Shaded Path Quotes

Home is behind, the world ahead, And there are many paths to tread Through shadows to the edge of night, Until the stars are all alight. Then world behind and home ahead, We'll wander back and home to bed. Mist and twilight, cloud and shade, Away shall fade! Away shall fade!

A person chose their path. Or they made a new one.

The walls weren't moving, and the room was open - gaping. No colors, but shades of darkness, of night . Only those star-flecked violet eyes were bright, full of color and light. He gave me a lazy smile before he leaned forward. I pulled away, but his hands were like shackles. I could do nothing as his mouth met with my cheek, and he licked away a tear. His tongue was hot against my skin, so startling that I couldn't move as he licked away another path of salt water, and then another. My body went taut and loose all at once and I burned, even as chills shuddered along my limbs. It was only when his tongue danced along the damp edges of my lashes that I jerked back. He chuckled as I scrambled for the corner of the cell. I wiped my face as I glared at him. He smirked, sitting down against a wall. "I figured that would get you to stop crying." "It was disgusting." I wiped my face again. "Was it?" He quirked an eyebrow and pointed to his palm - to the place where my tattoo would be. "Beneath all your pride and stubbornness, I could have sworn I detected something that felt differently. Interesting." "Get out." "As usual, your gratitude is overwhelming.

Here is Menard's own intimate forest: 'Now I am traversed by bridle paths, under the seal of sun and shade...I live in great density...Shelter lures me. I slump down into the thick foliage...In the forest, I am my entire self. Everything is possible in my heart just as it is in the hiding places in ravines. Thickly wooded distance separates me from moral codes and cities.

That scares me... you scare me... I am completly caught up in your spell, considering a lifestyle with you that I didn't even know existed until last week, and then you write something like that and I want to run screaming into the hills. I won't of course, because I'd miss you. Really miss you. I want us to work, but I am terrified of the dept of feeling I have for you and the dark path you're leading me down. What you are offering is erotic and sexy, and I'm curious, but I'm also scared you'll hurt me- physically and emotionally. After threee months you could say good-bye, and where will that leave me if you do?

A shade of sorrow passed over Taliesin's face. 'There are those,' he said gently, 'who must first learn loss, despair, and grief. Of all paths to wisdom, this is the cruelest and longest. Are you one who must follow such a way? This even I cannot know. If you are, take heart nonetheless. Those who reach the end do more than gain wisdom. As rough wool becomes cloth, and crude clay a vessel, so do they change and fashion wisdom for others, and what they give back is greater than what they won.

For a long time the fear of seeming singular scared me away; but by degrees, as people became accustomed to me and my habits, and to such shadows of peculiarity as were engrained in my nature - shades, certainly not striking enough to interest, and perhaps not prominent enough to offend, but born in and with me, and no more to be parted with than my identity - but slow degrees I became a frequenter of this straight narrow path.

In a dark time, the eye begins to see, I meet my shadow in the deepening shade; I hear my echo in the echoing wood-- A lord of nature weeping to a tree. I live between the heron and the wren, Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den. What's madness but nobility of soul At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire! I know the purity of pure despair, My shadow pinned against a sweating wall. That place among the rocks--is it a cave, Or winding path? The edge is what I have. A steady storm of correspondences! A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon, And in broad day the midnight comes again! A man goes far to find out what he is-- Death of the self in a long, tearless night, All natural shapes blazing unnatural light. Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire. My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly, Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I? A fallen man, I climb out of my fear. The mind enters itself, and God the mind, And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

Before me floats an image, man or shade, Shade more than man, more image than a shade; For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth May unwind the winding path; A mouth that has no moisture and no breath Breathless mouths may summon; ("Byzantium")

Upon the hearth the fire is red, Beneath the roof there is a bed; But not yet weary are our feet, Still round the corner we may meet A sudden tree or standing stone That none have seen but we alone. Tree and flower, leaf and grass, Let them pass! Let them pass! Hill and water under sky, Pass them by! Pass them by! Still round the corner there may wait A new road or a secret gate, And though we pass them by today, Tomorrow we may come this way And take the hidden paths that run Towards the Moon or to the Sun. Apple, thorn, and nut and sloe, Let them go! Let them go! Sand and stone and pool and dell, Fare you well! Fare you well! Home is behind, the world ahead, And there are many paths to tread Through shadows to the edge of night, Until the stars are all alight. Then world behind and home ahead, We'll wander back to home and bed. Mist and twilight, cloud and shade, Away shall fade! Away shall fade! Fire and lamp and meat and bread, And then to bed! And then to bed!

Across the broad continent of a woman's life falls the shadow of a sword. On one side all is correct, definite, orderly; the paths are straight, the trees regular, the sun shaded; escorted by gentlemen, protected by policemen, wedded and buried by clergymen, she has only to walk demurely from cradle to grave and no one will touch a hair of her head. But on the other side all is confusion. Nothing follows a regular course. The paths wind between bogs and precipices; the trees roar and rock and fall in ruin.

This is exactly why I can’t understand the path of vengeance. No matter how much someone has hurt me, I still find no pleasure in seeing them hurt.

I wandered beneath the sun-dappled shade from the trees, surrounded by the warm fragrances of the forest, thinking that I was in the middle of my life. Not life as an age, not halfway along life’s path, but in the middle of my existence. My heart trembled.

In North Carolina, I stopped to gas up at a Humble Oil station, then walked around the corner to use the toilet. There were two doors and three signs. MEN was neatly stenciled over one door, LADIES over the other. The third sign was an arrow on a stick. It pointed toward the brush-covered slope behind the station. It said COLORED. Curious, I walked down the path, being careful to sidle at a couple of points where the oily, green-shading-to-maroon leaves of poison ivy were unmistakable... There was no facility. What I found at the end of the path was a narrow stream with a board laid across it on a couple of crumbling concrete posts... If I ever give you the idea that 1958's all Andy-n-Opie, remember the path, okay? The one lined with poison ivy. And the board over the stream.

In The Wood I heard the water-fall rejoice Singing like a choir, I saw the sun flash out of it Azure and amber fire. The earth was like an open flower Enamelled and arrayed, The path I took to find its heart Fluttered with sun and shade. And while earth lured me, gently, gently, Happy and all alone, Suddenly a heavy snake Reared black upon a stone.

I’ll tell you what,” he said, when it was clear she wouldn’t follow him down that path. “Spend the nights with me, and I’ll help improve your tongue.

Don’t leave me,” I yell as he walks down the path leading to another life. Turning and glancing at me over his shoulder, his eyes are no longer gleaming their perfect shade of green; they’re cloudy, hazy even. “I’m not,” he says as he keeps walking. “You left me, beautiful girl.

To take the tops off all the houses and mingle our miseries was too simple a solution, I knew. Houses had windows with shades. Yards had gates and fences. There were carefully planned out sidewalks and roads, and these were the paths that, if you chose to go into someone else's reality, you had to be willing to walk. There were no shortcuts.

Truth and fact-checking travel along the same paths that conspiracies do. But the truth is often complicated, shaded and demanding, and there's no denying that it often lacks the powerful, emotional, gut level appeal of a conspiracy.

So it goes with me day by day and age by age, I tell myself. Locked in the deadly progression of moon and stars. I shake my head, muttering darkly on shaded paths, holding conversation with the only friend and comfort this world allows, my shadow.

On the first day of November last year, sacred to many religious calendars but especially the Celtic, I went for a walk among bare oaks and birch. Nothing much was going on. Scarlet sumac had passed and the bees were dead. The pond had slicked overnight into that shiny and deceptive glaze of delusion, first ice. It made me remember sakes and conjure a vision of myself skimming backward on one foot, the other extended; the arms become wings. Minnesota girls know that this is not a difficult maneuver if one's limber and practices even a little after school before the boys claim the rink for hockey. I think I can still do it - one thinks many foolish things when November's bright sun skips over the entrancing first freeze. A flock of sparrows reels through the air looking more like a flying net than seventy conscious birds, a black veil thrown on the wind. When one sparrow dodges, the whole net swerves, dips: one mind. Am I part of anything like that? Maybe not. The last few years of my life have been characterized by stripping away, one by one, loves and communities that sustain the soul. A young colleague, new to my English department, recently asked me who I hang around with at school. "Nobody," I had to say, feeling briefly ashamed. This solitude is one of the surprises of middle age, especially if one's youth has been rich in love and friendship and children. If you do your job right, children leave home; few communities can stand an individual's most pitiful, amateur truth telling. So the soul must stand in her own meager feathers and learn to fly - or simply take hopeful jumps into the wind. In the Christian calendar, November 1 is the Feast of All Saints, a day honoring not only those who are known and recognized as enlightened souls, but more especially the unknowns, saints who walk beside us unrecognized down the millennia. In Buddhism, we honor the bodhisattvas - saints - who refuse enlightenment and return willingly to the wheel of karma to help other beings. Similarly, in Judaism, anonymous holy men pray the world from its well-merited destruction. We never know who is walking beside us, who is our spiritual teacher. That one - who annoys you so - pretends for a day that he's the one, your personal Obi Wan Kenobi. The first of November is a splendid, subversive holiday. Imagine a hectic procession of revelers - the half-mad bag lady; a mumbling, scarred janitor whose ravaged face made the children turn away; the austere, unsmiling mother superior who seemed with great focus and clarity to do harm; a haunted music teacher, survivor of Auschwitz. I bring them before my mind's eye, these old firends of my soul, awakening to dance their day. Crazy saints; but who knows what was home in the heart? This is the feast of those who tried to take the path, so clumsily that no one knew or notice, the feast, indeed, of most of us. It's an ugly woods, I was saying to myself, padding along a trail where other walkers had broken ground before me. And then I found an extraordinary bouquet. Someone had bound an offering of dry seed pods, yew, lyme grass, red berries, and brown fern and laid it on the path: "nothing special," as Buddhists say, meaning "everything." Gathered to formality, each dry stalk proclaimed a slant, an attitude, infinite shades of neutral. All contemplative acts, silences, poems, honor the world this way. Brought together by the eye of love, a milkweed pod, a twig, allow us to see how things have been all along. A feast of being.

Our pioneers gave us a head start. They prepared us to fight many battles for decades to come as they left the map for us to continue on the path of their greatness. As quoted by the great Susan B. Anthony, “Oh, if I could but live another century and see the fruition of all the work for women! There is so much yet to be done.” The shade of our skin might be a bit darker or lighter, but we share the same rejections and discriminations as we are treated unfairly because we are women. Our religions might very well be different; however, we share the same identity, being females productively working for change for a greater cause.

The paths that were separated Crossed once again; Fate, is this a game of yours? Or a chance for my silent offering That I perhaps missed, years back But, which was preserved in the folds And crevices of enigmatic time!

Ree followed a path made by prey uphill through scrub, across a bald knob and downhill into a section of pine trees and pine scent and that pious shade and silence pines create. Pine trees in low limbs spread over fresh snow made a stronger vault for the spirit than pews and pulpits ever could.

And what is this wild summons? What art is asked of us? The gift offered is different for each but all are equal in grandeur. To paint, draw, dance, compose. To write songs, poems, letters, diaries, prayers. To set a violet on the sill, stitch a quilt,; bake bread; plant marigolds, beans, apple trees. To follow the track of the forest elk, the neighborhood coyote, the cupboard mouse. To open the windows, air beds, sweep clean the corners. To hold the child’s hand, listen to the vagrant’s story, paint the elder friend's fingernails a delightful shade of pink while wrapped in a blanket she knit with deft young fingers of her past. To wander paths, nibble purslane, notice spiders. To be rained upon. To listen with changed ears and sing back what we hear.

He felt something on his neck. Warmth. He hesitated, then turned weary eyes toward the sky. Sunlight bathed his face. He gaped; it seemed so long since he’d seen pure sunlight. It shone down through a large break in the clouds, comforting, like the warmth of an oven baking a loaf of Adrinne’s thick sourdough bread. Almen stood, raising a hand to shade his eyes. He took a deep, long breath, and smelled… apple blossoms? He spun with a start. The apple trees were flowering. That was plain ridiculous. He rubbed his eyes, but that didn’t dispel the image. They were blooming, all of them, white flowers breaking out between the leaves. [...] What was happening? Apple trees didn’t blossom twice. Was he going mad? Footsteps sounded softly on the path that ran past the orchard. Almen spun to find a tall young man walking down out of the foothills. He had deep red hair and he wore ragged clothing: a brown cloak with loose sleeves and a simple white linen shirt beneath. The trousers were finer, black with a delicate embroidery of gold at the cuff. “Ho, stranger,” Almen said, raising a hand, not knowing what else to say, not even sure if he’d seen what he thought he’d seen. “Did you… did you get lost up in the foothills?” The man stopped, turning sharply. He seemed surprised to find Almen there. With a start, Almen realized the man’s left arm ended in a stump. The stranger looked about, then breathed in deeply. “No. I’m not lost. Finally. It feels like a great long time since I’ve understood the path before me.

Tell me “The Subtle Briar” again,’ she asked. She knew I would still know it by heart. I whispered to her in the dark. ‘When you cut down the hybrid rose, its blackened stump below the graft spreads furtive fingers in the dirt. It claws at life, weaving a raft of suckering roots to pierce the earth. The first thin shoot is fierce and green, a pliant whip of furious briar splitting the soil, gulping the light. You hack it down. It skulks between the flagstones of the garden path to nurse a hungry spur in shade against the porch. With iron spade you dig and drag it from the gravel and toss it living on the fire. ‘It claws up towards the light again hidden from view, avoiding battle beyond the fence. Unnoticed, then, unloved, unfed, it clings and grows in the wild hedge. The subtle briar armors itself with desperate thorns and stubborn leaves – and struggling higher, unquenchable, it now adorns itself with blossom, till the stalk is crowned with beauty, papery white fine petals thin as chips of chalk or shaven bone, drinking the light. ‘Izabela, Aniela, Alicia, Eugenia, Stefania, Rozalia, Pelagia, Irena, Alfreda, Apolonia, Janina, Leonarda, Czeslava, Stanislava, Vladyslava, Barbara, Veronika, Vaclava, Bogumila, Anna, Genovefa, Helena, Jadviga, Joanna, Kazimiera, Ursula, Vojcziecha, Maria, Wanda, Leokadia, Krystyna, Zofia. ‘When you cut down the hybrid rose to cull and plough its tender bed, trust there is life beneath your blade: the suckering briar below the graft, the wildflower stock of strength and thorn whose subtle roots are never dead.

They stopped for a moment to watch the evening sky transform itself in a show of dazzling radiance as gold transmuted into shades of vermilion that waned into shimmering purple, then darkened to deep blue as the first glittering sky fires appeared. Soon the sooty black night became a backdrop to the multitude of blazing lights that filled the summer sky, with a concentrated accumulation wending its way like a path across the vault above.

May lily-dotted lakes delight your eye; May shade-trees bid the heat of noonday cease; May soft winds blow the lotus-pollen nigh; May all your path be pleasantness and peace.

«She sat at the bow of a pleasure craft a stone's throw away, under the shade of a white parasol, a diligent tourist out to reap all the beauty and charm Copenhagen had to offer. She studied him with a distressed concentration, as if she couldn't quite remember who he was. As if she didn't want to. He looked different. His hair reached down to his nape, and he'd sported a full beard for the past two years. Their eyes met. She bolted upright from the chair. The parasol fell from her hand, clanking against the deck. She stared at him, her face pale, her gaze haunted. He'd never seen her like this, not even on the day he left her. She was stunned, her composure flayed, her vulnerability visible for miles. As her boat glided past him, she picked up her skirts and ran along the port rail, her eyes never leaving his. She stumbled over a line in her path and fell hard. His heart clenched in alarm, but she barely noticed, scrambling to her feet. She kept running until she was at the stern and could not move another inch closer to him (…) Gigi didn't move from her rigid pose at the rail, but she suddenly looked worn down, as if she'd been standing there, in that same spot, for all the eighteen hundred and some days since she'd last seen him. She still loved him. The thought echoed wildly in his head, making him hot and dizzy. She still loved him.»

But my daughter, not minding, scampered off towards the pond. I ran after her, out of breath. A weeping willow stood at the point where the side path joined the main one. As it caught the rays of the sinking sun full on, its brightness was dazzling to eyes grown accustomed to the shadows. My daughter was jumping up and down, trying to grab one of the willow’s dangling branches. All right, I would wow her by grabbing a whole bunch. Shading my eyes with one hand, I approached my daughter in the light.

Home is behind, the world ahead, And there are many paths to tread Through shadows to the edge of night, Until the stars are all alight. Then world behind and home ahead, We’ll wander back to home and bed. Mist and twilight, cloud and shade, Away shall fade! Away shall fade! Fire and lamp, and meat and bread, And then to bed! And then to bed!

Invitation to Eternity Say, wilt thou go with me, sweet maid, Say, maiden, wilt thou go with me Through the valley-depths of shade, Of bright and dark obscurity; Where the path has lost its way, Where the sun forgets the day, Where there's nor light nor life to see, Sweet maiden, wilt thou go with me? Where stones will turn to flooding streams, Where plains will rise like ocean's waves, Where life will fade like visioned dreams And darkness darken into caves, Say, maiden, wilt thou go with me Through this sad non-identity Where parents live and are forgot, And sisters live and know us not? Say, maiden, wilt thou go with me In this strange death of life to be, To live in death and be the same, Without this life or home or name, At once to be and not to be— That was and is not—yet to see Things pass like shadows, and the sky Above, below, around us lie? The land of shadows wilt thou trace, Nor look nor know each other's face; The present marred with reason gone, And past and present both as one? Say, maiden, can thy life be led To join the living and the dead? Then trace thy footsteps on with me: We are wed to one eternity.

Wisteria hangs over the eaves like clumps of ghostly grapes. Euphorbia's pale blooms billow like sea froth. Blood grass twists upward, knifing the air, while underground its roots go berserk, goosing everything in their path. A magnolia, impatient with vulvic flesh, erupts in front of the living room window. The recovering terrorist--holding a watering can filled with equal parts fish fertilizer and water, paisley gloves right up over her freckled forearms, a straw hat with its big brim shading her eyes, old tennis shoes speckled with dew--moves through her front garden. Her face, she tells herself, like a Zen koan. The look of one lip smiling.

Julien took breath for a moment in the shade of these great rocks and then started to go up higher. By a narrow, unfrequented path, used only by the goat shepherds, he soon found himself upon an immense rock, where he was sure of being all alone. That physical position made him smile; it pictured to him the moral plane he was burning to reach. The pure air of those high mountains imparted serenity to his soul, even joy.

I could keep him in place with the weight of a fingertip, I think. Very gently, very carefully, I curl the hand on his chest into the fabric of his biosuit, tugging him ever so slowly toward me. My cheeks are streaked with dried tears, and I can see every shade of violet in his eyes, the line of blood across his cheek where a shard of the exploding Trigger cut it. And as our helmets touch, we’re so close I can count his eyelashes. And he holds still for me. “I don’t know what comes next,” I say softly. “But why don’t we see where this path leads us? Let’s just find out together.

But he, Siddhartha, was not a source of joy for himself, he found no delight in himself. Walking the rosy paths of the fig tree garden, sitting in the bluish shade of the grove of contemplation, washing his limbs daily in the bath of repentance, sacrificing in the dim shade of the mango forest, his gestures of perfect decency, everyone's love and joy, he still lacked all joy in his heart. Dreams and restless thoughts came into his mind, flowing from the water of the river, sparkling from the stars of the night, melting from the beams of the sun, dreams came to him and a restlessness of the soul, fuming from the sacrifices, breathing forth from the verses of the Rig-Veda, being infused into him, drop by drop, from the teachings of the old Brahmans.

Always there are walls, Rachael, she persisted. Walls that block our path. Too high, too hard. We stop to rest, to gather strength, and before we know it we have lived whole lives in their shade. In time, we cease to even see them there, casting their long shadows, blocking our path. We cease to yearn for the other side.

remembered something Blue Horse said to me back before Gilbert was born. He said wisdom is not a path, it is a tree. At the time I was too busy to give it much thought, so I nodded politely but didn’t pay much attention. Now I see that he was surely right. I have been sad almost a whole year, thinking that taking that test was somehow the end of my learning and that not having that as a possibility in my future left a big empty spot in my life that the children and the ranch didn’t fill. But my life is not like that, it is a tree, and I can stay in one place and spread out in all directions, and I can do more learning shading this brood of mine than if I was all alone.

Your Majesty, you worship a thing you can neither see nor touch, whereas I worship something I engage with every moment of every day. Which is the more logical path?

As for describing the smell of a spaniel mixed with the smell of torches, laurels, incense, banners, wax candles and a garland of rose leaves crushed by a satin heel that has been laid up in camphor, perhaps Shakespeare, had he paused in the middle of writing Antony and Cleopatra — But Shakespeare did not pause. Confessing our inadequacy, then, we can but note that to Flush Italy, in these the fullest, the freest, the happiest years of his life, meant mainly a succession of smells. Love, it must be supposed, was gradually losing its appeal. Smell remained. Now that they were established in Casa Guidi again, all had their avocations. Mr. Browning wrote regularly in one room; Mrs. Browning wrote regularly in another. The baby played in the nursery. But Flush wandered off into the streets of Florence to enjoy the rapture of smell. He threaded his path through main streets and back streets, through squares and alleys, by smell. He nosed his way from smell to smell; the rough, the smooth, the dark, the golden. He went in and out, up and down, where they beat brass, where they bake bread, where the women sit combing their hair, where the bird-cages are piled high on the causeway, where the wine spills itself in dark red stains on the pavement, where leather smells and harness and garlic, where cloth is beaten, where vine leaves tremble, where men sit and drink and spit and dice — he ran in and out, always with his nose to the ground, drinking in the essence; or with his nose in the air vibrating with the aroma. He slept in this hot patch of sun — how sun made the stone reek! he sought that tunnel of shade — how acid shade made the stone smell! He devoured whole bunches of ripe grapes largely because of their purple smell; he chewed and spat out whatever tough relic of goat or macaroni the Italian housewife had thrown from the balcony — goat and macaroni were raucous smells, crimson smells. He followed the swooning sweetness of incense into the violet intricacies of dark cathedrals; and, sniffing, tried to lap the gold on the window- stained tomb. Nor was his sense of touch much less acute. He knew Florence in its marmoreal smoothness and in its gritty and cobbled roughness. Hoary folds of drapery, smooth fingers and feet of stone received the lick of his tongue, the quiver of his shivering snout. Upon the infinitely sensitive pads of his feet he took the clear stamp of proud Latin inscriptions. In short, he knew Florence as no human being has ever known it; as Ruskin never knew it or George Eliot either.

Making progress in science often hinges on asking the right kind of question. Without a well-posed question, discussions become little more than people talking (or yelling) past each other. And without a well-posed question, there’s no clear path toward gathering data that will yield answers. Finding a good question is like throwing open the shades in a dark room. It’s the first step in finding a new way to tell is important. It tells us where we should be looking, where we should be going, and how to begin organizing our efforts to get there.

Advice" I must do as you do? Your way I own Is a very good way, and still, There are sometimes two straight roads to a town, One over, one under the hill. You are treading the safe and the well-worn way, That the prudent choose each time; And you think me reckless and rash to-day Because I prefer to climb. Your path is the right one, and so is mine. We are not like peas in a pod, Compelled to lie in a certain line, Or else be scattered abroad. 'T were a dull old world, methinks, my friend, If we all just went one way; Yet our paths will meet no doubt at the end, Though they lead apart today. You like the shade, and I like the sun; You like an even pace, I like to mix with the crowd and run, And then rest after the race. I like danger, and storm, and strife, You like a peaceful time; I like the passion and surge of life, You like its gentle rhyme. You like buttercups, dewy sweet, And crocuses, framed in snow; I like roses, born of the heat, And the red carnation's glow. I must live my life, not yours, my friend, For so it was written down; We must follow our given paths to the end, But I trust we shall meet--in town.

Since I was a small boy, I had watched that forest for enemies or for game, and I knew its every mood and shading, how the sunlight fell through the leaves and where the shadows gathered. It held no mysteries for me but much of memory. I had played there as a child with Yance, Jubal, and Brian, later with Noelle. We had climbed its trees, picked berries there, and played hide-and-seek under its branches.

We are travellers in each other's lives, carried down the paths of time, touching here and there in strange moments of intimacy. And the intersections, where the paths meet, give meaning to it all, mark the paths with light and shade.

In a valley shaded with rhododendrons, close to the snow line, where a stream milky with meltwater splashed and where doves and linnets flew among the immense pines, lay a cave, half, hidden by the crag above and the stiff heavy leaves that clustered below. The woods were full of sound: the stream between the rocks, the wind among the needles of the pine branches, the chitter of insects and the cries of small arboreal mammals, as well as the birdsong; and from time to time a stronger gust of wind would make one of the branches of a cedar or a fir move against another and groan like a cello. It was a place of brilliant sunlight, never undappled. Shafts of lemon-gold brilliance lanced down to the forest floor between bars and pools of brown-green shade; and the light was never still, never constant, because drifting mist would often float among the treetops, filtering all the sunlight to a pearly sheen and brushing every pine cone with moisture that glistened when the mist lifted. Sometimes the wetness in the clouds condensed into tiny drops half mist and half rain, which floated downward rather than fell, making a soft rustling patter among the millions of needles. There was a narrow path beside the stream, which led from a village-little more than a cluster of herdsmen's dwellings - at the foot of the valley to a half-ruined shrine near the glacier at its head, a place where faded silken flags streamed out in the Perpetual winds from the high mountains, and offerings of barley cakes and dried tea were placed by pious villagers. An odd effect of the light, the ice, and the vapor enveloped the head of the valley in perpetual rainbows.

Be in this world as if you are a traveller, a passer-by, with your clothes and shoes full of dust. Sometimes you sit under the shade of a tree, sometimes you walk in the desert. Be always a passer-by, for this is not home. – Hadith of the Prophet

I sat this afternoon to read during the boys’ nap. I was going through the botanical theory book, and while I was reading I remembered something Blue Horse said to me back before Gilbert was born. He said wisdom is not a path, it is a tree. At the time I was too busy to give it much thought, so I nodded politely but didn’t pay much attention. Now I see that he was surely right. I have been sad almost a whole year, thinking that taking that test was somehow the end of my learning and that not having that as a possibility in my future left a big empty spot in my life that the children and the ranch didn’t fill. But my life is not like that, it is a tree, and I can stay in one place and spread out in all directions, and I can do more learning shading this brood of mine than if I was all alone. I declare, it is like some other part of me made up some rules about happiness and I just went along with them without thinking. My heart is lightened so much that I am amazed at how sad I felt for so long.

You look at me, Kell, and think we are alike. That we are the same, even, one person on two divergent paths. Perhaps you think our power bonds us. Allow me to correct your misapprehension. We may share an ability, you and I, but that does not make us equals.

The morning sea of silence broke into ripples of bird songs; and the flowers were all merry by the roadside; and the wealth of gold was scattered through the rift of the clouds while we busily went on our way and paid no heed. We sang no glad songs nor played; we went not to the village for barter; we spoke not a word nor smiled; we lingered not on the way. We quickened our pace more and more as the time sped by. The sun rose to the mid sky and doves cooed in the shade. Withered leaves danced and whirled in the hot air of noon. The shepherd boy drowsed and dreamed in the shadow of the banyan tree, and I laid myself down by the water and stretched my tired limbs on the grass. My companions laughed at me in scorn; they held their heads high and hurried on; they never looked back nor rested; they vanished in the distant blue haze. They crossed many meadows and hills, and passed through strange, far-away countries. All honour to you, heroic host of the interminable path! Mockery and reproach pricked me to rise, but found no response in me. I gave myself up for lost in the depth of a glad humiliation---in the shadow of a dim delight. The repose of the sun-embroidered green gloom slowly spread over my heart. I forgot for what I had travelled, and I surrendered my mind without struggle to the maze of shadows and songs. At last, when I woke from my slumber and opened my eyes, I saw thee standing by me, flooding my sleep with thy smile. How I had feared that the path was long and wearisome, and the struggle to reach thee was hard!

You can't write things like that to me—bound and gagged in a crate. (Were you serious or was it a joke?) That scares me...you scare me...I am completely caught up in your spell, considering a lifestyle with you that I didn't even know existed until last week, and then you write something like that and I want to run screaming into the hills. I won't, of course, because I'd miss you. Really miss you. I want us to work, but I am terrified of the depth of feeling I have for you and the dark path you're leading me down.

Starting a diet or buying a new shade of lipstick won't put you on a path to freedom. It might make you feel good on the outside, which is a natural part of your womanhood, but the change must begin with the transformation by the Spirit—the renewing of our minds.

His delicate blue-ish cheeks dusted the softest shade of pink, and he bit that bottom lip again. The backdrop of thick black trees, and grey and white grass made his colors even more vivid. Pink, blue, purple, with big, green eyes. He was a tiny rainbow in a sea of black.

[Shade Dragon Rogue: This path might be one of a kind. Shade grants shadowy, necromantic, and dark powers. Dragon grants incredible power at the cost of emboldened vices. Rogue improves on focus, agility, fortune while having an affinity for short blades, stealth, and dishonesty.]

The lion is king of the beasts. When he leaves his den, he stretches and gazes out over all the directions. Before seeking his prey, he lets forth a mighty roar that causes the other creatures to tremble and flee. - Birds fly high, crocodiles dive beneath the water, foxes slip into their holes. Even village elephants, decked in fancy belts and ornaments and shaded by golden parasols, run away at the sound of that roar. -Community, the proclamation of the Way of Enlightenment is like that lion’s roar! …..False doctrines fear and tremble. When Impermanence, Non-self, and Dependent Co-arising are proclaimed, all those who have long sought false security in ignorance and forgetfulness must awaken, celestial beings as well as human beings. When a person sees the dazzling truth, he exclaims, ‘We embraced dangerous views for so long, taking the impermanent to be permanent, and believing in the existence of a separate self. We took suffering to be pleasure and look at the temporary as if it were eternal. We mistook the false for the true. Now the time has come to tear down all the walls of forgetfulness and false views.

Last year I had a very unusual experience. I was awake, with my eyes closed, when I had a dream. It was a small dream about time. I was dead, I guess, in deep black space high up among many white stars. My own consciousness had been disclosed to me, and I was happy. Then I saw far below me a long, curved band of color. As I came closer, I saw that it stretched endlessly in either direction, and I understood that I was seeing all the time of the planet where I had lived. It looked like a woman’s tweed scarf; the longer I studied any one spot, the more dots of color I saw. There was no end to the deepness and variety of the dots. At length, I started to look for my time, but, although more and more specks of color and deeper and more intricate textures appeared in the fabric, I couldn’t find my time, or any time at all that I recognized as being near my time. I couldn’t make out so much as a pyramid. Yet as I looked at the band of time, all the individual people, I understood with special clarity, were living at the very moment with great emotion, in intricate detail, in their individual times and places, and they were dying and being replaced by ever more people, one by one, like stitches in which whole worlds of feeling and energy were wrapped, in a never-ending cloth. I remembered suddenly the color and texture of our life as we knew it- these things had been utterly forgotten- and I thought as I searched for it on the limitless band, “that was a good time then, a good time to be living.” And I began to remember our time. I recalled green fields with carrots growing, one by one, in slender rows. Men and women in bright vests and scarves came and pulled the carrots out of the soil and carried them in baskets to shaded kitchens, where they scrubbed them with yellow brushes under running water…I saw may apples in forest, erupting through leaf-strewn paths. Cells on the root hairs of sycamores split and divided and apples grew striped and spotted in the fall. Mountains kept their cool caves, and squirrels raced home to their nests through sunlight and shade. I remembered the ocean, and I seemed to be in the ocean myself, swimming over orange crabs that looked like coral, or off the deep Atlantic banks where whitefish school. Or again I saw the tops of poplars, and the whole sky brushed with clouds in pallid streaks, under which wilds ducks flew, and called, one by one, and flew on. All these things I saw. Scenes grew in depth and sunlit detail before my eyes, and were replaced by ever more scenes, as I remembered the life of my time with increasing feeling. At last I saw the earth as a globe in space, and I recalled the ocean’s shape and the form of continents, saying to myself with surprise as I looked at the planet, “Yes, that’s how it was then, that part there we called ‘France’”. I was filled with the deep affection of nostalgia- and then I opened my eyes.

Sometimes all you need is a little bit of Sunshine. I have learnt that Life is not about the walk that we have taken but the company, the experiences we have gathered. I have learnt that in each and every unknown path of our journey we get to know more of our own selves. I have learnt that Forgiveness comes from Love and knowledge that everyone has a story that we cannot fathom. I have learnt that Darkness only comes to lead us to Light while moulding our grey shades in the best silhouette of our soul. I have learnt that all it takes is a little word of encouragement or a pat on a shoulder to let a person know how valued that person truly is. I have learnt that most special moments and bonds can come with a time frame and as long as we have them we need to live that to its fullness and then just let that be. I have learnt that making connections isn't difficult but the easiest way to connect to one's own self. I have learnt that silence has so much more clutched up than words could ever open. I have learnt that sunsets are as beautiful as sunrises, nights are as dreamy as morns. I have learnt that sometimes Life takes a complete different turn to what we plan or expect but when seen from a distance that turn actually looks just the one meant to take us to our destination, where our souls embrace every walk taken so far to know, to accept all that we are. I have learnt that in a world where we could be anything, I chose to be Love. I have learnt that sometimes Love is not what we wait for or what we expect others to shower us with but what we embody and shower others with for Love is the Dream of a Dreamer, the Melody of a Music, the Sunshine of a Sun. And sometimes all you need is a little bit of Sunshine.

Hope you got your things together.’” I sang, stabbing a pillow with my spear. Feathers exploded into the air. “‘Hope you are quite prepared to die!’” I spun in a dazzling whirl of lights, landed a killer back-kick on a phantom Shade, and simultaneously punched the magazine rack. “‘Looks like we’re in for nasty weather!’” I took a swan dive at a short, imaginary Shade, lunged up at a taller one— —and froze. Barrons stood inside the front door, dripping cool-world elegance. I hadn’t heard him come in over the music. He was leaning, shoulder against the wall, arms folded, watching me. “‘One eye is taken for an eye . . .’” I trailed off, deflating. I didn’t need a mirror to know how stupid I looked. I regarded him sourly for a moment, then moved for the sound dock to turn it off. When I heard a choked sound behind me I spun, and shot him a hostile glare. He wore his usual expression of arrogance and boredom. I resumed my path for the sound dock, and heard it again. This time when I turned back, the corners of his mouth were twitching. I stared at him until they stopped. I’d reached the sound dock, and just turned it off, when he exploded. I whirled. “I didn’t look that funny,” I snapped. His shoulders shook. “Oh, come on! Stop it!” He cleared his throat and stopped laughing. Then his gaze took a quick dart upward, fixed on my blazing MacHalo, and he lost it again. I don’t know, maybe it was the brackets sticking out from the sides. Or maybe I should have gotten a black bike helmet, not a hot pink one. I unfastened it and yanked it off my head. I stomped over to the door, flipped the interior lights back on, slammed him in the chest with my brilliant invention, and stomped upstairs. “You’d better have stopped laughing by the time I come back down,” I shouted over my shoulder. I wasn’t sure he even heard me, he was laughing so hard.

Lillian concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, when all she wanted was to head back to Westcliff and fling herself upon him in a mindless attack. “That arrogant, pompous clodpole—” “Easy,” she heard St. Vincent murmur. “Westcliff is in a thorough temper—and I wouldn’t care to engage him in your defense. I can best him any day with a sword, but not with fists.” “Why not?” Lillian muttered. “You’ve got a longer reach than Westcliff.” “He’s got the most vicious right hook I’ve ever encountered. And I have an unfortunate habit of trying to shield my face—which frequently leaves me open for gut punches.” The unashamed conceit behind the statement drew a reluctant laugh from Lillian. As the heat of anger faded, she reflected that with a face like his, one could hardly blame him for desiring to protect it. “Have you fought with the earl often?” she asked. “Not since we were boys at school. Westcliff did everything a bit too perfectly—I had to challenge him now and then just to make certain that his vanity didn’t become overinflated. Here…shall we take a more scenic route through the garden?” Lillian hesitated, recalling the numerous stories that she had heard about him. “I’m not certain that would be wise.” St. Vincent smiled. “What if I promise on my honor not to make any advances to you?” Considering that, Lillian nodded. “In that case, all right.” St. Vincent guided her through a small leafy grove, and onto a graveled path shaded by a row of ancient yews. “I should probably tell you,” he remarked casually, “that since my sense of honor is completely deteriorated, any promise I make is worthless.” “Then I should tell you that my right hook is likely ten times more vicious than Westcliff’s.” St. Vincent grinned.

It was a place of brilliant sunlight, never undappled. Shafts of lemon-gold brilliance lanced down to the forest floor between bars and pools of brown-green shade; and the light was never still, never constant, because drifting mist would often float among the treetops, filtering all the sunlight to a pearly sheen and brushing every pine cone with moisture that glistened when the mist lifted. Sometimes the wetness in the clouds condensed into tiny drops half mist and half rain, which floated downward rather than fell, making a soft rustling patter among the millions of needles. There was a narrow path beside the stream, which led from a village-little more than a cluster of herdsmen's dwellings - at the foot of the valley to a half-ruined shrine near the glacier at its head, a place where faded silken flags streamed out in the Perpetual winds from the high mountains, and offerings of barley cakes and dried tea were placed by pious villagers. An odd effect of the light, the ice, and the vapor enveloped the head of the valley in perpetual rainbows.

One morning she at last succeeded in helping him to the foot of the steps, trampling down the grass before him with her feet, and clearing a way for him through the briars, whose supple arms barred the last few yards. Then they slowly entered the wood of roses. It was indeed a very wood, with thickets of tall standard roses throwing out leafy clumps as big as trees, and enormous rose bushes impenetrable as copses of young oaks. Here, formerly, there had been a most marvellous collection of plants. But since the flower garden had been left in abandonment, everything had run wild, and a virgin forest had arisen, a forest of roses over-running the paths, crowded with wild offshoots, so mingled, so blended, that roses of every scent and hue seemed to blossom on the same stem. Creeping roses formed mossy carpets on the ground, while climbing roses clung to others like greedy ivy plants, and ascended in spindles of verdure, letting a shower of their loosened petals fall at the lightest breeze. Natural paths coursed through the wood — narrow footways, broad avenues, enchanting covered walks in which one strolled in the shade and scent. These led to glades and clearings, under bowers of small red roses, and between walls hung with tiny yellow ones. Some sunny nooks gleamed like green silken stuff embroidered with bright patterns; other shadier corners offered the seclusion of alcoves and an aroma of love, the balmy warmth, as it were, of a posy languishing on a woman’s bosom. The rose bushes had whispering voices too. And the rose bushes were full of songbirds’ nests. ‘We must take care not to lose ourselves,’ said Albine, as she entered the wood. ‘I did lose myself once, and the sun had set before I was able to free myself from the rose bushes which caught me by the skirt at every step.’ They had barely walked a few minutes, however, before Serge, worn out with fatigue, wished to sit down. He stretched himself upon the ground, and fell into deep slumber. Albine sat musing by his side. They were on the edge of a glade, near a narrow path which stretched away through the wood, streaked with flashes of sunlight, and, through a small round blue gap at its far end, revealed the sky. Other little paths led from the clearing into leafy recesses. The glade was formed of tall rose bushes rising one above the other with such a wealth of branches, such a tangle of thorny shoots, that big patches of foliage were caught aloft, and hung there tent-like, stretching out from bush to bush. Through the tiny apertures in the patches of leaves, which were suggestive of fine lace, the light

I suppose you could say we worship magic. That is our highest power.” “That is heresy.” Kell raised a brow, his hand slipping from the tomb’s lid. “Your Majesty, you worship a thing you can neither see nor touch, whereas I worship something I engage with every moment of every day. Which is the more logical path?” George scowled. “It isn’t a matter of logic. It is a matter of faith.” Faith. It seemed a shallow substitution, but Kell supposed he couldn’t blame the Grey-worlders. Everyone needed to believe in something , and without magic, they had settled for a lesser god. One full of holes and mystery and made-up rules. The irony was that they had abandoned magic long before it abandoned them, smothered it with this almighty God of theirs.

I think of crusts and bread and butter and white plates in a sunny room. I will go back across the fields. I will walk along this grass path with strong, even strides, now swerving to avoid the puddle, now leaping lightly to a clump. Beads of wet form on my rough skirt; my shoes become supple and dark. The stiffness has gone from the day; it is shaded with grey, green and umber. The birds no longer settle on the high road.

A morning-flowered dalliance demured and dulcet-sweet with ebullience and efflorescence admiring, cozy cottages and elixirs of eloquence lie waiting at our feet - We'll dance through fetching pleasantries as we walk ephemeral roads evocative epiphanies ethereal, though we know our hearts are linked with gossamer halcyon our day a harbinger of pretty things infused with whispers longing still and gamboling in sultry ways to feelings, all ineffable screaming with insouciance masking labyrinthine paths where, in our nonchalance, we walk through the lilt of love’s new morning rays. Mellifluous murmurings from a babbling brook that soothes our heated passion-songs and panoplies perplexed with thought of shadows carried off with clouds in stormy summer rains… My dear, and that I can call you 'dear' after ripples turned to crashing waves after pyrrhic wins, emotions drained we find our palace sunned and rayed with quintessential moments lit with wildflower lanterns arrayed on verandahs lush with mutual love, the softest love – our preferred décor of life's lilly-blossom gate in white-fenced serendipity… Twilight sunlit heavens cross our gardens, graced with perseverance, bliss, and thee, and thou, so splendid, delicate as a morning dove of charm and mirth – at least with me; our misty mornings glide through air... So with whippoorwill’d sweet poetry - of moonstones, triumphs, wonder-woven in chandliers of winglet cherubs wrought with time immemorial, crafted with innocence, stowed away and brought to light upon our day in hallelujah tapestries of ocean-windswept galleries in breaths of ballet kisses, light, skipping to the breakfast room cascading chrysalis's love in diaphanous imaginings delightful, fleeting, celestial-viewed as in our eyes which come to rest evocative, exuberant on one another’s moon-stowed dreams idyllic, in quiescent ways, peaceful in their radiance resplendent with a myriad of thought soothing muse, rhapsodic song until the somnolence of night spreads out again its shaded truss of luminescent fantasies waiting to be loved by us… Oh, love! Your sincerest pardons begged! I’ve gone too long, I’ve rambled, dear, and on and on and on and on - as if our hours were endless here… A morning toast, with orange-juiced lips exalting transcendent minds suffused with sunrise symphonies organic-born tranquilities sublimed sonorous assemblages with scintillas of eternity beating at our breasts – their embraces but a blushing, longing glance away… I’ll end my charms this enraptured morn' before cacophony and chafe coarse in crude and rough abrade when cynical distrust is laid by hoarse and leeching parasites, distaste fraught with smug disgust by hairy, smelly maladroit mediocrities born of poisoned wells grotesque with selfish lies - shrill and shrieking, biting, creeping around our love, as if they rose from Edgar Allen’s own immortal rumpled decomposing clothes… Oh me, oh my! I am so sorry! can you forgive me? I gone and kissed you for so long, in my morning imaginings, through these words, through this song - ‘twas supposed to be "a trifle treat," but little treats do sometimes last a little longer; and, oh, but oh, but if I could, I surly would keep you just a little longer tarrying here, tarrying here with me this pleasant morn

For a long time the fear of seeming singular scared me away; but by degrees, as people became accustomed to me and my habits, and to such shades of peculiarity as were engrained in my nature—shades, certainly not striking enough to interest, and perhaps not prominent enough to offend, but born in and with me, and no more to be parted with than my identity—by slow degrees I became a frequenter of this strait and narrow path.

Remarks on My Character Waving a flag I retreat a long way beyond any denial, all the way over the scorched earth, and come into an arching grove of evasions, onto those easy paths, one leading to another and covered ever deeper with shade: I'll never dare the sun again, that I can promise. It is time to practice the shrug: "Don't count on me." Or practice the question that drags its broken wing over the ground and leads into the swamp where vines trip anyone in a hurry, and a final dark pool waits for you to stare at yourself while shadows move closer over your shoulder. That's my natural place; I can live where the blurred faces peer back at me. I like the way they blend, and no one is ever sure itself or likely to settle in unless you scare off the others. Afraid but so deep no one can follow, I steal away there, holding my arms like a tree.

They came to a destroyed cabin and he pulled up and then went inside. Broken cups and pieces of dress material torn on a nail. A doll’s body without a head. He dug a .50-caliber bullet out of the wall with his knife and then carefully placed it on the windowsill as if for a memento. Here were memories, loves, deep heartstring notes like the place where he had been raised in Georgia. Here had been people whose dearest memories were the sound of a dipper dropped in the water bucket after taking a drink and the click of it as it hit bottom. The quiet of evening. The shade of the Devil’s trumpet vine over a window, scattered shadows gently hypnotic. The smell of a new calf, a long bar of sun falling into the back door over worn planks and every knot outlined. The familiar path to the barn walked for years by one’s father, grandfather, uncles, the way they called out, Horses, horses. How they swung the bucket by the handle as they went at an easy walk down the path between the trees, between here and there, between babyhood and adulthood, between innocence and death, that worn path and the lifting of the heart as the horses called out to you, how you knew each by the sound of its voice in the long cool evening after a day of hard work. Your heart melted sweetly, it slowed, lost its edges. Horses, horses. All gone in the burning.

She nearly slipped on an icy rock, but he caught her, his shoepacks sure on the frozen ground. He led her up a shaded path to a limestone wall, where they squeezed through an opening like a loophole. On the other side, the earth fell away, and it seemed they stepped into open sky. She gave a little gasp, not of fear, but of awe. He turned to take her in, pressing his back against the cold cliff and drawing her in front of him. She looked down and found the toes of her boots in midair with only her heels on the ledge. But he had one hard arm around her, grounding her. His breath was warm against her cold cheek. “I wanted to show you Cherokee territory, not just tell you about it.” She followed the sweep of his arm south, his finger pointing to distant snow-dusted mountains and a wide opal river. Small puffs of smoke revealed few campfires or cabins. The land lay before them like a disheveled white coverlet, uninhabited and without end, broken by more mountains and wending waterways. The unspoiled beauty of it took her breath. For a moment he relaxed his hold on her. With a cry, she reached for him again, fearing she might fall into nothingness. “Careful,” he murmured, steadying her. “Trust me.” She shut her eyes tight as his arms settled around her, anchoring her to the side of the cliff. Frightened as she was, she felt a tingling from her bare head to her feet. ’Twas altogether bewildering and frightening . . . yet pleasing. Gingerly, as if doing a slow dance, he led her off the ledge onto safe ground, where he released her and turned toward the stallion grazing on a tuft of grass. His smile was tight. “We should return—soon, before your father thinks I took you captive.” Reluctantly she walked behind him, framing every part of him in her mind in those few, unguarded moments before he mounted.

Or, so I thought it could all make sense if I felt it all the way through, no matter which direction or sense of purpose. What started me on this insane path to begin with? Women, death or luck; perhaps all three I knew that much, this nuke dream filled with silver wet screens. California was on fire, my heart was racing and I thought it was still about to make sense at any moment until I was a tidal wave of matrix information approaching the beach I stood upon.

Byzantium The unpurged images of day recede; The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed; Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song After great cathedral gong; A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains All that man is, All mere complexities, The fury and the mire of human veins. Before me floats an image, man or shade, Shade more than man, more image than a shade; For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth May unwind the winding path; A mouth that has no moisture and no breath Breathless mouths may summon; I hail the superhuman; I call it death-in-life and life-in-death. Miracle, bird or golden handiwork, More miracle than bird or handiwork, Planted on the starlit golden bough, Can like the cocks of Hades crow, Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud In glory of changeless metal Common bird or petal And all complexities of mire or blood. At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit, Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame, Where blood-begotten spirits come And all complexities of fury leave, Dying into a dance, An agony of trance, An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve. Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood, Spirit after spirit! The smithies break the flood, The golden smithies of the Emperor! Marbles of the dancing floor Break bitter furies of complexity, Those images that yet Fresh images beget, That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.

You can have your king-god. You can have your warrior-god. You can have your father-god. Today, I’m opting for the Mother-Hen-God. The God who welcomes all her children under her wings, no matter how they behave, or how they look, or what annoying and inappropriate things they do. The God who opens her heart of healing. The God who feels what I feel, who validates me as a mother, who assures me that when I have made mistakes, when I have wandered from the right path, and when I have been overwhelmed by the foxes, those holy wings are still spread over me, protecting me, sheltering me, keeping me safe, loving me. Leah D. Shade

Fabrice had gone no more than five hundred paces when his nag stopped dead: a corpse lay right across the path, striking horror into both horse and rider. Fabrice’s face, naturally very pale, turned a pronounced shade of green; the canteen-keeper, after looking at the dead body, said, as if to herself, ‘It’s not from our division.’ Then, turning her gaze upon our hero, she burst out laughing. ‘Haha! me dear!’ she cried, ‘Tasty, ain’t it!’ Fabrice remained frozen. What he was most struck by was the filthy state of the feet of the corpse, which had been stripped of its shoes and of everything except an awful pair of trousers badly stained with blood.

And then there are colors. The truth is that the brain knows far less about colors than one might suppose. It sees more or less clearly what the eyes show it, but when it comes to converting what it has seen into knowledge, it often suffers from one might call difficulties in orientation. Thanks to the unconscious confidence of a lifetime's experience, it unhesitatingly utters the names of the colors it calls elementary and complementary, but it immediately lost, perplexed and uncertain when it tries to formulate words that might serve as labels or explanatory markers for the things that verge on the ineffable, that border on the incommunicable, for the still nascent color which, with the eyes' other bemused approval and complicity, the hands and fingers are in the process of inventing and which will probably never even have its own name. Or perhaps it already does -- a name known only to the hands, because they mixed the paint as if they were dismantling the constituent parts of a note of music, because they became smeared with the color and kept the stain deep inside the dermis, and because only with the invisible knowledge of the fingers will one ever be able to paint the infinite fabric of dreams. Trusting in what the eyes believe they have seen, the brain-in-the-head states that, depending on conditions of light and shade, on the presence or absence of wind, on whether it is wet or dry, the beach is white or yellow or olden or gray or purple or any other shade in between, but then along comes the fingers and, with a gesture of gathering in, as if harvesting a wheat field, they pluck from the ground all the colors of the world. What seemed unique was plural, what is plural will become more so. It is equally true, though, that in the exultant flash of a single tone or shade, or in its musical modulation, all the other tones and shades are also present and alive, both the tones or shades of colors that have already been name, as well as those awaiting names, just as an apparently smooth, flat surface can both conceal and display the traces of everything ever experience in the history of the world. All archaeology of matter is an archaeology of humanity. What this clay hides and shows is the passage of a being through time and space, the marks left by fingers, the scratches left by fingernails, the ashes and the charred logs of burned-out bonfires, our bones and those of others, the endlessly bifurcating paths disappearing off into the distance and merging with each other. This grain on the surface is a memory, this depression the mark left by a recumbent body. The brain asked a question and made a request, the hand answered and acted.

Anastasia,” he whispers. “What are you doing to me?” “I could say the same to you,” I whisper back. Taking a deep breath, he kisses my forehead and leaves. He strolls purposefully down the path toward his car as he runs his hand through his hair. Glancing up as he opens his car door, he smiles his breathtaking smile. My answering smile is weak, completely dazzled by him, and I’m reminded once more of Icarus soaring too close to the sun. I close the front door as he climbs into his sports car. I have an overwhelming urge to cry; a sad and lonely melancholy grips and tightens around my heart. Dashing back to my bedroom, I close the door and lean against it, trying to rationalize my feelings. I can’t. Sliding to the floor, I put my head in my hands as my tears begin to flow.

Later that evening, I meet Alex and Gracie at a crepe stand on Fairview for dinner. He orders two ham-and-provolones and I chose a goat-cheese-spinach-and-tomato. We watch as the woman behind the stand pours the batter on the round wheel and rakes it into a perfect circle with a wooden tool. Within seconds, the batter thickens and bubbles, turning a shade of golden brown. She reaches for a tub of cheese labeled "Pro 3-5," then shakes her head and tucks it under the shelf before looking up at us. "Almost forgot to toss this one. Found it in the back of the fridge. Expired months ago." She opens up a new tub of shredded cheese and sprinkles it on Alex's crepe. I'm not thinking about expired cheese, however. It's "Pro 3-5" that haunts me. I know it's silly. It's an expiration date for provolone cheese, but I key Proverbs 3:5 into my phone, and read what comes back: "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight.

Many potential readers will skip the shopping cart or cash-out clerk because they have seen so many disasters reported in the news that they’ve acquired a panic mentality when they think of them. “Disasters scare me to death!” they cry. “I don’t want to read about them!” But really, how can a picture hurt you? Better that each serve as a Hallmark card that greets your fitful fevers with reason and uncurtains your valor. Then, so gospeled, you may see that defeating a disaster is as innocently easy as deciding to go out to dinner. Remove the dread that bars your doors of perception, and you will enjoy a banquet of treats that will make the difference between suffering and safety. You will enter a brave new world that will erase your panic, and release you from the grip of terror, and relieve you of the deadening effects of indifference —and you will find that switch of initiative that will energize your intelligence, empower your imagination, and rouse your sense of vigilance in ways that will tilt the odds of danger from being forever against you to being always in your favor. Indeed, just thinking about a disaster is one of the best things you can do —because it allows you to imagine how you would respond in a way that is free of pain and destruction. Another reason why disasters seem so scary is that many victims tend to see them as a whole rather than divide them into much smaller and more manageable problems. A disaster can seem overwhelming when confronted with everything at once —but if you dice it into its tiny parts and knock them off one at a time, the whole thing can seem as easy as eating a lavish dinner one bite at a time. In a disaster you must also plan for disruption as well as destruction. Death and damage may make the news, but in almost every disaster far more lives are disrupted than destroyed. Wit­ness the tornado that struck Joplin, Missouri, in May 2011 and killed 158 people. The path of death and destruction was less than a mile wide and only 22 miles long —but within thirty miles 160,000 citizens whose property didn’t suffer a dime of damage were profoundly disrupted by the carnage, loss of power and water, suspension of civic services, and inability to buy food, gas, and other necessities. You may rightfully believe your chances of dying in a disaster in your lifetime may be nearly nil, but the chances of your life being disrupted by a disaster in the next decade is nearly a sure thing. Not only should you prepare for disasters, you should learn to premeditate them. Prepare concerns the body; premeditate concerns the mind. Everywhere you go, think what could happen and how you might/could/would/should respond. Use your imagination. Fill your brain with these visualizations —run mind-movies in your head —develop a repertoire —until when you walk into a building/room/situation you’ll automatically know what to do. If a disaster does ambush you —sure you’re apt to panic, but in seconds your memory will load the proper video into your mobile disk drive and you’ll feel like you’re watching a scary movie for the second time and you’ll know what to expect and how to react. That’s why this book is important: its manner of vivifying disasters kickstarts and streamlines your acquiring these premeditations, which lays the foundation for satisfying your needs when a disaster catches you by surprise.

(from Lady of the Lake) The western waves of ebbing day Rolled o’er the glen their level way; Each purple peak, each flinty spire, Was bathed in floods of living fire. But not a setting beam could glow Within the dark ravines below, Where twined the path in shadow hid, Round many a rocky pyramid, Shooting abruptly from the dell Its thunder-splintered pinnacle; Round many an insulated mass, The native bulwarks of the pass, Huge as the tower which builders vain Presumptuous piled on Shinar’s plain. The rocky summits, split and rent, Formed turret, dome, or battlement, Or seemed fantastically set With cupola or minaret, Wild crests as pagod ever decked, Or mosque of Eastern architect. Nor were these earth-born castles bare, Nor lacked they many a banner fair; For, from their shivered brows displayed, Far o’er the unfathomable glade, All twinkling with the dewdrop sheen, The brier-rose fell in streamers green, And creeping shrubs, of thousand dyes, Waved in the west-wind’s summer sighs. Boon nature scattered, free and wild, Each plant or flower, the mountain’s child. Here eglantine embalmed the air, Hawthorn and hazel mingled there; The primrose pale, and violet flower, Found in each cliff a narrow bower; Fox-glove and night-shade, side by side, Emblems of punishment and pride, Grouped their dark hues with every stain The weather-beaten crags retain. With boughs that quaked at every breath, Gray birch and aspen wept beneath; Aloft, the ash and warrior oak Cast anchor in the rifted rock; And, higher yet, the pine-tree hung His shattered trunk, and frequent flung, Where seemed the cliffs to meet on high, His boughs athwart the narrowed sky. Highest of all, where white peaks glanced, Where glist’ning streamers waved and danced, The wanderer’s eye could barely view The summer heaven’s delicious blue; So wondrous wild, the whole might seem The scenery of a fairy dream. Onward, amid the copse ’gan peep A narrow inlet, still and deep, Affording scarce such breadth of brim As served the wild duck’s brood to swim. Lost for a space, through thickets veering, But broader when again appearing, Tall rocks and tufted knolls their face Could on the dark-blue mirror trace; And farther as the hunter strayed, Still broader sweep its channels made. The shaggy mounds no longer stood, Emerging from entangled wood, But, wave-encircled, seemed to float, Like castle girdled with its moat; Yet broader floods extending still Divide them from their parent hill, Till each, retiring, claims to be An islet in an inland sea. And now, to issue from the glen, No pathway meets the wanderer’s ken, Unless he climb, with footing nice A far projecting precipice. The broom’s tough roots his ladder made, The hazel saplings lent their aid; And thus an airy point he won, Where, gleaming with the setting sun, One burnished sheet of living gold, Loch Katrine lay beneath him rolled, In all her length far winding lay, With promontory, creek, and bay, And islands that, empurpled bright, Floated amid the livelier light, And mountains, that like giants stand, To sentinel enchanted land. High on the south, huge Benvenue Down to the lake in masses threw Crags, knolls, and mountains, confusedly hurled, The fragments of an earlier world; A wildering forest feathered o’er His ruined sides and summit hoar, While on the north, through middle air, Ben-an heaved high his forehead bare.

Scrubby evergreen bushes released a strong scent of resin and honey; forests of pine gave way to gentle south-facing vineyards disturbed only by the ululation of early summer cicadas. Sitting up tall on the seat, she craned around eagerly to see what plants thrived naturally. It was a wild and romantic place, Laurent de Fayols had written, the whole island once bought as a wedding gift to his wife by a man who had made his fortune in the silver mines of Mexico. One of three small specks in the Mediterranean known as the Golden Isles, after the oranges, lemons, and grapefruit that glowed like lamps in their citrus groves. There were few reference works in English that offered information beyond superficial facts about the island, and those she had managed to find were old. The best had been published in 1880, by a journalist called Adolphe Smith. Ellie had been struck by the loveliness of his "description of the most Southern Point of the French Riviera": 'The island is divided into seven ranges of small hills, and in the numerous valleys thus created are walks sheltered from every wind, where the umbrella pines throw their deep shade over the path and mingle their balsamic odor with the scent of the thyme, myrtle and the tamarisk.

Since my biographer may be too staid Or know too little to affirm that Shade Shaved in his bath, here goes: "He'd fixed a sort Of hinge-and-screw affair, a steel support Running across the tub to hold in place The shaving mirror right before his face And with his toe renewing tap-warmth, he'd Sit like a king there, and like Marat bleed." The more I weigh, the less secure my skin; In places it's ridiculously thin; Thus near the mouth: the space between its wick And my grimace, invited the wicked nick. Or this dewlap: some day I must set free The Newport Frill inveterate in me. My Adam's apple is a prickly pear: Now I shall speak of evil and despair As none has spoken. Five, six, seven, eight, Nine strokes are not enough. Ten. I palpate Through strawberry-and-cream the gory mess And find unchanged that patch of prickliness. I have my doubts about the one-armed bloke Who in commercials with one gliding stroke Clears a smooth path of flesh from ear to chin, Then wipes his faces and fondly tries his skin. I'm in the class of fussy bimanists. As a discreet ephebe in tights assists A female in an acrobatic dance, My left hand help, and holds, and shifts its stance. Now I shall speak...Better than any soap Is the sensation for which poets hope When inspiration and its icy blaze, The sudden image, the immediate phrase Over the skin a triple ripple send Making the little hairs all stand on end As in the enlarged animated scheme Of whiskers mowed when held up by Our Cream.

Aubade" Who lives where summer ends knows the hard cold of autumn is blissfully close, although it feels each season newly un- known. You are constantly newly unknown to me, my night-glowing open-hearted sting-of-salt weather. Rains and winds, sleights-of- hand. Who if not you could weigh me enough down. You’d paint my eyes blacker and warmer than they are and soon they would carry whole calendars of black night in them. You say you’re pulled back, but it is a rare thing inside those shocks of minutes that holds without our even needing to touch it. Maybe you think you trade one clean joy for another. But mine is darker, slanted, nitrous blue at the root, an acrostic of what is most free and far. To be another person than the one you were before means more than I understand. But my gradual hands move in streams over you whether you travel or not, as you drop into sleep or not, and in the book of this most-alone-place I am there only when you feel need, a coat so thin and so like skin you can touch the slopes, the smoother pools, dust-mooded winds over roads, the skeleton instrument of your voice as it richens the maps and paths, summer’s last shades of white on dark soil, as if the moon-moth and house-mouth were close against the lashes of your eyes, puzzles-in- flutter, or wandering off through the warm night air, unlikely ever again to find such light as this. from Boston Review: August 21, 2013

My editor insists that I clarify that there isn’t actually a $25 bill hidden in this book, which is sort of ridiculous to have to explain, because there’s no such thing as a $25 bill. If you bought this book thinking you were going to find a $25 bill inside then I think you really just paid for a worthwhile lesson, and that lesson is, don’t sell your cow for magic beans. There was another book that explained this same concept many years ago, but I think my cribbed example is much more exciting. It’s like the Fifty Shades of Grey version of “Jack and the Beanstalk.” But with fewer anal beads, or beanstalks. 2. “Concoctulary” is a word that I just made up for words that you have to invent because they didn’t yet exist. It’s a portmanteau of “concocted” and “vocabulary.” I was going to call it an “imaginary” (as a portmanteau of “imagined” and “dictionary”) but turns out that the word “imaginary” was already concoctularied, which is actually fine because “concoctulary” sounds sort of unintentionally dirty and is also great fun to say. Try it for yourself. Con-COC-chew-lary. It sings. 3. My mental illness is not your mental illness. Even if we have the exact same diagnosis we will likely experience it in profoundly different ways. This book is my unique perspective on my personal path so far. It is not a textbook. If it were it would probably cost a lot more money and have significantly less profanity or stories about strangers sending you unexpected vaginas in the mail. As it is with all stories, fast cars, wild bears, mental illness, and even life, only one truth remains: your mileage may vary.

The Seer's Map by Stewart Stafford Howling dog, thou cursèd hound, Plaguest thy master with baleful sound, The cur's yelps taint the air around; A dirge for all that hear thy wound. The rooftop magpie foretells: Herald of guests to visit soon, A noisy speech announceth, Companions of the afternoon. Lucky horseshoe and iron key, Bringeth good fortune to the finder, But spilling salt provokes fate, And draws the evil eye's reminder. A shoe upon the table laid, Tempts the dead to live anon, For this ungracious gesture waketh, Flesh and blood from skeleton. Who crosses the path of hare or priest, A perilous milestone on thy road, Their very presence signifies That gathering trouble doth forebode. A toad on thy merry travels, Brings sweet smiles and kindest charms, Keep one about thy person warm, To shelter safe from danger's harms. Red sky at night delights the eye, Of shepherd that beholds thy light, Thy colour doth betoken dawn Of weather fair and clear and bright. Red sky at morn troubles the heart, Of shepherd that surveys thy shade, Thy hue doth presage day Of stormy blast and tempest made. December's thunder balm, Speaks of harvest's tranquil mind, January's thunder, fierce! Warns of war and gales unkind. An itchy palm hints at gold To come into thy hand ere long, But if thou scratch it, thou dost lose The fair wind that blows so strong. A Sunday Christmas forewarns: Three signs of what the year shall hold; A winter mild, a Lenten wind, And summer dry, to then unfold. Good luck charm on New Year's Day Maketh fortune bloom all year, But to lose it or give it away, Thou dost invite ill-omened fear. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

I felt the ripple in the darkness without having to look up, and didn't flinch at the soft footsteps that approached me. I didn't bother hoping that it would be Tamlin. 'Still weeping?' Rhysand. I didn't lower my hands from my face. The floor rose toward the lowering ceiling- I would soon be flattened. There was no colour, no light here. 'You're just beaten her second task. Tears are unnecessary.' I wept harder, and he laughed. The stones reverberated as he knelt before me, and though I tried to fight him, his grip was firm as he grasped my wrists and pried my hands from my face. The walls weren't moving, and the room was open- gaping. No colours, but shades of darkness, of night. Only those star-flecked violet eyes were bright, full of colour and light. He gave me a lazy smile before he leaned forward. I pulled away, but his hands were like shackles. I could do nothing as his mouth met with my cheek, and he licked away a tear. His tongue was hot against my skin, so startling that I couldn't move as he licked away another path of salt water, and then another. My body went taut and loose all at once and I burned, even as chills shuddered along my limbs. It was only when his tongue danced along the damp edges of my lashes that I jerked back. He chuckled as I scrambled for the corner of the cell. I wiped my face as I glared at him. He smirked, sitting down against a wall. 'I figured that would get you to stop crying.' 'It was disgusting.' I wiped my face again. 'Was it?' He quirked an eyebrow and pointed to his palm- to the place where my tattoo would be. 'Beneath all your pride and stubbornness, I could have sworn I detected something that felt differently. Interesting.' 'Get out.' 'As usual, your gratitude is overwhelming.' 'Do you want me to kiss your feet for what you did at the trial? Do you want me to offer another week of my life?' 'Not unless you feel compelled to do so,' he said, his eyes like stars.

My route, Sior Francis—and don't be surprised when you hear it—my route when I set out to find God... was... laziness. Yes, laziness. If I wasn't lazy I would have gone the way of respectable, upstanding people. Like everyone else I would have studied a trade—cabinet-maker, weaver, mason—and opened a shop; I would have worked all day long, and where then would I have found time to search for God? I might as well be looking for a needle in a haystack: that's what I would have said to myself. All my mind and thoughts would have been occupied with how to earn my living, feed my children, how to keep the upper hand over my wife. With such worries, curse them, how could I have the time, or inclination, or the pure heart needed to think about the Almighty? But by the grace of God I was born lazy. To work, get married, have children, and make problems for myself were all too much trouble. I simply sat in the sun during winter and in the shade during summer, while at night, stretched out on my back on the roof of my house, I watched the moon and the stars. And when you watch the moon and the stars how can you expect your mind not to dwell on God? I couldn't sleep any more. Who made all that? I asked myself. And why? Who made me, and why? Where can I find God so that I may ask Him? Piety requires laziness, you know. It requires leisure—and don't listen to what others say. The laborer who lives from hand to mouth returns home each night exhausted and famished. He assaults his dinner, bolts his food, then quarrels with his wife, beats his children without rhyme or reason simply because he's tired and irritated, and afterwards he clenches his fists and sleeps. Waking up for a moment he finds his wife at his side, couples with her, clenches his fists once more, and plunges back into sleep.... Where can he find time for God? But the man who is without work, children, and wife thinks about God, at first just out of curiosity, but later with anguish.

Then he went up to the window. His heart began pounding excitedly when he turned back the yellow linen of the curtain. An enchantingly beautiful spectacle was revealed before him — although today he immediately noticed that there was something strange in the entire aspect of this extensive and excellently arranged Garden. Precisely what amazed him he was still unable to say right away, and he began to examine the Garden attentively. What was there so unpleasant in its beauty? Why was the Youth's heart trembling so painfully? Was it that everything in the enchanted Garden was too exact. All the paths were laid out geometrically, and all were of the same width, and all were covered with precisely the same amount of yellow sand; the plants were all arranged with exaggerated orderliness; the trees were trimmed in the form of spheres, cones and cylinders; the flowers were arranged according to the various shades so that their composition was pleasing to the eye, but for some reason or other this wounded the soul. But giving it careful thought, what was there unpleasant in that orderliness which merely bore witness to the careful attention which someone paid to the Garden? Of course there was no reason for this to cause the strange apprehension which oppressed the Youth. But it was in something else as yet incomprehensible to the Youth. One thing was for certain, though, that this Garden did not resemble any other garden which the Youth had happened to see in his time. Here he saw giant flowers of an almost too brilliant color — at times it seemed that many-colored fires were burning in the midst of the luxuriant greenery — brown and black stalks of creeping growths, thick like tropical serpents; leaves of a strange shape and immeasurable size, whose greeness seemed to be unnaturally brilliant. Heady and languid fragrances wafted through the window in gentle waves, breaths of vanilla, frankincense and bitter almond, sweet and bitter, ecstatic and sad, like some joyous funereal mysterium. The Youth felt the tender yet lively touches of the gentle wind. But in the Garden it seemed as if the wind had no strength and lay exhausted on the tranquil green grass and in the shadows beneath the bushes of the strange growths. And because the trees and grass of the strange Garden were breathlessly quiet and could not hear the softly blowing wind above them and did not reply to it, they seemed to be inanimate. And thus they were deceitful, evil and hostile to man. ("The Poison Garden")

Last year I had a very unusual experience. I was awake, with my eyes closed, when I had a dream. It was a small dream about time. I was dead, I guess, in deep blank space high up above many white stars. My own consciousness had been disclosed to me, and I was happy. Then I saw far below me a long, curved band of color. As I came closer, I saw that it stretched endlessly in either direction, and I understood that I was seeing all the time of the planet where I had lived. It looked like a woman’s tweed scarf; the longer I studied any one spot, the more dots of color I saw. There was no end to the deepness and variety of dots. At length I started to look for my time, but, although more and more specks of color and deeper and more intricate textures appeared in the fabric, I couldn’t find my time, or any time at all that I recognized as being near my time. I couldn’t make out so much as a pyramid. Yet as I looked at the band of time, all the individual people, I understood with special clarity, were living at that very moment with great emotion, in intricate, detail, in their individual times and places, and they were dying and being replaced by ever more people, one by one, like stitches in which wholly worlds of feeling and energy were wrapped in a never-ending cloth. I remembered suddenly the color and texture of our life as we knew it- these things had been utterly forgotten- and I thought as I searched for it on the limitless band, “that was a good time then, a good time to be living.” And I began to remember our time. I recalled green fields with carrots growing, one by one, in slender rows. Men and women in bright vests and scarves came and pulled the carrots out of the soil and carried them in baskets to shaded kitchens, where they scrubbed them with yellow brushes under running water. I saw white-faced cattle lowing and wading in creeks. I saw May apples in forests, erupting through leaf-strewn paths. Cells on the root hairs of sycamores split and divided, and apples grew spotted and striped in the fall. Mountains kept their cool caves and squirrels raced home to their nests through sunlight and shade. I remembered the ocean, and I seemed to be in the ocean myself, swimming over orange crabs that looked like coral, or off the deep Atlantic banks where whitefish school. Or again I saw the tops of poplars, and the whole sky brushed with clouds in pallid streaks, under which wild ducks flew with outstretched necks, and called, one by one, and flew on. All these things I saw. Scenes grew in depth and sunlit detail before my eyes, and were replaced by ever more scenes, as I remember the life of my time with increasing feeling. At last I saw the earth as a globe in space, and I recalled the ocean’s shape and the form of continents, saying to myself with surprise as I looked at the planet, “yes, that’s how it was then, that part there was called France.” I was filled with the deep affection of nostalgia- and then I opened my eyes. We all ought to be able to conjure up sights like these at will, so that we can keep in mind the scope of texture’s motion in time.

I thought I saw you scurrying in here hubby-kins!” A girl in a vivid orange dress stepped into the room and I had to look up at her towering height and shoulders which nearly matched the breadth of the Heirs'. Her teeth protruded a little from her lower jaw and her eyes seemed to wander, never landing on one spot. Her hair was a massive brown frizz with a pink bow clipped into the top of it, perfectly matching the violently bright shade of her eyeshadow. She marched between Tory and I like we were made of paper, forcing us aside with her elbows as she charted a direct path for Darius. “Mildred,” he said tersely, his eyes darkening as his bride-to-be reached out to him. Caleb, Seth and Max sniggered as Mildred leaned in for a kiss and Darius only managed to stop her at the last second by planting his palm on her forehead with a loud clap. “Not before the wedding,” he said firmly and I looked at Tory who was falling into a fit of silent laughter, clutching her side. I tried to smother the giggle that fought its way out of my chest but it floated free and Mildred rounded on us like a hungry animal. “These must be the Vega Twins,” she said coldly. “Well don't waste your time sniffing around my snookums. Daddy says he's saving himself for our wedding night.” Max roared with laughter and Mildred turned on him like a loaded weapon, jabbing him right in the chest. Max's smile fell away as she glared at him like he was her next meal. “What are you laughing at you overgrown starfish?” she demanded, her eyes flashing red and her pupils turning to slits. “I've eaten bigger bites than you before, so don't tempt me because I adore seafood.” Max reached out, laying a hand on her bare arm, shifting it slightly as his fingers brushed a hairy mole. “Calm down Milly, we're just having a bit of fun. We want to get to know Darius's betrothed. Why don't you have a shot?” He nodded to Caleb who promptly picked one up and held it one out for Mildred to take. “Daddy says drinking will grow hairs on my chest,” she said, refusing it. “Too late for that,” Seth said under his breath and the others started laughing. A knot of sympathy tugged at my gut, but Mildred didn't seem to care about their mocking. She stepped toward Seth with a wicked grin and his smile fell away. “Oh and what's wrong with that exactly, Seth Capella? You like your girls hairy, don't you?” Seth gawped at her in answer. “What the hell does that mean?” “You like mutt muff,” she answered, jutting out her chin and I noticed a few wiry hairs protruding from it. Seth growled, scratching his stomach as he stepped forward. “I don't screw girls in their Order form, idiot.” “Maybe not, but you do, don't you Caleb Altair?” She rounded on him and now I was really starting to warm to Mildred as she cut them all down to size. I settled in for the show, folding my arms and smiling as I waited for her to go on. “My sister's boyfriend’s cousin said you like Pegasus butts. He even sent a video to Aurora Academy of you humping a Pegasex blow up doll and it went viral within a day.” Caleb's mouth fell open and his face paled in horror. “I didn't hump it!” “I didn't watch the video, but everyone told me what was in it. Why would I want to see you screwing a plastic horse?” She shrugged then turned to Tory and I with absolutely no kindness in her eyes. Oh crap.(Darcy)

Father will bury us with both hands. He boasts of me to his so-called friends, telling them I’m the next queen of this kingdom. I don’t think he’s ever paid so much attention to me before, and even now, it is minuscule, not for my own benefit. He pretends to love me now because of another, because of Tibe. Only when someone else sees worth in me does he condescend to do the same. Because of her father, she dreamed of a Queenstrial she did not win, of being cast aside and returned to the old estate. Once there, she was made to sleep in the family tomb, beside the still, bare body of her uncle. When the corpse twitched, hands reaching for her throat, she would wake, drenched in sweat, unable to sleep for the rest of the night. Julian and Sara think me weak, fragile, a porcelain doll who will shatter if touched, she wrote. Worst of all, I’m beginning to believe them. Am I really so frail? So useless? Surely I can be of some help somehow, if Julian would only ask? Are Jessamine’s lessons the best I can do? What am I becoming in this place? I doubt I even remember how to replace a lightbulb. I am not someone I recognize. Is this what growing up means? Because of Julian, she dreamed of being in a beautiful room. But every door was locked, every window shut, with nothing and no one to keep her company. Not even books. Nothing to upset her. And always, the room would become a birdcage with gilded bars. It would shrink and shrink until it cut her skin, waking her up. I am not the monster the gossips think me to be. I’ve done nothing, manipulated no one. I haven’t even attempted to use my ability in months, since Julian has no more time to teach me. But they don’t believe that. I see how they look at me, even the whispers of House Merandus. Even Elara. I have not heard her in my head since the banquet, when her sneers drove me to Tibe. Perhaps that taught her better than to meddle. Or maybe she is afraid of looking into my eyes and hearing my voice, as if I’m some kind of match for her razored whispers. I am not, of course. I am hopelessly undefended against people like her. Perhaps I should thank whoever started the rumor. It keeps predators like her from making me prey. Because of Elara, she dreamed of ice-blue eyes following her every move, watching as she donned a crown. People bowed under her gaze and sneered when she turned away, plotting against their newly made queen. They feared her and hated her in equal measure, each one a wolf waiting for her to be revealed as a lamb. She sang in the dream, a wordless song that did nothing but double their bloodlust. Sometimes they killed her, sometimes they ignored her, sometimes they put her in a cell. All three wrenched her from sleep. Today Tibe said he loves me, that he wants to marry me. I do not believe him. Why would he want such a thing? I am no one of consequence. No great beauty or intellect, no strength or power to aid his reign. I bring nothing to him but worry and weight. He needs someone strong at his side, a person who laughs at the gossips and overcomes her own doubts. Tibe is as weak as I am, a lonely boy without a path of his own. I will only make things worse. I will only bring him pain. How can I do that? Because of Tibe, she dreamed of leaving court for good. Like Julian wanted to do, to keep Sara from staying behind. The locations varied with the changing nights. She ran to Delphie or Harbor Bay or Piedmont or even the Lakelands, each one painted in shades of black and gray. Shadow cities to swallow her up and hide her from the prince and the crown he offered. But they frightened her too. And they were always empty, even of ghosts. In these dreams, she ended up alone. From these dreams, she woke quietly, in the morning, with dried tears and an aching heart.

His eyes flickered with amusement, reflecting sunlight and shade. The rough beard on his chin gave him a wild, dangerous look. Stiffly, she lifted herself onto her toes, bracing a hand against his shoulders. He was steel beneath her grasp. Did he have to watch her so intently? She closed her eyes. It was the only way she would have the courage to do this. Still he waited. It would be a brief meeting of lips. Nothing to be afraid of. If only her heart would remember to keep beating. Holding her breath, she let her lips brush over his. It was the first time she’d ever kissed a man and her mind raced with it. She hardly had a sense of his mouth at all, though the shock of the single touch rushed like liquid fire to her toes. Her part of the bargain was fulfilled. It could be done and over right then. Recklessly, after a moment’s hesitation, she touched her lips once again to him. This time she lingered, exploring the feel of him little by little. His mouth was warm and smooth and wonderful, all of it new and unexpected. He still hadn’t moved, even though her knees threatened to crumble and her heart beat like a thunder drum. Finally he responded with the barest hint of pressure. The warmth of his breath mingled with hers. Without thinking, she let her fingers dig into the sleek muscle of his arms. A low, husky sound rumbled in his throat before he wrapped his arms around her. Heaven and earth. She hadn’t been kissing him at all. The thin ribbon of resistance uncoiled within her as he took control of the kiss. His stubble scraped against her mouth, raking a raw path of sensation through her. She could do nothing but melt against him, clutching the front of his tunic to stay on her feet. A delicious heat radiated from him. His hands sank low against the small of her back to draw her close as he teased her mouth open. His breath mingled with hers for one anguished second before his tongue slipped past her lips to taste her in a slow, indulgent caress. A sigh of surrender escaped from her lips, a sound she hadn’t imagined she was capable of uttering. His hands slipped from her abruptly and she opened her eyes to see his gaze fixed on her. ‘Well,’ he breathed, ‘you do honour your bets.’ Though he no longer touched her, it was as if the kiss hadn’t ended. He was still so close, filling every sense and thought. She stumbled as she tried to step away and he caught her, a knowing smile playing over his mouth. Her balance was impeccable. She never lost her footing like that, just standing there. His grip tightened briefly before he let her go. Even that tiny, innocent touch filled her with renewed longing. In a daze, she bent to pick up her fallen swords. Her pulse throbbed as if she had run a li without stopping. In her head she was still running, flying fast. ‘Now that our bargain is settled…’ she began hoarsely ‘…we should be going.’ To her horror her hands would not stop shaking. Brushing past him, she gathered up her knapsack and slung it over her shoulder. ‘You said the next town was hours from here?’ He collected his sword while a slow grin spread over his face. She couldn’t look at him without conjuring the feel and the taste of him. Head down, she ploughed through the tall grass. ‘A good match,’ she attempted. He caught up to her easily with his long stride. ‘Yes, quite good,’ he replied, the tone rife with meaning. Her cheeks burned hot as she forced her gaze on the road ahead. She could barely tell day from night, couldn’t give her own name if asked. She had to get home and denounce Li Tao. Warn her father. She had thought of nothing else since her escape, until this blue-eyed barbarian had appeared. It was fortunate they were parting when they reached town. When he wasn’t looking she pressed her fingers over her lips, which were still swollen from that first kiss. She was outmatched, much more outmatched than when they had crossed swords.

But suddenly Jonas had noticed, following the path of the apple through the air with his eyes, that the piece of fruit had—well, this was the part that he couldn’t adequately understand—the apple had changed. Just for an instant. It had changed in mid-air, he remembered. Then it was in his hand, and he looked at it carefully, but it was the same apple. Unchanged. The same size and shape: a perfect sphere. The same nondescript shade, about the same shade as his own tunic. There was absolutely nothing remarkable about that apple. He had tossed it back and forth between his hands a few times, then thrown it again to Asher. And again—in the air, for an instant only—it had changed.

Resonating the first half of the highest quality material known to man. Previously worked out, I embraced the back story never told but retold as practical reality. All I ask and bleed, there's nothing more to be felt as a man anymore. Most rebuild to be included, invoking the awakening stages of beautiful death; resonating with frozen lakes, dirty films we made and seven million pounds of sorrow disguised as drifting smoke that showed me the path out the final frame of reference.

It was in Kuala Lumpur that I saw the tree roots at the botanical gardens grow as much outside of the ground as inside. I saw what used to be the tallest building in the world still appreciated for its beauty long after it lost its title. I thought people could be like buildings, still adored despite their best years behind them. I heard the horns of cars drown out the sound of fountains spurting illuminated shades of violet and crashing against themselves and I thought it was time to leave, to head home the same way I left it; expecting things to be a different way than how they actually will work out. The actions of ones life, makes his life, and in this way things can disappear but never leave. A person that sees beauty in only the grand has never witnessed true beauty, if the abyss is to remind us of anything it is that there is beauty in nothingness and everything. The forest that has no trees, no stones, no path and no flowers is still a forest because of the feeling one can get walking through it which leaves me wondering if the grand zero is everything, that reality was a moment in which I both existed and ceased to exist.

walking thru life unsure whether. it is day are a night from the perspective. of the wonder, the world is shades of gray. broken up only at times of need not there. own but the people of the world that. the wonder passes thru shadow to shadow. uncertain of the path before them never. knowing when the world might change. before them will become radiant. with color are stay forever gray and untouched.

The only thing I can say is that I felt as though a veil of thick cloth had been lifted away from me as I opened my eyes again—and not only from my eyes, but from all of my senses. I could abruptly smell the mud and fish odor of the lake, the trees around the house, the fresh scent of the coming rain preceding the storm on the smoke-stained wind. I looked at the trees. Saw them, not just in the first green coat of spring, but in the full bloom of summer, the splendor of the fall, and the barren desolation of winter, all at the same time. I Saw the house, and each separate part of it as its own component, the timbers as parts of spectral trees, the windows as pieces of distant sandy shores. I could feel the heat of summer and the cold of winter in the wind coming off the lake. I Saw the house wreathed in ghostly flames, and knew that those were part of its possible future, that fire lay down several of the many paths of possibility that lay ahead in the next hour. The house itself was a place of power. Dark emotions—greed, lust, hatred—all hung over it as visible things, molds and slimes that were strewn over it like Spanish moss with malevolent eyes. Ghostly things, restless spirits, moved around the place, drawn to the sense of fear, despair, and anger that hung over it, mindless shades that were always to be found in such places, like rats in granaries. The other thing that I Saw over the house was a grinning, empty skull. Skulls were everywhere, wherever I looked, just at the edge of my vision, silent and still and bleach white, as solid and real as though a fetishist had scattered them around in anticipation of some bizarre holiday. Death. Death lay in the house’s future, tangible, solid, unavoidable.

May the sun guide your way.” “May the moon light your path,” Hansa added. “May the wind be your wings,” Anjani continued.

Blue Eyes, you will drink?” Loretta waved him away. A long silence settled over them. Then Hunter grasped her chin and forced her to look at him. “Habbe we-ich-ket, seeking death, it is not wisdom.” He wedged the canteen between his knees and caught her hand, placing it on his muscular upper arm. “Ein mah-heepicut, it is yours. No harm will come to you walking in my footsteps. You will trust this Comanche, eh? It is a promise I make for you.” Loretta stared into his indigo eyes, aware of the leashed power beneath her fingertips. For an instant she believed he truly meant it, that he would protect her, always. Then her gaze shifted to the scar on his cheek, to his heathen medallion, to the images carved into the leather of his wristband. Half-breed or no, she couldn’t trust this man. He sighed and released her hand to take a long, slow drink, calculated, she was sure, to make her yearn for one herself. He wiped his mouth and said, “We will see, eh? It is a hard path to walk, going thirsty in the sun. You will yield.” With that, he corked the gourd and set it beside her in the shade so she could help herself if her willpower wavered. Rocking back on his heels, he ran a finger along her cheekbone. “I must protect you from the sun, eh? So you do not burn.” Scooping a handful of dirt, he mixed it with a little water from the canteen to make a mud paste. It felt wonderfully cool when he smoothed it on her face. After he finished he sat back and studied her again, his dark eyes gleaming with that silent laughter that irritated her so. She must look like a blue-eyed bugaboo with her face streaked brown and her hair flying every which way. Well, he was no prize, either.

Hunter was sitting under a brush arbor, tossing dice with several men, when Blackbird came tearing up the path between the lodges, screaming, “The yellow-hair! She’s back, Uncle! She’s back!” Accustomed as he was to Blackbird’s mischief, Hunter ignored her while he finished a throw. Then he swept the child onto his lap and growled like a bear, playfully biting her belly. He knew something was amiss when Blackbird didn’t let loose with her usual cackles of glee. “The yellow-hair! She’s come back!” Blackbird caught his face between her tiny hands so he had no choice but to look at her. “She isn’t moving. I think she’s waiting for you.” Hunter’s heart tripped. “If you’re teasing me, you little weasel, I’ll toss you into a prickly pear.” Blackbird’s eyes danced. “She’s here! Grandmother sent me to tell you. Nabone, look!” Hunter set the child aside and left the arbor. He shaded his brow against the sun. Up on the plateau, he could see the distinct silhouette of a white woman on a horse. As he walked up the path between the lodges, the breeze caught her hair and lifted it. Gold glinted in the sunshine.

He shaded his brow against the sun. Up on the plateau, he could see the distinct silhouette of a white woman on a horse. As he walked up the path between the lodges, the breeze caught her hair and lifted it. Gold glinted in the sunshine. Hunter’s throat tightened. He nearly tripped over Blackbird, who danced excitedly about his feet as he walked. A mixture of gladness and dread filled him, one emotion as powerful as the other. His little blue-eyes had come to him, just as the prophecy foretold. He couldn’t help but wonder if it would not also come to pass that he would one day leave the People. Numbly placing one foot before the other, Hunter strode to the edge of the village and stared up at the plateau. Even at a distance he recognized the way she sat a horse, the tilt of her head. He couldn’t believe she had come so far and so quickly. Fate had indeed led her in a circle back to him. Ordering Blackbird back to his mother’s lodge, Hunter increased his pace, the dread of leaving his people forgotten. Destiny. A month ago he had railed against it. Now he wasn’t certain how he felt. Resentful, yet pleased. And relieved. Deep in the quiet places of his heart, he sensed the rightness. Fate. Today it had brought him a woman, a woman like no other, with skin as white as a night moon, hair like honey, and eyes like the summer sky. His woman, and this time she came freely.

is it i, who have dragged the latter of linger from the shadows the smell of death from the pits; the footprints where no one steps the pitiful thoughts of nostalgia, hate? the love for another, hate for myself, of human feeling? is it i? falling from the skies was the son of God, or his enemy? constantly torn between sun and shade, the good and not weighing scales of justice, the path to good grace living a lie for a heaven only dreamed; the preacher man's belly sweet wine and sour, deceit before the holy bible, of the preacher man's tongue testaments of old and new, what to follow for truth, what is new to old laws laws of the land, of the people, laws broken, held against ourselves is it i? to think of Christ Jesus, or His Father in Heaven, or the holy spirit solemn: my thoughts running wild, the second coming of who we love who we do not; who we believe in; who we want to follow; or not is it i? who is afraid, or the voices in my head? of Jacob's ladder? buried in myself; afraid of the light, afraid of change. is it i? in low, bottomless pits,holds the crucifix in high esteem; soar lips preaching testaments in disbelief? of what we have become, what we are, what we live to not see is it i? who have dragged myself to this? or this bottomless thoughts?

The group picked up the picnic hamper from the Queen and strolled down a narrow path through the woods leading to Willow River. “Here’s a good spot.” Callie pointed to a shaded level area along the bank. “We haven’t been in this section before.” Soon everyone was enjoying the delicious lunch the girls had prepared: chicken sandwiches, potato salad, chocolate cake, and lemonade. While they were eating, the girls were the targets of good-natured kidding. “Boy!” Joe exclaimed as he finished his piece of cake. “This is almost as good as my mother and Aunt Gertrude make.” “That’s a compliment!” Chet said emphatically. Callie’s eyes twinkled. “I know it is. Joe’s mother and aunt are the best cooks ever!” Iola sniffed. “I don’t know about this compliment stuff. There’s something on your mind, Joe Hardy!” Joe grinned. “How are you on apple pie and cream puffs and—?” “Oh, stop it!” Iola commanded. “Otherwise, you won’t get a second piece of cake!” “I give up.” Joe handed over his paper plate.