Shells Knowledge Quotes

For money you can have everything it is said. No, that is not true. You can buy food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; soft beds, but not sleep; knowledge but not intelligence; glitter, but not comfort; fun, but not pleasure; acquaintances, but not friendship; servants, but not faithfulness; grey hair, but not honor; quiet days, but not peace. The shell of all things you can get for money. But not the kernel. That cannot be had for money.

She'll tell herself that what she really wanted was not to live forever, but to stop worrying. 'What if I change?' she asked the fortune teller, all those years ago, sure that knowledge could save her from bad luck and tragedy. 'Most people don't,' the woman said.

Storytelling awakens us to that which is real. Honest. . . . it transcends the individual. . . . Those things that are most personal are most general, and are, in turn, most trusted. Stories bind. . . . They are basic to who we are. A story composite personality which grows out of its community. It maintains a stability within that community, providing common knowledge as to how things are, how things should be -- knowledge based on experience. These stories become the conscience of the group. They belong to everyone.

But this time it was not pain that filled the empty shell, but feelings, flooding back, bringing knowledge and realisation. Here, and now, and his once more. Vadim. Forever and always. Vadim. His. And Dan cried, helplessly, while his good hand clawed at the other’s body, his body pressed so close, as if he was trying to crawl inside.

I do love it. But I want you two to have it. Today, you taught me- no, you taught all of us- an important lesson. It is a dark day in the deep sea when we cause innocent creatures to suffer. The professor said we can conquer our fears through knowledge. But you taught us that our fears can best be conquered through compassion. Even we scientists must never forget to have compassion for all living creatures. My compassion for the little creature that once lived in this shell made me very happy.

She has the strength, the knowledge, and the desire. She’ll bring him out of the Twisted Kingdom.” It wasn’t what Lucivar meant, and they both knew it. “Why didn’t you stop her? Why are you letting her risk herself?” Saetan bent his head, avoiding Lucivar’s eyes. “Because she loves him. Because he really is her mate.” Lucivar was silent for a minute. Then he sighed. “He always said he’d been born to be Witch’s lover. Looks like he was right.

my teacher read me "The Chambered Nautilus," and showed me that the shell-building process of the mollusks is symbolical of the development of the mind. Just as the wonder-working mantle of the Nautilus changes the material it absorbs from the water and makes it a part of itself, so the bits of knowledge one gathers undergo a similar change and become pearls of thought.

Shell shock, they said in the First World War. Battle fatigue, in the Second. It’s what happens when you live through things you shouldn’t have been able to live through and can’t reconcile that knowledge with the fact that you did.

Red had a deep loathing of the night before them. He had been through so much combat, had felt so many kinds of terror, and had seen so many men killed that he no longer had any illusions about the inviolability of his own flesh. He knew he could be killed; it was something he had accepted long ago, and he had grown a shell about that knowledge so that he rarely thought of anything further ahead than the next few minutes…

Three years of changes, moves, uncertainties, upheavals; the war, the revolution; scenes of destruction, scenes of death, shelling, blown-up bridges, fires, ruins—all this turned suddenly into a huge, empty, waste space. The first real event since the long interruption was this vertiginous home-coming by train, in the knowledge that his home was still safe, still existing somewhere, with every smallest stone in it dear to him. This was the point of life, this was experience, this was the quest of adventure seekers and what artists had in mind—this coming home to your family, to yourself, this renewal of life.

There’s something different in their speeches: the resonance, the frequency, the melody, and the pauses. They’re poetry of breath and air. She’ll never move a mass or give revolutionary speeches, standing on bamboo poles as they did. They know the secret. She knows little of that secret. ‘Little knowledge makes people superstitiously defensive,’ she read in Mob Psychology.

Long ago I thought I knew myself, now my knowledge about myself is nothing but a empty shell…

The comparison of religions is only possible, in some measure, through the miraculous virtue of sympathy. We can know men to a certain extent if at the same time as we observe them from the outside we manage by sympathy to transport our own soul into theirs for a time. In the same way the study of different religions does not lead to a real knowledge of them unless we transport ourselves for a time by faith to the very center of whichever one we are studying...This scarcely ever happens, for some have no faith, and the others have faith exclusively in one religion and only bestow upon the others the sort of attention we give to strangely shaped shells. There are others again who think they are capable of impartiality because they have only a vague religiosity which they can turn indifferently in any direction, whereas, on the contrary, we must have given all our attention, all our faith, all our love to a particular religion in order to think of any other religion with the high degree of attention, faith, and love that is proper to it.

If you look from a distance, you observe a sea of roofs, and have no more knowledge of the dark streams of people than of denizens of some unknown ocean. But the city is always a heaving and restless place, with its own torrents and billows, its foam and spray. The sound of its streets is like the murmur from a sea shell and in the great fogs of the past the citizens believed themselves to be lying on the floor of the ocean.

Everything is a tide, in and out, in and out. Even your humans. We have every advantage to us in this New World, harnessing the power and knowledge of the old one. A fresh start is sometimes just the ticket. We must recognize that our greatest gifts sometimes come in the ugliest of shells.

We humans think we are smart, but an orchid, for example, knows how to produce noble, symmetrical flowers, and a snail knows how to make a beautiful, well-proportioned shell. Compared with their knowledge, ours is not worth much at all. We should bow deeply before the orchid and the snail and join our palms reverently before the monarch butterfly and the magnolia tree. The feeling of respect for all species will help us recognize the noblest nature in ourselves. Thich Nhat Hanh

How these humans dispose themselves! Unlike anything else in creation. Or rather like everything else in creation all at once. Legs of one beast. Arms of another. Proportions all awry to a tortoise's eye. Torso too squat. Too little neck. Vastly too much leg. Hands like creatures unto themselves. Senses delicately balanced. And yet each sense dulled by mental acuity. Reason in place of a good nose. Logic instead of a tail. Faith instead of the certain knowledge of instinct. Superstition instead of a shell.

What’s alloy made of?” I ask, heady with the knowledge that I can keep Dain out. “An amalgamation of Talladium, a few other ores, and dragon egg shells.

My teacher read me "The Chambered Nautilus" [a nature poem], and showed me that the shell-building process of the mollusks is symbolical of the development of the mind. Just as the wonder-working mantle of the nautilus changes the material it absorbs from the water and makes it a part of itself, so the bits of knowledge one gathers undergo a similar change and become pearls of thought.

specifically and the perennial philosophy generally. Before we do the conscious work of self-development, we are the seeds of what we may become. To transform from our “acorn-self” into our “oak tree–Self,” we must traverse our underground territory—allow our defenses to crack open and break down—and consciously integrate our disowned feelings, blind spots, and Shadow traits so that we can shake off the limiting outer shell of our personality and grow into all that we are meant to be. Nature brings us part of the way, but to fully manifest our potential, we need to make conscious efforts to grow—and the Enneagram can guide us in this transformation.

Taking out your enemy before the battle is really smart; I'll give you that,' he whispers, his warm breath brushing the shell of my ear. Oh gods. He knows what I've been doing. The pain in my arm is nothing compared to the nausea churning in my stomach at the thought of what he might do with that knowledge. 'Problem is, if you aren't testing yourself in here'- he scrapes the dagger down my neck, but there's no warm trickle of blood, so I know he hasn't cut me- 'then you're not going to get any better.' 'You'd rather I die, no doubt,' I fire back, the side of my face pressed into the mat. This isn't just painful, it's humiliating. 'And be denied the pleasure of your company?' he mocks. 'I fucking hate you.' The words are past my lips before I can shut my mouth. 'That doesn't make you special.

Modern trench-warfare demands knowledge and experience; a man must have a feeling for the contours of the ground, an ear for the sound and character of the shells, must be able to decide beforehand where they will drop, how they will burst, and how to shelter from them.

Then the One, that was hidden in the shell, Was born through the force of fiery torment. From it there arose in the beginning love,170 Which is the germ and the seed of knowledge. The wise found the root of being in not-being By investigating the impulses of the human heart.

Books, those miraculous memories of high thoughts and golden moods; those magical shells, tremulous with the secrets of the ocean of life; those love-letters that pass from hand to hand of a thousand lovers that never meet; those honeycombs of dreams; those orchards of knowledge; those still-beating hearts of the noble dead; those mysterious signals that beckon along the darksome pathways of the past; voices through which the myriad lispings of the earth find perfect speech; oracles through which its mysteries call like voices of moonlit woods; prisms of beauty; urns stored with all the sweets of all the summers of time; immortal nightingales that sing for ever to the rose of life.

On all sides, as far as the eye could reach, rose the grass-covered heaps marking the site of ancient habitations. The great tide of civilisation had long since ebbed, leaving these scattered wrecks on the solitary shore. Are those waters to flow again, bearing back the seeds of knowledge and of wealth that they have wafted to the West? We wanderers were seeking what they had left behind, as children gather up the coloured shells on the deserted sands. At my feet there was a busy scene, making more lonely the unbroken solitude which reigned in the vast plain around, where the only thing having life or motion were the shadows of the lofty mounds as they lengthened before the declining sun.

Since everyone around you agrees ever since there were people on earth that land is value, or labor is value, or learning is value, or title, degree, necklaces, murex shells, the ownership of slaves. Everyone knows bees sting and ghosts haunt and giving your robes away humiliates your rivals. That the enemies are barbarians. That wise men swim through the rock of the earth; that houses breed filth, airstrips attract airplanes, tornadoes punish, ancestors watch, and you can buy a shorter stay in purgatory. The black rock is holy, or the scroll; or the pangolin is holy, the quetzal is holy, this tree, water, rock, stone, cow, cross, or mountain--and it's all true. The Red Sox. Or nothing at all is holy, as everyone intelligent knows.

Every generation of children instinctively nests itself in nature, no matter matter how tiny a scrap of it they can grasp. In a tale of one city child, the poet Audre Lord remembers picking tufts of grass which crept up through the paving stones in New York City and giving them as bouquets to her mother. It is a tale of two necessities. The grass must grow, no matter the concrete suppressing it. The child must find her way to the green, no matter the edifice which would crush it. "The Maori word for placenta is the same word for land, so at birth the placenta is buried, put back in the mothering earth. A Hindu baby may receive the sun-showing rite surya-darsana when, with conch shells ringing to the skies, the child is introduced to the sun. A newborn child of the Tonga people 'meets' the moon, dipped in the ocean of Kosi Bay in KwaZulu-Natal. Among some of the tribes of India, the qualities of different aspects of nature are invoked to bless the child, so he or she may have the characteristics of earth, sky and wind, of birds and animals, right down to the earthworm. Nothing is unbelonging to the child. "'My oldest memories have the flavor of earth,' wrote Frederico García Lorca. In the traditions of the Australian deserts, even from its time in the womb, the baby is catscradled in kinship with the world. Born into a sandy hollow, it is cleaned with sand and 'smoked' by fire, and everything -- insects, birds, plants, and animals -- is named to the child, who is told not only what everything is called but also the relationship between the child and each creature. Story and song weave the child into the subtle world of the Dreaming, the nested knowledge of how the child belongs. "The threads which tie the child to the land include its conception site and the significant places of the Dreaming inherited through its parents. Introduced to creatures and land features as to relations, the child is folded into the land, wrapped into country, and the stories press on the child's mind like the making of felt -- soft and often -- storytelling until the feeling of the story of the country is impressed into the landscape of the child's mind. "That the juggernaut of ants belongs to a child, belligerently following its own trail. That the twitch of an animal's tail is part of a child's own tale or storyline, once and now again. That on the papery bark of a tree may be written the songline of a child's name. That the prickles of a thornbush may have dynamic relevance to conscience. That a damp hollow by the riverbank is not an occasional place to visit but a permanent part of who you are. This is the beginning of belonging, the beginning of love. "In the art and myth of Indigenous Australia, the Ancestors seeded the country with its children, so the shimmering, pouring, circling, wheeling, spinning land is lit up with them, cartwheeling into life.... "The human heart's love for nature cannot ultimately be concreted over. Like Audre Lord's tufts of grass, will crack apart paving stones to grasp the sun. Children know they are made of the same stuff as the grass, as Walt Whitman describes nature creating the child who becomes what he sees: There was a child went forth every day And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became... The early lilacs became part of this child... And the song of the phoebe-bird... In Australia, people may talk of the child's conception site as the origin of their selfhood and their picture of themselves. As Whitman wrote of the child becoming aspects of the land, so in Northern Queensland a Kunjen elder describes the conception site as 'the home place for your image.' Land can make someone who they are, giving them fragments of themselves.

Only seconds slip by without me scrambling for the aid of someone better, more knowledgeable, to walk beside. Writers are good for that. They like nothing more than to tell you what they know. Dorothy Sayers, with all her essays and treatises, was good for that. Are women human? What constitutes the mind of the Maker? How did Dante survive the Inferno? Ask Dorothy; she’ll tell you and gladly.

enlargement of our being. We want to be more than ourselves. Each of us by nature sees the whole world from one point of view with a perspective and a selectiveness peculiar to himself. And even when we build disinterested fantasies, they are saturated with, and limited by, our own psychology. To acquiesce in this particularity on the sensuous level—in other words, not to discount perspective—would be lunacy. We should then believe that the railway line really grew narrower as it receded into the distance. But we want to escape the illusions of perspective on higher levels too. We want to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts, as well as with our own.      [138] We are not content to be Leibnitzian monads. We demand windows. Literature as Logos is a series of windows, even of doors. One of the things we feel after reading a great work is ‘I have got out’. Or from another point of view, ‘I have got in’; pierced the shell of some other monad and discovered what it is like inside. Good reading, therefore, though it is not essentially an affectional or moral or intellectual activity, has something in common with all three. In love we escape from our self into one other. In the moral sphere, every act of justice or charity involves putting ourselves in the other person’s place and thus transcending our own competitive particularity. In coming to understand anything we are rejecting the facts as they are for us in favour of the facts as they are. The primary impulse of each is to maintain and aggrandise himself. The secondary impulse is to go out of the self, to correct its provincialism and heal its loneliness. In love, in virtue, in the pursuit of knowledge, and in the reception of the arts, we are doing this. Obviously this process can be described either as an enlargement or as a temporary annihilation of the self. But that is an old paradox; ‘he that loseth his life shall save it’. We therefore delight to enter into other

We have heard that a few days after this, when the Provincetown Bank was robbed, speedy emissaries from Provincetown made particular inquiries concerning us at this lighthouse. Indeed, they traced us all the way down the Cape, and concluded that we came by this unusual route down the back side and on foot in order that we might discover a way to get off with our booty when we had committed the robbery. The Cape is so long and narrow, and so bare withal, that it is well-nigh impossible for a stranger to visit it without the knowledge of its inhabitants generally, unless he is wrecked on to it in the night. So, when this robbery occurred, all their suspicions seem to have at once centered on us two travelers who had just passed down it. If we had not chanced to leave the Cape so soon, we should probably have been arrested. The real robbers were two young men from Worcester County who traveled with a centre-bit, and are said to have done their work very neatly. But the only bank that we pried into was the great Cape Cod sand-bank, and we robbed it only of an old French crown piece, some shells and pebbles, and the materials of this story.

Attempts were made in 1941 to design a similar proximity fuze, using a tiny Radar set arranged to explode the warhead when the projectile passed near the aircraft. Successful preliminary experiments were made, but before this fuze was developed in England the Americans, to whom we imparted our knowledge, actually succeeded not only in perfecting the instrument but in reducing its size so much that the whole thing could be put into the head not merely of a rocket but of a shell. These so-called “Proximity Fuzes”, made in the United States, were used in great numbers in the last year of the war,

You can't work in the library without going into the Old Levels," said Mirelle somberly. "At least some of the time. I wouldn't be keen on going to some parts of the Library, myself." Lirael listened, wondering what they were talking about. The Great Library of the Clayr was enormous, but she had never heard of the Old Levels. She knew the general layout well. The Library was shaped like a nautilus shell, a continuous tunnel that wound down into the mountain in an ever-tightening spiral. This main spiral was an enormously long, twisting ramp that took you from the high reaches of the mountain down past the level of the valley floor, several thousand feet below. Off the main spiral, there were countless other corridors, rooms, halls, and strange chambers. Many were full of the Clayr's written records, mainly documenting the prophesies and visions of many generations of seers. But they also contained books and papers from all over the Kingdom. Books of magic and mystery, knowledge both ancient and new. Scrolls, maps, spells, recipes, inventories, stories, true tales, and Charter knew what else. In addition to all these written works, the Great Library also housed other things. There were old armories within it, containing weapons and armor that had not been used for centuries but still stayed bright and new. There were rooms full of odd paraphernalia that no one now knew how to use. There were chambers where dressmakers' dummies stood fully clothed, displaying the fashions of bygone Clayr or the wildly different costumes of the barbaric North. There were greenhouses tended by sendings, with Charter marks for light as bright as the sun. There were rooms of total darkness, swallowing up the light and anyone foolish enough to enter unprepared. Lirael had seen some of the Library, on carefully escorted excursions with the rest of her year gathering. She had always hankered to enter the doors they passed, to step across the red rope barriers that marked corridors or tunnels where only authorized librarians might pass.

I understand felicitations are in order.” Ian started. His betrothal to Christina, which was about to be broken, was not yet common knowledge. “Christina Taylor is a lovely young woman. I knew her grandfather and her uncles, and, of course, her father, the Earl of Melbourne. She’ll make you a fine wife, Ian.” “Inasmuch as bigamy is a crime in this country, I find that unlikely.” Startled by the discovery that his information was apparently incorrect, Edward took another swallow of champagne and asked, “May I ask who the fortunate young woman is, then?” Ian opened his mouth to tell him to go to hell, but there was something alarming about the way his grandfather was slowly putting his glass down.

Finally, we arrive at the question of the so-called nonpolitical man. Hitler not only established his power from the very beginning with masses of people who were until then essentially nonpolitical; he also accomplished his last step to victory in March of 1933 in a "legal" manner, by mobilizing no less than five million nonvoters, that is to say, nonpolitical people. The Left parties had made every effort to win over the indifferent masses, without posing the question as to what it means "to be indifferent or nonpolitical." If an industrialist and large estate owner champions a rightist party, this is easily understood in terms of his immediate economic interests. In his case a leftist orientation would be at variance with his social situation and would, for that reason, point to irrational motives. If an industrial worker has a leftist orientation, this too is by all mean rationally consistent—it derives from his economic and social position in industry. If, however, a worker, an employee, or an official has a rightist orientation, this must be ascribed to a lack of political clarity, i.e., he is ignorant of his social position. The more a man who belongs to the broad working masses is nonpolitical, the more susceptible he is to the ideology of political reaction. To be nonpolitical is not, as one might suppose, evidence of a passive psychic condition, but of a highly active attitude, a defense against the awareness of social responsibility. The analysis of this defense against consciousness of one's social responsibility yields clear insights into a number of dark questions concerning the behavior of the broad nonpolitical strata. In the case of the average intellectual "who wants nothing to do with politics," it can easily be shown that immediate economic interests and fears related to his social position, which is dependent upon public opinion, lie at the basis of his noninvolvement. These fears cause him to make the most grotesque sacrifices with respect to his knowledge and convictions. Those people who are engaged in the production process in one way or another and are nonetheless socially irresponsible can be divided into two major groups. In the case of the one group the concept of politics is unconsciously associated with the idea of violence and physical danger, i.e., with an intense fear, which prevents them from facing life realistically. In the case of the other group, which undoubtedly constitutes the majority, social irresponsibility is based on personal conflicts and anxieties, of which the sexual anxiety is the predominant one. […] Until now the revolutionary movement has misunderstood this situation. It attempted to awaken the "nonpolitical" man by making him conscious solely of his unfulfilled economic interests. Experience teaches that the majority of these "nonpolitical" people can hardly be made to listen to anything about their socio-economic situation, whereas they are very accessible to the mystical claptrap of a National Socialist, despite the fact that the latter makes very little mention of economic interests. [This] is explained by the fact that severe sexual conflicts (in the broadest sense of the word), whether conscious or unconscious, inhibit rational thinking and the development of social responsibility. They make a person afraid and force him into a shell. If, now, such a self-encapsulated person meets a propagandist who works with faith and mysticism, meets, in other words, a fascist who works with sexual, libidinous methods, he turns his complete attention to him. This is not because the fascist program makes a greater impression on him than the liberal program, but because in his devotion to the führer and the führer's ideology, he experiences a momentary release from his unrelenting inner tension. Unconsciously, he is able to give his conflicts a different form and in this way to "solve" them.

At the sound of the first droning of the shells we rush back, in one part of our being, a thousand years. By the animal instinct that is awakened in us we are led and protected. It is not conscious; it is far quicker, much more sure, less fallible, than consciousness. One cannot explain it. A man is walking along without thought or heed; - suddenly he throws himself down on the ground and a storm of fragments fly harmlessly over him; - yet he cannot remember either to have heard the shell coming or to have thought of flinging himself down. But had he not abandoned himself to the impulse he would now be a heap of mangled flesh. It is this other, this second sight in us, that has thrown us to the ground and saved us, without our knowledge how. If it were not so, there would not be one man alive . . .

Do you condemn the kids for not having been blessed with I.Q.s of 120? Can you condemn the kids? Can you condemn anyone? Can you condemn the colleges that give all you need to pass a board of education examination? Do you condemn the board of education for not making the exams stiffer, for not boosting the requirements, for not raising salaries, for not trying to attract better teachers, for not making sure their teachers are better equipped to teach? Or do you condemn the meatheads all over the world who drift into the teaching profession drift into it because it offers a certain amount of paycheck every month security ,vacation-every summer luxury, or a certain amount of power , or a certain easy road when the other more difficult roads are full of ruts? Oh he’d seen the meatheads, all right; he’d seen them in every education class he’d ever attended. The simpering female idiots who smiled and agreed with the instructor, who imparted vast knowledge gleaned from profound observations made while sitting at the back of the classroom in some ideal high school in some ideal neighborhood while an ideal teacher taught ideal students. Or the men who were perhaps the worst, the men who sometimes seemed a little embarrassed, over having chosen the easy road, the road the security, the men who sometimes made a joke about the women not realizing they themselves were poured from the same streaming cauldron of horse manure. Had Rick been one of these men? He did not believe so…. He had wanted to teach, had honestly wanted to teach. He had not considered the security or the two-month vacation, or the short tours. He had simply wanted to teach, and he had considred taeaching a worth-while profession. He had, in fact, considered it the worthiest profession. He had held no illusions about his own capabilities. He could not paint, or write, or compose, or sculpt, or philopshize deeply, or design tall buildings. He could contribute nothing to the world creatively and this had been a disappointment to him until he’d realized he could be a big creator by teaching. For here were minds to be sculptured, here were ideas to be painted, here were lives to shape. To spend his allotted time on earth as a bank teller or an insurance salesman would have seemed an utter waste to Rick. Women, he had reflected had no such problem. Creation had been given to them as a gift and a woman was self-sufficient within her own creative shell. A man needed more which perhaps was one reason why a woman could never understand a man’s concern for the job he had to do.

Her collections matured, categorized methodically by order, genus, and species; by age according to bone wear; by size in millimeters of feathers; or by the most fragile hues of greens. The science and art entwined in each other’s strengths: the colors, the light, the species, the life; weaving a masterpiece of knowledge and beauty that filled every corner of her shack. Her world. She grew with them—the trunk of the vine—alone, but holding all the wonders together. But just as her collection grew, so did her loneliness. A pain as large as her heart lived in her chest. Nothing eased it. Not the gulls, not a splendid sunset, not the rarest of shells. Months turned into a year. The lonely became larger than she could hold. She wished for someone’s voice, presence, touch, but wished more to protect her heart. Months passed into another year. Then another. PART 2 The Swamp 22. Same Tide 1965 Nineteen years old, legs longer, eyes larger and seemingly blacker, Kya sat on Point Beach, watching sand crabs bury themselves backward into the swash.

It was my father who called the city the Mansion on the River. He was talking about Charleston, South Carolina, and he was a native son, peacock proud of a town so pretty it makes your eyes ache with pleasure just to walk down its spellbinding, narrow streets. Charleston was my father’s ministry, his hobbyhorse, his quiet obsession, and the great love of his life. His bloodstream lit up my own with a passion for the city that I’ve never lost nor ever will. I’m Charleston-born, and bred. The city’s two rivers, the Ashley and the Cooper, have flooded and shaped all the days of my life on this storied peninsula. I carry the delicate porcelain beauty of Charleston like the hinged shell of some soft-tissued mollusk. My soul is peninsula-shaped and sun-hardened and river-swollen. The high tides of the city flood my consciousness each day, subject to the whims and harmonies of full moons rising out of the Atlantic. I grow calm when I see the ranks of palmetto trees pulling guard duty on the banks of Colonial Lake or hear the bells of St. Michael’s calling cadence in the cicada-filled trees along Meeting Street. Deep in my bones, I knew early that I was one of those incorrigible creatures known as Charlestonians. It comes to me as a surprising form of knowledge that my time in the city is more vocation than gift; it is my destiny, not my choice. I consider it a high privilege to be a native of one of the loveliest American cities, not a high-kicking, glossy, or lipsticked city, not a city with bells on its fingers or brightly painted toenails, but a ruffled, low-slung city, understated and tolerant of nothing mismade or ostentatious. Though Charleston feels a seersuckered, tuxedoed view of itself, it approves of restraint far more than vainglory. As a boy, in my own backyard I could catch a basket of blue crabs, a string of flounder, a dozen redfish, or a net full of white shrimp. All this I could do in a city enchanting enough to charm cobras out of baskets, one so corniced and filigreed and elaborate that it leaves strangers awed and natives self-satisfied. In its shadows you can find metalwork as delicate as lace and spiral staircases as elaborate as yachts. In the secrecy of its gardens you can discover jasmine and camellias and hundreds of other plants that look embroidered and stolen from the Garden of Eden for the sheer love of richness and the joy of stealing from the gods. In its kitchens, the stoves are lit up in happiness as the lamb is marinating in red wine sauce, vinaigrette is prepared for the salad, crabmeat is anointed with sherry, custards are baked in the oven, and buttermilk biscuits cool on the counter.

The contemporary Christian Church, precisely, has understood them in this' 'wrong way, to the letter, 'like the Jews,' exoterically, not esoterically. Nevertheless to say 'like the Jews' is an error. One would have to say 'as the Jews want.' Because they also possess an exotericism, for their masses, represented by the Torah and Talmud, and an esotericism, in the Cabala (which means: 'Received Tradition'), in the Zohar ('brightness'), the Merkaba or Chariot being the most secret part of the Cabala which only initiated rabbis know and use as the powerful tool of their magic. We have already said that the Cabala reached them from elsewhere, like everything else, in the Middle Ages, even though they tell us otherwise, using and transforming it in concordance with their Archetype. The Hasidim, from Poland, represent an exclusively esoteric sect of Judaism. Islam also has its esoteric magic, represented by Sufism and the sect of the Assassins, Hassanists, oflran. They interpret the Koran symbolically. And it was because of contact with this sect of the 'Old Man of the Mountain' that the Templars felt compelled to secede more and more from the direction of Rome, centering themselves in their Esoteric Kristianity and Mystery of the Gral. This was also why Rome destroyed them, like the esoteric Cathars (katharos = pure in Greek), the Bogomils, the Manichees and the gnostics. In the Church of Rome, called Catholic, there only remains a soulless ritual of the Mass, as a liturgical shell that no longer reaches the Symbol, which no longer touches it, no longer puts it into action. The Nordic contribution has been lost, destroyed by prejudice and the ethnological persecution of Nordicism, Germanism and the complete surrender to Judaism. Zen Buddhism preserves the esotericism of Buddha. In Japan Shinto and Zen are practiced by a racially superior warrior caste, the Samurai. The most esoteric side of Hinduism is found in Tantrism, especially in the Kaula or Kula Order. So understood, esotericism is what goes beyond the exterior form and the masses, the physical, and puts an elite in contact with invisible superior forces. In my case, the condition that paralysed me in the midst of dreaming and left me without means to influence the phenomena. The visible is symbol of invisible forces (Archetypes, Gods). By means of an esoteric knowledge, of an initiation in this knowledge, a hierarchic minority can make contact with these invisible forces, being able to act on the Symbol, dynamizing and controlling the physical phenomena that incarnate them. In my case: to come to control the involuntary process which, without knowing how, was controlling me, to be able to guide it, to check or avoid it. Jung referred to this when he said 'if someone wisely faces the Archetype, in whatever place in the world, he acquires universal validity because the Archetype is one and indivisible'. And the means to reach this spiritual world, 'on the other side of the mirror,' is Magic, Rite, Ritual, Ceremony. All religions have possessed them, even the Christian, as we have said. And the Rite is not something invented by humans but inspired by 'those from beyond,' Jung would say by the Collective Unconscious.

It was dusk when Ian returned, and the house seemed unnaturally quiet. His uncle was sitting near the fire, watching him with an odd expression on his face that was half anger, half speculation. Against his will Ian glanced about the room, expecting to see Elizabeth’s shiny golden hair and entrancing face. When he didn’t, he put his gun back on the rack above the fireplace and casually asked, “Where is everyone?” “If you mean Jake,” the vicar said, angered yet more by the way Ian deliberately avoided asking about Elizabeth, “he took a bottle of ale with him to the stable and said he was planning to drink it until the last two days were washed from his memory.” “They’re back, then?” “Jake is back,” the vicar corrected as Ian walked over to the table and poured some Madeira into a glass. “The servingwomen will arrive in the morn. Elizabeth and Miss Throckmorton-Jones are gone, however.” Thinking Duncan meant they’d gone for a walk, Ian flicked a glance toward the front door. “Where have they gone at this hour?” “Back to England.” The glass in Ian’s hand froze halfway to his lips. “Why?” he snapped. “Because Miss Cameron’s uncle has accepted an offer for her hand.” The vicar watched in angry satisfaction as Ian tossed down half the contents of his glass as if he wanted to wash away the bitterness of the news. When he spoke his voice was laced with cold sarcasm. “Who’s the lucky bridegroom?” “Sir Francis Belhaven, I believe.” Ian’s lips twisted with excruciating distaste. “You don’t admire him, I gather?” Ian shrugged. “Belhaven is an old lecher whose sexual tastes reportedly run to the bizarre. He’s also three times her age.” “That’s a pity,” the vicar said, trying unsuccessfully to keep his voice blank as he leaned back in his chair and propped his long legs upon the footstool in front of him. “Because that beautiful, innocent child will have no choice but to wed that old…lecher. If she doesn’t, her uncle will withdraw his financial support, and she’ll lose that home she loves so much. He’s perfectly satisfied with Belhaven, since he possesses the prerequisites of title and wealth, which I gather are his only prerequisites. That lovely girl will have to wed that old man; she has no way to avoid it.” “That’s absurd,” Ian snapped, draining his glass. “Elizabeth Cameron was considered the biggest success of her season two years ago. It was pubic knowledge she’d had more than a dozen offers. If that’s all he cares about, he can choose from dozens of others.” Duncan’s voice was laced with uncharacteristic sarcasm. “That was before she encountered you at some party or other. Since then it’s been public knowledge that she’s used goods.” “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” “You tell me, Ian,” the vicar bit out. “I only have the story in two parts from Miss Throckmorton-Jones. The first time she spoke she was under the influence of laudanum. Today she was under the influence of what I can only describe as the most formidable temper I’ve ever seen. However, while I may not have the complete story, I certainly have the gist of it, and if half what I’ve heard is true, then it’s obvious that you are completely without either a heart or a conscience! My own heart breaks when I imagine Elizabeth enduring what she has for nearly two years. When I think of how forgiving of you she has been-“ “What did the woman tell you?” Ian interrupted shortly, turning and walking over to the window.

Some quotes from Standing Stark: “The mind is the charioteer of experience, while the body is the vehicle that carries out the orders of its driver. The gift we have been given is the one called possibility, whose intent offers to tie all together, creating strands of a whole life rather than a disintegrated one.” “It is our own microcosmic journey that gives life meaning and weaves us into the macrocosm of existence. Life does begin with each of us. It then expands outward to touch others with how we live.” “At some time in our lives, we receive a signal to arouse from a deep sleep. If we answer the cue, we set out on a journey toward authenticity that takes us into the unknown. We begin to separate from the selves we thought we were and search for who we are.” “Set your intent and let it go. Your intent is your beginning. Worrying about the details detracts from the intent. In your strong intent, the attraction will take care of the details.” “The conscious realization I offer now is that when we learn to trust, we will be led to all we ever need. Our only job is to be awake and follow the lead.” “We can gauge the measure of truth in our lives by the lightness of our body, emotions and energy. We need only be aware in any given moment of the state of our being, and be guided. This is what we are asked to do on the spiritual path. We aren’t headed for a continuing chaotic free fall, but an order of divine nature.” “After all, if we’re on the spiritual path, we can trust that there is much we don’t know. These mysteries are hidden from us until we are ripe. The paradox is that we frantically attempt to know in order to surrender to the place of not knowing! The other paradox is that there are no mysteries because the cues are surrounding us all the time. We’re just too tied up to recognize them.” “There comes a time when we are knowingly left with the ramifications of the choices we make. While it would be comforting to think that the progressions we undertake will be painless and smooth, any change involves conflict between what was and what will be. Therein lies the opportunity for learning and alignment to an authentic life.” “Words are the shell. They feed intellectual knowledge. What lies in the middle of words is the seed that, if presented and embraced in a certain way, will take us to the place we seek.

…we seek an enlargement of our being. We want to be more than ourselves. … We want to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts, as well as with our own. … One of the things we feel after reading a great work is ‘I have got out’. Or from another point of view, ‘I have got in’; pierced the shell of some other monad and discovered what it is like inside. Good reading, therefore, though it is not essentially an affectional or moral or intellectual activity, has something in common with all three. In love we escape from our self into one other. In the moral sphere, every act of justice or charity involves putting ourselves in the other person’s place and thus transcending our own competitive particularity. In coming to understand anything we are rejecting the facts as they are for us in favour of the facts as they are. The primary impulse of each is to maintain and aggrandise himself. The secondary impulse is to go out of the self, to correct its provincialism and heal its loneliness. In love, in virtue, in the pursuit of knowledge, and in the reception of the arts, we are doing this. Obviously this process can be described either as an enlargement or as a temporary annihilation of the self. But that is an old paradox; ‘he that loseth his life shall save it’. … Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom fully realise the enormous extension of our being which we owe to authors. We realise it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. He may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world. In it, we should be suffocated. The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison. My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, is not enough. I will see what others have invented. Even the eyes of all humanity are not enough. I regret that the brutes cannot write books. … Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality. There are mass emotions which heal the wound; but they destroy the privilege. In them our separate selves are pooled and we sink back into sub-individuality. But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.

I’m going to guide you across the desert,” the alchemist said. “I want to stay at the oasis,” the boy answered. “I’ve found Fatima, and, as far as I’m concerned, she’s worth more than treasure.” “Fatima is a woman of the desert,” said the alchemist. “She knows that men have to go away in order to return. And she already has her treasure: it’s you. Now she expects that you will find what it is you’re looking for.” “Well, what if I decide to stay?” “Let me tell you what will happen. You’ll be the counselor of the oasis. You have enough gold to buy many sheep and many camels. You’ll marry Fatima, and you’ll both be happy for a year. You’ll learn to love the desert, and you’ll get to know every one of the fifty thousand palms. You’ll watch them as they grow, demonstrating how the world is always changing. And you’ll get better and better at understanding omens, because the desert is the best teacher there is. “Sometime during the second year, you’ll remember about the treasure. The omens will begin insistently to speak of it, and you’ll try to ignore them. You’ll use your knowledge for the welfare of the oasis and its inhabitants. The tribal chieftains will appreciate what you do. And your camels will bring you wealth and power. “During the third year, the omens will continue to speak of your treasure and your Personal Legend. You’ll walk around, night after night, at the oasis, and Fatima will be unhappy because she’ll feel it was she who interrupted your quest. But you will love her, and she’ll return your love. You’ll remember that she never asked you to stay, because a woman of the desert knows that she must await her man. So you won’t blame her. But many times you’ll walk the sands of the desert, thinking that maybe you could have left … that you could have trusted more in your love for Fatima. Because what kept you at the oasis was your own fear that you might never come back. At that point, the omens will tell you that your treasure is buried forever. “Then, sometime during the fourth year, the omens will abandon you, because you’ve stopped listening to them. The tribal chieftains will see that, and you’ll be dismissed from your position as counselor. But, by then, you’ll be a rich merchant, with many camels and a great deal of merchandise. You’ll spend the rest of your days knowing that you didn’t pursue your Personal Legend, and that now it’s too late. “You must understand that love never keeps a man from pursuing his Personal Legend. If he abandons that pursuit, it’s because it wasn’t true love … the love that speaks the Language of the World.

When an ovulating woman offers herself to you, she's the choicest morsel on the planet. Her nipples are already sharp, her labia already swollen, her spine already undulating. Her skin is damp and she pants. If you touch the center of her forehead with your thumb she isn't thinking about her head—she isn't thinking at all, she's imagining, believing, willing your hand to lift and turn and curve, cup the back of her head. She's living in a reality where the hand will have no choice but to slide down that soft, flexing muscle valley of the spine to the flare of strong hips, where the other hand joins the first to hold both hip bones, immobilize them against the side of the counter, so that you can touch the base of her throat gently with your lips and she will whimper and writhe and let the muscles in her legs go, but she won't fall, because you have her. She'll be feeling this as though it's already happening, knowing absolutely that it will, because every cell is alive and crying out, Fill me, love me, cherish me, be tender, but, oh God, be sure. She wants you to want her. And when her pupils expand like that, as though you have dropped black ink into a saucer of cool blue water, and her head tips just a little, as though she's gone blind or has had a terrible shock or maybe just too much to drink, to her she is crying in a great voice, Fuck me, right here, right now against the kitchen counter, because I want you wrist-deep inside me. I hunger, I burn, I need. It doesn't matter if you are tired, or unsure, if your stomach is hard with dread at not being forgiven. If you allow yourself one moment's distraction—a microsecond's break in eye contact, a slight shift in weight—she knows, and that knowledge is a punch in the gut. She will back up a step and search your face, and she'll feel embarrassed—a fool or a whore—at offering so blatantly what you're not interested in, and her fine sense of being queen of the world will shiver and break like a glass shield hit by a mace, and fall around her in dust. Oh, it will still sparkle, because sex is magic, but she will be standing there naked, and you will be a monster, and the next time she feels her womb quiver and clench she'll hesitate, which will confuse you, even on a day when there is no dread, no uncertainty, and that singing sureness between you will dissolve and very slowly begin to sicken and die. The body knows. I listened to the deep message—but carefully, because at some point the deep message also must be a conscious message. Active, not just passive, agreement. I took her hand and guided the wok back down to the gas burner. Yes, her body still said, yes. I turned off the gas, but slowly, and now she reached for me.

ONE WHO SAY'S "I LOVE KRISHNA WHY SHELL I LOVE JESUS"HAS NO KNOWLEDGE. ONE WHO WHY SAY'S I LOVE JESUS WHY SHELL I LOVE KRISHNA" NEITHER HAS NO GOOD KNOWLEDGE. BUT HAS LOTS OF HATE. "LOVE ALL, SERVR ALL

From my readings, I had learned of a vast pool of human knowledge that both included books and went far beyond them in content and reach. The humans, of course, having only the faintest of intimations of quenging, use a different though related metaphor for the noosphere in which they like to dip their feet. Instead of seeing the truth of all things as a single, superluminal substance that everywhere flows like water, they conceive of it as a collection of things, and they content themselves with fashioning nets with their minds in the hope of casting them out in order to capture here a prettier pebble and there a smoother shell. Hence their name for the Oceanic wisdom that should flow among all beings: the worldwide Net.

Once upon a time, in a not-so-far-away land, there was a kingdom of acorns, nestled at the foot of a grand old oak tree. Since the citizens of this kingdom were modern, fully Westernized acorns, they went about their business with purposeful energy; and since they were midlife, baby-boomer acorns, they engaged in a lot of self-help courses. There were seminars called “Getting All You Can out of Your Shell.” There were woundedness and recovery groups for acorns who had been bruised in their original fall from the tree. There were spas for oiling and polishing those shells and various acornopathic therapies to enhance longevity and well-being. One day in the midst of this kingdom there suddenly appeared a knotty little stranger, apparently dropped “out of the blue” by a passing bird. He was capless and dirty, making an immediate negative impression on his fellow acorns. And crouched beneath the oak tree, he stammered out a wild tale. Pointing upward at the tree, he said, “We… are… that!” Delusional thinking, obviously, the other acorns concluded, but one of them continued to engage him in conversation: “So tell us, how would we become that tree?” “Well,” he said, pointing downward, “it has something to do with going into the ground …and cracking open the shell.” “Insane,” they responded. “Totally morbid! Why, then we wouldn’t be acorns anymore.” 3

Unlike juicy fruits and berries, which invite you to eat them right away before they spoil, nuts protect themselves with a hard, almost stony shell and a green, leathery husk. The tree does not mean for you to eat them right away with juice dripping down your chin. They are designed to be food for winter, when you need fat and protein, heavy calories to keep you warm. They are safety for hard times, the embryo of survival.

Anderson’s use of the word ‘grotesque’ is quite important in this context. In its usual sense in reference to human beings it connotes disgust or revulsion, but Anderson’s use is quite different. To him a grotesque is, as he points out later, like the twisted apples that are left behind in the orchards because they are imperfect. These apples, he says, are the sweetest of all, perhaps even because of the imperfections that have caused them to be rejected. He approaches the people in his stories as he does the apples, secure in his knowledge that the sources or natures of their deformities are unimportant when compared to their intrinsic worth as human beings needing and deserving of understanding. This approach is based on intuition rather than objective knowledge, and it is the same sort of intuition with which one approaches the twisted apples; he believes that one dare not reject because of mere appearance, either physical or spiritual; that appearance may mask a significant experience made more intense and more worthwhile by the deformity itself. In the body of the work proper, following this introductory sketch, Anderson has set up an organizational pattern that no only gives partial unity to the book but explores systematically the diverse origins of the isolation of his people, each of whom is in effect a social displaced person because he is cut off from human intercourse with his fellow human beings. In the first three stories Anderson deals with three aspects of the problem of human isolation. The first story, ‘Hands,’ deals with the inability to communicate feeling; the second, ‘Paper Pills,’ is devoted to the inability to communicate thought; and the third, ‘Mother,’ focuses on the inability to communicate love. This three-phased examination of the basic problem of human isolation sets the tone for the rest of the book because these three shortcomings, resulting partially from the narrowness of the vision of each central figure but primarily from the lack of sympathy with which the contemporaries of each regard him, are the real creators of the grotesques in human nature. Each of the three characters has encountered one aspect of the problem: he has something that he feels is vital and real within himself that he wants desperately to reveal to others, but in each case he is rebuffed, and, turning in upon himself, he becomes a bit more twisted and worn spiritually. But, like the apples left in the orchards, he is the sweeter, the more human for it. In each case the inner vision of the main character remains clear, and the thing that he wishes to communicate is in itself good, but his inability to break through the shell that prevents him from talking to others results in misunderstanding and spiritual tragedy. David D. Anderson “Sherwood Anderson’s Moments of Insight

Every strong mortal woman I have encountered started out broken in some way. She’ll reknit herself into a more impenetrable form once she has the tools to reprogram her mind and the knowledge to build her own truths.

Her collections matured, categorized methodically by order, genus, and species; by age according to bone wear; by size in millimeters of feathers; or by the most fragile hues of greens. The science and art entwined in each other’s strengths: the colors, the light, the species, the life; weaving a masterpiece of knowledge and beauty that filled every corner of her shack. Her world. She grew with them—the trunk of the vine—alone, but holding all the wonders together. But just as her collection grew, so did her loneliness. A pain as large as her heart lived in her chest. Nothing eased it. Not the gulls, not a splendid sunset, not the rarest of shells. Months turned into a year. The lonely became larger than she could hold. She wished for someone’s voice, presence, touch, but wished more to protect her heart.

Ultimately we are all alone, enclosed in a fixed shell with no exits. And each of us leads his life more or less inertly, more or less conscious and awake. This is a salutary realization that makes life easier and spares one failure. Which is why it's in equal measures cheerful, colourful, wonderful and thrilling. One must never let oneself be troubled by this pleasure in colourfulness and incomprehensible beauty, which is offered at every turn. Rather, one must b e grateful for it anywhere and at any time, sure in the knowledge that it is the inexhaustible outpouring of a secret harmony flowing through everything. And one must connect with this secret reality, the harmony of the universe, which one finds in the smallest and largest things. Then it flows into you, fills you, flows through you, shines from within you, finding your secret allies who will strengthen your soul with their power and make you lissom and flexible when life is tempestuous, felling and splitting mighty boughs.

Unlike juicy fruits and berries, which invite you to eat them right away before they spoil, nuts protect themselves with a hard, almost stony shell and a green, leathery husk. The tree does not mean for you to eat them right away with juice dripping down your chin. They are designed to be food for winter, when you need fat and protein, heavy calories to keep you warm. They are safety for hard times, the embryo of survival. So rich is the reward that the contents are protected in a vault, double locked, a box inside a box.

She always liked it when he wore a tie. She looked at him then as the most handsome man in the world. He wonders if she will look at him now. If she’ll be ashamed of him turning up in the afterlife unemployed and wearing a dirty suit. Will she think he’s an idiot who can’t even hold down an honest job without being phased out, just because his knowledge has been found wanting on account of some computer? Will she still look at him the way she used to, like a man who can be relied on? A man who can take responsibility for things and fix a water heater if necessary. Will she like him as much now that he’s just an old person with no purpose in the world?

I’ve never really understood the importance of class participation. If I have the knowledge and I can prove that I have it in a test or in some homework, then why do I have to show it off in front of the whole classroom to get the grade? Or worse, if I don’t know the answer, why do I have to humiliate myself in front of the entire classroom just for some points? I just don’t get it. All I can say is that I definitely didn’t want that top spot hard enough to participate daily in every class. Although I gotta say that sometimes I was tempted to force myself to participate just so I could get the teachers off my back. “You have to learn to come out of your shell,” “Don’t be shy, we don’t bite,” “You’re never going to make it in the real world if you don’t talk.” They always used the same old, tired phrases. I knew some of them had good intentions, and maybe they were right, maybe I needed to speak up and participate more, but why did they think it was a good idea to motivate me like that? I’m sure there are other ways to promote class participation without being so aggressive or rude. Public humiliation was not going to magically transform me into someone outgoing like my brother, my parents had already tried that for years with no results. It is the teachers’ job to create a safe space for students to grow and develop, not a safe space for mocking and bullying. By singling me out as the “quiet one,” the teachers basically put a target on my back and gave my classmates permission to mock me for the same reason. And they took that permission by heart. All through middle school, many kids enjoyed bullying me for being quiet—and for other things, like preferring to read during recess instead of playing sports and for my short stature, but mostly it was for being quiet, which is something that I’ve never fully understood. Why did being quiet make me stand out? Shouldn’t it have been the other way around? I used to try to not pay attention to the bullies, but when so many people—including some of the teachers—tell you that there’s something wrong with you, you can’t help but start to wonder if they’re right.

Those few single ones who, on the essential paths of grounding Dasein (poetry—thinking—deed—sacrifice), ground in advance the sites and moments for the realms of beings. In this way they create the essentially occurring possibility for the various shelterings of truth in which Da-sein becomes historical. Those numerous affiliated ones to whom it is given, in virtue of their understanding of the knowing will and of the groundings of the single ones, to surmise and to make visible, by carrying them out, the laws of the re-creation of beings as well as the laws of the preservation of the earth and of the projection of the world in the strife between earth and world. Those many who are referred to one another according to their common historical (earthly-worldly) origin, through whom and for whom the re-creation of beings and thereby the grounding of the truth of the event acquire constancy. The single ones, the few, and the many (not taken in terms of their numbers, but with respect to their distinctiveness) still partially stand in the old, common, and planned orders, which are either only a shell-like safeguard of the precarious continuance of the single ones, the few, and the many or the guiding power of their will.     The agreement among these single, few, and many ones is hidden, is not fabricated, and grows suddenly and for itself.     This agreement is pervaded by the essential occurrence (different in each case) of the event, wherein an original gathering is prepared. In this gathering and as this gathering, that which may be called a people becomes historical. In its origin and destiny this people is unique, in accord with the uniqueness of beyng itself, whose truth this people must ground once and for all in a unique site and a unique moment. How can this decision be prepared? Do knowledge and will have a space at their disposal, or would that amount merely to a blind intrusion into hidden necessities? Yet necessities shine forth only in a plight. The preparing of a preparedness for the decision certainly stands in the plight of merely hastening, in the end, the snowballing lack of history and of hardening its conditions, whereas this preparing indeed wants the opposite. Whoever does not know about this plight cannot surmise a shadow of the impending decisions. The decision takes place in stillness. In that way, however, the destruction of the possibility of decision results afortiori, through the impending inexorability of the uprooting. The decision and its necessity and even its preparation remain all the more difficult to perceive, the more the incidents of “world-historical” revolutions require clamor and the more exclusively all hearing and listening respond only to the gigantic and loud and allow everything in the opposite condition, even the great stillness, to sink into nullity.

This is the Prius,” he said. The car he pointed to was a shell with wires hanging out. “It is an example of what they look like when we are done,” he said. This particular examination had proven exceedingly useful because when the second-generation Prius was released in the mid-2000s, some wondered whether Toyota had cheated on the fuel economy tests. Hillebrand’s team had showed that, if the company wanted to, it in fact could game federal evaluators. That was because the car could be programmed with advance knowledge of the curves, stops, and hazards that all automakers knew the test featured. So armed, it could adjust and conserve gasoline. Hillebrand’s team did not demonstrate that the Prius folks did cheat. But the opportunity to do so was sufficient. He sent word to the Environmental Protection Agency, which devised a randomized test that was harder to con.

island to island over long distances.5 Trade may seem a very pragmatic activity, one that needs no fictive basis. Yet the fact is that no animal other than Sapiens engages in trade, and all the Sapiens trade neworks about which we have detailed evidence were based on fictions. Trade cannot exist without trust, and it is very difficult to trust strangers. The global trade network of today is based on our trust in such fictional entities as the dollar, the Federal Reserve Bank, and the totemic trademarks of corporations. When two strangers in a tribal society want to trade, they will often establish trust by appealing to a common god, mythical ancestor or totem animal. If archaic Sapiens believing in such fictions traded shells and obsidian, it stands to reason that they could also have traded information, thus creating a much denser and wider knowledge network than the one that served Neanderthals and other archaic humans. Hunting techniques provide another illustration

None of us wanted to be there that day, in our house, as we were. We’d seen joy and happiness and celebration, and the memory of that, the knowledge of how rich life could be, didn’t linger to warm and cheer us. Rather, it did just the opposite. None of us wanted to be us anymore. I wondered how long we’d be able to sustain ourselves, and I imagined, dramatically, the fumes of our dissatisfaction building up inside our house until they exploded, blowing out the roof and walls, leaving nothing but the burnt empty shell of a home.

Unhappiness is a slow drowning descent into the darkest knowledges, while happiness blasts us like rootless party-rooms smelling of pot inside caramel bullets shot at doomed star-clusters shelled with swirling astronomical dust! I want the dusty dadaist perfume. The smashed caramel glow of galactic bliss! I choose brain freedom! Happiness!

Rishikesh is one of the most wanted places for adventure lovers. Rishikesh is also well-known among Hindus for its pilgrimage. The free of charge graceful river and also Substring Mountains make this place beautiful for travelers. It is really one of the best locations for people wanting onward to get tons of adventure, and fun. It's also a precious knowledge for nature lovers. The major fair activity in Rishikesh is White Water Rafting. It has grown to a well-liked and daring spot for white water rafting enthusiast as the place offers an impressive experience of average to very tough and rough rapids in the region of River Ganges. Uttarakhand adventure is well known rafting company in Rishikesh. Many adventurous tourists both from India and overseas stay this place to experience the real challenge of white water rafting. All services for white water rafting Rishikesh is available here, and there are preparation guides for rafting from whom a tourist can take help in this sport. River rafting in Rishikesh is one of the majority popular sport activities because of free flowing rivers from Himalayas. Rafting, camping, trekking, and Rock Climbing, Bungee jumping is some of the sports education that a traveler can consider. We are best rafting company in Rishikesh. Important and Helpful Information and Rafting Safety Tips for All Rafting Users • Important Equipments Shell Be take for River Rafting and Camping • Sunglasses and water glasses with retaining cord, Battery Torch • Swimming costume and quick drying shorts for river • Odomos, Antiseptic Cream and Sunscreen Lotion, First Aid Box • Only Use River Sandals & old Sneakers , no flip flops • River Rafting Guide & Splash life jackets. • Other required safety accessories • Waterproof disposable camera with Extra Battery (Full Battery Charge). • Mobile Phone with Extra Mobile Batteries (Electricity may be off) • We provide River Rafting Gears & Assistance • Helmets & river rafting gears • Trekking Shoes

fully Westernized acorns, they went about their business with purposeful energy; and since they were midlife, baby-boomer acorns, they engaged in a lot of self-help courses. There were seminars called “Getting All You Can out of Your Shell.” There were woundedness and recovery groups for acorns who had been bruised in their original fall from the tree. There were spas for oiling and polishing those shells and various acornopathic therapies to enhance longevity and well-being. One day in the midst of this kingdom there suddenly appeared a knotty little stranger, apparently dropped “out of the blue” by a passing bird. He was capless and dirty, making an immediate negative impression on his fellow acorns. And crouched beneath the oak tree, he stammered out a wild tale. Pointing upward at the tree, he said, “We…are…that!”  

fully Westernized acorns, they went about their business with purposeful energy; and since they were midlife, baby-boomer acorns, they engaged in a lot of self-help courses. There were seminars called “Getting All You Can out of Your Shell.” There were woundedness and recovery groups for acorns who had been bruised in their original fall from the tree. There were spas for oiling and polishing those shells and various acornopathic therapies to enhance longevity and well-being.

Delusional thinking, obviously, the other acorns concluded, but one of them continued to engage him in conversation: “So tell us, how would we become that tree?” “Well,” he said, pointing downward, “it has something to do with going into the ground …and cracking open the shell.”   “Insane,” they responded. “Totally morbid! Why, then we wouldn’t be acorns anymore.”3   This “acornology” story spells out our human situation according to the wisdom tradition behind the Enneagram

I had always been no more than a hermit, straying from one shell—one shelter—to another, looking at life only as a constant battle for survival. I barely got by; I succeeded by no other means than sheer luck. I found food when I needed it and I found health when sickness became my leech. There was nothing I did or earned that sustained my lifeline; I was simply a manifestation of mass that consumed and expelled mass. I had no hopes and therefore I was never disappointed. I was a wayfarer through time and knowledge, a companion to their works as they to me were my only friends.

My God!” Sophia sat back, her eyes wide with horror. “It’s a drug! He’s drugging her and she doesn’t even know it.” Here we go. “It’s common knowledge that we’re genetic traders—the fact that we have more than one means to attract a mate of an entirely different species should come as no surprise,” he pointed out. “You…you cold blooded bastard.” Sophia shook her head. “Poor Liv—she has no idea what he’s doing to her.” “It wouldn’t matter even if she did,” Sylvan explained patiently, ignoring her insults. “The mating scent is too strong to fight, even with advanced warning. Stronger species than yours have tried and they have all failed. With very few exceptions.” He closed his eyes briefly thinking of Feenah, of her pure white hair and pale crystal eyes. I’m sorry, Sylvan… “It’s not right. You’re not fighting fair.” Sophia’s words pushed back the painful memory and Sylvan opened his eyes again to see the look of despair and anger on her lovely face. She looked almost on the brink of tears. Wonderful—she was even more upset and irrational than he had thought she would be. He supposed he ought to feel irritated. Instead, the illogical urge to hold and comfort her came over him so strongly that he had to sit back and cross his arms over his chest to keep from reaching for her. “I believe you humans have a saying that covers this—‘All’s fair in love and war.’ Is that right?” he said softly. “Yes, but that doesn’t mean—” Sylvan leaned forward again and took her soft, small hands between his own larger ones. “You must understand, Sophia—Baird isn’t trying to trick your sister into anything. He’s simply using every power at his disposal to keep her. Because he needs her—he loves her. She is the only woman in the entire universe for him and the bond that will form between them will be one of undying love and devotion.” “Maybe for him.” She looked down as though mesmerized by the sight of her own small hands being engulfed in his much larger ones. “But not for Liv. He’s going to trick her into having bonding sex with him —whatever that is—and then she’ll spend the rest of her life hating him once she finds out how he did it.” She looked up at Sylvan. “You don’t know her like I do—she hates being lied to. Her last boyfriend cheated on her and then lied about it and she dumped him and never looked back. If she knew what Baird was doing to her…” “It’s not as though it’s a conscious choice on his part,” Sylvan tried to explain. “It’s the way our bodies react chemically to our chosen mates. We can’t turn it off, even if we try. Sometimes it comes even when it’s not wanted. We have a saying for it—‘The blood knows what the mind does not wish to see.’” Lifting a hand, he cupped her cheek and brushed away the single tear that had escaped her wide green eyes with his thumb. “It cannot be helped.” Sophia

Once upon a time, in a not-so-far-away land, there was a kingdom of acorns, nestled at the foot of a grand old oak tree. Since the citizens of this kingdom were modern, fully Westernized acorns, they went about their business with purposeful energy; and since they were midlife, baby-boomer acorns, they engaged in a lot of self-help courses. There were seminars called “Getting All You Can out of Your Shell.” There were woundedness and recovery groups for acorns who had been bruised in their original fall from the tree. There were spas for oiling and polishing those shells and various acornopathic therapies to enhance longevity and well-being. One day in the midst of this kingdom there suddenly appeared a knotty little stranger, apparently dropped “out of the blue” by a passing bird. He was capless and dirty, making an immediate negative impression on his fellow acorns. And crouched beneath the oak tree, he stammered out a wild tale. Pointing upward at the tree, he said, “We…are…that!

You’re right. You and Millie look more like your mom,” I said... “That’s because we spent more time with her,” Henry said seriously, as if it were common knowledge, as if resemblances were based on nurture instead of nature. It was true, to a point. Mannerisms, quirks, style. All those things could be learned and copied. “So if I spend a lot of time with Kathleen, do you think she’ll start to look like me?” I asked him, steering the focus away from his father. Henry looked doubtfully from me to my grunting, banana-bearded child and back again. “I hope so,” he said. Georgia snickered, and I hooted and held my hand in the air so Henry could give me five. “You hear that, Georgia? Henry hopes so,” I crowed. “I guess that means your baby daddy is a beautiful man.” Henry obviously didn’t mean to be funny, and he totally left me hanging. Georgia reached up and slapped my hand and winked at me.

He who has attained this Knowledge of Brahman is a jīvanmukta, liberated while living in the body. He rightly understands that the Ātman and the body are two separate things. After realizing God one does not identify the Ātman with the body. These two are separate, like the kernel and the shell of the coconut when its milk dries up. The Ātman moves, as it were, within the body. When

Something lost somewhere inside you, untraceable, sinking, and even at her heart’s request you’d never pluck a single shining coin from behind her ear, the warm shell of all her sound, in which you heard the ocean rolling away in bracing violence. In which more of you began to sink and be lost. In which and in which and this was enough to put your lips to the door and not know why. Not really. Not while rain held its court in the world and even in the noon darkness the day gleamed with water on its face. —Paul Guest, from “Elegiac Forecast,” My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge (Ecco, 2008)

She could read Hal's thoughts, evident in the lines of his body, his tensed shoulders and narrowed eyes: I will hurt you. And she smiled even more widely, knowing that he couldn't. For once, finally, she was the one with the power, the knowledge, the upper hand. His life was an oyster, dropped from a great height onto a rocky shore. Now his shell had been cracked open and the soft, defenseless meat had been exposed. Hal couldn't protect himself. Not from this. The only question left was how much damage she would do.

The other queens indeed fled from Briallyn weeks ago, as Eris said. She alone sits in the throne room of their shared palace. And what Eris revealed about Beron was true, too: the High Lord visited Briallyn on the continent, pledging his forces to her cause.” A muscle ticked in Azriel’s jaw. “But Briallyn’s gathering of armies, the alliance with Beron, is only the auxiliary force to what she has planned.” He shook his head, shadows slithering over his wings. “Briallyn wishes to find the Cauldron again. In order to retrieve her youth.” “She’ll never attain the Cauldron,” Amren said, waving a hand gleaming with rings. “No one but us, Miryam, and Drakon know where it’s hidden. Even if Briallyn did uncover its location, there are enough wards and spells on it that no one could ever break through.” “Briallyn knows this,” Azriel said gravely. Nesta’s stomach churned. Azriel nodded to Cassian. “What Vassa suspected is true. The death-lord Koschei has been whispering in Briallyn’s ear. He remains trapped at his lake, but his words carry on the wind to her. He is ancient, his depth of knowledge fathomless. He pointed Briallyn toward the Dread Trove—not for her sake, but for his own ends. He wishes to use it to free himself from his lake. And Briallyn is not the puppet we believed her to be—she and Koschei are allies.” He added to Cassian, “You need to ask Eris whether Beron knows about this. And the Trove.” Cassian nodded into the ensuing silence. Nesta found herself asking, “What’s the Dread Trove?” Amren’s eyes glowed with a remnant of her power. “The Cauldron Made many objects of power, long ago, forging weapons of unrivaled might. Most were lost to history and war, and when I went into the Prison, only three remained. At the time, some claimed there were four, or that the fourth had been Unmade, but today’s legends only tell of three.

The next consumer revolution will be bloodless, requiring neither bullets nor even bullhorns. We have the power to enact change and to chart a pragmatic course. That power resides not only in the voting booth but in our wallets. Bargain hunting is a national pastime and a pleasure that I, for one, will not relinquish. But knowing that our purchases have consequences, we can begin to enact change. We can set our own standard for quality and stick to it. We can demand to know the true costs of what we buy, and refuse to allow them to be externalized. We can enforce sustainability, minimize disposability, and insist on transparency. We can rekindle our acquaintance with craftsmanship. We can choose to buy or not, choose to bargain or not, and choose to follow our hearts or not, unencumbered by the anxiety that someone somewhere is getting a “better deal.” No longer slaves to the low-price imperative, we are free to make our own choices. As individuals and as a nation we can turn our attention to what matters, secure in the knowledge that what matters has never been and will never be cheap.

Being is the sea; speech is the shore; the shells are letters; the pearls knowledge of the heart.

In their ceaseless experimenting, they had learned to store knowledge in the structure of space itself, and to preserve their thoughts for eternity in frozen lattices of light. They would become creatures of radiation, free at last from the tyranny of matter. Into Pure Energy, therefore, they presently transformed themselves; and on a thousand worlds, the empty shells they had discarded twitched for a while in a mindless dance of death, then crumbled into rust.

Live like there is no tommorow cause tommorow is never promised. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. God does not judge us on our fathers sins. Father son and holy spirit I hold you nearest. To be a mother you need to actually be there and represent what a mother is. You don’t get to be the mother if you show up after the kids are already grown up. She’s like all those animals at the end of the story who show up to eat the Little Red Hen’s bread. The train crawls out of the Tapachula station. From here on, he thinks, nothing bad can happen. People come here to prosper. You have nothing here. What have you accomplished? You can't live through or claim there your children if you weren't there for them. The garden is a metaphor of opposites man women good evil up down everything has a opposite. God had already planned my destiny before I was created. Treat others how they treat you or how you want to be treated. My kids are my world and I will protect them from your evil manipulative narcissistic ways. Forgive but never forget. Knowledge is power. You don't own me. I only owe my servitude to the family I created and God. Love thy father who art in heaven. Your only Australian if you live in Australia. If you live in America your American stop trying to get freinds and likes based on where other people think your from. Don't blow your own trumpet. A bad worker blames his tools. No worries mate she'll be right. Couldn't hand a man a grander spanner The game was a fizzer. I wouldn't piss on them even if they were on fire. If you think I'm bad you should see my sister. She gives me cupcakes for my birthday. Happy birthday man whore. She's like that white girl at the gangbang party Your mother and father would be proud lol. narcissistic siblings keep score and feel compelled to outplay a sibling. They often triangulate in the family, playing two against one. Children reared in narcissistic homes rarely feel connected to one another as adults which is a good thing. Suck a big black cock casey. And mum try too lol and dad I'm not even gonna bother keep paying that child support mum and keep it for yourself and your drugs and alcohole dad Lord knows

The underlying cause of all shame is the deep and unshakable suspicion that I am an imposter. I sense the absence of true-self in myself, but not in others, so I naturally assume others to be real people and myself to be false. Seeing the outer shells everyone else has so convincingly erected and not knowing them to be hollow, I necessarily feel singularly fraudulent and, of course, shameful. (Spiritual Enlightenment, p. 242)

Among the hills, when you sit in the cool shade of the white poplars, sharing the peace and serenity of distant fields and meadows — then let your heart say in silence, “God rests in reason.” And when the storm comes, and the mighty wind shakes the forest, and thunder and lightning proclaim the majesty of the sky, — then let your heart say in awe, “God moves in passion.” And since you are a breath in God’s sphere, and a leaf in God’s forest, you too should rest in reason and move in passion. Chapter 16 — Pain And a woman spoke, saying, Tell us of Pain. And he said: Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain. And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy; And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields. And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief. Much of your pain is self-chosen. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self. Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquillity: For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen, And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears. Chapter 17 — Self-Knowledge And a man said, Speak to us of Self-Knowledge.

As Margaret ages past Jack, I believe he will remain her older brother, looking out for her and cheering her on as he always did. He is not as far away as he may seem. My prayer for Margaret is that as she grows older, she’ll remember that the same God who gave her the uncanny knowledge that Jack would die, and who sent angels to get her away from the creek, is always with her, and that she can do great things with the strength He gives her. As her special Bible verse says, “You are mine.

The fact is, I’m scared of relinquishing my identity. But surely anxiety about losing my identity doesn’t make sense: I’ve already experienced what that feels like. Shaking off all the layers of self that I’d accumulated in my lifetime, like the layers of an onion, was a necessary step to passing through the doorway into the Light. All that was left was a name that no longer belonged to me and I’d shrugged that off too. So why should I feel anxious now? Isn’t this what I crave? To get closer to the state I was in inside the Light. Or was losing my ego actually a traumatic experience? Seventeen years spent constructing my identity and when I relinquished it, I was left only with the knowledge of how flimsy and insubstantial it all is. The scaffolding we build for ourselves is rickety, it has no foundation and it’s so easily demolished. Is that why I felt like an alien when I came back to earth? Or why, finding myself surrounded by crowds in the high street, I’d felt as fragile as a moth? Or why I suffered panic attacks in the lecture theatre packed full of other students? I can see a pattern again. I suppose it can’t be healthy in this life to abandon your identity all in one go as I’d been forced to, flying towards the doorway of Light. There are reasons we all spend years insulating ourselves from each other in the first place: survival. Some people grow thicker and thicker layers of shell simply to stop others getting through. I’m trying to do the opposite: to remain open.

In a Global Research article,179 Chossudovsky recalls past CIA covert operations such as those in Central America, Haiti, and Afghanistan. Illicit dope funded the so-called “Freedom Fighters” Langley sponsored in those areas. As an example, Chossudovsky noted that Iran-Contra rebels and the Afghan “muj” got their funds through “dirty money” being transformed into “covert money” by way of shell companies and the lending structure. Weapons and drugs and money flowed across the borders of Albania with Kosovo and Macedonia. For hefty commissions, “respectable” European banks, far removed from the fighting, dry-cleaned the dirty dollars. The drugs went one way, and the greenbacks another, helping pay the fighters and their trainers. Writing in Global Research,180 Prof. Chossudovsky added to our knowledge of the sources of support for the Bosnian Muslim Army and the KLA—opium-based drug money direct from the Golden Crescent (Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran). Mercenaries financed by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait had been fighting in Bosnia.181 And the Bosnian pattern was replicated in Kosovo: Mujahadeen [sic] mercenaries from various Islamic countries are reported to be fighting alongside the KLA [Kosovo Liberation Army] in Kosovo. German, Turkish and Afghan instructors were reported to be training the KLA in guerilla and diversion tactics.182 Worse, The trade in narcotics and weapons was allowed to prosper despite the presence since 1993 of a large contingent of American troops at the Albanian-Macedonian border with a mandate to enforce the embargo. The West had turned a blind eye. The revenues from oil and narcotics were used to finance the purchase of arms (often in terms of direct barter): “Deliveries of oil to Macedonia (skirting the Greek embargo [in 1993–94] can be used to cover heroin, as do deliveries of kalachnikov [sic] rifles to Albanian ‘brothers’ in Kosovo.

Five months later, Goldman launched Project Maximus, buying another $1.75 billion in bonds to finance 1MDB’s acquisition of power plants from the Malaysian casino-and-plantations conglomerate Genting Group. Again, the fund paid a high price, and, like Tanjong, Genting made payments to a Najib-linked charity. This time, $790.3 million disappeared into the look-alike Aabar. David Ryan, president of Goldman’s Asia operations, argued to lower the fee on the second bond, given how easy it had been to sell the first round. But he was overruled by senior executives, including Gary Cohn. While Goldman was working on the deal, Ryan was effectively sidelined; the bank brought in a veteran banker, Mark Schwartz, a proponent of the 1MDB business, as chairman in Asia, a post senior to Ryan’s. Goldman earned a little less than the first deal, making $114 million—still an enormous windfall. For bringing in the business, Leissner was paid a salary and bonuses in 2012 of more than $10 million, making him one of the bank’s top-remunerated employees. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. Unknown to his bosses at Goldman, and three months after the first bond, millions of dollars began to flow into a British Virgin Islands shell company controlled by Leissner, some of which he shared with Roger Ng, according to Department of Justice filings. Millions of dollars more moved through Leissner’s shell company to pay bribes to 1MDB officials. Over the next two years, more than $200 million in 1MDB money, raised by Goldman, would flow through accounts controlled by Leissner and his relatives. He could have taken his hefty Goldman salary and disavowed knowledge of the bribery carried out by Low and others. Perhaps he would have gotten away with it, as many Wall Street bankers do in countries far from headquarters. But he decided to take a risk by becoming a direct accomplice in the fraud, rather than just greasing its wheels. He had seen the kind of life Low was leading, and he must have thought that a mere $10 million wasn’t going to cut it, not if he wanted to buy super yachts and host parties himself. Soon he would be doing just that.

When the Sieur de la Chesnee Monstereul made a list of tulip names in 1654, he included fifty-five of the Agate class alone, and in the Netherlands we find, in various tulip books, names such as Agaat Bisschop, Agaat Fenis da Costa, and Agaat van Enckhuysen. Other French tulips were marbr es or jaspees, and in the Netherlands names like Ghemarmerde [marbled] de Goyer, Ghemarmerde van der Eyck, Ghemarmerde van Willem Willemsz, and so on, were usual. Tulips were not a collector's item simply because they were expensive but because they were part of the same aesthetic universe as shells and many other items so prized in early modern collections. Tulips, like shells, could be stone.

One French tulip was called a Coquille marbr e, a marbled shell.

As he learned more math, Brodt made the wonder-inspiring observation that mathematical laws seemed to be Someone's intention rather than just accidents in many concepts: infinity, unity being totality, irrational numbers in general and pi in particular as it illustrates such disparate occurrences as the relationship of height to base perimeter in the Great Pyramid of Giza and the course of any meandering river (over a surface smoothed for consistency). There was also the Fibonacci Sequence, that looping string of addends which, with their sums, describes the spirals on a nautilus shell, the distribution of leaves around a tree branch, and the genealogy of ants and bees. It all seemed too orderly, too regular and consistent to have occurred by chance. So many things in the world appeared as blotches, smears, or random spikes that these mathematically explained phenomena were extraordinary--he wanted to say mystical, but he wouldn't want to be caught using that word.

Have you ever seen a horse wounded in action? I have. It was a horse I rode for several kilometres, until a shell exploded near us. Making a few circles in the air I finally landed. Then I saw the animal: its front legs, set against the ground, made jerky movements as if dancing; its body was covered in sweat, the muscles vibrating with a futile effort. The poor thing didn’t understand that it would never rise again. Its nostrils quivered, pink and bloody. It groaned like a human, and looked at me with wide open eyes, tears falling from them. I stood close by but did not have the nerve to shoot it. Some old soldier stopped by and put an end to the suffering of the wounded horse. He stuck a carbine into its ear and fired. I’m crying as I write these lines. What was the dying horse thinking when it looked at me with its wide open eyes? That men are a sick race, a force that disfigures nature? No, this knowledge is accessible only to Man himself. At its final moment, the horse expected from me – a human being – help and salvation.

Any employee with a promising idea is invited to give a ten-minute pitch to the panel, followed by a fifteen-minute Q&A session. If members agree that the idea has potential, the employee returns for a second round of discussions with a broader group of company experts whose knowledge or support may be important to the success of the proposed venture. Ideas that get a green light often receive funding—on average $100,000, but sometimes as much as $600,000—within eight or ten days. Each project goes through a proof-of-concept review, in which the team must demonstrate that its plan is indeed workable in order to win further funding. This review typically marks the point at which the GameChanger panel helps successful ventures find a permanent home inside Shell.

Careful, Egrette,” the man warned. His voice sounded a world away. “You can’t kill her yet.” Egrette. I’d heard that name before. Distantly, it clicked together. The House of Shadow had a princess, too. A second heir, sister to the man I’d killed. But this knowledge flew by, lost beneath her assault on my mind. I barely heard her response. “She’ll die soon anyway. Before she does, I want to see how she did it.” She tore through my memories of that party—the coup, when Raihn had been kidnapped and Oraya disappeared. Pushed past the images of the Bloodborn guards dragging me away and locking me up, a gift for the Shadowborn prince’s favor. And then she stopped—right there, right at the moment it happened. I had the prince against the wall. Oraya was behind me. His hands were on my throat. I was so, so angry. This man had taken everything from me. He had Turned me into a beast undeserving of everything I’d devoted my entire life to. He was the reason I had lost my magic. He was the reason my god had abandoned me. I thought about nothing but that hatred as I grabbed the sword Oraya had given me. As I drove that blade straight through his chest and kept going, and going, and going, until I couldn’t push anymore—until the prince’s perfect face went slack⁠— Egrette stopped. Her magic clung to that image—her brother in his moment of death. She smiled. “Poor, poor Malach. How very sad.

Professor Devera isn’t the joking kind. “In the past, riders have seldom been called into service before graduation,” Professor Devera continues, her mouth tensing as she paces slowly in front of a twenty-foot-high map of the Continent mounted to the back wall that’s intricately labeled with our defensive outposts along our borders. Dozens of mage lights illuminate the space, more than making up for the lack of windows and reflecting off the longsword she keeps strapped to her back. “And if they were, they were always third-years who’d spent time shadowing forward wings, but we expect you to graduate with the full knowledge of what we’re up against. It’s not about just knowing where every wing is stationed, either.” She takes her time, making eye contact with every first-year she sees. The rank on her shoulder says captain, but I know she’ll be a major before she leaves her rotation teaching here, given the medals pinned on her chest. “You need to understand the politics of our enemies, the strategies of defending our outposts from constant attack, and have a thorough knowledge of both recent and current battles. If you cannot grasp these basic topics, then you have no business on the back of a dragon.” She arches a black brow a few shades darker than her deep-brown skin.