Small Bulb Quotes

Yes, all of this is sorrow. But leave a little love burning always like the small bulb in the room of a sleeping baby that gives him a bit of security and quiet love though he doesn’t know what the light is or where it comes from.

It's a poem about moths. But it's also a poem about psychopaths. I get it copied. And stick it in a frame. And now it glowers redoubtably above my desk:an entomological keepsake of the horizons of existence. And the brutal, star-crossed wisdom of those who seek them out. i was talking to a moth the other evening he was trying to break into an electric bulb and fry himself on the wires why do you fellows pull this stunt i asked him because it is the conventional thing for moths or why if that had been an uncovered candle instead of an electric light bulb you would now be a small unsightly cinder have you no sense plenty of it he answered but at times we get tired of using it we get bored with routine and crave beauty and excitement fire is beautiful and we know that if we get too close it will kill us but what does that matter it is better to be happy for a moment and be burned up with beauty than to live a long time and be bored all the while so we wad all our life up into one little roll and then we shoot the roll that is what life is for it is better to be part of beauty our attitude toward life is come easy go easy we are like human beings used to be before they became too civilized to enjoy themselves and before i could argue him out of his philosophy he went and immolated himself on a patent cigar lighter i do not agree with him myself i would rather have half the happiness and twice the longevity but at the same time i wish there was something i wanted as badly as he wanted to fry himself

Instead of thinking gigantic thoughts, I tried to focus on something small, the smallest thing I could think of. Someone once made this pew I’m sitting on, I thought. Someone sanded the wood and varnished it. Someone carried it into the church. Someone laid the tiles on the floor, someone fitted the windows. Each brick was placed by human hands, each hinge fitted on each door, every road surface outside, every bulb in every streetlight. And even things built by machines were really built by human beings, who built the machines initially. And human beings themselves, made by other humans, struggling to create happy children and families. Me, all the clothing I wear, all the language I know. Who put me here in this church, thinking these thoughts? Other people, some I know very well and others I have never met. Am I myself, or am I them? Is this me, Frances? No, it is not me. It is the others. Do I sometimes hurt and harm myself, do I abuse the unearned cultural privilege of whiteness, do I take the labor of others for granted, have I sometimes exploited a reductive iteration of gender theory to avoid serious moral engagement, do I have a troubled relationship with my body, yes. Do I want to be free of pain and therefore demand that others also live free of pain, the pain that is mine and therefore also theirs, yes, yes.

Not for the first time, Peter thought about how much of our lives we spend sequestered inside small patches of electric brightness, blind to everything beyond the reach of those fragile bulbs.

How peaceful it was, with the light evening breeze stirring the small leaves of the grapevine that clustered around the electric bulb, making the shadows move and change on the yellow mat below. For a moment he pushed aside the thought of money. From time to time the dark water beside them rippled audibly, as if a tiny fish had come to the surface for an instant and then darted beneath. It was in peaceful moments such as this, his father had said, that men were given to know just a little of what paradise was like, so that they might yearn for it with all their soul,and strive during their time on earth to be worthy of going there.

ROOT CELLAR" Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch, Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark, Shoots dangled and drooped, Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates, Hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes. And what a congress of stinks!-- Roots ripe as old bait, Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich, Leaf-mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks. Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.

Tapping a little bell, I leaned on the desk and turned to look at a small, traditionally decorated Christmas tree on a table near the entranceway. It was complete with shiny, egg-fragile bulbs; miniature candy canes; flat, laughing Santas with arms wide; a star on top nodding awkwardly against the delicate shoulder of an upper branch; and colored lights that bloomed out of flower-shaped sockets. For some reason this seemed to me a sorry little piece.

The cashier had long since left for home. By now she was probably bustling by an unmade bed that was waiting in her small room like a boat to carry her off to the black lagoons of sleep, into the complicated world of dreams. The person sitting in the box office was only a wraith, an illusory phantom looking with tired, heavily made-up eyes at the empyiness of light, fluttering her lashes thoughtlessly to disperse the golden dust of drowsiness scattered by the elctric bulbs.

It was small and dim inside, the floral wallpaper lit by apricot light bulbs that hung in jars from the ceiling.

Ayub had rich, long lashes that throbbed oddly when he was excited. He was a bit like a bulb that hasn’t quite learned to hoard all its electricity into light and so emits it through twitches—

How many were the aquarelles she painted for me; what a revelation it was when she showed me the lilac tree that grows out of mixed blue and red! Sometimes, in our St Petersburg house, from a secret compartment in the wall of her dressing room (and my birth room), she would produce a mass of jewelry for my bedtime amusement. I was very small then, and those flashing tiaras and chokers and rings seemed to me hardly inferior in mystery and enchantment to the illumination in the city during imperial fêtes, when, in the padded stillness of a frosty night, giant monograms, crowns, and other armorial designs, made of coloured electric bulbs - sapphire, emerald, ruby - glowed with a kind of charmed constraint above snow-lined cornices on housefronts along residential streets.

Most of us accept that when we flip the light switch, the bulb will light up the darkness. When we turn on the tap, crystalline water will pour deliciously into our glass. When we are hungry, there will be something to eat. We also accept that others do not deserve the same. In the cities, we walk by the homeless each and every day. On the nightly news, we glorify hatred and rage. In entertainment, we celebrate the discomfort of others. We have learned to accept the unacceptable. It is a tragedy. Changing the world seems an impossible task. And not one among us can do it. Only when we each commit to small steps forward will we turn it all around.

THE FAIR HAD A POWERFUL and lasting impact on the nation’s psyche, in ways both large and small. Walt Disney’s father, Elias, helped build the White City; Walt’s Magic Kingdom may well be a descendant. Certainly the fair made a powerful impression on the Disney family. It proved such a financial boon that when the family’s third son was born that year, Elias in gratitude wanted to name him Columbus. His wife, Flora, intervened; the baby became Roy. Walt came next, on December 5, 1901. The writer L. Frank Baum and his artist-partner William Wallace Denslow visited the fair; its grandeur informed their creation of Oz. The Japanese temple on the Wooded Island charmed Frank Lloyd Wright, and may have influenced the evolution of his “Prairie” residential designs. The fair prompted President Harrison to designate October 12 a national holiday, Columbus Day, which today serves to anchor a few thousand parades and a three-day weekend. Every carnival since 1893 has included a Midway and a Ferris Wheel, and every grocery store contains products born at the exposition. Shredded Wheat did survive. Every house has scores of incandescent bulbs powered by alternating current, both of which first proved themselves worthy of large-scale use at the fair; and nearly every town of any size has its little bit of ancient Rome, some beloved and be-columned bank, library or post office. Covered with graffiti, perhaps, or even an ill-conceived coat of paint, but underneath it all the glow of the White City persists. Even the Lincoln Memorial in Washington can trace its heritage to the fair.

Who" The month of flowering’s finished. The fruit’s in, Eaten or rotten. I am all mouth. October’s the month for storage. The shed’s fusty as a mummy’s stomach: Old tools, handles and rusty tusks. I am at home here among the dead heads. Let me sit in a flowerpot, The spiders won’t notice. My heart is a stopped geranium. If only the wind would leave my lungs alone. Dogsbody noses the petals. They bloom upside down. They rattle like hydrangea bushes. Mouldering heads console me, Nailed to the rafters yesterday: Inmates who don’t hibernate. Cabbageheads: wormy purple, silver-glaze, A dressing of mule ears, mothy pelts, but green-hearted, Their veins white as porkfat. O the beauty of usage! The orange pumpkins have no eyes. These halls are full of women who think they are birds. This is a dull school. I am a root, a stone, an owl pellet, Without dreams of any sort. Mother, you are the one mouth I would be a tongue to. Mother of otherness Eat me. Wastebasket gaper, shadow of doorways. I said: I must remember this, being small. There were such enormous flowers, Purple and red mouths, utterly lovely. The hoops of blackberry stems made me cry. Now they light me up like an electric bulb. For weeks I can remember nothing at all.

Mr. Tridden told them how it had been twenty years ago, the band playing on that ornate stand at night, the men pumping air into their brass horns, the plump conductor flinging perspiration from his baton, the children and fireflies running in the deep grass, the ladies with long dresses and high pompadours treading the wooden xylophone walks with men in choking collars. There was the walk now, all softened into a fiber mush by the years. The lake was silent and blue and serene, and fish peacefully threaded the bright reeds, and the motorman murmured on and on, and the children felt it was some other year, with Mr. Tridden looking wonderfully young, his eyes lighted like small bulbs, blue and electric. It was a drifting, easy day, nobody rushing, and the forest all about, the sun held in one position, as Mr. Tridden's voice rose and fell, and a darning needle sewed along the air, stitching, restitching designs both holden and invisible. A bee settled into a flower, humming and humming.

Writing is routinely described as creative —this has never struck me as a correct word. Planting tulips is creative. To plant a bulb(I imagine, I've never done it) is to participate in some small way in the cyclic miracle of creation. Writing is control.

Moths fly toward burning bulbs not because they’re drunk with love or exhausted from flight, wanting to wait out the pain in their wings, as if waiting was something warm they could wrap themselves around. They fly and die simply because they cannot see what we see. Instead they see stars off in the distance, the same stars we long ago used to navigate the darkness we still know nothing about. It’s hard to imagine what we once needed to know to know where we were. Without depth, with color, the moths look to the light until it calls to them. We are good at thinking we can stay. We are good at finding hurt. I live in a mapped city that keeps expanding like regret. When I look out the window I see a house so close I can hear a toilet flush. At night we take black lights and hunt scorpions stuck to our stucco walls. I walk around darkening rooms not in use, but I cannot stop the sun or streetlights from shining in. We are all aglow. I don’t want to think about the sun burning out or the billion small deaths I continue to cause. Even in the desert, a place whose name I learned to spell by the sweet treat of its opposite, the extra s demanding more, even after all these years of genetics, of rock slides, of canyons cut deep and persistent as a heart, moths spin in circles toward their stars.

potatoes, melons, and fruit trees in the long backyards behind their houses. He gave out seeds and bulbs. The town came to life. The Rosetans began raising pigs in their backyards and growing grapes for homemade wine. Schools, a park, a convent, and a cemetery were built. Small shops and bakeries and restaurants and bars opened along Garibaldi Avenue. More than a dozen factories sprang up making blouses for the garment trade. Neighboring Bangor was largely Welsh and English, and the next town over was overwhelmingly German, which meant—given

They sat eating ham sandwiches and fresh strawberries and waxy oranges and Mr. Tridden told them how it had been twenty years ago, the band playing on that ornate stand at night, the men pumping air into their brass horns, the plump conductor flinging perspiration from his baton, the children and fireflies running in the deep grass, the ladies with long dresses and high pompadours treading the wooden xylophone walks with men in choking collars. There was the walk now, all softened into a fiber mush by the years. The lake was silent and blue and serene, and fish peacefully threaded the bright reeds, and the motorman murmured on and on, and the children felt it was some other year, with Mr. Tridden looking wonderfully young, his eyes lighted like small bulbs, blue and electric. It was a drifting, easy day, nobody rushing, and the forest all about, the sun held in one position, as Mr. Tridden's voice rose and fell, and a darning needle sewed along the air, stitching, restitching designs both golden and invisible. A bee settled into a flower, humming and humming. The trolley stood like an enchanted calliope, simmering where the sun fell on it. The trolley was on their hands, a brass smell, as they ate ripe cherries. The bright odor of the trolley blew from their clothes on the summer wind.

RAMPICANTE (ITALIAN VINING ZUCCHINI) This is one of my all-time most-loved garden vegetables because it does double duty as both a summer zucchini and a winter butternut-type squash. This Italian heirloom is a vining summer squash rather than a bush plant. The fruit is long and trumpet-shaped, curls gently, and features medium to light-green striped skin. The flesh looks like other zucchini but tastes sweeter, another reason this squash should be more popular. All the seeds are contained in a small bulb at the end of the long fruit, so this zucchini is easy to use and does not need to be picked within days of appearing on the vine to be tender and tasty, as other summer squash does.

Because I expected so little, Gaines's painting is startlingly powerul. A lank-haired blond woman with a hard face sits at akitchen table in the harsh light of a bare bulb. She's surrounded by dirty cereal bowls and fast-food bags, and her shirt is open to the waist, revealing small sagging breasts. Her hollow eyes look out from the canvas with the sullen resignation of an animal that has helped build its own cage.

The room was small, lit by two naked bulbs in wall recesses, and bare of anything except for two solid wooden posts the height of a man and four feet apart. In each post, at just below shoulder height, was set a large iron ring. There were two other men already waiting, both leathermen. Len indicated each in turn. 'Rick and Sam.' The two men regarded Mike with arms folded. Rick was in his late twenties, a tall, blond biker, his hair hanging down well past his shoulders. Under his leather waistcoat he was bare-chested, his spare, pale flesh covered with tattoos of skulls, burning angels and other biker motifs, the twining reds, blues and blacks extending along both arms as well. He was wearing black leather gloves and impenetrable black shades. Shaven-headed Sam was older, shorter and stockier, built like a rugby player. A leather harness stretched across the barrel of his chest, its steel circlet buried in wiry hair. Through his leather chaps Mike could see a sizeable pouch, heavy with its contents.

Could I love everyone and even include bad people? I bowed my forehead into my clasped hands, feeling faint. Instead of thinking gigantic thoughts, I tried to focus on something small, the smallest thing I could think of. Someone once made this pew I’m sitting on, I thought. Someone sanded the wood and varnished it. Someone carried it into the church. Someone laid the tiles on the floor, someone fitted the windows. Each brick was placed by human hands, each hinge fitted on each door, every road surface outside, every bulb in every streetlight. And even things built by machines were really built by human beings, who built the machines initially. And human beings themselves, made by other humans, struggling to create happy children and families. Me, all the clothing I wear, all the language I know. Who put me here in this church, thinking these thoughts? Other people, some I know very well and others I have never met. Am I myself, or am I them? Is this me, Frances? No, it is not me. It is the others. Do I sometimes hurt and harm myself, do I abuse the unearned cultural privilege of whiteness, do I take the labour of others for granted, have I sometimes exploited a reductive iteration of gender theory to avoid serious moral engagement, do I have a troubled relationship with my body, yes. Do I want to be free of pain and therefore demand that others also live free of pain, the pain which is mine and therefore also theirs, yes, yes. When I opened my eyes I felt that I had understood something, and the cells of my body seemed to light up like millions of glowing points of contact, and I was aware of something profound. Then I stood up from my seat and collapsed.

Everything is arranged," John Robertson told me. Thank God." I forgot to mention that we appear to have one small problem," he said. Okay..." Evidently it seems Winston Holder has already left this morning to the border and Gbarnga. He took a journalist in." A journalist? Who?" I don't know who. They thought it must be you." But it wasn't me. I'm me," I said, though from the first hour in this country I'd begun to doubt it. I have Lincoln Smythe's address. He'll put us right. Everything will be arranged promptly, and we'll work out your itinerary." I thought everything was arranged," I said. By the bare bulb hung above our straw beds I saw, far back in John Robertson's eyes, the eternal West African question: What is this guy going on about? Naturally," he said, "but we just have to work out your itinerary." Everything is arranged doesn't mean you should expect to get anywhere or accomplish anything. In fact, for sanity's sake, those two ideas have to be banished: the idea of getting somewhere and the idea of accomplishing something. Everything is arranged means that all is complete, the great plan of the universe is unfolding before our eyes. So eat, drink, sleep. Everything is arranged.

Deacon met my glare with an impish grin. “Anyway, did you celebrate Valentine’s Day when you were slumming with the mortals?” I blinked. “Not really. Why?” Aiden snorted and then disappeared into one of the rooms. “Follow me,” Deacon said. “You’re going to love this. I just know it.” I followed him down the dimly-lit corridor that was sparsely decorated. We passed several closed doors and a spiral staircase. Deacon went through an archway and stopped, reaching along the wall. Light flooded the room. It was a typical sunroom, with floor-to-ceiling glass windows, wicker furniture, and colorful plants. Deacon stopped by a small potted plant sitting on a ceramic coffee table. It looked like a miniature pine tree that was missing several limbs. Half the needles were scattered in and around the pot. One red Christmas bulb hung from the very top branch, causing the tree to tilt to the right. “What do you think?” Deacon asked. “Um… well, that’s a really different Christmas tree, but I’m not sure what that has to do with Valentine’s Day.” “It’s sad,” Aiden said, strolling into the room. “It’s actually embarrassing to look at. What kind of tree is it, Deacon?” He beamed. “It’s called a Charlie Brown Christmas Tree.” Aiden rolled his eyes. “Deacon digs this thing out every year. The pine isn’t even real. And he leaves it up from Thanksgiving to Valentine’s Day. Which thank the gods is the day after tomorrow. That means he’ll be taking it down.” I ran my fingers over the plastic needles. “I’ve seen the cartoon.” Deacon sprayed something from an aerosol can. “It’s my MHT tree.” “MHT tree?” I questioned. “Mortal Holiday Tree,” Deacon explained, and smiled. “It covers the three major holidays. During Thanksgiving it gets a brown bulb, a green one for Christmas, and a red one for Valentine’s Day.” “What about New Year’s Eve?” He lowered his chin. “Now, is that really a holiday?” “The mortals think so.” I folded my arms. “But they’re wrong. The New Year is during the summer solstice,” Deacon said. “Their math is completely off, like most of their customs. For example, did you know that Valentine’s Day wasn’t actually about love until Geoffrey Chaucer did his whole courtly love thing in the High Middle Ages?” “You guys are so weird.” I grinned at the brothers. “That we are,” Aiden replied. “Come on, I’ll show you your room.” “Hey Alex,” Deacon called. “We’re making cookies tomorrow, since it’s Valentine’s Eve.” Making cookies on Valentine’s Eve? I didn’t even know if there was such a thing as Valentine’s Eve. I laughed as I followed Aiden out of the room. “You two really are opposites.” “I’m cooler!” Deacon yelled from his Mortal Holiday Tree room

You pay homage when and where you can. I love the smell of the bulb as the earth opens and releases it in harvest, an aroma that only those who grow garlic and handle the bulb and the leaves still fresh from the earth can know.Anyone who gardens knows these indescribable presences--of not only fresh garlic, but onions, carrots and their tops, parsley's piercing signal, the fragrant exultations of a tomato plant in its prime, sweet explosions of basil. They can be known best and most purely on the spot, in the instant, in the garden, in the sun, in the rain. They cannot be carried away from their place in the earth. They are inimitable. And they have no shelf life at all.

We tend to think of imagination and foresight like we are prone to think of life (sometimes) -- as an inscrutable flash of something from the outside that magically takes us over some large boundary in one atomic step. We even call it a flash (of insight), a eureka moment, a light bulb in our heads that suddenly turns on. But if you reflect on this phenomenon for a moment, you know you don't go suddenly from a blank mind to a fully formed solution. You were already thinking about the problem, and other near solutions that don't work, when suddenly you see a new connection that enables you to reuse familiar things on a novel way. Insight comes in small increments, leveraging what was already there.

A few scrapes, my ass,” she muttered, wringing her shaking hands. Constance shoved a bulb of garlic at her. “They’re Highlanders, dear. They’ll get themselves stabbed, dragged through a briar patch, thrown over a cliff, and punched in the face all before breakfast and call it ‘a fair interesting morn’.’ Now, peel those and put the cloves in the hot water.” The older woman nodded toward the steaming kettle a maid had deposited on the hearth. “Garlic water cleans wounds better than plain water and keeps infection away.” She latched onto the competence Constance radiated. While calming her with brisk assurances that all would be well, the older woman deftly deployed a small army of castle servants on various missions relating to “doctoring a bone-headed Highland husband.

The rain beat against the windows and against the tin roof of the hotel. It came down in hissing roars, then in whispers, then in loud shishes like sandpaper rubbed against wood. She drank the second glassful, climbed off the bed and began undressing, and then we were together, the cheap naked bulb still blazing down on the bed. Thinking back, I remember the stupidest things; the way there was a taut crease just above her hips, in the small of her back. The way she smelled like a baby's breath, a sweet barely there smell that retreated and retreated, so that no matter how close you got to it you weren't sure it was there. The brown speckles in the lavender-gray eyes, floating very close to the surface when I kissed her, the eyes wide open and aware. But not caring. The eyes of a gourmet offered a stale chunk of bread, using it of necessity but not tasting it any more than necessary. I remember getting up and coming back to her, and of throwing a shoe at the light bulb, later, when the whisky was gone. I remember the smell of rain-darkness in the room and her telling me I'd cut my feet on the light-bulb glass on the floor. And how she said I was no better than a tramp myself, that I made love to the cadence of the raingusts on the roof, and it was true I was doing just that, but it seemed the natural thing then. And I felt so marvelously clean and soaped and so in tune with the whole damned universe that I had the feeling I could have clouded up and rained and lightninged myself, and blown that cheese-colored room to smithereens.

The following houseplants are poisonous, some in very small doses: Dumb cane, English ivy, foxglove, hyacinth bulbs (and leaves and flowers in quantity), hydrangea, iris rootstalk and rhizome, lily of the valley, philodendron, Jerusalem cherry. Outdoor plants that are poisonous include: Azalea, rhododendron, caladium, daffodil and narcissus bulbs, daphne, English ivy, foxglove, hyacinth bulbs (and leaves and flowers in quantity), hydrangea, iris rootstalk and rhizome, Japanese yew seeds and leaves, larkspur, laurel, lily of the valley, morning glory seeds, oleander, privet, rhubarb leaves, sweet peas (especially the “peas,” which are the seeds), tomato plant leaves, wisteria pods and seeds, yews. Holiday favorites holly and mistletoe, and to a lesser extent, poinsettia (which is irritating but not poisonous), are also on the danger list.

The song just started again, and now I sang it, too. "These strong hands belong to you..." I found a place between two men. The first was about my age, maybe a little younger, with high cheekbones and small eyes. The other was middle-aged, with a wide forehead and bulb nose, and beside him was a man with a striking face, a square, dimpled chin and high cheekbones... and then there was another, and another--all the kinds of faces in all the colors the world calls black: brown and tan and yellow and orange, copper and bronze and gold. "These strong hands belong to you..." They sang--we sang--with no enthusiasm or joy. We used to sing at Bell's, crossing the yard or working on the pile, just like slaves used to sing in Old Slavery, spirituals and work songs, sly lyrics, silly lyrics, yearning for freedom or roasting Massa in nonsense words he couldn't understand. This, though--this was a different kind of singing. I looked from man to man, and they were singing mechanically, eyes front, mouths moving like puppets. Singing this dumb refrain about how much they loved their bosses and loved their work. Nothing spiritual about this. This was something else altogether.

Clark Air base in Angeles City is a hub of commerce. The streets teem with industrious Filipinos hustling to make a living. Rusty cars and trucks clog narrow streets and honk their horns with abandon. Jeepneys ferry passengers around town for only a few pesos and serve as public transportation. The jeepney is the official vehicle of the Philippines. Jeepneys are long, open-sided jeeps and have bench seats for passengers. The best jeepneys are very ornate, their hoods festooned with a multitude of fancy chrome horses and ornaments, multihued streamers, and hand-operated rubber-bulb horns. Safety standards are third-world-relaxed in the PI, and jeepney drivers casually smoke cigarettes while they sit with plastic containers of gasoline nestled between their feet. The clear plastic jugs have a tube that connects to the engine and serves as the jeepney’s improvised gas tank, making it easier for the driver to monitor and conserve fuel. Jeepneys are not the only transportation available. Small, sidecar-equipped motorcycles called tricycles, also serve as cheap taxis, crowding the streets near popular establishments. The alleys are lined with side-by-side food stalls, and street vendors occupy every corner.

Just above Tommy’s face were the Maiden and the Troll, two of his oldest wall people. The troll lived in a cave deep in the woods. He was big (Tommy knew the troll was even bigger than his daddy, and if the troll told his daddy to sit down and shut up, he would in a second), and he looked scary, with his little eyes and crooked teeth like fangs, but he had a secret. The secret was that he wasn’t scary at all. He liked to read, and play chess by mail with a gnome from over by the closet wall, and he never killed anything. The troll was a good troll, but everyone judged him by his looks. And that, Tommy knew, was a mean thing to do, though everyone did it. The maiden was very beautiful. Even more beautiful than Tommy’s mommy. She had long blonde hair that fell in heavy curls to her waist, and big blue eyes, and she always smiled even though her family was poor. She came into the woods near the troll’s cave to get water from a spring, for her family. The spring bubbled out of Tommy’s wall right next to where his hand lay when he was asleep. Sometimes she only came and filled her jug and left. But other times she would sit awhile, and sing songs of love lost, and sailing ships, and the kings and queens of Elfland. And the troll, so hideous and so kind, would listen to her soft voice from the shadows just inside the entrance of his cave, which sat just below the shelf where Tommy kept his favorite toys and books. Tommy felt bad for the troll. He loved the maiden who came to his spring, but she would never love him. He knew from listening to his parents and the stuff they watched on television when he was supposed to be asleep that beautiful people didn’t love ugly people. Ugly people were either to laugh at or to be frightened of. That was how the whole world worked. Tommy rolled over on his side, just a small seven year old boy in tan cargo shorts and a plain white T-shirt. He let his eyes drift over the bedroom wall, which was lumpy in some places and just gone in others. There was a part of the wall down near the floor where he could see the yellow light of the naked bulb down in the basement, and sometimes he wondered what might live down there. Nothing good, of that he was sure.

The PEOPLE, SCHOOL, EVERYONE, and EVERYTHING is so FAKE AND GAY.' 'I shrieked, at the top of my voice fingers outspread and frozen in fear, unlike ever before in my young life; being the gentle, sweet, and shy girl that I am.' 'Besides always too timid to have a voice, to stand up for me, and forced not to, by masters.' Amidst my thoughts racing ridiculously, 'I feel that it is all just another way for the 'SOCIETY' to make me feel inferior, they think, they are so 'SUPERIOR' to me, and who I am to them.' 'Nonetheless, every day of my life, I have felt like I have been drowning in a pool, with weights attached to my ankles.' 'Like, of course, there is no way for me to escape the chains that are holding me down.' 'The one and only person, that holds the key to my freedom: WILL NEVER LET ME GO! It's like there is within me, and has been deep inside me!' 'I now live in this small dull town for too damn long. It is an UNSYMPATHETIC, obscure, lonely, totally depressed, and depressing place, for any teenage girl to be, most definitely if you're a girl like me.' 'All these streets surrounding me are covered with filth, and born in the hills of middle western Pennsylvania mentalities of slow-talking and deep heritages, and beliefs, that don't operate me as a soul lost and lingering within the streets and halls.' 'My old town was ultimately left behind when the municipality neighboring made the alterations to the main roads; just to save five minutes of commuting, through this countryside village. Now my town sits on one side of that highway.' 'Just like a dead carcass to the rest of the world, which rushes by. What is sullen about this is that it is a historic town, with some immeasurable old monuments, and landmarks.' 'However, the others I see downright neglect what is here, just like me, it seems. Other than me, no one cares. Yet I care about all the little things.' 'I am so attached to all these trivial things as if they are a part of me. It disheartens me to see anything go away from me.' 'It's a community where the litter blows and bisects the road, like the tumble-wheats of the yore of times past.' 'Furthermore, if you do not look where you are going, you will fall in our trip, in one of the many potholes or heaved up bumps in the pavement, or have an evacuated structure masonry descending on your head.' 'Merely one foolproof way of simplifying the appearance of this ghost town.' 'There are still some reminders of the glory days when you glance around.' 'Like the town clock, that is evaporated black that has chipped enamel; it seems that it is always missing a few light bulbs.' 'The timepiece only has time pointing hands on the one side, and it nevermore shows the right time of day.' 'The same can be assumed for the neon signs on the mom-and-pop shops, which flicker at night as if they're in agonizing PAIN.' 'Why? To me is a question that is asked frequently.' 'It is all over negligence!' 'I get the sense and feeling most of the time, as they must prepare when looking around here at night.' 'The streetlamps do not all work, as they should. The glass in them is cracked.' 'The parking meters are always jammed, or just completely broken off their posts altogether.' 'The same can be said, for the town sign that titles this area. It is not even here anymore, as it should be now moved to the town square or shortage of a park.

«در مواجهه با تفکرات مارکسیستی و التقاطی مبنای فکری ما کتاب‌های #شهید_مطهری بود.» :closed_book: قایقی با هشت سرنشین، خاطرات شهید ترکاشوند، نوشته #مصطفی_رحیمی، #نشر_شاهد، ص۶۰ :small_blue_diamond: این مضمون در کتاب‌های #خاطرات #شهدا بارها تکرار شده است. :bulb: به نظر می‌رسد نسل اول امت حزب‌الله در دهه ۵۰ و ۶۰، #کتابخانه و #کتابخوانی به ویژه مطالعه آثار شهید مطهری را به منظور داشتن یک #نظام_فکری جدی‌تر گرفته بودند. :bulb: پاسداری از انقلاب، نیازمند کتابخوانی و انس با آثار شهید مطهری است؛ جدی بگیریم!

She soaked, washed, and trimmed three artichokes, baby purple Romagnas, which would sadly lose their beautiful hue once they hit hot water, then washed and peeled a bunch of pencil-thin asparagus. She pulled out several small zucchini and sliced them into translucent moons. She washed three leeks, slicing them down their centers and peeling back each layer, carefully rinsing away any sand, then chopped the white, light green, and some of the darker parts into a fine dice. She shelled a couple handfuls of spring peas, collecting them in a ceramic bowl. She chopped a bulb of fennel and julienned one more, then washed and spun the fronds. She washed the basil and mint and spun them dry. Last, she chopped the shallots. With the vegetables prepped, she started on the risotto, the base layer for the torta a strati alla primavera, or spring layer cake, she'd been finessing since her arrival, and which she hoped would become Dia's dish. She'd make a total of six 'torte': three artichoke and three asparagus. The trick was getting the risotto to the perfect consistency, which was considerably less creamy than usual. It had to be firm enough to keep its shape and support the layers that would be placed on top of it, but not gummy, the kiss of death for any risotto. She started with a 'soffritto' of shallot, fennel, and leek, adding Carnaroli rice, which she preferred to arborio, pinot grigio, and, when the wine had plumped the rice, spring-vegetable stock, one ladle at a time. Once the risotto had absorbed all the liquid and cooked sufficiently, she divided it into six single-serving crescent molds, placed the molds in a glass baking dish, and popped them all in the oven, which made the risotto the consistency of a soft Rice Krispies treat. Keeping the molds in place, she added the next layer, steamed asparagus in one version, artichoke in the other. A layer of basil and crushed pignoli pesto followed, then the zucchini rounds, flash-sauteed, and the fennel matchsticks, cooked until soft, and finally, the spring-pea puree. She carefully removed the first mold and was rewarded with a near-perfect crescent tower, which she drizzled with red-pepper coulis. Finally, she placed a dollop of chilled basil-mint 'sformato' alongside the crescent and radiated mint leaves around the 'sformato' so that it looked like a sun. The sun and the moon, 'sole e luna,' all anyone could hope for.

Few regions of the present United States were more inhospitable to human habitation than the lands of the Great Basin, the high desert country of southern Idaho, eastern Oregon, Nevada, and Utah. Indians of the Great Basin spent much of the year foraging for food in small and dispersed groups, although several families might come together for a communal rabbit drive or to dig for camas bulbs. It was common for Shoshonis to name their subgroups after the food most abundant in their customary dwelling grounds: thus among the Shoshonis were groups whose names translated as “seed eaters,” or “fish eaters,” or “mountain-sheep eaters.

The key to great bamboo, Yamashita tells me, is space. Bamboo trees can reproduce for six years, but their roots need room to spread, and the sun needs room to bake the forest floor. More than a farmer, Yamashita is a constant gardener, pruning branches, keeping the trees to a height of six meters, using rice husk to sow nutrients into the soil. The best bamboo is found deep underground, safely away from sunlight, turning the harvest into something resembling a truffle hunt. We walk carefully and quietly through the forest, looking for little cracks in the earth that indicate a baby bamboo trying to make its way to the surface. When we spot cracks, Yamashita comes by with a small pick and gently works the soil until he reaches the bulb. Most bamboo you see is ruddy brown or purple, but Yamashita's takenoko comes out lily white, tender, and sweet enough to eat like an apple. "You have to cook it right away, otherwise you begin to lose the flavor," says Shunichi.

Biddy?’ ‘No, not yet,’ Biddy said, thinking again that the scouse smelled good. ‘I left Virginia Street before Aunt Edie got round to thinking about a meal.’ ‘Right. Just for tonight you might as well eat in ’ere, wi’ us.’ She waddled out of the room and Biddy followed her into a tiny, dark little kitchen with a knee-high sink in one corner and a smelly, coke-burning stove in the other. There was a broken-down chair, a bare electric light bulb overhead and a large table. It was warm because of the stove, but cheerless, unfriendly. All the rooms are the same, they none of them want me, any more than Ma Kettle or her boys do, Biddy thought despairingly. Oh, how will I live in this horrible house with all these horrible people? But it was not a question to which she could give an answer. Instead, she watched as Ma ladled a very small helping of scouse and a

Garlic Nutter Spread Serves: 4 3 bulbs garlic 1 cup raw cashews ⅓ cup water or nondairy milk 1 tablespoon nutritional yeast Preheat the oven to 300˚F. Roast garlic in a small baking dish for about 25 minutes or until soft. When cool, remove and discard skins. Combine garlic and remaining ingredients in a high-powered blender. Blend until smooth. Use to season cooked vegetables or add extra flavor to soups and sauces. Spread it on a wrap or pita sandwich. Make a salad dressing by adding tomato sauce, vinegar, and some basil. PER SERVING: CALORIES 230; PROTEIN 9g; CARBOHYDRATE 18g; TOTAL FAT 15.2g; SATURATED FAT 2.7g; SODIUM 9mg; FIBER 2g; BETA-CAROTENE 1mcg; VITAMIN C 7mg; CALCIUM 55mg; IRON 2.8mg; FOLATE 9mcg; MAGNESIUM 108mg; ZINC 2.6mg; SELENIUM 10mcg

There’s a charge to being around Duncan, like one of those light bulbs you touch in the science museum that make your hair stand up, and we hadn’t stopped talking—urgently—since I arrived. We bounced from topic to topic, frantically, like fast friends excited to find someone else who also wanted to talk about religion, mysticism, sex, ghosts, and drugs. We sat down next to the incense like two kids in a dorm room trying to mask illegal aromas, and Duncan hit Record. I told him I wasn’t used to things getting so deep and so interesting so quickly. “That’s what happens when you’re with cool people,” Duncan said. “You end up getting in great conversations.” I wondered in this moment if Duncan knew how unique he was. I wondered if he knew how bored and dismissive people can be when you try to talk about dreams, or out-of-body experiences, or the afterlife, or if you suggest that the physical world is only just a small piece of what’s really going on here. “The plague of the world is that so many people allow themselves to be surrounded by vampires,” Duncan said, using the classiest monster as a word to describe all the what-you-see-is-what-you-get people, the ones who are busy cockblocking the curious weirdos from tripping out on their basic wonder. “Their whole life is one shit conversation to the next to the next to the next until they’re on their deathbed, and that’s the one real conversation they have. They finally say, ‘I love you so much!’ And then they die.” This is Duncan, the opposite of a vampire. He doesn’t drain life from people, he infuses them, resuscitating their awe and bringing color back to their cheeks. The vampires, he warned, “will keep you stuck in the harbor of sorrows. They’ll try to keep your fucking anchor down.” I cackled with laughter. Duncan is one of those rare people who remind you that we’re all here, stuck in our human bodies, confused and curious since we all emerged from the interdimensional space portal commonly known as a vagina. He wants to get into it; he wants to touch, taste, scream, laugh, and sing his way toward enlightenment, and as I sat with him that day, he made me think he just might bring me along with him.

He gave me a hard smile before clapping on his helmet. It enclosed his entire head and featured a multifunction power-optic visor, holovid camera with continuous map-revise data stream, laser communication capability, and an omnifilter respirator. Like his soft-armored combat jumpsuit, it had an environmental system to keep him comfy. His belt held a Kagi sidearm, a monster commando knife in place of the usual Ivanov stunner, small flexcanteens of water, coffee and nutrigoo, and a bulb of trailblazer spray.

Mr. Kaminski pulled a chain hanging from the pressed-metal kitchen ceiling, and light seeped from a bulb, casting a wan glow over a scarred wooden table, a small stained sink with a faucet that ran cold water, a gas stove. In the hall, outside the apartment door, was a lavatory we shared with our neighbors—a

Sniff, swill, sip 329 words Leading whisky expert Charles MacLean on the underrated art of downing a good Scotch. USE ALL YOUR SENSES We all love a splash of golden liquor now and then, but the fine art of appreciating whisky requires a heightening of the senses. 'Nosing' whisky, a technique employed by blenders, is called sensory evaluation or analeptic assessment. Prior to sipping, examine its colour and 'tears', which are the reams left behind on the glass after you swirl it. Even our sense of hearing can help us judge the whisky; a full bottle should open with a happy little pluck of the cap. APPRECIATE A GOOD MALT Appreciation and enjoyment are two dimensions of downing a stiff one. Identify how you like your whisky (with ice, soda or water) and stick with it. Getting sloshed on blended whisky is all very good, but you will need single malt and an understanding of three simple things to truly cherish your drink. A squat glass with a bulb at the bottom releases the full burst of its aroma when swilled. A narrow rim is an added advantage. Instead of topping the drink with ice, which dilutes the aroma, go for water. NIBBLE, DON'T GOBBLE Small bites pair best with your whisky. It excites the palate minimally, letting you detect the characteristics of the whisky through contrast. If you're not a big fan of food and whisky pairing, skip it. OLD IS GOLD While old whiskies are not necessarily better, it's a known fact that most of the finer whiskies are well-aged. I would consider whiskies that are anywhere between 18 and 50 years as old, but it also depends on the age of the cask. If the cask is reactive, it will dominate the flavours of the whisky within ten years of the ageing process. If you leave the spirit in the cask for much longer, the flavour of the whisky will be overpowered by the wood, lending it a distinct edge. Maclean was in Delhi to conduct the Singleton Sensorial experience.

It was a small place with bulbs of alcohol, chocolate, coffee, and tea all set with temperature controls in the nipple, so the uniformly tepid drinks could come out anywhere from almost boiling to just this side of ice. The

woke up in the middle of the night. Strange sounds were coming from outside our spaceship. I've watched enough scary movies to know that you should never investigate strange noises. It never ends well for the eager investigator, but I checked it out anyway. The moons were bright and big. This planet had three, small, medium, and large. They were arranged in a triangle and they lit up the night sky, like three high powered light bulbs. I checked the perimeter of the ship.

My Home HandyMan is a Calgary based handyman service. We specialize in small and medium-sized jobs that other contractors aren’t interested in. We’ll do anything from changing light bulbs to completely re-modelling your house. We are known for doing quality jobs at a great price—Guaranteed. We stand behind every job that we do.

When you see Chinese lanterns in a community home they are all lit with corms or candles. When creation your little lanterns out of paper at home, light them with candles is not actually a good idea. Though you could use threads of small LED bulbs. You can smooth get some that appearance like a energetic flame. Placing the gold or yellow tube confidential your lantern helps with the impression of being lit, just for adornment.

To recover an intuitive sense of what will be in season throughout the year, picture a season of foods unfolding as if from one single plant. Take a minute to study this creation—an imaginary plant that bears over the course of one growing season a cornucopia of all the different vegetable products we can harvest. We’ll call it a vegetannual. Picture its life passing before your eyes like a time-lapse film: first, in the cool early spring, shoots poke up out of the ground. Small leaves appear, then bigger leaves. As the plant grows up into the sunshine and the days grow longer, flower buds will appear, followed by small green fruits. Under midsummer’s warm sun, the fruits grow larger, riper, and more colorful. As days shorten into the autumn, these mature into hard-shelled fruits with appreciable seeds inside. Finally, as the days grow cool, the vegetannual may hoard the sugars its leaves have made, pulling them down into a storage unit of some kind: a tuber, bulb, or root. So goes the year. First the leaves: spinach, kale, lettuce, and chard (here, that’s April and May). Then more mature heads of leaves and flower heads cabbage, romaine, broccoli, and cauliflower (May–June). Then tender young fruit-set: snow peas, baby squash, cucumbers (June), followed by green beans, green peppers, and small tomatoes (July). Then more mature, colorfully ripened fruits: beefsteak tomatoes, eggplants, red and yellow peppers (late July–August). Then the large, hard-shelled fruits with developed seeds inside: cantaloupes, honeydews, watermelons, pumpkins, winter squash (August–September). Last come the root crops, and so ends the produce parade. Plainly these don’t all come from the same plant, but each comes from a plant, that’s the point—a plant predestined to begin its life in the spring and die in the fall. (A few, like onions and carrots, are attempting to be biennials, but we’ll ignore that for now.) Each plant part we eat must come in its turn—leaves, buds, flowers, green fruits, ripe fruits, hard fruits—because that is the necessary order of things for an annual plant. For the life of them, they can’t do it differently. Some minor deviations and a bit of overlap are allowed, but in general, picturing an imaginary vegetannual plant is a pretty reliable guide to what will be in season, wherever you live. If you find yourself eating a watermelon in April, you can count back three months and imagine a place warm enough in January for this plant to have launched its destiny.

Conductors have tons of free electrons and they keep moving in random direction (due to thermal energy), and each of these small movements contribute to an Electric current. You might be thinking, if an electric current is produced this easily in a conductor, why do we need batteries and generators and power plants and stuff. Can’t we just hook up a small piece of copper wire to a bulb and be done with it. Unfortunately, that won’t work. That’s because the currents produced by each free electron are in random direction (in accordance with the direction of their motion) and when we consider the conductor as a whole, these currents cancel each other out and net current is zero.

After I steamed four giant clams over a skillet of sake, Stephen ripped out the meat and hacked it into chunks. With cupped hands, he scooped up the chewy bits and threw them in a bowl. Then he stirred in spicy red-and-white radish wedges and a warm dressing of wasabi, sugar, and sweet white miso that I had stirred in a small saucepan over a low flame until it became thick and shiny. Following his directions, I spooned the golden clams back into their shells. Stephen garnished them with a pink-and-white "congratulatory" flower of spongy wheat gluten. "Precious," he said, winking at me. Next, we made sea urchin- egg balls, first blending creamy lobes of sea urchin with raw egg yolk and a little dashi. Stephen cooked the mixture until it formed a stiff paste and then pressed it through a sieve. I plopped a golden dollop in a clean damp cloth and flattened it into a disc. In the center I put three crescents of lily bulb tenderized in salt water. "Try one," urged Stephen, handing me a wedge of lily bulb. It was mealy and sweet, kind of like a boiled cashew. Stephen brought together the four corners of the damp cloth and twisted it gently to create a bubble of eggy sea urchin paste stuffed with lily bulb. When unveiled, it looked like a Rainier cherry. I twisted out nineteen more balls, which we later arranged on fresh green leaves draped across black lacquer trays. Next, we impaled several fat shrimp on two metal skewers, sending one rod through the head and the other through the tail. We grilled the grayish pink bodies until they became rosy on one side and then flipped them over until they turned opaque. Stephen painted golden egg yolk for prosperity over the juicy crustaceans and returned them to the grill until they smoldered and charred.

I speared a sausage with my knife, bit off the end. Juice and fat exploded: the pork melted. I tasted chestnuts, moss, the bulbs of wild lilies, the roots and shoots of an Umbrian forest floor. There was pepper, of course, salt and garlic. Nothing else. I opened my eyes. The Proctor was staring at me, and quickly looked away. I thought I saw a smile cross his lips before he opened them to admit another wagon-load of lentils. I tried a spoonful myself. They were very small and brown- earthy-tasting, of course. That I had been expecting. But these were subtle: there was a hint of pine, which came partly from the rosemary that was obviously in the dish, but partly from the lentils themselves. I did feel as if I were eating soil, but a special kind: some sort of silky brown clay, perhaps; something that Maestro Donatello would have crossed oceans to sculpt with, or that my uncle Filippo would have used as a pigment to paint the eyes of a beautiful brown-eyed donna. Maybe this is what the earth under the finest hazelnut tree in Italy would taste like- but that, perhaps, was a question best put to a pig. "Make sure you chew properly," I mumbled, piling my plate high. The serving girl came back with a trencher of sliced pork meats: salami dotted with pink fat, ribbons of lardo, peppery bacon. The flavors were slippery, lush, like copper leaf or the robe of a cardinal. I coiled a strip of dark, translucent ham onto my tongue: it dissolved into a shockingly carnal mist, a swirl of truffles, cinnamon and bottarga.

hidden from the pedestrians who wandered across to buy discount Viagra; it was deeper into the town, the disorder, the ruinous buildings, the litter, the donkeys cropping grass by the roadside. Reynosa was not its plaza, but rather another hot, dense border town of hard-up Mexicans who spent their lives peering across the frontier, easily able to see—through the slats in the fence, beyond the river—better houses, brighter stores, newer cars, cleaner streets, and no donkeys. At the first stoplight at the intersection of a potholed road of Reynosa, a fat, middle-aged man in shorts and wearing clown makeup—whitened face, red bulb nose, lipsticked mouth—began to juggle three blue balls as the light turned red, and a small girl in a tattered dress, obviously his daughter, passed him a teapot which he balanced on his chin. The small girl hurried to the waiting cars, soliciting pesos. At the next light, a man in sandals and rags juggled three bananas and flexed his muscles while making lunatic faces. A woman hurried from car to car with a basket, offering tamales. Farther on was a fire-eater, a skinny man in pink pajamas gulping smoky flames from a torch.

Even though I feel them for him, I had to hold back, to know for sure. I just had to hold back. That’s we he drifted off… Why did he fall asleep on me? Was it because I’m boring or is he just exposed? My head thumping still, I know was not thinking clearly, so I staggered back down the long hallway back into the dwindling party. I see one of the double-hung windows. Without anyone observing I reach my hand forward and place it on the big old sill, there is an electric candle with a night light bulb sitting in the middle. I crack the window to let out the smoke and smells out, and to get some much-needed air. A fine stream of rain-sh snow is gusting in on my face, it’s cold but feels so-so good, even though it’s winter. Enjoying the freezing air and the sensation of a hundred of little sparkly flacks. I squeezed my eyes closed tightly and promised myself that I’ll never forget the moment I just had with him. Funny I wanted to forget about all the sound, the tacky lights, and smalls of my friends and their mindless hilarity that they're tittering about. For some reason… I wanted to forget about all the heated hookups and the many bodies that were around me. What surpasses me the most about this, is that this is what I lived for and sacrificed so much to gain… to have the gathering and wanting of others that are popular, it's everything I ever wanted. Yet it seemed at that moment, I was better off before not having it. Before I became this girl… the girl that I’m not… not truly on the inside. When I open my eyes, I get the shock of my life. My little sis is standing in the doorway, staring at me. With that look holding me. She must have snuck out and followed me to this party with some of her older girlfriends, she has been messing with the wrong crew lately. I knew what happened to her tonight just by looking at her face, I knew. And if I find that boy, I’ll rip his sagging balls off! Then again, I was not much older than her when I went to my first party. I was horrified, she was doing what I did, back when I felt like I was dying inside. I was dead long before I wound up dead. I just wonder if she feels the same…? I wonder if I am the cause. How would let her in… and how did she get so popular already?

Harry, the security guard, was way too old and overweight for his job, but he was well liked by everyone, and best of all, he let us use his telephone to make local calls. I sometimes brought him a sandwich and some fruit from the galley, for which he was always grateful. His job didn’t pay much and from the looks of his attire, I don’t believe there was a woman looking after him. He didn’t talk much about things, other than to tell stories about his seafaring life so long ago. His shaggy dog lay sleeping next to a big, glowing potbelly stove. Occasionally some scruffy friends joined him to play cards under a bare light bulb hanging over a sad looking card table. It was a trip into the distant past, when I heard him tell some of his sea stories. After the perfunctory greeting and some remarks about the miserable weather, I asked if I could use his telephone. “Anytime,” Harry said, as I picked up the receiver from its cradle. I started to dial the prefix, when I noticed a movement on the wooden shelf behind the phone. At first I thought it was my imagination but there, I saw it again, and this time I could tell what it was… It was a rodent! It wasn’t just a small rodent; it was a huge Norwegian Rat! Gasping, I jumped back, letting the receiver drop. Whoa, I could feel the hair on the back of my neck tingling! “What the hell is this?” I exclaimed. The damn thing did not scurry away as I would have expected but just sat there with its nose twitching. It didn’t seem at all afraid…. I knew that it could have attacked me, but instead it just sat there looking at me, as a cat would, except with small, black, beady eyes. “Harry,” I shouted. “Get over here and look at this beast. It looks bigger than your dog!” “Keep your shirt on, sonny,” he said. “You're looking at Nibbles.” Sure enough, I now saw Nibble's milk and food dish. The damn rat was Harry's pet! I guess everyone needs somebody, but a pet rat and a shaggy dog? That was just too much! I left without making my call…. I don’t even recall putting the phone back into its cradle, although I’m certain I did. I figured that it wouldn’t take me all that long to walk the steep incline from the docks, past the warehouses, up to Congress Street and then down to State Street. I was on my way to my girlfriend’s apartment, snow or no snow, rat be damned!

I stood under the arch and absorbed the image. Rose and blue and ancient oriental rugs held pale pink loveseats with curved arms and perfectly faded silk upholstery. Sheer white-winged angels floated on a ceiling of baby-blue sky with clouds of spun gold. And eastern-facing windows of blue stained glass held paler blue stained-glass crosses in the middle. Daylight and streetlamps were obliterated by thick velvet curtains with gold tasseled ropes, and a small, dusty beam of faded light managed to seep past the heavy drapes, making it look like the tail end of the day instead of the early part of the afternoon. His home was lavish and seductive, and I thought it rare that a man living alone could create a thing of such intensity. For the second time in two days I found myself having to adjust my opinion of Michael Bon Chance. It was a marble fountain that ended my reverie and brought me back down to earth. It was the true centerpiece of the room, with water slowly seeping from a cracked jug and dripping over a statue of a nude couple, bathing. I cringed at the sound. Michael looked at me. "Something wrong?" "It's the dripping." He went over to the bar and poured me a glass of wine. "You're tense. Maybe this will help." I took a sip from the glass and put it down on the fireplace mantel. I caught a glimpse of Michael and myself in the mirror above the fire and felt trapped by how beautiful we looked in the rose glow of the dragon's-head lamps with pale pink bulbs.

Champagne arrived by the bottle, and the food came out of the kitchen à la carte on small plates. Roasted foie gras with passion fruit, saki-pine nut gazpacho with oysters and cherries, melted chestnut soup with salmon threads and celery root, and Mediterranean sea bass with Parmesan and charred lily bulb.

It tore Josie’s heart out to leave her there, but their training dictated that they neutralize the threat before they tended to the wounded. Standing and stepping over more debris, Josie made her way to the basement door. Noah followed her lead, moving along with her. She readied herself to go first. He pulled the door open, and Josie stepped through, onto a small landing. At the bottom of a small staircase hung a single dull yellow light bulb. Beyond it was only darkness and two killers.

tuna siciliana tonno siciliano 2 fennel bulbs 2 oranges, preferably organic ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper 1¾ pounds tuna steak, cut into 4 even pieces 1 tablespoon ground fennel seeds 2 tablespoons Clarified Butter (Chapter 7) or vegetable oil 1 tablespoon sea salt 4 teaspoons aged balsamic vinegar 4 teaspoons Basil Oil (Chapter 7) 1 Preheat the oven to 375°F. 2 Trim the fronds from the fennel bulbs and then cut the bulbs into 8 equal segments. Cut each orange (unpeeled) into 8 sections. 3 In a mixing bowl, toss the fennel and orange with the olive oil and red pepper and season to taste with salt and pepper. 4 Spread the fennel in a shallow baking pan and roast for 20 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and add the orange. Roast for about 5 minutes longer. Test the fennel for doneness by poking it with a small, sharp knife. When the fennel is done, the knife will meet with no resistance. Set aside the fennel and orange. 5 Season the tuna with fennel seeds, salt, and pepper. 6 Heat a sauté pan over high heat. When the pan is hot, put the clarified butter or oil in the pan. When the butter foams or the oil is smoking hot, sear the tuna on all sides or until rare. This should take 30 seconds on each side for perfectly rare tuna. Remove the tuna from the pan and slice each piece into quarters. 7 Put 4 pieces of roasted fennel and 4 pieces of roasted orange on each of 4 serving plates. Put 4 tuna slices in the center of each plate and season with sea salt. Drizzle the vinegar around the edge of each plate, followed by the Basil Oil. On a trip to Palermo, Sicily, I tasted a lot of fish dishes flavored with some of the traditional flavors of the island: fennel, orange, chiles, basil, and sea salt. When you make this dish, buy high-quality tuna, which can be bluefin, yellowfin, or bigeye tuna as long as it’s as fresh as can be. Cook it only long enough so that the center is still red or cooked to medium rare.

green olive tapenade makes about 3 cups 2 roasted red bell peppers, peeled and finely diced (see Chapter 1) 1 cup pitted and chopped green Cerignola olives 2 anchovy fillets, drained and crushed 2 tablespoons drained capers, rinsed and smashed 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar 6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil ¼ cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley Freshly ground black pepper Kosher salt 1 In a nonreactive glass or ceramic mixing bowl, combine the bell peppers, olives, anchovies, capers, and vinegar. Add the olive oil and parsley and about 1 teaspoon of black pepper and stir gently to mix well. Season to taste with salt. 2 Cover and refrigerate for up to 7 days. homemade giardiniera makes about 6 cups 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 1 bay leaf Pinch of crushed red pepper flakes Pinch of dried oregano 2 cups apple cider vinegar 1 cup white wine vinegar 1 cup sugar 1 teaspoon kosher salt 1 fennel bulb, trimmed of fronds, diced 1 large red onion, diced 1 celery rib, diced 1 large carrot, peeled and diced 1 large red bell pepper, ribs removed, diced 1 large yellow bell pepper, ribs removed, diced 1 jalapeño pepper, halved and seeded 1 cup cauliflower florets 1 cup pitted and halved Queen green olives or other large green olives 3 pickled peperoncini, sliced (see Note) 1 fresh sprig thyme 1 cup extra virgin olive oil 1 In a small, dry skillet set over medium-high heat, toast the black pepper, bay leaf, red pepper, and oregano for about 1 minute, or until fragrant. Slide from the pan to a plate and allow to cool. 2 Lay a 5-to 6-inch square of cheesecloth on a work surface. When the herbs are cool, pile them in the center. Gather the corners together and tie with a length of string to make an herb sachet. 3 In a large pot, heat 2 cups of water and the cider vinegar, wine vinegar, sugar, salt, and herb sachet over high heat and bring to a boil. 4 Add the fennel, onion, celery, carrot, bell peppers, jalapeño, and cauliflower. Let the liquid return to a boil, reduce the heat to a simmer, and cook for 10 to 12 minutes, or until the firmer vegetables (carrots, peppers, cauliflower) are al dente. 5 Remove from the heat and let cool. When the mixture is cool, add the olives, peperoncini, and thyme. Stir to mix, and then stir in the olive oil. Use right away or cover and refrigerate for up to 1 month.