Smoking Awareness Quotes

I want to touch with my mouth. His mouth, with my mouth. Maybe his neck, too. But first things first: Make him aware I exist. It’s possible that he is already aware, if only in a ‘don't step on the small girl’ kind of way.

A corpse doesn't need you to remember it. In fact, it doesn't need anything anymore-it's more than happy to lie there and rot away. It is you who needs the corpse. Looking at the body you understand the person is gone, no longer an active player in the game of life. Looking at the body you see yourself, and you know that you, too, will die. The visual is a call to self-awareness. It is the beginning of wisdom.

I wasn’t aware of just how close he’d moved to me until now. So many details came into focus. The shape of his lips, the line of his neck. “I’m not dangerous,” I breathed. He brought his face toward mine. “You are to me.” And somehow, against all reason, we were kissing. I closed my eyes, and the world around me faded. The noise, the smoke . . . it was gone. All that mattered was the taste of his mouth, a mix of cloves and mints. There was a fierceness in his kiss, a desperation . . . and I answered, just as hungry for him. I didn’t stop him when he pulled me closer, so that I almost sat on his lap. I’d never been wrapped around someone’s body like that, and I was shocked at how eagerly mine responded. His arm went around my waist, pulling me onto him further, and his other hand slid up the back of my neck, getting entangled in my hair. He took his lips away from my mouth, gently trailing kisses down to my neck. I tipped my head back, gasping when the intensity returned to his mouth. There was an animalistic quality that sent shock waves through the rest of my body.

It was hypnotic, and then it was unsettling, and finally I became aware of another entity in my universe, sitting on the shore two hundred yards away, smoking a pipe...

Does it make sense to boycott ourselves? Does it hold water to boycott the fluid course of our life? Is it consistent to commit self-sabotage by destroying wittingly our corporeal and mental structure? Those are the questions thousands of people may ask as they are confronted with the schizophrenic dilemma on the point of smoking, boozing, doping, sexual transgressing or environmental polluting. Many seem to be aware of their problem. Many have decided to stop from tomorrow on. But when tomorrow and after tomorrow come many tend to let slip their vow and their self-sabotage goes on to rule their life. Their dissonant behavior transforms them into social losers or hopeless patsies and depresses them into the class of forlorn pariahs. They realize, as such, that self-handicapping makes no sense, but are not able to protect themselves from themselves since they haven’t got the muscle to live down the spell of addiction. Thousands of people may feel having set the bar too high and recognize they are are failing to find the right angle and are missing sufficient insight to steer their life. If, however, they decide to give it a try they should be aware that the road may be very bumpy and that they have to be prepared for disappointments and regressions, that they might have to deal with very slowly crescent improvements, that they shouldn’t take themselves for a ride and that they could only possibly succeed by focusing painfully on the path to breaking free from the hornet's nest they have got themselves into.

I want to be, if I can, as sure of the world--the real world--around me as is possible. Now, you can only attain that to a certain degree, but I want the greatest degree of control. I've never involved myself in narcotics of any kind, I don't smoke, and I don't drink because that can easily just fuzz the edges of my rationality--fuzz the edges of my reasoning powers--and I want to be as aware as I possibly can. That means giving up a lot of fantasies that might be comforting in some ways, but I'm willing to give that up in order to live in an actually real world, or as close as I can get to it.

Certain kinds of information are like smoke: they work their way into people's eyes and minds whether sought out or not, and with no regard to personal preference.

I have at least the whole of my life to answer a question: Who am I? And who is the other? A gust of wind at dawn? A motionless landscape? A trembling leaf? A coil of white smoke above a mountain? I write all these words and I hear the wind, not outside, but inside my head. A strong wind, it rattles the shutters through which I enter the dream.

Ground rules, Tanner,” he growled. Tanner paled. More good. “No alcohol. No smoking. No drugs. No looking at other girls. You can dance with my daughter. Your hands will avoid the danger zones, which are here, here and here.” Liam gestured to his chest, groin and ass. “You can kiss her. Once. At 10:59 p.m. tonight, when you’ll be standing here once again. I will be on the other side of this door, waiting for her. Am I clear?” “Yes, sir,” Tanner whispered. “I was your age once, too,” Liam said. “I’m aware of that, sir.” “I know what you think about.” “I’m sorry.” “You can think it. You can’t do it.” “Okay.” “I have many sharp tools in my garage.” “Yes, sir.” “We’re clear, then?” “Very, sir.” “Good!” Liam smiled, then grabbed the boy by the shoulder and dragged him in. “Nicole! Your date’s here.

And far away, as Frodo put on the Ring and claimed it for his own, even in Sammath Naur the very heart of his realm, the Power in Barad-dûr was shaken, and the Tower trembled from its foundations to its proud and bitter crown. The Dark Lord was suddenly aware of him, and his Eye piercing all shadows looked across the plain to the door that he had made; and the magnitude of his own folly was revealed to him in a blinding flash, and all the devices of his enemies were at last laid bare. Then his wrath blazed in consuming flame, but his fear rose like a vast black smoke to choke him. For he knew his deadly peril and the thread upon which his doom now hung. From all his policies and webs of fear and treachery, from all his stratagems and wars his mind shook free; and throughout his realm a tremor ran, his slaves quailed, and his armies halted, and his captains suddenly steerless, bereft of will, wavered and despaired. For they were forgotten. The whole mind and purpose of the Power that wielded them was now bent with overwhelming force upon the Mountain. At his summons, wheeling with a rending cry, in a last desperate race there flew, faster than the winds, the Nazgûl, the Ringwraiths, and with a storm of wings they hurtled southwards to Mount Doom.

Making the choice to be naturally buried says, “Not only am I aware that I’m a helpless, fragmented mass of organic matter, I celebrate it. Vive la decay!

I have no strategy. I just want to skip all this and get to the part where he's my boyfriend. Not to mention, you know, the part where he's aware I exist.

Love and intimacy are at the root of what makes us sick and what makes us well, what causes sadness and what brings happiness, what makes us suffer and what leads to healing. … I am not aware of any other factor in medicine—not diet, not smoking, not exercise, not stress, not genetics, not drugs, not surgery—that has a greater impact on our quality of life, incidence of illness, and premature death from all causes.

You need time, and I respect that. But make no mistake about it, I intend to make you mine again. I’m fully aware this won’t be easy. I gave up on us once; it won’t happen again.

If you take good care of any disease by eating well, sleeping well, being aware of your health, consciously wanting to be well, not smoking, et cetera, you are doing all the things you should be doing anyway, but somehow having a disease makes them easier to do. A human without a disease is like a ship without a rudder.

You know, I’ve never understood that. How being named for a woman’s nethers is somehow more grievous than any other insult. Seems to me calling someone after a man’s privates is worse. I mean, what do you picture when you hear a fellow called a cock?’ Tric shrugged, befuddled at the strange turn in conversation. ‘You imagine an oaf, don’t you?’ Mia continued. ‘Someone so full of wank there’s no room for wits. A slow-minded bastard who struts about full of spunk and piss, completely ignorant of how he looks to others.’ An exhalation of clove-sweet grey into the air between them. ‘Cock is just another word for “fool”. But you call someone a cunt, well …’ The girl smiled. ‘You’re implying a sense of malice there. An intent. Malevolent and self-aware. Don’t think I name Consul Scaeva a cunt to gift him insult. Cunts have brains, Don Tric. Cunts have teeth. Someone calls you a cunt, you take it as a compliment. As a sign that folk believe you’re not to be lightly fucked with.’ A shrug. ‘I think they call that irony.’ Mia sniffed, staring at the wastes laid out below them. ‘Truth is, there’s no difference between your nethers and mine. Aside from the obvious, of course. But one doesn’t carry any more weight than the other. Why should what’s between my legs be considered any smarter or stupider, any worse or better? It’s all just meat, Don Tric. In the end, it’s all just food for worms. Just like Duomo, Remus, and Scaeva will be.’ One last drag, long and deep, as if drawing the very life from her smoke. ‘But I’d still rather be called a cunt than a cock any turn.’ The girl sighed grey, crushed her cigarillo out with her boot heel. Spat into the wind. And just like that, young Tric was in love.

Sometimes being strong meant knowing when to avoid the things that made you weak. Eighty percent of being courageous was about being self-aware. You had to know your weaknesses to develop your strengths.

The threat of lawsuits has increased public awareness of the dangers of smoking and has made tobacco companies market their dangerous nicotine delivery systems more responsibly. The threat of lawsuits has made all kinds of products safer. For example, over the last forty years or so, automobile deaths have been cut nearly in half by safety features in cars, developed and implemented in response to lawsuits.

The Poem About Taking out the Trash In the vast emptiness of darkness, Stars are being born and are burning out; Galaxies expand, into what I have no idea, And dark matter fills the infinite space That has no bounds and no limits. In the middle of all this, I stand In a single moment and know how small I am. A group of atoms, the size of nothing in comparison. I am the observer of the play on a tiny stage. The onlooker who watches the painting Of a picture that few stop to see. The listener of a song where I hear only a fraction Of a fraction of a note in a song that will be forever sung And that has been being sung for eternity upon eternity, Before I knew breath and sound. I am but dust, stardust, a breath of a life, smoke Rising into oblivion, here then gone as quickly. Under all of this, I take out the trash.

She was aware that she stood with her mouth gaping open like a fool but she just couldn’t stop herself. He was beautiful, handsome, sexy… Oh my God! He’s smoking hot!

Before the Industrial Revolution, it was normal to divide the night into two periods of sleep: the “first sleep,” or “dead sleep,” lasting from the evening until the early hours of the morning; and the “second” or “morning” sleep, which took the slumberer safely to daybreak. In between, there was an hour or more of wakefulness known as the “watch,” in which “Families rose to urinate, smoke tobacco, and even visit close neighbors. Many others made love, prayed, and . . . reflected on their dreams, a significant source of solace and self-awareness.” In the intimacy of the darkness, families and lovers could hold deep, rich, wandering conversations that had no place in the busy daytime.

She says she is aware of the irony of being a medical examiner who smokes, but that for all the blackened lungs she's seen, it is more disturbing to open the chest cavity of a veteran and find it is pristine.

She says she is aware of the irony of being a medical examiner who smokes, but that for all the blackened lungs she’s seen, it is more disturbing to open the chest cavity of a veteran and find that it is pristine.

...and the smoke that creeps off the tip of my cigarette and into the dim, scattered strands of light leaking off the moon, in through the clefts in the curtains, is much like my spirit trying to escape the burn of yesterday's presence.

Smoke says the beef is much better than the squawky white birds." Her expression changed from annoyed to dismayed. "Squawky white birds? Chickens? You ate Mrs. Beale's chickens?" Smoke whined apologetically. Saetan leaned back in his chair. Oh, it was so satisfying to see her thrown off stride. "I'm sure Mrs. Beale was delighted to feed a guest - even if she wasn't aware of it," he added dryly, remembering too well his cook's reaction when she learned about the missing hens.

Sitting across the dinner table was a man who had paid a massive price for hoping and trying for a just world, who had fathered and then neglected me, who wasn’t aware that the rage he harbored had killed all other impulses in him […] And here I was, sliding down a similar inevitable path.

[...] in his experience, reversion was the nature of things-people who had given up smoking (he touched the cigarette cocked behind his ear without being aware of it) wanted to go on smoking, and pictures that had been hanging crooked since Nixon was President wanted to go on hanging crooked.

The smoke! The golden smoke! His robe whipped upward, turning him until his face was directed downward into the abyss. With his gaze on the depths, he recognized a maelstrom of boiling rapids there, the mirror of his life-precipitous currents and plunges, all movement gathering up all substance. Leto’s words wound through his mind on a path of golden smoke: “Caution is the path to mediocrity. Gliding, passionless mediocrity is all that most people think they can achieve.” Moneo fell freely then in the ecstasy of awareness. The universe opened for him like clear glass, everything flowing in a no Time.

Habit has two parts, Toni [Packer] says. There is the habit itself (finger biting, smoking, drinking, whatever), and there is the observer who wants to stop, who is also a habit. And there is the conflict, the battle between the desire to indulge, which is an escape from what is, and the desire to stop, which is also a movement away from what is.

aware of her transformation

Was engaging with world issues a defense mechanism to trivialize personal pain, or was I doing it to be aware and responsible?

When I read Sontag for the first time, just like the first time I read Hannah Arendt, Emily Dickinson, and Pascal, I kept having those sudden, subtle, and possibly microchemical raptures—little lights flickering deep inside the brain tissue—that some people experience when they finally find words for a very simple and yet till then utterly unspeakable feeling. When someone else's words enter your consciosuness like that, they become small conceptual light-marks. They're not necessarily illuminating. A match struck alight in a dark hallway, the lit top of a cigarette smoked in bed at midnight, embers in a dying chimney: none of these things has enough light of its own to reveal anything. Neither do anyone's words. But sometimes a little light can make you aware of the dark, unknown space that surrounds it, of the enormous ignorance that envelops everything we think we know. And hat recognition and coming to terms with darkness is more valuable than all the factual knowledge we may ever accumulate.

Here undoubtedly lies the chief poetic energy:—in the force of imagination that pierces or exalts the solid fact, instead of floating among cloud-pictures. To glory in a prophetic vision of knowledge covering the earth, is an easier exercise of believing imagination than to see its beginning in newspaper placards, staring at you from the bridge beyond the corn-fields; and it might well happen to most of us dainty people that we were in the thick of the battle of Armageddon without being aware of anything more than the annoyance of a little explosive smoke and struggling on the ground immediately about us.

A corpse doesn't need you to remember it. In fact, it doesn't need anything anymore--it's more than happy to lie there and rot away. It is you who needs the corpse. Looking at the body you understand the person is gone, no longer an active player in the game of life. Looking at the body you see yourself, and you know that you, too, will die. That visual is a call to self-awareness. It is the beginning of wisdom.

Case in point: Warnings on cigarette packages can increase a smoker’s urge to light up. A 2009 study found that death warnings trigger stress and fear in smokers—exactly what public health officials hope for. Unfortunately, this anxiety then triggers smokers’ default stress-relief strategy: smoking. Oops. It isn’t logical, but it makes sense based on what we know about how stress influences the brain. Stress triggers cravings and makes dopamine neurons even more excited by any temptation in sight. It doesn’t help that the smoker is—of course—staring at a pack of cigarettes as he reads the warning. So even as a smoker’s brain encodes the words “WARNING: Cigarettes cause cancer” and grapples with awareness of his own mortality, another part of his brain starts screaming, “Don’t worry, smoking a cigarette will make you feel better!

We’re up against a public that wants a smoking gun . . .We know the public wants, demands, something simple. And we’re also very much aware that we live in a time of rampant science denial. Nobody does nuance anymore.

I have been aware for many years that most people do not think about aging in the same way that they think about cancer, or diabetes, or heart disease. They are strongly in favor of the absolute elimination of such diseases as soon as possible, but the idea of eliminating aging—maintaining truly youthful physical and mental function indefinitely—evokes an avalanche of fears and reservations. Yet, in the sense that matters most, aging is just like smoking: It’s really bad for you.

Long inhale, long exhale. In the pale evening light, the first cloud of smoke floated away from her like thought. She was never more aware of her breath than while smoking, never more present. It would be a great form of meditation if it wasn’t also killing her.

They sat for a time listening to the music and then Bond turned to Vesper: ‘It’s wonderful sitting here with you and knowing the job’s finished. It’s a lovely end to the day – the prize-giving.’ He expected her to smile. She said: ‘Yes, isn’t it,’ in a rather brittle voice. She seemed to be listening carefully to the music. One elbow rested on the table and her hand supported her chin, but on the back of her hand and not on the palm, and Bond noticed that her knuckles showed white as if her fist was tightly clenched. Between the thumb and first two fingers of her right hand she held one of Bond’s cigarettes, as an artist holds a crayon, and though she smoked with composure, she tapped the cigarette occasionally into an ashtray when the cigarette had no ash. Bond noticed these small things because he felt intensely aware of her and because he wanted to draw her into his own feeling of warmth and relaxed sensuality. But he accepted her reserve. He thought it came from a desire to protect herself from him, or else it was her reaction to his coolness to her earlier in the evening, his deliberate coolness, which he knew had been taken as a rebuff.

Now she took a close look at me for the first time, puffing on her pipe while the old woman beside her sighed. I didnt feel I could look at Mother directly, but I had the impression of smoke seeping out of her face like steam from a crack in the earth. I was so curious about her that my eyes took on a life of their own and began to dart about. The more I saw of her, the more fascinated I became. Her kimono was yellow, with willowy branches bearing lovely green and orange leaves; it was made of silk gauze as delicate as a spiders web. Her obi was every bit as astonishing to me. It was a lovely gauzy texture too, but heavier-looking, in russet and brown with gold threads woven through. The more I looked at her clothing, the less I was aware of standing there in that dirt corridor, or of wondering what had become of my sister and my mother and father and what would become of me.

In 1946, a new advertising campaign appeared in magazines with a picture of a doctor in a lab coat holding a cigarette and the slogan, “More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.” No, this wasn’t a spoof. Back then, doctors were not aware that smoking could cause cancer, heart disease and lung disease.

As one sat in the aeroplane amidst all the noise, smoking and loud talking, most unexpectedly, the sense of immensity and that extraordinary benediction which was felt at il L., that imminent feeling of sacredness, began to take place. The body was nervously tense because of the crowd, noise, etc. but in spite of all this, it was there. The pressure and the strain were intense and there was acute pain at the back of the head. There was only this state and there was no observer. The whole body was wholly in it and the feeling of sacredness was so intense that a groan escaped from the body and passengers were sitting in the next seats. It went on for several hours, late into the night. It was as though one was looking, not with eyes only but with a thousand centuries; it was altogether a strange occurrence. The brain was completely empty, all reaction had stopped; during all those hours, one was not aware of this emptiness but only in writing it is the thing known, but this knowledge is only descriptive and not real. That the brain could empty itself is an odd phenomenon. As the eyes were closed, the body, the brain seemed to plunge into unfathomable depths, into states of incredible sensitivity and beauty. The passenger in the next seat began to ask something and having replied, this intensity was there; there was no continuity but only being. And dawn was coming leisurely and the clear sky was filling with light - As this is being written late in the day, with sleepless fatigue, that sacredness is there. The pressure and the strain too.

Apology Lately, too much disturbed, you stay trailing in me and I believe you. How could I not feel you were misspent, there by books stacked clean on glass, or outside the snow arriving as I am still arriving. If the explanations amount to something, I will tell you. It is enough, you say, that surfaces grow so distant. Maybe you darken, already too much changed, maybe in your house you would be content where no incident emerges, but for smoke or glass or air, such things held simply to be voiceless. And if you mean me, I believe you. Or if you should darken, this inwardness would be misspent, and flinching I might pause, and add to these meager incidents the words. Some books should stay formal on the shelves. So surely I heard you, in your complication aware, snow holding where it might weightless rest, and should you fold into me—trackless, misspent, too much arranged—I might believe you but swiftly shut, lines of smoke rising through snow, here where it seems no good word emerges. Though it is cold, I am aware such reluctance could lose these blinking hours to simple safety. Here is an inwardless purpose. In these hours when snow shuts, it may be we empty, amounting to something. How could I not wait for those few words, which we might enter

Does he smoke marijuana?” I asked, aware that marijuana’s mind expansion properties are the motive behind the government’s adamant opposition to the herb. Since it can render mind control uncontrollable by penetrating memory compartmentalization, marijuana use is strictly forbidden in the military, special forces, among spies, etc.

I had a bad dream. The sky was falling down, and the moon disappeared. The stars fell into the ocean, and the ocean had a lot of smoke coming from it because the water put the stars' light out. I found myself talking in my sleep, begging the moon not to give up on me. I am willing to turn my life around if the moon and stars give me another chance.

I work with a great deal of discipline, although I usually take on more than I can handle and often have to extend due dates. I have always been appalled by bohemianism because of its laziness, disorder, and moral weakness. I understand that this way of living is a response to the fact of human frailty, but it leans too far in one direction. Being a little more buttoned up doesn’t mean that you’ll get so brittle that you’ll break. Nor does it mean that you don’t understand tragedy, loss, and, most of all, human limitation. I am more than well aware of those things and I feel very strongly, but on the other hand I like to run ten miles and return to a spotless well-ordered room, and I like my shirts heavily starched. When I used to go on a long run on Sunday morning when I lived on the Upper West Side, I would pass thousands and thousands of people in restaurants eating . . . (I won’t say this word, because I hate it so much, but it rhymes with hunch, and it’s a disgusting meal that is supposed to be both breakfast and lunch). There they were—having slept for five hours while I was doing calisthenics and running—unshaven (the women too), bleary eyed, surrounded by newspapers scattered as if in a hamster cage, smoking noxious French cigarettes, and drinking Bloody Marys while they ate huge quantities of fat. They looked to me like a movie version of South American bandits. I would never want to be like that. I prefer to live like a British soldier.

She’s drawn to me just as I’m drawn to her. She can’t keep away. She circles, forced to keep her distance, afraid of abandoning her husband and, even more, her son for too long. But she keeps coming, like a moth to my candle, staying longer than she should, leaving late for dinners and birthday parties, singeing her wings. She’s risking her marriage for me, her family, her reputation. And I, the moth circling her candle, realize that she’s not just a candle. She’s a moth as well, circling me. I look at her and see myself reflected, my feelings, my desires. And she, looking at me, must see herself. And which of us is moth and which is candle hardly seems to matter. We’re both the same. That’s the secret. What moths never tell us as they whirl in their dances. What Manucci learned at Pak Tea House. What sufis veil in verse. I turn her around and look into her eyes and see the wonder in them that must be in mine as well, the wonder I first saw on our night of ecstasy, and I feel myself explode, expand, fill the universe, then collapse, implode like a detonation under water, become tiny, disappear. I’m hardly aware of myself, of her, when I open my mouth. There is just us, and I speak for us when I speak, and I must be trembling and crying, but I don’t even know if I am or what I’m doing. I just say it. “I love you.” And I lose myself in her eyes and we kiss and I feel myself becoming part of something new, something larger, something I never knew could be. Union. There are no words.

I am a human hazard because I destroy everything and everyone who gets in my way. They made me this way. Every time they neglected me, I was slowly fuming with heat. Every time they ignored me the fumes grew hotter from the smoke. Therefore, I became a human being gone bad. Every time they inhaled my fumes, I would cut them with my tongue's quadruple swords and kill them with my words.

A corpse doesn’t need you to remember it. In fact, it doesn’t need anything anymore—it’s more than happy to lie there and rot away. It is you who needs the corpse. Looking at the body you understand the person is gone, no longer an active player in the game of life. Looking at the body you see yourself, and you know that you, too, will die. The visual is a call to self-awareness. It is the beginning of wisdom.

Watson, there are those rare people who elicit behaviour from us that others may not. Let me suggest that you were one man on the battlefield, another with your patients, a third altogether with Mary and perhaps a fourth in my company, for example?' 'No, Holmes. I am always myself. Well, perhaps I smoke less around Mary.' He smiled at this. 'But whatever the situation, I try always to be the best man I can be.

Unbuttoning my suit jacket, I took a cigar from the inner pocket of my coat. From a still smaller pocket I took out my cigar cutter and matches. Though it wasn’t after dinner, I lit the cigar—a Davidoff Grand Cru No. 3—and stood smoking, trying to calm myself. The cigars, the double-breasted suits—they’re a little too much. I’m well aware of that. But I need them. They make me feel better. After what I’ve been through, some overcompensation is to be expected.

The ‘Jewish Question’ itself went up in smoke. The Oriental Jews who have come here are admirable in their own way, but they are without the modern skills that are so badly needed. Yes, while the Jews suffered under Hitler the conscience of the world was aware of them, but when they were dead that awareness also died. Ah, before 1939, the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe created a rich, vital civilization—a culture, a literature, institutions. It all went into the graves and into the ovens.

His eyes were shockingly blue in that suntanned face, his brief smile a dazzling flash of white. He was very handsome, his features strong and even, with faint, pale whisks of laugh lines radiating from the outer corners of his eyes. He seemed like someone who would be irreverent and amusing, but there was also something shrewd about him, something a bit flinty. As if he'd had his share of experience in the world, and had few illusions left. Somehow that made him even more attractive. He came to them without haste. A pleasant outdoors scent clung to him: sun and air, a dusty, sedgelike sweetness and a hint of smoke, as if he'd been standing near a peat fire. His eyes were the darkest blue she'd ever seen, the irises rimmed with black. It had been a long time since a man had looked at Phoebe like this, direct and interested, and the slightest bit flirty. The strangest feeling came over her, something that reminded her a little of the early days of her marriage to Henry... that shaky, embarrassing, inexplicable desire to press her body intimately against someone else's. Until now, she'd never felt it for anyone but her husband, and never anything like this fire-and-ice jolt of awareness.

The worse I do in school, the more I rebel. I drink, I smoke pot, I act like an ass. I’m dimly aware of the inverse ratio between my grades and my rebellion, but I don’t dwell on it. I prefer Nick’s theory. He says I don’t do well in school because I have a hard-on for the world. It might be the only thing he’s ever said about me that’s halfway accurate. (He typically describes me as a cocky showboater who seeks the limelight. Even my father knows me better than that.) My general demeanor does feel like a hard-on—violent, involuntary, unstoppable—and so I accept it as I accept the many changes in my body.

Sorry to inform you...but as a fellow failed miner, the problem is there's nowhere left to dig. We're real poets man. And whatever. But it's the digging, it's the holes! Its these burrows to half nestle in just to pass the time, to chafe the inner thigh of boredom and that level of power-demanding pain is only in existence because you really, really know that there isn't anything else. The holes. And me missing a shovel, that has created the voids, the tears, the fucks, the sucks, the shame, the stares, the songs, the words, and in admittedly, even more holes. Not having one of my shovels has somehow overcompensated the digs in which I've dug. The holes. The holes are why you smoke aware of cancer, a disease to take over years of boring lives, and give us a bone to gnaw on, overcome, defeat, lick-dry, or die. The holes are why you drink with your last dollars, when you know you're going to throw it up tonight anyway. The holes are why you think you're in love, and that's a hole that you might not climb back from. The holes, the holes the holes, making you question everything standing at a bus stop...smelling like cigarettes and perfume...signing up for classes you wont go to... hand covered in club stamps... face covered in guilt... Maybe go to a protest and just stand there...Or lay in bed when there's no way you can sleep...

As soon as we fail to promptly obey the senses of smell and taste, they grow more lax in the fulfilment of their duty, and gradually allow harmful matter to pass unchallenged into the body. You are aware how one can become used to sitting in dense clouds of tobacco-smoke and inhaling it just as if it were healthy fresh air. The tongue has been still further corrupted, and we know that it can gradually be habituated to most unnatural food. Need I remind you of the different dishes and beverages which we now think indispensable, all of which were unknown some centuries ago? To these the present generation has grown so accustomed, that it would rather renounce a natural diet than give them up.

The introduction of cinematography enabled us to corral time past and thus retain it not merely in the memory - at best, a falsifying receptacle - but in the objective preservative of a roll of film. But, if past, present and future are the dimensions of time, they are notoriously fluid. There is no tension in the tenses and yet they are always tremulously about to coagulate. The present is a liquid jelly which settles into a quivering, passive mass, the past, as soon as - if not sooner than - we are aware of it as present. Yet this mass was intangible and existed only conceptually until arrival of the preservative, cinema. The motion picture is usually regarded as only a kind of shadow play and few bother to probe the ontological paradoxes it presents. For it offers us nothing less than the present tense experience of time irrefutably past. So that the coil of film has, as it were, lassoed inert phenomena from which the present had departed, and when projected upon a screen, they are granted a temporary revivification. [...] The images of cinematography, however, altogether lack autonomy. Locking in programmed patterns, they merely transpose time past into time present and cannot, by their nature, respond to the magnetic impulses of time future for the unachievable future which does not exist in any dimension, but nevertheless organizes phenomena towards its potential conclusions. The cinematographic model is one of cyclic recurrences alone, even if these recurrences are instigated voluntarily, by the hand of man viz. the projectionist, rather than the hand of fate. Though, in another sense, the action of time is actually visible in the tears, scratches and thumbprints on the substance of the film itself, these are caused only by the sly, corrosive touch of mortality and, since the print may be renewed at will, the flaws of aging, if retained, increase the presence of the past only by a kind of forgery, as when a man punches artificial worm-holes into raw or smokes shadows of fresh pain with a candle to produce an apparently aged artefact. Mendoza, however, claimed that if a thing were sufficiently artificial, it became absolutely equivalent to the genuine.

They say, you are a wildfire that is out of control. It doesn’t matter because nobody sees it; they only feel it. I burn and set fire to everyone who crosses me because they deserve it. Nobody deserves my kindness. My kindness to them is a weakness, so I created a wildfire in my mind and around me. My skin is brass, and I do not burn easily. I am a human hazard because I destroy everything and everyone who gets in my way. They made me this way. Every time they neglected me, I was slowly fuming with heat. Every time they ignored me the fumes grew hotter from the smoke. Therefore, I became a human being gone bad. Every time they inhaled my fumes, I would cut them with my tongue's quadruple swords and kill them with my words.

As he mused on the possibilities he became aware of the odor of cigarette smoke. And the sound of muted sobs... As she tried to stifle her anguish, what came out of her was utterly mournful, the saddest thing Luke had ever heard. He wanted to scramble out of the tree house, climb back into his room, and shut the window. But he was afraid to move. She would hear him. So he just sat there, hearing the agony of thousands of failed days bleed out of Nell. He put his hands over his ears and closed his eyes. he didn't want to hear her sobbing, didn't want to acknowledge she felt pain - nor that he knew she'd lived through more pain than anyone else he'd ever known. That maybe she had sent Norah and Kieran away because she knew Eleanor's home had to be happier than hers. He didn't want to acknowledge that. He wouldn't be able to hate her then.

The way to break the cycle and avoid embalming, the casket, the heavy vault, is something called green, or natural, burial. It is only available in certain cemeteries, but its popularity is growing as society continues to demand it. natural burial is what transpired with Edward Abbey's remains, minus the whole stealing-the-corpse and hightailing-it-into-the-desert-thing. The body goes straight into the ground, in a simple biodegradable shroud, with a rock to mark the location. It zips merrily through decomposition, shooting its atoms back into the universe to create new life. Not only is natural burial by far the most ecologically sound way to perish, it doubles down on the fear to fragmentation and loss of control. Making the choice to be naturally buried says, "Not only am I aware that I'm a helpless, fragmented mass of organic matter, I celebrate it. Vive la decay!

Such an expression of unhappiness was enough by itself to make one’s eyes slide above the paper’s edge to the poor woman’s face—insignificant without that look, almost a symbol of human destiny with it. Life’s what you see in people’s eyes; life’s what they learn, and, having learnt it, never, though they seek to hide it, cease to be aware of—what? That life’s like that, it seems. Five faces opposite—five mature faces—and the knowledge in each face. Strange, though, how people want to conceal it! Marks of reticence are on all those faces: lips shut, eyes shaded, each one of the five doing something to hide or stultify his knowledge. One smokes; another reads; a third checks entries in a pocket book; a fourth stares at the map of the line framed opposite; and the fifth—the terrible thing about the fifth is that she does nothing at all. She looks at life. Ah, but my poor, unfortunate woman, do play the game—do, for all our sakes, conceal it!

God lives in my head. His fields are immeasurable, his gardens are full of beautiful flowers that never die, regal women walk there naked, thousands of them. And the sun rises and sets and shines low and high and low again and the endless domain is endlessly itself and never the same for an instant. Broad rivers run through it, curving and meandering, and the sun shines on them and they carry the light to the sea. I sit quiet and content beside the rivers of my thoughts and smoke a clay pipe and feel the sunshine on my body and see the water flow ceaselessly into the unknown. The unknown doesn’t bother me. I nod now and then to the beautiful women plucking the flowers in my gardens and I hear the wind rustling through the high pines, through the forests of certainty, of knowing that all this exists whenever I decide to think it. I am grateful that this has been given to me. And I puff on my pipe in all humility and feel like God himself, who is infinity itself. I sit there aimlessly, God’s aim is aimlessness. But to keep this awareness always is granted to no man.

It is a pain that will stay with you as long as you live… . All the time I spent with Mason, I felt I never knew him, never could put my hands on him. He was like a gorgeous silver fish in a still pond: make a grab for him, and he has slithered away, and there you are with a handful of water. But maybe that was just the thing about him, you see? He was like mercury. Smoke. Wind. It was as if he was hardly a man at all, but a creature from a different race who had taken on the disguise of a man, an imperfect disguise, so that while you saw that he walked and talked and smelled like a man, you were nonetheless aware that here was a creature so strange, so new—so remote from the depths of your own experience, your own life, your own past—that there were times when you looked at him with your mouth wide-open, in awe, wondering that you could communicate with each other at all. For him there was no history, or, if there was, it began on the day he was born. Before that there was nothing, and out of that nothing sprang this creature, committed to nothingness because of the nothingness that informed all time before and after the hour of his birth. And it was impossible to understand a creature like this… . And so—

Why are you here? Where am I? You have come to this place… to lie in the ground? The derision in the question was clear. I have come to this place to find peace. And what is peace? Laughter in the recesses of his mind. This is peace. Perhaps it is. I don’t know. A pause. Talking to yourself, eh? There is no one else around. That is the beginning of wisdom. And what of it? Who are you? I am Peter. What are you? I… I am that which says I. Clever. Sometimes. He sparked a cigarette, nicotine bringing a touch of stability to his otherwise entirely too excited cognitions. What is I? I am. That is all? I don’t know. Where is I? Where am I? I am between this and that. This is again wisdom. He laughed aloud now, pulling deeply on his smoke, exhaling through clenched teeth. I am space. Of a sort. I am a character in a story. Sometimes. Nothing more? A page of your life turns. Do you see it? Sometimes. The blank of the page, the openness of its margins, do you see? Yes. This is the void of your unfolding imagination. Indeed. Would you fill it with your own story? I am void. I am between. I am neither this nor that. I am an idea of a between. What story would you have? Whatever I can. I am nothing. That is enough? No. What would you be? A man. This is also wisdom.

Dear Wildfire, Ember, you are a wildfire that is out of control. It doesn’t matter because nobody sees it; they only feel it. I burn and set fire to everyone who crosses me because they deserve it. If they don’t deserve it, so what, fuck it. Nobody deserves my kindness. My kindness to them is a weakness, so I created a wildfire in my mind and around me. My skin is brass, and I do not burn easily. I am a human hazard because I destroy everything and everyone who gets in my way. They made me this way. Every time they neglected me, I was slowly fuming with heat. Every time they ignored me the fumes grew hotter from the smoke. Therefore, I became a human being gone bad because I was a dangerous person. Every time they inhaled my fumes, I would cut them with my tongue's quadruple swords and kill them with my words. My fumes surrounded everyone with darkness because they couldn’t ever figure me out. They couldn’t read my thoughts; I became fearless in the worst way ever. When I was born, I was a wildfire, but the flames were smothered by me, always having to find a way to survive. Wildfire defines me perfectly because, just like a wildfire, I was unplanned, unwanted, and now I am uncontrollable. Everyone says, Ember, you’ve come so far, and they are shocked by my actions. I don’t know why they are surprised. After all, it is not my fault. I was born this way. I have officially exploded

Amar loosed a breath. “I understand, you know.” I looked up. “The forced silence…the voices of this palace.” We stood there, not saying anything. I felt too aware of the space between us. Even with Akaran’s secrets spiraling in the shadows of my head, I couldn’t ignore the weightless feeling that had gripped me. Standing beside Amar did something to me. Like my center had shifted to make room for him. “You do not trust me, do you?” “No,” I said. I had no reason to lie. “I told you in the Night Bazaar that trust is won in actions and time. Not words.” “I wish you trusted me.” “I don’t place my faith in wishes,” I said. “How can I? I can’t even--” I bit back the rest of my words. I can’t even see your face. Perhaps Gupta was lying and he really did have a disfiguring scar. Amar moved closer until we were only a hand space apart. “What?” he coaxed, his voice hovering between a growl and a question. “I can’t even see your face.” A strange chill still curled off of him like smoke and even though the glass garden was teeming with little lights, shades veiled him. “Is that what you want?” he said. “Would it make you trust me?” “It would be a start.” “You are impossible to please.” I said nothing. Amar leaned forward, and I felt the silken trails of his hood brush across my neck. My breath constricted. “Is that what you want? An unguarded gaze can spill a thousand secrets.” “I would know them anyway,” I said evenly.

- I’m a normal kid, I was raised by television. The secret to great barbeque: only Oscar knows it. Life should be so simple as enjoying ribs, farting, crapping, pissing, fucking and drinking, and maybe smoking too, but anything other than that is too complicated, life should be simple. It is not. - Work? You would go to work even if there’s a chance your job’s imaginary? Imaginary or not, the questions Max poses remain as relevant for Frank, Sam, and Oscar as they are for us. A slight hangover won’t be best friends with any kind of daylight and while this one wasn’t particularly hazardous, they wouldn’t be having any of it. "...the lunatic is on the grass." Surely if you see a bunch of people having a picnic in a park that would turn your head wouldn’t it? How normal a picnic really is? When was the last time you saw one happening? Not in a movie, in real life. If a man’s hat falls to the ground, said man is expected to pick it up. That’s the premise. I’m not some pissy little kid who stopped believing in God because some priests rape kids. I don’t believe in God because I can’t be sure of its existence. I’m not some pissy little kid who stopped believing in God because the church raped kids. I don’t believe in God because I can’t be sure of its existence. Nothing is wrong. You don’t take another man’s hat, another man’s ride, or another man’s woman. Those are universal laws. - You do not take another man’s hat, another man’s ride, or another man's woman. Universal laws, Rosa. - Jesus, no. That won’t be necessary Mr. Coyote. If there’s one thing I’ve learned through the course of my life is this: loaded guns make pretty compelling arguments, and it’s not like I was the star in the debate team in high school. A lot of dinners are joined by assholes, people that don’t matter, and good friends too, but breakfast are kind of elite. You have breakfast with fewer people in your life and most of the time those people you have breakfast with are the good ones. - That’s the thing: I don’t know. I’m aware of the fact that guns might not be the ultimate protection when what we’re facing is the truth, we’re coming to terms with our reality, but we don’t know what we might find out there and if by god there’s an imaginary monster or something waiting there for us, I’d rather have ammo than luck No gun will ever protect a man as he prepares to meet his maker. Personally, I think half a burger is something you can have regardless of how hungry you are. Air conditioning is a marvel of modern science, how could we have lived without it? In the end, there was no greener grass than Texas.

Then I heard it--the voice over the CB radio. “You’re on fire! You’re on fire!” The voice repeated, this time with more urgency, “Charlie! Get out! You’re on fire!” I sat there, frozen, unable to process the reality of what I’d just heard. “Oh, shit!” sweet little Charlie yelled, grabbing his door handle. “We’ve got to get out, darlin’--get outta here!” He opened his door, swung his feeble knees around, and let gravity pull him out of the pickup; I, in turn, did the same. Covering my head instinctively as I ditched, I darted away from the vehicle, running smack-dab into Marlboro Man’s brother, Tim, in the process. He was spraying the side of Charlie’s pickup, which, by now, was engulfed in flames. I kept running until I was sure I was out of the path of danger. “Ree! Where’d you come from?!?” Tim yelled, barely taking his eyes off the fire on the truck, which, by then, was almost extinguished. Tim hadn’t known I was on the scene. “You okay?” he yelled, glancing over to make sure I wasn’t on fire, too. A cowboy rushed to Charlie’s aid on the other side of the truck. He was fine, too, bless his heart. By now Marlboro Man had become aware of the commotion, not because he’d seen it happen through the smoke, but because his hose had reached the end of its slack and Charlie’s truck was no longer following behind. Another spray truck had already rushed over to Marlboro Man’s spot and resumed chasing the fire--the same fire that might have gobbled up a rickety, old spray truck, an equally rickety man named Charlie, and me. Luckily Tim had been nearby when a wind gust blew the flames over Charlie’s truck, and had acted quickly. The fire on the truck was out by now, and Marlboro Man rushed over, grabbed my shoulders, and looked me over--trying, in all the confusion, to make sure I was in one piece. And I was. Physically, I was perfectly fine. My nervous system, on the other hand, was a shambles. “You okay?” he shouted over the crackling sounds of the fire. All I could do was nod and bite my lip to keep from losing it. Can I go home now? was the only thing going through my mind. That, and I want my mommy. The fire was farther away by now, but it seemed to be growing in intensity. Even I could tell the wind had picked up. Marlboro Man and Tim looked at each other…and burst out in nervous laughter--the kind of laugh you laugh when you almost fall but don’t; when your car almost goes off a cliff but comes to a stop right at the edge; when your winning team almost misses the winning pass but doesn’t; or when your fiancée and a local cowboy are almost burned alive…but aren’t. I might have laughed, too, if I could muster any breath.

Miss Prudence Mercer Stony Cross Hampshire, England 7 November 1854 Dear Prudence, Regardless of the reports that describe the British soldier as unflinching, I assure you that when riflemen are under fire, we most certainly duck, bob, and run for cover. Per your advice, I have added a sidestep and a dodge to my repertoire, with excellent results. To my mind, the old fable has been disproved: there are times in life when one definitely wants to be the hare, not the tortoise. We fought at the southern port of Balaklava on the twenty-fourth of October. Light Brigade was ordered to charge directly into a battery of Russian guns for no comprehensible reason. Five cavalry regiments were mowed down without support. Two hundred men and nearly four hundred horses lost in twenty minutes. More fighting on the fifth of November, at Inkerman. We went to rescue soldiers stranded on the field before the Russians could reach them. Albert went out with me under a storm of shot and shell, and helped to identify the wounded so we could carry them out of range of the guns. My closest friend in the regiment was killed. Please thank your friend Prudence for her advice for Albert. His biting is less frequent, and he never goes for me, although he’s taken a few nips at visitors to the tent. May and October, the best-smelling months? I’ll make a case for December: evergreen, frost, wood smoke, cinnamon. As for your favorite song…were you aware that “Over the Hills and Far Away” is the official music of the Rifle Brigade? It seems nearly everyone here has fallen prey to some kind of illness except for me. I’ve had no symptoms of cholera nor any of the other diseases that have swept through both divisions. I feel I should at least feign some kind of digestive problem for the sake of decency. Regarding the donkey feud: while I have sympathy for Caird and his mare of easy virtue, I feel compelled to point out that the birth of a mule is not at all a bad outcome. Mules are more surefooted than horses, generally healthier, and best of all, they have very expressive ears. And they’re not unduly stubborn, as long they’re managed well. If you wonder at my apparent fondness for mules, I should probably explain that as a boy, I had a pet mule named Hector, after the mule mentioned in the Iliad. I wouldn’t presume to ask you to wait for me, Pru, but I will ask that you write to me again. I’ve read your last letter more times than I can count. Somehow you’re more real to me now, two thousand miles away, than you ever were before. Ever yours, Christopher P.S. Sketch of Albert included As Beatrix read, she was alternately concerned, moved, and charmed out of her stockings. “Let me reply to him and sign your name,” she begged. “One more letter. Please, Pru. I’ll show it to you before I send it.” Prudence burst out laughing. “Honestly, this is the silliest things I’ve ever…Oh, very well, write to him again if it amuses you.

In the uncertain hour before the morning Near the ending of interminable night At the recurrent end of the unending After the dark dove with the flickering tongue Had passed below the horizon of his homing While the dead leaves still rattled on like tin Over the asphalt where no other sound was Between three districts whence the smoke arose I met one walking, loitering and hurried As if blown towards me like the metal leaves Before the urban dawn wind unresisting. And as I fixed upon the down-turned face That pointed scrutiny with which we challenge The first-met stranger in the waning dusk I caught the sudden look of some dead master Whom I had known, forgotten, half recalled Both one and many; in the brown baked features The eyes of a familiar compound ghost Both intimate and unidentifiable. So I assumed a double part, and cried And heard another's voice cry: 'What! are you here?' Although we were not. I was still the same, Knowing myself yet being someone other— And he a face still forming; yet the words sufficed To compel the recognition they preceded. And so, compliant to the common wind, Too strange to each other for misunderstanding, In concord at this intersection time Of meeting nowhere, no before and after, We trod the pavement in a dead patrol. I said: 'The wonder that I feel is easy, Yet ease is cause of wonder. Therefore speak: I may not comprehend, may not remember.' And he: 'I am not eager to rehearse My thoughts and theory which you have forgotten. These things have served their purpose: let them be. So with your own, and pray they be forgiven By others, as I pray you to forgive Both bad and good. Last season's fruit is eaten And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail. For last year's words belong to last year's language And next year's words await another voice. But, as the passage now presents no hindrance To the spirit unappeased and peregrine Between two worlds become much like each other, So I find words I never thought to speak In streets I never thought I should revisit When I left my body on a distant shore. Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us To purify the dialect of the tribe And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight, Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort. First, the cold friction of expiring sense Without enchantment, offering no promise But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit As body and soul begin to fall asunder. Second, the conscious impotence of rage At human folly, and the laceration Of laughter at what ceases to amuse. And last, the rending pain of re-enactment Of all that you have done, and been; the shame Of motives late revealed, and the awareness Of things ill done and done to others' harm Which once you took for exercise of virtue. Then fools' approval stings, and honour stains. From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire Where you must move in measure, like a dancer.' The day was breaking. In the disfigured street He left me, with a kind of valediction, And faded on the blowing of the horn. -T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding

I am fully aware that the things I do are construed as absolute craziness. But in actuality, we are just having fun in God’s presence. We enjoy the happy presence of God and people get free from religion, so they stop taking themselves so seriously. Freedom from pride is liberating and empowering. The Lord loves to mock religion through us, because religion grieves Him tremendously. What we are never doing is trying to make a formula out of these crazy antics. In fact, most of these antics are gloriously deriding religious formula! Our antics are so crazy in fact that you would have to be a complete nutjob to think smoking a baby Jesus doll is the latest tool to get you to a new level with God. These silly acts don’t get us filled with the Spirit, nor are we trying to start a new denomination with this stuff. We do lots of fun, goofy things because we are already in the Spirit by His grace, and we’ve been set free from the performance-oriented version of Christianity.

I have questions," she said. "Ask away." Poppy decided to be blunt. "Are you dangerous? Everyone says you are." "To you? No." "To others?" Harry shrugged innocently. "I'm a hotelier. How dangerous could I be?" Poppy gave him a dubious glance, not at all deceived. "I may be gullible, Harry, but I'm not brainless. You know the rumors... you're well aware of your reputation. Are you as unscrupulous as you're made out to be?" Harry was quiet for a long moment, his gaze fixed on a distant cluster of blossoms. The sun threw its light into the filter of branches, scattering leaf shadows over the pair in the arbor. Eventually he lifted his head and looked at her directly, his eyes greener than the sun struck rose leaves. "I'm not a gentleman," he said. "Not by birth, and not by character. Very few men can afford to be honorable while trying to make a success of themselves. I don't lie, but I rarely tell everything I know. I'm not a religious man, nor a spiritual one. I act in my own interests, and I make no secret of it. However, I always keep my side of a bargain, I don't cheat, and I pay my debts." Pausing, Harry fished in his coat pocket, pulled out a penknife, and reached up to cut a rose in full bloom. After neatly severing the stem, he occupied himself with stripping the thorns with the sharp little blade. "I would never use physical force against a woman, or anyone weaker than myself. I don't smoke, take snuff, or chew tobacco. I always hold my liquor. I don't sleep well. And I can make a clock from scratch." Removing the last thorn, he handed the rose to her, and slipped the knife back into his pocket. Poppy concentrated on the satiny pink rose, running her fingers along the top edges of the petals.

Oneness in Everything Facing our darkness we struggle towards the light. Finally, worn away by the conflict the ego surrenders and we are taken beyond these opposites. Just as we first awoke to the pain of separation and the darkness of the lover's imperfection, so do we awaken to the higher consciousness of the Self that experiences the oneness in everything. People often have dreams of the teacher acting in an improper way, swearing in a church, smoking in a meditation room, in order to shock them into an awareness of this higher reality. The perfect man embraces both his own imperfection and also that of mankind. This is illustrated in the story of Jami who was mistaken for a thief. On being asked if he was a thief the saint replied, 'What am I not?

Heart Disease is one of the most common and dangerous disease in the world. It is a coronary artery disease which causes a reduction in blood supply to the heart. There are various reasons for this disease but most common are high BP, overweight, saturate life style, junk food, smoking habits and heredity of heart problem in family. Blockage of artery is mainly because of high level of cholesterol in your blood. These issues with slow down your working capacity and will lead you to a point where you will be unable to do what you want to do. You will fatigue, tiredness, unable to exercise and this will ultimately lead towards heart attack & death. The Common remedies for heart diseases are lifelong medicine, angioplasty, bypass surgery. All these methods have great side effects associated with them. Fortunately nature has given us a great gift to cure heart problem. Unfortunately most of the people are not aware about it.

Everybody was reading newspapers and magazines. There was unrest in North Africa. Did these interminable discussions during which points of view concurred or clashed, complemented each other or were vanquished, determine the aspect of the New Africa? The assimilationist dream of the colonist drew into its crucible our mode of thought and way of life. The sun helmet worn over the natural protection of our kinky hair, smoke-filled pipe in the mouth, white shorts just above the calves, very short dresses displaying shapely legs: a whole generation suddenly became aware of the ridiculous situation festering in our midst.

Dominic Mallory had never been one to debauch virgins, but he was beginning to think he should make an exception for this beauty. He took a quick glance around the wide stone terrace before he stepped farther back into the shadows. Good, they were alone. He ground out his cigar as he blew a last circle of smoke into the cold air. If he had it his way, nothing would disturb this moment. Rushing a seduction took all the anticipation out of it. Seduction hadn't been his plan when he arrived at his family's estate. In fact, he'd come straight to the terrace in order to avoid the celebration inside. Now he knew he'd made the right choice. He could have a much more interesting party alone with this young woman. She leaned on the terrace wall, completely oblivious to his presence. He had been more than aware of hers from the moment she slipped from the crowded ballroom into the frosty night. Now she stared up at the stars, giving him the impression that her heart and mind were leagues away. Her jet black hair matched the inky sky. Somehow during the evening, a few long, curly strands had come down from the elaborate pile on her head, leaving a tantalizing trail down the middle of her back. A trail he longed to follow with his lips. He sighed softly.

I’m sorry,” she murmured, rousing after a minute. Her breathing had begun to return to normal and awareness was starting to creep back in, particularly of his cock still buried hard and deep inside her. She propped herself up on her elbow. “I shamelessly used your body to get off and was too impatient to wait for you.” “Just so you know, you are welcome to shamelessly use my body to get off any time you want.

Imagine that you are in your house—no—you are locked in your house, cannot get out. It is the dead of winter. The drifted snow is higher than your windows, blocking the light of both moon and sun. Around the house, the wind moans, night and day. Now imagine that even though you have plenty of electric lights, and perfectly good central heating, you are almost always in the dark and quite cold, because something is wrong with the old-fashioned fuse box in the basement. Inside this cobwebbed, innocuous-looking box, the fuses keep burning out, and on account of this small malfunction, all the power in the house repeatedly fails. You have replaced so many melted fuses that now your little bag of new ones is empty; there are no more. You sigh in frustration, and regard your frozen breath in the light of the flashlight. Your house, which could be so cozy, is tomblike instead. In all probability, there is something quirky in the antiquated fuse box; it has developed some kind of needless hair trigger, and is not really reacting to any dangerous electrical overload at all. Should you get some pennies out of your pocket, and use them to replace the burned-out fuses? That would solve the power-outage problem. No more shorts, not with copper coins in there. Using coins would scuttle the safeguard function of the fuse box, but the need for a safeguard right now is questionable, and the box is keeping you cold and in the dark for no good reason. Well, probably for no good reason. On the other hand, what if the wiring in the house really is overloaded somehow? A fire could result, probably will result eventually. If you do not find the fire soon enough, if you cannot manage to put the fire out, the whole house could go up, with you trapped inside. You know that death by burning is hideous. You know also that your mind is playing tricks, but thinking about fire, you almost imagine there is smoke in your nostrils right now. So, do you go back upstairs and sit endlessly in a dark living room, defeated, numb from the cold, though you have buried yourself under every blanket in the house? No light to read by, no music, just the wail and rattle of the icy wind outside? Or, in an attempt to feel more human, do you make things warm and comfortable? Is it wise to gamble with calamity and howling pain? If you turn the power back on, will you not smell nonexistent smoke every moment you are awake? And will you not have far too many of these waking moments, for how will you ever risk going to sleep? Do you sabotage the fuse box? I

I am Sebastiano, and your name?” he asks. “Violet,” I say as we step over the threshold. “Violetta!” he says, throwing his arms wide. “English girl, Italian name!” And across the room, I see a dark head turn in our direction. That much taller than the rest of the boys, he stands out, his straight black silky hair falling over his face, his blue eyes as bright and cold as the water of the fjord next to my grandmother’s summer rental cottage. I was looking for him before and couldn’t see him anywhere; now that I’ve been distracted by dancing and a Chianti-drinking donkey, he’s spotted me. His gaze flicks like a knife between me and the boy, who’s at the gigantic wine bottle now, filling cups and handing me one. “Salute!” Sebastiano says, touching his cup to mine, and I glance up at Luca, seeing that he’s taking this in, too. A rush of confusion fills me as I toast. I’m glad that Luca’s seen me with someone else, that I haven’t been a wallflower at this party, that I’ve proved him wrong, even a little bit, because there’s a boy here who seems to like me, who’s talking to me, anyway, getting me a drink. In films, in books, flirting with a boy is a surefire way to get the one you actually like interested in you, draw him over to your side. They’re supposed to like competition, the challenge of going after a girl who’s popular. But maybe real life doesn’t quite work that way. Because Luca arches one black eyebrow, his mouth quirks up on one side in a sneer, and he turns pointedly away sliding a cigarette into his mouth, and lighting it with a flip of his Zippo. Disgusting habit, I think as firmly as I can. I’m glad he’s not coming over, smoking a nasty stinking cancer stick. It’s awful when you lie to yourself. I do think smoking is foul, but I’m also more than aware that if Luca strolled over to talk to me, with that cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, I wouldn’t walk away, complaining about the smoke; I’d stand there staring up at him, trying not to grin as widely as a five-year-old meeting Cinderella at Disneyland.

What made you come back?” Kitty jerked at his sudden question. She sputtered for a moment then laughed. “What made me come back? What do you mean?” He shrugged with one shoulder, never moving his gaze away from her. “At Eliza’s and Thomas’s wedding last year you were convinced that returning to Boston and living with your aunt was the best course to take. But it appears you have changed your mind. So, what made you come back?” “Is that why you followed me? To ask me that?” Her face burned, but she feigned composure and looked at him with as much ease as she could marshal. “Boston is too dangerous, you know that.” “’Tis true, I am well aware of what Boston and its residents suffer. But I cannot believe that was the only reason you returned.” Training her mouth to reveal nothing more than a slight grin, she strained to keep her pulse quiet. She stepped toward the fire, resting her hand atop the chair, acting more casual than she felt. “If there were any other reason, do you think that I would share such information with you? Surely, Nathaniel, I cannot share all my secrets.” “Secrets? Well, now I am curious.” Kitty rubbed the lace on her gloves and emitted a warm, genuine laugh that eased the strain in her voice. She offered an impish smile. “I came back for several reasons, if you must know. As I mentioned, ‘twas for matters of safety that Henry Donaldson insisted I return as well as—”  “Donaldson?” Kitty peered over her shoulder, hiding the grin that surged at the undeniable question in Nathaniel’s eyes. Could he be... nay, not possible. She kept her focus. “Aye, Henry Donaldson. You remember him, do you not?” “Aye, of course. I just... I just hadn’t known he was still... around. He was always a good friend and I admire him, despite his poor choice of allegiances.” Nathaniel’s interested expression stayed lifted, but the light in his eyes went flat. “Are you... have you been seeing much of him of late?” “I have,” she said. “He’s a close friend and I admire him very much.” Nathaniel’s expression didn’t change, but his Adam’s apple bobbed and he cleared his throat. “I see.”  She once again toyed with the fabric of her gloves, unsure what else to do with her hands. Quickly focusing on the subject of their conversation, she stared back into the fire. “Henry said it was too dangerous for me to stay despite my protestations. With Father gone and Eliza here—and since our home was destroyed that December… well, my home is here now.” The scent of smoke wafting from the fireplace in front of her snatched the horrid vision from its hiding place in her mind. Instantly she witnessed anew the roaring flames that devoured her treasured childhood home, taking with it all her cherished memories and replacing them with ash. She turned to Nathaniel, his face drawn as if he too relived the tragedy. The bond they’d shared that night had forged a friendship that could never be shaken.  Nathaniel stepped forward, the look of tenderness so rich in his eyes it wound around her shoulders like a warm cloak. “I can well understand that, Kitty. Donaldson was right in advising you to return.” Then, as if the heaviness were too much, he shrugged and sighed with added gaiety to his tone. “Well, I will admit that Sandwich didn’t feel the same with you gone, that’s for certain.” She tipped her head with a smirk. “You pined for my return?”  “With the pains of an anguished soul.” “Lying is a sin, Nathaniel,” she teased. Nathaniel laughed, his broad smile exposing his straight teeth. “All right, if you want the truth I pined more for your cooking, and more specifically for your carrot pudding. Are you satisfied?” “I knew it.

Loretta didn’t realize she had drifted off to sleep until she awoke to the delicious warmth of Hunter’s lips on her throat. She opened her eyes slowly, registering his presence beside her. A shaft of moonlight coming through the smoke hole gilded the broad shoulders that canopied hers. His solid chest, warm and silken, pinned her against soft fur. A wonderfully hard arm encircled her, his broad wrist pressed against her spine, his long fingers fanning between her shoulder blades. She let her head fall back to accommodate his caressing mouth. “Hi, hites,” she whispered. “Hello,” he murmured against her ear, sending spirals of longing down her spine. Coming aware by degrees, Loretta tucked in her chin to glance down, shocked to see her white skin glowing in the moonlight. It was shameless to be lying next to him like this. She tensed, but the brush of his lips along her throat robbed her of the will to move. Not that she could have if she tried. There was an urgency in the way he held her, a tautness in his body. His hips moved forward against hers, leaving her in no doubt that he wanted her, again. “Hunter…what about Amy? It’s dark outside.” “I tied the flap closed. She will go to my mother.” His voice was husky, throbbing. He slid his hand down her back to her bottom and drew her firmly against him. His hardness jabbed her abdomen, and she flinched. He drew back and looked down at her, his eyes shot with silver in the moonlight. “You hurt?” Loretta knew he had gone to great lengths to be gentle with her earlier, but she was sore nonetheless. The ache was to be expected, she felt sure, and probably would disappear in a day or two. “I’m fine.” He slid his hand to her belly, his strong fingers probing carefully, his gaze alert on her face for telltale signs of pain. “Ah, Blue Eyes, I think you lie.” His gentleness and concern touched her. “It isn’t that bad, truly. If you want to--” Heat flooded her cheeks as the impropriety of what she had nearly said struck her. His mouth quirked in a knowing grin. “This Comanche has much want, but I will wait.

The light sprang up again, and there on the brink of the chasm, at the very Crack of Doom, stood Frodo, black against the glare, tense, erect, but still as if he had been turned to stone. 'Master!' cried Sam. Then Frodo stirred and spoke with a clear voice, indeed with a voice clearer and more powerful than Sam had ever heard him use, and it rose above the throb and turmoil of Mount Doom, ringing in the roof and walls. 'I have come,' he said. 'But I do not choose now to do what I came to do. I will not do this deed. The Ring is mine!' And suddenly, as he set it on his finger, he vanished from Sam's sight. [...] And far away, as Frodo put on the Ring and claimed it for his own, even in Sammath Naur the very heart of his realm, the power in Barad-dúr was shaken, and the Tower trembled from its foundations to its proud and bitter crown. The Dark Lord was suddenly aware of him, and his Eye piercing all shadows looked across the plain to the door of that he had made; and the magnitude of his own folly was revealed to him in a blinding flash, and all the devices of his enemies were at last laid bare. Then his wrath blazed in consuming flame, but his fear rose like a vast black smoke to choke him. For he knew his deadly peril and the thread upon which his doom was hung. From all his policies and webs of fear and treachery, from all his stratagems and wars his mind shook free; and throughout his realm a tremor ran, his slaves quailed, and his armies halted, and his captains suddenly steerless, bereft of will, wavered and despaired. For they were forgotten. The whole mind and purpose of the Power that wielded them was now bent with overewhelming force upon the Mountain. At his summons, wheeling with a rending cry, in a last desperate race there flew, faster than the winds, the Nazgúls, the Ringwraiths, and with a storm of wings they hurtled southwards to Mount Doom...

In At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past, the historian A. Roger Ekirch asserts that before the Industrial Revolution, it was normal to divide the night into two periods of sleep: the “first sleep”, or “dead sleep”, lasting from the evening until the early hours of the morning; and the “second” or “morning” sleep, which took the slumber safely to daybreak. In between, there was an hour or more of wakefulness known as the “watch”, in which “Families rose to urinate, smoke tobacco, and even visit close neighbors. Many others made love, prayed, and ... reflected on their dreams, a significant source of solace and self-awareness.” In the intimacy of the darkness, families and lovers could hold deep, rich, wandering conversations that had no place in the busy daytime. This was a function of the times in which the night really was dark, when the poor would go to sleep early to save the price of candles, and even the rich would have the choice of struggling on with their occupation in limited light or surrendering to sleep. Outside the house, the streets were usually unlit, so the only navigable space was home. This was so ordinary, and perhaps also so private moment in the day, that little was written about it. Ekirch picks up a range of passing references to the first and second sleeps in diaries, letters, and literature, but this ancient practice is nearly invisible to the contemporary eye.

The paramedic moved away, giving me a line of sight into the crowd and my gaze latched onto Darcy. I was so starved, I moved before I was even aware of making the decision, colliding with her and driving my fangs into her neck. She squealed in fright and I growled deeply as I drank the sweet nectar of her blood, shutting my eyes and enjoying every second of it. She felt connected to me by it, her spiking pulse seeming to thump within my own body and I relished the feeling of having her power in my grasp. I lost all sense of everything as I fell into the needs of my Order and the desire to devour this girl’s magic. I wanted every last drop. I needed more of her. Everything. She clawed at my arm and I enjoyed the contact, holding her firmly against my hip as my cock began to throb. I was in the middle of a crowd of students and this was the wrong fucking time to get turned on for so many reasons. But hell she tasted so good. And it was more than that, I had her in my arms again and I didn’t want to let go. She was the summer sun after the longest winter of my life and all I wanted to do was bask in her glow. Especially after I’d seen Capella touching her. This girl didn’t belong to him. I’d staked my claim and maybe that should have only been about her blood, but it was becoming clear to me that it was far more than that. I didn’t want anyone but me getting this close to her. And I’d fight any rival I had to to keep it that way. “Hey,” Tory snapped, shoving me roughly to try and force me off of her sister but I was in a frenzy and I couldn’t stop. “That’s enough!” I released a growl in warning for her to back off, but then she shoved me with fire in her palms, the power behind the blast sending me staggering backwards and freeing Blue from my hold. My head was spinning with so much power I felt drunk and my breaths came heavily as I realised how much blood I’d just taken. Far too much. There were two hand marks singed into my chest, my shirt smoking and my flesh reddened, and Tory looked ready to burn me alive if I took so much as a step closer to her sister again. “You’ve had enough!” Tory snarled and I bared my fangs at the challenge in her voice. “Maybe you want to donate to the cause then?” I snapped, but I was just trying to deflect from how much I wanted her sister, how every student close by had witnessed me go fully savage on Darcy Vega like I had no self control at all. Caleb appeared, dropping an arm around Tory’s shoulders and releasing a deep growl in the back of his throat. “You might want to rethink that statement, Professor.” I stared at them when I really wanted to be looking at Darcy, but I feared if I did, I’d lunge at her again. And I wasn’t sure I’d stop this time. Fuck. What’s wrong with me? I shook my head to try and clear it, taking a breath as I realised my magic reserves were full and I didn’t need any more blood. This craving left in me wasn’t anything to do with my power reserves. It was purely about the girl I could see glaring at me in the corner of my eye. I couldn’t believe what I’d just done. I’d taken too much blood and it was wrong. It went against the Vampire Code. I swallowed the lasting taste of her and finally glanced her way, finding so much hatred in her eyes it scolded me.(ORION POV)

When a scientist works in his laboratory, he does not smoke, he does not eat sweets, and does not listen to the radio. He abstains not because he thinks that these things are sins, but because he knows that they impede the perfect concentration of his mind on the object of his study. It is much the same in Zen Discipline: the observance of this discipline must help the practitioner to live in Awareness of Being; it does not lead to moral objectives.

Today, be aware of the judgments you make. Whenever you catch yourself judging someone, imagine that you are breathing in their pain in the form of black smoke. Breathe your happiness back to them.

The central function of the amygdala, which I call the brain’s smoke detector, is to identify whether incoming input is relevant for our survival.11 It does so quickly and automatically, with the help of feedback from the hippocampus, a nearby structure that relates the new input to past experiences. If the amygdala senses a threat—a potential collision with an oncoming vehicle, a person on the street who looks threatening—it sends an instant message down to the hypothalamus and the brain stem, recruiting the stress-hormone system and the autonomic nervous system (ANS) to orchestrate a whole-body response. Because the amygdala processes the information it receives from the thalamus faster than the frontal lobes do, it decides whether incoming information is a threat to our survival even before we are consciously aware of the danger. By the time we realize what is happening, our body may already be on the move.

I’d like to think that I am somewhat self-aware. I’ve got some blind spots, that’s obvious, but all in all, I feel like I’ve got a pretty clear view of reality. More often than not, I know when, and why, I’m making a bad decision. Most of us do—and by us, I mean broke people. Take smoking, for example. If Mom didn’t smoke away ten bucks a day, we never would’ve had to rent out the guest cottage to Freddy in the first place, right? Mom knows that, she’s done the math a million times. But there’s more to consider. For starters, she’s perpetually tired. She’s been working fifty-hour weeks for as long as I can remember. And there’s a good chance she’s clinically depressed. Smoking gets her through that second shift. It relaxes her when the pressure is mounting. It gives her something to look forward to during her break and after work, and before work, and when she wakes up in the morning. It makes her heart beat faster. At ten bucks a day, that’s a bargain.

eye combination my mother always made a fuss about. Maybe that’s why my skin crawled every time someone commented on how attractive a couple we were. It was more a reflection on me than us. He lifts his hand and moves my hair off my forehead. The gesture is intimate, but I’m too stunned to stop him. He brushes his thumb over the scar on my temple. “I was worried about you. You wouldn’t let me see you in the hospital. Or after?” A sigh escapes before I can school my features into something a little more… regretful. “Well, I was embarrassed.” That’s a lie. I just didn’t want to face whatever the fuck emotional roller coaster I was riding the last six months. Seriously. My life went from normal to shit in a split second. Adding Jack—and the life that I thought I had, the one that seemed to go up in a puff of smoke when I woke up in the hospital—would’ve been more pain than I was ready to accept. “Violet!” I step away from Jack, ignoring his wounded expression, and turn to my other friends. Half the dance team is here, and they all crowd around me. Someone pulls at my coffee-stained blouse, and another swoops in to clean the floor where my cup dropped. I had forgotten, in my Jack-shock. “Lucky it wasn’t hot.” Willow nudges me. “Luck and I aren’t on speaking terms.” She visited faithfully every day while I was stuck in the hospital. Kept me sane, kept me looped in to the gossip. She’s the only one who knows what I went through, and I’m keeping it that way. I’m not in the habit of airing my dirty laundry—or my newfound nightmares. I’ve been plagued by bright lights, crunching metal, and snapping bones. She rolls her eyes at my luck comment. “You need to change. We’re taking you out.” Oh boy. My first instinct is to say no, but honestly? I could use a bit of normalcy. My therapist—the talk one, not the physical one—said something about getting back into a routine. Well, for the last two years, I’ve gone out with my girls on Friday nights. There’s nothing more normal than that. I’m actually looking forward to it. She leads the way to the bedroom I haven’t been in since… before. She steps aside and lets me do the honors. Opening the door is like cracking into a time capsule. Fucking devastating. Willow stands behind me, her hand on my shoulder, as I stare around at the remnants of the person I used to be. If I wasn’t aware of how different I was after six months away, I am now. Mentally, physically. There are still clothes that I left on the floor. My chair is pulled out and covered in clothes. There’s a pile of books that I had planned to conquer over the summer in the center of the desk. My bed is made. “I kept the door open

nd he realized that everyone was dreaming, but without awareness, without knowing what they really are. They couldn’t see him as themselves because there was a wall of fog or smoke between the mirrors. And that wall of fog was made by the interpretation of images of light — the Dream of humans.

What dawned on me then was that certain objects are themselves the material, silent equivalent of words spoken by invisible, spectral forces and agencies that often form our lives without our being aware of it. In a strange reversal, the inanimate articles around me suddenly became my teachers, showing me that my physical existence spoke of a past that was completely different from the histories I had read about in books and documents.

There is no Art of Dying manual available in our society, so I decided to write my own. It is intended not only for the religious, but also for the growing number of atheists, agnostics, and vaguely “spiritual” among us. For me, the good death includes being prepared to die, with my affairs in order, the good and bad messages delivered that need delivering. The good death means dying while I still have my mind sharp and aware; it also means dying without having to endure large amounts of suffering and pain. The good death means accepting death as inevitable, and not fighting it when the time comes. This is my good death, but as legendary psychotherapist Carl Jung said, “It won’t help to hear what I think about death.” Your relationship to mortality is your own.

A pair of waiters brought a feast to the hotel room and arranged it in the sitting area. They unfolded the hot cart into a table, draped it in white linen, and brought out silver-domed plates. By the time the wine was poured and all the dishes were uncovered, I was trembling with hunger. Luke, however, became fractious after I changed his diaper, and he howled every time I tried to set him down. Holding him against one shoulder, I contemplated the steaming grilled steak in front of me and wondered how I was going to manage with only one hand. “Let me,” Jack murmured, and came to my side of the table. He cut the steak into small, neat bites with such adroitness that I gave him a look of mock-alarm. “You certainly know how to handle a knife.” “I hunt whenever I get the chance.” Finishing the task, Jack set down the utensils and tucked a napkin into the neckline of my shirt. His knuckles brushed my skin, eliciting a shiver. “I can field-dress a deer in fifteen minutes,” he told me. “That’s impressive. Disgusting, but impressive.” He gave me an unrepentant grin as he returned to his side of the table. “If it makes you feel better, I eat anything I catch or kill.” “Thanks, but that doesn’t make me feel better in the least. Oh, I’m aware that meat doesn’t magically appear all nicely packaged in foam and cellophane at the grocery store. But I have to stay several steps removed from the process. I don’t think I could eat meat if I had to hunt the animal and . . .” “Skin and gut it?” “Yes. Let’s not talk about that right now.” I took a bite of the steak. Either it was the long period of deprivation, or the quality of the beef, or the skill of the chef . . . but that succulent, lightly smoked, melting-hot steak was the best thing I had ever tasted. I closed my eyes for a moment, my tonsils quivering. He laughed quietly at my expression. “Admit it, Ella. It’s not so bad being a carnivore.” I reached for a chunk of bread and dabbed it in soft yellow butter. “I’m not a carnivore, I’m an opportunistic omnivore.” -Jack & Ella

Reaching the brow of a stunted hill, Amelia paused in bewilderment at the sight of a towering contraption made of metal. It appeared to be a chute propped up on legs, tilted at a steep angle. Her attention was caught by a minor commotion farther afield … two men emerging from behind a small wooden shelter … they were shouting and waving their arms at her. Amelia instantly realized she had stumbled into danger, even before she saw the smoldering trail of sparks move, snakelike, along the ground toward the metal chute. A fuse? Although she didn’t know much about explosive devices, she was aware that once a fuse had been lit, nothing could be done to stop it. Dropping to the sun-warmed grass, Amelia covered her head with her arms, having every expectation of being blown to bits. A few heartbeats passed, and she let out a startled cry as she felt a large, heavy body fall on hers … no, not fall, pounce. He covered her completely, his knees digging into the ground on either side of her as he made a shelter of his body. At the same moment, a deafening explosion pierced the air, and there was a violent whoosh over their heads, and a shock went through the ground beneath them. Too stunned to move, Amelia tried to gather her wits. Her ears were filled with a high-pitched buzz. Her companion remained motionless over her, breathing heavily in her hair. The air was sharp with smoke, but even so, Amelia was aware of a pleasant masculine scent, skin-salt and soap and an intimate spice she couldn’t quite identify. The noise in her ears faded. Raising up on her elbows, feeling the solid wall of his chest against her back, she saw shirtsleeves rolled up over forearms cabled with muscle … and there was something else … Her eyes widened at the sight of a small, stylized design inked on his arm. A tattoo of a black winged horse with eyes the color of brimstone. It was an Irish design, of a nightmare horse called a pooka: a malevolent mythical creature that spoke in a human voice and carried people away at midnight. Her heart stopped as she saw the heavy rounded band of a thumb ring. Wriggling beneath him, Amelia tried to turn over. The strong hand curved around her shoulder, helping her. His voice was low and familiar. “Are you hurt? I’m sorry. You were in the way of—” He stopped as Amelia rolled to her back. The front of her hair had come loose, pulled free of a strategically anchored pin. The lock fanned over her face, obscuring her vision. Before she could reach up to push it away, he did it for her, and the brush of his fingertips sent ripples of liquid fire along intimate pathways of her body. “You,” he said softly. Cam Rohan.

Surprised at Kaye’s belated display of maternal instincts, Sean relented, promising he’d get in touch with Lily. Besides, he knew his own mother would never forgive him if he refused such a simple request. As he made his way down the narrow streets to the pensione opposite the Pantheon, where Lily and her roommate were staying, Sean steadfastly refused to acknowledge any other reason for agreeing to take Lily out. It had been three years since they’d left for college, not once had she come home to visit. But Sean still couldn’t look at a blonde without comparing her to Lily. He’d mounted the four flights of narrow, winding stairs, the sound of his steps muffled by red, threadbare carpet. At number seventeen, he’d stopped and stood, giving his racing heart a chance to quiet before he knocked. Calm down, he’d instructed himself. It’s only Lily. His knock echoed loudly in the empty hall. Through the door he heard the sound of approaching footsteps. Then it opened and there she was. She stood with her mouth agape. Her eyes, like beacons of light in the obscurity of the drab hallway, blinked at him with astonishment. “What are you doing here?” The question ended on a squeak. As if annoyed with the sound, she shut her mouth with an audible snap. Was it possible Kaye hadn’t bothered to tell Lily he’d be coming? “I heard you were spending a few days in Rome.” Sean realized he was staring like a dolt, but couldn’t help himself. It rattled him, seeing Lily again. A barrage of emotions and impressions mixed and churned inside him: how good she looked, different somehow, more self-confident than in high school, how maybe this time they might get along for more than 3.5 seconds. He became aware of a happy buzz of anticipation zinging through him. He was already picturing the two of them at a really nice trattoria. They’d be sitting at an intimate corner table. A waiter would come and take their order and Sean would impress her with his flawless Italian, his casual sophistication, his sprezzatura. By the time the waiter had served them their dessert and espresso, she’d be smiling at him across the soft candlelight. He’d reach out and take her hand. . . . Then Lily spoke again and Sean’s neat fantasy evaporated like a puff of smoke. “But how did you know I was here?” she’d asked, with what he’d conceitedly assumed was genuine confusion—that is, until a guy their age appeared. Standing just behind Lily, he had stared back at Sean through the aperture of the open door with a knowing smirk upon his face. And suddenly Sean understood. Lily wasn’t frowning from confusion. She was annoyed. Annoyed because he’d barged in on her and Lover Boy. Lily didn’t give a damn about him. At the realization, his jumbled thoughts at seeing her again, all those newborn hopes inside him, faded to black. His brain must have shorted after that. Suave, sophisticated guy that he was, Sean had blurted out, “Hey, this wasn’t my idea. I only came because Kaye begged me to—” Stupendously dumb. He knew better, had known since he was eight years old. If you wanted to push Lily Banyon into the red zone, all it took was a whispered, “Kaye.” The door to her hotel room had come at his face faster than a bullet train. He guessed he should be grateful she hadn’t been using a more lethal weapon, like the volleyball she’d smashed in his face during gym class back in eleventh grade. Even so, he’d been forced to jump back or have the number seventeen imprinted on his forehead. Their last skirmish, the one back in Rome, he’d definitely lost. He’d stood outside her room like a fool, Lover Boy’s laughter his only reply. Finally, the pensione’s night clerk had appeared, insisting he leave la bella americana in peace. He’d gone away, humiliated and oddly deflated.

December 28, Today I am aware that I have some basic issues like abandonment. My fear of being left is so powerful and pervasive that I hardly identify it as fear. It takes so little to activate my feelings of rejection disinterest omega someone I love, a turned away head, those I care about having their own lives and relationships; these things are all frightening to me and have the capacity to mobilize deep feelings of anger, resentment and hurt. I read all sorts of deeper motives into this kind of behavior from other people and create scenarios in my mind where I am ultimately left, I realize today that I cannot have people in my life in a healthy, comfortable way if I am daily haunted by the fear that they will leave me. I can live a comfortable life. The first lesson of life is to burn our own smoke; that is, not to inflict on outsiders our personal sorrows and petty morbidness, not to keep thinking of ourselves as exceptional cases. James Russell Loweell

And far away, as Frodo put on the Ring and claimed it for his own, even in Sammath Naur the very heart of his realm, the Power in Barad-dûr was shaken, and the Tower trembled from its foundations to its proud and bitter crown. The Dark Lord was suddenly aware of him, and his Eye piercing all shadows looked across the plain to the door that he had made; and the magnitude of his own folly was revealed to him in a blinding flash, and all the devices of his enemies were at last laid bare. Then his wrath blazed in consuming flame, but his fear rose like a vast black smoke to choke him. For he knew his deadly peril and the thread upon which his doom now hung.

I’ve just been to see Audrey,” Beatrix said breathlessly, entering the private upstairs parlor and closing the door. “Poor Mr. Phelan isn’t well, and--well, I’ll tell you about that in a minute, but--here’s a letter from Captain Phelan!” Prudence smiled and took the letter. “Thank you, Bea. Now, about the officers I met last night…there was a dark-haired lieutenant who asked me to dance, and he--” “Aren’t you going to open it?” Beatrix asked, watching in dismay as Prudence laid the letter on a side table. Prudence gave her a quizzical smile. “My, you’re impatient today. You want me to open it this very moment?” ”Yes.” Beatrix promptly sat in a chair upholstered with flower-printed fabric. “But I want to tell you about the lieutenant.” “I don’t give a monkey about the lieutenant, I want to hear about Captain Phelan.” Prudence gave a low chuckle. “I haven’t seen you this excited since you stole that fox that Lord Campdon imported from France last year.” “I didn’t steal him, I rescued him. Importing a fox for a hunt…I call that very unsporting.” Beatrix gestured to the letter. “Open it!” Prudence broke the seal, skimmed the letter, and shook her head in amused disbelief. “Now he’s writing about mules.” She rolled her eyes and gave Beatrix the letter. Miss Prudence Mercer Stony Cross Hampshire, England 7 November 1854 Dear Prudence, Regardless of the reports that describe the British soldier as unflinching, I assure you that when riflemen are under fire, we most certainly duck, bob, and run for cover. Per your advice, I have added a sidestep and a dodge to my repertoire, with excellent results. To my mind, the old fable has been disproved: there are times in life when one definitely wants to be the hare, not the tortoise. We fought at the southern port of Balaklava on the twenty-fourth of October. Light Brigade was ordered to charge directly into a battery of Russian guns for no comprehensible reason. Five cavalry regiments were mowed down without support. Two hundred men and nearly four hundred horses lost in twenty minutes. More fighting on the fifth of November, at Inkerman. We went to rescue soldiers stranded on the field before the Russians could reach them. Albert went out with me under a storm of shot and shell, and helped to identify the wounded so we could carry them out of range of the guns. My closest friend in the regiment was killed. Please thank your friend Prudence for her advice for Albert. His biting is less frequent, and he never goes for me, although he’s taken a few nips at visitors to the tent. May and October, the best-smelling months? I’ll make a case for December: evergreen, frost, wood smoke, cinnamon. As for your favorite song…were you aware that “Over the Hills and Far Away” is the official music of the Rifle Brigade? It seems nearly everyone here has fallen prey to some kind of illness except for me. I’ve had no symptoms of cholera nor any of the other diseases that have swept through both divisions. I feel I should at least feign some kind of digestive problem for the sake of decency. Regarding the donkey feud: while I have sympathy for Caird and his mare of easy virtue, I feel compelled to point out that the birth of a mule is not at all a bad outcome. Mules are more surefooted than horses, generally healthier, and best of all, they have very expressive ears. And they’re not unduly stubborn, as long they’re managed well. If you wonder at my apparent fondness for mules, I should probably explain that as a boy, I had a pet mule named Hector, after the mule mentioned in the Iliad. I wouldn’t presume to ask you to wait for me, Pru, but I will ask that you write to me again. I’ve read your last letter more times than I can count. Somehow you’re more real to me now, two thousand miles away, than you ever were before. Ever yours, Christopher P.S. Sketch of Albert included

Most Americans are not aware that the diet they feed their children guarantees a high cancer probability down the road.13 They don’t even contemplate that eating fast-food meals may be just as risky (or more so) as letting their children smoke cigarettes.14

If he was aware of her outrage he ignored it. And she had found it fading, evaporating like smoke on the wind even as she tried to hold on to it. Her heart had screamed, then whimpered, then stopped protesting altogether. His voice belonged to the Serpent, and mamma had always told her to beware those who used too many words. Words are liars. But his words had curled their way into her consciousness and wrapped tightly around her unresisting mind.