Still Waters Run Deep Quotes

I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

still waters run deep. ~Tabitha

Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its desire; Still waters run deep, my dear, there's never smoke without fire.

True love, in the evolutionary sense, means peace of mind. “Still waters run deep” is a good way of characterizing it.

The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want him for long He maketh me to lie down in green pastures and there are no green pastures He leadeth me beside still waters and still waters run deep

STILL WATER RUNS DEEP

Still waters run deep.

People who are outwardly distant or shy are often better targets than extroverts. They are dying to be drawn out, and still waters run deep.

Still waters run deep, I’d thought. Later, I learned that silence did not necessarily guarantee depth.

She wasn't even into you, you know. She was just bored, and she thought you were mysterious and quiet - like, "still waters run deep." I told her that sometimes "still waters just run still

Crack running through his voice like a crack in a glass. Eyes still on my eyes. A sorrow there, fathoms deep. His sorrow or mine? I'm drowning in it like dark water

He loved her in a subtle kind of way. It wasn’t the kind of love you see in movies, with swelling music and giant gestures and running through the streets to catch a departing train. It wasn’t the kind of love that Byron or Shakespeare wrote about, with flowery language and hyperbole and iambic pentameter. It was still and deep, like water that you might mistake for shallow if you just watched the surface. It was entirely his, not dependent on her own feelings for him, and it would still be there whether she, or him, or everyone else on the world disappeared. It was a subtle kind of love, but it was true.

He just stares. He's so quiet. That's the way we want him. Still water runs deep. Not with this one. The only thing that runs deep with him are the holes in his ears.

Still waters run deep

When he heard light, rushing footfalls, he turned his head. Someone was racing along the second-floor balcony. Then laughter drifted down from above. Glorious feminine laughter. He leaned out the archway and glanced at the grand staircase. Bella appeared on the landing above, breathless, smiling, a black satin robe gathered in her hands. As she slowed at the head of the stairs, she looked over her shoulder, her thick dark hair swinging like a mane. The pounding that came next was heavy and distant, growing louder until it was like boulders hitting the ground. Obviously, it was what she was waiting for. She let out a laugh, yanked her robe up even higher, and started down the stairs, bare feet skirting the steps as if she were floating. At the bottom, she hit the mosaic floor of the foyer and wheeled around just as Zsadist appeared in second-story hallway. The Brother spotted her and went straight for the balcony, pegging his hands into the rail, swinging his legs up and pushing himself straight off into thin air. He flew outward, body in a perfect swan dive--except he wasn't over water, he was two floors up over hard stone. John's cry for help came out as a mute, sustained rush of air-- Which was cut off as Zsadist dematerialized at the height of the dive. He took form twenty feet in front of Bella, who watched the show with glowing happiness. Meanwhile, John's heart pounded from shock...then pumped fast for a different reason. Bella smiled up at her mate, her breath still hard, her hands still gripping the robe, her eyes heavy with invitation. And Zsadist came forward to answer her call, seeming to get even bigger as he stalked over to her. The Brother's bonding scent filled the foyer, just as his low, lionlike growl did. The male was all animal at the moment....a very sexual animal. "You like to be chased, nalla, " Z said in a voice so deep it distorted. Bella's smile got even wider as she backed up into a corner. "Maybe." "So run some more, why don't you." The words were dark and even John caught the erotic threat in them. Bella took off, darting around her mate, going for the billiards room. Z tracked her like prey, pivoting around, his eyes leveled on the female's streaming hair and graceful body. As his lips peeled off his fangs, the white canines elongated, protruding from his mouth. And they weren't the only response he had to his shellan. At his hips, pressing into the front of his leathers, was an erection the size of a tree trunk. Z shot John a quick glance and then went back to his hunt, disappearing into the room, the pumping growl getting louder. From out of the open doors, there was a delighted squeal, a scramble, a female's gasp, and then....nothing. He'd caught her. ......When Zsadist came out a moment later, he had Bella in his arms, her dark hair trailing down his shoulder as she lounged in the strength that held her. Her eyes locked on Z's face while he looked where he was going, her hand stroking his chest, her lips curved in a private smile. There was a bite mark on her neck, one that had very definitely not been there before, and Bella's satisfaction as she stared at the hunger in her hellren's face was utterly compelling. John knew instinctively that Zsadist was going to finish two things upstairs: the mating and the feeding. The Brother was going to be at her throat and in between her legs. Probably at the same time. God, John wanted that kind of connection.

Maybe still waters did run deep. Or God on your side was the ultimate soul balm.

Still waters run deep

Likened to “still waters run deep,” a dignified person is able to call upon their wisdom and experience to discern a situation and expertly navigate it with grace.

Then I take a dump. Feel better. Take off my clothes and step into the pool. Ice water. But great. I walk along toward the deep end of the pool, the water rising inch by inch, chilling me. Then I plunge below the water. It's restful. The world doesn't know where I am. I come up, swim to the far edge, find the ledge, sit there. It must be about the 9th or 10th race. The horses are still running. I plunge again into the water, being aware of my stupid whiteness, of my age hanging onto me like a leech. Still, it's OK. I should have been dead 40 years ago. I rise to the top, swim to the far edge, get out.

The people came out of their houses and smelled the hot stinging air and covered their noses from it. And the children came out of the houses, but they did not run or shout as they would have done after a rain. Men stood by their fences and looked at the ruined corn, drying fast now, only a little green showing through the film of dust. The men were silent and they did not move often. And the women came out of the houses to stand beside their men - to feel whether this time the men would break. The women studied the men's faces secretly, for the corn could go, as long as something else remained. The children stood near by drawing figures in the dust with bare toes, and the children sent exploring senses out to see whether men and women would break. The children peeked at the faces of the men and women, and then drew careful lines in the dust with their toes. Horses came to the watering troughs and nuzzled the water to clear the surface dust. After a while the faces of the watching men lost their bemused perplexity and became hard and angry and resistant. Then the women knew that they were safe and that there was no break. Then they asked, Whta'll we do? And the men replied, I don't know. but it was all right. The women knew it was all right, and the watching children knew it was all right. Women and children knew deep in themselves that no misfortune was too great to bear if their men were whole. The women went into the houses to their work, and the children began to play, but cautiously at first. As the day went forward the sun became less red. It flared down on the dust-blanketed land. The men sat in the doorways of their houses; their hands were busy with sticks and little rocks. The men sat still - thinking - figuring.

There was only one editor I recognized, Lakshmi, who was also a freshman and lived in my building. All I knew about her was that she was beautiful, did drugs, spoke with a British accent, and had grown up in different foreign countries. She seemed really impressed that I had won this prize. “Still waters run deep,” she kept saying.

Alma knelt in the tall grass and brought her face as near as she could to the stone. And there, rising no more than an inch above the surface of the boulder, she saw a great and tiny forest. Nothing moved within this mossy world. She peered at it so closely that she could smell it- dank and rich and old. Gently, Alma pressed her hand into this tight little timberland. It compacted itself under her palm and then sprang back to form without complaint. There was something stirring about its response to her. The moss felt warm and spongy, several degrees warmer than the air around it, and far more damp than she had expected. It appeared to have its own weather. Alma put the magnifying lens to her eye and looked again. Now the miniature forest below her gaze sprang into majestic detail. She felt her breath catch. This was a stupefying kingdom. This was the Amazon jungle as seen from the back of a harpy eagle. She rode her eye above the surprising landscape, following its paths in every direction. Here were rich, abundant valleys filled with tiny trees of braided mermaid hair and minuscule, tangled vines. Here were barely visible tributaries running through that jungle, and here was a miniature ocean in a depression in the center of the boulder, where all the water pooled. Just across this ocean- which was half the size of Alma's shawl- she found another continent of moss altogether. On this new continent, everything was different. This corner of the boulder must receive more sunlight than the other, she surmised. Or slightly less rain? In any case, this was a new climate entirely. Here, the moss grew in mountain ranges the length of Alma's arms, in elegant, pine tree-shaped clusters of darker, more somber green. On another quadrant of the same boulder still, she found patches of infinitesimally small deserts, inhabited by some kind of sturdy, dry, flaking moss that had the appearance of cactus. Elsewhere, she found deep, diminutive fjords- so deep that, incredibly, even now in the month of June- the mosses within were still chilled by lingering traces of winter ice. But she also found warm estuaries, miniature cathedrals, and limestone caves the size of her thumb. Then Alma lifted her face and saw what was before her- dozens more such boulders, more than she could count, each one similarly carpeted, each one subtly different. She felt herself growing breathless. 'This was the entire world.' This was bigger than a world. This was the firmament of the universe, as seen through one of William Herschel's mighty telescopes. This was planetary and vast. These were ancient, unexplored galaxies, rolling forth in front of her- and it was all right here!

At first there was nothing - a profound blue darkness running running deep, laced by skeins of starlight and pale phosphorescent flashes. This four o-clock hour was a moment of utter silence, the indrawn breath of dark, the absolute, trance-like balance between night and day. Then, when it seemed that nothing would ever move or live or know the light again, a hot wind would run over the invisible water. It was like a fore-blast of the turning world, an intimation that its rocks and seas and surfaces still stirred against the sun. One strained one's eyes, scarce breathing, searching for a sign. Presently it came. Far in the east at last the horizon hardened, an imperceptible line dividing sky and sea, sharp as a diamond cut on glass. A dark bubble of cloud revealed itself, warmed slowly, flushing from within like a seed growing, a kernel ripening, a clinker hot with locked-in fire. Gradually the cloud throbbed red with light, then suddenly caught the still unrisen sun and burst like an expanding bomb. Flares and streamers began to fall into the sea, setting all things on fire. After the long unthinking darkness everything now began to happen at once. The stars snapped shut, the sky bled green, vermillion tides ran over the water, the hills around took on the colour of firebrick, and the great sun drew himself at last raw and dripping from the waves. Scarlet, purple, and clinker-blue, the morning, smelling of thyme and goats, of charcoal, splintered rock and man's long sojourn around this lake

screen filled with symbols, only this time it was Arabic letters that meant nothing to him. He assumed they meant nothing to Raj as well, and was therefore surprised when Raj pointed out a short sequence. “This is the word for ‘person’ or ‘human being’.” Daniel stared at Raj. “You know Arabic?” “No, not really. I have read Nizar Qabbani in translation, and this word is a particularly beautiful shape, is it not?” “Still waters run deep, Raj. So you read Arabic love poetry. I wouldn’t have ever guessed.” Raj blushed. “Sushma is more woman than I can handle without help,” he admitted. “Qabbani writes more than just love poetry. It is quite erotic.

Before us lay a green sloping land full of forests and woods, with here and there steep hills, crowned with clumps of trees or with farmhouses, the blank gable end to the road. There was everywhere a bewildering mass of fruit blossom- apple, plum, pear, cherry; and as we drove by I could see the green grass under the trees spangled with the fallen petals. In and out amongst these green hills of what they call here the 'Mittel Land' ran the road, losing itself as it swept round the grassy curve, or was shut out by the straggling ends of pine woods, which here and there ran down the hillside like tongues of flame. The road was rugged, but still we seemed to fly over it with a feverish haste. I could not understand then what the haste meant, but the driver was evidently bent on losing no time in reaching Borgo Prund. I was told that this road is in summertime excellent, but that it had not been put in order after the winter snows. In this respect it is different from the general run of roads in the Carpathians, for it is an old tradition that they are not to be kept in too good order. Of old the Hospadors would not repair them, lest the Turks should think that they were preparing to bring in foreign troops, and so hasten the war which was always really at loading point. Beyond the green swelling hills of the Mittel Land rose mighty slopes of forest up to the lofty steeps of the Carpathians themselves. Right and left of us they towered, with the afternoon sun falling full upon them and bringing out all the glorious colors of this beautiful range, deep blue and purple in the shadows of the peaks, green and brown where grass and rock mingled, and an endless perspective of jagged rock and pointed crags, till these were themselves lost in the distance, where the snowy peaks rose grandly. Here and there seemed mighty rifts in the mountains, through which, as the sun began to sink, we saw now and again the white gleam of falling water.

Firmly planted. Not fallen from on high: sprung up from below. Ochre, the color of burnt honey. The color of a sun buried a thousand years ago and dug up only yesterday. Fresh green and orange stripes running across its still-warm body. Circles, Greek frets: scattered traces of a lost alphabet? The belly of a woman heavy with child, the neck of a bird. If you cover and uncover its mouth with the palm of your hand, it answers you with a deep murmur, the sound of bubbling water welling up from its depths; if you tap its sides with your knuckles, it gives a tinkling laugh of little silver coins falling on stones. It has many tongues: it speaks of the language of clay and minerals, of air currents flowing between canyon walls, of washerwomen as they scrub, of angry skies, of rain. A vessel of baked clay: do not put it in a glass case alongside rare precious objects. It would look quite out of place. Its beauty is related to the liquid that it contains and to the thirst that it quenches. Its beauty is corporal: I see it, I touch it, I smell it, I hear it. If it is empty, It must be filled; if it is full, it must be emptied. I take it by the shaped handle as I would take a woman by the arm, I lift it up, I tip over a pitcher into which I pour milk or pulque - lunar liquids that open and close the doors of dawn and dark, waking a sleeping.

To me the front is a mysterious whirlpool. Though I am in still water far away from its centre, I feel the whirl of the vortex sucking me slowly, irresistibly, inescapable into itself. From the earth, from the air, sustaining forces pour into us—mostly from the earth. To no man does the earth mean so much as to the soldier. When he presses himself down upon her long and powerfully, when he buries his face and his limbs deep in her from the fear of death by shell-fire, then she is his only friend, his brother, his mother; he stifles his terror and his cries in her silence and her security; she shelters him and releases him for ten seconds to live, to run, ten seconds of life; receives him again and often for ever.

I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen—I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theatres from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, life is a cruel joke and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

Once upon a time there was a fish who lived in a deep lake all by himself. Every day the fish would watch with envy as a boy from the nearby village played with the animals on the land. The boy would run with the horses, wrestle with the dogs, and climb the trees with the squirrels. The fish wanted so badly to play with the boy, too, but he knew that as a fish it was impossible. One day a fairy flying high above the lake dropped her wand in the water. The fish, being the gentleman he was, retrieved the wand for the fairy. ‘As a reward for this kind gesture, I will grant you one wish,’ the fairy told the fish. He thought long but he didn’t think hard, for the fish knew which wish he wanted the fairy to grant him. ‘I want legs, just like all the animals on the land, so I, too, can play with the little boy from the village,’ the fish said. With one simple flick of her wand, the fairy magically turned the fish’s fins into legs and feet and he walked on land for the first time. The next day when the boy appeared, the fish happily showed him his new legs. The two became very good friends and every day they ran with the horses, wrestled with the dogs, and climbed trees with the squirrels. However, one day the little boy was playing too close to the edge of the lake and fell into the water. The fish ran to the edge of the lake and tried to save him, but he couldn’t go in the water without his fins. The little boy couldn’t swim, either, and drowned in the lake. The fish wished he had never wished for legs, because had he just stayed the normal fish God had intended him to be, the little boy would still be alive to this day. The

To me the front is a mysterious whirlpool. Though I am in still water far away from its centre, I feel the whirl of the vortex sucking me slowly, irresistibly, inescapable into itself. From the earth, from the air, sustaining forces pour into us—mostly from the earth. To no man does the earth mean so much as to the soldier. When he presses himself down upon her long and powerfully, when he buries his face and his limbs deep in her from the fear of death by shell-fire, then she is his only friend, his brother, his mother; he stifles his terror and his cries in her silence and her security; she shelters him and releases him for ten seconds to live, to run, ten seconds of life; receives him again and often for ever. Earth!—Earth!—Earth! Earth with thy folds, and hollows, and holes, into which a man may fling himself and crouch down. In the spasm of terror, under the hailing of annihilation, in the bellowing death of the explosions, O Earth, thou grantest us the great resisting surge of new-won life. Our being, almost utterly carried away by the fury of the storm, streams back through our hands from thee, and we, thy redeemed ones, bury ourselves in thee, and through the long minutes in a mute agony of hope bite into thee with our lips! At the sound of the first droning of the shells we rush back, in one part of our being, a thousand years. By the animal instinct that is awakened in us we are led and protected. It is not conscious; it is far quicker, much more sure, less fallible, than consciousness. One cannot explain it. A man is walking along without thought or heed;—suddenly he throws himself down on the ground and a storm of fragments flies harmlessly over him;—yet he cannot remember either to have heard the shell coming or to have thought of flinging himself down. But had he not abandoned himself to the impulse he would now be a heap of mangled flesh. It is this other, this second sight in us, that has thrown us to the ground and saved us, without our knowing how. If it were not so, there would not be one man alive from Flanders to the Vosges. We march up, moody or good-tempered soldiers—we reach the zone where the front begins and become on the instant human animals. An

We wolves will forever be in this land, for our spirits run heavy in this place. We are made of the very earth of this land. Our spirits are the moon over the lake, of the vapor of the breaths when we run hard through fields on cold fall nights with the stars all above and around us and shining off the perfect calm of the water. Our spirit is when we are tracking deer on cold winter days, of the chase and the precise timing of the kill, and then sleeping curled together for warmth in deep snow, mouths covered in fresh, dried blood from our feasting. Our spirit is of the dark and wind and perfect stillness before a summer storm and the sounds of slow, rolling thunder off the lake, echoing through the trees. Our spirit is the smell of wet grass and wildflowers, and all the bright colors of the land and water and sky.

Nobody ever talked about what a struggle this all was. I could see why women used to die in childbirth. They didn't catch some kind of microbe, or even hemorrhage. They just gave up. They knew that if they didn't die, they'd be going through it again the next year, and the next. I couldn't understand how a woman might just stop trying, like a tired swimmer, let her head go under, the water fill her lungs. I slowly massaged Yvonne's neck, her shoulders, I wouldn't let her go under. She sucked ice through threadbare white terry. If my mother were here, she'd have made Melinda meek cough up the drugs, sure enough. "Mamacita, ay," Yvonne wailed. I didn't know why she would call her mother. She hated her mother. She hadn't seen her in six years, since the day she locked Yvonne and her brother and sisters in their apartment in Burbank to go out and party, and never came back. Yvonne said she let her boyfriends run a train on her when she was eleven. I didn't even know what that meant. Gang bang, she said. And still she called out, Mama. It wasn't just Yvonne. All down the ward, they called for their mothers. ... I held onto Yvonne's hands, and I imagined my mother, seventeen years ago, giving birth to me. Did she call for her mother?...I thought of her mother, the one picture I had, the little I knew. Karin Thorvald, who may or may not have been a distant relation of King Olaf of Norway, classical actress and drunk, who could recite Shakespeare by heart while feeding the chickens and who drowned in the cow pond when my mother was thirteen. I couldn't imagine her calling out for anyone. But then I realized, they didn't mean their own mothers. Not those weak women, those victims. Drug addicts, shopaholics, cookie bakers. They didn't mean the women who let them down, who failed to help them into womanhood, women who let their boyfriends run a train on them. Bingers and purgers, women smiling into mirrors, women in girdles, women in barstools. Not those women with their complaints and their magazines, controlling women, women who asked, what's in it for me? Not the women who watched TV while they made dinner, women who dyed their hair blond behind closed doors trying to look twenty-three. They didn't mean the mothers washing dishes wishing they'd never married, the ones in the ER, saying they fell down the stairs, not the ones in prison saying loneliness is the human condition, get used to it. They wanted the real mother, the blood mother, the great womb, mother of a fierce compassion, a woman large enough to hold all the pain, to carry it away. What we needed was someone who bled, someone deep and rich as a field, a wide-hipped mother, awesome, immense, women like huge soft couches, mothers coursing with blood, mothers big enough, wide enough, for us to hide in, to sink down to the bottom of, mothers who would breathe for is when we could not breathe anymore, who would fight for us, who would kill for us, die for us. Yvonne was sitting up, holding her breath, eyes bulging out. It was the thing she should not do. "Breathe," I said in her ear. "Please, Yvonne, try." She tried to breathe, a couple of shallow inhalations, but it hurt too much. She flopped back on the narrow bed, too tired to go on. All she could do was grip my hand and cry. And I thought of the way the baby was linked to her, as she was linked to her mother, and her mother, all the way back, insider and inside, knit into a chain of disaster that brought her to this bed, this day. And not only her. I wondered what my own inheritance was going to be. "I wish I was dead," Yvonne said into the pillowcase with the flowers I'd brought from home. The baby came four hours later. A girl, born 5:32 PM.

Nicholas Rostóv turned away and, as if searching for something, gazed into the distance, at the waters of the Danube, at the sky, and at the sun. How beautiful the sky looked; how blue, how calm, and how deep! How bright and glorious was the setting sun! With what soft glitter the waters of the distant Danube shone. And fairer still were the far away blue mountains beyond the river, the nunnery, the mysterious gorges, and the pine forests veiled in mist to their summits . . . There was peace and happiness . . .”I should wish for nothing else, nothing, if only I were there,” thought Rostóv. “In myself alone and in that sunshine there is so much happiness; but here . . . groans, suffering, fear, and this uncertainty and hurry . . . There—they are shouting again, and again are all running back somewhere, and I shall run with them, and it, death, is here above me and around . . . Another instant and I shall never again see the sun, this water, that gorge! . . .” At that instant the sun began to hide behind the clouds and other stretchers came into view before Rostóv. And the fear of death and of the stretchers, and love of the sun and of life, all merged into one feeling of sickening agitation. “O Lord God! Thou who art in that heaven, save, forgive, and protect me!” Rostóv whispered.

Everything in Nature ran according to its own nature; the running of grass was in its growing, the running of rivers their flowing, granite bubbled up, cooled, compressed and crumbled, birds lived, flew, sang and died, everything did what it needed to do, each simultaneously running its own race, each by living according to its own nature together, never leaving any other part of the universe behind. The world’s Holy things raced constantly together, not to win anything over the next, but to keep the entire surging diverse motion of the living world from grinding to a halt, which is why there is no end to that race; no finish line. That would be oblivion to all. For the Indigenous Souls of all people who can still remember how to be real cultures, life is a race to be elegantly run, not a race to be competitively won. It cannot be won; it is the gift of the world’s diverse beautiful motion that must be maintained. Because human life has been give the gift of our elegant motion, whether we limp, roll, crawl, stroll, or fly, it is an obligation to engender that elegance of motion in our daily lives in service of maintaining life by moving and living as beautifully as we can. All else has, to me, the familiar taste of that domineering warlike harshness that daily tries to cover its tracks in order to camouflage the deep ruts of some old, sick, grinding, ungainly need to flee away from the elegance of our original Indigenous human souls. Our attempt to avariciously conquer or win a place where there are no problems, whether it be Heaven or a “New Democracy,” never mind if it is spiritually ugly and immorally “won” and taken from someone who is already there, has made a citifying world of people who, unconscious of it, have become our own ogreish problem to ourselves, our future, and the world. This is a problem that we cannot continue to attempt to competitively outrun by more and more effectively designed technological approaches to speed away from the past, for the specter of our own earth-wasting reality runs grinning competitively right alongside us. By developing even more effective and entertaining methods of escape that only burn up the earth, the air, animals, plants, and the deeper substance of what it should mean to be human, by competing to get ahead, we have created a brakeless competition that has outrun our innate beauty and marked out a very definite and imminent “finish” line. Living in and on a sphere, we cannot really outrun ourselves anyway. Therefore, I say, the entire devastating and hideous state of the world and its constant wounding and wrecking of the wild, beautiful, natural, viable and small, only to keep alive an untenable cultural proceedance is truly a spiritual sickness, one that will not be cured by the efficient use of the same thinking that maintains the sickness. Nor can this overly expensive, highly funded illness be symptomatically kept at bay any longer by yet more political, environmental, or social programs. We must as individuals and communities take the time necessary to learn how to indigenously remember what a sane, original existence for a viable people might look like. Though there are marvellous things and amazing people doing them, both seen and unseen, these do not resemble in any way the general trend of what is going on now. To begin remembering our Indigenous belonging on the Earth back to life we must metabolize as individuals the grief of recognition of our lost directions, digest it into a valuable spiritual compost that allows us to learn to stay put without outrunning our strange past, and get small, unarmed, brave, and beautiful. By trying to feed the Holy in Nature the fruit of beauty from the tree of memory of our Indigenous Souls, grown in the composted failures of our past need to conquer, watered by the tears of cultural grief, we might become ancestors worth descending from and possibly grow a place of hope for a time beyond our own.

Radioactive reactor fuel and graphite lay everywhere. Part of the roof had collapsed into Unit 4’s section of the turbine hall, setting turbine 7 on fire and breaking an oil pipe, which spread the fire still further and set the hall’s roof alight. Falling debris had broken the pressure valve on a feed pump, which was gushing out boiling, radioactive water.135 Men and women rushed past chunks of uranium fuel as they battled to contain the blaze, isolate electrical systems, and manually open oil-drain and cooling-water valves. Many of these brave souls later died, unaware they had been running among pieces of reactor fuel. For their part, Akimov and Toptunov stayed at the plant after the morning shift relieved them from duty at 6am, choosing to join the desperate effort to salvage the situation. The pair decided water flow to the reactor must be blocked by a closed valve somewhere, so they went together to the half-destroyed feedwater room, where they opened valves on the two feedwater lines. Next, they moved to another room, where they stood knee-deep in a highly radioactive mixture of fuel and water for hours, turning half-submerged valves by hand until the radiation drained their strength and they were evacuated to Pripyat’s hospital.136 Their noble efforts were in vain. The water lines had been destroyed along with the reactor - they were opening valves to nowhere - yet still the control room operators continued redirecting water towards the reactor even six hours after the explosion.

«It's not easy to believe.» «I» she told him, «I can believe anything. You have no idea what I can believe.» «Really?» «I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in "War of the Worlds". I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kind of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of casual chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.»

Then she bent her head over at the waist and tossed her head around to separate the curls. The elevator stopped and she heard the door open. She straightened up to find some big guy in a ball cap and sunglasses right in her face, charging into the elevator before she could even get out of it. He had both hands full of carry-out bags—Mexican food, judging from the smell. She looked at them, her mouth watering. Yep. Enrique’s. The best in town. He whirled around to punch the door-close button. “Hey,” she said. “I’m getting off here.” Some girl outside in the lobby yelled, “We know it’s you, Chase. You shouldn’t lie to us.” Startled, Elle looked at the guy’s face and saw, just before he reached for her, that it really was Chase Lomax in ragged shorts and flip-flops. He grabbed her up off her feet and bent his head. Found her mouth with his. “Wait for us,” another girl yelled. The sound of running feet echoed off the marble floor, slid to a stop. “Oh, no!” Kissing her, without so much as a “Hi, there, Elle.” Burning her up. She tried to struggle but he had both her arms pinned to her sides. And suddenly she wanted to stay right where she was forever because the shock was wearing off and she was starting to feel. A lot more than she ever had before. The door slid closed. The girls began banging on it. “We know your room number, Chase, honey,” they yelled. “See you there.” Loud giggles. “We’ll show you a real good time.” The elevator moved up, the voices faded away. But Chase kept on kissing her. She had to make him stop it. Right now. Who did he think he was, anyway? Somebody who could send lightning right through her whole body, that’s who. Lightning so strong it shook her to her toes. He had to stop this now. But she couldn’t move any part of her body. Except her lips. And her tongue . . . When he finally let her go she pulled back and away, fighting to get a handle on her breathing. “What’s the matter?” he demanded. Her blood rushed through her so fast it made her dizzy. “You’re asking me? It’s more like, what’s the matter with you? How’d you get the idea you could get away with kissing me like that without even bothering to say hello?” She touched her lips. They were still on fire. “You have got a helluva nerve, Chase Lomax.” He grinned at her as he took off his shades. He hung them in the neck of his huge, baggy T-shirt that had a bucking bull and rider with Git’R’Done written above it. He wore ragged denim shorts and flip-flops, for God’s sake. Chase Lomax was known for always being starched and ironed, custom-booted and hatted. “I asked if you’re all right because you were bent over double shaking your head when the doors opened,” he said. “Like you were in pain or something.” “I was drying my hair.” He stared, then burst out laughing. “Oh, well, then.” His laugh was contagious but she wouldn’t let herself join in. He could not get away with this scot-free. He’d shaken her up pretty good. “Oh. I see. You thought I needed help, so you just grabbed me and kissed me senseless. Is that how you treat somebody you think’s in pain?” He grinned that slow, charming grin of his again. “It made you feel better. Didn’t it?” He held her gaze and wouldn’t let it go. She must be a sight. She could feel heat in her cheeks, so her face must be red. Plus she was gasping, trying to slow her breathing. And her heart-beat. “You nearly scared me to death to try to get rid of those girls. And it was all wasted. They’re coming to your room.” Something flashed deep in his brown eyes. “Now you’ve hurt my feelings. I don’t think it was wasted,” he drawled. “I liked that kiss.

Flynn lived in a shiny glass apartment tower on the water in Melbourne. The building looked like hundreds of mirrors reflecting the bright blue sky. He lived at the top of the high-rise. Kope and I stepped off the elevator and looked down the hall at Flynn’s door. We’d been silent. Nodding to each other, we sent our hearing into the apartment. With a quiet gasp, I yanked my auditory sense back to normal. Flynn was busy with company at the moment. Very busy. Kope made a low sound and closed his eyes, shaking his head as if to clear away the sounds he’d heard. My face heated and I shifted from foot to foot, fighting back the nervous smile that always wanted to surface at inappropriate times. I found a small sitting area around the corner with glass walls overlooking the city. We sat, taking in the view. When my stupid urge to smile finally settled, I braved another look at Kope and pointed to myself, using my new, limited sign-language skills to tell him I’d listen. Given the new information about his inclination for lust, it was only fair. I quickly looked away, embarrassed by the crassness of the situation. I wasn’t going to listen the whole time. I’d just pop in for a quick check. Ten minutes passed. Still busy. Half an hour passed. Busy. Forty-five minutes passed. I shook my head to let Kope know they were still at it. He fidgeted and paced, out of his normal, calm comfort zone. An hour and ten minutes passed, and I took a turn at stretching my legs. I was getting hungry. I thought we’d be through with our talk by this time. We could interrupt Flynn, but I didn’t want him to freak out in front of somebody. We needed his guest to leave so we could talk alone. At the hour and a half mark, Kope checked his watch and looked at me. I sent my hearing into the room. Oh, they weren’t in the bedroom anymore. Finally! I wiggled my hearing around until it hit the sound of running water. A shower. This was a good sign. But wait . . . nope. I shook my head, eyes wide. Was this normal? Kope did something uncharacteristic then. He grinned, giving a little huff through his nose. This elicited a small giggle from me and I pressed both hands over my mouth. It was too late, though. At this point, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. I could feel the crazy, unfortunate amusement rising. I jumped up and ran as spritely as I could to the stairwell with Kope on my heels. We sprinted down several flights before I fell back against the wall, laughter bubbling out. It went on and on, only getting worse when Kope joined in with his deep chuckling, a joyful rumble.

The temple was in a field of graves suddenly a pitiful-looking skeleton appeared and said: A melancholy autumn wind Blows through the world; the pampas grass waves As we drift to the moor, Drift to the sea. What can be done With the mind of a man That should be clear But though he is dressed up in a monk's robe, Just lets life pass him by? Such deep musings Made me uneasy, I could not sleep. Towards dawn I dozed off... I found myself surrounded by a group of skeletons, acting as they had when they were still alive. One skeleton came over to me and said: Memories Flee and Are no more. All are empty dreams Devoid of meaning. Violate the reality of things And babble about 'God' and 'the Buddha' And you will never find the true Way. Still breathing, You feel animated, So a corpse in a field Seems to be something Apart from you. If chunks of rock Can serve as a memento To the dead A better headstone Would be a simple tea-mortar. Humans are indeed frightful things. A single moon Bright and clear In an unclouded sky; Yet we still stumble In the world's darkness. This world Is but A fleeting dream So why be alarmed At its evanescence? The vagaries of life, Though painful, Teach us Not to cling To this floating world. Why do people Lavish decoration On this set of bones, Destined to disappear Without a trace? The original body Must return to Its original place. Do not search For what cannot be found. No one really knows The nature of birth Nor the true dwelling place. We return to the source And turn to dust. Many paths lead from The foot of the mountain, But at the peak We all gaze at the Single bright moon. If at the end of our journey There is no final Resting place, Then we need not fear Losing our Way. No beginning. No end. Our mind Is born and dies; The emptiness of emptiness! Relax, And the mind Runs wild; Control the world And you can cast it aside. Rain, hail, snow, and ice: All are different But when they fall They become to same water As the valley stream. The ways of proclaiming The Mind all vary, But the same heavenly truth Can be seen In each and every one. Cover your path With fallen pine needles So no one will be able To locate your True dwelling place. How vain, The endless funderals at the Cremation grounds of Mount Toribe! Don't the mourner realize That they will be next? 'Life is fleeeting!' We think at the sight Of smoke drifting from Mount Toribe, But when will we realize That we are in the same boat? All is in vain! This morning, A healthy friend; This evening, A wisp of cremation smoke. What a pity! Evening smoke from Mount Toribe Blown violently To and fro By the wind. When burned We become ashes, and earth when buried. Is it only our sins That remain behind? All the sins Committed In the Three Worlds Will fade away Together with me.

I started blasting my gun. Letting loose a stream of words like I'd never used before. True to form, Misty didn't stay put and stood at my side. Tears stained her cheeks. Her gun firing wildly. It was a blur. The next thing I knew, no zombies were left standing and we knelt at Kali's side. I took out a rag and wiped the feathers from his face. We could tell he was still alive. His chest rising and falling in jerks. "Kali, how bad are you hurt?" I asked with an unsteady voice. "I'm okay, guys. Did we get all of them?" he whispered. "Nate, he's been bit all over!" I looked down at his body, covered in white feathers, speckled with splotches of deep red. "Yep. You got 'em, even those freak chickens." "Nate, I'm thirsty," his voice shaky and cracking. "Okay, buddy. We've got water in the truck." "No, not water. How about a glass of lemonade?" "Kali, what are you saying?" Misty's voice was tense as a piano string. "Hurry, Nate. I'm getting weak—the lemonade." I think running into the crowd of zombies would have been easier than this. Maybe that's why Kali chucked a rock at my head—he knew he could count on me for this. I ripped off a small water gun I had taped on my suit and tore off the cap. "Oh, Nate, don't. Maybe there's something we can do. Maybe—" she stopped. I put my hand behind Kali's neck and felt a slight burn, probably zombie snot. Misty took one of his hands and held it to her chest. "You were so brave, Kali, so brave." My hands didn't shake anymore; they were numb, as if they didn't belong to me. I manipulated them the best I could—like using chopsticks. Lifting Kali's head, I poured the juice into his mouth until it was gone. He was burning up; his skin felt like it was on fire. "I never thought I'd have friends, real friends—thank you, guys." He closed his eyes and I felt the muscles in his neck go limp. Gently, I put his head down and cleaned my blistering hand with the rag. Misty wiped her tears as I put the rag over Kali's face. "No, thank you, kid." We sat there still, silent except for the small cries that we both let slip out. Misty, still holding his hand. Me, staring down at my hands, soaked in tears. I don't know how much time passed. It could have been five minutes; it might have been an hour. Suddenly, the feathers moved, flying in every direction. Looking up, I saw a helicopter coming down in front of us—one of those big black military ones. It landed and three men stepped out. They wore protective gear like you see in those alien movies. I worried a little about what they might have planned for us. I've seen enough movies to know those government types can't be trusted—especially when they're in those protective suits. "What happened here? How did you manage to negate the virus?" one of the hooded figures asked. "Zombie juice," I replied. "Zombie juice?" "Actually it was the Super Zombie Juice Mega Bomb," Misty added as she stood and took my hand.

I can believe that things are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen – I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of casual chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

I," she told him, "can believe anything. You have no idea what I can believe." "Really?" "I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theatres from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in this universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of casual chaos, background noise and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, life is a cruel joke and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it." She stopped, out of breath. Shadow almost took his hands off the wheel to applaud.

Wherever you go, Provincetown will always take you back, at whatever age and in whatever condition. Because time moves somewhat differently there, it is possible to return after ten years or more and run into an acquaintance, on Commercial or at the A&P, who will ask mildly, as if he’d seen you the day before yesterday, what you’ve been doing with yourself. The streets of Provincetown are not in any way threatening, at least not to those with an appetite for the full range of human passions. If you grow deaf and blind and lame in Provincetown, some younger person with a civic conscience will wheel you wherever you need to go; if you die there, the marshes and dunes are ready to receive your ashes. While you’re alive and healthy, for as long as it lasts, the golden hands of the clock tower at Town Hall will note each hour with an electric bell as we below, on our purchase of land, buy or sell, paint or write or fish for bass, or trade gossip on the post office steps. The old bayfront houses will go on dreaming, at least until the emptiness between their boards proves more durable than the boards themselves. The sands will continue their slow devouring of the forests that were the Pilgrims’ first sight of North America, where man, as Fitzgerald put it, “must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.” The ghost of Dorothy Bradford will walk the ocean floor off Herring Cove, draped in seaweed, surrounded by the fleeting silver lights of fish, and the ghost of Guglielmo Marconi will tap out his messages to those even longer dead than he. The whales will breach and loll in their offshore world, dive deep into black canyons, and swim south when the time comes. Herons will browse the tidal pools; crabs with blue claws tipped in scarlet will scramble sideways over their own shadows. At sunset the dunes will take on their pink-orange light, and just after sunset the boats will go luminous in the harbor. Ashes of the dead, bits of their bones, will mingle with the sand in the salt marsh, and wind and water will further disperse the scraps of wood, shell, and rope I’ve used for Billy’s various memorials. After dark the raccoons and opossums will start on their rounds; the skunks will rouse from their burrows and head into town. In summer music will rise up. The old man with the portable organ will play for passing change in front of the public library. People in finery will sing the anthems of vanished goddesses; people who are still trying to live by fishing will pump quarters into jukeboxes that play the songs of their high school days. As night progresses, people in diminishing numbers will wander the streets (where whaling captains and their wives once promenaded, where O’Neill strode in drunken furies, where Radio Girl—who knows where she is now?—announced the news), hoping for surprises or just hoping for what the night can be counted on to provide, always, in any weather: the smell of water and its sound; the little houses standing square against immensities of ocean and sky; and the shapes of gulls gliding overhead, white as bone china, searching from their high silence for whatever they might be able to eat down there among the dunes and marshes, the black rooftops, the little lights tossing on the water as the tides move out or in.

He reaches out to stroke my wet hair, smoothing it back from my face. “Just once,” he says softly. “Just now, just for a few moments…” We lean into each other at the same time, wet skin pressed against wet skin, cold water over cold skin, warming each other, heating up so fast it feels as if the river droplets are burning off us already as our lips meet. I’ve never kissed anyone in the water before, never been so---comparatively--naked as I press against someone, and it’s dizzying. My hands slip over his shoulders, run over his back, feel the lean muscles there, the strength as his arms tighten around my waist, pulling me up toward him, onto the tips of my toes again. He’s kissing me hard, his tongue cool in my mouth, and I can’t help kissing him back just as hard. His hands slide under the loose shirt I’m wearing, up my bare back, and I moan against his lips; I press against him and feel his nipples, hard little points, through the cotton fabric of the shirt, the lace of my bra. It’s an odd, entrancing sensation, and it makes me want to rub against him even more. I’m clinging to him, my hands rising up to stroke his scalp, burrow into his wet hair, and he almost purrs against my mouth with pleasure, a sound that starts deep in his chest. I feel the vibration. It makes me think of a cat, a big, predatory cat, and I shiver from head to toe and pull my mouth from his and bury my face in the bony hollow of his shoulder, against his bare skin, and just hold on to him. I’m shaking. It’s too much, it’s not enough. Luca’s hand closes over the back of my head and smoothes my hair down, his other hand still firm around my waist, holding me to him. I feel his lips press to my scalp, kissing it. “Violetta,” he says, with utter desolation in his voice. “Violetta, cosa mi fai?” “What are you doing to me?” he’s saying. And I want to repeat his words back to him, but I know he doesn’t expect an answer. I keep my face pressed into his shoulder, because it will be the last time. I try to smell his skin, but the fresh flowing water carries scents away, and when I eventually pull back, there’s an extra little rush of heartbreak because I know it means that I will never have Luca’s scent in my nostrils again, will never again be close enough to him to have that luxury. There’s nothing to say. His hands fall from me and he steps back, enough to let me slip past him, turning my face away, because I’m shallow, and the sight of him with his hair slicked back and his mouth red from kissing will make me do what I know I can’t: throw myself at him all over again.

Just a moon ago, at dawn, I was drunk. Very drunk. I wasn’t thinking of you. You were the last thing on my mind. I was trying to get up from where I lay on the riverbank without falling in. I couldn’t tell the water from the sky. I was seeing two skies and two rivers and knew that if I took a wrong step I would probably drown, and I was deciding whether or not that would be a bad thing. The next thing I knew I was in the center of the river on that flat rock you used to sit on, and I looked up into the sky, and suddenly my vision cleared. I knew that you wanted me back. I knew, at that moment, we were both seeing into your heart.” She didn’t tell him that was probably the morning the baby came, but he saw her struggle and her resignation and her surprise. There’s no real reason for this, she thought. There’s no good reason. I can’t believe such nonsense, but it happened. I don’t know my own mind even now when he’s standing right in front of me, so dear, so beautiful, and much too good. Much too good. Why can’t I have his faith? Rising Hawk watched her face, and he began to believe that if he could just touch her, kiss her the way he had on the trail, she would give in. But then she said, “Rising Hawk. Would you do something for me?” Her voice suggested some new torment. His vulnerable expression fled. He wasn’t going to be made to look like a fool. Not even by Livy, no matter how dear she was to him. He thought about the winter. She made him laugh. Most of the time, she made him happy. They all believed she still had him bewitched. Maybe she did. Against his better judgment and his gut feeling, he felt himself nod yes. She took a deep breath. “Turn around and walk away.” “What?” “Turn around and walk away.” She had done all the thinking she could. By itself it held no answers. This was her last chance. “That’s what you want?” “Yes.” His next words had to fight their way out. His teeth were set like a bear trap. “I don’t know why I love you. It never makes any sense to me. Nothing about you does.” He turned. Livy watched him walk away. His familiar stride, the way he held his head, and the slight limp helped her remember the trail, their strange journey, and the gunshot. It’s not fair, she told herself as the pain of seeing him walk away one last time took hold of her. “It’s not enough,” she said aloud in an angry sob that rose in her throat and nearly choked her next words. “But I can’t help it. I can’t, and I don’t care anymore. I don’t care. Rising Hawk, wait!” she called, and broke into a run. He slowed at the sound of her voice and looked over his shoulder. The old smile returned to his face, gentle, mocking, assured. He didn’t wait for her to reach him, but turned to meet her halfway.

The SS Deutschland was one of a group of four ships that included the SS Albert Ballin, on which my father had originally come to the United States. The other two were the SS Hamburg, and the SS New York. The Deutschland was launched during the Roaring Twenties on April 28, 1923, at the Blohm and Voss shipyard along the Elbe River in Hamburg. Nearly a year later after sea trials, she inaugurated her regular run to New York City. From the beginning, the ship was beset by problems, but was still considered the pride of the Hamburg-Amerika Line, a company with rich traditions that was founded in 1847. So, when the Deutschland left Hamburg for the first time on March 27, 1924, she moved slowly down the Elbe River past Blohm und Voss, the massive dockyard where she had been built. At the time of her maiden voyage, the entire city celebrated when the Deutschland headed down the Elbe River towards the North Sea. Other ships in the harbor fittingly saluted her by blowing their deep throaty whistles, as small craft such as tugboats and fireboats pumped frothy white streams of the brackish river water high into the air.

One night he left his tent and rambled around aimlessly in the sleeping camp. He wandered to the enclosure where the captives’ tents stood near the banks of the river Rha. The night was cold, silvery with moonlight, and silent; he could hear the river gently lapping against its banks. It was a sweet, soothing sound like the lullaby his mother used to sing. As he listened a change came into the rhythm of the river’s song—now it was sad, yearning . . . and he could hear words. Someone was singing near by. The melody coiled around his heart and drew him, down the grassy slope, down to the river’s edge he went. The soft grass deadened his footsteps and he saw the singer before she heard him. Leaning against a tree so close to the river that her moonlit figure was reflected in the water, stood one of the captive girls. Bendeguz stood motionless, watching and listening. Her deep sad voice seemed to melt the fierceness around his heart, the restlessness left him, he was at peace. The song came to an end. The girl turned away from the river with a sigh . . . she saw Bendeguz. She made a move as if to run away, then shrank against the tree and faced him defiantly. There was contempt in her eyes and pride in the lift of her head. Bendeguz wanted to say: “Do not be afraid,” but now he could not, for there was no fear in her eyes—just cold, proud contempt. He walked closer, he could have touched her, and still she faced him defiantly. “What is your name?” he asked and his voice was gentle. “Alleeta.” “Alleeta . . .” he repeated slowly. “Alleeta, your eyes are as cold as ice. Do you hate me?” She looked at him for a long time then she turned her head away. “No, not now,” she whispered. “Always I have before, but not now.” She was speaking the language of the Huns, yet it wasn’t the same. To Bendeguz the words she spoke were like her elusive reflection in the water, the same words he knew but subtly different. And suddenly the words of her song rang again in his ears: Lead me westward, White Eagle of the Moon, oh, lead me On silvery rays of the Moon— Westward I long to fly . . . . “Alleeta, where did you learn that song—where did you learn the language of my people?” he asked. She looked at him, surprised. “It is the language of my people and it is a song we all know, the Song of the White Eagle.” “The White Eagle!” exclaimed Bendeguz.

Still waters run deep is a proverb of Latin origin meaning that a placid exterior hides a passionate or subtle nature or a great depth of character. People are more what they hide than what they show.

Ursula craved solitude but she hated loneliness... At work, they regarded her as a person apart... They imagined there must be more to her. A dark horse. And still waters run deep. They would be disappointed to know that even clichés were more interesting than the life she lived.

To her horror, the man lifted the edge of the robe to look at her shoulder. Frantic, she jerked at the leather that held her hand behind her. This was her worst nightmare. Comanches. Not one, but two. And she couldn’t even fight them. If he yanked the robe off her, there would be nothing she could do but lie there in shame. Hunter stirred and yawned, then rose up on one elbow to bark in Comanche, “What is it, tah-mah? Can’t you see I’m trying to sleep?” “I just came to check the woman.” Hunter squinted at the sun and sighed. “So, how does she look?” He sat up and drew the robe further down her shoulder, taking care not to uncover her breast, laughing softly at the horrified expression on her face. Of all the men, his brother, Warrior, would be least likely to harm her. He was a fierce fighter but otherwise gentle, more apt to defend her than attack her. “It seems better to me. The grease, maybe. Not such a deep red. Old Man was right about the cold water chasing away the fever, too. She’s hot, but nothing like she was.” Warrior pressed a palm to her skin. “Old Man says if you don’t keep her cool, the fever will come upon her again.” “Not another bath?” Hunter propped an elbow on his upraised knee and rubbed his forehead. All trace of laughter fled. He didn’t relish the thought of the battle he’d have with her. “Don’t wake me with news like that. Bring me coffee first.” “Not another bath, but no traveling in the heat. We’ll have to stay here a few days.” “You’re willing to risk that? What about the tosi tivo?” Breaking open a mullein leaf, Warrior laved his fingertips with healing juice and applied it to the frightened girl’s cheeks. She shrank back--only to run into Hunter, which made her flinch. “We’re probably safer here, right under their noses, than we would be miles away. When we circled back, we covered our trail well. You have to remember how stupid the tosi tivo are. They will follow the trails the others laid and never even think to look for us here, so close.” “Yes, but--” “She’s your woman. If the situation were reversed, you would risk it.” Hunter grew impatient with his struggling captive and caught a handful of her braid to hold her still. “There, I’ve got her. The nose is worst. On the end where it curves up. Her forehead, too, tah-mah.” Warrior dabbed juice and smiled. “She doesn’t like me. Come to think of it, she doesn’t seem any too fond of you.

Nicholas Róstov turned away and, as if searching for something, gazed into the distance, at the waters of the Danube, at the sky, and at the sun. How beautiful the sky looked; how blue, how calm, and how deep! How bright and glorious was the setting sun! With that soft glitter the water of the distant Danube shone. And fairer still were the far away blue mountains beyond the river, the nunnery, the mysterious gorges, and the pine forests veiled in mist to their summits . . . There was peace and happiness . . . 'I should wish for nothing else, nothing, if only I were there,' thought Róstov. 'In myself alone and in that sunshine there is so much happiness; but here . . . groans, suffering, fear, and this uncertainty and hurry . . . There - they are shouting again, and again are all running back somewhere, and I shall run with them, and it, death, is here above me and around . . . Another instant and I shall never again see the sun, this water, that gorge! . . .

But Ulmo was alone, and he abode not in Valinor, nor ever came thither unless there were need for a great council; he dwelt from the beginning of Arda in the Outer Ocean, and still he dwells there. Thence he governs the flowing of all waters, and the ebbing, the courses of all rivers and the replenishment of springs, the distilling of all dews and rain in every land beneath the sky. In the deep places he gives thought to music great and terrible; and the echo of that music runs through all the veins of the world in sorrow and in joy; for if joyful is the fountain that rises in the sun, its springs are in the wells of sorrow unfathomed and at the foundations of the Earth.

Still waters run deep, but history remembers fires.

Do/Do Not I sniff the blooming tiger lily, two tongues sprung open from one mouth. I poison the river unintentionally. I walk on the designated paths. I splice the mountain, its body and mouth gaping. I collect rainwater in a wheelbarrow. I line the whale’s belly with gifts until they rupture its stomach. I water the strawberries. Again I fill my gas tank with dead things, generations spun together until shiny. I feed the ducks fresh lettuce. I maneuver the dead squirrel on the road, mark the moment when creature becomes meat. I accept that my love is a poisonous flower, routinely fatal. I calculate the force of loving in each glittering death. All day on this land, in the deep forest, the electric greens and still-wet mud writhe with life. The pond gurgles and whispers. Everyone here knows to shudder when they see me coming. The mangos arrive unbruised at the grocery store. The wolves should start running.

Still waters may run deep, but stagnant pools breed decay. Embrace the current, and find your flow.

A Doorway Opens October 13 AT ITS HEART, I think, religion is mystical. Moses with his flocks in Midian, Buddha under the Bo tree, Jesus up to his knees in the waters of Jordan: each of them responds to something for which words like shalom, oneness, God even, are only pallid, alphabetic souvenirs. “I have seen things,” Aquinas told a friend, “that make all my writings seem like straw.” Religion as institution, as ethics, as dogma, as social action—all of this comes later and in the long run maybe counts for less. Religions start, as Frost said poems do, with a lump in the throat, to put it mildly, or with the bush going up in flames, the rain of flowers, the dove coming down out of the sky. As for the man in the street, any street, wherever his own religion is a matter of more than custom, it is likely to be because, however dimly, a doorway opened in the air once to him too, a word was spoken, and, however shakily, he responded. The debris of his life continues to accumulate, the Vesuvius of the years scatters its ashes deep and much gets buried alive, but even under many layers the tell-tale heart can go on beating still. Where it beats strong, there starts pulsing out from it a kind of life that is marked by, above all things perhaps, compassion: that sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside another’s skin and for knowing that there can never really be peace and joy for any until there is peace and joy finally for all. Where it stops beating altogether, little is left religiously speaking but a good man, not perhaps in Mark Twain’s “the worst sense of the word” but surely in the grayest and saddest: the good man whose goodness has become cheerless and finicky, a technique for working off his own guilts, a gift with no love in it which neither deceives nor benefits any for long.

You will find, my dear brother, that still waters run deep.

When her mind was clear and his body at rest – she could think clearly about the man who’d stolen her heart and captured her soul. Still waters run deep. The old saying had no better example than Patrick Murphy. The calm, politic façade he showed the world concealed a depth of passion he revealed to precious few. When he woke, he would consume her.

DJ, are you awake? Freaking elf. “Go home, Rand.” I am home. Where are you? I frowned and burrowed my face into the soft down pillow. Which wasn’t my pillow. Holy crap. What had happened? I sat up and took in several observations at once, none of which made sense and all of which sent my heart rate jack-rabbiting hard enough to send my blood pressure into the ozone. First, I was lying beneath a heavy bedspread woven in a rich blue-and-cream print. The bed was an elaborate confection made to look like an antique half-tester, and a brass chandelier hung overhead. I recognized the Hotel Monteleone. I recognized Jean Lafitte’s bedroom in the posh Eudora Welty Suite in the Monteleone. I didn’t have a clue as to how I got here. Second, I wore only underwear. My clothes were thrown across a chair in the corner. I had no recollection of removing them. Third, the pillow next to mine still held the clear indentation of a head, and there was water running behind the closed bathroom door. What in God’s name had I done? Rand! Where are you? So help me, if that elf was behind this, I’d splay him open like a catfish and watch his guts fall on the floor. Then I’d batter and deep-fry him. God, Dru. Stop shrieking like an elven shrew. I think you got too cold and went into a survival state.

sometimes when you think that sin is dead and that it has gone away, those are the most dangerous times of all, because at the times when we think that it is dead, it is very much alive, because as you and I know all too well that it is often still water, rather than running waters, that are in fact deep. ========== Mark 9.43-50 Mortification, Jesus Style First Presbyterian Church, Jackson, Mississippi

sometimes when you think that sin is dead and that it has gone away, those are the most dangerous times of all, because at the times when we think that it is dead, it is very much alive, because as you and I know all too well that it is often still water, rather than running waters, that are in fact deep.

Worn Faces Hills about the countryside, Cold and bare, dissatisfied. From the years of deep regret, Laboring, paying on her debt, On through life. Deep the gullies scar her face Where the waters run their race; Once a smooth and sun-lit hill— Now she’s ragged, worn and still— Dead from strife. Aged and worn, a human’s face Where the tears in steady pace Cut the youth to ragged forms As it faces roughest storms Seeking life.

Aaarrgghheeee….” There was a pounding of feet and a yell that would make a ninja master proud. I spun around just as Shawn dashed past me in a mindless panic. Before I could understand the reason behind his mad dash for freedom, I felt the brush of feathers. A black swan was madly flapping his wings and chasing after my boyfriend, reaching his long neck to peck at his butt. Shawn ran for his life, darting across the lawn and running in a circle before making his way back toward me. “Shawn!” I gasped in shock and panic. He attempted to jump over a small tree in the garden, but caught his foot and went sprawling on the lakeside path, knocking me off balance as he fell. I took a step backward with the impact of his body against mine, but there was nothing behind me apart from lake. The water was knee deep, and I fell, spread eagle on my back, and splashed into it without hurting myself. But it was cold, wet, and dirty. Birds scattered in fright as I picked myself up with disgust. Ow, help, ow, help, ow, get off, ow.” Shawn was still yelling, and I looked up to see a swan attacking his prone body, pecking at his arms, legs, and face. His mother came to the rescue, using her handbag like a battle-ax, knocking the bird away from Shawn, then swinging the bag in front of the swan’s face until he gave up the fight and retreated to the water. I climbed out of the lake, dripping and stinking like a sewer. “Shawn?” There was blood on his clothes, and my heart stopped. “Shawn? Baby? You’re bleeding.” He sat up gingerly and inspected a couple of peck marks on his arms before touching his chin. “Oh, fiddlesticks,” he exclaimed. “I hit my chin when I fell. How bad is it, Harley?” Still soaking wet, I drove him to the hospital, where Christine exclaimed with delight over his injuries before the doctor slipped in three stitches under his chin. Christine patched up his peck marks and cleaned his grazed palms before we went home.

Well-Watered Gardens “The LORD will always lead you. He will satisfy your needs in dry lands and give strength to your bones. You will be like a garden that has much water, like a spring that never runs dry.” ISAIAH 58:11 NCV Exhausted and weary to the bone, the writer walked into the prayer time barely able to summon any pleasure in the proceedings. The previous year had been grueling, and while she still clung to her faith in Jesus Christ, she had very little strength left. Empty and dry, she could barely make it through the motions of living. She came to the prayer room from a meeting with her agent, who had refused to drop her as a client. Frustrated at her lack of purpose and unable to write out of her desert-like existence, she sat facing the friend who had agreed to pray for her. Soon after prayer began, the dam holding her emotions hostage broke deep within. Tears flowed, and the Lord poured assurance after promise after confirmation over her head in the form of more life-giving water. God wasn’t done with her yet. Hope pushed through the dry soil, turning lush and green in the showers of life-giving water. Two months later she stared in amazement at Isaiah 58:11. Almost word for word, the verse matched what her friend had prayed, proving once again that God’s Word is living and powerful. Thank You so much, Father, for sending Your Holy Spirit to wash us with the water of Your unchanging Word and to refresh us in the showers of blessings and mercies that are new every morning.

The Caribbean is still an exciting destination. I have been to just about every notable island surrounding this sea and have yet to be bored. Some of the islands are administered by other countries like Saint Martín; some are independent countries such as Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The languages differ from island to island and include English, French, Spanish, Dutch Haitian Creole and Papiamento although English is understood on most islands. This time I returned to the Dominican Republic, an island nation that I first visited when Santo Domingo was called Ciudad Trujillo in 1955 and have returned numerous times. I have also been to Haiti the country that shares the Island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic and I have stood at the mountainous border dividing the two countries. Driving around the country offers magnificent views with every turn in the road. On this visit I enjoyed the northern Atlantic coast named the Amber Coast because of the amount of amber found there. The primary site along the northern coast is La Cordillera Septentrional. The amber-bearing stones named clastic rocks are usually washed down the steep inclines along with sandstone and other debris and are even found in deep water at the end of the run. The Amber Coast of the Dominican Republic has mostly low mountains and beautiful beaches. Overlooking the city of Puerto Plata is Mount Isabel de Torres, which is covered by dense jungles but can be ascended by a cableway. Some of these jungle areas were used as sites for the movie Jurassic Park. A new 30 acre tourist port for Carnival Cruise Lines has been constructed in Amber Cove at a cost of $85 Million. It is one of the newest destinations to visit in the Caribbean and well worth the effort.

Slowly, she realized there were fingers running through her hair. Not in the dream, not in that place of pain and memories that made her heart ache. No. There were fingers brushing the snarls out of her hair in the waking world. For a second, time melded together. She must be back in Alpha, where there was a kinder maid who wanted to wake her out of a nightmare. But these fingers were broader, thicker, and there were delicate claws gently raking along her scalp. Fingers that couldn’t belong to anything other than the monstrous creature who she should be terrified of. And yet, she had never been able to bring herself to be scared of him. Opening her eyes, she slowly rolled over to see that he had dragged himself out of the water and down the hall. His massive tail was still halfway in the hall, the fluke flat

He had Mira in his arms. Though her blood coated his scales and floated around her like a plume of bright color, she was still alive. He was certain they would save her. Even with the wound in her belly. Brushing his claws over her face, he drew her closer to him and held her tightly against his hearts. “You’re going to live,” he breathed. “You’re going to live, Mira. I will not let you go.” He was pleased that Byte had been correct. He breathed for both of them, and this was the first time in the water he’d seen her without a mask. Her face was so beautiful, so peaceful, as she looked up at him. She lifted a hand, gently running her fingers down his neck. “I love you,” she said, her voice so quiet he almost didn’t hear it. “I love you so much, Arges. I don’t want to die without you knowing that.” The words were a punch in his gut. “You’re not going to die.” “I might.” She lifted her hands from her belly, and the weak stream of blood frightened him. There should have been more. So much more.

Sometimes you spend hours contemplating a tree, describing it, dissecting it: the roots, the trunk, the branches, the leaves, every leaf, every rib of every leaf, every branch again, and the unending play of the indifferent shapes that your eager gaze solicits or conjures up: a face, a town, a maze or a path, coats of arms and cavalcades. As your perception gets sharper, more patient and more versatile, the tree shatters and then reforms, a thousand shades of green, a thousand leaves, identical and yet all different. You think that you could spend your whole life in front of a tree, never exhausting it and never understanding it, because there is nothing for you to understand, just something to look at: when all is said and done, all you can say about this tree is that it is a tree; all this tree can say to you is that it is a tree, a root, then a trunk, then branches, then leaves. You can't expect to extract any other truth from it. The tree has no moral to offer you, no message to impart. Its strength, its majesty, its life - if you still hope to draw some meaning, some courage, from these outworn metaphors - are only ever images, neat illustrations, as useless as the tranquillity of the fields, as the still waters which, reputedly, run deep, or the courage of the little paths that don't climb very high but do so all alone, or the smiling hillsides upon which bunches of grapes ripen in the sun. And that is why the tree fascinates you, or astounds you, or calms you: because of the unsuspected and unimpeachable obviousness of the bark, the branches and the leaves. That is why, perhaps, you never go walking with a dog, because the dog looks at you, pleads with you, speaks to you. Its eyes brimming with tears of gratitude, its servile expression, its canine frolicking, constantly force you to confer on it the ignoble status of pet. You cannot remain neutral in the company of a dog any more than in the company of a man. But you will never hold a conversation with a tree. You cannot live in the company of a dog, because the dog is constantly calling upon you to make it live, to feed it, to stroke it, to be a man for it, to be its master, to be the god roaring the name - dog - that will make it instantly grovel on the ground. But the tree asks nothing of you. You can be the God of the dogs, God of the cats, God of the poor, all you need is a leash, a little tenderness, a little money, but you will never be master of the tree. All you can ever wish for is to become a tree in your turn.

To be dull is to be interesting. Still waters run deep.

Nicholas Rostóv turned away and, as if searching for something, gazed into the distance, at the waters of the Danube, at the sky, and at the sun. How beautiful the sky looked; how blue, how calm, and how deep! How bright and glorious was the setting sun! With what soft glitter the waters of the distant Danube shone. And fairer still were the far away blue mountains beyond the river, the nunnery, the mysterious gorges, and the pine forests veiled in mist to their summits . . . There was peace and happiness . . .”I should wish for nothing else, nothing, if only I were there,” thought Rostóv. “In myself alone and in that sunshine there is so much happiness; but here . . . groans, suffering, fear, and this uncertainty and hurry . . . There—they are shouting again, and again are all running back somewhere, and I shall run with them, and it, death, is here above me and around . . . Another instant and I shall never again see the sun, this water, that gorge! . . .

Remember, an activated attachment system is not passionate love. Next time you date someone and find yourself feeling anxious, insecure, and obsessive—only to feel elated every once in a while—tell yourself this is most likely an activated attachment system and not love! True love, in the evolutionary sense, means peace of mind. “Still waters run deep” is a good way of characterizing it.

than she was deep. Her shallow draft let her go up rivers or right onto beaches without damage, but her passage over deeper water left a lot to be desired. She sidled along, with here a dip and there a curtsy, like a bundle-laden farm wife making her way through a crowded market. We seemed to be the sole cargo. A deckhand gave me a couple of apples to share with the horses, but little talk. So after I had parceled out the fruit, I settled myself near them on their straw and took Chade’s advice about resting. The winds were kind to us, and the captain took us in closer to the looming cliffs than I’d have thought possible, but unloading the horses from the vessel was still an unpleasant task. All of Chade’s lecturing and warnings had not prepared me for the blackness of night on the water. The lanterns on the deck seemed pathetic efforts, confusing me more with the shadows they threw than aiding me with their feeble light. In the end, a deckhand rowed Chade to shore in the ship’s dory. I went overboard with the reluctant horses, for I knew Sooty would fight a lead rope and probably swamp the dory. I clung to Sooty and encouraged her, trusting her common sense to take us toward the dim lantern on shore. I had a long line on Chade’s horse, for I didn’t want his thrashing too close to us in the water. The sea was cold, the night was black, and if I’d had any sense, I’d have wished myself elsewhere, but there is something in a boy that takes the mundanely difficult and unpleasant and turns it into a personal challenge and an adventure. I came out of the water dripping, chilled, and completely exhilarated. I kept Sooty’s reins and coaxed Chade’s horse in. By the time I had them both under control, Chade was beside me, lantern in hand, laughing exultantly. The dory man was already away and pulling for the ship. Chade gave me my dry things, but they did little good pulled on over my dripping clothes. “Where’s the path?” I asked, my voice shaking with my shivering. Chade gave a derisive snort. “Path? I had a quick look while you were pulling in my horse. It’s no path, it’s no more than the course the water takes when it runs off down the cliffs. But it will have to do.” It was a little better than he had reported, but not much. It was narrow and steep and the gravel on it was loose underfoot. Chade went before with the lantern. I followed, with the horses in tandem.

Still waters run deep, that’s what they say.

And it’s like it is all around me all the time, and it sucks away all the light and absorbs all the sound so everything is less bright . . . less fun . . .” She sighs, lowers her face, then lifts it again to return her gaze to the water. “Less, I don’t know, less everything.” Chloe’s eyes leak, tears rolling down her cheeks as she pinches her nose tight, trying to hold them in. “When I think about her,” Mo says, “like now, I try to be happy because I know that’s what she would want and that she is someplace really good, but it’s all the other times, when I’m not thinking about her, that it’s hard, because those are the moments I miss her the most, when I feel so alone it’s like I’m floating in this great big sea or drifting in outer space, like gravity has deserted me or like I’m going to run out of air.” Chloe sniffles, and Mo’s eyes snap to her. “Sorry, Clover,” she says quickly, suddenly realizing Chloe is crying. Chloe shakes her head. “No, it’s okay.” She blots her eyes and takes a deep breath. “I miss her too. All the time.” “I mean, I get it,” Mo says as her own eyes fill. “People die. And I get that I’m still here and that life goes on, and that eventually the hole will get smaller. At least that’s what everyone keeps saying.” “Don’t you wish everyone would just shut up?” Chloe says. Mo nods, looks up, almost smiles, looks back at the ocean. “Exactly. Because it’s not that I don’t get what they’re saying. I do. But right now, the hole, it’s really, really big, and it’s really, really lonely, and I really, really miss her.” For a moment they stand quiet, both of them looking out at the ocean and holding back their emotions, and as I watch them, both so sad, I

Calvin Little, Lepidopterist! Calvin Little, he of the Still Waters Running Deep all over the place. Sweet, belt-wearing, Latin-spouting Calvin, to whom I owed three dollars and seventy-five cents. He had called himself my friend, and for some reason that knocked me out more than if he had professed his undying love for me. Friend, as in the noun-not-the-verb, as in real-life, flesh-and-blood friend. I wanted to cry with appreciation for him. As I glue-sticked the Blue Morpho into the GBBoE, it occured to me that my mind had snapped a photograph of Calvin– Calvin kneeling in the sunshine, his brilliant hair aflame in the light, cradling that butterfly in his freckled hands–and that I might just carry the image with me for the rest of my life.

the bathroom down the hall, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it, not knowing whom she’d run into and when. Indoor plumbing seemed unnecessary anyway. Getting water from the well and using the outdoor toilet was easy enough. But that shower, now that was a thing of beauty! She took the brush from the cabinet and let loose her single braid, as thick and long as the grasses that stood by the river back home. She shook her head so that her black hair fell loose, then brushed it, slowly and carefully, treating it as if every inch held a story. One stroke and then another, until it was smooth and silky, like the pajamas she slept in. They were different from the ones she wore at home, which she had made for herself. The stitching was too regular, too perfect to have been made by a young woman’s hand. Obviously, they were made by machine, like everything in Kabul. When Sunny had presented the room to her, she had been particularly proud of the full-length mirror that was framed in a shiny dark wood and sat on its own four legs. But Yazmina thought of it as vanity and had turned it away once Sunny had departed. Today, though, she turned it to face her. She put her hands on her stomach, where the life inside was growing with each new day, and looked at herself. She pulled the sleeping gown over her head, removed her undergarments, and there was her body, which she was seeing naked, in full, for the first time in her life. She was slim, her legs long and lean, her right leg still red and scraped from knee to thigh where she had fallen on the pebbled road when she was pushed out of the car. Her arms were slender but muscled from daily chores, still bruised by the rough grip of strong hands. She looked at her breasts, which were larger than usual because of her condition, but nothing like the long, low ones of Halajan, the old busybody who lived next door to the café and had an opinion about everything. Yazmina thought that woman had been sent by God himself to test her patience. No, Yazmina’s breasts were still “as glowing and round as the midnight moon,” as Najam used to tell her. She saddened at the memory of her husband’s face, his kisses and his touch. She would never feel such sweetness again. But she was with his baby. She turned to the side to look at her belly and stroked it with her two hands. She took a deep breath as if the air would give her all she and her baby needed to thrive. This will be my baby, she thought, my Najam, or if a girl, Inshallah, God willing, Najama (for Yazmina was convinced it was a girl, perhaps because it was Najam’s wish to have many children—a son or two, of course, but also a daughter who had the same light in her eyes as Yazmina). Not only would the baby be named after her father, but she would be a star lighting up the night sky, as the name meant. Najam’s seed was part of her, and she would cherish it and die trying to protect it.

Semi-Dry Tomatoes and Mozzarella Salad YIELD: 4 SERVINGS IN THE Today’s Gourmet series, I wanted to create dishes that were elegant, modern, original, light, and reasonably quick to prepare. TV demanded that the dishes be visually attractive, too. It was fun to dream up new recipes with that focus in mind. This one is a good example. Partially drying the tomatoes in the oven concentrates their taste, giving them a wonderfully deep flavor and great chewiness. The red of the tomatoes, the white of the cheese, and the green of the basil make this dramatically colorful salad especially enticing. Serve with good crunchy bread. 1½ pounds plum tomatoes (about 6), cut lengthwise into halves (12 pieces) ¾ teaspoon salt 10 ounces fresh mozzarella cheese, cut into ½-inch slices 2 tablespoons drained and rinsed capers ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 1 teaspoon chopped garlic 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil ½ teaspoon grated lemon rind About 1 cup (loose) basil leaves Preheat the oven to 250 degrees. Line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil. Arrange the tomato halves cut side up on the sheet, and sprinkle ½ teaspoon of the salt on top. Bake for 4 hours. Remove the tomatoes from the oven (they will still be soft), and put them in a serving bowl. Let them cool, then add the mozzarella, capers, remaining ¼ teaspoon salt, pepper, garlic, olive oil, and lemon rind, and mix to combine. Drop the basil leaves into 2 cups of boiling water, and cook for about 10 seconds. Drain, and cool under cold running water. Press the basil between your palms to extrude most of the water, then chop finely. Add to the salad, toss well, and serve.

Still waters run deep. It

last the secret is out, as it always must come in the end, The delicious story is ripe to tell to the intimate friend; Over the teacups and in the square the tongue has its desire; Still waters run deep, my dear, there’s never smoke without fire.

Somehow Frank got word to the dingo enclosure. “You’d better get to the compound,” came the message. “Graham grabbed Wes.” I felt cold chills go down my arms into my fingers. Graham was a large enough crocodile that he could easily kill prey the size of a man. I struggled through the water toward the compound. This is a nightmare, I thought. It felt like a bad dream, trying desperately to run in the waist-deep water, and yet feeling like I was in slow motion, struggling my way forward. When I got to the compound, I was shocked. Wes was conscious and standing up. I had a look at his wounds. The gaping holes torn out of his bottom and the back of his leg were horrifying. Both wounds were bigger than my fist. He was badly torn up. We discussed whether or not to call an ambulance, and then decided we would take Wes to the hospital ourselves. Wes was fluctuating between feeling euphorically happy to be alive and lashing out in anger. He was going into shock and had lost a lot of blood. Steve drove. A trip that would normally have taken half an hour took less than twenty minutes. The emergency room was having a busy night. By now Wes’s face was somewhere between pale and gray--the pain was well and truly setting in. We explained to a nurse that he needed help immediately, but because we had a blanket over him to keep him warm, the severity of his injuries didn’t really hit home. Finally the nurse peeked under the blanket. She gasped. Wes was so terribly injured, I was worried that he would still bleed out. Steve and I were both very emotional. So many thoughts went through our heads. Why Wes? Why hadn’t Steve been grabbed? What kind of chance was it that Graham had grabbed Wes in probably the only manner that would not have killed him instantly? We realized again how much we loved Wes. The thought that we almost lost him terrified us. It was a horrible, emotional Friday night. Over the course of the weekend we learned that Wes would probably make a full recovery. He would keep his leg and probably regain most movement. There was still some doubt as to whether he was going to need skin grafts. Steve laid his life on the line to defend Wes. And as severely injured as Wes was, he stopped at the top of the fence to turn back and help Steve. That was mateship; that was love. It made me think of the line from scripture: Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Steve and Wes were lucky, for they were truly friends.