Strange Brew Quotes

Strange thoughts brew in your heart when you spend too much time with old books

Here I had a strange idea not unworthy of de Selby. Why was Joe so disturbed at the suggestion that he had a body? What if he had a body? A body with another body inside it in turn, thousands of such bodies within each other like the skins of an onion, receding to some unimaginable ultimum? Was I in turn merely a link in a vast sequence of imponderable beings, the world I knew merely the interior of the being whose inner voice I myself was? Who or what was the core and what monster in what world was the final uncontained colossus? God? Nothing? Was I receiving these wild thoughts from Lower Down or were they brewing newly in me to be transmitted Higher Up?

I feel a strange sensation brewing inside of me. It tickles my throat and forces my lips into a grin. Before I can stifle it, I giggle. And then I laugh.

Strange thoughts brew in your heart when you spend too much time with old books.

I wanted so much to find the words to explain to her the strange longing that had washed over me, to share with her the quiet rebellion that had brewed within me all these years. But no words poured out of me.

Her face deeply moved him. Why, he could at first not say. It gave him the impression of youth--spring flowers, yet age--a sense of having been used to the bone, wasted; this came from the eyes, which were hauntingly familiar, yet absolutely strange. He had a vivid impression that he had met her before, but try as he might he could not place her although he could almost recall her name, as he had read it in her own handwriting. No, this couldn't be; he would have remembered her. It was not, he affirmed, that she had an extraordinary beauty--no, though her face was attractive enough; it was that something about her moved him. Feature for feature, even some of the ladies of the photographs could do better; but she lapsed forth to this heart--had lived, or wanted to--more than just wanted, perhaps regretted how she had lived--had somehow deeply suffered: it could be seen in the depths of those reluctant eyes, and from the way the light enclosed and shone from her, and within her, opening realms of possibility: this was her own. Her he desired. His head ached and eyes narrowed with the intensity of his gazing, then as if an obscure fog had blown up in the mind, he experienced fear of her and was aware that he had received an impression, somehow, of evil. He shuddered, saying softly, it is thus with us all. Leo brewed some tea in a small pot and sat sipping it without sugar, to calm himself. But before he had finished drinking, again with excitement he examined the face and found it good: good for Leo Finkle. Only such a one could understand him and help him seek whatever he was seeking. She might, perhaps, love him. How she had happened to be among the discards in Salzman's barrel he could never guess, but he knew he must urgently go find her.

Friendships are strange evolving collections of laughter and fights and secrets, this rarified brew of humanity you choose to share with another person.

By the clock of St Jean Baptiste, that dream remained scarce fifteen minutes--a brief space, but sufficing to wring my whole frame with unknown anguish; to confer a nameless experience that had the hue, the mien, the terror, the very tone of a visitation from eternity. Between twelve and one that night a cup was forced to my lips, black, strong, strange, drawn from no well, but filled up seething from a bottomless and boundless sea. Suffering, brewed in temporal or calculable measure, and mixed for mortal lips, tastes not as this suffering tasted.

The strange brew of neurotransmitters that had encouraged the bike-activist fantasy sloshed up against some limiting mechanism and began to recede; the recipe was tweaked, and chemicals brushed past one another, exchanging glances, methyl groups. Leo started the process, which would increase in period and intensity throughout the day, of telling himself that he was a loser and a failure.

Well, he replied, finally letting my hand go so that he could gesticulate with his; you don your khakis, schlep off to some jungle, hang out with the natives, fish and hunt with them, shiver from their fevers, drink strange brew fermented in their virgins’ mouths, and all the rest; then, after about a year, they lug your bales and cases down to the small jetty that connects their tiny world to the big one that they kind of know exists, but only as an abstract concept, like adultery for children; and, waving with big, gap-toothed smiles, they send you back to your study—where, khakis swapped for cotton shirt and tie, saliva-liquor for the Twinings, tisane or iced Scotch your housekeeper purveys you on a tray, you write the book: that’s what I mean, he said. Not just a book: the fucking Book. You write the Book on them. Sum their tribe up. Speak its secret name.

My mind was flying high that day, courtesy of whatever witches’ brew of neurotransmitters God had programmed into my genes, and I filled page after page with what I am sure, thinking back on it, were very strange responses.

His sermon was a forthright denunciation of sin, an austere declaration of the motto on the wall behind him: he warned his flock against the evils of heady brews, gambling, and strange women. Bootleggers caused enough trouble in the Quarters, but women were worse. Again, as I had often met it in my own church, I was confronted with the Impurity of Women doctrine that seemed to preoccupy all clergymen.

But the most constant source of enchantment during those readings came from the harlequin pattern of colored panes inset in a whitewashed framework on either side of the veranda. The garden when viewed through these magic glasses grew strangely still and aloof. If one looked through blue glass, the sand turned to cinders while inky trees swam in a tropical sky. The yellow created an amber world infused with an extra strong brew of sunshine. The red made the foliage drip ruby dark upon a pink footpath. The green soaked greenery in a greener green. And when, after such richness, one turned to a small square of normal, savorless glass, with its lone mosquito or lame daddy longlegs, it was like taking a draught of water when one is not thirsty, and one saw a matter-of-fact white bench under familiar trees. But of all the windows this is the pane through which in later years parched nostalgia longed to peer.

You didn’t tell me,” he says. “Why not?” “Because I didn’t…” I shake my head. “I didn’t know how to.” He scowls. “It’s pretty easy, Tris--” “Oh yeah,” I say, nodding. “It’s so easy. All I have to do is go up to you and say, ‘By the way, I shot Will, and now guilt is ripping me to shreds, but what’s for breakfast?’ Right? Right?” Suddenly it is too much, too much to contain. Tears fill my eyes, and I yell, “Why don’t you try killing one of your best friends and then dealing with the consequences?” I cover my face with my hands. I don’t want him to see me sobbing again. He touches my shoulder. “Tris,” he says, gently this time. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t pretend that I understand. I just meant that…” He struggles for a moment. “I wish you trusted me enough to tell me things like that.” I do trust you, is what I want to say. But it isn’t true--I didn’t trust him to love me despite the terrible things I had done. I don’t trust anyone to do that, but that isn’t his problem; it’s mine. “I mean,” he says, “I had to find out that you almost drowned in a water tank from Caleb. Doesn’t that seem a little strange to you?” Just when I was about to apologize. I wipe my cheeks hard with my fingertips and stare at him. “Other things seem stranger,” I say, trying to make my voice light. “Like finding out that your boyfriend’s supposedly dead mother is still alive by seeing her in person. Or overhearing his plans to ally with the factionless, but he never tells you about it. That seems a little strange to me.” He takes his hand from my shoulder. “Don’t pretend this is only my problem,” I say. “If I don’t trust you, you don’t trust me either.” “I thought we would get to those things eventually,” he says. “Do I have to tell you everything right away?” I feel so frustrated I can’t even speak for a few seconds. Heat fills my cheeks. “God, Four!” I snap. “You don’t want to have to tell me everything right away, but I have to tell you everything right away? Can’t you see how stupid that is?” “First of all, don’t use that name like a weapon against me,” he says, pointing at me. “Second, I was not making plans to ally with the factionless; I was just thinking it over. If I had made a decision, I would have said something to you. And third, it would be different if you had actually intended to tell me about Will at some point, but it’s obvious that you didn’t.” “I did tell you about Will!” I say. “That wasn’t truth serum; it was me. I said it because I chose to.” “What are you talking about?” “I was aware. Under the serum. I could have lied; I could have kept it from you. But I didn’t, because I thought you deserved to know the truth.” “What a way to tell me!” he says, scowling. “In front of over a hundred people! How intimate!” “Oh, so it’s not enough that I told you; it has to be in the right setting?” I raise my eyebrows. “Next time should I brew some tea and make sure the lighting is right, too?” Tobias lets out a frustrated sound and turns away from me, pacing a few steps. When he turns back, his cheeks are splotchy. I can’t remember ever seeing his face change color before. “Sometimes,” he says quietly, “it isn’t easy to be with you, Tris.” He looks away. I want to tell him that I know it’s not easy, but I wouldn’t have made it through the past week without him. But I just stare at him, my heart pounding in my ears. I can’t tell him I need him. I can’t need him, period--or really, we can’t need each other, because who knows how long either of us will last in this war? “I’m sorry,” I say, all my anger gone. “I should have been honest with you.” “That’s it? That’s all you have to say?” He frowns. “What else do you want me to say?” He just shakes his head. “Nothing, Tris. Nothing.” I watch him walk away. I feel like a space has opened up within me, expanding so rapidly it will break me apart.

You didn’t tell me,” he says. “Why not?” “Because I didn’t…” I shake my head. “I didn’t know how to.” He scowls. “It’s pretty easy, Tris--” “Oh yeah,” I say, nodding. “It’s so easy. All I have to do is go up to you and say, ‘By the way, I shot Will, and now guilt is ripping me to shreds, but what’s for breakfast?’ Right? Right?” Suddenly it is too much, too much to contain. Tears fill my eyes, and I yell, “Why don’t you try killing one of your best friends and then dealing with the consequences?” I cover my face with my hands. I don’t want him to see me sobbing again. He touches my shoulder. “Tris,” he says, gently this time. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t pretend that I understand. I just meant that…” He struggles for a moment. “I wish you trusted me enough to tell me things like that.” I do trust you, is what I want to say. But it isn’t true--I didn’t trust him to love me despite the terrible things I had done. I don’t trust anyone to do that, but that isn’t his problem; it’s mine. “I mean,” he says, “I had to find out that you almost drowned in a water tank from Caleb. Doesn’t that seem a little strange to you?” Just when I was about to apologize. I wipe my cheeks hard with my fingertips and stare at him. “Other things seem stranger,” I say, trying to make my voice light. “Like finding out that your boyfriend’s supposedly dead mother is still alive by seeing her in person. Or overhearing his plans to ally with the factionless, but he never tells you about it. That seems a little strange to me.” He takes his hand from my shoulder. “Don’t pretend this is only my problem,” I say. “If I don’t trust you, you don’t trust me either.” “I thought we would get to those things eventually,” he says. “Do I have to tell you everything right away?” I feel so frustrated I can’t even speak for a few seconds. Heat fills my cheeks. “God, Four!” I snap. “You don’t want to have to tell me everything right away, but I have to tell you everything right away? Can’t you see how stupid that is?” “First of all, don’t use that name like a weapon against me,” he says, pointing at me. “Second, I was not making plans to ally with the factionless; I was just thinking it over. If I had made a decision, I would have said something to you. And third, it would be different if you had actually intended to tell me about Will at some point, but it’s obvious that you didn’t.” “I did tell you about Will!” I say. “That wasn’t truth serum; it was me. I said it because I chose to.” “What are you talking about?” “I was aware. Under the serum. I could have lied; I could have kept it from you. But I didn’t, because I thought you deserved to know the truth.” “What a way to tell me!” he says, scowling. “In front of over a hundred people! How intimate!” “Oh, so it’s not enough that I told you; it has to be in the right setting?” I raise my eyebrows. “Next time should I brew some tea and make sure the lighting is right, too?” Tobias lets out a frustrated sound and turns away from me, pacing a few steps. When he turns back, his cheeks are splotchy. I can’t remember ever seeing his face change color before. “Sometimes,” he says quietly, “it isn’t easy to be with you, Tris.” He looks away. I want to tell him that I know it’s not easy, but I wouldn’t have made it through the past week without him. But I just stare at him, my heart pounding in my ears. I can’t tell him I need him. I can’t need him, period--or really, we can’t need each other, because who knows how long either of us will last in this war? “I’m sorry,” I say, all my anger gone. “I should have been honest with you.” “That’s it? That’s all you have to say?” He frowns. “What else do you want me to say?” He just shakes his head. “Nothing, Tris. Nothing.” I watch him walk away. I feel like a space has opened up within me, expanding so rapidly it will break me apart.

SOMETIMES ON A PORCH in June, a girl begins to plunk her banjo; and after a spell of stillness, while the sound travels down their ear crinkles into their inmost feeling-chambers, the music starts to dance the people passing by. They toss like puppets on a bouncing sheet; like boys without a boat; they swing like weeds in the wind; they leap heptangularly about, dancing eccentric saltarellos, discovering that their springs are not so rusty. For even if you have built masterful aspen castles in your mind, have toppled whole forests to throttle the writhing elements into a liveably serene personal pond; if you have longtime sculled your ingenious fins to withstand the tumble-crazy currents; there is music that will dissolve your anchors, your sanctuaries, floating you off your feet, fetching you away with itself. And then you are a migrant, and then you are amuck; and then you are the music’s toy, juggled into its furious torrents, jostled into its foamy jokes, assuming its sparklyblue or greenweedy or brownmuddy tinges, being driven down to the dirgy bottom where rumble-clacking stones are lit by waterlogged and melancholy sunlight, warping back up to the surface, along with yew leaves and alewives and frog bones and other strange acquisitions snagged and rendered willy-nilly by the current, straggling away on its rambling cadenzas, with ever-changing sights—freckled children on the bank, chicken choirs, brewing thunderclouds, june bugs perched in wild parsley—until it spills you into a place whose dimensions make nonsense of your heretofore extraordinary spatial intelligence.

Luna left, too, with a cheery, “Thanks for the morning entertainment. That provided a better jolt than a cup of espresso.” Then it was just Arabella, her brother, and the really, really big man, who had just turned his gaze on her. Given his threats and violent solution, Arabella should have been quaking. At the very least staring at her toes lest she incur his wrath. But the gentlest blue eyes caught hers, and his tone was soft and soothing when he addressed her. “You must be Arabella. I’m Leo, the pride’s omega.” “More like enforcer,” Jeoff muttered, still rubbing his head. “If you behave, then I don’t have to resort to my methods.” “He started it,” Jeoff accused, pointing at finger at Hayder, who emerged from the bedroom clad in low-hipped jeans that hugged his corded thighs and a soft T-shirt that clung to his chest. “Hey, it’s not my fault you jumped to the wrong conclusion when I answered the door.” “What else was I to think? You’re in my sister’s condo wearing only a rag.” “Protecting her.” “The same way you protected her last night when you took her out and flaunted her?” “I took her to dinner.” “What the hell do you mean you took her out to dinner? You put my baby sister in danger.” “She wasn’t in danger.” “They snatched her off the street!” “And I got her back.” The men glared at each, toe-to-toe, bodies bristling. Leo, who’d seated himself on a stool by the kitchen island, cleared his throat. “Don’t make me get off this stool.” The tension remained, but the impending violence moved down a few notches. Seeming satisfied, Leo turned to her. “Coffee?” He addressed that to Arabella, holding out a cup he’d brewed from the machine on the counter. With a wary look at both Hayder and her brother, she went toward him but then almost scalded herself when Hayder barked, “Baby, where are your pants?” Oh yeah. She peeked down at her bare legs. To his credit, Leo didn’t, but he did smile. “How about I add some sugar and milk to this while you find some pants? You look like you need something sweet.” She couldn’t help but return his smile. “Yes, please.” Still ignoring the other two men, she stepped past them to the bedroom, where she scrounged in a drawer for pants. As she dressed, she listened to the arguing. “She’s leaving with me.” Her brother hadn’t relented. Neither did Hayder. “Wrong. Arabella isn’t going anywhere.” Ouch. She knew her brother wouldn’t like that. She was right. “Excuse me? You don’t get a say. She’s my sister, my responsibility. I’m taking her.” Arabella stepped back into the living room. “What of the danger though, Jeoff? The pack is in town, and they’re looking for me.” “We’ll figure something out.” “We already have. She’ll stay here with me where she’s safe.” Hayder crossed his arms over his impressive chest, looking much too determined— and sexy. A certain brother wasn’t impressed. “As safe as she was last night?” Hayder rolled his eyes. “Oh please. What part of ‘we had the situation under control’ can you not grasp? Leo, tell the wolf that Arabella was never in any danger.” “I don’t lie to my friends,” Leo said as he re-handed Arabella her coffee. She took a sip of the hot brew and sighed as she listened to the arguing. When Leo patted the stool beside him, she hopped on. For such a big man, he offered a strangely calming effect. On her at least. Hayder and Jeoff, on the other hand, just couldn’t stem their tirade. “I was wrong to stick her here. So you can forget I asked.” “Too late. She’s part of the pride now.” “She’s a wolf, or have you forgotten? She belongs with her own kind.” Jeoff crooked his finger at her and inclined his head to the door. Arabella didn’t move, more because Hayder’s next words froze her. “She belongs with me. Arabella is my mate.

Writers are a combative bunch when it comes to aesthetics, and the generation before GENRE are born into a discourse that’s been brewing since Cervantes.

level. For someone who has been a lifelong atheist, agnostic or secular humanist, most of these won’t cause any anxiety at all. You’ve learned to live with them years ago. However, for those who have recently lost their faith, the Horrors could be highly disconcerting. Once the concepts are established, data is presented to support the position and additional reading is recommended when available. The ultimate goal is to provide solutions and solace to those who have lost their faith. Often, all that reason and logic gets in the way of us enjoying life. While I speak tongue-in-cheek, most would agree that the faithful have a blissful simplicity about their lives as they combine irrationality and rationality in a strange unconscious brew to cope with the 12 Unthinkable Horrors. Take

the sleeve slipping over the edge of the rung. I steadied myself, fed more of the sleeve through it, until I had a complete loop through the rung. That work shirt was my favorite one, Gap, one hundred

And then I did the best thing I knew to do with the strange concoction of sadness and hope brewing inside me. I prayed. I prayed for the people whose initials were on those slivers. Not just for those people, but for the cave people before them and the robot people after them. For real orphans. For all the people who have lost shoes in the road. For kids whose parents play war. For Toodie Bleu Skies and Toodi Bleu Nordenhauer, for M. B. McClean and Douglas Nordenhauer. And all the people who need to find the magic in Make Believe. That, I figured, just about covered the whole world.

Whatever strange brew led Parkhomenko to focus his entire life on Hillary’s ascent, it

THE work of deciding cases goes on every day in hundreds of courts throughout the land. Any judge, one might suppose, would find it easy to describe the process which he had followed a thousand times and more. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Let some intelligent layman ask him to explain:  he will not go very far before taking refuge in the excuse that the language of craftsmen is unintelligible to those untutored in the craft. Such an excuse may cover with a semblance of respectability an otherwise ignominious retreat. It will hardly serve to still the pricks of curiosity and conscience. In moments of introspection, when there {10} is no longer a necessity of putting off with a show of wisdom the uninitiated interlocutor, the troublesome problem will recur, and press for a solution. What is it that I do when I decide a case? To what sources of information do I appeal for guidance? In what proportions do I permit them to contribute to the result? In what proportions ought they to contribute? If a precedent is applicable, when do I refuse to follow it? If no precedent is applicable, how do I reach the rule that will make a precedent for the future? If I am seeking logical consistency, the symmetry of the legal structure, how far shall I seek it? At what point shall the quest be halted by some discrepant custom, by some consideration of the social welfare, by my own or the common standards of justice and morals? Into that strange compound which is brewed daily in the caldron of the courts, all these ingredients enter in varying proportions. I am not concerned to inquire whether judges ought to be allowed to brew such a compound at all. I take judge-made law as one of the existing realities of life. There, before us, {11} is the brew. Not a judge on the bench but has had a hand in the making.

Japanese lilies and her beautiful face In a crowded market place, People walked, moved; and quite a few preferred to amble, While I searched for my known space, Where she sells beauty’s earthly samples without too much too gamble, I walked past the busy spaces and the bustling market views, People haggling, a few arguing, It was like life was tasked to seek reviews, In ways pleasing and many a time annoying, Finally I reached there where I wanted to be, And there she was this beautiful maiden, And as she prospected every face, her eyes finally rested on me, For a while nothing existed, as if time its pace had forgotten, Only to be revived back to life, When the maiden at the flower shop said, “Hello, and welcome to the shop of beautiful life,” My eyes moved, my lips shivered and in response I only shook my head, I looked at flowers with different colours, And her eyes followed mine to every spot where they rested, I could be there, with the flowers and the maiden, for many hours, Because at this flower shop, all the flowers only of her beauty attested, She knew it too because the sparkle in her eyes was brewing with confidence, She knew she was like the most beautiful summer rose that ever existed, And I only visited the shop to feel surrounded by this beauty’s appeal so dense, Her beauty was not just a visual act but an experience, where a new appeared as soon as the old exited, She was pure beauty, and maybe my only and my wilful addiction, While I was soaking in this experience of charm and beauty, She tenderly felt my hand trembling with love’s affliction, “Here, look at these new samples of eternal beauty,” She said this with a professional tone and demand, They were small clusters of white charm, Beautiful as anything beautiful can be resting peacefully in beauty’s eternal wand, Peaceful to look at that always kindled feelings warm, It was such a delight to witness and see, Then she silently quoth this, “They are called the Japanese lilies that sparkle like the pearls from the deepest sea, They look like joys suspended on the branches of bliss, These beautiful Japanese lilies bearing the sparkle of the pearl from the deepest sea.” I again nodded my head with a smile, As I looked at them closely, They indeed were clusters of white joy hanging there with a beautiful smile, And I said hurriedly, “certainly!” Then I realised something strange, They were bending downwards, as if gravity pulled them harder, It was nothing like flowers at other shops, so it indeed was very strange, I looked at all the flowers and then I looked at her, And there it was, in her eyes, her beautiful face her overall grace, That the flowers in her shop felt so inferior, Because all Japanese lilies and every Summer flower was but a reflection of her face, And it was difficult to tell whether they were her lovers or she was there lover, But to me, they all shone as the brilliance in her eyes, The rose had offered her its blush, The lies had granted her the twinkling miracle of the night skies, And all other flowers had rendered her eternally beautiful and lush, And whenever they looked at her, The flowers drooped a bit, And maybe that is why I buy all my flowers from her, Because like these helpless flowers I too love her every bit, and thus my love affair with her and her flowers has matured bit by bit! And now neither the flowers nor I can quit, So it is an affair that shall last till eternity and this is how I prefer it, She loving the flowers, I loving her, and as soon as my memory amidst her beautiful memories is lit, Then I am sure, like these flowers, and like me; now she too cannot quit, not even a bit!

G. K. Chesterton’s comment is apt: “though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators.”1 So also Luther’s: “Some have even brewed it [Revelation] into many stupid things out of their own heads.

Very often these luminous designs, rich in data, take the form of geometry. I speak from experience, having participated in more than seventy ayahuasca sessions since 2003, continuing to work with the brew for the valuable lessons it teaches me long after Supernatural was researched, written, and published. Here’s part of my account of the first time I drank ayahuasca in the Amazon: I raise the cup to my lips again. About two thirds of the measure that the shaman poured for me still remains, and now I drain it in one draught. The concentrated bittersweet foretaste, followed instantly by the aftertaste of rot and medicine, hits me like a punch in the stomach…. Feeling slightly apprehensive, I thank the shaman and wander back to my place on the floor…. Time passes but I don’t keep track of it. I’ve improvized a pillow from a rolled-up sleeping bag and I now find I’m swamped by a powerful feeling of weariness. My muscles involuntarily relax, I close my eyes, and without fanfare a parade of visions suddenly begins, visions that are at once geometrical and alive, visions of lights unlike any light I’ve ever seen—dark lights, a pulsing, swirling field of the deepest luminescent violets, of reds emerging out of night, of unearthly textures and colors, of solar systems revolving, of spiral galaxies on the move. Visions of nets and strange ladder-like structures. Visions in which I seem to see multiple square screens stacked side by side and on top of each other to form immense patterns of windows arranged in great banks. Though they manifest without sound in what seems to be a pristine and limitless vacuum, the images possess a most peculiar and particular quality. They feel like a drum-roll—as though their real function is to announce the arrival of something else.13 Other notes I made following my ayahuasca sessions in the Amazon refer to a “geometrical pulse,”14 to “a recurrence of the geometrical patterns,”15 to “a background of shifting geometrical patterns,”16 and to “complex interlaced patterns of geometry…. I zoom in for a closer view…. They’re rectangular, outlined in black, like windows. There’s a circle in the centre of each rectangle.”17

Behavioral finance sits at the crossroads of finance, economics, psychology, social psychology, decision-making, science and neurology, to name but a few of the disciplines that make up it’s strange brew.

Yet it seems possible that one can make too much of the hardships of the soldiers at Gallipoli, or rather there is a danger of seeing these hardships out of their right context. With the mere cataloguing of the Army’s miseries a sense of dreariness is transmitted, and this is a false impression; at this stage life on the peninsula was anything but dreary. It was ghastly but it was not yet petty or monotonous. There can be no fair comparison with the relatively comfortable lives of the soldiers in the second world war, or even with the lives of these men themselves before they enlisted. Gallipoli swallowed them up and made conditions of its own. With marvellous rapidity the men removed themselves to another plane of existence, the past receded, the future barely existed, and they lived as never before upon the moment, released from the normal weight of human ambitions and regrets. ‘It was in some ways,’ Herbert says, ‘a curiously happy time.’ It is a strange remark, but one feels one understands it very well. The men had no cinemas, no music, no radios, no ‘entertainment’ of any kind, and they never met women or children as the soldiers did behind the lines in France. Yet the very absence of these pleasures created another scale of values. They had a sharp and enormous appetite for the smallest things. Bathing in the sea became an inexpressible joy. To get away from the flies, to wash the dust from one’s eyes and mouth, to feel cool again: this was a heightening of sensation which, for the moment, went beyond their dreams of home. The brewing of tea in the evening, the sharing out of a parcel, a cake or a bar of chocolate, the long talks in the starlight talking of what they would do ‘when it was all over’—all these things took on an almost mystical emphasis of a kind that became familiar enough in the western desert of Egypt in the second world war, or indeed on any distant front in any war. There were no pin-up girls; no erotic magazines reached them—they were lucky if they even saw a newspaper from home that was under a month old—and there were no nurses or Ensa troupes. Perhaps because of this the sexual instinct seems to have been held in abeyance for the time, or rather it was absorbed in the minutiae of their intensely friendly life, the generous feelings created by the danger all around them. There was very little vice; ordinary crimes became lost in the innocence of the crime of war itself. Certainly there was no possibility of drunkenness,22 and gambling was not much more than an anaemic pastime in a world where money was the least of things. They craved not soft beds and hot baths but mosquito nets and salt water soap.