Soap Bubbles Quotes

With everything so perfect, reality seemed somehow fragile, as if the slightest interruption could imperil her pretty future... all of it felt as tenuous as a soap bubble, shivering and empty.

The idea hovered and shimmered delicately, like a soap bubble, and she dared not even look at it directly in case it burst. But she was familiar with the way of ideas, and she let it shimmer, looking away, thinking about something else.

I love you . . . even if you are insane.” Kellan was chuckling as he opened the shower door. “Good, because I think I’m going to be burping soap bubbles for a week.

Promise me you’ll marry me. Not now. Someday. Because I need to know.” Claire felt a flutter inside, like a bird trying to fly, and a rush of heat that made her dizzy. And something else, something fragile as a soap bubble, and just as beautiful. Joy, in the middle of all this horror and heartbreak. “Yes,” she whispered back. “I promise.” And she kissed him, and kissed him, and kissed him, while the sun came up and bathed Morganville in one last, shining day.

Fake people are like soap bubbles, they pop out when the sun shines brightly.

They always gives me bath salts," complained Nobby. "And bath soap and bubble bath and herbal bath lumps and tons of bath stuff and I can't think why, 'cos it's not as if I hardly ever has a bath. You'd think they'd take the hint, wouldn't you?

And to me also, who appreciate life, the butterflies, and soap-bubbles, and whatever is like them amongst us, seem most to enjoy happiness.

To live is to be vulnerable. A thin membrane of a soap bubble separates one from impenetrable hell. Ice on the road. The unlucky division of an aging cell. A child picks up a pill from the floor. Words stick to each other, line up, obedient to the great harmony of speech...

Fathers need to seize the day, because childhoods are like soap bubbles; you get only a few seconds to enjoy them.

For me the thing that signals a great story is what we might call its autonomy, the fact that it detaches itself from its author like a soap bubble blown from a clay pipe.

They're the ones inside a soap bubble. Not me.

She was my dream; and if you touch a dream it vanishes, like a soap bubble.

And then I wonder, does my brother think of me this way? We entered this world together, one after the other, beats in a pulse. But I will be first to leave it. That's what I've been promised. When we were children, did he dare to imagine an empty space beside him where I then stood giggling, blowing soap bubbles through my fingers? When I die, will he be sorry that he loved me? Sorry that we were twins? Maybe he already is.

Jaime," I said softly, "are you happy about it? About the baby?" Outlawed in Scotland, barred from his own home, and with only vague prospects in France, he could pardonably have been less than enthused about acquiring an additional obligation. He was silent for a moment, only hugging me harder, then sighed briefly before answering. "Aye, Sassenach," His hand stayed downward, gently rubbing my belly. "I'm happy. And proud as a stallion. But I am most awfully afraid too." "About the birth? I'll be all right." I could hardly blame him for apprehension; his own mother had died in childbirth, and birth and its complications were the leading cause of death for women in these times. Still, I knew a thing or two myself, and I had no intention whatever of exposing myself to what passed for medical care here. "Aye, that--and everything," he said softly. "I want to protect ye like a cloak and shield you and the child wi' my body." His voice was soft and husky, with a slight catch in it. "I would do anything for ye...and yet...there's nothing I can do. It doesna matter how strong I am, or how willing; I canna go with you where ye must go...nor even help ye at all. And to think of the things that might happen, and me helpless to stop them...aye, I'm afraid, Sassenach. "And yet"--he turned me toward him, hand closing gently over one breast--"yet when I think of you wi' my child at your breast...then I feel as though I've gone hollow as a soap bubble, and perhaps I shall burst with joy.

I suddenly realized it’s no coincidence the two middle letters of life are if. For every action we make, there is a reaction. The outcome often beyond our control, fragile and fraught with ruinous consequences. Like a soap bubble made real by a gentle breath only to be taken by it.

happiness is as fragile and fleeting as a bubble of soap.

I learned to swallow words back, hold secrets on my tongue until they dissolved like soap bubbles.

Justification is a remarkable thing-takes all those solid lines and blurs them, so that honor becomes as supple as a willow, and ethics burst like soap bubbles.

I’m a little dirty,” he said huskily, running his hand up and down the outside of one of her thighs. “I washed up but should have showered. Didn’t expect this.” “You probably should have expected this.” Her voice sounded a little breathless. “Yeah,” he agreed, his eyes darkening. “I probably should have.” “It’s okay,” she told him. “I’m washable.” Images of showers and soap bubbles tripped through her mind and she hoped through his as well. He gave her a little grin. “Good to know. Means I can get you really dirty.” Juliet felt her breathing quicken. She put her hand against his face, over his scar. “I really want that.” Sawyer slid a hand up her back and into her hair. He urged her closer until her lips were nearly against his. “Me, too.

He swallowed and shifted his weight a little uneasily, and then said, very quietly, his lips almost touching hers, 'Promise me you'll marry me. Not now. Someday. Because I need to know." Claier felt a flutter inside, like a bird trying to fly, and a ruch of heat that made her dizzy. And something else, something fragile as a soap bubble, and just as beautiful. Joy, in the middle of all this horror and heartbreak. 'Yes,' she whispered back. 'I promise.' And she kissed him, and kissed him, and kissed him, while the sun came up and bathed Morganville in one last, shining day.

Because, sir, in case you don't know it, words move, they change from one day to the next, they are as unstable as shadows, are themselves shadows, which both are and have ceased to be, soap bubbles, shells in which one can barely hear a whisper, mere tree stumps.

I thought about my beautiful dreams and wondered if they would drift away just like those lovely soap bubbles.

But Carroll's were more convoluted, and they struck me as funny in a new way: 1) Babies are illogical. 2) Nobody is despised who can manage a crocodile. 3) Illogical persons are despised. Therefore, babies cannot manage crocodiles. And: 1) No interesting poems are unpopular among people of real taste. 2) No modern poetry is free from affectation. 3) All of your poems are on the subject of soap bubbles. 4) No affected poetry is popular among people of taste. 5) Only a modern poem would be on the subject of soap bubbles. Therefore, all your poems are uninteresting.

The most special times in a person's life are not meant to last forever. They're like bubbles rising from a plastic ring dipped into a soapy solution. The soap bubbles rise, with the sun flashing brilliant colors, then bursts into a showery memory mist.

They were sixteen and even the snow was happy that morning, falling soap-bubble light and landing on cold cheeks as though the flakes were gently trying to wake someone they loved. She stood in front of him with January in her hair, and he was lost.

Parenthood was like awakening to find a soap bubble in the cup of your palm, and being told you had to carry it while you parachuted from a dizzying height, climbed a mountain range, battled on the front lines. All you wanted to do was tuck it away, safe from natural disasters and violence and prejudice and sarcasm, but that was not an option. You lived in daily fear of watching it burst, of breaking it yourself. Somehow you knew that if it disappeared, you would, too.

Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble?

The May sunshine makes both the trolls and the elves disappear, he thought. They burst like soap bubbles. Only human beings remain, for a little while. We are a brief song beneath the sky, laughter in the wind that ends in a sigh. Then we too are gone.

childhoods are like soap bubbles; you get only a few seconds to enjoy them.

More and more, she was experiencing a growing distance from her self-awareness. Her sense of Alice—what she knew and understood, what she liked and disliked, how she felt and perceived—was also like a soap bubble, ever higher in the sky and more difficult to identify, with nothing but the thinnest lipid membrane protecting it from popping into thinner air.

Happiness is like soap bubbles. It comes in small fragile doses, transparent and gentle, that you can’t catch, or hold forever. You have to learn to recognize the moment, to embrace it and when the bubble pops and the moment is over, to choose whether to remember it or not. The miserable people are the ones who think that happiness is a permanent state. They waste half of their lives trying to find it, and the other half being disappointed that they can’t, while there are many little soap bubbles floating in the air around them, but they don’t ever see them.

Happiness is as fragile and fleeting as a bubble soap. Water down the last dregs of happiness and turn them into bubbles to fill the void. It may nothing more than an illusion, but it was still better than the emptiness.

Our house was inside a black halo, thin as a soap bubble. Everything was squeezing in on us and everything was about to burst.

What fools we mortals are to think that the plans we make are anything more than a soap bubble blown against a hurricane, a frail and fleeting wish destined to burst.

The rest of the day they spent blowing soap bubbles from the veranda.

...the solitude was intoxicating. On my first night there I lay on my back on the sticky carpet for hours, in the murky orange pool of city glow coming through the window, smelling heady curry spices spiraling across the corridor and listening to two guys outside yelling at each other in Russian and someone practicing stormy flamboyant violin somewhere, and slowly realizing that there was not a single person in the world who could see me or ask me what I was doing or tell me to do anything else, and I felt as if at any moment the bedsit might detach itself from the buildings like a luminous soap bubble and drift off into the night, bobbing gently above the rooftops and the river and the stars.

The idea hovered and shivered delicately, like a soap bubble, and she dared not even look at it directly in case it burst. But she was familiar with the way of ideas, and she let it shimmer, looking away, thinking about something else.

Religion is an illusion and every illusion has the inevitable destiny of a soap bubble!

We learned love was just like a soap bubble, so shining and bright one day, and the next day it popped.

A soap bubble is as real as a fossil tooth.

What she knew and understood, what she liked and disliked, how she felt and perceived; was also like a soap bubble, ever higher in the sky and more difficult to identify ..

Life is basically like a soap bubble. It rides on the wind, flying here and there, …And before you realize it, pop! It’s gone. When it’s about to disappear, you think that you could’ve flown a bit higher. But by the time, it’s already too late.

Life, with all its ups and downs, taught me priceless lessons. I learned that we all make our own private little worlds, just like children make the soap bubbles. With patience and practice and a model to follow, they manage to make their bubbles larger or more lasting. It’s much the same for we adults and the unique worlds we create for ourselves.

We are seeing a globalization of indifference. There is a culture of conflict, which makes us think only of ourselves. Makes us live in soap bubbles which, however lovely, are also insubstantial. We've become used to the suffering of others. It doesn't affect me. No one in our world feels responsible.

It can only be our familiarity with soap bubbles from our earliest recollections, causing us to accept their existence as a matter of course, that prevents most of us from being seriously puzzled as to why they can be blown at all.

Just try to let yourself be carried away blindly by your feelings, without reflection, without a primary cause, suppressing consciousness even for a moment; hate or love, anything, just in order not to sit idly by with your arms folded. The day after tomorrow at the very latest, you'll begin to despise yourself for having deceived yourself knowingly. The result: a soap bubble and inertia.

The word bubble creates a mental picture of an expanding soap bubble, which is destined to pop suddenly and irrevocably. But speculative bubbles are not so easily ended; indeed, they may deflate somewhat, as the story changes, and then reflate.

Every breath we draw wards off the death that constantly impinges on us…. Ultimately death must triumph, for by birth it has already become our lot and it plays with its prey only for a short while before swallowing it up. However, we continue our life with great interest and much solicitude as long as possible, just as we blow out a soap-bubble as long and as large as possible, although with the perfect certainty that it will burst.

For quite some time now, like the foetus inside a womb, a terrible knowledge had been ripening within me and filling my soul with frightened foreboding: that the Infinite Universe is inflating at incredible speed, like some ridiculous soap bubble. I become obsessed with a miser's piercing anxiety whenever I allow myself to think that the Universe may be slipping out into space, like water through cupped hands, and that, ultimately—perhaps even today, perhaps not till tomorrow or for several light years—it will dissolve for ever into emptiness, as though it were made not of solid matter but only of fleeting sound.

My fellow, you strike me at present as being situated in the moon, kingdom of dream, province of illusion, capital: Soap-Bubble.

HAPPINESS IS JUST LIKE A SOAP BUBBLE. YOU CAN ENJOY IT, BUT CANNOT HOLD IT.

Well... I love moving in extra dimensions. Not just backwards and forwards, but up and down and around. And fins. I love swimming with fins— human feet are practically useless underwater. I love all the unique things you see on each dive. Millions of little aquatic soap operas playing out between all the creatures. And the silence. Well, it’s not really silent down there, but the roar of bubbles blocks any other sound...

We learned love was just like a soap bubble, so shining and bright one day, and the next day it popped. Then came the tears, the woebegone expressions, the anguish over endless cups of coffee while seated at the kitchen table with a best friend who had her own troubles, or his own troubles. But, no sooner was one love over and done with, then along came another love to start that shining soap bubble soaring again.

And even to me, one who likes life, it seems butterflies and soap bubbles and whatever is of their kind among human beings know most about happiness. To see these light, foolish, delicate, sensitive little souls fluttering--that seduces Zarathustra to tears and songs. I would only believe in a god who knew how to dance. And when I saw my devil, there I found him earnest, thorough, deep, somber; it was the spirit of gravity -- through him all things fall. Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughing. Up, let us kill the spirit of gravity!

Little, impalpable worlds, were those soap-bubbles, with the big world depicted, in hues bright as imagination, on the nothing of their surface.

She hurried off, leaving Rose feeling like the tiny soap suds left over from a burst bubble.

And it came to her that the pleasure and stability of dining rooms had always occurred against such a backdrop, against the catastrophic background of universal chaos; such moments of calm were things as fragile and transitory as soap bubbles, destined to burst almost as soon as they blew into existence. Groups of friends, rooms, streets, years, none of them would last. The illusion of stability was created by a concerted effort to ignore the chaos they were imbedded in. And so they ate, and talked, and enjoyed each other’s company; this was the way it had been in the caves, on the savannah, in the tenements and the trenches and the cities huddling under bombardment.

Parenthood was like awakening to find a soap bubble in the cup of your palm, and being told you had to carry it while you parachuted from a dizzying height, climbed a mountain range, battled on the front lines. All you wanted to do was tuck it away, safe from natural disasters and violence and prejudice and sarcasm, but that was not an option. You lived in daily fear of watching it burst, of breaking it yourself. Somehow

She found such ecstasy looking at the soap bubbles and sparrows that she closed her book with these words: “ ‘Dear Lord,’ I whisper, ‘Our Father in Heaven, I thank Thee. I thank Thee.’ “ Imagine thanking God because you can wash dishes and see rainbows in bubbles and sparrows flying through the snow!

She was looking at him steadily; he however, found it difficult to look back at her; it was like gazing into a brilliant light. Nice view, he said feebly, pointing toward with window. She ignored this. He could not blame her. I couldn't think what to get you, she said. You didn't have to get me anything. She disregarded this too. I didn't know what would be useful. Nothing too big, because you wouldn't be able to take it with you. He chanced a glance at her. She was not tearful; that was one of the many wonderful things about Ginny, she was rarely weepy. He had sometimes thought that having six brothers must have toughened her up. She took a step closer to him. So then I thought, I'd like you to have something to remember me by, you know, if you meet some Veela when you're off doing whatever you're doing. I think dating opportunities are going to be pretty thin on the ground, to be honest. There's the silver lining I've been looking for, she whispered, and then she was kissing him as she had never kissed him before, and Harry was kissing her back, and it was blissful oblivion better than firewhiskey; she was the only real thing in the world, Ginny, the feel of her, one hand at her back and one in her long, sweet-smelling hair- The door banged open behind them and they jumped apart. Oh, said Ron pointedly. Sorry. Ron! Hermione was just behind him, slight out of breath. There was a strained silence, then Ginny had said in a flat little voice, Well, happy birthday anyway, Harry. Ron's ears were scarlet; Hermione looked nervous. Harry wanted to slam the door in their faces, but it felt as though a cold draft had entered the room when the door opened, and his shining moment had popped like a soap bubble. All the reasons for ending his relationship with Ginny, for staying well away from her, seemed to have slunk inside the room with Ron, and all happy forgetfulness was gone. He looked at Ginny, wanting to say something, though he hardly knew what, but she had turned her back on him. He thought that she might have succumbed, for once, to tears. He could not do anything to comfort her in front of Ron. I'll see you later, he said, and followed the other two out of the bedroom.

Our mild anxiety about the precariousness of being may give way to confidence in a world that turns out to be coherent, luminous, and intellectually secure. Or it might yield to cosmic terror when we realize that the whole show is a mere ontological soap bubble that could pop into nothingness at any moment, without the slightest warning. And our present sense of the potential reach of human thought may give way to a newfound humility at its limits, or to a newfound wonder at its leaps and bounds—or a bit of both.

The disappointment or disapproval I could take; I am used to it. The pity, though, is like sandpaper against a soap bubble.

Parenthood was like awakening to find a soap bubble in the cup of your palm, and being told you had to carry it while you parachuted from a dizzying height, climbed a mountain

A child laughed; a long, gurgling giggle, like a stream of soap bubbles.

Justification is a remarkable thing—takes all those solid lines and blurs them, so that honor becomes as supple as a willow, and ethics burst like soap bubbles.

There are some families in which, at 9:00 at night, the father starts to hit the wine and the mother the ironing, far away from the fate of the children, who play in the yard, pretending to be hurt, or in the rooms in the dark, or in the bathroom making soap bubbles, or in the kitchen making odd deserts out of sour milk...There are also families that remember their dead at this hour, an aura of sorrow dominating their faces. No one plays, no one talks: the adults write letters that no one will read, the children ask questions that no one will answer.

Wonder then is a force of liberation, it makes sense of what our souls inherently know we were meant for. Every mundane glimpse is salve on a wound, instructions for how to set the bone right again. If you really want to get free, find God on the subway, find God in the soap bubble. Me, I meet God in the taste of my grandmas chicken, I hear God in the raspy leather of Nina Simones voice, I see the face of God in the boney teenager bagging my groceries and why shouldn't I? My faith is held together by wonder, by ever defined commitment to presence and paying attention.

The shimmering bubbles of happiness that had been floating all around me popped one by one, the whole breathlessness of our summer becoming nothing more than old soap on a stained industrial carpet.

This is meant to be in praise of the interval called hangover, a sadness not co-terminous with hopelessness, and the North American doubling cascade that (keep going) “this diamond lake is a photo lab” and if predicates really do propel the plot then you might see Jerusalem in a soap bubble or the appliance failures on Olive Street across these great instances, because “the complex Italians versus the basic Italians” because what does a mirror look like (when it´s not working) but birds singing a full tone higher in the sunshine. I´m going to call them Honest Eyes until I know if they are, in the interval called slam clicker, Realm of Pacific, because the second language wouldn´t let me learn it because I have heard of you for a long time occasionally because diet cards may be the recovery evergreen and there is a new benzodiazepene called Distance, anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship. I suppose a broken window is not symbolic unless symbolic means broken, which I think it sorta does, and when the phone jangles what´s more radical, the snow or the tires, and what does the Bible say about metal fatigue and why do mothers carry big scratched-up sunglasses in their purses. Hello to the era of going to the store to buy more ice because we are running out. Hello to feelings that arrive unintroduced. Hello to the nonfunctional sprig of parsley and the game of finding meaning in coincidence. Because there is a second mind in the margins of the used book because Judas Priest (source: Firestone Library) sang a song called Stained Class, because this world is 66% Then and 33% Now, and if you wake up thinking “feeling is a skill now” or “even this glass of water seems complicated now” and a phrase from a men´s magazine (like single-district cognac) rings and rings in your neck, then let the consequent misunderstandings (let the changer love the changed) wobble on heartbreakingly nu legs into this street-legal nonfiction, into this good world, this warm place that I love with all my heart, anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship.

It is true we love life; not because we are wont to live, but because we are wont to love. There is always some madness in love. But there is always, also, some method in madness. And to me also, who appreciate life, the butterflies, and soap-bubbles, and whatever is like them amongst us, seem most to enjoy happiness

As with soap bubbles, there is an upper limit to the size of a hoax, both in numbers of people and in time. This is too big—too many places, too widespread—to be a hoax. Or by now there would be denials from all over.

one could sit back with a bag of popcorn and watch the romances and comedies of his mind projected onto his face, and the lenses of his tortoiseshell glasses swirled with his thoughts like the iridescent membranes of soap bubbles.

The idea of a clean war, like that of a clean bomb or an intelligent missile, this whole war conceived as a technological extrapolation of the brain is a sure sign of madness. It is like those characters in Hieronymus Bosch with a glass bell or a soap bubble around their head as a sign of their mental debility. A war enclosed in a glass coffin, like Snow White, purged of any carnal contamination or warrior's passion. A clean war which ends up in an oil slick.

Schopenhauer once put it, we insist on living our lives "with great interest and much solicitude as long as possible, just as we blow out a soap-bubble as long and as large as possible, although with the perfect certainty that it will burst.

Love is not a spaceship you construct and then fly off together into the stars. Love is a soap bubble that bursts in the air. Love is the first winter snowflake that falls into you palm, a mirage that glows in the sun and fades in the shadows.

I relaxed back into the mattress as other elements in the room began to filter though my senses, namely the extraordinary warmth at my back. The air was filled with the smell of masculine skin and hints of cologne, soap, and dryer sheets. Hank was back. And his scent wasn't the only thing surrounding me; his arm was thrown over my hip and my back was tucked nicely against his front. ... It was nice. Good. Right, even. And then another feeling struck me in a novel way. Protected. I felt protected. A disbelieving laugh bubbled in my throat as I lay there, a small smile parked on my face. I was always the one out there protecting people. And after Will and I had split, I'd had no one to go to for comfort, to let all my guards down, to take a rest from being the caregiver, provider, guard, and detective. To let someone else be tough for a while. Had to admit, I liked it. And I never thought in a gazillion years I'd find this feeling with an off-worlder. I liked Hank's strength, his power, his quirky humor, even the badass attitude he caught sometimes. I was in so much trouble.

This thing ain’t easy. And I don’t mean to complain because this life is beautiful and it’s magic. And I am blessed and grateful. But this brain feels broken sometimes. This brain does this thing that takes little soap bubbles of “everyone feels this sometimes” and morphs them into latex balloons of “you’re the only one in this world who can’t seem to lift herself out of bed in the morning” and then the balloon becomes brick and the brick becomes wall and the wall is a mountain and then you’re stuck. So I’m grateful to only be latex balloon right now.

But these memories drifted away like bubbles of soap or fragments of a dream that vanished on waking.

The principles of liberalism can have a real existence only in conjunction with a police system. Anarchism is an attempt to cleanse liberalism of the police. But just as pure oxygen is impossible to breathe, so liberalism without the police principle means the death of society. Being a shadow-caricature of liberalism, anarchism as a whole has shared its fate. Having killed liberalism, the development of class contradictions has also killed anarchism. Like every sect which founds its teaching not upon the actual development of human society, but upon the reduction to absurdity of one of its features, anarchism explodes like a soap bubble at that moment when the social contradictions arrive at the point of war or revolution.

Anything could be true. The so-called laws of Nature were nonsense. The law of gravity was nonsense. 'If I wished,' O'Brien had said, 'I could float off this floor like a soap bubble.' Winston worked it out. 'If he thinks he floats off the floor, and if I simultaneously think I see him do it, then the thing happens.' Suddenly, like a lump of submerged wreckage breaking the surface of water, the thought burst into his mind: 'It doesn't really happen. We imagine it. It is hallucination.' He pushed the thought under instantly. The fallacy was obvious. It presupposed that somewhere or other, outside oneself, there was a 'real' world where 'real' things happened. But how could there be such a world? What knowledge have we of anything, save through our own minds? All happenings are in the mind. Whatever happens in all minds, truly happens. He had no difficulty in disposing of the fallacy, and he was in no danger of succumbing to it. He realized, nevertheless, that it ought never to have occurred to him. The mind should develop a blind spot whenever a dangerous thought presented itself. The process should be automatic, instinctive. Crimestop, they called it in Newspeak. He set to work to exercise himself in crimestop. He presented himself with propositions -- 'the Party says the earth is flat', 'the party says that ice is heavier than water' -- and trained himself in not seeing or not understanding the arguments that contradicted them. It was not easy. It needed great powers of reasoning and improvisation. The arithmetical problems raised, for instance, by such a statement as 'two and two make five' were beyond his intellectual grasp. It needed also a sort of athleticism of mind, an ability at one moment to make the most delicate use of logic and at the next to be unconscious of the crudest logical errors. Stupidity was as necessary as intelligence, and as difficult to attain.

come to realise that thoughts come and go of their own accord; that you are not your thoughts. You can watch as they appear in your mind, seemingly from thin air, and watch again as they disappear, like a soap bubble bursting. You come to the profound understanding that thoughts and feelings (including negative ones) are transient. They come and they go, and ultimately, you have a choice about whether to act on them or not.

When we were kids, getting your mouth washed out with soap was punishment. But today, I’m selling duck-soup-flavored soap that your own kids will beg to have for dinner, which you’ll eat under a waterfall for maximum bubbles.

They did not awaken quickly, nor fling about nor shock their systems with any sudden movement. No, they arose from slumber as gently as a soap bubble floats out from its pipe. Down into the gulch they trudged, still only half awake. Gradually their wills coagulated. They built a fire and boiled some tea and drank it from the fruit jars, and at last they settled in the sun on the front porch. The flaming flies made halos about their heads. Life took shape about them, the shape of yesterday and of tomorrow. Discussion began slowly, for each man treasured the little sleep he still possessed. From this time until well after noon, intellectual comradeship came into being. Then roofs were lifted, houses peered into, motives inspected, adventures recounted. Ordinarily their thoughts went first to Cornelia Ruiz, for it was a rare day and night during which Cornelia had not some curious and interesting adventure. And it was an unusual adventure from which no moral lesson could be drawn. The sun glistened in the pine needles. The earth smelled dry and good. The rose of Castile perfumed the world with its flowers. This was one of the best of times for the friends of Danny. The struggle for existence was remote. They sat in judgment on their fellows, judging not for morals, but for interest. Anyone having a good thing to tell saved it for recounting at this time. The big brown butterflies came to the rose and sat on the flowers and waved their wings slowly, as though they pumped honey out by wing power.

She was floating, arms outspread, water lapping her body, breathing in a summery fragrance of salt and coconut. There was a pleasantly satisfied breakfast taste in her mouth of bacon and coffee and possibly croissants. She lifted her chin and the morning sun shone so brightly on the water, she had to squint through spangles of light to see her feet in front of her. Her toenails were each painted a different color. Red. Gold. Purple. Funny. The nail polish hadn’t been applied very well. Blobby and messy. Someone else was floating in the water right next to her. Someone she liked a lot, who made her laugh, with toenails painted the same way. The other person waggled multicolored toes at her companionably, and she was filled with sleepy contentment. Somewhere in the distance, a man’s voice shouted, “Marco?” and a chorus of children’s voices cried back, “Polo!” The man called out again, “Marco, Marco, Marco?” and the voices answered, “Polo, Polo, Polo!” A child laughed; a long, gurgling giggle, like a stream of soap bubbles.

All she really wanted was to protect her daughter's joy in unicorns. It was like loving a soap bubble, she knew, treasuring that innocence. Yet nothing else in her life right now moved her in the least. She often thought that must be a little pathetic; surely she should have found a larger cause by now. But the larger causes of her youth had bled away. Her sense of the Big Picture had fractured and decayed. She loved her daughter, the blessing of a good book, a glass of wine after the day's wave of vanity had passed.

In logic class, I opened my textbook—the last place I was expecting to find comic inspiration—and was startled to find that Lewis Carroll, the supremely witty author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, was also a logician. He wrote logic textbooks and included argument forms based on the syllogism, normally presented in logic books this way: All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. _________________________________ Therefore, Socrates is mortal. But Carroll’s were more convoluted, and they struck me as funny in a new way: 1) Babies are illogical. 2) Nobody is despised who can manage a crocodile. 3) Illogical persons are despised. __________________________________________ Therefore, babies cannot manage crocodiles. And: 1) No interesting poems are unpopular among people of real taste. 2) No modern poetry is free from affectation. 3) All your poems are on the subject of soap bubbles. 4) No affected poetry is popular among people of taste. 5) Only a modern poem would be on the subject of soap bubbles. __________________________________________ Therefore, all your poems are uninteresting.

We blow out a soap-bubble as long and as large as possible, although with the perfect certainty that it will burst.” In this view, happiness is impossible, because of all these goals. Goals are the source of misery. An unattained goal causes pain, but actually achieving it brings only a brief satisfaction.

You look into it , the object flies off into air , your reasons evaporate , the criminal is not to be found , the wrong becomes not a wrong but a phantom , something like the toothache , for which no one is to blame , and consequently there is only the same outlet left again — that is , to beat the wall as hard as you can . So you give it up with a wave of the hand because you have not found a fundamental cause . And try letting yourself be carried away by your feelings , blindly , without reflection , without a primary cause , repelling consciousness at least for a time ; hate or love , if only not to sit with your hands folded . The day after tomorrow , at the latest , you will begin despising yourself for having knowingly deceived yourself . Result : a soap - bubble and inertia . Oh , gentlemen , do you know , perhaps I consider myself an intelligent man , only because all my life I have been able neither to begin nor to finish anything .

Finally it was time to go into the operating room, and the nurse came to wheel her away from me. My heart tightened. To ease her fears, the pediatric nurses gathered around her and created a “bubble parade,” blowing little soap bubbles as they went into the operating room. To create this fairy-tale experience, they used a wand. Specifically, a bubble wand. All the worry and fear melted from my daughter’s face as she was captivated by the magical moment. As a parent, I felt a great deal of gratitude for this small but meaningful touch. As a marketer, I was awed. I’d just witnessed my daughter’s customer experience switch from anxiety to anticipation in less than ten seconds.

There is a deep stillness in the Fakahatchee, but there is not a moment of physical peace. Something is always brushing against you or lapping at you or snagging at you or tangling in your legs, and the sun is always pummeling your skin, and the wetness in the air makes your hair coil like a phone cord. You never smell plain air in a swamp - you smell the tang of mud and the sourness of rotting leaves and the cool musk of new leaves and the perfumes of a million different flowers floating by, each distinct but transparent, like soap bubbles. The biggest number in the universe would not be big enough to count the things your eyes see. Every inch of land holds up a thatch of tall grass or a bush or a tree, and every bush or tree is girdled with another plant’s roots, and every root is topped with a flower or a fern or a swollen bulb, and every one of those flowers and ferns is the pivot around which a world of bees and gnats and spiders and dragonflies revolve. The sounds you hear are twigs cracking underfoot and branches whistling past you and leaves murmuring and leaves slopping over the trunks of old dead trees and every imaginable and unimaginable insect noise and every kind of bird peep and screech and tootle, and then all those unclaimed sounds of something moving in a hurry, something low to the ground and heavy, maybe the size of a horse in the shape of a lizard, or maybe the size, shape and essential character of a snake. In the swamp you feel as if someone had plugged all of your senses into a light socket. A swamp is logy and slow-moving about at the same time highly overstimulating. Even in the dim, sultry places deep within it, it is easy to stay awake.

The ghost was not a ghost at all, or so it claimed - it claimed to be a psychic energy baby, birthed in some ethereal dimension, and pulled into the phone by the powerful magnetism of phone signals. It remembered with perfect clarity how it came to be - remembered coalescing from the membranous surface of the world, streaked with reflected light, humming with surface tension under the pressure of emptiness underneath. The Psychic Energy Baby found form among the emanations of people's minds and the susurrus of their voices, it found flesh in the shapes of their lips and eyes made, the surprise of 'o's and the sibilations of 's's; its skin stretched taut like a soap bubble, forged from the wet sound of lips touching; its thoughts were the musky smells and the nerves twined around the transparent water balloons of the muscles like stems of toadflax, searching restlessly for every available crevice, stretching along cold rough surfaces. Its veins, tiny rivers, pumped heartbeats striking in unison, the dry dallying of billions of ventricular contractions. And it spoke, spoke endlessly, it spokes words that tasted of dark air and formic acid. It could speak long before it took it's final shape. And when it happened, when all the sounds and smells and words in the world, when all the thoughts had aligned so that it could become - then it found itself pulled into the wires, surrounded by taut copper and green and red and yellow insulation; twined and quartered among the cables, rent open by millions of voices that shouted and whispered and pleaded and threatened, interspersed with the rasping of breaths and tearing laughter. It traveled through the criss-crossing of the wires so fast that it felt itself being pulled into a needle, head spearing into the future while its feet infinitely receded into the past, until it came into a dark quiet pool of the black rotary phone, where it could reassemble itself and take stock.

Once upon a time I'd left Los Angeles and been swallowed down the throat of a life in which my sole loyalty was to my tongue. My belly. Myself. My mother called me selfish and so selfish I became. From nineteen to twenty-five I was a mouth, sating. For myself I made three-day braises and chose the most marbled meats, I played loose with butter and cream. My arteries were young, my life pooling before me, and I lapped, luxurious, from it. I drank, smoked, flew cheap red-eyes around Europe, I lived in thrilling shitholes, I found pills that made nights pass in a blink or expanded time to a soap bubble, floating, luminous, warm. Time seemed infinite, then. I begged famous chefs for the chance to learn from them. I entered competitions and placed in a few. I volunteered to work brunch, turn artichokes, clean the grease trap. I flung my body at all of it: the smoke and singe of the grill station, a duck's breast split open like a geode, two hundred oysters shucked in the walk-in, sex in the walk-in, drunken rides around Paris on a rickety motorcycle and no helmet, a white truffle I stole and shaved in secret over a bowl of Kraft mac n' cheese for me, just me, as my body strummed the high taut selfish song of youth. On my twenty-fifth birthday I served black-market fugu to my guests, the neurotoxin stinging sweetly on my lips as I waited to see if I would, by eating, die. At that age I believed I knew what death was: a thrill, like brushing by a friend who might become a lover.

Brian and Avis deliver their stacks and try to refuse dinner, but the waiters bring them glasses of burgundy, porcelain plates with thin, peppery steaks redolent of garlic, scoops of buttery grilled Brussels sprouts, and a salad of beets, walnuts, and Roquefort. They drag a couple of lawn chairs to a quiet spot on the street and they balance the plates on their laps. Some ingredient in the air reminds Avis of the rare delicious trips they used to make to the Keys. Ten years after they'd moved to Miami they'd left Stanley and Felice with family friends and Avis and Brian drove to Key West on a sort of second honeymoon. She remembers how the land dropped back into distance: wetlands, marsh, lazy-legged egrets flapping over the highway, tangled, sulfurous mangroves. And water. Steel-blue plains, celadon translucence. She and Brian had rented a vacation cottage in Old Town, ate small meals of fruit, cheese, olives, and crackers, swam in the warm, folding water. Each day stirring into the next, talking about nothing more complicated than the weather, spotting a shark off the pier, a mysterious constellation lowering in the west. Brian sheltered under a celery-green umbrella while Avis swam: the water formed pearls on the film of her sunscreen. They watched the night's rise, an immense black curtain from the ocean. Up and down the beach they hear the sounds of the outdoor bars, sandy patios switching on, distant strains of laughter, bursts of music. Someone played an instrument- quick runs of notes, arpeggios floating in soft ovals like soap bubbles over the darkening water.

Then Janie’s baby voice rose above the din. “Ma-ma!” My steps halted. So did my heart. The plaintive cry filled every crevice of my being. “Ma-ma!” The caterwauling ceased. I turned. Ollie’s horror-stricken face told me I’d heard right. Gripping the handle of my suitcase and clenching my teeth, I tried to hold in my own keening. Janie dropped to her pudgy knees in the middle of the road. “Ma-ma!” She fell on her face in the dirt and sobbed. My gaze rose past her to Frank, who stood at the top of the steps. His horror seemed to mirror my own. I’d thought by leaving I’d alleviate his suffering, but it seemed I’d only deepened it. He made his way across the yard, his eyes fixed on mine. He passed his frozen children as if they were merely trees in a human forest and stopped in front of me, so close I could smell Ol’ Bob on his shirt. I tilted my head back, looked into his face. My heart bumped against my chest, though I’d felt sure it had stopped beating altogether. His arms reached for me, then fell back to his side. “Please, Rebekah. Please stay. They need you. I told you that.” “I can’t.” My vision blurred as I shook my head. His thumb caught a tear on my cheek, wiped it dry. I glanced at Janie, still lying heartbroken in the dirt. I ached to go to her, but I didn’t want to make things worse. Ollie seemed to read my thoughts. She picked up her sister, but her attention remained on me. I looked back at Frank. “Can’t you see? I’m giving you your life back. Your whole life. Your house. Your family.” I tasted the salt of my tears. He grabbed my shoulders. “But don’t you understand, Rebekah? I can’t have my whole life back. When I left for the war, I knew nothing would ever be the same. And it isn’t. Clara is gone. I have to make a new life now.” He sucked in a deep breath. “And I want to make it with you.” “Me? Are you saying . . . ” I held my breath, holding the words inside me, afraid they’d meet the air and burst like a soap bubble. His lips curled into a smile that chased every trace of gray from his eyes. “Marry me?

Listen to me. Listen very carefully. You’re trapped. Right now you’re trapped. You’re stuck to the bottom of someone’s shoe. You’re walking around in yourlife, like your own little isolation bubble, following their footprints, thinking: This is it. This is me. This is MY SELF. This is how it goes. This is how it works. These are the rules. But here is the secret. You are free. You’re not one of those fools. There is no bubble except the one they put you in. But it’s made of soap, of air—of nothing at all. Only, you’re taught that it’s indestructible—no way of getting through that barrier. And you can pop it with your little finger. You could pop it with your breath. You could blow on it and it would fizzle say. You are free. You can do what you want. When you want. How you want. On your time. You can destroy yourself, kill yourself— And then get up and walk away. You are free. No but. No or. No either. You are an indestructible machine. You are magnificent. You can steal; you can cheat. And you can lie. Be a liar. I am.

She was floating, arms outspread, water lapping her body, breathing in a summery fragrance of salt and coconut. There was a pleasantly satisfied breakfast taste in her mouth of bacon and coffee and possibly croissants. She lifted her chin and the morning sun shone so brightly on the water, she had to squint through spangles of light to see her feet in front of her. Her toenails were each painted a different color. Red. Gold. Purple. Funny. The nail polish hadn’t been applied very well. Blobby and messy. Someone else was floating in the water right next to her. Someone she liked a lot, who made her laugh, with toenails painted the same way. The other person waggled multicolored toes at her companionably, and she was filled with sleepy contentment. Somewhere in the distance, a man’s voice shouted, “Marco?” and a chorus of children’s voices cried back, “Polo!” The man called out again, “Marco, Marco, Marco?” and the voices answered, “Polo, Polo, Polo!” A child laughed; a long, gurgling giggle, like a stream of soap bubbles. A voice said quietly and insistently in her ear, “Alice?” and she tipped back her head and let the cool water slide silently over her face. Tiny dots of light danced before her eyes. Was it a dream or a memory? “I don’t know!” said a frightened voice. “I didn’t see it happen!” No need to get your knickers in a knot. The dream or memory or whatever it was dissolved and vanished like a reflection on water, and instead fragments of thought began to drift through her head, as if she were waking up from a long, deep sleep, late on a Sunday morning. Is cream cheese considered a soft cheese? It’s not a hard cheese. It’s not . . . . . . hard at all. So, logically, you would think . . . . . . something. Something logical. Lavender is lovely. Logically lovely. Must prune back the lavender! I can smell lavender. No, I can’t. Yes, I can. That’s when she noticed the pain in her head for the first time. It hurt on one side, a lot, as if someone had given her a good solid thwack with a baseball bat. Her thoughts sharpened. What was this pain in the head all about?

Your brother is the most ridiculous, hardheaded, stupid man I know!” Rose half expected Archer to chastise her. Instead, he took a second glass of champagne from the footman passing with the tray and offered it to her. “And you are surprised by this?” “Astonishingly, yes.” She took a long, unladylike swallow of the crisp, bubbly liquid. “I’m astounded. Ah, here are two scoundrels you should know to avoid.” His grin told her he considered them quite the opposite. They were good-looking men, one tall and dark, the other almost as tall with brown hair and blue eyes and enough of the Kane countenance that she picked him for Grey's relation instantly. They met Archer enthusiastically, and then turned polite curiosity in her direction. "Lady Rose Danvers," Archer said jovially. "May I present the Earl of Autley." The dark man bowed over her offered hand. "And my cousin, Mr. Aiden Kane?" The man who looked a bit like Grey smiled and took her hand next. "It's lovely to meet you, Lady Rose," the earl said smoothly. "I hope you are enjoying your time in London?" "Oh, yes," she replied. "Lord Archer has been a very entertaining companion." "I don't doubt it," Aiden said with a grin as he clapped Archer on the shoulder.

The story we are told of women is not this one. The story of women is the story of love, of foundering into another. A slight deviation: longing to founder and being unable to. Being left alone in the foundering, and taking things into one's own hands: rat poison, the wheels of a Russian train. Even the smoother and gentler story is still just a modified version of the above. In the demotic, in the key of bougie, it's the promise of love in old age for all the good girls of the world. Hilarious ancient bodies at bath time, husband's palsied hands soaping wife's withered dugs, erection popping out of the bubbles like a pink periscope. I see you! There would be long, hobbledy walks under the plane trees, stories told by a single sideways glance, one word sufficing. Anthill, he'd say; Martini! she'd say; and the thick swim of the old joke would return to them. The laughter, the beautiful reverberations. Then the bleary toddling on to an early-bird dinner, snoozing through a movie hand in hand. Their bodies like knobby sticks wrapped in vellum. One laying the other on the deathbed, feeding the overdose, dying the day after, all heart gone out of the world with the beloved breath. Oh, companionship. Oh, romance. Oh, completion. Forgive her if she believed this would be the way it would go. She had been led to this conclusion by forces greater than she. Conquers all! All you need is! Is a many-splendored thing! Surrender to! Like corn rammed down goose necks, this shit they'd swallowed since they were barely old enough to dress themselves in tulle. The way the old story goes, woman needs an other to complete her circuits, to flick her to fullest blazing.

Finally, he allowed me to turn the key in the lock and the front door, with its porthole-shaped window, swung open. I don’t know what I’d expected. I’d tried not to conjure up fantasies of any kind, but what I saw left me inarticulate. The entire apartment had the feel of a ship’s interior. The walls were highly polished teak and oak, with shelves and cubbyholes on every side. The kitchenette was still located to the right where the old one had been, a galley-style arrangement with a pint-size stove and refrigerator. A microwave oven and trash compactor had been added. Tucked in beside the kitchen was a stacking washer-dryer, and next to that was a tiny bathroom. In the living area, a sofa had been built into a window bay, with two royal blue canvas director’s chairs arranged to form a “conversational grouping.” Henry did a quick demonstration of how the sofa could be extended into sleeping accommodations for company, a trundle bed in effect. The dimensions of the main room were still roughly fifteen feet on a side, but now there was a sleeping loft above, accessible by way of a tiny spiral staircase where my former storage space had been. In the old place, I’d usually slept naked on the couch in an envelope of folded quilt. Now, I was going to have an actual bedroom of my own. I wound my way up, staring in amazement at the double-size platform bed with drawers underneath. In the ceiling above the bed, there was a round shaft extending through the roof, capped by a clear Plexiglas skylight that seemed to fling light down on the blue-and-white patchwork coverlet. Loft windows looked out to the ocean on one side and the mountains on the other. Along the back wall, there was an expanse of cedar-lined closet space with a rod for hanging clothes, pegs for miscellaneous items, shoe racks, and floor-to-ceiling drawers. Just off the loft, there was a small bathroom. The tub was sunken with a built-in shower and a window right at tub level, the wooden sill lined with plants. I could bathe among the treetops, looking out at the ocean where the clouds were piling up like bubbles. The towels were the same royal blue as the cotton shag carpeting. Even the eggs of milled soap were blue, arranged in a white china dish on the edge of the round brass sink.

Sean was watching me, though. And Sean wiped the bryozoa residue from his hand across my stomach. This was the third time a boy had ever touched my bare tummy, and I’d had enough. Through gritted teeth, like any extra movement might spread the bryozoa further across my skin, I told him, “I like you less than I did.” I bailed over the side of the boat-the side opposite where the bryozoa returned to its native habitat. Deep in the warm water, I scrubbed at my tummy with both hands. A combination of bryozoa waste and Sean germs: it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Leaning toward worst, because now I had slime on my hands. Or maybe this was psychosomatic. Holding my hands open in front of me in the water, I didn’t see any slime. I rubbed my hands together anyway. Something dove into the water beside me in a rush of bubbles. I came up for air. Sean surfaced, too, tossing sparkling drops of water from his hair. “You still like me a lot, though, right?” “No prob. Green is the new black.” Giving up on getting clean, I swam a few strokes back toward the platform to get out again. What I needed was a shower with chlorinated water and disinfectant soap. I might need to bubble out my belly button with hydrogen peroxide. “What if I made it up to you?” He splashed close behind me. “What if I helped you get clean? We don’t want you dirty.” He moved both hands around me under the water, up and down across my tummy. It was the fourth time a boy had touched my tummy! And it was very awkward. He bobbed so close behind me that I had a hard time treading water without kicking him. I needed to choose between flirting and breathing. Cameron and my brother leaned over the side of the boat and gaped at us, which didn’t help matters. I’d been afraid of this. Flirting with Sean was no fun if the other boys acted like we were lepers. Well, okay, it was fun, but not as fun as it was supposed to be. Obviously I would need to give McGullicuddy the little dolphin talk. I wasn’t sure I could do this with Cameron-Cameron and I didn’t have heart-to-heart convos-but I might need to make an exception, if he continued to watch us like we were a dirty movie on Pay-Per-View (which I’d also seen a lot of. Life with boys). BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE- Sean and I started and turned toward the boat. Still behind the steering wheel, Adam had his chin in his hand and his elbow on the horn. -EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE Damn it! I turned around to face Sean and gave him a wry smile, but he’d already taken his hands away from my tummy. The horn really ruined the mood. -EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE Sean hauled himself up onto the platform. I followed close behind him, and (glee!) he put out a hand to help me. Cameron and my brother yelled at Adam. -EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP. “Oh!” Adam said as if he’d had no idea he’d been laying on the horn. He looked at his elbow like it belonged to someone else. I was in the boat with Sean now, and he was still holding my hand. Or, maybe I was still clinging to his hand, but this is a question of semantics. In any case, I pulled him by the hand past the other boys to the bow. We didn’t have privacy. There was no privacy on a wakeboarding boat. At least we had the boat’s windshield between us and the others. As I turned to sit down on the bench, I stuck out my tongue at Adam behind the windshield. He crossed his eyes at me.