Terra Firma Quotes

With this book in my hands, reading aloud to my friends, questioning them, explaining to them, I was made clearly to understand that I had no friends, that I was alone in the world. Because in not understanding the meaning of the words, neither I nor my friends, one thing became very clear and that was that there were ways of not understanding and that the difference between the non-understanding of one individual and the non-understanding of another created a world of terra firma even more solid than differences of understanding.

But the truly brilliant geocachers?" "Yeah?" he says. "What about us?" "They know it by its real name. Terra Firma." "Terra Firma," he repeats. At last, he slips his backpack off his shoulder. I know what he's looking for. I take a breath. "You don't need your GPS for this cache." His eyes don't move off mine; he's watching me so carefully. "You don't, huh?" "Nope," I say. Some things are meant to be kept - what you learn from experiences good or bad, smiles from an orphaned girl, a boy who is your compass pointing to your True North. So I look at Jacob full in the face with nothing obscuring him. Or me. And then I step closer to him. And closer. And closer yet. "Here I am," I tell him. "Here I am.

I know where The List is-my father has taken me to see it many times. Maybe for just this reason. And I know what it is: The List of Alien Outlaws on Terra Firma. And I know who I am: Daniel, son of Graff, son of Terfdon- The Alien Hunter. No last name, just Daniel X.

But for years, my best coping strategy has been work. I have assumed so many responsibilities and said yes to so many things. Working hard creates my own gravity. The more I work, the more I am on terra firma.

... for fog was merely a cloud that wasn't too smitten with itself to visit terra firma.

In Vietnamese, the word for country and the word for water are the same: Nước. Context obviously makes it clear if you're talking about the former or the latter, but in Vietnamese, your country is not the terra firma or the nationality; it's the water. The waters that feed the soil. The waters that lap your shores. If you ask someone where they're from, you're asking them literally from what waters do they come. The county of America is called, in Vietnamese, nước mỹ: the waters of America.

It's been said that parents should give their children roots and wings. That was a perfect description of my parents. Even in a wheelchair, my father was a dreamer with his head in the clouds and my mother was the roots with both feet planted firmly on terra quaking firma.

I will grab your other arm, you will close your eyes, and up you will come. Back on terra firma." "This is terra firma. " Juliana pointed with her nose to the rugged cliff wall. "Yes, but I doubt very much that you want to stay there." "I like the idea of dangling in the air so much less.

Arbogast had then assembled a dream team of creative consultants and contractors to help make his bold claim a reality, luring some of the videogame industry’s brightest stars away from their own companies and projects, with the sole promise of collaborating on his groundbreaking new MMOs. That was how gaming legends like Chris Roberts, Richard Garriott, Hidetaka Miyazaki, Gabe Newell, and Shigeru Miyamoto had all wound up as consultants on both Terra Firma and Armada—along with several big Hollywood filmmakers, including James Cameron, who had contributed to the EDA’s realistic ship and mech designs, and Peter Jackson, whose Weta Workshop had rendered all of the in-game cinematics.

This planet is not terra firma. It is a delicate flower and it must be cared for. It's lonely. It's small. It's isolated, and there is no resupply. And we are mistreating it. Clearly, the highest loyalty we should have is not to our on country or our own religion or our home town or even to ourselves. It should be to, number two, the family of man, and number one, the planet at large. This is our home, and this is all we've got.

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.

faith is more important than terra firma, that it has to be, for the material world is full of trials and tribulations, transgressions against body and soul, against our right to any piece of this country,

Sometimes, even when I'm standing on a remarkable slice of terra firma, I'm besotted with wanderlust, my heart thumping for the next unknown place and my mind wondering what's next. But right now, in this rain forest, floating in crystal waters after a walk on ancient, sacred soil with my flesh and blood, I want to be nowhere else. Nowhere. This, right now, is home. I can hear God through the rustling of the prehistoric fan shaped leaves, the scurry of alien insects on the bark, the familiar laughter of my children slipping on stones in the water. Everything here is unfamiliar, but it's familiar. We are transient, vagabonds, and yet we're tethered.

...But although the rules are vague And widely disregarded now Some precepts remain: live with love - That is a rule we all can understand; Forgive those who need forgiveness, Which I think is everybody, more or less; Be kind - that, perhaps, is first and foremost In any postmodern, new-fangled Code we devise for ourselves; Yes, be kind: love one another, And most of all tend with gentleness The small patch of terra firma That is allocated to each of us...

For not only do fabulous rumors naturally grow out of the very body of all surprising terrible events,—as the smitten tree gives birth to its fungi; but, in maritime life, far more than in that of terra firma, wild rumors abound, wherever there is any adequate reality for them to cling to.

When a woman withdraws to give birth the sun may be shining but the shutters of her room are closed so she can make her own weather. She is kept in the dark so she can dream. Her dreams drift her far away, from terra firma to a marshy tract of land, to a landing stage, to a river where a mist closes over the further bank, and earth and sky are inseparate; there she must embark towards life and death, a muffled figure in the stern directing the oars. In this vessel prayers are said that men never hear. Bargains are struck between a woman and her God. The river is tidal, and between one feather-stroke and the next, her tide may turn.

You see that God deems it right to take from me any claim to merit for what you call my devotion to you. I have promised to remain forever with you, and now I could not break my promise if I would. The treasure will be no more mine than yours, and neither of us will quit this prison. But my real treasure is not that, my dear friend, which awaits me beneath the somber rocks of Monte Cristo, it is your presence, our living together five or six hours a day, in spite of our jailers; it is the rays of intelligence you have elicited from my brain, the languages you have implanted in my memory, and which have taken root there with all of their philological ramifications. These different sciences that you have made so easy to me by the depth of the knowledge you possess of them, and the clearness of the principles to which you have reduced them – this is my treasure, my beloved friend, and with this you have made me rich and happy. Believe me, and take comfort, this is better for me than tons of gold and cases of diamonds, even were they not as problematical as the clouds we see in the morning floating over the sea, which we take for terra firma, and which evaporate and vanish as we draw near to them. To have you as long as possible near me, to hear your eloquent speech, -- which embellishes my mind, strengthens my soul, and makes my whole frame capable of great and terrible things, if I should ever be free, -- so fills my whole existence, that the despair to which I was just on the point of yielding when I knew you, has no longer any hold over me; this – this is my fortune – not chimerical, but actual. I owe you my real good, my present happiness; and all the sovereigns of the earth, even Caesar Borgia himself, could not deprive me of this.

Ale is the most civilized thing to a Dwarf, but to a Human it’s a reversal; a step back into a more primitive state.” (HammerThorn)

Moře je symbolem kolektivního nevědomí, neboť pod zrcadlící se hladinou skrývá netušené hlubiny. Ti, kteří stojí za ním, stínové personifikace nevědomí, vpadli jako záplava na pevninu (terra firma) vědomí. Takové vpády jsou nepříjemné, protože iracionální a pro postiženého nevysvětlitelné. Znamenají závažnou alteraci osobnosti, protože okamžitě tvoří trýznivé osobní tajemství, které postiženého odcizuje od jeho okolí a zcela jej od něho izoluje. Je to něco, "co nelze nikomu říci". Člověk se totiž obává, že bude podezírán z duševní abnormity; s určitým oprávněním, vždyť u duševně nemocných se děje něco podobného. Nicméně od intuitivně chápaného vpádu až k patologickému přemožení je ještě dlouhá cesta; to ale laik neví.

Perhaps the most important thing in life is for each person to stay headed in the right direction within his assigned place and not to veer off in vain or run around in circles on ill-defined quests.

dream. Her dreams drift her far away, from terra firma to a marshy tract of land, to a landing stage, to a river where a mist closes over the further bank, and earth and sky are inseparate; there she must embark towards life and death, a muffled figure in the stern directing the oars. In this vessel prayers are said that men never hear. Bargains are struck between a woman and her God. The river is tidal, and between one feather-stroke and the next, her tide may turn.

But my real treasure is not that, my dear friend, which awaits me beneath the sombre rocks of Monte Cristo, it is your presence, our living together five or six hours a day, in spite of our jailers; it is the rays of intelligence you have elicited from my brain, the languages you have implanted in my memory, and which have taken root there with all their philological ramifications. These different sciences that you have made so easy to me by the depth of the knowledge you possess of them, and the clearness of the principles to which you have reduced them—this is my treasure, my beloved friend, and with this you have made me rich and happy. Believe me, and take comfort, this is better for me than tons of gold and cases of diamonds, even were they not as problematical as the clouds we see in the morning floating over the sea, which we take for terra firma, and which evaporate and vanish as we draw near to them. To have you as long as possible near me, to hear your eloquent speech,—which embellishes my mind, strengthens my soul, and makes my whole frame capable of great and terrible things, if I should ever be free,—so fills my whole existence, that the despair to which I was just on the point of yielding when I knew you, has no longer any hold over me; and this—this is my fortune—not chimerical, but actual. I owe you my real good, my present happiness; and all the sovereigns of the earth, even Caesar Borgia himself, could not deprive me of this.

Beside the great "currents" of the world there are still individuals who are rooted in terra firma. Generally speaking, they are unknown people who shun the spotlight of modern popularity and culture. They live on spiritual heights; they do not belong to this world. Though they are scattered over the earth and often ignorant of each other's existence, they are united by an invisible bond and form an unbreakable chain in the traditional spirit... by virtue of these people, Tradition is present despite all; the flame burns invisibly and something still connects the world to the superworld. They are those who are awake[.]

Pete realized that to Pearl, Satan had staged the world in this and every ancient particular. Pete imagined what it would feel like to believe such a thing, to see the very Devil ranging about the Earth like an art director, crafting fictions in the schists and coal seams and limestone. All to cast doubt on the Bible’s timeline. All for the harvest of lost souls. Maybe it would be worth it for the Devil. You could almost picture it. Almost. You could almost believe a book more real than the real, more actual and relevant than terra firma and all the dull laws that govern it. “You know, Jeremiah,” Pete said, “if I believed the things you did, I’d act at least as batshit as you do.

nautical language was so pervasive that it was adopted by those on terra firma. To “toe the line” derives from when boys on a ship were forced to stand still for inspection with their toes on a deck seam. To “pipe down” was the boatswain’s whistle for everyone to be quiet at night, and “piping hot” was his call for meals. A “scuttlebutt” was a water cask around which the seamen gossiped while waiting for their rations. A ship was “three sheets to the wind” when the lines to the sails broke and the vessel pitched drunkenly out of control. To “turn a blind eye” became a popular expression after Vice-Admiral Nelson deliberately placed his telescope against his blind eye to ignore his superior’s signal flag to retreat.

During the age of sail, when wind-powered vessels were the only bridge across the vast oceans, nautical language was so pervasive that it was adopted by those on terra firma. To “toe the line” derives from when boys on a ship were forced to stand still for inspection with their toes on a deck seam. To “pipe down” was the boatswain’s whistle for everyone to be quiet at night, and “piping hot” was his call for meals. A “scuttlebutt” was a water cask around which the seamen gossiped while waiting for their rations. A ship was “three sheets to the wind” when the lines to the sails broke and the vessel pitched drunkenly out of control. To “turn a blind eye” became a popular expression after Vice-Admiral Nelson deliberately placed his telescope against his blind eye to ignore his superior’s signal flag to retreat.

Come for a walk, dear. The air will do you good." Raoul thought that she would propose a stroll in the country, far from that building which he detested as a prison whose jailer he could feel walking within the walls... the jailer Erik... But she took him to the stage and made him sit on the wooden curb of a well, in the doubtful peace and coolness of a first scene set for the evening's performance. On another day, she wandered with him, hand in hand, along the deserted paths of a garden whose creepers had been cut out by a decorator's skillful hands. It was as though the real sky, the real flowers, the real earth were forbidden her for all time and she condemned to breathe no other air than that of the theatre. An occasional fireman passed, watching over their melancholy idyll from afar. And she would drag him up above the clouds, in the magnificent disorder of the grid, where she loved to make him giddy by running in front of him along the frail bridges, among the thousands of ropes fastened to the pulleys, the windlasses, the rollers, in the midst of a regular forest of yards and masts. If he hesitated, she said, with an adorable pout of her lips: "You, a sailor!" And then they returned to terra firma, that is to say, to some passage that led them to the little girls' dancing-school, where brats between six and ten were practicing their steps, in the hope of becoming great dancers one day, "covered with diamonds..." Meanwhile, Christine gave them sweets instead. She took him to the wardrobe and property-rooms, took him all over her empire, which was artificial, but immense, covering seventeen stories from the ground-floor to the roof and inhabited by an army of subjects. She moved among them like a popular queen, encouraging them in their labors, sitting down in the workshops, giving words of advice to the workmen whose hands hesitated to cut into the rich stuffs that were to clothe heroes. There were inhabitants of that country who practiced every trade. There were cobblers, there were goldsmiths. All had learned to know her and to love her, for she always interested herself in all their troubles and all their little hobbies. She knew unsuspected corners that were secretly occupied by little old couples. She knocked at their door and introduced Raoul to them as a Prince Charming who had asked for her hand; and the two of them, sitting on some worm-eaten "property," would listen to the legends of the Opera, even as, in their childhood, they had listened to the old Breton tales.

Mankind - proud conqueror and king swings its flag of primal glory to the winds Titans of the power-myth that failed Neanderthal hunger for the flesh of war so frail So weak, so hollow-minded the primat flock responds the jester race submits For each day of war is a failure for man, enslaved in her mordial genes Illusions bleed from their fetid cores, bent to their rotten extremes We, the plague of Terra Firma, nature's grand and last mistake plant the poisoned seed of cancer, set the severed fruits awake Burning like frozen relics in god's archaic graveland Burn the visionaire Kill the ideaologies Mankind must die The doves and the angels return to their graves with flames on their pestilent wings while mushroom-clouds haunt their virginwhite skies to rape their utopian dreams Living the last days of evolution's end from the nest of humanity, the graveland vultures rend

You mentioned that Palermo, the part of Buenos Aires where you were brought up, had been a violent place full of bohemians and bandits. There they had two names for the knife, ‘the blade’ and ‘the slicer’. The two names described the same object, but ‘the blade’ was the thing itself, and ‘the slicer’ described its function. ‘The blade’ could fit in the hand even of a sickly child shut up in his father’s library, ‘the blade’ could be any of the superannuated daggers and swords belonging to his warrior grandfather or great-grandfather and displayed on the walls of his house, but ‘the slicer’, the knife in the hand slicing back and forth, in and out, existed only in his imagination, in a fascinating world of rapid settlings of accounts and duels over honor, an insult or a woman, in dark street where you never went, where no writer went, except in the literature he wrote. ‘I’ve always felt that in order to be a great writer, one should have the experience of life at sea, which is why Conrad and Melville and, in a way, Stevenson, who ended his days in the South Seas, were better than all of us, Vogelstein. At sea, a writer flees from the minor demons and faces only the definitive ones. A character in Conrad says that he has a horror of ports because, in port, ships rot and men go to the devil. He meant the devils of domesticity and incoherence, the small devils of terra firma. But I think that having experience of “the slicer” would give a writer the same sensation as going to sea, of spectacularly breaking the bounds of his own passivity and of his remoteness from the fundamental matters of the world.’ ‘You mean that if the writer were to stab someone three times, he could allege that he was merely doing so in order to improve his style.’ ‘Something like that. Soaking up experience and atmosphere.’ ‘It’s said that the artist Turner used to have himself lashed to the ship’s mast during storms at sea so that he could make sure he was getting the colours and details of his painted vortices right.’ ‘And it worked. But neither you nor I will ever experience “the slicer”, Vogelstein. We are condemned to “the blade”, to the knife purely as theory. Even if we used “the slicer” against someone, we would still be ourselves, watching, analyzing the scene, and, therefore, inevitably, holding “the blade” in our hand. I don’t think I could kill anyone, apart from my own characters. And I don’t think I would feel comfortable at sea either. There aren’t any libraries at sea. The sea replaces the library.

These hybrid offspring were a voracious consuming mass of flesh and bone. Like a plague of locusts, they stripped bare the life of every territory where they encamped or passed through. She liked to call it “the circle of life,” the way of all things on terra firma: eat or be eaten, only the fittest survive. Morality and all its self-righteous proclamations of right and wrong were reducible to the will to power. Might made right. She would have to craft that into a myth one day. It would be a useful tool to obscure the Creator and justify all kinds of atrocities.

Not every risk-taker is a breaker of rules. Not every entrepreneur is a maverick unable to function in a corporate system. Many entrepreneurs – Guy Hands, for example, who set up Terra Firma – state the advantages of the support given by an organisation combined with the freedom to express yourself.

Somers and Newport, too, knew there was no way to bring the Sea Venture to anchor. Her hull was so open, her planks so sprung, that the ship would sink like one of the cannon they’d already jettisoned if they tried to anchor in deep water. Their only hope was to run on until the battered ship took the ground. Closer and closer to land the vessel inched. By this time, Somers and the others could see a beach ahead. Sir George may have wanted to try to run the ship up on the beach. He surely wanted to get as close to terra firma as possible. For a few moments, as the ship wallowed toward land, the old salt may have thought he would be able to drive the ship high and dry on the beach. Suddenly, though, Somers would have seen white water ahead and probably heard the sound of waves breaking on what he would have instantly known was a reef. Even if the old admiral had wanted to, there was no way to turn the vessel—barely time, in fact, to shout a warning to the passengers and crew on the deck. Then the Sea Venture struck, driving into a V-shaped opening in the reef that surrounds the Bermudas like a ship-killing necklace. She plunged like a wedge between massive coral heads that tore at the vessel’s hull like the claws of a huge beast.

After spending one and a half years in America and years of practicing English before that, Abed, for the first time in his life, began to dream in English. Indeed the meaning of every dream might be the fulfillment of a wish. But had Freud lived the life of an expatriate, immigrant, or a humble non-Western Ph.D. student cut off from his native tongue, he might have added to this that at times it’s not mainly the subject per se but the very form of the dream that fulfills that wish. Not the message but the medium. The latter can follow a path of its own and may even blatantly contradict the former. That’s why, that’s how, every so often foreigners in a country wake up from pleasant dreams with a glum feeling as if having lost something (not knowing that particular loss was a wedge of their mother tongue), or from gloomy nightmares with an inexplicable delight as if they had acquired something novel (not knowing that was a boon from the nonnative language). Dreaming in English for the first time is a threshold, a sign of a bigger change on the way, a change that won’t let you be the same person anymore. You wake up in the middle of the night and try to remember, not the theme of the dream but the words with which the story was told to you. You might be surprised to find out that some of those words you do not happen to have learned yet. For dreams, unlike us, are capable of living simultaneously in more time zones than one, and in the terra firma of Morpheus, the past and the future are one and the same.

Love's Great Adventure by Stewart Stafford Look out for the wandering eye, And the fervour that follows it, A jewel clasped is the first part, Guarding against theft is trickier. Surreptitious teases acted out then, The Rubicon crossed and drained, Love, blind to impediment boundaries, Prized contagion spread as lightning. Rival houses intrude to spoil it, To still the fluttering of butterflies, And the bosom of Eros heaving, Unstoppable to every homo sapien. Here, I'll act as Cupid's emissary, Whisper lovers' spells in my ear, I'll parrot them to her to the letter, So lured, she'll have me over you. Groggy from humid moon nectar, On summertime clouded visions, A second an hour, as a day a year, Arousal of fire in swelled chests. Stallions of the Venus chariot, Borne freely to the new Arcadia, Feet skimming over terra firma, The youthful mask smothers all. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

Back on terra firma, the Romans certainly left their mark on the Earth. It is often said that “all roads lead to Rome.

While there remains some debate, many believe that Homo erectus was the first to use fire, and fire was one of the most important catalysts—if not the most important—that enabled us to come out of the trees and live on terra firma.

Why did countless creatures and plants of dinosaur eras have to be made giant? The enormous amount of bio-organic matter was needed for forming the proper terra firma of the Earth. When the required vast layers of rich outer crust and soil were formed, the huge-sized species of fauna and flora were carefully removed from the scene of life, by adjusting the planet's climate ‘settings.’ Isn't it obvious that it’s done intentionally? It created that perfect basis for smaller and more intelligent species to evolve and thrive; slowly but steadily leading to the appearance and progress of the humanity.

As they multiplied, they split their tracts amongst their sons.13 These lots (named because each son picked a lot to see which swatch of terra firma would be his) grew smaller, so small that their owners were gradually impoverished.

Rainbow Days by Stewart Stafford They make us live in monochrome, Autoerotic under a mirrored dome, Regurgitating back this non-entity, Inside I scream it's the death of me. In between bouts of colon screening, Rainbow days in a third eye's gleaming, Silence a throbbing executioner's drum, Brass muffling the demagogue's hum. Shattered manacles I'm going to see, As I'm leaving this world for infinity, Christen horror hurricanes after me, On submerged planet earth, Terra-Firma-On-Sea. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved

On the Plain of Sorrow, three hyenas to one lion meant a fight. Tip the scale too hard in either sides favor, and it meant a slaughter.

In 1984, the creator of Sam Adams beer, Jim Koch, was staring long and hard across the chasm. It was spring. It was the beginning of the baseball season in Boston, and it was about to be “morning in America.” Ronald Reagan was preparing for what would be a landslide reelection to the presidency, the economy had finally turned around after years in recession, the US Olympic team was about to run away from the competition at the Summer Games in Los Angeles, and Jim was in the middle of his sixth year as a management consultant for Boston Consulting Group (BCG), already earning $250,000 per year (that’s more than $600K in 2020 dollars) before his thirty-fifth birthday. By all accounts, Jim Koch had it made. His feet were planted securely on the terra firma of the business consulting world. “We flew first-class. You consulted with CEOs. Everyone treated you really well,” Jim recalled. These were interesting, heady times at BCG. The company had just become fully employee owned, complete with an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) that forged a real path to truly significant wealth for consultants like Jim. At the same time, he had already worked alongside a quartet of future luminaries:

Comprender la geología, aunque solo sea un poco, es como disponer de unos prismáticos especiales con los que mirar el paisaje. Retrocedemos en el tiempo hasta un mundo en el que las rocas se funden y los mares se petrifican, donde el granito deambula por ahí como gránulos de papilla, el basalto suelta burbujas como un guiso y las capas de caliza se doblan como si fueran mantas. Mirando por los prismáticos de la geología, la terra firma se convierte en terra mobilis y tenemos que replantearnos a la fuerza nuestras creencias sobre lo que es sólido y lo que no.

To be a parent is to be terra firma, to stand, is to be planted in the earth.

Our landscapes are marked by the presence of grand trees. And what are trees, but love stories written by terra firma in praise of all the heavens offer? There are hundreds of ways to scribe your love story to reach a Sublime Result. Just ask the oak. All 600 species. III. Our own story will not be written in chronological order. Love was never meant to keep you in your comfort zone. It was designed- to feed, challenge, grow, and sustain you. To fracture you gently, drown you in small increments. Continental drift you into Pure Consciousness. And I am learning: to have the patience of geologic processes. My blood turns to lava, my breath to ash, my love to eons, to measures of time and movement imperceptible at most moments.

much

We are a mediating influence between terra firma and the cosmos, born to receive and diffuse aromatic molecules.

The struggle for a life extracts all our attention, and leaves us blind, deaf, dumb and senseless. The writer, the artist, the musician vanishes, without even the charity of a proper cremation. At this point words become formless sounds, and thoughts run out of paper and jump out of the terra firma and fly in the air, forcing us to find someone to share them with, someone who could understand. The fear of wasting words is the worst kind of it, only a writer knows.

Following the coast northward, he named the terra firma off his port side La Florida in recognition of the Easter season, known in Spain as Pascua Florida, “feast of flowers.

Dear friends, gathered again together in a place That has become so familiar to all of us, We might wish to forget the world outside, Might wish to think that here, with our friends, We are the world. Would that were true: The world outside is not the world We would like it to be; I don’t need To enumerate its woes – they are legion, And greet us each time we open a newspaper. But it would be wrong to become cynical, Would be wrong to dismiss the possibility Of making bearable the suffering of so many By acts of love in our own lives, By acts of friendship, by the simple cherishing Of those who daily cross our path, and those who do not. By these acts, I think, are we shown what might be; By these acts can we transform that small corner Of terra firma that is given to us, In our case this little patch of earth That we call Scotland, into a peaceable Kingdom, a place where love and friendship Are writ large not doubted, nor laughed at, But embraced and proclaimed, made the tenor Of our quotidian lives, made the register In which we conduct ourselves. How foolish I once thought I was To believe in all this; how warmly I now return to that earlier belief; How fervently I hope that it is true, How fervently I hope that this is so.

Accuracy and diligence are much more necessary to a Lawyer, than great comprehension of mind, or brilliancy of talents,” Daniel Webster argued, for the lawyer's “business is to refine, define, and split hairs…. A man can never gallop over the fields of Law on Pegasus, nor fly across them on the wing of oratory. If he would stand on terra firma he must descend.”25

NONE OF YOU WILL EVER STAND ON TERRA FIRMA, TOUCH YOUR loved ones, or breathe the atmosphere of your mother planet again,” the president said. “That is a terrible fate. And yet it is a better fate than seven billion people trapped on the Earth’s surface can hope for. The last ship home has sailed. From now on, launch vehicles will rise up into orbit, but they will not go back for ten thousand years.” The

He held up his arms to assist her to the ground, and she hesitated. In the instant when he would have remonstrated her for her rudeness, he understood that forcing herself to move at all when there was no driver at the reins was… difficult for her. “Evie, come here.” He plucked her bodily from the carriage—he was tall enough to do that—and let her slide down his body until her feet were planted on terra firma. When he would have stepped back, she dropped her forehead to his chest. “I’m an idiot.” “If so, you’re a wonderfully fragrant idiot.” Also lithe, warm, and a surprisingly agreeable armful of woman. He kept his arms around her as he catalogued these appealing attributes and helped himself to a pleasing whiff of mock orange. “I panicked back there when the horses startled.” She sounded miserable over this admission. He took a liberty and turned her under his arm, keeping his arm across her shoulders while they walked a few paces away. “I know you took a bad fall before your come out, Eve. There’s no shame in a lingering distaste for injury. I still get irritable whenever I hear cannon firing, even if it’s just a harbor sounding its signals.” And

Echo II   I wait for moon to die below black and jagged pines as I lay my aging body down on terra firma, my faith, my dream, the grand mystery, in and above all that is. I have no fear of night, for it is day without light, when all that is green suckles in dew and loon turns beak beneath wing as wolf is curled in silence.

To step into God’s will is a step into a different realm, even though your feet remain on firma terra.

Initially, the most important thing for me was dropping out of my head and into my body – into a sense of feeling myself. My head is where I tend to spend most of my day, either beating myself up or worrying about things that might be coming up. I think I went for years hardly being in the present at all. Formal practices like the body scan, actually focusing on my body, are enough to press a reset button. Being in the body gives me a sense of ‘terra firma’, a ‘being here right now’. That sense of feeling the air on my skin, my feet on the floor, allows me to settle into myself, to refocus and respond in a different way, rather than just react habitually. That’s a great skill because it gives you the opportunity to do something different.

Born into a world, beautiful. Landing in a terra firma of mud. A mind, innocent. A mind, free. That innocence corrupted. A life, having not taken a thousand breaths, torn asunder by the hardened teeth guiding this nation. Stand? For what?

I stay on terra firma under an umbrella with a good book. That’s my idea of the shore.