Went Numb Quotes

So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about as numb as a slave in a totalitarian state.

Sometimes he missed the numbed, walking-underwater feeling feel that the cocktail of narcotics used to give him. But if a situation went down in here, he was going to need all of his wits to get out of it.

And I knew that in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs. Willard's kitchen mat...I also remembered Buddy Willard saying in a sinister, knowing way that after I had children I would feel differently, I wouldn't want to write poems any more. So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state.

It was that stages-of-anger thing. I was shocked and then I got pissed and then I fought like hell … and then I went numb. They called it acceptance, but it wasn’t. It’s what happens when you have only two choices: live with the monster, or kill yourself.

Most of us would be seized with fear if our bodies went numb, and would do everything possible to avoid it, yet we take no interest at all in the numbing of our souls. —EPICTETUS

People said that video games were bad because they made you numb to death, made you register entrails splattering across a screen as a sign of success. In that moment, Val thought that the real problem with games was that the player was suppossed to try everything. If there was a cave, you went in it. If there was a mysterious stranger, you talked to him. If there was a map, you followed it. But in games, you had a hundred million billion lives and Val only had this one.

The doctor’s words made me understand what happened to me was a dark, evil, and shameful secret, and by association I too was dark, evil, and shameful. While it may not have been their intention, this was the message my clouded mind received. To escape the confines of the hospital, I once again disassociated myself from my emotions and numbed myself to the pain ravaging my body and mind. I acted as if nothing was wrong and went back to performing the necessary motions to get me from one day to the next. I existed but I did not live.

They grabbed for me, but he bared his teeth in a smile that was anything but friendly - and they halted. "No more household chores, no more tasks," he said, his voice an erotic caress. Their yellow eyes went glazed and dull, their sharp teeth gleaming as their mouths slackened. "Tell the others, too. Stay out of her cell, and don't touch her. If you do, you're to take your own daggers and gut yourselves. Understood?" Dazed, numb nods, then they blinked and straightened. I hid my trembling. Glamour, mind control - whatever it was he had done, it worked. They beckoned - but didn't dare touch me. Rhysand smiled. "You're welcome," he purred as I walked out.

It was Rhemann’s voice in his head, Rhemann’s and his friends’ and Neil’s, drowning out his miserable thoughts and excuses with unrelenting force. Jean squeezed his hands until his fingers went numb and willed himself to believe the words as he slowly spoke them into existence: “I deserve to get better.

He was numb: heart-numb, mind-numb, soul-numb. And the numbness, he realized, went a long way down, and a long way back.

And somehow, somewhere along the track, I went numb. I couldn’t say what it was & didn’t dare try. How do you explain the sense of being made to feel improper ? I withdrew into a watchful rectitude, anxious to please, risking nothing. I followed the outline of my life, carefully rehearsing form without conviction, like a bishop who can’t see that his faith has become an act.

She came and took away all his miseries, his sorrows !! Then SHe went and left him restlessly numb. He was her painkiller. SHe, his anesthetic.

Jace karate chopped his wrist, and Eric’s fingers went numb. “Step away from the eggs, Sticks.

I also remembered Buddy Willard saying in a sinister, knowing way that after I had children I would feel differently, I wouldn't want to write poems any more. So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state.

I turned away from him and went on my way, up the street and about my business. The past was dead. The future was resignation, fatality, and could only end one way now. The present was numbness, that could feel nothing. Like Novocaine needled into your heart. What was there in all the dimensions of time for me? ("Life Is Weird Sometimes" first chapter of unpublished novel THE LOSER)

I wanted to ventilate my deep feelings about song lyrics and dark poets. I wanted to take my socks off and dance in the forest. I wanted to drink wine until my lips went numb so kisses would feel deeper. I wanted to do everything dreamers do.

That loathsome opiate, relief, raced through my veins again—sharp and lucid at the initial prick, before everything went numb.

Do you think it would be possible for anyone to love you if they could see every single thing you do?’ And I watch them cringe as though I’ve reached out and struck them. ‘I’m serious,’ I say. ‘Imagine that everyone could see everything. Every secret, every base physical ejection, every category of porn you’ve ever looked at in a kind of coma when you’re numb to the normal stuff. Think about it all. Every moment of shame, of desperation – do you really think anyone could love you still? Anyone at all?’ 3 I remember what it was like when I first loved Ciaran, before he left me that first time at Christmas, when I’d miss him so much when he went anywhere.

I can't tell you what to do, Ishmael. I've tried to understand what it's been like for you - having gone to war, having lost your arm, not having married or had children. I've tried to make sense of it all, believe me, I have - how it must feel to be you. But I must confess that, no matter how I try, I can't really understand you. There are other boys, after all, who went to war and came back home and pushed on with their lives. They found girls and married and had children and raised families despite whatever was behind them. But you - you went numb, Ishmael. And you've stayed numb all these years.

The fact was that, as droves of demon kings had noticed, there was a limit to what you could do to a soul with, e.g., red-hot tweezers, because even fairly evil and corrupt souls were bright enough to realize that since they didn't have the concomitant body and nerve endings attached to them there was no real reason, other than force of habit, why they should suffer excruciating agony. So they didn't. Demons went on doing it anyway, because numb and mindless stupidity is part of what being a demon is all about, but since no one was suffering they didn't enjoy it much either and the whole thing was pointless. Centuries and centuries of pointlessness.

Actually, nothing hurts like hearing the word slut, unless it is hearing the word rape dropped about carelessly. Again, a word I wouldn't have thought much about, except that when I was in high school a girl gave her senior speech on her best friend's rape. She ended not with an appear for women's rights or self defense, but by begging us to consider our language. We use the word 'rape' so casually, for sports, for a failed test, to spice up jokes. 'The test raped me.' 'His smile went up to justifiable rape.' These references confer casualness upon the word, embedding it into our culture, stripping it of shock value, and ultimately numb us to the reality of rape.

Like many others who went through that time, he was gripped by what he could think of only as a numbness, though he knew it was a feeling compounded of emotions so deep and intense that they could not be acknowledged because they could not be lived with.

And she swung the old oar at him with all her strength. It hit with a great thwack, splintering in two, and he went over the side, into the dark, cold waters of the lake, sinking like a stone. It took her two seconds. And then she let out a scream for help, tossing the broken oar away from her, and jumped into the water after him. It was very cold, numbingly so, and as it closed over her head she grabbed for him, wrapping her arms around his body, ready to sink to the bottom with him. Instead he kicked, pushing them up so that they broke the surface, his arm clamped around hers as she struggled. "Jesus, woman!" he snapped. "When did we have to become Romeo and Juliet?

At times, feeling the wind on my brow, I went numb with horror. In my imagination I saw armies of ants and cockroaches calling to one another and scurrying toward my head, to some place under the top of my skull, where they would build new nests. There they would proliferate and eat out my thoughts, one after another, until I would become as empty as the shell of a pumpkin from which all the fruit has been scraped out.

So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterwards you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state.

We ate it like it was medicine. Like it was magic candy that could somehow restore us to a normal life again. We ate ourselves numb and got in our bags and went to sleep. There was a lot of crying from the little kids and occasionally one of us would yell, "Shut up!" That's how we got by, that first night.

That loathsome opiate, relief, raced through my veins again—sharp and lucid at the initial prick, before everything went numb. I heard one of the others, maybe Filippa, exhale and I knew I wasn’t the only one who felt it. The moral outrage we should have suffered was quietly put down, suppressed like an unpleasant rumor before it had a chance to be heard. Whatever we did—or more crucially, did not do—it seemed that so long as we did it together, our individual sins might be abated. There is no comfort like complicity.

To Martha it seemed that she stood outside life. The world went by her, colourless shapes on a flat pale background. Nothing had solidity or warmth. She felt numb, as though she could never be passionately alive again.

I shook off my numbness. I opened the door and went into the other bedroom. Two little figures stood on the bed. One had a shirt over his head which Mike was trying to pull past his ears. "Here," I said, "you've got to unbutton another button." "Then you'd have to take the whole thing off," he protested. "There are time when it pays to start all over again, and this is one of them.

There was a faint ringing in her ears that turned into a roar. And beneath it, a sudden wave of numbness, a too-familiar lack of sight or sound or feeling. She didn't know why it happened, because she had been so dead set on hating him, but . . . it would have been nice, she supposed. It would have been nice to have one person who knew the absolute truth about her—and didn't hate her for it. It would have been really, really nice. She walked away without another word. With each step she took back to her room, that flickering light inside of her guttered. And went out.

But then you were alone, your body trying to heal itself while your mind went numb. There was a mix of joy and the purest love, couples with real boredom and occasional rage. It got easier as the kids got older, but it never got easy.

...but grief, he'd discovered, was not an experience you went through once and then 'moved on' (as the idiotic popular phrase would have it). The truth was that it came over you in successive waves - waves separated by periods of numbness, periods of forgetfulness, periods of ordinary living.

This is from "Marabou Stork Nightmares". Bernard's Poem: Did you see her on the telly the other day good family entertainment the tabloids say But when you're backstage at your new faeces audition you hear the same old shite of your own selfish volition She was never a singer a comic or a dancer I cant say I was sad when I found out she had cancer Great Britain's earthy northern comedy queen takes the rand, understand from the racist Boer regime So now her cells are fucked and thats just tough titty I remember her act that I caught back in Sun City She went on and on about 'them from the trees with different skull shapes from the likes of you and me' Her Neo-Nazi spell it left me fucking numb the Boers lapped it up with zeal so did the British ex-pat scum But what goes round comes round they say so welcome to another dose of chemotherapy And for my part it's time to be upfront so fuck off and die you carcinogenic cunt.

Levedev: It's no great thing to drink - a horse too can drink... No, one must drink intelligently... in our time we used to struggle with lectures all day, but as soon as evening came we went straight off somewhere where the lights were shining and spun like tops til dawn... ... We would talk nonsense and philosophy till our tongues went numb... But today's lot... I don't understand... They wouldn't make God a candle or the Devil a poker.

In a state of numbness, I would listen to them all when they went around the room and told their tales.

Most of us would be seized with fear if our bodies went numb, and would do everything possible to avoid it, yet we take no interest at all in the numbing of our souls.

when she had curled up with her head on his lap to sleep, he’d felt nothing but adoration for her (literally: his legs went numb within half an hour and remained that way all night).

So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state.

Should I stop?” he said. I heard voices from far away and he stopped moving his fingers. I grabbed his wrist and pressed his hand into me. “Please,” I said, “please don’t stop.” “Oh, so I shouldn’t?” he said and chuckled. “That would be cruel of me, wouldn’t it?” I felt such pressurized pain, the tingle turned to a cold numb that made me shake. “Yes,” I said and stared into his eyes, “and you’re not cruel, are you?” He bit the side of my neck and nibbled on my earlobe as he breathed heavily into my ear. “I am the cruelest man you will ever meet, Beth,” he said into my ear, “but, I will make you feel so good, you will not care.” I stared into Declan’s eyes and knew that he told the truth. And just like he said, I did not care. His fingers went back to work and I felt as if I was being dragged out to sea by this incredible undertow. It did not matter that I was drowning or in the company of the cruelest man in the world. I only cared how he made me feel and, at that moment, I never felt better.

Lucy was frightened, frightened near to death. Her voice choked, she could not breath, her limbs went numb. "This is not happening", she said to herself as the men forced her down; "it is just a dream, a nightmare". While the men, for their part, drank up her fear, revelled in it, did all they could to hurt her, to menace her, to heighten her terror. "Call your dogs!" they said to her. "Go on, call your dogs! No dogs? Then let us show you dogs!

I also remembered Buddy Willard saying in a sinister, knowing way that after I had children I would feel differently. I wouldn't want to write poems any more. So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state.

He was numb and empty and he drank two fingers of whiskey from his bathroom glass before he lay down. The darkness pressed too closely on him. He turned on the bathroom light and went back to bed. He pretended Molly was in the bathroom brushing her hair.

Gideon and I sit there in the dark, wordless for a while, only our ragged breaths disturbing the silence. Memories of my sister overwhelm me—I see her impish grin as she leans over me at the orphanage, tugging on my hair until I wake up. I remember us climbing up to the roof as kids, sitting cross-legged next to the herbs and vegetables our caretakers were growing while we read the English books Rose had “borrowed” from her class at school. And then there was L.A.—all of our hope for a better life so quickly crushed, but Rose never let despair overtake her. She was there after every single night to hold me until the pain went away. And later, when I got numb to it all, she still made a point of holding me, of promising me that one day things would be different.

While dragging herself up she had to hang onto the rail. Her twisted progress was that of a cripple. Once on the open deck she felt the solid impact of the black night, and the mobility of the accidental home she was about to leave. Although Lucette had never died before—no, dived before, Violet—from such a height, in such a disorder of shadows and snaking reflections, she went with hardly a splash through the wave that humped to welcome her. That perfect end was spoiled by her instinctively surfacing in an immediate sweep — instead of surrendering under water to her drugged lassitude as she had planned to do on her last night ashore if it ever did come to this. The silly girl had not rehearsed the technique of suicide as, say, free-fall parachutists do every day in the element of another chapter. Owing to the tumultuous swell and her not being sure which way to peer through the spray and the darkness and her own tentaclinging hair—t,a,c,l—she could not make out the lights of the liner, an easily imagined many-eyed bulk mightily receding in heartless triumph. Now I’ve lost my next note. Got it. The sky was also heartless and dark, and her body, her head,and particularly those damned thirsty trousers, felt clogged with Oceanus Nox, n,o,x. At every slap and splash of cold wild salt, she heaved with anise-flavored nausea and there was an increasing number, okay, or numbness, in her neck and arms. As she began losing track of herself, she thought it proper to inform a series of receding Lucettes—telling them to pass it on and on in a trick-crystal regression—that what death amounted to was only a more complete assortment of the infinite fractions of solitude. She did not see her whole life flash before her as we all were afraid she might have done; the red rubber of a favorite doll remained safely decomposed among the myosotes of an un-analyzable brook; but she did see a few odds and ends as she swam like a dilettante Tobakoff in a circle of brief panic and merciful torpor. She saw a pair of new vairfurred bedroom slippers, which Brigitte had forgotten to pack; she saw Van wiping his mouth before answering, and then, still withholding the answer, throwing his napkin on the table as they both got up; and she saw a girl with long black hair quickly bend in passing to clap her hands over a dackel in a half-tom wreath. A brilliantly illumined motorboat was launched from the not-too-distant ship with Van and the swimming coach and the oilskin-hooded Toby among the would-be saviors; but by that time a lot of sea had rolled by and Lucette was too tired to wait. Then the night was filled with the rattle of an old but still strong helicopter. Its diligent beam could spot only the dark head of Van, who, having been propelled out of the boat when it shied from its own sudden shadow, kept bobbing and bawling the drowned girl’s name in the black, foam-veined, complicated waters.

To My Children, I'm dedicating my little story to you; doubtless you will be among the very few who will ever read it. It seems war stories aren't very well received at this point. I'm told they're out-dated, untimely and as might be expected - make some unpleasant reading. And, as you have no doubt already perceived, human beings don't like to remember unpleasant things. They gird themselves with the armor of wishful thinking, protect themselves with a shield of impenetrable optimism, and, with a few exceptions, seem to accomplish their "forgetting" quite admirably. But you, my children, I don't want you to be among those who choose to forget. I want you to read my stories and a lot of others like them. I want you to fill your heads with Remarque and Tolstoy and Ernie Pyle. I want you to know what shrapnel, and "88's" and mortar shells and mustard gas mean. I want you to feel, no matter how vicariously, a semblance of the feeling of a torn limb, a burnt patch of flesh, the crippling, numbing sensation of fear, the hopeless emptiness of fatigue. All these things are complimentary to the province of War and they should be taught and demonstrated in classrooms along with the more heroic aspects of uniforms, and flags, and honor and patriotism. I have no idea what your generation will be like. In mine we were to enjoy "Peace in our time". A very well meaning gentleman waved his umbrella and shouted those very words...less than a year before the whole world went to war. But this gentleman was suffering the worldly disease of insufferable optimism. He and his fellow humans kept polishing the rose colored glasses when actually they should have taken them off. They were sacrificing reason and reality for a brief and temporal peace of mind, the same peace of mind that many of my contemporaries derive by steadfastly refraining from remembering the War that came before. [excerpt from a dedication to an unpublished short story, "First Squad, First Platoon"; from Serling to his as yet unborn children]

It was not a physical fatigue—he went to the gym regularly and felt better than he had in years—but a draining lassitude that numbed the margins of his mind. He got up and went out to the verandah; the sudden hot air, the roar of his neighbor’s generator, the smell of diesel exhaust fumes brought a lightness to his head. Frantic winged insects flitted around the electric bulb. He felt, looking out at the muggy darkness farther away, as if he could float, and all he needed to do was to let himself go.

There was a metal rod inside of Colin. The rod went from his stomach to the middle of his head. It was made of steel and sugar, and had been dissolving inside of Colin for ten or fifteen years, slow and sweet, above and behind his tongue; and he could taste it in that way, like an aftertaste, removed and seeping and outside of the mouth. Sometimes he’d glimpse it with the black, numb backs of his eyes. But what he really wanted was to wrench it out. Cut it up and chew it. Or melt it. Bathe in the hard, sweet lava of it.

I also remembered Buddy Willard saying in a sinister, knowing way that after I had children I would feel differently, I wouldn’t want to write poems any more. So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about numb as a slave in some. private, totalitarian state.

Thus the days went by at Terralba, and our sensibilities became numbed, as we felt ourselves lost between an evil and a virtue equally inhuman.

She didn’t fall, but oh, her heart went icy in her chest. She sat down hard upon the steps. Too numb to walk. Her heart was cold and white as chalk.

Beyond that, he was numb: heart-numb, mind-numb, soul-numb. And the numbness, he realized, went a long way down, and a long way back.

Not that everything "went black," nothing of the sort; only that the event itself is cloudy because of some primitive, numbing effect that obscured it at the time; the same effect, I suppose, that enables panicked mothers to swim icy rivers, or rush into burning houses, for a child; the effect that occasionally allows a deeply bereaved person to make it through a funeral without a singe tear. Other things—naked, sputtering, indelible in their horror—are too terrible to really ever grasp at all. It is only later, in solitude, in memory, that the realization dawns; when the ashes are cold; when the mourners have departed; when one looks around and finds oneself—quite to one's surprise—in an entirely different world.

He [Pat] pushed a little wheat onto the edge of the shovel, then swung the thing around with such sudden force that the wheat might have actually made it onto the truck, if only he hadn't let go of the shovel. But he did let go of it, and it went sailing through the air like a silver spaceship until my forehead stopped it. "You've killed me!" I cried. I slipped down onto the pile of wheat, blinking wildly and clutching at my wounded forehead. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" he shouted. I felt quite numb all over, as if I weren't really there. "I see three angels with golden trumpets," I informed him. At this point he began to blubber. "Don't die!" he cried. "It's too late. I responded. "You've killed me, and now I'm going to die. "They'll probably hang you," I added as an afterthought.

Thing was though, before I´d gained the understanding of what was happening, my seemingly flattened approach to life became less a pretence and more and more real as time went on. At first an emotional numbness set it. Then my head, which initially had reassured with, 'Excellent. Well done. Successfully am I fooling them in that they do not know who I am or what I'm thinking or what I'm feeling', now began itself to doubt I was even there. 'Just a minute', it said. 'Where is our reaction? We were having a privately expressed reaction but now we're not having it. Where is it?' This my feelings stopped existing. And now this numbance from nowhere had come so far on in its development that along with others in the area finding me inaccessible, I, too, came to find me inaccessible. My inner world, it seemed, had gone away.

Before I’d gained the understanding of what was happening, my seemingly flattened approach to life became less a pretense and more and more real as time went on. At first, an emotional numbness set in. Then my head, which had initially reassured with, excellent well done, successfully am I fooling them in that they do not know who I am or what I’m thinking or what I’m feeling, now began itself to doubt I was even there. Just a minute, it said, where is our reaction? We were having a privately expressed reaction, but now we’re not having it. Where is it? Thus my feelings stopped expressing. Then, they stopped existing.

Still, I knew rehab was important. So I listened. I went to every class. I held hands with strangers. With suburban mummies who’d gotten addicted to prescription pills, and a preacher’s son who’d fallen into the arms of heroin, and a Russian oligarch’s daughter who, like me, had snorted pounds and pounds of cocaine to numb the feeling that the world was closing in on you from all angles. I wrote letters to my family and friends. Angry letters. Apologetic letters. Funny letters. Then I burned them all. I couldn’t write Stardust shite, though. Everything I had to say to her—every single groveling word—had to be said in person.

You felt it in your soul, no place else. You felt the truth there sometimes—beyond logic—and you were usually right if it was a type of truth that was the exact kind you didn’t want to face, weren’t sure you could. That’s what you tried to ignore, why you went to psychiatrists and spent too long in bars and numbed your brain in front of TV tubes—to hide from hard, ugly truths your soul recognized long before your mind caught up.

Fire, fire! The branches crackle and the night wind of late autumn blows the flame of the bonfire back and forth. The compound is dark; I am alone at the bonfire, and I can bring it still some more carpenters' shavings. The compound here is a privileged one, so privileged that it is almost as if I were out in freedom -- this is an island of paradise; this is the Marfino "sharashka" -- a scientific institute staffed with prisoners -- in its most privileged period. No one is overseeing me, calling me to a cell, chasing me away from the bonfire, and even then it is chilly in the penetrating wind. But she -- who has already been standing in the wind for hours, her arms straight down, her head drooping, weeping, then growing numb and still. And then again she begs piteously "Citizen Chief! Please forgive me! I won't do it again." The wind carries her moan to me, just as if she were moaning next to my ear. The citizen chief at the gatehouse fires up his stove and does not answer. This was the gatehouse of the camp next door to us, from which workers came into our compound to lay water pipes and to repair the old ramshackle seminary building. Across from me, beyond the artfully intertwined, many-stranded barbed-wire barricade and two steps away from the gatehouse, beneath a bright lantern, stood the punished girl, head hanging, the wind tugging at her grey work skirt, her feet growing numb from the cold, a thin scarf over her head. It had been warm during the day, when they had been digging a ditch on our territory. And another girl, slipping down into a ravine, had crawled her way to the Vladykino Highway and escaped. The guard had bungled. And Moscow city buses ran right along the highway. When they caught on, it was too late to catch her. They raised the alarm. A mean, dark major arrived and shouted that if they failed to catch the girl, the entire camp would be deprived of visits and parcels for whole month, because of her escape. And the women brigadiers went into a rage, and they were all shouting, one of them in particular, who kept viciously rolling her eyes: "Oh, I hope they catch her, the bitch! I hope they take scissors and -- clip, clip, clip -- take off all her hair in front of the line-up!" But the girl who was now standing outside the gatehouse in the cold had sighed and said instead: "At least she can have a good time out in freedom for all of us!" The jailer had overheard what she said, and now she was being punished; everyone else had been taken off to the camp, but she had been set outside there to stand "at attention" in front of the gatehouse. This had been at 6 PM, and it was now 11 PM. She tried to shift from one foot to another, but the guard stuck out his head and shouted: "Stand at attention, whore, or else it will be worse for you!" And now she was not moving, only weeping: "Forgive me, Citizen Chief! Let me into the camp, I won't do it any more!" But even in the camp no one was about to say to her: "All right, idiot! Come on it!" The reason they were keeping her out there so long was that the next day was Sunday, and she would not be needed for work. Such a straw-blond, naive, uneducated slip of a girl! She had been imprisoned for some spool of thread. What a dangerous thought you expressed there, little sister! They want to teach you a lesson for the rest of your life! Fire, fire! We fought the war -- and we looked into the bonfires to see what kind of victory it would be. The wind wafted a glowing husk from the bonfire. To that flame and to you, girl, I promise: the whole wide world will read about you.

He was deeply grateful for the chemical hand and feet warmers, which kept his extremities from freezing. Beyond that, he was numb: heart-numb, mind-numb, soul-numb. And the, numbness, he realized, went a long way down, and a long way back.

it was the horror of the two world wars—Verdun, the Somme, Hiroshima—that led to our own era’s questioning of the tragic view of war. Such a reaction was certainly true and understandable in a Europe that nearly destroyed itself in two devastating industrial wars within a roughly twenty-year period. Yet out of such numbing losses we may have missed the lesson of the horror. The calamity of sixty million dead was not just because nationalistic Westerners went to war in an industrial age of weaponry of mass annihilation, but rather because the liberal democracies were unwilling to make moderate sacrifices to keep the peace well before 1914 and 1939—when real resolve could have stopped Prussian militarism, and then Nazism without millions of the blameless perishing.

after I had children I would feel differently, I wouldn’t want to write poems any more. So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state.

The next three hours went by in a mind-numbing haze. By the time the cab pulled up to the airport terminal, she was pissed. Not at him though. She wanted to be-she'd fallen back in love with him, and he couldn't even stick around to have a waffle and say good-bye?-but she couldn't.

I needed to pay attention, to be ready to step through and descend into it, whatever it was. It felt archetypal. Something in me was being slain in the fires of pain so that some new thing could be born. I knew it and went with it, and in the alchemy of my pain, like flowers whose seeds open only in the presence of fire, tendrils of something new began to sprout. Pain for me was a Trojan horse, penetrating the protective walls I’d erected around my heart, bearing within it hints of a future I might never have awakened to had I tried to numb myself with busyness.

And I knew that in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs. Willard's kitchen mat. Hadn't my own mother told me that as soon as she and my father left Reno on their honeymoon—my father had been married before, so he needed a divorce—my father said to her, "Whew, that's a relief, now we can stop pretending and be ourselves?"—and from that day on my mother never had a minute's peace. I also remembered Buddy Willard saying in a sinister, knowing way that after I had children I would feel differently, I wouldn't want to write poems any more. So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state.

And when we pushed away that other, bad vision, we felt good again and everything was a joy to us: the fire, the smell of trampled grass, that our shirts had dried, the sleep of the earth, the taste of cigarettes, the forest, our rested legs, the stardust, life - life most of all. In the end, we went on. The dawn met us. The sun warmed us. We kept walking. Our legs buckled, our shoulders went numb, our hands swelled, but we managed to carry it to the cemetery - to the grave - our last harbour on earth, at which we put in only once, never again to sail forth - this Stefan Kanik, eighteen, killed in a tragic accident, during blasting, by a block of coal.

Carroll was eleven years old when he saw The Haunting in The Oregon Theater. He had gone with his cousins, but when the lights went down, his companions were swallowed by the dark and Carroll found himself essentially alone, shut tight into his own suffocating cabinet of shadows. At times, it required all his will not to hide his eyes, yet his insides churned with a nervous-sick frisson of pleasure. When the lights finally came up, his nerve endings were ringing, as if he had for a moment grabbed a copper wire with live current in it. It was a sensation for which he had developed a compulsion. Later, when he was a professional and it was his business, his feelings were more muted - not gone, but experienced distantly, more like the memory of an emotion than the thing itself. More recently, even the memory had fled, and in its place was a deadening amnesia, a numb disinterest when he looked at the piles of magazines on his coffee table. Or no - he was overcome with dread, but the wrong kind of dread. ("Best New Horror")

As the sun went down outside, the television screen started completely lighting up the room in obnoxiously bright colors at hyperactive speeds. The conversation had been slowly rising in volume and frequency, as everyone started becoming more delinquent and the social boundaries slowly wore away. I don't remember what any of them said because I wasn't honestly paying any attention. I was focusing on my own misery and trying to numb the inner demons, the ugly things Thomas claimed came from the Outside World. Yet, to me, it wasn't outside, but rather INSIDE, as in my own head. I kept hearing Charley's voice from bits and pieces of conversations we had, laughter that I'll never hear ever again.

I also remembered Buddy Willard saying in a sinister, knowing way that after I had children I would feel differently, I wouldn’t want to write poems any more. So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state.

I also remembered Buddy Willard saying in a sinister, knowing way that after I had children I would feel differently, I wouldn’t want to write poems any more. So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterwards you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state.

We can take things as slowly as you want, but you know it’s too late now to change your mind, Pierce,” he said, in a warning tone. “Of course,” I said. I could see I had approached this all wrong. Where, when you actually needed one, was one of those annoying women’s magazines with advice on how to handle your man? Although that advice probably didn’t apply to death deities. “Because the Furies are after me. And I promised you that I wouldn’t try to escape. That isn’t what I was-“ “No,” he said, with an abrupt shake of his head. “The Furies have no part in this. It doesn’t matter anymore whether or not you try to escape.” He was pacing the length of the room. A muscle had begun to twitch wildly in the side of his jaw. “I thought you knew. I thought you understood. Haven’t you read Homer?” Not again. Mr. Smith was obsessed with this Homer person, too. “No, John,” I said, with forced patience. “I’m afraid we don’t have time to study the ancient Greek poets in school anymore because we have so much stuff to learn that happened since you died, such as the Civil War and the Holocaust and making files in Excel-“ “Well, considering what they had to say about the Fates,” John interrupted, impatiently, “Homer might possibly have been of more use to you.” “The Fates?” The Fates were something I dimly remembered having been mentioned in the section we’d studied on Greek mythology. They were busybodies who presided over everyone’s destiny. “What did Homer have to say about them?” John dragged a hand through his hair. For some reason, he wouldn’t meet my gaze. “The Fates decreed that anyone who ate or drank in the realm of the dead had to remain there for all eternity.” I stared at him. “Right,” I said. “Only if they are pomegranate seeds, like Persephone. The fruit of the dead.” He stopped pacing suddenly and lifted his gaze to mine. His eyes seemed to burn through to my soul. “Pomegranate seeds are what Persephone happened to eat while she was in the Underworld,” he said. “That’s why they call them the fruit of the dead. But the rule is any food or drink.” A strange feeling of numbness had begun to spread across my body. My mouth became too dry for me to speak. “However you feel about me, Pierce,” he went on, relentlessly, “you’re stuck here with me for the rest of eternity.

Maybe we’re feeling left out or defective, ashamed or insecure. The feelings get too big and … for many of us, the fix is to binge on treasure troves of sugar and fat: pizza, ice cream, cookies, cheese, chocolate. For a little while, the chemical relief numbs out the hurt. Hurt? Worry? It’s all shoved deep down beneath layers of chips or donuts. Hidden. Out of sight and out of mind. Until the chemical buzz begins to wear off … and it turns out that the feelings never went away. They’re still here. And worse, now there’s self-loathing and shame to add to the mix. So we punish ourselves … until the hurt gets too big, and the cycle starts again. For those of us who starve ourselves, the story isn’t much different. We’re still trying to escape overwhelming feelings—of being a fraud, not good enough, unworthy, a failure. Instead of indulging in cover-up chaos, undereaters (like I was) discover relief—even a sense of power—in artificial control.

He was stricken anew by her, overcome with the knowledge that in the morning he would have to relinquish her. In Prison 33, little by little, you relinquished everything, starting with your tomorrows and all that might be. Next went your past, and suddenly it was inconceivable that your head had ever touched a pillow, that you'd once used a spoon or a toilet, that your mouth had once known flavors and your eyes had beheld colors beyond gray and brown and the shade of black that blood took on. Before you relinquished yourself--Ga had felt it starting, like the numb of cold limbs--you let go of all the others, each person you'd once known. They became ideas and then notions and then impressions, and then they were as ghostly as projections against a prison infirmary. Sun Moon appeared to him now like this, not as a woman, vital and beautiful, making an instrument speak her sorrow, but as the flicker of someone once known, a photo of a person long gone.

The Troika sought to undo the steep pay raises civil servants had received in the decade preceding the crisis, and Greek government workers saw their paychecks cut by as much as 35 percent. This was intended not only to reduce the government’s wage bill, but to make the Greek economy more competitive. Since public wage levels have a direct effect on private wages, a reduction in the former would result in a cheaper overall labor force, allowing Greece to export products at more competitive prices, the thinking went. Or as I heard some Greeks put it, the plan was to make wages as low as in China, so that Greeks, too, would one day supplicate for jobs assembling iPads until their fingers went numb. The Troika’s plan certainly seemed to work, as average incomes in Greece fell about one-quarter in the years following the outbreak of the crisis. It was not clear, however, that the Greek government would be able to sustain all the public wage cuts it had been forced to implement.

He whirled,almost violently,and stared at her accusingly. "Damn it, Gennie, I've had my head lopped off." It was her turn to stare.Her fingers went numb against the stoneware. Her pulse seemed to stop long enough to make her head swim before it began to race. The color drained from her face until it was like porcelain against the glowing green of her eyes.On another oath, Grant dragged a hand through his hair. "You're spilling the coffee," he muttered, then stuck his hands in his pockets. "Oh." Gennie looked down foolishly at the tiny twin puddles that were forming on the floor,then set down the mugs. "I'll-I'll wipe it up." "Leave it." Grant grabbed her arm before she could reach for a towel. "Listen,I feel like someone's just given me a solid right straight to the gut-the kind that doubles you over and makes your head ring at the same time.I feel that way too often when I look at you." When she said nothing, he took her other arm and shook. "In the first place I never asked to have you walk into my life and mess up my head. The last thing I wanted was for you to get in my way,but you did.So now I'm in love with you, and I can tell you,I'm not crazy about the idea." Gennie found her voice, though she wasn't quite certain what to do with it. "Well," she managed after a moment, "that certainly puts me in my place." "Oh,she wants to make jokes." Disgusted, Grant released her to storm over to the coffee. Lifting a mug, he drained half the contents, perversely pleased that it scalded his throat. "Well, laugh this off," he suggested as he slammed the mug down again and glared. "You're not going anywhere until I figure out what the hell I'm going to do about you." Struggling against conflicting emotions of amusement,annoyance,and simple wonder, she put her hands on her hips. The movement shifted the too-big robe so that it threatened to slip off one shoulder. "Oh,really? So you're going to figure out what to do about me, like I was an inconvenient head cold." "Damned inconvenient," he muttered. "You may not have noticed, but I'm a grown woman with a mind of my own, accustomed to making my own decisions. You're not going to do anything about me," she told him as her temper began to overtake everything else. She jabbed a finger at him,and the gap in the robe widened. "If you're in love with me, that's your problem. I have one of my own because I'm in love with you." "Terrific!" he shouted at her. "That's just terrific.We'd both have been better off if you'd waited out that storm in a ditch instead of coming here." "You're not telling me anything I don't already know," Gennie retorted, then spun around to leave the room. "Just a minute." Grant had her arm again and backed her into the wall. "You're not going anywhere until this is settled." "It's settled!" Tossing her hair out of her face, she glared at him. "We're in love with each other and I wish you'd go jump off that cliff.If you had any finesse-" "I don't." "Any sensitivty," she continued, "you wouldn't announce that you were in love with someone in the same tone you'd use to frighten small children.

But as their journey progressed such interruptions came to seem more and more unreal to Andrews. The reality of their journey lay in the routine detail of bedding down at night, arising in the morning, drinking black coffee from hot tin cups, packing bedrolls upon gradually wearying horses, the monotonous and numbing movement over the prairie that never changed its aspect, the watering of the horses and oxen at noon, the eating of hard biscuit and dried fruit, the resumption of the journey, the fumbling setting up of camp in the darkness, the tasteless quantities of beans and bacon gulped savagely in the flickering darkness, the coffee again, and the bedding down. This came to be a ritual, more and more meaningless as it was repeated, but a ritual which nevertheless gave his life the only shape it now had. It seemed to him that he moved forward laboriously, inch by inch, over the space of the vast prairie; but it seemed that he did not move through time at all, that rather time moved with him, an invisible cloud that hovered about him and clung to him as he went forward.

Lan Yu stood up from the couch and looked down at me coldly. “You’re very considerate when dumping your lovers,” he said bitterly. “Any other instructions?” Without waiting for me to reply, he turned around and went upstairs. “I’m taking a shower and going to bed,” he said, then disappeared at the top of the staircase. That night Lan Yu and I had sex as always, but he was distant, mechanical. When I looked into his face I saw nothing. His eyes were empty. It was as if he had seen me so many times that he was numb to what he was looking at.

He fixed her in his gaze and set his jaw, his hands twitching at his sides. "You feel something for me," he said, daring her to try and deny it. There was no point trying to hide it now. She looked away, numb. "You can't feel that way about me." He lowered his voice. "It'll only get you hurt." "Oh, come on! That's so cliche! What's that even supposed to mean?" "It means my life is one that prevents me from the luxury of silly romantic notions. I can't have you look at me the way you just did. I don't care what Agatha's told you, or what she thinks she knows. This isn't going to happen, okay?" Silly romantic notions? Farley's embarrassment quickly moved aside to make room for her anger. "Agatha hasn't told me anything. None of you ever do. You're right, I do feel something for you, but don't worry. From your reaction, it's pretty clear that the feeling's not mutual. I'm not some crazy stalker. I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't flatter yourself into thinking that I'm completely head over heels in love with you. So just go!" she screamed, destroyed by his words and the feelings of rejection that coursed through her. "You don't understand." "I think I do." "No! You don't!" The hard look in his eyes morphed into something more pained and desperate. He stepped forward and grabbed her roughly by the arms, the same way he had done in the silo. "I sat there and watched you for months. Months! I watched you everywhere you went; I watched you when you didn't go anywhere at all! When you were so low you couldn't even leave the house. I watched the most beautiful person I'd ever seen get screwed over by the cops and have her life threatened on a daily basis without her even knowing it." Farley stared up at him-frozen and unblinking-his words barraging her. "How do you think I felt when I found you bleeding and broken on the floor of Aldan's room? I thought you were dead!" He stood, his eyes on fire, with something terrible strewn across his face. His voice dropped to barely more than a whisper. "We've got a war about to be unleashed here-one that I'm going to die for. One where you and I are an impossibility. So I don't get to tell you that I love you. And you don't get to look at me like that.

So, Joanie came over with some ice bubble hash--not sure what that means, but it's good--and I freaked her out with some Pink Floyd. She didn't know the early stuff so much. We went out into the garden with a fairly big-screen laptop, it was warmish, and after we were high and drinking a few beers, I played for her these videos, in this order: Jugband Blues Astronomy Domine (2x, once with Syd, once with Dave) Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun One of These Days A Saucerful of Secrets Echoes Comfortably Numb She passed out on the settee and I threw a cover over her. lol

Your enemies call it comeuppance and relish the details of a drug too fine, how long you must have dangled there beside yourself. In the middle distance of your twenty-ninth year, night split open like a fighter's bruised palm, a purple ripeness. Friends shook their heads. With you it was always the next attractive trouble, as if an arranged marriage had been made in a country of wing walkers, lion tamers, choirboys leaping from bellpulls into the high numb glitter, and you, born with the breath of wild on your tongue brash as gin. True, it was charming for a while. Your devil's balance, your debts. Then no one was laughing. Hypodermic needles and cash registers emptied themselves in your presence. Cars went head-on. Sympathy, old motor, ran out or we grew old, our tongues wearing little grooves in our mouths clucking disappointment. Michael, what pulled you up by upstart roots and set you packing, left the rest of us here, body-heavy on the edge of our pews. Over the reverend's lament we could still hear laughter, your mustache the angled black wings of a perfect crow. Later we taught ourselves the proper method for mourning haphazard life: salt, tequila, lemon. Drinking and drifting in your honor we barely felt a thing.

The odd sensation I had while cooking would often last through the meal, then dissolve as I climbed the stairs. I would enter my room and discover the homework books I had left on the bed had disappeared into my backpack. I’d look inside my books and be shocked to find that the homework had been done. Sometimes it had been done well, at others it was slapdash, the writing careless, my own handwriting but scrawled across the page. As I read the work through, I would get the creepy feeling that someone was watching me. I would turn quickly, trying to catch them out, but the door would be closed. There was never anyone there. Just me. My throat would turn dry. My shoulders would feel numb. The tic in my neck would start dancing as if an insect was burrowing beneath the surface of the skin. The symptoms would intensify into migraines that lasted for days and did not respond to treatment or drugs. The attack would come like a sudden storm, blow itself out of its own accord or unexpectedly vanish. Objects repeatedly went missing: a favourite pen, a cassette, money. They usually turned up, although once the money had gone it had gone for ever and I would find in the chest of drawers a T-shirt I didn’t remember buying, a Depeche Mode cassette I didn’t like, a box of sketching pencils, some Lego.

His lips parted under hers, damp and soft and warm, and she forgot all of that. Her entire life focused in on the sensations, the gentle pressure that grew more intense the longer the kiss went on. Chaste kisses, then dirtier ones, and man, those tasted good. They tasted better the wider her mouth opened, and especially after his tongue touched hers. She could have done a whole semester of kissing with Shane. Intense personal study. With lab classes. Time really wasn’t happening for her, but eventually Claire realized that there was a soft glow coming from the windows, and she was numb and sore from sitting on the floor. She winced as a muscle in her back protested, and Shane reached out, pulled her up, and settled himself on the couch. He stretched out, and extended a hand to her. She stared, tingling and confused. “There’s no room.’” “Plenty of room,’” he said. She felt breathless and kind of wild, stretching out on the tiny area of sofa cushion available next to him, and then smothered a yelp as Shane picked her up and draped her over his chest and, oh my God, over all the rest of him, too. “Better?’” he asked, and raised his eyebrows. It was a real question, and he was looking for a real answer. Claire felt a blush building a fire in her cheeks, but she didn’t look away from his gaze. “Perfect,’” she said.

The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here. Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in. I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands. I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions. I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons. They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut. Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in. The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble, They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps, Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another, So it is impossible to tell how many there are. My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently. They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep. Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage—— My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox, My husband and child smiling out of the family photo; Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks. I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat stubbornly hanging on to my name and address. They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations. Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head. I am a nun now, I have never been so pure. I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free—— The peacefulness is so big it dazes you, And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets. It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet. The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me. Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby. Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds. They are subtle : they seem to float, though they weigh me down, Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color, A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck. Nobody watched me before, now I am watched. The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins, And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips, And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself. The vivid tulips eat my oxygen. Before they came the air was calm enough, Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss. Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise. Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine. They concentrate my attention, that was happy Playing and resting without committing itself. The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves. The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals; They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat, And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me. The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea, And comes from a country far away as health. --"Tulips", written 18 March 1961

You are very quiet,” Archer remarked as they walked together to the refreshment table. They’d just finished a game of whist and when Rose begged off from a second round, Grey’s brother did the same. “My apologies,” she replied. “I do not mean to be rude.” “My brother doesn’t deserve to take up so much room in that lovely head of yours.” She might have been insulted by his disparaging Grey, or his familiarity with her, had she not been so surprised by the remark itself. “You are impertinent, sir.” He grinned-a grin so much more roguish than Grey’s. “One of my more charming traits. I did not mean offense, dear lady. Only that thinking about him will do you no good. The man is bent on punishing himself for the rest of his life.” Rose accepted the plate he offered her. “Thank you. Why would he wish to punish himself?” “Because he’s an ar…idiot. Sandwich?” He held up a cucumber sandwich caught in silver tongs. “Please. I’m not certain I wish to discuss your brother with you, Lord Archer.” “Not even if I can help you win him?” Rose’s heart froze-no, it simply stopped. Her entire body went numb. She would have dropped her plate had Archer not swept it from her hand into his own. “What makes you think I wish to win him?” He flashed her a coy glance. “Please, lady Rose. I’ve not made a career out of studying your sex to fall for your false innocence now.” Oh dear God. Had Grey told him? “I’ve seen the way you look at him, and I’ve had to put with hearing about you for the last four years-no offense.” Rose arched a brow as he piled food upon her plate. “None taken. I wasn’t aware that I looked at your brother in a manner different from how I might look upon anyone else.” “Mm.” He popped a small cake into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “That’s just it. You try too hard to treat him like everyone else. It’s obvious you care for him, and not just as the man who saved your life.” “Saved my life? How very dramatic.” He gave her a very serious look as he handed her the laden plate. “Where do you suppose you’d be right now if Grey hadn’t taken you in? Certainly not here, with such good food and charming company.” Point taken. And now she felt simply awful for the way she had spoken to Grey earlier. She was such a cow. “You shame me, sir.” And worse, he’d made tears come to her eyes. Staring at her food-such a wonderful array he’d picked for her-she blinked them away. He steered her toward a window seat where they sat in plain view of the room, but at least with a modicum of privacy. “My apologies, my lady. I did not mean to offend you with my plain and thoughtless words.” “Plain, perhaps. Thoughtless, I highly doubt it.” She managed a small smile. “I don’t think you do anything without thinking first.” Archer laughed, looking so much like Grey it hurt to look at him. “Were that but true.

I felt a numb shock as I drove home anxious to get my chocolate flowers and wondering how my mother arranged to get them delivered to me at the exact time of her passing as promised. I arrived home to a note on my door to go to the neighbor on the right. I knocked at the door and the grouchy older man answered. Without saying a word, he went to his refrigerator, opened it and said, "I think these are for you." He handed me the large bouquet of fruits all cut out like flowers and dipped in chocolate."It looks like chocolate flowers." he said with a grin, adding "I had a few, and they were great!" I held my delivery. I opened the small envelope and read the card: Dear Jori, We appreciate you showing us homes and although it has been months, we thought of you and wanted to do something nice for you today. I hope you remember us. The Johnsons This was a previous client who was a pastor. He never knew I had a mother who had cancer nor did I ever mention the conversation about the chocolate flowers. It had been several months since I had heard from this couple who were considering purchasing a home. I called the client, whom I haven't spoken to in such a long time. I was confused and wanted to know what made them decide to send me chocolate flowers, and why that day, of all days? He said it was his wife's idea to do something nice for someone and they agreed it on it being me. Mrs. Johnson thought of the chocolate flowers.

Is it true?” Kathleen asked. “The story you were telling about Devon?” After draining the tea in two gulps, West gave her a haunted glance. “All true. The son of a bitch almost succeeded in killing himself.” Kathleen took the cup from his lax fingers. “I don’t know how he did it,” West continued. “I was in the water for no more than two minutes, and my legs went numb to the bone. It was agony. By all accounts, Devon was in that river for at least twenty minutes, the reckless lackwit.” “Saving children,” Kathleen said, feigning scorn. “How dare he?” “Yes,” West said with no trace of humor. He stared at the leaping fire, brooding. “Now I understand what you once said to me about all the people who depend on him--and I’ve become one of them. Damn him to hell. My brother can’t take arse-headed chances with his life again, or I swear I’ll kill him.” “I understand,” she said, aware of the fear lurking beneath his caustic words. “No, you don’t. You weren’t there. My God, I almost didn’t reach him in time. Had I arrived just a few seconds later--” West took a shuddering breath and averted his face. “He wouldn’t have done this before, you know. He used to have more sense than to risk his neck for someone else. Especially strangers. The numbskull.” Kathleen smiled. Swallowing back the tightness in her throat, she reached out and smoothed his hair back. “My dear friend,” she whispered, “I’m sorry to have to say this…but you would have done the same thing.

… Not that everything “went black,” nothing of the sort; only that the event itself is cloudy because of some primitive, numbing effect that obscured it at the time; the same effect, I suppose, that enables panicked mothers to swim icy rivers, or rush into burning houses, for a child; the effect that occasionally allows a deeply bereaved person to make it through a funeral without a single tear. Some things are too terrible to grasp at once. Other things—naked, sputtering, indelible in their horror—are too terrible to really ever grasp at all. It is only later, in solitude, in memory, that the realization dawns: when the ashes are cold; when the mourners have departed; when one looks around and finds oneself —quite to one’s surprise—in an entirely different world.

She lifted the cup to her lips. “You make good coffee.” “You haven’t tasted it yet.” “I can smell it. And I love the way it smells.” It’s not the coffee, he thought. Not all of it, at any rate. “Well, I love your perfume,” he said, because he was a dolt. She frowned. “I’m not wearing any. I mean, other than the soap and shampoo I use.” “Well, I like them, then. And I’m glad you stayed.” “Is this what you planned?” Their eyes met. Shit, she was perfect. Radiant as the candles had been. “You making it all the way to the coffee? Yeah, I guess a date was what I was after.” “I thought you agreed with me.” Man, that breathless quality in her voice made him want to have her up against his naked chest. “Agreed with you?” he said. “Hell, if it would make you happy, I’d say yes to anything. But what are you specifically referring to?” “You said…I shouldn’t date anyone.” Ah, right. “You shouldn’t.” “I don’t understand.” Fuck him, but he went for it. Rehv put his numb elbow on the table and leaned into her. As he closed the distance, her eyes got wider, but she didn’t pull back. He paused, to give her a chance to tell him to cut the shit. Why? He had no clue. His symphath side was into pauses only for analysis or to better capitalize on a weakness. But she made him want to be decent. Ehlena didn’t tell him to step off, however. “I don’t…understand,” she whispered. “It’s simple. I don’t think you should date anyone.” Rehv moved in even closer, until he could see the flecks of gold in her eyes. “But I’m not just anyone.” -Ehlena & Rehv

There is an art to navigating London during the Blitz. Certain guides are obvious: Bethnal Green and Balham Undergrounds are no-goes, as is most of Wapping, Silvertown and the Isle of Dogs. The further west you go, the more you can move around late at night in reasonable confidence of not being hit, but should you pass an area which you feel sure was a council estate when you last checked in the 1970s, that is usually a sign that you should steer clear. There are also three practical ways in which the Blitz impacts on the general functioning of life in the city. The first is mundane: streets blocked, services suspended, hospitals overwhelmed, firefighters exhausted, policemen belligerent and bread difficult to find. Queuing becomes a tedious essential, and if you are a young nun not in uniform, sooner or later you will find yourself in the line for your weekly portion of meat, to be eaten very slowly one mouthful at a time, while non-judgemental ladies quietly judge you Secondly there is the slow erosion-a rather more subtle but perhaps more potent assault on the spirit It begins perhaps subtly, the half-seen glance down a shattered street where the survivors of a night which killed their kin sit dull and numb on the crooked remnants of their bed. Perhaps it need not even be a human stimulus: perhaps the sight of a child's nightdress hanging off a chimney pot, after it was thrown up only to float straight back down from the blast, is enough to stir something in your soul that has no rare. Perhaps the mother who cannot find her daughter, or the evacuees' faces pressed up against the window of a passing train. It is a death of the soul by a thousand cuts, and the falling skies are merely the laughter of the executioner going about his business. And then, inevitably, there is the moment of shock It is the day your neighbour died because he went to fix a bicycle in the wrong place, at the wrong time. It is the desk which is no longer filled, or the fire that ate your place of work entirely so now you stand on the street and wonder, what shall I do? There are a lot of lies told about the Blitz spirit: legends are made of singing in the tunnels, of those who kept going for friends, family and Britain. It is far simpler than that People kept going because that was all that they could really do. Which is no less an achievement, in its way.

Only one solution presented itself. I went from chemist to chemist buying packets of paracetamol. I bought only a few packets at a time to avoid arousing suspicion—but I needn’t have worried. No one paid me the least attention; I was clearly as invisible as I felt. It was cold in my room, and my fingers were numb and clumsy as I tore open the packets. It took an immense effort to swallow all the tablets. But I forced them all down, pill after bitter pill. Then I crawled onto my uncomfortable narrow bed. I shut my eyes and waited for death. But death didn’t come. Instead a searing, gut-wrenching pain tore through my insides. I doubled up and vomited, throwing up bile and half-digested pills all over myself. I lay in the dark, a fire burning in my stomach, for what seemed like eternity.

This was the first time that Buck had failed, in itself a sufficient reason to drive Hal into a rage. He exchanged the whip for the customary club. Buck refused to move under the rain of heavier blows which now fell upon him. Like his mates, he was barely able to get up, but, unlike them, he had made up his mind not to get up. He had a vague feeling of impending doom. This had been strong upon him when he pulled into the bank, and it had not departed from him. What of the thin and rotten ice he had felt under his feet all day, it seemed that he sensed disaster close at hand, out there ahead on the ice where his master was trying to drive him. He refused to stir. So greatly had he suffered, and so far gone was he, that the blows did not hurt much. And as they continued to fall upon him, the spark of life within flickered and went down. It was nearly out. He felt strangely numb. As though from a great distance, he was aware that he was being beaten. The last sensations of pain left him. He no longer felt anything, though very faintly he could hear the impact of the club upon his body. But it was no longer his body, it seemed so far away. And then, suddenly, without warning, uttering a cry that was inarticulate and more like the cry of an animal, John Thornton sprang upon the man who wielded the club. Hal was hurled backward, as though struck by a falling tree. Mercedes screamed. Charles looked on wistfully, wiped his watery eyes, but did not get up because of his stiffness. John Thornton stood over Buck, struggling to control himself, too convulsed with rage to speak. "If you strike that dog again, I'll kill you," he at last managed to say in a choking voice. p63

He just wanted a walk- and a few books. It had been an age since he'd even had free time to read, let alone do so for pleasure. But there she was. His mate. She was nothing like Jesminda. Jesminda had been all laughter and mischief, too wild and free to be contained by the country life that she'd been born into. She had teased him, taunted him- seduced him so thoroughly that he hadn't wanted anything but her. She'd seen him not as a High Lord's seventh son, but as a male. Had loved him without question, without hesitation. She had chosen him. Elain had been... thrown at him. He glanced toward the tea service spread on a low-lying table nearby. 'I'm going to assume that one of those cups belongs to your sister.' Indeed, there was a discarded book in the viper's usual chair. Cauldron help the male who wound up shackled to her. 'Do you mind if I held myself to the other?' He tried to sound casual- comfortable. Even as his heart raced and raced, so swift he thought he might vomit on the very expensive, very old carpet. From Sangravah, if the patterns and rich dyes were any indication. Rhysand was many things, but he certainly had good taste. The entire place had been decorated with thought and elegance, with a penchant for comfort over stuffiness. He didn't want to admit he liked it. Didn't want to admit he found the city beautiful. That the circle of people who now claimed to be Feyre's new family... It was what, long ago, he'd once thought life at Tamlin's court would be. An ache like a blow to the chest went through him, but he crossed the rug. Forced his hands to be steady while he poured himself a cup of tea and sat in the chair opposite Nesta's vacated one. 'There's a plate of biscuits. Would you like one?' He didn't expect her to answer, and he gave himself all of one more minute before he'd rise from this chair and leave, hopefully avoiding Nesta's return. But sunlight on gold caught his eye- and Elain slowly turned from her vigil at the window. He had not seen her entire face since that day in Hybern. Then, it had been drawn and terrified, then utterly blank and numb, her hair plastered to her head, her lips blue with cold and shock. Looking at her now... She was pale, yes. The vacancy still glazing her features. But he couldn't breathe as she faced him fully. She was the most beautiful female he'd ever seen. Betrayal, queasy and oily, slid through his veins. He'd said the same to Jesminda once. But even as shame washed through him, the words, the sense chanted, Mine. You are mine, and I am yours. Mate.

And I went from sleeper to sleeper, examining their faces as I had so many years ago in the tunnel, always looking for His Cognizance and always hoping—although I knew how absurd it was—that I would find Silk, that Silk had left Hyacinth and would be going with us after all, that Silk had rejoined us when I was inattentive, talking to Scleroderma and Shrike, and lagging behind the slowest walkers to talk to His Cognizance, whom I sought without finding on that nightmare night under the cloud-capped trees that outreach all our towers, so that at last I called out softly “Silk? Silk?” as I walked among the sleepers until Oreb grasped my hand with fingers that were in fact feathers, repeating, “Here Silk. Good Silk,” and I took my own advice and found the numbing fruit, cut one in two with the gold-chased black blade of the sword that I had imagined for myself and pressed a half against the sting on my arm, weeping. *

I did well at the Department of Justice. Some of my parts were hard workers. My well-developed memory helped me remember people: their names and positions and what they said during meetings. Rather than making me seem checked out, my dissociation made me seem calm and collected. In fact, the general dissociative state I was always in helped me function very well. I collected information, interacted on a personal and professional level, and was quite adept at managing most tasks in my life from this superficially numb and calm place. Most people, including me, didn't notice. This way of being and interacting was really all I knew. From that mild dissociation, I quickly went into a deeper dissociative state if there was conflict around me, if someone expressed strong emotions, or if something unpredictable happened. Although these difficult situations triggered me, they brought out behavior that helped me do well when the going got tough.

Sometimes, looking back, I try to isolate a moment to change, a day or a night on either side of which things were demonstrably different. I never succeed. Partly, I think, is because it's simply not possible. Outside of sudden, violent events, changes is ongoing; we measure it only by holding what we've become against the memory of what we once were. But it's also because, in that space, at that particular time, We were so enmeshed in change, so completely caught up in it that singular, momentary factors became lost and blurred. Day and night slipped their boundaries. Our bodies ached, contorted, then were numbed with narcotics and went slack. My fingernails became sharp, then broken. In regular life, the life we'd left, we would have managed these processes, checked them, turned things back to how they were and how we liked them. There, in that concrete room, we surrendered ourselves to time and all its effects. The heat was unrelenting, pooling us in sweat and thickening the stink in which we lived. (p.271)

Neither do I express well nor do I know how to write perfectly charming like writers do yet here I sit every night under the stars hoping one to break away so I could wish for the missing peace of my puzzle of life .. * Selfish isn't it wishing something to break so we can join ourselves  maybe thats the law of nature. One always has to give up for something to live. Tree dies  leaving the seed for a new bud behind.  Crazy! The sacrifice for one becomes the breath for the other one without even  him realizing what suffering something went through for its precious life * It gets cold fast once you decide to swim deep into your thoughts . Every thing from a star to even the buzzing of bees tell you a story about what your existence might be for but the city's lights and sound never let you realize how small yet how fascinating your existence is . We tend to forget the meaning of life even after preaching the same for others ourselves. . It feels good and at peace with nobody to bother you anymore . You can think and imagine stuff that might never be but this wonderful brain imagines  it . If not forever Atleast for sometime   you can feel the feeling you forever lust for.  Sure the usual disturbances try to lure my mind away from things but I'm used to it now . The gloominess  inside doesn't let them affect inside anymore. * The sky gets dark it really does . Maybe like the night sky's supposed to be so are my thoughts with a beating heart to support them and keep the flame of fight lit like the moon lights up the sky even if that means reflecting the harsh rays of sun. * The time flies and so do the body shivers for warmth but I feel like staying. Sure the exposed sky gives peace but it comes at a cost so I try to bargain with  it every night. She's a good at negotiating though only gives me some hours before she signal that time's over. * Hesitantly I move my numb body using the last remaining gas in  the dying  shell known as body. How much i try it won't let me stay so here I leave heartbroken once again like every other night.

Colby arrived the next day, with stitches down one lean cheek and a new prosthesis. He held it up as Cecily came out to the car to greet him. He held it up as Cecily came out to the car to greet him. “Nice, huh? Doesn’t it look more realistic than the last one?” “What happened to the last one?” she asked. “Got blown off. Don’t ask where,” he added darkly. “I know nothing,” she assured him. “Come on in. Leta made sandwiches.” Leta had only seen Colby once, on a visit with Tate. She was polite, but a little remote, and it showed. “She doesn’t like me,” Colby told Cecily when they were sitting on the steps later that evening. “She thinks I’m sleeping with you,” she said simply.” So does Tate.” “Why?” “Because I let him think I was,” she said bluntly. He gave her a hard look. “Bad move, Cecily.” “I won’t let him think I’m waiting around for him to notice me,” she said icily. “He’s already convinced that I’m in love with him, and that’s bad enough. I can’t have him know that I’m…well, what I am. I do have a little pride.” “I’m perfectly willing, if you’re serious,” he said matter-of-factly. His face broke into a grin, belying the solemnity of the words. “Or are you worried that I might not be able to handle it with one arm?” She burst out laughing and pressed affectionately against his side. “I adore you, I really do. But I had a bad experience in my teens. I’ve had therapy and all, but it’s still sort of traumatic for me to think about real intimacy.” “Even with Tate?” he probed gently. She wasn’t touching that line with a pole. “Tate doesn’t want me.” “You keep saying that, and he keeps making a liar of you.” “I don’t understand.” “He came to see me last night. Just after I spoke to you.” He ran his fingers down his damaged cheek. She caught her breath. “I thought you got that overseas!” “Tate wears a big silver turquoise ring on his middle right finger,” he reminded her. “It does a bit of damage when he hits people with it.” “He hit you? Why?” she exclaimed. “Because you told him we were sleeping together,” he said simply. “Honest to God, Cecily, I wish you’d tell me first when you plan to play games. I was caught off guard.” “What did he do after he hit you?” “I hit him, and one thing led to another. I don’t have a coffee table anymore. We won’t even discuss what he did to my best ashtry.” “I’m so sorry!” “Tate and I are pretty much matched in a fight,” he said. “Not that we’ve ever been in many. He hits harder than Pierce Hutton does in a temper.” He scowled down at her. “Are you sure Tate doesn’t want you? I can’t think of another reason he’d try to hammer my floor with my head.” “Big brother Tate, to the rescue,” she said miserably. She laughed bitterly. “He thinks you’re a bad risk.” “I am,” he said easily. “I like having you as my friend.” He smiled. “Me, too. There aren’t many people who stuck by me over the years, you know. When Maureen left me, I went crazy. I couldn’t live with the pain, so I found ways to numb it.” He shook his head. “I don’t think I came to my senses until you sent me to that psychologist over in Baltimore.” He glanced down at her. “Did you know she keeps snakes?” he added. “We all have our little quirks.

On my next-to-last day in the country, I flew into Tokyo from Sapporo and needed to get to Tokyo’s main railroad station, called Shinjuku. I climbed into a taxi at the airport and said to the driver, “Shinjuku station, please.” He didn’t seem to have any idea what I meant. I repeated my request, as articulately as I could, and he looked at me as if I had asked him to take me to Boise. I pulled a map of Tokyo out and showed him Shinjuku station. He studied this with a look of great dissatisfaction, but at length put the car in gear and we set off. We drove for what seemed hours through the endless, numbing sprawl of Tokyo. Eventually we entered a long, deep tunnel—a kind of underground freeway, it seemed. About a mile along, the driver pulled into an emergency parking bay and stopped. He pointed to a metal door cut into the tunnel wall and indicated that I should get out and go through that door. “You want me to go through that door?” I said in disbelief. He nodded robustly and presented me with a bill for about a zillion yen. Everything was beginning to seem more than a touch surreal. He took my money, gave me several small bills in change, and encouraged me to depart, with a little shooing gesture. This was crazy. We were in a tunnel, for crying out loud. If I got out and he drove off, I would be hundreds of feet under Tokyo in a busy traffic tunnel with no sidewalk or other escape. You’ll understand when I say this didn’t feel entirely right. “Through that door there?” I said again, dubiously. He nodded and made another shooing gesture. I got out with my suitcase and went up three metal steps to the door and turned the handle. The door opened. I looked back at the driver. He nodded in encouragement. Ahead of me, lit with what seemed emergency lighting, was the longest flight of stairs I had ever seen. It took a very long while to climb them all. At the top I came to another door, exactly like the one at the bottom. I turned the handle and cautiously opened it, then stepped out onto the concourse of the world’s busiest railway station. I don’t know whether this is the way lots of people get to Shinjuku or whether I am the only person in history ever to have done so. But what I do know is this: it’s why I like to travel.

All Night, All Night Rode in the train all night, in the sick light. A bird Flew parallel with a singular will. In daydream's moods and attitudes The other passengers slumped, dozed, slept, read, Waiting, and waiting for place to be displaced On the exact track of safety or the rack of accident. Looked out at the night, unable to distinguish Lights in the towns of passage from the yellow lights Numb on the ceiling. And the bird flew parallel and still As the train shot forth the straight line of its whistle, Forward on the taut tracks, piercing empty, familiar -- The bored center of this vision and condition looked and looked Down through the slick pages of the magazine (seeking The seen and the unseen) and his gaze fell down the well Of the great darkness under the slick glitter, And he was only one among eight million riders and readers. And all the while under his empty smile the shaking drum Of the long determined passage passed through him By his body mimicked and echoed. And then the train Like a suddenly storming rain, began to rush and thresh-- The silent or passive night, pressing and impressing The patients' foreheads with a tightening-like image Of the rushing engine proceeded by a shaft of light Piercing the dark, changing and transforming the silence Into a violence of foam, sound, smoke and succession. A bored child went to get a cup of water, And crushed the cup because the water too was Boring and merely boredom's struggle. The child, returning, looked over the shoulder Of a man reading until he annoyed the shoulder. A fat woman yawned and felt the liquid drops Drip down the fleece of many dinners. And the bird flew parallel and parallel flew The black pencil lines of telephone posts, crucified, At regular intervals, post after post Of thrice crossed, blue-belled, anonymous trees. And then the bird cried as if to all of us: 0 your life, your lonely life What have you ever done with it, And done with the great gift of consciousness? What will you ever do with your life before death's knife Provides the answer ultimate and appropriate? As I for my part felt in my heart as one who falls, Falls in a parachute, falls endlessly, and feel the vast Draft of the abyss sucking him down and down, An endlessly helplessly falling and appalled clown: This is the way that night passes by, this Is the overnight endless trip to the famous unfathomable abyss.

The area around the fifty-yard line had been set up with a stage and seating. The kids held my hands as we went to the elevator, ready to go out. "Can you believe we're in Cowboys Stadium for Daddy?" I asked them, trying to rally my spirits as well as theirs. "He would be so blown away." I think they nodded. The elevator opened. We got in. The car went down, and suddenly we were walking onto the runway that led to the field. Pay attention to what’s around you. This is unbelievable! The bagpipers began to move, the tap of their shoes on the concrete apron echoing loudly. The cadence centered me. The pipes began to mourn and my spirit swelled, the music propelling me forward. The casket was marched out and placed front and center. The pallbearers and Navy honor guard stood at attention. I was moving in a cocoon of numbing grief and overwhelming awe. There was a prayer, speeches--each moment moved me in a different way. The easy jokes, the devotional hymns, each had its own effect. I began to float. When I’d asked people to talk about Chris at the ceremony, I’d made a point of reminding them of his humor and asking if possible to add some lighter touches to their speeches, roasting him, even; it was all so Chris. But now some of the light jokes tripped a wire: Don’t talk bad about him! Don’t you dare! Then in the next moment I’d realize he would have been leading the laughs, and it was all good again. I couldn’t force a smile, though.

And for the four remaining days - the ninety-six remaining hours - we mapped out a future away from everything we knew. When the walls of the map were breached, we gave one another courage to build them again. And we imagined our home an old stone barn filled with junk and wine and paintings, surrounded by fields of wildflowers and bees. I remember our final day in the villa. We were supposed to be going that evening, taking the sleeper back to England. I was on edge, a mix of nerves and excitement, looking out to see if he made the slightest move toward leaving, but he didn’t. Toiletries remained on the bathroom shelves, clothes stayed scattered across the floor. We went to the beach as usual, lay side by side in our usual spot. The heat was intense and we said little, certainly nothing of our plans to move up to Provence, to the lavender and light. To the fields of sunflowers. I looked at my watch. We were almost there. It was happening. I kept saying to myself, he’s going to do it. I left him on the bed dozing, and went out to the shop to get water and peaches. I walked the streets as if they were my new home. Bonjour to everyone, me walking barefoot, oh so confident, free. And I imagined how we’d go out later to eat, and we’d celebrate at our bar. And I’d phone Mabel and Mabel would say, I understand. I raced back to the villa, ran up the stairs and died. Our rucksacks were open on the bed, our shoes already packed away inside. I watched him from the door. He was silent, his eyes red. He folded his clothes meticulously, dirty washing in separate bags. I wanted to howl. I wanted to put my arms around him, hold him there until the train had left the station. I’ve got peaches and water for the journey, I said. Thank you, he said. You think of everything. Because I love you, I said. He didn’t look at me. The change was happening too quickly. Is there a taxi coming? My voice was weak, breaking. Madame Cournier’s taking us. I went to open the window, the scent of tuberose strong. I lit a cigarette and looked at the sky. An airplane cast out a vivid orange wake that ripped across the violet wash. And I remember thinking, how cruel it was that our plans were out there somewhere. Another version of our future, out there somewhere, in perpetual orbit. The bottle of pastis? he said. I smiled at him. You take it, I said. We lay in our bunks as the sleeper rattled north and retraced the journey of ten days before. The cabin was dark, an occasional light from the corridor bled under the door. The room was hot and airless, smelled of sweat. In the darkness, he dropped his hand down to me and waited. I couldn’t help myself, I reached up and held it. Noticed my fingertips were numb. We’ll be OK, I remember thinking. Whatever we are, we’ll be OK. We didn’t see each other for a while back in Oxford. We both suffered, I know we did, but differently. And sometimes, when the day loomed gray, I’d sit at my desk and remember the heat of that summer. I’d remember the smells of tuberose that were carried by the wind, and the smell of octopus cooking on the stinking griddles. I’d remember the sound of our laughter and the sound of a doughnut seller, and I’d remember the red canvas shoes I lost in the sea, and the taste of pastis and the taste of his skin, and a sky so blue it would defy anything else to be blue again. And I’d remember my love for a man that almost made everything possible./

You’re mine,” he said when he drew back, gazing down at her with a hunger that should have made her run. “No one else’s.” He gripped her hips and set her on the edge of his desk. Before she could figure out what he was doing, he brushed her dress up, spread her thighs, and ripped her thong. “Gavin, what—?” His tongue slipped into her vagina, and her mind went blank with shock. He dragged her to the edge of the desk and ate her as if his life depended on it. One hand pinned her thigh open while the other cupped her ass, drawing her tight to his intimate kiss. She couldn’t think as pleasure ricocheted through her. His talented mouth suckled her clit. Before she could counteract the pleasure or get a hold on it, her climax, violent and unstoppable, blasted through her. She wrapped her legs around his head, body bowing as he slammed his fingers into her, eliciting mind-numbing pleasure so great, her mind shut down and her body took over. When it became too much, she yanked on his hair, trying to get his mouth away from her. He moaned but didn’t budge. She could hear him swallow as he lapped up her juices. “G-Gavin, please stop,” she said hoarsely, shuddering. Without moving his head, he pushed her, so she sprawled on her back in a boneless heap on the slick surface of his desk. He used his fingers this time, curling and stroking. The heat began to build again. She tried to kick him, but his hands pinned her wide, and she had no defense as he teased oversensitive nerves. “I-I can’t,” she panted even as another climax punched through her. She erupted, body jerking as he pulled the strings like the master he was. When rational thought returned, she found him standing over her, fingers still buried between her legs. His eyes were ablaze with lust. “I didn’t ask the first time. You say I raped you. Will you let me have you?” It would feel damn good, but... “No.

Then, as if he’d figured out what produced the maximum reaction in her, he switched back to Chopin. Just like that night in her childhood, the music slipped past her defenses and produced a deep contraction inside her, equal parts pain and pleasure. It went deeper still, until the tears began to rise, and she could only sit there, crying, trying to display only her expressionless left side so he wouldn’t notice. She’d been numb and it had felt good. Okay, not good. But safe. Manageable. He kept playing, soulful, stirring pieces that seemed chosen for their ability to pierce her heart deeper, deeper. She was crying audibly now, and he stopped and regarded her impassively. It couldn’t have been more awkward. She worked to compose herself and only then did she look up and meet his eyes. “Well,” he said, “I think it’s safe to say that dance is not done with you yet.” She stared at him in disbelief. “You did this on purpose. Tried to provoke a reaction.” “I suppose I did.” What a horrible, disreputable person he was. No wonder Misha had seemed anxious about having him around this weekend. “That was a pretty shitty thing to do.” “Not at all,” he replied. “I was just helping you see where you stand with your art. You need it. It nourishes you. That’s not going to go away just because you’re sidelined for a year or two.” “Two years?” She wasn’t sure which appalled her more, his words or his casual attitude. “Whatever. Point being, you’re still a dancer. It couldn’t be more obvious. That gorgeous body of yours, the way it moves. The way you’re sitting there now, all swept away by the music. You’re a dancer. You can’t not be one. Ever.” The truth of this, the twin emotions of fragile hope and crushing despair, crashed into her. He was right. And right then, the truth hurt. Now that the numbness was gone, it all hurt. The tears rose up again and spilled out. She heard Misha come in through the front door. David looked anxious. “Look, Dena. I just want to make sure you’re looking at the issue clearly.” Misha

a guitar. A hammock is swung near the table. It is three o'clock in the afternoon of a cloudy day. MARINA, a quiet, grey-haired, little old woman, is sitting at the table knitting a stocking. ASTROFF is walking up and down near her. MARINA. [Pouring some tea into a glass] Take a little tea, my son. ASTROFF. [Takes the glass from her unwillingly] Somehow, I don't seem to want any. MARINA. Then will you have a little vodka instead? ASTROFF. No, I don't drink vodka every day, and besides, it is too hot now. [A pause] Tell me, nurse, how long have we known each other? MARINA. [Thoughtfully] Let me see, how long is it? Lord—help me to remember. You first came here, into our parts—let me think—when was it? Sonia's mother was still alive—it was two winters before she died; that was eleven years ago—[thoughtfully] perhaps more. ASTROFF. Have I changed much since then? MARINA. Oh, yes. You were handsome and young then, and now you are an old man and not handsome any more. You drink, too. ASTROFF. Yes, ten years have made me another man. And why? Because I am overworked. Nurse, I am on my feet from dawn till dusk. I know no rest; at night I tremble under my blankets for fear of being dragged out to visit some one who is sick; I have toiled without repose or a day's freedom since I have known you; could I help growing old? And then, existence is tedious, anyway; it is a senseless, dirty business, this life, and goes heavily. Every one about here is silly, and after living with them for two or three years one grows silly oneself. It is inevitable. [Twisting his moustache] See what a long moustache I have grown. A foolish, long moustache. Yes, I am as silly as the rest, nurse, but not as stupid; no, I have not grown stupid. Thank God, my brain is not addled yet, though my feelings have grown numb. I ask nothing, I need nothing, I love no one, unless it is yourself alone. [He kisses her head] I had a nurse just like you when I was a child. MARINA. Don't you want a bite of something to eat? ASTROFF. No. During the third week of Lent I went to the epidemic at Malitskoi. It was eruptive typhoid. The peasants were all lying side by side in their huts, and the calves and pigs were running about the floor among the sick. Such dirt there was, and smoke! Unspeakable! I slaved among those people all day, not a crumb passed my lips, but when I got home there was still no rest for me; a switchman was carried in from the railroad; I laid him on the operating table and he went and died in my arms under chloroform, and then my feelings that should have been deadened awoke

Hell wasn’t what Rincewind had been led to expect, although there were signs of what it might once have been – a few clinkers in a corner, a bad scorch mark on the ceiling. It was hot, though, with the kind of heat that you get by boiling air inside an oven for years – Hell, it has been suggested, is other people. This has always come as a bit of a surprise to many working demons, who had always thought hell was sticking sharp things into people and pushing them into lakes of blood and so on. This is because demons, like most people, have failed to distinguish between the body and the soul. The fact was that, as droves of demon kings had noticed, there was a limit to what you could do to a soul with, e.g., red-hot tweezers, because even fairly evil and corrupt souls were bright enough to realise that since they didn’t have the concomitant body and nerve endings attached to them there was no real reason, other than force of habit, why they should suffer excruciating agony. So they didn’t. Demons went on doing it anyway, because numb and mindless stupidity is part of what being a demon is all about, but since no-one was suffering they didn’t enjoy it much either and the whole thing was pointless. Centuries and centuries of pointlessness. Astfgl, [the current Demon King,] had adopted, without realising what he was doing, a radically new approach. Demons can move interdimensionally, and so he’d found the basic ingredients for a very worthwhile lake of blood equivalent, as it were, for the soul. Learn from humans, he’d told the demon lords. Learn from humans. It’s amazing what you can learn from humans. You take, for example, a certain type of hotel. It is probably an English version of an American hotel, but operated with that peculiarly English genius for taking something American and subtracting from it its one worthwhile aspect, so that you end up with slow fast food, West Country and Western music and, well, this hotel. It’s early closing day. The bar is really just a pastel-pink paneled table with a silly bucket on it, set in one corner, and it won’t be open for hours yet. And then you add rain, and let the one channel available on the TV be, perhaps, Welsh Channel Four, showing its usual mobius Eisteddfod from Pant-y-gyrdl. And there is only one book in this hotel, left behind by a previous victim. It is one of those where the name of the author is on the front in raised gold letters much bigger than the tittle, and it probably has a rose and a bullet on there too. Half the pages are missing. And the only cinema in the town is showing something with subtitles and French umbrellas in it. And then you stop time, but not experience, so that it seems as though the very fluff in the carpet is gradually rising up to fill the brain and your mouth starts to taste like an old denture. And you make it last for ever and ever. That’s even longer than from now to opening time. And then you distil it.

There was a time when love filled his heart, but no more. Once Sam had sought enlightenment and thought he'd found its path on an Ashram outside Los Angeles. Once Sam had a teacher in whom he believed without reservation, who had helped him discover the inner resonances of the divine within himself. Sam had read that one could become a completely God-realized being and was awed and inspired by this perfection he saw in his teacher. As Sam progressed, his guru became more than his teacher, he became his beloved friend. Sam grew in stature and recognition in the community of spiritual seekers gathered about the guru. Sam's utter admiration made the truth more painful still when he discovered that advancement within the order was not by merit alone but that several of the higher ranking members had been conferred their status in exchange for sexual favors and that the donations made to the center went first and foremost toward the material enrichment of the leader. Life for Sam then lost its reason. He had no faith in any human being not even himself. He certainly had no faith left for the merciful and benevolent God that allowed his loving devotee to fall into the hands of such a charlatan. Sam was deeply disillusioned and heartbroken. He walked out of the center that day with no possessions, no money, no beliefs. His great spiritual quest had brought him here to New York, a homeless man living in a makeshift shanty under the overpass of the Long Island Expressway. Sam was numb inside. He did not think about his guru; he could not bear to think about the guru. Therefore, he hid his great pain deep inside himself.

Like everybody else, Guy had little appetite for the big bad news. Like everybody else, he had supped full of horrors, over breakfast, day after day, until he was numb with it, stupid with it, and his daily paper went unread.

I became aware that Francis was looking at me with an intent, fixed expression on his face. I mumbled something and got up and went to the bureau to get an Alka-Seltzer. The sudden movement made me feel light-headed. I was standing there dully, wondering where I'd put the box, when all of a sudden I became aware that Francis was immediately behind me, and I turned around. His face was very close to mine. To my surprise he put his hands on my shoulders and leaned forward and kissed me, right on the mouth. It was a real kiss — long, slow, deliberate. He'd caught me off balance and I grabbed his arm to keep from falling; sharply, he drew in his breath and his hands went down to my back and before I knew it, more from reflex than anything else, I was kissing him, too. His tongue was sharp. His mouth had a biter, mannish taste, like tea and cigarettes. He pulled away, breathing hard, and leaned to kiss my throat. I looked rather wildly around the room. God, I thought, what a night. "Look, Francis," I said, "cut it out." He was undoing the top button of my collar. "You idiot," he said, chuckling. "Did you know your shirt's on inside-out?" I was so tired and drunk I started to laugh. "Come on, Francis," I said "Give me a break." "It's fun," he said, "I promise you." Matters progressed. My jaded nerves began to stir. His eyes were magnified and wicked behind his pince-nez. Presently he took them off and dropped them on my bureau with an absent clatter. Then, quite unexpectedly, there was another knock at the door. We sprang apart. His eyes were wide. We stared at each other, and then the knock came again. Francis swore under his breath, bit his lip. I, panic-stricken, buttoning my shirt as fast as my numb fingers would go, started to say something but he made a quick, shushing gesture at me with his hands.

How it happened he himself did not know, but suddenly it was as if something lifted him and flung him down at her feet. He wept and embraced her knees. For the first moment she was terribly frightened, and her whole face went numb. She jumped up and looked at him, trembling. But all at once, in that same moment, she understood everything. Infinite happiness lit up in her eyes; she understood, and for her there was no longer any doubt that he loved her, loved her infinitely, and that at last the moment had come. . . .

When I got sober, I learned that hard feelings are doorbells that interrupt me, send me into a panic, and then leave me with an exciting package. Sobriety is a decision to stop numbing and blaming away hard feelings and to start answering the door. So when I quit drinking, I began allowing my feelings to disturb me. This was scary, because I had always assumed that my feelings were so big and powerful that they would stay forever and eventually kill me. But my hard feelings did not stay forever, and they did not kill me. Instead, they came and went, and afterward I was left with something I didn’t have before. That something was self-knowledge.

You felt it in your soul, no place else. You felt the truth there sometimes--beyond logic--and you were usually right if it was a type of truth that was the exact kind you didn't want to face, weren't sure you could. That's what you tried to ignore, why you went to psychiatrists and spent too long in bars and numbed your brain in front of TV tubes-- to hide from hard, ugly truths your soul recognized long before your mind caught up.

Why not Vespera?” Sophie asked. “Because I’m inclined to believe there’s more subtlety to her—and her research—than her journals imply. She’s an Empath, after all. And Empaths feel every hurt they trigger.” “Not all of them,” Keefe muttered, and Sophie’s heart ached, knowing he had to mean his dad. “How do you know she’s an Empath?” Sophie asked. “I just do. It’s actually why I chose Keefe’s father from my match lists. I knew if I wanted to build my own Nightfall someday, I was going to need an Empath to help me run it. But he turned out to be… incompatible. Fortunately, he gave me a son who manifested with far more power than he ever had. That’s your legacy, Keefe. But we’ll talk more about that later. For now, go get me my Archetype. And try not to die.” The Imparter went silent, and Sophie and Keefe just stared at it. Eventually Keefe mumbled, “So… all of that’s getting shoved into a really dark corner of my head—and we’re not going to talk about it, okay? At least not until we get through tonight.” Sophie nodded. “Well… at least we know Vespera’s ability isn’t something scary.” “Don’t be so sure. My mom’s never trained as an Empath, so she doesn’t get it.” He stood, moving to Sophie’s bookshelf, where she’d displayed the paintings he’d given her around her old human scrapbook. “My empathy Mentor warned me when she saw how strong my ability was—that there’s a risk that comes with feeling too much and not having the right training. Our mind’s natural reaction is to shut down when things get too intense—but everything is intense for an Empath. So if you’re not careful, you can end up going… numb. You’ll still feel what others feel. But you won’t feel

An occupation numbs a city’s vitality, the vitality that makes urban life attractive. Soon the citizen begins to feel alienated, disconnected from a familiar environment; though he is still physically engaged with the city, his emotional attachment to it weakens. Previously confident of his urban sophistication, which had allowed him to navigate a complex environment, he becomes tentative, anxious, angry, and impatient as he wonders how long before “his” city returns to him. One of the ironies is that an occupied city brings its citizens closer together physically—in lines, in movie houses, in cafés for warmth, in smaller living spaces, in crowded buses and trains—but separates them emotionally and sentimentally.

I looked up and felt a catch in my throat. I couldn't utter a sound. I wanted to shout 'Stop! Freeze!' but I couldn't. And I probably wouldn't have had time, anyway, it all happened so fast. Kirill stepped over the empty, turned his back to the canisters, and got his whole back into the silver web. I shut my eyes. I went numb and the only thing I heard was the web tearing. It was a weak crackly noise. I was crouched there with my eyes shut, unable to feel my arms or my legs, when Kirill spoke. 'Well, shall we get on with it?

The door opened. I stopped. Beyond it, orks lined both sides of the corridor. They had been watching for me. The moment I appeared, they roared their approval. They did not attack. They simply stood, clashed guns against blades, and hooted brute enthusiasm. I had been subjected to too many celebratory parades on Armageddon not to recognise one when it confronted me. I went numb from the unreality before me. I stepped forward, though. I had no choice. I walked. It was the most obscene victory march of my life. I moved through corridor, hold and bay, and the massed ranks of the greenskins hailed my passage. I saw the evidence of the destruction I had caused around every bend. Scorch marks, patched ruptures, buckled flooring, collapsed ceilings. But it hadn’t been enough. Not nearly enough. Only enough for this… this… At length, I arrived at a launch bay. There was a ship on the pad before the door. It was human, a small in-system shuttle. It was not built for long voyages. No matter, as long as its vox-system was still operative. I knew that it would be. Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka awaited me beside the ship’s access ramp. I did not let my confusion or the sense that I had slipped into an endless waking nightmare slow my stride. I did not hesitate as I strode towards the monster. I stopped before him. I met his gaze with all the cold hatred of my soul. He radiated delight. Then he leaned forward, a colossus of armour and bestial strength. Our faces were mere centimetres apart. My soul bears many scars from the days and months of my defeat and captivity. But there is one memory that, above all others, haunts me. By day, it is a goad to action. By night, it murders sleep. It lives with me always, the proof that there could hardly be a more terrible threat to the Imperium than this ork. Thraka spoke to me. Not in orkish. Not even in Low Gothic. In High Gothic. ‘A great fight,’ he said. He extended a huge, clawed finger and tapped me once on the chest. ‘My best enemy.’ He stepped aside and gestured to the ramp. ‘Go to Armageddon,’ he said. ‘Make ready for the greatest fight.’ I entered the ship, my being marked by words whose full measure of horror lay not in their content, but in the fact of their existence. I stumbled to the cockpit, and discovered that I had a pilot. It was Commander Rogge. His mouth was parted in a scream, but there was no sound. He had no vocal cords any longer. There was very little of his body recognisable. He had been opened up, reorganised, fused with the ship’s control and guidance systems. He had been transformed into a fully aware servitor. ‘Take us out of here,’ I ordered. The rumble of the ship’s engines powering up was drowned by the even greater roar of the orks. I knew that roar for what it was: the promise of war beyond description.

In her book Leaving Church, former parish priest and award-winning preacher Barbara Brown Taylor describes what it was like to feel her soul slipping away. She says: Many of the things1 that were happening inside of me seemed too shameful to talk about out loud. Laid low by what was happening at Grace-Calvary, I did not have the energy to put a positive spin on anything. . . . Beyond my luminous images of Sunday mornings I saw the committee meetings, the numbing routines, and the chronically difficult people who took up a large part of my time. Behind my heroic image of myself I saw my tiresome perfectionism, my resentment of those who did not try as hard as I did, and my huge appetite for approval. I saw the forgiving faces of my family, left behind every holiday for the last fifteen years, while I went to conduct services for other people and their families. Above all, I saw that my desire to draw as near to God as I could had backfired on me somehow. Drawn to care for hurt things, I had ended up with compassion fatigue. Drawn to a life of servanthood, I had ended up a service provider. Drawn to marry the Divine Presence, I had ended up estranged. . . . Like the bluebirds that sat on my windowsills, pecking at the reflections they saw in the glass, I could not reach the greenness for which my soul longed. For years I had believed that if I just kept at it, the glass would finally disappear. Now for the first time, I wondered if I had devoted myself to an illusion.

Every day of our lives, I’ve discovered, we live with stupid mischance and clumsy melodrama, cupidity, greed, unnecessary suffering. We forget it, we mask it, we try to order it with our arts and philosophies, numb ourselves to it with diversions—or with drink, like poor Stanley. We try to explain and compensate for it with our religions. But it’s always there, very close, like some poor deformed beast hiding behind the thinnest of curtains. Once in a while the curtain is torn down and we’re forced to look. You know that. You went to war.

My prayer went something like this: Father, this was Your idea. You commanded us to pray for things to be here as they are in heaven, and I know there is no numbness there, so there shouldn’t be any here. So I command, in the name of Jesus, the nerve endings to come to life. I command full restoration of feeling in this body.

The conclusion is inescapable: Crick in Cambridge and Brenner in Johannesburg were thinking well ahead of the biochemical pack. But then, about fifteen minutes later in that same discussion, Walter Sampson Vincent, an instructor in anatomy from the State University of New York at Syracuse, got up to report some experiments with the RNA of unfertilized egg cells of starfish. “Both Dr. Borsook and Dr. Zamecnik have suggested that there should be two RNA fractions in the cell, with differing characteristics,” Vincent said. He had found the same thing himself, and proceeded to tell how, at length. His biological specimens—starfish eggs—were unfamiliar; his methods were the well-known ones of Torbjörn Caspersson and Jean Brachet (he had spent a year with Brachet as a postdoc); and worse than that, late in such a meeting, when scientist after scientist has risen to talk about his experiments, however tenuously related to the chief topic, the audience gets numb and drifts away. Vincent’s data suggested, he said in conclusion, that the nucleus contained two classes of RNA, “one a soluble, metabolically very active, fraction, representing only a small portion of the total.” His last words were about that fraction: “One exciting implication of the active, or labile, form would be that it is involved in the transfer of nuclear ‘information’ to the synthetic centers of the cytoplasm.” This astonishing suggestion went unnoticed.

sighed with bliss. She’d always known he had beautiful hands and she needed that human touch for healing her frightened heart. ‘I’ll never sleep, but I will have to move. My legs have gone numb under Harley.’ ‘Here. Let me lift him. Would you like to sleep with him tonight in your bed?’ ‘Put him in his own bed and we’ll leave the door open. I’ll hear him if he wants me. I need your arms around me tonight, Iain. He won’t mind me sleeping with you – though he might come in in the morning.’ Iain laughed softly, dropped a tender kiss on her lips and lifted the boy easily out of her lap to carry him up the stairs. Chapter Fifty-two Noni Half an hour later, Noni had showered and was sipping the hot chocolate Iain had insisted she needed. He came back into the room, sat down and slid his arm around her. ‘This wasn’t quite the situation and setting I’d planned, but I do have something to say.’ Noni put down the cup and tried to calm the sudden thumping in her heart. She looked into the face of the man she’d come to love and knew, without a doubt, that she had to stay with him despite the dilemmas they hadn’t resolved. It wasn’t just Harley who’d been heartbroken that he’d left. ‘First of all, I’m sorry for accusing you of knowing Jacinta was planning on staying with you. On Saturday, it took me until about fifty kilometers south of Burra to realize that of course you hadn’t known she planned to stay behind. I think I always knew you’d never stoop to underhanded methods to arrange that change of plan.’ He sighed. ‘It was all Jacinta’s idea, although for the life of me I couldn’t understand why she left telling me until the last minute.’ He grimaced and squeezed her shoulder. ‘I was so disappointed in her lack of loyalty, I blamed you. And I was over the top about it. I’m sorry.’ Noni ran her finger along his jaw. ‘I understand that. Before she went to bed, Jacinta told me she wanted to make sure we still saw each other. That she could see we were good for each other if we could hang in there. She stayed so we would still keep in contact.’ ‘She’s a stubborn young woman.’ ‘Just like her father.’ Noni took a deep breath and hoped the offer was still open. ‘But I can see what she means. I will take you on your terms, Iain. I think we should try to make a life together, and it’s no good Harley and me staying in Burra if our hearts are down in Sydney with you.’ She expelled her breath. There. She’d said it and she meant it. He took her face in his hands and kissed her gently. ‘Ah, Noni. You’re too much for me. Thank you for your typically brave offer, but let me finish. Where was I? Oh, yes. I’m not stubborn, by the way! ‘It only took another five kilometers to realize I didn’t want to leave Burra, either. The challenges of a country practice might be the answer to rejuvenating my interest in obstetrics. But it’s you, not the town, which is drawing me back. If you’ll have me.’ Noni was lost now. ‘What are you saying, Iain?’ ‘I’m saying … I love you. I want to marry you. I want to live with you, be a part of your family and you be a part of mine, in Burra if you want to, for the rest of our lives.’ He took her hand in his and kissed her fingers. ‘Say that again,’ Noni whispered. She couldn’t believe it. ‘I love you. The first time I saw you it was as if I’d been searching for you my whole life. Or maybe we’ve connected before in

I’ve lived through some injustices in the last couple of centuries. Seen some fucking travesties. But one of the biggest, Oraya, is that anyone taught you that you should become anything other than exactly what you are.” My hands went numb. My fingers were so tight around my mug that they trembled. The words split me from throat to navel, pulled me open and touched my most fragile parts.

Sometimes, it's essential to take a moment to slow down and look at how far you've come. Like literally breathe in all the healing, all the changes that your Soul has embraced so far, the walk that once looked difficult and yet you went on with it, through it, only to come this far. It is essential to just remember how every small step you took led you to this moment, where some things that once bothered you do not find that trigger anymore, the places, the songs, the words, the elements of this material world that once brought you to your numbness have now lost its strong foothold on you, not that sometimes they won't leap in to make you feel a little vulnerable for the moment but essentially they've lost their ground. It's essential to appreciate that, to pat yourself on that. While doing so, we would find the simplest understanding that in Life, we cannot have everything. Some things will get lost in the way, and some dreams will be left unfulfilled but the best part is, there is always going to be something to fill its place. All the things you've lost would lead you to all the things you will gain in the process. And maybe, just maybe if you take time to listen to your Soul, the things you would gain in the process of losing what you thought was necessary, are actually the real necessities of your Soul. It is when you literally Stop moving in your Mind and walk past its edges that you would know the truest meaning that was there all along, that in this Human Existence, we are not meant to have it all, to have all the dreams and yearnings accomplished, to have it all sorted, some things would always be left undone, and somewhere that holds the beauty of this Human Life, to know how far we've come and to find a sense of peace even in an insatiable mind, to know that We don't need to have it all figured out, but to hold space for Grace and Gratitude, to know Kindness for every passer by and most importantly for our own self. And to know, that Life is a Labyrinth of a winding Walk, and just like going ahead is necessary, taking a pause would actually replenish your will to keep taking the forward step in your journey. That Slowing Down doesn't actually leave you bereft of your Winning spirit, but lets you appreciate the Simplest Knowledge that Life is never about Winning or Losing but about Becoming the Core Self by unbecoming everything that this World soaked you in. Love & Light, always - Debatrayee

And still, Ishqa was not moving. He released my hand, and I collapsed to the ground, my muscles suddenly beyond my control. And that was when I heard eight words that ripped me apart. “I fulfilled your request,” Ishqa said, to the scarred human. “Now you fulfill ours.” Everything went numb. My whole body jerked as I wrenched my head around to stare up at Ishqa. He did not look at me. What are you doing?! I tried to scream, but my body was not my own.

Sheer panic choked me as I fought the mind-numbing spell, but in the end, I lost ... And everything went black.

He ran a finger over her bicep, and she was about to ask what he was doing when her arm went numb. "Ohhhh, you are going to get the best head of your life for that," she said, her whole body dizzy with relief. Taranis swallowed back a laugh. "You're so delightfully ridiculous, Quinn Fairbrook." "It's part of my appeal. That and my epic tits," she replied, placing her arm under the running tap. Taranis's eyes dropped to her bloody tank top. "They are rather epic." "Thanks. I made them myself.

The first really organized investigation of the seas didn’t come until 1872, when a joint expedition between the British Museum, the Royal Society, and the British government set forth from Portsmouth on a former warship called HMS Challenger. For three and a half years they sailed the world, sampling waters, netting fish, and hauling a dredge through sediments. It was evidently dreary work. Out of a complement of 240 scientists and crew, one in four jumped ship and eight more died or went mad- "driven to distraction by the mind-numbing routine o f years of dredging" in the words of the historian Samantha Weinberg. But they sailed across almost 70,000 nautical miles of sea, collected over 4,700 new species of marine organisms, gathered enough information to create a fifty-volume report (which took nineteen years to put together), and gave the world the name of a new scientific discipline: oceanography. They also discovered, by means of depth measurements, that there appeared to be submerged mountains in the mid-Atlantic, prompting some excited observers to speculate that they had found the lost continent of Atlantis.

I HOPE THIS WON’T SOUND too pathetic, but I’ve been waiting every day for you to call.” Each syllable uttered in that voice was a gemlike particle that rolled through the receiver, into the ear canal, and straight to the brain. His spine went numb and a sweet sensation seeped through his body, as if he were absorbing some exquisite wine or cognac.

He went through sort of a mental checklist of his body parts. Toes? Check. Fingers? Check. Legs? Check. Arms? Check. Body? Check. He wiggled his toes, or at least he thought he did... it felt right. He wiggled his fingers and felt something on his forehead. His hand was still there from when he tried to rub his eyes, and his fingers were wiggling. “Okay, that’s a little odd.” He said it to himself, out loud again. He tried to move his arm, and it flopped off his head back to his side, feeling numb as if he had been laying on it all night, but without the pins and needles. He could control individual joints like his fingers or his elbow but when he tried to coordinate more than one thing he felt... disconnected.

I could have killed you,” he said savagely. “You didn’t.” “I could have hurt you.” “You didn’t do that, either.” “God, Beatrix.” Christopher went to sit heavily at a hearthside chair, glass in hand. She followed him in a rustle of lavender silk. “I’m not Beatrix, actually. I’m her much nicer twin. She said you could have me from now on.” Her gaze flickered to the Armagnac. “You promised not to drink spirits.” “We’re not married yet.” Christopher knew he should have been ashamed of the sneering echo of her own earlier words, but the temptation was too much to resist. Beatrix didn’t flinch. “I’m sorry about that. It’s no fun, caring about my welfare. I’m reckless. I overestimate my abilities.” She lowered to the floor at his feet, resting her arms on his knees. Her earnest blue eyes, starred with heavy dark lashes, stared contritely into his. “I shouldn’t have spoken to you as I did earlier. For my family, arguing is a sport--we forget that some people tend to take it personally.” One of her fingertips drew an intricate little pattern on his thigh. “But I have redeeming qualities,” she continued. “I never mind dog hair, example. And I can pick up small objects with my toes, which is a surprisingly useful talent.” Christopher’s numbness started melting like spring ice. And it had nothing to do with the Armagnac. It was all Beatrix. God, he adored her.

Her moan of despair came through the phone all too clearly. “Oh…Christ. Whatever. Kill yourself, fine.” She hung up on him. “Fuck.” He rubbed his face. “Fuck!” Rehv sat up and fired the cell phone at the bedroom door. And just as it ricocheted off the panels and went flying, he realized he’d busted the only thing he had with her number in it. With a roar and a messy scramble, he launched his body off the bed, quilts landing everywhere. Not a great move on his part. As his numb feet hit the throw rug, he went Frisbee, finding air briefly before landing on his face. On impact, a sound like a bomb had gone off rumbled through the floorboards, and he crawled for the phone, tracking the light that still glowed from its screen. Please, oh, fucking please, if there is a God… He was almost in range when the door swung open, narrowly missing his head and clipping the phone—which shot like a hockey puck in the opposite direction. As Rehv wheeled around and lunged for thing, he shouted at Trez. “Don’t shoot me!” Trez was in full fighting stance, gun up and pointed at the window, then the closet, then the bed. “What the fuck was that.” Rehv sprawled out flat to reach the phone, which was spinning under the bed. When he caught it, he closed his eyes and brought it close to his face. “Rehv?” “Please…” “What? Please…what?” He opened his eyes. The screen was flickering, and he pressed the buttons fast. Calls received…calls received…calls r— “Rehv, what the hell is going on?” There it was. The number. He stared at the seven digits after the area code as if they were the combination to his own safe, trying to get them all. The screen went dark and he let his head fall down on his arm. Trez crouched beside him. “You okay?” Rehv pushed himself out from under the bed and sat up, the room spinning like a merry-go-round. “Oh…fuck me.” Trez holstered his gun. “What happened?” “I dropped my phone.” -Ehlena, Rehv, & Trez

She went through the days silent and numb, coming alive only with hatred...

Daydream Jethro crept closer, working his cock, a dangerous glint in his eyes. The moment I was within grabbing distance, he captured my waist. “I need to be inside you, Nila.” I put words into Jethro’s mouth, but it was his voice I heard in my heart. I moaned again, angling the showerhead harder against my clit. “How do you want it?” my fantasy whispered in my ear as he spun me around and pressed me hard against the wall. I swallowed hard, answering in my mind. “Fast and…” “Filthy?” Daydream Jethro’s nose nuzzled the back of my ear, sending shockwaves down my spine. “I can fuck you filthy.” I couldn’t speak. But I didn’t have to. My fantasy knew exactly how I needed it. Jethro bit the back of my shoulder, spreading my legs wider with his. “Fuck me, Jethro Hawk,” I whispered. “Oh, I will. Believe me, I will.” Without further warning, he dug his fingers into my hips and slammed inside me. My fingers went numb as I slid the showerhead from clit to entrance. I cried out as water shot inside at the same time as Jethro thrust into me from behind, sliding deep and fast, stretching me deliciously painfully. My heart exploded with bliss. An orgasm squeezed every atom, getting ready to hurl me into the stratosphere. Jethro thrust again and I rode my new friend the showerhead. “Oh, God. Yes,” I hissed, rocking harder. “Yes, yes…” A masculine cough sounded. “You continue to surprise me, Ms. Weaver; at least this time, I rather enjoy it.

snowing, the snow blanketing the terrible debris. The man shivered and longed for the Mexican sun. The bodies of the victims were in the school of the small village near to where the plane had come down. The body of Vanessa Roswell had already been identified, so he went to a hotel five miles away to which the police directed him. There he found, sitting in silence before a fire in a private sitting-room, Gerald Stanton and a young woman, a beautiful young woman, he thought, gauging her with his painter’s eye, whose face now wore the numbed expression

I lay on my arm until it went numb and then I lifted it (with the nonnumb arm) onto my breasts. I wanted to see what it felt like to have a strange hand on them. It was quite nice, but what do I know? I’m too full of strange urges to think properly. Should I wear my bra to the party?

The Circumcision Decision If you have a baby boy, chances are you’ll be asked whether or not you want to circumcise him in the hospital. Most of us have inherited a vague sense that circumcision is somehow cleaner or healthier. But these are myths. We’ll share a few facts to jumpstart your research. - The significance of the infant’s pain is often overlooked in circumcision. Hospitals use painful Gomco clamps that sever nerve endings, and most docs make the cut without anesthesia. - Many infants go into shock as a result of the pain they experience in circumcision, and the breastfeeding relationship may be compromised as a result. - The circumcised penis is no cleaner than an intact penis, and requires far more care during the healing process. - “...[P]rofessional societies representing Australian, Canadian, and American pediatricians do not recommend routine circumcision of male newborns.” ~American Medical Association What if you plan to circumcise for reasons of Jewish faith? In Jewish circumcisions, - Boys are circumcised eight days after birth, when natural levels of Vitamin K are the highest. - Anesthetic is traditionally given (in the form of a tiny amount of wine and/or numbing agents). - Mohels (traditional circumcisers) don’t use painful skin clamps. Overheard… After reading up on circumcision, I knew I didn’t want to go through with it. The first reason was medical: the AAP doesn’t recommend routine circumcision. My second reason was emotional. It went against my mama bear instinct to protect my baby. Convincing dad was more difficult. He wanted to have his son like him. (I asked him if he and his dad compared their penises; the answer was no.) My husband watched videos of the procedure being done but had to stop them before they were over. He’d thought it was a simple snip of the ‘extra’ skin, but it’s not. The foreskin is actually fused to the head of the penis, like a fingernail to a nail bed. We took our baby home from the hospital the way he was born, and we haven’t regretted it. ~Lani, mom to Bentley Want to learn more? Check out the Circumcision Resource Center online, a helpful resource filled with medical and psychological literature for those questioning the practice.

Upon entering the town there was a Gestapo man with a noose around his neck, hanging for everyone to see. I went over and stared at this man dangling in the air, lifeless. I had no feelings one way or another for this man. I was numb in my heart. I tried to hate him and tell myself he was no good and deserved to die, but I felt empty inside. The only thing I noticed was his shoes that he wouldn't need any longer, so I untied them and put them on my feet.

What does it mean?” “What?” “That word. ‘Sexy.’ What does it mean?” He looked down, suddenly shy. “I can’t tell you.” “Why not?” “It’s a secret.” He pressed his lips together, so hard that a bit of them went white. “Tell me the secret. I want to know.” Rohin sat on the bed beside Miranda and began to kick the edge of the mattress with the backs of his shoes. He giggled nervously, his thin body flinching as if it were being tickled. “Tell me,” Miranda demanded. She leaned over and gripped his ankles, holding his feet still. Rohin looked at her, his eyes like slits. He struggled to kick the mattress again, but Miranda pressed against him. He fell back on the bed, his back straight as a board. He cupped his hands around his mouth, and then he whispered, “It means loving someone you don’t know.” Miranda felt Rohin’s words under her skin, the same way she’d felt Dev’s. But instead of going hot she felt numb. It reminded her of the way she’d felt at the Indian grocery, the moment she knew, without even looking at a picture, that Madhuri Dixit, whom Dev’s wife resembled, was beautiful. “That’s what my father did,” Rohin continued. “He sat next to someone he didn’t know, someone sexy, and now he loves her instead of my mother.

You told your brother and some guy I don’t even know the things I told you in confidence.” “Yes.” She dropped her gaze to the floor. “I’m not sure this helps, but Charlie knows Logan.” “You talked to Charlie?” “Yes, he helped us with the details I didn’t know.” “So you went behind my back, talked to my friends, and told your brothers and some guy everything.” She pressed her lips together. “Yes.” “And you told them things about the blackmail that’s not public knowledge.” Maddie swallowed hard as her throat constricted. “I did.” “I trusted you with information about my family that nobody knows.” “Mitch, I’d never jeopardize you or your family. I’d never tell them if I didn’t trust them implicitly. You know that.” She had to make him understand. He leaned forward, putting elbows on his knees. “I want you to leave.” “What? No. Let me explain.” The blood rushed in her ears as a wave of hot dizziness engulfed her. Fear and desperation warred inside her. “I’m sorry, but you wouldn’t listen.” “You didn’t ask.” Flat. She wrung her hands. “You would have said no.” “I see,” he said, so coldly that it was like being doused with a bucket of ice water. “So that makes it right? You didn’t think I’d agree, so you went behind my back, talked to my friends, your family, and some black-ops guy, revealing the things I’ve told you in private, because you know best?” She bit the inside of her cheek. “Yes, the same way you went behind my back and stalled the repairs on my car so I wouldn’t leave.” His head snapped back. “That’s not the same thing, Maddie.” “You lied, just like me. You went behind my back. Just like me.” She hoped he could see reason, but his expression said otherwise. “I told you those things,” he said through gritted teeth, “because I thought I could trust you.” “You can.” Her stomach clenched. “The evidence says otherwise, now doesn’t it?” Cold, cold words. Tears sprang to her eyes. “Please understand, I did it for you.” “No, you didn’t. You did it for you,” he scoffed, shaking his head. “Tell me something. Why are you so interested in meddling in my life when you have your own to worry about?” She reared back, stepping toward the door, unable to figure out how to handle this dead, cold Mitch who treated her like a stranger. “I wanted to help you.” “You know how you could have helped me?” There was a cruel twist to his lips. “By being the one fucking person who didn’t betray me.” “I didn’t. That’s not what . . .” She trailed off, feeling helpless. She hung her head and said softly, “I’d never betray you.” “Bullshit. If you thought what you were doing was right, you would have talked to me. ” This ice. She’d prepared for fire, for burning anger, not this. She had no defense. No plan. She walked over to him and fell to her knees, taking his hands in hers. He didn’t even flinch. It was like he was made of stone, and she met his eyes. Hard chips of gold. “Mitch, I’m sorry, I wanted to help.” He studied her as though she was a stranger. “You need to leave now.” The words were a crushing blow, threatening to break her. She did the only thing she could think of and confessed the truth. “I love you.” His mouth firmed. Eyes flashing, he pulled away and stood, moving around her and going over to the window that overlooked the nearly deserted parking lot. “I need you to leave.” Her heart shattered into a million pieces and desolation swept over her. She hadn’t felt anything like this since her father had died and she’d woken in a hospital bed. That same heavy weight crushed her chest, numbing her limbs. Tears spilled onto her cheeks and she wiped them away. Her voice trembled as she spoke, already knowing the answer but unable to keep from asking the question. “Is there anything I can do?” “Yes.” His tone was distant and unreachable. “Leave.” There

Roscoe had fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion. He awoke to find persistent itching on his stomach. He scratched it through his T-shirt. He went back to sleep. But dreams kept him from sleeping soundly. That and the itching. He woke again and felt the itchy spot. There was a lump there. Like a swelling. And when he held still and pressed his fingers against the spot he could feel something moving under the skin. The small room was suddenly very cold. Roscoe shivered. He went to the window hoping for light. There was a moon but the light was faint. Roscoe pulled his shirt over his head. He looked down at the spot on his stomach. It was moving. The flesh itself. He could feel it under his fingertips. Like something poking back at him. But he couldn’t feel it from the inside, couldn’t feel it in his stomach. And he realized that his entire body was numb. He could feel with his fingertips but not the skin of his stomach— The skin split! “Ahhhh!” He was touching it as it split, and he shrieked in terror and something pushed its way out through a bloodless hole. “Oh, God, oh, God, oh, no no no no!” Roscoe screamed and leaped for the door. His hand clawed at the knob as he babbled and wept and the door was locked, locked, oh, God, no, they had locked him in. He banged at the door, but it was the middle of the night. Who would hear him in the empty town hall? “Hey! Hey! Is anyone there? Help me. Help me. Please, please, someone help me!” He banged and the thing in his belly stuck out half an inch. He was scared to look at it. But he did and he screamed again because it was a mouth now, a gnashing insect mouth full of parts like no normal mouth. Hooked, wicked mandibles clicked. It was inside him, chewing its way out. Hatching from him. “Help me, help me, don’t leave me here like this!” But who would hear him? Sinder? No. Not anymore. That was over. All over. And he was alone and friendless. No one even to hear as he screamed and begged. The window. He grabbed the pillow from his bed and pushed it against the glass and then punched it hard. The pane shattered. He took off his shoe and smashed at the starred glass until most of it fell tinkling to the street below. Then he screamed for help. Screamed into the Perdido Beach night air. No answer. “Help me! Please, please, oh, God, please help me! You can’t just leave me locked up!” But still, no answer. Fear took hold of him, deep crazy-making fear. No. No. No no no no, this couldn’t be happening. He hadn’t done anything to hurt anyone, he hadn’t done anything awful. Why? Why was this happening to him? Roscoe fell to his knees and begged God. God, please, no, no, no, I didn’t do anything wrong. I wasn’t brave or strong but I wasn’t bad, either. Not like this, please, God, no no no, not like this. Roscoe felt an itching in the middle of his back. He sat down and cried.

That world opened up to me on my first visit to Atlanta during “Freaknik,” a sort of spring break without the beach for black college kids. I wasn’t in college, but I went anyway. While all the kids were getting numbed out, drinking and partying, I was waking up to possibility. For the first time in my life, I saw there were black people doing great things with their lives. There were black doctors, lawyers, business owners, and well-off families

That world opened up to me on my first visit to Atlanta during “Freaknik,” a sort of spring break without the beach for black college kids. I wasn’t in college, but I went anyway. While all the kids were getting numbed out, drinking and partying, I was waking up to possibility. For the first time in my life, I saw there were black people doing great things with their lives. There were black doctors, lawyers, business owners, and well-off families going to restaurants, the theater, and movies. I knew Atlanta was the place for me.

It's been... so long since I had a crush, I can't even remember what one feels like. Anorexia is a cancer that spread through your body and your life. My friendships and my schoolwork went first, then my periods stopped, then I just stopped feeling

There are a whole host of ways to do this. One of the best is the public pledge. Tell everyone you know that you will lose the excess weight or write that novel or whatever your goal might be. Once you make your goal known to the world, there will instantly be pressure on you to work towards its fulfillment since no one likes to look like a failure. In Sivana, my teachers used more dramatic means to create this positive pressure I speak of. They would declare to one another that if they did not follow through on their commitments, such as fasting for a week or getting up daily at 4:00 a.m. to meditate, they would go down to the icy waterfall and stand under it until their arms and legs went numb. This is an extreme illustration of the power that pressure can exert on the building of good habits and the attainment of goals.

On good nights, Winnie managed to glean five nonconsecutive hours of a shallow and unsatisfying slumber. But those nights were rare. Usually, Winnie was wide awake between midnight and dawn and passed the time by staring at the street below the apartment. Her room did not have its own balcony, just one window outfitted with a cage-like lattice designed to keep out burglars. When the afternoon sun came through at the right angle it created shadowy tessellations on her bed, and Winnie would lie down and position herself so that the scales of light would be cast onto her own skin. After dark, she climbed up and perched motionless on the sill for hours with her legs poking out through the bars, until her lower half went numb. She liked the feeling of having nothing beneath her feet while she was three stories high. It allowed her to pretend for a moment that she was no longer a girl, just a hovering, discorporate displacement of night sky. Safely concealed by the treetops, she could clock the nocturnal comings and goings of the trash collectors and grilled-squid carts and irresponsible, drunk revelers driving home from bars, occasionally wobbling off the road and crashing into a utility pole.

It doesn’t matter we went three weeks with feelings unshared. Yea it hurt to let the life die. Of course you hide in Facebook post where you know I’ll find you. And no it doesn’t surprise me you’re too numb for a conversation.

I met Chris at the Student Union. We both used to study there between our 9:30 and 11:30 classes. I had seen him on campus before. He was always wearing this yellow sweatshirt and giant headphones. The kind of headphones that say, “I may not take my clothes seriously. I may not have brushed or even washed my hair today. But I pronounce the word ‘music’ with a capital ‘M.’ Like God.” So I had noticed him before. He had Eddie Vedder hair. Ginger brown, tangly. He was too thin (much thinner than he is now), and there were permanent smudges under his eyes. Like he was too cool to eat or sleep. I thought he was dreamy. I called him Headphone Boy. I couldn’t believe my luck when I realized we studied in the Union at the same time. Well, I studied. He would pull a paperback out of his pocket and read. Never a textbook. Sometimes, he’d just sit there with his eyes closed, listening to music, his legs all jangly and loose. He gave me impure thoughts. (...) There we were. In the Student Union. He always sat in the corner. And I always sat one row across from him, three seats down. I took to leaving my 9:30 class early so I could primp and be in my spot looking casual by the time he sauntered in. He never looked at me – or anyone else, to my relief – and he never took off his headphones. I used to fantasize about what song he might be listening to… and whether it would be the first dance at our wedding… and whether we’d go with traditional wedding photography or black and white… Probably black and white, magazine style. There’d be lots of slightly out-of-focus, candid shots of us embracing with a romantic, faraway look in our eyes. Of course, Headphone Boy already had a faraway look in his eyes, which my friend Lynn attributed to “breakfast with Mary Jane.” This started in September. Sometime in October, one of his friends walked by and called him “Chris.” (A name, at last. “Say it loud and there’s music playing. Say it soft and it’s almost like praying.”) One Tuesday night in November, I saw him at the library. I spent the next four Tuesday nights there, hoping it was a pattern. It wasn’t. Sometimes I’d allow myself to follow him to his 11:30 class in Andrews Hall, and then I’d have to run across campus to make it to my class in the Temple Building. By the end of the semester, I was long past the point of starting a natural, casual conversation with him. I stopped trying to make eye contact. I even started dating a Sig Ep I met in my sociology class. But I couldn’t give up my 10:30 date with Headphone Boy. I figured, after Christmas break, our schedules would change, and that would be that. I’d wait until then to move on. All my hope was lost. And then… the week before finals, I showed up at the Union at my usual time and found Chris sitting in my seat. His headphones were around his neck, and he watched me walk toward him. At least, I thought he was watching me. He had never looked at me before, never, and the idea made my skin burn. Before I could solve the problem of where to sit, he was talking to me. He said, “Hey.” And I said, “Hi.” And he said, “Look…” His eyes were green. He kind of squinted when he talked. “I’ve got a 10:30 class next semester, so… we should probably make other arrangements.” I was struck numb. I said, “Are you mocking me?” “No,” he said, “I’m asking you out.” “Then, I’m saying yes.” “Good..,” he said, “we could have dinner. You could still sit across from me. It would be just like a Tuesday morning. But with breadsticks.” “Now you’re mocking me.” “Yes.” He was still smiling. “Now I am.” And that was that. We went out that weekend. And the next weekend. And the next. It was wildly romantic.

But time has a way of dealing with things. The hurt left a wound, then the wound grew a scar, and the scar, in turn, hardened into a callus. The mind became numb over time, and life went on.

With the absence of subsidized childcare, paid federal parental leave, and rampant pregnancy discrimination, young women who have had a healthy amount of class advantages are left to ask themselves if they want to effectively lose them—because that’s what parenthood in the United States will ultimately entail: If they want to partake in a different kind of labor that will offer them fewer legal protections, limited pay, increased hours, increased personal financial burdens, and with zero support from the institutions to which they have dedicated expanding days and increased workloads. In this increasing neoliberal cultural terrain, where everyone is encouraged to optimize themselves for the best employment, the strongest partnerships, the most successful path, what strategically middle-class, somewhat self-aware woman wants to do more work for less money? If it wasn’t parenthood we were talking about but a white-collar job, Sheryl Sandberg would tell these young women to lean out. The pragmatics of having a baby are fundamentally incompatible with the dominant cultural messages surrounding economic security, class ascension, and performance aimed at women of these particular socioeconomic backgrounds. This is the tension that underlies many of these waffling motherhood essays and, I think, what young, professional, child-curious people are looking to reconcile when they click on these “Should I, a Middle-Class Woman Who Went to NYU, Have a Baby and Fuck Up This Good Thing?” headlines. But what often awaits them is a contemplation of “choice” and very seldom an expanded structural critique. They are placated into the numbing mantra that having children is “a personal choice,” encouraging increased individual reflection on what is actually a raging systemic failure that relies on women’s free labor. But structuring the conversation of having children around personal autonomy and lone circumstances also successfully eclipses the identification of parenthood as labor in the first place.

Sometime around three in the morning, she got out of bed and went to the porch, where she sat wrapped in a blanket, staring at little beyond the vapor of her own breath. But it wasn’t cold enough to numb her grief.

thinking that he’d foiled her pathetic attempt. Then he let out a yelp of pain. “Wh-wh-what?” he stammered, confused by what was happening. “You already feel it, don’t you?” she said with a confident smile. “That’s a flower sea urchin. It’s got a pretty name, but what it does to your body is downright ugly.” He looked at the spiny sea creature in his hand. It was globular, about four inches wide, with tiny pink petals that resembled flowers. He dropped it to the floor, but it was too late. His palm was already beginning to swell. “That tingling in your hand,” she continued, “that’s caused by the poison on the petals. Pretty soon it will reach your bloodstream and that’s when the real trouble starts.” He looked at her with fear in his eyes. “First, your fingers will start feeling numb and then your lips,” she said. “Once it affects your tongue, you won’t be able to scream for help.” He went to say something but realized he could barely use his mouth. “So the question you have to ask yourself is this,” Brooklyn continued. “Do you want to keep chasing us until the poison overwhelms your entire body? Or do you want to leave us alone and drink the antidote that will save your life? It’s totally your choice.” He tried to answer but the best he could do was “Amp-li-dope.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I can’t understand what you’re saying.” “Amp-li-dope!” he pleaded. “I still can’t understand, but I’m guessing it’s probably antidote,” she answered. “That would be the wise choice.

What we went through on interminable conference calls in fancy office buildings obviously did not compare with the horrors of war, but ten minutes into the movie I knew I had finally found something that captured what the crisis felt like: the overwhelming burden of responsibility combined with the paralyzing risk of catastrophic failure; the frustration about the stuff out of your control; the uncertainty about what would help; the knowledge that even good decisions might turn out badly; the pain and guilt of neglecting your family; the loneliness and the numbness.”82

Meanwhile, Mabel waited outside the Prince of Wales Hotel on Lord Street. She'd perched her bony bottom on the pointed-top wall that ran alongside it, opposite the barbershop. She could smell the sweet, crisp freshness that came with springtime as the sun had finally managed to fight its way through the cloud cover. Unfortunately, though, it seemed that no matter where in this town she went, memories of her father haunted her. As she sat on the wall, her feet turned inwards and, with a dull numbness growing in her tailbone, she closed her eyes. In her mind, she opened them again to find that she was at least ten years younger. Her feet dangled off the edge of the wall in scuffed indigo leather shoes, with a shiny brass buckle glinting in the light from the oil street lamps. The sky was a moody blue, signalling the end of the day and the start of the night. Her father stood beside her, a thick cigarette held between his chapped lips and his hands in his pockets. His friends from work surrounded her, all laughing and chatting. She could see her father speaking, though all she could hear was a muted grumble. Even in her imagination, she couldn't quite picture how he spoke. The only sounds she could place were the short groans he'd make as he stood up from his chair or the wheeze that followed his laughter. With the sad realisation that she had lost all memory of her father's voice, she opened her eyes once more.

I went out for my run. I liked to go early, then hit the coffee shop. It was a crappy day, gloomy, rainy, but I loved running in the rain. This was early November, the year before Greg died. I had a second, just a second when I saw him. So ordinary-looking, so pleasant, but I had that click. I had a panic button on my key chain. I even reached for it, but it was too late. I felt that shock of pain, then nothing works.” She had to stop a moment, had to breathe. “Nothing works,” she repeated. “Pain, shock, then numb, useless. I felt sick

Men have a fight-or-flight response, they say. For women, it’s fight or flight, or freeze. Because in the face of overpowering physical strength, our overriding instinct is to survive, to not die here. I went numb, suspending my consciousness. It was a technique I had perfected as a child during beatings.

Gather around, we have a daring contestant backstage who wishes to take on The Numb Man!” he cried, and a cheer went up from the crowd.

Erik stood, his nose not three inches from the window, looking east toward the fountain. Suddenly, in the nanosecond it takes to blink an eye, time froze as a man plummeting at a hundred miles per hour and Erik made solid eye contact. The next nanosecond tick of the clock brought the sudden shotgun sound of his body hitting the ground, exploding as it went from a hundred miles per hour to instant zero. His bodily fluids sprayed in every direction; fresh blood flowed down the window. Numb, Erik redoubled his resolve to help his friend Doug Karpiloff. He turned to continue his journey to the Operations Command Center in the basement of the South Tower.

He looked to Cedric. “You damned fool. You actually fired!” “Why didn’t you fire back?” Cedric’s voice was filled with despair. Was the wound even worse than he thought? “I did fire back.” “Yes. Into the ground. You should have shot me.” “And what would that accomplish?” Lucien sighed. “I wagered my life that you would back out, or misfire. I’d hoped you would reconsider or calm yourself before it came to this. The armor was a desperate plan in case all that failed. It seemed I was right to do so.” Cedric looked pained. “I didn’t mean to fire at all. I meant to stare you down until you yielded. When you lowered your pistol it unnerved me, and my hand… it shook.” Lucien’s smile withered and he grew serious. “No matter what you think, I meant what I said. I love Horatia more than anything… but I could never kill my closest friend, nor the brother of my greatest love.” Lucien tried to ignore the burning pain in his head. It felt like someone was branding his skull. “You… you really love her?” Cedric asked. The pain in his eyes wounded Lucien more than the bullet. “She is everything to me. Always has been. I just couldn’t face that before. I tried to push her away.” Lucien winced. “I don’t deserve her.” He shut his eyes as pain overcame him. A cold darkness swept over his limbs, numbing him to any other sensations. “Help me get him up!” Cedric shouted at their seconds. Lucien opened his eyes and tried to laugh. “I always knew she’d be the death of me,” he said before he went numb again. “You die on me and I’ll kill you,” Cedric growled as Lucien’s eyelids fell heavily shut once more. “Not planning on it,” he said, but his spiraling vision warned him otherwise.

Writing surrogate letters wasn’t quite so easily justified; there was something slightly but definitely dishonest about it. To get one placed, you had to sound like the real thing, but not so much that you discredited your own position or insulted the intelligence of the supporter whose name you were hoping to attach to it. You had to start the letter off with some sassy stock phrase or rhetorical question: “Representative So-and-so just doesn’t get it” or “Which constitution is Senator So-and-so reading?” Then you’d make your case without sounding like you knew too much about the topic. That’s where surrogate letters sometimes went wrong. They would refer to specific revenue numbers or to the names of subcommittees or explain the difference between house and senate versions of bills. Average people didn’t know these things, and if a surrogate letter used them, it sounded like what it was, and editors wouldn’t run them. I spent a day writing these wretched things. It wasn’t worth it unless you produced ten or fifteen; newspapers likely wouldn’t print a letter taking a certain view if they got only one, but if they got a handful they’d feel bound to run one or two. It was a mind-numbing exercise: each one had to sound clumsy but not stupid; each had to approach the question from a different angle; and none could use the same vocabulary. We sent them out to the ostensible authors, and over the next two weeks or so I would see my little creations pop up in a variety of newspapers. Sometimes a few words had been changed by the surrogates, but by and large they slapped their names on the letters and forwarded them to their hometown newspapers. I felt the whole exercise was pointless, but perhaps the letters did contribute in a small way to the sense that Knotts’s allegations had been grossly unfair and that the governor had acted properly. Had he? I thought so at the time, but enough time has passed that I can admit I don’t know. One of the melancholy facts of political life is that your convictions tend to align with your paycheck.

glued them to me. It was like tearing off duct tape. With a harsh wrench, I went on my back. “Sorry,” he said, though he didn’t sound sorry. He finished taking off my pants and straightened. His arms slipped under my legs and around my back, collecting me in his arms. My cold, bare skin burned where it touched his warm body. The numbness of most of my skin kept

WAHLS WARRIORS SPEAK In August 2012, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The symptoms came on suddenly: tingling and numbness in my right arm and right and left hands, bladder urgency, cognitive issues and brain fog, lower back pain, and right-foot drop. One Saturday, I was playing golf, and by the next Friday, I was using a cane to walk. I was scared and I did not know what was happening. I was started on a five-day treatment of IV steroids. I began physical and occupational therapy, and speech therapy to assist with my word-finding issues. Desperate, I searched the Internet and read as much as I could about multiple sclerosis. I tried to discuss diet with my neurologist because I read that people with autoimmune diseases may benefit from going gluten-free. My neurologist recommended that I stick with my “balanced” diet because gluten-free may be a fad and it was difficult to do. In October 2012, I went to a holistic practitioner who recommended that I eliminate gluten, dairy, and eggs from my diet and then take an allergy test. About that time, I discovered Dr. Wahls, whose story provided me hope. I began to incorporate the 9 cups of produce and to eat organic lean meat, lots of wild fish, seaweed, and some organ meat (though I still struggle with that). My allergy tests came back and, sure enough, I was highly sensitive to gluten, dairy, eggs, soy, and almonds. This test further validated Dr. Wahls’s work. By eliminating highly inflammatory foods and replacing them with vegetables, lean meat, and seaweed, your body can heal. It’s been four months since I started the Wahls Diet, and I’ve increased my vitamin D levels from 17 to 52, my medicine has been reduced, and I have lost 14 pounds. I now exercise and run two miles several times per week, walk three miles a day, bike, swim, strength train, meditate, and stretch daily. I prepare smoothies and real meals in my kitchen. Gone are the days of eating out or ordering takeout three to four times a week. By eating this way, my energy levels have increased, my brain fog and stumbling over words has been eliminated, my skin looks great, and I am more alert and present. It is not easy eating this way, and my family has also had to make some adjustments, but, in the end, I choose health. I am more in tune with my body and I feed it the fuel it needs to thrive. —Michelle M., Baltimore, Maryland

I don’t know how he did it,” West continued. “I was in the water for no more than two minutes, and my legs went numb to the bone. It was agony. By all accounts, Devon was in that river for at least twenty minutes, the reckless lackwit.” “Saving children,” Kathleen said, feigning scorn. “How dare he?

I don’t know how he did it,” West continued. “I was in the water for no more than two minutes, and my legs went numb to the bone. It was agony. By all accounts, Devon was in that river for at least twenty minutes, the reckless lackwit.” “Saving children,” Kathleen said, feigning scorn. “How dare he?” “Yes,” West said with no trace of humor. He stared at the leaping fire, brooding. “Now I understand what you once said to me about all the people who depend on him--and I’ve become one of them. Damn him to hell.

Is it true?” Kathleen asked. “The story you were telling about Devon?” After draining the tea in two gulps, West gave her a haunted glance. “All true. The son of a bitch almost succeeded in killing himself.” Kathleen took the cup from his lax fingers. “I don’t know how he did it,” West continued. “I was in the water for no more than two minutes, and my legs went numb to the bone. It was agony. By all accounts, Devon was in that river for at least twenty minutes, the reckless lackwit.

my mind was suddenly blank. I thought of nothing. Literally nothing. No pain, or shame, or longing, or sadness. There was only the sound of Caleb’s palm landing across my bottom, my cries, his controlled breathing. His blows were no longer painful; my backside was numb, warm. I slowly went limp in his lap. It was strange, but I felt…at peace.

Frankl went on to say it wasn’t pleasure mankind was looking for, that men only sought pleasure when they couldn’t find meaning. If a man has no sense of meaning, Frankl argued, he will numb himself with pleasure.

She went back down the ramp, onto the plane, and found her seat. She fastened her seat belt, her right arm feeling foreign, missing the sound the bangle would have made coming into contact with the metal buckle. It would be replaced tenfold in the course of her wedding. And yet she felt she had left a piece of her body behind. She had grown up hearing from her mother that losing gold was inauspicious, and as the plane began to climb, in those moments she was still aware of it moving, a dark thought passed through her, that it would crash or be blasted apart in the sky. Then the fear turned numb. Already on the screen at the center of the plane there was a map with a white line emerging away from Rome, creeping toward India. And this simple graphic composed her, making clear the only road available now.

Where were you on the night of March 7?" Typical detective stuff you hear on television all the time. It's so phony. I hate it. Most people can't remember where they were three nights ago much less on a particular date. I know I can't. The times you remember are the ones you're supposed to: Christmas Day, the Fourth of July, your birthday. As you get older and occasionally look back, even those days drift together into one small blob of memories. But you always remember the first time and the last. You remember your first day of school and the last. You remember the first time you went to the show by yourself and the last time you saw your grandfather. The first time you made love. Most of the nights of my life have passed by barely noticed, like the black squares of rosary beads slipping through the wrinkled fingers in the last pew. But later, when I've looked back, I've realized that a few ink colored seeds have taken root in my mind and have grown into oaken strength. My dreams drift back and nestle in their branches. If those nights were suddenly not to be, I, who had come to lean on them, to relish those few surviving leaves of a young autumn that has passed and will not come again, would not know where I'd been. And I'd wonder, even more so, if there was anywhere to go. Every Chicago winter delivers four gray weeks, with rare spots of sunshine that are apparently the flipside of hell. Teeth bared, the wind comes snarling off the lake with every intention of shredding the skin off your face. Numb since November, hands can no longer tell or care if they are wearing gloves. Snowmen, offsprings of childhood enthusiasm, are rarely born during these weeks. Along with the human spirit, the temperature continues to plummet. The ground is smothered by aging layers of ice and snow. Looking at a magazine ad, you see a vaguely familiar blanket of green. Squinting back through months of brown snow, salt-marked shoes, running noses, icy railings, slippery sidewalks, and smoking sewers, you try to recall the feeling of grass. February is four weeks of hanging onto the ropes, waiting to be saved from a knockout by the bell of spring. One year, I was invited to Engrim University's President's Ball, which was to be held on the first Saturday in February. I don't know why I was invited. Most of the students who received invitations were involved in a number of extracurricular activities; they participated in student government, belonged to various clubs, were presidents of fraternities or sororities, were doing extremely well academically or were, in some other way, pleasing the gods. I was never late with my tuition payments. Maybe that was it. Regardless, the President's Ball was to be held in the main ballroom of one of Chicago's swankiest hotels. I thought it was an excellent opportunity to impress Sarah with my importance. A light snowfall was dotting the night air when

Today, I woke up at my grandparents’ house. Still half asleep, I went to brush my teeth. Mid-brush, my mouth started going numb. I inspected the toothpaste. It was my grandpa’s anti-itch anal cream. FML

Change your name to Miles, Dean, Serge, and /or Leonard, baby, she advised her reflection in the hall; light of that afternoon's vanity mirror. Either way, they'll call it paranoia. They. Either you have stumbled indeed, without the aid of LSD or other indole alkaloids, onto a secret richness and concealed density of dream; onto a network by which X number of Americans are truly communicating whilst reserving their lies, recitations of routine, arid betrayals of spiritual poverty, for the official government delivery system; maybe even onto a real alternative to the exitlessness, to the absence of surprise to life, that harrows the head of everybody American you know, and you too, sweetie. Or you are hallucinating it. Or a plot has been mounted against you, so expensive and elaborate, involving items like the forging of stamps and ancient books, constant surveillance of your movements, planting of post horn images all over San Francisco, bribing of librarians, hiring of professional actors and Pierce Inverarity only knows what-all besides, all financed out of the estate in a way either too secret or too involved for your non-legal mind to know about even though you are co-executor, so labyrinthine that it must have meaning beyond just a practical joke. Or you are fantasying some such plot, in which case you are a nut, Oedipa, out of your skull. Those, now that she was looking at them, she saw to be the alternatives. Those symmetrical four. She didn't like any of them, but hoped she was mentally ill; that that's all it was. That night she sat for hours, too numb even to drink, teaching herself to breathe in a vacuum. For this, oh God, was the void. There was nobody who could help her. Nobody in the world. They were all on something, mad, possible enemies, dead. Old fillings in her teeth began to bother her. She would spend nights staring at a ceiling lit by the pink glow of San Narciso's sky. Other nights she could sleep for eighteen drugged hours and wake, enervated, hardly able to stand. In conferences with the keen, fast-talking old man who was new counsel for the estate, her attention span could often be measured in seconds, and she laughed nervously more than she spoke. Waves of nausea, lasting five to ten minutes, would strike her at random, cause her deep misery, then vanish as if they had never been. There were headaches, nightmares, menstrual pains. One day she drove into L.A., picked a doctor at random from the phone book, went to her, told her she thought she was pregnant. They arranged for tests. Oedipa gave her name as Grace Bortz and didn't show up for her next appointment.

Oh, puppy…,” Thomas sighed. “I’m not sure that’s what you meant by making you feel my love,” Hans said, panting. Thomas chuckled and ran a hand through Hans’s hair. “I felt it. It wasn’t just sex. I felt you. I felt both of you.” “I love you,” Hans insisted. “I know,” Thomas said. “And I think I’ve been denying that I love you because I didn’t want to hurt Boris.” “I suspected,” Boris said with a shrug. “You know how I feel.” “You really do still love me? Not just as a friend, not like a brother, not like a fuckbuddy… You are still in love with me?” “Malish,” Boris said, drawing lines through the come trickling down Thomas’s side, “my love for you has not changed. I still adore you. I still get a hard-on just thinking about you. I would do anything for you—including ending our relationship with Hans, if that was the only way for you to be happy.” Hans hated to hear that. It felt like his heart was being ripped out of his chest, especially after what had just happened between the three of them. Boris moved forward and kissed his forearm, just as Hans thought about pulling away from them. “But please do not send the puppy away,” Boris continued. “I love him too. I would be very unhappy to lose him.” “Hans isn’t going anywhere,” Thomas said. “At least, I don’t want him to.” He stroked the side of Hans’s face. “I love him too.” Hans went from devastated to overflowing with emotion in a microsecond. He smiled and closed his eyes against the sting of tears. “I love you. Both of you.” “You’re growing hard again,” Thomas said, laughing. “I can feel it. Do you want to do something about that?” “You must be pretty worn out by now.” “I doubt I could come again,” Thomas admitted. “Not for an hour or so, anyway. But I think you can fuck me again if you take it slow.” Boris roused himself from the torpor he normally drifted into after he’d had an orgasm. “No. I am vetoing this. If you need more fucking, you can stick it in my ass. Thomas will probably be in severe pain tomorrow as it is.” Thomas laughed. “It’s hard for me to say. Things are kind of numb down there

At the clinic, they fed us pills like they were biscuits. Those pills made the tongue loose in my head, my left arm numb from the elbow down. Sometimes the world would smoulder at the edges. Patients came and went, people from every kind of background but all with one thing in common: no longer capable of contributing to society, they needed to be kept out of sight: losers, loners, dreamers, freaks; God forbid they ever make it onto a TV screen.

candles on the mantelpiece guttered and went out in a fragrant wisp of beeswax smoke. Jamie glanced automatically at the window; it was still dark outside, but the character of the night had changed, as it does soon before dawn. The curtains moved silently, a chilly, restless air breathing through the room. Another candle went out. A second sleepless night was telling on me; I felt cold all over, numb and disembodied, and the various horrors I had seen and heard had begun to fade into unreality in my mind, with nothing save a lingering strong scent of burning to bear witness to them.

Grief is the hardest emotion to describe, because so much of it is numbness; it is also passive, something one undergoes rather than something one undertakes. It becomes difficult to locate oneself. When Maria went missing, a part of me did too. My capacity for love, which had always seemed elusive and equivocal even to me, was bound up in my relationship with her. I discovered that after her death. I had not known it before. It is a familiar story. There is nothing original about pain.

For so long, I’ve been numb, unable to feel anything but rage and anguish. My world had stopped spinning ages ago. I went to Slashed hoping to die at the end of the night, to be set free from the misery dragging me down. Then, I saw you, and I felt for the first time in years. The world started moving again.

I’m popping Valiums and waiting for something. To my left was Jeff Bridges. I could still tell time at that point. I looked at my watch, and I thought, This is crazy. They haven’t gotten anywhere near to the Best Actor award. So I turned to Jeff, who I would come to know in the future as one of the most wonderful human beings and such a great actor. But at the time, I didn’t know him at all, and I guess the impending dissipation of my altered state led me to say, “Hi, excuse me,” as he looked at me like he was looking down from ten feet high. I said to him, “The hour is almost up. I guess they’re not going to get to the Best Actor.” He considered me like I was some poor, pathetic wretch. “It’s three hours long, man. Three hours long.” And I said, “Oh. Thank you.” I went numb after that.

No one had told Kathleen about the dark parts of motherhood. You gave birth and people brought over the sweetest little shoes and pale pink swaddling blankets. But then you were alone, your body trying to heal itself while your mind went numb. There was a mix of joy and the purest love, coupled with real boredom and occasional rage. It got easier as the kids got older, but it never got easy.

One of the best gifts I ever received is also one of my favorite memories. When I was about three or four years old, all the little kids in my family got to unwrap a giant box of balloons. We were overjoyed. Colorful balloons fell to the ground everywhere. My grandparents smiled. All my aunts and uncles laughed, and my parents were happy. It is still one of the warmest memories of my life. My heart leaps just thinking about it. When I became a mother, I wanted to give my children that kind of memory. I also wanted them to appreciate gifts like that -- simple and inexpensive yet meaningful and filled with joy. So when my eldest daughters were five and three, I saved the biggest box I could get. I blew up so many balloons that my mouth went numb. And when it came to wrapping everything, I spent hours fighting with wrapping paper, ribbon, and tape to make it look perfect. But when I finished, I knew my girls would have the time of their life.

feel numb and at the same time my nerves are

feel numb and at the same time my nerves are raw.

A billionaire senior manager stood up and said, "We are giving this special award to Vladimir Leonidovich Bogdanov." Bogdanov, the CEO and a billionaire too, got to his feet, accepted the award, and began reading his report: We have extracted this quantity of oil. We have made that huge amount of profit. Eventually, the host of the event stood up and asked, "Are there any questions?" Three hundred fifty shareholders sitting in the auditorium remained silent. "Does anyone want to say anything?" Silence. I raised my hand and told him, "There is something I want to say." The look on the young host's face suggested a flying saucer had landed in the hall with little green men emerging from it. It was obvious that in all his working life he had never before encountered anyone who wanted to say anything. "Fine," he said eventually. "Please come forward." I went up onto the stage and said, "There is an oil-trading company called Gunvor. It is owned by Gennadiy Timchenko, a very close friend of Putin's, and you sell your oil through it. Why was it chosen? Was there a tender? If there was, which other companies took part? How much oil do you forward to Guvnor, and what are the terms? I am demanding these explanations because at present everything suggests that the company's profit is simply accruing to Gunvor, and because of this shareholders are not receiving the dividends due them." To judge by the expressions of those sitting on the stage, little green men not only had landed but were now firing their ray guns while tap-dancing. You could read in the eyes of those onstage that they were wondering where I had come from. "Had he been sent by the Kremlin? The FSB? How dare he publicly accuse them of corruption!" I spoke with extreme courtesy, peppering my speech with legal terms. I followed up my question about Gunvor by demanding to be told who the real owners of Surgutneftegas were. It was widely known that as of 2003 the company had been publicly identifying only ordinary shareholders in its reports, presenting an incredibly convoluted scheme of corporate ownership from which no one on the planet could deduce who actually owned this gigantic oil enterprise. While I was speaking, there was absolute silence in the auditorium, but as I went on, I could see people becoming animated, first of whom were the journalists. It was part of their job to sit through these incredibly dull meetings, but now, for the first time in living memory, something besides the predictable was happening and things seemed to be livening up. Next, the shareholders showed signs of life. At first they just stared at me in bafflement, trying to work out who I was, but then they realized I was just an ordinary person like the rest of them, except that I was not afraid to get up on the stage. When I finished, the audience applauded. That was a moment to treasure, a triumph and a mind-numbing moment when I knew that now I really was battling corruption. I started attending all the shareholder meetings. Before they began, the main topic of interest to the journalists was whether Navalny was there. Everyone loved watching a battle between David and Goliath. I would put up my hand, and start speaking, and the company management would look sour because there was nothing they could do to stop me. Of course, they did not answer any questions. They could hardly say, "You're right, Alexei. We're thieves just like Putin." Their response was, "Thank you for raising such an important issue. We will look into it." Of course, nobody in the hall expected them to say anything meaningful. Far more important was the fact that someone was asking questions.

They grabbed for me, but he bared his teeth in a smile that was anything but friendly—and they halted. “No more household chores, no more tasks,” he said, his voice an erotic caress. Their yellow eyes went glazed and dull, their sharp teeth gleaming as their mouths slackened. “Tell the others, too. Stay out of her cell, and don’t touch her. If you do, you’re to take your own daggers and gut yourselves. Understood?” Dazed, numb nods, then they blinked and straightened. I hid my trembling. Glamour, mind control—whatever it was he had done, it worked. They beckoned—but didn’t dare touch me. Rhysand smiled at me. “You’re welcome,” he purred as I walked out.

In his piece, I used to be a human being, Andrew Sullivan a journalist and popular blogger, discusses how he quit what he calls his addiction to technology and social media. He wanted to learn to practice silence. He went on a retreat that required silence all day and night with no cell phone, internet, gps, or even conversation. A few days into his retreat, he was suddenly and to his surprise, overwhelmed by painful childhood memories. 'It was as if, having slowly and progressively removing every distraction from my life, I had suddenly been faced with what I was distracting myself from. Resting for a moment against the trunk of a tree I stopped and suddenly found myself bent over convulsed with a newly present pain, sobbing.' Every crutch he had habitually turned to had been taken away. He couldn't call or text a friend. He couldn't check twitter or email. He had to sit in the pain of his long-buried childhood trauma. And what he found was that he not only survived the experience, but that he found healing through it. There is wisdom that can be brought only in self-denial. Only when all our other props devices and numbing agents are taken away. Sullivan writes, 'The sadness shifted into a kind of calm and rest. I felt other things from my childhood-the beauty of the forest, the joy of friends, the support of my sister, the love of my maternal grandmother.' He spent a lifetime avoiding suffering, but the only way to the other side was through it. The only way he could find healing was by denying himself the thing that gave him an identity and a career. The thing he most compulsively went to for comfort.

Atheist author Gary Wilson wrote, “Until recently, erectile dysfunction was rarely seen in men under forty. Now it is seen in teenagers as young as fifteen.” Why? Wilson attributed the phenomenon to the use of porn. He went on to explain: By the time they find a real partner, perhaps as much as a decade later, some guys discover they have trained intensely for the wrong sport. These young men had simply conditioned their sexual response to screens, isolating, constant novelty, shock/surprise, fetish porn, and watching other people have sex… you become numb to real partners.[13]

They told me once that grief was a tidy thing, a sorrow you carried in a pocket, a stone you could learn to balance. Whoever “they” were had lied. Grief is a hammer, and I had been swinging until my arms went numb.

I’ve said it before, but I’m not a big believer in a God or Gods. I do believe there’s…something, however. Why that something would take our loved ones and leave us grieving on this crummy little ball of blue and green, I don’t understand, but that’s the way it is, and that’s the way it went.