See You In The Aisle Quotes

In those seconds, I was mourning everything I'd lost. How I'd never get to see you walk down an aisle toward me, how I'd never get to see your face in our children, how I'd never get to see streaks of silver in your hair. But, at the same time, I couldn't be bothered. If me dying meant you living, how could that be anything but good?

This isn't over. I won't give up on you." "I've given up on you," he said back, voice also soft. "Love fades. Mine has." I stared at him in disbelief. All this time, he'd never phrased it like that. His protests had always been about some greater good, about the remorse he felt over being a monster of how it had scarred him from love. I've given up on you. Love fades. Mine has. I backed up, the sting of those words hitting me as hard as if he'd slapped me. Something shifted in his features, like maybe he knew how much he'd hurt me. I didn't stick around to see. Instead, I pushed my way out of the aisle and ran out the doors in the back, afraid that if I stayed any longer, everyone in the church would see me cry.

I turned around to see Jim standing in the aisle with a smirk and a box of tampons in his hand. “Very funny asshole. Looks like you’re on the rag this week. Make sure to get yourself some Midol and a copy of Terms of Endearment so you can have yourself a good cry.

I walked over to Drake and stomped on his foot. Hard. "What will I give you to help me? What will I give you?" He stood on one leg rubbing his foot, grinning a grin so steamy, it almost melted my underwear. "I never doubted you would defeat her. You are my mate. You could do no less." I pointed a finger at him. "You are too arrogant for your own good. I officially de-mate you. Go away. I never want to see you again. Except maybe tonight. Naked. Your place. But after that, no more.

You are too arrogant for your own good. I officially de-mate you. Go away. I never want to see you again. Except maybe tonight. Naked. Your place. But after that, no more.

It’s important to keep up appearances with books,” I explained. “Image goes a long way in this business.” He dared a look over at me, still nervous but steadily recovering his composure. “I go more for content.” "Really?” I repositioned slightly so that we were touching again, the soft flannel of his shirt brushing my bare skin. “Because I could have sworn a moment ago you were pretty caught up in outside appearance.” His eyes shifted down again, but I could see a smile curving his lips. “Well. Some things are so striking, they can’t help but draw attention to themselves.” "And doesn’t that make you curious about what’s inside?” "Mostly it makes me want to get you some advanced copies.” Advanced copies? What did he—? "Seth? Seth, where—ah, there you are.” Paige turned down our aisle, Doug following behind. She brightened when she saw me, and I felt my stomach sink out of me and hit the floor with a thud as I put two and two together. No. No. It couldn’t be— "Ah, Georgina. I see you’ve already met Seth Mortensen.

Rosie, I'm returning to Boston tomorrow but before I go I wanted to write this letter to you. All the thoughts and feelings that have been bubbling up inside me are finally overflowing from this pen and I'm leaving this letter for you so that you don't feel that I'm putting you under any great pressure. I understand that you will need to take your time trying to decide on what I am about to say. I no what's going on, Rosie. You're my best friend and I can see the sadness in your eyes. I no that Greg isn't away working for the weekend. You never could lie to me; you were always terrible at it. Your eyes betray you time and time again. Don't pretend that everything is perfect because I see it isn't. I see that Greg is a selfish man who has absolutely no idea just how lucky he is and it makes me sick. He is the luckiest man in the world to have you, Rosie, but he doesn't deserve you and you deserve far better. You deserve someone who loves you with every single beat of his heart, someone who thinks about you constantly, someone who spends every minute of every day just wondering what you're doing, where you are, who you're with and if you're OK. You need someone who can help you reach your dreams and who can protect you from your fears. You need someone who will treat you with respect, love every part of you, especially your flaws. You should be with someone who can make you happy, really happy, dancing-on-air happy. Someone who should have taken the chance to be with you years ago instead of becoming scared and being too afraid to try. I am not scared any more, Rosie. I am not afraid to try. I no what the feeling was at your wedding - it was jealousy. My heart broke when I saw the woman I love turning away from me to walk down the aisle with another man, a man she planned to spend the rest of her life with. It was like a prison sentence for me - years stretching ahead without me being able to tell you how I feel or hold you how I wanted to. Twice we've stood beside each other at the altar, Rosie. Twice. And twice we got it wrong. I needed you to be there for my wedding day but I was too stupid to see that I needed you to be the reason for my wedding day. I should never have let your lips leave mine all those years ago in Boston. I should never have pulled away. I should never have panicked. I should never have wasted all those years without you. Give me a chance to make them up to you. I love you, Rosie, and I want to be with you and Katie and Josh. Always. Please think about it. Don't waste your time on Greg. This is our opportunity. Let's stop being afraid and take the chance. I promise I'll make you happy. All my love, Alex

what love looks like what does love look like the therapist asks one week after the breakup and i’m not sure how to answer her question except for the fact that i thought love looked so much like you that’s when it hit me and i realized how naive i had been to place an idea so beautiful on the image of a person as if anybody on this entire earth could encompass all love represented as if this emotion seven billion people tremble for would look like a five foot eleven medium-sized brown-skinned guy who likes eating frozen pizza for breakfast what does love look like the therapist asks again this time interrupting my thoughts midsentence and at this point i’m about to get up and walk right out the door except i paid too much money for this hour so instead i take a piercing look at her the way you look at someone when you’re about to hand it to them lips pursed tightly preparing to launch into conversation eyes digging deeply into theirs searching for all the weak spots they have hidden somewhere hair being tucked behind the ears as if you have to physically prepare for a conversation on the philosophies or rather disappointments of what love looks like well i tell her i don’t think love is him anymore if love was him he would be here wouldn’t he if he was the one for me wouldn’t he be the one sitting across from me if love was him it would have been simple i don’t think love is him anymore i repeat i think love never was i think i just wanted something was ready to give myself to something i believed was bigger than myself and when i saw someone who probably fit the part i made it very much my intention to make him my counterpart and i lost myself to him he took and he took wrapped me in the word special until i was so convinced he had eyes only to see me hands only to feel me a body only to be with me oh how he emptied me how does that make you feel interrupts the therapist well i said it kind of makes me feel like shit maybe we’re looking at it wrong we think it’s something to search for out there something meant to crash into us on our way out of an elevator or slip into our chair at a cafe somewhere appear at the end of an aisle at the bookstore looking the right amount of sexy and intellectual but i think love starts here everything else is just desire and projection of all our wants needs and fantasies but those externalities could never work out if we didn’t turn inward and learn how to love ourselves in order to love other people love does not look like a person love is our actions love is giving all we can even if it’s just the bigger slice of cake love is understanding we have the power to hurt one another but we are going to do everything in our power to make sure we don’t love is figuring out all the kind sweetness we deserve and when someone shows up saying they will provide it as you do but their actions seem to break you rather than build you love is knowing who to choose

People think that ghosts only come out at night, or on Halloween, when the world is dark and the walls are thin. But the truth is, ghosts are everywhere. In the bread aisle at your grocery store, in the middle of you grandmother's garden, in the front seat on your bus. Just because you can't see them doesn't mean they aren't there.

I was told The average girl begins to plan her wedding at the age of 7 She picks the colors and the cake first By the age of 10 She knows time, And location By 17 She’s already chosen a gown 2 bridesmaids And a maid of honor By 23 She’s waiting for a man Who wont break out in hives when he hears the word “commitment” Someone who doesn’t smell like a Band-Aid drenched in lonely Someone who isn’t a temporary solution to the empty side of the bed Someone Who’ll hold her hand like it’s the only one they’ve ever seen To be honest I don’t know what kind of tux I’ll be wearing I have no clue what want my wedding will look like But I imagine The women who pins my last to hers Will butterfly down the aisle Like a 5 foot promise I imagine Her smile Will be so large that you’ll see it on google maps And know exactly where our wedding is being held The woman that I plan to marry Will have champagne in her walk And I will get drunk on her footsteps When the pastor asks If I take this woman to be my wife I will say yes before he finishes the sentence I’ll apologize later for being impolite But I will also explain him That our first kiss happened 6 years ago And I’ve been practicing my “Yes” For past 2, 165 days When people ask me about my wedding I never really know what to say But when they ask me about my future wife I always tell them Her eyes are the only Christmas lights that deserve to be seen all year long I say She thinks too much Misses her father Loves to laugh And she’s terrible at lying Because her face never figured out how to do it correctl I tell them If my alarm clock sounded like her voice My snooze button would collect dust I tell them If she came in a bottle I would drink her until my vision is blurry and my friends take away my keys If she was a book I would memorize her table of contents I would read her cover-to-cover Hoping to find typos Just so we can both have a few things to work on Because aren’t we all unfinished? Don’t we all need a little editing? Aren’t we all waiting to be proofread by someone? Aren’t we all praying they will tell us that we make sense She don’t always make sense But her imperfections are the things I love about her the most I don’t know when I will be married I don’t know where I will be married But I do know this Whenever I’m asked about my future wife I always say …She’s a lot like you

Behold your future, Cavendish the Younger. You will not apply for membership, but the tribe of the elderly will claim you. Your present will not keep pace with the world's. This slippage will stretch your skin, sag your skeleton, erode your hair and memory, make your skin turn opaque so your twitching organs and blue-cheese veins will be semivisible. You will venture out only in daylight, avoiding weekends and school holidays. Language, too, will leave you behind, betraying your tribal affiliations whenever you speak. On escalators, on trunk roads, in supermarket aisles, the living will overtake you, incessantly. Elegant women will not see you. Store detectives will not see you. Salespeople will not see you, unless they sell stair lifts or fraudulent insurance policies. Only babies, cats, and drug addicts will acknowledge your existence. So do not fritter away your days. Sooner than you fear, you will stand before a mirror in a care home, look at your body, and think, E.T., locked in a ruddy cupboard for a fortnight.

And there isn’t a chance in hell I’d miss seeing you walk down that aisle. I’ve fought way too fucking hard for you.

Hey you ! out there in the cold Getting lonely, getting old, can you feel me Hey you ! Standing in the aisles With itchy feet and fading smiles, can you feel me Hey you ! don't help them to bury the light Don't give in without a fight. Hey you ! out there on your own sitting naked by the phone would you touch me Hey you ! with your ear against the wall Waiting for someone to call out would you touch me Hey you ! would you help me to carry the stone Open your heart, I'm coming home But it was only a fantasy The wall was too high as you can see No matter how he tried he could not break free And the worms ate into his brain. Hey you ! out there on the road Always doing what you're told, can you help me Hey you ! out there beyond the wall Breaking bottles in the hall, can you help me Hey you ! don't tell me there's no hope at all Together we stand, divided we fall.

...a kid, maybe eight years old, ran up and poked her in the ribs with a plastic laser weapon, making electric zinging noises as he repeatedly pulled the trigger. “You’re dead,” he said victoriously. His mother came hurrying up, looking harassed and helpless. “Damian, stop that!” She gave him a smile that was little more than a grimace. “Don’t bother the nice people.” “Shut up,” he said rudely. “Can’t you see they’re Terrons from Vaniot.” The kid poked her in the ribs again. “Ouch!” He made those zinging noises again, taking great pleasure in her discomfort. She plastered a big smile on her face and leaned down closer to precious Damian, then cooed in her most alienlike voice, “Oh, look, a little earthling.” She straightened and gave Sam a commanding look. “Kill it.” Damian’s mouth fell open. His eyes went as round as quarters as he took in the big pistol on Sam’s belt. From his open mouth began to issue a series of shrill noises that sounded like a fire alarm. Sam cursed under his breath, grabbed Jaine by the arm, and began tugging her at a half-trot toward the front of the store. She managed to snag her purse from the buggy as she went past. “Hey, my groceries!” she protested. “You can spend another three minutes in here tomorrow and get them,” he said with pent-up violence. “Right now I’m trying to keep you from getting arrested.” “For what?” she asked indignantly as he dragged her out of the automatic doors. People were turning to look at them, but most were following the sounds of Damian’s shrieks to aisle seven. “How about threatening to kill that brat and causing a riot?” “I didn’t threaten to loll him! I just ordered you to.

Look beyond that light,' says my father. 'Look hard and you'll see people filing into the theater. You'll see ushers run up and down the aisles; people talk, programs rustle-you'll hear a murmur. When the lights start to dim, the murmur rises, and then, just a moment before the curtain goes up, the noise stops-everyone in the house holds their breath, everyone knows what is going to happen. This is the moment I've always loved most:the anticipation of magic, the expectation of illusion.

And What Good Will Your Vanity Be When The Rapture Comes” says the man with a cart of empty bottles at the corner of church and lincoln while I stare into my phone and I say I know oh I know while trying to find the specific filter that will make the sun’s near-flawless descent look the way I might describe it in a poem and the man says the moment is already right in front of you and I say I know but everyone I love is not here and I mean here like on this street corner with me while I turn the sky a darker shade of red on my phone and I mean here like everyone I love who I can still touch and not pass my fingers through like the wind in a dream but I look up at the man and he is a kaleidoscope of shadows I mean his shadows have shadows and they are small and trailing behind him and I know then that everyone he loves is also not here and the man doesn’t ask but I still say hey man I’ve got nothing I’ve got nothing even though I have plenty to go home to and the sun is still hot even in its endless flirt with submission and the man’s palm has a small river inside I mean he has taken my hand now and here we are tethered and unmoving and the man says what color are you making the sky and I say what I might say in a poem I say all surrender ends in blood and he says what color are you making the sky and I say something bright enough to make people wish they were here and he squints towards the dancing shrapnel of dying light along a rooftop and he says I love things only as they are and I’m sure I did once too but I can’t prove it to anyone these days and he says the end isn’t always about what dies and I know I know or I knew once and now I write about beautiful things like I will never touch a beautiful thing again and the man looks me in the eyes and he points to the blue-orange vault over heaven’s gates and he says the face of everyone you miss is up there and I know I know I can’t see them but I know and he turns my face to the horizon and he says we don’t have much time left and I get that he means the time before the sun is finally through with its daily work or I think I get that but I still can’t stop trembling and I close my eyes and I am sobbing on the corner of church and lincoln and when I open my eyes the sun is plucking everyone who has chosen to love me from the clouds and carrying them into the light-drunk horizon and I am seeing this and I know I am seeing this the girl who kissed me as a boy in the dairy aisle of meijer while our parents shopped and the older boy on the basketball team who taught me how to make a good fist and swing it into the jaw of a bully and the friends who crawled to my porch in the summer of any year I have been alive they were all there I saw their faces and it was like I was given the eyes of a newborn again and once you know what it is to be lonely it is hard to unsee that which serves as a reminder that you were not always empty and I am gasping into the now-dark air and I pull my shirt up to wipe whatever tears are left and I see the man walking in the other direction and I chase him down and tap his arm and I say did you see it did you see it like I did and he turns and leans into the glow of a streetlamp and he is anchored by a single shadow now and he sneers and he says have we met and he scoffs and pushes his cart off into the night and I can hear the glass rattling even as I watch him become small and vanish and I look down at my phone and the sky on the screen is still blood red.

Between life and death there is a library,’ she said. ‘And within that library, the shelves go on for ever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be different if you had made other choices . . . Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?’ ‘So, I am dead?’ Nora asked. Mrs Elm shook her head. ‘No. Listen carefully. Between life and death.’ She gestured vaguely along the aisle, towards the distance. ‘Death is outside.

I had done something wrong. I shouldn't have shown him. But he had known, hadn't he? What had I done? I retreated quickly down the aisle, pushing my way through the double doors into the porch, where I swiped one of my eyes dry. For a long moment I stood in the dim room, looking blankly at the flyers for bake sales and Bible studies on the noticeboard. Then I heard him shout, "Damn you! Why?" I looked through the clear glass of the porch doors to see if he spoke to some barely seen faerie. But to my eyes, there was no one there but Luke and God.

In those seconds, I was mourning everything I’d lost. How I’d never get to see you walk down an aisle toward me, how I’d never get to see your face in our children, how I’d never get to see streaks of silver in your hair.

Here’s an Advent illustration for kids — and those of us who used to be kids and remember what it was like. Suppose you and your mom get separated in the grocery store, and you start to get scared and panic and don’t know which way to go, and you run to the end of an aisle, and just before you start to cry, you see a shadow on the floor at the end of the aisle that looks just like your mom. It makes you really happy and you feel hope. But which is better? The happiness of seeing the shadow, or having your mom step around the corner and it’s really her? That’s the way it is when Jesus comes to be our High Priest. That’s what Christmas is. Christmas is the replacement of shadows with the real thing.

Well, I'm sorry you couldn't make it either. I'm sorry I had to sit there in that church--which, by the way, had a broken air conditioner--sweating, watching all those people march down the aisle to look in my mother's casket and whisper to themselves all this mess about how much she looked like herself, even though she didn't. I'm sorry you weren't there to hear the lame choir drag out, song after song. I'm sorry you weren't there to see my dad try his best to be upbeat, cracking bad jokes in his speech, choking on his words. I'm sorry you weren't there to watch me totally lose it and explode into tears. I'm sorry you weren't there for me, but it doesn't matter, because even if you were, you wouldn't be able to feel what I feel. Nobody can. Even the preacher said so.

I'll never forget walking down one of the aisles (of the grocery store) and seeing powdered milk; just add water and you get milk. Right next to it was powdered orange juice; just add water and you get orange juice. Then I saw baby powder, and I thought to myself, What a country!

Life had decided that Aisling and I should not walk the same road hand in hand anymore. My heart had decided never to forget, and my hands missed the warmth of her hands. My eyes searched for her continually, but I could not see her. I did not know if to trust my heart that told me she was always nearby or my eyes that could not see her. I wished to say to her, "Aisling, I am right beside you, and I will love you always.

I have spent many an hour, when I was younger, floating over its surface as the zephyr willed, having paddled my boat to the middle, and lying on my back across the seats, in a summer forenoon, dreaming awake, until I was aroused by the boat touching the sand, and I arose to see what shore my fates had impelled me to; days when idleness was the most attractive and productive industry. Many a forenoon have I stolen away, preferring to spend thus the most valued part of the day; for I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly; nor do I regret that I did not waste more of them in the workshop or the teacher's desk. But since I left those shores the woodchoppers have still further laid them waste, and now for many a year there will be no more rambling through the aisles of the wood, with occasional vistas through which you see the water. My Muse may be excused if she is silent henceforth. How can you expect the birds to sing when their groves are cut down?

In those seconds, I was mourning everything I’d lost. How I’d never get to see you walk down an aisle toward me, how I’d never get to see your face in our children, how I’d never get to see streaks of silver in your hair. But, at the same time, I couldn’t be bothered. If me dying meant you living, how could that be anything but good?

And when you walk down the aisle and look in my eyes, you’ll see how you’re not just the love of my life, but my whole fucking world. There is no me without you.

In those seconds, I was mourning everything I’d lost. How I’d never get to see you walk down an aisle toward me, how I’d never get to see your face in our children, how I’d never get to see streaks of silver in your hair. But, at the same time, I couldn’t be bothered. If me dying meant you living”—he did his one-shoulder shrug again—“how could that be anything but good?

The white woman across the aisle from me says 'Look, look at all the history, that house on the hill there is over two hundred years old, ' as she points out the window past me into what she has been taught. I have learned little more about American history during my few days back East than what I expected and far less of what we should all know of the tribal stories whose architecture is 15,000 years older than the corners of the house that sits museumed on the hill. 'Walden Pond, ' the woman on the train asks, 'Did you see Walden Pond? ' and I don't have a cruel enough heart to break her own by telling her there are five Walden Ponds on my little reservation out West and at least a hundred more surrounding Spokane, the city I pretended to call my home. 'Listen, ' I could have told her. 'I don't give a shit about Walden. I know the Indians were living stories around that pond before Walden's grandparents were born and before his grandparents' grandparents were born. I'm tired of hearing about Don-fucking-Henley saving it, too, because that's redundant. If Don Henley's brothers and sisters and mothers and father hadn't come here in the first place then nothing would need to be saved.' But I didn't say a word to the woman about Walden Pond because she smiled so much and seemed delighted that I thought to bring her an orange juice back from the food car. I respect elders of every color. All I really did was eat my tasteless sandwich, drink my Diet Pepsi and nod my head whenever the woman pointed out another little piece of her country's history while I, as all Indians have done since this war began, made plans for what I would do and say the next time somebody from the enemy thought I was one of their own.

What are you doing?” I squeak. Big, warm hands slide under the hem of my dress, slowly dragging the satin material upward. “What do you mean?” he asks innocently. Surprise makes my pulse race. “Where’s my kiss?” Ignoring me, he pushes my dress all the way up to my waist, then groans so loudly that I shoot a wary glance behind me. But everyone on the lawn is completely out of sight, which means Blake and I are out of sight to them. Which means nobody but Blake can see that I’m not wearing anything under my dress. “No panties?” he croaks. “Seriously? We were walking down that aisle together and you weren’t wearing panties? Are you trying to kill me?

This afternoon, being on Fair Haven Hill, I heard the sound of a saw, and soon after from the Cliff saw two men sawing down a noble pine beneath, about forty rods off. I resolved to watch it till it fell, the last of a dozen or more which were left when the forest was cut and for fifteen years have waved in solitary majesty over the sprout-land. I saw them like beavers or insects gnawing at the trunk of this noble tree, the diminutive manikins with their cross-cut saw which could scarcely span it. It towered up a hundred feet as I afterward found by measurement, one of the tallest probably in the township and straight as an arrow, but slanting a little toward the hillside, its top seen against the frozen river and the hills of Conantum. I watch closely to see when it begins to move. Now the sawers stop, and with an axe open it a little on the side toward which it leans, that it may break the faster. And now their saw goes again. Now surely it is going; it is inclined one quarter of the quadrant, and, breathless, I expect its crashing fall. But no, I was mistaken; it has not moved an inch; it stands at the same angle as at first. It is fifteen minutes yet to its fall. Still its branches wave in the wind, as it were destined to stand for a century, and the wind soughs through its needles as of yore; it is still a forest tree, the most majestic tree that waves over Musketaquid. The silvery sheen of the sunlight is reflected from its needles; it still affords an inaccessible crotch for the squirrel’s nest; not a lichen has forsaken its mast-like stem, its raking mast,—the hill is the hulk. Now, now’s the moment! The manikins at its base are fleeing from their crime. They have dropped the guilty saw and axe. How slowly and majestic it starts! as it were only swayed by a summer breeze, and would return without a sigh to its location in the air. And now it fans the hillside with its fall, and it lies down to its bed in the valley, from which it is never to rise, as softly as a feather, folding its green mantle about it like a warrior, as if, tired of standing, it embraced the earth with silent joy, returning its elements to the dust again. But hark! there you only saw, but did not hear. There now comes up a deafening crash to these rocks , advertising you that even trees do not die without a groan. It rushes to embrace the earth, and mingle its elements with the dust. And now all is still once more and forever, both to eye and ear. I went down and measured it. It was about four feet in diameter where it was sawed, about one hundred feet long. Before I had reached it the axemen had already divested it of its branches. Its gracefully spreading top was a perfect wreck on the hillside as if it had been made of glass, and the tender cones of one year’s growth upon its summit appealed in vain and too late to the mercy of the chopper. Already he has measured it with his axe, and marked off the mill-logs it will make. And the space it occupied in upper air is vacant for the next two centuries. It is lumber. He has laid waste the air. When the fish hawk in the spring revisits the banks of the Musketaquid, he will circle in vain to find his accustomed perch, and the hen-hawk will mourn for the pines lofty enough to protect her brood. A plant which it has taken two centuries to perfect, rising by slow stages into the heavens, has this afternoon ceased to exist. Its sapling top had expanded to this January thaw as the forerunner of summers to come. Why does not the village bell sound a knell? I hear no knell tolled. I see no procession of mourners in the streets, or the woodland aisles. The squirrel has leaped to another tree; the hawk has circled further off, and has now settled upon a new eyrie, but the woodman is preparing [to] lay his axe at the root of that also.

It's so funny because I haven't set foot in a grocery store in years, you know. And that's so embarrassing...I kept going, 'What's this?' "First of all I had the cart and I was riding down the aisles standing on it. And there's nobody there but us. And we got in the checkout. And I'm seeing this square thing, and I'm like, "What's this you guys?" And Missy just looked at me. And they said, "That's so you can use your credit card." And I said, "You can use your credit cards in grocery stores now?

Could she see herself, someday, wearing a bridal gown, walking down an aisle—or going to a courthouse in a simple suit? Marriage was, after all, most young women’s life goal. And yet, the image left Maggie cold. That’s because you need to be in love first, dummy.

These are the little losers in the bunny derby, but they lose on a different route than the Mariannes, or the ones you see in the supermarket on the nights when they double the green stamps, coming in junk cars, plodding the bright aisles, snarling at their cross sleepy kids.

One day in 1948 or 1949, the Brentwood County Mart, a shopping complex in an upscale neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, was the scene of a slight disturbance that carried overtones of the most spectacular upheaval in twientieth-century music. Marta Feuchtwanger, wife of émigré novelist Lion Feuchtwanger, was examining grapefruit in the produce section when she heard a voice shouting German from the far end of the aisle. She looked up to see Arnold Schoenberg, the pioneer of atonal music and the codifier of twelve-tone composition, bearing down on her, with his bald pate and burning eyes. Decades later, in conversation with the writer Lawrence Weschler, Feuchtwanger could recall every detail of the encounter, including the weight of the grapefruit in her hand. “Lies, Frau Marta, lies!” Schoenberg was yelling. “You have to know, I never had syphilis!

but the truth was Eddie couldn’t have used the knife anyway—not then, anyway. He was staring into the doorway, hypnotized, as an aisle of Macy’s rushed forward—he was reminded again of The Shining, where you saw what the little boy was seeing as he rode his trike through the hallways of that haunted hotel.

He was staring into the doorway, hypnotized, as an aisle of Macy’s rushed forward—he was reminded again of The Shining, where you saw what the little boy was seeing as he rode his trike through the hallways of that haunted hotel. He remembered the little boy had seen this creepy pair of dead twins in one of those hallways. The

The aisles of the Varied Industries building had grown too coagulated, so Marlys led the girl around the building, the girl’s legs churning to keep up. They came out directly behind the fire hydrant that they’d planted the night before, separated from it by the dense crowd. Marlys asked a tall man at the back, “Do you see them yet?

A chance for the adventure we’d read about. For the love we’d witnessed on the pages of books.” “And you never did? Never dreamed of that, I mean?” “No.” Another quick answer. “It was a fantasy. Something to be read on the page, as real for me as the dragons and elves in fantasy stories. Something I’d never see or feel in real life.

I love you. How many times have you been asked, "How are you" today? It's a dreadful question. It's an absurd question. Knowing you and seeing what has happened in your life makes me stop in my tracks and catch myself before I ask anyone that question again. How the hell can you answer that question in the aisle of a supermarket? Come back to the house, you say. Bring your toothbrush and call your boss. You will need a week to hear the complete answer. And you will never be the same if you listen. It's the question that the entire human race reduces itself to each and every day, in each and every encounter, and without the intention of ever truly hearing the answer.

Stahl trailed him upstairs, across a mezzanine, and out into the darkness of the sloping balcony. Tom gave the aisle his torch so his guest could see. On the screen below a woman's head was wavering, two or three times larger than life. A metallic voice clanged out, echoing sepulchrally all over the house, like a modern Delphic Oracle. 'Go back, go back!' she said. 'This is no place for you!' Her big luminous eyes seemed to be looking right at Lew Stahl as she spoke. Her finger came out and pointed, and it seemed to aim straight at him and him alone. It was weird; he almost stopped in his tracks, then went on again. He hadn't eaten all day; he figured he must be woozy, to think things like that. ("Dusk To Dawn")

Isn't Glen an accountant? We're all frugal." These days, by necessity. "You might be frugal, but Glen is cheap. For Valentine's Day, he actually suggested that we go to a card shop, exchange cards in the aisle, then put them back because he didn't see the use in spending the money!" "Okay, that's cheap." Libby huffed. "I swear, if he cuts up my Bloomingdale's card, I'll cut off his pecker.

So what's the big emergency?" Jeffrey says. He jogs down the aisle of the Pink Garter toward where Christian and I are sitting, waiting for Angela, who uncharacteristically late. "I thought we weren't going to meet this week because we like, you know, spent all weekend together. I'm kind of sick of you people." "Glad to see that you decided to grace us with your presence, anyway," Christian says.

Jessabelle, I'm sorry to just leave, but I need some time. Time to get my head back on straight. Time to remember who I really am. Time with my Creator, the one who knew before the foundations of the earth what would happen over the last few days. I wish more than anything, that I could process all of this with you, go through all of this together, because I'm coming to understand that, out of all the men in the world, God picked me for you. It's so much more than lineage. It's you. How you've come into your own. How you've blossomed and grown. I'm so privileged to see that secret side of you-the side no one else gets to see. The side where you secretly paint your second toenail a different color because everyone else does the fourth one, but you're not sure my mother would approve so you never wear open-toed shoes to show them off. You only eat M&Ms in odd numbers. You use your right hand to put hair behind your ear, but never your left. You didn't know I knew those things, did you? I've watched you over the last few months and learned more about you than I realized until I tried to put my thoughts on paper. You're sleeping just feet away from me as I write this. Your even breathing brings some peace to my troubled soul. The small smile on your face makes me wonder what your dreaming about and if, in your sleep, you've managed to find happiness instead of the turmoil life always seems to bring. I have to stop myself from wondering if dream-Jessabelle has found happiness with someone besides dream-Malachi, because I've realized something in the last couple of days. I love you. My life didn't really begin until you walked down the aisle into it. I want to be man enough to tell you to your face, to kiss you, to tell you over and over what you've come to mean to me, but I can't. Not yet... You are the only one for me, sweet Mia Belle. I love you with my entire being, in a way I never believed possible to love another person. I didn't know this kind of love truly existed outside of fairy tales. Always, Kai

Most people actually ignore things out of the ordinary. Or, worse, hope that someone else will take care of it. I remember being on the train in Chicago in a car with about a dozen other people. On the other side of the car, a man suddenly fell off his seat. Just… toppled over into the aisle. He started convulsing. There were three people between me and him. But nobody said anything. Nobody did anything. I stood up, “Sir?” I said, and started toward him. And that’s when everyone started to move. I called for someone at the back to push the operator alert button, to tell the train driver to call for an ambulance at the next stop. After I moved, there were suddenly three or four other people with me, coming to the man’s aid. But somebody had to move first. I stood in a crowded, standing-room only train on another day and watched a young woman standing near the door close her eyes and drop her papers and binder onto the floor. She was packed tight, surrounded by other people, and no one said anything. Her body began to go limp. “Are you OK!?” I said loudly, leaning toward her, and then other people were looking, and she was sagging, and the buzz started, and somebody called up from the front of the car that he was a doctor, and someone gave up their seat, and people moved, moved, moved. Somebody needs to be the person who says something is wrong. We can’t pretend we don’t see it. Because people have been murdered and assaulted on street corners where hundreds of people milled around, pretending everything was normal. But pretending it was normal didn’t make it so. Somebody has to point it out. Somebody has to get folks to move. Somebody has to act.

It's not you it's me' she couldn't use that line. Even though it really was her and not him, everyone thought that line really meant, 'it's not me. It's definitely you.'  There was still a part of her that thought perhaps she shouldn't do it at all. In Andrew she had all the raw ingredients for a perfect life. Here was a grown-up, good-looking, solvent, generous, warm-hearted man who adored her. A man who adored her even when she looked like the loch ness monsters little sister and had a terrible temper to match. It didn't take a huge leap of imagination to see Andrew standing at the top of the aisle, looking back at lou walking towards him with a grin as wide as the English channel. She could see him painting the nursery yellow; pushing a pram that contained two lovely brown haired twins (one boy, one girl); presenting her woth an eternity ring on their tenth anniversary, taking the twins to school, teaching them how to play football on long, summer holidays in Tuscany, giving the daughter away at her own wedding, cosying up to Lou on the veranda of their perfect house as their retirement stretched ahead of them- a long straight road of well-planned for, financially comfortable and perpetually sunny days.  'oh god' Lou poured herself a vodka.

When you are traveling by bus, it is always difficult to decide whether you should sit in a seat by the window, a seat on the aisle, or a seat in the middle. If you take an aisle seat, you have the advantage of being able to stretch your legs whenever you like, but you have the disadvantage of people walking by you and they can accidentally step on your toes or spill something on your clothing. If you take a window seat, you have the advantage of getting a clear view of the scenery, but you have the disadvantage of watching insects die as they hit the glass. If you take a middle seat, you have neither of these advantages, and you have the added disadvantage of people leaning all over you when they fall asleep. You can see at once why you should always arrange to hire a limousine or rent a mule rather than take the bus to your destination.

They were properly mad in the Shakespearean sense, talking sense when you least expected it. In North London, where councillors once voted to change the name of the area to Nirvana, it is not unusual to walk the streets and be suddenly confronted by sage words from the chalkfaced, blue-lipped, or eyebrowless. From across the street or from the other end of a tube carriage they will use their schizophrenic talent for seeing connections in the random (for discerning the whole world in a grain of sand, for deriving narrative from nothing) to riddle you, to rhyme you, to strip you down, to tell you who you are and where you’re going (usually Baker Street—the great majority of modernday seers travel the Metropolitan Line) and why. But as a city we are not appreciative of these people. Our gut instinct is that they intend to embarrass us, that they’re out to shame us somehow as they lurch down the train aisle, bulbous-eyed and with carbuncled nose, preparing to ask us, inevitably, what we are looking at. What the fuck we are looking at. As a kind of preemptive defense mechanism, Londoners have learned not to look, never to look, to avoid eyes at all times so that the dreaded question “What you looking at?” and its pitiful, gutless, useless answer —“Nothing”—might be avoided.

Sile looked momentarily stymied, then shook his head sharply. "You won't go alone." "I can't ask anyone--" "You aren't asking," Sile said firmly. "I'm insisting--" "Grandfather, nay," Runach said, stunned. "I couldn't allow it." "Allow it?" Sile repeated, looking as if the gale were readying for another good blow. "Who do you think you are, whelp, to tell me what to do?" "I believe, your Majesty," Aisling said quietly, "he's someone who loves you..." Runach didn't dare smile, because his grandfather would have made the effort to get up out of his chair so he could deliver a brisk blow to the back of a grandson's head, of that he was certain. "Besides, I'm going to go along to keep him safe." Sile closed his eyes briefly before he leaned forward and looked at Aisling seriously. "You, my gel?" "Me, Your Majesty." Runach watched his grandfather look at his wife in consternation. "Are you listening to this?" he asked in disbelief. "She isn't even spawn of mine, and yet she exhibits this unsettling 'independence'." "I find it quite admirable, husband." Runach pushed away from the wall and walked over to squat down by Aisling's chair. He looked up at her. "I want you to stay here." She looked at him for a moment or two, then reached out and touched his scarred cheek. "This is my quest, and I must see it through to the end, wherever that end might lie." "I'll think about it," he said, and by that he meant not a chance in hell. He rose and glanced at his grandfather. "I appreciate your concern, but I'm going alone." Sile rubbed his hands over his face. "Breagha?" "Aye, my love?" "When did I lose control over my progeny?" "Several centuries ago, I believe, dear." "It seems more recent than that." "I don't think so, darling.

Then you clean it up! I’m sick of cleaning it and having you come in and mess it up again,’ Hud would say. ‘I’m not your maid.’ ‘You are, though,’ Jay would say. ‘Just like I’m the fluff and fold around here.’ Jay was in charge of the laundry. He handled his sisters’ underwear and bathing suits with chopsticks, unwilling to touch them whether they were clean or dirty. But Jay quickly became a wiz at stain removal, each mark a puzzle to solve. He threw himself into searching the right combination of liquids that would unlock the dirt from Kit’s soccer shorts. He found the golden ticket by asking an older woman in the laundry aisle what she did to get out grass stains. Turned out it was Fels-Naptha. Worked like a charm. ‘Look at this, motherfucker!’ Jay called out to the rest of the house one day from the garage. ‘Good as fucking new!’ Kit peeked her head in to see her white shorts bright as the sun, unblemished. ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘Maybe you can open Riva’s Laundry.

Each moment fully perceived contains eternity. With intuition, trust increases, both in yourself and others. You can see the good reasons for why things happen. You experience less anxiety-producing hopelessness and hopefulness about the past and the future and a more acute awareness of your surroundings. There’s more synchronicity. Inspiration increases. Enthusiasm expands, because when things flow, you feel happy. When you’re happy, creativity and productivity soar and satisfaction becomes profound. For instance, you rush frantically to the grocery store to do the weekly shopping, squeezing in the errand between work, time with your children, and repairs on the house. You could make the experience entertaining and magical if you pay attention to the smells, shapes, and colors of the foods and packages and the emotional tones of the people you meet in the aisles. You might enjoy the smooth motion of your grocery cart or notice exactly which piece of fruit your body wants to select.

Walk slowly," said a voice from behind me, and I turned around and felt my heart jump in delight. "Remember, you're on a crutch and she's an old lady." "You came!" I said. "I heard you were looking for me. Julian told me." "I didn't think I'd see you. Not till, you know, till it was my turn." "I couldn't wait," he said. "You look exactly the same as you did on that last day. In Central Park." "Actually, I'm a few pounds lighter," he said. "I've been on a fitness drive." "Good for you." I stared at him and felt the tears forming in my eyes. "Do you know how much I've missed you?" I asked him. "It's been almost thirty years. I shouldn't have had to spend all that time on my own." "I know, but it's nearly over. And you haven't done a bad job of it at the same time, given the mess you made of the first thirty. The years apart will feel like nothing compared to what we have before us." "The music's started," said my mother, clutching me to her. "I have to go, Bastiaan," I said. "Will I see you later?" "No. But I'll be there in November when you arrive." "All right." I took a deep breath. "I love you." "I love you too," said my mother. "Shall we go?" I nodded and stepped forward, and slowly we made our way down the aisle, passing the faces of our friends and family, and I delivered her into the arms of a kind man who swore to love her and take care of her for the rest of her life. And at the end, when the entire congregation broke into applause, I realized that I was finally happy.

It’s good to know that I’m not crazy, then.” “Well, you might be, dear,” she says mildly. “But not if you want to strangle him with yarn.” “He’s stealing my socks,” I lean forward and whisper. “They do that sort of thing,” she whispers back. “It’s okay, really.” “Sometimes I think that if I see one more of his socks on the floor I’m going to bury them all in the back yard.” She smiles again, the corners of her eyes crinkling merrily. “Well, if you decide to take that route, we have a wide range of shovels in aisle seven.

There was a note on the table.” “Bring it here,” Van Eck barked. The boy strode down the aisle, and Van Eck snatched the note from his hand. “What does it … what does it say?” asked Bajan. His voice was tremulous. Maybe Inej had been right about Alys and the music teacher. Van Eck backhanded him. “If I find out you knew anything about this—” “I didn’t!” Bajan cried. “I knew nothing. I followed your orders to the letter!” Van Eck crumpled the note in his fist, but not before Inej made out the words in Kaz’s jagged, unmistakable hand: Noon tomorrow. Goedmedbridge. With her knives. “The note was weighted down with this.” The boy reached into his pocket and drew out a tie pin—a fat ruby surrounded by golden laurel leaves. Kaz had stolen it from Van Eck back when they’d first been hired for the Ice Court job. Inej hadn’t had the chance to fence it before they left Ketterdam. Somehow Kaz must have gotten hold of it again. “Brekker,” Van Eck snarled, his voice taut with rage. Inej couldn’t help it. She started to laugh. Van Eck slapped her hard. He grabbed her tunic and shook her so that her bones rattled. “Brekker thinks we’re still playing a game, does he? She is my wife. She carries my heir.” Inej laughed even harder, all the horrors of the past week rising from her chest in giddy peals. She wasn’t sure she could have stopped if she wanted to. “And you were foolish enough to tell Kaz all of that on Vellgeluk.” “Shall I have Franke fetch the mallet and show you just how serious I am?” “Mister Van Eck,” Bajan pleaded. But Inej was done being frightened of this man. Before Van Eck could take another breath, she slammed her forehead upward, shattering his nose. He screamed and released her as blood gushed over his fine mercher suit. Instantly, his guards were on her, pulling her back. “You little wretch,” Van Eck said, holding a monogrammed handkerchief to his face. “You little whore. I’ll take a hammer to both your legs myself—” “Go on, Van Eck, threaten me. Tell me all the little things I am. You lay a finger on me and Kaz Brekker will cut the baby from your pretty wife’s stomach and hang its body from a balcony at the Exchange.” Ugly words, speech that pricked her conscience, but Van Eck deserved the images she’d planted in his mind. Though she didn’t believe Kaz would do such a thing, she felt grateful for each nasty, vicious thing Dirtyhands had done to earn his reputation—a reputation that would haunt Van Eck every second until his wife was returned. “Be silent,” he shouted, spittle flying from his mouth. “You think he won’t?” Inej taunted. She could feel the heat in her cheek from where his hand had struck her, could see the mallet still resting in the guard’s hand. Van Eck had given her fear and she was happy to return it to him. “Vile, ruthless, amoral. Isn’t that why you hired Kaz in the first place? Because he does the things that no one else dares? Go on, Van Eck. Break my legs and see what happens. Dare him.” Had she really believed a merch could outthink Kaz Brekker? Kaz would get her free and then they’d show this man exactly what whores and canal rats could do. “Console yourself,” she said as Van Eck clutched the ragged corner of the table for support. “Even better men can be bested.

You can’t possibly know the depths of my relationship with my boyfriend, of whether I’d marry him.” I lean across the table, “Oh, but I do. I know. I know perfectly well. You might say yes if he asked you. You might even make it to the fucking church on your wedding day. But you know as well as I do that the moment you started to walk down that aisle, you’d see that it was wrong. That you shouldn’t do it. Because there’s only one man on the face of this planet you should ever be getting married to, and it’s sure as shit not Ben the Good Samaritan. It’s me.

As the last passengers boarded the aircraft, the constant slamming of the overhead bins started to hurt Hero's ears. The infant began to cry, and everyone in the cabin glared in Jack and Goldilocks's direction. "Everyone is looking at us like we've personally offended them," Jack remarked. "It's because you brought a baby on a plane," Bree said. "They're worried he's going to cry the whole way to New York." Goldilocks was not going to put up with this. She passed Hero to Jack and stood in the aisle where all the passengers could see her. "Now, wait just one Hickory Dickory second," she called out. "I don't care if you have to listen to my baby cry! Eight days ago I experienced the worst pain humanly possible by pushing him out of my body! It's something all mothers must endure for the survival of our species! It's natural, it's brave, it's beautiful, and I will NOT be disrespected for it! Now, I suggest you all wipe those foul looks off your faces or YOU"LL be the ones crying all the way to New York!" "I'd listen to my wife if I were you," Jack added. "She's on caffeine." All the passengers quickly diverted their gazes elsewhere. Bree tried to start a round of applause for Goldilocks, but no one joined her.

The building has settled into itself so that when you walk down the aisle, you can hear it yielding to the burden of your weight. It’s a pleasanter sound than an echo would be, an obliging, accommodating sound. You have to be there alone to hear it. Maybe it can’t feel the weight of a child. But if it is still standing when you read this, and if you are not half a world away, sometime you might go there alone, just to see what I mean. After a while I did begin to wonder if I liked the church better with no people in it. I know they’re planning to pull it down. They’re waiting me out, which is kind of them.

Jacob smiled from ear to ear when he shook the man’s hand on stage. The man then handed him a trophy. "Tell the audience about your book." My little brother confidently walked up to a microphone his height and beamed to the crowd. "I wrote about the person I love the most, my older brother, Noah. We don’t live together so I wrote what I imagine he does when we’re not together." "And what is that?" prodded the stout man. "He’s a superhero who saves people in danger, because he saved me and my brother from dying in a fire a couple of years ago. Noah is better than Batman." The crowd chuckled. "I love you, too, lil’ bro." I couldn’t help it. To see him standing there, still worshipping me like he did when he was five … it was too much. Jacob’s smile reached a whole new level of excitement. "Noah!" He pointed right to me. "That’s Noah. That’s my brother, Noah!" Ignoring his foster parents, Jacob flew off the stage and ran down the middle aisle. Joe lowered his head and Carrie rubbed her eyes. Jacob raced into my arms and the crowd erupted into applause. "I’ve missed you, Noah." Jacob’s voice broke, bringing tears to my eyes. I couldn’t cry. Not in front of Jacob and not in front of Mrs. Collins. I needed to be a man and stay strong. "I’ve missed you, too, bro. I’m so proud of you."

New Rule: If you're going to have a rally where hundreds of thousands of people show up, you may as well go ahead and make it about something. With all due respect to my friends Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, it seems that if you truly wanted to come down on the side of restoring sanity and reason, you'd side with the sane and the reasonable--and not try to pretend the insanity is equally distributed in both parties. Keith Olbermann is right when he says he's not the equivalent of Glenn Beck. One reports facts; the other one is very close to playing with his poop. And the big mistake of modern media has been this notion of balance for balance's sake, that the left is just as violent and cruel as the right, that unions are just as powerful as corporations, that reverse racism is just as damaging as racism. There's a difference between a mad man and a madman. Now, getting more than two hundred thousand people to come to a liberal rally is a great achievement that gave me hope, and what I really loved about it was that it was twice the size of the Glenn Beck crowd on the Mall in August--although it weight the same. But the message of the rally as I heard it was that if the media would just top giving voice to the crazies on both sides, then maybe we could restore sanity. It was all nonpartisan, and urged cooperation with the moderates on the other side. Forgetting that Obama tried that, and found our there are no moderates on the other side. When Jon announced his rally, he said that the national conversation is "dominated" by people on the right who believe Obama's a socialist, and by people on the left who believe 9/11 was an inside job. But I can't name any Democratic leaders who think 9/11 was an inside job. But Republican leaders who think Obama's socialist? All of them. McCain, Boehner, Cantor, Palin...all of them. It's now official Republican dogma, like "Tax cuts pay for themselves" and "Gay men just haven't met the right woman." As another example of both sides using overheated rhetoric, Jon cited the right equating Obama with Hitler, and the left calling Bush a war criminal. Except thinking Obama is like Hitler is utterly unfounded--but thinking Bush is a war criminal? That's the opinion of Major General Anthony Taguba, who headed the Army's investigation into Abu Ghraib. Republicans keep staking out a position that is farther and farther right, and then demand Democrats meet them in the middle. Which now is not the middle anymore. That's the reason health-care reform is so watered down--it's Bob Dole's old plan from 1994. Same thing with cap and trade--it was the first President Bush's plan to deal with carbon emissions. Now the Republican plan for climate change is to claim it's a hoax. But it's not--I know because I've lived in L.A. since '83, and there's been a change in the city: I can see it now. All of us who live out here have had that experience: "Oh, look, there's a mountain there." Governments, led my liberal Democrats, passed laws that changed the air I breathe. For the better. I'm for them, and not the party that is plotting to abolish the EPA. I don't need to pretend both sides have a point here, and I don't care what left or right commentators say about it, I can only what climate scientists say about it. Two opposing sides don't necessarily have two compelling arguments. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke on that mall in the capital, and he didn't say, "Remember, folks, those southern sheriffs with the fire hoses and the German shepherds, they have a point, too." No, he said, "I have a dream. They have a nightmare. This isn't Team Edward and Team Jacob." Liberals, like the ones on that field, must stand up and be counted, and not pretend we're as mean or greedy or shortsighted or just plain batshit at them. And if that's too polarizing for you, and you still want to reach across the aisle and hold hands and sing with someone on the right, try church.

He accepted a cup of ale from his brother-in-law, sat back, then sighed. "Get on with the bludgeoning." "Me?" Miach asked innocently. "Why would I bludgeon?" Runach pursed his lips. "Because you are whoyou are, and you know Soilleir of Cothromaiche very well. I am continually appalled by the simialarites between the two of you." Miach only watched his steadily, a small smile playing around his mouth. "You know what she is, don't you?" "Who?" "Aisling." Runach shot him a look. "A girl, thank you. I haven't been so long at Buidseachd that I cant recognize one when I see one." He finally leaned on his sword, and looked at his sister's husband. "I'm biting. What is she?" "A girl." Runach growled. At least he thought he growled. It was difficult to tell what he was doing when all he wanted to do was wipe the smirk off Miach's face. "You know," he said shortly, "you annoyed me when you were a lad. You haven't improved since then." Runach looked over his shoulder to make sure no observant gel with shorn hair was standing behind him, eavesdropping with abandon, then leaned closer to his brother-in-law. "Let me lay out for you King Mochriadhemiach, all the problems that sit arranged pleasingly on a trencher before me. Perhaps then you can stop smirking long enough to examine them with me." "You're testy.

Ember looked up when he walked in, and when he saw her face, he felt like he’d been gut shot. Heavy bruising discolored the right side up to her eye, and she seemed to be in pain. Her mouth was pinched and her eyes squinted. When she realized he wasn’t one of the wait staff, she immediately turned away. “No customers allowed back here,” she called. She moved down the cook line and motioned to a Hispanic man she was working with to take her place at the grill. Zeke prowled down the parallel aisle until he was right behind her. “L-look at me.” She shook her head stubbornly. “You can’t be back here, Zeke.” “Look at me, please.” After a long pause, she turned her body toward him, but kept her face turned away. Bending his knees enough to peer into her eyes, he waited until she looked at him. Fury rolled through him as he realized he could see finger marks within the bruise. “Who d-did this to you?” She shook her head and refused to answer. Tears glinted in her eyes. “It’s no big deal, okay? Accidents happen. I was just in the wrong place at the right time. It happens when you own a bar.” Her eyes slid away and he thought there was something she wasn’t telling him, but he had a feeling if he called her on it she’d clam up completely. He reached out to touch a length of her dark hair that had escaped from her braid. Her eyes flickered and a single tear rolled down her cheek. He groaned. “D-d-don’t cry. I didn’t come in here to…up-upset you. Just had to check on you.” *****

Letter 4 As I lay dreaming, Montezuma introduced himself and put his hand on my shoulder. The palm of the Aztec king felt like ancient papyrus. When I looked up at him, I saw that his nose was chipped like that of a sphinx. His arms were like long ivory ropes that frayed into hands. He led me down to the river, where we sat together and shared the river’s silence. Then he spoke: „Allow me to tell you my story. It may help you understand your own. At dusk, in the year of one thousand rivers, the Spanish explorer Cortés arrived at the gates of my city. I welcomed him with open arms. I showed Cortés hundreds of aviaries that had built in the city, and finally I took him to the most aviary of sighs. These birds carried only love letters. Cortes laughed and said that all the bird songs made him feel like a virgin bride who is drunk with faith as she walks down the aisle of the church. On her wedding night, she undresses for her husband and he takes her in his arms. She believes everything is possible. When Cortés stared straight into my eyes and said 'It is a night that is always colored in blood'." He paused for a long time before he spoke. Then he said, „Cortés returned with a small army of soldiers on horseback. When they ransacked the city, I was Cortes's own hand that lit the torch that set fire to the aviary of sighs. The fires raged. The birds painted the blue sky black with the ashes of their wings. The gardens were reddened with the blood of our children. The sun rose behind a sky filled with plumes of dark smoke. But during night, three birds of phoenix had risen from the burning aviaries. They closed their eyes and soared straight up into the dark clouds. When they opened their eyes they could see the stars clearly, though they could not see the ground below.

Behold your future, Cavendish the Younger. You will not apply for membership, but the tribe of the elderly will claim you. Your present will not keep pace with the world’s. This slippage will stretch your skin, sag your skeleton, erode your hair and memory, make your skin turn opaque so your twitching organs and blue-cheese veins will be semivisible. You will venture out only in daylight, avoiding weekends and school holidays. Language, too, will leave you behind, betraying your tribal affiliations whenever you speak. On escalators, on trunk roads, in supermarket aisles, the living will overtake you, incessantly. Elegant women will not see you. Store detectives will not see you. Salespeople will not see you, unless they sell stair lifts or fraudulent insurance policies. Only babies, cats, and drug addicts will acknowledge your existence. So do not fritter away your days. Sooner than you fear, you will stand before a mirror in a care home, look at your body, and think, E.T., locked in a ruddy cupboard for a fortnight.

Pyotr wasn’t entirely satisfied with the notion of serving Aunt Thelma roast chicken, it turned out. When Kate made the mistake of telling him her menu plan, after he had caught up with her in the syrup-and-molasses aisle, his first question was “The chickens can be cut into pieces?” “Why would you want to do that?” “I am thinking you could make fried, like KFC. You know how to make fried chicken?” “No.” He waited, looking hopeful. “But you could learn?” he asked finally. “I could if I wanted to, I guess.” “And you would want to, maybe?” “Well, Pyotr, if you like KFC so much, why don’t I just buy some?” Kate said. She would love to see the expression on Aunt Thelma’s face if she did. “No, you should be cooking something,” Pyotr said. “Something with much labor. You are trying to make your aunt feel welcome.” Kate said, “Once you meet Aunt Thelma, you’ll realize that the last thing we want to do is make her feel too welcome.” “But she is family!” Pyotr said. He pronounced the word as if it were holy; he surrounded it with invisible cushions

History is storytelling,’” Yaw repeated. He walked down the aisles between the rows of seats, making sure to look each boy in the eye. Once he finished walking and stood in the back of the room, where the boys would have to crane their necks in order to see him, he asked, “Who would like to tell the story of how I got my scar?” The students began to squirm, their limbs growing limp and wobbly. They looked at each other, coughed, looked away. “Don’t be shy,” Yaw said, smiling now, nodding encouragingly. “Peter?” he asked. The boy who only seconds before had been so happy to speak began to plead with his eyes. The first day with a new class was always Yaw’s favorite. “Mr. Agyekum, sah?” Peter said. “What story have you heard? About my scar?” Yaw asked, smiling still, hoping, now to ease some of the child’s growing fear. Peter cleared his throat and looked at the ground. “They say you were born of fire,” he started. “That this is why you are so smart. Because you were lit by fire.” “Anyone else?” Timidly, a boy named Edem raised his hand. “They say your mother was fighting evil spirits from Asamando.” Then William: “I heard your father was so sad by the Asante loss that he cursed the gods, and the gods took vengeance.” Another, named Thomas: “I heard you did it to yourself, so that you would have something to talk about on the first day of class.” All the boys laughed, and Yaw had to stifle his own amusement. Word of his lesson had gotten around, he knew. The older boys told some of the younger ones what to expect from him. Still, he continued, making his way back to the front of the room to look at his students, the bright boys from the uncertain Gold Coast, learning the white book from a scarred man. “Whose story is correct?” Yaw asked them. They looked around at the boys who had spoken, as though trying to establish their allegiance by holding a gaze, casting a vote by sending a glance. Finally, once the murmuring subsided, Peter raised his hand. “Mr. Agyekum, we cannot know which story is correct.” He looked at the rest of the class, slowly understanding. “We cannot know which story is correct because we were not there.” Yaw nodded. He sat in his chair at the front of the room and looked at all the young men. “This is the problem of history. We cannot know that which we were not there to see and hear and experience for ourselves. We must rely upon the words of others. Those who were there in the olden days, they told stories to the children so that the children would know, so that the children could tell stories to their children. And so on, and so on. But now we come upon the problem of conflicting stories. Kojo Nyarko says that when the warriors came to his village their coats were red, but Kwame Adu says that they were blue. Whose story do we believe, then?” The boys were silent. They stared at him, waiting. “We believe the one who has the power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So when you study history, you must always ask yourself, Whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth? Once you have figured that out, you must find that story too. From there, you begin to get a clearer, yet still imperfect, picture.

I think you’re being narrow-minded where Sindal is concerned.” “He offered marriage only when he realized he’d been trifling with Lady Sophia Windham. I don’t want my husband served up on a platter of duty and obligation, Mags.” “You might have to take him that way.” Maggie rose from the chaise and started pacing. “You could be carrying, Soph. All bets are off, then. I won’t let my niece or nephew bear the stigma St. Just and I have put up with our entire lives. I’ll march Sindal up the aisle at gunpoint, and St. Just will load the thing for me. I’ll see his—” “Hush.” Sophie brought Vim’s handkerchief to her nose, finding his scent an odd comfort. “It shouldn’t come to that, and even if it did, Vim is not going to tarry in Kent any longer than necessary. He’d be one of those husbands gone for years at a time—he hates Kent—and I am bound to stay here as long as Kit is here for me to love. “And then twenty years from now, I can see how marriage to Vim would work: we’d pass each other on the street in Paris, and he’d exchange the most civil and considerate pleasantries with me. I couldn’t bear that.

Why can't we sit together? What's the point of seat reservations,anyway? The bored woman calls my section next,and I think terrible thoughts about her as she slides my ticket through her machine. At least I have a window seat. The middle and aisle are occupied with more businessmen. I'm reaching for my book again-it's going to be a long flight-when a polite English accent speaks to the man beside me. "Pardon me,but I wonder if you wouldn't mind switching seats.You see,that's my girlfriend there,and she's pregnant. And since she gets a bit ill on airplanes,I thought she might need someone to hold back her hair when...well..." St. Clair holds up the courtesy barf bag and shakes it around. The paper crinkles dramatically. The man sprints off the seat as my face flames. His pregnant girlfriend? "Thank you.I was in forty-five G." He slides into the vacated chair and waits for the man to disappear before speaking again. The guy onhis other side stares at us in horror,but St. Clair doesn't care. "They had me next to some horrible couple in matching Hawaiian shirts. There's no reason to suffer this flight alone when we can suffer it together." "That's flattering,thanks." But I laugh,and he looks pleased-until takeoff, when he claws the armrest and turns a color disturbingy similar to key lime pie. I distract him with a story about the time I broke my arm playing Peter Pan. It turned out there was more to flying than thinking happy thoughts and jumping out a window. St. Clair relaxes once we're above the clouds. Time passes quickly for an eight-hour flight. We don't talk about what waits on the other side of the ocean. Not his mother. Not Toph.Instead,we browse Skymall. We play the if-you-had-to-buy-one-thing-off-each-page game. He laughs when I choose the hot-dog toaster, and I tease him about the fogless shower mirror and the world's largest crossword puzzle. "At least they're practical," he says. "What are you gonna do with a giant crossword poster? 'Oh,I'm sorry Anna. I can't go to the movies tonight. I'm working on two thousand across, Norwegian Birdcall." "At least I'm not buying a Large Plastic Rock for hiding "unsightly utility posts.' You realize you have no lawn?" "I could hide other stuff.Like...failed French tests.Or illegal moonshining equipment." He doubles over with that wonderful boyish laughter, and I grin. "But what will you do with a motorized swimming-pool snack float?" "Use it in the bathtub." He wipes a tear from his cheek. "Ooo,look! A Mount Rushmore garden statue. Just what you need,Anna.And only forty dollars! A bargain!" We get stumped on the page of golfing accessories, so we switch to drawing rude pictures of the other people on the plane,followed by rude pictures of Euro Disney Guy. St. Clair's eyes glint as he sketches the man falling down the Pantheon's spiral staircase. There's a lot of blood. And Mickey Mouse ears. After a few hours,he grows sleepy.His head sinks against my shoulder. I don't dare move.The sun is coming up,and the sky is pink and orange and makes me think of sherbet.I siff his hair. Not out of weirdness.It's just...there. He must have woken earlier than I thought,because it smells shower-fresh. Clean. Healthy.Mmm.I doze in and out of a peaceful dream,and the next thing I know,the captain's voice is crackling over the airplane.We're here. I'm home.

Mrs. Baker opened the classroom door, pulled the shades down on all the windows, turned the lights off, and then patrolled up and down the aisles. I bet she was rolling her eyes then. It doesn’t take very long when you are scrunched under your desk with your hands over your head breathing quietly and evenly to feel three things: That your spine is not meant to bend like this. That if you don’t stretch your legs out soon, they are going to spasm and you’ll lose all feeling and probably not be able to walk for a very long time. That you are going to throw up any minute, because you can see the wads of Bazooka bubblegum that Danny Hupfer has been sticking under his desk all year, which now look like little wasp nests hanging down. But we followed our government’s drill procedures precisely and stayed under our desks for eighteen minutes, until the wind would have whisked away the first waves of airborne radioactive particles, and the blast of burning air would have passed overhead, and the mushroom cloud would no longer be expanding, and every living thing would have been incinerated except for us because we were scrunched under our gummy desks with our hands over our heads, breathing quietly and evenly.

I turn from the window and see Ringer across the aisle, staring at me. She holds up two fingers. I nod. Two minutes to the drop. I pull the headband down to position the lens of the eyepiece over my left eye and adjust the strap. Ringer is pointing at Teacup, who’s in the chair next to me. Her eyepiece keeps slipping. I tighten the strap; she gives me a thumbs-up, and something sour rises in my throat. Seven years old. Dear Jesus. I lean over and shout in her ear, “You stay right next to me, understand?” Teacup smiles, shakes her head, points at Ringer. I’m staying with her! I laugh. Teacup’s no dummy. Over the river now, the Black Hawk skimming only a few feet above the water. Ringer is checking her weapon for the thousandth time. Beside her, Flintstone is tapping his foot nervously, staring forward, looking at nothing. There’s Dumbo inventorying his med kit, and Oompa bending his head in an attempt to keep us from seeing him stuff one last candy bar into his mouth. Finally, Poundcake with his head down, hands folded in his lap. Reznik named him Poundcake because he said he was soft and sweet. He doesn’t strike me as either, especially on the firing range. Ringer’s a better marksman overall, but I’ve seen Poundcake take out six targets in six seconds.

Of course, she didn’t remember them; she’d never been introduced to them. Only knew them as Tallskinnyblonde and the rest. She felt like seaweed dragged on a line but managed to smile and say hello. This was the opportunity for which she’d waited. Here she was standing among the friends she wanted to join. Her mind fought for words, something clever to say that might interest them. Finally, two of them greeted her coolly and turned abruptly away, the others following quickly like a school of minnows finning down the street. “Well, so here we are,” Chase said. “I don’t want to interrupt anything. I’ve just come for supplies, then back home.” “You’re not interrupting. I just ran into them. I’ll be out on Sunday, like I said.” Chase shifted his feet, fingered the shell necklace. “I’ll see you then,” she said, but he’d already turned to catch the others. She hurried toward the market, stepping around a family of mallard ducks waddling down Main Street, their bright feet surprisingly orange against the dull pavement. In the Piggly Wiggly, pushing the vision of Chase and the girl from her head, she rounded the end of the bread aisle and saw the truant lady, Mrs. Culpepper, only four feet away. They stood there like a rabbit and a coyote caught together in a yard fence. Kya was now taller than the woman and much more educated, though neither would have thought of that. After all the running, she wanted to bolt, but stood her ground and returned Mrs. Culpepper’s stare. The woman nodded slightly, then moved on.

She shifted gears as they left Worth Avenue, hurtling them along the beach at just sublight speed. “Jesus, Addison, you are so blind,” she finally exploded. “She comes in playing the damsel in distress, and you buy all of it.” “She did n—” “‘Oh, Richard, I need your help,’” she mimicked, doing a startlingly good impression of Patricia’s soft, cultured Brit—especially since the two women had barely spoken a total of five words to one another. “’I’ve left Peter, and I so badly want to make a new start, but I just don’t know how to do it on my own. You’re so big and strong and successful, can’t you see it in your heart to help me?’” Samantha canted her eyes at him. “Did it go a little like that?” Christ. “Maybe,” he hedged. “But—” “See? She wants you back.” “Well, she can’t have me. I’m taken. But she asked for my help, and I’m partially the reason she’s in this position.” “No, she put herself on her back and then you put her in the next position.” “Even so—” “You can’t resist putting on your shining armor, can you?” she said more calmly, blowing out her breath. “And if I know it, then she knows it, too.” “Honestly, Samantha, I think it’s more a matter of Patricia actually being helpless than her acting that way to gain my assistance. I doubt she could find a grocery store on her own, much less the toothpaste aisle.” “But she’s not after toothpaste.” As they stopped at a light, Richard leaned over and grabbed Samantha’s face, kissing her hard on her surprised mouth. “Don’t worry about this. You won’t have to deal with her.” “Maybe not, but you will. And keep in mind that she’s got a subscriber website where she gives advice about how not to get screwed in a divorce.” “She does?” “Yes. Interesting stuff. You really need to spend more time surfing the ’net.” “Shit.” Before Samantha could follow up her smug look with more commentary, he took a breath. “I’ll make dumping the website a condition of my helping her.” “Great. She won’t need the site, anyway, because she’ll be busy screwing you over in person, instead.” “No one screws me over, Samantha. Ever.” “Yet, smart guy. Yet.

You look beautiful,” my dad said as he walked over to me and offered his arm. His voice was quiet--even quieter than his normal quiet--and it broke, trailed off, died. I took his arm, and together we walked forward, toward the large wooden doors that led to the beautiful sanctuary where I’d been baptized as a young child just after our family joined the Episcopal church. Where I’d been confirmed by the bishop at the age of twelve. I’d worn a Black Watch plaid Gunne Sax dress that day. It had delicate ribbon trim and a lace-up tie in the back--a corset-style tie, which, I realized, foreshadowed the style of my wedding gown. I looked through the windows and down the aisle and could see myself kneeling there, the bishop’s wrinkled, weathered hands on my auburn hair. I shivered with emotion, feeling the sting in my nose…and the warm beginnings of nostalgia-driven tears. Biting my bottom lip, I stepped forward with my father. Connell had started walking down the aisle as the organist began playing “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” I could close my eyes and hear the same music playing on the eight-track tape player in my mom’s Oldsmobile station wagon. Was it the London Symphony Orchestra or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir? I suddenly couldn’t remember. But that’s why I’d chosen it for the processional--not because it appeared on Modern Bride’s list of acceptable wedding processionals, but because it reminded me of childhood…of Bach…of home. I watched as Becky followed Connell, and then my sister, Betsy, her almost jet-black hair shining in the beautiful light of the church. I was so glad to have a sister. Ms. Altar Guild gently coaxed my father and me toward the door. “It’s time,” she whispered. My stomach fell. What was happening? Where was I? Who was I? At that very moment, my worlds were colliding--the old world with the new, the past life with the future. I felt my dad inhale deeply, and I followed his lead. He was nervous; I could feel it. I was nervous, too. As we took our place in the doorway, I squeezed his arm and whispered, “I love thee.” It was our little line. “I love thee, too,” he whispered back. And as I turned my head toward the front of the church, my eyes went straight to him--to Marlboro Man, who was standing dead ahead, looking straight at me.

I see many so-called conservative commentators, including some faith leaders, focusing on favorable policy initiatives or court appointments to justify their acceptance of this damage, while de-emphasizing the impact of this president on basic norms and ethics. That strikes me as both hypocritical and wrong. The hypocrisy is evident if you simply switch the names and imagine that a President Hillary Clinton had conducted herself in a similar fashion in office. I've said this earlier but it's worth repeating: close your eyes and imagine these same voices if President Hillary Clinton had told the FBI director, 'I hope you will let it go,' about the investigation of a senior aide, or told casual, easily disprovable lies nearly every day and then demanded we believe them. The hypocrisy is so thick as to be almost darkly funny. I say this as someone who has worked in law enforcement for most of my life, and served presidents of both parties. What is happening now is not normal. It is not fake news. It is not okay. Whatever your politics, it is wrong to dismiss the damage to the norms and traditions that have guided the presidency and our public life for decades or, in many cases, since the republic was founded. It is also wrong to stand idly by, or worse, to stay silent when you know better, while a president so brazenly seeks to undermine public confidence in law enforcement institutions that were established to keep our leaders in check...without these checks on our leaders, without those institutions vigorously standing against abuses of power, our country cannot sustain itself as a functioning democracy. I know there are men and women of good conscience in the United States Congress on both sides of the aisle who understand this. But not enough of them are speaking out. They must ask themselves to what, or to whom, they hold a higher loyalty: to partisan interests or to the pillars of democracy? Their silence is complicity - it is a choice - and somewhere deep down they must know that. Policies come and go. Supreme Court justices come and go. But the core of our nation is our commitment to a set of shared values that began with George Washington - to restraint and integrity and balance and transparency and truth. If that slides away from us, only a fool would be consoled by a tax cut or different immigration policy.

EVEN BEFORE HE GOT ELECTROCUTED, Jason was having a rotten day. He woke in the backseat of a school bus, not sure where he was, holding hands with a girl he didn’t know. That wasn’t necessarily the rotten part. The girl was cute, but he couldn’t figure out who she was or what he was doing there. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, trying to think. A few dozen kids sprawled in the seats in front of him, listening to iPods, talking, or sleeping. They all looked around his age…fifteen? Sixteen? Okay, that was scary. He didn’t know his own age. The bus rumbled along a bumpy road. Out the windows, desert rolled by under a bright blue sky. Jason was pretty sure he didn’t live in the desert. He tried to think back…the last thing he remembered… The girl squeezed his hand. “Jason, you okay?” She wore faded jeans, hiking boots, and a fleece snowboarding jacket. Her chocolate brown hair was cut choppy and uneven, with thin strands braided down the sides. She wore no makeup like she was trying not to draw attention to herself, but it didn’t work. She was seriously pretty. Her eyes seemed to change color like a kaleidoscope—brown, blue, and green. Jason let go of her hand. “Um, I don’t—” In the front of the bus, a teacher shouted, “All right, cupcakes, listen up!” The guy was obviously a coach. His baseball cap was pulled low over his hair, so you could just see his beady eyes. He had a wispy goatee and a sour face, like he’d eaten something moldy. His buff arms and chest pushed against a bright orange polo shirt. His nylon workout pants and Nikes were spotless white. A whistle hung from his neck, and a megaphone was clipped to his belt. He would’ve looked pretty scary if he hadn’t been five feet zero. When he stood up in the aisle, one of the students called, “Stand up, Coach Hedge!” “I heard that!” The coach scanned the bus for the offender. Then his eyes fixed on Jason, and his scowl deepened. A jolt went down Jason’s spine. He was sure the coach knew he didn’t belong there. He was going to call Jason out, demand to know what he was doing on the bus—and Jason wouldn’t have a clue what to say. But Coach Hedge looked away and cleared his throat. “We’ll arrive in five minutes! Stay with your partner. Don’t lose your worksheet. And if any of you precious little cupcakes causes any trouble on this trip, I will personally send you back to campus the hard way.

The Robot With Human Hair Pt2" Said it's the coming of man And I forget when you went away Like a kick to the face Not winning the race (Lion, I've seen you from afar) I've seen her in the car Knowing that you deserve such more Deserved to know you're free Leave, I'm the director Agree to the role of the pilot inspector Breathe, pilot inspector Feed off the role of the radar detector Leave, I'm the director Agree to the role of the pilot inspector Breathe, pilot inspector Feed off the role of the radar detector Well, then, you said you could do this on your own I'm sorry baby, I can't aid you (And then you say, hands down, right now, I'll let this go) You... Well, now it's up to god to save you Save you from all of those bruised, bruised and battered wounds (Wave right with a gun in his hand wave right) Can you taste this blood Dripping sweeter than...? And over your eyes And I, and I fall to both knees Not to beg for your forgiveness But to hate the word And you speak Take a right off these cliffs The ground is staring at your wounded weapons Wounded weapons (And I can't believe that you're right) You can bank the night on this its round And glaring at your well I get hyphy Tell 'em I get hyphy And this is where it ends Well, then, you said you could do this on your own I'm sorry baby, I can't aid you (And then you say, hands down, right now, I'll let this go) You... Well, now it's up to god to save you Save you, save you Save you, save you I can't believe these long words Come from many national absurd This is a line cut across Hope, defeat, the line, the loss I can never be this lone wolf You can never see me across this earth This will be a light that I run from You thought you were so strong You pleaded to never be wrong (Brace yourself, fasten belts) Well, now that you go (Close the hatch, flip the latch) I sit here and wonder (They're not dead, speed ahead) Times have changed It's like we've been trashing silos (Well, now that you go) In the time bomb aisle (I sit here and wonder) Maybe they'll dodge the spill Oil kills, sure it will And I can't breathe the air (Hide your daughter 'cause I'm coming over) To reach for this light (You know I'm not lying about) (Trashing silos in the time bomb aisle) And you can't breathe the air (About trashing silos in the time bomb aisle) Not leaving her to reach The line, the work, the rope, the love And I have seen such worse for you It's a no, I'm not coming back It's a no, I'm not coming back It's a no, I'm not coming back And now you see the sky has turned black Why do think everyone has turned back? It's cause he's gone And now you see the sky has turned black Why do think everyone has turned back? It's cause he's gone And now you see the sky has turned black Why do think everyone has turned back? It's cause he's gone

I’ll never forget this one night when Daddy had taken us way out to a little church up on a high ridge. There was no kind of instrumentation, and the hymns were all sung a cappella. During the preaching, there was a little more shouting from the congregation than usual. When it came time for us to sing, we were introduced by the preacher, a wiry little man with kind of a fiery look in his eyes. We stepped to the front and took our places on the old wood-plank platform to one side of the pulpit. Softly, I sung a note to get us started because it was decided I could come closest to hitting a key that we could all sing in. We began our songs, just as we had planned. I was aware that the pastor was on the stage behind us, but I didn’t think anything of it. After a while, I could feel Stella nudging me in the ribs, trying not to be noticed. I looked at her, and she motioned with her head slightly back toward where the preacher was standing. He seemed to be totally wrapped up in the spirit, nearly in a trance. I didn’t think too much of it, until I spotted a familiar sight—the back markings of a snake, a cottonmouth moccasin. I had seen them in the woods, usually scurrying across the path toward cover. They were afraid of me, and I was afraid of them. And up to now, we had always managed to keep our distance from each other. Here, apparently, they were a part of the worship service. I could see now, out of my peripheral vision, that the preacher had a full grown cottonmouth by the back of the head and it was twisting and coiling all around his forearm. Some members of the congregation were reaching out as if they wanted to touch it. The preacher was getting more and more worked up, and he reached into a wooden crate by the pulpit and took out two more snakes. This time he seemed to be holding them much more carelessly. He lifted them near his face as if daring them to strike. We sisters just kept on singing, unconsciously moving away from the snakes until we were very near the front of the platform. Just then, I noticed something that struck a note of fear in my heart much greater than that inspired by the snakes. My father had stepped into the back of the church to hear his little girls sing. Whatever he had been drinking didn’t impair his ability to see exactly what the preacher had in his hands. Just at that moment, the man and his snakes took a step toward the congregation, thus toward us. Daddy had seen enough. He charged down the aisle like a wild boar through a thicket. “You get them Goddamn snakes away from my kids!” Daddy bellowed with a force in his voice I had never heard before. It was amazing how quickly that preacher broke his trance and paid heed. He had heard the voice of a higher power, in this case a really pissed-off redneck. Daddy swooped us up and out the front door before we had time to think about what was happening. We didn’t even stop singing until we were almost down the steps into the churchyard. We were glad to be out of there, and I at least was proud that Daddy had come to our rescue. But Daddy obviously felt terrible about it. On the way home in the car, he got to feeling especially bad. “Goddamn! I can’t believe I said Goddamn in church!” he muttered to himself. He finally got so upset he had to stop the car and get out in the woods and, in his way, ask God’s forgiveness. I couldn’t help thinking how badly Mama had always wanted Daddy to walk down the church aisle and declare himself. Now he had certainly done that, although not I’m sure the way Mama had in mind.

Have no anxiety about anything,' Paul writes to the Philippians. In one sense it is like telling a woman with a bad head cold not to sniffle and sneeze so much or a lame man to stop dragging his feet. Or maybe it is more like telling a wino to lay off the booze or a compulsive gambler to stay away from the track. Is anxiety a disease or an addiction? Perhaps it is something of both. Partly, perhaps, because you can't help it, and partly because for some dark reason you choose not to help it, you torment yourself with detailed visions of the worst that can possibly happen. The nagging headache turns out to be a malignant brain tumor. When your teenage son fails to get off the plane you've gone to meet, you see his picture being tacked up in the post office among the missing and his disappearance never accounted for. As the latest mid-East crisis boils, you wait for the TV game show to be interrupted by a special bulletin to the effect that major cities all over the country are being evacuated in anticipation of a nuclear attack. If Woody Allen were to play your part on the screen, you would roll in the aisles with the rest of them, but you're not so much as cracking a smile at the screen inside your own head. Does the terrible fear of disaster conceal an even more terrible hankering for it? Do the accelerated pulse and the knot in the stomach mean that, beneath whatever their immediate cause, you are acting out some ancient and unresolved drama of childhood? Since the worst things that happen are apt to be the things you don't see coming, do you think there is a kind of magic whereby, if you only can see them coming, you will be able somehow to prevent them from happening? Who knows the answer? In addition to Novocain and indoor plumbing, one of the few advantages of living in the twentieth century is the existence of psychotherapists, and if you can locate a good one, maybe one day you will manage to dig up an answer that helps. But answer or no answer, the worst things will happen at last even so. 'All life is suffering' says the first and truest of the Buddha's Four Noble Truths, by which he means that sorrow, loss, death await us all and everybody we love. Yet "the Lord is at hand. Have no anxiety about anything," Paul writes, who was evidently in prison at the time and with good reason to be anxious about everything, 'but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.' He does not deny that the worst things will happen finally to all of us, as indeed he must have had a strong suspicion they were soon to happen to him. He does not try to minimize them. He does not try to explain them away as God's will or God's judgment or God's method of testing our spiritual fiber. He simply tells the Philippians that in spite of them—even in the thick of them—they are to keep in constant touch with the One who unimaginably transcends the worst things as he also unimaginably transcends the best. 'In everything,' Paul says, they are to keep on praying. Come Hell or high water, they are to keep on asking, keep on thanking, above all keep on making themselves known. He does not promise them that as a result they will be delivered from the worst things any more than Jesus himself was delivered from them. What he promises them instead is that 'the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.' The worst things will surely happen no matter what—that is to be understood—but beyond all our power to understand, he writes, we will have peace both in heart and in mind. We are as sure to be in trouble as the sparks fly upward, but we will also be "in Christ," as he puts it. Ultimately not even sorrow, loss, death can get at us there. That is the sense in which he dares say without risk of occasioning ironic laughter, "Have no anxiety about anything." Or, as he puts it a few lines earlier, 'Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say, Rejoice!

You ever stop to think about the evil in this world?” Father Brennan chuckled. “Of course. The evil in this world can seem quite overwhelming sometimes, but we have a choice to give in to it or not. For example, you choose to see evil because you’re tasked with bringing murderers to justice. People who watch television see evil because that’s what sells, so that’s all the media shows them. Me, I choose to see life. I see the joy of a new mother holding her child for the first time. I hear the laughter of newlyweds as they walk down the church aisle together as husband and wife. I see the joy of a family getting together for the holidays. These are the things that give me hope. I’ve seen the dark side too. More times than I wish to count. But I balance it with the good. I suggest you do the same. Evil is part of this world, as it’s part of your job, and it will remain so until the end of days, I’m afraid. You need to counterbalance it with the good. Find the good.

True, there's an aisle devoted to foreign foods, and then there are familiar foods that have been through the Japanese filter and emerged a little bit mutated. Take breakfast cereal. You'll find familiar American brands such as Kellogg's, but often without English words anywhere on the box. One of the most popular Kellogg's cereals in Japan is Brown Rice Flakes. They're quite good, and the back-of-the-box recipes include cold tofu salad and the savory pancake okonomiyaki, each topped with a flurry of crispy rice flakes. Iris and I got mildly addicted to a Japanese brand of dark chocolate cornflakes, the only chocolate cereal I've ever eaten that actually tastes like chocolate. (Believe me, I've tried them all.) Stocking my pantry at Life Supermarket was fantastically simple and inexpensive. I bought soy sauce, mirin, rice vinegar, rice, salt, and sugar. (I was standing right in front of the salt when I asked where to find it This happens to me every time I ask for help finding any item in any store.) Total outlay: about $15, and most of that was for the rice. Japan is an unabashed rice protectionist, levying prohibitive tariffs on imported rice. As a result, supermarket rice is domestic, high quality, and very expensive. There were many brands of white rice to choose from, the sacks advertising different growing regions and rice varieties. (I did the restaurant wine list thing and chose the second least expensive.) Japanese consumers love to hear about the regional origins of their foods. I almost never saw ingredients advertised as coming from a particular farm, like you'd see in a farm-to-table restaurant in the U.S., but if the milk is from Hokkaido, the rice from Niigata, and the tea from Uji, all is well. I suppose this is not so different from Idaho potatoes and Florida orange juice. When I got home, I opened the salt and sugar and spooned some into small bowls near the stove. The next day I learned that Japanese salt and sugar are hygroscopic: their crystalline structure draws in water from the air (and Tokyo, in summer, has enough water in the air to supply the world's car washes). I figured this was harmless and went on licking slightly moist salt and sugar off my fingers every time I cooked.

We forgo bagels at H&H, and instead push our way into the throng of shoppers clogging the narrow aisles of Zabar's. We travel up here usually once a month so Arianna can get the pickles she likes and stock up on their cream cheese spreads and coffee beans. We hit the dairy aisle first, dropping containers of Greek yogurt and crème fraiche into our basket. "Zabar's makes me hungry," Arianna announces as we pass the smoked fish counter. I cannot think of anything more unappetizing than fish that has been pulverized into a spread. "Seriously? Smoked fish? What are you, a seventy-year-old man? I understand if you said that back at the cheese counter. Did you see the fresh pasta that was on sale? Try-color cappelletti?" "Their smoked sable is incredible. Not that I need to spend twenty bucks on smoked fish at the moment, but if they were giving out free sample, I'd stand in line for hours.

Not long ago, I saw a woman in a drugstore pick something up in her hand, delighted, and hold it out toward her husband. It was just a perfume bottle, but the shape of it was lovely. “See this, hon?” she said. And the man said, “Yeah,” but he had his back to her and was walking down the aisle away from her. The woman put the thing back, diminished. Do you know what I mean, Martin? I think this comes from mistakes so many women make early on in a marriage. When we got engaged, I stopped driving my own car. I rode shotgun every time we were together. The default settings on the mirrors, on the closeness of the seat to the wheel, they were yours. Remember when that car caught on fire, the engine? Maybe it was auto grief. Don’t think I’m crazy, Martin. I have only gotten out my shovel, to dig a bit. I’m just pointing out what I uncover. You can look or not. I want the difference to be that I don’t put the thing back on the shelf because you say it’s not worth seeing.

With my professional experience of all these years, I can surely tell you that it’s not the typical jittery feeling of the wedding pressure, it’s something else. I am seeing pain and worry on their faces. faces.

Colorful foods are often healthier because they contain antioxidant pigments, whether it’s the beta-carotene that makes carrots and sweet potatoes orange, the lycopene antioxidant pigment that makes tomatoes red, or the anthocyanin pigments that make blueberries blue. The colors are the antioxidants. That knowledge alone should revolutionize your stroll down the produce aisle. Guess which have more antioxidants—red onions or white onions? You don’t need to look up the answer. You can see the difference with your own eyes. (Indeed, red onions have 76 percent more antioxidant capacity than white, with yellow onions in between.3) So, given the choice, why buy another white onion ever again? Red cabbage may contain eight times more antioxidants than green cabbage,4 which is why you’ll never find a green cabbage in my house. Pop quiz: Which wipes out more free radicals—pink grapefruit or regular grapefruit? Granny Smith or Red Delicious? Iceberg lettuce or romaine? Red grapes or green? Yellow or white sweetcorn? See, you don’t need me to go to the supermarket with you. You can make all these calls yourself.

Helpful Tips For Getting The Nutrition You Need Your interest in nutrition means that you are probably already a label reader as you traverse the supermarket aisles. You also hear about food and nutrition on the evening news. The knowledge you acquire about nutrition for optimal health can truly be life-changing. These tips will help you in your efforts to get the health and energy-giving nutrients that you need. Remember that portions are extremely important. To make sure you are eating the correct portion sizes, fill up your plate with the healthiest foods first and then the least healthy. It also helps to eat the foods on your plate in the same order. Carefully inspect food labels to determine the nutrition facts. Just because something says that it has reduced fat doesn't mean that it is full of healthy ingredients. Avoid highly processed foods when losing weight. Any label that is trustworthy is a label that has ingredients which are common and that people know what they are. Avoid buying foods with a lot of artificial ingredients listed on their label. Take some ideas from other countries when evaluating your nutrition. For centuries, other cultures have incorporated unusual and inventive ingredients that can be very good for you. Taking the time to research some of these ideas and finding the ingredients, can definitely add some spice to a potentially boring menu. Treatment Wheatgrass shoots may not be rated #1 in taste, but they contain many nutrients and vitamins that are great for your nutrition. Incorporate more wheatgrass in your diet to get healthy. It is a great way to detoxify your body and rebuild your bloodstream. In fact, it is a great treatment for anyone with blood disorders. Sugary drinks like apple juice contain a large amount of sugar. People who are trying to lose weight should avoid fruit drinks because they are deceptively filled with carbohydrates. Oranges, apples, and peaches all contain very high levels of sugar which in turn provides a ton of calories. Hospitals are often known to use fruit juice as a treatment for severely malnourished patients, due to its caloric value. These are just a few ideas that can get you going in the right direction or that can give you some new ways to get the nutrients that you need. Don't expect instant results - this is a long-term process. Ignoring the advice is like running a motor without ever changing the oil. Sure, you won't see any effects for a long time, but little by little the motor is sustaining irreversible damage. Don't let that happen to your body!

I was in love with the work, too, despite its overabundance. The world had always seemed disturbingly chaotic to me, my choices too bewildering. I was fundamentally happier, I found, with my focus on the ground. For the first time, I could clearly see the connection between my actions and their consequences. I knew why I was doing what I was doing, and I believed in it. I felt the gap between who I thought I was and how I behaved begin to close, growing slowly closer to authentic. I felt my body changing to accommodate what I was asking of it. I could lift the harness onto Sam's back without asphyxiating myself. I could carry two full five-gallon buckets with ease, tottering down the aisle of the barn like a Chinese peasant. I had always been attracted to the empty, sparkly grab bag of instant gratification, and I was beginning to learn something about the peace you can find inside an infinite challenge.

That night, though, Mom was getting things ready for a party at the restaurant, so I had to bum a ride with Jack and Julie. Jack said they didn’t need a chaperon, but it was just talk. He always helped me when it mattered. While we were waiting for Julie, I asked him about the one detail that was bothering me. “I’m supposed to meet her there,” I said. “Do I meet her inside the gym or outside?” “Do you have a date or not?” “More or less.” Jack grinned and shook his head. “Well, it’s not that simple,” I told him. “She can’t go out on dates, so she’s coming with her parents, and I’m supposed to meet her.” Jack broke out laughing. “You’re singing the freshman blues again, Eddie. Everything ends up half-baked.” “So where do I meet her on a half-baked date?” “Inside,” he said. “That way you won’t have to pay for her ticket.” “I don’t want to look like a cheapskate.” “Why hide the truth? Besides, her parents are bringing her, right? You don’t want to meet her father, do you?” “I don’t know.” “Look, he’ll just shake your hand and give you a dirty look. That’s what freshman girls’ fathers always do.” “Really?” “So save the hassle and the money. Wait inside.” I ended up waiting right inside the door. When Wendy and her father came in, she was careful to keep things looking casual. She pretended not to notice me at first, then said, “Oh, hi, Eddie,” and introduced me to her father as a boy in her algebra class. He shook my hand and gave me a dirty look. For a minute I thought the three of us would end up sitting together, but her father decided not to join us in the student rooting section. Wendy and I found an empty bench in the bleachers and were alone for twenty or thirty seconds before two of her friends came along, then three of mine. Then some friends of theirs. And finally Wayne Parks squeezed into a spot on the bench behind us. All through the game he kept leaning forward and making comments like “Where’s the ref keep his Seeing Eye dog during the game?” Even if Wendy and I hadn’t had an audience, we couldn’t have done much talking. During every time-out the Los Cedros Spirit Band, sitting three rows behind us, blasted us off the benches with fight songs. To top things off, Wendy’s father sat across the aisle and stared at us all night. And the Los Cedros Panthers blew a six-point lead in the final minute and lost the game at the buzzer. Before Wendy and I had our coats on, her father showed up beside us, mumbled, “Nice to meet you, Willy,” and led her away. The night could have been worse, I guess. I didn’t break an ankle or choke on my popcorn or rip my pants. But I had a hard time being thankful for those small favors.

Before the day I didn't fit, this conversation was largely an abstraction for me. My stance was the same as it is now (if people pay for a service, it's the seller's obligation to accommodate those people and provide the service they paid for), but I didn't understand what that panicky, uncertain walk down the aisle actually felt like. How inhumane it is. I'm telling you this not to garner sympathy or pity, or even to change your opinion about how airplanes should accommodate larger passengers. I'm just telling you, human to human, that life is complicated and fat people are trying to live. Same as you. Reasons I have had to fly within the past five years: For work (often). To see beloved friends get married. To speak to college students about rape culture and body image. To hold my father's hand while he died. I'm sorry, but I'm not constraining and rearranging my life just because no one cares enough to make flying accessible to all bodies.

You want more water, Aisling? You need more water, yes? I saw you use the water I bring you earlier. It is good. Here is more water. I bring it just for you." Zaccheo materialized at my elbow with a tray full of pitchers of ice water. He set them on the table, his eyes, which I can only describe as moony, watching me besottedly the entire time. "Thanks, Zaccheo. I think five pitchers is my limit." "Water is good. Very good for the womens. My mother, she tells me this. Very good for their peepees, yes? Makes no trouble there. I go now. You talk. You drink water." He zipped off to his serving station, a happy smile on bis face. I glanced at Nora. "He's very attentive." "Yes, I can see that. And evidently well trained by his mother to anticipate a woman's need of water to avoid urinary tract infections. Commendable, that.

Ophelia moaned as I patted her cheeks in the approved "vague assistance to woman who has fainted" manner. "Perdy?" she mumbled, her eyelashes fluttering. "No, it's just me," I said, looking up when the door opened. "And Drake and Fiat, and Pal and Istvan, and I think that's Renaldo and another one of Fiat's bullies in the hall, although it's a little hard to see with everyone in the way.

I sobbed out the story of the day thus far, too far gone in my relief to see Drake to care that I was watering his tux again. “Kincsem, I understand that it was difficult to be banished in that way. I do not understand why you believe your hands are possessed, but I am confident you will fill me in on that aspect of your day. We must leave now, however. I cannot protect this house, and I will not have you at further risk.” I sniffled and accepted the tissues that he had recently started carrying. “I know. And I want to go. I’m just so glad you’re here. Sometimes things get so overwhelming, and only when you’re around do I feel better.” Drake tipped my chin up, his eyes sparkling with a brilliant emerald light. “That has to be one of the nicest things you’ve said to me. You have made yourself necessary to me, as well.” I balled up my fingers and punched him in the stomach. He laughed as he rubbed his belly, then pulled me tightly against his chest. “All right, I will say it, but you must make note that this fulfills the requirement for the day.” “Too much talking and not enough kissing,” I said as I grabbed his head and pulled it down to me. His kiss was as hot as his dragon fire, scorching more than just my lips. His tongue danced along mine, driving me into squirming against him, wanting what only he could give me. “Give it,” I whispered into his mouth, and quivered to the tips of my toes when he opened his mouth and let his fire sweep through me. It blazed a trail along my veins, burning my blood, carrying me along in an inferno of desire, love, and need. “I love you more than all the treasures of the world, Aisling. Our love will burn for an eternity until we have taken our last breaths, and even then it will continue to shine as a testament to that which we are together, a beacon of passion for all to see like a glittering star in the darkness of the night sky.” “You sure know how to sweep a girl off her feet,” I said, kissing the corners of his delectable mouth as his dragon fire faded away. I felt empty inside without it, as if a part of me was missing, a sadness so profound it made my soul weep. “I love you, too.” “We must leave. I do not like this place.” “I know the feeling

Er..." I bit my lower lip. "Do you have a minute? I wanted to talk to you really quickly, without being overheard." She looked mildly surprised but sat down on the end of the bed and nodded toward a chair. "Of course." Jim ambled over, plopping itself down at her feet. I glanced at the demon. "Er..." "Jim, shoo," Aisling said, correctly reading my thoughts. "What? I'm not doing anything!" "You're making May uncomfortable. Go see what the boys are doing." "Whatever it is, it won't be nearly as interesting as this," it answered. "Oh, it doesn't matter, I guess," I said with a tight smile. "Jim might have some helpful insights as well." "I'm all over helpful insights, sister," it told me with an oddly endearing grin. "What's the problem? You can tell Dr. Jim. Is it something in the romance department? Need some advice on how to handle Gabriel?" "No, thank you-" "Ah. Then it's the sex, right? Fiery, animalistic, dragon sex too much for you?" It was difficult to keep from rolling my eyes. "Thank you, my sex life is not open to-" "What's the silver dragon element? Earth?" Jim's face screwed up as it thought. "Oh, man, that means he's gonna want to do it outdoors all the time. Buck naked in the wilderness. My advice is to take sunscreen and bug spray. And maybe a spatula or something to dig the sand out of your butt crack, in case he takes you to a beach." "Jim!" Aisling said, wrapping her hands around the demon's muzzle. She shot me an apologetic look. "I'm so sorry. It knows better than to offer unwanted sexual advice." "Just trying to be helpful," it said in a muffled voice. "Well, you're not. And you can just be quiet unless you have something of importance to offer to the conversation," Aisling told it as she released its muzzle

Uncle Damian crossed his arms and gave me a stern, unyielding, wholly unsympathetic look. For some odd reason, it made me feel immensely better. “Buck up, woman! You just took a hard left to the gut, but I trained you better than this.” “I’m pregnant,” I said, sniffling as I wiped up the last of my messy tears. “I’m allowed to be emotional.” “You’re not allowed to be an idiot, and that’s the path you’re heading down if you don’t stop right now. I trained you to be a smart, savvy woman who could handle herself in any situation. Now let’s see the last of this pitiful creature, and more of the Aisling I know you can be.” He was right. I straightened my shoulders, lifting my chin as I sniffled my last sniffle. Drake wasn’t excluding me because he wanted to—he’d always been proud of me as his mate, demanding I be at his side for everything. I was just giving in to my hormones, and that wasn’t going to help anyone. If I wanted things to change, I’d have to see to it myself. “You’re absolutely right. Dammit, I am a Guardian. I am a wyvern’s mate—we won’t go into whose right now because that’s all screwed up—but I am still a wyvern’s mate, and that’s important.” Righteous indignation filled me, but it was a cleansing, energizing emotion. “That’s better,” Uncle Damian nodded as I stormed over to the window and flung back the curtain. “And I am a demon lord, one of the seven princes of Abaddon!” I yelled, spinning around to face him, shaking my fist to the ceiling. “As god is my witness, I’ll never go hungry again!” “Eh…” Uncle Damian pursed his lips. “Sorry. Got carried away with the moment. Jim, Traci! I summon thee!” Both demons appeared before me just as Rene cracked open the door and peered in. “Is everything all right? We heard yelling.” “Come in and join the fun,” I said as he slowly came into the room, Nora on his heels. “Everything’s crap right now, but it’s about to get a whole lot better

We’re in Florence.” He looks at Tate and Nina with wide eyes. “We have to go. Now!” They all scramble to gather their things, and I move to stand in the aisle. Tate’s ready first and he gives me the one-armed side-hug thing, but he closes us in with his hand on my other shoulder, tapping it a few times. “I’m glad you came with us. It’s been fun,” he says. “Thanks for inviting me. It was good getting to know you guys.” Tate steps aside and Nina gives me a quick squeeze. “You’re sweet, Pippa. I’m sure I’ll see you again sometime.” She pulls away and winks at me before following Tate off the train. Darren holds the handle to his backpack on the seat. My heart is in my ears, my throat, exploding out of my chest, like waking up from a nightmare. I force a smile. “I’m glad you asked me to come along. Well, Nina asked, technically, but--” “It was my idea,” he says. “To ask you to come. I wanted you to.” My face warms. “Pippa, I--” “Darren,” Tate calls from the door behind me, “this train is about to leave.” Darren looks over my shoulder and nods, eyebrows tense, before he opens his arms and I walk into his embrace. Our chins sit on each other’s shoulders, my cheek against his warm, scruffy one. I try to ignore the sting in my eyes. I don’t know how to say good-bye. I don’t know what to say at all.

Darren,” Tate calls from the door behind me, “this train is about to leave.” Darren looks over my shoulder and nods, eyebrows tense, before he opens his arms and I walk into his embrace. Our chins sit on each other’s shoulders, my cheek against his warm, scruffy one. I try to ignore the sting in my eyes. I don’t know how to say good-bye. I don’t know what to say at all. “Seriously,” Tate calls again. “We’ve gotta go, bro.” We break apart and he’s about to slip his arms through the straps to his backpack when he digs in the front pouch and pulls out a paper sack. “I almost forgot,” he says, handing it to me. “For you.” “What is it?” “Just some things I found here and there.” Darren smiles and I turn to mush. “I’ll see you soon,” he says as we change places in the aisle and he backs toward the door. I manage a smile. “Promise?” He flashes his twisted tooth in a wide grin. “I promise. Bye, Pippa.” I raise my hand to wave at the same time he does, and he hops down the steps to the platform. I rush to my seat and watch the three of them through the window as they wave, then disappear into the crowded station. I reach into the little bag and pull out three refrigerator magnets: Pompeii, Positano, and Capri.

Hmph." I pushed the button a couple more times, trying to hurry the elevator along. "Oh, yeah, that's going to do some good. Everyone knows an elevator doesn't shift into second until you really lean on the call button." I pressed it another fifteen times, giving Jim a triumphant smile when the green light lit above the door. "Ha! See? It does too work—oh, sorry. Didn't mean to step on your foot.

The second I step into The Phoenix, Zelda hits me with another one of those stupid glares of hers. Well, I’m not one to keep things bottled up. The question is out before the bell over the door stops ringing. “Why, why, why do you keep looking at me like that?” She glances at the others around her like she doesn’t know full well I’m talking to her. “Who? Me?” She puts a dainty hand to her chest. I go into a long speech as I walk down the center aisle of the shop. “Cut the innocent act. You’re up to something. Every time I see you, you either look at me like you want me to burst into flames or like you know a secret about me. But the thing is, I’m an open book, I have no secrets. So, either you really do want me to burst into flames or you have, like, eye Tourette’s. Like you don’t have control over them. And if that were the case, then why have I never seen you randomly cross your eyes or blink rapidly?” Her brows knit together and her lips purse. Then her face relaxes and she freaking crosses her eyes. She turns to everyone else. “I have no idea what this guy is talking about.” They all laugh way too hard for my liking. Logan crosses his eyes, too. “Dude, are you okay? Do you need a glass of water? Maybe a cup of tea?” “Ha ha, it’s all so funny, but I’m serious!” My arms fling out in exasperation. “She’s up to something.” Zelda shakes her head and scoffs. “Whatever, Dan.

Okay, now you’re finally sounding crazy. Of course not. I’m forwarding you a new email from a bride named Amy.” I keep Jay on the line and check my email. Dear Jen, Let me preface this by saying that I have never been a bridesmaid. I am one of the first of my friends to be getting married and am 25 years old. I am getting married this September, weekend after Labor Day, and it has been quite a learning experience at that. I had to let my maid of honor go, due to her issues of not being able to be part of the big day and rearrange. That was a stressful part of planning. :/ I knock the pizza box off my bed and put my brother on speakerphone, tapping the reply button as my eyes begin to flutter shut. My body clearly isn’t on the same page with my brain, which is screaming that professional bridesmaids don’t get to nap. Dear Amy, Thanks so much for taking the time to write to me. Congratulations on your upcoming wedding! It’s great to hear about your interest in having me as a professional bridesmaid at your wedding, especially since you’ve had some problems with your maid of honor. I’m very sorry about that, by the way. I’d be happy to see what I can do to help between now and September. I would love to jump on a call with you to chat more about this. Please let me know when is best for you. All my love, Jen Glantz “I really hope she says yes, Jay. I think I could really be there for her. I think I could really help.

Now, if you’ll indulge me for a minute, I want you to think about the process of boarding a commercial airplane. You wait until your group is called. You step onto an airplane that will rush down the runway and lift you into the air, traveling five hundred miles an hour at thirty thousand feet, for however long it takes to get where you’re going. You greet the flight attendants, make your way to your seat and buckle in for the ride. Usually before the flight departs, you hear from the people in the cockpit, whose job it is to deliver you safely to your destination. In most cases, you don’t see their faces until you’re disembarking, when you finally see the pilots standing at the head of the aisle to thank you for flying with their airline. You’ve just put your life in the hands of two people you’ll probably never see again without having seen their faces beforehand or knowing a thing about their credentials. Many of us have probably flown with a commercial pilot on his or her first day at the controls, yet it never occurs to us to question whether they should be there.

Good-bye, America, the grizzled captain said during our ascent, looking out the window at a landscape I could not see from my aisle seat. I've had enough of you, he said. The affectless lieutenant, sitting in the middle, agreed. Why did we ever call it the beautiful country? he said. I had no answer.

You deserve someone who loves you with every single beat of his heart, someone who thinks about you constantly, someone who spends every minute of every day just wondering what you're doing, where you are, who you're with and if you're ok. You need someone who can protect you from your fears. You need someone who will treat you with respect, love every part of you, especially your flaws. You should be with someone who can make you happy, really happy, dancing-on-air happy. Someone who should have taken the chance to be with you years ago instead of becoming scared and being too afraid to try. I am not scared anymore, Rosie. I am not afraid to try. I know what that feeling was at your wedding - it was jealousy. My heart broke when I saw the woman I love turning away from me to walk down the aisle with another man, a man she planned to spend the rest of her life with. It was like a prison sentence for me - years stretching ahead without me being able to tell you how I feel or hold you how I wanted to. Twice we've stood beside each other at the altar, Rosie. Twice. And twice we got it wrong. I needed you to be there for my wedding day but I was too stupid to see that I needed you to be the reason for my wedding day. I should never have let your lips leave mine all those years ago in Boston. I should never have wasted all those years without you. Give me a chance to make them up to you. I love you, Rosie, and I want to be with you and Katie and Josh. Always. Please think about it. Don't waste your time on Greg. This is our opportunity. Let's stop being afraid and take the chance. I promise I'll make you happy.

The problem with idolatry, though, is that whatever you idolize, you then demonize the opposite. So you can tell if people idolize politics by whether or not they demonize the opposite side of the aisle. Sure, a Republican can disagree and dialogue with a Democrat, but if a Republican thinks that Democrats are the source of all evil, that's a sign of an idol - a worthless, fake god. If you idolize your self-righteousness, then you demonize those who are evil or worldly and not like you. Want to know what you probably idolize? Ask what you demonize. But when you idolize Jesus, you demonize demons... When Jesus and His righteousness are ultimate, then you actually see evil as the source of evil, rather than politics, money, or gender.