Stacked Rocks Quotes

Each yoki-hijo trained in an ancient and powerful art. A deliberate, wondrous artistry requiring the full synergy of body and mind. Geological reorganization on the microscale, requiring acute understanding of gravitational equilibrium. In other words, they stacked rocks.

You stand there, braced. Cloud shadows race over the buff rock stacks as a projected film, casting a queasy, mottled ground rash. The air hisses and it is no local breeze but the great harsh sweep of wind from the turning of the earth. The wild country--indigo jags of mountain, grassy plain everlasting, tumbled stones like fallen cities, the flaring roll of sky--provokes a spiritual shudder. It is like a deep note that cannot be heard but is felt, it is like a claw in the gut... ...Other cultures have camped here a while and disappeared. Only earth and sky matter. Only the endlessly repeated flood of morning light. You begin to see that God does not owe us much beyond that.

This was one of those moments when I realized that my emotional baggage, once a few neatly packed pieces, was now like the Joads' truck, stacked high with old clothes, half a rocking chair, a mule, all barely secured with twine.

While I pressed the tissue to my face, Beck said, “Can I tell you something? There are a lot of empty boxes in your head, Sam.” I looked at him, quizzical. Again, it was a strange enough concept to hold my attention. “There are a lot of empty boxes in there, and you can put things in them.” Beck handed me another tissue for the other side of my face. My trust of Beck at that point was not yet complete; I remember thinking that he was making a very bad joke that I wasn’t getting. My voice sounded wary, even to me. “What kinds of things?” “Sad things,” Beck said. “Do you have a lot of sad things in your head?” “No,” I said. Beck sucked in his lower lip and released it slowly. “Well, I do.” This was shocking. I didn’t ask a question, but I tilted toward him. “And these things would make me cry,” Beck continued. “They used to make me cry all day long.” I remembered thinking this was probably a lie. I could not imagine Beck crying. He was a rock. Even then, his fingers braced against the floor, he looked poised, sure, immutable. “You don’t believe me? Ask Ulrik. He had to deal with it,” Beck said. “And so you know what I did with those sad things? I put them in boxes. I put the sad things in the boxes in my head, and I closed them up and I put tape on them and I stacked them up in the corner and threw a blanket over them.” “Brain tape?” I suggested, with a little smirk. I was eight, after all. Beck smiled, a weird private smile that, at the time, I didn’t understand. Now I knew it was relief at eliciting a joke from me, no matter how pitiful the joke was. “Yes, brain tape. And a brain blanket over the top. Now I don’t have to look at those sad things anymore. I could open those boxes sometime, I guess, if I wanted to, but mostly I just leave them sealed up.” “How did you use the brain tape?” “You have to imagine it. Imagine putting those sad things in the boxes and imagine taping it up with the brain tape. And imagine pushing them into the side of your brain, where you won’t trip over them when you’re thinking normally, and then toss a blanket over the top. Do you have sad things, Sam?” I could see the dusty corner of my brain where the boxes sat. They were all wardrobe boxes, because those were the most interesting sort of boxes — tall enough to make houses with — and there were rolls and rolls of brain tape stacked on top. There were razors lying beside them, waiting to cut the boxes and me back open. “Mom,” I whispered. I wasn’t looking at Beck, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw him swallow. “What else?” he asked, barely loud enough for me to hear. “The water,” I said. I closed my eyes. I could see it, right there, and I had to force out the next word. “My …” My fingers were on my scars. Beck reached out a hand toward my shoulder, hesitant. When I didn’t move away, he put an arm around my back and I leaned against his chest, feeling small and eight and broken. “Me,” I said.

You stand there, braced. Cloud shadows race back over the buff rock stacks as a projected film, casting a queasy, mottled ground rash. The air hisses and it is no local breeze but the great harsh sweep of wind from the turning of the earth. The wild country -- indigo jags of mountain, grassy plain everlasting, tumbled stones like fallen cities, the flaring roll of sky -- provokes a spiritual shudder. It is like a deep note that cannot be heard but is felt, it is like a claw in the gut.

Stack all the rocks you want, but if you don't let go of the toxic people and behaviors in your life, nothing will change.

Here is my room, in the yellow lamplight and the space heater rumbling: Indian rug red as Cochise's blood, a desk with seven mystic drawers, a chair covered in material as velvety blue-black as Batman's cape, an aquarium holding tiny fish so pale you could see their hearts beat, the aforementioned dresser covered with decals from Revell model airplane kits, a bed with a quilt sewn by a relative of Jefferson Davis's, a closet, and the shelves, oh, yes, the shelves. The troves of treasure. On those shelves are stacks of me: hundreds of comic books- Justice League, Flash, Green Lantern, Batman, the Spirit, Blackhawk, Sgt. Rock and Easy Company, Aquaman, and the Fantastic Four... The shelves go on for miles and miles. My collection of marbles gleams in a mason jar. My dried cicada waits to sing again in the summer. My Duncan yo-yo that whistles except the string is broken and Dad's got to fix it.

We will make a rattle for our child from your teeth and phalanges, and stacking toys from your vertebrae. She will teethe on your kneecaps and we will rock her to sleep whispering tales of your bloody demise.

On the second and the third night there was again a ball -- this time in mid-ocean, during a furious storm sweeping over the ocean, which roared like a funeral mass and rolled up mountainous seas fringed with mourning silvery foam. The Devil, who from the rocks of Gibraltar, the stony gateway of two worlds, watched the ship vanish into night and storm, could hardly distinguish from behind the snow the innumerable fiery eyes of the ship. The Devil was as huge as a cliff, but the ship was even bigger, a many-storied, many-stacked giant, created by the arrogance of the New Man with his ancient heart.

On those shelves are stacks of me: hundreds of comic books — Justice League, Flash, Green Lantern, Batman, the Spirit, Blackhawk, Sgt. Rock and Easy Company, Aquaman, and the Fantastic Four. There are Boy’s Life magazines, dozens of issues of Famous Monsters of Filmland, Screen Thrills, and Popular Mechanics. There is a yellow wall of National Geographics, and I have to blush and say I know where all the African pictures are.

God took the hard rocks at the bottom of my pit and stacked them up high, creating something beautiful for His glory.

Without imagination, writing is a stack of lumber, a sack of nails, and a locked tool shed.

Project Princess Teeny feet rock layered double socks Popping side piping of many colored loose lace ups Racing toe keeps up with fancy free gear slick slide and just pressed recently weaved hair Jeans oversized belie her hips, back, thighs that have made guys sigh for milleni year Topped by an attractive jacket her suit’s not for flacking, flunkies, junkies or punk homies on the stroll. Her hands mobile thrones of today’s urban goddess Clinking rings link dragon fingers no need to be modest. One or two gap teeth coolin’ sport gold initials Doubt you get to her name just check from the side please chill. Multidimensional shrimp earrings frame her cinnamon face Crimson with a compliment if a comment hits the right place Don’t step to the plate with datelines from ‘88 Spare your simple, fragile feelings with the same sense that you came Color woman variation reworks the french twist with crinkle cut platinum frosted bangs from a spray can’s mist Never dissed, she insists: “No you can’t touch this.” And, if pissed, bedecked fists stop boys who must persist. She’s the one. Give her some. Under fire. Smoking gun. Of which songs are sung, raps are spun, bells are rung, rocked, pistols cocked, unwanted advances blocked, well stacked she’s jock. It’s all about you girl. You go on. Don’t you dare stop.

Those amazing sheer rock faces, stacked up in layers, as if they were God’s archives, a geological history of the Hebrides. Seams of rock like the rings of a tree, but taking you right back to the very beginnings of time.

I felt the way I did when I was about to dive into deep water. The last pause was to look for shadows that might be rocks. There were plenty that might have been, but nothing broke the surface and the more I looked the fewer there were.

Yet Jesus continues to select broken and splattered people not just as followers, but as participants. He called people like me who can't even figure out which way to turn a screw to tighten it or even stack a cake correctly the ones who would build a kingdom. And then, if we're willing, He serves us up—rocks, small bits of asphalt, and all.

When you left me I was lost. I didn’t know what to do, who I was or what I was going to do. Time froze for me. I woke up every morning with you in my head. That feeling of being lost, not knowing who I was, was terrible. It was so bad that I spent everyday numbing my pain with drugs and alcohol until I passed out. Not because I enjoyed it but because it was the only way I could sleep. When I look back, you had every reason to leave me. I was no good for you. We rotted at my place, didn’t do anything, treated you bad, picked everything over you. I had no motivation to do begin work, debt stacked up higher and higher. Until finally, welcome to rock bottom. Heck im surprised you stayed as long as you did. But when you left and I realized what I did to cause this, I thought to my self that when I look back at this I want to know I tried to get her back. I couldn’t let you go without a fight, I wanted to know that I tried to get you back. And I tried. After I saw you with another person my heart broke in pieces and like pieces of glass it felt stuck in my throat. You told me its what you wanted to do from the beginning and I didn’t want to believe it. But after that I gave up on you and decided to pick up whatever pieces I had left and move on. At least I tried, that’s what I told my self. If I could go back and do it all over again, would I do it differently? Of course, but that’s not reality. I focused on what was. In a way im glad things happened this way. It opened my eyes to a different world, it made me who iam today. It gave me the best motivation possible, to prove to you and my self that I could be better. I used you everyday to get to that extra mile. Waking up every morning at awkward times thinking about you and not being able to fall back asleep. I used that to motivate me to start work everyday at 6am. And now I sit here with my successful career, my new girl friend, debt free and a fat bank account in less then a year and I have no one else to thank but MY SELF! To everyone that has made a mistake, im here to tell you that it always gets worse before its gets better!

Push up some mountains. Cut them down. Drown the land under the sea. Push up some more mountains. Cut them down. Push up a third set of mountains, and let the river cut through them. “Unconformity” is the geologic term for an old, eroded land surface buried under younger rock layers. Put your outspread hand over the Carlin Canyon, Nevada unconformity and your fingers span roughly forty million years- the time that it took to bevel down the first set of mountains and deposit the younger layers on top. What is forty million years? Enough time for a small predatory dinosaur to evolve into a bird. Enough time for a four-legged, deer-like mammal to evolve into a whale. And far more than enough time to turn an ape-like creature in eastern Africa into a big-brained biped who can marvel at such things. The Grand Canyon’s Great Unconformity divides 1.7 billion-year-old rock from 550 million-year-old rock, a gap of more than one billion years. One billion years. I earn my salary studying the Earth and teaching its history, but I admit utter helplessness in comprehending such a span. A billion pages like those of this book would stack up more than forty miles. I had lived one bullion seconds a few days before my thirty-second birthday. A tape measure one billion inches long would stretch two-thirds of the way around the Earth. Such analogies hint at what deep time means- but they don’t get us there. “The human mind may not have evolved enough to be able to comprehend deep time," John McPhee once observed, “it may only be able to measure it.

We entered the grove, and a few yards in, the trees opened to another clearing. In the center was a Sunbeam bread truck, the tires missing, mounted on cinder blocks. It had to have been from the 50s. Little Miss Sunbeam, blond curls framing her face, looking down from the side of the truck with one blue eye. The other missing, replaced by a large spot of rust. Innocent and poised, forever taking a bite out of a piece of buttered white bread. The slogan above her head, Reach for Sunbeam! ENERGY-PACKED! Under Miss Sunbeam the truck was lined and stacked head high with crosses of all sizes, the artificial flowers attached to them faded by the sun. I realized they were roadside crosses, many I recognized that were placed at accident scenes along Death Road and disappeared shortly after. An eighteen-foot four-by-four utility pole and meter leaned dangerously inward toward the truck, anchored by nothing but mud and rocks after the rain. A deep cast iron pot sat a few feet in front of the truck surrounded by ashes, bits of charred wood and odd shaped tree stumps.

Pack what you need for the divination,” he said. Relieved that he believed me capable, I walked to his desk. A detailed map of Hereswith was spread over the wood, river rocks pinning down the four corners. It was a map I had memorized with its crooked, winding streets. Above the desk, shelves lined the walls, burdened with leather-bound spell books, stacks of paper, jars brimming with crushed flowers and salt crystals and swan quills, ornate ink pots, cast-iron spoons with jewels embedded in the handles, silver bowls nestled into each other, a potted fern whose wilting leaves dangled like unrequited love. I gathered what I needed: a bowl that shone like a full moon, pink salt, dried gardenias, a spoon with an emerald chip, a pitcher full of water, a swan quill, a silver inkwell that was crafted as an octopus, its tentacles holding a vial of walnut ink. I charmed them all beneath my breath with a shrinking cantrip—a spell my mother had taught me—until the objects could sit cradled in my palm, and I slipped them into my pocket, where the remedies waited. The objects clinked like musical notes when they met, weightless as air.

Though Eros and Psyche sat vast and magnificent in the front lawn, a prologue to the grand house itself, there was something wonderful- a mysterious and melancholic aspect- about the smaller fountain, hidden within its sunny clearing at the bottom of the south garden. The circular pool of stacked stone stood two feet high and twenty feet across at its widest point. It was lined with tiny glass tiles, azure blue like the necklace of sapphires Lord Ashbury had brought back for Lady Violet after serving in the Far East. From the center emerged a huge craggy block of russet marble, the height of two men, thick at the base but tapering to a peak. Midway up, creamy marble against the brown, the life-size figure of Icarus had been carved in a position of recline. His wings, pale marble etched to give the impression of feathers, were strapped to his outspread arms and fell behind, weeping over the rock. Rising from the pool to tend the fallen figure were three mermaids, long hair looped and coiled about angelic faces: one held a small harp, one wore a coronet of woven ivy leaves, and one reached beneath Icarus’s torso, white hands on creamy skin, to pull him from the deep.

It starts with a thwack, the sharp crack of hard plastic against a hot metal surface. When the ladle rolls over, it deposits a pale-yellow puddle of batter onto the griddle. A gentle sizzle, as the back of the ladle sparkles a mixture of eggs, flour, water, and milk across the silver surface. A crepe takes shape. Next comes cabbage, chopped thin- but not too thin- and stacked six inches high, lightly packed so hot air can flow freely and wilt the mountain down to a molehill. Crowning the cabbage comes a flurry of tastes and textures: ivory bean sprouts, golden pebbles of fried tempura batter, a few shakes of salt, and, for an extra umami punch, a drift of dried bonito powder. Finally, three strips of streaky pork belly, just enough to umbrella the cabbage in fat, plus a bit more batter to hold the whole thing together. With two metal spatulas and a gentle rocking of the wrists, the mass is inverted. The pork fat melts on contact, and the cabbage shrinks in the steam trapped under the crepe. Then things get serious. Thin wheat soba noodles, still dripping with hot water, hit the teppan, dancing like garden hoses across its hot surface, absorbing the heat of the griddle until they crisp into a bird's nest to house the cabbage and crepe. An egg with two orange yolks sizzles beside the soba, waiting for its place on top of this magnificent heap. Everything comes together: cabbage and crepe at the base, bean sprouts and pork belly in the center, soba and fried egg parked on top, a geologic construction of carbs and crunch, protein and chew, all framed with the black and white of thickened Worcestershire and a zigzag of mayonnaise. This is okonomiyaki, the second most famous thing that ever happened to Hiroshima.

Bathed in perspiration he worked like a bull, turning over with a shovel the chalk and the clay which was to become cement. This brute strength of his came not through his intelligence but from the profundities of his strong body; it did not explode within him but flowed out of him in great waves through the thunder of the earth, across the stones and the rails, from this enormous ant-like crowd who with shouting and moaning were rising from the depths with spades and hammers, emerged from smoke-stacks and the factory buildings , from the breaches quarried from the rocks, from the smoky depths up toward the obelisks supporting the power-cables.

Like most readers, she felt nervous without a stack of novels at her disposal. In fact, she sometimes wondered: What did people do if they couldn’t read? On the other hand, maybe without those hours lost to novels she would have become a championship knitter, or a rock climber. Luckily,

After Giles Palot was burned to death, Sylvie’s mother went into a depression. For Sylvie this was the most shocking of the traumas she suffered, more seismic than Pierre’s betrayal, even sadder than her father’s execution. In Sylvie’s mind, her mother was a rock that could never crumble, the foundation of her life. Isabelle had put salve on her childish injuries, fed her when she was hungry, and calmed her father’s volcanic temper. But now Isabelle was helpless. She sat in a chair all day. If Sylvie lit a fire, Isabelle would look at it; if Sylvie prepared food, Isabelle would eat it mechanically; if Sylvie did not help her get dressed, Isabelle would spend all day in her underclothes. Giles’s fate had been sealed when a stack of newly printed sheets for Bibles in French had been found in the shop. The sheets were ready to be cut into pages and bound into volumes, after which they would have been taken to the secret warehouse in the rue du Mur. But there had not been time to finish them. So Giles was guilty, not just of heresy but of promoting heresy. There had been no mercy for him. In the eyes of the church, the Bible was the most dangerous of all banned books—especially translated into French or English, with marginal notes explaining how certain passages proved the correctness of Protestant teaching. Priests said that ordinary people were unable to rightly interpret God’s word, and needed guidance. Protestants said the Bible opened men’s eyes to the errors of the priesthood. Both sides saw reading the Bible as the central issue of the religious conflict that had swept Europe.

The spherules [that could only have formed from the combustion of rock] also were found at 17 other sites across four continents, an estimated 10 million metric tons' worth, further supporting the idea that whatever changed Earth did so on a massive scale. It's unlikely that a wildfire or thunderstorm would leave a geological calling card that immense, covering about 50 million square kilometers. 'We know something came close enough to Earth and it was hot enough that it melted rock, that's what these carbon spherules are. In order to create this type of evidence that we see around the world, it was big,' Tankersley says, contrasting the effects of an event so massive with the 1883 volcanic explosion on Krakatoa in Indonesia. 'When Krakatoa blew its stack, Cincinnati had no summer. Imagine winter all year round. That's just one little volcano blowing its top.

There is always some trace, Roger tells me, of the history of things, the impressions humans have left on them. The term for the study of rock layers in geology is stratigraphy, but it is also used in archaeology to describe the technique of seeking out the contexts of rocks, discovering the events that have left detectable traces on their surfaces – in the same way we might scan one another’s bodies, looking for those distinctive lines and marks which tell us something unspoken about the stranger opposite us on the train, or the friend we grew up with but have not seen for years, or the person we are falling in love with. A geologist’s task is to see beyond the ways in which time tries to smooth out difference, examining layers in order to isolate each shift to our world, to feel every fault line. We discuss how hard this is to do this with people, to imagine our lives not as one continuous line, but comprised of hundreds of versions stacked up behind us, and hundreds more ahead of us too, like those pairs of facing mirrors that make your reflection curl up infinitely on either side of you.

Many of the first generation of Psychobillies were often ignorant about the history of Rockabilly and gained their love of Rock’n’Roll not from lovingly collecting twenty-five year old 45’s tracked down in dusty American record stores but by watching ‘Grease’ and ‘Happy Days’ alongside seeing Matchbox and The Stray Cats on ‘Top Of The Pops’. This was a generation weaned on ‘The Wanderers’, ‘Lemon Popsicle’ and stacks of low-rent TV advertised Rock’n’Roll albums.... They may not have known who [1950s rockabilly-country singer] Narvel Felts and [1950s rockabilly artist] ‘Groovey’ Joe Poovey were but they sure as hell had heard of Darts and Showaddywaddy and they undoubtedly knew “who put the bomp in the bompshoobompshoobomp” never mind the fucking ramalamadingdong.

Carl left grumbling and Chase pushed the next guy out of the way. Loud curses and protests unused from the men in line. He handed Katie a stack of bills. "I'd like to buy three hundred dollars' worth of kisses." Katie's mouth dropped open as Chase came around to the inside of the kissing booth and yelled, "Sorry, boys, these lips are reserved!" The men grumbled as Katie finally got her bearings. "Are you crazy? Everybody's going to be talking about this." He kissed her and she grabbed his arms to hold on. When he pulled back, he was grinning. "Only 299 more to go."" -Chase & Katie

At the corner of the table sat a stack of papers with a big rock holding them down—made of a material, Lex noted, that she was pretty sure didn’t exist anywhere on the periodic table. Uncle Mort set the rock aside and started to sift through the papers, staring at them intently. “Should we point out that there’s nothing on them?” Lex whispered to Driggs. “And spoil the fun of watching an honest-to-God crazy person do what he does best?” “It’s written in Elixir ink,” Grotton said behind them. When Lex looked at him with the sort of expression that such a statement might elicit, he pursed his lips. “Invisible to everyone but the person who wrote it. Amateurs

Excerpted From Chapter One “Rock of Ages” floated lightly down the first floor corridor of the Hollywood Hotel’s west wing. It was Sunday morning, and Hattie Mae couldn’t go to church because she had to work, so she praised the Lord in her own way, but she praised Him softly out of consideration for the “Do Not Disturb” placards hanging from the doors she passed with her wooden cart full of fresh linens and towels. Actually Sundays were Hattie Mae’s favorite of the six days she worked each week. For one thing, her shift ended at noon on Sundays. For another, this was the day Miss Lillian always left a “little something” in her room to thank Hattie Mae for such good maid service. Most of the hotel’s long-term guests left a little change for their room maids, but in Miss Lillian’s case, the tip was usually three crinkly new one dollar bills. It seemed like an awful lot of money to Hattie Mae, whose weekly pay was only nineteen dollars. Still, Miss Lillian Lawrence could afford to be generous because she was a famous actress in the movies. She was also, Hattie Mae thought, a very fine lady. When Hattie Mae reached the end of the corridor, she knocked quietly on Miss Lillian’s door. It was still too early for most guests to be out of their rooms, but Miss Lillian was always up with the sun, not like some lazy folks who laid around in their beds ‘til noon, often making Hattie Mae late for Sunday dinner because she couldn’t leave until all the rooms along her corridor were made up. After knocking twice, Hattie Mae tried Miss Lillian’s door. It opened, so after selecting the softest towels from the stacks on her cart, she walked in. With the curtains drawn the room was dark, but Hattie Mae didn’t stop to switch on the overheard light because her arms were full of towels. The maid’s eyes were on the chest of drawers to her right where Miss Lillian always left her tip, so she didn’t see the handbag on the floor just inside the door. Hattie Mae tripped over the bag and fell headlong to the floor, landing inches from the dead body of Lillian Lawrence. In the dim light Hattie Mae stared into a pale face with a gaping mouth and a trickle of blood from a small red dot above one vacant green eye. Hattie Mae screamed at the top of her lungs and kept on screaming.

It was to be the longest flight I had ever made in my young life and one of the most interesting. Having always been interested in the magic of aviation I knew that the DC-6B, I boarded was an approximately 75 seat, trans-ocean, Pan Am Clipper. It would also be the last long distance propeller driven commercial airliner. The only difference between it and the DC-6A was that it didn’t have a large cargo door in its side, and it was also approximately 5 feet longer than the DC-6A. 1955 was a good year and people felt relatively safe with Dwight D. Eisenhower in the White House. “I like Ike” had been his political motto since before he assumed office on January 20, 1953, even many Democrats held him in high esteem for his military service and winning the war in Europe. Eisenhower obtained a truce in Korea and worked diligently trying to ease the tensions of the Cold War. He did however fail to win over Georgy Malenkov, or Nikolai Bulganin who succeeded him, as Premier of the Soviet Union in February of 1955. As a moderate Conservative he left America, as the strongest and most productive nation in the world, but unfortunately because of his lack of diplomacy and love of golf, failed to prevent Cuba from slipping into the communist camp. WFLA inaugurated its broadcasting in the Tampa Bay area on February 14, 1955. The most popular music was referred to as good music, and although big bands were at their zenith in 1942, by 1947 and music critics will tell you that their time had passed. However, Benny Goodman was only 46 in 1955, Tommy Dorsey was 49 and Count Basie was 51. So, in many sheltered quarters they were still in vogue and perhaps always will be. I for one had my Hi-Fidelity 33 1/3 rpm multi stacked record player and a stash of vinyl long play recordings shipped to Africa. For me time stood still as I listened and entertained my friends. Some years later I met Harry James at the Crystal Ballroom in Disneyland. Those were the days…. Big on the scene was “Rhythm in Blues,” an offshoot of widespread African-American music, that had its beginnings in the ‘40s. It would soon become the window that Rock and Roll would come crashing through.

That’s one of the key challenges of remote work: keeping everyone’s outlook healthy and happy. That task is insurmountable if you’ve stacked your team with personalities who tend to let their inner asshole loose every now and again. Even for people with the best intentions, relations can go astray if the work gets stressful (and what work doesn’t occasionally?). The best ballast you can have is as many folks in your boat as possible with a thoroughly optimistic outlook. We’re talking about people who go out of their way to make sure everyone is having a good time. Remember: sentiments are infectious, whether good or bad. That’s also why it’s as important to continuously monitor the work atmosphere as to hire for it. It’s never a good idea to let poisonous people stick around to spoil it for everyone else, but in a remote-work setup it’s deadly. When you’re a manager and your employees are far flung, it’s impossible to see the dread in their eyes, and that can be fatal. With respect to drama, it therefore makes sense to follow the “No Broken Windows” theory of enforcement. What are we talking about? Well, in the same way that New York cracked down in the ’90s on even innocuous offenses like throwing rocks through windows or jumping the turnstile, a manager of remote workers needs to make an example of even the small stuff—things like snippy comments or passive-aggressive responses. While this responsibility naturally falls to those in charge, it works even better if policed by everyone in the company.

All that is human melted into the sky and faded into the mountains. Is that a paradox? That a man could never need or have better companionship than himself? As for the solitary confinement of the mind, that solipsism, like the other absurdities of the professional philosopher, is the product of too much time wasted in library stacks between the covers of a book and smoke-hilled coffeehouses, bad for the brains, and conversation-clogged seminars. To refute the solipsist or the metaphysical idealist, all that you have to do is take him out and throw a rock at his head. If he ducks, he’s a liar. His logic may be airtight, but his argument, far from revealing the delusions of living experience, only exposes the limitations of logic.

Marks … I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to find your spectacles in this wreckage.” “I have another pair at home,” she ventured. “Thank God.” Leo sat up with a quiet grunt of discomfort. “Now, if we stand on the highest pile of debris, it’s only a short distance to the surface. I’m going to hoist you up, get you out of here, and then you’re going to ride back to Ramsay House. Cam trained the horse, so you won’t need to guide him. He’ll find his way back home with no trouble.” “What are you going to do?” she asked, bewildered. He sounded rather sheepish. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to wait here until you send someone for me.” “Why?” “I have a—” He paused, searching for a word. “Splinter.” She felt indignant. “You’re going to make me ride back alone and unescorted and virtually blind, to send someone to rescue you? All because you have a splinter?” “A large one,” he volunteered. “Where is it? Your finger? Your hand? Maybe I can help to … Oh, God. ” This last as he took her hand and brought it to his shoulder. His shirt was wet with blood, and a thick shard of timber protruded from his shoulder. “That’s not a splinter,” she said in horror. “You’ve been impaled. What can I do? Shall I pull it out?” “No, it might be lodged against an artery. And I wouldn’t care to bleed out down here.” She crawled closer to him, bringing her face close to his to examine him anxiously... “Don’t worry,” he murmured. “It looks worse than it is.” But Catherine didn’t agree. If anything, it was worse than it looked... Stripping off her riding coat, she tried to lay it over his chest. “What are you doing?” he asked. “Trying to keep you warm.” Leo plucked the garment off his chest and made a scoffing sound. “Don’t be ridiculous. First, the injury isn’t that bad. Second, this tiny thing is not capable of keeping any part of me warm. Now, about my plan—” “It is obviously a significant injury,” she said, “and I do not agree to your plan. I have a better one.” “Of course you do,” he replied sardonically. “Marks, for once would you do as I ask?” “No, I’m not going to leave you here. I’m going to pile up enough debris for both of us to climb out.” “You can’t even see, damn it. And you can’t move these timbers and stones. You’re too small.” “There is no need to make derogatory remarks about my stature,” she said, lurching upward and squinting at her surroundings. Identifying the highest pile of debris, she made her way to it and hunted for nearby rocks. “I’m not being derogatory.” He sounded exasperated. “Your stature is absolutely perfect for my favorite activity. But you’re not built for hauling rocks. Blast it, Marks, you’re going to hurt yourself—” “Stay there,” Catherine said sharply, hearing him push some heavy object aside. “You’ll worsen your injury, and then it will be even more difficult to get you out. Let me do the work.” Finding a heap of ashlar blocks, she picked one up and lugged it up the pile, trying not to trip over her own skirts. “You’re not strong enough,” Leo said, sounding aggravated and out of breath. “What I lack in physical strength,” she replied, going for another block, “I make up for in determination.” “How inspiring. Could we set aside the heroic fortitude for one bloody moment and dredge up some common sense?” “I’m not going to argue with you, my lord. I need to save my breath for”—she paused to heft another block—“stacking rocks.” Somewhere amid the ordeal, Leo decided hazily that he would never underestimate Catherine Marks again. Ounce for ounce, she was the most insanely obstinate person he had ever known, dragging rocks and debris while half blind and hampered by long skirts, diligently crossing back and forth across his vision like an industrious mole. She had decided to build a mound upon which they could climb out, and nothing would stop her.

I never see any grow. I never see one a-growen.’ ‘I never see one a-growen neither, but they grow all the same. You pick up all the rocks offen this-here hill and in a year there’s as many out again. I lay there’ll be a stack to pick up right here again next year.’ ‘I can’t seem to think it! Rocks a-growen now! They don’t seem alive. They seem dead-like. Maybe they’ve got another kind of way to be alive.’ ‘Maybe they have. All I know is they grow.

The Nerek believed that they were the children of a woman and a serpent, and that the serpent dwelt still within the body, that gently curved spine, the stacked knuckles reaching up to hide its head in the centre of the brain. But the mountains despised that serpent, desired only to drag it back to the ground, to return it once more to its belly, slithering in the cracks and coiled beneath rocks. And so, in the course of a life, the serpent was made to bow, to bend and twist.

On September 29, the day after the James attack in Birmingham, the screen showed the arrival in Oxford of former Major General Edwin Walker, who, disciplined for insubordination, had resigned from the U.S. Army in flaming public protest against what he called the Kennedy Administration’s “collaboration and collusion with the international Communist conspiracy.” Walker already had gone on the radio to rally volunteers, confessing that he had been “on the wrong side” when he carried out Eisenhower’s orders to integrate Little Rock’s Central High School five years earlier. “Barnett yes, Castro no!” he declared. “Bring your flags, your tents and your skillets! It is time! Now or never!” Other cameras showed trucks and cars already cruising the streets of Oxford. Intelligence reports picked up Klan Klaverns mobilizing from as far away as Florida. Barnett’s desk was stacked with telegrams offering services to the defense of Mississippi.

We passed stacks of books and parchments, the shelves either built into the stone itself or made of dark, solid wood. Hallways lined with both vanished into the mountain itself, and every few minutes, a little reading area popped up, full of tidy tables, low-burning glass lamps, and deep-cushioned chairs and couches. Ancient woven rugs adorned the floors beneath them, usually set before fireplaces that had been carved into the rock and kept well away from any shelves, their grates fine-meshed enough to retain any wandering embers. Cosy, despite the size of the space; warm, despite the unknown terror lurking below.

There stands upon the horizon a new figure of self yet to be unfolded that one must...honor. All of this will be the same, but it will look and feel different upon one’s return—it is important to know this now. One can stand upon a ridge high above the valley, upon a formation of jutting rocks and look over the precipice of what one has known. Even in its multitude of permutations, all looks familiar: the mountains, the fields, the skies—all of it connected to one’s eyes as though by invisible threads. The idea of breaking free from them is now rather troubling. Do those threads have the tensility to endure the stretch of a journey? Will these specters of recognition remain immutable and intact and hitched to the undulating satchel through one’s peregrinations to yet unseen territories, or do these delicate snares snap, relegating these identities only to the wake, sequestered in their purity even from one’s keenest reminiscence? Irrespective of the case, one should assume there to be a reconstitution of both identifier and identified over this inexorable trek—the unyielding essence of each layered, nevertheless, by the sediment of accumulating circumstance until there exists an uncertainty when they meet again. The landscape of then is a petrified visage—the organic layers of tree barks are supplanted by crystalized molds of mineral simulacrum, grass stalks of ages ago have dried and yellowed, autumn blossoms breathe new scents unaware of previous aromas whose places they now occupy, ambling figures have crumbled to bone whistles stacked in cylinders in muted sarcophagi with their predecessors. Faces meet landscapes—there is a vague recognition between the overlapping partners, an attempt at translation to identify elements once apprehended, but inevitably no solution is available in the moment that can bridge pristine artifacts with reconfigured forms.

We all hit rock bottom, Isabelle, but the courageous ones pick themselves up.

She smiled and then she was gone, and I drove home more depressed than I had been in years. Why? Because the truth was that I wanted to drink. And I don’t mean I wanted to ease back into it, either, with casual Manhattans sipped at a mahogany and brass-rail bar with red leather booths and rows of gleaming glasses stacked in front of a long wall mirror. I wanted busthead boilermakers of Jack Daniel’s and draft beer, vodka on the rocks, Beam straight up with water on the side, raw tequila that left you breathless and boiling in your own juices. And I wanted it all in a run-down Decatur or Magazine Street saloon where I didn’t have to hold myself accountable for anything and where my gargoyle image in the mirror would be simply another drunken curiosity like the neon-lit rain striking against the window. After four years of sobriety I once again wanted to fill my mind with spiders and crawling slugs and snakes that grew corpulent off the pieces of my life that I would slay daily. I blamed it on the killing of Julio Segura. I decided my temptation for alcohol and self-destruction was maybe even an indication that my humanity was still intact. I said the rosary that night and did not fall asleep until the sky went gray with the false dawn.

Can I have your sperm?” “Umm, no,” says my very handsome friend. He’s standing in the doorway of his stunning Upper East Side townhouse, wearing a completely bewildered expression. Who can blame him? It’s 10 p.m. and I’m in my pajamas, my bunned-up hair hanging askew off my head. “Before you say no, hear me out––” “No,” he repeats as if I haven’t just given him instructions. He eyeballs my pjs with the pigs with wings pattern on them. A joke gift Delia bought me when she told me she sleeps naked and I said I would do that when pigs fly. They’re very comfy. “Are you in your pajamas?” “Yes.” I push past him to get inside. “I’m prepared to assume all cost,” I rush to say, my voice high and marked with desperation. “You know my financial situation. You know I don’t need help in that regard. And you can participate as little or as much as you want in raising our child––” “Slow down, Stella––” “Jeff said no...” I walk directly into his living room and come to an abrupt stop. Stacks of cardboard boxes are everywhere. “Are you moving?” “Yes.” Ethan brushes a hand over his gorgeous face. “Where’s this coming from?” “I want a baby and the gays said I was too structured. And we’re friends, right? We respect each other, right?” “Wait? What gays?” “The architect, and the professor of economics at Columbia. Keep up, will you.” Ethan chuckles and I glare back. This wasn’t supposed to be this hard. And it’s poking at all my sore spots. “I really liked the professor. He’s the one that said I was too structured. The architect said he found a more geographically suitable candidate, but I’m pretty sure he was lying because I would’ve moved uptown if that was the only issue.” “Okay––” he says, taking a deep breath, his hands on his hips. “You want a baby.” “Yes.” “So go to a sperm bank.” “Too anonymous.” “I’m not giving you my sperm, Stella. I’m moving to Los Angeles in less than two weeks and I’m getting married. I don’t think she’d be too keen on me handing over my sperm.” Stunned, I rock back on my heels. “What?! To who?” “To a woman I’m in love with.” He smiles then, the sweetest of smiles, and I know he’s serious. “Camilla’s friend.” At my blank response he continues, “The actress––we haven’t talked in months.” “I called.” “To tell me my investments are up thirteen percent.” “You’re up fourteen for the year now. And you said you were too busy for a drink.” “You canceled the last time.” Totally dejected, I slump down on the armrest of his couch. “You were the last name on my list.” I can’t keep the disappointment out of my voice. I’m so bummed I may start to cry and I am not a crier. Ethan chuckles softly. “Wow, thanks.” “You know what I mean.” “Why not a sperm bank?” “I want my kid to know his or her father. I don’t want to tell them I bought their father.

Break their bones. That’s what Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin told the Israeli soldiers, or so the story goes. Some Israelis insist this was a command to be soft with the Palestinians. Break their bones but don’t kill them, beat them but don’t shoot them. But an American reporter who covered that intifada told me he saw Israeli soldiers systematically break the arms of little boys, one by one, working their way through a village, so they couldn’t throw rocks.

He dropped the stack on to the ground, then he retrieved a stack of shiny green rocks from his inventory

Cakes and pies lined the parsonage countertop and the church refrigerator was stacked with casseroles. They baked spicy apple harvest cakes and angel biscuits so light they seemed to hover above the pan. They brought him jars of homemade bread and butter pickles, plum preserves, and chow-chow. Every morning cars lined the sidewalk in front of the church, and ladies bearing gifts of honey buns and banana bread still warm from the oven filed into the church. After a particularly moving sermon on "Faith, Fishes, and Loaves," they whipped up enough salmon croquettes and tuna casseroles to feed the masses.

Digging into the pancakes in the interim, Sarah moaned. “These are so good.” Abe stared at her mouth. “Stop making those sounds or you won’t get to finish the stack.

I keep getting drunk. There’s no more interesting way to say it. Only drunk does the volume crank down. Liquor no longer lets me bullshit myself that I’m taller, faster, funnier. Instead, it shrinks me to a plodding zombie state in which one day smudges into every other—it blurs time. Swaying on the back landing in the small hours, I stare at the boxy garage and ghostly replicas of it multiplying along either side, like playing cards spread against the slate sky. Though this plural perspective is standard, I’m surprised by my own shitfaced state. The walkman sends punk rock banging across the tiny bones of my ears. And with the phonebook-sized stack of papers on my lap still unmarked, I—once more, with feeling—take the pledge to quit drinking. Cross my heart. Pinky swear to myself. This is it, I say, the last night I sit here. Okay, I say in my head. I give. You’re right. (Who am I talking to? Fighting with?) By the next afternoon, while I’m lugging the third armload of groceries up the back stairs, Dev, who’s bolted ahead to the living room, shrieks like he’s been stabbed, and I drop the sack on the kitchen floor, hearing as it hits what must be a jar of tomato sauce detonating. In the living room, I find Dev has leaped—illicitly, for the nine hundredth time—off the sofa back, trying to land in the clothes basket like a circus diver into a bucket of water. He’s whapped his noggin on the coffee table corner. Now dead center on his pale, formerly smooth forehead, there’s a blue knot like a horn trying to break through. I gather him up and rush to the kitchen, aiming to grab a soothing bag of frozen peas. But I step on a shard of tomato sauce jar, gash my instep, slide as on a banana peel, barely hanging on to Dev till we skid to a stop. I tiptoe across the linoleum, dragging a snail of blood till I can plop him in a kitchen chair, instructing him to hold the peas to his head and not move an inch while I bunny-hop upstairs to bandage my foot. Coming back, I find he’s dragged the formerly white laundry into the kitchen to mop up the tomato sauce. I’m helping, he says, albeit surrounded by gleaming daggers of glass while on his forehead the blue Bambi horn seems to throb. Minutes later, my hand twists off a beer cap as I tell myself that a beer isn’t really a drink after all. So I have another after that to speed preparing the pot roast, and maybe even a third. Before we head to the park, I tuck two more beer bottles in my coat pocket, plus one in my purse alongside a juice box.

YOU STAND THERE, BRACED. CLOUD SHADOWS RACE OVER the buff rock stacks as a projected film, casting a queasy, mottled ground rash. The air hisses and it is no local breeze but the great harsh sweep of wind from the turning of the earth. The wild country—indigo jags of mountain, grassy plain everlasting, tumbled stones like fallen cities, the flaring roll of sky—provokes a spiritual shudder. It is like a deep note that cannot be heard but is felt, it is like a claw in the gut.

I was constantly torn between my desperate need to achieve my “gifted child” potential and my personal shame over the fact I couldn’t make my bed, do my washing, or take care of my finances. When you stack years of feeling like a failure on top of each other, you get a person with rock-bottom self-esteem.