Tapestry Sayings And Quotes

No one expects Will Herondale to live past nineteen, and no one will be sorry to see him go, either -" That was too much for Tessa. Without thinking about it she burst out indignantly, "What a thing to say!" Gabriel, interrupted midrant, looked as shocked as if one of the tapestries had suddenly started talking. "Pardon me?" "You heard me. Telling someone you wouldn't be sorry if they died! It's inexcusable!" She took hold of Will by the sleeve. "Come along, Will. This - this person - obviously isn't worth wasting your time on." Will looked hugely entertained. "So true." ... Tessa frowned at Gabriel. "I think you owe Will an apology." "I," said Gabriel, "would rather have my entrails yanked out and tied in a knot in front of my own eyes than apologize to such a worm." "Goodness," said Jem mildly. "You can't mean that. Not the Will being a worm part, of course. The bit about the entrails. That sounds dreadful.

As my Popo used to say, life is a tapestry we weave day by day with threads of different colors, some heavy and dark, others thin and bright, all the threads having their uses. The stupid things I did are already in the tapestry, indelible, but I’m not going to be weighed down by them till I die. What’s done is done; I have to look ahead.

Rhys said, “We will walk onto that field and only accept Death when it comes to haul us away to the Otherworld. We will fight for life, for survival, for our futures. But if it is decided by that tapestry of Fate or the Cauldron or the Mother that we do not walk off that field today …” His chin lifted. “The great joy and honor of my life has been to know you. To call you my family. And I am grateful—more than I can possibly say—that I was given this time with you all.

There's a saying in Hebrew, 'No matter how dark the tapestry God weaves for us, there's always a thread of grace.

Coincidence and intention are two sides of a tapestry, my lord. You may find one more agreeable to look at, but you cannot say one is true and the other is false.

Suddenly, from all the green around you, something-you don't know what-has disappeared; you feel it creeping closer to the window, in total silence. From the nearby wood you hear the urgent whistling of a plover, reminding you of someone's Saint Jerome: so much solitude and passion come from that one voice, whose fierce request the downpour will grant. The walls, with their ancient portraits, glide away from us, cautiously, as though they weren't supposed to hear what we are saying. And reflected on the faded tapestries now; the chill, uncertain sunlight of those long childhood hours when you were so afraid. - Before Summer Rain

Do we take less pride in the possession of our home because its walls were built by some unknown carpenter, its tapestries woven by some unknown weaver on a far Oriental shore, in some antique time? No. We show our home to our friends with the pride as if it were our home, which it is. Why then should we take less pride when reading a book written by some long-dead author? Is it not our book just as much, or even more so, than theirs? So the landowner says, ‘Look at my beautiful home! Isn’t it fine?’ And not, ‘Look at the home so-and-so has built.’ Thus we shouldn’t cry, ‘Look what so-and-so has written. What a genius so-and-so is!’ But rather, ‘Look at what I have read! Am I not a genius? Have I not invented these pages? The walls of this universe, did I not build? The souls of these characters, did I not weave?

When you didn't say a lot, he thought, you said the important things.

Today 5:14 p.m. "Mrrrrrowl. Mrrrrrowl." "Ow! Ow, stupid cat! Ahem. You told me, 'stop calling, Isabelle,' but I'm not the one calling you. Church is calling you. Mine are merely the fingers that work the phone. "See, here's something you may not have known before you committed your recent rash acts. Our cat, Church, and your cat, Chairman Meow? They're in love. I've never seen such love before. I never knew such love could exist in the heart of a... cat. Some people say that love between two dude cats is wrong, but I think it's beautiful. Love makes Church happier than I've ever seen him. Nothing makes him happy like Chairman Meow. Not tuna. Not shredding centuries-old tapestries. Nothing. Please don't keep these cats apart. Please don't take the joy of love away from Church. "Look, this is really just a warning for your own good. If you keep Church and Chairman Meow apart, Church will start to get angry. "You wouldn't like Church when he's angry." Beep

It makes us a thread in a tapestry that has unrolled for centuries before us, and will unroll for centuries after us. We're midway through the loom, that's the present, and what we do casts the thread in a particular direction, and the picture of the tapestry changes accordingly. When we begin to to try to make a picture pleasing to us and to those who come after, then perhaps you can say that we have seized history.

Peg came over with dinner tonight and told me about this dumb schmaltzy poem she heard someone read at an AA meeting.  It got me thinking.  It was about how while we are on earth, our limitations are such that we can only see the underside of the tapestry that God is weaving.  God sees the topside, the whole evolving portrait and its amazing beauty, and uses us as the pieces of thread to weave the picture.  We see the glorious colors and shadings, but we also see the knots and the threads hanging down, the think lumpy patches, the tangles.  But God and the people in heaven with him see how beautiful the portraits in the tapestry are.  The poem says in this flowery way that faith is about the willingness to be used by God wherever and however he most needs you, most needs the piece of thread that is your life.  You give him your life to put through his needle, to use as he sees fit.

Your Midas touch on the Chevy door November flush and your flannel cure "This dorm was once a madhouse" I made a joke, "Well, it's made for me" How evergreen, our group of friends Don't think we'll say that word again And soon they'll have the nerve to deck the halls That we once walked through One for the money, two for the show I never was ready, so I watch you go Sometimes you just don't know the answer 'Til someone's on their knees and asks you "She would've made such a lovely bride What a shame she's fucked in her head, " they said But you'll find the real thing instead She'll patch up your tapestry that I shred

What terrible things would she say to me, would I say to her, that we take such great care not to say anything important at all?

If there is anything certain in life, it is this. Time doesn't always heal. Not really. I know they say it does, but that is not true. What time does is to trick you into believing that you have healed, that the hurt of a great loss has lessened. But a single word, a note of a song, a fragrance, a knife point of dawn light across an empty room, any one of these things will take you back to that one moment you have never truly forgotten. These small things are the agents of memory. They are the sharp needle points piercing the living fabric of your life. Life, my children, isn't linear where the heart is concerned. It is filled with invisible threads that reach out from your past and into your future. These threads connect every second we have lived and breathed. As your own lives move forward and as the decades pass, the more of these threads are cast. Your task is to weave them into a tapestry, one that tells the story of the time we shared.

The difference in structure is of the same kind as that between an ordinary wallpaper in which the same pattern is repeated again and again in regular periodicity and a masterpiece of embroidery, say a Raphael tapestry, which shows no dull repetition, but an elaborate, coherent, meaningful design traced by the great master.

Another hour of strained silence passed. Hawk left to speak with an aquaintance in another car. "Would you like to tell me about it?" James offered as soon as his friend was out of earshot. Mandy looked out the window, shamefaced. "I'd really rather not discuss it, if you don't mind." "You know, even if he is a friend, I'd be happy to black his eye if-" "No!" "Whatever you say." He sighed resignedly, leaning back against the tapestry seats.

Somewhere in the Paramount vaults, there must be an outtake of me tottering onto the Enterprise bridge from the captain’s ready room and saying, “Tea is in the tapestry room, Your Grace.” Everyone on the bridge laughed, but our director had no idea what was going on and was none too pleased. Remember, we were not there to have fun.

Popo used to say, life is a tapestry we weave day by day with threads of different colors, some heavy and dark, others thin and bright, all the threads having their uses. The stupid things I did are already in the tapestry,

For the world has chosen and it says: make me whole. Think of us as a kind of haggard Calypso, offering everything, asking the world to choose anew. But it’s a lie, really. There is only one choice and it is always the same. Only in Pentexore was any other ever possible. The world always says: I choose to wither and die if it means love and tapestries and sons and suitors, if it means stories and wars and a thousand ships launching. And we only give the world what it wants.

The cultivation of mindfulness is ultimately a matter of life and death, not in a scary way, but in the sense that we are always at risk, in every moment, for missing what is deepest and richest in our lives, the texture of the tapestry itself. We might say (every pun intended) that the richness lies right beneath our noses in any and every moment.

Although it sounds silly to say no pain, no gain, it’s true. One has to hurt, to go through a period of stress, a period of self doubt, a period of confusion. And then out of that mess can flow the richest tapestries.

What does anyone say to anybody who used to be so important in her life, whom she’s not seen in such a long time? It seems to me that in situations like this, we’re all wondering the same thing: I’m still me; are you still you? A

Rhys said, "We will walk onto that field and only accept Death when it comes to haul us away to the Otherworld. We will fight for life, for survival, for our futures. But if it is decided by that tapestry of Fate or the Cauldron or the Mother that we do not walk off that field today . . ." His chin liftet. "The great joy and honor of my life has been to know you. To call you my family. And I am grateful - more than I can possibly say - that I was given this time with you all.

We are all mysteries, to those who love us and also to ourselves. When you find someone who embraces you, loves and desires you every moment, accepts your mysteries and flaws without judgement, you’ve struck gold. How delicious is the thought that this mysterious complex creature, chooses to share a life with you? Too many of us undervalue ourselves by digging too deep into the mistakes we have made or dwelling on when we failed at something like relationships, responsibilities, careers, whatever it might be. All those experiences make up the mystery and story of who we are. We are complex beings, all together in this fucked up but beautiful world. Whatever the mistakes or failures of someone’s murky past that leads them to your door should be experiences you are grateful for and that is cause for celebration. All of us have had experiences, good and bad, and those make up the intricate tapestry of who we are. I often feel insecure in so many ways, fragile and easily broken even when I know that is only a self-defeating perception that sometimes rears its ugly head. I am doing what I love, and deeply in love with someone with whom I want to share my future and write our own magical mystery story. I guess what I am trying to say is don’t dig so deep that you end up cutting your roots and the lifeblood that feeds and makes you. Match your energy and vibration with what you envision. Believe. You deserve love and success, so go for it.

Oh, why isn’t there a Community Center for People Who Need a Little Something? If people would only tell the truth about the way they felt, it would be busy all the time. There could be folding chairs arranged in groups, people sitting there saying, “I don’t know, I just wanted to come here for a while.” I

Don’t the stars make you feel so small?” Bastien said, and there was a slight roughness around his words from where his lip was already swollen. “People always say that,” Ott said. “I don’t understand it. The stars make me feel . . .” I could hear the gears turning, the struggle as Ott tried to cram the whole huge tapestry of his thoughts into the meager words of his vocabulary. “They make me feel big. A giant cosmic accident. Like—what are the chances that I would even happen? You know? If my parents hadn’t met, if the dinosaurs never died out . . . we might not be here. But here we are. And we get to look up at the stars at night. Who would appreciate them if we didn’t?

The best thing I can give myself as a person who suffers with acute anxiety is unconditional love. And that seems easy to say, but it has been almost impossible to practice. Unconditional —without conditions. So that means not torturing myself by blowing up past issues and future potentials into full-colour nightmare tapestries that cover every surface.

Make the race proud," the elders used to say. But by then, I knew that I wasn't so much bound by a biological race as to a group of people, and these people were not black because of any uniform color or any uniform physical feature. They were bound because they suffered under the weight of the dream, and they were bound by all the beautiful things, all the language and mannerisms, all the food and music, all the literature and philosophy, all the common language that they had fashioned like diamonds under the weight of the dream. ... In other words, I was part of a world. And looking out, I had friends who too were part of other worlds. The world of Jews, or New Yorkers. The world of southerners or gay men. Of immigrants, of Californians, of Native Americans, or a combination of any of these worlds stitched into worlds like tapestry. And though I could never myself be a native of any of these worlds, I knew that nothing so essentialist as race stood between us. I had read too much by then, and my eyes, my beautiful precious eyes, were growing stronger each day. And I saw that what divided me from the world was not anything intrinsic to us, but the actual injury done by people intent on naming us. Intent on believing that what they have named us matters more than anything we could ever actually do. In America, the injury is not in being born with darker skin, with fuller lips, with a broader nose, but in everything that happens after.

My own literary work, on the contrary, was always done as quietly and methodically as a piece of tapestry. I knew exactly what I had got to say, put the words firmly in their places like so many stitches, hemmed the edges of the chapters round with what seemed to me graceful flourishes, touched them finally with my cunningest points of colour, and read the work to papa and mamma at breakfast next morning, as a girl shows her sampler. Praeterita, Volume 2

Why, all our art treasures of to-day are only the dug-up commonplaces of three or four hundred years ago. I wonder if there is real intrinsic beauty in the old soup-plates, beer-mugs, and candle-snuffers that we prize so now, or if it is only the halo of age glowing around them that gives them their charms in our eyes. The “old blue” that we hang about our walls as ornaments were the common every-day household utensils of a few centuries ago; and the pink shepherds and the yellow shepherdesses that we hand round now for all our friends to gush over, and pretend they understand, were the unvalued mantel-ornaments that the mother of the eighteenth century would have given the baby to suck when he cried. Will it be the same in the future? Will the prized treasures of to-day always be the cheap trifles of the day before? Will rows of our willow-pattern dinner-plates be ranged above the chimneypieces of the great in the years 2000 and odd? Will the white cups with the gold rim and the beautiful gold flower inside (species unknown), that our Sarah Janes now break in sheer light-heartedness of spirit, be carefully mended, and stood upon a bracket, and dusted only by the lady of the house? That china dog that ornaments the bedroom of my furnished lodgings. It is a white dog. Its eyes blue. Its nose is a delicate red, with spots. Its head is painfully erect, its expression is amiability carried to verge of imbecility. I do not admire it myself. Considered as a work of art, I may say it irritates me. Thoughtless friends jeer at it, and even my landlady herself has no admiration for it, and excuses its presence by the circumstance that her aunt gave it to her. But in 200 years’ time it is more than probable that that dog will be dug up from somewhere or other, minus its legs, and with its tail broken, and will be sold for old china, and put in a glass cabinet. And people will pass it round, and admire it. They will be struck by the wonderful depth of the colour on the nose, and speculate as to how beautiful the bit of the tail that is lost no doubt was. We, in this age, do not see the beauty of that dog. We are too familiar with it. It is like the sunset and the stars: we are not awed by their loveliness because they are common to our eyes. So it is with that china dog. In 2288 people will gush over it. The making of such dogs will have become a lost art. Our descendants will wonder how we did it, and say how clever we were. We shall be referred to lovingly as “those grand old artists that flourished in the nineteenth century, and produced those china dogs.” The “sampler” that the eldest daughter did at school will be spoken of as “tapestry of the Victorian era,” and be almost priceless. The blue-and-white mugs of the present-day roadside inn will be hunted up, all cracked and chipped, and sold for their weight in gold, and rich people will use them for claret cups; and travellers from Japan will buy up all the “Presents from Ramsgate,” and “Souvenirs of Margate,” that may have escaped destruction, and take them back to Jedo as ancient English curios.

hot and close. The walls were hung with deep-dyed tapestries and old weapons kept gleaming by servants. Achilles walked past them and knelt at his father’s feet. “Father, I come to ask your pardon.” “Oh?” Peleus lifted an eyebrow. “Speak then.” From where I stood his face looked cold and displeased. I was suddenly fearful. We had interrupted; Achilles had not even knocked. “I have taken Patroclus from his drills.” My name sounded strange on his lips; I almost did not recognize it. The old king’s brows drew together. “Who?” “Menoitiades,” Achilles said. Menoitius’ son. “Ah.” Peleus’ gaze followed the carpet back to where I stood, trying not to fidget. “Yes, the boy the arms-master wants to whip.” “Yes. But it is not his fault. I forgot to say I wished him for a companion.” Therapon was the word he used. A brother-in-arms sworn to a prince by blood oaths and love. In war, these men were his honor guard; in peace, his closest advisers. It was a place of highest esteem, another reason the boys swarmed Peleus’ son, showing off; they hoped to be chosen. Peleus’ eyes narrowed. “Come here, Patroclus.” The carpet was thick beneath my feet. I knelt a little behind Achilles. I could feel the king’s gaze on me. “For many years now, Achilles, I have urged companions on you and you have turned them away. Why this boy?” The question might have been my own. I had nothing to offer such a prince. Why, then, had he made a charity case of me? Peleus and I both waited for his answer. “He is surprising.” I looked up, frowning. If he thought so, he was the only one. “Surprising,” Peleus echoed. “Yes.” Achilles explained no further, though I hoped he would. Peleus rubbed his nose in thought. “The boy is an exile with a stain upon him. He will add no luster to your reputation.” “I do not need him to,” Achilles said. Not proudly or boastfully. Honestly. Peleus acknowledged this. “Yet other boys will be envious that you have chosen such a one. What will you tell them?” “I will tell them nothing.” The answer came with no hesitation, clear and crisp. “It is not for them to say what I will do.” I found my pulse beating thickly in my veins, fearing Peleus’ anger. It did not come. Father and son met each other’s gaze, and the faintest touch of amusement bloomed at the corner of Peleus’ mouth. “Stand up, both of you.” I did so, dizzily. “I pronounce your sentence. Achilles, you

The clever use of media (i.e., TV political ads, image creations and management) kept us from raising or even addressing major problems we face as a nation — our identity, our values, our role as a resource for peace rather than war, for justice rather than its miscarriages, for people rather than corporations, for decency rather than humiliation, and for democracy rather than “hypocracy.” Martin Luther King, Jr., stated it well: A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: “This is not just. . . .

I felt as though the temple curtain had been drawn aside without warning and I, a goggle-eyed stranger somehow mistaken for an initiate, had been ushered into the sanctuary to witness the mystery of mysteries. I saw a phantasmagoria, a living tapestry of forms jeweled in minute detail. They danced together like guests at a rowdy wedding. They changed their shapes. Within themselves they juggled geometrical shards like the fragments in a kaleidoscope. They sent forth extensions of themselves like the flares of suns. Yet all their activity was obviously interrelated; each being's actions were in step with its neighbors'. They were like bees swarming: They obviously recognised each other and were communicating avidly, but it was impossible to know what they were saying. They enacted a pageant whose beauty awed me. As the lights came back on, the auditorium seemed dull and unreal.I'd been watching various kinds of ordinary cells going about their daily business, as seen through a microscope and recorded by the latest time-lapse movie techniques. The filmmaker frankly admitted that neither he nor anyone else knew just what the cells were doing, or how and why they were doing it. We biologists, especially during our formative years in school, spent most of our time dissecting dead animals and studying preparations of dead cells stained to make their structures more easily visible—"painted tombstones," as someone once called them. Of course, we all knew that life was more a process than a structure, but we tended to forget this, because a structure was so much easier to study. This film reminded me how far our static concepts still were from the actual business of living. As I thought how any one of those scintillating cells potentially could become a whole speckled frog or a person, I grew surer than ever that my work so far had disclosed only a few aspects of a process-control system as varied and widespread as life itself, of which we'd been ignorant until then.

She is thinking, as she walks, about that argument with her father, on an evening just before bed when the fire was dying down, and Kitty, her mother and the grandmother were busy with what they called their handwork and her mother had just asked her where was the tapestry square she’d given her. And Esme couldn’t reply that she had hidden it, stuffed it down behind the chair cushions in her room. ‘Put the book away, Esme,’ her mother had said. ‘You have read enough for tonight.’ But she couldn’t because the people on the page and the room they were in were holding her fast but then her father was there in front of her and he snatched the book away, shut it without saving her page, and suddenly there was only the room she was in. Do as your mother asks,’ he said, ‘for God’s sake.’ She’d sat up and the fury was within her, and instead of saying, please give me my book, she said, I want to stay on at school. She hadn’t meant to. She knew it wasn’t the time to bring this up, that it would get nowhere, but it felt sore within her, this desire, and she couldn’t help herself. The words came out from where they’d been hidden. Her hands felt strange and useless without the book and the need to stay at school had risen up and come out of her mouth without her knowing.

Simonton finds that on average, creative geniuses weren’t qualitatively better in their fields than their peers. They simply produced a greater volume of work, which gave them more variation and a higher chance of originality. “The odds of producing an influential or successful idea,” Simonton notes, are “a positive function of the total number of ideas generated.” Consider Shakespeare: we’re most familiar with a small number of his classics, forgetting that in the span of two decades, he produced 37 plays and 154 sonnets. Simonton tracked the popularity of Shakespeare’s plays, measuring how often they’re performed and how widely they’re praised by experts and critics. In the same five-year window that Shakespeare produced three of his five most popular works—Macbeth, King Lear, and Othello—he also churned out the comparatively average Timon of Athens and All’s Well That Ends Well, both of which rank among the worst of his plays and have been consistently slammed for unpolished prose and incomplete plot and character development. In every field, even the most eminent creators typically produce a large quantity of work that’s technically sound but considered unremarkable by experts and audiences. When the London Philharmonic Orchestra chose the 50 greatest pieces of classical music, the list included six pieces by Mozart, five by Beethoven, and three by Bach. To generate a handful of masterworks, Mozart composed more than 600 pieces before his death at thirty-five, Beethoven produced 650 in his lifetime, and Bach wrote over a thousand. In a study of over 15,000 classical music compositions, the more pieces a composer produced in a given five-year window, the greater the spike in the odds of a hit. Picasso’s oeuvre includes more than 1,800 paintings, 1,200 sculptures, 2,800 ceramics, and 12,000 drawings, not to mention prints, rugs, and tapestries—only a fraction of which have garnered acclaim. In poetry, when we recite Maya Angelou’s classic poem “Still I Rise,” we tend to forget that she wrote 165 others; we remember her moving memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and pay less attention to her other 6 autobiographies. In science, Einstein wrote papers on general and special relativity that transformed physics, but many of his 248 publications had minimal impact. If you want to be original, “the most important possible thing you could do,” says Ira Glass, the producer of This American Life and the podcast Serial, “is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work.” Across fields, Simonton reports that the most prolific people not only have the highest originality; they also generate their most original output during the periods in which they produce the largest volume.* Between the ages of thirty and thirty-five, Edison pioneered the lightbulb, the phonograph, and the carbon telephone. But during that period, he filed well over one hundred patents for other inventions as diverse as stencil pens, a fruit preservation technique, and a way of using magnets to mine iron ore—and designed a creepy talking doll. “Those periods in which the most minor products appear tend to be the same periods in which the most major works appear,” Simonton notes. Edison’s “1,093 patents notwithstanding, the number of truly superlative creative achievements can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Dear Carl: Here, on this paper, there are only you and me, and the things that each of us tries so hard to understand, clambering up through long, long researches into the past, and thinking ponderously and seeking, and finding that for which we looked a glorified question mark. It would be desirable to be flung, unfettered by consciousness, into the void, to sail unhindered through eternity. Please do not think that I am riding along on baseless words, covering threadbare thoughts with garrulous tapestries. I am not. It is the words which are inadequate. You know so much and I can tell you nothing, and I don't think I can even make you feel anything you have not felt more poignantly than I, who am a mummer in a brocaded boudoir. I wrote about miners' faces around a fire. Their bodies did not show in the light, so their yellow faces seemed like dangling masks against the night. And I wrote about little voices in the glens which were the spirits of passions and desires and dreams of dead men's minds. And Mrs. Russell said they were not real, that such things could not be, and she was not going to stand me bullying her into such claptrap nonsense. Those were not her words, it was was her meaning, and then she smiled out of the corner of her mouth as nurses do when an idiot child makes blunders. And I could not stand that, so I swore at her because I had been out all night to make my pictures. And now she is very cold, and she means to flunk me in the course, thinking that she can hurt me thus. I wish that she could know that I do not in the least care. I wish you were back, because you could understand the things I try to say, and help me say them better, and I know you would, because you did once.

My Voice by Paul Stephen Lynch Why was I born? What is my purpose here on this earth? Is there more out there after this life ends? At some point we all ask ourselves these questions. I can tell you with absolute certainty that for me, the answer to all three of these questions is… “I don’t know”. However, what I do know is that while I am here I am meant to learn from my mistakes, to grow through my pain, and to evolve. What will I be changed into? Again, I do not know. Perhaps I will become someone who is more courageous, more charitable, more peaceful, more dignified, more honest and more loving. I am very hopeful but nothing in life is guaranteed. Although, I have discovered that speaking from my heart and telling my truth is an integral part of my transformation. It is my voice. In those times in my life when I have experienced great pain – sadness, loss, conflict or depression – those have been the times that have brought me closest to this transformation. I recently realized that pain is one of the few things that seems to really get my attention and that I have spent a lot of my time just coasting down life’s path. Perhaps this is the reason why I seem to grow the most during the hard times, even though it often takes all the energy I can muster just to get through them. Quite a few years ago, while I was visiting a friend who was dying from AIDS, I saw a tapestry on the hospital wall that read: The Chinese word for “crisis” has two characters. One stands for danger; the other for opportunity. The times in my life that have been the most difficult have quite often proven to be my best opportunities for growth; to get closer to becoming the person I am meant to be. Of course, this doesn’t mean that painful circumstances ~ like HIV and AIDS ~ are good things or that they are in any way “all for the best” ~ or, that they even make any kind of sense. It just means that I know that there is always the possibility that something positive can ultimately come out of that which is incredibly bad. However, change does not happen in seclusion and I will likely need help from friends, family, teachers and even from people I do not know at all For me to continue moving closer to becoming the person I was born to be, I first needed to accept who I am. For me, that was relatively easy (easy does not mean painless mind you) and it happened at the unusually young age of twelve. The second step to transforming my life means I need to tell others the truth about who I am. I have been doing this ever since my personal acceptance occurred. As a result, I have learned that there will always be those people who cannot be trusted with the truth. There are also those who will simply never be able to understand my truth no matter what anyone says to them. However, others will hear the truth very clearly, understand it completely, and even care greatly. Moreover, I can hear, I understand, and I care. I have also learned that there are times when it is better to be silent. Sometimes words are just not necessary… Like when I am sharing with someone who already knows my heart. And then there are times when words are pointless… like when I have already spoken my truth to someone, yet they are simply not capable of hearing what it is that I am saying. This is when I need to find other ears. Sometimes, a silent sign of love is the best way, or even the only way that I can express myself. However, at those times, my silence is a choice that I am making. It is not being forced on me by fear or shame… and I will never let it be because… it is MY voice!

Whatever exists, he said. Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent. He looked about at the dark forest in which they were bivouacked. He nodded toward the specimens he’d collected. These anonymous creatures, he said, may seem little or nothing in the world. Yet the smallest crumb can devour us. Any smallest thing beneath yon rock out of men’s knowing. Only nature can enslave man and only when the existence of each last entity is routed out and made to stand naked before him will he be properly suzerain of the earth. What’s a suzerain? A keeper. A keeper or overlord. Why not say keeper then? Because he is a special kind of keeper. A suzerain rules even where there are other rulers. His authority countermands local judgements. Toadvine spat. The judge placed his hands on the ground. He looked at his inquisitor. This is my claim, he said. And yet everywhere upon it are pockets of autonomous life. Autonomous. In order for it to be mine nothing must be permitted to occur upon it save by my dispensation. Toadvine sat with his boots crossed before the fire. No man can acquaint himself with everthing on this earth, he said. The judge tilted his great head. The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate. I dont see what that has to do with catchin birds. The freedom of birds is an insult to me. I’d have them all in zoos. That would be a hell of a zoo. The judge smiled. Yes, he said. Even so.

Lights like stars whirled past me from out of the darkness, and when I opened my eyes, I was lying on a bed covered in rich tapestry and piled high with pillows. The room was lit by candles in colossal iron holders that flickered on the walls. A great fire was ablaze in the hearth. I recognized the triptych of slender, arched windows, though I was seeing them for the first time from the inside. No longer empty, they were fitted with glass through which I could make out some of the stars that hovered over Whitby on a clear night. We were inside the abbey, though apparently outside time. The room was warm and the roof intact, and he was lying beside me. 'Every moment that has ever existed in time is still here, Mina- every thought, every memory, and every experience.' Now that I saw him in the candlelight, he was more beautiful than I had imagined. Skin marble white, paler than mine and glowing, and hair like the night sea's glossy waves. His face was long and angular with a strong brow, like the artist's renderings I had of the Arthurian knights. With his midnight blue wolf eyes, he stared at me, taking me in. "Who are you?" I asked, my voice timid and feeble. 'You and I have gone by many names. It does not matter what we call each other. What matters is that you remember. Do you remember, Mina?' His lips did not move, and yet I heard every word that he said, I wanted to ask a thousand questions, but one long and slender finger reached out and touched my lips. Locking eyes with me, he slid my nightdress from my shoulder. Shock waves rippled through my body as his finger followed the curve under my neck, dusting my chin, and slowly sliding to the other ear. Surely just one finger could not create this bedlam inside me. 'Ah, so you do remember.' My heart palpitated wildly, but I was not afraid. Something familiar about him prevented me from fearing him, though I had witnessed how dangerous he could be on the banks of the Thames when he had thrashed my attacker. "Yes, yes, I remember," I said. I would have said anything to keep his hand on me, to wallow in the wild energy he brought to my body, and to stare into the infinite violet blue of his eyes. Though I said nothing else, every nerve in my body begged him to keep touching me. 'What is your desire?' I did not have the audacity to say the words aloud, but this being knew me and knew my thoughts. Our eyes were locked, and our minds were linked. I felt connected to him in a way that I had not known with another person. We were not one, but we were in harmony, as if we were both parts of the same symphony.

Amy was mentally packing for a midnight flight to the mail coach to Dover (plan C), when Jane’s gentle voice cut through the listing of ovine pedigrees. "Such a pity about the tapestries," was all she said. Her voice was pitched low but somehow it carried over both the shouting men. Amy glanced sharply at Jane, and was rewarded by a swift kick to the ankle. Had that been a ‘say something now!’ kick, or a ‘be quiet and sit still’ kick? Amy kicked back in inquiry. Jane put her foot down hard over Amy’s. Amy decided that could be interpreted as either ‘be quiet and sit still’ or ‘please stop kicking me now!' Aunt Prudence had snapped out of her reverie with what was nearly an audible click. "Tapestries?" she inquired eagerly. "Why, yes, Mama," Jane replied demurely. "I had hoped that while Amy and I were in France we might be granted access to the tapestries at the Tuilleries." Jane’s quiet words sent the table into a state of electric expectancy. Forks hovered over plates in mid-air; wineglasses tilted halfway to open mouths; little Ned paused in the act of slipping a pea down the back of Agnes’s dress. Even Miss Gwen stopped glaring long enough to eye Jane with what looked more like speculation than rancour. "Not the Gobelins series of Daphne and Apollo!" cried Aunt Prudence. "But, of course, Aunt Prudence," Amy plunged in. Amy just barely restrained herself from turning and flinging her arms around her cousin. Aunt Prudence had spent long hours lamenting that she had never taken the time before the war to copy the pattern of the tapestries that hung in the Tuilleries Palace. "Jane and I had hoped to sketch them for you, hadn’t we, Jane?" "We had," Jane affirmed, her graceful neck dipping in assent. "Yet if Papa feels that France remains unsafe, we shall bow to his greater wisdom." At the other end of the table, Aunt Prudence was wavering. Literally. Torn between her trust in her husband and her burning desire for needlepoint patterns, she swayed a bit in her chair, the feather in her small silk turban quivering with her agitation. "It surely can’t be as unsafe as that, can it, Bertrand?" She leant across the table to peer at her husband through eyes gone nearsighted from long hours over her embroidery frame. "After all, if dear Edouard is willing to take responsibility for the girls…" "Edouard will take very good care of us, I’m sure, Aunt Prudence! If you’ll just read his letter, you’ll see – ouch!" Jane had kicked her again.

You look a little lost, my dear,' a nun says behind me, and I jump. 'Were you interested in seeing the Bevington Triptych?' 'Oh,' I say. 'Erm... yes. Absolutely.' 'Up there,' she points, and I walk tentatively towards the front of the chapel, hoping it will become obvious what the Bevington Triptych is. A statue, maybe? Or a.. a piece of tapestry? But as I reach the elderly lady, I see that she's staring up at a whole wall of stained glass windows. I have to admit, they're pretty amazing. I mean look at that huge blue one in the middle. It's fantastic! 'The Bevington Triptych,' says the elderly woman. 'It simply has no parallel, does it?' 'Wow,' I breathe reverentially, staring up with her. 'It's beautiful.' It really is stunning. God, it just shows, there's no mistaking a real work of art, is there? When you come across real genius, it just leaps out at you. And I'm not even an expert. 'Wonderful colours,' I murmur. 'The detail,' says the woman, clasping her hands, 'is absolutely incomparable.' 'Incomparable,' I echo. I'm just about to point out the rainbow, which I think is a really nice touch - when I suddenly notice that the elderly woman and I aren't looking at the same thing. She's looking at some painted wooden thing which I hadn't even noticed. As inconspicuously as possible, I shift my gaze - and feel a pang of disappointment. Is this the Bevington triptych? But it isn't even pretty! 'Whereas this Victorian rubbish,' the woman suddenly adds savagely, 'is absolutely criminal! That rainbow! Doesn't it make you feel sick?' She gestures to my big blue window, and I gulp. 'I know,' I say. 'It's shocking, isn't it? Absolutely... You know - I think I'll just go for a little wander...

You look a little lost, my dear,' a nun says behind me, and I jump. 'Were you interested in seeing the Bevington Triptych?' 'Oh,' I say. 'Erm... yes. Absolutely.' 'Up there,' she points, and I walk tentatively towards the front of the chapel, hoping it will become obvious what the Bevington Triptych is. A statue, maybe? Or a.. a piece of tapestry? But as I reach the elderly lady, I see that she's staring up at a whole wall of stained glass windows. I have to admit, they're pretty amazing. I mean look at that huge blue one in the middle. It's fantastic! 'The Bevington Triptych,' says the elderly woman. 'It simply has no parallel, does it?' 'Wow,' I breathe reverentially, staring up with her. 'It's beautiful.' It really is stunning. God, it just shows, there's no mistaking a real work of art, is there? When you come across real genius, it just leaps out at you. And I'm not even an expert. 'Wonderful colours,' I murmur. 'The detail,' says the woman, clasping her hands, 'is absolutely incomparable.' 'Incomparable,' I echo. I'm just about to point out the rainbow, which I think is a really nice touch - when I suddenly notice that the elderly woman and I aren't looking at the same thing. She's looking at some painted wooden thing which I hadn't even noticed. As inconspicuously as possible, I shift my gaze - and feel a pang of disappointment. Is this the Bevington triptych? But it isn't even pretty! 'Whereas this Victorian rubbish,' the woman suddenly adds savagely, 'is absolutely criminal! That rainbow! Doesn't it make you feel sick?' She gestures to my big blue window, and I gulp. 'I know,' I say. 'It's shocking, isn't it? Absolutely... You know - I think I'll just go for a little wander...

Milk Thistle teaches guerilla warfare. Adaptogen milagrosa, Milk Thistle works with what is here, the yellow layers of toxins, the charcoal grit, the green bile slow as crude oil pooling in the liver's reservoirs, waiting to learn to flow. Milk Thistle says take what you are and use it. She's a junkyard artist, crafting beauty out of the broken. She's a magician, melting scar tissue into silk. She's a miner, fingering greasy lumps of river clay for emeralds. She can enter the damaged cells of your life and recreate your liver from a memory of health. She can pass her hands over this torn and stained tapestry of memory and show us beauty, make the threads gleam with the promise of something precious gained. She will not flinch from anything you have done to keep yourself alive. Give it to me, she will say. I will make it into something new. She will show you your courage, hammered to a dappled sheen by use. She will remind you that you took yourself over and over to the edge of what you knew. She will remind you that the world placed limits on your powers. That you were not omnipotent. That some of the choices you made were not choices. Use what you are, she says again and again, insistent. You are every step of your journey, you are everything that has touched you, you are organic and unexpected. Use what you are.

The vocation to the priesthood, according to your memoirs, ‘naturally matured within me without any grand conversion experiences’. If there was nothing grand, were there little spiritual experiences, at least? I would say it was my entering ever more deeply into the liturgy. Genuinely to recognize liturgy as the central point and seeking to understand it, together with the whole historical tapestry standing behind it. We had a teacher of religion who was writing a book about the Roman station churches.11 In a sense he used the religious instruction to prepare his book. Through him we learned the historical roots really well, very concretely. That was something that gave me real joy. With this I was then altogether preoccupied with religious questions. It is the world in which I feel most at home.

have been asked if I’ve needed help so many times that I have been allowed to forget the question, the significance of it. I see, now, the way the love in my life has woven into a tapestry that I’ve been blessed enough to get to ignore. But not now, not anymore. “Yes,” I tell her. She says she will email David, she will make sure we get refunds where we can. She will handle the returns and the calls. She is my mother. She will help. That is what she does. I go back upstairs. Jill is gone. Aaron is in the other

Dearest Young Ones, There is much talk ‘out there’ at the moment about who ‘should’ and ‘should not’ be loved and accepted in this world of ours. That’s right, this is OUR world and it belongs just as much to YOU as it does to me. I believe in God. I believe that God created us all equal in this beautiful tapestry of humanity. I believe that God created us ALL in their image. ALL of us, not just people who look like, sound like, or make the same choices as me. Mere mortals do not get to decide who is worthy of God’s love and who is not. Humans don’t get to say God is all wise and powerful UNLESS of course God’s loving creation doesn’t fit in with that group’s conveniently self-serving narrative or agenda. That just doesn’t make any sense!! I believe every single human was skillfully crafted and created out of love. Please know this fundamental truth. There is love out in the world for you. It may not be available to you from the sources that you may of hoped, but IT IS HERE. Never internalize the struggles, pain, and doubts of others as your own, they are not yours to carry. These actions are evidence of their internal lack and struggle NOT a determination of who you are. You are perfectly created and were put on this earth in all of your perfection to be loved as a reflection of our creator. You are meant to live your unique life experience and nobody gets to tell you that you don’t belong. NOBODY. Please know that there is love here for you beautiful, courageous souls. You are loved. I love you. Hold your head up. I love you. Be true to yourself. I love you. You are brave. I love you. You are a gift. I love you. You are strong. I. LOVE. YOU.

Arthur had his hands in the scarred fur of the dog's ruff. They looked at each other, man and dog; Paul found that he could not watch. Looking away, he heard Arthur say, "Farewell, my gallant joy. You would go with me, I know, but it may not be. You will be needed yet, great heart. There…may yet come a time when we need not part.

there is no saying how events in one place may affect what happens elsewhere, for the tapestry of history is woven of many threads.

This is the kind of art I want to make, she thought. A tapestry of all of us flying together. A tapestry that says: Look how much bigger the world is than you thought it was. Look at how different we are, but we’re all still dragons. Look at how dragons we don’t even know will fly across an ocean to help save us. Don’t you want to be like these dragons? Don’t you want to reach for different claws, fly alongside different wings? Don’t you want to do something brave and kind because someone has to?

I’d like you to imagine that you are about to attend one of the most important occasions of your life. It will be held in a room sufficiently large to seat all of your friends, your family, your business associates—anyone and everyone to whom you are important and who is important to you. Can you see it? The walls are draped with deep golden tapestries. The lighting is subdued, soft, casting a warm glow on the faces of your expectant guests. Their chairs are handsomely upholstered in a golden fabric that matches the tapestries. The golden carpeting is deeply piled. At the front of the room is a dais, and on the dais a large, beautifully decorated table, with candles burning at either end. On the table, in the center, is the object of everyone’s attention. A large, shining, ornate box. And in the box is…you! Stiff as the proverbial board. Do you see yourself lying in the box, not a dry eye in the room? Now, listen. From the four corners of the room comes a tape recording of your voice. Can you hear it? You’re addressing your guests. You’re telling them the story of your life. How would you like that story to go? That’s your Primary Aim. What would you like to be able to say about your life after it’s too late to do anything about it? That’s your Primary Aim. If you were to write a script for the tape to be played for the mourners at your funeral, how would you like it to read? That’s your Primary Aim. And once you’ve created the script, all you need to do is make it come true. All you need to do is begin living your life as if it were important. All you need to do is take your life seriously. To create it intentionally. To actively make your life into the life you wish it to be.

Her life was a tapestry woven together with stories of joy and sadness moments of pain but also hope— and within those threads of life she created herself in every stitch of colored string.

Here—this corner of the tapestry. This is why you are who you are.” We are learning presence, how to delight in each other’s mere existence, muster affection in spite of our quirks. As Hemingway says, “Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.”1

It is true what they say. Your life does replay before your eyes, but it’s not a flash; it’s an eternity. A simple change, a well-timed question, and a seemingly cavalier decision are not at all random when they are stitched together with every other facet of your life, producing a tapestry that is too beautiful to behold until death lovingly holds you up high enough to see.

Lady Meliara?” There was a tap outside the door, and Oria’s mother, Julen, lifted the tapestry. Oria and I both stared in surprise at the three long sticks she carried so carefully. “More Fire Sticks?” I asked. “In midwinter?” “Just found them outside the gate.” Julen laid them down, looked from one of us to the other, and went out. Oria grinned at me. “Maybe they’re a present. You did save the Covenant last year, and the Hill Folk know it.” “I didn’t do it,” I muttered. “All I did was make mistakes.” Oria crossed her arms. “Not mistakes. Misunderstandings. Those, at least, can be fixed. Which is all the more reason to go to Court--” “And what?” I asked sharply. “Get myself into trouble again?” Oria stood silently, and suddenly I was aware of the social gulf between us, and I knew she was as well. It happened like that sometimes. We’d be working side by side, cleaning or scraping or carrying, and then a liveried equerry would dash up the road with a letter, and suddenly I was the countess and she the servant who waited respectfully for me to read my letter and discuss it or not as I saw fit. “I’m sorry,” I said immediately, stuffing the Marquise’s letter into the pocket of my faded, worn old gown. “You know how I feel about Court, even if Bran has changed his mind.” “I promise not to jaw on about it again, but let me say it this once. You need to make your peace,” Oria said quietly. “You left your brother and the Marquis without so much as a by-your-leave, and I think it’s gnawing at you. Because you keep watching that road.” I felt my temper flare, but I didn’t say anything because I knew she was right. Or half right. And I wasn’t angry with her. I tried my best to dismiss my anger and force myself to smile. “Perhaps you may be right, and I’ll write to Bran by and by. But here, listen to this!” And I picked up the book I’d been reading before the letter came. “This is one of the ones I got just before the snows closed the roads: ‘And in several places throughout the world there are caves with ancient paintings and Iyon Daiyin glyphs.’” I looked up from the book. “Doesn’t that make you want to jump on the back of the nearest horse and ride and ride until you find these places?” Oria shuddered. “Not me. I like it fine right here at home.” “Use your imagination!” I read on. “‘Some of the caves depict constellations never seen in our skies--’” I stopped when we heard the pealing of bells. Not the melodic pattern of the time changes, but the clang of warning bells at the guardhouse just down the road. “Someone’s coming!” I exclaimed. Oria nodded, brows arched above her fine, dark eyes. “And the Hill Folk saw them.” She pointed at the Fire Sticks. “‘Them?’” I repeated, then glanced at the Fire Sticks and nodded. “Means a crowd, true enough.” Julen reappeared then, and tapped at the door. “Countess, I believe we have company on the road.” She looked in, and I said, “I hadn’t expected anyone.” Then my heart thumped, and I added, “It could be the fine weather has melted the snows down-mountain--d’you think it might be Branaric at last? I don’t see how it could be anyone else!” “Branaric needs three Fire Sticks?” Oria asked. “Maybe he’s brought lots of servants?” I suggested doubtfully. “Perhaps his half year at Court has given him elaborate tastes, ones that only a lot of servants can see to. Or he’s hired artisans from the capital to help forward our work on the castle. I hope it’s artisans,” I added. “Either way, we’ll be wanted to find space for these newcomers,” Julen said to her daughter. She picked up the Fire Sticks again and looked over her shoulder at me. “You ought to put on one of those gowns of your mother’s that we remade, my lady.” “For my brother?” I laughed, pulling my blanket closer about me as we slipped out of my room. “I don’t need to impress him, even if he has gotten used to Court ways!

Savona escorted me back to the Residence. For most of our journey the talk was in our usual pattern--he made outrageous compliments, which I turned into jokes. Once he said, “May I count on you to grace the Khazhred ball tomorrow?” “If the sight of me in my silver gown, dancing as often as I can, is your definition of grace, well, nothing easier,” I replied, wondering what he would do if I suddenly flirted back in earnest. He smiled, kissed my hand, and left. As I trod up the steps alone, I realized that he had never really talked with me about any serious subject, in spite of his obvious admiration. I thought back over the picnic. No serious subject had been discussed there, either, but I remembered some of the light, quick flirtatious comments he exchanged with some of the other ladies, and how much he appeared to appreciate their flirting right back. Would he appreciate it if I did? Except I can’t, I thought, walking down the hall to my room. Clever comments with double meanings; a fan pressed against someone’s wrist in different ways to hint at different things; all these things I’d observed and understood the meanings of, but I couldn’t see myself actually performing them even if I could think of them quickly enough. What troubled me most was trying to figure out Savona’s real intent. He certainly wasn’t courting me, I realized as I pushed aside my tapestry. What other purpose would there be in such a long, one-sided flirtation? My heart gave a bound of anticipation when I saw a letter waiting and I recognized the style of the Unknown. You ask what I think, and I will tell you that I admire without reservation your ability to solve your problems in a manner unforeseen by any, including those who would consider themselves far more clever than you. That was all. I read it through several times, trying to divine whether it was a compliment or something else entirely. He’s waiting to see what I do about Tamara, I thought at last. “And in return?” That was what Tamara had said. This is the essence of politics, I realized. One creates an interest, or, better, an obligation, that causes others to act according to one’s wishes. I grabbed up a paper, dipped my pen, and wrote swiftly: Today I have come to two realizations. Now, I well realize that every courtier in Athanarel probably saw all this by their tenth year. Nonetheless, I think I finally see the home-thrust of politics. Everyone who has an interest in such things seems to be waiting for me to make some sort of capital with respect to the situation with Tamara, and won’t they be surprised when I do nothing at all! Truth to say, I hold no grudge against Tamara. I’d have to be a mighty hypocrite to fault her for wishing to become a queen, when I tried to do the same a year back--though I really think her heart lies elsewhere--and if I am right, I got in her way yet again. Which brings me to my second insight: that Savona’s flirtation with me is just that, and not a courtship. The way I define courtship is that one befriends the other, tries to become a companion and not just a lover. I can’t see why he so exerted himself to seek me out, but I can’t complain, for I am morally certain that his interest is a good part of what has made me popular. (Though all this could end tomorrow). “Meliara?” Nee’s voice came through my tapestry. “The concert begins at the next time change.” I signed the letter hastily, sealed it, and left it lying there as I hurried to change my gown. No need to summon Mora, I thought; she was used to this particular exchange by now.

My mom used to say everything happens for a reason and there’s no such thing as coincidences. Serendipity, yes; coincidence, no. She always said every event was part of God’s tapestry. One side—the side we see as we stumble through life—looks like a confusing mass of interwoven thread, but on the other side—the side God sees— is a radiant, gorgeous work of art.

older man brought up a hand to start stroking Jon’s side, gliding his fingers up over the hard muscles of Tom’s arm and back down again to Jon’s hip. Now that their passions were slaked, the room felt cool, and Jon was glad for Tom’s constant heat. He nuzzled up under the big man’s jaw. I missed you, he wanted to say, among other things, but he didn’t want to push his luck with the captain here. Sex was one thing, emotions were another, and Jon was curious to see how things would settle in the end. He couldn’t tell if it was the effects of the drug or the mind-blowing sex, but he thought he could sense strands pulling the three of them together. It was as if their talents, strengths, desires, and weaknesses were woven into a three-sided tapestry.

Education must be largely self-initiated, a tapestry woven out of broad experience, constant introspection, ability to concentrate on one’s purpose in spite of distractions, a combination of curiosity, patience, and intense watchfulness, and it requires substantial trial and error risk-taking, along with a considerable ability to take feedback from the environment — to learn from mistakes. I once heard someone in my own family, who I once loved very much, say,“I don’t take criticism well,” as if it were a boast, and I knew at that instant there was no way at all for her to grow in mind or character with that self-destructive attitude.

major tragedy of our times, the citizens of the USA remain relatively passive and indifferent to what is occurring. Yes, it is true we respond to the individual and specific mass tragedies associated with violence, disasters, and related instances of suffering. But as a population — with a few exceptions (e.g., OWM, SOA protests, union protests) — we remain passive to the many injustices and abuses perpetrated by public and private individuals and organizations that serve self-interests at the expense of our nation and the world. Say what you will in argument and contention, but the United States of America is a “Culture of Violence,” and we are exporting that culture in all of its manifestations and forms across the world as we encourage greed, profit, consumerism, materialism, commodification, environmental

get him killed by … someone. Someone scary enough that the huntress doesn’t want to get involved. She whacks like seven-eight of their guys, but she doesn’t want to get into this. Stupidly, Alpha Male charges ahead where the Goddess of the Hunt fears to tread. Because my rallying cry is “MORONS FORWARD!” or something of that sort. Mercy. I say none of this to Dr. Perugini, because a) she’s not going to believe me, and b) none of this makes me look cool, especially the part where I’m not the Big Damn Hero doing the saving. Also, there are a lot of tourists around us and most of them speak English. Call me self-conscious, but I don’t want anyone thinking I’m crazy. There is still a widely accepted cult of skepticism about the existence of metahumans, even after the Minneapolis incident. We go through a corridor of tapestries, and one of them has a Jesus that the tour guide swears is watching. I picture someone behind the wall like in the old movies, eyeballs staring out, then dismiss that thought as utter nonsense. Then I move, and I swear the tapestry’s eyes move with me. No, I am not a fan of the “Jesus is watching” tapestry. It’s like he can sense my impure thoughts about Dr. Perugini and he is not pleased. Come on, man, your dad supposedly intelligently designed her. Like this wasn’t predictable.

Gareth!  Thank God you're up and about. I was just coming to get you —" "What is it?" "Lucien, the bastard!  He's sent her away!" "'Dammit, Andrew, why the hell didn't you come get me earlier?!" Andrew vaulted down the stairs after him. "I just learned of it this second!  Nerissa went to Miss Paige's room and found her gone, and one of the servants told her Lucien sent her packing back to Boston on the morning stage!  You've got to find her, Gareth, before it's too late!" I'll kill him, Gareth vowed, striding angrily through the Gold Parlour, the Red Drawing Room, the Tapestry Room and toward the Great Hall. "Where is he?" "Outside, on the west lawn." The report of a pistol cracked the mid-morning quiet. Then another. Andrew didn't need to say anything more, for there was only one thing that Lucien ever used the west lawn for. Dueling practice. Another pistol shot banged out in the distance. Gareth saw a footman standing rigidly near the door, pretending not to notice the drama unfolding beneath his nose. "Gallagher? Send word to the stables. I need Crusader saddled immediately." "Yes, my lord." "And get a message to Lord Brookhampton, telling him to summon the Den and have them waiting for me on the green in twenty minutes. Move, man!" Another

Consider Jesus’s genealogy in Matthew 1:1–17. In the ancient world, genealogies determined a person’s status—whether you came from an honorable family or a shameful one. A person’s family line says something about that person. Their character, their social status, the types of people they would hang out with. And Jesus’s genealogy says one thing loud and clear: Jesus is right at home with sinners, thugs, and outcasts. Most genealogies list only the male descendants. Remember, the ancient world was patriarchal. Men were more valued than women, so there was no need to list women—thanks for bearing our children, but we’ll take it from here. But Jesus’s genealogy lists five women, most of whom have some shady event attached to their name, all of whom we’ve already met. The first woman is Tamar, the Canaanite woman who dressed up as a prostitute in order to have sex with her father-in-law, Judah. Her plan succeeded, and she became pregnant with Perez, the one whom God would weave into Jesus’s family line. Next is Rahab, Jericho’s down-and-out prostitute, who was the first Canaanite to receive God’s grace. Among all the Canaanite leaders, among all the skilled warriors, Rahab was the only one who savored the majesty of Israel’s God. Then there’s Ruth, the foreign widow burdening a famished society. A social outcast, a perceived stigma of God’s judgment, Ruth was grafted into the messianic line. Then there’s “the wife of Uriah,” Bathsheba, who was entangled in the sinful affair with King David—the man who murdered her husband. Finally, there’s Mary, the teenage girl who got pregnant out of wedlock. Though she would become an icon in church tradition, her name was synonymous with shame and scandal in the beginning of the first century. You thought your family was messed up. All of these women were social outcasts. They belonged under a bridge. Whether it was their gender, ethnicity, or some sort of sexual debacle, they were rejected by society yet were part of Jesus’s genealogy—a tapestry of grace. Not only was God born in a feeding trough to enter our pain, but He chose to be born into a family tree filled with lust, perversion, murder, and deceit. This tells us a lot about the types of people Jesus wants to hang out with. It tells us that Jesus loves Tamars, Judahs, Gomers, and you.

I’m in my bedroom. Pretending to hunt for an old high school yearbook so we can show her boyfriend.” “Ouch.” “Yeah.” “Okay, so to recap, I’m your pretend girlfriend and I have free rein in what I say? I can create a rich tapestry of our love?” “If you come and help me, you can do whatever the hell you want.” I can’t stop smiling. “Give me an hour.

Damien swims to me slowly before cradling my body, sending twinkles up my veins. "It's true," he says. "You really are magic." A warm glow rouses in my cheeks. The ocean glimmers like a reflection of the Milky Way. I study Damien's face in the twilight. No one's ever believed in me the way he does. When I'm with him, he resurrects a version of myself I thought was dead. With a kiss, I'm confident I could lift the stars from the sea, ascending the illusion as our own stairway to the sky. I feel the power running through me, as if my magic is multiplying. It wouldn't take much to transcend this tapestry to the Heavens.

Three copper paintings, wrapped in red Air France blankets, are discarded in a forest near the tapestry drop. A timber cutter finds them. He is more excited about the new-looking blankets, though he also sees worth in the coppers: his henhouse has been leaking, so he hammers the works to the roof. One of them, Allegory of Autumn, is the piece attributed to Brueghel. Taped to the back is a note. “All my life, I will always adore art,” it says, signed “Stéphane and Anne-Catherine.

The awareness of mortality casts a bittersweet shadow over the vibrancy of life and love. We exist in a state of impermanence, where beauty fades and connection dissolves. Yet, it is precisely this impermanence that imbues life with its preciousness and love with its urgency. In the face of oblivion, love becomes a defiant act, a bridge we build across the chasm of the ephemeral, a testament to the enduring power of connection in a fleeting existence." The quote's appreciation for love in the face of life's fleeting nature echoes Epicurean ideals. This emphasizes the existentialist concept of living in a finite world and the absurdist notion of creating meaning in the face of nothingness. It highlights love as a way to transcend the impermanence of life and forge a connection that defies the inevitable. The concept of finding meaning and beauty in a world wracked by impermanence aligns closely with the philosophy of Epicurus. Epicureanism emphasizes living a virtuous and pleasure-filled life while minimizing pain. Though often misinterpreted as mere hedonism, Epicurus also stressed the importance of intellectual pursuits, close friendships, and facing mortality with courage. Unfortunately, Epicurus himself didn't write any essays or novels in the traditional sense. Most of his teachings were delivered in letters and discourses to his students and followers. These were later compiled by others, most notably Hermarchus, who helped establish Epicurean philosophy. The core tenets of Epicureanism are scattered throughout various ancient texts, including: *Principal Doctrines: A summary of Epicurus' core beliefs, likely compiled by Hermarchus. *Letter to Menoeceus: A letter outlining the path to happiness through a measured approach to pleasure and freedom from fear. *Vatican Sayings: A collection of sayings and aphorisms attributed to Epicurus. These texts, along with Diogenes Laërtius' Lives and Sayings of the Philosophers, which includes biographical details about Epicurus, provide the best understanding of his philosophy. Love is but an 'Ephemeral Embrace'. Life explodes into a vibrant party, a kaleidoscope of moments that dims as the sun dips below the horizon. The people we adore, the bonds we forge, all tinged with the bittersweet knowledge that nothing lasts forever. But it's this very impermanence that makes everything precious, urging us to savor the here and now. Imagine Epicurus nudging us and saying, "True pleasure isn't a fleeting high, it's the joy of sharing good times with the people you love." Even knowing things end, we can create a life brimming with love's connections. Love becomes an act of creation, weaving threads of shared joy into a tapestry of memories. Think of your heart as a garden. Love tells you to tend it with care, for it's the source of connection with others. In a world of constant change, love compels us to nurture our inner essence and share it with someone special. Love transcends impermanence by fostering a deep connection that enriches who we are at our core. Loss is as natural as breathing. But love says this: "Let life unfold, with all its happy moments and tearful goodbyes. Only then can you understand the profound beauty of impermanence." Love allows us to experience the full spectrum of life's emotions, embracing the present while accepting impermanence. It grants depth and meaning to our fleeting existence. Even knowing everything ends, love compels us to build a haven, a space where hearts connect. It's a testament to the enduring power of human connection in a world in flux. So let's love fiercely, vibrantly, because in the face of our impermanence, love erects a bridge to something that transcends the temporary.

My friends, I study politics and war, that my children may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My children study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

The Italians, who have been “guest workers” at many times and in many countries, are thrown by the phenomenon happening in their own country. During this second summer at Bramasole, the newspapers are tolerant to indignant about Albanians literally washing up on the shores of southern Italy. Living in San Francisco, a city where immigrants arrive daily, we cannot get excited about their problem. Americans in cities have realized that migrations are on the increase; that the whole demographic tapestry is being rewoven on a vast scale in the late twentieth century. Europe is having a harder time coming to grips with this fact. We have our own poor, they tell us incredulously. Yes, we say, we do, too. Italy is amazingly homogeneous; it is rare to see a black or Asian face in Tuscany. Recently, Eastern Europeans, finding the German work force at last full of people like themselves, began arriving in this prosperous part of northern Italy. Now we understood Alfiero’s estimate for the work. Instead of paying the normal Italian twenty-five thousand to thirty thousand lire per hour, he is able to pay nine thousand. He assures us they are legal workers and are covered by his insurance. The Poles are pleased with the hourly wage; at home, before the factory went kaput, they barely earned that much in a day.

Too many sad memories there anyway." "And happy ones," I point out thinking of his tapestries. "You know perfectly well how tainted those can become," he says quietly.

Nothing, perhaps. But there is no saying how events in one place may affect what happens elsewhere, for the tapestry of history is woven of many threads. We needs must study the whole warp and weft of it to predict the pattern on the loom.

In a quiet abode, where shadows weep, Lived the saddest grandmother, her sorrow ran deep. Once a home filled with laughter and cheer, Now echoes silence, a symphony of tears. Her eyes, like windows to a weathered soul, Glistened with memories that took their toll. A tale unfolded of love's sweet refrain, Now stained with loss, an enduring pain. Beside the hearth where warmth once thrived, Loneliness lingered, love deprived. A husband's absence, a void untold, Left her heart shattered, bitter and cold. Her family, once a vibrant bouquet, Now scattered petals, drifting away. The echoes of laughter, a distant sound, In the vast emptiness that sorrow found. Photographs whispered of days long past, A love that forever seemed to last. But time, a cruel and relentless stream, Carved lines of grief in a once joyous dream. Through tear-stained letters and faded attire, The saddest grandmother stoked love's dwindling fire. A matriarch cradled in solitude's embrace, Longing for the touch of her love's warm grace. Her children, grown and scattered like leaves, Each carried a piece of the pain she conceives. Yet, united by grief, a bittersweet thread, Bound by the love that time hadn't shed. In twilight's embrace, she wept in despair, A tapestry woven with threads of wear. The saddest grandmother, weathered and gray, Whispered to the wind the words she couldn't say. For in the echoes of her silent plea, Lingered the remnants of love's decree. A tale of loss, etched in the lines, Of the saddest grandmother, where sorrow resigns.

The person outside the library probably had nothing to do with the king, Celaena told herself as she walked—still not sprinting—down the hall to her room. There were plenty of strange people in a castle this large, and even though she rarely saw another soul in the library, perhaps some people just … wished to go to the library alone. And unidentified. In a court where reading was so out of fashion, perhaps it was merely some courtier trying to hide a passionate love of books from his or her sneering friends. Some animalistic, eerie courtier. Who had caused her amulet to glow. Celaena entered her bedroom just as the lunar eclipse was beginning, and groaned. “Of course there’s an eclipse,” she grumbled, turning from the balcony doors and approaching the tapestry along the wall. And even though she didn’t want to, even though she’d hoped to never see Elena again … she needed answers. Maybe the dead queen would laugh at her and tell her it was nothing. Gods above, she hoped Elena would say that. Because if she didn’t …

You and your thoughts! The vagueness of the future, the memories of yesterday and the promises of today, Remind me of you, everyday, and whenever it is today, In the last moment of wakeful mind before falling asleep, It is you I think of and you I dream of when I am fast asleep, In the view of the busy and at times relaxed world and the perspectives thereof, I look for you in everything, in its corners, in its open spaces, and live off the memories thereof, In the mind’s silence and in the heart’s endless beatings to keep kissing life, I listen to them both while thinking of you in my every passing moment of life, In the present that rushes to meet the future and shorten my span of dreams and desires, I smile silently because it does not know my life is but an endless bloom of your memories and your desires, In this moment while I am thinking of you Irma and my mind weaves a tapestry of known feelings, I wish you knew, I wish you realised, that all of them are our feelings, those beautiful bygone feelings, In the moments when I exist and yet feel maybe I don’t at all belong in the present, I roll my memories, I wrap my desires, and I slumber in the past, where you and your feelings are the only present! In this state I never realise when it is midday, when it is night and when it is today, Because now you become my only dream, my only memory, my only feeling and an everlasting today!

Within the chambers of a once-barricaded heart, love’s tender whispers found echoes; together, Abdulla and Maysa painted their pain into tapestries of triumph, fortifying an Empire of Hearts.

He liked one tapestry in particular that depicted a marvelously appointed griffin frozen in the act of putting a company of foot soldiers to flight. It was supposed to symbolize the triumph of some group of long-dead people over some other group of long-dead people whom nobody had liked, but for some reason the griffin had cocked its head to one side in the midst of its rampage and was gazing directly out of its woven universe at the viewer as if to say, yes, granted, I’m good at this. But is it really the best use of my time?

He surveyed them all again—and held out his hand to Cassian. Cassian took it, and held out his other for Mor. Then Mor extended her other to Azriel. Azriel to Amren. Amren to Nesta. Nesta to Elain. And Elain to me. Until we were all linked, all bound together. Rhys said, “We will walk onto that field and only accept Death when it comes to haul us away to the Otherworld. We will fight for life, for survival, for our futures. But if it is decided by that tapestry of Fate or the Cauldron or the Mother that we do not walk off that field today …” His chin lifted. “The great joy and honor of my life has been to know you. To call you my family. And I am grateful—more than I can possibly say—that I was given this time with you all.

Life was like a piece of tapestry . . . or perhaps one should say a piece of tapestry was like life . . . for there was the background, which was rather dull, and the coloured bits, which were fun. And it was not until you had got to the end and the whole thing was complete that you could see the pattern properly.

Rhys looked them each in the eye, even my sisters, his hand brushing the back of my own. 'Do you want the inspiring talk or the bleak one?' he asked. 'We want the real one,' Amren said. Rhys pushed his shoulders back, elegantly folding his wings behind him. 'I believe everything happens for a reason. Whether it is decided by the Mother, of the Cauldron, or some sort of tapestry of Fate, I don't know. I don't really care. But I am grateful for it, whatever it is. Grateful that it brought you all into my life. If it hadn't... I might have become as awful as the price we're going to face today. If I had not met an Illyrian warrior-in-training,' he said to Cassian, 'I would not have known the true depth of strength, of resilience, of honour and loyalty.' Cassian's eyes gleamed bright. Rhys said to Azriel, 'If I had not met a shadowsinger, I would not have known that it is the family you make not the one you are born into, that matters. I would not have known what it is to truly hope, even when the world tells you to despair.' Azriel bowed his head in thanks. Mor was already crying when Rhys spoke to her. 'If I had not met my cousin, I would never have learned that light can be found in even the darkest of hells. That kindness can thrive even amongst cruelty.' She wiped away her tears as she nodded. I waited for Amren to offer a retort. But she was only waiting. Rhys bowed his head to her. 'If I had not met a tiny monster who hoards jewels more fiercely than a firedrake...' A quiet laugh from all of us at that. Rhys smiled softly. 'My own power would have consumed me long ago.' Rhys squeezed my hand as he looked to me at last. 'And if I had not met my mate...' His words failed him as silver lined his eyes. He said down the bond, I would have waited five hundred more years for you. A thousand years. And if this was all the time we were allowed to have... The wait was worth it. He wiped away the tears sliding down my face. 'I believe that everything happened, exactly the way it had to... so I could find you.' He kissed another tear away. And then he said to my sisters, 'We have not known each other for long. But I have to believe that you were brought here, into our family, for a reason, too. And maybe today we'll find out why.' He surveyed them all again- and held out his hand to Cassian. Cassian took it, and held out his other for Mor. Then Mor extended her other to Azriel. Azriel to Amren. Amren to Nesta. Nesta to Elain. And Elain to me. Until we were all linked, all bound together. Rhys said, 'We will walk out onto that field and only accept Death when it comes to haul us away to the Otherworld. We will fight for life, for survival, for our futures. But if it is decided by that tapestry of Fate or the Cauldron or the Mother that we do not walk off that field today...' His chin lifted. 'The great joy and honour of my life has been to know you. To call you my family. And I am grateful- more than I can possibly say- that I was given this time with you all.' 'We are grateful, Rhysand,' Amren said quietly. 'More than you know.' Rhys gave her a small smile as the others murmured their agreement. He squeezed my hand again as he said, 'Then let's go make Hybern very ungrateful to have known us, too.

Beware! Peril to the detective who says: ‘It is so small – it does not matter. It will not agree. I will forget it.’ That way lies confusion. Everything matters.’ The Mysterious Affair at Styles - Agatha Christie

Will you repeat to us what you overheard of the quarrel?’ ‘I really do not remember hearing anything.’ ‘Do you mean to say you did not hear voices?’ ‘Oh, yes, I heard the voices, but I did not hear what they said.’ The Mysterious Affair at Styles - Agatha Christie

The walls covered with paintings and tapestries that often concealed the doors didn't help either. There were countless animal heads of all kinds lit by torches in several corridors, and I could have sworn I saw them move, but I was always so late for the lessons that I had no time to pay attention to them. Intense smells of herbs, vapors, and fumes filled this space, as potions and spells were constantly being played throughout the days and nights. Every time we passed Mrs. Fitz's secretary's office, we had to pinch our Nose, because she seemed to burn horrible herbs while she worked, and the smell spread down the hallway to the classrooms. Then there was Miss Melva Flin with her ever-vigilant bat. She controlled every person who came in and out of Philcrocks and roamed the corridors making sure no students broke the rules or tried to stick their noses where they weren't called. She had two spare eyes as her bat squeaked whenever it detected problems. No student liked her and everyone wished they could close that bat in the library where he could eat the bookworms for the rest of his life. Found the practice sites, there were still the lessons. Every Thursday at midnight the clan would gather in the High Ridge stone circle, at which hour it aligned with the moon, and it was possible to make omens from the constellations. On Tuesdays we went to the Philcrocks Woods where we watched the wild animals and any other species that walked around, hunted and fished in the river and even stayed overnight for the next day hoping to see the vampires hunt, which did not happen. I still couldn't believe vampires existed but the next day I turned away from all the sarcophagi I came across in the castle corridors. The most boring of the chairs was the Philcrocks Story, where they talked about the story of magic. Especially because the teacher talked monotonously and always behind the book, which made it impossible to see his face and understand what he was saying. He also made references to maps and wall articles that no one understood, which did not matter to him as long as he remained immersed in its reading aloud. Most interesting so far has been the story of the division of the 3 kingdoms and the emergence of the 3 clans. For many centuries they had lived peacefully until pure races emerged and the thirst for power increased, promoting their perpetuation. The segregation of sleves began there. King Elive's Night Clan was destroyed by King Ashen and the Night Clan disappeared, except for some sorcerers who chose the Shadow Kingdom to live on and continued the clan to which I now belong. Having to memorize endless dates and events was the worst part. It was hard to remember if it was Orlk or Orls who started the battle and whether it was in Cral or Crap, especially since all those names were strange to me.

The Baby Hospital forces you to ask the big question. It forces you to ask about Death and heaven and God. “Truly I say to you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it for Me” (Matthew 25:40).147 Some of the children at the Baby Hospital certainly qualify as the “least of these.” “Let’s not get tired of doing what is good” (Galatians 6:9).148 It’s a privilege to care for children. It’s a privilege to be called during the worst time in a family’s life. It’s a privilege to be entrusted with the life of a baby. It’s a privilege to be expected to study, to overcome the bureaucracy of medicine, and to feel capable of commanding an OR. It’s a privilege to operate on the central nervous system. I can see Death. And I can see Heaven. I wish I could understand the tapestry of the universe, of existence, of nature. But I can’t. But I can see some things. I can see that there is a Song of Creation. I can even hear it. I can hear it in a child’s laugh, my favorite sound. It’s beautiful. Yes. It’s worth it. Because of this:

What a thing to say!' Gabriel, interrupted midrant, looked as shocked as if one of the tapestries had suddenly started talking. 'Pardon me?' 'You heard me. Telling someone you wouldn't be sorry if they died! It's inexcusable!' She took hold of Will by the sleeve. "Come along, Will. This - this person - obviously isn't worth wasting your time on.' Will looked hugely entertained. 'So true.

Mystery" referred to realities behind the appearances that one could observe by means of the senses. That is to say, though our hands, eyes, ears, nose, and tongue are able to access reality, they cannot fully grasp this reality. They cannot comprehend it.

Those walls, where gorgeous tapestry had hung, showed only the remains of door-ways and of beautiful gothic windows, that had admitted the light of the same sun, which at this moment sent the last gleam of another day upon Willoughton, and warned him, that another portion of his life too was departing. The melancholy scene around him spoke, with the simplicity of truth, the brevity and nothingness of this life. Those walls seemed to say— “Generations have beheld us and passed away, as you now behold us, and shall pass away. They have thought of the generations before their time, as you now think of them, and as future ones shall think of you. The voices, that revelled beneath us, the pomp of power, the magnificence of wealth, the grace of beauty, the joy of hope, the interests of high passion and of low pursuits have passed from this scene for ever; yet we remain, the spectres of departed years and shall remain, feeble as we are, when you, who now gaze upon us, shall have ceased to be in this world!

My mom used to say everything happens for a reason and there’s no such thing as coincidences. Serendipity, yes; coincidence, no. She always said every event was part of God’s tapestry. One side—the side we see as we stumble through life—looks like a confusing mass of interwoven thread, but on the other side—the side God sees— is a radiant, gorgeous work of art. And now, I can’t help but wonder if there’s a reason this happened.

The fact is that we lack the terms to define [the Null Rhythm], and there are too many hypothetical notions upon which our assumptions are stacked that it would be silly for us to explore it. All the same, there are layers of absence between waves of static, perforations in the surface of the latent aural wall that descend to pits of ecstatic dread, eschewing the crystallized intelligence and industry of all manifestation with its own form of anti-intelligent, retro-manifestation–not the undoing upon ‘the done’ so much as the unbeing upon the ‘will have been’ (which can be stretched to include both the ‘have been’ as well as the invariable ‘to be’). The Anti-Rhythm rises from the perforations, from those pits, only to remind itself of the sheer inadequacies and of the abomination of existence, which is not to say that it confronts or beckons to all or any who exist. Rather, like a listless predator who has lost the thrill of pursuit, it observes without interest, without appetite even, this objective reality that has prevailed only in meeting the standards of its bitter contempt, for all braided within its fabric languishes in mere folly, and all therefore remains too intertwined with the scraps and muck and detritus and moreover with the flaws in this tapestry of being to intuit its desultory artifice. There is no unbeing of the ‘will have been’ aligned with a destined course. The destined destination is simply a byproduct of aim-befuddled movement. [Excerpt from "Why Yes Always But Also Why Always Yes Never" by Ashim Shanker]

We will walk onto that field and only accept Death when it comes to haul us away to the Otherworld. We will fight for life, for survival, for our futures. But if it is decided by that tapestry of Fate or the Cauldron or the Mother that we do not walk off that field today …” His chin lifted. “The great joy and honor of my life has been to know you. To call you my family. And I am grateful—more than I can possibly say—that I was given this time with you all.