Unclear Thoughts Quotes

Oh God just look at me now... one night opens words and utters pain... I cannot begin to explain to you... this... I am not here. This is not happening. Oh wait, it is, isn't it? I am a ghost. I am not here, not really. You see skin and cuts and frailty...these are symptoms, you known, of a ghost. An unclear image with unclear thoughts whispering vague things... If I told you what was really in my head, you''d never let me leave this place. And I have no desire to spend time in hell while I'm still, in theory, alive.

Sometimes, when you look close enough at a person hoping to find clarity, the image of the person becomes so hazy, so distorted, that all you're left with is unclear thoughts and more questions.

Rest assured you make perfectly good nonsense.  I understand you one-hundred-percent not at all.

When thought is in bondage the truth is hidden, for everything is murky and unclear, and the burdensome practice of judging brings annoyance and weariness. What benefit can be derived from distinctions and separations?

People usually complain that music is so ambiguous, and what they are supposed to think when they hear it is so unclear, while words are understood by everyone. But for me it is exactly the opposite...what the music I love expresses to me are thoughts not to indefinite for words, but rather too definite.

Once you decide something put all your petty fears away. Your decision should vanquish them. I will tell you time and time again, the most effective way to live is as a warrior. Worry and think before you make any decision, but once you make it, be on your way free from worries or thoughts; there will be a million other decisions still awaiting you. That's the warrior's way. A warrior thinks of his death when things become unclear. The idea of death is the only thing that tempers our spirit.

Ever since puberty I have believed in the value of two things: kindness and clear thinking. At first these two remained more or less distinct; when I felt triumphant I believed most in clear thinking, and in the opposite mood I believed most in kindness. Gradually, the two have come more and more together in my feelings. I find that much unclear thought exists as an excuse for cruelty, and that much cruelty is prompted by superstitious beliefs.

No matter what there always seems to be something clouding my existence, nothing is ever clear.

The story that you wanted to write will never be pen down that way, The chapters of incidences will variate, The entrance and exit of characters will alter, The starting of pages might be different, The ending of pages might be unclear, The attractive introduction, The charming ending, Considering the facts in your mind, Concluding with ideas in your heart, The end product will be something else, The same goes with your life, This person is going to be my lover, friend, helper, and well-wisher, or in case some of you decide an enemy, We’re breathing humans, Our thoughts, our minds, our hearts, and our souls, everything works according to our moods, likes, dislikes, etc., There’s a problem with us, There’s a fault in ourselves, When we think that they’ll be there for us, No, they wouldn’t be, Why should they be? They have a different story to live, It’s not their duty to make your story happening, So be delighted with your tale, And enjoy whatever comes your way.

Never be discouraged. The fact that you will be a winner at the first attempt is unclear. You don’t get master’s degree after attending school on the first day. You got to endure till you get there.

Live on no complex dreams... When the meaning of what you want to do isn't clear, it means there is absolutely no meaning! Simplicity with curiosity is the lap on which success rests!

During my travels in India I met a man at an ashram who was about 45-50. A little older than everyone else. He tells me a story. He had retired and he was traveling on a motorcycle with his wife on the back. While stopped at a red light, a truck ran into them from behind and killed his wife. He was badly injured and almost died. He went into a coma and it was unclear if he’d ever walk again. When he finally came out of it and found out what had happened, he naturally was devastated and heartbroken. Not to mention physically broken. He knew that his road ahead of rehabilitation, both physically and psychologically, was going to be hard. While he had given up, he had one friend who was a yoga teacher who said, “We're going to get you started on the path to recovery.” So, she kept going over to his place, and through yoga, helped him be able to walk again. After he could walk and move around again, he decided to head to India and explore some yoga ashrams. While he was there he started to learn about meditation and Hinduism and Buddhism. He told me that he never would have thought he’d ever go down this path. He would have probably laughed at anyone who goes to India to find themselves. I asked, “Did you get what you were hoping for?” He said, "Even though I lost my wife, it turned out to be the greatest thing that ever happened to me because it put me on this path.

It is unclear how much longer people will write on dried and flattened wood. Trees do so much for humans and for our planet that it hardly seems fair to ask them to carry our thoughts as well. From "Life from an RNA World: The Ancestor Within.

Whenever he was unclear about some idea or emotion, uncertain in his perception of someone or vague about a memory, he sat to his journal and wrote as precisely as he could what he thought or felt or remembered, and thereby gave those thoughts and feelings and memories the solidity and authority of words recorded on a page. And by that simple act made of them his abiding truth.

I’m so close to crying, I don’t think I can stop myself. They’re alive. They’re alive and nothing else matters. Tears are already starting to burn my eyes, clouding my vision. Kiaran looks at me with an expression I’ve never seen on him. It takes me a moment to realize it’s dawning horror. “Kam. Kam, don’t do that. Don’t cry. Don’t—” Then I’m crying and he puts his arms around me in quite possibly the most awkward, stiff embrace I’ve ever had in my life. And I adore every second of it. Aithinne speaks from behind us. “I admit to being somewhat unclear on the function of human tears,” she says. “So we’re sad about this? Should I menace someone?” In lieu of a response, the only thing I can manage is something of a half-laugh, half-sob, because they’re alive and I haven’t felt like this in so long. “For god’s sake, Aithinne,” Kiaran says, his voice rumbling through his chest, “put the blade away. You’re not going to stab Kam’s idiot friends.” Then, after a moment: “On second thought, the Seer really serves no purpose . . .” “Oh, shush.” I look up at him, whisking the tears off my cheeks. “Don’t ruin this. It helps if you don’t speak.” Then I press my face back into his chest. “And if you stop responding to my hug like I’m torturing you.” Kiaran makes some attempt to relax, but he could use lessons in hugging. He ends up with one hand shoved up in my hair and the other giving my back a there there pat, but it’s the thought that counts

For the fact is that neuroscientists who study memory remain unclear on the question of whether each time we remember something we are accessing a stable “memory fragment”—often called a “trace” or an “engram”—or whether each time we remember something we are literally creating a new “trace” to house the thought. And since no one has yet been able to discern the material of these traces, nor to locate them in the brain, how one thinks of them remains mostly a matter of metaphor: they could be “scribbles,” “holograms,” or “imprints”; they could live in “spirals,” “rooms,” or “storage units.” Personally, when I imagine my mind in the act of remembering, I see Mickey Mouse in Fantasia, roving about in a milky, navy-blue galaxy shot through with twinkling cartoon stars.

There is an aversion to long chunks of sentences...The dire problem is that long chunks of sentences are still the best way humans have to express complex thoughts, intricate observations, fleeting emotions-the whole range of what we are...It is unclear whether the American attention span can support book reading for much longer...

A man is born; his first years go by in obscurity amid the pleasures or hardships of childhood. He grows up; then comes the beginning of manhood; finally society's gates open to welcome him; he comes into contact with his fellows. For the first time he is scrutinized and the seeds of the vices and virtues of his maturity are thought to be observed forming in him. This is, if I am not mistaken, a singular error. Step back in time; look closely at the child in the very arms of his mother; see the external world reflected for the first time in the yet unclear mirror of his understanding; study the first examples which strike his eyes; listen to the first word which arouse with him the slumbering power of thought; watch the first struggles which he has to undergo; only then will you comprehend the source of the prejudices, the habits, and the passions which are to rule his life.

As I stared out of the train window, the scenery became a blur, as unclear as my thoughts and feelings.

God has not yet revealed himself to no one in no unclear terms. Religions are attempts to find him; on that level they are all equal

Pessimism counterbalances the ridiculously optimistic expectations of the culture we live in and helps us adapt out of the deeply detached, unrealistic perspective that we likely formed as a young child. It reminds us that things won’t always go our way or always be that nice, but rather, things will go wrong a lot, and that, despite this, we can still be ok. Paradoxically, we must recognize that through a certain quality of pessimism, we can better assist a more reasonably optimistic experience of life. We are all struggling and improvising our way through this strange existence, constantly confused and unsure. No one is perfect or normal in any traditional sense. We all make mistakes big and small. No one knows who or why they are. Happiness is hard and unclear. There is greed, tragedy, and malevolence in this world that we have and will continue to experience. And at any moment, this whole world and all of humanity could end for any number of reasons. Yet despite everything that was just said prior, the thought of it all ending should and does make us sad and tremble with fear. We don’t want it to end. In spite of the chaos, uncertainties, and hardships, we want to go on. We want to endure. We want to see what we can do, overcome, and experience in the face of it all. In this, we find the hopeful spirit and strength of humankind. We find optimism in pessimism.

Lupe was upset that the Japanese honeymooners were wearing surgical masks over their mouths and noses; she imagined the young Japanese couples were dying of some dread disease—she thought they’d come to Of the Roses to beg Our Lady of Guadalupe to save them. “But aren’t they contagious?” Lupe asked. “How many people have they infected between here and Japan?” How much of Juan Diego’s translation and Edward Bonshaw’s explanation to Lupe was lost in the crowd noise? The proclivity of the Japanese to be “precautionary,” to wear surgical masks to protect themselves from bad air or disease—well, it was unclear if Lupe ever understood what that was about.

Everyone has their opinion and everyone loves it. Nobody wants to accepts others opinion. So to make them happy be diplomatic and speak unclearly, let them interpret your thoughts by themselves, let them think what they want to think

Oh I could be out, rollicking in the ripeness of my flesh and others’, could be drinking things and eating things and rubbing mine against theirs, speculating about this person or that, waving, indicating hello with a sudden upward jutting of my chin, sitting in the backseat of someone else’s car, bumping up and down the San Francisco hills, south of Market, seeing people attacking their instruments, afterward stopping at a bodega, parking, carrying the bottles in a paper bag, the glass clinking, all our faces bright, glowing under streetlamps, down the sidewalk to this or that apartment party, hi, hi, putting the bottles in the fridge, removing one for now, hating the apartment, checking the view, sitting on the arm of a couch and being told not to, and then waiting for the bathroom, staring idly at that ubiquitous Ansel Adams print, Yosemite, talking to a short-haired girl while waiting in the hallway, talking about teeth, no reason really, the train of thought unclear, asking to see her fillings, no, really, I’ll show you mine first, ha ha, then no, you go ahead, I’ll go after you, then, after using the bathroom she is still there, still in the hallway, she was waiting not just for the bathroom but for me, and so eventually we’ll go home together, her apartment, where she lives alone, in a wide, immaculate railroad type place, newly painted, decorated with her mother, then sleeping in her oversized, oversoft white bed, eating breakfast in her light-filled nook, then maybe to the beach for a few hours with the Sunday paper, then wandering home whenever, never- Fuck. We don't even have a baby-sitter.

The problem is that the wise course is so frequently unclear. For a long while, I thought that this was simply because of uncertainty. When it is hard to know what will happen, it is hard to know what to do. But the challenge, I’ve come to see, is more fundamental than that. One has to decide whether one’s fears or one’s hopes are what should matter most.

A woman named Cynthia once told me a story about the time her father had made plans to take her on a night out in San Francisco. Twelve-year-old Cynthia and her father had been planning the “date” for months. They had a whole itinerary planned down to the minute: she would attend the last hour of his presentation, and then meet him at the back of the room at about four-thirty and leave quickly before everyone tried to talk to him. They would catch a tram to Chinatown, eat Chinese food (their favourite), shop for a souvenir, see the sights for a while and then “catch a flick” as her dad liked to say. Then they would grab a taxi back to the hotel, jump in the pool for a quick swim (her dad was famous for sneaking in when the pool was closed), order a hot fudge sundae from room service, and watch the late, late show. They discussed the details over and over again before they left. The anticipation was part of the whole experience. This was all going according to plan until, as her father was leaving the convention centre, he ran into an old college friend and business associate. It had been years since they had seen each other, and Cynthia watched as they embraced enthusiastically. His friend said, in effect: “I am so glad you are doing some work with our company now. When Lois and I heard about it we thought it would be perfect. We want to invite you, and of course Cynthia, to get a spectacular seafood dinner down at the Wharf!” Cynthia’s father responded: “Bob, it’s so great to see you. Dinner at the wharf sounds great!” Cynthia was crestfallen. Her daydreams of tram rides and ice cream sundaes evaporated in an instant. Plus, she hated seafood and she could just imagine how bored she would be listening to the adults talk all night. But then her father continued: “But not tonight. Cynthia and I have a special date planned, don’t we?” He winked at Cynthia and grabbed her hand and they ran out of the door and continued with what was an unforgettable night in San Francisco. As it happens, Cynthia’s father was the management thinker Stephen R. Covey (author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People) who had passed away only weeks before Cynthia told me this story. So it was with deep emotion she recalled that evening in San Francisco. His simple decision “Bonded him to me forever because I knew what mattered most to him was me!” she said.5 One simple answer is we are unclear about what is essential. When this happens we become defenceless. On the other hand, when we have strong internal clarity it is almost as if we have a force field protecting us from the non-essentials coming at us from all directions. With Rosa it was her deep moral clarity that gave her unusual courage of conviction. With Stephen it was the clarity of his vision for the evening with his loving daughter. In virtually every instance, clarity about what is essential fuels us with the strength to say no to the non-essentials. Stephen R. Covey, one of the most respected and widely read business thinkers of his generation, was an Essentialist. Not only did he routinely teach Essentialist principles – like “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing” – to important leaders and heads of state around the world, he lived them.6 And in this moment of living them with his daughter he made a memory that literally outlasted his lifetime. Seen with some perspective, his decision seems obvious. But many in his shoes would have accepted the friend’s invitation for fear of seeming rude or ungrateful, or passing up a rare opportunity to dine with an old friend. So why is it so hard in the moment to dare to choose what is essential over what is non-essential?

burn it.’ Jude felt, for an instant, an almost overpowering impulse to do just that, find some lighter fluid, douse it, cook it in the driveway. It was an impulse he immediately mistrusted, wary of any irrevocable action. Who knew what bridges might be burned along with it? He felt the slightest flicker of an idea, something about the awful-smelling suit and how it might be of use, but the thought drifted away before he could fix on it. He was tired. It was hard to pin a solid thought in place. His reasons for wanting to hold on to the suit were illogical, superstitious, unclear even to himself, but when he spoke, he had a perfectly reasonable explanation for keeping it. ‘We can’t burn it. It’s evidence. My lawyer is going to want it later, if we decide to build a case against her.’ Georgia laughed, weakly, unhappily. ‘What? Assault with a deadly spirit?

Questioner: I'm unclear on the point about the difference between thinking and thought. Are you proposing that we slide from thinking into thought without being aware that we are doing it? Bohm: Yes. It's automatic, because when we've been thinking, that thinking gets recorded in the brain and becomes thought. I'll discuss later how that thought is an active set of movements, a reflex. But suppose you keep telling very young children that people of a certain group are no good, no good, no good. Then later on it becomes thought which just springs up—'they're no good'.

He had always assumed that a time would come in adulthood, a kind of plateau, when he would have learned all the tricks of managing, of simply being. All mail and e-mails answered, all papers in order, books alphabetically on the shelves, clothes and shoes in good repair in the wardrobes, and all his stuff where he could find it, with the past, including its letters and photographs, sorted into boxes and files, the private life settled and serene, accommodation and finances likewise. In all these years this settlement, the calm plateau, had never appeared, and yet he had continued to assume, without reflecting on the matter, that it was just around the next turn, when he would exert himself and reach it, that moment when his life became clear and his mind free, when his grown-up existence could properly begin. But not long after Catriona's birth, about the time he met Darlene, he thought he saw it for the first time: on the day he died he would be wearing unmatching socks, there would be unanswered e-mails, and in the hovel he called home there would still be shirts missing cuff buttons, a malfunctioning light in the hall, and unpaid bills, uncleared attics, dead flies, friends waiting for a reply, and lovers he had not owned up to. Oblivion, the last word in organization, would be his only consolation.

Courage is strength in the face of knowledge of what is to be feared or hoped. Wisdom is prudent strength. At least two kinds of courage are required in aging and sickness. The first is the courage to confront the reality of mortality—the courage to seek out the truth of what is to be feared and what is to be hoped. Such courage is difficult enough. We have many reasons to shrink from it. But even more daunting is the second kind of courage—the courage to act on the truth we find. The problem is that the wise course is so frequently unclear. For a long while, I thought that this was simply because of uncertainty. When it is hard to know what will happen, it is hard to know what to do. But the challenge, I’ve come to see, is more fundamental than that. One has to decide whether one’s fears or one’s hopes are what should matter most. *

But since we’re on the topic of identity and narrative voice - here’s an interesting conundrum. You may know that The Correspondence Artist won a Lambda Award. I love the Lambda Literary Foundation, and I was thrilled to win a Lammy. My book won in the category of “Bisexual Fiction.” The Awards (or nearly all of them) are categorized according to the sexual identity of the dominant character in a work of fiction, not the author. I’m not sure if “dominant” is the word they use, but you get the idea. The foregrounded character. In The Correspondence Artist, the narrator is a woman, but you’re never sure about the gender of her lover. You’re also never sure about the lover’s age or ethnicity - these things change too, and pretty dramatically. Also, sometimes when the narrator corresponds with her lover by email, she (the narrator) makes reference to her “hard on.” That is, part of her erotic play with her lover has to do with destabilizing the ways she refers to her own sex (by which I mean both gender and naughty bits). So really, the narrator and her lover are only verifiably “bisexual” in the Freudian sense of the term - that is, it’s unclear if they have sex with people of the same sex, but they each have a complex gender identity that shifts over time. Looking at the various possible categorizations for that book, I think “Bisexual Fiction” was the most appropriate, but better, of course, would have been “Queer Fiction.” Maybe even trans, though surely that would have raised some hackles. So, I just submitted I’m Trying to Reach You for this year’s Lambda Awards and I had to choose a category. Well. As I said, the narrator identifies as a gay man. I guess you’d say the primary erotic relationship is with his boyfriend, Sven. But he has an obsession with a weird middle-aged white lady dancer on YouTube who happens to be me, and ultimately you come to understand that she is involved in an erotic relationship with a lesbian electric guitarist. And this romance isn’t just a titillating spectacle for a voyeuristic narrator: it turns out to be the founding myth of our national poetics! They are Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman! Sorry for all the spoilers. I never mind spoilers because I never read for plot. Maybe the editor (hello Emily) will want to head plot-sensitive readers off at the pass if you publish this paragraph. Anyway, the question then is: does authorial self-referentiality matter? Does the national mythos matter? Is this a work of Bisexual or Lesbian Fiction? Is Walt trans? I ended up submitting the book as Gay (Male) Fiction. The administrator of the prizes also thought this was appropriate, since Gray is the narrator. And Gray is not me, but also not not me, just as Emily Dickinson is not me but also not not me, and Walt Whitman is not my lover but also not not my lover. Again, it’s a really queer book, but the point is kind of to trip you up about what you thought you knew about gender anyway.

And it is one of the messages of this book that imagination is not an impediment, but, on the contrary, a necessity for true knowledge of the world, for true understanding, and for that neglected goal of human life, wisdom. Thus there is such a thing as reasoned truth, just as there is such a thing as scientific truth; but both are inseparable from the humanity that gives rise to them, both are provisional and uncertain. As with science, the vice is that of trying to avoid (what we call) the subjective by asserting (what we call) the objective. This presupposes that there is an ‘us and them’ about the world: something ‘in here’, trying to copy as well as it can something ‘out there’, and usually not doing it well. The one that is thought (on unclear grounds) to do it best is said to be objective, and that in turn is taken to be the truth. But it is the left hemisphere’s process of apprehending the world that gives rise to the very idea of the ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ – a false dichotomy.

In the valleys, it was already night, lamps coming on in the mossy, textured loam, the fresh-smelling darkness expanding, unfolding its foliage. The three of them drank Old Monk, watched as the black climbed all the way past their toes and their knees, the cabbage-leafed shadows reaching out and touching them on their cheeks, noses, enveloping their faces. The black climbed over the tops of their heads and on to extinguish Kachenjunga glowing a last brazen pornographic pink... each of them separately remembered how many evenings they'd spent like this... how unimaginable it was that they would soon come to an end. Here Sai had learned how music, alcohol, and friendship together could create a grand civilization. "Nothing so sweet, dear friends -" Uncle Potty would say raising his glass before he drank. There were concert halls in Europe to which Father Booty would soon return, opera houses where music molded entire audiences into a single grieving or celebrating heart, and where the applause rang like a downpour... But could they feel as they did here? Hanging over the mountain, hearts half empty-half full, longing for beauty, for innocence that now knows. With passion for the beloved or for the wide world or for worlds beyond this one... Sai thought of how it had been unclear to her what exactly she longed for in the early days at Cho Oyu, that only the longing itself found its echo in her aching soul. The longing was gone now, she thought, and the ache seemed to have found its substance.

After years of living in New York and feeling depressed about its state, I finally decided to stop feeling sorry and start feeling activated. Recently I made a concerted effort to get to know my neighbors. I made sure to say hi in the halls. I emailed them when I had a question. I started offering people in the subway help with their heavy items. I filed a petition with the city to determine if the building I live in is meant to be rent-stabilized. It's unclear what the result of that will be, but it made me feel more connected to the place where I live. I began attending meetings about gentrification. These weren't just things I thought of as good deeds, but a way to help reorient myself in the city. Separately they felt insignificant, but together they helped me see myself, and my city, as connected entities that are capable of changing each other. I've begun to appreciate New York more now, and so I am more willing to fight for it. The question I still have is whether it will ever be enough. Or will the city keep changing so fast that it will not matter how many individuals attempt to put the brakes on that change or dictate how and why change happens?

As though the fuzz of reminiscence had spilled into the landscape, her entire field of vision became a shifting overlap of colourful brushstrokes, even more unclear and undefined than her thoughts.

As I gradually come to trust my total reactions more deeply, I find that I can use them to guide my thinking. I have come to have more respect for those vague thoughts which occur in me from time to time, which feel as though they were significant. I am inclined to think that these unclear thoughts or hunches will lead me to important areas. I think of it as trusting the totality of my experience, which I have learned to suspect is wiser than my intellect It is fallible I am sure, but I believe it to be less fallible than my conscious mind alone.

In confessions deep, my heart reveals its weight, As the ink on paper echoes a love so great. At dawn's first light, your thought graces my mind, A gentle whisper, consciousness defined. Magical moments, your essence in the air, Setting joy's tone, a happiness rare. In waking thoughts, I sense you near, A profound love, crystal clear. With patience vast, I embrace life's bends, Winding paths and obstacles it sends. Prepared to wait, my love steadfast and true, Believing destiny will guide us, me and you. Unbound by barriers, a transcendent love, Withstanding time, distance above. In sleepless nights, haunted by silence so deep, Love unwavering, secrets it keeps. Blocked yet unbroken, my love persists, Enduring pain, challenges that exist. Through tear-stained keys, a message I impart, A love resilient, etched in my heart. Fear may linger, a future unclear, Yet hope prevails, refusing to disappear. Blocked or unblocked, my love remains, A steadfast beacon, untouched by chains. In patience and pain, my truth I declare, An unwavering love, beyond compare. Even if faces fades from view, Hope persists, love enduring, and true.

Listen for words where you’re unclear on the speaker’s meaning, then pull the conversation back, slowing it down to clear things up. “When I hear the term X, I think of Y. When you say it, do you mean something different?

That’s not radar—it’s something far wyrder. Call it wyrdar, perhaps. In Time Loops, I noted that precognition is a bit of a misnomer, since it implies thinking (cognition). I use the term because it is the most common and familiar term for future influence, but really we should define it as behavior oriented toward forthcoming rewards.5 It needn’t involve conscious thought at all. It might manifest as an urge, a hunch, or a gut feeling without any kind of mental representation attached. Waking premonitory experiences quite often produce positive effects in our lives, indirectly and unconsciously, via our behavior and via intentions that are unclear or that we are likely to misinterpret at the time. People who are highly intuitive may be especially good at acting on the kind of strange, senseless impulse that ends up saving a life or preventing some lesser mishap—perhaps by not censoring their reason, which will tend to get bogged down in finding rational causes for feelings and hunches rather than simply acting on those feelings. Intuition, I think, is just presentiment by another name, and being an intuitive person is just not getting in the way of this presentiment by overthinking our motives. Indeed, the kind of intuitive, spontaneous behavior displayed by Valerie or Mossbridge may be the most direct, important, and immediate, not to mention potentially survival-relevant, manifestation of the precognitive unconscious.

Apart from a few sectarian movements, the entire Christian church from the first century until the 1850s agreed that only men could be pastors and elders, and the vast majority agreed that only men could do public Bible teaching of both men and women.20 From the 1850s until the 1950s in the United States, women pastors were a tiny minority, but over 98 percent of evangelical churches (over 99 percent of the broader Christian church if Roman Catholic and Orthodox groups are included) had only men as pastors.21 Allowing women to be ordained in significant numbers began with some liberal Protestant denominations in the 1950s and spread to a number of evangelical groups under the influence of evangelical feminism in the 1970s and 1980s. Before the advent of evangelical feminist writings in the 1970s, today’s “disputed passages” on women in ministry were not thought to be unclear. Therefore this matter is much different from disputes over the end times or baptism or Calvinism and Arminianism.

At least two kinds of courage are required in aging and sickness. The first is the courage to confront the reality of mortality—the courage to seek out the truth of what is to be feared and what is to be hoped. Such courage is difficult enough. We have many reasons to shrink from it. But even more daunting is the second kind of courage—the courage to act on the truth we find. The problem is that the wise course is so frequently unclear. For a long while, I thought that this was simply because of uncertainty. When it is hard to know what will happen, it is hard to know what to do. But the challenge, I’ve come to see, is more fundamental than that. One has to decide whether one’s fears or one’s hopes are what should matter most.

For better or worse, I was my father’s son, and I intuited, however unclearly, that my life was inextricably bound up with his. I was who I was because of him. His blood was in my blood, his history was my history. Even my future, the person I might one day become, depended on him, because everything he’d ever seen or done or thought or felt flowed up through him and into me.

The doctrine of predestination is controversial not because the Bible is unclear or because there are good arguments on all sides. It is controversial because sinful man lacks intelligence to grasp the truth and integrity to admit the truth. He demands salvation from God but refuses to give him the glory. He reserves a decisive role for himself, and declares that although God makes salvation possible for everyone, he makes it actual for no one until each person permits God to save him.   He convinces himself that he is the master of his soul, and that no one can take it out of his hands. Jesus said, "You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you" (John 15:16), but sinful man retorts, "You have 'chosen' me only because you know that I would choose you, so that my will logically precedes and determines your will!" He says, "If conversion is necessary, then by my will I will turn against my wickedness, even my own evil will, by my might I will escape from Satan's hold and sin's grip, and by my power I will turn to Christ and permit him to save me, as if I need him at all."   The religious sinner resents this representation. He obscures his thoughts with beautiful words and reverent expressions, but he is driven by such wickedness and defiance that he makes himself the center of the universe, so that even God must bow down and serve him. Thus "free will" is Satan's slogan, and Arminianism is his creed. On the other hand, the Christian faith declares, "Salvation comes from the LORD" (Jonah 2:9) – really and wholly from God.

The preceding excerpt indicates that mathematicians tend to work on more than one problem at a given time. Do mathematicians switch back and forth between problems in a completely random manner, or do they employ and exhaust a systematic train of thought about a problem before switching to a different problem? Many of the mathematicians reported using heuristic reasoning, trying to prove something one day and disprove it the next day, looking for both examples and counterexamples, the use of "manipulations" (Polya, 1954) to gain an insight into the problem. This indicates that mathematicians do employ some of the heuristics made explicit by Polya. It was unclear whether the mathematicians made use of computers to gain an experimental or computational insight into the problem.

In the years leading up to Hitler, many völkisch groups appeared in Germany; the English equivalent “folk” doesn’t quite convey the blend of mythology, folklore, legend, and nationalism that the German term suggests. Jung’s emphasis on history and myth, as well as his rejection of scientific materialism, made these groups sympathetic to his work, as opposed to Freud’s which, along with being Jewish, was reductionist. Although much has been made of it,29 Jung’s own connection, if any,30 to the völkisch movement is unclear. The only strong link is his friendship with the German indologist J. W. Hauer, who founded the German Faith Movement in 1932, a religious society aimed at replacing Christianity in German-speaking countries with an anti-Christian and anti-Semitic modern paganism based on German literature and Hindu scripture. Hauer, an ardent Nazi, hoped his movement would become the official religion of the Reich. Hitler, however, thought little of Hauer and laughed at his followers who “made asses of themselves by worshipping Wotan and Odin and the ancient, but now obsolete, German mythology,”31 a remark that says much about Hitler’s cynicism toward the völkisch ideology he nevertheless exploited to gain power.

I resurrect this “market-guessing” section only because after the Dow declined from 995 at the peak in February to about 865 in May, I received a few calls from partners suggesting that they thought stocks were going a lot lower. This always raises two questions in my mind: (1) if they knew in February that the Dow was going to 865 in May, why didn’t they let me in on it then; and, (2) if they didn’t know what was going to happen during the ensuing three months back in February, how do they know in May? There is also a voice or two after any hundred point or so decline suggesting we sell and wait until the future is clearer. Let me again suggest two points: (1) the future has never been clear to me (give us a call when the next few months are obvious to you—or, for that matter the next few hours); and, (2) no one ever seems to call after the market has gone up one hundred points to focus my attention on how unclear everything is, even though the view back in February doesn’t look so clear in retrospect. If

Still under pressure to do more to punish Jane, Mary decided that justice must be seen to have taken its course. She had therefore resolved that Jane, together with her husband and his four brothers, must be 'tried and sentenced to receive capital punishment for the crimes they have committed'. It is clear that Mary had no wish to see her young cousin die, and the trial may therefore have been intended as no more than a formality, after which Jane could resume her imprisonment. After all, it was a queen's prerogative to show mercy, and it was one that Mary intended to use. It is unclear precisely when Jane was informed that she was to face this most harrowing ordeal, or how she reacted. After all, Mary had indicated that she would be given her life, and in time her liberty, thus the thought of standing trial, though not wholly unexpected, may still have come as something of a shock. As Jane contemplated the chilling prospect of her trial and what lay ahead, she would have been all to aware that in the past she had caused Mary so much humiliation and annoyance. But Mary had a kind heart and had refused the advice of her Councillors, several of whom had urged her to take Jane's life in order to secure her own safety. As Jane now faced a perilous trial, her only hope of survival lay in Mary's previous inclination to clemency. Nevertheless, she was well aware that many of those who stood trial did not survive the consequences. The stage had been set.

The sooner we can face the bizarre fact that we make our past in the process of finding it, and find it in the process of making it, the sooner our attitude can become one of care for our Long Self in the block universe. Dream journaling with an eye to precognition—precognitive dreamwork—is the first step. But you may find, as you build up a corpus of precognitive dreams and come face to face with the reality of that Long Self on a daily or near-daily basis, that mapping out those dream connections and reexploring what may have seemed like dead-and-gone territory—your past life, however meandering it may have seemed at the time, however traumatic it may have been, even—starts to brings even more amazing rewards and insights than just identifying discrete precognitive dream hits. This is because even if we can’t change the past or future, precognition (and the retrocausation it implies) changes everything we thought we knew about both. It is redemptive. We see our past and future selves unclearly and obliquely. But in fact, the distance between you now and you decades from now, or decades ago, may be just a wrinkled piece of cellophane. When we realize that our major upheavals in the second half of life may actually have been the billiard balls deflecting us when we were younger, it compels a new kind of sympathy and understanding for that immature being we once were—and by extension, a new kind of loyalty to the person we will become. The Long Self is truly an epic composition, and you are the one composing it. Like a writer of your soul, your aesthetic decisions now turn out to have shaped yourself long in the past, and your decisions in your future are shaping your experience now. Tobi characterizes it this way: “I believe we are involved in creating the already-written lives that we enact.” To consciously manifest and realize this amazing fact, you must build habits of self-care. Recognize that care for yourself at other ages is not just an attitude but has a real effect, a real outcome in the past—and via the past, in your future. “This is the part of the route without a short cut,” Tobi insists. “You must do the tasks, you must care.” Tobi wrote in another email: “It delights me to think that all those times I wished aloud to my family that I could go back and assure my younger self and the younger selves of my family members that we got through that time, that all would be well, that we survived, that I actually was doing that.

Tonight," said Potapov, and his wrinkled nose quivered above his thin lips, "we intend to adopt a new resolution, not only for Ispas, but for all the villages in the region. From this moment on, until further notice, every breeder of horses, like you, Comrade Lazar, will endeavor— No, he won't try, he will succeed! - Yes, he will succeed 100 percent The pregnancy and birth of all female mares!" The fifty people in the hall fell silent, and Potapov asked, "Is that clear? Something unclear in my words?" "Something unclear in my words?" Isabel came back after him. "Yes, Comrade Potapov," said Roman. "There are some unclear things." Isabelle and Sissy pinched him, and Isabelle continued to whisper in Potapov's unpleasant tenor voice, "One hundred percent pregnancy and birth of all female mares!" Sissy almost laughed out loud. Roman broke away from his wife and sister and walked to the aisle between the pews, from which He could speak without interruption from them. "You said you were an animal enclosure expert from Moscow?" Roman asked. "Please teach us how to achieve such extraordinary results." Ostap rose - Ostap, who never spoke at these assemblies! Even Yana was shocked. "Forgive me," said Ostap, seeming not to believe his own impudence, "but that's what they call female mares in Moscow, 'mares women'? Because here in Ukraine they simply say 'mares'." "Never mind," said Potapov. "And the mares, by the way, don't give birth," added Ostap with eyes burning with hatred and in a low voice with contempt. "They give birth." "Well, let's talk." Potapov pointed to the members of the Lazar family who were sitting with Mirik and Petka. "Comrade Zhuk told me about you, the Lazar family," Potapov said. Petka immediately got up and moved to another place. Mirik also moved his chair a little further - only a few centimeters, but still! He was staying away so he wouldn't be lumped in with those troublesome lazars, Isabelle thought. Unbelievable. Problematic like his wife, himself and his flesh. "We believe," said Potapov, "that you are using your horses by means of sabotage against the Soviet state." "And how do we do that?" asked Roman, who stood beside his brother. By having your mares give birth only once a year!" I don't create a horse, Comrade Potapov, I only quarter him." The mare's gestation period is eleven months," Roman said. "If you need to improve! Why do your horses, which you are apparently so famous for, only give birth to one foal per horse?" Potapov asked. "Why is their pregnancy so long? Almost a year? It's unthinkable! Can't you speed up the birth earlier and quarter them again? Or see if there's a way to make a mare carry two foals in one place? That would be very productive!" The members of the Lazar family looked forward and not at each other, lest they openly express contempt and be arrested for the crime of rowing under the Soviet Union. It is impossible to respect something that is despised, the Christian Jesus was right in that, Isabel thought, and wished that Roman would bite his tongue. Vitaly and Stan, Oleg Tretyak, the evicted Kubal, and most recently Andreyush - all these poor people were witnesses and victims of Stalin's total dedication to the reign of terror. Soon even the pretense that the rule of law exists will be abandoned. Yana got to her feet with an effort and held the chair rest. "I have to go," she said. "As you can see, I'm a pregnant female about to give birth. But maybe the experts from Moscow should spend some time around the stable during the calving season before they start giving recommendations." Yana nodded to Roman and Ostap and left the hall with a wobbly gait. Isabelle thought that Yana was slowing down for Potapov's sake. Just a few hours ago she jumped on the back of a horse and then got off above him without help and without effort. Potapov paid no attention to Yana's words or to her departure. "We need to solve th''e horse problem!" said the man.

In the first, two monkeys sit opposite each other on a branch, both inserting a finger ever deeper into the other’s nostril until the finger vanishes up to the first knuckle. Swaying gently, they sit like this with expressions on their faces described as “trancelike.” The monkeys are normally hyperactive and sociable, but hand-sniffers sit apart from the group, concentrating on each other for up to half an hour. Even more curious is the second game, in which one monkey inserts almost a whole finger between the other’s eyelid and eyeball. Monkey fingers are tiny, but relative to their eyes and noses they aren’t any smaller than ours. Also, their fingers have nails, which obviously aren’t particularly clean, so this behavior potentially scratches the cornea or causes infections. Now, the monkeys really need to sit still; otherwise someone may lose an eye. These games are most painful to watch! The pair keeps its posture for minutes, while the one whose eye is being poked may stick a finger into the other’s nostril. What purpose these weird games serve is unclear, but one idea is that the monkeys are testing their bonds. This explanation has also been offered with respect to human rituals in which we make ourselves vulnerable. Tongue-kissing, for example, carries the risk of disease transmission. Intimate kissing is either pleasurable or totally disgusting depending on the partner: Engaging in it thus says a lot about how we perceive the relationship. In couples, kissing is thought to test the love, enthusiasm, even faithfulness of the partner. Perhaps capuchin monkeys, too, are trying to find out how much they really like each other, which may then help them decide who can be trusted to support them during confrontations within the group. A second explanation is that these games help the monkeys reduce stress, of which they have no shortage. Their group life is full of drama. During eye-poking or hand-sniffing, they seem to enter an unusually calm, dreamy state. Are they exploring the borderline between pain and pleasure, perhaps releasing endorphins in the process?

...everything is always muddled, everything is always unclear, inextricable, and perhaps never more so than at the moment when you think you're behaving with the most algorithmic lucidity...

A Koan is a riddle or dialectic meditation device used in Zen Buddhist practice that is intentionally designed to, at least on the surface, be unclear and obscure. Its point is not to provide a conclusion or answer to the question presented, but rather, to disregard the relevance of the answer, to detach itself from the functions of conclusion and singular resolution. There are over a thousand known Koan that follow this format, used to test and challenge Zen Buddhists, and reveal the obscurity and limits of the mind. In general, life is uncertain, confusing, and paradoxical. As hard as we work against this, it mostly remains so. No matter our efforts, every time we believe we have some understanding or control over life, like water in the palm of the hand, the tighter we squeeze, the further it eludes our grip. Sciences, religions, and philosophies make sense of the world through various methods, some more successful than others, but nonetheless, all face the inevitable limits of themselves, the human mind, and the time in which they are erected. By sheer lack of alternatives, we understand the world with thoughts and words. Through which, we can create systems of order and understanding like logic, story, social structure, and so on. This can greatly assist our ability to survive, coexist, communicate, deal with physical stuff, and so on. However, thoughts and words, of course, can only describe and understand the world with thoughts and words. As a result, they cannot make sense of what exists beyond thoughts and words, which a great measure of life arguably does. Like any tool thinking and language are limited to the confines of their abilities. Like a hammer cannot screw in a screw, and a nail cannot cut a board of wood, the human mind cannot make sense of the mindless. A hammer can perhaps smash a screw in, and a nail can perhaps split a board of wood like the mind can perhaps consider life, but none of these items or tools fully suit the jobs they are carrying out, and thus, will fall short in their abilities to properly complete them. A Koan embodies this notion. As opposed to most stories, ideas, and answers that attempt to fight against the concept of obscurity and absurdity in life by using defined structure, logic, and resolutions, the Koan harmonizes with the absurdity of life and disregards the need for conclusive answers. In rough terms, Zen Buddhism, in general, is founded on this synchronization with the obscure and abstract.

That attachment styles can vary based on type—for example, friendship or a romantic relationship. 2. That how a person behaves in one relationship—for example, with one specific friend—can spread to how they behave in other relationships of that same type—such as with other friends. This concept is important because it truly demonstrates the ability of the subconscious to store and replay beliefs based on repetition and emotion. Now that you understand the fluidity of attachment styles and why they lie along a spectrum, you can begin to discover your dominant attachment style in different areas of your life. Consider how you act and feel in your relationships, whether they are romantic, platonic, or familial. Examine the ratio of activating to deactivating strategies in your thoughts and behaviors. Recall that activating strategies are decisions that are made based on prior information and experiences. Deactivating strategies are actions that drive self-reliance and deny attachment needs altogether, pushing others away. If you have relatively more activating strategies, you may have a greater fear of abandonment and be on the Anxious side of the spectrum. More deactivating strategies may indicate a subconscious belief around complete autonomy, placing you more on the Dismissive-Avoidant side of the attachment scale. Keep in mind that this tool should be used in romantic relationships after the honeymoon phase is over, a phase that occurs during the first two years of the relationship. During the honeymoon phase, your brain has higher levels of dopamine in the caudate nucleus and ventral tegmental regions, according to Scientific American. These areas of the brain are responsible for, respectively, learning and memory and emotional processing. Consequently, your attachment style may be unclear to you in the early phases of your romantic relationship since your emotions, memory, and hormone regulation are atypical. Our experiences can also dramatically alter our attachment style. For example, if Sophie were to partake in certain forms of therapy and practices such as recurrent meditation, she may be able to better understand and re-equilibrate her subconscious beliefs. According to Science Daily, since meditation induces theta brain waves and activates areas of the frontal lobe associated with emotional regulation, Sophie could eventually bring herself into a more Secure attachment space without the help of a Secure partner. However, although it is common to express different attachment styles in different areas of life, the type of attachment you have in relationships ultimately tends to be the attachment style that you associate with the type of relationship. For example, you can be Dismissive-Avoidant in familial relationships because you experienced emotional neglect from parental figures, but you could also be Fearful-Avoidant in romantic relationships due to domestic abuse that has occurred. This illustrates that major events such as betrayal, loss, or abuse can alter our attachment style in different chapters of life, but that ultimately attachment styles are fluid and often dependent on the kind of relationships we are in. We tend to have a primary attachment style, most associated with how we show up in romantic relationships, that plays a large role in our personality structure. This essentially dictates how we give and receive love and what our subconscious expectations are of others.

My life as a patient changed the day I reread a letter by the nineteenth-century poet John Keats in which he offers a theory of what makes an artist great. At the the time of its writing, Keats had witnessed his mother die from tuberculosis, then a poorly understood disease with an unclear cause. Soon his brother Tom and later himself would die of the infection. In the letter, Keats - in his early twenties - tried to e plain to his brothers the special quality that differentiated a great artist form a merely good one. “Negative Capability,” as he terms it, is the quality “of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.” I couldn’t escape the sense that Keats’s words about the necessity of “being in uncertainties” derived form his own experience of living with consumption’s impact on his family. In fact, his formulation of negative capability seemed to be a key to living well in the face of pain. It was a profound insight of the sort that comes from witnessing loss and suffering up close. (As the chronically ill know, to the alive *is* to be in uncertainty.) I was grateful for his words, because they reminded me that I wasn’t living off the known map of human experience. Rather, I had felt invisible in my illness, I realized, because American culture - and American medicine within it - largely strived to downplay the fact that we still know so little about illness. A doctor friend told me that in med school he was explicitly taught never to say “I don’t know” to a patient. Uncertainty was thought to open the door to lawsuits. In the place of uncertainty, Americans have catchphrases: *Just do it. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.* no wonder that as a patient I was bent on an “irritable reaching after fact & reason.” The shadowland I lived in, forced against my will into what Keats called the great “Penetralium of mystery,” was an uncomfortable and unsatisfying place, especially since I lived in a culture that Donita’s the importance of triumph over adversity - a culture that insists on recovery.

If you gather a team of experienced leaders and ask them why past projects failed, the explanations flow readily: The project was bigger than we realised . . . we were too slow . . . our design was flawed . . . we were operating from faulty assumptions . . . the market changed . . . we had the wrong people . . . our technology didn’t work . . . our strategy was unclear . . . our costs were too high . . . our organisation sabotaged us . . . the competition was tougher than we thought . . . we reorganised ourselves to death . . . we fought among ourselves . . . our strategy was flawed . . . our strategy was good but our execution was lousy . . . we ran into unexpected bottlenecks . . . we misunderstood our customers . . . we were short on resources . . . the economics didn’t work . . . we got killed by internal politics . . .

A clearly expressed word is fulfillment. The word which constantly keeps you in completion and expands you is Integrity. Everything starts with the word. Unclear doubts lead only to more confusion.Thoughts and words lacking integrity lead to incompletions. Unintelligent beings that lack integrity have unclear doubts.

I jolted out of my sleep or so I thought with tunneling sparking flashing light. For a second when I look around the room everything seems soft, unclear, and slightly distorted, I am in my bed naked like I am every day when I get up and hug my stuffed bunny for the last time, as I snap on the lamp on my nightstand. I have to hide my bunny when the girls come over. Ray used to just throw him off the bed onto the floor. That was not cool! I don’t think Marcel would mind my cuddly stuffed bunny, with the cute floppy ears. My alarm has been blaring and Beep- Beeping for five minutes. It's from seven-o to six am. I smash and rub my face in my soft pillow for the last time. I look around the room I am sweating. I wipe my forehead, saying wow, I have had a dream that I’m falling- but never like this. ‘Damn that was a crazy dream!’ So- I start my morning retain- you know grabbing for what inside my Pringles can buy my bed before all hell comes busting through my door. I sit up in bed slightly and I turn on my laptop, might as well live record what going to do on cam, why not. So, push the quilt away, I look down at my unclothed body with my toy in hand, and I see my toes wiggling with nail polish, and my almost smooth legs and everything in-between. Thinking I just shaved and looked at all this stubble, growing here already… don’t you hate that, I sure do? It’s like all you can see and feel. Now I’m covered with sweat even though my room is frigid cold. My throat is dry, my heart is racing, and I’m desperate for a drink, yet I am almost there, my sighing is getting loud, I can feel it building up, I can stop it feeling so good and the tips are just rolling in for the boys that tune into my show. The camera is right there, whoosh- and I feel on top of the world. Yet after I hit a low with having to start my day, running away from me away from who I am, I’ve just been running a long way. My floral sheets are stocked with everything rushing out, and so is my keyboard, yet the boys love it and love me for it, so that is good enough for me. Yet after I do that it’s like I get an embarrassing feeling, I pull it out, then close the lid of my lap, to cover up fast. It’s like I get a rush from it, and then the guilt comes after in my mind saying- ‘That was the wrong missy, yet I can’t stop. Jenny and my girls give me that same rush, always doing something that feels so good yet maybe wrong.

All facts are not known to be composed but tight and young to a point. Death is nearing me, I feel that I see that, they want that. ME- watches the doors open to admit me in the rush upwards. The doors slide closed behind him. Then a muffled red laser-ROUND like an endless machine gun I hear a kid yells out. I walk and not look, as they tumble down in a lined-up row, all death no reason. Turns back to the screens. YOU- I gave you an order... you the order not to kill her I ran to the desk, of the hands that run the government, robotics departments. ‘Yes- we hear your cries out for help yet that rain the math that we can, or you don’t have.’ FREAK YOU! She has by the tie, I don’t see kill your life, that you don’t even understand, I think we can see more than enough looking over the wall screens, at the wastes. You killed my baby girl off- Kantilla! The Robot did not us, she was one point away from life, pushed back towards the door. The gun on my back- go or die. Killer robots, not of the laws, I never thought it possible. Shaking in its hand, I see as mothers cry. Happy for the clean-up as they say. Bodies burnt in a large firebox in the mid-city, see the black smoke for kilometers. Mass graves are wanted and have been in place now, it’s all the same no name to be remembered by, just a large hologram in the full finger, saying lines- as I love you, on your wrist is not life to me or having them here. I am desperate and unclear, and incompatible. She touches the WALL PANEL making her way back to her appearance in the high rise, without her young life. The doors slide open. The Robot, said I am sorry for your loss today, ‘Anything I can do,’ as she goes and weeps, ‘Yeah, FREAK OFF!

nfront reality of mortality--the courage to seek out the truth of what is to be feared and what is to be hoped. Such courage is difficult enough. We have many reasons to shrink for it. But even more daunting is the second kind of courage--the courage to act on the truth we find. The problem is that the wise course is so frequently unclear. For a long while, I thought that this was simply because of uncertainty. When it is hard to know what will happen, it is hard to know what to do. But the challenge, I’ve come to see, is more fundamental than that. One has to decide whether one’s fears or one’s hope are what should matter most.

What we can say with some certainty is that American young people have enormous trouble putting faith into words. It was unclear whether the young people we interviewed in the NSYR were unfamiliar with religious language or just uncomfortable using it in public (a number of youth we talked to thought talking about religion at school was illegal). The difficulty escalated when the conversation turned to particulars (the name “Jesus” was especially absent from our interviews).

DARKY GARDINER OPENED his eyes and blinked. Raindrops fell on his face. He pushed his hands into the mud but they kept sinking. He was swimming in shit. He tried to get back to his feet. It was impossible. He was swimming in ever more shit. He tried to curl up to protect himself. It did no good and he only sank back into the foul hole. If he closed his eyes he was back there being beaten. If he opened his eyes he was drowning in shit, trying to stay afloat, trying to climb out. But it was so slippery and so dark and he could not find a hold, and when he did he had no strength to climb out. His body could not help him. It answered only to the kicks and blows that twisted him wherever they wished. He had no idea how long he had been there. Sometimes he thought it seemed forever. At other times it seemed no time at all. At one point he heard his mother. He was having difficulty breathing. He felt more soft raindrops, saw bright-red oil against the brown mud, heard his mother calling again, but it was unclear what she was saying, was she calling him home or was it the sea? There was a world and there was him and the thread joining the two was stretching and stretching, he was trying to pull himself up that thread, he was desperately trying to haul himself back home to where his mother was calling. He tried calling to her but his mind was running out of his mouth in a long, long river towards the sea. He blinked again. A monkey shrieked, its teeth white. Above the ridge, the smiling moon. Nothing held and he was sinking. He heard the sea. No, he said, or thought he said. No, not the sea. No! No!