Sports Car Quotes

You look like you got more of a bath than the car. I never thought washing a car would be so hard, but after watching you for the last fifteen minutes, I’m convinced it should be an Olympic sport.

There's nothing wild about me. I'm a solid middle-aged man." "Except that once a month you turn into a wolf and go tearing around slaughtering things," Clary said. "It could be worse," Luke said. "Men my age have been known to purchase expensive sports cars and sleep with supermodels.

I never understood how men could remember all those details about sports but, yet, were incapable of remembering where they set their car keys or wallet.

Let's just say that if these scientist had been using their brilliance for good instead of evil, cars would run off water vapor and leave fresh compost behind them; no one would be hungry; no one would be ill; all buildings would be earthquake-, bomb-, and flood-proof; and the world's entire economy would have collapsed and been replaced by one based on the value of chocolate.

I think life should be more like TV. I think all of life's problems ought to be solved in 30 minutes with simple homilies, don't you? I think weight and oral hygiene ought to be our biggest concerns. I think we should all have powerful, high-paying jobs, and everyone should drive fancy sports cars. All our desires should be instantly gratified. Women should always wear tight clothing, and men should carry powerful handguns. Life overall should be more glamorous, thrill-packed, and filled with applause, don't you think?... Then again, if real life was like that, what would we watch on television?

Why aren't you in school? I see you every day wandering around." "Oh, they don't miss me," she said. "I'm antisocial, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this." She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. "Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don't; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film-teacher. That's not social to me at all. It's a lot of funnels and lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it's wine when it's not. They run us so ragged by the end of the day we can't do anything but go to bed or head for a Fun Park to bully people around, break windowpanes in the Window Smasher place or wreck cars in the Car Wrecker place with the big steel ball. Or go out in the cars and race on the streets, trying to see how close you can get to lampposts, playing 'chicken' and 'knock hubcaps.' I guess I'm everything they say I am, all right. I haven't any friends. That's supposed to prove I'm abnormal. But everyone I know is either shouting or dancing around like wild or beating up one another. Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays?

There's a big confusion in this country over what we want versus what we need," Morrie said. "You need food, you want a chocolate sundae. You have to be honest with yourself. You don't need the latest sports car, you don't need the biggest house. The truth is, you don't get satisfaction from those things. You know what really gives you satisfaction?...Offering others what you have to give...I don't mean money, Mitch. I mean your time. Your concern. Your storytelling. It's not so hard.

Isn't post-modernism really one big cover-up for the failure of the French to write a truly interesting novel ever since a sports car ate Albert Camus?

There's an undeniable pleasure in stepping into an open-top sports car driven by a beautiful woman. It feels like you're climbing into a metaphor.

Why was it considered normal for a girl to live for fashion and makeup, but not car engines or bugs? And what about sports fanatics? My mom had a boyfriend who would flip out if he missed even a minute of a football game. Wouldn't that be what doctors considered autistic behavior?

You could have gotten a car with GPS," Total said helpfully. Yes," I said "Or we could have brought along a dog that doesn't talk." I gave Angel a pointed look, and she smiled, well, angelically, at me. Total huffed, offended at me and climbed into her lap...

Look, we're trying to explore other options to your retirement," the whitecoat said. "You might be useful to us in other ways." Because we're not that useful dead,"Nudge said thoughtfully. No," I agreed. "Well, maybe as doorstops." The whitecat made an "eew" expression. Or those things in a parking lot that show where the cars should stop," suggested Iggy. He closed his eyes and went stiff, to demonstrate what it would look like. Also an option.

13. Boretar was basking in the warm June sun as the Russell family prepared to depart. The black BMW’s boot was packed with the suitcases and the roof box was filled with tennis rackets and other sports gear. The bike stand on the rear of the car was already loaded with the children’s bikes. Peter made one final check of the house to ensure that all doors and windows were locked and secure. Then he shouted to his wife Mary, “We’re ready to go, where are the children?

Feminism and femininity are not mutually exclusive. It is misogynistic to suggest that they are. Sadly, women have learned to be ashamed and apologetic about pursuits that are seen as traditionally female, such as fashion and makeup. But our society does not expect men to feel ashamed of pursuits considered generally male - sports cars, certain professional sports. In the same way, men's grooming is never suspect in the way women's grooming is - a well-dressed man does not worry that, because he is dressed well, certain assumptions might be made about his intelligence, his ability, or his seriousness. A woman, on the other hand, is always aware of how a bright lipstick or a carefully-put-together outfit might very well make others assume her to be frivolous.

What the new mate, sports car, or unexpected check could never do, Christ says, "I Can." You'll love how he achieves it. He reconnects your soul with God.

The word "geek" today does not mean what it used to mean. A geek isn't the skinny kid with a pocket protector and acne. There can be computer geeks, video game geeks, car geeks, military geeks, and sports geeks. Being a geek just means that you're passionate about something.

In one universe, they are gorgeous, straight-teethed, long-legged, wrapped in designer fashions, and given sports cars on their sixteenth birthdays. Teacher smile at them and grade them on the curve. They know the first names of the staff. They are the Pride of the Trojans. Oops – I mean Pride of the Blue Devils. In Universe #2, they throw parties wild enough to attract college students. They worship the stink of Eau de Jocque. They rent beach houses in Cancún during Spring Break and get group-rate abortions before prom.

Take care of your car in the garage, and the car will take care of you on the road.

great web design without functionality is like a sports car with no engine.

On the way, I shared the backseat of Feyerabend's little sports car with the inflatable raft he kept there in case an 8-point earthquake came while he was on the Bay Bridge.

If money was taken out of the equation, only the people whose passion to make certain products would be making them, and they’d be the people who’d make the best products since it would be done out of passion instead of the want for money. People have more than one passion, so if there were already too many of the best people working in a particular field, a person could gravitate toward one of their other passions in order to benefit humanity. It would be the opposite of what we have today—almost everyone hating or being indifferent to their careers. We wouldn’t need a bunch of companies in every single field. Instead, we could have one or a few that enjoy making the very best for everyone, and their products would either last a lifetime or close to it. They wouldn’t need money to do their jobs because they would love their jobs since it’s their passion, and they wouldn’t have to worry about acquiring things they need to live because other people with their passions would happily provide all products and services. No one would be arguing whether someone should be giving money to feed the starving children in Africa instead of buying a luxury sports car because everyone would have food and a luxury sports car.

The contrast between the familiar and the exceptional was everywhere around me. A bullock cart was drawn up beside a modern sports car at a traffic signal. A man squatted to relieve himself behind the discreet shelter of a satellite dish. An electric forklift truck was being used to unload goods from an ancient wooden cart with wooden wheels. The impression was of a plodding indefatigable and distant past that had crashed intact through barriers of time into its own future. I liked it.

The only way to get through life is to laugh your way through it. You either have to laugh or cry. I prefer to laugh. Crying gives me a headache.” “I don't want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully, tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails. I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp. I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbors children. I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someone's garden. I want to be there with children's sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder. I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived.

In later years I would think that no woman’s lips had ever been as red as that bike. No low-slung foreign sports car with wire wheels and purring engine would ever look as powerful or as capable as that bike. No chrome would ever gleam with such purity, like the silver moon on a summer’s night.

You look like you got more of a bath than the car. I never thought washing a car would be so hard, but after watching you for the last fifteen minutes, I’m convinced it should be an Olympic sport.

The Ballad of Lucy Jordan The morning sun touched lightly on the eyes of Lucy Jordan In a white suburban bedroom in a white suburban town As she lay there 'neath the covers dreaming of a thousand lovers Till the world turned to orange and the room went spinning round. At the age of thirty-seven she realised she'd never Ride through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair. So she let the phone keep ringing and she sat there softly singing Little nursery rhymes she'd memorised in her daddy's easy chair. Her husband, he's off to work and the kids are off to school, And there are, oh, so many ways for her to spend the day. She could clean the house for hours or rearrange the flowers Or run naked through the shady street screaming all the way. At the age of thirty-seven she realised she'd never Ride through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair So she let the phone keep ringing as she sat there softly singing Pretty nursery rhymes she'd memorised in her daddy's easy chair. The evening sun touched gently on the eyes of Lucy Jordan On the roof top where she climbed when all the laughter grew too loud And she bowed and curtsied to the man who reached and offered her his hand, And he led her down to the long white car that waited past the crowd. At the age of thirty-seven she knew she'd found forever As she rode along through Paris with the warm wind in her hair

When you grow up in middle America you are inculcated from the earliest age with the belief - no, the understanding - that America is the richest and most powerful nation on earth because God likes us best. It has the most perfect form of government, the most exciting sporting events, the tastiest food and amplest portions, the largest cars, the cheapest gasoline, the most abundant natural resources, the most productive farms, the most devastating nuclear arsenal and the friendliest, most decent and most patriotic folks on Earth. Countries just don't come any better. So why anyone would want to live anywhere else is practically incomprehensible. In a foreigner it is puzzling; in a native it is seditious. I used to feel this way myself.

I am emotional about engines, if you hurt my car, you hurt my heart.

What shall I give? and which are my miracles? 2. Realism is mine--my miracles--Take freely, Take without end--I offer them to you wherever your feet can carry you or your eyes reach. 3. Why! who makes much of a miracle? As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles, Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the edge of the water, Or stand under trees in the woods, Or talk by day with any one I love--or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love, Or sit at the table at dinner with my mother, Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car, Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive, of a summer forenoon, Or animals feeding in the fields, Or birds--or the wonderfulness of insects in the air, Or the wonderfulness of the sundown--or of stars shining so quiet and bright, Or the exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new moon in spring; Or whether I go among those I like best, and that like me best--mechanics, boatmen, farmers, Or among the savans--or to the _soiree_--or to the opera. Or stand a long while looking at the movements of machinery, Or behold children at their sports, Or the admirable sight of the perfect old man, or the perfect old woman, Or the sick in hospitals, or the dead carried to burial, Or my own eyes and figure in the glass; These, with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles, The whole referring--yet each distinct and in its place. 4. To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, Every inch of space is a miracle, Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same, Every cubic foot of the interior swarms with the same; Every spear of grass--the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, and all that concerns them, All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles. To me the sea is a continual miracle; The fishes that swim--the rocks--the motion of the waves--the ships, with men in them, What stranger miracles are there?

There are only two ways to get in and out of an MG Midget sports car – the elegant way or my way. The elegant way is how you see the film stars do it on TV when they arrive at the Oscars. To get in, put your bum inside first and then swivel legs round. Similarly, to exit, swivel legs out, bum last. My way is to get everything but bum in first, leave bum out in the cold for a bit while struggling with other appendages, and then bum can come in. To get out, I simply fall on to the pavement.

Asking someone else to drive your sports car is like asking someone else to kiss your girlfriend.

Semiotic was the form Zipperstein`s midlife crisis had taken... Instead of buying sports car, he'd bought deconstrution.

If the only advantage of affluence were the ability to buy yachts, sports cars, and fancy vacations, inequalities

I want to buy a sports car, because I like riding bicycles. Hold on to my handlebar mustache if you value your life.

But the truth is, there is no way to make cleaning sound sexy - unless you are cleaning a sports car, in a bikini.

The high salt content in the water allowed tank users to float silently and without effort, achieving ultimate relaxation. If the makers of the tanks were to be believed, floating in the saltwater would improve mental alertness, decrease pain, facilitate healing, improve sports performance, wash your car, do your taxes, and clean the clutter out of your attic.

There is a Western phenomenon called the male midlife crisis. Very often it is heralded by divorce. What history might have done to you, you bring about on purpose: separation from woman and child. Don’t tell me that such men aren’t tasting the ancient flavors of death and defeat. In America, with divorce achieved, the midlifer can expect to be more recreational, more discretionary. He can almost design the sort of crisis he is going to have: motorbike, teenage girlfriend, vegetarianism, jogging, sports car, mature boyfriend, cocaine, crash diet, powerboat, new baby, religion, hair transplant. Over here, now, there’s no angling around for your male midlife crisis. It is brought to you and it is always the same thing. It is death.

A low, silver sports car roared past at high speed, missing them by inches. Nancy glimpsed the man at the wheel long enough to register his dark mustache and the pipe clenched in his teeth. “What a menace,” George said, shaking her head in disgust. Nancy

Never having experienced inequality, therefore, the majority of straight white men will be absolutely oblivious to their own advantages – not because they must necessarily be insensitive, sexist, racist, homophobic or unaware of the principles of equality; but because they have been told, over and over again, that there is no inequality left for them – or anyone else – to experience – and everything they have experienced up to that point will only have proved them right. Let the impact of that sink in for a moment. By teaching children and teenagers that equality already exists, we are actively blinding the group that most benefits from inequality – straight white men – to the prospect that it doesn’t. Privilege to them feels indistinguishable from equality, because they’ve been raised to believe that this is how the world behaves for everyone. And because the majority of our popular culture is straight-white-male-dominated, stories that should be windows into empathy for other, less privileged experiences have instead become mirrors, reflecting back at them the one thing they already know: that their lives both are important and free from discrimination. And this hurts men. It hurts them by making them unconsciously perpetrate biases they’ve been actively taught to despise. It hurts them by making them complicit in the distress of others. It hurts them by shoehorning them into a restrictive definition masculinity from which any and all deviation is harshly punished. It hurts them by saying they will always be inferior parents and caregivers, that they must always be active and aggressive even when they long for passivity and quietude, that they must enjoy certain things like sports and beer and cars or else be deemed morally suspect. It hurts them through a process of indoctrination so subtle and pervasive that they never even knew it was happening , and when you’ve been raised to hate inequality, discovering that you’ve actually been its primary beneficiary is horrifying – like learning that the family fortune comes from blood money. Blog post 4/12/2012: Why Teaching Equality Hurts Men

screw that gender essentialism bullshit, men have as much of a right to care about clothes as women. Girls can like sports and cars and guns. So why does it even matter if you identify as a girl, a boy or as neither?

All billionaire kids have bodyguards--at least that's what Max's dad had told him. But none were more qualified than Logan, who was a martial arts expert (with more black belts than one could count on tne fingers), a stunyt man (who had credits in no less than a dozen blockbuster action movies), a champion race-car driver (with a choice collection of exotic sports cars), and who could make a seriously mean peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Not everybody is looking for a boyfriend with a sports car.

Did children want sports cars for parents? No. They wanted Hondas. They wanted to know that the car would start in all seasons.

like a tank following a sports car through a slalom course.

MONOPOLY. Tesla started with a tiny submarket that it could dominate: the market for high-end electric sports cars. Since the first Roadster rolled off the production line in 2008, Tesla’s sold only about 3,000 of them, but at $109,000 apiece that’s not trivial. Starting small allowed Tesla to undertake the necessary R&D to build the slightly less expensive Model S, and now Tesla owns the luxury electric sedan market, too. They sold more than 20,000 sedans in 2013 and now Tesla is in prime position to expand to broader markets in the future.

Oh, look, the lights are so pretty,” I said dreamily, having just noticed them. I smiled at the way the lights were dancing overhead, pink and yellow and blue. I felt some pressure on my arm and thought, I should look over and see what’s going on, but then the thought was gone, sliding away like Jell-O off a hot car hood. “Fang?” “Yeah. I’m here.” I struggled to focus on him. “I’m so glad you’re here.” “Yeah, I got that.” “I don’t know what I’d do without you.” I peered up at him, trying to see past the too-bright lights. “You’d be fine,” he muttered. “No,” I said, suddenly struck by how unfine I would be. “I would be totally unfine. Totally.” It seemed very urgent that he understand this. Again I felt some tugging on my arm, and I really wondered what that was about. Was Ella’s mom going to start this procedure any time soon? “It’s okay. Just relax.” He sounded stiff and nervous. “Just...relax. Don’t try to talk.” “I don’t want my chip anymore,” I explained groggily, then frowned. “Actually, I never wanted that chip.” “Okay,” said Fang. “We’re taking it out.” “I just want you to hold my hand.” “I am holding your hand.” “Oh. I knew that.” I drifted off for a few minutes, barely aware of anything, but feeling Fang’s hand still in mine. “Do you have a La-Z-Boy somewhere?” I roused myself to ask, every word an effort. “Um, no,” said Ella’s voice, somewhere behind my head. “I think I would like a La-Z-Boy,” I mused, letting my eyes drift shut again. “Fang, don’t go anywhere.” “I won’t. I’m here.” “Okay. I need you here. Don’t leave me.” “I won’t.” “Fang, Fang, Fang,” I murmured, overwhelmed with emotion. “I love you. I love you sooo much.” I tried to hold out my arms to show how much, but I couldn’t move them. “Oh, jeez,” Fang said, sounding strangled.

Also, on account of the odd relationship between time and space, the people who do manage to time-jump sometimes space-jump at the same time and end up in places where they simply don't belong. Over there, for example," he said as a raucous DeLorean sports car rared into view from nowhere, "is that crazy American professorwho can't seem to stay put in one time, and, I must say, there is an absolute plague of of killer robots from the future being sent to change the past. Sleeping there under that banyan tree is a certain Hank Morgan of Hartford, Connecticut, who was accidentally transported one day back to King Arthur's Court, and stayed there until Merlin put him to sleep for 1300 thirteen hundred years. He was suppsoed to wake up back in his own time, but look at this lazy fellow! He's still snoring away, and has missed his slot.

We need to stop excusing mediocre and downright pernicious art, stop 'taking it for what it’s worth' as we take our fast foods, our overpriced cars that are no good, the overpriced houses we spend all our lives fixing, our television programs, our schools thrown up like barricades in the way of young minds, our brainless fat religions, our poisonous air, our incredible cult of sports, and our ritual of fornicating with all pretty or even horse-faced strangers. We would not put up with a debauched king, but in a democracy all of us are kings, and we praise debauchery as pluralism. This book is of course no condemnation of pluralism; but it is true that art is in one sense fascistic: it claims, on good authority, that some things are healthy for individuals and society and some things are not.

Middle children weep longer than their brothers and sisters. Over her mother’s shoulder, stilling her pains and her injured pride, Jackie Lacon watched the party leave. First, two men she had not seen before: one tall, one short and dark. They drove off in a small green van. No one waved to them, she noticed, or even said goodbye. Next, her father left in his own car; lastly a blond, good-looking man and a short fat one in an enormous overcoat like a pony blanket made their way to a sports car parked under the beech trees. For a moment she really thought there must be something wrong with the fat one, he followed so slowly and so painfully. Then, seeing the handsome man hold the car door for him, he seemed to wake, and hurried forward with a lumpy skip. Unaccountably, this gesture upset her afresh. A storm of sorrow seized her and her mother could not console her.

Fathers need to take their sons hunting and fishing, work on cars with them, take them to work, coach their teams, take them to ball games, work out with them, take them on business trips, and let them tag along with them when they go out with the guys. All of these activities help boys move successfully into the male world. This process is not just limited to a man's biological sons. Nice Guys can get involved with young relatives, scouts, sports teams, school activities, or big brothers.

Don’t let society’s labels hold you back. If you have a true passion for something whether its sports, art, science, etc…don’t believe anyone who says you can’t do it because you’re a girl. If you want to play baseball, hockey, or football, don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t. If you want to play with Hot Wheel cars and Legos, then do it. Only you are the boss of you

So here we are, in the family planning aisle with a cart full of sports drinks and our hands full of . . . “Trojans, Ramses, Magnum . . . Jeez, these are worse than names for muscle cars,” Jase observes, sliding his finger along the display. “They do sound sorta, well, forceful.” I flip over the box I’m holding to read the instructions. Jase glances up to smile at me. “Don’t worry, Sam. It’s just us.” “I don’t get what half these descriptions mean . . . What’s a vibrating ring?” “Sounds like the part that breaks on the washing machine. What’s extra-sensitive? That sounds like how we describe George.” I’m giggling. “Okay, would that be better or worse than ‘ultimate feeling’—and look—there’s ‘shared pleasure’ condoms and ‘her pleasure’ condoms. But there’s no ‘his pleasure.’” “I’m pretty sure that comes with the territory,” Jase says dryly. “Put down those Technicolor ones. No freaking way.” “But blue’s my favorite color,” I say, batting my eyelashes at him. “Put them down. The glow-in-the-dark ones too. Jesus. Why do they even make those?” “For the visually impaired?” I ask, reshelving the boxes. We move to the checkout line. “Enjoy the rest of your evening,” the clerk calls as we leave. “Do you think he knew?” I ask. “You’re blushing again,” Jase mutters absently. “Did who know what?” “The sales guy. Why we were buying these?” A smile pulls at the corners of his mouth. “Of course not. I’m sure it never occurred to him that we were actually buying birth control for ourselves. I bet he thought it was a . . . a . . . housewarming gift.” Okay, I’m ridiculous. “Or party favors,” I laugh. “Or”—he scrutinized the receipt—“supplies for a really expensive water balloon fight.” “Visual aids for health class?” I slip my hand into the back pocket of Jase’s jeans. “Or little raincoats for . . .” He pauses, stumped. “Barbie dolls,” I suggest. “G.I. Joes,” he corrects, and slips his free hand into the back pocket of my jeans, bumping his hip against mine as we head back to the car.

The key to fighting germs and parasites seems to be sex. At one level, this may bring you down. All the lipstick, high heels, hair products, salary seeking, sports cars, and weightlifting seem to be a result of germs. But then, so are art, and music, and good cooking. By having sex, organisms like dandelions, sea jellies, perch, parakeets, and termites can stay ahead in the game of life just enough to have offspring that succeed in producing more offspring in a subsequent season.

Outside, overgrown grass lapped dew on Ronan’s boots, and mist curled around the tyres of the charcoal BMW. The sky over Monmouth Manufacturing was the colour of a muddy lake. It was cold, but Ronan’s gasoline heart was firing. He settled into the car, letting it become his skin. The night air was still coiled beneath the seats and lurking in the door pockets; he shivered as he tethered his raven to the seat belt fastener in the passenger seat. Not the fanciest setup, but effective for keeping a corvid from flapping around one’s sports car. Chainsaw bit him, but not as hard as the early morning cold.

Barbers, on the other hand, are interesting guys with fascinating stories to tell. And I in turn feel at ease to say what’s on my mind. We converse about politics, cars, sports and family. Guys who are waiting read the newspaper and comment on current events. And everyone is involved: the barbers, the customers getting their haircut and the customers waiting to get their haircut.

Describing good relatedness to someone, no matter how precisely or how often, does not inscribe it into the neural networks that inspire love. Self-help books are like car repair manuals: you can read them all day, but doing so doesn't fix a thing. Working on a car means rolling up your sleeves and getting under the hood, and you have to be willing to get dirt on your hands and grease beneath your fingernails. Overhauling emotional knowledge is no spectator sport; it demands the messy experience of yanking and tinkering that comes from a limbic bond. If someone's relationship today bear a troubled imprint, they do so because an influential relationship left its mark on a child's mind. When a limbic connection has established a neural pattern, it takes a limbic connection to revise it.

Freeze or reheat. Thinking of you. I still don’t know who it’s from. Many of the condolence cards that arrived after my parents’ deaths came with stories of the cars they’d sold over the years. Keys handed to over-confident teens and over-anxious parents. Two-seater sports cars traded for family-friendly estates. Cars to celebrate promotions, big birthdays, retirements. My parents played a part in many different stories.

Ladies, what in the world is wrong with men? I mean besides all the really obvious stuff. They think they have the handle on everything. And if a lady gets in behind the wheel of a sports car, they act all crazy, like we don't belong. Same thing with motorcycles. Let a gal cruise down the highway on her hog and you'd think she was Lady Godiva for all the stares that she gets. I got news for you, just because we don't...doesn't mean that we can't. Seriously, boys, you can be replaced by a few inches of rubber and a couple of D-cell batteries, so I wouldn't be too cocky.

What if, when Tracy Austin writes that after her 1989 car crash, 'I quickly accepted that there was nothing I could do about it,' the statement is not only true but exhaustively descriptive of the entire acceptance process she went through?

It’s important to remember something: California is not a state built on moderation. We invented motion pictures. We made an electric sports car. We’re both the brain (Silicon Valley) and the heart (Hollywood, alas) of this great nation, and meanwhile we grow everyone’s strawberries. We’re open to innovation. We’re open to new ideas. We’re open to odd couples—and to strays from all parts of the world. Look at our last governor: an Austrian body builder and son of a Nazi married to John F. Kennedy’s niece. Anything can happen.

Men are so clueless, self-centered, and undeserving, each a bland replica of the other. They’re motivated by sex, sports, hunting, cars, and food. If they can’t screw it, cheer for it, shoot it, drive it, or consume it, then it might as well be a diva cup or a maxi pad.

You’re a momma’s boy, aren’t you?” “As much as any good ole Southern boy. I like sports, huntin’, fishin’, fast cars, and faster women, but I love my momma.

Among all the machines, motorcar is my favorite machine.

The weird thing about these gangsters was that they were all, at a glance, identical. They drove the same red sports car. They dated the same beautiful eighteen-year-old girls. It was strange. It was like they didn’t have personalities; they shared a personality. One could be the other, and the other could be the one. They’d each studied how to be that gangster.

Christians are notorious for acting like used car salesmen, treating non-Christians as if they’re standing there holding a blank check and sporting a hard-on for unreliable vehicles.

In one universe, they are gorgeous, straight-teethed, long-legged, wrapped in designer fashions, and given sport cars on their sixteenth birthdays, Teachers smile at them and grade them on the curve. They know the first names of the staff. They are the pride of the school. In Universe #2, they throw parties wild enough to attract college students. They worship stink of Eau de Jocque. They rent beach houses in Cancun during Spring Break and get group-rate abortions before the prom. But they are so cute. And they cheer on our boys, inciting them to violence and, we hope, victory. They’re are our role models- the Girls Who Have It All. I bet none of them ever stutter or screw up or feel like their brains are dissolving into marshmallow fluff.

An academic definition of Lynchian might be that the term "refers to a particular kind of irony where the very macabre and the very mundane combine in such a way as to reveal the former's perpetual containment within the latter." But like postmodern or pornographic, Lynchian is one of those Porter Stewart-type words that's ultimately definable only ostensively-i.e., we know it when we see it. Ted Bundy wasn't particularly Lynchian, but good old Jeffrey Dahmer, with his victims' various anatomies neatly separated and stored in his fridge alongside his chocolate milk and Shedd Spread, was thoroughgoingly Lynchian. A recent homicide in Boston, in which the deacon of a South Shore church reportedly gave chase to a vehicle that bad cut him off, forced the car off the road, and shot the driver with a highpowered crossbow, was borderline Lynchian. A Rotary luncheon where everybody's got a comb-over and a polyester sport coat and is eating bland Rotarian chicken and exchanging Republican platitudes with heartfelt sincerity and yet all are either amputees or neurologically damaged or both would be more Lynchian than not.

Mina. You’re the one who saved Brody!” Her confusion disappeared and her face lit with happiness. “We have much to thank you for…oh, Brody, watch out!” she practically shouted. Just when Mina had begun to wonder about Mrs. Carmichael’s strange re-enactment, she heard a sickening crunch of metal on metal and turned to see her bike crushed to smithereens beneath the wheels of a black car. “My bike!” Mina groaned. “Brody!” Mrs. Carmichael yelled simultaneously. Mina froze. She didn’t know what was worse—facing her long-time crush with a brown chocolate milk stain on her jacket, or the fact that he had just run over her pathetic bike with his expensive sports car. The driver’s door opened, and Brody jumped out of the car. “Mina, I’m sorry! Are you okay?

I hate this place. You can’t get a cup of coffee unless it has a backstory and a pedigree so the café can charge you as much for the cup as a normal human pays for dinner. Women drive by in cute little sports cars with more power under the hood than a Saturn V, but the speedometer will never top twenty because then they might not be seen and admired. Men window-shop in silk jackets made by indentured servants in countries they’ve never heard of while their sons all imagine they’re Tupac because they bought their thousand-dollar designer jeans a couple of sizes too big.

I sense that striving for wholeness is, increasingly, a countercultural goal, as fragmented people make for better consumers, buying more bits and pieces—two or more cars, two homes and all that fills them—and outfitting one's body for a wide variety of identities: business person, homebody, amateur athlete, traveler, theater or sports fan. Things exercise a certain tyranny over us.

What made them love you now when they didn’t before? I’ll tell you why. You had the balls to do what they never did. You got inside the car and pushed yourself to be the best. You did that. No one else did. What they don’t understand is that there will always be confessions that bared no sound and lived inside my head, my heart, and were my own desire. They were my own aspirations and something they never took the time to discover. I race for me. It’s not selfish. It’s me being me. I do it because that’s what I am and what is embedded into every fiber of my being. I race for the adrenaline, the power, the rumbling in my chest when behind the wheel. The sense of belonging in a sport that’s quick to prove you’re nothing but still, I race for me. That is what defined me.

I believe hurling is the best of us, one of the greatest and most beautiful expressions of what we can be. For me that is the perspective that death and loss cast on the game. If you could live again you would hurl more, because that is living. You'd pay less attention to the rows and the mortgage and the car and all the daily drudge. Hurling is our song and our verse, and when I walk in the graveyard in Cloyne and look at the familiar names on the headstones I know that their ownders would want us to hurl with more joy and more exuberance and more (as Frank Murphy used to tell us) abandon than before, because life is shorter than the second half of a tournament game that starts at dusk.

And, well, for most of my life I’d been way too far up my own ass to be of any use to anyone—something that only got worse after Kitchen Confidential. I don’t know exactly when the possibility of that changing presented itself—but sometime, I guess, after having made every mistake, having already fucked up in every way a man can fuck up, having realized that I’d had enough cocaine, that no amount in the world was going to make me any happier. That a naked, oiled supermodel was not going to make everything better in my life—nor any sports car known to man. It was sometime after that. The precise moment of realization came in my tiny fourth-floor walk-up apartment on Ninth Avenue. Above Manganaro’s Heroboy restaurant—next building over from Esposito Pork Shop. I was lying in bed with my then-girlfriend—I guess you could diplomatically call it “spooning”—and I caught myself thinking, “I could make a baby with this woman.

a perfect description of the “automatic cultural man”—man as confined by culture, a slave to it, who imagines that he has an identity if he pays his insurance premium, that he has control of his life if he guns his sports car or works his electric toothbrush. Today the inauthentic or immediate men are familiar types, after decades of Marxist and existentialist analysis of man’s slavery to his social system. But in Kierkegaard’s time it must have been a shock to be a modern European city-dweller and be considered a Philistine at the same time. For Kierkegaard “philistinism” was triviality, man lulled by the daily routines of his society, content with the satisfactions that it offers him: in today’s world the car, the shopping center, the two-week summer vacation. Man is protected by the secure and limited alternatives his society offers him, and if he does not look up from his path he can live out his life with a certain dull security: Devoid of imagination, as the Philistine always is, he lives in a certain trivial province of experience as to how things go, what is possible, what usually occurs… . Philistinism tranquilizes itself in the trivial…

Every now and then, I'm lucky enough to teach a kindergarten or first-grade class. Many of these children are natural-born scientists - although heavy on the wonder side, and light on skepticism. They're curious, intellectually vigorous. Provocative and insightful questions bubble out of them. They exhibit enormous enthusiasm. I'm asked follow-up questions. They've never heard of the notion of a 'dumb question'. But when I talk to high school seniors, I find something different. They memorize 'facts'. By and large, though, the joy of discovery, the life behind those facts has gone out of them. They've lost much of the wonder and gained very little skepticism. They're worried about asking 'dumb' questions; they are willing to accept inadequate answers, they don't pose follow-up questions, the room is awash with sidelong glances to judge, second-by-second, the approval of their peers. They come to class with their questions written out on pieces of paper, which they surreptitiously examine, waiting their turn and oblivious of whatever discussion their peers are at this moment engaged in. Something has happened between first and twelfth grade. And it's not just puberty. I'd guess that it's partly peer pressure not to excel - except in sports, partly that the society teaches short-term gratification, partly the impression that science or mathematics won't buy you a sports car, partly that so little is expected of students, and partly that there are few rewards or role-models for intelligent discussion of science and technology - or even for learning for it's own sake. Those few who remain interested are vilified as nerds or geeks or grinds. But there's something else. I find many adults are put off when young children pose scientific questions. 'Why is the Moon round?', the children ask. 'Why is grass green?', 'What is a dream?', 'How deep can you dig a hole?', 'When is the world's birthday?', 'Why do we have toes?'. Too many teachers and parents answer with irritation, or ridicule, or quickly move on to something else. 'What did you expect the Moon to be? Square?' Children soon recognize that somehow this kind of question annoys the grown-ups. A few more experiences like it, and another child has been lost to science.

Young men ... learn practical skills that set is in good stead for lives as the husbands of wealthy and educated women: Strong Handshakes, Silence, Rudimentary Car Mechanics, How to Mow the Lawn, Explosive Displays of Authority, Sport and Nutrition Against Impotance.

It’s not that I’m particularly worried about growing old. Nor am I all that bothered about wrinkles, grey hair and all that. BUT. Major but. I don’t like the idea of dying – not when i have so much left to do! That, people, is the rather unwelcome realisation that strikes me now and then, namely that the number of years ahead of me are fewer than the ones behind me, and while I have ticked off a lot of items on that mental list of mine, there are so many things left. Like riding through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in my hair, to mention one.

Then he placed his hands in his pockets and stood in the middle of the street alone, giving the silent roaring rage inside him time to ease down and out, and after several long minutes he once again became who he was, a solitary middle-aged man in the August of life looking for a few more Aprils, an aging bachelor in a floppy suit standing on a tired, worn Brooklyn street in the shadow of a giant housing project built by a Jewish reformer named Robert Moses who forgot he was a reformer, building projects like this all over, which destroyed neighborhoods, chasing out the working Italians, Irish, and Jews, gutting all the pretty things from them, displacing them with Negroes and Spanish and other desperate souls clambering to climb into the attic of New York life, hoping that the bedroom and kitchen below would open up so they could drop in, and at minimum join the club that to them included this man, an overweight bachelor in an ill-fitting suit, watching a shiny car roaring away, the car driven by a handsome young man who was pretty and drove away as if he were barreling into a bright future, while the dowdy heavyset man watched him jealously, believing the man so pretty and handsome had places to go and women to meet and things to do, and the older heavyset man standing behind eating his fumes on a sorry, dreary, crowded old Brooklyn street of storefronts and tired brownstones had nothing left but the fumes of the pretty sports car in his face.

The Dilemma of Human Suffering Nothing external ensures freedom from suffering. Even when we human beings possess all the things we typically use to gauge external success—great looks, loving parents, terrific children, financial security, a caring spouse—it may not be enough. Humans can be warm, well fed, dry, physically well—and still be miserable. Humans can enjoy forms of excitement and entertainment unknown in the nonhuman world and out of reach for all but a fraction of the population—high-definition TVs, sports cars, exotic trips to the Caribbean—and still be in excruciating psychological pain.

It's not that I have any moral compunctions about work . . . but grampa may die to-morrow and he may live for ten years. Meanwhile we're living above our income and all we've got to show for it is a farmer's car and a few clothes. We keep an apartment that we've only lived in three months and a little old house way off in nowhere. We're frequently bored and yet we won't make any effort to know any one except the same crowd who drift around California all summer wearing sport clothes and waiting for their families to die.

Children lose contact with their parents, and vice versa, when there is no present living moment in the family. You change careers, go traveling, play extreme sports, get plastic surgery, drive fast cars, take exotic holidays, or redecorate the house, constantly seeking presence. These strategies might work for an hour, a day, or a year, but they will not solve your inner deadness.

I sometimes rented a car and drove from event to event in Europe; a road trip was a great escape from the day-to-day anxieties of playing, and it kept me from getting too lost in the tournament fun house with its courtesy cars, caterers, locker room attendants, and such — all amenities that create a firewall between players and what you might call the 'real' world — you know, where you may have to read a map, ask a question in a foreign tongue, find a restaurant and read the menu posted in the window to make sure you're not about to walk into a joint that serves only exotic reptile meat.

Every now and then, I’m lucky enough to teach a kindergarten or first-grade class. Many of these children are natural-born scientists—although heavy on the wonder side and light on skepticism. They’re curious, intellectually vigorous. Provocative and insightful questions bubble out of them. They exhibit enormous enthusiasm. I’m asked follow-up questions. They’ve never heard of the notion of a “dumb question.” But when I talk to high school seniors, I find something different. They memorize “facts.” By and large, though, the joy of discovery, the life behind those facts, has gone out of them. They’ve lost much of the wonder, and gained very little skepticism. They’re worried about asking “dumb” questions; they’re willing to accept inadequate answers; they don’t pose follow-up questions; the room is awash with sidelong glances to judge, second-by-second, the approval of their peers. They come to class with their questions written out on pieces of paper, which they surreptitiously examine, waiting their turn and oblivious of whatever discussion their peers are at this moment engaged in. Something has happened between first and twelfth grade, and it’s not just puberty. I’d guess that it’s partly peer pressure not to excel (except in sports); partly that the society teaches short-term gratification; partly the impression that science or mathematics won’t buy you a sports car; partly that so little is expected of students; and partly that there are few rewards or role models for intelligent discussion of science and technology—or even for learning for its own sake. Those few who remain interested are vilified as “nerds” or “geeks” or “grinds.

Galbraith, tellingly, drew a line between ‘simple modes of enjoyment’ (he included here sport, food and houses as well as cars and sex) and more ‘esoteric’ ones such as music, fine art ‘and to some extent travel’. The first group required ‘little prior preparation of the subject for its highest enjoyment’ and was thus the target of ‘modern want creation’. The latter, by contrast, were more distinctly individual and had to be cultivated.

Still tripping after the flight, I decided I was going to hitchhike from Luxembourg, and I took one of my big photographs and wrote on the back in big black letters: Paris. I had no idea how far away it was, or even that it was in another country. I stood on this big highway—it was a beautiful day. I felt I looked pretty hot in my cape and hat, certainly worth someone stopping for to find out what the story was, but all these sports cars whizzed past me without stopping, totally ignoring me. None of them stopped. I thought, Everyone in Europe is so rude! Eventually, a sports car skidded to a halt. It backed up to me, and the driver said, in English, by the way, “You’re on the wrong side of the road. Paris is the other way! I think it’s safer for you to catch a train,” and he took me to the train station. He helped me get a ticket and onto the train, heading for Paris. I’m not sure if he was being kind or just wanted to get rid of me. I didn’t speak a word of French, not one word.

But there was one girl who had a big influence over me. Barbie. I worshipped Barbie. In fact, I would say Barbie was my twelve-inch plastic life coach. She had it all, a camper, a dune buggy, even a dream house. Part of why it was a dream house to me was that she was the only one who lived there. Her boyfriend, Ken, came to visit when she--er, I decided. She had a sports car and would bounce from job to job as she--er, I saw fit.Barbie owned zero floral baby-making dresses. I craved that indepence. And her weird-ass boobs? So what? She still reached the steering wheel of her royal blue sports car. Some people thought that the fact that her feet were fucked and she couldn't stand was a problem. But to me, it meant she was free. Free from standing at a stove, or a washing machine, or with a baby hanging off her hip. She has no hip. She has no hips. Plus, she didn't have to walk; she drove her convertible everywhere. God, I loved Barbie. She was free in every way I knew how to define freedom.

(I know, it's a poem but oh well). Why! who makes much of a miracle? As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles, Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the edge of the water, Or stand under trees in the woods, Or talk by day with any one I love--or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love, Or sit at table at dinner with my mother, Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car, Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive, of a summer forenoon, Or animals feeding in the fields, Or birds--or the wonderfulness of insects in the air, Or the wonderfulness of the sun-down--or of stars shining so quiet and bright, Or the exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new moon in spring; Or whether I go among those I like best, and that like me best-- mechanics, boatmen, farmers, Or among the savans--or to the soiree--or to the opera, Or stand a long while looking at the movements of machinery, Or behold children at their sports, Or the admirable sight of the perfect old man, or the perfect old woman, Or the sick in hospitals, or the dead carried to burial, Or my own eyes and figure in the glass; These, with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles, The whole referring--yet each distinct, and in its place. To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, Every cubic inch of space is a miracle, Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same, Every foot of the interior swarms with the same; Every spear of grass--the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, and all that concerns them, All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles. To me the sea is a continual miracle; The fishes that swim--the rocks--the motion of the waves--the ships, with men in them, What stranger miracles are there?

We decided to attend to our community instead of asking our community to attend the church.” His staff started showing up at local community events such as sports contests and town hall meetings. They entered a float in the local Christmas parade. They rented a football field and inaugurated a Free Movie Night on summer Fridays, complete with popcorn machines and a giant screen. They opened a burger joint, which soon became a hangout for local youth; it gives free meals to those who can’t afford to pay. When they found out how difficult it was for immigrants to get a driver’s license, they formed a drivers school and set their fees at half the going rate. My own church in Colorado started a ministry called Hands of the Carpenter, recruiting volunteers to do painting, carpentry, and house repairs for widows and single mothers. Soon they learned of another need and opened Hands Automotive to offer free oil changes, inspections, and car washes to the same constituency. They fund the work by charging normal rates to those who can afford it. I heard from a church in Minneapolis that monitors parking meters. Volunteers patrol the streets, add money to the meters with expired time, and put cards on the windshields that read, “Your meter looked hungry so we fed it. If we can help you in any other way, please give us a call.” In Cincinnati, college students sign up every Christmas to wrap presents at a local mall — ​no charge. “People just could not understand why I would want to wrap their presents,” one wrote me. “I tell them, ‘We just want to show God’s love in a practical way.’ ” In one of the boldest ventures in creative grace, a pastor started a community called Miracle Village in which half the residents are registered sex offenders. Florida’s state laws require sex offenders to live more than a thousand feet from a school, day care center, park, or playground, and some municipalities have lengthened the distance to half a mile and added swimming pools, bus stops, and libraries to the list. As a result, sex offenders, one of the most despised categories of criminals, are pushed out of cities and have few places to live. A pastor named Dick Witherow opened Miracle Village as part of his Matthew 25 Ministries. Staff members closely supervise the residents, many of them on parole, and conduct services in the church at the heart of Miracle Village. The ministry also provides anger-management and Bible study classes.

Tell me!” Cecily insisted later, shaking Colby by both arms. “Cut it out, you’ll dismember me,” Colby said, chuckling. She let go of the artificial arm and wrapped both hands around the good one. “I want to know. Listen, this is my covert operation. You’re just a stand-in!” “I promised I wouldn’t tell.” “You promised in Lakota. Tell me in English what you promised in Lakota.” He gave in. He did tell her, but not Leta, what was said, but only about the men coming to the reservation soon. “We’ll need the license plate number,” she said. “It can be traced. “Oh, of course,” he said facetiously. “They’ll certainly come here with their own license plate on the car so that everyone knows who they are!” “Damn!” He chuckled at her irritation. He was about to tell her about his alternative method when a big sport utility vehicle came flying down the dirt road and pulled up right in front of Leta’s small house. Tate Winthrop got out, wearing jeans and a buckskin jacket and sunglasses. His thick hair fell around his shoulders and down his back like a straight black silk curtain. Cecily stared at it with curious fascination. In all the years she’d known him, she’d very rarely seen his hair down. “All you need is the war paint,” Colby said in a resigned tone. He turned the uninjured cheek toward the newcomer. “Go ahead. I like matching scars.” Tate took off the dark glasses and looked from Cecily to Colby without smiling. “Holden won’t tell me a damned thing. I want answers.” “Come inside, then,” Cecily replied. “We’re attracting enough attention as it is.

She is watching a man lying dead or asleep on a blanket nearby dressed in a crumpled tan suit with blood discolouring his sleeve, his hand clutching a plastic bag filled with bread rolls, alone black shoe on a foot. Another man she saw been carried into the emergency room was wearing just one sport shoe, so many shoes gone astray she thinks, so many shoes dislodged while their owners are carried by the arms and legs or dragged by the armpits into the backs of cars and vans and dragged again into emergency rooms without a gurney, the orphaned shoes kicked aside in the rush or left to die on the street or on footpaths like an unblinking eye awaiting the return of its owner

If Daddy could see me now. I spent the morning with Rebecca at the Indianapolis Speedway, at an auto museum filled with Nascars and racing paraphernalia. Do you remember when we used to watch all five hundred laps with him, every year? I never understood what it was that made auto racing such a biggie for him—it's not like he ever tried the sport himself. He told me once when I was older that it was the absolute speed of it all. I liked to watch for crashes, like you. I liked the way there'd be a huge explosion on the track and billows of ebony smoke, and the other cars would just keep a straight course and head right for the spin, into this sort of black box, and they'd come out okay. I

You might want to pop your collar." "Hey if the biker doesn't pop his, I'm not popping mine. Also? We're thirty years past that fashion faux pas." "Yeah, but it still comes in handy when you're sporting a hickey." "What?" My hands flew to my neck, and I found the tender spot. "Shit. No, that's not-- I burned it. My hair wasn't cooperating, so I dragged out the curling iron." "Gabriel has a curling iron?" "No, I meant--Damn it." I rooted through my bag for concealer. "I'm sorry. If I'd noticed, I'd have hidden it." "I know." His lips twitched. "It is kinda funny, though, watching you guys scramble with excuses. Gabriel told me you weren't answering my calls because you forgot your phone in the car. Which is about as likely as you leaving your arm behind. He dried his hair so fast the back was sticking up. And then he scarfed down half the food I brought for lunch. I've never seen him eat like that." He smiled. "But I do appreciate he's being circumspect." "He's not going to wave it in your face." "No, but we are talking about Gabriel, who never goes out of his way to cushion anyone's feelings but yours. He's being very thoughtful. It's sweet. Just don't tell him I said that." "I won't." I finished applying the concealer. "Better?" "Yep." He leaned over for a better look and then stopped. "Is that a bite on your collarbone?" "Shit! No. Damn it. Ricky laughed as I frantically applied more makeup.

These people lived insular, often deeply private lives focused on their work. Their voices were rarely heard, because they sought no audience. Their identities were constructed from things that couldn’t be bought in shops. They wore old clothes and only went shopping occasionally for essentials. They held “shop-bought” things in great contempt. They preferred cash to credit, and would mend anything that broke, piling up old things to use again someday, rather than throwing them away. They had hobbies and interests that cost nothing, turning their necessary tasks, like catching rats or foxes, into sport. Their friendships were built around their work, and the breeds of cattle and sheep they kept. They rarely took holidays or bought new cars. And it wasn’t all work—a lot of time was spent on farm-related activities that were communal and more relaxed, or in the simple enjoyment of wild things. My grandfather called this way of life “living quietly.

Competition is the spice of sports; but if you make spice the whole meal you'll be sick. The simplest single-celled organism oscillates to a number of different frequencies, at the atomic, molecular, sub-cellular, and cellular levels. Microscopic movies of these organisms are striking for the ceaseless, rhythmic pulsation that is revealed. In an organism as complex as a human being, the frequencies of oscillation and the interactions between those frequencies are multitudinous. -George Leonard Learning any new skill involves relatively brief spurts of progress, each of which is followed by a slight decline to a plateau somewhat higher in most cases than that which preceded it…the upward spurts vary; the plateaus have their own dips and rises along the way…To take the master’s journey, you have to practice diligently, striving to hone your skills, to attain new levels of competence. But while doing so–and this is the inexorable–fact of the journey–you also have to be willing to spend most of your time on a plateau, to keep practicing even when you seem to be getting nowhere. (Mastery, p. 14-15). Backsliding is a universal experience. Every one of us resists significant change, no matter whether it’s for the worse or for the better. Our body, brain and behavior have a built-in tendency to stay the same within rather narrow limits, and to snap back when changed…Be aware of the way homeostasis works…Expect resistance and backlash. Realize that when the alarm bells start ringing, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re sick or crazy or lazy or that you’ve made a bad decision in embarking on the journey of mastery. In fact, you might take these signals as an indication that your life is definitely changing–just what you’ve wanted….Be willing to negotiate with your resistance to change. Our preoccupation with goals, results, and the quick fix has separated us from our own experiences…there are all of those chores that most of us can’t avoid: cleaning, straightening, raking leaves, shopping for groceries, driving the children to various activities, preparing food, washing dishes, washing the car, commuting, performing the routine, repetitive aspects of our jobs….Take driving, for instance. Say you need to drive ten miles to visit a friend. You might consider the trip itself as in-between-time, something to get over with. Or you could take it as an opportunity for the practice of mastery. In that case, you would approach your car in a state of full awareness…Take a moment to walk around the car and check its external condition, especially that of the tires…Open the door and get in the driver’s seat, performing the next series of actions as a ritual: fastening the seatbelt, adjusting the seat and the rearview mirror…As you begin moving, make a silent affirmation that you’ll take responsibility for the space all around your vehicle at all times…We tend to downgrade driving as a skill simply because it’s so common. Actually maneuvering a car through varying conditions of weather, traffic, and road surface calls for an extremely high level of perception, concentration, coordination, and judgement…Driving can be high art…Ultimately, nothing in this life is “commonplace,” nothing is “in between.” The threads that join your every act, your every thought, are infinite. All paths of mastery eventually merge. [Each person has a] vantage point that offers a truth of its own. We are the architects of creation and all things are connected through us. The Universe is continually at its work of restructuring itself at a higher, more complex, more elegant level . . . The intention of the universe is evolution. We exist as a locus of waves that spreads its influence to the ends of space and time. The whole of a thing is contained in each of its parts. We are completely, firmly, absolutely connected with all of existence. We are indeed in relationship to all that is.

The tattoos around his eyes burned as he scanned the surrounding area. No one but him probably noticed, but the plumes of darkness branching in every direction were writhing and groaning, desperate to avoid the light of the moon and street lamps. Come to me, he beseeched them. They didn’t hesitate. As if they’d merely been waiting for the invitation, they danced toward him, flattening against his car, shielding it—and thereby him—from prying eyes. “Freaks me out every damn time you do that,” Rowan said as he crawled into the front passenger seat. For the first time, Sean’s friend had accompanied him to “keep you from doing something you’ll regret.” Not that Gabby had known. Rowan had lain in the backseat the entire drive. “I can’t see a damn thing.” “I can.” Sean’s gaze could cut through shadows as easily as a knife through butter. Gabby was in the process of settling behind the wheel of her car. Though more than two weeks had passed since their kiss, they hadn’t touched again. Not even a brush of fingers. He was becoming desperate for more. That kiss . . . it was the hottest of his life. He’d forgotten where he was, what—and who—was around him. He’d never, never, risked discovery like that. But that night, having Gabby so close, those lush lips of hers parted and ready, those brown eyes watching him as if he were something delicious, he’d been unable to stop himself. He’d beckoned the shadows around them, meshed their lips together, touched her in places a man should only touch a woman in private, and tasted her. Oh, had he tasted her. Sugar and lemon. Which meant she’d been sipping lemonade during her breaks. Lemonade had never been sexy to him before. Now he was addicted to the stuff. Drank it every chance he got. Hell, he sported a hard-on if he even spotted the yellow fruit. At night he thought about pouring lemon juice over her lean body, sprinkling that liquid with sugar, and then feasting. She’d come, he’d come, and then they could do it all over again. Seriously. Lemonade was like his own personal brand of cocaine now—which he’d once been addicted to, had spent years in rehab combating, and had sworn never to let himself become so obsessed with a substance again. Good luck with that. “I’m getting nowhere with her,” Rowan said. “You, she watches. You, she kissed.” “Yeah, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.” Gabby’s car passed his and he accelerated, staying close enough to her that anyone trying to merge into her lane wouldn’t clip his car because they couldn’t see him. Not that anyone was out and about at this time of night. “She’s mine. I don’t want you touching her.” “Finally. The truth. Which is a good thing, because I already called Bill and told him you were gonna be the one to seduce her.” “Thanks.” This was one of the reasons he and Rowan were such good friends. “But I thought you were here tonight to keep me from her.” “First, you’re welcome. Second, I lied.

For the rest of Kat’s childhood, she moved from one relative’s house to another’s, up and down the East Coast, living in four homes before entering high school. Finally, in high school, she lived for a few years with her grandmother, her mom’s mom, whom she called “G-Ma.” No one ever talked about her mom’s murder. “In my family, my past was ‘The Big Unmentionable’—including my role in putting my own father in jail,” she says. In high school, Kat appeared to be doing well. She was an honor student who played four varsity sports. Beneath the surface, however, “I was secretly self-medicating with alcohol because otherwise, by the time everything stopped and it got quiet at night, I could not sleep, I would just lie there and a terrible panic would overtake me.” She went to college, failed out, went back, and graduated. She went to work in advertising, and one day, dissatisfied, quit. She went back to grad school, piling up debt. She became a teacher. Kat quit that job too, when a relationship she had formed with another teacher imploded. At the age of thirty-four, Kat went to stay with her brother and his family in Hawaii. She got a job as a valet, parking cars. “I’d come home from parking cars all day and curl up on my bed in the back bedroom of my brother’s house, and lie there feeling desperate and alone, my heart beating with anxiety.

A Favorite start to a book [sorry it's long!]: "In yesterday’s Sunday Times, a report from Francistown in Botswana. Sometime last week, in the middle of the night, a car, a white American model, drove up to a house in a residential area. Men wearing balaclavas jumped out, kicked down the front door, and began shooting. When they had done with shooting they set fire to the house and drove off. From the embers the neighbors dragged seven charred bodies: two men, three women, two children. Th killers appeared to be black, but one of the neighbors heard them speaking Afrikaans among themselves. And was convinced they were whites in blackface. The dead were South Africans, refugees who had moved into the house mere weeks ago. Approached for comment, the SA Minister of Foreign Affairs, through a spokesman, calls the report ‘unverified’. Inquiries will be undertaken, he says, to determine whether the deceased were indeed SA citizens. As for the military, an unnamed source denies that the SA Defence Force had anything to do with the matter. The killings are probably an internal ANC matter, he suggests, reflecting ‘ongoing tensions between factions. So they come out, week after week, these tales from the borderlands, murders followed by bland denials. He reads the reports and feels soiled. So this is what he has come back to! Yet where in the world can one hide where one will not feel soiled? Would he feel any cleaner in the snows of Sweden, reading at a distance about his people and their latest pranks? How to escape the filth: not a new question. An old rat-question that will not let go, that leaves its nasty, suppurating wound. Agenbite of inwit. ‘I see the Defense Force is up to its old tricks again,’ he remarks to his father. ‘In Botswana this time.’ But his father is too wary to rise to the bait. When his father picks up the newspaper, he cares to skip straight to the sports pages, missing out the politics—the politics and the killings. His father has nothing but disdain for the continent to the north of them. Buffoons is the word he uses to dismiss the leaders of African states: petty tyrants who can barely spell their own names, chauffeured from one banquet to another in their Rolls-Royces, wearing Ruritanian uniforms festooned with medals they have awarded themselves. Africa: a place of starving masses with homicidal buffoons lording over them. ‘They broke into a house in Francistown and killed everyone,’ he presses on nonetheless. ‘Executed them .Including the children. Look. Read the report. It’s on the front page.’ His father shrugs. His father can find no form of words spacious enough to cover his distaste for, on one hand, thugs who slaughter defenceless women and children and, on the other, terrorists who wage war from havens across the border. He resolves the problem by immersing himself in the cricket scores. As a response to moral dilemma it is feeble; yet is his own response—fits of anger and despair—any better?" Summertime, Coetzee

There is an inherent, humbling cruelty to learning how to run white water. In most other so-called "adrenaline" sports—skiing, surfing and rock climbing come to mind—one attains mastery, or the illusion of it, only after long apprenticeship, after enduring falls and tumbles, the fatigue of training previously unused muscles, the discipline of developing a new and initially awkward set of skills. Running white water is fundamentally different. With a little luck one is immediately able to travel long distances, often at great speeds, with only a rudimentary command of the sport's essential skills and about as much physical stamina as it takes to ride a bicycle downhill. At the beginning, at least, white-water adrenaline comes cheap. It's the river doing the work, of course, but like a teenager with a hot car, one forgets what the true power source is. Arrogance reigns. The river seems all smoke and mirrors, lots of bark (you hear it chortling away beneath you, crunching boulders), but not much bite. You think: Let's get on with it! Let's run this damn river! And then maybe the raft hits a drop in the river— say, a short, hidden waterfall. Or maybe a wave reaches up and flicks the boat on its side as easily as a horse swatting flies with its tail. Maybe you're thrown suddenly into the center of the raft, and the floor bounces back and punts you overboard. Maybe you just fall right off the side of the raft so fast you don't realize what's happening. It doesn't matter. The results are the same. The world goes dark. The river— the word hardly does justice to the churning mess enveloping you— the river tumbles you like so much laundry. It punches the air from your lungs. You're helpless. Swimming is a joke. You know for a fact that you are drowning. For the first time you understand the strength of the insouciant monster that has swallowed you. Maybe you travel a hundred feet before you surface (the current is moving that fast). And another hundred feet—just short of a truly fearsome plunge, one that will surely kill you— before you see the rescue lines. You're hauled to shore wearing a sheepish grin and a look in your eye that is equal parts confusion, respect, and raw fear. That is River Lesson Number One. Everyone suffers it. And every time you get the least bit cocky, every time you think you have finally figured out what the river is all about, you suffer it all over again.

Why aren't you in school? I see you every day wandering around." "Oh, they don't miss me," she said. "I'm antisocial, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this." She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. "Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don't; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film-teacher. That's not social to me at all. It's a lot of funnels and lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it's wine when it's not. They run us so ragged by the end of the day we can't do anything but go to bed or head for a Fun Park to bully people around, break windowpanes in the Window Smasher place or wreck cars in the Car Wrecker place with the big steel ball. Or go out in the cars and race on the streets, trying to see how close you can get to lampposts, playing 'chicken' and 'knock hubcaps.' I guess I'm everything they say I am, all right. I haven't any friends. That's supposed to prove I'm abnormal. But everyone I know is either shouting or dancing around like wild or beating up one another. Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays?

When the time comes, & I hope it comes soon, to bury this era of moral rot & the defiling of our communal, social, & democratic norms, the perfect epitaph for the gravestone of this age of unreason should be Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley's already infamous quote: "I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing... as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.” Grassley's vision of America, quite frankly, is one I do not recognize. I thought the heart of this great nation was not limited to the ranks of the plutocrats who are whisked through life in chauffeured cars & private jets, whose often inherited riches are passed along to children, many of whom no sacrifice or service is asked. I do not begrudge wealth, but it must come with a humility that money never is completely free of luck. And more importantly, wealth can never be a measure of worth. I have seen the waitress working the overnight shift at a diner to give her children a better life, & yes maybe even take them to a movie once in awhile - and in her, I see America. I have seen the public school teachers spending extra time with students who need help & who get no extra pay for their efforts, & in them I see America. I have seen parents sitting around kitchen tables with stacks of pressing bills & wondering if they can afford a Christmas gift for their children, & in them I see America. I have seen the young diplomat in a distant foreign capital & the young soldier in a battlefield foxhole, & in them I see America. I have seen the brilliant graduates of the best law schools who forgo the riches of a corporate firm for the often thankless slog of a district attorney or public defender's office, & in them I see America. I have seen the librarian reshelving books, the firefighter, police officer, & paramedic in service in trying times, the social worker helping the elderly & infirm, the youth sports coaches, the PTA presidents, & in them I see America. I have seen the immigrants working a cash register at a gas station or trimming hedges in the frost of an early fall morning, or driving a cab through rush hour traffic to make better lives for their families, & in them I see America. I have seen the science students unlocking the mysteries of life late at night in university laboratories for little or no pay, & in them I see America. I have seen the families struggling with a cancer diagnosis, or dementia in a parent or spouse. Amid the struggles of mortality & dignity, in them I see America. These, & so many other Americans, have every bit as much claim to a government working for them as the lobbyists & moneyed classes. And yet, the power brokers in Washington today seem deaf to these voices. It is a national disgrace of historic proportions. And finally, what is so wrong about those who must worry about the cost of a drink with friends, or a date, or a little entertainment, to rephrase Senator Grassley's demeaning phrasings? Those who can't afford not to worry about food, shelter, healthcare, education for their children, & all the other costs of modern life, surely they too deserve to be able to spend some of their “darn pennies” on the simple joys of life. Never mind that almost every reputable economist has called this tax bill a sham of handouts for the rich at the expense of the vast majority of Americans & the future economic health of this nation. Never mind that it is filled with loopholes written by lobbyists. Never mind that the wealthiest already speak with the loudest voices in Washington, & always have. Grassley’s comments open a window to the soul of the current national Republican Party & it it is not pretty. This is not a view of America that I think President Ronald Reagan let alone President Dwight Eisenhower or Teddy Roosevelt would have recognized. This is unadulterated cynicism & a version of top-down class warfare run amok. ~Facebook 12/4/17