Thoughts Wonder Good Morning Quotes

His hands lay flat on either side of him, his arms at his sides. He seemed barely to be breathing; she wasn't sure she was breathing herself. She slid her own hand across the bedsheet, just far enough that their fingers touched-so lightly that she would have probably hardly been aware of it had she been touching anyone but Jace; as it was, the nerve endings in her fingertips pricked softly, as if she were holding them over a low flame. She felt him tense beside her and then relax. He had shut his eyes, and his lashes cast fine shadows against the curve of his cheekbones. His mouth curled into a smile as if he sensed her watching him, and she wondered how he would look in the morning, with his hair messed and sleep circles under his eyes. Despite everything, the thought gave her a jolt of happiness. She laced her fingers through his. "Good night," she whispered. With their hands clasped like children in a fairy tale, she fell asleep beside him in the dark.

Later on, when they had all said “Good-bye” and “Thank-you” to Christopher Robin, Pooh and Piglet walked home thoughtfully together in the golden evening, and for a long time they were silent. “When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet at last, “what's the first thing you say to yourself?” “What's for breakfast?” said Pooh. “What do you say, Piglet?” “I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting to-day?” said Piglet. Pooh nodded thoughtfully. “It's the same thing,” he said.

It is the custom of every good mother after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things straight for next morning, repacking into their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day. If you could keep awake (but of course you can’t) you would see your own mother doing this, and you would find it very interesting to watch her. It is quite like tidying up drawers. You would see her on her knees, I expect, lingering humorously over some of your contents, wondering where on earth you had picked this thing up, making discoveries sweet and not so sweet, pressing this to her cheek as if it were as nice as a kitten, and hurriedly stowing that out of sight. When you wake in the morning, the naughtinesses and evil passions with which you went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom of your mind; and on the top, beautifully aired, are spread out prettier thoughts, ready for you to put on.

London The Institute Year of Our Lord 1878 “Mother, Father, my chwaer fach, It’s my seventeenth birthday today. I know that to write to you is to break the law, I know that I will likely tear this letter into pieces when it is finished. As I have done on all my birthdays past since I was twelve. But I write anyway, to commemorate the occasion - the way some make yearly pilgrimages to a grave, to remember the death of a loved one. For are we not dead to each other? I wonder if when you woke this morning you remembered that today, seventeen years ago, you had a son? I wonder if you think of me and imagine my life here in the Institute in London? I doubt you could imagine it. It is so very different from our house surrounded by mountains, and the great clear blue sky and the endless green. Here, everything is black and gray and brown, and the sunsets are painted in smoke and blood. I wonder if you worry that I am lonely or, as Mother always used to, that I am cold, that I have gone out into the rain again without a hat? No one here worries about those details. There are so many things that could kill us at any moment; catching a chill hardly seems important. I wonder if you knew that I could hear you that day you came for me, when I was twelve. I crawled under the bed to block out the sound of you crying my name, but I heard you. I heard mother call for her fach, her little one. I bit my hands until they bled but I did not come down. And, eventually, Charlotte convinced you to go away. I thought you might come again but you never did. Herondales are stubborn like that. I remember the great sighs of relief you would both give each time the Council came to ask me if I wished to join the Nephilim and leave my family, and each time I said no and I send them away. I wonder if you knew I was tempted by the idea of a life of glory, of fighting, of killing to protect as a man should. It is in our blood - the call to the seraph and the stele, to marks and to monsters. I wonder why you left the Nephilim, Father? I wonder why Mother chose not to Ascend and to become a Shadowhunter? Is it because you found them cruel or cold? I have no fathom side. Charlotte, especially, is kind to me, little knowing how much I do not deserve it. Henry is mad as a brush, but a good man. He would have made Ella laugh. There is little good to be said about Jessamine, but she is harmless. As little as there is good to say about her, there is as much good to say about Jem: He is the brother Father always thought I should have. Blood of my blood - though we are no relation. Though I might have lost everything else, at least I have gained one thing in his friendship. And we have a new addition to our household too. Her name is Tessa. A pretty name, is it not? When the clouds used to roll over the mountains from the ocean? That gray is the color of her eyes. And now I will tell you a terrible truth, since I never intend to send this letter. I came here to the Institute because I had nowhere else to go. I did not expect it to ever be home, but in the time I have been here I have discovered that I am a true Shadowhunter. In some way my blood tells me that this is what I was born to do.If only I had known before and gone with the Clave the first time they asked me, perhaps I could have saved Ella’s life. Perhaps I could have saved my own. Your Son, Will

Mrs. Darling first heard of Peter when she was tidying up her children's minds. It is the nightly custom of every good mother after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things straight for next morning, repacking into their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day. If you could keep awake (but of course you can't) you would see your own mother doing this and you would find it very interesting to watch. It's quite like tidying up drawers. You would see her on her knees, I expect, lingering humorously over some of your contents, wondering where on Earth you picked this thing up, making discoveries sweet and not so sweet, pressing this to her cheek, as if it were a nice kitten, and hurriedly stowing that out of sight. When you wake in the morning, the naughtiness and evil passions with which you went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom of your mind and on the top, beautifully aired, are spread out the prettier thoughts, ready for you to put on.

If from morning to night we just took care of one thing after another, thoroughly and completely and without accompanying thoughts, such as “I’m a good person for doing this” or “Isn’t it wonderful, that I can take care of everything?,” then that would be sufficient.

I looked for you on the Trident,” Ned said to them. “We were not there,” Ser Gerold answered. “Woe to the Usurper if we had been,” said Ser Oswell. “When King's Landing fell, Ser Jaime slew your king with a golden sword, and I wondered where you were.” “Far away,” Ser Gerold said, “or Aerys would yet sit the Iron Throne, and our false brother would burn in seven hells.” “I came down on Storm's End to lift the siege,” Ned told them, and the Lords Tyrell and Redwyne dipped their banners, and all their knights bent the knee to pledge us fealty. I was certain you would be among them.” “Our knees do not bend easily,” said Ser Arthur Dayne. “Ser Willem Darry is fled to Dragonstone, with your queen and Prince Viserys. I thought you might have sailed with him.” “Ser Willem is a good man and true,” said Ser Oswell. “But not of the Kingsguard,” Ser Gerold pointed out. “The Kingsguard does not flee.” “Then or now,” said Ser Arthur. He donned his helm. “We swore a vow,” explained old Ser Gerold. Ned’s wraiths moved up beside him, with shadow swords in hand. They were seven against three. “And now it begins,” said Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning. He unsheathed Dawn and held it with both hands. The blade was pale as milkglass, alive with light. “No,” Ned said with sadness in his voice. “Now it ends.

The Trial By Existence Even the bravest that are slain Shall not dissemble their surprise On waking to find valor reign, Even as on earth, in paradise; And where they sought without the sword Wide fields of asphodel fore’er, To find that the utmost reward Of daring should be still to dare. The light of heaven falls whole and white And is not shattered into dyes, The light for ever is morning light; The hills are verdured pasture-wise; The angel hosts with freshness go, And seek with laughter what to brave;— And binding all is the hushed snow Of the far-distant breaking wave. And from a cliff-top is proclaimed The gathering of the souls for birth, The trial by existence named, The obscuration upon earth. And the slant spirits trooping by In streams and cross- and counter-streams Can but give ear to that sweet cry For its suggestion of what dreams! And the more loitering are turned To view once more the sacrifice Of those who for some good discerned Will gladly give up paradise. And a white shimmering concourse rolls Toward the throne to witness there The speeding of devoted souls Which God makes his especial care. And none are taken but who will, Having first heard the life read out That opens earthward, good and ill, Beyond the shadow of a doubt; And very beautifully God limns, And tenderly, life’s little dream, But naught extenuates or dims, Setting the thing that is supreme. Nor is there wanting in the press Some spirit to stand simply forth, Heroic in its nakedness, Against the uttermost of earth. The tale of earth’s unhonored things Sounds nobler there than ’neath the sun; And the mind whirls and the heart sings, And a shout greets the daring one. But always God speaks at the end: ’One thought in agony of strife The bravest would have by for friend, The memory that he chose the life; But the pure fate to which you go Admits no memory of choice, Or the woe were not earthly woe To which you give the assenting voice.’ And so the choice must be again, But the last choice is still the same; And the awe passes wonder then, And a hush falls for all acclaim. And God has taken a flower of gold And broken it, and used therefrom The mystic link to bind and hold Spirit to matter till death come. ‘Tis of the essence of life here, Though we choose greatly, still to lack The lasting memory at all clear, That life has for us on the wrack Nothing but what we somehow chose; Thus are we wholly stripped of pride In the pain that has but one close, Bearing it crushed and mystified.

Good Lord, I thought, squinting at the bright glare of a late-July morning. No wonder I slept through this. It was noisy with shrieking birds, and already hot.

Boros's presence reminded me what it's like to live with someone. And how very awkward it is. How much it diverts you from your own thoughts and distracts you. How another Person starts to irritate you without actually doing anything annoying, but simply by being there. Each morning when he went off to the forest, I blessed my glorious solitude. How do people manage to spend decades living together in a small space? I wondered. How can they possibly sleep in the same bed together, breathing on and jostling each other accidentally in their sleep? I'm not saying it hasn't happened to me too. For some time I shared my bed with a Catholic, and nothing good came of it.

I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch – hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into – some fearful, devastating scourge, I know – and, before I had glanced half down the list of “premonitory symptoms,” it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it. I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever – read the symptoms – discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it – wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus’s Dance – found, as I expected, that I had that too, – began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically – read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright’s disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid’s knee. ... I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy man. I crawled out a decrepit wreck. I went to my medical man. He is an old chum of mine, and feels my pulse, and looks at my tongue, and talks about the weather, all for nothing, when I fancy I’m ill; so I thought I would do him a good turn by going to him now. “What a doctor wants,” I said, “is practice. He shall have me. He will get more practice out of me than out of seventeen hundred of your ordinary, commonplace patients, with only one or two diseases each.” So I went straight up and saw him, and he said: “Well, what’s the matter with you?” I said: “I will not take up your time, dear boy, with telling you what is the matter with me. Life is brief, and you might pass away before I had finished. But I will tell you what is NOT the matter with me. I have not got housemaid’s knee. Why I have not got housemaid’s knee, I cannot tell you; but the fact remains that I have not got it. Everything else, however, I HAVE got.” And I told him how I came to discover it all. Then he opened me and looked down me, and clutched hold of my wrist, and then he hit me over the chest when I wasn’t expecting it – a cowardly thing to do, I call it – and immediately afterwards butted me with the side of his head. After that, he sat down and wrote out a prescription, and folded it up and gave it me, and I put it in my pocket and went out. I did not open it. I took it to the nearest chemist’s, and handed it in. The man read it, and then handed it back. He said he didn’t keep it. I said: “You are a chemist?” He said: “I am a chemist. If I was a co-operative stores and family hotel combined, I might be able to oblige you. Being only a chemist hampers me.” I read the prescription. It ran: “1 lb. beefsteak, with 1 pt. bitter beer every 6 hours. 1 ten-mile walk every morning. 1 bed at 11 sharp every night. And don’t stuff up your head with things you don’t understand.” I followed the directions, with the happy result – speaking for myself – that my life was preserved, and is still going on.

Have you ever wondered What happens to all the poems people write? The poems they never let anyone else read? Perhaps they are Too private and personal Perhaps they are just not good enough. Perhaps the prospect of such a heartfelt expression being seen as clumsy shallow silly pretentious saccharine unoriginal sentimental trite boring overwrought obscure stupid pointless or simply embarrassing is enough to give any aspiring poet good reason to hide their work from public view. forever. Naturally many poems are IMMEDIATELY DESTROYED. Burnt shredded flushed away Occasionally they are folded Into little squares And wedged under the corner of An unstable piece of furniture (So actually quite useful) Others are hidden behind a loose brick or drainpipe or sealed into the back of an old alarm clock or put between the pages of AN OBSCURE BOOK that is unlikely to ever be opened. someone might find them one day, BUT PROBABLY NOT The truth is that unread poetry Will almost always be just that. DOOMED to join a vast invisible river of waste that flows out of suburbia. well Almost always. On rare occasions, Some especially insistent pieces of writing will escape into a backyard or a laneway be blown along a roadside embankment and finally come to rest in a shopping center parking lot as so many things do It is here that something quite Remarkable takes place two or more pieces of poetry drift toward each other through a strange force of attraction unknown to science and ever so slowly cling together to form a tiny, shapeless ball. Left undisturbed, this ball gradually becomes larger and rounder as other free verses confessions secrets stray musings wishes and unsent love letters attach themselves one by one. Such a ball creeps through the streets Like a tumbleweed for months even years If it comes out only at night it has a good Chance of surviving traffic and children and through a slow rolling motion AVOIDS SNAILS (its number one predator) At a certain size, it instinctively shelters from bad weather, unnoticed but otherwise roams the streets searching for scraps of forgotten thought and feeling. Given time and luck the poetry ball becomes large HUGE ENORMOUS: A vast accumulation of papery bits That ultimately takes to the air, levitating by The sheer force of so much unspoken emotion. It floats gently above suburban rooftops when everybody is asleep inspiring lonely dogs to bark in the middle of the night. Sadly a big ball of paper no matter how large and buoyant, is still a fragile thing. Sooner or LATER it will be surprised by a sudden gust of wind Beaten by driving rain and REDUCED in a matter of minutes to a billion soggy shreds. One morning everyone will wake up to find a pulpy mess covering front lawns clogging up gutters and plastering car windscreens. Traffic will be delayed children delighted adults baffled unable to figure out where it all came from Stranger still Will be the Discovery that Every lump of Wet paper Contains various faded words pressed into accidental verse. Barely visible but undeniably present To each reader they will whisper something different something joyful something sad truthful absurd hilarious profound and perfect No one will be able to explain the Strange feeling of weightlessness or the private smile that remains Long after the street sweepers have come and gone.

In times of old when I was new And Hogwarts barely started The founders of our noble school Thought never to be parted: United by a common goal, They had the selfsame yearning, To make the world’s best magic school And pass along their learning. “Together we will build and teach!” The four good friends decided And never did they dream that they Might someday be divided, For were there such friends anywhere As Slytherin and Gryffindor? Unless it was the second pair Of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw? So how could it have gone so wrong? How could such friendships fail? Why, I was there and so can tell The whole sad, sorry tale. Said Slytherin, “We’ll teach just those Whose ancestry is purest.” Said Ravenclaw, “We’ll teach those whose Intelligence is surest.” Said Gryffindor, “We’ll teach all those With brave deeds to their name.” Said Hufflepuff, “I’ll teach the lot, And treat them just the same.” These differences caused little strife When first they came to light, For each of the four founders had A House in which they might Take only those they wanted, so, For instance, Slytherin Took only pure-blood wizards Of great cunning, just like him, And only those of sharpest mind Were taught by Ravenclaw While the bravest and the boldest Went to daring Gryffindor. Good Hufflepuff, she took the rest, And taught them all she knew, Thus the Houses and their founders Retained friendships firm and true. So Hogwarts worked in harmony For several happy years, But then discord crept among us Feeding on our faults and fears. The Houses that, like pillars four, Had once held up our school, Now turned upon each other and, Divided, sought to rule. And for a while it seemed the school Must meet an early end, What with dueling and with fighting And the clash of friend on friend And at last there came a morning When old Slytherin departed And though the fighting then died out He left us quite downhearted. And never since the founders four Were whittled down to three Have the Houses been united As they once were meant to be. And now the Sorting Hat is here And you all know the score: I sort you into Houses Because that is what I’m for, But this year I’ll go further, Listen closely to my song: Though condemned I am to split you Still I worry that it’s wrong, Though I must fulfill my duty And must quarter every year Still I wonder whether Sorting May not bring the end I fear. Oh, know the perils, read the signs, The warning history shows, For our Hogwarts is in danger From external, deadly foes And we must unite inside her Or we’ll crumble from within. I have told you, I have warned you. . . . Let the Sorting now begin. The hat became motionless once more;

No wonder they don’t like her,” Valdivia said to herself. A woman who is good at her job always rocks the boat, she thought. She knew this from experience, but didn’t think she had run into the archetypal boys’ club in New Valley; however, Valdivia never dropped her guard to the possibility. It was then she realized the chief’s lack of interest in the case, his attempt to dissuade her from her instincts, was just a softer version of the same old thing.

And when you write a poem within the accepted poem-form, making it sound like a poem because a poem is a poem is a poem, you are saying “good morning” in that poem, and well, your morals are straight and you have not said SHIT, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could…instead of sweating out the correct image, the precise phrase, the turn of a thought…simply sit down and write the god damned thing, throwing on the color and sound, shaking us alive with the force, the blackbirds, the wheat fields, the ear in the hand of the whore, sun, sun, sun, SUN!; let’s make poetry the way we make love; let’s make poetry and leave the laws and the rules and the morals to the churches and the politicians; let’s make poetry the way we tilt the head back for the good liquor; let a drunken bum make his flame, and some day, Robert, I’ll think of you, pretty and difficult, measuring vowels and adverbs, making rules instead of poetry.

We stayed all day long. We closed our eyes and paryed, which we had not doen together in a long time. The nurse came in and out of the room. Everything felt awful and I wondered why the whole world didn't seem to notice how bad things really were. I thought of how I'd gotten used to awful, how after my dad died the planets kept on spinning and I got up and ate breakfast every morning and kept going to school. Something happens and it's terrible and you think you can't live another day, but then your mother gets used to it and you get used to it and you both keep on living, and you're not sure if that getting-used-to-things is good or the way life should be.

I just mean . . . when I come up with a great idea for a film, it’s like being drunk. You know that giddy feeling you get when you’re psyched about something? It’s exciting because it’s all potential. But then you wake up the next morning and reality has sunk in. you start to wonder if the idea was really good as you thought, and you suddenly see all the holes in the plan, and that high from the night before starts to crash. That’s the hangover.

It is the nightly custom of every good mother after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things straight for next morning, repacking into their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day. If you could keep awake (but of course you can't) you would see your own mother doing this, and you would find it very interesting to watch her. It is quite like tidying up drawers. You would see her on her knees, I expect, lingering humorously over some of your contents, wondering where on earth you had picked this thing up, making discoveries sweet and not so sweet, pressing this to her cheek as if it were as nice as a kitten, and hurriedly stowing that out of sight. When you wake in the morning, the naughtiness and evil passions with which you went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom of your mind; and on the top, beautifully aired, are spread out your prettier thoughts, ready for you to put on.

Ty and Livvy were the last to come say good-bye to Jules; Livvy embraced him fiercely, and Ty gave him a soft, shy smile. Julian wondered where Kit was. He'd been glued to Ty's and Livvy's sides the whole time they'd been in London, but he appeared to have vanished for the family farewell. "I've got something for you," Ty said. He held out a box, which Julian took with some surprise. Ty was absolutely punctual about Christmas and birthday presents, but he rarely gave gifs spontaneously. Curious, Julian popped open the top of the box to find a set of colored pencils. He didn't know the brand, but they looked pristine and unused. "Where did you get these?" "Fleet Street," said Ty. "I went out early this morning." An ache of love pressed against the back of Julian's throat. It reminded him of when Ty was a baby, serious and quiet. He hadn't been able to go to sleep for a long time without someone holding him, and though Julian had been very small himself, he remembered holding Ty while he fell asleep, all round wrists and straight black hair and long lashes. He'd felt so much love for his brother even then it had been like an explosion in his heart. "Thanks. I've missed drawing," Julian said, and tucked the box into his duffel bag. He didn't fuss; Ty didn't like fuss, but Julian made his tone as warm as he could, and Ty beamed. Jules thought of Livvy, the night before, the way she'd kissed his forehead. Her thank-you. This was Ty's.

Mr. Wonderful was probably taking his sweet time, right?” “No, it was actually my fault this morning. I was busy with…paperwork.” “Oh. Well, that’s alright. Don’t worry about it. What kind of paperwork?” He smiled. “Nothing important.” Mr. Kadam held the door for me, and we walked out into an empty hallway. I was just starting to relax at the elevator doors when I heard a hotel room door close. Ren walked down the hall toward us. He’d purchased new clothes. Of course, he looked wonderful. I took a step back from the elevator and tried to avoid eye contact. Ren wore a brand new pair of dark-indigo, purposely faded, urban-destruction designer jeans. His shirt was long-sleeved, buttoned-down, crisp, oxford-style and was obviously of high quality. It was blue with thin white stripes that matched is eyes perfectly. He’d rolled up the sleeves and left his shirt untucked and open at the collar. It was also an athletic cut, so it fit tightly to his muscular torso, which made me suck in an involuntary breath in appreciation of his male splendor. He looks like a runway model. How in the world am I going to be able to reject that? The world is so unfair. Seriously, it’s like turning Brad Pitt down for a date. The girl who could actually do it should win an award for idiot of the century. I again quickly ran through my list of reasons for not being with Ren and said a few “He’s not for me’s.” The good thing about seeing his mouthwatering self and watching him walk around like a regular person was that it tightened my resolve. Yes. It would be hard because he was so unbelievably gorgeous, but it was now even more obvious to me that we didn’t belong together. As he joined us at the elevator, I shook my head and muttered under my breath, “Figures. The guy is a tiger for three hundred and fifty years and emerges from his curse with expensive taste and keen fashion sense too. Incredible!” Mr. Kadam asked, “What was that, Miss Kelsey?” “Nothing.” Ren raised an eyebrow and smirked. He probably heard me. Stupid tiger hearing. The elevator doors opened. I stepped in and moved to the corner hoping to keep Mr. Kadam between the two of us, but unfortunately, Mr. Kadam wasn’t receiving the silent thoughts I was projecting furiously toward him and remained by the elevator buttons. Ren moved next to me and stood too close. He looked me up and down slowly and gave me a knowing smile. We rode down the elevator in silence. When the doors opened, he stopped me, took the backpack off my shoulder, and threw it over his, leaving me with nothing to carry. He walked ahead next to Mr. Kadam while I trialed along slowly behind, keeping distance between us and a wary eye on his tall frame.

Boros’s presence reminded me what it’s like to live with someone. And how very awkward it is. How much it diverts you from your own thoughts and distracts you. How another Person starts to irritate you without actually doing anything annoying, but simply by being there. Each morning when he went off to the forest, I blessed my glorious solitude. How do people manage to spend decades living together in a small space? I wondered. How can they possibly sleep in the same bed together, breathing on and jostling each other accidentally in their sleep? I’m not saying it hasn’t happened to me too. For some time I shared my bed with a Catholic, and nothing good came of it.

i wore red lipstick to the grocery store last Monday to buy a carton off eggs and so when the cashier told me that my eyes reminded him of the ocean, i asked if he’s ever drowned in his own sadness, he said my total was $1.89 and that he didn’t know what i meant, i payed in quarters and told him i was an Art major, i told him my boyfriend was a musician and we were saving up for an apartment in the city and how i’d use the walls as canvases and how he’d play his piano on Sunday mornings when the rain tasted like salt, and i told him that i had my first art opening in three weeks and he should stop by and i’d introduce him to this friend i had named Lolita who was really good in bed, he thought i was insane and i wonder if he knew how many times i’ve cried in the shower with my make up smeared and my eyes swollen shut, he said “yeah, yeah, sounds good, have a nice day” and i wonder if he’ll ever know i wanted to really be a poet and that’s why when some man in the parking lot asked if i had a lighter, i dropped my eggs while stumbling to find one, and cried on the way home

Split in two,” he sang, “Loved by one, and then another. Pulled in a direction and then the other. If I could breathe you in, all of you, every day of my life, it wouldn’t be enough. My heart was captive long ago — then you stole it away, you helped me grow. Now I’m staring at my crossroads with a choice to make, wondering how in the world I even thought there was one way to take.” His hands flew over the piano, muscles tightened in his forearms as he leaned forward and continued singing. “My biggest fear, is not the ending of this life, but going through it without you by my side.” He repeated the chorus and closed his eyes, humming the haunting melody in such a way that I felt hypnotized. “Letting her go will be the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do — but I’m doing it so I can say goodbye to her — and good morning to you. Tell me it’s not too late to ask for a second.” He smirked but continued singing. “Third, fourth, tenth date.” His hands slowed. “Loving you will always be easy because when I look into your eyes I know you see the real me, so be my love, be my rain, be my clouds, be my pain.” “My biggest fear, is not the ending of this life, but going through it without you by my side.” He stopped playing. The room fell silent.

I give myself a good cry if I need it. But then I concentrate on all the good things still in my life. On the people who are coming to see me. On the stories I’m going to hear. On you—if it’s Tuesday. Because we’re Tuesday people.” I grinned. Tuesday people. “Mitch, I don’t allow myself any more self-pity than that. A little each morning, a few tears, and that’s all.” I thought about all the people I knew who spent many of their waking hours feeling sorry for themselves. How useful it would be to put a daily limit on self-pity. Just a few tearful minutes, then on with the day. And if Morrie could do it, with such a horrible disease… “It’s only horrible if you see it that way,” Morrie said. “It’s horrible to watch my body slowly wilt away to nothing. But it’s also wonderful because of all the time I get to say good-bye.” He smiled. “Not everyone is so lucky.

Everyone's here except for St. Clair." Meredith cranes her neck around the cafeteria. "He's usually running late." "Always," Josh corrects. "Always running late." I clear my throat. "I think I met him last night. In the hallway." "Good hair and an English accent?" Meredith asks. "Um.Yeah.I guess." I try to keep my voice casual. Josh smirks. "Everyone's in luuurve with St. Clair." "Oh,shut up," Meredith says. "I'm not." Rashmi looks at me for the first time, calculating whether or not I might fall in love with her own boyfriend. He lets go of her hand and gives an exaggerated sigh. "Well,I am. I'm asking him to prom. This is our year, I just know it." "This school has a prom?" I ask. "God no," Rashmi says. "Yeah,Josh. You and St. Clair would look really cute in matching tuxes." "Tails." The English accent makes Meredith and me jump in our seats. Hallway boy. Beautiful boy. His hair is damp from the rain. "I insist the tuxes have tails, or I'm giving your corsage to Steve Carver instead." "St. Clair!" Josh springs from his seat, and they give each other the classic two-thumps-on-the-back guy hug. "No kiss? I'm crushed,mate." "Thought it might miff the ol' ball and chain. She doesn't know about us yet." "Whatever," Rashi says,but she's smiling now. It's a good look for her. She should utilize the corners of her mouth more often. Beautiful Hallway Boy (Am I supposed to call him Etienne or St. Clair?) drops his bag and slides into the remaining seat between Rashmi and me. "Anna." He's surprised to see me,and I'm startled,too. He remembers me. "Nice umbrella.Could've used that this morning." He shakes a hand through his hair, and a drop lands on my bare arm. Words fail me. Unfortunately, my stomach speaks for itself. His eyes pop at the rumble,and I'm alarmed by how big and brown they are. As if he needed any further weapons against the female race. Josh must be right. Every girl in school must be in love with him. "Sounds terrible.You ought to feed that thing. Unless..." He pretends to examine me, then comes in close with a whisper. "Unless you're one of those girls who never eats. Can't tolerate that, I'm afraid. Have to give you a lifetime table ban." I'm determined to speak rationally in his presence. "I'm not sure how to order." "Easy," Josh says. "Stand in line. Tell them what you want.Accept delicious goodies. And then give them your meal card and two pints of blood." "I heard they raised it to three pints this year," Rashmi says. "Bone marrow," Beautiful Hallway Boy says. "Or your left earlobe." "I meant the menu,thank you very much." I gesture to the chalkboard above one of the chefs. An exquisite cursive hand has written out the morning's menu in pink and yellow and white.In French. "Not exactly my first language." "You don't speak French?" Meredith asks. "I've taken Spanish for three years. It's not like I ever thought I'd be moving to Paris." "It's okay," Meredith says quickly. "A lot of people here don't speak French." "But most of them do," Josh adds. "But most of them not very well." Rashmi looks pointedly at him. "You'll learn the lanaguage of food first. The language of love." Josh rubs his belly like a shiny Buddha. "Oeuf. Egg. Pomme. Apple. Lapin. Rabbit." "Not funny." Rashmi punches him in the arm. "No wonder Isis bites you. Jerk." I glance at the chalkboard again. It's still in French. "And, um, until then?" "Right." Beautiful Hallway Boy pushes back his chair. "Come along, then. I haven't eaten either." I can't help but notice several girls gaping at him as we wind our way through the crowd.

I enjoy those parts of the Bible where Jesus talks about how much He loves His bride. It makes me wonder if the trees and mountains and rivers are things He planned in advance, knowing they would wow us. I wonder if God returned over and over to this world He placed us in thinking what He had created was good, but it could be even better, even grander. I wonder if He thought each foggy morning, each soft rain, each field of wildflowers would be a quiet and audacious way to demonstrate His tremendous love for us.

My Dear Mrs Winter. (I had half a mind when I dipped my pen in the ink, to address you by your old natural Christian name.) The snow lies so deep on the Northern Railway, and the Posts have been so interrupted in consequence, that your charming note arrived here only this morning... I get the heartache again when I read your commission, written in the hand which I find now to be not in the least changed, and yet it is a great pleasure to be entrusted with it, and to have that share in your gentler remembrances which I cannot find it still my privilege to have, without a stirring of the old fancies. ... I am very very sorry you mistrusted me in not writing before your little girl was born; but I hope now you know me better you will teach her, one day, to tell her children, in times to come when they have some interest in wondering about it, that I loved her mother with the most extraordinary earnestness when I was a boy. I have always believed since, and always shall to the last, that there never was such a faithful and devoted poor fellow as I was. Whatever of fancy, romance, energy, passion, aspiration and determination belong to me, I never have separated and never shall separate from the hard hearted little woman - you - whom it is nothing to say I would have died for, with the greatest alacrity! I never can think, and I never seem to observe, that other young people are in such desperate earnest, or set so much, so long, upon one absorbing hope. It is a matter of perfect certainty to me that I began to fight my way out of poverty and obscurity, with one perpetual idea of you. This is so fixed in my knowledge that to the hour when I opened your letter last Friday night, I have never heard anybody addressed by your name or spoken of by your name, without a start. The sound of it has always filled me with a kind of pity and respect for the deep truth that I had, in my silly hobbledehoyhood, to bestow upon one creature who represented the whole world to me. I have never been so good a man since, as I was when you made me wretchedly happy. I shall never be half so good a fellow any more. This is all so strange now, both to think of, and to say, after every change that has come about; but I think, when you ask me to write to you, you are not unprepared for what it is so natural to me to recall, and will not be displeased to read it. I fancy, - though you may not have thought in the old time how manfully I loved you - that you may have seen in one of my books a faithful reflection of the passion I had for you, and may have thought that it was something to have been loved so well, and may have seen in little bits of "Dora" touches of your old self sometimes, and a grace here and there that may be revived in your little girls, years hence, for the bewilderment of some other young lover - though he will never be as terribly in earnest as I and David Copperfield were. People used to say to me how pretty all that was, and how fanciful it was, and how elevated it was above the little foolish loves of very young men and women. But they little thought what reason I had to know it was true and nothing more nor less. These are things that I have locked up in my own breast, and that I never thought to bring out any more. But when I find myself writing to you again "all to your self", how can I forbear to let as much light in upon them as will shew you that they are there still! If the most innocent, the most ardent, and the most disinterested days of my life had you for their Sun - as indeed they had - and if I know that the Dream I lived in did me good, refined my heart, and made me patient and persevering, and if the Dream were all of you - as God knows it was - how can I receive a confidence from you, and return it, and make a feint of blotting all this out! ...

Dead Seas and Babbling Brooks Not all of us are out of touch with our emotions, but when it comes to talking, all of us are affected by our personality. I have observed two basic personality types. The first I call the “Dead Sea.” In the little nation of Israel, the Sea of Galilee flows south by way of the Jordan River into the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea goes nowhere. It receives but it does not give. This personality type receives many experiences, emotions, and thoughts throughout the day. They have a large reservoir where they store that information, and they are perfectly happy not to talk. If you say to a Dead Sea personality, “What’s wrong? Why aren’t you talking tonight?” he will probably answer, “Nothing’s wrong. What makes you think something’s wrong?” And that response is perfectly honest. He is content not to talk. He could drive from Chicago to Detroit and never say a word and be perfectly happy. On the other extreme is the “Babbling Brook.” For this personality, whatever enters into the eye gate or the ear gate comes out the mouth gate and there are seldom sixty seconds between the two. Whatever they see, whatever they hear, they tell. In fact, if no one is at home to talk to, they will call someone else. “Do you know what I saw? Do you know what I heard?” If they can’t get someone on the telephone, they may talk to themselves because they have no reservoir. Many times a Dead Sea marries a Babbling Brook. That happens because when they are dating, it is a very attractive match. If you are a Dead Sea and you date a Babbling Brook, you will have a wonderful evening. You don’t have to think, “How will I get the conversation started tonight? How will I keep the conversation flowing?” In fact, you don’t have to think at all. All you have to do is nod your head and say, “Uh-huh,” and she will fill up the whole evening and you will go home saying, “What a wonderful person.” On the other hand, if you are a Babbling Brook and you date a Dead Sea, you will have an equally wonderful evening because Dead Seas are the world’s best listeners. You will babble for three hours. He will listen intently to you, and you will go home saying, “What a wonderful person.” You attract each other. But five years after marriage, the Babbling Brook wakes up one morning and says, “We’ve been married five years, and I don’t know him.” The Dead Sea is saying, “I know her too well. I wish she would stop the flow and give me a break.” The good news is that Dead Seas can learn to talk and Babbling Brooks can learn to listen. We are influenced by our personality but not controlled by it. One way to learn new patterns is to establish a daily sharing time in which each of you will talk about three things that happened to you that day and how you feel about them. I call that the “Minimum Daily Requirement” for a healthy marriage. If you will start with the daily minimum, in a few weeks or months you may find quality conversation flowing more freely between you.

There was something in the dawn’s delicate loveliness that seemed to him inexpressibly pathetic, and he thought of all the days that break in beauty, and that set in storm. These rustics, too, with their rough, good-humoured voices, and their nonchalant ways, what a strange London they saw! A London free from the sin of night and the smoke of day, a pallid, ghost-like city, a desolate town of tombs! He wondered what they thought of it, and whether they knew anything of its splendour and its shame, of its fierce, fiery-coloured joys, and its horrible hunger, of all it makes and mars from morn to eve.

Anything Bunny wrote was bound to be alarmingly original, since he began with such odd working materials and managed to alter them further by his befuddled scrutiny, but the John Donne paper must have been the worst of all the bad papers he ever wrote (ironic, given that it was the only thing he ever wrote that saw print. After he disappeared, a journalist asked for an excerpt from the missing young scholar's work and Marion gave him a copy of it, a laboriously edited paragraph of which eventually found its way into People magazine). Somewhere, Bunny had heard that John Donne had been acquainted with Izaak Walton, and in some dim corridor of his mind this friendship grew larger and larger, until in his mind the two men were practically interchangeable. We never understood how this fatal connection had established itself: Henry blamed it on Men of Thought and Deed, but no one knew for sure. A week or two before the paper was due, he had started showing up in my room about two or three in the morning, looking as if he had just narrowly escaped some natural disaster, his tie askew and his eyes wild and rolling. 'Hello, hello,' he would say, stepping in, running both hands through his disordered hair. 'Hope I didn't wake you, don't mind if I cut on the lights, do you, ah, here we go, yes, yes…' He would turn on the lights and then pace back and forth for a while without taking off his coat, hands clasped behind his back, shaking his head. Finally he would stop dead in his tracks and say, with a desperate look in his eye: 'Metahemeralism. Tell me about it. Everything you know. I gotta know something about metahemeralism.' 'I'm sorry. I don't know what that is.' 'I don't either,' Bunny would say brokenly. 'Got to do with art or pastoralism or something. That's how I gotta tie together John Donne and Izaak Walton, see.' He would resume pacing. 'Donne. Walton. Metahemeralism. That's the problem as I see it.' 'Bunny, I don't think "metahemeralism" is even a word.' 'Sure it is. Comes from the Latin. Has to do with irony and the pastoral. Yeah. That's it. Painting or sculpture or something, maybe.' 'Is it in the dictionary?' 'Dunno. Don't know how to spell it. I mean' – he made a picture frame with his hands – 'the poet and the fisherman. Parfait. Boon companions. Out in the open spaces. Living the good life. Metahemeralism's gotta be the glue here, see?' And so it would go, for sometimes half an hour or more, with Bunny raving about fishing, and sonnets, and heaven knew what, until in the middle of his monologue he would be struck by a brilliant thought and bluster off as suddenly as he had descended. He finished the paper four days before the deadline and ran around showing it to everyone before he turned it in. 'This is a nice paper, Bun -,' Charles said cautiously. 'Thanks, thanks.' 'But don't you think you ought to mention John Donne more often? Wasn't that your assignment?' 'Oh, Donne,' Bunny had said scoffingly. 'I don't want to drag him into this.' Henry refused to read it. 'I'm sure it's over my head, Bunny, really,' he said, glancing over the first page. 'Say, what's wrong with this type?' 'Triple-spaced it,' said Bunny proudly. 'These lines are about an inch apart.' 'Looks kind of like free verse, doesn't it?' Henry made a funny little snorting noise through his nose. 'Looks kind of like a menu,' he said. All I remember about the paper was that it ended with the sentence 'And as we leave Donne and Walton on the shores of Metahemeralism, we wave a fond farewell to those famous chums of yore.' We wondered if he would fail.

But you? Are you all right? You're a bit pale." "Am I?" Small wonder, she thought, but smiled as she enjoyed the sensation of holding a secret inside her. "I don't feel pale. But you..." Swimming in the river of discovery, she leaned down. "You look wonderful.Rough and windblown and sexy." His narrowed eyes flickered, and he stepped back, a little uneasy when she rubbed a hand over his cheek. There were a half a dozen men milling about, he thought. And every one of them had eyes. "I was called down to the stables early this morning,didn't take time to shave." She decided to take this evasive move as a challenge rather than an insult. "I like it.Just a little dangerous.If you've got time later, I thought you might help me out." "With what?" "Take a ride with me." "I could do that." "Good.About five?" She leaned down again and this time took a fistful of his shirt to yank him a step closer. "And,Brian? Don't shave.

Her first instinct was to look away, to shield her wicked thoughts and feelings from his penetrating gaze. But if ever there was a time for truth between a man and a woman, this was that time. She met his eyes steadily and didn't care whether he saw the abandon and bliss she felt. His face held a cross between the wonder of a boy on Christmas morn and the knowing look of a man who was exquisitely aware of what wicked things he was doing to her. He enslaved her with pleasure, and she had no defense. Her cheeks heated, and her breath hitched, but she couldn't look away. He might stop, and she didn't think she could bear it if he did. Instead, she moved. Just a little, so his finger would brush her sensitive tip. A jolt of longing shot through her body from her breast to her womb. "Merciful God!" she breathed. "Aye, lass, and 'tis a good thing He is," Rob said with a wicked grin, "for I am no' merciful in the slightest.

A dog wash?” Bird repeated the next morning. I’d called her to let her know I needed to talk. She was making her Scoopin’ Poopin’ runs and had invited me to ride along with her. I shrugged. “Could be interesting, in a guys-in-wet-T-shirts kind of way.” ‘Hmm. Hadn’t thought of that. Still, it’s going to be a lot of work, and you’ll be the one who ends up doing it.” “Whatever. It’s for a good cause. Orphaned dogs. But that’s not really why I called.” “Didn’t think it was.” “I was just sorta wondering…have you ever noticed the way Jason looks at me?” She looked in her rearview mirror, looked in her side view mirror. “Bird?” “I’m thinking.” “It’s not an essay question. It’s a yes or no.” “Yes.” “And?” “Thought you said no essay.” “Come on, Bird, how does he look at me?” She sighed. “He looks at you like you’re something he wants and can’t have.” I gazed out the window at the houses passing by. “When have you seen him looking at me like that?” “When have I not seen him looking at you like that?

It looked like every cartoon of a flying saucer Newt had ever seen. As he stared over the top of his map, a door in the saucer slid aside with a satisfying whoosh, revealing a gleaming walkway which extended automatically down to the road. Brilliant blue light shone out, outlining three alien shapes. They walked down the ramp. At least, two of them walked. The one that looked like a pepper pot just skidded down it, and fell over at the bottom. The other two ignored its frantic beeping and walked over to the car quite slowly, in the worldwide approved manner of policemen already compiling the charge sheet it their heads. The tallest one, a yellow toad dressed in kitchen foil, rapped on Newt's window. He wound it down. The thing was wearing the kind of mirror-finished sunglasses that Newt always thought of as Cool Hand Luke shades. 'Morning, sir or madam or neuter,' the thing said. 'This your planet, is it?' The other alien, which was stubby and green, had wandered off into the woods by the side of the road. Out of the corner of his eye Newt saw it kick a tree, and then run a leaf through some complicated gadget on its belt. It didn't look very pleased. 'Well, yes. I suppose so.' he said. The toad stared thoughtfully at the skyline. 'Had it long, have we, sir?' it said. 'Er. Not personally. I mean, as a species, about half a million years. I think.' The alien exchanged glances with its colleague. 'Been letting the old acid rain build up, haven't we, sir?' it said. 'Been letting ourselves go a bit with the old hydrocarbons, perhaps?' 'I'm sorry.' 'Could you tell me your planet's albedo, sir?' said the the toad, still staring levelly at the horizon as though it was doing something interesting. 'Er. No.' 'Well, I'm sorry to have to tell you, sir, that your polar ice caps are below regulation size for a planet of this category, sir.' 'Oh, dear,' said Newt. He was wondering who he could tell about this, and realizing that there was absolutely no one who would believe him. [...] The small alien walked past the car. 'CO2 level up 0.5 percent,' it rasped, giving him a meaningful look. 'You do know you could find yourself charged with being a dominant species while under the influence of impulse-driven consumerism, don't you?

You’re worried about Anna?” “Anna and the baby, who, I can assure you, are not worried about me.” “Westhaven, are you pouting?” Westhaven glanced over to see his brother smiling, but it was a commiserating sort of smile. “Yes. Care to join me?” The commiserating smile became the signature St. Just Black Irish piratical grin. “Only until Valentine joins us. He’s so eager to get under way, we’ll let him break the trail when we depart in the morning.” “Where is he? I thought you were just going out to the stables to check on your babies.” “They’re horses, Westhaven. I do know the difference.” “You know it much differently than you knew it a year ago. Anna reports you sing your daughter to sleep more nights than not.” Two very large booted feet thunked onto the coffee table. “Do I take it your wife has been corresponding with my wife?” “And your daughter with my wife, and on and on.” Westhaven did not glance at his brother but, rather, kept his gaze trained on St. Just’s feet. Devlin could exude great good cheer among his familiars, but he was at heart a very private man. “The Royal Mail would go bankrupt if women were forbidden to correspond with each other.” St. Just’s tone was grumpy. “Does your wife let you read her mail in order that my personal marital business may now be known to all and sundry?” “I am not all and sundry,” Westhaven said. “I am your brother, and no, I do not read Anna’s mail. It will astound you to know this, but on occasion, say on days ending in y, I am known to talk with my very own wife. Not at all fashionable, but one must occasionally buck trends. I daresay you and Emmie indulge in the same eccentricity.” St. Just was silent for a moment while the fire hissed and popped in the hearth. “So I like to sing to my daughters. Emmie bears so much of the burden, it’s little enough I can do to look after my own children.” “You love them all more than you ever thought possible, and you’re scared witless,” Westhaven said, feeling a pang of gratitude to be able to offer the simple comfort of a shared truth. “I believe we’re just getting started on that part. With every child, we’ll fret more for our ladies, more for the children, for the ones we have, the one to come.” “You’re such a wonderful help to a man, Westhaven. Perhaps I’ll lock you in that nice cozy privy next time nature calls.” Which

Ah, my friends, that innocent afternoon with Larry provoked me into thought in a way my own dicelife until then never had. Larry took to following the dice with such ease and joy compared to the soul-searching gloom that I often went through before following a decision, that I had to wonder what happened to every human in the two decades between seven and twenty-seven to turn a kitten into a cow. Why did children seem to be so often spontaneous, joy-filled and concentrated while adults seemed controlled, anxiety-filled and diffused? It was the Goddam sense of having a self: that sense of self which psychologists have been proclaiming we all must have. What if - at the time it seemed like an original thought - what if the development of a sense of self is normal and natural, but is neither inevitable nor desirable? What if it represents a psychological appendix: a useless, anachronistic pain in the side? - or, like the mastodon's huge tusks: a heavy, useless and ultimately self-destructive burden? What if the sense of being some-one represents an evolutionary error as disastrous to the further development of a more complex creature as was the shell for snails or turtles? He he he. What if? indeed: men must attempt to eliminate the error and develop in themselves and their children liberation from the sense of self. Man must become comfortable in flowing from one role to another, one set of values to another, one life to another. Men must be free from boundaries, patterns and consistencies in order to be free to think, feel and create in new ways. Men have admired Prometheus and Mars too long; our God must become Proteus. I became tremendously excited with my thoughts: 'Men must become comfortable in flowing from one role to another' - why aren't they? At the age of three or four, children were willing to be either good guys or bad guys, the Americans or the Commies, the students or the fuzz. As the culture molds them, however, each child comes to insist on playing only one set of roles: he must always be a good guy, or, for equally compulsive reasons, a bad guy or rebel. The capacity to play and feel both sets of roles is lost. He has begun to know who he is supposed to be. The sense of permanent self: ah, how psychologists and parents lust to lock their kids into some definable cage. Consistency, patterns, something we can label - that's what we want in our boy. 'Oh, our Johnny always does a beautiful bower movement every morning after breakfast.' 'Billy just loves to read all the time...' 'Isn't Joan sweet? She always likes to let the other person win.' 'Sylvia's so pretty and so grown up; she just loves all the time to dress up.' It seemed to me that a thousand oversimplifications a year betrayed the truths in the child's heart: he knew at one point that he didn't always feel like shitting after breakfast but it gave his Ma a thrill. Billy ached to be out splashing in mud puddles with the other boys, but... Joan wanted to chew the penis off her brother every time he won, but ... And Sylvia daydreamed of a land in which she wouldn’t have to worry about how she looked . . . Patterns are prostitution to the patter of parents. Adults rule and they reward patterns. Patterns it is. And eventual misery. What if we were to bring up our children differently? Reward them for varying their habits, tastes, roles? Reward them for being inconsistent? What then? We could discipline them to be reliably various, to be conscientiously inconsistent, determinedly habit-free - even of 'good' habits.

He spent the morning at the beach. He had no idea which one, just some open stretch of coastline reaching out to the sea. An unbroken mantle of soft grey clouds was sitting low over the water. Only on the horizon was there a glimmer of light, a faint blue band of promise. The beach was deserted, not another soul on the vast, wide expanse of sand that stretched out in front of him. Having come from the city, it never ceased to amaze Jejeune that you could be that alone in the world. He walked along the beach, feeling the satisfying softness as the sand gave way beneath his slow deliberate strides. He ventured as close to the tide line as he dared, the white noise of the waves breaking on the shingles. A set of paw prints ran along the sand, with an unbroken line in between. A small dog, dragging a stick in its mouth. Always the detective, even if, these days, he wasn’t a very good one. Jejeune’s path became blocked by a narrow tidal creek carrying its silty cargo out to the sea. On each side of it were shallow lagoons and rock pools. When the tide washed in they would teem with new life, but at the moment they looked barren and empty. Jejeune looked inland, back to where the dark smudge of Corsican pines marked the edge of the coast road. He traced the creek’s sinuous course back to where it emerged from a tidal salt flat, and watched the water for a long time as it eddied and churned, meeting the incoming tide in an erotic swirl of water, the fresh intermingling with the salty in a turbulent, roiling dance, until it was no longer possible to tell one from the other. He looked out at the sea, at the motion, the color, the light. A Black-headed Gull swooped in and settled on a piece of driftwood a few feet away. Picture complete, thought Jejeune. For him, a landscape by itself, no matter how beautiful, seemed an empty thing. It needed a flicker of life, a tiny quiver of existence, to validate it, to confirm that other living things found a home here, too. Side by side, they looked out over the sea, the man and the bird, two beating hearts in this otherwise empty landscape, with no connection beyond their desire to be here, at this time. Was it the birds that attracted him to places like this, he wondered, or the solitude, the absence of demands, of expectations? But if Jejeune was unsure of his own motives, he knew this bird would have a purpose in being here. Nature always had her reasons. He chanced a sidelong glance at the bird, now settled to his presence. It had already completed its summer molt, crisp clean feathers having replaced the ones abraded by the harsh demands of eking out a living on this wild, windswept coastline. The gull stayed for a long moment, allowing Jejeune to rest his eyes softly, unthreateningly, upon it. And then, as if deciding it had allowed him enough time to appreciate its beauty, the bird spread its wings and effortlessly lifted off, wheeling on the invisible air currents, drifting away over the sea toward the horizon. p. 282-3

I’m the living dead. I feel no connection to any other human. I have no friends and I don’t really care much about my family any longer. I feel no love for them. I can feel no joy. I’m incapable of feeling physical pleasure. There’s nothing to ever look forward to as a result. I don’t miss anyone or anything. I eat because I feel hunger pangs, but no food tastes like anything I like. I wear a mask when I’m with other people but it’s been slipping lately. I can’t find the energy to hide the heavy weight of survival and its effect on me. I’m exhausted all the time from the effort of just making it through the day. This depression has made a mockery of my memory. It’s in tatters. I have no good memories to sustain me. My past is gone. My present is horrid. My future looks like more of the same. In a way, I’m a man without time. Certainly, there’s no meaning in my life. What meaning can there be without even a millisecond of joy? Ah, scratch that. Let’s even put aside joy and shoot for lower. How about a moment of being content? Nope. Not a chance. I see other people, normal people, who can enjoy themselves. I hear people laughing at something on TV. It makes me cock my head and wonder what that’s like. I’m sure at sometime in my past, I had to have had a wonderful belly laugh. I must have laughed so hard once or twice that my face hurt. Those memories are gone though. Now, the whole concept of “funny” is dead. I stopped going to movies a long time ago. Sitting in a theater crowded with people, every one of them having a better time than you, is incredibly damaging. I wasn’t able to focus for that long anyway. Probably for the best. Sometimes I fear the thought of being normal again. I think I wouldn’t know how to act. How would I handle being able to feel? Gosh it would be nice to feel again. Anything but this terrible, suffocating pain. The sorrow and the misery is so visceral, I find myself clenching my jaw. It physically hurts me. Then I realize that it’s silly to worry about that. You see, in spite of all the meds, the ketamine infusions and other treatments, I’m not getting better. I’m getting worse. I was diagnosed 7 years ago but I’m sure I was suffering for longer. Of course, I can’t remember that, but depression is something that crept up on me. It’s silent and oppressive. I don’t even remember what made me think about going to see someone. But I did and it was a pretty clear diagnosis. So, now what? I keep waking up every morning unfortunately. I don’t fear death any more. That’s for sure. I’ve made some money for the couple of decades I’ve been working and put it away in retirement accounts. I think about how if I was dead that others I once cared for would get that money. Maybe it could at least help them. I don’t know that I’ll ever need it. Even if I don’t end it myself, depression takes a toll on the body. My life expectancy is estimated to be 14 years lower as a result according to the NIH. It won’t be fast enough though. I’m just an empty biological machine that doesn’t know that my soul is gone. My humanity is no more

I want porridge!" she said, exasperated. "That's all. I wanted a bunny before and 'it' appeared, and now I want porridge. The way my aunts used to make it on cold mornings. Warm and buttery, with rich toasted acorns in it." "Acorns? Really? That sounds... um... I mean, it's an interesting gastronomic choice." She rolled her eyes. "We lived in the middle of a 'forest,' Royal Prince. It was what we had. And a real treat in the middle of winter." Then she proceeded to ignore him. She closed her eyes and cupped her hands. She prayed and wished and imagined and begged. Phillip stayed politely silent- though he did look around, sigh a little, and do all sorts of other things to obviously fret over the passage of time. She tried to call up the feel of the wooden bowl in her hands: it warmed almost like flesh where the wood was thin and the heat of her fingers and the hot porridge mingled. She summoned the smell, a mix of dairy and things of the earth and the tall green grass and the woods. Sometimes there was even a dollop of honey on top. She thought so hard she felt like she had to go to the privy. Her concentration faltered for a moment when she distractedly wondered if that ever happened to Maleficent when she was performing an incantation. But after a few seconds she was back in her dream of porridge. Time passed... "GOOD LORD!" The smell in her head was giving to a real scent in her nose now, with even that faint, almost 'un'tasty burnt smell the acorns sometimes gave off. She smiled and opened her eyes. In her hands was a cracked wooden bowl full of porridge, just like she remembered.

She knew what she had to do.” “Did she? How odd for a pampered lady. Though I’m sure she complained constantly about the lack of heat and food and furnishings.” Hell and blazes, he could see where this was going. “She did not. But it was only one night, and we were hiding from killers.” “Trust me, Jackson, killers or no, if you’d hauled me about the woods and put me through such deprivation, I would have been complaining. Loudly. Repeatedly. “ He pushed back from the table to eye her with abject skepticism. “No, you wouldn’t. You’d make the best of things.” “And she didn’t?” With a hard glare, he crossed his arms over his chest. “One night in a cottage is hardly a good test of how well she’d endure a lifetime in Cheapside?” “So last night was a test, was it? And even so, she passed it. In response, you talked about duty and honor and such. Made her feel as if marrying her would be your concession to propriety. Have I judged the situation aright?” It was getting harder to pretend that he’d behaved like anything but an arse this morning. “She has a bloody duke chomping at the bit to marry her, and you think she could be happy with me? Here?” Aunt Ada planted her hands on her hips. “You know, I’m beginning to be insulted. I thought I’d made this quite a comfortable home, and now I find that you think it comparable to some hovel in the woods.” “That’s not what I-“ “If you showed the same lack of feeling with her as you are with me right now, it’s a wonder she didn’t slap the tar out of you.” She shook her head. “You decided her future without even considering her feelings. Don’t you find that presumptuous?

BEAUTY I was charged with finding Beauty. The order whispered as I slept. A voice said it was my duty. Then quietly it wept. Filled with purpose, I set out. I was honored with my quest. In my mind there was no doubt I was up to this great test. In my garden I stopped first. My roses were in bloom. Their bright red glory burst With others mixed on Nature’s loom. Then a lady drew my gaze. She was gliding o’er the grass. Her features would gods amaze. I sighed deep and let her pass. A cathedral’s spire reached to the sky, Man-made wonder to behold. No sight more pleasing to the eye Than such a work both grand and bold. I came upon a mighty mountain, Snowcap glistening against blue sky. My eyes were drinking from beauty’s fountain. Yet I knew I could do better with another try. My journey lengthened. I crossed the earth. My will strengthened. To place beauty’s birth. Witness I was to the wonders Of beauty’s many layers. Fiery sunsets, tropic thunders, Children at their prayers. But each time I thought me near To beauty’s absolute, Something better would appear Even closer to the root. I wandered thus for many years. Despaired to ever reach my goal. I often found myself in tears. I had searched from pole to pole. Until one day on a dusty street In a poor part of the world, I found a woman begging at my feet, Her fingers gnarled and curled. I fished my pocket for a coin, Thinking good luck could be bought. Her eyes raised up to my eyes join. And I saw the woman owned what I sought. She let me pass into her soul. Into the garden there. Never in my life whole Had I conceived a sight so fair. I saw the Holy Face of God, From whose smile all beauty is born. All the steps that I had trod Were redeemed on that sweet morn

I was told love should be unconditional. That's the rule, everyone says so. But if love has no boundaries, no limits, no conditions, why should anyone try to do the right thing ever? If I know I am loved no matter what, where is the challenge? I am supposed to love Nick despite all his shortcomings. And Nick is supposed to love me despite my quirks. But clearly, neither of us does. It makes me think that everyone is very wrong, that love should have many conditions. Love should require both partners to be their very best at all times. Unconditional love is an undisciplined love, and as we all have seen, undisciplined love is disastrous. You can read more about my thoughts on love in Amazing. Out soon! But first: motherhood. The due date is tomorrow. Tomorrow happens to be our anniversary. Year six. Iron. I thought about giving Nick a nice pair of handcuffs, but he may not find that funny yet. It's so strange to think: A year ago today, I was undoing my husband. Now I am almost done reassembling him. Nick has spent all his free time these past months slathering my belly with cocoa butter and running out for pickles and rubbing my feet, and all the things good fathers-to-be are supposed to do. Doting on me. He is learning to love me unconditionally, under all my conditions. I think we are finally on our way to happiness. I have finally figured it out. We are on the eve of becoming the world's best, brightest nuclear family. We just need to sustain it. Nick doesn't have it down perfect. This morning he was stroking my hair and asking what else he could do for me, and I said: 'My gosh, Nick, why are you so wonderful to me?' He was supposed to say: You deserve it. I love you. But he said, 'Because I feel sorry for you.' 'Why?' 'Because every morning you have to wake up and be you.' I really, truly wish he hadn't said that. I keep thinking about it. I can't stop. I don't have anything else to add. I just wanted to make sure I had the last word. I think I've earned that.

Morning sweetheart," he said quietly, thinking it was Sarah who'd kissed him awake. "What time is it? I guess I better get up huh? We've got a long drive ahead of us today." "From what I hear, you were up quite a bit last night," Tina said, smiling at him sweetly. He opened his eyes then and sat up quickly. "Oh...hi, uh...good morning. Jeez I'm sorry, I thought you were Sarah," he said quickly. "Wait...you were kissing me again? God Tina, we can't keep doing that. If Sarah finds out...," he said, but he didn't get to finish. "Sarah already knows," Sarah said, leaning against the door jam with her coffee in her hand, as well as a second cup that she'd brought for him. Jarrod actually fell out of bed he was so shocked by her sudden appearance. It was heartbreaking how incredibly guilty he looked. "Oh god, sweetie I was asleep, I swear. I didn't do it on purpose," he said quickly. "Didn't you? You mean you don't enjoy kissing her?" Sarah asked, really enjoying this little game. "Well, yeah...I mean...oh jeez." "You're not sure? Maybe you should kiss her again, and then you can decide," Sarah said. Tina just smiled and then pooched her lips out at him. "Come on you guys, I just woke up. Please don't mess with me, it's too early for that." "Tell me something," Sarah said. "Who did you have sex with last night?" Jarrod just stood there looking confused. "Uh...you. You were here for it right?" he said finally. "Yeah, I was, but it was really Tina you were doing all night, wasn't it? She looked damn good in that outfit, didn't she?" That did it. Now his face turned beet red and he just stood there, naked and looking incredibly guilty. "It's ok sweetie, I don't mind...really. Now here, drink your coffee and get ready. We have a big day ahead of us," she said as she handed him his coffee and gave him a kiss. "Wait...what? God I'm so confused," he said. "I would be too if I was standing in front of two girls naked with a cup of coffee in my hand. Careful you don't spill it. You might burn something you'll be needing later," Sarah laughed as both her and Tina walked out the door and headed back to the kitchen. Jarrod just stood there in a state of total confusion, wondering what the hell just happened.

I continued my explorations in a cobbled yard overlooked by broken doors and cracked windows. Pushing open a swollen door into a storeroom, I found a stream running across paving stones and a carpet of slippery green moss. My explorations took me beneath a gateway surmounted by a clock face, standing with hands fixed permanently at eleven o'clock. Beyond stood derelict stables; then the park opened up in an undulating vista, reaching all the way to a swathe of deep forest on the horizon. In the distance was the twinkle of the river that I realized must border my own land at Whitelow. The grass was knee-high and speckled with late buttercups, but I was transported by that first sight of the Delafosse estate. In its situation alone, the Croxons had chosen our new home well. I dreamed for a moment of myself and Michael making a great fortune, and no longer renting Delafosse Hall but owning every inch of it, my inheritance spinning gold from cotton. Turning back to view the Hall I took a sharp breath; it was as massive and ancient as a child's dream of a castle, the bulk of its walls carpeted in greenery, the diamond-leaded windows sparkling in picturesque stone mullions. True, the barley-twist chimneys leaned askew, and the roofs sagged beneath the weight of years, but the shell of it was magnificent. It cast a strange possessive mood upon me. I remembered Michael's irritation at the house the previous night, and his eagerness to leave. Somehow I had to entice Michael into this shared dream of a happy life here, beside me. Determined to explore the park, I followed the nearest path. After walking through a deep wood for a good while I emerged into the sunlight by a round hill surmounted by a two-story tower. A hunting lodge, Mrs. Croxon had called it, but I thought it more a folly. It had a fantastical quality, with four miniature turrets, each topped with a verdigris-tarnished dome. Above the doorway stood a sundial drawn upon a disc representing a blazing sun. It was embellished with a script I thought might be Latin: FERREA VIRGA EST, UMBRATILIS MOTUS. I wondered whether Michael might know the meaning, or Anne's husband perhaps. As for the sundial's accuracy, the morning light was too weak to cast a line of shadow.

He felt it. Misery, we must insist, had been good to him. Poverty in youth, when it succeeds, is so far magnificent that it turns the whole will towards effort, and the whole soul towards aspiration. Poverty strips the material life entirely bare, and makes it hideous; thence arise inexpressible yearnings towards the ideal life. The rich young man has a hundred brilliant and coarse amusements, racing, hunting, dogs, cigars, gaming, feasting, and the rest; busying the lower portions of the soul at the expense of its higher and delicate portions. The poor young man must work for his bread; he eats; when he has eaten, he has nothing more but reverie. He goes free to the play which God gives; he beholds the sky, space, the stars, the flowers, the children, the humanity in which he suffers, the creation in which he shines. He looks at humanity so much that he sees the soul, he looks at creation so much that he sees God. He dreams, he feels that he is great; he dreams again, and he feels that he is tender. From the egotism of the suffering man, he passes to the compassion of the contemplating man. A wonderful feeling springs up within him, forgetfulness of self, and pity for all. In thinking of the numberless enjoyments which nature offers, gives, and gives lavishly to open souls, and refuses to closed souls, he, a millionaire of intelligence, comes to grieve for the millionaires of money. All hatred goes out of his heart in proportion as all light enters his mind. And then is he unhappy? No. The misery of a young man is never miserable. The first lad you meet, poor as he may be, with his health, his strength, his quick step, his shining eyes, his blood which circulates warmly, his black locks, his fresh cheeks, his rosy lips, his white teeth, his pure breath, will always be envied by an old emperor. And then every morning he sets about earning his bread; and while his hands are earning his living, his backbone is gaining firmness, his brain is gaining ideas. When his work is done, he returns to ineffable ecstasies, to contemplation, to joy; he sees his feet in difficulties, in obstacle, on the pavement, in thorns, sometimes in the mire; his head is in the light. He is firm, serene, gentle, peaceful, attentive, serious, content with little, benevolent; and he blesses God for having given him these two estates which many of the rich are without; labour which makes him free, and thought which makes him noble. This is what had taken place in Marius.

No matter what level of instruction Marlboro Man gave me, no matter how many pointers, a horse trot for me meant a repeated and violet Slap! Slap! Slap! on the seat of my saddle. My feet were fine--they’d stay securely in the stirrups. But I just couldn’t figure out how to use the muscles in my legs correctly, and I hadn’t yet learned how to post. It was so unpleasant, the whole riding-a-horse business: my bottom would slap, my torso would stiffen, and I’d be sore for days--not to mention that I looked like a complete freak while riding--kind of like a tree trunk with red, stringy hair. Short of taking the rectal temperatures of cows, I’d never felt more out of place doing anything in my life. All of this rushed to the surface when I saw Marlboro Man walking toward me with two of his horses, one of which was clearly meant for me. Where’s my Jeep? I thought. Where’s my torch? I don’t want a horse. My bottom can’t take it. Where’s my Jeep? I’d never wanted to drive a Jeep so much. “Hey,” I said, walking toward him and smiling, trying to appear not only calm but also totally unconcerned about the reality that faced me. “Uh…I thought we were going burning.” I clearly sounded out the g. It was a loud, clanging cymbal. “Oh, we are,” he said, smiling. “But we’ve got to get to some areas the Jeep can’t reach.” My stomach lurched. For more than a couple of seconds, I actually considered feigning illness so I wouldn’t have to go. What can I say? I wondered. That I feel like I’m going to throw up? Or should I just clutch my stomach, groan, then run behind the barn and make dramatic retching sounds? That could be highly effective. Marlboro Man will feel sorry for me and say, “It’s okay…you just go on up to my house and rest. I’ll be back later.” But I don’t think I can go through with it; vomiting is so embarrassing! And besides, if Marlboro Man thinks I vomited, I might not get a kiss today… “Oh, okay,” I said, smiling again and trying to prevent my face from betraying the utter dread that plagued me. I hadn’t noticed, through all my inner torture and turmoil, that Marlboro Man and the horses had been walking closer to me. Before I knew it, Marlboro Man’s right arm was wrapped around my waist while his other hand held the reins of the two horses. In another instant, he pulled me toward him in a tight grip and leaned in for a sweet, tender kiss--a kiss he seemed to savor even after our lips parted. “Good morning,” he said sweetly, grinning that magical grin. My knees went weak. I wasn’t sure if it was the kiss itself…or the dread of riding.

went off, without waiting for serving men, and unsaddled my horse, and washed such portions of his ribs and his spine as projected through his hide, and when I came back, behold five stately circus tents were up—tents that were brilliant, within, with blue, and gold, and crimson, and all manner of splendid adornment! I was speechless. Then they brought eight little iron bedsteads, and set them up in the tents; they put a soft mattress and pillows and good blankets and two snow-white sheets on each bed. Next, they rigged a table about the centre-pole, and on it placed pewter pitchers, basins, soap, and the whitest of towels—one set for each man; they pointed to pockets in the tent, and said we could put our small trifles in them for convenience, and if we needed pins or such things, they were sticking every where. Then came the finishing touch—they spread carpets on the floor! I simply said, "If you call this camping out, all right—but it isn't the style I am used to; my little baggage that I brought along is at a discount." It grew dark, and they put candles on the tables—candles set in bright, new, brazen candlesticks. And soon the bell—a genuine, simon-pure bell—rang, and we were invited to "the saloon." I had thought before that we had a tent or so too many, but now here was one, at least, provided for; it was to be used for nothing but an eating-saloon. Like the others, it was high enough for a family of giraffes to live in, and was very handsome and clean and bright-colored within. It was a gem of a place. A table for eight, and eight canvas chairs; a table-cloth and napkins whose whiteness and whose fineness laughed to scorn the things we were used to in the great excursion steamer; knives and forks, soup-plates, dinner-plates—every thing, in the handsomest kind of style. It was wonderful! And they call this camping out. Those stately fellows in baggy trowsers and turbaned fezzes brought in a dinner which consisted of roast mutton, roast chicken, roast goose, potatoes, bread, tea, pudding, apples, and delicious grapes; the viands were better cooked than any we had eaten for weeks, and the table made a finer appearance, with its large German silver candlesticks and other finery, than any table we had sat down to for a good while, and yet that polite dragoman, Abraham, came bowing in and apologizing for the whole affair, on account of the unavoidable confusion of getting under way for a very long trip, and promising to do a great deal better in future! It is midnight, now, and we break camp at six in the morning. They call this camping out. At this rate it is a glorious privilege to be a pilgrim to the Holy Land.

In the uncertain hour before the morning Near the ending of interminable night At the recurrent end of the unending After the dark dove with the flickering tongue Had passed below the horizon of his homing While the dead leaves still rattled on like tin Over the asphalt where no other sound was Between three districts whence the smoke arose I met one walking, loitering and hurried As if blown towards me like the metal leaves Before the urban dawn wind unresisting. And as I fixed upon the down-turned face That pointed scrutiny with which we challenge The first-met stranger in the waning dusk I caught the sudden look of some dead master Whom I had known, forgotten, half recalled Both one and many; in the brown baked features The eyes of a familiar compound ghost Both intimate and unidentifiable. So I assumed a double part, and cried And heard another's voice cry: 'What! are you here?' Although we were not. I was still the same, Knowing myself yet being someone other— And he a face still forming; yet the words sufficed To compel the recognition they preceded. And so, compliant to the common wind, Too strange to each other for misunderstanding, In concord at this intersection time Of meeting nowhere, no before and after, We trod the pavement in a dead patrol. I said: 'The wonder that I feel is easy, Yet ease is cause of wonder. Therefore speak: I may not comprehend, may not remember.' And he: 'I am not eager to rehearse My thoughts and theory which you have forgotten. These things have served their purpose: let them be. So with your own, and pray they be forgiven By others, as I pray you to forgive Both bad and good. Last season's fruit is eaten And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail. For last year's words belong to last year's language And next year's words await another voice. But, as the passage now presents no hindrance To the spirit unappeased and peregrine Between two worlds become much like each other, So I find words I never thought to speak In streets I never thought I should revisit When I left my body on a distant shore. Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us To purify the dialect of the tribe And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight, Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort. First, the cold friction of expiring sense Without enchantment, offering no promise But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit As body and soul begin to fall asunder. Second, the conscious impotence of rage At human folly, and the laceration Of laughter at what ceases to amuse. And last, the rending pain of re-enactment Of all that you have done, and been; the shame Of motives late revealed, and the awareness Of things ill done and done to others' harm Which once you took for exercise of virtue. Then fools' approval stings, and honour stains. From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire Where you must move in measure, like a dancer.' The day was breaking. In the disfigured street He left me, with a kind of valediction, And faded on the blowing of the horn. -T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding

... we decided to create a Nothing Place in the living room, it seemed necessary, because there are times when one needs to disappear while in the living room, and sometimes one simply wants to disappear, we made this zone slightly larger so that one of us could lie down in it, it was a rule that you never would look at that rectangle of space, it didn't exist, and when you were in it, neither did you, for a while that was enough, but only for a while, we required more rules, on our second anniversary we marked off the entire guest room as a Nothing Place, it seemed like a good idea at the time, sometimes a small patch at the foot of the bed or a rectangle in the living room isn't enough privacy, the side of the door that faced the guest room was Nothing, the side that faced the hallway was Something, the knob that connected them was neither Something nor Nothing. The walls of the hallway were Nothing, even pictures need to disappear, especially pictures, but the hallway itself was Something, the bathtub was Nothing, the bathwater was Something, the hair on our bodies was Nothing, of course, but once it collected around the drain it was Something, we were trying to make our lives easier, trying, with all of our rules, to make life effortless. But a friction began to arise between Nothing and Something, in the morning the Nothing vase cast a Something shadow, like the memory of someone you've lost, what can you say about that, at night the Nothing light from the guest room spilled under the Nothing door and stained the Something hallway, there's nothing to say. It became difficult to navigate from Something to Something without accidentally walking through Nothing, and when Something—a key, a pen, a pocketwatch—was accidentally left in a Nothing Place, it never could be retrieved, that was an unspoken rule, like nearly all of our rules have been. There came a point, a year or two ago, when our apartment was more Nothing than Something, that in itself didn't have to be a problem, it could have been a good thing, it could have saved us. We got worse. I was sitting on the sofa in the second bedroom one afternoon, thinking and thinking and thinking, when I realized I was on a Something island. "How did I get here," I wondered, surrounded by Nothing, "and how can I get back?" The longer your mother and I lived together, the more we took each other's assumptions for granted, the less was said, the more misunderstood, I'd often remember having designated a space as Nothing when she was sure we had agreed that it was Something, our unspoken agreements led to disagreements, to suffering, I started to undress right in front of her, this was just a few months ago, and she said, "Thomas! What are you doing!" and I gestured, "I thought this was Nothing," covering myself with one of my daybooks, and she said, "It's Something!" We took the blueprint of our apartment from the hallway closet and taped it to the inside of the front door, with an orange and a green marker we separated Something from Nothing. "This is Something," we decided. "This is Nothing." "Something." "Something." "Nothing." "Something." "Nothing." "Nothing." "Nothing." Everything was forever fixed, there would be only peace and happiness, it wasn't until last night, our last night together, that the inevitable question finally arose, I told her, "Something," by covering her face with my hands and then lifting them like a marriage veil. "We must be." But I knew, in the most protected part of my heart, the truth.

Today was a day to face that very temptation. A family who had become dear friends had left the church with no warning or explanation. Not even good bye. When they were missing on that first Sunday, we didn’t realize that they had removed themselves from our church. We thought maybe someone was sick or an alarm clock didn’t go off or something simple. If it had been something serious, they would have called us, of course. We had done so much for them and with them. We rejoiced when they rejoiced, we cried when they cried, we prayed with them, we prayed for them, we loved them and felt as if they loved us in return. Of course, one Sunday turned to two, and then three. I mentioned to Michael that I had called and left a message. He told me that he had the same thought as well. He had left a message and sent a card. We felt sad as the realization sank in: they had left the church. People don’t know how to leave a church, and many pastors don’t take such a loss graciously. In all our determinations about pastoring, we had considered the possibility of losing members, but this family was the first. It was time for a lesson for all of us, and I felt the Lord tugging at my spirit. I was to take the first step. Sunday afternoon, Michael taking a nap, kids playing games in their room... Now was as good a time as any. I got into my car and headed toward their house. Suddenly nervous, I sat in the driveway for a minute at first. What was I doing here again? Pastor’s wives don’t do this. I had been around pastor’s wives all my life. Since sensing my call to full time ministry at eighteen, I had been paying close attention to them, and I had never seen one of them do this. I got my words together. I needed an eloquent prayer for such a moment as this one: “Lord, help” (okay, so it wasn’t eloquent). I remembered a verse in Jeremiah: “I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind, Even to give every man according to his ways, According to the fruit of his doings” (17:10). The Lord knew my heart, and He understood. In this situation, I knew that I had opened myself up to Him. In this situation, I knew that my heart was pure before Him. All of a sudden, my courage returned. I opened the car door and willed myself toward the front porch. As I walked up the driveway, I also thought about Paul’s warning which I had read earlier that morning: “they failed to reach their goal... because their minds were fixed on what they achieved instead of what they believed” (Romans 9:31-32). This family was not my achievement; they were the Lord’s creation. What I believed was that I had been right in opening my heart to them. What I believed was that Michael and I had been faithful to the Lord and that we had helped this family while they were in our flock. I had not failed to reach my goal thus far, and I felt determined not to fail now. This front porch was not unfamiliar to me. I had been here before on many occasions, with my husband and children. Happy times: dinners, cook-outs, birthdays, engagement announcements, births.... Sad times as well: teenaged child rebelling, financial struggles, hospital stays or even death .... We had been invited to share heartache and joy alike. No, “invited” is the wrong word. We were needed. We were family, and family comes together at such times. This afternoon, however, was different. I was standing on this familiar front porch for a reason that had never brought me here before: I came to say good bye. On this front porch, I knocked on the door. This family had been with us for years, and we had been with them. Remembering how this family had helped and blessed our congregation, I quietly smiled. Remembering how they had enriched our personal lives with their friendship and encouragement, I could feel the tears burning behind my eyes. We would miss them. Remembering all that we had done for them, I wondered how they could leave with no word or even warning. Just stopped coming. Just

You were right, you know—coming here was completely crazy. It was irrational. To think I’d choose to go to a town where there’s no mall, much less a day spa, and one restaurant that doesn’t have a menu? Please. No medical technology, ambulance service or local police—how is it I thought that would be easier, less stressful? I almost slid off the mountain on my way into town!” “Ah… Mel…” “We don’t even have cable, no cell phone signal most of the time. And there’s not a single person here who can admire my Cole Haan boots which, by the way, are starting to look like crap from traipsing around forests and farms. Did you know that any critical illness or injury has to be airlifted out of here? A person would be crazy to find this relaxing. Renewing.” She laughed. “The state I was in, when I was leaving L.A., I thought I absolutely had to escape all the challenges. It never occurred to me that challenge would be good for me. A completely new challenge.” “Mel…” “When I told Jack I was pregnant, after promising him I had the birth control taken care of, he should have said, ‘I’m outta here, babe.’ But you know what he said? He said, ‘I have to have you and the baby in my life, and if you can’t stay here, I’ll go anywhere.’” She sniffed a little and a tear rolled down her cheek. “When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is check to see if there are deer in the yard. Then I wonder what Preacher’s in the mood to fix for dinner. Jack’s usually already gone back to town—he likes splitting logs in the early morning—half the town wakes up to the sound of his ax striking wood. I see him five or ten times through the day and he always looks at me like we’ve been apart for a year. If I have a patient in labor, he stays up all night, just in case I need something. And when there are no patients at night, when he holds me before I fall asleep, bad TV reception is the last thing on my mind. “Am I staying here? I came here because I believed I’d lost everything that mattered, and ended up finding everything I’ve ever wanted in the world. Yeah, Joey. I’m staying. Jack’s here. Besides, I belong here now. I belong to them. They belong to me.” *

Later, as they sat at one another’s elbows, eating dinner at the employee house where they lived, Roan detected a subtle sense of happiness around Shiloh. Again, nothing obvious, but his operator’s senses told him that. “You said you were writing a chapter? On your latest book? The one that’s due to your editor’s desk?” “Yes.” She shrugged. “I woke up this morning WANTING to write for the first time since coming here.” She met his gray gaze, seeing interest in them. Roan, she was discovering, missed nothing. He listened to her without ever interrupting her flow of thought. “First time.” “Is this a good thing?” he wondered, adding more spoonfuls of whipped potatoes onto his plate. “Sure is,” she sighed, giving him a look of relief. “I’ve had writer’s block for the last six months. I just haven’t felt the driving passion to write.” She added some green beans onto her plate. “Ever since the stalker came into my life, my writing has turned off.” “Kind of expected?” “I suppose,” Shiloh muttered. “It’s hurt me in so many ways, seen and unseen.” “It’s what we in the military call psy ops or psychological warfare.

Every day, in this earthly life, there are ups and downs, deep emotional valleys and steep mountains to overcome. We have not yet learned to travel the straight and narrow road of Understanding. We still coast and veer off the path we travel. A sudden change of attitude or a jump back into a dark habitual mood always deters us from moving toward the light. How much easier does it seem to reach back to the old and outgrown thought habits of the past? But it is this light, or moment of ‘seeing with the mental eye’, that inspires us to keep moving and to get back on the road to eternal bliss - again and again. This glimpse of the Truth that all is good and all is mental, and that we are part of this Universal goodness with its wonderful effects, is what keeps us going. We instinctively know the Truth when we keep our minds open to all possibilities. Inspiration comes in many forms. A wonderful reminder of a past experience, a certain smell reminding you of a pleasant encounter, the sound of a song that triggers loving feelings, looking at nature and its wondrous bounty, or the birth of a baby are just a few examples of new hope and a fresh want for living. A new desire for a better tomorrow is born every second and readily available to you. Indeed, desire is the starting point of all achievement, but most of all it is the starting point of imagination and the active spark or beginning of all creation. Your desire is a spark in your consciousness pressing for expression. Life is unfolding itself. Life always presses for manifestation and progress. It is an ever-changing ongoing process. Like water, life flows. With this in mind I make sure that my motivation is pure, and comes from within the chambers of my loving heart. The Universe with its vast ocean of pure possibilities is ready and willing to provide, and I draw from this unlimited Universal gift. Knowing that God is close and ever-present is all the daily inspiration I need to keep moving forward. Seeing the sunrise in the early morning hours reminds me that I have another chance to change my course; and I will travel happily toward my ultimate goal, which is perfect Understanding of the Allness of Good.

Thank you for leaving the flowers. I’ve meant to mention them before now.” He frowned. “The white rose…on my pillow? In my purse? Did you leave them?” The corner of his mouth turned up. “When would I have done that?” I thought for a moment. He had said goodnight with me before we had gone downstairs to play cards that first night. I worried my lip. He grinned. “I wonder who could have gone into your bedroom after we went down the stairs?” He peaked over his shoulder to make sure we weren’t being observed. “Maybe someone saying goodnight to his little ones?” “But this morning…he didn’t know we were leaving…” “Stewart did…Stewart does a lot for my brother.” He shrugged. I blushed. “Really? Why would he do this?” His grin grew. My cheeks felt like they were on fire. “What does the white rose stand for?” “I always thought it was purity…a new beginning…reverence.” His blues danced. “Maybe my brother is a romantic after all.” I drew in a breath. Getting flowers from Ian was one thing…getting them from Liam was a whole other matter. “I’m going to tell him you thanked me for the flowers and I took credit for them. If that doesn’t get his competitive spirit revved up…I don’t know what will!” He gave me a wink. “Ah, this game is fun! Good night, sweet friend!

Out of the first carriage stepped Bran, his hair loose and shining under a rakish plumed hat. He was dressed in a magnificent tunic and glossy high blackweave riding boots, with a lined cloak slung over one shoulder. He grinned at me--then he turned and, with a gesture of practiced grace that made me blink, handed out a lady. A lady? I gawked in dismay at the impressive hat and muffling cloak that spanned a broad skirt, and looked down at myself, in an old skirt Oria had discarded, a worn tunic that I hadn’t bothered to change after my sword lesson that morning, and my bare feet. Then I noticed that Julen and Oria had vanished. I stood there all alone. In fine style Bran escorted the mysterious lady to the new slate steps leading to the big double doors where I stood, but then he dropped her arm and bounded up, grabbing me in a big hug and swinging me around. “Sister!” He gave me a resounding kiss and set me down. “Place looks wonderful!” “You could have let me know you were bringing a guest,” I whispered. “And spoil a good surprise?” he asked, indicating the lady, who was still standing on the first step. “We have plenty of room, and as you’d told me in your letter the place isn’t such a rattrap anymore, I thought why not make the trip fun and bring ‘em?” “‘Them?’” I repeated faintly, but by then I already had my answer, for the outriders had resolved into a lot of liveried servants who were busy unloading coaches and helping stablehands. Through the midst of them strolled a tall, elegant man in a heel-length black cloak. I looked at the familiar gray eyes, the long yellow hair--it was the Marquis of Shevraeth.

Good morning, Mona. What can I do for you?” It was Him. He knew it was me on the phone demanding to speak with him, and he still thought it was a good morning. The sound of his voice uttering my name made me regret that I wasn’t taping the call for repeated replay later. His sound was warm and deep with the slightest undercurrent of sleepy crackle, like a thunderstorm. And he wanted to know what he could do for me. Marry me. Love me forever. Enter my Christmas scene proclaiming that, with me, it’s a wonderful life. See the world with me. Father children with me. Grow old with me. Be devastated when I die at 106 and follow me three days later, so our great grandchildren can tell future generations about the greatest love story ever. But first, forgive me for being such a bitch to your receptionist. “Good

They played croquet the next morning. “Won’t you show me how to use your mallet against the balls, Colonel Andrews?” asked Miss Charming, her eyebrows raised so high they twitched. Colonel Andrews had trouble unplasticizing his smile. Captain East chatted away the discomfort, his working-boy build meets gentleman grace working for him every inch. Not that Jane was looking at every inch, except when his back was turned. He kept the conversation on the weather, but did it in a very beguiling manner. To Jane’s mind, clouds had never seemed so sexy. As the game progressed, Andrews and Charming took the lead with professional zeal, followed by Heartwright and Nobley, an impressive pairing. Lingering in the rear, Erstwhile and East talked the talk but couldn’t walk the walk. The worse they played, the more Jane felt inebriated on bad sports and her partner’s undulating laugh. Captain East looked like he could play pro football, but he held the mallet in his hand as though being asked to eat steak with chopsticks, which Jane somehow found hilarious. He hammed it up for her benefit and made it very easy to laugh. He straddled the ball and pulled the mallet back. “Careful, careful,” Jane said. He swung--a hollow thock, and the ball smashed into a tree. “I swear I’m trying my best.” The captain’s laugh made his voice go dry and deep, and Jane thought if he really let himself go, he might actually bray. “I’ve never played this game before.” “Captain East, do you see how Mr. Nobley keeps giving me that look?” Jane said, watching the couple ahead. “Do you suppose he’s ashamed to know us?” “No one could be ashamed to know you, Miss Erstwhile,” said Captain East. It was precisely the right thing to say, and somehow that made it wrong. Jane wondered if Mr. Nobley had heard it, wondered what he thought. Then asked herself why she cared. The only discovery she could make was a hard bite of truth, like a bite of apple stuck in her throat--she did care what Mr. Nobley thought of her. The thought rankled. Why was the judgment of the disapproving so valuable? Who said that their good opinions tended to be any more rational than those of generally pleasant people? Jane’s turn to swing. Her grip on the mallet slipped, the ball lurched forward a dramatic two inches, and they laughed again. Mr. Nobley was still staring their way. Was it possible that he wished he were laughing, too?

I got up and turned off the coffee machine, pouring the last of the brew into my cup. I sat back down and sipped it, wondering why I bothered; there was no reason for me to be awake and alert. I had all the leisure time a man could want—I was suspended from work, and being stalked by somebody who thought he was turning himself into me. And if he somehow missed me, I was still under investigation for a murder I hadn’t committed. Considering how many I had gotten away with, that was probably very ironic. I tried a hollow, mocking laugh at myself, but it sounded too spooky in the sudden silence of the empty house. So I slurped coffee and concentrated on self-pity for a while. It came surprisingly easily; I really was the victim of a gross miscarriage of justice, and it was a simple matter for me to feel wounded, martyred, betrayed by the very system I had served so long and well. Luckily, my native wit trickled back in before I began to sing country songs, and I turned my thoughts toward finding a way out of my predicament. But in spite of the fact that I finished the coffee—my third cup of the morning, too—I couldn’t seem to kick my brain out of the glutinous sludge of misery it had fallen into. I was reasonably sure that Hood could not find anything and make it stick to me; there was nothing there to find. But I also knew that he was very anxious to solve Camilla’s murder—both so that he would look good to the department and the press and, just as importantly, so he could make Deborah look bad. And if I added in the uncomfortable fact that he was obviously aided and abetted by Sergeant Doakes and his toxic tunnel vision, I had to conclude that the outlook was far from rosy. I didn’t really believe they would manufacture evidence merely in order to frame me, but on the other hand—why wouldn’t they? It had happened before, even with an investigating officer who had a whole lot less on the line. The

Lord Charles?" "Amy."  He smiled sleepily and rose up on one elbow, the blanket sliding down one shoulder.  "Good morning." Temporary silence.  Charles was unaware that Amy had a friend with her, and he was totally oblivious to the sight he presented to the two girls, his hair tousled by sleep, his pale blue eyes clear as aquamarine as a shaft of sunlight drove through the window and caught him full in the face.  A sighted man would, of course, have squinted; Charles did not, and instead, Mira and Amy were treated to a brilliant, wide-open view of clear, intelligent eyes, romantically down turned at the outer corners and fringed by long straight lashes tinged with gold. "Hell and tarnation above, Amy, ye sure weren't jokin'!  He's bleedin' gorgeous!" "Mira!" cried Amy, horrified. Charles was hard-pressed to hide his amusement.  He knew, of course, or had at least suspected, that Amy had a girlish infatuation for him, and he'd tried his best not to embarrass her by calling attention to it.  He determined not to do so now. "And whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?" he asked, still supporting himself on one elbow and blinking the sleep from his eyes. Mira, standing there with her mouth open, was transfixed by that slow, deliberate blink.  In a heartbeat, she saw what Amy had described:  studied thoughtfulness, kindness, compassion.  The way the man lowered those long eyelashes over those translucently clear eyes, then slowly brought them back up again, did something funny to her insides.  Cripes, no wonder Amy was smitten! "Mira Ashton, patriot," she announced.  "I'm Amy's friend.  She tells me ye're a blasted Brit who took it upon himself to be merciful to Will, so I guess I'll take it upon myself to be merciful to you.  Besides, I hear ye're being nice to Amy, and since everyone else in this house treats her like donkey dung, I figger the least I can do is be civil to ye — redcoat or not." "Mira!" Amy gasped. "Well, it's true.  Where are those two bleedin' leeches, anyhow?" Despite himself, and his irritation with both the girl's language and her rather vexing use of the word "Brit," Charles got to his feet and bowed, his spirits suddenly quite buoyed.  If Amy had friends like this, maybe he shouldn't be worrying about her, after all. "Still in bed, I daresay," he said.

Angry tears stung her eyes. Tension built and boiled inside her. Her cheeks grew hot with suppressed anger, her movements became jerky and abrupt. She shoved an errant strand of hair out of her face, stormed to the washstand — And collided with her husband. He had been coming toward her with a piece of wet linen and a bowl half-filled with water. As he and Juliet bounced off each other, some of the water spilled onto the carpet, the rest down the front of his waistcoat. Ignoring it, Gareth held out the damp rag like a truce offering. "Here." "What's that for?" "She needs washing, doesn't she?" "What do you know about babies?" "Come now, Juliet. I am not entirely lacking in common sense." "I wonder," she muttered, spitefully. He summoned a polite though confused smile — and that only stoked Juliet's temper all the more. She did not want him to be such a gentleman, damn it!  She wanted a good, out-and-out row with him. She wanted to tell him just what she thought of him, of his reckless spending, of his carefree attitude toward serious matters. Oh, why hadn't she married someone like Charles — someone capable, competent, and mature? "What is wrong, Juliet?" "Everything!" she fumed. She plunged the linen in the bowl of water and began swabbing Charlotte's bottom. "I think Perry was right. We should go straight back to your brother, the duke." "You should not listen to Perry." "Why not? He's got more sense than you and the rest of your friends combined. We haven't even been married a day, and already it's obvious that you're hopelessly out of your element. You have no idea what to do with a wife and daughter. You have no idea where to go, how to support us — nothing. Yet you had to come charging after us, the noble rescuer who just had to save the day. I'll bet you didn't give any thought at all to what to do with us afterward, did you? Oh!  Do you always act before thinking? Do you?" He looked at her for a moment, brows raised, stunned by the force of her attack. Then he said dryly, "My dear, if you'll recall, that particular character defect saved your life. Not to mention the lives of the other people on that stagecoach." "So it did, but it's not going to feed us or find us a place to live!"  She lifted Charlotte's bottom, pinned a clean napkin around the baby's hips, and soaped and rinsed her hands. "I still cannot believe how much money you tossed away on a marriage license, no, a bribe, this morning, nor how annoyed you still seem to be that we didn't waste God-knows-how-much on a hotel tonight. You seem to have no concept of money's value, and at the rate you're going, we're going to have to throw ourselves on the mercy of the local parish or go begging in the street just to put food in our bellies!" "Don't be ridiculous. That would never happen." "Why wouldn't it?" "Juliet, my brother is the Duke of Blackheath. My family is one of the oldest and richest in all of England. We are not going to starve, I can assure you." "What do you plan to do, then, work for a living? Get those pampered, lily-white hands of yours dirty and calloused?

The next morning Becky was going to call Felix, but Mike had a better idea. “I haven’t bought you a Christmas present yet. If you don’t mind getting it early, I thought we could fly to L.A. and surprise Felix.” Becky gaped. “Good,” Mike said, “because I already reserved the tickets.” Through Celeste, Mike had learned that Felix was in Los Angeles. “You should go see him at the studio,” Celeste said. “I’ll call in your names. How I wish I could be there to see his face! This is a wonderful thing. Next time I see you, Michael, I will kiss you. You should warn your wife.” “I should warn myself,” Mike said. Becky could hear Celeste’s warm voice coming over the phone, and saw Mike’s neck flush. When he hung up, he said defensively, “She was being nice. She does not dig me.” “She’s going to kiss you.” His neck flushed darker. “She won’t. She was kidding.” “She will. She’s French. Kissing for her is like a genetic tic.

YOU ARE PRECIOUS   A young woman named June volunteered at a church agency that served the poor and homeless of her city. One day June met George, who had come in to receive some help. Winter was coming and he needed a jacket and some shoes to help keep him warm. He took a seat in the chapel because the waiting room was crowded and noisy. When he indicated he wanted a Bible, June went to get one for him while he waited his turn in the clothing room. When she returned with a Bible, she sat down to talk to him for a while. George looked like he was in his late ’50s or early ’60s. June noticed his thin hair beginning to gray and the deep lines which marked his face. His hands were stiff and he had lost part of one finger. Although it was 1:30 in the afternoon, he smelled slightly of alcohol. He was a short, slight man, and he spoke softly. He had come into the agency alone, and June wondered if he had any family—anyone who cared that he existed. June wrote George’s name in the front of his Bible along with the date. Then she showed him the study helps in the back, which would help him find key passages. As they talked, the thought occurred to June: George is one of God’s very precious creatures. She wondered if George knew that. She wondered how long it had been since someone had told him. What if no one had ever told him he was precious to God—and to all God’s other children as well? George had very little influence or stature, but God spoke to June through him that day, “My children need to know they are precious to Me. Please tell them that.” Since then, she has made that message a part of every encounter she has at the church agency. Ask the Lord how you might share the message, “You are precious to God,” with others today through your words and actions.   SINCE THOU WAST PRECIOUS IN MY SIGHT, THOU HAST BEEN HONOURABLE, AND I HAVE LOVED THEE. ISAIAH 43:4 KJV

wondered how many young men had wakened in the middle of the night, trying to sort out Varina’s mood swings and the conscious or unconscious signals she sent regarding her affections. I also wondered how many of them woke in the morning throbbing with desire and went to their jobs resenting themselves for emotions they couldn’t control. I thought Varina caused her lovers heartbreak because they believed there was nothing false or manipulative in her nature. They saw a loveliness and innocence in her that reminded them of dreams they’d had in adolescence about an imaginary girl, one who was so pretty and decent and good that they never told others about her or allowed themselves to think inappropriately of her.

Etymologically, paroikia (a compound word from para and oikos) literally means “next to” or “alongside of the house” and, in a technical sense, meant a group of resident aliens. This sense of “parish” carried a theological context into the life of the Early Church and meant a “Christian society of strangers or aliens whose true state or citizenship is in heaven.” So whether one’s flock consists of fifty people in a church which can financially sustain a priest or if it is merely a few people in a living room whose priest must find secular employment, it is a parish. This original meaning of parish also implies the kind of evangelism that accompanies the call of a true parish priest. A parish is a geographical distinction rather than a member-oriented distinction. A priest’s duties do not pertain only to the people who fill the pews of his church on a Sunday morning. He is a priest to everyone who fills the houses in the “cure” where God as placed him. This ministry might not look like choir rehearsals, rector’s meetings, midweek “extreme” youth nights, or Saturday weddings. Instead, it looks like helping a battered wife find shelter from her abusive husband, discretely paying a poor neighbor’s heating oil bill when their tank runs empty in the middle of a bitter snow storm, providing an extra set of hands to a farmer who needs to get all of his freshly-baled hay in the barn before it rains that night, taking food from his own pantry or freezer to help feed a neighbor’s family, or offering his home for emergency foster care. This kind of “parochial” ministry was best modeled by the old Russian staretzi (holy men) who found every opportunity to incarnate the hands and feet of Christ to the communities where they lived. Perhaps Geoffrey Chaucer caught a glimpse of the true nature of parish life through his introduction of the “Parson” in the Prologue of The Canterbury Tales. Note how the issues of sacrifice, humility, and community mentioned above characterize this Parson’s cure even when opportunities were available for “greater” things: "There was a good man of religion, a poor Parson, but rich in holy thought and deed. He was also a learned man, a clerk, and would faithfully preach Christ’s gospel and devoutly instruct his parishioners. He was benign, wonderfully diligent, and patient in adversity, as he was often tested. He was loath to excommunicate for unpaid tithes, but rather would give to his poor parishioners out of the church alms and also of his own substance; in little he found sufficiency. His parish was wide and the houses far apart, but not even for thunder or rain did he neglect to visit the farthest, great or small, in sickness or misfortune, going on foot, a staff in his hand… He would not farm out his benefice, nor leave his sheep stuck fast in the mire, while he ran to London to St. Paul’s, to get an easy appointment as a chantry-priest, or to be retained by some guild, but dwelled at home and guarded his fold well, so that the wolf would not make it miscarry… There was nowhere a better priest than he. He looked for no pomp and reverence, nor yet was his conscience too particular; but the teaching of Christ and his apostles he taught, and first he followed it himself." As we can see, the distinction between the work of worship and the work of ministry becomes clear. We worship God via the Eucharist. We serve God via our ministry to others. Large congregations make it possible for clergy and congregation to worship anonymously (even with strangers) while often omitting ministry altogether. No wonder Satan wants to discredit house churches and make them “odd things”! Thus, while the actual house church may only boast a membership in the single digits, the house church parish is much larger—perhaps into the hundreds as is the case with my own—and the overall ministry is more like that of Christ’s own—feeding, healing, forgiving, engaging in all the cycles of community life, whether the people attend

One early morning while jogging through the outskirts of Bahesht along the river, I had the rare privilege to witness a spectacular anthropological wonder. A huge caravan of what seemed like a thousand kuchis (nomads), at least twice that many camels toting all their worldly goods, and several thousand sheep and goats came walking through town on a singular dirt road. They were obviously heading to a new home somewhere up in the mountains, stirring up the dust in the early morning light. Their caravan stretched for well over a mile. As I ran past countless camels—laden with collapsed, black tents topped by ancient-looking women and led by men who looked as if they had stepped out of the Old Testament—I couldn’t help but marvel that these are some of the very few true nomads left on the face of the earth. The kuchis looked back at me as though I was from another planet. Abraham must have looked like these men, I thought as I continued my jog. Now there was a true nomad who walked by faith and not by sight! His citizenship was in heaven! It dawned on me that if I am to be a real follower of Jesus, I am called to be something of a nomad on this earth. I thought of a verse that I had recently read about Abraham and other spiritual nomads, Hebrews 11:16: “But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.” I smiled at the kuchi men that I jogged past. I know that I look different, but I am more like you than you may think ... I’m a nomad, too! Our guys in Bahesht were living as nomads on earth more than I was. I had a family and lived in the fair city of Iskandar in The Museum—basically a mud mansion—and here they were scraping by in one of the most remote and difficult places on the planet, trying to serve the poorest of the poor.

Anna returned to supper preparations, wondering what on earth she had managed to fill her time with before having children. ‘BC’, they jokingly described it. She loved all of them to bits. But there were times when she longed to escape from the bedlam of family life. Lately she felt constantly tired. Some mornings she forced herself to put one foot in front of the other to confront the day. And she was putting on weight despite being careful with her diet. She worried there might be something seriously wrong, but it was easier to push nagging thoughts to the back of her mind. She craved one week on her own: one week of blissful quiet without the confusion and togetherness Italians craved. To go to bed late if she wanted without a 6 a.m. alarm call. Time to read a whole book in one sitting or drink wine in the middle of the day, without the responsibility of being the afternoon chauffeur to one of her children: for swimming lessons, music clubs, gymnastics and now regional tennis coaching, for which Davide had been selected. And a week of sleeping in a bed on her own might be good, she thought – without having to get up to soothe a child’s nightmares or being kept awake by Francesco’s snores or his hand stroking her thigh, when sex was the very last thing on her mind… ‘Penny for them?’ Francesco had crept up behind her, folding her in a hug, nuzzling the back of her neck as she tried to concentrate on chopping parsley and celery for a meat sauce. ‘You wouldn’t want to know,’ she said, thinking that he really wouldn’t and that she was an ungrateful cow to fantasise about a life without them. ‘Mamma, Babbo, stop it!’ Rosanna and Emilia were trying to insinuate themselves between their parents to break up their embrace. ‘Is supper nearly ready?’ Emilia, always hungry, asked.

Another method I’ve learned is to just sit there and you close your eyes for at least one hour a day. You surrender to whatever happens—don’t make any effort whatsoever. You make no effort for something, and you make no effort against anything. If there are thoughts running through your mind, you let the thoughts run. For your entire life, things have been happening to you. Some good, some bad, most of which you have processed and dissolved, but a few stuck with you. Over time, more and more stuck with you, and they almost became like these barnacles stuck to you. You lost your childhood sense of wonder and of being present and happy. You lost your inner happiness because you built up this personality of unresolved pain, errors, fears, and desires that glommed onto you like a bunch of barnacles. How do you get those barnacles off you? What happens in meditation is you’re sitting there and not resisting your mind. These things will start bubbling up. It’s like a giant inbox of unanswered emails, going back to your childhood. They will come out one by one, and you will be forced to deal with them. You will be forced to resolve them. Resolving them doesn’t take any work—you just observe them. Now you’re an adult with some distance, time, and space from previous events, and you can just resolve them. You can be much more objective about how you view them. Over time, you will resolve a lot of these deep-seated unresolved things you have in your mind. Once they’re resolved, there will come a day when you sit down to meditate, and you’ll hit a mental “inbox zero.” When you open your mental “email” and there are none, that is a pretty amazing feeling. It’s a state of joy and bliss and peace. Once you have it, you don’t want to give it up. If you can get a free hour of bliss every morning just by sitting and closing your eyes, that is worth its weight in gold. It will change your life. I recommend meditating one hour each morning because anything less is not enough time to really get deep into it. I would recommend if you really want to try meditation, try sixty days of one hour a day, first thing in the morning. After about sixty days, you will be tired of listening to your own mind. You will have resolved a lot of issues, or you have heard them enough to see through those fears and issues. Meditation isn’t hard. All you have to do is sit there and do nothing. Just sit down. Close your eyes and say, “I’m just going to give myself a break for an hour. This is my hour off from life. This is the hour I’m not going to do anything. “If thoughts come, thoughts come. I’m not going to fight them. I’m not going to embrace them. I’m not going to think harder about them. I’m not going to reject them. I’m just going to sit here for an hour with my eyes closed, and I’m going to do nothing.” How hard is that? Why can you not do anything for an hour? What’s so hard about giving yourself an hour-long break? [74]

Morning,” he said, headed for the coffeepot. When he got back to the table and sat, he was met by her glare. “What?” he asked, perplexed. “I cannot believe you did that,” she said. “Did what?” he asked. “My best friend. You know she’s been through a hard time.” He looked around a little frantically. “Vanni, what? Where’s Nikki?” “Gone,” she said flatly. “Gone?” he asked, rising out of his chair. “Gone?” “Yes,” she affirmed. “What were you thinking?” He gave a huff of unhappy laughter. “I was thinking I’d just found the woman of my dreams,” he said. “She left?” “In tears,” Vanni said, her mouth set in a grim line. “Tears? Vanni, I did not make her cry!” “Didn’t you have sex with her all night long in that little fifth wheel?” she asked, anger in her tone. Hoo-boy. You don’t talk about that, especially when it’s meaningful. “Vanni, I swear to you, I didn’t do anything to hurt her.” “Didn’t you find her on the deck, crying, and kiss her and seduce her and take her to that little trailer?” “Well… Yeah… I did that part….” And he was thinking, was there a felony in there somewhere? Because all through the night the only thing he had tried to do was show her how much she could be loved. And it was wonderful; she was wonderful. Spontaneous and aroused and ultimately quite satisfied. And happy. He’d heard her sigh, he’d heard her laugh. There was absolutely no crying. “Didn’t it occur to you that after her heart had been broken, that was probably not a great idea?” He got a little angry himself. He leaned his hands on the table, got a little bit in her face and said, “No. I thought it was a terrific idea, and so did she. I wanted to be good to her and I was. I treated her with absolute respect, and she consented one hundred percent. Now, give me her number. I need to talk to her as soon as possible.” “She said absolutely no.” “What? No, I have to get in touch with her. Vanni, this isn’t funny.” “No, it’s not. I just don’t know what went through your mind.” “Wait a minute here, I didn’t talk her into anything! I was a perfect gentleman, I swear to God!” “Don’t you know anything about women?” she asked him. “Apparently not!” he answered hotly. “She’s just spent five years with a guy who wouldn’t come through. What do you suppose she thinks you’re going to do after one night?” “She could give me a frickin’ chance!” Vanni’s mouth was set in a firm line. “She said absolutely no.” “Oh, for God’s sake. Vanni, this is cruel and unusual. Listen, I have feelings for her. Really.” “After one night?” she asked, a definite superior tone to her voice. “Before the night,” he said. “Will you ask her to call me? Please?” “You knew her for what? Ten minutes?” “Shit,” he said. “Okay, it was fast. Okay? I admit it. But by the time we’d spent a night together it seemed…” It seemed as if he’d been with her for years! Jesus, his voice was quivering. He was losing his mind. He should be saying, fine—if that’s the way she wants it, fine. But in his head, his heart, his gut, he was feeling desperate. Driven. He was not letting this woman get away. His

I mean, he asked for the keys to the truck last night and brought them back earlier this morning.  Truck’s fixed.  I checked myself.  So, I’m wondering what you said to him.” My mouth popped open.  I couldn’t believe he’d actually listened to me.  A silly smile tugged at my mouth.  Did this really mean he’d let me go?  My barely formed smile faded.  Or would I just wake up back in this apartment tomorrow morning if I tried to leave? Sam continued to remake the bed with the clean sheets from the hidden compartment in the matching sofa ottoman. There had to be a catch.  Sam had told me a tied pair didn’t part until completing the Claim.  When Clay had scented me, and I’d recognized him openly, the Elders saw us as a pair.  They, in turn, announced it to everyone over their mental link.  Every werewolf, whether in a pack or Forlorn, recognized our tie.  If my words truly changed Clay’s mind, great—but Sam’s question caused me to begin to doubt that possibility, and I struggled to come up with what I’d overlooked. “The truth,” I said answering Sam’s question.  “Let’s say he is my Mate.  He’s an uneducated man from the backwoods.  How are we going to live?  I can’t turn on the fur like you guys can and live as a wolf like he’s done for most of his life.  Where does that leave us?  I just pointed out that I had to go to school to get the education I needed to land a good job to support myself because he can’t.” Sam had stopped remaking the bed and looked at me in disbelief. “Well, I said it nicer than that.” He gave me a disappointed look. “You don’t know anything about him, Gabby.  He may have lived most of his life in his fur, but it doesn’t mean he isn’t intelligent or that he’s more wolf than man.  You may have caused yourself more trouble than you intended.” I shifted against the door.  “Hold on, I didn’t say either of those things to him.”  Granted, I did tell him he needed to bathe.  “And what do you mean ‘more trouble’?” “He said that you suggested he live with you so you could get to know each other better.” I froze in disbelief.  That is not what I said. “Wait.  Did he actually talk to you?” “Well, I had to put on my fur to understand him since he was in his, but yes.” Sam’s kind communicated in several ways when in their fur—typically, through body language or howls.  Claimed and Mated pairs shared a special bond using an intuitive, mental link.  Once establishing a Claim, the pair could sense strong emotions as well as each other’s location.  Mated pairs had the same ability to communicate with each other as the Elders had with everyone in the pack. I closed my eyes and thought back to my exact wording. “I didn’t say we should live together, but that he should come back with me to get an education.”  Fine, I hadn’t worded it well, but how did he get “hey, we should live together” out of that? “Like I said, you’ve got trouble.”  He gave me another disappointed look, folded the bed back into the sofa, then picked up his bag from the floor.  He strode to the bathroom and closed the door on any further conversation. Crap.  I needed to talk to Clay again and find out what he intended.  I’d been counting on his feral upbringing and his need for freedom to cause him to reject my suggestion—a suggestion that hadn’t included him living with me.  I’d meant he should find a place nearby so we could go through the motions of human dating, which was the extent of my willingness to compromise.  I hadn’t thought he’d take any of it seriously but that, instead, he would just let me go. I

Vanessa had no trouble imagining how the general could look scary as hell to his troops. But this morning, at the kitchen table with just his daughter and grandson, he was soft as a puppy. She reached across the table and patted his hand. He played with the baby’s foot with his other. “You’re not losing me, Daddy. Not ever.” “It’s okay, Vanni. You’re a young woman in your prime. Paul’s a fine young man, despite the fact that he’s fathering the nation…” “Daddy…” “Nah, he’s a good man. His incident aside.” She leaned toward him. “You’re not losing me,” she said again. “But I packed a bag this morning. I’m going home with him, Dad. Just for a few days. We’ll be back before the weekend.” “That doesn’t surprise me a bit. I’m surprised you didn’t take off in the dark of night.” Then she asked softly, “Did I disturb your sleep last night?” He shook his head. “I suppose we’re an odd family,” he said. “Not quite the stiff and upright family I had always thought we were, but the facts of our lives have changed all that. Relaxed our expectations… At least mine.” He looked down. “I heard you, yes. It wasn’t too disturbing. In fact, those are happy sounds.” He lifted his eyes. “There were other nights I heard you—and your brother. Nights of crying over loved ones lost. Your mother. Your husband. And I don’t doubt there were nights young Tom, at only fourteen, wondered what to do about a tough old three-star crying in his bed over his wife’s death.” “Oh, Daddy…” “Vanni—life is rough. It can’t help but be, especially for military families like ours. But we have to soldier on, be strong, do the best we can. If you tell me you’re happy with Paul…” “Oh, Dad, I love him so much. I loved him before I fell in love with him, if that makes sense. He loves me. And—he loves you.” “Any man who would do all he did after his best friend’s death—this is a man who deserves my respect.” “Thank

When morning came, I decided to peek out from behind the bank and noticed what looked like fire moving through the trees. I then realized it was a zombie and he was burning up in the sun! Thank goodness, sunlight kills them. I thought it was quite funny when he disappeared in a cloud of smoke. I wandered over and discovered he had left behind some of his stinky rotten flesh. It serves him right for trying to kill me. Karma is a wonderful thing.   So,

Do you think they’ll ever be a place for us? I mean, do you think there’s a place for someone who lives under the radar, someone who has to pretend, someone who is a spy?” “Yes.” Daly said it with such confidence that I sat up in my bed, my cast dangling over the edge. “How do you know?” I asked. “There has to be. I don’t usually philosophize, but I do know one thing.” “What’s that?” “That even when we’re pretending, even when we’re hiding under wigs or accents or clothes that aren’t our style, we can’t hide our nature. Just like I knew from the moment I met you that you would choose this life. And just like I knew, when you told me about this mission, that you would agree to help the CIA find this girl. You would sacrifice yourself and your time with your brother to save someone. It’s just who you are.” “I’ve already messed things up, Daly. What if I’m not good enough? What if I can’t do it?” “That’s the thing, though. You’ll find a way.” I lay back again and buried the side of my face into my pillow. “I’m just not sure how.” “If you continue to think as you’ve always thought, you’ll continue to get what you’ve always got,” Daly said. I considered that. I wasn’t ready to give up. At least not yet. “That one is Itosu wisdom, in case you wondered.” I yawned into the phone. “It’s good advice.” “I’ll let you go. You should be resting. Don’t you have school in the morning?” He said the last part in a teasing tone. “Yeah, if I make it through another day at school. Maybe they’ll get rid of me—kick me out or something. You’d think I would have inherited some of my mom’s artistic genius.” “Can I give you one last bit of advice, Alex?” “Sure.” “Throw it all out the window.” “What?” I stared at my open window. A slight breeze blew the gauzelike drapes in and out as if they were a living creature. “Everything you’ve learned about art, the lines, the colors, the pictures in your head from other artists—just throw it all out. And throw out everything you’ve learned from books and simulations about being a good spy. Don’t try to be like someone else. Don’t force yourself to follow a set of rules that weren’t meant for you. Those work for 99.99% of the people.” “You’re telling me I’m the .01%?” I asked skeptically. “No, I’m telling you you’re not even on the scale.” Daly’s soft breathing traveled through the phone line. “With a mind like yours, you can’t be put in a box. Or even expected to stand outside it. You were never meant to hold still, Alex. You have to stack all the boxes up and climb and keep climbing until you find you. I’m just saying that Alexandra Stewart will find her own way.” The cool night air brushed the skin of my arm and I wished it was Daly’s hand instead. “You sure have a lot of wisdom tonight,” I told him. I expected him to laugh. Instead, the line went silent for a moment. “Because I’m not there. Because I wish I was.” His words were simple, but his message reached inside my heart and left a warmth—a warmth I needed. “Thank you, James.” “Take care, Alex.” I wanted to say more, to keep him at my ear just a little longer. Yet the words itching to break free couldn’t be said from over two thousand miles away. They needed to happen in person. I wasn’t going home until I found Amoriel. Which meant I had to complete this mission. Not just for Amoriel anymore. I had to do it for me. (page 143)

In the Bible, God called Gideon a mighty man of (fearless) courage. Gideon looked around and said, “Who’s He talking to? That’s not me.” God had an assignment for Gideon, something great for him to accomplish, but Gideon had not renewed his mind. He had these toxic thoughts. God saw him as strong, but Gideon saw himself as weak, defeated, not able to. God wanted him to lead the people of Israel and to defeat an opposing army, but Gideon said, “God, I can’t do that. I’m the least one in my father’s house. I come from the poorest family. I don’t have the education, the skills, the courage.” Notice how Gideon perceived himself compared to how God saw him. God said he was a mighty man of fearless courage. If God were to call your name today, He wouldn’t say, “Hello, you weak worm of the dust. Hello, you failure. Hello, you ol’ sinner. How’s My loser doing today?” God would say the same sort of thing to you that He said to Gideon: “Hello, Mary, you mighty woman of fearless courage.” Or “Hello, Bob, you mighty man of fearless courage.” I wonder if you would be like Gideon and say, “God, who are You talking to? Don’t You know what family I come from? Haven’t You seen the mistakes I’ve made? Let me remind You of some of them. God, You know I’m not that talented. Why are You calling me a mighty man?” The problem is, you have allowed these wrong thoughts to infect your thinking. But thank God this is a new day. You are beginning a new diet. You are starting a fast by cutting out every negative, discouraging, can’t do it thought. When those wrong thoughts come up, instead of saying like Gideon, “I’m not able. Who am I?” Turn it around and say, “I know who I am. I am well able. I’m ready for my assignment. God I am who You say I am.” I believe in the coming days God will present you with new opportunities. New doors will open. New people will come across your path. Maybe there will even be a new career opportunity. If you are to reach a new level, you must have a new way of thinking. You have to clean out the old so you’ll have room for the new. I’m asking you to detox all the garbage telling you what you’re not and what you can’t do. Remove all those strongholds. Detox little dreams. Detox low self-esteem. Detox the negative words. Stay on your diet. Every morning go through a good cleanse. Start the day off in faith. If you’ll guard your mind and instead of letting it get toxic keep it full of faith-filled thoughts, God promises you’ll overcome every obstacle, you’ll defeat every enemy, and every dream and every desire God has put in your heart will come to pass.

The labor went very much the same way that Kania's had, which seemed strange to Marra. Then again, peasants and princesses all shit the same and have their courses the same, so I suppose it's no surprise that babies all come out the same way, too. Having thus accidentally anticipated a few centuries' worth of revolutionary political thought, Marra got down to the business of boiling water and making tea. It went more quickly than Kania's, at least, but it was still a long, tense, tedious stretch. Marra nodded off more than once and sometimes came to with the lamp in her hand and the Sister Apothecary crouching between the mother's legs, wondering if she was really awake or if she was having a strange sort of dream. Dawn had passed and it was most of the way to morning when the baby emerged into the world, looked around and burst into tears. "You get used to it," the Sister told the infant, and handed the child to Marra, who stared at it with intense horror. It was bloody and wrinkly and reddish gray and looked like the sort of thing you would drive back to hell with holy water. "Um," said Marra. "Is it ... Is ..." The mother was panting and could hardly breathe. "It cried. It's alive right?" "Oh yes," said Marra hurriedly. "Very alive." She stared at it, trying to find something else to say. "Has arms and legs. And, uh ... a head ..." "That's good," said the mother, and began giggling with high, hysterical laughter. "Oh, that's good. You want them to have heads." "Lady of Grackles have mercy," muttered the Sister Apothecary, but as she was saying this directly into the birth canal, no one but Marra heard.

When breakfast was over you could tell by the long, long shadow of the fig tree that it was still very early in the morning. On sunny days Doña Teresa could tell the time almost exactly by its shadow, but on rainy days she just had to guess, because there was no clock in her little cabin. It was lucky that it was so early, because there were so many things to be done. The Twins and their mother were not the only busy people about, however, for there were two hundred other peons beside Pancho who worked on the hacienda, and each one had a little cabin where he lived with his family. There were other vaqueros besides [p 20 ] Pancho. There were ploughmen, and farmers, and water-carriers, and servants for the great white house where Señor Fernandez lived with his wife and pretty daughter Carmen. And there was the gatekeeper, José, 9 whom the Twins loved because he knew the most wonderful stories and was always willing to tell them. There were field-workers, and wood-cutters, and even fishermen. The huts where they all lived were huddled together like a little village, and the village, and the country for miles and miles around, and the big house, and the little chapel beside it, and the schoolhouse, and everything else on that great hacienda, belonged to Señor Fernandez. It almost seemed as if the workers all belonged to Señor Fernandez, too, for they had to do just what he told them to, and there was no other place for them to go and nothing else for them to do if they had wanted ever so much to change. [p 21 ] All the people, big and little, loved the fiesta of San Ramon. They thought the priest’s blessing would cause the hens to lay more eggs, and the cows to give more milk, and that it would keep all the creatures well and strong. Though it was a feast day, most of the men had gone away from their homes early, when Pancho did; but the women and children in all the little cabins were busy as bees, getting themselves and their animals ready to go in procession to the place where the priest was to bless them. As soon as breakfast was eaten, Doña Teresa said to Tonio: “Go now, my Tonio, and make Tonto beautiful! His coat is rough and full of burs, and he will make a very poor figure to show the priest unless you give him a good brushing. Only be careful

In my youth . . . my sacred youth . . . in eaves sole sparowe sat not more alone than I . . . in my youth, my saucer-deep youth, when I possessed a mirror and both a morning and an evening comb . . . in my youth, my pimpled, shame-faced, sugared youth, when I dreamed myself a fornicator and a poet; when life seemed to be ahead somewhere like a land o’ lakes vacation cottage, and I was pure tumescence, all seed, afloat like fuzz among the butterflies and bees; when I was the bursting pod of a fall weed; when I was the hum of sperm in the autumn air, the blue of it like watered silk, vellum to which I came in a soft cloud; O minstrel galleons of Carib fire, I sang then, knowing naught, clinging to the tall slim wheatweed which lay in a purple haze along the highway like a cotton star . . . in my fumbling, lubricious, my uticated youth, when a full bosom and a fine round line of Keats, Hart Crane, or Yeats produced in me the same effect—a moan throughout my molecules—in my limeade time, my uncorked innocence, my jellybelly days, when I repeated Olio de Oliva like a tenor; then I would touch the page in wonder as though it were a woman, as though I were blind in my bed, in the black backseat, behind the dark barn, the dim weekend tent, last dance, date's door, reaching the knee by the second feature, possibly the thigh, my finger an urgent emissary from my penis, alas as far away as Peking or Bangkok, so I took my heart in my hand, O my love, O my love, I sighed, O Christina, Italian rose; my inflated flesh yearning to press against that flesh becoming Word—a word—words which were wet and warm and responsive as a roaming tongue; and her hair was red, long, in ringlets, kiss me, love me up, she said in my anxious oral ear; I read: Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour; for I had oodles of needs, if England didn't; I was nothing but skin, pulp, and pit, in my grapevine time, during the hard-on priesthood of the poet; because then—in my unclean, foreskinned, and prurient youth—I devoutly believed in Later Life, in Passion, in Poetry, the way I thought only fools felt about God, prayer, heaven, foreknowledge, sin; for what was a poem if not a divine petition, a holy plea, a prophecy: [...] a stranger among strangers, myself the strangest because I could never bring myself to enter adolescence, but kept it about like a bit of lunch you think you may eat later, and later come upon at the bottom of a bag, dry as dust, at the back of the refrigerator, bearded with mold, or caked like sperm in the sock you've fucked, so that gingerly, then, you throw the mess out, averting your eyes, just as Rainer complained he never had a childhood—what luck!—never to have suffered birthpang, nightfear, cradlecap, lake in your lung; never to have practiced scales or sat numb before the dentist's hum or picked your mother up from the floor she's bled and wept and puked on; never to have been invaded by a tick, sucked by a leech, bitten by a spider, stung by a bee, slimed on by a slug, seared by a hot pan, or by paper or acquaintance cut, by father cuffed; never to have been lost in a crowd or store or parking lot or left by a lover without a word or arrogantly lied to or outrageously betrayed—really what luck!—never to have had a nickel roll with slow deliberation down a grate, a balloon burst, toy break; never to have skinned a knee, bruised a friendship, broken trust; never to have had to conjugate, keep quiet, tidy, bathe; to have lost the chance to be hollered at, bullied, beat up (being nothing, indeed, to have no death), and not to have had an earache, life's lessons to learn, or sums to add reluctantly right up to their bitter miscalculated end—what sublime good fortune, the Greek poet suggested—because Nature is not accustomed to life yet; it is too new, too incidental, this shiver in the stone, never altogether, and would just as soon (as Culp prefers to say) cancer it; erase, strike, stamp it out— [...]

You can gaze over the fence and covet another person’s life or tell yourself that God has blessed you in ways you never could have earned. Do you ever battle with envy? Have you ever wondered why someone else’s life seems easier than yours? Have you ever struggled to celebrate the blessings of someone else who had what you thought you needed? Have you ever wished you could just switch lives with someone? Perhaps there are ways in which envy haunts us all, so it’s worth examining the heart of envy. What things prepare the heart for envy? Envy is forgetful. In concentrating on what we don’t have that we think we should have, we fail to keep in mind the huge catalog of blessings that are ours simply because God has chosen to place his bountiful love on us. This forgetfulness causes us to do more comparing and complaining than praising and resting. Envy misunderstands blessing. So often envy is fueled by misunderstanding what God’s care looks like. It is not always the care of provision, relief, or release. Sometimes God’s blessing comes in the form of trials that are his means of giving us things we could get no other way. Envy is selfish. Envy tends to put us in the center of our own worlds. It tends to make everything about our comfort and ease, our wants, needs, and feelings, and not about the plan and the glory of the God we serve. Envy is self-righteous. Envy has an “I deserve _____ more than they do” posture to it. It forgets that we all deserve immediate and eternal punishment, and that any good thing we have is an undeserved gift of God’s amazing grace. Envy is shortsighted. Envy has a right here, right now aspect to it that overlooks the fact that this moment is not all there is. Envy cannot see that this moment isn’t meant to be a destination, but a preparation for a final destination that will be beautiful beyond our wildest imagination. Envy questions God’s wisdom. When you and I envy, we tend to buy into the thought that we are smarter than God. In envy, we tend to think we know more and better, and if our hands were on the joystick, we would be handling things a different way. Envy is impatient. Envy doesn’t like to wait. Envy complains quickly and tires easily. Envy doesn’t just cry for blessings; it cries for blessings now. What is devastating about envy is that it questions God’s goodness, and when you do that, you quit running to him for help. So cry out for rescue—that God would give you a thankful, humble, and patient heart. His transforming grace is your only defense against envy. For further study and encouragement: Psalm 34

Nesta gave you this?' Technically, Nesta had informed him, the House had given it to her. But she'd asked the House for these items, intending them to be brought here. 'She said it's a gift.' Emerie picked up a brass tin, pried open the top, and inhaled. The smoky, velvety scent of tea leaves floated out. 'Oh, this is good stuff.' She lifted a glass vial of finely ground powder. When she twisted the lid off, a nutty, spicy scent filled the shop. 'Cumin.' Her sigh was like a lover's. She moved to another and another, six glass containers in total. 'Turmeric, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, and...' She peered at the label. 'Black pepper.' Cassian laid the last container on the table, a large marble box that weighed at least two pounds. Emerie yanked off the lid and let out a laugh. 'Salt.' She pinched the flaky crystal between her fingers. 'A lot of salt.' Her eyes shone as a rare smile flitted across her face. It made her look younger, wiped away the weight and scars of all those years with her father. 'Please tell her I say thank you.' He cleared his throat, remembering the speech Nesta had drilled into him. 'Nesta says you can thank her by showing up to training tomorrow morning.' Emerie's smile wavered. 'I told her the other day: I have no means to attend.' 'She thought you'd say that. If you want to come, send word, and one of us will bring you.' It'd have to be Rhys, but he doubted his brother would object. 'If you can't stay the full time, that's fine. Come for an hour, before your shop opens.' Emerie's fingers fell away from the spices and tea. 'It's not the right time.' Cassian knew better than to push. 'If you ever change your mind, let us know.' He turned from the counter, aiming for the door. He knew Nesta had given the gift in part to tempt Emerie to join, but also from the kindness of her heart. He'd asked why she was sending these items, and she'd said, 'Emerie needs spices and good tea.' It had stunned him, just as it had stunned him earlier to hear her admit that she liked Gwyn. Nesta around Gwyn was a wholly different creature than who she was with the court. They didn't tease or laugh with each other, but an easiness lay between them that he'd never witnessed, even when Nesta was with Elain. She'd always been Elain's guardian, or Feyre's sister, or Cauldron-Made. With Gwyn... he wondered whether Nesta liked the girl because with her, she was simply Nesta. Perhaps she felt that way around Emerie, too. Had she gone into Velaris, night after night, not only to distract and numb herself, but to be around people who didn't know the weight of all she carried?

Boros’ presence reminded me what it’s like to live with someone. And how very awkward it is. How much it diverts you from your own thoughts and distracts you. How another Person starts to irritate you without actually doing anything annoying, but simply by being there. Each morning when he went off to the forest, I blessed my glorious solitude. How do people manage to spend decades living together in a small space? I wondered. How can they possibly sleep in the same bed together, breathing on and jostling each other accidentally in their sleep? I’m not saying it hasn’t happened to me too. For some time I shared my bed with a Catholic, and nothing good came of it.

But we left camp after a while and we was driving in a real spooky place cause all the roads up near camp are dark and in the woods and we had to drive for a while to get to a highway cause there was no street lights or anything and nothing but woods and my dad asked me if I had a good time and I told him I did, but that’s really a lie and I felt like telling him what it was like at that mean old camp, but I thought he’d get mad and tell me I’m making it up and I thought I’d tell him some other time like Febuary and cause I didn’t think he’d believe me anyway, but so I changed my mind and then I thought I should tell him now cause he’ll wonder howcome I never told him sooner, so when he said that’s a nasty gash and when he said what did I do, stumble on the trail and hit a big rock or something? I told him no and I told him that lots of bad things happened to me at camp and that I never want to go there again cause I hate it and I almost cried. But he said I always had a bibid emigination cause he’s sure it wasn’t that bad! And I don’t know about those big words either, but what he said made me kind of mad cause grownups always think they know what happened to you better than you do yourself.

But maybe she’d have herself a little adventure in there somewhere. Maybe on her cruise, on one of her trips. Not with this kind of man, of course. He was too mature, for one thing. One look convinced her—he knew everything about men and women, while she knew very little. He looked a little dangerous and very, very physical. Scary. He had that warrior appearance, complete with tattoos. The sight of him bare-chested had rattled her, but the big horse beneath her had given her plenty of confidence. His shoulders were so large, strong and muscular, and he had a barbed-wire armband tattooed on his rippling left biceps. His belly was flat and hard with a trail of chest hair that disappeared into his jeans. The stubble along his jaw made his grin a little taunting and definitely naughty; it had made her shiver. And he had an aura of carelessness. He would take a bite of her, then pitch her out, forgetting her before morning. But while Shelby had looked him over, everything inside her had grown warm. Something about him, a forbidden quality, was absolutely delicious. Even the damn dirt looked good on him. Despite her common sense, she wondered, wouldn’t that be interesting? And her very next thought was, no, no, no, not him! My adventure will come in a polo shirt, cheeks as smooth as a baby’s butt, styled hair, no tattoos and hopefully an advanced degree. Not some scary Black Hawk pilot who has a Ph.D. in one-night stands! *

out and started again? Well, she hated cold tea, so she tipped it onto the grass, holding her breath. No complaint, so she began again. ‘Milk?’ Hannah studied him from under her hair. ‘Yes, please, just a small amount. Lapsang is a very delicate tea and too much milk kills the flavour.’ ‘I’ll need lots of milk then.’ Balancing the cup, saucer and spoon carefully, she offered it. ‘Thank you, Miss Hollis.’ ‘Hannah.’ She poured her own tea, wondering if it would taste like the ashtray it smelled like. With cup only in hand, she leaned against the back of the wooden chair then threw a leg over the side arm. ‘So, Miss Hollis, what brings you to Cornwall?’ ‘Call me Hannah. Miss Hollis makes me sound like some old school marm.’ ‘Is that a problem? Most old school marms, as you call them, of my acquaintance are delightful people.’ ‘Sure, but boring I bet.’ ‘Not at all.’ ‘Right. Not to you, maybe.’ Hannah braved a sip and winced. ‘Back to the question: what has brought you to Cornwall?’ ‘Bloody bad luck,’ she said, frowning at her tea. ‘No need to swear,’ he said. ‘I didn’t swear.’ ‘You did,’ he said. ‘What? Are you talking about bloody?’ she asked. ‘Yes. It is a curse.’ ‘No,’ she said. ‘Yes.’ ‘Well, maybe in the dark ages it was, but it isn’t now.’ She began to wonder if she’d walked through a time machine when she’d come through the gate earlier. It was a nice one, though. The orchard was beautifully laid out and the table and chairs were a lovely weathered blue. ‘Who advised you of this?’ he asked. Hannah sat up and put her empty cup on the table, not quite sure when she had drunk it. ‘Look, it’s a word that’s used every day.’ ‘Yes, but does that change its meaning?’ he asked. ‘No, but no one takes it like that any more.’ ‘Who is no one?’ he asked. ‘I mean no one who hasn’t lived in the dark ages.’ She looked at his wrinkled skin and tried to guess his age. ‘You mean anyone over the age of, say, sixty?’ he suggested. ‘Yeah, sort of.’ ‘Well, as I fit that category, could you refrain from using it?’ ‘Yeah, I guess. If it bothers you that much.’ ‘Thank you. Would you be kind enough to pour more tea?’ Old Tom leaned back into his chair. The sun wasn’t coming through the east window when Maddie opened her eyes for the second time that day; instead, she found Mark standing at the end of the bed with a tray. She blinked. When she last peered at the bedside clock, it had been eight a.m. and she’d thought that if she slept for another hour, she would begin to feel human. What a wasted day. What had Hannah been up to? Had she come into the room and seen her like this? Well, it was a lesson in what not to do in life. The end of last night, no, this morning, was more than fuzzy; in fact, she didn’t remember coming up to her room. The last clear memory was saying goodbye to Tamsin and Anthony. She and Mark had gone back into the kitchen and had another glass of wine or two. ‘Good evening,’ he said. ‘It’s not that late?’ ‘Almost time for a drink.’ He smiled. She winced. ‘Oh, don’t.’ ‘Would a bit of tea and toast help?’ ‘It might.’ Maddie eased herself onto her elbows and then slipped back down again. She was only wearing knickers. Mark’s eyes widened. ‘Could you hand me that shirt on the end of the bed?’ she asked. ‘Certainly.’ She wrestled with it under the duvet. ‘Sorry. I couldn’t find your pyjamas last night.’ ‘What?’ Maddie

She was using the metal detector on Thursday morning, running it along the banks of the creek, when a pair of men’s hiking boots appeared at the edge of her vision. Her gaze traveled up a set of long, nicely muscled legs encased in faded denim, past a worn leather belt, over a flat stomach that vee’d to a man’s wide chest. She must have been staring, because Call reached over and shut off the metal detector. “Hi,” she said lamely. He cleared his throat and she wondered if he was as nervous as she. “I saw you working your way along the creek. I figured I owed you an apology for…for what happened the other day.” He glanced over her head, then looked back into her face. “I don’t usually attack helpless women. I hope I didn’t scare you.” She was a lot of things that morning, but afraid of those burning-hot kisses wasn’t one of them. “No apology needed. What happened was my fault as much as yours. Why don’t we just chalk it up to an adrenal rush with nowhere to go?” He nodded and turned to leave. “Actually, I was thinking of coming over to your place,” she said, stopping him. “I never thanked you for saving me. If you hadn’t shown up when you did, I’d probably be bear food by now.” His mouth edged into a faint half-smile. “I doubt it. You don’t really need to be afraid of them. Most of the time, bears leave you pretty much alone. You just need to use a little good judgment and be cautious whenever one’s near.” She studied his face, the chiseled lines and valleys, the square chin and solid jaw. There was something different this morning, but she couldn’t quite figure… “You shaved,” she blurted out, feeling like an idiot the instant the words let her mouth. His lips curved up. She remembered exactly the way they felt pressing into hers and a little sliver of heat trickled into her belly. “Believe it or not, I shave every once in a while.” “You look good.” God, did he. If she’d thought he was handsome before, now she realized how disturbingly attractive he was. “Do I?” A hint of color crept beneath the bones in his cheeks. “Then I guess I’ll have to do it more often.

mention that!). Teresa is way more than an agent. She’s also a lovely, thoughtful person. I’d also like to thank my good friends Susan McKenzie and Lili de Grandpré, for their help and support. And finally I want to say a word about the poetry I use in this book, and the others. As much as I’d love not to say anything and hope you believe I wrote it, I actually need to thank the wonderful poets who’ve allowed me to use their works and words. I adore poetry, as you can tell. Indeed, it inspires me—with words and emotions. I tell aspiring writers to read poetry, which I think for them is often the literary equivalent of being told to eat Brussels sprouts. They’re none too enthusiastic. But what a shame if a writer doesn’t at least try to find poems that speak to him or her. Poets manage to get into a couplet what I struggle to achieve in an entire book. I thought it was time I acknowledged that. In this book I use, as always, works from Margaret Atwood’s slim volume Morning in the Burned House. Not a very cheerful title, but brilliant poems. I’ve also quoted from a lovely old work called The Bells of Heaven by Ralph Hodgson. And a wonderful poem called “Gravity Zero” from an emerging Canadian poet named Mike Freeman, from his book Bones. I wanted you to know that. And I hope these poems speak to you, as they speak to me.

Sometimes even I don't realize how weighed down you are until you let that shit drop," Jasper said as we walked into the courtyard. I walked over to the wall and leaned on it, Jasper moving in behind me, arms around my waist, holding me tight. "I have a mom," I smiled. "A good one too." "And I have a grandmother." "Mhmm." "And a father who is a dickhead, but at least I know him now." "I guess." "And a brother." "I wish I could say that your desire to know him is normal, but I think it's fucked." I shrugged that off. "And I have Jade and Doyle and your mom and freaking Baba Yaga..." I trailed off, exhaling hard. I had never realized how alone I had felt in the world until I had a group of people I loved, admired, and would feel less myself if I hadn't met them. "And you." "I was wondering when you'd get around to me." "Saved the best for last," I said and he squeezed me tight. "Hey Jasper," I said and he made a 'mmm' sound against my neck. "I'm a princess," I declared a little giddily. He chuckled for a long time, his body jumping, making mine do the same. "Yeah you are." "Are you going to start kissing my ring and getting down on a knee in front of me?" I teased. "You want me on my knees, honey, I'll get on my knees. But I can think of a lot better things to kiss from that position than your fucking ring." I smiled at that. Huge. Happy. God, happy. I don't think I knew the meaning of that word until that very minute. "Me either," Jasper agreed. "That's still annoying," I snorted. "You'll get used to it." "Or you could stop mentally eavesdropping," I suggested. "Yeah, like that's gonna happen," he chuckled. Yes, happy. It may have taken an extreme situation, sadness and frustration and pain like I had never experienced before, but in the end, it was worth it. It was so, so worth it. "I love you," I declared for about the fifth time that morning. "I know," he said, just to screw with me and I loved him even more for that. "I love you too... princess." "So about that... kissing thing..." I smiled, turning in his arms. "Thought you'd never ask," he said, eyes going wicked as he dragged me across the courtyard and up to our room where he showed me just what a devoted servant he was to the Light Court. And then we lived happily ever after. Well, sort of. It's a long story. Let's just say shit happened. Things got crazy for a while. But then, oh yeah, we really did live happily ever after.

But her first instincts had been right. He was a good husband, a wonderful father and stepfather. He brought her a cup of tea in bed every morning and rubbed her feet at night when she was tired. And they’d made beautiful children together, she thought fondly, as she put Jacob’s breakfast on the high chair in front of him. Both their sons were a perfect blend of the two of them, with ruddy chestnut hair and hazel eyes. Only Emily looked like she didn’t belong. She was growing more like her biological father with every passing year. As she stirred the lumps out of Jacob’s cereal, Maddie felt an unexpected rush of tears. She blinked them back, cursing the pregnancy hormones that left her so vulnerable. Emily’s father, Benjamin, had been her first boyfriend, a veterinary student in his final year at the same college as she when they’d met. Quiet and painfully shy, Maddie had always found it hard to make friends, having been raised by a widowed mother too busy with her charitable causes to have time to show Maddie how to have fun. At twenty-one, she’d never even been on a date until Benjamin asked her to join him at a lecture about animal husbandry. Somehow, Benjamin had got under her skin. Theirs had been a gentle, low-key relationship, a slow burn born of shared interests and companionship. It wasn’t love, exactly, but it was warm and reassuring and safe. Eight months after they’d met, she’d lost her virginity to him in an encounter that, like the relationship itself, was unremarkable but quietly satisfying. The pregnancy a year later had been a complete accident. To her surprise, Benjamin had been thrilled. They’d both graduated college by then, and while she made next to nothing at the sanctuary, he was earning enough as a small animal vet to look after them both. He bought dozens of books on fatherhood and had picked out names – Emily for a girl, Charlie for a boy – before Maddie had been for her first scan. He was so excited about becoming a

Later on, when they had all said “Good-bye” and “Thank you” to Christopher Robin, Pooh and Piglet walked home thoughtfully together in the golden evening, and for a long time they were silent. “When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet at last, “what’s the first thing you say to yourself?” “What’s for breakfast?” said Pooh. “What do you say, Piglet?” “I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?” said Piglet. Pooh nodded thoughtfully. “It’s the same thing,” he said

Later on, when they had all said “Good-bye” and “Thank you” to Christopher Robin, Pooh and Piglet walked home thoughtfully together in the golden evening, and for a long time they were silent. “When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet at last, “what’s the first thing you say to yourself?” “What’s for breakfast?” said Pooh. “What do you say, Piglet?” “I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?” said Piglet. Pooh nodded thoughtfully. “It’s the same thing,” he said.

Gdmng, Sunshine! Just your daily dose of “wisdom” (because who doesn’t love a little dose of encouragement, inspiration or motivation in the morning)? Deep down, we all have the potential to be great. But let’s be honest, some of us planted those “greatness seeds” years ago & are enjoying a tree overflowing with awesome fruits. The rest of us? Still staring at a bag of seeds, wondering if the season is good & afraid of putting hands in dirt. Darling listen – those seeds won’t magically sprout into a self-watering garden of success. You gotta get your hands dirty (metaphorically…, unless you’re actually planting something today, then get dirty for real). Here’s the deal: Everything you do today is a seed for tomorrow. Remember, every thought, word & action counts. Shocking, I know.. but it has always been that way & it will always be that way. Sweetheart, ask yourself: While the universe is on your side, are you on your side? Because the universe is not here to do the weeding. That’s on you. May your metaphorical seeds blossom into a life-changing orchard. Keep Doing The Stuff, Keep Smiling, Stay Blessed & Enjoy your day!