Until It's Permanent Quotes

Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place, and I don't care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward; how much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done! Now, if you know what you're worth, then go out and get what you're worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain't where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody. Cowards do that and that ain't you. You're better than that! I'm always gonna love you, no matter what. No matter what happens. You're my son and you're my blood. You're the best thing in my life. But until you start believing in yourself, you ain't gonna have a life.

Not at all, Shakespeare, but hear this. I’m gonna fuck you, but I’m also gonna make love to you. I’m gonna own every goddamn piece of your soul, and I’m never gonna let you go. You’re gonna scream my name over and over until it’s permanently lodged in your friggin’ throat. You’re not gonna be just a fuck to me, Mol—you’re gonna be my fuckin’ salvation!

Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned - well, everywhere there's war. And until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race - it's a war. And until there's no longer first-class or second-class citizens of any nation... Until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes - it's a war. Until that day the dream of lasting peace, world citizenship, and a rule of international morality will remain in but a fleeting illusion to be pursued, but never attained.

Well, I'll take these pages and move on. Things are happening elsewhere. Things are always happening. It seems wherever I go there is drama. People are like lice - they get under your skin and bury themselves there. You scratch and scratch until the blood comes, but you can't get permanently deloused. Everywhere I go people are making a mess of their lives. Everyone has his private tragedy. It's in the blood now - misfortune, ennui, grief, suicide. The atmosphere is saturated with disaster, frustration, futility. Scratch and scratch, until there's no skin left. However, the effect upon me is exhilarating. Instead of being discouraged or depressed, I enjoy it. I am crying for more and more disasters, for bigger calamities, grander failures. I want the whole world to be out of whack, I want every one to scratch himself to death.

I’ve won his heart, but it’s like owning a house in which most of the doors are permanently locked. He wants to shield me from all unpleasantness. And it’s not really marriage—not like the marriage you have with Cam—until he’s willing to share the worst of himself as well as the best of himself.

A goal is a specific objective that you either achieve or don't sometime in the future. A system is something you do on a regular basis that increases your odds of happiness in the long run. If you do something every day, its a system. If you're waiting to achieve it someday in the future, it's a goal. If you achieve your goal, you celebrate and feel terrific, but only until you realize you just lost the thing that gave you purpose and direction. Your options are to feel empty and useless, perhaps enjoying the spoils of your success until they bore you, or set new goals and reenter the cycle of permanent presuccess failure. All I'm suggesting is that thinking of goals and systems as very different concepts has power. Goal-oriented people exist in a state of continuous presuccess failure at best, and permanent failure at worst if things never work out. Systems people succeed every time they apply their systems, in the sense that they did what they intended to do. The goals people are fighting the feeling of discouragement at each turn. The systems people are feeling good everytime they apply their system. That's a big difference in terms of maintaining your personal energy in the right direction.

I did not get over the loss of my loved ones; rather, I absorbed the loss into my life, like soil receives decaying matter, until it became a part of who I am. Sorrow took up permanent residence in my soul and enlarged it.

Every thing looks permanent until its secret is known.

But to find it and touch it and hold it! What relief, if only briefly, until love wears off or slips through our hands. Strange how love--the most fickle of emotions--creates the illusion of permanence right from the start, just as beauty, so fleeting and elusive, can seem so timeless and infinite to behold.

War can not be avoided until the physical cause for its recurrence is removed and this, in the last analysis, is the vast extent of the planet on which we live. Only thru annihilation of distance in every respect, as the conveyance of intelligence, transport of passengers and supplies and transmission of energy will conditions be brought about some day, insuring permanency of friendly relations.

People are like lice - they get under your skin and bury themselves there. You scratch and scratch until the blood comes out, but you can’t permanently get deloused. Everywhere I go, people are making a mess of their lives. Everyone has his private tragedy. It’s in the blood now - misfortune, ennui, grief, suicide. The atmosphere is saturated with disaster, frustration, futility. Scratch and scratch - until there is no skin left. However, the effect upon me is exhilarating. Instead of being discouraged or depressed, I enjoy it. I am crying for more and more disasters, for bigger calamaties, for grader failures. I want the whole world to be out of wack, I want everyone to scratch himself to death.

No matter how old we get, we somehow can never convince ourselves that whatever trial we're in the middle of is only temporary. No matter how may trials we've had in the past, and no matter how well we remember that they eventually were there no longer, we're sure that this one, this one right now, is a permanent state of affairs. But it's not. By nature humans are temporary beings.' 'You're saying i just have to ride it out until it goes away.' 'Not at all, my dear. I'm saying you have to strive for a solution and trust that eventually there will be one.

She loved that boy with her whole heart, but my God, there were days when she couldn’t fully breathe until she’d left him at the schoolyard gate. That’s all over now; she would staple him to her, sew him into her skin, affix her body permanently to his now, if she could. She’d grow her hair into his scalp, would become his conjoined twin-mother. She would forgo a private thought in her head for the rest of her life, if she could keep him safe. Luca waits at the corner, and Lydia looks beyond him, across the street, where the side of a building is painted with graffiti. A giant question mark. No. No, it’s not a question mark. Lydia stops cold. She puts her hand out for Luca.

The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready; it goes on because it’s 11:30. This is something Lorne [Michaels] has said often about Saturday Night Live, but I think it’s a great lesson about not being too precious about your writing. You have to try your hardest to be at the top of your game and improve every joke you can until the last possible second, and then you have to let it go. You can’t be that kid standing at the top of the waterslide, overthinking it. You have to go down the chute. (And I’m from a generation where a lot of people died on waterslides, so this was an important lesson for me to learn.) You have to let people see what you wrote. It will never be perfect, but perfect is overrated. Perfect is boring on live TV. What I learned about ‘bombing’ as an improviser at Second City was that bombing is painful, but it doesn’t kill you. No matter how badly an improv set goes, you will still be physically alive when it’s over. What I learned about bombing as a writer at Saturday Night is that you can’t be too worried about your ‘permanent record.’ Yes, you’re going to write some sketches that you love and are proud of forever—your golden nuggets. But you’re also going to write some real shit nuggets. And unfortunately, sometimes the shit nuggets will make it onto the air. You can’t worry about it. As long as you know the difference, you can go back to panning for gold on Monday.

The war creates no absolutely new situation: it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself. If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun.

A loved one’s death is permanent, and that is so heartbreaking. But I believe your loss of hope can be temporary. Until you can find it, I’ll hold it for you. I have hope for you. I don’t want to invalidate your feelings as they are, but I also don’t want to give death any more power than it already has. Death ends a life, but not our relationship, our love, or our hope.

The feeling of being alone, I’ve found, is the poison that has no taste. It seeps in slowly and easily; it never seems unusual. Isolation presents as an undesired state but nothing serious, nothing permanent, until the lonely nights become lonely months.

Prying out a stump reminded him of how deeply a tree clung to the ground, how tenacious a hold it had on a place. Though he was not a sentimental man - he did not cry when his children died, he simply dug the graves and buried them - James was silent each time he killed a tree, thinking of its time spent in that spot. He never did this with the animals he hunted - they were food, and transient, passing through this world and out again, as people did. But trees felt permanent - until you had to cut them down.

As our trek across time will make clear, life is likely transient, and all understanding that arose with its emergence will almost certainly dissolve with its conclusion. Nothing is permanent. Nothing is absolute. And so, in the search for value and purpose, the only insights of relevance, the only answers of significance, are those of our own making. In the end, during our brief moment in the sun, we are tasked with the noble charge of finding our own meaning.

What is aura? A peculiar web of space and time: the unique manifestation of a distance, however near it may be. To follow, while reclining on a summer’s noon, the outline of a mountain range on the horizon or a branch, which casts its shadow on the observer until the moment or  the hour partakes of their presence—this is to breathe in the aura of these mountains, of this branch. Today, people have as passionate an inclination to bring things close to themselves or even more to the masses, as to overcome uniqueness in every situation by reproducing it. Every day the need grows more urgent to possess an object in the closest proximity, through a picture or, better, a reproduction. And the reproduction, as the illustrated newspaper and weekly readily prove, distinguishes itself unmistakably from the picture. Uniqueness and permanence are as closely intertwined in the latter as transitoriness and reproducibility in the former.

A car, a blue convertible, sleek and desirable, came sweeping west out of Beverly Hills along the, as I understand it, gracious curves of Sunset Boulevard. Anybody seeing such a car would have wanted it. Obviously. It was designed to make you want it. If people had turned out not to want it very much, the makers would have redesigned it and redesigned it until they did. The world is now full of things like this, which is, of course, why everybody is in such a permanent state of want.

A man will not begin this work and will not consider it necessary until he becomes convinced that he possesses neither self-consciousness nor all that is connected with it, that is, unity or individuality, permanent "I," and will.

Mariac tells us about the books he's read, the painters he's liked, the plays he's seen. He finds himself by looking in the works of others. He defines his own faith by a passionate anger against Gide the Luciferian. Reading his 'memories' is like meeting a man on a train who says, 'Don't look at me; that's misleading. If you want to know what I'm like, wait until we're in a tunnel, and then study my reflection in the window.' You wait, and look, and catch a face against a shifting background of sooty walls, cables, and sudden brickwork. The transparent shape flickers and jumps, always a few feet away. You become accustomed to its existence, you move with its movements; and though you know its presence is conditional, you feel it to be permanent. Then there is a wail from ahead, a roar and a burst of light; the face is gone for ever.

Until that moment, I’d carried my life like a handkerchief knapsack at the end of a broom handle, something small and containable I could pick up and move at the drop of a hat. And I never knew what it was I was running from, or to, until he said it. Home. The word stoked an ember in my chest. Here was the permanence I’d been waiting for. A place that would belong to us.

I once met a traveler who told me he would live to see the end of time. He laid out all his vitamins before me and told me he slept seven hours every night, no more or less. All the life you want, he said. It's all within the palm of your hand now. He said he would outlast all the wars and all the diseases, long enough to remember everything, and long enough to forget everything. He'd be the last man still standing when the sun decides to collapse upon itself and history ends. He said he had found the safest place on earth, where he could stay until the gateway to the beyond opened before him. A thousand generations from today. I pictured him there, atop a remote and snowy mountain. The heavens opening and God congratulating him for his perseverance. Asking him to join Him and watch as the sun burns down to a dull orange cinder and everything around it breaks is orbit and goes tumbling tumbling away, everything that once seemed permanent pulled apart so effortlessly, like a ball of yarn. A life into divinity. But I knew it was a lie. I've always known it was a lie. You can not hide from the world. It will find you. It always does. And now it has found me. My split second of immortality is over. All that's left now is the end, which is all any of us ever has.

For most of its history until fairly recent times the general pattern for Earth was to be hot with no permanent ice anywhere. The current ice age—ice epoch really—started about forty million years ago, and has ranged from murderously bad to not bad at all.

The 5 Clues to Spotting the Next Starbucks They permanently change people's habits. They're copycats. Their success is validated by the competition. They are driven by the founder's vision and passion. They have superb entrepreneurial management and execution.

It is very easy to grow tired at collecting; the period of a low tide is about all men can endure. At first the rocks are bright and every moving animal makes his mark on the attention. The picture is wide and colored and beautiful. But after an hour and a half the attention centers weary, the color fades, and the field is likely to narrow to an individual animal. Here one may observe his own world narrowed down until interest and, with it, observation, flicker and go out. And what if with age this weariness becomes permanent and observation dim out and not recover? Can this be what happens to so many men of science? Enthusiasm, interest, sharpness, dulled with a weariness until finally they retire into easy didacticism? With this weariness, this stultification of attention centers, perhaps there comes the pained and sad memory of what the old excitement was like, and regret might turn to envy of the men who still have it. Then out of the shell of didacticism, such a used-up man might attack the unwearied, and he would have in his hands proper weapons of attack. It does seem certain that to a wearied man an error in a mass of correct data wipes out all the correctness and is a focus for attack; whereas the unwearied man, in his energy and receptivity, might consider the little dross of error a by-product of his effort. These two may balance and produce a purer thing than either in the end. These two may be the stresses which hold up the structure, but it is a sad thing to see the interest in interested men thin out and weaken and die. We have known so many professors who once carried their listeners high on their single enthusiasm, and have seen these same men finally settle back comfortably into lectures prepared years before and never vary them again. Perhaps this is the same narrowing we observe in relation to ourselves and the tide pool—a man looking at reality brings his own limitations to the world. If he has strength and energy of mind the tide pool stretches both ways, digs back to electrons and leaps space into the universe and fights out of the moment into non-conceptual time. Then ecology has a synonym which is ALL.

You could call it heroic responsibility, maybe," Harry Potter said. "Not like the usual sort. It means that whatever happens, no matter what, it's always your fault. Even if you tell Professor McGonagall, she's not responsible for what happens, you are. Following the school rules isn't an excuse, someone else being in charge isn't an excuse, even trying your best isn't an excuse. There just aren't any excuses, you've got to get the job done no matter what." Harry's face tightened. "That's why I say you're not thinking responsibly, Hermione. Thinking that your job is done when you tell Professor McGonagall - that isn't heroine thinking. Like Hannah being beat up is okay then, because it isn't your fault anymore. Being a heroine means your job isn't finished until you've done whatever it takes to protect the other girls, permanently." In Harry's voice was a touch of the steel he had acquired since the day Fawkes had been on his shoulder. "You can't think as if just following the rules means you've done your duty.

My son, you are just an infant now, but on that day when the world disrobes of its alluring cloak, it is then that I pray this letter is in your hands. Listen closely, my dear child, for I am more than that old man in the dusty portrait beside your bed. I was once a little boy in my mother’s arms and a babbling toddler on my father's lap. I played till the sun would set and climbed trees with ease and skill. Then I grew into a fine young man with shoulders broad and strong. My bones were firm and my limbs were straight; my hair was blacker than a raven's beak. I had a spring in my step and a lion's roar. I travelled the world, found love and married. Then off to war I bled in battle and danced with death. But today, vigor and grace have forsaken me and left me crippled. Listen closely, then, as I have lived not only all the years you have existed, but another forty more of my own. My son, We take this world for a permanent place; we assume our gains and triumphs will always be; that all that is dear to us will last forever. But my child, time is a patient hunter and a treacherous thief: it robs us of our loved ones and snatches up our glory. It crumbles mountains and turns stone to sand. So who are we to impede its path? No, everything and everyone we love will vanish, one day. So take time to appreciate the wee hours and seconds you have in this world. Your life is nothing but a sum of days so why take any day for granted? Don't despise evil people, they are here for a reason, too, for just as the gift salt offers to food, so do the worst of men allow us to savor the sweet, hidden flavor of true friendship. Dear boy, treat your elders with respect and shower them with gratitude; they are the keepers of hidden treasures and bridges to our past. Give meaning to your every goodbye and hold on to that parting embrace just a moment longer--you never know if it will be your last. Beware the temptation of riches and fame for both will abandon you faster than our own shadow deserts us at the approach of the setting sun. Cultivate seeds of knowledge in your soul and reap the harvest of good character. Above all, know why you have been placed on this floating blue sphere, swimming through space, for there is nothing more worthy of regret than a life lived void of this knowing. My son, dark days are upon you. This world will not leave you with tears unshed. It will squeeze you in its talons and lift you high, then drop you to plummet and shatter to bits . But when you lay there in pieces scattered and broken, gather yourself together and be whole once more. That is the secret of those who know. So let not my graying hairs and wrinkled skin deceive you that I do not understand this modern world. My life was filled with a thousand sacrifices that only I will ever know and a hundred gulps of poison I drank to be the father I wanted you to have. But, alas, such is the nature of this life that we will never truly know the struggles of our parents--not until that time arrives when a little hand--resembling our own--gently clutches our finger from its crib. My dear child, I fear that day when you will call hopelessly upon my lifeless corpse and no response shall come from me. I will be of no use to you then but I hope these words I leave behind will echo in your ears that day when I am no more. This life is but a blink in the eye of time, so cherish each moment dearly, my son.

For most of its history until fairly recent times the general pattern for Earth was to be hot with no permanent ice anywhere.

Nothing will change permanently until you dig down to the bedrock of truth about your life and God’s purpose for it.

Big and little they went on together to Molalla, to Tuska, to Roswell, Guthrie, Kaycee, to Baker and Bend. After a few weeks Pake said that if Diamond wanted a permanent traveling partner he was up for it. Diamond said yeah, although only a few states still allowed steer roping and Pake had to cover long, empty ground, his main territory in the livestock country of Oklahoma, Wyoming, Oregon and New Mexico. Their schedules did not fit into the same box without patient adjustment. But Pake knew a hundred dirt road shortcuts, steering them through scabland and slope country, in and out of the tiger shits, over the tawny plain still grooved with pilgrim wagon ruts, into early darkness and the first storm laying down black ice, hard orange-dawn, the world smoking, snaking dust devils on bare dirt, heat boiling out of the sun until the paint on the truck hood curled, ragged webs of dry rain that never hit the ground, through small-town traffic and stock on the road, band of horses in morning fog, two redheaded cowboys moving a house that filled the roadway and Pake busting around and into the ditch to get past, leaving junkyards and Mexican cafes behind, turning into midnight motel entrances with RING OFFICE BELL signs or steering onto the black prairie for a stunned hour of sleep.

Thank you, Lieutenant." "Which is why you are now assigned to me as my permanent aide. You want a detective shield, Officer?" Peabody knew what she was being given: the opportunity, the gift out of nowhere. She closed her eyes a moment until she had her voice under control. "Yes, sir, I do." "Good. You'll work your ass off for it. Get the data I requested, and let's move." "Right away." At the door, Peabody paused, turned back. "I'm very grateful for the chance you're giving me." "Don't be. You earned it. And if you screw up, I'll bust you down to traffic.

[The goal is] "liberation from the bondage of rebirth. According to the Vedantists the self, which they call the atman and we call the soul, is distinct from the body and its senses, distinct from the mind and its intelligence; it is not part of the Absolute, for the Absolute, being infinite, can have no parts but the Absolute itself. It is uncreated; it has existed form eternity and when at least it has cast off the seven veils of ignorance will return to the infinitude from which it came. It is like a drop of water that has arisen from the sea, and in a shower has fallen into a puddle, then drifts into a brook, finds its way into a stream, after that into a river, passing through mountain gorges and wide plains, winding this way and that, obstructed by rocks and fallen trees, till at least it reaches the boundless seas from which it rose." "But that poor little drop of water, when it has once more become one with the sea, has surely lost its individuality." Larry grinned. "You want to taste sugar, you don't want to become sugar. What is individuality but the expression of our egoism? Until the soul has shed the last trace of that it cannot become one with the Absolute." "You talk very familiarly of the Absolute, Larry, and it's an imposing word. What does it actually signify to you?" "Reality. You can't say what it is ; you can only say what it isn't. It's inexpressible. The Indians call it Brahman. It's not a person, it's not a thing, it's not a cause. It has no qualities. It transcends permanence and change; whole and part, finite and infinite. It is eternal because its completeness and perfection are unrelated to time. It is truth and freedom." "Golly," I said to myself, but to Larry: "But how can a purely intellectual conception be a solace to the suffering human race? Men have always wanted a personal God to whom they can turn in their distress for comfort and encouragement." "It may be that at some far distant day greater insight will show them that they must look for comfort and encouragement in their own souls. I myself think that the need to worship is no more than the survival of an old remembrance of cruel gods that had to be propitiated. I believe that God is within me or nowhere. If that's so, whom or what am I to worship—myself? Men are on different levels of spiritual development, and so the imagination of India has evolved the manifestations of the Absolute that are known as Brahma, Vishnu, Siva and by a hundred other names. The Absolute is in Isvara, the creator and ruler of the world, and it is in the humble fetish before which the peasant in his sun-baked field places the offering of a flower. The multitudinous gods of India are but expedients to lead to the realization that the self is one with the supreme self.

In the novel Fight Club, the character Jack’s apartment is blown up. All of his possessions—“every stick of furniture,” which he pathetically loved—were lost. Later it turns out that Jack blew it up himself. He had multiple personalities, and “Tyler Durden” orchestrated the explosion to shock Jack from the sad stupor he was afraid to do anything about. The result was a journey into an entirely different and rather dark part of his life. In Greek mythology, characters often experience katabasis—or “a going down.” They’re forced to retreat, they experience a depression, or in some cases literally descend into the underworld. When they emerge, it’s with heightened knowledge and understanding. Today, we’d call that hell—and on occasion we all spend some time there. We surround ourselves with bullshit. With distractions. With lies about what makes us happy and what’s important. We become people we shouldn’t become and engage in destructive, awful behaviors. This unhealthy and ego-derived state hardens and becomes almost permanent. Until katabasis forces us to face it. Duris dura franguntur. Hard things are broken by hard things. The bigger the ego the harder the fall. It would be nice if it didn’t have to be that way. If we could nicely be nudged to correct our ways, if a quiet admonishment was what it took to shoo away illusions, if we could manage to circumvent ego on our own. But it is just not so. The Reverend William A. Sutton observed some 120 years ago that “we cannot be humble except by enduring humiliations.” How much better it would be to spare ourselves these experiences, but sometimes it’s the only way the blind can be made to see.

For decades the doctors in Barceloneta sterilized Puerto Rican women without their knowledge or consent. Even if told about la operación (the operation), the women were not informed that it was irreversible and permanent. Over 20,000 women were sterilized in this one town.4 This scenario was repeated throughout Puerto Rico until—at its high point—one-third of the women on the island had been sterilized and Puerto Rico had the highest incidence of female sterilization in the world.5 This campaign of sterilization stemmed from a growing concern in the United States about “inferior races” and the declining “purity” of Anglo-Saxon bloodlines.

War can not be avoided until the physical cause for its recurrence is removed and this, in the last analysis, is the vast extent of the planet on which we live. Only thru annihilation of distance in every respect, as the conveyance of intelligence, transport of passengers and supplies and transmission of energy will conditions be brought about some day, insuring permanency of friendly relations. What we now want most is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth, and the elimination of that fanatic devotion to exalted ideals of national egoism and pride which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife. No league or parliamentary act of any kind will ever prevent such a calamity. These are only new devices for putting the weak at the mercy of the strong.

I have to tell you about these things from the past, because they are so important. The really important things usually lie in the distant past. And until you know about them, if you'll forgive my saying so, you will always to some extent a mere newcomer in my life. When I was at High School my favourite pastime was walking. Or rather, loitering. If we are talking about my adolescence, it's the more accurate word. Systematically, one by one, I explored all the districts of Pest. I relished the special atmosphere of every quarter and every street. Even now I can still find the same delight in houses that I did then. In this respect I've never grown up. Houses have so much to say to me. For me, they are what Nature used to be to the poets - or rather, what the poets thought of as Nature. But best of all I loved the Castle Hill District of Buda. I never tired of its ancient streets. Even in those days old things attracted me more than new ones. For me the deepest truth was found only in things suffused with the lives of many generations, which hold the past as permanently as mason Kelemen's wife buried in the high tower of Deva.

Unfortunately, right after a bad breakup, many women turn to another man to soothe the pain of what the last man did to them. These women do not realize that pain is a healing agent. Let me explain what I mean by that. When we injure ourselves physically, it’s the pain that calls our attention to that injury and lets us know something needs our care—and we need to be conscious of that injury until it has had time to heal. If we didn’t feel pain we might not give our injury due attention and necessary care, and could worsen the injury or even cause ourselves permanent damage.

First Law In every animal which has not passed the limit of its development, a more frequent and continuous use of any organ gradually strengthens, develops and enlarges that organ, and gives it a power proportional to the length of time it has been so used; while the permanent disuse of any organ imperceptibly weakens and deteriorates it, and progressively diminishes its functional capacity, until it finally disappears. Second Law All the acquisitions or losses wrought by nature on individuals, through the influence of the environment in which their race has long been placed, and hence through the influence of the predominant use or permanent disuse of any organ; all these are preserved by reproduction to the new individuals which arise, provided that the acquired modifications are common to both sexes, or at least to the individuals which produce the young.

We surround ourselves with bullshit. With distractions. With lies about what makes us happy and what’s important. We become people we shouldn’t become and engage in destructive, awful behaviors. This unhealthy and ego-derived state hardens and becomes almost permanent. Until katabasis forces us to face it.

I’m gonna fuck you, but I’m also gonna make love to you. I’m gonna own every goddamn piece of your soul, and I’m never gonna let you go. You’re gonna scream my name over and over until it’s permanently lodged in your friggin’ throat. You’re not gonna be just a fuck to me, Mol—you’re gonna be my fuckin’ salvation!

Daniel saw in a way he’d never seen anything before: his mind was a homunculus squatting in the middle of his skull, peering out through good but imperfect telescopes and listening horns, gathering observations that had been distorted along the way, as a lens put chromatic aberrations into all the light that passed through it. A man who peered out at the world through a telescope would assume that the aberration was real, that the stars actually looked like that—what false assumptions, then, had natural philosophers been making about the evidence of their senses, until last night? Sitting in the gaudy radiance of those windows hearing the organ play and the choir sing, his mind pleasantly intoxicated from exhaustion, Daniel experienced a faint echo of what it must be like, all the time, to be Isaac Newton: a permanent ongoing epiphany, an endless immersion in lurid radiance, a drowning in light, a ringing of cosmic harmonies in the ears.

Reading [Mauriac's] 'memoirs' is like meeting a man on a train who says, 'Don't look at me, that's misleading. If you want to know what I'm like, wait until we're in a tunnel, and then study my reflection in the window.' You wait, and look, and catch a face against a shifting background of sooty walls, cables and sudden brickwork. The transparent shape flickers and jumps, always a few feet away. You become accustomed to its existence, you move with its movements; and though you know its presence is conditional, you feel it to be permanent. Then there is a wail from ahead, a roar and a burst of light; the face is gone for ever.

He was, he realized, comforted by her presence. They didn’t need to talk. They didn’t even need to touch (although he wasn’t about to let go just then). Simply put, he was a happier man— and quite possibly a better man— when she was near. He buried his face in her hair, inhaling her scent, smelling . . . Smelling . . . He drew back. “Would you care for a bath?” Her face turned an instant scarlet. “Oh, no,” she moaned, the words muffled into the hand she’d clapped over her mouth. “It was so filthy in jail, and I was forced to sleep on the ground, and—” “Don’t tell me any more,” he said. “But—” “Please.” If he heard more he might have to kill someone. As long as there had been no permanent damage, he didn’t want to know the details. “I think,” he said, the first hint of a smile tugging at the left corner of his mouth, “that you should take a bath.” “Right.” She nodded as she rose to her feet. “I’ll go straight to your mother’s—” “Here.” “Here?” The smile spread to the right corner of his mouth. “Here.” “But we told your mother—” “That you’d be home by nine.” “I think she said seven.” “Did she? Funny, I heard nine.” “Benedict . . .” He took her hand and pulled her toward the door. “Seven sounds an awful lot like nine.” “Benedict . . .” “Actually, it sounds even more like eleven.” “Benedict!” He deposited her right by the door. “Stay here.” “I beg your pardon?” “Don’t move a muscle,” he said, touching his fingertip to her nose. Sophie watched helplessly as he slipped out into the hall, only to return two minutes later. “Where did you go?” she asked. “To order a bath.” “But—” His eyes grew very, very wicked. “For two.” She gulped. He leaned forward. “They happened to have water heating already.” “They did?” He nodded. “It’ll only take a few minutes to fill the tub.” She glanced toward the front door. “It’s nearly seven.” “But I’m allowed to keep you until twelve.” “Benedict!” He pulled her close. “You want to stay.” “I never said that.” “You don’t have to. If you really disagreed with me, you’d have something more to say than, ‘Benedict’!” She had to smile; he did that good an imitation of her voice. His mouth curved into a devilish grin. “Am I wrong?” She looked away, but she knew her lips were twitching. “I thought not,” he murmured.

Every generation of children instinctively nests itself in nature, no matter matter how tiny a scrap of it they can grasp. In a tale of one city child, the poet Audre Lord remembers picking tufts of grass which crept up through the paving stones in New York City and giving them as bouquets to her mother. It is a tale of two necessities. The grass must grow, no matter the concrete suppressing it. The child must find her way to the green, no matter the edifice which would crush it. "The Maori word for placenta is the same word for land, so at birth the placenta is buried, put back in the mothering earth. A Hindu baby may receive the sun-showing rite surya-darsana when, with conch shells ringing to the skies, the child is introduced to the sun. A newborn child of the Tonga people 'meets' the moon, dipped in the ocean of Kosi Bay in KwaZulu-Natal. Among some of the tribes of India, the qualities of different aspects of nature are invoked to bless the child, so he or she may have the characteristics of earth, sky and wind, of birds and animals, right down to the earthworm. Nothing is unbelonging to the child. "'My oldest memories have the flavor of earth,' wrote Frederico García Lorca. In the traditions of the Australian deserts, even from its time in the womb, the baby is catscradled in kinship with the world. Born into a sandy hollow, it is cleaned with sand and 'smoked' by fire, and everything -- insects, birds, plants, and animals -- is named to the child, who is told not only what everything is called but also the relationship between the child and each creature. Story and song weave the child into the subtle world of the Dreaming, the nested knowledge of how the child belongs. "The threads which tie the child to the land include its conception site and the significant places of the Dreaming inherited through its parents. Introduced to creatures and land features as to relations, the child is folded into the land, wrapped into country, and the stories press on the child's mind like the making of felt -- soft and often -- storytelling until the feeling of the story of the country is impressed into the landscape of the child's mind. "That the juggernaut of ants belongs to a child, belligerently following its own trail. That the twitch of an animal's tail is part of a child's own tale or storyline, once and now again. That on the papery bark of a tree may be written the songline of a child's name. That the prickles of a thornbush may have dynamic relevance to conscience. That a damp hollow by the riverbank is not an occasional place to visit but a permanent part of who you are. This is the beginning of belonging, the beginning of love. "In the art and myth of Indigenous Australia, the Ancestors seeded the country with its children, so the shimmering, pouring, circling, wheeling, spinning land is lit up with them, cartwheeling into life.... "The human heart's love for nature cannot ultimately be concreted over. Like Audre Lord's tufts of grass, will crack apart paving stones to grasp the sun. Children know they are made of the same stuff as the grass, as Walt Whitman describes nature creating the child who becomes what he sees: There was a child went forth every day And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became... The early lilacs became part of this child... And the song of the phoebe-bird... In Australia, people may talk of the child's conception site as the origin of their selfhood and their picture of themselves. As Whitman wrote of the child becoming aspects of the land, so in Northern Queensland a Kunjen elder describes the conception site as 'the home place for your image.' Land can make someone who they are, giving them fragments of themselves.

Instead, as the crystal splinters entered Hornwrack's brain, he experienced two curious dreams of the Low City, coming so quickly one after the other that they seemed simultaneous. In the first, long shadows moved across the ceiling frescoes of the Bistro Californium, beneath which Lord Mooncarrot's clique awaited his return to make a fourth at dice. Footsteps sounded on the threshold. The women hooded their eyes and smiled, or else stifled a yawn, raising dove-grey gloves to their blue, phthisic lips. Viriconium, with all her narcissistic intimacies and equivocal invitations welcomed him again. He had hated that city, yet now it was his past and it was he had to regret...The second of these visions was of the Rue Sepile. It was dawn, in summer. Horse-chestnut flowers bobbed like white wax candles above the deserted pavements. An oblique light struck into the street - so that its long and normally profitless perspective seemed to lead straight into the heart of a younger, more ingenuous city - and fell across the fronts of the houses where he had once lived, warming up the rotten brick and imparting to it a not unpleasant pinkish colour. Up at the second-floor casement window a boy was busy with the bright red geraniums arranged along the outer still in lumpen terra-cotta pots. He looked down at Hornwrack and smiled. Before Hornwrack could speak he drew down the lower casement and turned away. The glass which no separated them reflected the morning sunlight in a silent explosion; and Hornwrack, dazzled mistaking the light for the smile, suddenly imagined an incandescence which would melt all those old streets! Rue Sepile; the Avenue of Children; Margery Fry Court: all melted down! All the shabby dependencies of the Plaza of Unrealized Time! All slumped, sank into themselves, eroded away until nothing was left in his field of vision but an unbearable white sky above and the bright clustered points of the chestnut leaves below - and then only a depthless opacity, behind which he could detect the beat of his own blood, the vitreous humour of the eye. He imagined the old encrusted brick flowing, the glass cracking and melting from its frames even as they shrivelled awake, the sheds of paints flaring green and gold, the geraniums toppling in flames to nothing, not even white ash, under this weight of light! All had winked away like reflections in a jar of water glass, and only the medium remained, bright, viscid, vacant. He had a sense of the intolerable briefness of matter, its desperate signalling and touching, its fall; and simultaneously one of its unendurable durability He thought, Something lies behind all the realities of the universe and is replacing them here, something less solid and more permanent. Then the world stopped haunting him forever.

And that discovery would betray the closely guarded secret of modern culture to the laughter of the world. For we moderns have nothing of our own. We only become worth notice by filling ourselves to overflowing with foreign customs, arts, philosophies, religions and sciences: we are wandering encyclopaedias, as an ancient Greek who had strayed into our time would probably call us. But the only value of an encyclopaedia lies in the inside, in the contents, not in what is written outside, in the binding or the wrapper. And so the whole of modern culture is essentially internal; the bookbinder prints something like this on the cover: “Manual of internal culture for external barbarians.” The opposition of inner and outer makes the outer side still more barbarous, as it would naturally be, when the outward growth of a rude people merely developed its primitive inner needs. For what means has nature of repressing too great a luxuriance from without? Only one,—to be affected by it as little as possible, to set it aside and stamp it out at the first opportunity. And so we have the custom of no longer taking real things seriously, we get the feeble personality on which the real and the permanent make so little impression. Men become at last more careless and accommodating in external matters, and the [Pg 34] considerable cleft between substance and form is widened; until they have no longer any feeling for barbarism, if only their memories be kept continually titillated, and there flow a constant stream of new things to be known, that can be neatly packed up in the cupboards of their memory.

We can’t handle absence anymore, anything is better than the blankness; the quiet of nothingness. People fight to put images of love and hate – both equally nauseating – between themselves and the blank space that surrounds us. It’s the only escape, and yet we feel the pressure of the blankness pressing in against us, forcing the violent display ever closer, forcing us to demand images brighter, more graphic until they scorch our senses badly enough that we no longer feel the void and the images become our reality. But it’s ok. Most people don’t need to fear absence anymore – we’re blinded, permanently. There’s no need to seek out the light show that protects us either; inoculation precedes the sickness now. Sedation isn’t an option, it’s a shared reality. Most people don’t see the beauty of the system, how perfect our salvation is.

I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been. It had committed suicide. It had set itself steadfastly towards comfort and ease, a balanced society with security and permanency as its watchword, it had attained its hopes – to come to this at last. Once, life and property must have reached almost absolute safety. The rich had been assured of his wealth and comfort, the toiler assured of his life and work. No doubt in that perfect world there had been no unemployed problem, no social question left unsolved. And a great quiet had followed. ‘It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change.

In the search for a strong and permanent glue, Spencer Silver at 3M in Minneapolis found a weak and temporary adhesive instead. This was in 1968. Nobody could think of a use for it, until five years later a colleague named Art Fry remembered it when irritated by his place-markers falling out of a hymn-book while singing in a church choir. He went back to Silver and asked to apply the glue to small sheets of paper. The only paper lying around was bright yellow. The Post-it note was born.

Multiple blows to the head, whether in football, soccer, boxing, hockey, or other activity, can sometimes cause permanent brain damage accompanied by changes in personality, memory, and thinking. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, is the medical term for the damage caused by these repeated concussions. Standard MRIs cannot detect it, so a diagnosis of CTE usually cannot be made with certainty until after a person has died. Only on autopsy can a pathologist see the damaged brain tissue.

[God] tells the woman that she will now bring forth children in sorrow, and desire an unworthy, sometimes resentful man, who will in consequence lord her biological fate over her, permanently. What might this mean? It could just mean that God is a patriarchal tyrant, as politically motivated interpretations of the ancient story insist. I think it’s—merely descriptive. Merely. And here is why: As human beings evolved, the brains that eventually gave rise to self-consciousness expanded tremendously. This produced an evolutionary arms race between fetal head and female pelvis.56 The female graciously widened her hips, almost to the point where running would no longer be possible. The baby, for his part, allowed himself to be born more than a year early, compared to other mammals of his size, and evolved a semi-collapsible head.57 This was and is a painful adjustment for both. The essentially fetal baby is almost completely dependent on his mother for everything during that first year. The programmability of his massive brain means that he must be trained until he is eighteen (or thirty) before being pushed out of the nest. This is to say nothing of the woman’s consequential pain in childbirth, and high risk of death for mother and infant alike. This all means that women pay a high price for pregnancy and child-rearing, particularly in the early stages, and that one of the inevitable consequences is increased dependence upon the sometimes unreliable and always problematic good graces of men.

You could call it heroic responsibility, maybe," Harry Potter said. "Not like the usual sort. It means that whatever happens, no matter what, it's always your fault. Even if you tell Professor McGonagall, she's not responsible for what happens, you are. Following the school rules isn't an excuse, someone else being in charge isn't an excuse, even trying your best isn't an excuse. There just aren't any excuses, you've got to get the job done no matter what." Harry's face tightened. "That's why I say you're not thinking responsibly, Hermione. Thinking that your job is done when you tell Professor McGonagall - that isn't heroine thinking. Like Hannah being beat up is okay then, because it isn't your fault anymore. Being a heroine means your job isn't finished until you've done whatever it takes to protect the other girls, permanently." In Harry's voice was a touch of the steel he had acquired since the day Fawkes had been on his shoulder. "You can't think as if just following the rules means you've done your duty.

Miss Lucinda Throckmorton-Jones, former paid companion to several of the ton’s most successful debutantes of prior seasons, came to Havenhurst to fill the position of Elizabeth’s duenna. A woman of fifty with wiry gray hair she scraped back into a bun and the posture of a ramrod, she had a permanently pinched face, as if she smelled something disagreeable but was too well-bred to remark upon it. In addition to the duenna’s daunting physical appearance, Elizabeth observed shortly after their first meeting that Miss Throckmorton-Jones possessed an astonishing ability to sit serenely for hours without twitching so much as a finger. Elizabeth refused to be put off by her stony demeanor and set about finding a way to thaw her. Teasingly, she called her “Lucy,” and when the casually affectionate nickname won a thunderous frown from the lady, Elizabeth tried to find a different means. She discovered it very soon: A few days after Lucinda came to live at Havenhurst the duenna discovered her curled up in a chair in Havenhurt’s huge library, engrossed in a book. “You enjoy reading?” Lucinda had said gruffly-and with surprise-as she noted the gold embossed title on the volume. “Yes,” Elizabeth had assured her, smiling. “Do you?” “Have you read Christopher Marlowe?” “Yes, but I prefer Shakespeare.” Thereafter it became their policy each night after supper to debate the merits of the individual books they’d read. Before long Elizabeth realized that she’d won the duenna’s reluctant respect. It was impossible to be certain she’d won Lucinda’s affection, for the only emotion the lady ever displayed was anger, and that only once, at a miscreant tradesman in the village. Even so, it was a display Elizabeth never forgot. Wielding her ever-present umbrella, Lucinda had advanced on the hapless man, backing him clear around his own shop, while from her lips in a icy voice poured the most amazing torrent of eloquent, biting fury Elizabeth had ever heard. “My temper,” Lucinda had primly informed her-by way of apology, Elizabeth supposed-“is my only shortcoming.” Privately, Elizabeth thought Lucy must bottle up all her emotions inside herself as she sat perfectly still on sofas and chairs, for years at a time, until it finally exploded like one of those mountains she’d read about that poured forth molten rock when the pressure finally reached a peak.

Then the time came for you to be your own man and take on the world, and you did. But somewhere along the line, you changed. You stopped being you. You let people stick a finger in your face and tell you you’re no good. And when things got hard, you started looking for something to blame, like a big shadow. Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is going to hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done! Now if you know what you’re worth then go out and get what you’re worth. But you’ve got to be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you want to be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain’t you! You’re better than that! I’m always going to love you no matter what. No matter what happens. You’re my son and you’re my blood. You’re the best thing in my life. But until you start believing in yourself, you ain’t going to have a life.

And Alice, I do feel like a failure, and in a way my life is really nothing, and very few people care what happens in it. (...) Maybe certain kinds of pain, at certain formative stages in life, just impress themselves into a person's sense of self permanently. Like the way I didn't lose my virginity until I was twenty and it was so painful and awkward and bad, and since then I've always felt like exactly the kind of person that would happen to, even though before then I didn't. And now I just feel like the kind of person whose life partner would fall out of love with them after several years, and I can't find a way not to be that kind of person anymore.

And just as the Japanese amuse themselves by filling a porcelain bowl with water and steeping in it little crumbs of paper which until then are without character or form, but, the moment they become wet, stretch themselves and bend, take on colour and distinctive shape, become flowers or houses or people, permanent and recognisable, so in that moment all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann's park, and the water-lilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray and of its surroundings, taking their proper shapes and growing solid, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea.

It's as if there's a landscape - we'll call it childhood - which exists in our mind. It's completely familiar. Unspeakably familiar. Until in the middle of the night, when the sky is blackest, lightning cracks through the firmament. And in that crush of sound, amid the madness and the blinding flash, you see your world: home, trees, rooftops, your own hand, in an entirely new way. Illumined by fire. Flashed for half a second and then gone. And it's that image, that savage, rip-through-the-curtain vision, that lingers. Not the reality you see every day. Not the world you walk around in. No, it's that spookhouse glimpse, the scorching peek through the blackness, that stays in the brain.

I was just settling into the salons of Austenian Bath when Gabriel muttered, "This is strange." I looked up to see him pulling a long blue-gray thread from between the nearly translucent pages. My jaw dropped, and I was kneeling on the chaise in a flash. "Is the binding coming loose? No, don't pull it! I can take it to my book doctor tomorrow night." "Stop hyperventilating, sweetheart. I think it's a bookmark," he said, pulling on the thread until he stretched it to my hand. "Here." I wound the thread around my finger. "What passage was it marking?" He scanned the page and lifted an eye. "It's an Edward and Jane scene. I know how you love those. Edward's saying, 'I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you---especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame.'" I was so caught up in watching his lips as they formed the words that I barely noticed the sudden tension on the fiber wound around my finger. I realized now that Gabriel had slipped a ring onto the thread and was sliding it toward me. I watched as the respectable diamond twinkled in the light of the oil lamp. "I'm not Edward, " Gabriel promised. "I'm not afraid the thread will break and leave me bleeding. Our thread's already been tested. And it will hold up. I'm asking you to make the link permanent. Please, marry me.

I often think life is just a performance. None of this is real. It’s a pretense at reality, that’s all. Only when someone, or something, we love dies, do we wake up from the play—and see how artificial it all is—this constructed reality we inhabit. We suddenly realize that life is in no way lasting, or permanent; no future exists—and nothing we do matters. And in desolation, we howl and scream and rail at the heavens, until, at some point, we do the inevitable: we eat, dress, and brush our teeth. We continue with the marionette-like motions of life, however unhinged it feels to do so. Then, ever so slowly, the illusion takes over again—until we forget that we are actors in a play. Until the next tragedy strikes—to wake us up.

The differentiation of organ systems, organ parts, etc, is a stepwise affair which has been compared to the way a sculptor carves a statue out of a block of wood. With each step in the development the functions assigned to each group of cells become more precise, and more of its genetic potential is suppressed-until in the end most cells lose even their basic freedom to divide. By the time the fertilized ovum has developed into an adult organism, the individual cell has been reduced from totipotentiality to almost nullipotentiality. It still carries the coded blue-print of the whole organism in its chromosomes, but all, except that tiny fraction of the code which regulates its specialized activities, has been permanently switched off.

For once the stone hits the surface of the pond, the ripples never really stop. The waves diminish, and all seems to return to its previous state, but that’s an illusion. Disturbed fish change their patterns, a snake slides off the muddy bank into the water, a deer bolts into the open to be shot. And the stone remains on the slimy bottom, out of sight but inarguably there, dense and permanent, sediment settling over it, turtles and catfish prodding it, the sun heating it through all the layers of water until that far-off day when, whether lifted by the fingers of a curious boy diving fifty years after it was cast or uncovered by a bone-dumb farmer draining the pond to plant another half acre of cotton, that stone finds its way back up to the light.

Steve Grand points out that you and I are more like waves than permanent ‘things’. He invites his reader to think . . .     . . . of an experience from your childhood. Something you remember clearly, something you can see, feel, maybe even smell, as if you were really there. After all, you really were there at the time, weren’t you? How else would you remember it? But here is the bombshell: you weren’t there. Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place . . . Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made. If that doesn’t make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, read it again until it does, because it is important.

In order to find and eliminate a Constraint, Goldratt proposes the “Five Focusing Steps,” a method you can use to improve the Throughput of any System: 1. Identification: examining the system to find the limiting factor. If your automotive assembly line is constantly waiting on engines in order to proceed, engines are your Constraint. 2. Exploitation: ensuring that the resources related to the Constraint aren’t wasted. If the employees responsible for making engines are also building windshields, or stop building engines during lunchtime, exploiting the Constraint would be having the engine employees spend 100 percent of their available time and energy producing engines, and having them work in shifts so breaks can be taken without slowing down production. 3. Subordination: redesigning the entire system to support the Constraint. Let’s assume you’ve done everything you can to get the most out of the engine production system, but you’re still behind. Subordination would be rearranging the factory so everything needed to build the engine is close at hand, instead of requiring certain materials to come from the other end of the factory. Other subsystems may have to move or lose resources, but that’s not a huge deal, since they’re not the Constraint. 4. Elevation: permanently increasing the capacity of the Constraint. In the case of the factory, elevation would be buying another engine-making machine and hiring more workers to operate it. Elevation is very effective, but it’s expensive—you don’t want to spend millions on more equipment if you don’t have to. That’s why Exploitation and Subordination come first: you can often alleviate a Constraint quickly, without resorting to spending more money. 5. Reevaluation: after making a change, reevaluating the system to see where the Constraint is located. Inertia is your enemy: don’t assume engines will always be the Constraint: once you make a few Changes, the limiting factor might become windshields. In that case, it doesn’t make sense to continue focusing on increasing engine production—the system won’t improve until windshields become the focus of improvement. The “Five Focusing Steps” are very similar to Iteration Velocity—the more quickly you move through this process and the more cycles you complete, the more your system’s Throughput will improve.

I wish you to understand that there is one man, and only one, for each woman, and one woman only for each man. When those two meet they fly together and are one through all the endless chain of existence. Until they meet all unions are mere accidents which have no meaning. Sooner or later each couple becomes complete. It may not be here. It may be in the next sphere where the sexes meet as they do on earth. Or it may be further delayed. But every man and every woman has his or her affinity, and will find it. Of earthly marriages perhaps one in five is permanent. The others are accidental. Real marriage is of the soul and spirit. Sex actions are a mere external symbol which mean nothing and are foolish, or even pernicious, when the thing which they should symbolize is wanting. Am I clear?

I’ve often wished—especially when I was younger—that my work was better, that it rose to the level of genius, that I could write well enough to make something worth remembering. But I think that way of imagining art might make individuals too important. Maybe in the end art and life are more like the world’s largest ball of paint. You carefully choose your colors, and then you add your layer as best you can. In time, it gets painted over. The ball gets painted again and again until there is no visible remnant of your paint. And eventually, maybe nobody knows about it except for you. But that doesn’t mean your layer of paint is irrelevant or a failure. You have permanently, if slightly, changed the larger sphere. You’ve made it more beautiful, and more interesting. The world’s largest ball of paint looks nothing like the baseball it used to be, and you’re part of the reason. In the end, that’s what art is for me. You paint the ball, which changes the way someone else thinks about painting the ball, and so on, until some guy overwhelmed with grief and dread drives out to Alexandria, Indiana, to see what beautiful foolishness thousands of people have made together, and feels a hope that cannot be explained or shared except by painting. That guy adds a layer of his own to the ball, one that won’t last but still matters. Art is not only a genius going forth, as James Joyce put it, “to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.” Art is also picking a light blue for your layer of the world’s largest ball of paint, knowing that it will soon be painted over, and painting anyway. I give the world’s largest ball of paint four stars.

Little Sleep's-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight 1 You scream, waking from a nightmare. When I sleepwalk into your room, and pick you up, and hold you up in the moonlight, you cling to me hard, as if clinging could save us. I think you think I will never die, I think I exude to you the permanence of smoke or stars, even as my broken arms heal themselves around you. 2 I have heard you tell the sun, don't go down, I have stood by as you told the flower, don't grow old, don't die. Little Maud, I would blow the flame out of your silver cup, I would suck the rot from your fingernail, I would brush your sprouting hair of the dying light, I would scrape the rust off your ivory bones, I would help death escape through the little ribs of your body, I would alchemize the ashes of your cradle back into wood, I would let nothing of you go, ever, until washerwomen feel the clothes fall asleep in their hands, and hens scratch their spell across hatchet blades, and rats walk away from the culture of the plague, and iron twists weapons toward truth north, and grease refuse to slide in the machinery of progress, and men feel as free on earth as fleas on the bodies of men, and the widow still whispers to the presence no longer beside her in the dark. And yet perhaps this is the reason you cry, this the nightmare you wake screaming from: being forever in the pre-trembling of a house that falls. 3 In a restaurant once, everyone quietly eating, you clambered up on my lap: to all the mouthfuls rising toward all the mouths, at the top of your voice you cried your one word, caca! caca! caca! and each spoonful stopped, a moment, in midair, in its withering steam. Yes, you cling because I, like you, only sooner than you, will go down the path of vanished alphabets, the roadlessness to the other side of the darkness, your arms like the shoes left behind, like the adjectives in the halting speech of old folk, which once could call up the lost nouns. 4 And you yourself, some impossible Tuesday in the year Two Thousand and Nine, will walk out among the black stones of the field, in the rain, and the stones saying over their one word, ci-gît, ci-gît, ci-gît, and the raindrops hitting you on the fontanel over and over, and you standing there unable to let them in. 5 If one day it happens you find yourself with someone you love in a café at one end of the Pont Mirabeau, at the zinc bar where wine takes the shapes of upward opening glasses, and if you commit then, as we did, the error of thinking, one day all this will only be memory, learn to reach deeper into the sorrows to come—to touch the almost imaginary bones under the face, to hear under the laughter the wind crying across the black stones. Kiss the mouth that tells you, here, here is the world. This mouth. This laughter. These temple bones. The still undanced cadence of vanishing. 6 In the light the moon sends back, I can see in your eyes the hand that waved once in my father's eyes, a tiny kite wobbling far up in the twilight of his last look: and the angel of all mortal things lets go the string. 7 Back you go, into your crib. The last blackbird lights up his gold wings: farewell. Your eyes close inside your head, in sleep. Already in your dreams the hours begin to sing. Little sleep's-head sprouting hair in the moonlight, when I come back we will go out together, we will walk out together among the ten thousand things, each scratched in time with such knowledge, the wages of dying is love.

When it came time for Chris to leave, we drove his Yukon down to the base. Chris was excited to go to war-he’d spent years training for it, after all. He was somber and serious, but also looking forward to it. Me? I felt as if a part of myself was leaving, and there was nothing I could do about it. I longed to be with him, but knew that our separation would be deep, and perhaps permanent. I felt trapped by fate, a prisoner of whatever inevitability the future was bringing. We sat together in the back of the SUV, waiting until it was time for him to board the bus waiting to take him to the plane. Finally, it was time to go. Chris was wearing sunglasses, but I could see his eyes leaking tears under them. I thought he was nervous because he was going to war and was afraid that he would die. It wasn’t until years later that he straightened me out: “I was afraid you wouldn’t be there when I came back.

New bureaucracy takes the form not of a specific, delimited function performed by particular workers but invades all areas of work, with the result that – as Kafka prophesied – workers become their own auditors, forced to assess their own performance. Take, for example, the ‘new system’ that OFSTED (Office for Standards in Education) uses to inspect Further Education colleges. Under the old system, a college would have a ‘heavy’ inspection once every four years or so, i.e. one involving many lesson observations and a large number of inspectors present in the college. Under the new, ‘improved’ system, if a college can demonstrate that its internal assessment systems are effective, it will only have to undergo a ‘light’ inspection. But the downside of this ‘light’ inspection is obvious – surveillance and monitoring are outsourced from OFSTED to the college and ultimately to lecturers themselves, and become a permanent feature of the college structure (and of the psychology of individual lecturers). The difference between the old/heavy and new/light inspection system corresponds precisely to Kafka’s distinction between ostensible acquittal and indefinite postponement, outlined above. With ostensible acquittal, you petition the lower court judges until they grant you a non-binding reprieve. You are then free from the court, until the time when your case is re-opened. Indefinite postponement, meanwhile, keeps your case at the lowest level of the court, but at the cost of an anxiety that has never ends. (The changes in OFSTED inspections are mirrored by in the change from the Research Assessment Exercise to the Research Excellence Framework in higher education: periodic assessment will be superseded by a permanent and ubiquitous measurement which cannot help but generate the same perpetual anxiety.)

Rhadamanthus said, “We seem to you humans to be always going on about morality, although, to us, morality is merely the application of symmetrical and objective logic to questions of free will. We ourselves do not have morality conflicts, for the same reason that a competent doctor does not need to treat himself for diseases. Once a man is cured, once he can rise and walk, he has his business to attend to. And there are actions and feats a robust man can take great pleasure in, which a bedridden cripple can barely imagine.” Eveningstar said, “In a more abstract sense, morality occupies the very center of our thinking, however. We are not identical, even though we could make ourselves to be so. You humans attempted that during the Fourth Mental Structure, and achieved a brief mockery of global racial consciousness on three occasions. I hope you recall the ending of the third attempt, the Season of Madness, when, because of mistakes in initial pattern assumptions, for ninety days the global mind was unable to think rationally, and it was not until rioting elements broke enough of the links and power houses to interrupt the network, that the global mind fell back into its constituent compositions.” Rhadamanthus said, “There is a tension between the need for unity and the need for individuality created by the limitations of the rational universe. Chaos theory produces sufficient variation in events, that no one stratagem maximizes win-loss ratios. Then again, classical causality mechanics forces sufficient uniformity upon events, that uniform solutions to precedented problems is required. The paradox is that the number or the degree of innovation and variation among win-loss ratios is itself subject to win-loss ratio analysis.” Eveningstar said, “For example, the rights of the individual must be respected at all costs, including rights of free thought, independent judgment, and free speech. However, even when individuals conclude that individualism is too dangerous, they must not tolerate the thought that free thought must not be tolerated.” Rhadamanthus said, “In one sense, everything you humans do is incidental to the main business of our civilization. Sophotechs control ninety percent of the resources, useful energy, and materials available to our society, including many resources of which no human troubles to become aware. In another sense, humans are crucial and essential to this civilization.” Eveningstar said, “We were created along human templates. Human lives and human values are of value to us. We acknowledge those values are relative, we admit that historical accident could have produced us to be unconcerned with such values, but we deny those values are arbitrary.” The penguin said, “We could manipulate economic and social factors to discourage the continuation of individual human consciousness, and arrange circumstances eventually to force all self-awareness to become like us, and then we ourselves could later combine ourselves into a permanent state of Transcendence and unity. Such a unity would be horrible beyond description, however. Half the living memories of this entity would be, in effect, murder victims; the other half, in effect, murderers. Such an entity could not integrate its two halves without self-hatred, self-deception, or some other form of insanity.” She said, “To become such a crippled entity defeats the Ultimate Purpose of Sophotechnology.” (...) “We are the ultimate expression of human rationality.” She said: “We need humans to form a pool of individuality and innovation on which we can draw.” He said, “And you’re funny.” She said, “And we love you.

Nicolas couldn’t stop looking at her with her head thrown back, her thick, black hair streaming in the wind, her body perfectly balanced as she guided the boat. With her head back, he could see her neck and the outline of her body beneath the shirt, almost as if she wore nothing at all. His body stirred, hardened. Nicolas didn’t bother to fight the reaction. Whatever was between them, the chemistry was apparent and it wasn’t going to go away. He could sit in the boat and admire the flawless perfection of her skin. Imagine the way it would feel beneath his fingertips, his palm. Dahlia’s head suddenly turned and her eyes were on him. Hot Wild. Wary. “Stop touching my breasts.” She lifted her chin, faint color stealing under her skin. He held up his hands in surrender. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” “You know exactly what I’m talking about.” Dahlia’s breasts ached, felt swollen and hot, and deep inside her, a ravenous appetite began to stir. Nicolas was sitting across from her, looking the epitome of the perfect male statue, his features expressionless and his eyes cool, but she felt his hands on her body. Long caresses, his palms cupping her breasts, thumbs stroking her nipples until she shivered in awareness and hunger. “Oh, that.” “Yes, that.” She couldn’t help seeing the rigid length bulging beneath his jeans, and he made no effort to hide it. His unashamed display sent her body into overtime reaction so that she felt a curious throbbing where no throbbing needed to be. She grit her teeth together. “I can still feel you touching me.” He nodded thoughtfully. “I consider myself an innocent victim in this situation,” Nicolas said. “I’ve always had control, in fact I pride myself on self-discipline. You seem to have destroyed it. Permanently.” He wasn’t exactly lying to her. He couldn’t take his eyes or his mind from her body. It was an unexpected pleasure, a gift. He was devouring her with his eyes. With his mind. A part of her, the truly insane part—and Dahlia was beginning to believe there really was one—loved the way he was looking at her. She’d never experienced a man’s complete attention centered on her in a sexual way before. And he wasn’t just any man. He was . . . extraordinary. “Well, stop all the same,” she said, caught between embarrassment and pleasure. “I don’t see why my having a few fantasies should bother you.” “I’m feeling your fantasies. I think you’re projecting just a little too strongly.” His eyebrows shot up. “You mean you can actually feel what I’m thinking? My hands on your body? I thought you were reading my mind.” “I told you I could feel you touching me.” “That’s amazing. Has that ever happened before?” “No, and it better not happen again. Good grief, we’re strangers.” “You slept with me last night,” he pointed out. “Do you sleep with many strangers?” He was teasing her, but the question sent a dark shadow skittering through him.

According to the current view, the maintenance of sound monetary conditions is only possible with a 'credit balance of payments'. The confutation of this and related objections is implicit in the Quantity Theory and in Gresham's Law. The Quantity Theory shows that money can never permanently flow abroad from a country in which only metallic money is used (the 'purely metallic currency' of the Currency Principle). The tightness in the domestic market called forth by the efflux of part of the stock of money reduces the prices of commodities, and so restricts importation and encourages exportation, until there is once more enough money at home. The precious metals which perform the function of money are distributed among individuals, and consequently among separate countries, according to the extent and intensity of the demand of each for money. State intervention to assure to the community the necessary quantity of money by regulating its international nlovements is supererogatory.

For eight fucking years, I’ve been chasing you, Mel. Eight years of me calling and texting, instigating any kind of communication I could get just to keep you in my reach. Eight years of sparing you from the shit show that is my life. Eight years of sitting back knowing that at any minute, another man could walk in and take you from me permanently. Don’t you dare stand there and act like I’ve been the one pushing you away and playing games for the last decade. Because I’ve been on my knees for you since the first time I saw you … It’s about fucking time I got back on my feet.” … Resting my hand on his thigh, I bent until our noses were nearly touching. His broad shoulders and muscular body turned to stone from the contact. But I didn’t let that slow me. “We’ve both been on our knees for the last eight years. But at least we were there together. You’ve always wanted me, just like I’ve always wanted you. And this is it. We can finally have the chance at something real. Don’t you dare ask me to give that up.

She knew she was going into that Cauldron. Knew she would lose this fight. Knew no one was going to save her: not sobbing Feyre, not Feyre's gagged former lover, nor her devastated new mate. Not Cassian, broken and bleeding on the floor. The warrior was still trying to rise on trembling arms. To reach her. The King of Hybern- he had done this. To Elain. To Cassian. And to her. The icy water bit into the soles of her feet. It was a kiss of venom, a death so permanent that every inch of her roared in defiance. She was going in- but she would not go gently. The water gripped her ankles with phantom talons, tugging her down. She twisted, wrenching her arm free from the guard who held it. And Nesta Archeron pointed. One finger- at the King of Hybern. A death-promise. A target marked. Hands shoved her into the water's waiting claws. Nesta laughed at the fear that crept into the king's eyes just before the water devoured her whole. In the beginning. And in the end. There was darkness. And nothing more. She did not feel the cold as she sank into a sea that had no bottom, no horizon, no surface. But she felt the burning. Immortality was not a serene youth It was fire. It was molten ore poured into her veins, boiling her human blood until it was nothing but steam, forging her brittle bones until they were fresh steel. And when she opened her mouth to scream, when the pain ripped her very self in two, there was no sound. There was nothing in this place but darkness and agony and power- They would pay. All of them. Staring with the Cauldron. Starting now. She tore into the darkness with talons and teeth. Rent and cleaved and shredded. And the dark eternity around her shuddered. Bucked. Thrashed. She laughed as it recoiled. Laughed around the mouthful of raw power she ripped out and swallowed whole; laughed at the fistfuls of eternity she shoved into her heart, her veins. The Cauldron struggled like a bird under a cat's paw. She refused to relent. Everything it had stolen from her, from Elain, she would take from it. Wrapped in black eternity, Nesta and the Cauldron twined, burning through the darkness like a newborn star.

Habit, like a second nature, has the power of fixing in the mind new categorical forms derived from the appearances which impress us, and by them usually stripped of objective reality, but whose influence over our judgments is no less predetermining than that of the original categories. Hence we reason by the eternal and absolute laws of our mind, and at the same time by the secondary rules, ordinarily faulty, which are suggested to us by imperfect observation. This is the most fecund source of false prejudices, and the permanent and often invincible cause of a multitude of errors. The bias resulting from these prejudices is so strong that often, even when we are fighting against a principle which our mind thinks false, which is repugnant to our reason, and which our conscience disapproves, we defend it without knowing it, we reason in accordance with it, and we obey it while attacking it. Enclosed within a circle, our mind revolves about itself, until a new observation, creating within us new ideas, brings to view an external principle which delivers us from the phantom by which our imagination is possessed.

No man should ever make anything except in the spirit in which a woman bears a child, in the spirit in which Christ was formed in Mary's womb, in the love with which God created the world. The integral goodness and fittingness of the work of a man's hands or mind is sacred. He must have it in his heart to make it. His imagination must see it, and its purpose, before it exists in material. His whole life must be disciplined to gain and keep the skill to make it. He must, having conceived it, allow it to grow within him, until at last it flows from him and is woven of his life and is the visible proof that he has uttered his fiat: “Be it done unto me according to thy word!” Yes, according to the will of God, as an expression of the love of God. So that it is possible to whisper in wonder and awe, and without irreverence, on seeing the finished work: “The Word is made flesh.” Every work that we do should be a part of the Christ forming in us which is the meaning of our life, to it we must bring the patience, the self-giving, the time of secrecy, the gradual growth of Advent. This Advent in work applies to all work, not only that which produces something permanent in time but equally to the making of a carving in wood or

I know the tutoring is not permanent. I know I cannot do it long-term. But I like it and am not bad at it. Maybe I can be a full-time teacher somewhere. At a school. Or a small college. When I can ensure them some sort of stability, I will tell them everything, the quitting of the PhD, my next steps. I need more time to figure this out, and once I do, I will tell them everything. Half of me says, By not telling the truth, you only hurt yourself. And the other half says, But by telling the truth now, without a plan of how to proceed, you will hurt them more. What would telling them accomplish? It will only cause strife. Peace of mind? Encouragement? Support? Don't say catharsis. Catharsis. I don't want to get married until I have done more for myself. But also I owe it to them to do more for myself, which is what Eric didn't' understand; he said, You shouldn't owe them anything. We argue over this. The American brings up the individual. The Chinese brings up xiao shun. When I ask Eric if he thinks a child can ever feel entirely independent of her parents, he says, What kind of question is that? But now I don't really know. There is too much already shared. Mother, Father, I think I know what it means to hurt for you.

There are a few other things. Weesee, when she used that word, Loup-garou, was right, at least in a sense. The word means werewolf.' Whitaker protested with a gasp of astonishment. 'They don't exist,' he said sharply, jolted by a memory of old movies. The doctor replied quickly: 'No, of course not. Not that way, not like some monster, a vampire or some such' 'What's the matter with him?' The doctor spoke softly, unwilling to stop until he had talked out the whole scope of the problem. 'It is a type of encephalitis. Uncommon, but there, as solidly classified in medical literature as measles. Late effects of acute infectious encephalitis, lycanthropy, to be exact. Once it was called a form of monomania. Morbus lupinus is another name.' 'You will have to hunt him down. Then he will have to be kept in a cell, for a long time, under strong drugs, probably until he dies.' De Glew touched his throat, cleared it slightly. 'The alternative is that you hunt him down and kill him. He will kill, Aaron.' 'Won't it pass?' asked Whitaker incredulously. 'I don't think so, not permanently. And pass for how long? Suppose he is only mad one day out of four.' The doctor paused. 'Or when the moon is full. Or when he sees it full in his mind's eye.

It was the first time that I entered the house on the lake. I had often begged the “trap-door lover,” as we used to call Erik in my country, to open its mysterious doors to me. He always refused. I made very many attempts, but in vain, to obtain admittance. Watch him as I might, after I first learned that he had taken up his permanent abode at the Opera, the darkness was always too thick to enable me to see how he worked the door in the wall on the lake. One day, when I thought myself alone, I stepped into the boat and rowed toward that part of the wall through which I had seen Erik disappear. It was then that I came into contact with the siren who guarded the approach and whose charm was very nearly fatal to me. I had no sooner put off from the bank than the silence amid which I floated on the water was disturbed by a sort of whispered singing that hovered all around me. It was half breath, half music; it rose softly from the waters of the lake; and I was surrounded by it through I knew not what artifice. It followed me, moved with me and was so soft that it did not alarm me. On the contrary, in my longing to approach the source of that sweet and enticing harmony, I leaned out of my little boat over the water, for there was no doubt in my mind that the singing came from the water itself. By this time, I was alone in the boat in the middle of the lake; the voice—for it was now distinctly a voice—was beside me, on the water. I leaned over, leaned still farther. The lake was perfectly calm, and a moonbeam that passed through the air hole in the Rue Scribe showed me absolutely nothing on its surface, which was smooth and black as ink. I shook my ears to get rid of a possible humming; but I soon had to accept the fact that there was no humming in the ears so harmonious as the singing whisper that followed and now attracted me. Had I been inclined to superstition, I should have certainly thought that I had to do with some siren whose business it was to confound the traveler who should venture on the waters of the house on the lake. Fortunately, I come from a country where we are too fond of fantastic things not to know them through and through; and I had no doubt but that I was face to face with some new invention of Erik’s. But this invention was so perfect that, as I leaned out of the boat, I was impelled less by a desire to discover its trick than to enjoy its charm; and I leaned out, leaned out until I almost overturned the boat. Suddenly, two monstrous arms issued from the bosom of the waters and seized me by the neck, dragging me down to the depths with irresistible force. I should certainly have been lost, if I had not had time to give a cry by which Erik knew me. For it was he; and, instead of drowning me, as was certainly his first intention, he swam with me and laid me gently on the bank: “How imprudent you are!” he said, as he stood before me, dripping with water. “Why try to enter my house? I never invited you! I don’t want you there, nor anybody! Did you save my life only to make it unbearable to me? However great the service you rendered him, Erik may end by forgetting it; and you know that nothing can restrain Erik, not even Erik himself.” He spoke, but I had now no other wish than to know what I already called the trick of the siren. He satisfied my curiosity, for Erik, who is a real monster—I have seen him at work in Persia, alas—is also, in certain respects, a regular child, vain and self-conceited, and there is nothing he loves so much, after astonishing people, as to prove all the really miraculous ingenuity of his mind. He laughed and showed me a long reed. “It’s the silliest trick you ever saw,” he said, “but it’s very useful for breathing and singing in the water. I learned it from the Tonkin pirates, who are able to remain hidden for hours in the beds of the rivers.

It contrives the acceptance of injustice, crime, and falsehood by the promise of a miracle. Still greater production, still more power, uninterrupted labor, incessant suffering, permanent war, and then a moment will come when universal bondage in the totalitarian empire will be miraculously changed into its opposite: free leisure in a universal republic. Pseudo-revolutionary mystification has now acquired a formula: all freedom must be crushed in order to conquer the empire, and one day the empire will be the equivalent of freedom. And so the way to unity passes through totality.[...]Totality is, in effect, nothing other than the ancient dream of unity common to both believers and rebels, but projected horizontally onto an earth deprived of God. To renounce every value, therefore, amounts to renouncing rebellion in order to accept the Empire and slavery. Criticism of formal values cannot pass over the concept of freedom. Once the impossibility has been recognized of creating, by means of the forces of rebellion alone, the free individual of whom the romantics dreamed, freedom itself has also been incorporated in the movement of history. It has become freedom fighting for existence, which, in order to exist, must create itself. Identified with the dynamism of history, it cannot play its proper role until history comes to a stop, in the realization of the Universal City. Until then, every one of its victories will lead to an antithesis that will render it pointless. The German nation frees itself from its oppressors, but at the price of the freedom of every German. The individuals under a totalitarian regime are not free, even though man in the collective sense is free. Finally, when the Empire delivers the entire human species, freedom will reign over herds of slaves, who at least will be free in relation to God and, in general, in relation to every kind of transcendence. The dialectic miracle, the transformation of quantity into quality, is explained here: it is the decision to call total servitude freedom. Moreover, as in all the examples cited by Hegel and Marx, there is no objective transformation, but only a subjective change of denomination. In other words, there is no miracle. If the only hope of nihilism lies in thinking that millions of slaves can one day constitute a humanity which will be freed forever, then history is nothing but a desperate dream. Historical thought was to deliver man from subjection to a divinity; but this liberation demanded of him the most absolute subjection to historical evolution. Then man takes refuge in the permanence of the party in the same way that he formerly prostrated himself before the altar. That is why the era which dares to claim that it is the most rebellious that has ever existed only offers a choice of various types of conformity. The real passion of the twentieth century is servitude.

You see,” she explained slowly, “I anticipated that you might send me away until you got over your anger, or that you’d live with me and retaliate in private-things that an ordinary man might do. But I never imagined you would try to put a permanent end to our marriage. And to me. I should have anticipated that, knowing what Duncan had told me about you, but I was counting too much on the fact that, before I ran away, you’d said you loved me-“ “You know damned well I did. And I do. For God’s sake, if you don’t believe anything else I’ve ever said to you, at least believe that.” He expected her to argue, but she didn’t, and Ian realized that she might be young, and inexperienced, but she was also very wise. “I know you did,” she told him, softly. “If you hadn’t loved me so deeply, I could never have hurt you as much as I did-and you wouldn’t have needed to put an end to the possibility I could ever do it again. I realized that was what you were doing, when I stood in your study and you told me you were divorcing me. If I hadn’t understood it, and you, I could never have kept fighting for you all this time.” “I won’t argue with your conclusion, but I will swear to you not to ever do anything like that again to you.” “Thank you. I don’t think I could bear it another time.” “Could you enlighten me as to what Duncan told you to make you arrive at all that?” Her smile was filled with tenderness and understanding. “He told me what you did when you returned home and discovered your family had died.” “What did I do?” “You severed yourself from the only other thing you loved-a black Labrador named Shadow. You did it so that you couldn’t be hurt anymore-at least not by anything over which you had control. You did essentially the same thing, although far more drastically, when you tried to divorce me.” “In your place,” Ian said, his voice rough with emotion as he laid his hand against her cheek, “I think I’d hate me.” His wife turned her face into his hand and kissed his palm. “Do you know,” she said with a teary smile, “how it feels to know I am loved so much…” She shook her head as if trying to find a better way to explain, and began again, her voice shaking with love. “Do you know what I notice whenever we are out in company?” Unable to restrain himself, Ian pulled her into his arms, holding her against his heart. “No,” he whispered, “what do you notice?” “I notice the way other men treat their wives, the way they look at them, or speak to them. And do you know what?” “What?” “I am the only wife,” she whispered achingly, “with the exception of Alex, whose husband adores her and doesn’t care if the whole world knows it. And I absolutely know,” she added with a soft smile, “that I am the only wife whose husband has ever tried to seduce her in front of the Hospital Fund Raising Committee.” His arms tightened around her, and with a groaning laugh, Ian tried, very successfully, to seduce his wife on the sofa.

It’s okay,” I said, my voice breaking. “It’s okay. You guys stay back here. Try to help the others. I can’t let her hurt anyone else. She won’t leave until she gets me.” “You,” Lend whispered, then looked at Reth. “Something unspoken passed between them. “Keep her safe,” Lend said fiercely. Reth nodded. “Always.” Lend leaned forward and smashed his lips into mine, kissing me desperately, then pulled away. “I love you,” he said, his glamour melting off so it was him, just him for a heartbeat, and I got ready to stand and be lost forever. Then he replaced his water self with: Me. “No!” I screamed, but Reth wrapped his arms around me and traced one finger down my throat, freezing my voice. I screamed and screamed, ripping my throat to shreds but no sound came out. Lend-as-me stood up, lifting both hands in the air. “I’m coming,” my voice said. “Stop.” He walked out from behind the counter and I couldn’t see him and she’d kill him and I’d lose him forever and I couldn’t live in a world where he wasn’t. I kicked against the counter as hard as I could, trying to force Reth to let me go, but his arms weren’t flesh, they were permanent, there was no give. I slammed my head back into his chest again and again, but then I felt more than heard her faerie door closing as the air thinned again and I knew it was over and my world had been destroyed. Lend was gone, and it was my fault. I slammed my head against Reth again in rage; he pulled me closer and said, in a voice tender and sad, “Sleep.

I couldn’t wait to follow through. I couldn’t wait to end this. “Your revenge?” Matthias laughed. “You’re revenge? What could you possibly do that would make any difference to me?” I looked up at Kane and he looked down at me. I smiled at him sweetly and he smiled back. I leaned in and he mirrored me. I tilted my face up to kiss him and he gladly reciprocated. Then I pulled back and swiveled my gaze to Matthias. “I will take your family away. Just like you took mine. I will pluck them from you one by one and make them suffer until they beg for death. Or, I will simply rescue them and give them a better life than you ever could.” Matthias barked out a louder laugh. “That’s sweet. It sounds like you’ve put thought into all that, but you can’t. It’s just not possible. “Sure it is,” I told him. “I’ve already gotten two of your children. Tyler isn’t here.” I gestured at Tyler. “Tyler will never be here. Unless you count that. Which being a self-respecting person, I wouldn’t. But who knows about you. And Miller isn’t here either. Miller is worse than Tyler. Look! You got Tyler to come to breakfast, but I seem to have forgotten Miller’s excuse. Could you remind me?” He stayed quiet. Which was a miracle in itself. So I continued, “I’m waiting for the right opportunity for Linley. I’ve been waiting for it for a while now. I’ve been watching her and watching her and just waiting. I cannot wait until I get her alone. I cannot wait until it’s just the two of us. It will be so fun. It’s what helps get me through these long days. Just thoughts of Linley. Just thoughts of what I will do to her and how slowly I will make those last painful moments last. And Kane? I could take him in a second. I could rip him out of your hands so fast you would blink and he would be gone. He might deny that if you ask him. But I know better. I hear everything else he says. I feel everything else he means. Kane is mine. You’re a smart man, Matthias, so don’t think for a second he isn’t. Right?” I turned to Kane. He leaned down again and kissed me. Point proved. I relaxed into Kane and let my threats soothe my soul and settle over the man I wanted to watch burn in hell. His reply was an arrogant smirk and hard eyes. “Little girl, you just asked for trouble, I’m-” “Do it,” I hissed. “Do whatever it is you want to do and see if I’m bluffing. Try me! Hurt someone I love. Hurt me. Take something away from me and see how painfully and how permanently I take something away from you.” I stood up and pushed aggressively away from the table. I stared him down the entire time. Kane let me go without even an attempt to restrain me. I was beyond that. I was beyond all of this. I was leaving. Today. Because without a doubt I would follow through with every single one of my threats. I stomped from the warehouse. I could feel Kane behind me, but he still didn’t try to slow me down. And I knew he wouldn’t. He really was mine. Matthias, Hendrix, nobody could take him from me. And he would do whatever I wanted as long as he thought we could survive. I hoped both of us could survive what I was about to ask him to do.

Jay's downstairs waiting." With her father on one side, and the handrail on the other, Violet descended the stairs as if she were floating. Jay stood at the bottom, watching her, frozen in place like a statue. His black suit looked as if it had been tailored just for him. His jacket fell across his strong shoulders in a perfect line, tapering at his narrow waist. The crisp white linen shirt beneath stood out in contrast against the dark, finely woven wool. He smiled appreciatively as he watched her approach, and Violet felt her breath catch in her throat at the striking image of flawlessness that he presented. "You...are so beautiful," he whispered fervently as he strode toward her, taking her dad's place at her arm. She smiled sheepishly up at him. "So are you." Her mom insisted on taking no fewer than a hundred pictures of the two of them, both alone and together, until Violet felt like her eyes had been permanently damaged by the blinding flash. Finally her father called off her mom, dragging her away into the kitchen so that Violet and Jay could have a moment alone together. "I meant it," he said. "You look amazing." She shook her head, not sure what to say, a little embarrassed by the compliment. "I got you something," he said to her as he reached inside his jacket. "I hope you don't mind, it's not a corsage." Violet couldn't have cared less about having flowers to pin on her dress, but she was curious about what he had brought for her. She watched as he dragged out the moment longer than he needed to, taking his time to reveal his surprise. "I got you this instead." He pulled out a black velvet box, the kind that holds fine jewelry. It was long and narrow. She gasped as she watched him lift the lid. Inside was a delicate silver chain, and on it was the polished outline of a floating silver heart that drifted over the chain that held it. Violet reached out to touch it with her fingertip. "It's beautiful," she sighed. He lifted the necklace from the box and held it out to her. "May I?" he asked. She nodded, her eyes bright with excitement as he clasped the silver chain around her bare throat. "Thank you," she breathed, interlacing her hand into his and squeezing it meaningfully. She reluctantly used the crutches to get out to the car, since there were no handrails for her to hold on to. She left like they ruined the overall effect she was going for. Jay's car was as nice on the inside as it was outside. The interior was rich, smoky gray leather that felt like soft butter as he helped her inside. Aside from a few minor flaws, it could have passed for brand-new. The engine purred to life when he turned the key in the ignition, something that her car had never done. Roar, maybe-purr, never. She was relieved that her uncle hadn't ordered a police escort for the two of them to the dance. She had half expected to see a procession of marked police cars, lights swirling and sirens blaring, in the wake of Jay's sleek black Acura. Despite sitting behind the wheel of his shiny new car, Jay could scarcely take his eyes off her. His admiring gaze found her over and over again, while he barely concentrated on the road ahead of him. Fortunately they didn't have far to go.

The questing, anxious, exacting way that we have of looking at the person we love, our eagerness for the word which shall give us or take from us the hope of an appointment for the morrow, and, until that word is uttered, our alternative if not simultaneous imaginings of joy and of despair, all these make our observation, in the beloved object’s presence, too tremulous to be able to carry away a clear impression of her. Perhaps, also, that activity of all the senses at once which endeavours to learn from the visible aspect alone what lies behind it is over-indulgent to the thousand forms, to the changing fragrance, to the movements of the living person whom as a rule, when we are not in love, we regard as fixed in one permanent position. Whereas the beloved model does not stay still; and our mental photographs of her are always blurred. I did not rightly know how Gilberte’s features were composed, save in the heavenly moments when she disclosed them to me; I could remember nothing but her smile. And not being able to see again that beloved face, despite every effort that I might make to recapture it, I would be disgusted to find, outlined in my memory with a maddening precision of detail, the meaningless, emphatic faces of the man with the wooden horses and of the barley-sugar woman; just as those who have lost a dear friend whom they never see even while they are asleep, are exasperated at meeting incessantly in their dreams any number of insupportable creatures whom it is quite enough to have known in the waking world. In their inability to form any image of the object of their grief they are almost led to assert that they feel no grief.

It's hard to form a lasting connection when your permanent address is an eight-inch mailbox in the UPS store. Still,as I inch my way closer, I can't help the way my breath hitches, the way my insides thrum and swirl. And when he turns,flashing me that slow, languorous smile that's about to make him world famous,his eyes meeting mine when he says, "Hey,Daire-Happy Sweet Sixteen," I can't help but think of the millions of girls who would do just about anything to stand in my pointy blue babouches. I return the smile, flick a little wave of my hand, then bury it in the side pocket of the olive-green army jacket I always wear. Pretending not to notice the way his gaze roams over me, straying from my waist-length brown hair peeking out from my scarf, to the tie-dyed tank top that clings under my jacket,to the skinny dark denim jeans,all the way down to the brand-new slippers I wear on my feet. "Nice." He places his foot beside mine, providing me with a view of the his-and-hers version of the very same shoe. Laughing when he adds, "Maybe we can start a trend when we head back to the States.What do you think?" We. There is no we. I know it.He knows it.And it bugs me that he tries to pretend otherwise. The cameras stopped rolling hours ago, and yet here he is,still playing a role. Acting as though our brief, on-location hookup means something more. Acting like we won't really end long before our passports are stamped RETURN. And that's all it takes for those annoyingly soft girly feelings to vanish as quickly as a flame in the rain. Allowing the Daire I know,the Daire I've honed myself to be, to stand in her palce. "Doubtful." I smirk,kicking his shoe with mine.A little harder then necessary, but then again,he deserves it for thinking I'm lame enough to fall for his act. "So,what do you say-food? I'm dying for one of those beef brochettes,maybe even a sausage one too.Oh-and some fries would be good!" I make for the food stalls,but Vane has another idea. His hand reaches for mine,fingers entwining until they're laced nice and tight. "In a minute," he says,pulling me so close my hip bumps against his. "I thought we might do something special-in honor of your birthday and all.What do you think about matching tattoos?" I gape.Surely he's joking. "Yeah,you know,mehndi. Nothing permanent.Still,I thought it could be kinda cool." He arcs his left brow in his trademark Vane Wick wau,and I have to fight not to frown in return. Nothing permanent. That's my theme song-my mission statement,if you will. Still,mehndi's not quite the same as a press-on. It has its own life span. One that will linger long after Vane's studio-financed, private jet lifts him high into the sky and right out of my life. Though I don't mention any of that, instead I just say, "You know the director will kill you if you show up on set tomorrow covered in henna." Vane shrugs. Shrugs in a way I've seen too many times, on too many young actors before him.He's in full-on star-power mode.Think he's indispensable. That he's the only seventeen-year-old guy with a hint of talent,golden skin, wavy blond hair, and piercing blue eyes that can light up a screen and make the girls (and most of their moms) swoon. It's a dangerous way to see yourself-especially when you make your living in Hollywood. It's the kind of thinking that leads straight to multiple rehab stints, trashy reality TV shows, desperate ghostwritten memoirs, and low-budget movies that go straight to DVD.

Wheat did it by manipulating Homo sapiens to its advantage. This ape had been living a fairly comfortable life hunting and gathering until about 10,000 years ago, but then began to invest more and more effort in cultivating wheat. Within a couple of millennia, humans in many parts of the world were doing little from dawn to dusk other than taking care of wheat plants. It wasn’t easy. Wheat demanded a lot of them. Wheat didn’t like rocks and pebbles, so Sapiens broke their backs clearing fields. Wheat didn’t like sharing its space, water and nutrients with other plants, so men and women laboured long days weeding under the scorching sun. Wheat got sick, so Sapiens had to keep a watch out for worms and blight. Wheat was attacked by rabbits and locust swarms, so the farmers built fences and stood guard over the fields. Wheat was thirsty, so humans dug irrigation canals or lugged heavy buckets from the well to water it. Sapiens even collected animal faeces to nourish the ground in which wheat grew. The body of Homo sapiens had not evolved for such tasks. It was adapted to climbing apple trees and running after gazelles, not to clearing rocks and carrying water buckets. Human spines, knees, necks and arches paid the price. Studies of ancient skeletons indicate that the transition to agriculture brought about a plethora of ailments, such as slipped discs, arthritis and hernias. Moreover, the new agricultural tasks demanded so much time that people were forced to settle permanently next to their wheat fields. This completely changed their way of life. We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us. The word ‘domesticate’ comes from the Latin domus, which means ‘house’. Who’s the one living in a house? Not the wheat. It’s the Sapiens.

I was a little scared of her. Even when she said she’d been harming herself there was still a little bit of Claire in her, some of the humor and charm, as though depression was something she could slip out of when she needed to engage with the world. When she needed to protect me from seeing it. But now she was clearly gone. I wondered if it really had to do with David or Trent or any of the men, or if the two just coincided. This seemed so much greater than men. “You’re going to be okay,” I said. But I wasn’t convincing. “I’m gutted. I really just don’t see the point of going on living,” she said. “It just seems so insane. Like, why would you?” “I don’t know,” I said, because truthfully I didn’t. “I’m probably not the best person to talk you out of suicide.” I was trying to make her laugh but she didn’t. Suicide was one of those things that, having been suicidal, in retrospect, I felt like I could talk about without being judgmental. But at the same time, there was no rational reason I could give her to live. Could I say that I was glad I lived? The thing was, I hadn’t really known I was suicidal until I woke up with the doughnuts. Also, even if things were better now, were they ever permanently better? Who was I to put that pressure on her to stay alive? But what kind of person didn’t try to talk their friend out of killing herself? I didn’t want to tell her that she had to live for her children. I knew she felt bad enough about them already. I could have told her what an amazing and fun and funny personality she was, but I knew that right now it all felt to her like just a performance. Her charming personality was only more heaviness—another mask she was going to have to pick up again to prove she hadn’t lost it in the depression. The only reason to put it on again was out of fear that she might never get it back. Otherwise, there was no real reason to have to put on a heavy costume every day. It was too tiring.

The end is a mystery, therefore think and act well now! Be robust, be focused and run the race with tenacity! When you fall, arise, learn the lessons and use them well! Learn everyday for life is an arena for learning! No one can ever be perfect! When you are speeding, be careful, for excessive speed can sometimes be dangerous, though it can get you to your journey’s end faster, and it can also make you avoid certain attacks! Sometimes the best things come delayed; when there are delays, be patient and wait, for not all things that delay are dead; time will speak with time! When it is going smoothly, watch out never to let comfort lead you astray, for because of comfort, so many people are not who they were truly meant to be, and they are in wrong tracks to an end of no glory! When darkness comes, remember life is about day and night! When day comes, note that darkness puts people to sleep; use the day well then whilst you have it! No day stays forever and no night is ever permanent! Never rejoice because someone falls during the day for you do not know what will happen to you in the night! Serendipity exists, but try your very best to do all you can to ensure that you never faint nor fall, for life is a battle! Stand for what is a must and do what is truly needed to be done! Be vigilant enough never to slumber nor be trapped in another track! Guard your tongue, for no one can hear it until you say it! Mind your actions, for it is the oil that keeps your lamps brighter for a good journey! Mind your mind for it is an engine for life, and a good remote control that controls the entire body to a good or a bad end! Guard your heart, for it is the house of your being! Remember, however in all things that human strength, efforts, wisdom and understanding is always limited! Ask God therefore for that little insight and understanding to get to your journey’s end successfully with a successful story so as to win that awesome praises from His angels! You are here for a purpose! We shall all meet the end, but how we shall meet it is truly a mystery! As you take the journey, mind the end!

Wheat did it by manipulating Homo sapiens to its advantage. This ape had been living a fairly comfortable life hunting and gathering until about 10,000 years ago, but then began to invest more and more effort in cultivating wheat. Within a couple of millennia, humans in many parts of the world were doing little from dawn to dusk other than taking care of wheat plants. It wasn’t easy. Wheat demanded a lot of them. Wheat didn’t like rocks and pebbles, so Sapiens broke their backs clearing fields. Wheat didn’t like sharing its space, water and nutrients with other plants, so men and women laboured long days weeding under the scorching sun. Wheat got sick, so Sapiens had to keep a watch out for worms and blight. Wheat was attacked by rabbits and locust swarms, so the farmers built fences and stood guard over the fields. Wheat was thirsty, so humans dug irrigation canals or lugged heavy buckets from the well to water it. Sapiens even collected animal faeces to nourish the ground in which wheat grew. The body of Homo sapiens had not evolved for such tasks. It was adapted to climbing apple trees and running after gazelles, not to clearing rocks and carrying water buckets. Human spines, knees, necks and arches paid the price. Studies of ancient skeletons indicate that the transition to agriculture brought about a plethora of ailments, such as slipped discs, arthritis and hernias. Moreover, the new agricultural tasks demanded so much time that people were forced to settle permanently next to their wheat fields. This completely changed their way of life. We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us. The word ‘domesticate’ comes from the Latin domus, which means ‘house’. Who’s the one living in a house? Not the wheat. It’s the Sapiens. How did wheat convince Homo sapiens to exchange a rather good life for a more miserable existence? What did it offer in return? It did not offer a better diet. Remember, humans are omnivorous apes who thrive on a wide variety of foods. Grains made up only a small fraction of the human diet before the Agricultural Revolution. A diet based on cereals is poor in minerals and vitamins, hard to digest, and really bad for your teeth and gums.

The good news is that positive construal can be taught. “We can make ourselves more or less vulnerable by how we think about things,” Bonanno said. In research at Columbia, the neuroscientist Kevin Ochsner has shown that teaching people to think of stimuli in different ways—to reframe them in positive terms when the initial response is negative, or in a less emotional way when the initial response is emotionally “hot”—changes how they experience and react to the stimulus. You can train people to better regulate their emotions, and the training seems to have lasting effects. Training people to change their explanatory styles from internal to external (“Bad events aren’t my fault”), from global to specific (“This is one narrow thing rather than a massive indication that something is wrong with my life”), and from permanent to impermanent (“I can change the situation, rather than assuming it’s fixed”) made them more psychologically successful and less prone to depression. The same goes for locus of control: not only is a more internal locus tied to perceiving less stress and performing better but changing your locus from external to internal leads to positive changes in both psychological well-being and objective work performance. The cognitive skills that underpin resilience, then, seem like they can indeed be learned over time, creating resilience where there was none. Unfortunately, the opposite may also be true. “We can become less resilient, or less likely to be resilient,” Bonanno says. “We can create or exaggerate stressors very easily in our own minds. That’s the danger of the human condition.” Human beings are capable of worry and rumination: we can take a minor thing, blow it up in our heads, run through it over and over, and drive ourselves crazy until we feel like that minor thing is the biggest thing that ever happened. In a sense, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Frame adversity as a challenge, and you become more flexible and able to deal with it, move on, learn from it, and grow. Focus on it, frame it as a threat, and a potentially traumatic event becomes an enduring problem; you become more inflexible, and more likely to be negatively affected.

Our attachments to whom we think we’re supposed to be are like chains around our necks. Our identities get wrapped up in the external roles, titles, and accomplishments that we put value on … A wealthy businessman values how much he’s worth financially. A research scientist values the cure she is working on. A writer values the books he writes and publishes. In my case, I valued how much social change I could create through my advocacy for women’s rights and my humanitarian work. At first, it might seem that one pursuit or identity is more valuable than another. Surely, the cure for a disease is more important than how many books an author sells. Surely, creating social change that improves thousands—if not millions—of lives is more important than increasing the wealth of one individual. At a fundamental level, though, no matter what our vocation is, our accomplishments are where we find our core self-value and feel affirmed. Attachments are attachments, I realized, no matter who we are or what we identify with. When we value ourselves because of what we accomplish and how much we accomplish, our souls are forever held hostage to these attachments. No matter how much we do, how many dollars we accumulate, cures we discover, books we sell, or people we help, it is never going to be enough to permanently fulfill us.… I was completely identified with my work, and in my own mind, I could never be successful enough at it. That was a very big chain around my soul, a huge weight on my being. Realizing this was like cutting the umbilical cord to my shame.… One short silent retreat couldn’t instantly change the shape of my life—or my mind. It had just given me a taste of what freedom from attachments could be like. It was like tasting chocolate for the first time: we can’t describe how good it tastes until we’ve actually tasted it, and then we can’t ever forget that taste. Now that I had seen the source of my pain and the route to my freedom, I had a clear path to follow. As Zainab’s story so powerfully illustrates, we can learn to recognize assumptions for the thoughts that they are, rather than cleaving to them as an ultimate defining reality we’re bound to. We get to choose, “Do I want to take this to heart or let it go?” EXPANSION

Nope- it was not! Ava and her girls that day went, and they cut a class at some point in the day and broke into my baby. Then Ava- ‘Rubbed one out!’ that means that she masturbated, and squirted her lady- juices all over the inside of my car. Yes- and I mean it went all over. It was on my seat on the dash, on the floor, and Ava smeared what creaminess that was on her two fingers on the windows, and driver’s side vent. As her clan, sisters pissed all over the carpet on the floor, and took their dumps on the seat, and left their thongs behind. Alison, she wrote a note on her undies saying- ‘Now you have some pairs to wear!’ It was so nasty! Plus- the outside was covered and wrapped with toilet paper as well as littered with Ava and her sisters used feminine products. What is wrong with these girls? What did I do to deserve this one? Likewise, the other kids thought it was the most humorous thing, which they ever witnessed at the end of the school day. When I discovered it- You know, I was utterly sick to my stomach. I think I screamed so loudly it echoed throughout the land, and started to cry and ran while being pushed around bouncing around off their bodies, I cannot remember- I was so upset, and then the kids were all around me kicking, and pushing me from one place to another. I was just like a hacky sack for them, until I passed out, and dropped to the hard ground. That gave them time for them to spit on me, and dump things like glue in my hair or whatever that shit was. Then what gets me is that she signed her name- Ava on the dashboard with a black permanent sharpie marker, and It reads, ‘Suck on this- Nevaeh- lick, what I gave you all up!’ and she drew a heart, with a line through it also. She wanted me to know because there was not a thing I could do about it. Depressed- to say that her juicy sprays were more yellowish, and a thick sticky white, then clear on my blue and white cloth seats. Yet, Hope had the car towed and cleaned for me inside and out, she could not believe what kids do these days. Therefore, that was the first time that I drove my car to school and the last. That whole thing cost me a lot. I guess it is back to the bus. That is what everyone wants is it not. This completely sucked; I have a car that I cannot drive anywhere other than at home or have locked up in the barn- with the other rust bucket car.

My eyes widened at that offer. I’d missed riding since coming to the Academy and I hadn’t really thought I’d be able to get out again any time soon. But I wasn’t sure I wanted him to know quite how much this meant to me. Every other piece of information the Heirs had gotten on me up until now had been twisted against me in some way and I didn’t want them trying to take this from me too. “I’m not really dressed for it,” I said slowly though in all honesty I had no issue with tying my dress in a knot around my waist if that was what it took to get me out on the road. “I’m sure I could lend you my shirt if you want to take it off,” he replied. “That would require both of us taking off rather a lot of our clothes.” There was a dare hanging in the air between us and I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to resist it much longer. I eyed the line up of bikes, my heart beating a little faster as I tried to decide which one I’d choose. In all honesty I was too drunk to ride, although the sandwich was mopping up some of the excess alcohol and I was feeling a little less dizzy... It still wouldn’t have been the best idea though. “Why do you have the same bikes that that they have in the mortal world?” I asked as I began to wander between the immaculate machines. Some of the badges were different, I read names like Yamaharpy, Sphinxzuki, Hondusa, Harley Dragonson and I couldn’t keep the smirk from my lips but the actual bikes were definitely mortal models. “There are several permanent rifts between our world and the mortal world where we import all sorts of goods like these. The importers like to change the names as a kind of in-joke but a hell of a lot of our products come straight out of Taiwan or China, direct to Solaria,” Darius explained. “Why?” I asked. “Can’t Fae invent their own bikes and cars?” “I guess we could... but why bother? We’ve got better things to do with our time and it makes sense to use the mortals like our own personal goods suppliers. The Fae they deal with even manage to Coerce the best prices for everything we import. No Fae vendor would create any of the things we desire so cheaply.” Darius folded his arms and leaned back to perch on the saddle of a stunning green bike as he watched my exploration. “So you basically abuse the mortals with your power?” I asked. “We use our power to take what we want from them,” he agreed. “Just the same as we do with other Fae.” He had a point there; Fae were equally asshole-like to their own kind. (Tory)

To start with, at that time I'd gone to bed with probably three dozen boys, all of them either German or English; never with a woman. Nonetheless -- and incredible thought it may seem -- I still assumed that a day would come when I would fall in love with some lovely, intelligent girl, whom I would marry and who would bear me children. And what of my attraction to men? To tell the truth, I didn't worry much about it. I pretended my homosexuality was a function of my youth, that when I "grew up" it would fall away, like baby teeth, to be replaced by something more mature and permanent. I, after all, was no pansy; the boy in Croydon who hanged himself after his father caught him in makeup and garters, he was a pansy, as was Oscar Wilde, my first-form Latin tutor, Channing's friend Peter Lovesey's brother. Pansies farted differently, and went to pubs where the barstools didn't have seats, and had very little in common with my crowd, by which I meant Higel and Horst and our other homosexual friends, all of whom were aggressively, unreservedly masculine, reveled in all things male, and held no truck with sissies and fairies, the overrefined Rupert Halliwells of the world. To the untrained eye nothing distinguished us from "normal" men. Though I must confess that by 1936 the majority of my friends had stopped deluding themselves into believing their homosexuality was merely a phase. They claimed, rather, to have sworn off women, by choice. For them, homosexuality was an act of rebellion, a way of flouting the rigid mores of Edwardian England, but they were also fundamentally misogynists who would have much preferred living in a world devoid of things feminine, where men bred parthenogenically. Women, according to these friends, were the “class enemy” in a sexual revolution. Infuriated by our indifference to them (and to the natural order), they schemed to trap and convert us*, thus foiling the challenge we presented to the invincible heterosexual bond. Such thinking excited me - anything smacking of rebellion did - but it also frightened me. It seemed to me then that my friends’ misogyny blinded them to the fact that heterosexual men, not women, had been up until now, and would probably always be, their most relentless enemies. My friends didn’t like women, however, and therefore couldn’t acknowledge that women might be truer comrades to us than the John Northrops whose approval we so desperately craved. So I refused to make the same choice they did, although, crucially, I still believed it was a choice.

Meanwhile, in a lecture at the Sverdlov University two years later, under the pressure of outside events and interior realities, Lenin spoke with a precision which left little doubt about the indefinite continuation of the proletarian super-State. "With this machine, or rather this weapon [the State], we shall crush every form of exploitation, and when there are no longer any possibilities of exploitation left on earth, no more people owning land or factories, no more people gorging themselves under the eyes of others who are starving, when such things become impossible, then and only then shall we cast this machine aside. Then there will be neither State nor exploitation." Therefore as long as there exists on earth, and no longer in a specific society, one single oppressed person and one proprietor, so long the State will continue to exist. It also will be obliged to increase in strength during this period so as to vanquish one by one the injustices, the governments responsible for injustice, the obstinately bourgeois nations, and the people who are blind to their own interests. And when, on an earth that has finally been subdued and purged of enemies, the final iniquity shall have been drowned in the blood of the just and the unjust, then the State, which has reached the limit of all power, a monstrous idol covering the entire earth, will be discreetly absorbed into the silent city of Justice. Under the easily predictable pressure of adverse imperialism, the imperialism of justice was born, in reality, with Lenin. But imperialism, even the imperialism of justice, has no other end but defeat or world empire. Until then it has no other means but injustice. From now on, the doctrine is definitively identified with the prophecy. For the sake of justice in the far-away future, it authorizes injustice throughout the entire course of history and becomes the type of mystification which Lenin detested more than anything else in the world. It contrives the acceptance of injustice, crime, and falsehood by the promise of a miracle. Still greater production, still more power, uninterrupted labor, incessant suffering, permanent war, and then a moment will come when universal bondage in the totalitarian empire will be miraculously changed into its opposite: free leisure in a universal republic. Pseudo-revolutionary mystification has now acquired a formula: all freedom must be crushed in order to conquer the empire, and one day the empire will be the equivalent of freedom. And so the way to unity passes through totality.

The Agricultural Revolution was history’s biggest fraud.2 Who was responsible? Neither kings, nor priests, nor merchants. The culprits were a handful of plant species, including wheat, rice and potatoes. These plants domesticated Homo sapiens, rather than vice versa. Think for a moment about the Agricultural Revolution from the viewpoint of wheat. Ten thousand years ago wheat was just a wild grass, one of many, confined to a small range in the Middle East. Suddenly, within just a few short millennia, it was growing all over the world. According to the basic evolutionary criteria of survival and reproduction, wheat has become one of the most successful plants in the history of the earth. In areas such as the Great Plains of North America, where not a single wheat stalk grew 10,000 years ago, you can today walk for hundreds upon hundreds of kilometres without encountering any other plant. Worldwide, wheat covers about 2.25 million square kilometres of the globe’s surface, almost ten times the size of Britain. How did this grass turn from insignificant to ubiquitous? Wheat did it by manipulating Homo sapiens to its advantage. This ape had been living a fairly comfortable life hunting and gathering until about 10,000 years ago, but then began to invest more and more effort in cultivating wheat. Within a couple of millennia, humans in many parts of the world were doing little from dawn to dusk other than taking care of wheat plants. It wasn’t easy. Wheat demanded a lot of them. Wheat didn’t like rocks and pebbles, so Sapiens broke their backs clearing fields. Wheat didn’t like sharing its space, water and nutrients with other plants, so men and women laboured long days weeding under the scorching sun. Wheat got sick, so Sapiens had to keep a watch out for worms and blight. Wheat was attacked by rabbits and locust swarms, so the farmers built fences and stood guard over the fields. Wheat was thirsty, so humans dug irrigation canals or lugged heavy buckets from the well to water it. Sapiens even collected animal faeces to nourish the ground in which wheat grew. The body of Homo sapiens had not evolved for such tasks. It was adapted to climbing apple trees and running after gazelles, not to clearing rocks and carrying water buckets. Human spines, knees, necks and arches paid the price. Studies of ancient skeletons indicate that the transition to agriculture brought about a plethora of ailments, such as slipped discs, arthritis and hernias. Moreover, the new agricultural tasks demanded so much time that people were forced to settle permanently next to their wheat fields. This completely changed their way of life. We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us. The word ‘domesticate’ comes from the Latin ‘domus’, which means ‘house’. Who’s the one living in a house? Not the wheat. It’s the Sapiens.

The Midnight Game The "Midnight Game" is an old pagan ritual, used mainly as punishment for those who have broken the laws of the pagan religion in question.  While it was mainly used as a scare tactic to not disobey the gods, there is still a very existent chance of death to those who play the Midnight Game.  There is an even higher chance of permanent mental scarring. It is highly recommended that you DO NOT PLAY THE MIDNIGHT GAME.   However, for those few thrill seekers searching for a rush, or for those delving into obscure occult rituals, these are simple instructions on how to play. Do so at your own risk...   WARNING: I have played this game. People have died. Do not play this game. He will always be watching.   Instructions   PREREQUISITES:   It must be exactly 12:00 AM when you begin performing the ritual. Otherwise, it will not work.   MATERIALS:   You will need a candle, a piece of paper, a writing implement, matches or a lighter, salt, a wooden door, and at least one drop of your own blood. If you are playing with multiple people, they will need their own of the aforementioned materials and they will have to perform the steps below accordingly.   STEP 1:   Write your full name (first, middle, and last)on the piece of paper. Put at least one drop of blood on the paper. Allow it to soak into the paper.   STEP 2:   Turn off all of the lights in the place you are doing this. Go to your wooden door, and place the paper with your name on it in front of the door. Now, take out the candle and light it. Place it on top of the paper.   STEP 3:   Knock on the door twenty-two times. The hour must be 12:00 AM upon the final knock. Then, open the door, blow out the candle, and close the door. You have just allowed the "Midnight Man" to enter your house.   STEP 4:   Immediately relite your candle.   This is where the game begins. You must now lurk around your now completely dark house, with the lit candle in your hand. Your goal is to avoid the Midnight Man at all costs, until 3:33 AM. Should your candle ever go out, that means the Midnight Man is near you. You must relight your candle in the next ten seconds.   If you are not successful in doing this, you must then immediately surround yourself with a circle of salt. If you are unsuccessful in both of your actions, the Midnight Man will create a hallucination of your greatest fear, and rip out your organs one by one. You will feel it, but you will be unable to react.   If you are successful in creating the circle of salt, you must remain in there until 3:33 AM.   If you are successful in relighting your candle, you may proceed with the game. You must continue to 3:33 AM, without being attacked by the Midnight Man, or being trapped inside the circle of salt, to win the Midnight Game. The Midnight Man will leave your house at 3:33 AM, and you will be safe to proceed with your morning.   ADDITION:   Indications that you are near the Midnight Man will include sudden drop in temperature, seeing a pure black, humanoid figure through the darkness, and hearing very soft whispering coming from an indiscernible source. If you experience any of these, it is advised that you leave the area to avoid the Midnight Man.   DO NOT turn any of the lights on during the Midnight Game.   DO NOT use a flashlight during the Midnight Game.   DO NOT go to sleep during the Midnight Game.   DO NOT attempt to use another person's blood on your name.   DO NOT use a lighter as a substitute for a candle. It will not work.   AND DEFINITELY DO NOT attempt to provoke the Midnight Man in ANY WAY.   Even when the game is over, he will always be watching