saw; it was called Rashomon, and at the end of it, for some reason, I cried; I remember that I didn't want the movie to end, to resolve itself in any way at all; I wanted the movie just to keep going, to keep coming up with more versions of its story, to keep producing more characters so they could add their takes on the tale; so I was really upset when the film felt the need to come to a conclusion and the lights came up; I remember walking home holding my fist to my mouth, to keep my crying from lathering out;

DECEMBER 30 Joy Is Your Next Lesson Learning compassion, understanding love, and experiencing joy. That’s our purpose, our reason for being here. That’s our true mission on this planet. Learning compassion may have been difficult, because in order to feel compassion for others without judging, we had to go through difficult times ourselves. Times when despite our best efforts we couldn’t help ourselves, times when despite our searching we couldn’t find the answers. As many say, it is usually our own pain and problems that makes us compassionate. Understanding love may have taken many years, many heartbreaks, and much searching and grasping until we discovered that the key to love was our own heart. Until we discovered that love wasn’t exactly what we thought or hoped it would be. Now it’s different. And better. Don’t give up. Don’t stop now. Don’t let the residue, the pain from the early parts of your journey, stop you from going forward. We first had to learn about compassion and love in order to learn joy. The hard work is done. Now you have reached your reward. Now it is time to learn joy. DECEMBER 31 Honor the Ending “How was your trip?” a friend asked, as my trip drew to a close. I thought for a moment, then the answer came easily. “It had its ups and downs,” I said. “There were times I felt exhilarated and sure I was on track. Other days I felt lost. Confused. I’d fall into bed at night certain that this whole trip was a mistake and a waste. But I’d wake up in the morning, something would happen, and I’d see how I’d been guided all along.” The journey of a year is drawing to a close. Cherish the moments, all of them, even the ups and downs. Cherish the places you’ve visited, the people you’ve seen. Say good-bye to those whose journeys have called them someplace else. Know you can always call them back by thinking loving thoughts. Know all those you love will be there for you when you need them most. Honor the lessons you’ve learned, and the people who helped you learn them. Honor the journey your soul mapped out for you. Trust all the places you’ve been. Make a scrapbook in your heart to help you remember. Look back for a moment. Reflect in peace. Then let this year draw to a close. All parts of the journey are sacred and holy. You’ve learned that by now. Take time to honor this ending—though it’s never really the end. Go to sleep tonight. When you wake up tomorrow a new adventure will begin. Remember the words you were told when this last adventure began, the words whispered quietly to your heart: Let the journey unfold. Let it be magical. The way has been prepared. People will be expecting you. Yes, you are being led.

...but now, though, because I have still not gotten there, I feel as if distance- as if distance itself-has developed a density, a viscosity, and that I am pushing against it, that I am fighting distance's density; so I press the pedal, and the car surges, and I attempt to push to the terminus of distance, and when this does not happen and I am still not there I feel as if the tenacity of time will smother me- that I will be smothered by the atrocity of distance, by the painful failure of simultaneity; and I struggle to keep the gas pedal within civilized limits, and I go astride cars and around cars, and I am doused in the unthought thought: Please let me get to him quickly;

I hear his heartbeats as my own, I feel his urgency as my own, our covalent union making of us both a new, charged, unknown substance; so too my skin, my liquidy skin, is both our separation and our merger, it is our shared, evanescent frontier; yet when he kisses the valley of my belly so long and so shiver-warm I realize that I am also beyond his skin's extremity, I am past the barrier of his skin, I am also living within him, for the juncture is no longer clear: utterly, entirely, I feel his response to me, I feel his churning when I surge; and it is sublime circuitry, this overlap, this confusion, giving me new contours, new periphery, expand­ing me into added dimensions,...

I would next like to work in anthropology; for here, if I may say so, I believe I have much to contribute-indeed, I believe I am on the verge of substantiating significant advances both theoretical and practical; yes, my inquisitors, I assure you this is true; for I have established, on my own, as an unaffiliated scholar, no less than a new definition of Man- yes, him- one that is easily more rigorous than any heretofore proposed; forget opposable thumbs, disregard use of tools,lay down language capacity or abstract reasoning-those are clearly insufficient; my definition easily surpasses these provisional flouncings in accuracy, comprehensiveness, and elegance; and it is this: man is the animal who pisses where he shouldn't;

the figures are shadow-swept, various, self-involved, and as turbulent as waves, as standing waves ...; and as I look at them, as I curl more tightly into shin-warmth on my preferred bench, I wonder which of these figures, too, are runaways, which of these scudding clumps are the moving forms of runaways ...but runaways whom I don't recognize, whose rightfulness I don't acknowledge: which of these figures am I denying ...; because it would take, I am sure, only a glance, only one shared eye-shudder, for all this to end, for their circumstances suddenly to reverse; it would only take one glance upon them...and one glance from them...; this, then, would be interpenetration, genuine interpenetration, a real refutation of figure and ground...;

She flipped through the notebook. In most places, Murphy’s large, crooked handwriting ate up the pages greedily, as if she couldn’t write large enough to get her point across. Occasionally Birdie’s more graceful handwriting appeared, adding asides or participating with Murphy in some kind of list she had thrown together, like favorite Leeda moments, or most unknown things about Leeda, or Leeda’s top five best articles of clothing. Mostly, though, it was all Murphy. Listing albums Leeda had to own before she died, like Janis Joplin’s Pearl. Copied scraps of her favorite poetry: about nature and despair and cities and even one or two about love that Murphy had annotated with words like Sickening, but she’s good and Horrible but worth reading. Dried leaves---pecan, magnolia, and, of course, the thin slivered shape of the peach leaf---taped in messy crisscrosses. A cider label Birdie had once kissed. A diagram of Leeda---outlined sloppily with colored-in blond hair, with words on the outside pointing to different parts of her: brainy pointing to her head, good posture pointing to her back, hot gams pointing to her legs, impenetrable (ha ha) pointing to her heart.

...and the smells, you know, the smells- I mean, if only our customers knew; they haven't got a clue about the greatness of these things when they buy them the next morning; you see, when the muffins come down the conveyor belt, and they're thrown from their pockets in the rack pans as the belt turns down-well, this paddlewheel action, if you're standing right there, flings this absolutely amazing hot aroma right into your face-from the Oat Brans, from the Banana-Rhubarbs, especially from the Double Double Chocolates; and then the muffins themselves are so warm and nice-shaped, like these great little trumpet mutes of cake like texture, and you're feeling this kind of glistening inside your cheeks, this liquidy glowing, and you're thinking that these muffins would, you know, just fit so well right in your fist, where you could take them and shove them sugar-warm right into your face-just fill up your mouth and chew and chomp, densely, sweet-texturedly, liquidly ... ; and then, you know, while you're sweet-chomping, it would be like you could smell them with your entire mouth, with your entire sinuses, with your pores...; but all this is gone by the time the muffins are distributed to the delis and diners in the morning, all dead and cold and dry; in fact, no one out there even has the beginning of a clue how good this shit is;

The power behind words and voices is substantial to life! I dedicated this book to all of you readers before you even read it, to understand- the book of misunderstandings for the misunderstood. To have a voice, when you were made not have one or told not to have one. Maybe if you are like me, trying to get your voice back this is the story you need. Nonetheless, let us not fail to remember all the voices, which will never speak again, for being rejected and misunderstood.' 'Yes, be that voice with this book, this book is for you, to speak up, and be heard.' 'Why?' 'So, there are no more lost and forgotten voices of life. This book is a stepping stone to abolish bullying altogether, along with your help; we can take that step forward, and forget about the past!' 'At this time, I would like you all to take a moment of silence, to remember someone, that is no longer with us. So, they are not forgotten.' Preface: 'To understand, you must read between the lines of a story just like mine. My wronging if you do not read this book, is you'll find out fast that life is going to suck, and then you make the discovery, that you are going to die alone, and the hex- I have will now be on you.' 'At least that is what I thought; I thought I read, my story before it was written, and this note was the last thing that I was going to write. However, I never realized that there was so much more to life, which I did not appreciate. I came near a stone's throw away from the end. Yet I got additional unplanned lifespans. Yet, was the second chance what I needed?' 'Nevertheless, there were things that I concerned my mind with, which was not substantial to my existence.' 'If anything- learn from me. Try to do the virtuous things I did and not the mistakes I made. Though it is up to you to decide what was good or bad, it is what you feel and believe is morally right in your mind.' 'Yeah- I never really put any thought into what was going to happen to me someday, and the others that are part of my surroundings.' 'However, life goes on, and the existence of what was stands for nothing but- a memory of what you can and cannot have. If you are someone like me, but all I ever wanted was someone that appreciates me. They say life is free or is it. Do I want it- No- not really!' 'The existence of life…!' 'Is what I do not want to have anymore. There must be a way out of all this misery that I live in today? 'They say dying is easy, as well as lasting, and living is difficult and uncertain.' While- I am going to find out!' 'I guess life is all about what you want, need, and love.' 'Likewise, existing in life comes down to what you cannot have in it.' 'All I have to say is don't let anyone or anything pin you down, and make you less than whom you are. Always be whom you were meant to be, regardless of what they say… because who in the hell are they!' 'My story- is somewhat graphic at times, just like looking into a black and white photo of the past in a scrapbook. All the color in it washes away over time, one way or another. Besides all that is left is still frames that keep on fading, and distorting.' 'On the morning I was scheduled to die, I saw my life as if I had lived it to its whole. Oh, the captivating angel beamed lovingly as she roamed forward help me hang myself, a part of me felt death, and other parts of my mind, body, and soul felt as if it would never dye.

-jeez, these guys, with their on-again, off-again rela­tionships, lutgen said; -Yeah, Dave said: now you see them, now you see them once more; -They're virtual insects!, Jurgen said; -Virtually innumerable, said Dave; -I wonder, though, if we haven't got it wrong, Jurgen said: I mean, I wonder if maybe these guys' natural condition isn't to be lit up-if their ground state isn't actually when they're glowing; -Hm, said Dave: so what they're actually doing is turning off their lights­ -Right: momentarily going under; -Flashing darkness­ -Projecting their inner voids­ -Their repeating, periodic depressions ... -So then, I suppose, we should really call them douse bugs---;. -Exactly... -Or nature's faders---;. -Flying extinguishers­ -Buzzing snuffers-! -Or maybe­ -Or maybe, despite what it looks like, maybe they really are glowing constantly, Jurgen said: but, through some malign unknown mechanism, their everlasting light is peri­odically swallowed up by un-understood atmospheric forces; -So then they're being occluded­ -Rudely occluded­ -Denied their God-given right to shine ... -So that, I suppose, would make them-o horror-victims­ -Yeah: victims of predatory darkness­ -Of uncontrollable flares of night; -So it isn't bioluminescence, but eco-eclipsis­ -Exactly: ambient effacement­ -Nature's station-identification­ -Ongoing lessons in humility ... -In fact, that might explain the nits' efficiency factor, Jurgen Said: you know, these guys burn so cleanly that they produce what's known in the trade as cold light they put together this real slow oxidation reaction within these little cell-structures called photocytes, using a really weird enzyme and substrate that're, like, named for the devil; and the result is virtually 100% efficient: almost no heat is lost at all... -So, in fact, these folks should be our heroes­ -Exactly: our role models­ -Our ego ideals---;. -Hosts of syndicated talk shows­ -Spokes-things for massive advertising campaigns---;. -In fact, children should be forced to leave their families and go be raised by them­-MacArthur winners, all...

[from 'Blade Runner 2049' review in 'Cut The Kink'] Here, in a reversal of 'The Force Awakens,' Harrison Ford survives and Gosling, his surrogate son, dies. The last shot of the film shows baby-boomer Ford creepily watching his daughter, a maker of memory implants, through a glass partition. Somehow, this generic version of the female has become the creator and repository of false memories, a scrapbooker of all the unnecessary backstories that have been weighing down screenplays since the original 'Blade Runner' came out. At one point we meet some official Hollywood-movie Tribal Scavengers, followed later by some official Hollywood-movie Meaningless Revolutionaries. Since at least the Matrix movies, such figures have heralded a revolution that never comes, though President Donald Sutherland did get trampled to death by rebels in 'The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2.

scrapbook to

I didn’t leer at your cock when you were naked.” My hands meet my hips hard, and I tilt my head at him accusingly. “The fuck you didn’t. You looked, measured, and scrapbooked my cock the first moment we met.

unceremoniously as “John F. Kennedy: The Photographic Archive of Cecil W. Stoughton.” I knew—even sight unseen—that this was no ordinary scrapbook collection of scratchy Polaroids and faded albums. No, this might be the treasure trove of one of Camelot’s court photographers, a man who had visually documented some of the most important events in the presidency of John F. Kennedy, including a secret party in New York City attended by the president and the most glamorous movie star of the time: Marilyn Monroe.

Those people, once removed from your life, were hard to put back. You could try, and you could think it was going to work, and you could enjoy the company and the reminiscing, but it was hard, if not impossible, to make them a part of your life once again. And so opening that door invited in a certain bittersweet melancholy, and a reminder that life was fleeting. And those moments that seem bigger than a movie? Even those moments fade and become part of our mental scrapbooks.

It seems difficult to imagine, but there was once a time when human beings did not feel the need to share their every waking moment with hundreds of millions, even billions of complete and utter strangers. If one went to a shopping mall to purchase an article of clothing, one did not post minute-by-minute details on a social networking site; and if one made a fool of oneself at a party, one did not leave a photographic record of the sorry episode in a digital scrapbook that would survive for all eternity. But now, in the era of lost in inhibition, it seemed no detail of life was too mundane or humiliating to share. In the online age, it was more important to live out loud then to live with dignity. Internet followers were more treasured than flesh-and-blood friends, for they held the elusive promise of celebrity , even immortality. Were Descartes alive today, he might have written: I tweet, therefore I am.

My pulse thunders in my ears. It feels like my heart’s rattling my ribs loose, it’s pounding so violently inside my chest. If he touches me any further, I won’t be strong enough to resist Ren anymore. I’ll throw myself at him, beg him to give me everything for just a little while. To give me for now until he can have forever with her. Her. God, my blood boils, and a kick of anger surges through my veins. I hate her. I’m wildly jealous of this woman, who I can only assume is entirely, completely worthy of him. And I know, I trust that she is, because I trust Ren. He’s measured and thoughtful. He has his head screwed on straight. He values the right things. She’s probably an understated beauty, because Ren’s too wholesome to need a knockout—he only asks for beauty from within. She’s one of those rescue-shelter volunteers who bakes perfectly circular chocolate chip cookies and makes friends with all the grandmas on the block. She wants three kids—two boys and a girl—and she loves to scrapbook. She also reads those criminally sex-free romances and is the least erotically adventurous woman on the planet— Whoa, there, Francesca. Getting a little nasty, aren’t we? Well, yes. My thoughts have turned uncharitable. That’s my jealousy talking. That’s my covetous envy. A fierce possessiveness for someone I have no right to. An unwarranted, unfair animosity toward a woman I should be happy for. “I want to apologize, Frankie. About last night.” I spin, tugged out of my thoughts. “What?” Ren frowns up at me from his crouched position, petting Pazza. “I don’t remember everything, because that headache was…unearthly painful, and I’d taken one of the pills for it that Amy prescribed me, but I have a vague memory of being very into hand holding.” Heat rushes through me as I bite my lip. God, you’d think we’d made out, the way thinking of it affects me. “You were.” He grimaces. “It was unprofessional of me. I’m sorry.” His face transforms to a wide smile as Pazza licks his face, perching her muddy paws on his knees. “Pazza, down.” My voice is sharp, and she drops immediately, jogging over to me. Ren slowly stands with a look of wariness on his face. “What’s the matter?” “Nothing. Just Pazza. Sh-she’ll ruin your slacks.” I point at the grass and mud staining his knees. He smiles and shrugs. “I don’t care, Frankie. I can do my laundry. I’m a spot-treating wizard, actually.” “Of course, you are.” I can’t get a stain out of my clothes to save my life. Why do all these little things about him add up to something so perfectly right to me? Why does he have to be so wonderful? Why do I have to be so fucked up?

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Mix ground beef, rice, ½ cup water, onion, salt, garlic salt, and pepper together. Using a large spoon, take scoops from mixture and shape into round balls. Place balls in ungreased baking dish. Stir together tomato sauce, 1 cup water, and Worcestershire sauce and pour over porcupines. Cover with foil and bake for 45 minutes. Remove foil and bake for an additional 10 minutes. Serves

Southern Spoon Bread 2 cups water 1 cup cornmeal 1 cup milk 2 eggs 1 Tbsp. melted butter 2 tsp. salt Mix water and cornmeal in pan. Heat to boiling point and cook for 5 minutes. Beat eggs well, adding in butter, salt, and milk. Add egg mixture to cornmeal mixture. Beat well and bake in a well-greased pan for approximately 25 minutes.

How cool is it that we’re all on a rescue mission together? One for the scrapbook, right dude?” “Please tell me you don’t actually have a scrapbook,” I muttered. “I’ve been stuck in that house waiting to get news of my mate for two days, what else was I supposed to do with all the photos I took these past few weeks?” he hissed. “Not make a scrapbook,” I deadpanned. And what fucking photos? “Then how would I show Elise all the stuff we’ve been doing, Scar?” He tutted like I was the insane one.

Why not Vespera?” Sophie asked. “Because I’m inclined to believe there’s more subtlety to her—and her research—than her journals imply. She’s an Empath, after all. And Empaths feel every hurt they trigger.” “Not all of them,” Keefe muttered, and Sophie’s heart ached, knowing he had to mean his dad. “How do you know she’s an Empath?” Sophie asked. “I just do. It’s actually why I chose Keefe’s father from my match lists. I knew if I wanted to build my own Nightfall someday, I was going to need an Empath to help me run it. But he turned out to be… incompatible. Fortunately, he gave me a son who manifested with far more power than he ever had. That’s your legacy, Keefe. But we’ll talk more about that later. For now, go get me my Archetype. And try not to die.” The Imparter went silent, and Sophie and Keefe just stared at it. Eventually Keefe mumbled, “So… all of that’s getting shoved into a really dark corner of my head—and we’re not going to talk about it, okay? At least not until we get through tonight.” Sophie nodded. “Well… at least we know Vespera’s ability isn’t something scary.” “Don’t be so sure. My mom’s never trained as an Empath, so she doesn’t get it.” He stood, moving to Sophie’s bookshelf, where she’d displayed the paintings he’d given her around her old human scrapbook. “My empathy Mentor warned me when she saw how strong my ability was—that there’s a risk that comes with feeling too much and not having the right training. Our mind’s natural reaction is to shut down when things get too intense—but everything is intense for an Empath. So if you’re not careful, you can end up going… numb. You’ll still feel what others feel. But you won’t feel