Short Ethereal Quotes

..she began to stand around the gate and expect things. What things? She didn't know exactly. Her breath was gusty and short. She knew things that nobody ever told her. For instance, the words of the trees and the wind. .. She knew the world was a stallion rolling in the blue pasture of ether. She knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-up. It was wonderful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from the gray dust of its making.

He looks like a poem. One of those mournfully beautiful ones with short, unfamiliar words that sound ethereal when spoken and completely nonsensical when thought.

Then the cow asked: "What is a mirror?" "It is a hole in the wall," said the cat. "You look in it, and there you see the picture, and it is so dainty and charming and ethereal and inspiring in its unimaginable beauty that your head turns round and round, and you almost swoon with ecstasy.

So Janie waited a bloom time, and a green time and an orange time. But when the pollen again gilded the sun and sifted down on the world she began to stand around the gate and expect things. What things? She didn't know exactly. Her breath was gusty and short. She knew things that nobody had ever told her. For instance, the words of the trees and the wind. She often spoke to falling seeds and said, 'Ah hope you fall on soft ground,' because she had heard seeds saying that to each other as they passed. She knew the world was a stallion rolling in the blue pasture of ether. She knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-up. It was wonderful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from the gray dust of its making. The familiar people and things had failed her so she hung over the gate and looked up the road towards way off. She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie's first dream was dead, so she became a woman.

As surely as the sunset in my latest November shall translate me to the ethereal world, and remind me of the ruddy morning of youth; as surely as the last strain of music which falls on my decaying ear shall make age to be forgotten, or, in short, the manifold influences of nature survive during the term of our natural life, so surely my Friend shall forever be my Friend, and reflect a ray of God to me, and time shall foster and adorn and consecrate our Friendship, no less than the ruins of temples.

I only want to express the black part of me, the part of me that’s twisted. When something is fun, it’s fun for only that moment, right. But the bad stuff, the pain, we bring it with us for days. And depending on how deep the wound, we might not be able to forget for a year or two. First off, It’s impossible for anyone to sustain fun for 2 years. In short, I have no interest in expressing the ethereal.

Exposure to the harsh realities and fierce beauties of a world not aimed at my comfort has a way of cutting through the self-absorption of my life. The uncontrolled mystery of nature puts the ego in check and invites the soul back (in more than one way) to the ground of its being. It elicits the soul’s deepest desire, enforces a rigorous discipline, and demands a life marked by activism and resistance. It reminds me, in short, that spiritual practice—far from being anything ethereal—is a highly tactile, embodied, and visceral affair.

Somewhere in all this, it was thought, there also resided a mysterious élan vital, the force that brought inanimate objects to life. No-one knew where this ethereal essence lay, but two things seemed probable: that you could enliven it with a jolt of electricity (a notion Mary Shelley exploited to full effect in her novel Frankenstein); and that it existed in some substances but not others, which is why we ended up with two branches of chemistry4: organic (for those substances that were thought to have it) and inorganic (for those that did not).

…wilderness backpacking can be a form of spiritual practice…Exposure to the harsh realities and fierce beauties of a world not aimed at my comfort has a way of cutting through the self-absorption of my life. The uncontrolled mystery of nature puts the ego in check and invites the soul back (in more than one way) to the ground of its being. It elicits the soul’s deepest desire, enforces a rigorous discipline, and demands a life marked by activism and resistance. It reminds me, in short, that spiritual practice – far from being anything ethereal – is a highly tactile, embodied, and visceral affair. (p 4)

He remembered those countless nights staring at the irrevocable concrete and wishing he might will himself beyond the dungeon. Yet, the evocative beseeching for God never reached beyond the guard towers. Mechanistic accretions that eroded in the ether and died shortly after the moment of conception. This world incubated and full of things that you have no control over. Windless air in the tomb that perpetually stank of a milieu of filthy men and toxic bleach. That was now gone. Finally, Ronnie had what he prayed for those many nights. A plan that was based off more than the basic human contingencies. A reason to live that was outside of himself.

XIX. Do you retire to these quieter, safer, greater things! Think you that it is just the same whether you are concerned in having corn from oversea poured into the granaries, unhurt either by the dishonesty or the neglect of those who transport it, in seeing that it does not become heated and spoiled by collecting moisture and tallies in weight and measure, or whether you enter upon these sacred and lofty studies with the purpose of discovering what substance, what pleasure, what mode of life, what shape God has; what fate awaits your soul; where Nature lays us to rest When we are freed from the body; what the principle is that upholds all the heaviest matter in the centre of this world, suspends the light on high, carries fire to the topmost part, summons the stars to their proper changes—and ether matters, in turn, full of mighty wonders? You really must leave the ground and turn your mind's eye upon these things! Now while the blood is hot, we must enter with brisk step upon the better course. In this kind of life there awaits much that is good to know—the love and practice of the virtues, forgetfulness of the passions, knowledge of living and dying, and a life of deep repose.

What a fool he was, how short-sighted, how little-lived he’d been not to feel her fear as she felt it. For her it was an informed terror, re-entering a haunted house, replaying an old and frequent death. She kissed him; Sorry about your stupidity. She wanted to tell him, to teach him: Every time you love, pieces of you break off and get replaced by something you steal from someone else. It seems like it’s the right shape but it’s slightly different every time, so that eventually, very very quietly and over days and days and days, you are transformed into something unrecognizable, and it happens so slowly you don’t even notice, like shedding scales and making new ones.

The relevant facts can be summarized in a few sentences. (I won't try to do it in one.) All things are made from atoms and photons. Atoms in turn are made from electrons and atomic nuclei. The nuclei are very much smaller than the atoms as a whole (they have roughly one-hundred-thousandth, or 10^-5, the radius), but they contain all the positive electric charge and nearly all the mass of the atom-more than 99.9%. Atoms are held together by electrical attraction between the electrons and the nuclei. Finally, nuclei in turn are made from protons and neutrons. The nuclei are held together by another force, a force that is much more powerful than the electric force but acts only over short distances.

We should expect artists to be more sensitive and more open to abstract thoughts and ideas. If they are more open, they should be capable of tapping into the mystical static that is bouncing around the collective ether. True inspiration is a mystery, and any artist can describe how getting lost in this zone can create a sort of timeless trance where things just flow magically. An artist’s best work comes from a mindless place, unhindered by logic and intellect. This could be the concert violinist standing on stage, or the illustrator hunched over in the corner with a sketchbook. Although it almost always falls short, the Hollywood machine is continually trying to come up with the next UFO-themed product. But where do these ideas come from?

Nature writers are supposed to be able to summon from the literary ether the precise words to describe their subjects or the feelings they evince. Sometimes the Muse attends, but by no means on demand. It is one of the great delights of trying to be a writer that words can suddenly appear, like blackcap's jubilant song, absent for months and then unexpectedly and ecstatically there, winging into your head just when you need them most. The more emotive the subject or the more deeply personal the experience, the easier it ought to be. But not necessarily so. Some experiences transcend ready description as though making a point: words - at least those available to the generality of writers - sometimes fall hopelessly short; they dish out despair in bucket loads. Others fare much better.

In order to conform to the current Empire style in fashion, the modiste had raised the waistline so that it fell just beneath Esme's small rounded breasts. Mrs. Benson had embellished further by adding a slender grosgrain ribbon there that matched the exact shade of tiny embroidered golden flowers scattered over the gown's ivory satin. Next she had shortened the sleeves so they were now small puffed caps edged against the arms with more narrow golden ribbon. As for the long length of material that had once run from shoulder to heel, she'd removed it and used the excess fabric to create a sweeping train that ended in a spectacular half circle that trailed after Esme as she walked. The entire hem was further enlivened by small appliquéd white lace rosettes, whose effect was nothing short of ethereal. On her feet, Esme wore a soft pair of ivory satin slippers with gold and diamond buckles that had been a last-minute gift from Mallory and Adam. On her hands were long white silk gloves that ended just above her elbows; her lustrous dark hair was pinned and styled in an elaborate upsweep with a few soft curls left to brush in dainty wisps against her forehead and cheeks. Carefully draped over head was a waist-length veil of the finest Brussels lace, which had been another present, this one from Claire, and in her hands she held creamy pink hothouse roses and crisp green holly leaves banded together inside a wide white satin ribbon.

Glass" In every bar there’s someone sitting alone and absolutely absorbed by whatever he’s seeing in the glass in front of him, a glass that looks ordinary, with something clear or dark inside it, something partially drunk but never completely gone. Everything’s there: all the plans that came to nothing, the stupid love affairs, and the terrifying ones, the ones where actual happiness opened like a hole beneath his feet and he fell in, then lay helpless while the dirt rained down a little at a time to bury him. And his friends are there, cracking open six-packs, raising the bottles, the click of their meeting like the sound of a pool cue nicking a ball, the wrong ball, that now edges, black and shining, toward the waiting pocket. But it stops short, and at the bar the lone drinker signals for another. Now the relatives are floating up with their failures, with cancer, with plateloads of guilt and a little laughter, too, and even beauty—some afternoon from childhood, a lake, a ball game, a book of stories, a few flurries of snow that thicken and gradually cover the earth until the whole world’s gone white and quiet, until there’s hardly a world at all, no traffic, no money or butchery or sex, just a blessed peace that seems final but isn’t. And finally the glass that contains and spills this stuff continually while the drinker hunches before it, while the bartender gathers up empties, gives back the drinker’s own face. Who knows what it looks like; who cares whether or not it was young once, or ever lovely, who gives a shit about some drunk rising to stagger toward the bathroom, some man or woman or even lost angel who recklessly threw it all over—heaven, the ether, the celestial works—and said, Fuck it, I want to be human? Who believes in angels, anyway? Who has time for anything but their own pleasures and sorrows, for the few good people they’ve managed to gather around them against the uncertainty, against afternoons of sitting alone in some bar with a name like the Embers or the Ninth Inning or the Wishing Well? Forget that loser. Just tell me who’s buying, who’s paying; Christ but I’m thirsty, and I want to tell you something, come close I want to whisper it, to pour the words burning into you, the same words for each one of you, listen, it’s simple, I’m saying it now, while I’m still sober, while I’m not about to weep bitterly into my own glass, while you’re still here—don’t go yet, stay, stay, give me your shoulder to lean against, steady me, don’t let me drop, I’m so in love with you I can’t stand up. Kim Addonizio, Tell Me (BOA Editions Ltd.; First Edition (July 1, 2000)

My darling son: depression at your age is more common than you might think. I remember it very strongly in Minneapolis, Minnesota, when I was about twenty-six and felt like killing myself. I think the winter, the cold, the lack of sunshine, for us tropical creatures, is a trigger. And to tell you the truth, the idea that you might soon unpack your bags here, having chucked in all your European plans, makes your mother and me as happy as could be. You have more than earned the equivalent of any university 'degree' and you have used your time so well to educate yourself culturally and personally that if university bores you, it is only natural. Whatever you do from here on in, whether you write or don't write, whether you get a degree or not, whether you work for your mother, or at El Mundo, or at La Ines, or teaching at a high school, or giving lectures like Estanislao Zuleta, or as a psychoanalyst to your parents, sisters and relatives, or simply being Hector Abad Faciolince, will be fine. What matters is that you don't stop being what you have been up till now, a person, who simply by virtue of being the way you are, not for what you write or don't write, or for being brilliant or prominent, but just for being the way you are, has earned the affection, the respect, the acceptance, the trust, the love, of the vast majority of those who know you. So we want to keep seeing you in this way, not as a future great author, or journalist or communicator or professor or poet, but as the son, brother, relative, friend, humanist, who understands others and does not aspire to be understood. It does not matter what people think of you, and gaudy decoration doesn't matter, for those of us who know you are. For goodness' sake, dear Quinquin, how can you think 'we support you (...) because 'that boy could go far'? You have already gone very far, further than all our dreams, better than everything we imagined for any of our children. You should know very well that your mother's and my ambitions are not for glory, or for money, or even for happiness, that word that sounds so pretty but is attained so infrequently and for such short intervals (and maybe for that very reason is so valued), for all our children, but that they might at least achieve well-being, that more solid, more durable, more possible, more attainable word. We have often talked of the anguish of Carlos Castro Saavedra, Manuel Meija Vallejo, Rodrigo Arenas Betancourt, and so many quasi-geniuses we know. Or Sabato or Rulfo, or even Garcia Marquez. That does not matter. Remember Goethe: 'All theory (I would add, and all art), dear friend, is grey, but only the golden tree of life springs ever green.' What we want for you is to 'live'. And living means many better things than being famous, gaining qualifications or winning prizes. I think I too had boundless political ambitions when I was young and that's why I wasn't happy. I think I too had boundless political ambitions when I was young and that's why I wasn't happy. Only now, when all that has passed, have I felt really happy. And part of that happiness is Cecilia, you, and all my children and grandchildren. Only the memory of Marta Cecilia tarnishes it. I believe things are that simple, after having gone round and round in circles, complicating them so much. We should do away with this love for things as ethereal as fame, glory, success... Well, my Quinquin, now you know what I think of you and your future. There's no need for you to worry. You are doing just fine and you'll do better, and when you get to my age or your grandfather's age and you can enjoy the scenery around La Ines that I intend to leave to all of you, with the sunshine, heat and lush greenery, and you'll see I was right. Don't stay there longer than you feel you can. If you want to come back I'll welcome you with open arms. And if you regret it and want to go back again, we can buy you another return flight. A kiss from your father.

At bottom, though, the failure to face nonlocality reflects an unease with the implication that the stark divide between mind and world sanctioned by classical physics—in which what is investigated and observed has a reality independent of the mind that observes or investigates—does not accord with what we now know. Almost all scientists, whether trained in the eighteenth century or the twenty-first and whether they articulate it or not, believe that the observer stands apart from the observed, and the act of observation (short of knocking over the apparatus, of course) has no effect on the system being observed. This attitude usually works just fine. But it becomes a problem when the observing system is the same as the system being observed—when, that is, the mind is observing the brain. Nonlocality suggests that nature may not separate ethereal mind from substantive stuff as completely as classical materialist physics assumed. It is here, when the mind contemplates itself and also the brain (as when an OCD patient recognizes compulsions as arising from a brain glitch), that these issues come to a head. In the case of a human being who is observing his own thoughts, the fiction of the dynamic separation of mind and matter needs to be reexamined.

Felix.” She let go, suddenly shy to speak. But that tense, tickly sensation running from her throat to her belly was giving her some kind of superhuman nerve. And besides, he wasn’t really Felix Callahan anymore, not in that ethereal, big-screen sense. So. She cleared her throat. “Felix, will you be my friend?” He did laugh at her, though he didn’t seem to mean it. “Yes, we’ll get matching lockets holding strands of each other’s hair.” “I wish the English language gave us a better option. ‘Pals,’ ‘chums,’ ‘buddies’ . . . but a word that implies the sudden and unusual nature—like ‘metabuddies.’ ” “ ‘Metabuddies.’ Wow. This is getting serious.” “So?” “So. Yes. Let’s be friends. That would solve some of this confused muss. Do we spit in our palms and shake?” “I think this calls for a pinky pledge.” She hooked her pinky around his. “I, Becky Jack, agree to be Felix Callahan’s pal, even though he’s way overrated as an actor and screen hunk and can be such a brat.” Felix cleared his throat. “I, world-famous and fabulously wealthy Felix Paul Callahan, agree to be mates with Becky, even though she wears grandmother shoes and insists on popping out children with reckless abandon and shows no remorse for her vicious right hook.” “That was very nice. I almost shed a tear.” “Apparently all it takes to make you weep is a singing puppet.” “Hey, don’t sell me short. I also cry at talking socks and animated washcloths.” “You cry in terror.” “Well, yeah, that’s true.

Stablecoins The ground is currently being laid to set the way for a new type of currency –the stablecoin. What is the stablecoin? The stablecoin is an asset that typically features price stability. Cryptocurrency is notoriously unstable, with volatile prices that are often difficult to predict. The advantage of them is that they give the user total control over their holdings. On the other hand, the US dollar is a great example of a fiat stablecoin, as it offers low volatility and so provides a reliable unit of money to invest in both the short term and the long term. However, the US dollar doesn’t give the user any form of control, as it is monitored by the Federal Reserve Bank and is dependent on the banking network in the US for commercial use. To get a combination of the two –full user control and reduced volatility –is an exciting prospect. Maker is a company that is currently working on a project to make this happen by creating a currency known as the Dai, which is set to become a stablecoin that combines user control with price stability. Social Networks

You can’t ask people to give up personal, tangible comforts for some ethereal ideal. That’s why communism failed. That’s why all those primitive, hippie, “back to the land” communes failed. Selfless suffering feels good for short crusades, but as a way of life, it’s unsustainable.

Life can be short. Who knows how much any of us has left? We shouldn’t let things fester or go unsaid. I just wanted you all to know.

Perhaps the most common device for giving people focus and direction is goal setting, but goals, as often as they are used, have their pros and cons. Sure, if you can convince everybody that profits must increase 20% next quarter or we’re going out of business, people will hurry around looking for ways to hype profits by 20%. When discussing “mission” I assigned Susan a goal of 25% improvement in sales, based on what I calculated was needed to avoid closing the factory and on what I felt her district could reasonably provide. It was not a number pulled from the ether, and I went to some length to explain this to her. Short of any such basis in reality, people will often do the easiest things, such as firing 20% of the workforce, canceling vital R&D programs, or simply not making any payments to suppliers. In other words, they will take achieving the goal as seriously as they feel you were in setting it; they will sense whether you have positioned yourself at the Schwerpunkt. Goals, as we all know, can be motivators. Cypress Semiconductor, a communications-oriented company founded in 1982, used to have a computer that tracked the thousands of self-imposed goals that its people fed into the system. Cypress founder T. J. Rodgers identified this automated goal tending system as the heart of his management style and a big factor in the company’s early success.136 Frankly, I find this philosophy depressing, not to mention a temptation to focus inward: If the boss places great importance on entering and tracking goals, as he obviously does, then that is what the other employees are going to consider important.137 In any case, what’s the big deal about meeting or missing a goal? A goal is an intention at a point in time. It is, to a large extent, an arbitrary target, whether you set it or someone above you assigns it. And we all know that numerical goals can be gamed, like banking (delaying) sales that we could have made this quarter to help us make quota next quarter. Unlike a Schwerpunkt, which gives focus and direction for chaotic and uncertain situations, what does a goal tell you? Just keep your head down and continue plugging away?

Who are you,” Yeshua asked? “Son of God, is Your memory so short You do not remember me?” Mary paced back and forth seeking to find a weakness she could exploit; Yeshua answered flatly, “Lust.” “Yes! You remembered me!” Mary danced around laughing maliciously, “Yes, and I have brought friends.” “In the name of the Living God name yourselves!” In their own voice each answered in kind: “Lust”, “Confusion”, “Deception”, “Derision”, “Rage”, “Malice”, and “Malfeasance”. “I command you, be cast out into the ethereal and trouble her no more!” At Yeshua’s command the demonions threw Mary down at His feet, she convulsed and screamed in horrific agony, then lay as still as death. Yeshua knelt down lifting her head and placing it on His knees. “Mary?” Her eyes fluttered and opened staring up into His eyes.

As we discussed way back in Chapter 3, gravity responds directly to energy. Its power, as defined here, is proportional to energy squared. Allowing for that effect, we can calculate the power of gravity at short distances and compare it with the other interactions. Figure 20.2 displays the result. From well outside the known universe, the inverse power of gravity descends to join the other interactions, pretty nearly.

We've seen that the theories of the Core forces, each deeply based on symmetry, can be combined. The three separate Core symmetries can be realized as parts of a single, all-encompassing symmetry. Moreover, that encompassing symmetry brings unity and coherence to the clusters of the Core. From a motley six, we assemble the faultless Charge Account. We also discover that once we correct for the distorting effect of Grid fluctuations-and after upping the ante to include SUSY-the different powers of the Core forces derive from a common value at short distances. Even gravity, that hopelessly feeble misfit, comes into the field. To reach this clear and lofty perspective, we made some hopeful leaps of imagination. We assumed that the Grid-the entity that in everyday life we consider empty space-is a multilayered, multicolored superconductor. We assumed that the world contains the extra quantum dimensions required to support super-symmetry. And we boldly took the laws of physics, supplemented with these two "super" assumptions, up to energies and down to distances far beyond where we've tested them directly. From the intellectual success so far achieved-from the clarity and coherence of this vision of unification-we are tempted to believe that our assumptions correspond to reality. But in science, Mother Nature is the ultimate judge. After the solar expedition of 1919 confirmed his prediction for the bending of light by the Sun, a reporter asked Albert Einstein what it would have meant if the result had been otherwise. He replied, "Then God would have missed a great opportunity." Nature doesn't miss such opportunities. I anticipated that Nature's verdicts in favor of our "super" ideas will inaugurate a new golden age in fundamental physics.

If the world behaved classically and predictably, the billion euros invested in LEP would have underwritten a very boring machine: every collision would just reproduce the result of the first one, and there'd be only one photograph to look at. Instead, our quantum-mechanical theories predict that many results can emerge from the same cause. And that is what we find. We can predict the relative probabilities of different results. Through many repetitions, we can check those predictions in detail. In that way, short-term unpredictability can be tamed. Short-term unpredictability is, in the end, perfectly compatible with long-term precision.

1) We draw power for appliances, lights, and computers from the electric grid. The physical world of appearance draws its power, in general, from the Grid. 2) A great, developing project, driven in part by the needs of physics, is the technology to integrate many dispersed computers into functional units, whose total power can be accessed as needed from any point. That technology is known as Grid technology. It's hot, and it's cool. 3) Grid is short. 4) Grid is not Matrix. I'm sorry, but the sequels tarnished that candidate. And Grid is not Borg.

DRAGONFLY   As my feet take hold of the floor I cling to her lips with the kind of intensity that shakes her entire body with a paralyzing calm. She carefully pushes my shorts down around my thighs while holding on to these lips that have proved perfection to her love. Easing the edge of her skintight shirt up around her frail torso with a steady rise the lower portion of my body eases into hers, she struggling to get her arms around my neck and chest after lifting her shirt over.   Her leg rises up underneath my arm, holding her up as her other leg follows. Like a steady freight crane I carefully move her onto the bed as she holds on to me, falling into her with all of my love. Moving across the surface of her entire body in the way that a dragonfly wets its tail above still water I lie down beside her with one hand moving across her chest. Wishing only to free her I seize her lips with an upward nudge of passion that educes a sort of ethereal beauty as we lie within the soothe of each other’s company. Reaching again for her lips I lean in to kiss her with my pelvis and upper body against hers as our legs intertwine. Aroused beneath my waist comes the part of me that does protrude, causing an effluxion of vitality to commove down my entire vessel in a slow whisper that moves over my entire body towards my legs and toes.

I was no longer making an effort at school. I didn’t decide to become lazy on a whim born of a bad attitude, I was tired. I was tired of all my earnest and concentrated scholastic efforts being met with not just dwindling grades, but also my teachers’ lowering estimation of me. My report cards were almost exclusively filled with sentiments like, ‘Hannah does not apply herself’, or ‘Hannah is falling well short of her potential’, sometimes the sentiments were more bluntly expressed. ‘Hannah is lazy’, or ‘had a bad attitude’. Sometimes they were contained within genuinely insightful observations and far more interesting language, ‘Hannah’s participation in class is spasmodic’, or, ‘Hannah brings a rather ethereal presence to class discussions’. The truth is none of my teachers seemed to notice how hard I was trying. Instead they would invariably conclude that laziness, mine, was the root cause of the ever-widening gap between my perceived intelligence, and my poor results. None of my teachers were inclined to wonder if it was their teaching methods that were falling short

„Say, Pythias… Are you trying to flirt with me?“ „Have been for years.“, they sip from their coffee, „You’re catching on only now?“ There is this blush Pythias enjoys seeing on Damon’s face. He already reminds him of a painting which came to life but especially this rush of blood to his face turns him almost human instead of ethereal. There are still streaks of the paint from their art session clinging like nettles on his beautiful face. „I mean, how could I not? I owe you my life, but instead I’ve sworn my friendship to you. My lifelong loyalty and my heart. It is all I can offer you and I would hand it over to you even without anything in return. Although it would be nice to get at least a fragment of my affection back.

To a people, always prompt in its recognition of genius, and ready to sympathize in the joys and woes of a truly great artist, this work will be one of exceeding interest. It is a short, glowing, and generous sketch, from the hand of Franz Liszt, (who, considered in the double light of composer and performer, has no living equal,) of the original and romantic Chopin; the most ethereal, subtle, and delicate among our modern tone-poets. It is a rare thing for a great artist to write on art, to leave the passionate worlds of sounds or colors for the colder realm of words; rarer still for him to abdicate, even temporarily, his own throne, to stand patiently and hold aloft the blazing torch of his own genius, to illume the gloomy grave of another: yet this has Liszt done through love for Chopin.

I had two great passions at the time: one magical and ethereal, which was reading, and the other mundane and predictable, which was pursuing silly love affairs. Concerning my literary ambitions, my successes went from slender to nonexistent. During those years I started a hundred woefully bad novels that died along the way, hundreds of short stories, plays, radio serials, and even poems that I wouldn't let anyone read, for their own good. I only needed to read them myself to see how much I still had to learn and what little progress I was making, despite the desire and enthusiasm I put into it. I was forever rereading Carax's novels and those of countless authors I borrowed from my parent's bookshop. I tried to pull them apart as if they were transistor radios, or the engine of a Rolls-Royce, hoping I would be able to figure out how they were built and how and why they worked. I'd read something in a newspaper about some Japanese engineers who practiced something called reverse engineering. Apparently these industrious gentlemen disassembled an engine to its last piece, analyzing the function of each bit, the dynamics of the whole, and the interior design of the device to work out the mathematics that supported its operation. My mother had a brother who worked as an engineer in Germany, so I told myself that there must be something in my genes that would allow me to do the same thing with a book or with a story. Every day I became more convinced that good literature has little or nothing to do with trivial fancies such as 'inspiration' or 'having something to tell' and more with the engineering of language, with the architecture of the narrative, with the painting of textures, with the timbres and colors of the staging, with the cinematography of words, and the music that can be produced by an orchestra of ideas. My second great occupation, or I should say my first, was far more suited to comedy, and at times touched on farce. There was a time in which I fell in love on a weekly basis, something that, in hindsight, I don't recommend. I fell in love with a look, a voice, and above all with what was tightly concealed under those fine-wool dresses worn by the young girls of my time. 'That isn't love, it's a fever,' Fermín would specify. 'At your age it is chemically impossible to tell the difference. Mother Nature brings on these tricks to repopulate the planet by injecting hormones and a raft of idiocies into young people's veins so there's enough cannon fodder available for them to reproduce like rabbits and at the same time sacrifice themselves in the name of whatever is parroted by bankers, clerics, and revolutionary visionaries in dire need of idealists, imbeciles, and other plagues that will prevent the world from evolving and make sure it always stays the same.

She thought about how short a human lifespan was on a planet like this.  In a universe like this.  Seventy or eighty years against millions or even billions, making the span of a human life little more than a speck—at best, a momentary flash in time compared to things like a lake or an ocean, whose waves and ripples felt timeless, ambivalent of what floated on or within them.  It reminded Angela of the old saying that an ocean had no memory. In reality, the only true sense of time was born through human consciousness, with human lives being just a momentary flash within it.  So brief and so temporary, yet humans spent so much of their flash doing what?  Arguing and fighting.  Only to have their entire existence snuffed out seventy or eighty years later.  Sometimes sooner, sometimes later.  Everything they felt.  Everything they thought about or loved.  Gone into the ether.

when I gently advised against this, pointing out that the studies would not end until 2024, they became irate. This was my people, my tribe, my whole life, the progressive, right-on part of the ideological world — and it became more and more uncritical, less and less able to discuss or reason. Friends and colleagues who their whole adult lives had known the dangers of Big Pharma (and, reflexively wellness-oriented, would only think of using Burt’s Bees on their babies’ bottoms and sunscreen with no PABAs on themselves) rushed to take the experimental genetic-based therapy; then, like the stone throwers in Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery,” crowded around to lash out at, shun, punish anyone who raised the slightest question about Big Pharma. Their entire knowledge base about that industry seemed to have magically evaporated into the ether.

In a 1991 short story first published in Omni magazine titled “They’re Made out of Meat,” sci-fi author Terry Bisson makes you regret being human. We are treated to a conversation between two ethereal aliens, where one tries hard to explain to the other that Earth humans are made entirely out of meat. A snippet of their pithy dialogue captures the astonishment:29 They’re made out of meat. Meat? Meat. They’re made out of meat. Meat? There’s no doubt about it. We picked several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, probed them all the way through. They’re completely meat. That’s impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars. They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don’t come from them. The signals come from machines. So who made the machines? That’s who we want to contact. They made the machines. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Meat made the machines. That’s ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You’re asking me to believe in sentient meat. The first alien later attempts to describe how humans communicate: You know how when you slap or flap meat it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat.

The subarctic world of the Koyukon is dominated by physical forces that may be incomprehensible to an inexperienced outsider. If the spiritual powers of this environment seem ethereal, its physical powers are the opposite. The land itself is massive, both in its extent and in the amplitude of its up-thrown mountains. Great rivers carve the terrain, running each spring with a chaos of fractured ice, periodically spilling over their banks to submerge the flats and make islands of the hills. The summer day lasts for months yet is too short against winter's darkness. And finally the weather, the omnipotent cold, the snow and storms, and the brief summer heat, when forests are set afire by passing thunderstorms.

The goddess of the dawn, Eos, reigned briefly compared with her brother, Helios, the god of the sun, or their sister, Selene, the goddess of the moon. But Eos’s short display of power was transcendent. The goddess of the dawn was the bridge between night and day, a doorway into the soul of all creation and an ethereal glimpse into the transitions of eternity.

Me, though- when life gave me lemons, I smashed the fruit with a hammer and used the juice to blind my enemies so I could beat and rob them. A short, nasty, brutish life.

Their eyes wide open, they stared into empty nothingness. There was silence everywhere. Apart from a few twinkling of stars, masses of dark void pressed down upon the atmosphere. Moments passed slowly. She could not sleep a wink. A pale light peeled the darkness off. She felt she was in slumber-land; a land of the living dead - then thoughts returned: an anguish; life appeared to be too short; it melted away so easily into bleak oblivion. She felt that she passed through space, a path designated by ethereal time. Her spirits soared like a falcon...despaired...and more...it fell into a dungeon of dark depression. Laying there. like a fallen log of a dead pine, she heard from her bed a roaring noise of the westerly knocking on the shutters of the window. It was like an ancient calling of Nemesis to wake her up to the fact that surely an end was closing in.

So in this Hemisphere when the moon goes down, I sit in one of those all-night-into-mornings cafes, watching short short skies below the skyscrapers and low-rises and sense the big turntables turning and the roadies setting up from stadium to stadium from L.A. to New York and all north and south and east and west and in between – and i know there must be a lot of kids who aren't sleeping but listening to their muse – iPad-ing and YouTubing...and the final shore ain't no shore at all but a long ether cable cyperspacing us together – cutting the continent in half.