Smoky Air Quotes

From p. 40 of Signet Edition of Thomas Wolfe's _You Can't Go Home Again_ (1940): Some things will never change. Some things will always be the same. Lean down your ear upon the earth and listen. The voice of forest water in the night, a woman's laughter in the dark, the clean, hard rattle of raked gravel, the cricketing stitch of midday in hot meadows, the delicate web of children's voices in bright air--these things will never change. The glitter of sunlight on roughened water, the glory of the stars, the innocence of morning, the smell of the sea in harbors, the feathery blur and smoky buddings of young boughs, and something there that comes and goes and never can be captured, the thorn of spring, the sharp and tongueless cry--these things will always be the same. All things belonging to the earth will never change--the leaf, the blade, the flower, the wind that cries and sleeps and wakes again, the trees whose stiff arms clash and tremble in the dark, and the dust of lovers long since buried in the earth--all things proceeding from the earth to seasons, all things that lapse and change and come again upon the earth--these things will always be the same, for they come up from the earth that never changes, they go back into the earth that lasts forever. Only the earth endures, but it endures forever. The tarantula, the adder, and the asp will also never change. Pain and death will always be the same. But under the pavements trembling like a pulse, under the buildings trembling like a cry, under the waste of time, under the hoof of the beast above the broken bones of cities, there will be something growing like a flower, something bursting from the earth again, forever deathless, faithful, coming into life again like April.

Later, when he was able to see the bigger picture, he imagined that wild animals must feel the same kind of uncontrollable fear when they first inhaled the smoky air of a forest fire.

CHAPTER 2: INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS ALDO THE APACHE My name is Lt. Aldo Raine and I'm putting together a special team, and I need me 8 soldiers. 8 Jewish-American soldiers. Now, y'all might've heard rumors about the armada happening soon. Well, we'll be leaving a little earlier. We're gonna be dropped into France, dressed as civilians. And once we're in enemy territory, as a bushwhackin' guerrilla army, we're gonna be doin' one thing and one thing only... killin' Nazis. Now, I don't know about y'all, but I sure as hell didn't come down from the goddamn Smoky Mountains, cross 5,000 miles of water, fight my way through half of Sicily and jump out of a fuckin' air-o-plane to teach the Nazis lessons in humanity. Nazi ain't got no humanity. They're the foot soldiers of a Jew-hatin', mass murderin' maniac and they need to be destroyed. That's why any and every every son of a bitch we find wearin' a Nazi uniform, they're gonna die. Now, I'm the direct descendant of the mountain man Jim Bridger. That means I got a little Injun in me. And our battle plan will be that of an Apache resistance. We will be cruel to the Germans, and through our cruelty they will know who we are. And they will find the evidence of our cruelty in the disemboweled, dismembered, and disfigured bodies of their brothers we leave behind us. And the German won't not be able to help themselves but to imagine the cruelty their brothers endured at our hands, and our boot heels, and the edge of our knives. And the German will be sickened by us, and the German will talk about us, and the German will fear us. And when the German closes their eyes at night and they're tortured by their subconscious for the evil they have done, it will be with thoughts of us they are tortured with. Sooounds good?

When someone you love disappears, it's like the light goes dim, and you're in the shadows. You try to do what people tell you: put one foot in front of the other; keep looking up; give yourself over to the seconds and minutes and hours. But always there's taht glimmer of light-that way of living you once knew-sort of faded and smoky like the crescent moon on a winter's night when the air is full of ice and clouds, but still there, hanging just over your head. You think it's not far. Your think at any moment you can reach out and grab it.

Alone in her shelter, she allowed herself tears. When her shelter cooled to the touch she called to Gull, “Coming out!” She eased her head out into the smoky air, looked over at Gull. She imaged they both looked like a couple of sweaty, parboiled turtles climbing out of their shells. “Hello, gorgeous.” She laughed. It hurt her throat, but she laughed. “Hey, handsome.

It stood in the middle of a vast yard behind the terribly strange house. And this tree rose up some one hundred feet in the air, taller than the high roofs and full and round and well branched, and covered all over with rich assortments of red and brown and yellow autumn leaves. "But," whispered Tom, "oh, look. What's up in that tree!" For the Tree was hung with a variety of pumpkins of every shape and size and a number of tints and hues of smoky yellow or bright orange." "A pumpkin tree," someone said. "No," said Tom. The wind blew among the high branches and tossed their bright burdens, softly. "A Halloween Tree," said Tom. And he was right.

The seamen had whitewashed the smoky ceilings of the ward, and that dear homely smell carried the vividness of thatch and lumpy walls and stew given from the goodness of a stranger's heart. But that was all there was of comfort, and the salt air had turned from cold to warm in the passing of a life, an afternoon.

The air is hot and rich with the scent of chocolate. Quite unlike the white powdery chocolate I knew as a boy, this has a throaty richness like the perfumed beans from the coffee stall on the market, a redolence of amaretto and tiramisù, a smoky, burned flavor that enters my mouth somehow and makes it water. There is a silver jug of the stuff on the counter, from which a vapor rises. I recall that I have not breakfasted this morning.

His mother's Femme smelled of plums, flowers and smoky sandalwood. It made him think of the silk and linen dresses that fluttered around her knees on windy days. Her gloves smelled of it, and her shawls. It was his mother's scent only, and he liked that when she left a room it would trail in the air behind her, making him feel safe.

Gradually, the darkness sculpted itself into air and object, the appointments of her room materializing as smoky shapes: a skyline of perfume bottles on her dresser...

You removed my spectacles!” A disbelieving snort of laughter escaped him. “The way you’re taking on, you’d have thought I removed your clothing!” Samantha clutched at the high-necked bodice of her homely bottle-green day dress. “How do I know you didn’t?” Silence hung between them, thicker than the heated air. Then his smoky voice dipped into low and dangerous territory. “If I had removed your clothing, Miss Wickersham, I can assure you it would have been worth waking up for.

...the air is thick and smoky, and it makes the night glow a vivid thing, and dense. It is more than heavy enough for ghosts that it holds suspended here above us.

FAUSTUS. Ah, Faustus, Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, And then thou must be damn'd perpetually! Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven, That time may cease, and midnight never come; Fair Nature's eye, rise, rise again, and make Perpetual day; or let this hour be but A year, a month, a week, a natural day, That Faustus may repent and save his soul! O lente,172 lente currite, noctis equi! The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, The devil will come, and Faustus must be damn'd. O, I'll leap up to my God!—Who pulls me down?— See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament! One drop would save my soul, half a drop: ah, my Christ!— Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ! Yet will I call on him: O, spare me, Lucifer!— Where is it now? 'tis gone: and see, where God Stretcheth out his arm, and bends his ireful brows! Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me, And hide me from the heavy wrath of God! No, no! Then will I headlong run into the earth: Earth, gape! O, no, it will not harbour me! You stars that reign'd at my nativity, Whose influence hath allotted death and hell, Now draw up Faustus, like a foggy mist. Into the entrails of yon labouring cloud[s], That, when you173 vomit forth into the air, My limbs may issue from your smoky mouths, So that my soul may but ascend to heaven! [The clock strikes the half-hour.] Ah, half the hour is past! 'twill all be past anon O God, If thou wilt not have mercy on my soul, Yet for Christ's sake, whose blood hath ransom'd me, Impose some end to my incessant pain; Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years, A hundred thousand, and at last be sav'd! O, no end is limited to damned souls! Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul? Or why is this immortal that thou hast? Ah, Pythagoras' metempsychosis, were that true, This soul should fly from me, and I be chang'd Unto some brutish beast!174 all beasts are happy, For, when they die, Their souls are soon dissolv'd in elements; But mine must live still to be plagu'd in hell. Curs'd be the parents that engender'd me! No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer That hath depriv'd thee of the joys of heaven. [The clock strikes twelve.] O, it strikes, it strikes! Now, body, turn to air, Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell! [Thunder and lightning.] O soul, be chang'd into little water-drops, And fall into the ocean, ne'er be found! Enter DEVILS. My God, my god, look not so fierce on me! Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while! Ugly hell, gape not! come not, Lucifer! I'll burn my books!—Ah, Mephistophilis! [Exeunt DEVILS with FAUSTUS.]

Pull it together, Four-Five-One,” he says firmly. But you can see him suppressing a smile as he’s double-checking the next pod. Positioning the Holo to find the best light in the smoky air. Still facing us as his left foot steps back onto the orange paving stone. Triggering the bomb that blows off his legs.

My delightful, my love, my life, I don’t understand anything: how can you not be with me? I’m so infinitely used to you that I now feel myself lost and empty: without you, my soul. You turn my life into something light, amazing, rainbowed—you put a glint of happiness on everything—always different: sometimes you can be smoky-pink, downy, sometimes dark, winged—and I don’t know when I love your eyes more—when they are open or shut. It’s eleven p.m. now: I’m trying with all the force of my soul to see you through space; my thoughts plead for a heavenly visa to Berlin via air . . . My sweet excitement . . . Today I can’t write about anything except my longing for you. I’m gloomy and fearful: silly thoughts are swarming—that you’ll stumble as you jump out of a carriage in the underground, or that someone will bump into you in the street . . . I don’t know how I’ll survive the week. My tenderness, my happiness, what words can I write for you? How strange that although my life’s work is moving a pen over paper, I don’t know how to tell you how I love, how I desire you. Such agitation—and such divine peace: melting clouds immersed in sunshine—mounds of happiness. And I am floating with you, in you, aflame and melting—and a whole life with you is like the movement of clouds, their airy, quiet falls, their lightness and smoothness, and the heavenly variety of outline and tint—my inexplicable love. I cannot express these cirrus-cumulus sensations. When you and I were at the cemetery last time, I felt it so piercingly and clearly: you know it all, you know what will happen after death—you know it absolutely simply and calmly—as a bird knows that, fluttering from a branch, it will fly and not fall down . . . And that’s why I am so happy with you, my lovely, my little one. And here’s more: you and I are so special; the miracles we know, no one knows, and no one loves the way we love. What are you doing now? For some reason I think you’re in the study: you’ve got up, walked to the door, you are pulling the door wings together and pausing for a moment—waiting to see if they’ll move apart again. I’m tired, I’m terribly tired, good night, my joy. Tomorrow I’ll write you about all kinds of everyday things. My love.

...Would you like to know the view I have out of my window, since you love snow? So here you are: the broad whiteness of the Moldau, and along that whiteness, little black silhouettes of people cross from one shore to the other, like musical notes. For example, the figure of some boy is dragging behind him a D-sharp: a sledge. Across the river there are snowy roofs in a distant, lightweight sky... I walked around the cathedral along a slippery path between snowdrifts. The snow was light, dry: grab a handful, throw it up, and it disperses in the air like dust, as if flying back up. The sky darkened. In it appeared a thin golden moon: half of a broken halo. I walked along the edge of the fortress wall. Old Prague lay below in the thickening mist. The snowy roofs clustered together, cumbrous and dim. The houses seemed to have been piled anyhow, in a moment of terrible and fantastic carelessness. In this frozen storm of outlines, in this snowy semi-darkness, the streetlamps and windows were burning with a warm and sweet lustre, like well-licked punch lollipops. In just one place you could also see a little scarlet light, a drop of pomegranate juice. And in the fog of crooked walls and smoky corners I divined an ancient ghetto, mystical ruins, the alley of Alchemists...

I knew nothing until I knew that we were on the floor by the great table, and that patches of tinder yet alight were floating in the smoky air, which a moment ago had been her faded bridal dress.

With the influence of the dress her personality had also undergone a change. The intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage was converted into impressive hauteur. Her laughter, her gestures, her assertions became more violently affected moment by moment, and as she expanded the room grew smaller around her, until she seemed to be revolving on a noisy, creaking pivot through the smoky air.

The suburban evening was grey and yellow on Sunday; the gardens of the small houses to left and right were rank with ivy and tall grass and lilac bushes; the tropical South London verdure was dusty above and mouldy below; the tepid air swarmed with flies. Eeldrop, at the window, welcomed the smoky smell of lilac, the gramaphones, the choir of the Baptist chapel, and the sight of three small girls playing cards on the steps of the police station.

'how then does soul differ from spirit?' you're probably asking yourself. although he must have been reasonably sure nobody was. "Well, soul is darker of color, denser of volume, saltier of flavor, rougher of texture, and tends to be more maternalistic than paternalistic: soul is connected to Mother Earth just as spirit is connected to Father Sky. Of course, mothers and fathers are prone to copulation, and in their commingled state, soul and spirit often can be difficult to distinguish the one from the other. Generally, if spirit is the fresh air cent and ambient lighting in the house of consciousness, if the spirit is the electrical system that illuminates that house, then soul is the smoky fireplace, the fragrant oven, the dusty wine cellar, the strange creeks we hear in the floorboards late at night. "It's a bit of a cliche to say it, but when you think of soul, you should think of things that are authentic and things that are deep. Anything superficial is not soulful. Anything artificial, imitative, or overly refined is not soulful. Wood has a stronger connection to soul than does plastic, although, paradoxically, thanks to human interface, a funky wooden table or chair can sometimes exceed in soulfulness the soul that may be invoked by a living tree.

Do you know what the best thing about getting my sight back will be?” he asked softly. “No,” she replied, all of the bravado gone from her voice. Straightening, he took one step toward her, then another. She refused to give ground until he was almost on top of her. Feeling the air shift as she retreated, he clumsily flanked her until their positions were reversed and she was the one backing toward the door. “Some might believe it would be the joy of watching the sun dip below a lavender horizon at the end of a perfect summer day.” When he heard her back come up against the door, he splayed one palm against the thick mahogany behind her. “Others might judge it to be perusing the velvety petals of a ruby red rose…”—leaning forward until he felt the warm tickle of her breath against his face, he deepened his voice to a smoky caress—“or gazing tenderly into the eyes of a beautiful woman. But I can promise you, Miss Wickersham, that all of those pleasures will pale in comparison to the sheer unmitigated joy of being rid of you.

THOSE BORN UNDER Pacific Northwest skies are like daffodils: they can achieve beauty only after a long, cold sulk in the rain. Henry, our mother, and I were Pacific Northwest babies. At the first patter of raindrops on the roof, a comfortable melancholy settled over the house. The three of us spent dark, wet days wrapped in old quilts, sitting and sighing at the watery sky. Viviane, with her acute gift for smell, could close her eyes and know the season just by the smell of the rain. Summer rain smelled like newly clipped grass, like mouths stained red with berry juice — blueberries, raspberries, blackberries. It smelled like late nights spent pointing constellations out from their starry guises, freshly washed laundry drying outside on the line, like barbecues and stolen kisses in a 1932 Ford Coupe. The first of the many autumn rains smelled smoky, like a doused campsite fire, as if the ground itself had been aflame during those hot summer months. It smelled like burnt piles of collected leaves, the cough of a newly revived chimney, roasted chestnuts, the scent of a man’s hands after hours spent in a woodshop. Fall rain was not Viviane’s favorite. Rain in the winter smelled simply like ice, the cold air burning the tips of ears, cheeks, and eyelashes. Winter rain was for hiding in quilts and blankets, for tying woolen scarves around noses and mouths — the moisture of rasping breaths stinging chapped lips. The first bout of warm spring rain caused normally respectable women to pull off their stockings and run through muddy puddles alongside their children. Viviane was convinced it was due to the way the rain smelled: like the earth, tulip bulbs, and dahlia roots. It smelled like the mud along a riverbed, like if she opened her mouth wide enough, she could taste the minerals in the air. Viviane could feel the heat of the rain against her fingers when she pressed her hand to the ground after a storm. But in 1959, the year Henry and I turned fifteen, those warm spring rains never arrived. March came and went without a single drop falling from the sky. The air that month smelled dry and flat. Viviane would wake up in the morning unsure of where she was or what she should be doing. Did the wash need to be hung on the line? Was there firewood to be brought in from the woodshed and stacked on the back porch? Even nature seemed confused. When the rains didn’t appear, the daffodil bulbs dried to dust in their beds of mulch and soil. The trees remained leafless, and the squirrels, without acorns to feed on and with nests to build, ran in confused circles below the bare limbs. The only person who seemed unfazed by the disappearance of the rain was my grandmother. Emilienne was not a Pacific Northwest baby nor a daffodil. Emilienne was more like a petunia. She needed the water but could do without the puddles and wet feet. She didn’t have any desire to ponder the gray skies. She found all the rain to be a bit of an inconvenience, to be honest.

But what if I tried to use it on Nikolas and I couldn’t control it? What if I hurt him or worse? The thought of him dying left me cold; the thought of me being the one to end his life sucked the air from my lungs, and I had to remind myself to breathe. “I can’t . . . I can’t do it . . . ” I wheezed, close to hyperventilating. Nikolas moved so fast he was gripping my shoulders before I could react. His eyes softened to a smoky gray as they captured mine. “This really frightens you, doesn’t it?” I could only nod.

So,” Will begins, “do you play ball as well as you run?” I laugh a little. I can’t help it. He’s sweet and disarming and my nerves are racing. “Not even close.” The conversation goes no further as we move up in our lines. Catherine looks over her shoulder at me, her wide sea eyes assessing. Like she can’t quite figure me out. My smile fades and I look away. She can never figure me out. I can never let her. Never let anyone here. She faces me with her arms crossed. “You make friends fast. Since freshman year, I’ve spoken to like . . .” She paused and looks upward as though mentally counting. “Three, no—four people. And you’re number four.” I shrug. “He’s just a guy.” Catherine squares up at the free-throw line, dribbles a few times, and shoots. The ball swished cleanly through the net. She catches it and tosses it back to me. I try copying her moves, but my ball flies low, glides beneath the backboard. I head to the end of the line again. Will’s already waiting it half-court, letting others go before him. My face warms at his obvious stall. “You weren’t kidding,” he teases over the thunder of basketballs. “Did you make it?” I ask, wishing I had looked while he shot. “Yeah.” “Of course,” I mock. He lets another kid go before him. I do the same. Catherine is several ahead of me now. His gaze scans me, sweeping over my face and hair with deep intensity, like he’s memorizing my features. “Yeah, well. I can’t run like you.” I move up in line, but when I sneak a look behind me, he’s looking back, too. “Wow,” Catherine murmurs in her smoky low voice as she falls into line beside me. “I never knew it happened like that.” I snap my gaze to her. “What?” “You know. Romeo and Juliet stuff. Love at first sight and all that.” “It’s not like that,” I say quickly. “You could have fooled me.” We’re up again. Catherine takes her shot. It swishes cleanly through the hoop. When I shoot, the ball bounces hard off the backboard and flies wildly through the air, knocking the coach in the head. I slap a hand over my mouth. The coach barely catches herself from falling. Several students laugh. She glares at me and readjusts her cap. With a small wave of apology, I head back to the end of the line. Will’s there, fighting laughter. “Nice,” he says. “Glad I’m downcourt of you.” I cross my arms and resist smiling, resist letting myself feel good around him. But he makes it hard. I want to smile. I want to like him, to be around him, to know him. “Happy to amuse you.” His smile slips then, and he’s looking at me with that strange intensity again. Only I understand. I know why. He must remember . . . must recognize me on some level even though he can’t understand it. “You want to go out?” he asks suddenly. I blink. “As in a date?” “Yes. That’s what a guy usually means when he asks that question.

Those who pass their time immured in the smoky circumference of the city, amid the rattling of carts, the brawling of the multitude, and the variety of unmeaning and discordant sounds that prey insensibly upon the nerves, and beget a weariness of the spirits, can alone understand and feel that expansion of the heart, that physical renovation which a citizen experiences when he steals forth from his dusty prison, to breathe the free air of heaven, and enjoy the unsophisticated face of nature. Who that has rambled by the side of one of our majestic rivers, at the hour of sun-set, when the wildly romatick scenery around is softened and tinted by the voluptuous mist of evening; when the bold and swelling outlines of the distant mountain seem melting into the glowing horizon, and rich mantle of refulgence is thrown over the whole expanse of the heavens, but must have felt how abundant is nature in sources of pure enjoyment; how luxuriant in all that can enliven the senses or delight the imagination. The jocund zephyr full freighted with native fragrance, sues sweetly to the senses; the chirping of the thousand varieties of insects with which our woodlands abound, forms a concert of simple melody; even the barking of the farm dog, the lowing of the cattle, the tinkling of their bells, and the strokes of the woodman's axe from the opposite shore, seem to partake of the softness of the scene and fall tunefully upon the ear; while the voice of the villager, chaunting some rustick ballad, swells from a distance, in the semblance of the very musick of harmonious love.

Walt's father had been shopping with his son on a Sunday afternoon when he'd wandered into All Saints' Passage and found the bookshop. A silent boy, Walt still hadn't spoken, so there was no reason to think he'd be interested in reading yet. But when Walt snuck through the door, under his father's arm, he let out a gasp of delight. He had stepped into a kingdom: an oak labyrinth of bookshelves, corridors and canyons of literature beckoning him, whispering enchanting words Walt had never heard before. The air was smoky with the scent of leather, ink and paper, caramel-rich and citrus-sharp. Walt stuck out his small tongue to taste this new flavor and grinned, sticky with excitement. And he knew, all of a sudden and deep in his soul, that this was a place he belonged more than any other.

air, that’s what I murmured as I sidled my way through the crowd, and this was true enough. Certainly I wanted air, and once free of the smokiness and perspiration of the party, I found air in abundance. I also saw a pair of French doors standing open to the evening air, allowing a glimpse of a hallway, and not a footman in sight. Now, it wasn’t as if I meant any harm. I had just sipped champagne

The dogs skittered across the wet blacktop as silently as cockroaches, each so small it amazes me that they hadn’t been squashed underfoot. Easy to love. Easy to kill. I thought again of Ping Xi’s stuffed dogs, the preposterous myth of his industrial dog-killing freezer. A tight sheet of wind slapped me in the face. I pulled the collar of my fur coat up around my throat, and I pictured myself as a white fox curling up in the corner of Ping Xi’s freezer, the room whirling with smoky air, swinging sides of cow creaking through the the hum of cold, my mind slowing down until single syllables of thought abstracted from their meanings and I heard them stretched out as long-held notes, like foghorns or sirens for a blackout curfew or an air raid. “This has been a test.” I felt my teeth chatter but my face was numb. Soon. The freezer sounded really good.

Remove this quote from your collection “The dogs skittered across the wet blacktop as silently as cockroaches, each so small it amazes me that they hadn’t been squashed underfoot. Easy to love. Easy to kill. I thought again of Ping Xi’s stuffed dogs, the preposterous myth of his industrial dog-killing freezer. A tight sheet of wind slapped me in the face. I pulled the collar of my fur coat up around my throat, and I pictured myself as a white fox curling up in the corner of Ping Xi’s freezer, the room whirling with smoky air, swinging sides of cow creaking through the the hum of cold, my mind slowing down until single syllables of thought abstracted from their meanings and I heard them stretched out as long-held notes, like foghorns or sirens for a blackout curfew or an air raid. “This has been a test.” I felt my teeth chatter but my face was numb. Soon. The freezer sounded really good.

DEATH’S DIARY: THE PARISIANS Summer came. For the book thief, everything was going nicely. For me, the sky was the color of Jews. When their bodies had finished scouring for gaps in the door, their souls rose up. When their fingernails had scratched at the wood and in some cases were nailed into it by the sheer force of desperation, their spirits came toward me, into my arms, and we climbed out of those shower facilities, onto the roof and up, into eternity’s certain breadth. They just kept feeding me. Minute after minute. Shower after shower. I’ll never forget the first day in Auschwitz, the first time in Mauthausen. At that second place, as time wore on, I also picked them up from the bottom of the great cliff, when their escapes fell awfully awry. There were broken bodies and dead, sweet hearts. Still, it was better than the gas. Some of them I caught when they were only halfway down. Saved you, I’d think, holding their souls in midair as the rest of their being—their physical shells—plummeted to the earth. All of them were light, like the cases of empty walnuts. Smoky sky in those places. The smell like a stove, but still so cold. I shiver when I remember—as I try to de-realize it. I blow warm air into my hands, to heat them up. But it’s hard to keep them warm when the souls still shiver. God. I always say that name when I think of it. God. Twice, I speak it. I say His name in a futile attempt to understand. “But it’s not your job to understand.” That’s me who answers. God never says anything. You think you’re the only one he never answers? “Your job is to …” And I stop listening to me, because to put it bluntly, I tire me. When I start thinking like that, I become so exhausted, and I don’t have the luxury of indulging fatigue. I’m compelled to continue on, because although it’s not true for every person on earth, it’s true for the vast majority—that death waits for no man—and if he does, he doesn’t usually wait very long. On June 23, 1942, there was a group of French Jews in a German prison, on Polish soil. The first person I took was close to the door, his mind racing, then reduced to pacing, then slowing down, slowing down …. Please believe me when I tell you that I picked up each soul that day as if it were newly born. I even kissed a few weary, poisoned cheeks. I listened to their last, gasping cries. Their vanishing words. I watched their love visions and freed them from their fear. I took them all away, and if ever there was a time I needed distraction, this was it. In complete desolation, I looked at the world above. I watched the sky as it turned from silver to gray to the color of rain. Even the clouds were trying to get away. Sometimes I imagined how everything looked above those clouds, knowing without question that the sun was blond, and the endless atmosphere was a giant blue eye. They were French, they were Jews, and they were you.

Letter You can see it already: chalks and ochers; Country crossed with a thousand furrow-lines; Ground-level rooftops hidden by the shrubbery; Sporadic haystacks standing on the grass; Smoky old rooftops tarnishing the landscape; A river (not Cayster or Ganges, though: A feeble Norman salt-infested watercourse); On the right, to the north, bizarre terrain All angular--you'd think a shovel did it. So that's the foreground. An old chapel adds Its antique spire, and gathers alongside it A few gnarled elms with grumpy silhouettes; Seemingly tired of all the frisky breezes, They carp at every gust that stirs them up. At one side of my house a big wheelbarrow Is rusting; and before me lies the vast Horizon, all its notches filled with ocean blue; Cocks and hens spread their gildings, and converse Beneath my window; and the rooftop attics, Now and then, toss me songs in dialect. In my lane dwells a patriarchal rope-maker; The old man makes his wheel run loud, and goes Retrograde, hemp wreathed tightly round the midriff. I like these waters where the wild gale scuds; All day the country tempts me to go strolling; The little village urchins, book in hand, Envy me, at the schoolmaster's (my lodging), As a big schoolboy sneaking a day off. The air is pure, the sky smiles; there's a constant Soft noise of children spelling things aloud. The waters flow; a linnet flies; and I say: "Thank you! Thank you, Almighty God!"--So, then, I live: Peacefully, hour by hour, with little fuss, I shed My days, and think of you, my lady fair! I hear the children chattering; and I see, at times, Sailing across the high seas in its pride, Over the gables of the tranquil village, Some winged ship which is traveling far away, Flying across the ocean, hounded by all the winds. Lately it slept in port beside the quay. Nothing has kept it from the jealous sea-surge: No tears of relatives, nor fears of wives, Nor reefs dimly reflected in the waters, Nor importunity of sinister birds.

THE sun had not yet risen. The sea was indistinguishable from the sky, except that the sea was slightly creased as if a cloth had wrinkles in it. Gradually as the sky whitened a dark line lay on the horizon dividing the sea from the sky and the grey cloth became barred with thick strokes moving, one after another, beneath the surface, following each other, pursuing each other, perpetually. As they neared the shore each bar rose, heaped itself, broke and swept a thin veil of white water across the sand. The wave paused, and then drew out again, sighing like a sleeper whose breath comes and goes unconsciously. Gradually the dark bar on the horizon became clear as if the sediment in an old wine-bottle had sunk and left the glass green. Behind it, too, the sky cleared as if the white sediment there had sunk, or as if the arm of a woman couched beneath the horizon had raised a lamp and flat bars of white, green and yellow, spread across the sky like the blades of a fan. Then she raised her lamp higher and the air seemed to become fibrous and to tear away from the green surface flickering and flaming in red and yellow fibres like the smoky fire that roars from a bonfire. Gradually the fibres of the burning bonfire were fused into one haze, one incandescence which lifted the weight of the woollen grey sky on top of it and turned it to a million atoms of soft blue. The surface of the sea slowly became transparent and lay rippling and sparkling until the dark stripes were almost rubbed out. Slowly the arm that held the lamp reused it higher and then higher until a broad flame became visible; an arc of fire burnt on the rim of the horizon, and all round it the sea blazed gold. The light struck upon the trees in the garden, making one leaf transparent and then another. One bird chirped high up; there was a pause; another chirped lower down. The sun sharpened the walls of the house, and rested like the tip of a fan upon a white blind and made a blue fingerprint of shadow under the leaf by the bedroom window. The blind stirred slightly, but all within was dim and unsubstantial. The birds sang their blank melody outside.

We talked into the night, the room blurring around us as it had done at the dance in West Side Story when Tony and Maria first saw each other across a crowd of people. Tonight, tonight, it all began tonight. My friends giggled and sipped wine at the table where I’d abandoned them earlier in the night, oblivious to the fact that their redheaded amiga had just been struck by a lightning bolt. Before I could internally break into the second chorus of song, my version of Tony--this mysterious cowboy--announced abruptly that he had to go. Go? I thought. Go where? There’s no place on earth but this smoky bar…But there was for him: he and his brother had plans to cook Christmas turkeys for some needy folks in his small town. Mmmm. He’s nice, too, I thought as a pang stabbed my insides. “Bye,” he said with a gentle smile. And with that, his delicious boots walked right out of the J-Bar, his dark blue Wranglers cloaking a body that I was sure had to have been chiseled out of granite. My lungs felt tight, and I still smelled his scent through the bar smoke in the air. I didn’t even know his name. I prayed it wasn’t Billy Bob.

About three things I was absolutely positive. First, Edward was a vampire. Second, there was part of him—and I didn’t know how potent that part might be—that thirsted for my blood. And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him. 10. INTERROGATIONS IT WAS VERY HARD, IN THE MORNING, TO ARGUE WITH THE PART of me that was sure last night was a dream. Logic wasn’t on my side, or common sense. I clung to the parts I couldn’t have imagined—like his smell. I was sure I could never have dreamed that up on my own. It was foggy and dark outside my window, absolutely perfect. He had no reason not to be in school today. I dressed in my heavy clothes, remembering I didn’t have a jacket. Further proof that my memory was real. When I got downstairs, Charlie was gone again—I was running later than I’d realized. I swallowed a granola bar in three bites, chased it down with milk straight from the carton, and then hurried out the door. Hopefully the rain would hold off until I could find Jessica. It was unusually foggy; the air was almost smoky with it. The mist was ice cold where it clung to the exposed skin on my face and neck. I couldn’t wait to get the heat going in my truck. It was such a thick fog that I was a few feet down the driveway before I realized there was a car

Zane awakened them both early. By the time Chase stirred, he had both their tents down and was on his third cup of coffee. Phoebe had promised she could act completely normal, but looking at her from across the fire, he wasn’t so sure. There was no way anyone could see her dreamy expression and not know something was different. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “What? You keep looking at me. I know my makeup can’t be smudged. I’m not wearing any.” It didn’t matter; she was still beautiful. “You look different,” he told her. “Satisfied?” Color flared on her cheeks. “You’re only saying that because you know the truth.” “Uh-huh.” He doubted that, but maybe she was right. Or maybe the weather would be enough of a distraction to keep everyone from figuring out the truth. “How long is it going to rain?” she asked as she fingered a pole holding up the canvas sheet they put up to protect the fire and the seating area around it. “It sure got cold and damp in a hurry.” Zane shrugged. “No way to tell. The storm is supposed to hang around for a few days, but maybe it will blow over.” He hoped it would. Traveling in the rain wouldn’t be fun for anyone. And he couldn’t simply turn them around, head to the ranch and be there in time for lunch. They were at the farthest point from his house. It was a full two-day ride back. Phoebe finished her coffee. “I’m going to check and see if my things are dry,” she said as she stood. He nodded, then watched her go. Cookie had started a second campfire on the far side of camp. Phoebe’s clothes and sleeping bag were getting a dose of smoky warm air in an attempt to get them dry before they headed out. Zane knew the old man wouldn’t tease Phoebe. Instead he would save his comments for Zane.

And now this mofiient also had come and gone. The dark- red sun still hung, round as a ball, above the blue snowdrifts on the skyline, and the snowy plain greedily sucked in its juicy pineapple light, when the sleigh swept into sight and vanished. “ Good-bye, Lara, until we meet in the next world, AGAIN YARYKINO 441 good-bye, my Icwe, my inexhaustible, everlasting joy. I’ll never see you again. I’ll never, never see you again.’* It was getting dark. Swiftly the bronze-red patches of sunset on the ^low faded and went out. The soft, ashy dis- tance filled with lilac dusk turning to deep mauve, and its smoky haze smudged the fine tracery of the roadside birch^ lightly hand-drawn on the pink sky, pale as thou^ it had sudd^y grown shallow. Grief had sharpened Yury’s vision and quickened his per- ception a hundredfold. The very air surrounding him seemed unique. The evening breathed witness of all that had befallen him. As if there had never been such a dusk before and evening were falling now for the first time in order to console him in his loneliness and bereavement. As if the valky were not always girded by woods growing on the surrounding hills and facing away from the horizon, but the trees had only taken up their places now, rising out of the ground on purpose to offer their condolences. He almost waved away the tangible beauty of the hour like a crowd of persistent friends, almost said to the lingering afterglow: “Thank you, thank you, I’ll be all right.” Still standing on the veranda, he turned his face to the closed door, his back to the world. “ My bri^t sun has set something was repeating this inside him, as if to learn it by heart. He had not the strength to say these words out loud

We begin with an onion soup as smoky and fragrant as autumn leaves, with croutons and grated Gruyère and a sprinkle of paprika over the top. She serves and watches me throughout, waiting, perhaps, for me to produce from thin air an even more perfect confection that will cast her effort into the shade. Instead I eat, and talk, and smile, and compliment the chef, and the chink of crockery goes through her head, and she feels slightly dazed, not quite herself. Well, pulque is a mysterious brew, and the punch is liberally spiked with it, courtesy of Yours Truly, of course, in honor of the joyful occasion. As comfort, perhaps, she serves more punch, and the scent of the cloves is like being buried alive, and the taste is like chilies spiced with fire, and she wonders, Will it ever end? The second course is sweet foie gras, sliced on thin toast with quinces and figs. It's the snap that gives this dish its charm, like the snap of correctly tempered chocolate, and the foie gras melts so lingeringly in the mouth, as soft as praline truffle, and it is served with a glass of ice-cold Sauternes that Anouk disdains, but which Rosette sips in a tiny glass no larger than a thimble, and she gives her rare and sunny smile, and signs impatiently for more. The third course is a salmon baked en papillote and served whole, with a béarnaise sauce. Alice complains she is nearly full, but Nico shares his plate with her, feeding her tidbits and laughing at her minuscule appetite. Then comes the pièce de résistance: the goose, long roasted in a hot oven so that the fat has melted from the skin, leaving it crisp and almost caramelized, and the flesh so tender it slips off the bones like a silk stocking from a lady's leg. Around it there are chestnuts and roast potatoes, all cooked and crackling in the golden fat.

The sun had not yet risen. The sea was indistinguishable from the sky, except that the sea was slightly creased as if a cloth had wrinkles in it. Gradually as the sky whitened a dark line lay on the horizon dividing the sea from the sky and the grey cloth became barred with thick strokes moving, one after another, beneath the surface, following each other, pursuing each other, perpetually. As they neared the shore each bar rose, heaped itself, broke and swept a thin veil of white water across the sand. The wave paused, and then drew out again, sighing like a sleeper whose breath comes and goes unconsciously. Gradually the dark bar on the horizon became clear as if the sediment in an old wine-bottle had sunk and left the glass green. Behind it, too, the sky cleared as if the white sediment there had sunk, or as if the arm of a woman couched beneath the horizon had raised a lamp and flat bars of white, green and yellow spread across the sky like the blades of a fan. Then she raised her lamp higher and the air seemed to become fibrous and to tear away from the green surface flickering and flaming in red and yellow fibres like the smoky fire that roars from a bonfire. Gradually the fibres of the burning bonfire were fused into one haze, one incandescence which lifted the weight of the woolen grey sky on top of it and turned it to a million atoms of soft blue. The surface of the sea slowly became transparent and lay rippling and sparkling until the dark stripes were almost rubbed out. Slowly the arm that held the lamp raised it higher and then higher until a broad flame became visible; an arc of fire burnt on the rim of the horizon, and all round it the sea blazed gold. The light struck upon the trees in the garden, making one leaf transparent and then another. One bird chirped high up; there was a pause; another chirped lower down. The sun sharpened the walls of the house, and rested like the tip of a fan upon a white blind and made a blue finger-print of shadow under the leaf by the bedroom window. The blind stirred slightly, but all within was dim and unsubstantial. The birds sang their blank melody outside.

How did you convince her to remarry you?” Tomas asked curiously, drawing Radcliffe from his thoughts. Making a face, he admitted, “I had to draw up a contract stating that I would never again condescend to her. That I would discuss business with her on a daily basis were she interested, and…” “And?” He sighed unhappily. “And that I would take her to my club dressed as a man.” Tomas gave a start. “What?” “Shh,” Radcliffe cautioned, glancing nervously around to be sure that they had not been overheard. No one seemed to be paying attention to them. Most of the guests were casting expectant glances toward the back of the church, hoping to spot the brides who should have been there by now. Glancing back to Tomas, he nodded. “She was quite adamant about seeing the club. It seems she was jealous of Beth’s getting with those ‘hallowed halls’-her words, not mine-and she was determined to see inside for herself.” “Have you taken her there yet?” “Nay, nay. I managed to put her off for quite some time, and then by the time she lost her patience with my stalling, she was with child and did not think the smoky atmosphere would be good for the baby. I am hoping by the time it is born and she is up and about again, she will have forgotten-“ A faint shriek from outside the church made him pause and stiffen in alarm. “That sounded like Charlie.” Turning, he hurried toward the back of the church with Tomas on his heel. Crashing through the church doors, they both froze at the top of the steps and gaped at the spectacle taking place on the street below. Charlie and Beth, in all their wedding finery, were in the midst of attacking what appeared to be a street vendor. Flowers were flying through the air as they both pummeled the man with their bouquets and shouted at him furiously. “Have I mentioned, Radcliffe, how little I appreciate the effect your wife has had on mine?” Tomas murmured suddenly, and Radcliffe glanced at him with amazement. “My wife? Good Lord, Tomas, you cannot blame Beth’s sudden change on Charlie. They grew up together, for God’s sake. After twenty years of influence, she was not like this.” Tomas frowned. “I had not thought of that. What do you suppose did it, then?” Radcliffe grinned slightly. “The only new thing in her life is you.” Tomas was gaping over that truth when Stokes slipped out of the church to join them. “Oh, dear. Lady Charlie and Lady Beth are hardly in the condition for that sort of behavior.

From an essay on early reading by Robert Pinsky: My favorite reading for many years was the "Alice" books. The sentences had the same somber, drugged conviction as Sir John Tenniel's illustrations, an inexplicable, shadowy dignity that reminded me of the portraits and symbols engraved on paper money. The books were not made of words and sentences but of that smoky assurance, the insistent solidity of folded, textured, Victorian interiors elaborately barricaded against the doubt and ennui of a dreadfully God-forsaken vision. The drama of resisting some corrosive, enervating loss, some menacing boredom, made itself clear in the matter-of-fact reality of the story. Behind the drawings I felt not merely a tissue of words and sentences but an unquestioned, definite reality. I read the books over and over. Inevitably, at some point, I began trying to see how it was done, to unravel the making--to read the words as words, to peek behind the reality. The loss entailed by such knowledge is immense. Is the romance of "being a writer"--a romance perhaps even created to compensate for this catastrophic loss--worth the price? The process can be epitomized by the episode that goes with one of my favorite illustrations. Alice has entered a dark wood--"much darker than the last wood": [S]he reached the wood: It looked very cool and shady. "Well, at any rate it's a great comfort," she said as she stepped under the trees, "after being so hot, to get into the--into the--into what?" she went on, rather surprised at not being able to think of the word. "I mean to get under the--under the--under this, you know!" putting her hand on the trunk of the tree. "What does it call itself, I wonder? I do believe it's got no name--why to be sure it hasn't!" This is the wood where things have no names, which Alice has been warned about. As she tries to remember her own name ("I know it begins with L!"), a Fawn comes wandering by. In its soft, sweet voice, the Fawn asks Alice, "What do you call yourself?" Alice returns the question, the creature replies, "I'll tell you, if you'll come a little further on . . . . I can't remember here". The Tenniel picture that I still find affecting illustrates the first part of the next sentence: So they walked on together through the wood, Alice with her arms clasped lovingly round the soft neck of the Fawn, till they came out into another open field, and here the Fawn gave a sudden bound into the air, and shook itself free from Alice's arm. "I'm a Fawn!" it cried out in a voice of delight. "And dear me! you're a human child!" A sudden look of alarm came into its beautiful brown eyes, and in another moment it had darted away at full speed. In the illustration, the little girl and the animal walk together with a slightly awkward intimacy, Alice's right arm circled over the Fawn's neck and back so that the fingers of her two hands meet in front of her waist, barely close enough to mesh a little, a space between the thumbs. They both look forward, and the affecting clumsiness of the pose suggests that they are tripping one another. The great-eyed Fawn's legs are breathtakingly thin. Alice's expression is calm, a little melancholy or spaced-out. What an allegory of the fall into language. To imagine a child crossing over from the jubilant, passive experience of such a passage in its physical reality, over into the phrase-by-phrase, conscious analysis of how it is done--all that movement and reversal and feeling and texture in a handful of sentences--is somewhat like imagining a parallel masking of life itself, as if I were to discover, on reflection, that this room where I am writing, the keyboard, the jar of pens, the lamp, the rain outside, were all made out of words. From "Some Notes on Reading," in The Most Wonderful Books (Milkweed Editions)

Past the projects, the land opened up and water came into view. The breeze carried rain and salt. Jetties and barrier walls supported the shore, which was stacked with crumbling brick warehouses. Out in the channel, the Statue of Liberty stood alone on her little island, her corroding flame held high in the air as the sun set over the industrial shoreline and skyways of New Jersey. Across the narrows, the bluffs of Staten Island wavered in the smoky light of dusk that turned the Verrazano into bronze. Faint light burnished water into busy with freighters and tug boats. A lone sail boat flitted in the distance. On the near shore, on a slip of water between a jetty and the land, a blood red barge bobbed on the tide.

The rest of the day is spent, by Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse and the rest of the Navy, grappling with the fact that many two-dimensional structures on this and other ships, which were put into place to prevent various fluids from commingling (e.g. fuel and air) have holes in them, and not only that but a lot of shit is on fire too and things are more than a little smoky. Certain objects that are supposed to (a) remain horizontal and (b) support heavy things have ceased to do either.

So we, God’s servants, go, our Master’s invitation in our hands, out to the highways and hedges. We walk through squalid refugee camps in Syria, fetid open-air trash dumps in Mozambique, drug-infested smoky brothels in Bangkok. We go because deep in the Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan and out on the dusty plains of Iraq, there are people whom God wants to come to His feast. There are people hidden away in small villages in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan who belong at God’s table. There are women in Somalia; street kids in Portland, Oregon; girls in northern Nigeria; and men in Chechnya and a thousand other places who belong in God’s house. God sees them, every one of them, people drawing water from open wells, drinking tea in mud houses, scheming evil in dark camps, hiding from violence in rough caves. He knows their names and faces and voices and laughter and tears. He knows their fears and dreams and joys and sorrows. He was there when they were born, when they fell down, and when they got up—and He wants to share the blessings of all He has with them. This is the heart of God—generous, loving, kind, patient—always ready to bless. He’s prepared His table from the foundations of the earth, and there is still room.

You should go and enjoy your last night of freedom." Dominic held tight to her hands with one of his own, while with the other he tilted up her chin until she was forced to meet his stormy gaze. "Don't worry, Kat. I intend to." With that, his mouth came down on hers to claim her in a way she had never been claimed before. Their last kiss was warm and gentle, an exploration. This kiss devoured, consumed. And in her surprise, she responded. She slipped her hands from his to wrap them around his neck and into his hair. The dark locks slid like warm silk through her chilly fingers and the friction of the action caused her to kiss him deeper. He tasted very faintly of cigar smoke tinged with just the sharpest hint of whiskey. She never would have thought that taste would please her, but somehow it fit him. Smoky and tangy melded together in a way that made her knees go weak. Not that she needed their support. The moment their lips touched, Dominic crushed her against him and became her support and her prison all at once. A prison she didn't feel any desire to escape. In comparison to the air and the cold of the snow, he was as hot as fire. She was molded against a hard, lean body that melted her defenses and made her groan. "Dominic," she whimpered against his lips. He smiled between hot kisses. "So you do know my name. Say it again." Instead she lifted her lips for another kiss, but he held back. "Say it." "Dominic," she repeated, so low he barely heard it. But it was loud enough for now. Later, he would make her cry out his name. It would be a plea and a prayer as he took her careening over an edge he doubted she even knew existed. Yet. Just the thought of that made hot blood pump harder through him and he brought her even closer. Slowly, he moved his mouth away from hers and began a leisurely trail down her throat. To his delight, she arched against him with a quiet moan as her fingers dug into the layers of his coat. Emboldened by her passionate response, he pressed her back against the terrace wall as one hand brushed up her body until he cupped her breast. Her eyes flew open in surprise, but within the green depths he saw no fear, rather a haze of desire and surrender. With a half-smile, he kissed her again, this time with more control as he gently massaged the nipple thrusting out even through her heavy gown. Her mouth came open with a gasp of pleasure and he drank deeply of her taste. He wanted her. Now. Tonight. Tomorrow wasn't going to come fast enough.

The leaders, drummer Carleton Coon and pianist Joe Sanders, had met in a music store and formed their group in 1918. They sang duets through megaphones: hot, roaring numbers, and Sanders’s bubbly greeting—“Howdja do, howdja do, you big ole raddio pooblic”—gave further evidence of the unstilting of America. The nation charged into the new era with music that had never been heard outside small bistros and smoky Harlem speakeasies. Radio was bringing these locations into thousands of homes, making such obscure regional groups as the Coon-Sanders Nighthawks national celebrities. Listeners with crystal sets were picking up WDAF from afar, and interest in the band spread well beyond the Midwest. Coon-Sanders took on road engagements: they were among the first bands to do one-night stands, engagements that were soon engrained in big band life.

But that four-leafed clover hadn't brought any luck either to this soldier or to me. He was a man, too, like me, or like Mr. Hubicka, like us he hadn't any distinction or rank, and yet we had shot each other and brought each other to death, although surely if we could have met somewhere in civil life we might well have liked each other, and found a lot to talk about. And then the explosion rang out. And I, who only a little while before had been looking forward to the sight, lay there beside the German soldier, stretched out my hand and opened his stiffening fingers, and put into them the green four-leaved clover that brings luck, while from somewhere away there in the countryside a mushroom cloud soared into the sky, endlessly expanding into greater heights and vaster smoky masses. I heard the pressure of the air rush across the countryside and hiss and whistle through the bare branches of the trees and bushes, I heard it rattle the transfer chains on the signal, and lean on the arm and shake it; but I lay coughing, and felt my blood draining out of me. To the last moment, before I began to lose the awareness of myself, I held this dead man by the hand, and for his unhearing ears I repeated the words of the chief of that mail train which had brought those wretched Germans from Dresden: 'You should have sat at home on your arse...

Many surprises greet my morning... Sky hazy, smoky, odor in the air

It was a buoyant place under a clear sky, everything in the air whispered that the plains were far behind and the sunlight sent a flicker and a flash of reflections glancing up from the snow; and two more invisible lines had been crossed and important ones: the accent had changed and wine cellars had taken the place of beerhalls. Instead of those grey mastodontic mugs, wine-glasses glittered on the oak. (It was under a vista of old casks in a Weinstube that I settled with my diary till bedtime.) The plain bowls of those wine-glasses were poised on slender glass stalks, or on diminishing pagodas of little globes, and both kinds of stem were coloured: a deep green for Mosel and, for Rhenish, a brown smoky gold that was almost amber. When horny hands lifted them, each flashed forth its coloured message in the lamplight. It is impossible, drinking by glass in those charmingly named inns and wine-cellars, not to drink too much. Deceptively and treacherously, those innocent-looking goblets hold nearly half a bottle and simply by sipping one could explore the two great rivers below and the Danube and all Swabia, and Franconia too by proxy, and the vales of Imhof and the faraway slopes of Würzburg: journeying in time from year to year, with draughts as cool as a deep well, limpidly varying from dark gold to pale silver and smelling of glades and meadows and flowers.

It was a fairy moon. Pearlescent, glowing, and hanging low in the sky---cit was the kind of moon that spelled mischief and delight. Dina stood at the edge of the north field, where the fire was already burning. It had all been arranged by Nour, a kind of witchy wedding gift. Dina inhaled the midnight air, sweet and smoky. Her mother was silhouetted by the fire, loosening her hair from the updo she'd styled it in for the evening. Dina would be like her mother tonight: untamable, wild.

It was a fairy moon. Pearlescent, glowing, and hanging low in the sky---it was the kind of moon that spelled mischief and delight. Dina stood at the edge of the north field, where the fire was already burning. It had all been arranged by Nour, a kind of witchy wedding gift. Dina inhaled the midnight air, sweet and smoky. Her mother was silhouetted by the fire, loosening her hair from the updo she'd styled it in for the evening. Dina would be like her mother tonight: untamable, wild.

What rescues it is Mr Vanhoenacker’s attunement to wisps of sensual, rooted specificity, such as the scents above different cities that waft into the cockpit—the “unique and rich, faintly smoky” smell of Indian cities, the “snow-air mixes with salt” of Boston or how flying over a river near his friend’s home in New England reminds him of “the table they laid for me, and the grateful pilot who came to their place…and felt no sort of

Thank you.” I hated feeling indebted to him, but I took great comfort in the hams and bacon slabs soaking in the curing syrup. He shrugged. “Nothing one neighbor wouldn’t do for another.” “I think you are more neighborly than most.” He poked a stick into the cooling ash. “It isn’t hard to want to help you.” I sucked in the smoky night air, its cold stinging my nose and chest. Though that night with Arthur on the front steps of the schoolhouse in Downington hadn’t been cold, suddenly it seemed too similar to this one. All alone. In the dark. Words that could mean so many different things. “Thank you,” I said. His shoulder raised and lowered as he stared into the distance. I wondered what his life was like, a single man in this small town. No family to speak of. Prater’s Junction didn’t seem to have many girls of an age for him to be interested in. So why didn’t he go elsewhere? Nothing held him here that I could see. He threw the stick on top of the fire pit. “I did it.” I pulled my coat closer around me. “Did what?” “Asked to be considered for a Texas Ranger.” I shoved my hands into the pockets of my coat. “Congratulations. I hope they accept you.” He stepped closer, so close that I could see every inch of his face, in spite of the cloak of night. “I’d never have dared, but for you.” With a hard swallow, I stepped away. Away from the reach of his arms, his lips. I had no intention of falling for a man I didn’t really know. Not again. Besides, though the sheriff had endearing qualities, my heart didn’t leap at his nearness. “Rebekah?” Ollie’s voice, from the house. Sheriff Jeffries touched his hat, stepped back, and nodded. “See you at church on Sunday, Rebekah.

temperature in the storehouse seemed to have risen a notch. I guessed it was my anxiety. The air was faintly smoky, as if somebody was smoking a cigarette. Takeo smoked. I remembered his long-ago offer of a cigarette. I’d declined and bhe had never smoked in my presence after that. Was he inside and smoking as he leisurely made his way toward me? No, he wasn’t the one. I knew that the danger was Eriko Iwata. I heard

player hummed for a second, then sweet sad acoustic guitar filled the air, arpeggiated cascades that transformed the cramped space of the room. The voice that followed was smoky and haunting, filled with loss:

And that is where we leave Pages & Co, reader. But what’s that? Do you feel something strange in the pit of your stomach, like the feeling when you go over the top of a roller coaster? Do you hear the click-clack of a world building itself around you? Can you smell something on the air? Something smoky and sweet, almost like marshmallows toasting on a bonfire? Hold on tight, bookwanderer. For when you are a reader, there is always a new adventure to start. The End. The Beginning.

Likewise, the hüzün in Turkish poetry after the foundation of the Republic, as it, too, expresses the same grief that no one can or would wish to escape, an ache that finally saves our souls and also gives them depth. For the poet, hüzün is the smoky window between him and the world. The screen he projects over life is painful because life itself is painful. So it is, too, for the residents of Istanbul as they resign themselves to poverty and depression. Imbued still with the honour accorded it in Sufi literature, hüzün gives their resignation an air of dignity, but it also explains why it is their choice to embrace failure, indecision, defeat and poverty so philosophically and with such pride, suggesting that hüzün is not the outcome of life’s worries and great losses, but their principal cause. So it was for the heroes of the Turkish films of my childhood and youth, and also for many of my real-life heroes during the same period: they all gave the impression that, because of this hüzün they’d been carrying around in their hearts since birth that they could not appear desirous in the face of money, success, or the women they loved. Hüzün does not just paralyse the inhabitants of Istanbul; it also gives them poetic licence to be paralysed.

then, suddenly, and for no reason he could think of, he was very conscious of the life around him, the Parisian chatter and laughter that filled the smoky air of the restaurant. A strange awareness; not enjoyment, more apprehension. Like the dogs, he thought. Sometimes, at rest, they would raise their heads, alert to something distant, then, after a moment, lie back down again, always with a kind of sigh. What would happen to these people, he wondered, if war came here?

Urey seemed to know all the bars and restaurants near the Columbia University campus and led him to a narrow place packed with people. A white-capped short-order cook at a gas grill took barked orders from a cranky waitress who blew her hair out of her face after each sentence. Aromas of frying meat and grilled potatoes layered the air. Booths marked off tables with red-checked tablecloths. Ceiling fans turned languidly, stirring smoky air into a smooth blue-gray blur. There was no hurry in the place, a feeling of having been there all eternity, with only the faces changing in the pale winter light from the big windows. The waiters moved with quick, sure movements, delivering food that tasted exactly the same as when he was a boy in Brooklyn.

The reality of combat always exceeds the boundaries of imagination. Every battle is an amalgamation of a thousand personal battles, and each man's fight a kaleidoscope of sights, sounds, and smells that burn into his consciousness and echo for as long as his life lasts. A man excited to rage runs across a smoky stubble field. One moment he is bounding ahead on eager legs. A second later he is shocked to find the ground leaping up to dash him rudely in the mouth. His teeth clack, he tastes the gritty soil. He gasps for air. Hot liquid seeps ominously from his belly. Sounds echo and recede. An idea quivers on the edge of his mind. A word forms on his dry tongue. No breath to voice it. The sun shines on him from a night sky.

At the apex of the snake's resistance, its body formed a fine powerful arc that was held momentarily in perfect tension, like a bow. Woman and snake were perfectly attuned to the moment and the task, each focused on the other. Hermine's absolute command over the creature, like her power over all the island, was as inalterable as the equality of the three sides of an equilateral triangle. The storm-colored m'sauga gradually torqued her thick body into a flattened S in her silent, flowing resistance, matching the resistance of Hermine's right arm, and turned to reveal a smoky ribbed belly. Her mouth opened wide, as if in a yawn, and she revealed a pearly pink-white iridescence, the color of a princess dress or the inside of a river clam. Another wave of morel-mushroom musk rose as the venomous fangs bit the air in a staccato rhythm.

Only such witnessing could have inspired the mildly epiphanic passage in Seeds of Man, in which the clear air of the mountainous borderland all too briefly serves as an antidote to the industrial poisons that had choked the life out of both Okemah and Pampa. As Guthrie recalled it: “The feel and the breath of the air was all different, new, high, clear, clean, and light. None of the smokes and carbons, none of the charcoal smells of the oil fields. None of the sooty oil-field fires, none of the blackening slush-pond blazes, none of those big sheet-iron petroleum refineries, none of those big smoky carbon-black plants. No smells of the wild oil gusher on the breeze. No smells from that wild gas well blowing off twenty million feet into the good air every day.”30

Something cathartic happened that night. After tears rolled freely out during the dance, I felt clearer and wide-open and strangely closer to the Ortiz Mountains that loomed before me in the smoky blue air. Once again I felt like a child of the universe, dancing in the green folds of the earth.

That said, he returned to his lunch. Mercier drank some champagne, then, suddenly, and for no reason he could think of, he was very conscious of the life around him, the Parisian chatter and laughter that filled the smoky air of the restaurant. A strange awareness; not enjoyment, more apprehension. Like the dogs, he thought. Sometimes, at rest, they would raise their heads, alert to something distant, then, after a moment, lie back down again, always with a kind of sigh. What would happen to these people, he wondered, if war came here?

against the back of Mom’s seat and put two slugs into it. The girl went ape, screaming and pounding on me. I pushed myself off her. Once I was sitting up, I bounced her head off her door window. The window cracked, but didn’t break. She slumped, out cold. All the windows were shut because of the air conditioner, and it was so smoky in there you’d think we each had our own cigars. If you ask me, gunsmoke smells a lot better than cigar smoke. Love it. But I was afraid people driving by might worry if they saw all that smoke, so I put my window down to let it out.

My smells of a son are gummy sweeties, Play-Doh, Pritt Stick, poster paint and wax crayons. Earthy mud on polyester football kit. The sweet antiseptic of sticking plasters. Fruity bubble gum and the minty tang of chong- as he and his friends called chewing gum. Bicycle chain oil and rubber inner tubes. The chemical overload of Lynx sprayed profusely over sweat, hair gel and toxic trainers. Fried onions and meat on the breath. Tomato ketchup. My scents for a son are: I am Juicy Couture by Juicy Couture Black by Bvlgari L'Air de Rien by Miller Harris Serge Noire by Serge Lutens Rocker Femme by Britney Spears Dirty by Lush Africa by Lynx

When you’re in need of a rescue the approaching thump-thump-thump of rapidly rotating blades is a joyous sound. To give the helicopter rescue the greatest chance of success, a suitable landing zone will have to be found. The ideal landing zone should not require a completely vertical landing or takeoff, both of which reduce the pilot’s control. The ground should slope away on all sides, allowing the helicopter to immediately drop into forward flight when it’s time to take off. Landings and liftoffs work best when the aircraft is pointed into the wind because that gives the machine the greatest lift. The area should be as large as possible, at least 60 feet across for most small rescue helicopters, and as clear as possible for obstructions such as trees and boulders. Clear away debris (pine needles, dust, leaves) that can be blown up by the wash of air, with the possibility of producing mechanical failure. Light snow can be especially dangerous if it fluffs up dramatically to blind the pilot. Wet snow sticks to the ground and adds dangerous weight. If you have the opportunity, pack snow flat well before the helicopter arrives—the night before would be ideal—to harden the surface of the landing zone. Tall grass can be a hazard because it disturbs the helicopter’s cushion of supporting air and hides obstacles such as rocks and tree stumps. To prepare a landing zone, clear out the area as much as possible, including removing your equipment and all the people except the one who is going to be signaling the pilot. Mark the landing zone with weighted bright clothing or gear during the day or with bright lights at night. In case of a night rescue, turn off the bright lights before the helicopter starts to land—they can blind the pilot. Use instead a low-intensity light to mark the perimeter of the landing area, such as chemical light sticks, or at least turn the light away from the helicopter’s direction. Indicate the wind’s direction by building a very small smoky fire, hanging brightly colored streamers, throwing up handfuls of light debris, or signaling with your arms pointed in the direction of the wind. The greatest danger to you occurs while you’re moving toward or away from the helicopter on the ground. Never approach the rear and never walk around the rear of a helicopter. The pilot can’t see you, and the rapidly spinning tail rotor is virtually invisible and soundless. In a sudden shift of the aircraft, you can be sliced to death. Don’t approach by walking downhill toward the helicopter, where the large overhead blade is closest to the ground. It is safest to come toward the helicopter from directly in front, where the pilot has a clear field of view, and only after the pilot or another of the aircraft’s personnel has signaled you to approach. Remove your hat or anything that can be sucked up into the rotors. Stay low because blades can sink closer to the ground as their speed diminishes. Make sure nothing is sticking up above your pack, such as an ice ax or ski pole. In most cases someone from the helicopter will come out to remind you of the important safety measures. One-skid landings or hovering while a rescue is attempted are solely at the discretion of the pilot. They are a high risk at best, and finding a landing zone and preparing it should always be given priority.

I can sometimes hear her music now, after thirty years -- and remember the leaves falling on some smoky autumn afternoon, the air crisp and the sounds of dogs barking, and train whistles far away.

The white fireball was his life force. White embers sprouted out of the life force as the life force whipped its smoky white flames in the air. Although the life force looked like fire, it didn’t feel like fire. It was as soft as a cloud, and it was as warm as a glove.