Tour Memories Quotes

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I was in the winter of my life- and the men I met along the road were my only summer. At night I fell sleep with visions of myself dancing and laughing and crying with them. Three years down the line of being on an endless world tour and memories of them were the only things that sustained me, and my only real happy times. I was a singer, not a very popular one, who once had dreams of becoming a beautiful poet- but upon an unfortunate series of events saw those dreams dashed and divided like a million stars in the night sky that I wished on over and over again- sparkling and broken. But I really didn’t mind because I knew that it takes getting everything you ever wanted and then losing it to know what true freedom is. When the people I used to know found out what I had been doing, how I had been living- they asked me why. But there’s no use in talking to people who have a home, they have no idea what its like to seek safety in other people, for home to be wherever you lay your head. I was always an unusual girl, my mother told me that I had a chameleon soul. No moral compass pointing me due north, no fixed personality. Just an inner indecisiveness that was as wide as wavering as the ocean. And if I said that I didn't plan for it to turn out this way I’d be lying- because I was born to be the other woman. I belonged to no one- who belonged to everyone, who had nothing- who wanted everything with a fire for every experience and an obsession for freedom that terrified me to the point that I couldn’t even talk about- and pushed me to a nomadic point of madness that both dazzled and dizzied me. Every night I used to pray that I’d find my people- and finally I did- on the open road. We have nothing to lose, nothing to gain, nothing we desired anymore- except to make our lives into a work of art.
Lana Del Rey
I was in the winter of my life- and the men I met along the road were my only summer. At night I fell sleep with vision of myself dancing and laughing and crying with them. Three year down the line of being on an endless world tour and memories of them were the only things that sustained me, and my only real happy times. I was a singer, not very popular one, who once has dreams of becoming a beautiful poet- but upon an unfortunate series of events saw those dreams dashed and divided like million stars in the night sky that I wished on over and over again- sparkling and broken. But I really didn’t mind because I knew that it takes getting everything you ever wanted and then losing it to know what true freedom is. When the people I used to know found out what I had been doing, how I had been living- they asked me why. But there’s no use in talking to people who have a home, they have no idea what its like to seek safety in other people, for home to be wherever you lied you head. I was always an unusual girl, my mother told me that I had a chameleon soul. No moral compass pointing me due north, no fixed personality. Just an inner indecisiviness that was as wide as wavering as the ocean. And if I said that I didn’t plan for it to turn out this way I’d be lying- because I was born to be the other woman. I belonged to no one- who belonged to everyone, who had nothing- who wanted everything with a fire for every experience and an obssesion for freedom that terrified me to the point that I couldn’t even talk about- and pushed me to a nomadic point of madness that both dazzled and dizzied me. Every night I used to pray that I’d find my people- and finally I did- on the open road. We have nothing to lose, nothing to gain, nothing we desired anymore- except to make our lives into a work of art. LIVE FAST. DIE YOUNG. BE WILD. AND HAVE FUN. I believe in the country America used to be. I belive in the person I want to become, I believe in the freedom of the open road. And my motto is the same as ever- *I believe in the kindness of strangers. And when I’m at war with myself- I Ride. I Just Ride.* Who are you? Are you in touch with all your darkest fantasies? Have you created a life for yourself where you’re free to experience them? I Have. I Am Fucking Crazy. But I Am Free.
Lana Del Rey
Lose Faith. Pray anyway. Persist. We are made to persist, to complete the whole tour. That's how we find out who we are.
Tobias Wolff (In Pharaoh's Army: Memories of the Lost War)
context and memory play powerful roles in all the truly great meals in one's life. I mean, lets face it:when you're eating simple barbecue under a palm tree, and you feel sand between your toes, samba music is playing softly in the backgroud, waves are lapping at the shore a few yards off, a gentle breeze is cooling the sweat on the back of your neck at the hairline, and looking across the table, past the column of empty Red Stripes at the dreamy expression on your companion's face, you realize that in half an hour you're proably going to be having sex on clean white hotel sheets, that grilled chicken leg suddenly tastes a hell of a lot better
Anthony Bourdain (A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines)
I gave him the name Wiki, because his brain seems to contain as much knowledge as Wikipedia, whereas my revision notes disappear from my memory as fast as a Snapchat.
Zoe Sugg (On Tour (Girl Online #2))
The human brain is like a memory system that records every thing that happens to us and makes intelligent predictions based on those experiences.
Daniel Tammet (Embracing the Wide Sky: A Tour Across the Horizons of the Mind)
Food shouldn’t be that shade of green, lass.” – Faolán MacIntyre
Shannon MacLeod (Rogue on the Rollaway)
Even today, the memory of Ribbon Creek influences the way new recruits are handled—not with kid gloves, but with respect for their safety and dignity. This too is part of the Marine ethos: to take care of their brother and sister Marines.
Tom Clancy (Marine: A Guided Tour of a Marine Expeditionary Unit (Guided Tour))
Memories? Pheh. Those just get in the way of living.
Tsukumizu (Girls' Last Tour, Vol. 1 (Girls' Last Tour, #1))
Submitted for your approval--the curious case of Colleen O’Brien and the gorgeous time traveling Scot who landed in her living room.” – Rod Serling
Shannon MacLeod (Rogue on the Rollaway)
On arrival at Orly Airport, Fritz and Magda hired a taxi which drove them to the city. They saw before them a metropolis crowned with triumphal architecture and magnificent monuments. The first Parisian landmark that caught their eye was the majestic Eiffel Tower and, in the background, on a distant hill, the white church of Montmartre. They immediately opted that their hotel could wait and asked the driver to take them around the city, though they knew that this would cost them a whole day's budget. What they began to see was simply spectacular: wide areas edified with splendid monuments, fantastic fountains, enchanting gardens and bronze statues representing the best exponents who flourished in the city, amongst whom artists, philosophers, musicians and great writers. The River Seine fascinated them, with boatloads of tourists all eager to see as much as they could of the city. They also admired a number of bridges, amongst which the flamboyant Pont Alexandre III. The driver, a friendly, balding man of about fifty, with moustaches à la Clemenceau, informed them that quite nearby there was the famous Pont Neuf which, ironically, was the first to be built way back in 1607. They continued their tour...
Anton Sammut (Memories of Recurrent Echoes)
Greg Broadmore's fertile and twisted imagination has conjoined multiple genres, memories, and a sharp sense of pulp, colonialist nostalgia/parody in this lavish, fully realized, imaginative tour-de-force. It's Jules Verne meets Fritz Lang meets Tintin. It's beyond Steampunk. It's clearly an insatiable passion for the talismans of a bygone civilization and it's slavish addiction to the early industrial age in all it's filigreed, ignorant glory. Greg has raised the bar.
Adam Savage
One evening at a remote provincial college through which I happened to be jogging on a protracted lecture tour, I suggested a little quiz—-ten definitions of a reader, and from these ten the students had to choose four definitions that would combine to make a good reader. I have mislaid the list, but as far as I remember the definitions went something like this. Select four answers to the question what should a reader be to be a good reader: 1. The reader should belong to a book club. 2. The reader should identify himself or herself with the hero or heroine. 3. The reader should concentrate on the social-economic angle. 4. The reader should prefer a story with action and dialogue to one with none. 5. The reader should have seen the book in a movie. 6. The reader should be a budding author. 7. The reader should have imagination. 8. The reader should have memory. 9. The reader should have a dictionary. 10. The reader should have some artistic sense. The students leaned heavily on emotional identification, action, and the social-economic or historical angle. Of course, as you have guessed, the good reader is one who has imagination, memory, a dictionary, and some artistic sense–-which sense I propose to develop in myself and in others whenever I have the chance.
Vladimir Nabokov (Lectures on Literature)
The whole concept of 'the perfect meal' is ludicrous. I knew already that the best meal in the world, the perfect meal, is very rarely the most sophisticated or expensive one....Context and memory play powerful roles in all the truly great meals in one's life.
Anthony Bourdain (A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines)
Eric lifted the long lock of hair that he dyed a different vibrant color every forty-nine days without fail and stared at it. His memory had served him correctly. It was currently cobalt blue—the exact same shade as the under-layer of her hair. What were the chances? It had to be kismet. Destiny. Fate. Providence. All of the above... She’d said her name was Rebekah. That was Eric’s favorite name. At least, now it was.
Olivia Cunning (Wicked Beat (Sinners on Tour, #4))
I wish I hadn't met you in the rain: it comes every winter. I wish you hadn't told me your favorite wine: I've become a drinker. I wish I never showed you my hidden birthmark: It looks back at me at night asking where you are. I wish I hadn't read you my journal, all the pages praising you, It's corrupted now that I can't tell if I write for me or you. I wish I hadn't told you my daily routine: it's not mine anymore. I can't enjoy 11:11, my favorite song, a birthday cake, or a concert tour. I'm not afraid of the future, it's the past that takes a while.
Kristian Ventura (Can I Tell You Something?)
As if it were important, he strained his memory; beside the sofa there had been a large lamp with a round milk-white base encircled by a chain of painted roses, and beyond that, on the wall, neatly framed, was a series of water colors done by a forgotten aunt during her Grand Tour.
John Williams (Butcher's Crossing)
His deep voice drifted to her through the crowd of women. “…my lady when she returns. Och, there ye are, Blossom,” Faolán grinned, standing up and taking her hand so she could ease back into the restaurant booth. “These lasses were just asking if I was a stripper. I told them I doona think so,” he said, his face clouded with uncertainty. “I’m not, am I?” The inquisitive lasses in question flushed scarlet and scattered to the four corners of the room at the murderous look on Colleen’s face. “No, you’re not, but I guess I can see how they’d think that,” she muttered darkly. “What you are is a freaking estrogen magnet.
Shannon MacLeod (Rogue on the Rollaway)
Och, lass. Yer going to have to not do that.” Faolán exhaled. “Creeping up on a man is a dangerous thing, and I confess I’m jumpier than most. Yer feet are soft as a cat’s.” “I wasn’t creeping anywhere, I was going to make coffee and this is my house, I’ll creep anywhere I like,” Colleen muttered with a petulant scowl. “But I wasn’t creeping.
Shannon MacLeod (Rogue on the Rollaway)
The five branches are immortalized in every medical student’s memory as Two Zombies Buggered My Cat (Temporal, Zygomatic, Buccal, Mandibular and Cervical). Remembering
Gavin Francis (Adventures in Human Being: A Grand Tour from the Cranium to the Calcaneum)
La mémoire nous joue parfois des tours pour effacer les choses trop pénibles. Elle préfère un joli mensonge plutôt que d'affronter la vérité.
Joris Chamblain (Des premières neiges aux Perséides (Les carnets de Cerise, #5))
Melodies hold memories, Like nothing else on earth, they recall feelings, places, moments-- the needle dropping into the groove of the soul's record player.
Emily Wibberley (The Breakup Tour)
Fame requires every kind of excess. I mean true fame, a devouring neon, not the somber renown of waning statesmen or chinless kings. I mean long journeys across gray space. I mean danger, the edge of every void, the circumstance of one man imparting an erotic terror to the dreams of the republic. Understand the man who must inhabit these extreme regions, monstrous and vulval, damp with memories of violation. Even if half-mad he is absorbed into the public's total madness; even if fully rational, a bureaucrat in hell, a secret genius of survival, he is sure to be destroyed by the public's contempt for survivors. Fame, this special kind, feeds itself on outrage, on what the counselors of lesser men would consider bad publicity-hysteria in limousines, knife fights in the audience, bizarre litigation, treachery, pandemonium and drugs. Perhaps the only natural law attaching to true fame is that the famous man is compelled, eventually, to commit suicide. (Is it clear I was a hero of rock'n'roll?) Toward the end of the final tour it became apparent that our audience wanted more than music, more even than its own reduplicated noise. It's possible the culture had reached its limit, a point of severe tension. There was less sense of simple visceral abandon at our concerts during these last weeks. Few cases of arson and vandalism. Fewer still of rape. No smoke bombs or threats of worse explosives. Our followers, in their isolation, were not concerned with precedent now. They were free of old saints and martyrs, but fearfully so, left with their own unlabeled flesh. Those without tickets didn't storm the barricades, and during a performance the boys and girls directly below us, scratching at the stage, were less murderous in their love of me, as if realizing finally that my death, to be authentic, must be self-willed- a succesful piece of instruction only if it occured by my own hand, preferrably ina foreign city. I began to think their education would not be complete until they outdid me as a teacher, until one day they merely pantomimed the kind of massive response the group was used to getting. As we performed they would dance, collapse, clutch each other, wave their arms, all the while making absolutely no sound. We would stand in the incandescent pit of a huge stadium filled with wildly rippling bodies, all totally silent. Our recent music, deprived of people's screams, was next to meaningless, and there would have been no choice but to stop playing. A profound joke it would have been. A lesson in something or other. In Houston I left the group, saying nothing, and boarded a plane for New York City, that contaminated shrine, place of my birth. I knew Azarian would assume leadership of the band, his body being prettiest. As to the rest, I left them to their respective uproars- news media, promotion people, agents, accountants, various members of the managerial peerage. The public would come closer to understanding my disappearance than anyone else. It was not quite as total as the act they needed and nobody could be sure whether I was gone for good. For my closest followers, it foreshadowed a period of waiting. Either I'd return with a new language for them to speak or they'd seek a divine silence attendant to my own. I took a taxi past the cemetaries toward Manhattan, tides of ash-light breaking across the spires. new York seemed older than the cities of Europe, a sadistic gift of the sixteenth century, ever on the verge of plague. The cab driver was young, however, a freckled kid with a moderate orange Afro. I told him to take the tunnel. Is there a tunnel?" he said.
Don DeLillo
Seeing the name Hillary in a headline last week—a headline about a life that had involved real achievement—I felt a mouse stirring in the attic of my memory. Eventually, I was able to recall how the two Hillarys had once been mentionable in the same breath. On a first-lady goodwill tour of Asia in April 1995—the kind of banal trip that she now claims as part of her foreign-policy 'experience'—Mrs. Clinton had been in Nepal and been briefly introduced to the late Sir Edmund Hillary, conqueror of Mount Everest. Ever ready to milk the moment, she announced that her mother had actually named her for this famous and intrepid explorer. The claim 'worked' well enough to be repeated at other stops and even showed up in Bill Clinton's memoirs almost a decade later, as one more instance of the gutsy tradition that undergirds the junior senator from New York. Sen. Clinton was born in 1947, and Sir Edmund Hillary and his partner Tenzing Norgay did not ascend Mount Everest until 1953, so the story was self-evidently untrue and eventually yielded to fact-checking. Indeed, a spokeswoman for Sen. Clinton named Jennifer Hanley phrased it like this in a statement in October 2006, conceding that the tale was untrue but nonetheless charming: 'It was a sweet family story her mother shared to inspire greatness in her daughter, to great results I might add.' Perfect. It worked, in other words, having been coined long after Sir Edmund became a bankable celebrity, but now its usefulness is exhausted and its untruth can safely be blamed on Mummy.
Christopher Hitchens
Music, more than money, is the tonic of happiness. Music helps to create moments and social occasions, memories and emotions. This is the secret of music, and it is the reason that, as Neil Young famously sang, “rock and roll will never die.
Alan B. Krueger (Rockonomics: A Backstage Tour of What the Music Industry Can Teach Us about Economics and Life)
Refusing to lean back against him, Colleen sat ramrod straight until they reached the road. “I guess I should say thank you for saving my life,” she muttered then turned and slapped Faolán hard across the face. “And that’s for you having to save it in the first place. And I’m not your woman, you big, arrogant, lying, betraying…faery loving…” She searched for the perfect insult and couldn’t find one, “…Scot.” She gave a very unladylike snort. “Happy now? That fiery enough for you?
Shannon MacLeod (Rogue on the Rollaway)
For over two weeks, the defenders of Wake Island held off a vastly superior force of Japanese ships and troops, inspiring the whole nation with their plucky spirit and sacrifice. Unfortunately, Navy leaders at Pearl Harbor, struggling to protect what was left of the shattered Pacific Fleet, canceled a relief mission, allowing the island and its defenders to fall without support. Wake damaged the long-standing trust between the Corps and the Navy, a memory that still rankles Marines and shames sailors.
Tom Clancy (Marine: A Guided Tour of a Marine Expeditionary Unit (Guided Tour))
You turn the lights on and off here and if you can’t sleep and want something to read there are books in the living room…” her voice broke off. “Wait. Can you read?” His chin took a slight tilt upward. “Aye,” Faolán replied, his voice cool, “in English, Gaelic, Latin, or French. My Welsh is a bit rusty, and I doona remember any of the Greek I was taught except for words not fit for a lady’s ears. I can also count all the way up to…” He looked down and wiggled his large bare toes, “…twenty.” – Faolán MacIntyre
Shannon MacLeod (Rogue on the Rollaway)
It feels significant, finding myself suddenly writing the song I was working on when we were last here. Like musical memory reminding me not to lose faith. I wonder if we could be like the lyrics I started on the drive home a decade ago. Not lost. Unfinished.
Emily Wibberley & Austin Siegemund-Broka (The Breakup Tour)
For a moment, disconnected by the stitch in his side, he listened not to the sense but to the interplay of the two flexible voices, one masculine and light, one mellow and feminine, unreeling their story, faintly affronted amid mounting hysteria. He opened his eyes. He knew, because his memories of Francis Crawford went back further than those of anyone there, that Lymond was rather drunk, although he could still disguise it. The quick-wittedness, the invention, the faultless comedy timing were present at the price of a little concentration which had closed his outer consciousness for the moment. Jerott, no longer laughing, sat in the shadows and watched the dazzling performance and both the players, blond and brown, artist and acolyte. Acolyte. But Philippa was a child no longer: he had known that since that single evening in Lyon. The severe, clear-skinned profile turned towards Francis might have belonged to any great lady. The brown and brilliant gaze only quizzed him at intervals: she seemed able, Jerott saw, to sense by instinct the course of his fantasy; and as with Lymond, what she was doing at present occupied all her awareness. Then Francis surged to his feet, leaving his robe, and launched into Jason’s querulous tour de force, fractured by interruptions and a mounting fury of incoherent resentment, and finally disintegrating in chaos.
Dorothy Dunnett (Checkmate (The Lymond Chronicles, #6))
Our quick tour through the many dimensions of cognitive and emotional dysfunction makes it plain why the practice of psychiatry has changed so profoundly over the past thirty years. The familiar caricature of the bearded and monocled Freudian analyst probing his reclining patient for memories of toilet training gone awry and parentally directed lust is now an anachronism, as is the professional practice of that mostly empty and confabulatory art. How such an elaborate theory could have become so widely accepted—on the basis of no systematic evidence or critical experiments, and in the face of chronic failures of therapeutic intervention in all of the major classes of mental illness (schizophrenia, mania and depression)—is something that sociologists of science and popular culture have yet to fully explain.
Paul M. Churchland (The Engine of Reason, The Seat of the Soul: A Philosophical Journey into the Brain)
DA Datta: what have we given? My friend, blood shaking my heart The awful daring of a moment's surrender Which an age of prudence can never retract By this, and this only, we have existed Which is not to be found in our obituaries Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor In our empty rooms 410 DA Dayadhvam: I have heard the key Turn in the door once and turn once only We think of the key, each in his prison Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus DA Damyata: The boat responded Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar 420 The sea was calm, your heart would have responded Gaily, when invited, beating obedient To controlling hands                                      I sat upon the shore Fishing, with the arid plain behind me Shall I at least set my lands in order? London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina Quando fiam ceu chelidon - O swallow swallow Le Prince d'Aquitaine a la tour abolie 430 These fragments I have shored against my ruins Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe. Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.                            Shantih shantih shantih
T.S. Eliot (The Waste Land)
Quote from David, the tour guide: There's a difference between history and nostalgia, and somewhere between those two is memory. I think that history is the story of the past, using all available facts, and that nostalgia is a fantasy about the past using no facts, and somewhere in between is memory, which is a blend of history and a little bit of emotion. History is about what you need to know... but nostalgia is what you want to hear.
Clint Smith (How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America)
Create a trophy room in your heart. Each time you experience a victory, place a memory on the shelf. Before you face a challenge, take a quick tour of God’s accomplishments. Look at all the paychecks he has provided, all the blessings he has given, all the prayers he had answered. Imitate the shepherd boy David. Before he fought Goliath, the giant, he remembered how God had helped him kill a lion and a bear (1 Samuel 17:34-36). He faced his future by revisiting the past.
Max Lucado
Are you still working on that bucket list of yours?" Amelia nodded. "As I remember, you mentioned a few things for Ireland." He smiled with humor lacing his eyes as he said, "Like kissing the Blarney Stone at Blarney Castle." She laughed as she opened her brochure of things to do in southern Ireland. "You've got a good memory." Amelia pointed to a picture of a beautiful garden full of flowers. "I want to visit the Blarney Gardens, too." He pointed to another picture and said, "How about the Blarney dungeons? That looks awesome to explore." She looked up at him and smiled. "Yeah. I've also been interested in listening to a live Irish concert.
Linda Weaver Clarke (The Shamrock Case (Amelia Moore Detective Series #2))
Not everyone on campus was fond of my hobbies. After football practice one day, one of my coaches informed me that the dean of men wanted to see me. I wasn’t sure what I had done wrong, but I knew they had me on something. I walked into the office, and he asked me to close the door. “We have a problem,” he said. “Do you know what street you live on? Do you know the name of it?” “Vetville?” I asked him. “Let me refresh your memory,” he said. “You live on Scholar Drive.” Apparently, the president of Louisiana Tech had given members of the board of trustees a tour of campus the day before. “When we went to where you live, it wasn’t very scholarly,” the dean told me. “There were old boats, motors, duck decoys, and fishnets littering your front yard. He was embarrassed. This is an institution of higher learning.” “That’s my equipment,” I told him. “But everybody’s yard is mowed-except yours,” he replied. “At least the frost will get it,” I said. “It will lay down flat as a pancake when the frost gets it.” “It’s July,” the dean said. “Cut your grass.
Phil Robertson (Happy, Happy, Happy: My Life and Legacy as the Duck Commander)
The job was a sign of his failings. In his youth he’d been a devoted scholar of foreign languages, the owner of an impressive collection of dictionaries. He had dreamed of being an interpreter for diplomats and dignitaries, resolving conflicts between people and nations, settling disputes of which he alone could understand both sides. He was a self-educated man. In a series of notebooks, in the evenings before his parents settled his marriage, he had listed the common etymologies of words, and at one point in his life he was confident that he could converse, if given the opportunity, in English, French, Russian, Portuguese, and Italian, not to mention Hindi, Bengali, Oriya, and Gujarati. Now only a handful of European phrases remained in his memory, scattered words for things like saucers and chairs. English was the only non-Indian language he spoke fluently anymore. Mr. Kapasi knew it was not a remarkable talent. Sometimes he feared that his children knew better English than he did, just from watching television. Still, it came in handy for the tours.
Jhumpa Lahiri (Interpreter of Maladies)
Ordinarily, when he thought back upon those days, let alone upon his student years and the Bamboo Grove, it had always been as if he were gazing from a cool, dull room out into broad, brightly sunlit landscapes, into the irrevocable past, the paradise of memory. Such recollections had always been, even when they were free of sadness, a vision of things remote and different, separated from the prosaic present by a mysterious festiveness. But now, on this bright and cheerful September afternoon, with the strong greens and browns all around him and the ethereal, gently misted tones of blues verging into violet in the distance, as he trudged along at an easy pace, with frequent pauses to look about him, that walking tour of so long ago did not seem a distant paradise cut off from a resigned present. rather his present journey was the same as that of the past, the present Joseph Knecht was close as a brother to the Knecht of those days. Everything was new again, mysterious, promising; all that had been could recur, and many new things as well. It was long, long since he had looked out upon the day and the world and seen them as so unburdened, so beautiful and innocent. The happiness of freedom, of commanding his own destiny, flooded through him like a strong drink. How long it was since he had last had this feeling, last entertained this lovely and rapturous illusion.
Hermann Hesse (The Glass Bead Game)
My husband, Eric, has a joke he likes to say: “Ask Jessica to sing about Jesus or America, and she’ll be there. Super Bowl, backyard cookout, whatever you got, she’s coming to sing ‘God Bless America.’ ” And he’s right. Growing up in Texas, I sang that song over and over. From Memorial Day parades to Veteran’s Day pancake breakfasts—I was your girl. When I sang it at the East Room of the White House, I finally found out I had been flubbing the lyrics all those years. I was there to kick off the USO holiday tour for troops fighting in Afghanistan. It was the first time they let celebrities in after 9/11, because, well, they were busy. It was surreal to hear President Bush speak, thanking the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for his service, the transportation secretary for keeping the airlines safe. And then he added, “I want to thank Rob Schneider and Jessica Simpson as well.” They asked me to sing “God Bless America,” and I gave it my all. President Bush was in the front row, right next to Laura, and I watched him quietly sing along, his mouth moving along with mine. Something went wrong after we got to the mountains, though. I said, “to the rivers,” just like I always did, and, well, he knew it was “the prairies.” I was so embarrassed that I apologized to him and Mrs. Bush after. “I swear all this time I thought it was rivers!” I said. “That’s okay, Jessica,” he said. “God blessed the rivers, too.
Jessica Simpson (Open Book)
If the past is a foreign country, it is a shockingly violent one. It is easy to forget how dangerous life used to be, how deeply brutality was once woven into the fabric of daily existence. Cultural memory pacifies the past, leaving us with pale souvenirs whose bloody origins have been bleached away. A woman donning a cross seldom reflects that this instrument of torture was a common punishment in the ancient world; nor does a person who speaks of a whipping boy ponder the old practice of flogging an innocent child in place of a misbehaving prince. We are surrounded by signs of the depravity of our ancestors’ way of life, but we are barely aware of them. Just as travel broadens the mind, a literal-minded tour of our cultural heritage can awaken us to how differently they did things in the past. In a century that began with 9/11, Iraq, and Darfur, the claim that we are living in an unusually peaceful time may strike you as somewhere between hallucinatory and obscene. I know from conversations and survey data that most people refuse to believe it.1 In succeeding chapters I will make the case with dates and data. But first I want to soften you up by reminding you of incriminating facts about the past that you have known all along. This is not just an exercise in persuasion. Scientists often probe their conclusions with a sanity check, a sampling of real-world phenomena to reassure themselves they haven’t overlooked some flaw in their methods and wandered into a preposterous conclusion. The vignettes in this chapter are a sanity check on the data to come.
Steven Pinker (The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined)
Immediately my mind had conceived this new idea of "the purest and most exalted manifestation of dramatic art," it, the idea, sped to join the imperfect pleasure which I had felt in the theatre, added to it a little of what was lacking, and their combination formed something so exalting that I cried out within myself: ‘What a great artist!’ It may doubtless be argued that I was not absolutely sincere. But let us bear in mind, rather, the numberless writers who, dissatisfied with the page which they have just written, if they read some eulogy of the genius of Chateaubriand, or evoke the spirit of some great artist whose equal they aspire to be, by humming to themselves, for instance, a phrase of Beethoven, the melancholy of which they compare with what they have been trying to express in prose, are so filled with that idea of genius that they add it to their own productions, when they think of them once again, see them no longer in the light in which at first they appeared, and, hazarding an act of faith in the value of their work, say to themselves: "After all!" without taking into account that, into the total which determines their ultimate satisfaction, they have introduced the memory of marvellous pages of Chateaubriand which they assimilate to their own, but of which, in cold fact, they are not the authors; let us bear in mind the numberless men who believe in the love of a mistress on the evidence only of her betrayals; all those, too, who are sustained by the alternative hopes, either of an incomprehensible survival of death, when they think, inconsolable husbands, of the wives whom they have lost but have not ceased to love, or, artists, of the posthumous glory which they may thus enjoy; or else the hope of complete extinction which comforts them when their thoughts turn to the misdeeds that otherwise they must expiate after death; let us bear in mind also the travellers who come home enraptured by the general beauty of a tour of which, from day to day, they have felt nothing but the tedious incidents; and let us then declare whether, in the communal life that is led by our ideas in the enclosure of our minds, there is a single one of those that make us most happy which has not first sought, a very parasite, and won from an alien but neighbouring idea the greater part of the strength that it originally lacked
Marcel Proust (In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower)
Another episode startled Trump’s advisers on the Asia trip. As the president and his entourage embarked on the journey, they stopped in Hawaii on November 3 to break up the long flight and allow Air Force One to refuel. White House aides arranged for the president and first lady to make a somber pilgrimage so many of their predecessors had made: to visit Pearl Harbor and honor the twenty-three hundred American sailors, soldiers, and marines who lost their lives there. The first couple was set to take a private tour of the USS Arizona Memorial, which sits just off the coast of Honolulu and straddles the hull of the battleship that sank into the Pacific during the Japanese surprise bombing attack in 1941. As a passenger boat ferried the Trumps to the stark white memorial, the president pulled Kelly aside for a quiet consult. “Hey, John, what’s this all about? What’s this a tour of?” Trump asked his chief of staff. Kelly was momentarily stunned. Trump had heard the phrase “Pearl Harbor” and appeared to understand that he was visiting the scene of a historic battle, but he did not seem to know much else. Kelly explained to him that the stealth Japanese attack here had devastated the U.S. Pacific Fleet and prompted the country’s entrance into World War II, eventually leading the United States to drop atom bombs on Japan. If Trump had learned about “a date which will live in infamy” in school, it hadn’t really pierced his consciousness or stuck with him. “He was at times dangerously uninformed,” said one senior former adviser. Trump’s lack of basic historical knowledge surprised some foreign leaders as well. When he met with President Emmanuel Macron of France at the United Nations back in September 2017, Trump complimented him on the spectacular Bastille Day military parade they had attended together that summer in Paris. Trump said he did not realize until seeing the parade that France had had such a rich history of military conquest. He told Macron something along the lines of “You know, I really didn’t know, but the French have won a lot of battles. I didn’t know.” A senior European official observed, “He’s totally ignorant of everything. But he doesn’t care. He’s not interested.” Tillerson developed a polite and self-effacing way to manage the gaps in Trump’s knowledge. If he saw the president was completely lost in the conversation with a foreign leader, other advisers noticed, the secretary of state would step in to ask a question. As Tillerson lodged his question, he would reframe the topic by explaining some of the basics at issue, giving Trump a little time to think. Over time, the president developed a tell that he would use to get out of a sticky conversation in which a world leader mentioned a topic that was totally foreign or unrecognizable to him. He would turn to McMaster, Tillerson
Philip Rucker (A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America)
Here before you lies the memorial to St. Cefnogwr, though he is not buried here, of course.” At her words, an uncanny knowing flushed through Katy and, crazy-of-crazy, transfixed her. “Why? Where is he?” Traci stepped forward, hand on her hip. A you’re-right-on-cue look crossed the guide’s face. She pointed to the ceiling. Traci scoffed. “I meant, where’s the body?” Her American southern accent lent a strange contrast to her skepticism. Again, the tour guide’s arthritic finger pointed upward, and a smile tugged at her lips, the smokers’ wrinkles on her upper lip smoothing out. “That’s the miracle that made him a saint, you see. Throughout the twelve hundreds, the Welsh struggled to maintain our independence from the English. During Madog’s Rebellion in 1294, St. Cefnogwr, a noble Norman-English knight, turned against his liege lord and sided with the Welsh—” “Norman-English?” Katy frowned, her voice raspy in her dry throat. “Why would a Norman have a Welsh name and side with the Welsh?” She might be an American, but her years living in England had taught her that was unusual. “The English nicknamed him. It means ‘sympathizer’ in Welsh. The knight was captured and, for his crime, sentenced to hang. As he swung, the rope creaking in the crowd’s silence, an angel of mercy swooped down and—” She clapped her hands in one decisive smack, and everyone jumped. “The rope dangled empty, free of its burden. Proof, we say, of his noble cause. He’s been venerated ever since as a Welsh hero.” Another chill danced over Katy’s skin. A chill that flashed warm as the story seeped into her. Familiar. Achingly familiar. Unease followed—this existential stuff was so not her. “His rescue by an angel was enough to make him a saint?” ever-practical Traci asked. “Unofficially. The Welsh named him one, and eventually it became a fait accompli. Now, please follow me.” The tour guide stepped toward a side door. Katy let the others pass and approached the knight covered in chainmail and other medieval-looking doodads. Only his face peeked out from a tight-fitting, chainmail hoodie-thing. One hand gripped a shield, the other, a sword. She touched his straight nose, the marble a cool kiss against her finger. So. This person had lived about seven hundred years ago. His angular features were starkly masculine. Probably had women admiring them in the flesh. Had he loved? An odd…void bloomed within, tugging at her, as if it were the absence of a feeling seeking wholeness. Evidence of past lives frozen in time always made her feel…disconnected. Disconnected and disturbed. Unable to grasp some larger meaning. Especially since Isabelle was in the past now too, instead of here as her maid of honor. She traced along the knight’s torso, the bumps from the carved chainmail teasing her fingers. “The tour group is getting on the bus. Hurry.” Traci’s voice came from the door. “Coming.” One last glance at her knight. Katy ran a finger down his strong nose again. “Bye,” she whispered.
Angela Quarles (Must Love Chainmail (Must Love, #2))
SAFARI tents remain zipped, hotel pools are empty, game guides idle among lions and elephants. Tour operators across Africa are reporting the biggest drop in business in living memory. A specialist travel agency, SafariBookings.com, says a survey of 500 operators in September showed a fall in bookings of between 20% and 70%. Since then the trend has accelerated, especially in Botswana, Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania. Several American and European agents have stopped offering African tours for the time being. The reason is the outbreak of the Ebola virus in west Africa, which has killed more than 5,000 people. The epidemic is taking place far from the big safari destinations in eastern and southern Africa—as far or farther than the
Anonymous
Rhythm becoming thought, thought becoming memory; memory, which tends to shuck itself, to peel away. You get older, look back through a child's tunnel vision, and realize you never knew the whole that tied the details together. You were just along for the ride, moving from experience to experience, a flat spectacle, some kind of guideless tour. You remember--or think you remember--what happened, but not where, or why. What you did, but not with who. Details fade. People's names get lost in the white noise.
Gemma Files (We Will All Go Down Together)
a foreign affair juxtaposed with a stateside and domestically approved romantic fancy is mysteriously attractive due to circumstances knowing it will only be parlayed into a memory
Tom Waits (The Early Years: The Lyrics, 1971-1983)
On the third day, Sunday, we were guests of Mrs. Roosevelt, in Hyde Park. She gave us a conducted tour through the house, the Museum, which houses all the presents that the president had received, while in office, and to the garden and we stopped at the grave of F.D.R. That remained a very special week-end, a memorable highlight during my two years as a student. I still possess a snapshot, which a Greek student took of me in front of the Roosevelt Estate in Hyde Park, New York.
Pearl Fichman (Before Memories Fade)
There are many faces to the horrors of war-- decimation, mutilation, barbarity, and, of course, death itself. But one of the most savage and dehumanizing consequences of armed conflict is the prison system that springs up to house enemy combatants--and ordinary citizens too. These hellish camps encapsulate the lowest depths of human depravity; ruled by violence and degeneracy, political prisoners are forced to endure unthinkable conditions and unchecked cruelty--all without any chance of reprieve. Uta Christensen's latest novel, Caught: Surviving the Turbulent River of Life, chronicles this appalling consequence of war, weaving a narrative of atrocity that, despite its artful inventions and complex characters, is so starkly based on grim realities... that one cannot help but shudder. Caught tells the story of Janos, a young German boy kidnapped by the Nazis during WWII--and forced into a Russian prison camp. There, Janos must survive against all odds, fighting off starvation and death at every turn as the years march on... and he becomes a man. It is, in fact, within the hardships of this very crucible, that Janos thrives, overcoming the frailties and ignobilities of existence to discover friendship, compassion, and love--making him into the apotheosis of an upstanding, self-reliant citizen: a true model to all his fellow countrymen. Told in flashbacks, Caught: Surviving the Turbulent River of Life explores the intricate nature of suffering and memory, delving into the complexities of how the past--even the most vicious episodes--informs the present... and the very nature of the self. Uta Christensen, with striking prose and a poetic sensibility, brings the darker chapters of history to life in such a way that one is instantly captivated by a concurrent horror and pity, a sense of tragedy, but too a catharsis in overcoming, in human resilience and beauty itself. A truly breathtaking novel, Caught is a tour de force of literary perfection; poignant, unremitting, and painfully real, this book is essential reading for all those willing to face hard truths--and grow from them.
Phi Beta Kappa review, 5 Star Review by Charles Asher.
Being a student of divinity he was at liberty to preach, but conscious ignorance had hitherto restrained him. He thought, however, that by committing some other man's sermon to memory he might profit the hearers, and so he undertook it. It was slavish work to prepare, for it took most of a week to memorize the sermon, and it was joyless work to deliver it, for there was none of the living power that attends a man's God-given message and witness. His conscience was not yet enlightened enough to see that he was acting a false part in preaching another's sermon as his own; nor had he the spiritual insight to perceive that it is not God's way to set up a man to preach who knows not enough of either His word or the life of the Spirit within him, to prepare his own discourse. How few even among preachers feel preaching to be a divine vocation and not a mere human profession; that a ministry of the truth implies the witness of experience, and that to preach another man's sermon is, at the best, unnatural walking on stilts!
George Müller (GEORGE MULLER COLLECTION (5-in-1): Biography, Autobiography, Answers to Prayer, Counsel to Christians, Preaching Tours and Missionary Labours)
To try am fully, evil needs to victories, not one. The first victory happens when an evil deed is perpetrated; the second victory, when evil is returned." 9 "in the Christian tradition, condemnation is an element of reconciliation, not an isolated independent judgment, even when reconciliation cannot be achi Pp ved. So we condemn most properly in the act of forgiving, and the act of separating the doer from the deed. That is how God in Christ condemned all wrongdoing." 15 "...unhealthy dreams and misdirected labors often become broken realities." 42 "...the story (of Christianity) frames what it means to remember rightly, and the God of this story makes remembering rightly possible." 44 "...peace can be honest and lasting only if it rests on the foundation of truth and justice." 56 "Seekers or truth, as distinct from alleged possessors of truth, will employ 'double vision'- they will give others the benefit of the doubt, they will inhabit imaginatively the world of others, and they will endeavor to view events in question from the perspective of others, not just their own." 57 "Those who love do not remember a persons evil deeds without also remembering her good deeds; they do not remember a person'a vices without also being mindful of their own failings. Thus the full story of wrongdoing becomes clear through the voice of love..."64 "...the highest aim of lovingly truthful memory seeks to bring about the repentance, forgiveness, and transformation of wrongdoers, and reconciliation between wrongdoers and their victims." 65 "And healing of the wrong without involving the wrong tour, therefore, can only be partial. To complete the healing, The relationship between the two needs to be mended. For Christians, this is what reconciliation is all about. Reconciliation with the wrongdoer completes the healing of the person who suffered the wrong. 84 Page 113: "Christ suffered in solidarity...what happened to him will also happen to him." "The dangers of this memory reside in its orientation not just to the past but also to the future." 113 "But let us beware that some accounts of what it means for Christ to have died on behalf of the ungodly...negates the notion of his involvement as a third party." 113 "Christian churches are communities that keep themselves alive- more precisely, that God keeps alive- by keeping alive the memories of the exodus and the passion." 126 "...but often they (churches) simply fail to incorporate right remembering of wrong suffered into the celebration of holy Communion. And even when they do incorporate such remembrance, they often keep it neatly sequestered from the memory of the passion. That memory becomes simply the story of what God has done for us wrongdoers or for a suffers, while remaining mute about how we ourselves remember the wrongs. With such stopping short, suffered wrongs are remembered only for God to comfort us in our pain and lend religious legitimacy to whatever uses we want to put those memories. No wonder we sometimes find revenge celebrating its victory under the mantle of religiously sanctioned struggle for the faith, for self protection, for national preservation, for our way of life- all in the name of God and accompanied by celebration of the self sacrificial love of Christ!" 127 "Communities of sacred memory are, at their best, schools of right remembering - remembering that is truthful and just, that heals individuals without injuring others, that allows the past to motivate a just struggle for justice and the grace-filled work of reconciliation." 128 Quoting Kierkegaard: "no part of life out to have so much meaning for a person that he cannot forget it at any moment he wants to; on the other hand, every single part of life ought to have so much meaning for a person that he can remember it at any moment." 166
Mirslov Volf
Amidst all the chaos, one memory stands out. A ten-year-old boy in the upper-class Hindu-dominated neighbourhood where we were staying was taken on a tour of the city by his father, mainly to parts where Muslims were being hunted down by mobs. The idea of this “riots tourism” was to make a man out of this boy, and, as his mother explained to us, to prepare him to withstand any kind of “frightening sights”. There was something eerily Ku Klux Klannish about that behaviour, I thought.
Ullekh N.P. (War Room: The People, Tactics and Technology behind Narendra Modi's 2014 Win)
Her boys were growing up, too. William would start nursery school in January of 1987 at four and a half. The most exciting part for William was the uniform, “which he is thrilled to bits about, especially as Harry is very envious of his big brother!” The next year would find Diana and Charles in Portugal, Spain, and Germany. “It never stops and it’s certainly no holiday package tour!” How true. I’d seen that for myself in Washington. I had been thrilled to catch a television documentary on the royal couple and had said so in my letter. Diana wrote, “An awful lot of money was raised for very worthy causes so that made the intrusion much more worthwhile!” This comment exemplified the conflict Diana faced between her desire for privacy and her desire to do good.
Mary Robertson (The Diana I Knew: Loving Memories of the Friendship Between an American Mother and Her Son's Nanny Who Became the Princess of Wales)
She had become reconciled to the idea of an eternal shadow; she discovered that, far from being a threat, her bodyguards were much wiser sounding boards than many of the gentleman courtiers who fluttered around her. Police officers like Sergeant Allan Peters and Inspector Graham Smith became avuncular father figures, defusing tricky situations and deflating overweening subjects alike with a joke or a crisp command. They also brought her mothering instincts to the fore. She remembered their birthdays, sent notes of apology to their wives when they had to accompany her on an overseas tours and ensured that they were “fed and watered” when she went out with them from Kensington Palace. When Graham Smith contracted cancer, she invited him and his wife on holiday to Necker in the Caribbean and also on a Mediterranean cruise on board the yacht owned by Greek tycoon, John Latsis. Such is her affection for this popular police officer that she arranged a dinner in his honour after he had recovered which was attended by her family. If she is dining with friends at San Lorenzo, her favourite restaurant, her current detective, Inspector Ken Wharfe will often join her table at the end of the meal and regale the assembled throng with his jokes. Perhaps she reserves her fondest memories for Sergeant Barry Mannakee who became her bodyguard at a time when she felt lost and alone in the royal world. He sensed her bewilderment and became a shoulder for her to lean on and sometimes to cry on during this painful period. The affectionate bond that built up between them did not go unnoticed either by Prince Charles nor Mannakee’s colleagues. Shortly before the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of York in July 1986 he was transferred to other duties, much to Diana’s dismay. In the following spring he was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident.
Andrew Morton (Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words)
In the meantime, Pat was enjoying his first solo conversation with Diana. Previously, he’d seen her only twice at our flat in London in 1980 and again at the prewedding ball in 1981. Pat had been waiting on the palace driveway by our car. Diana’s butler had come out and asked, “Are you Mr. Robertson?” Then he graciously said, “Please come inside.” Pat expected to be shown into the entrance hall to wait more comfortably. He was pleasantly surprised to be led upstairs into Diana’s elegant drawing room. There, Diana’s butler gave him coffee and the newspaper to read while Diana and I finished our tete-a-tete. Pat was caught unawares when Diana breezed in to see him. Pat is six feet three inches tall, but he was struck by Diana’s height and by her natural good looks and vitality. He stood up, saying “Gosh, I don’t know what to call you.” Diana, unassuming and direct as always, replied, “Diana’s just fine.” They sat down together and had a short visit. Pat recalls that they talked about children, hers and ours, and our travel plans for Wales and Scotland. He couldn’t get over how unaffected and natural she was. He was thrilled finally to visit with the wonderful Diana I’d been talking about for years. Pat asked if we’d taken any photographs yet. Diana said, “Yes, but would you like to take another one outside in the garden?” I had finished my coffee and the children had returned from their tour, so we all walked downstairs and out onto the front courtyard and lawn. With my camera, Pat took a picture of Diana standing with the children and me. Then Diana asked one of her staff, who was standing nearby, to use my camera so that Pat could be in a photograph. Then with hugs and good wishes all around, we returned to our car and drove slowly from Kensington Palace. I hated to leave Diana, not knowing when, or even if, we’d see her again.
Mary Robertson (The Diana I Knew: Loving Memories of the Friendship Between an American Mother and Her Son's Nanny Who Became the Princess of Wales)
Tim Graham Tim Graham has specialized in photographing the Royal Family for more than thirty years and is foremost in his chosen field. Recognition of his work over the years has led to invitations for private sessions with almost all the members of the British Royal Family, including, of course, Diana, Princess of Wales, and her children. For at-home photographs, I found her chatty and easy to work with, and her sense of humor always showed through. Tours could be eventful. On one occasion, while photographing her at a Saudi Arabian desert picnic, I was walking backward in front of her--a position quite normal for photographers. What I didn’t realize while concentrating on hr was that I was backing straight into a fire. Just in time, the Princess called out to warn me, but couldn’t suppress her giggles as I stepped into the flames. She was a very lively person to photograph. You had to keep your camera on her at all times, because in a split second there could be just the picture of her expression or response to someone she was meeting or something that had happened. She had the ability to charm and relax whoever she met, whether the man in the street or a nation’s president. If things went wrong in the job, it always made her laugh--and it’s true to say that she must have found some of her royal duties a bit monotonous and stifling and been glad of some light relief.
Larry King (The People's Princess: Cherished Memories of Diana, Princess of Wales, From Those Who Knew Her Best)
And then we went on vacation. Not just any vacation, but a monthlong, four-thousand-mile family road trip. We spent twenty-nine days touring the country — seeing some incredible sites and visiting with friends and family all along the way. It was the trip of a lifetime, one my husband and I had dreamed about taking for years. We created countless memories that I will cherish forever.
Ruth Soukup (Living Well, Spending Less: 12 Secrets of the Good Life)
It's so funny that , it is those random stupid acts done. That give us the best memories in life.
De philosopher DJ Kyos
Early Greek and Roman orators delivered lengthy speeches with unfailing accuracy because they learned the speeches, thought for thought, by applying memory systems. What they did, basically, was associate each thought of a speech to a part of their own homes. These were called “loci,” or “places.” The opening thought of a speech would, perhaps, be associated to the front door, the second thought to the foyer, the third to a piece of furniture in the foyer, and so on. When the orator wanted to remember his speech, thought for thought, he actually took a mental tour through his own home. Thinking of the front door reminded him of the first thought of his speech. The second “place,” the foyer, reminded him of the next thought; and so on to the end of the speech. It is from this “place” or “loci” memory technique that we get the time-worn phrase “in the first place.
Harry Lorayne (The Memory Book: The Classic Guide to Improving Your Memory at Work, at School, and at Play)
Now, let’s focus on one aspect of another female superstar’s greatness that you should bring into your game, or rather into your head; Serena Williams (and Venus too) have serious short-term memory loss. By that I mean when things go bad in a point, game, set, or match, they have this ability to mentally wipe the slate clean—to forget about it immediately and not get ruined. Club players? We miss a few shots and lose a couple of games and it gets in our mind; we lose confidence, get rattled, and dial it down. Believe me, I know. That was me on tour plenty of times. As you’ll read later in Winning Ugly, when you get down on yourself—start beating yourself up mentally—there are now two players on the court trying to take you down. And one of them is you.
Brad Gilbert (Winning Ugly: Mental Warfare in Tennis--Lessons from a Master)
The army sent him to a base in Germany, where he had a lot of free time on his hands. He spent it in the local beer gardens getting drunk on beer. Dahmer never formed any relationships in the army, gay or otherwise, and satisfied his need for sexual intimacy by masturbating. He appeared genuinely disappointed that he was dismissed before finishing his tour of duty; however, thoughts of what happened in Ohio continued to haunt him and alcohol was the only way to dampen the memory. He was disciplined numerous times for being drunk on duty, and eventually given an honorable discharge.
Patrick Kennedy (GRILLING DAHMER: The Interrogation Of "The Milwaukee Cannibal")
(Back at school) I never realized that if a girl is in-like with she starts right at your Junk, then they look back up and if you turn around, they look at the cute butt. I say walking down the hallway out of the door of the lunchroom- ‘It is February- yeah, what can I say, it's just another freaking- freaked up day, who-and-ray. Oh- Oliva said- all the other girls are too busy doing whatever it is they do to care about me. Where are you going next? She said, ‘I didn’t know I’d be outside.’ I pass the soccer fields on our right as we loop back toward Lower Lot. At this moment in time of year the fields are all tousled up, looking ever so dirty with a few straggly weeds, and a few patches of auburn grass. ‘I feel like I’m having déjà vu,’ I say once more. ‘Flashback Fridays, Throwback Thursday Facebook, Twitter Mondays- I don’t give a flying crap- even back to freshman year- I don’t give a rat’s ass, you know it’s all hitting me like a brick in the red nose.’ Just like all the holidays, I don’t freaking care about what everyone does, I just sit in my room and pet kitty. Ha! Classic punt! ‘I’ve been having déjà vu all morning, afternoon, evening, and all the freaking time.’ I can’t stand it anymore- I feel like it not me doing crap anymore- I feel freaked up and sore, for sure, I- myself am rubbed raw and tour, must you- some more- I hear as I pass one of the windows to the cafeteria from the outside, and I say what the freak- That what I just said. I blurt it out yes, yes, yes- I can stop myself. Instantly I feel better. I feel like it happened, sure that not what this is, yet it feels good to feel good. ‘Let me guess.’ Jenny brings one hand to her temples and frowns, pretending to concentrate. ‘You’re having flashbacks of freaking yourself to the last time Madilyn was this annoying before nine a.m. you're just sick.’ They rush too to the window from the inside knowing my sexy voice. ‘Shut up!’ Madilyn said as she leaned forward and Oliva grabs her ass as she does, her arm flies up and grabs her boob, and we all start to laugh. I smile too, relieved to have spoken the words out loud, and maybe, I am not the only freak-up girl in this school. It makes sense… I hope so- I hope.
Marcel Ray Duriez (Nevaeh They Call Out)
The recovery of memory and culture in the 1960s by radical movements terrified the elites. It gave people an understanding of their own power and agency. It articulated and celebrated the struggles of working men and women and the oppressed rather than the mythical beneficence of the powerful. It exposed the exploitation and mendacity of the ruling class. And that is why corporatists spent billions to crush and marginalize these movements and their histories in schools, culture, the press, and in our systems of entertainment. “Not only does the people have no precise consciousness of its own historical identity,” Gramsci lamented under fascism, “it is not even conscious of the historical identity or the exact limits of its adversary.”78 If we do not know our history we have no point of comparison. We cannot name the forces that control us or see the long continuity of capitalist oppression and resistance.
Chris Hedges (America: The Farewell Tour)
The contrast between the two was conspicuous in ways not dissimilar to that between the two cemeteries at Monticello. There were far fewer tombstones at the People’s Memorial Cemetery than at Blandford, and those there were indiscriminately scattered across the brown grass. There were no flags ornamenting the graves. There were no hourly tours available for people to remember the dead. There was history, but also silence.
Clint Smith (How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America)
But her experience on the European tour—the savage reviews she received for singing out of tune, and especially, the memory of the wag in Châteauvallon who, when Paul complained of a nonworking microphone, called out “give it to your missus”—inspired Paul to use the Mellotron as a fail-safe. “What he did was, he had a Mellotron with them with all their vocal harmony parts on it,” explained Brinsley Schwarz guitarist Ian Gomm. “So, you press a key and they go, ‘Ahh.’ On a bad night, he’d look at her and say, ‘Mellotron,’ and she’d mime to the recorded part. The other boys would be happy then, because she was in tune.
Allan Kozinn (The McCartney Legacy: Volume 1: 1969 – 73)
What is an oyster if not the perfect food? It requires no preparation or cooking. Cooking would be an affront. It provides its own sauce. It’s a living thing until seconds before disappearing down your throat, so you know – or should know – that it’s fresh. It appears on your plate as God created it: raw, unadorned. A squeeze of lemon, or maybe a little mignonette sauce (red wine vinegar, cracked black pepper, some finely chopped shallot), about as much of an insult as you might care to tender against this magnificent creature. It is food at its most primeval and glorious, untouched by time or man. A living thing, eaten for sustenance and pleasure, the same way our knuckle-dragging forefathers ate them. And they have, for me anyway, the added mystical attraction of all that sense memory – the significance of being the first food to change my life. I blame my first oyster for everything I did after: my decision to become a chef, my thrill-seeking, all my hideous screwups in pursuit of pleasure. I blame it all on that oyster. In a nice way, of course.
Anthony Bourdain (A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines)
Traveling is not just about seeing new places, it's about creating unforgettable memories and experiences that stay with you forever. At Enjoy Nepal Treks Expedition & Tours P.Ltd, we aim to make those memories unforgettable and those experiences unforgettable. Join us on a journey through the breathtaking landscapes of Nepal and let us create memories that will last a lifetime.
Ras Bahadur Rai
There are a couple of situations that are ideal for touring your memories: the quiet three minutes after takeoff on a commercial flight, and when you're trying to fall asleep. The first makes you keenly aware of the possibility of a quick death, and the other makes you aware of the likelihood of one that comes slowly.
Rebecca Rukeyser (The Seaplane on Final Approach)
Chapter Six: Mistress of Red From underneath from hellish bowels, She lives the torment she shrieks and howls. A damned flame of volcanic intent, Seeks a city where her hatred may vent. Underneath the bow of vaulted earth, This spirit breaks from infernoed perch. Circles the span of inward woe, From beneath the caverns does she go. She seeks the city she may destroy, To lie in ruins for her ploy. From lofty plume of sordid ash, She delights to see her cuts and gash. Vulcania Draconis, spirit of bitter ’ire, Rings the earth with her dredful fires. Horrendous demon from Vulcan’s forge, Lays waste to the earth, her inhabitants engorged. Mighty Pompeii knew her ways, Scoffed at her threats and would not pay. In vindiction’s rage hissed she their doom, Cast them alive within their tombs. And Krakatoa and Mycenae, They would not yield, she laid them waste. An extortioness, royal supreme, To conquer or destroy, her consummate dream. How this evil one sets her pace, Rings sweet earth in her death’s nec-lace. Far from below she blasts her smoke, To cover their eyes until they choke. At her command cities fall and swell, Earthquake, tidal wave, gives masses to hell. This spirit from the blackest pit, Broods deep on those she kiss. She comes to seek those to enslave, To fuel her bowels, her booty in trade. The pride and ruination of nations and men, Seeks souls and bodies to ambition her ends. Now this licking creature of red-hot glow, Sends her heat to make fumerals. Damns the many and damns the one, As empires burn when her rage is done. A vengeful spirit, Draconis is, Smiles so pleasant as victims drop in. Opens her shotted eyes in mirth, To hear the screams of their heated death lurch. This diabolic holds much potent sway, Seeks for victims as ground gives way. She holds the riddle to the land, And holds it she must for her time is at hand. Had learned she now that Kari had come, That timeless conflict again begun. “Never did I see one I could not coerce, But now a convolcation of power, a tour de force.” Suppressed regret ruminated throughout, Yet shreds of fear left no doubt. “I will finish what was started here in mmy land, Beyond records treatise once we did stand. Past all memories, hmm, even so, Before myth began and Rome’s trumpets blowed. I will shatter her like earthenware because I mmust, She tasks mme this creature, mmy hate it is just. Wounded mme she did, her preysence calls, If nothing else, ha I will hurt her if I faullt.” On Vulcania Draconis, Kari's Diabolical Enemy Cold Steel Eternity Vol. ii
Douglas M. Laurent
He had spent his teenage years touring the state of Texas delivering the Constitution from memory as part of a free-market troupe
Tim Alberta (American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump)
Lennon was – whether by luck, accident or perceptive foresight – at the forefront of the psychedelic era’s passion for rose-tinted introspection, which channelled the likes of children’s literature, Victorian fairgrounds and circuses, and an innocent sense of wonder. McCartney, too, moved with the times when writing his children’s singalong Yellow Submarine. Among the hippie era’s other moments of nostalgia were Pink Floyd’s Bike and The Gnome from their debut album Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, recorded at EMI Studios as the Beatles worked on Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band; Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit, laid down in 1966 but released in the same month as Sgt Pepper, and which drew from Lewis Carroll’s Alice stories just as Lennon did; and many more, from Tiny Tim’s Tiptoe Through The Tulips to Traffic’s psychedelic fantasy Hole In My Shoe. The Beatles continued writing songs evoking childhood to the end of their days. Sgt Pepper – itself a loose concept album harking back to earlier, more innocent times – referenced Lewis Carroll (Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds), youthful anticipation of old age (When I’m Sixty-Four), a stroll down memory lane (Good Morning Good Morning), and the sensory barrage of a circus big top extravaganza (Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite!). It was followed by Magical Mystery Tour and Yellow Submarine, two films firmly pitched at the widest possible audience. A splendid time was, indeed, guaranteed for all.
Joe Goodden (Riding So High: The Beatles and Drugs)
In a series of experiments involving hundreds of subjects, Princeton psychologist Diana Tamir and three colleagues examined how people's recording of their experiences, through online comments or digital photographs, influenced memory formation in three different scenarios: watching a lecture on a computer, taking a self-guided tour of a historic building alone, and taking the same tour in the company of another person. "Media use impaired memory for both computer-based and real-world experiences, in both solo and social contexts," the researchers reported in the Journal of Experimental Psychology. "Creating a hard copy of an experience through media leaves only a diminished copy in our own heads." With social media allowing and encouraging us to upload accounts of pretty much everything we do, this effect is now widespread. A 2017 Frontiers in Psychology survey of peer-reviewed research on how smartphones affect memory concluded that "when we turn to these devices, we generally learn and remember less from our experiences.
Nicholas Carr (The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains)
As rituals are drained of their intensity, their roots are buried in the sediment of years, centuries, even millennia. As the human movements that are meant to expend energy become easier, more comfortable, less intense—a leisurely tour through the Nautilus circuit, watching TV on the elliptical—sport becomes exercise. Without intensity, it’s not a ritual. It’s just a grind. Ritual becomes habit. The memory and meaning are lost.
J.C. Herz (Learning to Breathe Fire: The Rise of CrossFit and the Primal Future of Fitness)
As rituals are drained of their intensity, their roots are buried in the sediment of years, centuries, even millennia. As the human movements that are meant to expend energy become easier, more comfortable, less intense—a leisurely tour through the Nautilus circuit, watching TV on the elliptical—sport becomes exercise. Without intensity, it’s not a ritual. It’s just a grind. Ritual becomes habit. The memory and meaning are lost. But the roots of the ritual are still alive. And when the habits, for some reason, are re-endowed with intensity, they become rituals again. Because the root of the ritual, sport as sacrifice, is still alive inside us, it feels like a memory of something. It is a new shoot from an old root that makes a Hero WOD come alive. It’s why, in a CrossFit box, you can be outrun or outlifted, but there’s no way to feel defeated unless you slack off. The visceral sense of sacrifice, of giving all of one’s energy up—underlies every WOD. Detonating all the fireworks means there will be more and bigger fireworks next time. Giving everything you have banishes regret.
J.C. Herz (Learning to Breathe Fire: The Rise of CrossFit and the Primal Future of Fitness)
You and patterns Patterns, shapes and visions, all assume one form, That of her smiles, her deep eyes and her beauty warm, Moments, all moments passing by, and the very ability to experience time, Without her seems to be a profane act of mind, that becomes its inadvertent crime, Days, months, years and decades, chase a century still unrealised, But in all these variants of time, in every moment you reside disguised, As a feeling that leaps from every moment of time and imprisons me, So I lie stranded in a moment, and I cannot do anything, though I know it is not where it is meant to be, Hopes arise from somewhere in my mind, and become feelings felt a long time ago, And my heart follows the mind into emotional territories, where it should not go, And then all patterns, all shapes, and every vision assumes one shape, That of you, your beauty, and then this visual mirage covers me like a drape, Like a never ending veil of mist flowing over the surface of water, Concealing everything that lies between them, and the gently flowing waves in romantic splashes utter, Feelings they feel, and it is then feelings speak in a language that one can hear, And like these waves, my love Irma, my heart beats too; similar echoes of my passions bear, Then shapes fade away, patterns disappear, and only the vision remains, Now my heart does not control my mind, and my mind no longer my heart restrains, So I live inside a vision and you live all around me, And the mind doesn't care what the heart feels, because my heart has grown into a tree, That branches out everywhere, it has transformed into the tree of everything, But it still remains the tree that only bears one fruit and thrives on one thing, That of your memories and your visions, in all colours, It is then, my wandering heart ends its wayward tours, And I grow as a feeling over this vision of yours, Because now the vision is completely and exclusively ours!
Javid Ahmad Tak (They Loved in 2075!)
Although Monticello has been open to the public since the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation purchased the property in 1923, the plantation’s public wrestling with Jefferson’s relationship to slavery began in 1993, as part of the foundation’s Getting Word oral history project, in which the foundation interviewed the descendants of enslaved people from Monticello in an effort to preserve those histories. The oral histories represented an attempt to get the descendants to share stories their elders might have shared with them. The stories that arose from Getting Word became part of the tours Monticello created based on the lives of the enslaved population there. “This is how the word is passed down,” remarked one of the descendants in an interview for the project.
Clint Smith (How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America)
I started carrying an old tour book for the Florida Keys in my bag with me at all times. I'd had it since I was a kid, and after my daddy died, I read it to escape back to memories of him taking me there. As I read it to my guys, we'd leave whatever hospital we were in, and go somewhere beautiful, away from trouble and worry. They'd all come home to Arkansas, a place that had birthed them but wouldn't claim them. So we left. . . . We went someplace else, where they were safe and warm. Where there was nothing to be hidden and nothing wrong with admiring the way the sun shone down on the beauty of men. As it it existed for that very reason -- to be admired and loved.
Ruth Coker Burks (All The Young Men)
A meeting with the Friends Mission in La Paz, Bolivia, lived long in the memory of the touring pair. Mr. O told it repeatedly as he relived the pioneering days of international outreach: The church in the Indian section of the city was crowded and most of the adults, so colorful in their native dress, were believers. The women, in bright shawls and skirts, removed their babies from their backs to the floor during the meeting. How they listened as their pastor interpreted…my message on The Wordless Book! Their faces lit up with understanding—the children’s too! Then at the close the pastor gave an altar call for the children to accept Christ. It was wonderful to see them come one by one until about 35 were gathered at the altar. The pastor dealt with each personally and faithfully and I am sure many were born again that day. This meeting alone, in all of its marvelous aspects, was worth the trip to South America.
Norman Rohrer (The Indomitable Mr. O)
At the end of the evening, Paxton and Willa walked Agatha out to the nurse's car, after Agatha had given them a blind tour of the Madam, pointing out by feel and memory everything she remembered about the house. She and Georgie sliding down the banister and their skirts flying up. Playing dolls in Georgie's room. Having pineapple upside-down cake the Jacksons' cook would make in a cast-iron frying pan, so that the brown sugar on top turned crispy. A slide-away secret compartment in the bookcase where they used to leave notes for each other.
Sarah Addison Allen (The Peach Keeper)
We should do some research on voodoo, too,” Roo reminded them. “Lots of people around here practiced secret voodoo rituals.” “How do you know that?” “Why wouldn’t she know that?” Parker returned. “She of the Deep Underworld who keeps decomposing mice and many other dead things in her locker.” Roo’s stare was calm disdain. “One mouse.” “We still don’t know how it got in Roo’s locker,” Ashley explained, looking distressed at the memory. “But she threw her books in and squashed it.” “It was hiding. How was I supposed to know it was there.” “Maybe if you cleaned out your locker once in a while?” “Hey!” Snapping his fingers, Parker gave an exaggerated gasp of excitement. “I think we should put Roo’s locker on our tour! The mummy of the murdered mouse!” Gage held back a smile. “Why don’t we just put Roo on our tour?” “No, no, mon Dieu, way too scary.
Richie Tankersley Cusick (Walk of the Spirits (Walk, #1))
But then, according to memoirs and accounts of the time, the curator and his colleagues continued to run tours of the museum. Gesturing to the absent works, they spoke to groups about the former contents of those empty frames, naming the lost images as though the paintings were still there in some way, in the remains.
Katherine Brabon (The Memory Artist)
Memory - that's a powerful tool in any chef's kit. Used skillfully, it can be devastatingly effective.
Anthony Bourdain (A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines)
The relationship became so close by the mid-1970s that Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin invited South African Prime Minister John Vorster to visit, including a tour of Yad Vashem, the country’s Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. Vorster had been a Nazi sympathizer and member of the fascist Afrikaner group Ossewabrandwag during World War II. In 1942, he proudly expressed his admiration for Nazi Germany. Yet when Vorster arrived in Israel in 1976, he was feted by Rabin at a state dinner. Rabin toasted “the ideals shared by Israel and South Africa: the hopes for justice and peaceful coexistence.” Both nations faced “foreign-inspired instability and recklessness.” A few months after Vorster’s visit, the South African government yearbook explained that both states were facing the same challenge: “Israel and South Africa have one thing above all else in common: they are both situated in a predominantly hostile world inhabited by dark peoples.”6 The relationship between the nations was broad but also sworn to secrecy. In April 1975, a security agreement was signed that defined the relationship for the next twenty years. A clause within the deal stated that both parties pledged to keep its existence concealed.
Antony Loewenstein (The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World)