Terrace Love Quotes

Had he but turned back then, and looked out once more on to the rose-lit garden, she would have seen that which would have made her own sufferings seem but light and easy to bear--a strong man, overwhelmed with his own passion and despair. Pride had given way at last, obstinacy was gone: the will was powerless. He was but a man madly, blindly, passionately in love and as soon as her light footstep had died away within the house, he knelt down upon the terrace steps, and in the very madness of his love he kissed one by one the places where her small foot had trodden, and the stone balustrade, where her tiny hand had rested last.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap And seeing that it was a soft October night Curled once about the house, and fell asleep

Clay, did you ever love me?" I'm studying a billboard and say that I didn't hear what she said. "I asked if you ever loved me?" On the terrace the sun bursts into my eyes and for one blinding moment I see myself clearly. I remember the first time we made love, in the house in Palm Springs, her body tan and wet, lying against cool, white sheets. "Don't do this, Blair," I tell her. "Just tell me." I don't say anything. "Is it such a hard question to answer?" I look at her straight on. "Yes or no?" "Why?" "Damnit, Clay," she sighs. "Yeah, sure, I guess." "Don't lie to me." "What in the fuck do you want to hear?" "Just tell me," she says, her voice rising. "No," I almost shout. "I never did." I almost start to laugh. She draws in a breath and says, "Thank you. That's all I wanted to know." She sips her wine. "Did you ever love me?" I ask her back, though by now I can't even care. She pauses. "I thought about it and yeah, I did once. I mean I really did. Everything was all right for a while. You were kind." She looks down and then goes on. "But it was like you weren't there. Oh shit, this isn't going to make any sense." She stops. I look at her, waiting for her to go on, looking up at the billboard. Disappear Here. "I don't know if any other person I've been with has been really there, either ... but at least they tried." I finger the menu; put the cigarette out. "You never did. Other people made an effort and you just ... It was just beyond you." She takes another sip of her wine. "You were never there. I felt sorry for you for a little while, but then I found it hard to. You're a beautiful boy, Clay, but that's about it." I watch the cars pass by on Sunset. "It's hard to feel sorry for someone who doesn't care." "Yeah?" I ask. "What do you care about? What makes you happy?" "Nothing. Nothing makes me happy. I like nothing," I tell her. "Did you ever care about me, Clay?" I don't say anything, look back at the menu. "Did you ever care about me?" she asks again. "I don't want to care. If I care about things, it'll just be worse, it'll just be another thing to worry about. It's less painful if I don't care." "I cared about you for a little while." I don't say anything. She takes off her sunglasses and finally says, "I'll see you later, Clay." She gets up. "Where are you going?" I suddenly don't want to leave Blair here. I almost want to take her back with me. "Have to meet someone for lunch." "But what about us?" "What about us?" She stands there for a moment, waiting. I keep staring at the billboard until it begins to blur and when my vision becomes clearer I watch as Blair's car glides out of the parking lot and becomes lost in the haze of traffic on Sunset. The waiter comes over and asks, "Is everything okay, sir?" I look up and put my sunglasses on and try to smile. "Yeah.

I often wish I'd got on better with your father,' he said. But he never liked anyone who--our friends,' said Clarissa; and could have bitten her tongue for thus reminding Peter that he had wanted to marry her. Of course I did, thought Peter; it almost broke my heart too, he thought; and was overcome with his own grief, which rose like a moon looked at from a terrace, ghastly beautiful with light from the sunken day. I was more unhappy than I've ever been since, he thought. And as if in truth he were sitting there on the terrace he edged a little towards Clarissa; put his hand out; raised it; let it fall. There above them it hung, that moon. She too seemed to be sitting with him on the terrace, in the moonlight.

The greatest bliss I have known in my life was when I knew that you loved me too.

Sure, she loves him. But they've got two different ideas of love. He wants to dance with her on a terrace with a full moon and a thirty-six-piece orchestra; he wants to go singing through storms with her, like Gene Kelly. She knows about thirty-six-piece orchestras. You have to feed them, and then there's nothing left for the children.

Nick stands up and offers his hand to me. I have no idea what he wants, but what the hell, I take his hand anyway, and he pulls me up on my feet then presses against me for a slow dance and it's like we're in a dream where he's Christopher Plummer and I'm Julie Andrews and we're dancing on the marble floor of an Austrian terrace garden. Somehow my head presses Nick's t-shirt and in this moment I am forgetting about time and Tal because maybe my life isn't over. Maybe it's only beginning.

At times poetry is the vertigo of bodies and the vertigo of speech and the vertigo of death; the walk with eyes closed along the edge of the cliff, and the verbena in submarine gardens; the laughter that sets on fire the rules and the holy commandments; the descent of parachuting words onto the sands of the page; the despair that boards a paper boat and crosses, for forty nights and forty days, the night-sorrow sea and the day-sorrow desert; the idolatry of the self and the desecration of the self and the dissipation of the self; the beheading of epithets, the burial of mirrors; the recollection of pronouns freshly cut in the garden of Epicurus, and the garden of Netzahualcoyotl; the flute solo on the terrace of memory and the dance of flames in the cave of thought; the migrations of millions of verbs, wings and claws, seeds and hands; the nouns, bony and full of roots, planted on the waves of language; the love unseen and the love unheard and the love unsaid: the love in love.

A providence is shaping our ends; a plan is developing in our lives; a supremely wise and loving Being is making all things work together for good. In the sequel of our life's story, we shall see that there was a meaning and necessity in all the previous incidents, except those that were the result of our own folly and sin, and that even these have been made to contribute to the final result. Trust Him, child of God: He is leading you by a right way to the celestial city of habitation; and as from the terrace of eternity you review the path by which you came from the morning-land of childhood, you will confess that He has done all things well.

Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of honourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleries from which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life hung ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight. A moment and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears.

Eccolo!” he exclaimed. At the same moment the ground gave way, and with a cry she fell out of the wood. Light and beauty enveloped her. She had fallen on to a little open terrace, which was covered with violets from end to end. “Courage!” cried her companion, now standing some six feet above. “Courage and love.” She did not answer. From her feet the ground sloped sharply into view, and violets ran down in rivulets and streams and cataracts, irrigating the hillside with blue, eddying round the tree stems, collecting into pools in the hollows, covering the grass with spots of azure foam. But never again were they in such profusion; this terrace was the well-head, the primal source whence beauty gushed out to water the earth. Standing at its brink, like a swimmer who prepares, was the good man. But he was not the good man that she had expected, and he was alone. George had turned at the sound of her arrival. For a moment he contemplated her, as one who had fallen out of heaven. He saw radiant joy in her face, he saw the flowers beat against her dress in blue waves. The bushes above them closed. He stepped quickly forward and kissed her…

He was but a man madly, blindly, passionately in love, and as soon as her light footsteps had died away within the house, he knelt down upon the terrace steps, and in the very madness of his love he kissed one by one the places where her small foot had trodden, and the stone balustrade there, where her tiny hand had rested last.

And, day and night, aloof, from the high towers and terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem to sleep in one another's arms, and dream of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and all that we read in their smiles, and call reality.

It isn’t Jingyuan who can’t live without me. It’s I who cannot live without him.

I wanted to describe to him how the emotional intimacy growing between us was shattering my heart in the most life-affirming ways, but I didn’t have the right words, except to say that I loved him, which wasn’t nearly enough. We spent that night, and every night together after, in a closeness I had never known, or even thought possible with another person. I was happy. Truly content. Drifting to sleep in Bilal’s arms, I thought about the hills beyond the terrace. Soon wild plum, peach, pear, fig, medlar, mulberry, date, and almond trees would bloom.

All down the stone steps on either side were periwinkles in full flower, and she could now see what it was that had caught at her the night before and brushed, wet and scented, across her face. It was wistaria. Wistaria and sunshine . . . she remembered the advertisement. Here indeed were both in profusion. The wistaria was tumbling over itself in its excess of life, its prodigality of flowering; and where the pergola ended the sun blazed on scarlet geraniums, bushes of them, and nasturtiums in great heaps, and marigolds so brilliant that they seemed to be burning, and red and pink snapdragons, all outdoing each other in bright, fierce colour. The ground behind these flaming things dropped away in terraces to the sea, each terrace a little orchard, where among the olives grew vines on trellises, and fig-trees, and peach-trees, and cherry-trees. The cherry-trees and peach-trees were in blossom--lovely showers of white and deep rose-colour among the trembling delicacy of the olives; the fig-leaves were just big enough to smell of figs, the vine-buds were only beginning to show. And beneath these trees were groups of blue and purple irises, and bushes of lavender, and grey, sharp cactuses, and the grass was thick with dandelions and daisies, and right down at the bottom was the sea. Colour seemed flung down anyhow, anywhere; every sort of colour piled up in heaps, pouring along in rivers....

So far as Emma was concerned she did not ask herself whether she was in love. Love, she thought, was something that must come suddenly, with a great display of thunder and lightning, descending on one's life like a tempest from above, turning it topsy-turvy, whirling away one's resolutions like leaves and bearing one onward, heart and soul, towards the abyss. She never bethought herself how on the terrace of a house the rain forms itself into little lakes when the gutters are choked, and she was going on quite unaware of her peril, when all of a sudden she discovered--a crack in the wall!

Had she put turned back then, she would have seen that which would have made her own sufferings seem but light and easy to bear-a strong man, overwhelmed with his own passion and his own despair. Pride had given way at last, obstinacy was gone: the will was powerless. He was but a man madly, blindly, passionately in love, and as soon as her light footstep had died away within the house, he knelt down upon the terrace steps, and in the very madness of his love he kissed one by one the places where her small foot had trodden, and the stone balustrade there, were her tiny hand had rested last.

In Paris, strolling arm in arm with a casual sweetheart through a late autumn, it seemed impossible to imagine a purer happiness than those golden afternoons, with the woody odor of chestnuts on the braziers, the languid accordions, the insatiable lovers kidding on the open terraces, and still he had told himself with his hand on his heart that he was not prepared to exchange all that for a single instant of his Caribbean in April. He was still too young to know that heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past.

Of course, I know the details. I just reject your premise," the woman said. "What premise?" "The premise that there is no love when a person is alone.

Where was Bewcastle? But then he was there, standing on the terrace some distance away, and such was the power of his presence that everyone seemed to sense it an fell back away from Alleyne even as they stopped talking. There was still all sorts of noise, of course - horses, carriage wheels, voices, the water spouting out of the fountain - but it seemed to Alleyne as if complete silence fell. Bewcastle had already seen him. His gaze was steady and silver-eyed and inscrutable. His hand reached for the gold-handled, jewel-studded quizzing glass he always wore with formal attire and raised it halfway to his eyes in a characteristic gesture. Then he came striding along the terrace with uncharacteristic speed and did not stop coming until he had caught Alleyne up in a tight, wordless embrace that lasted perhaps a whole minute while Alleyne dipped his forehead to his brother's shoulder and felt at last that he was safe. It was an extraordinary moment. He had been little more than a child when his father died, but Wulfric himself had been only seventeen. Alleyne had never thought of him as a father figure. Indeed, he had often resented the authority his brother wielded over them with such unwavering strictness, and often with apparant impersonality and lack of humor. He had always thought of his eldest brother as aloof, unfeeling, totally self sufficient. A cold fish. And yet it was in Wulfric's arm that he felt his homecoming most acutely. He felt finally and completely and unconditionally loved. An extraordinary moment indeed.

Sorrow and joy and parting and reunion, life and death and calamity and trial, wild laughter and tearful songs, twelve years gone by like the course of a long river — all of it flowed gently past in the instant their eyes met.

As to Emma, she did not ask herself whether she loved. Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings—a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionises it, roots up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss. She did not know that on the terrace of houses it makes lakes when the pipes are choked, and she would thus have remained in her security when she suddenly discovered a rent in the wall of it.

Once upon a time when I was young, I had a lovely boyfriend who bought me a hammock and hooked it up on my tiny and highly perilous roof terrace, where I spent many happy hours just rocking and reading, eating Quavers and reflecting on my lovely handsome boyfriend. Then, I married him and we had a bunch of children and a dog and moved somewhere where it rains all the time, and I think the hammock is in storage. This, my friends, is apparently what's known as 'happily ever after'.

In any case, if the reader would have a correct idea of the mood of these exiles, we must conjure up once more those dreary evenings, sifting down through a haze of dust and golden light upon the treeless streets filled with teeming crowds of men and women. For, characteristically, the sound that rose towards the terraces still bathed in the last glow of daylight, now that the noises of vehicles and motors--the sole voice of cities in ordinary times--had ceased, was but one vast rumour of low voices and incessant footfalls, the drumming of innumerable soles timed to the eerie whistling of the plague in the sultry air above, the sound of a huge concourse of people marking time, a never-ending, stifling drone that, gradually swelling, filled the town from end to end, and evening after evening gave its truest, mournfullest expression to the blind endurance which had ousted love from all our hearts.

Learn this, as we pass through the portico: Fear nothing; there is nothing you can know! And by these terraces and steps that gleam Wintry, although the summer night is hot, This—what we seek is never what we find! Life is a dream, like love; and from the dream If we may wake, we never find it what We would; for the wisdom of a mightier mind Leads us in its own ways To a perfected praise.

I’m not even a very good plant mommy, truthfully; as I reflect, my plants are all thirsty most of the time. I wait until they scream out in terror before I remember to water them. Several have jumped right off my terrace ledge in search of an owner who will love them. I am just not a nurturer.

The picture had no flourishes, but she liked its lowness of tone and the atmosphere of summer twilight that pervaded it. It spoke of the kind of personal issue that touched her most nearly; of the choice between objects, subjects, contacts—what might she call them?—of a thin and those of a rich association; of a lonely, studious life in a lovely land; of an old sorrow that sometimes ached to-day; of a feeling of pride that was perhaps exaggerated, but that had an element of nobleness; of a care for beauty and perfection so natural and so cultivated together that the career appeared to stretch beneath it in the disposed vistas and with the ranges of steps and terraces and fountains of a formal Italian garden—allowing only for arid places freshened by the natural dews of a quaint half-anxious, half-helpless fatherhood.

We sat on the terrace and talked as the sun slipped into the western sea and the stars filled the sky above us.

Once I'm through the doors, I often pause to take in the grandeur of the lobby. It never tarnishes. It never grows drab or dusty. It never dulls or fades. It is blessedly the same each and every day. There's the reception and concierge to the left, with its midnight-obsidian counter and smart-looking receptionists in black and white, like penguins. And there's the ample lobby itself, laid out in a horseshoe, with its fine Italian marble floors that radiate pristine white, drawing the eye up, up to the second-floor terrace. There are the ornate Art Deco features of the terrace and the grand marble staircase that brings you there, balustrades glowing and opulent, serpents twisting up to golden knobs held static in brass jaws. Guests will often stand at the rails, hands resting on a glowing post, as they survey the glorious scene below—porters marching crisscross, dragging suitcases behind them, guests lounging in sumptuous armchairs or couples tucked into emerald love seats, their secrets absorbed into the deep, plush velvet.

ANNABETH WANTED TO HATE NEW ROME. But as an aspiring architect, she couldn’t help admiring the terraced gardens, the fountains and temples, the winding cobblestone streets and gleaming white villas. After the Titan War last summer, she’d gotten her dream job of redesigning the palaces of Mount Olympus. Now, walking through this miniature city, she kept thinking, I should have made a dome like that. I love the way those columns lead into that

The truth was overrated, she realized. Knowing that certain parts were fiction, this was what filled her body with an unexpected warmth. it was love, to recognize the inventions and inconsistencies that make a person whole.

I threw myself upon the ground, and wept: I then sprang up, and ran out upon the terrace, and saw, under the shade of the linden-trees, her white dress disappearing near the garden-gate. I stretched out my arms, and she vanished.

I meant to resist your charms; I really did.I wasn't going to do this." Alan took her wrist, guiding her hand over so that he could press a kiss to the palm. "Make love with me?" "No." Shelby's gaze traveled from his mouth to his eyes. "Be in love with you." She felt his fingers tighten on her wrist, then loosen slowly as his eyes stayed dark and fixed on hers. Beneath her, she felt the change in his heartbeart. "And are you?" "Yes." The word, hardly audible, thundered in his head. Alan brought her to him, cradling her head against his chest, feeling her low slow expulsion of air as his arm came around her. He hadn't expected her to give him so much so soon. "When?" "When?" Shelby repeated, enjoying the solid feel of his chest under her cheek. "Sometime between when we first stepped out on the Write's terrace and when I opened a basket of strawberries." "It took you that long? All I had to do was look at you.

Probably Verrari,” muttered the senior, who was methodically torturing a piece of ivory with a slender carving knife. He wanted it to come out like a sculpted terrace he'd seen at the Temple of Iono, alive with lovely relief and fantastical representations of drowned men taken by the Lord of the Grasping Waters. What he seemed to be producing more closely resembled a lump of white dogshit, life-size. “Sooner trust a sailing ship to a blind drunkard with no hands than a Verrari.

Mr. McLean looked up at Piper. He seemed unconcerned by her knife and blowgun. “Going out?” “Just for a while.” Piper kissed her father on the cheek. “I’ll be back tonight. Don’t let them take the sleeping bags, okay? You and I can camp out on the terrace. It’ll be fun.” “All right.” He patted her arm absently. “Good luck…studying?” “Yep,” Piper said. “Studying.” You have to love the Mist. You can stroll out of your house heavily armed, in the company of a satyr, a demigod, and a flabby former Olympian, and thanks to the Mist’s perception-bending magic, your mortal father assumes you’re going to a study group. That’s right, Dad. We need to go over some math problems that involve the trajectory of blowgun darts against moving targets.

If you're going to jump, at least give me time to compose a ballad in your honor," said Nikolai. I turned to see him striding onto the terrace, blond hair shining. He'd thrown on an elegant greatcoat of army drab, marked with the golden double eagle. "Something with lots of sad fiddle and a verse devoted to your love of herring." "If I wait, I may have to hear you sing it." "I happen to have a more than passable baritone. And what's the rush? Is it my cologne?" "You don't wear cologne." "I have such a naturally delightful scent that it seems like overkill. But if you have a penchant for it, I'll start." I wrinkled my nose. "No, thank you." "I shall obey you in all things. Especially after that demonstration," he said with a nod to the lopped-off mountain. "Anytime you want me to take off my hat, please just ask.

Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of honourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleries from which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life hung ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight. A moment, and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears. Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away. VI.

I carried with me into the West End Bar, the White Horse Tavern, a long list of things I would never do: I would never have my hair set in a beauty parlor. I would never move to a suburb and bake cakes or make casseroles. I would never go to a country club dance, although I did like the paper lanterns casting rainbow colors on the terrace. I would never invest in the stock market. I would never play canasta. I would never wear pearls. I would love like a nursling but I would never go near a man who had a portfolio or a set of golf clubs or a business or even a business suit. I would only love a wild thing. I didn't care if wild things tended to break hearts. I didn't care if they substituted scotch for breakfast cereal. I understood that wild things wrote suicide notes to the gods and were apt to show up three hours later than promised. I understood that art was long and life was short.

He racked his brains for a way of making his declaration. Torn all the while between fear of offending and shame at his own faint-heartedness, he wept tears of dejection and desire. Then he made forceful resolutions. He wrote letters, and tore them up; he gave himself a time limit, then extended it. Often he started out with a determination to dare all; but his decisiveness quickly deserted him in Emma's presence [...] Emma, for her part, never questioned herself to find out whether she was in love with him. Love, she believed, must come suddenly, with thunder and lightning, a hurricane from on high that swoops down into your life and turns it topsy-turvy, snatches away your will-power like a leaf, hurls your heart and soul into the abyss. She did not know how on the terrace of a house the rain collects in pools when the gutters are choked; and she would have continued to feel quite safe had she not suddenly discovered a crack in the wall.

As she reached the entrance hall, she saw Lady St. Vincent coming in from the back terrace, her cheeks wind-brightened, the hem of her gown littered with bits of leaves and grass. She looked like an untidy angel, with her lovely calm face and rippling red hair, and the playful spray of light gold freckles across her nose.

Merrick moved away from the guests and toward the terrace doors, where Cassius had made his escape, hoping it was only a dream and he would see his love waiting for him. But as the cool air hit his skin, he only saw the vast forest before him and heard the whistling wind through the trees. He felt hollow once again. A rectangular object on the stairs caught his attention, and he bent to pick it up. It was Cassius’s notebook, flipped open to the very last page. His gaze greedily drank in the sentences written by his lover’s hand. Once upon a time there was an exquisite prince Who filled my wintry soul with all the colors of spring He became my day, my night, my sun, my moon My heart, my soul, my very bones My Ever After

The Tote End (a large and foreboding terrace at Eastville) itself was demolished in the nineties. Sadly a monstrous Ikea store now stands in it's place. Where once tribes of youths performed their rites of passage and bodily fluids flowed in the name of love, hate and pride; Justin and Kate bicker over which wood flooring they should choose. It fucking kills me.

I would be unfair to myself if I said I did not try. I did, even if desultorily. But desire is a curious thing. If it does not exist it does not exist and there is nothing you can do to conjure it up. Worse still, as I discovered, when desire begins to sink, like a capsizing ship it takes down a lot with it.   In our case it took down the conversation, the laughter, the sharing, the concern, the dreams and nearly - the most important thing, the most important thing - and nearly the affection too. Soon my sinking desire had taken everything else down with it to the floor of the sea, and only affection remained like the bobbing hand of a drowning man, poised perilously between life and death.   More than once she tried to seize the moment and open up the issue. She did it with a hard face and a soft face; she did it when I was idling on the terrace and when I was in the thick of my works; first thing in the morning and last thing at night.   We need to talk. Yes. Do you want to talk? Sure. What's happening? I don't know. Is there someone else? No. Is it something I did? Oh no. Then what the hell's happening? I don't know. Is there anything you want to talk to me about? I don't know. What do you mean you don't know? I don't know. What do you mean you don't know? I don't know. That's what I mean - I don't know. Toc toc toc.   All the while I tried to save that bobbing hand - of affection - from vanishing. I felt somehow that if it drowned there would not be a single pointer on the wide stormy surface to show me where our great love had once stood. That bobbing hand of affection was a marker, a buoy, holding out the hope that one day we could salvage the sunken ship. If it drowned, our coordinates would be completely lost and we would not know where to even begin looking.   Even in my weird state, it was an image of such desolation that it made my heart lurch wildly.   ***   For a long time, with her immense pride in herself - in us - she did not turn to anyone for help. Not friends, not family. For simply too long she imagined this was a passing phase, but then, as the weeks rolled by, through slow accretion the awful truth began to settle on her. By then she had run through all the plays of a relationship: withdrawal, sulking, anger, seduction, inquisition, affection, threat.   Logic, love, lust. Now the epitaph was beginning to creep up on her. Acceptance. 

If anyone in our family wanted to step outside onto the Truman Balcony—the lovely arcing terrace that overlooked the South Lawn, and the only semiprivate outdoor space we had at the White House—we needed to first alert the Secret Service so that they could shut down the section of E Street that was in view of the balcony, clearing out the flocks of tourists who gathered outside the gates there at all hours of the day and night.

Sometimes, on waking, she would close her eyes For a last look at that white house she knew In sleep alone, and held no title to, And had not entered yet, for all her sighs. What did she tell me of that house of hers? White gatepost; terrace; fanlight of the door; A widow’s walk above the bouldered shore; Salt winds that ruffle the surrounding firs. Is she now there, wherever there may be? Only a foolish man would hope to find That haven fashioned by her dreaming mind. Night after night, my love, I put to sea.

Two hours ago I took a break from writing this to take a walk before the sun went down. I had an urge to play Willie Nelson's "Crazy" on the Red Hot Country CD before going out, but didn't. When I turned the bend on 49th Terrace, my usual walk, Crazy sung by Patsy Cline was pouring, I mean POURING, out the windows of a house. I leaned back against a fence across the street and watched the house lift off. An operatic, cinematic moment, everything locked into a single frame that gets you high. Like You I'm Trapped.

Khizar, can you see that star emitting bright yellow light?” She asked me while handing over the binocular she was using to see the stars. We were standing on the terrace of our university cafe. I looked through the very powerful lenses of the binocular and said “Yes, I can see. Looks like a star that must have died millions of years ago but we can still see the stardust it emitted while exploding” She took the binocular from my hands, looked into my eyes and said “Khizar, you know memories are like those particles of the stardust of a star which died millions of years ago but we can see them emitting lights now. I hope you won’t become a star that once existed in my universe”  I looked at her. Except for the tears floating in her eyes betraying the emotional turmoil she was suffering from, she was as calm as the sea is after a storm. They say that every atom in a human body is the grain of the stardust of the stars which exploded millions of years ago. Then I understood why her eyes used to sparkle when she was looking at me.

Stop! Stop!” Sophie shrieked with laughter as she ran down the stone steps that led to the garden behind Bridgerton House. After three children and seven years of marriage, Benedict could still make her smile, still make her laugh . . . and he still chased her around the house any chance he could get. “Where are the children?” she gasped, once he’d caught her at the base of the steps. “Francesca is watching them.” “And your mother?” He grinned. “I daresay Francesca is watching her, too.” “Anyone could stumble upon us out here,” she said, looking this way and that. His smile turned wicked. “Maybe,” he said, catching hold of her green-velvet skirt and reeling her in, “we should adjourn to the private terrace.” The words were oh-so-familiar, and it was only a second before she was transported back nine years to the masquerade ball. “The private terrace, you say?” she asked, amusement dancing in her eyes. “And how, pray tell, would you know of a private terrace?” His lips brushed against hers. “I have my ways,” he murmured. “And I,” she returned, smiling slyly, “have my secrets.” He drew back. “Oh? And will you share?” “We five,” she said with a nod, “are about to be six.” He looked at her face, then looked at her belly. “Are you sure?” “As sure as I was last time.” He took her hand and raised it to lips. “This one will be a girl.” “That’s what you said last time.” “I know, but—” “And the time before.” “All the more reason for the odds to favor me this time.” She shook her head. “I’m glad you’re not a gambler.” He smiled at that. “Let’s not tell anyone yet.” “I think a few people already suspect,” Sophie admitted. “I want to see how long it takes that Whistledown woman to figure it out,” Benedict said. “Are you serious?” “The blasted woman knew about Charles, and she knew about Alexander, and she knew about William.” Sophie smiled as she let him pull her into the shadows. “Do you realize that I have been mentioned in Whistledown two hundred and thirty-two times?” That stopped him cold. “You’ve been counting?” “Two hundred and thirty-three if you include the time after the masquerade.” “I can’t believe you’ve been counting.” She gave him a nonchalant shrug. “It’s exciting to be mentioned.” Benedict thought it was a bloody nuisance to be mentioned, but he wasn’t about to spoil her delight, so instead he just said, “At least she always writes nice things about you. If she didn’t, I might have to hunt her down and run her out of the country.” Sophie couldn’t help but smile. “Oh, please. I hardly think you could discover her identity when no one else in the ton has managed it.” He raised one arrogant brow. “That doesn’t sound like wifely devotion and confidence to me.” She pretended to examine her glove. “You needn’t expend the energy. She’s obviously very good at what she does.” “Well, she won’t know about Violet,” Benedict vowed. “At least not until it’s obvious to the world.” “Violet?” Sophie asked softly. “It’s time my mother had a grandchild named after her, don’t you think?” Sophie leaned against him, letting her cheek rest against the crisp linen of his shirt. “I think Violet is a lovely name,” she murmured, nestling deeper into the shelter of his arms. “I just hope it’s a girl. Because if it’s a boy, he’s never going to forgive us . . .

At the same moment the ground gave way, and with a cry she fell out of the wood. Light and beauty enveloped her. She had fallen on to a little open terrace, which was covered with violets from end to end. “Courage!” cried her companion, now standing some six feet above. “Courage and love.” She did not answer. From her feet the ground sloped sharply into view, and violets ran down in rivulets and streams and cataracts, irrigating the hillside with blue, eddying round the tree stems, collecting into pools in the hollows, covering the grass with spots of azure foam. But never again were they in such profusion; this terrace was the well-head, the primal source whence beauty gushed out to water the earth. Standing at its brink, like a swimmer who prepares, was the good man. But he was not the good man that she had expected, and he was alone. George had turned at the sound of her arrival. For a moment he contemplated her, as one who had fallen out of heaven. He saw radiant joy in her face, he saw the flowers beat against her dress in blue waves. The bushes above them closed. He stepped quickly forward and kissed her.

When we came back to Paris it was clear and cold and lovely. The city had accommodated itself to winter, there was good wood for sale at the wood and coal place across our street, and there were braziers outside of many of the good cafés so that you could keep warm on the terraces. Our own apartment was warm and cheerful. We burned boulets which were molded, egg-shaped lumps of coal dust, on the wood fire, and on the streets the winter light was beautiful. Now you were accustomed to see the bare trees against the sky and you walked on the fresh-washed gravel paths through the Luxembourg gardens in the clear sharp wind. The trees were beautiful without their leaves when you were reconciled to them, and the winter winds blew across the surfaces of the ponds and the fountains were blowing in the bright light. All the distances were short now since we had been in the mountains. Because of the change in altitude I did not notice the grade of the hills except with pleasure, and the climb up to the top floor of the hotel where I worked, in a room that looked across all the roofs and the chimneys of the high hill of the quarter, was a pleasure. The fireplace drew well in the room and it was warm and pleasant to work.

Desdemona had always loved her brother as only a sister growing up on a mountain could love a brother: he was the whole entertainment, her best friend and confidant, her co-discoverer of short cuts and monks' cells. Early on, the emotional sympathy she'd felt with Lefty had been so absolute that she'd sometimes forgotten that they were separate people. As kids they'd scrabbled down the terraced mountainside like a four-legged, two-headed creature. She was accustomed to their Siamese shadow springing up against the whitewashed house at evening, and whenever she encountered her solitary outline, it seemed cut in half.

Then she revived him with an ardor and skill he could not have imagined in the meager pleasures of his solitary lovemaking, and without glory deprived him of his virginity. He was fifty-two years old and she was twenty-three, but age was the least pernicious of the differences between them. They continued to make hurried, heartless siesta love in the evangelical shade of the orange trees. The madwomen encouraged them from the terraces with indecent songs, and celebrated their triumphs with stadium ovations. Before the Marquis was aware of the dangers that pursued him, Bernarda woke him from his stupor with the news that she was in the second month of pregnancy.

The two men were slowly pacing the terrace in front of Dr. Raymond’s house. The sun still hung above the western mountain-line, but it shone with a dull red glow that cast no shadows, and all the air was quiet; a sweet breath came from the great wood on the hillside above, and with it, at intervals, the soft murmuring call of the wild doves. Below, in the long lovely valley, the river wound in and out between the lonely hills, and, as the sun hovered and vanished into the west, a faint mist, pure white, began to rise from the hills. Dr. Raymond turned sharply to his friend. “Safe? Of course it is. In itself the operation is a perfectly simple one; any surgeon could do it.

What about you, Mr. Shaw?" she asked. "Are your affections engaged by someone back home?" He shook his head at once. "I'm afraid that I share McKenna's rather skeptical view of the benefits of marriage." "I think you will fall in love someday." "Doubtful. I'm afraid that particular emotion is unknown to me..." Suddenly his voice faded into silence. He set his cup down as he stared off into the distance with sudden alertness. "Mr. Shaw?" As Aline followed his gaze, she realized what he had seen- Livia, wearing a pastel flower-printed walking dress as she headed to one of the forest trails leading away from the manor. A straw bonnet adorned with a sprig of fresh daisies swung from her fingers as she held it by the ribbons. Gideon Shaw stood so quickly that his chair threatened to topple backward. "Pardon," he said to Aline, tossing his napkin to the table. "The figment of my imagination has reappeared- and I'm going to catch her." "Of course," Aline said, struggling not to laugh. "Good luck, Mr. Shaw." "Thanks." He was gone in a flash, descending one side of the U-shaped stone staircase with the ease of a cat. Once he reached the terraced gardens, he cut across the lawn with long, ground-eating strides, just short of breaking into a run. Standing to better her view of his progress, Aline couldn't suppress a mocking grin. "Why, Mr. Shaw... I thought there was nothing in life you wanted badly enough to chase after it.

Kami Castillo My Books Browse ▾ Community ▾ All down the stone steps on either side were periwinkles in full flower, and she could now see what it was that had caught at her the night before and brushed, wet and scented, across her face. It was wistaria. Wistaria and sunshine . . . she remembered the advertisement. Here indeed were both in profusion. The wistaria was tumbling over itself in its excess of life, its prodigality of flowering; and where the pergola ended the sun blazed on scarlet geraniums, bushes of them, and nasturtiums in great heaps, and marigolds so brilliant that they seemed to be burning, and red and pink snapdragons, all outdoing each other in bright, fierce colour. The ground behind these flaming things dropped away in terraces to the sea, each terrace a little orchard, where among the olives grew vines on trellises, and fig-trees, and peach-trees, and cherry-trees. The cherry-trees and peach-trees were in blossom--lovely showers of white and deep rose-colour among the trembling delicacy of the olives; the fig-leaves were just big enough to smell of figs, the vine-buds were only beginning to show. And beneath these trees were groups of blue and purple irises, and bushes of lavender, and grey, sharp cactuses, and the grass was thick with dandelions and daisies, and right down at the bottom was the sea. Colour seemed flung down anyhow, anywhere; every sort of colour piled up in heaps, pouring along in rivers....

For know you, that your gold and marble city of wonder is only the sum of what you have seen and loved in youth . . . the glory of Boston’s hillside roofs and western windows aflame with sunset; of the flower-fragrant Common and the great dome on the hill and the tangle of gables and chimneys in the violet valley where the many-bridged Charles flows drowsily . . . this loveliness, moulded, crystallised, and polished by years of memory and dreaming, is your terraced wonder of elusive sunsets; and to find that marble parapet with curious urns and carven rail, and descend at last those endless balustraded steps to the city of broad squares and prismatic fountains, you need only to turn back to the thoughts and visions of your wistful boyhood.

Picture to yourself all the kings’ palaces you ever saw, set side by side and piled on one another. That will be a little house, beside the House of the Ax. It was a palace within whose bounds you could have set a town. It crowned the ridge and clung to its downward slopes, terrace after terrace, tier after tier of painted columns, deep glowing red, tapering in toward the base, and ringed at head and foot with that dark brilliant blue the Cretans love. Behind them in the noonday shadow were porticoes and balconies gay with pictured walls, which glowed in the shade like beds of flowers. The tops of tall cypresses hardly showed above the roofs of the courts they grew in. Over the highest roof-edge, sharp-cut against the deep-blue Cretan sky, a mighty pair of horns reared toward heaven.

She pushed me towards the open window. I could see the terrace below me gray and indistinct in the white wall of fog. “Look down there,” she said. “It’s easy, isn’t it? Why don’t you jump? It wouldn’t hurt, not to break your neck. It’s a quick, kind way. It’s not like drowning. Why don’t you try it? Why don’t you go?” The fog filled the open window, damp and clammy, it stung my eyes, it clung to my nostrils. I held onto the windowsill with my hands. “Don’t be afraid,” said Mrs. Danvers. “I won’t push you. I won’t stand by you. You can jump of your own accord. What’s the use of your staying here at Manderley? You’re not happy. Mr. de Winter doesn’t love you. There’s not much for you to live for, is there? Why don’t you jump now and have done with it? Then you won’t be unhappy anymore.

No sooner would such a temptation present itself than I would smother it. The effect was of snuffing out a candle, two candles, a row of twenty, until the lens pulled back to reveal an entire votive stand exhaling a hundred thin lines of smoke as a terraced offering before the shrine. In this religion hidden lights had been declared superior to those that glared. Somewhere I was storing up merit, accumulating the credit I'd need to buy, one day, the salvation I longed for. Until then (and it was a reckoning that could be forestalled indefinitely, that I preferred putting off) I'd live in that happiest of all conditions: the long but seemingly prosperous courtship. It was a series of tests, ever more arduous, even perverse. For instance, I was required to deny my love in order to prove it.

Police have announced the untimely and gruesome death of local poet and Leeds historian Michael Dooley. Mr. Dooley’s piteous remains were found in the pond of Langford Primary School, in the lunch bags of four children who attend the self-same school, in the confessional at Leeds Catholic Church, in the lanterns that line the catwalk that stretches between McCauliffe Park and Tremens Terrace, in a collection of small metal lock-boxes owned by local box collector Ruth Swaddleston, and wound around the trunks of ancient trees in the loneliest reaches of Look Park. Two toes each were found in stewpots in the kitchens of Mary Lowerton, Richard Frogtoucher, Susan Diggle, Nathaniel Ronstadt, and Robert Grain-Toggle. The poor man’s face was found hanging from a coat-hanger of local doctor Elias Stonehearse. It expected that more of Mr. Dooley will turn up when, once again, spring thaws the rivers and roads of our lovely city.

And if she were an honest woman, which she was known to be on occasion, she could readily admit that hearing about his escapades had bothered her on so many levels. And, yes, it affected how she looked at him, how she thought of him. But not, unfortunately, how she felt about him. Which either made her very generous, or very stupid. She was also very hungry, despite the ache in her head. So, she climbed out of bed, rang for Heather, and set about getting ready for the day. She told her maid to tell Cook that she would like to take breakfast out on the terrace since it was such a lovely day and she doubted anyone would join her. Her mother had no doubt eaten long ago, and Grey was probably passed out somewhere if his condition of last night had worsened after her departure. She rather fancied him drinking himself blind after she made her grand exit. Not that she wanted him to be miserable-she simply wanted to think that her words and opinion mattered.

Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of honourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleries from which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life hung ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight. A moment, and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears. Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away. Chapter 6 — Hundreds of People The quiet lodgings of Doctor Manette were in a quiet street-corner not far from Soho-square. On the afternoon of a certain fine Sunday when the waves of four months had roiled over the trial for treason, and carried

The Praying Mantis Visits A Penthouse The praying Mantis with its length of straw Out of nowhere's forehead born full armed Engaged the century at my terrace door. Focused at inches the dinosaur insect sends Broadsides of epic stillness at my eye, Above the deafening projects of the age. My love, who fears the thunder of its poise, Has seen it and cries out. The clouds like curls Fall in my faith as I seize a stick to stop This Martian raid distilled to a straw with legs, To wisps of prowess. Bristling with motionlessness The Mantis prays to the Stick twice armed with Man. I strike, the stick whistles, shearing off two legs Which run off by themselves beneath some boards. The Mantis spreads out tints of batlike wing, The many colored pennants of its blood, And hugs my weapon; the frantic greens come out, the reds and yellows blurt out from the straw, All sinews doubtless screaming insect death. Against the railing's edge I knock the stick Sending that gay mad body into the gulf. Such noisy trappings in defeat wake doubts. I search my mind for possible wounds and feel The victim's body heavy on the victor's heart.

Years later I saw a film - poignantly sad, and for me unbearably so - about a scientist who had invented a kind of total sense recorder, not just video but audio and smellio and touchio and the rest, which he set to play every afternoon in a given place a given time, for as long as the mechanism lasted. The scene he projected was that of a dozen or so young couples dancing on a terrace in the same holiday house, on the same island, where the recorder itself was kept. Then this young man comes across it while it is playing and at first is convinced he is watching a real occurrence: he sees this beautiful girl, in her slinky 1930s outfit, dancing and laughing and chattering with her friends, and he falls in love with her on the spot. Second day, same time around, he comes to the island at a slightly different time so he sees a slightly different excerpt, and still doesn't twig and falls deeper in love. And so on and so forth for various days until he happens on a duplicate bit and realises something is wrong. But by then, of course, he is irretrievably hooked. So what does he do? He digs out the machine, fiddles with its insides until he has grasped its workings, and then sets it up in recording mode and records himself into the scene in a desperate last-ditch attempt to join the dancers. Which works, and there he stays: trapped there amongst them in a virtual dimension, forever young, forever re-enacting the same little loop of life, over and over.

Probably, we should all hate you,” he was saying to Cade. “Illinois played against Northwestern that year for our homecoming, and you totally slaughtered us—” He broke off at the sound of a knock on the interior door to the suite. A woman in her early twenties, dressed in a skirt and a black T-shirt with “Sterling Restaurants” in red letters, walked into the suite pushing a three-tiered dessert cart. “Sweet Jesus, it’s here,” Charlie whispered reverently. Brooke fought back a smile. The dessert cart was something Sterling Restaurants had introduced a year ago, as a perk for all of the skyboxes and luxury suites at the sports arenas they collaborated with. Needless to say, it had been a huge success. Four kinds of cake (chocolate with toffee glaze, carrot cake, traditional cheesecake, and a pineapple-raspberry tart), three types of cookies (chocolate chip, M&M, and oatmeal raisin), blond brownies, dark chocolate brownies, lemon squares, peach cobbler, four kinds of dessert liquors, taffy apples, and, on the third tier, a make-your-own sundae bar with all the fixings. “Wow. That is some spread,” Vaughn said, wide-eyed. Simultaneously, the men sprang forward, bulldozed their way through the suite door, and attacked the cart like a pack of starving Survivor contestants. All except for one. Cade stayed right there, on the terrace. He leaned back against the railing, stretching out his tall, broad-shouldered frame. “Whew. I thought they’d never leave

The summer king customarily delivers a brief poem or statement before he convenes the special sessions. Enki gives them quite a bit more than that. “In the verde,” says Enki, as serious as I’ve ever seen him, “we love the storms. Sometimes, when we see one come in, the blocos will set up in the terraces and play until the rain drives us inside.” He pauses here, as though considering his next words, though I can tell he’s just savoring the moment. My last present from the verde must have gone through. Everyone in the audience shuffles uncomfortably. Nostrils flair, discreet coughs echo through the chamber. Some look at Enki, others at one another or the doorways. Enki takes a deep breath, as though he doesn’t notice a thing. “We have a saying,” he says as murmurs from his audience rise to a wave, “you can’t smell the catinga until it comes back home.” In the background, I can just make out several guards hurrying through the doors. Enki surveys his work and smiles, a sun breaking through clouds. “I hereby convene parliament.” As he saunters back to his seat, Auntie Isa rushes the podium with a handkerchief covering her nose and murder in her eyes. People stand up and hurry to the doors. They don’t know the smell will be even worse in the hallway. Our transport pods are all connected to the ventilation system. It’s meant to help refresh the air supply in the tunnels, but it can go the other direction. It can carry the fetid stink of the verde straight to the noses of people who pretend it doesn’t exist.

Consider a world in which cause and effect are erratic. Sometimes the first precedes the second, sometimes the second the first. Or perhaps cause lies forever in the past while effect in the future, but future and past are entwined. On the terrace of the Bundesterrasse is a striking view: the river Aare below and the Bernese Alps above. A man stands there just now, absently emptying his pockets and weeping. Without reason, his friends have abandoned him. No one calls any more, no one meets him for supper or beer at the tavern, no one invites him to their home. For twenty years he has been the ideal friend to his friends, generous, interested, soft-spoken, affectionate. What could have happened? A week from this moment on the terrace, the same man begins acting the goat, insulting everyone, wearing smelly clothes, stingy with money, allowing no one to come to his apartment on Laupenstrasse. Which was cause and which effect, which future and which past? In Zürich, strict laws have recently been approved by the Council. Pistols may not be sold to the public. Banks and trading houses must be audited. All visitors, whether entering Zürich by boat on the river Limmat or by rail on the Selnau line, must be searched for contraband. The civil military is doubled. One month after the crackdown, Zürich is ripped by the worst crimes in its history. In daylight, people are murdered in the Weinplatz, paintings are stolen from the Kunsthaus, liquor is drunk in the pews of the Münsterhof. Are these criminal acts not misplaced in time? Or perhaps the new laws were action rather than reaction? A young woman sits near a fountain in the Botanischer Garten. She comes here every Sunday to smell the white double violets, the musk rose, the matted pink gillyflowers. Suddenly, her heart soars, she blushes, she paces anxiously, she becomes happy for no reason. Days later, she meets a young man and is smitten with love. Are the two events not connected? But by what bizarre connection, by what twist in time, by what reversed logic? In this acausal world, scientists are helpless. Their predictions become postdictions. Their equations become justifications, their logic, illogic. Scientists turn reckless and mutter like gamblers who cannot stop betting. Scientists are buffoons, not because they are rational but because the cosmos is irrational. Or perhaps it is not because the cosmos is irrational but because they are rational. Who can say which, in an acausal world? In this world, artists are joyous. Unpredictability is the life of their paintings, their music, their novels. They delight in events not forecasted, happenings without explanation, retrospective. Most people have learned how to live in the moment. The argument goes that if the past has uncertain effect on the present, there is no need to dwell on the past. And if the present has little effect on the future, present actions need not be weighed for their consequence. Rather, each act is an island in time, to be judged on its own. Families comfort a dying uncle not because of a likely inheritance, but because he is loved at that moment. Employees are hired not because of their résumés, but because of their good sense in interviews. Clerks trampled by their bosses fight back at each insult, with no fear for their future. It is a world of impulse. It is a world of sincerity. It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning, each touch has no past or no future, each kiss is a kiss of immediacy.

It could be said that Borluut was in love with the town. But we only have one heart for all our loves, consequently his love was somewhat like the affection one feels for a woman, the devotion one entertains for a work of art, for a religion. He loved Bruges for its beauty and, like a lover, he would have loved it the more, the more beautiful it was. His passion had nothing to do with the local patriotism which unites those living in a town through habits, shared tastes, alliances, parochial pride. On the contrary, Borluut was almost solitary, kept himself apart, mingled little with the slow-witted inhabitants. Even out in the streets he scarcely saw the passers-by. As a solitary wanderer, he began to favour the canals, the weeping trees, the tunnel bridges, the bells he could sense in the air, the old walls of the old districts. Instead of living beings, his interest focused on things. The town took on a personality, became almost human. He loved It, wished to embellish it, to adorn its beauty, a beauty mysterious in its sadness. And, above all, so unostentatious. Other towns are showy, amassing palaces, terraced gardens, fine geometrical monuments. Here everything was muted, nuanced. Storiated architecture, facades like reliquaries, stepped gables, trefoil doors and windows, ridges crowned with finials, mouldings, gargoyles, bas-reliefs - incessant surprises making the town into a kind of complex landscape of stone. It was a mixture of Gothic and Renaissance, that sinuous transition which suddenly draws out forms that are too rigid and too bare in supple, flowing lines. It was if an unexpected spring had sprouted on the walls, as if they had been transubstantiated by a dream - all at once there were faces and bunches of flowers on them. This blossoming on the facades had lasted until the present, blackened by the ravages of time, abiding but already blurred.

She kept on looking at me sitting on a chair in her terrace. And I was fascinated by the look in her eyes!

Poem For Laura" Now come the bright prophets across my life. The solemn fl esh, the miracles, and the pain. Across the simple meadows of my heart, splendidly you come promising sorrow. And knowing, I bless your coming with trees of love, singing, singing even to the night. The princely mornings will fail when you go, and night will come like animals. Yet I open my cautious life and sing thanksgiving of yes, oh yes to love, even while the tireless crows of pain and the diligent fever-ticks of sorrow are somehow privileged in my flowering heart. For you fashion such rivers in my soon unable heart as are focused to paradise by the crippling night. Such terraced waters as are cheap at only sorrow. And to have cargoes of hyacinths sail once more my life I will freely undertake any debt of pain. I will break these hands for tokens, oh my love.

Theme It's a sunny weekday in early May and after a ham sandwich and a cold bottle of beer on the brick terrace, I am consumed by the wish to add something to one of the ancient themes– youth dancing with his eyes closed, for example, in the shadows of corruption and death, or the rise and fall of illustrious men strapped to the turning wheel of mischance and disaster. There is a slight breeze, just enough to bend the yellow tulips on their stems, but that hardly helps me echo the longing for immortality despite the roaring juggernaut of time, or the painful motif of Nature's cyclial return versus man's blind rush to the grave. I could loosen my shirt and lie down in the soft grass, sweet now after its first cutting, but that would not produce a record of the pursuit of the moth of eternal beauty or the despondency that attends the eventual dribble of the once gurgling fountain of creativity. So, as far as great topics go, that seems to leave only the fall from exuberant maturity into sudden, headlong decline– a subject that fills me with silence and leaves me with no choice but to spend the rest of the day sniffing the jasmine vine and surrendering to the ivory goverance of the piano by picking out with my index finger the melody notes of "Easy to Love," a song in which Cole Porter expresses, with put-on nonchalance, the hopelessness of a love brimming with desire and a hunger for affection, but met only and always with frosty disregard.

Thereafter, they met up at off times, after practices or on the terrace of the pavilion when nightly feasts were breaking up, in what Aerander gradually recognized as a romance, though he wondered at times if it was possible for him to have such luck or, rather, if he was misinterpreting things; it was so hard to tell with boys. He accepted Calyiches' ring in a soft and private moment, nuzzling behind a garden trellis; it came as naturally as laying his head on Calyiches' shoulder. They were bonded. Two boys in love.

Eww!” Kendra says, shuddering and clamping her hands on her hair, as if a swarm of bats is about to fly in and try to nest there. “I hate bats!” “I bet you’ve never even seen a bat,” Kelly says pragmatically. “Anyway, they don’t want us. They want the mosquitos. You heard her.” “Come outside!” Luca calls over his shoulder. “It’s very lovely out here!” Kelly and Paige need no encouragement, and both shoot out onto the terrace. Kelly wants to watch the bats; Paige wants to try to pry Luca from Elisa, as far as I can make out. “The bats sleep in the cipressi,” Luca explains, his voice carrying clearly in the still night air. “Because it is dark in there, and they like the dark. And in Italy, we have the cipressi always by the cimiteri--” “Cemeteries,” Elisa translates, still clinging proprietorially to his arm. “So people think, oh, bats love the cimiteri, they are very Gotici.” “Gothic,” Elisa prompts. “Got-tic,” Luca attempts. “But really, the bats like the cipressi. They are not really Gotici. They just like the dark inside.” “Well, that’s a pretty good definition of Gothic,” Kelly observes, and Luca turns to her. I step back, farther inside the salon. Watching Luca surrounded by girls, all vying for his attention, Elisa attached to him like a nasty growth that will need extensive surgery to remove, is not my idea of a fun time.

disappearing around a bend into the dusk. She’ll walk to Marbella, the humour she’s in, Valerie thought glumly, making her way back up the garden to the terracotta terrace. She would have liked to pour herself a big glass of fruity red wine and get smashed but she wouldn’t drink knowing that her granddaughter was asleep inside, and Briony was scorching along the beach in a temper, having given Valerie no indication as to what time she’d be back. That damn letter. She’d forgotten all about it. Tessa had given it to Valerie’s mother, Carmel, some time after

he stops to show me the label. ‘This is one of my favourite local wines: Costa d’Amalfi Tramonti Bianco. Tenuta San Francesco grow their wines on the steep terraced hills in Tramonti, in the heart of the Amalfi Coast. Try it – I bought this specially for us to enjoy tonight.’ Nico passes me a glass and I pretend to know

love you, too, Dan. And I’m not so much of a cop that you can’t trust me with anything.

With its glass walls, you can enjoy the view even when it’s raining. It has a huge outdoor terrace with a panoramic view across the city, but the big draw is that you are up high, directly in front of the ‘cricket cage’ balustrade of Brunelleschi’s dome. Just between you and me, the Folco Portinari–Dante connection had me sold before I even arrived. It could have had a view of the men’s toilets and I still would have been thrilled, just because I love the Alighieri-Portinari story! (See Chapter 23: A Walk With Dante.) My first time here was with the city archivist I told you about in the chapter on the Duomo, so I associate this place with cool local 30-somethings with fascinating jobs in the city and endless stories about Florence, dating back to Julius Caesar. Caffeteria della Oblate is a little tricky to find, but that means the tourist crowd can’t find it either, so walking around in circles trying to get here is worth it. And of course, there’s that view… Address: Via dell’ Oriuolo, 26

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We lay next to each other on the terrace watching the sky with her hand holding mine, comforting me. The next morning, she had gone before dawn.

On cloudless mornings, when she is gardening, she is sometimes seized by the desire to “leave everything and go away,” she told me. She doesn’t want to see a computer or stove. She feels she has too many clothes and wants to give them to others. One morning, she was on her terrace and felt herself melting. “I had an immense urge to jump off and mingle with the sky,” she said. “It is a very expansive, loving feeling. In that space, you can allow anything to come in and occupy you. The only thought that finally drew me back was: I have a daughter. And I am not going to do to her what my mom did.

- What are you doing, my Love? - I set fire to the North. - I'm the dust only. One of the hardest missions of mine, from now and from my past, and Jinnie, when we had call the spaceship to deal with the awareness of Earth. Mission completed. Then I had to face a death of my future husband from the Golden Terraces. Me, who sent the capsules with the cosmic astronauts. I never told my Mother about.

Once I was lucky enough to rent an apartment just around the way from the Casino, and I pretended I lived there, making my coffee in the caffettiera, drinking it on my terrace overlooking the red roofs.

I really don’t dance, Davis, but thank you for the offer.” “I don’t actually know the steps, Miss Millie, but it seems a shame that you and Miss Plum are looking so lovely tonight, but haven’t been given the opportunity to waltz.” “It’s a shame indeed.” Millie’s breath left her in a split second as Everett strolled across the terrace, smiling her way and looking remarkably handsome, at least to her, even though his face was still a bit of a disaster. Coming to a stop right in front of her, he nodded to Davis. “Perhaps you could offer Miss Plum a dance instead?” Davis’s eyes widened. He leaned closer to Everett and lowered his voice. “Miss Plum scares me, Mr. Mulberry. That’s why I asked Miss Millie. She’s safer.” “I’m completely safe, Davis,” Lucetta said with a huff before she took the poor man by the arm and grabbed hold of his other hand. “Allow me to teach you the basic steps of the waltz.” With Davis turning bright red, Lucetta sent Millie a wink and then spun Davis around, not giving the man an opportunity to refuse her demand of a waltz. “That’ll be something he’ll be able to talk about for years,” Millie said, catching Everett’s eye, which immediately had all the breath leaving her again. To her confusion, Everett frowned. “I must beg your pardon, Millie. I rather rudely stepped in between you and Davis. It has not escaped my notice that he seems a little . . . keen to be around you, and . . . if you’re, ah, keen to be around him, I won’t stand in your way.” Millie scrunched up her nose. “Davis has been secretly seeing one of the maids, Ann, for over a year now, so any keenness on his part has probably just been a ruse to hide that relationship. But don’t go letting anyone know about that relationship, and don’t even think about letting either Ann or Davis go from their positions.” “Since you told me you’re planning to tell Harriet about Davis and his tailoring skills, I have a feeling he won’t be in my employ long, but of course I won’t let him or Ann go.” “Wonderful, and . . . thank you for that.” “You’re welcome, and since that’s settled . . . shall we waltz?” “I should warn you that what we’re about to do will not remotely be considered a waltz, not given my two left feet.” “We’ll see about that.” Laughter rumbled in Everett’s chest but the rumbling died a sudden death when he pulled her close, his breath fanning her face. “Did I tell you how lovely you look tonight?” “I don’t believe so,” Millie managed to whisper. “Well, now you know, and . . . we’re waltzing.” Millie

It was true, of course, there was an abnormal level of narcissism in our society, but it did not do, he told himself, to spend too much time going on about it. Society changed. Narcissism was about love, ultimately, even if only love of self. And that was better than hate. By and large, Hate, of all the tempting gods, was the unhappiest today. He had his recruits, naturally, but they were relatively few, and vilified. Did it matter if young men thought of fashion and hair gel when, not all that many years ago, their thoughts had tended to turn to war and flags and the grim partisanship of the football terrace?

Hester Landon, independent, invincible, indestructible. Who might have died after a terrible fall, if not for a neighbor—and her own indefatigable will. Now she reigned in a suite of rooms in his parents’ home while she recovered from her injuries. There she’d stay until deemed strong enough to come back to Bluff House—or if his parents had their way, there she would stay, period. He wanted to think of her back here, in the house she loved, sitting out on the terrace with her evening martini, looking out at the ocean. Or puttering in her garden, maybe setting up her easel to paint. He wanted to think of her vital and tough, not helpless and broken on the floor while he’d been pouring a second cup

Manifesto" I know that dying is how we escape the rest of our lives. I think that trees send us a message: do not believe you are lucky. The skins of apples and the peeler will marry; it's simply a question of when. Believe in mourning and carrion birds. Look how their fleshy treasures dissolve in the sun before their very eyes. To love something you must have considered what it means to do without. You must have thought about it—the coefficient of the body is another body—but do not forget that there are people who are willing to staple your palm to your chest. Know there are places it isn't wise to go. Begin again if you must: there are ways to make up for what you have been before, the dust in the corners that collects you. Sympathy is overrated. Rethink how lack becomes everyone's master, drives us into town and spends our money. Quiet: the trees are napping. Water meets itself again. We reach for the days that precede us and the world keeps us from knowing too much. The body loves music, the abandoned road of it; each day a peel lengthens in the shadow of blossoms, fabric weaves itself into light. Pay attention to the patterns. They repeat— terraces erode, groves lie fallow— order is cognate of joy.

He could become again the man who had once crossed a Surrey park at dusk in his best suit, swaggering on the promise of life, who had entered the house and with the clarity of passion made love to Cecilia—no, let him rescue the word from the corporals, they had fucked while others sipped their cocktails on the terrace. The story could resume, the one that he had been planning on that evening walk.

Once upon a time, oh, it seems a long while ago now, I dreamed of a natural haven, of paradise winking down upon a tranquil blue sea. I had pictured friends and family at ease in my Garden of Eden, sharing, and at peace, a place where artists worked and lovers loved. But it had been a vague sketch, a dream without lines between the dots, until I met Michel. Then it began to gain wattage, to take on a shape, develop light and shade, rhythm, sinew. Together we have breathed life into those blurred images. Together we have discovered how to live a new life. Even more, what has blossomed out of those dreams surpasses any bricks or mortar, or even the loveliest of pearly terraced olive groves. Our paradise lies in the depth of our love. What geographical points our traveling takes us no longer matters.... We began this enterprise on a shoestring. Love and tenacity have held it together. We can do it again if we have to. And in the discovery of all this, I have shed skins—driving ambition, materialism, a need to control my life. I am learning to let go and am empowered. My heart has found heart.

Stars, Sam. We mucked it. I mean, I mucked it. And not just for us. Yet I recall pure joy: your bike hot between my legs, your arms locked ’round my waist. I recall poor Second’s chiding before I blinked it off. I recall laughter and all of those soldiers from someone else’s war standing on that terrace singing yet another Terran victory rag. You told me later that you didn’t know I’d make a run at the canyon wall ’til I torqued it, thumbing your bike’s twin throttles hard enough to singe our legs as the acceleration turned into an increasing roar. By the time we hit fifty, I couldn’t even hear you yelling at me to stop over the wind. I didn’t think you were serious. We’d climbed that mesa in daylight when we were younger, smaller, bendier. We’d done it with safety rails and belts, with hoverbikes that floated back down like carnival balloons when we failed; we’d done it with our parents cheering and a Grass Priest standing watch in case we needed healing. That run should’ve been a lark, Sam. But the night was dark as space, and our planet has no moon. You grabbed hard as I pulled the yoke. The engines screamed. I meant to pull up, climb that mesa vertically—see if we could rocket to the top before I gunned again like we’d done a hundred times as kids. But I timed it too late. I saw the mesa wall in our headlamps, and then everything went black. The next thing I recall is waking up on the Unity ship Ascendant with Ken’ri Mureen of Glos smiling down at me. Those big round eyes in her lovely, lying face. I thought I’d surely killed you, Sam, but Mureen swore you were fine. Mureen swore removing my Second was only temporary—swore surgery would fix the soup the crash had made of my brain. She made me sign forms, and then Ma came in with pastries. I still didn’t believe you’d made it out, but Ma swore it too. You know the gist after that—mostly—but there’s a lot I never told—

This is the other way,” he said, as he reached a terrace where he was caught in a honey-colored tractor beam of light. Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.

One early morning last week, I walked through a terraced garden over the ocean, peeling a blood orange. It was a Taroco orange, or arancia rossa, brought from Sicily many years ago, its skin thin with a hint of blush, its flesh the color of a setting sun, its sweetness beyond that of any other orange." Pursing his lips in remembrance, he went on, his voice rich with reverence and wonder. "The salt air on my lips, combined with the sweet juice, inspired this new effort. Try it for me. I'd love to know what you think." Celina brought the dark chocolate-enrobed delicacy to her nose and inhaled, reveling in the juxtaposition of aromas. Biting into it, a complexity of flavors melted across her tongue. The intense aroma of blood orange with its singular sweetness... a bitter edge of dark chocolate with hints of tropical earthiness... a tart explosion of sea salt that intensified every flavor.

My definition of emotional torture is being married to someone for twenty years, living separate lives. The past ten years have been empty, with no intimacy, separate rooms, very little conversation, and not sharing dreams. We are strangers to each other and pass each other in the kitchen, or on the terrace, When necessary, we attend social functions as a couple, but that ends at the end of each event. Thank God we no longer have to socialize as we did in the first ten years we were married

So it is: we have nothing to love about this dawning day, nothing at home, nothing outside, and yet we don’t want to die and we can’t live off of hatred. So we must love something, even it is a star. Because the object of love doesn’t matter in the slightest; love is all. The proof of its fertility: we leave the terrace no longer afraid of the destitution on our heels; we leave full of the will to live, even starving, even louse-ridden, under this sky which, for its part, never asks the poor why they are not rich, too.

I hope that one day, I can again believe in you and sing a song for you while holding you in my arms near the terraced rice fields that glow golden in the late afternoon light.

Prinny has been an unpopular monarch for 250 years. He spent fortunes on palaces and parks at a time when England needed all the money it could raise to finance the Napoleonic War. Well, the Napoleonic War was followed by the Crimean War and the Boer War and the First World War and the Second World War and they're all long gone. The Pavilion at Brighton and Windsor Castle and Regent Street and Carlton House Terrace and Regent's Park and the Nash Terraces are all still here. Blessings on your far-sighted spendthrift head, Prinny.

overloaded horses bent backwards by the chisel of the mason who once sculpted an eternal now on the brow of the wingless archangel, time-deformed cherubim and the false protests, overweight bowels fallen from the barracks of the pink house carved with grey rain unfallen, never creaking, never opening door, with the mouth wide, darkened and extinguished like a burning boat floating in a voiceless sea, bottle of rum down threadbare socks, singing from pavement to pavement, bright iridescent flame, "Oh, my Annie, my heart is sore!", slept chin on the curb of the last star, the lintel illuminated the forgotten light cast to a different plane, ah the wick of a celestial candle. The piling up of pigeons, tram lines, the pickpocket boys, the melancholy silver, an ode to Plotinus, the rattle of cattle, the goat in the woods, and the retreat night in the railroad houses, the ghosts of terraces, the wine shakes, the broken pencils, the drunk and wet rags, the eucalyptus and the sky. Impossible eyes, wide avenues, shirt sleeves, time receded, 'now close your eyes, this will not hurt a bit', the rose within the rose, dreaming pale under sheets such brilliance, highlighting unreality of a night that never comes. Toothless Cantineros stomp sad lullabies with sad old boots, turning from star to star, following the trail of the line, from dust, to dust, back to dust, out late, wrapped in a white blanket, top of the world, laughs upturned, belly rumbling by the butchers door, kissing the idol, tracing the balconies, long strings of flowers in the shape of a heart, love rolls and folds, from the Window to Window, afflicting seriousness from one too big and ever-charged soul, consolidating everything to nothing, of a song unsung, the sun soundlessly rising, reducing the majesty of heroic hearts and observing the sad night with watery eyes, everything present, abounding, horses frolic on the high hazy hills, a ships sails into the mist, a baby weeps for mother, windows open, lights behind curtains, the supple avenue swoons in the blissful banality, bells ringing for all yet to come forgotten, of bursting beauty bathing in every bright eternal now, counteract the charge, a last turn, what will it be, flowers by the gate, shoe less in the park, burn a hole in the missionary door, by the moonlit table, reading the decree of the Rose to the Resistance, holding the parchment, once a green tree, sticking out of the recital and the solitaire, unbuttoning her coat sitting for a portrait, uncorking a bottle, her eyes like lead, her loose blouse and petticoat, drying out briefs by the stone belfry and her hair in a photo long ago when, black as a night, a muddy river past the weeds, carrying the leaves, her coffee stained photo blowing down the street. Train by train, all goes slow, mist its the morning of lights, it is the day of the Bull, the fiesta of magic, the castanets never stop, the sound between the ringing of the bells, the long and muted silence of the distant sea, gypsy hands full of rosemary, every sweet, deep blue buckets for eyes, dawn comes, the Brahmanic splendour, sunlit gilt crown capped by clouds, brazen, illuminated, bright be dawn, golden avenues, its top to bottom, green to gold, but the sky and the plaza, blood red like the great bleeding out Bull, and if your quiet enough, you can hear the heart weeping.

Wambach's concerns raised questions about the impact that deaf signers could have on Project Nim, and perhaps inadvertently about how Terrace's study might compare with the work done by the Gardners in Nevada, who had expressly designed their experiments to include deaf signers. Simply having Falitz sign at the weekly meetings and interpret for Wambach in the discussions brought a new dimension to their work. Wambach was not particularly critical of Terrace, who was older and far more established than she, but she wanted the staff to have a better understanding of the world of deaf speakers—those who used ASL because they needed a language. Thanks to Wambach, the chimp project began attracting deaf volunteers (including one who is remembered for having love and hate tattooed on his knuckles), who formed a small subculture within Terrace's staff. In an attempt to bridge these two worlds, one night the deaf volunteers arranged to plug up the ears of the hearing staff and take them out to a restaurant for dinner. They were instructed to communicate exclusively in ASL from the moment the plugs were placed in their ears on the way to the restaurant, during the meal, and all the way back to Delafield. The hearing group found the experience to be a terrible struggle. But what made an indelible impression on Johnson was the way that everybody in the restaurant spoke really slowly and loudly to them, treating them as if they were all mentally incapacitated.

Once upon a time when I was young, I had a lovely boyfriend who bought me a hammock and hooked it up on my tiny and highly perilous roof terrace, where I spent many happy hours just rocking and reading, eating Quavers and reflecting on my lovely handsome boyfriend. Then (reader), I married him and we had a bunch of children and a dog and moved somewhere where it rains all the time, and I think the hammock is in storage. This, my friends, is apparently what’s known as “happy ever after.

I knew that day I would show you the world beyond that horizon, William. Let’s start there. We’ll go back to that terrace in Antibes. You can tell me your dreams and I’ll bring them to life for you.