Shaft Peoples Quotes

One reads books in order to gain the privilege of living more than one life. People who don't read are trapped in a mine shaft, even if they think the sun is shining.

Something Vimes had learned as a young guard drifted up from memory. If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you're going to die. So they'll talk. They'll gloat. They'll watch you squirm. They'll put off the moment of murder like another man will put off a good cigar. So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word.

You know, I do believe in magic. I was born and raised in a magic time, in a magic town, among magicians. Oh, most everybody else didn’t realize we lived in that web of magic, connected by silver filaments of chance and circumstance. But I knew it all along. When I was twelve years old, the world was my magic lantern, and by its green spirit glow I saw the past, the present and into the future. You probably did too; you just don’t recall it. See, this is my opinion: we all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand. But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for God’s sake. And you know why we were told that? Because the people doing the telling were afraid of our wildness and youth, and because the magic we knew made them ashamed and sad of what they’d allowed to wither in themselves. After you go so far away from it, though, you can’t really get it back. You can have seconds of it. Just seconds of knowing and remembering. When people get weepy at movies, it’s because in that dark theater the golden pool of magic is touched, just briefly. Then they come out into the hard sun of logic and reason again and it dries up, and they’re left feeling a little heartsad and not knowing why. When a song stirs a memory, when motes of dust turning in a shaft of light takes your attention from the world, when you listen to a train passing on a track at night in the distance and wonder where it might be going, you step beyond who you are and where you are. For the briefest of instants, you have stepped into the magic realm. That’s what I believe. The truth of life is that every year we get farther away from the essence that is born within us. We get shouldered with burdens, some of them good, some of them not so good. Things happen to us. Loved ones die. People get in wrecks and get crippled. People lose their way, for one reason or another. It’s not hard to do, in this world of crazy mazes. Life itself does its best to take that memory of magic away from us. You don’t know it’s happening until one day you feel you’ve lost something but you’re not sure what it is. It’s like smiling at a pretty girl and she calls you “sir.” It just happens. These memories of who I was and where I lived are important to me. They make up a large part of who I’m going to be when my journey winds down. I need the memory of magic if I am ever going to conjure magic again. I need to know and remember, and I want to tell you.

The letter said that they were two feet high, and green, and shaped like plumber's friends. Their suction cups were on the ground, and their shafts, which were extremely flexible, usually pointed to the sky. At the top of each shaft was a little hand with a green eye in its palm. The creatures were friendly, and they could see in four dimensions. They pitied Earthlings for being able to see only three. They had many wonderful things to teach Earthlings, especially about time. Billy promised to tell what some of those wonderful things were in his next letter. Billy was working on his second letter when the first letter was published. The second letter started out like this: The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever. When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in a bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "so it goes.

He can’t help Marianne, no matter what he does. There’s something frightening about her, some huge emptiness in the pit of her being. It’s like waiting for a lift to arrive and when the doors open nothing is there, just the terrible dark emptiness of the elevator shaft, on and on forever. She’s missing some primal instinct, self-defense or self-preservation, which makes other human beings comprehensible. You lean in expecting resistance, and everything just falls away in front of you.

Most of the time I can tell when people are lying, and this must be a lie, because Tris is still alive, her eyes bright and her cheeks flushed and her small body full of power and strenght, standing in a shaft of light in the atrium. Tris is still alive, she wouldn't leave me here alone, she wouldn't go to the Weapons Lab instead of Caleb.

The Frays had never been a religiously observant family, but Clary loved Fifth Avenue at Christmas time. The air smelled like sweet roasted chestnuts, and the window displays sparkled with silver and blue, green and red. This year there were fat round crystal snowflakes attached to each lamppost, sending back the winter sunlight in shafts of gold. Not to mention the huge tree at Rockefeller Center. It threw its shadow across them as she and Simon draped themselves over the gate at the side of the skating rink, watching tourists fall down as they tried to navigate the ice. Clary had a hot chocolate wrapped in her hands, the warmth spreading through her body. She felt almost normal—this, coming to Fifth to see the window displays and the tree, had been a winter tradition for her and Simon for as long as she could remember. “Feels like old times, doesn’t it?” he said, echoing her thoughts as he propped his chin on his folded arms. She chanced a sideways look at him. He was wearing a black topcoat and scarf that emphasized the winter pallor of his skin. His eyes were shadowed, indicating that he hadn’t fed on blood recently. He looked like what he was—a hungry, tired vampire. Well, she thought. Almost like old times. “More people to buy presents for,” she said. “Plus, the always traumatic what-to-buy-someone-for-the-first-Christmas-after-you’ve-started-dating question.” “What to get the Shadowhunter who has everything,” Simon said with a grin. “Jace mostly likes weapons,” Clary sighed. “He likes books, but they have a huge library at the Institute. He likes classical music …” She brightened. Simon was a musician; even though his band was terrible, and was always changing their name—currently they were Lethal Soufflé—he did have training. “What would you give someone who likes to play the piano?” “A piano.” “Simon.” “A really huge metronome that could also double as a weapon?” Clary sighed, exasperated. “Sheet music. Rachmaninoff is tough stuff, but he likes a challenge.” “Now you’re talking. I’m going to see if there’s a music store around here.” Clary, done with her hot chocolate, tossed the cup into a nearby trash can and pulled her phone out. “What about you? What are you giving Isabelle?” “I have absolutely no idea,” Simon said. They had started heading toward the avenue, where a steady stream of pedestrians gawking at the windows clogged the streets. “Oh, come on. Isabelle’s easy.” “That’s my girlfriend you’re talking about.” Simon’s brows drew together. “I think. I’m not sure. We haven’t discussed it. The relationship, I mean.” “You really have to DTR, Simon.” “What?” “Define the relationship. What it is, where it’s going. Are you boyfriend and girlfriend, just having fun, ‘it’s complicated,’ or what? When’s she going to tell her parents? Are you allowed to see other people?” Simon blanched. “What? Seriously?” “Seriously. In the meantime—perfume!” Clary grabbed Simon by the back of his coat and hauled him into a cosmetics store that had once been a bank. It was massive on the inside, with rows of gleaming bottles everywhere. “And something unusual,” she said, heading for the fragrance area. “Isabelle isn’t going to want to smell like everyone else. She’s going to want to smell like figs, or vetiver, or—” “Figs? Figs have a smell?” Simon looked horrified; Clary was about to laugh at him when her phone buzzed. It was her mother. where are you? It’s an emergency.

Old men only lie in wait for people to ask them to talk. Then they rattle on like a rusty elevator wheezing up a shaft.

You'll get over it...' It's the cliches that cause the trouble. To lose someone you love is to alter your life for ever. You don't get over it because 'it' is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap never closes. How could it? The particularness of someone who mattered enough to greive over is not made anodyne by death. This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no-one else can fit it. Why would I want them to? I've thought a lot about death recently, the finality of it, the argument ending in mid-air. One of us hadn't finished, why did the other one go? And why without warning? Even death after long illness is without warning. The moment you had prepared for so carefully took you by storm. The troops broke through the window and snatched the body and the body is gone. The day before the Wednesday last, this time a year ago, you were here and now you're not. Why not? Death reduces us to the baffled logic of a small child. If yesterday why not today? And where are you? Fragile creatures of a small blue planet, surrounded by light years of silent space. Do the dead find peace beyond the rattle of the world? What peace is there for us whose best love cannot return them even for a day? I raise my head to the door and think I will see you in the frame. I know it is your voice in the corridor but when I run outside the corridor is empty. There is nothing I can do that will make any difference. The last word was yours. The fluttering in the stomach goes away and the dull waking pain. Sometimes I think of you and I feel giddy. Memory makes me lightheaded, drunk on champagne. All the things we did. And if anyone had said this was the price I would have agreed to pay it. That surprises me; that with the hurt and the mess comes a shaft of recognition. It was worth it. Love is worth it.

Beware, Charlie, old men only lie in wait for people to ask them to talk. Then they rattle on like a rusty elevator wheezing up a shaft

...my big depression. For six months I languished at the bottom of a deep hole, like the shaft of a waterless well, while kindly, puzzled people...peered down at me over the rim of the parapet and tried to cheer me up, or lowered drugs and advice in a bucket.

I think that it’s extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. When it started out it was an awful lot of fun. Of course the paying customers got shafted every now and then and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful error-free perfect use of these machines. I don’t think we are. I think we’re responsible for stretching them setting them off in new directions and keeping fun in the house. I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun. Above all I hope we don’t become missionaries. Don’t feel as if you’re Bible sales-men. The world has too many of those already. What you know about computing other people will learn. Don’t feel as if the key to successful computing is only in your hands. What’s in your hands I think and hope is intelligence: the ability to see the machine as more than when you were first led up to it that you can make it more.

Capturing the terms of the debate through the adroit use of language has allowed the GOP to bamboozle millions of people about their own material interests.

While police officers who blatantly shaft the common people believe that they are God, they are the Devil to those that they wrong.

Michael had taken over the Apollo cabin after Lee Fletcher died in battle last summer. Michael stood four-foot-six with another two feet of attitude. He reminded me of a ferret, with a pointy nose and scrunched-up features—either because he scowled so much or because he spent too much time looking down the shaft of an arrow. “It’s our loot!” he yelled, standing on his tiptoes so he could get in Clarisse’s face. “If you don’t like it, you can kiss my quiver!” Around the table, people were trying not to laugh—the Stoll brothers, Pollux from the Dionysus cabin, Katie Gardner from Demeter. Even Jake Mason, the hastily appointed new counselor from Hephaestus, managed a faint smile. Only Silena Beauregard didn’t pay any attention.

People had always amazed him, he began. But they amazed him more since the sickness. For as long as the two of them had been together, he said, Gary’s mother had accepted him as her son’s lover, had given them her blessing. Then, at the funeral, she’d barely acknowledged him. Later, when she drove to the house to retrieve some personal things, she’d hunted through her son’s drawers with plastic bags twist-tied around her wrists. “…And yet,” he whispered, “The janitor at school--remember him? Mr. Feeney? --he’d openly disapproved of me for nineteen years. One of the nastiest people I knew. Then when the news about me got out, after I resigned, he started showing up at the front door every Sunday with a coffee milkshake. In his church clothes, with his wife waiting out in the car. People have sent me hate mail, condoms, Xeroxed prayers…” What made him most anxious, he told me, was not the big questions--the mercilessness of fate, the possibility of heaven. He was too exhausted, he said, to wrestle with those. But he’d become impatient with the way people wasted their lives, squandered their chances like paychecks. I sat on the bed, massaging his temples, pretending that just the right rubbing might draw out the disease. In the mirror I watched us both--Mr. Pucci, frail and wasted, a talking dead man. And myself with the surgical mask over my mouth, to protect him from me. “The irony,” he said, “… is that now that I’m this blind man, it’s clearer to me than it’s ever been before. What’s the line? ‘Was blind but now I see…’” He stopped and put his lips to the plastic straw. Juice went halfway up the shaft, then back down again. He motioned the drink away. “You accused me of being a saint a while back, pal, but you were wrong. Gary and I were no different. We fought…said terrible things to each other. Spent one whole weekend not speaking to each other because of a messed up phone message… That time we separated was my idea. I thought, well, I’m fifty years old and there might be someone else out there. People waste their happiness--That’s what makes me sad. Everyone’s so scared to be happy.” “I know what you mean,” I said. His eyes opened wider. For a second he seemed to see me. “No you don’t,” he said. “You mustn’t. He keeps wanting to give you his love, a gift out and out, and you dismiss it. Shrug it off because you’re afraid.” “I’m not afraid. It’s more like…” I watched myself in the mirror above the sink. The mask was suddenly a gag. I listened. “I’ll give you what I learned from all this,” he said. “Accept what people offer. Drink their milkshakes. Take their love.

Following Someone is always falling in love with you: men and women, infants and children, octogenarians and adolescents. A tenant of heaven-haven on the pearly doorstep hopes you will wave your hand in passing. Where you stood just now a white bird has flown into a ponderosa pine and a black bee hovers in a bush of yellow flowers. People would like to discuss you, but hold back. Mystery is a fragile substance, too easy to tear. Several persons, however, have noticed that you are followed not by the usual shadow but by a shaft of sunlight. Even on a day of fog or light rain. Even after sunset. When you are not present, you still walk quietly through our minds, and we tell ourselves little stories or small poems about you, like this one. When a bird sings, we listen carefully hoping your name will be mentioned.

Afterwards Mostly you look back and say, "Well, OK. Things might have been different, sure, and it's not too bad, but look - things happen like that, and you did what you could." You go back and pick up the pieces. There's tomorrow. There's that long bend in the river on the way home. Fluffy bursts of milkweed are floating through shafts of sunlight or disappearing where trees reach out from their deep dark roots. Maybe people have to go in and out of shadows till they learn that floating, that immensity waiting to receive whatever arrives with trust. Maybe somebody has to explore what happens when one of us wanders over near the edge and falls for awhile. Maybe it was your turn.

The United States is now a bloated military empire on the cusp of steady and irrevocable economic decline. Historically, the danger in such cases is that when the fiscal stability of the empire begins to weaken, the governing elites double down on the very policies of military profligacy that caused the fiscal crisis in the first place. And that appears to be what the people who run America would like to do. This

The whole underneath of Paris was an ant nest, Metro tunnels, sewer shafts, catacombs, mines, cemeteries. She'd been down in the city of bones where skulls and femurs rose in yellowing walls. Right down there, win the square before them. through a dinky little entrance, were the Roman ruins like honeycomb. The trains went under the river. There were tunnels people had forgotten about. It was a wonder Paris stood up at all. The bit you saw was only half of it. Her skin burned, thinking of it. The Hunchback knew. Up here in the tower of Notre Dame he saw how it was. Now and then, with the bells rattling his bones, he saw it like God saw it -- inside, outside, above and under -- just for a moment. The rest of the time he went back to hurting and waiting like Scully out there crying in the wind.

Our star-crossed moments may have lasted only milliseconds, but they filled the whole of my small schoolgirl world and kept it turning, like shafts of dust dancing gold in a splinter of sunlight.

You’re a priestess. That means people don’t think of you the same way. But believe me, most of us basically can’t talk to a man without him looking us over and deciding whether or not he wants to give us the shaft. And if he does then, whatever else we are, whatever else we do, it’s always there, somewhere in his mind. And if he doesn’t fancy us, then that’s a judgment too, writing us off as a thing without value. You can’t get rid of it. And either way it means you’re always a woman, first. You’re not a warrior, or an archer, or even just a friend to drink with. You’re a woman, and that means you’ve got a place, and a use.

The biggest political divide in America today is not between Republicans and Democrats. It’s between democracy and oligarchy. Hearing and using the same old labels prevents most people from noticing they’re being shafted.

What made him most anxious, he told me, was not the big questions -the mercilessness of fate, the possibility of heaven. He was too exhausted, he said, to wrestle with those. But he'd become impatient with the way people wasted their lives, squandered their chances like paychecks. I sat on the bed, massaging his temples, pretending that just the right rubbing might draw out the disease. In the mirror I watched us both -Mr. Pucci, frail and wasted, a talking dead man. And myself with a surgical mask over my mouth, to protect him from me. "The irony," he said, "... is that now that I'm this blind man, it's clearer to me now then it's ever been before. What's the line? 'Was blind but now I see...' " He stopped and put his lips to the plastic straw. Juice went halfway up the shaft, then back down again. He motioned the drink away. "You accused me of being a saint a while back, pal, but you were wrong. Gary and I were no different. We fought ...said terrible things to each other. Spent one whole weekend not speaking to each other because of a messed-up phone message... That time we separated was my idea. I thought, well, I'm fifty years old and there might be someone else out there. People waste their happiness -that's what makes me sad. Everyone's so scared to be happy." "I know what you mean," I said. His eyes opened wider. For a second he seemed to see me. "No you don't," he said. "You mustn’t. He keeps wanting to give you his love, a gift out and out and you dismiss it. Shrug it off because you're afraid." "I'm not afraid. It's more like ..." I watched myself in the mirror above the sink. The mask was suddenly a gag. I listened. "l'll give you what I learned from all this," he said. "Accept what people offer. Drink their milkshakes. Take their love.

There’s something frightening about her, some huge emptiness in the pit of her being. It’s like waiting for a lift to arrive and when the doors open nothing is there, just the terrible dark emptiness of the elevator shaft, on and on forever.

There's something frightening about her, some huge emptiness in the pit of her being. It's like waiting for a lift to arrive and when the doors open nothing is there, just the terrible dark emptiness of the elevator shaft, on and on forever.

BOWLS OF FOOD Moon and evening star do their slow tambourine dance to praise this universe. The purpose of every gathering is discovered: to recognize beauty and love what’s beautiful. “Once it was like that, now it’s like this,” the saying goes around town, and serious consequences too. Men and women turn their faces to the wall in grief. They lose appetite. Then they start eating the fire of pleasure, as camels chew pungent grass for the sake of their souls. Winter blocks the road. Flowers are taken prisoner underground. Then green justice tenders a spear. Go outside to the orchard. These visitors came a long way, past all the houses of the zodiac, learning Something new at each stop. And they’re here for such a short time, sitting at these tables set on the prow of the wind. Bowls of food are brought out as answers, but still no one knows the answer. Food for the soul stays secret. Body food gets put out in the open like us. Those who work at a bakery don’t know the taste of bread like the hungry beggars do. Because the beloved wants to know, unseen things become manifest. Hiding is the hidden purpose of creation: bury your seed and wait. After you die, All the thoughts you had will throng around like children. The heart is the secret inside the secret. Call the secret language, and never be sure what you conceal. It’s unsure people who get the blessing. Climbing cypress, opening rose, Nightingale song, fruit, these are inside the chill November wind. They are its secret. We climb and fall so often. Plants have an inner Being, and separate ways of talking and feeling. An ear of corn bends in thought. Tulip, so embarrassed. Pink rose deciding to open a competing store. A bunch of grapes sits with its feet stuck out. Narcissus gossiping about iris. Willow, what do you learn from running water? Humility. Red apple, what has the Friend taught you? To be sour. Peach tree, why so low? To let you reach. Look at the poplar, tall but without fruit or flower. Yes, if I had those, I’d be self-absorbed like you. I gave up self to watch the enlightened ones. Pomegranate questions quince, Why so pale? For the pearl you hid inside me. How did you discover my secret? Your laugh. The core of the seen and unseen universes smiles, but remember, smiles come best from those who weep. Lightning, then the rain-laughter. Dark earth receives that clear and grows a trunk. Melon and cucumber come dragging along on pilgrimage. You have to be to be blessed! Pumpkin begins climbing a rope! Where did he learn that? Grass, thorns, a hundred thousand ants and snakes, everything is looking for food. Don’t you hear the noise? Every herb cures some illness. Camels delight to eat thorns. We prefer the inside of a walnut, not the shell. The inside of an egg, the outside of a date. What about your inside and outside? The same way a branch draws water up many feet, God is pulling your soul along. Wind carries pollen from blossom to ground. Wings and Arabian stallions gallop toward the warmth of spring. They visit; they sing and tell what they think they know: so-and-so will travel to such-and-such. The hoopoe carries a letter to Solomon. The wise stork says lek-lek. Please translate. It’s time to go to the high plain, to leave the winter house. Be your own watchman as birds are. Let the remembering beads encircle you. I make promises to myself and break them. Words are coins: the vein of ore and the mine shaft, what they speak of. Now consider the sun. It’s neither oriental nor occidental. Only the soul knows what love is. This moment in time and space is an eggshell with an embryo crumpled inside, soaked in belief-yolk, under the wing of grace, until it breaks free of mind to become the song of an actual bird, and God.

I'm no expert, but in my limited experience, women aren't born women. They start out as girls. And every girl, from the moment they can dream, imagines the rescue. The knight. The castle. Life in a fairy tale. If you don't believe me, watch boys and girls on a playground. No one teaches us to do this. The kid in us actually believes in things that are too good to be true. Before life convinces us we can't and they're not. Then life kicks in. Boys become men. Girls become women. For any number of reasons we are wounded and, sadly, wounded people wound people. So many of us grow into doubting, hopeless, callous adults protecting hardened hearts. Medicating the pain. Life isn't what we imagined. Nor are we. And we didn't start out trying to get there. Far from it. But it's who we've become. One day we turn around, and what we once dreamed or hoped is a distant echo. We've forgotten what it sounded like. Once pure and unadulterated, the voice of hope is now muted by all the stuff we've crammed on top of it. And we're okay with that. For some illogical reason, we stand atop the mine shaft of ourselves, shoving stuff into the pipe that is us, telling our very soul, 'Shut up. Not another word.' Why? Because the cry of our heart hurts when unanswered. And the longer it remains unanswered, the deeper the hurt. In self-protection we inhale resignation and exhale indifference. [Murphy Shepherd]

I here proffer my opinion that we, the people, are still being raped on a daily basis, but it’s a much longer, much slower fucking. The aggressors are the lobbyists for big tobacco and for guns and for pharmaceuticals and for agribusiness, and their filthy, turgid cocks are enormous, probing ram-shafts made of money. But wait, I thought this book was a lighthearted look at living one’s life deliciously? That’s all well and good, fat boy, but you cannot just blithely drift through life in your canoe whilst turning a blind eye to the bullshit going on around you.

He thought, in your most secret dreams you cut a niche for yourself, and it is finished early, and then you wait for someone to come along to fill it—but to fill it exactly, every cut, curve, hollow and plane of it. And people do come along, and one covers up the niche, and another rattles around inside it, and another is so surrounded by fog that for the longest time you don’t know if she fits or not; but each of them hits you with a tremendous impact. And then one comes along and slips in so quietly that you don’t know when it happened, and fits so well you almost can’t feel anything at all. And that is it. “What are you thinking about?” she asked him. He told her, immediately and fully. She nodded as if he had been talking about cats or cathedrals or cam-shafts, or anything else beautiful and complex. She said, “That’s right. It isn’t all there, of course. It isn’t even enough. But everything else isn’t enough without it.” “What is ‘everything else’?

But I wasn't simply going nuts, tumbling down a shaft into Wonderland. It was my misfortune -or salvation- to be at all times perfectly conscious of my misperceptions of reality . Now, I would say to myself , you are feeling alienated from people and unlike other people, therefore you are projecting your discomfort onto them.

I think that it's extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course, the paying customers got shafted every now and then, and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines. I don't think we are. I think we're responsible for stretching them, setting them off in new directions, and keeping fun in the house. I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun. Above all, I hope we don't become missionaries. Don't feel as if you're Bible salesmen. The world has too many of those already. What you know about computing other people will learn. Don't feel as if the key to successful computing is only in your hands. What's in your hands, I think and hope, is intelligence: the ability to see the machine as more than when you were first led up to it, that you can make it more.

The entrance gate at the far end of the quadrangle was open wide, and beyond it I could see a mass of people assembled on the green, men, women, children.The shouting was coming from them, and the creaking sounds were the wheels of an enormous covered wagon drawn by five horses, the second leader and the horse between the shafts carrying riders upon their backs. The wooden canopy

In good fiction, we have one eye on the hero or the good guys and a fascinated eye on the bad guys, who may be a lot more interesting. The plot leads all of these people (and us) into dark woods where we find, against all odds, a woman or a man with the compass, and it still points true north. That's the miracle, and it's astonishing. This shaft of light, sometimes only a glimmer, both defines and thwarts the darkness.

My job is never boring," Staples said. "There's nuts-and-bolts stuff like getting the tarpaulin over the shaft when it rains, and so in. Cataloging and reshelving. The shelves are in a shocking state. And when you've got everything ever written or lost to keep track of, it's quite a job. And there's fetching books. "I used to really look forward to requests for books way down in the abyss. We'd all rope up, follow our lines down for miles. The order falls apart a way down but you learn to sniff out class-marks. Sometimes we'd be gone for weeks, fetching volumes.' She spoke with a faraway voice. "There are risks. Hunters, animals, and accidents. Ropes that snap. Sometimes someone gets separated. Twenty years ago, I was in a group looking for a book someone had requested. I remember, it was called 'Oh, All Right Then': Bartleby Returns. We were led by Ptolemy Yes. He was the man taught me. Best librarian there's ever been, some say. "Anyway, after weeks of searching, we ran out of food and had to turn back. No one likes it when we fail, so none of us were feeling great. "We felt that much worse when we realized that we'd lost Ptolemy. "Some people say he went off deliberately. That he couldn't bear not to find the book. That he's out there still in the Wordhoard Abyss, living off shelf-monkeys, looking. And that he'll be back one day, book in his hand.

People spoke of love as if it were an arrow. They spoke of it as if it were a pleasant thing, but Maxim had taken an arrow once, and knew it for what is was: excruciating. … The arrow's barb had so long healed. He'd forgotten the pain entirely. But now. Now he felt the wound, a shaft driven through his ribs. Scraping bone and lung with every ragged breath, and loss the hand twisting the arrow, trying to rend it free before it killed and doing so much damage in the process.

A person whom questions the purpose behind enduring life strafed with pain and self-doubt must construct a self-rescue plan. Does a demoralized person discover contentment and a meaningful life through expanded intellectual studies or by becoming engrossed in living deeply connected to nature? Should I seek personal conquest and eradication of ugly segments of my persona or merger and unification of the irrational splinters of a fragmented and traumatized personality? How does a person express what it means to be human? How does a person locate the incandescent flash of their flesh? If I shout into the wind with all my might, will responsive people hear my wild cry? Will placing pen to paper buffet the cantos of a troubled mind, expose the operatic musings of a madman’s ranting song, or will looking at each day through the diverse lens of both detachment and solipsism ignite an illuminating shaft of wisdom to grace the sinkhole of a fallen man?

People are like that here. Strangers smile at you on the beach, come up and offer you a shell, for no reason, lightly, and then go by and leave you alone again. Nothing is demanded of you in payment, no social rite expected, no tie established. It was a gift, freely offered, freely taken, in mutual trust. People smile at you here, like children, sure that you will not rebuff them, that you will smile back. And you do, because you know it will involve nothing. The smile, the act, the relationship is hung in space, in the immediacy and purity of the present; suspended on the still point of here and now; balanced there, on a shaft of air, like a seagull. The pure relationship, how beautiful it is! How easily it is damaged, or weighed down with irrelevancies - not even irrelevancies, just life itself, the accumulations of life and of time. For the first part of every relationship is pure, whether it be with friend or lover, husband or child. It is pure, simple and unencumbered.

You, dearly beloved, whom I address in no less earnest terms than those of the blessed apostle Peter, “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession,” built upon the impregnable rock, Christ, and joined to the Lord our Savior by His true assumption of our flesh, remain firm in the faith, which you have professed before many witnesses and in which you were reborn through water and the Holy Spirit, and received the anointing of salvation and the seal of eternal life. But “if anyone preaches to you anything besides that which you have learned, let him be anathema”; refuse to put wicked fables before the clearest truth, and what you may happen to read or hear contrary to the rule of the catholic and apostolic creed, judge it altogether deadly and diabolical… Indeed, they put on a cloak of piety and chastity, but under this deceit they conceal the filthiness of their acts, and from the recesses of their ungodly heart hurl shafts to wound the simple… A mighty bulwark is a sound faith, a true faith, to which nothing has to be added or taken away, because unless it is one, it is no faith, as the apostle says, “one Lord, one faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in us all.” Cling to this unity, dearly beloved, with minds unshaken, and in it “follow after” all “holiness.” In it carry out the Lord’s commands, because “without faith it is impossible to please God,” and without it nothing is holy, nothing pure, nothing alive, “for the just lives by faith,” and he who by the devil’s deception loses it is dead though living, because as righteousness is gained by faith, so, too, by a true faith is eternal life gained, as our Lord and Savior says. And this is life eternal, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent. May He make you to advance and persevere to the end, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, forever and ever. Amen.                —Leo the Great

Doctors are for sick people and Taft isn’t sick. Once they start looking it opens up a whole can of worms. They find things wrong, one thing and then another until you’re dead. That’s the way it went with his father. He went in to see about a simple cough and came back with cancer. The more those doctors looked, the more they found. They said his father was shot through with it. They said they needed to explore. The exploring took them deeper down the mine shaft, into veins stuffed with cancer. They said he wouldn’t live six months, and so he didn’t. Taft believes people are like wells, clear water with some sediment on the bottom. As long as you don’t disturb them, they’re going to be fine.

Studies of the effects of education confirm that educated people really are more enlightened. They are less racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, and authoritarian. They place a higher value on imagination, independence, and free speech. They are more likely to vote, volunteer, express political views, and belong to civic associations such as unions, political parties, and religious and community organizations. They are also likelier to trust their fellow citizens, a prime ingredient of the precious elixir called social capital which gives people the confidence to contract, invest, and obey the law without fearing that they are chumps who will be shafted by everyone else. For all these reasons, the growth of education and its first dividend, literacy is a flagship of human progress.

We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand. But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for God’s sake. And you know why we were told that? Because the people doing the telling were afraid of our wildness and youth, and because the magic we knew made them ashamed and sad of what they’d allowed to wither in themselves. After you go so far away from it, though, you can’t really get it back. You can have seconds of it. Just seconds of knowing and remembering. When people get weepy at movies, it’s because in that dark theater the golden pool of magic is touched, just briefly. Then they come out into the hard sun of logic and reason again and it dries up, and they’re left feeling a little heartsad and not knowing why. When a song stirs a memory, when motes of dust turning in a shaft of light takes your attention from the world, when you listen to a train passing on a track at night in the distance and wonder where it might be going, you step beyond who you are and where you are. For the briefest of instants, you have stepped into the magic realm. That’s what I believe. The truth of life is that every year we get farther away from the essence that is born within us. We get shouldered with burdens, some of them good, some of them not so good. Things happen to us. Loved ones die. People get in wrecks and get crippled. People lose their way, for one reason or another. It’s not hard to do, in this world of crazy mazes. Life itself does its best to take that memory of magic away from us. You don’t know it’s happening until one day you feel you’ve lost something but you’re not sure what it is. It’s like smiling at a pretty girl and she calls you “sir.” It just happens.

Tobias takes me to the atrium near the hotel dormitory, and we spend some time there, talking and kissing and pointing out the strangest plants. It feels like something that normal people do--go on dates, talk about small things, laugh. We have had so few of those moments. Most of our time together has been spent running from one threat or another, or running toward one threat or another. But I can see a time on the horizon when that won’t need to happen anymore. We will reset the people in the compound, and work to rebuild this place together. Maybe then we can find out if we do as well with the quiet moments as we have with the loud ones. I am looking forward to it. Finally the time comes for Tobias to leave. I stand on the higher step in the atrium and he stands on the lower one, so we’re on the same plane. “I don’t like that I can’t be with you tonight,” he says. “It doesn’t feel right to leave you alone with something this huge.” “What, you don’t think I can handle it?” I say, a little defensive. “Obviously that is not what I think.” He touches his hands to my face and leans his forehead against mine. “I just don’t want you to have to bear it alone.” “I don’t want you to have to bear Uriah’s family alone,” I say softly. “But I think these are things we have to do separately. I’m glad I’ll get to be with Caleb before…you know. It’ll be nice not having to worry about you at the same time.” “Yeah.” He closes his eyes. “I can’t wait until tomorrow, when I’m back and you’ve done what you set out to do and we can decide what comes next.” “I can tell you it will involve a lot of this,” I say, and I press my lips to his. His hands shift from my cheeks to my shoulders and then slide painstakingly down my back. His fingers find the hem of my shirt, then slip under it, warm and insistent. I feel aware of everything at once, of the pressure of his mouth and the taste of our kiss and the texture of his skin and the orange light glowing against my closed eyelids and the smell of green things, growing things, in the air. When I pull away, and he opens his eyes, I see everything about them, the dart of light blue in his left eye, the dark blue that makes me feel like I am safe inside it, like I am dreaming. “I love you,” I say. “I love you, too,” he says. “I’ll see you soon.” He kisses me again, softly, and then leaves the atrium. I stand in that shaft of sunlight until the sun disappears. It’s time to be with my brother now.

Ricky Marigold was his name up at the commune. He was seventeen, had run away from home in Pacoima and was a righteous grasshead. He wasn't a bad kid, just fucked up. He was for: love, truth, gentleness, getting high, staying high, good sounds, pleasant weather, funky clothes and rapping with his friends. He was against: Viet Nam, the Laws with their riot sticks, violence, bigotry, random hatred, nine-to-five jobs, squares who tried to get you to conform, grass full of seeds and stems, and bringdowns in general. He met Jack Gardiner on the corner of Laurel Canyon and Sunset, across from Schwab's where the starlets went to show off their asses. He saw Jack Gardiner as a little too old to be making the scene, but the guy looked flaky enough: lumberjack shirt, good beard, bright eyes; and he seemed to be friendly enough. So Ricky invited him to come along. They walked up Laurel Canyon, hunching along next to the curb on the sidewalkless street. "Gonna be a quiet scene," Ricky said. "Just a buncha beautiful people groovin' on themselves, maybe turning on, you know." The older man nodded; his hands were deep in his pants pockets. They walked quite a while, finally turning up Stone Canyon Road. A mile up the twisting road. Jack Gardiner slipped a step behind Ricky Marigold and pulled out the blade. Ricky had started to turn, just as Connie's father drove the shaft into Ricky's back, near the base of the spine. Ricky was instantly paralyzed, though not dead. He slipped to the street, and Jack Gardiner dragged him into the high weeds and junk of an empty lot. He left him there to die. Unable to speak, unable to move, Ricky Marigold found all the love draining out of him. Slowly, for six hours, through the small of his back.

So much changes when you get an education! You unlearn dangerous superstitions, such as that leaders rule by divine right, or that people who don’t look like you are less than human. You learn that there are other cultures that are as tied to their ways of life as you are to yours, and for no better or worse reason. You learn that charismatic saviors have led their countries to disaster. You learn that your own convictions, no matter how heartfelt or popular, may be mistaken. You learn that there are better and worse ways to live, and that other people and other cultures may know things that you don’t. Not least, you learn that there are ways of resolving conflicts without violence. All these epiphanies militate against knuckling under the rule of an autocrat or joining a crusade to subdue and kill your neighbors. Of course, none of this wisdom is guaranteed, particularly when authorities promulgate their own dogmas, alternative facts, and conspiracy theories—and, in a backhanded compliment to the power of knowledge, stifle the people and ideas that might discredit them. Studies of the effects of education confirm that educated people really are more enlightened. They are less racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, and authoritarian.10 They place a higher value on imagination, independence, and free speech.11 They are more likely to vote, volunteer, express political views, and belong to civic associations such as unions, political parties, and religious and community organizations.12 They are also likelier to trust their fellow citizens—a prime ingredient of the precious elixir called social capital which gives people the confidence to contract, invest, and obey the law without fearing that they are chumps who will be shafted by everyone else.13 For all these reasons, the growth of education—and its first dividend, literacy—is a flagship of human progress.

Trumpets blared. ’Denham’s Dentifrice.’ Shut up, thought Montag. Consider the lilies of the field. ’Denham’s Dentifrice.’ They toil not — ’Denham’s —’ He tore the book open and flicked the pages and felt them as if he were blind, he picked at the shape of the individual letters, not blinking. ’Denham’s. Spelled: D-E-N —’ They toil not, neither do they … A fierce whisper of hot sand through empty sieve. ’Denham’s does it!’ Consider the lilies, the lilies, the lilies … ’Denham’s dental detergent.’ ‘Shut up, shut up, shut up!’ It was a plea, a cry so terrible that Montag found himself on his feet, the shocked inhabitants of the loud car staring, moving back from this man with the insane, gorged face, the gibbering, dry mouth, the flapping book in his fist. The people who have been sitting a moment before, tapping their feet to the rhythm of Denham’s Dentifrice, Denham’s Dandy Dental Detergent, Denham’s Dentifrice Dentifrice Dentifrice, one two, one two three, one two, one two three. The people whose mouths had been faintly twitching the words Dentifrice Dentifrice Dentifrice. The train radio vomited upon Montag, in retaliation, a great ton-load of music made of tin, copper, silver, chromium, and brass. The people were pounded into submission; they did not run; there was no place to run; the great air-train fell down its shafts in the earth. ’Lilies of the field.’ ’Denham’s.’ ’Lilies, I said!’ The people stared. ’Call the guard.’ ’The man’s off —’ ’Knoll View!’ The train hissed to its stop. ’Knoll View!’ A cry. ’Denham’s.’ A whisper. Montag’s mouth barely moved. ‘Lilies …’ The train door whistled open. Montag stood. The door gasped, started shut. Only then did he leap past the other passengers, screaming his mind, plunge through the slicing door only in time. He rain on the white tiles up through the tunnels, ignoring the escalators, because he wanted to feel his feet move, arms swing, lungs clench, unclench, feel his throat go raw with air. A voice drifted after him, ‘Denham’s Denham’s Denham’s,’ the train hissed like a snake. The train vanished in its hole.

the Gzilt were a people favoured by Fate, by the Universe itself, as part of an ongoing thrust towards a glorious, transcendent providence; they represented the very tip of a mystical spear thrown by the past at the future, the shaft of that spear being formed by a multitude of earlier species which existed before them and kept on serially handing on the baton of destiny to the next, slightly more exceptional people ahead of them.

It was an invention with huge potential in saving money and lives, but Otis faced a skeptical and fearful public. So he rented out the main exhibit hall of what was then New York City’s largest convention center. On the floor of the hall he constructed an open elevator platform and a shaft in which the platform could rise and descend. One afternoon, he gathered convention-goers for a demonstration. He climbed onto the platform and directed an assistant to hoist the elevator to its top height, about three stories off the ground. Then, as he stood and gazed down at the crowd, Otis took an ax and slashed the rope that was suspending the elevator in midair. The audience gasped. The platform fell. But in seconds, the safety brake engaged and halted the elevator’s descent. Still alive and standing, Otis looked out at the shaken crowd and said, “All safe, gentlemen. All safe.”1 The moment marked two firsts. It was the first demonstration of an elevator safe enough to carry people. (Otis, you might have guessed by now, went on to found the Otis Elevator Company.) And more important for our purposes, it was a simple, succinct, and effective way to convey a complex message in an effort to move others—the world’s first elevator pitch.

Stronger Shaft   A healthy scalp equals healthy hair.  Apple cider vinegar will cure your weak and brittle hair as your scalp will be able to absorb the nutrients it needs.  This can be done with the recipe below or by ingesting apple cider vinegar daily.  Healthy skin and hair are usually the first two benefits people notice when taking apple cider vinegar.  Often, after a few weeks, users begin to receive compliments about their skin or hair.  Strong, glowing hair all starts with a strong shaft.  The stronger and healthier the shaft, the longer the hair and the healthier it will look.  Often, hair is dull and brittle because the shaft of the hair is thin or damaged.  Apple cider vinegar will restore your shaft and promote healthy hair growth.   Apple Cider Vinegar Hair Recipes   1 part water 1 part apple cider vinegar   Start by rinsing and cleaning your hair with shampoo. Once you are out of the shower, add the mixture to a spray bottle.  Spray your hair and let it sit for 10-15 minutes.  Massage your scalp to make sure the apple cider vinegar is getting down to your skin.  Wash and once again shampoo to make sure you have removed all the apple cider vinegar.

I’m giving you a chance to walk away, to live. Don’t be a fool--take it.” Cannan tucked his knife into the shaft of his boot, then cast his eyes over Steldor, Galen, Adrik and Koranis. All resolutely met his gaze. “I don’t see fear in this room, Narian,” he said, shaking his head. “Do what you must, as will we.” “Then you’re asking to die!” For a moment there was a pleading note in Narian’s voice, an indication of how torn he was about his position. He didn’t want to put these men to death. “If I arrest you, you will be executed. If I let you go forward, you will fail.” “The only way we could fail,” Steldor interjected in a low voice, “is by accepting what you have handed our people. We owe this to them.” “You owe them your leadership, not the sacrifice of your lives. The High Priestess will not relinquish this province, in that she is unyielding. She and the Overlord fought too long and too hard for it. Don’t do this.” My uncle approached the Cokyrian commander with an almost sympathetic expression. His dark eyes had lost none of their determination, but he meant to reach the young man with his words. “Who are you, Narian?” The question was strange, but Narian seemed to understand its significance. “From the moment you set foot in Hytanica, you have tried to play both sides. You’ve spent far too long being a Cokyrian with Hytanican blood, and it ends now, for better or worse. There is no more in between, so do what you must. Either have us arrested, or allow us to go forward.” Narian met Cannan’s gaze, not discomfited by the taller man’s proximity. In truth, he had nothing at all to fear from us, what with the powers he possessed. But I wished I could see something in his eyes, some indication of what he would do from here. “Very well, Captain. I will do as you say--what I must.” Showing us his back, Narian ascended the stairs, disappearing through the cellar door. Steldor immediately made to follow, but Cannan grasped his shirt. “Let me go,” my cousin snapped, but his father stepped closer, until their faces were just inches apart. “Don’t be reckless,” the captain muttered. “He will kill you if you challenge him.” Steldor gave in, and his father released his grip. “Then what do we do?” Galen asked. “Nothing has changed.” Cannan looked around at the men who would follow his orders, to the grave and beyond. “We will do exactly what we have planned. Until and unless Narian stops us, we proceed.” “But…but isn’t that dangerous?” King Adrik queried. “This has always been dangerous. But I’m willing to take a chance on Narian.” The silence in the aftermath of the captain’s statement reinforced my sense that, at a single wave of the Cokyrian commander’s hand, we would all be buried alive.

The typical self-centered goals of a young Midwestern white man were absent. I had no interest in McMansions, Rolexes, or Range Rovers. I just liked to get fucked up and fuck things and other people up.               Maybe I was looking for something to believe in when the planets aligned to set me down that path. I was drawn to racist ideology because I felt like white people were getting shafted. We were the underdogs. It was us against the world in an epic battle for forever. Such romance! Yes, I have a tendency to make it sound that way, which I guess is really just getting back in that moment, because the taint we cast upon reality definitely had that saga feel. And that was by design. Hitler did it with the torch-lit ceremony and iconic swastika. It felt like you were Beowulf, Siegfried, and Conan all rolled into one. Just a big fucking game of Dungeons & Dragons, till death and prison inevitably show up. Then the shit is real. Then comes the real challenge, the true test of will.

In a country so distant, so naturally poor, more impoverished by misgovernment and internal discord, and the meddling of a powerful and grasping neighbour, we must not look for the extended dealings that dignify trade, nor for the refinement, luxury, art, which adorned the free cities of the Continent. Instead of these we may find something even more valuable, if we are able to trace to our free institutions, and to the burgh life that glowed from them, a sturdy independence and self-reliance, honest frugality, a respect for law and order, and an intelligent love of education, somewhat above our neighbours, which, I hope, still mark our nation. In the early literature of Scotland we have a worthy reflection of her history. Her first poet sung the achievements of Bruce. Her greatest satirist aimed his shafts at the corruptions of Rome. In the homely burghs of Scotland we may find the first spring of that public spirit, the voice of the people, which in the worst of times, when the crown and the law were powerless, and the feudal aristocracy altogether selfish in its views, supported the patriot leaders Wallace and Bruce in their desperate struggle, and sent down that tide of native feeling which animated Burns and Scott, and which is not yet dead, however much it may be endangered by the childish follies of its quixotic champions. Whatever of thought, of enterprise, of public feeling, appears in our poor history, took rise in our burghs, and among the burgess class.

The only thing that matters is that I like it and that you and people in your world like it, because for me, it’s about separating the wheat from the shaft. Tapping in with good people and letting that be your North Star.

It was something in the tone of the madmen and their type of formation. They were a scratch company of barbarians and slaves and poor and unimportant people; but their formation was military; they moved together and were very absolute about who and what was really a part of their little system; and about what they said. However mildly, there was a ring like iron. Men used to many mythologies and moralities could make no analysis of the mystery, except the curious conjecture that they meant what they said. All attempts to make them see reason in the perfectly simple matter of the Emperor’s statue seemed to be spoken to deaf men. It was as if a new meteoric metal had fallen on the earth; it was a difference of substance to the touch. Those who touched their foundation fancied they had struck a rock. With a strange rapidity, like the changes of a dream, the proportions of things seemed to change in their presence. Before most men knew what had happened, these few men were palpably present. They were important enough to be ignored. People became suddenly silent about them and walked stiffly past them. We see a new scene, in which the world has drawn its skirts away from these men and women and they stand in the centre of a great space like lepers. The scene changes again and the great space where they stand is overhung on every side with a cloud of witnesses, interminable terraces full of faces looking down towards them intently; for strange things are happening to them. New tortures have been invented for the madmen who have brought good news. That sad and weary society seems almost to find a new energy in establishing its first religious persecution. Nobody yet knows very clearly why that level world has thus lost its balance about the people in its midst; but they stand unnaturally still while the arena and the world seem to revolve round them. And there shone on them in that dark hour a light that has never been darkened; a white fire clinging to that group like an unearthly phosphorescence, blazing its track through the twilights of history and confounding every effort to confound it with the mists of mythology and theory; that shaft of light or lightning by which the world itself has struck and isolated and crowned it; by which its own enemies have made it more illustrious and its own critics have made it more inexplicable; the halo of hatred around the Church of God.

7. Over against this table, near the southern wall, was set a candlestick of cast gold, hollow within, being of the weight of one hundred pounds, which the Hebrews call Chinchares, if it be turned into the Greek language, it denotes a talent. It was made with its knops, and lilies, and pomegranates, and bowls (which ornaments amounted to seventy in all); by which means the shaft elevated itself on high from a single base, and spread itself into as many branches as there are planets, including the sun among them. It terminated in seven heads, in one row, all standing parallel to one another; and these branches carried seven lamps, one by one, in imitation of the number of the planets. These lamps looked to the east and to the south, the candlestick being situate obliquely.

The sun had reached its noon zenith in the sky in the world that lay outside the dark and grimy warehouse, and coming in slantwise through the small window sent a dusty shaft that fell like a theatrical spotlight about Jennie’s head and shoulders as she lectured. “If you have committed any kind of an error and anyone scolds you – wash,” she was saying. “If you slip and fall off something and somebody laughs at you – wash. If you are getting the worst of an argument and want to break off hostilities until you have composed yourself, start washing. Remember, every cat respects another cat at her toilet. That’s our first rule of social deportment, and you must also observe it. “Whatever the situation, whatever difficulty you may be in you can’t go wrong if you wash. If you come into a room full of people you do not know, and who are confusing to you, sit right down in the midst of them and start washing. They’ll end up by quieting down and watching you. Some noise frightens you into a jump, and somebody you know saw you were frightened – begin washing immediately. “If somebody calls you and you don’t care to come and still you don’t wish to make it a direct insult – wash. If you’ve started off to go somewhere and suddenly can’t remember where it was you wanted to go, sit right down and begin brushing up a little. It will come back to you. Something hurt you? Wash it. Tired of playing with someone who has been kind enough to take time and trouble and you want to break off without hurting his or her feelings? Start washing. “Oh, there are dozens of things! Door closed and you’re burning up because no one will open it for you – have yourself a little wash and forget it. Somebody petting another cat or dog in the same room, and you are annoyed over that – be nonchalant; wash. Feel sad – wash away your blues. Been picked up by somebody you don’t particularly fancy and who didn’t smell good – wash him off immediately and pointedly where he can see you do it. Overcome by emotion – a wash will help you to get a grip on yourself again. Any time, anyhow, in any manner, for whatever purpose, wherever you are, whenever and why ever that you want to clear the air, or get a moment’s respite or think things over – WASH!

A dog of Flanders - yellow of hide, large of head and limb, with wolf-like ears that stood erect, and legs bowed and feed widened in the muscular development wrought in his breed by many generations of hard service. Patrasche came of a race which had toiled hard and cruelly from sire to son in Flanders many a century - slaves of slaves, dogs of the people, beasts of the shafts and the harness, creatures that lived straining their sinews in the gall of the cart, and died breaking their hearts on the flints of the streets.

Let’s make a promise to each other that if we ever find ourselves in a position where we throw off the shackles of oppression, we’ll leave them off and stay in charge of ourselves. Not just pick some new shackles with Nike on them and get on with our subjugation. This requires diligence. As David Graeber said, any authoritative measures supposedly for our benefit must be resisted. We must insist on total self-governance. The American constitution was designed to keep rich men in charge; the only significant change was the accent and crowns. They swapped a lion for an eagle and crowns for hair cream. The same people that were shafted then are shafted now. Any country that puts the word “United” in its title has got something to hide, and I would suggest that it’s conflict. In the United Kingdom, the Scottish want out, the Welsh want out, even the English want nothing to do with it. The United States is anything but. Descendants of slaves, Europeans of every description, Latino folk, forever condemned for crossing a line that didn’t used to be there. The nation state is a relatively modern idea, and I don’t think we’re getting a lot out of it except for flags and World Cups. It’s odd that those in power condemn people who want change for being whimsical and impractical, but actually what is being demanded is pragmatism, systems that function. People get the resources they need, the resources are managed efficiently, and the conditions required to create resources are respected. None of that happens. It can’t, because they’ve prioritized a bizarre, selfish, and destructive idea over common sense.

A good way to connect with what are called ‘friends,’” I say. “Not regular friends, usually it’s like the guy who plays softball with your coworker.” Who wants to be more connected? the bird says, does not say. Everyone is friends now? “I think people dislike other people at the ratio they did before you—” We’re not going to get very far if you can’t say died. “It’s called virtual.” I frown. “I’m not describing this correctly.” You’re describing it fine. “How would you know?” I say at the same time as she says, But how would I know? I’ve come a week early to this inn on the shaft of Long Island to prepare for the transition from woman to wife, to do what the groom calls “decompress” because “of late” I’ve become a bit of a “nightmare.

What do you think a soldier's job is, Derfel?" he asked me in that intimate manner that made you feel he was more interested in you than anyone else in the world. "To fight battles, Lord," I said. He shook his head. "To fight battles, Derfel," he corrected me, 'on behalf of people who can't fight for themselves. I learned that in Brittany. This miserable world is full of weak people, powerless people, hungry people, sad people, sick people, poor people, and it's the easiest thing in the world to despise the weak, especially if you're a soldier. If you're a warrior and you want a man's daughter, you just take her; you want his land, you just kill him; after all, you're a soldier and you have a spear and a sword, and he's just a poor weak man with a broken plough and a sick ox and what's to stop you?" He did not expect an answer to the question, but just paced on in silence. We had come to the western gateway and the split-log steps that climbed to the platform over the gate were whitening with a new frost. We climbed them side by side. "But the truth is, Derfel," Arthur said when we reached the high platform, 'that we are only soldiers because that weak man makes us soldiers. He grows the grain that feeds us, he tans the leather that protects us and he polls the ash trees that make our spear-shafts. We owe him our service.

The following is a quotation from the Mahābhārata that describes our present era and the immediately preceding yuga, revealing a progressive deterioration of humanity’s moral fiber. Again, in the dvāpara-yuga the moral order (dharma) exists [only] half. [God] Vishnu becomes yellow, and the Veda is now fourfold [i.e., the original wisdom is split into the four Vedic hymnodies]. Thence, some [adhere to] four Vedas, others to three Vedas, or two Vedas, or a single Veda, while yet others have no hymns [at all]. Thus, owing to the broken traditions, rites become manifold and creatures, fond of austerities and almsgiving, become rajas-motivated2. Due to ignorance about the single Veda, the Vedas become multiple and because of the collapse of truth, few adhere to truthfulness. Many diseases appear for those who have fallen from truth, and there are desires and disasters caused by fate. Afflicted by these, [some] men perform very severe austerities; others, filled with [worldly] desires or desiring heaven, conduct sacrifices. Thus with the onset of the dvāpara, creatures perish through their lawlessness. In the kali-yuga, O Kaunteya, the moral order (dharma) exists by one quarter only. With the onset of this tamas-motivated3 age, O Keshava [i.e., God Vishnu] becomes black (krishna). The Vedic ways of life end, and so do the moral order, sacrifice, and rites. Plagues, disease, sloth, blemishes such as anger, as well as calamities, sickness, and afflictions prevail. In the course of the yugas, the moral order diminishes increasingly. With the diminution of the moral order, the people (loka) diminish. This description of the kali-yuga is not as daunting as it is in some other scriptures. But the message is clear enough: Ours is a sinister age. What thinking person would not agree? Can we not, by now, fill a whole library with tales of human foolishness, of humanity’s thoughtless interference with the life-world and its almost unbelievable lack of concern for fellow beings, both human and nonhuman? Is there no hope, then, for humankind? Is historian Oswald Spengler’s dark prophecy of the decline of the West (and with it, also of the East) coming true?4 Or are there, today, forces at work that countermand the Zeitgeist, the spirit of the age? This latter appears to be the case. It could not be otherwise. Or else our species would have perished long ago, right at the outset of the kali-yuga. The kali-yuga, then, does not signal total spiritual darkness or inevitable doom. Inverting a popular maxim, one can perhaps say that where there is shadow there is also light. Here and there, the present dark age is pierced by shafts of light. It is not without its benign counterbalancing influences.

But she didn’t leave. Instead, she dropped to her knees and began undoing my belt. I leaned on the edge of the sink, powerless to stop her. My fingers curled around the counter. “I’m going to bleed all over my floor.” A last-ditch effort to stop her. She pulled out my heavy, engorged cock. Her fingers circled it all the way without touching. I loved how tiny she was compared to me. How unlikely a pair we were. How people must’ve wondered how I fit into her. The delicious answer, by the way, was barely. “It’ll compliment all the green I splashed on your ceiling.” She wrapped her lips around my cock, taking it inch by inch. Her warmth engulfed it. I shuddered when she flattened her tongue against my shaft. I dropped my head back and groaned. Dallas was a great dick-sucker. She had the stamina, since her jaw worked out all day from eating. Andshe was enthusiastic. I could tell she loved going down on me. I’d had my dick sucked by enough women who only did it to warm my bed. They’d blink up at me, examining me through their lashes with what they thought were seductive grins, suckling gently, stroking my dick up and down like it was a cello. Not Shortbread. Shortbread loved it all—the sucking, the spitting, the kissing, the way my cock hit the back of her throat when I grabbed her hair and fucked her face. She loved gagging on it and often tried to take me all the way to the root. In fact, this seemed to be the only aspect in Dallas’s life in which she was not lazy. Tilting my chin down, I watched as she sucked me off. Crimson drops ran down her glossy hair, trailing along her forehead. Seeing her tainted with my blood did something to me. Gave me a sense of ownership I normally did not allow myself to contemplate. Perhaps it was the blood loss, but I didn’t want to finish like this. Coming in her mouth wouldn’t cut it. Lacing her long brown hair in my fist, I tugged her away from my cock. She pulled back, blinking at me expectantly.(Chapter 55)

Naysayers can’t prevent your brilliance and purpose from entering the world. It will seep under doors like water flooding into a room. Its shafts will beam through windows like the dazzling rays on a bright, summery morning. Within the sunlight are galaxies and constellations filled with opportunities for you to take. Your radiance will materialize, even when you least expect it. All you have to do is create the environment for its manifestation and keep striving, keep going toward your mission.

That attitude is not hard to come to. You go through a heavy industrial area of a large city and there it all is, the technology. In front of it are high barbed-wire fences, locked gates, signs saying NO TRESPASSING, and beyond, through sooty air, you see ugly strange shapes of metal and brick whose purpose is unknown, and whose masters you will never see. What it's for you don't know, and why it's there, there's no one to tell, and so all you can feel is alienated, estranged, as though you didn't belong there. Who owns and understands this doesn't want you around. All this technology has somehow made you a stranger in your own land. Its very shape and appearance and mysteriousness say, ``Get out.'' You know there's an explanation for all this somewhere and what it's doing undoubtedly serves mankind in some indirect way but that isn't what you see. What you see is the NO TRESPASSING, KEEP OUT signs and not anything serving people but little people, like ants, serving these strange, incomprehensible shapes. And you think, even if I were a part of this, even if I were not a17 stranger, I would be just another ant serving the shapes. So the final feeling is hostile, and I think that's ultimately what's involved with this otherwise unexplainable attitude of John and Sylvia. Anything to do with valves and shafts and wrenches is a part of that dehumanized world, and they would rather not think about it. They don't want to get into it. If this is so, they are not alone. There is no question that they have been following their natural feelings in this and not trying to imitate anyone. But many others are also following their natural feelings and not trying to imitate anyone and the natural feelings of very many people are similar on this matter; so that when you look at them collectively, as journalists do, you get the illusion of a mass movement, an antitechnological mass movement, an entire political antitechnological left emerging, looming up from apparently nowhere, saying, ``Stop the technology. Have it somewhere else. Don't have it here.'' It is still restrained by a thin web of logic that points out that without the factories there are no jobs or standard of living. But there are human forces stronger than logic. There always have been, and if they become strong enough in their hatred of technology that web can break.

People in many parts of America know they have gotten the economic shaft and are angry. However, they cannot see that their own core values have been used against them, which is why they find scapegoats to blame instead of their Authoritative lawmakers who changed the rules of the economic game.124

Giles’ head is full of blood. In capillaries it chugs busily up and down the hills and valleys of his brain. In his imagination it streams down from the sky and moves in the water. He scratches a scab on his wrist and flakes off layer after layer of skin until the blood pours out. Pieces of metal whine out of the blue sky towards him and smash into his body, scooping out his intestines. His bowels trail along the deck. Yellow globules of shit, their journey through the colon interrupted, huddle together inside the slit open pipes. The eyes of his friends are continually attacked. They appear and disappear. Each part of the ship is a weapon. The clews of his hammock can strangle, the guard rails buckle and toss him overboard; the lifeboats fall and crush him. … Giles, looking up, feels the shafts of his eyes penetrate deep, deep, past the light and into the blackness of space. The sky is the palest, palest blue … Death stalks them. … The horrors of his imagination are real. This is war. This is the purpose of war. To give shape to the menacing blackness of space behind the blue sky, the silver death in the water, the streams of blood behind the smooth forehead. This pale forehead, grey brown hair crusted with salt, frizzing more than ever in the fresh, damp air, these straight eyebrows, delicate veil of lids, jumping eyeballs, hide many patterns and possibilities of death. Those he has been trained for. Those he has seen, heard or imagined. Those he fears. Death lurking in the pure blue sky is not new to him and now he can put a name to it. … Sometimes they happen to other people and you are still alive. Sometimes you make them happen to your enemy and you are still alive. Sometimes they happen to you and you are dead. Or you are still alive, having lost a lump of flesh, a yard of skin, a pint of blood. Picking over what is left a doctor can make something of it. A catalogue at least. If you can know or name what is left, nothing so dreadful has been lost.

If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you’re going to die. So they’ll talk. They’ll gloat. They’ll watch you squirm. They’ll put off the moment of murder like another man will put off a good cigar. So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word.

(these are my highlighted parts of the book) Not human, thought Maura, as the hairs stood up on the back of her neck. My god, what have I brought back from the dead? This poor woman's already died once. Let's not have it happen again. Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you are about to give to the court in the case now in hearing shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God? Corpses have woken up in morgues. Old graves have been dug up, and they have found claw marks inside the coffin lids. People are so terrified of the possibility that some casket makers sell coffins equipped with emergency transmitters to call for help. Just in case you're buried alive. The resurrection of Christ wasn't a true resurrection. It was merely a case of premature burial. When they ask you to play a child, it means they want you to be scared. They want you to scream. They enjoy it if you bleed. It's not strength, Mila. It's hate. That's what keeps you alive. Duplex rounds are designed to inflict maximum damage. In marines, we call them "torso meat tags" because they're useful for identifying your corpse. In a blast, there's a good chance you'd lose your extremities. So a lot of soldiers choose to get their tattoos on their chest or back. The world is evil, Mila, and there's no way to change it. The best you can do is to stay alive...and not be evil. You're worse tan a whore. You don't just sell out yourself. You'd sell out anyone else. But these bars look different; these are not to trap people in; they are meant to keep people out. Come on baby. Stop being so goddamn stubborn. Help your mama out! Some babies are born screamers. They refuse to be ignored. God put mothers on this earth for a reason. Now, I'm not saying it takes a village to raise a kid. But it sure does help to have a grandma. Human. A02/B00/C02(7cm)/D42 Scalp hair. Slightly curved, shaft is seven centimeters, pigment is medium red. Reality's a bitch, ain't it? And so am I. Whenever there are big boys playing with a lot of money, you can bet sex comes into it. When I open my eyes again, I see more of Anja peeking out from the sand. The curve of her hip bone, the brown shaft of her thigh. The desert has decided to give her up, and now she is re-emerging from the earth. Nothing that happened to you was your fault. Whatever those men did to you - whatever they made you do - they forced on you. It was done to your body. It has nothing to do with your soul. Your soul, Mila, is still pure.

The police do a great job of shafting the general public.

The great weapon of infantry - and of Mongol and Turkish cavalry - was the bow and arrow. The short bow is very ancient, the property of most primitive peoples the world over. As we see in the Bayeux tapestry, it was drawn to the breast, not the ear; at short range it could be lethal. The six-foot longbow, shooting a three-foot “clothyard” shaft, was apparently a Welsh invention of the twelfth century; it became the favorite weapon of the English.

From the beginning, the SS Deutschland was beset by problems, She was known as the “Cocktail Shaker” when she was first launched in 1923. On her trials, it was noticed that the ship had a serious vibration problem due to an imbalance in her twin shafts or perhaps her massive bronze propellers. Because of a lack of funding, this vibration was accepted and remained so for the first six years of her existence. It was an embarrassment to have a ship represent the German Merchant Marine, Handelsmarine, that was handicapped from the start. However, she was still considered the pride of the Hamburg-Amerika Line, a company with rich traditions that was founded in 1847. So, when the Deutschland left Hamburg for the first time on March 27, 1924, she moved slowly down the Elbe River past Blohm und Voss, the massive dockyard where she had been built. At the time of her maiden voyage, the entire city celebrated when the Deutschland headed down the Elbe River towards the North Sea. Other ships in the harbor fittingly saluted her by blowing their deep throaty whistles, as small craft such as tugboats and fireboats pumped frothy white streams of the brackish river water high into the air. By the time I boarded her for my voyage to the United States in November, 1934, the SS Deutschland was over 11 years old and, although she was still Hamburg-Amerika Line’s flagship, she was beginning to show her age. Germans, who prided themselves in their knowledge of science and engineering, were falling behind other European countries. Paying retribution to the victors of World War I had drained the German treasury and as a nation, they resented it. Hostility had increased and the pressure it put on the people was obvious. Many looked to Hitler to make “Germany great again.

Viewed from the outside, fine, let people think we're an army of yupster antique dealers, puttering around in granny glasses and moth-eaten cardigans, fishing through a milk crate for that pristine vinyl copy of Daydream Nation while everybody else rushes home for the Clay Aiken Thanksgiving special. We know what's really going on. We're the ones lying in wait like a parking lot full of Trojan horses.

It’s a geode. You can sess that, the way the rock around you abruptly changes to something else. The pebble in the stream, the warp in the weft; countless aeons ago a bubble formed in a flow of molten mineral within Father Earth. Within that pocket, nurtured by incomprehensible pressures and bathed in water and fire, crystals grew. This one’s the size of a city. Which is probably why someone built a city in this one. You stand before a vast, vaulted cavern that is full of glowing crystal shafts the size of tree trunks. Big tree trunks. Or buildings. Big buildings. They jut forth from the walls in an utterly haphazard jumble: different lengths, different circumferences, some white and translucent and a few smoky or tinged with purple. Some are stubby, their pointed tips ending only a few feet away from the walls that grew them—but many stretch from one side of the vast cavern into the indistinct distance. They form struts and roads too steep to climb, going in directions that make no sense. It is as if someone found an architect, made her build a city out of the most beautiful materials available, then threw all those buildings into a box and jumbled them up for laughs. And they’re definitely living in it. As you stare, you notice narrow rope bridges and wooden platforms everywhere. There are dangling lines strung with electric lanterns, ropes and pulleys carrying small lifts from one platform to another. In the distance a man walks down a wooden stairway built around a titanic slanted column of white; two children play on the ground far below, in between stubby crystals the size of houses. Actually, some of the crystals are houses. They have holes cut in them—doors and windows. You can see people moving around inside some of them. Smoke curls from chimney holes cut in pointed crystal tips.

What did the Great Ones expect of him? Would the girl die if he pressed onward? And if he took her home to her people, what then? What of the prophecy? What of his people? As if he heard Hunter’s thoughts, Warrior moved his pony closer and said, “You must trust the Great Ones, tah-mah. If you are certain she is the woman of the prophecy, then all will be well. The song cannot come to pass if she dies.” Hunter tucked in his chin to study the girl’s mud-streaked face and found himself wondering how he ever could have thought her ugly. Could a shaft of sunlight be ugly? A sparkle of moonlight upon water? “I’m certain, Warrior. She is the woman. Already, part of the prophecy has come to pass, eh? Her voice has been returned to her.” “And she has stolen your Comanche heart, has she not?” “She has great courage for one so small, but my heart is my own. As it will always be.

You must trust the Great Ones, tah-mah. If you are certain she is the woman of the prophecy, then all will be well. The song cannot come to pass if she dies.” Hunter tucked in his chin to study the girl’s mud-streaked face and found himself wondering how he ever could have thought her ugly. Could a shaft of sunlight be ugly? A sparkle of moonlight upon water? “I’m certain, Warrior. She is the woman. Already, part of the prophecy has come to pass, eh? Her voice has been returned to her.” “And she has stolen your Comanche heart, has she not?” “She has great courage for one so small, but my heart is my own. As it will always be.” Warrior leaned sideways to peer over Hunter’s shoulder at the yellow-hair’s face, his own creasing in a grin. “Yes, there is something about her, is there not? The mud, I think. It does something for her.” Hunter smiled in spite of himself. “She looks like She Who Shakes got ahold of her. Remember when Ki-was, Rascal, let her make his war paint?” Warrior chuckled. “The time she mixed it too thin? The three red stripes on his chin dripped, and he rode into battle looking like a People Eater. Yes, I remember.” Hunter flexed his tense back, letting the sound of Warrior’s laughter soothe him. “She sleeps like a baby, Hunter. That’s a good sign, no? She must be starting to trust you. She’ll begin eating and drinking soon.” “She’s just exhausted and weak from thirst. Too weary to be frightened. Or to give me trouble.

What do your feathers say?” “They have my mark. And tell a little bit my life song.” His full lower lip quirked in a grin. “My marks say I am a fine fellow--a good lover, a good hunter, with a mighty arm to shield a little yellow-hair.” She hugged her knees and grinned back at him. “I bet your marks say you’re a fierce warrior, and yellow-hairs should beware.” He shrugged. “I fight the big fight for my people. This is bad?” Loretta grabbed a handful of grass and ripped it up. Its smell was sharp in her nostrils. “A-are you going on a raid tomorrow after you take me home?” He glanced up from his work. “With this? His dark eyes filled with laughter as he peered along the crooked shaft of the lance. “Blue Eyes, a crooked tse-ak such as this would kill my friend beside me. This tse-ak will say hi, hites, hello, my friend.” “To who?” “To all who pass. You will see, eh?” “You’re sure you aren’t planning to attack my home?” “No fight. You will be easy.

At twilight, people came searching for her and she bit her hand to keep from calling for help. She grew numb from the cold and could no longer move her legs or arms. Watching the starry winter sky she fell asleep. Her hair grew flat and brittle and grew endlessly, curling out through her fists, unable to contain it. Her hair fell in among the plants and fallen leaves that blanketed the forest floor, worming its way through the earth and taking root as new plants, tiny shafts stuck in dirt cracks like melted pins — translucent beings yearning for the light. Her eyes closed and she died in all her dreams. She sat up, holding her hand in front of her face she watched as the nails grew long and unwieldy, curling around and around her hand, freezing it open. She had two traps for hands —

They pulled up to 195 Madison Street - a tall narrow six-story redbrick and limestone-trimmed tenement house indistinguishable from all the tenement houses on all the other streets of tenements. The bars and ladders of a fire escape ran up the left side of the building; sooty stone scrolls, shields, and flowers framed the second- and third-story windows. This was the place where they had to live? Two blocks from the commercial madness of East Broadway; two blocks from the filthy snout of the East River, smelling of fish, ships, and garbage; three blocks from the brain-rattling racket of the elevated train; three blocks from the playground of the Henry Street Settlement; practically in the shadow of the construction side of the twin-towered Manhattan Bridge. Every three blocks they passed more people than the entire population of Rakov. Half a million Jews packed the one and a half square miles of the Lower East Side in 1909; 702 people per acre in the densest acres. It was one of the most crowded places on earth, and all of them seemed to be swarming outdoors on the June afternoon that Gishe Sore and her family arrived. Aside from the crisscross steel girders of the Manhattan Bridge at the end of the street, it was all tenement houses as far as she could see. Tenements and bodies. In every room of every building, bodies fought for a ray of light and a sip of air. Bodies slept four to a bed and on two chairs pushed together; bodies sat hunched over sewing machines in parlors and sunless back bedrooms and at kitchen tables heaped with cloth and thread; bodies ate, slept, woke, and cleared out for the next shift of bodies to cycle through. Toilets in the hall or in courtyard outhouses; windows opening, if they opened at all, onto fetid air shafts; no privacy; no escape from the racket and smell of neighbors; no relief from summer heat or blasting winter furnaces. This was the place her American children had brought them to live?

Alternating current won the War of the Currents. Even Edison grudgingly took up manufacturing the equipment to produce it. Motors large and small, all the way down to motors for individual sewing machines, began replacing the shafts and belts that transferred power inefficiently from steam engines. Country people still read and cooked with kerosene, but electric lights went on in the cities of the world.

I wrapped my hand around his shaft. He was a big boy like me. Wide and long. He was so pale I could clearly see the veins throbbing under his skin. He had freckles under his pubic hair, which I was really loving. There were too many people who had those dots on their skin anymore and the fact that a dark-haired guy had this many intrigued me. He was a bit messy with that nest of dark hair but nothing would deter me. I stroked his long, hard shaft from base to tip. I was rewarded with a gasp.

Were the Comanches still out there, hidden from sight but watching? Was that lance a message from Hunter to his people? I will come to you like the wind. I am your destiny. She visualized the Indian returning with a dirty blanket or two, a scrawny horse he no longer wanted, perhaps a battered pot. And Uncle Henry, coward that he was, would waste no time in handing her over. Loretta Simpson, bought by a Comanche. No, not by just any Comanche, but Hunter himself. It would be whispered in horror all along the Brazos and Navasota rivers. Hunter’s woman. She’d never be able to hold her head up again. No decent man would even look at her. If she lived… With a whining intake of air, Loretta lunged to her feet and ran to the door. Before anyone could stop her, she was across the porch and down the steps. She’d show that heathen. If this was a message that she belonged to him, she’d destroy it. Grabbing the lance, she worked it free from the earth. “Loretta, you fool girl!” Tom came after her, catching her arm to whirl her around. “All you’ll do is rile him.” Jerking free, she headed for the front gate. Rile him or not, if she didn’t refute the Comanche’s claim, it would be the same as agreeing to it. Maybe he would come back for her, but if he was out there watching, at least he’d know he wasn’t welcome. She walked beyond the yard fence, then turned and swung the lance against the top rail. The resilient shaft bounced back at her. She swung again. And again. The lance seemed to take life, resisting her, mocking her. She envisioned the Comanche’s arrogant face and bludgeoned it, venting her hatred. For Ma, for Papa. She’d never belong to a filthy redskin, never. Sweat began to run down her face, burning her eyes, salty on her lips, but still she swung the lance. It had to break. He might be out there watching. If his weapon defeated her, it would be the same as if he had. Her shoulders began to ache. Each lift of her arms became an effort. Beyond the realm of her immediate focus, she saw her family standing around her in shocked horror, staring as if she had lost her mind. Perhaps she had. Loretta fell to her knees, gazing at the intact lance. Willow, green willow. No wonder the dad-blamed thing wouldn’t break. Furious, she snatched the feathers off of it and ripped them into shreds, sputtering when the bits of down flew back in her face. Then she knelt there, heaving for air, so exhausted all the fight in her was drained away. He had won.

There are some of you here today who feel like dead people. It is as if you are already six feet under, staring up at the top of your own locked coffin. This morning Jesus wants to set you free. You simply have to let go of the key and pass it through the little hole, where you see a tiny shaft of light.

In God’s Kingdom there are no overnight sensations or flash-in-the-pan successes. Anyone who wants to be used of God will experience hidden years in the backside of the desert. During that time the Lord is polishing, sharpening and preparing us to fit into His bow, so at the right time, like “a polished shaft” He can launch us into fruitful service. The invisible years are years of serving, studying, being faithful in another person’s ministry and doing the behind-the-scenes work. The Bible says, ‘God is not unjust; he will not forget your work’ (Hebrews 6:10 NIV 2011 Edition). Be patient; when the time is right He will bring forth the fruit He placed inside you.

I seek to ascertain a way to breathe life back into my sunken chamber. I need to discover an incarnate means to replicate the meditative shadow that appears on the wall of my inner cave. I must eliminate the distorted manner that I look at the world through the falsifying mirrors of illusion and delusion. My innermost fear is that I wasted precious time, squandered opportunities, and the clock will expire before I create any worthy testament to the pristine beauty of nature or innate goodness of humankind. I shudder in the creeping shadows of the evening struck by the thought that I lack the discipline, talent, and fortitude as well as the crucial gift of evaluation and analysis demanded to add to the collective good. I fear that selfishly ensconced in a cosseted life I ignored the shaft of light that openly beckons each of us to unbolt. I am clueless of how to release the glorious expression of beauty that our nature seeks to burnish in our fleeting ambulation across the plains of time. Do I dare pull back the curtain and unmask the timid man that stands hidden behind the sheltering layers of untruth that conceal the demesne of his mangled personal thoughts, feelings, emotions, wants, and needs? Inside this crusted urn, is there a shard of anything that can be cultivated for goodness, if only I possessed the strength of mind and insight to will it into fruition? Does one know how to share their modest notions with other people who might yearn to hear that they too are not alone?

The personal narrative is an invitation for other people to join the author in a journey of discovery as the author attempts to organize snippets of their life into a telling format and generate a self-healing message. A person whom discloses what an inflamed mind taught them does not seek heavy-handedly to impose their will upon other people, but they preach to an unseen audience so that other people can avoid the insanity and inanity that came before they received a shaft of illumination. Most personal essay writers begin by wanting to conduct strictly a private inquest, but feel a need to make connections with their brethren through their act of confessing.

A NATION’S STRENGTH What makes a nation’s pillars high And its foundations strong? What makes it mighty to defy The foes that round it throng? It is not gold. Its kingdoms grand Go down in battle shock; Its shafts are laid on sinking sand, Not on abiding rock. Is it the sword? Ask the red dust Of empires passed away; The blood has turned their stones to rust, Their glory to decay. And is it pride? Ah, that bright crown Has seemed to nations sweet; But God has struck its luster down In ashes at his feet. Not gold but only men can make A people great and strong; Men who for truth and honor’s sake Stand fast and suffer long. Brave men who work while others sleep, Who dare while others fly . . . They build a nation’s pillars deep And lift them to the sky. —RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Smyth is credited for noting another anomaly in the Queen's Chamber—there were flakes of white mortar exuding from stone joints inside the shaft. Analysis of the mortar found it to be plaster of paris—gypsum (calcium sulfate). Smyth also described this chamber as having a foul odor, which caused early visitors to the chamber to beat a hasty retreat, and it was assumed that tourists were relieving themselves, though the way Smyth described this chamber, few people stayed long enough to do so. However, as I will make clear, this odor may not have been the result of unhygienic conditions but of the chemical process that once occurred in the Queen's Chamber. One of the greatest mysteries of this chamber has been the salt encrustation on the walls. It was up to one-half-inch thick in places, and Petrie took it into account when he made measurements of the chamber. The salt also was found along the Horizontal Passage and in the lower portion of the Grand Gallery. How did salt come to build up on the walls?

The transition to managing a larger team reminded me that when everything is going fine, management is easy. Thousands of managers around the world inherit healthy teams in healthy companies, do little of merit, and get great rewards for just being in the right place at the right time. The real story behind some people you meet with fantastic reputations isn't notable talents or skills, but merely an exceptional ability to choose the right time to join and leave particular projects. The work of managers everywhere is rarely evaluated with enough consideration for the situation they inherited and the situations they faced that were not in their control. We all make judgments of ability at the most superficial levels. If the results are good, we give praise. If the results are poor, we criticize. We rarely give credence to the feeling in the back of our minds that the winner or loser doesn't quite fit the part. We know in our careers people who were shafted, taking the fall for incompetence that wasn't theirs, and also people who slide through organizations as if coated with Teflon, causing misery and frustration at every turn, yet they move into promotions unscathed.

Maybe I was looking for something to believe in when the planets aligned to set me down that path. I was drawn to racist ideology because I felt like white people were getting shafted. We were the underdogs. It was us against the world in an epic battle for forever. Such romance! Getting back in that moment, the taint we cast upon reality definitely had that saga feel. Hitler did it with the torch-lit ceremony and iconic swastika. It felt like you were Beowulf, Siegfried, and Conan all rolled into one. Just a big fucking game of Dungeons & Dragons, till death and prison inevitably show up. Then the shit is real. Then comes the real challenge, the true test of will. Do you back down then? Are you a coward? Or just a fool? That's when you gather all the suffering you can endure and produce and you devour it, because it's the only thing that nourishes you anymore. And you let that fire rage on till it's all you can see. You damn well can't see how burnt and disfigured it makes you-how it scorches your life. It's impossible to see how the hurt you emanate feels on the receiving end, because you no empathy for other humans. Even your own crew is barren of empathy for each other. You would die for your brothers and sisters, but you are unable to put yourself in their shoes. You don't really care about or understand their individual hopes and dreams, because like you, they have none outside of the movement. Your feeling for them is one of primal pack-mentality. Survival melded with a perverted sense of honor that won't permit you to suffer insult to them any more than to yourself.

And the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit. He opened the shaft of the bottomless pit, and from the shaft rose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft. Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth. They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any green plant or any tree, but only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. They were allowed to torment them for five months, but not to kill them, and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings someone. And in those days people will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them.

And the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit. He opened the shaft of the bottomless pit, and from the shaft rose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft. Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth. They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any green plant or any tree, but only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. They were allowed to torment them for five months, but not to kill them, and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings someone. And in those days people will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them. In appearance the locusts were like horses prepared for battle; on their heads were what looked like crowns of gold; their faces were like human faces, their hair like women’s hair, and their teeth like lions’ teeth; they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing into battle. They have tails and stings like scorpions, and their power to hurt people for five months is in their tails. They have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit. His name is called Apollyon” - Revelation 9:1-11

The wind was blowing from the west, an autumn wind that smelled of damp yellow earth and rain. The grass bowed under heavy seed heads, and in the distance, gathering clouds were pierced by shafts of bright late sunshine. I’d stood at the top of a valley watching the dusty white road below as it wended its way across the wide sweep of the hills. Sun and rain together are what people call a day for a fox’s wedding, though that’s just folk superstition. We get married just the way you do, by choosing a lucky day that all parties agree on. In any case, I hadn’t been thinking of getting married at all.

I think it’s extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course, the paying customers got shafted every now and then, and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as though we really were responsible for the successful, error-free, perfect use of these machines. I don’t think we are. I think we’re responsible for stretching them, setting them off in new directions, and keeping fun in the house. Fun comes in many ways. Fun comes in making a discovery, proving a theorem, writing a program, breaking a code. Whatever form or sense it comes in I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun. Above all, I hope we don’t become missionaries. What you know about computing other people will learn. Don’t feel as though the key to successful computing is only in your hands. What’s in your hands, I think and hope, is intelligence: the ability to see the machine as more than when you were first led up to it, that you can make it more.