Sound Of Waterfall Quotes

Learning to let go should be learned before learning to get. Life should be touched, not strangled. You've got to relax, let it happen at times, and at others move forward with it. It's like boats. You keep your motor on so you can steer with the current. And when you hear the sound of the waterfall coming nearer and nearer, tidy up the boat, put on your best tie and hat, and smoke a cigar right up till the moment you go over. That's a triumph.

Nothing can be given or taken away; nothing has been added or subtracted; nothing increased or diminished. We stand on the same shore before the same mighty ocean. The ocean of love. There it is - in perpetuum. As much in a broken blossom, the sound of a waterfall, the swoop of a carrion bird as in the thunderous artillery of the prophet. We move with eyes shut and ears stopped; we smash walls where doors are waiting to open to the touch; we grope for ladders, forgetting that we have wings; we pray as if God were deaf and blind, as if He were in a space. No wonder the angels in our midst are unrecognizable. One day it will be pleasant to remember these things.

Your house sounds like a train at midday, the wasps buzz, the saucepans sing, the waterfall enumerates the deeds of the dew . . .

Once he went into the mountains on a clear, sunny day, and wandered about for a long time with a tormenting thought that refused to take shape. Before him was the shining sky, below him the lake, around him the horizon, bright and infinite, as if it went on forever. For a long time he looked and suffered. He remembered now how he had stretched out his arms to that bright, infinite blue and wept. What had tormented him was that he was a total stranger to it all. What was this banquet, what was this great everlasting feast, to which he had long been drawn, always, ever since childhood, and which he could never join? Every morning the same bright sun rises; every morning there is a rainbow over the waterfall; every evening the highest snowcapped mountain, there, far away, at the edge of the sky, burns with a crimson flame; every little fly that buzzes near him in a hot ray of sunlight participates in this whole chorus: knows its place, loves it, and is happy; every little blade of grass grows and is happy! And everything has its path, and everything knows its path, goes with a song and comes back with a song; only he knows nothing, understands nothing, neither people nor sounds, a stranger to everything and a castaway.

Sometimes,' Beauty said softly, sipping from her silver goblet, 'everyone needs to let the beast inside them out for a while'. She laughed, a sound like a waterfall meeting the sea and more glitter escaped from her fingertips. 'I like to see it. We all have our dark lusts. We should enjoy them.

It was a world of acts, and words had no more influence on acts than the sound of a waterfall has on the flow of the stream.

When I was walking in the mountains with the Japanese man and began to hear the water, he said, 'What is the sound of the waterfall?' 'Silence,' he finally told me.

Typically, I like my women tall, lean, blonde, and a little on the "easy" side. Who doesn't really? I sound like an ass, don't I? - Dre

Love has a sound. It sounds like a thousand heartbeats happening at the same time. It sounds like the rush of a waterfall or the still of the world at daybreak. You can hear it at night, lulling you to sleep, and, in the middle of your darkest days, it breaks through like a laugh. “The thing is, some of us have been taught to listen for it, so when it comes, it’s all too easy to hear over the noise. For others, there are too many other sounds drowning it out. For them, it takes longer. But when it finally breaks through, it’s a symphony.

The morning sun burned away the mist so the valley below is now clear. The scope of what I see drowns out every other sense: There's no river, no water. Instead, hundreds of feet below the bridge the ground shifts and writhes. At first I think maybe it's a field of some sort but then individual colors begin to pull apart. And all at once I understand what it is. Like a river flooding its banks, the entire valley is full of Mudo. The sound is not that of a raging waterfall but the pounding of two hundred million feet. The moans of a hundred million mouths. They pour through the valley, more people than I have ever seen. More people than I ever thought could have existed in one world. And they sense me, reach for me but are trapped by the mountains.

I turn to look at him. His face is smooth, without the blotches and spots that have begun to afflict the other boys. His features are drawn with a firm hand; nothing awry or sloppy, nothing too large—all precise, cut with the sharpest of knives. And yet the effect itself is not sharp. He turns and finds me looking at him. “What?” he says. “Nothing.” I can smell him. The oils that he uses on his feet, pomegranate and sandalwood; the salt of clean sweat; the hyacinths we had walked through, their scent crushed against our ankles. Beneath it all is his own smell, the one I go to sleep with, the one I wake up to. I cannot describe it. It is sweet, but not just. It is strong but not too strong. Something like almond, but that still is not right. Sometimes, after we have wrestled, my own skin smells like it. He puts a hand down, to lean against. The muscles in his arms curve softly, appearing and disappearing as he moves. His eyes are deep green on mine. My pulse jumps, for no reason I can name. He has looked at me a thousand thousand times, but there is something different in this gaze, an intensity I do not know. My mouth is dry, and I can hear the sound of my throat as I swallow. He watches me. It seems that he is waiting. I shift, an infinitesimal movement, towards him. It is like the leap from a waterfall. I do not know, until then, what I am going to do. I lean forward and our lips land clumsily on each other. They are like the fat bodies of bees, soft and round and giddy with pollen. I can taste his mouth—hot and sweet with honey from dessert. My stomach trembles, and a warm drop of pleasure spreads beneath my skin. More.

That night, I fell into a deep, travel-weary sleep, lulled by the familiar sound of the waterfall beyond the window. I dreamed of the beck fairies, a blur of lavender and rose-pink and buttercup-yellow light, flitting across the glittering stream, beckoning me to follow them toward the woodland cottage. There, the little girl with flame-red hair picked daisies in the garden, threading them together to make a garland for her hair. She picked a posy of wildflowers- harebell, bindweed, campion, and bladderwort- and gave them to me.

At that instant, Eragon's back ruptured in an explosion of agony so intense he experienced it with all five senses: as a deafening waterfall of sound; a metallic taste that coated his tongue; an acrid eye-watering stench in his nostrils, redolent of vinegar; pulsing colors, and above all the feeling that Durza had just laid open his back.

The sound of the river raging among the rocks, and the dashing of the waterfalls around, spoke of a power mighty as Omnipotence – and I ceased to fear or to bend before any being less almighty than that which had created and ruled the elements, here displayed in their most terrific guise.

Reminiscing in the drizzle of Portland, I notice the ring that’s landed on your finger, a massive insect of glitter, a chandelier shining at the end of a long tunnel. Thirteen years ago, you hid the hurt in your voice under a blanket and said there’s two kinds of women—those you write poems about and those you don’t. It’s true. I never brought you a bouquet of sonnets, or served you haiku in bed. My idea of courtship was tapping Jane’s Addiction lyrics in Morse code on your window at three A.M., whiskey doing push-ups on my breath. But I worked within the confines of my character, cast as the bad boy in your life, the Magellan of your dark side. We don’t have a past so much as a bunch of electricity and liquor, power never put to good use. What we had together makes it sound like a virus, as if we caught one another like colds, and desire was merely a symptom that could be treated with soup and lots of sex. Gliding beside you now, I feel like the Benjamin Franklin of monogamy, as if I invented it, but I’m still not immune to your waterfall scent, still haven’t developed antibodies for your smile. I don’t know how long regret existed before humans stuck a word on it. I don’t know how many paper towels it would take to wipe up the Pacific Ocean, or why the light of a candle being blown out travels faster than the luminescence of one that’s just been lit, but I do know that all our huffing and puffing into each other’s ears—as if the brain was a trick birthday candle—didn’t make the silence any easier to navigate. I’m sorry all the kisses I scrawled on your neck were written in disappearing ink. Sometimes I thought of you so hard one of your legs would pop out of my ear hole, and when I was sleeping, you’d press your face against the porthole of my submarine. I’m sorry this poem has taken thirteen years to reach you. I wish that just once, instead of skidding off the shoulder blade’s precipice and joyriding over flesh, we’d put our hands away like chocolate to be saved for later, and deciphered the calligraphy of each other’s eyelashes, translated a paragraph from the volumes of what couldn’t be said.

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.

petrichord: the sound of water sliding over smooth stone.

When you have a pet waterfall, and you want to take it for a walk, the trickiest part is trying to figure out what to use for a leash. Next time, try a duck.

I'd like to repair your elevator using only a kayak and a smile. If it's broken, my advice would be to remove the ducks and restart the waterfall.

Thank you for inviting me here today " I said my voice sounding nothing like me. "I'm here to testify about things I've seen and experienced myself. I'm here because the human race has become more powerful than ever. We've gone to the moon. Our crops resist diseases and pests. We can stop and restart a human heart. And we've harvested vast amounts of energy for everything from night-lights to enormous super-jets. We've even created new kinds of people, like me. "But everything mankind" - I frowned - "personkind has accomplished has had a price. One that we're all gonna have to pay." I heard coughing and shifting in the audience. I looked down at my notes and all the little black words blurred together on the page. I just could not get through this. I put the speech down picked up the microphone and came out from behind the podium. "Look " I said. "There's a lot of official stuff I could quote and put up on the screen with PowerPoint. But what you need to know what the world needs to know is that we're really destroying the earth in a bigger and more catastrophic was than anyone has ever imagined. "I mean I've seen a lot of the world the only world we have. There are so many awesome beautiful tings in it. Waterfalls and mountains thermal pools surrounded by sand like white sugar. Field and field of wildflowers. Places where the ocean crashes up against a mountainside like it's done for hundreds of thousands of years. "I've also seen concrete cities with hardly any green. And rivers whose pretty rainbow surfaces came from an oil leak upstream. Animals are becoming extinct right now in my lifetime. Just recently I went through one of the worst hurricanes ever recorded. It was a whole lot worse because of huge worldwide climatic changes caused by... us. We the people." .... "A more perfect union While huge corporations do whatever they want to whoever they want and other people live in subway tunnels Where's the justice of that Kids right here in America go to be hungry every night while other people get four-hundred-dollar haircuts. Promote the general welfare Where's the General welfare in strip-mining toxic pesticides industrial solvents being dumped into rivers killing everything Domestic Tranquility Ever sleep in a forest that's being clear-cut You'd be hearing chain saws in your head for weeks. The blessings of liberty Yes. I'm using one of the blessings of liberty right now my freedom of speech to tell you guys who make the laws that the very ground you stand on the house you live in the children you tuck in at night are all in immediate catastrophic danger.

A harsh crack followed the rumble of thunder, a lightning strike. With that, the other musicians began to play, bringing in the tinkling sounds of light rain, the deeper thrum of thicker droplets. The others played the crashing waves, the lapping of water against a nonexistent shore. All around us were the sounds of water, dripping from faucets, gushing from waterfalls.

I grow into these mountains like a moss. I am bewitched. The blinding snow peaks and the clarion air, the sound of earth and heaven in the silence, the requiem birds, the mythic beasts, the flags, great horns, and old carved stones, the silver ice in the black river, the Kang, the Crystal Mountain. Also, I love the common miracles-the murmur of my friends at evening, the clay fires of smudgy juniper, the coarse dull food, the hardship and simplicity, the contentment of doing one thing at a time… gradually my mind has cleared itself, and wind and sun pour through my head, as through a bell. Though we talk little here, I am never lonely; I am returned into myself. In another life-this isn’t what I know, but how I feel- these mountains were my home; there is a rising of forgotten knowledge, like a spring from hidden aquifers under the earth. To glimpse one’s own true nature is a kind of homegoing, to a place East of the Sun, West of the Moon- the homegoing that needs no home, like that waterfall on the supper Suli Gad that turns to mist before touching the earth and rises once again to the sky.

My ducks and I hiked up to see a waterfall today, but when we got there it was Closed For Repairs. I think they had to order a missing part off of Amazon. Probably the flowing H2O, which is a major component of a waterfall.

I lived in a world of magic and color then—my mother’s voice a sapphire stream flecked with emeralds, my father’s a soft caramel. In summer I ran barefoot through the valleys with my cousins and kin and saw their voices rise up in vibrant wisps of yellow and gold. The wind was sometimes fierce pink, and the sound of the waterfall on rocks glistened silver.

As the wind swelled, my tree started to sway. Almost like a human body it swung back and around, gently at first, then more and more wildly. While the swaying intensified, so did my fears that the trunk might snap and hurl me to the ground. But in time my confidence returned. Amazed at how the tree could be at once so flexible and so sturdy, I held on tight as it bent and waved, twisted and swirled, slicing curves and arcs through the air. With each graceful swing, I felt less a creature of the land and more a part of the wind itself. "The rain began falling, it's sound merging with the splashing river and the singing trees. Branches streamed like waterfalls of green. Tiny rivers cascaded down every trunk, twisting through moss meadows and bark canyons. All the while, I rode out the gale. I could not have felt wetter. I could not have felt freer. "When, at last, the storm subsided, the entire world seemed newly born. Sunbeams danced on rain-washed leaves. Curling columns of mist rose from every glade. The forest's colors shown more vivid, its smells struck more fresh. And I understood, for the first time in my life, that the Earth was always being remade, that life was always being renewed. That it may have been the afternoon of this particular day, but it was still the very morning of Creation.

She wanted to find the place where lightning bolts were stored, to discover where the wind began, and to watch as love poured down in generous waterfalls into hearts that moved in its current. What a joy to be among the chorus when one more of those hearts turned to the Son. How loud the sound must be.

I wasn’t in the mood to talk. The mournful sound of the rubber wheels of the tea trolley squeaking on the lino floor was the right soundtrack for the end of the world. Sometimes the tea lady lost her grip and the trolley hit the corners of the walls and beds. It was the equivalent of waterfalls and parrots in my new terrible world.

My Childhood Home I See Again by Abraham Lincoln My childhood home I see again, And sadden with the view; And still, as memory crowds my brain, There's pleasure in it too. O Memory! thou midway world 'Twixt earth and paradise, Where things decayed and loved ones lost In dreamy shadows rise, And, freed from all that's earthly vile, Seem hallowed, pure, and bright, Like scenes in some enchanted isle All bathed in liquid light. As dusky mountains please the eye When twilight chases day; As bugle-notes that, passing by, In distance die away; As leaving some grand waterfall, We, lingering, list its roar-- So memory will hallow all We've known, but know no more. Near twenty years have passed away Since here I bid farewell To woods and fields, and scenes of play, And playmates loved so well. Where many were, but few remain Of old familiar things; But seeing them, to mind again The lost and absent brings. The friends I left that parting day, How changed, as time has sped! Young childhood grown, strong manhood gray, And half of all are dead. I hear the loved survivors tell How nought from death could save, Till every sound appears a knell, And every spot a grave. I range the fields with pensive tread, And pace the hollow rooms, And feel (companion of the dead) I'm living in the tombs.

She thought, sometimes, that, after all, this was the happiest time of her life—the honeymoon, as people called it. To taste the full sweetness of it, it would have been necessary doubtless to fly to those lands with sonorous names where the days after marriage are full of laziness most suave. In post chaises behind blue silken curtains to ride slowly up steep road, listening to the song of the postilion re-echoed by the mountains, along with the bells of goats and the muffled sound of a waterfall; at sunset on the shores of gulfs to breathe in the perfume of lemon trees; then in the evening on the villa-terraces above, hand in hand to look at the stars, making plans for the future. It seemed to her that certain places on earth must bring happiness, as a plant peculiar to the soil, and that cannot thrive elsewhere. Why could not she lean over balconies in Swiss chalets, or enshrine her melancholy in a Scotch cottage, with a husband dressed in a black velvet coat with long tails, and thin shoes, a pointed hat and frills? Perhaps she would have liked to confide all these things to someone. But how tell an undefinable uneasiness, variable as the clouds, unstable as the winds? Words failed her—the opportunity, the courage.

The immense mountains and precipices that overhung me on every side, the sound of the river raging among the rocks, and the dashing of the waterfalls around spoke of a power mighty as Omnipotence—and I ceased to fear or to bend before any being less almighty than that which had created and ruled the elements, here displayed in their most terrific guise.

sound, a cascading waterfall of glee. I

Can you hear it?” she whispers. I pause, ears straining, but all I hear are faint sounds from the city below and the constant draw of the waterfall at the base of the mountain. “Hear what?” And she smiles, through the tears dried on her cheeks, through the glassiness of her eyes. The sight is so damn beautiful that it’s hard to breathe. “The sun,” Auren answers quietly, tone filled with a tentative, innocent joy. One that you’re afraid of saying too loud in case it breaks. “She’s singing to me.” Emotion clogs in my throat as I watch her tip her head back again. Watch her eyes close. I draw a knuckle down her soft cheek. “And what does she sing, Goldfinch?” I murmur. Her smile breaks through like the sunlight above us. “The song of home,” she says. “The sun is singing the song of home.” My chest swells, and when she reaches a hand up and tugs at my arm, I lie back with her, situating until we’re arm to arm, leg to leg. “Listen,” she whispers. So I do. I thread my fingers through her own, and I listen. But my song of home doesn’t come from the sun. Mine comes from her.

HAPPENING APART FROM WHAT’S HAPPENING AROUND IT There is a vividness to eleven years of love because it is over. A clarity of Greece now because I live in Manhattan or New England. If what is happening is part of what’s going on around what’s occurring, it is impossible to know what is truly happening. If love is part of the passion, part of the fine food or the villa on the Mediterranean, it is not clear what the love is. When I was walking in the mountains with the Japanese man and began to hear the water, he said, “What is the sound of the waterfall?” “Silence,” he finally told me. The stillness I did not notice until the sound of water falling made apparent the silence I had been hearing long before. I ask myself what is the sound of women? What is the word for that still thing I have hunted inside them for so long? Deep inside the avalanche of joy, the thing deeper in the dark, and deeper still in the bed where we are lost. Deeper, deeper down where a woman’s heart is holding its breath, where something very far away in that body is becoming something we don’t have a name for.

I sat there for a long time, listening to the waterfall intone, its sound filling my ears. It was like the murmur of countless voices and I thought they were prayers. All humanity's laments and powerlessness. Perhaps this is what it sounded like to God, a cacophony that never ended. Sometimes our Lord stuck his finger into the flowing currents and plucked a drop from farthest away, and examined it closely before placing it on the tip of his tongue. And that was the moment a miracle happened somewhere on our earth, and a person received solace.

The drama streamed forth from the might of its own grace, like a waterfall plunging into a woodland pool. Underneath the words, the watery variety of sounds, silences, and terrifying mysteries beat in my pulse, in the ebb and flow of the music. I was not the composer, merely the conduit as this new creation poured out of me, floating like a feather on the breath of God.

There is only early morning light. Then the Water Train passes. Different. A weight of sound. The sound of a great waterfall crashing into a pool. It has the power church bells must used to have.

The sound of rushing water filled Amy Cahill’s ears. If she kept her eyes closed, she could imagine she was standing under a beautiful tropical waterfall. Unfortunately, she was hiding in an airport bathroom. Inside

Where mermaids live looks a bit like your pool.' said Bernard. 'Except they build houses out of whale bones and the wreckage of sunken ships. They play chess with seahorses. They wear capes of fish scales and sleep on beds made from seaweed.' As we listened, I thought I heard a slight splashing from the far end of the pool. 'At night,' Bernard continued, 'they turn on an electric eel for a night-light, and they light a fire, and the smoke goes up a chimney made from coral.' 'Wait a minute,' interupted Zoe, clearly immersed in Bernard's description. 'If they live underwater, how could they have a fire?' 'You should ask them,' said Bernard. Zoe and I open our eyes. Now, look, I know the light was just playing tricks on us. And I know we'd all probably inhaled too much sequin glue. But for the briefest moment, the blue of Zoe's pool gave way to deeper, darker aqua-colored water. The few plants and rocks were replaced with a lagoon and a waterfall where several mermaids lounged half in the water, half in the sun. They splashed and dove, their laughter making the same sound as the water.

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

Cats make cuddly pets, but you can’t take them for walks. That’s why I love my pet waterfall, which also makes the splashiest snuggles. However, neither cats nor waterfalls lay eggs, which makes ducks the superior jazz musicians.

You first taught me the great principle "Begin where you are." I had thought one had to start by summoning up what we believe about the goodness and greatness of God, by thinking about creation and redemption and "all the blessings of this life." You turned to the brook and once more splashed your burning face and hands in the little waterfall and said, "Why not begin with this?" And it worked. Apparently you have never guessed how much. That cushiony moss, that coldness and sound and dancing light were no doubt the very minor blessings compared with "the means of grace and the hope of glory." But then they were manifest. So far as they were concerned, sight had replaced faith. They were not the hope of glory, they were an exposition of the glory itself." Yet you were not - or so it seemed - telling me that "Nature," or "the beauties of Nature," manifest the glory. No such abstraction as "Nature" comes into it. I was learning the far more secret doctrine that pleasures are shafts of the glory as it strikes our sensibility. As it impinges on our will or understanding, we give it different names - goodness or truth or the like. But its flash upon our senses and mood is pleasure.

He wagged his tail, and his whole body tingled. He realized the emptiness inside was not filled with happiness. Blue felt a glow within that was a result of more than just the warm sunshine on a spring day. It was more than just the gentle tumble of the waterfall, or the wind or the sound of birds. It was much, much more he knew. He looked about him and he knew he had found what he had been looking for. He had found more than his true heart's desire... He had found a forever home!

All things have the capacity for speech -- all beings have the ability to communicate something of themselves to other beings. Indeed, what is perception if not the experience of this gregarious, communicative power of things, wherein even obstensibly 'inert' objects radiate out of themselves, conveying their shapes, hues, and rhythms to other beings and to us, influencing and informing our breathing bodies though we stand far apart from those things? Not just animals and plants, then, but tumbling waterfalls and dry riverbeds, gusts of wind, compost piles and cumulus clouds, freshly painted houses (as well as houses abandoned and sometimes haunted), rusting automobiles, feathers, granite cliffs and grains of sand, tax forms, dormant volcanoes, bays and bayous made wretched by pollutants, snowdrifts, shed antlers, diamonds, and daikon radishes, all are expressive, sometimes eloquent and hence participant in the mystery of language. Our own chatter erupts in response to the abundant articulations of the world: human speech is simply our part of a much broader conversation. It follows that the myriad things are also listening, or attending, to various signs and gestures around them. Indeed, when we are at ease in our animal flesh, we will sometimes feel we are being listened to, or sensed, by the earthly surroundings. And so we take deeper care with our speaking, mindful that our sounds may carry more than a merely human meaning and resonance. This care -- this full-bodied alertness -- is the ancient, ancestral source of all word magic. It is the practice of attention to the uncanny power that lives in our spoken phrases to touch and sometimes transform the tenor of the world's unfolding.

Chase’s laughter sounds like a waterfall of crystal bubbles. His laugh is like music class when I dragged the felt-tipped xylophone mallet gently from the long, deep bar all the way to the tiny, tinkly one to hear every note in rippled succession.

He leaned in even closer until she could count the bristles on his poorly shaven chin. “But you’re pretty. You can stay. Turn around and spread your legs so I can fuck you up against the wire. I’ll get my cock in you so deep it’ll need a directory to find its way out.” “That sounds...dangerous.” “I am,” he rumbled sexily, like a waterfall that’s had a dam collapse upstream and is about to flood and destroy the village of peasants further downstream...many of whom are poor and in desperate need of medical attention.

Cascade Towers!” Jupiter shouted over the roaring, rushing sound of a waterfall as they lunged out from between the alley walls, gasping for breath. Not just a waterfall, though—a dozen waterfalls, maybe more. Some were vast, impenetrable white-water curtains that crashed spectacularly to the ground; others delicate and crystalline with a sound like tinkling glass chimes. It was a symphony of water, falling from nowhere and disappearing into nothing, arranged in the three-dimensional form of a glorious, glittering skyscraper.

Residents of Niagara Falls, New York complained that bitcoin miners powerful cooling fans, necessary to keep the computers from overheating, were drowning out the sound of the area's massive waterfalls. China, not exactly known for its environmentalism, banned mining due to its massive energy use. Of course, it was welcomed by Texas.

I probably should say that this is what makes you a good traveler in my opinion, but deep down I really think this is just universal, incontrovertible truth. There is the right way to travel, and the wrong way. And if there is one philanthropic deed that can come from this book, maybe it will be that I teach a few more people how to do it right. So, in short, my list of what makes a good traveler, which I recommend you use when interviewing your next potential trip partner: 1. You are open. You say yes to whatever comes your way, whether it’s shots of a putrid-smelling yak-butter tea or an offer for an Albanian toe-licking. (How else are you going to get the volcano dust off?) You say yes because it is the only way to really experience another place, and let it change you. Which, in my opinion, is the mark of a great trip. 2. You venture to the places where the tourists aren’t, in addition to hitting the “must-sees.” If you are exclusively visiting places where busloads of Chinese are following a woman with a flag and a bullhorn, you’re not doing it. 3. You are easygoing about sleeping/eating/comfort issues. You don’t change rooms three times, you’ll take an overnight bus if you must, you can go without meat in India and without vegan soy gluten-free tempeh butter in Bolivia, and you can shut the hell up about it. 4. You are aware of your travel companions, and of not being contrary to their desires/​needs/​schedules more often than necessary. If you find that you want to do things differently than your companions, you happily tell them to go on without you in a way that does not sound like you’re saying, “This is a test.” 5. You can figure it out. How to read a map, how to order when you can’t read the menu, how to find a bathroom, or a train, or a castle. 6. You know what the trip is going to cost, and can afford it. If you can’t afford the trip, you don’t go. Conversely, if your travel companions can’t afford what you can afford, you are willing to slum it in the name of camaraderie. P.S.: Attractive single people almost exclusively stay at dumps. If you’re looking for them, don’t go posh. 7. You are aware of cultural differences, and go out of your way to blend. You don’t wear booty shorts to the Western Wall on Shabbat. You do hike your bathing suit up your booty on the beach in Brazil. Basically, just be aware to show the culturally correct amount of booty. 8. You behave yourself when dealing with local hotel clerks/​train operators/​tour guides etc. Whether it’s for selfish gain, helping the reputation of Americans traveling abroad, or simply the spreading of good vibes, you will make nice even when faced with cultural frustrations and repeated smug “not possible”s. This was an especially important trait for an American traveling during the George W. years, when the world collectively thought we were all either mentally disabled or bent on world destruction. (One anecdote from that dark time: in Greece, I came back to my table at a café to find that Emma had let a nearby [handsome] Greek stranger pick my camera up off our table. He had then stuck it down the front of his pants for a photo. After he snapped it, he handed the camera back to me and said, “Show that to George Bush.” Which was obviously extra funny because of the word bush.) 9. This last rule is the most important to me: you are able to go with the flow in a spontaneous, non-uptight way if you stumble into something amazing that will bump some plan off the day’s schedule. So you missed the freakin’ waterfall—you got invited to a Bahamian family’s post-Christening barbecue where you danced with three generations of locals in a backyard under flower-strewn balconies. You won. Shut the hell up about the waterfall. Sally

Before me green slopes made a wide amphitheatre, enclosing a frothy and pulsating lake into which, over many-coloured rocks, a waterfall was pouring. Here once again I realised that something had happened to my senses so that they were now receiving impressions which would normally exceed their capacity. On earth, such a waterfall could not have been perceived at all as a whole; it was too big. Its sound would have been a terror in the woods for twenty miles. Here, after the first shock, my sensibility ‘took’ both as a well-built ship takes a huge wave. I exulted. The noise, though gigantic, was like giants’ laughter: like the revelry of a whole college of giants together laughing, dancing, singing, roaring at their high works.

Away on his right he could see, rather indistinctly, the Western Mountains. On his left was the gleam of the Great River, and everything was so quiet that he could hear the sound of the waterfall at Beaversdam, a mile away. There was no difficulty in picking out the two stars they had come to see. They hung rather low in the southern sky, almost as bright as two little moons and very close together. “Are they going to have a collision?” he asked in an awestruck voice. “Nay, dear Prince,” said the Doctor (and he too spoke in a whisper). “The great lords of the upper sky know the steps of their dance too well for that. Look well upon them. Their meeting is fortunate and means some great good for the sad realm of Narnia. Tarva, the Lord of Victory, salutes Alambil, the Lady of Peace. They are just coming to their nearest.

She is a Weyward. And she carries another Weyward inside her. She gathers herself together, every cell blazing, and thinks: Now. The window breaks, a waterfall of sharp sounds. The room grows dark with feathered bodies, shooting through the broken window, the fireplace. Beaks, claws, and eyes flashing. Feathers brushing her skin. Simon yells, his hand loosening on her throat. She sucks in the air, falling to her knees, one hand cradling her stomach. Something touches her foot, and she sees a dark tide of spiders spreading across the floor. Birds continue to stream through the window. Insects, too: the azure flicker of damselflies, moths with orange eyes on their wings. Tiny, gossamer mayflies. Bees in a ferocious golden swarm. She feels something sharp on her shoulder, its claws digging into her flesh. She looks up at blue-black feathers, streaked with white. A crow. The same crow that has watched over her since she arrived. Tears fill her eyes, and she knows in that moment that she is not alone in the cottage. Altha is there, in the spiders that dance across the floor. Violet is there, in the mayflies that glisten and undulate like some great silver snake. And all the other Weyward women, from the first of the line, are there, too. They have always been with her, and always will be.

This place, our little cloud forest, even though we missed our papi, it was the most beautiful place you've ever seen. We didn't really know that then, because it was the only place we'd ever seen, except in picture in books and magazines, but now that's I've seen other place, I know. I know how beautiful it was. And we loved it anyway even before we knew. Because the trees had these enormous dark green leaves, as a big as a bed, and they would sway in the wind. And when it rain you could hear the big, fat raindrops splatting onto those giant leaves, and you could only see the sky in bright blue patches if you were walking a long way off to a friend's house or to church or something, when you passed through a clearing and all those leaves would back away and open up and the hot sunshine would beat down all yellow and gold and sticky. And there were waterfalls everywhere with big rock pools where you could take a bath and the water was always warm and it smelled like sunlight. And at night there was the sound of the tree frogs and the music of the rushing water from the falls and all the songs of the night birds, and Mami would make the most delicious chilate, and Abuela would sing to us in the old language, and Soledad and I would gather herbs and dry them and bundle them for Papi to sell in the market when he had a day off, and that's how we passed our days.' Luca can see it. He's there, far away in the misty cloud forest, in a hut with a packed dirt floor and a cool breeze, with Rebeca and Soledad and their mami and abuela, and he can even see their father, far away down the mountain and through the streets of that clogged, enormous city, wearing a long apron and a chef's hat, and his pockets full of dried herbs. Luca can smell the wood of the fire, the cocoa and cinnamon of the chilate, and that's how he knows Rebeca is magical, because she can transport him a thousand miles away into her own mountain homestead just by the sound of her voice.

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? ... 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.

Secrets I am all secrets now. I know when you walk into a room. I don't need to see or hear you behind me, but I know you're there and wish you'd touch my shoulder when you walk by. How can you do that, without a sound, send electricity, a current through a room full of people? When did this crazy secret life start? People see me but don't see I've changed. The me people see isn't the tangled me inside, trying not to think about you, your laugh splashing like a waterfall on a hot summer day.

You really don’t believe that anything can have a value of its own beyond what function it serves for human beings?” Resaint said. “Value to who?” Resaint asked Halyard to imagine a planet in some remote galaxy—a lush, seething, glittering planet covered with stratospheric waterfalls, great land-sponges bouncing through the valleys, corals budding in perfect niveous hexagons, humming lichens glued to pink crystals, prismatic jellyfish breaching from the rivers, titanic lilies relying on tornadoes to spread their pollen—a planet full of complex, interconnected life but devoid of consciousness. “Are you telling me that, if an asteroid smashed into this planet and reduced every inch of its surface to dust, nothing would be lost? Because nobody in particular would miss it?” “But the universe is bloody huge—stuff like that must happen every minute. You can’t go on strike over it. Honestly it sounds to me to like your real enemy isn’t climate change or habitat loss, it’s entropy. You don’t like the idea that everything eventually crumbles. Well, it does. If you’re this worried about species extinction, wait until you hear about the heat death of the universe.” “I would be upset about the heat death of the universe too if human beings were accelerating the rate of it by a hundred times or more.” “And if a species’ position with respect to us doesn’t matter— you know, those amoebae they found that live at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, if they’re just as important as Chiu Chiu or my parents’ dog, even though nobody ever gets anywhere near them—if distance in space doesn’t matter, why should distance in time? If we don’t care about whether their lives overlap with our lives, why even worry about whether they exist simultaneously with us? Your favorite wasp—Adelo-midgy-midgy—” “Adelognathus marginatum—” “It did exist. It always will have existed. Extinction can’t take that away. It went through its nasty little routine over and over again for millions and millions of years. The show was a big success. So why is it important that it’s still running at the same time you are? Isn’t that centering the whole thing on human beings, which is exactly what we’re not supposed to be doing? I mean, for that matter—reality is all just numbers anyway, right? I mean underneath? That’s what people say now. So why are you so down on the scans? Hacks aside. Why is it so crucial that these animals exist right now in an ostensibly meat-based format, just because we do? My point is you talk about extinction as if you’re taking this enlightened post-human View from Nowhere but if we really get down to it you’re definitely taking a View from Karin Resaint two arms two legs one head born Basel Switzerland year of our lord two-thousand-and-when-ever.” But Resaint wasn’t listening anymore.

that was still okay because this place, our little cloud forest, even though we missed our papi, it was the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen. We didn’t really know that then, because it was the only place we’d ever seen, except in pictures in books and magazines, but now that I’ve seen other places, I know. I know how beautiful it was. And we loved it anyway even before we knew. Because the trees had these enormous dark green leaves, as big as a bed, and they would sway in the wind. And when it rained you could hear the big, fat raindrops splatting onto those giant leaves, and you could only see the sky in bright blue patches if you were walking a long way off to a friend’s house or to church or something, when you passed through a clearing and all those leaves would back away and open up and the hot sunshine would beat down all yellow and gold and sticky. And there were waterfalls everywhere with big rock pools where you could take a bath and the water was always warm and it smelled like sunlight. And at night there was the sound of the tree frogs and the music of the rushing water from the falls and all the songs of the night birds, and

He created waterfalls for her out of the morning dew, and from the colored pebbles of a meadow stream he made a necklace more beautiful than emeralds, sadder than pearls. She caught him in her net of silken hair, she carried him down, down, into deep and silent waters, past obliteration. He showed her frozen stars and molten sun; she gave him long, entwined shadows and the sound of black velvet. He reached out to her and touched moss, grass, ancient trees, iridescent rocks; her fingertips, striving upwards, brushed old planets and silver moonlight, the flash of comets and the cry of dissolving suns.

Inside the words there was magic. I would throw open the dictionary and dive in. Words were undiscovered continents, I would swim in amongst them, hauling them up like treasures found on the seabed. They were curiosities with weight and wonder. They were telescopes and hourglasses, barnacles and periwinkles. The words would slip through my fingers like silk, like sand. There were landlubber words all granite and gumboots and there were words that caught the mystery of air, and sounds that spoke to one another like birds across the sky and I’d go foraging for them like mushrooms, watch them like waterfalls and

But that was still okay because this place, our little cloud forest, even though we missed our papi, it was the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen. We didn’t really know that then, because it was the only place we’d ever seen, except in pictures in books and magazines, but now that I’ve seen other places, I know. I know how beautiful it was. And we loved it anyway even before we knew. Because the trees had these enormous dark green leaves, as big as a bed, and they would sway in the wind. And when it rained you could hear the big, fat raindrops splatting onto those giant leaves, and you could only see the sky in bright blue patches if you were walking a long way off to a friend’s house or to church or something, when you passed through a clearing and all those leaves would back away and open up and the hot sunshine would beat down all yellow and gold and sticky. And there were waterfalls everywhere with big rock pools where you could take a bath and the water was always warm and it smelled like sunlight. And at night there was the sound of the tree frogs and the music of the rushing water from the falls and all the songs of the night birds, and Mami would make the most delicious chilate, and Abuela would sing to us in the old language

This isn't a situation, okay? I save that word for when things get really bad.' 'Really bad? This isn't really bad? what do you want, a nuclear -' She broke off with a scream as Lily, braving the light, launched herself at Jace, her teeth bared in a searing snarl. Jace seized the second blade from his belt and hurled it through the air; Lily fell back screeching, a long gash sizzling down her arm. As she staggered, the other vampires surged forward around her. There were so many of them, Clary thought, so many- She fumbled at her belt, her fingers closing around the hilltop the dagger. It felt cold and foreign in her hand. She didn't know how to use a knife. She'd never hit anyone, let alone stabbed them. She'd even skipped gym class the day they'd learned how to ward off muggers and rapists with ordinary objects like car keys and pencils. She pulled the knife red, raised it in a shaking hand - The windows exploded inwards in a shower of broken glass. She heard herself cry out, saw the vampires - barely an arms length from her and Jace - whirl in astonishment, shock mingling with terror on their faces. Through the shattered windows came dozens of sleek shapes, four-footed and low to the ground, their coats scattering the moonlight and broken bits of glass. Their eyes were blue fire, and from their throats came a combined low growl that sounded like the roiling crash of a waterfall. Wolves. 'Now this,' said Jace, 'is a situation.

I undress, look at myself in the mirror with no special acknowledgement of the worn-down woman who looks back at me, and then climb into the shower, turn on the hot water, and once the temperature’s set to exactly where I want it, when the water begins to feel like a womb, I cry into my palms. Under the shower’s waterfall, I squint, sniffle, choke. I cough. I stutter my way through every defeated sound I know, and I hate myself for making them. I hope no one can hear me, and that the shower will keep my secret. I cry like that until I have nothing left in me, until I’ve been emptied, and then I stop and decide that it’s over, that I should stop feeling sorry for myself. That I’ve already held myself together for this long. That I can’t break apart again now.

Reality is everything that exists. That sounds straightforward, doesn’t it? Actually, it isn’t. There are various problems. What about dinosaurs, which once existed but exist no longer? What about stars, which are so far away that, by the time their light reaches us and we can see them, they may have fizzled out? We’ll come to dinosaurs and stars in a moment. But in any case, how do we know things exist, even in the present? Well, our five senses — sight, smell, touch, hearing and taste — do a pretty good job of convincing us that many things are real: rocks and camels, newly mown grass and freshly ground coffee, sandpaper and velvet, waterfalls and doorbells, sugar and salt. But are we only going to call something ‘real’ if we can detect it directly with one of our five senses? What about a distant galaxy, too far away to be seen with the naked eye? What about a bacterium, too small to be seen without a powerful microscope? Must we say that these do not exist because we can’t see them? No. Obviously we can enhance our senses through the use of special instruments: telescopes for the galaxy, microscopes for bacteria. Because we understand telescopes and microscopes, and how they work, we can use them to extend the reach of our senses — in this case, the sense of sight — and what they enable us to see convinces us that galaxies and bacteria exist. How about radio waves? Do they exist? Our eyes can’t detect them, nor can our ears, but again special instruments — television sets, for example — convert them into signals that we can see and hear. So, although we can’t see or hear radio waves, we know they are a part of reality. As with telescopes and microscopes, we understand how radios and televisions work. So they help our senses to build a picture of what exists: the real world — reality. Radio telescopes (and X-ray telescopes) show us stars and galaxies through what seem like different eyes: another way to expand our view of reality.

Clay’s heart was beating fast. Peril tilted her head at Starflight. “He is smart,” she said. “Just like you said. I guess I could do that.” She sounded like she wasn’t entirely convinced. “If you’re really sure you want to escape tonight.” “Of course we are,” Tsunami said, springing to her feet. “Let’s get out of here.” “But Sunny —” Starflight said. “We hide somewhere and wait until Peril can free her tomorrow,” Tsunami said. “And Glory,” Clay said. “We have to save Glory, too.” “Glory?” Peril’s brow creased in a frown. “The RainWing. Queen Scarlet’s new artwork,” Clay said. “Oh,” Peril said. “Her. She’s very beautiful.” She narrowed her eyes at Clay, which confused him. “Let’s run away now and worry about that later,” Tsunami said. “Is there somewhere we can hide?” Peril snapped her wings open. “Below the waterfall. There’s a cave only I know about.” She turned, nearly smacking Clay with her tail, and hopped over the pool into the fire. Clay watched in amazement as she wrapped her claws around two of the black rocks and picked them up. She stepped into the tunnel, and the fire from the rocks went with her, blazing around her talons. Carefully she piled the fire on the rock floor outside until there was a gap big enough for the dragonets to jump through. Tsunami went first, and then Clay, and then Starflight. When they were all out in the tunnel, Peril rebuilt the wall of fire across the cave entrance. “There,” she said with satisfaction. “Now she’ll have no idea how you got out.” “Can you get these off our wings?” Starflight whispered, pointing to the bindings. Peril gave him a hard look. “Maybe,” she said. “But maybe I’ll wait until I know you won’t leave without saying good-bye.” “We wouldn’t leave without our friends,” Clay promised. She scowled. “Which way to the waterfall?” Tsunami asked. Peril nodded up the tunnel and slithered off, leading the way. “Stop making her mad,” Tsunami hissed in Clay’s ear as they followed. “Me?” he said, genuinely surprised. “What did I do?” “Well, you’re a handsome idiot,” she said affectionately. “And I’ll tell you later.” Which didn’t clear things up at all. Shortly

In the Naked Bed, in Plato’s Cave In the naked bed, in Plato’s cave, Reflected headlights slowly slid the wall, Carpenters hammered under the shaded window, Wind troubled the window curtains all night long, A fleet of trucks strained uphill, grinding, Their freights covered, as usual. The ceiling lightened again, the slanting diagram Slid slowly forth. Hearing the milkman’s chop, His striving up the stair, the bottle’s chink, I rose from bed, lit a cigarette, And walked to the window. The stony street Displayed the stillness in which buildings stand, The street-lamp’s vigil and the horse’s patience. The winter sky’s pure capital Turned me back to bed with exhausted eyes. Strangeness grew in the motionless air. The loose Film grayed. Shaking wagons, hooves’ waterfalls, Sounded far off, increasing, louder and nearer. A car coughed, starting. Morning, softly Melting the air, lifted the half-covered chair From underseas, kindled the looking-glass, Distinguished the dresser and the white wall. The bird called tentatively, whistled, called, Bubbled and whistled, so! Perplexed, still wet With sleep, affectionate, hungry and cold. So, so, O son of man, the ignorant night, the travail Of early morning, the mystery of beginning Again and again, while History is unforgiven.

She wraps her legs around my waist, and I walk us slowly down the hall. "Mmm, wait," she whines against my mouth. "I haven't showered. I'm so gross, and I don't..." She trails off as I turn into my bathroom, then set her down. She shuffles her bare feet against the gray stone tile, an inquisitive look on her face as she looks around the narrow space bathed in neutral hues. I push open the glass door and turn on the shower. Water cascades from the waterfall showered. "Oh," she says as she grins and bites her bottom lip. By the time we've helped each other out of our clothes, the water's warm. I help her in first, then step in. And then, under the hot stream of water, we resume our dirty kissing and grabbing. "Wait, wait." She presses a hand against my chest, then reaches for the shampoo bottle on the ledge. "I do need to get clean first." I laugh and follow her lead by shampooing my own hair and doing a quick rinse with body wash. She holds her hand out for the loofah, but I shake my head. "Let me?" A devilish smirk tugs at her perfect mouth. When she nods and licks her lips, I have to take a second. God, this woman. The way she's sweet and filthy all at once is enough to make me lose it right here. But I refuse. Not before she gets what I'm dying to give her. I work up a lather and run the loofah all over her body. I take my time, paying attention to every part of her. These beautifully curved hips, the fullness of her thighs, the gentle curve of her waist, her arms, her hands, the swell of her boobs. And then I lather up my hands and slowly work between her legs. She clutches both hands around my biceps, and her toes curl against the earthen-hued river rock that lines the shower floor. Her eyes go wide and pleading as she looks up at me. I lean down to kiss her. "Tell me what you want." "You. Just you. Please." With her breathy request, I'm ready to burst. Not yet, though. She reaches down to palm me, but I gently push her hand away. I want this to be one hundred percent about her. When she presses her mouth against my shoulder and her sounds go louder and more frantic, I work my hand faster. She's panting, pleading, shouting. When I feel the sting of her teeth against my skin, I grin. Fuck yeah, my girl is rough when she loses it and I love it. I love her. She explodes against my palm, the weight of her body shuddering against me. I've got her, though. I've always, always got you. When she starts to ease back down, she lets out a breathy laugh. "Oh my god." I nod down at her, which only makes her laugh harder. Then she glances down at what I'm sporting between my legs and flashes a naughty smirk. "Let's do something about that." Soon it's me at the mercy of her hands. My head spins at the pleasure she delivers so confidently, like she knows every single one of my buttons to push. When I lose it, I'm shuddering and grunting. For a few seconds, my vision's blurry. She's that incredible.

I sucked on a blade of grass and watched the millwheel turn. I was lying on my stomach on the stream's opposite bank, my head propped in my hands. There was a tiny rainbow in the mist above the froth and boil at the foot of the waterfall, and an occasional droplet found its way to me. The steady splashing and the sound of the wheel drowned out all other noises in the wood. The mill was deserted today, and I contemplated it because I had not seen its like in ages. Watching the wheel and listening to the water were more than just relaxing. It was somewhat hypnotic. … My head nodding with each creak of the wheel, I forced everything else from my mind and set about remembering the necessary texture of the sand, its coloration, the temperature, the winds, the touch of salt in the air, the clouds... I slept then and I dreamed, but not of the place that I sought. I regarded a big roulette wheel, and we were all of us on it-my brothers, my sisters, myself, and others whom I knew or had known-rising and falling, each with his allotted section. We were all shouting for it to stop for us and wailing as we passed the top and headed down once more. The wheel had begun to slow and I was on the rise. A fair-haired youth hung upside down before me, shouting pleas and warnings that were drowned in the cacophony of voices. His face darkened, writhed, became a horrible thing to behold, and I slashed at the cord that bound his ankle and he fell from sight. The wheel slowed even more as I neared the top, and I saw Lorraine then. She was gesturing, beckoning frantically, and calling my name. I leaned toward her, seeing her clearly, wanting her, wanting to help her. But as the wheel continued its turning she passed from my sight. “Corwin!” I tried to ignore her cry, for I was almost to the top. It came again, but I tensed myself and prepared to spring upward. If it did not stop for me, I was going to try gimmicking the damned thing, even though falling off would mean my total ruin. I readied myself for the leap. Another click... “Corwin!” It receded, returned, faded, and I was looking toward the water wheel again with my name echoing in my ears and mingling, merging, fading into the sound of the stream. … It plunged for over a thousand feet: a mighty cataract that smote the gray river like an anvil. The currents were rapid and strong, bearing bubbles and flecks of foam a great distance before they finally dissolved. Across from us, perhaps half a mile distant, partly screened by rainbow and mist, like an island slapped by a Titan, a gigantic wheel slowly rotated, ponderous and gleaming. High overhead, enormous birds rode like drifting crucifixes the currents of the air. We stood there for a fairly long while. Conversation was impossible, which was just as well. After a time, when she turned from it to look at me, narrow-eyed, speculative, I nodded and gestured with my eyes toward the wood. Turning then, we made our way back in the direction from which we had come. Our return was the same process in reverse, and I managed it with greater ease. When conversation became possible once more, Dara still kept her silence, apparently realizing by then that I was a part of the process of change going on around us. It was not until we stood beside our own stream once more, watching the small mill wheel in its turning, that she spoke.

Legacy items. That’s the term we used to describe these golden moments. Sometimes we even knew what it meant. Taking out bin Laden was a legacy item. So was rescuing the auto industry, bringing troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan, or repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” But just as often, we imagined our legacy with the starry eyes of a hobo describing the Big Rock Candy Mountain. We dreamed of a distant utopia, a sunny political paradise, where the credit flows like a waterfall and approvals stay sky-high. We weren’t there yet. With twenty months to go until POTUS left office, our place in history was far from certain. But inside the building, something had undoubtedly changed. President Obama’s jaunty, let’s-go-for-it attitude was infectious. We no longer felt like turtles in our shells. Our growing confidence was matched by growing competence as well. That’s not to disparage the early days: as White Houses go, Obama’s functioned fairly smoothly from the start. Still, the longer POTUS ran the institution, the more we learned from our mistakes. After the Healthcare.gov disaster, we began “red-teaming” a growing number of big decisions, assigning designated cynics to guard against undiluted hope. Confronted with its lack of diversity, Obamaworld gradually became a place where rooms full of white guys were the exception and not the rule. Baby steps, I know. But these baby steps made us a unicorn among bureaucracies—we improved over time. Somewhat to my astonishment, so did I. At the risk of sounding boastful, I had now gone two full years without angering a sovereign nation. Even better, the White House finally felt like home. There was no one moment when the transformation happened. I didn’t burst forth from a cocoon. It was more like learning a language. You study, you practice, you embarrass yourself. And then one day someone cuts you off in traffic and you call them a motherfucker in perfect Portuguese. Whoa, you think. I guess I’m learning.

Rather, I found through this experience that there is significant similarity between meditating under a waterfall and tidying. When you stand under a waterfall, the only audible sound is the roar of water. As the cascade pummels your body, the sensation of pain soon disappears and numbness spreads. Then a sensation of heat warms you from the inside out, and you enter a meditative trance. Although I had never tried this form of meditation before, the sensation it generated seemed extremely familiar. It closely resembled what I experience when I am tidying. While not exactly a meditative state, there are times when I am cleaning that I can quietly commune with myself. The work of carefully considering each object I own to see whether it sparks joy inside me is like conversing with myself through the medium of my possessions. For this reason, it is essential to create a quiet space in which to evaluate the things in your life. Ideally, you should not even be listening to music. Sometimes I hear of methods that recommend tidying in time to a catchy song, but personally, I don’t encourage this. I feel that noise makes it harder to hear the internal dialogue between the owner and his or her belongings. Listening to the TV is, of course, out of the question. If you need some background noise to relax, choose environmental or ambient music with no lyrics or well-defined melodies. If you want to add momentum to your tidying work, tap the power of the atmosphere in your room rather than relying on music. The best time to start is early morning. The fresh morning air keeps your mind clear and your power of discernment sharp. For this reason, most of my lessons commence in the morning. The earliest lesson I ever conducted began at six thirty, and we were able to clean at twice the usual speed. The clear, refreshed feeling gained after standing under a waterfall can be addictive. Similarly, when you finish putting your space in order, you will be overcome with the urge to do it again. And, unlike waterfall meditation, you don’t have to travel long distances over hard terrain to get there. You can enjoy the same effect in your own home. That’s pretty special, don’t you think?

Blaine: ONE MOMENT. I MUST ADJUST THE VOLUME FOR YOU TO ENJOY THE FULL EFFECT. There was a brief, whispery hooting sound (a kind of mechanical throat-clearing) and then they were assaulted by a vast roar. It was water (a billion gallons a minute, for all Jake knew) pouring over the lip of the chasm and falling perhaps two thousand feet into the deep stone basin at the base of the falls. Streamers of mist floated past the blunt almost-faces of the jutting dogs like steam from the vents of hell. The level of sound kept climbing. Now Jake's whole head vibrated with it, and as he clapped his hands over his ears, he saw Roland, Eddie, and Susannah doing the same. Oy was barking, but Jake couldn't hear him. Susannah's lips were moving again, and again he could read the words (STOP IT, BLAINE, STOP IT!) but he couldn't hear them any more than he could hear Oy's barks, although he was sure Susannah was screaming at the top of her lungs. And still Blaine increased the sound of the waterfall, until Jake could feel his eyes shaking in their sockets and he was sure his ears were going to short out like overstressed stereo speakers. Then it was over. They still hung above the moon-misty drop, the moonbows still made their slow and dreamlike revolutions before the curtain of endlessly falling water, the wet and brutal stone faces of the dog-guardians continued to jut out of the torrent, but that world-ending thunder was gone. For a moment Jake thought what he'd feared had happened, that he had gone deaf. Then he realized that he could hear Oy, still barking, and Susannah crying. At first these sounds seemed distant and flat, as if his ears had been packed with cracker-crumbs, but then they began to clarify. Eddie put his arm around Susannah's shoulders and looked toward the route map. Eddie: Nice guy, Blaine. Blaine: (his booming voice sounds laughing and injured simultaneously) I MERELY THOUGHT YOU WOULD ENJOY HEARING THE SOUND OF THE FALLS AT FULL VOLUME. I THOUGHT IT MIGHT HELP YOU TO FORGET MY REGRETTABLE MISTAKE IN THE MATTER OF EDITH BUNKER. My fault, Jake thought. Blaine may just be a machine, and a suicidal one at that, but he still doesn't like to be laughed at. He sat beside Susannah and put his own arm around her. He could still hear the Falls of the Hounds, but the sound was now distant.

Then I remembered something else from the 2112 liner notes. I pulled them up and scanned over them again. There was my answer, in the text that preceded Part III—“Discovery”: Behind my beloved waterfall, in the little room that was hidden beneath the cave, I found it. I brushed away the dust of the years, and picked it up, holding it reverently in my hands. I had no idea what it might be, but it was beautiful. I learned to lay my fingers across the wires, and to turn the keys to make them sound differently. As I struck the wires with my other hand, I produced my first harmonious sounds, and soon my own music! I found the waterfall near the southern edge of the city, just inside the curved wall of the atmospheric dome. As soon as I found it, I activated my jet boots and flew over the foaming river below the falls, then passed through the waterfall itself. My haptic suit did its best to simulate the sensation of torrents of falling water striking my body, but it felt more like someone pounding on my head, shoulders, and back with a bundle of sticks. Once I’d passed through the falls to the other side, I found the opening of a cave and went inside. The cave narrowed into a long tunnel, which terminated in a small, cavernous room. I searched the room and discovered that one of the stalagmites protruding from the floor was slightly worn around the tip. I grabbed the stalagmite and pulled it toward me, but it didn’t budge. I tried pushing, and it gave, bending as if on some hidden hinge, like a lever. I heard a rumble of grinding stone behind me, and I turned to see a trapdoor opening in the floor. A hole had also opened in the roof of the cave, casting a brilliant shaft of light down through the open trapdoor, into a tiny hidden chamber below. I took an item out of my inventory, a wand that could detect hidden traps, magical or otherwise. I used it to make sure the area was clear, then jumped down through the trapdoor and landed on the dusty floor of the hidden chamber. It was a tiny cube-shaped room with a large rough-hewn stone standing against the north wall. Embedded in the stone, neck first, was an electric guitar. I recognized its design from the 2112 concert footage I’d watched during the trip here. It was a 1974 Gibson Les Paul, the exact guitar used by Alex Lifeson during the 2112 tour.

When a little of his strength returned he moved onto his side, taking her with him, still a part of her. Her hair spilled over his naked chest like a rumpled satin waterfall, and he lifted a shaking hand to smooth it off her face, feeling humbled and blessed by her sweetness and unselfish ardor. Several minutes later Elizabeth stirred in his arms, and he tipped her chin up so that he could gaze into her eyes. “Have I ever told you that you are magnificent? She started to shake her head, then suddenly remembered that he had told her she was magnificent once before, and the recollection brought poignant tears to her eyes. “You did say that to me,” she amended, brushing her fingers over his smooth shoulder because she couldn’t seem to stop touching him. “You told me that when we were together-“ “In the woodcutter’s cottage,” he finished for her, recalling the occasion as well. In reply she had chided him for acting as if he also thought Charise Dumont was magnificent, Ian remembered, regretting all the time they had lost since then…the days and nights she could have been in his arms as she was now. “Do you know how I spent the rest of the afternoon after you left the cottage?” he asked softly. When she shook her head, he said with a wry smile, “I spent it pleasurably contemplating tonight. At the time, of course, I didn’t realize tonight was years away.” He paused to draw the sheet up over her back so she wouldn’t be chilled, then he continued in the same quiet voice, “I wanted you so badly that day that I actually ached while I watched you fasten that shirt you were wearing. Although,” he added dryly, “that particular condition, brought on by that particular cause, has become my normal state for the last four weeks, so I’m quite used to it now. I wonder if I’ll miss it,” he teased. “What do you mean?” Elizabeth asked, realizing that he was perfectly serious despite his light tone. “The agony of unfulfilled desire,” he explained, brushing a kiss on her forehead, “brought on by wanting you.” “Wanting me?” she burst out, rearing up so abruptly that she nearly overturned him as she leaned up on an elbow, absently clutching the sheet to her breasts. “Is this-what we’ve just done, I mean-“ “The Scots think of it as making love,” he interrupted gently. “Unlike most English,” he added with flat scorn, “who prefer to regard it as ‘performing one’s marital duty.’” “Yes,” Elizabeth said absently, her mind on his earlier remark about wanting her until it caused him physical pain, “but is this what you meant all those times you’ve said you wanted me?” His sensual lips quirked in a half smile. “Yes.” A rosy blush stained her smooth cheeks, and despite her effort to sound severe, her eyes were lit with laughter. “And the day we bargained about the betrothal, and you told me I had something you wanted very badly, what you wanted to do with me…was this?” “Among other things,” he agreed, tenderly brushing his knuckles over her flushed cheek. “If I had known all this,” she said with a rueful smile, “I’m certain I would have asked for additional concessions.” That startled him-the thought that she would have tried to drive a harder bargain if she’d realized exactly how much and what sort of power she really held. “What kind of additional concessions?” he asked, his face carefully expressionless. She put her cheek against his shoulder, her arms curving around him. “A shorter betrothal,” she whispered. “A shorter courtship, and a shorter ceremony.

He groaned. She groaned. They both groaned as he played with the nipple. There were no words exchanged between them, nothing but soft pants and moans of pleasure. And the splash as something hit the water. Then another something. The faint echo of a gunshot froze him. Shit. Someone was fucking shooting at them. “Take a deep breath,” was the only warning he gave before yanking Arabella underwater where they’d prove a more difficult target. Wide eyes met his under the surface. Kind of hard to explain. Only his great-uncle Clive had ever inherited the famous Johnson gills. Hayder got great hair. Since he couldn’t explain why it appeared he wanted to drown her, he kicked off. With her in tow, he scissor-kicked to the deep end of the pool by the waterfall. Having explored this place many a time when working off some energy, he knew the perfect spot to shelter while he figured out where the shooter was. And then we’ll catch ’em and eat ’em. It seemed Hayder wasn’t the only one peeved at the interruption. But still… We don’t eat people. Such a disappointed kitty. But catch the hunter and we’ll order the biggest rare steak they have in stock. With the red sauce stuff? A double order of the red wine reduction, he promised. Lungs burning, Hayder dragged them to the surface, behind the filtering screen of water cascading from above. The little hidden grotto made a great hiding spot. The shooter would have a hard time targeting them, and the water would also slow the bullet and throw off its aim. He knew they were more or less safe for the moment, but she didn’t. Soaked and scentless didn’t mean Hayder couldn’t sense the fear coming off Arabella. She remained tucked close to him, for once not sneezing. Small blessing because one of her ginoromous achoos might have caused quite the amplified echo. “Was someone shooting at us?” she whispered in his ear. Kind of funny since nothing could be heard above the falling splash of water “Yes. Someone was trying to get us.” Which meant heads would roll with whoever was on duty for security today. Exactly how had someone made it on to pride land with a loaded weapon? What kind of cowards hunted shifters with bullets? The kind who thought it was okay to beat a woman. Grrrr>/I>. Man, not lion, made the sound. It was also the man who made sure to tuck Arabella as deep as he could into the pocket, using himself as a body shield just in case the gunman got a lucky shot. The crashing of water, not to mention the echoes created by the recess, made it impossible to gauge what happened outside their watery grotto. Did the shooter approach? Did he know where they’d gone? Would he stick around long enough for Hayder to hunt him down and slap him silly? Only one way to find out.

He groaned. She groaned. They both groaned as he played with the nipple. There were no words exchanged between them, nothing but soft pants and moans of pleasure. And the splash as something hit the water. Then another something. The faint echo of a gunshot froze him. Shit. Someone was fucking shooting at them. “Take a deep breath,” was the only warning he gave before yanking Arabella underwater where they’d prove a more difficult target. Wide eyes met his under the surface. Kind of hard to explain. Only his great-uncle Clive had ever inherited the famous Johnson gills. Hayder got great hair. Since he couldn’t explain why it appeared he wanted to drown her, he kicked off. With her in tow, he scissor-kicked to the deep end of the pool by the waterfall. Having explored this place many a time when working off some energy, he knew the perfect spot to shelter while he figured out where the shooter was. And then we’ll catch ’em and eat ’em. It seemed Hayder wasn’t the only one peeved at the interruption. But still… We don’t eat people. Such a disappointed kitty. But catch the hunter and we’ll order the biggest rare steak they have in stock. With the red sauce stuff? A double order of the red wine reduction, he promised. Lungs burning, Hayder dragged them to the surface, behind the filtering screen of water cascading from above. The little hidden grotto made a great hiding spot. The shooter would have a hard time targeting them, and the water would also slow the bullet and throw off its aim. He knew they were more or less safe for the moment, but she didn’t. Soaked and scentless didn’t mean Hayder couldn’t sense the fear coming off Arabella. She remained tucked close to him, for once not sneezing. Small blessing because one of her ginoromous achoos might have caused quite the amplified echo. “Was someone shooting at us?” she whispered in his ear. Kind of funny since nothing could be heard above the falling splash of water “Yes. Someone was trying to get us.” Which meant heads would roll with whoever was on duty for security today. Exactly how had someone made it on to pride land with a loaded weapon? What kind of cowards hunted shifters with bullets? The kind who thought it was okay to beat a woman. Grrrr. Man, not lion, made the sound. It was also the man who made sure to tuck Arabella as deep as he could into the pocket, using himself as a body shield just in case the gunman got a lucky shot. The crashing of water, not to mention the echoes created by the recess, made it impossible to gauge what happened outside their watery grotto. Did the shooter approach? Did he know where they’d gone? Would he stick around long enough for Hayder to hunt him down and slap him silly? Only one way to find out.

7Deep calls to deep at the sound of Your waterfalls; All Your breakers and Your waves have rolled over me. 8The LORD will command His lovingkindness in the daytime; And His song will be with me in the night, A prayer to the God of my life.

She went on to say something else, but Jamie found his attention drifting. He was feeling sleepy, for it was warm, and he could lie there for ever, he thought, listening to the sound of Isabel’s voice, in the way one listens to the conversations of birds, or the sound of a waterfall descending the side of a Scottish mountain; sounds for which we cannot come up with a meaning, but which we love dearly with all our heart, and loving anything with all your heart always brings understanding, in time.

She laughed loudly. It sounded to her husband like someone pushing a witch in a barrel over a waterfall. He pictured his wife in a barrel falling into very deep water, and this cheered him up a bit.

Only two months. The memories of fireflies and swimming naked in the waterfall did nothing but make very fine and long incisions in the membrane of contentedness I’d built up over the years—a good home, a successful career, kind neighbors, a few great relationships. A wasted life.

Noises that can reduce the difference between the background ambient hum and sudden loud sounds include: ~ White noise- this is a continuous mechanical-type noise, like the gentle hum of a motor, that covers the whole hearing range of frequencies... ~ Pink noise- this noise boosts lower frequencies for those who find white noise too sharp, and is more akin to natural noises such as steady rainfall or wind rustling through the leaves in a tree... ~ Brown noise- this is even lower frequency noise, like thunder or a crashing waterfall.

I used to become very restless. I was continually thinking of the life I would lead. I wanted to know what life had in store for me. I was particularly restless at some moments. You know there are such moments, especially in solitude. There was a small waterfall there; it fell from a height on the mountain, such a tiny thread, almost perpendicular—foaming, white and splashing. Though it fell from a great height it didn’t seem so high; it was the third of a mile away, but it only looked about fifty paces. I used to like listening to the sound of it at night. At such moments I was sometimes overcome with great restlessness; sometimes too at midday I wandered on the mountains, and stood alone halfway up a mountain surrounded by great ancient resinous pine trees; on the crest of the rock an old medieval castle in ruins; our little village far, far below, scarcely visible; bright sunshine, blue sky, and the terrible stillness. At such times I felt something was drawing me away, and I kept fancying that in walked straight on, far, far away and reached that line where sky and earth meet, there I should find the key to the mystery, there I should see a new life a thousand times richer and more turbulent than ours. I dreamed of some great town like Naples, full of palaces, noise, roar, life. And I dreamed of all sorts of things, indeed. But afterwards I fancied one might find a wealth of life even in prison.

There was the waterfall, of course, and the babble of the stream, the hum of machinery and moving air, and the muffled sound of girls crying from scattered points on the perimeter, but compared to the day, it was close enough to silent.

Can you hear it?” she whispers. I pause, ears straining, but all I hear are faint sounds from the city below and the constant draw of the waterfall at the base of the mountain. “Hear what?” And she smiles, through the tears dried on her cheeks, through the glassiness of her eyes. The sight is so damn beautiful that it’s hard to breathe. “The sun,” Auren answers quietly, tone filled with a tentative, innocent joy. One that you’re afraid of saying too loud in case it breaks. “She’s singing to me.” Emotion clogs in my throat as I watch her tip her head back again. Watch her eyes close. I draw a knuckle down her soft cheek. “And what does she sing, Goldfinch?” I murmur. Her smile breaks through like the sunlight above us. “The song of home,” she says. “The sun is singing the song of home.” My chest swells, and when she reaches a hand up and tugs at my arm, I lie back with her, situating until we’re arm to arm, leg to leg. “Listen,” she whispers. So I do. I thread my fingers through her own, and I listen. But my song of home doesn’t come from the sun. Mine comes from her. CHAPTER 47 AUREN I have no idea how long Slade stays up on that rooftop with me, but by the time we climb down, I’m buzzing with bolts of energy.

Every morning the same bright sun rises; every morning there is a rainbow on the waterfall; every evening the highest snowcapped mountain, far, far away, on the very edge of the sky shows with a purple flame; every ‘tiny gnat’ buzzing around him in the hot sunshine plays its part in that chorus: it knows its place, it loves it and is happy; every blade of grass grows and is happy! Everything has its path, and everything knows its path; it departs with a song and comes back with a song; only he knows nothing, understands nothing, neither men nor sounds, a stranger to everything and an outcast.” Dostoyevsky,

Breath!’ A voice, wild with anxiety, ordered, and I felt a cruel stab of pain where I recognized the voice because it wasn't Marcel’s. I could not obey. The waterfall pouring from my mouth didn't stop long enough for me to catch a breath. The black, icy water filled my chest, burning. The rock smacked into my back again, right between my shoulder blades, and another volley of water choked its way out of my lungs. ‘Breathe, Bell! C'mon!’ Marcel begged. Black spots bloomed across my vision, getting wider and wider, blocking out the light. The rock struck me again. The rock wasn't cold like the water; it was hot on my skin. I realized it was Marcel’s hand, trying to beat the water from my lungs. The iron bar that had dragged me from the sea was also… warm… My head whirled; the black spots covered everything… Was I dying again, then? I didn't like it. This wasn't as good as the last time. It was only dark now, nothing worth looking at here. The sound of the crashing waves faded into the black and became a quiet, even whoosh that sounded like it was coming from the inside of my ears… ‘Bell?’ Marcel asked, his voice still tense, but not as wild as before. ‘Bells, honey, can you hear me?’ The contents of my head swished and rolled sickeningly like they'd joined the rough water… ‘How long has she been unconscious?’ someone else asked. The voice that was not Marcel’s shocked me, jarred me into a more focused awareness. I realized that I was still. There was no tug of the current on me-the heaving was inside my head. The surface under me was flat and motionless. It felt grainy against my bear arms. ‘I don't know,’ Marcel reported, still frantic. His voice was very close. Hands-so warm they had to be his- I brushed wet hair from my cheeks. ‘A few minutes? It didn't take long to tow her to the beach.’ The quiet whooshing inside my ears was not the waves-it was the air moving in and out of my lungs again. Each breath burned-the passageways were as raw as if I'd scrubbed them out with steel wool. But I was breathing. And I was freezing. A thousand sharp, icy beads were striking my face and arms, making the cold worse. ‘She's breathing. She'll come around. We should get her out of the cold, though. I don't like the color she's turning…’ I recognized Sam's voice this time. ‘You think it's okay to move her?’ ‘She didn't hurt her back or anything when she fell?’ ‘I don't know.’ They hesitated.

After some uphill tracks, they arrived at a cave which entrance was overgrown by lush creeping razzleberry. Pen-tailed treeshrew took a handful of ripen razzleberry before entering. Not long, they heard a rumbling sound. Pen-tailed treeshrew stopped at the edge of gleaming river. Water was rippled from flowing waterfall with the same beryl color. It sipped the water and ate razzleberry, then gave Cemara some.

And Joey loved the sound of the water flowing in the stream. He liked to listen to the water gurgle over the stones and the loud splash of the waterfall. He enjoyed lying on his back and looking up at the sky through the leaves on the trees. It was so nice to lie in the cool shade on a hot summer’s day listening to the bees buzzing and the birds singing. It was beautiful.

At length a silence fell, and they [the Company] heard the music of the waterfall running sweetly in the shadows. Almost Frodo fancied that he could hear a voice singing, mingled with the sound of the water.

These two men have flipped my world, made colors more vivid, made sounds sweeter, made the world as a whole more bearable. My dreams consist of ray-filled days full of coconut lotion, long kisses, itchy sunburns, floating between waterfalls, and sighs before exhausted bodies collapse against feathery pillows. Other dreams of rainy days and nights filled with flips of pages and old nineties flicks, of cheddar popcorn and lavender scented blankets, of lightning and thunder and the fast pants and moans between the streak in the sky and the ground rattling boom that follows.

These two men have flipped my world; made colors more vivid, made sounds sweeter, made the world as a whole more bearable. My dreams consist of ray-filled days full of coconut lotion, long kisses, itchy sunburns, floating between waterfalls, and sighs before exhausted bodies collapse against feathery pillows. Other dreams of rainy days and nights filled with flips of pages and old nineties flicks, of cheddar popcorn and lavender-scented blankets, of lightning and thunder and the fast pants and moans between the streak in the sky and the ground-rattling boom that follows. But these are my waking dreams, and I’m living them.

Clothes Washer Hoses and Filters A couple of years ago, I came home from running an errand and heard the sound of rushing water (like a waterfall!) coming from my basement. I tore down the stairs and saw what looked like the Old Faithful geyser spewing water from behind my washing machine. I immediately cut off the water at the supply stop behind the washer, but there was quite a pool on the floor. I cut the power to the washing machine (at the electrical panel), then unplugged it and moved the appliance back from the wall. The washer was about 15 years old, and so were the hoses that ran from the supply valve to the machine. Made of rubber, they had grown brittle and corroded with minerals from our well water over the years. One of them finally split; that’s what caused the gusher. I’d never given them a thought before the split. If you’ve had your washing machine for eight years or more, it might be wise to replace the supply hoses now, before they do to you what mine did to me! Insurance companies—who often wind up paying out for the damage done by burst hoses—advise homeowners to replace supply hoses every 3 to 5 years.

It was a short walk from the bridge to the waterfall, and I heard it long before I actually saw it, a loud, roaring sound that reverberated like rolling thunder. We passed under an outcropping of rock, and then there it was on the other side. Quixotic Falls. It took my breath away. The waterfall was so tall, I had to crane my neck to see the top of it. Shimmers of a rainbow reflected in the mist and sunlight, and the air was cool and damp. It felt good in the humidity of the afternoon. I closed my eyes, and enjoyed the mist that clung to my skin, coagulating into droplets. We walked along the underside of it, and the sunlight hit the falling water like it was glimmers of glass. The tunnel between the rock face and the waterfall was smooth and rounded from thousands of years of erosion. Vines crawled across the rocks--- morning glories and four o'clocks and honeysuckles. The waterfall poured down into a small watering hole that then slowly wormed its way into a larger river down the mountain. I knew this place would feel whimsical. Surrounding the swimming hole, the bright pink heather and stark white yarrow mixed with coneflowers and black-eyed Susans.

Can you hear it?” she whispers. I pause, ears straining, but all I hear are faint sounds from the city below and the constant draw of the waterfall at the base of the mountain. “Hear what?” And she smiles, through the tears dried on her cheeks, through the glassiness or her eyes. The sight is so damn beautiful that it’s hard to breathe. “The sun,” Auren answers quietly, tone filled with a tentative, innocent joy. One that you’re afraid of saying too loud in case it breaks. “She’s singing to me.” Emotion clogs in my throat as I watch her tip her head back again. Watch her eyes close. I draw a knuckle down her soft cheek. “And what does she sing, Goldfinch?” I murmur. Her smile breaks through like the sunlight above us. “The song of home,” she says. “The sun is singing the song of home.” My chest swells, and when she reaches a hand up and tugs at my arm, I lie back with her, situating until we’re arm to arm, leg to leg. “Listen,” she whispers. So I do. I thread my fingers through her own, and I listen. But my song of home doesn’t come from the sun. Mine comes from her.

I burrowed through the small opening that Jack had created for me and emerged before an inlet enclosed by rocky hillside. The water was the color of emeralds, and I wondered how this was possible, given that the sound was so decidedly gray. A small plume of water--- a waterfall, but not a loud, forceful one, just a trickle--- was winding down one side of the cliff, making its descent into the pool below. Birds chirped in stereo. There was a small patch of sand free of barnacle-covered rocks, like the beach in front of Bee's, and that's where Jack spread a blanket out. "What do you think?" he asked proudly. "It's unbelievable," I said, shaking my head. "How in the world does water get that color?" "It's the minerals in the rock," he replied.

The more attention she paid to the sounds around her, the more they exploded into her consciousness. The sway and crackling of Mr. K's branches, the scurry of tiny bugs under the rocks, the sound of the waterfall in the distance—the world felt smaller and bigger, louder and quieter. Impossible to explain, but so alive and present. "Good." Mr. K's brown, bark-like eyes looked straight into her. "Excellent. Do you feel the difference when you open up?" She nodded. "Yes, but I don't know how to describe it." "It's about expansion verses contraction. You, and quite honestly most humans, spend all of your time contracted. Like a roly-poly bug or a snail stuck in its shell, you crawl into yourself and shut yourself off from the world.

Anaya inhaled the rich scent of soil, along with the sharp, citric smell of thriving vegetation and the sweetness of fresh dew. Her eyes drifted shut and she pricked up her ears, the gushing sound of the nearby waterfalls enveloping her.

Spectral analysis of music from classical to nursery rhymes has revealed a remarkable affinity with patterns in nature, in particular fractal distribution called 1/f noise, which is found in the sound of a waterfall or waves crashing on the beach. 1/f noise lies midway between the total chaos of white noise.. ..and overly-correlated brown noise. All music from Bach to the Beatles, even birdsong, is characterized by 1/f noise, displaying the same dynamic balance between predictability and surprise, between dull monotony and random discord. Seen in this light, music is essentially a simulation of the harmony in nature.

…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…

It was in Switzerland, during his first year, in the early part of it, in fact. Then he was almost like an idiot; he could not even speak properly - and sometimes could not understand what was wanted of him. He once went up into the mountain-side, on a bright, sunny day, and walked a long time, his mind possessed with an agonising but unformulated idea. Before him was the brilliant sky, below, the lake, and all around an horizon, bright and boundless which seemed to have no ending. He gazed a long time in distress. He remembered now how he had stretched out his hand to that bright, infinite blue, and had shed tears. What tortured him was that he was utterly outside all this. What was this festival? what was this grand, everlasting pageant to which there was no end, to which he had always, from his earliest childhood, been drawn and in which he could never take part? Every morning the same bright sun rises, every morning the same rainbow in the waterfall, every evening that highest snow mountain glows, with a flush of purple against the distant sky, every 'little fly that buzzes about him in the hot sunshine has its part in the chorus; knows its place, loves it and is happy'. Every blade of grass grows and is happy! Everything has its path, and everything knows its path, and with a song goes forth, and with a song returns. Only he knows nothing, and understands nothing, neither men nor sounds; he is outside it all, and an outcast.

It is a sound as integral to the scenery of the Alps in summer as the whistling of the marmot, the cry of the buzzard and the splashing of waterfalls. The gentle, tinkling music of cowbells as cattle graze in the mountain pastures, each bell unique in size, shape, and tone, becomes discernible only when it stops. 

It might sound silly to think about waterfalls attempting to pull off the beauty of a garden, but that’s how we must appear to God sometimes. If He wanted us to have a different type of beauty, don’t you think He would have created us that way? But one glimpse at nature proves that His creativity far exceeds just one type of beauty.

Infrasound is sound that is lower than the normal limit of human hearing, usually quantified at 20 hertz or cycles per second. Infrasound sometimes results naturally from severe weather, surf, lee waves, avalanches, earthquakes, volcanoes, waterfalls, auroras, and lightning. It’s believed that animals can detect infrasound and it is the reason they flee when severe weather, like a tsunami, is approaching. So Vic Tandy saw a ghost in his lab and attributed it to infrasound playing tricks on his mind.