Wedding Detail Quotes

Life has a way of going in circles. Ideally, it would be a straight path forward––we'd always know where we were going, we'd always be able to move on and leave everything else behind. There would be nothing but the present and the future. Instead, we always find ourselves where we started. When we try to move ahead, we end up taking a step back. We carry everything with us, the weight exhausting us until we want to collapse and give up. We forget things we try to remember. We remember things we'd rather forget. The most frightening thing about memory is that it leaves no choice. It has mastered an incomprehensible art of forgetting. It erases, it smudges, it fills in blank spaces with details that don't exist. But however we remember it––or choose to remember it––the past is the foundation that holds our lives in place. Without its support, we'd have nothing for guidance. We spend so much time focused on what lies ahead, when what has fallen behind is just as important. What defines us isn't where we're going, but where we've been. Although there are places and people we will never see again, and although we move on and let them go, they remain a part of who we are. There are things that will never change, things we will carry along with us always. But as we venture into the murky future, we must find our strength by learning to leave things behind.

It's when you stop planning every last detail that you discover the fun in life.

If we were given one word of information in our entire history, how we'd treasure it! how we'd pore over ever syllable, divining it's meaning, arguing its importance; how we'd examine it and wring every lesson we could from it. Yet today we have trillions of words, tidal waves of information and the smallest detail of every action our government and businesses take is easily available to us at the touch of a button. And yet...we ignore it, and learn nothing from it. One day we'll die of voluntary ignorance

Ah, Belikov," said Abe, shaking Dimitri's hand. "I'd been hoping we'd run into each other. I'd really like to get to know you better. Maybe we can set aside some time to talk, learn more about life, love, et cetera. Do you like to hunt? You seem like a hunting man. That's what we should do sometime. I know a great spot in the woods. Far, far away. We could make a day of it. I've certainly got a lot of question to ask you. A lot of things I'd like to tell you." I shot a panicked look at my mother, silently begging her to stop this. Abe had spent a good deal of time talking to Adrian when we dated, explaining in vivid and gruesome detail exactly how Abe expected his daughter to be treated. I did not want Abe taking Dimitri off alone into the wilderness, especially if firearms were involved. "Actually," said my mum casually."I'd like to come along. I also have a number of questions-especially about when you two were back at St. Vladimir's." "Don't you guys have somewhere to be?" I asked hastily. "We're about to start." That, at least, was true. Nearly everyone was in formation, and the crowd was quieting. "of course," said Abe. To my astonishment, he brushed a kiss over my forehead before stepping away. "I'm glad you're back." Then, with a wink, he said to Dimitri:"Looking forward to our chat." "Run," I said when they were gone. "If you slip out now, maybe they won't notice. Go back to Siberia.

He went plof and vanished. Onomatopoeia can be so very handy. Imagine if we’d had to provide a detailed description of someone disappearing. It would have taken us at least ten pages. Plof.

There, just beyond his open palm, was our mother’s face. I wasn’t expecting it. We hadn’t requested a viewing, and the memorial service was closed-coffin. We got it anyway. They’d shampooed and waved her hair and made up her face. They’d done a great job, but I felt taken, as if we’d asked for the basic carwash and they’d gone ahead and detailed her. Hey, I wanted to say, we didn’t order this. But of course I said nothing. Death makes us helplessly polite.

I trail away into silence. I've just shared details of my condom use with my son's teacher. I'm not sure how that happened.

Being older, I began to understand the lyrics. At the beginning, it sounds like a guy is trying to get his girlfriend to secretly meet up with him at midnight. But it’s an odd place for a tryst, a hanging tree, where a man was hung for murder. The murderer’s lover must have had something to do with the killing, or maybe they were just going to punish her anyway, because his corpse called out for her to flee. That’s weird obviously, the talking-corpse bit, but it’s not until the third verse that “The Hanging Tree” begins to get unnerving. You realize the singer of the song is the dead murderer. He’s still in the hanging tree. And even though he told his lover to flee, he keeps asking if she’s coming to meet him. The phrase Where I told you to run, so we’d both be free is the most troubling because at first you think he’s talking about when he told her to flee, presumably to safety. But then you wonder if he meant for her to run to him. To death. In the final stanza, it’s clear that that’s what he was waiting for. His lover, with her rope necklace, hanging dead next to him in the tree. I used to think the murderer was the creepiest guy imaginable. Now, with a couple of trips to the Hunger Games under my belt, I decide not to judge him without knowing more details. Maybe his lover was already sentenced to death and he was trying to make it easier. To let her know he’d be waiting. Or maybe he thought the place he was leaving her was really worse than death. Didn’t I want to kill Peeta with that syringe to save him from the Capitol? Was that really my only option? Probably not, but I couldn’t think of another at the time.

The thing about a wedding is: you don’t remember the vows. You forget them the second after your mouth utters the sacred words, because your brain needs the room to catalog every detail of your partner’s face. All of my concentration is on him. Everything is wonderful. Every day is the same. Every day is like our wedding day.

In the church I felt really angry when all the people came to shake our hands. This was the morning before the day of the funeral. We were sitting in the front row. We’d never seen these people when she was alive. I was angry they hadn’t helped us. Or her. I didn’t know who half of them were. And the ones I knew made me feel angrier. They’d known. Not the details. But they’d known. And they hadn’t done a thing, but came now to shake our hands and tell us how sorry they were for our loss. I was tempted to ask, Which loss in particular? We’ve more chance of actually raising our mother from the dead some Easter Sunday than ever getting back what we really lost. Which is ourselves, years before now.

The only bit I have pictured in any detail is the music (maybe 'The Book of Love' by the Magnetic Fields. Or Johnny Cash's 'It Ain't Me, Babe'). It doesn't matter if the selection is slow or fast, but couples shouldn't scramble to select it. If you have ever gone dancing or on a road trip or had a romantic bout of serenaded sex on a winter night, you should have a few to pick from. If not, you probably shouldn't be getting married.

The Me Too movement, started by Tarana Burke, made visible the overwhelming number of situations where assault and harassment happen, the way violence is embedded in our day-to-day lives, pointed out countless conversations and gestures we’d been taught to write off as insignificant. Me Too is a tail-end phrase, meant to be tacked on, in addition to. It is inextricable from a greater mass, immune to isolation. By stating those words, you didn’t have to divulge your full story in graphic detail, you just gave a nod, raised your hand. Speaking up didn’t force you to step into a spotlight, only helped you contribute to a glowing, innumerable whole. The Me Too movement offered the relief of finally being given a chance to set the story down, to see what it felt like to walk around, breathe, shake your arms out a little, without it.

Whether we do it consciously or subconsciously, we tend to organize our lives to display our identity as accurately as possible. Our lifestyle choices often reveal our values, or at least what we’d like people to perceive as our values…as we make our everyday choices, we continuously calculate not just which choices best match who we are and what we want but also how those choices will be interpreted by others. We look for cues in our social environment to figure out what others think of this or that, which can require being sensitive to the most localized and up-to-date details of what a particular choice means.

They had paused before the table on which the bride’s jewel were displayed, and Lily’s heart gave an envious throb as she caught the refraction of light from their surfaces – the milky gleam of perfectly matched pearls, the flash of rubies relieved against contrasting velvet, the intense blue rays of sapphires kindled into light by surrounding diamonds: all these precious tints enhanced and deepened by the varied art of their setting. The glow of the stones warmed Lily’s veins like wine. More completely than any other expression of wealth they symbolized the life she longed to lead, the life of fastidious aloofness and refinement in which every detail should have the finish of a jewel, and the whole form a harmonious setting to her own jewel-like rareness.

Gail loved to talk about how stressed she was. She would do this thing where we'd be walking in the hallway, and suddenly she'd stop in her tracks, rub both of her temples with her index and middle fingers, and theatrically let out a deep guttural moan: "Mooooog." "Mooog. Minz. I am just so stressed out," she'd say. "I just want to go home, open a bottle of red wine, draw up a hot bath, light some candles and listen to David Gray." A note about me: I do not think stress is a legitimate topic of conversation, in public anyway. No one ever wants to hear how stressed out anyone else is, because most of the time everyone is stressed out. Going on and on in detail about how stressed out I am isn't conversation. It'll never lead anywhere. No one is going to say, "Wow, Mindy, you really have it especially bad. I have heard some stories of stress, but this just takes the cake.

It probably didn't help that we kept being taken on holiday to monasteries. Not many kids there, just monks. Although you do find the best reverb in monastic chapels. I have a theory that the religious experience is actually based on reverb - which is why outdoor weddings always seem weird. God isn't in the details, he's in the echo.

I don’t need all the fuss, all the details, all the trimmings. All, essentially, that we do here. Emma does, and Parker will, and God knows Mac’s gotten into it.” “She has, and I think it’s been a surprise to her.” “But I don’t. I don’t need a ring or a license, or a spectacular white dress. It’s not marriage so much, or at all really, that matters. It’s the promise. It’s the knowing someone wants me to be part of his life. Someone loves me, that I’m the one for him. That’s not just enough, it’s everything.

Everett and his mom broke up with me,thank you very much." "You shouldn't have made out with him in his mother's scrapbooking room," Liz said sagely. "We're seventeen,"I snapped, "and Everett and I had been dating for two months when that happened.What were we supposed to do,eat dinner with his family and keep our hands on the table where everyone could see them?I mean, you and Davis are Mr. and Mrs. Polite Reserve, and even you were macking in the hot tub an hour ago." I picked up a pink fuzzy pillow that had fallen from he bed and threw it at Liz. "You were?" Chloe gushed. "You what? Hello,I need the details of Liz and Davis." "Hayden!" Liz squealed, ducking behind Chloe. "I'm not saying you shouldn't have made out with Everett.I'm saying you shouldn't have done it in his mother's scrapbooking room.Location, location,location.You might have disorganized her supplies.Some people are very particular about their chipboard getting mixed up with their cardstock." I closed my eyes,inhaled through my nose,and felt my lungs fill with air. My blood spread the life-giving oxygen throughout my body. "Watch out,"Chloe whispered to Liz. "She's doing yoga." My eyes snapped open.So much for controlling my temper. "Why the hell didn't you tell me Nick's mother left before I went into the sauna with him?" I hollered at Chloe. "We didn't know he was here!" Liz came to Chloe's defense. "And if we'd warned you about him before he got here," Chloe explained, "You would have known he was coming.We didn't want you to leave.The two of you are surprisingly hard to throw together,let me tell you." "I'm not buying it," I informed Chloe. "You were distracted.You had your mind on taking inventory." Liz giggled,turned red, and fell back to the pillows. "Taking inventory requires enormous concentration!" Chloe said with a straight face,but she was blushing,too.

If we want to We will become a people, if we want to, when we learn that we are not angels, and that evil is not the prerogative of others We will become a people when we stop reciting a prayer of thanksgiving to the sacred nation every time a poor man finds something to eat for his dinner We will become a people when we can sniff out the sultan’s gatekeeper and the sultan without a trial We will become a people when a poet writes an erotic description of a dancer’s belly We will become a people when we forget what the tribe tells us, when the individual recognizes the importance of small details We will become a people when a writer can look up at the stars without saying: ‘Our country is loftier and more beautiful!’ We will become a people when the morality police protect a prostitute from being beaten up in the streets We will become a people when the Palestinian only remembers his flag on the football pitch, at camel races, and on the day of the Nakba We will become a people, if we want to, when the singer is allowed to chant a verse of Surat al-Rahman at a mixed wedding reception We will become a people when we respect the right, and the wrong.

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?

This smorgasbord of eyes brings with it a dizzying medley of visual Umwelten. Animals might see crisp detail at a distance, or nothing more than blurry blotches of light and shade. They might see perfectly well in what we’d call darkness, or go instantly blind in what we’d call brightness. They might see in what we’d deem slow motion or time-lapse. They might see in two directions at once, or in every direction at once. Their vision might get more or less sensitive over the span of a single day. Their Umwelt might change as they get older. Jakob’s colleague Nate Morehouse has shown that jumping spiders are born with their lifetime’s supply of light-detecting cells, which get bigger and more sensitive with age. “Things would get brighter and brighter,” Morehouse tells me. For a jumping spider, getting older “is like watching the sun rising.

He became hyperalert at any gathering like this, saw all the tiny details of normal life humming right along. This was when the bombs came and ripped through crowds. At funerals and weddings and religious celebrations.

friendship nostalgia i miss the days when my friends knew every mundane detail about my life and i knew every ordinary detail about theirs adulthood has starved me of that consistency​ ​that us those walks around the block those long conversations when we were too lost in the moment to care what time it was when we won-and celebrated when we failed and celebrated even harder when we were just kids now we have our very important jobs that fill up our very busy schedules we have to compare calendars just to plan coffee dates that one of us will eventually cancel because adulthood is being too exhausted to leave our apartments most days i miss belonging to a group of people bigger than myself it was that belonging that made life easier to live how come no one warned us about how we'd graduate and grow apart after everything we'd been through how come no one said one of life's biggest challenges would be trying to stay connected to the people that make us feel alive no one talks about the hole a friend can leave inside you when they go off to make their dreams come true in college we used to stay up till 4 in the morning dreaming of what we'd do the moment we started earning real paychecks now we finally have the money to cross everything off our bucket lists but those lists are collecting dust in some lost corridor of our minds sometimes when i get lonely ​i​ still search for them i'd give anything to go back and do the foolish things we used to do i feel the most present in your presence when we're laughing so hard the past slides off our shoulders and worries of the future slip away the truth is​ ​i couldn't survive without my friends they know exactly what i need before i even know that i need the way we hold each other is just different so forget grabbing coffee i don't want to have another dinner where we sit across from each other at a table reminiscing about old times when we have so much time left to make new memories with how about you go pack your bags and i'll pack mine you take a week off work i'll grab my keys and let's go for ride we've got years of catching up to do

The one thing I hate about the wedding industry is that it focuses so much on the one day. People become obsessed with details, enraged with those they love, worn out from planning a few hours of a day that may not mean that much in the grand scheme of things. Even as I’m designing a dress that will cost thousands and thousands of dollars, I’ve always tried to work that message in. Don’t forget that after this day comes thousands of other days. Be careful. Cherish each other. Don’t blow it.

I love the truth my cameras show. We can't trust our memories. They gloss over details, change words to ones we wish we'd used, and bury the secrets we try to hide. Photos give us clear memories and show us what really happened. The camera never lies, you know.

Side by side, their faces blurred, The earl and countess lie in stone, Their proper habits vaguely shown As jointed armour, stiffened pleat, And that faint hint of the absurd - The little dogs under their feet. Such plainness of the pre-Baroque Hardly involves the eye, until It meets his left-hand gauntlett, still Clasped empty in the other, and One sees with a sharp tender shock His hand withdrawn, holding her hand. They would not think to lie so long, Such faithfulness in effigy Was just a detail friends would see, A sculptor's sweet commissioned grace Thrown off in helping to prolong The Latin names around the base. They would not guess how early in Their supine stationary voyage The air would change to soundless damage, Turn the old tenantry away; How soon succeeding eyes being To look, not read. Rigidly, they Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light Each summer thronged the grass. A bright Litter of birdcalls strewed the same Bone-littered ground. And up the paths The endless altered people came Washing at their identity. Now helpless in the hollow Of an unarmorial age, a trough Of smoke in slow suspended skeins Above their scrap of history, Only an attitude remains. Time has transfigured them into Untruth. The stone fidelity They hardly meant has come to be Their final blazon and to prove Our almost-instinct almost-true: What will survive of us is love. - An Arundel Tomb

The kid looked at me as if I’d just told a joke about his mother. ‘I don’t know, Mr Dunne, I’m sure they’re getting the details right now. The point is, your wife is safe.’ Hurray. Kid stole my line. I spotted Rand and Marybeth through the doorway of the room where we’d given our first press conference six weeks ago. They were leaning in to each other, as always, Rand kissing the top of Marybeth’s head, Marybeth nuzzling him back, and I felt such a keen sense of outrage that I almost threw a stapler at them. You two worshipful, adoring assholes created that thing down the hall and set her loose on the world. Lo, how jolly, what a perfect monster! And do they get punished? No, not a single person had come forth to question their characters; they’d experienced nothing but an outpouring of love and support, and Amy would be restored to them and everyone would love her more. My wife was an insatiable sociopath before. What would she become now? Step carefully, Nick, step very carefully.

Though Beckett remained confined to the same claustrophobic hotel room that had housed him for weeks now, he’d attended the wedding in every sense but literally. He dressed for the occasion, and Eve helped him get his bow tie just right before she left, promising once again that her hummingbird pin would send him every detail it could. Riveted to the live feed from Eve’s transmitter on his hotel room TV, Beckett stood when the congregation stood, and he sat when they sat. And when he noticed that the camera had bounced even lower, Beckett knelt. As Kyle came fluttering down the aisle in her simple blue dress, Beckett swore aloud in the empty room. “Shit, Fairy Princess, you’re an angel.

Ashton, I’m running over to Neil’s house. I’ll be back in a bit!” Our wedding invitations arrived. They’re beautiful, everything I could’ve hoped for. I can’t wait to show him. Not that he’s really into the details, but we spent a lot of time choosing these. It’ll be such a relief when we finally move in together and stop all this back and forth. Ashton

You could be my goddess queen. Together, we’d build the largest settlement on earth! With your crops and my sun, we’d feed thousands. Between your thorns and my Bagmen, we’d maintain order.” Order. Jack had wanted the same thing. I absently said, “That is something to think about. Well, except for the goddess queen part.” “Don’t knock that part, pequeña. It’s my favorite detail about our future. We would do our duty and repopulate the world. Because we are givers. I, myself, would be devoted to giving.” I quirked a brow at him. “No kids for me. Would you really bring children into a world like this?” Eyes alight with playfulness, he said, “No. It was just an excuse to get in your pants.” “Ugh. Behave. Or you’ll get a vine where the sun don’t shine.

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?

I worried we’d miss each other,” Arin said. “I went to your villa first, but was told you had come here.” “Where’ve you been?” Cheat was in an ugly mood. “Scouting the mountain pass.” When this deepened Cheat’s frown, Ain added, “Since that’s the path the reinforcements will probably take.” “Of course. Obviously.” “And I know just what to do to them.” A glimmer stole into Cheat’s face. Arin sent for Sarsine, and when she came, he asked her to bring Kestrel. “I need her opinion.” Sarsine hesitated. “But--” Cheat wagged a finger at her. “I’m sure you run this house well, but can’t you see that your cousin’s bursting at the seams with a plan that might save our hides? Don’t bore him with domestic details, like who’s squabbling with whom…or whether your special charge isn’t feeling social. Just get the girl.

Live every day as if you might be struck blind--that was the rule I made for myself now. In those first few days after the quarantine was lifted, we went around marveling at the smallest things, as if the Spanish flu had rendered us all blind & we'd suddenly gained our sight again. Every detail seemed suddenly as sharp as if seen for the first time. Life returned to SF, and it had never been more precious.

This problem can be illustrated with a mock analogy. Imagine in your golden years you are accused of murdering a child many decades ago and put on trial for it. The prosecution claims you murdered a little girl in the middle of a public wedding in front of thousands of guests. But as evidence all they present is a religious tract written by ‘John’ which lays out a narrative in which the wedding guests watch you kill her. Who is this John? The prosecution confesses they don’t know. When did he write this narrative? Again, unknown. Probably thirty or forty years after the crime, maybe even sixty. Who told John this story? Again, no one knows. He doesn’t say. So why should this even be admissible as evidence? Because the narrative is filled with accurate historical details and reads like an eyewitness account. Is it an eyewitness account? Well, no, John is repeating a story told to him. Told to him by an eyewitness? Well . . . we really have no way of knowing how many people the story passed through before it came to John and he wrote it down. Although he does claim an eyewitness told him some of the details. Who is that witness? He doesn’t say. I see. So how can we even believe the story is in any way true if it comes from unknown sources through an unknown number of intermediaries? Because there is no way the eyewitnesses to the crime, all those people at the wedding, would have allowed John to lie or make anything up, even after thirty to sixty years, so there is no way the account can be fabricated. If that isn’t obviously an absurd argument to you, then you didn’t understand what has just been said and you need to read that paragraph again until you do. Because

Course they wouldn't have all the details, like whether or not they played in squares of sunlight on their walls, if they wore spiders on their hats, if they ate hamburger every other day, if they had ever made love in a yellow canola field tenderly or passionately or awkwardly. If they preferred dresses or pants, if they shaved their legs or didn't, or if they preferred red peppers to green. Stuff was happening. Even in Half-a-Life. Little things, but it all added up to something big. To our lives. It was happening all along. These were our lives. This was it. My mom was hanging on to the lives, the recorded lives, of these women. We might escape, but what if we didn't? What if we lived in Half-a-Life all our lives, poor, lonely, proud, happy? If we did, we did. These were our lives. If we couldn't escape them, we'd have to live them.

So a contemporary wedding is like the Olympic Games, a spectacle of detailed research and preparation but lasts only a short time. Even if it all goes according to plan, a wedding is over in a day, much of it spent being ordered around by photographers, and when the audience is gone and the costumes returned to their boxes (never again to be taken out), an ordinary man and woman look to each other and think: 'Is this all it is?

Here," Trey says, fumbling for his cell phone on the bedside table. "You should call me. Ben turns and looks at him, a small smile still playing around his lips. "Oh, should I? What's your number?" Trey tells him, and Ben enters it into is phone, and then he takes Trey's and enters his number. "Okay," Ben says a little cautiously, "well, we'd love to have you come for a meeting. Are you seriously considering U of C? Even after what happened?" "Oh yeah. I totally am. "What's your name again?" Ben laughs and tells him. I frown. Trey knows U of C is a private school. Mucho big bucks. But hey... there's always the power of morphine to make you forget about the minor details of your life, like living above a restaurant that struggles monthly to pay bills, and considering returning to the place where some lunatic outsider came in and fucking shot you because you're gay.

We’re just discussing details of Bronte’s wedding.” Rose’s lips curved as she walked toward him. “Gentlemen discussing wedding details? I think the world must be ending.” Picking up his glass, she took a drink of lemonade. It was an innocent, innocuous gesture-and one of the most arousing things he’d ever seen. Archer chuckled, seemingly obviously to Grey’s dumb state. “Lucifer is putting on his ice skates as we speak. And on that note, I’m afraid it is time for me to take my leave. I promised Mama I would escort both she and Bronte to the ball tonight, and I have yet to find a suitable mask.” “I look forward to trying to ascertain your identity this evening,” Rose remarked with a smile that seemed only slightly strained. Regardless, the sight filled Grey with unease. “As do I.” Archer bowed over her hand before leaning down to whisper, “Arse,” in Grey’s ear and punched him in the arm. Hard. Sometimes, Grey hated his brother.

Then, somehow, P. J. Proby became embroiled in the conversation. I’d love to be able to tell you what the trouser-splitting, ponytail-wearing enfant terrible of mid-sixties pop had to say regarding my impending wedding, its potential cancellation and, indeed, whether or not I was a homosexual, but by then I was incredibly pissed, and the exact details are a little hazy, although at some point I must have given in and conceded that John was right, at least about the marriage.

I discussed in detail what to expect over the next couple of days: what the surgery entailed; how we'd shave only a small strip of her hair to keep it cosmetically appealing; how her arm would likely get a little weaker afterward but then stronger again; that if all went well, she'd be out of the hospital in three days; that this was just the first step in a marathon; that getting rest was important; and that I didn't expect them to retain anything I had just said and we'd go over everything again.

We'd need to leave fast. The biggest hurdle would be finding a ship. Passages across the Atlantic didn't always work out. The Black Sea wasn't easy to cross either. The ancient Greeks called it Pontos Axenos, the Hostile Sea. In our day and age, Greek myths were lifesaving required reading, and I'd read enough of them to know that the Black Sea wasn't a fun place. "Where on the Black Sea?" "Georgia." Colchis. Bodyguard detail in the land of the Golden Fleece, dragons, and witches, where the Argonauts had sailed and nearly died.

In other words, FDR understood that to be effective, governance couldn't be so antiseptic that it set aside the basic stuff of politics: You had to sell your program, reward supporters, punch back against opponents, and amplify the facts that helped your cause while fudging the details that didn't. I found myself wondering whether we'd somehow turned a virtue into a vice; whether, trapped in my own high-mindedness, I'd failed to tell the American people a story they could believe in; and whether having ceded the political narrative to my critics, I was going to be able to wrest it back.

It was many hours before I was cognizant of what we’d done; days (months? hours?) before I began to comprehend the magnitude of it. I suppose we’d simply thought about it too much, talked of it too often, until the scheme ceased to be a thing of the imagination and took on a horrible life of its own… Never, never once in any immediate sense, did it occur to me that any of this was anything but a game. An air of unreality suffused even the most workaday details, as if we were plotting not the death of a friend but the itinerary of a fabulous trip that I, for one, never quite believed we’d ever really take.

We cannot know the ways in which God will weave together all the details of human history into the most beautiful story that has ever been told. We know that He will do exactly that, but we don’t know how He will do it. And we don’t even know the nature of most of the subplots. We know that Christ crucified and risen is at the center of the great story, because He has told us that part, and we know that the story is a comedy, not a tragedy. The story begins in a garden, and ends with a garden city. It begins with a simple wedding in a garden, and it ends with a magnificent royal wedding in that garden city.

If I were a modern writing about a modern young woman I would have to do her wedding night in grisly detail. The custom of the country and the times would demand a description, preferable "comic," of foreplay, lubrication, penetration, and climax and in deference to the accepted opinions about Victorian love, I would have to abort the climax and end the wedding night in tears and desolate comfortings. But I don't know. I have a good deal of confidence in both Susan Burling and the man she married. I imagine they worked it out without the need of any scientific lubricity and with even less need to make their privacies public.

Lillian kept her face against Marcus’s shoulder. As mortified as she had been on the day that he had seen her playing rounders in her knickers, this was ten times worse. She would never be able to face Simon Hunt again, she thought, and groaned. “It’s all right,” Marcus murmured. “He’ll keep his mouth shut.” “I don’t care whom he tells,” Lillian managed to say. “I’m not going to marry you. Not if you compromised me a hundred times.” “Lillian,” he said, a sudden tremor of laughter in his voice, “it would be my greatest pleasure to compromise you a hundred times. But first I would like to know what I’ve done this morning that is so unforgivable.” “To begin with, you talked to my father.” His brows lifted a fraction of an inch. “That offended you?” “How could it not? You’ve behaved in the most highhanded manner possible by going behind my back and trying to arrange things with my father, without one word to me—” “Wait,” Marcus said sardonically, rolling to his side and sitting up in an easy movement. He reached out with a broad hand to pull Lillian up to face him. “I was not being high-handed in meeting with your father. I was adhering to tradition. A prospective bridegroom usually approaches a woman’s father before he makes a formal proposal.” A gently caustic note entered his voice as he added, “Even in America. Unless I’ve been misinformed?” The clock on the mantel dispensed a slow half-minute before Lillian managed a grudging reply. “Yes, that’s how it’s usually done. But I assumed that you and he had already made a betrothal agreement, regardless of whether or not it was what I wanted—” “Your assumption was incorrect. We did not discuss any details of a betrothal, nor was anything mentioned about a dowry or a wedding date. All I did was ask your father for permission to court you.” Lillian stared at him with surprised chagrin, until another question occurred to her. “What about your discussion with Lord St. Vincent just now?” Now it was Marcus’s turn to look chagrined. “That was high-handed,” he admitted.

The continuing struggle to align word and action, our heartfelt desires with a workable plan—didn’t self-esteem finally depend on just this? It was that belief which had led me into organizing, and it was that belief which would lead me to conclude, perhaps for the final time, that notions of purity—of race or of culture—could no more serve as the basis for the typical black American’s self-esteem than it could for mine. Our sense of wholeness would have to arise from something more fine than the bloodlines we’d inherited. It would have to find root in Mrs. Crenshaw’s story and Mr. Marshall’s story, in Ruby’s story and Rafiq’s; in all the messy, contradictory details of our experience.

up for it, and I’m sorry. That’s not enough. You’re going to search until you find something, and you’re going to tell me. Right now. Sheri. Please. You do it now or we’re gone. You give me some way to have some sympathy for you as I stand in this nice house, all lovingly redone, and think about the broken house you left us in, with its leaky roof and no heat and no insulation and nothing. Tell your sob story about the fucking war, whatever it was that my mom thought you were so broken about. My grandfather closed his eyes. No story ever explains. But I’ll give you what you want. I think I know the moment you want, because I made a kind of decision. There was some change. But I can’t start the story at the beginning. I’ve never been able to do that. I have to start at the end and then go back, and it doesn’t finish, because you can go back forever. Do it, my mother said. I don’t think Caitlin should hear. She can hear. Okay. You’re her mother. That’s right. So I won’t give the awful details, but I was lying in a pile of bodies. My friends. The closest friends I’ve ever had. Not piled there on purpose, but just the way it ended up because I had been working on the axle, lying on the ground. And the thing is, the war was over. It had been over for days, and we were laughing and a bit drunk, telling jokes. There was something unbearable about the fact that we’d all be going our separate ways now. The truth is that we didn’t want to leave. We wanted the war over, but we didn’t want what we had together to be over. I think we all had some sense that this was the closest we’d ever be to anyone, and that our families might feel like strangers now. So that’s it? You couldn’t be a father and husband because you weren’t done being a buddy? No. No. It’s the way it happened, in a moment that was supposed to be safe. After every moment of every day in fear for years, we were finally safe, and that’s when the slugs came and I watched my friends torn apart and landing on me, dying. That’s the point. We were supposed to be safe. And with your mother, too, I was supposed to be safe. A wife, a family. The story doesn’t make any sense unless you know every moment before it, every time we thought we were going to die, all the times we weren’t safe. You can’t just be told about that. You have to feel it, how long one night can be, and then all of them put together, hundreds of nights and then more, and there’s a kind of deal that’s made, a deal with god. You do certain terrible things, you endure things, because there’s a bargain made. And then when god says the deal’s off later, after you’ve already paid, and you see your friends ripped through, yanked like puppets on a day that was safe, and you find out your wife is going to die young, and you get to watch her dying, something that again is going to be for years, hundreds of nights more, all deals are off.

breath, life after seven decades plus three years is a lot of breathing. seventy three years on this earth is a lot of taking in and giving out, is a life of coming from somewhere and for many a bunch of going nowhere. how do we celebrate a poet who has created music with words for over fifty years, who has showered magic on her people, who has redefined poetry into a black world exactness thereby giving the universe an insight into darkroads? just say she interprets beauty and wants to give life, say she is patient with phoniness and doesn’t mind people calling her gwen or sister. say she sees the genius in our children, is visionary about possibilities, sees as clearly as ray charles and stevie wonder, hears like determined elephants looking for food. say that her touch is fine wood, her memory is like an african roadmap detailing adventure and clarity, yet returning to chicago’s south evans to record the journey. say her voice is majestic and magnetic as she speaks in poetry, rhythms, song and spirited trumpets, say she is dark skinned, melanin rich, small-boned, hurricane-willed, with a mind like a tornado redefining the landscape. life after seven decades plus three years is a lot of breathing. gwendolyn, gwen, sister g has not disappointed our expectations. in the middle of her eldership she brings us vigorous language, memory, illumination. she brings breath. (Quality: Gwendolyn Brooks at 73)

Calvin had nodded excitedly, explaining in detail Elizabeth’s work and habits and laugh and everything else he loved about her. But in a more somber tone, he also explained that although he and Elizabeth spent all of their free time together—they lived together, they ate together, they drove back and forth to work together—it didn’t feel like enough. It wasn’t that he couldn’t function without her, he told Four Seat, but rather that he didn’t see the point of functioning without her. “I don’t know what to call it,” he’d confided following a full examination. “Am I addicted to her? Am I dependent in some sick sort of way? Could I have a brain tumor?” “Jesus, Six, it’s called happiness,” Four Seat explained. “When’s the wedding?

Don't you think Rycca would like to hear about Hadding, the warrior Odin rescued from his enemies? Indeed, so would I for as I recall, the last time I asked about him, you told the story in great haste without the scantiest details." There was a gleam in her eyes that Rycca had come to understand meant she was up to something, but she had no idea what might lurk behind so seemingly innocent a suggestion. Dragon grinned and looked at his brother, who leaned back in his chair and laughed. When Rycca appeared puzzled, Cymbra said, "I confess, when I noticed how attentive you are to Dragon's stories I was reminded of myself. At Wolf's and my wedding feast, I persuaded Dragon to tell a great many tales. He was the soul of patience." "He was?" Wolf interjected. "I was the one with the patience. My dear brother knew perfectly well I was sitting there contemplating various possibilities for doing away with him and he enjoyed every moment of it." "Now how could I have known that, brother?" Dragon challenged. "Just because the wine goblet you were holding was twisted into a very odd shape?" "It was that or your neck, brother," Wolf replied pleasantly. He looked at Rycca reassuringly. "Don't worry, if I hadn't already forgiven him, that sword he gave me would force me to." "It is a magnificent blade," Dragon agreed. "They both are. Every smithy in Christendom is trying to work out what the Moors are doing but..." "It's got something to do with the temperature of the steel," Wolf said. "And with the folding. They fold more than we do, possibly hundreds of times." "Hundreds,really? Then the temperature has to be very high or they couldn't pound that thin. I wonder how much carbon they're adding-" Cymbra sighed. To Rycca, she said, "We might as well retire.They can talk about this for hours." Wolf heard her and laughed. He draped an arm over her chair, pulling her closer. Into her ear, he said something that made the redoubtable Cymbra blush. She cleared her throat. "Oh, well, in that case, you might as well retire, too." Standing up quickly, she took her husband's rugged hand in her much smaller and fairer one. "Good night, Rycca, good night, Dragon. Sleep well." This last was said over her shoulder as she tugged Wolf from the hall. Her obvious intent startled Rycca, who even now could not think herself as being so bold, but it made both the Hakonson brothers laugh. "As you may gather," Dragon said in the aftermath of the couple's departure, "my brother and his wife are happily wed.

You have a what?" Four Seat had said, surprised. "A girlfriend? Well, good for you, Six!" he said, slapping him on the back. "About bloody time!" Calvin hade nodded excitedly, explaining in detail Elizabeth's work and habits and laugh and everything else he loved about her. But in a more somber tone, he also explained that although he and Elizabeth spent all of their free time together - they lived together, they ate together, they drove back and forth to work together - it didn't feel like enough. It wasnt that he couldn't function without her, he told Four Seat, but rather that he didn't see the point of functioning without her. "I don't know what to call it," he confided following a full examination. "Am I addicted to her? Am I dependent in some sick sort of way? Could I have a brain tumor?" "Jesus, Six, it's called happiness," Four Seat explained. "When's the wedding?

I felt as though the temple curtain had been drawn aside without warning and I, a goggle-eyed stranger somehow mistaken for an initiate, had been ushered into the sanctuary to witness the mystery of mysteries. I saw a phantasmagoria, a living tapestry of forms jeweled in minute detail. They danced together like guests at a rowdy wedding. They changed their shapes. Within themselves they juggled geometrical shards like the fragments in a kaleidoscope. They sent forth extensions of themselves like the flares of suns. Yet all their activity was obviously interrelated; each being's actions were in step with its neighbors'. They were like bees swarming: They obviously recognised each other and were communicating avidly, but it was impossible to know what they were saying. They enacted a pageant whose beauty awed me. As the lights came back on, the auditorium seemed dull and unreal.I'd been watching various kinds of ordinary cells going about their daily business, as seen through a microscope and recorded by the latest time-lapse movie techniques. The filmmaker frankly admitted that neither he nor anyone else knew just what the cells were doing, or how and why they were doing it. We biologists, especially during our formative years in school, spent most of our time dissecting dead animals and studying preparations of dead cells stained to make their structures more easily visible—"painted tombstones," as someone once called them. Of course, we all knew that life was more a process than a structure, but we tended to forget this, because a structure was so much easier to study. This film reminded me how far our static concepts still were from the actual business of living. As I thought how any one of those scintillating cells potentially could become a whole speckled frog or a person, I grew surer than ever that my work so far had disclosed only a few aspects of a process-control system as varied and widespread as life itself, of which we'd been ignorant until then.

In the end, it was the little details of the wedding that Daphne remembered. There were tears in her mother's eyes (and then eventually on her face), and Anthony's voice had been oddly hoarse when he stepped forward to give her away. Hyacinth had strewn her rose petals too quickly, and there were none left by the time she reached the altar. Gregory sneezed three times before they even got to their vows. And she remembered the look of concentration on Simon's face as he repeated his vows. Each syllable was uttered slowly and carefully. His eyes burned with intent, and his voice was low but true. To Daphne, it sounded as if nothing in the world could possibly be as important as the words he spoke as they stood before the archbishop. Her heart found comfort in this; no man who spoke his vows with such intensity could possibly view marriage as a mere convenience. Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder. A shiver raced down Daphne's spine, causing her to sway. In just a moment, she would belong to this man forever. Simon's head turned slightly, his eyes darting to her face. Are you all right? his eyes asked. She nodded, a tiny little jog of her chin that only he could see. Something blazed in his eyes—could it be relief? I now pronounce you— Gregory sneezed for a fourth time, then a fifth and sixth, completely obliterating the archbishop's “man and wife.” Daphne felt a horrifying bubble of mirth pushing up her throat. She pressed her lips together, determined to maintain an appropriately serious facade. Marriage, after all, was a solemn institution, and not one to be treating as a joke. She shot a glance at Simon, only to find that he was looking at her with a queer expression. His pale eyes were focused on her mouth, and the corners of his lips began to twitch. Daphne felt that bubble of mirth rising ever higher. You may kiss the bride. Simon grabbed her with almost desperate arms, his mouth crashing down on hers with a force that drew a collective gasp from the small assemblage of guests. And then both sets of lips—bride and groom—burst into laughter, even as they remained entwined. Violet Bridgerton later said it was the oddest kiss she'd ever been privileged to view. Gregory Bridgerton—when he finished sneezing—said it was disgusting. The archbishop, who was getting on in years, looked perplexed. But Hyacinth Bridgerton, who at ten should have known the least about kisses of anyone, just blinked thoughtfully, and said, “I think it's nice. If they're laughing now, they'll probably be laughing forever.” She turned to her mother. “Isn't that a good thing?” Violet took her youngest daughter's hand and squeezed it. “Laughter is always a good thing, Hyacinth. And thank you for reminding us of that.” And so it was that the rumor was started that the new Duke and Duchess of Hastings were the most blissfully happy and devoted couple to be married in decades. After all, who could remember another wedding with so much laughter?

I am convinced that God is love; this thought has for me a pristine lyrical validity. When it is present to me I am unspeakably happy, when it is absent I yearn for it more intensely than the lover for the beloved; but I do not have faith; this courage I lack. God's love is for me, both in a direct and inverse sense, incommensurable with the whole of reality. I am not coward enough to whimper and moan on that account, but neither am I underhand enough to deny that faith is something far higher. I can very well carry on living in my manner, I am happy and satisfied, but my happiness is not that of faith and compared with that is indeed unhappy. I do not burden God with my petty cares, details don't concern me, I gaze only upon my love and keep its virginal flame pure and clear; faith is convinced that God troubles himself about the smallest thing. In this life I am content to be wedded to the left hand, faith is humble enough to demand the right; and that it is indeed humility I don't, and shall never, deny.

The Armonica: Among the most amusing of his inventions was a musical instrument he called the armonica. It was based on the common practice of bored dinner guests, and some musicians, of producing a resonant tone by moving a wet finger around the rim of a glass. Franklin attended a concert in England of music performed on wineglasses, and in 1761 he perfected the idea by taking thirty-seven glass bowls of different sizes and attaching them to a spindle. He rigged up a foot pedal and flywheel to spin the contraption, which allowed him to produce various tones by pressing on the glass pieces with his wet fingers. In a letter to an Italian electrician, Franklin described the new instrument in minute detail. “It is an instrument,” he said, “that seems peculiarly adapted to Italian music, especially that of the soft and plaintive kind.” Franklin’s armonica was quite a rage for a while. Marie Antoinette took lessons on it, Mozart and Beethoven wrote pieces for it, and its haunting tones became popular at weddings. But it tended to produce melancholia, perhaps from lead poisoning, and it eventually went out of fashion.19

A Flock of Geese" She often wondered about the inexplicable deep sorrow that she feels every time she sees a flock of geese flying in the sky … Do the flying geese remind her that she has wasted her life stuck in the trivialities of daily life? Or perhaps the flying birds remind her that she’s lost her ability to fly? She thinks at times in sadness how she wasted the years of her life like a naïve bride dreaming about the ideal groom... A bride planning the minutest details of her wedding, not realizing, until her wings were clipped, that the wedding, the groom, and the bride are roles and illusions created by society to counter the dangers of all those who wish to fly; those who dream about creating new worlds instead of getting hanged or strangulated in a world created by on their behalf by others … As she hears the honking of another passing flock of geese flying over her head as did the most beautiful years of her life the birds awaken in her that uncontrollable itch to depart to refuse the illusion of settling and stability The illusion of the wedding and the groom The illusion of all the wedding invitees Who spend an entire night dancing, cheering, and celebrating the clipping of her wings… [Original poem published in Arabic on December 14, 2023 at ahewar.org]

I took a cinnamon roll and waved it under her nose. “Mmmm,” she said, her eyes still closed. I waved it around some more, totally amused that I was messing with her dreams. “AAAH!” I screamed as Rayna’s head zipped forward and she chomped down on the roll. “Excellent!” she said, sitting up. “Thanks!” “Rayna! You almost bit my finger off!” “You asked for it.” She took another bite. “Mmmm. Oh my God, this is totally better than sex.” She looked at me pointedly. “Would you agree?” “Whoa, subtle much?” “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.” She knew it was the right thing to say, but her eyes were so clearly dying to know that I laughed out loud. I actually wanted to talk about it now, just to keep it alive in my head. I told her everything. Watching her reactions was like watching a silent movie: Her face registered every detail in IMAX-size emotions. “Am I allowed to have a moment of “ew” for my poor deflowered passenger seat?” she asked when I was finished. I winced and buried my head in my hands. “Um…yeah.” “Thank you.” She paused a moment, then grinned and burst out, “Clea, oh my God!!” “I know. I know.” “So what happens now?” “We go to Tokyo, just like we’d planned.” “What about Ben?” she asked. “Are you going to tell Ben?” I looked at her like she was crazy. “Hello! Not like everything you told me, just-are you going to let him know you’re together?” “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I don’t think so…” “You really think you’re going to be able to hide it?

One of the most effective ways to quicken your story’s pace is to move from a static description of an object, place or person to an active scene. The classic method for accomplishing this is to have your character interact with the subject that’s been described. For instance, let’s say you’ve just written three paragraphs describing a wedding dress in a shop window. You’ve detailed the Belgian lace veil, the beaded bodice, the twelve-foot train, even the row of satin buttons down the sleeves. Instinctively you feel it’s time to move into an action scene, but how do you do it without making your transition obvious? A simple, almost seamless way is to initiate an action between your character (let’s call her Miranda) and the dress you’ve just described. Perhaps Miranda could be passing by on the sidewalk when the dress in the window catches her attention. Or she could walk into the shop and ask the shopkeeper how much the dress costs. This method works well to link almost any static description with a scene of action. Describe an elegant table, for instance, complete with crystal goblets, damask tablecloth, monogrammed napkins and sterling silver tableware; then let the maid pull a cloth from her apron and begin to polish one of the forks. Or describe a Superman kite lying beside a tree, then watch as a little girl grabs the string and begins to run. You will still be describing, but the nature of your description will have changed from static to active, thus quickening the story’s pace. Throughout

short buzz followed, then silence. “They want to get rid of us,” said Trillian nervously. “What do we do?” “It’s just a recording,” said Zaphod. “We keep going. Got that, computer?” “I got it,” said the computer and gave the ship an extra kick of speed. They waited. After a second or so came the fanfare once again, and then the voice. “We would like to assure you that as soon as our business is resumed announcements will be made in all fashionable magazines and color supplements, when our clients will once again be able to select from all that’s best in contemporary geography.” The menace in the voice took on a sharper edge. “Meanwhile, we thank our clients for their kind interest and would ask them to leave. Now.” Arthur looked round the nervous faces of his companions. “Well, I suppose we’d better be going then, hadn’t we?” he suggested. “Shhh!” said Zaphod. “There’s absolutely nothing to be worried about.” “Then why’s everyone so tense?” “They’re just interested!” shouted Zaphod. “Computer, start a descent into the atmosphere and prepare for landing.” This time the fanfare was quite perfunctory, the voice now distinctly cold. “It is most gratifying,” it said, “that your enthusiasm for our planet continues unabated, and so we would like to assure you that the guided missiles currently converging with your ship are part of a special service we extend to all of our most enthusiastic clients, and the fully armed nuclear warheads are of course merely a courtesy detail. We look forward to your custom in future lives…. Thank you.

MT: The arrival of Christ disturbs the sacrificial order, the cycle of little false periods of temporary peace following sacrifices? RG: The story of the “demons of Gerasa” in the synoptic Gospels, and notably in Mark, shows this well. To free himself from the crowd that surrounds him, Christ gets on a boat, crosses Lake Tiberias, and comes to shore in non-Jewish territory, in the land of the Gerasenes. It's the only time the Gospels venture among a people who don't read the Bible or acknowledge Mosaic law. As Jesus is getting off the boat, a possessed man blocks his way, like the Sphinx blocking Oedipus. “The man lived in the tombs and no one could secure him anymore, even with a chain. All night and all day, among the tombs and in the mountains, he would howl and gash himself with stones.” Christ asks him his name, and he replies: “My name is Legion, for there are many of us.” The man then asks, or rather the demons who speak through him ask Christ not to send them out of the area—a telling detail—and to let them enter a herd of swine that happen to be passing by. And the swine hurl themselves off the edge of the cliff into the lake. It's not the victim who throws himself off the cliff, it's the crowd. The expulsion of the violent crowd is substituted for the expulsion of the single victim. The possessed man is healed and wants to follow Christ, but Christ tells him to stay put. And the Gerasenes come en masse to beg Jesus to leave immediately. They're pagans who function thanks to their expelled victims, and Christ is subverting their system, spreading confusion that recalls the unrest in today's world. They're basically telling him: “We'd rather continue with our exorcists, because you, you're obviously a true revolutionary. Instead of reorganizing the demoniac, rearranging it a bit, like a psychoanalyst, you do away with it entirely. If you stayed, you would deprive us of the sacrificial crutches that make it possible for us to get around.” That's when Jesus says to the man he's just liberated from his demons: “You're going to explain it to them.” It's actually quite a bit like the conversion of Paul. Who's to say that historical Christianity isn't a system that, for a long time, has tempered the message and made it possible to wait for two thousand years? Of course this text is dated because of its primitive demonological framework, but it contains the capital idea that, in the sacrificial universe that is the norm for mankind, Christ always comes too early. More precisely, Christ must come when it's time, and not before. In Cana he says: “My hour has not come yet.” This theme is linked to the sacrificial crisis: Christ intervenes at the moment the sacrificial system is complete. This possessed man who keeps gashing himself with stones, as Jean Starobinski has revealed, is a victim of “auto-lapidation.” It's the crowd's role to throw stones. So, it's the demons of the crowd that are in him. That's why he's called Legion—in a way he's the embodiment of the crowd. It's the crowd that comes out of him and goes and throws itself off of the cliff. We're witnessing the birth of an individual capable of escaping the fatal destiny of collective violence. MT

Marks,” he replied, crawling about on hands and knees, eyes intent on the short turf. “How did they know where to start and stop?” “Good question. I don’t see anything.” Casting an eye over the ground, though, I did see an interesting plant growing near the base of one of the tall stones. Myosotis? No, probably not; this had orange centers to the deep blue flowers. Intrigued, I started toward it. Frank, with keener hearing than I, leaped to his feet and seized my arm, hurrying me out of the circle a moment before one of the morning’s dancers entered from the other side. It was Miss Grant, the tubby little woman who, suitably enough in view of her figure, ran the sweets and pastries shop in the town’s High Street. She peered nearsightedly around, then fumbled in her pocket for her spectacles. Jamming these on her nose, she strolled about the circle, at last pouncing on the lost hair-clip for which she had returned. Having restored it to its place in her thick, glossy locks, she seemed in no hurry to return to business. Instead, she seated herself on a boulder, leaned back against one of the stone giants in comradely fashion and lighted a leisurely cigarette. Frank gave a muted sigh of exasperation beside me. “Well,” he said, resigned, “we’d best go. She could sit there all morning, by the looks of her. And I didn’t see any obvious markings in any case.” “Perhaps we could come back later,” I suggested, still curious about the blue-flowered vine. “Yes, all right.” But he had plainly lost interest in the circle itself, being now absorbed in the details of the ceremony. He quizzed me relentlessly on the way down the path, urging me to remember as closely as I could the exact wording of the calls, and the timing of the dance.

It was at night,” I say. “What was?” “What happened. The car wreck. We were driving along the Storm King Highway.” “Where’s that?” “Oh, it’s one of the most scenic drives in the whole state,” I say, somewhat sarcastically. “Route 218. The road that connects West Point and Cornwall up in the Highlands on the west side of the Hudson River. It’s narrow and curvy and hangs off the cliffs on the side of Storm King Mountain. An extremely twisty two-lane road. With a lookout point and a picturesque stone wall to stop you from tumbling off into the river. Motorcycle guys love Route 218.” We stop moving forward and pause under a streetlamp. “But if you ask me, they shouldn’t let trucks use that road.” Cool Girl looks at me. “Go on, Jamie,” she says gently. And so I do. “Like I said, it was night. And it was raining. We’d gone to West Point to take the tour, have a picnic. It was a beautiful day. Not a cloud in the sky until the tour was over, and then it started pouring. Guess we stayed too late. Me, my mom, my dad.” Now I bite back the tears. “My little sister. Jenny. You would’ve liked Jenny. She was always happy. Always laughing. “We were on a curve. All of a sudden, this truck comes around the side of the cliff. It’s halfway in our lane and fishtailing on account of the slick road. My dad slams on the brakes. Swerves right. We smash into a stone fence and bounce off it like we’re playing wall ball. The hood of our car slides under the truck, right in front of its rear tires—tires that are smoking and screaming and trying to stop spinning.” I see it all again. In slow motion. The detail never goes away. “They all died,” I finally say. “My mother, my father, my little sister. I was the lucky one. I was the only one who survived.

This was a new way to do it. We’d just discovered it. Staring into each other’s eyes was another way of keeping them closed, or off the details at hand, anyway. We locked onto each other. Meanwhile the Object was very subtly flexing her legs. I was aware of the mound beneath her cutoffs rising toward me, just a little, rising and suggesting itself. I put my hand on the Object’s thigh, palm down. And as we continued to swing, looking at each other while crickets played their fiddles in the grass, I slid my hand sideways up toward the place where the Object’s legs joined. My thumb went under her cutoffs. Her face showed no reaction. Her green eyes under the heavy lids remained fastened on mine. I felt the fluffiness of her underpants and pressed down, sliding under the elastic. And then with our eyes wide open but confined in that way my thumb slipped inside her. She blinked, her eyes closed, her hips rose higher, and I did it again. And again after that. The boats in the bay were part of it, and the string section of crickets in the baking grass, and the ice melting in our lemonade glasses. The swing moved back and forth, creaking on its rusted chain, and it was like that old nursery rhyme, Little Jack Horner sat in the corner eating his Christmas pie. He stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plum . . . After the first roll of her eyes the Object resettled her gaze on mine, and then what she was feeling showed only there, in the green depths her eyes revealed. Otherwise she was motionless. Only my hand moved, and my feet on the rail, pushing the swing. This went on for three minutes, or five, or fifteen. I have no idea. Time disappeared. Somehow we were still not quite conscious of what we were doing. Sensation dissolved straight into forgetting.

Michael took me to Paris for the first time back in 1995. I was thirty-six years old and we’d been seeing each other for five months. He was invited to give a talk on childhood leukemia to a conference in Toulouse, and asked if I’d like to go along. When I regained consciousness I said, yes, yes, yes please! We flew out of Montréal in a snowstorm, almost missing the flight. Michael was, to be honest, a little vague on details, like departure times of planes, trains, buses. In fact, almost all appointments. This was the trip where I realized we each had strengths. Mine seemed to be actually getting us to places. His was making it fun once there. On our first night in Paris we went to a wonderful restaurant, then for a walk. At some stage he said, “I’d like to show you something. Look at this.” He was pointing to the trunk of a tree. Now, I’d actually seen trees before, but I thought there must be something extraordinary about this one. “Get up close,” he said. “Look at where I’m pointing.” It was dark, so my nose was practically touching his finger, lucky man. Then, slowly, slowly, his finger began moving, scraping along the bark. I was cross-eyed, following it. And then it left the tree trunk. And pointed into the air. I followed it. And there was the Eiffel Tower. Lit up in the night sky. As long as I live, I will never forget that moment. Seeing the Eiffel Tower with Michael. And the dear man, knowing the magic of it for a woman who never thought she’d see Paris, made it even more magical by making it a surprise. C. S. Lewis wrote that we can create situations in which we are happy, but we cannot create joy. It just happens. That moment I was surprised by complete and utter joy. A little more than a year earlier I knew that the best of life was behind me. I could not have been more wrong. In that year I’d gotten sober, met and fell in love with Michael, and was now in Paris. We just don’t know. The key is to keep going. Joy might be just around the corner

You have no idea where Anne’s office is?” I asked, grouchy and beyond footsore, seriously envying Jack’s completely healed feet. We’d already been here for an hour and had nothing to show for it other than a few close calls with security patrols. I’d figured since I couldn’t check every room for Raquel, searching Anne-Whatever Whatever’s office for records was my next best bet. “Surprisingly enough, I do not make a habit of concerning myself with the locations of offices of people I neither know nor care anything for.” “I thought you had some big vendetta against IPCA for controlling you.” “Have you seen anyone who ever once used my name against me? Present company excepted.” I frowned, checking around a corner to a hall that was, as usual, empty. This was so much less exciting than I had been afraid it would be. Reth walked calmly forward, never pausing, never frantically checking over his shoulder. I wondered what he did to those poor suckers who had trapped him with his true name. I almost asked, but honestly, I didn’t really want to know. “Wait—you didn’t do anything to Raquel.” I inwardly cringed. Raquel had used his name against him, and there I went reminding him. “Hmm. An uncharacteristic oversight.” I snorted. “Yeah, mister always has a plan, you’re constantly missing details.” I shouldn’t push the issue lest I convince him that he still had some vengeance waiting, but I couldn’t help it. It was so unlike him. He waved an elegant hand through the air as though brushing off my observation. “Some things are beneath my attention.” “Liar.” He stopped short, and I walked a few paces before realizing he wasn’t beside me anymore. I turned and found myself sucked into his golden gaze. “You are quite blind sometimes, my love.” “What do you mean by that?” I snapped. Then my jaw dropped as he actually rolled his perfect, gigantic-bordering-on-anime golden eyes. That was so not a faerie gesture. “You just rolled your eyes!” “It would appear you are a negative influence after all.

Frederick looked great in the parade of old-fashioned suits I'd seen in since we'd met, of course. More than great. But I realized now that his consistently too-formal, out-of-date attire served as a constant reminder to me that Frederick was out of my league in every imaginable way--- and completely off-limits. Untouchable. And other. Now, though... "What do you think?" he asked. "Do I look like I fit in with modern society now?" With difficulty, I tore my eyes from the broad expanse of his chest now covered in a forest-green Henley that fit him like a glove and met his gaze. He was fidgeting a little as I looked back at him, drumming his fingertips against his upper thigh again, looking at me with a nervous intensity that stole the breath from my lungs. I let my eyes trail slowly down his body, drinking him in, taking in his new shirt and the dark blue jeans that fit him so well you wouldn't have guessed he'd had no idea what size he was twenty minutes ago. The other jeans he'd tried on lay folded in a pile on the chair beside him; his suit hung neatly on a hanger in the dressing room. I focused on these other details to distract myself from how Frederick not only looked just as hot in more casual clothes as he did in his stuffy suits, but also how he now looked attainable in a way that was dangerous to me, specifically. I had to avert my eyes. Looking right at him felt a little too much like looking directly at the sun. "You look great. You look unbelievable, actually." I heard his sharp intake of breath, only then realizing that that hadn't quite been what he'd asked me. All he'd asked was whether he looked like he fit in. My stomach swooped, my face suddenly feeling like it was on fire. Idiot. "That is... that is to say---" "You think I look great?" He was looking at me with an expression that felt somewhere between surprise and pleasure. He stepped from the dressing room, stopping when he was only a few inches away from me. I took an involuntary breath, breathing in the scent of lavender soap and new clothes that clung to him.

I knew he and Tamlin were different. Knew that Rhysand's protective anger tonight had been justified, that I would have had a similar reaction. I'd been bloodthirsty at the barest details of Mor's suffering, had wanted to punish them for it. I had known the risks. I had known I'd be sitting in his lap, touching him, using him. I'd been using him for a while now. And maybe I should tell him I didn't... I didn't want or expect anything from him. Maybe Rhysand needed to flirt with me, taunt me, as much for a distraction and sense of normalcy as I did. And maybe I'd said what I had to him because... because I'd realised that I might very well be the person who wouldn't let anyone in. And tonight, when he'd recoiled after he'd seen how he affected me... It had crumpled something in my chest. I had been jealous- of Cresseida. I had been so profoundly unhappy on that barge because I'd wanted to be the one he smiled at like that. And I knew it was wrong, but... I did not think Rhys would call me a whore if I wanted it- wanted... him. No matter how soon it was after Tamlin. Neither would his friends. Not when they had been called the same and worse. And learned to live- and love- beyond it. Despite it. So maybe it was time to tell Rhys that. To explain that I didn't want to pretend. I didn't want to write it off as a joke, or a plan, or a distraction. And it'd be hard, and I was scared and might be difficult to deal with, but... I was willing to try- with him. To try to... be something. Together. Whether it was purely sex, or more, or something between or beyond them, I didn't know. We'd find out. I was healed- or healing- enough to want to try. If he was willing to try, too. If he didn't walk away when I voiced what I wanted: him. Not the High Lord, not the most powerful male in Prythian's history. Just him. The person who had sent music into that cell; who had picked up that knife in Amarantha's throne room to fight for me when no one else dared, and who had kept fighting for me every day since, refusing to let me crumble and disappear into nothing. So I waited for him in the chilled, moonlit garden. But he didn't come.

Portia countered with something cutting and I left my sisters quarrelling over the details whilst I mooned about, waiting for a letter from Brisbane. While Olivia had wanted a smart town wedding, the rest had mercifully overruled her and decided I would be married from the church of St. Barnabas in Blessingstoke, the village nestled at the foot of our family seat at Bellmont Abbey, surrounded by friends and family.

Maybe if we'd had more information...It wouldn't have made a difference at all. Those doors were already locked. What was going to happen was already a foregone conclusion. All that could have changed is the details. Sometimes, it's the details that matter the most of all.

back, change into something formal. I’m taking you out to the most famous restaurant in all of Paris,’ he said proudly. She giggled. Listening to him make every effort to be the romantic tickled her to bits. Though she was a seasoned and toughened law enforcement agent, she still wasn’t beyond feeling giddy when it came to Pope’s courting efforts. For their long overdue holiday, a honeymoon-before-the-wedding kind of thing, Pope splashed out. The sky was the limit. Five months ago, when he asked her where she wanted to go, she had said Paris. So, Paris it had to be. There were no ifs or buts. And they were going to do it in style. He booked them a room at the Banke Hôtel for the entire duration of their stay. Luckily, he got it at a special rate, otherwise a Federal employee like him wouldn’t have been able to stretch the budget that far. Housed in a former bank, the Baroque revival hotel had an ornate columned façade. The interior was grand in scale and lavishly decorated. The room didn’t disappoint. Charming period detailing had been retained; in their

Josh shrugged. “Works for me.” Caroline nodded. “I think you should get married beside the loch,” Archie told them. Caroline helped herself to a cup of tea from the pot on the table in front of her. “The loch will be full of midges.” James bit into a biscuit and spoke with his mouth full. “With any luck they’ll only bite the foreigners.” Millicent blinked at the man before turning back to Caroline. “How about photos at the loch? That way you can have loch, castle and church.” “Sounds great to me.” Caroline took a sip of her tea. “Josh, what do you think?” “Whatever you decide is fine.” He couldn’t have come across less interested if he’d tried. “Now, the gentlemen were talking about having a grey colour scheme.” Millicent was clearly horrified by the idea. “What do you think?” They all looked at Caroline, who was wearing yet another second-hand grey skirt suit. Although Caroline had never bothered with fashion, she was beginning to think she might have to wear some other colours. “No, I don’t want grey,” Caroline sighed. “I like lavender.” “Lavender it is,” Millicent said. “Any thoughts on flowers?” “Heather,” Caroline said. Archie threw up his hands in disgust. “You can get heather on the damn hill. Pick something he has to pay for. The man is a gazillionaire. What’s the point in marrying him if you can’t splash out?” Caroline looked at Josh. “What kind of flowers do you want?” Josh was munching his way through a giant bag of chips. “I really don’t care about flowers.” Caroline felt her blood pressure rise. “Do you care about the wedding at all?” “Of course I do.” “Well, what ideas do you have for it?” “Fine.” He pushed himself away from the counter and sauntered towards them. Caroline bit the inside of her cheek to stop from commenting. Everything the man did was so unhurried. It was beyond irritating. He pulled up a chair, swung it around, straddled it and leaned on the back with his forearms. He was so close Caroline could feel the heat coming off him. “Okay, this is what I think.” Josh spread his hands wide. “I’m thinking a couple of hundred of our closest friends, large dance floor, great band. I might sing, but we can get someone else in too. Lots of food. I want steak. Apart from that, I don’t care what colour the thing is or what type of flowers we have.” “So, you’re going to leave the details up to me?” “Isn’t this what women do?

Eventually, Leopold did give his consent for the union to take place, but it was too little, too late—the letter detailing his approval arrived by post the day after Wolfgang and Constanze were already wed on August 4, 1782. Over the next nine years of their marriage, Constanze would give birth to six children. As was frequent in that period, only two of those children survived infancy, both sons: Karl Thomas Mozart was born in September 1784, and Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart in July 1791.

And Madalena?” Cass prompted, her mind cycling frantically, clutching for escape routes, tactics, miracles. “How could you want to harm someone who has been so kind to you?” Cristian raised an eyebrow. “I have not done anything to Madalena.” “But the painting,” Cass protested. “It looked just like The Fallen Ones…” “Ah.” Cristian smiled, and somehow it made him look more gruesome. “You have a fine eye for detail. A wedding gift, no more and no less. Partial repayment for the Rambaldo generosity.

It had been often commented upon that Vibe offspring tended to be crazy as bedbugs. ‘Fax’s brother Cragmont had run away with a trapeze girl, then brought her back to New York to get married, the wedding being actually performed on trapezes, groom and best man, dressed in tails and silk opera hats held on with elastic, swinging upside down by their knees in perfect synchrony across the perilous Æther to meet the bride and her father, a carnival “jointee” or concessionaire, in matched excursion from their own side of the ring, bridesmaids observed at every hand up twirling by their chins in billows of spangling, forty feet above the faces of the guests, feathers dyed a deep acid green sweeping and stirring the cigar smoke rising from the crowd. Cragmont Vibe was but thirteen that circus summer he became a husband and began what would become, even for the day, an enormous family. The third brother, Fleetwood, best man at this ceremony, had also got out of the house early, fast-talking his way onto an expedition heading for Africa. He kept as clear of political games as of any real scientific inquiry, preferring to take the title of “Explorer” literally, and do nothing but explore. It did not hurt Fleetwood’s chances that a hefty Vibe trust fund was there to pick up the bills for bespoke pith helmets and meat lozenges and so forth. Kit met him one spring weekend out at the Vibe manor on Long Island. “Say, but you’ve never seen our cottage,” ‘Fax said one day after classes. “What are you doing this weekend? Unless there’s another factory girl or pizza princess or something in the works.” “Do I use that tone of voice about the Seven Sisters material you specialize in?” “I’ve nothing against the newer races,” ‘Fax protested. “But you might like to meet Cousin Dittany anyway.” “The one at Smith.” “Mount Holyoke, actually.” “Can’t wait.” They arrived under a dourly overcast sky. Even in cheerier illumination, the Vibe mansion would have registered as a place best kept clear of—four stories tall, square, unadorned, dark stone facing looking much older than the known date of construction. Despite its aspect of abandonment, an uneasy tenancy was still pursued within, perhaps by some collateral branch of Vibes . . . it was unclear. There was the matter of the second floor. Only the servants were allowed there. It “belonged,” in some way nobody was eager to specify, to previous occupants. “Someone’s living there?” “Someone’s there.” . . . from time to time, a door swinging shut on a glimpse of back stairway, a muffled footfall . . . an ambiguous movement across a distant doorframe . . . a threat of somehow being obliged to perform a daily search through the forbidden level, just at dusk, so detailed that contact with the unseen occupants, in some form, at some unannounced moment, would be inevitable . . . all dustless and tidy, shadows in permanent possession, window-drapes and upholstery in deep hues of green, claret, and indigo, servants who did not speak, who would or could not meet one’s gaze . . . and in the next room, the next instant, waiting . . . “Real nice of you to have me here, folks,” chirped Kit at breakfast. “Fellow sleeps like a top. Well, except . . .” Pause in the orderly gobbling and scarfing. Interest from all around the table. “I mean, who came in the room in the middle of the night like that?” “You’re sure,” said Scarsdale, “it wasn’t just the wind, or the place settling.” “They were walking around, like they were looking for something.” Glances were exchanged, failed to be exchanged, were sent out but not returned. “Kit, you haven’t seen the stables yet,” Cousin Dittany offered at last. “Wouldn’t you like to go riding?

The mortician cleared his throat and looked toward the coffin. I suppose we should have recognized it, as we’d picked it out and paid for it the day before, but we didn’t. Finally the man walked over and gestured at it, bowing slightly, in the manner of a maître d’ showing diners to their table. There, just beyond his open palm, was our mother’s face. I wasn’t expecting it. We hadn’t requested a viewing, and the memorial service was closed-coffin. We got it anyway. They’d shampooed and waved her hair and made up her face. They’d done a great job, but I felt taken, as if we’d asked for the basic carwash and they’d gone ahead and detailed her. Hey,

Don’t you think it’s hilarious when people think they’re being terribly clever? I know I do. Just as well some of us genuinely fucking are or we’d be in a hell of a fucking state.

now and, smiling, stuck his hand over the top to shake mine. ‘Can I help you?’ he said, in an English accent. Here in the middle of nowhere, France. At that precise moment the rain stopped, just like that. A beam from the setting sun broke through the dull heavy clouds; I felt bathed in a ray of glowing sunlight. At the bottom of the mucky hill, ducks in someone’s garden started quacking, the joyous clamour echoing around the valley like laughter. Somewhere close by I heard a sheep baa gently –it was like a welcome. The rhythmic, melodious and soothing sound of distant church bells pealed. It sounded like fate. ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘We’ve been given these house details by an estate agent in Hesdin and we just thought we’d have a drive by and a quick peek.’ ‘Blimey, we only put it on the market yesterday,’ spluttered the man. ‘It’s not been dressed up or anything. In fact, my daughter who lives here hasn’t even cleaned it and I’ve just popped in to mop up the leaks and make sure the wind hasn’t blown the doors off.’ I heard my dad sniggering behind me.

Though all Christians start a wedding invitation by solemnly declaring their marriage is due to special Divine arrangement, I, as a philosopher, would like to talk in greater detail about this … —JOHANNES KEPLER If you prefer Mr. Martin to every other person; if you think him the most agreeable man you have ever been in company with, why should you hesitate? —JANE AUSTEN, EMMA

It’s a girl,” I heard Marlboro Man tell his mom. Nurses dabbed my bottom with gauze. “Ree did great,” he continued. “The baby’s fine.” The doctor opened up a suture kit. I took a few deep breaths, staring at the baby’s striped knit cap, placed on her head by one of the nurses. Marlboro Man spoke quietly to his parents, answering their questions and providing them with details about when we’d gone to the hospital and how it had all gone. I drifted in and out of listening to him talk; I was too busy trying to assimilate what had just happened to me. Then, toward the end of the conversation, I heard him ask his mother a question. “So…what do you do with girls?” he said. His mother knew the answer, of course. Though she hadn’t had any girls of her own, she herself had been the oldest child of a rancher and had grown up being her father’s primary ranch hand throughout her childhood years. She knew better than anyone “what you do with girls” on a working ranch. “The same thing you do with boys,” she answered. I chuckled softly when Marlboro Man relayed his mom’s sentiments. For the first time in our relationship, he was the one in a foreign land.

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.

OBJECTIVELY SPEAKING, my wedding to Troy Brennan was a beautiful event. Obscenely lavish and obnoxiously wasteful. Brennan spared no expense when it came to what was his. Be it his penthouse, his cars, his women or his wedding. The candles, floral arrangements, aisle runner, soloist, organist, floral archways and extravagantly decorated pews were all impeccable and plush. In fact, I was surprised the altar wasn’t built exclusively from blood diamonds and rolled one-hundred-dollar bills. Nonetheless, to me, it was as pointless as Henry Cavill with a shirt on. So much detail and beauty shouldn’t be wasted on fraud. And that’s what Brennan and I were—a lie. A charade. Doomed people trapped in a marriage built on the ruins of extortion and lies. We

Ritual characterizes every aspect of life here, and even mundane, daily activities take on an ageless quality. The daily rhythm begins at dawn, as the fishermen launch boats from countless harbors, an event that has taken place for centuries. The women go to market, exchanging greetings and comments. Ritual rules the care and time taken with every detail of the midday meal, from the hearty seafood appetizers to the strong, syrupy coffee that marks the end of the feast. The day winds down with the evening stroll, a tradition thoroughly ingrained in the culture of the Greek Isles. In villages and towns throughout the islands, sunset brings cooler air and draws people from their homes and the beaches for an enjoyable evening walk through town squares, portside promenades, and narrow streets. Ancient crafts still flourish in the artisans’ studios and in tidy homes of countless mountain villages and ports. Embroidery--traditionally the province of Greek women--is created by hand to adorn the regional costumes worn during festivals. Artists craft delicate silver utensils, engraved gems, blown glass, and gold jewelry. Potters create ceramic pieces featuring some of the same decorative patterns and mythological subjects that captured their ancestors’ imagination. Weddings, festivals, saints’ days. And other celebrations with family and friends provide a backdrop for grave and energetic Greek dancing. For centuries--probably ever since people have lived on the islands--Greek islanders have seized every opportunity to play music, sing, and dance. Dancing in Greece is always a group activity, a way to create and reinforce bonds among families, friends, and communities, and island men have been dancing circle dances like the Kalamatianos and the Tsamikos since antiquity. Musicians accompany revelers on stringed instruments like the bouzouki--the modern equivalent of the lyre. While traditional attire is reserved mainly for festive occasions, on some islands people still sport these garments daily. On Lefkada and Crete, it is not unusual to find men wearing vraka, or baggy trousers, and vests, along with the high boots known as stivania. Women wear long, dark, pleated skirts woven on a traditional loom, and long silk scarves or kerchiefs adorn their heads. All the garments are ornamented by hand with rich brocades and elaborate embroidery. All over the Greek Isles, Orthodox priests dress in long black robes, their shadowy figures contrasting with the bright whites, blues, and greens of Greek village architecture.

The cake is pretty simple; they didn't want anything too fancy. Two tiers. The bottom is the Frango mint tier from the cake contest, but the top is a new one. An almond cake with a whipped honey caramel filling and a layer of thinly sliced spiced poached pears, with vanilla buttercream. The whole cake will get a smooth white fondant coating, and then a detailed lace pattern hand-piped with white royal icing. They've opted out of toppers, so I've made some simple wildflowers out of gum paste, colored with the powdered food colors to look incredibly real.

Creating a truly memorable event is always a challenge. Whether it’s a wedding reception, tea party, shower or intimate dinner at home with friends: the key to an unforgettable celebration is careful planning and details, details, details!

: "Still, we ask these questions, do we not? We want to know why things happen the way they do. We want to know if we said or did things differently, then maybe things would have turned out in our favor. Did our actions or inactions hold the magic sauce? As in, if I hadn't seemed too eager or if I had played "the game" differently, then things would have worked out the way that I wanted them to? Maybe he'd still be interested? Or, perhaps, we'd still be together? But seriously, why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we agonize over the details—no matter how minuscule—in hopes of uncovering the deeper meaning of things? We could make things so much easier on ourselves if we didn't feel so compelled to dissect everything and just accepted things for what they are. And what they are is pretty simple: Things didn't work out—not because you responded too quickly to his texts or because you always seemed too available—but because it wasn't meant to be—end of story.

if there really is no way you can win, you never say it out loud. You assess why, change strategy, adjust tactics, and keep fighting and pushing till either you’ve gotten a better outcome or you’ve died. Either way, you never quit when your country needs you to succeed. As Team 5 was shutting down the workup and loading up its gear, our task unit’s leadership flew to Ramadi to do what we call a predeployment site survey. Lieutenant Commander Thomas went, and so did both of our platoon officers in charge. It was quite an adventure. They were shot at every day. They were hit by IEDs. When they came home, Lieutenant Commander Thomas got us together in the briefing room and laid out the details. The general reaction from the team was, “Get ready, kids. This is gonna be one hell of a ride.” I remember sitting around the team room talking about it. Morgan had a big smile on his face. Elliott Miller, too, all 240 pounds of him, looked happy. Even Mr. Fantastic seemed at peace and relaxed, in that sober, senior chief way. We turned over in our minds the hard realities of the city. Only a couple weeks from now we would be calling Ramadi home. For six or seven months we’d be living in a hornet’s nest, picking up where Team 3 had left off. It was time for us to roll. In late September, Al Qaeda’s barbaric way of dealing with the local population was stirring some of Iraq’s Sunni tribal leaders to come over to our side. (Stuff like punishing cigarette smokers by cutting off their fingers—can you blame locals for wanting those crazies gone?) Standing up for their own people posed a serious risk, but it was easier to justify when you had five thousand American military personnel backing you up. That’ll boost your courage, for sure. We were putting that vise grip on that city, infiltrating it, and setting up shop, block by block, house by house, inch by inch. On September 29, a Team 3 platoon set out on foot from a combat outpost named Eagle’s Nest on the final operation of their six-month deployment. Located in the dangerous Ma’laab district, it wasn’t much more than a perimeter of concrete walls and concertina wire bundling up a block of residential homes. COP Eagle’s

The rest of the party goes by in a blur, much like your wedding day. In fact, now that you think about it, children's birthday parties are pretty similar to your wedding day: you pay too much attention to meaningless detail, you overinvest in certain decisions, you see your friends but don't really get to interact with them, you end up incredibly stressed, and in retrospect you would certainly do it all much more simply.

all the long-term stuff, most of that usually played out, but not in the detail I thought it would, because we’d come up with something else, or something would happen.

I just never got the sense that any of us were as happy apart as we’d been together. Which is why, counterintuitive as it sounds, I dreaded these dinners. We were flaunting our former selves to our current ones. We’d become too disconnected, too leery of bridging the gap, too likely to run downs list of conversational categories as if detailing a car. How’s the family? The job? The apartment hunt? As if making deeper inquiries would open up a sinkhole of sadness from which we’d never escape.

I thought I’d cut away a section of the planking next to the keel and—” “Just a moment!” Stig protested. “You’re planning to cut through a plank next to the keel?” Hal nodded. “That’s right. Then I could—” “You do know what happens when you cut a hole in the bottom of a ship, don’t you? The ship tends to sink.” He looked to Thorn for corroboration. “You tell him, Thorn.” Thorn raised his eyebrows. As a rule, he trusted Hal’s ideas, but this did seem extreme. “It’s not usually considered a good idea to cut holes in the bottom of a ship,” he said. Stig threw his hands in the air in a see-what-I-mean gesture. “I’m not cutting holes in the bottom of the ship, as you put it. It’s only one hole.” But Hal got no further before Stig erupted again. “It’s only one ship! How many holes do you want? One will definitely be enough to do the job! You cut. We sink. Not a good idea, Hal!” He shook his head violently. “Or is this just another one of those small details you tend to forget?” Hal’s head snapped up angrily at those words. “I wondered when we’d get to that,” he said. Stig threw his hands up again. “Well, it’s a pretty obvious question, isn’t it? You do have something of a track record with water going where it shouldn’t.

If people could actually retain their greatest memories of the past in vivid detail, we’d all look more miserable living in the empty present. And if we kept the worst memories of the past in vivid detail, we’d look even more miserable living in the empty present. Everyone just says they remember these things, because it’s better to pretend that you do.

Dale Olsen, the owner of Outlooks, opened up shop in 1990. The store has changed and grown over the years and is now Victoria’s premier stop for what a guy needs – when he needs it. With two locations, in Victoria and Duncan, Outlooks carries a carefully curated selection of menswear brands from around the world. Our selection includes beautiful suits, a polished look in shoes, basic staples, and quirky accessories. More Details : Phone : +1 250-384-2848 Email : Dale@outlooksformen.com Address : 534 Yates St, Victoria, British Columbia, V8W 1K8 Hours : Mon - Sat: 10am - 5:30pm, Sunday: 11am - 5pm

Monday night marked our first Astrology Class in the Earth Observatory. And it didn't start until eight o'clock. I was distracted during my Liaison while Orion sat across his desk from me, attempting to explain Nymph anatomy in greater detail while I tried not to wonder what those lips would feel like against more places than my neck. I bet his kisses taste like bourbon and power. “Miss Vega?” I blinked, snapping myself out of my latest dirty daydream as Orion rose from his seat. “Time's up,” he answered my questioning expression. “I'm so glad I didn't waste my time tonight. You've been listening so attentively.” His narrowed eyes told me that was sarcasm and I gave him an apologetic grin. Well I had fun anyway. I gathered up my bag, wishing I could head back to my room, have a shower and change out of this uniform. But according to the email I'd received when the class had been added to my timetable, we had to turn up dressed in the Zodiac uniform even for lessons after hours. “I'll walk you back to your House,” Orion said. “And maybe on the way you can tell me exactly what you've spent the last hour thinking about.” He strode toward the door with a smirk and I followed him across the room, my heart pitter-pattering. “No thanks, I've got Astrology now, sir,” I said, saying absolutely nothing more about my daydreams. Those can never see the light of day. “Then I'll take you to Earth Observatory.” Orion stepped out into the hall, waiting for me as I followed. I frowned at him. “I think I can manage a ten minute walk alone.” “Well I'm heading in that direction anyway so we may as well go together.” Orion headed off and I fell into step beside him, fighting an eye-roll. We headed onto the path beyond Jupiter Hall and a yawn pulled at my mouth as we turned in the direction of Earth Observatory. Students were spilling out of The Orb heading back to their Houses, but I wasn't jealous. Despite the long-ass day I'd had, I was excited to attend my first ever Astrology class. Supposedly our schedule was going to fill up even more once we passed The Reckoning. Or if we passed it. God I hope we do. We might end up back in Chicago after all. Even Darius’s gold doesn’t make me feel much better about that. I spent most of my free time practising Elemental magic with Tory and the others in preparation for the exam. Orion was still refusing to teach us anything practical in class, and I half wondered if his vague promises of practical lessons would really ever come to fruition. I stole a look at him as we walked in perfect silence, finding it surprisingly not awkward. I noticed the deep set of his eyes, the way his shoulders were slightly tense and his fingers were flexing a little. “Are you expecting an ambush?” I teased and he glanced my way, his expression deadly serious. “You should always expect an ambush, Miss Vega.” “Oh,” I breathed, figuring he was probably right considering the way the Fae world carried on. I'd not really thought about what it might be like to live somewhere beyond the walls of the Academy. Would it be just as cut-throat out there as it was in here? “Darcy!” Sofia's voice caught my attention and I spotted her up ahead with Diego, standing outside the observatory. She beckoned me over and I stopped walking, looking to Orion to say goodbye. He turned to me too and a strange energy passed between us as we simply stood there for much longer than was necessary. Why are we even stopping to say goodbye? Why am I not just walking away now? He half tipped his head then shot away at high-speed, disappearing back the way we'd come. So he hadn’t been heading this way. I knew it. His casual stalking was clearly to do with his worries over a Nymph getting its probes into my magic. “Daaarccccyy!” Sofia sang and I turned back to them, finding her on Diego's back, waving her arms. (Darcy)

Get in touch with Safarsaga Films for wedding photography, Fashion photography, Pre Wedding Shoot Photographer, Music Videos, Maternity, Baby Shoots, Events, Product Photography, Cinematic videos and all photography services in your area. Get more details. contact us at +91-9646219269.

Social Media Advertising - Different Options & Their Benefits How To Use Social Media Paid Ads Ideally? What is the most effective way to make use of social media ads? Choosing which social media platform to advertise on depends on your target audience. You need to understand which platforms are being used, the type of campaigns that can run on each platform, and what investment you’ll be required to make. Pew Research Center’s report helps give us an idea of the most preferred platform for various demographics. For example, if your product caters to the teenage group, consider advertising on Instagram, TikTok, or Snapchat. If you’re catering to a more B2B client, you can consider LinkedIn. Once you understand where your audience spends the most time, you can narrow down the platforms. However, we’d still advise on A/B testing various platforms. You’d be surprised by how many B2B clients you can find on TikTok! What Are The Most Popular Social Media Ads? Here is a brief rundown of the various social media ad options available. 1. Facebook Ads Facebook Ads are the most successful form of social media advertising. Statistics show that Facebook paid ads have an average conversion rate of 9.21%. They’re easy to set up and track, and allow you to measure campaign performance easily, giving insights into how well your ads are performing. They also offer a wide range of targeting options that help you reach people who might be interested in what you’re selling, which is why they’re so effective at generating sales leads. Facebook Ads are also highly targeted. You can target specific demographics or audiences based on gender, age range, location, and other details such as interests and behaviors or job titles. This helps ensure that only people who are interested in what you’re offering, see your ad on Facebook. 2. Twitter Ads Twitter ads are a great way to reach your target audience, especially if your company already has a presence on the platform. They’re easy to set up and manage so you can focus on other aspects of your business. As of 2022, they have an average conversion rate of 0.77%. Twitter ads also offer simple targeting options that let you get more followers, increase engagement with existing customers and gain new followers interested in what you have to offer. There are multiple ad options to choose from for accomplishing various advertising goals, including promoted ads, follower ads, amplify ads, and takeover ads. Promoted and follower ads have a much wider average cost range than their takeover counterparts. 3. LinkedIn Ads LinkedIn is a professional networking site, so it’s not as casual as other social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook. As a result, users are more likely to be interested in what you are promoting on the platform because they’re looking for something related to their professional lives. LinkedIn has an average click-through rate of 0.65%. In addition, the conversion rate for LinkedIn ads is also fairly decent (2.35%). They can have high or low conversion rates depending on factors like interests and demographics. But if your ad is effectively targeted, it will have more chances of enjoying a higher conversion rate. 4. Instagram Ads As a younger demographic, Instagram users make up a great target audience for social media advertising. They are highly engaged in the platform and are more likely to respond to call-to-action than other demographics. 5. YouTube Ads YouTube ads are excellent for marketers with video content to promote their business. Furthermore, the advertising options offered by this platform ensure that you needn't bother with YouTuber fame or even a large number of subscribers on your channel to spread the word on this platform.

Now, though, as we assembled the crew to work on our second film, A Bug’s Life, drawing on people who’d been key to Toy Story’s evolution, I discovered we’d completely missed a serious, ongoing rift between our creative and production departments. In short, production managers told me that working on Toy Story had been a nightmare. They felt disrespected and marginalized—like second-class citizens. And while they were gratified by Toy Story’s success, they were very reluctant to sign on to work on another film at Pixar. I was floored. How had we missed this? The answer, at least in part, was rooted in the role production managers play in making our films. Production managers are the people who keep track of the endless details that ensure that a movie is delivered on time and on budget. They monitor the overall progress of the crew; they keep track of the thousands of shots; they evaluate how resources are being used; they persuade and cajole and nudge and say no when necessary. In other words, they do something essential for a company whose success relies on hitting deadlines and staying on-budget: They manage people and safeguard the process. If there was one thing we prided ourselves on at Pixar, it was making sure that Pixar’s artists and technical people treated each other as equals, and I had assumed that that same mutual respect would be afforded to those who managed the productions. I had assumed wrong. Sure enough, when I checked with the artists and technical staff, they did believe that production managers were second-class and that they impeded—not facilitated—good filmmaking by overcontrolling the process, by micromanaging. Production managers, the folks I consulted told me, were just sand in the gears.

A Flock of Geese" She often wondered about the inexplicable deep sorrow that she feels every time she sees a flock of geese flying in the sky … Do the flying geese remind her that she has wasted her life stuck in the trivialities of daily life? Or perhaps the flying birds remind her that she’s lost her ability to fly? She thinks at times in sadness how she wasted the years of her life like a naïve bride dreaming about the ideal groom... A bride planning the minutest details of her wedding, not realizing, until her wings were clipped, that the wedding, the groom, and the bride are roles and illusions created by society to counter the dangers of all those who wish to fly; those who dream about creating new worlds instead of getting hanged or strangulated in a world created on their behalf by others … As she hears the honking of another passing flock of geese flying over her head as did the most beautiful years of her life the birds awaken in her that uncontrollable itch to depart to refuse the illusion of settling and stability The illusion of the wedding and the groom The illusion of all the wedding invitees Who spend an entire night dancing, cheering, and celebrating the clipping of her wings… [Original poem published in Arabic on December 14, 2023 at ahewar.org]” ― Louis Yako

Haven’t you heard a damned word that I’ve said?” she exploded. “You show up on the day before my wedding, thinking to ‘rescue’ me, but have you ever even once asked me what I want? No—instead, you’ve made this all about you. How you could never live with yourself if this marriage of honor went through. How you only want what’s best for me. Stars, Eve—you’re no different from everyone else who wants to control every detail of my life!

I’ve paid attention to everything about her, and I know exactly what she loves. Not just for breakfast but in general. In… everything. It’s hard not to notice everything about your favorite person. To want to memorize every detail about them.