Seems Like Just Yesterday Quotes

I look down at our knees, slightly touching. Jeans against jeans. Does she notice the heat transferring from her body to mine? Does she even realize what she's doing to me? I know, I know. I'm not a virgin and the slightest touch of a girl's knee is driving me insane. I don't even know what I'm feeling for Maggie, I just know that I'm feeling. It's something I've tried to avoid and deny until yesterday, when I held her in my arms while her tears spilled onto my shirt. God, our knees touching isn't enough. I need more. She's knotting her fingers together on her lap as if she doesn't know what to do with them. I want to touch her, but what if she pulls away like before? I've never been such a wuss with a girl in my life. I bite my bottom lip as I slide my hand about millionth of a millimeter closer to her hand. She doesn't seem fazed so I move closer. And closer. When the tips of my fingers touch her wrist, she freezes. But she doesn't jerk her hand away. God, her skin is so soft, I think as my fingers trail a path from her wrist to her knuckles to her smooth, manicured nails. I swear touching her like this is driving me nuts. It's more erotic, more intense than any other time with Kendra. I feel awkward and inexperienced as a freshman again. I look up. Everyone else is oblivious to the intensity of emotions running rampant in the back of the public bus. When I look back down at my hand covering hers, I'm grateful she hasn't come to her senses and pulled away. As if she knows my thoughts, we both turn our hands at the same time so our hands are palm against palm...finger against finger. Her hand is dwarfed against mine. It makes her seem more delicate and petite than I'd realize. I feel a need to protect her and be her champion should she ever need one. With a slight shift of my hand, I lace my fingers through hers. I'm holding hands. With Maggie Armstrong. I'm not even going to think about how wrong it is because it feels so right. She's avoided looking right at me, but now she turns her head and our eyes lock. God, how come I never noticed before how long her lashes were and how her brown eyes have specks of gold that sparkle when the sun shine on them? The bus stops suddenly and I look out the window. It's our stop. She must have realized this because she pulls her hand away from mine and stands. I follow behind, still reeling.

Come, I'll take you to San Giacomo before you change your mind,' I finally said. 'There is still time before lunch. Remember the way?' 'I remember the way.' 'You remember the way,' I echoed. He looked at me and smiled. It cheered me. Perhaps because I knew he was taunting me. Twenty years was yesterday, and yesterday was just earlier this morning, and morning seemed light-years away. 'I'm like you,' he said. 'I remember everything.' I stopped for a second. If you remember everything, I wanted to say, and if you are really like me, then before you leave tomorrow, or when you're just ready to shut the door of the taxi and have already said goodbye to everyone else and there's not a thing left to say in this life, then, just this once, turn to me, even in jest, or as an afterthought, which would have meant everything to me when we were together, and, as you did back then, look me in the face, hold my gaze, and call me by your name.

People seem weak, but they’re strong. They seem strong, but they’re weak. No matter how much you cry, you still have to sleep. And you even get hungry. You suddenly realize you’re doing the same things you did yesterday. You say hi to your friends and smile just like you did yesterday. Life goes on as if nothing ever happened… I want to go somewhere… Anywhere… Somewhere where I can forget everything. …where I’ll forget everything …and be reborn. Mars Volume 18

Yesterday that new lipstick made me very happy," I tell the counselor. "But today, it just doesn't seem like enough.

The shirt was a screen print of a famous Surrealist artwork by René Magritte in which he drew a pipe and then beneath it wrote in cursive Ceci n’est pas une pipe. (“This is not a pipe.”) “I just don’t get that shirt,” Mom said. “Peter Van Houten will get it, trust me. There are like seven thousand Magritte references in An Imperial Affliction.” “But it is a pipe.” “No, it’s not,” I said. “It’s a drawing of a pipe. Get it? All representations of a thing are inherently abstract. It’s very clever.” “How did you get so grown up that you understand things that confuse your ancient mother?” Mom asked. “It seems like just yes-terday that I was telling seven-year-old Hazel why the sky was blue. You thought I was a genius back then.” “Why is the sky blue?” I asked. “Cuz,” she answered. I laughed.

When did my youth slip away from me? I suddenly thought. It was over, wasn't it? Seemed just like yesterday I was still only half grown up. Huey Lewis and the News had a couple of hit songs then. Not so many years ago. And now here I was, inside a closed circuit, spinning my wheels. Knowing I wasn't getting anywhere but spinning just the same. I had to. Had to keep that up or I wouldn't be able to survive.

Fine!” I threw my hands up in the air. “Yes, you mean something to me. What you did for me on Thanksgiving—that made me…” My voice cracked. “That made me happy. You made me happy. And I still care about you. Okay? You mean something to me—something I can’t really even put into words because everything seems too lame in comparison. I’ve always wanted you, even when I hated you. I want you even though you drive me freaking insane. And I know I screwed everything up. Not just for you and me, but for Dee.” My breath caught on a sob. The words rushed from me, one after another. “And I never felt this way with anyone else. Like I’m falling every time I’m around you, like I can’t catch my breath, and I feel alive —not just standing around and letting my life walk past me. There’s been nothing like that with anyone else.” Tears pricked my eyes as I stepped back. My chest was swelling so fast it hurt. “But none of this matters, because I know you really hate me now . I understand that. I just wish I could go back and change everything! I—” Daemon was suddenly in front of me, clasping my cheeks in his warm hands. “I never hated you.” I blinked back the wetness gathering in my eyes. “But—” “I don’t hate you now , Kat.” He stared intently into my eyes. “I’m mad at you—at myself. I’m so angry, I can taste it. I want to find Blake and rearrange parts of his body. But do you know w hat I thought about all day yesterday? All night? The one single thought I couldn’t escape, no matter how pissed off I am at you?” “No,” I whispered. “That I’m lucky, because the person I can’t get out of my head, the person who means more to me than I can stand, is still alive. She’s still there. And that’s you.

It seems like just yesterday that I was telling seven-year-old Hazel why the sky was blue. You thought I was a genius back then.

Are you eating?" I asked. "You have to keep up your strength." "All of a sudden you're grown and worrying about me, instead of the other way around. Seems like yesterday you were just a little boy.

My time in camp with Kaden had become awkward several times, or perhaps I was just more self-conscious now. I had known he cared about me. It was hardly a secret. It was the reason I was still alive, but I hadn’t quite grasped how much he cared. And in spite of myself, I knew in my own way, I cared about him too. Not Kaden the assassin, but the Kaden I had known back in Terravin, the one who had caught my attention the minute he walked through the tavern door. The one who was calm and had mysterious, but kind, eyes. I remembered dancing with him at the festival, his arms pulling me closer, and the way he struggled with his thoughts, holding them back. He didn’t hold back the night he was drunk. The fireshine had loosened his lips and he laid it all out quite blatantly. Slurred and sloshy but clear. He loved me. This from a barbarian who was sent to kill me. I lay back, staring into the cloudless sky, a shade bluer and brighter than yesterday. Did he even know what love was? For that matter, did I? Even my parents didn’t seem to know. I crossed my arms behind my head as a pillow. Maybe there was no one way to define it. Maybe there were as many shades of love as the blues of the sky. I wondered if his interest had begun when I tended his shoulder. I remembered his odd look of surprise when I touched him, as if no one had ever shown him a kindness before. If Griz, Finch, and Malich were any indication of his past, maybe no one had. They showed a certain steely devotion to one another, but it in no way resembled kindness. And then there were those scars on his chest and back. Only cruel savage could have delivered those. Yet somewhere along the way, Kaden had learned kindness. Tenderness, even. It surfaced in small actions. He seemed like he was two separate people, the intensely loyal Vendan assassin and someone else far different, someone he had locked away, a prisoner just like me.

Habit is the explanation of why we seem to forget things so quickly. Yesterday we were under fire, to-day we act the fool and go foraging through the countryside, to-morrow we go up to the trenches again. We forget nothing really. But so long as we have to stay here in the field, the front-line days, when they are past, sink down in us like a stone; they are too grievous for us to be able to reflect on them at once. If we did that, we should have been destroyed long ago. I soon found out this much:—terror can be endured so long as a man simply ducks;—but it kills, if a man thinks about it. Just

It is easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living. Easy to wish we’d developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga. It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make and the work we didn’t do and the people we didn’t marry and the children we didn’t have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out. But it is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy. We can’t tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on. Of course, we can’t visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we’d feel in any life is still available. We don’t have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don’t have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. We don’t have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasure of wine. Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies. We just have to close our eyes and savour the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays. We are as completely and utterly alive as we are in any other life and have access to the same emotional spectrum. We only need to be one person. We only need to feel one existence. We don’t have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility. So let’s be kind to the people in our own existence. Let’s occasionally look up from the spot in which we are because, wherever we happen to be standing, the sky above goes on for ever. Yesterday I knew I had no future, and that it was impossible for me to accept my life as it is now. And yet today, that same messy life seems full of hope. Potential. The impossible, I suppose, happens via living. Will my life be miraculously free from pain, despair, grief, heartbreak, hardship, loneliness, depression? No. But do I want to live? Yes. Yes. A thousand times, yes.

When did my youth slip away from me? I suddenly thought. It was over, wasn’t it? Seemed just like yesterday I was still only half grown up. Huey Lewis and the News had a couple of hit songs then. Not so many years ago. And now here I was, inside a closed circuit, spinning my wheels. Knowing I wasn’t getting anywhere but spinning just the same. I had to. Had to keep that up or I wouldn’t be able to survive.

Dead-end streets and boulevards You threw in the towel, I broke your heart But there's a first time for everything Who would've thought you'd feel so cold And all these memories seem so old To think you were my everything Remember when we'd talk all night But time ain't easy on us, how can love die? I got so much shit to say But I can't help feeling like I'm camouflage Fortress around my heart You were mine just yesterday Now I have no idea who you are It's like you camouflage

It really does just seem like yesterday.

Tomorrow will be like today, and the day after tomorrow will be like day before yesterday," said Apollonius. "I see your remaining days each as quiet, tedious collections of hours. You will not travel anywhere. You will think no new thoughts. You will experience no new passions. Older you will become but not wiser. Stiffer but not more dignified. Childless you are, and childless you shall remain. Of that suppleness you once commanded in your youth, of that strange simplicity which once attracted a few men to you, neither endures, nor shall you recapture any of them anymore. People will talk to you and visit with you out of sentiment or pity, not because you have anything to offer them. Have you ever seen an old cornstalk turning brown, dying, but refusing to fall over, upon which stray birds alight now and then, hardly remarking what it is they perch on? That is you. I cannot fathom your place in life's economy. A living thing should either create or destroy according to its capacity and caprice, but you, you do neither. You only live on dreaming of the nice things you would like to have happen to you but which never happen; and you wonder vaguely why the young lives about you which you occasionally chide for a fancied impropriety never listen to you and seem to flee at your approach. When you die you will be buried and forgotten and that is all. The morticians will enclose you in a worm-proof casket, thus sealing even unto eternity the clay of your uselessness. And for all the good or evil, creation or destruction, that your living might have accomplished, you might just as well has never lived at all. I cannot see the purpose in such a life. I can see in it only vulgar, shocking waste.

You heard me. Let someone else send you to your blaze of glory. You're a speck, man. You're nothing. You're not worth the bullet or the mark on my soul for taking you out." You trying to piss me off again, Patrick?" He removed Campbell Rawson from his shoulder and held him aloft. I tilted my wrist so the cylinder fell into my palm, shrugged. "You're a joke, Gerry. I'm just calling it like I see it." That so?" Absolutely." I met his hard eyes with my own. "And you'll be replaced, just like everything else, in maybe a week, tops. Some other dumb, sick shit will come along and kill some people and he'll be all over the papers, and all over Hard Copy and you'll be yesterday's news. Your fifteen minutes are up, Gerry. And they've passed without impact." They'll remember this," Gerry said. "Believe me." Gerry clamped back on the trigger. When he met my finger, he looked at me and then clamped down so hard that my finger broke. I depressed the trigger on the one-shot and nothing happened. Gerry shrieked louder, and the razor came out of my flesh, then swung back immediately, and I clenched my eyes shut and depressed the trigger frantically three times. And Gerry's hand exploded. And so did mine. The razor hit the ice by my knee as I dropped the one shot and fire roared up the electrical tape and gasoline on Gerry's arm and caught the wisps of Danielle's hair. Gerry threw his head back and opened his mouth wide and bellowed in ecstasy. I grabbed the razor, could barely feel it because the nerves in my hand seemed to have stopped working. I slashed into the electric tape at the end of the shotgun barrel, and Danielle dropped away toward the ice and rolled her head into the frozen sand. My broken finger came back out of the shotgun and Gerry swung the barrels toward my head. The twin shotgun bores arced through the darkness like eyes without mercy or soul, and I raised my head to meet them, and Gerry's wail filled my ears as the fire licked at his neck. Good-bye, I thought. Everyone. It's been nice. Oscar's first two shots entered the back of Gerry's head and exited through the center of his forehead and a third punched into his back. The shotgun jerked upward in Gerry's flaming arm and then the shots came from the front, several at once, and Gerry spun like a marionette and pitched toward the ground. The shotgun boomed twice and punched holes through the ice in front of him as he fell. He landed on his knees and, for a moment, I wasn't sure if he was dead or not. His rusty hair was afire and his head lolled to the left as one eye disappeared in flames but the other shimmered at me through waves of heat, and an amused derision shone in the pupil. Patrick, the eye said through the gathering smoke, you still know nothing. Oscar rose up on the other side of Gerry's corpse, Campbell Rawson clutched tight to his massive chest as it rose and fell with great heaving breaths. The sight of it-something so soft and gentle in the arms of something so thick and mountaineous-made me laugh. Oscar came out of the darkness toward me, stepped around Gerry's burning body, and I felt the waves of heat rise toward me as the circle of gasoline around Gerry caught fire. Burn, I thought. Burn. God help me, but burn. Just after Oscar stepped over the outer edge of the circle, it erupted in yellow flame, and I found myself laughing harder as he looked at it, not remotely impressed. I felt cool lips smack against my ear, and by the time I looked her way, Danielle was already past me, rushing to take her child from Oscar. His huge shadow loomed over me as he approached, and I looked up at him and he held the look for a long moment. How you doing, Patrick?" he said and smiled broadly. And, behind him, Gerry burned on the ice. And everything was so goddamned funny for some reason, even though I knew it wasn't. I knew it wasn't. I did. But I was still laughing when they put me in the ambulance.

Yesterday, where someone had dumped a cat-scratched leather recliner in the weedy empty lot around the corner, an elderly man was found sitting in the chair, quietly disoriented. The recliner looked like a seat on an Amtrak train, in Coach. The man did not seem to know where he was, or how he got there, but he was not fearful, just quiet. He was able to recite his son’s email address and list the son’s many accomplishments to the police whom someone called to help. They were kind when they contacted the man’s son in another state. But this won’t go well, I thought, and chose not to follow the story.

One," said the recording secretary. "Jesus wept," answered Leon promptly. There was not a sound in the church. You could almost hear the butterflies pass. Father looked down and laid his lower lip in folds with his fingers, like he did sometimes when it wouldn't behave to suit him. "Two," said the secretary after just a breath of pause. Leon looked over the congregation easily and then fastened his eyes on Abram Saunders, the father of Absalom, and said reprovingly: "Give not sleep to thine eyes nor slumber to thine eyelids." Abram straightened up suddenly and blinked in astonishment, while father held fast to his lip. "Three," called the secretary hurriedly. Leon shifted his gaze to Betsy Alton, who hadn't spoken to her next door neighbour in five years. "Hatred stirreth up strife," he told her softly, "but love covereth all sins." Things were so quiet it seemed as if the air would snap. "Four." The mild blue eyes travelled back to the men's side and settled on Isaac Thomas, a man too lazy to plow and sow land his father had left him. They were not so mild, and the voice was touched with command: "Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise." Still that silence. "Five," said the secretary hurriedly, as if he wished it were over. Back came the eyes to the women's side and past all question looked straight at Hannah Dover. "As a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, so is a fair woman without discretion." "Six," said the secretary and looked appealingly at father, whose face was filled with dismay. Again Leon's eyes crossed the aisle and he looked directly at the man whom everybody in the community called "Stiff-necked Johnny." I think he was rather proud of it, he worked so hard to keep them doing it. "Lift not up your horn on high: speak not with a stiff neck," Leon commanded him. Toward the door some one tittered. "Seven," called the secretary hastily. Leon glanced around the room. "But how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity," he announced in delighted tones as if he had found it out by himself. "Eight," called the secretary with something like a breath of relief. Our angel boy never had looked so angelic, and he was beaming on the Princess. "Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee," he told her. Laddie would thrash him for that. Instantly after, "Nine," he recited straight at Laddie: "I made a covenant with mine eyes; why then should I think upon a maid?" More than one giggled that time. "Ten!" came almost sharply. Leon looked scared for the first time. He actually seemed to shiver. Maybe he realized at last that it was a pretty serious thing he was doing. When he spoke he said these words in the most surprised voice you ever heard: "I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly." "Eleven." Perhaps these words are in the Bible. They are not there to read the way Leon repeated them, for he put a short pause after the first name, and he glanced toward our father: "Jesus Christ, the SAME, yesterday, and to-day, and forever!" Sure as you live my mother's shoulders shook. "Twelve." Suddenly Leon seemed to be forsaken. He surely shrank in size and appeared abused. "When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up," he announced, and looked as happy over the ending as he had seemed forlorn at the beginning. "Thirteen." "The Lord is on my side; I will not fear; what can man do unto me?" inquired Leon of every one in the church. Then he soberly made a bow and walked to his seat.

Since the very beginning of the Communist regime, I had carefully studied books on Marxism and pronouncements by Chinese Communist Party leaders. It seemed to me that socialism in China was still very much an experiment nad had no fixed course of development for the country had yet been decided upon. This, I thought, was why the government's policy was always changing, like a pendulum swinging from left to right and back again. When things went to extremes and problems emerged. Beijing would take corrective measures. Then these very corrective measures went too far and had to be corrected. The real difficulty was, of course, that a state-controlled economy only stifled productivity, and economic planning from Beijing ignored local conditions and killed incentive. When a policy changed from above, the standards of values changed with it. What was right yesterday became wrong today, and visa versa. Thus the words and actions of a Communist Party official at the lower level were valid for a limited time only... The Cultural Revolution seemed to me to be a swing to the left. Sooner or later, when it had gone too far, corrective measures would be taken. The people would have a few months or a few years of respite until the next political campaign. Mao Zedong believed that political campaigns were the motivating force for progress. So I thought the Proletarian Cultural Revolution was just one of an endless series of upheavals the Chinese people must learn to put up with.

Cassandra caught my quizzical look and shrugged. “Problems adjusting. You just missed the latest of the new souls. It would seem none of us are quite as good with people as you are.” That was an understatement. With any luck, Cassandra hadn’t caused any psychological scarring with her “Yeah, you’re dead, get over it” speech. She wasn’t a people person. Ordinarily, I greeted the new souls and took special care to deal with any “adjustment problems.” I enjoyed that part of my work. It was one of the few good deeds I could credit myself with. But as much as I’d love to tell myself otherwise, I wasn’t settling in the souls out of the goodness of my heart. Just lack of better alternatives. The other gods had difficulties relating to humans. But those difficulties were nothing compared to the problems the humans in my court had relating to each other. Souls lose something the longer they’re dead. They forget what it was like to worry, to be scared, to be human. Just yesterday, I’d caught Cassandra telling a frightened new soul I’d gone through a dark phase back when Dante passed through, but not to worry. I hadn’t gone off my meds for centuries. Fucking Dante.

My lady," Percival began. He had called her that yesterday, and she had guessed it was some kind of elaborate sarcasm. But this didn't seem like the time for unpleasant jibes. Maybe it was just the way he'd been raised. Cnan wished she could meet Percival's mother. "I cannot recommend that you remain in that position," he said, "considering that hostile archers, in large numbers, are about to surround you.

Jay showed up after school with a bouquet of flowers and an armful of DVDs, although Violet couldn’t have cared less about either . . . he was all she wanted. She couldn’t help the electric thrill of excitement she felt when he came strolling in, grinning at her foolishly as if he hadn’t seen her in weeks rather than hours. He scooped her up from the couch and dropped her onto his lap as he sat down where she had been just a moment before. He was careful to arrange her ankle on a neatly stacked pile of pillows beside him. He stubbornly refused to hide his affection for her, and if Violet hadn’t known better she would have sword that he was going out of his way to make her self-conscious in her own home. Fortunately her parents were giving them some space for the time being, and they were left by themselves most of the time. “Did you miss me?” he asked arrogantly as he gently brushed his lips over hers, not bothering to wait for an answer. She smiled while she kissed him back, loving the topsy-turvy feeling that her stomach always got when he was so close to her. She wound her arms around his neck, forgetting that she was in the middle of the family room and not hidden away in the privacy of her bedroom. He pulled away from her, suddenly serious. “You know, we didn’t get much time alone yesterday. And I didn’t get a chance to tell you . . .” Violet was mesmerized by the thick timbre of his deep voice. She barely heard his words but rather concentrated on the fluid masculinity of his tone. “I feel like I’ve waited too long to finally have you, and then yesterday . . . when . . .” He stopped, seemingly at a loss, and he tried another approach. His hand stroked her cheek, igniting a response from deep within her. “I can’t imagine living without you,” he said, tenderly kissing her forehead, his warm breath fanning her brow. He paused thoughtfully for a moment before speaking again. “I love you, Violet. More than I ever could have imagined. And I don’t want to lose you . . . I can’t lose you.” It was her turn to look arrogant as she glanced up at him. “I know,” she stated smugly, shrugging her shoulder. He shoved her playfully but held on to her tightly so that she never really went anywhere. “What do you mean, ‘I know’? What kind of response is that?” His righteous indignation bordered on comical. He pulled her down into his arms so that his face was directly above hers. “Say it!” he commanded. She shook her head, pretending not to understand him. “What? What do you want me to say?” But then she giggled and ruined her baffled façade. He teased her with his mouth, leaning down to kiss her and then pulling away before his lips ever reached hers. He nuzzled her neck tantalizingly, only to stop once she responded. She wrapped her arms around his neck, trying to pull him closer, frustrated by his mocking ambush of her senses. “Sat it,” he whispered, his breath warm against her neck. She groaned, wanting him to put her out of her misery. “I love you too,” she rasped as she clung to him. “I love you so much . . .” His mouth moved to cover hers in an exhausting kiss that left them both breathless and craving more than they could have. Violet collapsed into his arms, gathering her wits and hoping that no one walking in on them anytime soon.

I find that there are a lot of objects and subjects within the world today. There's so much going on, that it seems like reality itself is trying hide something. Not only do we have to deal with illusions that the media, literature, states, governments, religions, and all of the plentiful theatrics of life entrances us with, but we have to deal with reality's false face. People continuously live life, go to work, play, stress, dance, eat, sleep, and step back into yesterday, not understanding that there are invisible curtains blinding the truth from the surface. Become empty, just for a moment, and ask yourself simple paradoxical questions. Do you know where you are? Do you understand where you are? Do you understand who you are? Do you understand why you are? Gain a sense of glory, by being defeated by your own question, and liberate yourself from the mask that reality has given you since adolescence. However, that is the problem. So many have worn this invisible mask for so long, that they are unable to take it off, and are bound by the illusion that reality wants them to see. Liberation is a goal that you may no longer obtain, but don't worry, for ignorance and deception are your only true friends now. They can carry you to God, but they cannot wake you up.

Galen picking you up for school?" "No, I'm driving myself." Vinegar turns to acid. Sure, it's irritating to take a lukewarm shower when you intended to scald the flesh from your body. But not being able to see Galen today is more disappointing than not having hot water all winter. And I hate it. Spending all of yesterday with him slaughtered my intention of keeping him at a distance. Even if he weren't worthy of his own billboard underwear ad, he's just too likeable. Except for his habit of almost-kissing me. But his obsession with trying to order me around is too cute. Especially the way his mouth gets all pouty when I don't listen. "You two fighting already?" She's fishing, but for what I don't know. Shrugging seems safe until I can figure out what she wants to hear. "Do you fight often?" Shrugging again, I ladle enough oatmeal into my mouth to make talking impossible for at least a minute, which is more than enough time for her to drop it. It doesn't work. After the exaggerated minute, I reach for my glass of milk. "You know, if he ever hit you-" The glass in mid-tilt, I swallow before the milk can escape through my nose. "Mom, he would never hit me!" "I didn't say he would." "Good, because he wouldn't. Ever. What's with you? Do you have to interrogate me about Galen every time you see me?" This time she shrugs. "Seems like the right thing to do. When you have children, you'll understand." "I'm not stupid. If Galen acts up, I'll either dump him or kill him. You have my word." Mom laughs and butters my muffin. "I guess I can't ask for more than that." Accepting the muffin-and the truce-I say, "Nope. Anything more would be unreasonable." "Just remember, I'm watching you like a hawk. Except for right now, because I'm going to bed.

And then they were staring again. And it happened again, just as it had in the theater yesterday. Time slowed, atoms and particles separating and recombining into a secret sphere around them. 'I like you,' he said. Her hand out on the table again, between them, and he put his on it. 'I like you,' she said, almost soundless. They stared on through another timeless moment, after which she went back to her book, and he bent his head over his work again. They held hands on the table, held feet beneath. Erik had never been so relaxed with a girl, never known such comfort with another human being. He had no desire to leave this space, and yet within it, he was free. He could sit with her and feel what he was feeling, with no need to explain it, dismiss it or joke it away. Every time he looked up at her and thought, I love this, she looked up too, and her eyes seemed to nod at him.

What happened on that tiny island off the coast of Cuba called Flowering Cay at times seems like a half-remembered dream, one of those groggy remembrances that you’re never quite certain you didn’t just imagine. Other times I can recall it with such clarity it is as if it happened yesterday. Sitting in front of my typewriter as the palms sway gently at the urging of the trade winds, I almost wish I could forget everything. But then I think of Faith.

Christy dug her hand deeper into her shoulder bag. Scanning the papers she finally located there, she found no phone numbers or addresses listed. All the plans had been made in such haste. All she knew was that someone was supposed to meet her here. She was here, and he or she wasn't. Never in her life had she felt so completely alone. Stranded with nowhere to turn. A prayer came quickly to her lips. "Father God, I'm at Your mercy here. I know You're in control. Please show me what to do." Suddenly she heard a voice calling to her. "Kilikina!" Christy's heart stopped. Only one person in the entire world had ever called her by her Hawaiian name. She spun around. "Kilikina," called out the tall, blond surfer who was running toward her. Christy looked up into the screaming silver-blue eyes that could only belong to one person. "Todd?" she whispered, convinced she was hallucinating. "Kilikina," Todd wrapped his arms around her so tightly that for an instant she couldn't breathe. He held her a long time. Crying. She could feel his warm tears on her neck. She knew this had to be real. But how could it be? "Todd?" she whispered again. "How? I mean, what...? I don't..." Todd pulled away, and for the first time she noticed the big gouquet of white carnations in his hand. They were now a bit squashed. "For you," he said, his eyes clearing and his rich voice sounding calm and steady. Then, seeing her shocked expression, he asked, "You really didn't know I was here, did you?" Christy shook her head, unable to find any words. "Didn't Dr. Benson tell you?" She shook her head again. "You mean you came all this way by yourself, and you didn't even know I was here?" Now it was Todd's turn to look surprised. "No, I thought you were in Papua New Guinea or something. I had no idea you were here!" "They needed me here more," Todd said with a chin-up gesture toward the beach. "It's the perfect place for me." With a wide smile spreading above his square jaw, he said, "Ever since I received the fax yesterday saying they were sending you, I've been out of my mind with joy! Kilikina, you can't imagine how I've been feeling." Christy had never heard him talk like this before. Todd took the bouquet from her and placed it on top of her luggage. Then, grasping both her quivering hands in his and looking into her eyes, he said, "Don't you see? There is no way you or I could ever have planned this. It's from God." The shocked tears finally caught up to Christy's eyes, and she blinked to keep Todd in focus. "It is," she agreed. "God brought us back together, didn't He?" A giggle of joy and delight danced from her lips. "Do you remember what I said when you gave me back your bracelet?" Todd asked. "I said that if God ever brought us back together, I would put that bracelet back on your wrist, and that time, it would stay on forever." Christy nodded. She had replayed the memory of that day a thousand times in her mind. It had seemed impossible that God would bring them back together. Christy's heart pounded as she realized that God, in His weird way, had done the impossible. Todd reached into his pocket and pulled out the "Forever" ID bracelet. He tenderly held Christy's wrist, and circling it with the gold chain, he secured the clasp. Above their heads a fresh ocean wind blew through the palm trees. It almost sounded as if the trees were applauding. Christy looked up from her wrist and met Todd's expectant gaze. Deep inside, Christy knew that with the blessing of the Lord, Todd had just stepped into the garden of her heart. In the holiness of that moment, his silver-blue eyes embraced hers and he whispered, "I promise, Kilikina. Forever." "Forever," Christy whispered back. Then gently, reverently, Todd and Christy sealed their forever promise with a kiss.

Others may not notice it, because an angry Toraf is truly a rare thing to behold, but Galen can practically feel the animosity emanating from his friend. Which is why he casually bumps into him, taking care to be overly apologetic. “Oh, sorry about that, minnow. I didn’t even see you there.” Galen mimics Toraf’s demeanor, crossing his arms and staring ahead of them. What they’re supposed to be staring at, he’s not sure. His effort is rewarded with a slight upward curve of his friend’s mouth. “Oh, don’t think twice about it, tadpole. I know it must be difficult to swim straight with a whale’s tail.” Galen scowls, taking care not to glance down at his fin. Ever since they went to retrieve Grom, he’s been sore all below the waist, but he’d just attributed it to tension from finding Nalia, and then the whole tribunal mess-not to mention, hovering in place for hours at a time. Still, he did examine his fin the evening before, hoping to massage out any knots he found, but was a bit shocked to see that his fin span seemed to have widened. He decided that he was letting his imagination get the better of him. Now he’s not so sure. “What do you mean?” he says lightly. Toraf nods down toward the sand. “You know what I mean. Looks like you have the red fever.” “The red fever bloats you all over, idiot. Right before it kills you. It doesn’t make your fin grow wider. Besides, the red tide hasn’t been bad for years now.” But Toraf already knows what the red fever looks like. Not long after he first became a Tracker, Toraf was commissioned to find an older Syrena who had gone off on his own to die after he’d been caught in what the humans call the red tide. Toraf was forced to tie seaweed around the old one’s fin and pull his body to the Cave of Memories. No, he doesn’t think I have the red fever. Toraf allows himself a long look at Galen’s fin. If it were anyone else, Galen would consider it rude. “Does it hurt?” “It’s sore.” “Have you asked anyone about it?” “I’ve had other things on my mind.” Which is the truth. Galen really hadn’t given it much thought until right now. Now that it has been noticed by someone else. Toraf pulls his own fin around and after a few seconds of twisting and bending, he’s able to measure it against his torso. It spans from his neck to where his waist turns into velvety tail. He nods to Galen to do the same. Galen is horrified to find that his fin now spans from the top of his head to well below his waist. It really does look like a whale tail. “I don’t know how I feel about that,” Toraf says, thoughtful. “I’ve gotten used to having the most impressive fin out of the two of us.” Galen grins, letting his tail fall. “For a minute there I thought you really cared.” Toraf shrugs. “Being self-conscious doesn’t suit you.” Galen follows his gaze back out into the sea ahead of them. “So what do you think about yesterday’s tribunal?” “I think I know where Nalia and Emma get their temper.” Galen laughs. “I thought Jagen was going to pass out when Antonis grabbed him.” “He’s not very good at interacting with others anymore, is he?” “I wonder if he ever was. I told you how crazy Nalia always acted. Could be a family trait.” It looks like Toraf might actually smile but instead his gaze jerks back out to sea, a new scowl on his face. “Oh, no,” Galen groans. “What is it?” Please don’t say Emma. Please don’t say Emma. “Rayna,” Toraf says through clenched teeth. “She’s heading straight for us.” That’s almost as bad.

Amos [Tversky] liked to say that if you are asked to do anything—go to a party, give a speech, lift a finger—you should never answer right away, even if you are sure that you want to do it. Wait a day, Amos said, and you’ll be amazed how many of those invitations you would have accepted yesterday you’ll refuse after you have had a day to think it over. A corollary to his rule for dealing with demands upon his time was his approach to situations from which he wished to extract himself. A human being who finds himself stuck at some boring meeting or cocktail party often finds it difficult to invent an excuse to flee. Amos’s rule, whenever he wanted to leave any gathering, was to just get up and leave. Just start walking and you’ll be surprised how creative you will become and how fast you’ll find the words for your excuse, he said. His attitude to the clutter of daily life was of a piece with his strategy for dealing with social demands. Unless you are kicking yourself once a month for throwing something away, you are not throwing enough away, he said. Everything that didn’t seem to Amos obviously important he chucked, and thus what he saved acquired the interest of objects that have survived a pitiless culling.

Perhaps I don't know enough yet to find the right words for it, but I think I can describe it. It happened again just a moment ago. I don't know how to put it except by saying that I see things in two different ways-everything, ideas included. If I make an effort to find any difference in them, each of them is the same today as it was yesterday, but as soon as I shut my eyes they're suddenly transformed, in a different light. Perhaps I went wrong about the imaginary numbers. If I get to them by going straight along inside mathematics, so to speak, they seem quite natural. It's only if I look at them directly, in all their strangeness, that they seem impossible. But of course I may be all wrong about this, I know too little about it. But I wasn't wrong about Basini. I wasn't wrong when I couldn't turn my ear away from the faint trickling sound in the high wall or my eye from the silent, swirling dust going up in the beam of light from a lamp. No, I wasn't wrong when I talked about things having a second, secret life that nobody takes any notice of! I-I don't mean it literally-it's not that things are alive, it's not that Basini seemed to have two faces-it was more as if I had a sort of second sight and saw all this not with the eyes of reason. Just as I can feel an idea coming to life in my mind, in the same way I feel something alive in me when I look at things and stop thinking. There's something dark in me, deep under all my thoughts, something I can't measure out with thoughts, a sort of life that can't be expressed in words and which is my life, all the same. “That silent life oppressed me, harassed me. Something kept on making me stare at it. I was tormented by the fear that our whole life might be like that and that I was only finding it out here and there, in bits and pieces. . . . Oh, I was dreadfully afraid! I was out of my mind.. .” These words and these figures of speech, which were far beyond what was appropriate to Törless's age, flowed easily and naturally from his lips in this state of vast excitement he was in, in this moment of almost poetic inspiration. Then he lowered his voice and, as though moved by his own suffering, he added: “Now it's all over. I know now I was wrong after all. I'm not afraid of anything any more. I know that things are just things and will probably always be so. And I shall probably go on for ever seeing them sometimes this way and sometimes that, sometimes with the eyes of reason, and sometimes with those other eyes. . . . And I shan't ever try again to compare one with the other. .

Sheepwalking I define “sheepwalking” as the outcome of hiring people who have been raised to be obedient and giving them a brain-dead job and enough fear to keep them in line. You’ve probably encountered someone who is sheepwalking. The TSA “screener” who forces a mom to drink from a bottle of breast milk because any other action is not in the manual. A “customer service” rep who will happily reread a company policy six or seven times but never stop to actually consider what the policy means. A marketing executive who buys millions of dollars’ worth of TV time even though she knows it’s not working—she does it because her boss told her to. It’s ironic but not surprising that in our age of increased reliance on new ideas, rapid change, and innovation, sheepwalking is actually on the rise. That’s because we can no longer rely on machines to do the brain-dead stuff. We’ve mechanized what we could mechanize. What’s left is to cost-reduce the manual labor that must be done by a human. So we write manuals and race to the bottom in our search for the cheapest possible labor. And it’s not surprising that when we go to hire that labor, we search for people who have already been trained to be sheepish. Training a student to be sheepish is a lot easier than the alternative. Teaching to the test, ensuring compliant behavior, and using fear as a motivator are the easiest and fastest ways to get a kid through school. So why does it surprise us that we graduate so many sheep? And graduate school? Since the stakes are higher (opportunity cost, tuition, and the job market), students fall back on what they’ve been taught. To be sheep. Well-educated, of course, but compliant nonetheless. And many organizations go out of their way to hire people that color inside the lines, that demonstrate consistency and compliance. And then they give these people jobs where they are managed via fear. Which leads to sheepwalking. (“I might get fired!”) The fault doesn’t lie with the employee, at least not at first. And of course, the pain is often shouldered by both the employee and the customer. Is it less efficient to pursue the alternative? What happens when you build an organization like W. L. Gore and Associates (makers of Gore-Tex) or the Acumen Fund? At first, it seems crazy. There’s too much overhead, there are too many cats to herd, there is too little predictability, and there is way too much noise. Then, over and over, we see something happen. When you hire amazing people and give them freedom, they do amazing stuff. And the sheepwalkers and their bosses just watch and shake their heads, certain that this is just an exception, and that it is way too risky for their industry or their customer base. I was at a Google conference last month, and I spent some time in a room filled with (pretty newly minted) Google sales reps. I talked to a few of them for a while about the state of the industry. And it broke my heart to discover that they were sheepwalking. Just like the receptionist at a company I visited a week later. She acknowledged that the front office is very slow, and that she just sits there, reading romance novels and waiting. And she’s been doing it for two years. Just like the MBA student I met yesterday who is taking a job at a major packaged-goods company…because they offered her a great salary and promised her a well-known brand. She’s going to stay “for just ten years, then have a baby and leave and start my own gig.…” She’ll get really good at running coupons in the Sunday paper, but not particularly good at solving new problems. What a waste. Step one is to give the problem a name. Done. Step two is for anyone who sees themselves in this mirror to realize that you can always stop. You can always claim the career you deserve merely by refusing to walk down the same path as everyone else just because everyone else is already doing it.

She caught the old man napping, that little girl did,” said the Chief Monopod. “We’ve beaten him this time.” “Just what we were going to say ourselves,” chimed the chorus. “You’re going stronger than ever today, Chief. Keep it up, keep it up.” “But do they dare to talk about you like that?” said Lucy. “They seemed to be so afraid of you yesterday. Don’t they know you might be listening?” “That’s one of the funny things about the Duffers,” said the Magician. “One minute they talk as if I ran everything and overheard everything and was extremely dangerous. The next moment they think they can take me in by tricks that a baby would see through--bless them!

Twenty years was yesterday, and yesterday was just earlier this morning, and morning seemed light-years away. “I’m like you,” he said. “I remember everything.” I stopped for a second. If you remember everything, I wanted to say, and if you are really like me, then before you leave tomorrow, or when you’re just ready to shut the door of the taxi and have already said goodbye to everyone else and there’s not a thing left to say in this life, then, just this once, turn to me, even in jest, or as an afterthought, which would have meant everything to me when we were together, and, as you did back then, look me in the face, hold my gaze, and call me by your name.

TO MY BELOVED, Its neither a piece of paper nor a letter, rather it's my small heart which I'm gifting it to you darling.It seems time stood still without ur presence around me. My days and nights have gone worthless. All my heart could do is to recall the memories of time which we have spend together. My heart gets rejoiced whenever your beautiful face comes before my eyes. Your mesmerizing eyes drive me to another world. Your flowing hair looks tantalizing and your rosy lips seems to be meant only for saying lovely words. While having a cup of coffee yesterday, numerous moments striked my heart. Our first meeting, when you were looking like a fairy in white salwar-suit. Still fresh in my mind, your pretty smile and bowing your head down to laugh with your hand on your lips. I confess that your every action was stealing my heart and I couldn't withdraw myself from lookig you. The gift you presented me on my birthday gives me a sigh of relief that you are always there with me. Sweetheart, In the classroom, I cracked useless jokes and PJ's just to see your charming smile. Kept gazing your lips, just to heat some golden words. You had stolen my heart. Dedicated '' I don't know when and how you arrived in my life, Don't know when my heart star beating for you, day n night.... My eyes kept staring the window pane, Wishing one day u'll come in my lane.... Darling you're the only one whom I admire, It's you whom my heart desperately desires... Being with you is my only need, You are now the medicine of my heartbeat... I Craved your name on my heart, The day when I decided not to loose you ever, And I promise you sweetheart that, I love you & i'll love you for ever, ever n ever...... It's true my baby that, i love you like anything. Miss you from very morning 2 the night. MY senses are active to feel you, to hear you, to see you, to taste every sorrow and happiness of your life. Jaana, get embedded in me, in my soul so that i can live with you, for you........ Dying to have your reply..... Truly Your's PK

Have you ever listened to a song from a long time ago; from your past; a song that was filled with so many memories tied to it, that you felt it so deeply- that it made you cry? And did you listen to it again, intentionally, for a second time? So you could travel back in time through that song; back when everything seemed so much simpler, basic, carefree? Those are the songs that are the soundtracks of our lives… the ones that bring back childhood memories, deep feelings, snapshots of our lives (or short videos), best friends, first loves, first heartbreaks… births, deaths. Our lives are like the record albums that we used to play just a few years ago; just yesterday. We played some of the songs over and over again- to the point of which we can sing along with every word as we play it. Other songs seem somewhat unfamiliar, as we rarely go back to listen to them; we skip over them or we barely listen to the start of it before we turn off the record player. But just like on a record album and just like in our memories, you can't cut a song out off an album... just like you can't cut out a memory. The songs and memories remain there, side by side; the good ones, the bad ones, the ones that thrill us and the ones that hurt. Those are the songs that our lives are composed of. Those are the songs that we chase back, back into our our own memories in our private and personal musical time machines.

But it wasn't their separation that was consuming my mind just then; it was Evelyn's garden. Bee had taken us there when we were children, and it was all rushing back: a magical world of hydrangeas, roses, and dahlias, and lemon shortbread cookies on Evelyn's patio. It seemed like only yesterday that my sister and I sat on the little bench under the trellis while Bee hovered over her easel, capturing on her canvas whatever flower was in bloom in the lush beds. "Your garden," I said, "I remember your garden." "Yes," Evelyn said, smiling. I nodded, a little astonished that this memory, buried so deep in my mind, had risen to the surface just then like a lost file from my subconscious. It was as if the island had unlocked it somehow.

I know that everyone in this room, Bernie Fain included, thinks I'm some kind of a nut with my so-called fixation on this vampire thing. OK, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe he only thinks he is. But there are things here that can't be explained away by so-called common sense. Not even Bernie's report can explain some of them. 'I was at the hospital yesterday.' I looked directly at Butcher. 'Your own people fired maybe fifty or sixty rounds at him, some at point-blank range. How come this man never even slowed down? How come a man seventy years old can outrun police cars for more than fifteen blocks? How come when he gets clubbed on the head he doesn't bleed like other people? Look at these photos! There's a gash on his forehead... and whatever is trickling down from the cut is clear... it isn't blood. 'How come three great, big, burly hospital orderlies weighing an estimated total of nearly seven-hundred fifty pounds couldn't bring one, skinny one-hundred sixty pound man to his knees? How come an ex-boxer, a light-heavyweight not long out of the ring, couldn't even faze him with his best punch, a right hook that should have broken his jaw? 'Face it. Whether it's science, witchcraft or black magic, this character has got something going for him you don't know anything about. He doesn't seem to feel pain. Or get winded. And he doesn't seem to be very frightened by guns, or discouraged by your efforts to trap him. 'Look at these photos! Look at that face! That isn't fear there. It's hate. Pure hate! This man is evil incarnate. He is insane and he may be something even worse although you'd laugh at me because I have no scientific documentation to back me up. Hell, even Regenhaus and Mokurji have all but confirmed that he sucks blood. 'Whatever he is, he's been around a long time and this seems to be the closest any police force has come to putting the finger on him. If you want to go on operating the way you've been doing by treating him like an ordinary man, go ahead. But, I'll bet you any amount of money you come up empty handed again. If you try to catch him at night he'll get away just like he did last night. He'll...' 'Jesus Christ!' bellowed Butcher. 'This son of a bitch has diarrhea of the mouth. Can't one of you people shut him up?

I remember the way." "You remember the way" I echoed. He looked at me and smiled. It cheered me perhaps because I knew he was taunting me. Twenty years was yesterday and yesterday was just earlier this morning. and morning seemed light-years away. "I'm like you" he said "I remember everything." I stopped for a second. If you rememeber everything. I wanted to say, and if you are reaslly like me, then before you leave tomorrow, or when you're just ready to shut the door of the taxi and have already said goodbye to everyone else and there's not a thing left to say in this life, then, just this once, turn to me, even in jest or as an afterthought, which would have meant everything to me when we were togheter and as you did back then, look at me in the face, hold my gaze, and call me by your name

Completely confused as to who the real criminals were in this case, the jury had voted to wash their hands of everybody and they let him off. That had been the meaning of the conversation I'd had with him that afternoon, but I hadn't understood what was happening at all. There were many moments in the Vine like that one—where you might think today was yesterday, and yesterday was tomorrow, and so on. Because we all believed we were tragic, and we drank. We had that helpless, destined feeling. We would die with handcuffs on. We would be put a stop to, and it wouldn't be our fault. So we imagined. And yet we were always being found innocent for ridiculous reasons. ...We bought heroin with the money and split the heroin down the middle. Then he went looking for his girlfriend, and I went looking for mine, knowing that when there were drugs around, she surrendered. But I was in a bad condition—drunk, and having missed a night's sleep. As soon as the stuff entered my system, I passed out. Two hours went by without my noticing. I felt I'd only blinked my eyes, but when I opened them my girlfriend and a Mexican neighbor were working on me, doing everything they could to bring me back. The Mexican was saying, "There, he's coming around now." We lived in a tiny, dirty apartment. When I realized how long I'd been out and how close I'd come to leaving it forever, our little home seemed to glitter like cheap jewelry. I was overjoyed not to be dead. Generally the closest I ever came to wondering about the meaning of it all was to consider that I must be the victim of a joke. There was no touching the hem of mystery, no little occasion when any of us thought—well, speaking for myself only, I suppose— that our lungs were filled with light, or anything like that. I had a moment's glory that night, though. I was certain I was here in this world because I couldn't tolerate any other place. As for Hotel, who was in exactly the same shape I was and carrying just as much heroin, but who didn't have to share it with his girlfriend, because he couldn't find her that day: he took himself to a rooming house down at the end of Iowa Avenue, and he overdosed, too. He went into a deep sleep, and to the others there he looked quite dead. The people with him, all friends of ours, monitored his breathing by holding a pocket mirror under his nostrils from time to time, making sure that points of mist appeared on the glass. But after a while they forgot about him, and his breath failed without anybody's noticing. He simply went under. He died. I am still alive.

There was a moment of stillness before something in him seemed to snap. she pounced on her with a sort of tigerish delight, and clamped his mouth over hers. She squeaked in surprise, wriggling in his hold, but his arms clamped around her easily, his muscles as solid as oak. He kissed her possessively, almost roughly at first, gentling by voluptuous degrees. Her body surrendered without giving her brain a chance to object, applying itself eagerly to every available inch of him. The luxurious male heat and hardness of him satisfied a wrenching hunger she hadn't been aware of until now. It also gave her the close-but-not-close-enough feeling she remembered from before. Oh, how confusing this was, this maddening need to crawl inside his clothes, practically inside his skin. She let her fingertips wander over his cheeks and jaw, the neat shape of his ears, the taut smoothness of his neck. When he offered no objection, she sank her fingers into his thick, vibrant hair and sighed in satisfaction. He searched for her tongue, teased and stroked intimately until her heart pounded in a tumult of longing, and a sweet, empty ache spread all through her. Dimly aware that she was going to lose control, that she was on the verge of swooning, or assaulting him again, she managed to break the kiss and turn her face away with a gasp. "Don't," she said weakly. His lips grazed along her jawline, his breath rushing unsteadily against her skin. "Why? Are you still worried about Australian pox?" Slowly it registered that they were no longer standing. Gabriel was sitting on the ground with his back against the grass-covered mound, and- heaven help her- she was in his lap. She glanced around them in bewilderment. How had this happened? "No," she said, bewildered and perturbed, "but I just remembered that you said I kissed like a pirate." Gabriel looked blank for a moment. "Oh, that. That was a compliment." Pandora scowled. "It would only be a compliment if I had a beard and a peg leg." Setting his mouth sternly against a faint quiver, Gabriel smoothed her hair tenderly. "Forgive my poor choice of words. What I meant to convey was that I found your enthusiasm charming." "Did you?" Pandora turned crimson. Dropping her head to his shoulder, she said in a muffled voice, "Because I've worried for the past three days that I did it wrong." "No, never, darling." Gabriel sat up a little and cradled her more closely to him. Nuzzling her cheek, he whispered, "Isn't it obvious that everything about you gives me pleasure?" "Even when I plunder and pillage like a Viking?" she asked darkly. "Pirate. Yes, especially then." His lips moved softly along the rim of her right ear. "My sweet, there are altogether too many respectable ladies in the world. The supply has far exceeded the demand. But there's an appalling shortage of attractive pirates, and you do seem to have a gift for plundering and ravishing. I think we've found you're true calling." "You're mocking me," Pandora said in resignation, and jumped a little as she felt his teeth gently nip her earlobe. Smiling, Gabriel took her head between his hands and looked into her eyes. "Your kiss thrilled me beyond imagining," he whispered. "Every night for the rest of my life, I'll dream of the afternoon in the holloway, when I was waylaid by a dark-haired beauty who devastated me with the heat of a thousand troubled stars, and left my soul in cinders. Even when I'm an old man, and my brain has fallen to wrack and ruin, I'll remember the sweet fire of your lips under mine, and I'll say to myself, 'Now, that was a kiss.'" Silver-tongued devil, Pandora thought, unable to hold back a crooked grin. Only yesterday, she'd heard Gabriel affectionately mock his father, who was fond of expressing himself with elaborate, almost labyrinthine turns of phrase. Clearly the gift had been passed down to his son.

Yesterday while I was on the side of the mat next to some wrestlers who were warming up for their next match, I found myself standing side by side next to an extraordinary wrestler. He was warming up and he had that look of desperation on his face that wrestlers get when their match is about to start and their coach is across the gym coaching on another mat in a match that is already in progress. “Hey do you have a coach.” I asked him. “He's not here right now.” He quietly answered me ready to take on the task of wrestling his opponent alone. “Would you mind if I coached you?” His face tilted up at me with a slight smile and said. “That would be great.” Through the sounds of whistles and yelling fans I heard him ask me what my name was. “My name is John.” I replied. “Hi John, I am Nishan” he said while extending his hand for a handshake. He paused for a second and then he said to me: “John I am going to lose this match”. He said that as if he was preparing me so I wouldn’t get hurt when my coaching skills didn’t work magic with him today. I just said, “Nishan - No score of a match will ever make you a winner. You are already a winner by stepping onto that mat.” With that he just smiled and slowly ran on to the mat, ready for battle, but half knowing what the probable outcome would be. When you first see Nishan you will notice that his legs are frail - very frail. So frail that they have to be supported by custom made, form fitted braces to help support and straighten his limbs. Braces that I recognize all to well. Some would say Nishan has a handicap. I say that he has a gift. To me the word handicap is a word that describes what one “can’t do”. That doesn’t describe Nishan. Nishan is doing. The word “gift” is a word that describes something of value that you give to others. And without knowing it, Nishan is giving us all a gift. I believe Nishan’s gift is inspiration. The ability to look the odds in the eye and say “You don’t pertain to me.” The ability to keep moving forward. Perseverance. A “Whatever it takes” attitude. As he predicted, the outcome of his match wasn’t great. That is, if the only thing you judge a wrestling match by is the actual score. Nishan tried as hard as he could, but he couldn’t overcome the twenty-six pound weight difference that he was giving up to his opponent on this day in order to compete. You see, Nishan weighs only 80 pounds and the lowest weight class in this tournament was 106. Nishan knew he was spotting his opponent 26 pounds going into every match on this day. He wrestled anyway. I never did get the chance to ask him why he wrestles, but if I had to guess I would say, after watching him all day long, that Nishan wrestles for the same reasons that we all wrestle for. We wrestle to feel alive, to push ourselves to our mental, physical and emotional limits - levels we never knew we could reach. We wrestle to learn to use 100% of what we have today in hopes that our maximum today will be our minimum tomorrow. We wrestle to measure where we started from, to know where we are now, and to plan on getting where we want to be in the future. We wrestle to look the seemingly insurmountable opponent right in the eye and say, “Bring it on. - I can take whatever you can dish out.” Sometimes life is your opponent and just showing up is a victory. You don't need to score more points than your opponent in order to accomplish that. No Nishan didn’t score more points than any of his opponents on this day, that would have been nice, but I don’t believe that was the most important thing to Nishan. Without knowing for sure - the most important thing to him on this day was to walk with pride like a wrestler up to a thirty two foot circle, have all eyes from the crowd on him, to watch him compete one on one against his opponent - giving it all that he had. That is what competition is all about. Most of the times in wrestlin

This is a very common thing among male groups of friends. There is a person who's always taking heat from everyone else for various reasons. Not that I'm defending this behavior though, fuck no, I hate it when guys are like this; it's barbaric and stupid. Unfortunately I think it's like an unconscious thing that just comes natural to guys when we're in groups. We take the piss out of each other all the time, prodding until we know the limits of each other and crossing the lines once in a while to test the boundaries. Some guys who're overly-nice or don't fully understand this dynamic get completely shit on by it. If you keep excusing small actions by others that violate your boundaries, they'll just keep pushing and pushing, giving less and less respect until they know how far they're allowed to go. Having people knowing your limits and making sure to not cross them equates to respect, which is what we're after. This doesn't mean you should to tell them all to fuck off now; that wouldn't work anymore because you've allowed them this far into your territory. It'd seem like an overreaction from you, which makes sense, right? "We were just joking around yesterday about the same things, he seemed cool with it, but now he's all pissed for some reason, this guys a whack..." The key thing to note if you want to avoid this in the future is to either find "nicer" friends, or to let people know when they cross a boundary. This may sound huge and dramatic, but it's honestly a really simple thing. "Haha great job idiot you messed up" ----> "Fuck you man haha" Simple as that; he/they poked at you and by throwing it back at him, you let him know you're not just going to take it. If they do something that crosses your boundary, you respond appropriately; a big cross, like outright disrespecting you, means a big reaction, like telling the guy off. Does this mean you can't be nice anymore? Nope, not at all. You can still be a nice guy; most interactions with others don't involve all this boundary bullshit - and that's when the niceness in your personality can shine through. Beyond that, it's also a personal image/confidence thing. If you truly respect yourself, how would you let anyone get away with the things they say/do to you? What if this was your little sister? Would you let others treat her the same way? If not, then why would you let them treat you this way?

She had several books she'd been wanting to read, but instead she sprawled out on the couch surrounded by pillows and blankets, and spent the hours flipping channels between Judge Judy, The People's Court, Maury, and Jerry Springer, and rounded out her afternoon with Dr. Phil and Oprah. All in all, it was a complete waste of a day. At least until school got out. Jay showed up after school with a bouquet of flowers and an armful of DVDs, although Violet couldn't have card less about either...he was all she wanted. She couldn't help the electric thrill of excitement she felt when he came strolling in, grinning at her foolishly as if he hadn't seen her in weeks rather than hours. He scooped her up from the couch and dropped her onto his lap as he sat down where she had been just a moment before. He was careful to arrange her ankle on a neatly stacked pile of pillows beside him. He stubbornly refused to hide his affection for her, and if Violet hadn't known better she would have sworn that he was going out of his way to make her self-conscious in her own home. Fortunately her parents were giving them some space for the time being, and they were left by themselves most of the time. "Did you miss me?" he asked arrogantly as he gently brushed his lips over hers, not bothering to wait for an answer. She smiled while she kissed him back, loving the topsy-turvy feeling that her stomach always got when he was so close to her. She wound her arms around his neck, forgetting that she was in the middle of the family room and not hidden away in the privacy of her bedroom. He pulled away from her, suddenly serious. "You know, we didn't get much time alone yesterday. And I didn't get a chance to tell you..." Violet was mesmerized by the thick timbre of his deep voice. She barely heard his words but rather concentrated on the fluid masculinity of his tone. "I feel like I've waited too long to finally have you, and then yesterday...when..." He stopped, seemingly at a loss, and then he tried another approach. His hand stroked her cheek, igniting a response from deep within her. "I can't imagine living without you," he said, tenderly kissing her forehead, his warm breath fanning her brow. He paused thoughtfully for a moment before speaking again. "I love you, Violet. More than I ever could have imagined. And I don't want to lose you...I can't lose you." It was her turn to look arrogant as she glanced up at him. "I know," she stated smugly, shrugging her shoulder. He shoved her playfully but held on to her tightly so that she never really went anywhere. "What do you mean, 'I know'? What kind of response is that?" His righteous indignation bordered on comical. He pulled her down into his arms so that his face was directly above hers. "Say it!" he commanded. She shook her head, pretending not to understand him. "What? What do you want me to say?" But then she giggled and ruined her baffled façade. He teased her with his mouth, leaning down to kiss her and then pulling away before his lips ever reached hers. He nuzzled her neck tantalizingly, only to stop once she responded. She wrapped her arms around his neck, trying to pull him closer, frustrated by his mocking ambush of her senses. "Say it," he whispered, his breath warm against her neck. She groaned, wanting him to put her out of her misery. "I love you too," she rasped as she clung to him. "I love you so much..." His mouth moved to cover hers in an exhausting kiss that left them broth breathless and craving more than they could have. Violet collapsed into his arms, gathering her wits and hoping that no one walked in on them anytime soon.

Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie When yer head gets twisted and yer mind grows numb When you think you're too old, too young, too smart or too dumb When yer laggin' behind an' losin' yer pace In a slow-motion crawl of life's busy race No matter what yer doing if you start givin' up If the wine don't come to the top of yer cup If the wind's got you sideways with with one hand holdin' on And the other starts slipping and the feeling is gone And yer train engine fire needs a new spark to catch it And the wood's easy findin' but yer lazy to fetch it And yer sidewalk starts curlin' and the street gets too long And you start walkin' backwards though you know its wrong And lonesome comes up as down goes the day And tomorrow's mornin' seems so far away And you feel the reins from yer pony are slippin' And yer rope is a-slidin' 'cause yer hands are a-drippin' And yer sun-decked desert and evergreen valleys Turn to broken down slums and trash-can alleys And yer sky cries water and yer drain pipe's a-pourin' And the lightnin's a-flashing and the thunder's a-crashin' And the windows are rattlin' and breakin' and the roof tops a-shakin' And yer whole world's a-slammin' and bangin' And yer minutes of sun turn to hours of storm And to yourself you sometimes say "I never knew it was gonna be this way Why didn't they tell me the day I was born" And you start gettin' chills and yer jumping from sweat And you're lookin' for somethin' you ain't quite found yet And yer knee-deep in the dark water with yer hands in the air And the whole world's a-watchin' with a window peek stare And yer good gal leaves and she's long gone a-flying And yer heart feels sick like fish when they're fryin' And yer jackhammer falls from yer hand to yer feet And you need it badly but it lays on the street And yer bell's bangin' loudly but you can't hear its beat And you think yer ears might a been hurt Or yer eyes've turned filthy from the sight-blindin' dirt And you figured you failed in yesterdays rush When you were faked out an' fooled white facing a four flush And all the time you were holdin' three queens And it's makin you mad, it's makin' you mean Like in the middle of Life magazine Bouncin' around a pinball machine And there's something on yer mind you wanna be saying That somebody someplace oughta be hearin' But it's trapped on yer tongue and sealed in yer head And it bothers you badly when your layin' in bed And no matter how you try you just can't say it And yer scared to yer soul you just might forget it And yer eyes get swimmy from the tears in yer head And yer pillows of feathers turn to blankets of lead And the lion's mouth opens and yer staring at his teeth And his jaws start closin with you underneath And yer flat on your belly with yer hands tied behind And you wish you'd never taken that last detour sign And you say to yourself just what am I doin' On this road I'm walkin', on this trail I'm turnin' On this curve I'm hanging On this pathway I'm strolling, in the space I'm taking In this air I'm inhaling Am I mixed up too much, am I mixed up too hard Why am I walking, where am I running What am I saying, what am I knowing On this guitar I'm playing, on this banjo I'm frailin' On this mandolin I'm strummin', in the song I'm singin' In the tune I'm hummin', in the words I'm writin' In the words that I'm thinkin' In this ocean of hours I'm all the time drinkin' Who am I helping, what am I breaking What am I giving, what am I taking But you try with your whole soul best Never to think these thoughts and never to let Them kind of thoughts gain ground Or make yer heart pound ...

And yeah, put out as I can be with Mama 'bout a lotta things, I gotta admit she gets all the credit for getting me interested in cooking when I was just knee-high to a grasshopper. Gladys never seemed to give a damn about it when we were kids, which I guess is why she and that family of hers nourish themselves today mainly on KFC and Whoppers and junk like that. But me, I couldn't keep my eyes off Mama when she'd fix a mess of short ribs, or cut out perfect rounds of buttermilk biscuit dough with a juice glass, or spread a thick, real shiny caramel icing over her 1-2-3-4 cakes. And I can remember like it was yesterday (must have been about 4 years old at the time) when she first let me help her bake cookies, especially the same jelly treats I still make today and could eat by the dozen if I didn't now have better control. "Honey, start opening those jars on the counter," she said while she creamed butter and sugar with her Sunbeam electric hand mixer in the same wide, chipped bowl she used to make for biscuit dough. Strawberry, peach, and mint- the flavors never varied for Mama's jelly treats, and just the idea of making these cookies with anything but jelly and jam she'd put up herself the year before would have been inconceivable to Mama.

The teachings of impermanence and lack of independent existence are not difficult to understand intellectually; when you hear these teachings you may think that they are quite true. On a deeper level, however, you probably still identify yourself as “me” and identify others as “them” or “you.” On some level you likely say to yourself, “I will always be me; I have an identity that is important.” I, for example, say to myself, “I am a Buddhist priest; not a Christian or Islamic one. I am a Japanese person, not an American or a Chinese one.” If we did not assume that we have this something within us that does not change, it would be very difficult for us to live responsibly in society. This is why people who are unfamiliar with Buddhism often ask, “If there were no unchanging essential existence, doesn’t that mean I would not be responsible for my past actions, since I would be a different person than in the past?” But of course that is not what the Buddha meant when he said we have no unchanging atman or essential existence. To help us understand this point, we can consider how our life resembles a river. Each moment the water of a river is flowing and different, so it is constantly changing, but there is still a certain continuity of the river as a whole. The Mississippi River, for example, was the river we know a million years ago. And yet, the water flowing in the Mississippi is always different, always new, so there is actually no fixed thing that we can say is the one and only Mississippi River. We can see this clearly when we compare the source of the Mississippi in northern Minnesota, a small stream one can jump over, to the river’s New Orleans estuary, which seems as wide as an ocean. We cannot say which of these is the true Mississippi: it is just a matter of conditions that lets us call one or the other of these the Mississippi. In reality, a river is just a collection of masses of flowing water contained within certain shapes in the land. “Mississippi River” is simply a name given to various conditions and changing elements. Since our lives are also just a collection of conditions, we cannot say that we each have one true identity that does not change, just as we cannot say there is one true Mississippi River. What we call the “self ” is just a set of conditions existing within a collection of different elements. So I cannot say that there is an unchanging self that exists throughout my life as a baby, as a teenager, and as it is today. Things that I thought were important and interesting when I was an elementary or high school student, for example, are not at all interesting to me now; my feelings, emotions, and values are always changing. This is the meaning of the teaching that everything is impermanent and without independent existence. But we still must recognize that there is a certain continuity in our lives, that there is causality, and that we need to be responsible for what we did yesterday. In this way, self-identity is important. Even though in actuality there is no unchanging identity, I still must use expressions like “when I was a baby ..., when I was a boy ..., when I was a teenager. ...” To speak about changes in our lives and communicate in a meaningful way, we must speak as if we assumed that there is an unchanging “I” that has been experiencing the changes; otherwise, the word “change” has no meaning. But according to Buddhist philosophy, self-identity, the “I,” is a creation of the mind; we create self-identity because it’s convenient and useful in certain ways. We must use self-identity to live responsibly in society, but we should realize that it is merely a tool, a symbol, a sign, or a concept. Because it enables us to think and discriminate, self-identity allows us to live and function. Although it is not the only reality of our lives, self-identity is a reality for us, a tool we must use to live with others in society.

Yesterday on the street I passed the 100% perfect girl,' I tell someone. 'Yeah?' he says. 'Good-looking?' 'Not really.' 'Your favorite type, then?' 'I don't know. I can't seem to remember anything about her - the shape of her eyes or the size of her breasts.' 'Strange.' 'Yeah, strange.' 'So anyhow,' he says, already bored, 'what did you do? Talk to her? Follow her?' 'Nah. Just passed her on the street.' She's walking east to west, and I west to east. [...] How can I approach her? What should I say? 'Good morning, miss. Do you think you could spare half an hour for a little conversation?' Ridiculous. I'd sound like an insurance salesman. 'Pardon me, but would you happen to know if there is an all-night cleaners in the neighborhood?' No, this is just as ridiculous. I'm not carrying any laundry, for one thing. Who's going to buy a line like that? Maybe the simple truth would do. 'Good morning. You are the 100% perfect girl for me.' No, she wouldn't believe it. Or even if she did, she might not want to talk to me. Sorry, she could say, I might be the 100% perfect girl for you, but you're not the 100% perfect boy for me. It could happen. And if I found myself in that situation, I'd probably go to pieces. I'd never recover from the shock. I'm thirty-two, and that's what growing older is all about.

From Tomorrow to Yesterday The tree trunks move in time with the rhythm of her rubber soles on the wet path, where the air is still cool after the night rain. The woodland floor is white with anemones; in one place, growing close to the roots of an ancient tree, they make her think of an old, wrinkled hand. She could go on and on without getting tired, without meeting anyone or thinking of anything in particular, and without coming to the edge of the woods. As if the town did not begin just behind the trees, the leafy suburb with its peaceful roads and its houses hidden behind close-trimmed hedges. She doesn't want to think about anything, and almost succeeds; her body is no more than a porous, pulsating machine. The sun breaks through the clouds as she runs back, its light diffused on the gravel drive and the magnolia in front of the kitchen window. His car is no longer parked beside hers, he must have left while she was in the woods. He hadn't stirred when she rose, and she'd already been in bed when he came home late last night. She lay with her back turned, eyes closed, as he undressed, taking care not to wake her. She leans against one of the pillars of the garage and stretches, before emptying the mailbox and letting herself into the house. She puts the mail on the kitchen table. The little light on the coffeemaker is on; she switches it off. Not so long ago, she would have felt a stab of irritation or a touch of tenderness, depending on her mood. He always forgets to turn off that machine. She puts the kettle on, sprinkles tea leaves into the pot, and goes over to the kitchen window. She observes the magnolia blossoms, already starting to open. They'll have to talk about it, of course, but neither of them seems able to find the right words, the right moment. She pauses on her way through the sitting room. She stands amid her furniture looking out over the lawn and the pond at the end of the garden. The canopies of the trees are dimly reflected in the shining water. She goes into the bathroom. The shower door is still spotted with little drops. As time went on they have come to make contact during the day only briefly, like passing strangers. But that's the way it has been since the children left home, nothing unusual in that. She takes off her clothes and stands in front of the mirror where a little while ago he stood shaving. She greets her reflection with a wry smile. She has never been able to view herself in a mirror without this moue, as if demonstrating a certain guardedness about what she sees. The dark green eyes and wavy black hair, the angularity of her features. She dyes her hair exactly the color it would have been if she hadn't begun to go gray in her thirties, but that's her only protest against age.

Between the pleasure of a kiss and of what a man and woman do in bed seems to me only a gradation. A kiss, for instance, is not to be minimized, or its value judged by anyone else. I wonder do these men grade their pleasure in terms of whether their actions produce a child or not, and do they consider them more pleasant if they do. It is a question of pleasure after all, and what's the use debating the pleasure of an ice cream cone versus a football gamme--or a Beethoven quartet versus the Mona Lisa. I'll leave that to the philosophers. But their attitude was that I must be somehow demented or blind (plus a kind of regret, I thought, at the fact that a fairly attractive woman is presumably unavailable to men). [...] The most important point I did not mention and was not thought of by anyone--that the rapport between two men or two women can be absolute and perfect, as it can never be between man and woman, and perhaps some people want just this, as others want that more shifting and uncertain thing that happens between men and women. It was said or at least implied yesterday that my present course would bring me to the depths of human vice and degeneration. Yes, I have sunk a good deal since they took you from me. It is true, if I were to go on like this and be spied upon, attacked, never possessing one person long enough so that knowledge of a person is a superficial thing--that is degeneration. Or to live against one's grain, that is degeneration by definition.

Where are you from?" She asked without thinking. "I was born in the mountains." Runach said with a shrug. "The place doesn't matter." "Do you have siblings?" "Yes, several. Not all are still living. He smiled faintly. "You are full of questions this afternoon." "The library was a bad influence on me." Runach smiled briefly. "And I believe that was three questions you asked me, which leaves me with three of my own for you to answer." "That was two." "I don't count very well." "I think you count very well," she said grimly. He only smiled again. "I'll contemplate which answers I'll have and let you know." Aisling thought she just might be dreading them, but couldn't bring herself to say as much. "What was your home like?" she asked. "Another question." "You look distracted." He smiled and a dimple peeked out at her from his unscarred cheek. "You are more devious than I give you credit for being. I am keeping a tally, you know. I will expect a like number of answers from you." She stared at him for a moment or two. It was difficult not to, but he didnt seem to mind. "Why?" She asked finally. "Beacause you are a mystery." "And do you care for a mystery?" "I am obsessed by a good mystery," he said frankly. "More than enough to pry a few answers out of you, however I am able." "And what if I am not inclined to give them?" She asked, her mouth suddenly dry. "Then I will wonder about you silently." "In truth?" she asked, surprised. Runach smiled, looking just as surprised. "What else would I do? Beat the answers from you?" "I don't know." She said slowly. "I don't know what soldiers do." He shook his head. "Hedge all you like, if you like." "Your mother must have been a well-bred lady." She said, frowning. "Why do you say that?" "She seems to have taught you decent manners, for your being a mere soldier." "She tried," he agreed, looking out over the sea. Aisling turned and looked at him. "How long ago did you lose her?" Runach took a deep breath and dragged his hand through his hair, before he bowed his head and slid her a look. "That answer will cost you dearly." Her first instinct, as always, was to say nothing. But the truth was, she lived and breathed still. She could tell him perhaps a bit about herself, without bringing the curse down upon her head. Aisling took her own deep breath. "Very well." "My mother died twenty years ago, though I vow it feels like yesterday." "How did she die?" Runach was very still. "My father slew her and half my siblings. Time has done the rest of that terrible work I suppose. She shut her mouth, and put her hand on his arm. "I'm sorry." "I am too," he agreed. Runach shook his head, then reached for her hand to draw it through his arm. "Let's walk whilst you spew out the answers you owe me. You'll be more comfortable that way, I'm sure." "I'm not sure you should worry about my comfort" Aisling managed, "not after those questions." "But I do. And now that I have bared my soul, I think you should worry about my comfort and do the same.

Studentdom, he felt, must pass its own Examinations and define its own Commencement--a slow, most painful process, made the more anguishing by bloody intelligences like the Bonifacists of Siegfrieder College. Yet however it seemed at times that men got nowhere, but only repeated class by class the mistakes of their predecessors, two crucial facts about them were at once their hope and the limitation of their possibility, so he believed. One was their historicity: the campus was young, the student race even younger, and by contrast with the whole of past time, the great collegiate cultures had been born only yesterday. The other had to do with comparative cyclology, a field of systematic speculation he could not review for me just then, but whose present relevance lay in the correspondency he held to obtain between the life-history of individuals and the history of studentdom in general. As the embryologists maintained that ontogeny repeats phylogeny, so, Max claimed, the race itself--and on a smaller scale, West-Campus culture--followed demonstrably--in capital letters, as it were, or slow motion--the life-pattern of its least new freshman. This was the basis of Spielman's Law--ontogeny repeats cosmogeny--and there was much more to it and to the science of cyclology whereof it was first principle. The important thing for now was that, by his calculations, West-Campus as a whole was in mid-adolescence... 'Look how we been acting,' he invited me, referring to intercollegiate political squabbles; 'the colleges are spoilt kids, and the whole University a mindless baby, ja? Okay: so weren't we all once, Enos Enoch too? And we got to admit that the University's a precocious kid. If the history of life on campus hadn't been so childish, we couldn't hope it'll reach maturity.' Studentdom had passed already, he asserted, from a disorganized, pre-literate infancy (of which Croaker was a modern representative, nothing ever being entirely lost) through a rather brilliant early childhood ('...ancient Lykeion, Remus, T'ang...') which formed its basic and somewhat contradictory character; it had undergone a period of naive general faith in parental authority (by which he meant early Founderism) and survived critical spells of disillusionment, skepticism, rationalism, willfulness, self-criticism, violence, disorientation, despair, and the like--all characteristic of pre-adolescence and adolescence, at least in their West-Campus form. I even recognized some of those stages in my own recent past; indeed, Max's description of the present state of West-Campus studentdom reminded me uncomfortably of my behavior in the Lady-Creamhair period: capricious, at odds with itself, perverse, hard to live with. Its schisms, as manifested in the Quiet Riot, had been aggravated and rendered dangerous by the access of unwonted power--as when, in the space of a few semesters, a boy finds himself suddenly muscular, deep-voiced, aware of his failings, proud of his strengths, capable of truly potent love and hatred--and on his own. What hope there was that such an adolescent would reach maturity (not to say Commencement) without destroying himself was precisely the hope of the University.

Chip asked me about New York and what I wanted to do, and how long my dad had owned the shop, and what it was I loved about Waco. He asked about my sisters and my family in general, and what I’d done at Baylor, and if I’d known a few communications majors he’d run around with at school. (I told y’all he was chatty!) Somehow none of these questions seemed intrusive or strange to me at the time, which is funny, because thinking back I find them particularly telling. At the time, it was just like talking with an old friend. John finally stood up, and this baseball-cap-wearing customer that John had introduced as Chip followed. “Well, nice talking to you,” he said. “Nice talking to you too,” I replied, and that was it. I went back inside. The guys in the shop wanted to know what I thought about Hot John, and I just laughed. “Sorry, guys, I don’t think it’s gonna work out.” The next day I came back from my lunch break to find a note on my desk: “Chip Gaines called. Call him back.” I thought, Oh, that must be the guy I met yesterday. So I called him. I honestly thought he was going to ask me about getting a better price on his brakes or something, but instead he said, “Hey, I really enjoyed our conversation yesterday. I was wondering…you want to go out sometime?” And for some reason I said okay--just like that, without any hesitation. It wasn’t like me at all. When I hung up the phone, I went, “What in the world just happened!” So you said okay immediately? I don’t even remember that. That’s fun! No reservations? Man, I must’ve been good-lookin’. What Chip didn’t know was I didn’t even give myself time to have reservations. Something told me to just go for it. Cute, Joey. This story makes me love you all over again.

Four Years Since Today I remember the day but to be honest it is everyday That day then, the moment then, when you left us all here More than just a father I call, a gem I treasure, that day I lost We four girls, my mom’s other half, my brothers best bud, our first love, we lost Holding the key to the future called You, I stand still facing the gate of the past Why I keep on asking the same question? Why you? Why out of all those people? Why too soon? Why? It has been years, 4 years exact, it seems like yesterday yes You were taken too soon, words aren’t enough to express It’s not fair, but who I am to blame, who Am I to question? My eyes express longing you cannot fathom From my open mouth my broken heart pours Words that try to capture that image so faint He is the picture I could not ever paint Yet our memories is in the solid bowl being kept Spare me even just 5 or 10 minutes of your presence To build up this longing I feel, I am asking I want to hear your nag; I want to hear your laugh In my dreams please see me there I won’t get afraid nor get frightened Like a waterfalls my tears keeps on flowing Like a bubble your voice keeps on vanishing He, his shadow, he himself starts from fading I don’t want to forget you please stop time from ticking I don’t want to open my eyes don’t wake me from dreaming You are the art of my painting, the muse of my poem My strength, my inspiration why I’m still holding on My king, my superman, name them all, you are my only one I miss the old golden days when you used to carry us one by one Look papa, how I am now, hoping always, you’ll be proud It pains me to know this inevitable truth, yes That I can’t see you for now yes it’s the truth, but My father’s love undeniable not easily obtained Something that few, many people rather don’t have But I’m blessed and proud I have mine claimed.

We came to the city because we wished to live haphazardly, to reach for only the least realistic of our desires, and to see if we could not learn what our failures had to teach, and not, when we came to live, discover that we had never died. We wanted to dig deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to be overworked and reduced to our last wit. And if our bosses proved mean, why then we’d evoke their whole and genuine meanness afterward over vodka cranberries and small batch bourbons. And if our drinking companions proved to be sublime then we would stagger home at dawn over the Old City cobblestones, into hot showers and clean shirts, and press onward until dusk fell again. For the rest of the world, it seemed to us, had somewhat hastily concluded that it was the chief end of man to thank God it was Friday and pray that Netflix would never forsake them. Still we lived frantically, like hummingbirds; though our HR departments told us that our commitments were valuable and our feedback was appreciated, our raises would be held back another year. Like gnats we pestered Management— who didn’t know how to use the Internet, whose only use for us was to set up Facebook accounts so they could spy on their children, or to sync their iPhones to their Outlooks, or to explain what tweets were and more importantly, why— which even we didn’t know. Retire! we wanted to shout. We ha Get out of the way with your big thumbs and your senior moments and your nostalgia for 1976! We hated them; we wanted them to love us. We wanted to be them; we wanted to never, ever become them. Complexity, complexity, complexity! We said let our affairs be endless and convoluted; let our bank accounts be overdrawn and our benefits be reduced. Take our Social Security contributions and let it go bankrupt. We’d been bankrupt since we’d left home: we’d secure our own society. Retirement was an afterlife we didn’t believe in and that we expected yesterday. Instead of three meals a day, we’d drink coffee for breakfast and scavenge from empty conference rooms for lunch. We had plans for dinner. We’d go out and buy gummy pad thai and throat-scorching chicken vindaloo and bento boxes in chintzy, dark restaurants that were always about to go out of business. Those who were a little flush would cover those who were a little short, and we would promise them coffees in repayment. We still owed someone for a movie ticket last summer; they hadn’t forgotten. Complexity, complexity. In holiday seasons we gave each other spider plants in badly decoupaged pots and scarves we’d just learned how to knit and cuff links purchased with employee discounts. We followed the instructions on food and wine Web sites, but our soufflés sank and our baked bries burned and our basil ice creams froze solid. We called our mothers to get recipes for old favorites, but they never came out the same. We missed our families; we were sad to be rid of them. Why shouldn’t we live with such hurry and waste of life? We were determined to be starved before we were hungry. We were determined to be starved before we were hungry. We were determined to decrypt our neighbors’ Wi-Fi passwords and to never turn on the air-conditioning. We vowed to fall in love: headboard-clutching, desperate-texting, hearts-in-esophagi love. On the subways and at the park and on our fire escapes and in the break rooms, we turned pages, resolved to get to the ends of whatever we were reading. A couple of minutes were the day’s most valuable commodity. If only we could make more time, more money, more patience; have better sex, better coffee, boots that didn’t leak, umbrellas that didn’t involute at the slightest gust of wind. We were determined to make stupid bets. We were determined to be promoted or else to set the building on fire on our way out. We were determined to be out of our minds.

After I left Uriah’s side last night, I wandered the compound without any sense of direction. I should have been thinking of my friend, teetering between this world and whatever comes next, but instead I thought of what I said to Tobias. And how I felt when I looked at him, like something was breaking. I didn’t tell him it was the end of our relationship. I meant to, but when I was looking at him, the words were impossible to say. I feel tears welling up again, as they have every hour or so since yesterday, and I push them away, swallow them down. “So you saved the Bureau,” Cara says, turning to me. “You seem to get involved in a lot of conflict. I suppose we should all be grateful that you are steady in a crisis.” “I didn’t save the Bureau. I have no interest in saving the Bureau,” I retort. “I kept a weapon out of some dangerous hands, that’s all.” I wait a beat. “Did you just compliment me?” “I am capable of recognizing another person’s strengths,” Cara replies, and she smiles. “Additionally, I think our issues are now resolved, both on a logical and an emotional level.” She clears her throat a little, and I wonder if it’s finally acknowledging that she has emotions that makes her uncomfortable, or something else. “It sounds like you know something about the Bureau that has made you angry. I wonder if you could tell me what it is.” Christina rests her head on the edge of Uriah’s mattress, her slender body collapsing sideways. I say wryly, “I wonder. We may never know.” “Hmm.” The crease between Cara’s eyebrows appears when she frowns, making her look so much like Will that I have to look away. “Maybe I should say please.” “Fine. You know Jeanine’s simulation serum? Well, it wasn’t hers.” I sigh. “Come on. I’ll show you. It’ll be easier that way.” It would be just as easy to tell her what I saw in that old storage room, nestled deep in the Bureau laboratories. But the truth is, I just want to keep myself busy, so I don’t think about Uriah. Or Tobias.

Standing at the window overlooking the lawn, Jordan and Alexandra Townsende watched the couple heading toward them. “If you’d asked me to name the last man on earth I would have expected to fall head over heels for a slip of a girl, it would have been Ian Thornton,” he told her. His wife heard that with a sidewise look of extreme amusement. “If I’d been asked, I rather think I would have named you.” “I’m sure you would have,” he said, grinning. He saw her smile fade, and he put his arm around her waist, instantly concerned that her pregnancy was causing her discomfort. “Is it the babe, darling?” She burst out laughing and shook her head, but she sobered again almost instantly. “Do you think,” she asked pensively, “he can be trusted not to hurt her? He’s done so much damage that I-I just cannot like him, Jordan. He’s handsome, I’ll grant you that, extraordinarily handsome-“ “Not that handsome,” Jordan said, stung. And this time Alexandra dissolved in mirth. Turning, she wrapped her arms around him and kissed him soundly. “Actually, he rather reminds me of you,” she said, “in his coloring and height and build.” “I hope that hasn’t anything to do with why you can’t like him,” her husband teased. “Jordan, do stop. I’m worried, really I am. He’s-well, he almost frightens me. Even though he seems very civilized on the surface, there’s a forcefulness, maybe even a ruthlessness beneath his polished manners. And he stops at nothing when he wants something. I saw that yesterday when he came to the house and persuaded Elizabeth to agree to marry him.” Turning, Jordan looked at her with a mixture of intent interest, surprise, and amusement. “Go on,” he said. “Well, at this particular moment he wants Elizabeth, and I can’t help fearing it’s a whim.” “You wouldn’t have thought that if you’d seen his face blanch the other night when he realized she was going to try to brave society without his help.” “Really? You’re certain?” “Positive.” “Are you certain you know him well enough to judge him?” “Absolutely certain,” he averred. “How well do you know him?” “Ian,” Jordan said with a grin, “is my sixth cousin.” “Your what? You’re joking! Why didn’t you tell me before?

Dammit, Holly, I'd never have believed you'd do something so harebrained. Do you understand that the building could have collapsed around you and those henwits? I know what condition those places are in, and I wouldn't let a dog of mine venture past the threshold, much less my wife. And the men—good God, when I think of the low-living bastards who were in your vicinity, it makes my blood curdle! Sailors and drunkards on every corner—do you know what would happen if one of them took it into his head to snap up a little treat like you?” As the thought seemed to temporarily render him incapable of speech, Holly took the opportunity to defend herself. “I was with companions, and—” “Ladies,” he said savagely. “Armed with umbrellas, no doubt. Just what do you think they would have been able to do, had you met with bad company?” “The few men we encountered in the neighborhood were harmless,” Holly argued. “In fact, it was the very same place you lived in during your childhood, and those men were no different from you—” “In those days, I'd have played merry hell with you, if I'd managed to get my hands on you,” he said harshly. “Have no illusions, milady… you'd have ended face-to-the wall in Maidenhead Lane with your skirts around your waist. The only wonder is that you didn't meet that fate with some randy sailor yesterday.” “You're exaggerating,” Holly said defensively, but that only roused his temper to a higher pitch. He continued to blister her ears with a lecture that was furious and insulting by turns, naming the various diseases she could have contracted and the vermin she had likely encountered, until Holly couldn't bear another word. “I've heard enough,” she cried hotly. “It's clear to me that I'm not to make a single decision without asking your permission first—I'm to be treated as a child, and you will act as a dictator.” The accusation was unfair, and she knew it, but she was too incensed to care. Suddenly his fury seemed to evaporate, and he stared at her with an inscrutable gaze. A long moment passed before he spoke again. “You wouldn't have taken Rose to such a place, would you?” “Of course not! But she is a little girl, and I'm—” “My life,” he interrupted quietly. “You're my entire life. If anything ever happens to you, Holly, there is nothing left for me.

If it were any of the other Sharpes, he wouldn’t balk. But the idea of spending serveral hours in her company was both intoxicating and terrifying. “If you don’t let me go along,” she continued, “I’ll just follow you. He scowled at her. She probably would; the woman was as stubborn as she was beautiful. “And don’t think you can outride me, either,” she added. “Halstead Hall has a very good stable, and lady Bell is one of our swiftest mounts.” “Lady Bell?” he said sarcastically. “Not Crack Shot or Pistol?” She glared over at him. “Lady Bell was my favorite doll when I was a girl, the last one Mama gave me before she died. I used to play with it whenever I wanted to remember her. The doll got so ragged that I threw her away when I outgrew her.” Her voice lowered. “I regretted that later, but by then it was too late.” The idea of her playing with a doll to remember her late mother made his throat tighten and his heart falter. “Fine,” he bit out. “You can go with me to High Wycombe.” Surprise turned her cheeks rosy. “Oh, thank you, Jackson! You won’t regret it, I promise you!” “I already regret it,” he grumbled. “And you must do as I say. None of your going off half-cocked, do you hear?” “I never go off half-cocked!” “No, you just walk around with a pistol packed full of powder, thinking you can hold men at bay with it.” She tossed her head. “You’ll never let me forget that, will you?” “Not as long as we both shall live.” The minute the words left his lips, he could have kicked himself. They sounded too much like a vow, one he’d give anything for the right to make. Fortunately, she didn’t seem to have noticed. Instead, she was squirming and shimmying about on her saddle. “Are you all right?” he asked. “I’ve got a burr caught in my stocking that keeps rubbing against my leg. I’m just trying to work it out. Don’t mind me.” His mouth went dry at her mention of stockings. It brought yesterday’s encounter vividly into his mind, how he’d lifted her skirts to reach the smooth expanse of calf encased in silk. How he’d run his hands up her thighs as his mouth had tasted- God save him. He couldn’t be thinking about such things while riding. He shifted uncomfortably in the saddle as they reached the road and settled into a comfortable pace. The road was busy at this early hour. The local farmers were driving their carts to market or town, and laborers were headed for the fields. To Jackson’s relief, that made it easy not to talk. Conversaing with her was bound to be difficult, especially if she started consulting him about her suitors.

ACT I Dear Diary, I have been carrying you around for a while now, but I didn’t write anything before now. You see, I didn’t like killing that cow to get its leather, but I had to. Because I wanted to make a diary and write into it, of course. Why did I want to write into a diary? Well, it’s a long story. A lot has happened over the last year and I have wanted to write it all down for a while, but yesterday was too crazy not to document! I’m going to tell you everything. So where should we begin? Let’s begin from the beginning. I kind of really want to begin from the middle, though. It’s when things got very interesting. But never mind that, I’ll come to it in a bit. First of all, my name is Herobrine. That’s a weird name, some people say. I’m kinda fond of it, but that’s just me I suppose. Nobody really talks to me anyway. People just refer to me as “Him”. Who gave me the name Herobrine? I gave it to myself, of course! Back in the day, I used to be called Jack, but it was such a run-of-the-mill name, so I changed it. Oh hey, while we’re at the topic of names, how about I give you a name, Diary? Yeah, I’m gonna give you a name. I’ll call you… umm, how does Doris sound? Nah, very plain. I must come up with a more creative name. Angela sounds cool, but I don’t think you’ll like that. Come on, give me some time. I’m not used to coming up with awesome names on the fly! Yes, I got it! I’ll call you Moony, because I created you under a full moon. Of course, that’s such a perfect name! I am truly a genius. I wish people would start appreciating my intellect. Oh, right. The story, right, my bad. So Moony, when it all started, I was a miner. Yep, just like 70% of the people in Scotland. And it was a dull job, I have to say. Most of the times, I mined for coal and iron ore. Those two resources were in great need at my place, that’s why so many people were miners. We had some farmers, builders, and merchants, but that was basically it. No jewelers, no booksellers, no restaurants, nothing. My gosh, that place was boring! I had always been fascinated by the idea of building. It seemed like so much fun, creating new things from other things. What’s not to like? I wanted to build, too. So I started. It was part-time at first, and I only did it when nobody was around. Whenever I got some free time on my hands, I spent it building stuff. I would dig out small caves and build little horse stables and make boats and all. It was so much fun! So I decided to take it to the next level and left my job as a miner. They weren’t paying me well, anyway. I traveled far and wide, looking for places to build and finding new materials. I’m quite the adrenaline junkie, I soon realized, always looking for an adventure.

Hannah Winter was sixty all of a sudden, as women of sixty are. Just yesterday - or the day before, at most - she had been a bride of twenty in a wine-coloured silk wedding gown, very stiff and rich. And now here she was, all of a sudden, sixty. (...) This is the way it happened! She was rushing along Peacock Alley to meet her daughter Marcia. Anyone who knows Chicago knows that smoke-blackened pile, the Congress Hotel; and anyone who knows the Congress Hotel has walked down that glittering white marble crypt called Peacock Alley. It is neither so glittering nor so white nor, for that matter, so prone to preen itself as it was in the hotel's palmy '90s. But it still serves as a convenient short cut on a day when Chicago's lake wind makes Michigan Boulevard a hazard, and thus Hannah Winter was using it. She was to have met Marcia at the Michigan Boulevard entrance at two, sharp. And here it was 2.07. When Marcia said two, there she was at two, waiting, lips slightly compressed. (...) So then here it was 2.07, and Hannah Winter, rather panicky, was rushing along Peacock Alley, dodging loungers, and bell-boys, and traveling salesmen and visiting provincials and the inevitable red-faced delegates with satin badges. In her hurry and nervous apprehension she looked, as she scuttled down the narrow passage, very much like the Rabbit who was late for the Duchess's dinner. Her rubber-heeled oxfords were pounding down hard on the white marble pavement. Suddenly she saw coming swiftly toward her a woman who seemed strangely familiar - a well-dressed woman, harassed-looking, a tense frown between her eyes, and her eyes staring so that they protruded a little, as one who runs ahead of herself in her haste. Hannah had just time to note, in a flash, that the woman's smart hat was slightly askew and that, though she walked very fast, her trim ankles showed the inflexibility of age, when she saw that the woman was not going to get out of her way. Hannah Winter swerved quickly to avoid a collision. So did the other woman. Next instant Hannah Winter brought up with a crash against her own image in that long and tricky mirror which forms a broad full-length panel set in the marble wall at the north end of Peacock Alley. Passerby and the loungers on near-by red plush seats came running, but she was unhurt except for a forehead bump that remained black-and-blue for two weeks or more. The bump did not bother her, nor did the slightly amused concern of those who had come to her assistance. She stood there, her hat still askew, staring at this woman - this woman with her stiff ankles, her slightly protruding eyes, her nervous frown, her hat a little sideways - this stranger - this murderess who had just slain, ruthlessly and forever, a sallow, high-spirited girl of twenty in a wine-coloured silk wedding gown.

I don't seem very useful. I don't look big or tough or strong. And yet here I am, in the middle of your fancy base." I gesture to the room around me, and feel the shaking in my hands subside. "Before I even met these guys, I was wandering the wastes alone. Completely alone. Do you even know what that's like?" Saint is silent, studying my face. I swallow and continue. "Not a lot of people do. 'Cause most people who end up alone just die, and that's the end of that. But not me. I joined a crew of goddamn sharks. I ate human flesh to survive. I learned to shoot. To kill. I blew the Queen's head off. I watched a friend die yesterday and I still came here to kick some ass." I take a deep breath, feel my chest rise and fall, the words nearly tumbling out of my mouth now. "And you think I'm not good enough for your mess of an army? Just 'cause I'm a little girl? Well, fuck you. I'm worth two of your guards, and tomorrow I'll be worth four of 'em, and eventually the whole lot. Because that's who I am, and that's what I do. I survive.

hear I lay watching a day comes a new how long has it been since i have seen your smiling face how long will it be till I can hold you in my arms once more it seems like just yesterday we walked side by side but in honesty it has been a lifetime since I have held your hands wily you cried to never to let you go here I am in our sleepy little town wondering when did I let go and why I can still fill your hands on my heart.

You're just a figment of my imagination, every piece of you, aren't you? A dream. Yet, those beautiful doe-eyes seem real as ever, the smell of your skin, taste of your lips, your sweet, warm breath on my mouth, like yesterday. Yet, you're here, every minute, here, together. In my world. In my heart.

In Walked Jim September 2013: Entering his first morning staff meeting as FBI director, Jim Comey loped to the head of the table, put down his briefing books, and lowered his six-foot-eight-inch, shirtsleeved self into a huge leather chair. He leaned the chair so far back on its hind legs that he lay practically flat, testing gravity. Then he sat up, stretched like a big cat, pushed the briefing books to the side, and said, as if he were talking to a friend, I don’t want to talk about these today. I’d rather talk about some other things first. He talked about how effective leaders immediately make their expectations clear and proceeded to do just that for us. Said he would expect us to love our jobs, expect us to take care of ourselves … I remember less of what he said than the easygoing way he spoke and the absolute clarity of his day-one priority: building relationships with each member of his senior team. Comey continually reminded the FBI leadership that strong relationships with one another were critical to the institution’s functioning. One day, after we reviewed the briefing books, he said, Okay, now I want to go around the room, and I want you all to say one thing about yourselves that no one else here knows about you. One hard-ass from the criminal division stunned the room to silence when he said, My wife and I, we really love Disney characters, and all our vacation time we spend in the Magic Kingdom. Another guy, formerly a member of the hostage-rescue team, who carefully tended his persona as a dead-eyed meathead—I thought his aesthetic tastes ran the gamut from YouTube videos of snipers in Afghanistan to YouTube videos of Bigfoot sightings—turned out to be an art lover. I really like the old masters, he said, but my favorite is abstract expressionism. This hokey parlor game had the effect Comey intended. It gave people an opportunity to be interesting and funny with colleagues in a way that most had rarely been before. Years later, I remember it like yesterday. That was Jim’s effect on almost everyone he worked with. I observed how he treated people. Tell me your story, he would say, then listen as if there were only the two of you in the whole world. You were, of course, being carefully assessed at the same time that you were being appreciated and accepted. He once told me that people’s responses to that opening helped him gauge their ability to communicate. Over the next few years I would sit in on hundreds of meetings with him. All kinds of individuals and organizations would come to Comey with their issues. No matter how hostile they were when they walked in the door, they would always walk out on a cloud of Comey goodness. Sometimes, after the door had closed, he would look at me and say, That was a mess. Jim has the same judgmental impulse that everyone has. He is complicated, with many different sides, and he is so good at showing his best side—which is better than most people’s—that his bad side, which is not as bad as most people’s, can seem more shocking on the rare moments when it flashes to the surface.

What I say is my business. How you react to it is your business To ascertain someone’s true character, don't listen to what they say, look at what they do The more intelligent you are, the more of an individual you are (same with creativity). Memory is the prison and imagination the key that frees us from our prejudice and preconceptions Attention addiction is the most pernicious of addictions. People will destroy themselves and the lives of others around them, just to get or keep attention focused on them and their need for its drug like dependency Sensitive people are more present than the insensitive, which is why the former jump at the sound of a pin dropping and the latter, not even to a ton weight falling beside them What you admire you mourn the passing of. What you despise, you are glad to see the back of Memory and perception depends upon silence and stillness as forgetting depends upon noise and motion (concentration / dispersal of energy and attention) Reality is not open to discussion. It is not something that changes with your opinion. It works how it works because that is how it works. The laws of reality are the laws of reality and that is it. If seeing is believing, is hearing deceiving (Being told the Emperor has got new clothes, versus seeing he hasn’t)? Stillness and silence is about staying present in the present. Noise and motion is abandonment (moving away from your position in time and space). Discovery is live, that is of the present. Memory is of the dead past (a recording). The first is always a surprise to you, the second is not. People mistake where consciousness is directed as being consciousness itself, which it isn’t If we think that we can't solve a problem, we want to eradicate it instead (stop it dead). If we can find a solution, we want to pat ourselves on the back for our creativity or understanding (keeping life / existence moving on, instead of it grinding to a halt). Culture, habit is that which reinforces our sense of identity Concentration is control because you are being present Thinking is an individual task, it is not a discussion with others, which is an exchange of ideas (other people’s thoughts) You will never understand a problem and resolve it, without exploring it and in depth. To some, yesterday is the nightmare and tomorrow the dream, to others it is the reverse Everything seems crazy until you understand it, when it instantly makes sense, even if you you still don’t think it’s sensible

To anyone who didn't know Noah like I did, like the boys did, he probably seemed picture-perfect. Handsome, though I'd never tell his stupid face that. Charming, playful. But he'd always had a sadness, just under the skin. Tender, like poking a bruise. And Noah was good at not flinching.

...if he could only break away from this pseudo-modernity, and pseudo-intellectualism; if he could just once defy his own age, instead of defying the dead Victorians; if he could only shock the vicar (who reads Proust) by quoting Longfellow (one doesn't put him on the mountaintops, of course, but there's better stuff than Proust ever dreamed of in the sonnets on Dante); I should feel that he was really his own self, instead of a variation on a current theme. It seems to me that if you really like a person, you want him above everything to be his own self ... One does get so sick of the notion of the present moment—that, because its conventions aren't those of the last century, it has no conventions of its own. The conventionalists of today all seem to forget that the conventions of yesterday were equally different from those of the day before yesterday.

Think about what pleases you, not just them." She paused, then added softly. "Even the Pumpkin King has a right to be happy." Jack nodded slowly, for a moment seeming lost in thought. Then he gave her a shy smile. "You know," he said thoughtfully. "We should talk more often, you and I." Sally's breath caught in her throat as Jack met her eyes with his own. She'd never seen them so close up, she realized wildly. Or noticed how dark and deep they were. She felt a shiver down her back, not entirely unpleasant. "I'd like that," she replied, her voice barely over a whisper. "I'd like that a lot." They fell into silence. Not an awkward silence, like the kind that came when she was having dinner with Dr. Finkelstein and ran out of polite things to say, but rather something almost comforting. As if they were somehow sharing a precious moment beyond words, side by side, under the bright orange Halloween moon. It was funny, Sally thought. If someone had told her yesterday she'd be out here on Halloween night, staring into the eyes of the Pumpkin King, she'd never have believed it. Up until now, they'd seemed worlds apart. But she'd seen another side of Jack tonight. And for two people who were so very different, they were more alike than she could have ever imagined.

But look at man, the impossible creature! Here nature seems to have thrown caution to the winds along with the programmed instincts. She created an animal who has no defense against full perception of the external world, an animal completely open to experience. Not only in front of his nose, in his umwelt, but in many other umwelten. He can relate not only to animals in his own species, but in some ways to all other species. He can contemplate not only what is edible for him, but everything that grows. He not only lives in this moment, but expands his inner self to yesterday, his curiosity to centuries ago, his fears to five billion years from now when the sun will cool, his hopes to an eternity from now. He lives not only on a tiny territory, nor even on an entire planet, but in a galaxy, in a universe, and in dimensions beyond visible universes. It is appalling, the burden that man bears, the experiential burden. As we saw in the last chapter, man can’t even take his own body for granted as can other animals. It is not just hind feet, a tail that he drags, that are just “there,” limbs to be; used and taken for granted or chewed off when caught in a trap and when they give pain and prevent movement. Man’s body is a problem to him that has to be explained. Not only his body is strange, but also its inner landscape, the memories and dreams. Man’s very insides—his self—are foreign to him. He doesn’t know who he is, why he was born, what he is doing on the planet, what he is supposed to do, what he can expect. His own existence is incomprehensible to him, a miracle just like the rest of creation, closer to him, right near his pounding heart, but for that reason all the more strange. Each thing is a problem, and man can shut out nothing. As Maslow has well said, “It is precisely the godlike in ourselves that we are ambivalent about, fascinated by and fearful of, motivated to and defensive against. This is one aspect of the basic human predicament, that we are simultaneously worms and gods.

But nature has protected the lower animal by endowing them with instincts. An instinct is a programmed perception that calls into play a programmed reaction. It is very simple. Animals are not moved by what they cannot react to. They live in a tiny world, a sliver of reality, one neuro-chemical program that keeps them walking behind their nose and shuts out everything else. But look at man, the impossible creature! Here nature seems to have thrown caution to the winds along with the programmed instincts. She created an animal who has no defense against full perception of the external world, an animal completely open to experience. Not only in front of his nose, in his umwelt, but in many umwelten. He can relate not only to animals in his own species, but in some ways to all other species. He can contemplate not only what is edible for him, but everything that grows. He not only lives in this moment, but expands his inner self to yesterday, his curiosity to centuries ago, his fears to five billion years from now when the sun will cool, his hopes to an eternity from now. He lives not only on a tiny territory, nor even on an entire planet, but in a galaxy, in a universe, and in dimensions beyond visible universes. It is appalling, the burden that man bears, the experiential burden. As we saw in the last chapter, man can't even take his own body for granted as can other animals. It is not just hind feet, a tail that he drags, that are just "there," limbs to be used and taken for granted or chewed off when caught in a trap and when they give pain and prevent movement. Man's body is a problem to him that has to be explained. Not only his body is strange, but also its inner landscape, the memories and dreams. Man's very insides-his self-are foreign to him. He doesn't know who he is, why he was born, what he is doing on the planet, what he is supposed to do, what he can expect. His own existence is incomprehensible to him, a miracle just like the rest of creation, closer to him, right near his pounding heart, but for that reason all the more strange. Each thing is a problem, and man can shut out nothing. As Maslow has well said, "It is precisely the godlike in ourselves that we are ambivalent about, fascinated by and fearful of, motivated to and defensive against. This is one aspect of the basic human predicament, that we are simultaneously worms and gods." There it is again: gods with anuses.

Alternatives to time-out Isolating children for a period of time has become a popular discipline strategy advocated by many child psychologists and pediatricians. However, newly adopted toddlers seem to be more upset than helped by time-outs. Time-outs are intended to provide an opportunity for both parents and children to calm down and change their behaviors, but it isn’t effective for children who do not have self-calming strategies. Isolation can be traumatic for a toddler who is struggling with grief and/or attachment, and so perceives time-out as further rejection. If the child becomes angrier or more withdrawn as a result of being timed-out, try another strategy. One alternative is for parents to impose a brief time-out on themselves by temporarily withdrawing their attention from their child. For example, the parent whose child is throwing toys stops playing, looks away, and firmly tells the child, “I can’t continue playing until you stop throwing your toys.” Sitting passively next to the child may be effective, especially if the child previously was engaged in an enjoyable activity with the parent. Another alternative to parent enforced time-outs is self-determined time-outs, where the child is provided the opportunity to withdraw from a conflict voluntarily or at least have some input into the time-out arrangement. The parent could say, “I understand that you got very upset when you had to go to your room yesterday after you hit Sara. Can you think of a different place you would like to go to calm down if you feel like getting in a fight?” If the child suggests going out on the porch, the next time a battle seems to be brewing, Mom or Dad can say, “Do you need to go outside to the porch and calm down before we talk more?” Some children eventually reach the level of self-control where they remove themselves from a volatile situation without encouragement from Mom or Dad. These types of negotiations usually work better with older preschoolers or school-age children than they do with toddlers because of the reasoning skills involved. As an alternative to being timed-out, toddlers also can be timed-in while in the safety of a parent’s lap. Holding allows parents to talk to their child about why she’s being removed from an activity. For example, the toddler who has thrown her truck at the cat could be picked up and held for a few minutes while being told, “I can’t let you throw your toys at Misty. That hurts her, and in our family we don’t hurt animals. We’ll sit here together until you’re able to calm down.” Calming strategies could incorporate music, back rubs, or encouraging the child to breathe slowly. Objects that children are misusing should also be removed. For example, in the situation just discussed, the truck could be timed-out to a high shelf. If parents still decide to physically remove their child for a time-out, it should never be done in a way or place that frightens a toddler. Toddlers who have been frightened in the past by closed doors, dark rooms, or a particular room such as a bathroom should never be subjected to those settings. I know toddlers who, in their terror, have literally trashed the furniture and broken windows when they were locked in their rooms for a time-out. If parents feel a time-out is essential, it should be very brief, and in a location where the child can be supervised.

Waterfalls" A lonely mother gazing out of her window Staring at a son that she just can't touch If at any time he's in a jam she'll be by his side But he doesn't realize he hurts her so much But all the praying just ain't helping at all 'Cause he can't seem to keep his self out of trouble So he goes out and he makes his money the best way he knows how Another body laying cold in the gutter Listen to me [Chorus:] Don't go chasing waterfalls Please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you're used to I know that you're gonna have it your way or nothing at all But I think you're moving too fast Little precious has a natural obsession For temptation but he just can't see She gives him loving that his body can't handle But all he can say is "Baby, it's good to me." One day he goes and takes a glimpse in the mirror But he doesn't recognize his own face His health is fading and he doesn't know why Three letters took him to his final resting place Y'all don't hear me [Chorus (2x)] Come on I seen a rainbow yesterday But too many storms have come and gone Leavin' a trace of not one God-given ray Is it because my life is ten shades of gray I pray all ten fade away Seldom praise Him for the sunny days And like His promise is true Only my faith can undo The many chances I blew To bring my life to anew Clear blue and unconditional skies Have dried the tears from my eyes No more lonely cries My only bleedin' hope Is for the folk who can't cope With such an endurin' pain That it keeps 'em in the pourin' rain Who's to blame For tootin' 'caine into your own vein What a shame You shoot and aim for someone else's brain You claim the insane And name this day in time For fallin' prey to crime I say the system got you victim to your own mind Dreams are hopeless aspirations In hopes of comin' true Believe in yourself The rest is up to me and you [Chorus (2x)]

Hello, ladies, I’m your uncle Devlin. Has Westhaven scared you witless with his fuming and fretting?” This fellow looked to be great fun, with a nice smile and kind green eyes. “Mama and Papa didn’t say anything about getting uncles for Christmas,” Amanda observed, but she was smiling back at the big uncle. The biggest uncle—they were all as tall as Papa. “Well, that’s because we’re a surprise,” the other dark-haired fellow said. “I’m your uncle Valentine, and we have an entire gaggle of aunties waiting out in the coach to spoil you rotten. Westhaven here is just out of sorts because Father Christmas gave him a headache for being naughty yesterday.” “I was not naughty.” The other two uncles thought this was quite funny, judging by their smiles. “There’s your problem,” said Uncle Devlin. “I’m thinking it’s a fine day for a pair of ladies to join their aunts for a ride in the traveling coach.” Uncle Gayle—it didn’t seem fair to call him by the same name as Fleur’s puppy—appeared to consider this. “For what purpose?” “To keep the peace. Emmie and I never haul out our big guns around the children,” said Uncle Devlin, which made no sense. “Do you like to play soldiers?” Fleur asked. Amanda appeared intrigued by the notion. She was forever galloping up hills and charging down banisters in pursuit of the French. Uncle Devlin’s brows knitted—he had wonderful dark eyebrows, much like Papa’s. “As a matter of fact, on occasion, if I’ve been an exceedingly good fellow, my daughter lets me join her in a game of soldiers.” “I’m not exactly unfamiliar with the business myself,” said Uncle Valentine. “I excel at the lightning charge and have been known to take even the occasional doll prisoner.” “Missus Wolverhampton would not like being a prisoner,” Fleur said, though Uncle Valentine was teasing—wasn’t he?” “Perhaps you gentlemen can arrange an assignation to play soldiers with our nieces on some other day,” Westhaven said. He sounded like his teeth hurt, which Fleur knew might be from the seasonal hazard of eating too much candy. “You can play too,” Fleur allowed, because it was Christmas, and one ought to be kind to uncles who strayed into one’s nursery. “We’ll let you be Wellington,” Amanda added, getting into the spirit of the day. “Which leaves me to be Blucher’s mercenaries,” Uncle Devlin said, “saving the day as usual.” “Oh, that’s brilliant.” Uncle Valentine wasn’t smiling now. “Leave your baby brother to be the infernal French again, will you? See if I write a waltz for your daughter’s come out, St. Just.” Uncle Gayle wasn’t frowning quite so mightily. In fact, he looked like he wanted to smile but was too grown-up to allow it. “Perhaps you ladies will gather up a few soldiers and fetch a doll or two. We’re going on a short journey to find your mama and papa, so we can all share Christmas with them.” Fleur noticed his slip, and clearly, Amanda had too—but it was the same slip Amanda had made earlier, and one Fleur was perfectly happy to let everybody make. Uncle Gayle had referred to their papa’s new wife not as their stepmama, but as their mama. What a fine thing that would be, if for Christmas they got a mama again for really and truly. Amanda fetched their dolls, Fleur grabbed their favorite storybook, and the uncles herded them from the nursery, all three grown men arguing about whose turn it was to be the blasted French. ***

I just had to do something for the two of them. He’s a good guy. I didn’t expect anything in return. . . .” As Wrath walked out of the closet, he was dressed in his uniform, and she had to take a second to admire the view. His hair was swinging loose, almost to his tight ass. His magnificent arms were showing every muscle they had, thanks to the wifebeater. And those leather pants . . . “So I guess she’d worked on that for a year—” “Are you ever going to have sex with me again? Or do I have to wait five months?” Stopped. Dead. But at least she knew her husband was paying attention. “Come on, Wrath. Like I said yesterday, I’m pregnant, not broken.” “Ah . . .” She stared at his hips, watching his arousal take shape, wanting that long, hard erection of his. “Well, at least I know you want me,” she murmured. “Don’t ever doubt that.” “So how ’bout now. Because you look . . . very fine.” Her eyes did another up-and-down. “Did you get bigger all of a sudden? I mean, is that a baseball bat in your pocket or are you just glad to see me? Come over here and let me sample your goods, big guy.” He let his head fall back. “Beth . . .” “Whaaaaaaat. What’s the problem—look, we gotta talk about this. This abstinence thing is not good for you and me.” “My son’s in there, okay? And it just—it doesn’t seem . . . right.” Beth didn’t mean to laugh, but she couldn’t stop herself. “I’m sorry.” She put her hands up as he frowned like he was pissed. “Honestly, I’m not making fun of you.” “Oh, really.” “Come here.” She held her arms out. “And no, I’m not going to seduce you. Scout’s honor.

To her surprise, Linc was waiting around the first curve on the road, listening to the radio. She could see his hand tapping a beat on the back of the other seat. Kenzie slowed her car to a stop when their windows lined up. He rolled his down. “Hey. How’d it go?” “No big deal. I handed the papers to his temp assistant. What the hell are you doing here?” Linc studied her face. “I wanted to see if the beacon I put on your car was working.” She should have known. “Is that necessary?” “The readout is on this.” He tapped the face of his watch. “I can’t see. And I don’t believe you.” Kenzie put her car into park, got out, and walked around. He turned his wrist to show her. “Check it out. Your dot merged into my dot.” “Isn’t that sweet.” He grinned. “It’s not a problem to remove the beacon if you don’t like it.” “No. It’s all right. You’re the only person who knows where I am most of the time now.” That didn’t seem to have occurred to him. “Really?” She nodded. “So where are you off to?” Kenzie shot him a mocking look. “You don’t have to ask, do you?” Linc laughed. “The beacon can’t read your mind.” She rolled her eyes. “Thank God for that. If you want to know, I was heading to the drugstore to print out some of the photos for Mrs. Corelli. Where are you going?” “Just running errands,” he said. “Need anything from the electronics store?” “I don’t think so.” “Okay. I’m just picking up a couple of components.” Kenzie gave a little yelp. “Yikes--that reminds me. Yesterday my boss asked me to pick something up for him out in the boondocks. I forgot until you said that. So if my dot falls off your watch, you’ll know why.” He smiled at her warmly as he bent his arm and rested it on the bottom of the window frame. The bicep under the flannel rounded up very nicely as he lifted a hand and chucked her gently under the chin. “Funny.” The friendly touch was unexpectedly intimate. In fact, it triggered a dangerous sensation of giving in. She smiled at him, feeling weak. His brown eyes were dark and warm. She felt herself blush under his steady gaze. Linc was the real deal. Maybe she didn’t have to be so tough all the time. It was okay to be protected. More than okay. Back when she’d had Tex at her side, she’d actually liked the feeling. Like all military working dogs, he’d been trained to maintain an invisible six-foot circle around her, and woe to anyone who crossed into it without her permission. Including guys she was dating. “Kenzie?” She snapped out of it. “Sorry. You knocked on my stupid spot.” “I’ll have to remember that.” She shook her head in mock dismay. “Please don’t. Let’s touch base around four or five o’clock.” He nodded and turned the key in the ignition. “Works for me.” His gaze stayed on her a moment longer. “Call me if you need anything.” “I will. Thanks.” She glanced back at the gray monolith a little distance behind them and her mouth tightened. But when her green gaze met Linc’s brown eyes, she managed a quick smile. He raised his left hand in a quick good-bye wave and eased his car ahead of hers, rolling up the window again. She watched him go, then got back into hers and drove on, turning off on the road to the firing range.

Christopher stood facing Beatrix, trying not to gape. And failing utterly. She might as well have been standing there in her undergarments. In fact, that would have been preferable, because at least it wouldn’t have seemed so singularly erotic. He could see the feminine outline of her hips and thighs clad in the masculine garments. And she didn’t seem at all self-conscious. Confound her, what kind of woman was she? He struggled with his reaction to her, a mixture of annoyance, fascination, and arousal. With her hair threatening to tumble from its pins, and her cheeks flushed from exertion, she was the epitome of glowing female health. “Why are you here?” she asked. “I came to apologize,” he said. “I was…discourteous yesterday.” “No, you were rude.” “You’re right. I’m truly sorry.” At her lack of response, Christopher fumbled for words. He, who had once spoken to women so glibly. “I’ve been too long in rough company. Since I left the Crimea, I find myself reacting irritably without cause. I…words are too important for me to be so careless with them.” Perhaps it was his imagination, but he thought her face softened a little. “You don’t have to be sorry for disliking me,” she said. “Only for being discourteous.” “Rude,” Christopher corrected. “And I don’t.” “You don’t what?” she asked with a frown. “Dislike you. That is…I don’t know you well enough to either like or dislike you.” “I’m fairly certain, Captain,” she said, “that the more you discover about me, the more you will dislike me. Therefore, let’s cut to the chase and acknowledge that we don’t like each other. Then we won’t have to bother with the in-between part.” She was so bloody frank and practical about the whole thing that Christopher couldn’t help but be amused. “I’m afraid I can’t oblige you.” “Why not?” “Because when you said that just now, I found myself starting to like you.” “You’ll recover,” she said. Her decisive tone made him want to smile. “It’s getting worse, actually,” he told her. “Now I’m absolutely convinced that I like you.” Beatrix gave him a patently skeptical stare. “What about my hedgehog? Do you like her, too?” Christopher considered that. “Affection for rodents can’t be rushed.” “Medusa isn’t a rodent. She’s an erinaceid.” “Why did you bring her to the picnic?” Christopher couldn’t resist asking. “Because I thought her company would be preferable to that of the people I would meet there.” A faint smile played at the corners of her lips. “And I was right.

THE OLD CAR WAS SUNK TO THE BUMPERS WHEN I DISCOVERED IT, but my first thought was how good it would be to sleep in there and hear the rain drumming on steel rather than splattering against our tattered old tarp. I was Maggie back then. Maggie, the name my parents gave me. A nice name. But these weren’t nice times. We were tired and hungry, and the GreyDevil bonfires were burning brighter and the solar bear howls were getting closer, and every morning as I strapped my SpitStick across my back and set out to scavenge, I found myself thinking I needed a better name. A stronger name. I mean, the name Maggie was fine, it just seemed kinda underpowered. So when I scrubbed the moss from the side of that old car overlooking Goldmine Gully and saw the chrome letters—Ford Falcon—I climbed up on the hood and stood there with my steel-toed boots planted wide and I wedged my fists on my hips and I announced that Maggie was yesterday, and from this day forward I would answer only to Ford Falcon. Ford, because we had a lot of rivers to cross. Falcon, because, well, if you have a lot of rivers to cross, a pair of wings can’t hurt, and then once you get across the river it’s likely you will need sharp eyes and an even sharper beak. Yes. I know. I named myself after an old dead car. Worse yet, it’s not even a cool car. It’s a station wagon. Station wagons were how parents hauled kids around during the time between covered wagons and minivans. These days you won’t see a minivan unless it’s being pulled by a horse, and even horses are hard to come by. But if you see me you will know me because I wear a vest made from the hide of a beast that tried to kill me and lost. I skinned that beast myself, and also I skinned the lettering from that old dead car and stitched it to the vest across my shoulder blades using copper wire so that in polished chrome the world can read my name and know it: Ford Falcon.

Sometimes I run into a person who tells me, “I was once committed to God, but something happened. I changed or He changed or something, but it’s just not like it once was between us. I don’t feel like He cares for me.” God will never stop loving you. Nothing you can do has the power to derail His love. If there seems to be a distance between you and Him, then it is because you have moved in your devotion, trust, or love for Him. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb. 13:8). Satan, however, will do all he possibly can do to remind you of past sin—sin that you have asked God to forgive. He will tell you the Lord is disappointed in you and that there is distance between you and Him. Never believe a word of this. God is intimately involved in the lives of His creation, and He is always close to you. If you have yielded to sin, then you will sense a distance between you and the Lord. But the distance is not because God has moved. He remains the same in His loving care for you. We are the ones who move whenever we choose to disobey the Lord. Sin creates a distance within our hearts. James writes, “Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you” (4:7–8).

You know he came to see me, right?” he asks. I roll my eyes. “I’m not deaf, Dad. You just told me that.” “Not today, Sky. Yesterday. He came to see me.” I go to the fridge and get a bottle of water. Chunky Monkey makes me thirsty, apparently. “Why would Matt come to see you?” “He wanted to ask for my permission to marry you.” I drop my bottle, and it rolls across the floor. “He wanted what?” “You’re not deaf, Sky,” he says. “Not funny, Dad.” But a grin steals across my face. “He really asked you that?” He smiles, too. “Yeah, he did. I told him you guys should just shack up like young people do, but he told me he couldn’t do that as long as there are impressionable kids in the house. He said that Seth will learn how to treat women from the way he treats you, and that Joey and Mellie will learn how to treat men from the way you treat him. And vice versa. So, he wants to marry you and make it all legitimate.” My heart warms at the very idea of it. “He hasn’t asked me yet.” But I know what my answer would be. I feel for my ring finger with the pad of my thumb. I want to wear Matt’s ring. I want him to be my husband. Dad takes in my grin. “He’s the one, huh?” he asks. “Yeah,” I say. “He’s the one.” “I had a feeling he would be. I met him when Kendra was sick. He seems like a wonderful person. Good and kind. And persistent.” He narrows his eyes at me. I laugh. “He’s definitely persistent. But you know what I love about him most, Dad?” I ask. He quirks a brow instead of responding. “I love that he was willing to give up tonight and walk away for the good of the kids.” “I don’t get it.” He looks confused. “I ran to my apartment because I didn’t want to face him. He came there and told me he would give up if I would just go back to the kids, because they didn’t deserve for me to leave them. He quit our argument. He walked away. And that makes me love him even more than I did before.” Dad walks over and gives me an awkward hug. He’s not nearly as good at it as Seth is, but he’s trying. He gets points for trying. I look up at my dad. “Did you tell him yes, Dad?” I ask quietly. He brushes my hair back from my face. “Yes, Sky. I did.” I grin. “I’m glad.” “Me, too. Glad you met him. Glad he’s capable of loving you like you deserve.

It was strange to think about them after all this time and feel like it all could have happened just yesterday. How was that possible? It seemed she’d been experiencing that a lot lately. The familiar feeling of stepping back in time, which turned into a sinking feeling once her heart reconnected to her brain and she realized just how much time had come and gone.

The picture enclosed here is of a hibiscus that has been flowering in the parlor window one bloom at a time for what seems like a year or more. It’s getting to where I don’t remember when there wasn’t a bud or two and a flower either out or on the way. This morning there is a fresh new flower just like the one in the picture, but right next to it is the one that was new yesterday and is already spent. I don’t know whether to be happy for the beautiful one or sad for the one that is gone. I guess if I wait until tomorrow I can be sad for the one that is so beautiful now. But how can I anticipate being sad for something that is so pretty? It’s really a good thing that people can only “see” the present because we are on the same train as a hibiscus except that we are on a longer trip. I’ve told you before but it fits in here so I will say it again. Sometimes I get feeling so good that I get afraid to anticipate the loss. If life could be a series of beautiful scenes and beautiful music and pleasant visits with people we love, then life should just go on forever. I suppose that’s why people get old and feeble with wandering minds. What is can end without too much loss, and what was did not stop so will be forever. Right now and as far as I can see, I want to be this morning’s flower. I’ll be a hibiscus. You be a rose…

Seems to me that a gentleman who really wanted to get to know me better would have found time for a text with his question during reasonable hours.” “I was very busy yesterday.” “Sounds like you just weren’t properly motivated yesterday. A text only takes a second. Now I have no choice but to penalize you.” Her tone was playful, but she wasn’t going to cut me any slack. And was she maybe, just possibly, a little mad at me for not being more attentive yesterday? The thought made me smile to myself. “What can I do to make it up to you? Give me your address and I’ll send you flowers. What’s your favorite kind?” “Sunflowers. And not a chance.” “I guessed you might say that.

I could see reminders of why I had cast aside my phone in the first place. I sat in Café Heaven, a lovely little place in the West End of Provincetown, and ate an eggs Benedict. Next to me there were two men in, I guess, their mid-twenties. I shamelessly eavesdropped on their conversation while pretending to read David Copperfield. It was clear they had met on an app, and this was the first time they had seen each other in person. Something about their conversation seemed odd to me, and I couldn’t place it at first. Then I realized they weren’t, in fact, having a conversation at all. What would happen is the first one, who was blond, would talk about himself for ten minutes or so. Then the second one, who was dark-haired, would talk about himself for ten minutes. And they alternated in this way, interrupting each other. I sat next to them for two hours, and at no point did either of them ask the other person a question. At one point, the dark-haired man mentioned that his brother had died a month before. The blond didn’t even offer a cursory “I’m so sorry to hear that”; he simply went back to talking about himself. I realized that if they had met up simply to read out their own Facebook status updates to each other in turn, there would have been absolutely no difference. I felt like everywhere I went, I was surrounded by people who were broadcasting but not receiving. Narcissism, it occurred to me, is a corruption of attention—it’s where your attention becomes turned in only on yourself and your own ego. I don’t say this with any sense of superiority. I am embarrassed to describe what I realized in that week that I missed most about the web. Every day in my normal life—sometimes several times a day—I would look at Twitter and Instagram to see how many followers I had. I didn’t look at the feed, the news, the buzz—just my own stats. If the figure had gone up, I felt glad—like a money-obsessed miser checking the state of his personal stocks and finding he was slightly richer than yesterday. It was as if I was saying to myself, See? More people are following you. You matter. I didn’t miss the content of what they said. I just missed the raw numbers, and the sense that they were growing.

Zoonotics seem to be in the hews for one or another reason of late. From coronavirus (covid-19), bird flu (H5N1) and now monkeypox. Scientists say that there are no connections between them, yet bird flu turned up in coronavirus hotspots around the globe. Monkeypox attacks the same areas as covid. Coincidence? I don't think so. It's time that we looked more closely at how these zoonotics work and why they share a penchant for the same human body areas. There may be no connection, but what if there is. It's like yesterday and tomorrow. They are both separate, but they are connected by a thing called, today. We should look at what is their food source. That is, the proteins in our bodies that they feed off. We should also map out the areas to see where they overlap. With monkeypox we should also look at what vaccines were administered just in case there is a connection there as well. I know that there is a connection there somewhere. All we have to do is look at what may be possible.

Today I begin a new life. Today I shed my old skin which hath, too long, suffered the bruises of failure and the wounds of mediocrity. Today I am born anew and my birthplace is a vineyard where there is fruit for all. Today I will pluck grapes of wisdom from the tallest and fullest vines in the vineyard, for these were planted by the wisest of my profession who have come before me, generation upon generation. Today I will savor the taste of grapes from these vines and verily I will swallow the seed of success buried in each and new life will sprout within me. The career I have chosen is laden with opportunity yet it is fraught with heartbreak and despair and the bodies of those who have failed, were they piled one atop another, would cast a shadow down upon all the pyramids of the earth. Yet I will not fail, as the others, for in my hands I now hold the charts which will guide me through perilous waters to shores which only yesterday seemed but a dream. Failure no longer will be my payment for struggle. Just as nature made no provision for my body to tolerate pain neither has it made any provision for my life to suffer failure. Failure, like pain, is alien to my life. In the past I accepted it as I accepted pain. Now I reject it and I am prepared for wisdom and principles which will guide me out of the shadows into the sunlight of wealth, position, and happiness far beyond my most extravagant dreams until even the golden apples in the Garden of Hesperides will seem no more than my just reward. Time teaches all things to him who lives forever but I have not the luxury of eternity. Yet, within my allotted time I must practice the art of patience for nature acts never in haste. To create the olive, king of all trees, a hundred years is required. An onion plant is old in nine weeks. I have lived as an onion plant.

The kid burst through the front door, with a stainless-steel bottle looped through one finger and what looked like two granola bars in his other hand. “You don’t care if he goes?” was the quiet question that came at me. “Not at all,” I confirmed. “If you’re okay with it.” “You’re only going for a hike?” “Yes.” I saw him hesitate before letting out another one of his deep breaths. Then he murmured, “I need a minute,” just as Amos stopped in front of me and said, “I’m ready.” Was… was Mr. Rhodes coming too? He disappeared into the house even faster than his son had, his movements and strides long and fluid considering how muscular he was. I needed to stop thinking about his muscles. Like yesterday. I knew better already, didn’t I? Subtle, I was not. “Where’s he going?” Amos asked, watching his dad too. “I don’t know. He said to give him a minute. He might be coming too…?” The kid let out a frustrated sigh that made me side-eye him. “Change your mind?” He seemed to think about it for a second before shaking his head. “No. As long as I get out of the house, I don’t care.” “Thank you for making me feel so special,” I joked. The teenager looked at me, his quiet voice back, “Sorry.” “It’s okay. I’m just messing with you,” I told him with a grin. “He said I couldn’t go out with my friends so….” “You’re hanging out with chopped liver?” I could only imagine the kind of relationship he had with his dad if he wasn’t used to being picked on. “I’m messing with you, Amos. I promise.” I even nudged him with my elbow quickly.

Beneath the previously mentioned disappointments on both sides and the disputes I have mentioned there lurked a deep-seated bitterness and disillusionment over the images of one another that we had fashioned for ourselves. Occasionally such feelings were expressed under the veil of an exchange of letters that the infant Stefan and I would leave out for each other. Stefan’s letters were in Dora’s handwriting, but they were written with Walter’s knowledge and possibly even with his participation. On June 20—six weeks after my arrival!—Stefan wrote me with reference to a letter of mine that, as far as I recall, never existed: Dear Uncle Gerhardt [sic]: Herewith I am sending you a better photo of me which has arrived in the meantime. Thank you very much for your letter; various things may be said about it, and that is why I am writing you, for if I visit you, you will again tell me so many things that I won’t be able to get a word in edgeways. Well then, first I must tell you that you ought to know I no longer remember. For if I could remember, I certainly would not be here, where it is so unpleasant and you are creating such a bad atmosphere; no, I long since would have returned where I came from. That’s why I can’t read the end of your letter. My mother read the rest to me. Incidentally, I have very strange parents; but more about that later. When I was in town yesterday, something occurred to me: When I grow up, I’m going to be your pupil. Better start thinking now. Best of all, start keeping a little book in which you note everything down. Now I will tell you something about my parents. I won’t say anything about my mother, because she is, after all, my mother. But I have all sorts of things to tell you about my father. You are wrong in what you write, dear Uncle Gerhardt. I believe you really know very little about my Papa. There are very few people who know anything about him. Once, when I was still in heaven, you wrote him a letter that made all of us think that you did know him. But perhaps you don’t after all. I think a man like that is born only once in a great while, and then you just have to be kind to him and he will do everything else by himself. You, dear Uncle Gerhardt, still think that one has to do a great deal. Perhaps I shall also think that way when I am a grown man, but now I think more like my Mama, that is, not at all or very little; and so all this to-do and the great excitement over everything seems much less important to me than which way the wind is blowing. But I don’t want to be smart-alecky, for you know everything much better. That’s the whole trouble. Many regards from Stefan

It is easy to mourn the lives we aren't living. Easy to wish we'd developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we'd worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga. It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn't make and the work we didn't do and the people we didn't marry and the children we didn't have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out. But it is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It's the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people's worst enemy. We can't tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on. Of course, we can't visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we'd feel in any life is still available. We don't have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don't have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. We don't have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasure of wine. Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies. We just have to close our eyes and savour the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays. We are as completely and utterly alive as we are in any other life and have access to the same emotional spectrum. We only need to be one person. We only need to feel one existence. We don't have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility. So let's be kind to the people in our existence. Let's occasionally look up from the spot in which we are because, wherever we happen to be standing, the sky above goes on for ever. Yesterday I knew I had no future, and that it was impossible for me to accept my life as it is now. And yet today, the same messy life seems full of hope. Potential. The impossible, I suppose, happens via living. Will my life be miraculously free from pain, despair, grief, heartbreak, hardship, loneliness, depression? No. But do I want to live? Yes. Yes. A thousand times, yes.

In Your Thoughts Irma! I was lost in your thoughts Irma, your hopes and in your imagination, When the breeze whispered “follow me and feel the new celebration!” And I replied, “no matter where I may tarry I am never away from her sensation, That has dissolved in my every emotion!” I seek you in every corner of light, In the morning hope, in the flowers., in the stars and in the moonlight, Then I look into the mirror and investigate my own sight, To find you in my own eyes and what a delight! I often remember our moments of togetherness from the past, The kiss that is still fresh and warm, but was the last, Always together even in the shadows that we cast, Everything feels like yesterday, but in every today, yesterday is always the past! My heart loves being a prisoner of your thoughts and your imaginings, And my mind seems to have got used to my heart’s longings, Leaving me marooned in love’s beautiful trappings, Where your smiling face is a part of all my mental surroundings! You are like the moon of my night, Where you shine on the shore of my life with love’s light, And I let you be my fate, my destiny and my joy’s every scalable height, So it is you and only you I dream of every night. Sometimes you are a palpable dream passing through my closed eyes, Often you are a beautiful embrace the warmth of which never dies, Until I wake up and seek you with my open eyes, It shall be the same every day and night until we meet again under these open skies! For now let me seek you within me and outside my own existence, I miss you deeply because I love you without any pretence, And I wish sometimes if I could bear wings like Gabriel to overcome every distance, But I am sure, I will either find you or bear wings to be kissed by your magnificence. Someday we both shall be reduced to nothing, just an impalpable feeling, But even then my soul shall find your thoughts healing, And when all shall before the God be kneeling, I shall be the only one still seeking myself in your omnipresent feeling!

A Thing I Have Learned (Written By A Nobody Who Has Been Everybody) It is easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living. Easy to wish we’d developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga. It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make and the work we didn’t do and the people we didn’t marry and the children we didn’t have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out. But it is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy. We can’t tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on. Of course, we can’t visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we’d feel in any life is still available. We don’t have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don’t have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. We don’t have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasure of wine. Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies. We just have to close our eyes and savour the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays. We are as completely and utterly alive as we are in any other life and have access to the same emotional spectrum. We only need to be one person. We only need to feel one existence. We don’t have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility. So let’s be kind to the people in our own existence. Let’s occasionally look up from the spot in which we are because, wherever we happen to be standing, the sky above goes on for ever. Yesterday I knew I had no future, and that it was impossible for me to accept my life as it is now. And yet today, that same messy life seems full of hope. Potential. The impossible, I suppose, happens via living. Will my life be miraculously free from pain, despair, grief, heartbreak, hardship, loneliness, depression? No. But do I want to live? Yes. Yes. A thousand times, yes.

I’d allowed myself to become very out of touch with the latest technologies. I’d used samples but didn’t really know how sampling worked. I’d used sequencing but, again, didn’t really know how sequencers worked, and so on. Synths had moved on, but those advances had escaped me. My reliance on the PPG, and my reliance on Mike and Ian operating it, had rendered me a technical dimwit. It amazed me how quickly I’d lost touch. It seemed like only yesterday that I was on top of everything and now just a review of a new synth read like a foreign language.

Nonstop To Nowhere" I'm on the lame train, I got a first class ticket On the nonstop to nowhere Where it takes me I don't know I guess the tracks you lay are your own It's five o'clock in the morning And I can't fall asleep again Times are changing and moving fast Way too fast for me Seems like only yesterday I was skipping school and stealing gasoline I've been talking, I guess you can call it talking a white lie One minute I'm on the top of the world And the next thing you know Sometimes I just sit and daydream And I just slip away from here If only I had a crystal ball Or could invent a time machine I'd go into the future and take a good look around And what life has in store for me I've been walking, I guess you can call it walking a thin line One minute I'm on the top of the world And the next thing you know I'm on the lame train, I got a first class ticket On the non-stop to nowhere Where it takes me I don't know I guess the tracks you lay are your own It's like a chain gang I know the exit but my problems Seem to follow me wherever I go Nonstop to nowhere I don't believe the preachers They're just sticking out their hands I don't believe the government And who in the hell's this Uncle Sam Mr. conductor will you help me off this train Well I believe I'm on the wrong one And it's taking me down the drain Faster Pussycat, Whipped (1992)

Pariva was a small village, unimportant enough that it rarely appeared on any maps of Esperia. Bordered by mountains and sea, it seemed untouched by time. The school looked the same as she remembered; so did the market and Mangia Road---a block of eating establishments that included the locally famous Belmagio bakery---and cypress and laurel and pine trees still surrounded the local square, where the villagers came out to gossip or play chess or even sing together. Had it really been forty years since she had returned? It seemed like only yesterday that she'd strolled down Pariva's narrow streets, carrying a sack of pine nuts to her parents' bakery or stopping by the docks to watch the fishing boats sail across the glittering sea. Back then, she'd been a daughter, a sister, a friend. A mere slip of a young woman. Home had been a humble two-storied house on Constanza Street, with a door as yellow as daffodils and cobblestoned stairs that led into a small courtyard in the back. Her father had kept a garden of herbs; he was always frustrated by how the mint grew wild when what he truly wanted to grow was basil. The herbs went into the bread that her parents sold at their bakery. Papa crafted the savory loaves and Mamma the sweet ones, along with almond cakes drizzled with lemon glaze, chocolate biscuits with hazelnut pralines, and her famous cinnamon cookies. The magic the Blue Fairy had grown up with was sugar shimmering on her fingertips and flour dusting her hair like snow. It was her older brother, Niccolo, coaxing their finicky oven into working again, and Mamma listening for the crackle of a golden-brown crust just before her bread sang. It was her little sister Ilaria's tongue turning green after she ate too many pistachio cakes. Most of all, magic was the smile on Mamma's, Papa's, Niccolo's, and Ilaria's faces when they brought home the bakery's leftover chocolate cake and sank their forks into a sumptuous, moist slice. After dinner, the Blue Fairy and her siblings made music together in the Blue Room. Its walls were bluer than the midsummer sky, and the windows arched like rainbows. It'd been her favorite room in the house.

Jonas walked beside her with his hands clasped behind has back, staring straight ahead, occasionally mouthing phrases to himself. I shouldn’t be doing this seemed to be his favorite, with have you gone insanecoming in at a close second. I get one hour. That was her favorite of his mutterings so far. He hadn’t said, “You get one hour.” He’d said, “I get one hour.” And maybe, just maybe, that meant he was enjoying being with her, even if he looked like he was being boiled alive in a pit of hot oil. A girl could dream. “One hour,” she murmured now. “And then I won’t see you again?” Grooves formed between his brows. “Correct.” She ignored the pang in her chest. “This is a unique opportunity then.” He seemed reluctantly intrigued. “How so?” “Since we’re never going to see each other after tonight, we can say the weirdest things on our minds without fear of reliving the embarrassment every time we meet. Maybe I can even pass on the secrets of womankind. Aren’t you curious why women open their mouth when they apply mascara?” “Not until now. Why do they?” “It’s reflexive. When a woman is trying not to blink, the oculomotor nerve is activated, triggering the trigeminal nerve that opens the jaw. Mouth open equals no blinking—and our bodies just do it naturally.” She beamed at him. “Aren’t you glad you came on this walk?

On a show like Newsline, the frame was all-important. Older producers on the show talked about 'context,' which to them meant putting the story in a larger setting. Indicating what the story meant, by reporting what had happened before, or reporting similar things that had occurred. The older guys thought context so important, they seemed to regard it as a kind of moral or ethical obligation. Jennifer disagreed. Because when you cut out all the sanctimonious bullshit, context was just spin, a way of pumping the story—and not a very useful way, because context meant referring to the past. Jennifer had no interest in the past; she was one of the new generation that understood that gripping television was now, events happening now, a flow of images in a perpetual unending electronic present. Context by its very nature required something more than now, and her interest did not go beyond now. Nor, she thought, did anyone else's. The past was dead and gone. Who cared what you ate yesterday? What you did yesterday? What was immediate and compelling was now. And television at its best was now.

In the morning, I jumped out of bed with a burst of excitement, the song “Child of Mine” playing in my head. Happy birthday to me! I’d been wanting a baby for the past several years, and finding a donor I felt so comfortable with seemed like the best birthday present ever. Heading to the computer, I smiled at my good fortune—I was really going to do this. I typed in the sperm bank’s URL, found the donor’s profile, and read it all over again. I was just as certain as I’d been the night before that he was The One—the one that would make sense to my child when he or she asked why, of all the possible donors, I chose this guy. I placed the donor in my online shopping cart—just as I might with a book on Amazon—double-checked the order, then clicked Purchase Vials. I’m having a baby! I thought. The moment felt monumental. As the order processed, I planned what I had to do next: Make an appointment for the insemination, buy prenatal vitamins, put together a baby registry, get the baby’s room set up. Between thoughts, I noticed that my order was taking a while to complete. The rotating circle on my screen, known as the “spinning wheel of death,” seemed to be spinning for an unusually long time. I waited, waited some more, and finally tried using the back button in case my computer was crashing. But nothing happened. Finally, the spinning wheel of death disappeared and a message popped up: Out of stock. Out of stock? I figured there must be some computer glitch—maybe when I pressed the back button?—so I speed-dialed the sperm bank and asked for Kathleen, but she was out and I got transferred to a customer-service rep named Barb. Barb looked into the matter and determined that this was no glitch. I’d selected a very popular donor, she said. She went on to explain that popular donors went quickly and that, while the company tried to “restock” their “inventory” often, there was a six-month hold for it so it could get quarantined and tested. Even when the inventory was made available, she said, there still might be a long wait, because some people had placed it on back order. As Barb spoke, I thought of how Kathleen had called just yesterday. Now it occurred to me that maybe she’d suggested this donor to several women. Like me, maybe many women had bonded with Kathleen over her honest appraisals of semen.

Ten Things I Need to Know" The brightest stars are the first to explode. Also hearts. It is important to pay attention to love’s high voltage signs. The mockingbird is really ashamed of its own feeble song lost beneath all those he has to imitate. It’s true, the Carolina Wren caught in the bedroom yesterday died because he stepped on a glue trap and tore his wings off. Maybe we have both fallen through the soul’s thin ice already. Even Ethiopia is splitting off from Africa to become its own continent. Last year it moved 10 feet. This will take a million years. There’s always this nostalgia for the days when Time was so unreal it touched us only like the pale shadow of a hawk. Parmenedes transported himself above the beaten path of the stars to find the real that was beyond time. The words you left are still smoldering like the cigarette left in my ashtray as if it were a dying star. The thin thread of its smoke is caught on the ceiling. When love is threatened, the heart crackles with anger like kindling. It’s lucky we are not like hippos who fling dung at each other with their ridiculously tiny tails. Okay, that’s more than ten things I know. Let’s try twenty five, no, let’s not push it, twenty. How many times have we hurt each other not knowing? Destiny wears her clothes inside out. Each desire is a memory of the future. The past is a fake cloud we’ve pasted to a paper sky. That is why our dreams are the most real thing we possess. My logic here is made of your smells, your thighs, your kiss, your words. I collect stars but have no place to put them. You take my breath away only to give back a purer one. The way you dance creates a new constellation. Off the Thai coast they have discovered a new undersea world with sharks that walk on their fins. In Indonesia, a kangaroo that lives in a tree. Why is the shadow I cast always yours? Okay, let’s say I list 33 things, a solid symbolic number. It’s good to have a plan so we don’t lose ourselves, but then who has taken the ladder out of the hole I’ve dug for myself? How can I revive the things I’ve killed inside you? The real is a sunset over a shanty by the river. The keys that lock the door also open it. When we shut out each other, nothing seems real except the empty caves of our hearts, yet how arrogant to think our problems finally matter when thousands of children are bayoneted in the Congo this year. How incredible to think of those soldiers never having loved. Nothing ever ends. Will this? Byron never knew where his epic, Don Juan, would end and died in the middle of it. The good thing about being dead is that you don’t have to go through all that dying again. You just toast it. See, the real is what the imagination decants. You can be anywhere with the turn of a few words. Some say the feeling of out-of-the-body travel is due to certain short circuits in parts of the brain. That doesn’t matter because I’m still drifting towards you. Inside you are cumulous clouds I could float on all night. The difference is always between what we say we love and what we love. Tonight, for instance, I could drink from the bowl of your belly. It doesn’t matter if our feelings shift like sands beneath the river, there’s still the river. Maybe the real is the way your palms fit against my face, or the way you hold my life inside you until it is nothing at all, the way this plant droops, this flower called Heart’s Bursting Flower, with its beads of red hanging from their delicate threads any breeze might break, any word might shatter, any hurt might crush. Superstition Reviews issue 2 fall 2008

I think it would be for the best if we both pretend yesterday afternoon- in the woods- it never happened. Wouldn't you agree?" "I would." He takes a step closer, his eyes still locked on hers. He is no longer smiling. "And I think we should avoid any future situations that put us in close proximity to each other." "Like this one?" "Yes." Jack nods, still holding her eye, and she tries hard to control the rise of blood to her face as a fragment of something from the woods comes back to her- the sensation of his fingers running down the curve of her collarbone, his mouth against her neck. "Good." She clears her throat. "I'm glad we understand each other." "We do." He takes another step towards her, so close now that she wonders if it is the breeze through the open window she can feel on her skin, or his warm breath. "I think that is our problem, Lillian. We understand each other. You and I, we seem to share something." Lillian can hear her heart beating in her ribcage. "I felt it that first moment I saw you... at the party." Lillian swallows. "You feel it too, don't you?" he asks. The sun, now low in the sky, filters through the trees outside in the arboretum, casting them both in a burnished glow. She knows she must go. She knows she must turn and leave the room, but something in his eyes holds her fixed to the spot. "Tell me that it's not just me, that I'm not imagining this," he says in a low voice. There is a stillness in the room, as if they both await the next breath, the next word. She swallows. "I feel it, too." She isn't sure who takes the next step but it doesn't really matter; she is in his arms again and he is kissing her, pulling her close and all reason and rational thought- all the jumbled arguments she has agonized over- fly away like a flock of birds startled from the branches of a tree. Her arms are wrapped around his waist and his hands are on her face and in her hair as they stumble backwards. She meets the edge of the desk, and then he is lifting her onto its surface, several brushes clattering to the floor as he presses against her. "We mustn't," she sighs, but already her fingers are tugging at the buttons of his shirt. She parts her legs and his hands move under her skirt, his fingertips grazing the bare skin above her silk stockings. "Do you want me to stop?" he asks, his breath hot against her neck. But she draws him to her again, pressing her mouth against his ear to whisper her answer. "Don't stop. I don't want you to stop.

point.” “That matchbook Gertie found at the lab site seems to fit with this Benedict character,” I said. “You know what this means?” Ida Belle said. I flopped back in my chair. “That we have to go to the Swamp Bar and see if we catch this Benedict doing something suspicious.” I pointed a finger at them. “But I’m not dressing like a hooker again, and I’m definitely not doing a wet T-shirt contest.” “Oh!” Gertie sat upright. “I just remembered. At the festival yesterday, some of the usual Swamp