Weeds Show Quotes

But that’s the thing about happiness, I guess. You can show whatever you want to the world and not feel a lick of it inside yourself.

There is a willow grows aslant the brook that shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream; therewith fantastic garlands did she make of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples that the liberal shepherds give a grosser name, but our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them. There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds clamb'ring to hang, an envious sliver broke; when down her weedy trophies and herself fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide and, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up; which time she chanted snatches of old lauds, as one incapable of her own distress, or like a creature native and indued unto that element; but long it could not be till that her garments, heavy with their drink, pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay to muddy death.

Though men in their hundreds of thousands had tried their hardest to disfigure that little corner of the earth where they had crowded themselves together, paving the ground with stones so that nothing could grow, weeding out every blade of vegetation, filling the air with the fumes of coal and gas, cutting down trees and driving away every beast and every bird -- spring, however, was still spring, even in the town. The sun shone warm, the grass, wherever it had not been scraped away, revived and showed green not only on the narrow strips of lawn on the boulevards but between the paving-stones as well, and the birches, the poplars and the wild cherry-trees were unfolding their sticky, fragrant leaves, and the swelling buds were bursting on the lime trees; the jackdaws, the sparrows and the pigeons were cheerfully getting their nests ready for the spring, and the flies, warmed by the sunshine, buzzed gaily along the walls. All were happy -- plants, birds, insects and children. But grown-up people -- adult men and women -- never left off cheating and tormenting themselves and one another. It was not this spring morning which they considered sacred and important, not the beauty of God's world, given to all creatures to enjoy -- a beauty which inclines the heart to peace, to harmony and to love. No, what they considered sacred and important were their own devices for wielding power over each other.

When I was nineteen years old, I fell in love with a girl who changed my life by showing me that even the darkest nights still had stars and it didn’t matter one bit that you had to lie in the weeds to see them.

If you had your way you’d pass a law to abolish all the little jobs, the little things. But then you’d leave yourselves nothing to do between the big jobs and you’d have a devil of a time thinking up things to do so you wouldn’t go crazy. Instead of that, why not let nature show you a few things? Cutting grass and pulling weeds can be a way of life, son.

Bitterness is like a weed. Remember how hard it always was to pull out thistles once they root? Remember how deep those roots grow, and how if you just snapped off the end of it, the plant would grow right back? You have to dig down deep inside. Let God search your heart. Let Him show you what's there and help you root out all that bitterness. Then you can pray for forgiveness.

The tide goes out imperceptibly. The boulders show and seem to rise up and the ocean recedes leaving little pools, leaving wet weed and moss and sponge, iridescence and brown and blue and China red. On the bottoms lie the incredible refuse of the sea, shells broken and chipped and bits of skeleton, claws, the whole sea bottom a fantastic cemetery on which the living scamper and scramble.

Eventually the Woodsman spoke. ‘We all have our routines,’ he said softly. ‘But they must have a purpose and provide an outcome that we can see and take some comfort from, or else they have no use at all. Without that, they are like the endless pacings of a caged animal. If they are not madness itself, then they are a prelude to it.’ The Woodsman stood and showed David his axe. ‘See here,’ he said, pointing with his finger at the blade. Every morning, I make certain that me axe is clean and keen. I look to my house and check that its windows and doors remain secure. I tend to my land, disposing of weeds and ensuring that the soil is watered. I walk through the forest, clearing those paths that need to be kept open. Where trees have been damaged, I do my best to repair what has been harmed. these are my routines and I enjoy doing them well.’ He laid a hand gently on David’s shoulder, and David saw understanding in his face. ‘Rules and routines are good, but they must give you satisfaction. Can you truly say you gain that from touching and counting?’ David shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘but I get scared when I don’t do them. I’m afraid of what might happen.’ ‘Then find routines that allow you to feel secure when they are done. You told me that you have a new brother: look to him each morning. Look to your father, and your stepmother. Tend to the flowers in the garden, or in the pots upon the window sill. Seek others who are weaker than you are, and try to give them comfort where you can. Let these be your routines, and the rules that govern your life.

I want to do something, right here, right now, to shame them, to make them accountable, to show the Capitol that whatever they do or force us to do there is a part of every tribute they can't own. That Rue was more than a piece in their Games. And so am I. "A few steps into the woods grows a bank of wildflowers. Perhaps they are really weeds of some sort, but they have blossoms in beautiful shades of violet and yellow and white. I gather an armful and come back to Rues's side. Slowly, one stem at a time, I decorate her body in the flowers. Covering the ugly wound. Wreathing her face. Weaving her hair with bright colors. "They'll have to show it. Or, even if they choose to turn the cameras elsewhere at this moment, they'll have to bring them back when they collect the bodies and everyone will see her then and know I did it. I step back and take a last look at Rue. She really could be asleep in that meadow after all. ""Bye, Rue," I whisper. I press the three middle fingers of my left hand against my lips and hold them out in her direction. Then I walk away without looking back.

It is no disparagement to the garden to say it will not fence and weed itself, nor prune its own fruit trees, nor roll and cut its own lawns...It will remain a garden only if someone does all these things to it...If you want to see the difference between [the garden's] contribution and the gardener's, put the commonest weed it grows side by side with his hoes rakes, shears, and a packet of weed killer; you have put beauty, energy, and fecundity beside dead, steril things. Just so, our 'decency and common sense' show grey and deathlike beside the geniality of love.

How can we set up a system which encourages individuals to strive and excel, and yet which shows some compassion to the weak, and weeds out madmen and tyrants?

Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright, Let temple burn, or flax; an equal light Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed: And love is fire. And when I say at need I love thee ... mark! ... I love thee -- in thy sight I stand transfigured, glorified aright, With conscience of the new rays that proceed Out of my face toward thine. There's nothing low In love, when love the lowest: meanest creatures Who love God, God accepts while loving so. And what I feel, across the inferior features Of what I am, doth flash itself, and show How that great work of Love enhances Nature's.

To him, restaurants were the ultimate expression of ungodly waste. For of all the luxuries that your money could buy, a restaurant left you the least to show for it. A fur coat could at least be worn in winter to fend off the cold, and a silver spoon could be melted down and sold to a jeweler. But a porterhouse steak? You chopped it, chewed it, swallowed it, wiped your lips and dropped your napkin on your plate. That was that. And asparagus? My father would sooner have carried a twenty-dollar bill to his grave than spend it on some glamorous weed coated in cheese.

They that have power to hurt and will do none, That do not do the thing they most do show, Who, moving others, are themselves as stone, Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow, They rightly do inherit Heaven's graces, And husband nature's riches from expense; They are the lords and owners of their faces, Others but stewards of their excellence. The summer's flow'r is to the summer sweet Though to itself it only live and die; But if that flow'r with base infection meet, The basest weed outbraves his dignity: For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; Lillies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

Christians must show that misery fits the good for heaven, while happiness prepares the bad for hell; that the wicked get all their good things in this life, and the good all their evil; that in this world God punishes the people he loves, and in the next, the ones he hates; that happiness makes us bad here, but not in heaven; that pain makes us good here, but not in hell. No matter how absurd these things may appear to the carnal mind, they must be preached and they must be believed. If they were reasonable, there would be no virtue in believing. Even the publicans and sinners believe reasonable things. To believe without evidence, or in spite of it, is accounted as righteousness to the sincere and humble christian. In short, Christians are expected to denounce all pleasant paths and rustling trees, to curse the grass and flowers, and glorify the dust and weeds. They are expected to malign the wicked people in the green and happy fields, who sit and laugh beside the gurgling springs or climb the hills and wander as they will. They are expected to point out the dangers of freedom, the safety of implicit obedience, and to show the wickedness of philosophy, the goodness of faith, the immorality of science and the purity of ignorance.

I see things in windows and I say to myself that I want them. I want them because I want to belong. I want to be liked by more people, I want to be held in higher regard than others. I want to feel valued, so I say to myself to watch certain shows. I watch certain shows on the television so I can participate in dialogues and conversations and debates with people who want the same things I want. I want to dress a certain way so certain groups of people are forced to be attracted to me. I want to do my hair a certain way with certain styling products and particular combs and methods so that I can fit in with the In-Crowd. I want to spend hours upon hours at the gym, stuffing my body with what scientists are calling 'superfoods', so that I can be loved and envied by everyone around me. I want to become an icon on someone's mantle. I want to work meaningless jobs so that I can fill my wallet and parentally-advised bank accounts with monetary potential. I want to believe what's on the news so that I can feel normal along with the rest of forever. I want to listen to the Top Ten on Q102, and roll my windows down so others can hear it and see that I am listening to it, and enjoying it. I want to go to church every Sunday, and pray every other day. I want to believe that what I do is for the promise of a peaceful afterlife. I want rewards for my 'good' deeds. I want acknowledgment and praise. And I want people to know that I put out that fire. I want people to know that I support the war effort. I want people to know that I volunteer to save lives. I want to be seen and heard and pointed at with love. I want to read my name in the history books during a future full of clones exactly like me. The mirror, I've noticed, is almost always positioned above the sink. Though the sink offers more depth than a mirror, and mirror is only able to reflect, the sink is held in lower regard. Lower still is the toilet, and thought it offers even more depth than the sink, we piss and shit in it. I want these kind of architectural details to be paralleled in my every day life. I want to care more about my reflection, and less about my cleanliness. I want to be seen as someone who lives externally, and never internally, unless I am able to lock the door behind me. I want these things, because if I didn't, I would be dead in the mirrors of those around me. I would be nothing. I would be an example. Sunken, and easily washed away.

It is not written that great men shall be happy men. It is nowhere recorded that the rewards of public office include a quiet mind. He sits in Whitehall, the year folding around him, aware of the shadow of his hand as it moves across the paper, his own inconcealable fist; and in the quiet of the house, he can hear the soft whispering of his quill, as if his writing is talking back to him. Can you make a new England? You can write a new story. You can write new texts and destroy the old ones, set the torn leaves of Duns Scotus sailing about the quadrangles, and place the gospels in every church. You can write on England, but what was written before keeps showing through, inscribed on the rocks and carried on floodwater, surfacing from deep cold wells. It’s not just the saints and martyrs who claim the country, it’s those who came before them: the dwarves dug into ditches, the sprites who sing in the breeze, the demons bricked into culverts and buried under bridges; the bones under your floor. You cannot tax them or count them. They have lasted ten thousand years and ten thousand before that. They are not easily dispossessed by farmers with fresh leases and law clerks who adduce proof of title. They bubble out of the ground, wear away the shoreline, sow weeds among the crops and erode the workings of mines.

1. I told you that I was a roadway of potholes, not safe to cross. You said nothing, showed up in my driveway wearing roller-skates. 2. The first time I asked you on a date, after you hung up, I held the air between our phones against my ear and whispered, “You will fall in love with me. Then, just months later, you will fall out. I will pretend the entire time that I don’t know it’s coming.” 3. Once, I got naked and danced around your bedroom, awkward and safe. You did the same. We held each other without hesitation and flailed lovely. This was vulnerability foreplay. 4. The last eight times I told you I loved you, they sounded like apologies. 5. You recorded me a CD of you repeating, “You are beautiful.” I listened to it until I no longer thought in my own voice. 6. Into the half-empty phone line, I whispered, “We will wake up believing the worst in each other. We will spit shrapnel at each other’s hearts. The bruises will lodge somewhere we don’t know how to look for and I will still pretend I don’t know its coming.” 7. You photographed my eyebrow shapes and turned them into flashcards: mood on one side, correct response on the other. You studied them until you knew when to stay silent. 8. I bought you an entire bakery so that we could eat nothing but breakfast for a week. Breakfast, untainted by the day ahead, was when we still smiled at each other as if we meant it. 9. I whispered, “I will latch on like a deadbolt to a door and tell you it is only because I want to protect you. Really, I’m afraid that without you I mean nothing.” 10. I gave you a bouquet of plane tickets so I could practice the feeling of watching you leave. 11. I picked you up from the airport limping. In your absence, I’d forgotten how to walk. When I collapsed at your feet, you refused to look at me until I learned to stand up without your help. 12. Too scared to move, I stared while you set fire to your apartment – its walls decaying beyond repair, roaches invading the corpse of your bedroom. You tossed all the faulty appliances through the smoke out your window, screaming that you couldn’t handle choking on one more thing that wouldn’t just fix himself. 13. I whispered, “We will each weed through the last year and try to spot the moment we began breaking. We will repel sprint away from each other. Your voice will take months to drain out from my ears. You will throw away your notebook of tally marks from each time you wondered if I was worth the work. The invisible bruises will finally surface and I will still pretend that I didn’t know it was coming.” 14. The entire time, I was only pretending that I knew it was coming.

The main skill is to keep from getting lost. Since the roads are used only by local people who know them by sight nobody complains if the junctions aren’t posted. And often they aren’t. When they are it’s usually a small sign hiding unobtrusively in the weeds and that’s all. County-road-sign makers seldom tell you twice. If you miss that sign in the weeds that’s your problem, not theirs. Moreover, you discover that the highway maps are often inaccurate about county roads. And from time to time you find your “county road” takes you onto a two-rutter and then a single rutter and then into a pasture and stops, or else it takes you into some farmer’s backyard. So we navigate mostly by dead reckoning, and deduction from what clues we find. I keep a compass in one pocket for overcast days when the sun doesn’t show directions and have the map mounted in a special carrier on top of the gas tank where I can keep track of miles from the last junction and know what to look for. With those tools and a lack of pressure to “get somewhere” it works out fine and we just about have America all to ourselves.

The rules for working on Tony’s shows were not to be found on the pages of any HR manual. There were behaviors perfectly acceptable in polite society that were unforgivable deal-breakers for Tony. Stingy tipper, vegan, mediocre, tea drinker, late, or a fan of Jimmy Buffett’s music, you’re off the show.

That's the trouble with your generation,' said Grandpa. 'Bill, I'm ashamed of you, you a newspaperman. All the things in life that were put here to savor, you eliminate. Save time, save work, you say.' He nudged the grass trays disrespectfully. 'Bill, when your'e my age, you'll find out it's the little savors and little things that count more than big ones. A walk on a spring morning is better than an eighty-mile ride in a hopped-up car, you know why? Because it's full of flavors, full of a lot of things growing. You've time to seek and find. I know--you're after the broad effect now, and I suppose that's fit and proper. But for a young man working on a newspaper, you got to look for grapes as well as watermelons. You greatly admire skeletons and I like fingerprints; well and good. Right now such things are bothersome to you, and I wonder if it isn't because you've never learned to use them. If you had your way you'd pass a law to abolish all the little jobs, the little things. But then you'd leave yourselves nothing to do between the big jobs and you'd have a devil of a time thinking up things to do so you wouldn't go crazy. Instead of that, why not let nature show you a few things? Cutting grass and pulling weeds can be a way of life, son.

Still, this particular fantasy nagged him. He'd stroll through the streets, eat, bathe, weed his rose garden, and it would gather strength over his head, an insidious halo, as black as dried blood, glittering with the thunder of snapping bones. It tugged at him like a tornado. He would peer up and see George affixed to its sphere, and the smog made him think of a woodcut he'd seen as a child. It showed every bone in some man's body broken and woven through spokes of a wagon wheel. Hoisted aloft in the Renaissance, they had continued to twirl for Philippe ever since.

Like That" Love me like a wrong turn on a bad road late at night, with no moon and no town anywhere and a large hungry animal moving heavily through the brush in the ditch. Love me with a blindfold over your eyes and the sound of rusty water blurting from the faucet in the kitchen, leaking down through the floorboards to hot cement. Do it without asking, without wondering or thinking anything, while the machinery’s shut down and the watchman’s slumped asleep before his small TV showing the empty garage, the deserted hallways, while the thieves slice through the fence with steel clippers. Love me when you can’t find a decent restaurant open anywhere, when you’re alone in a glaring diner with two nuns arguing in the back booth, when your eggs are greasy and your hash browns underdone. Snick the buttons off the front of my dress and toss them one by one into the pond where carp lurk just beneath the surface, their cold fins waving. Love me on the hood of a truck no one’s driven in years, sunk to its fenders in weeds and dead sunflowers; and in the lilies, your mouth on my white throat, while turtles drag their bellies through slick mud, through the footprints of coots and ducks. Do it when no one’s looking, when the riots begin and the planes open up, when the bus leaps the curb and the driver hits the brakes and the pedal sinks to the floor, while someone hurls a plate against the wall and picks up another, love me like a freezing shot of vodka, like pure agave, love me when you’re lonely, when we’re both too tired to speak, when you don’t believe in anything, listen, there isn’t anything, it doesn’t matter; lie down with me and close your eyes, the road curves here, I’m cranking up the radio and we’re going, we won’t turn back as long as you love me, as long as you keep on doing it exactly like that.

Uncertainty and failure might look like the end of the road to you. But uncertainty is a part of life. Facing uncertainty and failure doesn’t always make people weaker and weaker until they give up. Sometimes it wakes them up, and it’s like they can see the beauty around them for the first time. Sometimes losing everything makes you realize how little you actually need. Sometimes losing everything sends you out into the world to breathe in the air, to pick some flowery weeds, to take in a new day. Because this life is full of promise, always. It’s full of beads and dolls and chipped plates; it’s full of twinklings and twinges. It is possible to admit that life is a struggle and also embrace the fact that small things—like sons who call you and beloved dogs in framed pictures and birds that tell you to drink your fucking tea—matter. They matter a lot. Stop trying to make sense of things. You can’t think your way through this. Open your heart and drink in this glorious day. You are young, and you will find little things that will make you grateful to be alive. Believe in what you love now, with all of your heart, and you will love more and more until everything around you is love. Love yourself now, exactly as sad and scared and flawed as you are, and you will grow up and live a rich life and show up for other people, and you’ll know exactly how big that is. Let’s celebrate this moment together. There are twinklings and twinges, right here, in this moment. It is enough. Let’s find the eastern towhee.

But this is human life: the war, the deeds, The disappointment, the anxiety, Imagination’s struggles, far and nigh, All human; bearing in themselves this good, That they are still the air, the subtle food, To make us feel existence, and to show How quiet death is. Where soil is men grow, Whether to weeds or flowers; but for me, There is no depth to strike in

When life gives you a hundred reasons to cry, show life that you have a thousand reasons to smile.

When life gives you a hundred reasons to cry, show life that you have a thousand reasons to smile. Laura Miller - Butterfly Weeds

My mother died at eighty-three, of cancer, in pain, her spleen enlarged so that her body was misshapen. Is that the person I see when I think of her? Sometimes. I wish it were not. It is a true image, yet it blurs, it clouds, a truer image. It is one memory among fifty years of memories of my mother. It is the last in time. Beneath it, behind it is a deeper, complex, ever-changing image, made from imagination, hearsay, photographs, memories. I see a little red-haired child in the mountains of Colorado, a sad-faced, delicate college girl, a kind, smiling young mother, a brilliantly intellectual woman, a peerless flirt, a serious artist, a splendid cook—I see her rocking, weeding, writing, laughing — I see the turquoise bracelets on her delicate, freckled arm — I see, for a moment, all that at once, I glimpse what no mirror can reflect, the spirit flashing out across the years, beautiful. That must be what the great artists see and paint. That must be why the tired, aged faces in Rembrandt’s portraits give us such delight: they show us beauty not skin-deep but life-deep.

The Active Life If an expert does not have some problem to vex him, he is unhappy! If a philosopher's teaching is never attacked, she pines away! If critics have no one on whom to exercise their spite, they are unhappy. All such people are prisoners in the world of objects. He who wants followers, seeks political power. She who wants reputation, holds an office. The strong man looks for weights to lift. The brave woman looks for an emergency in which she can show bravery. The swordsman wants a battle in which he can swing his sword. People past their prime prefer a dignified retirement, in which they may seem profound. People experienced in law seek difficult cases to extend the application of the laws. Liturgists and musicians like festivals in which they parade their ceremonious talents. The benevolent, the dutiful, are always looking for chances to display virtue. Where would the gardener be if there were no more weeds? What would become of business without a market of fools? Where would the masses be if there were no pretext for getting jammed together and making noise? What would become of labor if there were no superfluous objects to be made? Produce! Get results! Make money! Make friends! Make changes! Or you will die of despair! Those who are caught in the machinery of power take no joy except in activity and change--the whirring of the machine! Whenever an occasion for action presents itself, they are compelled to act; they cannot help themselves. They are inexorably moved, like the ma- chine of which they are a part. Prisoners in the world of objects, they have no choice but to submit to the demands of matter! They are pressed down and crushed by external forces, fashion, the mar- ket, events, public opinion. Never in a whole lifetime do they re- cover their right mind! The active life! What a pity!

I’ve put some thought to it. How can we set up a system which encourages individuals to strive and excel, and yet which shows some compassion to the weak, and weeds out madmen and tyrants?

There is a willow grows askant the brook, That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream. Therewith fantastic garlands did she make Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples, That liberal shepherds give a grosser name, But our cold maids do dead-men's-fingers call them. There on the pendant boughs her crownet weeds Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke, When down her weedy trophies and herself Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide, And mermaid-like awhile they bore her up; Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes, As one incapable of her own distress, Or like a creature native and indued Unto that element.

At least it was short,” said Digby. Annie didn’t like it, certain that Tandry probably considered her one of the weeds. Liam must have seen her expression because he reached for her hand and squeezed it under the table. “Thank you,” Snow White finally said to Tandry. “Now,” she said, turning to Nasheen, “why don’t you show us what you’ve done?” “It would be my pleasure,” said the prince as he rose to his feet. “Please, follow me.” Liam

There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings. The town lay in the midst of a checkerboard of prosperous farms, with fields of grain and hillsides of orchards where, in spring, white clouds of bloom drifted above the green fields. In autumn, oak and maple and birch set up a blaze of color that flamed and flickered across a backdrop of pines. Then foxes barked in the hills and deer silently crossed the fields, half hidden in the mists of the fall mornings. Along the roads, laurel, viburnum, and alder, great ferns and wildflowers delighted the traveler's eye through much of the year. Even in winter the roadsides were places of beauty, where countless birds came to feed on the berries and on the seed heads of the dried weeds rising above the snow. The countryside was, in fact, famous for the abundance and variety of its bird life, and when the flood of migrants was pouring through in spring and fall people traveled from great distances to observe them. Others came to fish the streams, which flowed clear and cold out of the hills and contained shady pools where trout lay. So it had been from the days many years ago when the first settlers raised their homes, sank their wells, and built their barns. Then a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change. Some evil spell had settled on the community: mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens, the cattle, and sheep sickened and died. Everywhere was a shadow of death. The farmers spoke of much illness among their families. In the town the doctors had become more and more puzzled by new kinds of sickness appearing among their patients. There had been sudden and unexplained deaths, not only among adults but even among children whoe would be stricken suddently while at play and die within a few hours. There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example--where had they gone? Many people spoke of them, puzzled and disturbed. The feeding stations in the backyards were deserted. The few birds seen anywhere were moribund; they trembled violently and could not fly. It was a spring without voices. On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird voices there was no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh. On the farms the hens brooded, but no chicks hatched. The farmers complained that they were unable to raise any pigs--the litters were small and the young survived only a few days. The apple trees were coming into bloom but no bees droned among the blossoms, so there was no pollination and there would be no fruit. The roadsides, once so attractive, were now lined with browned and withered vegetation as though swept by fire. These, too, were silent, deserted by all living things. Even the streams were not lifeless. Anglers no longer visited them, for all the fish had died. In the gutters under the eaves and between the shingles of the roofs, a white granular powder still showed a few patches; some weeks before it had fallen like snow upon the roofs and the lawns, the fields and streams. No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of life in this stricken world. The people had done it to themselves.

We were all used to Dad's little show-off sessions, and though they were never worthy of excitement, we always tried to humor him. (Last weekend he'd called us out to the lawn to see what a big pile of dandelions he'd weeded.)

THE FORTRESS Under the pink quilted covers I hold the pulse that counts your blood. I think the woods outdoors are half asleep, left over from summer like a stack of books after a flood, left over like those promises I never keep. On the right, the scrub pine tree waits like a fruit store holding up bunches of tufted broccoli. We watch the wind from our square bed. I press down my index finger -- half in jest, half in dread -- on the brown mole under your left eye, inherited from my right cheek: a spot of danger where a bewitched worm ate its way through our soul in search of beauty. My child, since July the leaves have been fed secretly from a pool of beet-red dye. And sometimes they are battle green with trunks as wet as hunters' boots, smacked hard by the wind, clean as oilskins. No, the wind's not off the ocean. Yes, it cried in your room like a wolf and your pony tail hurt you. That was a long time ago. The wind rolled the tide like a dying woman. She wouldn't sleep, she rolled there all night, grunting and sighing. Darling, life is not in my hands; life with its terrible changes will take you, bombs or glands, your own child at your breast, your own house on your own land. Outside the bittersweet turns orange. Before she died, my mother and I picked those fat branches, finding orange nipples on the gray wire strands. We weeded the forest, curing trees like cripples. Your feet thump-thump against my back and you whisper to yourself. Child, what are you wishing? What pact are you making? What mouse runs between your eyes? What ark can I fill for you when the world goes wild? The woods are underwater, their weeds are shaking in the tide; birches like zebra fish flash by in a pack. Child, I cannot promise that you will get your wish. I cannot promise very much. I give you the images I know. Lie still with me and watch. A pheasant moves by like a seal, pulled through the mulch by his thick white collar. He's on show like a clown. He drags a beige feather that he removed, one time, from an old lady's hat. We laugh and we touch. I promise you love. Time will not take away that.

...why not let nature show you a few things? Cutting grass and pulling weeds can be a way of life... Lilacs on a bush are better than orchids. And dandelions and devil grass are better! Why? Because they bend you over and turn you away from all the people and the town for a little while and sweat you and get you down where you remember you got a nose again. And when you're all to yourself that way, you're really yourself for a little while; you get to thinking things through, alone. Gardening is the handiest excuse for being a philosopher. Nobody guesses, nobody accuses, nobody knows, but there you are, Plato in the peonies, Socrates force-growing his own hemlock. A man toting a sack of blood manure across his lawn is kin to Atlas letting the world spin easy on his shoulder. As Samuel Spaudling, Esquire, once said, 'Dig in the earth, delve in the soul.' Spin those mower blades, Bill, and walk in the spray of the Fountain of Youth.

I used to have a pretty dim view of humanity,” Tony said. “But since I started traveling—particularly to places where I anticipated being treated badly—I am on balance pretty convinced that generally speaking the human race are doing the best they can to be as good as they can, under the circumstances, whatever they may be. I guess my hope is the more people see of the world, in person hopefully, or even on television, they see ordinary people doing ordinary things, so when news happens at least they have a better idea of who we’re talking about. Put a face to some empathy, to some kinship, to some understanding. This surely is a good thing. I hope it’s a useful thing.” “And this is why a show like yours is terrific,” the president said. “Because it reminds people that actually there’s a whole bunch of the world that on a daily basis is going about its business, eating at restaurants, taking their kids to school, trying to make ends meet, playing games. The same way we are back home.

The same mistake presents itself to me, in one shape or other, at every turn,' said brother Charles. 'Parents who never showed their love, complain of want of natural affection in their children; children who never showed their duty, complain of want of natural feeling in their parents; law-makers who find both so miserable that their affections have never had enough of life's sun to develop them, are loud in their moralisings over parents and children too, and cry that the very ties of nature are disregarded. Natural affections and instincts, my dear sir, are the most beautiful of the Almighty's works, but like other beautiful works of His, they must be reared and fostered, or it is as natural that they should be wholly obscured, and that new feelings should usurp their place, as it is that the sweetest productions of the earth, left untended, should be choked with weeds and briers. I wish we could be brought to consider this, and remembering natural obligations a little more at the right time, talk about them a little less at the wrong one.

I just don't understand why you're trying so hard. It was really a long time ago." "Because, when I was nineteen years old, I fell in love with a girl who changed my life by showing me that even the darkest nights still had stars and it didn't matter one bit that you had to lie in the weeds to see them. We were kids and I barely knew her, but I loved her. I should have been there while she grew up, but I was a fool. Now, I have the woman back and I have every intention of making her fall in love with me again, and this time ...I'm never letting go.

Indeed, one of the greatest pleasures of travelling was to find a genius hidden among weeds and bushes, a treasure lost in broken tiles, a mass of gold buried in clay, and when I did find such a person, I always kept a record with the hope that I might be able to show it to my friends.

The sound of running footsteps made them all start. Then the refectory door opened and the round, freckled face of Sister Belinda appeared. She was breathing heavily, and her veil was crooked, showing short tufts of red hair sprouting around her glowing face like unruly weeds in a parched garden. “Excuse me, Mother, Sisters,” she said. “But there is a police car waiting at the gate and what looks like the Black Maria behind it. Also, another car approaching from the farm and a uniformed constable coming in via the beach path. It would appear that the filth have us surrounded.

Sharing a meal put people at ease, helped them forget the cameras were there, and inspired them to open up about their lives. Most importantly, food had become our cover, at least as far as I was concerned. In Iran and Laos, it was actually thought we were CIA like in the movie Argo. And in certain ways they were right. If it wasn’t for the cover of a “food show,” we never would have been able to get to the places we did. Season after season while planning the shoots, food had morphed from the show’s raison d’être to almost an afterthought. By the end, it was a show about people far more than one about food.

There are many places a spirit may rest when life's long march has ended. Every creature returns to its home exactly as nature intended. The cowards and traitors, the liars and cheats, each in their turn is awarded, someplace that they deserved to go, as their actions in life accorded. Those who proved untrue to their friends lie thick in the dust of the earth, trodden on forever by all to show what treachery's worth. In the mud of swamps, in rotting weeds, they lie imprisoned by evil misdeeds. But the warriors true, the brave of heart, who valiantly upheld the right, they are raised on high, to the velvet sky, bringing light to the darkness of night. They'll stand there as long as the sky will, their honor in brightness will glow, a lesson to see, for eternity, of where the real warriors go! So ere my eyelids close in sleep, these are the words I will say, May I have the courage and faithfulness that my spirit should join them one day.

When Nature made her chief work, Stella’s eyes, In colour black why wrapp’d she beams so bright? Would she in beamy black, like painter wise, Frame daintiest lustre, mix’d of shades and light? Or did she else that sober hue devise, In object best to knit and strength our sight, Lest if no veil those brave gleams did disguise, They sun-like should more dazzle than delight? Or would she her miraculous power show, That whereas black seems Beauty’s contrary, She even in black doth make all beauties flow? Both so and thus, she minding Love should be Placed ever there, gave him this mourning weed, To honour all their deaths, who for her bleed.

When I wanted to quit smoking cannabis a few years ago and found that I couldn’t do it under my own steam I went in search of a self-help book to show me the way. Annoyingly all I could find were books on how to cultivate the damn stuff. So to exact my revenge on the world of publishing I decided to one day write that book myself.

Often, half in a bay of the mountains and half on a headland, a small and nearly amphibian Schloss mouldered in the failing light among the geese and the elder-bushes and the apple trees. Dank walls rose between towers that were topped with cones of moulting shingle. Weeds throve in every cranny. Moss mottled the walls. Fissures branched like forked lightning across damp masonry which the rusting iron clamps tried to hold together, and buttresses of brick shored up the perilously leaning walls. The mountains, delaying sunrise and hastening dusk, must have halved again the short winter days. Those buildings looked too forlorn for habitation. But, in tiny, creeper-smothered windows, a faint light would show at dusk. Who lived in those stone-flagged rooms where the sun never came? Immured in those six-foot-thick walls, overgrown outside with the conquering ivy and within by genealogical trees all moulting with mildew? My thoughts flew at once to solitary figures…a windowed descendant of a lady-in-waiting at the court of Charlemagne, alone with the Sacred Heart and her beads, or a family of wax-pale barons, recklessly inbred; bachelors with walrus moustaches, bent double with rheumatism, shuddering from room to room and coughing among their lurchers, while their cleft palates called to each other down corridors that were all but pitch dark.

She was a gardener of the ruthless type, and went for any small green thing that incautiously showed a timid spike above the earth, suspecting it of being a weed. She had had a slight difference with the professional gardener who had hitherto worked for her on three afternoons during the week, and had told him that his services were no longer required. She meant to do her gardening herself this year, and was confident that a profusion of beautiful flowers and a plethora of delicious vegetables would be the result. At the end of her garden path was a barrow of rich manure, which she proposed, when she had finished the slaughter of the innocents, to dig into the depopulated beds. On the other side of her paling her neighbour Georgie Pillson was rolling his strip of lawn, on which during the summer he often played croquet on a small scale. Occasionally they shouted remarks to each other, but as they got more and more out of breath with their exertions the remarks got fewer. Mrs. Quantock's last question had been "What do you do with slugs, Georgie?" and Georgie had panted out, "Pretend you don't see them.

One of the constants in life is that results are always being produced. If you don't consciously decide what results you want to produce and represent things accordingly, then some external trigger-a conversation, a TV show, whatever-may create states that create behaviors that do not support you. Life is like a river. It's moving, and you can be at the mercy of the river if you don't take deliberate, conscious action to steer yourself in a direction you have predetermined. If you don't plant the mental and physiological seeds of the results you want, weeds will grow automatically. If we don't consciously direct our own minds and states, our environment may produce undesirable haphazard states. The results can be disastrous. Thus it's critical that-on a daily basis-we stand guard at the door of our mind, that we know how we are consistently representing things to ourselves. We must daily weed our garden.

would look for us. When I think of the pleasure of being free, I think of the start of that day, of coming out of the tunnel and finding ourselves on a road that went straight as far as the eye could see, the road that, according to what Rino had told Lila, if you got to the end arrived at the sea. I felt joyfully open to the unknown. It was entirely different from going down into the cellar or up to Don Achille’s house. There was a hazy sun, a strong smell of burning. We walked for a long time between crumbling walls invaded by weeds, low structures from which came voices in dialect, sometimes a clamor. We saw a horse make its way slowly down an embankment and cross the street, whinnying. We saw a young woman looking out from a balcony, combing her hair with a flea comb. We saw a lot of small snotty children who stopped playing and looked at us threateningly. We also saw a fat man in an undershirt who emerged from a tumbledown house, opened his pants, and showed us his penis. But we weren’t scared of anything: Don Nicola, Enzo’s father, sometimes let us pat his horse, the children were threatening in our courtyard, too, and there was old Don Mimì who showed us his disgusting thing when we were coming home from school. For at least three hours, the road we were walking on did not seem different from the segment that we looked out on every day. And I felt no responsibility for the right road. We held each other by the hand, we walked side by side, but for me, as usual, it was as if Lila were ten steps ahead and knew precisely what to do, where to go. I was used to feeling second in everything, and so I was sure that to her, who had always been first, everything

In March 2015, sixteen accused policemen were acquitted of their involvement in the Hashimpura massacre, making minorities even more cynical about the promises of justice from secular parties. The case dated back to 1987 when riots had erupted in Meerut. Men from UP’s Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) dragged out young Muslim men, most of them poor daily wagers and weavers, drove them to the Upper Ganga Canal in Ghaziabad instead of to the police station, and threw them in one by one. V. N. Rai, who was superintendent of police in Ghaziabad, wrote a chilling account of how the police—who described Meerut as a ‘mini Pakistan’ and held the Muslims solely responsible for the violence—had behaved. ‘Every survivor who hit the ground after being shot at tried hard to pretend he is dead and most hanged on the canal’s embankments with their heads in water and the body clutched by weeds to show to their killers that they were dead and no more gunshots fired at them. Even after the PAC personnel had left, they lay still between water, blood and slush. They were too scared and numbed even to help those who were still alive or half dead.

In downtown Mexico City thousands of hipsters in floppy straw hats and long-lapeled jackets over bare chests padded along the main drag, some of them selling crucifixes and weed in the alleys, some of them kneeling in beat chapels next to Mexican burlesque shows in sheds. Some alleys were rubble, with open sewers, and little doors led to closet-size bars stuck in adobe walls. You had to jump over a ditch to get your drink, and in the bottom of the ditch was the ancient lake of the Aztec. You came out of the bar with your back to the wall and edged back to the street. They served coffee mixed with rum and nutmeg. Mambo blared from everywhere.

John Isidore said, “I found a spider.” The three androids glanced up, momentarily moving their attention from the TV screen to him. “Let’s see it,” Pris said. She held out her hand. Roy Baty said, “Don’t talk while Buster is on.” “I’ve never seen a spider,” Pris said. She cupped the medicine bottle in her palms, surveying the creature within. “All those legs. Why’s it need so many legs, J. R.?” “That’s the way spiders are,” Isidore said, his heart pounding; he had difficulty breathing. “Eight legs.” Rising to her feet, Pris said, “You know what I think, J. R.? I think it doesn’t need all those legs.” “Eight?” Irmgard Baty said. “Why couldn’t it get by on four? Cut four off and see.” Impulsively opening her purse, she produced a pair of clean, sharp cuticle scissors, which she passed to Pris. A weird terror struck at J. R. Isidore. Carrying the medicine bottle into the kitchen, Pris seated herself at J. R. Isidore’s breakfast table. She removed the lid from the bottle and dumped the spider out. “It probably won’t be able to run as fast,” she said, “but there’s nothing for it to catch around here anyhow. It’ll die anyway.” She reached for the scissors. “Please,” Isidore said. Pris glanced up inquiringly. “Is it worth something?” “Don’t mutilate it,” he said wheezingly. Imploringly. With the scissors, Pris snipped off one of the spider’s legs. In the living room Buster Friendly on the TV screen said, “Take a look at this enlargement of a section of background. This is the sky you usually see. Wait, I’ll have Earl Parameter, head of my research staff, explain their virtually world-shaking discovery to you.” Pris clipped off another leg, restraining the spider with the edge of her hand. She was smiling. “Blowups of the video pictures,” a new voice from the TV said, “when subjected to rigorous laboratory scrutiny, reveal that the gray backdrop of sky and daytime moon against which Mercer moves is not only not Terran—it is artificial.” “You’re missing it!” Irmgard called anxiously to Pris; she rushed to the kitchen door, saw what Pris had begun doing. “Oh, do that afterward,” she said coaxingly. “This is so important, what they’re saying; it proves that everything we believed—” “Be quiet,” Roy Baty said. “—is true,” Irmgard finished. The TV set continued, “The ‘moon’ is painted; in the enlargements, one of which you see now on your screen, brush strokes show. And there is even some evidence that the scraggly weeds and dismal, sterile soil—perhaps even the stones hurled at Mercer by unseen alleged parties—are equally faked. It is quite possible in fact that the ‘stones’ are made of soft plastic, causing no authentic wounds.” “In other words,” Buster Friendly broke in, “Wilbur Mercer is not suffering at all.” The research chief said, “We at last managed, Mr. Friendly, to track down a former Hollywood special-effects man, a Mr. Wade Cortot, who flatly states, from his years of experience, that the figure of ‘Mercer’ could well be merely some bit player marching across a sound stage. Cortot has gone so far as to declare that he recognizes the stage as one used by a now out-of-business minor moviemaker with whom Cortot had various dealings several decades ago.” “So according to Cortot,” Buster Friendly said, “there can be virtually no doubt.” Pris had now cut three legs from the spider, which crept about miserably on the kitchen table, seeking a way out, a path to freedom. It found none.

Gardener: ...Go thou, and like an executioner, Cut off the heads of too fast growing sprays, That look too lofty in our commonwealth: All must be even in our government. You thus employ'd, I will go root away The noisome weeds, which without profit suck The soil's fertility from wholesome flowers. +Servant: Why should we in the compass of a pale Keep law and form and due proportion, Showing, as in a model, our firm estate, When our sea-walled garden, the whole land, Is full of weeds, her fairest flowers choked up, Her fruit-trees all upturned, her hedges ruin'd, Her knots disorder'd and her wholesome herbs Swarming with caterpillars? -Gardener: Hold thy peace! He that hath suffer'd this disorder'd spring Hath now himself met with the fall of leaf.,,

People outside the field couldn’t fathom the depth of communication apes were capable of, though they were willing to admit that their dogs showed moods and desires, barking at the door or fetching the leash when they wanted to go out, for instance, or that their cats’ mewing served half a dozen different purposes, but what they failed to appreciate was that apes were of a different order altogether. Dogs and cats had been bred for thousands of generations to weed out the undesirable genes, domesticated to create an all but emotionally neutered animal designed to serve human needs, but apes came straight out of the wild. They were independent. Resentful of captivity. And if you stared into their eyes you saw yourself staring right back. To put Sam in the category of a dog or cat was demeaning—and beyond that, uniformed and unimaginative

Miss Rose sitting on a porch. Beside her, a bushel basket of ripe peaches or tomatoes. The drunkards buzzing, but easily smashed with a swat. Early mornings, she starts singing, "What a Friend We Have in Jesus," and that's your cue to rise. To eat the heavy breakfast that will keep you full all day. Once you've helped her with peeling those tomatoes or peaches, there are weeds to be plucked from the garden, from around the vegetables that will show up fresh on the supper table. Fish need cleaning if Uncle Norman comes through with a prize. After dinner, the piecing together of quilt tops from remnants until the light completely fades. The next morning, it starts again. A woman singing off-key praises to the Lord. The sweet fruit dripping with juice. The sound of bugs. I thought of what Mama liked to say: to find this kind of love, you have to enter deep country.

Is that what we do? We pitch our tents, do our little clown shows, and then take off up the road to the next town ahead? Leaving our science-fictional debris on the blasted dirt to poison the minds of future generations, like the alien litter in STALKER and ROADSIDE PICNIC. Flying cars rusting out like Saturn Five rockets propped up as roadkill talismans at Kennedy, leaking toxins into the soil. Jetpacks oozing fuel from cracks in their tanks and poisoning the grass. Three-ring moonbases crumbling in the solar wind. Birdshit on the time machines. Big fat rats scavenging broken packs of food capsules, Best Before Date of 1971. A Westinghouse Robot Smoking Companion, vintage of 1931, slumped up against a tree, tin fingers still twitching for a cigarette. Vines growing through a busted cyberspace deck. The shreds of inflatable furniture designed for the space hospitals of 1955. Lizards perched atop a weather control cannon. Atomic batteries mouldering inside the grips of laser pistols abandoned in the weeds.

We have a timber yard?" Leo asked. Miss Marks replied, "Mr. Merripen is planning to construct houses for the new tenant farmers." "This is the first I've heard of it. Why are we providing houses for them?" Leo's tone was not at all censuring, merely interested. But Miss Marks's lips thinned, as if she had interpreted his question as a complaint. "The most recent tenants to join the estate were lured by the promise of new houses. They are already successful farmers, educated and forward-looking, and Mr. Merripen believes their presence will add to the estate's prosperity. Other local estates, such as Stony Cross Park, are also building homes for their tenants and laborers-" "It's all right," Leo interrupted. "No need to be defensive, Marks. God knows I wouldn't think of interfering with Merripen's plans after seeing all he's done so far." He glanced at the housekeeper. "If you'll point the way, Mrs. Barnstable, I'll go out and find Merripen. Perhaps I might help to unload the timber wagon." "A footman will show you the way," the housekeeper said at once. "But the work is occasionally hazardous, my lord, and not fitting for a man of your station." Miss Marks added in a light but caustic tone, "Besides, it is doubtful you could be of any help." The housekeeper's mouth fell open. Win had to bite back a grin. Miss Marks had spoken as if Leo were a small weed of a man instead of a strapping six-footer.

Sheltered Garden" I have had enough. I gasp for breath. Every way ends, every road, every foot-path leads at last to the hill-crest-- then you retrace your steps, or find the same slope on the other side, precipitate. I have had enough-- border-pinks, clove-pinks, wax-lilies, herbs, sweet-cress. O for some sharp swish of a branch-- there is no scent of resin in this place, no taste of bark, of coarse weeds, aromatic, astringent-- only border on border of scented pinks. Have you seen fruit under cover that wanted light-- pears wadded in cloth, protected from the frost, melons, almost ripe, smothered in straw? Why not let the pears cling to the empty branch? All your coaxing will only make a bitter fruit-- let them cling, ripen of themselves, test their own worth, nipped, shrivelled by the frost, to fall at last but fair With a russet coat. Or the melon-- let it bleach yellow in the winter light, even tart to the taste-- it is better to taste of frost-- the exquisite frost-- than of wadding and of dead grass. For this beauty, beauty without strength, chokes out life. I want wind to break, scatter these pink-stalks, snap off their spiced heads, fling them about with dead leaves-- spread the paths with twigs, limbs broken off, trail great pine branches, hurled from some far wood right across the melon-patch, break pear and quince-- leave half-trees, torn, twisted but showing the fight was valiant. O to blot out this garden to forget, to find a new beauty in some terrible wind-tortured place.

Ricky Marigold was his name up at the commune. He was seventeen, had run away from home in Pacoima and was a righteous grasshead. He wasn't a bad kid, just fucked up. He was for: love, truth, gentleness, getting high, staying high, good sounds, pleasant weather, funky clothes and rapping with his friends. He was against: Viet Nam, the Laws with their riot sticks, violence, bigotry, random hatred, nine-to-five jobs, squares who tried to get you to conform, grass full of seeds and stems, and bringdowns in general. He met Jack Gardiner on the corner of Laurel Canyon and Sunset, across from Schwab's where the starlets went to show off their asses. He saw Jack Gardiner as a little too old to be making the scene, but the guy looked flaky enough: lumberjack shirt, good beard, bright eyes; and he seemed to be friendly enough. So Ricky invited him to come along. They walked up Laurel Canyon, hunching along next to the curb on the sidewalkless street. "Gonna be a quiet scene," Ricky said. "Just a buncha beautiful people groovin' on themselves, maybe turning on, you know." The older man nodded; his hands were deep in his pants pockets. They walked quite a while, finally turning up Stone Canyon Road. A mile up the twisting road. Jack Gardiner slipped a step behind Ricky Marigold and pulled out the blade. Ricky had started to turn, just as Connie's father drove the shaft into Ricky's back, near the base of the spine. Ricky was instantly paralyzed, though not dead. He slipped to the street, and Jack Gardiner dragged him into the high weeds and junk of an empty lot. He left him there to die. Unable to speak, unable to move, Ricky Marigold found all the love draining out of him. Slowly, for six hours, through the small of his back.

For a moment, the fog remained unmoved. It sat around, swirling in place, very clearly listening but showing no sign of offering answers. Then, just as Nausicaä began to contemplate conjuring a few more fireballs, the fog began to thin. Little by little it drained from the air until, finally, all that was left was a vaguely damp, translucent haze. She could only stare at what was revealed. “Huh,” she breathed when speech at last overcame her surprise. “This is…new.” It wasn’t just the changelings that had gathered. They were present, of course—one mere step away. Nausicaä briefly took in the unmistakable pale green tint of his fawn-brown skin and the snaking twists of ivy that grew from the sharp flares of his little shoulders. But there were others. There were so many others. In all of Nausicaä’s very long life, she had never encountered so many of magic’s children in one place. The crowd of them stretched far in almost every direction, faces of all shapes and sizes peeking out of the foliage and trees. There were centaurs, goblins, brownies, imps and sprites. There were redcaps, with their crimson-stained hats and vicious scythes, which glinted in the moonlight. There were kelpies dripping sodden weeds, lilies strangled in their manes. Littered throughout the branches above were crows that weren’t really crows at all, but sluagh—wandering souls of the violent dead who preyed on those soon to die. There were larger things too. Unnameable things. Things that had undoubtedly been calling this forest their home long before Nausicaä had ever been born. She narrowed her eyes at the distance—something massive as a mobile hill stood still as silence too far away for mortal eyes to see. Their form was not unlike an overlarge, poisonous tree frog, all vibrant blues and yellows and greens, a crown of velvet antlers on their head and hundreds of glittering black eyes on their face. A freaking Forest Guardian, she would hazard a guess, not that she’d ever seen one to say for sure. “Uh…okay, well, weird time to have a company meeting, but you do you, I guess. I’m going to…go. Gar, maybe it’s best you stick with these guys until I square things up with my Reaper. Thanks for lifting the fog, forest brats! Good luck with…whatever this is. May the force be with you.” She turned back around. There weren’t any faeries in front of her, either—just trees and misty gloom and a darkness unnatural even for this time of night. And, of course, the glass-chime tinkling of magic, which now sounded to her a bit distressed.

Small children always bounce back. Parents think of them as fragile flowers, but they’re more like weeds: They show up whenever they want, grow like crazy, and make your garden look terrible. But most importantly, nothing kills them. I’ve seen dandelions soak up bottles of herbicide and toddlers eat handfuls of cereal from inside a dusty vent. Both pests are still here.

The scribe objects. You can’t put it like that, I can’t write that. But the client is a tough small woman forty years old. She insists. She needs her letter to open out full of pleated revolving silk and the soft lobes of her ears where she flaunts those thin silver wires. She wants to tell her dream to the only one who will get the drift. How she saw their children lying every one dressed out in their simplest fears. They glowed, the shape of their sentence outlined in sea green. Among those beloved exiles one sighed happy, as a curtain lightened and the grammar changed, and the wall showed pure white in the shape of a bird’s wing. Advertisement But when she whispered it to the scribe he frowned and she saw she had got it wrong, she had come to a place where they all spoke the one language: it rose up before her like a quay wall draped in sable weeds. He said, You can’t put those words into your letter. It will weigh too heavy, it will cost too much, it will break the strap of the postman’s bag, it will crack his collarbone. The bridges are all so bad now, with that weight to shift he’s bound to stumble. He’ll never make it alive.

The scribe objects. You can’t put it like that, I can’t write that. But the client is a tough small woman forty years old. She insists. She needs her letter to open out full of pleated revolving silk and the soft lobes of her ears where she flaunts those thin silver wires. She wants to tell her dream to the only one who will get the drift. How she saw their children lying every one dressed out in their simplest fears. They glowed, the shape of their sentence outlined in sea green. Among those beloved exiles one sighed happy, as a curtain lightened and the grammar changed, and the wall showed pure white in the shape of a bird’s wing. But when she whispered it to the scribe he frowned and she saw she had got it wrong, she had come to a place where they all spoke the one language: it rose up before her like a quay wall draped in sable weeds. He said, You can’t put those words into your letter. It will weigh too heavy, it will cost too much, it will break the strap of the postman’s bag, it will crack his collarbone. The bridges are all so bad now, with that weight to shift he’s bound to stumble. He’ll never make it alive.

Sitting in your favorite position and closing your eyes, you tiptoe over the threshold of experience and into the mystery. You drop into the heart of the universe. You’re there. The cascade of SONDANoBe floods your brain. You’re hooked, drawn up into the light. When you emerge from meditation, you’re more compassionate, emotionally balanced, mentally coherent, effective, kind, creative, healthy, and productive. The effects ripple through the whole community around you. At the center of that circle is a great-feeling you. The Gregs of this world go for heroin, weed, or alcohol to make themselves feel good. That’s simply because they don’t realize that a far better drug is available. SONDANoBe is what addicts are really craving. They want to feel good, but they’re looking for exogenous chemicals to meet their needs. They don’t understand that what they’re searching for is right inside their own brains. The only reason those drugs feel good to the Gregs of this world is that they’re facsimiles of the substances that their own brains produce. Bliss Brain is a formula, just like the World’s Best Cocktail. It’s the World’s Best High, and it’s just as addictive. The brain that experiences SONDANoBe once can never go back to its old state. By remodeling neural tissue, SONDANoBe consolidates learning and hardwires bliss. While street drugs shrink and damage vital brain regions, SONDANoBe does the opposite. It grows your brain. It expands the brain regions that regulate your emotions, synthesize great ideas, stimulate your creativity, acquire new skills, heal your body, extend your longevity, improve your memory, and boost your happiness. The next chapter shows how a brain bathed in the chemicals of ecstasy starts to change its fundamental structure, as the software of mind becomes the hardware of brain.

Chemically induced joy comes at a cost. That cost can be high. Very, very high. So high that you’re going to think twice after reading what science has to say about drug use. One study found that adolescents who smoke just a couple of joints of marijuana show changes in their brains. That’s not a couple of years of smoking or the decades that some adults rack up. It’s just two joints. A research team led by Dr. Gabriella Gobbi, a professor and psychiatrist at the McGill University Health Center in Montreal, discovered that teenagers using cannabis had a nearly 40% greater risk of depression and a 50% greater risk of suicidal ideation in adulthood. Dr. Gobbi stated that “given the large number of adolescents who smoke cannabis, the risk in the population becomes very big. About 7% of depression is probably linked to the use of cannabis in adolescence, which translates into more than 400,000 cases.” The research that revealed these startling numbers was not just a single study of adolescent marijuana use. It was a meta-analysis and review of 11 studies with a total of 23,317 teenage subjects followed through young adulthood. Further, Gobbi’s team only reviewed studies that provided information on depression in the subjects prior to their cannabis use. “We considered only studies that controlled for [preexisting] depression,” said Dr. Gobbi. “They were not depressed before using marijuana, so they probably weren’t using it to self-medicate.” Marijuana use preceded depression. The specific findings of Gobbi’s research include: The risk of depression associated with marijuana use in teens below age 18 is 1.4 times higher than among nonusers. The risk of suicidal thoughts is 1.5 times higher. The likelihood that teen marijuana users will attempt suicide is 3.46 times greater. In adults with prolonged marijuana use, the wiring of the brain degrades. Areas affected include the hippocampus (learning and memory), insula (compassion), and prefrontal cortex (executive functions). The authors of one study stated that “regular cannabis use is associated with gray matter volume reduction in the medial temporal cortex, temporal pole, parahippocampal gyrus, insula, and orbitofrontal cortex; these regions are rich in cannabinoid CB1 receptors and functionally associated with motivational, emotional, and affective processing. Furthermore, these changes correlate with the frequency of cannabis use . . . [while the] . . . age of onset of drug use also influences the magnitude of these changes.” A large number of studies show that cannabis use both increases anxiety and depression and leads to worse health. Key parts of your brain shrink more, based on how early you began smoking weed, and how often you smoke it. That’s a “high” price to pay.

Some studies show that exposure to more free radicals causes lab animals not to live shorter but actually longer. Worms that had been genetically manipulated in such a way that they produced more free radicals lived 32 percent longer than regular worms. When you give worms a weed killer that increases free radical production in their cells, they live 58 percent longer (although I do not advise sprinkling weed killer on your breakfast).191 How is it possible that many antioxidants do not slow down aging, or even accelerate it, and that free radicals can slow down aging?

This is the damage I’ve caused by just showing up to Triple Falls. By setting Collin free. Another casualty to add in the wake of my reckless heart. “I love you,” he says with surety. “No matter what.” “Love you too.” Defeated, he thumps his head back on the rest and turns to me. “Now get out of my car, you reek of weed and teenage angst.

Sometimes my voice comes out of your mouth— songs rush from the throats of weeds, leaves fly back to trees, and the moon peels back its skin to show the sea its great green heart. — Linda Hillringhouse, from “Black Rattle,” The Things I Didn’t Know to Wish For (New York Quarterly Books, 2020)

I fell in love with a girl who changed my life by showing me that even the darkest nights still had stars and it didn’t matter one bit that you had to lie in the weeds to see them.

a young man once sought out a master to teach him the Japanese tea ceremony. The master tested him by asking him to clean up a garden. The young man removed the weeds and raked the leaves until the grounds were pristine. As he reviewed his flawless work, he decided something was missing. He walked over to a cherry tree and shook it so that some flower petals fell to the ground. By finding the beauty in imperfection, he showed he was ready to become a master.

If you wish to speed your mate’s healing, in addition to your blood, a pink-flowered weed sprouts by the river. Make him chew it.” I fired my arrow at the snare before I finished hearing its words. The trap sprang free. And the word clicked through me. Mate. “What did you say?” The Suriel rose to its full height, towering over me even from across the clearing. I had not realized that despite the bone, it was muscled— powerful. “If you wish to … ” The Suriel paused, and grinned, showing nearly all of those brown, thick teeth. “You did not know, then.” “Say it,” I gritted out. “The High Lord of the Night Court is your mate.

Darling listen - I want you to wake up now... Oh, no.. you took me otherwise. I am not asking you to wake up early today & do the same thing you did yesterday, I want you to wake up in life... To wake up in life means to become more of yourself, to express yourself, to show the world how you're unique & the best, everyday. To wake up in life means shifting your mindset from “Things happen to me” to “I make things happen”… It also means to remain happy with what you have while working hard for what you want. To wake up in life means putting a full stop to “watering the WEEDS” & begin “watering the SEEDS”… It also means to stop over-dreaming & under-acting. To wake up in life means shifting your mindset from “what is missing” to “what you’re grateful for”… & giving your best shot to everything & achieving every single thing you possibly CAN! Good luck & Tons of Good Wishes!

Love. It finds its way like a weed growing through the cracks of cement meant to hold it out. It’s determined to show its beautiful self, even in the midst of the darkness surrounding it. Crazy things happen because of love, unimaginable things that seem too rare to be purely coincidence.

Yung Pueblo, the modern poet and philosopher, is a beacon of personal growth, healing, and self-awareness. His words, steeped in wisdom, resonate with people seeking peace, transformation, and a deeper connection with themselves. Let's look at some of Yung Pueblo's quotes and break them down in a way that adds value to your life. Each quote is followed by an easy-to-understand explainer, using metaphors to help you understand his message's depth. These explanations are guideposts, showing how to apply his insights to your journey. ## Yung Pueblo Quotes on Healing **"True healing is the willingness to treat yourself with kindness."** Healing is like tending to a garden. You can't rush it, and you can't force it. As you carefully water plants and pull weeds, you must approach yourself with patience and compassion. Only by treating yourself kindly will you create an environment where healing can flourish. **"The more you heal, the less you push away what's uncomfortable."** Healing isn't about avoiding discomfort—it's about embracing it. Think of it like building a muscle. Every stretch and strain makes you stronger. As you heal, you grow more capable of sitting with discomfort, knowing that it's part of the process, not a thing to run from. **"Healing happens when you are ready to let go of what is hurting you."** Letting go is like releasing a heavy anchor holding your ship in place. You can't sail forward until you free yourself from the weight of old wounds. Healing begins when you untie yourself from the past and allow yourself to move freely into the future. ## Yung Pueblo Quotes About Self-Love **"You must love yourself so deeply that your energy and presence become a gift to the world."** Imagine your heart as well. The more you fill it with love for yourself, the more you have to share with others. Self-love isn't selfish—the overflow enriches everything and everyone around you. By loving yourself deeply, you become a gift to those you meet. **"Self-love is creating space in your life to take care of yourself."** Self-love is like building a sanctuary in your daily life. You need to create space, even negligible, to retreat and recharge. It's not about indulgence; it's about recognizing that taking care of yourself is essential to thriving in a busy, chaotic world. **"Self-love is accepting that you are a constantly evolving work of art."** You are like a canvas, always in progress. Some days, the strokes are bold; others, they're gentle. Self-love means accepting that your life is a masterpiece in progress—you are never finished, and that's where the beauty lies. Embrace each phase and layer, and know it all adds to something magnificent.

The graves were overgrown with weeds but they were still visible on a rise above the river. The crosses were rotted but the stones were there. I spent the better part of the afternoon at Mangel’s grave. I told him about Buck. They weren’t the best of friends but I figured he’d want to know. I talked about Moze too. If Mangel hadn’t showed up when he did I wouldn’t be telling this tale. I got the better half of that partnership. It was early for wildflowers but I found some yellow columbines and laid them on his grave. I’d asked Carlos once about dogs in heaven. He figured that if there was a heaven, dogs had as much right to it as anybody and more right than most. It was heaven that he was less sure of. He talked about freedom and being fully alive instead. He told me once that he thought hell was more a state of mind than a real place. Believe he felt the same about heaven. I put in a word for Mangel. Figured it couldn’t hurt. I told him that if there was a heaven I’d look for his sign and I’d follow the tracks through eternity till I found him.

This petition very wisely reminds us of how prayer works. If people prayed this prayer, and then sat back and waited for bread to fall into their hands, they would certainly starve. It reminds us that prayer and work go hand in hand and that when we pray we must go on to work to make our prayers come true. It is true that the living seed comes from God, but it is equally true that it is our task to grow and to cultivate that seed. Dick Sheppard, the famous pacifist and preacher, used to love a certain story. There was a man who had an allotment; he had with great toil reclaimed a piece of ground, clearing away the stones, eradicating the rank growth of weeds, enriching and feeding the ground, until it produced the loveliest flowers and vegetables. One evening he was showing a pious friend around his allotment. The pious friend said: ‘It’s wonderful what God can do with a bit of ground like this, isn’t it?’ ‘Yes,’ said the man who had put in such toil, ‘but you should have seen this bit of ground when God had it to himself!’ God’s bounty and human toil must combine. Prayer, like faith, without works is dead. When we pray this petition, we are recognizing two basic truths – that without God we can do nothing, and that without our effort and co-operation God can do nothing for us.

- So what do you want me to do, Adam? I cannot be everywhere at the same time. I already have to be in three places at once, not just two. My Spanish is much better than it was half a year ago, but I am not native, Adam - I am not Catalan, I am not Spanish. - Alright, alright, alright. Jesus. - What do you mean, Boss Jesus? I am Tomas, the king of the Goys, not the Jews. - HAHAHA. Get serious now. This costs me money. - You’re kidding. You don’t even pay me a salary and my girlfriend is crazy about it. How do you want me to make over 10,000 Euros in net traffic a month if you are sending me to the same Estanco stores that never order and barely have any traffic, just wasting my time, Adam? - Mario made a lot of business with Estancos. - Bullshit, Boss. Mario, Mister Jerk Twister made monkey-business with a handful of Estancos. He sold a set of twelve crumble-cards with a free display in 2012 Spring and he never showed up again, they said. Was he even in Spain, Adam? - That’s not the point. - OK. So what is the point? - Mario made a lot of business. - Would you like to show me the total sum of wholesale figures Mario allegedly made in 2012, Boss? - No. - Because Mario didn’t make 10 000 Euros traffic in an entire year, Boss. Monkey-business. - You are spending 140 Euros on these two kids for the two catalogs and wasting time here with Rachel. - So do you want Rachel to stay here all night to laminate all this by herself, or may I help her so that we can give the catalogs to the two kids and we at least triple our potential tomorrow, so they can do sales, Adam, so they could go and visit all the Estancos as you wish? - Yeah, sure. - Thank you. Adam the tiny Estancos are seasonal and some of them don’t even keep our kinds of products they rely soley on tobacco sales, elder Catalan people. Clubs are opening at every corner, Adam and they need us to supply them with products. They won’t be so seasonal, they cannot rely on the tourism by law they cannot register walk-ins. - Cccc. They register anyone, what are you talking about? - No. Which club? - Club Alfalfa. The custom card client, Mario and Tom made in 2012. - Yeah, the marijuana club where there were two Police razzias both found cocaine twice behind the booth, so far. - But they are open again. Selling weed. - For how long Adam? How many times can they re-open after the Police had shut the club down twice already because of cocaine? How many members or employees they arrested, Adam? Would you bail me out if I go inside the wrong door one day, representing you?

One of those days we were in Maria Vostra getting weed; while we were sitting at the bar during some festive day—I think it was Three Kings' arrival in January—Marco, the 30 some years old Argentine founding member of that club and probably the kindest of the three, received a phone call from Buenos Aires. I didn't understand it much, nor did I pay too much attention, but the tall Marco, who was usually in a great mood, suddenly ran out of the bar crying after one or two minutes. Martina told me she heard him speaking in Rioplatense on the phone. Marco's best friend had been shot dead in broad daylight in Buenos Aires at the same time; in front of her seven-year-old daughter. He had been shot five times in the chest because a thief had tried to steal his scooter and he had tried to stop them; they then shot him dead and took off with his scooter. We were shocked, at least Marco and I while I tried to hide it - but Martina, who was only 20, wasn't. “That's how poor people are in Argentina, Tomas,” she said, pointing to her lips with her pinky as if it was a known secret. She wasn't fazed by death. I failed to realize what that meant. She must have seen people die before we met. Perhaps I was blindfolded because I had been with Sabrina, whom I knew had something to do with Timothy's death and had gotten away with it, leaving Canada - I was unsure as to when she left exactly, and why - and why she was really unable to visit little Joel in Canada. I was also aware that Adam had not been to Israel for over 10 years, probably because he had murdered someone or done something similar when he was younger. Perhaps I had become too accustomed to the presence of bad people; perhaps they had all become too familiar to me after all, two years after I had first met Sabrina, one year after I had first met Adam, and living in Barcelona for one and a half years at that time. “A scooter worth 200-300 Euros is such a great value there, imagine Tomas. It's so dangerous and poor country” she said. A few times in Urgell, Martina made a joyful noise of 'Oyyy', but she stopped because I laughed and she never said it again, no matter how much I asked her to. Perhaps the presence of the Polish workers at the other end of the place had something to do with it. Gucho and Damian spent time with us in the kitchen-living room area every night. We ate, we smoked, and we had a great time together. They were skilled at smoking out of a bowl to get the most from the least weed. I registered Martina at Club Marley, so if she was in the center and needed weed, she wouldn't have to go all the way up to Maria Vostra, a block from Urgell. Club Marley was mostly run by Argentine people, so I thought she would like them too. One of those nights I was sitting in Club Marley at a table with Martina. When she went to the bathroom, an elder dispensary budtender I knew, who I met daily, told me that he didn't want to be rude, but: “Be very, very careful with this girl, Tomas. With Latinas, there is love sweeter than honey and all you ever dreamed of, but it only lasts as long as you are successful as you are right now, as long as you’re the manager.” I said “thank you” and I meant it, but I had no time to reflect on it because he had to go. Martina was suddenly in my mind and by my side again: in love. I thought, “Yes, the guy may be right, but I trust Martina and have no reason not to.” I knew I was broke and I knew that Martina knew that too. Even though I was a manager and seemed successful to my customers, it did not make me rich yet nor was it the reason to make Martina want to be with me. I believe he must have caught sight of her looking at me or at another man when I wasn't paying attention. To me, she was one of a kind. I trusted her deeply and even told her about the guy's warning regarding Latinas. She showed no reaction. I didn't notice or pay attention to the fact that Martina never set foot in Club Marley again.

They used my name and permit to grow the weed and earn money to repay their debts and compensate their investors. To keep my girlfriend. To take her. I am uncertain if any of them have ever spent a minute in jail for any of these activities. Adam proudly showcases his new motorcycles on Instagram, posing on a hill above Barcelona. He also displays his brand new electric camper van, which they use to travel and transport drugs across Europe and Iberia, as well as his gigantic marijuana cultivation located in Portugal. People like Ruan and Martina admire his public images. I came across a picture of Ruan and Martina together in Berlin, where their mother Fernanda visited them. Martina became member of the Evil Eye Cult, and the custom made mafia group in Spain, which used her as a pawn in their porn and drug-related activities. She now operates as their representative in Berlin. Martina and I have lost the ability to genuinely smile. Her social media posts only show disinterest or a malicious demeanor. ‘A boot stomping on a human face.’ In a picture with her brother and mother, she puts on a forced fake “good vibe” and “happy” smile, revealing her flawless teeth and the subtle lines of aging. With each passing day, she bears a greater resemblance to her rich and so happy mother, the bad person. As far as I know, none of these individuals have faced consequences for their actions, such as having their teeth broken. As I had. Innocently. Taking care of business and their lives. With love. I find this to be incredibly unjust. In the 21st century. In Europe. On planet Earth. By non-EU criminals. “Matando – ganando” – “killing and gaining” like there were no Laws at all. Nowadays, you can observe Sabrina flaunting her fake lips and altered face, just like Martina her enhanced breasts. Guess who was paying for it? It seems that both girls now sustain themselves through their bodies and drug involvement, to this day, influencing criminals to gain friends in harming Tomas and having a lavish lifestyle filled with fun and mischief. Making a living. Enjoying Spain. Enjoying Life. My money. My tears. This is the situation as it stands. I was wondering what Salvador Dali was trying to tell me. I stood in front of the Lincoln portrait for a long time, but I couldn't grasp the point or the moral behind it. I can listen to Abraham Lincoln and ‘trust people. To see. If I can trust them.’ But he ultimately suffered a tragic fate, with his life being taken. (Got his head popped.) I believe there may have also been a female or two involved in that situation, too, possibly leading to his guards being let down. While he was watching: Acting performances, he was facing a: Stage. Theater. It is disheartening, considering he was a good person. Like Jesus, John Lennon and so on. Shows a pattern Machiavelli was talking about. Some individuals are too bright for those in darkness; they feel compelled to suppress those brighter minds simply because they think and act differently. Popping their heads. Reptilian lower brain-based culture, the concept of the Evil Eye, Homo erectus. He couldn't even stand up properly when I was shouting at him, urging him to stand up from the stairs. ‘Homo seditus reptilis.’ But what else was there in the Lincoln image that I didn't see? What was Dali trying to convey or express or tell me? Besides the fact that the woman is in his mind, on his mind, in the image, exactly, his head got popped open. Perhaps because he was focusing on a woman, trusting her for a split second, or turning his head away for a moment.

Who were these people who were Nico's friends at that club? It seemed like an Italian-Spanish coffeeshop. I'm not sure, it was quite far from downtown in a pretty hidden location. I don't remember the name of the club or the street, but if I drive from Urgell I can find it. I took a few pictures outside the reception area while we were waiting outside with Adam to be allowed to enter after being registered as club members. They took our entry into the almost empty private club very seriously, unlike my girlfriend selling weed in their dispensary at age 20, when I just gave her a job elsewhere. The pictures I took were of two skateboards hanging on the wall next to each other. They were spray-painted with smiling devilish faces, the comedy and tragedy masks. („Sock and buskin: The sock and buskin are two ancient symbols of comedy and tragedy. In ancient Greek theatre, actors in tragic roles wore a boot called a buskin (Latin cothurnus). The actors with comedic roles wore only a thin-soled shoe called a sock (Latin soccus).” – Source: Wikipedia) There was another skateboard hanging on the wall, showing the devil smiling with his eyes and teeth and horns only visible in the darkness of the artwork. I doubt they were Italians – they were rather Spaniards – but I never really met anyone else from there besides Nico and Carulo. But I trusted Carulo; he was different. Carulo was a known person in Catalonia. He was known to be the person who was sitting in the Catalan Parliament and rolled a joint and lit it up, smoking during a session as a protest against the law prohibiting marijuana growing and smoking in Spain. Nico told me when he introduced me to Carulo in the summer of 2013, almost a year earlier: “This is the guy you can thank for being able to smoke freely in Catalonia without the police bothering you. Tomas, meet Carulo.” He never really ordered from me if I had met him before. He had no traffic; his growshop was always closed. He was only smoking inside with his younger brother, who was always walking his bull terrier. Their white Bull Terrier was female, half the size of Chico, but she was kind of crazy; you could see in her eyes that she was not normal; she had mental issues. At least, looking into Carulo's eyes and his brother's eyes, I recognized the similar illness in their dog's eyes. In 2014, it had been over four years since I had been working with dogs in my secondary job interpreting Italian and travelling every fifth weekend. Additionally, Huns came to Europe with their animals, including their dogs. There are at least nine unique Hungarian dog breeds.

I saw how humble our hands were: small hands, small fingers, middle finger and ring finger bending toward each other like old friends with secrets to share. My mother’s movements were sure and fast, unlike my own. My hands tangled unproductively against the deep-rooted dandelions. I wrapped my fingers tightly around the base of the green plants right where the white roots were showing and pulled hard. When the earth gave way and I held the broken roots, I knew that they would sprout again in a couple of weeks. I sighed quietly to myself but did not complain or voice my observation. Instead, I listened as my mother told me stories of how she’d once, long ago, weeded alongside her own mother.

Let him grow up clean and strong and without fear. Let him never have to lie down in weeds in Vietnam and beat his meat. Let me do all that is right for him and none of the wrong that my father did to me. Let him show Odessa that the world is still all right to have babies in.

I must show the blacksmith and the shopkeeper once more--two years after marriage--time long enough to have made common people as common to each other as the weed by the roadside; but these are not common to each other yet, and never will be. They will never complain of being _desillusionnes_, for they have never been illuded. They look up each to the other still, because they were right in looking up each to the other from the first. Each was, and therefore each is and will be, real.

What do you have”, she said , “that binds you to life? Love doesn't follow you, glory doesn't seek you, and power doesn't find you. The house that you inherit was in ruins. The lands you received had already lost their first fruits to frost, and the sun had withered their promises. You have never found water in your farm's well. And before you ever saw them, the leaves had all rotted in your pools; weeds covered the paths and walkways where your feet had never trod. “But in my domain, where only the night reigns, you will be consoled, for you hopes will have ceased; you will be able to forget, for your desire will have died; you will finally rest, for you'll have no life”. And she showed me the futility of hoping for better days when one isn't born with a soul that can know better days. She showed me how dreaming never consoles, for life hurts all the more when we wake up. She showed me how sleep gives no rest, for it is haunted by phantoms, shadows of things, ghost of gestures, stillborn desires, the flotsam from the shipwreck of living. (…) „Why try to be like others if you're condemned to being yourself? Why laugh if, when you laugh, even your genuine happiness is false, since it is born of forgetting who you are? Why cry if you feel it's of no use, and if you cry not because tears console you but because it grieves you that they don't?

When I was ten, my mother got me a subscription to a website called Seeds Anonymous,” I said. “Every month I would get an unmarked package of seeds in the mail with instructions on how to plant them and care for them. I wouldn’t know what I was growing until it came up out of the ground. Every day after school I’d run straight to the backyard to see the progress. It gave me something to look forward to. Growing things felt like a reward.” I could feel Atlas staring at me when he asked, “A reward for what?” I shrugged. “For loving my plants the right way. Plants reward you based on the amount of love you show them. If you’re cruel to them or neglect them, they give you nothing. But if you care for them and love them the right way, they reward you with gifts in the form of vegetables or fruits or flowers.” I looked down at the weed I was tearing apart in my hands and there was barely an inch left of it. I wadded it up between my fingers and flicked it. I didn’t want to look over at Atlas because I could still feel him staring, so instead, I just stared out over my mulch-covered garden. “We’re just alike,” he said. My eyes flicked to his. “Me and you?” He shook his head. “No. Plants and humans. Plants need to be loved the right way in order to survive. So do humans. We rely on our parents from birth to love us enough to keep us alive. And if our parents show us the right kind of love, we turn out as better humans overall. But if we’re neglected . . .” His voice grew quiet. Almost sad. He wiped his hands on his knees, trying to get some of the dirt off. “If we’re neglected, we end up homeless and incapable of anything meaningful.

The Seeds of God's Words A great crowd gathered, and Jesus taught them with a story: “A farmer was planting seeds. As he spread the seeds, some fell on the path. Birds ate these seeds. Some seeds fell in with rocks. They died because there wasn’t enough water. Seeds fell into the weeds and couldn’t grow. Others fell into good soil. These seeds grew and gave the farmer a good crop.” Later, Jesus told his disciples, “The seeds are God’s word. The ones that fell on the path mean this: Some people hear God’s word. Then the devil takes it from their heart. So they can’t believe and be saved. “The seeds in the rocks are the people who happily believe for a little while. But in hard times, they forget God’s word. “The seeds in the weeds mean this: Some people hear God’s word and go on their way. The word can’t grow because their heart is full of other things. “Then there are the seeds in good soil. These show God’s word in a good heart. That person’s life is changed forever.

If you’ll point the way, Mrs. Barnstable, I’ll go out and find Merripen. Perhaps I might help to unload the timber wagon.” “A footman will show you the way,” the housekeeper said at once. “But the work is occasionally hazardous, my lord, and not fitting for a man of your station.” Miss Marks added in a light but caustic tone, “Besides, it is doubtful you could be of any help.” The housekeeper’s mouth fell open. Win had to bite back a grin. Miss Marks had spoken as if Leo were a small weed of a man instead of a strapping six-footer. Leo gave the governess a sardonic smile. “I’m more physically capable than you suspect, Marks. You have no idea what lurks beneath this coat.” “I am profoundly grateful for that.

Guys with beards tended to smoke weed, be creative, listen to cool music.

They showed up right after you got there?" I asked. "Well, no, Erik and I smoked some weed first. I guess we were there for an hour or so." "Maybe an hour and a half," said Erik. "That long?" "It was good weed.

The sled runners had been replaced by wheels and they traveled on a rutted, muddy road that formed a dark line between two fields of snow that occasionally showed a patch of matted, tangled weeds. Seeing them got her thinking. She wiped her face with the blanket and, digging her brush out of a nearby pack, began the arduous process of clearing the snarls from her hair. She pulled, grunted, and then sighed. Modina looked over with a questioning expression, and Arista explained by letting go of the brush and leaving it to hang. Modina smiled and crawled over to her. “Turn around,” she said, and taking the brush, the empress began working the back of Arista’s head. “You have quite the rat’s nest here.” “Be careful one doesn’t bite you,” Arista replied.

The fraternity’s leadership did a membership review, interviewing every member and weeding out any brothers who were deemed unfit to be a part of the house. Evan and Reggie were picked as two bad apples and kicked out of the fraternity. Reggie’s expulsion came as no surprise to anyone who’d been paying attention. He was known principally for getting wasted, breaking things, and leaving a mess in the kitchen. His room, which reeked of weed and tobacco, was filled with cups and plates from the house’s kitchen that he hadn’t bothered to return. He never showed up for house meetings or lent a hand on house cleans or party setups. Although he was very book smart and super friendly to everyone, he was a downright nuisance to live with. Evan’s case was not so clear-cut—ask ten people why he got kicked out and you’ll get ten different answers. Some say he was a willing scapegoat, volunteering to be kicked out because he knew he wouldn’t have the house for his senior year anyway. Others say he was scapegoated because he had angered younger guys by pushing for parties while the house was on probation. Others say Evan deserved to be kicked out because he didn’t want to fight hard enough get the house back, and he had been taking too cavalier an attitude toward the trouble the fraternity faced. No matter the reason, Evan was out. Guys in the fraternity blamed him for their house being taken away. Friends who he thought would have his back didn’t. Bad news came in threes for Evan. He had already lost Future Freshman. He lost the fraternity. Then, his girlfriend Lily told him she’d had enough and dumped him after two-plus years of dating.

Nature has embellish'd rare as May Its dew-gemm'd primroses glitter'd up, To show pride from each budding weed, Since from skies naught a ray dismay.

Because, when I was nineteen years old, I fell in love with a girl who changed my life by showing me that even the darkest nights still had stars and it didn’t matter one bit that you had to lie in the weeds to see them.

...until the weeds were all wilted in a heap, and all I could think was how there would be more weeds tomorrow and wouldn't it be easier for the world if everything just stayed still, just stopped growing all together? Maybe it would, but we won't do that, we won't stop, plants don't, people don't, we keep showing up and living and trying to do something and dying and what was it that all these vines and leaves were struggling toward year after century after eternity?

You know what the worst customer service in the world is? I’ll tell you. It’s the weed guys. You just cannot depend on these people. They’ll give you a time, right? And you’re looking forward to it all week and get off work on Friday at five. Of course I personally wouldn’t know, but I’ve heard of people with jobs. And the weed guy never shows up, and he doesn’t answer his phone, and you drive by his house and his car’s gone, and then you’re totally un-stoned at midnight and accidentally bump into the guy at a party and go, ‘Dude, what’s the deal? We had a time,’ and he says, ‘I was doin’ stuff,’ and I say, ‘Like what?’ and he says, ‘Listenin’ to music’ . . .” “Coleman—

Some has been written about the reaction of our forces to the bombing of the “highway to death.” The criticism revolves around the lack of apparent remorse or guilt, and perhaps even bloodlust, at bombing the relatively easy targets. Everybody reacts to the stress of war and life and death decisions differently, and to narrow the image one would construct of an individual to his reaction immediately following the events of any battle is superficial and simplistic. Naval aviators are a strange mix of people—utterly homogeneous in certain respects, particularly to the casual observer, and radically different in their core and substance. Very few naval aviators show honest emotion easily; they’re not supposed to fracture the military bearing that has been instilled in them through years of training and detached experience under the stress of carrier aviation. Anger is the easiest emotion to display because it is the natural, instinctual outlet for stress and fear. But even expressions of anger might be as diverse in their reaction to a common event as physical violence or the mere raising of a voice. Most emotion comes out at the officers’ club, or on liberty in a foreign port, where the beer either softens or heightens aviators’ feelings to the edges of their flexibility, which often is not very far. Virtually all naval aviators are college graduates—some from state colleges, some from the Naval Academy, even a few Ivy Leaguers. This is their greatest obvious commonality—a college degree and mutual survival of the weeding-out process to get where they are in the navy. Many are religious, many are not, and the greatest of the values shared by the men is a trust in their comrades, a dedication to their country, and an absolute focus on their mission. It is exceedingly difficult most times for an outsider to register where a naval aviator is “coming from.” The uniform, the haircut, and the navy-speak contribute enormously to the building of a stereotype. So do the mannerisms of each individual; some express the control of emotion in reserved stoicism, others in an outburst of emotional release through inappropriate laughter or anger. Still others never express emotion at all. But the emotion is there, it has to be; despite years of training and desensitizing to hide the race of the heart and the sickening chill in the stomach, anyone who has landed on an aircraft carrier, never mind fought in a war, knows what fear and exhilarating intensity are.

When we try to create a blessing the way the world does, we create problems for ourselves. Whether its compromising on taxes, cheating on an exam or something else; when we operate this way we are allowing weeds to choke out God’s promise that he will supply all of our needs. The end result is stress and turmoil.            Often times we seek help from people when it’s God we should be seeking. The end result is that people get the praise and glory for our deliverance. There are times in our lives when God wants to show up mightily in lives; He doesn’t want to share the glory with someone else. But like Sarah, we doubt that God could possible work out our situation and we turn to friends and family when we should be turning to His promises.

Prayer brings perspective, shows the big picture, gets you out of the weeds, reorients you to where you really are.

As Steve glided along the edge of the overhanging leaves, every now and then a golden orb spiderweb would clutch at my hair, the thick, yellow, sticky webbing covering my head, the boat, and the torch. Steve was oblivious to anything but the crocodiles. Some of them allowed us to get close. Steve could gauge a croc’s total size based on the length of its head. My heart kept pounding, and I tried to do everything right. He showed me how to hold the spotlight right under my chin, so that I could look directly over the beam and pick up the eye-shine of the crocs. I was tired, yet adrenaline surged through my veins. “Look, look, look,” Steve whispered excitedly, “there’s another one.” There was something strange about this one, only a single red eye reflected. Perhaps the other one had been shot out, Steve suggested. “He’s big,” he whispered. “Maybe fifteen feet.” We edged closer. The engine coughed and suddenly ground to a stop. Steve leaned over the back of the dinghy, reaching in up to his shoulder in the water, to clear the weeds from around the propeller. The single red eye blinked out. The big croc had submerged. Submerged where? I thought. Steve finally cleared the weeds and yanked the ignition cord, but the engine refused to turn over. I am in the middle of nowhere. It’s nighttime. I am surrounded by crocodiles. The boat motor won’t start. Steve will be snatched and eaten by One-Eye right off the back of the boat. Then I’ll be alone. But after some gentle persuasion (some of it verbal, and not so gentle), the engine finally started. The heat hadn’t really broken when we got back to camp. It was still well over ninety degrees. The insects that had been attracted to my spotlight were stuck and struggling in the sweat running down my back. “How about a quick tub?” Steve said. That was Australian for bath. Somehow, the words “bath” and “crocodile” refused to go together in my mind.

with some weed in a blunt. Then the fire, the crackle, and the boom: a fireworks show drove through me like a truck. Like someone had lit a wick that ran through my body. From the warmth rushing in, the ringing in my ears, and the tingling of my joints, I was full-on electric.