Touching 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.

Why I Wake Early Hello, sun in my face. Hello, you who made the morning and spread it over the fields and into the faces of the tulips and the nodding morning glories, and into the windows of, even, the miserable and the crotchety – best preacher that ever was, dear star, that just happens to be where you are in the universe to keep us from ever-darkness, to ease us with warm touching, to hold us in the great hands of light – good morning, good morning, good morning. Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.

We are loved way more by some of the people who have not contacted us in the last twelve or so months than we are loved by some of those who contact us every twelve or so days … or hours.

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God.

...the sun rose each morning to stare into my face with the blank but touching gaze of a lovely retarded child.

Quite alone. No voice, no touch, no hand....How long must I lie here? For ever? No, only for a couple of hundred years this time, miss....

all my parents do is drink. They hate me. Do you know what it's like waking up every morning knowing you're not good enough? there are only two things wrong with me-everything I do and everything I say. They'll never be happy until I'm dead

Take this fucking thing off me!" he demanded. "Good morning to you too, Nick," Damian said mildly. He unlocked the door without haste and went to his office, Nick dogging his every footstep. "Did you --?" "I didn't touch it or myself. Take it off right now!" Nick said angrily. Damian sat down and motioned Nick closer. "We're going to have to have a talk about topping from the bottom. I don't allow that, pet.

No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. ... Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it? ... And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it. And all from my cup of tea.

A good man buys you tampons when you run out. He does the dishes. He makes you coffee before you're awake in the morning. He listens to you when you're talking, even if it's about home decor. He goes out of his way to touch you, even if it's just your hand. He doesn't call it 'babysitting' when he looks after his own children. He calls you from work just to hear your voice. And he always thinks you're beautiful, even---no, especially---when you don't.

At nearly three in the morning sleepiness weighted my body as we lay there together so still. I heard his breathing even out as we both hovered in that place between wake and sleep. And then his hand wandered lazily down my back and over my hip until he was cupping the full curve of my behind, part of me that he’d actively avoided touching all night. Scratch that sleepy thing. His firm hands clutched me closer and I breathed a heady gust of air at his throat. I’d been careful all night not to be too vocal about how good his touches felt. I knew each noise would act as fuel, making it even harder for him. He rolled to his back, pulling me on top of him with both hands fully on my backside now. “Kaidan,” I whispered. Looking half-asleep, he shushed me with a hot kiss, pulling my hips to crush us together. I whimpered into his mouth. “God, those little sounds,” he said against my lips. “I want to hear how you sound when I make you—” “Kai!” I practically leaped off him, and he sat up, eyes blazing, licking his lips. I was breathing hard. He had to be as tired as me after our long day, and it was starting to weaken us big-time. Oh, how I’d love to indulge that weakness. I scooted farther away. “Maybe we should try to get some sleep,” I suggested, though I was feeling wide-awake now. He stared at me with roaring passion. “I think a third shower might be necessary,” he said. A silly laugh wanted to escape me, but there was no humor in his eyes. Only want.

There is nothing you can do that profit does not enter into, and fear of loss, and wish for power. You cannot say good morning without knowing which of you is 'superior' to the other, or trying to prove it. You cannot act like a brother to other people, you must manipulate them, or command them, or obey them, or trick them. You cannot touch another person, yet they will not leave you alone. There is no freedom.

It’s good if you can accept your life—you’ll notice Your face has become deranged trying to adjust To it. Your face thought your life would look Like your bedroom mirror when you were ten. That was a clear river touched by mountain wind. Even your parents can’t believe how much you’ve changed.

Eventually the Woodsman spoke. ‘We all have our routines,’ he said softly. ‘But they must have a purpose and provide an outcome that we can see and take some comfort from, or else they have no use at all. Without that, they are like the endless pacings of a caged animal. If they are not madness itself, then they are a prelude to it.’ The Woodsman stood and showed David his axe. ‘See here,’ he said, pointing with his finger at the blade. Every morning, I make certain that me axe is clean and keen. I look to my house and check that its windows and doors remain secure. I tend to my land, disposing of weeds and ensuring that the soil is watered. I walk through the forest, clearing those paths that need to be kept open. Where trees have been damaged, I do my best to repair what has been harmed. these are my routines and I enjoy doing them well.’ He laid a hand gently on David’s shoulder, and David saw understanding in his face. ‘Rules and routines are good, but they must give you satisfaction. Can you truly say you gain that from touching and counting?’ David shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘but I get scared when I don’t do them. I’m afraid of what might happen.’ ‘Then find routines that allow you to feel secure when they are done. You told me that you have a new brother: look to him each morning. Look to your father, and your stepmother. Tend to the flowers in the garden, or in the pots upon the window sill. Seek others who are weaker than you are, and try to give them comfort where you can. Let these be your routines, and the rules that govern your life.

Because there is nothing, nothing on Urras that we Anarresti need! We left with empty hands, a hundred and seventy years ago, and we were right. We took nothing. Because there is nothing here but States and their weapons, the rich and their lies, and the poor and their misery. There is no way to act rightly, with a clear heart, on Urras. There is nothing you can do that profit does not enter into, and fear of loss, and the wish for power. You cannot say good morning without knowing which of you is ‘superior’ to the other, or trying to prove it. You cannot act like a brother to other people, you must manipulate them, or command them, or obey them, or trick them. You cannot touch another person, yet they will not leave you alone. There is no freedom. It is a box—Urras is a box, a package, with all the beautiful wrapping of blue sky and meadows and forests and great cities. And you open the box, and what is inside it? A black cellar full of dust, and a dead man. A man whose hand was shot off because he held it out to others.

It was a good thing Ridge was mighty fond of Tug or he’d probably have killed him by now. As it was, it had been touch and go for a little while that morning. But killing your lover on Christmas morning was so…so…heterosexual.

One morning I fell to sketching a face: what sort of a face it was to be, I did not care or know. I took a soft black pencil, gave it a broad point, and worked away. Soon I had traced on the paper a broad and prominent forehead and a square lower outline of visage: that contour gave me pleasure; my fingers proceeded actively to fill it with features. Strongly-marked horizontal eyebrows must be traced under that brow; then followed, naturally, a well-defined nose, with a straight ridge and full nostrils; then a flexible-looking mouth, by no means narrow; then a firm chin, with a decided cleft down the middle of it: of course, some black whiskers were wanted, and some jetty hair, tufted on the temples, and waved above the forehead. Now for the eyes: I had left them to the last, because they required the most careful working. I drew them large; I shaped them well: the eyelashes I traced long and sombre; the irids lustrous and large. "Good! but not quite the thing," I thought, as I surveyed the effect: "they want more force and spirit;" and I wrought the shades blacker, that the lights might flash more brilliantly--a happy touch or two secured success. There, I had a friend's face under my gaze; and what did it signify that those young ladies turned their backs on me? I looked at it; I smiled at the speaking likeness: I was absorbed and content. Is that a portrait of some one you know?" asked Eliza, who had approached me unnoticed. I responded that it was merely a fancy head, and hurried it beneath the other sheets. Of course, I lied: it was, in fact, a very faithful representation of Mr. Rochester. But what was that to her, or to any one but myself? Georgiana also advanced to look. The other drawings pleased her much, but she called that 'an ugly man.

Why I Wake Early Hello, sun in my face. Hello, you who make the morning and spread it over the fields and into the faces of the tulips and the nodding morning glories, and into the windows of, even, the miserable and the crotchety— best preacher that ever was, dear star, that just happens to be where you are in the universe to keep us from ever-darkness, to ease us with warm touching, to hold us in the great hands of light— good morning, good morning, good morning. Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.

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.

She was like a drowning person, flailing, reaching for anything that might save her. Her life was an urgent, desperate struggle to justify her life. She learned impossibly difficult songs on her violin, songs outside of what she thought she could know, and would each time come crying to Yankel, I have learned to play this one too! It's so terrible! I must write some- thing that not even I can play! She spent evenings with the art books Yankel had bought for her in Lutsk, and each morning sulked over breakfast, They were good and fine, but not beautiful. No, not if I'm being honest with my- self. They are only the best of what exists. She spent an afternoon staring at their front door. Waiting for someone? Yankel asked. What color is this? He stood very close to the door, letting the end of his nose touch the peephole. He licked the wood and joked, It certainly tastes like red. Yes, it is red, isn't it? Seems so. She buried her head in her hands. But couldn't it be just a bit more red?

Maybe physical intimacy isn't always about touching. Maybe it's also about being able to sit next to someone at dinner and not care if he takes something off your plate or reaches across you for the salt. Maybe it's about being able to sprawl out on the floor and read a book in the same room with someone who's grading papers and muttering about 'incompetent boobs who couldn't write a good paper if their lives depended on it.' Maybe it's about sharing the same space with another person and not going fucking crazy because you can't get away from them. That's it, I guess: true intimacy is really just the run of the mill, day to day stuff that happens without thinking—thousands of simple, meaningless, comfortable ways you can be close to someone, never dreaming how shitty you'll feel when you wake up one morning with all of it gone.

He awakens from this dream unable to remember exactly what it was, or much at all beyond the simple fact that he has dreamed about being a child again. He touches his wife’s smooth back as she sleeps her warm sleep and dreams her own dreams; he thinks that it is good to be a child, but it is also good to be grownup and able to consider the mystery of childhood ... its beliefs and desires. I will write about all of this one day, he thinks, and knows it’s just a dawn thought, an after-dreaming thought. But it’s nice to think so for awhile in the morning’s clean silence, to think that childhood has its own sweet secrets and confirms mortality, and that mortality defines all courage and love. To think that what has looked forward must also look back, and that each life makes its own imitation of immortality: a wheel. Or so Bill Denbrough sometimes thinks on those early mornings after dreaming, when he almost remembers his childhood, and the friends with whom he shared it.

I'm bad at good-byes," says the boy. Grandpa's lips reveal all his teeth when he smiles. "We'll have plenty of chances to practice. You'll be good at it. Almost all grown adults walk around full of regret over a good-bye they wish they'd been able to go back and say better. Our good-bye doesn't have to be like that, you'll be able to keep redoing it until it's perfect. And once it's perfect, that's when your feet will touch the ground and I'll be in space, and there won't be anything to be afraid of.

Ms. Lane.”Barrons’ voice is deep, touched with that strange Old World accent and mildly pissed off. Jericho Barrons is often mildly pissed off. I think he crawled from the swamp that way, chafed either by some condition in it, out of it, or maybe just the general mass incompetence he encountered in both places. He’s the most controlled, capable man I’ve ever known. After all we’ve been through together, he still calls me Ms. Lane, with one exception: When I’m in his bed. Or on the floor, or some other place where I’ve temporarily lost my mind and become convinced I can’t breathe without him inside me this very instant. Then the things he calls me are varied and nobody’s business but mine. I reply: “Barrons,” without inflection. I’ve learned a few things in our time together. Distance is frequently the only intimacy he’ll tolerate. Suits me. I’ve got my own demons. Besides I don’t believe good relationships come from living inside each other’s pockets. I believe divorce comes from that. I admire the animal grace with which he enters the room and moves toward me. He prefers dark colors, the better to slide in and out of the night, or a room, unnoticed except for whatever he’s left behind that you may or may not discover for some time, like, say a tattoo on the back of one’s skull. “What are you doing?” “Reading,” I say nonchalantly, rubbing the tattoo on the back of my skull. I angle the volume so he can’t see the cover. If he sees what I’m reading, he’ll know I’m looking for something. If he realizes how bad it’s gotten, and what I’m thinking about doing, he’ll try to stop me. He circles behind me, looks over my shoulder at the thick vellum of the ancient manuscript. “In the first tongue?” “Is that what it is?” I feign innocence. He knows precisely which cells in my body are innocent and which are thoroughly corrupted. He’s responsible for most of the corrupted ones. One corner of his mouth ticks up and I see the glint of beast behind his eyes, a feral crimson backlight, bloodstaining the whites. It turns me on. Barrons makes me feel violently, electrically sexual and alive. I’d march into hell beside him. But I will not let him march into hell beside me. And there’s no doubt that’s where I’m going. I thought I was strong, a heroine. I thought I was the victor. The enemy got inside my head and tried to seduce me with lies. It’s easy to walk away from lies. Power is another thing. Temptation isn’t a sin that you triumph over once, completely and then you’re free. Temptation slips into bed with you each night and helps you say your prayers. It wakes you in the morning with a friendly cup of coffee, and knows exactly how you take it. He skirts the Chesterfield sofa and stands over me. “Looking for something, Ms. Lane?” I’m eye level with his belt but that’s not where my gaze gets stuck and suddenly my mouth is so dry I can hardly swallow and I know I’m going to want to. I’m Pri-ya for this man. I hate it. I love it. I can’t escape it. I reach for his belt buckle. The manuscript slides from my lap, forgotten. Along with everything else but this moment, this man. “I just found it,” I tell him.

January? The month is dumb. It is fraudulent. It does not cleanse itself. The hens lay blood-stained eggs. Do not lend your bread to anyone lest it nevermore rise. Do not eat lentils or your hair will fall out. Do not rely on February except when your cat has kittens, throbbing into the snow. Do not use knives and forks unless there is a thaw, like the yawn of a baby. The sun in this month begets a headache like an angel slapping you in the face. Earthquakes mean March. The dragon will move, and the earth will open like a wound. There will be great rain or snow so save some coal for your uncle. The sun of this month cures all. Therefore, old women say: Let the sun of March shine on my daughter, but let the sun of February shine on my daughter-in-law. However, if you go to a party dressed as the anti-Christ you will be frozen to death by morning. During the rainstorms of April the oyster rises from the sea and opens its shell — rain enters it — when it sinks the raindrops become the pearl. So take a picnic, open your body, and give birth to pearls. June and July? These are the months we call Boiling Water. There is sweat on the cat but the grape marries herself to the sun. Hesitate in August. Be shy. Let your toes tremble in their sandals. However, pick the grape and eat with confidence. The grape is the blood of God. Watch out when holding a knife or you will behead St. John the Baptist. Touch the Cross in September, knock on it three times and say aloud the name of the Lord. Put seven bowls of salt on the roof overnight and the next morning the damp one will foretell the month of rain. Do not faint in September or you will wake up in a dead city. If someone dies in October do not sweep the house for three days or the rest of you will go. Also do not step on a boy's head for the devil will enter your ears like music. November? Shave, whether you have hair or not. Hair is not good, nothing is allowed to grow, all is allowed to die. Because nothing grows you may be tempted to count the stars but beware, in November counting the stars gives you boils. Beware of tall people, they will go mad. Don't harm the turtle dove because he is a great shoe that has swallowed Christ's blood. December? On December fourth water spurts out of the mouse. Put herbs in its eyes and boil corn and put the corn away for the night so that the Lord may trample on it and bring you luck. For many days the Lord has been shut up in the oven. After that He is boiled, but He never dies, never dies.

[Robert's eulogy at his brother, Ebon C. Ingersoll's grave. Even the great orator Robert Ingersoll was choked up with tears at the memory of his beloved brother] The record of a generous life runs like a vine around the memory of our dead, and every sweet, unselfish act is now a perfumed flower. Dear Friends: I am going to do that which the dead oft promised he would do for me. The loved and loving brother, husband, father, friend, died where manhood's morning almost touches noon, and while the shadows still were falling toward the west. He had not passed on life's highway the stone that marks the highest point; but, being weary for a moment, he lay down by the wayside, and, using his burden for a pillow, fell into that dreamless sleep that kisses down his eyelids still. While yet in love with life and raptured with the world, he passed to silence and pathetic dust. Yet, after all, it may be best, just in the happiest, sunniest hour of all the voyage, while eager winds are kissing every sail, to dash against the unseen rock, and in an instant hear the billows roar above a sunken ship. For whether in mid sea or 'mong the breakers of the farther shore, a wreck at last must mark the end of each and all. And every life, no matter if its every hour is rich with love and every moment jeweled with a joy, will, at its close, become a tragedy as sad and deep and dark as can be woven of the warp and woof of mystery and death. This brave and tender man in every storm of life was oak and rock; but in the sunshine he was vine and flower. He was the friend of all heroic souls. He climbed the heights, and left all superstitions far below, while on his forehead fell the golden dawning, of the grander day. He loved the beautiful, and was with color, form, and music touched to tears. He sided with the weak, the poor, and wronged, and lovingly gave alms. With loyal heart and with the purest hands he faithfully discharged all public trusts. He was a worshipper of liberty, a friend of the oppressed. A thousand times I have heard him quote these words: 'For Justice all place a temple, and all season, summer!' He believed that happiness was the only good, reason the only torch, justice the only worship, humanity the only religion, and love the only priest. He added to the sum of human joy; and were every one to whom he did some loving service to bring a blossom to his grave, he would sleep to-night beneath a wilderness of flowers. Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud, and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word; but in the night of death hope sees a star and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing. He who sleeps here, when dying, mistaking the approach of death for the return of health, whispered with his latest breath, 'I am better now.' Let us believe, in spite of doubts and dogmas, of fears and tears, that these dear words are true of all the countless dead. And now, to you, who have been chosen, from among the many men he loved, to do the last sad office for the dead, we give his sacred dust. Speech cannot contain our love. There was, there is, no gentler, stronger, manlier man.

Here was a revelation which no one could doubt or deny; here, seen by unknown magic of Overlord science, were the true beginnings of all the world's great faiths. Most of them were noble and inspiring, but that was not enough. Within a few days, all mankind's multitudinous messaihs had lost their divinity. Beneath the fierce and passionless light of truth, faiths that had sustained millions for twice a thousand years vanished like morning dew. All the good and all the evil they had wrought were swept suddenly into the past, and could touch the minds of men no more.

Welsh Incident 'But that was nothing to what things came out From the sea-caves of Criccieth yonder.' What were they? Mermaids? dragons? ghosts?' Nothing at all of any things like that.' What were they, then?' 'All sorts of queer things, Things never seen or heard or written about, Very strange, un-Welsh, utterly peculiar Things. Oh, solid enough they seemed to touch, Had anyone dared it. Marvellous creation, All various shapes and sizes, and no sizes, All new, each perfectly unlike his neighbour, Though all came moving slowly out together.' Describe just one of them.' 'I am unable.' What were their colours?' 'Mostly nameless colours, Colours you'd like to see; but one was puce Or perhaps more like crimson, but not purplish. Some had no colour.' 'Tell me, had they legs?' Not a leg or foot among them that I saw.' But did these things come out in any order?' What o'clock was it? What was the day of the week? Who else was present? How was the weather?' I was coming to that. It was half-past three On Easter Tuesday last. The sun was shining. The Harlech Silver Band played Marchog Jesu On thrity-seven shimmering instruments Collecting for Caernarvon's (Fever) Hospital Fund. The populations of Pwllheli, Criccieth, Portmadoc, Borth, Tremadoc, Penrhyndeudraeth, Were all assembled. Criccieth's mayor addressed them First in good Welsh and then in fluent English, Twisting his fingers in his chain of office, Welcoming the things. They came out on the sand, Not keeping time to the band, moving seaward Silently at a snail's pace. But at last The most odd, indescribable thing of all Which hardly one man there could see for wonder Did something recognizably a something.' Well, what?' 'It made a noise.' 'A frightening noise?' No, no.' 'A musical noise? A noise of scuffling?' No, but a very loud, respectable noise --- Like groaning to oneself on Sunday morning In Chapel, close before the second psalm.' What did the mayor do?' 'I was coming to that.

Do you know what it’s like waking up every morning knowing you’re not good enough? There are only two things wrong with me—everything I do and everything I say. They’ll never be happy until I’m dead.

For she said to herself, “If only I may touch His garment, I shall be made well.” But Jesus turned around, and when He saw her He said, “Be of good cheer, daughter; your faith has made you well.” MATTHEW 9:21–22 NKJV

This was a side effect of partying that my friends and I called “The Fear.” Mild paranoia was just a touch of The Fear, hardly worth bothering with; a full dose really came the morning after, a bottomless pit of regret and shame fueled by drugs, alcohol, lack of sleep, and the insidious feeling that you had somehow just fucked up monumentally. I had learned to live with The Fear, but we were not very good roommates and I believed he was using my toothbrush.

Kiss me goodbye.” “I already kissed you goodbye this morning. Twice.” “Third time lucky.” He planted his lips firmly on hers. “I’ll be in touch, Lieutenant.” He strolled out. Even before he hit the sidewalk a sleek black car pulled up to the curb, and a driver hopped out to open the door. Like magic, Eve thought. “I’d like to be in touch with him. Anytime. Anywhere. Any way.” Eve turned her head slowly. “Did you say something, Peabody?” “Who, sir, me, sir? Nope. Absolutely not.” “Good.

Ruby?” His hair was pale silver in this light, curled and tangled in its usual way. I couldn’t hide from him. I had never been able to. “Mike came and got me,” he said, taking a careful step toward me. His hands were out in front of him, as if trying to coax a wild animal into letting him approach. “What are you doing out here? What’s going on?” “Please just go,” I begged. “I need to be alone.” He kept coming straight at me. “Please,” I shouted, “go away!” “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s going on!” Liam said. He got a better look at me and swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Where were you this morning? Did something happen? Chubs told me you’ve been gone all day, and now you’re out here like…this…did he do something to you?” I looked away. “Nothing I didn’t ask for.” Liam’s only response was to move back a few paces back. Giving me space. “I don’t believe you for a second,” he said, calmly. “Not one damn second. If you want to get rid of me, you’re going to have to try harder than that.” “I don’t want you here.” He shook his head. “Doesn’t mean I’m leaving you here alone. You can take all the time you want, as long as you need, but you and me? We’re having this out tonight. Right now.” Liam pulled his black sweater over his head and threw it toward me. “Put it on, or you’ll catch a cold.” I caught it with one hand and pressed it to my chest. It was still warm. He began to pace, his hands on his hips. “Is it me? Is it that you can’t talk to me about it? Do you want me to get Chubs?” I couldn’t bring myself to answer. “Ruby, you’re scaring the hell out of me.” “Good.” I balled up his sweater and threw it into the darkness as hard as I could. He blew out a shaky sigh, bracing a hand against the nearest tree. “Good? What’s good about it?” I hadn’t really understood what Clancy had been trying to tell me that night, not until right then, when Liam looked up and his eyes met mine. The trickle of blood in my ears turned into a roar. I squeezed my eyes shut, digging the heels of my palms against my forehead. “I can’t do this anymore,” I cried. “Why won’t you just leave me alone?” “Because you would never leave me.” His feet shuffled through the underbrush as he took a few steps closer. The air around me heated, taking on a charge I recognized. I gritted my teeth, furious with him for coming so close when he knew I couldn’t handle it. When he knew I could hurt him. His hands came up to pull mine away from my face, but I wasn’t about to let him be gentle. I shoved him back, throwing my full weight into it. Liam stumbled. “Ruby—” I pushed him again and again, harder each time, because it was the only way I could tell him what I was desperate to say. I saw bursts of his glossy memories. I saw all of his brilliant dreams. It wasn’t until I knocked his back into a tree that I realized I was crying. Up this close, I saw a new cut under his left eye and the bruise forming around it. Liam’s lips parted. His hands were no longer out in front of him, but hovering over my hips. “Ruby…” I closed what little distance was left between us, one hand sliding through his soft hair, the other gathering the back of his shirt into my fist. When my lips finally pressed against his, I felt something coil deep inside of me. There was nothing outside of him, not even the grating of cicadas, not even the gray-bodied trees. My heart thundered in my chest. More, more, more—a steady beat. His body relaxed under my hands, shuddering at my touch. Breathing him in wasn’t enough, I wanted to inhale him. The leather, the smoke, the sweetness. I felt his fingers counting up my bare ribs. Liam shifted his legs around mine to draw me closer. I was off-balance on my toes; the world swaying dangerously under me as his lips traveled to my cheek, to my jaw, to where my pulse throbbed in my neck. He seemed so sure of himself, like he had already plotted out this course.

champagne, n. You appear at the foot of the bed with a bottle of champagne, and I have no idea why. I search my mind desperately for an occasion I've forgotten - is this some obscure anniversary or, even worse, a not-so-obscure one? Then I think you have something to tell me, some good news to share, but your smile is silent, cryptic. I sit up in bed, ask you what's going on, and you shake your head, as if to say that nothing's going on, as if to pretend that we usually start our Wednesday mornings with champagne. You touch the bottle to my leg - I feel the cool condensation and the glass, the fact that the bottle must have been sleeping all night in the refrigerator without me noticing. You have long-stemmed glasses in you other hand, and you place them on the nightstand, beside the uncommenting clock, the box of kleenex, the tumbler of water. "The thing about champagne," you say, unfailing the cork, unwinding its wire restraint, "is that it is the ultimate associative object. Every time you open a bottle of champagne, it's a celebration, so there's no better way of starting a celebration than opening a bottle of champagne. Every time you sip it, you're sipping from all those other celebrations. The joy accumulates over time." You pop the cork. The bubbles rise. I feel some of the spray on my skin. You pour. "But why?" I ask as you hand me my glass. You raise yours and ask, "Why not? What better way to start the day?" We drink a toast to that.

But my parents understood that the world that they made within the walls of our house was what constituted home. So I grew up in spaces framed by art and color, filled with candlelight, marked by beauty. I grew up within a rhythm of time made sacred by family devotions in the morning and long conversations in the evening. I grew up with the sense of our daily life as a feast and delight; a soup-and-bread dinner by the fire, Celtic music lilting in the shadows, and the laughter of my siblings gave me a sense of the blessedness of love, of God's life made tangible in the food and touch and air of our home. It was a fight for my parents, I know. Every day was a battle to bring order to mess, peace to stressful situations, beauty to the chaos wrought by four young children. But that's the reality of incarnation as it invades a fallen world....What my parents-bless them-knew...is that to make a home right in the midst of the fallen world is to craft out a space of human flesh and existence in which eternity rises up in time, in which the kingdom comes, in which we may taste and see the goodness of God.

I sat listening to the birdcalls and smelling the new day’s warmth touching the earth. Such things have always been a deep comfort to me. This morning they affirmed the goodness of the earth always goes on and made me wish that I could stay to watch the summer grow strong and the fruit swell on the trees. p. 65

His goodness has been apparent since creation. When He formed and shaped and painted and sculpted this world and its creatures into being, His goodness seeped in with every thought and touch. “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day” (Genesis 1:31).

I know him, that man walking- toward me up the crowded street of the city, I have lived with him seven years now, I know his fast stride, his windy wheatfield hair, his hands thrust deep in his jacket pockets, hands that have known my body, touched its softest part, caused its quick shudders and slow releasings, I have seen his face above my face, his mouth smiling, moaning his eyes closed and opened, I have studied his eyes, the brown turning gold at the centers, I have silently watched him lying beside me in the early morning, I know his loneliness, like mine, human and sad, but different, too, his private pain and pleasure I can never enter even as he comes closer, past trees and cars, trash and flowers, steam rising from the manhole covers, gutters running with rain, he lifts his head, he sees me, we are strangers again, and a rending music of desire and loss— I don’t know him—courses through me, and we kiss and say, It’s good to see you, as if we haven’t seen each other in years when it was just a few hours ago, and we are shy, then, not knowing what to say next.

I don’t understand it,” Hans Castorp said. “I never can understand how anybody can not smoke—it deprives a man of the best part of life, so to speak—or at least of a first-class pleasure. When I wake in the morning, I feel glad at the thought of being able to smoke all day, and when I eat, I look forward to smoking afterwards; I might almost say I only eat for the sake of being able to smoke—though of course that is more or less of an exaggeration. But a day without tobacco would be flat, stale, and unprofitable, as far as I am concerned. If I had to say to myself to-morrow: ‘No smoke to-day’—I believe I shouldn’t find the courage to get up—on my honour, I’d stop in bed. But when a man has a good cigar in his mouth—of course it mustn’t have a side draught or not draw well, that is extremely irritating—but with a good cigar in his mouth a man is perfectly safe, nothing can touch him—literally. It’s just like lying on the beach: when you lie on the beach, why, you lie on the beach, don’t you?—you don’t require anything else, in the line of work or amusement either.—People smoke all over the world, thank goodness; there is nowhere one could get to, so far as I know, where the habit hasn’t penetrated. Even polar expeditions fit themselves out with supplies of tobacco to help them carry on. I’ve always felt a thrill of sympathy when I read that. You can be very miserable: I might be feeling perfectly wretched, for instance; but I could always stand it if I had my smoke.

I never leave home without my cayenne pepper. I either stash a bottle of the liquid extract in my pocket book or I stick it in the shopping cart I pull around with me all over Manhattan. When it comes to staying right side up in this world, a black woman needs at least three things. The first is a quiet spot of her own, a place away from the nonsense. The second is a stash of money, like the cash my mother kept hidden in the slit of her mattress. The last is several drops of cayenne pepper, always at the ready. Sprinkle that on your food before you eat it and it’ll kill any lurking bacteria. The powder does the trick as well, but I prefer the liquid because it hits the bloodstream quickly. Particularly when eating out, I won’t touch a morsel to my lips ‘til it’s speckled with with cayenne. That’s just one way I take care of my temple, aside from preparing my daily greens, certain other habits have carried me toward the century mark. First thing I do every morning is drink four glasses of water. People think this water business is a joke. But I’m here to tell you that it’s not. I’ve known two elderly people who died of dehydration, one of whom fell from his bed in the middle of the night and couldn’t stand up because he was so parched. Following my water, I drink 8 ounces of fresh celery blended in my Vita-mix. The juice cleanses the system and reduces inflammation. My biggest meal is my first one: oatmeal. I soak my oats overnight so that when I get up all I have to do is turn on the burner. Sometimes I enjoy them with warm almond milk, other times I add grated almonds and berries, put the mixture in my tumbler and shake it until it’s so smooth I can drink it. In any form, oats do the heart good. Throughout the day I eat sweet potatoes, which are filled with fiber, beets sprinkled with a little olive oil, and vegetables of every variety. I also still enjoy plenty of salad, though I stopped adding so many carrots – too much sugar. But I will do celery, cucumbers, seaweed grass and other greens. God’s fresh bounty doesn’t need a lot of dressing up, which is why I generally eat my salad plain. From time to time I do drizzle it with garlic oil. I love the taste. I also love lychee nuts. I put them in the freezer so that when I bite into them cold juice comes flooding out. As terrific as they are, I buy them only once in awhile. I recently bit into an especially sweet one, and then I stuck it right back in the freezer. “Not today, Suzie,” I said to myself, “full of glucose!” I try never to eat late, and certainly not after nine p.m. Our organs need a chance to rest. And before bed, of course, I have a final glass of water. I don’t mess around with my hydration.

Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder, and heard the Count’s voice saying to me, ‘Good morning.’ I started, for it amazed me that I had not seen him, since the reflection of the glass covered the whole room behind me. In starting I had cut myself slightly, but did not notice it at the moment. Having answered the Count’s salutation, I turned to the glass again to see how I had been mistaken. This time there could be no error, for the man was close to me, and I could see him over my shoulder. But there was no reflection of him in the mirror! The whole room behind me was displayed; but there was no sign of a man in it, except myself. This was startling, and, coming on the top of so many strange things, was beginning to increase that vague feeling of uneasiness which I always have when the Count is near; but at that instant I saw that the cut had bled a little, and the blood was trickling over my chin. I laid down the razor, turning as I did so half-round to look for some sticking-plaster. When the Count saw my face, his eyes blazed with a sort of demoniac fury, and he suddenly made a grab at my throat. I drew away, and his hand touched the string of beads which held the crucifix. It made an instant change in him, for the fury passed so quickly that I could hardly believe that it was ever there.

In little towns, lives roll along so close to one another; loves and hates beat about, their wings almost touching. On the sidewalks along which everybody comes and goes, you must, if you walk abroad at all, at some time pass within a few inches of the man who cheated and betrayed you, or the woman you desire more than anything else in the world. Her skirt brushes against you. You say good-morning, and go on. It is a close shave. Out in the world the escapes are not so narrow.

Touch the stone,' said Beliah, 'and you will touch "reality", or what the ignorant of all ages think "reality" is. That kind of truth will kill you, man. You won't see morning! I have kept you all your life from such things as remorse, terror, pity. Touch the stone, and those same angels will change you into an old poor pathetic deluded dying creature. Hubert, a nurse has to shave you, your hand shakes so much. You know that don't you? You dribble at every orifice, Hubert. You've begun to smell this past year or two...' He suddenly howled as if I had actually touched the stone,'YOU WILL BE RAVAGED IN FIRES OF GRACE!' I heard Nurse McGregor in the next ward. 'Good evening,' came her cheerful voice to the looney who had strangled his sweetheart and then buried her in his garden. 'Is it cocoa tonight, or tea, or milk?" Beliah was weeping. Outside the eaves dripped. The whole earth was drenched with the grief of Beliah. He wept inside me. I felt his marvellous tears on my face.

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.

Your father’s death was an accident,” Kate said. “An accident. A terrible, horrible twist of fate that no one could have predicted.” Anthony shrugged fatalistically. “I’ll probably go the same way.” “Oh, for the love of—” Kate managed to bite her tongue a split second before she blasphemed. “Anthony, I could die tomorrow as well. I could have died today when that carriage rolled on top of me.” He paled. “Don’t ever remind me of that.” “My mother died when she was my age,” Kate reminded him harshly. “Did you ever think of that? By your laws, I should be dead by my next birthday.” “Don’t be—” “Silly?” she finished for him. Silence reigned for a full minute. Finally, Anthony said, his voice barely above a whisper, “I don’t know if I can get past this.” “You don’t have to get past it,” Kate said. She caught her lower lip, which had begun to tremble, between her teeth, and then laid her hand on an empty spot on the bed. “Could you come over here so I can hold your hand?” Anthony responded instantly; the warmth of her touch flooded him, seeping through his body until it caressed his very soul. And in that moment he realized that this was about more than love. This woman made him a better person. He’d been good and strong and kind before, but with her at his side, he was something more. And together they could do anything. It almost made him think that forty might not be such an impossible dream. “You don’t have to get past it,” she said again, her words blowing softly between them. “To be honest, I don’t see how you could get completely past it until you turn thirty-nine. But what you can do”— she gave his hand a squeeze, and Anthony somehow felt even stronger than he had just moments before—“ is refuse to allow it to rule your life.” “I realized that this morning,” he whispered, “when I knew I had to tell you I loved you. But somehow now— now I know it.” She nodded, and he saw that her eyes were filling with tears. “You have to live each hour as if it’s your last,” she said, “and each day as if you were immortal." -Kate & Anthony

I MEAN not to defend the scapes of any, Or justify my vices being many; For I confess, if that might merit favour, Here I display my lewd and loose behaviour. I loathe, yet after that I loathe, I run: 5 Oh, how the burthen irks, that we should shun. I cannot rule myself but where Love please; Am driven like a ship upon rough seas. No one face likes me best, all faces move, A hundred reasons make me ever love. 10 If any eye me with a modest look, I blush, and by that blushful glance am took; And she that’s coy I like, for being no clown, Methinks she would be nimble when she’s down. Though her sour looks a Sabine’s brow resemble, 15 I think she’ll do, but deeply can dissemble. If she be learned, then for her skill I crave her; If not, because she’s simple I would have her. Before Callimachus one prefers me far; Seeing she likes my books, why should we jar? 20 Another rails at me, and that I write, Yet would I lie with her, if that I might: Trips she, it likes me well; plods she, what then? She would be nimbler lying with a man. And when one sweetly sings, then straight I long, 25 To quaver on her lips even in her song; Or if one touch the lute with art and cunning, Who would not love those hands for their swift running? And her I like that with a majesty, Folds up her arms, and makes low courtesy. 30 To leave myself, that am in love with all, Some one of these might make the chastest fall. If she be tall, she’s like an Amazon, And therefore fills the bed she lies upon: If short, she lies the rounder: to speak troth, 35 Both short and long please me, for I love both. I think what one undecked would be, being drest; Is she attired? then show her graces best. A white wench thralls me, so doth golden yellow: And nut-brown girls in doing have no fellow. 40 If her white neck be shadowed with brown hair, Why so was Leda’s, yet was Leda fair. Amber-tress’d is she? Then on the morn think I: My love alludes to every history: A young wench pleaseth, and an old is good, 45 This for her looks, that for her womanhood: Nay what is she, that any Roman loves, But my ambitious ranging mind approves?

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! ...

On the other hand, it is God the Son who performs the commands of the Father.When God the Father said, “Let there be light,” God the Son came and performed it.Then, God the Holy Spirit brought the light. Let me illustrate it this way. If I asked you, “Please turn on the light,” three forces would be involved. First, I would be the one who gave the command. Second, you would be the one who walks to the switch and flips it. In other words, you are the performer of the command. But finally, who brings on the light? It is not me, and it is not you. It is the power—the electricity—that produces light. The Holy Spirit is the power of God. He is the power of the Father and of the Son. He is the one who brings into action the performance of the Son. Yet He is a person. He has emotions which are expressed in a way unique among the Trinity. I’ve been asked,“Benny, aren’t you forgetting the importance of Christ in all of this?” Never! How could I forget the One who loved and died for me? But some people are so focused on the Son that they forget the Father—the one who loved them and sent His Son. I cannot forget the Father nor the Son. But I cannot be in touch with the Father and the Son without the Holy Spirit (see Eph. 2:18).

Galen slides into his desk, unsettled by the way the sturdy blond boy talking to Emma casually rests his arm on the back of her seat. "Good morning," Galen says, leaning over to wrap his arms around her, nearly pulling her from the chair. He even rests his cheek against hers for good measure. "Good morning...er, Mark, isn't it?" he says, careful to keep his voice pleasant. Still, he glances meaningfully at the masculine arm still lining the back of Emma's seat, almost touching her. To his credit-and safety-Mark eases the offending limb back to his own desk, offering Emma a lazy smile full of strikingly white teeth. "You and Forza, huh? Did you clear that with his groupies?" She laughs and gently pries Galen's arms off her. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the eruption of pink spreading like spilled paint over her face. She's not used to dating him yet. Until about ten minutes ago, he wasn't used to it either. Now though, with the way Mark eyes her like a tasty shellfish, playing the role of Emma's boyfriend feels all too natural. The bell rings, saving Emma from a reply and saving Mark thousands of dollars in hospital bills. Emma shoots Galen a withering look, which he deflects with that he hopes is an enchanting grin. He measures his success by the way her blush deepens but stops short when he notices the dark circles under her eyes. She didn't sleep last night. Not that he thought she would. She'd been quiet on the flight home from Destin two nights ago. He didn't pressure her to talk about it with him, mostly because he didn't know what to say once the conversation got started. So many times, he's started to assure her that he doesn't see her as an abomination, but it seems wrong to say it out loud. Like he's willfully disagreeing with the law. But how could those delicious-looking lips and those huge violet eyes be considered an abomination? What's even crazier is that not only does he not consider her an abomination, the fact that she could be a Half-Breed ignited a hope in him he's got no right to feel: Grom would never mate with a half human. At least, Galen doesn't think he would. He glances at Emma, whose silky eyelids don't even flutter in her state of light sleep. When he clears his throat, she startles. "Thank you," she mouths to him as she picks her pencil back up, using the eraser to trace the lines in her textbook as she reads. He acknowledges with a nod. He doesn't want to leave her like this, anxious and tense and out of place in her own beautiful skin.

Those who came before me did not take for granted the world in which they lived. They blessed the air with smoke and pollen. They touched the ground, the trees, the stones with respect and reverence. I believe that they imagined me before I was born, that they prepared the way for me, that they placed their faith and hope in me and in the generations that followed and will follow them. Will I give my children an inheritance of the earth? Or will I give them less than I was given? On one side of time there are herds of buffalo and antelope. Redbud trees and chokecherries splash color on the plain. The waters are clear, and there is a glitter on the early morning grass. You breathe in the fresh fragrances of rain and wind on which are borne silence and serenity. It is good to be alive in this world. But on the immediate side there is the exhaust of countless machines, toxic and unavoidable. The planet is warming, and the northern ice is melting. Fires and floods wreak irresistible havoc. The forests are diminished and waste piles upon us. Thousands of species have been destroyed. Our own is at imminent risk. The earth and its inhabitants are in crisis, and at the center it is a moral crisis. Man stands to repudiate his humanity. I make a prayer for words. Let me say my heart

At the level of second attention, however, this cycle is irrelevant. One doesn’t need to repeal the law of karma at all. Despite all the activity on the surface of life, a speck of awareness inside is not touched. The instant they wake up in the morning, a saint and a sinner are in the same place. They both feel themselves to be alive and aware. This place stands outside reward and punishment. It knows no duality; therefore in stage four your challenge is to find this place, hold on to it, and live there. When you have accomplished this task, duality is gone. You are free from all bondage of good or bad actions. In Christian terms, your soul is redeemed and returned to innocence.

Will you dare to say so?–Have you never erred?–Have you never felt one impure sensation?–Have you never indulged a transient feeling of hatred, or malice, or revenge?–Have you never forgot to do the good you ought to do,–or remembered to do the evil you ought not to have done?–Have you never in trade overreached a dealer, or banquetted on the spoils of your starving debtor?–Have you never, as you went to your daily devotions, cursed from your heart the wanderings of your heretical brethren,–and while you dipped your fingers in the holy water, hoped that every drop that touched your pores, would be visited on them in drops of brimstone and sulphur?–Have you never, as you beheld the famished, illiterate, degraded populace of your country, exulted in the wretched and temporary superiority your wealth has given you,–and felt that the wheels of your carriage would not roll less smoothly if the way was paved with the heads of your countrymen? Orthodox Catholic–old Christian–as you boast yourself to be,–is not this true?–and dare you say you have not been an agent of Satan? I tell you, whenever you indulge one brutal passion, one sordid desire, one impure imagination–whenever you uttered one word that wrung the heart, or embittered the spirit of your fellow-creature–whenever you made that hour pass in pain to whose flight you might have lent wings of down–whenever you have seen the tear, which your hand might have wiped away, fall uncaught, or forced it from an eye which would have smiled on you in light had you permitted it–whenever you have done this, you have been ten times more an agent of the enemy of man than all the wretches whom terror, enfeebled nerves, or visionary credulity, has forced into the confession of an incredible compact with the author of evil, and whose confession has consigned them to flames much more substantial than those the imagination of their persecutors pictured them doomed to for an eternity of suffering! Enemy of mankind!' the speaker continued,–'Alas! how absurdly is that title bestowed on the great angelic chief,–the morning star fallen from its sphere! What enemy has man so deadly as himself? If he would ask on whom he should bestow that title aright, let him smite his bosom, and his heart will answer,–Bestow it here!

On Monday morning, she called me into her bedroom. Her dark hair was tousled, her light robe very feminine against the soft blue of her bed. Her eyes were full of mischief. “Oh, Mr. West,” she whispered in her beguiling child’s voice. “I’ve gotten myself into something. Can you help me get out of it?” “What can I do?” I asked, wondering who was next in line to be fired. “I’ve invited someone to stay here,” she said, “but now we’ve changed our minds.” She cast a glance in the direction of the President’s bedroom. “Could you help us cook up something so we can get out of having her as a houseguest?” Without waiting for a reply, she rushed on, her request becoming a command in mid-breath. “Would you fix up the Queen’s Room and the Lincoln Room so that it looks like we’re still decorating them, and I’ll show her that our guest rooms are not available.” Her eyes twinkled, imagining the elaborate deception. “The guest rooms will be redecorated immediately,” I said, and almost clicked my heels. I called Bonner Arrington in the carpenter’s shop. “Bring drop-cloths up to the Queen’s Room and Lincoln Bedroom. Roll up the rugs and cover the draperies and chandeliers, and all the furniture,” I instructed. “Oh yes, and bring a stepladder.” I called the paint shop. “I need six paint buckets each for the Queen’s Room and the Lincoln Room. Two of the buckets in each room should be empty—off-white—and I need four or five dirty brushes.” I met the crews on the second floor. “Now proceed to make these two rooms look as if they’re being redecorated,” I directed. “You mean you don’t want us to paint?” said the painters. “No,” I said. “Just make it look as if you are.” The crew had a good time, even though they didn’t know what it was all about. As I brought in the finishing touches, ashtrays filled with cigarette butts, Bonner shook his head. “Mr. West, all I can say is that this place has finally got to you,” he said. That evening the President and Mrs. Kennedy entertained a Princess for dinner upstairs in the President’s Dining Room. Before dinner, though, President Kennedy strolled down to the East Hall with his wife’s guest. He pointed out the bedraped Queen’s Room. “… And you see, this is where you would have spent the night if Jackie hadn’t been redecorating again,” he told the unsuspecting lady. The next morning, Mrs. Kennedy phoned me. “Mr. West, you outdid yourself,” she exclaimed. “The President almost broke up when he saw those ashtrays.

JANUARY 16 Reach Out by Faith For she said to herself, “If only I may touch His garment, I shall be made well.” But Jesus turned around, and when He saw her He said, “Be of good cheer, daughter; your faith has made you well.” MATTHEW 9:21–22 NKJV ONE FELLOW WHOSE MARRIAGE was on the verge of dissolution told me, “Joel, I’ve been this way for a long time. Nothing good ever happens to me. I don’t see how my marriage can be restored. We’ve always had these problems.” “Those wrong attitudes will keep you from receiving the good things God wants to pour out in your life,” I told him. “Stop dwelling on negative, destructive thoughts that keep you in a rut. Your life will change when you change your thinking.” God has so much more in store for him, and for you as well. If you want to see God’s far and beyond favor, you have to start believing it, seeing it, and speaking it.

Winter was come indeed bringing with it those pleasures of which the summer dreamer knows nothing—the delight when the fine and glittering day shows in the window, though one knows how cold it is outside; the delight of getting as close as possible to the blazing range which in the shadowy kitchen throws reflections very different from the pale gleams of sunlight in the yard, the range we cannot take with us on our walk, busy with its own activity, growling and grumbling as it sets to work, for in three hours time luncheon must be ready; the delight of filling one's bowl with steaming café-au-lait—for it is only eight o'clock—and swallowing it in boiling gulps while servants at their tasks come in and out with a, 'Good morning: up early, aren't you?' and a kindly, 'It's snug enough in here, but cold outside,' accompanying the words with that smile which is to be seen only on the faces of those who for the moment are thinking of others and not of themselves, whose expressions, entirely freed from egotism, take on a quality of vacillating goodness, a smile which completes that earlier smile of the bright golden sky touching the window-panes, and crowns our every pleasure as we stand there with the lovely heat of the range at our backs, the hot and limpid flavour of the café-au-lait in our mouths; the delight of night-time when, having had to get up to go shiveringly to the icy lavatory in the tower, into which the air creeps through the ill-fitting window, we later return deliciously to our room, feeling a smile of happiness distend our lips, finding it hard not to jump for sheer joy at the thought of the big bed already warm with our warmth, of the still burning fire, the hot-water bottle, the coverlets and blankets which have imparted their heat to the bed into which we are about to slip, walled in, embattled, hiding ourselves to the chin as against enemies thundering at the gates, who will not (and the thought brings gaiety) get the better of us, since they do not even know where we have so snugly gone to earth, laughing at the wind which is roaring outside, climbing up all the chimneys to every floor of the great house, conducting a search on each landing, trying all the locks: the delight of rolling ourselves in the blankets when we feel its icy breath approaching, sliding a little farther down the bed, gripping the hot-water bottle between our feet, working it up too high, and when we push it down again feeling the place where it has been still hot, pulling up the bedclothes to our faces, rolling ourselves into a ball, turning over, thinking—'How good life is!' too gay even to feel melancholy at the thought of the triviality of all this pleasure.

I want to feel you.” “You feel me every day,” he pulls my hand to his lips and kisses the inside of my palm. “No, I want to feel you my way,” I say uneasily. He stares down at me with mesmerizing eyes. They are so lustrous they even seem to glow in the darkness. He is contemplating my request. He takes my hand from his lips and carefully moves it towards his chest; I can’t explain the fear I have from just that small gesture. The anticipation of what I will find excites me and terrifies me all at once. The last time - the only time - I felt Justice, he literally lit me on fire. As I apprehensively touch his skin, it washes over me. The tender warmth he holds inside, like I’m being wrapped in warm blankets on a cold autumn morning. “Feel what you were looking for?” he asks. “Yes,” I say, as I spread my fingers over him. The sensation is glorious. “Good,” he leans down and kisses me, his lips holding the same warmth as my insides. Without even thinking, I wrap my arms around his neck and jerk him in closer.

2/ KICK YOUR OWN ASS, GENTLY. I’ve been trying to set a few modest goals, both daily and weekly. In the course of a day, it’s good to get some stupid things accomplished, and off your “list.” I guess because it leaves you feeling that you and the “rest of the world” still have something to do with each other! Like today, for example, I can think back on sending a fax to my brother on his birthday, leaving a phone message for Brutus at his “hotel” on his birthday, phoning my Dad on his birthday (yep, all on the same day), then driving to Morin Heights to the ATM machine, to St. Sauveur for grocery shopping, and planning all that so I’d still have enough daylight left to go snowshoeing in the woods. And then I could drink. Not a high-pressure day, and hardly earth-shaking activities, but I laid them out for myself and did them (even though tempted to “not bother” with each of them at one point or another). I gave myself a gentle kick in the ass when necessary, or cursed myself out for a lazy fool, and because of all that, I consider today a satisfactory day. Everything that needed to be done got done. And by “needs” I certainly include taking my little baby soul out for a ride. And drinking. And there are little side benefits from such activities, like when the cashier in the grocery store wished me a genuinely-pleasant “Bonjour,” and I forced myself to look at her and return the greeting. The world still seems unreal to me, but I try not to purposely avoid contact with pleasant strangers. It wouldn’t be polite! Another “little goal” for me right now is spending an hour or two at the desk every morning, writing a letter or a fax to someone like you, or Brutus, or Danny, who I want to reach out to, or conversely, to someone I’ve been out of touch with for a long while, maybe for a year-and-a-half or two years. These are friends that I’ve decided I still value, and that I want as part of my “new life,” whatever it may be. It doesn’t really matter what, but just so you can say that you changed something in the course of your day: a neglected friend is no longer neglected; an errand that ought to be dealt with has been dealt with.

The taxi driver has told me his entire life story for only 97 kroner, but from his story I gather what really happened: he got drunk last night and had a hangover this morning. He was about to call in sick but then remembered all his unpaid bills and went to work anyway. He quit working at sea and went ashore because he couldn’t keep his job. When he was no longer able to control his drinking, he was urged to quit his job as a fireman and now he earns a living driving a taxi. He has never been close to his mum but now that she doesn’t have much time left, he tries to show that he’s a good son. His wife left him. He gives money to his daughter in order to keep in touch with her … He wants to be heard. He wants to exist. He tries to avoid being lonely by talking about himself. If he had bothered to ask me, I would have told him that I just witnessed a child’s first breath, but I don’t give a fuck that he didn’t ask. Today, I resist the temptation to criticise anybody, and decide to show patience instead. ‘Thank you,’ I say with a smile. ‘Same to you. Have a nice day,’ he answers.

Oh, good. I was worried you’d taken ill.” “Why?” Elizabeth asked as she took a sip of the chocolate. It was cold as ice! “Because I couldn’t wake-“ “What time is it?” Elizabeth cried. “Nearly eleven.” “Eleven! But I told you to wake me at eight! How could you let me oversleep this way?” she said, her sleep-drugged mind already groping wildly for a solution. She could dress quickly and catch up with everyone. Or… “I did try,” Berta exclaimed, hurt by the uncharacteristic sharpness in Elizabeth’s tone, “but you didn’t want to wake up.” “I never want to awaken, Berta, you know that!” “But you were worse this morning than normal. You said your head ached.” “I always say things like that. I don’t know what I’m saying when I’m asleep. I’ll say anything to bargain for a few minutes’ more sleep. You’ve known that for years, and you always shake me awake anyway.” “But you said,” Berta persisted, tugging unhappily a her apron, “that since it rained so much last night you were sure the trip to the village wouldn’t take place, so you didn’t have to arise at all.” “Berta, for heaven’s sake!” Elizabeth cried, throwing off the covers and jumping out of bed with more energy than she’d ever shown after such a short period of wakefulness. “I’ve told you I’m dying of diphtheria to make you go away, and that didn’t succeed!” “Well,” Berta shot back, marching over to the bell pull and ringing for a bath to be brought up, “when you told me that, your face wasn’t pale and your head didn’t feel hot to my touch. And you hadn’t dragged yourself into bed as if you could hardly stand when it was half past one in the morning!” Contrite, Elizabeth slumped down in the bed. “It’s not your fault that I sleep like a hibernating bear. And besides, if they didn’t go to the village, it makes no difference at all that I overslept.” She was trying to resign herself to the notion of spending the day in the house with a man who could look at her across a roomful of diners and make her heart leap when Berta said, “They did go to the village. Last night’s storm was more noise and threat than rain.” Closing her eyes for a brief moment, Elizabeth emitted a long sigh. It was already eleven, which meant Ian had already begun his useless vigil at the cottage.

Good morning, I’m Anne Ryan,” she said, producing the driver’s license. The receptionist stood up, nodding. She was wearing latex gloves. And before the woman formerly known as Myfanwy Thomas could say a word, the receptionist wound up and punched her in the face. She flew backward, the pain in her eyes flaring, and shrieked like a train whistle. Through the stars floating in her vision, she could see three men entering the room and shutting the doors behind them. They surrounded her, and one of the men leaned over her with a hypodermic needle in one hand. Filled with a sudden rage, she swung her leg up and kicked him hard between the legs. Squealing, he doubled over, and she lashed out with a fist, catching him hard on the chin. He staggered back onto one of the other men, and she swung herself up, teeth bared, panic rising as she realized that she had no idea how to fight. Still, certain things were obvious. She shoved the man she’d kicked hard, sending him and his friend against the wall. The remaining man and the woman stood back, seeming almost hesitant to touch her. She noticed that the men were also wearing latex gloves. The woman flicked a questioning look to the standing man.

If you’re hoping for a good meal, you’ve come to the wrong place. Miss Cameron has already attempted to sacrifice herself on the altar of domesticity this morning, and we both narrowly escaped death from her efforts. I’m cooking supper,” he finished, “and it may not be much better.” “I’ll try my hand at breakfast,” the vicar volunteered good-naturedly. When Elizabeth was out of earshot, Ian said quietly, “How badly is the woman hurt?” “It’s hard to say, considering that she was almost too angry to be coherent. Or it might have been the laudanum that did it.” “Did what?” The vicar paused a moment to watch a bird hop about in the rustling leaves overhead, then he said, “She was in a rare state. Quite confused. Angry, too. On the one hand, she was afraid you might decide to express your ‘tender regard’ for Lady Cameron, undoubtedly in much the way you were doing it when I arrived.” When his gibe evoked nothing but a quirked eyebrow from his imperturbable nephew, Duncan sighed and continued, “At the same time, she was equally convinced that her young lady might try to shoot you with your own gun, which I distinctly understood her to say the young lady had already tried to do. It is that which I feared when I heard the gunshots that sent me galloping up here.” “We were shooting at targets.” The vicar nodded, but he was studying Ian with an intent frown. “Is something else bothering you?” Ian asked, noting the look. The vicar hesitated, then shook his head slightly, as if trying to dismiss something from his mind. “Miss Throckmorton-Jones had more to say, but I can scarcely credit it.” “No doubt it was the laudanum,” Ian said, dismissing the matter with a shrug. “Perhaps,” he said, his frown returning. “Yet I have not taken laudanum, and I was under the impression you are about to betroth yourself to a young woman named Christina Taylor.” “I am.” His face turned censorious. “Then what excuse can you have for the scene I just witnessed a few minutes ago?” Ian’s voice was clipped. “Insanity.” They walked back to the house, the vicar silent and thoughtful, Ian grim. Duncan’s untimely arrival had not bothered him, but now that his passion had finally cooled he was irritated as hell with his body’s uncontrollable reaction to Elizabeth Cameron. The moment his mouth touched hers it was as if his brain went dead. Even though he knew exactly what she was, in his arms she became an alluring angel.

The rock came loose, but Jake’s satisfied grunt turned into a howl of outraged pain as a set of huge teeth in the next stall clamped into Jake’s ample rear end. “You vicious bag of bones,” he shouted, jumping to his feet and throwing himself half over the rail in an attempt to land a punch on Attila’s body. As if the horse anticipated retribution, he sidled to the edge of his stall and regarded Jake from the corner of his eye with an expression that looked to Jake like complacent satisfaction. “I’ll get you for that,” Jake promised, and he started to shake his fist when he realized how absurd it was to threaten a dumb beast. Rubbing his offended backside, he turned to Mayhem and carefully put his own rump against the outside wall of the barn. He checked the hoof to make certain it was clean, but the moment his fingers touched the place where the rock had been lodged the chestnut jerked in pain. “Bruised you, did it?” Jake said sympathetically. “It’s not surprisin’, considering the size and shape of the rock. But you never gave a sign yesterday that you were hurtin’,” he continued. Raising his voice and infusing it with a wealth of exaggerated admiration, the patted the chestnut’s flank and glanced disdainfully at Attila while he spoke to Mayhem. “That’s because you’re a true aristocrat and a fine, brave animal-not a miserable, sneaky mule who’s not fit to be your stallmate!” If Attila cared one way or another for Jake’s opinion, he was disappointingly careful not to show it, which only made Jake’s mood more stormy when he stomped into the cottage. Ian was sitting at the table, a cup of steaming coffee cradled between his palms. “Good morning,” he said to Jake, studying the older man’s thunderous frown. “Mebbe you think so, but I can’t see it. Course, I’ve spent the night freezin’ out there, bedded down next to a horse that wants to make a meal of me, and who broke his fast with a bit of my arse already this mornin’. And,” he finished irately as he poured coffee from the tin pot into an earthenware mug and cast a quelling look at his amused friend, “your horse is lame!” Flinging himself into the chair beside Ian, he gulped down the scalding coffee without thinking what he was doing; his eyes bulged, and sweat popped out on his forehead. Ian’s grin faded. “He’s what?” “Picked up a rock, and he’s favoring his left foreleg.” Ian’s chair legs scraped against the wooden floor as he shoved his chair back and started to go to the barn. “There’s no need. It’s just a bruise.

By the way," he said, so casually that Lauren was instantly on guard, "a magazine reporter called me this morning. They know who you are and they know we're getting married. When the story breaks, I'm afraid the press will start hounding you." "How did they find out?" Lauren gasped. He shot her a glinting smile. "I told them." Everything was happening so quickly that Lauren felt dazed. "Did you happen to tell them when and where we're getting married?" she chided. "I told them soon." He closed his briefcase and drew her out of the chair in which she had just sat down. "Do you want a big church wedding with a cast of hundreds-or could you settle for me in a little chapel somewhere, with just your family and a few friends? When we come back from our honeymoon we could throw a huge party,and that would satisfy our social obligations to everyone else we know." Lauren quickly considered the burden a big church wedding would place on her father's health and nonexistent finances, and the highly desirable alternative of becoming Nick's wife right away. "You and a chapel," she said. "Good." He grinned. "Because I would go quietly insane waiting to make you mine. I'm not a patient man." "Really?" She straightened the knot in his tie so that she'd have an excuse to touch him. "I never noticed that." "Brat," he said affectionately.

Ourselves,’ a Vast Country not yet Explored.––When we think of our bodies and of the wonderful powers they possess, we say, under our breath, “Great and marvellous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty.” Now, let us consider that still more wonderful Self which we cannot see and touch as we can our bodies, but which thinks and loves and prays to God; which is happy or sad, good or not good. This inner self is, as we have said, like a vast country much of which is not yet explored, or like a great house, built as a maze, in which you cannot find your way about. People usually talk of ‘Ourselves’ as made up of Body, Mind, Heart, and Soul; and we will do the same, because it is a convenient way to describe us. It is more convenient to say, ‘The sun rises at six and sets at nine,’ than to say, ‘As the earth turns round daily before the sun, that part of the earth on which we live first gets within sight of the sun about six o’clock in the morning in March.’ ‘The sun rises and sets’ is a better way of describing this, not only because it is easier to say, but because it is what we all appear to see and to know. In the same way, everybody appears to know about his own heart and soul and mind; though, perhaps, the truth is that there is no division into parts, but that the whole of each of us has many different powers and does many different things at different times.

On the train I had a lot of time to think. I thought how in the thirty years of my life I had seldom gotten on a train in America without being conscious of my color. In the South, there are Jim Crow cars and Negroes must ride separate from the whites, usually in a filthy antiquated coach next to the engine, getting all the smoke and bumps and dirt. In the South, we cannot buy sleeping car tickets. Such comforts are only for white folks. And in the North where segregated travel is not the law, colored people have, nevertheless, many difficulties. In auto buses they must take the seats in the rear, over the wheels. On the boats they must occupy the worst cabins. The ticket agents always say that all other accommodations are sold. On trains, if one sits down by a white person, the white person will sometimes get up, flinging back an insult at the Negro who has dared to take a seat beside him. Thus it is that in America, if you are yellow, brown, or black, you can never travel anywhere without being reminded of your color, and oft-times suffering great inconveniences. I sat in the comfortable sleeping car on my first day out of Moscow and remembered many things about trips I had taken in America. I remembered how, once as a youngster going alone to see my father who was working in Mexico, I went into the dining car of the train to eat. I sat down at a table with a white man. The man looked at me and said, "You're a nigger, ain't you?" and left the table. It was beneath his dignity to eat with a Negro child. At St. Louis I went onto the station platform to buy a glass of milk. The clerk behind the counter said, “We don't serve niggers," and refused to sell me anything. As I grew older I learned to expect this often when traveling. So when I went South to lecture on my poetry at Negro universities, I carried my own food because I knew I could not go into the dining cars. Once from Washington to New Orleans, I lived all the way on the train on cold food. I remembered this miserable trip as I sat eating a hot dinner on the diner of the Moscow-Tashkent express. Traveling South from New York, at Washington, the capital of our country, the official Jim Crow begins. There the conductor comes through the train and, if you are a Negro, touches you on the shoulder and says, "The last coach forward is the car for colored people." Then you must move your baggage and yourself up near the engine, because when the train crosses the Potomac River into Virginia, and the dome of the Capitol disappears, it is illegal any longer for white people and colored people to ride together. (Or to eat together, or sleep together, or in some places even to work together.) Now I am riding South from Moscow and am not Jim-Crowed, and none of the darker people on the train with me are Jim-Crowed, so I make a happy mental note in the back of my mind to write home to the Negro papers: "There is no Jim Crow on the trains of the Soviet Union.

This Compost" Something startles me where I thought I was safest, I withdraw from the still woods I loved, I will not go now on the pastures to walk, I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea, I will not touch my flesh to the earth as to other flesh to renew me. O how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken? How can you be alive you growths of spring? How can you furnish health you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain? Are they not continually putting distemper'd corpses within you? Is not every continent work'd over and over with sour dead? Where have you disposed of their carcasses? Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations? Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat? I do not see any of it upon you to-day, or perhaps I am deceiv'd, I will run a furrow with my plough, I will press my spade through the sod and turn it up underneath, I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat. 2 Behold this compost! behold it well! Perhaps every mite has once form'd part of a sick person—yet behold! The grass of spring covers the prairies, The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden, The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward, The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches, The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves, The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree, The he-birds carol mornings and evenings while the she-birds sit on their nests, The young of poultry break through the hatch'd eggs, The new-born of animals appear, the calf is dropt from the cow, the colt from the mare, Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's dark green leaves, Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk, the lilacs bloom in the dooryards, The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata of sour dead. What chemistry! That the winds are really not infectious, That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea which is so amorous after me, That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues, That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited themselves in it, That all is clean forever and forever, That the cool drink from the well tastes so good, That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy, That the fruits of the apple-orchard and the orange-orchard, that melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me, That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease, Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once a catching disease. Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient, It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions, It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseas'd corpses, It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor, It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops, It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last.

She submitted to walk slowly on, with downcast eyes. He put her hand to his lips, and she quietly drew it away. ‘Will you walk beside me, Mr Wrayburn, and not touch me?’ For, his arm was already stealing round her waist. She stopped again, and gave him an earnest supplicating look. ‘Well, Lizzie, well!’ said he, in an easy way though ill at ease with himself ‘don’t be unhappy, don’t be reproachful.’ ‘I cannot help being unhappy, but I do not mean to be reproachful. Mr Wrayburn, I implore you to go away from this neighbourhood, to-morrow morning.’ ‘Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie!’ he remonstrated. ‘As well be reproachful as wholly unreasonable. I can’t go away.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Faith!’ said Eugene in his airily candid manner. ‘Because you won’t let me. Mind! I don’t mean to be reproachful either. I don’t complain that you design to keep me here. But you do it, you do it.’ ‘Will you walk beside me, and not touch me;’ for, his arm was coming about her again; ‘while I speak to you very seriously, Mr Wrayburn?’ ‘I will do anything within the limits of possibility, for you, Lizzie,’ he answered with pleasant gaiety as he folded his arms. ‘See here! Napoleon Buonaparte at St Helena.’ ‘When you spoke to me as I came from the Mill the night before last,’ said Lizzie, fixing her eyes upon him with the look of supplication which troubled his better nature, ‘you told me that you were much surprised to see me, and that you were on a solitary fishing excursion. Was it true?’ ‘It was not,’ replied Eugene composedly, ‘in the least true. I came here, because I had information that I should find you here.’ ‘Can you imagine why I left London, Mr Wrayburn?’ ‘I am afraid, Lizzie,’ he openly answered, ‘that you left London to get rid of me. It is not flattering to my self-love, but I am afraid you did.’ ‘I did.’ ‘How could you be so cruel?’ ‘O Mr Wrayburn,’ she answered, suddenly breaking into tears, ‘is the cruelty on my side! O Mr Wrayburn, Mr Wrayburn, is there no cruelty in your being here to-night!’ ‘In the name of all that’s good—and that is not conjuring you in my own name, for Heaven knows I am not good’—said Eugene, ‘don’t be distressed!’ ‘What else can I be, when I know the distance and the difference between us? What else can I be, when to tell me why you came here, is to put me to shame!’ said Lizzie, covering her face. He looked at her with a real sentiment of remorseful tenderness and pity. It was not strong enough to impell him to sacrifice himself and spare her, but it was a strong emotion. ‘Lizzie! I never thought before, that there was a woman in the world who could affect me so much by saying so little. But don’t be hard in your construction of me. You don’t know what my state of mind towards you is. You don’t know how you haunt me and bewilder me. You don’t know how the cursed carelessness that is over-officious in helping me at every other turning of my life, won’t help me here. You have struck it dead, I think, and I sometimes almost wish you had struck me dead along with it.

If loneliness or sadness or happiness could be expressed through food, loneliness would be basil. It’s not good for your stomach, dims your eyes, and turns your mind murky. If you pound basil and place a stone over it, scorpions swarm toward it. Happiness is saffron, from the crocus that blooms in the spring. Even if you add just a pinch to a dish, it adds an intense taste and a lingering scent. You can find it anywhere but you can’t get it at any time of the year. It’s good for your heart, and if you drop a little bit in your wine, you instantly become drunk from its heady perfume. The best saffron crumbles at the touch and instantaneously emits its fragrance. Sadness is a knobby cucumber, whose aroma you can detect from far away. It’s tough and hard to digest and makes you fall ill with a high fever. It’s porous, excellent at absorption, and sponges up spices, guaranteeing a lengthy period of preservation. Pickles are the best food you can make from cucumbers. You boil vinegar and pour it over the cucumbers, then season with salt and pepper. You enclose them in a sterilized glass jar, seal it, and store it in a dark and dry place. WON’S KITCHEN. I take off the sign hanging by the first-floor entryway. He designed it by hand and silk-screened it onto a metal plate. Early in the morning on the day of the opening party for the cooking school, he had me hang the sign myself. I was meaning to give it a really special name, he said, grinning, flashing his white teeth, but I thought Jeong Ji-won was the most special name in the world. He called my name again: Hey, Ji-won. He walked around the house calling my name over and over, mischievously — as if he were an Eskimo who believed that the soul became imprinted in the name when it was called — while I fried an egg, cautiously sprinkling grated Emmentaler, salt, pepper, taking care not to pop the yolk. I spread the white sun-dried tablecloth on the coffee table and set it with the fried egg, unsalted butter, blueberry jam, and a baguette I’d toasted in the oven. It was our favorite breakfast: simple, warm, sweet. As was his habit, he spread a thick layer of butter and jam on his baguette and dunked it into his coffee, and I plunked into my cup the teaspoon laced with jam, waiting for the sticky sweetness to melt into the hot, dark coffee. I still remember the sugary jam infusing the last drop of coffee and the moist crumbs of the baguette lingering at the roof of my mouth. And also his words, informing me that he wanted to design a new house that would contain the cooking school, his office, and our bedroom. Instead of replying, I picked up a firm red radish, sparkling with droplets of water, dabbed a little butter on it, dipped it in salt, and stuck it into my mouth. A crunch resonated from my mouth. Hoping the crunch sounded like, Yes, someday, I continued to eat it. Was that the reason I equated a fresh red radish with sprouting green tops, as small as a miniature apple, with the taste of love? But if I cut into it crosswise like an apple, I wouldn't find the constellation of seeds.

Gadgetry will continue to relieve mankind of tedious jobs. Kitchen units will be devised that will prepare ‘automeals,’ heating water and converting it to coffee; toasting bread; frying, poaching or scrambling eggs, grilling bacon, and so on. Breakfasts will be ‘ordered’ the night before to be ready by a specified hour the next morning. Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the person you telephone. The screen can be used not only to see the people you call but also for studying documents and photographs and reading passages from books. Synchronous satellites, hovering in space will make it possible for you to direct-dial any spot on earth, including the weather stations in Antarctica. [M]en will continue to withdraw from nature in order to create an environment that will suit them better. By 2014, electroluminescent panels will be in common use. Ceilings and walls will glow softly, and in a variety of colors that will change at the touch of a push button. Robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence. The appliances of 2014 will have no electric cords, of course, for they will be powered by long- lived batteries running on radioisotopes. “[H]ighways … in the more advanced sections of the world will have passed their peak in 2014; there will be increasing emphasis on transportation that makes the least possible contact with the surface. There will be aircraft, of course, but even ground travel will increasingly take to the air a foot or two off the ground. [V]ehicles with ‘Robot-brains’ … can be set for particular destinations … that will then proceed there without interference by the slow reflexes of a human driver. [W]all screens will have replaced the ordinary set; but transparent cubes will be making their appearance in which three-dimensional viewing will be possible. [T]he world population will be 6,500,000,000 and the population of the United States will be 350,000,000. All earth will be a single choked Manhattan by A.D. 2450 and society will collapse long before that! There will, therefore, be a worldwide propaganda drive in favor of birth control by rational and humane methods and, by 2014, it will undoubtedly have taken serious effect. Ordinary agriculture will keep up with great difficulty and there will be ‘farms’ turning to the more efficient micro-organisms. Processed yeast and algae products will be available in a variety of flavors. The world of A.D. 2014 will have few routine jobs that cannot be done better by some machine than by any human being. Mankind will therefore have become largely a race of machine tenders. Schools will have to be oriented in this direction…. All the high-school students will be taught the fundamentals of computer technology will become proficient in binary arithmetic and will be trained to perfection in the use of the computer languages that will have developed out of those like the contemporary “Fortran". [M]ankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014. [T]he most glorious single word in the vocabulary will have become work! in our a society of enforced leisure.

Amy, listen to me.  Listen to me.  Don't you ever let them tell you you're ugly!  Don't ever let them tell you you're dirty.  You're a beautiful person, inside and out, thoughtful, sensitive and kind.  I don't care what Sylvanus says, or what anyone else thinks.  You'll find yourself a nice man to marry someday, and if your family's trying to convince you otherwise, it's only because they have an unpaid servant in you and they don't want to lose you." He heard what sounded like a gulp, then a sniffle. "Amy?" "I — I'm sorry, Ch-Charles.  No one's ever said anything like that to me before, and . . . and I j-just don't know what to make of it —" "Oh, God, don't cry.  I don't know how to deal with tearful females, truly I don't." "I c-can't help it, you're being so nice to me, saying that I'm beautiful when really, I'm not, and — "You are beautiful, Amy, and don't you ever forget it." "You can't say that, you've never even seen me!" "Come here." "I am here." "Come closer, then, and let me judge the issue for myself." She did. "Now, place my hands on your face." Sniffling, she took his hands within her own.  Or tried to, given that hers were half the size of his and dainty as a bird's foot. And then she raised them to her face, placing one on each hot, tearstained cheek. The minute he felt her flesh beneath his, Charles knew this was a mistake.  A big mistake.  But to stop now would crush her. "Ah, Amy.  How can you think you're ugly?  Your skin is so soft that it feels like roses after a morning rain." "It's too dark.  Bronzy.  Not at all the color of Ophelia's and Mildred's." "And who says skin has to be milk-white to be beautiful?" "Well . . . no one, I guess." He gently pressed his thumbs against her cheeks, noting that they were hot with blush, soft as thistledown, and that the delicate bones beneath were high and prominent.  "And look at these cheekbones!  I know women — aristocratic women, mind you — who'd kill for cheekbones like these.  High cheekbones are a mark of great beauty, you know." "High cheekbones are a mark of Indian blood." "Amy." "Yes?" "Stop it." "I'm sorry." He continued on, now tracing the curve of her brow, and the bridge of her nose.  He had lost his eyesight, but it was amazing what his hands could see. "You have a lovely nose," he said. "It's too strong." "No it isn't.  Close your eyes." She did.  He could feel the fragile veneer of her eyelids, trembling faintly beneath his fingertips, and long, long lashes that brushed those cheekbones he had so admired. "What color are your eyes, Amy?" "Brown." "What color brown?  Brown like conkers?  Brown like nutmeg?  Brown like black?" "Brown like mud." "Can you think of a more flattering word?" "No." His hands moved out over her face, learning its shape, before touching the plaited, pinned-up mass of her hair.  It was straight, he could tell that much.  Shiny like glass, as soft as a fern.  He wished it was down. Good God, man, whatever are you thinking?! "My hair's brown, too," Amy said, her voice now a tremulous, barely audible whisper. "Brown like mud?" he cajoled. "No.  Brown like black.  And when the sun comes out, it's got reddish undertones." "It sounds very pretty." "It's not, really.  It's just hair." "Just hair.  Do you ever wear it down?" "No." "Why not?" "It gets in the way of things." "Don't you think that someday, a man will wish to drag his fingers through all this hair?" "No . . . no respectable man." He shook his head, his heart aching for her.  "Oh, Amy." He

She felt the electric tickle of Finn behind her. He must have come from the hallway. She turned. Standing on the first step, she was almost eye level with him. He’d carried the irresistible smell of the morning in with him, caught in his hair and clothes. “Good morning, beautiful,” he said. Teagan leaned closer. “What are you doing?” Aiden asked. Sniffing Finn. How weird would that sound? She changed the sniff into a kiss on the cheek, but Finn turned just before her lips met his face. She felt a shock as their lips touched, the wild inside her exploding like fireworks, rocketing through her to Finn. He swayed, and she managed to get her arms around him before his knees gave way. “Wa,” he gasped. “Could you steer me toward the couch, girl?” “Oh, my god,” Abby said from behind her. “The couch? Are you going to let them do that in your living room, Mr. Wylltson?” “Do what?” Finn flushed red. “Oh. I just meant . . . I need to sit down. The girl’s that good a kisser.” Thomas and Mr. Wylltson were staring. Aiden’s mouth was hanging open. “What are you doing, Tea?” Abby asked. “You totally lunged at him.” “I did not lunge.” I was just sniffing him. That would sound worse than lunging. “I just . . . caught him.” “Then why don’t you let him go?” Because he wasn’t steady on his feet yet. Finn’s electronics had gone haywire. “Well played.” Thomas winked at Finn and grinned at Teagan. “And well caught.” Finn groped for the banister. “I’m telling you I never meant to kiss her. Not in front of her da, that is—” “Unhand the young man, Teagan, and step away,” Mr. Wylltson said. “You are befuddling him.” “By that”—Finn found the banister and Teagan let go and backed up a stair—“I did not mean that I intended to carry on behind your back. This whole thing isn’t what it looks like”—his eyes lifted to Teagan. “Is it?

Life is pretty short yet magnanimous if we know just how to live right. It isn't that easy, it takes a lot of our soul, sometimes too many broken pieces to finally come together in binding a masterpiece that smiles like a solitary star forever gazing around at the music of an eternal cosmos. The most brutal yet beautiful truth about Life is that It is marked, marked with Time where every moment takes us closer to death, it doesn't have to sound or feel bad or scary because death is the most inevitable truth in this mortal world. While the knowledge of death jolts our mind with the uncertainty of Life, clutches us in the emotion of fear to think of pain or the loss of bonds, when we acknowledge that as a part of our souls' journey and take every moment as our precious gift, a blessing to experience this Life with its beautiful garden of emotions blossoming with wonderful smiles that we can paint on others, then we make our Life magnanimous, then we make even the very face of death as that of an angel coming to take us to a different voyage, soaked in a lot of memories and experiences beautifully binding our soul. I have realised that when we live each day as if it's the last day of our life, we become more loving and gentle to everyone around and especially to our own selves. We forgive and love more openly, we grace and embrace every opportunity we get to be kind, to stay in touch with everything that truly matters. I have realised that when we rise every morning with gratitude knowing that the breath of air still passes through our body, just in the mere understanding that we have one more day to experience Life once again, we stay more compassionate towards everything and everyone around and invest more of our selves into everything and everyone that truly connect and resonate with our soul. I have realised that when we consciously try to be good and kind, no matter however bad or suffocating a situation is we always end up taking everything at its best holding on to the firm grip of goodness, accepting everything as a part of our souls' lesson or just a turn of Time or Fate and that shapes into our strength and roots our core with the truest understanding of Life, the simple act of going on and letting go. Letting go of anything and everything that chains our Soul while going on with a Heart open to Love and a Soul ready to absorb all that falls along the pathway of this adventure called Life. I have realised that when we are kind and do anything good for another person, that gives us the most special happiness, something so pure that even our hearts don't know how deep that joy permeates inside our soul. I have realised that at the end of the day we do good not because of others but because of our own selves, for if tomorrow death comes to grace me I hope to smile and say I have Lived, loved unconditionally and embraced forgiveness, kindness and goodness and all the other colours of Love with every breath I caught, I have lived a Life magnanimous. So each time someone's unkind towards you, hold back and smile, and try to give your warmth to that person. Because Kindness is not a declaration of who deserves it, it's a statement of who you are. So each time some pieces of your heart lay scattered, hold them up and embrace everyone of them with Love. Because Love is not a magic potion that is spilled from a hollow space, it's a breath of eternity that flows through the tunnel of your soul. So each time Life puts up a question of your Happiness, answer back with a Smile of Peace. Because Happiness is not what you look for in others, it's what you create in every passing moment, with the power of Life, that is pretty short when we see how counted it stands in days but actually turns out absolutely incredibly magnanimous when loved and lived in moments.

After I returned from that morning, our telephone rang incessantly with requests for interviews and photos. By midafternoon I was exhausted. At four o’clock I was reaching to disconnect the telephone when I answered one last call. Thank heavens I did! I heard, “Mrs. Robertson? This is Ian Hamilton from the Lord Chamberlain’s office.” I held my breath and prayed, “Please let this be the palace.” He continued: “We would like to invite you, your husband, and your son to attend the funeral of the Princess of Wales on Saturday in London.” I was speechless. I could feel my heart thumping. I never thought to ask him how our name had been selected. Later, in London, I learned that the Spencer family had given instructions to review Diana’s personal records, including her Christmas-card list, with the help of her closest aides. “Yes, of course, we absolutely want to attend,” I answered without hesitating. “Thank you so much. I can’t tell you how much this means to me. I’ll have to make travel plans on very short notice, so may I call you back to confirm? How late can I reach you?” He replied, “Anytime. We’re working twenty-four hours a day. But I need your reply within an hour.” I jotted down his telephone and fax numbers and set about making travel arrangements. My husband had just walked in the door, so we were able to discuss who would travel and how. Both children’s passports had expired and could not be renewed in less than a day from the suburbs where we live. Caroline, our daughter, was starting at a new school the very next day. Pat felt he needed to stay home with her. “Besides,” he said, “I cried at the wedding. I’d never make it through the funeral.” Though I dreaded the prospect of coping with the heartbreak of the funeral on my own, I felt I had to be there at the end, no matter what. We had been with Diana at the very beginning of the courtship. We had attended her wedding with tremendous joy. We had kept in touch ever since. I had to say good-bye to her in person. I said to Pat, “We were there for the ‘wedding of the century.’ This will be ‘the funeral of the century.’ Yes, I have to go.” Then we just looked at each other. We couldn’t find any words to express the sorrow we both felt.

It’s annoying not being able to see you,” I said in place of a good morning.  I flipped to my stomach and propped myself up with my elbows to get a better look at him. “If you don’t talk, and I can’t see your face, how am I ever supposed to figure out what you’re thinking?” I reached out to move some hair out of the way, but he stopped me in a blurred move, catching my wrist gently in his hand.  He didn’t let me any closer.  First, he ditched me on dinner night then he wouldn’t let me touch him?  The thought stopped me.  I really hadn’t touched him before either, at least not as a man.  Maybe he was like me, a little standoffish.  I could understand that. “Seriously, Clay, what kind of bribe is it going to take for you to get rid of some of that hair?” He flashed his elongated canines at me again in explanation. “Can’t we at least trim it back some?”  Okay maybe a lot, but I knew to start with baby steps. He tugged my hand to his chest, laying it flat.  So much for my theory about not wanting to be touched.  I patiently allowed it because with him, everything was guessing or pantomime.  His chest warmed my palm. Using his free hand, he tapped my mouth.  I frowned, perplexed. “What, you want me to be mute like you?”  Was he hinting I talked too much? He shook his head and reached out again.  This time, he cupped my jaw and lightly ran his thumb over my bottom lip.  The gentle touch caused the pull in my stomach to intensify.  Though I couldn’t see his eyes, I read his intent. “Whoa!”  I scrambled out of the bed as if it had caught fire. He stayed where I left him and turned his head to study me as I stood trembling beside the bed.  I nervously rubbed a sweaty palm, the one that had moments before rested on his chest, against my leg.  His whiskers twitched down.  I couldn’t recall him frowning at me before. I almost asked where that idea suddenly came from, but guessed it was long overdue.  According to the Elders, when an unMated male finds his female, he begins a courtship of sorts.  The end goal is to Claim his Mate. But Clay hadn’t courted me.  He just lived here in his fur.  And sometimes cooked for me.  And sometimes helped me with chores...and when he wasn’t around, I felt disappointed and missed him.  My fearful expression slackened to one of stunned amazement.  He had been courting me these last few months.  Clever dog. Not

Leo was at her side in an instant, crouching on the floor as he sorted through the hissing tangle of limbs and skirts. “Are you hurt? I feel certain there’s a woman in here somewhere. … Ah, there you are. Easy, now. Let me—” “Don’t touch me,” she snapped, batting at him with her fists. “I’m not touching you. That is, I’m only touching you with the—ow, damn it—with the intention of helping.” Her hat, a little scrap of wool felt with cheap corded trim, had fallen over her face. Leo managed to push it back to the top of her head, narrowly missing a sharp blow to his jaw. “Christ. Would you stop flailing for a moment?” Struggling to a sitting position, she glared at him. Leo crawled to retrieve the spectacles and returned to hand them to her. She snatched them from him without a word of thanks. She was a lean, anxious-looking woman. A young woman with narrowed eyes, from which bad temper flashed out. Her light brown hair was pulled back with a gallows-rope tightness that made Leo wince just to see it. One would have hoped for some compensating feature—a soft pair of lips, perhaps, or a pretty bosom. But no, there was only a stern mouth, a flat chest, and gaunt cheeks. If Leo were compelled to spend any time with her—which, thankfully, he wasn’t—he would have started by feeding her. “If you want to help,” she said coldly, hooking the spectacles around her ears, “retrieve that blasted ferret for me. Perhaps I’ve tired him enough that you may be able to run him to ground.” Still crouching on the floor, Leo glanced at the ferret, which had paused ten yards away and was watching them both with bright, beady eyes. “What is his name?” “Dodger.” Leo gave a low whistle and a few clicks of his tongue. “Come here, Dodger. You’ve caused enough trouble for the morning. Though I can’t fault your taste in … ladies’ garters? Is that what you’re holding?” The woman watched, stupefied, as the ferret’s long, slender body wriggled toward Leo. Chattering busily, Dodger crawled onto Leo’s thigh. “Good fellow,” Leo said, stroking the sleek fur. “How did you do that?” the woman asked in annoyance. “I have a way with animals. They tend to acknowledge me as one of their own.” Leo gently pried a frilly bit of lace and ribbon from the long front teeth. It was definitely a garter, deliciously feminine and impractical. He gave the woman a mocking smile as he handed it to her. “No doubt this is yours.

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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.

Rose barely poured herself a cup of hot, mouth-watering chocolate, when she saw Grey and Archer walking across the lawn. Archer was impeccable as always, but Grey was a mess. His clothes were the same he’d worn the night before, and obviously slept in. His shirt, open at the throat, revealed a glimpse of tanned flesh that made her heart twitch and her gingers itch to touch him. His hair was mussed, and stubble covered his cheeks and jaw, except where prohibited by his scar. In short, he looked absolutely beautiful-a fallen angel. The only thing that made him remotely human was that scar, and she could easily tell herself he got that from battling the archangel Gabriel before being thrown out of heaven. She squinted as she realize Grey held something against his chest-something that moved. Was that a puppy? She jumped to her feet, and skipped down the few steps that took her down to the lawn. Lifting the skirts of her yellow morning gown, she hurried to meet them. “Good morning!” she cried. “What have you there?” Archer smiled in greeting, but Rose barely noticed. Her gaze was riveted on the man looking at her with an expression so hopeful it neigh on broke her heart. “I brought you something,” he said, his voice low and strangely rough. “A gift.” And then he held out his arms and offered her the sweetest face she’d ever seen. “Oh!” What an idiot she must seem, her eyes welling with tears over a dog, but she didn’t care. She let the tears come and slip down her cheeks as she took the warm, silky animal into her own arms, burying her face against its fur. “Grey, thank you!” “He’s too young to be away from his mother yet, but he’s yours if you want hm.” “Of course I want him! He’s beautiful.” He ran a hand through the thick tangle of his hair. “I didn’t know that you’d never had a dog before.” Rose cast a glance at Archer, who shrugged. “Telling my secrets are you, Lord Archer?” What else had he revealed? Grey’s brother shot her a sincere glance. “Only that one, Lady Rose. I did not think you would mind.” “And I don’t.” Turning her attention back to the squirming puppy in her arms, Rose was rewarded with a lick to the chin. “He’ll need to go back to the stables in a few minutes,” Grey told her. “But you can see him whenever you like.” With her free hand, Rose reached out and took one of Grey’s. His fingers were so big and strong next to hers. She squeezed and then let go, letting him know with a touch just how much his gift meant to her. “I love him. Thank you so very much.” “What are you going to name him?” he asked. Rose tore her gaze away from the pleasure in his, lest she do something stupid like kiss him in front of his brother. Instead, she cast a small, secretive smile at Archer. “Heathcliff,” she replied. “His name is Heathcliff.

Gray froze as Miss Turner emerged from the hold. For weeks, she’d plagued him-by day, he suffered glimpses of her beauty; by night, he was haunted by memories of her touch. And just when he thought he’d finally wrangled his desire into submission, today she’d ruined everything. She’d gone and changed her dress. Gone was that serge shroud, that forbidding thundercloud of a garment that had loomed in his peripheral vision for weeks. Today, she wore a cap-sleeved frock of sprigged muslin. She stepped onto the deck, smiling face tilted to the wind. A flower opening to greet the sun. She bobbed on her toes, as though resisting the urge to make a girlish twirl. The pale, sheer fabric of her dress billowed and swelled in the breeze, pulling the undulating contour of calf, thigh, hip into relief. Gray thought she just might be the loveliest creature he’d ever seen. Therefore, he knew he ought to look away. He did, for a moment. He made an honest attempt to scan the horizon for clouds. He checked the hour on his pocket watch, wound the small knob one, two, three, four times. He wiped a bit of salt spray from its glass face. He thought of England. And France, and Cuba, and Spain. He remembered his brother, his sister, and his singularly ugly Aunt Rosamond, on whom he hadn’t clapped eyes in decades. And all this Herculean effort resulting in nothing but a fine sheen of sweat on his brow and precisely thirty seconds’ delay in the inevitable. He looked at her again. Desire swept through his body with starling intensity. And beneath that hot surge of lust, a deeper emotion swelled. It wasn’t something Gray wished to examine. He preferred to let it sink back into the murky depths of his being. An unnamed creature of the deep, let for a more intrepid adventurer to catalog. Instead, he examined Miss Turner’s new frock. The fabric was of fine quality, the sprig pattern evenly stamped, without variations in shape or hue. The dressmaker had taken great pains to match the pattern at the seams. The sleeves of the frock fit perfectly square with her shoulders, in a moment of calm, the skirt’s single flounce lapped the laces of her boots. Unlike that gray serge abomination, this dress was expensive, and it had been fashioned for her alone. But it no longer fit. As she turned, Gray noted how the neckline gaped slightly, and the column of her skirt that ought to have skimmed the swell of her hip instead caught on nothing but air. He frowned. And in that instant, she turned to face him. Their gazes caught and held. Her own smile faded to a quizzical expression. And because Gray didn’t know how to answer the unspoken question in her eyes, and because he hated the fact that he’d banished the giddy delight from her face, he gave her a curt nod and a churlish, “Good morning.” And then he walked away.

One morning, a farmer knocked loudly on the door of a monastery. When Brother Porter opened the door, the farmer held out to him a magnificent bunch of grapes. “Dear Brother Porter, these are the finest grapes from my vineyard. Please accept them as a gift from me.” “Why, thank you! I’ll take them straight to the Abbot, who will be thrilled with such a gift.” “No, no. I brought them for you.” “For me? But I don’t deserve such a beautiful gift from nature.” “Whenever I knocked on the door, you opened it. When the harvest had been ruined by drought, you gave me a piece of bread and a glass of wine every day. I want this bunch of grapes to bring you a little of the sun’s love, the rain’s beauty and God’s miraculous power.” Brother Porter put the grapes down where he could see them and spent the whole morning admiring them: they really were lovely. Because of this, he decided to give the present to the Abbot, whose words of wisdom had always been such a boon to him. The Abbot was very pleased with the grapes, but then he remembered that one of the other monks was ill and thought: “I’ll give him the grapes. Who knows, they might bring a little joy into his life.” But the grapes did not remain for very long in the room of the ailing monk, for he in turn thought: “Brother Cook has taken such good care of me, giving me only the very best food to eat. I’m sure these grapes will bring him great happiness.” And when Brother Cook brought him his lunch, the monk gave him the grapes. “These are for you. You are in close touch with the gifts Nature gives us and will know what to do with this, God’s produce.” Brother Cook was amazed at the beauty of the grapes and drew his assistant’s attention to their perfection. They were so perfect that no one could possibly appreciate them more than Brother Sacristan, who had charge of the Holy Sacrament, and whom many in the monastery considered to be a truly saintly man. Brother Sacristan, in turn, gave the grapes to the youngest of the novices in order to help him understand that God’s work is to be found in the smallest details of the Creation. When the novice received them, his heart was filled with the Glory of God, because he had never before seen such a beautiful bunch of grapes. At the same time, he remembered the day he had arrived at the monastery and the person who had opened the door to him; that gesture of opening the door had allowed him to be there now in that community of people who knew the value of miracles. Shortly before dark, he took the bunch of grapes to Brother Porter. “Eat and enjoy. You spend most of your time here all alone, and these grapes will do you good.” Brother Porter understood then that the gift really was intended for him; he savoured every grape and went to sleep a happy man. In this way, the circle was closed; the circle of happiness and joy which always wraps around those who are in contact with the energy of love.

She started to head out, but she passed her room. It was the same as she'd left it: a pile of cushions by her bed for Little Brother to sleep on, a stack of poetry and famous literature on her desk that she was supposed to study to become a "model bride," and the lavender shawl and silk robes she'd worn the day before she left home. The jade comb Mulan had left in exchange for the conscription notice caught her eye; it now rested in front of her mirror. Mulan's gaze lingered on the comb, on its green teeth and the pearl-colored flower nestled on its shoulder. She wanted to hold it, to put it in her hair and show her family- to show everyone- she was worthy. After all, her surname, Fa, meant flower. She needed to show them that she had bloomed to be worthy of her family name. But no one was here, and she didn't want to face her reflection. Who knew what it would show, especially in Diyu? She isn't a boy, her mother had told her father once. She shouldn't be riding horses and letting her hair loose. The neighbors will talk. She won't find a good husband- Let her, Fa Zhou had consoled his wife. When she leaves this household as a bride, she'll no longer be able to do these things. Mulan hadn't understood what he meant then. She hadn't understood the significance of what it meant for her to be the only girl in the village who skipped learning ribbon dances to ride Khan through the village rice fields, who chased after chickens and helped herd the cows instead of learning the zither or practicing her painting, who was allowed to have opinions- at all. She'd taken the freedom of her childhood for granted. When she turned fourteen, everything changed. I know this will be a hard change to make, Fa Li had told her, but it's for your own good. Men want a girl who is quiet and demure, polite and poised- not someone who speaks out of turn and runs wild about the garden. A girl who can't make a good match won't bring honor to the family. And worse yet, she'll have nothing: not respect, or money of her own, or a home. She'd touched Mulan's cheek with a resigned sigh. I don't want that fate for you, Mulan. Every morning for a year, her mother tied a rod of bamboo to Mulan's spine to remind her to stand straight, stuffed her mouth with persimmon seeds to remind her to speak softly, and helped Mulan practice wearing heeled shoes by tying ribbons to her feet and guiding her along the garden. Oh, how she'd wanted to please her mother, and especially her father. She hadn't wanted to let them down. But maybe she hadn't tried enough. For despite Fa Li's careful preparation, she had failed the Matchmaker's exam. The look of hopefulness on her father's face that day- the thought that she'd disappointed him still haunted her. Then fate had taken its turn, and Mulan had thrown everything away to become a soldier. To learn how to punch and kick and hold a sword and shield, to shoot arrows and run and yell. To save her country, and bring honor home to her family. How much she had wanted them to be proud of her.

He removed his hand from his worn, pleasantly snug jeans…and it held something small. Holy Lord, I said to myself. What in the name of kingdom come is going on here? His face wore a sweet, sweet smile. I stood there completely frozen. “Um…what?” I asked. I could formulate no words but these. He didn’t respond immediately. Instead he took my left hand in his, opened up my fingers, and placed a diamond ring onto my palm, which was, by now, beginning to sweat. “I said,” he closed my hand tightly around the ring. “I want you to marry me.” He paused for a moment. “If you need time to think about it, I’ll understand.” His hands were still wrapped around my knuckles. He touched his forehead to mine, and the ligaments of my knees turned to spaghetti. Marry you? My mind raced a mile a minute. Ten miles a second. I had three million thoughts all at once, and my heart thumped wildly in my chest. Marry you? But then I’d have to cut my hair short. Married women have short hair, and they get it fixed at the beauty shop. Marry you? But then I’d have to make casseroles. Marry you? But then I’d have to wear yellow rubber gloves to do the dishes. Marry you? As in, move out to the country and actually live with you? In your house? In the country? But I…I…I don’t live in the country. I don’t know how. I can’t ride a horse. I’m scared of spiders. I forced myself to speak again. “Um…what?” I repeated, a touch of frantic urgency to my voice. “You heard me,” Marlboro Man said, still smiling. He knew this would catch me by surprise. Just then my brother Mike laid on the horn again. He leaned out of the window and yelled at the top of his lungs, “C’mon! I am gonna b-b-be late for lunch!” Mike didn’t like being late. Marlboro Man laughed. “Be right there, Mike!” I would have laughed, too, at the hilarious scene playing out before my eyes. A ring. A proposal. My developmentally disabled and highly impatient brother Mike, waiting for Marlboro Man to drive him to the mall. The horn of the diesel pickup. Normally, I would have laughed. But this time I was way, way too stunned. “I’d better go,” Marlboro Man said, leaning forward and kissing my cheek. I still grasped the diamond ring in my warm, sweaty hand. “I don’t want Mike to burst a blood vessel.” He laughed out loud, clearly enjoying it all. I tried to speak but couldn’t. I’d been rendered totally mute. Nothing could have prepared me for those ten minutes of my life. The last thing I remember, I’d awakened at eleven. Moments later, I was hiding in my bathroom, trying, in all my early-morning ugliness, to avoid being seen by Marlboro Man, who’d dropped by unexpectedly. Now I was standing on the front porch, a diamond ring in my hand. It was all completely surreal. Marlboro Man turned to leave. “You can give me your answer later,” he said, grinning, his Wranglers waving good-bye to me in the bright noonday sun. But then it all came flashing across my line of sight. The boots in the bar, the icy blue-green eyes, the starched shirt, the Wranglers…the first date, the long talks, my breakdown in his kitchen, the movies, the nights on his porch, the kisses, the long drives, the hugs…the all-encompassing, mind-numbing passion I felt. It played frame by frame in my mind in a steady stream. “Hey,” I said, walking toward him and effortlessly sliding the ring on my finger. I wrapped my arms around his neck as his arms, instinctively, wrapped around my waist and raised me off the ground in our all-too-familiar pose. “Yep,” I said effortlessly. He smiled and hugged me tightly. Mike, once again, laid on the horn, oblivious to what had just happened. Marlboro Man said nothing more. He simply kissed me, smiled, then drove my brother to the mall.

The first time Christina and Lachlan Meet ...Christina wasn't about to stop fighting—not until she took her last breath. Boring down with her heels, she thrashed. "Get off me, ye brute." She would hold her son in her arms this day if it was the last thing she did. And by the shift of the crushing weight on her chest, she only had moments before her life's breath completely whooshed from her lungs. The very thought of dying whilst her son was still held captive infused her with strength. With a jab, she slammed the heel of her hand across the man's chin. He flew from her body like a sack of grain. Praises be, had the Lord granted her with superhuman strength? Blinking, Christina sat up. No, no. Her strike hadn't rescued her from the pillager. A champion had. A behemoth of a man pummeled the pikeman's face with his fists. "Never. Ever." His fists moved so fast they blurred. "Harm. A. Woman!" Bloodied and battered, the varlet dropped to the dirt. A swordsman attacked her savior from behind. "Watch out," she cried, but before the words left her lips the warrior spun to his feet. Flinging his arm backward, he grabbed his assailant's wrist, stopped the sword midair and flipped the cur onto his back. Onward, he fought a rush of English attackers with his bare hands, without armor. Not even William Wallace himself had been so talented. This warrior moved like a cat, anticipating his opponent's moves before they happened. Five enemy soldiers lay on their backs. "Quickly," the man shouted, running toward her, his feet bare. No sooner had she rolled to her knees than his powerful arms clamped around her. The wind whipped beneath her feet. He planted her bum in the saddle. "Behind!" Christina screamed, every muscle in her body clenching taut. Throwing back an elbow, the man smacked an enemy soldier in the face resulting in a sickening crack. She picked up her reins and dug in her heels. "Whoa!" The big man latched onto the skirt of her saddle and hopped behind her, making her pony's rear end dip. But the frightened galloway didn't need coaxing. He galloped away from the fight like a deer running from a fox. Christina peered around her shoulder at the mass of fighting men behind them. "My son!" "Do you see him?" the man asked in the strangest accent she'd ever heard. She tried to turn back, but the man's steely chest stopped her. "They took him." "Who?" "The English, of course." The more they talked, the further from the border the galloway took them. "Huh?" the man mumbled behind her like he'd been struck in the head by a hammer. Everyone for miles knew the Scots and the English were to exchange a prisoner that day. The champion's big palm slipped around her waist and held on—it didn't hurt like he was digging in his fingers, but he pressed firm against her. The sensation of such a powerful hand on her body was unnerving. It had been eons since any man had touched her, at least gently. The truth? Aside from the brutish attack moments ago, Christina's life had been nothing but chaste. White foam leached from the pony's neck and he took in thunderous snorts. He wouldn't be able to keep this pace much longer. Christina steered him through a copse of trees and up the crag where just that morning she'd stood with King Robert and Sir Boyd before they'd led the Scottish battalion into the valley. There, she could gain a good vantage point and try to determine where the backstabbing English were heading with Andrew this time. At the crest of the outcropping, she pulled the horse to a halt. "The pony cannot keep going at this pace." The man's eyebrows slanted inward and he gave her a quizzical stare. Good Lord, his tempest-blue eyes pierced straight through her soul. "Are you speaking English?

Father will bury us with both hands. He boasts of me to his so-called friends, telling them I’m the next queen of this kingdom. I don’t think he’s ever paid so much attention to me before, and even now, it is minuscule, not for my own benefit. He pretends to love me now because of another, because of Tibe. Only when someone else sees worth in me does he condescend to do the same. Because of her father, she dreamed of a Queenstrial she did not win, of being cast aside and returned to the old estate. Once there, she was made to sleep in the family tomb, beside the still, bare body of her uncle. When the corpse twitched, hands reaching for her throat, she would wake, drenched in sweat, unable to sleep for the rest of the night. Julian and Sara think me weak, fragile, a porcelain doll who will shatter if touched, she wrote. Worst of all, I’m beginning to believe them. Am I really so frail? So useless? Surely I can be of some help somehow, if Julian would only ask? Are Jessamine’s lessons the best I can do? What am I becoming in this place? I doubt I even remember how to replace a lightbulb. I am not someone I recognize. Is this what growing up means? Because of Julian, she dreamed of being in a beautiful room. But every door was locked, every window shut, with nothing and no one to keep her company. Not even books. Nothing to upset her. And always, the room would become a birdcage with gilded bars. It would shrink and shrink until it cut her skin, waking her up. I am not the monster the gossips think me to be. I’ve done nothing, manipulated no one. I haven’t even attempted to use my ability in months, since Julian has no more time to teach me. But they don’t believe that. I see how they look at me, even the whispers of House Merandus. Even Elara. I have not heard her in my head since the banquet, when her sneers drove me to Tibe. Perhaps that taught her better than to meddle. Or maybe she is afraid of looking into my eyes and hearing my voice, as if I’m some kind of match for her razored whispers. I am not, of course. I am hopelessly undefended against people like her. Perhaps I should thank whoever started the rumor. It keeps predators like her from making me prey. Because of Elara, she dreamed of ice-blue eyes following her every move, watching as she donned a crown. People bowed under her gaze and sneered when she turned away, plotting against their newly made queen. They feared her and hated her in equal measure, each one a wolf waiting for her to be revealed as a lamb. She sang in the dream, a wordless song that did nothing but double their bloodlust. Sometimes they killed her, sometimes they ignored her, sometimes they put her in a cell. All three wrenched her from sleep. Today Tibe said he loves me, that he wants to marry me. I do not believe him. Why would he want such a thing? I am no one of consequence. No great beauty or intellect, no strength or power to aid his reign. I bring nothing to him but worry and weight. He needs someone strong at his side, a person who laughs at the gossips and overcomes her own doubts. Tibe is as weak as I am, a lonely boy without a path of his own. I will only make things worse. I will only bring him pain. How can I do that? Because of Tibe, she dreamed of leaving court for good. Like Julian wanted to do, to keep Sara from staying behind. The locations varied with the changing nights. She ran to Delphie or Harbor Bay or Piedmont or even the Lakelands, each one painted in shades of black and gray. Shadow cities to swallow her up and hide her from the prince and the crown he offered. But they frightened her too. And they were always empty, even of ghosts. In these dreams, she ended up alone. From these dreams, she woke quietly, in the morning, with dried tears and an aching heart.

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— [...]

I don't want anyone else but sometimes, surprisingly, there's someone, not the prettiest or the most available, but you know that in another life it would be her. Or him, don't you find? A small quickening. The room responds slightly to being entered. Like a raised blind. Nothing intended, and a long way from doing anything, but you catch the glint of being someone else's possibility, and it's a sort of politeness to show you haven't missed it, so you push it a little, well within safety, but there's that sense of a promise almost being made in the touching and kissing without which no one can seem to say good morning in this poney business and one more push would do it. -The Real Thing (London 1982), p.73 Today, I bought a copy of the play at the co-op, I thought I should send it to you- out of a sort of politeness.

Sam had a child’s faith in the healing power of the morning, she thought later, as she lay sleepless at his side; he believed that a good night’s sleep could iron out all the accumulated wrinkles of the day. She resented his ability to fall asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow while she tossed restlessly in bed; his even breathing was an affront to her wakefulness.

Thunderbolts," Beatrix exclaimed, entering the library where Leo had been waiting, "I can't go with you to the ruins after all. I've just checked on Lucky, and she's about to have her babies. I can't leave her at such a time." Leo smiled quizzically, replacing a book on a shelf. "Who's Lucky?" "Oh, I forgot you hadn't met her. She's a three-legged cat who used to belong to the cheesemaker in the village. The poor thing got her paw caught in a rat trap, and it had to be amputated. And now that she's no longer a good mouser, the cheesemaker gave her to me. He never even named her, can you imagine?" "Given what happened to her, the name 'Lucky' is something of a misnomer, isn't it?" "I thought it might improve her fortunes." "I'm sure it will," Leo said, amused. Beatrix's passion for helping vulnerable creatures had always worried and touched the Hathaways in equal measure. They all recognized that Beatrix was the most unconventional person in the family. Beatrix was always sought after at London social events. She was a pretty girl, if not classically beautiful, with her blue eyes, dark hair, and tall, slender figure. Gentlemen were attracted by her freshness and charm, unaware that she showed the same patient interest to hedgehogs, field mice, and misbehaving spaniels. And when it came time for active courtship, men reluctantly left Beatrix's engaging company and turned to more conventional misses. With each successive season, her chances at marriage diminished. Beatrix didn't seem to care. At the age of nineteen- nearly twenty- she had yet to fall in love. It was universally agreed among the Hathaways that few men would be able to understand or handle her. She was a force of nature, unhampered by conventional rules.

Just a moon ago, at dawn, I was drunk. Very drunk. I wasn’t thinking of you. You were the last thing on my mind. I was trying to get up from where I lay on the riverbank without falling in. I couldn’t tell the water from the sky. I was seeing two skies and two rivers and knew that if I took a wrong step I would probably drown, and I was deciding whether or not that would be a bad thing. The next thing I knew I was in the center of the river on that flat rock you used to sit on, and I looked up into the sky, and suddenly my vision cleared. I knew that you wanted me back. I knew, at that moment, we were both seeing into your heart.” She didn’t tell him that was probably the morning the baby came, but he saw her struggle and her resignation and her surprise. There’s no real reason for this, she thought. There’s no good reason. I can’t believe such nonsense, but it happened. I don’t know my own mind even now when he’s standing right in front of me, so dear, so beautiful, and much too good. Much too good. Why can’t I have his faith? Rising Hawk watched her face, and he began to believe that if he could just touch her, kiss her the way he had on the trail, she would give in. But then she said, “Rising Hawk. Would you do something for me?” Her voice suggested some new torment. His vulnerable expression fled. He wasn’t going to be made to look like a fool. Not even by Livy, no matter how dear she was to him. He thought about the winter. She made him laugh. Most of the time, she made him happy. They all believed she still had him bewitched. Maybe she did. Against his better judgment and his gut feeling, he felt himself nod yes. She took a deep breath. “Turn around and walk away.” “What?” “Turn around and walk away.” She had done all the thinking she could. By itself it held no answers. This was her last chance. “That’s what you want?” “Yes.” His next words had to fight their way out. His teeth were set like a bear trap. “I don’t know why I love you. It never makes any sense to me. Nothing about you does.” He turned. Livy watched him walk away. His familiar stride, the way he held his head, and the slight limp helped her remember the trail, their strange journey, and the gunshot. It’s not fair, she told herself as the pain of seeing him walk away one last time took hold of her. “It’s not enough,” she said aloud in an angry sob that rose in her throat and nearly choked her next words. “But I can’t help it. I can’t, and I don’t care anymore. I don’t care. Rising Hawk, wait!” she called, and broke into a run. He slowed at the sound of her voice and looked over his shoulder. The old smile returned to his face, gentle, mocking, assured. He didn’t wait for her to reach him, but turned to meet her halfway.

We catch the train that makes stops in every village, sitting as close to each other as possible, freely kissing whenever we feel like it. I’m torn between wishing we hadn’t waited so long to get to this point and almost wishing it never had happened at all. Now I really know what I’m going to be missing. The motion of the train conflicts with all the crap in my head and I panic. I lay my head against Darren’s chest and wrap my arms around his middle. He puts both of his arms around me, hugging me tight. I can feel him sigh. Is he thinking through everything like I am? “We’ll figure it out,” he says in my ear before he kisses the top of my head. “I promise.” I squeeze him tighter and memorize the rhythm of his heartbeat. We decide to meet at the trattoria for breakfast first thing tomorrow and spend the whole morning together before he has to leave. I already can’t wait to kiss him again, but I don’t look forward to figuring out the logistics of a long-distance relationship, if that’s what he even wants. If it’s what I want. Our lips touch until the last possible moment when the doors of the train threaten to close at his stop in Manarola. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says, a smile stretching ear to ear. “Tomorrow,” I reply, beaming back at him. “Good night.” “Good night, Pippa.” He hops down onto the platform and the doors slap together. I look at him through the grimy window, reminded of the time I saw him across the metro station in Rome, when I didn’t know if I’d ever see him again. Now I know I will for sure. And I also know there will be kissing.

Well, I just wanted to say hi.” Darren blows out his candle and tosses it behind us into the box with the rest of them. “I should head back and finish getting everything together for tomorrow. Are you all ready to go?” “Nearly,” I lie. He grins. “Our first train leaves here around 7:30 in the morning, so I’ll meet you at the mouth of the tunnel,” he says, pointing toward the bottom of the hill, “around ten after. Sound good?” I nod. “Guess I’ll see you in the morning then.” We shift forward slightly, unsure if we’re supposed to hug or go our separate ways. Darren opens his arms and pulls me against him, patting my back several times. I do the same, his sweat-dampened shirt warm to the touch. “A domani,” he says as his cheek brushes across my ear. I watch him start down the street, and wave when he’s about twenty steps away. “Don’t forget your camera!” he calls back to me. I wave again and smile. “And the battery charger!” he calls, feet moving him backward down the hill. Laughter escapes my mouth as I continue to wave good-bye. “And memory cards!” I lose sight of him in the darkness, but the smile he brought to my face stays put.

NICK WOKE UP the next morning not immediately recognizing his surroundings. An occupational hazard. When he felt the silk comforter brush against his bare chest in a caress, he remembered. Jordan. He wondered how angry she’d still be that morning. If he were an introspective person, one of those in-touch-with-hidden-emotions types—aka a woman—he would probably take note of the fact that it was much harder to blow off her dislike of him than it had been merely six days ago. And, if he were an introspective person, he might also ask himself what he’d been doing by calling in that favor with his boss last night. Thank goodness, then, that he wasn’t such a person. Because if he were, he would also have to tell himself to shut up and stop asking so many damn questions. He had an assignment to focus on.

LULLABALOO As I was walking in The park one day I chanced to run into An angelorium. Good morning, he said I answered back, good day. He was speaking Spanish But I used French. Dites moi, Sir Angel Comment va monsieur. He stretched out his hand I grabbed his foot, You should get a good look At a real live angel! As silly as a swan As cold as a crowbar As fat as a duck As ugly as you. I got a little scared But I stuck it out. I tried to touch his feathers His feathers felt as Hard as the hard Shell of a fish, Just think if it was Lucifer! I made him mad He took a swipe at me With his golden sword But I was quick and ducked. That's the looniest angel I ever hope to see. I laughed myself to pieces I said, goodbye, kind sir Be on your way. Have a nice day Get run over by a car, Get killed by a train. So that's the story of the angel. The End.

He grabs my leg and kisses up to my thigh. It’s like lightning is striking all over my body and the more I try to control it, the more electric the feeling. It had been a long time since I let anyone touch me. I couldn’t believe it was him. I wasn’t sure if I even still knew how to do this with someone.

Literature has sometimes flourished under despotic regimes, but, as has often been pointed out, the despotisms of the past were not totalitarian. Their repressive apparatus was always inefficient, their ruling classes were usually either corrupt or apathetic or half-liberal in outlook, and the prevailing religious doctrines usually worked against perfectionism and the notion of human infallibility. Even so it is broadly true that prose literature has reached its highest levels in periods of democracy and free speculation. What is new in totalitarianism is that its doctrines are not only unchallengeable but also unstable. They have to be accepted on pain of damnation, but on the other hand, they are always liable to be altered on a moment’s notice. Consider, for example, the various attitudes, completely incompatible with one another, which an English Communist or ‘fellow-traveler’ has had to adopt toward the war between Britain and Germany. For years before September, 1939, he was expected to be in a continuous stew about ‘the horrors of Nazism’ and to twist everything he wrote into a denunciation of Hitler: after September, 1939, for twenty months, he had to believe that Germany was more sinned against than sinning, and the word ‘Nazi’, at least as far as print went, had to drop right out of his vocabulary. Immediately after hearing the 8 o’clock news bulletin on the morning of June 22, 1941, he had to start believing once again that Nazism was the most hideous evil the world had ever seen. Now, it is easy for the politician to make such changes: for a writer the case is somewhat different. If he is to switch his allegiance at exactly the right moment, he must either tell lies about his subjective feelings, or else suppress them altogether. In either case he has destroyed his dynamo. Not only will ideas refuse to come to him, but the very words he uses will seem to stiffen under his touch. Political writing in our time consists almost entirely of prefabricated phrases bolted together like the pieces of a child’s Meccano set. It is the unavoidable result of self-censorship. To write in plain, vigorous language one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox. Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia…to be corrupted by totalitarianism one does not have to live in a totalitarian country. The mere prevalence of certain ideas can spread a kind of poison that makes one subject after another impossible for literary purposes. Wherever there is an enforced orthodoxy…good writing stops.

A good man buys you tampons when you run out. He does the dishes. He makes you coffee before you’re awake in the morning. He listens to you when you’re talking, even if it’s about home décor. He goes out of his way to touch you, even if it’s just your hand. He doesn’t call it ‘babysitting’ when he looks after his own children. He calls you from work just to hear your voice. And he always thinks you’re beautiful, even—no, especially—when you don’t.

What is Christ doing as He sits in the heavens? He is interceding. Perhaps Christ would say of a certain premarked one, “Father, look at that one. He has been marked out by You and I have imparted My life into him, but he is still wandering. Father, bring him home.” Soon afterward, some Christian friends invite him to a meeting of the church and he is captured. After that, the interceding Christ on the throne might say, “It is good that this dear one has come home, but, Father, You must do something further in him. The life in him has not been developed. It needs to develop, function, and work.” Then in the next meeting this dear one stands up and says, “Lord Jesus, I love You. I consecrate myself to You.” The life functions because of Christ’s invisible intercession. As Romans 8:34 makes clear, after ascending to the heavens, Christ is there interceding for us. Such a perfected, qualified, equipped, and Almighty One is interceding for us. After a few days, the interceding Christ may say of this dear one, “Father, he is functioning now, but he is not mature. He is still so young.” Suddenly in a meeting this brother stands up and prays, “Lord, You know that I am still so young. I am not yet mature. Lord, I want to mature.” His prayer corresponds to the heavenly intercession. It seems that the prayer originated with him, but actually it was a quotation of the heavenly intercession. Many times our utterances in prayer or praise are quotations of the heavenly intercession. Such utterances are not originated or initiated by us but by Christ’s intercession. Perhaps this same brother is touched one morning concerning his selfishness, having the deep conviction that he is full of self. He may think that this is the reaction to a certain message, not realizing that this also is a reaction to the heavenly intercession. Whatever happens to us in our spiritual life is either a quotation of the heavenly intercession or a reaction to it.

She painted in the mornings and felt that artist instinct begin to yawn again inside her. In the afternoons she rehearsed with Mr. Nobley in the library, pacing outside under the apple trees (she didn’t see Martin), or in the north drawing room with the others, wrapping themselves in fabric that was meant to suggest Roman togas. And Mr. Nobley watched her. He had always watched her, of course. That was part of his character. But did she fancy that he did so even more now? And that in his side glances and half-smiles gleamed a touch of slipped-character, a break, a sliver of the man himself? Jane’s thoughts: Oh, stop it. Jane’s other thoughts: But then again, movie actors fall in love with each other on the set all the time. Is it so outlandish to suppose it might happen to me? Jane answered Jane’s other thoughts: Yes, it is. Stay focused. Have fun. And, miraculously, she did! She bantered and laughed and smiled coyly over one shoulder. Her mornings painting imbued her with a fresh energy that made her feel pretty, and in the afternoons and evenings with Mr. Nobley, she felt relaxed. In the past, Jane would be so beset by stumbling doubts she’d lose the capacity to enjoy his eyes on her. But now, she looked at him right back. Here there was no anxiety, no what-ifs. Just good clean flirting. One night as she snuggled into her sheets, giggling at herself and remembering all the delicious moments from that day, she decided that she was able to go for broke because she wasn’t really Jane here--not obsessive, crazy Jane. Fairy-tale land was a safe place to roll around in, get into trouble, figure yourself out, and come out unscathed.

Morning After Morning The Family Have A Warm Smile For every morning that one see the lovely sun thus when the sun touch ones heart for it warm the one heart with respect the more one feels the respect for the more one shall smile and yet the sun shall shine till the time come for when the sky turn to dark thus the family will sparkle in the night sky. Where there a rose for the sun shall fill the moon with respect to kiss the rose with respect from the family of angels but yet where the moon shine for every star shall smile that will light up the night sky with respect. Just to feel the night breeze is like feeling the summer breeze that whisper the name Star bucks for it's there where one can get a good cup of fresh coffee and yet the more one drink a good cup of fresh coffee the more the family says welcome to Star bucks. The more the family smile the more the angel fill the night air with respect for the angel heart is full of respect yet who wish to feel the touch of respect just to hear the birds sing thus the birds sing for a heart that wish for respect.

The bright moon reflects your radiant face Your snowcapped cheekbones supply water of grace My heavy heart desires an audience with your face Come forward or must return, your command I will embrace. Nobody for good measures girded your fields Such trades no one in their right mind would chase. Our dormant fate will never awake, unless You wash its face and shout brace, brace! Send a bouquet of your face with morning breeze Perhaps inhaling your scent, your fields we envision & trace. May you live fulfilled and long, O wine-bearer of this feast Though our cup was never filled from your jug or your vase. My heart is reckless, please, let Beloved know Beware my friend, my soul your soul replace. O God, when will my fate and desires hand in hand Bring me to my Beloved hair, in one place? Step above the ground, when you decide to pass us by On this path lie bloody, the martyrs of human race. Hafiz says a prayer, listen, and say amen May your sweet wine daily pour upon my lips and my face. O breeze tell us about the inhabitants of city of Yazd May the heads of unworthy roll as a ball in your polo race. Though we are far from friends, kinship is near We praise your goodness and majestic mace. O Majesty, may we be touched by your grace I kiss and touch the ground that is your base