Temporarily Closed Quotes

Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.

If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the "creative temperament"--it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No--Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.

Only a few months into our marriage," writes the grandfather, "we started marking off areas in the apartment as 'Nothing Places,' in which one could be assured of complete privacy, we agreed that we never would look at the marked-off zones, that they would be nonexistent territories in the apartment in which one could temporarily cease to exist.

Up close the city constitutes an oppressive series of staircases, but from a distance it inspires fantasies of wealth and power so profound that even our communists are temporarily rendered speechless.

I rest my head on his shoulder and close my eyes, which keeps the business part of my brain temporarily disabled.

Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction -- Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn ... No -- Gatsby turned out all right in the end; it was what prayed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and the short-winded elations of men.

At the core of every addiction is an emptiness based in abject fear. The addict dreads and abhors the present moment; she bends feverishly only toward the next time, the moment when her brain, infused with her drug of choice, will briefly experience itself as liberated from the burden of the past and the fear of the future—the two elements that make the present intolerable. Many of us resemble the drug addict in our ineffectual efforts to fill in the spiritual black hole, the void at the center, where we have lost touch with our souls, our spirit—with those sources of meaning and value that are not contingent or fleeting. Our consumerist, acquisition-, action-, and image-mad culture only serves to deepen the hole, leaving us emptier than before. The constant, intrusive, and meaningless mind-whirl that characterizes the way so many of us experience our silent moments is, itself, a form of addiction—and it serves the same purpose. “One of the main tasks of the mind is to fight or remove the emotional pain, which is one of the reasons for its incessant activity, but all it can ever achieve is to cover it up temporarily. In fact, the harder the mind struggles to get rid of the pain, the greater the pain.”14 So writes Eckhart Tolle. Even our 24/7 self-exposure to noise, e-mails, cell phones, TV, Internet chats, media outlets, music downloads, videogames, and nonstop internal and external chatter cannot succeed in drowning out the fearful voices within.

The Black Pit of Despair is temporarily closed for renovations. We apologize for any inconvenience.

No- Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it was what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and the short-winded elations of men.

They consulted the computer. It said: “I regret I have been temporarily closed to all communication. Meanwhile, here is some light music.” They turned off the light music.

All of you, get off my damned window now!" "Shit," Locke muttered from a few feet above and to her left, his eloquence temporarily frightened into submission. "Madam, you're complicating our night, so before we come in and complicate yours, kindly cork you bullshit bottle and close the gods-damned window!" She looked up, aghast. "Two of you? All of you, get down, get down, get down!" "Close your window, close your window, close your fucking window!" "I'll kill both you shitsuckers' huffed Fernez 'I'll drop both you off this fucking--" There was a marrow-chillingly loud cracking noise, and the trellis shuddered beneath the hands of three men clinging to it.

This time we weren’t disturbed either by traveling through time or a cheeky gargoyle demon. While “Hallelujah” was running, the kiss was gentle and careful, but then Gideon buried both hands in my hair and held me very close. It wasn’t a gentle kiss anymore, and my reaction surprised me. I suddenly felt very soft and lightweight, and my arms went around Gideon’s neck of their own accord. I had no idea how, but at some point in the next few minutes, still kissing without a break, we landed on the green sofa, and we went on kissing there until Gideon abruptly sat up and looked at his watch. “Like I said, it really is a shame I’m not allowed to kiss you anymore,” he remarked rather breathlessly. The pupils of his eyes looked huge, and his cheeks were definitely flushed. I wondered what I looked like myself. As I’d temporarily mutated into some kind of human blancmange, there was no way I could get out of my half-lying position. And I realized, with horror, that I had no idea how much time had passed since Bon Jovi stopped singing “Hallelujah.” Ten minutes? Half an hour? Anything was possible. Gideon looked at me, and I thought I saw something like bewilderment in his eyes. “We’d better collect our things,” he said at last. “And you need to do something about your hair—it looks as if some idiot has been digging both hands into it and dragging you down on a sofa. Whoever’s back there waiting for us will put two and two together—oh, my God, don’t look at me like that.” “Like what?” “As if you couldn’t move.” “But I can’t,” I said, perfectly seriously. “I’m a blancmange. You’ve turned me into blancmange.” A brief smile brightened Gideon’s face, and then he jumped up and began stowing my school things in my bag. “Come along, little blancmange. Stand up.

It is the reader who comes to complete the work and to close, albeit temporarily, the world that it opens, and the reader does this in a different way every time.

Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: 'After the revolution even we will have more, won't we, dear?' Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property. I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew—at least they claimed to be Communists—couldn't have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves.

I am falling, tumbling through the air, but this time the darkness is alive around me, full of beating things, and I realize that I'm not surrounded by dark but have only had my eyes closed all this time. I open them, feeling silly, and at the same time a hundred thousand butterlies take off around me, so many of them in so many brilliant colors they are like a solid rainbow, temporarily obscuring the sun. But as they wing higher and higher they reveal a landscape below us, all green and gold and sun-drenched fields and pink-tinged clouds drifting underneath me, and the air around me is clear and blue and sweet smelling, and I'm laughing, laughing, laughing as I spin through the air because, of course, I haven't been falling all the time. I've been flying.

Only a few months into our marriage, we started marking off areas in the apartment as "Nothing Places," in which one could be assured of complete privacy, we agreed that we never would look at the marked-off zones, that they would be nonexistent territories in the apartment in which one could temporarily cease to exist, the first was in the bedroom, by the foot of the bed, we marked it off with red tape on the carpet, and it was just large enough to stand in, it was a good place to disappear, we knew it was there but we never looked at it, it worked so well that we decided to create a Nothing Place in the living room, it seemed necessary, because there are times when one needs to disappear while in the living room, and sometimes one simply wants to disappear, we made this zone slightly larger so that one of us could lie down in it, it was a rule that you never would look at that rectangle of space, it didn't exist, and when you were in it, neither did you, for a while that was enough, but only for a while.

The bath is one of the places I prefer, certainly not a place I leave readily, a place where one can close the door and remove oneself, put oneself in parentheses, as it were, from the rest of humanity. It is a place for reading and thinking, where one's mind wanders easily, where time seems temporarily suspended.

No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.

Fear is one of the persistent hounds of hell that dog the footsteps of the poor, the dispossessed, the disinherited. There is nothing new or recent about fear—it is doubtless as old as the life of man on the planet. Fears are of many kinds—fear of objects, fear of people, fear of the future, fear of nature, fear of the unknown, fear of old age, fear of disease, and fear of life itself. Then there is fear which has to do with aspects of experience and detailed states of mind. Our homes, institutions, prisons, churches, are crowded with people who are hounded by day and harrowed by night because of some fear that lurks ready to spring into action as soon as one is alone, or as soon as the lights go out, or as soon as one’s social defenses are temporarily removed. The ever-present fear that besets the vast poor, the economically and socially insecure, is a fear of still a different breed. It is a climate closing in; it is like the fog in San Francisco or in London. It is nowhere in particular yet everywhere. It is a mood which one carries around with himself, distilled from the acrid conflict with which his days are surrounded. It has its roots deep in the heart of the relations between the weak and the strong, between the controllers of environment and those who are controlled by it. When the basis of such fear is analyzed, it is clear that it arises out of the sense of isolation and helplessness in the face of the varied dimensions of violence to which the underprivileged are exposed. Violence, precipitate and stark, is the sire of the fear of such people. It is spawned by the perpetual threat of violence everywhere. Of course, physical violence is the most obvious cause. But here, it is important to point out, a particular kind of physical violence or its counterpart is evidenced; it is violence that is devoid of the element of contest. It is what is feared by the rabbit that cannot ultimately escape the hounds.

The natural state of mammals is to be somewhat on guard. However, in order to feel emotionally close to another human being, our defensive system must temporarily shut down. In order to play, mate, and nurture our young, the brain needs to turn off its natural vigilance . . . Many traumatized individuals are too hypervigilant to enjoy the ordinary pleasures that life has to offer, while others are too numb to absorb new experiences — or to be alert to signs of real danger . . . Many people feel safe as long as they can limit their social contact to superficial conversations, but actual physical contact can trigger intense reactions. However … achieving any sort of deep intimacy — a close embrace, sleeping with a mate, and sex — requires allowing oneself to experience immobilization without fear. It is especially challenging for traumatized people to discern when they are actually safe and to be able to activate their defenses when they are in danger. This requires having experiences that can restore the sense of physical safety.

Only a few months into our marriage, we started marking off areas in the apartment as "Nothing Places," in which one could be assured of complete privacy, we agreed that we never would look at the marked-off zones, that they would be nonexistent territories in the apartment in which one could temporarily cease to exist, the first was in the bedroom, by the foot of the bed, we marked it off with red tape on the carpet, and it was just large enough to stand in, it was a good place to disappear, we knew it was there but we never looked at it, it worked so well that we decided to create a Nothing Place in the living room, it seemed necessary,

The only thing that stood out in my memory was when the pediatric nurse placed Layla’s semi-naked body under my T-shirt, against my skin. During those few brief minutes the hurt I felt in my heart temporarily dissipated. I sighed deeply when Layla squirmed contentedly as she soaked up my warmth when I cradled her protectively against me. Then, when I felt her little heart beating close to mine through her teeny bony chest, I choked up with the indescribable distress I felt, and my tears fell

Cannabis sativa and its derivatives are strictly prohibited in Turkey, and the natural correlative of this proscription is that alcohol, far from being frowned upon as it is in other Moslem lands, is freely drunk; being a government monopoly it can be bought at any cigarette counter. This fact is no mere detail; it is of primary social importance, since the psychological effects of the two substances are diametrically opposed to each other. Alcohol blurs the personality by loosening inhibitions. The drinker feels, temporarily at least, a sense of participation. Kif abolishes no inhibitions; on the contrary it reinforces them, pushes the individual further back into the recesses of his own isolated personality, pledging him to contemplation and inaction. It is to be expected that there should be a close relationsip between the culture of a given society and the means used by its members to achieve release and euphoria. For Judaism and Christianity the means has always been alcohol; for Islam it has been hashish. The first is dynamic in its effects, the other static. If a nation wishes, however mistakenly, to Westernize itself, first let it give up hashish. The rest will follow, more or less as a manner of course. Conversely, in a Western country, if a whole segment of the population desires, for reasons of protest (as has happened in the United States), to isolate itself in a radical fashion from the society around it, the quickest and surest way is for it to replace alcohol by cannabis.

The universal character of the centrifugal forces leaves us impotent as to discern whether what is going on inside the carrousel is because we are rotating with respect to terra firma (remember my eyes are closed), or because – for some unknown reason unrelated to motion – radial gravitational field has temporarily emerged while the carrousel is as in repose as it was before the given impulse. The latter would have certainly been the interpretation adopted by an intelligent being, had s/he been born and grown up inside the carrousel, without any access whatsoever to the exterior world.

Its All About Choice - The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe. In the Middle Ages when men believed in the physical existence of Hell the sight of fire must have meant something different from what it means today. Nevertheless their idea of Hell owed a lot to the sight of fire consuming and the ashes remaining - as well as to their experience of the pain of burns. When in love, the sight of the beloved has a completeness which no words and no embrace can match : a completeness which only the act of making love can temporarily accommodate. Yet this seeing which comes before words, and can never be quite covered by them, is not a question of mechanically reacting to stimuli. (It can only be thought of in this way if one isolates the small part of the process which concerns the eye's retina.) We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice. As a result of this act, what we see is brought within our reach - though not necessarily within arm's reach. To touch something is to situate oneself in relation to it. (Close your eyes, move round the room and notice how the faculty of touch is like a static, limited form of sight.) We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves. Our vision is continually active, continually moving, continually holding things in a circle around itself, constituting what is present to us as we are.

She looked at her nine guests, all of whom had their eyes obediently closed as they waited her instructions. Their destinies were in her hands. She was going to change them not just temporarily, but forever.

War. In 1901, he graduated from the Virginia Military Institute, where he marched before Stonewall Jackson’s widow. He soon joined the Army, which then was recovering from its low ebb of the 1890s, the decade when the frontier officially closed and the last of the Indian wars ended. The Army expanded rapidly in the wake of the Spanish–American War of 1898, almost quadrupling in size to 100,000. As part of that growth, George Marshall received his commission. In this newly energized force, he stood out as a young officer. Marshall was temporarily posted to Fort Douglas, Utah—originally placed on a hillside overlooking Salt Lake City to keep an eye on Brigham Young’s nascent and hostile Mormon empire. One

This is a recorded announcement,” it said, “as I’m afraid we’re all out at the moment. The commercial council of Magrathea thanks you for your esteemed visit …” (“A voice from ancient Magrathea!” shouted Zaphod. “Okay, okay,” said Ford.) “… but regrets,” continued the voice, “that the entire planet is temporarily closed for business. Thank you. If you would care to leave your name and the address of a planet where you can be contacted, kindly speak when you hear the tone.

That visceral wish to be close to our babies is still powerful enough to induce many Western women every year to opt for life as stay-at-home mums, temporarily or permanently, despite near-universal public messaging that valorises more or less any other life choice you care to name.

The whole point of me not getting knocked up with the prince’s baby was to keep the gates closed, but we had to open them. Temporarily. And we’d need the Order for that. I had a suspicion baby Jesus was more likely to attend dinner tonight wearing suspenders than getting them on board with opening a gate.

She wasn't sure what to do next. They were so close. The room so hot. Their anger alive and temporarily frozen like the sparks of only moments ago; Attis's breath fast and heavy and the scent of him suddenly dizzying. Anna looked down. He stepped closer and lifted her chin, his eye's a smoke behind which fire burned-.

America must welcome all---Chinese, Irish, German, pauper or not, criminal or not---all, all, without exceptions: become an asylum for all who choose to come. We may have drifted away from this principle temporarily but time will bring us back. … America is not for special types, for the caste, but for the great mass of people---the vast, surging, hopeful, army of workers. Dare we deny them a home---close the doors in their face----take possession of all and fence it in and then sit down satisfied with our system---convinced that we have solved our problem? I for my part refuse to connect America with such a failure---such a tragedy, for tragedy it would be.

Well, it helped that my husband was upstairs cheating on me. Because I was sickeningly jealous on both accounts. I was jealous when I found out Celia was gay, because it meant that she was with other women, or had been with other women, that her life wasn't just me. And I was jealous that my husband was with a woman upstairs at the very party I was at, because it was embarrassing and threatening my way of life. I had been living in this world where I thought I could have this closeness with Celia and this distance with Don and neither of them would need anything else from anyone else. It was this odd bubble that just up and burst." "I would imagine, back then, it wasn't a conclusion you'd come to easily--being in love with someone of the same sex." "Of course not! Maybe if I'd spent my whole life fighting off feelings for women, then I might have had a template for it. But I didn't. I was taught to like men, and I had found--albeit temporarily--love and lust with a man. The fact that I wanted to be around Celia all the time, the fact that I cared about her enough that I valued her happiness over my own, the fact that I liked to think about that moment when she stood in front of me without her shirt on--now, you put those pieces together, and you say, one plus one equals I'm in love with a woman. But back then, at least for me, I didn't have that equation. And if you didn't even realize that there's a formula to be working with, how the hell are you supposed to find the answer?

With the veil removed by the rending of Jesus' flesh, with nothing on God's side to prevent us from entering, why do we tarry without? Why do we consent to abide all our days just outside the Holy of Holies and never enter at all to look upon God? We hear the Bridegroom say, `Let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice and thy countenance is comely.' (Song of Sol 2:14) We sense that the call is for us, but still we fail to draw near, and the years pass and we grow old and tired in the outer courts of the tabernacle. What doth hinder us? The answer usually given, simply that we are `cold,' will not explain all the facts. There is something more serious than coldness of heart, something that may be back of that coldness and be the cause of its existence. What is it? What but the presence of a veil in out hearts? A veil not taken away as the first veil was, but which remains there still shutting out the light and hiding the face of God from us. It is the veil of our fleshly fallen nature living on, unjudged within us, uncrucified and unrepudiated. It is the close- woven veil of the self-life which we have never truly acknowledged, of which we have been secretly ashamed, and which for these reasons we have never brought to the judgment of the cross. It is not too mysterious, this opaque veil, nor is it hard to identify. We have but to look in our own hearts and we shall see it there, sewn and patched and repaired it may be, but there nevertheless, an enemy to our lives and an effective block to our spiritual progress. This veil is not a beautiful thing and it is not a thing about which we commonly care to talk, but I am addressing the thirsting souls who are determined to follow God, and I know they will not turn back because the way leads temporarily through the blackened hills. The urge of God within them will assure their continuing the pursuit. They will face the facts however unpleasant and endure the cross for the joy set before them. So I am bold to mane the threads out of which this inner veil is woven. It is woven of the fine threads of the self-life, the hyphenated sins of the human spirit. They are not something we do, they are something we are, and therein lies both their subtlety and their power.

However, the law of accelerating returns pertains to evolution, which is not a closed system. It takes place amid great chaos and indeed depends on the disorder in its midst, from which it draws its options for diversity. And from these options, an evolutionary process continually prunes its choices to create ever greater order. Even a crisis, such as the periodic large asteroids that have crashed into the Earth, although increasing chaos temporarily, end up increasing—deepening—the

He got into the tub and ran a little cold water. Then he lowered his thin, hairy body into the just-right warmth and stared at the interstices between the tiles. Sadness--he had experienced that emotion ten thousand times. As exhalation is to inhalation, he thought of it as the return from each thrust of happiness. Lazily soaping himself, he gave examples. When he was five and Irwin eight, their father had breezed into town with a snowstorm and come to see them where they lived with their grandparents in the small Connecticut city. Their father had been a vagabond salesman and was considered a bum by people who should know. But he had come into the closed, heated house with all the gimcrack and untouchable junk behind glass and he had smelled of cold air and had had snow in his curly black hair. He had raved about the world he lived in, while the old people, his father and mother, had clucked sadly in the shadows. And then he had wakened the boys in the night and forced them out into the yard to worship the swirling wet flakes, to dance around with their hands joined, shrieking at the snow-laden branches. Later, they had gone in to sleep with hearts slowly returning to bearable beatings. Great flowering things had opened and closed in Norman's head, and the resonance of the wild man's voice had squeezed a sweet, tart juice through his heart. But then he had wakened to a gray day with his father gone and the world walking gingerly over the somber crust of dead-looking snow. It had taken him some time to get back to his usual equanimity. He slid down in the warm, foamy water until just his face and his knobby white knees were exposed. Once he had read Wuthering Heights over a weekend and gone to school susceptible to any heroine, only to have the girl who sat in front of him, whom he had admired for some months, emit a loud fart which had murdered him in a small way and kept him from speaking a word to anyone the whole week following. He had laughed at a very funny joke about a Negro when Irwin told it at a party, and then the following day had seen some white men lightly kicking a Negro man in the pants, and temporarily he had questioned laughter altogether. He had gone to several universities with the vague exaltation of Old Man Axelrod and had found only curves and credits. He had become drunk on the idea of God and found only theology. He had risen several times on the subtle and powerful wings of lust, expectant of magnificence, achieving only discharge. A few times he had extended friendship with palpitating hope, only to find that no one quite knew what he had in mind. His solitude now was the result of his metabolism, that constant breathing in of joy and exhalation of sadness. He had come to take shallower breaths, and the two had become mercifully mixed into melancholy contentment. He wondered how pain would breach that low-level strength. "I'm a small man of definite limitations," he declared to himself, and relaxed in the admission.

However, the law of accelerating returns pertains to evolution, which is not a closed system. It takes place amid great chaos and indeed depends on the disorder in its midst, from which it draws its options for diversity. And from these options, an evolutionary process continually prunes its choices to create ever greater order. Even a crisis, such as the periodic large asteroids that have crashed into the Earth, although increasing chaos temporarily, end up increasing—deepening—the order created by biological evolution.

There are some Baby Step Three clarifications. Joe asked recently if he should stop his Snowball—Step Two—to get his emergency fund finished. Joe and his wife have twins due in six months. Brad’s plant is closing in four months, and he will lose his job. Mike got a huge severance check of $25,000 last week when his company downsized him. Should these people work on debt or finish the emergency fund? All three should temporarily stop Snowballing and concentrate on the emergency fund because we can see distant storm clouds that are real. Once the storm passes, they can resume the plan as before. Resuming the plan for Joe means that once the babies are born healthy, are home, and everyone is fine, Joe will take the emergency fund back down to $1,000 by using the rest of the savings to pay the Debt Snowball. Resuming for Brad would mean that once he finds his new job, he’ll do the same. Mike should hold his instant emergency fund of $25,000 until he is reemployed. The sooner he can get a job, the more that severance is going to look like a bonus and have a huge impact on the Debt Snowball.

Human beings want not only to survive, but also to live. We long to experience life in all its vividness, with full, untrammelled emotion. Adults envy the open-hearted and open-minded explorations of children; seeing their joy and curiosity, we pine for our own lost capacity for wide-eyed wonder. Boredom, rooted in a fundamental discomfort with the self, is one of the least tolerable mental states. For the addict the drug provides a route to feeling alive again, if only temporarily. “I am in profound awe of the ordinary,” recalls author and bank robber Stephen Reid of his first hit of morphine. Thomas De Quincey extols opium’s power “to stimulate the capacities of enjoyment.

You’re good,” he said, and he smiled a little. Just then, Madison showed up. “Oh, are you two playing?” she asked. “Kind of,” I said. “Did you pick Bruce?” she asked. “I did. He’s the best one,” I told her. “The best one today,” Timothy clarified. “Daddy’s home!” Madison suddenly said, and Timothy started to vibrate with, what, happiness? Excitement? Fear? “Daddy,” he said, now smiling, and he stumbled out of the room. “Jasper’s here,” Madison said to me. “Yikes,” I said. “Okay.” I walked as close to Madison as I could without it being a three-legged race, and we found Timothy lifted into the air by Senator Roberts. There was genuine happiness on the man’s face, and this softened me temporarily, which was exactly what I needed to get through this moment.

A child with a secure attachment style will likely grow up into an adult who feels worthy of love and seeks to create meaningful, healthy relationships with people who are physically and emotionally available. Securely functioning adults are comfortable with intimacy, closeness, and their need or desire for others. They don't fear losing their sense of self or being engulfed by the relationship. For securely attached people, 'dependency' is not a dirty word, but a fact of life that can be experienced without losing or compromising the self. Conversely, securely functioning adults are also comfortable with their independence and personal autonomy. They may miss their partners when they're not together, but inside they feel fundamentally alright with themselves when they're alone. They also feel minimal fear of abandonment when temporarily separated from their partner.

In attunement, it is the infant who leads and the mother who follows. “Where their roles differ is in the timing of their responses,” writes John Bowlby, one of the century’s great psychiatric researchers. The infant initiates the interaction or withdraws from it according to his own rhythms, Bowlby found, while the “mother regulates her behaviour so that it meshes with his... Thus she lets him call the tune and by a skillful interweaving of her own responses with his creates a dialogue.” The tense or depressed mothering adult will not be able to accompany the infant into relaxed, happy spaces. He may also not fully pick up signs of the infant’s emotional distress, or may not be able to respond to them as effectively as he would wish. The ADD child’s difficulty reading social cues likely originates from her relationship cues not being read by the nurturing adult, who was distracted by stress. In the attunement interaction, not only does the mother follow the child, but she also permits the child to temporarily interrupt contact. When the interaction reaches a certain stage of intensity for the infant, he will look away to avoid an uncomfortably high level of arousal. Another interaction will then begin. A mother who is anxious may react with alarm when the infant breaks off contact, may try to stimulate him, to draw him back into the interaction. Then the infant’s nervous system is not allowed to “cool down,” and the attunement relationship is hampered. Infants whose caregivers were too stressed, for whatever reason, to give them the necessary attunement contact will grow up with a chronic tendency to feel alone with their emotions, to have a sense — rightly or wrongly — that no one can share how they feel, that no one can “understand.” Attunement is the quintessential component of a larger process, called attachment. Attachment is simply our need to be close to somebody. It represents the absolute need of the utterly and helplessly vulnerable human infant for secure closeness with at least one nourishing, protective and constantly available parenting figure. Essential for survival, the drive for attachment is part of the very nature of warm-blooded animals in infancy, especially. of mammals. In human beings, attachment is a driving force of behavior for longer than in any other animal. For most of us it is present throughout our lives, although we may transfer our attachment need from one person — our parent — to another — say, a spouse or even a child. We may also attempt to satisfy the lack of the human contact we crave by various other means, such as addictions, for example, or perhaps fanatical religiosity or the virtual reality of the Internet. Much of popular culture, from novels to movies to rock or country music, expresses nothing but the joys or the sorrows flowing from satisfactions or disappointments in our attachment relationships. Most parents extend to their children some mixture of loving and hurtful behavior, of wise parenting and unskillful, clumsy parenting. The proportions vary from family to family, from parent to parent. Those ADD children whose needs for warm parental contact are most frustrated grow up to be adults with the most severe cases of ADD. Already at only a few months of age, an infant will register by facial expression his dejection at the mother’s unconscious emotional withdrawal, despite the mother’s continued physical presence. “(The infant) takes delight in Mommy’s attention,” writes Stanley Greenspan, “and knows when that source of delight is missing. If Mom becomes preoccupied or distracted while playing with the baby, sadness or dismay settles in on the little face.

Predominantly inattentive type Perhaps the majority of girls with AD/HD fall into the primarily inattentive type, and are most likely to go undiagnosed. Generally, these girls are more compliant than disruptive and get by rather passively in the academic arena. They may be hypoactive or lethargic. In the extreme, they may even seem narcoleptic. Because they do not appear to stray from cultural norms, they will rarely come to the attention of their teacher. Early report cards of an inattentive type girl may read, "She is such a sweet little girl. She must try harder to speak up in class." She is often a shy daydreamer who avoids drawing attention to herself. Fearful of expressing herself in class, she is concerned that she will be ridiculed or wrong. She often feels awkward, and may nervously twirl the ends of her hair. Her preferred seating position is in the rear of the classroom. She may appear to be listening to the teacher, even when she has drifted off and her thoughts are far away. These girls avoid challenges, are easily discouraged, and tend to give up quickly. Their lack of confidence in themselves is reflected in their failure excuses, such as, "I can't," "It's too hard," or "I used to know it, but I can't remember it now." The inattentive girl is likely to be disorganized, forgetful, and often anxious about her school work. Teachers may be frustrated because she does not finish class work on time. She may mistakenly be judged as less bright than she really is. These girls are reluctant to volunteer for a project orjoin a group of peers at recess. They worry that other children will humiliate them if they make a mistake, which they are sure they will. Indeed, one of their greatest fears is being called on in class; they may stare down at their book to avoid eye contact with the teacher, hoping that the teacher will forget they exist for the moment. Because interactions with the teacher are often anxiety-ridden, these girls may have trouble expressing themselves, even when they know the answer. Sometimes, it is concluded that they have problems with central auditory processing or expressive language skills. More likely, their anxiety interferes with their concentration, temporarily reducing their capacity to both speak and listen. Generally, these girls don't experience this problem around family or close friends, where they are more relaxed. Inattentive type girls with a high IQ and no learning disabilities will be diagnosed with AD/HD very late, if ever. These bright girls have the ability and the resources to compensate for their cognitive challenges, but it's a mixed blessing. Their psychological distress is internalized, making it less obvious, but no less damaging. Some of these girls will go unnoticed until college or beyond, and many are never diagnosed they are left to live with chronic stress that may develop into anxiety and depression as their exhausting, hidden efforts to succeed take their toll. Issues

In 2017, Greg Duncan, the education economist, along with psychologist Drew Bailey and colleagues, reviewed sixty-seven early childhood education programs meant to boost academic achievement. Programs like Head Start did give a head start, but academically that was about it. The researchers found a pervasive “fadeout” effect, where a temporary academic advantage quickly diminished and often completely vanished. On a graph, it looks eerily like the kind that show future elite athletes catching up to their peers who got a head start in deliberate practice. A reason for this, the researchers concluded, is that early childhood education programs teach “closed” skills that can be acquired quickly with repetition of procedures, but that everyone will pick up at some point anyway. The fadeout was not a disappearance of skill so much as the rest of the world catching up. The motor-skill equivalent would be teaching a kid to walk a little early. Everyone is going to learn it anyway, and while it might be temporarily impressive, there is no evidence that rushing it matters.

I sensed in it an absolute rest for the spirit, a beatifica- tion of the flesh. Summer, white clouds, the empty blue of the sky following the final lesson of the day, and the touch of nostalgic sadness tinging the glitter of sunlight filtering through the trees, induced a sense of intoxication. I existed.. . . How complex were the procedures necessary to attain this existence! Within it, a large number of concepts that for me were close to fetishes achieved direct association with my body and senses, quite independently of the agency of words. The army, physical training, summer, clouds, sunset, the green of summer grasses, the white training suit, sweat, muscle, and just the faintest whiff of death. . . . Nothing was lacking; every piece of the mosaic was in place. I had absolutely no need of any others, and thus no need of words. The world I was in was made up of conceptual elements that were as pure as angels; all foreign elements had been temporarily swept aside, and I overflowed with the infinite joy of being one with the world, a joy akin to that produced by cold water on skin warmed by the summer sun.

Hermione!” She stirred, then sat up quickly, pushing her hair out of her face. “What’s wrong? Harry? Are you all right?” “It’s okay, everything’s fine. More than fine. I’m great. There’s someone here.” “What do you mean? Who--?” She saw Ron, who stood there holding the sword and dripping onto the threadbare carpet. Harry backed into a shadowy corner, slipped off Ron’s rucksack, and attempted to blend in with the canvas. Hermione slid out of her bunk and moved like a sleepwalker toward Ron, her eyes upon his pale face. She stopped right in front of him, her lips slightly parted, her eyes wide. Ron gave a weak, hopeful smile and half raised his arms. Hermione launched herself forward and started punching every inch of him that she could reach. “Ouch--ow--gerroff! What the--? Hermione--OW!” “You--complete--arse--Ronald--Weasley!” She punctuated every word with a blow: Ron backed away, shielding his head as Hermione advanced. “You--crawl--back--here--after--weeks--and--weeks--oh, where’s my wand?” She looked as though ready to wrestle it out of Harry’s hands and he reacted instinctively. “Protego!” The invisible shield erupted between Ron and Hermione: The force of it knocked her backward onto the floor. Spitting hair out of her mouth, she leapt up again. “Hermione!” said Harry. “Calm--” “I will not calm down!” she screamed. Never before had he seen her lose control like this; she looked quite demented. “Give me back my wand! Give it back to me!” “Hermione, will you please--” “Don’t you tell me what to do, Harry Potter!” she screeched. “Don’t you dare! Give it back now! And YOU!” She was pointing at Ron in dire accusation: It was like a malediction, and Harry could not blame Ron for retreating several steps. “I came running after you! I called you! I begged you to come back!” “I know,” Ron said, “Hermione, I’m sorry, I’m really--” “Oh, you’re sorry!” She laughed, a high-pitched, out-of-control sound; Ron looked at Harry for help, but Harry merely grimaced his helplessness. “You come back after weeks--weeks--and you think it’s all going to be all right if you just say sorry?” “Well, what else can I say?” Ron shouted, and Harry was glad that Ron was fighting back. “Oh, I don’t know!” yelled Hermione with awful sarcasm. “Rack your brains, Ron, that should only take a couple of seconds--” “Hermione,” interjected Harry, who considered this a low blow, “he just saved my--” “I don’t care!” she screamed. “I don’t care what he’s done! Weeks and weeks, we could have been dead for all he knew--” “I knew you weren’t dead!” bellowed Ron, drowning her voice for the first time, and approaching as close as he could with the Shield Charm between them. “Harry’s all over the Prophet, all over the radio, they’re looking for you everywhere, all these rumors and mental stories, I knew I’d hear straight off if you were dead, you don’t know what it’s been like--” “What it’s been like for you?” Her voice was now so shrill only bats would be able to hear it soon, but she had reached a level of indignation that rendered her temporarily speechless, and Ron seized his opportunity. “I wanted to come back the minute I’d Disapparated, but I walked straight into a gang of Snatchers, Hermione, and I couldn’t go anywhere!” “A gang of what?” asked Harry, as Hermione threw herself down into a chair with her arms and legs crossed so tightly it seemed unlikely that she would unravel them for several years.

has tended to ignore the forces of mental healing, the psychical “will-to-health” — has failed to take into practical account the fact that, besides such medicaments as arsenic and camphor, there are other remedies to stimulate a flagging vitality; purely spiritual remedies, such as courage, self-confidence, faith, vigorous optimism. Much as our reason may revolt against the futility of the teaching of those who want to kill bacilli by “mind,” to counteract syphilitic infection by “truth,” and to nullify the disastrous effect of arteriosclerosis by “God,” we should make a great mistake were we to ignore the energy which this doctrine can furnish to one who believes in it. We should be closing our eyes to the truth were we to deny that Christian Science has achieved wonderful successes, and, by the profundity of its faith, has brought consolation to numberless persons in moments of despair. Perhaps it is but an intoxicant, is but “dope,” giving no more than a transient support to the nerves as does camphor or caffeine, and temporarily arresting the advance of disease. Still, in giving this temporary relief, it shows once more how the power of the mind can come to the help of the body.

Our difficulty or inability to perceive the experience of others…is all the more pronounced the more distant these experiences are from ours in time, space, or quality,” wrote the Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi. We can be moved by the tragedy of mass starvation on a far continent; after all, we have all known physical hunger, if only temporarily. But it takes a greater effort of emotional imagination to empathize with the addict. We readily feel for a suffering child, but cannot see the child in the adult who, his soul fragmented and isolated, hustles for survival a few blocks away from where we shop or work. Levi quotes Jean Améry, a Jewish-Austrian philosopher and resistance fighter who fell into the grasp of the Gestapo. “Anyone who was tortured remains tortured… Anyone who has suffered torture never again will be able to be at ease in the world…Faith in humanity, already cracked by the first slap in the face, then demolished by torture, is never acquired again.” Améry was a full-grown adult when he was traumatized, an accomplished intellectual captured by the foe in the course of a war of liberation. We may then imagine the shock, loss of faith and unfathomable despair of the child who is traumatized not by hated enemies but by loved ones.

13. If the goal is to build up one's sexual energy, what's the harm of sleeping with a lot of different women (or men) to increase your ching chi? Chia: The goal is not to build up one's sexual energy—it is to transform raw sexual energy into a refined subtle energy. Sex is only one means of doing that. Promiscuity can easily lower your energy if you choose partners with moral or physical weakness. If you lie with degenerates, it may hurt you, in that you can temporarily acquire your partner's vileness. By exchanging subtle energy, you actually absorb the other's substance. You become the other person and assume new karmic burdens. This is why old couples resemble each other so closely: they have exchanged so much energy that they are made of the same life-stuff. This practice accelerates this union, but elevates it to a higher level of spiritual experience. So the best advice I can give is to never compromise your integrity of body, mind and spirit. In choosing a lover you are choosing your destiny, so make sure you love the woman with whom you have sex. Then you will be in harmony with what flows from the exchange and your actions will be proper. If you think you can love two women at once, be ready to spend double the chi to transform and balance their energy. I doubt if many men can really do that and feel deep serenity. For the sake of simplicity, limit yourself to one woman at a time. It takes a lot of time and energy to cultivate the subtle energies to a deep level. It is impossible to define love precisely. You have to consult your inner voice. But cultivating your chi energy sensitizes you to your conscience. What was a distant whisper before may become a very loud voice. For your own sake, do not abandon your integrity for the sake of physical pleasure or the pretense that you are doing deep spiritual exercises. If you sleep with one whom you don't love, your subtle energies will not be in balance and psychic warfare can begin. This will take its toll no matter how far apart you are physically until you sever or heal the psychic connection. It's better to be honest in the beginning. For the same reason make love only when you feel true tenderness within yourself. Your power to love will thus grow stronger. Selfish or manipulative use of sex even with someone with whom you are in love can cause great disharmony. If you feel unable to use your sexual power lovingly, then do not use it at all! Sex is a gleaming, sharp, two-edged sword, a healing tool that can quickly become a weapon. If used for base purposes, it cuts you mercilessly. If you haven't found a partner with whom you can be truly gentle, then simply touch no one. Go back to building your internal energy and when it gets high you will either attract a quality lover or learn a deeper level within yourself.

Why do we despise, ostracize and punish the drug addict when as a social collective we share the same blindness and engage in the same rationalizations? To pose that question is to answer it. We despise, ostracize and punish the addict because we don’t wish to see how much we resemble him. In his dark mirror our own features are unmistakable. We shudder at the recognition. This mirror is not for us, we say to the addict. You are different, and you don’t belong with us. Like the hardcore addict’s pursuit of drugs, much of our economic and cultural life caters to people’s craving to escape mental and emotional distress. In an apt phrase, Lewis Lapham, long-time publisher of Harper’s Magazine, derides “consumer markets selling promises of instant relief from the pain of thought, loneliness, doubt, experience, envy, and old age.” According to a Statistics Canada study, 31 per cent of working adults aged nineteen to sixty-four consider themselves workaholics, who attach excessive importance to their work and are “overdedicated and perhaps overwhelmed by their jobs.” “They have trouble sleeping, are more likely to be stressed out and unhealthy, and feel they don’t spend enough time with their families,” reports the Globe and Mail. Work doesn’t necessarily give them greater satisfaction, suggested Vishwanath Baba, a professor of Human Resources and Management at McMaster University. “These people turn to work to occupy their time and energy” — as compensation for what is lacking in their lives, much as the drug addict employs substances. At the core of every addiction is an emptiness based in abject fear. The addict dreads and abhors the present moment; she bends feverishly only towards the next time, the moment when her brain, infused with her drug of choice, will briefly experience itself as liberated from the burden of the past and the fear of the future — the two elements that make the present intolerable. Many of us resemble the drug addict in our ineffectual efforts to fill in the spiritual black hole, the void at the centre, where we have lost touch with our souls, our spirit, with those sources of meaning and value that are not contingent or fleeting. Our consumerist, acquisition-, action- and image-mad culture only serves to deepen the hole, leaving us emptier than before. The constant, intrusive and meaningless mind-whirl that characterizes the way so many of us experience our silent moments is, itself, a form of addiction— and it serves the same purpose. “One of the main tasks of the mind is to fight or remove the emotional pain, which is one of the reasons for its incessant activity, but all it can ever achieve is to cover it up temporarily. In fact, the harder the mind struggles to get rid of the pain, the greater the pain.” So writes Eckhart Tolle. Even our 24/7 self-exposure to noise, emails, cell phones, TV, Internet chats, media outlets, music downloads, videogames and non-stop internal and external chatter cannot succeed in drowning out the fearful voices within.

And she knew her defiance in escaping his grasp, even temporarily, had shown Jasu the depth of her strength. In the months afterward, though he behaved awkwardly, he had allowed her the time and space she needed. It was the first genuine show of respect he had made toward her in their four years of marriage. Jasu’s parents made no such concession, their latent disappointment growing into relentless criticism of her for failing to bear a son.Kavita walks outside and spreads her mat on the rough stone steps, where she sits facing the rising sun in the east She lights the small ghee-soaked diya and thin stick of incense, and then closes her eyes in prayer. The wisp of fragrant smoke slowly circles its way up into the air and around her. She breathes deeply and thinks, as always, of the baby girls she has lost. She rings the small silver bell and chants softly. She sees their faces and their small bodies, she hears their cries and feels their tiny fingers wrap around hers. And always, she hears the sound of Usha’s desperate cry echoing behind the closed doors of the orphanage. She allows herself to get lost in the depths of her grief. After she has chanted and sung and wept for some time, she tries to envision the babies at peace, wherever they are. She pictures Usha as a little girl, her hair wound in two braids, each tied with a white ribbon. The image of the girl in her mind is perfectly clear: smiling, running, and playing with children, eating her meals and sleeping alongside the others in the orphanage.Every morning, Kavita sits in the same place outside her home with her eyes closed until the stormy feelings peak and then, very gradually, subside. She waits until she can breathe evenly again. By the time she opens her eyes, her face is wet and the incense has burned down to a small pile of soft ash. The sun is a glowing orange ball on the horizon, and the villagers are beginning to stir around her. She always ends her puja by touching her lips to the one remaining silver bangle on her wrist, reconciling herself to the only thing she has left of her daughters. These daily rituals have brought her comfort and, over time, some healing. She can carry herself through the rest of the day with these peaceful images of Usha in her mind. Each day becomes more bearable. As days turn to weeks, and weeks to months, Kavita feels her bitterness toward Jasu soften. After several months, she allows him to touch her and then, to reach for her at night.

By pointing to the captain’s foolhardy departure from standard procedure, the officials shielded themselves from the disturbing image of slaves overpowering their captors and relieved themselves of the uncomfortable obligation to explain how and why the events had deviated from the prescribed pattern. But assigning blame to the captain for his carelessness afforded only partial comfort, for by seizing their opportunity, the Africans aboard the Cape Coast had done more than liberate themselves (temporarily at least) from the slave ship. Their action reminded any European who heard news of the event of what all preferred not to contemplate too closely; that their ‘accountable’ history was only as real as the violence and racial fiction at its foundation. Only by ceaseless replication of the system’s violence did African sellers and European buyers render captives in the distorted guise of human commodities to market. Only by imagining that whiteness could render seven men more powerful than a group of twice their number did European investors produce an account naturalizing social relations that had as their starting point an act of violence. Successful African uprisings against European captors were of course moments at which the undeniable free agency of the captives most disturbed Europeans—for it was in these moments that African captives invalidated the vision of the history being written in this corner of the Atlantic world and articulated their own version of a history that was ‘accountable.’ Other moments in which the agency and irrepressible humanity of the captives manifested themselves were more tragic than heroic: instances of illness and death, thwarted efforts to escape from the various settings of saltwater slavery, removal of slaves from the market by reason of ‘madness.’ In negotiating the narrow isthmus between illness and recovery, death and survival, mental coherence and insanity, captives provided the answers the slave traders needed: the Africans revealed the boundaries of the middle ground between life and death where human commodification was possible. Turning people into slaves entailed more than the completion of a market transaction. In addition, the economic exchange had to transform independent beings into human commodities whose most ‘socially relevant feature’ was their ‘exchangeability’ . . . The shore was the stage for a range of activities and practices designed to promote the pretense that human beings could convincingly play the part of their antithesis—bodies animated only by others’ calculated investment in their physical capacities.

Through the open doorway suddenly stepped a small woman, long ebony hair braided intricately, huge blue eyes flashing at Mikhail. As Byron shouldered his way inside behind her, she gave him a friendly smile and stood on her toes to brush his chin with a kiss. Mikhail stiffened, then immediately wrapped a possessive arm around her waist. “Carpathian women do not do that kind of thing,” he reprimanded her. She tilted her chin at him, in no way intimidated. “That’s because Carpathian males have such a territorial mentality— you know, a beat-their-chest, swing-from-the-trees sort of thing.” She turned her head to look at the couple lying on the floor. Her indrawn breath was audible. “Jacques.” She whispered his name, tears in her voice and in her blue eyes. “It really is you.” Eluding Mikhail’s outstretched, detaining hand, she ran to him. Let her, Gregori persuaded softly. Look at him. Jacques’ gaze was fastened on the woman’s face, the red flames receding from his eyes as she approached. “I’m Raven, Jacques. Don’t you remember me? Mikhail, your brother, is my lifemate.” Raven dropped to her knees beside the couple. “Thank God you’re alive. I can’t believe how lucky we are. Who did this to you? Who took you from us?” Shea felt the ripple of awareness in her mind. Jacques’ shock. His curiosity. He recognized those tear-filled blue eyes. Shea caught a glimpse, a fragment of memory, the woman bending over him, her hands clamped to his throat, pressing soil and saliva into a pumping wound. Shea held her breath, waiting. Jacques’ silent cry of despair echoed in her head. She forced herself to move, found his hand with hers, silently supporting him as she regarded the woman kneeling beside her. You didn’t tell me she was so beautiful, Shea reprimanded deliberately. In the midst of Jacques’ pain and agony, his possessive fury and maniacal madness, something seemed to melt the ice-cold core of murderous resolve. The urge to smile at that feminine, edgy tone came out of nowhere. Something snarling to be set free retreated, and the tension in him eased visibly. Is she? Jacques asked innocently. Shea’s green eyes touched his face, and warmth spread further inside him. And the beast was temporarily leashed. “Is this your lifemate, Jacques?” Raven asked softly. Shea looked at her then, this woman who had been a part of Jacques’ life. “I’m Shea O’Halloran.” Her voice was husky and ragged. “Jacques has been unable to use his voice since I found him.” Raven touched Shea’s bruised throat with gentle fingers. “Someone had better tell me what happened here.” Her blue eyes were studying the dark smudges closely. “Help her to the bed,” Gregori interceded, distracting Raven from her study. You owe me one, old friend, he sent to Mikhail.

By now, though, it had been a steep learning curve, he was fairly well versed on the basics of how clearing worked: When a customer bought shares in a stock on Robinhood — say, GameStop — at a specific price, the order was first sent to Robinhood's in-house clearing brokerage, who in turn bundled the trade to a market maker for execution. The trade was then brought to a clearinghouse, who oversaw the trade all the way to the settlement. During this time period, the trade itself needed to be 'insured' against anything that might go wrong, such as some sort of systemic collapse or a default by either party — although in reality, in regulated markets, this seemed extremely unlikely. While the customer's money was temporarily put aside, essentially in an untouchable safe, for the two days it took for the clearing agency to verify that both parties were able to provide what they had agreed upon — the brokerage house, Robinhood — had to insure the deal with a deposit; money of its own, separate from the money that the customer had provided, that could be used to guarantee the value of the trade. In financial parlance, this 'collateral' was known as VAR — or value at risk. For a single trade of a simple asset, it would have been relatively easy to know how much the brokerage would need to deposit to insure the situation; the risk of something going wrong would be small, and the total value would be simple to calculate. If GME was trading at $400 a share and a customer wanted ten shares, there was $4000 at risk, plus or minus some nominal amount due to minute vagaries in market fluctuations during the two-day period before settlement. In such a simple situation, Robinhood might be asked to put up $4000 and change — in addition to the $4000 of the customer's buy order, which remained locked in the safe. The deposit requirement calculation grew more complicated as layers were added onto the trading situation. A single trade had low inherent risk; multiplied to millions of trades, the risk profile began to change. The more volatile the stock — in price and/or volume — the riskier a buy or sell became. Of course, the NSCC did not make these calculations by hand; they used sophisticated algorithms to digest the numerous inputs coming in from the trade — type of equity, volume, current volatility, where it fit into a brokerage's portfolio as a whole — and spit out a 'recommendation' of what sort of deposit would protect the trade. And this process was entirely automated; the brokerage house would continually run its trading activity through the federal clearing system and would receive its updated deposit requirements as often as every fifteen minutes while the market was open. Premarket during a trading week, that number would come in at 5:11 a.m. East Coast time, usually right as Jim, in Orlando, was finishing his morning coffee. Robinhood would then have until 10:00 a.m. to satisfy the deposit requirement for the upcoming day of trading — or risk being in default, which could lead to an immediate shutdown of all operations. Usually, the deposit requirement was tied closely to the actual dollars being 'spent' on the trades; a near equal number of buys and sells in a brokerage house's trading profile lowered its overall risk, and though volatility was common, especially in the past half-decade, even a two-day settlement period came with an acceptable level of confidence that nobody would fail to deliver on their trades.

Some viewed Chinese investors as the latest “dumb money” to hit Hollywood. It is no doubt true that financing movies is not the smartest way for any investor, from anywhere in the world, to earn the best returns. Others had a different theory—that some wealthy Chinese individuals and businesses were seeking to get their money out of China, where an autocratic government could still steal anyone’s wealth at any time, for any reason. Certainly Hollywood had long been a destination for legal money laundering. But those who worked most closely with the Chinese knew that the biggest reason for these investments was a form of reverse-colonialism. After more than a decade as a place for Hollywood to make money, China wanted to turn the tables. The United States had already proved the power of pop culture to help establish a nation’s global dominance. Now China wanted to do the same. The Beijing government considered art and culture to be a form of “soft power,” whereby it could extend influence around the world without the use of weapons. Over the past few years, locally produced Chinese films had become more successful at the box office there. But most were culturally specific comedies and love stories that didn’t translate anywhere else. China had yet to produce a global blockbuster. And with box-office growth in that country slowing in 2016 and early 2017, hits that resonated internationally would be critical if the Communist nation was to grow its movie business and use it to become the kind of global power it wanted to be. So Chinese companies, with the backing of the government, started investing in Hollywood, with a mission to learn how experienced hands there made blockbusters that thrived worldwide. Within a few years, they figured, China would learn how to do that without anyone’s help. “Working with a company like Universal will help us elevate our skill set in moviemaking,” the head of the Chinese entertainment company Perfect World Pictures said, while investing $250 million in a slate of upcoming films from the American studio. Getting there wouldn’t be easy. One of the highest-profile efforts to produce a worldwide hit out of China was The Great Wall, starring Matt Damon and made by Wanda’s Legendary Pictures. The $150 million film, about a war against monsters set on the Chinese historic landmark, grossed an underwhelming $171 million and a disastrous $45 million in the United States. Then, to create another obstacle, Chinese government currency controls established in early 2017 slowed, at least temporarily, the flow of money from China into Hollywood. But by then it was too late to turn back. As seemed to always be true when it came to Hollywood’s relationship with China, the Americans had no choice but to keep playing along. Nobody else was willing to pour billions of dollars into the struggling movie business in the mid-2010s, particularly for original or lower-budget productions.

21. THE HABIT OF INDISCRIMINATE SPENDING. The spend-thrift cannot succeed, mainly because he stands eternally in FEAR OF POVERTY. Form the habit of systematic saving by putting aside a definite percentage of your income. Money in the bank gives one a very safe foundation of COURAGE when bargaining for the sale of personal services. Without money, one must take what one is offered, and be glad to get it. 22. LACK OF ENTHUSIASM. Without enthusiasm one cannot be convincing. Moreover, enthusiasm is contagious, and the person who has it, under control, is generally welcome in any group of people. 23. INTOLERANCE. The person with a "closed" mind on any subject seldom gets ahead. Intolerance means that one has stopped acquiring knowledge. The most damaging forms of intolerance are those connected with religious, racial, and political differences of opinion. 24. INTEMPERANCE. The most damaging forms of intemperance are connected with eating, strong drink, and sexual activities. Overindulgence in any of these is fatal to success. 25. INABILITY TO COOPERATE WITH OTHERS. More people lose their positions and their big opportunities in life, because of this fault, than for all other reasons combined. It is a fault which no well-informed business man, or leader will tolerate. 26. POSSESSION OF POWER THAT WAS NOT ACQUIRED THROUGH SELF EFFORT. (Sons and daughters of wealthy men, and others who inherit money which they did not earn). Power in the hands of one who did not acquire it gradually, is often fatal to success. QUICK RICHES are more dangerous than poverty. 27. INTENTIONAL DISHONESTY. There is no substitute for honesty. One may be temporarily dishonest by force of circumstances over which one has no control, without permanent damage. But, there is NO HOPE for the person who is dishonest by choice. Sooner or later, his deeds will catch up with him, and he will pay by loss of reputation, and perhaps even loss of liberty. 28. EGOTISM AND VANITY. These qualities serve as red lights which warn others to keep away. THEY ARE FATAL TO SUCCESS. 29. GUESSING INSTEAD OF THINKING. Most people are too indifferent or lazy to acquire FACTS with which to THINK ACCURATELY. They prefer to act on "opinions" created by guesswork or snap-judgments. 30. LACK OF CAPITAL. This is a common cause of failure among those who start out in business for the first time, without sufficient reserve of capital to absorb the shock of their mistakes, and to carry them over until they have established a REPUTATION. 31. Under this, name any particular cause of failure from which you have suffered that has not been included in the foregoing list.

I drove to the bar Theodosha had called from and parked on the street. The bar was a gray, dismal place, ensconced like a broken matchbox under a dying oak tree, its only indication of gaiety a neon beer sign that flickered in one window. She was at a table in back, the glow of the jukebox lighting her face and the deep blackness of her hair. She tipped a collins glass to her mouth, her eyes locked on mine. “Let me take you home,” I said. “No, thanks,” she replied. “Getting swacked?” “Merchie and I had another fight. He says he can’t take my pretensions anymore. I love the word ‘pretensions.’” “That doesn’t mean you have to get drunk,” I said. “You’re right. I can get drunk for any reason I choose,” she replied, and took another hit from the glass. Then she added incongruously, “You once asked Merchie what he was doing in Afghanistan. The answer is he wasn’t in Afghanistan. He was in one of those other God-forsaken Stone Age countries to the north, helping build American airbases to protect American oil interests. Merchie says they’re going to make a fortune. All for the red, white, and blue.” “Who is they?” But her eyes were empty now, her concentration and anger temporarily spent. I glanced at the surroundings, the dour men sitting at the bar, a black woman sleeping with her head on a table, a parolee putting moves on a twenty-year-old junkie and mother of two children who was waiting for her connection. These were the people we cycled in and out of the system for decades, without beneficial influence or purpose of any kind that was detectable. “Let’s clear up one thing. Your old man came looking for trouble at the club today. I didn’t start it,” I said. “Go to a meeting, Dave. You’re a drag,” she said. “Give your guff to Merchie,” I said, and got up to leave. “I would. Except he’s probably banging his newest flop in the hay. And the saddest thing is I can’t blame him.” “I think I’m going to ease on out of this. Take care of yourself, kiddo,” I said. “Fuck that ‘kiddo’ stuff. I loved you and you were too stupid to know it.” I walked back outside into a misting rain and the clean smell of the night. I walked past a house where people were fighting behind the shades. I heard doors slamming, the sound of either a car backfiring or gunshots on another street, a siren wailing in the distance. On the corner I saw an expensive automobile pull to the curb and a black kid emerge from the darkness, wearing a skintight bandanna on his head. The driver of the car, a white man, exchanged money for something in the black kid’s hand. Welcome to the twenty-first century, I thought. I opened my truck door, then noticed the sag on the frame and glanced at the right rear tire. It was totally flat, the steel rim buried deep in the folds of collapsed rubber. I dropped the tailgate, pulled the jack and lug wrench out of the toolbox that was arc-welded to the bed of the truck, and fitted the jack under the frame. Just as I had pumped the flat tire clear of the puddle it rested in, I heard footsteps crunch on the gravel behind me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a short, thick billy club whip through the air. Just before it exploded across the side of my head, my eyes seemed to close like a camera lens on a haystack that smelled of damp-rot and unwashed hair and old shoes. I was sure as I slipped into unconsciousness that I was inside an ephemeral dream from which I would soon awake.

Hence, the vital need for us always to keep ourselves in the noblest ideals and purest purposes of life, due to the fact that energies attract other energies of the same kind. Thus, when we dwell on vice or darkness, the mental forces that we exteriorize then return to our mind, forces which are reanimated and intensified by the elements in tune with them.  Consequently, we reinforce the bars of the prison in which we thoughtlessly remain, making our soul a closed world, where the voices and images of our own thoughts combine with the suggestions of those who are in tune with our behavior, thereby imposing recurrent hallucinations on us and temporarily

By late January 2014, Tesla had completed the construction of a cross-country Supercharger corridor that would allow Model S drivers to get from Los Angeles to New York without having to spend a penny on energy. The electric highway took a northern route through Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Illinois, before approaching New York from Delaware. The path it cut was similar to a trip taken by Musk and his brother, Kimbal, in a beat-up 1970s BMW 320i in 1994. Within days of the route’s completion, Tesla staged a cross-country rally to show that the Model S could easily handle long-distance driving, even in the dead of winter. Two hot-pepper-red Model S’s, driven by members of the Supercharging team, left Tesla’s Los Angeles–based design studio just after midnight on Thursday, January 30. Tesla planned to finish the trip at New York’s City Hall on the night of February 1, the day before Super Bowl XLVIII, which would take place at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, just across the state line. Along the way, the cars would drive through some of the snowiest and most frigid places in the country, in one of the coldest weeks of the year. The trip took a little longer than expected. The rally encountered a wild snowstorm in the Rocky Mountains that temporarily closed the road over Vail Pass and then provided an icy entrance to Wyoming. Somewhere in South Dakota, one of the rally’s diesel support vans broke down, forcing its occupants to catch a flight from Sioux Falls to rejoin the rest of the crew in Chicago. And in Ohio, the cars powered through torrential rains as the fatigued crew pressed on for the final stretch. It was 7:30 A.M. on Sunday, February 2, when the Teslas rolled up to New York’s City Hall on a bright, mild morning. The 3,427-mile journey had taken 76 hours and 5 minutes—just over three days. The cars had spent a total of 15 hours and 57 seconds charging along the way,

the natural state of mammals is to be somewhat on guard. However, in order to feel emotionally close to another human being, our defensive system must temporarily shut down. In order to play, mate, and nurture our young, the brain needs to turn off its natural vigilance.

Addictions can never truly replace the life needs they temporarily displace. The false needs they serve, no matter how often they are gratified, cannot leave us fulfilled. The brain can never, as it were, feel that it has had enough, that it can relax and get on with other essential business. It’s as if after a full meal you were left starving and had to immediately turn your efforts to procuring food again.

21. The habit of indiscriminate spending. The spendthrift cannot succeed, mainly because he stands eternally in fear of poverty. Form the habit of systematic saving by putting aside a definite percentage of your income. Money in the bank gives one a very safe foundation of courage when bargaining for the sale of personal services. Without money, one must take what one is offered, and be glad to get it. 22. Lack of enthusiasm. Without enthusiasm one cannot be convincing. Moreover, enthusiasm is contagious, and the person who has it, under control, is generally welcome in any group of people. 23. Intolerance. The person with a closed mind on any subject seldom gets ahead. Intolerance means that one has stopped acquiring knowledge. The most damaging forms of intolerance are those connected with religious, racial, and political differences of opinion. 24. Intemperance. The most damaging forms of intemperance are connected with eating, strong drink, and sexual activities. Over-indulgence in any of these is fatal to success. 25. Inability to cooperate with others. More people lose their positions and their big opportunities in life, because of this fault, than for all other reasons combined. It is a fault which no well-informed businessman or leader will tolerate. 26. Possession of power that was not acquired through self effort. (Sons and daughters of wealthy men, and others who inherit money which they did not earn). Power in the hands of one who did not acquire it gradually is often fatal to success. Quick riches are more dangerous than poverty. 27. Intentional dishonesty. There is no substitute for honesty. One may be temporarily dishonest by force of circumstances over which one has no control, without permanent damage. But, there is no hope for the person who is dishonest by choice. Sooner or later, his deeds will catch up with him, and he will pay by loss of reputation, and perhaps even loss of liberty. 28. Egotism and vanity. These qualities serve as red lights which warn others to keep away. They are fatal to success. 29. Guessing instead of thinking. Most people are too indifferent or lazy to acquire facts with which to think accurately. They prefer to act on “opinions” created by guesswork or snap-judgments. 30. Lack of capital. This is a common cause of failure among those who start out in business for the first time, without sufficient reserve of capital to absorb the shock of their mistakes, and to carry them over until they have established a reputation. 31. Under this, name any particular cause of failure from which you have suffered that has not been included in the foregoing list.

There was a caution light around the front with a holographic sign that read “Den temporarily closed for renovation; okay that’s a lie. We were attacked by the Clan and the place is a mess.

Arrhythmias are additional common causes of problems and death, and the heart can also be damaged by infections, birth defects, drugs, and faulty wiring. But atherosclerosis is by far the leading culprit, and chronically high blood pressure, hypertension, is a close second. Hypertension is a silent condition that relentlessly strains the heart, arteries, and various organs. At least 100,000 times a day, the heart forces about five liters of blood through thousands of miles of arteries that resist each squeeze, generating pressure. When we exercise, blood pressure rises temporarily, causing the heart’s muscular chambers to adapt, mostly by becoming stronger, larger, and more elastic so it can pump more blood with each stroke.30 Just as important, arteries also adapt to exercise to keep blood pressure low, primarily by expanding, multiplying, and staying elastic.31 However, when blood pressure is chronically high, the heart defends itself by developing thicker muscular walls. These thicker walls stiffen and fill with scar tissue, and eventually the heart weakens. A vicious cycle then ensues. As the heart’s ability to pump blood declines, it becomes harder to exercise and thus control high blood pressure. Blood pressure may rise as the heart progressively weakens until the failing heart cannot support or sustain a normal blood pressure. Death usually ensues. Coronary artery disease is ancient and has even been diagnosed in mummies.32 But research on nonindustrial populations provides powerful evidence that coronary artery disease and hypertension are largely evolutionary mismatches. Although many medical textbooks teach doctors that it’s normal for blood pressure to rise with age, we have known since the 1970s this is not true among hunter-gatherer populations like the San and the Hadza.33 The average blood pressure in a seventy-year-old San hunter-gatherer is 120/67, no different from a twenty-year-old. Lifelong low blood pressure also characterizes many subsistence farming populations. My colleagues Rob Shave and Aaron Baggish and I measured more than a hundred Tarahumara farmers of every age and found no difference in blood pressure between teenagers and octogenarians.34 By the same token, blood pressure can also stay normal into old age among industrialized people who eat sensibly and stay active.35

As you are reading this book, when your mind inevitably wanders into something else—and that something else is important but not urgent—don’t try to not think of it. What you resist persists. Instead, keep a notebook close by to capture that thought or idea by writing it down. You can thus release it temporarily, to be addressed after the task at hand is complete

How do we know our thoughts are the best and, simultaneously, the noblest? How rigorous is the inspection of our thoughts and merits? Are we satisfied more with winning or knowing? Do we enjoy victories and fame more than the truth itself? Our motives are driven more by winning than by finding the truth. If when this is the case, the winning "truth" or personal "triumph" can be more devastating, not only to “progress” but also to knowledge and the truth, than if there were no such "truths" and such thoughts at a particular moment. Some ideas may temporarily open some doors but close others in the long run. (Features of this kind in human nature are most apparent in politics.)

Alternatives to time-out Isolating children for a period of time has become a popular discipline strategy advocated by many child psychologists and pediatricians. However, newly adopted toddlers seem to be more upset than helped by time-outs. Time-outs are intended to provide an opportunity for both parents and children to calm down and change their behaviors, but it isn’t effective for children who do not have self-calming strategies. Isolation can be traumatic for a toddler who is struggling with grief and/or attachment, and so perceives time-out as further rejection. If the child becomes angrier or more withdrawn as a result of being timed-out, try another strategy. One alternative is for parents to impose a brief time-out on themselves by temporarily withdrawing their attention from their child. For example, the parent whose child is throwing toys stops playing, looks away, and firmly tells the child, “I can’t continue playing until you stop throwing your toys.” Sitting passively next to the child may be effective, especially if the child previously was engaged in an enjoyable activity with the parent. Another alternative to parent enforced time-outs is self-determined time-outs, where the child is provided the opportunity to withdraw from a conflict voluntarily or at least have some input into the time-out arrangement. The parent could say, “I understand that you got very upset when you had to go to your room yesterday after you hit Sara. Can you think of a different place you would like to go to calm down if you feel like getting in a fight?” If the child suggests going out on the porch, the next time a battle seems to be brewing, Mom or Dad can say, “Do you need to go outside to the porch and calm down before we talk more?” Some children eventually reach the level of self-control where they remove themselves from a volatile situation without encouragement from Mom or Dad. These types of negotiations usually work better with older preschoolers or school-age children than they do with toddlers because of the reasoning skills involved. As an alternative to being timed-out, toddlers also can be timed-in while in the safety of a parent’s lap. Holding allows parents to talk to their child about why she’s being removed from an activity. For example, the toddler who has thrown her truck at the cat could be picked up and held for a few minutes while being told, “I can’t let you throw your toys at Misty. That hurts her, and in our family we don’t hurt animals. We’ll sit here together until you’re able to calm down.” Calming strategies could incorporate music, back rubs, or encouraging the child to breathe slowly. Objects that children are misusing should also be removed. For example, in the situation just discussed, the truck could be timed-out to a high shelf. If parents still decide to physically remove their child for a time-out, it should never be done in a way or place that frightens a toddler. Toddlers who have been frightened in the past by closed doors, dark rooms, or a particular room such as a bathroom should never be subjected to those settings. I know toddlers who, in their terror, have literally trashed the furniture and broken windows when they were locked in their rooms for a time-out. If parents feel a time-out is essential, it should be very brief, and in a location where the child can be supervised.

southern star or constellation which once temporarily gained prominence in the sky, or may stand for some recurrent phenomenon, he most likely represented different ‘things’ on different occasions. Bali was guided by Venus, the guru of the asuras who, as we saw in “The Greatness of Saturn,” possesses the Sanjivani Vidya, which can revive the dead. Indeed, Venus is always dying (disappearing from view when it goes too close to the sun) and being reborn (reappearing after a predictable period of residence in the ‘underworld’). Asuras are known to be stronger at night, which they rule, but each dawn the potential chaos that night represents is dispelled by the sun, who reappears to separate the earth from the sky and to measure the world by rising in the east, appearing overhead at noon, and setting in the west. These may be the three great strides that the dwarf Vamana uses in The Begging of the Universe incident from the “The Greatness of Saturn” to subdue Bali and return him to the celestial underworld. Or perhaps the three steps are measured at the vernal equinox, when Vamana’s left foot reaches to the North (celestial)

Seizing Situational Status Here are the steps involved in elevating your status in any situation. You will recognize some of these actions from framing, and for good reason. Frame control and status are closely related, as are the pitch techniques you will learn in Chapter 4.        1. Politely ignore power rituals and avoid beta traps.        2. Be unaffected by your customer’s global status (meaning the customer’s status inside and outside the business environment).        3. Look for opportunities to perpetrate small denials and defiances that strengthen your frame and elevate your status.        4. As soon as you take power, quickly move the discussion into an area where you are the domain expert, where your knowledge and information are unassailable by your audience.        5. Apply a prize frame by positioning yourself as the reward for making the decision to do business with you.        6. Confirm your alpha status by making your customer, who now temporarily occupies a beta position, make a statement that qualifies your higher status.

Later in the evening, trays of champagne were brought out, and the assembled guests waited expectantly for the betrothal announcement to be made. Unfortunately, the man designated to do it was temporarily missing. After a brief search, Leo was found and urged into the drawing room, where he launched into a charming toast and listed any number of amusing reasons for marriage. Although most of the guests listened with close attention and chuckled throughout, Christopher heard a pair of women gossiping nearby, whispering in disapproving undertones. “…Ramsay was found flirting in the corner with a woman. They had to drag him away from her.” “Who was it?” “His own wife.” “Oh, dear.” “Yes. How unseemly for a married couple to carry on so.” “I suppose the Hathaways know no better.” Christopher suppressed a grin and fought the temptation to turn and inform the two old hens that the Hathaways actually did know better. They just didn’t give a damn.

I like her,” Gracie said, the questions as clear as if she’d spoken them. Mitch gave the woman he’d come to think of as a sister a level-eyed stare, keeping his mouth shut. Gracie tilted her head to the side, sending her mop of blond curls flying. “How are you going to keep her?” “She lives in Chicago. I’m not keeping her.” He was temporarily borrowing her until she decided to hightail it to her real life. She gave a smug smile. “I meant keep her for now.” Mitch scrubbed a hand over his jaw, contemplating. “I’m not sure she has any other options.” “Don’t tell me you’re banking on that?” Gracie looked up to the ceiling as if exasperated by his complete stupidity. “A woman always has options, and she’ll think of plenty if you’re stupid enough to point out that she has to choose you by default.” Of course, Gracie was right. But he’d talked her into staying once; he could do it again. The question was, how? Mitch sat forward, placing his elbows on the table, his brain starting a slow, methodical spin. He took a sip of coffee and looked at Gracie. She practically danced in her chair. He rolled his eyes. “What’s on your mind?” “The way I see it,” Gracie said, not letting grass grow under her feet with any long dramatic silences, “her car’s broken down, and Tommy’s is closed today. That buys you a couple of days.” Immediately finding fault with her logic, Mitch shook his head. “Not necessarily. She has family. She could come to her senses and call them, and be gone by noon.” Just because she’d been adamant last night about not contacting them didn’t mean her justifications would hold true in the light of day. “I don’t think so.” Gracie peered behind him, looking thoughtful. “She told me she has no money.” Mitch pressed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. The more he thought about it, the more he saw it as the most likely outcome. He’d only been able to convince her to come back to his house last night because she’d been tired, scared, and drunk. “There’s no way she’ll take any from me. What other option is there?” “One little hitch and you’re giving up?

When the weary group disappeared over the horizon, we turned back, knowing that another agonized family would be arriving soon. The doctors, nurses, and I didn’t cry because the bewildered husbands and stricken daughters were crying enough for all of us. Helpless and impotent against the awesome power of Death, we nonetheless bowed our heads in the pharmacy, injected twenty milliliters of salvation into a bag of tears, blessed it again and again, and then carried it like a baby to the hospice and offered it up. The drug would flow into a passive vein, the family would draw close, and a cup of fluid might be temporarily removed from their ocean of pain.

She started for the bedroom. I reached for the door to the corridor. “Myron?” I turned toward her. She stood facing me full. She was beautiful and vulnerable and strong and she stood like she was readying to take a blow and I wanted to jump in the way and protect her. “What?” I asked. “I love you,” Terese said. She said it just like that. Facing me full, beautiful and vulnerable and strong. Something in my chest rose and took flight. I stood there, frozen, the gift of speech temporarily taken away from me. “I know the timing sucks and I don’t want it to interfere with what we’re doing now. But either way, if Miriam is alive or if this is all some horrible practical joke, I want you to know: I love you. And when this is over, however it turns out, I want more than anything to give you and me a try.” I opened my mouth, closed it, opened it again. “I’m kinda with someone.” “I know. I guess my timing double-sucks. But that’s okay. If you love her, then that’s that. If you don’t, I’m here.” Terese didn’t wait for a response. She turned and opened the bedroom door and vanished inside.

Poppies in Afghanistan: The Taliban and the Heroin Trade Harvesting opium in Afghanistan Ghaffar Baig/ Reuters/Corbis Most Americans knew little about Afghanistan or the Taliban prior to September 11, 2001, but those who follow the heroin trade have focused on Afghanistan for decades. Afghanistan has long been a major area of opium production, but the “golden triangle” of Southeast Asia (Burma, Laos, and Thailand) historically dominated opium production. By 1999, though, Afghanistan had become the undisputed world leader in opium production despite being an Islamic state ruled by the Taliban, which publicly opposed opium use. In 1999, the Taliban representative to the United States, Abdul Hakeem Mujahid, said, “We are against poppy cultivation, narcotics production and drugs, but we cannot fight our own people” (Bartolet & Levine, 2001, p. 85). Even before 9/11, the United States accused the Taliban of profiting from opium and heroin production, and using those profits to fund terrorist activities. Under pressure from the United Nations, the Taliban announced bans on poppy cultivation in 1997, 1998, and 2000, but there was little evidence of any decreased production. In 2001, though, a ban was put into place that apparently really did reduce poppy production. Cynics have pointed out that the Taliban was simply trying to increase prices by temporarily cutting the supply; whatever the reason, when the Taliban lost control of Afghanistan, the poppy made a comeback. In this war-ravaged and economically depressed nation, growing opium is one of the few ways that farmers can make a living. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has urged his people to declare jihad (holy war) on drug production, but opium farming still accounts for nearly half of the domestic economy, and Afghanistan supplies nearly 80% of the world’s heroin (Office of National Drug Control Policy, 2013). In recent years, opium production has declined in Afghanistan, but a close relationship between heroin traffickers and the insurgency continues to create difficulties for that country’s reconstruction process (Office of National Drug Control Policy, 2013).

There is often much good in the type of boss, especially common in big cities, who fulfills towards the people of his district in rough and ready fashion the position of friend and protector. He uses his influence to get jobs for young men who need them. He goes into court for a wild young fellow who has gotten into trouble. He helps out with cash or credit the widow who is in straits, or the breadwinner who is crippled or for some other cause temporarily out of work. He organizes clambakes and chowder parties and picnics, and is consulted by the local labor leaders when a cut in wages is threatened. For some of his constituents he does proper favors, and for others wholly improper favors; but he preserves human relations with all. He may be a very bad and very corrupt man, a man whose action in blackmailing and protecting vice is of far-reaching damage to his constituents. But these constituents are for the most part men and women who struggle hard against poverty and with whom the problem of living is very real and very close. They would prefer clean and honest government, if this clean and honest government is accompanied by human sympathy, human understanding. But an appeal made to them for virtue in the abstract, an appeal made by good men who do not really understand their needs, will often pass quite unheeded, if on the other side stands the boss, the friend and benefactor, who may have been guilty of much wrong-doing in things that they are hardly aware concern them, but who appeals to them, not only for the sake of favors to come, but in the name of gratitude and loyalty, and above all of understanding and fellow-feeling.

What did he say to you?” he demanded, when they were alone in Chloe’s study, with the doors closed. Emma rubbed her eyes. “Who?” she replied, stalling. Steven only looked at her, his expression wry, his jawline tight. A headache pounded at the base of her skull and she sighed, wishing she could go to her room and lie down with a cold cloth on her head. They both knew Steven was talking about Macon, but Emma didn’t dare admit the man had threatened her again. Steven would get furious, maybe violent, and he might insist on leaving her in Whitneyville until the trial was over, or sending her to Chicago. “He only wanted to dance,” she said, avoiding her husband’s eyes. Steven caught her chin in a rough but painless grasp. “Once and for all, Emma,” he breathed, “don’t lie to me. I won’t tolerate it, not even from you.” Tears gathered in Emma’s lashes. “He said—he said he’d have to teach me n-not to spread my l-legs for killers, once you were gone.” Steven’s face contorted with rage, and he whirled away from Emma and stormed toward the door. She ran after him and caught hold of his arm. “One murder trial is enough,” she cried. “Please, Steven—let it pass!” She watched as a variety of ferocious emotions moved across his face. Finally, Steven shoved the splayed fingers of his right hand through his hair and said, “I want to kill him.” He folded that same hand into a fist and slammed it against the wall. “I want to kill him.” “I know,” Emma said gently. “But it wouldn’t be worth sacrificing all the years ahead, Steven.” He drew her close and held her, and his lips moved in her hair. “When I’m acquitted of killing Mary, the first thing I’m going to do is make love to you. The second thing is beat the hell out of Macon.” Emma smiled up at him. “When I get through with you,” she promised, full of bravado and hope, “you won’t have the strength to beat the hell out of anybody.” Steven chuckled hoarsely. “Is that so?” he retorted. “Well, maybe I’d better take you upstairs right now, Mrs. Fairfax, and find out if you’re bluffing.” “You’ll just have to wait until evening, Mr. Fairfax,” Emma responded airily. “I intend to enjoy our wedding party.” “That was exactly what I had in mind.” Steven grinned. Emma laughed and shook her head, her fears lost again, at least temporarily, in the boundless love she bore this man. Joellen

She was pointing at Ron in dire accusation: It was like a malediction, and Harry could not blame Ron for retreating several steps. “I came running after you! I called you! I begged you to come back!” “I know,” Ron said, “Hermione, I’m sorry, I’m really—” “Oh, you’re sorry!” She laughed, a high-pitched, out-of-control sound; Ron looked at Harry for help, but Harry merely grimaced his helplessness. “You come back after weeks—weeks—and you think it’s all going to be all right if you just say sorry?” “Well, what else can I say?” Ron shouted, and Harry was glad that Ron was fighting back. “Oh, I don’t know!” yelled Hermione with awful sarcasm. “Rack your brains, Ron, that should only take a couple of seconds—” “Hermione,” interjected Harry, who considered this a low blow, “he just saved my—” “I don’t care!” she screamed. “I don’t care what he’s done! Weeks and weeks, we could have been dead for all he knew—” “I knew you weren’t dead!” bellowed Ron, drowning her voice for the first time, and approaching as close as he could with the Shield Charm between them. “Harry’s all over the Prophet, all over the radio, they’re looking for you everywhere, all these rumors and mental stories, I knew I’d hear straight off if you were dead, you don’t know what it’s been like—” “What it’s been like for you?” Her voice was so shrill only bats would be able to hear it soon, but she had reached a level of indignation that rendered her temporarily speechless, and Ron seized his opportunity. “I wanted to come back the minute I’d Disapparated, but I walked straight into a gang of Snatchers, Hermione, and I couldn’t go anywhere!” “A gang of what?” asked Harry, as Hermione threw herself down into a chair with her arms and legs crossed so tightly it seemed unlikely that she would unravel them for several years.

My head feels like it's starting to rattle with words bouncing around inside it like balls. Every time Moscow, Nick, Baylee, or Metamorphosis hit the side, my entire body jolts with excitement. Every time Nat and Annabel make contact, I feel like I'm about to implode with guilt and anxiety. And every time the Alexa ball bounces, I feel like vomiting. But it's too late. I've made my choice. So I spend the rest of the evening making an imaginary box in my head. And into this box I put all of the balls. I close the lid. And then I lock it up and temporarily misplace the key.

The beach is the only place where I now how it feels, even temporarily, to live without anxiety: I'm able to feel a kind of soul-deep calm I never get close to anywhere else.

I would not have thought it likely’, she said, ‘that you would go off on a boat with a complete stranger. What is he like? Do you like him?’ I closed my eyes and tried to summon up my feelings for my neighbour. When I opened them again Elena was still looking at me, waiting. I said that I had become so unused to thinking about things in terms of whether I liked them or whether I didn’t that I couldn’t answer her question. My neighbour was merely a perfectly good example of something about which I could only feel absolute ambivalence. ‘But you still let him take you out on his boat,’ she said. It was hot, I said. And the terms on which we had left the harbour were strictly – or so I thought – the terms of friendship. I described his attempt to kiss me, when we were anchored far out to sea. I said that he was old, and that though it would be cruel to call him ugly, I had found his physical advances as repellent as they were surprising. It had never occurred to me that he would do such a thing; or more accurately, before she pointed out that I would have to be an imbecile not to have seen it as a possibility, I thought he wouldn’t dare do such a thing. I had thought the differences between us were obvious, but to him they weren’t. She hoped, Elena said, that I had made that fact clear to him. I said that, on the contrary, I had come up with all manner of excuses to spare his feelings. She was silent for a while. ‘If,’ she said presently, ‘you had told him the truth, if you had said to him, look, you are old and short and fat, and though I like you the only reason I am really here is to get a ride on your boat –’ she began to laugh, fanning her face with the menu ‘– if you had said those things to him, you understand, you would have heard some truths in return. If you had been frank you would have elicited frankness.’ She herself, she said, had visited the very depths of disillusionment in the male character by being honest in precisely this way: men who had claimed one minute to be dying of love for her were openly insulting her the next, and it was only, in a sense, when she had reached this place of mutual frankness that she could work out who she herself was and what she actually wanted. What she couldn’t stand, she said, was pretence of any kind, especially the pretence of desire, wherein someone feigned the need to possess her wholly when in fact what he wanted was to use her temporarily. She herself, she said, was quite willing to use others too, but she only recognised it once they had admitted this intention in themselves.

Securely functioning adults are comfortable with intimacy, closeness, and their need or desire for others. They don’t fear losing their sense of self or being engulfed by the relationship. For securely attached people, “dependency” is not a dirty word, but a fact of life that can be experienced without losing or compromising the self. Conversely, securely functioning adults are also comfortable with their independence and personal autonomy. They may miss their partners when they’re not together, but inside they feel fundamentally alright with themselves when they’re alone. They also feel minimal fear of abandonment when temporarily separated from their partner. In other words, securely attached people experience relational object constancy, which is the ability to trust in and maintain an emotional bond with people even during physical or emotional separation.

very act of congregating is an exceptionally powerful stimulant. Once the individuals are gathered together, a sort of electricity is generated from their closeness and quickly launches them to an extraordinary height of exaltation.13 In such a state, “the vital energies become hyperexcited, the passions more intense, the sensations more powerful.”14 Durkheim believed that these collective emotions pull humans fully but temporarily into the higher of our two realms, the realm of the sacred,

Tapas is any practice that pushes the mind against its own limits, and the key ingredient of tapas is endurance. Thus in the archaic Rig-Veda (10.136), the long-haired ascetic or keshin is said to “endure” the world, to “endure” fire, and to “endure” poison.1 The keshin is a type of renouncer, a proto-yogin, who is a “wind-girt” (naked?) companion of the wild God Rudra (Howler). He is said to “ascend” the wind in a God-intoxicated state and to fly through space, looking down upon all things. But the name keshin harbors a deeper meaning, for it also can refer to the Sun whose “long hair” is made up of the countless rays that emanate from the solar orb and reach far into the cosmos and bestow life on Earth. This is again a reminder that the archaic Yoga of the Vedas revolves around the Solar Spirit, who selflessly feeds all beings with his/her/its compassionate warmth. The early name for the yogin is tapasvin, the practitioner of tapas or voluntary self-challenge. The tapasvin lives always at the edge. He deliberately challenges his body and mind, applying formidable will power to whatever practice he vows to undertake. He may choose to stand stock-still under India’s hot sun for hours on end, surrounded by a wall of heat from four fires lit close by. Or he may resolve to sit naked in solitary meditation on a windswept mountain peak in below-zero temperatures. Or he may opt to incessantly chant a divine name, forfeiting sleep for a specified number of days. The possibilities for tapas are endless. Tapas begins with temporarily or permanently denying ourselves a particular desire—having a satisfying cup of coffee, piece of chocolate, or casual sex. Instead of instant gratification, we choose postponement. Then, gradually, postponement can be stepped up to become complete renunciation of a desire. This kind of challenge to our habit patterns causes a certain degree of frustration in us. We begin to “stew in our own juices,” and this generates psychic energy that can be used to power the process of self-transformation. As we become increasingly able to gain control over our impulses, we experience the delight behind creative self-frustration. We see that we are growing and that self-denial need not necessarily be negative.

Tapas is any practice that pushes the mind against its own limits, and the key ingredient of tapas is endurance. Thus in the archaic Rig-Veda (10.136), the long-haired ascetic or keshin is said to “endure” the world, to “endure” fire, and to “endure” poison.1 The keshin is a type of renouncer, a proto-yogin, who is a “wind-girt” (naked?) companion of the wild God Rudra (Howler). He is said to “ascend” the wind in a God-intoxicated state and to fly through space, looking down upon all things. But the name keshin harbors a deeper meaning, for it also can refer to the Sun whose “long hair” is made up of the countless rays that emanate from the solar orb and reach far into the cosmos and bestow life on Earth. This is again a reminder that the archaic Yoga of the Vedas revolves around the Solar Spirit, who selflessly feeds all beings with his/her/its compassionate warmth. The early name for the yogin is tapasvin, the practitioner of tapas or voluntary self-challenge. The tapasvin lives always at the edge. He deliberately challenges his body and mind, applying formidable will power to whatever practice he vows to undertake. He may choose to stand stock-still under India’s hot sun for hours on end, surrounded by a wall of heat from four fires lit close by. Or he may resolve to sit naked in solitary meditation on a windswept mountain peak in below-zero temperatures. Or he may opt to incessantly chant a divine name, forfeiting sleep for a specified number of days. The possibilities for tapas are endless. Tapas begins with temporarily or permanently denying ourselves a particular desire—having a satisfying cup of coffee, piece of chocolate, or casual sex. Instead of instant gratification, we choose postponement. Then, gradually, postponement can be stepped up to become complete renunciation of a desire. This kind of challenge to our habit patterns causes a certain degree of frustration in us. We begin to “stew in our own juices,” and this generates psychic energy that can be used to power the process of self-transformation. As we become increasingly able to gain control over our impulses, we experience the delight behind creative self-frustration. We see that we are growing and that self-denial need not necessarily be negative. The Bhagavad-Gītā (17.14–16) speaks of three kinds of austerity or tapas: Austerity of body, speech, and mind. Austerity of the body includes purity, rectitude, chastity, nonharming, and making offerings to higher beings, sages, brahmins (the custodians of the spiritual legacy of India), and honored teachers. Austerity of speech encompasses speaking kind, truthful, and beneficial words that give no offense, as well as the regular practice of recitation (svādhyāya) of the sacred lore. Austerity of the mind consists of serenity, gentleness, silence, self-restraint, and pure emotions.

The elephants in our heads—our reflexive reactions—perceive anything unfamiliar as just plain wrong. Familiar things feel right, right, RIGHT! This is the sensation comedian Stephen Colbert famously dubbed “truthiness.” It’s like being drunk or high: delicious in the short term, ultimately toxic. The righteous mind can temporarily overwhelm our sense of truth, including our allegiance to justice and fairness. When our righteous mind is in control, we lose the way of integrity and become weirdly, obviously self-contradictory, like proponents of world peace who advocate war against anyone who disagrees with them. Because violence and the righteous mind are closely linked, I don’t call destructive actions sins of violence, as Dante does. I think of them as “errors of righteousness.” They are psychological mistakes we make when our irrational rejection of the unfamiliar takes over our thinking.

Besides, I’ve … er, dealt with a case of rape once before. There isn’t a great deal you can do, externally. Maybe there isn’t a great deal you can do, period,” I added. I changed my mind and picked up the cup again. “Perhaps not,” Raymond agreed. “But if anyone is capable of reaching the patient’s center, surely it would be La Dame Blanche?” I set the cup down, staring at him. My mouth was unbecomingly open, and I closed it. Thoughts, suspicions, and realizations were rioting through my head, colliding with each other in tangles of conjecture. Temporarily sidestepping the traffic jam, I seized on the other half of his remark, to give me time to think. “The patient’s center?” He reached into an open jar on the table, withdrew a pinch of white powder, and dropped it into his goblet. The deep amber of the brandy immediately turned the color of blood, and began to boil. “Dragon’s blood,” he remarked, casually waving at the bubbling liquid. “It only works in a vessel lined with silver. It ruins the cup, of course, but it’s most effective, done under the proper circumstances.” I made a small, gurgling noise. “Oh, the patient’s center,” he said, as though recalling something we had talked about many days ago. “Yes, of course. All healing is done essentially by reaching the … what shall we call it? the soul? the essence? say, the center. By reaching the patient’s center, from which they can heal themselves. Surely you have seen it, madonna. The cases so ill or so wounded that plainly they will die—but they don’t. Or those who suffer from something so slight that surely they must recover, with the proper care. But they slip away, despite all you can do for them.” “Everyone who minds the sick has seen things like that,” I replied cautiously.

By the fall of 2021, schools across the country had lost a staggering number of teachers, paraeducators, substitutes, bus drivers, and other staff who quit, retired early, got sick, or died because of the pandemic. In September 2021, 30,000 public school teachers gave notice. Florida had 67% more teacher vacancies than the previous year. California's largest school district had five times the number of teacher vacancies as in prior years; Fort Worth, Texas, was close behind with four and a half times the number of vacancies. A small Michigan district lost a quarter of its teaching staff, while statewide there was a 44% increase in midyear teacher retirements. Lacking enough staff to operate, some schools across the country temporarily closed; hired students to serve lunch during school hours; grouped classes together in the cafeteria, where building services workers or untrained parent volunteers supervised hundreds of students; and/or asked the National Guard to fill in as bus drivers and substitute teachers.

He closed his eyes against his pounding headache, but the blackness engulfed him again. A familiar vision materialized—the statuesque, veiled woman with the amulet and silver hair in ringlets. As before, she was on the banks of a bloodred river and surrounded by writhing bodies. She spoke to Langdon, her voice pleading. Seek and ye shall find! Langdon was overcome with the feeling that he had to save her … save them all. The half-buried, upside-down legs were falling limp … one by one. Who are you!? he called out in silence. What do you want?! Her luxuriant silver hair began fluttering in a hot wind. Our time grows short, she whispered, touching her amulet necklace. Then, without warning, she erupted in a blinding pillar of fire, which billowed across the river, engulfing them both. Langdon shouted, his eyes flying open. Dr. Brooks eyed him with concern. “What is it?” “I keep hallucinating!” Langdon exclaimed. “The same scene.” “The silver-haired woman? And all the dead bodies?” Langdon nodded, perspiration beading on his brow. “You’ll be okay,” she assured him, despite sounding shaky herself. “Recurring visions are common with amnesia. The brain function that sorts and catalogs your memories has been temporarily shaken up, and so it throws everything into one picture.” “Not a very nice picture,” he managed. “I know, but until you heal, your memories will be muddled and uncataloged—past, present, and imagination all mixed together. The same thing happens in dreams.

What makes any dwelling place worthy are the dreams you cradle close while you’re sheltered, temporarily, in this transitional terminal toward tomorrow.

My naked eyes see the naked truth,” Diablo began. “And the naked truth is that life is an adventure in the imagination of God, Providence at play, and to the extent that we release control, we experience grace. It is not a coincidence that the more you accept the flow of life, the more that life will flow through you. And that the minute you close your heart, the instant you presume to protect yourself from hurt or heartache, or the moment you try to control the insecurity of life with routine and structure, you have already lost exactly that which you are trying to protect. Your heart goes hard, your life goes stagnant, and Spirit will burn you with a thousand sufferings until you sit in your sacred fire and wake up to the naked truth that you are not in control of your life. This is the truth that is so fretfully foreign to common sense. You are a temporarily stable matrix of energetic probabilities, a spiritual synapse in the mind of God, and that’s all. This is no more your life than it is mine. It’s an experience to behold, but never to hold.” Diablo paused, seeking summation, feeling foolish in his nakedness, another hairy monkey squawking all the answers. “Anyway, the trick is simply this: No matter what happens, keep your heart open. Wide open. The heart is made of love, and love is indestructible, and only the arrogance of ego would presume that it requires protection. To open your heart is to reduce your ego, and this is the only magic that is ever required to experience the naked truth.

She wrote to her bishop, pointing out that the fever was spread in places where crowds gathered, and begging him to temporarily close the churches. Bishop Fabre refused, stating that to close the churches would be to laugh at God. The bishop urged his flock to church, telling them that united prayer was more powerful than prayer in isolation.

Sandy Ridge is an outdoor holding facility where the Fish and Wildlife Service keeps a few captive red wolves beneath a dense canopy of hardwood trees. Wild wolves are brought here temporarily to recuperate from wounds or sickness. The cabin houses a rotating cadre of barely paid interns, usually students seeking wildlife management experience. They live here for twelve weeks at a time with no potable water, plumbing, or electricity and a stipend of a few hundred dollars a month for groceries. They also get access to a government truck. Given the ruggedness of the surrounding woods, the remoteness of the location, and the lack of communications, access to a truck is a huge selling point - as is working directly with the red wolves. The interns feed the wolves of Sandy Ridge and clean their pens. They also administer medicine to its wild visitors. The current caretaker is taking a rare day off, and one of the red wolf biologists, Ryan Nordsven, is tending the animals this morning. I can’t see the holding pens from the clearing by the cabin, but the woods are so dense, they may be only thirty feet past the tree line and I wouldn’t know. I walk down a dirt road leading from the cabin to the wolf pens. Deer flies dart around my bare legs. As I approach a ten-foot-high chain-link fence, a man waves and opens the gate from the inside. As I pass through, I notice a second chain-link fence about six feet inside the perimeter of the first. “I’m Ryan,” the man says. “So you’re the writer who’s here to learn about red wolves?” “Yes, as much as I can,” I reply. He shakes my hand while holding a shovel in his other hand. Ryan has sandy brown hair, a closely trimmed goatee, and blue eyes set in Scandinavian features. He’s six feet tall, well muscled, and looks like he could wrestle a wolf to the ground with each hand and still have strength left over.

We rebelled, even if only temporarily. For a few hours every day, we dropped the rock, left the mount, and turned our backs to the toil and responsibility given and demanded of us by our gods and the authorities appointed to maintain them, and turned instead toward the reprieve we could only seem to find as we closed our eyes and slept together in those craters. We had committed the unforgivable sin of our age, against our age, and we found rest.

If you happen to live there, it’s always refreshing to view Manhattan from afar. Up close the city constitutes an oppressive series of staircases, but from a distance it inspires fantasies of wealth and power so profound that even our communists are temporarily rendered speechless.

Regarding the straying of the dwelling place, it is generally taught that in order to perfect ultimate realization of the view someone who has a temporary realization of it should go to a secluded open area, such as a mountain retreat or a charnel ground. You may temporarily possess the view, but in order to sustain it, you must stay in mountain hermitages. An unwholesome dwelling place may indeed cause your view to go astray.

Steve Porges helped me realize that the natural state of mammals is to be somewhat on guard. However, in order to feel emotionally close to another human being, our defensive system must temporarily shut down. In order to play, mate, and nurture our young, the brain needs to turn off its natural vigilance. Many traumatized individuals are too hypervigilant to enjoy the ordinary pleasures that life has to offer, while others are too numb to absorb new experiences—or to be alert to signs of real danger.

Perhaps the best approach to a toddler’s wish to partake of the gifts of both genders is to sympathize with it and to provide corrective information only when the child asks for it directly. Far from being harmful, wishful thinking and fantasy play such as Lori’s and Ari’s provide the child with a safe setting to explore reality at her or his own pace. As they experiment, children come up with their own explanations for things. Parents do best not to correct those explanations unless the child asks directly for their input. The child’s fanciful ideas will be useful temporarily and will be replaced by increasingly more accurate versions of reality when the child is ready. The parent’s role is to be close at hand to provide the facts that the child wants without adding more information than the child is asking for.

Between the ages of fifteen and sixteen, I managed to void people’s utility bills, at least temporarily, around three hundred times. I also handled a few overdue mortgages. I’d come home from school, change clothes, eat a snack, and then Black Power and I would head upstairs and start phoning before the close of business. Office workers tended to be weary and a little more careless at that hour, which helped.