Static Hair Quotes

The night crackled ... Everything had turned to static electricity in the heat. I combed my hair to watch the sparks fly from the ends.

Henry's recollections of the past, in contrast to Proust, are done while in movement. He may remember his first wife while making love to a whore, or he may remember his very first love while walking the streets, traveling to see a friend; and life does not stop while he remembers. Analysis in movement. No static vivisection. Henry's daily and continuous flow of life, his sexual activity, his talks with everyone, his cafe life, his conversations with people in the street, which I once considered an interruption to writing, I now believe to be a quality which distinguishes him from other writers. He never writes in cold blood: he is always writing in white heat. It is what I do with the journal, carrying it everywhere, writing on cafe tables while waiting for a friend, on the train, on the bus, in waiting rooms at the station, while my hair is washed, at the Sorbonne when the lectures get tedious, on journeys, trips, almost while people are talking. It is while cooking, gardening, walking, or love-making that I remember my childhood, and not while reading Freud's 'Preface to a Little Girl's Journal.

This week in live current events: your eyes. All power can be dangerous: Direct or alternating, you, socket to me. Plugged in and the grid is humming, this electricity, molecule-deep desire: particular friction, a charge strong enough to stop a heart or start it again; volt, re-volt-- I shudder, I stutter, I start to life. I've got my ion you, copper-top, so watch how you conduct yourself. Here's today's newsflash: a battery of rolling blackouts in California, sudden, like lightning kisses: sudden, whitehot darkness and you're here, fumbling for that small switch with an urgent surge strong enough to kill lesser machines. Static makes hair raise, makes things cling, makes things rise like a gathering storm charging outside our darkened house and here I am: tempest, pouring out mouthfulls of tsunami on the ground, I've got that rain-soaked kite, that drenched key. You know what it's for, circuit-breaker, you know how to kiss until it's hertz.

She handed it to him. His hand closed over hers. He drew her wrist to his mouth and pressed his lips against it. A squeak came from her. She had made that noise. His lips felt hot. He spoke against her skin. “Your hair,” he said, “is a glory. Promise me you will never pin it up again.” The brush of his mouth sent static sparks along her skin. She felt flushed, shivering, light-headed. “I don’t . . . It would be a scandal.” He turned her wrist ever so slightly, finding her pulse with his tongue. Her breath caught. She heard him breathe in deeply. “Then unpin it just for me,” he whispered.

Episodic memories get stored in the hippocampus as our stories—our interpretation of events with our emotional responses attached to them. These are memories that are tied to serious emotional reactions. If something happened in your life that was really significant to you, the emotions tied to that memory become attached like cat hair or static cling. So when we have an emotional response in the future, the amygdala immediately pulls this EAM file in order to decide how to respond. What fires together, wires together.

I don’t know what to . . . to think.” There was a horrifying burn of tears crawling up my throat. “This is all overwhelming for you, I imagine. The whole world as you know it is on the brink of great change, and you’re here and don’t even know my name.” The man smiled so broadly, I wondered if it hurt. “You can call me Rolland.” Then he extended a hand. My gaze dropped to it and I made no attempt to take it. Rolland chuckled as he turned and strolled back to the desk. “So, you’re a hybrid? Mutated and linked to him on such an intense level that if one of you dies, so does the other?” His question caught me off guard, but I kept quiet. He sat on the edge of the desk. “You’re actually the first hybrid I’ve seen.” “She really isn’t anything special.” The redhead sneered. “Frankly, she’s rather filthy, like an unclean animal.” As stupid as it was, my cheeks heated, because I was filthy, and Daemon had just physically removed me from him. My pride—my everything—was officially wounded. Rolland chuckled. “She’s had a rough day, Sadi.” At her name, every muscle in my body locked up, and my gaze swung back to her. That was Sadi? The one Dee said was trying to molest Daemon—my Daemon? Anger punched through the confusion and hurt. Of course it would have to be a freaking walking and talking model and not a hag. “Rough day or not, I can’t imagine she cleans up well.” Sadi looked at Daemon as she placed a hand on his chest. “I’m kind of disappointed.” “Are you?” Daemon replied.
 Every hair on my body rose as my arms unfolded.
 “Yes,” she purred. “I really think you can do better. Lots better.” As she spoke, she trailed red-painted fingers down the center of his chest, over his abdomen, heading straight for the button on his jeans. And oh, hell to the no. “Get your hands off him.”
 Sadi’s head snapped in my direction. “Excuse me?”
 “I don’t think I stuttered.” I took a step forward. “But it looks like you need me to repeat it. Get your freaking hands off him.” One side of her plump red lips curled up. “You want to make me?”
 In the back of my head, I was aware that Sadi didn’t move or speak like the other Luxen. Her mannerisms were too human, but then that thought was quickly chased away when Daemon reached down and pulled her hand away. “Stop it,” he murmured, voice dropped low in that teasing way of his. I saw red. The pictures on the wall rattled and the papers on the desk started to lift up. Static charged over my skin. I was about to pull a Beth right here, seconds away from floating to the ceiling and ripping out every strand of red— “And you stop it,” Daemon said, but the teasing quality was gone from his words. There was a warning in them that took the wind right out of my pissed-off sails. The pictures settled as I gaped at him. Being slapped in the face would’ve been better.

Already the people murmur that I am your enemy because they say that in verse I give the world your me. They lie, Julia de Burgos. They lie, Julia de Burgos. Who rises in my verses is not your voice. It is my voice because you are the dressing and the essence is me; and the most profound abyss is spread between us. You are the cold doll of social lies, and me, the virile starburst of the human truth. You, honey of courtesan hypocrisies; not me; in all my poems I undress my heart. You are like your world, selfish; not me who gambles everything betting on what I am. You are only the ponderous lady very lady; not me; I am life, strength, woman. You belong to your husband, your master; not me; I belong to nobody, or all, because to all, to all I give myself in my clean feeling and in my thought. You curl your hair and paint yourself; not me; the wind curls my hair, the sun paints me. You are a housewife, resigned, submissive, tied to the prejudices of men; not me; unbridled, I am a runaway Rocinante snorting horizons of God's justice. You in yourself have no say; everyone governs you; your husband, your parents, your family, the priest, the dressmaker, the theatre, the dance hall, the auto, the fine furnishings, the feast, champagne, heaven and hell, and the social, "what will they say." Not in me, in me only my heart governs, only my thought; who governs in me is me. You, flower of aristocracy; and me, flower of the people. You in you have everything and you owe it to everyone, while me, my nothing I owe to nobody. You nailed to the static ancestral dividend, and me, a one in the numerical social divider, we are the duel to death who fatally approaches. When the multitudes run rioting leaving behind ashes of burned injustices, and with the torch of the seven virtues, the multitudes run after the seven sins, against you and against everything unjust and inhuman, I will be in their midst with the torch in my hand.

Both the Pollyannas and the Cassandras are wrong, and both stand in the way of social justice, the former by condemning us all to catastrophic climate change and the loss of other vital ecosystem services for the sake of profit; the latter by condemning us all to a hair-shirted existence and refusal of further human development due to a romantic, unscientific belief in a static, unchanging balance of nature.

A clatter of metal against the concrete made me look back. Liam had moved on from the car to a nearby pile of bikes that were tangled together like brambles. He picked through the frames and spokes and wheels, working carefully, trying to get down to whatever he'd seen under them.... "Do you actually know how to ride?" "Do I know how to ride?" Liam scoffed, leaning over the bike's seat so his face was inches from mine. His pale blue eyes were electric with his excitement; they sent a charge through me, sizzling the rest of the world into peaceful, quiet static. That last bit of distance must have been as unbearable to him as it was to me, because his fingers came down over where my hands rested on the busted leather seat. I felt his touch spread over my skin like late afternoon sunshine. His lips skimmed my cheek, his breath warm against my ear as he said in low, honeyed tones, "Not only can I ride, darlin', but I can give you a few pointers– "Hey, Hell's Angels!" Cole barked. "I didn't bring you in here to shop around for yourselves! Get your assess over here!" Liam expression clouded over as he pulled back, the fluttering excitement vanishing like a candle blown out. with a single breath. I must have looked as disappointed as I felt, letting out a small sound of irritation, because just like that he was smiling again as he tucked a loose strand of hair back over my ear. A softer, smaller smile than before, but one meant for me. It warmed me down to my bones.

I didn't want to know these things about myself. I splashed water on my face, cold water, like Connie had once told me to do. "Cold water makes your pores close up," and maybe it was true: I felt my skin tighten, water dripping down my face and neck. How desperately Connie and I thought that if we performed these rituals - washed our faces with cold water, brushed our hair into a static frenzy with a boar-bristle brush before bed - some proof would solve itself and a new life would spread out before us.

In a few dreams, I’d answer the phone and hear a long silence, which I interpreted as my mother’s speechless disdain. Or I heard crackling static, and cried out, “Mom? Dad?” into the receiver, desperate and devastated that I couldn’t hear what they were saying. And other times, I was just reading transcripts of dialogues between the two of them, typed on aging onionskin paper that fell apart in my hands. Occasionally I’d spot my parents in places like the lobby of my apartment building or on the steps of the New York Public Library. My mother seemed disappointed and rushed, as though the dream had pulled her away from an important task. “What happened to your hair?” she asked me in the Starbucks on Lexington Avenue, then she trotted down the hall to the restroom.

From the line, watching, three things are striking: (a) what on TV is a brisk crack is here a whooming roar that apparently is what a shotgun really sounds like; (b) trapshooting looks comparatively easy, because now the stocky older guy who's replaced the trim bearded guy at the rail is also blowing these little fluorescent plates away one after the other, so that a steady rain of lumpy orange crud is falling into the Nadir's wake; (c) a clay pigeon, when shot, undergoes a frighteningly familiar-looking midflight peripeteia -- erupting material, changing vector, and plummeting seaward in a corkscrewy way that all eerily recalls footage of the 1986 Challenger disaster. All the shooters who precede me seem to fire with a kind of casual scorn, and all get eight out of ten or above. But it turns out that, of these six guys, three have military-combat backgrounds, another two are L. L. Bean-model-type brothers who spend weeks every year hunting various fast-flying species with their "Papa" in southern Canada, and the last has got not only his own earmuffs, plus his own shotgun in a special crushed-velvet-lined case, but also his own trapshooting range in his backyard (31) in North Carolina. When it's finally my turn, the earmuffs they give me have somebody else's ear-oil on them and don't fit my head very well. The gun itself is shockingly heavy and stinks of what I'm told is cordite, small pubic spirals of which are still exiting the barrel from the Korea-vet who preceded me and is tied for first with 10/10. The two brothers are the only entrants even near my age; both got scores of 9/10 and are now appraising me coolly from identical prep-school-slouch positions against the starboard rail. The Greek NCOs seem extremely bored. I am handed the heavy gun and told to "be bracing a hip" against the aft rail and then to place the stock of the weapon against, no, not the shoulder of my hold-the-gun arm but the shoulder of my pull-the-trigger arm. (My initial error in this latter regard results in a severely distorted aim that makes the Greek by the catapult do a rather neat drop-and-roll.) Let's not spend a lot of time drawing this whole incident out. Let me simply say that, yes, my own trapshooting score was noticeably lower than the other entrants' scores, then simply make a few disinterested observations for the benefit of any novice contemplating trapshooting from a 7NC Megaship, and then we'll move on: (1) A certain level of displayed ineptitude with a firearm will cause everyone who knows anything about firearms to converge on you all at the same time with cautions and advice and handy tips. (2) A lot of the advice in (1) boils down to exhortations to "lead" the launched pigeon, but nobody explains whether this means that the gun's barrel should move across the sky with the pigeon or should instead sort of lie in static ambush along some point in the pigeon's projected path. (3) Whatever a "hair trigger" is, a shotgun does not have one. (4) If you've never fired a gun before, the urge to close your eyes at the precise moment of concussion is, for all practical purposes, irresistible. (5) The well-known "kick" of a fired shotgun is no misnomer; it knocks you back several steps with your arms pinwheeling wildly for balance, which when you're holding a still-loaded gun results in mass screaming and ducking and then on the next shot a conspicuous thinning of the crowd in the 9-Aft gallery above. Finally, (6), know that an unshot discus's movement against the vast lapis lazuli dome of the open ocean's sky is sun-like -- i.e., orange and parabolic and right-to-left -- and that its disappearance into the sea is edge-first and splashless and sad.

Images surround us; cavorting broadcast in the minds of others, we wear the motley tailored by their bad digestions, the shame and failure, plague pandemics and private indecencies, unpaid bills, and animal ecstasies remembered in hospital beds, our worst deeds and best intentions will not stay still, scolding, mocking, or merely chattering they assail each other, shocked at recognition. Sometimes simplicity serves, though even the static image of Saint John Baptist received prenatal attentions (six months along, leaping for joy in his mother's womb when she met Mary who had conceived the day before): once delivered he stands steady in a camel's hair loincloth at a ford in the river, morose, ascetic on locusts and honey, molesting passers-by, upbraiding the flesh on those who wear it with pleasure. And the Nazarene whom he baptized? Three years pass, in a humility past understanding: and then death, disappointed? unsuspecting? and the body left on earth, the one which was to rule the twelve tribes of Israel, and on earth, left crying out - My God, why dost thou shame me? Hopelessly ascendent in resurrection, the image is pegged on the wind by an epileptic tentmaker, his strong hands stretch the canvas of faith into a gaudy caravanserai, shelter for travelers wearied of the burning sand, lured by forgetfulness striped crimson and gold, triple-tiered, visible from afar, redolent of the east, and level and wide the sun crashes the fist of reality into that desert where the truth still walks barefoot.

They waited. And waited. And waited some more. Still nothing happened. She turned to Evan and looped her arms round his neck. "I think we might have to kiss. Aurora started them [The Harps] playing with her human boyfriend. I bet hey didn't just hold hands." Suddenly he looked just like the boys at school, impish and foxy. He out his arms tight around her neck. "Or maybe we have to do something more?" She laughed. "You wish." Their faces were inches apart. Little sparks of static were flashing and clicking between them. "I want to kiss you, just in case," he said. So he did, right there beneath the hard in the weird purple light, with their hair standing out like dandelion's. Her first true kiss. Strange. Soft. Sweet. And pretty painful because of the sparks that flew between their lips and zapped of their teeth. And the next moment they were hugging and kissing and almost falling over, until they bumped up against the harp. And this time it didn't ripple beneath them, it gave way." Page 272

My beautiful wooden leader with your heartful of medals made of wood, fixing it each time so you almost win, you long to be bandaged before you have been cut. My love for you is the love of one statue for another: tensed and static. General, you enlist my body in your heroic struggle to become real: though you promise bronze rescues you hold me by the left ankle so that my head brushes the ground, my eyes are blinded, my hair fills with white ribbons. There are hordes of me now, alike and paralyzed, we follow you scattering floral tributes under your hooves. Magnificent on your wooden horse you point with your fringed hand; the sun sets, and the people all ride off in the other direction.

Although I like a good scary movie, I’ve never actually believed anything paranormal or supernatural could be real...until today. Magic genies, witch spells, and magic troll dolls with funky bright hair are other ideas that have crossed my mind. It also occurs to me that I may be going crazy, and will have to be committed before I finish high school.

Her hair came undone and rose off her shoulders, quivering as if from a breeze. Static kept snapping through the strands, and Jasmira’s eyes turned completely white. Her arms were covered in spiraled script. It crawled and twisted on her skin. The text shone burgundy. Single letters kept separating and slowly flaking off. They resembled tiny red fire sparks, burning brightly, and then disappearing all together.

our genome is less like a static blueprint and more like a piano. The piano keys represent the genome. We each get different keys, and the keys don’t change throughout our life: we die with the same piano keys, or genome, we’re born with. What changes is the sheet music: the epigenetics. That sheet of music determines what tune is played—what genes are expressed—and those genes determine our traits—everything from IQ to hair color.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous" i Tell me it was for the hunger & nothing less. For hunger is to give the body what it knows it cannot keep. That this amber light whittled down by another war is all that pins my hand to your chest. i You, drowning                         between my arms — stay. You, pushing your body                          into the river only to be left                          with yourself — stay. i I’ll tell you how we’re wrong enough to be forgiven. How one night, after backhanding mother, then taking a chainsaw to the kitchen table, my father went to kneel in the bathroom until we heard his muffled cries through the walls. And so I learned that a man, in climax, was the closest thing to surrender. i Say surrender. Say alabaster. Switchblade.                    Honeysuckle. Goldenrod. Say autumn. Say autumn despite the green                    in your eyes. Beauty despite daylight. Say you’d kill for it. Unbreakable dawn                    mounting in your throat. My thrashing beneath you                    like a sparrow stunned with falling. i Dusk: a blade of honey between our shadows, draining. i I wanted to disappear — so I opened the door to a stranger’s car. He was divorced. He was still alive. He was sobbing into his hands (hands that tasted like rust). The pink breast cancer ribbon on his keychain swayed in the ignition. Don’t we touch each other just to prove we are still here? I was still here once. The moon, distant & flickering, trapped itself in beads of sweat on my neck. I let the fog spill through the cracked window & cover my fangs. When I left, the Buick kept sitting there, a dumb bull in pasture, its eyes searing my shadow onto the side of suburban houses. At home, I threw myself on the bed like a torch & watched the flames gnaw through my mother’s house until the sky appeared, bloodshot & massive. How I wanted to be that sky — to hold every flying & falling at once. i Say amen. Say amend. Say yes. Say yes anyway. i In the shower, sweating under cold water, I scrubbed & scrubbed. i In the life before this one, you could tell two people were in love because when they drove the pickup over the bridge, their wings would grow back just in time. Some days I am still inside the pickup. Some days I keep waiting. i It’s not too late. Our heads haloed             with gnats & summer too early to leave any marks.             Your hand under my shirt as static intensifies on the radio.             Your other hand pointing your daddy’s revolver             to the sky. Stars falling one by one in the cross hairs.             This means I won’t be afraid if we’re already             here. Already more than skin can hold. That a body             beside a body must ma

Horgan recalls renting horses in Santa Fe and riding with Robert on the Lake Peak trail across the Sangre de Cristo range and down to the village of Cowles: “We hit the divide at the very top of that mountain in a tremendous thunderstorm . . . immense, huge pounding rain. We sat under our horses for lunch and ate oranges, [and we] were drenched. . . . I was looking at Robert and all of a sudden I noticed his hair was standing straight up, responding to the static. Marvelous.

It’s not too late. Our heads haloed with gnats & summer too early to leave any marks. Your hand under my shirt as static intensifies on the radio. Your other hand pointing your daddy’s revolver to the sky. Stars falling one by one in the cross hairs. This means I won’t be afraid if we’re already here. Already more than skin can hold. That a body beside a body must make a field full of ticking. That your name is only the sound of clocks being set back another hour & morning finds our clothes on your mother’s front porch, shed like week-old lilies.

A reflection on Robert Lowell Robert Lowell knew I was not one of his devotees. I attended his famous “office hours” salon only a few times. Life Studies was not a book of central importance for me, though I respected it. I admired his writing, but not the way many of my Boston friends did. Among poets in his generation, poems by Elizabeth Bishop, Alan Dugan, and Allen Ginsberg meant more to me than Lowell’s. I think he probably sensed some of that. To his credit, Lowell nevertheless was generous to me (as he was to many other young poets) just the same. In that generosity, and a kind of open, omnivorous curiosity, he was different from my dear teacher at Stanford, Yvor Winters. Like Lowell, Winters attracted followers—but Lowell seemed almost dismayed or a little bewildered by imitators; Winters seemed to want disciples: “Wintersians,” they were called. A few years before I met Lowell, when I was still in California, I read his review of Winters’s Selected Poems. Lowell wrote that, for him, Winters’s poetry passed A. E. Housman’s test: he felt that if he recited it while he was shaving, he would cut himself. One thing Lowell and Winters shared, that I still revere in both of them, was a fiery devotion to the vocal essence of poetry: the work and interplay of sentences and lines, rhythm and pitch. The poetry in the sounds of the poetry, in a reader’s voice: neither page nor stage. Winters criticizing the violence of Lowell’s enjambments, or Lowell admiring a poem in pentameter for its “drill-sergeant quality”: they shared that way of thinking, not matters of opinion but the matter itself, passionately engaged in the art and its vocal—call it “technical”—materials. Lowell loved to talk about poetry and poems. His appetite for that kind of conversation seemed inexhaustible. It tended to be about historical poetry, mixed in with his contemporaries. When he asked you, what was Pope’s best work, it was as though he was talking about a living colleague . . . which in a way he was. He could be amusing about that same sort of thing. He described Julius Caesar’s entourage waiting in the street outside Cicero’s house while Caesar chatted up Cicero about writers. “They talked about poetry,” said Lowell in his peculiar drawl. “Caesar asked Cicero what he thought of Jim Dickey.” His considerable comic gift had to do with a humor of self and incongruity, rather than wit. More surreal than donnish. He had a memorable conversation with my daughter Caroline when she was six years old. A tall, bespectacled man with a fringe of long gray hair came into her living room, with a certain air. “You look like somebody famous,” she said to him, “but I can’t remember who.” “Do I?” “Yes . . . now I remember!— Benjamin Franklin.” “He was a terrible man, just awful.” “Or no, I don’t mean Benjamin Franklin. I mean you look like a Christmas ornament my friend Heather made out of Play-Doh, that looked like Benjamin Franklin.” That left Robert Lowell with nothing to do but repeat himself: “Well, he was a terrible man.” That silly conversation suggests the kind of social static or weirdness the man generated. It also happens to exemplify his peculiar largeness of mind . . . even, in a way, his engagement with the past. When he died, I realized that a large vacuum had appeared at the center of the world I knew.

Why I Like Being Baldy • Never have to pay for a haircut • No need for styling • The birds love it • You can get together with a fellow baldy and pretend to be a pair of tits • You can pretend to be Ming the Merciless, Emperor of the Galaxy, with more conviction than people with hair • It makes you look hard • Richard O’Brien • You can draw a line down the middle of your head and pretend to be a cock • A hat will always fit • No dickies • Save money on Shampoo • Time saver should you wish to become ordained into an order of Buddhist monks Why I Don’t Like Being Baldy • Can never make a balloon static to entertain a child • Might get mistaken for Ross Kemp • Lack of hair

She breathed in the salt spray and repeated softly, “It’s beautiful.” “So are you,” Jake said, as softly. He was standing so close that the hairs on her arm felt the brush of static electricity, a promise held in the air between them. Her face tipped up to meet his; his arm moved to her waist. She could feel his breath on her lips, on her cheeks. She waited for the brush of his lips against hers. It didn’t come. She looked into his eyes and saw desire; longing. But she saw something else too. She saw fear. He stood there, paralyzed it seemed, the want in his eyes at war with the fear. Then, like a man who had found himself about to step on a poisonous snake, he cautiously took a step back. The relief in his eyes brought tears to Rachel’s. “I … I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I just …” He stopped, at a loss for what to say. Rachel stared at him, hoping that her eyes would pull him back toward her, that this moment of apprehension would pass. It didn’t. In a gentle, almost loving tone he said, “You’re a very beautiful girl, Rachel,” and it hurt worse than if he had called her an ugly hag.

Images surround us; cavorting broadcast in the minds of others, we wear the motley tailored by their bad digestions, the shame and failure, plague pandemics and private indecencies, unpaid bills, and animal ecstasies remembered in hospital beds, our worst deeds and best intentions will not stay still, scolding, mocking, or merely chattering they assail each other, shocked at recognition. Sometimes simplicity serves, though even the static image of Saint John Baptist received prenatal attentions (six months along, leaping for joy in his mother's womb when she met Mary who had conceived the day before): once delivered he stands steady in a camel's hair loincloth at a ford in the river, morose, ascetic on locusts and honey, molesting passers-by, upbraiding the flesh on those who wear it with pleasure. And the Nazarene whom he baptized? Three years pass, in a humility past understanding: and then death, disappointed? unsuspecting? and the body left on earth, the one which was to rule the twelve tribes of Israel, and on earth, left crying out—My God, why dost thou shame me? Hopelessly ascendant in resurrection, the image is pegged on the wind by an epileptic tentmaker, his strong hands stretch the canvas of faith into a gaudy caravanserai, shelter for travelers wearied of the burning sand, lured by forgetfulness striped crimson and gold, triple-tiered, visible from afar, redolent of the east, and level and wide the sun crashes the fist of reality into that desert where the truth still walks barefoot.

My roommate has a gerbil,” Ryan said, grinning. “The little guy got loose and crapped all over my bed. It’s just been a crazy day.” Nodding at his silly story, I heard a familiar voice. “That’s fucking fascinating,” Judd said from behind me. “Then, what happened?” Judd was stalking me apparently. He pulled a chair to the table. “What are we having for dinner?” “Who are you exactly?” Ryan asked. “Tawny’s man. I don’t do names or handshakes, so save it, kid.” When Ryan looked at me for help, I shook my head. “I have no control over him. If I did, he wouldn’t be here.” “Oh, don’t be like that,” Judd said, caressing the back of my hair. “I like that sweater on you. Very autumn. Looks good with your eyes.” “Please, go away.” “I can’t. I’m your ride tonight.” “Should I leave?” Ryan asked. Judd glanced at my date. “Just catch onto that, did you?” Ryan stood up. “See you around, Tawny.” “Can’t you stay and ignore him?” Judd’s eyes narrowed. “No, he can’t.” “We can still talk,” I said, praying Ryan would stay. “He might leave if we treat him like static in the background.” Ryan considered staying until Judd’s amused expression faded. “She’s not fucking you, if that’s what you’re holding out for. In fact, you ain’t even getting a goodnight kiss. Well, unless you want that to be the last thing your lips ever do before I rip them off your face.” “I’m going to leave,” Ryan said, giving me a tight smile. “See you around.” “If you see her,” Judd growled, “you just keep on walking.” Nodding, Ryan hurried away, leaving me alone with Judd who switched into the seat across from me. “Alone at last.

Upstairs, she raked sleep knots and static electricity from her hair.

faster but the picture remained entirely static. The stillness of a deserted office descended and held steady as time rushed by. “When do the cleaners come in?” Reacher asked. “Just before midnight,” Froelich said. “That late?” “They’re night workers. This is a round-the-clock operation.” “And there’s nothing else visible before then?” “Nothing at all.” “So spool ahead. We get the picture.” Froelich operated the buttons and shuttled between fast-forward with snow on the screen and regular-speed playback with a picture to check the timecode. At eleven-fifty P.M. she let the tape run. The counter clicked ahead, a second at a time. At eleven fifty-two there was motion at the far end of the corridor. A team of three people emerged from the gloom. There were two women and a man, all of them wearing dark overalls. They looked Hispanic. They were all short and compact, dark-haired, stoic. The man was pushing a cart. It had a black garbage bag locked into a hoop at the front, and trays stacked with cloths and spray bottles on shelves at the rear. One of the women was carrying a vacuum cleaner. It rode on

However, the most interesting property of your spacetime tube isn't its bulk shape, but its internal structure, which is remarkably complex. Whereas the particles that constitute the Moon are stuck together in a rather static arrangement, many of your particles are in constant motion relative to one another. Consider, for example, the particles that make up your red blood cells. As your blood circulates through your body to deliver the oxygen you need, each red blood cell traces out its own unique tube shape through spacetime, corresponding to a complex itinerary through your arteries, capillaries and veins with regular returns to your heart and lungs. These spacetime tubes of different red blood cells are intertwined to form a braid pattern (Figure 11.4, middle panel) which is more elaborate than anything you'll ever see in a hair salon: whereas a classic braid consists of three strands with perhaps thirty thousand hairs each, intertwined in a simple repeating pattern, this spacetime braid consists of trillions of strands (one for each red blood cell), each composed of trillions of hairlike elementary-particle trajectories, intertwined in a complex pattern that never repeats. In other words, if you imagine spending a year giving a friend a truly crazy hairdo, braiding his hair by separately intertwining not strands but all the individual hairs, the pattern you'd get would still be very simple in comparison. Yet the complexity of all this pales in comparison to the patterns of information processing in your brain. As we discussed in Chapter 8 and illustrated in Figure 8.7, your roughly hundred billion neurons are constantly generating electric signals ("firing"), which involves shuffling around billions of trillions of atoms, notably sodium, potassium and calcium ions. The trajectories of these atoms form an extremely elaborate braid through spacetime, whose complex intertwining corresponds to storing and processing information in a way that somehow gives rise to our familiar sensation of self-awareness. There's broad consensus in the scientific community that we still don't understand how this works, so it's fair to say that we humans don't yet fully understand what we are. However, in broad brushstrokes, we might say this: You're a pattern in spacetime. A mathematical pattern. Specifically, you're a braid in spacetime-indeed one of the most elaborate braids known.

It hit her that she was in a secret area that no one knew about, trapped with a strange boy who thought she was the Maravish princess, and she felt hot red panic begin to prickle her skin. She had to run. She tried to turn around, but he grabbed her arm. “I said wait,” he commanded, pulling her back. “Let go of me!” she screamed. She swiped at him with her free hand, but he caught it effortlessly. “Lottie—” “I will call the police,” she continued, trying to pull away from him, but she seemed to only be mildly annoying him. How is he so strong? “Lottie, please, just listen for a—” “LET GO OF ME!” She gave one final tug with all her energy and stamped down on his foot. He tried to pull his leg back but a strange static sensation shook him and the two tumbled quite ungracefully into the mud. “Eek!” Lottie fell flat on her back, immediately thinking of her poor ruined uniform and hair. She had to remind herself that these were the least of her concerns right now and that she needed to deal with the boy on top of her. She was ready to scream when a pendant around his neck fell against her chest; there was a familiar crest on it with an engraved wolf symbol. The Wolfson family crest, the same one Ellie wore.

Like most witches, I had a problem getting the shoulder-length strands to stay put. Sarah blamed it on pent-up magic and promised that the regular use of my power would keep the static electricity from building and make my hair more obedient.

Don't confound static electricity with ecstatic eccentricity. One will leave your hair up, the other will live up in the air!

In Science don't confound Normal static electricity To ecstatic eccentricity. Here is what I found: Electric charges As they rise up your hair In contrast with a discharge, Rarity leaves you up in the air!

My hair stained grey. My skin cracked into miniature valleys. I changed so slowly I didn’t even see it happening. Always dying becoming who I needed to be. The future pushed forward. Max went frail and splintered and perished (he went to sleep and stopped breathing). I took over his shop with his boyfriend, until he went frail and splintered and perished. Then it was me and Eugene, until he went frail and splintered and perished. The polar bears went extinct. East Boston sunk beneath the ocean. The west coast burned to cinder. Thousands died in a tube shot through space, floating frozen and static forever. I’m still here. Here for some time.

Not at all.” Pooja gestured for more wine, and three people scrambled into action. “I loved what you said in your artist talk with Yagazie Emezi about decay and the ephemerality of the work. I think it keeps it from being… static. To have a natural process viewed as a corruption of the work seems so controlling, don’t you think?” “I think people desire permanence,” Feyi replied. This wasn’t the conversation she’d expected to have with Pooja, but it was a delightfully pleasant surprise. “An archive that lasts.” “Well, we know all too well how futile such a desire can be, don’t we?” Pooja laughed, a sharp shadow slinking under her words, and for a moment, Feyi genuinely wondered what kind of man Sanjeet Chatterjee was, to love a woman who was this brilliant and furious and alive. Pooja leaned forward, her dark hair swinging sharp at her jawline. There was a darkness in her eyes that ran fathoms deep, and Feyi couldn’t understand how she had missed it before. “Give me an archive of madness that rots, Ms. Adekola. I wouldn’t mind it one bit.

Android Girl Just Wants to Have a Baby! The first thing I do when I wake up is run my hands over my body. I like to make sure all my wires are in place. I lotion my silicone shell and snap my hair helmet over my head. I once had a dream I was a real girl, but when I woke up I was still myself in my paleness under the halogen light. The saliva of androids emits a spectral resonance, barely sticky between freshly-gapped teeth. After they made me, the first thing they did was peel the cellophane from my eyes. I blinked once, twice, and cried because that's how you say you are alive before you are given language. They named each of my heartbeats on the oceanic monitor: Guanyin, Yama, Nuwa, Fuxi, Chang'e, Zao-Shen. I listened to them blur into one. The fetus carves for itself a hollowed vector, a fragile wetness. In utero, extension cords are umbilical. Before puberty, I did not know there was such a thing as dishonor. Diss-on- her. This is what they said when I began to drip petrol between my legs. A tension exists between ritual and proof, a fantasy and its execution. Since then, I have been to the emergency room twice. The first time for a suicide attempt, and the second time because my earring was swallowed up by my newly pierced earlobe overnight, and when I woke up, it was tangled in a helix of wires. The idea of dying doesn't scare me but the ocean does. I was once told that fish will swim up my orifices if I am no longer a virgin. Is anyone thinking about erotic magazines when they are not aroused, pubes parted harshly down the center like red seas? My body carries the weight of four hundred eggs. I rise from a weird slumber, let them drip into the bath. This is what I'll leave behind - tiny shards purer than me. I have always been afraid of pregnant women because of their power, and because I don't yet understand what it means to carry something stubborn and blossoming inside of me, screeching towards an exit. The ectoplasm is the telos for the wound. A trance state is induced when salt is poured on it, pixel by pixel. I wish they had made me into an octopus instead, because octopuses die after their eggs hatch and crawl out into the sea, and I want to know what it's like to set something free into the dark unknown and trust it to choose mercy. If you can generate aura in a non-place, then there is no such thing as an authentic origin. In Chinese, the word for mercy translates to my heart hurts for you. They say my heart continues beating even after it is dislocated from my body. The sound of its beating comes from the valves opening and closing like a portal - Guanyin, Yama, Nuwa, Fuxi, Chang'e, Zao-Shen. I first learned about love by watching a sex tape where a girl looks up from performing fellatio and says, show them the sunset. Her boyfriend pans the camera to the sky, which is tinged violet like a bruise. In this moment, the sky displaces her, all digital and hyped, and saturates the scene until it collapses on me too, its transient witness. I move in the space between belly ring and catharsis. That night I have a dream where I am a camgirl, but all I do on screen is wash my laundry. Everybody loves me because I am a real girl doing real girl things. What lives on the border between meditation and oblivion, static and flux, a pomegranate seed and an embryo? I set up my webcam in the corner of the room and play ambient music while I scrub my underwear, letting soap bubbles rise up from the sink, laughing when they overflow on the linoleum floor - my frizzy hair, my pockmarked skin, my face slick with sweat. A body with exit wounds. I ride the bright rails of an animal forgetting. And when I wake up, the sky is a mess of blue.

As if hearing his thoughts, lightning cracked across the sky in sheets too close for Hereward’s liking. The thick static in the atmosphere made the hairs on his tattooed arms stand to attention. Thunder boomed moments later. He stepped back, pulling Camdyn with him. Ealdræd wasn’t going to play nice.

Given how much time modern physics spends on deep and abstract mysteries like searching for gravitational waves or the Higgs boson, it can be surprising how many basic everyday phenomena aren’t well understood. In addition to ice skates, physicists don’t really understand what causes electric charges to build up in thunderstorms, why sand in an hourglass flows at the speed it does, or why your hair gets a static charge when you rub it with a

One of his hands tangled in my hair, tugging it to tip my chin back and eliciting another moan of pleasure from my lips. He swallowed it up, his tongue sinking into my mouth and making my heart find a rhythm it had never beat to before. He kissed me like he wasn't allowed to kiss me, but if he didn't he'd die. I tangled myself around him with equal desire, the well of magic in my body spilling over and flooding my veins. A profound and unknown energy hummed within me, drawing to the edges of my skin. Orion seemed to sense it too as the hairs raised along my arms and static energy crackled everywhere our flesh met. I was entirely lost to the deepest and most carnal desire I'd ever felt. His hand found the slit in my dress and his fingers trailed onto my bare leg, making me gasp in response. Fire surged down my spine only to bounce back up again as he gripped my thigh and squeezed. With so little clothes parting us, I felt every inch of his arousal pressing between my legs and I started to wonder how far this kiss was going to go. My fingers slid into the verge of his hair as I ground against him and my thoughts scattered again. He released a rumbling growl filled with nothing but need and his hand shifted between us, roaming deeper beneath my dress until he found the top of my panties. I nearly lost my mind as his fingers brushed the sensitive flesh there and skimmed the line of my underwear. My back arched as I tried to bring his hand closer to fulfil the promise of ecstasy I knew he could bring me. Instead, he pulled his hand free and placed it on my hip with a heavy breath. It took everything I had, but with his fingers firmly away from the area of my body which was trying to run the show, I could think a little clearer. He pulled back almost the same moment I did and I swallowed hard as I felt the lasting sensations of that kiss everywhere. My mouth tingled and my cheeks stung from the scrape of his stubble. My thigh muscles throbbed where they were still locked tightly around his waist and my heart seemed to bleed from the loss of contact with his mouth. We remained breathless and silent, staring at each other like the reality waiting above us wasn't about to rip us apart. But I knew as well as he did, this was a one time only thing. Now I just had to convince my body of that. I unwound my legs from him, bracing my hands on his shoulders as I dropped down. He steadied me for a moment then the air between us changed. His eyes darkened and he didn't need to speak to let me know what he was thinking. A vow hung solidly around us. This won't happen ever again. He opened his mouth to speak but I spoke before he could, not wanting to be commanded into eternal silence. I already knew what would happen the second we left this magical place behind, I didn't need to be told. “Let's go.” “We can stay a little longer...if you want.” His expression was that of a wounded man but I knew whatever pain lay in his body, would never be mine to heal. I shook my head, lifting my chin to gaze up at the surface of the pool. “No, I think we should go back to reality now.” The longer I stay, the harder it will be to leave. “Are you angry with me for bringing you here?” he asked and I was compelled to look down, falling into the intensity of his eyes as a strained line formed on his brow. “No.” He reached out to skate his fingers across the line of my jaw, feather light. “You know how it has to be.” I nodded, leaning away from his touch which felt like forcing two magnets apart. “I know.” What happens at the bottom of the pool, stays at the bottom of the pool. “Come on then, Blue.” He held out his hand. I took a shuddering breath, placing my hand in his. “I think it might be best if you don't call me that anymore.” I tugged at a lock of wet hair. “It's not blue anyway.” (DARCY)

Color, the principle: First, you should think about how color affects the psychology of the user. Then, you should think about the role of color in the product. Finally, you should think about the color itself. According to the theory of static and dynamic, usually colors like static world, the new colors like dynamic elements, new colors will instantly become the focus while ordinary colors will not attract too much attention. For product design, you should aim for a continuous and integrated appearance of the elements, or avoid any interruptions or breaks. This includes the colors of the front panel, frame, and rear panel. For color itself, there are different levels of colors based on how often humans see them. The highest level color is the air, which is the most seen color by humans, but humans cannot make it. The closest thing to air is glass, which can create a 3D color effect by superimposing on other colors. This is a miracle that breaks the common sense that the eye can only see 2D colors. The second level color is the sky, which is the second most seen color by humans, especially during the day. The third level color is the human body, which is the most familiar color to humans, such as skin and hair. The fourth level color is nature, which is the second most familiar color to humans. The fifth level color is artificial. Monochrome is the cornerstone, and the color combination (the same color system can reduce the sense of abruptness, the near color secondary) and the gradient aesthetics are stricter. The more the style focuses on minimalism, the more it favors monochrome.

She noted the way little pieces of yourself fall off like trash, gum wrappers and fuzz you pick off a sweater. In the same way you accumulate memories, spots of time adhere to your surroundings like stray hairs and static electricity, so that you spot them in the corner of your eye and wilt, awash with the heady sentiments of recollection. This is the problem, Viv would realize, when you've stayed in one place for far too long.

In addition to ice skates, physicists don’t really understand what causes electric charges to build up in thunderstorms, why sand in an hourglass flows at the speed it does, or why your hair gets a static charge when you rub it with a balloon.

The Party adopted unwritten rules to ensure that no one outstayed their welcome, limiting top leaders to two five-year terms and setting a retirement age. Even misdemeanours were handled in line with an unofficial code: members of the politburo might be purged for corruption, but the most senior figures of all – the Politburo Standing Committee – were untouchable, as were their families. You survived and thrived by cultivating patrons and your wider networks. The Party became safer, stabler, calmer and duller. For years, it worked. China prospered. People who might have eaten meat once a year dropped unctuous pork into their bowls each week. People who might never have left their county journeyed to Shanghai, Bangkok or Paris for shopping and sightseeing. They got their hair permed, wore bright sweaters and Nikes, tried red wine and McDonald’s, took up hobbies. It was attractive enough for foreigners to speak of the ‘Beijing model’. But there was a price. Corruption was endemic. To get your child into a decent school, or pass your driving test, or push through a business deal, or dodge prosecution, took cash: a few thousand yuan to a teacher, tens of millions to a senior leader. In cities such as Chongqing, gangs flourished, sheltered by officials they had bought off. Inequality was soaring. The more the economy grew and mutated, the more static politics seemed.

And whose quiet static laughter is always appropriate, conscious, complicated by an automatic and sophisticated concern for the special sensitivities of everyone present. Viz. Bonnie laughs only with; Carlina was so conceived and constituted as to laugh only at.

He came to me and his heat was just har, nothing more. I cried out once, but not with pain. His eyes never left my own, he wanted to read everything there. When the moment came, it shocked me like electricity, switching on, opening up to a greater current. His flame hair crackled with static dust and I could see his face, so vulnerable in ecstacy. A god trapped in the anemone folds of aquatic soume. I could control him and make him writhe, and I did.