Sparse Quotes

There's little in taking or giving There's little in water or wine This living, this living , this living was never a project of mine. Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is the gain of the one at the top for art is a form of catharsis and love is a permanent flop and work is the province of cattle and rest's for a clam in a shell so I'm thinking of throwing the battle would you kindly direct me to hell?

A story is not like a road to follow … it's more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you.

I care not that this moment’s lot was thin and sparsely dealt; all pleasures sweet can be forgot the instant they are felt.

Happiness isn't something this island yields easily; the ground is too rocky and the sun too sparse for it to flourish.

When I spoke to her, I had the feeling that her thoughts had been nourished in wide-open spaces where talk was sparse and silence ruled.

I don’t smoke, although it looks fantastic in films. But I light matches on those thinking blank nights when I crawl my route out onto the roof of the garage and the sky while my parents sleep innocent and the lonely cars move sparse on the faraway streets, when the pillow won’t stay cool and the blankets bother my body no matter how I move or lie still. I just sit with my legs dangling and light matches and watch them flicker away.

Our gods have no names, no hierarchy. Their blessings are random, their words sparse, their punishments impossible to predict. But they exist in all things. They are felt at all times.

I call the high and light aspects of my being SPIRIT and the dark and heavy aspects SOUL. Soul is at home in the deep shaded valleys. Heavy torpid flowes saturated with black grow there. The rivers flow like arm syrup. They empty into huge oceans of soul. Spirit is a land of high,white peaks and glittering jewel-like lakes and flowers. Life is sparse and sound travels great distances. There is soul music, soul food, and soul love. People need to climb the mountain not because it is there But because the soulful divinity need to be mated with the Spirit. Deep down we must have a rel affection for each other, a clear recognition of our shared human status. At the same time we must openly accept all ideologies and systems as means of solving humanity's problems. No matter how strong the wind of evil may blow, the flame of truth cannot be extinguished.

The summer ended. Day by day, and taking its time, the summer ended. The noises in the street began to change, diminish, voices became fewer, the music sparse. Daily, blocks and blocks of children were spirited away. Grownups retreated from the streets, into the houses. Adolescents moved from the sidewalk to the stoop to the hallway to the stairs, and rooftops were abandoned. Such trees as there were allowed their leaves to fall - they fell unnoticed - seeming to promise, not without bitterness, to endure another year. At night, from a distance, the parks and playgrounds seemed inhabited by fireflies, and the night came sooner, inched in closer, fell with a greater weight. The sound of the alarm clock conquered the sound of the tambourine, the houses put on their winter faces. The houses stared down a bitter landscape, seeming, not without bitterness, to have resolved to endure another year.

The stern of the ship faced the Solar System, where the sun was by now no more than a yellow star just a bit brighter than the rest. The peripheral spiral arm of the Milky Way lay in this direction, its stars sparse. The depth and expanse of deep space exhibited an arrogance that left no support for the mind or the eyes. “Dark. It’s so fucking dark,” the captain murmured, and then shot himself.

A distant love that waits to be together, is by far the most difficult relationship. It's like lighting a candle, and adoring the long flame and robust glow. Until time sets in like wax, overflowing deeper and deeper into the wick, leaving a sparse flame struggling to live. This is where most distant relationships fade, with the wax smothering the flame. This kind of relationship takes patience, hope, unconditional love, trust and strength, all centered around God. If the flame endures to the end, and the two come together, only then will it feel as if the candle was tipped and all the wax came pouring out, when the flame is revived, long and glowing again.

The ancient world was settled so sparsely that nature was not yet eclipsed by man. Nature hit you in the eye so plainly and grabbed you so fiercely and so tangibly by the scruff of the neck that perhaps it really was still full of gods.

Life owes you, but sometimes you have to be your own fucking debt collector. And if we have to burn in hell for it, heaven's going to be sparsely populated.

It is not an unusual life curve for Westerners - to live i n and be shaped by the bigness, sparseness, space clarity & hopefulness of the West, to go away for study and enlargement and the perspective that distance and dissatisfaction can give, and then to return to what pleases the sight and enlists the loyalty and demands the commitment.

The peculiar idea that bigger is better has been around for at least as long as I have, and it's always bothered me. There is within it the implication that it is more difficult for God to care about a gnat than about a galaxy. Creation is just as visible in a grain of sand as in a skyful of stars. The church is not immune from the bigger-is-better heresy. One woman told of going to a meeting where only a handful of people turned out, and these faithful few were scolded by the visiting preacher for the sparseness of the congregation. And she said indignantly, 'Our Lord said *feed* my sheep, not count them!' I often feel that I'm being counted, rather than fed, and so I am hungry.

He had a long thin nose, a moustache like flock wallpaper, sparse, carefully combed hair, and the complexion of a Hovis loaf.

Ophelia was beating some poor underling for not knowing her arse from the sparse collection of cells between her ears.

Are you whole or broken?” “I’m whole,” he said, swiping at his nose and holding her blue eyes with his gray ones in the sparse and dying twilight. “I’m wh-whole because I’m with you.

Coda" There's little in taking or giving, There's little in water or wine; This living, this living, this living Was never a project of mine. Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is The gain of the one at the top, For art is a form of catharsis, And love is a permanent flop, And work is the province of cattle, And rest's for a clam in a shell, So I'm thinking of throwing the battle- Would you kindly direct me to hell?

Ma was heavy, but not fat; thick with child-bearing and work. She wore a loose Mother Hubbard of gray cloth in which there had once been colored flowers, but the color was washed out now, so that the small flowered pattern was only a little lighter gray than the background. The dress came down to her ankles, and he strong, broad, bare feet moved quickly and deftly over the floor. Her thin, steel-gray hair was gathered in a sparse wispy knot at the back of her head. Strong, freckled arms were bare to the elbow, and her hands were chubby and delicate, like those of a plump little girl. She looked out into the sunshine. Her full face was not soft; it was controlled, kindly. Her hazel eyes seemed to have experienced all possible tragedy and to have mounted pain and suffering like steps into a high calm and a superhuman understanding. She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken. And since old Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt and fear, she had practiced denying them in herself. And since, when a joyful thing happened, they looked to see whether joy was on her, it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials. But better than joy was calm. Imperturbability could be depended upon. And from her great and humble position in the family she had taken dignity and a clean calm beauty. From her position as healer, her hands had grown sure and cool and quiet; from her position as arbiter she had become as remote and faultless in judgment as a goddess. She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever really deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall, the family will to function would be gone.

where actual evidence had been a bit sparse he had, in the best traditions of the keen ethnic historian, inferred from revealed self-evident wisdom* *Made it up and extrapolated from associated sources** **had read a lot of stuff that other people had made up, too.

The crumpled butcherpaper mountains lay in sharp shadowfold under the long blue dusk and in the middle distance the glazed bed of a dry lake lay shimmering like the mare imbrium and herds of deer were moving north in the last of the twilight, harried over the plain by wolves who were themselves the color of the desert floor. Glanton sat his horse and looked long out upon this scene. Sparse on the mesa the dry weeds lashed in the wind like the earth's long echo of lance and spear in old encounters forever unrecorded. All the sky seemed troubled and night came quickly over the evening land and small gray birds flew crying softly after the fled sun. He chucked up the horse. He passed and so passed all into the problematical destruction of darkness.

November and the sun grows sparse in the sky.

Consider the true picture. Think of myriads of tiny bubbles, very sparsely scattered, rising through a vast black sea. We rule some of the bubbles. Of the waters we know nothing...

The vaults beneath the Lunar palace were carved from years of emptied lava tubes, their walls made of rough black stone and lit by sparse glowing orbs.

So life goes on. For years we plant the seed, we feel ourselves rich; and then come other years when time does its work and our plantation is made sparse and thin. One by one, our comrades slip away, deprive us of their shade.

From remote and sparsely populated Vermont, Indiana seemed hopeless; a collection of turtle-shooting subliterates--people opposed to evolution, pluralism, and poetry. And yet. Those leaves.

The tinker in his burial tree was a wonder to the birds. The vultures that came by day to nose with their hooked beaks among his buttons and pockets like outrageous pets soon left him naked of his rags and flesh alike. Black mandrake sprang beneath the tree as it will where the seed of the hanged falls and in spring a new branch pierced his breast and flowered in a green boutonnière perennial beneath his yellow grin. He took the sparse winter snows upon what thatch of hair still clung to his dried skull and hunters that passed that way never chanced to see him brooding among his barren limbs. Until wind had tolled the thinker's bones and seasons loosed them one by one to the ground below and his bleached and weathered brisket hung in that lonesome wood like a bone birdcage.

Henry successfully kept his mind on the game, which might seem strange for a boy who slept beside a wall of magic. But baseball was as magical to him as a green, mossy mountain covered in ancient trees. What's more, baseball was a magic he could run around in and laugh about. While the magic of the cupboards was not necessarily good, the smell of leather mixed with dusty sweat and spitting and running through sparse grass after a small ball couldn't be anything else.

Since Mother's death, Father sees a sneeze as one step from pneumonia. I would rather die than confess a symptom. I don't like this new side of Father. This Father is weak, afraid, constantly worrying. I dare not encourage those fears. Instead, I nod or shake my head, keeping interchange sparse, waiting for a subject more suited to the dignified Father I remember. And I know he's in there.

But I didn't. I didn't say anything, if only because I had no idea how to respond to such an overture. If my experience with friends was sparse, what I knew about boys- other than a competitors for grades or class rank- was nonexistent

Cole," I breathed, "what have you done to yourself?" The wolf's head jerked back toward its shoulders, again and again. Cole sang from the speakers, his voice slow and uncertain against a sparse backing of just piano, a different Cole than I'd ever heard: If I am Hannibal where are my Alps?

Selfish needs, wants, and desires needed to be obliterated. Greed, overindulgence, and gluttony had to be expunged from human behavior. The solution was in self-control, in minimalism, in sparse living conditions; one simple and a brand-new dictionary filled with words everyone would understand.

The Rev’s house is similar to Fiji’s, but it’s older, smaller, and has only sparse grass in the little front yard. It is also in no way welcoming or charming, and he has no cat.

where data are sparse, competing ideas abound that are clever and wishful.

Sparse on the mesa the dry weeds lashed in the wind like the earth’s long echo of lance and spear in old encounters forever unrecorded.

The chemachen who comes calling for a subscription one morning is no more than a boy, the growth on his upper lip so sparse that each hair could be named after an apostle.

Once we stop wishing it were summer, winter can be a glorious season when the world takes on a sparse beauty and even the pavements sparkle. It’s a time for reflection and recuperation, for slow replenishment, for putting your house in order.

There is a payoff for examining the divine author's literary style. It will tell you something about Him. Whereas, Jonah's actions are extensively described and laboriously detailed, God's reactions (although miraculous) are only described in sparse, minimalist terms. God seems much more amused by Jonah than Jonah is with God. Every miracle is directed at Jonah. Yet, very little copy is used to described God's miracles. Although God's miracles are much more astonishing than Jonah's immature fits of rebellion, more copy is dedicated to Jonah.

Then there's the two of us. This word is far too short for us, it has only four letters, too sparse to fill those deep bare vacuums between the stars that press on us with their deafness. It's not love we don't wish to fall into, but that fear. This word is not enough but it will have to do. It's a single vowel in this metallic silence, a mouth that says O again and again in wonder and pain, a breath, a finger grip on a cliffside. You can hold on or let go.

Her lungs, like moldering cheesecloth sacks, hung visible between cracked and yellowing ribs. Her internal organs, long absent, only flaked brown gristle clung to her spine. Sparse clumps of pale hair clung to the few shreds of flesh still gripping her skull. Five other Cotardist assassins stood mutely behind her. Though none looked to be such an advanced state of decay, they all showed signs of rot and neglect.

Poi tirò dalla borsa un paio di caramelle, erano rotonde, agli agrumi, e ne offrì una a Jasper Gwyn. -Grazie, no, davvero, disse lui. -Ma figuriamoci un po'!, disse lei. Lui sorrise e prese la caramella. -Il fatto che siano sparse nella borsa non vuol dire che facciano schifo, disse lei. -No, certo. -Ma ho notato che la gente è propensa a crederlo.

I look up upon a sparsely starred abyss Having wandered to this street corner In the middle of the night Watching the cars and people go by Wondering If this deep, black nothingness Is the sum total of being human.

Thomas stared in horror at the monstrous thing making its way down the long corridor of the Maze. It looked like an experiment gone terribly wrong—something from a nightmare. Part animal, part machine, the Griever rolled and clicked along the stone pathway. Its body resembled a gigantic slug, sparsely covered in hair and glistening with slime, grotesquely pulsating in and out as it breathed. It had no distinguishable head or tail, but front to end it was at least six feet long, four feet thick. Every ten to fifteen seconds, sharp metal spikes popped through its bulbous flesh and the whole creature abruptly curled into a ball and spun forward. Then it would settle, seeming to gather its bearings, the spikes receding back through the moist skin with a sick slurping sound. It did this over and over, traveling just a few feet at a time. But hair and spikes were not the only things protruding from the Griever’s body. Several randomly placed mechanical arms stuck out here and there, each one with a different purpose. A few had bright lights attached to them. Others had long, menacing needles. One had a three-fingered claw that clasped and unclasped for no apparent reason. When the creature rolled, these arms folded and maneuvered to avoid being crushed. Thomas wondered what—or who—could create such frightening, disgusting creatures.

Centuries old, but recently widened, the highway was the same road used by pagan armies, pilgrims, peasants, donkey carts, nomads, wild horsemen out of the east, artillery, tanks, and ten-ton trucks. Its traffic gushed or trickled or dripped, according to the age and season. Once before, long ago, there had been six lanes and robot traffic. Then the traffic had stopped, the paving had cracked, and sparse grass grew in the cracks after an occasional rain. Dust had covered it. Desert dwellers had dug up its broken concrete for the building of hovels and barricades. Erosion made it a desert trail, crossing wilderness. But now there were six lanes and robot traffic, as before.

It is only rather recently that science has begun to make peace with its magical roots. Until a few decades ago, it was common for histories of science either to commence decorously with Copernicus's heliocentric theory or to laud the rationalism of Aristotelian antiquity and then to leap across the Middle Ages as an age of ignorance and superstition. One could, with care and diligence, find occasional things to praise in the works of Avicenna, William of Ockham, Albertus Magnus, and Roger Bacon, but these sparse gems had to be thoroughly dusted down and scraped clean of unsightly accretions before being inserted into the corners of a frame fashioned in a much later period.

Egypt is a fertile valley of rich river soil, low-lying, warm, monotonous, a slow-flowing river, and beyond the limitless desert. Greece is a country of sparse fertility and keen, cold winters, all hills and mountains sharp cut in stone, where strong men must work hard to get their bread. And while Egypt submitted and suffered and turned her face toward death, Greece resisted and rejoiced and turned full-face to life. For somewhere among those steep stone mountains, in little sheltered valleys where the great hills were ramparts to defend, and men could have security for peace and happy living, something quite new came into the world: the joy of life found expression. Perhaps it was born there, among the shepherds pasturing their flocks where the wild flowers made a glory on the hillside; among the sailors on a sapphire sea washing enchanted islands purple in a luminous air.

We’re the descendants of those ancient humans, but our species hasn’t evolved nearly as fast as the world around us has. That means we’re still wired for a lifestyle of constant movement, varied but relatively sparse diets, ample quiet, plenty of face-to-face time, and restful sleep that’s aligned with the rhythm of the day.

Una casa senza libreria è una casa senza dignità, — ha qualcosa della locanda, — è come una città senza librai, — un villaggio senza scuole, — una lettera senza ortografia." ("A house without a library in it is without dignity, like a motel, or a city with no bookstores, a town without a school, or a misspelled letter.") [Pagine sparse]

Canada is a sparsely populated nation, a mere 34 million people across a vast expanse of land. Consequently, as you grow up there, you encounter more weirdos who have been given a wider berth to stew in their weirdness and become gloriously eccentric. These are precisely the kinds of folks who served as our comic muses in Toronto. On top of this, the performers in Second City Toronto were a particularly nice, un-mean group,

Când ne-am zărit, aerul dintre noi şi-a aruncat dintr-o dată imaginea copacilor, indiferenţi şi goi, pe care-o lasă să-l străbată. Oh, ne-am zvârlit, strigându-ne pe nume, unul spre celălalt, şi-atât de iute, că timpul se turti-ntre piepturile noastre, şi ora, lovită, se sparse-n minute. Aş fi vrut să te păstrez în braţe aşa cum ţin trupul copilăriei, întrecut, cu morţile-i nerepetate. Şi să te-mbrăţişez cu coastele-aş fi vrut.

The man from the country has not expected such difficulties; the law, he thinks, should be accessible to everyone and at all times; but as he now takes a closer look at the doorkeeper in his fur coat, at his large pointed nose, his long, sparse, black Tartar beard, he decides that it is better, after all, to wait until he receives permission to enter.

His English was exceptional. There was a glottal sound in his voice, but it was not harsh. I'd often asked him to help me with my sparse Arabic, trying to get my pronunciation of this or that word right. "Shukran." "Afwan." "Qumbula." Thank you. You're welcome. Bomb.

A touch of ray on the stream A twinkle on waves and the sunset gleam I faintly remember seeing this picture Or maybe it was just a dream. Soothing solitude in the sky Of tired footprints and a probing eye I sparsely remember words of this song Or maybe it was a lullaby

Why not break free now, and make Bingtown a place where folk begin anew, all men standing on an equal footing?" "And all women, too." She must be Sparse's daughter, thought Keffria. Even her voice echoed his in tone. Devouchet looked at her in surprise. "It was but a manner of speaking, Ekke," he said mildly. "A manner of speaking becomes a manner of thinking.

How can anyone think so insanely that the human life has the same value and mankind, the same morality, independent of numbers? It is lucid to me that every time a new child is born, the value of every human in world decreases slightly. It is obvious to me that the morality of the population explosion is wholly unlike than when man was a sparse, noble species in its beginning.

E tuttavia, amo anch'io il cinematografo; ma pur andandoci da tanti anni, non ho saputo farmene una cultura. Lui se ne è fatto, invece, una cultura: si è fatto una cultura di tutto quello che ha attratto la sua curiosità; e io non ho saputo farmi una cultura di nulla, nemmeno delle cose che ho più amato nella mia vita: esse sono rimaste in me come immagini sparse, alimentando sì la mia vita di memorie e di commozione ma senza colmare il vuoto, il deserto della mia cultura.

She watched his pale, square hands on the map, the short almost stubby fingers, with their neatly trimmed nails and a sparse scattering of fine black hairs on the bottom section of each finger. Appalled, she felt a stirring of desire. You're pathetic as an adolescent, she savagely chided herself. Like a teenager who fancies the first teacher who says anything nice about your work. Grow up, Jordan!

Science arouses a soaring sense of wonder. But so does pseudoscience. Sparse and poor popularizations of science abandon ecological niches that pseudoscience promptly fills. If it were widely understood that claims to knowledge require adequate evidence before they can be accepted, there would be no room for pseudoscience. But a kind of Gresham’s Law prevails in popular culture by which bad science drives out good.

All these bold birds who fly out into the wide, widest open—it is true! At some point they will not be able to fly any farther and will squat down on some pylon or sparse crag—and very grateful for this miserable accommodation to boot! But who would want to conclude from this that there was no longer a vast and prodigious trajectory ahead of them, that they had flown as far and wide as one could fly! All our great mentors and precursors have finally come to a stop, and it is hardly the noblest and most graceful of gestures with which fatigue comes to a stop: it will also happen to you and me! Of what concern, however, is that to you and me! Other birds will fly farther!

Our home was in a beautiful valley far back in the rugged Ozarks. The country was new and sparsely settled. The land we lived on was Cherokee land, allotted to my mother because of the Cherokee blood that flowed in her veins. It lay in a strip from the foothills of the mountains to the banks of the Illinois River in northeastern Oklahoma.

Diana hooted in triumph as her feet met the path, sprinting higher to where the trees were sparse, their trunks bent and twisted by the wind. They looked like women, frozen in a mad dance, the tangle of their hair tossed forward in abandon, their backs arched in ecstasy or bent in supplication, a processional of dancers that led Diana up the mountainside.

Non tutto si può sistemare. Le cose si rompono e non basta del nastro adesivo o della colla super forte per rimettere insieme i pezzi. A volte i pezzi sono così piccoli, frammenti, briciole sparse sul pavimento, che non puoi raccogliere se non con una scopa e una paletta e una volta che lo hai fatto, non ti resta che gettarli via, perché non servono più a niente. Ed è così che mi sento. Non sono in pezzi. Non sono in frammenti. Sono polvere, che puoi solo soffiare via.

As with the rest of the palace, the library was colored gold and white, but here the walls were made of bookshelves that rose at least three floors high, with spiraling ladders between them and balconies on each level, all looking down to the open floor that was sparse but for the numerous comfortable reading chairs. In the center of it all and stretching up to the muraled ceiling sat a massive, twisting trunk of a pale oak tree, like an ancient guardian watching over the tomes.

One stretch of the gene is repeated a variable number of times, and the version with seven repeats (the “7R” form) produces a receptor protein that is sparse in the cortex and relatively unresponsive to dopamine. This is the variant associated with a host of related traits—sensation and novelty seeking, extroversion, alcoholism, promiscuity, less sensitive parenting, financial risk taking, impulsivity, and, probably most consistently, ADHD (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder).

I tried to describe impossible things like the scent of creosote - bitter, slightly resinous, but still pleasant - the high, keening sound of the cicadas in July, the feathery barrenness of the trees, the very size of the sky, extending white-blue from horizon to horizon, barely interrupted by the low mountains covered with purple volcanic rock. The hardest thing to explain was why it was so beautiful to me - to justify a beauty that didn't depend on the sparse, spiny vegetation that often looked half dead, a beauty that had more to do with the exposed shape of the land, with the shallow bowls of valleys between the craggy hills, and the way they held on to the sun. I found myself using my hands as I tried to describe it to him.

It is a stubble field, where a black rain is falling. It is a brown tree, that stands alone. It is a hissing wind, that encircles empty houses. How melancholy the evening is. A while later, The soft orphan garners the sparse ears of corn. Her eyes graze, round and golden, in the twilight And her womb awaits the heavenly bridegroom. On the way home The shepherd found the sweet body Decayed in a bush of thorns. I am a shadow far from darkening villages. I drank the silence of God Out of the stream in the trees. Cold metal walks on my forehead. Spiders search for my heart. It is a light that goes out in my mouth. At night, I found myself on a pasture, Covered with rubbish and the dust of stars. In a hazel thicket Angels of crystal rang out once more.

The heat swept off the black asphalt in waves as our ragged group started down the street between two columns of people. At first, the crowd was sparse, well-dressed, and relatively quiet, obviously high-ranking party officials. As the crowd got thicker and louder, a guard shouted:'Bow your heads!' The words shot through me like a streak of lightning. I shouted:'You are Americans! Keep your heads up!

Mountains, real or not, ring this desert like the rim of an empty dinner plate. Scattered sparsely along the flat middle are small towns with names like Red Mesa, Pine Cliff, and, right in the center, Night Vale. Above Night Vale are helicopters, protecting citizens from themselves and others. Above the helicopters are stars, which are completely meaningless. Above the stars is the void, which is completely meaningful.

Pete slept too, his chin resting on his chest. He dreamed as well. A diamond turned on his forehead. A tree. He was a landscape. He was covered with trees. He was the Yaak. He was Glacier. He was all the tremendous valleys of western Montana, cloud shadows grazing over him. Storm fronts broke against his nose. He was sparsely populated. He was a city. He teemed with highways and lights. He dreamed he had a sister, a beautiful girl, and in the dream he reasoned out that the girl was Rachel and what he was actually dreaming was a spirit inside of his, a sibling she’d never had, a son. He dreamed that we all contain so many masses and that people are simply potentialities, instances, cases. That all of life can be understood as casework. That DFS was a kind of priesthood.

As my wife saw it—as most people would see it, I imagine—an unwritten book was hardly a financial plan. “In other words,” she said, “you’ve got some magic beans in your pocket. That’s what you’re telling me. You have some magic beans, and you’re going to plant them, and overnight a huge beanstalk is going to grow high into the sky, and you’ll climb up the beanstalk, kill the giant who lives in the clouds, and then bring home a goose that lays golden eggs. Is that it?” “Something like that,” I said. Michelle shook her head and looked out the window. We both knew what I was asking for. Another disruption. Another gamble. Another step in the direction of something I wanted and she truly didn’t. “This is it, Barack,” Michelle said. “One last time. But don’t expect me to do any campaigning. In fact, you shouldn’t even count on my vote.” — AS A KID, I had sometimes watched as my salesman grandfather tried to sell life insurance policies over the phone, his face registering misery as he made cold calls in the evening from our tenth-floor apartment in a Honolulu high-rise. During the early months of 2003, I found myself thinking of him often as I sat at my desk in the sparsely furnished headquarters of my newly launched Senate campaign

Gideon,” she said evenly, inclining her head in sparse respect. “What brings you to my chambers so close to dawn?” The riveting male before her remained silent, his silver eyes flicking over her slowly. Her heart nearly stopped with her sudden fear, and immediately she threw up every mental and physical barrier she could to prevent an unwelcome scan and analysis of her health. “I would not scan you without your permission, Magdelegna. Body Demons who become healers have codes of ethics the same as any others.” “Funny,” she remarked, “I would have thought you to believe yourself above such a trivial matter as permission.

Chicken began to cry then or seemed to cry, to weep or seemed to weep, until they heard the sound of a grown man weeping, an old man who slept on a charred mattress, whose life savings in tattoos had faded to a tracery of ash, whose crotch hair was sparse and gray, whose flesh hung slack on his bones, whose only trespass on life was a flat guitar and a remembered and pitiful air of "I don't know where it is, sir, but I'll find it, sir," and whose name was known nowhere, nowhere in the far reaches of the earth or in the far reaches of his memory, where, when he talked to himself, he talked to himself as Chicken Number Two.

Thinking of Macintosh's reaction to Veronica, Grant felt a wave of empathy. "Poor kid's going to be mooning like a puppy for a month. Did you have to smile at him?" "Really,Grant.He can't be more than fifteen." "Old enough to break out in a sweat," he commented. "Hormones," she murmured as she found Fairfield's sparse selection of wine. "They just need time to balance." Grant's gaze drifted down and focused as she bent over. "It should only take thirty or forty years," he muttered.

It begins to rain. The first harsh, sparse, swift drops rush through the leaves and across the ground in a long sigh, as though of relief from intolerable suspense. They are big as buckshot, warm as though fired from a gun; they sweep across the lantern in a vicious hissing. Pa lifts his face, slackmouthed, the wet black rim of snuff plastered close along the base of his gums; from behind his slack-faced astonishment he 'muses as though from beyond time, upon the ultimate outrage. Cash looks once at the sky, then at the lantern. The saw has not faltered, the running gleam of its pistoning edge unbroken. "Get something to cover the lantern," he says.

Migration is often accompanied by a feeling of unavoidable disorientation, and the circumstances of 1947 would have pronounced this feeling. In most cases, it would have created an involuntary distance between where one was born before the Partition and where one moved to after it, stretching out their identity sparsely over the expanse of this distance. As a result, somewhere in between the original city of their birth and the adopted city of residence, would lay their essence – strangely malleable.

At the time, when decisions had to be made, she had truly wanted to stay home- she was, in a word, exchausted- though she had never wanted such a thing before. And, honestly, what a privilege. What a treat. She understood that she was just a privileged, overeducated lady in the middle of America living the dream of holding her baby twenty-four hours a day. According to basically everyone’s standards, she had nothing to complain about, ever, after that point and possibly even leading up to it. In fact, wasn’t it a bit, you know, hoity-toity, a but oblivious middle-class white lady of her, even to think about complaining? If she read the articles, examined the data, contemplated her lot in life, her place in society, her historical role in the oppression of everyone other than white men, she really had not even a sparse spot of yard on which to stand and emit one single strangled scream.

Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximising scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible. Once we stop wishing it were summer, winter can be a glorious season in which the world takes on a sparse beauty and even the pavements sparkle. It’s a time for reflection and recuperation, for slow replenishment, for putting your house in order. Doing those deeply unfashionable things—slowing down, letting your spare time expand, getting enough sleep, resting—is a radical act now, but it is essential. This is a crossroads we all know, a moment when you need to shed a skin. If you do, you’ll expose all those painful nerve endings and feel so raw that you’ll need to take care of yourself for a while. If you don’t, then that skin will harden around you. It’s one of the most important choices you’ll ever make.

Taking us by and large, we're a queer lot We women who write poetry. And when you think How few of us there've been, it's queerer still. I wonder what it is that makes us do it, Singles us out to scribble down, man-wise, The fragments of ourselves. Why are we Already mother-creatures, double-bearing, With matrices in body and in brain? I rather think that there is just the reason We are so sparse a kind of human being; The strength of forty thousand Atlases Is needed for our every-day concerns. There's Sapho, now I wonder what was Sapho. I know a single slender thing about her: That, loving, she was like a burning birch-tree All tall and glittering fire, and that she wrote Like the same fire caught up to Heaven and held there, A frozen blaze before it broke and fell. Ah, me! I wish I could have talked to Sapho, Surprised her reticences by flinging mine Into the wind. This tossing off of garments Which cloud the soul is none too easy doing With us to-day. But still I think with Sapho One might accomplish it, were she in the mood to bare her loveliness of words and tell The reasons, as she possibly conceived them of why they are so lovely. Just to know How she came at them, just watch The crisp sea sunshine playing on her hair, And listen, thinking all the while 'twas she Who spoke and that we two were sisters Of a strange, isolated little family. And she is Sapho -- Sapho -- not Miss or Mrs., A leaping fire we call so for convenience....

Bit by bit, it comes over us that we shall never hear this laughter again, and that this one garden is forever locked against us, and at that moment begins our true mourning. For nothing in truth can replace that true companion. Old friends cannot be created out of hand. Nothing can match the treasure of common memories. . . . It is idle having planted an acorn in the morning to expect that afternoon to sit by an oak, so life goes on. For years we plant the seed, we feel ourselves rich, and then comes other years when time does its work and our plantation is sparse. One by one, our comrades depart, deprive us of their shade.

At this time, many people still think that the universe is a great, empty place. “Oh, yes, there is life out there somewhere, but certainly it must be sparse, and it is all for the taking.” In the future, you will go out and attempt to set your flags down in any world that you can reach, but the Greater Community will temper your ambitions and your desire for conquest. Even your need for new resources will be curtailed because you will find that the Greater Community is indeed full of activity, particularly in this region of space where you live. And you will find that the regions that you seek to claim for yourself have already been claimed.

Wild Peaches" When the world turns completely upside down You say we’ll emigrate to the Eastern Shore Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore; We’ll live among wild peach trees, miles from town, You’ll wear a coonskin cap, and I a gown Homespun, dyed butternut’s dark gold color. Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor, We’ll swim in milk and honey till we drown. The winter will be short, the summer long, The autumn amber-hued, sunny and hot, Tasting of cider and of scuppernong; All seasons sweet, but autumn best of all. The squirrels in their silver fur will fall Like falling leaves, like fruit, before your shot. 2 The autumn frosts will lie upon the grass Like bloom on grapes of purple-brown and gold. The misted early mornings will be cold; The little puddles will be roofed with glass. The sun, which burns from copper into brass, Melts these at noon, and makes the boys unfold Their knitted mufflers; full as they can hold Fat pockets dribble chestnuts as they pass. Peaches grow wild, and pigs can live in clover; A barrel of salted herrings lasts a year; The spring begins before the winter’s over. By February you may find the skins Of garter snakes and water moccasins Dwindled and harsh, dead-white and cloudy-clear. 3 When April pours the colors of a shell Upon the hills, when every little creek Is shot with silver from the Chesapeake In shoals new-minted by the ocean swell, When strawberries go begging, and the sleek Blue plums lie open to the blackbird’s beak, We shall live well — we shall live very well. The months between the cherries and the peaches Are brimming cornucopias which spill Fruits red and purple, sombre-bloomed and black; Then, down rich fields and frosty river beaches We’ll trample bright persimmons, while you kill Bronze partridge, speckled quail, and canvasback. 4 Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones There’s something in this richness that I hate. I love the look, austere, immaculate, Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones. There’s something in my very blood that owns Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate, A thread of water, churned to milky spate Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones. I love those skies, thin blue or snowy gray, Those fields sparse-planted, rendering meagre sheaves; That spring, briefer than apple-blossom’s breath, Summer, so much too beautiful to stay, Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves, And sleepy winter, like the sleep of death.

After a few short years (fifteen, to be exact — brief by his count, interminable by hers), surrounded by all this vegetative rampancy, she was feeling increasingly unsure of herself. She missed the built environment of New York City. It was only in an urban landscape, amid straight lines and architecture, that she could situate herself in human time and history. As a novelist she needed this. She missed people. She missed human intrigue, drama and power struggles. She needed her own species, not to talk to, necessarily, but just to be among, as a bystander in a crowd or an anonymous witness. But here, on the sparsely populated island, human culture barely existed and then only as the thinnest veneer.

Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximising scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible. Once we stop wishing it were summer, winter can be a glorious season in which the world takes on a sparse beauty and even the pavements sparkle. It’s a time for reflection and recuperation, for slow replenishment, for putting your house in order. Doing

She had seen her son for the first time, in this place, when he was a child of eight or nine. She remembered that day. He ran along the path near the cottage to which she had been assigned, calling to his friends, laughing, his unkempt hair bright in the sunlight. “Gabe!” she heard a boy call; but she would have known him without hearing it. It was the same smile she remembered, the same silvery laugh. She had moved forward in that moment, intending to rush to him, to greet and embrace him. Perhaps she would make the silly face, the one with which they had once mimicked each other. But when she started eagerly toward him, she forgot her own weakness; her dragging foot caught on a stone and she stumbled clumsily. Quickly she righted herself, but in that moment she saw him glance toward her, then look away in disinterest. As if looking through his eyes, she perceived her own withered skin, her sparse gray hair, the awkward gait with which she moved. She stayed silent, and turned away, thinking.

Engineers had not framework for understanding Mandelbrot's description, but mathematicians did. In effect, Mandelbrot was duplicating an abstract construction known as the Cantor set, after the nineteenth-century mathematician Georg Cantor. To make a Cantor set, you start with the interval of numbers from zero to one, represented by a line segment. Then you remove the middle third. That leaves two segments, and you remove the middle third of each (from one-ninth to two-ninths and from seven-ninths to eight-ninths). That leaves four segments, and you remove the middle third of each- and so on to infinity. What remains? A strange "dust" of points, arranged in clusters, infinitely many yet infinitely sparse. Mandelbrot was thinking of transmission errors as a Cantor set arranged in time.

It is wrong to draw a sharp line in one's imagination between the "nature" present on the Rocky Mountain front and that available in the suburbanite's own front yard. The natural world found on even the most perfect and stylized of lawns is no less real than that at the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Different, yes, but to draw too sharp a distinction between the sparsely settled world of Alaska and the dense suburbs of Levittown is a prescription for the plundering of natural resources. It is easy to see how the yard, conceived as less natural and thus less important than the spotted owl, is easily ignored. The point is underscored by research showing that, surprisingly, people who evince concern for the environment are more likely to use chemicals on their yards than those who are less ecologically aware.

Horklump M.O.M. Classification: X The Horklump comes from Scandinavia but is now widespread throughout northern Europe. It resembles a fleshy, pinkish mushroom covered in sparse, wiry black bristles. A prodigious breeder, the Horklump will cover an average garden in a matter of days. It spreads sinewy tentacles rather than roots into the ground to search for its preferred food of earthworms. The Horklump is a favourite delicacy of gnomes but otherwise has no discernible use. Horned Serpent M.O.M. Classification: XXXXX Several species of Horned Serpents exist globally: large specimens have been caught in the Far East, while ancient bestiaries suggest that they were once native to Western Europe, where they have been hunted to extinction by wizards in search of potion ingredients. The largest and most diverse group of Horned Serpents still in existence is to be found in North America, of which the most famous and highly prized has a jewel in its forehead, which is reputed to give the power of invisibility and flight. A legend exists concerning the founder of Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Isolt Sayre, and a Horned Serpent. Sayre was reputed to be able to understand the serpent, which offered her shavings from its horn as the core of the first ever American-made wand. The Horned Serpent gives its name to one of the houses of Ilvermorny.

I tear down Baxter, which loops around the last mile down to Back Cove. And then I stop short. The buildings have fallen away behind me, giving way to ramshackle sheds, sparsely situated on either side of the cracked and run-down road. Beyond that, a short strip of tall, weedy grass slants down toward the cove. The water is an enormous mirror, tipped with pink and gold from the sky. In that single, blazing moment as I come around the bend, the sun—curved over the dip of the horizon like a solid gold archway—lets out its final winking rays of light, shattering the darkness of the water, turning everything white for a fraction of a second, and then falls away, sinking, dragging the pink and the red and the purple out of the sky with it, all the color bleeding away instantly and leaving only dark. Alex was right. It was gorgeous—one of the best I’ve ever seen.

A small grove of linden trees grew on the far side of the lake, below the palace. Dortchen made her way there carefully, not wanting to be seen so close to the King's residence. The trees were in full blossom, bees reeling drunkenly from the pale-yellow flowers that hung down in clusters below the heart-shaped leaves. Dortchen harvested what she could reach, breathing the sweet scent deeply, then picked handfuls of the wild roses that grew in a tangled hedge along the path. She would crystallise the petals with sugar when she got home, or make rose water to sell in her father's shop. She plucked some dandelions she found growing wild in a clearing, and then some meadowsweet, and at last reached the ancient old oak tree she knew from her last foray into the royal park. Here she found handfuls of the sparse grey moss, and she hid it deep within her basket, beneath the flowers and herbs and leaves.

Beautiful prairies, bordered by lofty hills sparsely scattered with timber, stretch around. The massive fronds of the Pinus Ponderosa replace the elegant leaflets of the Cedar, no longer found save rarely, perchance, in some deep dell moistened by a purling streamlet. Groves of aspen appear here and there. The Balsam Poplar shows itself at intervals only, along the streams. The white racemes of the Service-berry flower, and the chaste flowers of the Mock Orange, load the air with their fragrance. Every copse re-echoes with the low drumming of the ruffed Grouse; the trees resound with the muffled booming of the Cock of the Woods. The Pheasant shirrs past; the scrannel-pipe of the larger Crane -- ever a watchful sentinel -- grates harshly on the ear; and the shrill whistle of the Curlew as it soars aloft aides the general concert of the re-opined year. I speak still of Spring; for the impressions of that jocum season are ever the most vivid, and naturally recur with the greatest force in after years. -- Alexander Caulfield Anderson describing the new brigade trail between Lac la Hache and Kamloops.

She was a mimicry of a façade fashioned from the half-truths of her life. She was a beautiful abomination, patched together from the most pristine and terrible parts she could find. She was a black crystal of many cuts and facets whose dark glow suffocated and entranced those it washed over. There was a pointlessness in her eyes and apathy in her stature, and further in, past the symphonies of nightmarish screams was a blinding light. All the capability she could ever ask for kept in a place she would never reach. She chose the ice rather than the fire, shivering and hard with heat sparse, for while a flicker can exist in freeze's cold, it's heat will not radiate, no matter how bold. She took my face in hands that would make ice seem warm and whispered a blizzard into my ear, a cascading song of fear after fear. The lies she spilled, mixed with regrets and appeal, were cloaked in the inferno of her rage, the anger, the only thing that really made her real. This was her one semblance of life, a bottomless and endless void of proportions vast with a calamity of fusion and fission streaking through, a mindless hue, an emotion with a face, a darling of her race. The cracks spew darkness from within her ever so pale skin. They congregated on her curves and flesh in black and churning rivers and streams. They flooded every dip with blackness. They filled every hollow with unstable curiosity, this is her release, this is when she is free. The faces of deceit always laugh, they never wallow for their lies are a pleasure tool, her insides are contorted in laughter the same way, just as slick, just as cruel. A crude combination of fascination, of animation, of the darkest demons of them all. She was poetry written in pen, scratched and scribbled again and again. Ink splattered across the page, and within those scrawled words, those small, sharp incisions, an image can be seen, and you're left to wonder what, in the end, this all could mean...

early childhood she had given her deepest trust, and which for half a century has suggested what she might do, think, feel, desire, and become, has suddenly fallen silent. Now, at last, all those books have no instructions for her, no demands—because she is just too old. In the world of classic British fiction, the one Vinnie knows best, almost the entire population is under fifty, or even under forty—as was true of the real world when the novel was invented. The few older people—especially women—who are allowed into a story are usually cast as relatives; and Vinnie is no one’s mother, daughter, or sister. People over fifty who aren’t relatives are pushed into minor parts, character parts, and are usually portrayed as comic, pathetic, or disagreeable. Occasionally one will appear in the role of tutor or guide to some young protagonist, but more often than not their advice and example are bad; their histories a warning rather than a model. In most novels it is taken for granted that people over fifty are as set in their ways as elderly apple trees, and as permanently shaped and scarred by the years they have weathered. The literary convention is that nothing major can happen to them except through subtraction. They may be struck by lightning or pruned by the hand of man; they may grow weak or hollow; their sparse fruit may become misshapen, spotted, or sourly crabbed. They may endure these changes nobly or meanly. But they cannot, even under the best of conditions, put out new growth or burst into lush and unexpected bloom. Even today there are disproportionately few older characters in fiction. The

As long as there have been humans, we have searched for our place in the Cosmos. In the childhood of our species (when our ancestors gazed a little idly at the stars), among the Ionian scientists of ancient Greece, and in our own age, we have been transfixed by this question: Where are we? Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost between two spiral arms in the outskirts of a galaxy which is a member of a sparse cluster of galaxies, tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. This perspective is a courageous continuation of our penchant for constructing and testing mental models of the skies; the Sun as a red-hot stone, the stars as celestial flame, the Galaxy as the backbone of night. Since Aristarchus, every step in our quest has moved us farther from center stage in the cosmic drama. There has not been much time to assimilate these new findings. The discoveries of Shapley and Hubble were made within the lifetimes of many people still alive today. There are those who secretly deplore these great discoveries, who consider every step a demotion, who in their heart of hearts still pine for a universe whose center, focus and fulcrum is the Earth. But if we are to deal with the Cosmos we must first understand it, even if our hopes for some unearned preferential status are, in the process, contravened. Understanding where we live is an essential precondition for improving the neighborhood. Knowing what other neighborhoods are like also helps. If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers. We embarked on our cosmic voyage with a question first framed in the childhood of our species and in each generation asked anew with undiminished wonder: What are the stars? Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.

THE MEETING" "Scant rain had fallen and the summer sun Had scorched with waves of heat the ripening corn, That August nightfall, as I crossed the down Work-weary, half in dream. Beside a fence Skirting a penning’s edge, an old man waited Motionless in the mist, with downcast head And clothing weather-worn. I asked his name And why he lingered at so lonely a place. “I was a shepherd here. Two hundred seasons I roamed these windswept downlands with my flock. No fences barred our progress and we’d travel Wherever the bite grew deep. In summer drought I’d climb from flower-banked combe to barrow’d hill-top To find a missing straggler or set snares By wood or turmon-patch. In gales of March I’d crouch nightlong tending my suckling lambs. “I was a ploughman, too. Year upon year I trudged half-doubled, hands clenched to my shafts, Guiding my turning furrow. Overhead, Cloud-patterns built and faded, many a song Of lark and pewit melodied my toil. I durst not pause to heed them, rising at dawn To groom and dress my team: by daylight’s end My boots hung heavy, clodded with chalk and flint. “And then I was a carter. With my skill I built the reeded dew-pond, sliced out hay From the dense-matted rick. At harvest time, My wain piled high with sheaves, I urged the horses Back to the master’s barn with shouts and curses Before the scurrying storm. Through sunlit days On this same slope where you now stand, my friend, I stood till dusk scything the poppied fields. “My cob-built home has crumbled. Hereabouts Few folk remember me: and though you stare Till time’s conclusion you’ll not glimpse me striding The broad, bare down with flock or toiling team. Yet in this landscape still my spirit lingers: Down the long bottom where the tractors rumble, On the steep hanging where wild grasses murmur, In the sparse covert where the dog-fox patters.” My comrade turned aside. From the damp sward Drifted a scent of melilot and thyme; From far across the down a barn owl shouted, Circling the silence of that summer evening: But in an instant, as I stepped towards him Striving to view his face, his contour altered. Before me, in the vaporous gloaming, stood Nothing of flesh, only a post of wood.

interview from Ross E. Cheit about The Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology, and the Sexual Abuse of Children (Oxford University Press, February 2014). In the foreword to your book you mention a book titled Satan’s Silence was the catalyst for your research. Tell us about that. Cheit: Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker solidified the witch-hunt narrative in their 1995 book, Satan’s Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt, which included some of these cases. I was initially skeptical of the book’s argument for personal reasons. It seemed implausible to me that we had overreacted to child abuse because everything in my own personal history said we hadn’t. When I read the book closely, my skepticism increased. Satan’s Silence has been widely reviewed as meticulously researched. As someone with legal training, I looked for how many citations referred to the trial transcripts. The answer was almost none. Readers were also persuaded by long list of [presumably innocent] convicted sex offenders to whom they dedicated the book. If I’m dedicating a book to fifty-four people, all of whom I think have been falsely convicted, I’m going to mention every one of these cases somewhere in the book. Most weren’t mentioned at all beyond that dedication. The witch-hunt narrative is so sparsely documented that it’s shocking.

On one hand the Christian missionaries sought to convert the heathen, by fire and sword if need be, to the gospel of peace, brotherhood, and heavenly beatitude; on the other, the more venturesome spirits wished to throw off the constraining traditions and customs, and begin life afresh, levelling distinctions of class, eliminating superfluities and luxuries, privileges and distinctions, and hierarchical rank. In short, to go back to the Stone Ages, before the institutions of Bronze Age civilization had crystallized. Though the Western hemisphere was indeed inhabited, and many parts of it were artfully cultivated, so much of it was so sparsely occupied that the European thought of it as a virgin continent against whose wildness he pitted his manly strength. In one mood the European invaders preached the Christian gospel to the native idolaters, subverted them with strong liquors, forced them to cover their nakedness with clothes, and worked them to an early death in mines; in another, the pioneer himself took on the ways of the North American Indian, adopted his leather costume, and reverted to the ancient paleolithic economy: hunting, fishing, gathering shellfish and berries, revelling in the wilderness and its solitude, defying orthodox law and order, and yet, under pressure, improvising brutal substitutes. The beauty of that free life still haunted Audubon in his old age.

D’Agata non aveva tempo di sognare, perché era ossessionato dal terrore delle cimici. Queste incomode compagne non piacevano a nessuno, naturalmente; ma tutti avevamo finito col farci l’abitudine. Non erano poche e sparse, ma un esercito compatto, che col sopraggiungere della primavera aveva invaso tutti i nostri giacigli: stavano annidate di giorno nelle fenditure dei muri e delle cuccette di legno, e partivano in scorreria non appena cessava il tramestio del giorno. A cedere loro una piccola porzione del nostro sangue, ci saremmo rassegnati di buon grado: era meno facile abituarsi a sentirle correre furtive sul viso e sul corpo, sotto gli abiti. Potevano dormire tranquilli solo quelli che avevano la fortuna di godere di un sonno pesante, e che riuscivano a cadere nell’incoscienza prima che quelle altre si risvegliassero. D’Agata, che era un minuscolo, sobrio, riservato e pulitissimo muratore siciliano, si era ridotto a dormire di giorno, e passava le notti appollaiato sul letto, guardandosi intorno con occhi dilatati dall’orrore, dalla veglia e dall’attenzione spasmodica. Teneva stretto in mano un aggeggio rudimentale, che si era costruito con un bastoncello e un pezzo di rete metallica, e il muro accanto a lui era coperto di una lurida costellazione di macchie sanguigne. In principio queste sue abitudini erano state derise: aveva forse la pelle più fina di noi altri? Ma poi la pietà aveva prevalso commista con una traccia di invidia; perché, fra tutti noi, D’Agata era il solo il cui nemico fosse concreto, presente, tangibile, suscettibile di essere combattuto, percosso, schiacciato contro il muro.

Deacon met my glare with an impish grin. “Anyway, did you celebrate Valentine’s Day when you were slumming with the mortals?” I blinked. “Not really. Why?” Aiden snorted and then disappeared into one of the rooms. “Follow me,” Deacon said. “You’re going to love this. I just know it.” I followed him down the dimly-lit corridor that was sparsely decorated. We passed several closed doors and a spiral staircase. Deacon went through an archway and stopped, reaching along the wall. Light flooded the room. It was a typical sunroom, with floor-to-ceiling glass windows, wicker furniture, and colorful plants. Deacon stopped by a small potted plant sitting on a ceramic coffee table. It looked like a miniature pine tree that was missing several limbs. Half the needles were scattered in and around the pot. One red Christmas bulb hung from the very top branch, causing the tree to tilt to the right. “What do you think?” Deacon asked. “Um… well, that’s a really different Christmas tree, but I’m not sure what that has to do with Valentine’s Day.” “It’s sad,” Aiden said, strolling into the room. “It’s actually embarrassing to look at. What kind of tree is it, Deacon?” He beamed. “It’s called a Charlie Brown Christmas Tree.” Aiden rolled his eyes. “Deacon digs this thing out every year. The pine isn’t even real. And he leaves it up from Thanksgiving to Valentine’s Day. Which thank the gods is the day after tomorrow. That means he’ll be taking it down.” I ran my fingers over the plastic needles. “I’ve seen the cartoon.” Deacon sprayed something from an aerosol can. “It’s my MHT tree.” “MHT tree?” I questioned. “Mortal Holiday Tree,” Deacon explained, and smiled. “It covers the three major holidays. During Thanksgiving it gets a brown bulb, a green one for Christmas, and a red one for Valentine’s Day.” “What about New Year’s Eve?” He lowered his chin. “Now, is that really a holiday?” “The mortals think so.” I folded my arms. “But they’re wrong. The New Year is during the summer solstice,” Deacon said. “Their math is completely off, like most of their customs. For example, did you know that Valentine’s Day wasn’t actually about love until Geoffrey Chaucer did his whole courtly love thing in the High Middle Ages?” “You guys are so weird.” I grinned at the brothers. “That we are,” Aiden replied. “Come on, I’ll show you your room.” “Hey Alex,” Deacon called. “We’re making cookies tomorrow, since it’s Valentine’s Eve.” Making cookies on Valentine’s Eve? I didn’t even know if there was such a thing as Valentine’s Eve. I laughed as I followed Aiden out of the room. “You two really are opposites.” “I’m cooler!” Deacon yelled from his Mortal Holiday Tree room

Such is the lot of the knight that even though my patrimony were ample and adequate for my support, nevertheless here are the disturbances which give me no quiet. We live in fields, forests, and fortresses. Those by whose labors we exist are poverty-stricken peasants, to whom we lease our fields, vineyards, pastures, and woods. The return is exceedingly sparse in proportion to the labor expended. Nevertheless the utmost effort is put forth that it may be bountiful and plentiful, for we must be diligent stewards. I must attach myself to some prince in the hope of protection. Otherwise every one will look upon me as fair plunder. But even if I do make such an attachment hope is beclouded by danger and daily anxiety. If I go away from home I am in peril lest I fall in with those who are at war or feud with my overlord, no matter who he is, and for that reason fall upon me and carry me away. If fortune is adverse, the half of my estates will be forfeit as ransom. Where I looked for protection I was ensnared. We cannot go unarmed beyond to yokes of land. On that account, we must have a large equipage of horses, arms, and followers, and all at great expense. We cannot visit a neighboring village or go hunting or fishing save in iron. Then there are frequently quarrels between our retainers and others, and scarcely a day passes but some squabble is referred to us which we must compose as discreetly as possible, for if I push my claim to uncompromisingly war arises, but if I am too yielding I am immediately the subject of extortion. One concession unlooses a clamor of demands. And among whom does all this take place? Not among strangers, my friend, but among neighbors, relatives, and those of the same household, even brothers. These are our rural delights, our peace and tranquility. The castle, whether on plain or mountain, must be not fair but firm, surrounded by moat and wall, narrow within, crowded with stalls for the cattle, and arsenals for guns, pitch, and powder. Then there are dogs and their dung, a sweet savor I assure you. The horsemen come and go, among them robbers, thieves, and bandits. Our doors are open to practically all comers, either because we do not know who they are or do not make too diligent inquiry. One hears the bleating of sheep, the lowing of cattle, the barking of dogs, the shouts of men working in the fields, the squeaks or barrows and wagons, yes, and even the howling of wolves from nearby woods. The day is full of thought for the morrow, constant disturbance, continual storms. The fields must be ploughed and spaded, the vines tended, trees planted, meadows irrigated. There is harrowing, sowing, fertilizing, reaping, threshing: harvest and vintage. If the harvest fails in any year, then follow dire poverty, unrest, and turbulence.