Short Climax Quotes

I meditated on love and reasoned it out. I realized what is wrong with us. Men fall in love for the first time. And what do they fall in love with? ...They fall in love with a woman. They start at the wrong end of love. They begin at the climax. Can you wonder it is so miserable? Do you know how men should love? A tree. A rock. A cloud.

She said that sometimes she uses a formula when writing a short story, which goes ABDCE, for Action, Background, Development, Climax, and Ending.

Grandfather used to call the rain 'the erotic ritual between heaven and Earth.' The rain represented the seeds sown in the Earth’s womb by heaven, her roaring husband, to further life. Rainy encounters between heaven and Earth were sexual love on a cosmic scale. All of nature became involved. Clouds, heaven’s body, were titillated by the storm. In turn, heaven caressed the Earth with heavy winds, which rushed toward their erotic climax, the tornado. The grasses that pop out of the Earth’s warm center shortly after the rain are called the numberless children of Earth who will serve humankind’s need for nourishment. The rainy season is the season of life. Yes, it had rained the night before.

Shortly afterwards it started raining, very innocently at first, but the sky was packed tight with cloud and gradually the drops grew bigger and heavier, until it was autumn’s dismal rain that was falling—rain that seemed to fill the entire world with its leaden beat, rain suggestive in its dreariness of everlasting waterfalls between the planets, rain that thatched the heavens with drabness and brooded oppressively over the whole countryside, like a disease, strong in the power of its flat, unvarying monotony, its smothering heaviness, its cold, unrelenting cruelty. Smoothly, smoothly it fell, over the whole shire, over the fallen marsh grass, over the troubled lake, the iron-grey gravel flats, the sombre mountain above the croft, smudging out every prospect. And the heavy, hopeless, interminable beat wormed its way into every crevice in the house, lay like a pad of cotton wool over the ears, and embraced everything, both near and far, in its compass, like an unromantic story from life itself that has no rhythm and no crescendo, no climax, but which is nevertheless overwhelming in its scope, terrifying in its significance. And at the bottom of this unfathomed ocean of teeming rain sat the little house and its one neurotic woman.

They start at the wrong end of love. They begin at the climax. Can you wonder why it is so miserable?

You will get exactly what you deserve Polly,” comes the firm reply, “you can trust me on that… But if you do – trust me I mean – I promise you an unparalleled climax.” She pauses, gazing deep into my frightened green eyes. “It’s your call Polly, all yours.” I allow my aching body to decide for me . “Punish me please, mistress,” I say in a very small voice.

Then he curled his tongue around her clit and Nia could have sworn she saw lights exploding. Her breath caught in her lungs, the muscles in her body went rigid. Nothing, absolutely nothing seemed to exist except for the way that man was teasing her closer and closer to climax, using his tongue in a way that was nothing short of diabolical.

Artists have here perhaps a finer intuition; they who know only too well that precisely when they no longer do anything “arbitrarily,” and everything of necessity, their feeling of freedom, of subtlety, of power, of creatively fixing, disposing, and shaping, reaches its climax—in short, that necessity and “freedom of will” are then the same thing with them.

There can't be much development of action or theme in such stories, but at least there is some. By contrast, in the short short the very idea of character seems to lose its significance, seems in fact to drop out of sight. We see human figures in a momentary flash. We see them in fleeting profile. We see them in archetypal climaxes which define their mode of existence. Situation tends to replace character, representative condition to replace individuality. ("Introduction")

The openness from the baths lingered. Laurent, whose tangle of overthinking usually only disappeared at the moment of climax, had his defences down in the quiet. Damen could hear his soft exhalations of breath; once or twice, a sound passed his lips that he didn’t seem to be aware of. Time unslid the knot of any last ribbon of tension, letting it slip, letting him go further and further into his own pleasure. Their bodies tangled together, touches blending and blurring. Damen gave himself over to the feeling of Laurent in his arms. It was an age before he put his hand between Laurent’s legs, and felt his legs part. When he finally slid inside, it felt like time had stopped in the small, intimate space between them, after a sweet forever of deep kisses, of opening Laurent up with oiled fingers. He didn’t move but stayed where he was, in breathless silence. Everything felt connected, open. Their movements were more like nudges than thrusts, their bodies pushing together without the long, sliding separation of withdrawal. He could feel Laurent drawing closer and closer to his climax, not, as it was sometimes, like he was pushing past the gnarl of his own barriers, but hotly, inevitably. The thrust were longer now, Damen’s body moving to seek out its own gratification. He heard a choked off sound as Laurent dissolved under him, and Damen was lost to the feel of it, the hot, liquid pleasure of fucking, the closeness, near as a heartbeat. His own body pulsed and flared, an interval of flooding pleasure, and it almost didn’t seem to end but to transform into the sweet, heavy feel of his limbs entangled with Laurent’s, pleasure still between them, the throbs of it ebbing. For

Thus even though Christians are already saved, they still await the fullness of their salvation. Paul sees our salvation as both present and future, as both a now and a not-yet experience. In short, whatever blessings we have here and now will multiply when the fullness of time finally arrives and God brings the plan (mystery, verses 9, 10) that He developed “before the foundation of the world” (verse 4) to its climax. The problems that we face as Christians here on earth will not always be. No wonder Paul refers to the Second Advent as the “blessed hope” (Titus 2:13).

Gregory of Nyssa, in contrast, tries to advance philosophical and theological arguments to prove that the pains of hell cannot be co-eternal with God. His main argument is based on the essential superiority of good over evil; for evil, in its essence, can never be absolute and unlimited. The sinner inevitably reaches a limit when all his evil is done and he cannot go farther, just as the night, after having reached its peak, turns toward the day.18 This reasoning corresponds to the example of a physician who allows a boil to mature until it can be lanced. Thus the Incarnation, too, occurred only when evil had reached its climax.19 Gregory’s position has never been condemned.

Shortly after the Gulf War in 1992 I happened to visit a July Fourth worship service at a certain megachurch. At center stage in this auditorium stood a large cross next to an equally large American flag. The congregation sang some praise choruses mixed with such patriotic hymns as “God Bless America.” The climax of the service centered on a video of a well-known Christian military general giving a patriotic speech about how God has blessed America and blessed its military troops, as evidenced by the speedy and almost “casualty-free” victory “he gave us” in the Gulf War (Iraqi deaths apparently weren’t counted as “casualties” worthy of notice). Triumphant military music played in the background as he spoke. The video closed with a scene of a silhouette of three crosses on a hill with an American flag waving in the background. Majestic, patriotic music now thundered. Suddenly, four fighter jets appeared on the horizon, flew over the crosses, and then split apart. As they roared over the camera, the words “God Bless America” appeared on the screen in front of the crosses. The congregation responded with roaring applause, catcalls, and a standing ovation. I saw several people wiping tears from their eyes. Indeed, as I remained frozen in my seat, I grew teary-eyed as well - but for entirely different reasons. I was struck with horrified grief. Thoughts raced through my mind: How could the cross and the sword have been so thoroughly fused without anyone seeming to notice? How could Jesus’ self-sacrificial death be linked with flying killing machines? How could Calvary be associated with bombs and missiles? How could Jesus’ people applaud tragic violence, regardless of why it happened and regardless of how they might benefit from its outcome? How could the kingdom of God be reduced to this sort of violent, nationalistic tribalism? Has the church progressed at all since the Crusades? Indeed, I wondered how this tribalistic, militaristic, religious celebration was any different from the one I had recently witnessed on television carried out by Taliban Muslims raising their guns as they joyfully praised Allah for the victories they believed “he had given them” in Afghanistan?

She said that sometimes she uses a formula when writing a short story, which goes ABDCE, for Action, Background, Development, Climax, and Ending. You begin with action that is compelling enough to draw us in, make us want to know more. Background is where you let us see and know who these people are, how they’ve come to be together, what was going on before the opening of the story. Then you develop these people, so that we learn what they care most about. The plot—the drama, the actions, the tension—will grow out of that. You move them along until everything comes together in the climax, after which things are different for the main characters, different in some real way. And then there is the ending: what is our sense of who these people are now, what are they left with, what happened, and what did it mean?

His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it. “You appear to be astonished,” he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. “Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it.” “To forget it!” “You see,” he explained, “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.” “But the Solar System!” I protested. “What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently; “you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.” I was on the point of asking him what that work might be, but something in his manner showed me that the question would be an unwelcome one. I pondered over our short conversation, however, and endeavoured to draw my deductions from it. He said that he would acquire no knowledge which did not bear upon his object. Therefore all the knowledge which he possessed was such as would be useful to him. I enumerated in my own mind all the various points upon which he had shown me that he was exceptionally well-informed. I even took a pencil and jotted them down. I could not help smiling at the document when I had completed it. It ran in this way— SHERLOCK HOLMES—his limits. 1. Knowledge of Literature.—Nil. 2. Philosophy.—Nil. 3. Astronomy.—Nil. 4. Politics.—Feeble. 5. Botany.—Variable. Well up in belladonna, opium, and poisons generally. Knows nothing of practical gardening. 6. Geology.—Practical, but limited. Tells at a glance different soils from each other. After walks has shown me splashes upon his trousers, and told me by their colour and consistence in what part of London he had received them. 7. Chemistry.—Profound. 8. Anatomy.—Accurate, but unsystematic. 9. Sensational Literature.—Immense. He appears to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the century. 10. Plays the violin well. 11. Is an expert singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman. 12. Has a good practical knowledge of British law.

Oh, Gray, she said. Oh, gray, indeed. As in, oh Gray what the holy hell has come over you and what the devil do you intend to do about it? He took the coward’s way out. He looked away. “I thought you were painting a portrait. Of me.” She turned her head, following his gaze to her easel. A vast seascape overflowed the small canvas. Towering thunderclouds and a violent, frothy sea. And slightly off center, a tiny ship cresting a massive wave. “I am painting you.” “What, am I on the little boat, then?” It was a relief to joke. The relief was short-lived. “No,” she said softly, turning back to look at him. “I’m on the little boat. You’re the storm. And the ocean. You’re…Gray, you’re everything.” And that was when things went from “very bad” to “worse.” “I can’t take credit for the composition. It’s inspired by a painting I once saw, in a gallery on Queen Anne Street. By a Mr. Turner.” “Turner. Yes, I know his work. No relation, I suppose?” “No.” She looked back at the canvas. “When I saw it that day, so brash and wild…I could feel the tempest churning in my blood. I just knew then and there, that I had something inside me-a passion too bold, too grand to keep squeezed inside a drawing room. First I tried to deny it, and then I tried to run from it…and then I met you, and I saw you have it, too. Don’t deny it, Gray. Don’t run from it and leave me alone.” She sat up, still rubbing his cheek with her thumb. Grasping his other hand, she drew it to her naked breast. Oh, God. She was every bit as soft as he’d dreamed. Softer. And there went his hand now. Trembling. “Touch me, Gray.” She leaned forward, until her lips paused a mere inch away from his. “Kiss me.” Perhaps that dagger had missed his heart after all, because the damned thing was hammering away inside his chest. And oh, he could taste her sweet breath mingling with his. Her lips were so close, so inviting. So dangerous. Panic-that’s what had his knees trembling and his heart hammering and his lips spouting foolishness. It had to be panic. Because something told Gray that he could see her mostly naked, and watch her toes curl as she reached her climax, and even cup her dream-soft breast in his palm-but somehow, if he touched his lips to hers, he would be lost. “Please,” she whispered. “Kiss me.

Only then comes the fourth and last movement, the Adagio, the final farewell. It takes the form of a prayer, Mahler's last chorale, his closing hymn, so to speak; and it prays for the restoration of life, of tonality, of faith. This is tonality unashamed, presented in all aspects ranging from the diatonic simplicity of the hymn tune that opens it through every possible chromatic ambiguity. It's also a passionate prayer, moving from one climax to another, each more searing than the last. But there are no solutions. And between these surges of prayer there is intermittently a sudden coolness, a wide-spaced transparency, like an icy burning — a Zen-like immobility of pure meditation. This is a whole other world of prayer, of egoless acceptance. But again, there are no solutions. "Heftig ausbrechend!" he writes, as again the despairing chorale breaks out with greatly magnified intensity. This is the dual Mahler, flinging himself back into his burning Christian prayer, then again freezing into his Eastern one. This vacillation is his final duality. In the very last return of the hymn he is close to prostration; it is all he can give in prayer, a sobbing, sacrificial last try. But suddenly this climax fails, unachieved — the one that might have worked, that might have brought solutions. This last desperate reach falls short of its goal, subsides into a hint of resignation, then another hint, then into resignation itself. And so we come to the final incredible page. And this page, I think, is the closest we have ever come, in any work of art, to experiencing the very act of dying, of giving it all up. The slowness of this page is terrifying: Adagissimo, he writes, the slowest possible musical direction; and then langsam (slow), ersterbend (dying away), zögernd (hesitat-ing); and as if all those were not enough to indicate the near stoppage of time, he adds äusserst langsam (extremely slow) in the very last bars. It is terrifying, and paralyzing, as the strands of sound disintegrate. We hold on to them, hovering between hope and submission. And one by one, these spidery strands connecting us to life melt away, vanish from our fingers even as we hold them. We cling to them as they dematerialize; we are holding two-then one. One, and suddenly none. For a petrifying moment there is only silence. Then again, a strand, a broken strand, two strands, one ... none. We are half in love with easeful death ... now more than ever seems it rich to die, to cease upon the midnight with no pain ... And in ceasing, we lose it all. But in letting go, we have gained everything.

Twenty years? No kidding: twenty years? It’s hard to believe. Twenty years ago, I was—well, I was much younger. My parents were still alive. Two of my grandchildren had not yet been born, and another one, now in college, was an infant. Twenty years ago I didn’t own a cell phone. I didn’t know what quinoa was and I doubt if I had ever tasted kale. There had recently been a war. Now we refer to that one as the First Gulf War, but back then, mercifully, we didn’t know there would be another. Maybe a lot of us weren’t even thinking about the future then. But I was. And I’m a writer. I wrote The Giver on a big machine that had recently taken the place of my much-loved typewriter, and after I printed the pages, very noisily, I had to tear them apart, one by one, at the perforated edges. (When I referred to it as my computer, someone more knowledgeable pointed out that my machine was not a computer. It was a dedicated word processor. “Oh, okay then,” I said, as if I understood the difference.) As I carefully separated those two hundred or so pages, I glanced again at the words on them. I could see that I had written a complete book. It had all the elements of the seventeen or so books I had written before, the same things students of writing list on school quizzes: characters, plot, setting, tension, climax. (Though I didn’t reply as he had hoped to a student who emailed me some years later with the request “Please list all the similes and metaphors in The Giver,” I’m sure it contained those as well.) I had typed THE END after the intentionally ambiguous final paragraphs. But I was aware that this book was different from the many I had already written. My editor, when I gave him the manuscript, realized the same thing. If I had drawn a cartoon of him reading those pages, it would have had a text balloon over his head. The text would have said, simply: Gulp. But that was twenty years ago. If I had written The Giver this year, there would have been no gulp. Maybe a yawn, at most. Ho-hum. In so many recent dystopian novels (and there are exactly that: so many), societies battle and characters die hideously and whole civilizations crumble. None of that in The Giver. It was introspective. Quiet. Short on action. “Introspective, quiet, and short on action” translates to “tough to film.” Katniss Everdeen gets to kill off countless adolescent competitors in various ways during The Hunger Games; that’s exciting movie fare. It sells popcorn. Jonas, riding a bike and musing about his future? Not so much. Although the film rights to The Giver were snapped up early on, it moved forward in spurts and stops for years, as screenplay after screenplay—none of them by me—was

Let us now assume that under truly extraordinary circumstances, the daimon nevertheless breaks through in the individual, so to speak, and is this able to let its destructive transcendence be felt: then one would have a kind of active experience of death. Thereupon the second connection becomes clear: why the figure of the daimon or doppelgänger in the ancient myths could be melded with the deity of death. In the Nordic tradition the warrior sees his Valkyrie precisely at the moment of death or mortal danger. In religious asceticism, mortification, self-renunciation, and the impulse of devotion to God are the preferred methods of provoking and successfully overcoming the crisis I have just mentioned. Everyone knows the expressions which refer to these states, such as the 'mystical death' or 'dark night of the soul', etc. In contrast to this, within the framework of a heroic tradition, the path to the same goal is the active rapture, the Dionysian unleashing of the active element. At its lower levels, we find phenomenons such as the use of dance as a sacred technique for achieving an ecstasy of the soul that summons and uses profound energies. While the individual’s life is surrendered to Dionysian rhythm, another life sinks into it, as if it where his abyssal roots surfacing. The 'wild host' Furies, Erinyes, and suchlike spiritual natures are symbolic picturings of this energy, thus corresponding to a manifestation of the daimon in its terrifying and active transcendence. At a higher level we find sacred war-games; higher still, war itself. And this brings us back to the ancient Aryan concept of battle and the warrior ascetic. At the climax of danger and heroic battle, the possibility for such an extraordinary experience was recognized. The Lating ludere, meaning both 'to play' and 'to fight', seems to contain the idea of release. This is one of the many allusions to the inherent ability of battle to release deeply-buried powers from individual limitations and let them freely emerge. Hence the third comparison: the daimon, the Lar, the individualizing I, etc., are not only identical with the Furies, Erinyes, and other unleashed Dionysian natures, which themselves have many traits similar to the goddess of death — they are also synonymous with the storm maidens of battle, the Valkyries and Fravartis. In the texts, for example, the Fravartis are called 'the terrible, the all-powerful', 'those who attack in storm and bestow victory upon those who conjure them', or, more precisely, those who conjure them up in themselves. From there to the final comparison is only a short step. In the Aryan tradition the same martial beings eventually take on the form of victory-goddesses, a transformation which denotes the happy completion of the inner experience in question. Just as the daimon or doppelgänger signifies a deep, supra-individual power in its latent condition as compared to ordinary consciousness; just as the Furies and Erinyes reflect a particular manifestation of daimonic rages and eruptions (and the goddesses of death, Valkyries, Fravartis, etc., refer to the same conditions, as long as these are facilitated by battle and heroism) — in the same way the goddess of victory is the expression of the triumph of the I over this power. She signifies the victorious ascent to a state unendangered by ecstasies and sub-personal forms of disintegration, a danger that always lurks behind the frenetic moment of Dionysian and even heroic action. The ascent to a spiritual, truly supra-personal condition that makes one free, immortal, and internally indestructible, when the 'Two becomes One', expresses itself in this image of mythical consciousness.

Strength, moreover, could have been used in righteous causes with little risk of bloodshed. In their loss of purpose, in their abandonment even of the themes they most sincerely espoused, Britain, France, and most of all, because of their immense power and impartiality, the United States, allowed conditions to be gradually built up which led to the very climax they dreaded most. They have only to repeat the same well-meaning, short-sighted behaviour towards the new problems which in singular resemblance confront us to-day to bring about a third convulsion from which none may live to tell the tale.

Where our ideas cannot copy definitely their object, what does agreement with that object mean? Some idealists seem to say that they are true whenever they are what God means that we ought to think about that object. Others hold the copy-view all through, and speak as if our ideas possessed truth just in proportion as they approach to being copies of the Absolute's eternal way of thinking. These views, you see, invite pragmatistic discussion. But the great assumption of the intellectualists is that truth means essentially an inert static relation. When you've got your true idea of anything, there's an end of the matter. You're in possession; you KNOW; you have fulfilled your thinking destiny. You are where you ought to be mentally; you have obeyed your categorical imperative; and nothing more need follow on that climax of your rational destiny. Epistemologically you are in stable equilibrium. Pragmatism, on the other hand, asks its usual question. "Grant an idea or belief to be true," it says, "what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?" The moment pragmatism asks this question, it sees the answer: TRUE IDEAS ARE THOSE THAT WE CAN ASSIMILATE, VALIDATE, CORROBORATE AND VERIFY. FALSE IDEAS ARE THOSE THAT WE CANNOT. That is the practical difference it makes to us to have true ideas; that, therefore, is the meaning of truth, for it is all that truth is known-as.

Hunting was not hard work. It consisted of a leisurely stroll in the country with a bunch of friends, followed by a short period of exhilarating terror and a chance to demonstrate how brave and strong one was, climaxed by an orgy of eating and lovemaking that compensated for the long trek home carrying hunks of flesh.

Listening to the early recordings of Hitler’s speeches, one biographer was struck by their “peculiarly obscene” and “copulatory character”: “the silence at the beginning,” then “the short, shrill yappings,” followed by “minor climaxes and first sounds of liberation,” and then “the ecstasies released by the finally unblocked oratorial orgasms.” Writer René Schickele once spoke of Hitler’s speeches as being “like sex murders.

I could feel the tension leaving her as she gave in, her kisses rich and consuming as I explored her mouth with mine. I moved my hand that final inch, my thumb dragging its way up the centre of her panties until I found her clit and pressed down, making her gasp in pleasure. I began circling my thumb against her through her panties and she arched her back, her thighs widening further to give me all the access I wanted to destroy her. I kissed harder as I began to unhook her shirt buttons with my free hand, wanting to see those fucking tits I'd been jerking off over in the flesh. Her hands continued to move across my bare skin as I kept working her clit and I gave up trying to take my time with her as she started panting with need. I shifted my hand, pushing her panties aside and growling with desire as I found her pussy soaked and ready for me and I immediately sank a finger deep inside her. Tory moaned, her voice rough and breathy and so fucking sexy that I had to fight the urge to drop my pants and drive my cock into her here and now so that I could hear what it sounded like when I really made her scream. But thanks to fucking Teddy, I knew I didn't have time to fuck her the way I ached to and I didn't want to rush through something I'd been daydreaming about for so long. So I was going to feel her coming for me like this, take control of her pleasure and leave her wanting more so that she was aching for me as much as possible the next time we found ourselves alone like this and I could really show her what I was made of. My other hand found her tit and I squeezed it through her bra, groaning at the fullness in my palm and breaking our kiss as I worked my way down her body to better service her hardened nipple. Tory leaned back, giving me a perfect fucking view of her with her shirt swinging wide and her skirt hitched up around her waist as I drove my finger in and out of her tight pussy. I yanked her bra down, my dick jerking at the sight of her pink nipple before my mouth descended on it and I sucked it between my lips, coupling the move with the addition of a second finger driving inside her. She moaned even louder, her pussy tightening like a vice around my fingers while I sucked on her nipple and felt her body surging towards its climax like I was playing the most exquisite instrument in the world. The moment I felt her coming for me, I reared up and kissed her hard, swallowing her cries of pleasure and tasting her lust as I dragged my tongue over hers. My dick was fucking aching and I growled with a desperate, needy plea of my flesh which I knew I didn't have time to answer as the heat of our kisses softened and I slowly drew my fingers back out of her, fixing her panties into place again. I broke off our kiss with a surge of effort, mentally planning to give Teddy the lesson from hell for forcing me to cut this shit short after I'd waited so long to claim it. Tory blinked up at me in surprise and I had to fight the urge to pout like a bitch as I read the desire in her body and knew she'd been hoping to come all over my cock again after that stunning first round. “I have a student coming in a minute to learn the art of Vampirism from an expert,” I explained, wishing I could just cancel the damn thing, but my mom had already been calling me out on not attending a bunch of these sessions and as our family name was linked to them, it was a bad look for me to miss any more of them. “So that was purely for my benefit?” Tory asked in surprise as she began to re-button her shirt. My jaw ticked with frustration, though I couldn't claim she was the only one of us who had gotten something out of that. “Oh no, I got plenty from that too,” I promised her, my gaze sweeping over her body appreciatively as I began to mentally plan all the things I wanted to do to every inch of her if I was lucky enough to get to do this with her again. (Caleb POV)

Acknowledgements Also by Julie Cohen Copyright ‘It is, in short, music which observes neither end nor beginning, music with neither real climax nor real resolution, music which, like Baudelaire’s lovers, “rests lightly on the wings of the unchecked wind.

We tend to understand our world through labels and through stories. Well, I love a good story. You know that. But... sometimes... I see folks getting themselves all twisted up over stories. I mean the stories we apply to ourselves. The story of our identities. Younger folks, older folks too, get anxious because they feel like their story hasn’t actually begun. That they are in a play and they’ve missed their cues and forgotten their lines. Or, they turn into literary critics of life and criticize their own character, looking for steady growth and rising action. A satisfying plot tying events together. Here’s the thing. Lives aren’t stories. They aren’t written to be tidy or to hang tight to a central theme or conflict. We consume a lot of carefully constructed stories and it can be easy to forget that life is not one of them. You aren’t headed toward a thoughtful climax and, so, you can’t be off track within your own narrative. Life doesn’t work that way. We live and then we don’t. That’s the simple truth of it. Our stories are happening now and if we get preoccupied looking for satisfying character arcs or a steady build toward some conclusion, well we miss what’s here in the moment and we will always fall short of our expectations. We can’t judge ourselves like we judge the protagonist in a book or movie. Life isn’t failing you because it isn’t delivering a cohesive story. You aren’t failing because you haven’t stuck to a clear and explainable hero’s path. Stories are a great way to understand the world, but they are paper thin compared to actual life. You, in contrast, are complicated. Make room for that truth and love yourself in all your messy complexity. (The Cryptonaturalist episode 39: Bittersweet)

Rule one for fucking a wolf, June," Dom growled into my ear, making me shiver. "Dominance is everything." The urgency tightened inside of me more and more with every stroke. I couldn't move, and it excited me. Dom's mouth took mine. Biting and pressing hungrily. I was desperate for him. Desperate for his lips, desperate for climax. "June," Dom warned. I was too breathless to answer, panting, and nodding with fervor. Yes. Yes! Please. My wolf agreed passionately. We were an animal in heat. Fucking Dom was the only thing either of us could think of. Dom thrust upward in one last strong jerk. "Let me see your eyes, June!" He commanded me. I mean really commanded me. My wolf couldn't say no. I couldn't say no. I looked him in the eye as I lost it all. "Ah!" A short, breathy yell left me as everything in me rose higher and higher toward that sweet release. The moment I felt his last thrust and the spilling of him inside me, I went to pieces. My body tensed, riding him hard as we both came. It was both better and worse that I couldn't even move my hands, I was fully on display in my most vulnerable moment.

With a low moan, Jon gripped the wooden spokes of the wheel as Baltsaros’s cock opened him up, and he shuddered when he was filled, the captain’s pelvis tight against his buttocks. Baltsaros began fucking him with short, quick thrusts, his hand stroking Jon’s cock in time with his movements. Though his ribs twinged in pain with every jolt, Jon was soon sobbing his breath out, Baltsaros’s cock hurtling him towards climax with every fast plunge. With a low grunt Baltsaros quickened his pace suddenly, and Jon let out a soft, ragged cry, letting himself go over as the captain spilled his seed inside him. Jon’s orgasm was a sweet, aching, breathless thing that made his heart beat light and fast in his chest. His knees felt weak, but he held onto the wheel and tried to catch his breath as the captain rested his forehead against his back.

Jon pushing the wooden phallus against his puckered opening brought Tom out of his reverie, and he made a small, slightly shaky sound. Jon’s hand stroked the back of his thigh, his palm now warm and slippery with oil. The pressure increased and Tom felt himself begin to open up. He winced as the stretch bordered on painful for a moment, but it was more out of nerves than any real discomfort. “Fuck, Tom,” breathed Jon. “I am so fucking hard right now… watching this… doing this to you. I never thought…” Tom let out a groan at Jon’s words, his arousal rekindling again as he realized that the wooden cock sliding into his ass was not going to be the uncomfortable challenge that he had assumed it would be. Since the thing didn’t actually have a head, being smooth and widening only slightly near the base, he knew he could take it. Tom heard Jon take a shuddering breath and, hearing the rapid sound of skin on skin, came to the conclusion that Jon was jerking himself off as he fucked Tom’s ass with the dildo. Tom’s cock twitched against his stomach in response, almost painfully stiff and so sensitive that when he breathed and it moved against his belly hair, it sent little jolts of pleasure through him. He lifted his head to look at Jon and saw that he was flushed; his eyes had taken on the glazed, rapt look of profound arousal as he stroked himself quickly. Then Jon began pulling the phallus almost all the way out and pushing it back in, slick and hard into Tom’s body. “Oh gods,” murmured Jon. “I think I’m going to cum just looking at you.” Tom arched his head back on the pillow, his breath short and his heart thundering. He let out a gasp a moment later when the dildo left his ass and he heard Jon’s strangled cry as he sent a jet of cum right against Tom’s throbbing pucker. A second volley followed and then Jon pushed his slick cock inside Tom, fucking him quick and hard with a few deep thrusts as he rode out the tail of his climax. Tom felt frantic and desperately aroused when Jon pulled out with a satisfied growl.

The aspiring writer comes home after a hard day’s work in the plastic shop. Maybe he has a few beers, or a cocktail, but soon he retires to his writing. There he discovers the aroma of burning lavender incense, and a soft red glow streaming from his reading lamp. The strings of a violin sing out softly, romantically. He notices his favorite notebook lying on his desk, submissively, with her blank naked pages spread open for him. He fondles his ballpoint pen and gawks at her 9.75 by 7.5-inch-wide ruled lines. He simply sits and stares at her awhile, lustfully, admiring the soft red lines that run down her legs to form margins. He smiles, feeling shy and perhaps a little apprehensive about this, what is for him, inevitable endeavor. He glances at his eager pen for a moment. It is a small pen. She reassures him that it is not the size of the pen that counts, but rather his prowess with it.        Not having any sort of plan in mind, all the more excited by the spontaneity of it, he sets to writing. He starts out softly, gently, and careful at first, forming each letter of each word with intimate precision. The inhibitions drop with each gentle stroke of his pen. Soon he is inside and one with the inviting quarter blank page. His pen is feverishly scratching against the warm paper. Madly he is marking the page. The blood in his head pounds, as he lets all his energy, all the everything inside him spill out onto the page. Faster and faster he writes with wild abandon, pushing it out onto her! “More” she moans. He grunts a primal grunt that rises up thick and full, from somewhere in the depths of his very soul, and he writes on! From under his pen she screams out in shades of purple passion ecstasy! “YES! OH GOOD GOD, YES! GIVE IT TO ME! YOU MAD MAD POET!” So he writes on, harder and faster, striving for climax. Until it seems at any moment, his pen might explode and spray thick creamy bubbling blue ink everywhere! He comes! To the end of the page. With the ink still wet and strangely sticky between her pages, he closes the notebook. Feeling drained, he lies his head against her soft cardboard cover and dozes off to dream the dreams that writers dream…           Rainbow

I believe this particular part of 1 Corinthians 7 is an important practical resource. Each partner in marriage is to be most concerned not with getting sexual pleasure but with giving it. In short, the greatest sexual pleasure should be the pleasure of seeing your spouse getting pleasure. When you get to the place where giving arousal is the most arousing thing, you are practicing this principle. When I was doing research for this chapter, I found some old talks that Kathy and I did together. I had forgotten some of the struggles we had in our early days, and some of the notes reminded me that in those years we started to dread having sex. Kathy, in those remarks, said that if she didn’t experience an orgasm during lovemaking, we both felt like failures. If I asked her, “How was that?” and she said, “It just hurt,” I felt devastated, and she did, too. We had a great deal of trouble until we started to see something. As Kathy said in her notes:   We came to realize that orgasm is great, especially climaxing together. But the awe, the wonder, the safety, and the joy of just being one is stirring and stunning even without that. And when we stopped trying to perform and just started trying to simply love one another in sex, things started to move ahead. We stopped worrying about our performance. And we stopped worrying about what we were getting and started to say, “Well, what can we do just to give something to the other?” This concept also has implications for a typical problem that many couples experience in their marital relationship—namely, that one person wants sex more often than the other. If your main purpose in sex is giving pleasure, not getting pleasure, then a person who doesn’t have as much of a sex drive physically can give to the other person as a gift. This is a legitimate act of love, and it shouldn’t be denigrated by saying, “Oh, no, no. Unless you’re going to be all passionate, don’t do it.” Do it as a gift. Related to this are the differences that many spouses experience over what is the most satisfying context for sex. While I am not saying this is universal, I will share that, as a male, context means very little to me. That means, to be blunt, pretty much anytime, anywhere. However, I came to see that that meant I was being oblivious to something that was very important to my wife. Context? Oh, you mean candles or something? And, of course, Kathy, like so many women, did not mean “candles or something.” She meant preparing for sex emotionally. She meant warmth and conversation and things like that. I learned this, but slowly. And so we learned to be very patient with each other when it came to sex. It took years for us to be good at sexually satisfying one another. But the patience paid off. Sex

Archer moved behind me and pushed me flat into Kody's chest with a hand on my back. Except, instead of taking my ass like I'd expected, I felt a startling, unfamiliar stretch as he pushed into my pussy with Kody. A low, sex-drenched moan escaped me as my cunt adjusted to accommodate two cocks together, and my breath came in short, sharp pants. It was incredible. "You okay, baby girl?" Archer asked in a rough voice, his body shadowing me and his lips at my ear. I nodded, frantic, and Kody just chuckled. He wasn't objecting, though. Far fucking from it. He and Archer just went to town, fucking me in tandem and making me come twice more before they each chased their own climaxes.

In the 2016 film Arrival by director Denis Villeneuve, based on “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang, linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is part of a scientific team summoned to Montana to help decipher the language of visiting extraterrestrials, known as “heptapods,” so that their intentions can be clarified. She starts to have frequent visions of a dying girl that she cannot place—she fears she may be going crazy from the strain of her assignment. The audience naturally assumes that these are flashbacks, memories of a child she lost in her past. As Louise begins to realize that her increased understanding of how the aliens communicate is helping liberate her cognitively from linear time, she begins having visions that aid in her work, including reading from the definitive book on the aliens’ written language that she herself is destined to write and publish in her future. From the book’s dedication, she realizes that the girl in her visions is a daughter she is going to have and who will eventually die of a rare disease. And at a key moment, when the world is on the brink of war with the visitors, she is able to contact a Chinese General on his private cell phone and talk him out of his belligerence after she “premembers” his phone number, which he will show her at a celebration months or years in the future—an event celebrating international unification in the aftermath of humanity’s first contact with extraterrestrial beings, made possible thanks largely to her intervention. It is a story about time loops, in other words. And what “arrives” at the climax and at various turning points—excitingly in some cases and sadly in others—is the meaning of Louise’s baffling experiences. The heptapods, with their circular language, feel at home in the block universe of Minkowski spacetime, where past, present, and future coexist. In Chiang’s short story, the scientists attempting to crack the code of their language get an important clue from Fermat’s principle of least time (Chapter 6), which suggests a kind of teleological interpretation of light’s behavior—it needs to know where it is going right from the start, in order to take the fastest possible route to get there. Chiang resolves the perennial questions about precognition and free will by suggesting that knowledge of future outcomes causes a psychological shift in the experiencer: an “urgency, a sense of obligation”1 to fulfill what has been foreseen. “Fatalism” would be one word for it but inflected more positively—perhaps not unlike how Morgan Robertson and Phil Dick may have seen it: as absolution rather than restriction.

In the 2016 film Arrival by director Denis Villeneuve, based on “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang, linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is part of a scientific team summoned to Montana to help decipher the language of visiting extraterrestrials, known as “heptapods,” so that their intentions can be clarified. She starts to have frequent visions of a dying girl that she cannot place—she fears she may be going crazy from the strain of her assignment. The audience naturally assumes that these are flashbacks, memories of a child she lost in her past. As Louise begins to realize that her increased understanding of how the aliens communicate is helping liberate her cognitively from linear time, she begins having visions that aid in her work, including reading from the definitive book on the aliens’ written language that she herself is destined to write and publish in her future. From the book’s dedication, she realizes that the girl in her visions is a daughter she is going to have and who will eventually die of a rare disease. And at a key moment, when the world is on the brink of war with the visitors, she is able to contact a Chinese General on his private cell phone and talk him out of his belligerence after she “premembers” his phone number, which he will show her at a celebration months or years in the future—an event celebrating international unification in the aftermath of humanity’s first contact with extraterrestrial beings, made possible thanks largely to her intervention. It is a story about time loops, in other words. And what “arrives” at the climax and at various turning points—excitingly in some cases and sadly in others—is the meaning of Louise’s baffling experiences. The heptapods, with their circular language, feel at home in the block universe of Minkowski spacetime, where past, present, and future coexist. In Chiang’s short story, the scientists attempting to crack the code of their language get an important clue from Fermat’s principle of least time (Chapter 6), which suggests a kind of teleological interpretation of light’s behavior—it needs to know where it is going right from the start, in order to take the fastest possible route to get there. Chiang resolves the perennial questions about precognition and free will by suggesting that knowledge of future outcomes causes a psychological shift in the experiencer: an “urgency, a sense of obligation”1 to fulfill what has been foreseen. “Fatalism” would be one word for it but inflected more positively—perhaps not unlike how Morgan Robertson and Phil Dick may have seen it: as absolution rather than restriction. In the film, one of the heptapods sacrifices its life to save that of Louise and her team members from a bomb planted by some soldiers, even though it clearly knows its fate well in advance. Their race even knows that in 3,000 years, humanity will offer them some needed assistance, and thus their visit is just the beginning of a long relationship of mutual aid in the block universe. At the end of the film, Louise chooses to have her daughter, even knowing that the girl will die.

there, guiding her through it, drawing everything skilfully from the inside, out. After what felt like a short time, Naomi found herself approaching the dramatic climax of the ending. Speed of attack, Naomi. Conscious she’d made only one tiny mistake in the whole piece, she knew this part would be the real test. Without holding back and playing safe, she unleashed all her energy into the final bars – a cascading sprint of broken chords which ended with four triumphant crashing chords. She was trembling when her hands moved away from the keys. On weak limbs, Naomi stood and turned to face Nathan’s applause. She took hold of the edge of the piano and bowed. She’d had a whole lesson in Professional Skills, about bowing. Nathan laughed and clapped harder, mouthing wow, shaking his head. Eventually, his hands stilled. ‘Whoa. That was amazing. How do you remember all those notes?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘You have to know.’ Naomi allowed a smile. ‘It’s like driving a

The love interest and climax would come when a man and a lady, both strangers, got to talking together on the train going back east. "Well," said Mrs. Croot, for it was she, "what did you think of the Canyon?" "Some cave," replied her escort. "What a funny way to put it!" replied Mrs. Croot. "And now play me something.

Not wanting to come without him inside, she gently pulled him up, sliding him into her. She clutched his ass, digging her nails into his tender flesh motioning him quicker and harder. Her pussy clung to his dick as the wave built up, growing stronger as he pumped faster into her. Instantly, the waves crashed at the same time, immense pleasure sweeping over them. Robert grit his teeth as Sharon's nails dug deeper into his ass. She squealed loudly as she climaxed. Robert groaning, his face scrunched as he came inside her.

he raised her short skirts, parted her thighs and, dragging his lazy member from inside his trousers, thrust into her. He climaxed quickly and unsatisfactorily,

If we look at the force of anger, we can, in fact, discover many positive aspects in it. Anger is not a passive, complacent state. It has incredible energy. Anger can impel us to let go of ways we may be inappropriately defined by the needs of others; it can teach us to say no. In this way it also serves our integrity, because anger can motivate us to turn from the demands of the outer world to the nascent voice of our inner world. It is a way to set boundaries and to challenge injustice at every level. Anger will not take things for granted or simply accept them mindlessly. Anger also has the ability to cut through surface appearances; it does not just stay on a superficial level. It is very critical; it is very demanding. Anger has the power to pierce through the obvious to things that are more hidden. This is why anger may be transmuted to wisdom. By nature, anger has characteristics in common with wisdom. Nevertheless, the unskillful aspects of anger are immense, and they far outweigh the positive aspects. The Buddha described it in this way: “Anger, with its poisoned source and fevered climax, murderously sweet, that you must slay to weep no more.” It is sweet indeed! But the satisfaction we get from expressing anger is very short-lived, while the pain endures for a long time and debilitates us.

she uses a formula when writing a short story, which goes ABDCE, for Action, Background, Development, Climax, and Ending.

the United States, allowed conditions to be gradually built up which led to the very climax they dreaded most. They have only to repeat the same well-meaning, short-sighted behaviour towards the new problems which in singular resemblance confront us to-day to bring about a third convulsion from which none may live to tell the tale.

Nobel laureate Sir MacFarlane Burnet was moved from his perspective as an immunologist to issue similar warnings about humanity’s overconfidence. True, he said, vaccines and antibiotics had rendered most infectious diseases of the Northern Hemisphere controllable. But, he cautioned, “it is almost an axiom that action for short-term human benefit will sooner or later bring long-term ecological or social problems which demand unacceptable effort and expense for their solution. Nature has always seemed to be working for a climax state, a provisionally stable ecosystem, reached by natural forces, and when we attempt to remold any such ecosystem, we must remember that Nature is working against us.”43

A hullabaloo broke out. Among all the remarks offered, from the very constructive “It’s disgusting!” to “Those children are completely nuts,” there wasn’t really anything worth the climax of a Columbo episode. Kashmareck cut short the chatter.