Wedding Bands Quotes

It is easy to mourn the lives we aren't living. Easy to wish we'd developed other other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we'd worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga. It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn't make and the work we didn't do the people we didn't do and the people we didn't marry and the children we didn't have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out. But it is not lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It's the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people's worst enemy. We can't tell if any of those other versions would of been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.

We'd spent maybe ten minutes together, during which time I'd accidentally swung a sword at her, she'd saved my life, and I'd run away chased by a band of supernatural killing machines. You know, your typical chance meeting.

Slowly his resistance ebbed. She felt the change in his body, the relaxing of tension, his shoulders curving around her as if he could draw her into himself. Murmuring her name, he brought her hand to his face and nuzzled ardently into her palm, his lips brushing the warm circlet of her gold wedding band. “My love is upon you,” he whispered…and she knew then that she had won.

I thought I would inaugurate a Bipolar Pride Day. You know, with floats and parades and stuff! On the floats we would get the depressives, and they wouldn’t even have to leave their beds - we’d just roll their beds out of their houses, and they could continue staring off miserably into space. And then for the manics, we’d have the manic marching band, with manics laughing and talking and shopping and fucking and making bad judgment calls.

Finn regarded pesky little things like wedding bands, engagement rings, and jealous, hulking menfolk more as amusing challenges than immovable obstacles that could be hazardous to his health.

Murmuring her name, he brought her hand to his face and nuzzled ardently into her palm, his lips brushing the warm circlet of her gold wedding band. 'My love is upon you,' he whispered... and she knew then that she had won.

My love has placed her little hand With noble faith in mine, And vowed that wedlock's sacred band Our nature shall entwine. My love has sworn, with sealing kiss, With me to live -- to die; I have at last my nameless bliss: As I love -- loved am I!

Simon's band never actually produced any music. Mostly they sat around in Simon's living room, fighting about potential names and band logos. She sometimes wondered if any of them could actually play an instrument. 'What's on the table?' 'We're choosing between Sea Vegetable Conspiracy and Rock Solid Panda.' Clary shook her head. 'Those are both terrible.' 'Eric suggested Lawn Chair Crisis.' 'Maybe Eric should stick to gaming.' 'But then we'd have to find a new drummer.' 'Oh, is that what Eric does?...

When two werewolves are mated, we bite to leave a permanent mark that announces belonging," he explained. "Right. Kind of like wedding bands, only for freaks.

never trust a man who wears a pinkie ring. . . the only jewelry a guy should wear is a wedding band or a super bowl ring

Angelica rolled the wedding band between her finger and thumb. "It's terrifying, to be on the verge of finally getting what you want.

I described the pyramid we'd found and waited for him to jump on the bandwagon. Unfortunately he's afraid of wagons. And bands.

Two things a man can give the woman he loves...his name and his protection...

I touch the haemanthus blossom in my pocket and feel the wedding band around my neck. They didn't create me. She did.

The inscription in your wedding band says 'forever,' Callie. And it means forever. I'll love you until I close my eyes for the last time. And even afterward, I'll love you.

Everybody's got some sin, but if it troubles your heart you're a gentle sinner, just a good soul gone wrong.

Check her out. She‟s fuckin‟ hot.” “Wedding band,” I say. “She sings in one?" “No, jackass. She's wearing one.

I was told The average girl begins to plan her wedding at the age of 7 She picks the colors and the cake first By the age of 10 She knows time, And location By 17 She’s already chosen a gown 2 bridesmaids And a maid of honor By 23 She’s waiting for a man Who wont break out in hives when he hears the word “commitment” Someone who doesn’t smell like a Band-Aid drenched in lonely Someone who isn’t a temporary solution to the empty side of the bed Someone Who’ll hold her hand like it’s the only one they’ve ever seen To be honest I don’t know what kind of tux I’ll be wearing I have no clue what want my wedding will look like But I imagine The women who pins my last to hers Will butterfly down the aisle Like a 5 foot promise I imagine Her smile Will be so large that you’ll see it on google maps And know exactly where our wedding is being held The woman that I plan to marry Will have champagne in her walk And I will get drunk on her footsteps When the pastor asks If I take this woman to be my wife I will say yes before he finishes the sentence I’ll apologize later for being impolite But I will also explain him That our first kiss happened 6 years ago And I’ve been practicing my “Yes” For past 2, 165 days When people ask me about my wedding I never really know what to say But when they ask me about my future wife I always tell them Her eyes are the only Christmas lights that deserve to be seen all year long I say She thinks too much Misses her father Loves to laugh And she’s terrible at lying Because her face never figured out how to do it correctl I tell them If my alarm clock sounded like her voice My snooze button would collect dust I tell them If she came in a bottle I would drink her until my vision is blurry and my friends take away my keys If she was a book I would memorize her table of contents I would read her cover-to-cover Hoping to find typos Just so we can both have a few things to work on Because aren’t we all unfinished? Don’t we all need a little editing? Aren’t we all waiting to be proofread by someone? Aren’t we all praying they will tell us that we make sense She don’t always make sense But her imperfections are the things I love about her the most I don’t know when I will be married I don’t know where I will be married But I do know this Whenever I’m asked about my future wife I always say …She’s a lot like you

A Tip from Bonnie Sue: God is the ultimate band director. Pay close attention, because you don't want to get ahead of him. Stick with him in perfect timing, and he will make a beautiful melody out of your life.

Wolf took Scarlet’s hands into his, as tenderly as he would pick up an injured butterfly, and slid the band onto her finger. His voice was rough and wavering as he recited—“I, Ze’ev Kesley, do hereby claim you, Scarlet Benoit, as my wife and my Alpha. Forevermore, you will be my mate, my star, my beginning of everything.” He smiled down at her, his eyes swimming with emotion. Scarlet returned the look, and though Wolf’s expression teetered between proud and bashful, Scarlet’s face contained nothing but joy. “You are the one. You have always been, and you will always be, the only one. Scarlet took the second ring—a significantly larger version of the same unadorned band—and pressed it onto Wolf’s finger. “I, Scarlet Benoit, do hereby claim you, Ze’ev Kesley, as my husband and my Alpha. Forevermore, you will be my mate, my star, my beginning of everything. You are the one. You have always been, and you will always be, the only one.” Wolf folded his hands around hers. From where she sat, Cinder could see that he was shaking. Kai grinned. “By the power given to me by the people of Earth, under the laws of the Earthen Union and as witnessed by those gathered here today, I do now pronounce you husband and wife.” He spread his hands in invitation. “You may kiss your—” Wolf wrapped his arms around Scarlet’s waist, lifting her off the floor, and kissed her before Kai could finish. Or maybe she kissed him. It seemed mutual, as her hands wound through his disheveled hair. The room exploded with cheers, everyone launching to their feet to congratulate the still-kissing couple. Scarlet had lost one of her red shoes. “I’ll get the champagne,” said Thorne, heading toward the kitchen. “Those two are going to be thirsty when they finally come up for air.

We rode to the airport hand in hand, and I giggled as I watched Travis stare at his wedding band without apology. His eyes held the peaceful expression I was becoming accustomed to. “When we get back to the apartment, I think it will finally hit me, and I’ll quit acting like such a jackass.” “Promise?” I smiled. He kissed my hand and then cradled it in his lap between his palms. “No.” I laughed, resting my head on his shoulder.

We slept beside them, fought beside them, bled beside them. We trusted them to watch our backs and save our asses – which they did, time and time again. And somewhere out there, between one gig and the next, something changed. We woke up one day and realized that home was no longer behind us. That our families were with us all along. We looked around at these miscreants, these motley crews, and knew in our hearts there was nowhere we’d rather be than by their side.

You cannot take this with you, goodman. The wedding band on your hand is queer enough. The flower is too much." "Give me a petal then," I say. "I thought you would ask for that." He pulls out a necklace. It is the Sigil of Andromedus. My Sigil, I remember. It is golden. He drops it in my hand. "Whisper her name." I do and the Pegasus unfurls like a haemanthus bud. He sets a petal in the center. It closes again. "This is your heart. Then guard it with metal.

Tatiana fretted over him before he left as if he were a five-year-old on his first day of school. Shura, don't forget to wear your helmet wherever you go, even if it's just down the trail to the river. Don't forget to bring extra magazines. Look at this combat vest. You can fit more than five hundred rounds. It's unbelievable. Load yourself up with ammo. Bring a few extra cartridges. You don't want to run out. Don't forget to clean your M-16 every day. You don't want your rifle to jam." Tatia, this is the third generation of the M-16. It doesn't jam anymore. The gunpowder doesn't burn as much. The rifle is self-cleaning." When you attach the rocket bandolier, don't tighten it too close to your belt, the friction from bending will chafe you, and then irritation follows, and then infection... ...Bring at least two warning flares for the helicopters. Maybe a smoke bomb, too?" Gee, I hadn't thought of that." Bring your Colt - that's your lucky weapon - bring it, as well as the standard -issue Ruger. Oh, and I have personally organized your medical supplies: lots of bandages, four complete emergency kits, two QuickClots - no I decided three. They're light. I got Helena at PMH to write a prescription for morphine, for penicillin, for -" Alexander put his hand over her mouth. "Tania," he said, "do you want to just go yourself?" When he took the hand away, she said, "Yes." He kissed her. She said, "Spam. Three cans. And keep your canteen always filled with water, in case you can't get to the plasma. It'll help." Yes, Tania" And this cross, right around your neck. Do you remember the prayer of the heart?" Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." Good. And the wedding band. Right around your finger. Do you remember the wedding prayer?" Gloria in Excelsis, please just a little more." Very good. Never take off the steel helmet, ever. Promise?" You said that already. But yes, Tania." Do you remember what the most important thing is?" To always wear a condom." She smacked his chest. To stop the bleeding," he said, hugging her. Yes. To stop the bleeding. Everything else they can fix." Yes, Tania.

It is easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living. Easy to wish we’d developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga.

Logan began to sing, a lilting tune I didn't recognize. At first I wondered if we'd seen the band in concert together or had listened to it on one of our first dates. Then he reached the chorus, and the words were us. All my insecurities, all his excesses, all the ways we fought and pushed and pulled. And how it all didn't matter. Those things that tore us apart were no match for forever. ... I'd been so wrong about us. If he'd lived, we would've been happy. Not every day, but over the span of time that made up forever. But he hadn't lived. ... We had lost forever.

The idea that his wedding band was some kind of talisman nauseated him like the smell of attar.

It’s like they suddenly don’t understand what it is they have created. I touch the haemanthus blossom in my pocket and feel the wedding band around my neck. They didn’t create me. She did. It

When the Devil was a woman, When Lilith wound Her ebony hair in heavy braids, And framed Her pale features all 'round With Botticelli's tangled thoughts, When she, smiling softly, Ringed all her slim fingers In golden bands with brilliant stones, When she leafed through Villiers And loved Huysmans, When she fathomed Maeterlinck's silence And bathed her Soul In Gabriel d'Annunzio's colors, She even laughed And as she laughed, The little princess of serpents sprang Out of her mouth. Then the most beautiful of she-devils Sought after the serpent, She seized the Queen of Serpents With her ringed finger, So that she wound and hissed Hissed, hissed And spit venom. In a heavy copper vase; Damp earth, Black damp earth She scattered upon it. Lightly her great hands caressed This heavy copper vase All around, Her pale lips lightly sang Her ancient curse. Like a children's rhyme her curses chimed, Soft and languid Languid as the kisses, That the damp earth drank From her mouth, But life arose in the vase, And tempted by her languid kisses, And tempted by those sweet tones, From the black earth slowly there crept, Orchids - When the most beloved Adorns her pale features before the mirror All 'round with Botticelli's adders, There creep sideways from the copper vase, Orchids- Devil's blossoms which the ancient earth, Wed by Lilith's curse To serpent's venom, has borne to the light Orchids- The Devil's blossoms- "The Diary Of An Orange Tree

Nick stopped on the sidewalk, pulled a ring from his pocket, and handed it to Kate. "Your wedding ring." It was a platinum band inlaid with diamonds. Simple but elegant. Kate put the ring on her finger. "That's got to be the least romantic proposal in history. Where did you steal this?" "I bought it," he said. "That must have been a new experience for you." "It was. Cost me ten grand." He slipped a matching platinum band onto his finger. "I want that ring back when this marriage is over." "No way," she said. "You can keep the dishes.

I'm pretty sure that when babies are born in Oregon, they leave the hospital with birth certificates - and teeny-tiny sleeping bags. Everyone in the state camps. The hippies and the rednecks. The hunters and the tree huggers. Rich people. Poor people. Even rock musicians. Especially rock musicians. Our band had perfected the art of punk-rock camping, throwing a bunch of crap into the van with, like, an hour's notice and just driving out into the mountains, where we'd drink beer, burn food, jam on our instruments around the campfire, and sack out under the open sky. Sometimes, on tour, back in the early hardscrabble days, we'd even camp as an alternative to crashing in another crowded, roach-infested rock 'n' roll house. I don't know if it's because no matter where you live, the wilderness is never that far off, but it just seemed like everyone in Oregon camped.

Maybe I could help with some of the wedding stuff, too.” Sidney laughed, then saw Vaughn frown. “ Wait — you’re being serious?” He shrugged. “Sure, why not?” “No offense, but you don’t exactly exude a ‘wedding planning’ vibe.” “And thank God for that. But I think I can manage a few tasks. How hard could it be to pick a photographer? Or a band? Just ask them if they plan to play ‘Y.M.C.A.’ or that annoying Kool and the Gang song. If they say no, they’re hired.

Some truth has no nourishment in it.

Gawd might forgive but people never will.

People,” Wax said, “are like cords, Steris. We snake out, striking this way and that, always looking for something new. That’s human nature, to discover what is hidden. There’s so much we can do, so many places we can go.” He shifted in his seat, changing his center of gravity, which caused the sphere to rotate upward on its tether. “But if there aren’t any boundaries,” he said, “we’d get tangled up. Imagine a thousand of these cords, zipping through the room. The law is there to keep us from ruining everyone else’s ability to explore. Without law, there’s no freedom. That’s why I am what I am.

She’d told me an Empress could fashion wood into whatever shapes she liked; in my pocket was a wedding ring for Aric that I’d painstakingly crafted. I’d figured the band would need to be as resilient as metal, so I’d chosen one of the strongest trees in the world: lignum vitae. Latin for wood of life.

We’d spent maybe ten minutes together, during which time I’d accidentally swung a sword at her, she’d saved my life and I’d run away, chased by a band of supernatural killing machines. You know, your typical chance meeting.

If we were a rock ‘n’ roll band, We’d travel all over the land. We’d play and we’d sing and wear spangly things, If we were a rock ‘n’ roll band. If we were a rock ‘n’ roll band, And we were up there on the stand, The people would hear us and love us and cheer us, Hurray for that rock ‘n’ roll band. If we were a rock ‘n’ roll band Then we’d have a million fans. We’d goggle and laugh and sign autographs, If we were a rock ‘n’ roll band. If we were a rock ‘n’ roll band, The people would all kiss our hands. We’d be millionaires and have extra long hair, If we were a rock ‘n’ roll band. But we ain’t no rock ‘n’ roll band, We’re just seven kids in the sand With homemade guitars and pails and jars And drums of potato chip cans. Just seven kids in the sand, Talkin’ and wavin’ our hands, And dreamin’ and thinkin’ oh wouldn’t it be grand, If we were a rock ‘n’ roll band.

Shards of glass. As Stan escorted me from Caravel, I decided that if I formed a band, I would call it Shards of Glass. And we’d only sing really, really angsty songs about my ex, Dan O’Malley. So many words rhymed with Dan. It was meant to be. Man. Plan. Fan. Ban. Tan. LAN. Uzbekistan. The songs would basically write themselves.

Buela fiddles with her wedding band before looking at me. “I’m not sick, Emoni. I’ve lied to you. I haven’t had all those doctor’s appointments. I just needed a private afternoon with my thoughts where I’m not in this house. Where I’m Gloria again, and not only ’Buela. I don’t know how to explain it. And I don’t want to talk about it.

The Hermit I’d gladly climb the highest steeple To escape those middle minded people Jet Set Wedding I wake up screaming clutching my wedding band The garnet ring is still a constant companion on my finger But what happened to the marriage? Fruitland Ave He taught her not to love nor hate And he my friend was double gate The Closing (On Death and Acceptance) When he died the funeral took place at her bank And sadly enough she’s down to her very last frank The Misogynist He sits on his throne a hilltop alone For women’s neurosis cause men’s psychosis Home Sweet Home The neurotic builds the dreamhouse The psychotic becomes his spouse Monogamy I’d rather be someone’s concubine, smell the honeysuckle Taste the wine, than end up being a clinging vine The Gour Maid I like champagne, and french brie, and camembert And men that don’t get in my hair

The photo is faded and white at the edges, and there is a small gold wedding band on the dressing table next to it.

I’ve been wrapping one night stands around my body like wedding bands but none of them fit in the morning,

Some women barter their bodies like whores with wedding bands. Some use sex like a sword. But some women can touch a man and heal like Jesus.

Our band had perfected the art of punk-rock camping, throwing a bunch of crap into the van with, like, an hour's notice and just driving out into the mountains, where we'd drink beer, burn food, jam on our instruments around the campfire, and sack out under the open sky.

My life was awful. When I was a kid, I was fat, pretty ugly and had awful hair. I used to get teased every fucking day, slammed up against lockers, punched in the face - you name it. Hell, I had to go to prom with one of my female friends because I couldn’t even get a proper date. I can’t even look back at those photos because I look so bad. I transferred schools, but the teasing just got worse. After an, let’s say, ‘incident’ I had with the school play the bullying just got worse. But I made it through high school, only to find out that real life was pretty much the same. I just stayed in my dark room all day and didn’t talk to anyone. I didn’t go outside. I just stayed inside and drew. I’d draw vampires, mummies, heroes, villains. Anything to help me escape all the bad in the world. I went to art school and didn’t really belong. All I could draw was comic book characters. I tried to put my only good talent to use by drawing a cartoon and pitching it - only to have it turned down. Life to me was just pointless. I started drinking, doing drugs and just generally wasting my life drawing.
Then one day, I saw bodies falling from the sky. I witnessed people dying. And that’s when I decided to turn my life around. I called up anyone I knew who had an instrument and we formed a band. Being on tour for the first few years was bad. All we’d do is get drunk and do drugs, but I loved it. Because I was doing something I loved with people I loved. And a few years ago I met the most perfect woman ever. It’s like we share a wave-link or something. She just knows me without even knowing me, if you understand. And now, 2011, I have a beautiful baby girl, a caring wife and I get to perform for my adoring fans everyday. I am living proof that no matter how bad it gets, it gets better. I am Gerard Way, and I survived.

Murmuring her name, he brought her hand to his face and nuzzled ardently into her palm, his lips brushing the warm circlet of her gold wedding band. "My love is upon you," he whispered... and she knew then that she had won. This imperfect, extraordinary, passionate man was hers, his heart given over completely to her safekeeping. It was a trust she would never betray.

Just because a guy wanders through the produce aisle, isn’t wearing a wedding band and lets you have the last ripe avocado, it doesn’t mean he’s single. It also doesn’t mean you should fix him up with your best friend. His presence in the fresh produce section should’ve been the giveaway. Bachelors don’t tend to buy perishable items.” - Amanda in "A Deal with the Devil

Look,Nik.I can't lose you. We can be partners.With you by my side,and with the band backing us,we could take over. I want you by my side in the High Court?" "What does that even mean? We'd be...together? Like, together, together?" Cole gave a sly smile. "We'd rule hand in hand. And as far as being together, we'd be as together as you'd allow." Annoyingly,my cheeks got all warm, and I turned away, frustrated at my reaction. I stood and went over to my desk chair to sit down. Cole chuckled. He pushed himself off the floor and walked closer to me,and the Shade at my shoulder pulled toward him. I wanted to hit it. "Stay over there," I said. "Why?" He held his hands up, all innocent-like. "Does my nearness affect you? That's what happens when you spend a century with someone.

As much as we know and feel that it’s not good for man to be alone, we might not be an Eve with an Adam. We might be an Esther with a Mordecai. A Hannah with a Samuel. A Jesus with a John. A Paul with a Timothy. You weren’t meant to fight through this life alone, to do battle by yourself—but the companion promised to you won’t necessarily wear a platinum wedding band and fold towels the wrong way.

We fall back into silence. I look around XO Cafe and notice that chatter happens mostly at tables where the diners are young and hip. The older couples, the ones sporting wedding bands that wink with their silverware, eat without the pepper of conversation. Is it because they are so comfortable, they already know what the other is thinking? Or is it because after a certain point, there is simply nothing left to say?

I open my hand and put my thumb and index finger around his wrist and lift it up to the strobe light. And there it is, blinking in the light, on-off, on-off, on-off, a platinum wedding band, clear and bright like a priest’s collar.

Darling Daddy, This is Rose. Very good news. Caddy is going to marry Micheal. In case you have forgotten because you have not been home for so long he is the one with the ponytail and the earring that you do not like. And Caddy says she will have a white lace dress and three bridesmaids, Saffron and Sarah and me, and a big party for everyone, all her old boyfriends too. Fireworks. A band. A big tent called a marquee. But where will we put it? Carriages with white horses for us all to go to the church. Afterward Caddy and Micheal will go for a holiday to Australia to visit the Great Barrier Reef. Caddy has it all worked out and Mummy says Yes She Can Of Course You Can Darling Of Course You Must Do That. Saffron said That Will Cost a Few Weeks Housekeeping and Mummy said Yes But We Do Not Need to Worry About That. DADDY WILL PAY. Love, Rose.

Evie…” His whisper stirred the tiny wisps at her hairline. “I want to make love to you.” Her blood turned to boiling honey. Eventually she managed a stammering reply. “I-I thought y-you never called it that.” His hands lifted to her face, his fingertips exploring delicately. She remained docile beneath his caress while the scent of his skin, fresh and clove-like, drugged her like some narcotic incense. Reaching to his own throat, Sebastian fumbled beneath his shirt and extracted the wedding band on the fine chain. He tugged it, breaking the fragile links, and let the chain drop to the floor. Evie’s breathing hastened as he reached for her left hand and slid the gold band onto her fourth finger. Their hands matched together, palm to palm, wrist to wrist, just as they had been bound during their wedding ceremony. His forehead lowered to hers, and he whispered, “I want to fill every part of you…breathe the air from your lungs…leave my handprints on your soul. I want to give you more pleasure than you can bear. I want to make love to you, Evie, as I have never done with anyone before.” She was now trembling so violently that she could hardly stand. “Your w-wound—we have to be careful—” “You let me worry about that.” His mouth took hers in a soft, smoldering kiss. Releasing her hand, he gathered her body closer, applying explicit pressure against her shoulders, back, hips, until she was molded completely against him. Evie wanted him with a desperation that almost frightened her. She tried to catch his gently shifting mouth with her own, and pulled at his clothes with a fumbling urgency that made him laugh softly. “Slowly,” he murmured. “The night is just beginning…and I’m going to love you for a long time.

I will worship you,” I remind her, taking her hand and tracing the letters tattooed beneath her wedding band, linking our fingers, showing her the ink beneath mine. “Still?” she asks with a watery smile. “Yeah.” Always. Evermore. Even after. “Still.

Cinder." Kai pulled one leg onto the bank, turning his body so they were facing each other. He took her hands between his and her heart began to drum unexpectedly. Not because of his touch, and not even because of his low, serious tone, but because it occurred to Cinder all at once that Kai was nervous. Kai was never nervous. "I asked you once," he said, running his thumbs over her knuckles, "if you thought you would ever be willing to wear a crown again. Not as the queen of Luna, but ... as my empress. And you said that you would consider it, someday." She swallowed a breath of cool night air. "And ... this is that day?" His lips twitched, but didn't quite become a smile. "I love you. I want to be with you for the rest of my life. I want to marry you, and, yes, I want you to be my empress." Cinder gaped at him for a long moment before she whispered, "That's a lot of wanting." "You have no idea." She lowered her lashes. "I might have some idea." Kai released one of her hands and she looked up again to see him reaching into his pocket - the same that had held Wolf's and Scarlet's wedding rings before. His fist was closed when he pulled it out and Kai held it toward her, released a slow breath, and opened his fingers to reveal a stunning ring with a large ruby ringed in diamonds. It didn't take long for her retina scanner to measure the ring, and within seconds it was filling her in on far more information than she needed - inane worlds like carats and clarity scrolled past her vision. But it was the ring's history that snagged her attention. It had been his mother's engagement ring once, and his grandmother's before that. Kai took her hand and slipped the ring onto her finger. Metal clinked against metal, and the priceless gem looked as ridiculous against her cyborg plating as the simple gold band had looked on Wolf's enormous, deformed, slightly hairy hand. Cinder pressed her lips together and swallowed, hard, before daring to meet Kai's gaze again. "Cinder," he said, "will you marry me?" Absurd, she thought. The emperor of the Eastern Commonwealth was proposing to her. It was uncanny. It was hysterical. But it was Kai, and somehow, that also made it exactly right. "Yes," she whispered. "I will marry you." Those simple words hung between them for a breath, and then she grinned and kissed him, amazed that her declaration didn't bring the surge of anxiety she would have expected years ago. He drew her into his arms, laughing between kisses, and she suddenly started to laugh too. She felt strangely delirious. They had stood against all adversity to be together, and now they would forge their own path to love. She would be Kai's wife. She would be the Commonwealth's empress. And she had every intention of being blissfully happy for ever, ever after.

You’re embarrassed.” Her brow cleared in surprise and amusement. “You’re never embarrassed. By anything. This is weird. And kind of sweet.” “I’m not embarrassed.” Mortified, he decided, but not embarrassed. “I’m simply…not entirely comfortable explaining myself. I love you,” he said and stilled her muffled chuckle. “You risk your life, a life that’s essential to me, just by being who you are. This…” He brushed his thumb over her wedding band. “Is a small and very personal shield.” “That’s lovely, Roarke. Really. But you don’t really believe all that magic nonsense.

Trying to describe how I felt watching her dance around and sing would be like trying to build a skyscraper with my bare bands. It made me want to marry her. Made me want to buy her a magic airplane and fly her away to a place where nothing bad could ever happen. Made me want to pour rubber cement all over my chest and then lay down on top of her so that we'd be stuck together, and so it would hurt like ell if we eer tried to tear ourselves apart.

It is easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living. Easy to wish we’d developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga. It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make and the work we didn’t do and the people we didn’t marry and the children we didn’t have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out. But it is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy. We can’t tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on. Of course, we can’t visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we’d feel in any life is still available. We don’t have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don’t have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. We don’t have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasure of wine. Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies. We just have to close our eyes and savour the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays. We are as completely and utterly alive as we are in any other life and have access to the same emotional spectrum. We only need to be one person. We only need to feel one existence. We don’t have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility. So let’s be kind to the people in our own existence. Let’s occasionally look up from the spot in which we are because, wherever we happen to be standing, the sky above goes on for ever. Yesterday I knew I had no future, and that it was impossible for me to accept my life as it is now. And yet today, that same messy life seems full of hope. Potential. The impossible, I suppose, happens via living. Will my life be miraculously free from pain, despair, grief, heartbreak, hardship, loneliness, depression? No. But do I want to live? Yes. Yes. A thousand times, yes.

Evie…” His shaking hand fumbled for hers, feebly trapping her fingers on his bare chest. Under their joined hands, the wedding band on the chain pressed against his unsteady heartbeat. “Go with Westcliff,” he murmured, his eyes closing. “After.” After what? Evie stared into his face, his gray complexion, and realized that he was referring to his own death. As she felt his hand slide away from hers, she gripped it firmly. His hand had changed…no longer smooth and manicured, but harder, callused, the nails cut ruthlessly short. “No,” she said with soft intensity, “there will be no ‘after.’ I will stay with you every moment. I will keep you with me. I won’t let you go.” Suddenly her breath was coming hard, and she felt the pressure of panic against the inner wall of her chest. Continuing to lean over him, she turned her hand so that their palms matched, their pulses pressed together…one weak, one strong. “If my love can hold you, I’ll keep you with me.

I had already imagined how it would be next year. I'd be at Columbia, and Marcus would move to Manhattan, or maybe one of the outer boroughs. I would study hard, and he would make money playing gigs at dingy bars. We'd spend countless hours going to clubs to see bands on the verge, touring obscure art exhibits, and sipping pot after pot of black coffee at hole-in-the-wall cafes. Many more hours would be spent lounging under the covers. We would never run out of witty and fascinating things to say to each other. Eventually, he'd apply to Columbia, and we'd be the sort of well-educated, cosmopolitan couple that confuse the suburbumpkins who never leave Pineville.

I’ve got something for you,” he crooned, reaching down and putting my wedding band back on my finger. The huge diamond ring sparkled in a spotlight against the familiar darkness—the darkness of the bedroom where Tristan had perpetrated so many drug-induced sex acts against me. “You forgot your finest jewelry at home. Never leave home without it.

That's sin, [...] leavin' on a lie.

The band played, and the people around us whirled and danced, but in this world we’d carved for ourselves, it was silent save for our ragged intakes of breath.

Thank you,” she says and yanks the pull-tab off the soda can. She takes a big sip and aaahs. Then she takes the pull-tab and puts it on her ring finger like a wedding band. She holds her hand out and looks at it. “Someday,” she says wistfully. “Wow, a soda pop pull-tab ring. You’re easy. Most girls want their ring from Tiffany’s.” “Well, I’m not most girls.” She’s telling me?

He wore a delicate ring with a tiny sleepy diamond embedded in the latticed gold band. He said, "My wife chose this wedding ring for me. It's Victorian, not really my style, but it reminds me of her." And then he said, "My wife crashed the car again." Ah, I thought, as we walked past the golden trees, she does not have a name. She is a wife. I wondered why my male colleague often forgot the names of most of the women he met at social events. He would always refer to them as someone's wife or girlfriend, as if that was all I needed to know. If we don't have names, who are we?

It's a complex song, and it's fascinating to watch the creative process as they went back and forth and finally created it over a few months. Lennon was always my favorite Beatle. [ He laughs as Lennon stops during the first take and makes the band go back and revise a chord.] Did you hear that little detour they took? It didn't work, so they went back and started from where they were. It's so raw in this version. It actually makes the sound like mere mortals. You could actually imagine other people doing this, up to this version. Maybe not writing and conceiving it, but certainly playing it. Yet they just didn't stop. They were such perfectionists they kept it going This made a big impression on me when I was in my thirties. You could just tell how much they worked at this. They did a bundle of work between each of these recording. They kept sending it back to make it closer to perfect.[ As he listens to the third take, he points out how instrumentation has gotten more complex.] The way we build stuff at Apple is often this way. Even the number of models we'd make of a new notebook or iPod. We would start off with a version and then begin refining and refining, doing detailed models of the design, or the buttons, or how a function operates. It's a lot of work, but in the end it just gets better, and soon it's like, " Wow, how did they do that?!? Where are the screws?

Every week seems to bring another luxuriantly creamy envelope, the thickness of a letter-bomb, containing a complex invitation – a triumph of paper engineering – and a comprehensive dossier of phone numbers, email addresses, websites, how to get there, what to wear, where to buy the gifts. Country house hotels are being block-booked, great schools of salmon are being poached, vast marquees are appearing overnight like Bedouin tent cities. Silky grey morning suits and top hats are being hired and worn with an absolutely straight face, and the times are heady and golden for florists and caterers, string quartets and Ceilidh callers, ice sculptors and the makers of disposable cameras. Decent Motown cover-bands are limp with exhaustion. Churches are back in fashion, and these days the happy couple are travelling the short distance from the place of worship to the reception on open-topped London buses, in hot-air balloons, on the backs of matching white stallions, in micro-lite planes. A wedding requires immense reserves of love and commitment and time off work, not least from the guests. Confetti costs eight pounds a box. A bag of rice from the corner shop just won’t cut it anymore.

It’s been a long day. I got shot at, got a water tower dumped on my head, and had my wedding fall apart. Now Wayne is dropping broken walnut shells all over my chair. Honestly, I think I just need a drink.

We fall back into silence. I look around XO Café and notice that chatter happens mostly at tables where the diners are young and hip. The older couples, the ones sporting wedding bands that wink with their silverware, eat without the pepper of conversation. Is it because they are so comfortable, they already know what the other is thinking? Or is it because after a certain point, there is simply nothing left to say?

You could have just given me a band. I don’t care what everyone else thinks,” I kind of whispered as I slipped the wedding set onto the appropriate hand and finger. “I don’t care either, but I got it for you anyway.

How soon do you want to move in?” “As soon as possible after school is out. In about six or seven weeks.” “Are you a teacher too?” AJ asked. Shelby shook her head. “I have a first grader. And a three-year-old.” “You’re married?” As AJ’s brown eyes flitted to her left hand, she self-consciously folded it into her waist. It’d been over a year since Gary’s death, but she still wore her wedding band. More for her daughters’ sakes than her own. “I was.

But if we grow stronger...and rise higher than what's pullin' us down...Yes, rise higher than dirt...that fifty pound weight will lift and you'll be free, free without anybody's by-your-leave. Do something to wash out the sin.

He was like that—regretful and arrogant and illogical at once. I don’t think he ever really loved his children. The wedding band he continued to wear years after her death suggested that he’d loved our mother to some degrees at least. But I suspect he was incapable of love, real love. He was a cruel character. Imagining his parents beating him as a child is the only path to forgiveness that I have found so far. It isn’t perfect, but it does the trick

We scoffed at the kids who weren't like us, the ones who already talked about careers, or bliddy mortgages and pensions. Kids wanting to be old before they were young. Kids wanting to be dead before they'd lived. They were digging their own graves, building the walls of their own damn jails. Us, we hung to our youth. We were footloose, fancy free. We said we'd never grow boring and old. We plundered charity shops for vintage clothes. We bought battered Levis and gorgeous faded velvet stuff from Attica in High Bridge. We wore coloured boots, hemp scarves from Gaia. We read Baudelaire and Byron. We read our poems to each other. We wrote songs and posted them on YouTube. We formed bands. We talked of the amazing journeys we'd take together once school was done. Sometimes we paired off, made couples that lasted for a little while, but the group was us. We hung together. We could say anything to each other. We loved each other.

These things matter to me, Daniel, says the man with six days to live. They are sitting on the porch in the last light. These things matter to me, son. The way the hawks huddle their shoulders angrily against hissing snow. Wrens whirring in the bare bones of bushes in winter. The way swallows and swifts veer and whirl and swim and slice and carve and curve and swerve. The way that frozen dew outlines every blade of grass. Salmonberries thimbleberries cloudberries snowberries elderberries salalberries gooseberries. My children learning to read. My wife's voice velvet in my ear at night in the dark under the covers. Her hair in my nose as we slept curled like spoons. The sinuous pace of rivers and minks and cats. Fresh bread with too much butter. My children's hands when they cup my face in their hands. Toys. Exuberance. Mowing the lawn. Tiny wrenches and screwdrivers. Tears of sorrow, which are the salt sea of the heart. Sleep in every form from doze to bone-weary. Pay stubs. Trains. The shivering ache of a saxophone and the yearning of a soprano. Folding laundry hot from the dryer. A spotless kitchen floor. The sound of bagpipes. The way horses smell in spring. Red wines. Furnaces. Stone walls. Sweat. Postcards on which the sender has written so much that he or she can barely squeeze in the signature. Opera on the radio. Bathrobes, back rubs. Potatoes. Mink oil on boots. The bands at wedding receptions. Box-elder bugs. The postman's grin. Linen table napkins. Tent flaps. The green sifting powdery snow of cedar pollen on my porch every year. Raccoons. The way a heron labors through the sky with such a vast elderly dignity. The cheerful ears of dogs. Smoked fish and the smokehouses where fish are smoked. The way barbers sweep up circles of hair after a haircut. Handkerchiefs. Poems read aloud by poets. Cigar-scissors. Book marginalia written with the lightest possible pencil as if the reader is whispering to the writer. People who keep dead languages alive. Fresh-mown lawns. First-basemen's mitts. Dish-racks. My wife's breasts. Lumber. Newspapers folded under arms. Hats. The way my children smelled after their baths when they were little. Sneakers. The way my father's face shone right after he shaved. Pants that fit. Soap half gone. Weeds forcing their way through sidewalks. Worms. The sound of ice shaken in drinks. Nutcrackers. Boxing matches. Diapers. Rain in every form from mist to sluice. The sound of my daughters typing their papers for school. My wife's eyes, as blue and green and gray as the sea. The sea, as blue and green and gray as her eyes. Her eyes. Her.

No, I’m talking about the aliens inside our own heads. The ones we made up, the ones we’ve been making up since we realized those glittering lights in the sky were suns like ours and probably had planets like ours spinning around them. You know, the aliens we imagine, the kind of aliens we’d like to attack us, human aliens. You’ve seen them a million times. They swoop down from the sky in their flying saucers to level New York and Tokyo and London, or they march across the countryside in huge machines that look like mechanical spiders, ray guns blasting away, and always, always, humanity sets aside its differences and bands together to defeat the alien horde. David slays Goliath, and everybody (except Goliath) goes home happy. What crap.

Try to remember that even if they deliver the wrong cake, the limo driver is a no-show, there's a monsoon, and the band plays music you hate, you will still have just married the person of your dreams!!! Isn't that what the whole thing is really about?

Music?” he asked. I nodded and handed him my iPod. We’d been running together three more times now and had worked out our routine. We talked for the first mile or so, while we were warming up. When breathing became more important than talking, we switched to music, which we would listen to for the rest of the run, and then we’d turn the iPods off as we’d cool down and walk to one of our houses—we alternated. But the run before, Frank had proposed that we switch iPods so that he could see if my “music, not observational comedy” theory was effective in terms of helping him run faster, and I could apparently learn all about some group called Freelance Whales which was, apparently, an actual band. I’d made him a mix of my favorite songs that hopefully weren’t too alienating for someone who claimed he never listened to country and had no idea who the Cure was.

Tina can be a B-,and she's high maintenance in every possible way. She's also prone to asking questions like whether vegetarians can eat animal crackers. She actually once asked Frankie what Asians throw at weddings, since Americans throw rice. He said shredded math tests.I think she believed him.

Alfie was consistent, and, because of that, I wasn't crazy. I was calm, I was chill - I was all the things you wanted me to be, Reese. But I was incapable of being those things with you. The more you wanted me to be that "chill" girl - the more you made it clear that your love for me depended on it - the less chill and more crazy I got. Because you weren't consistent. One day you’d be all over me, making my anxiety disappear, being kind and considerate and amazing and everything I’d always wanted. “God I love you, I love you so much,” you’d tell everyone at the lunch table, and the rest of the band would groan while I glowed. But then, later that afternoon, we’d walk past a girl and you’d say, “Wow, she’s so pretty,” then get in a mood with me if I dared to be upset. I’m starting to realize that craziness may not always come from within. I’m starting to think lows aren’t worth the highs - not in love. Not in something where the most important thing is to feel safe. Consistency is underrated.

Listening to the radio, I heard the story behind rocker David Lee Roth’s notorious insistence that Van Halen’s contracts with concert promoters contain a clause specifying that a bowl of M&M’s has to be provided backstage, but with every single brown candy removed, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation to the band. And at least once, Van Halen followed through, peremptorily canceling a show in Colorado when Roth found some brown M&M’s in his dressing room. This turned out to be, however, not another example of the insane demands of power-mad celebrities but an ingenious ruse. As Roth explained in his memoir, Crazy from the Heat, “Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, third-level markets. We’d pull up with nine eighteen-wheeler trucks, full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max. And there were many, many technical errors—whether it was the girders couldn’t support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the doors weren’t big enough to move the gear through. The contract rider read like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages because there was so much equipment, and so many human beings to make it function.” So just as a little test, buried somewhere in the middle of the rider, would be article 126, the no-brown-M&M’s clause. “When I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl,” he wrote, “well, we’d line-check the entire production. Guaranteed you’re going to arrive at a technical error.… Guaranteed you’d run into a problem.” These weren’t trifles, the radio story pointed out. The mistakes could be life-threatening. In Colorado, the band found the local promoters had failed to read the weight requirements and the staging would have fallen through the arena floor.

The band in the ballroom announced the cover of a special request, and after a pause, the woman's voice sang out the breathy first line of Etta James's "At Last." Chairs barked as guests rose to greet the champion of all wedding songs, the one that always brought indifferent or fighting or estranged couples to the dance floor for momentary reconciliation.

Still lying on the ground, half tingly, half stunned, I held my left hand in front of my face and lightly spread my fingers, examining what Marlboro Man had given me that morning. I couldn’t have chosen a more beautiful ring, or a ring that was a more fitting symbol of my relationship with Marlboro Man. It was unadorned, uncontrived, consisting only of a delicate gold band and a lovely diamond that stood up high--almost proudly--on its supportive prongs. It was a ring chosen by a man who, from day one, had always let me know exactly how he felt. The ring was a perfect extension of that: strong, straightforward, solid, direct. I liked seeing it on my finger. I felt good knowing it was there. My stomach, though, was in knots. I was engaged. Engaged. I was ill-prepared for how weird it felt. Why hadn’t I ever heard of this strange sensation before? Why hadn’t anyone told me? I felt simultaneously grown up, excited, shocked, scared, matronly, weird, and happy--a strange combination for a weekday morning. I was engaged--holy moly. My other hand picked up the receiver of the phone, and without thinking, I dialed my little sister. “Hi,” I said when Betsy picked up the phone. It hadn’t been ten minutes since we’d hung up from our last conversation. “Hey,” she replied. “Uh, I just wanted to tell you”--my heart began to race--“that I’m, like…engaged.” What seemed like hours of silence passed. “Bullcrap,” Betsy finally exclaimed. Then she repeated: “Bullcrap.” “Not bullcrap,” I answered. “He just asked me to marry him. I’m engaged, Bets!” “What?” Betsy shrieked. “Oh my God…” Her voice began to crack. Seconds later, she was crying. A lump formed in my throat, too. I immediately understood where her tears were coming from. I felt it all, too. It was bittersweet. Things would change. Tears welled up in my eyes. My nose began to sting. “Don’t cry, you butthead.” I laughed through my tears. She laughed it off, too, sobbing harder, totally unable to suppress the tears. “Can I be your maid of honor?” This was too much for me. “I can’t talk anymore,” I managed to squeak through my lips. I hung up on Betsy and lay there, blubbering on my floor.

There appears to be a close connection between these skin disorders (acne and warts) and the emotions. As with virtually all of these mind-body processes, there is no laboratory proof of the causative role of emotions, but there is certainly a mountain of clinical evidence. Acne is one of the common "other things" that people with TMS have had or continue to have even while they're having back trouble. And then there's the story of the man who developed an itchy rash under his wedding band that disappeared as soon as he separated from his wife. Other gold rings did not produce a similar rash. It has been suggested that other skin disorders like eczema and psoriasis are related to the emotions. I am inclined to agree but have no evidence one way or the other. (page 195)

Tom O’ Bedlam among the Sunflowers" To have gold in your back yard and not know it. . . I woke this morning before your dream had shredded And found a curious thing: flowers made of gold, Six-sided—more than that—broken on flagstones, Petals the color of a wedding band. You are sleeping. The morning comes up gold. Perhaps I made those flowers in my head, For I have counted snowflakes in July Blowing across my eyes like bits of calcium, And I have stepped into your dream at night, A stranger there, my body steeped in moonlight. I watched you tremble, washed in all that silver. Love, the stars have fallen into the garden And turned to frost. They have opened like a hand. It is the color that breaks out of the bedsheets. This morning the garden is littered with dry petals As yellow as the page of an old book. I step among them. They are brittle as bone china.

He gently grasped her fingers. To touch her again after a week apart was bliss; heat and the faint hum of a current seemed to work its way up his arm to settle in his belly. His body recognized her immediately as need tore swiftly through him, the need to hold her against him and inhale her sweet scent, to feel the beat of her heart. The gold ring held a rose-cut emerald set in the middle of two matching diamonds with a scrollwork band.

You don't wear jewelry, do you? Besides your wedding ring, I mean?' 'Now often. If is not that I disapprove. I simply don't take the time to bother with it. I've been given a few trinkets over the years, but rarely wear them.' Thora looked down at her hand, the plain thin wedding band, the unadorned wrist, and a memory struck her. She said, 'Frank gave me a gift once - a find gold bracelet with a blue enamel heart dangling from it. He said it was to remind me that I was more than his helpmeet and housekeeper, but also an attractive woman. I was sure I'd break the delicate chain, and the heart clacked against the desk whenever I wrote in the ledger. So I put it back in its box, and there it has remained ever since.' Nan said gently, 'We've all been given gifts, Thors, and ought not to hide them away. They remind us that we are blessed and loved. They give pleasure to those who see them - especially to the one who bestowed the gift in the first place.

One of the things I find strangest and hardest is that we were having such conversations. We should have been talking about discos and electronic mail and exams and bands. How could this have been happening to us? How could we have been huddled in the dark bush, cold and hungry and terrified, talking about who we should kill? We had no preparation for this, no background, no knowledge. We didn’t know if we were doing the right thing, ever. We didn’t know anything. We were just ordinary teenagers, so ordinary we were boring. Overnight they’d pulled the roof off our lives. And after they’d pulled off the roof they’d come in and torn down the curtains, ripped up the furniture, burnt the house and thrown us into the night, where we’d been forced to run and hide and live like wild animals. We had no foundations, and we had no secure walls around our lives any more. We were living in a strange long nightmare, where we had to make our own rules, invent new values, stumble around blindly, hoping we weren’t making too many mistakes. We clung to what we knew and what we thought was right, but all the time those things too were being stripped from us. I didn’t know if we’d be left with nothing, or if we’d left with a new set of rules and attitudes and behaviours, so that we weren’t able to recognise ourselves any more. We could end up as new, distorted, deformed creatures, with only a few physical resemblances to the people we once were.

A Thing I Have Learned (Written By a Nobody Who Has Been Everybody) It is easy to morn the lives we aren't living. Easy to wish we'd developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we'd worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga. It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn't make and the work we didn't do and the people we didn't marry and the children we didn't have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscope versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out. But it is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It's the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people's worst enemy. ...We don't have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility. So let's be kind to the people in our own existence. Let's occasionally look up from the spot in which we are because, wherever we happen to be standing, the sky above goes on forever. Yesterday I knew I had no future, and that it was impossible for me to accept my life as it is now. And yet today, that same messy life seems full of hope. Potential.

Behind Garber’s desk was a man I had never seen before. He was a colonel. He was in BDUs. His tape said: Willard, U.S. Army. He had iron-gray hair parted in a schoolboy style. It needed a trim. He had steel-rimmed eyeglasses and the kind of gray pouchy face that must have looked old when he was twenty. He was short and relatively squat and the way his shoulders failed to fill his BDUs told me he spent no time at all in the gym. He had a problem sitting still. He was rocking to his left and plucking at his pants where they went tight over his right knee. Before I had been in the room ten seconds he had adjusted his position three times. Maybe he had hemorrhoids. Maybe he was nervous. He had soft hands. Ragged nails. No wedding band. Divorced, for sure. He looked the type. No wife would let him walk about with hair like that. And no wife could have stood all that rocking and twitching. Not for very long. I should have come smartly to attention and saluted and announced: Sir, Major Reacher reports.

A place for the newly weds and nearly deads I'm counting the stones I hope you know I love you. Got a lot of friends 6 feet under us. Counting down the days till we join the party. Thoughts of your nightmare projected through mine... Breathing in these lies is no surprise These evil things are all we know Lets take these lives where we want to go. The future is our prize, when the stars align. Ghouls and ghosts will haunt my soul but they will never take me. Before I go, I want to show that we can make a difference. We've got some dumb perceptions. But I've got the death connection... All the hate that you have... Just throw it away Life is meant for more, But we're too distracted.. Too caught up in the anger and judgment.. Caught up in the web of lies I've heard these things keep our blood boiling, Keeps us alive, and moving forward... If that's the case I was born a dead man. And I'm forever a ghost. Hatred is something that we're brought up to see. Now everybody's looking at me I hope they know... They won't get their satisfaction.

I didn’t want a fancy engagement ring or a gaudy wedding band; for me, a plain wedding ring was a perfect symbol. I like simple, especially in a wedding ring: it reminds you that love is about love, nothing else--not money, not appearances, not showing off. But it seemed almost impossible to convince anyone of that. Including Chris. He kept asking me what I wanted, and wouldn’t take “simple” for an answer. Then my mother got into the act. My grandmother had left her a diamond from a ring that she had had. Mom suggested that I use it as the centerpiece of an engagement ring. I told her thanks, but no thanks. “I don’t care whether you wear it as an engagement ring or a belly button ring,” she insisted after we went around a bit. “But I’m sending it.” She did. It was lovely. Chris and I ended up taking it to a local jewelry store. We found a wonderful setting we both loved and had the jeweler set the diamond in it. We got our wedding rings the same day, adding an engraving on the inside. “All of me,” Chris wrote on mine. “My love, my life,” I said on his.

Nick stopped on the sidewalk, pulled a ring from his pocket, and handed it to Kate. “Your wedding ring.” It was a platinum band inlaid with diamonds. Simple but elegant. Kate put the ring on her finger. “That’s got to be the least romantic proposal in history. Where did you steal this?” “I bought it,” he said. “That must have been a new experience for you.” “It was. Cost me ten grand.” He slipped a matching platinum band onto his finger. “I want that ring back when this marriage is over.” “No way,” she said. “You can keep the dishes.

Jeff Ament: The minute we started rehearsing and Ed started singing -- which was within an hour of him landing in Seattle -- was the first time I was like, "Wow, this is a band that I'd play at home on my stereo." What he was writing about was the space Stone and I were in. We'd just lost one of our friends to a dark and evil addiction, and he was putting that feeling to words. I saw him as a brother. That's what pulled me back in [to making music]. It's like when you read a book and there's something describing something you've felt all your life.

Where have you been?” I softly answered followed by a question. I wanted to laugh hysterically at the controlled calmness of it all, as if nothing at all had happened, as if he hadn’t resurrected himself after an eternity of absence. “New York,” I have a good friend there. I found a job, a place. I had to- away from here; away from Bella; from you.” Swallowing, I clasped my hands together to stop from trembling and I said in a low, audible voice, “From me?” He sighed heavily. “I can’t love you, Helena. I still love Bella. And I suppose I could love another woman in another way at the same time, but not you.” “…but why?” I tried hard to keep my voice and gaze even. I glanced at the plain wedding ring on the third finger on his left hand, his wedding band. It was gleaming brightly in the firelight. I felt my heart plummet, like a disappointed child. Seeking the right words, he replied with a very soft voice, “It’s because I would always see you as an extension of her. I want to fall in love with you in separate way, the one that involves only us, uninfluenced by the past and our hurt. I can’t do that now and I can’t tell when I’ll be able to.

I fall in love with one special hat, but it happens to be on the head of the old Indian who is waiting on us. It is an old black hat, broken with white lines where it must have been crumpled and stepped on and kicked, and its brim droops like a hound's ear all along one side, but it is a wonderful hat, a magic hat. D'Artagnan wore a hat like that when he came up from Gascony, and Don Quixote wore a hat like that when he went home at last. Around the crown its owner has placed a thin silver band, as simply made as a wedding ring. They do look long-married, the old man and his black hat.

Daniel." He looked up. "El-la.I was wondering if you'd catch me." He offered me a cigarette. I gave him a shame-on-you look;he grinned. "This is your band?" I asked. Visible piercings aside, no one looked like that went by the name Ax. "Nope,but I go to school with the lead's sister. Regular guy got food poisoning at a Christmas party last night.I've played with them before." "Weddings?" It wasn't quite how I'd pictured him performing. "Usually clubs, but the last one was a bar mitzvah. Musicians have to eat, too," he added, a little sharply. "Sorry." I wanted to wave the smoke away, but figured that might be adding insult to inury. "I thought you played the guitar." "Guitar, piano, a little violin, but badly, and I'll have to garrote you ith one of the strings if you tell anyone." That's the thing about Daniel. Obviously-the violin being a case in point-I don't know him very well,but he seems to hold a grudge for even less time than Frankie. "Secret's safe with me." He shrugged, telling me he didn't really care. Then, "Nice dress." "Just when I start liking you a litte.." He made his vampire-boy face. I could see why it usually worked. "You like me,Ella. Wanna do something when this is over?" "Tempting," I said. "No, I mean that. But no,thanks. I'm not at my best these days." "You're good," he said quietly, blowing out a stream of smoke. "You'll be fine." "Yeah." I shivered. It was bitter outside. "I should go in." "You should." The cold didn't seem to be bothering him at all, and he wasn't even wearing a jacket over his white dress shirt. I turned to go. "Oh, I think I figured it out, by the way." "Figured out what?" "The question.The one everyone should ask before getting involved with someone. Not 'Will he-slash-she make me happy?' but 'Does it bring out the best in me,being with him?'" "Him-slash-her," Daniel corrected, clearly amused. Then, "Nope. No way. Wasn't me who posed the question to you, Marino.I would never be so Emo." "Of course not.But it was one smart boy." I waved. "Hug Frankie for me." "Will do. Hey.Any requests for the band?" "'Don't Stop Believin'," I shot back. He rolled his eyes. "I'm curious, in that last song-are the words really 'I cut my chest wide open'?" "Yup.Followed by, "They come and watch us bleed.Is it art like I was hoping now?" Avett Brothers. Too gruesome for you?" "You have no idea," I told him. How much I get it.

You know, the aliens we imagine, the kind of aliens we’d like to attack us, human aliens. You’ve seen them a million times. They swoop down from the sky in their flying saucers to level New York and Tokyo and London, or they march across the countryside in huge machines that look like mechanical spiders, ray guns blasting away, and always, always, humanity sets aside its differences and bands together to defeat the alien horde. David slays Goliath, and everybody (except Goliath) goes home happy. What crap. It’s like a cockroach working up a plan to defeat the shoe on its way down to crush it.

The marriage-pipes sounded, and the mild autumn sun streamed round us. But Rahmun sat in the little Calcutta lane, and saw before him the barren mountains of Afghanistan. I took out a bank-note and gave it to him, saying: "Go back to your own daughter, Rahmun, in your own country, and may the happiness of your meeting bring good fortune to my child!" Having made this present, I had to curtail some of the festivities. I could not have the electric lights I had intended, nor the military band, and the ladies of the house were despondent at it. But to me the wedding-feast was all the brighter for the thought that in a distant land a long-lost father met again with his only child.

We circled around and came in from the northwest.” I lifted my wrist to show him the compass on my watch band, although I hoped that, being the pilot, he knew we’d approached from the northwest. “I was looking out the window. I saw a woman running down the street. There was a pack of dogs after her and a guy with a switchblade down the street in the direction she was running.” “Ma’am,” he said, still very patiently. I reached out and took a fistful of his shirt. Actually, at the last moment, I grabbed the air in front of his shirt. I didn’t think security could throw me out of the airport for grabbing air in a threatening fashion, not even in this post-9/11 age. “Don’t ma’am me . . .

The voice that breathed o’er Eden, That earliest wedding-day The primal marriage blessing, It hath not passed away. Be present, heavenly Father, To give away this bride, As Eve thou gav’st to Adam Out of his own pierced side. Be present, gracious Savior, To join their loving hands, As Thou didst bind two natures In Thine eternal bands. Be present, Holy Spirit, To bless them as they kneel, As Thou for Christ the bridegroom The heavenly spouse dost seal. O spread Thy pure wings o’er them! Let no ill power find place, When onward through life’s journey The hallowed path they trace, To cast their crowns before Thee, In perfect sacrifice, Till to the home of gladness With Christ’s own bride they rise.

He gestured at me. “Do you like the blanket?” I nodded. “It’s warm.” “I made it. Well, actually, I didn’t skin the animal, but I did kill it….after the others pinned it down. It’s werewolf skin.” My heart faltered; I gripped at a wad of black fur. “I slayed the beast for you, Catherine. I used your sword. It was your grandmother’s idea actually, a wedding present. You mentioned how chilly you get.” “You didn’t slay a werewolf,” I breathed before repeating the words louder. “You did not slay a werewolf, Thaddeus.” “Oh, but I did. I took a band of huntsman with me and we tracked one down. A smaller one, mind you, not far from the front gate…” “You did not!” I contended more strongly. Why would one wolf have separated from the pack? Why outside our walls? “Yes, Catherine, I did,” he insisted. I shook my head disbelieving. “You’re not capable—” “I am so.” I wanted to cry. I wanted to protest, but to do so meant giving away my knowledge of the truth. Without knowing what else to do or say I changed the subject. “The fire’s gone out.” Thaddeus turned his head to check. “You’re right. I’ll see to it.” He fed the barrel stove until a healthy blaze was roaring. Finding me no longer a decent conversationalist, Thaddeus left with a promise to return soon with food and water. Unobserved, I gathered up the fur hide of a lost soul and curled into a ball, hugging it close to my chest. I cried silent tears and mourned for this unknown werewolf for days.

I couldn’t believe how into this girl I was, and we’d only been talking for twenty minutes. I was also dressed in gym clothes, because I’d been to the gym earlier. She looked down and saw the rubber bracelet around my wrist. “Is that an ‘I Am Second’ bracelet? I have one of those!” she said as she held up her wrist with the band that means, “I am second after Jesus.” “No, this is my own bracelet with my motto, ‘Train like a Machine,’ on it. Just my little self-motivator. I have some in my car. I’d love to give you one.” “Well, actually, I am about to leave. I have to go work out before my shift,” she reminded me. “You can have this one. Take it off my wrist. This one will be worth more someday because I’ve been sweating in it,” I joked.

Then he remembered his wedding, the old times, the first pregnancy of his wife; he, too, had been very happy the day when he had taken her from her father to his home, and had carried her off on a pillion, trotting through the snow, for it was near Christmas-time, and the country was all white. She held him by one arm, her basket hanging from the other; the wind blew the long lace of her Cauchois headdress so that it sometimes flapped across his mouth, and when he turned his head he saw near him, on his shoulder, her little rosy face, smiling silently under the gold bands of her cap. To warm her hands she put them from time to time in his breast. How long ago it all was! Their son would have been thirty by now. Then he looked back and saw nothing on the road.

Comparing marriage to football is no insult. I come from the South where football is sacred. I would never belittle marriage by saying it is like soccer, bowling, or playing bridge, never. Those images would never work, only football is passionate enough to be compared to marriage. In other sports, players walk onto the field, in football they run onto the field, in high school ripping through some paper, in college (for those who are fortunate enough) they touch the rock and run down the hill onto the field in the middle of the band. In other sports, fans cheer, in football they scream. In other sports, players ‘high five’, in football they chest, smash shoulder pads, and pat your rear. Football is a passionate sport, and marriage is about passion. In football, two teams send players onto the field to determine which athletes will win and which will lose, in marriage two families send their representatives forward to see which family will survive and which family will be lost into oblivion with their traditions, patterns, and values lost and forgotten. Preparing for this struggle for survival, the bride and groom are each set up. Each has been led to believe that their family’s patterns are all ‘normal,’ and anyone who differs is dense, naïve, or stupid because, no matter what the issue, the way their family has always done it is the ‘right’ way. For the premarital bride and groom in their twenties, as soon as they say, “I do,” these ‘right’ ways of doing things are about to collide like two three hundred and fifty pound linemen at the hiking of the ball. From “I do” forward, if not before, every decision, every action, every goal will be like the line of scrimmage. Where will the family patterns collide? In the kitchen. Here the new couple will be faced with the difficult decision of “Where do the cereal bowls go?” Likely, one family’s is high, and the others is low. Where will they go now? In the bathroom. The bathroom is a battleground unmatched in the potential conflicts. Will the toilet paper roll over the top or underneath? Will the acceptable residing position for the lid be up or down? And, of course, what about the toothpaste? Squeeze it from the middle or the end? But the skirmishes don’t stop in the rooms of the house, they are not only locational they are seasonal. The classic battles come home for the holidays. Thanksgiving. Which family will they spend the noon meal with and which family, if close enough, will have to wait until the nighttime meal, or just dessert if at all? Christmas. Whose home will they visit first, if at all? How much money will they spend on gifts for his family? for hers? Then comes for many couples an even bigger challenge – children of their own! At the wedding, many couples take two candles and light just one often extinguishing their candle as a sign of devotion. The image is Biblical. The Bible is quoted a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one. What few prepare them for is the upcoming struggle, the conflict over the unanswered question: the two shall become one, but which one? Two families, two patterns, two ways of doing things, which family’s patterns will survive to play another day, in another generation, and which will be lost forever? Let the games begin.

The Proposal The diamond industry has pulled a fast one over on us. It has convinced us that there is no way to make public a lifetime commitment to another person without a very large, sparkly rock on a very slim band. This is, of course, nonsense. Often wedding books have engagement chapters that read like diamond-buying guides. But the truth is, the way to get engaged is for the two of you to decide that you want to get married. So the next time someone tries to imply that you are not engaged because you don’t have a dramatic enough engagement story or a ring, firmly say, “You know, I like to think of my partner as my rock,” and slowly raise your eyebrow. The modern wedding industry—along with a fair share of romantic comedies—has set a pretty high bar for proposals. We think they need to be elaborate and surprising. But they don’t. A proposal should be: • A decision to get married • Romantic (because you decide to spend the rest of your lives together, not necessarily because of its elaborate nature) • Possibly mutual • Possibly discussed in advance • Possibly instigated by you • Not used to judge the state of your relationship • An event that may be followed by the not-at-all-romantic kind of sobbing, because you realize your life is changing forever It’s exciting to decide to get married. And scary. But the moment of proposal is just that: a moment. It moves you to the next step of the process; it’s not the be-all, end-all. So maybe you have a fancy candlelight dinner followed by parachutists delivering you a pear-shaped, seven-carat diamond. Or maybe you decide to get married one Sunday morning over the newspaper and a cup of coffee. Either way is fine. The point is that you decided to spend your life with someone you love.

I shake my head, knowing that if it hadn’t been for me, Ben wouldn’t have been there in the first place. I try to tell him that, but he swats my words away with his hand and says he wants to show me something. “Sure,” I say, wondering if he’s really as nervous as he seems. He clenches his teeth and hesitates a couple of moments; the angles of his face seem to grow sharper. Finally, he motions to the pant leg of his jeans. There’s a tear right over his thigh. “I know you saw it in the hospital,” he says, exposing the chameleon tattoo through the torn fabric. “I felt you . . . looking at it. Anyway, I wanted you to know that I did this back home, before I ever came to Freetown. Before I ever met you.” “So it’s a coincidence?” His dark gray eyes swallow mine whole. “Do you honestly believe that?” “No,” I say, listening as he proceeds to tell me that a few months before he got to town, he touched his mother’s wedding band—something that reminded him of soul mates—and the image of a chameleon stuck inside his head. “I couldn’t get it out of my mind,” he explains. “It was almost like the image was welded to my brain, behind my eyes, haunting me even when I tried to sleep.” “And you got the tattoo because of that?” “Because I hoped its permanence might help me understand it more—might help me understand what it had to do with my own soul mate.” “And do you understand now?” I ask, swallowing hard. “Yeah.” He smiles. “I suppose I do.” I take a deep breath, trying to hold myself together, desperate to know what he’s truly trying to say here, and what I should say to him as well. I close my eyes, picturing that moment in the hospital when I held his hand and wondering if he would’ve recovered as quickly as if it hadn’t been for the connection between us—the electricity he must have sensed from my touch.

The Fable of the Comet and the Moon I have betrothed the O so inconstant moon, with a band of six of Saturn's seven rings, leaving the gas giant's last ring unpilfered as a cosmic lagniappe. The astrological charts cautioned me against such a star-crossed marriage, but I, being a headstrong comet hung with an enormous tail, and impetuous Luna, being a headlong stellar slut (satellites known to be as submissive as Asians for the right price), well, we both threw caution to the solar winds. Our wedding proceeded on cycle, with Luna luminescent and draped in silvery white (the craters of her complexion conveniently masked behind a veil of clouds). It was downhill from day one, Luna losing a sliver of herself every night and bit by bit revealing to me her dark side. Luna and I went our separate elliptical ways after a domestic disturbance where I called her a professional tailgater. and she called me a dirty snowball.

I think he painted the way he did," I answered, "because he had something perfect with Diana." I braced myself for her next scathing insight and nearly fell over when she reached out to pat my hand. Her wedding ring was a heavy,hammered gold band that could probably pound nails. "Nothing but the occasional espresso is perfect," she said, not unkindly. "Let me share some wisdom, Willing Girl. Relationships are like Whack-a-Mole. You squash one annoying deformity and another one pops up in no time." Not your classic sentiment, there. Or a particularly heartening one. It seemed well meant, though, so I figured it might be a good time to inform her, "Um, my name....is Ella. Marino." "Oh,I know who you are, Miss Marino," she shot back. "Shall I mention again that the Willing Foundation doesn't?" "No,Dr. Rothaus," I said meekly. "No need." "Excellent." Dr. Rothaus headed for the door. "You may call me Maxine. Good luck finding something I haven't. And don't cry on the materials.

claque, aka canned laughter It’s becoming increasingly clear that there’s nothing new under the sun (a heavenly body, by the way, that some Indian ascetics stare at till they go blind). I knew that some things had a history—the Constitution, rhythm and blues, Canada—but it’s the odd little things that surprise me with their storied past. This first struck me when I was reading about anesthetics and I learned that, in the early 1840s, it became fashionable to hold parties where guests would inhale nitrous oxide out of bladders. In other words, Whip-it parties! We held the exact same kind of parties in high school. We’d buy fourteen cans of Reddi-Wip and suck on them till we had successfully obliterated a couple of million neurons and face-planted on my friend Andy’s couch. And we thought we were so cutting edge. And now, I learn about claque, which is essentially a highbrow French word for canned laughter. Canned laughter was invented long before Lucille Ball stuffed chocolates in her face or Ralph Kramden threatened his wife with extreme violence. It goes back to the 4th century B.C., when Greek playwrights hired bands of helpers to laugh at their comedies in order to influence the judges. The Romans also stacked the audience, but they were apparently more interested in applause than chuckles: Nero—emperor and wannabe musician—employed a group of five thousand knights and soldiers to accompany him on his concert tours. But the golden age of canned laughter came in 19th-century France. Almost every theater in France was forced to hire a band called a claque—from claquer, “to clap.” The influential claque leaders, called the chefs de claque, got a monthly payment from the actors. And the brilliant innovation they came up with was specialization. Each claque member had his or her own important job to perform: There were the rieurs, who laughed loudly during comedies. There were the bisseurs, who shouted for encores. There were the commissaires, who would elbow their neighbors and say, “This is the good part.” And my favorite of all, the pleureuses, women who were paid good francs to weep at the sad parts of tragedies. I love this idea. I’m not sure why the networks never thought of canned crying. You’d be watching an ER episode, and a softball player would come in with a bat splinter through his forehead, and you’d hear a little whimper in the background, turning into a wave of sobs. Julie already has trouble keeping her cheeks dry, seeing as she cried during the Joe Millionaire finale. If they added canned crying, she’d be a mess.

Our father was a rumor, an echo, something only to be seen out of the corner of your eye. Our father was a woodsman, arms like tree limbs, beard as if born from bear, disappearing for days, for weeks, returning with so many things—tiny bird skulls, beads on a string, flowers for mother with purple blossoms and veiny leaves. The wood was stacked along one side of the cabin as high as it could go, the steady chop, the split of the timber, just part of the day, or so we were told. Our father was the cold creek that ran south of our home, filled with silver-backed fish with blood-orange meat, whispering every time we neared it, quenching our thirst, promises of sleepy peace if only we'd step a bit closer. Our father was the frosty moon that pasted the land with silence as our breath formed clouds of pain, feet bruised and bleeding, his laughter running over the mountain, guiding us down one ravine and up the other, wandering from hill to valley and back, some elusive destination always out of reach. Our father was time, stretched in every direction, elastic as a rubber band, as slow and anchored as a wall of granite, our eyes closing, waking up sore, grey where black had been. All lies. Everything she had ever told us was a lie. She never loved us, or it wouldn't be like this. (from "Asking for Forgiveness.")

Amazing Grace” Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found; Was blind, but now I see. ’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, And grace my fears relieved; How precious did that grace appear, The hour I first believed. Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come; ’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, And grace will lead me home. The Lord has promised good to me, His Word my hope secures; He will my Shield and Portion be, As long as life endures. Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail, And mortal life shall cease, I shall possess, within the veil, A life of joy and peace. The earth shall soon dissolve like snow, The sun forbear to shine; But God, who called me here below, Will be forever mine. When we’ve been there ten thousand years, Bright shining as the sun, We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise, Than when we’d first begun. Lyrics by John Newton, 1779 “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” (Chorus) Swing low, sweet chariot, Coming for to carry me home. Swing low, sweet chariot, Coming for to carry me home. I looked over Jordan, and what did I see? (Coming for to carry me home) A band of angels coming after me. (Coming for to carry me home) (Chorus) If you get there before I do, (Coming for to carry me home) Tell all of my friends, that I'm coming there too. (Coming for to carry me home) (Chorus) Traditional lyrics Wallis Willis, circa 1865 “Battle Hymn of the Republic” Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on. (Chorus) Glory, Glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah! His truth is marching on. I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps, They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps; I can read His righteous sentence in the dim and flaring lamps: His day is marching on. (Chorus) I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel: "As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal"; Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel, Since God is marching on. (Chorus) He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat; Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! Be jubilant, my feet! Our God is marching on. (Chorus) In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me. As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on. Lyrics by Julia Ward Howe, 1861

When I put together my early bands, usually some other singer who was short of one would take it away. It seemed like this happened every time one of my bands was fully formed. I couldn’t understand how this was possible seeing that these guys weren’t any better at singing or playing than I was. What they did have was an open door to gigs where there was real money. Anybody who had a band could play at park pavilions, talent shows, county fairgrounds, auctions and store openings, but those gigs didn’t pay except maybe for expenses and sometimes not even for that. These other crooners could perform at small conventions, private wedding parties, golden anniversaries in hotel ballrooms, things like that — and there was cash involved. It was always the promise of money that lured my band away. Truth was, that the guys who took my bands away had connections to someone up the ladder. It went to the very root of things, gave unfair advantage to some and left others squeezed out. How could somebody ever reach the world this way? It seemed like it was the law of life. It got so that I almost always expected to lose my band and it didn’t even shock me anymore if it happened. It was beginning to dawn on me that I would have to learn how to play and sing by myself and not depend on a band until the time I could afford to pay and keep one.

In order to conform to the current Empire style in fashion, the modiste had raised the waistline so that it fell just beneath Esme's small rounded breasts. Mrs. Benson had embellished further by adding a slender grosgrain ribbon there that matched the exact shade of tiny embroidered golden flowers scattered over the gown's ivory satin. Next she had shortened the sleeves so they were now small puffed caps edged against the arms with more narrow golden ribbon. As for the long length of material that had once run from shoulder to heel, she'd removed it and used the excess fabric to create a sweeping train that ended in a spectacular half circle that trailed after Esme as she walked. The entire hem was further enlivened by small appliquéd white lace rosettes, whose effect was nothing short of ethereal. On her feet, Esme wore a soft pair of ivory satin slippers with gold and diamond buckles that had been a last-minute gift from Mallory and Adam. On her hands were long white silk gloves that ended just above her elbows; her lustrous dark hair was pinned and styled in an elaborate upsweep with a few soft curls left to brush in dainty wisps against her forehead and cheeks. Carefully draped over head was a waist-length veil of the finest Brussels lace, which had been another present, this one from Claire, and in her hands she held creamy pink hothouse roses and crisp green holly leaves banded together inside a wide white satin ribbon.

If you give me the name of the contraceptive shot you had, I will source for more of them. I am keen that nothing interrupts our enjoyment of each other.” His tone indicated the understatement of the millennium. “It’s called Depo-Provera. It’s supposed to last three months or so, and Paul has a few more doses.” When he’d injected me, I’d said, “The idea of living another three months feels far-fetched right now.” He’d replied, “Better safe than sorry, huh?” Aric nodded. “I will be on the lookout for it.” Aric raised a brow at that. Then, seeming to make a decision, he eased me aside to get out of the bed. “I have something for you.” As he strode to our closet, I gawked at the sight of his flawless body. The return view was even more rewarding. He sat beside me and handed me a small jewelry box. “I want you to have this.” I opened the box, finding a gorgeous gold ring, engraved with runes that called to mind his tattoos. An oval of amber adorned the band. Beautiful. The warm color reminded me of his eyes whenever he was pleased. “My homeland was famous for amber—from pine.” He slipped the ring on my finger, and it fit perfectly. Holding my gaze, he said, “We are wed now.” First priest I find, I’m goan to marry you. Jack’s words. I recalled the love blazing from his gray gaze before I stifled the memory. “Aric, th-this is so beautiful. Thank you.” The symbol of his parents’ marriage had been derived from trees. Another waypoint.

So, we’ve got a problem,” I said. “What?” Lend yelled. “We’ve got a problem!” I shouted. “No, I heard that. I mean, what’s the problem now?” “I have the solution!” Jack interrupted. “What?” I sat up, all ears. “Bells!” “What?” Lend and I asked at the same time. “Get her a kitty collar with bells on it. That way you can hear her coming and get someplace where you won’t be hurt by collapsing immediately into sleep.” There was a thumping noise, followed by an indignant “Ow!” from Jack. “The problem,” I said, “is that Raquel is going on trial with IPCA and I am not about to let them lock her up forever.” She was my Raquel. How dare they. My fear was quickly shifting to anger. Tasing me was one thing. But if they thought they could get away with persecuting the very best person they’d ever had working for them, they had another think coming. “Where?” Jack asked. “At the Center,” David answered, coming down the stairs, but he was cut off by Lend snapping, “You aren’t involved in this, Jack.” “Oh, I think you want me involved. I believe I’m the only one here who has ever been to a disciplinary hearing. Five, actually. I was shooting for my lucky number seven, but alas, IPCA and I parted ways too soon.” That settled it. A cheery band we’d make, no doubt. I’d been looking forward to starting some new Christmas traditions this year. Simple things. Reading the Grinch. Decorating a tree. Making cookies. Storming the Center to rescue the closest person I’d ever had to a mom. The usual holiday fare. Merry freaking Christmas.

But the crown jewel was the columned Greek Revival mansion, which dated from the mid-1800s, along with the manicured boxwood gardens that would serve as the backdrop for the couple's ceremony. Of course, everything was not only very traditional but also a standard to what one might imagine an over-the-top Southern wedding to be. As I said, "Steel Magnolias on steroids." The ceremony would take place outdoors in the garden, but large custom peach-and-white scalloped umbrellas were placed throughout the rows of bamboo folding chairs to shade the guests. Magnolia blossoms and vintage lace adorned the ends of the aisles. White, trellis-covered bars flanked the entrance to the gardens where guests could select from a cucumber cooler or spiked sweet tea to keep cool during the thirty-minute nuptials. It was still considered spring, but like Dallas, Nashville could heat up early in the year, and we were glad to be prepared. By the time we arrived the tent was well on its way to completion, and rental deliveries were rolling in. The reception structure was located past the gardens near the enormous whitewashed former stable, and inside the ceiling was draped in countless yards of peach fabric with crystal chandeliers hanging above every dining table. Custom napkins with embroidered magnolias on them complemented the centerpieces' peach garden roses, lush greenery, and dried cotton stems. Cedric's carpentry department created floor-to-ceiling lattice walls covered in faux greenery and white wisteria blooms, a dreamy backdrop for the band.

I saw her as soon as I pulled into the parking lot. This beautiful woman with a gigantic smile on her face was just about bouncing up and down despite the orthopedic boot she had on her foot as she waved me into a parking space. I felt like I’d been hit in the gut. She took my breath away. She was dressed in workout clothes, her long brown hair softly framing her face, and she just glowed. I composed myself and got out of the car. She was standing with Paul Orr, the radio host I was there to meet. Local press had become fairly routine for me at this point, so I hadn’t really given it much thought when I agreed to be a guest on the afternoon drive-time show for WZZK. But I had no idea I’d meet her. Paul reached out his hand and introduced himself. And without waiting to be introduced she whipped out her hand and said, “Hi! I’m Jamie Boyd!” And right away she was talking a mile a minute. She was so chipper I couldn’t help but smile. I was like that little dog in Looney Toons who is always following the big bulldog around shouting, “What are we going to do today, Spike?” She was adorable. She started firing off questions, one of which really caught my attention. “So you were in the Army? What was your MOS?” she asked. Now, MOS is a military term most civilians have never heard. It stands for Military Occupational Specialty. It’s basically military code for “job.” So instead of just asking me what my job was in the Army, she knew enough to specifically ask me what my MOS was. I was impressed. “Eleven Bravo. Were you in?” I replied. “Nope! But I’ve thought about it. I still think one day I will join the Army.” We followed Paul inside and as he set things up and got ready for his show, Jamie and I talked nonstop. She, too, was really into fitness. She was dressed and ready for the gym and told me she was about to leave to get in a quick workout before her shift on-air. “Yeah, I have the shift after Paul Orr. The seven-to-midnight show. I call it the Jammin’ with Jamie Show. People call in and I’ll ask them if they’re cryin’, laughin’, lovin’, or leavin’.” I couldn’t believe how into this girl I was, and we’d only been talking for twenty minutes. I was also dressed in gym clothes, because I’d been to the gym earlier. She looked down and saw the rubber bracelet around my wrist. “Is that an ‘I Am Second’ bracelet? I have one of those!” she said as she held up her wrist with the band that means, “I am second after Jesus.” “No, this is my own bracelet with my motto, ‘Train like a Machine,’ on it. Just my little self-motivator. I have some in my car. I’d love to give you one.” “Well, actually, I am about to leave. I have to go work out before my shift,” she reminded me. “You can have this one. Take it off my wrist. This one will be worth more someday because I’ve been sweating in it,” I joked. She laughed and took it off my wrist. We kept chatting and she told me she had wanted to do an obstacle course race for a long time. Then Paul interrupted our conversation and gently reminded Jamie he had a show to do. He and I needed to start our interview. She laughed some more and smiled her way out the door.

It is easy to mourn the lives we aren't living. Easy to wish we'd developed other other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we'd worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga. It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn't make and the work we didn't do and the people we didn't marry and the children we didn't have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out. But it is not lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It's the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people's worst enemy. We can't tell if any of those other versions would of been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on. Of course, we can't visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we feel in any other life is still available. We don't have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don't have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. We don't have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasure of wine. Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies. We just have to close our eyes and savor the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays.

BEST FRIENDS SHOULD BE TOGETHER We’ll get a pair of those half-heart necklaces so every ask n’ point reminds us we are one glued duo. We’ll send real letters like our grandparents did, handwritten in smart cursive curls. We’ll extend cell plans and chat through favorite shows like a commentary track just for each other. We’ll get our braces off on the same day, chew whole packs of gum. We’ll nab some serious studs but tell each other everything. Double-date at a roadside diner exactly halfway between our homes. Cry on shoulders when our boys fail us. We’ll room together at State, cover the walls floor-to-ceiling with incense posters of pop dweebs gone wry. See how beer feels. Be those funny cute girls everybody’s got an eye on. We’ll have a secret code for hot boys in passing. A secret dog named Freshman Fifteen we’ll have to hide in the rafters during inspection. Follow some jam band one summer, grooving on lawns, refusing drugs usually. Get tattoos that only spell something when we stand together. I’ll be maid of honor in your wedding and you’ll be co-maid with my sister but only cause she’d disown me if I didn’t let her. We’ll start a store selling just what we like. We’ll name our firstborn daughters after one another, and if our husbands don’t like it, tough. Lifespans being what they are, we’ll be there for each other when our men have passed, and all the friends who come to visit our assisted living condo will be dazzled by what fun we still have together. We’ll be the kind of besties who make outsiders wonder if they’ve ever known true friendship, but we won’t even notice how sad it makes them and they won’t bring it up because you and I will be so caught up in the fun, us marveling at how not-good it never was.

The cotton swab softly moved across my face, leaving a pleasant coolness behind. It swept over my forehead, down my nose, on the sides of my cheeks, and across my chin. It relaxed me and I melted. And slowly, I began to fall asleep. I considered reupping for another hour. But then I felt the burning. “Oooh,” I said, opening my eyes. “Cindy, this doesn’t feel right.” “Oh, good,” Cindy said, sounding unconcerned. “You’re starting to feel it now?” Seconds later, I was in severe pain. “Oh, I’m more feeling it,” I answered, gripping the arms of the chair until my knuckles turned white. “Well, it should stop here in a second…,” she insisted. “It’s just working its magic--” My face was melting off. “Ouch! Ow! Seriously, Cindy! Take this stuff off my face! It’s killing me!” “Oh, dear…okay, okay,” Cindy answered, quickly grabbing a soaked washcloth and quickly wiping the nuclear solution from my skin. Finally, the intense burning began to subside. “Gosh,” I said, trying to be nice. “I don’t think that’s something I want to try again.” I swallowed hard, trying to will the pain receptors to stop firing. “Hmmm,” Cindy said, perplexed. “I’m sorry it stung a little. But you’ll love it tomorrow morning when you wake up! Your skin will look so fresh and dewy.” It better, I thought as I paid Cindy for the torture and left the tiny salon. My face tingled, and not at all in a good way. And as I walked to my car, the floodgates of wedding worry opened once again: What if my dress doesn’t zip? What if the band doesn’t show up? What if the shrimp taste fishy? I don’t know how to two-step. How long is the flight to Australia? Are there tarantulas in the country? What if there are scorpions in the bed? The facial had done little to decompress me.

He loves you,’ I said, and smoothed the tumbled hair off her flushed face. ‘He won’t stop.’ I got up, brushing yellow leaves from my skirt. ‘We’ll have a bit of time, then, but none to waste. Jamie can send word downriver, to keep an eye out for Roger. Speaking of Roger …’ I hesitated, picking a bit of dried fern from my sleeve. ‘I don’t suppose he knows about this, does he?’ Brianna took a deep breath, and her fist closed tight on the leaf in her hand, crushing it. ‘Well, see, there’s a problem about that,’ she said. She looked up at me, and suddenly she was my little girl again. ‘It isn’t Roger’s.’ ‘What?’ I said stupidly. ‘It. Isn’t. Roger’s. Baby,’ she said, between clenched teeth. I sank down beside her once more. Her worry over Roger suddenly took on new dimensions. ‘Who?’ I said. ‘Here, or there?’ Even as I spoke, I was calculating – it had to be someone here, in the past. If it had been a man in her own time, she’d be farther along than two months. Not only in the past, then, but here, in the Colonies. I wasn’t planning to have sex, she’d said. No, of course not. She hadn’t told Roger, for fear he would follow her – he was her anchor, her key to the future. But in that case – ‘Here,’ she said, confirming my calculations. She dug in the pocket of her skirt, and came out with something. She reached toward me, and I held out my hand automatically. ‘Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ.’ The worn gold wedding band sparked in the sun, and my hand closed reflexively over it. It was warm from being carried next to her skin, but I felt a deep coldness seep into my fingers. ‘Bonnet?’ I said. ‘Stephen Bonnet?’ Her throat moved convulsively, and she swallowed, head jerking in a brief nod. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you – I couldn’t; not after Ian told me about what happened on the river. At first I didn’t know what Da would do; I was afraid he’d blame me. And then when I knew him a little better – I knew he’d try to find Bonnet – that’s what Daddy would have done. I couldn’t let him do that. You met that man, you know what he’s like.’ She was sitting in the sun, but a shudder passed over her, and she rubbed her arms as though she was cold. ‘I do,’ I said. My lips were stiff. Her words were ringing in my ears. I wasn’t planning to have sex. I couldn’t tell … I was afraid he’d blame me. ‘What did he do to you?’ I asked, and was surprised that my voice sounded calm. ‘Did he hurt you, baby?’ She grimaced, and pulled her knees up to her chest, hugging them against herself. ‘Don’t call me that, okay? Not right now.’ I reached to touch her, but she huddled closer into herself, and I dropped my hand. ‘Do you want to tell me?’ I didn’t want to know; I wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened, too. She looked up at me, lips tightened to a straight white line. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I don’t want to. But I think I’d better.’ She had stepped aboard the Gloriana in broad daylight, cautious, but feeling safe by reason of the number of people around; loaders, seamen, merchants, servants – the docks bustled with life. She had told a seaman on the deck what she wanted; he had vanished into the recesses of the ship, and a moment later, Stephen Bonnet had appeared. He had on the same clothes as the night before; in the daylight, she could see that they were of fine quality, but stained and badly crumpled. Greasy candle wax had dripped on the silk cuff of his coat, and his jabot had crumbs in it. Bonnet himself showed fewer marks of wear than did his clothes; he was fresh-shaven, and his green eyes were pale and alert. They passed over her quickly, lighting with interest. ‘I did think ye comely last night by candlelight,’ he said, taking her hand and raising it to his lips. ‘But a-many seem so when the drink is flowin’. It’s a good deal more rare to find a woman fairer in the sun than she is by the moon.

It is easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living. Easy to wish we’d developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga. It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make and the work we didn’t do and the people we didn’t marry and the children we didn’t have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out. But it is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy. We can’t tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on. Of course, we can’t visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we’d feel in any life is still available. We don’t have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don’t have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. We don’t have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasure of wine. Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies. We just have to close our eyes and savour the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays. We are as completely and utterly alive as we are in any other life and have access to the same emotional spectrum. We only need to be one person. We only need to feel one existence. We don’t have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility. So let’s be kind to the people in our own existence. Let’s occasionally look up from the spot in which we are because, wherever we happen to be standing, the sky above goes on for ever.

The wedding of David and Michal was a glorious affair. Though Saul was normally stingy with his money, he was not so with his daughters. Michal had started the day with a bath followed by a bodily anointing of oil. She wore a linen and silk dress with embroidered cloth of Phoenician purple. Her hair was brushed to a soft perfection and placed beneath her Tyrian style crown of gold. She was bedecked with gold and silver jewelry from Egypt. Bracelets, necklaces, ear coverings and a ring on her nose. She walked through the Gibeah streets in fine calf leather sandals, surrounded by a cadre of dozens of virgin bridesmaid companions dressed in white linen. A band of minstrels led her with rejoicing on tambourine, flute, and lyre. She felt like a queen. She would be a queen one day. She knew that she was marrying the mightiest warrior in all of Israel. The gibborim who had killed the giant Rephaim Philistine, who her own father, the anointed warrior king, could not conquer. All she could think of the entire journey to the palace were the lyrics she first heard her from the lips of her bridegroom upon their first acquaintance. She had never forgot them. They were burned into her heart. He had sung a song of virginal submission to a manly king as a sample of his musical talent to her father. But she knew he had sung those words for her. She knew by the look in his eyes, his unquenchable stare of desire for her. It was like a prophecy. Now those words were coming true, she was going to be living them out any moment. Hear, O daughter, and consider, and incline your ear: forget your people and your father’s house, and the king will desire your beauty. Since he is your lord, bow to him. The people of Israel lined the streets and cheered their beautiful princess as she approached the entranceway to the palace. She could feel her heart pounding out of her chest. Would he sing to her on their wedding night? Would he seduce her with his musical talent before he ravished her? All glorious is the princess in her chamber, with robes interwoven with gold. In many-colored robes she is led to the king, with her virgin companions following behind her. With joy and gladness they are led along as they enter the palace of the king.

Hey Princess.” Good God I missed hearing his voice. “Chase,” I had to clear my throat to continue, “I didn’t think you were going to be here.” “I asked if you were coming to the house.” He replied hesitantly. “Right, I just figured you meant your house.” The room was thick with the tension that always followed us around. My heart started racing from his nearness and I silently cursed myself. I really didn’t want any kind of feelings for this guy, and here I was wishing he would try to kiss me again. We sat there watching each other for who knows how long before he walked over and sank down on the floor next to me, handing me a small wrapped box. “Merry Christmas Harper.” I picked it up and just stared at it, all I could say was “Why?” “Because you’re my favorite, remember?” he huffed and his lips tilted up a little, “When I saw it, there was no way I couldn’t get it for you. Please open it.” So slowly I probably drove him crazy, I took off the wrapping and opened the little leather box. I gasped when I saw the ring inside there. It was a silver band that wrapped into the trinity symbol on top. I’d always wanted that symbol as a tattoo. I looked up at Chase and shook my head in wonder. “How did you know?” “You doodle it on everything put in front of you.” He was right of course, if I had a pen and paper or napkin, it always ended up on there at some point. I just hadn’t realized anyone other than Brandon noticed that, especially him. “Chase …” I couldn’t hold them back any longer, tears started falling down my cheeks and I quickly dropped my head hoping he wouldn’t notice. He did. “Don’t cry Harper. If you don’t like it, or you don’t like that it’s from me I’ll take it back.” My laugh sounded more like a sob than anything else. “I love it, please don’t take it.” “Then what’s wrong?” He tilted my head up and brushed away a few tears with his thumbs. I had to force myself to not lean into his hands, it was the first time we’d had any type of physical contact in over a month. He was a whole new kind of Chase on Sundays, but I’d never seen him like this. So gentle and kind. It made my entire being crave him. “I’ve never had this before. Not just the presents … the love that your family has for me. I’ve never had it until now, and it’s so overwhelming. I don’t know what I did to deserve it and I don’t know if I show them that too.” “You do. Trust me.” He searched my face for a long time and wiped the remaining tears from my cheeks. “You’re special Harper, it’s not hard to love you.

Bands don't last. We'd have been a meteor shower. Over before we started. "Meteor showers are fucking beautiful.

A woman would have simply observed that I was not wearing a wedding band, but men are often blind to subtlety, to the myriad social cues and signifiers that lie at the foundation of civilized order. They really should not be entrusted with the care of children.

Well, see,” he said, growing red, “we was real busy. And we were down next to the tracks, which made a lot of noise. We’d wanted a place what was private-like, you know, and . . .” He shrugged.

Full Disclosure: when Dan DiDio approached me about doing one, I was wary to say the least. Nowadays events often mean character deaths or reboots or company-wide publishing initiatives and so on. But the run Greg Capullo and I had on BATMAN was, for better or for worse, idiosyncratic - about our own hopes, our fears, our interests. It was just... very much ours. Even so, I told Dan that I *did* have a story, one I'd been working on for a few years, a big one, in the back of my brain. It was about a detective case that stretched back to the beginnings of humanity, a mystery about the nature of the DC Universe that Batman would try to uncover, and which would lead him and the Justice League to discover that their own cosmology was much larger, scarier and more wondrous than they'd known. But I wasn't sure it would make a good "event". Dan, to his credit, said, "Work it up and let's see." So I did. But in the course of working it up, I reread all the events I could think of. Just for reference. Not only recent ones, but events from years ago, from when I was a kid. And what I discovered, or rediscovered, was that at their core, events are joyous things. They're these great big stories, ridiculous tales about alien invasions or cosmic gems or zombie-space-cop attacks that have the highest stakes possible - stories where the whole universe hangs in the balance and nothing will ever be the same again! They were *about* things, and - what I also realized while doing my homework - when I was a kid, they were THE stories that brought me and my friends together. We'd split our money and buy different parts of an event, just to be able to argue about it. We'd meet after school and go on for hours about who should win, who should lose... Because even the grimmest events are celebratory. They're about pushing the limits of an already ludicrous form to a breaking point. So that's what I came back with. I remember standing in my kitchen and getting ready to pitch DARK NIGHTS: METAL to Greg, having prepared a whole presentation, a whole argument as to why, crazy as it was, it was us, it was *our* event. I said "It's called METAL," and Greg said, "I'm in," before I could even tell him the story. And even though Dan thought it was crazy, he went with it, and for that I'm very grateful. In the end, METAL is a lot of things - it's about those moments when you find yourself face to face with the worst versions of yourself, moments when all looks like doom - but at it's heart it's a love letter to comic storytelling at its most lunatic, and a tribute to the kinds of stories, events that got me thought hard times as a kid and as an adult. It's about using friendship as a foundation to go further than you thought you could go, and that means it's about me and Greg, and you as well. Because we tried something different with it, something ours, hoping you'd show up, and you did. So thank you, sincerely, from all of us on the team. Because when they work, events are about coming together and rocking out over our love of this crazy art form. And you're all in the band, now and always.

Singapore Why should I book a live band for my wedding? Merry Bees Merry Bees have serenaded dignitaries at the Istana. Merry bees provide services to their customers like Solo Live Music, Virtual live band, Solo Musician, Solo Wedding Singer, Instrumental live band, Corporate Live Band, wedding livestream etc. their all the services are quite good. Merry bees also performed at TV programmes and other high profile events including APEC, F1 Singapore Grand Prix, Young NTUC Celebrates NDP, DBS, Prudential, Maersk, Singapore Sports Awards, etc. Merry Bees have produced and performed to over 2,000 successful events. When COVID-19 hit us in 2020, Merry Bees was one of the first few events companies in Singapore who adapted quickly to virtual. Merry bees have produced and live streamed to over 250 events and performances by Dec 2020. Apart from that merry bees also provide Content creation, Videography, livestream production, Corporate Videography Merry bees are emotionally attached with their each client. ShiLi & Adi TWO IS BETTER THAN ONE It is no surprise that ShiLi & Adi are a highly sought after duo in the wedding live bands and corporate events circuit due to their fresh piano arrangements and smooth vocal harmony. From duets and their ability to medley any songs dedicated by the audience, their chemistry is unmistakable. John Lye Live Looping Singer Guitarist, Bilingual Emcee & Host, Production & Technical Director John Lye is one of the most versatile performers we know with 12 years of performing experience under his belt. As part of our core team and co-founder of Merry Bees, John wears many hats but his biggest hat would be charming audiences with a wide vocal range and solid guitar live looping skills, as he switches effortlessly from heavy old school rock ballads of Journey and Bon Jovi to classics from Sinatra and Nat King Cole in various languages. Merry bees have many live offers you can book merry bees to make your special day wonderful.

other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga. It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make and the work we didn’t do and the people we didn’t marry and the children we didn’t have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out. But it is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy. We can’t tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on. Of course, we can’t visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we’d feel in any life is still available. We don’t have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don’t have to hear

Finding the perfect diamond wedding ring set for your big day should be a lot of fun, even if you’re overwhelmed by the options. Keep looking if you haven’t found the perfect ring yet. The six options listed above should have helped you limit down your options, but don’t settle. You’ll know when you’ve found your dream ring. There should be no holding back, no weighing of pros and disadvantages; you’ll recognize your ideal ring and know it right away. Choosing your wedding ring is a lot like discovering your soul mate; you just “feel” it’s right. The wedding band is a symbol of your love; therefore, it has to be flawless.

It is easy to mourn the lives we aren't living. Easy to wish we'd developed other other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we'd worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga. It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn't make and the work we didn't do the people we didn't do and the people we didn't marry and the children we didn't have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out. But it is not lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It's the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people's worst enemy. We can't tell if any of those other versions would of been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.

We’d pull into a town,” Haynes said, “and we didn’t know where the clubs were. We’d literally pull over somebody and say, ‘Hey, where do the queers hang out? Where’s the college area?

Good call dropping the mystery-ingredient round." She caught Sylvie's questioning glance. "Finalist last year with an unknown allergy to turmeric. Violent gastro effects. Ever seen the pie scene in Stand By Me?" Sylvie winced. "We had to reshoot the whole day. I was scrubbing neon yellow out of my ears for a week." Mariana smoothed back a strand of salt-and-pepper hair. "We looked like we'd banded together to massacre Big Bird." Only this woman could make that anecdote sound almost classy.

admittedly it's kind of a trash move, like at a wedding when the minister basically goes: 'if you think this union is a steaming pile of doo-doo, then totes feel free to stand up and give everyone your amazon 1-star review of the couple's relationship.' first of all minister, why are you being a messy lil bitch? people put on nice underwear, use shick mock 5 razors to get the smoothest shave, dressed in tacky bridesmaid dresses and goofy ass colonel sanders beige suits, paid for flights and hotel rooms, both the bride and groom, bride and bride, or groom and groom went through the painful process of cutting certain folks from the guest list and the wedding band had to learn both journey and earth wind and fire's entire catalogue, and now you want to take the temperature of the room?" 64%

The reception tent was rigged with a custom lighting system that projected twinkling constellations in an evening sky. Every table had a massive floral centerpiece draped in lush white flowers and dripping with crystals. The china, crystal, and sterling silver were brought in from England. Fun fact: just one sterling place setting cost roughly $800. The gilded custom stage for the orchestra-style band would have been suited to a Roaring Twenties New York City ballroom. Ornamental bushes dotted the room, trimmed to resemble the constellations brought to life, from the Hunter to the Big Dipper. However, the crown jewel was the head table, a round mirrored table underneath a huge hanging ring of white orchids, peonies, and crystals---and in front of a solid wall of five thousand white roses and ranunculus. The sight was truly breathtaking.

is easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living. Easy to wish we’d developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga. It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make and the work we didn’t do and the people we didn’t marry and the children we didn’t have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they

The band had accomplished what we set out to do and I felt really good about what we’d done, so it wasn’t a sense of incompletion or that sort of gnawing to it. I thought, ‘Hey, we did pretty good.

I settle on a vintage ivory silk tube. The dress is sleeveless and goes straight to the floor with a high waist and two layers of a sheer organza overlay that flutter slightly when I walk. A band of the same see-through fabric covers each shoulder, then flows down my back in a streamer. I feel like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's €”and sort of silly for loving it, but I do. When I come out of the dressing room, Rachel catches her breath and squeals like I've tried on my wedding dress.

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Well, your choice is to spit out what's wrong, or I'm going to start guessing. I'm not going to stop until you tell me I've got it, and I'll warn you—I'm a shitty guesser, so this could take a while." I leaned back in my chair and glared at him. “Have it your way,” he said. William started to pace around the room while stroking his chin theatrically. “You were actually born to a convent of nuns, but you had a sex change and escaped years ago. Now they’ve found you, and they’re coming for your penis? Pun intended,” he added with a wiggle of his eyebrows. “That’s…” I closed my mouth and shook my head. “What kind of person even comes up with something like that?” “No? Okay, I got it. Hold on. You witnessed an alien abduction when you were a kid. Up until yesterday, you thought it was all just some weird dream induced by the aggressive case of chronic diarrhea you suffered from—and still suffer from to this day. But yesterday, those little green men came back, and now your world is shaken. Why? Because you’ve secretly harbored romantic feelings for them this whole time, and now you’ll have to face your budding sexuality for the first time.” “Are you seriously going to keep this up unless I tell you?” "Hmm. Not right, either? Okay, this time I really have it. It all started in the African jungles seven years ago when you found yourself trapped deep in the wrinkly clutches of an elephant's rectum. With no hope of escape, you realized the only choice you had was to go deeper. Only you went too deep. You dreamed too big, and now you can't—" “I give up,” I said. “I’ll tell you because I don’t think I can survive much more of this. I’ve been in a little bit of a dating rut for the past couple years, and—” “Let me stop you there, partner.” William held up his left hand and pointed to his wedding band. “I’m flattered. Really. But one, I have a strict no sword crossing rule. And two? I’m spoken for.

We prayed for seven days. But, by the last day, we still needed more days to pray. On the first day we prayed well by the well. We prayed for strength and to be saved from hell. Strength to carry and bear the weight of the bear. The furless bear that was living rent-free within. On the second day we prayed for union and companionship. In that unionship, some told us to alter ourselves to benefit from their gold. Some told us to worship at their alter, and to their forbidden gods. Some gave us bands, while some gave us rose stems. But they all promised us a life full of bliss, and concerts to see bands like Kiss. On the third day we prayed for courage and strength. We thought that we needed to lean on to some friends. We begged to rest our lean bodies on their shoulders. We said that we needed a match in which we could meet our match. We asked for a cover to cover up and shield us; providing a shield from the storms of life. On the fourth day we prayed for assertiveness and self-esteem. But, like a bow without its own direction, we jumped as high as they told us. And gave a bow after each and every performance. We skipped and hopped for everyone despite their lies. In fact, we also skipped all the steps necessary to living full lives. On the fifth day we prayed for security and protection. But some betrayed and beat us because we intimidated their situation. And some became deadbeats to the children that we bore for each. We were left beat, with no fun. Missing the beat to the sound of our own drum. On the sixth day we prayed for solitude; some space from an alliance. But we went on to perform for this and that audience. Some were fair skinned; some were dark skinned. Some were fair to us, while some were cruel too much. But we remained amongst them because we chose to be one with copendence. On the seventh day we prayed for bravery. But our conduct had changed gravely because, for six days, we'd invited others to conduct our song. We'd geared up for them and shot arms at ourselves for so long. Meanwhile they'd raised their arms up, cheering for our self-destruction. And, once we were doomed in their mission, they bounced like a wave; vanishing without a wave.

She drove to San Francisco for them and picked out two simple wedding bands, hers gold and Richard’s platinum. When later asked why Richard told Doreen not to buy a gold ring for him, he said, “Because Satanists don’t wear gold.

Inside was a pile of photographs, a bottle of perfume, a gold ring with a simple ball-chain through it, the kind of necklace that usually has dog tags on it. Wayne took out the ring and reverently lowered the chain around his neck, letting the wedding band rest on his chest. “Nice ring, Mr. Frodo.” Wayne looked up. “It was my mom’s.

There was one idea that might have turned out pretty interesting. Hunter S. Thompson had written a book called Songs of the Doomed, and in the first few pages he mentions sitting around and listening to something off The Caution Horses, then he mentions the band later on in there, too. He's always been one of our favourite wackos, so we decided to call him up and see if we could maybe work on something together. It took a while to get him on the phone, because he'd wake up at midnight, stay up all night, drinking and watching sports, then sleep through the day. But we ended up having a bunch of weird phone conversations with him. His idea was we'd go to his ranch out in Colorado, get a camera crew, no script and 'just go crazy, man!' That didn't really fit what we had in mind; we wanted a little more structure than that. Going crazy isn't what we do. But he wasn't into that, at all. He didnt want to write anything, he just wanted this wacked-out thing. Eventually he got really pissed off for some reason. He sent us a fax, saying 'If you guys show up here, you're going home in body bags!' What did we do to piss him off that much?

And on February 19, I, Dorothea Mae Daley, took Emanuel Engel Jr., to be my wedded husband . . . There was no ring, no license, no bouquet, no veil, no Mass . . . Sounds of bombs were in the distance, and my feet, encased in huge army boots, felt awkward as I stood in an army hospital . . . But there was a solemnity and a sacredness about the ceremony, performed in the midst of so much tragedy, that made us both feel that ours was no ordinary marriage.

That saying, ‘The Trail Provides’, was one I’d come across a few times while researching our trip. Used by hikers, and believed to have originated from the popular Pacific Crest Trail in the United States, it refers to moments of magic and serendipity that occur while on a long-distance journey. On more than one occasion we’d been longing for or in need of something and, somehow, it would manifest. Like craving honey for days and passing a rare hiker who just happens to gift you some. Or losing your hiking sticks down a hole and then for a group to coincidently see a post about it who also just happen to be passing the exact area so they can fetch them and bring them back to you a day later.

It is easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living. Easy to wish we’d developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga. It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make and the work we didn’t do and the people we didn’t marry and the children we didn’t have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out. But it is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy. We can’t tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on. Of course, we can’t visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we’d feel in any life is still available. We don’t have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don’t have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. We don’t have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasure of wine. Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies. We just have to close our eyes and savour the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays. We are as completely and utterly alive as we are in any other life and have access to the same emotional spectrum. We only need to be one person. We only need to feel one existence. We don’t have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility. So let’s be kind to the people in our own existence. Let’s occasionally look up from the spot in which we are because, wherever we happen to be standing, the sky above goes on for ever.

A Thing I Have Learned (Written By A Nobody Who Has Been Everybody) It is easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living. Easy to wish we’d developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga. It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make and the work we didn’t do and the people we didn’t marry and the children we didn’t have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out. But it is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy.

What kind of tattoo are you getting?” “You mean what kind of tattoo are we getting?” She reaches into her purse and hands me a sketch. “This one.” It’s a pair of hands, one masculine and one feminine. Banding each ring finger is Matty’s trademark calligraphy of the word still. The letters wrap around each finger, sketched to look like delicate vine. “You like it?” Bristol asks, her voice soft, uncertain. After the wedding, she requested that I give her my vows, my poem “STILL,” in writing. I know she added it to a box where she keeps our memories—the leather book of Neruda poetry, the tarnished whistle from the carnival, and now the vows I wrote for her. I know “STILL” holds significance, but I never saw this coming.

It is easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living. Easy to wish we’d developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga. It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make and the work we didn’t do and the people we didn’t marry and the children we didn’t have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out. But it is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy. We can’t tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on. Of course, we can’t visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we’d feel in any life is still available. We don’t have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don’t have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. We don’t have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasure of wine. Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies. We just have to close our eyes and savour the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays. We are as completely and utterly alive as we are in any other life and have access to the same emotional spectrum.

WHAT IS A WEDDING BAND?

) It is easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living. Easy to wish we’d developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga. It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make and the work we didn’t do and the people we didn’t marry and the children we didn’t have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out. But it is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy. We can’t tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on. Of course, we can’t visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we’d feel in any life is still available. We don’t have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don’t have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. We don’t have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasure of wine. Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies. We just have to close our eyes and savour the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays. We are as completely and utterly alive as we are in any other life and have access to the same emotional spectrum. We only need to be one person. We only need to feel one existence. We don’t have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility. So let’s be kind to the people in our own existence. Let’s occasionally look up from the spot in which we are because, wherever we happen to be standing, the sky above goes on for ever. Yesterday I knew I had no future, and that it was impossible for me to accept my life as it is now. And yet today, that same messy life seems full of hope. Potential. The impossible, I suppose, happens via living. Will my life be miraculously free from pain, despair, grief, heartbreak, hardship, loneliness, depression? No. But do I want to live? Yes. Yes. A thousand times, yes

She curls tightly to me kissing me on the lips and cheeks, her body skin to skin to mine, she’s kind of- like- a hyper puppy… you know- wet nose, big sad eyes, giving you lots of unwanted wet kisses, and can’t sit in one place for too long. Now she is pulling on my necklace, the one I am always wearing has my dad’s wedding ring hanging from it-a thin silver chain and the gold band hanging from it, a gift dad gives me- saying- ‘He loves me more than mom, that I am the love of his life.’ Yet sis tugs gently to get my full attention. I ask here- ‘Why are you not wearing your undies?’ And she baby- talks without missing a beat- ‘Be- because you don’t at night so-o why should I’s.’ I knew not too long from now she would be running around the house stark-naked like always, saying it’s because I sleep this way. I am sure mom will say I am a bad role model, but yet there are far worse things she has done, things that mom and dad never need to know about, things that I can even remember right now. If she wants to be in my bad nude, will- I guess that’s okay…? She is just trying to be like me, and that’s sweet. I have saved her butt many times when she has done bad things. I have been like a mom to her, ever since she was born if I wanted to be or not. And she has been there for me when I was a nobody. Yeah, she’s the best pain in the butt a girl can have. ‘Mommy says you have to get up soon, her hand covering her eyes as she walks my room and sees both of us.’ Her breath smells like toothpaste, as she kisses us good morning, and she stumbles over all the stuff lying on the floor and it’s not until I push sis off me that I realize how badly I’m shaking. Mom, she has one of those green face masks sped up, which is some scary-looking crap, pulls she has curlers in her hair. Yet that’s not what’s got me traumatized. ‘It’s Friday,’ I say confused. I thought we were going to the rusty anchor today? Mom said- ‘I thought you didn’t like doing that Karly that you’re too grown up to be with your mommy and Daddy and sissy… always- yes we are all going this upcoming weekend, glad to see you want to go.’ I said- ‘Oh- okay?’ Mom- ‘Karly are you feeling, okay? Are you not your usual descent and moody self? Me- ‘Yah I am a fine mom.’ I have no idea how I got home last night, or what I did or didn’t do. It’s like it never happened, yet I think it did… didn’t it? Maybe I drink too much? Mom said- ‘Um-hum- come on you two bare cuddle bugs it’s getting late.’ Then- I remember getting in the car, with the girls and the fighting it was all coming back to me, as I see my sis run into her room, leaving her nighty behind on my bed. I knew that something looked different about her when I looked her over, I am starting to remember what Ray did to her last night. Yet she seems to be taking it so well- so strange. I have no idea what happened to Jenny or Maddie or Liv, and just thinking about it makes me awful sick, pissed, and yet so worried. I put my feet on the ground, first on my fuzzy shaggy throw rug, and then I step forward feeling the hard would under my feet. The cold wood reminds me. When I was younger, I would lie on the floor all summer wishing I have some friends to spend my time with. Back then my only friend was my sis and my horse, I’m curious to do the same thing now, and reflect a bit on what the heck is going on- and also on how things have changed, I know my sis will be another half hour getting ready. And with me, all I have to do is jump in my outfit laying there on the floor. My skin feels so cold yet, yet on the inside, I feel scorching. Like- photos on Instagram, all these snapshots start scrolling, row after row in my mind. Seeing bits and pieces of what went down last night. My, I- phone starts vibrating on top of my bed until it falls off the edge hitting me square in the face making me jump two feet in the air. I reach for it and slide my finger over the cracked screen.

Every night we’d go out and listen to bands play. Fort Collins had a music scene that was second to none for a town its size. Any night of the week you could find 10 or 15 bands playing. All of them were playing original music, too. No cover bands. I never understood going out to listen to music that you could hear on a CD. We mostly saw punk bands, including Suicide Fan Club, Armchair Martian, Baldo Rex, The Fairlanes, Fester, The Nobodys, Pinhead Circus, and others. Another local favorite was Where’s the Bishop, which merged punk and funk beautifully. It was such a great time.

By losing our focus on the small band of terrorists who had actually planned and carried out 9/11 and instead defining the threat as an open-ended, all-encompassing “War on Terror,” we’d fallen into what I believed was a strategic trap—one that had elevated al-Qaeda’s prestige, rationalized the Iraq invasion, alienated much of the Muslim world, and warped almost a decade of U.S. foreign policy.

When you sing lead in a band, it’s an exhausting business. Just the breathing involved. Singing song after song is enough to knock most people on their ass. It’s an incredible amount of oxygen you’re going through. So we would do shows and we’d come off stage and I’d go to bed!

Yet many times—too many times—we get into situations or routines based on convenience rather than inspiration. We do what is easy instead of what is right for who we are and who we want to be. Instead of feeling charmed and excited by what lies ahead for us, we become experts at doing enough to get by. More and more of our time is spent putting Band-Aids on the things that just aren’t working instead of re-examining, reimagining, and reshaping our lives based on what brings us meaning and joy. When we stop moving forward with a fresh vision for the future infused with passion and purpose, something fundamental inside of us dies. We become detached—absent from our own lives—and just a shadow remains. We’d rather be doing something else, even if we don’t know what that something else is.

Maybe every other band in the world has more brains and deeper meaning, but only Black Sabbath sounds like exactly what my friends and I might have done if we’d had the equipment.

Shit, does everyone know about the fire?” He held the phone, tipped the beer up to his lips, and took a swig. Thankfully, he’d finished swallowing before Vinny stopped laughing. “Of course. What are you, nuts? Remember that wedding reception in the church basement? The maid of honor’s dress caught on fire when they served flaming cherries jubilee, and the band started playin’ the “William Tell Overture” while she ran around screaming like a banshee?

A small wave of guilt washes over me at the absence of the wedding band on his ring finger, but the feeling is laced with a smidgen of…something else. Relief? Comfort? I don't know. All I do know is it's strange and confusing and—

It was true Advils looked just like little brown M&M's. Motrin, in the right light, were SweetTarts. A band of MAO inhibitor called Nardil looked just like the tiny round Red Hots we'd all eaten as children.

As the sun sank over the far purple hills, I imagined how he would welcome me into his war band with silver words praising my prowess with sword and spear. Indeed, the great hall would be crowded with Prydain royalty, including Aeddan, Mael’s older brother by two years. After the passing of their father, Mannuetios, he was now king of the Trinovantes. The thought of seeing him made me smile. We’d all grown up together when Aeddan was still a fosterling in our tribe, but Mael and I hadn’t seen him in a good long while. Not since their father’s great betrayal.

She kept sneaking looks at him. He had strong, chiseled features, his jaw softened by a day or two's growth of beard. And those shoulders. She'd always been a sucker for a guy's strong shoulders. Big square hands that looked as if they did harder work than writing biographies. No wedding band. At thirty, Isabel couldn't help noticing a detail like that.

Collars are one of the most sacred symbols in the kink community, and also one of the most abused. For a submissive, the collar is the symbol of everything she yearns for. It’s not just physical proof that she belongs to someone to whom she has surrendered, but also proof of her dominant’s love and protection. The collar shows the world (or as much of it as is practical) that someone has claimed her as his. Most people view the collar as the D/s equivalent of a wedding band. It is a symbol, not only of ownership and submission, but the commitment of both partners. One gives, one takes and together they complete the circle of the power exchange.

Before Bernays scheme was launched, engagement and wedding rings were just a gold band, but using his techniques of social conditioning he was able to brainwash men and women into believing that a large diamond ring

But she wasn’t frightened any longer. ‘Here.’ He handed her the box as his other hand reached up and stroked the smooth silk of her cheek. ‘Wedding present, Mrs Price.’ ‘Oh, Zachariah. I haven’t got you anything.’ ‘I didn’t buy it, lass. It was me mam’s.’ He watched her as she opened the small hinged lid to reveal an exquisitely dainty ring worked in fine lacy gold with a half band of tiny diamonds and rubies, and at her delighted gasp he reached out and plucked it from its nest, sliding it onto the third finger of her left hand next to the shining gold wedding band. ‘This is your engagement ring, lass, but I wanted you to have it tonight. Me mam would’ve liked that, bein’ as how she felt about marriage an’ all.’ She turned to him, flinging her arms round his neck as she pressed her lips to his for a moment, and then he held her close as he said,

Think of these as wedding bands, my love," the Grand Duke amusedly remarked. "By the powers invested in me, I now pronounce us husband and wife, through lust and hatred, through indulgence and abuse-and you can rest assured, death will never do us apart.

The moment I opened my eyes on Suse and Jonah’s wedding day, there was only one thing on my mind – Gary. I knew he was in town, and his presence was everywhere. It was in the sheets on my bed, it wrapped itself around me in the shape of my bathrobe and stirred into my coffee with the sugar. The stupid thing was that I didn’t even know if he was in town yet. Maybe he was still on the way.

I remember driving there in the afternoon, and I remember getting there and loading the gear in. I don’t remember the sound check. We had one, I think, but we had no idea what to do because we’d never done one before. No one had the foggiest. Not knowing what to do made it exciting, though. Like, now, everybody’s got a stage manager and a sound guy, lights, and so on. The bands know all about sound checks and levels, equipment and all that. Now they even have music schools to teach you that kind of stuff. Back then you knew fuck-all. You didn’t have anyone professional, just your mates, who, like you, were clueless; you had a disco PA and a sleepy barmaid. It’s something I find quite sad about groups today, funnily enough, the careerism of it all. I saw this program once, a “battle of the bands” sort of thing. It had Alex James from Blur on it and Lauren Laverne and some twat from a record company, and they’d sit there saying what they thought of the band: “Your bass player’s shit and your image needs work; lose the harmonica player.” All the bands just stood there and took it, going, “Cheers, man, we’ll go off and do that.” I couldn’t believe it. I joined a band to tell everyone to fuck off, and if somebody said to me, “Your image is shit,” I’d have gone, “Fuck off, knob head!” And if someone had said, “Your music’s shit,” I would have nutted them. That to me is what’s lacking in groups. They’ve missed out that growing-up stage of being bloody-minded and fucking clueless. You have to have ultimate self-belief. You have to believe right from the word go that you’re great and that the rest of the world has to catch up with you. Of us lot, Ian was the best at that. He believed in Joy Division completely. If any of us got downhearted it was always him who would cheer us up and get us going again. He’d put you back on track.

Could you at least give me some time to get accustomed to the idea and get to know you before we are wed?” He sighed and nodded with obvious reluctance. “Within reason.” “One year?” she asked in the sweetest voice she could manage. His silver gaze glinted as he frowned. “One month.” “Six months?” she ventured, struggling to maintain her saccharine, imploring tone. “One month,” he repeated. His arms crossed over his broad chest as his frown deepened. “Four months?” Angelica begged, hating the desperation in her voice. But she needed time to devise a plan on how to get out of this predicament. “One month.” His tone was firm, implacable, autocratic. And there was something unnerving about the way he looked at her, as if he knew she sought escape. She sighed, exhausted with his refusal to yield. “You will negotiate with my father, but not with me. Some suitor you are!” Biting back her temper, she gentled her voice. “Six weeks, please?” Burnrath nodded. “Very well, six weeks it is.” He smiled suddenly and a small dimple appeared in his cheek. “I suppose I should take the time to court you properly. Now, let’s seal the bargain with a kiss.” He grasped her shoulders, but Angelica stepped back. The idea of his lips on hers made her knees turn to water and her stomach leap around in the most alarming manner. “A-a handshake should suffice, I think.” His rich laughter overwhelmed her senses. “Come now, you are to be my bride. No kiss, no bargain, my beauty,” he challenged. “Do not tell me you are afraid.” Angelica lifted her chin. Hell if he would call her a coward! “Very well.” She stood on tiptoe and pecked him on the cheek, shocked at the thrill rushing up her spine at that small contact. He smelled of exotic spices. “D-do we have a bargain then?” she asked, hating how her voice shook. The vampire’s eyes seemed to glow dangerously. With a low growl, he pulled her into his arms. She gasped at the feel of the warm steel bands holding her to his large, hard body. “That is not what I had in mind.” Keeping his arm around her, he stroked her back as he tipped her chin up with his other hand to meet his smoldering silver gaze. With one finger, he lightly traced her cheek before tangling his fingers in her hair. The vampire’s breath was warm on her face as he whispered, “This is a kiss.” His

Well, I won’t be here when you get back.” He grinned at her, but there was no fondness in the expression, no light in his eyes. “You won’t get far, will you?” he asked, and Lily saw mockery in the curve of his lips and the set of his shoulders. “I’ll wager you don’t want to face even Gertrude without my wedding band on your finger.” He

If you permit such a barbarous thing to happen, Caleb Halliday, I vow that I’ll never speak to you again.” He pushed back his chair, and Lily’s hand in the process, to stand. “If you have your way, we’ll be apart soon anyway. What do I have to lose?” “Your honor,” Lily argued. He crossed the room to take his campaign hat from one of the pegs beside the kitchen door. “When it comes to letting another man lay his hands on you, I have no honor,” he said bluntly. She grasped the back of a chair as he put his hat on and reached for the doorknob. “Where are you going? You can’t just leave me here—” “I need to think,” Caleb replied. “I’ll be at my office if you want me.” “Well, I won’t be here when you get back.” He grinned at her, but there was no fondness in the expression, no light in his eyes. “You won’t get far, will you?” he asked, and Lily saw mockery in the curve of his lips and the set of his shoulders. “I’ll wager you don’t want to face even Gertrude without my wedding band on your finger.” He

Um, Your Majesty,” the priest cleared his throat, “we’re not to that part of the ceremony yet.” Still, Darling held on to her and whispered in her ear with that deep, damaged voice that sent chills all over her body. “In all my life, I have only had one haven that sheltered me from my hell. One woman whose smile made me fly even after I’d hit the ground so hard that I didn’t think I could ever stand again. There is nothing in this universe that could destroy me, except you, Zarya. You have taken a monster and made him human. My wounded soul was healed because of your smile. So long as I live and even beyond this life, I am and will always be ever yours.” Her tears fell even harder as she heard the sincerity behind those words. “Ever yours” was what he’d engraved in the band of her wedding ring… She

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me, and nobody was talking to anyone. I didn’t even know if We Stink had just broken up, or what. Which was too bad, because we’d just played the best show of our lives. After all the bands performed, they finally brought all of us back out onstage for the results. We stood there in a big line while Mr. Swivel got up in front of the families again. “Well, well, well, isn’t this exciting?” he said, and you could just feel all the kids onstage grinding their teeth down to little nubs, waiting to hear who had won. I still wanted this. I wanted it so bad. Then maybe we could start to put the whole stupid fight behind us and just keep going. “And our winner today—” I mean, I could live with not winning if I had to. I just didn’t want to have to. “—is a band that showed the musical chops to stand toe-to-toe with the one and only Lulu and the Handbags—” “JUST SAY IT!” someone yelled in the audience, and everyone laughed. Mr. Swivel kept going. “As hard as this decision was, it was also unanimous,” he said. “So, without further delay, the winning band is…” I swallowed hard. It felt like choking down a rock. No pun intended. “Extra Creddit!” A big spotlight came on and Extra Creddit was high-fiving and jumping around, while the rest of us stood around like a giant pile of leftovers. And just like that… it was all over. Truthfully, I never thought we’d get as far as we did. But once that happened, I wanted to hear Jordy Swivel say “WE STINK IS THE WINNER!” as much as I’ve ever wanted anything. Now, the girls and I were just standing there with nothing to say. And I was starting to think that We

Where have you been?” I softly answered followed by a question. I wanted to laugh hysterically at the controlled calmness of it all, as if nothing at all had happened, as if he hadn’t resurrected himself after an eternity of absence. “New York. I have a good friend there. I found a job, a place. I had to- away from here; away from Bella; from you.” Swallowing, I clasped my hands together to stop from trembling and I said in a low, audible voice, “From me?” He sighed heavily. “I can’t love you, Helena. I still love Bella. And I suppose I could love another woman in another way at the same time, but not you.” “…but why?” I tried hard to keep my voice and gaze even. I glanced at the plain wedding ring on the third finger on his left hand, his wedding band. It was gleaming brightly in the firelight. I felt my heart plummet, like a disappointed child. Seeking the right words, he replied with a very soft voice, “It’s because I would always see you as an extension of her. I want to fall in love with you in separate way, the one that involves only us, uninfluenced by the past and our hurt. I can’t do that now and I can’t tell when I’ll be able to.

Where have you been?” I asked, almost a whisper. I wanted to laugh hysterically at the controlled calmness of it all, as if nothing at all had happened, as if he hadn’t resurrected himself after an eternity of absence. “New York. I have a good friend there. I found a job, a place. I had to- away from here; away from Bella; from you.” Swallowing, I clasped my hands together to stop from trembling and I said in a low, audible voice, “From me?” He sighed heavily. “I can’t love you, Helena. I still love Bella. And I suppose I could love another woman in another way at the same time, but not you.” “…but why?” I tried hard to keep my voice and gaze even. I glanced at the plain wedding ring on the third finger on his left hand, his wedding band. It was gleaming brightly in the firelight. I felt my heart plummet, like a disappointed child. Seeking the right words, he replied with a very soft voice, “It’s because I would always see you as an extension of her. I want to fall in love with you in separate way, the one that involves only us, uninfluenced by the past and our hurt. I can’t do that now and I can’t tell when I’ll be able to.

As a group of people, New Order acted like a divorcing husband and wife: we couldn’t even be bothered to hate one another any more. We’d simply stopped caring about each other. We played our guts out most nights – I like to think we didn’t let our band politics affect the performances – but as soon as we were offstage all our heart was lost again.

Driving 'round thought I saw you pass me My rearview mirror's playing tricks on me Cause you fade away Maybe I'm just hallucinating Cause my loneliness got the best of me And my heart's so weak Every day I want to pick up the phone And tell you that You're everything I need and more If only I could find you Like a cold Summer afternoon Like the snow coming down in June Like a wedding without a groom I'm missing you I'm the desert without the sand I'm the one without a band I'm a ring without a hand I'm missing you

You came on a raid the morning of your wedding?” the captain asked. The lawman, Waxillium Ladrian, stopped in the doorway. “In my defense, it wasn’t my idea.

Upon reaching her, he stilled, bewildered by her beauty. She wore a light blue gown with short cap sleeves and a plunging bodice; a band of lace stretched across the top was meant to disguise her bosom, but only served to tease him. Another narrow band of lace was wrapped around her delicate throat, and her golden locks had been swept up neatly. Tiny pearls had been tucked here and there within the curls piled atop her head. She looked elegant and refined and... and all he wanted to do was strip her naked and lick her from top to bottom.

The photographer will ask you what kind of music you want to play during the shoot. Remember that whatever you choose will be blasted through the loft and heard by an entire crew of people who are all so cool that the Board of Ed. officially closed school. Just murmur, “Hip-hop,” or make up the name of a hipster-sounding band and then act superior when they’ve never heard of it. “Do you guys have any Asphalt of Pinking? [disappointed] Really? [shrug] Whatever you want, then.” Sometimes they ask if you want to hook up your iPod for background music. Do not do this. It’s a trap. They’ll put it on shuffle, and no matter how much Beastie Boys or Velvet Underground you have on there, the following four tracks will play in a row: “We’d Like to Thank You Herbert Hoover” from Annie, “Hold On” by Wilson Phillips, “That’s What Friends Are For,” Various Artists, and “We’d Like to Thank You Herbert Hoover” from Annie.

Set against the wall, next to a closed steel door, was a huge control panel at which the Confessor sat in a wheeled chair. Her eyes were closed, but I could see them moving busily beneath the twitching lids as her hands roamed the console, pressing buttons, caressing dials. Around her forehead sat a metal band, a steel halo, from which a single wire draped to meet the central console. “It’s her?” Kip whispered at my side. I nodded. Unhurried, the Confessor spun in her chair to face us. “I wondered when I’d be seeing you again.” I opened my mouth to answer but saw that the Confessor hadn’t even glanced at me. Still staring at Kip, she stood, lifted off the metal band, narrowed her eyes, then smiled slowly. “We’d guessed there’d be damage, but it’s strange to see in person. And it’s worse than I’d realized. You really are a blank slate, aren’t you? Remarkable.

Riddick, it’s that we’re all basically the same. White or black, we’re all going to end up in the same place (well, one of two places), but most of us don’t like to think about death. And even fewer of us take the time to plan for it. Which is kind of funny when you consider the odds of it happening. By contrast, think about how much time we take planning for other stuff. We talk to people, check out things on Google, and weigh our options on everything from the type of wedding cake we want to which career looks most promising. We analyze our health benefits, test-drive cars, and peek in the crawl spaces of our houses. When children come along, we buy books about what to name them, how to toilet train them, and what we should do when they announce that they don’t need us anymore and they’re leaving home to follow a rock-’n’-roll band.

at least once in my life make something that would go around the world, create a lick that guitarists everywhere would play, be number one in America, be heard at weddings, bar mitzvahs, births, funerals, be adapted into the repertoire of brass bands in the north of England, and make my mum and dad proud.

New York,” I have a good friend there. I found a job, a place. I had to- away from here; away from Bella; from you.” Swallowing, I clasped my hands together to stop from trembling and I said in a low, audible voice, “From me?” He sighed heavily. “I can’t love you, Helena. I still love Bella. And I suppose I could love another woman in another way at the same time, but not you.” “…but why?” I tried hard to keep my voice and gaze even. I glanced at the plain wedding ring on the third finger on his left hand, his wedding band. It was gleaming brightly in the firelight. I felt my heart plummet, like a disappointed child. Seeking the right words, he replied with a very soft voice, “It’s because I would always see you as an extension of her. I want to fall in love with you in separate way, the one that involves only us, uninfluenced by the past and our hurt. I can’t do that now and I can’t tell when I’ll be able to.

The tape had not been rewound fully and the room filled immediately with music. Lauren Adler, celebrated cello soloist and Elodie’s mother, was in close-up on the screen. She hadn’t started yet, but was embracing the cello, its neck entwined with her own as the orchestra played behind her. She was very young in this video. Her chin was lifted, her eyes fixed on the conductor; long hair cascaded over her shoulders and down her back. She was waiting. The stage lights illuminated one side of her face, throwing the other into dramatic shadow. She was wearing a black satin dress with spaghetti straps, and her fine arms—deceptively strong—were bare. She wore no jewelry except for her simple gold wedding band; her fingers, resting on the strings, were poised, ready. The conductor was on-screen now, a man in a white bowtie and black jacket. He brought the orchestra to a pause and, after a few seconds of silence, nodded at Lauren Adler. She drew breath and then she and her cello began their dance. Amongst

He was ugly as a rain cloud on a wedding day

He sucks my ring finger, swirling his tongue round my wedding band. The greatest fetish of all.

A second method of rebalancing involves the creation of expansion bands. With this method of rebalancing, you create a window, such as plus or minus 5 percent from your desired allocation. You would rebalance whenever the asset class exceeds those bands. For example, if our desired equity allocation was 60 percent, we’d only need to rebalance whenever the equities in our portfolio fell below 55 percent or rose above 65 percent. However, if you plan to use the expansion band method and intend to rebalance as soon as your allocation touches either band, this would require more frequent monitoring of one’s portfolio than the predetermined time-interval method, especially in a volatile market. In addition, if strict expansion band rebalancing were to be done in a taxable account, it could create short-term capital gains which are taxed at a higher rate than long-term capital gains. Therefore, you may want to consider delaying your rebalancing until you have held the asset for more than 12 months.

Next the ruined panty hose came off. I removed my wide gold wedding band, tied it to the leg with the big hole, and carried it back to the bedroom. I stood on the bed and looped the hose around a blade on the ceiling fan. I hoped Drew would flip on the light switch and the thing would knock him upside the head.

It just so happens that the Neolithic dance craze coincided with one of the most significant transitions in the history of human life: from living in small bands of hunter-gatherers to large agrarian communities. No longer limited by what they could carry, our ancestors began to amass property, and this gave rise to social and economic stratification. By settling down, societies gained wealth and security, but along with these benefits came a host of destabilizing forces—inequality, jealousy, isolation, distrust—that hunter-gatherer societies had largely managed to avoid. At this profound inflection point in the evolution of human civilization, Garfinkel suggests, dancing may have been a joyful kind of glue that kept these new societies intact. To this day, the act of dancing or making music together has the power to connect us to others. You can see this at weddings, where two disparate groups of friends and relatives come together as one on the dance floor.

I’d sit there and listen and interject, “Yeah, that’s the one! I can work with that,” and I’d run into my room and get my pad of paper and we’d write a song. It’s the same formula that we use today to write songs, which is no formula. We just show up and start improvising, and I start collecting notes. That’s what separates us from a lot of other bands, because with us, all things are born from the jam. We go in and start wailing and see what works.

Seeing Addy in a bikini that showed her figure perfectly it made Celeste so turned on. Hearing her laugh echoed in the distance then appearing beside her was Harley, it made her stomach churned feeling that Harley touching her, jealousy stirred inside her. Watching Addy walk her way made her smile seeing that Harley finally went away and she had her woman. “Babe, come on, let's go play in the water with the kids and Harley.” She called me babe, I am her woman...oh my goodness...Addy is wearing my wedding band on her hand. Addy is mine, all mine, this is so real! Addy sat on her lap brushing Celeste hair out of the way and then kissed her with such sweet cherry taste. Addy ended the kiss with a smile, Celeste just sat there unsure of what to do next. Celeste Rayne

Guests came and went as they pleased, filling their gold-banded plates with hot breads, poached eggs on toast, smoked quail, fruit salad, and slices of charlotte russe made with sponge cake and Bavarian cream. Footmen crossed through the entrance hall as they headed outside with trays of coffee, tea, and iced champagne. Ordinarily this was the kind of event Cassandra would have enjoyed to no end. She loved a nice breakfast, especially when there was a little something sweet to finish off, and charlotte russe was one of her favorite desserts. However, she was in no mood to make small talk with anyone. Besides, she'd eaten far too many sweets lately... the extra jam tart at teatime yesterday, and all the fruit ices between dinner courses last night, and that entire éclair, stuffed with rich almond cream and roofed with a crisp layer of icing. And one of the little decorative marzipan flowers from a platter of puddings.

Ari [Up] hides nothing from our audiences: if she’s in a bad mood, she shows it, and if we happen to be on stage when she’s not happy, she just does a shit gig. There’s no You’ve paid money to see this so I’m going to give you a good time, or I’m not going to let the band down – she’s just grumpy and uncommunicative. This is a good thing in many ways, we’re against faking it, we tell it like it is. People in bands are just like the audience: they have good days and bad days, we’re not pantomime or theatre, we’re no different to anyone else. We don’t see ourselves as entertainers, trying to make the audience forget their troubles for forty minutes. We see ourselves as warriors. We’d rather people confronted their anger and dissatisfaction and did something about it. Like Luis Buñuel said, ‘I’m not here to entertain you, I’m here to make you feel uncomfortable.

I wonkily pitched a tent and in the name of ‘homely’ décor affixed to its interior an enormous poster of (who else?) Alien Sex Fiend. The greatest thrill that weekend was interviewing Half Man Half Biscuit – the folk-rock wits from the Wirral whose surreal-pop masterpiece Back In The DHSS had dominated the indie village in 1985 – in the back of their fag-fumed Transit van. The Smash Hits Glastonbury Team 1986 lasted one night out in the field before heading off mid-Saturday night for a delicious meal and a fluffy bed in a nearby swish hotel, photographs of which then became ‘a dream sequence’ printed in ver Hits, pretending we’d been (as if!) lying in the swamp for days.