Space Jams Quotes

She surrounded herself with books at work and at home. Her living space was a testament to her first and abiding love with shelves jammed with books tables crowded with them. She saw them not only as knowledge entertainment comfort even sanity but as a kind of artful decoration.

That's what being shy feels like. Like my skin is too thin, the light too bright. Like the best place I could possibly be is in a tunnel far under the cool, dark earth. Someone asks me a question and I stare at them, empty-faced, my brain jammed up with how hard I'm trying to find something interesting to say. And in the end, all I can do is nod or shrug, because the light of their eyes looking at me, waiting for me, is just too much to take. And then it's over and there's one more person in the world who thinks I'm a complete and total waste of space. The worst thing is the stupid hopefulness. Every new party, every new bunch of people, and I start thinking that maybe this is my chance. That I'm going to be normal this time. A new leaf. A fresh start. But then I find myself at the party, thinking, Oh, yeah. This again. So I stand on the edge of things, crossing my fingers, praying nobody will try to look me in the eye. And the good thing is, they usually don't.

That's a big trunk," James said, as we jammed in the leathery old case that looked so much like the black heart of some leviathan. "It fits a tuba, three suitcases, a dead dog, and a garment bag almost perfectly." "That's just what they used to say in the ads," I said...

I’ve never had a thing for fictional characters, but Halle as Space Jam Lola Bunny might have unlocked something in me.

Greta knows that for me there are no good parties. I’m okay with one or two people, but more than that and I turn into a naked mole rat. That’s what being shy feels like. Like my skin is too thin, the light too bright. Like the best place I could possibly be is in a tunnel far under the cool, dark earth. Someone asks me a question and I stare at them, empty-faced, my brain jammed up with how hard I’m trying to find something interesting to say. And in the end, all I can do is nod or shrug, because the light of their eyes looking at me, waiting for me, is just too much to take. And then it’s over and there’s one more person in the world who thinks I’m a complete and total waste of space.

For a moment I don’t move. We’re nose to nose, blinking into each other’s eyes. Wes’s tongue emerges to slick my lower lip. And I dive onto his mouth, jamming my tongue inside. There isn’t a lot of space for me to move, but it doesn’t matter. I’m riding him in short, fast strokes. The angle is heaven—I can bear down on him just where I need him. Wes is cupping my ass in strong hands, and with each thrust, he lets out a sexy grunt. Our chests rub together as our mouths lock again. My dick is trapped between our stomachs, slicking us both with pre-come.

The peace and beauty of it all, before I can fly, I learn how to crawl. Mentally rich so space jam is where I take my lessons to ball. Failures of life? Haa, angels surround me as if I'm never destined to fall, It's destined for all, tap into conscious mind is what makes me so raw.

What kind of party?” “The good kind.” “Yeah, right.” Greta knows that for me there are no good parties. I’m okay with one or two people, but more than that and I turn into a naked mole rat. That’s what being shy feels like. Like my skin is too thin, the light is too bright. Like the best place I could possibly be is in a tunnel far under the cool, dark earth. Someone asks me a question and I stare at them, empty-faced, my brain jammed up with how hard I’m trying to find something interesting to say. And in the end, all I can do is nod or shrug, because the light of their eyes looking at me, waiting for me, is just too much to take. And then it’s over and there’s one more person in the world who thinks I’m a complete and total waste of space. The worst thing is the stupid hopefulness. Every new party, every new bunch of people, and I start thinking that maybe this is my chance. That I’m going to be normal this time. A new leaf. A fresh start. But then I find myself at the party, thinking, Oh, yeah. This again. So I stand at the edge of things, crossing my fingers, praying nobody will try to look me in the eye. And the good thing is, they usually don’t.

Until one morning, one of the coldest mornings of the year, when I came in with the book cart and found Jean Hollis Clark, a fellow librarian, standing dead still in the middle of the staff room. "I heard a noise from the drop box," Jean said. "What kind of noise?" "I think it's an animal." "A what?" "An animal," Jean said. "I think there's an animal in the drop box." That was when I heard it, a low rumble from under the metal cover. It didn't sound like an animal. It sounded like an old man clearing his throat. Gurr-gug-gug. Gurr-gug-gug. But the opening at the top of the chute was only a few inches wide, so that would be quite a squeeze for an old man. It had to be an animal. But what kind? I got down on my knees, reached over the lid, and hoped for a chipmunk. What I got instead was a blast of freezing air. The night before, the temperature had reached minus fifteen degrees, and that didn't take into account the wind, which cut under your coat and squeezed your bones. And on that night, of all nights, someone had jammed a book into return slot, wedging it open. It was as cold in the box as it was outside, maybe colder, since the box was lined with metal. It was the kind of cold that made it almost painful to breathe. I was still catching my breath, in fact, when I saw the kitten huddled in the front left corner of the box. It was tucked up in a little space underneath a book, so all I could see at first was its head. It looked grey in the shadows, almost like a little rock, and I could tell its fur was dirty and tangled. Carefully, I lifted the book. The kitten looked up at me, slowly and sadly, and for a second I looked straight into its huge golden eyes. The it lowered its head and sank back down into its hole. At that moment, I lost every bone in my body and just melted.

I know everyone else on board did similarly unheralded, unobtrusively helpful things. We’ve all fixed the toilet in space (it breaks down regularly). We’ve all wiped jam off the walls (it has a way of floating off your toast and splattering everywhere).

The the street was quiet again. Country quiet. That's partly what took city natives like the Whitlams by surprise, Falk thought: the quiet. He could understand them seeking out the idyllic country lifestyle, a lot of people did. The idea had an enticing, wholesome glow when it was weighed out from the back of a traffic jam, or while crammed into a gardenless apartment. They all had the same visions of breathing fresh clean air and knowing their neighbors. The kids would eat home-grown veggies and learn the value of an honest day's work. On arrival, as the empty moving truck disappeared form sight, they looked around and were always taken aback by the crushing vastness of the open land. The space was the thing that hit them first. There was so much of it. There was enough to drown in. To look out and see not another soul between you and the horizon could be a strange and disturbing sight. Soon, they discovered that the veggies didn't grow as willingly as they had in the city window box. That every single green shoot had to be coaxed and prized from the reluctant soil, and the neighbors were too busy doing the same on an industrial scale to muster much cheer in their greetings. There was no daily bumper-to-bumper commute, but there was also nowhere much to drive to. Falk didn't blame the Whitlams, he'd seen it many times before when he was a kid. The arrivals looked around at the barrenness and the scale and the sheer bloody hardness of the land, and before long their faces all said exactly the same thing. "I didn't know it was like this." He turned away, remembering how the rawness of local life had seeped into the kids' paintings at the school. Sad faces and brown landscapes.

The human population density of the world when we lived in hunter-gatherer communities was about 1 person for every 6 square miles. Compare that to Manhattan, which jams about 417,000 people into the same 6-square-mile space. Even midsize cities like Providence, Rhode Island, and Portland, Oregon, have 58,000 and 26,000 people per 6 square miles, respectively.

Flesh and bone and blood no longer are my makeup. I’m stacks of naught, packed into my being at the molecular level. My skin, my muscles, my organs, my cunt—cells of non-existence, masquerading as bits of human. Touch me, I’ll feel nothing. Bruise me, fuck me, love me—nothing, nothing, nothing. Everything within me has been altered and adapted. There’s nothing real anymore. Nothing solid. Nothing worthy. Only pieces of limbo. Only nihilism. Only nothing. Nothing wrapped securely around my core, an impenetrable seal. Nothing jammed in all my spaces, crammed in tight, protecting the last embers of a once-blazing heart. I’m barely aware of its beat anymorethrough the layers of vacuity, barely feel the steadiness of its pulse.

To give my characters a real, or at least a convincing, life demanded more space. Did giving them a domestic dimension mean pressing the pause button in order to relate the dull routines of mortgages, electric bills, children’s ailments and traffic jams? No, that is not the way to treat your readers unless you just don’t care about them; and in that case you should be writing literary novels.

For Peñalosa, TransMilenio was a crucial victory. “If, in a democracy, all citizens are equal before the law, then a bus with one hundred passengers should have the right to one hundred times more road space than a car carrying only one person. When a fast-moving bus passes cars stuck in a total traffic jam, it is an unconscious and extremely powerful symbol that shows that democracy is really at work, and it gives a whole new legitimacy to the state and social organization.

Please wait here. "Annoying yet romantic," she said aloud. She sat down on the folding chair and peered inside the paper bag. A handful of tiny jam-filled donuts dusted with cinnamon and sugar sent up an intoxicating scent. The bag was warm in her hands, flecked with little bits of oil seeping through. Luce popped one into her mouth and took a sip from the tiny white cup, which contained the richest, most delightful espresso Luce had ever tasted. "Enjoying the bombolini?" Daniel called from below. Luce shot to her feet and leaned over the railing to find him standing at the back of a gondola painted with images of angels. He wore a flat straw hat bound with a thick red ribbon, and used a broad wooden paddle to steer the boat slowly toward her. Her heart surged the way it did each time she first saw Daniel in another life. But he was here. He was hers. This was happening now. "Dip them in the espresso, then tell me what it's like to be in Heaven," Daniel said, smiling up at her. "How do I get down to you?" she called. He pointed to the narrowest spiral staircase Luce had ever seen, just to the right of the railing. She grabbed the coffee and bag of donuts, slipped the peony stem behind her ear, and made for the steps. She could feel Daniel's eyes on her as she climbed over the railing and slinked down the stairs. Every time she made a full rotation on the staircase, she caught a teasing flash of his violet eyes. By the time she made it to the bottom, he had extended his hand to help her onto the boat. There was the electricity she'd been yearning for since she awoke. The spark that passed between them every time they touched. Daniel wrapped his arms around her waist and drew her in so that there was no space between their bodies. He kissed her, long and deep, until she was dizzy. "Now that's the way to start a morning." Daniel's fingers traced the petals of the peony behind her ear. A slight weight suddenly tugged at her neck and when she reached up, her hands found a find chain, which her fingers traced down to a silver locket. She held it out and looked at the red rose engraved on its face. Her locket!

Nobody knew then, nor does anybody know now, where emerging viruses are going or what one of them might become. The human host has been gathering itself into gigantic supercities, teeming urban megahives packed with tens of millions of individuals jammed into a small space, who are breathing one another’s air and touching one another’s bodies. The supercities are growing larger all the time. Many of the world’s largest supercities are crowded with people who have little or no access to doctors and medical care. The cities are connected by airline routes, and the human host has zero immunity to any emerging virus.

The Big House Brought to you by Pete the Palikos This four-storey sky-blue Victorian is a bona fide gem. The vast veranda offers ample space for pinochle players and convalescents alike. The basement is currently set up for strawberry-jam storage, but can also be used to hide the occasional demigod driven insane by the Labyrinth. The ground-floor living quarters, camp infirmary and combination rec room / meeting room are wheelchair accessible, as is a specially designed bronze-lined office. The rooms of the top floors stand ready to welcome overnight guests, while the attic, now free of its resident desiccated mummy, provides the perfect catch-all for camper discards and memorabilia.

Jam jamming,” Meghan chanted in a sing song voice. “I like the idea, the feel. I KNOW what you are getting at. Where does a sound end? Has the Earth been pumping billions upon billions of horrendous noises into the depths of space since the time primates began walking? Can you imagine all the noisy concerts, explosions of war, and thundering of bombs, all drifting endlessly into empty darkness? Can you imagine? For infinity? Frozen glaciers, devoid rocks, suddenly illuminated to be crushed by all that deafening din, waking the inhabitants of other planets. Jamming alien satellite signals. If there is life out there, it wants to destroy us....I must be really stoned to see this so clearly

Gregory was in the walls, in the crawl space between the board floor of the cabin and the bitter ground. He was gone, but he was everywhere. He was on the small pantry shelf where canning was removed. The air of the cabin still held Gregory. He filled and expanded every dark corner, tight, to exploding. He was jammed between her legs so that no matter how she moved, he was inside of Agnes. She couldn't shake him from her vestments or burn him from the stove. He nested in the books, of course. She couldn't stand to touch their pages. He was in the sweet, fragrant wood Mary Kashpaw chopped, split, and piled. In the cloth of curtains, the clasp of doors, he waited. She turned the handle, let the light in, and he came, too, solid and good and alive.

Mysterious My paper shines White, like snow, but the paper looks empty. I could decorate it with tiny spiders or stars or sketches of me looking at a blank page, but the clock ticks, and somehow I must write. I like the sight of untouched snow. Gentle, slow, silent, it drifts and swirls, layers itself, and I see a new world of mysterious, inviting shapes. I walk in its white whispers, susurrus. I drift back to this paper that feels hard on the disk, and I begin to listen- to the story I tell myself. The paper is a white, patient place, my private space for remembering, saving: spring sun on my face venting and inventing, arguing with my mother, wondering: who am I, wandering through cobwebs of old dreams, crying, sighing at people who don't see me, hoping to write music so blue listeners forget to breathe, playing the sounds, jamming with myself, changing ....into the me I can't quite see.

Without electricity or gas, the kitchen became a twilight mausoleum of dead appliances. One day, Natasha had an idea. Wearing latex gloves she found in Sonja’s room, she scrubbed the innards of the oven and refrigerator with steel wool and bleach. She cut a broomstick to the width of the refrigerator compartment, jammed it in below the thermostat control, and pulled out the plastic shelves. In her bedroom, she gathered clothes from the floor in sweeping armfuls and deposited them before the refrigerator and the oven. Ever since she had begun working for the shuttle trader, her wardrobe exceeded her closet space. She hung silk evening dresses and cashmere sweaters on the broomstick bar, set folded jeans and blouses on the oven rack. When finished, she opened the doors to her new closet and bureau and felt pleased with her ingenuity. This is how you will survive, she told herself. You will turn the holes in your life into storage space.

The down side is that more and more of them keep coming. The noise is like a dinner bell. Hungries are crowding into the green space from the streets on every side, at what you’d have to call a dead run. There’s no limit to their numbers, and there is a limit to his ammo. Which he hits, suddenly. The gun stops vibrating in his hands and the noise of his shots dies away through layers of echoes. He ejects the empty magazine, gropes for another in his pocket. He’s done this so often he could go through the moves in his sleep. Slap the new mag in and give it a quick, sharp tug, pivoting it on the forward lip so it locks into place. Pull the bolt all the way back. The bolt sticks halfway. The weapon’s just dead weight until he can clear whatever’s jamming it–the first round, most likely, elbowed in the chamber. And two hungries are on top of him now, triangulating from left and right. One of them used to be a man, the other a woman. They’re about a second away from the world’s nastiest three-way. It’s

It wasn't just this street that she was afraid of or that was bad. It was any street where people were packed together like sardines in a can. And it wasn't just this city. It was any city where they set up a line and say black folks stay on this side and white folks on this side, so that the black folks were crammed on top of each other—jammed and packed and forced into the smallest possible space until they were completely cut off from light and air. It was any place where the women had to work to support the families because the men couldn't get jobs and the men got bored and pulled out and the kids were left without proper homes because there was nobody around to put a heart into it. Yes. It was any place where people were so damn poor they didn't have time to do anything but work, and their bodies were the only source of relief from the pressure under which they lived; and where the crowding together made the young girls wise beyond their years. It all added up to the same thing, she decided—white people. She hated them. She would always hate them.

When I burst into the terminal, my eyes swept around, bouncing from person to person in the crowded, bustling space. My stomach fell a little when I didn’t see him, but I knew he probably couldn’t come this far. He was probably at baggage claim. I looked around for a sign to point me in the right direction and finally saw one labeled Baggage Claim with an arrow pointing off to the left. But I didn’t follow the arrow. My eyes fixed on someone standing beneath the sign. His hands were jammed into the pockets of his well-worn slouchy jeans. The relaxed action pulled the waistband low, highlighting his flat, narrow waist his Henley tee molded to. As usual, he was wearing his varsity jacket and his blond hair was a mess. My gaze locked on his sapphire-blue eyes and didn’t let go. His eyes, ohmigod, his eyes. The blue was so intense it served as an emergency brake on everything in my life. The second I looked at him, everything else came to a screeching halt. I no longer noticed the huge crowd rushing around. The anxiety-causing flight was just a distant memory, and the two weeks I spent longing for his touch became something I would live through ten times over just to be in this moment with him again. His lips pulled into a smile and the charm that oozed from every pore in his body made me almost lightheaded. Romeo pulled his hands out of his pockets and straightened, motioning for me. I rushed across the space separating us, my bag slapping against my side as I, for once, gracefully maneuvered around the people in my path. His chuckle brushed over me when I was just steps away, and I threw myself at him with a little sigh of relief. My legs wrapped around his waist and his arms locked around my back. I burrowed my head into his shoulder and inhaled deep, taking in his distinctive scent. “Rim,” he murmured, his voice low. I pulled back and his lips were on mine instantly. The moment our lips touched, he stilled, his body and mouth pausing against mine. Before I could wonder why, he muttered a garbled curse against my mouth and then his lips began to move. He kissed me softly but fiercely. There was so much possession in the way he kissed me, in the way his arms locked around me that my heart stuttered. I parted my lips so his tongue could sweep inside, and when my tongue met his, desire, hot and heavy, unfurled within me. Someone chuckled as they walked by, and Romeo retreated slightly, still letting his mouth linger on mine before completely pulling away. He rested his forehead against mine and he smiled. “I really fucking missed you.” “Me too,” I whispered. -Romeo & Rimmel

The walls behind the counter had deep floor-to-ceiling shelves for vases and jam jars and scented candles, and there was an old wrought-iron revolving stand for cards. But most of the space in the long, narrow shop was taken up with flowers and plants. Today there were fifty-two kinds of cut blooms, from the tiny cobalt-blue violets that were smaller than Lara's little fingernail to a purple-and-green-frilled brassica that was bigger than her head. The flowers were set out in gleaming metal buckets and containers of every shape and size. They were lined up on the floor three deep and stacked on the tall three-tier stand in the middle of the shop. The plants, huge leafy ferns and tiny fleshy succulents, lemon trees and jasmine bushes and freckled orchids, were displayed on floating shelves that were built at various heights all the way up to the ceiling. Lara had spent weeks getting the lighting right. There were a few soft spotlights above the flower displays, and an antique crystal chandelier hung low above the counter. There were strings of fairy lights and dozens of jewel-colored tea lights and tall, slender lanterns dotted between the buckets. When they were lit, they cast star and crescent moon shapes along the walls and the shop resembled the courtyard of a Moroccan riad- a tiny walled garden right in the middle of the city.

In my introduction to Warriors, the first of our crossgenre anthologies, I talked about growing up in Bayonne, New Jersey, in the 1950s, a city without a single bookstore. I bought all my reading material at newsstands and the corner “candy shops,” from wire spinner racks. The paperbacks on those spinner racks were not segregated by genre. Everything was jammed in together, a copy of this, two copies of that. You might find The Brothers Karamazov sandwiched between a nurse novel and the latest Mike Hammer yarn from Mickey Spillane. Dorothy Parker and Dorothy Sayers shared rack space with Ralph Ellison and J. D. Salinger. Max Brand rubbed up against Barbara Cartland. A. E. van Vogt, P. G. Wodehouse, and H. P. Lovecraft were crammed in with F. Scott Fitzgerald. Mysteries, Westerns, gothics, ghost stories, classics of English literature, the latest contemporary “literary” novels, and, of course, SF and fantasy and horror—you could find it all on that spinner rack, and ten thousand others like it. I liked it that way. I still do. But in the decades since (too many decades, I fear), publishing has changed, chain bookstores have multiplied, the genre barriers have hardened. I think that’s a pity. Books should broaden us, take us to places we have never been and show us things we’ve never seen, expand our horizons and our way of looking at the world. Limiting your reading to a single genre defeats that. It limits us, makes us smaller. It seemed to me, then as now, that there were good stories and bad stories, and that was the only distinction that truly mattered.

Gods take whoever designed this crawlspace and jam them inside a sardine can. Then put that sardine can inside a pill box and shoot both into a black hole. Ugh, and I am having a very long discussion with Orn and his habit of throwing old candy sticks through the grates!

Like many other merchant vessels, the Sea Venture was armed. Though England and Spain had signed a peace treaty in 1604, soon after James took the English throne, there were still scores of Spanish vessels sailing the Atlantic and the Caribbean just waiting to fall on ships like the Sea Venture. And since the Spanish continued their claim to the lands the English knew as Virginia, the company had every reason to fear Spanish attempts to keep it from resupplying Jamestown. The “admiral” herself carried sixteen cannon and at least one small swivel gun that could be used to repel boarders. To save space below, where passengers and stores would be jam-packed for the voyage, these heavy guns were mounted on the Sea Venture’s upper deck instead of on the main deck, or in the ’tween deck area, their usual location. As Newport and Somers looked at the heavy cannon—minions that weighed 1,500 pounds each, sakers that weighed 3,500 pounds, and demi-culverins that tipped the scales at 4,500 pounds each, as well as the smallest of the guns, falconers, that weighed as much as two large men—their eyes would have narrowed with concern as they imagined how all that weight topside would unbalance the vessel in strong seas and high winds.

more than one hundred Virginia-bound settlers would squeeze themselves into a space not much larger than a middling-sized English cottage. By that time, carpenters would almost certainly have built crude partitions dividing the already small space into a maze of tiny compartments designed to provide some privacy for the passengers who would soon be jammed on board. From below, the three would have climbed a ladder to the mate’s cabin, situated just below the great cabin aft and now turned into a crowded dormitory for a few of the gentlemen settlers who were making the voyage to Virginia.

QWERTY was designed with commonly used characters spaced far apart. This layout prevented typists from jamming the metal type bars of early machines.11 This physical limitation is an anachronism in the digital age, yet QWERTY keyboards remain the standard despite the invention of far better layouts.

struggling with frozen expressions and tightly compressed lips. Everyone wore black padded jackets in a kind of mournful uniformity, and battled the same bladed wind that swept across the open spaces, their fists jammed into pockets, their heads resolutely down.

The joint was divided almost evenly between dining area and bar. The smoke-filled bar was jammed nearly full while the restaurant was largely empty. In both sections, railroad memorabilia—from fading pictures and travel posters to crossing signs—decorated every inch of available wall space. A platform, dropped from the ceiling, ran around the outside of the room and supported the tracks for several running electric trains that hummed overhead at odd intervals.

You’re a slow fever. Don’t be so very engaging, amusing or witty or bright. You are causing confusion and jams in tight spaces. You are an accident in waiting. The type of accident with casualties spanning from me to you and here to there, a potential tragedy, a stunning unborn disaster.

Take a look at the category piles and consider the quantities as you begin to downsize. For each item, ask whether it’s been used/worn in the past year. Knowing that we wear only about 20 percent of our clothes 80 percent of the time will aid the letting go process. Also note that over-stuffed drawers are the likely culprit when clean laundry doesn’t get put away. It simply takes too much effort to jam everything in, so make a goal to only fill drawers about two-thirds full. If you find anything that would be better off in another area of the home, place it into the relocation box for redistribution at the end of the project. Also keep on hand the fix-it box (for items that need repairing) and the donation box. 4. DECLARE A HOME Now that you can see what you actually have, start measuring. How much of the clothing can realistically fit in the closet? If it only has one rod across the top, you may want to consider redesigning the closet for maximum space efficiency. Or, simple, inexpensive modifications can be made by adding a double hang closet rod to double the hanging space. You may also be able to adjust shelves and rods to better accommodate space needs. Now, decide where each category of clothing will live. Remember, the closet works in tandem with any dressers, armoires, and underbed storage in the bedroom. Assign each item a home. Designate a shelf, section of rod, drawer, or container for each category

Shelves were jam-packed with orange and brown packaged treats: chocolate-covered Cheerios, chocolate-covered cornflakes, chocolate-covered raisins and pretzels and espresso beans. Chocolate malt balls, chocolate almonds, and giant 2.2-pound "Big Daddy" chocolate blocks. There was caramel corn, peanut brittle, mudslide cookie mixes, and tins of chocolate shavings so you could try replicating Jacques's über-rich hot chocolate at home- anything the choco-obsessed could dream was crammed in the small space. An L-shaped counter had all manner of fresh, handcrafted temptations: a spread of individual bonbons with cheeky names like Wicked Fun (chocolate ganache with ancho and chipotle chilies), Love Bug (key lime ganache enveloped in white chocolate), and Ménage à Trois (a mystery blend of three ingredients). Platters of double chocolate chip cookies and fudge brownies. And there were his buttery croissants and pain au chocolat, which duked it out in popularity with the French bakery across the street, Almondine.

I was distracted by more than the frenetic schedules of our household. All the other people I’d been and not been in my life were beginning to fight for their share of my brain space and their chance at a breath of real-life air, too. There were far more than three people crowded into my head. I felt like a human traffic jam.

I could no longer feel or move my right hand, no surprise under the circumstances, and normally a fairly simple problem to fix. You take off two of the three gloves you wear and jam the affected hand beneath your coat against your bare chest. When it’s warmed sufficiently, you take it back out, put on the gloves and go about your business. Now, I had been in very cold places, but what happened next was a complete shock. When I pulled those two outer gloves off, the skin on my hand and my arm immediately froze solid, even underneath that third expedition-weight glove. The shooting pain of instant frostbite so startled me that I lost my grip on the glove in my left hand, which the wind grabbed—whoooooosh—and sent into outer space. There was another pair of gloves in the pack on my back. But they might as well have been under my bed at home. In such a storm, there was no way I could take off that pack, put it down and rummage through it. The wind was strong enough to lift me bodily off the ground and drop me, which at one point it did. I didn’t have the time, or presence of mind, to consider my exposed right hand and forearm’s probable fate, or how I might fare in the future as a one-handed pathologist. I did reinsert my hand under my coat, a frozen Napoleon. Life and death were now the issue for all of us, with the odds against the former lengthening each moment.

The notion of making more free time has been gaining traction, but most people I know use that extra time to catch up on errands or email, or recharge their batteries through passive relaxation, such as binge-watching Netflix or online shopping. But the most joyful people I know manage to hold a space for play in their adult lives: a recreational sport, an improv-comedy hobby, a band they jam with on weekends, a family game night, or an hour a week set aside to dabble in watercolors.

We can see American English downtown in any city in the States. We would look up a block of “apartments” to a “penthouse,” be deluged by the “mass media,” go into a “chain store,” breakfast on “cornflakes,” avoid the “hot dog,” see the “commuters” walking under strips of “neon,” not “jaywalking,” which would be “moronic,” but if they were “executives” or “go-getters” (not “yes-men” or “fat cats”), they would be after “big business,” though unlikely to have much to do with an “assembly line” or a “closed shop.” There’s likely to be a “traffic jam,” so no “speeding,” certainly no space for “joy-riding” and the more “underpasses” the better. And of course in any downtown city we would be surrounded by a high forest of “skyscrapers.” “Skyscraper” started life as an English naval term — a high light sail to catch the breeze in calm conditions. It was the name of the Derby winner in 1788, after which tall houses became generally called skyscrapers. Later it was a kind of hat, then slang for a very tall person. The word arrived in America as a baseball term, meaning a ball hit high in the air. Now its world meaning is very tall building, as typified by those in American cities. Then you could go into a “hotel” (originally French for a large private house) and find a “lobby” (adopted from English), find the “desk clerk” and the “bell boy,” nod to the “hat-check girl” as you go to the “elevator.” Turn on the television, flick it all about and you’re bound to find some “gangsters” with their “floozies” in their “glad rags.” In your bedroom, where the English would have “bedclothes,” the Americans have “covers”; instead of a “dressing gown” you’ll find a “bathrobe,” “drapes” rather than “curtains,” a “closet” not a “wardrobe,” and in the bathroom a “tub” with a “faucet” and not a “bath” with a “tap.

You spend a restless night, your sleep is an intermittent, jammed flow, like the reading of the novel, with dreams that seem to you like the repetition of one dream always the same. You fight with dreams as with formless and meaningless life, seeking a pattern, a route that must surely be there, as when you begin to read a book and you don't yet know in which direction it will carry you. What you would like is the opening of an abstract and absolute space and time in which you could move, following an exact, taut trajectory; but when you seem to be succeeding, you realize you are motionless, blocked, forced to repeat everything from the beginning.

The bad architect, addicted to aestheticism, is vexed because a door must be hung on a hinge, and redesigns the latter so that it appears ‘beautiful’ as it performs its function; and by doing this he finds that the door often creaks, jams, and will not open or opens badly. The good architect on the other hand wants the door to open and reveal other spaces, and after having redesigned everything in the building, he does not care if he has to rely on the eternal wisdom of the ironmonger.

His point was that we can distinguish between the normal pain of life—difficult emotions, physical discomfort, and so on—and actual suffering, which is the mental anguish caused by fighting against the fact that life is sometimes painful. Let’s say you get caught in a nasty traffic jam. This situation may be mildly stressful and annoying. You’ll probably be a few minutes late for work and somewhat bored while sitting there. No big deal. If, however, you resist the fact that you are caught in a traffic jam, mentally screaming “THIS SHOULD NOT BE HAPPENING!!!!” you are likely to suffer a great deal. You’ll become much more upset, agitated, and angry than you would be otherwise. Road rage incidents are due to precisely this type of overreaction. There are about three hundred serious injuries or deaths caused by road rage in the United States alone each year. Our emotional suffering is caused by our desire for things to be other than they are. The more we resist the fact of what is happening right now, the more we suffer. Pain is like a gaseous substance. If you allow it to just be there, freely, it will eventually dissipate on its own. If you fight and resist the pain, however, walling it into a confined space, the pressure will grow and grow until there is an explosion.

sets of four equal counts. Eventually, stop counting and just feel the breath. 9. At the end of the exercise, take a few breaths and notice how the exhalation is longer, smoother, more even. A Note from Katrina I practice this breath whenever I feel I am being judged. And the more I do it, the less frequently those situations seem to occur. With Alan’s help, I am ridding myself at last of those automatic responses to what I think, mistakenly or not, is criticism. We learn as children that being criticized means we are bad. But we are not bad. It is all conditioning, and we must decondition ourselves. We only need to remember what Alan told me: There is no right. There is no wrong. There is only being. If you feel a crisis approaching, focus on your exhalations in order to release any unhealthy thoughts that are bubbling up. Even doing this for a minute can make a big difference. I also find this breath helpful whenever I feel myself on the point of overreacting to irritating everyday situations: sitting in a traffic jam, holding for customer service, waiting in line to pay at the supermarket, et cetera. Any time I feel like biting someone’s head off for no honest reason. As a result, little problems no longer take up so much of my energy. You can use this technique anywhere, anytime, even with your eyes open. During any difficult interaction, simply turn your attention to your breath and notice how bad thoughts are instantly dismissed. There is no one to disturb your peace. You can walk freely for as long as you desire.

I’m sorry.” “I don’t think that’s something you have to be sorry for. I haven’t done it. I’ve had two hundred years and I haven’t.” “Why not?” asked Halim. “It was easier to be a toad,” said Toadling. “I thought perhaps I could, one day, but then I was a toad for a long time, and as long as I was a toad, I didn’t have to worry about it. And then no one could get in, so it didn’t matter anymore.” “Didn’t matter? But you couldn’t leave here, could you?” “No. But I’d made a mess of the gift. I didn’t give it to her properly. So it was only right I had to stay.” “You think you had to pay for two hundred years for a momentary slip of the tongue?” Toadling was giggling at him. She could feel the words slipping down inside her, into a place under her breastbone. The other words rearranged themselves to make space. “There’s a very high wall,” said Halim, “according to the imams, called al-A’raf. Between hell and paradise. And if you haven’t been good enough or evil enough to go to one place or the other, you live in this wall. But even those people will eventually enter paradise, because God is merciful.” He jammed his chin onto his fist and gazed at Toadling. “It seems like you’ve been stuck in that wall for quite a long time now…That’s all the theology I’ve got in me, incidentally, so I hope it’s useful.” Toadling sighed. “I would like to climb down from that wall,” she admitted.

The shuttle would announce its arrival with the trademark double sonic boom-- Boom, BOOM!!-- and shortly thereafter you could see the bright silvery craft dropping from the sky. Space enthusiasm in the state has dimmed somewhat sine the final return of the Space Shuttle on July 21, 2011, but even now, there are traffic jams on the access roads whenever a launch is scheduled. If you are within five miles of the launch site, the sky lights up, the ground rumbles, the crowds cheer, and waves of unrepentant patriotism surge through your body.

Hi,” I say quietly. I’m surprised that noise crept past the emotion in my throat because I still feel like it’s going to choke me. “Hi,” he says quietly. He looks over at Jill, and she gives him a thumbs-up. She doesn’t get up, though. I see her wipe a tear from her cheek. “Did you meet my friend, Hayley?” I ask. He nods. Paul keeps trying to catch my eyes with his, but I won’t let him. “I’m Friday,” I say. I’m your mother, and I love you more than anything, anywhere, anytime. The words rush to my lips, but I bite them back. “What’s your name?” Jacob runs over to his mother and says something to her. She reaches into the big bag at her feet and takes out a box. She hands it to him, and he runs back over. He never did tell me his name, but that’s okay. I’d rather he have a little stranger danger. And I’m a stranger, after all. Jacob sits down on the sidewalk and opens his box. He takes out a clunky piece of chalk and says, “Do you want to draw with me?” I sit down beside him and say, “What color should I use?” He gives me a blue piece of chalk. “This one.” So I sit for hours and draw with my son in chalk on the sidewalk. We draw rainbows and dragons, and we even make some flowers for his mom. I look around and see that the sidewalk is completely full of our art. There’s not an available space to be had. “You’re a really good drawer,” he says. He grins up at me, and I see the space where his missing tooth should be. “So are you.” I reach out a tentative hand and touch the top of his head. I close my eyes and breathe, letting my hand riffle through the silky strands. I pull back way sooner than I want to because he’s looking at me funny. I look over and see Paul sitting and talking quietly with Jill. He gets up and yells over to us. “We’re going to get some lunch! We’ll be right back!” I give him a thumbs-up and get up to chase Hayley and Jacob over to the swings. “Push me!” Hayley cries. “Push me!” Jacob calls at the same time. He laughs, and I put my hand in the center of both their backs, standing between them, and give them both a shove. It’s only a minute or two later when Paul and Jill come back carrying hot dogs and drinks. The kids race to the table. I jam my hands into my pockets and walk over a little more slowly. Paul and Jill sit side by side on one side of the picnic table, and Hayley and Jacob sit on the other. “Sit beside me!” Hayley cries. “No, me!” Jacob says. I put my legs over the bench and sit between them, and Paul hands me a hot dog. Jacob scoots so close to me that I can feel his thigh against mine. The heat of his little body seeps into the cold of mine and warms me everywhere. I close my eyes for a moment and just breathe, enjoying the feel of having my living, breathing child pressed into my side.

The square is a treasure precisely because it doesn't masquerade as an outdoor museum. It's a living place, jammed with people, changeable, democratic, urbane. [Michael Kimmelman, "Culture: Power of the Place"].

to order and that whole inner debate one usually has when ordering food at a restaurant would be vocalized and performed for the express purpose of filling space, of jamming the silence so full of meaningless idle chitchat that they’d never get around to talking about the thing they never talked about but were always thinking: that if they had been born into a generation that found divorce more acceptable, they would have left each other so long ago. For decades they had avoided this subject. It was like they’d come to an agreement—they were who they were, they were born when they were born, they were taught that divorce was wrong, and they openly disapproved of other couples, younger couples, who divorced, while secretly feeling bolts of envy at these couples’ ability to split and remarry and become happy again.

Cindy had told her to take as much as she wanted from the storage space in the attic because whatever she didn’t take was going to charity, so Neni had cheerfully obliged, taking an old Louis Vuitton carry-on suitcase with a broken zipper, jam-packing it like roasted peanuts in a liquor bottle, and tying it shut with one of her blouses.

We had a jam space in the garage, an inside bar with its own full-sized refrigerator and electric grill, seven couches to crash on, pot growing in the closet, a rooftop lounge … So we threw giant parties with the best rock bands. LOAD, Quit, One Eyed Kings, stage diving from the roof, good drugs and endless beer, the greatest personalities …

5. Open space attracts! Shoppers compete with products for space in the store. Good retailers might be oblivious to this competition, and freely tip the balance in favor of the products over the shoppers. Jamming the store with products leads to lots of narrow aisles (“aisleness”) and psychic discomfort for shoppers. Great retailers refuse to sacrifice shopper space, and use wide promenades to lead crowds of shoppers through a speedy, efficient, high-dollar trip. The allocation of open space is of paramount importance in store design—and there is no single recipe for success.

An idea was forming in his mind. It was only rudimentary, but in the circumstances, it could be called a plan. He loathed the alien for attacking them, without any provocation. He hated the way it was smashing up his ship – and all of them – with hardly any effort or regard for life at all. “How’s that message coming?” “Umm – they must be jamming us, sir – I can’t get through.

The Epicureans also sought ataraxia. Epicurus (341–270 B.C.) held that the world consisted fundamentally of atoms and “the void,” the space in which the atoms moved. His materialist philosophy sought to free men from their worries about the gods and other superstitions, as well as the fear of death. There was no soul and at death nothing happened except that the atoms of one’s body returned to the flux. Like the Cynics, he advised a retreat from the public world, but a much more decorous one, and taught that one should “cultivate one’s garden.” One should, as he said, “live unknown.” “Epicurean” for us means refined and delicate tastes, but this is in some ways a misnomer. Although advocating a kind of materialist hedonism, Epicurus really argued for the simple life. Pleasure was the only good, and one should arrange one’s life to have as much of it as possible. This did not mean that we should jam as much pleasure into our lives as we can, as if it was an “all you can eat” buffet and we’d be losing out if we didn’t stuff ourselves. Such gluttony is simply quantitative. Epicurus preached discrimination aimed at providing the highest quality of pleasure. Self-discipline and self-control were central tenets of Epicureanism.

Mysterious My paper shines white, like snow, but the paper looks empty. I could decorate it with tiny spiders or stars or sketches of me looking at a blank page, but the clock ticks, and somehow I must write. I like the sight of untouched snow. Gentle, snow, silent, it drifts and swirls, layers itself, and I see a new world of mysterious, inviting shapes. I walk in its white whispers, susurrus. I drift back to this paper that feels hard on the desk, and I begin to listen– to the story I tell myself. The paper is a white, patient place, my private space for remembering, saving, spring sun on my face, venting and inventing, arguing with my mother, wonder: who am I, wandering through cobwebs of old dreams, crying, sighing at people who don't see me, hoping to write music so blue listeners forget to breathe, playing the sounds, jamming with myself, changing into the me I can't quite see.

It’s a simple fact of geometry that having a bunch of little continents gives you more coastline than having one big supercontinent. And more coastline gives you more shelf space to bury carbon in shallow sea life. But in the Permian and Triassic, this space was in short supply around the bloated supercontinent, and simple geometry jammed the biological carbon pump. As a result, more CO2 gathered in the atmosphere and the planet couldn’t manage to cool off. Add to this the enormous CO2 sinks of trees and forests that nearly disappeared for 10 million years after the Permian and there was nowhere to shuttle all that extra carbon dioxide. Eventually, though, the planet would cool off, however slowly, and life would fitfully recover. But the early Triassic earth remained a largely broken world, and the wastelands of tropical Pangaea barren and lifeless.

Come on and slam, and welcome to the jam!

Pantry Staples Our pantry is organized to stock a limited and set amount of jars, which contain either a permanent staple or rotational staple. Permanent staples will vary from family to family. Ours include: • Flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, cornstarch, baking powder, yeast, oatmeal, coffee, dry corn, powdered sugar • Jam, butter, peanut butter, honey, mustard, canned tomatoes, pickles, olives, capers • Olive oil, vegetable oil, apple cider vinegar, wine vinegar, tamari, vanilla extract • A selection of spices and herbs Rotational staples represent groups of foods that we used to buy in many different forms. In the past, our legume collection consisted of chickpeas, lentils, peas, red beans, fava beans, pinto beans, etc. Even though stocking many types of food appears to stimulate variety, the contrary is often the case. Similar to wardrobe items, pantry favorites get picked first while nonfavorites get pushed back and forgotten, take up space, and ultimately go bad (i.e., become rancid or bug infested). Today, instead of storing many versions of a staple, we have dedicated one specific jar and adopted a system of rotation. For example, our rotating jar of grain might be filled with rice one week, couscous another. Our rotating collection includes: • Grain • Pasta • Legume • Cereal • Cookie • Nut • Sweet snack • Savory snack • Tea This system has proved not only to maintain variety in our diet and free up storage space; it has also been efficient at keeping foods from going bad.

Ohno writes that he realized the solution when he heard about supermarkets (much before he actually saw a supermarket during his visit to the U.S. in 1956). He realized that both supermarkets and the feeding lines at Toyota needed to manage a large variety of products. In the supermarkets, products were not jam packing the aisles, rather most merchandise was held in the backroom storage. In the store itself, each product was allocated a limited shelf space. Only after a product was taken by a shopper, was replenishment from the backroom storage triggered to refill that product’s allotted shelf space. What Ohno envisioned is the mechanism that would enable him to guide Toyota’s operation when not to produce. Rather than using a single limited space between work centers to restrict work-in-process production, he had to limit the amount allowed to accumulate of each component specifically. Based on that realization Ohno designed the Kanban system.

That good is the understatement of the century. I’ve never had a thing for fictional characters, but Halle as Space Jam Lola Bunny might have unlocked something in me.