Toll Road Quotes

Jealousy appears to be a redoubtable pitfall for love, on the toll road of self-absorption and unshareability. When love has to remain cloistered and ostentatiously exclusionary, envy may show its pernicious power, cause wounding harms and unchain emotional twisters. ("Why has Shé got stars in the sky?")

I’m a modern man, a man for the millennium. Digital and smoke free. A diversified multi-cultural, post-modern deconstruction that is anatomically and ecologically incorrect. I’ve been up linked and downloaded, I’ve been inputted and outsourced, I know the upside of downsizing, I know the downside of upgrading. I’m a high-tech low-life. A cutting edge, state-of-the-art bi-coastal multi-tasker and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond! I’m new wave, but I’m old school and my inner child is outward bound. I’m a hot-wired, heat seeking, warm-hearted cool customer, voice activated and bio-degradable. I interface with my database, my database is in cyberspace, so I’m interactive, I’m hyperactive and from time to time I’m radioactive. Behind the eight ball, ahead of the curve, ridin the wave, dodgin the bullet and pushin the envelope. I’m on-point, on-task, on-message and off drugs. I’ve got no need for coke and speed. I've got no urge to binge and purge. I’m in-the-moment, on-the-edge, over-the-top and under-the-radar. A high-concept, low-profile, medium-range ballistic missionary. A street-wise smart bomb. A top-gun bottom feeder. I wear power ties, I tell power lies, I take power naps and run victory laps. I’m a totally ongoing big-foot, slam-dunk, rainmaker with a pro-active outreach. A raging workaholic. A working rageaholic. Out of rehab and in denial! I’ve got a personal trainer, a personal shopper, a personal assistant and a personal agenda. You can’t shut me up. You can’t dumb me down because I’m tireless and I’m wireless, I’m an alpha male on beta-blockers. I’m a non-believer and an over-achiever, laid-back but fashion-forward. Up-front, down-home, low-rent, high-maintenance. Super-sized, long-lasting, high-definition, fast-acting, oven-ready and built-to-last! I’m a hands-on, foot-loose, knee-jerk head case pretty maturely post-traumatic and I’ve got a love-child that sends me hate mail. But, I’m feeling, I’m caring, I’m healing, I’m sharing-- a supportive, bonding, nurturing primary care-giver. My output is down, but my income is up. I took a short position on the long bond and my revenue stream has its own cash-flow. I read junk mail, I eat junk food, I buy junk bonds and I watch trash sports! I’m gender specific, capital intensive, user-friendly and lactose intolerant. I like rough sex. I like tough love. I use the “F” word in my emails and the software on my hard-drive is hardcore--no soft porn. I bought a microwave at a mini-mall; I bought a mini-van at a mega-store. I eat fast-food in the slow lane. I’m toll-free, bite-sized, ready-to-wear and I come in all sizes. A fully-equipped, factory-authorized, hospital-tested, clinically-proven, scientifically- formulated medical miracle. I’ve been pre-wash, pre-cooked, pre-heated, pre-screened, pre-approved, pre-packaged, post-dated, freeze-dried, double-wrapped, vacuum-packed and, I have an unlimited broadband capacity. I’m a rude dude, but I’m the real deal. Lean and mean! Cocked, locked and ready-to-rock. Rough, tough and hard to bluff. I take it slow, I go with the flow, I ride with the tide. I’ve got glide in my stride. Drivin and movin, sailin and spinin, jiving and groovin, wailin and winnin. I don’t snooze, so I don’t lose. I keep the pedal to the metal and the rubber on the road. I party hearty and lunch time is crunch time. I’m hangin in, there ain’t no doubt and I’m hangin tough, over and out!

Oh Lion in a peculiar guise, Sharp Roman road to Paradise, Come eat me up, I'll pay thy toll With all my flesh, and keep my soul.

As to remedying our personal mistakes, we face no hindering traffic jams on the road of repentance. It is a toll road, not a freeway, and applying Christ’s Atonement will speed us along.

Stranger, think long before you enter, For these corridors amuse not passing travellers. But if you enter, keep your voice to yourself. Nor should you tinkle and toll your tongue. These columns rose not, for the such as you. But for those urgent pilgrim feet that wander On lonely ways, seeking the roots of rootless trees. The earth has many flowery roads; choose one That pleases your whim, and gods be with you. But now leave! - leave me to my dark green solitude Which like the deep dream world of the sea Has its moving shapes; corals; ancient coins; Carved urns and ruins of ancient ships and gods; And mermaids, with flowing golden hair That charm a patch of silent darkness Into singing sunlight.

A beggar had been sitting by the side of a road for over thirty years. One day a stranger walked by. “Spare some change?” mumbled the beggar, mechanically holding out his old baseball cap. “I have nothing to give you,” said the stranger. Then he asked: “What’s that you are sitting on?” “Nothing,” replied the beggar. “Just an old box. I have been sitting on it for as long as I can remember.” “Ever looked inside?” asked the stranger. “No,” said the beggar. “What’s the point? There’s nothing in there.” “Have a look inside,” insisted the stranger. The beggar managed to pry open the lid. With astonishment, disbelief, and elation, he saw that the box was filled with gold. I am that stranger who has nothing to give you and who is telling you to look inside. Not inside any box, as in the parable, but somewhere even closer: inside yourself.

In the dream from which he'd wakened he had wandered in a cave where the child led him by the hand. Their light playing over the wet flowstone walls. Like pilgrims in a fable swallowed up and lost among the inward parts of some granitic beast. Deep stone flues where the water dripped and sang. Tolling in the silence the minutes of the earth and the hours and the days of it and the years without cease. Until they stood in a great stone room where lay a black and ancient lake. And on the far shore a creature that raised its dripping mouth from the rimstone pool and stared into the light with eyes dead white and sightless as the eggs of spiders. It swung its head low over the water as if to take the scent of what it could not see. Crouching there pale and naked and translucent, its alabaster bones cast up in shadow on the rocks behind it. Its bowels, its beating heart. The brain that pulsed in a dull glass bell. It swung its head from side to side and then gave out a low moan and turned and lurched away and loped soundlessly into the dark.

Tolling in the silence the minutes of the earth and the hours and the days of it and the years without cease.

Let me but live my life from year to year, With forward face and unreluctant soul, Not hastening to, nor turning from the goal; Nor mourning things that disappear In the dim past, nor holding back in fear From what the future veils; but with a whole And happy heart, that pays its toll To youth and age, and travels on with cheer. So let the way wind up the hill or down, Through rough or smooth, the journey will be joy, Still seeking what I sought when but a boy -- New friendship, high adventure, and a crown, I shall grow old, but never lose life's zest, Because the road's last turn will be the best.

He lay flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees. The mountainside sloped gently where he lay; but below it was steep and he could see the dark of the oiled road winding through the pass. There was a stream alongside the road and water of the dam, white in the summer sunlight.

Robert Jordan saw them there on the slope, close to him now, and below he saw the road and the bridge and the long lines of vehicles below it. He was completely integrated now and he took a good long look at everything. Then he looked up at the sky. There were big white clouds in it. He touched the palm of his hand against the pine needles where he lay and he touched the bark of the pine trunk that he lay behind... He was waiting until the officer reached the sunlit place where the first trees of the pine forest joined the green slope of the meadow. He could feel his heart beating against the pine needle floor of the forest.

You see, the Highway to Hell is a toll road. Someone has to pay. And, guess what? It ain't gonna be me.

His copy was full of lofty echoes: Greek Tragedy; Damocle's sword; manna from heaven; the myth of Sisyphus; the last of the Mohicans; hydra-headed and Circe-voiced; experiments with truth; discovery of India; biblical resonance; the lessons of Vedanta; the centre does not hold; the road not taken; the mimic men; for whom the bell tolls; a hundred visions and revisions; the power and the glory; the heart of the matter; the heart of darkness; the agony and the ecstasy; sands of time; riddle of the Sphinx; test of tantalus; murmurs of mortality; Falstaffian figure; Dickensian darkness; ...

You only heard the statement of the loss. You did not see the father fall as Pilar made him see the fascists die in that story she had told by the stream. You knew the father died in some courtyard, or against some wall, or in some field or orchard, or at night, in the lights of a truck, beside some road. You had seen the lights of the car from down the hills and heard the shooting and afterwards you had come down to the road and found the bodies. You did not see the mother shot, nor the sister, nor the brother. You heard about it; you heard the shots; and you saw the bodies.

The monks walked on in silence. Five hours later, as they were approaching the lodging temple, Ekido couldn't restrain himself any longer. 'Why did you carry that girl across the road?' he asked. 'We monks are not supposed to do things like that.' 'I put the girl down hours ago,' said Tanzan. 'Are you still carrying her?

It was always exciting, but it was also always dangerous. And fear takes a toll finally: when you live in danger from moment to moment, the constant tension becomes very wearying. Every step I took on the roads of Gelderland was nerve-wracking, because I was secretly carrying the very material that could turn out to be my own death warrant.

The Creed of the Assassin Brotherhood teaches us that nothing is forbidden to us. Once, I thought that meant we were free to do as we would. To pursue our ideals, no matter the cost. I understand now. Not a grant of permission. The Creed is a warning. Ideals too easily give way to dogma. Dogma becomes fanaticism. No higher power sits in judgement of us. No supreme being watches to punish us for our sins. In the end, only we ourselves can guard against our obsessions. Only we can decide whether the road we walk carries too high a toll. We believe ourselves redeemers, avengers, saviours. We make war on those who oppose us, and they in turn make war on us. We dream of leaving our stamp upon the world... even as we give our lives in a conflict that will be recorded in no history book. All that we do, all that we are, begins and ends with ourselves.

What sort of early interventions might have helped them before the medications took their toll, neutralizing them without curing them? And what about the thousands of people who couldn’t afford what her son had—who languish because of a lack of resources, or a stigma from a society that would prefer to pretend that people like them do not exist?

Aye. 'Tis a free country." Monq had come to check on Elora just as she asked that question. "Well, that kind of has to be qualified," he interjected. "You can't come or go without a passport. You can't drive without a driver's license, registration, auto insurance and proof that your vehicle is up to code. You can't work or even get health care without a social security number. You have to pay taxes on everything including air and water. The closest distance between point A and B may involve paying a road toll. There are over three hundred thousand federal laws. You have to educate your children according to legal standards set by someone that's not you. There are laws about who can marry whom. But other than a few more such trivialities, it's a free country.

Handbrake found the drive to Jaipur that morning particularly frustrating. The new tarmac-surfaced toll road, which was part of India’s proliferating highway system, had four lanes running in both directions, and although it presented all manner of hazards, including the occasional herd of goats, a few overturned trucks and the odd gaping pothole, it held out an irresistible invitation to speed. Indeed, many of the other cars travelled as fast as 100 miles

I like to know about the world beyond our shores. About faraway countries where people behave differently. I like to hear about their food and customs. How they deal with the cold and the rain. What it is like to drive on the other side of the road.

From an early age, Mimi had a way of glossing over the more painful disappointments in her life: the loss of her father; the forced exile from Houston; the husband who remained so distant from her. Even if she didn’t admit it, these losses hurt, and took their toll. Having so many children, however, offered Mimi a brand-new narrative—or at least distracted her, changed the subject, shored up the losses, helped her dwell less on what was missing. For a woman who so often felt abandoned, here was a way to create all the company she would ever need.

My wife is a thief... She takes the last cookie Takes forever to get ready She takes her time in the shower Takes all of the hot water She takes my favorite seat on the couch Takes the high road when I lose control My wife is a thief... She took my last name Took the time to get to know me, love me She took the back seat and let me lead Took on motherhood and the emotional toll that it brings She took care of me the many times that I've gotten sick Took on the pain of pregnancy so that the Jackson legacy would live on My wife takes, and takes, and takes... I'm so proud of my perpetual thief who stole my heart and won't give it back.

Every year, more than 120,000 new books are published in Britain, creating millions of volumes that will never be opened, let alone read. Many of these unread books are shredded into tiny fibre pellets called bitumen modifier, which can beused to make roads, holding the blacktop in place and doubling up as a sound absorber. A mile of motorway consumes about 50,000 books. The M6 Toll Road used up two-and-a-half million old Mills and Boon novels, romantic dreams crushed daily by juggernauts...Having your unread books vanish into the authorless anonymity of a road feels pleasingly melancholic, like having your ashes scattered in a vast ocean.

the occupation of the Rhineland by French troops that followed in 1794. This invasion marked “a decisive break with the past, as centuries of traditional institutions, ways of thinking and acting were swept away” (Diefendorf, 1980, 23).21 The French eliminated the majority of tolls and standardized the regulation of the river.

Only a few days after my encounter with the police, two patrolmen tackled Alton Sterling onto a car, then pinned him down on the ground and shot him in the chest while he was selling CDs in front of a convenience store, seventy-five miles up the road in Baton Rouge. A day after that, Philando Castile was shot in the passenger seat of his car during a police traffic stop in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, as his girlfriend recorded the aftermath via Facebook Live. Then, the day after Castile was killed, five policemen were shot dead by a sniper in Dallas. It felt as if the world was subsumed by cascades of unceasing despair. I mourned for the family and friends of Sterling and Castille. I felt deep sympathy for the families of the policemen who died. I also felt a real fear that, as a result of what took place in Dallas, law enforcement would become more deeply entrenched in their biases against black men, leading to the possibility of even more violence. The stream of names of those who have been killed at the hands of the police feels endless, and I become overwhelmed when I consider all the names we do not know—all of those who lost their lives and had no camera there to capture it, nothing to corroborate police reports that named them as threats. Closed cases. I watch the collective mourning transpire across my social-media feeds. I watch as people declare that they cannot get out of bed, cannot bear to go to work, cannot function as a human being is meant to function. This sense of anxiety is something I have become unsettlingly accustomed to. The familiar knot in my stomach. The tightness in my chest. But becoming accustomed to something does not mean that it does not take a toll. Systemic racism always takes a toll, whether it be by bullet or by blood clot.

When the Black Death swept through 14th century Europe, killing upwards of 200 million people and forever altering the course of human history, one of the original culprits of the epidemic was said to be the black rat, carrying plague-infested fleas into population centers to wreak their destruction. This is, in fact, not true. The true perpetrator was actually the Asian great gerbil, who took advantage of the warmer climate to travel the silk road and bring the disease into Europe. This is only important to know because Ralph, champion pit fighter of the kobold training grounds, lives his life in a perpetual state of rage. Why? Because he feels that human death toll of 200 million is much too low, and he will do everything in his power to triple that number. Starting with you. The only survivor of a family of gerbils left to starve by a child who’d grown bored with the pets, Ralph had to commit unspeakable acts of cannibalism in order to endure. Part earth rodent, part the embodiment of death, Frenzied Gerbils are regular mobs one might encounter on the fifth or seventh floors. But Ralph here is special. He has dedicated his existence to fighting and training in hopes that one day he might exact his revenge against the humans he so despises. He is fast, he is angry,

Will you come and tell me when the music ends When the musicians are swallowed in flames Every instrument blackening and crumbling to ash When the dancers stumble and sprawl their diseased limbs rotting off and twitching the skin sloughing away Will you come and tell me when the music ends When the stars we pushed into the sky loose their roars And the clouds we built into visible rage do now explode When the bright princes of privilege march past with dead smiles falling from their faces a host of deceiving masks Will you come and tell me when the music ends When reason sinks into the morass of superstition Waging a war of ten thousand armies stung to the lash When we stop looking up even as we begin our mad running into stupidity’s nothingness with heavenly choirs screaming Will you come and tell me when the music ends When the musicians are no more than black grinning sticks Every instrument wailing its frantic death cry down the road When the ones left standing have had their mouths cut off leaving holes from which a charnel wind eternally blows

My love, whose fingers are matches, whose waist is encircled by the arms of the wind. My love, how the world sleeps in your throat, how your heart is filled with the scents of raspberries and grapes, to live inside you, to live inside the warm peach. Otherwise there is no way to stop despair from lurking all night in the shadows beside the old toll gate. Otherwise we will have to weep in another language. It was on a country road. It was in the wrong tense. How do we stop all our words from falling in love with gravity? Otherwise we will have to stop taking breaths from this moment on. From this moment on the abandoned clocks will observe us. My love, our hearts are growing full of broken wings, My love, to find our voice in a drop of water, in the tracks the starlight leaves behind. If only this were enough. If only we could get the attention of Time, standing in that doorway, peeling an apple. It hurts here. It hurts here. — Richard Jackson, from “The Italian Phrase Book,” Richard Jackson Greatest Hits: 1980-2004 (Pudding House Publications, 2004)

People should be entrusted with their own lives. People must be independent in every respect. No one should own anything. Property should be free like people are. The roads should not belong to any one person, in order to stop someone from collecting tolls from travelers. A priest shouldn't take a toll for prayers. A farmhand shouldn't take a toll for the fruits of the earth. The phone company shouldn't take a toll for conversations. Totally free of charge, like the fetus's time inside the mother continues to be after its birth.

(Sarah) Während ich nach dem richtigen Förderband Ausschau hielt, fing er neben mir wieder ein Gespräch an: »Du spielst gut.« Ohne meine Suche zu unterbrechen, antwortete ich ihm. »Danke. Und du singst richtig gut.« Ups, das richtig hatte ich eigentlich weglassen wollen. Aus dem Augenwinkel konnte ich erkennen, dass sich sofort einer seiner Mundwinkel hob. Na toll, wieder Futter für sein haushohes Selbstbewusstsein. Im Geiste klatschte ich mir an die Stirn. »Ebenfalls danke. Du klingst überrascht, hat Nat dir denn nie von meinem Talent erzählt? Hast nicht damit gerechnet, dass es stimmt, nicht wahr?« Nun verdrehte ich vor ihm meine Augen, damit er meine Reaktion mitbekam. Ich holte mir eine Weste aus meinem Rucksack und schlüpfte hinein, als ich ihm antwortete: »Nein. Und noch einmal nein. Er hat nur kurz erwähnt, dass du Gitarre spielst und singst. Muss ich es dir schon wieder sagen, es dreht sich nicht alles um dich. Das meiste, was ich von Nat über dich gehört habe, handelte von irgendwelchen Frauengeschichten, die selbst ihm als Mann zu heftig waren.« Sein Grinsen verschwand, genauso wie ich es mir gedacht hatte. Doch dann war es schon wieder an Ort und Stelle, was mich wiederum irritierte. Besonders, als er sagte: »Du bist schon wieder unhöflich. Merkst du das eigentlich noch? Jede andere würde wenigstens versuchen, nett zu sein.« Endlich hatten wir die richtige Bahn erreicht und ich stellte mich neben die wartenden Fluggäste. Johnny quetschte sich zwischen mich und einen anderen Passagier, als wäre unser Gespräch nicht beendet und als würde er auf eine Antwort warten. Na schön. Ich drehte mich in seine Richtung. »Junge, hatten wir das Thema nicht schon vor ein paar Stunden? Das, was ich tue, nennt man Ehrlichsein. Schreib dir das auf, dann vergisst du es nicht wieder.« Er kratzte sich am Kinn und spielte den Beleidigten, was aber nur von kurzer Dauer war, denn irgendwie schienen ihn meine Antworten auch zu belustigen. Das konnte sein nächster Kommentar nicht verbergen. »Ein kleiner Tipp für die Zukunft: Du bist netter, wenn du den Mund nicht aufmachst.«

So much is kept off limits these days. There are things we don't speak of, things we not only don't remember but carefully forget, places we do not stray into, memories we bury or reshape. That is the way we all live nowadays: driving a long a road between hallucination and amnesia. As long as you are moving, you are OK -- you have negotiated safe passage, for the moment. It is only when you come to a stop like this, in a black night in the middle of nowhere, that things wobble a bit and you wonder about the purpose of roads. You sit in the dark, frightened at the life you've led and things you've led undone. You can only hope that in the long run it won't matter, but that in itself is no consolation at all.

III. Ah Vastness of Pines Ah vastness of pines, murmur of waves breaking, slow play of lights, solitary bell, twilight falling in your eyes, toy doll, earth-shell, in whom the earth sings! In you the rivers sing and my soul flees in them as you desire, and you send it where you will. Aim my road on your bow of hope and in a frenzy I will free my flock of arrows. On all sides I see you waist of fog, and yousilence hunts my afflicted hours; my kisses anchor, and my moist desire nests in you with your arms of transparent stone. Ah your mysterious voice that love tolls and darkens in the resonant and dying evening! Thus in deep hours I have seen, over the fields, the ears of wheat tolling in the mouth of the wind.

Sassy had worked in El Paso, Texas as a waitress in a small café, a toll-booth cashier in Houston, Texas, posed nude for magazine photos in Reno, Nevada and even was a ski instructor in Granby, Colorado for a few years. Sassy was always looking. She was looking for something that she couldn’t find. Sassy wanted to go where the road led. She walked past other people’s dreams and security and followed the twisting snake through deserts and mountains, big cities and cow towns. Sassy was on a quest and she didn’t even know it. She would take her small earnings and saddle-up, following fate or hope or desire into new horizons with new promises--a skinny green-eyed girl carrying a backpack full of her life, down the roads of America.

The ground was hard, the air was still, my road was lonely; I walked fast till I got warm, and then I walked slowly to enjoy and analyse the species of pleasure brooding for me in the hour and situation. It was three o’clock; the church bell tolled as I passed under the belfry: the charm of the hour lay in its approaching dimness, in the low-gliding and pale-beaming sun. I was a mile from Thornfield, in a lane noted for wild roses in summer, for nuts and blackberries in autumn, and even now possessing a few coral treasures in hips and haws, but whose best winter delight lay in its utter solitude and leafless repose. If a breath of air stirred, it made no sound here; for there was not a holly, not an evergreen to rustle, and the stripped hawthorn and hazel bushes were as still as the white, worn stones which causewayed the middle of the path. Far and wide, on each side, there were only fields, where no cattle now browsed; and the little brown birds, which stirred occasionally in the hedge, looked like single russet leaves that had forgotten to drop.

Soll ich dir eine Geschichte erzählen? Nein. Warum nicht? Der Junge sah ihn an und wandte den Blick ab. Warum nicht? Diese Geschichten sind nicht wahr. Das müssen sie auch nicht sein. Es sind Geschichten. Ja. Aber in den Geschichten helfen wir andauernd jemanden, dabei tun wir das in Wirklichkeit gar nicht. Warum erzählst du mir nicht eine Geschichte? Ich will nicht. Okay. Ich habe keine Geschichten zu erzählen. Du könntest mir eine Geschichte über dich selbst erzählen. Die Geschichten über mich kennst du alle. Du warst dabei. Du hast Geschichten in deinem Inneren, von denen ich nichts weiß. Du meinst, so was wie Träume? Ja. Oder einfach Sachen, über die du nachdenkst. Ja, aber Geschichten sollen doch schön sein. Nicht unbedingt. Du erzählst immer schöne Geschichten. Kennst du denn keine schönen? Meine haben mehr mit dem wirklichen Leben zu tun. Und meine nicht? Deine nicht. Nein. Der Mann betrachtete ihn. Und das wirkliche Leben ist ziemlich übel? Was denkst du denn? Tja, ich denke, es gibt uns noch. Es sind viele schlimme Sachen passiert, aber es gibt uns immer noch. Ja. Du findest das nicht so toll. Es ist okay.

We traveled through Texas for a couple of weeks, then went to the West Coast. In San Diego, near where we’d lived, a friend came up to me and said she was so glad to see us together. “We really haven’t had much quality time,” I confessed. “Chris is always so busy with the media and everything.” “Yes, but I can tell he needs you.” “Really?” “Whenever you walk away, there’s a look on his face. He’s looking around, wondering where you are.” Just being present for him turned out to be more important than I realized. Part of it was the toll the attention and the interviews were taking on Chris-he was reliving Iraq yet again, over and over, several times a day. But I came to realize the need was deeper than that. Having come through so much together, we had each reached the point where our love reinforced and nurtured us. Having me physically close gave him a safe base no matter how unusual or crazy the rest of the world got. With the tumult of demands for interviews and face time and all the rest, he knew he could just reach out and touch me to relax, if only for a moment. He was my strength at home. Now, on the road, in a slightly different way, I was his.

I wonder how they will like Maria in Missoula, Montana? That is if I can get a job back in Missoula. I suppose that I am ticketed as a Red there now for good and will be on the general blacklist. Though you never know. You never can tell. They've no proof of what you do, and as a matter of fact they would never believe it if you told them, and my passport was valid for Spain before they issued the restrictions. The time for getting back will not be until the fall of thirty-seven. I left in the summer of thirty-six and though the leave is for a year you do not need to be back until the fall term opens in the following year. There is a lot of time between now and the fall term. There is a lot of time between now and the day after tomorrow if you want to put it that way. No. I think there is no need to worry about the university. Just you turn up there in the fall and it will be all right. Just try and turn up there. But it has been a strange life for a long time now. Damned if it hasn't. Spain was your work and your job, so being in Spain was natural and sound. You had worked summers on engineering projects and in the forest service building roads and in the park and learned to handle powder, so the demolition was a sound and normal job too. Always a little hasty, but sound. Once you accept the idea of demolition as a problem it is only a problem. But there was plenty that was not so good that went with it although God knows you took it easily enough. There was the constant attempt to approximate the conditions of successful assassination that accompanied the demolition. Did big words make it more defensible? Did they make killing any more palatable? You took to it a little too readily if you ask me, he told himself. And what you will be like or just exactly what you will be suited for when you leave the service of the Republic is, to me, he thought, extremely doubtful. But my guess is you will get rid of all that by writing about it, he said. Once you write it down it is all gone. It will be a good book if you can write it. Much better than the other. But in the meantime all the life you have or ever will have is today, tonight, tomorrow, today, tonight, tomorrow, over and over again (I hope), he thought and so you had better take what time there is and be very thankful for it. If the bridge goes bad. It does not look too good just now.

Let me return from history and draw my conclusion. What all this means to us at the present time is this: Our system has already passed its flowering. Some time ago it reached that summit of blessedness which the mysterious game of world history sometimes allows to things beautiful and desirable in themselves. We are on the downward slope. Our course may possible stretch out for a very long time, but in any case nothing finer, ore beautiful, and more desirable than what we have already had can henceforth be expected. The road leads downhill. Historically we are, I believe, ripe for dismantling. And there is no doubt that such will be our fate, not today or tomorrow, but the day after tomorrow. I do not draw this conclusion from any excessively moralistic estimate of our accomplishments and our abilities: I draw it far more from the movements which I see already on the way in the outside world. Critical times are approaching; the omens can be sensed everywhere; the world is once again about to shift its center of gravity. Displacements of power are in the offing. They will not take place without war and violence. From the Far East comes a threat not only to peace, but to life and liberty. Even if our country remains politically neutral, even if our whole nation unanimously abides by tradition (which is not the case) and attempts to remain faithful to Castalian ideals, that will be in vain. Some of our representatives in Parliament are already saying that Castalia is a rather expensive luxury for our country. The country may very soon be forced into a serious rearmament - armaments for defensive purposes only, of course - and great economies will be necessary. In spite of the government's benevolent disposition towards us, much of the economizing will strike us directly. We are proud that our Order and the cultural continuity it provides have cost the country as little as they have. In comparison with other ages, especially the early period of the Feuilletonistic Age with its lavishly endowed universities, its innumerable consultants and opulent institutes, this toll is really not large. It is infinitesimal compared with the sums consumed for war and armaments during the Century of Wars. But before too long this kind of armament may once again be the supreme necessity; the generals will again dominate Parliament; and if the people are confronted with the choice of sacrificing Castalia or exposing themselves to the danger of war and destruction, we know how they will choose. Undoubtedly a bellicose ideology will burgeon. The rash of propaganda will affect youth in particular. Then scholars and scholarship, Latin and mathematics, education and culture, will be considered worth their salt only to the extent that they can serve the ends of war.

From the height we had now reached, the sea no longer appeared, as it did from Balbec, like an undulating range of hills, but on the contrary like the view, from a mountain-peak or from a road winding round its flank, of a blue-green glacier or a glittering plain situated at a lower level. The ripples of eddies and currents seemed to be fixed upon its surface, and to have traced there for ever their concentric circles; the enamelled face of the sea, imperceptibly changing colour, assumed towards the head of the bay, where an estuary opened, the blue whiteness of milk in which little black boats that did not move seemed entangled like flies. I felt that from nowhere could one discover a vaster prospect. But at each turn in the road a fresh expanse was added to it and when we arrived at the Douville toll-house, the spur of the cliff which until then had concealed from us half the bay receded, and all of a sudden I saw upon my left a gulf as profound as that which I had already had in front of me, but one that changed the proportions of the other and doubled its beauty. The air at this lofty point had a keenness and purity that intoxicated me. I adored the Verdurins; that they should have sent a carriage for us seemed to me a touching act of kindness. I should have liked to kiss the Princess. I told her that I had never seen anything so beautiful. She professed that she too loved this spot more than any other. But I could see that to her as to the Verdurins the thing that really mattered was not to gaze at the view like tourists, but to partake of good meals there, to entertain people whom they liked, to write letters, to read books, in short to live in these surroundings, passively allowing the beauty of the scene to soak into them rather than making it the object of their conscious attention.

After the Grand Perhaps” After vespers, after the first snow has fallen to its squalls, after New Wave, after the anorexics have curled into their geometric forms, after the man with the apparition in his one bad eye has done red things behind the curtain of the lid & sleeps, after the fallout shelter in the elementary school has been packed with tins & other tangibles, after the barn boys have woken, startled by foxes & fire, warm in their hay, every part of them blithe & smooth & touchable, after the little vandals have tilted toward the impossible seduction to smash glass in the dark, getting away with the most lethal pieces, leaving the shards which travel most easily through flesh as message on the bathroom floor, the parking lots, the irresistible debris of the neighbor’s yard where he’s been constructing all winter long. After the pain has become an old known friend, repeating itself, you can hold on to it. The power of fright, I think, is as much as magnetic heat or gravity. After what is boundless: wind chimes, fertile patches of the land, the ochre symmetry of fields in fall, the end of breath, the beginning of shadow, the shadow of heat as it moves the way the night heads west, I take this road to arrive at its end where the toll taker passes the night, reading. I feel the cupped heat of his left hand as he inherits change; on the road that is not his road anymore I belong to whatever it is which will happen to me. When I left this city I gave back the metallic waking in the night, the signals of barges moving coal up a slow river north, the movement of trains, each whistle like a woodwind song of another age passing, each ambulance would split a night in two, lying in bed as a little girl, a fear of being taken with the sirens as they lit the neighborhood in neon, quick as the fire as it takes fire & our house goes up in night. After what is arbitrary: the hand grazing something too sharp or fine, the word spoken out of sleep, the buckling of the knees to cold, the melting of the parts to want, the design of the moon to cast unfriendly light, the dazed shadow of the self as it follows the self, the toll taker’s sorrow that we couldn’t have been more intimate. Which leads me back to the land, the old wolves which used to roam on it, the one light left on the small far hill where someone must be living still. After life there must be life.

The Old Issue October 9, 1899 “HERE is nothing new nor aught unproven,” say the Trumpets, “Many feet have worn it and the road is old indeed. “It is the King—the King we schooled aforetime !” (Trumpets in the marshes—in the eyot at Runnymede!) “Here is neither haste, nor hate, nor anger,” peal the Trumpets, “Pardon for his penitence or pity for his fall. “It is the King!”—inexorable Trumpets— (Trumpets round the scaffold at the dawning by Whitehall!) “He hath veiled the Crown and hid the Sceptre,” warn the Trumpets, “He hath changed the fashion of the lies that cloak his will. “Hard die the Kings—ah hard—dooms hard!” declare the Trumpets, Trumpets at the gang-plank where the brawling troop-decks fill! Ancient and Unteachable, abide—abide the Trumpets! Once again the Trumpets, for the shuddering ground-swell brings Clamour over ocean of the harsh, pursuing Trumpets— Trumpets of the Vanguard that have sworn no truce with Kings! All we have of freedom, all we use or know— This our fathers bought for us long and long ago. Ancient Right unnoticed as the breath we draw— Leave to live by no man’s leave, underneath the Law. Lance and torch and tumult, steel and grey-goose wing Wrenched it, inch and ell and all, slowly from the King. Till our fathers ’stablished, after bloody years, How our King is one with us, first among his peers. So they bought us freedom—not at little cost Wherefore must we watch the King, lest our gain be lost, Over all things certain, this is sure indeed, Suffer not the old King: for we know the breed. Give no ear to bondsmen bidding us endure. Whining “He is weak and far”; crying “Time shall cure.”, (Time himself is witness, till the battle joins, Deeper strikes the rottenness in the people’s loins.) Give no heed to bondsmen masking war with peace. Suffer not the old King here or overseas. They that beg us barter—wait his yielding mood— Pledge the years we hold in trust—pawn our brother’s blood— Howso’ great their clamour, whatsoe’er their claim, Suffer not the old King under any name! Here is naught unproven—here is naught to learn. It is written what shall fall if the King return. He shall mark our goings, question whence we came, Set his guards about us, as in Freedom’s name. He shall take a tribute, toll of all our ware; He shall change our gold for arms—arms we may not bear. He shall break his judges if they cross his word; He shall rule above the Law calling on the Lord. He shall peep and mutter; and the night shall bring Watchers ’neath our window, lest we mock the King— Hate and all division; hosts of hurrying spies; Money poured in secret, carrion breeding flies. Strangers of his counsel, hirelings of his pay, These shall deal our Justice: sell—deny—delay. We shall drink dishonour, we shall eat abuse For the Land we look to—for the Tongue we use. We shall take our station, dirt beneath his feet, While his hired captains jeer us in the street. Cruel in the shadow, crafty in the sun, Far beyond his borders shall his teachings run. Sloven, sullen, savage, secret, uncontrolled, Laying on a new land evil of the old— Long-forgotten bondage, dwarfing heart and brain— All our fathers died to loose he shall bind again. Here is naught at venture, random nor untrue— Swings the wheel full-circle, brims the cup anew. Here is naught unproven, here is nothing hid: Step for step and word for word—so the old Kings did! Step by step, and word by word: who is ruled may read. Suffer not the old Kings: for we know the breed— All the right they promise—all the wrong they bring. Stewards of the Judgment, suffer not this King!

Nothing worthwhile really ever comes easily. Work, continuous work and hard work, is the only way you will accomplish results that last. Whatever you want in life, you must give up something to get it. The greater the value, the greater the sacrifice required of you. There's a price to pay if you want to make things better, a price to pay for just leaving things as they are. The highway to success is a toll road. Everything has a price. – UNKNOWN

roads and consume more carbon than urbanites (though perhaps not as much as distant commuters forced out by green belts). But this damage can be alleviated by a carbon tax, by toll roads and by charging for parking. Many cities in the emerging world have followed the barmy American practice of requiring property developers to provide a certain number of parking spaces for every building—something that makes commuting by car much more attractive than it would be otherwise. Scrapping them would give public transport a chance. The second is that it is foolish to try to stop the spread of suburbs. Green belts, the most effective method for doing this, push up property prices and encourage long-distance commuting. The cost of housing in London, already astronomical, went up by 19% in the

Countries competing against one another in the same array of products and services is not covered by Ricardian trade theory.   Offshoring doesn’t fit the Ricardian or the competitive idea of free trade. In fact, offshoring is not trade.   Offshoring is the practice of a firm relocating its production of goods or services for its home market to a foreign country. When an American firm moves production offshore, US GDP declines by the amount of the offshored production, and foreign GDP increases by that amount. Employment and consumer income decline in the US and rise abroad. The US tax base shrinks, resulting in reductions in public services or in higher taxes or a switch from tax finance to bond finance and higher debt service cost.   When the offshored production comes back to the US to be marketed, the US trade deficit increases dollar for dollar. The trade deficit is financed by turning over to foreigners US assets and their future income streams. Profits, dividends, interest, capital gains, rents, and tolls from leased toll roads now flow from American pockets to foreign pockets, thus worsening the current account deficit as well.   Who benefits from these income losses suffered by Americans? Clearly, the beneficiary is the foreign country to which the production is moved. The other prominent beneficiaries are the shareholders and the executives of the companies that offshore production. The lower labor costs raise profits, the share price, and the “performance bonuses” of corporate management.   Offshoring’s proponents claim that the lost incomes from job losses are offset by benefits to consumers from lower prices. Allegedly, the harm done to those who lose their jobs is more than offset by the benefit consumers in general get from the alleged lower prices. Yet, proponents are unable to cite studies that support this claim. The claim is based on the unexamined assumption that offshoring is free trade and, thereby, mutually beneficial.   Proponents of jobs offshoring also claim that the Americans who are left unemployed soon find equal or better jobs. This claim is based on the assumption that the demand for labor ensures full employment, and that people whose jobs have been moved abroad can be retrained for new jobs that are equal to or better than the jobs that were lost.   This claim is false.

Everyone has their own definition of survival.

When I was certain that I could talk without showing fear, I opened my eyes and met my dad's gaze.

My legs tell me to run, but my brain remains in control. To run now would be to condemn myself for sure.

toll road

Spivey funded construction of the road from Silverton and only took a small piece of the tolls, and Otto Mears finished the road down to Lake City himself.

The railroad, when it came, would meet high expectations. It came quickly enough, but before the necessary technologies converged into a successful system, variety flourished. Passengers were first carried on 25 March 1807 on the Oystermouth Tramroad on the Gower Peninsula in Swansea, northwest of Cardiff in Wales. The cars were horse-drawn, and the operator paid tolls to the company that owned the road.

In love or pain, in joy and sadness, in loss and achievement, a Traveller along the Entertainment Leys joining these domains, these zones and points of sympathy, will therefore never ever be alone. Rod Stewart's cousin might be near, or Elton John's grandfather might have died just up the road. Be it suffering or transcendent joy, an Entertainment Traveller is held in an intercontinental web of healing glory which doesn't cost a penny, and has absolutely no concern for your previous moral life. Entertainment Priests are not deeply troubled men in nightshirts, most of whom have so many psychological problems before breakfast their personal depression nearly kills them promoting the comedown, the comeback, the punishment, the price to be paid at the toll gates of both sides of the schism. If the new Entertainment Priests are not fun, there is an absolute lock on their spiritual progress. They have to be Entertainers first and foremost, and they are to cast out of the temple the depressing landscape of fear and guilt and horrorof the Old Analogue Age, which was the pre-Entertainment Time. As Entertainment Citizens we will come to see that this past was a bleak landscape in which everything was poisoned, gassed, and strangled. It was a psychopath's world of tortured animals and old iron of industrial and scientific determinism. Now, like a billion-ton ice-pack, this spiritual hell is beginning a perceptible shift of paradigm into a landscape of purest Entertainment Legend.

Sally Jackson and son Percy are still missing one week after their mysterious disappearance. The family’s badly burned ’78 Camaro was discovered last Saturday on a north Long Island road with the roof ripped off and the front axle broken. The car had flipped and skidded for several hundred feet before exploding. Mother and son had gone for a weekend vacation to Montauk, but left hastily, under mysterious circumstances. Small traces of blood were found in the car and near the scene of the wreck, but there were no other signs of the missing Jacksons. Residents in the rural area reported seeing nothing unusual around the time of the accident. Ms. Jackson’s husband, Gabe Ugliano, claims that his stepson, Percy Jackson, is a troubled child who has been kicked out of numerous boarding schools and has expressed violent tendencies in the past. Police would not say whether son Percy is a suspect in his mother’s disappearance, but they have not ruled out foul play. Below are recent pictures of Sally Jackson and Percy. Police urge anyone with information to call the following toll-free crime-stoppers hotline.

No-one can own our Lord Buddha. That would be a foolish claim, but the roads that lead to him, the Way... That is a different matter. They are all filled with toll-gates, like the roads of Japan, and the monks collect the fees.

And with the range of earshot extended at night, preindustrial sounds represented the aural equivalent of landmarks.43 Overtaken by darkness on an unfamiliar road outside the Scottish town of Paisley, a set of travelers “proceeded with great caution and deliberation, frequently stopping to look forward and listen.” Where wind and rain, by their sounds, could help to reveal the contours of a landscape, familiar noises afforded welcome wayposts. The “clattering” of their horses’ hooves told visitors to Freiburg that they were entering “a large pavd town.” Bleating ewes and bellowing bulls provided bearings, as did tolling church bells.

We stole the sky from the birds, with clouds that cache fly ash from the coal. Spoiled the waters with spilled oil, now the fish wish to live in a bowl. Beheaded the trees in the name of growth; concrete roads erode the soil from its soul. Poached and piled animals like wild animals, and forgot to realize the rise in their death toll. Flogged the icebergs down with the whip of heat, and rang hell's bells from pole to pole. We are already sinners against nature, is reaching the sinners by nature stature our ultimate goal?

stamp or where they sealed the envelope?” I asked. “Sure, we’ll check those too. That’s common procedure, but we have nothing to compare it to.” Jack added his two cents. “The message itself sounds kind of like the hell-and-damnation type of speech. Somebody in the clergy or even a religious zealot could have written it.” Clayton slowly read the message out loud again. “Yeah, I see where you’re coming from, Jack. It does sound kind of preachy.” “Yes it does,” I said, “but we still don’t know if it’s a serious threat or just someone blowing smoke.” Clark stood. “Okay, guys, check out whatever you can as far as forensic evidence. Make ten copies of that letter before you get started. The rest of you, keep your eyes and ears peeled for somebody with an ax to grind. That’s all we can do for now.” Chapter 2 The long driveway beyond the dead-end road led to the small, faded clapboard house. The walls inside the home held family secrets that were as dead and buried as the family dog. Nobody spoke of Alice’s incident anymore—it was neatly tucked away, hopefully forgotten, and life carried on. Forced smiles and the cautious daily routine filled the family’s waking hours. Alice’s eyes darted toward Mandy and then at the clock. She watched as her twenty-year-old daughter crossed the living room, barefoot and still wearing her green flannel bathrobe. Mandy took a seat on the old floral couch, as she did every day at eleven o’clock. The dark-paneled living room in that house held the sofa, a rocker, two end tables, and two velvet wall hangings of horses. The sofa had seen better days—sun fading had taken a toll on it after being in front of windows year after year. What used to be vibrant colors on that threadbare couch now appeared as pastel hues at best. Two flattened cushions looked as though somebody had let the air out of them; they held permanent indentions from years of use.

Congestion-reducing activities like carpooling, off-peak commuting, bicycling, telecommuting, and mass transit would all increase with congestion pricing in effect. Already Pigovian principles have been applied to revenue-generating segments of infrastructure like toll roads and London’s congestion zone, which reduces traffic and takes in money by charging motorists to drive into the city center during peak times. Meanwhile, Singapore has implemented an Electronic Road Pricing System that has virtually eliminated congestion.

...grand oaks, maples, and chestnuts muscle in on one another, flared in their autumn robes; a motley conflagration under the dazzling mid-October sun. We are in the middle of a beautiful nowhere, digging into sprawling hinterlands, into territories of wild earth. The rolling, winding roads away from Bangor took us through towns with names like Charleston, Dover-Foxcroft, Monson, and Shirley, all with their own quaint, beautifully cinematic set dressing. It was like each was curated from grange hall flea markets and movie sets rife with small-town Americana. Stoic stone war memorials. American flags. Whitewashed, chipping town hall buildings from other centuries. Church bell towers in the actual process of tolling, gonging, calling. To me, the sound was ominous in a remote sort of way, unnamable.

A WORLD OF SLOWER GROWTH AND HIGHER INFLATION If triple-digit oil prices are the true culprit behind the recent recession, what happens if oil prices recover to triple-digit levels or even close to them when the economy recovers? Does the economy slip right back into recession again? Everything else being equal—or ceteris paribus, as they say in the economics textbooks—that’s probably as good a forecast as any. Every oil shock has produced a global recession, and the record price increase of the past few years may produce the biggest one of all. But recessions, no matter how severe, are finite events. Ultimately, we face a far more challenging economic verdict from oil. Any way you cut it, a return to triple-digit oil prices means a much slower-growing world economy than before. And not just for a couple of quarters of recession. That’s because virtually every dollar of world GDP requires energy to produce. Not all of that energy, of course, comes from oil, but far too much does for world GDP not to be affected by oil’s growing scarcity. And there is nothing at the end of the day that we can do about depletion. Big tax cuts and big spending increases can mitigate triple-digit oil’s bite, but the deficits they inevitably produce ultimately lead to tax hikes and spending cuts that just make the suffering all the more painful down the road. Taking out a loan to pay your mortgage might defer your problems for a month or so, but in the end, it often makes your difficulties more acute. Borrowing from the future just turns today’s problems into tomorrow’s, and by the time tomorrow comes, they’ve become a lot bigger than if we had dealt with them today. Trillion-dollar-plus deficits, just like a near-zero percent federal funds rate, can mask the impact of high energy prices for a while, but ultimately they can’t protect economies that still run on oil from the impact of higher energy prices and the toll that they take.

Cruel randomness [...] Besides, if God really was selecting people to protect on the basis of some bigger picture, then you would not expect the number of people who are killed in various ways to be subject to the rules of probability. However, I can predict with remarkable accuracy the road toll each year, the number of people who will be struck by lightning, the number of people who will be killed by shark attacks, and so on. Each of these causes of death has a certain rate of occurrence that is quite predictable. It is not just the number of deaths that is predictable, it is the whole probability distribution of deaths that is predictable. If you know the average number of deaths by car accidents in a city, then it is possible to calculate all the percentiles for that city. For example, you can estimate the numbers of deaths that would be exceeded only once every ten years. When you do this for many cities, you find that the 1-in-10-year extremes are exceeded in approximately 10% of cities each year. This is exactly what you would expect if the world was random, but not what you would expect if anyone was in control. Car accidents, diseases, and industrial accidents all follow the same probability distribution, known as the “Poisson distribution”. The Poisson probability distribution is based on the assumption that accidents happen randomly. It is simply not possible for tragedies to appear to follow the Poisson probability distribution while actually being controlled by God. Any interventions of God that interfere in the random processes would be detectable. If they are not detectable, then they are random and God is not involved. If we accept that the world is random, and that bad things happen to everyone by chance, where does that leave God? Either he does not exist, or he has no power, or he does not care. Whichever of those answers you prefer, God does not deserve our thanks.

It was love that had troubled her, love that had shown her the road to Hell.

I once led armies,' Traveller said. 'I was once the will of the Emperor of Malaz.' 'We served death, of course, in all that we did. For all our claims otherwise. Imposing peace, ending stupid feuds and tribal rivalries. Opening roads to merchants without fear of banditry. Coin flowed like blood in veins, such was the gift of those roads and the peace we enforced. And yet, behind it all, he waited. With a cold smile, he waits. Where all the roads converge, where every path ends. He waits.

The inability or rather unwillingness of the human mind to let go of the past is beautifully illustrated in the story of two Zen monks, Tanzan and Ekido, who were walking along a country road that had become extremely muddy after heavy rains. Near a village, they came upon a young woman who was trying to cross the road, but the mud was so deep it would have ruined the silk kimono she was wearing. Tanzan at once picked her up and carried her to the other side. The monks walked on in silence. Five hours later, as they were approaching the lodging temple, Ekido couldn’t restrain himself any longer. “Why did you carry that girl across the road?” he asked. “We monks are not supposed to do things like that.” “I put the girl down hours ago,” said Tanzan. “Are you still carrying her?

All roads in this mystical world tragically lead to death. Every personal narrative repeats the same rhetorical trope. Memento mori (‘remember that you must die’) and memento mortis (‘remember death’) are the Latin medieval designation of the theory and practice of reflecting on mortality, pondering the vanity of earthly life and the transient nature of all earthly goods and pursuits. The title to metaphysical poet John Donne’s poem Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris (‘Now, this Bell tolling softly for another, says to me, Thou must die.’) expresses this sentiment of humankind’s painful morality and the interconnectedness of humanity. Remember death – that I must die – is my faithful traveling companion.

He attacked Oriati Mbo with all his powers. Schools to seduce the young. Banks to issue loans, loans to put Oriati into debt, debt to give him an excuse to seize their land and property. He built toll roads and canals for exclusive trade. He gave his allies inoculations against disease. He brutalized the Oriati currencies with counterfeiting and debasement, flooding their continent with fake money so they would turn to the stable, reliable Falcresti fiat note as their trade coin. It was precisely how he captured Taranoke. It failed utterly.

Privatised power companies that profit from a fossil-fuel-generated energy supply are obviously resistant to politicians promising to build and operate the infrastructure of renewable energy. The owners of a private bus company, or a pay-per-use toll road, do not want the government to build you a local train station.

There was a dreadful logic here - so obvious he had overlooked it. The real need was for a different kind of book altogether, a book for the times. Very well then, he would explore that infernal map, transcribe its morbid cartography; record the tale of a realm that was at once a city and Hell and himself. In this way Owen Maddock turned his back on the light and sought out the oracles that lurk in darkness. A feverish energy possessed him. He laboured as never before upon his given work. Now he would strive to be obscure, to lead his readers by crooked paths, baffle them with indecipherable mysteries. There would no delicacy of style, only 'thunder at midnight'. Little by little there rose up before his inner eye a new vision to replace that of the White Road that had led him nowhere: a Kingdom of Darkness, a crepuscular domain of monstrous cults that chanted, to the tolling of iron bells and the beating of brazen gongs, unpronounceable demonic litanies. He must familiarise himself with every aspect of this world, its endless roll-calls of Hell, the spells by which the doors of the pit might be opened. He must cast in awful detail the laws by which tortures were administered. He would write for days in a frenzy, his mind ranging on raven's wings through skies black as pitch. "The White Road

Smallpox has an incubation period of about twelve days, during which time sufferers, who may not know they are sick, can infect anyone they meet. With its fine roads and great population movements, Tawantinsuyu was perfectly positioned for a major epidemic. Smallpox radiated throughout the empire like ink spreading through tissue paper. Millions of people simultaneously experienced its symptoms: high fever, vomiting, severe pain, oozing blisters everywhere on the body. Unable to number the losses, the Jesuit Martín de Murúa said only that the toll was “infinite thousands.

Some years ago I took a copy of God’s “whoever” policy to California. I wanted to show it to my Uncle Billy. He’d been scheduled to visit my home, but bone cancer had thwarted his plans. My uncle reminded me much of my father: squared like a blast furnace, ruddy as a leather basketball. They shared the same West Texas roots, penchant for cigars, and blue-collar work ethic. But I wasn’t sure if they shared the same faith. So after several planes, two shuttles, and a rental-car road trip, I reached Uncle Billy’s house only to learn he was back in the hospital. No visitors. Maybe tomorrow. He felt better the next day. Good enough to come home. I went to see him. Cancer had taken its toll and his strength. The recliner entombed his body. He recognized me yet dozed as I chatted with his wife and friends. He scarcely opened his eyes. People came and went, and I began to wonder if I would have the chance to ask the question. Finally the guests stepped out onto the lawn and left me alone with my uncle. I slid my chair next to his, took his skintaut hand, and wasted no words. “Bill, are you ready to go to heaven?” His eyes, for the first time, popped open. Saucer wide. His head lifted. Doubt laced his response: “I think I am.” “Do you want to be sure?” “Oh yes.” Our brief talk ended with a prayer for grace. We both said “amen,” and I soon left. Uncle Billy died within days. Did he wake up in heaven? According to the parable of the eleventh-hour workers, he did.

Since my wife ran off with a lesbian basketball coach, in October of 2007, I had to raise my three youngest children as a cowboy single dad. This has made it impossible for me to travel and run my hotel jobs. I hired Jim Rossi to run my out of town work for me and Jim had done a great job for the first year. As time had progressed, Jims drinking and greed seemed to be taking a toll on what was in October 2007, the largest hotel remodeling business in the Midwest. If I’m able to get the Palace up and running, I can shut down the hotel road work and personally run The Palace. Making the Grand Palace as successful as my hotel business was when I ran all the hotel renovations road work myself.