Trees Lounge Quotes

We have gained reality and lost dream. No more lounging under a tree and peering at the sky between one's big and second toes; there's work to be done. To be efficient, one cannot be hungry and dreamy but must eat steak and keep moving.

I began to recognize the trees, the rocks. There, I had stood with Rhys-- there, I had flirted with him. There, he had lounged atop a branch while waiting for me.

Insulated from natural contacts with earth, air and sunlight, by corsets pressing on the solar plexus, by voluminous petticoats, cotton stockings and kid boots, the drowsy well-fed girls lounging in the shade were no more a part of their environment than figures in a photograph album, arbitrarily posed against a backcloth of cork rocks and cardboard trees.

I sit up in bed and watch her fiddle about in the back of my wardrobe. I think she's got a plan. That's what's good about Zoey. She'd better hurry up though, because I'm starting to think of things like carrots. And air. And ducks. And pear trees. Velvet and silk. Lakes. I'm going to miss ice. And the sofa. And the lounge. And the way Cal loves magic tricks. And white things- milk, snow, swans.

When he heard light, rushing footfalls, he turned his head. Someone was racing along the second-floor balcony. Then laughter drifted down from above. Glorious feminine laughter. He leaned out the archway and glanced at the grand staircase. Bella appeared on the landing above, breathless, smiling, a black satin robe gathered in her hands. As she slowed at the head of the stairs, she looked over her shoulder, her thick dark hair swinging like a mane. The pounding that came next was heavy and distant, growing louder until it was like boulders hitting the ground. Obviously, it was what she was waiting for. She let out a laugh, yanked her robe up even higher, and started down the stairs, bare feet skirting the steps as if she were floating. At the bottom, she hit the mosaic floor of the foyer and wheeled around just as Zsadist appeared in second-story hallway. The Brother spotted her and went straight for the balcony, pegging his hands into the rail, swinging his legs up and pushing himself straight off into thin air. He flew outward, body in a perfect swan dive--except he wasn't over water, he was two floors up over hard stone. John's cry for help came out as a mute, sustained rush of air-- Which was cut off as Zsadist dematerialized at the height of the dive. He took form twenty feet in front of Bella, who watched the show with glowing happiness. Meanwhile, John's heart pounded from shock...then pumped fast for a different reason. Bella smiled up at her mate, her breath still hard, her hands still gripping the robe, her eyes heavy with invitation. And Zsadist came forward to answer her call, seeming to get even bigger as he stalked over to her. The Brother's bonding scent filled the foyer, just as his low, lionlike growl did. The male was all animal at the moment....a very sexual animal. "You like to be chased, nalla, " Z said in a voice so deep it distorted. Bella's smile got even wider as she backed up into a corner. "Maybe." "So run some more, why don't you." The words were dark and even John caught the erotic threat in them. Bella took off, darting around her mate, going for the billiards room. Z tracked her like prey, pivoting around, his eyes leveled on the female's streaming hair and graceful body. As his lips peeled off his fangs, the white canines elongated, protruding from his mouth. And they weren't the only response he had to his shellan. At his hips, pressing into the front of his leathers, was an erection the size of a tree trunk. Z shot John a quick glance and then went back to his hunt, disappearing into the room, the pumping growl getting louder. From out of the open doors, there was a delighted squeal, a scramble, a female's gasp, and then....nothing. He'd caught her. ......When Zsadist came out a moment later, he had Bella in his arms, her dark hair trailing down his shoulder as she lounged in the strength that held her. Her eyes locked on Z's face while he looked where he was going, her hand stroking his chest, her lips curved in a private smile. There was a bite mark on her neck, one that had very definitely not been there before, and Bella's satisfaction as she stared at the hunger in her hellren's face was utterly compelling. John knew instinctively that Zsadist was going to finish two things upstairs: the mating and the feeding. The Brother was going to be at her throat and in between her legs. Probably at the same time. God, John wanted that kind of connection.

Extraordinary—that Willowdale Academy and Calvin Coolidge High School should both be institutions of learning! The contrast is stunning. I had a leisurely tea with the Chairman of the English Department. I saw several faculty members sitting around in offices and lounges, sipping tea, reading, smoking. Through the large casement windows bare trees rubbed cozy branches. (One of my students had written wistfully of a dream-school that would have "windows with trees in them"!) Old leather chairs, book-lined walls, air of cultivated casualness, sound of well-bred laughter.

Bad luck alone does not embitter us that badly . . . nor does the feeling that our affairs might have been better managed move us out of range of ordinary disappointment; it is when we recognize that the loss has been caused in great part by others; that it needn't have happened; that there is an enemy out there who has stolen our loaf, soured our wine, infected our book of splendid verse with filthy rhymes; then we are filled with resentment and would hang the villains from that bough we would have lounged in liquorous love beneath had the tree not been cut down by greedy and dim-witted loggers in the pay of the lumber interests. Watch out, then, watch out for us, be on your guard, look sharp, both ways, when we learn--we, in any numbers--when we find who is forcing us--wife, children, Commies, fat cats, Jews--to give up life in order to survive. It is this condition in men that makes them ideal candidates for the Party of the disappointed People.

Shortly before school started, I moved into a studio apartment on a quiet street near the bustle of the downtown in one of the most self-conscious bends of the world. The “Gold Coast” was a neighborhood that stretched five blocks along the lake in a sliver of land just south of Lincoln Park and north of River North. The streets were like fine necklaces and strung together were the brownstone houses and tall condominiums and tiny mansions like pearls, and when the day broke and the sun faded away, their lights burned like jewels shining gaudily in the night. The world’s most elegant bazaar, Michigan Avenue, jutted out from its eastern tip near The Drake Hotel and the timeless blue-green waters of Lake Michigan pressed its shores. The fractious make-up of the people that inhabited it, the flat squareness of its parks and the hint of the lake at the ends of its tree-lined streets squeezed together a domesticated cesspool of age and wealth and standing. It was a place one could readily dress up for an expensive dinner at one of the fashionable restaurants or have a drink miles high in the lounge of the looming John Hancock Building and five minutes later be out walking on the beach with pants cuffed and feet in the cool water at the lake’s edge.

From a Berkeley Notebook' ~Denis Johnson One changes so much from moment to moment that when one hugs oneself against the chill air at the inception of spring, at night, knees drawn to chin, he finds himself in the arms of a total stranger, the arms of one he might move away from on the dark playground. Also, it breaks the heart that the sign revolving like a flame above the gas station remembers the price of gas, but forgets entirely this face it has been looking at all day. And so the heart is exhausted that even the face of the dismal facts we wait for the loves of the past to come walking from the fire, the tree, the stone, tangible and unchanged and repentant but what can you do. Half the time I think about my wife and child, the other half I think how to become a citizen with an apartment, and sex too is quite on my mind, though it seems the women have no time for you here, for which in my larger, more mature moments I can’t blame them. These are the absolute Pastures I am led to: I am in Berkeley, California, trapped inside my body, I am the secret my body is going to keep forever, as if its secret were merely silence. It lies between two mistakes of the earth, the San Andreas and Hayward faults, and at night from the hill above the stadium where I sleep, I can see the yellow aurora of Telegraph Avenue uplifted by the holocaust. My sleeping bag has little cowboys lassoing bulls embroidered all over its pastel inner lining, the pines are tall and straight, converging in a sort of roof above me, it’s nice, oh loves, oh loves, why aren’t you here? Morgan, my pyjamas are so lonesome without the orangutans—I write and write, and transcend nothing, escape nothing, nothing is truly born from me, yet magically it’s better than nothing—I know you must be quite changed by now, but you are just the same, too, like those stars that keep shining for a long time after they go out—but it’s just a light they touch us with this evening amid the fine rain like mist, among the pines.

The Troubadours Etc." Just for this evening, let's not mock them. Not their curtsies or cross-garters or ever-recurring pepper trees in their gardens promising, promising. At least they had ideas about love. All day we've driven past cornfields, past cows poking their heads through metal contraptions to eat. We've followed West 84, and what else? Irrigation sprinklers fly past us, huge wooden spools in the fields, lounging sheep, telephone wires, yellowing flowering shrubs. Before us, above us, the clouds swell, layers of them, the violet underneath of clouds. Every idea I have is nostalgia. Look up: there is the sky that passenger pigeons darkened and filled— darkened for days, eclipsing sun, eclipsing all other sound with the thunder of their wings. After a while, it must have seemed that they followed not instinct or pattern but only one another. When they stopped, Audubon observed, they broke the limbs of stout trees by the weight of the numbers. And when we stop we'll follow—what? Our hearts? The Puritans thought that we are granted the ability to love only through miracle, but the troubadours knew how to burn themselves through, how to make themselves shrines to their own longing. The spectacular was never behind them. Think of days of those scarlet-breasted, blue-winged birds above you. Think of me in the garden, humming quietly to myself in my blue dress, a blue darker than the sky above us, a blue dark enough for storms, though cloudless. At what point is something gone completely? The last of the sunlight is disappearing even as it swells— Just for this evening, won't you put me before you until I'm far enough away you can believe in me? Then try, try to come closer— my wonderful and less than.

A high upland common was this moor, two miles from end to end, and full of furze and bracken. There were no trees and not a house, nothing but a line of telegraph poles following the road, sweeping with rigidity from north to south; nailed upon one of them a small scarlet notice to stonethrowers was prominent as a wound. On so high and wide a region as Shag Moor the wind always blew, or if it did not quite blow there was a cool activity in the air. The furze was always green and growing, and, taking no account of seasons, often golden. Here in summer solitude lounged and snoozed; at other times, as now, it shivered and looked sinister. ("The Higgler")

Of course there is no denying that all these primordial dreams appear, in the opinion of nonmathematicians, to have been suddenly realized in a form quite different from the original fantasy. Baron Munchhausen’s post horn was more beautiful than our canned music, the Seven-League boots more beautiful than a car, Oberon’s kingdom lovelier than a railway tunnel, the magic root of the mandrake better than a telegraphed image, eating of one’s mother’s heart and then understanding birds more beautiful than an ethologic study of a bird’s vocalizing. We have gained reality and lost dream. No more lounging under a tree and peering at the sky between one’s big and second toes; there’s work to be done. To be efficient, one cannot be hungry and dreamy but must eat steak and keep moving. It is exactly as though the old, inefficient breed of humanity had fallen asleep on an anthill and found, when the new breed awoke, that the ants had crept into its bloodstream, making it move frantically ever since, unable to shake off that rotten feeling of antlike industry.

ON MEDITATING, SORT OF Meditation, so I’ve heard, is best accomplished if you entertain a certain strict posture. Frankly, I prefer just to lounge under a tree. So why should I think I could ever be successful? Some days I fall asleep, or land in that even better place—half-asleep—where the world, spring, summer, autumn, winter— flies through my mind in its hardy ascent and its uncompromising descent. So I just lie like that, while distance and time reveal their true attitudes: they never heard of me, and never will, or ever need to. Of course I wake up finally thinking, how wonderful to be who I am, made out of earth and water, my own thoughts, my own fingerprints— all that glorious, temporary stuff.

The morning grass was damp and cool with dew. My yellow rain slicker must have looked sharp contrasted against the bright green that spring provided. I must have looked like an early nineteenth century romantic poet (Walt Whitman, perhaps?) lounging around a meadow celebrating nature and the glory of my existence. But don’t make this about me. Don’t you dare. This was about something bigger than me (by at least 44 feet). I was there to unselfishly throw myself in front of danger (nothing is scarier than a parked bulldozer), in the hopes of saving a tree, and also procuring a spot in a featured article in my local newspaper. It’s not about celebrity for me, it’s about showing that I care. It’s not enough to just quietly go about caring anymore. No, now we need the world to see that we care. I was just trying to do my part to show I was doing my part. But no journalists or TV news stations came to witness my selfless heroics. In fact, nobody came at all, not even Satan’s henchmen (the construction crew). People might scoff and say, “But it was Sunday.” Yes, it was Sunday. But if you’re a hero you can’t take a day off. I’d rather be brave a day early than a day late. Most cowards show up late to their destiny. But I always show up early, and quite often I leave early too, but at least I have the guts to lay down my life for something I’d die for. Now I only laid down my life for a short fifteen-minute nap, but I can forever hold my chin high as I loudly tell anyone who will listen to my exploits as an unsung hero (not that I haven’t written dozens of songs dedicated to my bravery). Most superheroes hide anonymously behind masks. That’s cowardly to me. I don’t wear a mask. And the only reason I’m anonymous is that journalists don’t respond to my requests for interviews, and when I hold press conferences nobody shows up, not even my own mother. The world doesn’t know all the good I’ve done for the world. And that’s fine with me. Not really. But if I have to go on being anonymous to make this world a better place, I will. But that doesn’t mean I’m not thinking about changing my hours of altruism from 7-8 am Sunday mornings to 9-5 am Monday through Friday, and only doing deeds of greatness in crowded locations.

Takes them less than a week to run the Line thro’ somebody’s House. About a mile and a half west of the Twelve-Mile Arc, twenty-four Chains beyond Little Christiana Creek, on Wednesday, April 10th, the Field-Book reports, “At 3 Miles 49 Chains, went through Mr. Price’s House.” “Just took a wild guess,” Mrs. Price quite amiable, “where we’d build it,— not as if my Husband’s a Surveyor or anything. Which side’s to be Pennsylvania, by the way?” A mischievous glint in her eyes that Barnes, Farlow, Moses McClean and others will later all recall. Mr. Price is in Town, in search of Partners for a Land Venture. “Would you Gentlemen mind coming in the House and showing me just where your Line does Run?” Mason and Dixon, already feeling awkward about it, oblige, Dixon up on the Roof with a long Plumb-line, Mason a-squint at the Snout of the Instrument. Mrs. Price meantime fills her Table with plates of sour-cherry fritters, Neat’s-Tongue Pies, a gigantick Indian Pudding, pitchers a-slosh with home-made Cider,— then producing some new-hackl’d Streaks of Hemp, and laying them down in a Right Line according to the Surveyors’ advice,— fixing them here and there with Tacks, across the room, up the stairs, straight down the middle of the Bed, of course, . . . which is about when Mr. Rhys Price happens to return from his Business in town, to find merry Axmen lounging beneath his Sassafras tree, Strange Stock mingling with his own and watering out of his Branch, his house invaded by Surveyors, and his wife giving away the Larder and waving her Tankard about, crying, “Husband, what Province were we married in? Ha! see him gape, for he cannot remember. ’Twas in Pennsylvania, my Tortoise. But never in Maryland. Hey? So from now on, when I am upon this side of the House, I am in Maryland, legally not your wife, and no longer subject to your Authority,— isn’t that right, Gents?” “Ask the Rev,” they reply together,

[Look at] the chair you are lounging in. . . . Could you have made it for yourself? . . . How [would you] get, say, the wood? Go and fell a tree? But only after first making the tools for that, and putting together some kind of vehicle to haul the wood, and constructing a mill to do the lumber and roads to drive on from place to place? In short, a lifetime or two to make one chair! . . . If we . . . worked not forty but one-hundred-forty hours per week we couldn’t make ourselves from scratch even a fraction of all the goods and services that we call our own. [Our] paycheck turns out to buy us the use of far more than we could possibly make for ourselves in the time it takes us to earn the check. . . . Work . . . yields far more in return upon our efforts than our particular jobs put in. . . .

MOTHER— Mother— You lounge on a cloud Surrounded by God in His absence. Mother— I dream You are always returning. I wake and wait For your steps in the hall. Mother— Mornings, I hear you puttering. At night, you mutter and hum over the laundry. The earth is still warm from you. I see your needlework in the grasses that sway. When you were alive, I worried your hair gray. You cried like a little girl wanting her way. Mother— Losing you, my life has grown brittle. The air has lost all its give. Nothing surrounds me. My hands have never been so greedy For the warmth of your body, Or my eyes more restless, Scouring the crowd for your face in the sea. God is real. The earth perceives us. Ghosts Roam among the living, bargaining for an hour as flesh. Mother— You are a green leaf Swept from the tree by unseasonable winds To wander the heavens like a star. I pray for a day each year when we might collide. In still water I search for your eyes. Mother— How could you have lived once and not forever? How have we not gone everywhere together? Mother— I see you on your cloud, A shadow above this impossible city. I hurl my voice at the sky—Mother! And what answers back is the absence of everything That isn’t you.

We left the diner for another long walk along the lake. The sky had lightened the last couple of days, making me think that Ontonagon was a Michigan paradise tucked up in its northern corner. But today, racks of clouds as big as steamships parked themselves above us, giving the whole town the grey murkiness I'd grown used to. Wind came off Lake Superior, bypassed my skin and veins, and dug right into my bones. We stopped at one of the benches along the lakeshore. Pieces of driftwood were scattered across the sand like they'd been tossed there long ago by some burly creature or god. My mind drifted to the sort of gods that would inhabit Upper Michigan, tough ones to be sure. No grape-eating lounging Greeks; these gods would be plaid-wearing giants as big as pine trees who waded into Superior's violent water for a morning dip.

There was just enough room for the tonga to get through among the bullock-carts, rickshaws, cycles and pedestrians who thronged both the road and the pavement--which they shared with barbers plying their trade out of doors, fortune-tellers, flimsy tea-stalls, vegetable-stands, monkey-trainers, ear-cleaners, pickpockets, stray cattle, the odd sleepy policeman sauntering along in faded khaki, sweat-soaked men carrying impossible loads of copper, steel rods, glass or scrap paper on their backs as they yelled 'Look out! Look out!' in voices that somehow pierced though the din, shops of brassware and cloth (the owners attempting with shouts and gestures to entice uncertain shoppers in), the small carved stone entrance of the Tinny Tots (English Medium) School which opened out onto the courtyard of the reconverted haveli of a bankrupt aristocrat, and beggars--young and old, aggressive and meek, leprous, maimed or blinded--who would quietly invade Nabiganj as evening fell, attempting to avoid the police as they worked the queues in front of the cinema-halls. Crows cawed, small boys in rags rushed around on errands (one balancing six small dirty glasses of tea on a cheap tin tray as he weaved through the crowd) monkeys chattered in and bounded about a great shivering-leafed pipal tree and tried to raid unwary customers as they left the well-guarded fruit-stand, women shuffled along in anonymous burqas or bright saris, with or without their menfolk, a few students from the university lounging around a chaat-stand shouted at each other from a foot away either out of habit or in order to be heard, mangy dogs snapped and were kicked, skeletal cats mewed and were stoned, and flies settled everywhere: on heaps of foetid, rotting rubbish, on the uncovered sweets at the sweetseller's in whose huge curved pans of ghee sizzled delicioius jalebis, on the faces of the sari-clad but not the burqa-clad women, and on the horse's nostrils as he shook his blinkered head and tried to forge his way through Old Brahmpur in the direction of the Barsaat Mahal.

understanding. As they progressed west across the crater floor, they saw more gazelles and zebras and buffalo than she could count. She glassed the grasslands through the binoculars for a bottleneck of Land Rovers, hoping it would indicate a predator sighting. The strategy paid off. The first gathering led them to a chilled-out leopard lounging in the crotch of an acacia tree, the second to a pack of spotted hyenas making whooping-giggling noises while tearing apart the ribcage of an antelope with their bone-crushing jaws.

At her feet, a luminous path lit the way through the grassy field. It was made entirely from glow sticks; each of the radiant lights had been painstakingly set into the ground at perfect intervals, tracing a curved trail that shone through the darkness. Apparently, Jay had been busy. Near the water’s edge, at the end of the iridescent pathway and beneath a stand of trees, Jay had set up more than just a picnic. He had created a retreat, an oasis for the two of them. Violet shook her head, unable to find the words to speak. He led her closer, and Violet followed, amazed. Jay had hung more of the luminous glow sticks from the low-hanging branches, so they dangled overhead. They drifted and swayed in the breeze that blew up from the lake. Beneath the natural canopy of limbs, he had set up two folding lounge chairs and covered them with pillows and blankets. “I’d planned to use candles, but the wind would’ve blown ‘em out, so I had to improvise.” “Seriously, Jay? This is amazing.” Violet felt awed. She couldn’t imagine how long it must have taken him. “I’m glad you like it.” He led her to one of the chairs and drew her down until she was sitting before he started unpacking the cooler. She half-expected him to pull out a jar of Beluga caviar, some fancy French cheeses, and Dom Perignon champagne. Maybe even a cluster of grapes to feed to her…one at a time. So when he started laying out their picnic, Violet laughed. Instead of expensive fish eggs and stinky cheeses, Jay had packed Daritos and chicken soft tacos-Violet’s favorites. And instead of grapes, he brought Oreos. He knew her way too well. Violet grinned as he pulled out two clear plastic cups and a bottle of sparkling cider. She giggled. “What? No champagne?” He shrugged, pouring a little of the bubbling apple juice into each of the flimsy cups. “I sorta thought that a DUI might ruin the mood.” He lifted his cup and clinked-or rather, tapped-it against hers. “Cheers.” He watched her closely as she took a sip. For several moments, they were silent. The lights swayed above them, creating shadows that danced over them. The park was peaceful, asleep, as the lake’s waters lapped the shore. Across from them, lights from the houses along the water’s edge cast rippling reflections on the shuddering surface. All of these things transformed the ordinary park into a romantic winter rendezvous.

Violent Storm" Those who have chosen to pass the night Entertaining friends And intimate ideas in the bright, Commodious rooms of dreams Will not feel the slightest tremor Or be wakened by what seems Only a quirk in the dry run Of conventional weather. For them, The long night sweeping over these trees And houses will have been no more than one In a series whose end Only the nervous or morbid consider. But for us, the wide-awake, who tend To believe the worst is always waiting Around the next corner or hiding in the dry, Unsteady branch of a sick tree, debating Whether or not to fell the passerby, It has a sinister air. How we wish we were sunning ourselves In a world of familiar views And fixed conditions, confined By what we know, and able to refuse Entry to the unaccounted for. For now, Deeper and darker than ever, the night unveils Its dubious plans, and the rain Beats down in gales Against the roof. We sit behind Closed windows, bolted doors, Unsure and ill at ease While the loose, untidy wind, Making an almost human sound, pours Through the open chambers of the trees. We cannot take ourselves or what belongs To us for granted. No longer the exclusive, Last resorts in which we could unwind, Lounging in easy chairs, Recalling the various wrongs We had been done or spared, our rooms Seem suddenly mixed up in our affairs. We do not feel protected By the walls, nor can we hide Before the duplicating presence Of their mirrors, pretending we are the ones who stare From the other side, collected In the glassy air. A cold we never knew invades our bones. We shake as though the storm were going to hurl us down Against the flat stones Of our lives. All other nights Seem pale compared to this, and the brilliant rise Of morning after morning seems unthinkable. Already now the lights That shared our wakefulness are dimming And the dark brushes against our eyes.

Therefore we see that our corporeal life Needs little, altogether, and only such As takes the pain away, and can besides Strew underneath some number of delights. More grateful ’tis at times (for nature craves No artifice nor luxury), if forsooth There be no golden images of boys Along the halls, with right hands holding out The lamps ablaze, the lights for evening feasts, And if the house doth glitter not with gold Nor gleam with silver, and to the lyre resound No fretted and gilded ceilings overhead, Yet still to lounge with friends in the soft grass Beside a river of water, underneath A big tree’s boughs, and merrily to refresh Our frames, with no vast outlay — most of all If the weather is laughing and the times of the year Besprinkle the green of the grass around with flowers. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things ___Trans: William Ellery Leonard

Some people misperceived what a hunter or who a hunter is. Most people associate hunting with Lions chasing Gazelles. The human hunter sometimes doesn’t go looking for deers. Hunters sometimes sit in the quiet, shade of a tree, back against a safe firm wall and wait on a catch. Sometimes your catch comes to you. Like lounging on a boat on a lake and your fishing rod in the water wakes you up after a fish is hooked on it and starts moving. Hunting isn’t always moving. Sometimes a man or woman hunts by not doing anything. Nothing. And you find yourself hooked. I’ve decided to stop falling into those toxic traps. Hunters aren’t always in motion.

As Meena bounced off, he watched the waggle of her ass with way more interest than he should have. To his annoyance, his interest was noted and teased upon by the remaining pride ladies lounging in the reception area. He’d not found their ribald and impromptu song entertaining at all. “Leo and Meena sitting in a tree, F-U-C-K-I-NG.” Fighting a blush, he’d bellowed “Behave!” to get them to stop and then glared at them for good measure until they scattered. But the damage was done. The song spun around in his head. Dammit.

I have confessed sin over cigars, asked for prayer over cigars, celebrated personal and professional victories over cigars, and mourned personal and professional defeats over cigars. I’ve laughed with those who have laughed, over cigars, and wept with those who have wept. That’s not to elevate the cigar to some kind of exalted religious or cultural level. Here’s what a cigar is, in plain-speak: An excuse to sit down and talk with another guy for an hour. Think about it . . . when does this ever happen outside a cigar lounge? When guys are “hunting together” they’re sitting in a tree stand being quiet. When guys are “watching a ballgame together” they’re sitting in a living room or a sports bar staring slack-jawed at a television. When guys are “shopping for antiques together”[3] they’re walking through a junky antique store making fun of all the ridiculous stuff inside and not really talking about the stuff of life. The cigar lounge removes the awkward stiltedness of the Church Lobby (“How are YOU doing Bob?”), and it’s not as formal and intimidating as a counselor’s office, yet it still works as a place to talk.

Looking down from a fork in the tree, a little girl shivers in the bitter autumn wind. She could be inside in the warmth. Inside; amidst all the smelly pots and pans and piles of dirty clothes. The darkened lounge room flickering out a constant reel of cartoons; the light outside strangled as it tries to valiantly penetrate curtains too hard for a child to open. Michelle had gone into her Auntie’s room, as she had done many times before, to say that she will just be outside. ‘Okay my dearie,’ came the exhausted reply. There Patricia lay, her crumpled hair peeping out from the blankets. The stale, sour, smell of too much hibernation trapped in that tiny room. Her frayed sequin shoes left discarded near the door. The feather cap hanging limply from her dresser door, waiting for life to ride underneath it once again and for the wind to make it shimmer with delight. Michelle had walked outside, hoping that this canyon of loneliness would not follow her down the stairs. Out into the sounds of activity, the fresh waft of sea air, and the theatrical display of birdlife. There, Michelle now sits, watching it all as she reunites with the silent strength of her tree.

It looks like you have a fan club,” I said, laughing as I showed him the artwork. “There you are in a barn lounging on a haybale - with your dick out. Oh and there you are climbing an apple tree – with your dick out. And, oh look, this one has immortalised that time you rode bareback on a horse through that cornfield. With your dick out.

Samantha strolled into the garden and followed the little winding pathway that led through a small orchid garden to a beach shaded by tall palms. Delighted to find the beach relatively empty, Samantha carefully chose a lounge chair with a bright turquoise cushion under a palm tree whose leaves fluttered softly in the breeze. Settling in, she pulled her books and notepad from her bag and set them with her water bottle on the table next to the chair.

Zai’s promises about Faery being lush and alive? Maybe actually not a lie after all. Because everything up here is green. The starlight overhead is just bright enough that I can still make out the sprawling scenery unfolding in front of us. Trees taller than anything I’ve ever seen, fields of wildflowers stretching on and on. There are buildings, too, but they’re not like anything on Earth. They’re built right into the layout of the land, not disrupting anything to make space for themselves. There are homes nestled into the giant limbs of the trees, and tucked into massive tangles of flowers. Cavenia has led us to a massive door carved directly into a sloping hillside. There are people moving around, still finishing up their days. Witches and fae move together, intermingling without concern. They’ve set up in what appears to be some kind of town center, gathered around a natural pool of water, where children splash. It isn’t only witches and fae, either. Pixies dart in the air. A goblin helps a young fae patch a hole in the tree branch roof of their home. The sight of a hellhound with her two pups makes my heart ache for Boom, back in Asalin. [...] Overhead, floating islands dot the sky, their undersides made of roots that hang loosely toward the ground. I can barely make out the greenery peeking over the edge on top. One of them has a waterfall flowing off the side, and the water seems to turn to mist before it reaches anyone below. The islands look small from here, as high up as they are, but I know they must be huge. Know, because I can see dragons lounging on all of them. [...] Behind us, I can make out the island we came from in the distance, the colossal divot of an empty ocean stretched between us. This far above it, I realize the island is shaped like a near-perfect crescent moon.

mother and father didn't shout, instead they hooked an arm around one another and smiled.  Imagining bike rides with Ethan, and tree climbing with Wil, I ran around the departure lounge, skidding on knees and creating fictitious worlds where I was the King, and the passing-by passengers were trolls and ghosts and evil ghouls.

The slaves felt a great pride that they were owned by a master who did not stand helplessly, or labor among his fruit trees to no avail, or who did not spend the bulk of his time at whist or in lounging with liquor and no purpose. The dumb affection .. stemmed (much of it) from an awareness that he could do many of the same tasks they performed, and often do them better. In such an absolute monarchy, and in the shadow of such a monarch, there was the flourishing of a strange democratic pride; you had to see it and feel it and live it to know it, but it was there, and always exerting.

A small number of residents in each city have stopped caring whether they age a few seconds faster than their neighbors. These adventuresome souls come down to the lower world for days at a time, lounge under the trees that grow in the valleys, swim leisurely in the lakes that lie at warmer altitudes, roll on level ground. They hardly look at their watches and cannot tell you if it is Monday or Thursday. When the others rush by them and scoff, they just smile.

A velvet voice stroked down my spine. "I'm quite pleased, quite pleased indeed." I turned around. The Goblin King was lounging against one of the alder trees in the grove, one arm draped against the trunk, the other resting casually against his hip. His hair was in wild disarray, ruffled and feathery, like thistledown, like spiderwebs, illuminated by the full moon into a halo about his head. His face held all the beauty of angels, but the grin upon his face was positively devilish.

Miss Elton, who found the conversation increasingly distressing, got up, murmured a quick good night . . . and went to her room. During the bellicose talk in the lounge, the ghosts of Frank Durrant, Madeleine, Arvid and Mr. Sorenius seemed to be slipping further and further away with their own receding world. And what was one offered in exchange for this world of the dead? A future in which all signposts pointed to war and the ruin of all those useless little things which made life worth living. And then, as if provoked by the contrast of the speeches and ideas to which she had just been listening, a flood of images, each of them a small part of her life at Ashleigh Place, swept through her mind with an overwhelming suddenness—a walk on a windy autumn afternoon to the farm with a message about eggs, cartloads of logs coming before Christmas to be stacked in the stables, the remodelling of the rose-garden, with Mrs. Durrant setting the new labels in their places, two swans which spent a season on the little River Mene at the foot of the western slope, and the sudden appearance of a kingfisher by those fitful waters, the endless cooing of wood-pigeons in the trees round the house, the catch whistled by the baker's boy as he jumped out of his bright little van, the tick of the huge grandfather clock in the darkest corner of the hall, the pattern of the old-fashioned tiles in the bathroom which she had used, cockchafers beating against the windows on hot summer nights, the scent of the tobacco plants in the round bed near the drawing-room, an expedition to the woods on a grey day to cut mistletoe. . . .

Shea parked her truck at the village petrol station and slipped from the cab. Almost immediately she was uneasy, not certain why. Few villagers were out and about at such an early hour. She leaned casually against the truck, taking a long look around. She could detect no one, but she felt eyes on her, someone or something watching her. The feeling was strong. Lifting her chin, she forced herself to ignore her overactive imagination while she filled the truck, its reserve tank, and the two tanks for her generator. The feeling of being watched became so strong, it made her skin crawl. Without warning something pushed at her mind. Not Jacques. It wasn’t his familiar touch. Fear slammed into her, but she kept her cool, professional mask, her single-minded purpose to finish her tasks as quickly as possible. Whatever it was retreated, unable to penetrate. Shea drove down the nearly deserted street and parked close to the small medical clinic. This time, as she slid from the seat, she searched the shadows around her carefully, using every sense she could. Sight. Smell. Hearing. Instinct. There was someone, something. It had followed her, was near. She could feel it, but she couldn’t find it. Jacques? She touched his mind gently, suddenly afraid she was feeling something that was happening to him. I am awaiting your return. She sensed his tiredness. The morning light was even harder on him than on her. She hated being away from him. I will come soon. Shea took another deep breath and looked around, determined to find what was making her so uneasy. A man lounged lazily in the shade of a tree. He was tall, dark, and motionless, like a hunter. She felt the impact of his eyes as his gaze casually found her.

Shea took another deep breath and looked around, determined to find what was making her so uneasy. A man lounged lazily in the shade of a tree. He was tall, dark, and motionless, like a hunter. She felt the impact of his eyes as his gaze casually found her. Her heart jumped. Who was he? Had Wallace found her so soon? Shea turned away. First, before anything, she had to complete her business. She dragged out her laptop computer and typed in the commands to access the clinic’s blood bank. If she had to move Jacques, they would need supplies desperately. In another moment, Shea felt silly. The door to the small general store across the street swung open. The short, stooped owner emerged, apron tied around his ample middle, a broom in his hand. He waved openly at the motionless figure beneath the tree. “Byron. Good morning to you. Bit early, isn’t it?” She recognized the local dialect. The tall, dark-haired man replied in the same language, but his voice was low, a beautiful tone. He stepped out of the shadows, young, good-looking. He flashed a quick, friendly smile at the grocer approaching him. Clearly they knew one another, were friendly. The dark-haired man was obviously no stranger to the area. Neither exhibited the least interest in Shea. She watched as Byron bent his head solicitously down to the older man, listening intently, his arm circling the shopkeeper’s shoulders. Shea breathed a soft sigh of relief. The feeling of being stalked was gone, and she couldn’t be certain if it had been real or imagined.

Never mind. Let’s get right to the heart of this thing. You see, about twenty - four hours ago we were sitting in the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel - in the patio section, of course - and we were just sitting there under a palm tree when this uniformed dwarf came up to me with a pink telephone and said, ‘This must be the call you’ve been waiting for all this time, sir.’” I laughed and ripped open a beer can that

And the thought of her garden---ballast and bread, those blooms and vines and spinney sprigs. Herbs that comforted, cured. Growing conditions had been ideal that summer. Resplendent. Delphinium spires soared their prettiest periwinkle blue; roses clambered over the arbor, luxuriant ivy slumped languidly like legions of lounging ladies. Myrtle gleamed so waxen Lavender almost saw a miniature of her face reflected back in its leaves. Ferns forested. Hollyhocks hollered their joy. Aromatic too, pears from her mother's tree. Even the moss spread ardent, brashly ambitious. The borage grew boisterous. And yarrow, always yarrow. And purple lavender, her namesake. Though some flower dictionaries ascribed a wary, ambiguous meaning to lavender, her mother long ago had asserted the contrary, that lavender equated calmness, serenity.