Spin The Dawn Quotes

Seize the wind," I whispered. "Don't become the kite that never flies.

I will stay by your side until the fire in the sun grows cold and the light of the moon is no more. Until time blots out the stars.

You are my oath now, Maia Tamarin. And you'll never be free of me.

I'd battled ghosts and touched the stars. I'd climbed a mountain to the moon and conquered the fury of the sun.

All legends have a spark of truth. Sometimes more than a spark.

Above, the stars faded behind the misty sky, and the sun fanned its light upon us. We melted into each other until the dawn slid into dusk, and the sun paled into the moon, and the stars, once lost, became found again.

I knew then that we were like two pieces of cloth, sewn together for life. Our stitches couldn't be undone. I wouldn't let them.

But depression wasn't the word. This was a plunge encompassing sorrow and revulsion far beyond the personal: a sick, drenching nausea at all humanity and human endeavor from the dawn of time. The writhing loathsomeness of the biological order. Old age, sickness, death. No escape for anyone. Even the beautiful ones were like soft fruit about to spoil. And yet somehow people still kept fucking and breeding and popping out new fodder for the grave, producing more and more new beings to suffer like this was some kind of redemptive, or good, or even somehow morally admirable thing: dragging more innocent creatures into the lose-lose game. Squirming babies and plodding, complacent, hormone-drugged moms. Oh, isn't he cute? Awww. Kids shouting and skidding in the playground with no idea what future Hells await them: boring jobs and ruinous mortgages and bad marriages and hair loss and hip replacements and lonely cups of coffee in an empty house and a colostomy bag at the hospital. Most people seemed satisfied with the thin decorative glaze and the artful stage lighting that sometimes, made the bedrock atrocity of the human predicament look somewhat more mysterious or less abhorrent. People gambled and golfed and planted gardens and traded stocks and had sex and bought new cars and practiced yoga and worked and prayed and redecorated their homes and got worked up over the news and fussed over their children and gossiped about their neighbors and pored over restaurant reviews and founded charitable organizations and supported political candidates and attended the U.S. Open and dined and travelled and distracted themselves with all kinds of gadgets and devices, flooding themselves incessantly with information and texts and communication and entertainment from every direction to try to make themselves forget it: where we were, what we were. But in a strong light there was no good spin you could put on it. It was rotten from top to bottom.

It was a tale of a boy, too. A boy who could fly but not swim. A boy with the powers of the gods but the shackles of a slave. A boy who loved me. It was a tale still being written.

Sometimes finding the way is tricky, but you always do. As long as you don't give up.

But I would give up the sun and moon and stars if it meant saving him.

You're used to being underestimated, so you want to prove yourself. Don't let that be your crutch. Accept help when you need it.

You will hold the seams of our family together, Maia. No other tailor in the world can do that.

I want you to know that some journeys have ends, but not this one. This one will change you. Irrevocably." "Don't all journeys change you?" "It isn't the same." He leaned forward. "I, too, once journeyed beyond the stars." "What did you find?" His voice turned lethally soft. "That it's just the beginning.

What keeps you up at night?" I asked. "You're never in your tent." A cloud passed over his face. "Demons and ghosts." With a faint smile, he added, "And not having enough books to read.

We have each other, and our stories twist and mingle like the twisting currents of a river. We hold each other tight as we spin and lurch across our lives. There are moments of great joy and magic. The most astounding things can lie waiting as each day dawns, as each page turns.

I whirled around, but Edan was gone. I let out an exasperated sigh. Never had I met anyone so insufferably pleased with himself.

People will see what they want to see.

You'll learn that certain things aren't worth the trouble.

I’ve read somewhere in a book when something happens that is unbearable to you, sometimes, time stops. Like your inner clock just stops working, even if the world keeps spinning you will stand still for the rest of your life.

I believed in Oxford, and cobblestoned squares, and old bricks thick with ivy,a nd rainy days curled up reading books. I believed in my mother's strong coffee and in the lonely, aching scent of early dawn before anyone else in my boardinghouse was awake. I believed in my favorite men's cardigan and the way the wind felt on the back of my neck. I believed in life as it lay before me, spinning out slowly, day after day of warm springs and thunderstorms and laughter. These were the things I believed in.

A sketchbook for a cloak? Hardly seems like a fair trade." "It's a magic sketchbook," Edan said, reaching for it. I rolled my eyes. "Really." "See, when you turn it upside down, sand falls out." Edan smiled widely as he caught the desert's golden grains in his palm. "Sand, sand, and more sand." "Oh, you!

The sun was a brutal god. Brutal and merciless, he blinded those foolish enough to look at him.

The more you worry about it, the less you'll be able to concentrate.

She gave off a little neigh when I reached to touch her cheek. I fell in love with her immediately. "You like her more than me," Edan pouted. "That's not hard to do." I petted her mane again; then offered Edan a small smile. "But thank you.

It was the tale of a boy, too. A boy who could fly but not swim. A boy with the powers of the gods but the shackles of a slave. A boy who loved me.

But I did worry about him. Now I understood the fatigue written on his brow, the hiding and evasive answers.

I dread reaching the end of my story, for it is full of knots that I haven't had the courage to cut free.

Normally death came at night, taking a person in their sleep, stopping their heart or tickling them awake, leading them to the bathroom with a splitting headache before pouncing and flooding their brain with blood. It waits in alleys and metro stops. After the sun goes down plugs are pulled by white-clad guardians and death is invited into an antiseptic room. But in the country death comes, uninvited, during the day. It takes fishermen in their longboats. It grabs children by the ankles as they swim. In winter it calls them down a slope too steep for their budding skills, and crosses their skies at the tips. It waits along the shore where snow met ice not long ago but now, unseen by sparkling eyes, a little water touches the shore, and the skater makes a circle slightly larger than intended. Death stands in the woods with a bow and arrow at dawn and dusk. And it tugs cars off the road in broad daylight, the tires spinning furiously on ice or snow, or bright autumn leaves.

War comes at a great cost, and from that sacrifice comes peace. Sometimes we must let go of what we value for the future of our country.

A working woman, rising before dawn to spin and needing light in her cottage room, piles brushwood on a smoldering log, and the whole heap kindled by the little brand goes up in a mighty blaze. Such was the fire of Love, stealthy but all-consuming, that swept through Medea's heart. In the turmoil of her soul, her soft cheeks turned from rose to white and white to rose.

We don't think of being bound to the oath as a sacrifice, but as an honor. It is an honor to use our powers to better this world.

It is wishful thinking to hope the gods might listen to you.

I want you to know that some journeys have ends, but not this one, This one will change you.

Is Maia your birth name?" "It is." "I'm not sure it suits you." I twisted my lips slightly. "It means obedient." He set down the cup. "Which is why I said I'm not sure it suits you," he said.

I want you to know that some journeys have ends, but not this one. This one will change you. Irrevocably." "Don't all journeys change you?" "It isn't the same." He leaned forward. "I, too, once journeyd beyond the stars." "What did you find?" His voice turned lethally soft. "That it's just the beginning.

A QUESTION OF VISION. From the sun’s seat, after all, humanity is an abstraction. Earth a mere spinning blip. Closer, the city a knot of light between other knots; even closer, and buildings gleamed, slowly separating. Dawn in the windows revealed bodies, all the same. Only with focus came specifics, mole by nostril, tooth stuck to a dry bottom lip in sleep, the papery skin of an armpit.

I saw how protective Delann is of you. Yet he respects you.

Will you be able to find your way back? His grin widened, and I realized I'd shown him a sign that I still cared. To you, always.

And that day dawned when Arrakis lay at the hub of the universe with the wheel poised to spin.

To judge from the entrance the dawn was making, it promised to be a very iffy day -- that is, blasts of angry sunlight one minute, fits of freezing rain the next, all of it seasoned with sudden gusts of wind -- one of those days when someone who is sensitive to abrupt shifts in weather and suffers them in his blood and brain is likely to change opinion and direction continuously, like those sheets of tin, cut in the shape of banners and roosters, that spin every which way on rooftops with each new puff of wind.

We caught the tread of dancing feet, We loitered down the moonlit street, And stopped beneath the harlot's house. Inside, above the din and fray, We heard the loud musicians play The 'Treues Liebes Herz' of Strauss. Like strange mechanical grotesques, Making fantastic arabesques, The shadows raced across the blind. We watched the ghostly dancers spin To sound of horn and violin, Like black leaves wheeling in the wind. Like wire-pulled automatons, Slim silhouetted skeletons Went sidling through the slow quadrille, Then took each other by the hand, And danced a stately saraband; Their laughter echoed thin and shrill. Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed A phantom lover to her breast, Sometimes they seemed to try to sing. Sometimes a horrible marionette Came out, and smoked its cigarette Upon the steps like a live thing. Then, turning to my love, I said, 'The dead are dancing with the dead, The dust is whirling with the dust.' But she--she heard the violin, And left my side, and entered in: Love passed into the house of lust. Then suddenly the tune went false, The dancers wearied of the waltz, The shadows ceased to wheel and whirl. And down the long and silent street, The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet, Crept like a frightened girl.

Shams is a trumpet note of light that starts the atoms spinning, a wind that comes at dawn tasting of bread and salt. Move to the edge and over. Fly with the wings he gives, and if you get tired, lie down, but keep opening inside your soul.

Stop spinning on your busy wheel of pain long enough to hear this: You are not outside the fold of your original preciousness. Even the dawn-bird is heralding this truth each morning, singing to you a map-song with coordinates leading to your renewal.

When economists base their models on their fantasies of an "economic man" motivated only by self-interest, they forget community--the all-important web of meaning we spin around each other--the inescapable context within which anything truly human has taken place.

I believed in Oxford, and cobblestoned squares, and old bricks thick with ivy, a nd rainy days curled up reading books. I believed in my mother's strong coffee and in the lonely, aching scent of early dawn before anyone else in my boardinghouse was awake. I believed in my favorite men's cardigan and the way the wind felt on the back of my neck. I believed in life as it lay before me, spinning out slowly, day after day of warm springs and thunderstorms and laughter. These were the things I believed in.

You are my oath now, Maia Tamarin. And you’ll never be free of me.

A girl isn't fit to be anything more than a prize.

So while I do not expect to get over much, I know that my motley, beloved friends and I have only a short time together left on this merry-go-round, as it spins around the sun, rises and falls. At the same time, these friends are all sort of a marvelous mess: perfect and neurotic, driven and gentle, self-centered and crazily generous, fully alive and probably on their way out. They are chipped and slightly faded works of art, and they are the exact horse I’ve longed for, all my life.

The heat intensified. My emotions were spinning out of control. The euphoria was maddening. Out of pure instinct, I pulled away and leaned against the wall, unable to find enough air to breathe. The more I pulled away, the strong the raw ache inside of me became, causing me more pain than the lack of oxygen in the room. Then I realized the source of my pain. It dawned on me with a shocking certainty. I hadn't wanted to pull away from Nathan. I needed him closer in order to feel safe. I needed his touch, his feel. I needed him now more than I ever had.

They were the cars at the fair that were whirling around her; no, they were the planets, while the sun stood, burning and spinning and guttering in the centre; here they came again, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto; but they were not planets, for it was not the merry-go-round at all, but the Ferris wheel, they were constellations, in the hub of which, like a great cold eye, burned Polaris, and round and round it here they went: Cassiopeia, Cepheus, the Lynx, Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, and the Dragon; yet they were not constellations, but, somehow, myriads of beautiful butterflies, she was sailing into Acapulco harbour through a hurricane of beautiful butterflies, zigzagging overhead and endlessly vanishing astern over the sea, the sea, rough and pure, the long dawn rollers advancing, rising, and crashing down to glide in colourless ellipses over the sand, sinking, sinking, someone was calling her name far away and she remembered, they were in a dark wood, she heard the wind and the rain rushing through the forest and saw the tremours of lightning shuddering through the heavens and the horse—great God, the horse—and would this scene repeat itself endlessly and forever?—the horse, rearing, poised over her, petrified in midair, a statue, somebody was sitting on the statue, it was Yvonne Griffaton, no, it was the statue of Huerta, the drunkard, the murderer, it was the Consul, or it was a mechanical horse on the merry-go-round, the carrousel, but the carrousel had stopped and she was in a ravine down which a million horses were thundering towards her, and she must escape, through the friendly forest to their house, their little home by the sea.

PIPER TUMBLED THROUGH THE SKY. Far below she saw city lights glimmering in the early dawn, and several hundred yards away the body of the bronze dragon spinning out of control, its wings limp, fire flickering in its mouth like a badly wired lightbulb. A body shot past her – Leo, screaming and frantically grabbing at the clouds. ‘Not coooooool!’ She tried to call to him, but he was already too far below. Somewhere above her, Jason yelled, ‘Piper, level out! Extend your arms and legs!’ It was hard to control her fear, but she did what he said and regained some balance. She fell spread-eagle like a skydiver, the wind underneath her like a solid block of ice. Then Jason was there, wrapping his arms around her waist. Thank god, Piper thought. But part of her also thought: Great. Second time this week he’s hugged me, and both times it’s because I’m plummeting to my death. ‘We have to get Leo!’ she shouted. Their fall slowed as Jason controlled the winds, but they still lurched up and down like the winds didn’t want to cooperate. ‘Gonna get rough,’ Jason warned. ‘Hold on!’ Piper locked her arms around him, and Jason shot towards the ground. Piper

In the beginning was the dream... In the eternal night where no dawn broke, the dream deepened. Before anything ever was, it had to be dreamed... If we take Nature as the great artist, then all presences in the world have emerged from her mind and imagination. We are children of the earth's dreaming. It's almost as if Nature is in dream and we are her children who have broken through the dawn into time and place. Fashioned in the dreaming of the clay, we are always somehow haunted by that; we are unable ever finally to decide what is dream and what is reality. Each day we live in what we call reality, yet life seems to resemble a dream. We rush through our days in such stress and intensity, as if we were here to stay and the serious project of the world depended on us. We worry and grow anxious - we magnify trivia until they become important enough to control our lives. Yet all the time, we have forgotten that we are but temporary sojourners on the surface of a strange planet spinning slowly in the infinite night of the cosmos... [.....] There is no definitive dividing line between reality and dream. What we consider real is often precariously dream-like. Our grip on reality is tenuous...

They strap toast onto a cat’s back and toss it in the air.” And he waited. I knew there had to be a gag, and if I didn’t guess what it was, he would win the exchange I had begun by essaying a pun. Well, it served me right. “But how do dat make de ship go, Mr. Interlocutor,” I asked ritually, conceding defeat. “They butter the toast, you see.” Light belatedly dawned. “Ah. Of course. The toast must fall butter side down—” “—but the cat must land on its feet.” He spread his hands: QED. “Hence the array spins forever, generating power.

I hate the night, the awful night! It muzzles the scream of pain, it rolls the spin of woes, and the waves of the night are sweeping the town serving none but the ill-fated ones. The masquerade of time, what does it conceal in its twists? Agony and more in that night of bore. The night, what a night! A night of endless sighs and cries! I hate the night, that awful night, and I see no light, no hope for dawn, no peace in sight, nothing but to suffer from the turmoil. The night of pain! The night of shame! The untamed night of the wickedest symphonies!

My life was such a careful balance, a fragile nexus of work and attention and preparation and planning, like the old vaudeville trick of spinning plates on poles all over a stage, running from one to another to another, not letting any of them fall. I’d been so good at it, the running and the spinning. I’d been getting up before dawn and staying late after school and running and spinning the plates for as long as I could remember. I was getting so tired. I didn’t want to run and spin anymore. But I didn’t know what would happen, I didn’t know who I would be, if one of the plates broke.

Today is a writing day. My head is spinning with rapture as the words rise from my throat. I am dizzy from holding the world in my palm. At dusk, my lantern and I go in search of cries of the destitute, the displaced, and dispossessed. I lend them my pen and offer them my heart. Today is a sacred day. My skin is anointed with their blood, and I am ready to battle the darkness. With hope as my shield and love as my sword, I will not return until dawn. Because no one must be forgotten. Because victory is possible. Because anything is possible, for today is a writing day.

The sides of my head throb. My knees feel weak. “You need therapy.” Mom laughs the most over-the-top, hysterical laugh I’ve ever heard. “It’s not funny. There is something wrong with you. Who treats their kids this way? There’s a reason none of us want to be around you. There’s a reason Shoji wants to live with Dad, and why Taro spent the rest of the summer with his friend, and why I want to go to art school thousands of miles away from you.” My face burns with frustration. “You are so obsessed with yourself that there isn’t any room for anyone else’s feelings. You don’t care about anything unless it somehow relates back to you.” I start to walk away, intent on leaving her alone in her chair. But something stops me. Spinning back to face her, my breathing erratic and my voice hoarse, I growl, “And I’m not imagining what happened to me. Your sick brother sexually abused me. I don’t care what you think it’s called, because that’s what it is. Sexual abuse. I was sexually abused. Do you get that? And if you were any kind of mother, that would have mattered to you. You wouldn’t have tried to justify it or rationalize it away by saying it wasn’t rape and therefore isn’t as bad—it was bad. That’s it.

11- His days in Shadbagh were numbered, like Shuja’s. He knew this now. There was nothing left for him here. He had no home here. He would wait until winter passed and the spring thaw set in, and he would rise one morning before dawn and he would step out the door. He would choose a direction and he would begin to walk. He would walk as far from Shadbagh as his feet would take him. And if one day, trekking across some vast open field, despair should take hold of him, he would stop in his tracks and shut his eyes and he would think of the falcon feather Pari had found in the desert. He would picture the feather coming loose from the bird, up in the clouds, half a mile above the world, twirling and spinning in violent currents, hurled by gusts of blustering wind across miles and miles of desert and mountains, to finally land, of all places and against all odds, at the foot of that one boulder for his sister to find. It would strike him with wonder, then, and hope too, that such things happened, And though he would know better, he would take heart, and he would open his eyes, and walk.

The Harlot’s House. We caught the tread of dancing feet, We loitered down the moonlit street, And stopped beneath the harlot’s house. Inside, above the din and fray, We heard the loud musicians play The ‘Treues Liebes Herz’ of Strauss. Like strange mechanical grotesques, Making fantastic arabesques, The shadows raced across the blind. We watched the ghostly dancers spin To sound of horn and violin, Like black leaves wheeling in the wind. Like wire-pulled automatons, Slim silhouetted skeletons Went sidling through the slow quadrille. They took each other by the hand, And danced a stately saraband; Their laughter echoed thin and shrill. Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed A phantom lover to her breast, Sometimes they seemed to try to sing. Sometimes a horrible marionette Came out, and smoked its cigarette Upon the steps like a live thing. Then, turning to my love, I said, ‘The dead are dancing with the dead, The dust is whirling with the dust.’ But she—she heard the violin, And left my side, and entered in: Love passed into the house of lust. Then suddenly the tune went false, The dancers wearied of the waltz, The shadows ceased to wheel and whirl. And down the long and silent street, The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet, Crept like a frightened girl.

Creed by Abigail Carroll, p.196-197 I believe in the life of the word, the diplomacy of food. I believe in salt-thick ancient seas and the absoluteness of blue. A poem is an ark, a suitcase in which to pack the universe—I believe in the universality of art, of human thirst for a place. I believe in Adam's work of naming breath and weather—all manner of wind and stillness, humidity and heat. I believe in the audacity of light, the patience of cedars, the innocence of weeds. I believe in apologies, soliloquies, speaking in tongues; the underwater operas of whales, the secret prayer rituals of bees. As for miracles— the perfection of cells, the integrity of wings—I believe. Bones know the dust from which they come; all music spins through space on just a breath. I believe in that grand economy of love that counts the tiny death of every fern and white-tailed fox. I believe in the healing ministry of phlox, the holy brokenness of saints, the fortuity of faults—of making and then redeeming mistakes. Who dares brush off the auguries of a storm, disdain the lilting eulogies of the moon? To dance is nothing less than an act of faith in what the prophets sang. I believe in the genius of children and the goodness of sleep, the eternal impulse to create. For love of God and the human race, I believe in the elegance of insects, the imminence of winter, the free enterprise of grace.

Max’s unflinching gaze never left that house. “What do you think’s going to happen?” Jules asked him quietly, “if you let yourself peel that giant S off your shirt and take a nap? If you let yourself spend an hour, an evening, screw it, a whole weekend doing nothing more than breaking and taking enjoyment from living in the moment? What’s going to happen, Max, if—after this is over—you give yourself permission to actually enjoy Gina’s company? To sit with her arms around you and let yourself be happy. You don’t have to be happy forever—just for that short amount of time.” Max didn’t say anything. So Jules went on. “And then maybe you could let yourself be happy again the next weekend. Not too happy,” he added quickly. “We wouldn’t want that. But just happy in a small way, because this amazing woman is part of your life, because she makes you smile and probably fucks like a dream and yeah—see? You are listening. Don’t kill me, I was just making sure you hadn’t checked out.” Max was giving him that look. “Are you done?” “Oh, sweetie, we have nowhere to go and hours til dawn. I’m just getting started.” Shit, Max said with his body language. But he didn’t stand up and walk away. He just sat there. Across the street, nothing moved. And then it still didn’t move. But once again, Max was back to watching it not move. Jules let the silence go for an entire minute and a half. “Just in case I didn’t make myself clear,” he said, “I believe with all my heart that you deserve—completely—whatever happiness you can grab. I don’t know what damage your father did to you but—” “I don’t know if I can do that,” Max interrupted. “You know, what you said. Just go home from work and . . .” Holy shit, Max was actually talking. About this. Or at least he had been talking. Jules waited for more, but Max just shook his head. “You know what happens when you work your ass off?” Jules finally asked, and then answered the question for him. “There’s no ass there the next time. So then you have to work off some other vital body part. You have to give yourself time to regrow, recharge. When was the last time you took a vacation? Was it nineteen ninety-one or ninety-two?” “You know damn well that I took a really long vacation just—” “No, sir, you did not. Hospitalization and recovery from a near-fatal gunshot wound is not a vacation,” Jules blasted him. “Didn’t you spend any of that time in ICU considering exactly why you made that stupid mistake that resulted in a bullet in your chest? Might it have been severe fatigue caused by asslessness, caused by working said ass off too many 24-7’s in a row?” Max sighed. Then nodded. “I know I fucked up. No doubt about that.” He was silent for a moment. “I’ve been doing that a lot lately.” He glanced over to where Jones was pretending to sleep, arm up and over his eyes. “I’ve been playing God too often, too. I don’t know, maybe I’m starting to believe my own spin, and it’s coming back to bite me.” “Not in the ass,” Jules said.

But depression wasn’t the word. This was a plunge encompassing sorrow and revulsion far beyond the personal: a sick, drenching nausea at all humanity and human endeavor from the dawn of time. The writhing loathsomeness of the biological order. Old age, sickness, death. No escape for anyone. Even the beautiful ones were like soft fruit about to spoil. And yet somehow people still kept fucking and breeding and popping out new fodder for the grave, producing more and more new beings to suffer like this was some kind of redemptive, or good, or even somehow morally admirable thing: dragging more innocent creatures into the lose-lose game. Squirming babies and plodding, complacent, hormone-drugged moms. Oh, isn’t he cute? Awww. Kids shouting and skidding in the playground with no idea what future Hells awaited them: boring jobs and ruinous mortgages and bad marriages and hair loss and hip replacements and lonely cups of coffee in an empty house and a colostomy bag at the hospital. Most people seemed satisfied with the thin decorative glaze and the artful stage lighting that, sometimes, made the bedrock atrocity of the human predicament look somewhat more mysterious or less abhorrent. People gambled and golfed and planted gardens and traded stocks and had sex and bought new cars and practiced yoga and worked and prayed and redecorated their homes and got worked up over the news and fussed over their children and gossiped about their neighbors and pored over restaurant reviews and founded charitable organizations and supported political candidates and attended the U.S. Open and dined and travelled and distracted themselves with all kinds of gadgets and devices, flooding themselves incessantly with information and texts and communication and entertainment from every direction to try to make themselves forget it: where we were, what we were. But in a strong light there was no good spin you could put on it. It was rotten top to bottom. Putting your time in at the office; dutifully spawning your two point five; smiling politely at your retirement party; then chewing on your bedsheet and choking on your canned peaches at the nursing home. It was better never to have been born—never to have wanted anything, never to have hoped for anything.

But depression wasn’t the word. This was a plunge encompassing sorrow and revulsion far beyond the personal: a sick, drenching nausea at all humanity and human endeavor from the dawn of time. The writhing loathsomeness of the biological order. Old age, sickness, death. No escape for anyone. Even the beautiful ones were like soft fruit about to spoil. And yet somehow people still kept fucking and breeding and popping out new fodder for the grave, producing more and more new beings to suffer like this was some kind of redemptive, or good, or even somehow morally admirable thing: dragging more innocent creatures into the lose-lose game. Squirming babies and plodding, complacent, hormone-drugged moms. Oh, isn’t he cute? Awww. Kids shouting and skidding in the playground with no idea what future Hells awaited them: boring jobs and ruinous mortgages and bad marriages and hair loss and hip replacements and lonely cups of coffee in an empty house and a colostomy bag at the hospital. Most people seemed satisfied with the thin decorative glaze and the artful stage lighting that, sometimes, made the bedrock atrocity of the human predicament look somewhat more mysterious or less abhorrent. People gambled and golfed and planted gardens and traded stocks and had sex and bought new cars and practiced yoga and worked and prayed and redecorated their homes and got worked up over the news and fussed over their children and gossiped about their neighbors and pored over restaurant reviews and founded charitable organizations and supported political candidates and attended the U.S. Open and dined and travelled and distracted themselves with all kinds of gadgets and devices, flooding themselves incessantly with information and texts and communication and entertainment from every direction to try to make themselves forget it: where we were, what we were. But in a strong light there was no good spin you could put on it. It was rotten top to bottom. Putting your time in at the office; dutifully spawning your two point five; smiling politely at your retirement party; then chewing on your bedsheet and choking on your canned peaches at the nursing home. It was better never to have been born—never to have wanted anything, never to have hoped for anything. And all this mental thrashing and tossing was mixed up with recurring images, or half-dreams, of Popchik lying weak and thin on one side with his ribs going up and down—I’d forgotten him somewhere, left him alone and forgotten to feed him, he was dying—over and over, even when he was in the room with me, head-snaps where I started up guiltily, where is Popchik; and this in turn was mixed up with head-snapping flashes of the bundled pillowcase, locked away in its steel coffin.

looked out of the window. Dawn was breaking, and idle snowflakes were gradually starting to fill the nothingness. They were falling slowly, weaving their way through the air and spinning on their own axis like feathers.

Something snapped between them. He didn’t know if he was the first one to move or her. But within a heartbeat she was in his arms, and it felt so right. The earth stopped spinning because he could smell the biting mint of her hair, the chill of her flesh, and the strong grip of her arms around his waist. She was here and real in his arms. It wasn’t something out of a dream but she had come for him. Nadir curled his body around hers, drawing her closer to his chest. The feeling of her fingers splayed wide over his heart was right. He couldn’t think of a moment in his life when he’d felt this complete. So utterly enchanted by another person who he had missed for what felt like his entire life.

Rapture" Does beauty sleep alone— that all her leaves have fallen in the night? Her trees shivering quietly within their newfound nakedness, and yet not so immodest is the wind as it caresses the starkness of her limbs now bare. Clouds churn in the half-light. Rolling barrels of thick, black smoke spinning silently on the horizon. Like oil upon water; they delicately contort the dawn with the soft and wistful mutiny of their unspoken revelations. The sun begrudgingly awakens, his pride subdued by the currents of reckless circumstance. Therefore,  not but a shadow of its self, he clambers listlessly into the sky treading the waters of his own light. And the streets scurry with ocher— The umberlings of motherless children chased along by the wind. The air—though indifferent, is sweet with their laughter, and I am haunted by the inflection, as her soul gathers in the twilight of my shadow.

Rapture" Does beauty sleep alone— that all her leaves have fallen in the night? Her trees shivering quietly within their newfound nakedness, and yet not so immodest is the wind as it caresses the starkness of her limbs now bare. Clouds churn in the half-light. Rolling barrels of thick, black smoke spinning silently on the horizon. Like oil upon water; they delicately contort the dawn with the soft and wistful mutiny of their unspoken revelations. The sun begrudgingly awakens, his pride subdued by the currents of reckless circumstance. Therefore, not but a shadow of its self, he clambers listlessly into the sky treading the waters of his own light. And the streets scurry with ocher— The umberlings of motherless children chased along by the wind. The air—indifferent, is yet sweet with their laughter, and I am haunted by the inflection, as her soul gathers in the twilight of my shadow. Outlandos D'Amour (2008)

Stop spinning on your busy wheel of pain long enough to hear this: You are not outside the fold of your original preciousness. Even the dawn-bird is heralding this truth each morning, singing to you a map-song with coordinates leading to your renewal. - from "Invisible Belonging," The School of Soft-Attention

But in the country death comes, uninvited, during the day. It takes fishermen in their longboats. It grabs children by the ankles as they swim. In winter it calls them down a slope too steep for their budding skills, and crosses their skies at the tips. It waits along the shore where snow met ice not long ago but now, unseen by sparkling eyes, a little water touches the shore, and the skater makes a circle slightly larger than intended. Death stands in the woods with a bow and arrow at dawn and dusk. And it tugs cars off the road in broad daylight, the tires spinning furiously on ice or snow, or bright autumn leaves.

Jakob sends Rakel a text message that contains a link to the xkcd webcomic. The cartoon, titled “Angular Momentum,” shows a girl spinning around and around next to a bed on which her boyfriend is sitting and watching her in amazement. “What are you doing?” his speech bubble says. “Spinning counterclockwise. Each turn robs the planet of angular momentum, slowing its spin the tiniest bit, lengthening the night, pushing back the dawn, giving me a little more time here, with you,” answers the spinning girl. Rakel is amused and sends Jakob a response: “Right now I’m spinning the other way, clockwise with the earth’s rotation. All in the hope of making our planet turn the tiniest bit faster, so that time will pass more quickly and it won’t be so long until I see you again.” “Cunning—you can spin both ways” is his answer.

Just being near all these beautiful books reminds me of the feeling I get when I'm in front of a blank canvas holding a palette filled smears of colorful paint. I run my fingers across the smooth paper jackets of the spines, sinking into daydreams of the worlds and characters hidden between the covers, until I stop at Spin the Dawn, one of my absolute favorites, with one of the most gorgeous covers I've ever seen.

Something clicked in my mind, and I recognized the strange way Ammi was acting. She was flirting with me!

I don’t have it in me to save you anymore.” “Save me?” I retorted. “Vachir’s arrows would have made a pincushion out of you if not for me and my scissors.

You might be willing to get on your knees for Hybern, but I certainly am not.' He exploded. Furniture splintered and went flying, windows cracked and shattered. And this time, I did not shield myself. The worktable slammed into me, throwing me against the bookshelf, and every place where flesh and bone met wood barked and ached. My knees slammed into the carpeted floor, and Tamlin was instantly in front of me, hands shaking- The doors burst open. 'What have you done,' Lucien breathed, and Tamlin's face was the picture of devastation as Lucien shoved him aside. He let Lucien shove him aside and help me stand. Something wet and warm slid down my cheek- blood, from the scent of it. 'Let's get you cleaned up,' Lucien said, an arm around my shoulders as he eased me from the room. I barely heard him over the ringing in my ears, the slight spinning to the world. The sentries- Bron and Hart, two of Tamlin's favourite lord-warriors among them- were gaping, attention torn between the wrecked study and my face. With good reason. As Lucien led me past a gilded hall mirror, I beheld what had drawn such horror. My eyes were glassy, my face pallid- save for the scratch just beneath my cheekbone, perhaps two inches long and leaking blood. Little scratches peppered my neck, my hands. But I willed that cleansing, healing power- that of the High Lord of Dawn- to keep from seeking them out. From smoothing them away. 'Feyre,' Tamlin breathed from behind us. I halted, aware of every eye that watched. 'I'm fine,' I whispered. 'I'm sorry.' I wiped at the blood dribbling down my cheek. 'I'm fine,' I told him again. No one, not even Tamlin, looked convinced. And if I could have painted that moment, I would have named it A Portrait in Snares and Baiting.

The sun was a brutal god, I remembered from Sendo's tales. Brutal and merciless, he blinded those foolish enough to look at him. Was he watching me now, as I ventured into his labyrinth? Would he punish or help me on my quest to make his mother's dresses? More likely he'd do nothing at all. The gods rarely showed themselves.

If you were [a man], you would have been sent to war. The gods are protecting you.

,,,the sun is worshipped in many lands. He's a brilliant, brutal diety. And now we are in the heart of his kingdom.

Longhair capped his flask. "Did you see her fur coat? Rabbit, fox, wolf, at least three different bears. Northerners only wear what they can hunt--Lady Sarnai must be quite skilled." He heaved a sympathetic sigh. "She won't be an easy time adjusting to life here.

... craftsmanship is a luxury of peace," Lady Sarnai said, tipping the fan toward a candle's flame. "Artisans such as you are soldiers in times of war. Do not forget that.

What was left of the boy's face was moist from recent rainfall. He'd been struck three times--arrows in his knee, abdomen, his heart. He couldn't have been older than Keton. I hugged my arms to my chest, holding back a sob. Finlei and Sendo had died this way--alone, yet not alone. Hacked by a sword or impaled by an arrow. Sendo... Sendo had died in these very mountains. His body was somewhere among the thousands strewn before me, rotting under a coat of earth and snow. I wouldn't even recognize him if I saw him. Just thinking about it made me want to weep.

War comes at a great cost," Lady Sarnai said, "and from that sacrifice comes peace. Sometimes we must let go of what we value for the future of our country. Be it a beautiful fan, or our honor, or our lives. In the end, we all belong to the gods anyway.

Longhai capped his flask. "Did you see her fur coat? Rabbit, fox, wolf, at least three different bears. Northerners only wear what they can hunt--Lady Sarnai must be quite skilled." He heaved a sympathetic sigh. "She won't be an easy time adjusting to life here.

Barefoot on the shore, I steady myself, alone. Tides sway back and forth as earthly hours trace forward motion on the clock. Reassuring ease refreshes with the smooth, slow bloom of morning twilight, governed with consistent timing by predictable planetary spin.

La fuerte, la que mantenía unidas las costuras de mi familia.

—¿ Sabrás encontrar el camino? Su sonrisa se hizo más amplia y me di cuenta de que había dejado entrever que todavía me preocupaba por él.—Hacia ti siempre.

El sol y la luna solo se ven un día en todo el año. Aunque solo sea una hora al día, preferiría estar contigo ese rato que nunca.

En aquel momento supe que éramos como dos trozos de tela cosidos de por vida. Nuestras puntadas no podían deshacerse. No lo permitiría.

Tenía la esperanza de que el mañana tejería un nuevo amanecer.

Ahora eres mi juramento, Maia Tamarin. Y nunca te desharás de mí.

Cuanto más ascendía, más intenso era el frío. Elegir la ruta hacia la cima se convirtió en una serie de riesgos calculados. ¿Debía bordear aquel tramo de hielo reluciente o podía pasar por encima? ¿Aquello era una sombra en la roca o nieve? Enfrentarme al temor de que el siguiente paso pudiera ser el último me provocaba mareos y me cortaba la respiración. «Mantén la calma—me recordé cuando me azotó una racha de viento—. Sé fuerte».

A veces, encontrar el camino es complicado, pero siempre lo consigues. No puedes rendirte».

—Me dijiste que me aclarara las ideas, y eso he hecho—respondió en voz baja—. Imaginar que elegimos a quien amamos es una ilusión. No puedo cambiar mis sentimientos por ti. Movería el sol y la luna si eso significara estar contigo. En cuanto a mi juramento… No puedo prometerte que vaya a romperlo, pero haría cuanto estuviera en mi mano para que seas feliz, Maia. Eso sí puedo prometértelo.

Después miré por última vez a Baba y a la ventana de Keton y me monté en el carruaje sin saber qué me aguardaba, tan solo que debía triunfar costara lo que costara.

Con prudencia, miré al emperador y me fijé en las docenas de colgantes de jade y oro que adornaban su cuello y su fajín. Uno no brillaba tanto como los demás. Era de bronce y distinguí el perfil de un pájaro grabado.

—Aprovecha el viento—susurré—. No te conviertas en la cometa que no vuela nunca.

—Y así es—dije con un nudo en la garganta. Edan me atravesó con la mirada y, pese a mis palabras, mi cuerpo no se rebeló contra su cercanía—. Muy desagradable. E imposible.—Y arrogante—murmuró Edan. Nuestras narices se tocaron—. No olvidemos lo de arrogante.—¿ Cómo iba a olvidarlo?—dije sin aliento. Me acercó más a él, prácticamente levantándome del suelo, y me besó.

—¿ Me prometes que intentarás caminar?—le pregunté—. Un poco cada día.—Daré un paso por cada día que estés fuera. Aquello bastó para consolidar mi decisión. Besé a mi hermano en la frente.—Entonces espero estar fuera mucho tiempo.

Toda mi vida me habían dicho lo que no podía hacer porque era una chica. Aquella era mi oportunidad para averiguarlo. Solo podía aprovecharla.

Nadie tenía necesidad de sedas y satenes, sobre todo cuando nuestro país estaba devorándose a sí mismo desde dentro.