Somebody's Watching Me Quotes

It was not the thought that I was so unloved that froze me. I had taught myself to do without love. It was not the thought that God was cruel that froze me. I had taught myself never to expect anything from Him. What froze me was the fact that I had absolutely no reason to move in any direction. What had made me move through so many dead and pointless years was curiosity. Now even that had flickered out. How long I stood frozen there, I cannot say. If I was ever going to move again, someone else was going to have to furnish the reason for moving. Somebody did. A policeman watched me for a while, and then he came over to me, and he said, "You alright?" Yes," I said. You've been standing here a long time," he said. I know," I said. You waiting for somebody?" he said. No," I said. Better move on, don't you think?" he said. Yes, sir," I said. And I moved on.

Through writing, I feel power for maybe the first time in my life. I don’t have to say somebody else’s words. I can write my own. I can be myself for once. I like the privacy of it. Nobody’s watching. Nobody’s judging. Nobody’s weighing in. No casting directors or agents or managers or directors or Mom. Just me and the page. Writing is the opposite of performing to me. Performing feels inherently fake. Writing feels inherently real.

There's a somebody I'm longing to see, I hope that he, turns out to be, someone to watch over me.

To the most inconsiderate asshole of a friend, I’m writing you this letter because I know that if I say what I have to say to your face I will probably punch you. I don’t know you anymore. I don’t see you anymore. All I get is a quick text or a rushed e-mail from you every few days. I know you are busy and I know you have Bethany, but hello? I’m supposed to be your best friend. You have no idea what this summer has been like. Ever since we were kids we pushed away every single person that could possibly have been our friend. We blocked people until there was only me and you. You probably haven’t noticed, because you have never been in the position I am in now. You have always had someone. You always had me. I always had you. Now you have Bethany and I have no one. Now I feel like those other people that used to try to become our friend, that tried to push their way into our circle but were met by turned backs. I know you’re probably not doing it deliberately just as we never did it deliberately. It’s not that we didn’t want anyone else, it’s just that we didn’t need them. Sadly now it looks like you don’t need me anymore. Anyway I’m not moaning on about how much I hate her, I’m just trying to tell you that I miss you. And that well . . . I’m lonely. Whenever you cancel nights out I end up staying home with Mum and Dad watching TV. It’s so depressing. This was supposed to be our summer of fun. What happened? Can’t you be friends with two people at once? I know you have found someone who is extra special, and I know you both have a special “bond,” or whatever, that you and I will never have. But we have another bond, we’re best friends. Or does the best friend bond disappear as soon as you meet somebody else? Maybe it does, maybe I just don’t understand that because I haven’t met that “somebody special.” I’m not in any hurry to, either. I liked things the way they were. So maybe Bethany is now your best friend and I have been relegated to just being your “friend.” At least be that to me, Alex. In a few years time if my name ever comes up you will probably say, “Rosie, now there’s a name I haven’t heard in years. We used to be best friends. I wonder what she’s doingnow; I haven’t seen or thought of her in years!” You will sound like my mum and dad when they have dinner parties with friends and talk about old times. They always mention people I’ve never even heard of when they’re talking about some of the most important days of their lives. Yet where are those people now? How could someone who was your bridesmaid 20 years ago not even be someone who you are on talking terms with now? Or in Dad’s case, how could he not know where his own best friend from college lives? He studied with the man for five years! Anyway, my point is (I know, I know, there is one), I don’t want to be one of those easily forgotten people, so important at the time, so special, so influential, and so treasured, yet years later just a vague face and a distant memory. I want us to be best friends forever, Alex. I’m happy you’re happy, really I am, but I feel like I’ve been left behind. Maybe our time has come and gone. Maybe your time is now meant to be spent with Bethany. And if that’s the case I won’t bother sending you this letter. And if I’m not sending this letter then what am I doing still writing it? OK I’m going now and I’m ripping these muddled thoughts up. Your friend, Rosie

The world is filled with negativity. I want people to watch me and think, “I feel good, and I’m going to make somebody else feel good today.

His lyrical whistle beckoned me to adventure and forgetting. But I didn't want to forget. Hugging my grudge, ugly and prickly, a sad sea urchin, I trudged off on my own, in the opposite direction toward the forbidding prison. As from a star I saw, coldly and soberly, the separateness of everything. I felt the wall of my skin; I am I. That stone is a stone. My beautiful fusion with the things of this world was over. The Tide ebbed, sucked back into itself. There I was, a reject, with the dried black seaweed whose hard beads I liked to pop, hollowed orange and grapefruit halves and a garbage of shells. All at once, old and lonely, I eyed these-- razor clams, fairy boats, weedy mussels, the oyster's pocked gray lace (there was never a pearl) and tiny white "ice cream cones." You could always tell where the best shells were-- at the rim of the last wave, marked by a mascara of tar. I picked up, frigidly, a stiff pink starfish. It lay at the heart of my palm, a joke dummy of my own hand. Sometimes I nursed starfish alive in jam jars of seawater and watched them grow back lost arms. On this day, this awful birthday of otherness, my rival, somebody else, I flung the starfish against a stone. Let it perish.

He had strange eyes-they make me think of a two-way mirror. Like you could feel somebody on the other side watching you, but the only reflections you saw was your own.

Do you know what it was like kissing Holly and looking up to see you?" "What?" "You said to begin anywhere." But I hadn't expected that as a beginning, middle or end. I felt my cheeks getting warm. "I guess it was pretty embarrassing for both of us," I said, and walked ahead of him so he wouldn't see my face. "I know, I just kept staring at you." "What were you thinking?" "I don't remember." "Don't you start using that line," he chided. "Then don't ask me, Nick." Did he suspect how I felt. He caught me and turned me around to face him. I focused on his shirt. "Okay," he said quietly, "I'll tell you what I was thinking. I couldn't believe that I, who was never going to get hooked, had fallen in love with a girl who didn't want to date, and she was watching me kiss somebody else." I glanced up. "Your turn, brave girl. What were you thinking?" "That Holly looked beautiful in your arms and that you didn't pull away from her the way you had pulled away from me when I kissed you." He drew me to him. "I'm not pulling away again," he said holding me close.

I’m tired of watching children perish. I’m tired of watching the world grind up gentle people. I’m tired of outliving those I shouldn’t be outliving. I’ve made books my life because they let me escape this world of cruelty and savagery. I needed to say that out loud to somebody other than my cats. Please take care of yourselves, my young friends.

Perfectionism is a particularly evil lure for women, who, I believe, hold themselves to an even higher standard of performance than do men. There are many reasons why women’s voices and visions are not more widely represented today in creative fields. Some of that exclusion is due to regular old misogyny, but it’s also true that—all too often—women are the ones holding themselves back from participating in the first place. Holding back their ideas, holding back their contributions, holding back their leadership and their talents. Too many women still seem to believe that they are not allowed to put themselves forward at all, until both they and their work are perfect and beyond criticism. Meanwhile, putting forth work that is far from perfect rarely stops men from participating in the global cultural conversation. Just sayin’. And I don’t say this as a criticism of men, by the way. I like that feature in men—their absurd overconfidence, the way they will casually decide, “Well, I’m 41 percent qualified for this task, so give me the job!” Yes, sometimes the results are ridiculous and disastrous, but sometimes, strangely enough, it works—a man who seems not ready for the task, not good enough for the task, somehow grows immediately into his potential through the wild leap of faith itself. I only wish more women would risk these same kinds of wild leaps. But I’ve watched too many women do the opposite. I’ve watched far too many brilliant and gifted female creators say, “I am 99.8 percent qualified for this task, but until I master that last smidgen of ability, I will hold myself back, just to be on the safe side.” Now, I cannot imagine where women ever got the idea that they must be perfect in order to be loved or successful. (Ha ha ha! Just kidding! I can totally imagine: We got it from every single message society has ever sent us! Thanks, all of human history!) But we women must break this habit in ourselves—and we are the only ones who can break it. We must understand that the drive for perfectionism is a corrosive waste of time, because nothing is ever beyond criticism. No matter how many hours you spend attempting to render something flawless, somebody will always be able to find fault with it. (There are people out there who still consider Beethoven’s symphonies a little bit too, you know, loud.) At some point, you really just have to finish your work and release it as is—if only so that you can go on to make other things with a glad and determined heart. Which is the entire point. Or should be.

It's just a real gentle moment. I'm here by myself and I don't mind. I kind of wish it could just stay like this for maybe a few years, or I just never moved out of this spot. I could just watch the light stay like this. And maybe somebody coming along and just putting their arms around me for a few minutes.

I had just kissed somebody whose smile had faded, who was watching me now with tranquil eyes and making not the least effort to bridge the little space between our bodies.

I dropped the head and kicked it into the crowd. I say “kicked” but in truth it’s a bad idea to kick a head. I learned that years ago, a lesson that cost me two broken toes. What you want to do is shove the head with the side of your foot, like you’re throwing it. It’s going to roll anyhow so you don’t need that much force. See, the thing about severed heads is the owner no longer has any interest in minimizing the force of the blow, or any ability to do so for that matter. When you kick somebody in the head as you do from time to time, they tend to be actively trying to move themselves out of the way and the contact is lessened. A severed head is a dead weight, even if it’s watching you. And that exhausts my insights into the kicking of severed heads. Admittedly it’s more than most people have to offer on the subject but there were Mayans who knew a lot more than I do. That of course is a whole different ball-game.

I took in a deep breath, and smoke twisted around my head as I let it slip through my teeth. “Do you know what my favorite show was when I was a little kid?” The look again. “I would have no idea.” “Doctor Who. British sci-fi show.” “I am familiar with it. Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, and Matt—“ “No,” I said. “The new show’s great, but I grew up on the old one. The low-budget, rubber monster show with Tom Baker and Peter Davison. I watched it on PBS all the time as a kid.” I looked out at the dark ruins of Hollywood, at the stumbling shadows dotting the streets as far as you could see. The only other living person within half a mile was standing behind me, her eyes boring into my head. “The Doctor didn’t have super-powers or weapons or anything like that. He was just a really smart guy who always tried to do the right thing. To help people, no matter what. That struck me when I was a kid. The idea that no matter how cold and callous and heartless the world seemed, there was somebody out there who just wanted to make life better. Not better for worlds or countries in some vague way. Just better for people trying to live their lives, even if they didn’t know about him.” I turned back to her and tapped my chest. “That’s what this suit’s always been about. Not scaring people like you or Gorgon do. Not some sort of pseudo-sexual roleplay or repressed emotions. I wear this thing, all these bright colors, because I want people to know someone’s trying to make their lives better. I want to give them hope.

Let's say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I'll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years. Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks 'That's enough of that. It's time to intervene,' and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don't lets appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let's go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can't be believed by a thinking person. Why am I glad this is the case? To get to the point of the wrongness of Christianity, because I think the teachings of Christianity are immoral. The central one is the most immoral of all, and that is the one of vicarious redemption. You can throw your sins onto somebody else, vulgarly known as scapegoating. In fact, originating as scapegoating in the same area, the same desert. I can pay your debt if I love you. I can serve your term in prison if I love you very much. I can volunteer to do that. I can't take your sins away, because I can't abolish your responsibility, and I shouldn't offer to do so. Your responsibility has to stay with you. There's no vicarious redemption. There very probably, in fact, is no redemption at all. It's just a part of wish-thinking, and I don't think wish-thinking is good for people either. It even manages to pollute the central question, the word I just employed, the most important word of all: the word love, by making love compulsory, by saying you MUST love. You must love your neighbour as yourself, something you can't actually do. You'll always fall short, so you can always be found guilty. By saying you must love someone who you also must fear. That's to say a supreme being, an eternal father, someone of whom you must be afraid, but you must love him, too. If you fail in this duty, you're again a wretched sinner. This is not mentally or morally or intellectually healthy. And that brings me to the final objection - I'll condense it, Dr. Orlafsky - which is, this is a totalitarian system. If there was a God who could do these things and demand these things of us, and he was eternal and unchanging, we'd be living under a dictatorship from which there is no appeal, and one that can never change and one that knows our thoughts and can convict us of thought crime, and condemn us to eternal punishment for actions that we are condemned in advance to be taking. All this in the round, and I could say more, it's an excellent thing that we have absolutely no reason to believe any of it to be true.

How To Tell If Somebody Loves You: Somebody loves you if they pick an eyelash off of your face or wet a napkin and apply it to your dirty skin. You didn’t ask for these things, but this person went ahead and did it anyway. They don’t want to see you looking like a fool with eyelashes and crumbs on your face. They notice these things. They really look at you and are the first to notice if something is amiss with your beautiful visage! Somebody loves you if they assume the role of caretaker when you’re sick. Unsure if someone really gives a shit about you? Fake a case of food poisoning and text them being like, “Oh, my God, so sick. Need water.” Depending on their response, you’ll know whether or not they REALLY love you. “That’s terrible. Feel better!” earns you a stay in friendship jail; “Do you need anything? I can come over and bring you get well remedies!” gets you a cozy friendship suite. It’s easy to care about someone when they don’t need you. It’s easy to love them when they’re healthy and don’t ask you for anything beyond change for the parking meter. Being sick is different. Being sick means asking someone to hold your hair back when you vomit. Either love me with vomit in my hair or don’t love me at all. Somebody loves you if they call you out on your bullshit. They’re not passive, they don’t just let you get away with murder. They know you well enough and care about you enough to ask you to chill out, to bust your balls, to tell you to stop. They aren’t passive observers in your life, they are in the trenches. They have an opinion about your decisions and the things you say and do. They want to be a part of it; they want to be a part of you. Somebody loves you if they don’t mind the quiet. They don’t mind running errands with you or cleaning your apartment while blasting some annoying music. There’s no pressure, no need to fill the silences. You know how with some of your friends there needs to be some sort of activity for you to hang out? You don’t feel comfortable just shooting the shit and watching bad reality TV with them. You need something that will keep the both of you busy to ensure there won’t be a void. That’s not love. That’s “Hey, babe! I like you okay. Do you wanna grab lunch? I think we have enough to talk about to fill two hours!" It’s a damn dream when you find someone you can do nothing with. Whether you’re skydiving together or sitting at home and doing different things, it’s always comfortable. That is fucking love. Somebody loves you if they want you to be happy, even if that involves something that doesn’t benefit them. They realize the things you need to do in order to be content and come to terms with the fact that it might not include them. Never underestimate the gift of understanding. When there are so many people who are selfish and equate relationships as something that only must make them happy, having someone around who can take their needs out of any given situation if they need to. Somebody loves you if they can order you food without having to be told what you want. Somebody loves you if they rub your back at any given moment. Somebody loves you if they give you oral sex without expecting anything back. Somebody loves you if they don’t care about your job or how much money you make. It’s a relationship where no one is selling something to the other. No one is the prostitute. Somebody loves you if they’ll watch a movie starring Kate Hudson because you really really want to see it. Somebody loves you if they’re able to create their own separate world with you, away from the internet and your job and family and friends. Just you and them. Somebody will always love you. If you don’t think this is true, then you’re not paying close enough attention.

don’t say you’se ole. You’se uh lil girl baby all de time. God made it so you spent yo’ ole age first wid somebody else, and saved up yo’ young girl days to spend wid me.

Live or die, but don't poison everything... Well, death's been here for a long time -- it has a hell of a lot to do with hell and suspicion of the eye and the religious objects and how I mourned them when they were made obscene by my dwarf-heart's doodle. The chief ingredient is mutilation. And mud, day after day, mud like a ritual, and the baby on the platter, cooked but still human, cooked also with little maggots, sewn onto it maybe by somebody's mother, the damn bitch! Even so, I kept right on going on, a sort of human statement, lugging myself as if I were a sawed-off body in the trunk, the steamer trunk. This became perjury of the soul. It became an outright lie and even though I dressed the body it was still naked, still killed. It was caught in the first place at birth, like a fish. But I play it, dressed it up, dressed it up like somebody's doll. Is life something you play? And all the time wanting to get rid of it? And further, everyone yelling at you to shut up. And no wonder! People don't like to be told that you're sick and then be forced to watch you come down with the hammer. Today life opened inside me like an egg and there inside after considerable digging I found the answer. What a bargain! There was the sun, her yolk moving feverishly, tumbling her prize -- and you realize she does this daily! I'd known she was a purifier but I hadn't thought she was solid, hadn't known she was an answer. God! It's a dream, lovers sprouting in the yard like celery stalks and better, a husband straight as a redwood, two daughters, two sea urchings, picking roses off my hackles. If I'm on fire they dance around it and cook marshmallows. And if I'm ice they simply skate on me in little ballet costumes. Here, all along, thinking I was a killer, anointing myself daily with my little poisons. But no. I'm an empress. I wear an apron. My typewriter writes. It didn't break the way it warned. Even crazy, I'm as nice as a chocolate bar. Even with the witches' gymnastics they trust my incalculable city, my corruptible bed. O dearest three, I make a soft reply. The witch comes on and you paint her pink. I come with kisses in my hood and the sun, the smart one, rolling in my arms. So I say Live and turn my shadow three times round to feed our puppies as they come, the eight Dalmatians we didn't drown, despite the warnings: The abort! The destroy! Despite the pails of water that waited, to drown them, to pull them down like stones, they came, each one headfirst, blowing bubbles the color of cataract-blue and fumbling for the tiny tits. Just last week, eight Dalmatians, 3/4 of a lb., lined up like cord wood each like a birch tree. I promise to love more if they come, because in spite of cruelty and the stuffed railroad cars for the ovens, I am not what I expected. Not an Eichmann. The poison just didn't take. So I won't hang around in my hospital shift, repeating The Black Mass and all of it. I say Live, Live because of the sun, the dream, the excitable gift.

It was hard to stay angry when I felt so sad. I would rather have felt angry, but instead, all I could do was sob. Even though people had been coming over all day, the house seemed so lonely that I couldn't stand it. The room grew somewhat dimmer. I didn't move as it grew dimmer still. Then, with a start, I hurried outside and ran to the alley in back of our house. Through a break between the buildings, I saw that the sun hung low over the horizon. I watched it until it started to hide between two trees in the distance. Then I climbed on a car and watched until only half of the sun was visible, and then a quarter, and then I felt a huge sickening panic inside of me and ran as hard as I could to a ladder I saw down the alley. I rushed up the ladder and climbed on the roof of somebody's garage. I saw the sun again, a quarter of it, and then a slice, and then it disappeared, the last time ever that the sun would set on a day my sister had lived.

I have no respect for you pigs, but I was willing to let that slide for business. Then you come to me, late, ungrateful, and disrespectful. It hurts me.” I sighed, loading six bullets into my revolver slowly. I enjoyed watching them panic while I did this. “And when I hurt, somebody else gotta feel my hurt. It’s what makes my world go ‘round.” Smiling, I shot at the first man in the groin. He screamed so loud I’m sure he popped a vein in his neck. “Do you feel the world spinning?” I grinned.

Room 101" said the officer. The man's face, already very pale, turned a color Winston would not have believed possible. It was definitely, unmistakably, a shade of green. "Do anything to me!" he yelled. "You've been starving me for weeks. Finish it off and let me die. Shoot me. Hang me. Sentence me to twenty-five years. Is there somebody else you want me to give away? Just say who it is and I'll tell you anything you want. I don't care who it is or what you do to them. I've got a wife and three children. The biggest of them isn't six years old. You can take the whole lot of them and cut their throats in front of my eyes, and I'll stand by and watch it. But not room 101!" "Room 101" said the officer.

I hate to go mincing through life, afraid to take a single long step for fear somebody is watching. I want to "wave my wild tail and walk by my wild lone." There wasn't a bit of real harm in my opening that window and talking to Perry. There wasn't even any harm in his trying to kiss me. He just did it to tease me. Oh, I hate conventions. As you say, hang consequences.' 'But we can't hang 'em, Pussy - that's just the trouble. They're more likely to hang us.

Well, eighteen, then. And I saw you with him the other night at the opera." She laughed nervously as she spoke, and watched him with her vague forget-me-not eyes. She was a curious woman, whose dresses always looked as if they had been designed in a rage and put on in a tempest. She was usually in love with somebody, and, as her passion was never returned, she had kept all her illusions. She tried to look picturesque, but only succeeded in being untidy. Her name was Victoria, and she had a perfect mania for going to church.

When I walked out of the house with hijab on, i felt beautiful in the eyes of Allah. I felt protected, shielded - i just felt somebody was watching over me' - Nadia, a reverted Muslim

...every now and then I watched him beam at Olivia. He obviously adored her. And I realized that meeting her father made me look at Olivia differently. She was somebody's little girl.

And that was when it really came home to me what I was about to do. I was going to rob a bank, committing the additional crime of arson in the process, and if I got caught I'd go to prison. Well, I thought, go on selling second-hand jalopies for another forty years and maybe somebody'll give you a testimonial and a forty-dollar watch.

I absolutely prefer writing to acting. Through writing, I feel power for maybe the first time in my life. I don’t have to say somebody else’s words. I can write my own. I can be myself for once. I like the privacy of it. Nobody’s watching. Nobody’s judging. Nobody’s weighing in. No casting directors or agents or managers or directors or Mom. Just me and the page. Writing is the opposite of performing to me. Performing feels inherently fake. Writing feels inherently real.

But there was something strange about her that made me think she was "somebody." I don't mean her poise, the cool manner in which she stood with arms folded just watching all the goings on at the book party. Kids inherit that poise. It's their enemy, the way ignorance was the enemy of my generation.

Poor Metias. He’s not supposed to be a father. He’s supposed to be out on his own, independent and free to concentrate on his job as a young captain. But somebody has to take care of me, and I make his life so much harder than it needs to be. I wonder what things must have been like for him back when our parents were still alive, when I was a toddler and Metias was a teenager and he could focus on growing up instead of helping someone else grow up. Still, Metias hasn’t complained once. Not a single time. And even though I wish our parents were here, sometimes I’m really happy that this is our little family unit, just me and my brother, each watching out for no one but the other. We do the best we can.

I can see the little girl, the face of the little girl. And as much as people say that they don't care about these people and all that, I don't care about these people - but I do, at the same time, if that makes any sense. They don't want to help themselves, they're blowing us up, yeah, that hurts, but it also hurts to know that I've seen a girl that's as old as my little brother watch me shoot somebody in the head. And I don't care if she's Iraqi, Korean, African, white - she's still a little girl. And she watched me shoot somebody.

THE FIRST BOY I fell in love with used to regale me with stories about kings and queens and war and peace, and how he hoped to one day be somebody’s knight in shining armor. I lived vicariously through his late night adventures, watching the way he swung his hands animatedly as he told his stories, and loving the way his green eyes twinkled when I laughed at his jokes. He taught me what it feels like to be touched and thoroughly kissed. Later, he taught me the pain one feels at the loss of someone that you’ve grown attached to. The one thing he forgot to teach me was how to deal with the way my chest squeezed after he broke the ghost of what heart I had left. I’d always wondered if it had been a missed lesson. Now I wonder if maybe he’d been trying to figure it out for himself, or if he just never felt anything at all.

When she says margarita she means daiquiri. When she says quixotic she means mercurial. And when she says, "I'll never speak to you again," she means, "Put your arms around me from behind as I stand disconsolate at the window." He's supposed to know that. When a man loves a woman he is in New York and she is in Virginia or he is in Boston, writing, and she is in New York, reading, or she is wearing a sweater and sunglasses in Balboa Park and he is raking leaves in Ithaca or he is driving to East Hampton and she is standing disconsolate at the window overlooking the bay where a regatta of many-colored sails is going on while he is stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway. When a woman loves a man it is one ten in the morning she is asleep he is watching the ball scores and eating pretzels drinking lemonade and two hours later he wakes up and staggers into bed where she remains asleep and very warm. When she says tomorrow she means in three or four weeks. When she says, "We're talking about me now," he stops talking. Her best friend comes over and says, "Did somebody die?" When a woman loves a man, they have gone to swim naked in the stream on a glorious July day with the sound of the waterfall like a chuckle of water rushing over smooth rocks, and there is nothing alien in the universe. Ripe apples fall about them. What else can they do but eat? When he says, "Ours is a transitional era," "that's very original of you," she replies, dry as the martini he is sipping. They fight all the time It's fun What do I owe you? Let's start with an apology Ok, I'm sorry, you dickhead. A sign is held up saying "Laughter." It's a silent picture. "I've been fucked without a kiss," she says, "and you can quote me on that," which sounds great in an English accent. One year they broke up seven times and threatened to do it another nine times. When a woman loves a man, she wants him to meet her at the airport in a foreign country with a jeep. When a man loves a woman he's there. He doesn't complain that she's two hours late and there's nothing in the refrigerator. When a woman loves a man, she wants to stay awake. She's like a child crying at nightfall because she didn't want the day to end. When a man loves a woman, he watches her sleep, thinking: as midnight to the moon is sleep to the beloved. A thousand fireflies wink at him. The frogs sound like the string section of the orchestra warming up. The stars dangle down like earrings the shape of grapes.

Is six a.m. too early to watch The Bachelor and mock all the giggly, desperate women?" "Go for it. Though I bet it'd work better as a drinking game," Laurel said. "One shot for the flirty arm touch. Chug if they strip and bum-rush the pool." Anne hit play. "Like they'd get their hair wet." Laurel stared at the screen, laughed at Anne's comments but felt another weird pang upset her insides. "Would you say this show makes something incredibly complex--you know, relationships--into something mind-numbingly vapid? Or does it make something actually rather simple into a big fucking circus?" "Both. That's why I love it." "I couldn't stand competing for a man like that," Laurel murmured. "I don't have the right...programming for it. Like to fight like that. Some people get an adrenaline rush and they're like foosh, give me somebody to beat down. I just, like curl up into a ball and want to hide." "I'm somewhere in the middle," Anne said. "I'm like a ninja. I'll like, come out of my shadowy hiding space and beat you down, bitches. You won't even see me.

So what's your doll's name?" Boo asked me. "Barbie," I said. "All their names are Barbie." "I see," she said. "Well, I'd think that would get boring, everyone having the same name." I thought about this, then said, "Okay, then her name is Sabrina." "Well, that's a very nice name," Boo said. I remember she was baking bread, kneading the dough between her thick fingers. "What does she do?" "Do?" I said. "Yes." She flipped the dough over and started in on it from the other side. "What does she do?" "She goes out with Ken," I said. "And what else?" "She goes to parties," I said slowly. "And shopping." "Oh," Boo said, nodding. "She can't work?" "She doesn't have to work," I said. "Why not?" "Because she's Barbie." "I hate to tell you, Caitlin, but somebody has to make payments on that town house and the Corvette," Boo said cheerfully. "Unless Barbie has a lot of family money." I considered this while I put on Ken's pants. Boo started pushing the dough into a pan, smoothing it with her hand over the top. "You know what I think, Caitlin?" Her voice was soft and nice, the way she always spoke to me. "What?" "I think your Barbie can go shopping, and go out with Ken, and also have a productive and satisfying career of her own." She opened the oven and slid in the bread pan, adjusting its position on the rack. "But what can she do?" My mother didn't work and spent her time cleaning the house and going to PTA. I couldn't imagine Barbie, whose most casual outfit had sequins and go-go boots, doing s.uch things. Boo came over and plopped right down beside me. I always remember her being on my level; she'd sit on the edge of the sandbox, or lie across her bed with me and Cass as we listened to the radio. "Well," she said thoughtfully, picking up Ken and examining his perfect physique. "What do you want to do when you grow up?" I remember this moment so well; I can still see Boo sitting there on the floor, cross- legged, holding my Ken and watching my face as she tried to make me see that between my mother's PTA and Boo's strange ways there was a middle ground that began here with my Barbie, Sab-rina, and led right to me. "Well," I said abruptly, "I want to be in advertising." I have no idea where this came from. "Advertising," Boo repeated, nodding. "Okay. Advertising it is. So Sabrina has to go to work every day, coming up with ideas for commercials and things like that." "She works in an office," I went on. "Sometimes she has to work late." "Sure she does," Boo said. "It's hard to get ahead. Even if you're Barbie." "Because she wants to get promoted," I added. "So she can pay off the town house. And the Corvette." "Very responsible of her," Boo said. "Can she be divorced?" I asked. "And famous for her commercials and ideas?" "She can be anything," Boo told me, and this is what I remember most, her freckled face so solemn, as if she knew she was the first to tell me. "And so can you.

What's wrong with actors?" "They quote poetry. A girl has to be crazy to believe one," I told him. "It's far too easy for an actor to give you a good line." "You're quick to judge." "No," I argued. "I've had experience with theater types. After a while they can't tell real from unreal. They believe their own creation of themselves and can't understand why everyone else isn't convinced they're wonderful." He jumped down from the limb, then stared up at me, his eyes sparking with anger. "It's efficient, I guess, judging an individual by a group. You don't waste any time trying to know somebody." But I don't want to know you! I thought as I watched Mike walk away. I can't risk knowing you.

As soon as I decided I'd have to dig down still deeper to uncover the root of my listless withdrawal from life, I became aware of some interference from the past distracting and confusing my thoughts, causing me a sensation that was at the same time oppressive, expectant and empty. In these somewhat contradictory feelings, I came to recognize my childish sense of having run down like a clock that needed someone to wind it before it could go again; and saw that I was now no less helpless than in those far-off days when I waited for somebody to take me by the hand and tell me what to do. On my own initiative I could do nothing, take no responsibility, make no decisions only watch my existence unroll.

But to this day, if I have words with somebody, I never walk past them. I never turn my back on them. Now I’m always watching people. I’ve never had that problem with somebody hitting me in the back of the head no more. Never again after that.

The feeling started in my hand and creeped out into my already shifting body. I was not safe. Nothing about me was safe from drowning in the open air. It was my first panic attack. My Grandpa watched it happen until it was over, then he drove me home.

Being socialized female and spending my life "othered" by this world gives me a unique perspective. In the past, this has felt like shit. In the present, it feels pretty good. In the future I hope somebody loves me enough to watch me age ungracefully.

Your hair waves once more when I weep. With the blue of your eyes you lay the table of love: a bed between summer and autumn. We drink what somebody brewed, neither I nor you nor a third: we lap up some empty and last thing. We watch ourselves in the deep sea’s mirrors and faster pass food to the other: the night is the night, it begins with the morning, beside you it lays me down. ("The Years From You To Me")

What’s the matter with me I don’t have much to say... People disagreeing on all just about everything, yeah Makes you stop and all wonder why Why only yesterday I saw somebody on the street Who just couldn’t help but cry Oh, this ol’ river keeps on rollin’, though No matter what gets in the way and which way the wind does blow And as long as it does I’ll just sit here And watch the river flow People disagreeing everywhere you look Makes you wanna stop and read a book Why only yesterday I saw somebody on the street That was really shook But this ol’ river keeps on rollin’, though No matter what gets in the way and which way the wind does blow And as long as it does I’ll just sit here And watch the river flow.

The sun had risen for me -for me alone- and turned the sky into the painted milk of a soggy bowl of leftover off-brand Lucky Charms. The soft roses and lavenders went on to burn blood orange on the underbellies of clouds. I told my shadow I wanted to keep the sun. My shadow whispered back the instructions for making a memory. I watched the light of day ascend until it hurt my eyes, then I closed them, and taught myself to remember.

IT WOULD BE interesting to examine this subject in terms of what is not a sense of humor. Lack of humor seems to come from the attitude of the “hard fact.” Things are very hard and deadly honest, deadly serious, like, to use an analogy, a living corpse. He lives in pain, has a continual expression of pain on his face. He has experienced some kind of hard fact—“reality”—he is deadly serious and has gone so far as to become a living corpse. The rigidity of this living corpse expresses the opposite of a sense of humor. It is as though somebody is standing behind you with a sharp sword. If you are not meditating properly, sitting still and upright, there will be someone behind you just about to strike. Or if you are not dealing with life properly, honestly, directly, someone is just about to hit you. This is the self-consciousness of watching yourself, observing yourself unnecessarily. Whatever we do is constantly being watched and censored. Actually it is not Big Brother who is watching; it is Big Me! Another aspect of me is watching me, behind me, just about to strike, just about to pinpoint my failure. There is no joy in this approach, no sense of humor at all.

Stella says when we were kids and things got bad she would go outside herself. She said she would be in a spot near the ceiling in the corner of the room. Watching. Like everything was happening to somebody else. Like you watch a movie on a screen. Not me. I tuck in. I go into an even deeper place in myself. And I pull the covers in over me. And then I dare you to find me. You have to find me to touch me or hurt me. At least, the part of me that really counts. I go inside and just hold very still. And part of me feels dead. Like it doesn't matter. Whatever it is. It just doesn't matter.

Without somebody to watch me, laugh at my jokes, tell me what to do, ask me questions, race me to the river, make me guess the names of birds, or challenge me to count the silvery fish in a school, there was nothing for me to do. Without somebody to be somebody to, it was as though I wasn't somebody myself.

Well, let's consider the value of the dollar. Ultimately, logically, the dollar has no value at all. It's a piece of paper. It only has value because we say it has value, and because we agree on a system of bartering that maintains that value. Great care is taken to keep the value of the dollar strong. Smart guys in Washington and New York lose sleep over this. And we all watched what happend in Argentina a few years ago. We watched what happened when the value of currency declined rapidly. It's not a good thing. Sex is like that. God is concerned with the value of sex staying high. It's important to a person's health, a family's health, and a society's health. But like anything, sex can be cheapened in our minds, so we don't hold it in high esteem. God doesn't think this is a good thing. Stuff God doesn't think is good is called sin. "What happens when sex is cheaped?" somebody asked. A lot happens. The main thing is there is no sacred physical territory associated with commitment. There can still be emotional territory, but there isn't anything physical, experiential, that a man and a woman have only with each other. Sleeping around does something to the heart, to the mind. It leaves less commodity to spend on a sacred mate. But all of that sounds pretty fluffy. Let me break it down into practical stuff. Women saying no to men, not letting men have sex with them, causes men to step up. If, in order to have sex with them, women demanded you got a job and shaved every day and didn't dress like a dork or sit around playing video games, then all of us would do just that. We all want to have sex, right? ... And this in turn would be good for families, would be good for the communities.

For the first time in my life, I didn't feel watched. My mistakes, however big or small, to the people around me, were just that; mistakes.

Thank yuh, ma’am, but don’t say you’se ole. You’se uh lil girl baby all de time. God made it so you spent yo’ ole age first wid somebody else, and saved up yo’ young girl days to spend wid me.

The next day, a dead turtle was left on my doorstep as a warning. I couldn’t figure out as a warning for what, and I guess whoever was watching me picked up on that, because the next morning there was another dead turtle, but this one had several sheets of paper glued to it’s back leg. The pieces of paper contained a long footnoted explanation of all the symbolism involved. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me. The turtle was the “turtle of inquisitiveness” and the cheese smeared on it’s shell meant something, and the little cowboy boots on its feet meant something. Everything about this animal meant something apparently to whoever sent it. I still didn’t get what it was all about. The next morning there was no turtle. Somebody just shot at me from the bushes.

If we did something wrong, we made sure to say excuse me (excuse me for looking at you, excuse me for sitting here, excuse me for coming back). If we did something terribly wrong we immediately said we were sorry (I’m sorry I touched your arm. I didn’t mean to, it was an accident, I didn’t see it resting there so quietly, so beautifully, so perfectly, so irresistibly, on the edge of the desk. I lost my balance and brushed against it by mistake, I was standing too close, I wasn’t watching where I was going, somebody pushed me from behind, I never wanted to touch you, I have always wanted to touch you, I will never touch you again, I promise, I swear…).

Leaders instill courage in the hearts of those who follow. This rarely happens through words alone. It generally requires action. It goes back to what we said earlier: Somebody has to go first. By going first, the leader furnishes confidence to those who follow. As a next generation leader, you will be called upon to go first. That will require courage. But in stepping out you will give the gift of courage to those who are watching. What do I believe is impossible to do in my field, but if it could be done would fundamentally change my business? What has been done is safe. But to attempt a solution to a problem that plagues an entire industry - in my case, the local church - requires courage. Unsolved problems are gateways to the future. To those who have the courage to ask the question and the tenacity to hang on until they discover or create an answer belongs the future. Don’t allow the many good opportunities to divert your attention from the one opportunity that has the greatest potential. Learn to say no. There will always be more opportunities than there is time to pursue them. Leaders worth following are willing to face and embrace current reality regardless of how discouraging or embarrassing it might be. It is impossible to generate sustained growth or progress if your plan for the future is not rooted in reality. Be willing to face the truth regardless of how painful it might be. If fear causes you to retreat from your dreams, you will never give the world anything new. it is impossible to lead without a dream. When leaders are no longer willing to dream, it is only a short time before followers are unwilling to follow. Will I allow my fear to bind me to mediocrity? Uncertainty is a permanent part of the leadership landscape. It never goes away. Where there is no uncertainty, there is no longer the need for leadership. The greater the uncertainty, the greater the need for leadership. Your capacity as a leader will be determined by how well you learn to deal with uncertainty. My enemy is not uncertainty. It is not even my responsibility to remove the uncertainty. It is my responsibility to bring clarity into the midst of the uncertainty. As leaders we can afford to be uncertain, but we cannot afford to be unclear. People will follow you in spite of a few bad decisions. People will not follow you if you are unclear in your instruction. As a leader you must develop the elusive skill of leading confidently and purposefully onto uncertain terrain. Next generation leaders must fear a lack of clarity more than a lack of accuracy. The individual in your organization who communicates the clearest vision will often be perceived as the leader. Clarity is perceived as leadership. Uncertainty exposes a lack of knowledge. Pretending exposes a lack of character. Express your uncertainty with confidence. You will never maximize your potential in any area without coaching. It is impossible. Self-evaluation is helpful, but evaluation from someone else is essential. You need a leadership coach. Great leaders are great learners. God, in His wisdom, has placed men and women around us with the experience and discernment we often lack. Experience alone doesn’t make you better at anything. Evaluated experience is what enables you to improve your performance. As a leader, what you don’t know can hurt you. What you don’t know about yourself can put a lid on your leadership. You owe it to yourself and to those who have chosen to follow you to open the doors to evaluation. Engage a coach. Success doesn’t make anything of consequence easier. Success just raises the stakes. Success brings with it the unanticipated pressure of maintaining success. The more successful you are as a leader, the more difficult this becomes. There is far more pressure at the top of an organization than you might imagine.

Dear . . . God,” she blurted as she recoiled. The hallway beyond was filled with the males of the house, the Brothers and other fighters and Manny sitting on the floor with their backs to the bare walls, their legs stretched out, propped up, crossed at the knees or crossed at the ankles. Apparently there had been quite a bit of drinking going on, empty bottles of vodka and whiskey littered around them, glasses in hands or on thighs. “This is not as pathetic as it looks,” her Butch pointed out. “Liar,” V muttered. “It so fucking is. I think I’m going to start knitting for reals.” As the females emerged with her, each one of them registered shock, disbelief, and then a wry amusement. “Is it me,” one of the males groused, “or did we just perform our own mass castration out here?” “I think that just about sums this shit up,” somebody agreed. “I’m wearing panties under my leathers from now on. Anyone joining me?” “Lassiter already does,” V said as he got to his feet and went to Jane. “Hey.” And then it was group-reunion time. While the other pairs found one another, Butch smiled as Marissa came over to him and put out her hand to help him off the floor. As they embraced, he kissed her on the side of the neck. “Are you out of love with me now?” he murmured. “’ Cuz I’m pussy-whipped?” She leaned back in his arms. “Why? Because you pined after me while I was watching a dirty movie with my girls that wasn’t all that dirty? I think it’s actually— and brace yourself— really pretty cute.” “I’m still all man.” As she rolled her body against him, she let out a mmmm as she felt his erection. “Yes, I can tell.

But the Esquire passage I found most poignant and revealing was this one: Mister Rogers' visit to a teenage boy severely afflicted with cerebral palsy and terrible anger. One of the boys' few consolations in life, Junod wrote, was watching Mister Rogers Neighborhood. 'At first, the boy was made very nervous by the thought that Mister Rogers was visiting him. He was so nervous, in fact, that when Mister Rogers did visit, he got mad at himself and began hating himself and hitting himself, and his mother had to take him to another room and talk to him. Mister Rogers didn't leave, though. He wanted something from the boy, and Mister Rogers never leaves when he wants something from somebody. He just waited patiently, and when the boy came back, Mister Rogers talked to him, and then he made his request. He said, 'I would like you to do something for me. Would you do something for me?' On his computer, the boy answered yes, of course, he would do anything for Mister Rogers, so then Mister Rogers said: I would like you to pray for me. Will you pray for me?' And now the boy didn't know how to respond. He was thunderstruck... because nobody had ever asked him for something like that, ever. The boy had always been prayed for. The boy had always been the object of prayer, and now he was being asked to pray for Mister Rogers, and although at first he didn't know how to do it, he said he would, he said he'd try, and ever since then he keeps Mister Rogers in his prayers and doesn't talk about wanting to die anymore, because he figures if Mister Rogers likes him, that must mean that God likes him, too. As for Mister Rogers himself... he doesn't look at the story the same way the boy did or I did. In fact, when Mister Rogers first told me the story, I complimented him on being smart - for knowing that asking the boy for his prayers would make the boy feel better about himself - and Mister Rogers responded by looking at me first with puzzlement and then with surprise. 'Oh heavens no, Tom! I didn't ask him for his prayers for him; I asked for me. I asked him because I think that anyone who has gone through challenges like that must be very close to God. I asked him because I wanted his intercession.

I went to my room and put some water on my hair, but you can't really comb a crew cut or anything. Then I tested to see if my breath stank from so many cigarettes and the Scotch and sodas I drank at Ernie's. All you do is hold your hand under your mouth and blow your breath up toward the old nostrils. It didn't seem to stink much, but I brushed my teeth anyway. Then I put on another clean shirt. I knew I didn't have to get all dolled up for a prostitute or anything, but it sort of gave me something to do. I was a little nervous. I was starting to feel pretty sexy and all, but I was a little nervous anyway. If you want to know the truth, I'm a virgin. I really am. I've had quite a few opportunities to lose my virginity and all, but I've never got around to it yet. Something always happens. For instance, if you're at a girl's house, her parents always come home at the wrong time – or you're afraid they will. Or if you're in the back seat of somebody's car, there's always somebody's date in the front seat – some girl, I mean – that always wants to know what's going on all over the whole goddam car. I mean some girl in front keeps turning around to see what the hell's going on. Anyway, something always happens. I came quite close to doing it a couple of times, though. One time in particular, I remember. Something went wrong, though – I don't even remember what any more. The thing is, most of the time when you're coming pretty close to doing it with a girl – a girl that isn't a prostitute or anything, I mean – she keeps telling you to stop. The trouble with me is, I stop. Most guys don't. I can't help it. You never know whether they really want you to stop, or whether they're just scared as hell, or whether they're just telling you to stop so that if you do go through with it, the blame'll be on you not them. Anyway, I keep stopping. The trouble is, I get to feeling sorry for them. I mean most girls are so dumb and all. After you neck them for a while, you can really watch them losing their brains. You take a girl when she really gets passionate, she just hasn't any brains. I don't know. They tell me to stop, so I stop. I always wish I hadn't, after I take them home, but I keep doing it anyway.

Smith, I met you right here, under the bleachers, and I kissed you. On the drive home, you looked out through the rain at a red light and told me it was the first time in a long time that it felt right. It's so stupid how my dad makes students work for free at the concession stand as a form of detention, isn't it, Rory? You looked miserable, and that was before you even saw me kiss Smith right in front of you. I know you saw, because I knew you were there, watching the same way you watch from your bedroom window, turning away every time somebody looks. Jealousy is a funny thing. We spend so much of high school consumed by it, hating that another person has something we don't, wishing we could taste what it's like to be them. To take that feeling out of your hands for a second and pass it to someone else in relief. So, I guess that's why it felt like I meant it.

God Will, I wish you'd stop telling me what to do. What if I like watching television? What if I don't want to do much else other than read a book?" My voice had become shrill. "What if I'm tired when I get home? What if I don't need to fill my days with activity?" "Bur one day you might wish you had", he said quietly. "Do you know what I would do if I were you?" I put down my peeler. "I suspect you're going to tell me." "Yes. And I'm completely unembarrassed about telling you. I'd be doing night school. I'd be training as a seamstress or a fashion designer or whatever it is that taps into what you really love." He gestured at my minidress, a Sixties-inspired Pucci-type dress, made with the fabric that had once been a pair of Grandad's curtains. The first time Dad had seen it he had pointed at me and yelled, "Hey, Lou, pull yourself together!" It had taken him a full five minutes to stop laughing. "I'd be finding out what I could do that didn't cost much - keep-fit classes, swimming, volunteering, whatever. I'd be teaching myself music or going for long walks with somebody else's dog, or -" "Okay, okay, I get the message," I said, irritably. "But I'm not you, Will." "Luckily for you.

Joe was the only constant thing in my life. And I loved him like a brother. But that phrase has a very precise meaning. A lot of those stock sayings do. Like when people say they slept like a baby. Do they mean they slept well? Or do they mean they woke up every ten minutes, screaming? I loved Joe like a brother, which meant a lot of things in our family. The truth was I never knew for sure if I loved him or not. And he never knew for sure if he loved me or not, either. We were only two years apart, but he was born in the fifties and I was born in the sixties. That seemed to make a lot more than two years’ worth of a difference to us. And like any pair of brothers two years apart, we irritated the hell out of each other. We fought and bickered and sullenly waited to grow up and get out from under. Most of those sixteen years, we didn’t know if we loved each other or hated each other. But we had the thing that army families have. Your family was your unit. The men on the bases were taught total loyalty to their units. It was the most fundamental thing in their lives. The boys copied them. They translated that same intense loyalty onto their families. So time to time you might hate your brother, but you didn’t let anybody mess with him. That was what we had, Joe and I. We had that unconditional loyalty. We stood back to back in every new schoolyard and punched our way out of trouble together. I watched out for him, and he watched out for me, like brothers did. For sixteen years. Not much of a normal childhood, but it was the only childhood I was ever going to get. And Joe was just about the beginning and end of it. And now somebody had killed him. I sat there in the back of the police Chevrolet listening to a tiny voice in my head asking me what the hell I was going to do about that.

Some of my favorite songs: 'Only Love Can Break Your Heart' by Neil Young; 'Last Night I Dreamed That Somebody Loved Me' by the Smiths; 'Call Me' by Aretha Franklin; 'I Don't Want to Talk About It' by anybody. And then there's 'Love Hurts' and 'When Love Breaks Down' and 'How Can You Mend a Broken Heart' and 'The Speed of the Sound of Loneliness' and 'She's Gone' and 'I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself 'and . . . some of these songs I have listened to around once a week, on average (three hundred times in the first month, every now and again thereafter), since I was sixteen or nineteen or twenty-one. How can that not leave you bruised somewhere? How can that not turn you into the sort of person liable to break into little bits when your first love goes all wrong? What came first, the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person? People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands, of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss. The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking, are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don't know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they've been listening to the sad songs longer than they've been living the unhappy lives.

Nobody tells people who are beginners. I really wish someone had told this to me. Is that [if you are watching this video, you are somebody who wants o make videos right?] all of us who do creative work, we get into it. we get into it because we have good taste. you know what I mean? like you want to make TV, because you love TV. there is stuff you just like, love. ok so you got really good taste. you get into this thing … that i don’t even know how to describe it, but there is a gap. for the first couple of years you are making stuff, what you are making isn’t so good... ok, its not that great. it's really not that great. its trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but not quite that good. but your taste, the thing get you into the game, your taste is still killer. your taste is good enough that you can tell what you are making is a kind of disappointment to you, you know what i mean? you can tell it is still sort of crappy. a lot of people never get past that phase. a lot of people at that point, they quit. the thing i would just like say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know, who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste, they could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be. they knew it felt short. [some of us can admit that to ourselves, some of us less able to admit that to ourselves] we knew like, it didn’t have that special thing that we wanted it to have. [...] everybody goes through that. for you to go through it, if you are going through right now, just getting out of that phase, if you are just starting out and entering into that phase, you gotta know it is totally normal and the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work. do a huge volume of work. put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you’re gonna finish one story. you know what i mean? whatever its gonna be. you create the deadline. it is best if have somebody who is waiting work from you, expecting work from you. even if not somebody who pays you, but that you are in a situation where you have to turn out the work. because it is only by actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap and the work you are making will be as good as your ambitions.

If that was it, I thought, it was a whole new way of looking at things, a whole new way of looking at life. I’d always done whatever I figured I ought to do. That was the kind of person I was. I just did what I thought was best. Maybe that wasn’t how it was supposed to be after you’d opened up your heart to God. Maybe you were supposed to ask somebody else, and who else would that be but God?

The Years from You to Me" Your hair waves once more when I weep. With the blue of your eyes you lay the table of love; a bed between summer and autumn. We drink what somebody brewed neither I nor you nor a third: we lap up some empty and last thing. We watch ourselves in the deep sea’s mirror and faster pass food to the other: the night is the night, it begins with the morning, beside you it lays me down.

Most people actually ignore things out of the ordinary. Or, worse, hope that someone else will take care of it. I remember being on the train in Chicago in a car with about a dozen other people. On the other side of the car, a man suddenly fell off his seat. Just… toppled over into the aisle. He started convulsing. There were three people between me and him. But nobody said anything. Nobody did anything. I stood up, “Sir?” I said, and started toward him. And that’s when everyone started to move. I called for someone at the back to push the operator alert button, to tell the train driver to call for an ambulance at the next stop. After I moved, there were suddenly three or four other people with me, coming to the man’s aid. But somebody had to move first. I stood in a crowded, standing-room only train on another day and watched a young woman standing near the door close her eyes and drop her papers and binder onto the floor. She was packed tight, surrounded by other people, and no one said anything. Her body began to go limp. “Are you OK!?” I said loudly, leaning toward her, and then other people were looking, and she was sagging, and the buzz started, and somebody called up from the front of the car that he was a doctor, and someone gave up their seat, and people moved, moved, moved. Somebody needs to be the person who says something is wrong. We can’t pretend we don’t see it. Because people have been murdered and assaulted on street corners where hundreds of people milled around, pretending everything was normal. But pretending it was normal didn’t make it so. Somebody has to point it out. Somebody has to get folks to move. Somebody has to act.

I’m tired of many things,” Mr. Burson said, fighting for composure. They turned. “I’m tired of watching children perish. I’m tired of watching the world grind up gentle people. I’m tired of outliving those I shouldn’t be outliving. I’ve made books my life because they let me escape this world of cruelty and savagery. I needed to say that out loud to somebody other than my cats. Please take care of yourselves, my young friends.

she explained that right now, I was practicing being a good woman by being a good girl. However, when I turned twelve years old, every bad or wrong action I made would officially count against me in the eyes of God. She told me that God was watching me, but so were the demons, and they were waiting to see who I would decide to become, following the righteous or unholy breadcrumbs I’d left behind over the first twelve years of my life.

Why not just go with it? Just walk the dog and send the tweets and eat the scones and play with the hamsters and ride the bicycles and watch the sunsets and stream the movies and never worry about any of it? I didn’t know it could be that easy. I didn’t know that until just now. That sounds good to me. I think I might be able to do that. Who couldn’t do that? It would take somebody mentally ill not to do that, and I’m not mentally ill.

YOUNG STARS A curse, a cross Costing me all costs Knotting me up in all of your knots An ache, a prayer Worn from wear Daring what you do not dare I believe you can break me But I’m saved for the one who saved me We only look like young stars Because you can’t see old scars Tender in the places you touch I’d offer you everything but I don’t have much Tell you the truth just to watch you blush You can’t handle the hit so I hold the punch I believe you can break me But I’m saved for the one who saved me We only look like young stars Because you can’t see old scars You won’t give me a reason to wait And I’m starting to feel a little proud I’m searching for somebody lost When you’ve already been found You’re waiting for the right mistake But I’m not coming around You’re waiting for a quiet day But the world is just too loud I believe you can break me But I’m saved for the one who saved me We only look like young stars Because you can’t see old scars

Whatever the final cost of HS2, all those tens of billions could clearly buy lots of things more generally useful to society than a quicker ride to Birmingham. Then there is all the destruction of the countryside. A high-speed rail line offers nothing in the way of charm. It is a motorway for trains. It would create a permanent very noisy, hyper-visible scar across a great deal of classic British countryside, and disrupt and make miserable the lives of hundreds of thousands of people throughout its years of construction. If the outcome were something truly marvellous, then perhaps that would be a justifiable price to pay, but a fast train to Birmingham is never going to be marvellous. The best it can ever be is a fast train to Birmingham. Remarkably, the new line doesn’t hook up to most of the places people might reasonably want to go to. Passengers from the north who need to get to Heathrow will have to change trains at Old Oak Common, with all their luggage, and travel the last twelve miles on another service. Getting to Gatwick will be even harder. If they want to catch a train to Europe, they will have to get off at Euston station and make their way half a mile along the Euston Road to St Pancras. It has actually been suggested that travelators could be installed for that journey. Can you imagine travelling half a mile on travelators? Somebody find me the person who came up with that notion. I’ll get the horsewhip. Now here’s my idea. Why not keep the journey times the same but make the trains so comfortable and relaxing that people won’t want the trip to end? Instead, they could pass the time staring out the window at all the gleaming hospitals, schools, playing fields and gorgeously maintained countryside that the billions of saved pounds had paid for. Alternatively, you could just put a steam locomotive in front of the train, make all the seats inside wooden and have it run entirely by volunteers. People would come from all over the country to ride on it. In either case, if any money was left over, perhaps a little of it could be used to fit trains with toilets that don’t flush directly on to the tracks, so that when I sit on a platform at a place like Cambridge or Oxford glumly eating a WH Smith sandwich I don’t have to watch blackbirds fighting over tattered fragments of human waste and toilet paper. It is, let’s face it, hard enough to eat a WH Smith sandwich as it is.

My Fellow Non-American Blacks: In America, You Are Black, Baby Dear Non-American Black, when you make the choice to come to America, you become black. Stop arguing. Stop saying I’m Jamaican or I’m Ghanaian. America doesn’t care. So what if you weren’t “black” in your country? You’re in America now. We all have our moments of initiation into the Society of Former Negroes. Mine was in a class in undergrad when I was asked to give the black perspective, only I had no idea what that was. So I just made something up. And admit it—you say “I’m not black” only because you know black is at the bottom of America’s race ladder. And you want none of that. Don’t deny now. What if being black had all the privileges of being white? Would you still say “Don’t call me black, I’m from Trinidad”? I didn’t think so. So you’re black, baby. And here’s the deal with becoming black: You must show that you are offended when such words as “watermelon” or “tar baby” are used in jokes, even if you don’t know what the hell is being talked about—and since you are a Non-American Black, the chances are that you won’t know. (In undergrad a white classmate asks if I like watermelon, I say yes, and another classmate says, Oh my God that is so racist, and I’m confused. “Wait, how?”) You must nod back when a black person nods at you in a heavily white area. It is called the black nod. It is a way for black people to say “You are not alone, I am here too.” In describing black women you admire, always use the word “STRONG” because that is what black women are supposed to be in America. If you are a woman, please do not speak your mind as you are used to doing in your country. Because in America, strong-minded black women are SCARY. And if you are a man, be hyper-mellow, never get too excited, or somebody will worry that you’re about to pull a gun. When you watch television and hear that a “racist slur” was used, you must immediately become offended. Even though you are thinking “But why won’t they tell me exactly what was said?” Even though you would like to be able to decide for yourself how offended to be, or whether to be offended at all, you must nevertheless be very offended. When a crime is reported, pray that it was not committed by a black person, and if it turns out to have been committed by a black person, stay well away from the crime area for weeks, or you might be stopped for fitting the profile. If a black cashier gives poor service to the non-black person in front of you, compliment that person’s shoes or something, to make up for the bad service, because you’re just as guilty for the cashier’s crimes. If you are in an Ivy League college and a Young Republican tells you that you got in only because of Affirmative Action, do not whip out your perfect grades from high school. Instead, gently point out that the biggest beneficiaries of Affirmative Action are white women. If you go to eat in a restaurant, please tip generously. Otherwise the next black person who comes in will get awful service, because waiters groan when they get a black table. You see, black people have a gene that makes them not tip, so please overpower that gene. If you’re telling a non-black person about something racist that happened to you, make sure you are not bitter. Don’t complain. Be forgiving. If possible, make it funny. Most of all, do not be angry. Black people are not supposed to be angry about racism. Otherwise you get no sympathy. This applies only for white liberals, by the way. Don’t even bother telling a white conservative about anything racist that happened to you. Because the conservative will tell you that YOU are the real racist and your mouth will hang open in confusion.

I was ready to get this show on the road, creating a new generation with an updated set of rules and regulations. Not that there was anything wrong with the way either one of us was brought up, but still, the world is changing, so the way you bring up kids had to change, too. Part of my plan was to never one time mention picking cotton. My parents always talked about either real cotton or the idea of it. White people say, 'It beats digging a ditch'; black people say, 'It beats picking cotton.' I'm not going to remind my kids that somebody died in order for me to do everyday things. I don't want Roy III sitting up in the movie theater trying to watch Star Wars or what have you and be thinking about the fact that sitting down eating some popcorn is a right that cost somebody his life. None of that. Or maybe not much of that. We'll have to get the recipe right. Now Celestial promises that she will never say that they have to be twice as good to get half as much. 'Even if it's true,' she said, 'what kind of thing is that to say to a five-year-old?

Eliciting peak performance means going up against something or somebody. Let me give you a simple example. For years the performance of the Intel facilities maintenance group, which is responsible for keeping our buildings clean and neat, was mediocre, and no amount of pressure or inducement seemed to do any good. We then initiated a program in which each building’s upkeep was periodically scored by a resident senior manager, dubbed a “building czar.” The score was then compared with those given the other buildings. The condition of all of them dramatically improved almost immediately. Nothing else was done; people did not get more money or other rewards. What they did get was a racetrack, an arena of competition. If your work is facilities maintenance, having your building receive the top score is a powerful source of motivation. This is key to the manager’s approach and involvement: he has to see the work as it is seen by the people who do that work every day and then create indicators so that his subordinates can watch their “racetrack” take shape.

The sun greeted me each morning whether I'd watched it rise or not. I prayed to God each night, like I'd been told. I could count my ABC's, sing along to the radio, and even remember how to tie my shoes if I practiced enough. These things were not hard to remember. But my father, far away, gone without an explanation, would fade away into the background of my four-year-old everyday life until I'd forgotten he'd ever been part of it at all. But before he went to jail, he was here, in a home with me and my mother. Before he was gone he loved me.

She reached down to help him stand. "Where did you learn that move?" he asked. "From an old movie on TV," said Buffy proudly. "I think it starred somebody - Flynn, or maybe what's-his-name - Lancaster, I forget which. Are we done?" "No, we must complete the session." He rubbed his back and groaned. "As difficult as that might prove to be." "Okay! But don't say I didn't warn you - I've been watching a lot of old movies lately." "I was afraid of that." Stiffly, Giles assumed a fighting position. "This is called a wombat stance-" "Looks more like a drunken squirrel to me," Buffy giggled.

I think about all this sometimes when I’m watching a football game with Patrick and Sam. I look at the field, and I think about the boy who just made the touchdown. I think that these are the glory days for that boy, and this moment will just be another story someday because all the people who make touchdowns and home runs will become somebody’s dad. And when his children look at his yearbook photograph, they will think that their dad was rugged and handsome and looked a lot happier than they are. I just hope I remember to tell my kids that they are as happy as I look in my old photographs. And I hope that they believe me.

We only have a little bit of time before I leave for Korea. Let’s not waste it.” Then I slide my hand in his, and he squeezes it. The house is completely empty, for the first time all week. All the other girls are still at the party, except for Chris, who ran into somebody she knows through Applebee’s. We go up to my room, and Peter takes off his shoes and gets in my bed. “Want to watch a movie?” he asks, stretching his arms behind his head. No, I don’t want to watch a movie. Suddenly my heart is racing, because I know what I want to do. I’m ready. I sit down on the bed next to him as he says, “Or we could start a new show--” I press my lips to his neck, and I can feel his pulse jump. “What if we don’t watch a movie or a show? What if we…do something else instead.” I give him a meaningful look. His body jerks in surprise. “What, you mean like now?” “Yes.” Now. Now feels right. I start planting little kisses down his throat. “Do you like that?” I can feel him swallow. “Yes.” He pushes me away from him so he can look at my face. “Let’s stop for a second. I can’t think. Are you drunk? What did Chris put in that drink she gave you?” “No, I’m not drunk!” I had a little bit of a warm feeling in my body, but the walk home woke me right up. Peter’s still staring at me. “I’m not drunk. I swear.” Peter swallows hard, his eyes searching mine. “Are you sure you want to do this now?” “Yes,” I say, because I really, truly am. “But first can you put on Frank Ocean?” He grabs his phone, and a second later the beat kicks in and Frank’s melodious voice fills the room. Peter starts fumbling with his shirt buttons and then gives up and starts to pull my shirt up, and I yelp, “Wait!” Peter’s so startled, he jumps away from me. “What? What’s wrong?” I leap off the bed and start rummaging through my suitcase. I’m not wearing my special bra and underwear set; I’m wearing my normal every day cappuccino-colored bra with the frayed edges. I can’t lose my virginity in my ugliest bra.

Do I get to come in?” he asked. She shrugged and stood aside. “I’m just packing.” “Moving again?” he asked with faint sarcasm. “You used to be easier to keep track of.” “Because I was living in a nest of spies!” she threw at him, having only recently gleaned that bit of information from Colby. “You got me an apartment surrounded by government agents!” “It was the safest place for you,” he said simply. “Someone was always watching you when I couldn’t.” “I didn’t need watching!” “You did,” he returned, perching on the arm of her big easy chair to stare at her intently. “You never realized it, but you were a constant target for anyone who had a grudge against me. In the end, it was why I gave up government work and got a job in the private sector.” He folded his arms over his broad chest, watching surprise claim her features. “There was a communist agent with a high-powered rifle one day, and a South American gentlemen with an automatic pistol the following week. You were never told about them. But you had two close calls. If you hadn’t been living in a ‘nest of spies,’ I’d have buried you. Funerals are expensive,” he added with a cold smile. She stared at him blankly. “Why didn’t you just send me back to South Dakota?” she asked. “To your stepfather?” he drawled. That was still a sore spot with her, and she was certain that he knew it. But she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of arguing. He seemed to be spoiling for a fight. She turned away to the kitchen. “Want a cup of coffee?” He got up and took her by the shoulders. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was a low blow.” “Another in a long line of them lately,” she said without meeting his eyes. “I seem to do nothing except rub you the wrong way.” “And you don’t know why?” he asked curtly, letting her go. She moved one shoulder as she went about the business of getting down a cup and saucer. “At a guess, you’re mad at somebody you can’t get to, and I’m the stand-in.” He chuckled. “How do you see through me so easily? Even my mother can’t do that.” If he thought about it, he’d know, she thought miserably.

We rode in a darling neighborhood of little bungalows cuddled together. I love the gray-green-putty colors against the leafless cherry trees and Japanese maples. I could feel the crocus, daffodil, and tulip bulbs underground, gaining strength, patiently enduring our winter, waiting to burst forth for another glorious Seattle spring. I held my hand out and whooshed it through the thick, healthy air. What other city has given birth to the jumbo jet, the Internet superstore, the personal computer, the cellular phone, online travel, grunge music, the big-box store, good coffee? Where else could somebody like me ride bikes alongside the man with the fourth-most-watched TEDTalk? I started laughing.

It just makes me so goddamn mad,” she said, still looking away from Saul. “Yes.” “I mean, it’s like he didn’t even count. He wasn’t important. Do you know what I mean?” “Yes.” “When I was little I used to watch cowboy shows on television,” she said. “And somebody would be killed—not the hero or villain, just some guy—and it’d be like he had never existed, you know? And it bothered me. I was only six or seven, but it bothered me. I always used to think about the person and how he must’ve had parents and all the years he’d taken to grow up and how he had to have got dressed that morning and then, bang, he doesn’t exist anymore because the writer wanted to show how fast the good guy was with a gun or something.

Okay,” I said. “Okay, I’ll watch these kids. I’ll be their . . . what did you call it?” “Governess,” she said, delighted. “Yeah, I’ll be that.” “I promise you that I will never forget this. Never.” “I’d better get home,” I said. “Is Carl gone? Can somebody drive me to the bus station?” “No,” Madison said, shaking her head, standing up. “You aren’t going home tonight. You’re staying here. You’ll spend the night. In fact, you don’t have to go home if you don’t want to. We’re buying you everything you need. All new clothes! The best computer. Whatever you want.” “Okay,” I said, so tired all of a sudden. “What do you want for dinner tonight? Our cook can make anything.” “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe pizza or something like that.” “We have a pizza oven!” she said. “The best pizza you’ve ever had.” We stared at each other. It was three in the afternoon. What did we do until dinner? “Is Timothy still napping?” I asked, trying to break the awkwardness. “Oh, yeah, I’d better go check on him. Do you want a drink or anything?” “Maybe I can take a nap?” I asked. I barely took note of how huge the house was now that I was able to move through it. We went up a spiral staircase, like in some big-budget musical. Madison was telling me some nonsense about how during the Civil War they took horses up these stairs and hid them in the attic from the Union army. It’s possible I imagined this, some kind of fever dream in the aftermath of making a life-altering decision.

Some of my favorite songs: 'Only Love Can Break Your Heart' by Neil Young; 'Last Night I Dreamed That Somebody Loved Me' by the Smiths; 'Call Me' by Aretha Franklin; 'I Don't Want to Talk About It' by anybody. And then there's 'Love Hurts' and 'When Love Breaks Down' and 'How Can You Mend a Broken Heart' and 'The Speed of the Sound of Loneliness' and 'She's Gone' and 'I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself 'and . . . some of these songs I have listened to around once a week, on average (three hundred times in the first month, every now and again thereafter), since I was sixteen or nineteen or twenty-one. How can that not leave you bruised somewhere? How can that not turn you into the sort of person liable to break into little bits when your first love goes all wrong? What came first, the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person? People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands, of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss. The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking, are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don't know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they've been listening to the sad songs longer than they've been living the unhappy lives.

Through the fall, the president’s anger seemed difficult to contain. He threatened North Korea with “fire and fury,” then followed up with a threat to “totally destroy” the country. When neo-Nazis and white supremacists held a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and one of them killed a protester and injured a score of others, he made a brutally offensive statement condemning violence “on many sides … on many sides”—as if there was moral equivalence between those who were fomenting racial hatred and violence and those who were opposing it. He retweeted anti-Muslim propaganda that had been posted by a convicted criminal leader of a British far-right organization. Then as now, the president’s heedless bullying and intolerance of variance—intolerance of any perception not his own—has been nurturing a strain of insanity in public dialogue that has been long in development, a pathology that became only more virulent when it migrated to the internet. A person such as the president can on impulse and with minimal effort inject any sort of falsehood into public conversation through digital media and call his own lie a correction of “fake news.” There are so many news outlets now, and the competition for clicks is so intense, that any sufficiently outrageous statement made online by anyone with even the faintest patina of authority, and sometimes even without it, will be talked about, shared, and reported on, regardless of whether it has a basis in fact. How do you progress as a culture if you set out to destroy any common agreement as to what constitutes a fact? You can’t have conversations. You can’t have debates. You can’t come to conclusions. At the same time, calling out the transgressor has a way of giving more oxygen to the lie. Now it’s a news story, and the lie is being mentioned not just in some website that publishes unattributable gossip but in every reputable newspaper in the country. I have not been looking to start a personal fight with the president. When somebody insults your wife, your instinctive reaction is to want to lash out in response. When you are the acting director, or deputy director, of the FBI, and the person doing the insulting is the chief executive of the United States, your options have guardrails. I read the president’s tweets, but I had an organization to run. A country to help protect. I had to remain independent, neutral, professional, positive, on target. I had to compartmentalize my emotions. Crises taught me how to compartmentalize. Example: the Boston Marathon bombing—watching the video evidence, reviewing videos again and again of people dying, people being mutilated and maimed. I had the primal human response that anyone would have. But I know how to build walls around that response and had to build them then in order to stay focused on finding the bombers. Compared to experiences like that one, getting tweeted about by Donald Trump does not count as a crisis. I do not even know how to think about the fact that the person with time on his hands to tweet about me and my wife is the president of the United States.

What do you mean, you’re not sure?” Kitty presses. “Shouldn’t you know if you’re somebody’s girlfriend or not?” “We haven’t discussed it yet. I mean, not explicitly.” Kitty switches the channel. “You should look into that.” I roll on my side and prop myself up on my elbow. “But would that change anything? I mean, we like each other. What’s the difference between that and the label? What would change?” Kitty doesn’t answer. “Hello?” “Sorry, can you say that again at the commercial break? I’m trying to watch my show.” I throw a pillow at her head. “I would be better off discussing these things with Jamie.” I clap my hands. “C’mere, Jamie!” Jamie lifts his head to look at me and then lies back down again, nestled against Kitty’s side, still hoping for pudding, I’m sure.

I’m walking off the dance floor when I see him. Peter, in a suit, standing to the side, beside the dogwood tree. He looks so handsome I can hardly stand it. I cross the backyard, and he watches me the whole time. My heart is pounding so hard. Is he here for me? Or did he just come because he promised my dad? When I’m standing in front of him, I say, “You came.” Peter looks away. “Of course I came.” Softly I say, “I wish I could take back the things I said the other night. I don’t even remember all of them.” Looking down, he says, “But you meant them, right? So it’s a good thing you said them then, because somebody had to and you were right.” “Which part?” I whisper. “About UNC. About me not transferring there.” He lifts his head, his eyes wounded. “But you should have told me my mom talked to you.” I take a shaky breath. “You should have told me you were thinking about transferring! You should’ve told me how you were feeling, period. You shut down after graduation; you wouldn’t let me in. You kept saying everything was going to be fine.” “Because I was fucking scared, okay!” he bursts out. He looks around to see if anyone heard, but the music is loud, and everyone is dancing; no one is looking at us, and it’s like we are alone here in this backyard. “What were you so scared about?” I whisper. His hands tighten into fists at his sides. When he finally speaks, his voice comes out raw, like he hasn’t used it in a while. “I was scared that you were going to go to UNC and you were gonna figure out I wasn’t worth it, and you were going to leave.

The next time you enter a temple of Gautam Buddha, just sit silently, watch the statue. Because the statue has been made in such a way, in such proportions that if you watch it you will fall silent. It is a statue of meditation; it is not concerned with Gautam Buddha. That’s why all those statues look alike—Mahavira, Gautam Buddha, Neminatha, Adinatha … . The twenty-four tirthankaras of the Jainas … in the same temple you will find twenty-four statues all alike, exactly alike. In my childhood I used to ask my father, “Can you explain to me how it is possible that twenty-four persons are exactly alike—the same size, the same nose, the same face, the same body … ?” And he used to say, “I don’t know. I am always puzzled myself that there is not a bit of difference. And it is almost unheard of—there are not even two persons in the whole world who are alike, what to say about twenty-four?” But as my meditation blossomed I found the answer—not from anybody else, I found the answer that these statues have nothing to do with the people. These statues have something to do with what was happening inside those twenty-four people, and that happening was exactly the same. We have not bothered about the outside; we have insisted that only the inner should be paid attention to. The outer is unimportant. Somebody is young, somebody is old, somebody is black, somebody is white, somebody is man, somebody is woman—it does not matter; what matters is that inside there is an ocean of silence. In that oceanic state, the body takes a certain posture. You have observed it yourself, but you have not been alert. When you are angry, have you observed? Your body takes a certain posture. In anger you cannot keep your hands open; in anger—the fist. In anger you cannot smile—or can you? With a certain emotion, the body has to follow a certain posture.

I want to wake Chrissie and tell her this as if it's a warning: Don't push too hard; your last chance to see a person the way you wanted them to be may come at any moment. One minute you have a parent, or a friend, or a lover, something solid, and physics tells you their resistance will always be there to meet you as you press yourself into relief against them. Then all of a sudden your mother is a fading outline in a thunderstorm, wet and weak and so far out of reach; or your lover who may also be your best and only friend is pulled so quickly into someone else's life that you don't even realize he's left yours until you're getting a save-the-date card; or your father is somewhere at the end of the world and even if you had a number for him, you'd feel wrong calling to tell him to quit collecting stuff when it's painfully clear you have nothing to offer to replace it. But I don't wake Chrissie because she's sleeping like a baby, and anyway, she isn't a baby and she doesn't need me to tell her what it is to watch somebody let you down by being human in the saddest and neediest ways, what it is to push at something that has long since given way.

Do you know what makes me the happiest? When I see somebody's dream getting the light of morn. When I see the happy giggle of a child with the most enchanting twinkle in that eye. When I see the breaking dawn to watch the rising sun. When I see a smile walking along the horizon painting the crimson rays of a setting sun. When I see a sobbing heart finally taking a flight to a deep unknown within the canvas of its soul. When I see the rain touch the earth and caress its voice in a mirthful melody of stories unfinished. When I see a rainbow dancing along a silver lining of a roaring storm. When I see the radiance on a freckled face of an old woman holding the hand of her forever old man. When I see the moist mist of that coffee slowly becoming the poison of my muse. When I see my wandering heart falling in love with beautiful lands and strangers of soulful cord. When I see how Life is beautiful in all its breathtaking shortness marked in moments of happy surprise lulling across the door of my distant dream clutched in a canopy of dreams lived. And now when I see that beguiling smile of Life, I know how happiest that stardust shines which twinkles in my eye and the soul of my distant dream.

Meeting the Prince of Wales I’ve known her [the Queen] since I was tiny so it was no big deal. No interest in Andrew and Edward--never thought about Andrew. I kept thinking, ‘Look at the life they have, how awful’ so I remember him coming to Althorp to stay, my husband, and the first impact was ‘God, what a sad man.’ He came with his Labrador. My sister was all over him like a bad rash and I thought, ‘God, he must really hate that.’ I kept out of the way. I remember being a fat, podgy, no make-up, unsmart lady but I made a lot of noise and he liked that and he came up to me after dinner and we had a big dance and he said: ‘Will you show me the gallery?’ and I was just about to show him the gallery and my sister Sarah comes up and tells me to push off and I said ‘At least, let me tell you where the switches are to the gallery because you won’t know where they are,’ and I disappeared. And he was charm himself and when I stood next to him the next day, a 16-year old, for someone like that to show you any attention--I was just so sort of amazed. ‘Why would anyone like him be interested in me?’ and it was interest. That was it for about two years. Saw him off and on with Sarah and Sarah got frightfully excited about the whole thing, then she saw something different happening which I hadn’t twigged on to, i.e. when he had his 30th birthday dance I was asked too. ‘Why is Diana coming as well?’ [my] sister asked. I said: ‘Well, I don’t know but I’d like to come.’ ‘Oh, all right then,’ that sort of thing. Had a very nice time at the dance--fascinating. I wasn’t at all intimidated by the surroundings [Buckingham Palace]. I thought, amazing place. Then I was asked to stay at the de Passes in July 1980 by Philip de Pass who is the son. ‘Would you like to come and stay for a couple of nights down at Petworth because we’ve got the Prince of Wales staying. You’re a young blood, you might amuse him.’ So I said ‘OK.’ So I sat next to him and Charles came in. He was all over me again and it was very strange. I thought ‘Well, this isn’t very cool.’ I thought men were supposed not to be so obvious, I thought this was very odd. The first night we sat down on a bale at the barbecue at this house and he’d just finished with Anna Wallace. I said: ‘You looked so sad when you walked up the aisle at Lord Mountbatten’s funeral.’ I said: ‘It was the most tragic thing I’ve ever seen. My heart bled for you when I watched. I thought, “It’s wrong, you’re lonely--you should be with somebody to look after you.

Meeting the Prince of Wales Then I was asked to stay at the de Passes in July 1980 by Philip de Pass who is the son. ‘Would you like to come and stay for a couple of nights down at Petworth because we’ve got the Prince of Wales staying. You’re a young blood, you might amuse him.’ So I said ‘OK.’ So I sat next to him and Charles came in. He was all over me again and it was very strange. I thought ‘Well, this isn’t very cool.’ I thought men were supposed not to be so obvious, I thought this was very odd. The first night we sat down on a bale at the barbecue at this house and he’d just finished with Anna Wallace. I said: ‘You looked so sad when you walked up the aisle at Lord Mountbatten’s funeral.’ I said: ‘It was the most tragic thing I’ve ever seen. My heart bled for you when I watched. I thought, “It’s wrong, you’re lonely--you should be with somebody to look after you.”’ The next minute he leapt on me practically and I thought this was very strange, too, and I wasn’t quite sure how to cope with all this. Anyway we talked about lots of things and anyway that was it. Frigid wasn’t the word. Big F when it comes to that. He said: ‘You must come to London with me tomorrow. I’ve got to work at Buckingham Palace, you must come to work with me.’ I thought this was too much. I said: ‘No, I can’t.’ I thought ‘How will I explain my presence at Buckingham Palace when I’m supposed to be staying with Philip?’ Then he asked me to Cowes on Britannia and he had lots of older friends there and I was fairly intimidated but they were all over me like a bad rash. I felt very strange about the whole thing, obviously somebody was talking. I came in and out, in and out, then I went to stay with my sister Jane at Balmoral where Robert [Fellowes, Jane’s husband] was assistant private secretary [to the Queen]. I was terrified--shitting bricks. I was frightened because I had never stayed at Balmoral and I wanted to get it right. The anticipation was worse than actually being there. I was all right once I got in through the front door. I had a normal single bed! I have always done my own packing and unpacking--I was always appalled that Prince Charles takes 22 pieces of hand luggage with him. That’s before the other stuff. I have four or five. I felt rather embarrassed. I stayed back at the castle because of the press interest. It was considered a good idea. Mr and Mrs Parker-Bowles were there at all my visits. I was the youngest there by a long way. Charles used to ring me up and say: ‘Would you like to come for a walk, come for a barbecue?’ so I said: ‘Yes, please.’ I thought this was all wonderful.

Dear Sad Eyes, I’m sure my eyes look sad from the outside, but nobody knows the pain behind my eyes. Sad eyes, do you know how to smile? I’m sure you would know if you weren’t so tired all of the time. Sad eyes, do you know how to rest? No, I have to strain my eyes in the dark because who else would watch my back. Sad eyes, there’s no such thing as rest—that is only wishful thinking. A stranger spoke to me today. She noticed me, my smile, and my sad eyes. For once, I didn’t feel invisible. I felt like somebody. Ms. Brown doesn’t know me, but she made me feel special. She made me feel like I mattered. She tried to be nice, but I fucked that up. Sad eyes, you know just as well as I do that anger eats me up alive, and I do not know how to control it. The anger I have for others is destroying me piece by piece. If I let it destroy me, then I won’t be able to kiss the moon, and all of the stars are going to fall from the sky. I won’t be able to dance in the moonlight, and the stars will not be my disco ball. I am so empty inside. I make-believe and imagine the dragonflies have filled my empty arms of darkness with light. Sad eyes, do you think you will be able to rest tonight? I hope so. With the moon, stars, and dragonflies surrounding me with so much light, I feel at peace and protected. Let’s try to rest and try it again tomorrow. After all, it will be another day. Who knows what might happen? Counting the stars and kissing the moon.

I love the way David put it in Psalm 23, verse 5: “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies” (NKJV). God will not only avenge you and make your wrongs right, but He will also bless you in front of your enemies. He could promote you anywhere, but He’ll promote you in front of those trying to make you look bad. He’ll give you favor, honor, and recognition. One day those who stabbed you in the back will watch you receive the credit you deserve. Knowing that God prepares the table for us in the presence of our enemies keeps me from being discouraged when people talk unfavorably of me. You see, I know God just sent the angels to the grocery store. If somebody lies about you, no big deal. You can see Gabriel setting the table. Your critics can see the meal on God’s table, but they aren’t invited to the party. They’ll have to watch you enjoy what God has prepared for you. They will watch as you are promoted. Be ready. If you’ve done the right thing and overlooked offenses and negative words and blessed your enemies, then know God’s table is set. Your dinner is ready. It’s just a matter of time before you’re seated at the table. Your enemies may try to spoil the party by stealing your joy. They’ll plant doubts, but shake them off. The dinner bell will ring for you at any moment. Those hindering you, trying to bring you down, will see you stepping to a new level. They will see God’s favor and goodness enter your life in a greater way.

When I say celebrate, I mean become more and more sensitive to everything. In life, dance should not be apart. The whole life should become a dance; it should be a dance. You can go for a walk and dance. Allow life to enter into you, become more open and vulnerable, feel more, sense more. Small things filled with such wonders are lying all around. Watch a small child. Leave him in the garden and just watch. That should be your way also; so wonderful, wonder-filled: running to catch this butterfly, running to catch that flower, playing with mud, rolling in the sand. From everywhere the Divine is touching the child. If you can live in wonder you will be capable of celebration. Don't live in knowledge, live in wonder. Life is surprising; everywhere, it is a continuous surprise. Live it as a surprise, an unpredictable phenomenon: every moment is new. Just try, give it a try! You will not lose anything if you give it a try, and you may gain everything. But you have become addicted to misery. You cling to your misery as if it is something very precious. You become cruel because you don't know how to become compassionate. It is a negative state. The same energy that is cruelty will become compassion. With an unalert mind the energy becomes violence; with an alert mind the same energy becomes compassion. In sleep the same energy becomes torture, either of yourself or of somebody else. When you are awake, the same energy becomes love, for yourself and for others also. You are already where you need to be, you are already in that space which you are seeking. Just make a little effort to come out of your clinging to misery. Don't invest in misery; invest in celebration. You take one step towards life and life takes one thousand towards you. Just take one step out of your clinging to misery. The mind will go on pulling you backwards. Just be indifferent to the mind and tell the mind, 'Wait, I have lived enough with you, now let me live without mind.' That's what a child is: living without mind, or, living with no mind.

Why should I side with you? Why should I care if you win?” The phouka raked fingers through his hair. “You have seen one of them, one of their forms. That is what seeks domination over every natural thing in this place. We of the Seelie Court are capricious, and not always well-disposed toward humankind. But would you hand this city over to the likes of what you saw tonight? That is the Unseelie Court. If we fall, every park, every boulevard tree, every grassy lawn would be their dwelling place.” Eddi sighed. “It’s not just for you, it’s for the entire seven-country metro area. Couldn’t we just let them have St. Paul?” The phouka made a disgusted noise. “All right. What if they did take over? Would we all be eaten in our beds?” He shook his head. “There are places,” he began slowly, “that belong to them. Have you ever passed through some small town, surrounded by fertile country and fed by commerce, that seemed to be rotting away even as you watched? Where the houses and the people were faded, and all the storefronts stood empty?” Eddi remembered a few. “Or a city whose new buildings looked tawdry, whose old ones were ramshackle, where the streets were grimy and the wind was never fresh, where money passed from hand to hand yet benefited no one?” His words were quicker now. “This city is alive with the best magic of mortal folk. The very light off the skyscrapers and the lakes vibrate with it. If the Unseelie Court takes up residence here, this will be a place where people fear their neighbors, where life drains the living until art and wit are luxuries, where any pleasant thing must be imported and soon loses its savor.” He fell silent, as if embarrassed by his own eloquence. Eddi rubbed her hands over her face, trying to rub away her confusion, her anger, her fear. Finally she asked the only question she had left. “Can’t you get somebody else?” The phouka began to laugh weakly. “Oh, go to bed, Eddi McCandry. You could befuddle a stone. Go to bed, and sleep soundly, and tempt me not into some foolish flap of the tongue.

When I threw the stick at Jamie, I hadn't intended to hit him with it. But the moment it left my hand, I knew that's what was going to happen. I didn't yet know any calculus or geometry, but I was able to plot, with some degree of certainty, the trajectory of that stick. The initial velocity, the acceleration, the impact. The mathematical likelihood of Jamie's bloody cheek. It had good weight and heft, that stick. It felt nice to throw. And it looked damn fine in the overcast sky, too, flying end over end, spinning like a heavy, two-pronged pinwheel and (finally, indifferently, like math) connecting with Jamie's face. Jamie's older sister took me by the arm and she shook me. Why did you do that? What were you thinking? The anger I saw in her eyes. Heard in her voice. The kid I became to her then, who was not the kid I thought I was. The burdensome regret. I knew the word "accident" was wrong, but I used it anyway. If you throw a baseball at a wall and it goes through a window, that is an accident. If you throw a stick directly at your friend and it hits your friend in the face, that is something else. My throw had been something of a lob and there had been a good distance between us. There had been ample time for Jamie to move, but he hadn't moved. There had been time for him to lift a hand and protect his face from the stick, but he hadn't done that either. He just stood impotent and watched it hit him. And it made me angry: That he hadn't tried harder at a defense. That he hadn't made any effort to protect himself from me. What was I thinking? What was he thinking? I am not a kid who throws sticks at his friends. But sometimes, that's who I've been. And when I've been that kid, it's like I'm watching myself act in a movie, reciting somebody else's damaging lines. Like this morning, over breakfast. Your eyes asking mine to forget last night's exchange. You were holding your favorite tea mug. I don't remember what we were fighting about. It doesn't seem to matter any more. The words that came out of my mouth then, deliberate and measured, temporarily satisfying to throw at the bored space between us. The slow, beautiful arc. The spin and the calculated impact. The downward turn of your face. The heavy drop in my chest. The word "accident" was wrong. I used it anyway.

When Mama leaned over to kiss me, I hugged her so tight she could hardly breathe. “I’ll never forget you,” I whispered. Mama drew back. “What did you say?” “Nothing,” I mumbled. “I love you, Mama.” She smiled. “Well, for goodness sake, you little jackanapes, I love you too.” Smoothing the quilt over me, she turned to the others. “What Andrew needs is a good night’s sleep. In the morning, he’ll be himself again, just wait and see.” “I hope so,” Andrew said. Papa frowned. “No one will get any sleep, good or bad, with Buster making such a racket. I don’t know what ails that animal.” While we’d been talking, Andrew had gone to the window and whistled for the dog. Though the Tylers hadn’t heard the loud two-fingered blast, Buster definitely had. His howls made the hair on my neck prickle. Even Andrew looked frightened. He backed away from the window and sat quietly in the rocker. “Edward told me a dog howls when somebody in the family is about to die,” Theo said uneasily. Papa shook his head. “That’s superstitious nonsense, Theodore. Surely you know better than to believe someone as well known for mendacity as your cousin.” Muttering to himself, Papa left the room. Taking Theo with her, Mama followed, but Hannah lingered by the bed. I reached out and grabbed her hand. “Don’t leave yet,” I begged. “Stay a while.” Hannah hesitated for a moment, her face solemn, her eyes worried. “Mama’s right, Andrew,” she said softly. “You need to rest, you’ve overexcited yourself again. We’ve got all day tomorrow to sit in the tree and talk.” When Hannah reached up to turn off the gas jet, I glanced at Andrew. He was watching his sister from the rocker, his eyes fixed longingly on her face. A little wave of jealousy swept over me. He’d get to be with her for years, but all I had were a few more minutes. In the darkness, Hannah smiled down at me. “Close your eyes,” she said. “Go to sleep.” “But I’ll never see you again.” Hannah’s smile vanished. “Don’t talk nonsense,” she whispered. “You’ll see me tomorrow and every day after that.” In the corner, Andrew stared at his sister and rocked the chair harder. In the silent room I heard it creak, saw it move back and forth. Startled by the sound, Hannah glanced at the rocker and drew in her breath. Turning to me, she said, “Lord, the moon’s making me as fanciful as you. I thought I saw--” She shook her head. “I must need a good night’s sleep myself.” Kissing me lightly on the nose, Hannah left the room without looking at the rocking chair again.

Flynn lived in a shiny glass apartment tower on the water in Melbourne. The building looked like hundreds of mirrors reflecting the bright blue sky. He lived at the top of the high-rise. Kope and I stepped off the elevator and looked down the hall at Flynn’s door. We’d been silent. Nodding to each other, we sent our hearing into the apartment. With a quiet gasp, I yanked my auditory sense back to normal. Flynn was busy with company at the moment. Very busy. Kope made a low sound and closed his eyes, shaking his head as if to clear away the sounds he’d heard. My face heated and I shifted from foot to foot, fighting back the nervous smile that always wanted to surface at inappropriate times. I found a small sitting area around the corner with glass walls overlooking the city. We sat, taking in the view. When my stupid urge to smile finally settled, I braved another look at Kope and pointed to myself, using my new, limited sign-language skills to tell him I’d listen. Given the new information about his inclination for lust, it was only fair. I quickly looked away, embarrassed by the crassness of the situation. I wasn’t going to listen the whole time. I’d just pop in for a quick check. Ten minutes passed. Still busy. Half an hour passed. Busy. Forty-five minutes passed. I shook my head to let Kope know they were still at it. He fidgeted and paced, out of his normal, calm comfort zone. An hour and ten minutes passed, and I took a turn at stretching my legs. I was getting hungry. I thought we’d be through with our talk by this time. We could interrupt Flynn, but I didn’t want him to freak out in front of somebody. We needed his guest to leave so we could talk alone. At the hour and a half mark, Kope checked his watch and looked at me. I sent my hearing into the room. Oh, they weren’t in the bedroom anymore. Finally! I wiggled my hearing around until it hit the sound of running water. A shower. This was a good sign. But wait . . . nope. I shook my head, eyes wide. Was this normal? Kope did something uncharacteristic then. He grinned, giving a little huff through his nose. This elicited a small giggle from me and I pressed both hands over my mouth. It was too late, though. At this point, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. I could feel the crazy, unfortunate amusement rising. I jumped up and ran as spritely as I could to the stairwell with Kope on my heels. We sprinted down several flights before I fell back against the wall, laughter bubbling out. It went on and on, only getting worse when Kope joined in with his deep chuckling, a joyful rumble.

I am like God, Codi? Like GOD? Give me a break. If I get another letter that mentions SAVING THE WORLD, I am sending you, by return mail, a letter bomb. Codi, please. I've got things to do. You say you're not a moral person. What a copout. Sometime, when I wasn't looking, something happened to make you think you were bad. What, did Miss Colder give you a bad mark on your report card? You think you're no good, so you can't do good things. Jesus, Codi, how long are you going to keep limping around on that crutch? It's the other way around, it's what you do that makes you who you are. I'm sorry to be blunt. I've had a bad week. I am trying to explain, and I wish you were here so I could tell you this right now, I am trying to explain to you that I'm not here to save anybody or any thing. It's not some perfect ideal we're working toward that keeps us going. You ask, what if we lose this war? Well, we could. By invasion, or even in the next election. People are very tired. I don't expect to see perfection before I die. Lord, if I did I would have stuck my head in the oven back in Tucson, after hearing the stories of some of those refugees. What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive. You keep your eyes open, you see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself, "What life can I live that will let me breathe in & out and love somebody or something and not run off screaming into the woods?" I didn't look down from some high rock and choose cotton fields in Nicaragua. These cotton fields chose me. The contras that were through here yesterday got sent to a prison farm where they'll plant vegetables, learn to read and write if they don't know how, learn to repair CB radios, and get a week-long vacation with their families every year. They'll probably get amnesty in five. There's hardly ever a repeat offender. That kid from San Manuel died. Your sister, Hallie "What's new with Hallie?" Loyd asked. "Nothing." I folded the pages back into the envelope as neatly as I could, trying to leave its creases undisturbed, but my fingers had gone numb and blind. With tears in my eyes I watched whatever lay to the south of us, the land we were driving down into, but I have no memory of it. I was getting a dim comprehension of the difference between Hallie and me. It wasn't a matter of courage or dreams, but something a whole lot simpler. A pilot would call it ground orientation. I'd spent a long time circling above the clouds, looking for life, while Hallie was living it.

Danny and the Memories was the band at the root of Crazy Horse. They were a vocal group with Danny Whitten, Ralphie, Billy, and a guy named Ben Rocco. When I recently saw their old video of "Land of a Thousand Dances" on You-Tube, I realized that is is truly the shit. You know, I looked at it maybe twenty times in a row. Even though Danny was amazing and he held the Horse together in the early days, I did not know how great Danny was until I saw this! The moves! What an amazing dancer he was. His presence on that performance is elevating! He is gone, and no one can change that. We will never see and hear where he was going. I am telling you, the world missed one of the greatest when Danny and the Memories did not have a NUMBER ONE smash record back in the day. They were so musical, with great harmonies, and Danny was a total knockout! I am so moved by this that it could make me cry at any time. This is one of those many times when words can't describe the music. Danny and the Memories eventually transformed into the Rockets; they were playing in this old house in Laurel Canyon, and I somehow connected with them while Buffalo Springfield was at the Whiskey. We had a lot of pots jams in the house. Later on I saw Danny and the guys at somebody's house in Topanga. After that I asked if Danny, Billy, and Ralphie would play on a record with me. We did one day, practicing in my Topanga house, and it sounded great. I named the band Crazy Horse and away we went. The Rockets were still together, but this was a different deal. At that time, I thought Danny was a great guitarist and singer. I had no idea how great, though. I just was too full of myself to see it. Now I see it clearly. I wish I could do that again, because more of Danny would be there. I have made an Early Daze record of the Horse, and you can hear a different vocal of "Cinnamon Girl" featuring more of Danny. He was singing the high part and it came through big-time. I changed it so I sang the high part and put that out. That was a big mistake. I fucked up. I did not know who Danny was. He was better than me. I didn't see it. I was strong, and maybe I helped destroy something sacred by not seeing it. He was never pissed off about it. I wasn't like that. I was young, and maybe I didn't know what I was doing. Some things you wish never happened. But we got what we got. I never really saw him a sing and move until I saw that "Land of a Thousand Dances" video. I could watch it over and over. I can't believe it. It's just one of those things. My heart aches for what happened to him. These memories are what make Crazy Horse great today. And now we don't have Briggs, either, for the next record, but we have the spirit and the heart to go on. And we have John Hanlong, taught by Briggs, to engineer this sucker. It will rock and cry. Please let's get to this before life comes knocking again.

Sophie?” He knocked, though not that hard, then decided she wasn’t going hear anything less than a regiment of charging dragoons over Kit’s racket. He pushed the door open to find half of Sophie’s candles lit and the lady pacing the room with Kit in her arms. “He won’t settle,” she said. “He isn’t wet; he isn’t hungry; he isn’t in want of cuddling. I think he’s sickening for something.” Sophie looked to be sickening. Her complexion was pale even by candlelight, her green eyes were underscored by shadows, and her voice held a brittle, anxious quality. “Babies can be colicky.” Vim laid the back of his hand on the child’s forehead. This resulted in a sudden cessation of Kit’s bellowing. “Ah, we have his attention. What ails you, young sir? You’ve woken the watch and disturbed my lady’s sleep.” “Keep talking,” Sophie said softly. “This is the first time he’s quieted in more than an hour.” Vim’s gaze went to the clock on her mantel. It was a quarter past midnight, meaning Sophie had gotten very little rest. “Give him to me, Sophie. Get off your feet, and I’ll have a talk with My Lord Baby.” She looked reluctant but passed the baby over. When the infant started whimpering, Vim began a circuit of the room. “None of your whining, Kit. Father Christmas will hear of it, and you’ll have a bad reputation from your very first Christmas. Do you know Miss Sophie made Christmas bread today? That’s why the house bore such lovely scents—despite your various efforts to put a different fragrance in the air.” He went on like that, speaking softly, rubbing the child’s back and hoping the slight warmth he’d detected was just a matter of the child’s determined upset, not inchoate sickness. Sophie would fret herself into an early grave if the boy stopped thriving. “Listen,” Vim said, speaking very quietly against the baby’s ear. “You are worrying your mama Sophie. You’re too young to start that nonsense, not even old enough to join the navy. Go to sleep, my man. Sooner rather than later.” The child did not go to sleep. He whimpered and whined, and by two in the morning, his nose was running most unattractively. Sophie would not go to sleep either, and Vim would not leave her alone with the baby. “This is my fault,” Sophie said, her gaze following Vim as he made yet another circuit with the child. “I was the one who had to go to the mews, and I should never have taken Kit with me.” “Nonsense. He loved the outing, and you needed the fresh air.” The baby wasn’t even slurping on his fist, which alarmed Vim more than a possible low fever. And that nose… Vim surreptitiously used a hankie to tend to it, but Sophie got to her feet and came toward them. “He’s ill,” she said, frowning at the child. “He misses his mother and I took him out in the middle of a blizzard and now he’s ill.” Vim put his free arm around her, hating the misery in her tone. “He has a runny nose, Sophie. Nobody died of a runny nose.” Her expression went from wan to stricken. “He could die?” She scooted away from Vim. “This is what people mean when they say somebody took a chill, isn’t it? It starts with congestion, then a fever, then he becomes weak and delirious…” “He’s not weak or delirious, Sophie. Calm down.

Steve was a warrior in every sense of the word, but battling wildlife perpetrators just wasn’t the same as old-fashioned combat. Because Steve’s knees continued to deteriorate, his surfing ability was severely compromised. Instead of giving up in despair, Steve sought another outlet for all his pent-up energy. Through our head of security, Dan Higgins, Steve discovered mixed martial arts (or MMA) fighting. Steve was a natural at sparring. His build was unbelievable, like a gorilla’s, with his thick chest, long arms, and outrageous strength for hugging things (like crocs). Once he grabbed hold of something, there was no getting away. He had a punch equivalent to the kick of a Clydesdale, he could just about lift somebody off the ground with an uppercut, and he took to grappling as a wonderful release. Steve never did anything by halves. I remember one time the guys were telling him that a good body shot could really wind someone. Steve suddenly said, “No one’s given me a good body shot. Try to drop me with a good one so I know what it feels like.” Steve opened up his arms and Dan just pile drove him. Steve said, in between gasps, “Thanks, mate. That was great, I get your point.” I would join in and spar or work the pads, or roll around until I was absolutely exhausted. Steve would go until he threw up. I’ve never seen anything like it. Some MMA athletes are able to seek that dark place, that point of total exhaustion--they can see it, stare at it, and sometimes get past it. Steve ran to it every day. He wasn’t afraid of it. He tried to get himself to that point of exhaustion so that maybe the next day he could get a little bit further. Soon we were recruiting the crew, anyone who had any experience grappling. Guys from the tiger department or construction were lining up to have a go, and Steve would go through the blokes one after another, grappling away. And all the while I loved it too. Here was something else that Steve and I could do together, and he was hilarious. Sometimes he would be cooking dinner, and I’d come into the kitchen and pat him on the bum with a flirtatious look. The next thing I knew he had me in underhooks and I was on the floor. We’d be rolling around, laughing, trying to grapple each other. It’s like the old adage when you’re watching a wildlife documentary: Are they fighting or mating? It seems odd that this no-holds-barred fighting really brought us closer, but we had so much fun with it. Steve finally built his own dojo on a raised concrete pad with a cage, shade cloth, fans, mats, bags, and all that great gear. Six days a week, he would start grappling at daylight, as soon as the guys would get into work. He had his own set of techniques and was a great brawler in his own right, having stood up for himself in some of the roughest, toughest, most remote outback areas. Steve wasn’t intimidated by anyone. Dan Higgins brought a bunch of guys over from the States, including Keith Jardine and other pros, and Steve couldn’t wait to tear into them. He held his own against some of the best MMA fighters in the world. I always thought that if he’d wanted to be a fighter as a profession, he would have been dangerous. All the guys heartily agreed.

This is the only story of mine whose moral I know. I don't think it's a marvelous moral, I simply happen to know what it is: We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. My personal experience with Nazi monkey business was limited. There were some vile and lively native American Fascists in my home town of Indianapolis during the thirties, and somebody slipped me a copy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, I remember, which was supposed to be the Jews' secret plan for taking over the world. And I remember some laughs about my aunt, too, who married a German German, and who had to write to Indianapolis for proofs that she had no Jewish blood. The Indianapolis mayor knew her from high school and dancing school, so he had fun putting ribbons and official seals all over the documents the Germans required, which made them look like eighteenth-century peace treaties. After a while the war came, and I was in it, and I was captured, so I got to see a little of Germany from the inside while the war was still going on. I was a private, a battalion scout, and, under the terms of the Geneva Convention, I had to work for my keep, which was good, not bad. I didn't have to stay in prison all the time, somewhere out in the countryside. I got to go to a city, which was Dresden, and to see the people and the things they did. There were about a hundred of us in our particular work group, and we were put out as contract labor to a factory that was making a vitamin-enriched malt syrup for pregnant women. It tasted like thin honey laced with hickory smoke. It was good. I wish I had some right now. And the city was lovely, highly ornamented, like Paris, and untouched by war. It was supposedly an 'open' city, not to be attacked since there were no troop concentrations or war industries there. But high explosives were dropped on Dresden by American and British planes on the night of February 13, 1945, just about twenty-one years ago, as I now write. There were no particular targets for the bombs. The hope was that they would create a lot of kindling and drive firemen underground. And then hundreds of thousands of tiny incendiaries were scattered over the kindling, like seeds on freshly turned loam. More bombs were dropped to keep firemen in their holes, and all the little fires grew, joined one another, and became one apocalyptic flame. Hey presto: fire storm. It was the largest massacre in European history, by the way. And so what? We didn't get to see the fire storm. We were in a cool meat-locker under a slaughterhouse with our six guards and ranks and ranks of dressed cadavers of cattle, pigs, horses, and sheep. We heard the bombs walking around up there. Now and then there would be a gentle shower of calcimine. If we had gone above to take a look, we would have been turned into artefacts characteristic of fire storms: seeming pieces of charred firewood two or three feet long - ridiculously small human beings, or jumbo fried grasshoppers, if you will. The malt syrup factory was gone. Everything was gone but the cellars where 135,000 Hansels and Gretels had been baked like gingerbread men. So we were put to work as corpse miners, breaking into shelters, bringing bodies out. And I got to see many German types of all ages as death had found them, usually with valuables in their laps. Sometimes relatives would come to watch us dig. They were interesting, too. So much for Nazis and me. If I'd been born in Germany, I suppose I would have been a Nazi, bopping Jews and gypsies and Poles around, leaving boots sticking out of snowbanks, warming myself with my secretly virtuous insides. So it goes. There's another clear moral to this tale, now that I think about it: When you're dead you're dead. And yet another moral occurs to me now: Make love when you can. It's good for you.

Robert Askins Brings ‘Hand to God’ to Broadway Chad Batka for The New York Times Robert Askins at the Booth Theater, where his play “Hand to God” opens on Tuesday. By MICHAEL PAULSON The conceit is zany: In a church basement, a group of adolescents gathers (mostly at the insistence of their parents) to make puppets that will spread the Christian message, but one of the puppets turns out to be more demonic than divine. The result — a dark comedy with the can-puppets-really-do-that raunchiness of “Avenue Q” and can-people-really-say-that outrageousness of “The Book of Mormon” — is “Hand to God,” a new play that is among the more improbable entrants in the packed competition for Broadway audiences over the next few weeks. Given the irreverence of some of the material — at one point stuffed animals are mutilated in ways that replicate the torments of Catholic martyrs — it is perhaps not a surprise to discover that the play’s author, Robert Askins, was nicknamed “Dirty Rob” as an undergraduate at Baylor, a Baptist-affiliated university where the sexual explicitness and violence of his early scripts raised eyebrows. But Mr. Askins had also been a lone male soloist in the children’s choir at St. John Lutheran of Cypress, Tex. — a child who discovered early that singing was a way to make the stern church ladies smile. His earliest performances were in a deeply religious world, and his writings since then have been a complex reaction to that upbringing. “It’s kind of frustrating in life to be like, ‘I’m a playwright,’ and watch people’s face fall, because they associate plays with phenomenally dull, didactic, poetic grad-schoolery, where everything takes too long and tediously explores the beauty in ourselves,” he said in a recent interview. “It’s not church, even though it feels like church a lot when we go these days.” The journey to Broadway, where “Hand to God” opens on Tuesday at the Booth Theater, still seems unlikely to Mr. Askins, 34, who works as a bartender in Brooklyn and says he can’t afford to see Broadway shows, despite his newfound prominence. He seems simultaneously enthralled by and contemptuous of contemporary theater, the world in which he has chosen to make his life; during a walk from the Cobble Hill coffee shop where he sometimes writes to the Park Slope restaurant where he tends bar, he quoted Nietzsche and Derrida, described himself as “deeply weird,” and swore like, well, a satanic sock-puppet. “If there were no laughs in the show, I’d think there was something wrong with him,” said the actor Steven Boyer, who won raves in earlier “Hand to God” productions as Jason, a grief-stricken adolescent with a meek demeanor and an angry-puppet pal. “But anybody who is able to write about such serious stuff and be as hilarious as it is, I’m not worried about their mental health.” Mr. Askins’s interest in the performing arts began when he was a boy attending rural Texas churches affiliated with the conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod denomination; he recalls the worshipers as “deeply conservative, old farm folks, stone-faced, pride and suffering, and the only time anybody ever really livened up was when the children’s choir would perform.” “My grandmother had a cross-stitch that said, ‘God respects me when I work, but he loves me when I sing,’ and so I got into that,” he said. “For somebody who enjoys performance, that was the way in.” The church also had a puppet ministry — an effort to teach children about the Bible by use of puppets — and when Mr. Askins’s mother, a nurse, began running the program, he enlisted to help. He would perform shows for other children at preschools and vacation Bible camps. “The shows are wacky, but it was fun,” he said. “They’re badly written attempts to bring children to Jesus.” Not all of his formative encounters with puppets were positive. Particularly scarring: D

Rex opened her bedroom door, letting a warm draft into the corridor. “I’ll light your candles,” he said, gesturing her to precede him into her sitting room. “You are doing more than performing a service, Eleanora. You allow me to raise difficult questions with absolute faith that my confidences will not be betrayed. You take my interests to heart. You instruct me on matters nobody has seen fit to include in my ducal education. I am indebted to you.” He was also attracted to her, and not in the casual sense he was attracted to any comely female. He liked watching her mind work. He liked arguing with her. He liked hearing the click of the abacus beads because she moved them around with the brisk speed of a sharpshooter wielding a favorite weapon. She closed the door, plunging the room into deep gloom. “Somebody kept my fires built up,” she said. “You cannot imagine what a luxury that is for me.” She wore a plain wool shawl when he wanted to wrap her in cashmere and silk. Her bun was drooping, and he yearned to unravel the lot and learn how long her hair was, learn the feel of it in his hands. He wanted…her. To cherish, explore, appreciate, and indulge. “The bedroom candles, if you please, Elsmore. I’ll not be using the parlor tonight.” A man intent on observing propriety would pass her the candle, bow, and wish her sound slumbers. Rex thought back over the day, when Eleanora had slept so trustingly against his side in the coach. She’d come to dinner with the barest minimum of a fuss. She’d patted his hand. She’d toed off her house slippers in his presence. She’d taken his arm as she’d traversed the steps. Now, she was inviting him into her bedroom on the most mundane of pretexts.

believe that our planet is inhabited not only by animals and plants and bacteria and viruses, but also by ideas. Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life-form. They are completely separate from us, but capable of interacting with us—albeit strangely. Ideas have no material body, but they do have consciousness, and they most certainly have will. Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner. It is only through a human’s efforts that an idea can be escorted out of the ether and into the realm of the actual. Therefore, ideas spend eternity swirling around us, searching for available and willing human partners. (I’m talking about all ideas here—artistic, scientific, industrial, commercial, ethical, religious, political.) When an idea thinks it has found somebody—say, you—who might be able to bring it into the world, the idea will pay you a visit. It will try to get your attention. Mostly, you will not notice. This is likely because you’re so consumed by your own dramas, anxieties, distractions, insecurities, and duties that you aren’t receptive to inspiration. You might miss the signal because you’re watching TV, or shopping, or brooding over how angry you are at somebody, or pondering your failures and mistakes, or just generally really busy. The idea will try to wave you down (perhaps for a few moments; perhaps for a few months; perhaps even for a few years), but when it finally realizes that you’re oblivious to its message, it will move on to someone else. But sometimes—rarely, but magnificently—there comes a day when you’re open and relaxed enough to actually receive something. Your defenses might slacken and your anxieties might ease, and then magic can slip through. The idea, sensing your openness, will start to do its work on you. It will send the universal physical and emotional signals of inspiration (the chills up the arms, the hair standing up on the back of the neck, the nervous stomach, the buzzy thoughts, that feeling of falling into love or obsession). The idea will organize coincidences and portents to tumble across your path, to keep your interest keen. You will start to notice all sorts of signs pointing you toward the idea. Everything you see and touch and do will remind you of the idea. The idea will wake you up in the middle of the night and distract you from your everyday routine. The idea will not leave you alone until it has your fullest attention. And then, in a quiet moment, it will ask, “Do you want to work with me?” At this point, you have two options for how to respond. What

train me, nice as could be other than acting like she’s my mom, all honey-this and honey-that and “You think you can remember all that, sweetie?” Just three or four years out of high school herself. But she did have three kids, so probably she’d wiped so many asses she got stuck that way. I didn’t hold it against her. Coach Briggs’s brother stayed upstairs in the office. Heart attack guy was a mystery. First they said he might come back by the end of summer. Then they all stopped talking about him. As far as customers, every kind of person came in. Older guys would want to chew the fat outside in the dock after I loaded their grain bags or headgates or what have you. I handled all the larger items. They complained about the weather or tobacco prices, but oftentimes somebody would recognize me and want to talk football. What was my opinion on our being a passing versus running team, etc. So that was amazing. Being known. It was the voice that hit my ear like a bell, the day he came in. I knew it instantly. And that laugh. It always made you wish that whoever made him laugh like that, it had been you. I was stocking inventory in the home goods aisle, and moved around the end to where I could see across the store. Over by the medications and vaccines that were kept in a refrigerator case, he was standing with his back to me, but that wild head of hair was the giveaway. And the lit-up face of Donnamarie, flirting so hard her bangs were standing on end. She was opening a case for him. Some of the pricier items were kept under lock and key. I debated whether to go over, but heard him say he needed fifty pounds of Hi-Mag mineral and a hundred pounds of pelleted beef feed, so I knew I would see him outside. I signaled to Donnamarie that I’d heard, and threw it all on the dolly to wheel out to the loading dock. He pulled his truck around but didn’t really see me. Just leaned his elbow out the open window and handed me the register ticket. He’d kept the Lariat of course, because who wouldn’t. “You’ve still got the Fastmobile, I see,” I said. He froze in the middle of lighting a smoke, shifted his eyes at me, and shook his head fast, like a splash of cold water had hit him. “I’ll be goddamned. Diamond?” “The one,” I said. “How you been hanging, Fast Man?” “Cannot complain,” he said. But it seemed like he wasn’t a hundred percent on it really being me loading his pickup. He watched me in the side mirror. The truck bounced a little each time I hefted a mineral block or bag into the bed. Awesome leaf springs on that beauty. I came around to give him back his ticket, and he seemed more sure.

Jeremiah declined, even though night fishing was his favorite. He was always trying to get people to go night fishing with him. That night he said he wasn’t in the mood. So they left, and Jeremiah stayed behind, with me. We watched TV and played cards. We spent most of the summer doing that, just us. We cemented things between us that summer. He’d wake me up early some mornings, and we would go collect shells or sand crabs, or ride our bikes to the ice cream place three miles away. When it was just us two, he didn’t joke around as much, but he was still Jeremiah. From that summer on I felt closer to Jeremiah than I did to my own brother. Jeremiah was nicer. Maybe because he was somebody’s little sibling too, or maybe just because he was that kind of person. He was nice to everybody. He had a talent for making people feel comfortable.

Then Conrad came out and sat next to her on the deck chair. He pulled on her ponytail and said, “What’s so funny?” Belly looked up at him, and she was actually blushing. Her face was all flushed, and her eyes were shining. “I don’t remember,” she said. My gut just twisted. I felt like somebody had drop-kicked me in the stomach. I was jealous, crazy jealous. Of Conrad. And when she got up a little while later to get a soda, I watched him watch her walk away and I felt sick inside. That was when I knew things would never be the same. I wanted to tell Conrad that he had no right. That he’d ignored her all these years, that he couldn’t just decide to take her just because he felt like it.

Through writing, I feel power for maybe the first time in my life. I don't have to say somebody else's words. I can write my own. I can be myself for once. I like the privacy of it. Nobody's watching. Nobody's judging. Nobody's weighing in....just me and the page. Writing is the opposite of performing to me. Writing feels inherently real.

Through writing, I feel power for maybe the first time in my life. I don't have to say somebody else's words. I can write my own. I can be myself for once. I like the privacy of it. Nobody's watching. Nobody's judging. Nobody's weighing in....just me and the page. Writing is the opposite of performing to me. Writing feels inherently real.

Serch." Why did he always sound like the one who'd been left, who'd been denied? His fingers brushed Serch's forearm, though, and it damn near took him out. His belly pulled tight and heat crashed over his head like a fucking wave, rocking him and weakening his limbs. "Don't do this," German begged softly. "Gram is gone. It's just you and me now." He clasped Serch's shoulder. "I don't want to fight." All Serch had was the fight, otherwise, he'd be empty, hollowed out by the pain with no one to pass it off to. "Serch." German's whole fucking palm rested on Serch's face. It just sat there, warm and enticing. The best touch a beggar like him could ever hope to have. "I love you." His soul shook. His heart broke all over again. Serch spun away from him, giving German his back as he leaned against the doorframe, head bowed. "Please." That shaky voice sounded close, too close to Serch. "Please." "Fuck your love." Serch faced him with a snarl, chest heaving as he gave up on attempting to control himself. "You love me, German? You kiss me and tell me you want me, and then the instant I turn my back you move across the fucking country with somebody else. You love me? You stay away for years and only speak to me once, once--" He held up a finger. "On the phone." His brother's mouth opened and closed, but Serch refused to let him talk. "I've had birthdays without you. I've taken care of Gram without you. I had to watch her die..." His voice disappeared then, and he had to swallow and swallow before finishing. "Without you." "I'm sorry." "Don't tell me that shit!" Serch exploded. "Tell me how I can stop wanting you, because I do. Tell me how I can stop feeling your body against mine, because I do. Your cries, your taste. I still get off on them." He grabbed the front of his own t-shirt, fisting it, tugging on it. "Tell me how to stop missing you, because I've been lonely since the day you left. And I'm alone now, even with your breath incinerating my skin." "I miss you, too." Fuck! Somebody moved. Somebody must have moved because they were on each other, the press of their bodies so fucking good Serch's eyes watered. German was in his embrace, arms at his nape, fingers gripping his hair. Parted lips on his.

He looked at his mother. He did not want to hear what she thought of this; he knew that his only chance to decide was to make the decision before he heard her; she had stopped, looking at him, ready to turn and leave the room; he knew it was not a pose—she would leave if he wished it; he wanted her to go; he wanted it desperately. He said: “Why, Mother, how can you say that? Of course I want your opinion. What ... what do you think?” She ignored the raw irritation in his voice. She smiled. “Petey, I never think anything. It’s up to you. It’s always been up to you.” “Well ...” he began hesitantly, watching her, “if I go to the Beaux-Arts ...” “Fine,” said Mrs. Keating, “go to the Beaux-Arts. It’s a grand place. A whole ocean away from your home. Of course, if you go, Mr. Francon will take somebody else. People will talk about that. Everybody knows that Mr. Francon picks out the best boy from Stanton every year for his office. I wonder how it’ll look if some other boy gets the job? But I guess that doesn’t matter.” “What ... what will people say?” “Nothing much, I guess. Only that the other boy was the best man of his class. I guess he’ll take Shlinker.” “No!” he gulped furiously. “Not Shlinker!” “Yes,” she said sweetly. “Shlinker.” “But...” “But why should you care what people will say? All you have to do is please yourself.” “And you think that Francon ...” “Why should I think of Mr. Francon? It’s nothing to me.” “Mother, you want me to take the job with Francon?” “I don’t want anything, Petey. You’re the boss.” He wondered whether he really liked his mother. But she was his mother and this fact was recognized by everybody as meaning automatically that he loved her, and so he took for granted that whatever he felt for her was love. He did not know whether there was any reason why he should respect her judgment. She was his mother; this was supposed to take the place of reasons.

The old man smiled at me, dark eyes twinkling over his spectacles. ‘I think God has already sent us angels enough, mon ami. But I shall pray he watch over us this night nevertheless.’ “‘And what’s the point of that, priest?’ “Rafa blinked. ‘What is the point of—’ “‘Praying. Oui.’ “The old man looked at me as if I’d asked the point of breathing. ‘I…’ “‘Two soldiers stand on a field of battle,’ I told him. ‘Both are convinced God is on their side. Both pray to their Lord and Redeemer to smite their enemy low, and to the Mothermaid to protect them from all harm. But somebody’s going to lose. Somebody’s wasting their fucking time. Maybe, just maybe … it’s both of them?’ “The priest frowned. ‘God cannot be said to be on the side of the Dead.’ “‘You’re missing the point, old man. All on earth below and hea’en above is the work of my hand…’ “‘… And all the work of my hand is in accord with my plan.’ “‘You think those refugees we met on the road didn’t pray with everything they had to not lose their homes? You think Lachlunn á Cuinn didn’t pray for his wife and son to stay alive? See, that divine plan shite is what the pulpit-hucksters feed you when things start to go wrong. After they’ve passed around the collection plate, of course. When your crops fail or your cancer spreads or whatever else you’ve begged him for doesn’t come to pass. That’s the solace they’ll offer. It’s God’s will, they’ll tell you. Part of the divine plan. “‘What they don’t point out is, if he has a plan? There’s no sense praying for anything. If His will be done is the golden rule, then God’s going to do what he wants, regardless of how hard you beg him. And imagine, just for a second, the sense of entitlement it takes to ask him for anything in the first place. The fucking ego you’d need to think that this is somehow all for you. What if you ask for something that’s not his will? You want him to alter the course of the divine plan? For you? See, that’s the grift of it all. That’s the genius. You get what you pray for? Huzzah, God fucking loves you. But your prayers go unanswered?’ I snapped my fingers. ‘Just wasn’t part of the plan.

The mixture of displeasure and relief is so overpowering my mind. I knew that I would pick to have that pleasure if he kept being so passionate and felt right. I look down the tunneling hallway my eyes feel like kaleidoscopes, yet I can figure there are kids with sparklers and the firecrackers the sounds are going off within all the colors I see. He has to hold me with my back against the walls or I am sure I would fall, I see Justen feeling the left of a rail of the stairs, walking over the entryway into their room feather down that hallway, up above me, me like they’re going to slip away any second, and share the rest of the night cuddling in bed. Is tonight the night I follow him to his room and crawl in with him, or isn’t tonight the night, maybe hold back until tomorrow? That kept running through my head. Tonight, or tomorrow? Tomorrow I’ll wake up and be the same, regardless if I am in his bed or not. This earth will look the same, and everything will feel and taste and smell the same. What am I rushing it for, he’s going to love me the same if not more is, I hold out? Maybe play that three-date rule. My throat gets taut, just thinking about what we could be doing right now, also I have to think about what Ray and Justen are doing, and my eyes start to tingle in ire, and all I can think at that moment is that it’s all Ray’s fault, that my sis has gone home broken-hearted. Yet I don’t want her spending the night here anyway, with him of all boys. It’s funny how you can go from love to hate in seconds. Half an hour later the party starts to wind down. Inside, everyone is just about passed out, at this point, I need to find a place to crash too. Then I thought, should I, or shouldn’t I? My sis is one of those shy ones around cute boys, and those are the ones you have to worry about because they are freaks between the sheets. I can see that somebody pulled the drooping icicle lights off the wall there getting crouched on by the others passing by. They are getting tangled up in my feet, as I move. There twanging and shorting out from the broken blabs, in sparks lighting up the grime corners, like cups and broken beer bottles. You have to be careful like I see a lot of girls with flip-flops on or barefoot running around not a good idea. I think that I’m feeling better now until I move away from the walls, but I’m starting to feel more like the girl I should be around all my friends. ‘There’s always tomorrow,’ Jenny walked up to me and said before going up to her bed when I told her about Ray, yet she seemed not suppressed and I ran the phrase over and over in my head like a chant: There’s always tomorrow. There’s always tomorrow. So that is what I went with thinking… I am going to be with him tomorrow night. I see myself in the ornate hall mirror in the makeup that I replayed, thinking- ‘God Marcel loves this face.’ Every time I put on makeup it reminds me of my mom, I used to watch me bowed over her vanity, getting ready for dates with my father-daughter dates-and it calms me down.

One Headlight" So long ago, I don't remember when That's when they say I lost my only friend Well they said she died easy of a broken heart disease As I listened through the cemetery trees I seen the sun coming up at the funeral at dawn The long broken arm of human law Now it always seemed such a waste She always had a pretty face So I wondered how she hung around this place Hey, come on try a little Nothing is forever There's got to be something better than In the middle But me and Cinderella We put it all together We can drive it home With one headlight She said it's cold It feels like Independence Day And I can't break away from this parade But there's got to be an opening Somewhere here in front of me Through this maze of ugliness and greed And I seen the sun up ahead At the county line bridge Saying all is good and nothingness is dead We'd run until she's out of breath She ran until there's nothing left She hit the end, it's just her window ledge Hey, come on try a little Nothing is forever There's got to be something better than In the middle But me and Cinderella We put it all together We can drive it home With one headlight This place is old It feels just like a beat up truck I turn the engine, but the engine doesn't turn What smells of cheap wine and cigarettes This place is always such a mess Sometimes I think I'd like to watch it burn I'm so alone, I feel just like somebody else Man, I ain't changed, but I know I ain't the same But somewhere here in between the city walls of dying dreams I think her death it must be killing me Hey Hey Hey, come on try a little Nothing is forever There's got to be something better than In the middle But me and Cinderella We put it all together We can drive it home With one headlight The Wallflowers, Bringing Down the Horse (1996)

It was this. My father had left a small collection of books in a little room upstairs, to which I had access (for it adjoined my own) and which nobody else in our house ever troubled. From that blessed little room, Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, Tom Jones, the Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Robinson Crusoe, came out, a glorious host, to keep me company. They kept alive my fancy, and my hope of something beyond that place and time,—they, and the Arabian Nights, and the Tales of the Genii,—and did me no harm; for whatever harm was in some of them was not there for me; I knew nothing of it. It is astonishing to me now, how I found time, in the midst of my porings and blunderings over heavier themes, to read those books as I did. It is curious to me how I could ever have consoled myself under my small troubles (which were great troubles to me), by impersonating my favourite characters in them—as I did—and by putting Mr. and Miss Murdstone into all the bad ones—which I did too. I have been Tom Jones (a child's Tom Jones, a harmless creature) for a week together. I have sustained my own idea of Roderick Random for a month at a stretch, I verily believe. I had a greedy relish for a few volumes of Voyages and Travels—I forget what, now—that were on those shelves; and for days and days I can remember to have gone about my region of our house, armed with the centre-piece out of an old set of boot-trees—the perfect realization of Captain Somebody, of the Royal British Navy, in danger of being beset by savages, and resolved to sell his life at a great price. The Captain never lost dignity, from having his ears boxed with the Latin Grammar. I did; but the Captain was a Captain and a hero, in despite of all the grammars of all the languages in the world, dead or alive. This was my only and my constant comfort. When I think of it, the picture always rises in my mind, of a summer evening, the boys at play in the churchyard, and I sitting on my bed, reading as if for life. Every barn in the neighbourhood, every stone in the church, and every foot of the churchyard, had some association of its own, in my mind, connected with these books, and stood for some locality made famous in them. I have seen Tom Pipes go climbing up the church-steeple; I have watched Strap, with the knapsack on his back, stopping to rest himself upon the wicket-gate; and I know that Commodore Trunnion held that club with Mr. Pickle, in the parlour of our little village alehouse.

Pre was most famous for saying, “Somebody may beat me—but they’re going to have to bleed to do it.” Watching him run that final weekend of May 1975, I’d never felt more admiration for him, or identified with him more closely. Somebody may beat me, I told myself, some banker or creditor or competitor may stop me, but by God they’re going to have to bleed to do it.

Will you please be careful, Enzo?” I say. He looks up at me, and when he grins, I melt. Is that normal? Do other women who are married to somebody for over eleven years still get wobbly in the knees over them sometimes?

Let Let us go somewhere far, Let us be there where there is no war, Let us seek what peace seeks from all, Let us be there, if we try, there we can be afterall, Let us give life a chance, Let us allow innocent hearts to feel their moments of romance, Let us be there where you can be you and I can be who I am, Let us not worry about who he/she is, but only focus on who we are and who I am, Let us go there where seasons end and reappear in their cyclic recurrences, Let us collect their beautiful impressions, their essences and their fragrances, Let us follow no guiding star, but just our inner guidance, Let us only follow our heart’s native radiance, Let us believe in ourselves with firmness, Let us believe that before seeking anything outside us we should seek it within us, that true feeling of happiness, Let us harvest feelings true under this sky blue, Let you be you, let me be who I am, but always be true, Let us fill all emotional voids with moments of genuine adulations, Let us indulge in these acts and end all our tribulations, Let us wait for nothing, because time waits for nobody, Let us try, and I am sure we shall succeed if we truly love somebody, Let us let the sun set, because only then the moon will rise, Let us for someone’s sake stand and witness our own rise, Let us not flee when we should be participating in life’s dealings, Let us believe and we shall witness divine joys and healings, Let us give before we can take, Let us take only what we can recreate or make, Let us not fear repudiation of any sort, Let us know we shall always be the masters of the thing called “the last resort!” Let us not believe in aspersions because they might hurt someone, Let us before dying, love that special someone, Let us only deal with evinced hearts, for they know how heart breaks feel, Let us, before we deal with others, with our own hearts’ deal, Let me find this place for you and me, Let me lead you there, and let us forever then there be, Let me love you in the lap of time in that region, Let your feelings and you, then be my heart’s only succession, Let us then watch the setting sun and the rising moon, Let me then disappear in the horizon of your beauty before the sunset and before the rising moon, Let it be so then forever, Let love and time seek us then Irma, in this landscape called “your and my everywhere!

As Enzo and his friend bring the sofa into our beautiful new house, I raise my eyes again to look at the house across the way. Number 13 Locust Street. There’s still someone staring at me from the window. The house is dark inside, so I can’t see much, but that silhouette is still at the window. Somebody is watching us.

On August 11, 1934, Stanley Ferson walked off the Morro Castle when she docked in New York. His sudden departure baffled Alagna and a number of ship’s officers; thirty-seven years would pass before the extraordinary circumstances behind Ferson’s resignation were revealed. With his departure, Rogers became chief radio officer, Alagna regained his old position as first assistant radioman, and Maki—absent during the furor—returned to complete the team. As far as Maki was concerned, “Rogers ran an easy shop. You did your job, and you relaxed the way you liked.” Alagna, on the other hand, found it difficult to relax. He had started to get “the creeps.” He believed somebody was trying to waylay him, possibly even kill him, for the trouble he had caused. “I thought several times that I heard footsteps hurrying along behind me in the shadows of the deck. But each time, when I swung around to investigate, the deck would be vacant. I could neither see nor hear anyone when I was sure someone had been there but a moment before.” It may have been this stress which finally sealed the fate of George Alagna. On this trip, one day out of New York, as the Morro Castle steamed through the Florida Strait on her way to Havana, Alagna had been on radio duty. Suddenly he raced to the bridge and accused the watch officer, Second Officer Ivan Freeman, of tinkering with the radio compass on the bridge, jamming the main radio transmitter. It was a ridiculous allegation; moreover, it offended Freeman’s sense of propriety. Junior radiomen did not come to the bridge unless it was with a specific message; they certainly did not assail the officer of the watch. Freeman complained to Chief Officer Warms, who reported the incident to the captain. Captain Wilmott sent a signal to the Radiomarine Corporation demanding the immediate removal of Alagna on their return to New York.

We watched the sun's gentle fall, and the lengthening shadows creeping towards us, and I thought about the New York skyline and that nobody was truly free. Perhaps all freedom—physical, personal—only came at the cost of somebody or something else.

I’m tired of many things,” Mr. Burson said, fighting for composure. They turned. “I’m tired of watching children perish. I’m tired of watching the world grind up gentle people. I’m tired of outliving those I shouldn’t be outliving. I’ve made books my life because they let me escape this world of cruelty and savagery. I needed to say that out loud to somebody other than my cats.

He looks up at me, and when he grins, I melt. Is that normal? Do other women who are married to somebody for over eleven years still get wobbly in the knees over them sometimes?

Mick had become uncertain, had started second-guessing his own talent—that seemed, ironically, to be at the root of the self-inflation. For many years through the ’60s, Mick was incredibly charming and humorous. He was natural. It was electrifying the way he could work those small spaces, as a singer and as a dancer; fascinating to watch and work with—the spins, the moves. He never thought about it. That performance was exciting without him appearing to do anything. And he’s still good, even though to my mind it’s dissipated on the big stages. That’s what people have wanted to see: spectacle. But it’s not necessarily what he’s best at. Somewhere, though, he got unnatural. He forgot how good he was in that small spot. He forgot his natural rhythm. I know he disagrees with me. What somebody else was doing was far more interesting to him than what he was doing. He even began to act as if he wanted to be someone else. Mick is quite competitive, and he started to get competitive about other bands. He watched what David Bowie was doing and wanted to do it. Bowie was a major, major attraction. Somebody had taken Mick on in the costume and bizarreness department. But the fact is, Mick could deliver ten times more than Bowie in just a T-shirt and a pair of jeans, singing “I’m a Man.” Why would you want to be anything else if you’re Mick Jagger? Is being the greatest entertainer in show business not enough? He forgot that it was he who was new, who created and set the trends in the first place, for years. It’s fascinating. I can’t figure it out. It’s almost as if Mick was aspiring to be Mick Jagger, chasing his own phantom. And getting design consultants to help him do it. No one taught him to dance, until he took dance lessons. Charlie and Ronnie and I quite often chuckle when we see Mick out there doing a move that we know some dance instructor just laid on him, instead of being himself. We know the minute he’s going plastic. Shit, Charlie and I have been watching that ass for forty-odd years; we know when the moneymaker’s shaking and when it’s being told what to do. Mick’s taken up singing lessons, but that may be to preserve his voice.

We were watching videos at night on her Samsung tablet or my company iPad. She showed me the Silvano Agosti 1983 Italian interview with a little Italian boy called “D'Amore si vive, We Live of Love.” The boy was so cute, and his thoughts seemed similar to mine and Martina's. I was so deeply in love with her. The boy on the interview was just like what our own child would be, and we agreed and laughed. “We Live of Love.” What a coincidence! Living. By: Love. I knew the interview from before and she was surprised at how I knew about it. I showed her on my Instagram a picture of the boy I had recently taken a screenshot of and posted. With the subtitle at the right moment under his face: “Descubrir a la vida.” To discover life. Together. With his one and only girlfriend, as the boy explains. I told her multiple times that I was still unsure if she was real, or if it was all a dream; if I had only dreamed of her one night in the dark; if Pinto and I had invented her in my mind. She was a big fan of space, but I thought she liked the mystery behind the endless space with all its questions and secrets for us humans. I thought she liked the sky and space because she recently flew from Argentina to land in my arms. Martina and I were obsessed with Chris Rock and Eddie Murphy; we both knew all their stand-up comedies by heart. We kept replaying the best moments or faces that Chris or Eddie made. We had so much fun watching the same videos over and over that I couldn't believe it. Nobody else ever found the same moments or the same stand-ups as funny as Martina and I did. Nobody before or after found it so amusing. If I showed it to someone, they didn't understand why I was so excited about it or why racist jokes were so funny for an hour from one black comedian to the next. We were obsessed the way Eddie spoke about the „Zebra-Bitch of her dreams, her dream-wife who doesn’t know the concept of money”, saying “she should have an afro, like Angela Davis goes 'God damn it.'“ We were laughing so much. Sometimes I tickled her flat belly or her ribs and she was laughing so sweetly and so much that she couldn't stop. She was begging me to stop tickling her when I barely touched her. She said “No, no, no, no” so many times so quickly and cutely that I had to stop and kiss her; I couldn't resist her lips or her person, I had to kiss and hug her. We laughed so much at particular parts of Chris Rock's stand-up comedies that we could barely stop, almost as if we were tickling each other. We were laughing when Chris Rock was mocking Bone-Thugs-n-Harmony for singing ‘Welfare chariots’ such as „The First of the Month” or when he explained that the government hates rappers, but „only the good rappers get gunned down. They could find Saddam Hussein in a cave in Iraq but couldn't arrest anyone related to Tupac Shakur’s assassination, which didn't happen in a cave in Iraq but in Las Vegas, on the Strip, not one of those side streets, but in front of Circus Circus, after a Mike Tyson fight. Now how many witnesses do you need, to arrest somebody?” We were fascinated with Eddie Murphy, Charlie Murphy, and Chris Rock, but when I showed her Richard Prior, Doug Stanhope, Aries Spears, or George Carlin, she was no longer so impressed for some reason. Her favorite part perhaps was when Chris Rock talked about love and relationships. He said that „you never really been in love unless you have contemplated murder; unless you have practiced your alibi in front of the mirror, staring at a can of rat poison for 45 minutes straight, you haven't been in love. And the only thing preventing you from killing your significant other was an episode of CSI.” He said that relationships are hard and that in order for them to work, both people need to have the same focus, which is all about: her.

We were watching videos at night on her Samsung tablet or my company iPad. She showed me the Silvano Agosti 1983 Italian interview with a little Italian boy called “D'Amore si vive, We Live of Love.” The boy was so cute, and his thoughts seemed similar to mine and Martina's. I was so deeply in love with her. The boy on the interview was just like what our own child would be, and we agreed and laughed. “We Live of Love.” What a coincidence! Living. By: Love. I knew the interview from before and she was surprised at how I knew about it. I showed her on my Instagram a picture of the boy I had recently taken a screenshot of and posted. With the subtitle at the right moment under his face: “Descubrir a la vida.” To discover life. Together. With his one and only girlfriend, as the boy explains. I told her multiple times that I was still unsure if she was real, or if it was all a dream; if I had only dreamed of her one night in the dark; if Pinto and I had invented her in my mind. She was a big fan of space, but I thought she liked the mystery behind the endless space with all its questions and secrets for us humans. I thought she liked the sky and space because she recently flew from Argentina to land in my arms. Martina and I were obsessed with Chris Rock and Eddie Murphy; we both knew all their stand-up comedies by heart. We kept replaying the best moments or faces that Chris or Eddie made. We had so much fun watching the same videos over and over that I couldn't believe it. Nobody else ever found the same moments or the same stand-ups as funny as Martina and I did. Nobody before or after found it so amusing. If I showed it to someone, they didn't understand why I was so excited about it or why racist jokes were so funny for an hour from one black comedian to the next. We were obsessed the way Eddie spoke about the „Zebra-Bitch of his dreams, his dream-wife who doesn’t know the concept of money”, saying “she should have an afro, like Angela Davis goes 'God damn it.'“ We were laughing so much. Sometimes I tickled her flat belly or her ribs and she was laughing so sweetly and so much that she couldn't stop. She was begging me to stop tickling her when I barely touched her. She said “No, no, no, no” so many times so quickly and cutely that I had to stop and kiss her; I couldn't resist her lips or her person, I had to kiss and hug her. We laughed so much at particular parts of Chris Rock's stand-up comedies that we could barely stop, almost as if we were tickling each other. We were laughing when Chris Rock was mocking Bone-Thugs-n-Harmony for singing ‘Welfare chariots’ such as „The First of the Month” or when he explained that the government hates rappers, but „only the good rappers get gunned down. They could find Saddam Hussein in a cave in Iraq but couldn't arrest anyone related to Tupac Shakur’s assassination, which didn't happen in a cave in Iraq but in Las Vegas, on the Strip, not one of those side streets, but in front of Circus Circus, after a Mike Tyson fight. Now how many witnesses do you need, to arrest somebody?” We were fascinated with Eddie Murphy, Charlie Murphy, and Chris Rock, but when I showed her Richard Prior, Doug Stanhope, Aries Spears, or George Carlin, she was no longer so impressed for some reason. Her favorite part perhaps was when Chris Rock talked about love and relationships. He said that „you never really been in love unless you have contemplated murder; unless you have practiced your alibi in front of the mirror, staring at a can of rat poison for 45 minutes straight, you haven't been in love. And the only thing preventing you from killing your significant other was an episode of CSI.” He said that relationships are hard and that in order for them to work, both people need to have the same focus, which is all about: her.

What I did finally, Jesus I don’t know where I got such a stupid idea from, I brought this hammer in from home and brought it in and kept it right under my desk, on the floor, and when somebody knocked at the door I’d just… I’d sort of dive onto the floor and crawl under the desk and grab up the hammer, and I’d start in to pounding on the leg of the desk, real hard-like, whacketa whacketa, like I was fixing something down there. And if they opened the door finally and came in anyhow or came in to bitch about me not opening the door I’d just stay out of sight under there pounding away like hell and I’d yell out I was going to be a moment, just a moment, emergency repairs, be with them momentarily. I guess you can guess how all that pounding felt, you know, under there, what with the big head I had every morning. I’d hide under there and pound and pound with the hammer till they finally gave up and went away, I’d watch from under the desk and tell when they finally went away, from I could see their feet from under the desk.

No. It’s not possible,’ he thought. ‘That grim-looking face, all thin and pale and so much older than it was. It can’t be her. It’s somebody who reminds me of her …’ But at that moment Princess Marya said, ‘Natasha!’ And painfully, with all the strain of a rusty door opening, that carefully watching face smiled at him, and as the door opened Pierre was suddenly overwhelmed by a heady sensation of happiness long forgotten, something that couldn’t have been further from his mind at this time. His head swam as the feeling swept over him and enveloped his whole being. That smile of hers had left him in no doubt. It was Natasha, and he loved her. In that first minute

Do other women who are married to somebody for over eleven years still get wobbly in the knees over them sometimes? No? Just me? I mean, it’s not like it’s every minute. But boy, he still gets me. It doesn’t hurt that he seems to get inexplicably sexier every year. (And I just get a year older.)

You going to finish beating yourself up soon? Because I've got a lot of work to catch up on, seeing as I had to go to Italy to help wipe your blood off the street. You getting yourself shot really put a crimp in my schedule." David turned back toward Tyler. "Did you use that same tone when you suggested that fucker DeMorney get an X ray?" "Probably. It's the one I use when somebody's being annoyingly stupid." The raw edges in David's stomach smoothed away, and the first glint of humor sparked into his eyes. "I'd take a swing at you over that, but you're bigger than me." "Younger, too." "Bastard. Now that I think of it, I could take you down, but I'll give you a break because Sophia's heading this way. I'd hate for her to have to watch her future stepfather kick your ass." "In your dreams." "I'm going to go sulk in the caves." He started off, pausing as he passed Tyler. "Thanks

My lips parted his to absorb even more energy. My stomach rumbled in praise as the Whisperers laughed at the sight. Luke’s tongue danced against mine, but I am too focused on the feed to feel the unreadable emotion that came with kissing my best friend. Another minute passed. And then another, until somebody grabbed my arm and threw me to the ground. I snapped out of the feed and watched Luke fall to his knees in weakness. My hunger disappeared. I looked up at Cadan to see him staring at his step brother. “Welcome to the dark side, sweetness,” he murmured right before I blacked out.

When I walked out of the house with hijab on, i felt beautiful in the eyes of Allah. I felt protected, shielded - i just felt somebody was watching over me' - Nadia, a reverted Muslim

One day I was standing with my stage manager, Sandy Prudden, and Buddy Sheffield watching as Kermit the Frog (with the help of the late Jim Henson) sweetly sang a song. Sandy was always a big joker. He sidled up to me and said, “Isn’t it amazing the way Kermit can sing like that with somebody’s hand up his ass.” Without missing a beat, I came back with, “Shoot, that ain’t nothin’. I did that for seven years on the ‘The Porter Wagoner Show.

Uncle Jarrod groaned. “What are you doing here?” “I came to have a word. Good thing I did, too, I see you’re up to your usual tyranny. Do me a favor and get that blade away from her throat.” “Gerda!” the duke barked. “Go home at once! This is not your concern!” “Not my concern, eh?” Miss Gerda approached Uncle Jarrod, her arms folded. “I assure you, what I have to say concerns every one of us. Jarrod, do you not recognize this child?” “Nothing you say is going to spare her. She is arrested for treason.” Miss Gerda watched him. Being much shorter, she had to look up to meet his eyes. Her plain dress and apron looked very drab beside the king, but she regarded him without embarrassment. “You’ve been friendly with the duke a long time, Jarrod. Came an awful lot in your younger days. And you liked me then, remember? Especially that summer when you came for a long stay. You like me… quite often. And I was stupid enough to think it would last.” “Silence, woman, your words are meaningless. Nobody wants to hear this.” A trace of dread lurked behind Uncle Jarrod’s eyes. “That fall, I left the duke’s manor and returned to my home kingdom of Clerlione. I had told the duke my mother was ill, but that wasn’t it. You see, Jarrod, something came of the time you and I spent together.” She raised a hand to the duke and his prisoner. “Briette.” Briette, still pinned against the duke, suffered a jolt so hard it nearly stopped her heart. She could not have moved even if the duke had let her. Uncle Jarrod’s face was pinched with contempt. “Don’t be a fool.” “Think about it, Jarrod. That summer. It was eighteen years ago. Briette is seventeen. Look at her face, you’ll see.” Uncle Jarrod cleared his throat and stared at the floor. He raised a hand and stroked his beard. It seemed a long time before he spoke. “Let the child come here.” The duke lowered his hands. Briette started walking, though she felt separated from herself, as if watching this happen to somebody else. She made the mistake of letting her eyes drift to her sisters. They stared at her with a mixture of wide-eyed horror and pale disbelief. Arialain had covered her face and was shaking. It seemed a very long walk though in truth it was only six or seven paces. Uncle Jarrod gripped her chin and lifted her face. Briette stared into his clear blue eyes and tried not to think. He looked deeply troubled. Shaken. He released her chin. “It is hard to say. There are little things…. But I’m not sure.” “Then you must take my word,” said Miss Gerda. “If she is what you say, then why didn’t you raise her? She came here as an orphan.” Miss Gerda grew somber. “I wasn’t ready to have a child. Without a husband to support me, how could I care for it? I had to work. I left the baby with my sister in Clerlione. She was married but had no children, and was happy to take Briette. I returned to work for the duke and for two years, all was well. And then came the Red Fever plague.” Briette hugged her sides, her eyes shut. This was too much to bear. She wanted Miss Gerda to stop talking. “By the time I reached Clerlione, my sister and her husband were dead. I was frantic, thinking Briette had died too. But I found a neighbor who told me that my sister had given the baby to the king of Runa Realm. I was shocked. And for a while, quite miserable. But in time, I came to be glad of it. As a princess, she would never know poverty or hardship. So I stayed at the duke’s and kept my silence. But occasionally, at a festival or in the market square, I’d see her. And I was proud.” She smiled at Briette. A short silence followed. Then Heidel spoke up. “Let me be quite clear on this. Briette is Uncle Jarrod’s daughter?” “And

We live in a society in which mediocrity is the norm. Many people do as little as they can to get by. They don’t take pride in their work or in who they are. If somebody is watching, they may perform one way, but when nobody is watching they’ll cut corners and take the easy way out. If you are not careful, you can be pulled into this same mentality where you think it’s okay to show up late to work, to look less than your best, or to give less than your best. But God doesn’t bless mediocrity. God blesses excellence. I have observed that the fifth undeniable quality of a winner is a commitment to excellence. When you have a spirit of excellence, you do your best whether anyone is watching or not. You go the extra mile. You do more than you have to. Other people may complain about their jobs. They may go around looking sloppy and cutting corners. Don’t sink to that level. Everyone else may be slacking off at work, compromising in school, letting their lawns go, but here’s the key: You are not everyone else. You are a cut above. You are called to excellence. God wants you to set the highest standard. You should be the model employee for your company. Your boss and your supervisors should be able to say to the new hires, “Watch him. Learn from her. Pick up the same habits. Develop the same skills. This person is the cream of the crop, always on time, great attitude, doing more than what is required.” When you have an excellent spirit like that, you will not only see promotion and increase, but you are honoring God. Some people think, “Let me go to church to honor God. Let me read my Bible to honor God.” And yes, that’s true, but it honors God just as much to get to work on time. It honors God to be productive. It honors God to look good each day. When you are excellent, your life gives praise to God. That’s one of the best witnesses you can have. Some people will never go to church. They never listen to a sermon. They’re not reading the Bible. Instead, they’re reading your life. They’re watching how you live. Now, don’t be sloppy. When you leave the house, whether you’re wearing shorts or a three-piece suit, make sure you look the best you possibly can. You’re representing the almighty God. When you go to work, don’t slack off, and don’t give a halfhearted effort. Give it your all. Do your job to the best of your ability. You should be so full of excellence that other people want what you have. When you’re a person of excellence, you do more than necessary. You don’t just meet the minimum requirements; you go the extra mile. That phrase comes from the Bible. Jesus said it in Matthew 5:41--“If a soldier demands you carry his gear one mile, carry it two miles.” In those days Roman soldiers were permitted by law to require someone else to carry their armor.

There they came, forty Comanches, all whooping and hollering, lances raised, a frightening spectacle indeed. Forgetting for the moment that she must guard what she said, she cried, “They aren’t attacking. He promised.” “Then what the hell are they doin’? Get outa my way!” Henry shoved her aside and resighted his rifle. “He promised? She’s touched, Rachel! They messed her up in the head, keepin’ her all this time.” Loretta ran for the door. “He isn’t attacking! I know he isn’t. Please, don’t shoot!” The bar stuck as she tried to lift it. Her heart began to slam as she wrestled with it. A vision of Hunter lying dead in the yard flashed through her head. This was exactly what she had dreaded might happen, what she’d tried to explain to him last night. “Please, Uncle Henry--he promised me. And he wouldn’t make a lie of it, he wouldn’t, I know he wouldn’t!” The bar finally came free. “Don’t shoot him, don’t!” Throwing the door wide, Loretta ran out onto the porch. The Comanches were circling the house. She ran to the end of the porch and saw a lance embedded in the dirt fifteen feet away. Hi, hites, hello, my friend. Her knees went weak with relief. “Uncle Henry,” she cried over her shoulder, “they’re marking the property. Protecting us! Don’t shoot or you’ll cause a bloodbath for sure!” She ran to the window and peered in the crack at her uncle. “Did you hear me? If they were wanting to murder somebody, I’d be dead.” She turned back to watch as the Comanches widened their circle to mark the outer perimeters of Henry’s land. Tears stung her eyes. Hunter was leaving a message to every Indian in the whole territory: those at this farm were not to be attacked. Within minutes the braves had driven all forty willow lances into the dirt and ridden to the crest of the hill. Loretta shaded her brow, trying to find Hunter in the swarm. Recognizing him from the rest at this distance was impossible. Then they disappeared over the rise. Loretta stared at the empty knoll, her chest aching, her knees still shaking. “Good-bye, my friend,” she whispered. As if he had heard her, Hunter reappeared alone on the rise. Bringing his stallion to a halt, he straightened and lifted his head, forming a dark silhouette, his quiver and arrows jutting up above his shoulder, his shield braced on his thigh, his long hair drifting in the wind. Forgetting all about her family watching her, Loretta stumbled down the steps and out into the yard to be sure Hunter could see her. Then she waved. In answer, he raised his right arm high in a salute. He remained there for several seconds, and she stood rooted, memorizing how he looked. When he wheeled his horse and disappeared, she stared after him for a long while. I will know the song your heart sings, eh? And you will know mine.

St. Lawrence River May 1705 Temperature 48 degrees “I don’t understand adoptions myself. I wouldn’t want to be a father to somebody else’s son. But the French and the Indians have run out of children. They love to pretend we’re their children.” They aren’t pretending, thought Mercy. Annisquam’s mother and father were not pretending. Annisquam is their son. “Do you know this boy Annisquam?” asked Joanna. “Where is he from?” Ebenezer shook his head. “Nobody will say and he isn’t allowed to talk to us. That doesn’t surprise me. I’m usually separated from the other captives. We become Indian quicker if we don’t have any English around us.” Joseph spoke up. Mercy had almost forgotten that Joseph was along. Since his encounter with Mr. Williams, Joseph had been unwilling to talk about family. As soon as a captive referred to the past, Joseph melted away. Of all the captives, Mercy thought, Joseph suffered the most from wrestling with past and present. “Have you become Indian?” said Joseph to Ebenezer. Ebenezer made a disgusted face. “Absolutely not. I get along with them, but I do not permit a thought in my head to be Indian. It’s different for me than it is for the three of you, though. Nobody in my Indian family attacked Deerfield. You and Mercy and Joanna deal with men who actually killed somebody in your family, but I’m just with Indians who bought me. It’s easier. I promise you, Joseph, I’m going home one day. They could adopt me a hundred times and I’d still be English. So how’s Kahnawake? I’ve never been there. Is it a trash heap like this?” “Kahnawake is a beautiful town,” said Mercy stiffly. Ebenezer Sheldon laughed. “Watch your step, Mercy. They’ve got you by the ankle. Probably planning your adoption next.” Joseph looked away. Joanna looked excited. Lord, thought Mercy. Lord, Lord, Lord.

I don't know what's worse: living in fear or dying. Before two weeks ago when George met Rachel, I would've said fear and only dying if the dying didn't last long. But now, I just say death. I've been waiting and watching over Squiggy and Rachel, hoping for George to redeem hisself for better 'cause I have no choice. If Bessie's consequence is true, I cain't in square in my mind not being here to see my grandchildren grow. To see Josey, a mother like me, grow. I can't end myself after all we been through. They need me. Even this way. 'Cause sometimes, just being there for somebody, wordless and present, is enough.

Say something to it, he said. As I looked at the baby, I felt nothing taking shape in mind or mouth. I had no idea what the sort of things were that somebody would say to a baby. I had no idea why anyone would say anything to a baby. I held it carefully, as one would a sack of apples. And then, with him watching me, nodding encouragingly, I began to say to it, for lack of anything else to say, all the words I had ever known, in order.

If the weather does remain fair, I would like to take Winnie with me into town soon.” Emmie nodded but pulled her feet up under her, making herself look smaller and even a little defensive. “Miss Farnum, nobody will treat her badly in my company.” “They would not dare,” she agreed, but her tone was off. A little flippant or bitter. “But?” He sipped his drink and tried not to focus on the way candlelight glinted off her hair, which was swept back into a soft, disheveled bun at her nape. “Winnie will parade around town with you,” she said, an edge to her voice, “and have a grand time as long as you are at her side. Emboldened by your escort and her happy experiences, she will wander there again on her own, and sooner or later, somebody will treat her like the pariah she is.” “Go on.” He was a bastard, but he hadn’t considered this. “I wonder, when I watch you and Lord Amery cosseting and fussing over Winnie, if I don’t do her a disservice by allowing such attentions. She is desperate for your regard and affection, your time, and yet she cannot grow to depend on it. Still, her instincts are right: She is deserving of just such care, and had her father been a decent man, she would have had at least some of that from him.” “But?” The earl watched the emotions play across the lady’s face and saw there was much she wasn’t saying. “But she cannot grow to rely on such from others,” Emmie said, setting her drink down with a definite clink. “Sooner or later, you will return to London or take a wife, and Winnie will be sent off, to school, to a poor relation, to somewhere. Her future is not that of the legitimate daughter of an earl, and she must learn to rely on herself.” “As you have?” He watched as she rose and started pacing the room. She crossed her arms and hunched her shoulders, her expression troubled. “Of course as I have.” She nodded then startled as thunder rumbled even closer. “Winnie deserves the hugs and cuddles and compliments and guidance you give her, but what she deserves and what life will hand her are two different things. She needs to know not every friendly gentleman who offers her a buss on the cheek can be trusted to respect her.

What has put that look on your face, Sophie?” “What look?” She laid the child in the cradle where Vim had set it near the hearth. “Like you just lost your best friend.” “I was thinking of fostering Kit.” And just like that, she was blinking back tears. She tugged the blankets up around the baby, who immediately set about kicking them away. “Naughty baby,” she whispered. “You’ll catch a chill.” “Sophie?” A large male hand landed on her shoulder. “Sophie, look at me.” She shook her head and tried again to secure Kit’s blankets. “My dear, you are crying.” Another hand settled on the opposite shoulder, and now the kindness was palpable in his voice. Vim turned her gently into his embrace and wrapped both arms around her. It wasn’t a careful, tentative hug. It was a secure embrace. He wasn’t offering her a fleeting little squeeze to buck her up, he was holding her, his chin propped on her crown, the entire solid length of his body available to her for warmth and support. Which had the disastrous effect of turning a trickle of tears into a deluge. “I can’t keep him.” She managed four words around the lump in her throat. “To think of him being passed again into the keeping of strangers… I can’t…” “Hush.” He held a hanky up to her nose, one laden with the bergamot scent she already associated with him. For long minutes, Sophie struggled to regain her equilibrium while Vim stroked his hand slowly over her back. “Babies do this,” Vim said quietly. “They wear you out physically and pluck at your heartstrings and coo and babble and wend their way into your heart, and there’s nothing you can do stop it. Nobody is asking you to give the child up now.” “They won’t have to ask. In my position, I can’t be keeping somebody else’s castoff—” She stopped, hating the hysterical note that had crept into her voice and hating that she might have just prompted the man to whom she was clinging to ask her what exactly her position was. “Kit is not a castoff. He’s yours, and you’re keeping him. Maybe you will foster him elsewhere for a time, but he’ll always be yours too.” She didn’t quite follow the words rumbling out of him. She focused instead on the feel of his arms around her, offering support and security while she parted company temporarily with her dignity. “You are tired, and that baby has knocked you off your pins, Sophie Windham. You’re borrowing trouble if you try to sort out anything more complicated right now than what you’ll serve him for dinner.” She’d grown up with five brothers, and she’d watched her papa in action any number of times. She knew exactly what Vim was up to, but she took the bait anyway. “He loved the apples.” This time when Vim offered her his handkerchief, she took it, stepping back even as a final sigh shuddered through her. “He

I'd watch his smooth chest rise and fall with each steady breath, I'd watch the pulsating of his stomach when he laughed, and I'd never forget to make a comment or two about the wispy trail of grey fuzz that lined up perfectly centre with his body - and I thought that straight lines didn't exist in nature. "Look at that old man hair," I'd say, purposely trying to get a reaction from him. Sometimes I'd even run my hand over his stomach so that he'd feel it. He'd grab my hand to make me stop, or pretend that he was going to hit me as he laughed with me. "At least I don't have a grizzly bear ass like somebody I know.

Who am I?? I'm a person who was scammed by somebody and who scammed people - First! (Don't worry that's my past! Everyone have such past do they??) I'm the guy who was punched and kicked in School when we are talking about this (This reminds me for some films like Monk - check out he in school (his past!)) I'm the guy who follow the crowd, what I found was horrible that I went in a place where most people play the games which other play like "League of Legends" - outside and home all they talking about this game which one round takes 60 minutes. I'm now 2016 year in school and still listening about the football what has happen, who has played, who has won, who has won privious round, which is the best team and I'm sure that I'm genius because of listening this discussion. I can say it from here.... I'm just ironic, I don't like football, logicaly I don't like to listen => so I don't like to watch why?? You must find out!

I needed to grab another box of screws, but, when I got to the truck, I realized I’d left my wallet in my tool bucket. When I went back ground the house to get it, she had my plans open and was double-checking all my measurements.” Emma’s cheeks burned when Gram laughed at Sean’s story, but, since she couldn’t deny it, she stuck her last bite of the fabulous steak he’d grilled into her mouth. “That’s my Emma,” Gram said. “I think her first words were ‘If you want something done right, do it yourself.’” “In my defense,” she said when she’d swallowed, pointing her fork at Sean for emphasis, “my name is on the truck, and being able to pound nails doesn’t make you a builder. I have a responsibility to my clients to make sure they get quality work.” “I do quality work.” “I know you build a quality deck, but stairs are tricky.” She smiled sweetly at him. “I had to double-check.” “It’s all done but the seating now and it’s good work, even though I practically had to duct tape you to a tree in order to work in peace.” She might have taken offense at his words if not for the fact he was playing footsie with her under the table. And when he nudged her foot to get her to look at him, he winked in that way that—along with the grin—made it almost impossible for her to be mad at him. “It’s Sean’s turn to wash tonight. Emma, you dry and I’ll put away.” “I’ll wash, Gram. Sean can dry.” “I can wash,” Sean told her. “The world won’t come to an end if I wash the silverware before the cups.” “It makes me twitch.” “I know it does. That’s why I do it.” He leaned over and kissed her before she could protest. “That new undercover-cop show I like is on tonight,” Gram said as they cleared the table. “Maybe Sean won’t snort his way through this episode.” He laughed and started filling the sink with hot, soapy water. “I’m sorry, but if he keeps shoving his gun in his waistband like that, he’s going to shoot his…he’s going to shoot himself in a place men don’t want to be shot.” Emma watched him dump the plates and silverware into the water—while three coffee mugs sat on the counter waiting to be washed—but forced herself to ignore it. “Can’t be worse than the movie the other night.” “That was just stupid,” Sean said while Gram laughed. They’d tried to watch a military-action movie and by the time they were fifteen minutes in, she thought they were going to have to medicate Sean if they wanted to see the end. After a particularly heated lecture about what helicopters could and couldn’t do, Emma had hushed him, but he’d still snorted so often in derision she was surprised he hadn’t done permanent damage to his sinuses. “I don’t want you to think that’s real life,” he told them. “I promise,” Gram said, “if I ever want to use a tank to break somebody out of a federal prison, I’ll ask you how to do it correctly first.” Sean kissed the top of her head. “Thanks, Cat. At least you appreciate me, unlike Emma, who just tells me to shut up.” “I’d appreciate you more if there wasn’t salad dressing floating in the dishwater you’re about to wash my coffee cup in.” “According to the official guy’s handbook, if I keep doing it wrong, you’re supposed to let me watch SportsCenter while you do it yourself.” “Did the official guy’s handbook also tell you that if that happens, you’ll also be free to watch the late-night sports show while I do other things myself?

How’s fake almost-married life treating you?” “I kissed her.” He chugged down a quarter of the mug. “Yeah, so? Engaged people do that sometimes.” “I kissed her after Cat left the room. I didn’t kiss her because we were pretending. I kissed her because…Hell, I don’t need to draw you a map.” “When did that happen?” Sean looked at his watch. “About a half hour ago.” Kevin gave a low whistle. “She still sleeping on the couch?” “Yes. And she’s staying there, too, goddammit.” “Did she punch you in the face? Knee you in the balls?” “No.” Kevin grinned. “So what’s the problem? You want her. She can at least tolerate you. Get it out of your system.” He was afraid sleeping with Emma wouldn’t get her out of his system, but get her a little further under his skin, instead. “Bad idea.” “Call it a fringe benefit.” “She’s already pretending she’s in love with me. Throwing real sex on top of that could get it all mixed up in her head.” “You worried about her mixing it up…or you?” That was ridiculous, so he snorted and swallowed some more beer. He had no interest in settling down—signing his life over to somebody else so soon after getting it back from Uncle Sam—and he sure as hell wasn’t planting flowers until retirement age. Assuming he didn’t lose his mind and suffocate himself in a mound of mulch before then.

We stalked carefully through the park in best paramilitary fashion, the lost patrol on its mission into the land of the B movie. To Deborah’s credit, she was very careful. She moved stealthily from one piece of cover to the next, frequently looking right to Chutsky and then left at me. It was getting harder to see her, since the sun had now definitely set, but at least that meant it was harder for them to see us, too—whoever them might turn out to be. We leapfrogged through the first part of the park like this, past the ancient souvenir stand, and then I came up to the first of the rides, an old merry-go-round. It had fallen off its spindle and lay there leaning to one side. It was battered and faded and somebody had chopped the heads off the horses and spray-painted the whole thing in Day-Glo green and orange, and it was one of the saddest things I had ever seen. I circled around it carefully, holding my gun ready, and peering behind everything large enough to hide a cannibal. At the far side of the merry-go-round I looked to my right. In the growing darkness I could barely make out Debs. She had moved up into the shadow of one of the large posts that held up the cable car line that ran from one side of the park to the other. I couldn’t see Chutsky at all; where he should have been there was a row of crumbling playhouses that fringed a go-kart track. I hoped he was there, being watchful and dangerous. If anything did jump out and yell boo at us, I wanted him ready with his assault rifle. But there was no sign of him, and even as I watched, Deborah began to move forward again, deeper into the dark park. A warm, light wind blew over me and I smelled the Miami night: a distant tang of salt on the edge of rotting vegetation and automobile exhaust. But even as I inhaled the familiar smell, I felt the hairs go up on the back of my neck and a soft whisper came up at me from the lowest dungeon of Castle Dexter, and a rustle of leather wings rattled softly on the ramparts. It was a very clear notice that something was not right here and this would be a great time to be somewhere else; I froze there by the headless horses, looking for whatever had set off the Passenger’s alarm. I saw and heard nothing. Deborah had vanished into the darkness and nothing moved anywhere, except a plastic shopping bag blowing by in the gentle wind. My stomach turned over, and for once it was not from hunger. My

GreenHollyWood, I think that you asked me why I don't get out? - I'm kinda in hateful state, I hate to watch the fucking liars to lie in front of my face and backward to put the knife in my back. Why I stay home? - It's awesome place, I feel safe and out of the ignorance there is always somebody to harass for to get attention.

Horst Schulze, cofounder and past president of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, shares the origin of the Motto: “I started in the hotel business when I was 14 years old as a busboy. When my mother took me to the hotel to work for the first time, she said, ’We could never go to this hotel. This is only for important people. For important, fine people. So you’re lucky. Behave yourself. Wash your hands.’ She was a typical mother. I went to the hotel and the general manager talked to my mother and me for 15 minutes and told us we could never be like the guests who came to his hotel. ’So don’t ever get jealous. This is for Ladies and Gentlemen—very important people.’ “By the time I started working in the restaurant, I knew the guests were very important. But a few months later I realized that the maître d’ I watched every day was just as important because every guest was proud when he talked to them. Why? Because he was a first-class professional. He was somebody special—because of the excellence he created for the guests. So when I went to hotel school about a year and a half later, the teacher asked me to write a story describing what I felt about the business. And I wrote about the maître d’ at my hotel. I titled it, ’Ladies and Gentlemen Serving Ladies and Gentlemen.’ I wrote we could be excellent like he was. . .absolute excellence. When you walked into a room, you knew he was there. In any moment all of us who serve can be Ladies and Gentlemen, just like the guests. I think it’s a powerful thing that shouldn’t be missed by the wonderful people in this industry. They should understand that.

SpottieOttieDopaliscious [Hook] Damn damn damn James [Verse 1: Sleepy Brown] Dickie shorts and Lincoln's clean Leanin', checking out the scene Gangsta boys, blizzes lit Ridin' out, talkin' shit Nigga where you wanna go? You know the club don't close 'til four Let's party 'til we can't no more Watch out here come the folks (Damn - oh lord) [Verse 2: André 3000] As the plot thickens it gives me the dickens Reminiscent of Charles a lil' discotheque Nestled in the ghettos of Niggaville, USA Via Atlanta, Georgia a lil' spot where Young men and young women go to experience They first li'l taste of the night life Me? Well I've never been there; well perhaps once But I was so engulfed in the Olde E I never made it to the door you speak of, hardcore While the DJ sweatin' out all the problems And the troubles of the day While this fine bow-legged girl fine as all outdoors Lulls lukewarm lullabies in your left ear Competing with "Set it Off," in the right But it all blends perfectly let the liquor tell it "Hey hey look baby they playin' our song" And the crowd goes wild as if Holyfield has just won the fight But in actuality it's only about 3 A.M And three niggas just don' got hauled Off in the ambulance (sliced up) Two niggas don' start bustin' (wham wham) And one nigga don' took his shirt off talkin' 'bout "Now who else wanna fuck with Hollywood Courts?" It's just my interpretation of the situation [Hook] [Verse 3: Big Boi] Yes, when I first met my SpottieOttieDopalicious Angel I can remember that damn thing like yesterday The way she moved reminded me of a Brown Stallion Horse with skates on, ya know Smooth like a hot comb on nappy ass hair I walked up on her and was almost paralyzed Her neck was smelling sweeter Than a plate of yams with extra syrup Eyes beaming like four karats apiece just blindin' a nigga Felt like I chiefed a whole O of that Presidential My heart was beating so damn fast Never knowing this moment would bring another Life into this world Funny how shit come together sometimes (ya dig) One moment you frequent the booty clubs and The next four years you & somebody's daughter Raisin' y'all own young'n now that's a beautiful thang That's if you're on top of your game And man enough to handle real life situations (that is) Can't gamble feeding baby on that dope money Might not always be sufficient but the United Parcel Service & the people at the Post Office Didn't call you back because you had cloudy piss So now you back in the trap just that, trapped Go on and marinate on that for a minute

1948, my uncles offered me a special treat. They visited Mother, while I was in Queens to see visiting friends from Bucharest. Max and Morris thought it would be a good idea for me to visit Bernie and his family in Miami. Morris called me at the Teitelbaums and asked whether I was afraid of flying. Of course, I had never flown - but, of course, I was not afraid. They reserved a ticket for me; I came home in a hurry and by 11 p.m. that night I was on my way to Florida, from Newark. (Kennedy Airport had not been in existence yet). Bernie did not even know about my arrival. It was a glorious morning when I landed. I took a taxi and reached his house around five in the morning. Not wanting to wake them up, I sat in front of the house and watched the lovely, sunny surroundings - palm trees and flowering bushes, a delight to the eye. When somebody stirred inside, I rang the bell.

Sunrise is the time to feel that you will be able to find out how to help somebody close to you who you think needs help even if he doesn’t think so. At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear. Then about twelve miles before Wolf Creek the road drops into the Little Prickly Pear Canyon, where dawn is long in coming. In the suddenly returning semidarkness, I watched the road carefully, saying to myself, hell, my brother is not like anybody else. He’s not my gal’s uncle or a brother of my aunts. He is my brother and an artist and when a four-and-a-half-ounce rod is in his hand he is a major artist. He doesn’t piddle around with a paint brush or take lessons to improve his short game and he won’t take money even when he must need it and he won’t run anywhere from anyone, least of all to the Arctic Circle. It is a shame I do not understand him. Yet even in the loneliness of the canyon I knew there were others like me who had brothers they did not understand but wanted to help. We are probably those referred to as “our brothers’ keepers,” possessed of one of the oldest and possibly one of the most futile and certainly one of the most haunting of instincts. It will not let us go.

My favorite video game is a game called Minecraft. Only problem is that sometimes when I play, I feel like someone is watching me. One time I thought I saw somebody move around in my game.

Did you see the fight yesterday, when Lem Johnson didn’t want to cross the river?” Joellen nodded. “I was hiding in the supply wagon, and I watched the whole thing. You were masterful.” “If you saw what happened, you know nobody defies my orders and gets away with it. And I don’t let people tell lies about me, either.” Joellen swallowed, but she still looked besotted. Steven was about to cure her of that. He sat down on the bench, clasped Joellen by the wrist, and flung her down across his lap. She was so startled that, for a moment, she just lay there with her fanny upended. But when she looked back over her shoulder, she saw Steven’s hand descending and yelped in anticipation of the pain. His palm made a satisfying thwack, so Steven gave her another swat. Joellen squirmed and shrieked, more in anger than suffering, but he kept her legs scissored between his thighs and went right on spanking her. In the street, wagons rolled past, their occupants staring at Joellen and Steven, but he didn’t give a damn. In fact, he gave Joellen five more solid swats before letting her up. He felt guilty looking at the tear streaks on her dirty cheeks, but only a little. “Monster! Fiend! I wouldn’t marry you if you could buy and sell my daddy five times over!” Joellen screamed, her hands knotted into fists at her sides. In a few years, when she was of age, she was going to make somebody a fine and spirited wife. Steven rose from the bench and sighed as he pulled his gloves back on. “Good-bye, Joellen,” he said. Taking his wallet from the inside pocket of his leather vest, he pulled out a twenty-dollar bill. “This will keep you until Big John gets here.” For a moment, she looked as if she was going to spit in his face. But then, at the last second, Joellen snatched the money from his hand. “I hate you!” she cried. Steven grinned as he walked away. In six months Joellen Lenahan not only wouldn’t hate him, she wouldn’t remember his name. Wearily,

Behind me somebody said, “Fuck!” and I realized that my sister had returned. I glanced over my shoulder, and sure enough, Deborah was glaring into the now-silent room. I wasn’t sure if we were speaking to each other, since I had disobeyed her direct order and failed to go fuck myself, so I just turned back around and watched the peep show. There was really very little to see: Chapin’s brand-new attorney leaned in toward him and spoke rapidly for a few minutes. He looked up at her with growing interest, and eventually he talked back. She pulled out a legal pad and took a few notes, and then asked him a few questions, which he answered with increasing animation. After

An incident which meant a great deal to Diana took place in that same hospital away from the cameras, smiling dignitaries and the watchful public. The drama began uneventfully three days earlier in a back yard in Balderton, a village near Newark when housewife Freda Hickling collapsed with a brain haemorrhage. When Diana first saw her behind the screens in the intensive care unit she was on a life-support system. Her husband Peter sat with his wife, holding her hand. Diana, who was visiting patients in the hospital, had been already been told by the consultant that there was little hope of recovery. She quietly asked Peter if she should join him. For the next two hours she sat holding the hands of Peter and Freda Hickling before the specialist informed Peter that his wife was dead. Diana then joined Peter, his stepson Neil and Neil’s girlfriend Sue in a private room. Sue, who was so shocked at seeing Freda Hickling on a life-support machine, did not recognize Diana at first, vaguely thinking she was someone from television. “Just call me Diana,” said the Princess. She chatted about everyday matters; the size of the hospital, Prince Charles’s arm and asked about Neil’s forestry business. Eventually Diana decided that Peter could do with a large gin and asked her detective to find one. When he failed to reappear, the Princess successfully found one herself. Peter, a 53-year-old former council worker, recalls: “She was trying to keep our spirits up. For somebody who didn’t know anything about us she was a real professional at handling people and making quick decisions about them. Diana did a great job to keep Neil calm. By the time we left he was chatting to Diana as though he had known her all his life and gave her a kiss on the cheek as we walked down the steps.” His sentiments are endorsed by his stepson, Neil. He says: “She was a very caring, understanding person, somebody you can rely on. She understood about death and grief.

I guess I’m just saying that you could do better—you could probably have a supermodel if you wanted to. So maybe you should just, uh, let me go and look for somebody more your type.” “You’re my type.” He stepped forward and took her hands in his. “From the moment our minds first aligned I knew you were the only woman in this world or any other for me, Olivia,” he rumbled softly. “I don’t want anyone but you. Watching you and sharing your life through my dreams was the only thing that kept me from going crazy those six months before we met.” “Yes, but why me? Why did you pick me to, uh, align with when you could have had anyone?” Liv persisted. She was trying to keep her cool despite the way his big hands enveloping her much smaller ones was making her heart race. Baird looked surprised. “I didn’t pick you—not consciously. We aligned because we’re right together. Because you’re the one I need and I’m the one you need, even if you don’t want to admit it. It’s the way it always happens with Kindred. We just know.” Liv

What in hell would you know of ladies?" Travis asked, disgruntled by the exchange. Cade raised his head, much as a buffalo might when aroused to danger. "My mother was a lady. What about yours?" Before Lily could do anything unladylike like slinging the plate she had in her hand, Ephraim put a halt to the bickering. "I don't think either of you is impressing anybody." He turned to his daughter. "Lily, I think it's about time you started making some choices before somebody gets killed. If you've got your heart set on staying here instead of coming home with me, you have to settle on one man and get it over with—unless you like watching grown men behave like young bucks and challenging each other." Lily sent her father a furious look. "I could just tell the lot of them to get the hell out and leave me alone, and that includes you, too. I'm sick to death of men telling me what to do." Cade

Ulay’s Polaroids of that period often showed him piercing his own flesh in various bloody ways. In one work, he tattooed one of his aphorisms on his arm: ULTIMA RATIO (meaning final argument or last resort, referring to force). Then he cut a square hunk of flesh containing the tattoo out of his arm, slicing so deeply that the muscle and tendon were visible. He framed and preserved the tattooed flesh in formaldehyde. For another image, he held a bloodstained paper towel over a self-inflicted razor wound in his belly. A series of shots showed him slicing his fingertips with a box cutter and painting the white tiles of a bathroom with his own blood. (...)somebody gave Ulay a Newton’s cradle. He was fascinated by the back-and-forth swinging of the shiny metal balls, the little clack they made when they collided, the perfect transfer of energy. “What if we did that?” he said. I immediately understood what he was talking about: a performance where the two of us would collide and bounce off each other. We were naked, standing twenty meters apart. We were in a warehouse on the island of Giudecca, just across the lagoon from Venice. A couple hundred people were watching. Slowly at first, Ulay and I began to run toward each other. The first time, we just brushed past each other as we met; on each successive run, though, we moved faster and faster and made harder contact—until finally Ulay was crashing into me. Once or twice he knocked me over. We had placed microphones near the collision point, to pick up the sounds of flesh slapping flesh. (...) then [Ulay] took out a heavy needle, the kind used to sew leather, attached to some thick white thread, and he sewed his lips shut. This didn’t happen quickly. First he had to penetrate the skin below his lower lip—not easy—and then the skin above his upper lip. Also not easy. Then he pulled the thread tight and tied a knot. And then he and I changed places: Ulay sat down among the audience, and I sat in the chair he had just occupied. “Now,” I told our friends, “you will ask me questions and I will answer as Ulay.

[The Death of Ivan Ilych is] possibly the best short story ever written, depending on whether or not you consider The Leopard [Giuseppe di Lampedusa] to be a short story, but it is only about 50 pages or so. It describes how easy it is to go through life, in the same way as Eliot describes in ‘Prufrock’, trying to please everyone and to be a good person, to conform, without really having any authentic intimacy with anyone. And the great importance really of waking up and smelling the coffee and seeing that the superficial things in life really are superficial and that what actually matters is how you conduct yourself in your relationships with your intimates. Well [Tolstoy]... was [bad at that], yes. And, er, that’s true, of course, of many authors. They can be extraordinarily adept at writing stories about the things that they are unable to do themselves. [Defining authentic intimacy...] ...that’s a whole subject but sincerity is that you feel passionately that something is real and important, as opposed to authenticity where you divine internal truth, your true feeling and also external truth, the true feeling of other people. It’s not about being Tony Blair who is sincere but inauthentic; it’s about being… well, who? It’s very difficult to know, though, because these people are so good at presenting themselves. Somebody who is authentic in the public eye… well, very few people. Most high achievers are not very authentic. Unless you know people very well it’s hard to judge. [I suppose the point of superficiality is that it’s a defence against vulnerability. Being authentic makes you terribly vulnerable.] I don’t think it’s the same thing as telling the truth. My mother, in her later years after my father died, was a good example of someone who became very wise when she got older. If she watched me doing something stupid, she wouldn’t say: ‘Oh, don’t be so stupid,’ but she’d ask a question: ‘I wonder if you’ve thought about this or that?’ If I didn’t want to hear any more she would let it go. She didn’t try to impose her version on me but at the same time she tried to signal what she felt was true. She certainly didn’t tell lies. An authentic person in an inauthentic environment, like a corporate headquarters or a television company, might need to construct quite an elaborate persona and it might entail… well, keeping your mouth shut a lot.

two or ALL the puppies if I could’ve. But whatever, it was just cool to have puppies in the mall. My sister’s gonna FREAK when I tell her about it. Anyways, Fergus and Annie returned to our tournament table with the biggest plate of nachos I’d ever seen in my whole entire life, so me and Emma went and joined them. The four of us dug into the towering mountain of chips and cheese and chicken and onions and queso and tomatoes and salsa and sour cream and guac and jalapenos and O.M.CHEESE, it was SO good! I filled my belly with warm food and then sat back, watching all the people around the tournament having fun. What a great start to a weekend full of friends, puppies, and video games. I mean, seriously, everything was PERFECT, and there wasn’t a single thing that could change that… And immediately, Annie goes, “It was stolen,” but she didn’t know that! Isn’t it funny how some people go to the worst-case scenario first? That’s called “catastrophic thinking” and helps ABSOLUTELY NOBODY in times of stress. So, until we had more details, I thought it best to simply call the camera “missing.” I ran up to Callie, HOPING that maybe she had taken the camera to a Lost & Found box somewhere inside Hacktronics, but nope. Apparently, they didn’t have one. Not good. That meant somebody MIGHT have stolen it. I went to the other players in the tournament and asked if THEY saw anything suspicious, but nobody did! I just couldn’t believe it! How was it possible that NOBODY saw some fool GANK an $800 camera?? That doesn’t even make any sense! Fergus had completely shut down. Annie was angry at me. And Emma was just caught in the middle of it, sitting there, like, “Awkwaaaaaard.” Then, outta nowhere, Annie let me have it. She shouted a bunch of stuff at me that weren’t the kindest things ever, but I fixed all that through the MAGIC of editing…

So, you’re perfectly fine—” “Other than the stab wound.” “Ah yes, ha ha. Sorry.” He actually said ‘ha ha’ in a way that Paul found irritating. “Still though, you and I have dealt with some difficult information and now look – we are making jokes! This has gone very well.” He resumed beaming at Paul. “Which brings me to the next issue we must address. There appears to have been an issue with the emergency contact details the nurse took from you when you were admitted.” “Oh?” “It happens all the time. People are rushing about—” “I’d been stabbed.” “You’d been stabbed. We rang the number you gave us and, apparently, it is a Chinese takeaway called the Oriental Palace.” “It’s not just a takeaway. They’ve recently expanded to include an in-dining area with ambiance.” Mrs Wu would’ve been proud. She had been answering the phone ‘Hello Oriental Palace, now including an in-dining area with ambiance’ for nearly three months. She clearly didn’t know what ambiance meant, but somebody must’ve told her the place had it, and she was damn sure going to sell it. “I see,” said Dr Sinha. “And do you have a relative working at the Oriental Palace?” “No, not as such.” Or at all. “Ask for Mickey.” “OK. Mickey who?” Paul had been dreading that question. Who really knew the second name of their regular delivery guy? Sure, Mickey had come in and nabbed the occasional smoke or life-threateningly cheap Eastern European beer on a slow Tuesday. He’d even stayed to watch half of Roxanne on DVD once, but a second name seemed like a very personal question. Mickey had told him he was not from China, and how annoyed he got when people assumed he was. Unfortunately, Paul had forgotten where Mickey was from, so that was another no-go area. “Just Mickey.” “So, no relatives you’d like us to call?” “Nope. None.” Dr Sinha was clearly uncomfortable at this. “Well, as someone from a very large family, may I say, I envy you. I spend half of my salary on birthday cards alone.

{The Death of Ivan Ilych is} possibly the best short story ever written, depending on whether or not you consider The Leopard [Giuseppe di Lampedusa] to be a short story, but it is only about 50 pages or so. It describes how easy it is to go through life, in the same way as Eliot describes in ‘Prufrock’, trying to please everyone and to be a good person, to conform, without really having any authentic intimacy with anyone. And the great importance really of waking up and smelling the coffee and seeing that the superficial things in life really are superficial and that what actually matters is how you conduct yourself in your relationships with your intimates. Well [Tolstoy]... was [bad at that], yes. And, er, that’s true, of course, of many authors. They can be extraordinarily adept at writing stories about the things that they are unable to do themselves. [Defining authentic intimacy...] ...that’s a whole subject but sincerity is that you feel passionately that something is real and important, as opposed to authenticity where you divine internal truth, your true feeling and also external truth, the true feeling of other people. It’s not about being Tony Blair who is sincere but inauthentic; it’s about being… well, who? It’s very difficult to know, though, because these people are so good at presenting themselves. Somebody who is authentic in the public eye… well, very few people. Most high achievers are not very authentic. Unless you know people very well it’s hard to judge. [I suppose the point of superficiality is that it’s a defence against vulnerability. Being authentic makes you terribly vulnerable.] I don’t think it’s the same thing as telling the truth. My mother, in her later years after my father died, was a good example of someone who became very wise when she got older. If she watched me doing something stupid, she wouldn’t say: ‘Oh, don’t be so stupid,’ but she’d ask a question: ‘I wonder if you’ve thought about this or that?’ If I didn’t want to hear any more she would let it go. She didn’t try to impose her version on me but at the same time she tried to signal what she felt was true. She certainly didn’t tell lies. An authentic person in an inauthentic environment, like a corporate headquarters or a television company, might need to construct quite an elaborate persona and it might entail… well, keeping your mouth shut a lot.

I'm thinking you should always go topless." "That'll perk things up at work," Min said, and then remembered that there was nothing perky about her. "I meant—" "Not in public, dummy," Cal said. "Just at home. We'll put it in the wedding vows. You can promise to love, honor, cherish, and be naked from the waist up every night." "Married?" Min said, trying to sit up. "Well, of course, married," Cal said, watching her with interest. "You think I'd tie up somebody I wasn't serious about?" "You haven't asked," Min said, yanking on the belt. "Will you marry me?" Cal said, still watching her breasts. "No," Min said, torn between love and murder. "Right," Cal said. "Because years from now when Harry asks how I proposed, you don't want to say, 'Well, he tied me to the couch and ripped off my nightgown and ate doughnuts off my breasts and then he asked me.

God made it so you spent yo' ole age first wid somebody else, and saved up yo' young girl days to spend wid me.

The nurse watched me gently climb in next to nanna, take her hand in mine and lean my head against hers. I didn’t know what to say to her. How do you thank somebody for being everything you needed and more?

It was hard being behind bars when I turned thirty-five, but would it have been so hard if somebody told me that the next year I would be a free man? Time can’t always be measured with a watch or a calendar or even grains of sand.

Aza [Raskin] said: 'For instance, Facebook tomorrow could start batching your notifications, so you only get one push notification a day ... They could do that tomorrow.' ....So instead of getting 'this constant drip of behavioural cocaine,' telling you every few minutes that somebody liked your picture, commented on your post, has a birthday tomorrow, and on and on - you would get one daily update, like a newspaper, summarising it all. You'd be pushed to look once a day, instead of being interrupted several times an hour. 'Here's another one,' he said 'Infinite scroll. ...it's catching your impulses before your brain has a chance to really get involved and make a decision.' Facebook and Instagram and the others could simply turn off infinite scroll - so that when you get to the bottom of the screen, you have to make a conscious decision to carry on scrolling. Similarly, these sites could simply switch off the things that have been shown to most polarise people politically, stealing our ability to pay collective attention. Since there's evidence YouTube's recommendation engine is radicalising people, Tristan [Harris] told one interviewer: 'Just turn it off. They can turn it off in a heartbeat.' It's not as if, he points out, the day before recommendations were introduced, people were lost and clamouring for somebody to tell them what to watch next. Once the most obvious forms of mental pollution have been stopped, they said, we can begin to look deeper, at how these sites could be redesigned to make it easier for you to restrain yourself and think about your longer-term goals. ...there could be a button that says 'here are all your friends who are nearby and are indicating they'd like to meet up today.' You click it, you connect, you put down your phone and hang out with them. Instead of being a vacuum sucking up your attention and keeping it away from the outside world, social media would become a trampoline, sending you back into that world as efficiently as possible, matched with the people you want to see. Similarly, when you set up (say) a Facebook account, it could ask you how much time you want to spend per day or per week on the site. ...then the website could help you to achieve your goal. One way could be that when you hit that limit, the website could radically slow down. In tests, Amazon found that even 100 milliseconds of delay in the pace at which a page loads results in a substantial drop-off in people sticking around to buy the product. Aza said: 'It just gives your brain a chance to catch up to your impulse and [ask] - do I really want to be here? No.' In addition, Facebook could ask you at regular intervals - what changes do you want to make to your life? ...then match you up with other people nearby... who say they also want to make that change and have indicated they are looking for the equivalent of gym buddies. ...A battery of scientific evidence shows that if you want to succeed in changing something, you should meet up with groups of people doing the same. At the moment, they said, social media is designed to grab your attention and sell it to the highest bidder, but it could be designed to understand your intentions and to better help you achieve them. Tristan and Aza told me that it's just as easy to design and program this life-affirming Facebook as the life-draining Facebook we currently have. I think that most people, if you stopped them in the street and painted them a vision of these two Facebooks, would say they wanted the one that serves your intentions. So why isn't it happened? It comes back... to the business model.

p 85. through writing, i feel power for maybe the first time in my life. i don’t have to say somebody else’s words. i can write my own. i can be myself for once. i like the privacy of it. nobody’s watching. nobody’s judging. nobody’s weighing in. just me & the page. writing is the opposite of performing. performing feels inherently fake. writing feels inherently real.

We leaned toward the window on the passenger’s side, watching him hunch around into his driving posture, setting himself casually between the door and the seat, his left arm hanging out the window. “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “The little limp means nothing. People my age limp. A limp is a natural thing at a certain age. Forget the cough. It’s healthy to cough. You move the stuff around. The stuff can’t harm you as long as it doesn’t settle in one spot and stay there for years. So the cough’s all right. So is the insomnia. The insomnia’s all right. What do I gain by sleeping? You reach an age when every minute of sleep is one less minute to do useful things. To cough or limp. Never mind the women. The women are all right. We rent a cassette and have some sex. It pumps blood to the heart. Forget the cigarettes. I like to tell myself I’m getting away with something. Let the Mormons quit smoking. They’ll die of something just as bad. The money’s no problem. I’m all set incomewise. Zero pensions, zero savings, zero stocks and bonds. So you don’t have to worry about that. That’s all taken care of. Never mind the teeth. The teeth are all right. The looser they are, the more you can wobble them with your tongue. It gives the tongue something to do. Don’t worry about the shakes. Everybody gets the shakes now and then. It’s only the left hand anyway. The way to enjoy the shakes is pretend it’s somebody else’s hand. Never mind the sudden and unexplained weight loss. There’s no point eating what you can’t see. Don’t worry about the eyes. The eyes can’t get any worse than they are now. Forget the mind completely. The mind goes before the body. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. So don’t worry about the mind. The mind is all right. Worry about the car. The steering’s all awry. The brakes were recalled three times. The hood shoots up on pothole terrain.

Commercial transactions embarrassed Tol. When he had to receive payment from somebody, the feeling would always come over him that it was too much; when he had to give payment, the same feeling would suggest that it was too little. The passage of money seemed to him to discount all else that might pass between people.

Whenever we could steal a few minutes alone, that’s when we became the “other”, the charged-up thing that kept me up at night, afraid of falling so fast, afraid of losing, afraid it wouldn’t last once everyone found out. We stole too-short kisses in the front hallway, shared knowing and devious looks across the table when we weren’t being watched. We snuck out every night behind the house to watch for shooting stars and whisper about life, our favorite books, about the meaning of songs. It wasn’t the topics themselves that changed, we had talked about all of those things befores. But now, there was a new intensity, an urgency to know as much as we could, to fit as much as possible into our final nights, before somebody found out.

Magazine Street was a sea of green. Piper reveled in the pleasure and satisfaction of having finished the scene in her first feature film as she made her way through the crowds and watched the floats decorated by New Orleans marching clubs. The float riders threw carrots, potatoes, moon pies, and beads to the onlookers gathered on the sidewalk. Pets joined in the festivities as well, sporting leprechaun attire and green-tinted fur. Under a bright sun and a clear blue sky, families and friends were gathered for the opportunity to celebrate one of the biggest street parties of the year. Some set up ladders along the parade route, climbing atop for the best views. Others scaled trees and found perches among the branches. "Hey, mister, throw me something!" yelled a man next to Piper. Waving hands rose in the air as a head of cabbage came hurtling from the float. Everyone in the crowd lunged for it. The person who snagged it was roundly congratulated for the catch. "What's with the cabbage?" Piper asked the man standing next to her. "They aren't supposed to throw them, just hand them out. Somebody could get hurt by one of those things." The man shrugged. "But the tradition is to cook them for dinner on St. Patrick's Day night.

The three boys passed the big house, now dark and silent once more, and walked down the driveway. “That place gives me the willies,” muttered Chet, as Frank closed the gate. “I still have the creepy feeling that somebody’s in there, watching everything that goes on.

Then it’s a drive to Pittsburgh for TV where I see Hunter. He’s real beat up, but the pride is evident in his face. That twinkle in his eye you never get to see, almost like he had reconnected with a little part of himself, that part of him that just wanted to be a “rassler.” Vince loved it. Steph was really stoked about it too. Pat can’t stop talking about it. He’s asking people in catering: “Oh! My god! Did you see that match?!” This all makes me feel good. I’m proud every time somebody comes up to tell me how much they enjoyed watching it, that it felt really unique. That match doesn’t have any historical significance and will probably just be another one lost in the annals of time. I doubt you’ll find that shit on Peacock or whatever, but I hope the people that were there have fond memories of it. Maybe it was the first show they brought their kids to, or it was just a fun night out with the gang drinking giant cans of Molson Canadian and watching some wrestling. A night at the matches. Maybe some kid got a blow job in the parking lot. I’d like to think so. I’d go on to wrestle Hunter a few more times, in places like Belgium and the UK. We always had dope matches. Turns out that HHH kid can work. He’s just gotta do something about those skinny calves.

Elliot opened the passenger door. He picked up the box and plunked it firmly on the warm hood of the truck. “What kind of person keeps their dogs on somebody else’s property?” He watched her face change. Watched all the fight drain out of her. It might have been a harsh thing to say, but he hadn’t meant to hurt or upset her. He had simply made an error. She had presented herself to him as invincible, and he had made the mistake of believing her. “I’m sorry,” she said, and for a second she looked as though she might cry. “I thought the place was abandoned. I didn’t expect anybody would notice or care.” “I guess we can pin that on me. I haven’t come up here in years.

The next day, a dead turtle was left on my doorstep as a warning. I couldn't figure out as a warning for what, and I guess whoever was watching me picked up on that, because the next morning there was another dead turtle, but this one had several sheets of paper glued to it's back leg. The pieces of paper contained a long footnoted explanation of all the symbolism involved. It didn't make a lot of sense to me. The turtle was the "turtle of inquisitiveness" and the cheese smeared on it's shell meant something, and the little cowboy boots on its feet meant something. Everything about this animal meant something apparently to whoever sent it. I still didn't get what it was all about. The next morning there was no turtle. Somebody just shot at me from the bushes.

more, but no more than twenty. I had four songs left after the one I was doing when I saw her. And the talk between songs, well, I keep that short. So fifteen minutes, likely no more than seventeen.” “Did you see anyone follow her out?” “I didn’t, but I was looking for Forrest once she got up and started out. I wasn’t watching the door.” “I bet you saw a lot of familiar faces in the crowd tonight.” “I did. It was so nice to see everyone.” She thought of Arlo. “Mostly.” “A lot of unfamiliar ones, too.” “Tansy did a lot of marketing. She had flyers all over. I heard we had a lot of people in tonight who’re staying at the hotel and the lodge and so on, even campers who came in tonight. Something new, you know?” “Wish I could’ve been here myself. We’re going to make a point of it, the wife and me, next time. Now, did anybody strike you, Shelby? Somebody who just didn’t look right?

I started on the bunny hill with the kids and on the second day got a little too over confident.  I also misinterpreted the symbols on the trail marks for the degree of difficulty and managed to find myself at the top of the mountain and the beginning of a double Black Diamond run.   I had no idea until I discovered the only way down was to ski, and that the double Black Diamond meant “For Experts Only.”      Marguerite had gotten off at a rest area, found a nice table outside, got a cup of hot tea and rented a telescope so she could watch me ski down the mountain.       She got a ski show all right; about 200 yards down the slope I lost complete control.  I saw the sky and ground so many times as I tumbled I lost count and when I did come to rest it was at the bottom of the run and I was minus a ski.  A nice Swiss couple had retrieved it for me and it wasn’t until they gave it back that I realized just how lethal a runaway downhill ski could be, I was damned lucky it didn’t go through somebody down the mountain.      I realized I was over matched and stuck with the bunny hill for the rest of the day.

night, there was a real bad thunderstorm. But what woke me up wasn’t the thunder and lightning. It was Winn-Dixie, whining and butting his head against my bedroom door. “Winn-Dixie,” I said. “What are you doing?” He didn’t pay any attention to me. He just kept beating his head against the door and whining and whimpering; and when I got out of bed and went over and put my hand on his head, he was shaking and trembling so hard that it scared me. I knelt down and wrapped my arms around him, but he didn’t turn and look at me or smile or sneeze or wag his tail, or do any normal kind of Winn-Dixie thing; he just kept beating his head against the door and crying and shaking. “You want the door open?” I said. “Huh? Is that what you want?” I stood up and opened the door and Winn-Dixie flew through it like something big and ugly and mean was chasing him. “Winn-Dixie,” I hissed, “come back here.” I didn’t want him going and waking the preacher up. But it was too late. Winn-Dixie was already at the other end of the trailer, in the preacher’s room. I could tell because there was a sproi-i-ing sound that must have come from Winn-Dixie jumping up on the bed, and then there was a sound from the preacher like he was real surprised. But none of it lasted long, because Winn-Dixie came tearing back out of the preacher’s room, panting and running like crazy. I tried to grab him, but he was going too fast. “Opal?” said the preacher. He was standing at the door to his bedroom, and his hair was all kind of wild on top of his head, and he was looking around like he wasn’t sure where he was. “Opal, what’s going on?” “I don’t know,” I told him. But just then there was a huge crack of thunder, one so loud that it shook the whole trailer, and Winn-Dixie came shooting back out of my room and went running right past me and I screamed, “Daddy, watch out!” But the preacher was still confused. He just stood there, and Winn-Dixie came barreling right toward him like he was a bowling ball and the preacher was the only pin left standing, and wham, they both fell to the ground. “Uh-oh,” I said. “Opal?” said the preacher. He was lying on his stomach, and Winn-Dixie was sitting on top of him, panting and whining. “Yes sir,” I said. “Opal,” the preacher said again. “Yes sir,” I said louder. “Do you know what a pathological fear is?” “No sir,” I told him. The preacher raised a hand. He rubbed his nose. “Well,” he said, after a minute, “it’s a fear that goes way beyond normal fears. It’s a fear you can’t be talked out of or reasoned out of.” Just then there was another crack of thunder and Winn-Dixie rose straight up in the air like somebody had poked him with something hot. When he hit the floor, he started running. He ran back to my bedroom, and I didn’t even try to catch him; I just got out of his way. The preacher lay there on the ground, rubbing his nose. Finally, he sat up. He said, “Opal, I believe Winn-Dixie has a pathological fear of thunderstorms.” And just when he finished his sentence, here came Winn-Dixie again, running to save his life. I got the preacher up off the floor and out of the way just in time. There didn’t seem to be a thing we could do for Winn-Dixie to make him feel better, so we just sat there and watched him run back and forth, all terrorized and panting. And every time there was another crack of thunder, Winn-Dixie acted all over again like it was surely the end of the world. “The storm won’t last long,” the preacher told me. “And when it’s over, the real Winn-Dixie will come back.

My personal sense of presence that I kind of carry around with me is along the lines of “Somebody has to be there first before acting.” The more one is there, the better the results in whatever you’re doing — more precision, subtlety, relevance…and much less dispersion and depletion. When you watch someone who is good at this, you can sometimes feel like they’re actually stretching out the walls of possibility in a given situation, literally creating open space. Much of this comes only through time and experience, eventual understanding that how one does something, not the specifics of action, is what impacts others most.

How many times have we done all of this?” I ask. “Thousands, I suspect. More than I could possibly count.” “So why do I keep failing?” He sighs, looking over his shoulder at me. There’s a sense of weariness in his bearing, as though every loop is sediment, pressing down on him. “It’s a question I’ve pondered myself from time to time,” he says, melting wax running down the side to stain his glove. “Chance has played its part, stumbling when being surefooted would have saved you. Mostly, though, I think it’s your nature.” “My nature?” I ask. “You think I’m destined to fail?” “Destined? No. That would be an excuse, and Blackheath is intolerant of excuses,” he says. “Nothing that’s happening here is inevitable, much as it may appear otherwise. Events keep happening the same way day after day, because your fellow guests keep making the same decisions day after day. They decide to go hunting; they decide to betray each other; one of them drinks too much and skips breakfast, missing a meeting that would change his life forever. They cannot see another way, so they never change. You are different, Mr. Bishop. Throughout the loops, I’ve watched you react to moments of kindness and cruelty, random acts of chance. You make different decisions, and yet repeat the same mistakes at crucial junctures. It’s as though some part of you is perpetually pulled toward the pit.” “Are you saying I have to become somebody else to escape?” “I’m saying every man is in a cage of his own making,” he says. “The Aiden Bishop who first entered Blackheath.” He sighs, as if the memory troubles him. “The things he wanted and his way of getting them were…unyielding. That man could never have escaped Blackheath. This Aiden Bishop before me is different. I think you’re closer than you’ve ever been, but I’ve thought that before and been fooled. The truth is you’ve yet to be tested, but that’s coming, and if you’ve changed, truly changed, then who knows, there may be hope for you.

I fell in love with used to regale me with stories about kings and queens and war and peace, and how he hoped to one day be somebody’s knight in shining armor. I lived vicariously through his late night adventures, watching the way he swung his hands

PEOPLE are too full of themselves, says David Brooks, a columnist for the New York Times. Joe Namath, a star quarterback of the 1960s, once shouted to his bathroom mirror: “Joe! Joe! You’re the most beautiful thing in the world!”—with a reporter watching. But it is not just celebrities who puff themselves up, and the evidence is not just anecdotal. The proportion of American teenagers who believe themselves to be “very important” jumped from 12% in 1950 to 80% in 2005. On a test that asks subjects to agree or disagree with statements such as “I like to look at my body” and “Somebody should write a biography about me”, 93% of young Americans emerge as being more narcissistic than the average of 20 years ago.

One thing I’ve seen we can do is watch other people and when they become very irritating or there’s something puzzling about ‘em… this is almost always because we’re seeing ourselves. And the ego just can’t admit it. So it says it’s the other person. You know it still happens to me. I’ll find somebody who’s very irritating and just driving me up the wall. And if I can look at them close enough and say ‘Why is this? It’s all out of proportion to what it should be. It’s irrational.’ And it always comes down to the point that there’s something in me, that I refuse to admit, and I can see it in them.

Together we watched the little bird climb up and down the ramp, and even saw it eat a dead mouse. That was a first, even for me. It held the critter with its feet and tore off the poor thing’s head. Then after bolting the head down, it picked at the body until there was nothing left of it. All this seemed shocking, especially to Greta, because she hadn’t been through the process of reading books, setting traps, and becoming hardened to what it takes to keep an owl alive, as I had. But I found it hard to watch too. “Well, we eat meat,” Greta finally said. “Only, first, somebody else--the butcher, I guess--has to cut off the head of the chicken or the cow so that we don’t have to see it looking at us.” Greta had a way of putting things.

...and it's tricky because she always makes me feel like, well, you know what it's like, when somebody's watching you and you feel it like dead leaves down the back of your sweater...

Cover the war, what a gig to frame for yourself, going out after one kind of information and getting another, totally other, to lock your eyes open, drop your blood temperature down under the 0, dry your mouth out so a full swig of water disappeared in there before you could swallow, turn your breath fouler than corpse gas. There were times when your fear would take directions so wild that you had to stop and watch the spin. Forget the Cong, the trees would kill you, the elephant grass grew up homicidal, the ground you were walking over possessed malignant intelligence, your whole environment was a bath. Even so, considering where you were and what was happening to so many people, it was a privilege just to be able to feel afraid. So you learned about fear, it was hard to know what you really learned about courage. How many times did somebody have to run in front of a machine gun before it became an act of cowardice? What about those acts that didn’t require courage to perform, but made you a coward if you didn’t? It was hard to know at the moment, easy to make a mistake when it came, like the mistake of thinking that all you needed to perform a witness act were your eyes. A lot of what people called courage was only undifferentiated energy cut loose by the intensity of the moment, mind loss that sent the actor on an incredible run; if he survived it he had the chance later to decide whether he’d really been brave or just overcome with life, even ecstasy. A lot of people found the guts to just call it all off and refuse to ever go out anymore, they turned and submitted to the penalty end of the system or they just split. A lot of reporters, too, I had friends in the press corps who went out once or twice and then never again. Sometimes I thought that they were the sanest, most serious people of all, although to be honest I never said so until my time there was almost over. “We had this gook and we was gonna skin him” (a grunt told me), “I mean he was already dead and everything, and the lieutenant comes over and says, ‘Hey asshole, there’s a reporter in the TOC, you want him to come out and see that? I mean, use your fucking heads, there’s a time and place for everything.…” “Too bad you wasn’t with us last week” (another grunt told me, coming off a no-contact operation), “we killed so many gooks it wasn’t even funny.” Was it possible that they were there and not haunted? No, not possible, not a chance, I know I wasn’t the only one. Where are they now? (Where am I now?) I stood as close to them as I could without actually being one of them, and then I stood as far back as I could without leaving the planet. Disgust doesn’t begin to describe what they made me feel, they threw people out of helicopters, tied people up and put the dogs on them. Brutality was just a word in my mouth before that. But disgust was only one color in the whole mandala, gentleness and pity were other colors, there wasn’t a color left out. I think that those people who used to say that they only wept for the Vietnamese never really wept for anyone at all if they couldn’t squeeze out at least one for these men and boys when they died or had their lives cracked open for them. But of course we were intimate, I’ll tell you how intimate: they were my guns, and I let them do it.

The thing about Zofia and libraries is that she’s always losing library books. She says that she hasn’t lost them, and in fact that they aren’t even overdue, really. It’s just that even one week inside the faery handbag is a lot longer in library-world time. So what is she supposed to do about it? The librarians all hate Zofia. She’s banned from using any of the branches in our area. When I was eight, she got me to go to the library for her and check out a bunch of biographies and science books and some Georgette Heyer novels. My mother was livid when she found out, but it was too late. Zofia had already misplaced most of them.   It’s really hard to write about somebody as if they’re really dead. I still think Zofia must be sitting in her living room, in her house, watching some old horror movie, dropping popcorn into her handbag. She’s waiting for me to come over and play Scrabble.   Nobody is ever going to return those library books now.

I got nervous around you after our arrangement became official,” Luca said. “I used to watch you sometimes, though.” “That’s kind of creepy, don’t you think?” Cass raised an eyebrow, and couldn’t help but crack a small smile. “You stopped being just a little girl.” A red flush crept across Luca’s high cheekbones. “I wasn’t very good at talking to women. I’m still not.” His shyness surprised her. Luca, the man, was proving to be so different from the boy she remembered. She thought of what Mada had said about growing to love somebody. She looked down at her hands and said haltingly, “My behavior has been inexcusable these last few days, so I won’t try to excuse it. I can only imagine what you must think of me.” Luca finally dared to sit on the bench across from Cass. “It’s all right,” he said, still twirling the rosebud in his big hands. “I guess your aunt sprang it on you, announcing our engagement so suddenly.” He smiled, but Cass could tell it was forced. Hurt still lingered in his eyes. “You know, most girls wouldn’t mind being Signora da Peraga.” “I know,” Cass said. She could think of nothing else to say. Luca said, this time with a warm smile, “But you are different from most girls, aren’t you, Cassandra?” Her hands tightened around her journal. Somehow Luca managed to see something good in her, even where there was nothing good to see. And yet, his words reminded her of Falco’s. “I’d prefer it if the idea of our engagement didn’t make you miserable,” Luca continued. “Does it?” he asked softly. “Make you miserable?” A few days ago, all Cass had wanted was to escape from her obligation to marry, and now she felt Luca loosening the band around her neck, unlocking the door to her cage. But Cass couldn’t tell him the truth. She had already hurt Falco. She wouldn’t hurt Luca and Agnese too. Being with Luca made sense. Being with Falco was madness. “I hate seeing you so sad,” Luca said after a pause. “I hate to think I may be the cause of your unhappiness.

Sister didn't have to make a special valentine for Billy Grizzwold. She found the perfect one for him at the card store. It showed a scary-looking Frankenbear-type monster with a bolt on each side of his neck. It said: Monsters come in every shape and size. But when it comes to creepy, you take the prize! She'd sign it, "Guess Who." She couldn't wait to see Billy's face when he opened it at the class Valentine's Day party. But Sister forgot to watch when Billy opened her valentine because among the valentines she received was one that took her breath away. It was all hearts and flowers and inside it said, “Will you be my special friend?” “Wow!” said Lizzy Bruin. “It must have cost a whole dollar!” “It’s signed, ‘Guess who,’” said Sister. “Who do you suppose it’s from?” “Well, I know who you hope it’s from,” said Lizzy. “If somebody sent me a beautiful valentine that cost a whole dollar, I’d sure want to know who it was from. There’s Herbie over by the punch bowl. Go ask him.” Sister started for the punch bowl, but Billy Grizzwold blocked her way. He had the valentine Sister had sent him. “I’ll be glad to get you some punch,” said Billy. “And throw it down my back?” said Sister. “No, nothing like that,” said Billy. “I’m sorry about all the stuff I did. And I really don’t blame you for sending me this. It’s really pretty funny. How’d you like that valentine I sent you?” “You sent me?” said Sister. “You sent me this valentine?” “Yep,” said Billy. “I saved up for weeks to get it.” Sister was confused. She didn’t know what to say, so she just said, “Thanks.

but Wetmore launched out, with Alma for a tacit text, on the futility of women generally going in for art. "Even when they have talent they've got too much against them. Where a girl doesn't seem very strong, like Miss Leighton, no amount of chic is going to help." His wife disputed him on behalf of her sex, as women always do. "No, Dolly," he persisted; "she'd better be home milking the cows and leading the horse to water." "Do you think she'd better be up till two in the morning at balls and going all day to receptions and luncheons?" "Oh, guess it isn't a question of that, even if she weren't drawing. You knew them at home," he said to Beaton. "Yes." "I remember. Her mother said you suggested me. Well, the girl has some notion of it; there's no doubt about that. But—she's a woman. The trouble with these talented girls is that they're all woman. If they weren't, there wouldn't be much chance for the men, Beaton. But we've got Providence on our own side from the start. I'm able to watch all their inspirations with perfect composure. I know just how soon it's going to end in nervous breakdown. Somebody ought to marry them all and put them out of their misery." "And what will you do with your students who are married already?" his wife said. She felt that she had let him go on long enough. "Oh, they ought to get divorced." "You ought to be ashamed to take their money if that's what you think of them." "My dear, I have a wife to support." Beaton intervened with a question. "Do you mean that Miss Leighton isn't standing it very well?" "How do I know? She isn't the kind that bends; she's the kind that breaks.

The best thing about my life up to here is, nobody believes it. I stopped trying to make people hear it long ago, and I'm nothing but a real middle-sized white woman that has kept on going with strong eyes and teeth for fifty-seven years. You can touch me; I answer. But it got to where I felt like the first woman landed from Pluto - people asking how I lasted through all I claimed and could still count to three, me telling the truth with an effort to smile and then watching them doubt it. So I've kept quiet for years. Now I've changed my mind and will try again. Two big new reasons. Nobody in my family lives for long, and last week I found somebody I'd lost or thrown away. All he knows about me is the little he's heard. He hasn't laid eyes on me since he was a baby and I vanished while he was down for a nap. I may very well be the last thing he wants at this late date. I'm his natural mother; he's almost forty and has got on without me.

Andie leaned in a bit more and whispered conspiratorially, “I don’t know if you’ve seen the Barbur twins serve up drinks, but they not only know how to mix a great cocktail, they can make some really stiff ones that taste like fruit juice.” “Let me guess.” I grinned as I watched Eric snore, each one rustling his blonde-and-blue-streaked hair more and more. “Somebody got a hold of a Barbur special and got carried away?” Kara, who was sitting on the other side of me, looked up from her tablet with an amused shake of her head. “No. Somebody got a hold of two of them and chugged them like a maniac.

And when somebody dies, the family can mercifully occupy their minds with all the heartbreaking little things we need to do when it’s all finished – the flowers, the food, what needs to be put away, what needs to be given away – while tears fall on the objects left behind: a pair of slippers, a mug, a dressing gown. We comfort each other, holding on to a solid arm, clinging to a warm hand where the blood flows strong, we feel it underneath the skin and it sings so loud, so clear, that it banishes death away.

He showed it to me and Lesley—it was handwritten and in Latin. Nightingale translated. “‘The Lord and Lady of the River do give you notice that they will be holding their Spring Court together at the Garden of Bernadette of Spain,’” he paused and reread the last bit. “‘Bernie Spain’s Garden and that you are hereby charged as if by ancient custom to secure and police the fair against all enemies.’ And it’s sealed with the Hanged Man of Tyburn and the Waterwheel of Oxley plus signatures.” He showed us the seals. “Somebody’s been watching way too much Game of Thrones,” said Lesley.

You might call me a member of the Ordo Machinis Spectandis.” She gazed at me over her glasses. “Do you know what that means?” “You maintain the sacred machines to further the greater glory of the God Emperor of mankind?” I said. Mrs. Chin looked at Stephen. “He talks like this all the time,” he said. “Just ignore him.” “Somebody has to watch the machines,” said Mrs. Chin. “We are the people at the Library who do that.” “Watch the machines for what?” “Signs of life,” she said.

In San Pedro during the maritime strike in 1939 I watched a lanky pink-faced man with white hair being arrested for reading the Declaration of Independence from a soapbox. They led him away holding up the book and smiling to the crowd, as though it was a private joke he was playing on the police. Somebody said he was a writer. After they had taken him away the crowd began to get ugly; somebody began singing the Internationale and rocks sailed through the air. A cop told me to move on, I stood on my rights as a decent left-wing American citizen, and the cop busted my nose with his nightstick. Evidently they hit you whether you were interested in politics or not. After that I still had no politics, but I decided I was a cop-hater.

how to stop crying for long enough to eat breakfast / how to stop overreacting / what does it mean to dream about being bitten by a fawn? / how to stop thinking about food / am I neurodivergent? / symptoms of autism / symptoms of adhd / is cheese low fodmap? / I always wanna die sometimes lyrics / virginia woolf suicide note / am I a narcissist? / is it normal to get stretch marks in your 20s? / synonyms for tired / when do the clocks go forward? / leave your scarf in my life poem / papercut definition / grey’s anatomy station 19 watch order / is mercury in retrograde or am i? / skill regression / practise or practice / drawstring trousers / how to burn yarn ends together / types of red leaves / keeping me awake song / biscuits that go with coffee / how many presidents have been assassinated? / how to use somebody as an anchor / is this all a waste of time?

Every believer is a preacher. Maybe you don’t like me to call you a preacher, but you are one nonetheless. You can’t escape it—you are saying something to somebody by the life you live. Perhaps your life is speaking to the child in your home. I think that is one of the reasons we have so many of our young people out on the highways and byways, the streets and alleys of this world. They watched mom and dad at home, and they didn’t like what they saw; so they took to the highways. The greatest sermon you will ever preach is by the life that you live.

Southern Cross" Ooh Got out of town on a boat goin' to Southern islands Sailing a reach before a followin' sea She was makin' for the trades on the outside And the downhill run to Papeete Off the wind on this heading lie the Marquesas We got eighty feet of the waterline nicely making way In a noisy bar in Avalon I tried to call you But on a midnight watch I realized why twice you ran away Think about Think about how many times I have fallen Spirits are using me larger voices callin' What Heaven brought you and me cannot be forgotten (Been around the world) I have been around the world (Lookin') Lookin' for that woman girl (Who knows she knows) Who knows love can endure And you know it will Yes When you see the Southern Cross for the first time You understand now why you came this way 'Cause the truth you might be runnin' from is so small But it's as big as the promise, the promise of a comin' day So I'm sailing for tomorrow my dreams are a dyin' And my love is an anchor tied to you tied with a silver chain I have my ship and all her flags are a' flyin' She is all that I have left and music is her name Think about Think about how many times I have fallen Spirits are using me larger voices callin' What Heaven brought you and me cannot be forgotten (I've been around the world) I have been around the world (Lookin') Lookin' for that woman girl Who knows love can endure And you know it will, and you know it will Yes Ooh So we cheated and we lied and we tested And we never failed to fail, it was the easiest thing to do You will survive being bested Somebody fine will come along, make me forget about loving you At the Southern Cross Crosby, Still, Nash, Daylight Again (1982)

I took perhaps fifty steps down the sidewalk, and then I stopped. I froze. It was not guilt that froze me. I had taught myself never to feel guilt. It was not a ghastly sense of loss that froze me. I had taught myself to covet nothing. It was not a loathing of death that froze me. I had taught myself to think of death as a friend. It was not heartbroken rage against injustice that froze me. I had taught myself that a human being might as well look for diamond tiaras in the gutter as for rewards and punishments that were fair. It was not the thought that I was so unloved that froze me. I had taught myself to do without love. It was not the thought that God was cruel that froze me. I had taught myself never to expect anything from Him. What froze me was the fact that I had absolutely no reason to move in any direction. What had made me move through so many dead and pointless years was curiosity. Now even that had flickered out. How long I stood frozen there, I cannot say. If I was ever going to move again, someone else was going to have to furnish the reason for moving. Somebody did. A policeman watched me for a while, and then he came over to me, and he said, “You all right?” “Yes,” I said. “You’ve been standing here a long time,” he said. “I know,” I said. “You waiting for somebody?” he said. “No,” I said. “Better move on, don’t you think?” he said. “Yes, sir,” I said. And I moved on.

Wh-What’s going on?” somebody spluttered. “You don’t know?” a regular customer responded. “Just watch. You’re about to see the biggest eater in these parts. They call her the Little Witch with the Bottomless Stomach.