Travel Theme Quotes

As I travel through life, I gather experiences that lie imprinted on the deepest strata of memory, and there they ferment, are transformed, and sometimes rise to the surface and sprout like strange plants from other worlds. What is the fertile humus of the subconscious composed of? Why are certain images converted into recurrent themes in nightmares or writing?

And before long there will be no more milk in bottles delivered to the doorstep or sleepy rural pubs, and the countryside will be mostly shopping centers and theme parks. Forgive me. I don't mean to get upset. But you are taking my world away from me, piece by little piece, and sometimes it just pisses me off. Sorry.

One thing which even the most seasoned and discerning masters of the art of choice do not and cannot choose, is the society to be born into - and so we are all in travel, whether we like it or not. We have not been asked about our feelings anyway. Thrown into a vast open sea with no navigation charts and all the marker buoys sunk and barely visible, we have only two choices left: we may rejoice in the breath-taking vistas of new discoveries - or we may tremble out of fear of drowning. One option not really realistic is to claim sanctuary in a safe harbour; one could bet that what seems to be a tranquil haven today will be soon modernized, and a theme park, amusement promenade or crowded marina will replace the sedate boat sheds. The third option not thus being available, which of the two other options will be chosen or become the lot of the sailor depends in no small measure on the ship's quality and the navigation skills of the sailors. Not all ships are seaworthy, however. And so the larger the expanse of free sailing, the more the sailor's fate tends to be polarized and the deeper the chasm between the poles. A pleasurable adventure for the well-equipped yacht may prove a dangerous trap for a tattered dinghy. In the last account, the difference between the two is that between life and death.

This is natural: one must read Herodotus's book-and every great book-repeatedly; with each reading it will reveal another layer, previously overlooked themes, images, and meanings. For within every great book there are several others.

Perhaps the greatest strike against philosophical pessimism is that its only theme is human suffering. This is the last item on the list of our species’ obsessions and detracts from everything that matters to us, such as the Good, the Beautiful, and a Sparking Clean Toilet Bowl. For the pessimist, everything considered in isolation from human suffering or any cognition that does not have as its motive the origins, nature, and elimination of human suffering is at base recreational, whether it takes the form of conceptual probing or physical action in the world—for example, delving into game theory or traveling in outer space, respectively. And by “human suffering,” the pessimist is not thinking of particular sufferings and their relief, but of suffering itself. Remedies may be discovered for certain diseases and sociopolitical barbarities may be amended. But those are only stopgaps. Human suffering will remain insoluble as long as human beings exist. The one truly effective solution for suffering is that spoken of in Zapffe’s “Last Messiah.” It may not be a welcome solution for a stopgap world, but it would forever put an end to suffering, should we ever care to do so. The pessimist’s credo, or one of them, is that nonexistence never hurt anyone and existence hurts everyone. Although our selves may be illusory creations of consciousness, our pain is nonetheless real.

We all crave latitude in life, yet simultaneously dig ourselves deeper into domestic entrapment. We may dream of traveling light but accumulate as much as we can to keep us burdened and rooted to one spot. And we have no one to blame but ourselves. Because-though we all muse on the theme of escape-we stil find the notion of responsibility irresistible. The career, the house, the dependents, the debt-it grounds us. Provides us with a necessary security, a reason to get upin the morning. It narrows choice and ergo, gives us certainty. And though just about every man I know rails against being so cul-de-saced by domesic burden, we all embrace it. Embrace it with a vengeance.

What each of the early Coney Island parks offered was conceptual travel. A visitor from Manhattan could travel just a short distance to experience pleasures and sights that had normally been possible only on the Grand Tour. As

The Professor noted two nymphs with strawberries on their heads, a DayGlo Amish lady, a mustachioed man in a rainbow apron. He wrote Saturday Night Fever, then crossed it out and wrote Drag Ball + Bollywood and underlined it twice.

James Baldwin famously wrote, 'If I am not what you say I am, then you are not who you think you are.' Redefining women and their roles redefined men and masculinity and vice versa. If the genders were not opposite but a spectrum of variations on some central theme of being human, if there were many ways to execute your role or refuse it, and liberation for each gender was seen as being allowed to take up what had been considered the proper role and goods and even feelings of the other or find some third (or seventh) way, then the citadel would be broken and everyone could travel freely.

Introduction to bits. Things are going up on the curb, every few months. Maybe. Bottle of the inside of the lines of the landing, not as we can set of brightness. But the houses get repayed, man. Anywhere. There’s nowhere else to be late at a number of me? But it’s visible from the house. It’s early evening, but it crackles and perhaps they own. It means that perhaps the result of bubbly waiting for a few moments. I have to flinch at the forthcoming disaster strikes. Nathan: He travels. While most of the hoarded seconds of the moon given flesh. Inanna is that they own. That which does the theme afterwards. They become bitter. Not a level on a few moments I see. Thank you. Yeah. Arty stuff.

One of the central themes of Socratic philosophy was about how to look after our souls in the very best way we can, and nearly all the books of Plato deal with this subject in one way or another.

Behold her, single in the field, Yon solitary Highland Lass! Reaping and singing by herself; Stop here, or gently pass! Alone she cuts and binds the grain, And sings a melancholy strain; O listen! for the vale profound Is overflowing with the sound. No nightingale did ever chaunt More welcome notes to weary bands Of travellers in some shady haunt, Among Arabian sands: A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard In spring-time from the cuckoo-bird Breaking the silence of the seas Among the farthest Hebrides. Will no one tell me what she sings? Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow For old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago: Or is it some more humble lay, Familiar matter of today? Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, That has been, and may be again! Whate'er the theme, the maiden sang As if her song could have no ending; I saw her singing at her work, And o'er the sickle bending; I listened, motionless and still; And as I mounted up the hill The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more.

Likewise, much of science fiction is, at its heart, the story of the search for accessibility or what happens when something we can’t access now—outer space, time travel, telepathy—is or becomes accessible to us.

This is a consistent theme in stories about traveling to the future: Things are always worse when you get there. And I suspect this is because the kind of writer who’s intrigued by the notion of moving forward in time can’t see beyond their own pessimism about being alive. People who want to travel through time are both (a) unhappy and (b) unwilling to compromise anything about who they are. They would rather change every element of society except themselves.

Prolific libraries take on an independent existence, and become living things...We may have chosen its themes, and the general pathways along which it will develop, but we can only stand and watch as it invades all the walls of the room, climbs to the ceiling, annexes the other rooms one by one, expelling anything that gets in the way. It eliminates pictures hanging on the walls, or ornaments that obstruct its advance; it moves on with its necessary but cumbersome acolytes -- stools and ladders -- and forces its owner into constant reorganization since its progress is not linear and calls for ever new kinds of diviion. At the same time, it is undeniably the reflection, the twin image of its master. To anyone with the insight to decode it, the fundamental character of the librarian will emerge as one's eye travels along the bookshelves. indeed no library of any size is like another, none has the same personality. (pp. 30-31)

I'm glad that the rock is heavy and that it feels all right in my heart like an eye in a pot of humus. Let's write long letters on grand themes, fish sandwiches, egg sandwiches and cheese; or travelling in Mexico, Italy and Australia. I eat a lot so I won't get drunk and then I drink a lot so I'll feel excited and then I've gone away I don't know where or with whom and can't remember whom from except that I'm back with my paper bag and next time my face won't come with me.

An indigenous group native to the vast jungles of Borneo, the Iban considered the Bejalai central to their culture. The general idea is you go on an adventure, and learn something about the world. When all is said and done, hopefully you’re better for what you’ve seen, and you share the knowledge you’ve acquired with your home village. The Iban then commemorate the experience with a hand-tapped tattoo, à la “travel leaves marks.” It was literally a perfect theme for an episode of TV about travel.

After Tony [Judt]'s death, in August 2010, I toured to discuss the book we had written together, which he had entitle 'Thinking the Twentieth Century.' I realized as I traveled around the United States that its subject had been forgotten all too well. In hotel rooms, I watched Russian television toy with the traumatic American history of race, suggesting that Barack Obama had been born in Africa. It struck me as odd that the American entertainer Donald Trump picked up the theme not long thereafter.

Everything I am is based on this ugly building on its lonely lawn—lit up during winter darkness; open in the slashing rain—which allowed a girl so poor she didn’t even own a purse to come in twice a day and experience actual magic: traveling through time, making contact with the dead—Dorothy Parker, Stella Gibbons, Charlotte Brontë, Spike Milligan. A library in the middle of a community is a cross be-tween an emergency exit, a life raft and a festival. They are cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the soul; theme parks of the imagination. On a cold, rainy island, they are the only sheltered public spaces where you are not a consumer, but a citizen, instead. A human with a brain and a heart and a desire to be uplifted, rather than a customer with a credit card and an inchoate “need” for “stuff.” A mall—the shops—are places where your money makes the wealthy wealthier. But a library is where the wealthy’s taxes pay for you to become a little more extraordinary, instead. A satisfying reversal. A balancing of the power.

They are taking away all the nice things there because they are impractical, as if that were reason enough – the red phone-boxes, the pound note, those open London buses that you can leap on and off. There is almost no experience in life that makes you look and feel more suave than jumping on or off a moving London bus. But they aren’t practical. They require two men (one to drive and one to stop thugs from kicking the crap out of the Pakistani gentleman at the back) and that is uneconomical, so they have to go. And before long there will be no more milk in bottles delivered to the doorstep or sleepy rural pubs and the countryside will be mostly shopping centres and theme parks. Forgive me. I don’t mean to get upset. But you are taking my world away from me, piece by little piece, and sometimes it just pisses me off. Sorry.

the Qur’ān appears to be interested in three types knowledge for man. One is the knowledge of nature which has been made subservient to man, i.e., the physical sciences. The second crucial type is the knowledge of history (and geography): the Qur’ān persistently asks man to "travel on the earth" and see for himself what happened to bygone civilizations and why they rose and fell. The third is the knowledge of man himself.

The Qur’ān definitely seems optimistic about the future, while rather grim about the past It is absolutely imperative for successor civilizations and their bearer communities to study well and learn from the fate of earlier ones that have perished; or they will assuredly meet with the same fate, for "God's law does not change" for any people. This is perhaps one of the most insistent ideas in the Qur’ān, which constantly exhorts people to "travel on the earth and see the end of those before them

In this sub-species [of science fiction] the author leaps forward into an imagined future when planetary, sidereal, or even galactic travel has become common. Against this huge backcloth he then proceeds to develop an ordinary love-story, spy-story, wreck-story, or crime-story. This seems to me tasteless. Whatever in a work of art is not used is doing harm. The faintly imagined, and sometimes strictly unimagineable, scene and properties, only blur the real theme and distract us from any interest it might have had.

To determine the truth or falsity of a statement you not only need to a set of special experiences, but you need to know the truth of falsity of a host of other different statements as well. That is, verifying that the cat is on the mat is not a matter of experience alone, but of accepting all sorts of other different statements, all the way from "Light rays travel in straight lines" to "I am not having another one of those darn flashbacks." "Themes in Contemporary Analytic Philosophy as Reflected in the Work of Monty Python

When a train pulls into a great city I am reminded of the closing moments of an overture. All the rural and urban themes of our long journey were picked up again: a factory was followed by a meadow, a patch of autostrada by a country road, a gas-works by a modern church: the houses began to tread on each other’s heels, advertisements for Fiat cars swarmed closer together, the conductor who had brought breakfast passed, working intensely down the corridor to rouse some important passenger, the last fields were squeezed out and at last there were only houses, houses, houses, and Milano, flashed the signs, Milano.

SHAKESPEARE What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more (Hamlet) There is no one kind of Shakespearean hero, although in many ways Hamlet is the epitome of the Renaissance tragic hero, who reaches his perfection only to die. In Shakespeare's early plays, his heroes are mainly historical figures, kings of England, as he traces some of the historical background to the nation's glory. But character and motive are more vital to his work than praise for the dynasty, and Shakespeare's range expands considerably during the 1590s, as he and his company became the stars of London theatre. Although he never went to university, as Marlowe and Kyd had done, Shakespeare had a wider range of reference and allusion, theme and content than any of his contemporaries. His plays, written for performance rather than publication, were not only highly successful as entertainment, they were also at the cutting edge of the debate on a great many of the moral and philosophical issues of the time. Shakespeare's earliest concern was with kingship and history, with how 'this sceptr'd isle' came to its present glory. As his career progressed, the horizons of the world widened, and his explorations encompassed the geography of the human soul, just as the voyages of such travellers as Richard Hakluyt, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Sir Francis Drake expanded the horizons of the real world.

Little Brother, an aspiring painter, saved up all his money and went to France, to surround himself with beauty and inspiration. He lived on the cheap, painted every day, visited museums, traveled to picturesque locations, bravely spoke to everyone he met, and showed his work to anyone who would look at it. One afternoon, Little Brother struck up a conversation in a café with a group of charming young people, who turned out to be some species of fancy aristocrats. The charming young aristocrats took a liking to Little Brother and invited him to a party that weekend in a castle in the Loire Valley. They promised Little Brother that this was going to be the most fabulous party of the year. It would be attended by the rich, by the famous, and by several crowned heads of Europe. Best of all, it was to be a masquerade ball, where nobody skimped on the costumes. It was not to be missed. Dress up, they said, and join us! Excited, Little Brother worked all week on a costume that he was certain would be a showstopper. He scoured Paris for materials and held back neither on the details nor the audacity of his creation. Then he rented a car and drove to the castle, three hours from Paris. He changed into his costume in the car and ascended the castle steps. He gave his name to the butler, who found him on the guest list and politely welcomed him in. Little Brother entered the ballroom, head held high. Upon which he immediately realized his mistake. This was indeed a costume party—his new friends had not misled him there—but he had missed one detail in translation: This was a themed costume party. The theme was “a medieval court.” And Little Brother was dressed as a lobster. All around him, the wealthiest and most beautiful people of Europe were attired in gilded finery and elaborate period gowns, draped in heirloom jewels, sparkling with elegance as they waltzed to a fine orchestra. Little Brother, on the other hand, was wearing a red leotard, red tights, red ballet slippers, and giant red foam claws. Also, his face was painted red. This is the part of the story where I must tell you that Little Brother was over six feet tall and quite skinny—but with the long waving antennae on his head, he appeared even taller. He was also, of course, the only American in the room. He stood at the top of the steps for one long, ghastly moment. He almost ran away in shame. Running away in shame seemed like the most dignified response to the situation. But he didn’t run. Somehow, he found his resolve. He’d come this far, after all. He’d worked tremendously hard to make this costume, and he was proud of it. He took a deep breath and walked onto the dance floor. He reported later that it was only his experience as an aspiring artist that gave him the courage and the license to be so vulnerable and absurd. Something in life had already taught him to just put it out there, whatever “it” is. That costume was what he had made, after all, so that’s what he was bringing to the party. It was the best he had. It was all he had. So he decided to trust in himself, to trust in his costume, to trust in the circumstances. As he moved into the crowd of aristocrats, a silence fell. The dancing stopped. The orchestra stuttered to a stop. The other guests gathered around Little Brother. Finally, someone asked him what on earth he was. Little Brother bowed deeply and announced, “I am the court lobster.” Then: laughter. Not ridicule—just joy. They loved him. They loved his sweetness, his weirdness, his giant red claws, his skinny ass in his bright spandex tights. He was the trickster among them, and so he made the party. Little Brother even ended up dancing that night with the Queen of Belgium. This is how you must do it, people.

THE SOLITARY REAPER. Behold her, single in the field, Yon solitary highland lass! Reaping and singing by herself; Stop here, or gently pass! Alone she cuts and binds the grain, And sings a melancholy strain; O listen! for the vale profound Is overflowing with the sound. No nightingale did ever chaunt More welcome notes to weary bands Of travellers in some shady haunt Among Arabian sands: A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard In spring-time from a cuckoo-bird, Breaking the silence of the seas Among the farthest Hebrides. Will no one tell me what she sings?— Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow For old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago: Or is it some more humble lay, Familiar matter of to-day? Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, That has been, or may be again? Whate'er the theme, the maiden sang As if her song could have no ending; I saw her singing at her work, And o'er the sickle bending;— I listened, motionless and still; And, as I mounted up the hill, The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more.

We’ve been instructed to reject any trace of poetry, myth, hyperbole, or symbolism even when those literary forms are virtually shouting at us from the page via talking snakes and enchanted trees. That’s because there’s a curious but popular notion circulating around the church these days that says God would never stoop to using ancient genre categories to communicate. Speaking to ancient people using their own language, literary structures, and cosmological assumptions would be beneath God, it is said, for only our modern categories of science and history can convey the truth in any meaningful way. In addition to once again prioritizing modern, Western (and often uniquely American) concerns, this notion overlooks one of the most central themes of Scripture itself: God stoops. From walking with Adam and Eve through the garden of Eden, to traveling with the liberated Hebrew slaves in a pillar of cloud and fire, to slipping into flesh and eating, laughing, suffering, healing, weeping, and dying among us as part of humanity, the God of Scripture stoops and stoops and stoops and stoops. At the heart of the gospel message is the story of a God who stoops to the point of death on a cross. Dignified or not, believable or not, ours is a God perpetually on bended knee, doing everything it takes to convince stubborn and petulant children that they are seen and loved. It is no more beneath God to speak to us using poetry, proverb, letters, and legend than it is for a mother to read storybooks to her daughter at bedtime. This is who God is. This is what God does.

GCHQ has traveled a long and winding road. That road stretches from the wooden huts of Bletchley Park, past the domes and dishes of the Cold War, and on towards what some suggest will be the omniscient state of the Brave New World. As we look to the future, the docile and passive state described by Aldous Huxley in his Brave New World is perhaps more appropriate analogy than the strictly totalitarian predictions offered by George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Bizarrely, many British citizens are quite content in this new climate of hyper-surveillance, since its their own lifestyle choices that helped to create 'wired world' - or even wish for it, for as we have seen, the new torrents of data have been been a source of endless trouble for the overstretched secret agencies. As Ken Macdonald rightly points out, the real drives of our wired world have been private companies looking for growth, and private individuals in search of luxury and convenience at the click of a mouse. The sigint agencies have merely been handed the impossible task of making an interconnected society perfectly secure and risk-free, against the background of a globalized world that presents many unprecedented threats, and now has a few boundaries or borders to protect us. Who, then, is to blame for the rapid intensification of electronic surveillance? Instinctively, many might reply Osama bin Laden, or perhaps Pablo Escobar. Others might respond that governments have used these villains as a convenient excuse to extend state control. At first glance, the massive growth of security, which includes includes not only eavesdropping but also biometric monitoring, face recognition, universal fingerprinting and the gathering of DNA, looks like a sad response to new kinds of miscreants. However, the sad reality is that the Brave New World that looms ahead of us is ultimately a reflection of ourselves. It is driven by technologies such as text messaging and customer loyalty cards that are free to accept or reject as we choose. The public debate on surveillance is often cast in terms of a trade-off between security and privacy. The truth is that luxury and convenience have been pre-eminent themes in the last decade, and we have given them a much higher priority than either security or privacy. We have all been embraced the world of surveillance with remarkable eagerness, surfing the Internet in a global search for a better bargain, better friends, even a better partner. GCHQ vast new circular headquarters is sometimes represented as a 'ring of power', exercising unparalleled levels of surveillance over citizens at home and abroad, collecting every email, every telephone and every instance of internet acces. It has even been asserted that GCHQ is engaged in nothing short of 'algorithmic warfare' as part of a battle for control of global communications. By contrast, the occupants of 'Celtenham's Doughnut' claim that in reality they are increasingly weak, having been left behind by the unstoppable electronic communications that they cannot hope to listen to, still less analyse or make sense of. In fact, the frightening truth is that no one is in control. No person, no intelligence agency and no government is steering the accelerating electronic processes that may eventually enslave us. Most of the devices that cause us to leave a continual digital trail of everything we think or do were not devised by the state, but are merely symptoms of modernity. GCHQ is simply a vast mirror, and it reflects the spirit of the age.

What’ll it be?” Steve asked me, just days after our wedding. “Do we go on the honeymoon we’ve got planned, or do you want to go catch crocs?” My head was still spinning from the ceremony, the celebration, and the fact that I could now use the two words “my husband” and have them mean something real. The four months between February 2, 1992--the day Steve asked me to marry him--and our wedding day on June 4 had been a blur. Steve’s mother threw us an engagement party for Queensland friends and family, and I encountered a very common theme: “We never thought Steve would get married.” Everyone said it--relatives, old friends, and schoolmates. I’d smile and nod, but my inner response was, Well, we’ve got that in common. And something else: Wait until I get home and tell everybody I am moving to Australia. I knew what I’d have to explain. Being with Steve, running the zoo, and helping the crocs was exactly the right thing to do. I knew with all my heart and soul that this was the path I was meant to travel. My American friends--the best, closest ones--understood this perfectly. I trusted Steve with my life and loved him desperately. One of the first challenges was how to bring as many Australian friends and family as possible over to the United States for the wedding. None of us had a lot of money. Eleven people wound up making the trip from Australia, and we held the ceremony in the big Methodist church my grandmother attended. It was more than a wedding, it was saying good-bye to everyone I’d ever known. I invited everybody, even people who may not have been intimate friends. I even invited my dentist. The whole network of wildlife rehabilitators came too--four hundred people in all. The ceremony began at eight p.m., with coffee and cake afterward. I wore the same dress that my older sister Bonnie had worn at her wedding twenty-seven years earlier, and my sister Tricia wore at her wedding six years after that. The wedding cake had white frosting, but it was decorated with real flowers instead of icing ones. Steve had picked out a simple ring for me, a quarter carat, exactly what I wanted. He didn’t have a wedding ring. We were just going to borrow one for the service, but we couldn’t find anybody with fingers that were big enough. It turned out that my dad’s wedding ring fitted him, and that’s the one we used. Steve’s mother, Lyn, gave me a silk horseshoe to put around my wrist, a symbol of good luck. On our wedding day, June 4, 1992, it had been eight months since Steve and I first met. As the minister started reading the vows, I could see that Steve was nervous. His tuxedo looked like it was strangling him. For a man who was used to working in the tropics, he sure looked hot. The church was air-conditioned, but sweat drops formed on the ends of his fingers. Poor Steve, I thought. He’d never been up in front of such a big crowd before. “The scariest situation I’ve ever been in,” Steve would say later of the ceremony. This from a man who wrangled crocodiles! When the minister invited the groom to kiss the bride, I could feel all Steve’s energy, passion, and love. I realized without a doubt we were doing the right thing.

Tell them about your blog. What is your blog about? Try to narrow it down to a theme. For example, my theme is intentional leadership. Next explain what kinds of things you write about. I think it is best to limit yourself to a handful of categories. The more focused your content, the more readers you will attract. Kate McCulley’s About page on Adventurous Kate’s Solo Female 104 Travel Blog gives a few fun facts about Kate (she has been shipwrecked and once made a pass at Jon Stewart; she quit her job to travel the world), and then dives right into her theme: I am a solo traveler at heart, and one of my goals is to show women that solo travel can be safe, easy, cheap and a lot of fun. Meanwhile, I’m committed to showing you what the lifestyle of a long-term traveler and online entrepreneur is like. Like anyone else in the world, I have good times and bad times, but I promise to show you reality—with honesty and humor.3

The first intimation of a new romance for a woman of the court was the arrival at her door of a messenger bearing a five-line poem in an unfamiliar hand. If the woman found the poem sufficiently intriguing, the paper it was written on suitable for its contents and mood, and the calligraphy acceptably graceful, her encouraging reply—itself in the form of a poem—would set in motion a clandestine, late-night visit from her suitor. The first night together was, according to established etiquette, sleepless; lovemaking and talk were expected to continue without pause until the man, protesting the night’s brevity, departed in the first light of the predawn. Even then he was not free to turn his thoughts to the day’s official duties: a morning-after poem had to be written and sent off by means of an ever-present messenger page, who would return with the woman’s reply. Only after this exchange had been completed could the night’s success be fully judged by whether the poems were equally ardent and accomplished, referring in image and nuance to the themes of the night just passed. Subsequent visits were made on the same clandestine basis and under the same circumstances, until the relationship was either made official by a private ceremony of marriage or ended. Once she had given her heart, a woman was left to await her lover’s letters and appearances at her door at nightfall. Should he fail to arrive, there might be many explanations—the darkness of the night, inclement weather, inauspicious omens preventing travel, or other interests. Many sleepless nights were spent in hope and speculation, and, as evidenced by the poems in this book, in poetic activity. Throughout the course of a relationship, the exchange of poems served to reassure, remind, rekindle or cool interest, and, in general, to keep the other person aware of a lover’s state of mind. At the same time, poetry was a means of expressing solely for oneself the uncertainties, hopes, and doubts which inevitably accompanied such a system of courtship, as well as a way of exploring other personal concerns.

Carlton Church review – Why Tokyo is populated? How Tokyo became the largest city? Apparently Tokyo Japan has been one of the largest global cities for hundreds of years. One of the primary reasons for its growth is the fact that it has been a political hotspot since they Edo period. Many of the feudal lords of Japan needed to be in Edo for a significant part of the year and this has led to a situation where increasing numbers of the population was attracted to the city. There were many people with some power base throughout Japan but it became increasingly clear that those who have the real power were the ones who were residing in Edo. Eventually Tokyo Japan emerged as both the cultural and the political center for the entire Japan and this only contributed to its rapid growth which made it increasingly popular for all people living in Japan. After World War II substantial rebuilding of the city was necessary and it was especially after the war that extraordinary growth was seen and because major industries came especially to Tokyo and Osaka, these were the cities where the most growth took place. The fact remains that there are fewer opportunities for people who are living far from the cities of Japan and this is why any increasing number of people come to the city. There are many reasons why Japan is acknowledged as the greatest city The Japanese railways is widely acknowledged to be the most sophisticated railway system in the world. There is more than 100 surface routes which is operated by Japan’s railways as well as 13 subway lines and over the years Japanese railway engineers has accomplished some amazing feats which is unequalled in any other part of the world. Most places in the city of Tokyo Japan can be reached by train and a relatively short walk. Very few global cities can make this same boast. Crossing the street especially outside Shibuya station which is one of the busiest crossings on the planet with literally thousands of people crossing at the same time. However, this street crossing symbolizes one of the trademarks of Tokyo Japan and its major tourism attractions. It lies not so much in old buildings but rather in the masses of people who come together for some type of cultural celebration. There is also the religious centers in Japan such as Carlton Church and others. Tokyo Japan has also been chosen as the city that will host the Olympics in 2020 and for many reasons this is considered to be the best possible venue. A technological Metropolitan No other country exports more critical technologies then Japan and therefore it should come as no surprise that the neighborhood electronics store look more like theme parks than electronic stores. At quickly becomes clear when one looks at such a spectacle that the Japanese people are completely infatuated with technology and they make no effort to hide that infatuation. People planning to visit Japan should heed the warnings from travel organizations and also the many complaints which is lodged by travelers who have become victims of fraud. It is important to do extensive research regarding the available options and to read every possible review which is available regarding travel agencies. A safe option will always be to visit the website of Carlton Church and to make use of their services when travelling to and from Japan.

Folk traditions have preserved this belief in the gathering of the dead who, on certain dates—the Ember Days,*16 the night of November 1, St. Hilaire’s Day (January 14),30 and especially in winter (Advent, Christmas)—traveled in processions over the earth. In Switzerland, for example,31 these retinues were called Processione dei poveri morti (Misox, Italian-Catholic Switzerland); Gratzug (Valais), because it was necessary to transport the dead over the ridge (the German Grat) of the mountain; Til dils morts (Engardine); Totuchrizgang; Nachtschar; Nachtvolk (Procession of the Dead, Night Troop, Night Folk); and Totâgeigi32 (Music or Fiddler of the Dead, Alemannic Switzerland), because the passing of these dead was accompanied by music, a theme we will see again in the Wild Hunt.

Percht herself has been introduced into the theme of the wild hunter. In some stories she travels with a cart full of people and hurls death at those who demand their share of the booty.28 In others she plants her ax in the knee of anyone who hides to spy on her when she passes, accompanied by her seven dogs. The following year, she returns to retrieve her tool.

The secretary’s top advisers who traveled with him and attended many of his meetings reported a common theme: former president Trump’s “Article 5 saber rattling” over four years was causing many NATO allies to question if the U.S. would actually show up when it mattered. The nervousness in the room was palpable.

I began my effort at improving my flight experiences by reading purposefully during my flights. My airplane reading would often be centered on themes. On some flights I would read only newspapers and magazines, catching up on one particular event. On other flights I would read a short novel, and finishing the entire book during the flight would give me a great thrill, as if I'd just flown a cross-Atlantic mission with Amelia Earhart.

In the midst of this scoured landscape, on a suburban street, I saw the church steeple, and Lucille slowed down and pointed, and waved me on. As I passed her to enter the parking lot, I thanked her, and she gave me a wonderful smile, and just before she drove on she said, “Be blessed.” That seemed to be the theme in the Deep South: kindness, generosity, a welcome. I had found it often in my traveling life in the wider world, but I found so much more of it here that I kept going, because the good will was like an embrace. Yes, there is a haunted substratum of darkness in Southern life, and though it pulses through many interactions, it takes a long while to perceive it, and even longer to understand.

For decades I’ve had an intense interest in the history and mythology of the Silk Road, I think in part because an aspect of me loves the resonance of long distance travel as a theme or anchor, if you will, for narrative. The ways that cultures rise and fade across centuries, the ways cultures connect and conflict, absorb and reject, transform or remain static: As a writer this is thematic content that never gets old for me. A million million stories rise out of the endless back and forth of cultural contact in all its best and worst aspects, and everything in between. Weave that within a story of adventure or empire or a journey into unknown spaces and I’m in writer and reader hog heaven.

Panhandle's residence was situated in a remote part of the country, and at this moment I have no clear recollection of the complicated journey, with its many changes at little-known junctions, which I had to make in order to find my friend. The residence stood in the midst of elevated woodlands, and was well hidden by the trees. An immense sky-sign, standing out high above all other objects and plainly visible to the traveller from whatever side he made his approach, had been erected on the roof. The sky-sign carried the legend "No Psychologists!" It turned with the wind, gyrating continually, and when darkness fell the letters were outlined in electric lamps. Only a blind man could miss the warning. This legend was repeated over the main entrance to the grounds, with the addition of the word "Beware!" I thought of mantraps and ferocious dogs, and for some minutes I stood before the gates, wondering if it would be safe for me to enter. At last, remembering how several friends had assured me that I was "no psychologist," I concluded that little harm awaited me, plucked up my courage, and boldly advanced. Beyond the gates I found the warning again repeated with a more emphatic truculence and a finer particularity. At intervals along the drive I saw notice-boards projecting from the barberries and the laurels, each with some new version of the original theme. "Death to the Psychology of Religion" were the words inscribed on one. The next was even more precise in its application, and ran as follows:— "Inquisitive psychologists take notice! Panhandle has a gun, And will not hesitate to shoot." Somewhat shaken I approached the front door and was startled to see a long, glittering thing suddenly thrust through an open window in the upper storey; and the man behind the weapon was unquestionably Panhandle himself. "Can it be," I said aloud, "that Panhandle has taken me for an inquisitive psychologist?" "Advance," cried my host, who had a keen ear for such undertones. "Advance and fear nothing." A moment later he grasped me warmly by the hand, "Welcome, dearest of friends," he was saying. "You have arrived at an opportune moment. The house is full of guests who are longing to meet you." "But, Panhandle," I expostulated as we stood on the doorstep, "I understood we were to be alone. I have come for one purpose only, that you might explain your familiarity with—with those people." I used this expression, rather than one more explicit, because the footman was still present, knowing from long experience how dangerous it is to speak plainly about metaphysical realities in the hearing of the proletariat. "Those very people are now awaiting you," said Panhandle, as he drew me into the library. "I will be quite frank with you at once. This house is haunted; and if on consideration you find your nerves unequal to an encounter with ghosts, you had better go back at once, for there is no telling how soon the apparitions will begin.

So what can we generalize about Victorian vampires? They are already dead, yet not exactly dead, and clammy-handed. They can be magnetically repelled by crucifixes and they don’t show up in mirrors. No one is safe; vampires prey upon strangers, family, and lovers. Unlike zombies, vampires are individualists, seldom traveling in packs and never en masse. Many suffer from mortuary halitosis despite our reasonable expectation that they would no longer breathe. But our vampires herein also differ in interesting ways. Some fear sunlight; others do not. Many are bound by a supernatural edict that forbids them to enter a home without some kind of invitation, no matter how innocently mistaken. Dracula, for example, greets Jonathan Harker with this creepy exclamation that underlines another recurring theme, the betrayal of innocence (and also explains why I chose Stoker’s story “Dracula’s Guest” as the title of this anthology): “Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own will.” Yet other vampires seem immune to this hospitality prohibition. One common bit of folklore was that you ought never to refer to a suspected vampire by name, yet in some tales people do so without consequence. Contrary to their later presentation in movies and television, not all Victorian vampires are charming or handsome or beautiful. Some are gruesome. Some are fiends wallowing in satanic bacchanal and others merely contagious victims of fate, à la Typhoid Mary. A few, in fact, are almost sympathetic figures, like the hero of a Greek epic who suffers the anger of the gods. Curious bits of other similar folklore pop up in scattered places. Vampires in many cultures, for example, are said to be allergic to garlic. Over the centuries, this aromatic herb has become associated with sorcerers and even with the devil himself. It protected Odysseus from Circe’s spells. In Islamic folklore, garlic springs up from Satan’s first step outside the Garden of Eden and onion from his second. Garlic has become as important in vampire defense as it is in Italian cooking. If, after refilling your necklace sachet and outlining your window frames, you have some left over, you can even use garlic to guard your pets or livestock—although animals luxuriate in soullessness and thus appeal less to the undead. The vampire story as we know it was born in the early nineteenth century. As

A recurrent theme throughout the history of the Church is that of creating a loving, caring community. The story of the Early Church recounted in Acts emphasizes the importance of relationships among believers. Jesus’ ministry was a model of commitment to fellow believers: He did everything with the family of faith; He ate, talked, traveled and ministered with His disciples. He did more than simply talk about love for others; Jesus personally modeled it and consistently arranged situations and opportunities for His faith-circle to deepen and demonstrate their love for each other.

The future is travelling furiously toward you at incredible speed and will beat you to your destination to surprise you by its resemblance to what you have already seen.

UNCONVENTIONAL DESTINATION WEDDING LOCALES Destination Wedding Jan 6 This wedding season, fall in love with endearing unconventional destination wedding locales Theme Weavers Designs Since all the travel restrictions have been lifted, destination weddings are back in vogue. However, the pandemic has led to a major paradigm shift. In this case, Indian couples are looking into hidden gems to take on as their wedding destination, instead of opting for an international location. With the rich cultural heritage and a myriad of local traditions, it has been observed by industry insiders that couples feel closer to their past and history after getting married in a regional wedding destination. At the same time, it is a very cumbersome task to find the perfect wedding destination - it has to be perfectly balanced in terms of the services it offers as well as having breathtaking views. This wedding season, choose something offbeat, by opting for an unexplored destination, that is both visually appealing and has a romantic vibe to them. Start off your wedding journey with an auspicious location. Rishikesh, on the banks of the holy river Ganges is one of the most sacred places a couple can tie the knot. This tiny town’s interesting traditions, picturesque locales, and ancient customs make this one of the most underrated places to get married in india. Perfect for a riverside wedding in extravagant outdoor tents, this wedding season, it is high time Rishikesh gets the hype it deserves. “The Glasshouse on the Ganges,” is one of the most stunning places to get married. While becoming informed travellers, this place is interred with a vast and vibrant cultural history. It offers an extremely unique experience as it revitalises ruined architectural wonders for the couple to tour or get married in, making it a heartwarming and wonderful experience for all those who are involved. Steep your wedding party in the lap of nature, in Naukuchiatal, Nainital, Uttarakhand. This place is commonly referred to as “treasure of natural beauty,” where it offers mesmerising natural spectacles for a couple to get married in a gorgeous outdoor ceremony. Away from the hustle and bustle of the urban jungles that have slowly been taking over the Indian subcontinent, this location provides a much needed breath of fresh air. This location also provides much needed reprieve from the fast paced lifestyle that we live, making a wedding a truly relaxing affair. As this is a quaint hill station, surrounded with lush greens, there are numerous ideas to create a natural and sustainable wedding. The most distinguishing feature of this location is the nine-cornered lake, situated 1,220 m above sea level. There is something classic and timeless about the Kerala backwaters. This location is enriching and chock full of unique cultural traditions. With spectacular and awe-inspiring views of the backwaters, Kumarakom in Kerala easily qualifies as one of the top wedding destinations in india. Just like Naukuchiatal, this space is a study in serenity, where it is far away from the noisy streets and bazaars. Perfect for a cozy and intimate wedding, the Kerala backwaters are a gorgeous choice for couples who are opting for a socially distant wedding, along with having a lot of indigenous flora and fauna. Punctuated with the salty sea and the sultry air, the backwaters in Kerala are an underrated gem that presents couples with a unique wedding location that is perfect for a historical and regal wedding. The beaches of Goa and the forts of Rajasthan are a classic for a reason, but at the same time, they can get boring. Couples have been exploring more underrated wedding locations in order to experience the diverse local cultures of India that can also host their weddings

Even more strikingly, just about every major French Enlightenment figure tried their hand at a Lahontan-style critique of their own society, from the perspective of some imagined outsider. Montesquieu chose a Persian; the Marquis d’Argens a Chinese; Diderot a Tahitian; Chateaubriand a Natchez; Voltaire’s L’Ingénu was half Wendat and half French.41 All took up and developed themes and arguments borrowed directly from Kandiaronk, supplemented by lines from other ‘savage critics’ in travellers’ accounts.

On August 15, the FDA instructed, on its website: “You are not a horse.” In an August 21, 2021 Twitter post,84 the FDA expanded the theme: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.” The White House and CNN also urged listeners that they should avoid veterinary products. CDC joined the chorus, warning Americans to not risk their health consuming a “horse de-wormer.” Elsewhere on its website, the CDC urged black and brown human immigrants to load up on ivermectin. “All Middle Eastern, Asian, North African, Latin American, and Caribbean refugees should receive presumptive therapy with: ivermectin, two doses 200 mcg/Kg orally once a day for two days before departure to the United States.85 Whether this was intended to deworm them or to prevent COVID transmission during travel to the US is unclear.

It was a beautiful fall day at the soccer fields when I met Stacy for the first time. The game had just begun when she arrived carrying homemade pumpkin spice muffins with cream cheese frosting for everyone, photos of the jack-o’-lantern she had elaborately carved earlier that morning into the shape of a witch stirring a bubbling cauldron with the rising steam spelling out the word “Boo,” enough material and glue for each of the siblings not playing soccer to make adorable “easy no-sew” bat wings as a fun craft to fill their time, as well as little gift bags for every mother full of Halloween-themed wine charms and sleep masks that were embroidered with “Sleeping for a spell.” Besides her generous gifts, she also looked terrific. She was wearing the perfect fall outfit with just the right number of layers and textures and cool boots. Her hair was beautifully twisted into a loose braid casually thrown over one shoulder. While everyone sat in their lawn chair and screamed at their kid to “attack the ball,” Stacy ran up and down the sidelines taking (no doubt fabulous) photos of her son and overseeing the siblings’ craft bonanza. At this point I should also mention, in case you don’t feel bad enough about yourself, that Stacy has a full-time job outside the home. Like a really important one. I’m not sure what she does exactly, but from the thirty seconds that she slowed down long enough to talk to me, I learned that she works fifty hours a week or so and travels around the country every few days and then comes home and makes her kids pancakes in the shape of clovers for breakfast, because it’s International Clover Day or some shit like that.

Social roost was born when the two were in the mediterranean and had an idea to bring their world travel dining experiences back to the community in which they were born and raised. They joined forces with new york city’s executive chef, susan burdian and the three developed a globally inspired menu from a scratch kitchen that is now served at social roost. Of course, delicious food deserves delicious cocktails. Rob and jason tapped st. Petersburg native max blowers as their lead mixologist. Max developed cocktails around social themes provided by rob and jason to create the ultimate lavish cocktail menu.

The time after I won the title of Grandmaster brought with it my first experience of the aftermath of obsessively chasing a goal. I was suddenly left without a purpose. I felt empty and bored, almost listless. All this while, I had been solely fixated on a singular pursuit. But once I got to my destination I kept looking back rather than at fresh peaks. I didn’t know what to do with myself. Tournaments and scores didn’t excite me any more, and my results took a beating. For six months I was caught on a conveyor belt of despair. It was through my interactions with other Grandmasters on my travels for overseas tournaments that I realized this was a normal phase and one that almost all players experienced. Sometimes, a goal can be such a big deal, such an all-consuming theme in our lives, that we just don’t know what to look forward to any more after we’ve achieved it. Gradually, I managed to pull myself back together, just in time for the next phase of my life as a chess player to begin.

Nearly every horror theme and twist of plot is prefigured in these one-reel, seven- to eight-minute experiments of early filmmakers. Here are the seeds of feature-length horror subjects to come—murder, madness, curses, black magic, vampires, ghosts, mummies, werewolves, monsters, giant insects, demons, telepathy, time travel, waxworks, chambers of horrors, and even the perils of hypnosis and mind control (George du Maurier’s 1894 novel Trilby, featuring the evil mesmerist Svengali, was a bestseller, and was adapted many times for film).

One of Gunter’s fears was that the Bible was a ‘policy’, a deliberately manipulative hoax. This venerable theme, revived by Machiavelli, now seemed more compelling than ever. During the Reformation age, Christendom had been splintered into national churches closely controlled by secular governments – none more so than the Church of England. Apparently God’s eternal truth changed when you crossed a border, or on the whims of kings and queens. Bishop Earle’s ‘sceptic’ was ‘troubled at this naturalness of Religion to Countries, that Protestantism should be born so in England, and Popery abroad’. What if we only believe what we believe out of chauvinism and habit? A popular advice-book warned young Englishmen travelling to the Continent against sampling foreign churches, fearing not so much that they would convert as that they would conclude that all churches had good points and bad points, ‘and so, displeased on all sides, you dash upon the rock of Atheism’ – a fate to which those who had ‘seen many countries’ were proverbially prone. Even if you did not give ‘perfect credit’ to another religion, merely to ‘admit of a suspicion that things may be’ as others say was to set the woodworm to work.

There is no old age like anxiety,” said one of the monks I met in India. “And there is no freedom from old age like the freedom from anxiety.” In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding that they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place. Generally speaking, though, Americans have an inability to relax into sheer pleasure. Ours is an entertainment-seeking nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one. Americans spend billions to keep themselves amused with everything from porn to theme parks to wars, but that’s not exactly the same thing as quiet enjoyment. The beauty of doing nothing is the goal of all your work, the final accomplishment for which you are most highly congratulated. The more exquisitely and delightfully you can do nothing, the higher your life’s achievement. You don’t necessarily need to be rich in order to experience this, either. I am having a relationship with this pizza, almost an affair. Without seeing Sicily one cannot get a clear idea of what Italy is. “No town can live peacefully, whatever its laws,” Plato wrote, “when its citizens…do nothing but feast and drink and tire themselves out in the cares of love.” In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down. And sometimes the meal is the only currency that is real. The idea that the appreciation of pleasure can be an anchor of one’s humanity. You should never give yourself a chance to fall apart because, when you do, it becomes a tendency and it happens over and over again. You must practice staying strong, instead. People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that’s holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. They break your heart open so new light could get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you had to transform your life. The Zen masters always say that you cannot see your reflection in running water, only in still water. Your treasure—your perfection—is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the busy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart. Balinese families are always allowed to eat their own donations to the gods, since the offering is more metaphysical than literal. The way the Balinese see it, God takes what belongs to God—the gesture—while man takes what belongs to man—the food itself.) To meditate, only you must smile. Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy. Even smile in your liver. Practice tonight at hotel. Not to hurry, not to try too hard. Too serious, you make you sick. You can calling the good energy with a smile. The word paradise, by the way, which comes to us from the Persian, means literally “a walled garden.” The four virtues a person needs in order to be safe and happy in life: intelligence, friendship, strength and (I love this one) poetry. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. Once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.

the imagination of the world. Since then, dozens of similar books and short stories have followed, and feature films with time travel themes remain extremely popular. It’s clear that the idea of time travel pushes our buttons in a significant way. It’s an idea that is just too intriguing an idea to ignore. What is also difficult to ignore are the real life cases of normal everyday people reporting strange encounters with slips, shifts and spontaneous journeys in time. It is also fascinating to note that as modern physics advances, a realization is developing to suggest that time travel may be something that is real and possible, and may already be happening. The idea of time travel also straddles the fringe theories of New Agers all the way over to hard-nosed science. The world’s greatest scientists such as Stephen Hawking and Michio Kaku, are equally enamoured with time travel as is the common man on the street. Support for the possibility that time travel is real runs across a broad spectrum of human thought. Add to this the obvious fact that time travel is a highly entertaining concept – and you get a subject of endless fascination. We hope readers found this book to be an interesting and worthy contribution to time travel fact and

To keep your kid safe from polar bears in the Arctic Circle, don't take your kids to the Arctic Circle. Seriously, what kind of vacation is that? There are no major theme parks, and Santa's workshop is just one big tourist trap. Try Hawaii instead.

Aside from including several of Irving’s recipes in her book, they shared a number of overlapping themes: foremost among them was the idea that they were recording recipes rooted in a way of life that was on the verge of disappearing. In Honey from a Weed, Patience likened the endeavor to that of a musicologist who records old songs. It was an apt analogy: Just a few years before she and Irving took their trip to Lecce in 1958, American ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax and the Italian anthropologist Diego Carpitella had traveled through the south of Italy, including Puglia, recording folk songs. They started out in Martano, not far from Santa Maria di Leuca, and traveled north, documenting the songs of agricultural workers, shepherds, and peasants. In the text accompanying the recordings Lomax wrote, “It was a mythic time. None of us suspected that that world—made of music, songs, poverty, joy, desperation, custom, violence, injustice, love, dialect, and poetry, formed over the course of millennia—would be swept away in a couple of years . . . by the voodoo of ‘progress.’” Federman, Adam. Fasting and Feasting . Chelsea Green Publishing. Kindle Edition.

For decades, Western analysts have been too quick to overlook or dismiss the persistent influence of the Maoist heritage in contemporary China. In this book, I have argued that Maoism has been underestimated not just as a Chinese but also as a global phenomenon. I have sought to re-centre its ideas and experiences as major forces of the recent past, present and future that have shaped – and are shaping – the world, as well as China. What themes have emerged from observing Maoism’s global travels?

Preface to the Paperback Edition The coronavirus, a severe acute respiratory syndrome, has unleashed a pandemic since the original publication of Epidemics and Society. Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is still too new and too poorly understood to allow us to assess its ultimate impact, but its broad contours have become sufficiently clear, and several of its features relate closely to the themes of this book. Like all pandemics, COVID-19 is not an accidental or random event. Epidemics afflict societies through the specific vulnerabilities people have created by their relationships with the environment, other species, and each other. Microbes that ignite pandemics are those whose evolution has adapted them to fill the ecological niches that we have prepared. COVID-19 flared up and spread because it is suited to the society we have made. A world with nearly eight billion people, the majority of whom live in densely crowded cities and all linked by rapid air travel, creates innumerable opportunities for pulmonary viruses. At the same time, demographic increase and frenetic urbanization lead to the invasion and destruction of animal habitat, altering the relationship of humans to the animal world. Particularly relevant is the multiplication of contacts with bats, which are a natural reservoir of innumerable viruses capable of crossing the species barrier and spilling over to humans.

In Joseph Campbell's popular book of essays Myths to Live By, he described something pertinent to our theme of sacred journeys: “The ultimate aim of the quest, if one is to return, must be neither release nor ecstasy for oneself, but the wisdom and the power to serve others.

The Time Tourists might sound like a cozy mystery with time travel thrown in, but nothing could be further from the truth. This is a novel packed with important and often dark themes, blended together with a cast of vibrant and believable characters. Andrew @penstricken

See the USA in your Chevrolet, America is asking you to call, Drive your Chevrolet through the USA, America’s the greatest land of all. [Quoting The Dinah Shore Chevy Show theme song, c. 1952, in an epigraph to Chapter 11: See the USA in Your Chevrolet or from a Plane Flying High Above.]

With horror, he noted that trailer parks were cropping up at the edge of most towns. The people inhabiting these rootless buildings, which were propped on wheels or temporary foundations, seemed to him like alien creatures. “These are Martians,” he writes home to Elaine, “and I wanted to ask them to take me to their leader. They have no humor, no past, and their future is new models.” He added: “If I ever am looking for a theme—this mobility is a good one.

It was this. My father had left a small collection of books in a little room upstairs, to which I had access (for it adjoined my own) and which nobody else in our house ever troubled. From that blessed little room, Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, Tom Jones, the Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Robinson Crusoe, came out, a glorious host, to keep me company. They kept alive my fancy, and my hope of something beyond that place and time,—they, and the Arabian Nights, and the Tales of the Genii,—and did me no harm; for whatever harm was in some of them was not there for me; I knew nothing of it. It is astonishing to me now, how I found time, in the midst of my porings and blunderings over heavier themes, to read those books as I did. It is curious to me how I could ever have consoled myself under my small troubles (which were great troubles to me), by impersonating my favourite characters in them—as I did—and by putting Mr. and Miss Murdstone into all the bad ones—which I did too. I have been Tom Jones (a child's Tom Jones, a harmless creature) for a week together. I have sustained my own idea of Roderick Random for a month at a stretch, I verily believe. I had a greedy relish for a few volumes of Voyages and Travels—I forget what, now—that were on those shelves; and for days and days I can remember to have gone about my region of our house, armed with the centre-piece out of an old set of boot-trees—the perfect realization of Captain Somebody, of the Royal British Navy, in danger of being beset by savages, and resolved to sell his life at a great price. The Captain never lost dignity, from having his ears boxed with the Latin Grammar. I did; but the Captain was a Captain and a hero, in despite of all the grammars of all the languages in the world, dead or alive. This was my only and my constant comfort. When I think of it, the picture always rises in my mind, of a summer evening, the boys at play in the churchyard, and I sitting on my bed, reading as if for life. Every barn in the neighbourhood, every stone in the church, and every foot of the churchyard, had some association of its own, in my mind, connected with these books, and stood for some locality made famous in them. I have seen Tom Pipes go climbing up the church-steeple; I have watched Strap, with the knapsack on his back, stopping to rest himself upon the wicket-gate; and I know that Commodore Trunnion held that club with Mr. Pickle, in the parlour of our little village alehouse.

Rather than show contrition and resolve to finally address racism in their ranks, those appointed to serve and protect our communities engaged in further violence against Black Americans over the ensuing months, as well as nightly displays of unapologetic—indeed deliberate, performatively cruel—brutality against Black Lives Matter protesters. Cruelty and injustice are nothing new. It has always been easy to export violence and suffering to the rest of the world when we don’t imagine that the victims are real people leading real lives that matter. Weirdly, the very technologies that made the world a smaller place, that were supposed to create a global village, have only made it easier to dehumanize—to unmatter—poor people in the more remote corners of that village. Soldiers launch drone assassinations halfway around the globe from the comfort and safety of video-game consoles on American military bases.*55 Pixelated videos of innocents blown to bits in mistaken air strikes elicit yawns by those who pull the trigger and tough-minded excuses by the generals who consider such collateral murders necessary sacrifices in the ever-more-nebulous War on Terror. There’s a common theme in all this. The unmattering of Black, or brown, or transgender, or Muslim lives reveals an ever-more-defiant and deliberate refusal to imagine or care. It is a cancerous empathy deficit that could destroy our species if it is not confronted with some antidote, and a vaccine to halt its further spread. This empathy deficit may be as urgent an existential threat as the climate crisis, even if it is harder to perceive and define. I think it is what really lies at the root of that ecological catastrophe. I see the Long Self Revolution as a revolution of imagination and care, of empathy and anti-cruelty. When you directly experience your own self as a vast and sublime and unique four-dimensional formation in the block universe, you realize that every fellow traveler on this planet is similarly vast and sublime and unique—like threads in a tapestry, both irreducibly individual and completely interdependent. Precognitive dreamwork (and lifework) makes it impossible to ignore or deny the worth, value, and real reality of other, embodied lives—including lives very distant and different from ours.*56 Our planet is a splendid, multicolored tapestry woven from the intertwining of Long Selves. (Probably our universe is too, in ways we will discover in a few thousand years.) Caring for the future of the earth first requires imagining that each of its inhabitants has a future. That’s what a Long Self is: someone with a future. Thus the Long Self Revolution is incompatible both with cruelty and with the resentful apocalypticism of those who deny that our planet and our species are going somewhere, and going somewhere better.6 In a way, it recruits the future to save the present.

Salem’s Old Burying Point, also known as the Charter Street Cemetery, is a familiar location for pop culture representations of the “Witch City,” serving as a backdrop for paranormal-themed shows like the Travel Channel’s Ghost Adventures and Syfy’s Ghost Hunters.