Skating Small Quotes

It was a small town by a small river and a small lake in a small northern part of a Midwest state. There wasn't so much wilderness around you couldn't see the town. But on the other hand there wasn't so much town you couldn't see and feel and touch and smell the wilderness. The town was full of trees. And dry grass and dead flowers now that autumn was here. And full of fences to walk on and sidewalks to skate on and a large ravine to tumble in and yell across. And the town was full of... Boys. And it was the afternoon of Halloween. And all the houses shut against a cool wind. And the town was full of cold sunlight. But suddenly, the day was gone. Night came out from under each tree and spread.

I smile up at his beautiful face, feeling so at ease in his arms. So safe and content. For so long I’ve felt like a small boat set adrift on a perilous sea. Ilmari Kinnunen came skating into my life as this closed-off, moody bear of a goalie. I smile, knowing with such clarity how he fits with us. He’s my safe harbor.

Hence, Orlando and Sasha, as he called her for short, and because it was the name of a white Russian fox he had had as a boy—a creature soft as snow, but with teeth of steel, which bit him so savagely that his father had it killed—hence they had the river to themselves. Hot with skating and with love they would throw themselves down in some solitary reach, where the yellow osiers fringed the bank, and wrapped in a great fur cloak Orlando would take her in his arms, and know, for the first time, he murmured, the delights of love. Then, when the ecstasy was over and they lay lulled in a swoon on the ice, he would tell her of his other loves, and how, compared with her, they had been of wood, of sackcloth, and of cinders. And laughing at his vehemence, she would turn once more in his arms and give him, for love’s sake, one more embrace. And then they would marvel that the ice did not melt with their heat, and pity the poor old woman who had no such natural means of thawing it, but must hack at it with a chopper of cold steel. And then, wrapped in their sables, they would talk of everything under the sun; of sights and travels; of Moor and Pagan; of this man’s beard and that woman’s skin; of a rat that fed from her hand at table; of the arras that moved always in the hall at home; of a face; of a feather. Nothing was too small for such converse, nothing was too great.

It was Christmas night in the Castle of the Forest Sauvage, and all around length. It hung on the boughs of the forest trees in rounded lumps, even better than apple-blossom, and occasionally slid off the roofs of the village when it saw the chance of falling on some amusing character and giving pleasure to all. The boys made snowballs with it, but never put stones in them to hurt each other, and the dogs, when they were taken out to scombre, bit it and rolled in it, and looked surprised but delighted when they vanished into the bigger drifts. There was skating on the moat, which roared with the gliding bones which they used for skates, while hot chestnuts and spiced mead were served on the bank to all and sundry. The owls hooted. The cooks put out plenty of crumbs for the small birds. The villagers brought out their red mufflers. Sir Ector’s face shone redder even than these. And reddest of all shone the cottage fires down the main street of an evening,

IN the sea, once upon a time, O my Best Beloved, there was a Whale, and he ate fishes. He ate the starfish and the garfish, and the crab and the dab, and the plaice and the dace, and the skate and his mate, and the mackereel and the pickereel, and the really truly twirly-whirly eel. All the fishes he could find in all the sea he ate with his mouth—so! Till at last there was only one small fish left in all the sea, and he was a small 'Stute Fish, and he swam a little behind the Whale's right ear, so as to be out of harm's way. Then the Whale stood up on his tail and said, 'I'm hungry.' And the small 'Stute Fish said in a small 'stute voice, 'Noble and generous Cetacean, have you ever tasted Man?

All I want, what I desire, is your surrender.” His voice was pitched low, so low I knew if anyone else had been in the room they wouldn’t have heard him. “I’m not a good man.” He said it so matter-of-factly that I had no doubts whatsoever that this man knew who and what he was. “I’m a killer, a drug lord.” He took another step closer. “I rule the underground with apathy and violence.” His chest was so wide, so powerful that it took up my entire view. “I know who and what you are.” But did I really? He shook his head slowly. “No, I don’t think you do, Sofia. I don’t think you do at all.” I was sucking air into my lungs, hard, fast, yet I couldn’t breathe. “I feel you’re my weakness,” he said softly, his voice deep, like a knife skating along my body, barely touching me, but the threat of getting cut was right there at the surface. He lifted his head then, staring me in the eyes, his gaze so cold, so hard. I was small, miniature compared to him. “And having a weakness isn’t something I’m comfortable with.

For the rest of their lives they will always walk past the display windows of the sports shop and think that there’s one bicycle too many in there. A pair of skates too many. A hundred thousand adventures and trees to climb and puddles to jump in too many. A million uneaten ice creams. They will never be woken too early on holiday mornings, never whisper-shout “Quiet!” when they’re talking on the phone, never put small gloves on the radiator. The greatest fear, the tiniest human being, will never be theirs.

The unexpected gift suggested small hopes, a vague but promising human connection. She felt a delight but also a fear of it, for it momentarily seemed to eclipse her impatience to skate. She lived only for skating, she told herself; there was no room for anything else. Not love, school, or scraping the walls of memory. Negotiating a bouquet of confusion, the lace on her skate broke in her hand. She quickly knotted it, then unfastened the skirt of her new coat and stepped onto the ice. -I am Eugenia, she said, to no one in particular.

When Straight Women Flirt …With Me She sits on my lesbian lap both of us too much wine arm around my shoulder hair carelessly tossed from her face her full weight light upon me sweet sweat rising in the noisy night her laugh laps up the smoke her lean close her breathing flirts with mine small confessions of girlhood slumber parties spill out and into my ear long unspoken memories of pairing up with other girls to practice kissing she tosses excitement of kitten innocence in my face roller skate caresses first tastes of delicious shudder first caress and innocence innocence innocence only in a sense implication of guilt guilt guilt the unsaid in her sentence she tosses excitement her breathing breathless breathing breath breast breasts breasts breasts oh flirt with my around my shoulder lean close close close both of us taste too much too much to touch ankles thighs fingers ribs eyes ears toes her arm my shoulder my shoulder her arm alarm disarm dare me dare me dare me no harm my shoulder her arm my shoulder hold her fold her I never told her my small confession: I don’t practice kissing

Giving up, I admire the rose gold chain in my hand, letting it slip through my fingers like running water. It’s not a necklace, but a lanyard for my school ID badge. The delicate chain breaks every few inches with small diamond-encrusted hoops, a matching rose gold whistle hanging off a clip. My thumb rubs methodically over the words etched into the circular pendant connecting the chain to the clip. Miss Parker it says on one side. Turning it over in my palm, I smile through my quickly blurring vision at the words on the back: World’s hottest teacher. But my favorite part? The tiny hockey skate charm that dangles next to the whistle

In a few weeks her partner will find the box containing the crib in the storeroom, the one she kept nagging at him to put together, and he'll sob so hard that it feels like his ribs will break. For the rest of their lives they will always walk past the display windows of the sports shop and think that there's one bicycle too many in there. A pair of skates too many. A hundred thousand adventures and trees to climb and puddles to jump in too many. A million uneaten ice creams. They will never be woken too early on holiday mornings, never whisper-shout "Quiet!" when they're talking on the phone, never put small gloves on the radiator. The greatest fear, the tiniest human being, will never be theirs.

A kiss with Lenore is a scenario in which I skate with buttered soles over the moist rink of lower lip, sheltered from weathers by the wet warm overhang of upper, finally to crawl between lip and gum and pull the lip to me like a child’s blanket and stare over it with beady, unfriendly eyes out at the world external to Lenore, of which I no longer wish to be part. That I must in the final analysis remain part of the world that is external to and other from Lenore Beadsman is to me a source of profound grief. That others may dwell deep, deep within the ones they love, drink from the soft cup at the creamy lake at the center of the Object of Passion, while I am fated forever only to intuit the presence of deep recesses while I poke my nose, as it were, merely into the foyer of the Great House of Love, agitate briefly, and make a small mess on the doormat, pisses me off to no small degree. But that Lenore finds such tiny frenzies, such conversations just inside the Screen Door of Union, to be not only pleasant and briefly diverting but somehow apparently right, fulfilling, significant, in some sense wonderful, quite simply and not at all surprisingly makes me feel the same way, enlarges my sense of it and me, sends me hurrying up the walk to that Screen Door in my best sportjacket and flower in lapel as excited as any schoolboy, time after time, brings me charging to the cave entrance in leopardskin shirt, avec club, bellowing for admittance and promising general kickings of ass if I am impeded in any way.

At the foot of the mountain the old man found himself in a broad glade grown thick with rushes, a small stream looping placidly over shallow sands stippled with dace shadows, the six-pointed stars of skating waterspiders drifting like bright frail medusas. He squatted and dipped a palmful of water to his lips, watched the dace drift and shimmer. Scout waded past him, elbow-deep into the stream, lapped at it noisily. Strings of red dirt receded from his balding hocks, marbling in the water like blood. The dace skittered into the channel and a watersnake uncurled from a rock at the far bank and glided down the slight current, no more demonstrative of effort or motion than a flute note. The old man drank and then leaned back against the sledge. The glade hummed softly. A woodhen called from the timber on the mountain and to that sound of all summer days of seclusion and peace the old man slept.

As I tried various restaurants, certain preconceptions came crashing down. I realized not all Japanese food consisted of carefully carved vegetables, sliced fish, and clear soups served on black lacquerware in a highly restrained manner. Tasting okonomiyaki (literally, "cook what you like"), for example, revealed one way the Japanese let their chopsticks fly. Often called "Japanese pizza," okonomiyaki more resembles a pancake filled with chopped vegetables and your choice of meat, chicken, or seafood. The dish evolved in Osaka after World War II, as a thrifty way to cobble together a meal from table scraps. A college classmate living in Kyoto took me to my first okonomiyaki restaurant where, in a casual room swirling with conversation and aromatic smoke, we ordered chicken-shrimp okonomiyaki. A waitress oiled the small griddle in the center of our table, then set down a pitcher filled with a mixture of flour, egg, and grated Japanese mountain yam made all lumpy with chopped cabbage, carrots, scallions, bean sprouts, shrimp, and bits of chicken. When a drip of green tea skated across the surface of the hot meal, we poured out a huge gob of batter. It sputtered and heaved. With a metal spatula and chopsticks, we pushed and nagged the massive pancake until it became firm and golden on both sides. Our Japanese neighbors were doing the same. After cutting the doughy disc into wedges, we buried our portions under a mass of mayonnaise, juicy strands of red pickled ginger, green seaweed powder, smoky fish flakes, and a sweet Worcestershire-flavored sauce. The pancake was crispy on the outside, soft and savory inside- the epitome of Japanese comfort food. Another day, one of Bob's roommates, Theresa, took me to a donburi restaurant, as ubiquitous in Japan as McDonald's are in America. Named after the bowl in which the dish is served, donburi consists of sticky white rice smothered with your choice of meat, vegetables, and other goodies. Theresa recommended the oyako, or "parent and child," donburi, a medley of soft nuggets of chicken and feathery cooked egg heaped over rice, along with chopped scallions and a rich sweet bouillon. Scrumptious, healthy, and prepared in a flash, it redefined the meaning of fast food.

As the sun set, I ate a hospital meal and watched TV. Every few minutes, I glanced at the girl on the bed and tried to see Raven. I struggled to remember her smile and laugh. With her face so swollen, she didn’t seem like my love. I worried I’d lost her because I brought Caleb to Ellsberg. Eventually, the nurse showed me how to turn the chair into a pull out bed. I thanked her, but the thing was too damn small for me to fit on. Besides, I didn’t want to sleep until Raven woke up. Finally, I gave into my weird little urge to kiss the sleeping beauty. I needed to know she was okay. Know she wanted me to stay because she still loved me. I felt nervous until her swollen lips twitched into a smile after my kiss. “Tell me a story,” she mumbled while gripping my shirt with her good hand and tugging me into the bed with her. I adjusted our bodies just enough for me to rest next to her. While the position wasn’t comfortable, I finally relaxed at knowing my woman wanted me close. Caressing her battered face with my fingers, I loved how she smiled for me. Even in pain and after a hellish day, she soothed my fears. “Once upon a time,” I said and she smiled again, “there was a lonely fool who wasted one day after another of his life. One day, he met the most fascinating chick and she quickly wrapped the fool around her finger. She loved him in the best way and saved him from himself. He loved her too and only wanted for her to be happy and safe.” Hesitating, I frowned at the sight of her suffering. As if knowing what I was thinking, she reached up and ran a finger of my lips. “More.” “After the evil… let’s call them gnomes because I hate those ugly little fuckers. So, once the gnomes were destroyed, the fool and his lovely savior bought a big house for all the beautiful blond babies they would have together.” As Raven smiled at this idea, my uneasiness faded. “Their kids all had names with a V in them to honor their hot parents.” Raven laughed then moaned at the gesture. Still, she kept smiling for me. “The fool, his beautiful woman, and their army of glorious babies played videogames, bowled, and roller skated. They were always happy and never sad in a town with their friends and family. They all lived happily ever after.” Raven swollen lips smiled enough to show her missing tooth. Even though she was essentially blind with her battered eyes, she knew I’d seen her mouth and covered it with her hand. “You’re beautiful, darling. Nothing will ever change that.” Raven grunted, unconvinced. “There’s more to love about you than your beauty.” Another grunt followed by a hint of a pout. “Sugar, if I got all banged up and my stunning good looks were damaged, you’d still love me, right?” Raven laughed, but said nothing, so I answered for her. “Of course, you would. My amazing personality and giant brain would keep you horny even if my hot body wasn’t at its best.” Laughing harder now, Raven leaned against me. “I liked your story.” “Unlike most fairytales, this one is coming true.

The whole world is there on the screen, for the taking, and a hive of demanding voices encourages us to absorb as much of it as possible, and keep up with it frantically, as it moves on, and it is always moving on, more swiftly and forgetfully than ever. If you're someone with a thirst for knowledge, you can very easily get sucked into the excitement of this, before you realise it's a flawed, impossible pursuit, and it's not making people, en mass, any more knowledgeable. What it instead often leads to is a brand of knowledge that's thousands of miles wide and half a centimetre deep: a pond-skating mentality of misleading screenshots and thinly gleaned opinions and out-of-context sound bites and people reading hastily between the lines while forgetting the vital thing you also need to do when practising that skill is to read the lines themselves. The idea of getting to know an area of limited size extremely well works as an antidote to this, and even in a very small area there is always more to know.

we had as much in common as a roller skate and a race car.

The Spring Has Many Silences - 1901-1991 The spring has many sounds: Roller skates grind the pavement to noisy dust. Birds chop the still air into small melodies. The wind forgets to be the weather for a time And whispers old advice for summer. The sea stretches itself And gently creaks and cracks its bones…. The spring has many silences: Buds are mysteriously unbound With a discreet significance, And buds say nothing. There are things that even the wind will not betray. Earth puts her finger to her lips And muffles there her quiet, quick activity…. Do not wonder at me That I am hushed This April night beside you. The spring has many silences.

Why’re you still here?” She yawned. “Go away. Jared will be here any moment, and I’ll be nothing but an unfortunate memory.” I should go. Pivot and leave. To my relief, I started doing just that. The echo of my footsteps bounced on the bare walls. I did not look back. Knew that if I caught a glimpse of her again, I’d make a mistake. This was for the best. It was time to cut my losses, admit my one mistake in my thirty-one years of life, and move on. My life would return to normal. Peaceful. Tidy. Noiseless. Unexpensive. My hand curled around the doorknob, about to push it open. “Hey, asshole.” I stopped but didn’t turn around. I refused to answer to the word. “What do you say—one last time for the road?” I glanced behind my shoulder, knowing I shouldn’t, and found my soon-to-be ex-wife propped on the hood of my Maybach, her dress hiked up her waist, revealing she’d worn no panties. Her bare pussy glistened, ready for me. A dare. I never shied away from those. Throwing caution to the wind (and the remaining few brain cells she hadn’t fried with her mindless conversation), I marched to her. When I reached the car, she lifted her hand to stop me, slapping her palm against my chest. “Not so fast.” It is going to be fast and a half, seeing as I’m about to come just from watching you like this. I arched an eyebrow. “Cold feet?” “Nah, low temperature is your thing. Don’t wanna steal your thunder. Either we go all the way, or we go nowhere at all. It’s all or nothing.” It infuriated me that each time I gave her a choice, she fabricated another. If I gave her an option, she swapped it with one of her creation. And now, on the heels of my ultimatum, she’d dished out her own. And like a doomed fool, I chose everything. I chose my downfall. We exploded together in a filthy, frustrated kiss full of tongue and teeth. She latched on to my neck, half-choking me, half-hugging me. I fumbled with the zipper of my suit pants, freeing my cock, which by this point gleamed with precum, so heavy and so hard it was uncomfortable to stand. My teeth grazed down her chin, trailing her throat before I did what I hadn’t done in five fucking years and pushed into her, all at once. Bare. My cock disappeared inside her, hitting a hot spot, squeezed to death by her muscles. Oh, fuck. My forehead fell against hers. A thin coat of sweat glued us together. Never in my life had anything felt quite so good. I wanted to evaporate into mist, seep into her, and never come back. I wanted to live, breathe, and exist inside my beautiful, maddening, conniving, infuriating curse of a wife. She was the one thing I never wanted and the only thing I craved. Worst, still, was the fact that I knew I couldn’t deny her a single thing she desired, be it a frock or piece of jewelry. Or, unfortunately, my heart on a platter, speared straight through with a skewer for her to devour. Still beating and as vibrant red as candied apples. I retreated, then slammed into her harder. Pulled and rushed back in. My fingers gripped her by the waist, pinning her down, wild with lust and desire. I drove into her in jerky, frenzied movements of a man starved for sex, fucking the ever-living shit out of her. Now that I’d officially filed a restraining order against my logic, I grabbed the front of her throat, sinking my teeth onto her lower lip. My spearmint breath skated over her face. The hood of the car warmed her thighs, still hot from the engine, jacking up the temperature between us even further. Small, desperate yelps fled her mouth. The only sounds in the cavernous space came from my grunts, our skin slapping together, and her tiny gasps of pleasure. The car rocked back and forth to the rhythm of my thrusts... (chapter 44)

Wandering around Bath. People come here to learn about Jane Austen and to tour the old Roman baths, but I stumbled upon a small museum off the tourist paths. And there was a painting, a man weeping over his bride. I stared at it for hours. I couldn’t tell you why.

26 In which we say goodbye to Ophelia Jane Worthington-Whittard After the hospital, where Mr. Whittard had his arm bandaged, they went in a taxi to the hotel. They drove through the streets of the city, where it no longer snowed. Alice folded all the clothes the museum curator had given her and left them neatly on her bed. She re-dressed herself, the way she had always dressed, in jeans and a T-shirt. She applied blood-red lipstick, which was way too grown-up for her. The sun was just up. It shone everywhere on the snow and on the glistening white trees and on all the windows. Behind each window there were people waking up to Christmas Day. They would no doubt open their presents, eat, and ice-skate. They would not set a time limit; they would skate into the night, and their cheeks would burn bright, and they would smile. Somewhere a man would take a violin out and begin to play. At the airport the family’s three suitcases were checked and the large, unusually shaped package was checked as well. The unusually shaped package went through the X-ray machine, and security looked very surprised until Ophelia’s father produced his card, which read: MALCOLM WHITTARD LEADING INTERNATIONAL EXPERT ON SWORDS They took their seats and rested, waiting for takeoff. Ophelia felt for Alice’s hand, and Alice squeezed in return until they were high in the air. Ophelia looked at her watch. They would be home within a few hours. She went to calculate … and stopped. Be brave, her mother whispered in her ear, and then was gone. From the airplane window Ophelia could see the city below. All the small and winding gray cobblestone streets, all the shining silver buildings and bridges, the museum, getting smaller and smaller until it was lost. She caught just a glimpse of the vast and fabled sea before the clouds covered this world. In that tiny moment she fancied she saw blue water, perfect blue water, the whitecaps breaking. Then that view was gone, swallowed up by the whitest clouds she’d ever seen. Ophelia Jane Worthington-Whittard, brave, curious girl, closed her eyes and smiled. THE END.

Skating and dancing are the only two forms of recreative exercise within the reach of the gentler sex, the former being infinitely more healthful than the latter, from the fact that the rapid motion through a clear, bracing atmosphere, incident to skating, quickens the circulation and introduces the pure oxygen of nature into the system, instead of the noxious gases of the ballroom, where the atmosphere is redolent of carbonic acid, frivolous tittle tattle, eau de cologne, insipid small talk, cutaneous exhalations, and simpering stupidity. The contrast, too, between the social surroundings of the skating pond and the ballroom is equally in favor of the outdoor recreation. But there is one circumstance which tends to give skating the precedence over any other amusement, and that is the privilege a gentleman enjoys of imparting instruction in the art to his fair companion. To intervene, just in the critical moment, between her departure from the perpendicular and her assumption of the horizontal is to enjoy a combination of duty and pleasure not often within reach, and no relation is more calculated to produce tender attachments than that of pupil and tutor under such circumstances. In fact, the exercise not only brings roses to the cheeks, and imparts buoyancy to the spirits, but weaves nets to catch Cupid, and makes cages to retain him. From The New York Herald, December 24, 1864.

She thrust the pink box she was holding into Mr. Rutherford’s hands before she opened up her reticule and pulled out a fistful of coins. Counting them out very precisely, she stopped counting when she reached three dollars, sixty-two cents. Handing Mr. Rutherford the coins, she then took back the pink box, completely ignoring the scowl Mr. Rutherford was now sending her. “This is not the amount of money I quoted you for the skates, Miss . . . ?” “Miss Griswold,” Permilia supplied as she opened up the box and began rummaging through the thin paper that covered her skates. Mr. Rutherford’s brows drew together. “Surely you’re not related to Mr. George Griswold, are you?” “He’s my father,” Permilia returned before she frowned and lifted out what appeared to be some type of printed form, one that had a small pencil attached to it with a maroon ribbon. “What is this?” Mr. Rutherford returned the frown, looking as if he wanted to discuss something besides the form Permilia was now waving his way, but he finally relented—although he did so with a somewhat heavy sigh. “It’s a survey, and I would be ever so grateful if you and Miss Radcliff would take a few moments to fill it out, returning it after you’re done to a member of my staff, many of whom can be found offering hot chocolate for a mere five cents at a stand we’ve erected by the side of the lake. I’m trying to determine which styles of skates my customers prefer, and after I’m armed with that information, I’ll be better prepared to stock my store next year with the best possible products.” “Far be it from me to point out the obvious, Mr. Rutherford, but one has to wonder about your audacity,” Permilia said. “It’s confounding to me that you’re so successful in business, especially since not only are you overcharging your customers for the skates today, you also expect those very customers to extend you a service by taking time out of their day to fill out a survey for you. And then, to top matters off nicely, instead of extending those customers a free cup of hot chocolate for their time and effort, you’re charging them for that as well.” “I’m a businessman, Miss Griswold—as is your father, if I need remind you. I’m sure he’d understand exactly what my strategy is here today, as well as agree with that strategy.” Permilia stuck her nose into the air. “You may very well be right, Mr. Rutherford, but . . .” She thrust the box back into his hands. “Since I’m unwilling to pay more than I’ve already given you for these skates, I’ll take my money back, if you please.” “Don’t be ridiculous,” Mr. Rutherford said, thrusting the box right back at Permilia. “Now, if the two of you will excuse me, I have other customers to attend to.” With that, he sent Wilhelmina a nod, scowled at Permilia, and strode through the snow back to his cash register.

The wanderers and their descendants invented the taming of animals like dogs, goats, sheep, cats, and horses. They invented transport like sailing and skating on ice. Some of the earlier groups of travelers met humanlike creatures, thickset survivors of an earlier exodus. Others who made it all the way to the landmass we think of as Indonesia may have discovered a group of people who were all the size of small children. On the first leg of the trip they traveled as far as possible, arriving in Australia, a land of two-ton wombats, ten-foot-tall kangaroos, and enormous marsupial lions, about fifty thousand years ago. The ancestors of modern humans began to spread through Europe only forty thousand years ago.

While I used to deride small hatchbacks as little more than  pregnant roller skates , I can now appreciate the utter and complete utility of the entire concept. 

Anyway, to me he’s just Sunny. Come on up, Jacks, don’t be shy.” His eyes are wide, and he’s mouthing, “What the fuck?” At me while his friends shove him. “Sunny.” “What’s going on, Starlight?” His words are too quiet for the mic to pick up clearly. “You know I love you. I wouldn’t be here in this amazing city with this fantastic group of ladies if you hadn’t come crashing into my life. Literally.” His laugh has a nervous edge to it. “We might not seem like a perfect match from the outside, but somehow, we work. You make every single day a little lighter, a little more fun, and you drive me freaking insane sometimes.” He smirks. “But I love how you challenge me to be a better person. You make me whole. And so....” I scrabble in the waist pouch Jo passed to me after the bout. “Will you drive me crazy for the rest of our lives? Will you marry me, Jackson?” He leans into the mic. “Are you kidding me, Starlight? Way to steal my thunder.” “What?” I pull back. He reaches into the pocket of his jeans. “I was going to propose to you. I’ve been carrying this around for weeks. It was all planned out.” He pulls out a small grey velvet box. My chest shudders with laughter. “You always were too slow to keep up with me. Better get your skate coach to work on your speed.” “You like it when I take my time.” “Wait. So, is that a yes?” I shove at him to get a little distance. It’s entirely possible I could self combust if he doesn’t give me a bit of space. “No.” I gasp as he drops to one knee. “Starlight. You’re my world. That day I knocked you over at that shitty roller rink was the best day of my life. I say was, because every day I’ve gotten to have you in my life has been a little better, and the day I get to slide my ring on your finger to make it permanent. I can’t wait for that. So, Tasha Scar, will you marry me?” My smile spreads all the way up my face, his eyes falling to the dimple I’ve grown to appreciate. “Fine. But just remember. I asked first.

The New Century Global Center in Chengdu was enormous. The sign above the main doors proclaimed it as the biggest mall in the world, and it was easy to reach the conclusion that that was still selling it short. The building was a hundred metres tall, with a concrete pediment that had been shaped to resemble flowing waves. Video screens fixed to the structure ran colourful advertisements for the stores inside the complex on a steady loop. The place was more like a small town than a mall, with hundreds of shops and restaurants. There was an artificial indoor beach, an ice-skating rink and a sculpture garden on the roof. The story was that the government had authorised the billions involved in its construction as a way to demonstrate to the rest of the world the strength of the Chinese economy. They wanted it to be visible from space

It’s not hard to find evidence that can be used to back up a parent’s decision to never let their kid venture out unsupervised (a viral story of a child lured away from a skating rink, a forced abduction from a park, a memory of a missing child from the parent’s own elementary school days). I empathize with the feelings of horror those stories evoke. To feel this way is natural. But what do we do with those feelings? I don’t think we should use them to make our safety decisions for us. I’d encourage parents to look at the data and probability of crimes involving tweens and young teens. Some will say, “Probability doesn’t matter. If it happens one time, to my child, that’s all that matters. It’s my job to protect against the possibility of danger, no matter how small.” My response to that is simple: You can’t even try to keep your child safe from random acts of tragedy.

There are halibut as big as doors in the ocean down below the town, flapskimming on the murky ocean floor with vast skates and rays and purple crabs and black cod large as logs, and sea lions slashing through the whip-forests of bull kelp and eelgrass and sugar wrack, and seals in the rockweed and giant perennial kelp and iridescent kelp and iridescent fish and luminous shrimp too small to see with the naked eye but billions of which feed the gray whales which slide hugely slowly by like rubbery zeppelins twice a year, north in spring and south in fall. Salmonberries, thimbleberries, black raspberries, gooseberries, bearberries, snowberries, salal berries, elderberries, blackberries along the road and by the seasonal salt marshes north and south. The ground squirrels burrow along the dirt banks of the back roads, their warren of mysterious holes, the thick scatter of fine brown soil before their doorsteps, the flash of silver-gray on their back fur as they rocket into the bushes; the bucks and does and fawns in the road in the morning, their springy step as they slip away from the gardens they have been eating; the bobcat seen once, at dusk, its haunches jacked up like a teenager's hot-rodding car; the rumor of cougar in the hills; the coyotes who use the old fire road in the hills; the tiny mice and bats one sometimes finds long dead and leathery like ancient brown paper; the little frenetic testy chittering skittering cheeky testy chickaree squirrels in the spruces and pines - Douglas squirrels, they are, their very name remembering that young gentleman botanist who wandered near these hills centuries ago. The herons in marshes and sinks and creeks and streams and on the beach sometimes at dusk; and the cormorants and pelicans and sea scoters and murres (poor things so often dead young on the beach after the late-spring fledging) and jays and crows and quorking haunted ravens (moaning Poe! Poe! at dusk) especially over the wooded hills, and the goldfinches mobbing thistles in the meadowed hills, and sometimes a falcon rocketing by like a gleeful murderous dream, and osprey of all sizes all along the Mink like an osprey police lineup, and the herring gulls and Caspian terns and arctic terns, and the varied thrushes in wet corners of thickets, and the ruffed grouse in the spruce by the road, and the quail sometimes, and red-tailed hawks floating floating floating; from below they look like kites soaring brownly against the piercing blue sky, which itself is a vast creature bluer by the month as summer deepens into crispy cold fall.

What it instead often leads to is a brand of knowledge that’s thousands of miles wide and half a centimetre deep: a pond-skating mentality of misleading screenshots and thinly gleaned opinions and out-of-context sound bites and people reading hastily between the lines while forgetting the vital thing you also need to do when practising that skill is to read the lines themselves. The idea of getting to know an area of limited size extremely well works as an antidote to this, and even in a very small area there is always more to know. You can reduce your space right down – to one hedgerow or wall or flooded out-of-use tin mine – and there will never be enough time to know it all.

It seems like a long time has passed since I was skating solo in a parking-lot in small town Ontario, Canada humming a Suicidal Tendencies song to keep myself motivated. I liked to alter the lyrics from "He rips, when he skates, cause he never hesitates!" to "She rips, when she skates..." I hoped that somewhere out there a girl was skating who truly did rip, and it would be even more incredible if I could see her skate in real life and have a conversation. I was completely in the dark.

Most businesses have the goal of getting as big as possible. Supreme, on the other hand, strives to remain underground and boutique, growing only when they deem it will enhance the brand. As style writer Glenn O’Brien put it, “Supreme is a company that refuses to sell out.” But why? Well, first off, because it wouldn’t be authentic to who they are, what they do, and what they’re into. For instance, when asked why they wouldn’t expand into women’s wear, Jebbia simply replied, “It’s not what we know.” And that’s all they’ve done—manifest an authentic reflection of their core beliefs with unyielding discipline. Supreme is a reflection of Jebbia’s life experiences and pas- sions. It just happened that his passion for “cool and unusual things for young people” was in harmony with the global youth movement that his brand has come to represent. Supreme continues to succeed on a massive scale because they have the discipline to focus their resources on creating great products rather than over-expanding. Or, as Jebbia puts it, “Staying true to what you do best has played a major role in our longevity. I would like people to see that we’re a small, independent skate company that has done our own thing, in our own way, over many years, and will hopefully continue to do so.

The countryside around us changed again. Now we were driving through forest. Sørland forests with mountain crags here and there among the trees, hills covered with spruce and oaks, aspen and birch, sporadic dark moorland, sudden meadows, flatland with densely growing pine trees. When I was a boy I used to imagine the sea rising and filling the forest so that the hilltops became islets you could sail between and on which you could bathe. Of all my childhood fantasies this was the one that captivated me most; the thought that you could swim over bus shelters and roofs, perhaps dive down and glide through a door, up a staircase, into a living room. Or just through a forest, with its slopes, cliffs, cairns, and ancient trees. At a certain point in childhood my most exciting game was building dams in streams, watching the water swell and cover the marsh, the roots, the grass, the rocks, the beaten earth path beside the stream. It was hypnotic. Not the mention the cellar we found in an unfinished house filled with shiny, black water we sailed on in two styrofoam boxes, when we were around five years old. Hypnotic. The same applied to winter when we skated along frozen streams in which grass, sticks, twigs, and small plants stood upright in the translucent ice beneath us. What had been the great attraction? And what had happened to it? Another fantasy I had at that time was that there were two enormous saw blades sticking out from the side of the car, chopping off everything as we drove past. Trees and streetlamps, houses and outhouses, but also people and animals. If someone was waiting for a bus they would be sliced through the middle, their top half falling like a felled tree, leaving feet and waist standing and the wound bleeding.

I walked out into the parking lot and found the space he’d written on the rental folder.  I frowned at the bright yellow and black machine that sat there waiting for me.  What is that?  A riding lawnmower?  “This can’t be right,” I said to no one.  I was the only one out there, so I don’t know who I thought I was talking to, but having a thousand conversations in my head over the last twenty-four hours was making me question my own sanity.  Probably talking out loud to myself wasn’t any better, but what the hell … might as well change up the crazy every once in a while to keep it fresh. I pressed the button on the key ring and the headlights flashed on once, proving this was not a mistake.  “A Smart Car?  Are you kidding me?”  It looked like a giant, wasp-yellow roller skate.  Maybe not even a giant one; maybe just a large-ish roller skate.  Surely looking like a giant wasp flying down a country road was a bad idea for a girl with a sting-allergy… I debated in my head whether I should go and argue for one of the other fifty full-sized cars on the lot, but then gave up on the idea five seconds later.  “Screw it,” I said, annoyed as hell.  “Might as well get eight hundred miles to the gallon, right?!”  The tone of my voice had drifted a little over to the hysterical side, but there was nothing I could do about it.  I was barely hanging on, the stress almost enough to send me to the looney bin.  I just kept picturing Bradley saying, “You got married?  To a complete stranger?  In Las Vegas?  When you were drunk?  By a guy named Elvis?”  It was too horrible to fully fathom.  He’d dump me just for humiliating him in front of all his clients and his frat brothers and his parents.  There were so many people expecting me to be the perfect fiancée. I threw my overnight bag in the passenger seat and drove off the lot, wishing I could peel out and really express my anger in a satisfyingly loud and obnoxious way.  But I quickly learned that a Smart Car doesn’t know how to peel out; it’s not equipped to do much with its lawn-mower sized engine.  It just knows how to deliver me from Point A to Point B on a very small amount of gas with almost zero elbow room.  I felt like a clown buzzing around in her little circus car.  The only things missing were a little face paint and some floppy shoes.  At first I thought I was also missing one of those brass honky-horns that clowns carry around, but then I pressed on the steering wheel and found out differently.  Yes, it’s true.  The Smart Car comes equipped with a clown honky-horn.

In another person such an attitude might have seemed opportunistic, even cynical. Although Franklin was not cynical, it is true that few opportunities escaped him. Yet his attitude toward journalism honestly reflected his personality, to wit, his innate skepticism. No argument ever so convinced him as to preclude his entertaining the opposite. Many people find uncertainty unsettling and insist on definite answers to the large and small questions of life. Franklin was just the opposite, being of that less numerous tribe that finds certainty—or certitude, rather—unsettling. Doubtless this reflected, at least in part, his experience of the stifling certitude of the Mathers in Boston. It also reflected his wide, and ever-widening, reading, which exposed him to multiple viewpoints. Above all, it probably reflected something innate: an equipoise that nearly everyone who knew him noticed and that many remarked upon. It could make him seem smug or shallow; while others agonized upon life’s deep issues, Franklin contented himself with incomplete answers, maintaining an open mind and seeming to skate upon life’s surface.

With one hand pressed to her lower back, I cup the nape of her neck with the other and bring her mouth to mine. My tongue sweeps across her bottom lip, and her small sigh spurs me on. Nails dig into my shoulders, waking up every nerve in my body. I skate my thumb over her chin, giving myself access to take her mouth like I’ve wanted to for weeks. She’s like that first high. With each brush of our lips, I forget why this situation is so complicated. Soft gasps and firm grasps are all I need to know she’s with me. This time, it will be different. This time, we’re doing it right. And nothing feels more right than this. Her fingers press against my chest. “But what do you want?” she repeats.