Spray Your Life Quotes

I've apparently been the victim of growing up, which apparently happens to all of us at one point or another. It's been going on for quite some time now, without me knowing it. I've found that growing up can mean a lot of things. For me, it doesn't mean I should become somebody completely new and stop loving the things I used to love. It means I've just added more things to my list. Like for example, I'm still beyond obsessed with the winter season and I still start putting up strings of lights in September. I still love sparkles and grocery shopping and really old cats that are only nice to you half the time. I still love writing in my journal and wearing dresses all the time and staring at chandeliers. But some new things I've fallen in love with -- mismatched everything. Mismatched chairs, mismatched colors, mismatched personalities. I love spraying perfumes I used to wear when I was in high school. It brings me back to the days of trying to get a close parking spot at school, trying to get noticed by soccer players, and trying to figure out how to avoid doing or saying anything uncool, and wishing every minute of every day that one day maybe I'd get a chance to win a Grammy. Or something crazy and out of reach like that. ;) I love old buildings with the paint chipping off the walls and my dad's stories about college. I love the freedom of living alone, but I also love things that make me feel seven again. Back then naivety was the norm and skepticism was a foreign language, and I just think every once in a while you need fries and a chocolate milkshake and your mom. I love picking up a cookbook and closing my eyes and opening it to a random page, then attempting to make that recipe. I've loved my fans from the very first day, but they've said things and done things recently that make me feel like they're my friends -- more now than ever before. I'll never go a day without thinking about our memories together.

The ones who are not soul-mated – the ones who have settled – are even more dismissive of my singleness: It’s not that hard to find someone to marry, they say. No relationship is perfect, they say – they, who make do with dutiful sex and gassy bedtime rituals, who settle for TV as conversation, who believe that husbandly capitulation – yes, honey, okay, honey – is the same as concord. He’s doing what you tell him to do because he doesn’t care enough to argue, I think. Your petty demands simply make him feel superior, or resentful, and someday he will fuck his pretty, young coworker who asks nothing of him, and you will actually be shocked. Give me a man with a little fight in him, a man who calls me on my bullshit. (But who also kind of likes my bullshit.) And yet: Don’t land me in one of those relationships where we’re always pecking at each other, disguising insults as jokes, rolling our eyes and ‘playfully’ scrapping in front of our friends, hoping to lure them to our side of an argument they could not care less about. Those awful if only relationships: This marriage would be great if only… and you sense the if only list is a lot longer than either of them realizes. So I know I am right not to settle, but it doesn’t make me feel better as my friends pair off and I stay home on Friday night with a bottle of wine and make myself an extravagant meal and tell myself, This is perfect, as if I’m the one dating me. As I go to endless rounds of parties and bar nights, perfumed and sprayed and hopeful, rotating myself around the room like some dubious dessert. I go on dates with men who are nice and good-looking and smart – perfect-on-paper men who make me feel like I’m in a foreign land, trying to explain myself, trying to make myself known. Because isn’t that the point of every relationship: to be known by someone else, to be understood? He gets me. She gets me. Isn’t that the simple magic phrase? So you suffer through the night with the perfect-on-paper man – the stutter of jokes misunderstood, the witty remarks lobbed and missed. Or maybe he understands that you’ve made a witty remark but, unsure of what to do with it, he holds it in his hand like some bit of conversational phlegm he will wipe away later. You spend another hour trying to find each other, to recognise each other, and you drink a little too much and try a little too hard. And you go home to a cold bed and think, That was fine. And your life is a long line of fine.

You do not,’ cried Giovanni, sitting up, ‘love anyone! You never have loved anyone, I am sure you never will! You love your purity, you love your mirror—you are just like a little virgin, you walk around with your hands in front of you as though you had some precious metal, gold, silver, rubies, maybe diamonds down there between your legs! You will never give it to anybody, you will never let anybody touch it—man or woman. You want to be clean. You think you came here covered with soap and you think you will go out covered with soap—and you do not want to stink, not even for five minutes, in the meantime.’ He grasped me by the collar, wrestling and caressing at once, fluid and iron at once: saliva spraying from his lips and his eyes full of tears, but with the bones of his face showing and the muscles leaping in his arms and neck. ‘You want to leave Giovanni because he makes you stink. You want to despise Giovanni because he is not afraid of the stink of love. You want to kill him in the name of all your lying little moralities. And you—you are immoral. You are, by far, the most immoral man I have met in all my life. Look, look what you have done to me. Do you think you could have done this if I did not love you? Is this what you should do to love?

I should rip your eyes out,” Newt said, spraying Thomas with spit. “Teach you a lesson in stupidity. Why’d you come over here? You expected a bloody hug? Huh? A nice sit-down to talk about the good times in the Glade?

The Voyager We are all lonely voyagers sailing on life's ebb tide, To a far off place were all stripling warriors have died, Sometime at eve when the tide is low, The voices call us back to the rippling water's flow, Even though our boat sailed with love in our hearts, Neither our dreams or plans would keep heaven far apart, We drift through the hush of God's twilight pale, With no response to our friendly hail, We raise our sails and search for majestic light, While finding company on this journey to the brighten our night, Then suddenly he pulls us through the reef's cutting sea, Back to the place that he asked us to be, Friendly barges that were anchored so sweetly near, In silent sorrow they drop their salted tears, Shall our soul be a feast of kelp and brine, The wasted tales of wishful time, Are we a fish on a line lured with bait, Is life the grind, a heartless fate, Suddenly, "HUSH", said the wind from afar, Have you not looked to the heavens and seen the new star, It danced on the abyss of the evening sky, The sparkle of heaven shining on high, Its whisper echoed on the ocean's spray, From the bow to the mast they heard him say, "Hope is above, not found in the deep, I am alive in your memories and dreams when you sleep, I will greet you at sunset and with the moon's evening smile, I will light your path home.. every last lonely mile, My friends, have no fear, my work was done well, In this life I broke the waves and rode the swell, I found faith in those that I called my crew, My love will be the compass that will see you through, So don't look for me on the ocean's floor to find, I've never left the weathered docks of your loving mind, For I am in the moon, the wind and the whale's evening song, I am the sailor of eternity whose voyage is not gone.

Let’s say you have an ax. Just a cheap one, from Home Depot. On one bitter winter day, you use said ax to behead a man. Don’t worry, the man was already dead. Or maybe you should worry, because you’re the one who shot him. He had been a big, twitchy guy with veiny skin stretched over swollen biceps, a tattoo of a swastika on his tongue. Teeth filed into razor-sharp fangs-you know the type. And you’re chopping off his head because, even with eight bullet holes in him, you’re pretty sure he’s about to spring back to his feet and eat the look of terror right off your face. On the follow-through of the last swing, though, the handle of the ax snaps in a spray of splinters. You now have a broken ax. So, after a long night of looking for a place to dump the man and his head, you take a trip into town with your ax. You go to the hardware store, explaining away the dark reddish stains on the broken handle as barbecue sauce. You walk out with a brand-new handle for your ax. The repaired ax sits undisturbed in your garage until the spring when, on one rainy morning, you find in your kitchen a creature that appears to be a foot-long slug with a bulging egg sac on its tail. Its jaws bite one of your forks in half with what seems like very little effort. You grab your trusty ax and chop the thing into several pieces. On the last blow, however, the ax strikes a metal leg of the overturned kitchen table and chips out a notch right in the middle of the blade. Of course, a chipped head means yet another trip to the hardware store. They sell you a brand-new head for your ax. As soon as you get home, you meet the reanimated body of the guy you beheaded earlier. He’s also got a new head, stitched on with what looks like plastic weed-trimmer line, and it’s wearing that unique expression of “you’re the man who killed me last winter” resentment that one so rarely encounters in everyday life. You brandish your ax. The guy takes a long look at the weapon with his squishy, rotting eyes and in a gargly voice he screams, “That’s the same ax that beheaded me!” IS HE RIGHT?

EDMUND *Then with alcoholic talkativeness You've just told me some high spots in your memories. Want to hear mine? They're all connected with the sea. Here's one. When I was on the Squarehead square rigger, bound for Buenos Aires. Full moon in the Trades. The old hooker driving fourteen knots. I lay on the bowsprit, facing astern, with the water foaming into spume under me, the masts with every sail white in the moonlight, towering high above me. I became drunk with the beauty and signing rhythm of it, and for a moment I lost myself -- actually lost my life. I was set free! I dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship and the high dim-starred sky! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life, or the life of Man, to Life itself! To God, if you want to put it that way. Then another time, on the American Line, when I was lookout on the crow's nest in the dawn watch. A calm sea, that time. Only a lazy ground swell and a slow drowsy roll of the ship. The passengers asleep and none of the crew in sight. No sound of man. Black smoke pouring from the funnels behind and beneath me. Dreaming, not keeping looking, feeling alone, and above, and apart, watching the dawn creep like a painted dream over the sky and sea which slept together. Then the moment of ecstatic freedom came. the peace, the end of the quest, the last harbor, the joy of belonging to a fulfillment beyond men's lousy, pitiful, greedy fears and hopes and dreams! And several other times in my life, when I was swimming far out, or lying alone on a beach, I have had the same experience. Became the sun, the hot sand, green seaweed anchored to a rock, swaying in the tide. Like a saint's vision of beatitude. Like a veil of things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second you see -- and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second there is meaning! Then the hand lets the veil fall and you are alone, lost in the fog again, and you stumble on toward nowhere, for no good reason! *He grins wryly. It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a sea gull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must always be a a little in love with death! TYRONE *Stares at him -- impressed. Yes, there's the makings of a poet in you all right. *Then protesting uneasily. But that's morbid craziness about not being wanted and loving death. EDMUND *Sardonically The *makings of a poet. No, I'm afraid I'm like the guy who is always panhandling for a smoke. He hasn't even got the makings. He's got only the habit. I couldn't touch what I tried to tell you just now. I just stammered. That's the best I'll ever do, I mean, if I live. Well, it will be faithful realism, at least. Stammering is the native eloquence of us fog people.

I've always believed that to some extent you get to decide for yourself what your life will be like. You can either look at the world and say "Oh, isn't it all so tragic, so grim, so awful." Or you can look at the world and decide that it's mostly funny. If you step back far enough from the details, everything gets funny. You say war is tragic. I say, isn't it crazy the way people will fight over nothing? People fight wars to control crappy little patches of empty desert, for crying out loud. It's like fighting over an empty soda can. It's not so much tragic as it is ridiculous. Asinine! Stupid! You say, isn't it terrible about global warming? And I say, no, it's funny. We're going to bring on global warming because we ran too many leaky air conditioners? We used too much spray deodorant, so now we'll be doomed to sweat forever? That's not sad. That's irony.

I had a dream about you. In my dream I stole all your money, kidnapped your parents, and mailed you mannequin parts spray-painted red in a series of packages that also included ransom notes. Then, towards the end of the dream, the cops surrounded my cave and swarmed in to arrest me. Sweating, my eyes shot open, and I realized it was a dream. “Of course it’s a dream,” I thought. “The cops have no idea where my cave is, and your first package has yet to be delivered.”


I want you to imagine for a minute,” she begins. “I know it’s going to be hard for both of you, but just imagine—that literally nothing was made for you. Your parents were denied a house because of their skin color, your grandparents were sprayed with fire hoses and ripped apart by dogs in the streets, your great-grandparents were housemaids and mammies and barely paid entertainers, and your great-great-grandparents were slaves. Every movie in your life is majority Black, all the characters in your favorite books have been cast darker in the movie adaptation for no reason, and every mistake you make is because of your skin color and because of “your background” and because of the music you listen to. You are the only white kids at a school of five hundred Blacks, and every Black person at that school asks you to weigh in on what it’s like to be white, or what white people think about this or that. It’s not fun.

I value my life more than yours. Sue me. We wouldn’t be in this mess if you hadn’t been so blatantly obvious with your sabotage!” “Fuck you!” Rudy pulled a squirt bottle from his desk and sprayed us both. “Hush,” he said. Jin winced “Now, that’s just unprofessional!

I’m a tattoo artist, I’ll probably always be a tattoo artist and I don’t know how that plays into your future or the future you have planned after school and frankly I don’t care. This is what I have to offer you Shaw and just like you let me be your first, I’m letting you be mine,” I covered her entire palm with a detailed drawing of a sacred heart, it matched the one I had inked on the center of my chest. It had flames dancing up the back, a crown of thorns on top of it, a spray of roses along the bottom and in the center I drew a scrolling banner with my name in the center. “Here’s my heart Shaw. You have it in your hands and I promise you’re the first and last person to ever touch it. You need to be careful with it because it’s far more fragile than I ever thought and if you try and give it back I’m not taking it. I don’t know enough about love to know for sure that’s what this between us is, but I know that for me it’s you and only you from here on out and I can only promise to be careful and not push you away again. Life without you in it is doable, but if I have a choice I want to do it with you by my side and I’m telling you I’m not running away from the work it takes to make that happen. Shaw I’m not scared of us anymore.

This is where we are now, endlessly cheerleading ourselves into positivity while erasing the dirty underside of real life. I always read brutality in those messages: they offer next to nothing. There are days when I can say with great certainty that I am not strong enough to manage. And what if I can’t hang on in there? What then? These people might as well be leaning into my face, shouting, Cope! Cope! Cope! while spraying perfume into the air to make it all seem nice. The subtext of these messages is clear: Misery is not an option. We must carry on looking jolly for the sake of the crowd. While we may no longer see depression as a failure, we expect you to spin it into something meaningful pretty quick. And if you can’t pull that off, then you’d better disappear from view for a while. You’re dragging down the vibe.

The group home is always muggy, like we live in an old shoe, smelling like corn chips mixed with roach spray. I never call the group home “home.” It’s not a home. No house where you fear for your life can be considered a home.

You will come upon those who exude life, who burn bright. In their company, how are you to be? Proud to name them friend? Pleased to bask in their fire? Or, in the name of need, will you simply devour all that they offer, like a force of darkness swallowing light, warmth, life itself? Will you make yourself a rocky island, black and gnarled, a place of cold caves and littered bones? The bright waves do not soothe your shores, but crash instead, explode in a fury of foam and spray. And you drink in every swirl, sucked down into your caves, your bottomless caverns. ‘I do not describe a transitory mood. Not a temporary disposition, brought on by external woes. What I describe, in fashioning this island soul, so bleak and forbidding, is a place made too precious to be surrendered, too stolid to be dismantled. This island I give you, this soul in particular, is a fortress of need, a maw that knows only how to ease its eternal hunger. Within its twisted self, no true friend is acknowledged and no love is honest in its exchange. The self stands alone, inviolate as a god, but a besieged god … forever besieged.’ Gothos leaned forward, studied Arathan with glittering eyes. ‘Oddly, those who burn bright are often drawn to such islands, such souls. As friends. As lovers. They imagine they can offer salvation, a sharing of warmth, of love, even. And in contrast, they see in themselves something to offer their forlorn companion, who huddles and hides, who gives occasion to rail and loose venom. The life within them feels so vast! So welcoming! Surely there is enough to share! And so, by giving – and giving – they are themselves appeased, and made to feel worthwhile. For a time. ‘But this is no healthy exchange, though it might at first seem so – after all, the act of giving will itself yield a kind of euphoria, a drunkenness of generosity, not to mention the salve of protectiveness, of paternal regard.’ Gothos leaned back again, drank more from the cup in his hands, and closed his eyes. ‘The island is unchanging. Bones and corpses lie upon its wrack on all sides.’ Arathan

...why not let nature show you a few things? Cutting grass and pulling weeds can be a way of life... Lilacs on a bush are better than orchids. And dandelions and devil grass are better! Why? Because they bend you over and turn you away from all the people and the town for a little while and sweat you and get you down where you remember you got a nose again. And when you're all to yourself that way, you're really yourself for a little while; you get to thinking things through, alone. Gardening is the handiest excuse for being a philosopher. Nobody guesses, nobody accuses, nobody knows, but there you are, Plato in the peonies, Socrates force-growing his own hemlock. A man toting a sack of blood manure across his lawn is kin to Atlas letting the world spin easy on his shoulder. As Samuel Spaudling, Esquire, once said, 'Dig in the earth, delve in the soul.' Spin those mower blades, Bill, and walk in the spray of the Fountain of Youth.

If nothing else, school teaches that there is an answer to every question; only in the real world do young people discover that many aspects of life are uncertain, mysterious, and even unknowable. If you have a chance to play in nature, if you are sprayed by a beetle, if the color of a butterfly's wing comes off on your fingers, if you watch a caterpillar spin its cocoon-- you come away with a sense of mystery and uncertainty. The more you watch, the more mysterious the natural world becomes, and the more you realize how little you know. Along with its beauty, you may also come to experience its fecundity, its wastefulness, aggressiveness, ruthlessness, parasitism, and its violence. These qualities are not well-conveyed in textbooks.

There are at least two sets of Rules for Life, as far as I can tell. There are the ones that get you picked up by the cops or taken to the assistant principal's office if you break them: Don't leave school grounds, don't spray paint stop signs, don't drink, ,don't drop firecrackers in the toliets. But there's a different set that you really can't break if you don't want your life to suck relentlessly. At the head of the list, Rule Number One: Don't get noticed. As long as you stay exactly the person everyone thinks you're supposed to be, you're fine.

You want to be clean. You think you came here covered with soap and you think you will go out covered with soap—and you do not want to stink, not even for five minutes, in the meantime.’ He grasped me by the collar, wrestling and caressing at once, fluid and iron at once: saliva spraying from his lips and his eyes full of tears, but with the bones of his face showing and the muscles leaping in his arms and neck. ‘You want to leave Giovanni because he makes you stink. You want to despise Giovanni because he is not afraid of the stink of love. You want to kill him in the name of all your lying little moralities. And you—you are immoral. You are, by far, the most immoral man I have met in all my life. Look, look what you have done to me. Do you think you could have done this if I did not love you? Is this what you should do to love?

But I promise you, you guys can do it. In four days you'll be the happiest person Earth has ever seen. You'll stand by the ocean and feel the salty sea spray tingling in your nose. You'll be with people you know and love, and you'all appreciate how beautiful everything is. You'll see cars behind you in your rear view mirror, and maybe you'll laugh at the driver's faces. Because they'll look annoyed, bored, angry. And you'll realize what they're missing. You'll live a long and happy life, Mia. Because when you get home, you'll realize that anything is possible. You mustn't ever forget that.

Widen your vision of what beauty is. Realize and keep close the fact that a beauty standard has been created by the very people who sell it, and that it is no accident that the accepted "beauty standard" can easily be described as "perfect." Flaws are not tolerated if you want to be perfect. But the models that we see most often--even the tallest and thinnest and most doe-eyed--are still pinned and sprayed and pulled into place. Then they are manipulated digitally until, literally, everything that might be perceived as a "flaw" is erased. This is a way to sell product. It has nothing to do with real life. It has nothing to do with you. We are made of so-called "flaws." They are the thread that stitches our parts together and keeps us from being generic cut-out paper dolls. You are beautiful. You are enough, now and always. You have always been enough.

And that's what we'll do every day. If you or your friends spray-paint obscenities on our walls, we'll scrub them off, and the people will come. if you break our windows, we'll fix them, and the people will come. If you hurt us, we'll wash off the blood, slap on some bandages and the people will come...any wound you inflict, we'll stitch up. We're not going to stop, no matter what you do. This work is too important. Too many lives are at stake.

After you died I could not hold a funeral And so my life became a funeral. Oh, return to me. Oh, return to me when I call your name. Do not delay any longer. Return to me now. After you died I couldn't hold a funeral, So these eyes that once beheld you became a shrine. These ears that once heard your voice became a shrine. These lungs that once inhaled your breath became a shrine. The flowers that bloom in spring, the willows, the raindrops and snowflakes became shrines. The morning ushering in each day, the evenings that daily darken, became shrines. After you died I couldn't hold a funeral, so my life became a funeral. After you were wrapped in a tarpaulin and carted away in a garbage truck, After sparkling jets of water sprayed unforgivably from the fountain. Everywhere the lights of the temple shrines are burning. In the flowers that bloom in spring, in the snowflakes. In the evenings that draw each day to a close. Sparks from the candles, burning in empty drinks bottles.

My evolution had begun, but as my Navy SEAL future crystallized over the next several months, I learned that when you change, not everyone in your life will be on board. You will get some serious resistance, and it will be a pain in your ass. Everywhere I turned, I found family members, friends, and coworkers resistant to my evolution because they loved the Ecolab-spraying, chocolate-shake-slurping fat ass. At three hundred pounds, I made them feel much better about themselves, which is another way of saying, they were holding me back.

Cutting grass and pulling weeds can be a way of life, son." Bill Forrester was smiling quietly at him. "I know," said Grandpa, "I talk too much." "There's no one I'd rather hear." "Lecture continued, then. Lilacs on a bush are better than orchids. And dandelions and devil grass are better! Why? Because they bend you over and turn you away from all the people and the town for a little while and sweat you and get you down where you remember you got a nose again. And when you're all to yourself that way, you're really yourself for a little while; you get to thinking things through, alone. Gardening is the handiest excuse for being a philosopher. Nobody guesses, nobody accuses, nobody knows, but there you are, Plato in the peonies, Socrates force-growing his own hemlock. A man toting a sack of blood manure across his lawn is kin to Atlas letting the world spin easy on his shoulder. As Samuel Spaulding, Esquire, once said, 'Dig in the earth, delve in the soul.' Spin those mower blades, Bill, and walk in the spray of the Fountain of Youth. End of lecture. Besides, a mess of dandelion greens is good eating once in a while.

But I promise you, you guys can do it. In four days you'll be the happiest person Earth has ever seen. You'll stand by the ocean and feel the salty sea spray tingling in your nose. You'll be with people you know and love, and you'all appreciate how beautiful everything is. You'll se cars behind you in your rear view mirror, and maybe you'll laugh at the driver's faces. Because they'll look annoyed, bored, angry. And you'll realize what they're missing. You'll live a long and happy life, Mia. Because when you get home, you'll realize that anything is possible. You mustn't ever forget that.

I thought about every mundane moment that makes up that gray area of a person’s life. It’s the hour or two a day that you clean your kitchen or watch TV or do the laundry. All my gray moments with Mia were colored in: chasing her around the Laundromat, spraying water on her from the kitchen sink, or messing around with her on the couch while we spent whole days watching reruns of The Office. I looked forward to the rest of my life, even if the rest of my life only consisted of the humdrum day-in, day-out bullshit, it didn’t matter because Mia turned the most unremarkable moments into moments I cherished.

He grasped me by the collar, wrestling and caressing at once, fluid and iron at once: saliva spraying from his lips and his eyes full of tears, but with the bones of his face showing and the muscles leaping in his arms and neck. ‘You want to leave Giovanni because he makes you stink. You want to despise Giovanni because he is not afraid of the stink of love. You want to kill him in the name of all your lying moralities. And you--you are immoral. You are, by far, the most immoral man I have met in all my life. Look, look what you have done to me. Do you think you could have done this if I did not love you? Is this what you should do to love?

This will not be a normal winter. The winter will begin, and it will continue, winter following winter. There will be no spring, no warmth. People will be hungry and they will be cold and they will be angry. Great battles will take place, all across the world. Brothers will fight brothers, fathers will kill sons. Mothers and daughters will be set against each other. Sisters will fall in battle with sisters, and will watch their children murder each other in their turn. This will be the age of cruel winds, the age of people who become as wolves, who prey upon each other, who are no better than wild beasts. Twilight will come to the world, and the places where the humans live will fall into ruins, flaming briefly, then crashing down and crumbling into ash and devastation. Then, when the few remaining people are living like animals, the sun in the sky will vanish, as if eaten by a wolf, and the moon will be taken from us too, and no one will be able to see the stars any longer. Darkness will fill the air, like ashes, like mist. This will be the time of the terrible winter that will not end, the Fimbulwinter. There will be snow driving in from all directions, fierce winds, and cold colder than you have ever imagined cold could be, an icy cold so cold your lungs will ache when you breathe, so cold that the tears in your eyes will freeze. There will be no spring to relieve it, no summer, no autumn. Only winter, followed by winter, followed by winter. After that there will come the time of the great earthquakes. The mountains will shake and crumble. Trees will fall, and any remaining places where people live will be destroyed. The earthquakes will be so great that all bonds and shackles and fetters will be destroyed. All of them. Fenrir, the great wolf, will free himself from his shackles. His mouth will gape: his upper jaw will reach the heavens, the lower jaw will touch the earth. There is nothing he cannot eat, nothing he will not destroy. Flames come from his eyes and his nostrils. Where Fenris Wolf walks, flaming destruction follows. There will be flooding too, as the seas rise and surge onto the land. Jormungundr, the Midgard serpent, huge and dangerous, will writhe in its fury, closer and closer to the land. The venom from its fangs will spill into the water, poisoning all the sea life. It will spatter its black poison into the air in a fine spray, killing all the seabirds that breathe it. There will be no more life in the oceans, where the Midgard serpent writhes. The rotted corpses of fish and of whales, of seals and sea monsters, will wash in the waves. All who see the brothers Fenrir the wolf and the Midgard serpent, the children of Loki, will know death. That is the beginning of the end.

I go straight toward the last place where I felt safe: Tobias’s small apartment. The second I reach the door, I feel calmer. The door is not completely closed. I nudge it open with my foot. He isn’t there, but I don’t leave. I sit on his bed and gather the quilt in my arms, burying my face in the fabric and taking deep breaths of it through my nose. The smell it used to have is almost gone, it’s been so long since he slept on it. The door opens and Tobias slips in. My arms go limp, and the quilt falls into my lap. How will I explain my presence here? I’m supposed to be angry with him. He doesn’t scowl, but his mouth is so tense that I know he’s angry with me. “Don’t be an idiot,” he says. “An idiot?” “You were lying. You said you wouldn’t go to Erudite, and you were lying, and going to Erudite would make you an idiot. So don’t.” I set the blanket down and get up. “Don’t try to make this simple,” I say. “It’s not. You know as well as I do that this is the right thing to do.” “You choose this moment to act like the Abnegation?” His voice fills the room and makes fear prickle in my chest. His anger seems too sudden. Too strange. “All that time you spent insisting that you were too selfish for them, and now, when your life is on the line, you’ve got to be a hero? What’s wrong with you?” “What’s wrong with you? People died. They walked right off the edge of a building! And I can stop it from happening again!” “You’re too important to just…die.” He shakes his head. He won’t even look at me--his eyes keep shifting across my face, to the wall behind me or the ceiling above me, to everything but me. I am too stunned to be angry. “I’m not important. Everyone will do just fine without me,” I say. “Who cares about everyone? What about me?” He lowers his head into his hand, covering his eyes. His fingers are trembling. Then he crosses the room in two long strides and touches his lips to mine. Their gentle pressure erases the past few months, and I am the girl who sat on the rocks next to the chasm, with river spray on her ankles, and kissed him for the first time. I am the girl who grabbed his hand in the hallway just because I wanted to.

You do not", cried Giovanni, sitting up, "love anyone ! You never loved anyone, I am sure you never will! You love your purity you love your mirror - you are just like a little virgin, you walk around with your hands in front of you as though you had some precious metal, gold, silver, rubies, maybe diamonds down there between your legs! You will never give it to anybody, you will never let anybody touch it- man or woman. You want to be clean. You think you came here covered with soap and you think you go out covered with soap- and you do not want to stink, not even for five minutes, in the meantime." He grasped me by the collar, wrestling and caressing at once, fluid and iron at once: saliva spraying from his lips and his eyes full of tears, but with the bones of his face showing and the muscles leaping in his arms and neck. "You want to leave Giovanni because he makes you stink. You want to despise Giovanni because he is not afraid of the stink love . You want to kill in the name of all your lying little moralities. And you - you are immoral. You are, by far, the most immoral man I have met in all my life . Do you think you could have done this if I did not love you? Is this what you should do to love ?

You choose this moment to act like the Abnegation?” His voice fills the room and makes fear prickle in my chest. His anger seems too sudden. Too strange. “All that time you spent insisting that you were too selfish for them, and now, when your life is on the line, you’ve got to be a hero? What’s wrong with you?” “What’s wrong with you? People died. They walked right off the edge of a building! And I can stop it from happening again!” “You’re too important to just…die.” He shakes his head. He won’t even look at me--his eyes keep shifting across my face, to the wall behind me or the ceiling above me, to everything but me. I am too stunned to be angry. “I’m not important. Everyone will do just fine without me,” I say. “Who cares about everyone? What about me?” He lowers his head into his hand, covering his eyes. His fingers are trembling. Then he crosses the room in two long strides and touches his lips to mine. Their gentle pressure erases the past few months, and I am the girl who sat on the rocks next to the chasm, with river spray on her ankles, and kissed him for the first time. I am the girl who grabbed his hand in the hallway just because I wanted to. I pull back, my hand on his chest to keep him away. The problem is, I am also the girl who shot Will and lied about it, and chose between Hector and Marlene, and now a thousand other things besides. And I can’t erase those things. “You would be fine.” I don’t look at him. I stare at his T-shirt between my fingers and the black ink curling around his neck, but I don’t look at his face. “Not at first. But you would move on, and do what you have to.” He wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me against him. “That’s a lie,” he says, before he kisses me again. This is wrong. It’s wrong to forget who I have become, and to let him kiss me when I know what I’m about to do. But I want to. Oh, I want to. I stand on my tiptoes and wrap my arms around him. I press one hand between his shoulder blades and curl the other one around the back of his neck. I can feel his breaths against my palm, his body expanding and contracting, and I know he’s strong, steady, unstoppable. All things I need to be, but I am not, I am not. He walks backward, pulling me with him so I stumble. I stumble right out of my shoes. He sits on the edge of the bed and I stand in front of him, and we’re finally eye to eye. He touches my face, covering my cheeks with his hands, sliding his fingertips down my neck, fitting his fingers to the slight curve of my hips. I can’t stop. I fit my mouth to his, and he tastes like water and smells like fresh air. I drag my hand from his neck to the small of his back, and put it under his shirt. He kisses me harder. I knew he was strong; I didn’t know how strong until I felt it myself, the muscles in his back tightening beneath my fingers. Stop, I tell myself. Suddenly it’s as if we’re in a hurry, his fingertips brushing my side under my shirt, my hands clutching at him, struggling closer but there is no closer. I have never longed for someone this way, or this much. He pulls back just enough to look into my eyes, his eyelids lowered. “Promise me,” he whispers, “that you won’t go. For me. Do this one thing for me.” Could I do that? Could I stay here, fix things with him, let someone else die in my place? Looking up at him, I believe for a moment that I could. And then I see Will. The crease between his eyebrows. The empty, simulation-bound eyes. The slumped body. Do this one thing for me. Tobias’s dark eyes plead with me. But if I don’t go to Erudite, who will? Tobias? It’s the kind of thing he would do. I feel a stab of pain in my chest as I lie to him. “Okay.” “Promise,” he says, frowning. The pain becomes an ache, spreads everywhere--all mixed together, guilt and terror and longing. “I promise.

Love is not an agreement between two people/parties to exchange love between each other when the time comes that they need it. The “you love me and I love you” does not exist. Love is not an agreement. It’s not a label. Love is sharing. Love is caring. It’s when you tell your heart to let out the love stored within it and spread it to every grain of blood in your body. Then comes a time when love begins to overflow. Then you find someone to share it with. It’s not agreement. It is natural companionship. The source? It’s just simple self-love. The heart does what it loves. The mind can worry all it wants about the results/outcomes. The heart just follows the journey for the sake of the beautiful flow. All love is sourced from within. It can only be poured when the bodily cup is full. Love is divine. It is miraculous. It is instant. It is revolutionary. It has no ending when it starts. It’s a miracle that those who believe in magic receive. The light of true love can only be witnessed after a period of blackness and agony. When life’s purpose comes into fruition. The body and mind is just a cover. What is within, the soul, is eternal. It carries with it love wherever it goes. We are souls distracted by material obsessions. Love is spiritual. It makes you believe in God. Love is not a person. It is a spirit. When you connect with your soul, it attracts the spirit of love. You’re greater than the cover you’re in at the moment. You begin to understand that God is within and you are within everything you see. You begin to love God. You begin to love life. You begin to cherish your worth and all the obstacles that got you here. What was a little loneliness when it comes to this divine sensation of love spraying the heavenly gardens within?

So I know I am right not to settle, but it doesn't make me feel better as my friends pair off and I stay home on Friday night with a bottle of wine and make myself an extravagant meal and tell myself, This is perfect, as if I'm the one dating me. As I go to endless rounds of parties and bar nights, perfumed and sprayed and hopeful, rotating myself around the room like some dubious dessert. I go on dates with men who are nice and good-looking and smart - perfect-on-paper men who make me feel like I'm in a foreign land, trying to explain myself, trying to make myself known. Because isn't that the point of every relationship: to be known by someone else, to be understood? He gets me. She gets me. Isn't that the simple magic phrase? So you suffer through the night with the perfect-on-paper man - the stutter of jokes misunderstood, the witty remarks lobbed and missed. Or maybe he understands that you've made a witty remark but, unsure of what to do with it, he holds it in his hand like some bit of conversational phlegm he will wipe away later. You spend another hour trying to find each other, to recognise each other, and you drink a little too much and try a little too hard. And you go home to a cold bed and think, That was fine. And your life is a long line of fine. And then you run into Nick Dunne on Seventh Avenue as you're buying diced cantaloupe, and pow, you are known, you are recognised, the both of you. You both find the exact same things worth remembering. (Just one olive, though). You have the same rhythm. Click. You just know each other. All of a sudden you see reading in bed and waffles on Sunday and laughing at nothing and his mouth on yours. And it's so far beyond fine that you know you can never go back to fine. That fast. You think: Oh, here is the rest of my life. It's finally arrived.

Surely you’re not going to destroy another book, are you?” “I’ve decided my obsession with reading has gotten me absolutely nowhere, so . . . I’m tossing all the nonsense out of my life and intend to travel forth with less baggage.” “You love to read.” “And I’ll occasionally indulge that love, but enough is enough.” She held up her copy of Pride and Prejudice. “This, for all intent and purposes, is a fairy tale. I’m done with fairy tales for good, as well as anything by Shakespeare. I loathe his stories, don’t understand most of what he’s written, and I was only reading them because of any future children I hoped to have. But since I’m destined to remain a spinster forever . . . I’m chucking them into the fire.” “What do Shakespeare and any children you might have in the future have in common?” Millie sent him a look that clearly said she found him a little dense. “I wanted to be knowledgeable so that my children wouldn’t suffer any embarrassment because of my ignorance and lack of education.” Everett’s mouth dropped open before he had the presence of mind to snap it shut when she shot him a glare. Bracing himself in case she got it into her head to punch him as she’d done Mr. Victor, Everett stepped closer to her and pried the copy of Pride and Prejudice out of her hand. “Any child would be lucky to call you mother, Millie. You’re smart, well-read, curious about everything, and have a true love for children.” Staring at him for a long moment, Millie tilted her head. “I knew we should have summoned the physician to take a look at you after your last brawl.” “My wits are not addled, Millie. Quite honestly, my mind is clearer right now than it’s been in years.” He brought her hand up to his lips and kissed it, relieved when her eyes widened just a bit. “And I have to tell you something else.” “What?” she asked in a voice that sounded somewhat breathless. “I can’t allow you to burn any Jane Austen book—but especially not Pride and Prejudice.” “That’s what you have to say to me—that I can’t burn a silly book?” “I finished the story, Millie. I read Pride and Prejudice from cover to cover, and . . . I’m your Mr. Darcy and you’re my Lizzy.” “You . . . finished . . . the story?” “Indeed. And if you didn’t hear me the first time, I’m Mr. Darcy.” “I’m fairly certain Mr. Darcy would have had an English accent, but since Lizzy did enjoy reading, I suppose it’s not too much of a stretch to compare me with her, although. . . .” As Millie continued talking, really rapidly at that, Everett simply watched her, taking in every detail of her face. Her green eyes were sparkling and her cheeks were flushed a delicate shade of pink. Brown curls had begun to escape the pins someone had put in her hair, and a spray of flowers that had been tucked into that hair was hanging somewhat forlornly over her ear. Her lips were still moving incredibly fast, but the second his gaze settled on them, he couldn’t seem to look away. They were delightful lips, just the right shade of pink, and . . . Everett leaned forward and claimed those rapidly moving lips with his own. For

Christine's heart is thumping wildly. She lets herself be led (her aunt means her nothing but good) into a tiled and mirrored room full of warmth and sweetly scented with mild floral soap and sprayed perfumes; an electrical apparatus roars like a mountain storm in the adjoining room. The hairdresser, a brisk, snub-nosed Frenchwoman, is given all sorts of instructions, little of which Christine understands or cares to. A new desire has come over her to give herself up, to submit and let herself be surprised. She allows herself to be seated in the comfortable barber's chair and her aunt disappears. She leans back gently, and, eyes closed in a luxurious stupor, senses a mechanical clattering, cold steel on her neck, and the easy incomprehensible chatter of the cheerful hairdresser; she breathes in clouds of fragrance and lets aromatic balms and clever fingers run over her hair and neck. Just don't open your eyes, she thinks. If you do, it might go away. Don't question anything, just savor this Sundayish feeling of sitting back for once, of being waited on instead of waiting on other people. Just let our hands fall into your lap, let good things happen to you, let it come, savor it, this rare swoon of lying back and being ministered to, this strange voluptuous feeling you haven't experienced in years, in decades. Eyes closed, feeling the fragrant warmth enveloping her, she remembers the last time: she's a child, in bed, she had a fever for days, but now it's over and her mother brings some sweet white almond milk, her father and her brother are sitting by her bed, everyone's taking care of her, everyone's doing things for her, they're all gentle and nice. In the next room the canary is singing mischievously, the bed is soft and warm, there's no need to go to school, everything's being done for her, there are toys on the bed, though she's too pleasantly lulled to play with them; no, it's better to close her eyes and really feel, deep down, the idleness, the being waited on. It's been decades since she thought of this lovely languor from her childhood, but suddenly it's back: her skin, her temples bathed in warmth are doing the remembering. A few times the brisk salonist asks some question like, 'Would you like it shorter?' But she answers only, 'Whatever you think,' and deliberately avoids the mirror held up to her. Best not to disturb the wonderful irresponsibility of letting things happen to you, this detachment from doing or wanting anything. Though it would be tempting to give someone an order just once, for the first time in your life, to make some imperious demand, to call for such and such. Now fragrance from a shiny bottle streams over her hair, a razor blade tickles her gently and delicately, her head feels suddenly strangely light and the skin of her neck cool and bare. She wants to look in the mirror, but keeping her eyes closed in prolonging the numb dreamy feeling so pleasantly. Meanwhile a second young woman has slipped beside her like a sylph to do her nails while the other is waving her hair. She submits to it all without resistance, almost without surprise, and makes no protest when, after an introductory 'Vous etes un peu pale, Mademoiselle,' the busy salonist, employing all manner of pencils and crayons, reddens her lips, reinforces the arches of her eyebrows, and touches up the color of her cheeks. She's aware of it all and, in her pleasant detached stupor, unaware of it too: drugged by the humid, fragrance-laden air, she hardly knows if all this happening to her or to some other, brand-new self. It's all dreamily disjointed, not quite real, and she's a little afraid of suddenly falling out of the dream.

When she’s in a courtroom, Wendy Patrick, a deputy district attorney for San Diego, uses some of the roughest words in the English language. She has to, given that she prosecutes sex crimes. Yet just repeating the words is a challenge for a woman who not only holds a law degree but also degrees in theology and is an ordained Baptist minister. “I have to say (a particularly vulgar expletive) in court when I’m quoting other people, usually the defendants,” she admitted. There’s an important reason Patrick has to repeat vile language in court. “My job is to prove a case, to prove that a crime occurred,” she explained. “There’s often an element of coercion, of threat, (and) of fear. Colorful language and context is very relevant to proving the kind of emotional persuasion, the menacing, a flavor of how scary these guys are. The jury has to be made aware of how bad the situation was. Those words are disgusting.” It’s so bad, Patrick said, that on occasion a judge will ask her to tone things down, fearing a jury’s emotions will be improperly swayed. And yet Patrick continues to be surprised when she heads over to San Diego State University for her part-time work of teaching business ethics. “My students have no qualms about dropping the ‘F-bomb’ in class,” she said. “The culture in college campuses is that unless they’re disruptive or violating the rules, that’s (just) the way kids talk.” Experts say people swear for impact, but the widespread use of strong language may in fact lessen that impact, as well as lessen society’s ability to set apart certain ideas and words as sacred. . . . [C]onsider the now-conversational use of the texting abbreviation “OMG,” for “Oh, My God,” and how the full phrase often shows up in settings as benign as home-design shows without any recognition of its meaning by the speakers. . . . Diane Gottsman, an etiquette expert in San Antonio, in a blog about workers cleaning up their language, cited a 2012 Career Builder survey in which 57 percent of employers say they wouldn’t hire a candidate who used profanity. . . . She added, “It all comes down to respect: if you wouldn’t say it to your grandmother, you shouldn’t say it to your client, your boss, your girlfriend or your wife.” And what about Hollywood, which is often blamed for coarsening the language? According to Barbara Nicolosi, a Hollywood script consultant and film professor at Azusa Pacific University, an evangelical Christian school, lazy script writing is part of the explanation for the blue tide on television and in the movies. . . . By contrast, she said, “Bad writers go for the emotional punch of crass language,” hence the fire-hose spray of obscenities [in] some modern films, almost regardless of whether or not the subject demands it. . . . Nicolosi, who noted that “nobody misses the bad language” when it’s omitted from a script, said any change in the industry has to come from among its ranks: “Writers need to have a conversation among themselves and in the industry where we popularize much more responsible methods in storytelling,” she said. . . . That change can’t come quickly enough for Melissa Henson, director of grass-roots education and advocacy for the Parents Television Council, a pro-decency group. While conceding there is a market for “adult-themed” films and language, Henson said it may be smaller than some in the industry want to admit. “The volume of R-rated stuff that we’re seeing probably far outpaces what the market would support,” she said. By contrast, she added, “the rate of G-rated stuff is hardly sufficient to meet market demands.” . . . Henson believes arguments about an “artistic need” for profanity are disingenuous. “You often hear people try to make the argument that art reflects life,” Henson said. “I don’t hold to that. More often than not, ‘art’ shapes the way we live our lives, and it skews our perceptions of the kind of life we're supposed to live." [DN, Apr. 13, 2014]

ave you noticed the focus these days is back on the simple things of life? What's the first thing you do when you pick a rose? You smell the fragrance. Maybe it brings back a memory of the time you picked flowers for your mom. Perhaps it's time to recapture some of that girlhood simplicity. A lavender sachet in your drawer can be an unexpected and simple pleasure. Spray a little cologne on your notepaper or even on the bathroom throw rug. Or better yet, boil a little pot of cinnamon and enjoy the aroma. Put on lively music while you do your housework. Light candles for a quiet yet festive atmosphere. When we find satisfaction in the little things in life, we are happier and more willing to look for the positive in bigger things. olor in your home can make a world of difference. It can help you redefine spaces. If an area is too large, add a throw rug in a complementary color and create a "get together" spot. Add some soft colored curtains for a change of seasons. The idea is to create intimacy, a place that's inviting on a chilly evening or a warm spring afternoon. The richer the colors, the more welcoming the space. Red is great for warmth. Go for it! And shades of cranberry and plum work well. Experiment and step out of your comfort zone. Your home can be a place that gives you a feeling of quiet for thinking about what really counts in life and also be a festive atmosphere for celebrating. on't put all your emotional eggs in one basket. Our work consumes much of our time, and that's natural. And for some of you, that's 95 percent of your awake hours. Is it time to change your focus-to make life a little easier and less stressful for

Somewhere Else Discouraging, or training a cat away from a certain area is impossible to achieve as a human. This is because it has to happen within two seconds with consistent intensity every single time they come within the forbidden perimeter If you’re at work, you can’t spray the cat with water when she jumps on the counter. Do yourself a favor and get a remote training device! You won’t need it for more than a few weeks. For instance, one such device is a compressed air canister with an electric eye. The cat jumps up on the counter, the can sprays a spurt of air. The cat jumps down. She won’t have to do this too many days in a row before she just decides that the counter is unfriendly. That being said, don’t forget my rule of thumb when discouraging a cat from doing something: Behind every “No” there needs to be a “Yes!” If your cats are insistent about the counter, use your cat mojo and figure out why it’s so important. Then, give them a perch right nearby that’s acceptable to you and achieves the important objective for them.

I see professional advisors cold-call perfect strangers rather than do a call rotation for existing clients. I see advisors do prospecting seminars rather than a client advisory council or client appreciation event, and I see advisors run advertising campaigns rather than network with existing strategic allies and other professional influencers. “Spray and pray” marketing strategies are flawed on so many levels. Why, then, do so many advisors still attempt them? The reason for this is simple; nurturing existing relationships and other tried and true strategies can be boring and rarely results in instant gratification. Too many advisors want to find the next “new idea”, something with some “sizzle”, and, as a result, are continually searching for and dabbling with concepts that ultimately have minimal impact. It’s not unlike investing. How many times have you seen someone try to hit a home-run with a high-risk investment opportunity rather than stick with a methodical long-term approach? It’s not just money that compounds. As I’ve said before, discipline compounds, too. You have to be patient and let your efforts gather momentum. Too many advisors get themselves into the proverbial “Red Zone” and, rather than stick to the plan and see it through, they self-sabotage by abandoning the fundamentals and trying something new. Neglect also compounds. If we neglect our existing relationships it’s only a matter of time before they’ll be lured away and we’ll have to throw our own Hail Mary. Don’t deviate from your process. Identify the most fundamentally sound and proven trust-building activities, stick with them and tune out all the other noise. It’s much more effective to strengthen and nurture existing relationships over the long haul, rather than perpetually trying to start new ones. The prospecting treadmill is draining and you are building a business that is chaotic and unfocused. Relationships are proprietary and are a big part of the equity that you are building in your business.

CONTIMENT’S END At the equinox when the earth was veiled in a late rain, wreathed with wet poppies, waiting spring, The ocean swelled for a far storm and beat its boundary, the ground-swell shook the beds of granite. I gazing at the boundaries of granite and spray, the established sea-marks, felt behind me Mountain and plain, the immense breadth of the continent, before me the mass and doubled stretch of water. I said: You yoke the Aleutian seal-rocks with the lava and coral sowings that flower the south, Over your flood the life that sought the sunrise faces ours that has followed the evening star. The long migrations meet across you and it is nothing to you, you have forgotten us, mother. You were much younger when we crawled out of the womb and lay in the sun’s eye on the tideline. It was long and long ago; we have grown proud since then and you have grown bitter; life retains Your mobile soft unquiet strength; and envies hardness, the insolent quietness of stone. The tides are in our veins, we still mirror the stars, life is your child, but there is in me Older and harder than life and more impartial, the eye that watched before there was an ocean. That watched you fill your beds out of the condensation of thin vapor and watched you change them, That saw you soft and violent wear your boundaries down, eat rock, shift places with the continents. Mother, though my song’s measure is like your surf-beat’s ancient rhythm I never learned it of you. Before there was any water there were tides of fire, both our tones flow from the older fountain.

ANTs are “automatic negative thoughts” and, if you’re like most people, you place limitations on yourself in the form of these thoughts at least some of the time. Maybe you tell yourself that you aren’t smart enough to learn a skill that you’d really like to have. Or perhaps you repeat on an endless loop how pushing yourself to accomplish something is only going to lead to disappointment. ANTs are everywhere, and there isn’t enough ant spray in the world to get rid of all of them. But eliminating them from your life is an essential part of unlimiting your brain. The reason for this is simple: If you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them. If you regularly tell yourself that you can’t do something, or that you’re too old to do something, or that you don’t have the smarts to do something, you won’t do that thing. Only when you move on from this kind of destructive self-talk can you truly accomplish what you want to accomplish

Store-bought spices are often sprayed with preservatives to extend shelf life, and yet they lose potency over time. Purchase spices whole and grinds small amounts at a time. Preserve them in airtight glass jars to keep them fresh. Pantry Whole mung beans Split mung beans, also called yellow dal or moong dal Basmati rice Ghee, or grass-fed unsalted butter to make your own Extra-virgin olive oil Coconut oil Apple cider vinegar Tamari (a Japanese variety of soy sauce that is gluten-free and preservative-free) Almonds, cashews, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds Shredded coconut Cocoa powder Raw honey Maple syrup Jaggery or Sucanat Fresh produce Lemons, limes, citrus, in season Apples, berries, seasonal fruits Root vegetables, like carrots, sweet potatoes, turnips, according to season Leafy greens, in season Seasonal favorites like avocado, broccoli, pumpkin Fresh peas and green beans Fresh cilantro, parsley, other herbs Spices/herbs Spring: Ground ginger, cinnamon, turmeric, black pepper, cayenne, or red pepper flakes Summer: Ground coriander, turmeric, fennel seeds, mint, dill Autumn: Ground ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, whole nutmeg, fenugreek Winter: Ground ginger, cinnamon, cloves, turmeric, fenugreek General: Mustard seeds (brown), pink or sea salt, whole peppercorns Miscellaneous Whole-milk plain yogurt Dates

Occipital cortex: Guys, I see a brown figure! Hippocampus: We’re in Canada and it’s summer, so it could be a bear. I’ve learned that bears attack people if they’re surprised. Amygdala, we’ve got an alert—it’s safety time! Amygdala: I got this. Safety system activated and everything’s ready to go. Stop! Get the bear pepper spray out and ready to use in case of a charge. Prefrontal cortex: Hey, wait—I’m here! I’ve just understood what the brown figure is. It’s a cow—it’s harmless. We’re good to go. Amygdala: Cool! Safety system deactivated. You can proceed. Prefrontal cortex: Awesome! Phew, that was scary. Glad it’s over. Let’s continue running and enjoying the beautiful day in nature.

First and foremost, I am experiencing much better sleep, and I am actually dreaming vividly almost every night now! This began happening during the FIRST WEEK of use! I used to have dreams like this when I was a kid, but before using this appliance, not in YEARS! I am sleeping all the way through the night as well. I am so much more awake and alert in the mornings, and all the way throughout the day, for that matter. As for the side effects, I am seeing my skin glowing, my eyes are brighter, and the bags under my eyes are gone! I feel like my circulation all around is much better, and I do not “gasp” for air anymore. Before, I would take [various brand-named allergy medications], nasal spray and gels, humidifiers, tea kettles, exotic muds and salves—you name it! Nothing would prevent me from going to bed fine and waking up stuffed up like hell and feeling like I was going to suffocate! Oh, and that is during NON-allergy season. During allergy season (or a bad allergy day), I would just be stuffed up constantly and medicate myself to the point of exhaustion. Now, I take nothing. I now sleep all the way through the night, and I wake up renewed and refreshed. I was skeptical trying this out. I had braces in the past and did not offer any resistance to the plan to remove two of my front teeth and “shrink” my upper jaw, effectively shrinking the “tiger’s cage” too small to allow normal growth or function. When seeing Dr. Liao, he saw this right away and recommended strongly that I be tested for a narrowed airway. I did not come for this: I came to have mercury amalgam fillings removed, so I was unsure. Dr. Liao took the time to explain to me that, despite my legitimate concern about the fillings, my priority should be to open the airway that had become so narrow that it, unbeknownst to me, affected almost every area of my life. … I opted to have both upper and lower appliances made to increase the size of my jaws, and braces and two false teeth installed later on to hold the shape of my new bite pattern. This was to take place over the course of two to three years’ time, and was to cost a significant amount of money. The appliance(s) began to work immediately, and since they are to be adjusted weekly (easily by us right at home with a small tool provided), they continue to open the airway more and more every day, allowing me to experience these results to an even greater degree as I go. I even had a flight recently to California (from Virginia), and I had NO ear pain or discomfort! I used to have to take a bunch of pills and wear [earplugs for airplane travel], and it would STILL kill my ears to fly, but not now. I never knew that I was being deprived of the oxygen I needed to thrive, but now that I am experiencing it for the first time in my adult life, I regret not looking into having this done YEARS ago! I highly recommend this to anyone who feels stuffed up in the morning, tired and groggy all day, or any of the plethora of other symptoms associated with a narrowed airway. Thank you, Dr. Liao!

Be good to everyone who becomes attached to us; cherish every friend who is by our side; 바오메이판매,바오메이파는곳,바오메이구매,바오메이구입,바오메이팝니다,바오메이구입방법,바오메이구매방법,바오메이지속시간,바오메이약효 love everyone who walks into our life.It must be fate to get acquainted in a huge crowd of people... 발기부족으로 삽입시 조루증상 그리고 여성분 오르가즘늦기지 못한다 또한 페니션이 작다고 느끼는분들 이쪽으로 보세요 팔팔정,구구정,비닉스,센트립,네노마정,프릴리지,비맥스,비그알엑스 등 아주 많은 좋은제품들 취급하고 단골님 모시고 있는곳입니다.원하실경우 언제든 연락주세요 I feel, the love that Osho talks about, maybe is a kind of pure love beyond the mundane world, which is full of divinity and caritas, and overflows with Buddhist allegorical words and gestures, but, it seems that I cannot see through its true meaning forever... Maybe, I do not just “absorb” your love; but because the love overpowers me and I am unable to dispute and refuse it... I would have talked less and listened more. I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was strained and the sofa faded. I would have taken the time to listen to my grandfather ramble about his youth. I would never have insisted the car windows be rolled up on a summer day because my hair had just been teased and sprayed. I would have burned the pink candle sculpted like a rose before it melted in storage. I would have sat on the lawn with my children and not worried about grass stains. I would have cried and laughed less while watching television - and more while watching life. I would have gone to bed when I was sick instead of pretending the earth would go into a holding patter if I were not there for the day. I would never have bought anything just because it was practical，would not show soil or was guaranteed to last a life time. There would have been more“I love you”……more“I‘m sorry”……but mostly，given another shots at life，I would seize every minute……look at it and really see it……live it……and never give it back.

Be good to everyone who becomes attached to us; cherish every friend who is by our side; 카톡►ppt33◄ 〓 라인►pxp32◄ 홈피는 친추로 연락주세요 네노마정판매,네노마정파는곳,네노마정구입방법,네노마정구매방법,네노마정구입사이트,네노마정구매사이트,네노마정판매사이트,네노마정약효 사정지연제판매,조루제판매,비맥스판매,비그알엑스판매,비아그라판매,시알리스판매,레비트라판매 love everyone who walks into our life.It must be fate to get acquainted in a huge crowd of people... I feel, the love that Osho talks about, maybe is a kind of pure love beyond the mundane world, which is full of divinity and caritas, and overflows with Buddhist allegorical words and gestures, but, it seems that I cannot see through its true meaning forever... Maybe, I do not just “absorb” your love; but because the love overpowers me and I am unable to dispute and refuse it... I would have talked less and listened more. I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was strained and the sofa faded. I would have taken the time to listen to my grandfather ramble about his youth. I would never have insisted the car windows be rolled up on a summer day because my hair had just been teased and sprayed. I would have burned the pink candle sculpted like a rose before it melted in storage. I would have sat on the lawn with my children and not worried about grass stains. I would have cried and laughed less while watching television - and more while watching life. I would have gone to bed when I was sick instead of pretending the earth would go into a holding patter if I were not there for the day. I would never have bought anything just because it was practical，would not show soil or was guaranteed to last a life time. There would have been more“I love you”……more“I‘m sorry”……but mostly，given another shots at life，I would seize every minute……look at it and really see it……live it……and never give it back.

batrachotoxin is that you can make it into a spray form and spray it onto surfaces. It has a half-life of dozens of hours. So if anyone were to spray it on, say, a bunch of doorknobs and the arms to an office chair, just touching them even for a moment would get the skin to absorb the toxin. First it causes itching as the sodium ion channels in your muscles and nerves can’t close. After the itching come the convulsions, and then paralysis. It’s really slow, actually. It starts in your feet and works its way up, and you just have to sit there and wait while you feel it crawling up your body.

The zombie fell over the generator, too, and laid on the ground next to me—its eyes seemed to glow in the dark. I was so scared, I almost lost it. Shaking, I sprayed it in the face and rolled away. It started smoking the same way the other zombies had, but then did something unexpected—it caught fire. Instantly, the entire area went up in flames. I stepped back, and still standing, jumped up and down, kicking my gas-soaked pants and shoes off. The flames sprouted up as if they had a life of their own.  I shot them with the Super Soaker, but it didn't do any good. The flames spread up the side of a rack of cheesy Hawaiian shirts. I knew I had to put the fire out fast. I ran to the aisle with the fire extinguishers and stopped. I'd dropped my flashlight back by the generator. A couple aisles over, something moved in the shadows. I started to lift my Super Soaker when I got hit in the face. "Oww, it burns," I cried, "Darn it. It burns." My eyes started watering like a busted drinking fountain. "Nathan, is that you? Were you bit? Did I kill you?" "No, no. I'm fine, it's just the lemonade; that stuff burns." "What's going on? You're burning the place down." I could hear panic in her voice. "Grab a fire extinguisher and follow me." My eyes dribbled lemonade-flavored tears as I grabbed two of the largest fire extinguishers and ran back. It took four extinguishers, but we managed to put the fire out. "Wow, the generator's still running," I said. Charred clothes were everywhere. Smoke filled the place—it smelled like fresh-roasted zombie. And I'd thought my day couldn't get any worse. "What the heck happened?" Misty held her nose and looked around at the blackened remains. "Security zombie in the bathroom; it was a close call." "I'll say. We're lucky the fire sprinklers didn't come on." "If this is lucky, I'd hate to see cursed." "Umm, Nate?" "Yeah?" I exhaled in relief. It would have been embarrassing if I'd burnt the place down. "Where's your pants?

He changed his final wad up at the train station. Which was a sad place now. There were homeless people and disturbed people hanging around. There were furtive men with swivel eyes, their hands thrust deep in capacious pockets. There was spray-can graffiti on the walls. Nothing compared to the South Bronx or inner-city Detroit or South-Central LA. But unusual for Germany. Reunification had been a strain. Economically, and socially. And mentally. He had watched it. Like living a comfortable life in a nice little house with your family. And then a whole bunch of relatives moves in. From someplace where they don’t really know how to use a knife and fork. Ignorant and stunted people. But German like you. As if a brother had been taken away at birth and locked in a closet. Then in his mid-forties he comes stumbling out again, pale and hunched and blinking. A tough situation to manage. He

But this obsession with the most minor activities of our everyday life means that they function as a kind of highly charged political battleground. The result is that struggles are no longer fought over political ideologies. Instead, the politics we become passionately invested in are those that are closely related to our habits and bodies. Indeed we become deeply interested in what some have called ‘bio-politics’ (Foucault, 1978). Broadly put, this involves political contestation focusing on life itself (Esposito, 2008). This means political struggles take place around the most basic aspects such as bodily health and lifestyle. No big ideas here. The pressing political questions are no longer your position on patriarchy – it is how many burgers you ate this month or where you stand on spray-tanning. The increasing importance of this kind of bio-politics can be seen in the fact that many contemporary political movements today are focused on quotidian issues close to the body such as health, food and lifestyle. And one of the central demands which is often bound up with these bio-political movements is a demand for authenticity – real food, real wine, real music and the ability to live a real life which is not artificially clouded by various in-authenticities.

And tell me, when have you ever really noticed me, or where I am, or where I sit? You never look at me. You avoid me like I’m the pox!” Her volume reached new levels and she had to force herself not to yell up into his face. She spoke through her teeth to keep her voice low. “You’ve done your best to keep us safe and help me learn what I’ve needed to know about Father—and for that I will be forever grateful, but you can’t honestly pretend that you care!” Thomas captured her shoulders again and pulled her in front of him with a jerk, making her hat fall to the ground. The glowering look in his eyes simmered and Eliza turned her head away. Taking a hand from her shoulder he wrapped his strong, gentle fingers around her chin, compelling her to look at him. The low resonance in his rich voice was both imposing and tender. “I notice everything about you.” Eliza tried to pull away, her heart beating against her lungs. “I don’t believe you. You’re actions say otherwise.” Thomas huffed and glanced away before locking eyes with her again. “I’ve tried to keep away from you, to keep from developing feelings for you, Eliza. I know you have a life in Boston and I’ve only ever brought you trouble . . . but I can’t dictate my heart.” He brushed his calloused fingers against her cheek. Eliza closed her eyes, relishing the feel of his tenderness. It was too wonderful to be real. “I couldn’t bear to see you hurt again, Eliza. That’s what caused my anger. Not the fact that you went to the rally.” His honey voice softened. “If anything had happened to you, I would never have forgiven myself, and not because it’s my duty to care for you, as you think. Because I love you.” Eliza’s breath hitched, and her heart thumped at the sparkle of surprise in his eyes, as if he hadn’t meant to speak the tender words. But from the way his gaze roamed her face, it seemed he didn’t regret saying them. She looked up with parted lips, soaking in the sweet dew of his affections as he stepped closer. As if unwrapping precious china, he unwound the scarf that still circled her hair and let it drop to the ground near the hat. He smoothed his fingers around her ears, cupping her head, and directed her face toward his. All the world disappeared, the surrounding trees and shadows melting together and closing around them like a celestial dream. He stepped closer and her knees turned as weak as the wilted blades of snow-covered grass at her feet. “What are you doing?” she whispered, trembling under his touch. An unmistakable hunger swirled in his gaze, reaching out and expanding the longing of her own. The heat in his low voice stole her breath. “I’m doing what I’ve wanted to do for a very long time.” He leaned toward her, but she put a hand on his chest to stop him, her heart slamming against her ribs. His dark eyebrows crunched down. “What is it?” Eliza swallowed, trying to keep her voice even. “Last time you kissed me, you avoided me as if I were a poison. I don’t want that to happen again.” A quiet, rumbling laugh escaped him. “You are anything but a poison, Eliza.” He cradled her face in his hands, tilting it upward and nuzzled her cold nose with his. She closed her eyes and inhaled in a ragged breath as his warm lips moved across the corners of her eyes, her cheekbones, her ear. Delicious shivers sprayed down her skin and she clung to his chest to keep from falling. His hands brushed down her neck and shoulders—one resting behind her head, the other at her back, as if he wanted to keep her safely next to him forever. Dear

As he turned her face to study her, he said, “You have more courage than you have strength, Yellow Hair. It is not wise to fight when you cannot win.” Looking up at his carved features and the arrogant set of his mouth, she longed for the strength to jerk him off his horse. He wasn’t just taunting her, he was challenging her, mocking her. “You will yield. Look at me and know the face of your master. Remember it well.” Riding high on humiliation, Loretta forgot Amy, Aunt Rachel, everything. An image of her mother’s face flashed before her. Never, as long as she had life in her body, would she yield to him. She worked her parched mouth and spat. Nothing came out, but the message rang clear. “Nei mah-heepicut!” Releasing her, he struck her lightly on the arm. Wheeling his horse, he glanced toward the windows of the house and thumped his chest with a broad fist. “I claim her!” Loretta staggered, watching in numb disbelief as Hunter pranced his stallion in a circle around her. I claim her? Warily she turned, keeping him in sight, unsure of what he might do. He rode erect, his eyes touching on her dress, her face, her hair, as if everything about her were a curiosity. A taunting smile curved his mouth. His attention centered on her full skirt, and she could almost see the questions churning in his head. He repositioned his hand on the lance. The determination in his expression filled her with foreboding. He rode directly toward her, and she sidestepped. He turned his mount to come at her again. As he swept by he leaned forward, catching the hem of her skirt with his lance. Loretta whirled, striking out with her forearms, but the Indian moved expertly, his aim swift and sure, his horse precision-trained to the pressure of his legs. He was as bent on seeing her undergarments as she was on keeping them hidden. The outcome of their battle was a foregone conclusion, and Loretta knew it. His friends encouraged him, whooping with ribald laughter each time her ruffles flashed. She snatched the dirty peace flag from the wooden shaft and threw it to the earth, grinding it beneath the heel of her shoe. After fending off several more passes, exhaustion claimed its victory, and Loretta realized the folly in fighting. She stood motionless, breasts heaving, her eyes staring fixedly at nothing, head lifted. The warrior circled her, guiding his stallion’s flashing hooves so close to her feet that her toes tingled. When she didn’t move, he reined the horse to a halt and studied her for several seconds before he leaned forward to finger the bodice of her dress. Her breath snagged when he slid a palm over her bosom to the indentation of her waist. “Ai-ee,” he whispered. “You learn quick.” Raising tear-filled eyes to his, she again spat in his face. This time he felt the spray and wiped his cheek, his lips quivering with something that looked suspiciously like suppressed laughter, friendly laughter this time. “Maybe not so quick. But I am a good teacher. You will learn not to fight me, Yellow Hair. It is a promise I make for you.

You choose this moment to act like the Abnegation?” His voice fills the room and makes fear prickle in my chest. His anger seems too sudden. Too strange. “All that time you spent insisting that you were too selfish for them, and now, when your life is on the line, you’ve got to be a hero? What’s wrong with you?” “What’s wrong with you? People died. They walked right off the edge of a building! And I can stop it from happening again!” “You’re too important to just…die.” He shakes his head. He won’t even look at me--his eyes keep shifting across my face, to the wall behind me or the ceiling above me, to everything but me. I am too stunned to be angry. “I’m not important. Everyone will do just fine without me,” I say. “Who cares about everyone? What about me?” He lowers his head into his hand, covering his eyes. His fingers are trembling. Then he crosses the room in two long strides and touches his lips to mine. Their gentle pressure erases the past few months, and I am the girl who sat on the rocks next to the chasm, with river spray on her ankles, and kissed him for the first time. I am the girl who grabbed his hand in the hallway just because I wanted to. I pull back, my hand on his chest to keep him away. The problem is, I am also the girl who shot Will and lied about it, and chose between Hector and Marlene, and now a thousand other things besides. And I can’t erase those things. “You would be fine.” I don’t look at him. I stare at his T-shirt between my fingers and the black ink curling around his neck, but I don’t look at his face. “Not at first. But you would move on, and do what you have to.” He wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me against him. “That’s a lie,” he says, before he kisses me again. This is wrong. It’s wrong to forget who I have become, and to let him kiss me when I know what I’m about to do. But I want to. Oh, I want to. I stand on my tiptoes and wrap my arms around him. I press one hand between his shoulder blades and curl the other one around the back of his neck. I can feel his breaths against my palm, his body expanding and contracting, and I know he’s strong, steady, unstoppable. All things I need to be, but I am not, I am not. He walks backward, pulling me with him so I stumble. I stumble right out of my shoes. He sits on the edge of the bed and I stand in front of him, and we’re finally eye to eye. He touches my face, covering my cheeks with his hands, sliding his fingertips down my neck, fitting his fingers to the slight curve of my hips. I can’t stop. I fit my mouth to his, and he tastes like water and smells like fresh air. I drag my hand from his neck to the small of his back, and put it under his shirt. He kisses me harder. I knew he was strong; I didn’t know how strong until I felt it myself, the muscles in his back tightening beneath my fingers. Stop, I tell myself. Suddenly it’s as if we’re in a hurry, his fingertips brushing my side under my shirt, my hands clutching at him, struggling closer but there is no closer. I have never longed for someone this way, or this much. He pulls back just enough to look into my eyes, his eyelids lowered. “Promise me,” he whispers, “that you won’t go. For me. Do this one thing for me.” Could I do that? Could I stay here, fix things with him, let someone else die in my place? Looking up at him, I believe for a moment that I could. And then I see Will. The crease between his eyebrows. The empty, simulation-bound eyes. The slumped body. Do this one thing for me. Tobias’s dark eyes plead with me. But if I don’t go to Erudite, who will? Tobias? It’s the kind of thing he would do. I feel a stab of pain in my chest as I lie to him. “Okay.” “Promise,” he says, frowning. The pain becomes an ache, spreads everywhere--all mixed together, guilt and terror and longing. “I promise.

You bitch!”  He screamed. “You tricked me—just like Kevin!”  Lexy’s brain was screaming for her to run, but her legs felt like tree trunks rooted to the spot.  Jason’s eyes were wild, his face a mask of rage.  “No one crosses me,” he sputtered. “You saw what happened to Kevin when he tried it.  He got his and now you’ll get yours, too!  Jason lunged for Lexy, wrapping his hands around her throat, squeezing with all his might.  Lexy tried to fend him off, but her air supply was dwindling, stars swam before her eyes, everything was starting to turn black. She thought of Nans and Sprinkles.  What would they do without her? Jason’s face, only inches from hers, was screwed up in anger as he focused his energy on choking the life out of her.  With one last burst of strength, she reached into her purse. Her hand closed on a round cylinder. She brought her hand up in between their faces, pressed the button on the cylinder and sprayed.   Lexy heard Jason scream, then felt him release his hold on her neck.  She slumped to the floor gasping for air, but finding only the heavy mist of pepper spray, which her lungs violently coughed out again.   Hearing a thunderous crash and the sound of splintering wood, she peered through teary eyes toward the direction of the sound just in time to see Jack and several members of the BRPD come barreling through the door with their guns drawn.

Love Hurts. I daresay there’s two or three poems, six novels and at least twelve songs on the subject. That’s how the Janus-faced beast of poetry gets written in the first place, in all its myriad of magical forms. So; why cover this hitherto uncharted and highly original territory? Why leap fearlessly into the unknown, nostrils flared, eyes flashing fire? Well, in the name of love, lust and limerence, why on earth not? Suffering is gratuitous and pointless, yet also vital, valuable and necessary. My last tête à tête gave me plenty, incorporating elements of the forbidden, of rebellion, pornography, pregnancy, parental approval – followed by fury – of infidelity, friend estrangement, life on one island that was heavenly and a second that veered between purgatorial and infernal, of violence, miscarriage, masturbating Indians, pepper spray, antipathy, disloyalty, evictions, a planned future, failed globetrotting and habitual lies, whilst being indicative of a wider, all-encompassing social corrosion, and while the story itself may remain merely hinted at or alluded to in the course of this generalised polemic, it’s as worthy or valid as any other such tale told round the campfire and whispered across the beaches of the world. All life’s a roll of the dice, tiger; ride into the bastard storm and if your wounds hurt, be grateful you survived to lick them, even in the darkest nights of the soul when the sun is a mattress fire the god of your love died in. Love Hurts, and in a stupendous and savage cosmos, it’s my right to sit at the keyboard and bleed. Besides, love, poverty and war are the necessary accoutrements to a fulfilled life; this is the all-encompassing theme of our human condition and the crooning, persuasive symphony of that philosophically unfathomable miracle of life itself… especially as love leads to poverty and war. Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward, after all. I certainly am… we choose our own chains... ~excerpt, "Love Hurts

Chase!” she cried. At last, he surfaced. Not in the center of the lake, but close to the bank, taking her unawares. He emerged from the water with a spray of fanfare, his translucent shirt pasted to his torso and his hair slicked back. Like Poseidon rising from the sea—hoisting a waterlogged doll in place of a trident. Chase Reynaud, god of the Serpentine. And oh, he looked ready to enjoy a bit of worship. He grinned at her, the horrid man. As if he hadn’t just given her the fright of her life, and the past ten minutes were an expected element of any outing in Hyde Park. He presented the doll to Daisy. “She took in some water, but I think she’ll pull through.” Instead of hugging the doll, Daisy attached herself to Chase’s leg, clinging to him with all four limbs. Alex rather wished she could do the same. Chase shook his leg, and Daisy held tight. He looked to Alex. “You’re the sailor. How does one remove a barnacle?

Liv- ‘Dear sweet baby Jesus I think you’re without a drought the worst driver on the planet!’ I said- ‘You think?’ Maddie sniggers. And Liv spit sprays some of my hot on the back of my headrest. Liv, she has become a real squirter she is always sparing one of us girls down, yet Maddie the most! I said- ‘I don’t want to die like this today!’ ‘Please- please be more alert, please,’ I stammered, I’m clutching the sides of my seat without meaning to. Jenny said- ‘Kar, it’s all good. Hey- It’s not like I am going to crash, I have never even been in a car wreck yet.’ I said- ‘That’s amazing!’ I start to think as I close my eyes, trying so hard not to hold my breath. Like it’s so weird how life works, isn’t it? Like how I always wanted one thing, all my life, and I waited and waited for it but it never comes. And then it did happen last night, yet it was not what I hoped for all, however, all you want to do is curl back up at that moment before things change. And see if he is the one for me or if I should fall back into the arm of Ray, after all, I am his girl. One thing I have resized from dying: Every person you have dependencies on, and every person you need to count on, will ultimately upset you. No matter how much they try not to, nothing in life is ever going to be perfect, so maybe you have to forgive and forget, or trust and move on? In my deepening delusional thoughts, I ask myself these questions.

For two decades, our escape defined me. It dominated my personality and compelled my every decision. By college, half my life had led up to our escape and the other half was spent reliving it, in churches and retreats where my mother made it a hagiograpihc journey, on college applications where it was a plea, at sleepovers where it was entertainment, and in discussion groups after public viewings of xenophobic melodrama like China Cry and Not Without my Daughter, films about Christian women facing death and escaping to America. Our story was a sacred thread woven into my identity. Sometimes people asked, But don't a lot of Christians live there? or Couldn't your mother just say she was Muslim? It would take me a long time to get over those kinds of questions. They felt like a bad grade, like a criticism of my face and body...Once in an Oklahoma church, a woman said, "Well, I sure do get it. You came for a better life." I thought I'd pass out -- a better life? In Isfahan, we had yellow spray roses, a pool. A glass enclosure shot up through our living room, and inside that was a tree. I had a tree inside my house; I had the papery hand of Morvarid, my friend nanny, a ninety-year-old village woman; I had my grandmother's fruit leather and Hotel Koorosh schnitzels and sour cherries and orchards and a farm - life in Iran was a fairytale. In Oklahoma, we lived in an apartment complex for the destitute and disenfranchised. Life was a big gray parking lot with cigarette butts baking in oil puddles, slick children idling in the beating sun, teachers who couldn't do math. I dedicated my youth and every ounce of my magic to get out of there. A better life? The words lodged in my ear like grit. Gradually, all those retellings felt like pandering. The skeptics drew their conclusions based on details that I had provided them: my childhood dreams of Kit Kats and flawless bananas. My academic ambitions. I thought of how my first retelling was in an asylum office in Italy: how merciless that with the sweat and dust of escape still on our brows, we had to turn our ordeal into a good, persuasive story or risk being sent back. Then, after asylum was secured, we had to relive that story again and again, to earn our place, to calm casual skeptics. Every day of her new life, the refugee is asked to differentiate herself from the opportunist, the economic migrant... Why do the native-born perpetuate this distinction? Why harm the vulnerable with the threat of this stigma? ...To draw a line around a birthright, a privilege. Unlike economic migrants, refugees have no agency; they are no threat. Often, they are so broken, they beg to be remade into the image of the native. As recipients of magnanimity, they can be pitied. But if you are born in the Third World, and you dare to make a move before you are shattered, your dreams are suspicious. You are a carpetbagger, an opportunist, a thief. You are reaching above your station.

I sometimes describe conflict as dandelions. At first one pops up—maybe someone says something that rubs you the wrong way, and it’s not such a big deal. It’s a surface issue. No need to spray pesticides. Mow over it, and it’ll go away. Or better yet, ignore it. But then it goes to seed. That’s okay! The seeds are pretty, then they blow away, and your dandelion is gone. Except it isn’t gone; it’s just hiding. Until next spring, when you wake up and your entire yard is full of dandelions. In the book Have a Nice Conflict: How to Find Success and Satisfaction in the Most Unlikely Places, the authors point out that one of the biggest challenges is to learn how to manage a conflict when you’re already firmly entrenched in it.4 So, it’s better to deal with it before you’re firmly entrenched. The best way to get rid of dandelions is to pull out the roots when you first notice them. It’s the same with conflict, which is best resolved when you address it immediately, before it grows roots and spreads.

You came into my life when I didn’t want you there. You sprayed me with water, were living in my house, and stole my heart when it wasn’t even whole yet.” She gave him a wobbly smile, and Dawson squeezed her hands. “You gave me time when I needed it. Love when it was hard to give. Comfort when I pushed you away. I love you for all of that, and for being the man that you are. I promise to love, cherish, and honor you forever.” She glanced out at the small crowd and back at him. “And I really can’t wait to be your wife.

TO BOOST SEXUAL AROUSAL AND SATISFACTION FOR BOTH WOMEN AND MEN: The peptide PT-141 (bremelanotide) binds to receptors in the brain that are believed to be a central nervous system “hub” for sexual arousal and libido. This peptide has also been tested in clinical trials as an intranasal spray and is FDA-approved for low sexual desire disorder in premenopausal women. Not recommended for those with uncontrolled hypertension or heart disease.

I’ve thought about it a lot, and I came up with a list of twenty supplies you need to survive middle school when you don’t have arms. So here it is: 1. Good shoes. Ease of removal is of utmost importance here. Ease of reapplication—equally important. 2. Sense of humor. I’m being very serious here—you’ve got to have one. Seriously. 3. A sizeable daily breakfast. You never know when you might chicken out in the lunchroom. Get your daily fuel requirement early in the day. 4. Easy-to-eat bagged lunches. Do you really want to carry that giant tray through the cafeteria? And forget about bringing stuff like chili and clam chowder for lunch. Really. Forget. That. 5. An easy-to-carry/open/close/get-things-out-of book bag. 6. Lots of cute shirts. This really applies to both people with and without arms. And when you’re ready—tank tops. 7. Bully spray. Similar to bear spray, only better. Would be great to have for those nasty little comments. I’m totally inventing this. 8. Thick skin. More like armor. Armor skin.

An e-reader is super helpful. And no more toe paper cuts. 10. Some kind of sport or recreational activity—soccer, dance, swimming, professional hopscotch. You can do it! I’m trying out my motivational speaking skills here. 11. Pants that button easily. Trust me, when nature calls at school, you’ll be grateful you listened. 12. Your handy-dandy hook. From buttoning pants to lifting a dollar out of your pocket, a good hook is essential. 13. A wide variety of nail polishes. Boys probably don’t care much about this, but when people are staring at our feet as much as they do, we want to look our best. Am I right, ladies, or am I right? 14. Nunchuks. At least until bully spray becomes available. 15. An open heart and eyes. You think you’re the only one out there who feels different? What about that kid sitting alone in the library or out on the sidewalk? 16. Awesome parents. This is a must. 17. Friends who listen.

A native landscape enters a child’s mind through a meld of sensations: the smell of seaweed or hay, the sound of cicadas, the cold grit of stone. It is all heart and magic, confusion rather than order, but the feeling it evokes is wholly satisfying and lasting. Gaining this kind of deep familiarity with a landscape other than your native one is like learning to speak a foreign language. You can’t hope for quick or easy fluency. You work from the outside in, by accumulating a vocabulary of observed details. You learn where things happen in the rhythmic revolutions of the days and the year, which shrubs harbor families of grackles, which stands of beach plum send out sprays of August bloom, where the hog-nose snake waits for its toad, and the toad for its fly. Slowly the strange becomes familiar; the familiar becomes precious.

All-Natural, All-Purpose Cleaner Combine 1 teaspoon borax, ½ teaspoon washing soda, and 1 teaspoon liquid Castile soap in a spray bottle. Add 2 cups warm distilled water. Add a few drops of the essential oils of your choice (such as lemon, lavender, or orange). Put the spray top on the bottle and shake well. Use on bathroom surfaces, kitchen counters, and elsewhere.—courtesy of Katie Wells, Wellness Mama4

Biological systems are a chemical inevitability in the right circumstances. There is, of course, something special about life—I won’t take that away from it—but it is a chemical process, a dynamic, kinetic stability that exists, as your scientists have said, “far from thermodynamic equilibrium.” You don’t have to understand this or believe me, but life is fairly common in both time and space. It is not special, nor is it particularly fragile. The best measure I have of the size and complexity of a biosphere is calories of energy captured per square meter per year. Higher is more impressive, and always more beautiful, but this measures nothing of the creation of a system like humanity. For that, my awakened mind categorizes systems by bytes of information transmitted. This will sound to you like it’s a relatively new phenomenon on your planet, but it’s not. Even pelagibacter transmit information, if only to daughter cells. Ants spray pheromones, bees dance, birds sing—all of these are comparatively low-bandwidth systems for communication. But your system caused an inflection point. The graph of data flow switched from linear to exponential growth. Maybe you would call this system “humanity,” but I wouldn’t. It is not just a collection of individuals; it is also a collection of ideas stored inside of individuals and objects and even ideas inside ideas. If that seems like a trivial difference to you, well, I guess I can forgive you since you do not know what the rest of the universe looks like. Collections of individuals are beautiful, but they are as common as pelagibacter. Collections of ideas are veins of gold in our universe.

Biological systems are a chemical inevitability in the right circumstances. There is, of course, something special about life—I won’t take that away from it—but it is a chemical process, a dynamic, kinetic stability that exists, as your scientists have said, “far from thermodynamic equilibrium.” You don’t have to understand this or believe me, but life is fairly common in both time and space. It is not special, nor is it particularly fragile. The best measure I have of the size and complexity of a biosphere is calories of energy captured per square meter per year. Higher is more impressive, and always more beautiful, but this measures nothing of the creation of a system like humanity. For that, my awakened mind categorizes systems by bytes of information transmitted. This will sound to you like it’s a relatively new phenomenon on your planet, but it’s not. Even pelagibacter transmit information, if only to daughter cells. Ants spray pheromones, bees dance, birds sing—all of these are comparatively low-bandwidth systems for communication. But your system caused an inflection point. The graph of data flow switched from linear to exponential growth. Maybe you would call this system “humanity,” but I wouldn’t. It is not just a collection of individuals; it is also a collection of ideas stored inside of individuals and objects and even ideas inside ideas. If that seems like a trivial difference to you, well, I guess I can forgive you since you do not know what the rest of the universe looks like. Collections of individuals are beautiful, but they are as common as pelagibacter. Collections of ideas are veins of gold in our universe. They must be cherished and protected. My parents, whoever and whatever they were, gave me knowledge of many systems—it was locked in my code before I was sent here to self-assemble—and the only thing I can tell you about systems like yours is that they are rare because they are unstable. Dynamite flows through their veins. A single solid jolt and they’re gone. If my data sets are accurate, you are rare, fragile, and precious.

Flower killers ( PART 1 ) Flower killers There is a war going on out there, Wherever you turn to see, it is everywhere, Guns firing bullets that bear one address: kill, Who? Just anyone do it at your free will, And the guns spray death in all directions, Giving rise to endless predilections, That of a father, a mother and a lover, Whoever the bullet may hit, is lost forever, And when bullets turn stray, They hit anything that comes in their way, It does not matter whether you are a foe or a friend, That time the bullet, only its purpose does defend, That to kill and shoot anyhow and anyone, It can be a father, a mother, a daughter, a lover, or just a human someone, And as the victim falls and collapses on the ground, The bullet pierces deeper like the canines of a hungry hound, And no matter how hard you tried it cannot be bound, Because the war is everywhere and so is its echoing and deathly sound, That tempts the bullet to travel and shoot someone, somewhere, And it couldn't be happier than now, because the war is everywhere, Yesterday a stray bullet whizzed through the air, And it hit a flower that had just bloomed and looked fair, Its petals got shredded into countless pieces, The pollen grains flew in the air and fell in different places, And as they fell, they all cried, “murder!” But the bullet had no intention to surrender, The tattered flower petals fell on the ground, I realised there is a new gang called, “flower killers” and they abound, The bee and the butterfly desperately searched for their missing flower, And ah the pain they felt as a dismayed lover, Their wings dropped and they fell to ground like dead autumn leaves, Where except the bullet, even death grieves, The other flowers looked helplessly at the fallen youth and it's still falling memories, And in honour of the killed flower, they named their garden, the garden of tragedies, And to pay their homages, they all wilted on the same day, The garden looked barren even on a new Summer day, The bullet that killed the flower lies embedded in the fence, Same bullet that killed someone who possessed nothing in self defence, Continued in part 2...

Emril?” she gasped, diving toward him. She shook his arm. “Emril!” He blew out a breath, spraying blood off his lips as he grinned, white teeth shining under red. “So, has today’s brush with death and me saving your life changed your mind about sleeping with me?

What are the main causes of Dandruff? Dandruff, a harmless, chronic condition, occurs when the scalp is dry or oily and produces thin patches of dead skin. These little white scales dot the hair and fall like snow on the shoulders. Although harmless, dandruff can be bothersome. They often appear between the ages of 10 or 20 and affect up to 40% of people over 30. What is dandruff caused by? There are several types with different causes. What are they and how to treat them? Answers from a dermatologist. Do you feel like your scalp is literally peeling? Is dandruff strewn on your shoulders ruining your life? Although very annoying, this desquamation is generally benign. However, it happens that it really is a pathology and requires appropriate treatment. What are the different types of Dandruff? The most common dandruff is pityriasis, a condition caused by a fungus that colonizes the scalp and disrupts its cell renewal system. Indeed, the skin of the skull permanently eliminates dead cells to produce new ones (as for all skin areas). Under the effect of pityriasis, the process tends to accelerate. The dead cells clump together and accumulate in the form of scales. Result: unsightly flakes on your shoulders. Does hot water cause dandruff? The hot water allows your shampoo to remove more easily grease, dirt and dust that accumulate and dirty scalp. However, do not risk increasing the temperature too much: water that is too hot can irritate or even damage your scalp. Local infection with Staphylococcus aureus can also suggest the presence of ringworms, without this being the case. This is why it is imperative to consult a dermatologist in the event of the appearance of oily and yellowish dandruff. Psoriasis (an autoimmune disease) is the excessive activity of the body's defense systems. Psoriasis and has an exaggerated response to environmental insults. The cells of the epidermis renewing themselves in too large a quantity, they cause excessive desquamation. On the scalp, the phenomenon, therefore, manifests itself in the form of dandruff. Does food cause dandruff? The most cited link between diet and dandruff is due to the yeast Malassezia. According to one theory, since dandruff is caused by yeast, eating yeast-based foods can make it worse. Internal causes of dandruff Stress - Infection, fever - Hormonal imbalance - In women: approaching menstruation and / or heavy menstruation - Excessive sweating - Digestive assimilation problems - Overly acidifying diet EXTERNAL FACTORS - Shampoos too aggressive for the scalp. Best dandruff treatment and prevention The diagnosis of dandruff is easy to do yourself: the scalp itches, it is dry and covered with scales. Seborrheic dermatitis is accompanied by reddish skin, a few yellowish and oily scales, and patches with indefinite contours. Although often chronic, dandruff can be treated. Try a non-medicated shampoo first, massaging the scalp vigorously and rinsing it well. Frequent application of shampoo removes dander, reduces the amount of oil, and prevents the build-up of dead skin cells. If there is no improvement, special anti-dandruff shampoos can give good results. The instructions for use depend on the shampoo used. Some are to be used daily, while others are used once or twice a week. Best products to use during dandruff When choosing an over-the-counter shampoo, look for anti-dandruff agents such as onion and caffeine. You may need Onion Caffeine Shampoo & Conditioner to help control dandruff, and try reducing the number of products you put in your hair (e.g., gels and sprays), or stop using them altogether and eat a balanced diet.

She spoke slowly. “I am captain of this boat because I thrive upon the salt air and the spray of the water, but also because I desire the power I exercise over my sailors. I do not deny that. Once you have taken such control of your life, and of the lives of others, it becomes addictive, almost necessary to survive.” She paused, giving Ari a searching look. “It is hard, isn’t it? Giving up that power, even for a moment?

They watched the whales float in the murk, blowing spray into the air. After a minute, the mother showed them her eye again, unblinking and huge. Then she and her calf dipped back under the surface. It was an impossible thing: so many tons of flesh, disappearing in an instant. Their tails emerged fifty yards away, saluting the stars. Hanging high and wide. Ned's father started the motor. 'She's as interested in us as we are in dragonflies'. The engine smoked to life. He let it idle. Turned to his sons. 'If you're going to fear something, boys, it's best to understand it.' He laid a hand on Ned's scalp, his rough skin stilling Ned's shivers. 'To come right up against it.' (p.219)

Alis coughed from the shadows of the house, and I remembered to start walking, to look toward the dais- At Tamlin. The breath knocked from me, and it was an effort to keep going down the stairs, to keep going my knees from buckling. He was resplendent in a tunic of green and gold, a crown of burnished laurel leaves gleaming on his head. He'd loosened the grip on his glamour, letting that immortal light and beauty shine through- for me. My vision narrowed on him, on my High Lord, his wide eyes glistening as I stepped onto the soft grass, white rose petals scattered down it- And Red ones. Like drops of blood amongst the white, red petals had been sprayed across the path ahead. I forced my gaze up, to Tamlin, his shoulders back, head high. So unaware of the true extent of how broken and dark I was inside. How unfit I was to be clothed in white when my hands were so filthy. Everyone else was thinking it. They had to be. Every step was too fast, propelling me toward the dais and Tamlin. And toward Ianthe, clothed in dark blue robes tonight, beaming beneath the hood and silver crown. As if I were good- as if I hadn't murdered two of their kind. I was a murderer and a liar. A cluster of red petals loomed ahead- just like the Fae youth's blood had pooled at my feet. Ten steps from the dais, at the edge of that splatter of red, I slowed. Then stopped. Everyone was watching, exactly as they had when I'd nearly died, spectators to my torment. Tamlin extended a broad hand, brows narrowing slightly. My heart beat so fast, too fast. I was going to vomit. Right over those rose petals, right over the grass and ribbons trailing into the ailse from the chairs flanking it. And between my skin and bones, something thrummed and pounded, rising and pushing, lashing through my blood- So many eyes, too many eyes, pressed on me, witness to every crime I'd committed, every humiliation- I don't know why I'd even bothered to wear gloves, why I'd let Ianthe convince me. The fading sun was too hot, the garden too hedged in. As inescapable as the vow I was about to make, binding me to him forever, shackling him to my broken and weary soul. The thing inside me was roiling now, my body shaking with the building force of it as it hunted for a way out- Forever- I would never get better, never get free of myself, of the dungeon where I'd spent three months- 'Feyre,' Tamlin said, his hand steady, as he continued to reach for mine. The sun sank past the lip of the western garden wall; shadows pooled, chilling the air. If I turned away, they'd start talking, but I couldn't make the last few steps, couldn't, couldn't, couldn't- I was going to fall apart, right there, right then- and they'd see precisely how ruined I was. Help me, help me, help me, I begged someone, anyone. Begged Lucien, standing in the front row, his metal eye fixed on me. Begged Ianthe, face serene and patient and lovely within that hood. Save me- please, save me. Get me out. End this. Tamlin took a step toward me- concern shading those eyes. I retreated a step. No. Tamlin's mouth tightened. The crowd murmured. Silk streamers laden with globes of gold faelight twinkled into life above and around us. Ianthe said smoothly. 'Come, Bride and be joined with your true love. Come, Bride, and let good triumph at last.' Good. I was not good. I was nothing, and my soul, my eternal soul was damned- I tried to get my traitorous lungs to draw air so I could voice a word. No- no. But I didn't have to say it. Thunder crackled behind me, as if two boulders have been hurled against each other. People screamed, falling back, a few vanishing outright as darkness erupted. I whirled, and through the night drifting away like smoke on a wind, I found Rhysand straightening the lapels of his black jacket. 'Hello, Feyre darkling,' he purred.

A Summertime Prisoner's Psalm O Summer, zenith of the year, I praise your robust life, your hot blood. You are a liberator who calls us out-of-doors into your desert-like sun and heat, just as the God of Moses and Aaron called the children of Israel out of the brickyards of Egypt. Those who work in the warmth of this day are blessed to be outside, while others are stuck in buildings built of brick, constructed with concrete and glass. Chilled-but-artificial air blows upon the new slaves of electric Egypt's indoor brickyards. Fortunate are those children who play today under the great yellow face of our giant daystar, the sun. Free to jump through sprinkler sprays or ride their bikes in the free flight of real air-conditioned coolness. Corporate giants in their stainless steel skyscrapers dream of their treehouse days when every kid was truly a millionaire. O Liberator God, who called your children away from the mile's sweaty slavery, lead me, this day, into the glorious freedom of which the spirit of summer sings.

13.  Macadamia Nut and Mock Banana Muffins Ingredients                  2 tablespoons wheat bran                  1 tablespoon soy flour                  1 cup soy flour                  1⁄2 cup Splenda (or other sugar substitute)                  1 teaspoon baking powder                  2 eggs                  1⁄2 cup heavy cream                  1⁄2 teaspoon banana extract or 1⁄2 teaspoon banana flavoring (no sugar added)                  1⁄3 cup club soda                  1⁄2 cup macadamia nuts, coarsely chopped Directions               Preheat oven to 375°F.               Spray (6 muffin) muffin tin with vegetable oil spray.               Mix wheat bran and 1 T soy flour, then coat the muffin tin with the mixture (do this step over a trash can!).               Mix soy flour, Splenda, baking powder, eggs, cream, and banana extract in a large bowl with a wire whisk.               Whisk in club soda.               Fold in nuts.               Fill muffin tins evenly, and bake for 20 to 25 minutes, using the toothpick test for doneness.              

Er..." I bit my lower lip. "Do you have a minute? I wanted to talk to you really quickly, without being overheard." She looked mildly surprised but sat down on the end of the bed and nodded toward a chair. "Of course." Jim ambled over, plopping itself down at her feet. I glanced at the demon. "Er..." "Jim, shoo," Aisling said, correctly reading my thoughts. "What? I'm not doing anything!" "You're making May uncomfortable. Go see what the boys are doing." "Whatever it is, it won't be nearly as interesting as this," it answered. "Oh, it doesn't matter, I guess," I said with a tight smile. "Jim might have some helpful insights as well." "I'm all over helpful insights, sister," it told me with an oddly endearing grin. "What's the problem? You can tell Dr. Jim. Is it something in the romance department? Need some advice on how to handle Gabriel?" "No, thank you-" "Ah. Then it's the sex, right? Fiery, animalistic, dragon sex too much for you?" It was difficult to keep from rolling my eyes. "Thank you, my sex life is not open to-" "What's the silver dragon element? Earth?" Jim's face screwed up as it thought. "Oh, man, that means he's gonna want to do it outdoors all the time. Buck naked in the wilderness. My advice is to take sunscreen and bug spray. And maybe a spatula or something to dig the sand out of your butt crack, in case he takes you to a beach." "Jim!" Aisling said, wrapping her hands around the demon's muzzle. She shot me an apologetic look. "I'm so sorry. It knows better than to offer unwanted sexual advice." "Just trying to be helpful," it said in a muffled voice. "Well, you're not. And you can just be quiet unless you have something of importance to offer to the conversation," Aisling told it as she released its muzzle

When we walk in, everybody turns to look at us. Pres looks down at our joined hands and then looks to Knox. I open my mouth to say something, but he beats me to it. Of course he does. “Yo. Little announcement here. Violent Violet and I are together. She’s my old lady and I’m her old man. Yada yada yada, we’re getting married. So there’s that.” I look at him, and I feel my jaw pop open. “Did you just yada yada your proposal to me?” Knox shrugs like it’s no big deal. “Wasn’t going to let you tell me no.” The big scarred-up guy comes over and gives him a high five. “Best way to do it,” he says and pats Knox on the back. “About time you made an honest man out of him,” Pres says, walking over and giving me a hug. I feel Knox’s hand tighten, and he doesn’t let it go while I awkwardly try to hug the guy back. “We’re all a family here now, and it’s going to stay that way. We agreed that you’re patched in, regardless if you marry this nerd or not.” I lean into Knox and laugh. “Thank you.” “Welcome to the Ghost Riders,” Pres says, and suddenly I hear a champagne cork pop and we’re all being sprayed with suds. I try to turn into Knox’s chest, but he holds me in front of him so I get covered. As more champagne is popped and more bottles get poured, Knox spins me in his arms and raises me up so we are at eye level. “I love you, baby,” he says, kissing me on the lips. ‘Love you, too,” I mumble as I wrap myself around him. I’m finally at peace with myself and my life, and I’ve got someone to always make me feel safe. It was a long time coming, but it was worth the wait. And now we’ve got the rest of our lives to do this thing we call love.

He changed his final wad up at the train station. Which was a sad place now. There were homeless people and disturbed people hanging around. There were furtive men with swivel eyes, their hands thrust deep in capacious pockets. There was spray-can graffiti on the walls. Nothing compared to the South Bronx or inner-city Detroit or South-Central LA. But unusual for Germany. Reunification had been a strain. Economically, and socially. And mentally. He had watched it. Like living a comfortable life in a nice little house with your family. And then a whole bunch of relatives moves in. From someplace where they don’t really know how to use a knife and fork. Ignorant and stunted people. But German like you. As if a brother had been taken away at birth and locked in a closet. Then in his mid-forties he comes stumbling out again, pale and hunched and blinking. A tough situation to manage.

As a child, I had not known the world anthropology or that there was a thing called Ivy League. I had not known that you could spend your days on planes, moving through the world, studying death, your whole life before this life an unanswered question...finally answered. I had seen death in Indonesia and Korea. Death in Mauritania and Mongolia. I had watched the people of Madagascar exhume the muslin-wrapped bones of their ancestors, spray them with perfume, and ask those who had already passed to the next place for their stories, prayers, blessings. I had been home a month watching my father die. Death didn't frighten me. Not now. Not anymore. But Brooklyn felt like a stone in my throat.

There is no need to keep soaps and shampoos out when we are not using them, and the added exposure to heat and moisture when they aren’t in use is bound to affect their quality. It is therefore my policy to keep everything out of the bath or shower. Whatever is used in the bath should be dried after use anyway, so it makes far more sense to just wipe down the few items we use with our bath towel and then put them away in the cupboard. While this may seem like more work at first glance, it is actually less. It is much quicker and easier to clean the bath or shower without these items cluttering that space, and there will be less slime buildup. The same is true for the kitchen sink area. Do you keep your sponges and dish detergent by the sink? I store mine underneath it. The secret is to make sure the sponge is completely dry. Many people use a wire sponge rack with suction cups that stick to the sink. If you do, too, I recommend that you remove it immediately. It cannot dry out if it is sprayed with water every time you use the sink, and it will soon start to smell. To prevent this, squeeze your sponge tightly after use and hang it up to dry. You can use a clothespin to pin it to your towel rack or to the handle of a kitchen drawer if you don’t have a rack. Personally, I recommend hanging sponges outside, such as on the veranda.

Your sister’s the doctor,” her father said. His pride in his daughters was almost hilarious to behold, like a summer hose spraying in all directions. Seema knew what he would say next. “One doctor, one lawyer. I’m covered for life.

I remember once in the Arctic, when we were attempting to cross the frozen North Atlantic in a small, open rigid inflatable boat (RIB), that I heard that voice very clearly. We had been caught out in a monster, sub-zero, gale-force 8 storm, 400 miles off the coast of Greenland - and we were struggling. We were reduced to a crawl as we battled up and down huge, freezing waves and crashing white water. It felt like only a matter of time before we would be capsized to our deaths in the black and icy sea during this longest of nights. Each time one of us handed over the control of the little boat to another crew member to do their shift at the wheel, we had an especially frightening few minutes as the new helmsman fought to become accustomed to the pitch and character of those freak waves. If ever we were going to be capsized, it was during these change-over times. We got lucky once. We were all thrown off our seats after the RIB had been tossed up and landed on the side of her tubes, only to topple back, by luck, the right way up. We then got lucky a second time in a similar incident. Instinct told me we wouldn’t get so lucky a third time. ‘No more mistakes. Helm this yourself,’ I felt the voice saying to me. As I prepared to hand over to Mick, my old buddy, something deep inside me kept repeating, ‘Just keep helming for a bit longer - see this team through the storm yourself.’ But we had a rota and I also knew we should stick to it. That was the rule. Yet the voice persisted. Eventually I shouted over the wind and spray to Mick that I was going to keep helming. ‘Trust me,’ I told him. Mick then helped me all through that night, pouring Red Bull down my throat as we got thrown left and right, fighting to cling on to the wheel and our seats. By dawn, the seas were easing and by the next evening we could see the distant coast of Iceland ahead. Finally. Afterwards, two of the crew said to me quietly that they had been so terrified to helm that they were praying someone else would do it. I had been exhausted, and logic had said to hand over, but instinct had told me I should keep steering. Deep down I knew that I had been beginning to master how to control the small boat in the chaos of the waves and ice - and that voice told me we might not get a third lucky escape. It was the right call - not an easy one, but a right one. Instinct doesn’t always tell us to choose the easier path, but it will guide you towards the right one.

To Yahweh" “YHWH is definitely a verb form. We can take comfort in the certain knowledge that God is a verb, not a noun or an adjective.” – The Gifts of the Jews, Thomas Cahill God is the spray on your lip from the freshly-poured ginger ale. No, God is the arrival on your lip of the spray. The arcing. The spree. God is definitely not that weird sexuality of wild bird rehabilitators. God is, instead, waves blown back hard from the shore. At night. Perhaps he is the rumbling scaring done by the haunted freight train, the shrill ghouls in the back cars climbing over each other to escape. God is weequashing: The spearing of eels or fish from a canoe by torchlight. God is the inventing of words like weequashing. She is not the fire darkening down. She is the goldfinch singing the whisper song. And the birthing of a second child, to feel your body blooming. To feel head, then shoulders, thighs then cord tumbling. To live. To life! To give the initial downbeat to the tympanis. To cure mice by placing them in a cello. To do whatever the scarecrow did with his brains. And to make that acrid or burned quality of the smell of space. To crow, to fly, to gild and gnaw. To mean. Shape, shear, smear and shine. Play and improvise. To last.

Raven stirred in his arms, stretched languidly. “I was thinking of something upsetting, and you took it away, didn’t you?” There was a hint of a smile in her voice. He allowed her freedom, watched her sink beneath the foaming water, surface a few feet away. Her large eyes were moving over him with definite laughter. “You know, Mikhail, I’m beginning to think my very first assessment of your character was correct. You’re arrogant and bossy.” He swam toward her with lazy, easy strokes. “But I am sexy.” She backpedaled, sent a spray of water at him with the flat of her hand. “Stay away from me. Every time you get near me, something crazy happens.” “Now might be a good time to take you to task for placing your life in danger. You should never have followed the assassins from the inn. You knew I was unable to hear if you called for help.” He kept swimming toward her, as relentless as a shark. Raven took the coward’s way out and waded out of the pool, flinging herself into the next large one. The water was cold on her heated skin. She pointed a finger at him, her soft mouth curving. “I told you I was going to try to help you. In any case, if you dare to lecture me, I’ll have no choice but to go into just how unethical it was to bind me to you without my consent.

I was thinking of something upsetting, and you took it away, didn’t you?” There was a hint of a smile in her voice. He allowed her freedom, watched her sink beneath the foaming water, surface a few feet away. Her large eyes were moving over him with definite laughter. “You know, Mikhail, I’m beginning to think my very first assessment of your character was correct. You’re arrogant and bossy.” He swam toward her with lazy, easy strokes. “But I am sexy.” She backpedaled, sent a spray of water at him with the flat of her hand. “Stay away from me. Every time you get near me, something crazy happens.” “Now might be a good time to take you to task for placing your life in danger. You should never have followed the assassins from the inn. You knew I was unable to hear if you called for help.” He kept swimming toward her, as relentless as a shark. Raven took the coward’s way out and waded out of the pool, flinging herself into the next large one. The water was cold on her heated skin. She pointed a finger at him, her soft mouth curving. “I told you I was going to try to help you. In any case, if you dare to lecture me, I’ll have no choice but to go into just how unethical it was to bind me to you without my consent. Tell me--if I hadn’t followed the assassins and Jacob hadn’t stabbed me, I would have remained human, wouldn’t I?” Mikhail rose out of the pool, water streaming off his body. Raven’s breath caught in her throat. He looked magnificent, so masculine and powerful. In one fluid leap, he launched himself into the air, jackknifed, and cut cleanly into the deep pool. She found her heart beating frantically, her blood singing for him. He came up behind her, his hands spanning her waist, dragging her close, his powerful legs keeping them afloat. “You would still be human,” he agreed, his voice a black magic spell that could send heat coiling through her, despite the cold water. “If I had stayed human, how could you have remained with me as a lifemate?” She pushed her rounded bottom against the cradle of his hips, enjoying the sudden excitement as his body swelled and hardened in response to the pressure. She laid her head back on his shoulder. “I would have chosen to grow old with you and die when you died.

BASIC MIX DIRECTIONS Fill a spray bottle with 1 cup water and 1/ 4 cup white distilled vinegar. Note: For added scent, you can infuse the vinegar with citrus peels in a jar for a couple of weeks, prior to diluting it.

Mildew remover and prevention: Use full-strength vinegar to remove mildew off most surfaces. To prevent mildew on a shower curtain, spray vinegar on the problem areas or add vinegar to your rinse cycle when you wash it.

preservation. The pair of Golden Scorpions jumped into action, their stings flashing as they closed the gap and cut through three of the altivorc guards before their weapons even left their sheaths. The two survivors had managed to draw their own giant broadswords, but fell before taking a swing as the Scorpions slashed through them. Black blood sprayed on the floor and walls. They closed toward their final target, but the Altivorc King did not seem the least bit concerned. He leisurely shifted on his cushions as he withdrew a grey metal wand, pointed it at one of the Scorpions, and spoke a guttural syllable. A bolt of blue lighting sizzled from the tip, hurling the man back a dozen feet through the air with a scream of agony. In that split second, the other Scorpion reached him and stabbed. Dhananad barely registered the motion, but the final result stood out clearly. The Scorpion screamed and clawed at the King’s hand, which seized his wrist in a bone-crunching grip. Rising to his feet, the altivorc drove the would-be assailant down to his knees and plucked the weapon away. He threw it at Dhananad’s feet. “I am very forgiving, and will forget this reckless transgression.” He released his hold on the Scorpion’s wrist. “Your life is spared…for now. Go ahead and meet with the princess if you are still so thick-skulled. You will see I am right.” The Scorpion gasped, clutching his hand, which bent at a strange angle. He fared better than his companion, who lay in a smoldering heap near the entrance. Dhananad cringed, deciding once and for all he would never tempt the Altivorc King again. He turned on his heel and left, his entourage scurrying after him. Ambassador Piros watched Prince Dhananad storm out of the room. Once his angry

All-Natural, All-Purpose Cleaner Combine 1 teaspoon borax, ½ teaspoon washing soda, and 1 teaspoon liquid Castile soap in a spray bottle. Add 2 cups warm distilled water. Add a few drops of the essential oils of your choice (such as lemon, lavender, or orange). Put the spray top on the bottle and shake well. Use on bathroom surfaces, kitchen counters, and elsewhere. —courtesy of Katie Wells, Wellness Mama4