Trap Of Gold Quotes

I'm here to tell you, though, ladies that the term "gold digger" is one of the traps we men set to keep you off our money trail; we created that term for you so that we can have all our money and still get everything we want from you without you asking for or expecting this very basic, instincual responsibility that men all over the world are obligated to assume and embrace. ... KNOW THIS: It is your right to expect that a man will pay for your dinner, your movie ticket, your club entry fee, or whatever else he has to pay for in exhange for your time.

But books are curious objects. They have the power to trap, transport, and even transform you if you are lucky.

Her eyes were luminous gold. I wondered if that was the last color a bug saw when it was trapped in amber—and if the bug thought, wow, that's beautiful, right before it was frozen forever.

Ruby, what does the future look like?” Nico asked. “I can’t picture it. I try all the time, but I can’t imagine it. Jude said it looked like an open road just after a rainstorm.” I turned back toward the board, eyes tracing those eight letters, trying to take their power away; change them from a place, a name, to just another word. Certain memories trap you; you relive their thousand tiny details. The damp, cool spring air, swinging between snow flurries and light rain. The hum of the electric fence. The way Sam used to let out a small sigh each morning we left the cabin. I remembered the path to the Factory the way you never forgot the story behind a scar. The black mud would splatter over my shoes, momentarily hiding the numbers written there. 3285. Not a name. You learned to look up, craning your neck back to gaze over the razor wire curled around the top of the fence. Otherwise, it was too easy to forget that there was a world beyond the rusting metal pen they’d thrown all of us animals into. “I see it in colors,” I said. “A deep blue, fading into golds and reds—like fire on a horizon. Afterlight. It’s a sky that wants you to guess if the sun is about to rise or set.” Nico shook his head. “I think I like Jude’s better.” “Me too,” I said softly. “Me too.

Lucky Beauty. Her beast was a man in beast trappings. Far scarier is a beast in the trappings of a man.

His heart thrashed like a bobcat in a trap. When he refused to run for governor, they begged him to run for lieutenant governor. Augusta was all for it, since she’d taken up with the Pioneer Ladies Society, serving punch in the back of the ballroom. Felt good to have her on his side for a change.

He became absorbed beyond mere happiness as he felt himself exercising control over living things. He talked to them, urging them, ordering them. Driven back by the tide, his footprints became bays in which they were trapped and gave him the illusion of mastery.

It draws you in. You twist your mind into new shapes. You start to understand Caverna . . . and you fall in love with her. Imagine the most beautiful woman in the world, but with tunnels as her long, tangled, snake-like hair. Her skin is dappled in trap-lantern gold and velvety black, like a tropical frog. Her eyes are cavern lagoons, bottomless and full of hunger. When she smiles, she has diamonds and sapphires for teeth, thousands of them, needle-thin." "But that sounds like a monster!" "She is. Caverna is terrifying. This is love, not liking. You fear her, but she is all you can think about.

To be oneself on a basis of gold is no better than founding one’s house on the sand. For your watch, and your ring, and the rest of your trappings the good people fawn on you, grovelling to earth; they lift their hats to your jewelled breast-pin; but your ring and your breast-pin are not your person.-

Unease, fear, guilt, and lack of confidence. Resentment is the other side of that. It is your shadow. It is a false and fake gold. Resentment is a trap of the heart into which everyone falls.

Beauty to beguile, spies to ensnare, and gold, always gold, to tempt, to trap, to control.

A pure heart is like pure gold—soft, tender, and pliable. Hebrews 3:13 states that hearts are hardened through the deceitfulness of sin! If we do not deal with an offense, it will produce more fruit of sin, such as bitterness, anger, and resentment. This added substance hardens our hearts just as alloys harden gold. This reduces or removes tenderness, creating a loss of sensitivity. We are hindered in our ability to hear God’s voice. Our accuracy to see is darkened. This is a perfect setting for deception.

Those children are right," he would have said. "They stole nothing from you, my dear. These things don't belong to you here, you now. They belonged to her, that other you, so long ago." Oh, thought Mrs. Bentley. And then, as though an ancient phonograph record had been set hissing under a steel needle, she remembered a conversation she had once had with Mr. Bentley--Mr. Bentley, so prim, a pink carnation in his whisk-broomed lapel, saying, "My dear, you never will understand time, will you? You've always trying to be the things you were, instead of the person you are tonight. Why do you save those ticket stubs and theater programs? They'll only hurt you later. Throw them away, my dear." But Mrs. Bentley had stubbornly kept them. "It won't work," Mr. Bentley continued, sipping his tea. "No matter how hard you try to be what you once were, you can only be what you are here and now. Time hypnotizes. When you're nine, you think you've always been nine years old and will always be. When you're thirty, it seems you've always been balanced there on that bright rim of middle life. And then when you turn seventy, you are always and forever seventy. You're in the present, you're trapped in a young now or an old now, but there is no other now to be seen." It had been one of the few, but gentle, disputes of their quiet marriage. He had never approved of her bric-a-brackery. "Be what you are, bury what you are not," he had said. "Ticket stubs are trickery. Saving things is a magic trick, with mirrors." If he were alive tonight, what would he say? "You're saving cocoons." That's what he'd say. "Corsets, in a way, you can never fit again. So why save them? You can't really prove you were ever young. Pictures? No, they lie. You're not the picture." "Affidavits?" No, my dear, you are not the dates, or the ink, or the paper. You're not these trunks of junk and dust. You're only you, here, now--the present you." Mrs. Bentley nodded at the memory, breathing easier. "Yes, I see. I see." The gold-feruled cane lay silently on the moonlit rug. "In the morning," she said to it, "I will do something final about this, and settle down to being only me, and nobody else from any other year. Yes, that's what I'll do." She slept . . .

...Orlando, to whom fortune had given every gift--plate, linen, houses, men-servants, carpets, beds in profusion--had only to open a book for the whole vast accumulation to turn to mist. The nine acres of stone which were his house vanished; one hundred and fifty indoor servants disappeared; his eighty riding horses became invisible; it would take too long to count the carpets, sofas, trappings, china, plate, cruets, chafing dishes and other movables often of beaten gold, which evaporated like so much sea mist under the miasma. So it was, and Orlando would sit by himself, reading, a naked man.

Being put in a box in the ground was bad enough, but being entombed like this, with layers of stone between you and the world? Kell would never understand the way these Grey-worlders sealed away their dead, trapping the discarded shells in gold and wood and stone as if some remnant of who they’d been in life remained. And if it did? What a cruel punishment.

The full tigers watched him silently. All females. Thankfully. He would be less than happy if he had to take on some territorial male. Well, this little adventure was only going to last through today. As soon as night came, he would get his furry ass out of here. Even if he had to scare some poor security guard to death. Then he would be heading to California. He had some dog butt to kick. Sighing, Nik looked up to find a small child staring at him. A small child busy picking his nose. Could this get any worse? The females stirred restlessly near him and he caught the scent they had. Oh no. Please. Not that. They stood in front of him, completely unaware of his presence and arguing like two ten-year-olds. Nik didn't bother searching for a way out. There was no way out. Those two evil witches trapped him. Trapped him in hell. Throwing up his hands in anger, Alek turned away from Ban, facing the tiger display. Alek's gold eyes stared at Nik for a moment, a frown of confusion pulling his brows down. Then he smiled. And then he just became plain hysterical. Bastard! This wasn't and never would be funny! Ban stared at Alek for several confused moments before catching sight of Nik. As his brothers literally rolled on the ground laughing hysterically--and freaking out all the zoo visitors--Nik seethed

He’d taken pride in making Ketterdam his. He’d laid the traps, set the fires, put his boot to the necks of all those who’d challenged him, and reaped the rewards of his boldness. Most of the opposition had fallen, easy pickings, the occasional challenge almost welcome for the excitement it brought. He’d broken the Barrel to his whim, written the rules of the game to his liking, rewritten them at will. The problem was that the creatures who had managed to survive the city he’d made were a new kind of misery entirely—Brekker, his Wraith queen, his rotten little court of thugs. A fearless breed, hard-eyed and feral, hungrier for vengeance than gold. Do you like life, Rollins? Yes, he did, very much indeed, and he intended to go on living for a good long time. Pekka would count his money. He would raise his son. He’d find himself a good woman or two or ten. And maybe, in the quiet hours, he’d raise a glass to men like him, to his fellow architects of misfortune who had helped raise Brekker and his crew. He’d drink to the whole sorry lot of them, but mostly to the poor fools who didn’t know what trouble was coming.

There’s nothing worse for a soldier to imagine—that there will be no home to return to once the violence is over, no way to become the men we want to be. Instead, we’re trapped in these violent guises, guises we only ever had the courage to don because of how much we love our home. Is this all we’ll ever be?

Everywhere, despite all the sorrows from which our lives are woven, there will flash a glittering dream of joy, just like a brilliant carriage with gold trappings, fairytale steeds, sparkling windows which suddenly appears from nowhere and flashes past some wretched backwater village, which has never seen anything other than farm carts, and for a long time after the peasants remain standing, mouths agape and caps still doffed, although the wondrous carriage has long since passed from view

Men were made to sacrifice so that humanity endured. They were given Colors, lives limited and ordered so that we could destroy the timeless cycle of our race - prosperity to greed to war. Gold was meant to shepherd the other Colors, not devour them. Now we are trapped again in that cycle, the very thing we endeavored to avoid. So the Society? The beautiful sum of all human enterprise? It's been dead and rotting for hundreds of years, and those who fight over it are but vultures and maggots.

I sweep out of the cage like I’m shucking off a weight. I can’t imagine being trapped in there for hours or days. For weeks, months, years… How did she stand it?

you were fortunate enough to be born into a family whose ancestors directly benefited from genocide and/ or slavery, maybe you think the more you don’t know, the more innocent you can stay, which is a good incentive to not find out, to not look too deep, to walk carefully around the sleeping tiger. Look no further than your last name. Follow it back and you might find your line paved with gold, or beset with traps.

It was one of those red-gold early October days, the air crisp and tart as heady as applejack, and even at dawn the sky was the clear, purplish blue that only the finest of autumn days brings. There are maybe three such days in a year. I sang as I lifted my traps, and my voice bounced off the misty banks of the Loire like a challenge. It was the mushroom season, so after I had brought my catch back to the farm and cleaned it out, I took some bread and cheese for breakfast and set out into the woods to hunt for mushrooms. I was always good at that. Still am, to tell the truth, but in those days I had a nose like a truffle pig's. I could smell those mushrooms out, the gray chanterelle and the orange, with its apricot scent, the bolet and the petit rose and the edible puffball and the brown-cap and the blue-cap. Mother always told us to take our mushrooms to the pharmacy to ensure we had not gathered anything poisonous, but I never made a mistake. I knew the meaty scent of the bolet and the dry, earthy smell of the brown-cap mushroom. I knew their haunts and breeding grounds. I was a patient collector.

The taste for books was an early one. As a child he was sometimes found at midnight by a page still reading. They took his taper away, and he bred glow-worms to serve his purpose. They took the glow-worms away, and he almost burnt the house down with a tinder. To put it in a nutshell, leaving the novelist to smooth out the crumpled silk and all its implications, he was a nobleman afflicted with a love of literature. Many people of his time, still more of his rank, escaped the infection and were thus free to run or ride or make love at their own sweet will. But some were early infected by a germ said to be bred of the pollen of the asphodel and to be blown out of Greece and Italy, which was of so deadly a nature that it would shake the hand as it was raised to strike, and cloud the eye as it sought its prey, and make the tongue stammer as it declared its love. It was the fatal nature of this disease to substitute a phantom for reality, so that Orlando, to whom fortune had given every gift--plate, linen, houses, men-servants, carpets, beds in profusion--had only to open a book for the whole vast accumulation to turn to mist. The nine acres of stone which were his house vanished; one hundred and fifty indoor servants disappeared; his eighty riding horses became invisible; it would take too long to count the carpets, sofas, trappings, china, plate, cruets, chafing dishes and other movables often of beaten gold, which evaporated like so much sea mist under the miasma. So it was, and Orlando would sit by himself, reading, a naked man.

It’s her eyes that unnerve me. Hazel with flecks of gold and green. But it’s more what I see when I look into them that rattles me. Pain, anger, fear, mixed with strength, passion and lust. A chaos of emotions trapped behind a mask of self-inflicted rules. but I see it, something wild just waiting to be set free.

It is a great wonder How Almighty God in his magnificence Favors our race with rank and scope And the gift of wisdom; His sway is wide. Sometimes He allows the mind of a man Of distinguished birth to follow its bent, Grants him fulfillment and felicity on earth And forts to command in his own country. He permits him to lord it in many lands Until the man in his unthinkingness Forgets that it will ever end for him. He indulges his desires; illness and old age Mean nothing to him; his mind is untroubled By envy or malice or thought of enemies With their hate-honed swords. The whole world Conforms to his will, he is kept from the worst Until an element of overweening Enters him and takes hold While the soul’s guard, its sentry, drowses, Grown too distracted. A killer stalks him, An archer who draws a deadly bow. And then the man is hit in the heart, The arrow flies beneath his defenses, The devious promptings of the demon start. His old possessions seem paltry to him now. He covets and resents; dishonors custom And bestows no gold; and because of good things That the Heavenly powers gave him in the past He ignores the shape of things to come. Then finally the end arrives When the body he was lent collapses and falls Prey to its death; ancestral possessions And the goods he hoarded and inherited by another Who lets them go with a liberal hand. “O flower of warriors, beware of that trap. Choose, dear Beowulf, the better part, Eternal rewards. Do not give way to pride. For a brief while your strength is in bloom But it fades quickly; and soon there will follow Illness or the sword to lay you low, Or a sudden fire or surge of water Or jabbing blade or javelin from the air Or repellent age. Your piercing eye Will dim and darken; and death will arrive, Dear warrior, to sweep you away.

People have so often been hurt and trapped and tortured by ideas and contraptions which they did not understand, that they have come to believe all things passing their understanding are vicious and evil—things to be stamped out and destroyed by the first comer. They only protect themselves, thus, against the ghastly hurts that can come to them from little things grown up.

I ask him if he tried to rape Nyla. “Laws are silent in times of war,” Tactus drawls. “Don’t quote Cicero to me,” I say. “You are held to a higher standard than a marauding centurion.” “In that, you’re hitting the mark at least. I am a superior creature descended from proud stock and glorious heritage. Might makes right, Darrow. If I can take, I may take. If I do take, I deserve to have. This is what Peerless believe.” “The measure of a man is what he does when he has power,” I say loudly. “Just come off it, Reaper,” Tactus drawls, confident in himself as all like him are. “She’s a spoil of war. My power took her. And before the strong, bend the weak.” “I’m stronger than you, Tactus,” I say. “So I can do with you as I wish. No?” He’s silent, realizing he’s fallen into a trap. “You are from a superior family to mine, Tactus. My parents are dead. I am the sole member of my family. But I am a superior creature to you.” He smirks at that. “Do you disagree?” I toss a knife at his feet and pull my own out. “I beg you to voice your concerns.” He does not pick his blade up. “So, by right of power, I can do with you as I like.” I announce that rape will never be permitted, and then I ask Nyla the punishment she would give. As she told me before, she says she wants no punishment. I make sure they know this, so there are no recriminations against her. Tactus and his armed supporters stare at her in surprise. They don’t understand why she would not take vengeance, but that doesn’t stop them from smiling wolfishly at one another, thinking their chief has dodged punishment. Then I speak. “But I say you get twenty lashes from a leather switch, Tactus. You tried to take something beyond the bounds of the game. You gave in to your pathetic animal instincts. Here that is less forgivable than murder; I hope you feel shame when you look back at this moment fifty years from now and realize your weakness. I hope you fear your sons and daughters knowing what you did to a fellow Gold. Until then, twenty lashes will serve.” Some of the Diana soldiers step forward in anger, but Pax hefts his axe on his shoulder and they shrink back, glaring at me. They gave me a fortress and I’m going to whip their favorite warrior. I see my army dying as Mustang pulls off Tactus’s shirt. He stares at me like a snake. I know what evil thoughts he’s thinking. I thought them of my floggers too. I whip him twenty brutal times, holding nothing back. Blood runs down his back. Pax nearly has to hack down one of the Diana soldiers to keep them from charging to stop the punishment. Tactus barely manages to stagger to his feet, wrath burning in his eyes. “A mistake,” he whispers to me. “Such a mistake.” Then I surprise him. I shove the switch into his hand and bring him close by cupping my hand around the back of his head. “You deserve to have your balls off, you selfish bastard,” I whisper to him. “This is my army,” I say more loudly. “This is my army. Its evils are mine as much as yours, as much as they are Tactus’s. Every time any of you commit a crime like this, something gratuitous and perverse, you will own it and I will own it with you, because when you do something wicked, it hurts all of us.” Tactus stands there like a fool. He’s confused. I shove him hard in the chest. He stumbles back. I follow him, shoving. “What were you going to do?” I push his hand holding the leather switch back toward his chest. “I don’t know what you mean …” he murmurs as I shove him. “Come on, man! You were going to shove your prick inside someone in my army. Why not whip me while you’re at it? Why not hurt me too? It’ll be easier. Milia won’t even try to stab you. I promise.” I shove him again. He looks around. No one speaks. I strip off my shirt and go to my knees. The air is cold. Knees on stone and snow. My eyes lock with Mustang’s. She winks at me and I feel like I can do anything.

I shake my head in unfortunate assent...in any life age and stage to this necessary truth one must be able to maintain and without forced effort. Jealousy, dislike, envy, hatred are low-living, human traits, of a rejectable, and dejected nature. Elevate your mindfulness & emotional state when in the presence of those trapped in their negative miserable ones. I recommend when that's finished, recalibrate who you've allowed to access your inner/outer circle perimeter - the gift of your personal/professional contact & presence...then...adjust control measures accordingly. You can believe with full certainty you'll be on a healthy and gold-bricked wealthy boulevard to practicing soul abuse & neglect prevention - by the lightning-quick process of connection elimination. Selah...

Can you not see, Robert? People have so often been hurt and trapped and tortured by ideas and contraptions which they did not understand, that they have come to believe all things passing their understanding are vicious and evil--to think of them as things to be stamped out and destroyed by the first comer. They only protect themselves, thus against the ghastly hurts that can come to them from little things grown up.

Feeling trapped, growing desperate, she finally declared that she would not live under the same roof with Joe, that it was him or her, that Joe had to move out if she were to stay in such a godforsaken place. Harry could not calm her down, and he could not abide the thought of losing a second wife, certainly not one as lovely as Thula. He went back upstairs and told his son he would have to move out of the house. Joe was ten.

Images of him continued to plague me, unbidden and cruelly tantalising: the mesmerizing blue eyes that compelled me to share with him my most private fears; the feel of his thick, untidy hair as the sunlight split it into myriad shades of gold; the soft laugh that touched my soul; his aloof but unpretentious manner; his confident assurance that I could make my own choices. I shuddered at the thought of Steldor's attitude toward me, for he saw me as only a woman, relegated to supervising that household, planning and executing social events and raising the children. All he really wanted was my presence in his bed, which made me all the more unwilling to comply. Steldor's glance made me uncomfortable, his patronising laugh made me cringe, his condescension frequently led to my humiliation. In Narians arms, I had felt extraordinary happiness; in Steldor's I felt trapped.

Cursed,” he said, laughing without humor. “I’m well aware of that.” “But don’t you see?” She took his hands. “This is a good thing.” “How is being cursed a good thing?” It was the question Serilda had been trying to answer her whole life. She lifted his hand and placed a kiss against the pale scar on his freckled wrist, where the gold-tipped arrow had tethered his spirit to this castle, trapping him forever. “Because curses can be broken.

By the sea and in the eyes of the Mother and the Lord of Judgement, I declare myself to you. I come to you without distinctions and without glory, without the trifling and meaningless trappings of mortal honours. I come to you as nothing and no one but myself. Take my hands and see that they are empty - I offer you no wealth but that of my heart, and ask for none but that of yours. Hear my words and know that they are true - I swear myself to you and none other

It was easier to ignore the consideration of paternal genes then than it would be now. We did not then consider ourselves held in the genetic trap. We thought each infant was born pure and new and holy: a gold baby, a luminous lamb. We did not know that certain forms of breast cancer were programmed and almost ineluctable, and we would not have believed you if you had told us that in our lifetime young women would be subjecting themselves to preventative mastectomies.

That book of [Melancthon], to my mind, deserves not merely to live as long as books are read, but to take its place in the Church canon; whereas your book, by comparison, struck me as so worthless and poor that my heart went out to you for having defiled your lovely, brilliant flow of language with such vile stuff. I thought it outrageous to convey material of so low a quality in the trappings of such rare eloquence; it is like using gold or silver dishes to carry garden rubbish or dung.

But I do know that you aren’t a ghost. You aren’t dead. You’re just cursed.” “Cursed,” he said, laughing without humor. “I’m well aware of that.” “But don’t you see?” She took his hands. “This is a good thing.” “How is being cursed a good thing?” It was the question Serilda had been trying to answer her whole life. She lifted his hand and placed a kiss against the pale scar on his freckled wrist, where a gold-tipped arrow had tethered his spirit to this castle, trapping him forever. “Because curses can be broken.

Then Finnick suddenly grins. “Lucky thing we’re allies. Right?” Sensing a trap, I’m about to let my arrow fly, hoping it finds his heart before the trident impales me, when he shifts his hand and something on his wrist catches the sunlight. A solid-gold bangle patterned with flames. The same one I remember on Haymitch’s wrist the morning I began training. I briefly consider that Finnick could have stolen it to trick me, but somehow I know this isn’t the case. Haymitch gave it to him. As a signal to me. An order, really. To trust Finnick.

AMONG the compensations of advancing age is a wholesome pessimism, which, though it takes the fine edge off of whatever triumphs may come to us, has the admirable effect of preventing Fate from working off on us any of those gold bricks, coins with strings attached, and unhatched chickens, at which ardent youth snatches with such enthusiasm, to its subsequent disappointment. As we emerge from the twenties we grow into a habit of mind that looks askance at Fate bearing gifts. We miss, perhaps, the occasional prize, but we also avoid leaping light-heartedly into traps.

Then the door opens and a strange little man steps inside. He has a red glow to his skin, a black mustache, and a black hat. He walks all hunched up, with skinny legs and a lumpy bottom, as if he is hiding a tail inside his breeches. He sets dark eyes upon the girl and says: Hello Mathilde. Quite a trap you're in. Lucky for you, I can spin straw into gold. So let's play a game. He smiles jagged little teeth that shine like pearls. W-w-who are you? Mathilde asks. But she already knows the answer. He grabs his hat with long red claws and pops it off, revealing two pointy horns. The Devil, of course, he says.

The last rain had come at the beginning of April and now, at the first of June, all but the hardiest mosquitoes had left their papery skins in the grass. It was already seven o'clock in the morning, long past time to close windows and doors, trap what was left of the night air slightly cooler only by virtue of the dark. The dust on the gravel had just enough energy to drift a short distance and then collapse on the flower beds. The sun had a white cast, as if shade and shadow, any flicker of nuance, had been burned out by its own fierce center. There would be no late afternoon gold, no pale early morning yellow, no flaming orange at sunset. If the plants had vocal cords they would sing their holy dirges like slaves.

Among the compensations of advancing age is a wholesome pessimism which, while it takes the fine edge off whatever triumphs may come to us, has the admirable effect of preventing fate from working off on us any of those gold bricks, coins with strings attached, and unhatched chickens that which ardent youth snatches with such enthusiasm to its subsequent disappointment. As we emerge from the twenties, we grow into a habit of mind which looks askance at fate bearing gifts. We miss perhaps the occasional prize but we also avoid leaping lightheartedly into traps. Ash Marsin had yet to reach the age of tranquil mistrust and when fate seemed to be treating him kindly, he was still young enough to accept such kindnesses on its face value and rejoice in them. --Something Fresh

Only those who have lost as much as we have see the particularly nasty slice of smile on someone who thinks they’re winning when they say “Get over it.” This is the thing: If you have the option to not think about or even consider history, whether you learned it right or not, or whether it even deserves consideration, that’s how you know you’re on board the ship that serves hors d’oeuvres and fluffs your pillows, while others are out at sea, swimming or drowning, or clinging to little inflatable rafts that they have to take turns keeping inflated, people short of breath, who’ve never even heard of the words hors d’oeuvres or fluff. Then someone from up on the yacht says, “It’s too bad those people down there are lazy, and not as smart and able as we are up here, we who have built these strong, large, stylish boats ourselves, we who float the seven seas like kings.” And then someone else on board says something like, “But your father gave you this yacht, and these are his servants who brought the hors d’oeuvres.” At which point that person gets tossed overboard by a group of hired thugs who’d been hired by the father who owned the yacht, hired for the express purpose of removing any and all agitators on the yacht to keep them from making unnecessary waves, or even referencing the father or the yacht itself. Meanwhile, the man thrown overboard begs for his life, and the people on the small inflatable rafts can’t get to him soon enough, or they don’t even try, and the yacht’s speed and weight cause an undertow. Then in whispers, while the agitator gets sucked under the yacht, private agreements are made, precautions are measured out, and everyone quietly agrees to keep on quietly agreeing to the implied rule of law and to not think about what just happened. Soon, the father, who put these things in place, is only spoken of in the form of lore, stories told to children at night, under the stars, at which point there are suddenly several fathers, noble, wise forefathers. And the boat sails on unfettered. If you were fortunate enough to be born into a family whose ancestors directly benefited from genocide and/or slavery, maybe you think the more you don’t know, the more innocent you can stay, which is a good incentive to not find out, to not look too deep, to walk carefully around the sleeping tiger. Look no further than your last name. Follow it back and you might find your line paved with gold, or beset with traps.

We know that we are trapped within an economic system that has it backward; it behaves as if there is no end to what is actually finite (clean water, fossil fuels, and the atmospheric space to absorb their emissions) while insisting that there are strict and immovable limits to what is actually quite flexible: the financial resources that human institutions manufacture, and that, if imagined differently, could build the kind of caring society we need. Anni Vassiliou, a youth worker who is part of the struggle against the Eldorado gold mine in Greece, describes this as living in “an upside down world. We are in danger of more and more floods. We are in danger of never, here in Greece, never experiencing spring and fall again. And they’re telling us that we are in danger of exiting the Euro. How crazy is that?

Essay on Lust Identity can’t be concise. It’s knit from sequins and lust and scatters. Mostly everyone was fucking the seven arts with a willed difficulty. Then for one day there was the collective sensation that we carried our lovely voices as if in baskets, piled up in clear tones like grapes. Each voice had achieved its particular mass. From an interior space we heard the word sequin repeating in relation to leaves and the image was yellow-gold leaves moving on dark water. We had undergone an influence of death which was itself imprinted on such a moving sequin: the breath sequins, the heartbeat sequins, the organs and their slowing articulation sequins which drifting from the foreground appear to dim since they gradually go out to illuminate some event so distant we will never own the moment of its perception. But all this gives the illusion of peacefulness which is inert or at least passive when breaths burst smashing into sobbed words some urgent errand trapped in these letters as labour of light diminishing rhythm and if we fiercely decide to clear the stupid human stuff stop waiting for something to come to the father-studded earth shouldn’t this impatience release itself as a tongue so new weeping stops. In young women enamoured of their own intensities the Latin element wells up and knits from lust the pelt on the wall that’s ocelot or shadepelt or the imagination of matter. Nothing’s frugal. As for us, we want to give the city what lust has never ceased to put together. Young women or other women carrying their lovely voices as if on platters, their ten voices or nine voices in urgent errand dictating the imagination of matter. It is not our purpose to obscure the song of no-knowledge.

And when they start talking, and they always do, you find that each of them has a story they want to tell. Everyone, no matter how old or young, has some lesson they want to teach. And I sit there and listen and learn all about life from people who have no idea how to live it. Nobody knows how to just shut the fuck up and look out the window anymore. The bathrooms are tiny and filthy and you have no choice but to piss all over yourself when the bus swerves, but the streetlights look like blurred stars exploding in the window when it rains at night, and you can sleep knowing that if there’s an accident and everyone on the bus dies it wasn’t your fault. Someone fat and snoring will sometimes sit beside you and sweat on your shoulder even though it’s twelve degrees outside, and someone else with a big head shaped like an onion and dirty hair that smells like fish sticks will sit in front of you and recline their seat into your lap. And you’ll be trapped and sleepless and sad for the entire ride. But then other times you get two whole seats to yourself, and when that becomes your idea of luxury you know you’ve found something that no one else is even looking for, and if you gave it to them for Christmas they’d return it the next morning as soon as the stores opened. And then you get to think of yourself like the little drummer boy, playing for Jesus even though he’s too young to understand, even though nobody in Bethlehem really likes percussion and they think you’re a cheap ass for not bringing gold or frankincense. And it’s a shame when you realize that you won’t get to be in the Bible, and it doesn’t seem right. But then nobody gets to be in the Bible anymore, no matter who they are or what they do, and the sooner you realize that the easier it all becomes. But it’s still a shame.

I brushed my teeth like a crazed lunatic as I examined myself in the mirror. Why couldn’t I look the women in commercials who wake up in a bed with ironed sheets and a dewy complexion with their hair perfectly tousled? I wasn’t fit for human eyes, let alone the piercing eyes of the sexy, magnetic Marlboro Man, who by now was walking up the stairs to my bedroom. I could hear the clomping of his boots. The boots were in my bedroom by now, and so was the gravelly voice attached to them. “Hey,” I heard him say. I patted an ice-cold washcloth on my face and said ten Hail Marys, incredulous that I would yet again find myself trapped in the prison of a bathroom with Marlboro Man, my cowboy love, on the other side of the door. What in the world was he doing there? Didn’t he have some cows to wrangle? Some fence to fix? It was broad daylight; didn’t he have a ranch to run? I needed to speak to him about his work ethic. “Oh, hello,” I responded through the door, ransacking the hamper in my bathroom for something, anything better than the sacrilege that adorned my body. Didn’t I have any respect for myself? I heard Marlboro Man laugh quietly. “What’re you doing in there?” I found my favorite pair of faded, soft jeans. “Hiding,” I replied, stepping into them and buttoning the waist. “Well, c’mere,” he said softly. My jeans were damp from sitting in the hamper next to a wet washcloth for two days, and the best top I could find was a cardinal and gold FIGHT ON! T-shirt from my ‘SC days. It wasn’t dingy, and it didn’t smell. That was the best I could do at the time. Oh, how far I’d fallen from the black heels and glitz of Los Angeles. Accepting defeat, I shrugged and swung open the door. He was standing there, smiling. His impish grin jumped out and grabbed me, as it always did. “Well, good morning!” he said, wrapping his arms around my waist. His lips settled on my neck. I was glad I’d spritzed myself with Giorgio. “Good morning,” I whispered back, a slight edge to my voice. Equal parts embarrassed at my puffy eyes and at the fact that I’d slept so late that day, I kept hugging him tightly, hoping against hope he’d never let go and never back up enough to get a good, long look at me. Maybe if we just stood there for fifty years or so, wrinkles would eventually shield my puffiness. “So,” Marlboro Man said. “What have you been doing all day?” I hesitated for a moment, then launched into a full-scale monologue. “Well, of course I had my usual twenty-mile run, then I went on a hike and then I read The Iliad. Twice. You don’t even want to know the rest. It’ll make you tired just hearing about it.” “Uh-huh,” he said, his blue-green eyes fixed on mine. I melted in his arms once again. It happened any time, every time, he held me. He kissed me, despite my gold FIGHT ON! T-shirt. My eyes were closed, and I was in a black hole, a vortex of romance, existing in something other than a human body. I floated on vapors. Marlboro Man whispered in my ear, “So…,” and his grip around my waist tightened. And then, in an instant, I plunged back to earth, back to my bedroom, and landed with a loud thud on the floor. “R-R-R-R-Ree?” A thundering voice entered the room. It was my brother Mike. And he was barreling toward Marlboro Man and me, his arms outstretched. “Hey!” Mike yelled. “W-w-w-what are you guys doin’?” And before either of us knew it, Mike’s arms were around us both, holding us in a great big bear hug. “Well, hi, Mike,” Marlboro Man said, clearly trying to reconcile the fact that my adult brother had his arms around him. It wasn’t awkward for me; it was just annoying. Mike had interrupted our moment. He was always doing that.

She froze, bracing one hand against the wall. Gild stared up at her, clutching a bundle of fabric in his arms. His sleeves were pushed up past his elbows, and she could see lines of red welts where the gold chains had wrapped around him. There was tension in his shoulders. His expression was too careful, too wary. She wanted to rush into his arms, but they did not open to her. Her mouth opened and closed a few times before she found words. “I was coming to free you.” His jaw tensed, but a second later, his gaze softened. “I was starting to make a bit of a ruckus. Moaning. Chain-rattling. Typical poltergeist stuff. They finally got tired of listening to me and brought me down around sunset.” She eased down the steps. A finger reached for one of the marks on his forearm, but he flinched away. She pulled back. “How did they do it?” “Cornered me outside the tower,” he said. “They had the chains around me before I knew what was happening. I’ve never had to worry about that before. Being…trapped like that.” “I’m so sorry, Gild. If it wasn’t for me—” “You didn’t do this to me,” he interrupted sharply. “But the gold—” “I made the gold. I designed my own prison. How’s that for torture?” He looked briefly like he wanted to smile but couldn’t quite figure out how. “But if I’d told the truth…at anytime, if I’d just told the truth, rather than asking you to spin the gold, too keep coming back, to keep helping me—” “Then you would be dead.

With a wail of fury, the prince raised his sword and began to charge the villain, but in that same moment, the Erlking fired an arrow tipped in pure gold. The prince screamed. He dropped the sword and fell to his knees, cradling his arm. The arrow had not gone completely through but remained lodged in his wrist. With a snarl, he looked up and staggered back to his feet. “You should have aimed to kill,” he told the Erlking. But the villain merely smiled. “I do not want you dead. I want you to suffer. As I will continue to suffer for the rest of time.” The prince claimed the sword with his other hand. But when he went again to charge for the Erlking—something tugged on his arm, holding him in place. He looked down at the bloodied arrow shaft trapped in his limb. The Erlking rose from the throne. Black magic sparked in the air between them. “That arrow now tethers you to this castle,” he said. “Your spirit no longer belongs to the confines of your mortal body, but will be forever trapped within these walls. From this day into eternity, your soul belongs to me.” The Erlking lifted his hands and darkness cloaked the castle, spreading through the throne room and out to every corner of the forsaken place. “I lay claim to all of this. To you family’s history, your beloved name—and I curse it all. The world will forget you. Your name will be burned from the pages of history. Not even you will remember the love you might have known. Dear prince, you will be forever alone, tormented until the end of time—just as you’ve left me. And you will never understand why. Let this be your fate, until your name, forgotten by all, should be spoken once more.

Zane continued to look at her. Even better, he kept her hand in his, his thumb rubbing up and down the length of her fingers. Over and over. Up and down. It was very rhythmic. And sexual. Her thighs took on a life of their own, getting all hot and shaking slightly. Her mouth went dry, her breasts were jealous of the attention her hand was getting and her hormones were singing the “Hallelujah Chorus.” Obviously she needed intensive therapy…or maybe just sex. Zane’s eyes darkened. The muscles in his face tightened, and he stared at her with a hawkish expression. Had he been anyone else, she would have sworn that he’d just had a physical awakening of his own. Awareness crackled around them, like self-generated lightning. The tightness in her chest eased just enough for her to suck in a breath, which was really good, because the next second it all came rushing out again when he kissed her. Just like that. With no warning, Zane Nicholson bent his head and claimed her mouth. It wasn’t a movie-perfect kiss. They didn’t magically melt into each other. Instead their noses bumped, and somehow the hand still holding hers got trapped between them. But all that was fairly insignificant when compared with the intense, sensual heat generated by the pressure of his lips on hers. That part was exactly right. Not too hard, not too soft. When he moved against her, need shot through her body. Had she been breathing again, she would have whimpered. Had he tried to pull away, she would have fallen at his feet and begged him not to stop. Somehow he released her hand and pulled his free. He wrapped his arms around her and hauled her against him so her entire body pressed against his. The man was a rock. Big, unyielding and warmed by the sun. She wanted to snuggle even closer. She wanted to rip off her clothes and give the goats something to talk about. She wanted-- He licked her lower lip. The unexpected moist heat made her gasp as fire raced through her. Every singed nerve ending vibrated with need for more. The masculine, slightly piney scent of him surrounded her. Operating only on instinct, she parted her lips to allow him entry. She had a single heartbeat to brace herself for the power of his tongue touching hers. Then he swept inside and blew her away.

If you have the option to not think about or even consider history, whether you learned it right or not, or whether it even deserves consideration, that’s how you know you’re on board the ship that serves hors d’oeuvres and fluffs your pillows, while others are out at sea, swimming or drowning, or clinging to little inflatable rafts that they have to take turns keeping inflated, people short of breath, who’ve never even heard of the words hors d’oeuvres or fluff. Then someone from up on the yacht says, “It’s too bad those people down there are lazy, and not as smart and able as we are up here, we who have built these strong, large, stylish boats ourselves, we who float the seven seas like kings.” And then someone else on board says something like, “But your father gave you this yacht, and these are his servants who brought the hors d’oeuvres.” At which point that person gets tossed overboard by a group of hired thugs who’d been hired by the father who owned the yacht, hired for the express purpose of removing any and all agitators on the yacht to keep them from making unnecessary waves, or even referencing the father or the yacht itself. Meanwhile, the man thrown overboard begs for his life, and the people on the small inflatable rafts can’t get to him soon enough, or they don’t even try, and the yacht’s speed and weight cause an undertow. Then in whispers, while the agitator gets sucked under the yacht, private agreements are made, precautions are measured out, and everyone quietly agrees to keep on quietly agreeing to the implied rule of law and to not think about what just happened. Soon, the father, who put these things in place, is only spoken of in the form of lore, stories told to children at night, under the stars, at which point there are suddenly several fathers, noble, wise forefathers. And the boat sails on unfettered. If you were fortunate enough to be born into a family whose ancestors directly benefited from genocide and/or slavery, maybe you think the more you don’t know, the more innocent you can stay, which is a good incentive to not find out, to not look too deep, to walk carefully around the sleeping tiger. Look no further than your last name. Follow it back and you might find your line paved with gold, or beset with traps.

ever. Amen. Thank God for self-help books. No wonder the business is booming. It reminds me of junior high school, where everybody was afraid of the really cool kids because they knew the latest, most potent putdowns, and were not afraid to use them. Dah! But there must be another reason that one of the best-selling books in the history of the world is Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus by John Gray. Could it be that our culture is oh so eager for a quick fix? What a relief it must be for some people to think “Oh, that’s why we fight like cats and dogs, it is because he’s from Mars and I am from Venus. I thought it was just because we’re messed up in the head.” Can you imagine Calvin Consumer’s excitement and relief to get the video on “The Secret to her Sexual Satisfaction” with Dr. GraySpot, a picture chart, a big pointer, and an X marking the spot. Could that “G” be for “giggle” rather than Dr. “Graffenberg?” Perhaps we are always looking for the secret, the gold mine, the G-spot because we are afraid of the real G-word: Growth—and the energy it requires of us. I am worried that just becoming more educated or well-read is chopping at the leaves of ignorance but is not cutting at the roots. Take my own example: I used to be a lowly busboy at 12 East Restaurant in Florida. One Christmas Eve the manager fired me for eating on the job. As I slunk away I muttered under my breath, “Scrooge!” Years later, after obtaining a Masters Degree in Psychology and getting a California license to practice psychotherapy, I was fired by the clinical director of a psychiatric institute for being unorthodox. This time I knew just what to say. This time I was much more assertive and articulate. As I left I told the director “You obviously have a narcissistic pseudo-neurotic paranoia of anything that does not fit your myopic Procrustean paradigm.” Thank God for higher education. No wonder colleges are packed. What if there was a language designed not to put down or control each other, but nurture and release each other to grow? What if you could develop a consciousness of expressing your feelings and needs fully and completely without having any intention of blaming, attacking, intimidating, begging, punishing, coercing or disrespecting the other person? What if there was a language that kept us focused in the present, and prevented us from speaking like moralistic mini-gods? There is: The name of one such language is Nonviolent Communication. Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication provides a wealth of simple principles and effective techniques to maintain a laser focus on the human heart and innocent child within the other person, even when they have lost contact with that part of themselves. You know how it is when you are hurt or scared: suddenly you become cold and critical, or aloof and analytical. Would it not be wonderful if someone could see through the mask, and warmly meet your need for understanding or reassurance? What I am presenting are some tools for staying locked onto the other person’s humanness, even when they have become an alien monster. Remember that episode of Star Trek where Captain Kirk was turned into a Klingon, and Bones was freaking out? (I felt sorry for Bones because I’ve had friends turn into Cling-ons too.) But then Spock, in his cool, Vulcan way, performed a mind meld to determine that James T. Kirk was trapped inside the alien form. And finally Scotty was able to put some dilithium crystals into his phaser and destroy the alien cloaking device, freeing the captain from his Klingon form. Oh, how I wish that, in my youth or childhood,

Frank Baum’s book the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which appeared in 1990, is widely recognized to be a parable for the Populist campaign of William Jennings Bryan, who twice ran for president on the Free Silver platform- vowing to replace the gold standard with a bimetallic system that would allow the free creation of silver money alongside gold. As with the Greenbackers, one of the main constituencies for the movement was debtors: particularly, Midwestern farm families such as Dorothy’s, who had been facing a massive wave of foreclosures during the severe recession of the 1890s. According to the Populist reading, the Wicked Witches of the East and West represent the East and West Coast bankers (promoters of and benefactors from the tight money supply), the Scarecrow represented the farmers (who didn’t have the brains to avoid the debt trap), the Tin Woodsman was the industrial proletariat (who didn’t have the heart to act in solidarity with the farmers), the Cowardly Lion represented the political class (who didn’t have the courage to intervene). The yellow brick road, silver slippers, emerald city, and hapless Wizard presumably speak for themselves. “Oz” is of course the standard abbreviation for “ounce.

There’s plenty of food here,” Erik said dismissively. “We have fish traps and eel traps, we net wildfowl and eat well. And the prospect of silver and gold buys a lot of wheat, barley, oats, meat, fish, and ale.

My dear Countess,” a fluting voice said at my right ear, and Lady Tamara’s soft hand slid along my arm, guiding me toward the lowest tier near the fireplace. Several people moved away, and we sank down onto the cushions there. Tamara gestured to one of the hovering foot-servants, and two glasses of wine were instantly brought. “Did I not predict that you would show us the way at the races as well?” “I won only once,” I said, fighting against embarrassment. Deric was grinning. “Beat me,” he said. “Nearly beat Renna.” “I had the best horse,” I countered. For a moment the conversation turned from me to the races the week before. It had been a sudden thing, arranged on the first really nice day we’d had, and though the course was purported to be rough, I had found it much easier than riding mountain trails. As Deric described the last obstacles of the race in which I had beaten him, I saw the shy red-haired Lord Geral listening with a kind of ardent expression in his eyes. He was another who often sought me out for dances but rarely spoke otherwise. Might my rose and ring have come from him? Tamara’s voice recalled my attention “…the way with swords as well, dear Countess?” I glanced at her, sipping at my wine as I mentally reached for the subject. “It transpires,” Tamara said with a glinting smile, “that our sharpest wits are also experts at the duel. Almost am I willing to rise at dawn, just to observe you at the cut and the thrust.” I opened my mouth to disclaim any great prowess with the sword, then realized that I’d walk right into her little verbal trap if I did so. Now, maybe I’m not any kind of a sharp wit, but I wasn’t going to hand myself over for trimming so easily. So I just smiled and sipped at my wine. Fialma’s faint, die-away voice was just audible on Tamara’s other side. “Tamara, my love, that is not dueling, but mere swordplay.” Tamara’s blue eyes rounded with perplexity. “True, true, I had forgotten.” She smiled suddenly, her fan waving slowly in query mode. “An academic question: Is it a real duel when one is favored by the opponent?” Fialma said, “Is it a real contest, say, in a race when the better rider does not ride?” She turned her thin smile to Shevraeth. “Your grace?” The Marquis bowed slightly, his hands at an oblique angle. “If a stake is won,” he said, “it is a race. If the point draws blood, it is a duel.” A murmur of appreciative laughter met this, and Fialma sighed ever so slightly. “You honor us,” she murmured, sweeping her fan gracefully in the half circle of Intimate Confidence, “with your liberality…” She seated herself at the other side of the fireplace and began a low-voiced conversation with Lady Dara, the heir to a northern duchy. Just beyond Fialma’s waving fan, Lord Flauvic’s metal-gold eyes lifted from my face to Shevraeth’s to Tamara’s, then back to me. What had I missed? Nee’s cheeks were glowing, but that could have been her proximity to the fire. Branaric spoke then, saluting Shevraeth with his wineglass. “Duel or dabble, I’d hie me to those practices, except I just can’t stomach rough work at dawn. Now, make them at noon, and I’m your man!” More laughter greeted this, and Bran turned to Flauvic. “How about you? Join me in agitating for a decent time?” Lord Flauvic also had a fan, but he had not opened it. Holding it horizontally between his fingers in the mode of the neutral observer, he said, “Not at any time, Tlanth. You will forgive me if I am forced to admit that I am much too lazy?

felt like the Grinch after stealing all the presents. The Whos down in Whoville really didn’t need the trappings of Christmas to celebrate the season. They were happy anyway, and so was she.

He felt like the Grinch after stealing all the presents. The Whos down in Whoville really didn’t need the trappings of Christmas to celebrate the season. They were happy anyway, and so was she.

God refines with afflictions, trials, and tribulations, the heat of which separates impurities such as unforgiveness, strife, bitterness, anger, envy, and so forth from the character of God in our lives. Sin easily hides where there is no heat of trials and afflictions. In times of prosperity and success, even a wicked man will seem kind and generous. Under the heat of trials, however, the impurities surface. There was a time in my life when I went through intense trials such as I had never faced before. I became rude and harsh with those closest to me. My family and friends began to avoid me. I cried out to the Lord, “Where is all this anger coming from? It wasn’t here before!” The Lord responded, “Son, it is when they liquefy gold in fire that the impurities show up.” He then asked a question that changed my life. “Can you see the impurities in gold before it is put in the fire?” “No,” I answered. “But that doesn’t mean they were not there,” He said. “When the fire of trials hit you, these impurities surfaced. Though hidden to you, they were always visible to Me. So now you have a choice that will determine your future. You can remain angry, blaming your wife, friends, pastor, and the people you work with, or you can see this dross of sin for what it is and repent, receive forgiveness, and I will take My ladle and remove these impurities from your life.

Every time Amazons swarmed beneath them, demanding their surrender, Hazel made a crate of jewelry explode, burying their enemies in a Niagara Falls of gold and silver. When they got to the bottom of the ladder, they found a scene that looked like Mardi Gras Armageddon—Amazons trapped up to their necks in bead necklaces, several more upside down in a mountain of amethyst earrings, and a battle forklift buried in silver charm bracelets.

Promises are like spiderwebs we weave to trap our own dreams, but dreams have a way of thinning out until you’re left with nothing but the web.

The fervour accompanying these events may be deceptive. If it expresses nothing more than the zeal with which the countries of the East are casting aside the bonds of ideology, or if it is a mimetic fervour - a tribute, as it were, to those liberal countries where all liberty has already been traded in for a technically easy life - then we shall have found out definitively what freedom is worth, and that it is probably never to be discovered a second time. History offers no second helpings. On the other hand, it could be that the present thaw in the East may be as disastrous in the long term as the excess of carbon dioxide in the upper atmosphere, that it may bring about a political greenhouse effect, and so overheat human relations on the planet that the melting of the Communist ice-sheet will cause Western seaboards to be submerged. Odd that we should be in such absolute fear of the melting of the polar ice, and look upon it as a climatic catastrophe, while we aspire with every democratic bone in our bodies to the occurrence of just such an event on the political plane. If in the old days the USSR had released its gold reserves onto the world market, that market would have been completely destabilized. Today, by putting back into circulation their vast accumulated store of freedom, the Eastern countries could quite easily destabilize that very fragile balance of Western values which strives to ensure that freedom no longer emerges as action but only as a virtual and consensual form of interaction; no longer as a drama but merely as the universal psychodrama of liberalism. A sudden infusion of freedom as a real currency, as violent and active transcendence, as Idea, would be in every way catastrophic for our present air-conditioned redistribution of values. Yet this is precisely what we are asking of the East: freedom, the image of freedom, in exchange for the material signs of freedom. This is an absolutely diabolical contract, by virtue of which one signatory is in danger of losing their soul, and the other of losing their creature comforts. But perhaps - who knows? - this may, after all, be the best thing for both sides. Those societies that were formerly masked - Communist societies - have been unmasked. What is their face like? As for us, we dropped the mask long ago and have for a long time been without either mask or face. We are also without memory. We have reached the point of searching the water for signs of a memory that has left no traces, hoping against hope that something might remain when even the water's molecular memory has faded away. So it goes for our freedom: we would be hard put to it to produce a single sign of it, and we have been reduced to postulating its infinitesimal, intangible, undetectable existence in a (programmatic, operational) environment so highly dilute that in truth only a spectre of freedom floats there still, in a memory every bit as evanescent as water's.

If you were fortunate enough to be born into a family whose ancestors directly benefited from genocide and/or slavery, maybe you think the more you don’t know, the more innocent you can stay, which is a good incentive to not find out, to not look too deep, to walk carefully around the sleeping tiger. Look no further than your last name. Follow it back and you might find your line paved with gold, or beset with traps.

I see,' said the Patrician sweetly. 'You feel, perhaps, that it would be a marvellous thing to go to the Counterweight Continent and bring back a shipload of gold?' Rincewind had a feeling that some sort of trap was being set. 'Yes?' he ventured. 'And if every man on the shores of the Circle Sea had a mountain of gold of his own? Would that be a good thing? What would happen? Think carefully.' Rincewind's brow furrowed. He thought. 'We'd all be rich?' The way the temperature fell at his remark told him that it was not the correct one.

Have I ever asked you for anything? Then you’ll know how much I mean this: do not take Sevro with you. As a favor to me. Tell him to stay here.” “He won’t.” “He will if you tell him to.” “No, he won’t.” I pause my packing, look at Victra’s pleading eyes. “We both know I would have to knock him unconscious and leave him here hogtied.” She shrugs her shoulders, suggesting she would be fine with that plan. “I can’t do that to him.” “But you can take him to Venus? Where he’s likely to die?” “I can’t manipulate him,” I say. “I won’t. Even if I do, we both know he’ll be right behind me in another, slower ship.” “Then I’ll put his leg in a bear trap.” “He’ll just chew it off.” “True.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking competition is your worst enemy. But as you’ve read, it can be one of your greatest assets. You can build businesses out of competitors’ weaknesses. They’re also a gold mine of valuable data and can be used to create trust with your prospects and respect in your industry. So the next time you’re wondering how to beat the competition, remember what Michael Corleone said: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” It’s advice worth keeping in mind.

Put it another way: the saint is the one who does the terribly difficult thing of climbing the ladder of spiritual ascent, a ladder that is coated with the venerable gold of the religious tradition. All will praise him if he makes it to the top. The knight of faith, the real sinner, is climbing, too, only he is climbing up a Babel tower of his own building. He is seeking unauthorized access to heaven. He wants to know, like Faust, like Prometheus (who are his only gods) what secrets they are that Jehovah so jealously guards. In plain terms, he wants to know the truth that orthodoxy is afraid to know, for which it can make no room on its narrow shelf of holy and well-worn relics. The saint takes a spiritual journey along the path prescribed and well-beaten with holy footprints. He uses the conventional doctrines and symbols to their best advantage. But the sinner, the real sinner, dares to question and even to reject those forms and names and paths. If he can leap high and far enough, he will even get, for a moment, beyond all our sheltering religious systems, all our inherited philosophies and worldviews, and he will reach the Void of outer space: the bare Suchness which no doctrine can contain and which mandates no doctrine. The Nihil, the Nothing. It is an airless heaven he has reached for a moment, but one where the stars shine all the brighter for it. He will return to earth, to walk among the familiar landmarks and familiar faces, but no longer familiar to himself. The Eden of simplicity and convention and assumption is forever barred for him, though all his contemporaries still sport blissfully within. They may see him as trapped in Hell, like Milton’s Satan, but he would rather rule it than be a docile slave in heaven.

You got this.” I turn just before I exit the booth, connecting our eyes. “For me. Sing for me.” I hear the difference immediately. I don’t know if it’s Amber’s miracle tea that has saved more than one voice on a rough night, or if it was our pep talk, but Kai nails it. She measures her breathing, every phrase spaced as it should be. Every note, properly supported. And emotion . . . God, as jaded as I am, it takes a lot for me to get goosebumps, but my goosebumps have goosebumps when she sings the lyrics this time. I don’t stop her once. I’m afraid to, scared I’ll ruin something magnificent by meddling with it. And when I told her to sing for me, I didn’t expect her to sing to me, but she does, stretching a live wire between her eyes and mine. I’m not only transfixed, but also painfully aroused by the whole thing. It’s so incredibly personal to have my words in her mouth. It’s almost an erotic experience to see something that came from my mind, from my heart, dwelling inside of her. I scoot under the board as far as I can so these guys can’t tease me about getting a hard on for a second verse. My synesthesia is in overdrive. I close my eyes, trapping all the colors the music shows me beneath my eyelids, not sharing them with anyone. Bright gold mixed with blue and green, a musical paisley splashed across the palette of my mind, splashed across my senses.

bringing in folding chairs to place in the aisles. She didn’t know Reverend Kelley, but she had met his elder daughter, Kim Randall, through her community service, and her heart went out to the Kelley family. The life of every clergyman in the region was at risk, including Dewan’s life, a thought she could hardly bear. But everyone had to be wondering who the killer would target as his next victim. With her head held high and a brave expression on her face, she entered the sanctuary and found her spot in the front row between Deacon Fuqua and his wife, Dionne. She leaned across and spoke to the deacon. “Should someone adjust the air-conditioning? With so many people packed inside the church, it’s bound to get hot.” “It’s being done,” Deacon Fuqua told her. “Can you believe this crowd? I see God’s hand in this prayer vigil that Dewan organized.” “God’s hand is in everything my husband does,” she said. A flurry of activity up on the podium at the front of the sanctuary gained Tasha’s attention. The members of the choir, decked out in their white and gold robes, were taking their places and preparing to sing God’s praises. She closed her eyes, her every thought a prayer for all those whose hearts were heavy tonight. Patsy and Elliott Floyd had arrived in time to find seats in the middle aisle, a few pews from the back of the building. As she glanced around, Patsy was pleased to see so many of her parishioners here this evening. She had sent out e-mails to the entire congregation and made numerous personal phone calls. Tonight’s prayer vigil was of great importance on several different levels. First and foremost, Bruce Kelley needed the combined strength of this type of group praying. Second, holding this vigil at the black Baptist church went a long way toward bridging the gap between black and white Christians in the area. Third, this was an example of how all churches, regardless of their doctrine, could support one another. And coming together to pray for one of their own would bring strength and comfort to the ministers and their families who were living each day with fear in their hearts. As they sat quietly side by side, Elliott reached between them and took her hand in his. They had been married for nearly thirty years, and they had stayed together through thick and thin. They had argued often in the early years, mostly because Elliott had never been at home and she’d been trapped there with two toddlers. She had not been as understanding as she should have been. After all, Elliott had been holding down a part-time job and putting

I took a step away, pulling my sheets over her and intending to take a position in the armchair by the fire for the night but she caught my hand before I could leave. I looked at her in surprise and found her eyes open, her gaze locked on mine. “Don’t go,” she breathed, her grip tightening. “I don’t think you really-” “Please don’t leave me alone,” she begged and the vulnerability in her voice broke down any further protests I’d been going to make. She sat up a little and tugged on my arm, trying to pull me down into the bed with her. And I couldn’t really deny the fact that I’d thought about getting her in my bed more than once before. Not that I’d lay a finger on her in her current state but even seeing her here, surrounded by gold and half undressed was sending zips of turbulent energy right through me. She pulled on my hand again and I gave up trying to talk myself out of it as I kicked my shoes off and got in beside her. She smiled at me and it wasn’t sarcastic or taunting, the difference that made taking my breath away for a moment. I settled back against the pillows and she rolled against me, pressing her nearly naked body flush to mine. I could feel myself getting hard just from that small amount of contact. I tried to prise her away from me but she wriggled closer, pressing her full breasts against me and giving me a clear view of them trying to break free of the confines of her bra. “Fuck, Roxy, I cant sleep next to you while you’re dressed like that,” I said, rolling her away from me more forcefully. She blinked up at me in confusion for a moment before pushing herself upright and looking down at her undressed state. “Oh, sorry,” she mumbled before pulling off the unbuttoned shirt and throwing it to the floor. “Better?” My mouth dried up and a growl escaped me as the Dragon writhed beneath my skin. “You need to be putting more on, not taking things off,” I said tersely. She huffed like I was the one who was being ridiculous. “Give me your shirt then,” she demanded, reaching out to pull at my black t-shirt. “I don’t think it will help if I start taking off my clothes too,” I said, catching her wrist to stop her. “You’re so fucking bossy,” she muttered, a bit of her usual fire rising to the surface. “Just do as you’re told for once.” Before I could respond to that, she shoved my hand aside and moved to straddle me in one quick movement. I was so surprised that for a moment I couldn’t even react as she yanked on my shirt and pulled it over my head. My hands found her waist, my thumbs brushing against her hip bones as she looked down at me with her dark hair tumbling around her shoulders and that sexy as sin underwear begging me to touch it. She laughed as she waved the shirt at me triumphantly, doing a little victory dance which meant she was grinding right against my hard-on and sending my body haywire. Before I could say or do anything, she pulled the shirt over her head and covered herself with it. I was so much bigger than her that it fell right down to pool around her thighs, trapping my hands beneath the material where I still held her. Her gaze locked with mine and for a moment it was like none of the shit that had passed between us had ever happened and we were just us, alone...in my bed. (DariusPOV)

As though nature concealed a trap, Cathy had from the first a face of innocence. Her hair was gold and lovely; wide-set hazel eyes with upper lids that drooped made her look mysteriously sleepy. Her nose was delicate and thin, and her cheekbones high and wide, sweeping down to a small chin so that her face was heart-shaped. Her mouth was well shaped and well lipped but abnormally small-- what used to be called a rosebud. Her ears were very little, without lobes, and they pressed so close to her head that even with her hair combed up they made no silhouette. They were thin flaps sealed against her head.

A Treatise on Money, published in 1930, is an excellent example of Keynes’s passion for generalization. In essence, Keynes built an exceedingly complicated conceptual apparatus to show how an economy on the gold standard could, under certain conditions, fall into a low-employment trap. If the monetary authority was prevented from lowering the long-term interest rate to a level consonant with investors’ expectations, and if domestic costs of production prevented the achievement of an export surplus equal to what people wished to lend abroad, the result would be an ‘excess’ of saving over investment, a sagging price level, and a ‘jammed’ economy. This was Britain’s fate in the 1920s.

The wound that was made when white people came and took all that they took has never healed. An unattended wound gets infected. Becomes a new kind of wound like the history of what actually happened became a new kind of history. All these stories that we haven't been telling all this time, that we haven't been listening to, are just part of what we need to heal. Not that we're broken. And don't make the mistake of calling us resilient. To not have been destroyed, to not have given up, to have survived is not a badge of honor. Would you call an attempted murder victim resilient? When we go to tell our stories, people think we want it to have gone differently. People want to say things like "sore losers" and "move on already, quit playing the blame game." But is it a game? Only those who have lost as much as we have see the particularly nasty slice of smile on someone who thinks they're winning when they say "Get over it." This is the thing: If you have the option to not think about or even consider history, whether you learned it right or not, or whether it even deserves consideration, that’s how you know you’re on board the ship that serves hors d’oeuvres and fluffs your pillows, while others are out at sea, swimming or drowning, or clinging to little inflatable rafts that they have to take turns keeping inflated, people short of breath, who’ve never even heard of the words hors d’oeuvres or fluff. Then someone from up on the yacht says, “It’s too bad those people down there are lazy, and not as smart and able as we are up here, we who have built these strong, large, stylish boats ourselves, we who float the seven seas like kings.” And then someone else on board says something like, “But your father gave you this yacht, and these are his servants who brought the hors d’oeuvres.” At which point that person gets tossed overboard by a group of hired thugs who’d been hired by the father who owned the yacht, hired for the express purpose of removing any and all agitators on the yacht to keep them from making unnecessary waves, or even referencing the father or the yacht itself. Meanwhile, the man thrown overboard begs for his life, and the people on the small inflatable rafts can’t get to him soon enough, or they don’t even try, and the yacht’s speed and weight cause an undertow. Then in whispers, while the agitator gets sucked under the yacht, private agreements are made, precautions are measured out, and everyone quietly agrees to keep on quietly agreeing to the implied rule of law and to not think about what just happened. Soon, the father, who put these things in place, is only spoken of in the form of lore, stories told to children at night, under the stars, at which point there are suddenly several fathers, noble, wise forefathers. And the boat sails on unfettered. If you were fortunate enough to be born into a family whose ancestors directly benefited from genocide and/or slavery, maybe you think the more you don’t know, the more innocent you can stay, which is a good incentive to not find out, to not look too deep, to walk carefully around the sleeping tiger. Look no further than your last name. Follow it back and you might find your line paved with gold, or beset with traps.

A lady recently said to me, “Lebo, the passion you have for women is so deep. I don’t think I have half the passion you have for my own self and I’m a woman.” Truth is, every man inherently has this drive whether they aware of it or not. We, as men, whether gay or straight, live to unravel the sensual mystery/beauty of the feminine energy. Not to sound like a male chauvinist, but I believe this is one of the biggest reasons why as Tom Ford said, “Men are often better designers for women than other women.” It is this approach of “mining” and wanting to “unravel” the sensual feminine mystery/beauty that serves as our biggest drive or motivation. Male designers (i.e. David tlale, Gert Johan Coetzee, Christian Louboutin, Tomford, ME, etc.) are very exceptional at their craft because I believe they have this deep acknowledgement that they were first and foremost “CALLED” TO PUT WOMEN ON A PEDESTAL, and that means understanding that women want to feel overwhelmingly desired rather than rationally considered. By the way, women are not given the luxury to unravel their own sensual feminine mystery/beauty as men are. Women in general tend to have a very limited perspective of themselves which prevents them from reaching their fullest sensual feminine potential. Blame it on the society. Their biggest challenge is seeing themselves beyond their insecurities; they’re trapped by their own views of themselves particularly as women in a patriarchal society. But men (NOT patriarchal men), on the other hand, are able to see beyond women’s insecurities; they can see women’s potential than most women can see themselves. AND AWAKENED MODERN MEN WANT TO FULLY MAXIMIZE THAT POTENTIAL. This is why I strongly believe that a man’s ultimate role in the 21st century is to help carve the definition of what it means to be a woman. I know most feminists are pissed to hear me say that. The legendary photographer Peter Lindbergh said, “The most important part of fashion photography, for me, is not the models; it is not the clothes. It’s that you are responsible for defining what a woman today is. That, I think, is my job.” If women are diamonds/gold, then men got to be jewelry designers.

Rae gets me pure and simple, my frustrations with the loop tape that is my thought process, the boiling pot that is my body. She feels my frustrations because she got a mix-up, too; she's not really a girl. Like, she's got a pussy covered with thick hair and she's got a full rack, but she's really a guy trapped in a gold mine of a stripper's body. As a he-she, Rae knows what it's like to feel bananas. Just like I'm chaotic neurotransmitters imprisoned by flesh and bone, she's masculinity poured into a body that curves like a Coke bottle.

It seemed a complete waste of time to reply to your arguments. I have already myself refuted them over and over again, and Philip Melancthon, in his unsurpassed volume on the doctrines of theology, has trampled them in the dust. That book of his, to my mind, deserves not merely to live as long as books are read, but to take its place in the Church’s canon; whereas your book, by comparison, struck me as so worthless and poor that my heart went out to you for having defiled your lovely, brilliant flow of language with such vile stuff. I thought it outrageous to convey material of so low a quality in the trappings of such rare eloquence; it is like using gold or silver dishes to carry garden rubbish or dung.[

The Impossible Banquet by Stewart Stafford Awakened by a stinging sun, Radiant wings of flame and gold, I breathe in dawn’s virgin hopes, With icy shards of doubting cold. Am I not my parents' child? Lost my way on a freedom roam, Invitation to a tempting feast, Over family, love, and home. Trapped within the world's crosshairs, Locked down with time to burn, Casting runestones, but too late, For visible escape, I yearn. An obsessive lady by my side, A judge of karma infernal, She took my life with her own hand, Bequeathing a wound eternal. Tomorrow’s hopes are now a ghost, No merciful release to illuminate, I wish to scrub away the past, A vain rebirth to change my fate. But I’m caught in the Reaper's maw, I weep for you who procrastinate, Sold my soul on Devil's Bridge, Then dragged through a fiery gate. Hope, community, society crash, Towering feats of grotesquery, You may not grieve for me who's gone, Time's cruel critic is all you see. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

The dining hall itself was splendid; high-vaulted, with enough decorative pennants and banners and hanging crystal to suggest that the master of this manse desired to at least imitate the trappings of a nobility he did not possess through natural descent. Oil-lamps of filigree and gold illuminated the great room while the profusion of precious objects far exceeded what he had encountered in the hallway. It was an ostentatious display of wealth that bordered on the obscene.

I stood under the arch and absorbed the image. Rose and blue and ancient oriental rugs held pale pink loveseats with curved arms and perfectly faded silk upholstery. Sheer white-winged angels floated on a ceiling of baby-blue sky with clouds of spun gold. And eastern-facing windows of blue stained glass held paler blue stained-glass crosses in the middle. Daylight and streetlamps were obliterated by thick velvet curtains with gold tasseled ropes, and a small, dusty beam of faded light managed to seep past the heavy drapes, making it look like the tail end of the day instead of the early part of the afternoon. His home was lavish and seductive, and I thought it rare that a man living alone could create a thing of such intensity. For the second time in two days I found myself having to adjust my opinion of Michael Bon Chance. It was a marble fountain that ended my reverie and brought me back down to earth. It was the true centerpiece of the room, with water slowly seeping from a cracked jug and dripping over a statue of a nude couple, bathing. I cringed at the sound. Michael looked at me. "Something wrong?" "It's the dripping." He went over to the bar and poured me a glass of wine. "You're tense. Maybe this will help." I took a sip from the glass and put it down on the fireplace mantel. I caught a glimpse of Michael and myself in the mirror above the fire and felt trapped by how beautiful we looked in the rose glow of the dragon's-head lamps with pale pink bulbs.

You did what you felt you had to do, and when it was done, you lived with it. But he knew, and he would know, that he had once climbed to a high and lonely place, that with the climbing irons and the ropes he had reached the last sheer drop before the summit. He had swung there in the frosty gale until finally, too numbed to make the final effort, he had climbed back down the way he had come, back down to a niche where he could be warm and safe and out of the wind. He knew he would read and hear about the ones who made it all the way to the high peaks. The lower slopes of the mountains were warm and easy, and the trails were marked. The high places were dangerous. He knew how close he had come, and he could read about the others who had made it. Their power and their decisions would affect him. And all his life he would wonder just how it felt to be up there. As he got behind the wheel he found himself wondering if it was a happy ending. Happy endings were reserved for stories for children. An adult concerned himself with feasible endings. And this one as feasible, as an ending or as a beginning. You had to put your own puzzle together, and nobody would ever come along to tell you how well or how poorly you had done. "The Trap of Solid Gold" in "End of the Tiger and Other Stories

As Karen returned from the restroom, the gate agent explained the order of boarding: People with disabilities or in wheelchairs, people over the age of 100, people who act like they’re over the age of 100, families with children (children are two-year olds and younger, not fifteen-year olds), in-uniform military personnel, first class, business class, platinum frequent flyer members, gold members, silver members, bronze members, associate members, people who just applied for the airline’s credit card five minutes ago, group 1, groups 2 through 10 in that order, and finally, anyone too clueless to figure out how to get into one of the groups already called. We had “group 8” boarding passes. We felt smug as we pushed our way past the five remaining passengers who were lower on the boarding list than us. I don’t like being trapped in a small place, such as an airplane, with a large cross-section of humanity. I think airlines should announce before every flight, “Listen up people. We’re all sealed in here together for the next four hours, so try not to be annoying until the flight is over. Once you exit the plane, then you can whistle, hum, fart, snore, talk baby talk, take your shoes off and put on as much bad perfume as you want.” I think this would make air travel more bearable. We arrived in El Paso with enough time to pick up the rental car, have dinner (at Carlos and Mickey’s) and buy groceries for the week: peanut butter, jelly, bread, water, blue corn chips, peppermint patties, animal crackers and beer.

Our province is the greatest of all of the provinces because we are safe and we are free,” Mrs. Golding said with an air of finality and thence resumed the study of her magazine. Nothing—not anything that Fleck had told her or anything she had learned in the Burrow—had shown Hyacinth the truth of the world as plainly as Mrs. Golding’s statement. They were free. Free, but trapped inside the province walls. Free, but kept in ignorance. Free, but had regulated for them what they could eat and drink and think and say. They were safe but only so long as they kept to society’s expectations. All of these truths sank into Hyacinth’s soul in a single, horrible, breath, and she knew that it couldn’t be different with any of the other provinces. None of them were free. No one was.

For there is no God but God of God's creation of the heavens and the earth in order to create next and find its angels and making it khalifa in the earth and the expulsion of ablys rest in eternal peace and the creation of heaven and fire For there is no God but God send alanbyaʾ and their role in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia for 950 years until Noah called to his words he said Noah is given on the ground of the unbelievers de ballara for there is no God but god awqdt fire must see do it For there is no God but God of Moses fled his country For there is no God but God v is the Jews killed issa for there is no God but God patience aywb gold vision Jacob and enter yusuf into the prison he was in the belly of the shark and the slaughter of yahya and dissemination of zakaria For there is no God but god awdhy alnby out of Muhammad-may peace be upon him and encouraged in the guard and hit on him and broke his quarters and flew daughters expelled from his country For there is no God but God has made an abdomen hamza asd God Hands and feet amputated jafar spare ras musab graphic killing For there is no God but God before its abou bakr he called a friend and left Pharaoh wager right before God in the territories of Omar p called Al-Faruq and their refusal to qarwn unfortunately the trap God! There is no God but God is the beginning and the end of the first and last it pride and greatness and complete it good word it happiness it high class it faith and peace There is no God but God will satisfy the Lord and enter paradise and expel satan and argues the owner when his golo and they posted twjrwa there is no God but God Muhammad is the messenger of God. For no god but Allah create the heavens and the earth and created the creation of Adam and the angels worship him and make it a successor in the land and the expulsion of the devil from his mercy and the creation of heaven and hell For no god but God sent prophets and messengers led by Noah 950 years until called on his people and said Noah Lord, do not destroy everything on the floor of the unbelievers Diarra for no god but God lit the fire to Abraham for no god but God, Moses fled his country For no god but God Tamr Jews killed Jesus for no god but God, the patience of Job, went sight of Jacob and Joseph to enter the prison and was Younis in the belly of the whale slaughter and Yahya Zakaria deployment For no god but God traumatized Prophet Muhammad Allah bless him and encouraged him in the head and beaten on his shoulder and broke Rbaith and divorced daughters and was expelled from his country For no god but God made their belly Hamzah Asadullah And amputated the hand of Jafar and beheaded and killed Musab Sumih For no god but God accepted Abu Bakr was called the friend of God and left Pharaoh Vagrgah in the sea and before that was called Omar al-Faruq and its refusal to Karun Fajsv God to the earth No God but God is the beginning, first and last, and finally, a pride and greatness and perfection, a kind word, a happiness which is a high degree of faith and Islam No God but God, and accept the Lord into heaven and expel the devil and the owner argued with his Lord and Anscheroha Coloha rewarded is no god but God and Mohammed is the Messenger of Allah

Barbie's new face, fashioned by doll sculptor Joyce Clark, was the face of disco. The doll appears in the 1977 catalogue against a black background, as if on the edge of a cavernous dance floor. Light glints off her glossy magenta boa, her burnished gold hair, her luminous diamondlike ring. Gone is the haughty smirk of her early years. Seemingly stupefied by the disco beat, SuperStar Barbie's mouth is set in a broad smile. The revamped Barbie changed the relationship between the doll and the little girl who owned it. Barbie could still function as an object onto which the child projected her future self; but because the doll had the trappings of celebrity, the girl's imagined future had to involve being rich and famous.

You know, witches aren’t the only ones with a magical scent detector—it’s just more developed in us. A lot of the reason why supernaturals don’t like each other has to do with scent—they smell different, smell wrong to each other. It’s hard to like someone who stinks, even if you don’t realize it on a conscious level.” “She’s right.” Victor nodded. “That’s the reason weres don’t like vamps—part of it, anyway.” I was horrified. “You mean we… we stink to you?” And here I had been laying all over him when I was taking his blood. Had he been holding his breath the entire time, trying not to smell me? When he told me I smelled good before, was he lying? Victor must have seen the look on my face because he reached over and grabbed my hand at once. “No, baby—it’s not like that. Not with you,” he protested. “I mean, most vamps smell like the snake cage at the zoo. But not you, you smell like… like…” “Like what?” I asked, pulling my hand away and frowning at him. “You don’t have to lie to me, Victor. If you think I stink—” “You don’t stink!” he growled, obviously frustrated. “You smell good—too Goddamned good.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “What is that supposed to mean?” “It means you smell like a female wolf. Like a wolf going into—” He stopped abruptly and shook his head. “Go on.” Gwendolyn looked amused. “Finish your sentence, big guy. This is getting interesting.” “We’re not here to talk about who stinks and who doesn’t.” Victor’s eyes flashed gold with irritation. “We just want to know what you can tell us about the fucking trap.

66. The Will To Win Means Nothing Without The Will To Train I have met a lot of people over the years who professed that they would do whatever it took to win a race or climb a big mountain. But sometimes the will to win just isn’t enough. In fact, the will to win means nothing if you don’t also have the will to train. The day of the race is the easy bit: all eyes are on you and the adrenalin is running high. But the race or the battle is really won or lost in the build-up: the unglamorous times when it is raining at 5:30 a.m. and you don’t want to get out of your warm bed to go for a run. So, don’t fall into the trap of trying hard but lacking the skills or resources that you can only gain through training. I love the story of Daley Thompson, the decathlete who won gold at two Olympics. He used to say his favourite day of the year to train was Christmas Day, as he knew it would be the only day his competitors wouldn’t be training. That is commitment, and it is part of why he won - he saw it as a chance to get 1/365th quicker than his rivals! So, remember that our goals are reached by how we prepare and train in the many months before crunch time. Train right, and the summit or gold medal will be the inevitable culmination of your commitment. I like that, because it means the rewards go to the dogged rather than the brilliant.

Spread over the extravagant supper table was a silk tapestry of moons and stars and the six symbols of death. Talis couldn’t help but stare at the design, for the weavings glowed and the drawing was animated with a nefarious life of its own. A frightful illustration that seemed to follow his eyes as they perused the tapestry. Etched along the tassels flowed a river of blood, the river leading into the Underworld. Farther up, layers of bodies were piled high, their vicious fumes rising as incense to the lesser demons above, who devoured the mortals’ flesh. Then above them were the taskmasters of the Underworld, great demons with spiked whips. They endlessly struck the lesser demons as punishment for the act of consuming the mortals’ flesh. Arranged around the center of the tapestry were the gods themselves. At the head stood Zagros, the Lord of the Underworld, then Ractan, the Lord of the Dragons, and Ishta, the Lord of the Genie Sorcerers. At the other side hovered Nestria, the Goddess of the Sky, and Nacrea, the Goddess of the Sun, and opposite her was Satvis, the God of Darkness. Between both sets of gods sat two mythological heroes: Nyx the Destroyer and Lord Heti of Calabastria. Here were the triumphant gods, playing with the lives and flesh of all mortals. Talis stifled a groan. Atop the tapestry were glass jars filled with what looked like trapped souls. Their ghastly faces peered out, eyes desperate and longing for freedom. How did they get inside? He felt a sickness rising in his stomach. The dark sorcerers studied him with grave looks, as if they glimpsed something distasteful inside. He could tell they were suspicious of him. He was too young, from a strange land untouched by their power, and to their murmuring voices, unsuitable to attend this grand feast. Now, all he could think about was leaving this wretched city. Whatever danger lay ahead, he’d rather face it than fester here in the insidious poison seeping through the black and gold walls of Darkov. “To your charmed fortune.” A sorcerer raised a crystal vial filled with some bubbling substance. The man appeared to be hundreds of years old. Deep, harsh wrinkles lined his eyes and forehead, and yet his hands were perfectly smooth. He wore a black silk cloak fastened around his neck with a gold broach, ornately designed like the sun. He drank the vial and after a while, he appeared as youthful as a young man. Talis was taken aback at the man’s sudden transformation. He steadied his wine cup with his other hand. “Fortune smiles on you...” “Every day.” The sorcerer frowned at Talis. “You’d be wise to remember that. Without fortune shining on you daily”—he leaned in close to Talis—”your life is at risk.” Turning, the man whisked away and disappeared behind another group of sorcerers mingling in the corner of the room. Talis tried to discover where he’d gone, but the man had vanished. Just then Talis felt a cold hand settle on his right shoulder. He turned, glimpsed the eyes of Aurellia, and resisted the desire to flee. “I see you’ve finally joined us here in our illustrious

and Thomas Anstey Guthrie’s Vice Versa: a Lesson to Fathers, a novel of 1882 about a schoolboy and his father, a City merchant, who exchange bodies and inhabit each others’ lives. The boy’s father is taught how trapped a lively-minded boy can feel when he has ‘no money and few rights’, ‘virtually no way to assert himself in the world around him’.

Bakushan had only been open for a couple of months, but expectations were already sky-high. Still, few people had mentioned the food. Instead, everyone was writing about the up-and-coming chef, Pascal Fox. According to nearly every article, he'd dropped out of college and worked at top French restaurants around the world. Then, at twenty-five and on every "30 under 30" list in existence, he had received an offer to take over L'Escalier, a cathedral-ceilinged white-tablecloth institution in Midtown. But just as New York was ready to inaugurate him into a realm of Immortal Chefs synonymous with a certain level of luxurious precision, Pascal had said he would open a place on his own. He didn't have a location or a concept- or so he'd said in his interviews- just a conviction that he didn't want to fall into the trap of being yet another French chef at another fancy restaurant. So there we were, in front of his brand-new place. It was hard to label it. I had read neo-modernist and Asian-American eclectic. The food was hard to pin down, but the inside was just cool, at least from my sidewalk vantage point. It was 5:45 and already there was a forty-five-minute wait for a spot at one of the communal, no-reservation tables. I looked at the crowd while we waited and saw a couple of girls dressed in tight, short dresses. One of them held a food magazine with Pascal Fox's face on the cover against a blurred kitchen background. I stole a peek at the photo. His eyes were a deep black-brown with a streak of gold. His hair was charmingly messed up, longish bits going every which way, casting shadows on his sculpted cheekbones. That was the other thing. Pascal was exceedingly good-looking. I hadn't paid attention to the hype around his looks, but seeing these girls swoon over his photo made his handsomeness hard to ignore. And... the pictures. I'm only human.

A gray-robed old male stood before them. Not human, but his scent declared nothing other than some sort of Vanir humanoid. His heavy white beard fell to the thin band of rope that served as a belt, his wispy hair long and unbound. Four rings of silver and gold glinted on one of his withered, spotted hands, with small stars blazing in the center of each, trapped in the nearly invisible glass domes. No—not stars. Bryce’s stomach turned over at the minuscule hand that pressed against the other side of the glass. There was no mistaking the desperation in that touch. Fire sprites. Enslaved, all of them. Bought and sold.

She was scared. Without thinking, he slid his hand over hers. Her fingers clenched on his. She turned her head to face him. Their faces were only an inch apart. Up close, he could see gold flecks in her brown eyes. She pressed against him. The noise of the helo made it feel like they were trapped in their own world. He let his gaze run over her face, taking it all in—high cheekbones, long lashes, that stubborn jawline. Then she shifted and pressed her mouth to his. Fuck.

L. Frank Baum’s book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which appeared in 1900, is often held to be a parable for the Populist campaign of William Jennings Bryan, who twice ran for president on the Free Silver platform—vowing to replace the gold standard with a bimetallic system that would allow the free creation of silver money alongside gold.22 As with the Greenbackers, one of the main constituencies for the movement was debtors: particularly, Midwestern farm families such as Dorothy’s, who had been facing a massive wave of foreclosures during the severe recession of the 1890s. According to the Populist reading, the Wicked Witches of the East and West represent the East and West Coast bankers (promoters of and benefactors from the tight money supply), the Scarecrow represented the farmers (who didn’t have the brains to avoid the debt trap), the Tin Woodsman was the industrial proletariat (who didn’t have the heart to act in solidarity with the farmers), the Cowardly Lion represented the political class (who didn’t have the courage to intervene). The yellow brick road, silver slippers, emerald city, and hapless Wizard presumably speak for themselves.23 “Oz” is of course the standard abbreviation for “ounce.”24 As an attempt to create a new myth, Baum’s story was remarkably effective. As political propaganda, less so.

Furl your banners and hang you heads,” muttered the wind, “this is no time for tourney. Cast into my four arms those gaudy trappings, for what can cause you joy, O trees, at such a time as this?” “This rising Sun and the long bright bright day,” the beech cried out. “The setting Sun and the cool dark night,” the oak said quietly. “And the rain,” the pine murmured gratefully, “wit it’s gentle fingers finer than my needles.” The maple was silent. The wind spun around it’s rough gray trunk and sent a shower of gold into the sky. “O wind,” the maple said, “the side passage of the year from cold to heat, from growing to fruition, from birds nesting to their migrations, is joy enough for us. Let us celebrate it, O wind, before the snow lays it’s white fingers on us and bids us be silent for a time.” The maple spoke wistfully, golden leaves tumbling down the day at every word. “You speak of memories,” the wind went on. “I who have roamed the earth have seen suffering and cruelty and sorrow. You who stand so still in one place always must believe me.” “For you, O wind, perhaps it has been a year of sad revelation,” the beech said softly; “but for us it has been a year like all others—rising suns and waxing moons, rains and dews and storms, and the seasons marching in orderly procession around us.” “Ah,” the wind wailed, clutching at gold and scarlet and green, “how can you hold those banners high when evil still stalks the earth?” The trees quivered and were silent. The wind raged around them, and his fury brought down cascades of leaves, which he sent hurling over the dry ground. “We hold our banners high in faith, O wind,” the pine spoke out, lifting its voice so the wind would hear, “emblem for this brief moment of the pledge we have made. We have heard before of these things that you would tell us. The stars have told us many strange tales, and the moon has told us even stranger ones. But we must still be faithful.” “To what?” moaned the wind, annoyed that his words could not deter the trees from their galliard ways. “To the everlasting right at the heart of things,” replied the maple. “Evil has but a little day, O wind, and good has a thousand.” The banners were fading and falling, and the wind laughed to himself that the brave words of the trees must be as thin and fleeting. He stamped and reached high, swept over the ground and leapt aloft, while leaves fell in a gilded shower about him. Cheering at his triumph, he looked through bare branches to the sky, heavy with scudding clouds. Oak, maple, beech were silenced now. Dark trunks stood rooted in the earth, crossed boughs were held uplifted to the heavens. The pine swayed slowly, it’s heraldic blazon of sable and vert gleaming darkly. “Look higher, wind, than those bare boughs. Look wider.” The wind looked, and there, outlined against the sunset gold, on every twig tight buds were tipping: the crimson secret of the oak, the enscaled cradle of the maple, the little sheathed sword of the beech. “Faith, my friend,” the pine said in a whisper, “faith has the last word always.” The wind bowed low, low enough to kiss the leaves that swirled around him in a moment of ecstasy; then the wind went on his way down the archway of the year that was luminous with promise.

Love happens in all kinds of ways. He was right when he said that. Love does happen in all kinds of ways. But our kind happened like the dawn. The dawn doesn't question when to appear. It simply does. He walked into my life with the surety of his presence, and from that point on, the night began to wane. I was trapped in lonely darkness for so long that I couldn't recognize the way the world began to illuminate—not right away. I was blind for so many years that, when my horizon began to brighten, I tried to turn away. To squint and blink and shut my eyes against it because I thought, of course, I couldn't have that. Of course I'd stay in the dark. But I didn't. He showed me what it was to face the sun and not shy away. He let me approach it with my hesitations, let me ease into it without being blinded. Let me choose. I'm in this light with him, basking in its warmth, and even our distance can't take that away. Because no matter where we are, the sun always dawns. No matter where he is, I love him.

I cried out to the Lord, "Where is all this anger coming from? It wasn't here before!" The Lord responded, "Son, it is when they liquefy gold in fire that the impurities show up.

Town Hall Level 1 — Gold Mine, Elixir Collector, Gold Storage, Elixir Storage, Barracks, Army Camp and 2 Cannons. Town Hall Level 2 — second Gold Mine, second Elixir Collector, second Barracks, an Archer Tower and 25 Walls. Town Hall Level 3 — third Gold Mine, third Elixir Collector, second Gold Storage, second Elixir Storage, second Army Camp, first Mortar, an additional 25 Walls and 2 Bombs. Town Hall Level 4 — fourth Gold Mine, fourth Elixir Collector, third Barracks, Laboratory, second Archer Tower, an additional 25 Walls, first Air Defense and 2 Spring Traps. Town Hall Level 5 — fifth Gold Mine, fifth Elixir Collector, third Army Camp, Spell Factory, third Archer Tower, first Wizard Tower, 2 Air Bombs and an additional, 2 Bombs and 25 Walls Town Hall Level 6 — sixth Gold Mine, sixth Elixir Collector, second Mortar, second Wizard Tower, Giant Bomb and an additional 25 walls and 2 spring traps Town Hall Level 7 — first Dark Elixir Storage, first Dark Barracks, fourth Barracks, fourth Army Camp, an additional 2 Cannons, fourth Archer Tower, an additional 50 Walls, third Mortar, 2 Air Defenses an additional 2 Bombs, Giant Bomb, Seeking Air Mine and 2 Hidden Teslas. Town Hall Level 8 — first Dark Elixir Drill, fourth Gold Storage, fourth Elixir Storage, second Dark Barracks, fifth Archer Tower, Wizard Tower, third Hidden Tesla, an additional 50 Walls, 2 Spring Traps, Giant Bomb, 2 Air Bombs and Seeking Air Mine. Town Hall Level 9 — second Dark Elixir Drill, fourth Gold Storage, fourth Elixir Storage, sixth Archer Tower, fourth Wizard Tower, third Air Defense, 2 X-Bows and an additional 25 Walls, Giant Bomb and Seeking Air Mine. Town Hall Level 10 — third Dark Elixir Drill, sixth Cannon, seventh Archer Tower and Inferno Tower