Whose Life Is It Anyway Quotes

Positive. In other news, Marcie's throwing a Halloween party here at the farmhouse." Patch smiled. "Grey - Millar family drama?" "The theme is famous couples from history. Could she be any less original? Worse, she's roped my mom into this. They went shopping for decorations today. For three whole hours. It's like they're suddenly best friends." I picked up another apple slice and made a face at it. "Marcie is ruining everything. I wanted Scott to go with Vee, but Marcie already convinced him to go with her." Patch's smile widened. I aimed my best sulky look at him. "This isn't funny. Marcie is destroying my life. Whose side are you on anyway?" Patch raised his hands in surrender. "I'm staying out of this.

My daddy. . . . . used to say, ‘Honey, find something you love to do and then figure out a way to get paid for it.’ He understood that where your true passion is, there your joy is also. And a joyful life is a truly successful life. Perhaps not by the world’s standards, but whose life is it anyway?

Fairy tales are about trouble, about getting into and out of it, and trouble seems to be a necessary stage on the route to becoming. All the magic and glass mountains and pearls the size of houses and princesses beautiful as the day and talking birds and part-time serpents are distractions from the core of most of the stories, the struggle to survive against adversaries, to find your place in the world, and to come into your own. Fairy tales are almost always the stories of the powerless, of youngest sons, abandoned children, orphans, of humans transformed into birds and beasts or otherwise enchanted away from their own lives and selves. Even princesses are chattels to be disowned by fathers, punished by step-mothers, or claimed by princes, though they often assert themselves in between and are rarely as passive as the cartoon versions. Fairy tales are children's stories not in wh they were made for but in their focus on the early stages of life, when others have power over you and you have power over no one. In them, power is rarely the right tool for survival anyway. Rather the powerless thrive on alliances, often in the form of reciprocated acts of kindness -- from beehives that were not raided, birds that were not killed but set free or fed, old women who were saluted with respect. Kindness sewn among the meek is harvested in crisis... In Hans Christian Andersen's retelling of the old Nordic tale that begins with a stepmother, "The Wild Swans," the banished sister can only disenchant her eleven brothers -- who are swans all day look but turn human at night -- by gathering stinging nettles barehanded from churchyard graves, making them into flax, spinning them and knitting eleven long-sleeved shirts while remaining silent the whole time. If she speaks, they'll remain birds forever. In her silence, she cannot protest the crimes she accused of and nearly burned as a witch. Hauled off to a pyre as she knits the last of the shirts, she is rescued by the swans, who fly in at the last moment. As they swoop down, she throws the nettle shirts over them so that they turn into men again, all but the youngest brother, whose shirt is missing a sleeve so that he's left with one arm and one wing, eternally a swan-man. Why shirts made of graveyard nettles by bleeding fingers and silence should disenchant men turned into birds by their step-mother is a question the story doesn't need to answer. It just needs to give us compelling images of exile, loneliness, affection, and metamorphosis -- and of a heroine who nearly dies of being unable to tell her own story.

I’ll tell you a thing that will shock you. It will certainly shock the readers of Writer’s Digest. What I often do nowadays when I have to, say, describe a room, is to take a page of a dictionary, any page at all, and see if with the words suggested by that one page in the dictionary I can build up a room, build up a scene. … I even did it in a novel I wrote called MF. There’s a description of a hotel vestibule whose properties are derived from Page 167 in R.J. Wilkinson’s Malay-English Dictionary. Nobody has noticed. … As most things in life are arbitrary anyway, you’re not doing anything naughty, you’re really normally doing what nature does, you’re just making an entity out of the elements. I do recommend it to young writers.

It was she made me acquainted with love. She went by the peaceful name of Ruth I think, but I can't say for certain. Perhaps the name was Edith. She had a hole between her legs, oh not the bunghole I had always imagined, but a slit, and in this I put, or rather she put, my so-called virile member, not without difficulty, and I toiled and moiled until I discharged or gave up trying or was begged by her to stop. A mug's game in my opinion and tiring on top of that, in the long run. But I lent myself to it with a good enough grace, knowing it was love, for she had told me so. She bent over the couch, because of her rheumatism, and in I went from behind. It was the only position she could bear, because of her lumbago. It seemed all right to me, for I had seen dogs, and I was astonished when she confided that you could go about it differently. I wonder what she meant exactly. Perhaps after all she put me in her rectum. A matter of complete indifference to me, I needn't tell you. But is it true love, in the rectum? That's what bothers me sometimes. Have I never known true love, after all? She too was an eminently flat woman and she moved with short stiff steps, leaning on an ebony stick. Perhaps she too was a man, yet another of them. But in that case surely our testicles would have collided, while we writhed. Perhaps she held hers tight in her hand, on purpose to avoid it. She favoured voluminous tempestuous shifts and petticoats and other undergarments whose names I forget. They welled up all frothing and swishing and then, congress achieved, broke over us in slow cascades. And all I could see was her taut yellow nape which every now and then I set my teeth in, forgetting I had none, such is the power of instinct. We met in a rubbish dump, unlike any other, and yet they are all alike, rubbish dumps. I don't know what she was doing there. I was limply poking about in the garbage saying probably, for at that age I must still have been capable of general ideas, This is life. She had no time to lose, I had nothing to lose, I would have made love with a goat, to know what love was. She had a dainty flat, no, not dainty, it made you want to lie down in a corner and never get up again. I liked it. It was full of dainty furniture, under our desperate strokes the couch moved forward on its castors, the whole place fell about our ears, it was pandemonium. Our commerce was not without tenderness, with trembling hands she cut my toe-nails and I rubbed her rump with winter cream. This idyll was of short duration. Poor Edith, I hastened her end perhaps. Anyway it was she who started it, in the rubbish dump, when she laid her hand upon my fly. More precisely, I was bent double over a heap of muck, in the hope of finding something to disgust me for ever with eating, when she, undertaking me from behind, thrust her stick between my legs and began to titillate my privates. She gave me money after each session, to me who would have consented to know love, and probe it to the bottom, without charge. But she was an idealist. I would have preferred it seems to me an orifice less arid and roomy, that would have given me a higher opinion of love it seems to me. However. Twixt finger and thumb tis heaven in comparison. But love is no doubt above such contingencies. And not when you are comfortable, but when your frantic member casts about for a rubbing-place, and the unction of a little mucous membrane, and meeting with none does not beat in retreat, but retains its tumefaction, it is then no doubt that true love comes to pass, and wings away, high above the tight fit and the loose.

What (Ada asks) are eyes anyway? Two holes in the mask of life. What (she asks) would they mean to a creature from another corpuscle or milk bubble whose organ of sight was (say) an internal parasite resembling the written word "deified"? What, indeed, would a pair of beautiful (human, lemurian, owlish) eyes mean to anybody if found lying on the seat of a taxi?

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.' Those words aren't intended to be an idyllic abstraction, they're our call to action.

The way that identity has been commercialised through movies and TV, and now through social networking, means we’re all sort of working to a script, a collective idea of what needs to happen next.

She tilted her head slightly to the right and waited for me to keep spewing out my heinous life story. I was wildly relieved that it stayed on her neck and didn’t fall to the floor and roll around. Superglue was some amazing stuff.

The Loneliness of the Military Historian Confess: it's my profession that alarms you. This is why few people ask me to dinner, though Lord knows I don't go out of my way to be scary. I wear dresses of sensible cut and unalarming shades of beige, I smell of lavender and go to the hairdresser's: no prophetess mane of mine, complete with snakes, will frighten the youngsters. If I roll my eyes and mutter, if I clutch at my heart and scream in horror like a third-rate actress chewing up a mad scene, I do it in private and nobody sees but the bathroom mirror. In general I might agree with you: women should not contemplate war, should not weigh tactics impartially, or evade the word enemy, or view both sides and denounce nothing. Women should march for peace, or hand out white feathers to arouse bravery, spit themselves on bayonets to protect their babies, whose skulls will be split anyway, or,having been raped repeatedly, hang themselves with their own hair. There are the functions that inspire general comfort. That, and the knitting of socks for the troops and a sort of moral cheerleading. Also: mourning the dead. Sons,lovers and so forth. All the killed children. Instead of this, I tell what I hope will pass as truth. A blunt thing, not lovely. The truth is seldom welcome, especially at dinner, though I am good at what I do. My trade is courage and atrocities. I look at them and do not condemn. I write things down the way they happened, as near as can be remembered. I don't ask why, because it is mostly the same. Wars happen because the ones who start them think they can win. In my dreams there is glamour. The Vikings leave their fields each year for a few months of killing and plunder, much as the boys go hunting. In real life they were farmers. The come back loaded with splendour. The Arabs ride against Crusaders with scimitars that could sever silk in the air. A swift cut to the horse's neck and a hunk of armour crashes down like a tower. Fire against metal. A poet might say: romance against banality. When awake, I know better. Despite the propaganda, there are no monsters, or none that could be finally buried. Finish one off, and circumstances and the radio create another. Believe me: whole armies have prayed fervently to God all night and meant it, and been slaughtered anyway. Brutality wins frequently, and large outcomes have turned on the invention of a mechanical device, viz. radar. True, valour sometimes counts for something, as at Thermopylae. Sometimes being right - though ultimate virtue, by agreed tradition, is decided by the winner. Sometimes men throw themselves on grenades and burst like paper bags of guts to save their comrades. I can admire that. But rats and cholera have won many wars. Those, and potatoes, or the absence of them. It's no use pinning all those medals across the chests of the dead. Impressive, but I know too much. Grand exploits merely depress me. In the interests of research I have walked on many battlefields that once were liquid with pulped men's bodies and spangled with exploded shells and splayed bone. All of them have been green again by the time I got there. Each has inspired a few good quotes in its day. Sad marble angels brood like hens over the grassy nests where nothing hatches. (The angels could just as well be described as vulgar or pitiless, depending on camera angle.) The word glory figures a lot on gateways. Of course I pick a flower or two from each, and press it in the hotel Bible for a souvenir. I'm just as human as you. But it's no use asking me for a final statement. As I say, I deal in tactics. Also statistics: for every year of peace there have been four hundred years of war.

Like most girls, I want a lot. Fame and fortune. Equal rights. Shoes no one else has. But I'd trade all that in for the perfect guy. (Don't tell me there's something wrong with that. I don't know of a single person who doesn't spend most of her time thinking about love.) Anyway, ever since I could think, I have been imagining and reimagining the exact sort of boy I want to love and who would love me back. Basically, I imagine someone who has all the good attributes of the male species and whose bad ones wouldn't ruin my life.

You’re right,” said Colon. “The thing about the captain, see, I read this book once… you know we’ve all got alcohol in our bodies… sort of natural alcohol? Even if you never touch a drop in your life, your body sort of makes it anyway… but Captain Vimes, see, he’s one of those people whose body doesn’t do it naturally. Like, he was born two drinks below normal.” “Gosh,” said Carrot. “Yes… so, when he’s sober, he’s really sober. Knurd, they call it. You know how you feel when you wake up if you’ve been on the piss all night, Nobby? Well, he feels like that all the time.” “Poor bugger,” said Nobby. “I never realized. No wonder he’s always so gloomy.” “So he’s always trying to catch up, see. It’s just that he doesn’t always get the dose right. And, of course—” Colon glanced at Carrot—“he was brung low by a woman. Mind you, just about anything brings him low.

We began before words, and we will end beyond them. It sometimes seems to me that our days are poisoned with too many words. Words said and not meant. Words said ‘and’ meant. Words divorced from feeling. Wounding words. Words that conceal. Words that reduce. Dead words. If only words were a kind of fluid that collects in the ears, if only they turned into the visible chemical equivalent of their true value, an acid, or something curative – then we might be more careful. Words do collect in us anyway. They collect in the blood, in the soul, and either transform or poison people’s lives. Bitter or thoughtless words poured into the ears of the young have blighted many lives in advance. We all know people whose unhappy lives twist on a set of words uttered to them on a certain unforgotten day at school, in childhood, or at university. We seem to think that words aren’t things. A bump on the head may pass away, but a cutting remark grows with the mind. But then it is possible that we know all too well the awesome power of words – which is why we use them with such deadly and accurate cruelty. We are all wounded inside one way or other. We all carry unhappiness within us for some reason or other. Which is why we need a little gentleness and healing from one another. Healing in words, and healing beyond words. Like gestures. Warm gestures. Like friendship, which will always be a mystery. Like a smile, which someone described as the shortest distance between two people. Yes, the highest things are beyond words. That is probably why all art aspires to the condition of wordlessness. When literature works on you, it does so in silence, in your dreams, in your wordless moments. Good words enter you and become moods, become the quiet fabric of your being. Like music, like painting, literature too wants to transcend its primary condition and become something higher. Art wants to move into silence, into the emotional and spiritual conditions of the world. Statues become melodies, melodies become yearnings, yearnings become actions. When things fall into words they usually descend. Words have an earthly gravity. But the best things in us are those that escape the gravity of our deaths. Art wants to pass into life, to lift it; art wants to enchant, to transform, to make life more meaningful or bearable in its own small and mysterious way. The greatest art was probably born from a profound and terrible silence – a silence out of which the greatest enigmas of our life cry: Why are we here? What is the point of it all? How can we know peace and live in joy? Why be born in order to die? Why this difficult one-way journey between the two mysteries? Out of the wonder and agony of being come these cries and questions and the endless stream of words with which to order human life and quieten the human heart in the midst of our living and our distress. The ages have been inundated with vast oceans of words. We have been virtually drowned in them. Words pour at us from every angle and corner. They have not brought understanding, or peace, or healing, or a sense of self-mastery, nor has the ocean of words given us the feeling that, at least in terms of tranquility, the human spirit is getting better. At best our cry for meaning, for serenity, is answered by a greater silence, the silence that makes us seek higher reconciliation. I think we need more of the wordless in our lives. We need more stillness, more of a sense of wonder, a feeling for the mystery of life. We need more love, more silence, more deep listening, more deep giving.

The eyes. Ada’s dark brown eyes. What (Ada asks) are eyes anyway? Two holes in the mask of life. What (she asks) would they mean to a creature from another corpuscle or milk bubble whose organ of sight was (say) an internal parasite resembling the written word ‘deified’? What, indeed, would a pair of beautiful (human, lemurian, owlish) eyes mean to anybody if found lying on the seat of a taxi? Yet I have to describe yours.

We are today engaged in a war. It is an economic war over our sovereignty as human beings with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The “pursuit of happiness” means the right to create wealth through our labor and to enjoy the fruits thereof. The battle now is over who has the moral, the ethical, and the legal right to the fruits of our labor. Are we to be free, or are we to be slaves? Just whose money is it anyway?

Very often, we will show compassion to those who need our help – or rather, those whom we think need our help – receiving nothing in return but their approval, and that of an imagined audience of our friends and peers. This sounds innocent enough. Noble, even. Yet, we can attach so much importance to approval that we find ourselves wanting it when we don’t get it or, worse, when we perceive we have failed. And the irony is that we simply can’t show ourselves the same compassion that we show others.

On the Lights, Tom Sherbourne has plenty of time to think about the war. About the faces, the voices of the blokes who had stood beside him, who saved his life one way or another; the ones whose dying words he heard, and those whose muttered jumbles he couldn’t make out, but who he nodded to anyway. Tom isn’t one of the men whose legs trailed by a hank of sinews, or whose guts cascaded from their casing like slithering eels. Nor were his lungs turned to glue or his brains to stodge by the gas. But he’s scarred all the same, having to live in the same skin as the man who did the things that needed to be done back then. He carries that other shadow, which is cast inward. He tries not to dwell on it: he’s seen plenty of men turned worse than useless that way. So he gets on with life around the edges of this thing he’s got no name for. When he dreams about those years, the Tom who is experiencing them, the Tom who is there with blood on his hands, is a boy of eight or so. It’s this small boy who’s up against blokes with guns and bayonets, and he’s worried because his school socks have slipped down and he can’t hitch them up because he’ll have to drop his gun to do it, and he’s barely big enough even to hold that. And he can’t find his mother anywhere. Then he wakes and he’s in a place where there’s just wind and waves and light, and the intricate machinery that keeps the flame burning and the lantern turning. Always turning, always looking over its shoulder. If he can only get far enough away—from people, from memory—time will do its job.

What is the relationship of the famous author to their famous books anyway? If I had bad manners and was personally unpleasant and spoke with an irritating accent, which in my opinion is probably the case, would it have anything to do with my novels? Of course not. The work would be the same, no different. And what do the books gain by being attached to me, my face, my mannerisms, in all their demoralising specificity? Nothing. So why, why, is it done this way? Whose interests does it serve? It makes me miserable, keeps me away from the one thing in my life

So—there were still four hundred scabs, and it was painful to think of them as scabs because they were just like the others, but they were frightened. They were frightened because they were hungry now, but if they lost their jobs they would be hungrier, and winter was coming. Winter haunted them all because there was only scrub cotton to pick for awhile, maybe a few oranges now and then, maybe not anything. There were colds and flu and pneumonia, and babies being born and unborn, and school, and shoes wearing out. There were old men and women dying, and sometimes the young died before their time. Babies died. Life was just a little thing to them: a shrunken breast, a colorless tent wall in their curious sight, hunger without name and explanation, pain, and the dark. Sometimes in the short winter days, the mothers looked at old magazines and saw ads for milk and pretty blankets and lacy pillows, and insurance for your baby’s education, and sometimes they found articles about how to care for a baby, and they knew why their babies died. They knew anyway. Often they wondered why their babies did not die, how they could survive without all the things necessary to babies in the outside world.

FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 1943 Dearest Kitty, Oh my, another item has been added to my list of sins. Last night I was lying in bed, waiting for Father to tuck me in and say my prayers with me, when Mother came into the room, sat on my bed and asked very gently, “Anne, Daddy isn’t ready. How about if I listen to your prayers tonight?” “No, Momsy,” I replied. Mother got up, stood beside my bed for a moment and then slowly walked toward the door. Suddenly she turned, her face contorted with pain, and said, “I don’t want to be angry with you. I can’t make you love me!” A few tears slid down her cheeks as she went out the door. I lay still, thinking how mean it was of me to reject her so cruelly, but I also knew that I was incapable of answering her any other way. I can’t be a hypocrite and pray with her when I don’t feel like it. It just doesn’t work that way. I felt sorry for Mother—very, very sorry—because for the first time in my life I noticed she wasn’t indifferent to my coldness. I saw the sorrow in her face when she talked about not being able to make me love her. It’s hard to tell the truth, and yet the truth is that she’s the one who’s rejected me. She’s the one whose tactless comments and cruel jokes about matters I don’t think are funny have made me insensitive to any sign of love on her part. Just as my heart sinks every time I hear her harsh words, that’s how her heart sank when she realized there was no more love between us. She cried half the night and didn’t get any sleep. Father has avoided looking at me, and if his eyes do happen to cross mine, I can read his unspoken words: “How can you be so unkind? How dare you make your mother so sad!” Everyone expects me to apologize, but this is not something I can apologize for, because I told the truth, and sooner or later Mother was bound to find out anyway. I seem to be indifferent to Mother’s tears and Father’s glances, and I am, because both of them are now feeling what I’ve always felt. I can only feel sorry for Mother, who will have to figure out what her attitude should be all by herself. For my part, I will continue to remain silent and aloof, and I don’t intend to shrink from the truth, because the longer it’s postponed, the harder it will be for them to accept it when they do hear it! Yours, Anne

I'd promised myself I wouldn't cry. I wanted to deliver the only gift I had to offer in the memory of Cora Frost. But as I started blowing the first notes of "Shenandoah," the tears began to run. I played on anyway, and Miss Stratton followed, and the music itself seemed to weep and not just for what we'd lost that week. It was for the families and the childhoods and the dreams that were, even for those of us so young, already gone forever. But as I continued, I went to that place only music could take me, and although Cora Frost was dead and about to be buried along with my fleeting hope of a better life, I imagined she was listening somewhere, with her husband by her side, and they were both smiling down on me and Emmy and Albert and Mose and all the others whose lives, at least for a while, had been better because of them. And in the end, that's where my tears were coming from." p. 63

You’re good at this,” said Ronan. “What?” He leaned to touch the baby’s head. “Being a mother.” “What is that supposed to mean?” Ronan looked awkward. Then he said glibly, “Nothing, if you don’t like it.” He glanced at Benix, Faris, and the others, but they were discussing thumbscrews and nooses. “It didn’t mean anything. I take it back.” Kestrel set the baby on the grass next to Faris. “You cannot take it back.” “Just this once,” he said, echoing her earlier words during the game. She stood and walked away. He followed. “Come, Kestrel. I spoke only the truth.” They had entered the shade of thickly grown laran trees, whose leaves were a bloody color. They would soon fall. “It’s not that I wouldn’t want to have a child someday,” Kestrel told Ronan. Visibly relieved, he said, “Good. The empire needs new life.” It did. She knew this. As the Valorian empire stretched across the continent, it faced the problem of keeping what it had won. The solutions were military prowess and boosting the Valorian population, so the emperor prohibited any activities that unnecessarily endangered Valorian lives--like dueling and the bull-jumping games that used to mark coming-of-age ceremonies. Marriage became mandatory by the age of twenty for anyone who was not a soldier. “It’s just--” Kestrel tried again: “Ronan, I feel trapped. Between what my father wants and--” He held up his hands in flat-palmed defense. “I am not trying to trap you. I am your friend.” “I know. But when you are faced with only two choices--the military or marriage--don’t you wonder if there is a third, or a fourth, or more, even, than that?” “You have many choices. The law says that in three years you must marry, but not whom. Anyway, there is time.” His should grazed hers in the teasing push of children starting a mock fight. “Time enough for me to convince you of the right choice.” “Benix, of course.” She laughed. “Benix.” Ronan made a fist and shook it at the sky. “Benix!” he shouted. “I challenge you to a duel! Where are you, you great oaf?” Ronan stormed from the laran trees with all the flair of a comic actor. Kestrel smiled, watching him go. Maybe his silly flirtations disguised something real. People’s feelings were hard to know for certain. A conversation with Ronan resembled a Bite and Sting game where Kestrel couldn’t tell if the truth looked like a lie, or a lie like the truth. If it was true, what then?

the kind of woman you want to be. Be the kind of woman who is proud to be herself. Be the kind of woman who has so much love inside her that she won’t be tempted to change herself in order to get love from others. Be the kind of woman who focuses more on being interested than on other people thinking she’s interesting. Be the kind of woman who laughs loudly and often. Be the kind of woman who is generous—no matter how much money is in your bank account, you have a wealth of resources to offer others. Be the kind of woman who spends a lifetime learning, because knowledge is power and those who think they know it all are often the dumbest among us. Be the kind of woman both your eleven-year-old self and your ninety-year-old self would be proud of. Be the kind of woman who shows up for her life. Be the kind of woman who understands that she was made for more. Be the kind of woman who believes that she is capable of doing amazing things in this world. Be the kind of woman whose own dreams make her nervous—and then go ahead and do them anyway. Be the kind of woman who never asks permission to be herself. BEHAVIOR 2: CHOOSE ONE DREAM AND GO ALL IN Here’s the thing I believe about a goal that often annoys people: you can only focus on one at a time.

[What to do with] Unwanted Gifts This can be a very sensitive issue for many people. However, here’s my very best advice on what to do with unwanted presents: get rid of them. Here’s why. Things you really love have a strong, vibrant energy field around them, whereas unwanted presents have uneasy, conflicting energies attached to them that drain you rather than energize you. They actually create an energetic gloom in your home. The very thought of giving them the elbow is horrifying to some people. “But what about when Aunt Jane comes to visit and that expensive decoration she gave us isn’t on the mantelpiece?“ Whose mantlepiece is it anyway? If you love the item, fine, but if you keep it in your home out of fear and obligation, you were giving your power away. Every time you walk into the room and see that object, your energy levels drop. And don’t think that out of sight, out of mind will work. You can’t keep that gift in the cupboard and just bring it out when Aunt Jane is due to visit. Your subconscious mind still knows you have it on the premises. If you have enough of these unwanted presents around you, your energy network looks like a sieve, with vitality running out all over the place. Remember, it’s the thought that counts. You can appreciate being given the gift without necessarily having to keep it. Try adopting a whole different philosophy about presents. When you give something to someone, give it with love and let it go. Allow the recipient complete freedom to do whatever he wants with it. If the thing he can most useful he do is put it straight in the trash or give it to someone else, fine (you wouldn’t want him to clutter up his space with unwanted presents would you?). Give others this freedom and you will begin to experience more freedom in your own life too.

Sometimes Marlboro Man and I would venture out into the world--go to the city, see a movie, eat a good meal, be among other humans. But what we did best was stay in together, cooking dinner and washing dishes and retiring to the chairs on his front porch or the couch in his living room, watching action movies and finding new and inventive ways to wrap ourselves in each other’s arms so not a centimeter of space existed between us. It was our hobby. And we were good at it. It was getting more serious. We were getting closer. Each passing day brought deeper feelings, more intense passion, love like I’d never known it before. To be with a man who, despite his obvious masculinity, wasn’t at all afraid to reveal his soft, affectionate side, who had no fears or hang-ups about declaring his feelings plainly and often, who, it seemed, had never played a head game in his life…this was the romance I was meant to have. Occasionally, though, after returning to my house at night, I’d lie awake in my own bed, wrestling with the turn my life had taken. Though my feelings for Marlboro Man were never in question, I sometimes wondered where “all this” would lead. We weren’t engaged--it was way too soon for that--but how would that even work, anyway? It’s not like I could ever live out here. I tried to squint and see through all the blinding passion I felt and envision what such a life would mean. Gravel? Manure? Overalls? Isolation? Then, almost without fail, just about the time my mind reached full capacity and my what-ifs threatened to disrupt my sleep, my phone would ring again. And it would be Marlboro Man, whose mind was anything but scattered. Who had a thought and acted on it without wasting even a moment calculating the pros and cons and risks and rewards. Who’d whisper words that might as well never have existed before he spoke them: “I miss you already…” “I’m thinking about you…” “I love you…” And then I’d smell his scent in the air and drift right off to Dreamland. This was the pattern that defined my early days with Marlboro Man. I was so happy, so utterly content--as far as I was concerned, it could have gone on like that forever. But inevitably, the day would come when reality would appear and shake me violently by the shoulders. And, as usual, I wasn’t the least bit ready for it.

Of course, no china--however intricate and inviting--was as seductive as my fiancé, my future husband, who continued to eat me alive with one glance from his icy-blue eyes. Who greeted me not at the door of his house when I arrived almost every night of the week, but at my car. Who welcomed me not with a pat on the arm or even a hug but with an all-enveloping, all-encompassing embrace. Whose good-night kisses began the moment I arrived, not hours later when it was time to go home. We were already playing house, what with my almost daily trips to the ranch and our five o’clock suppers and our lazy movie nights on his thirty-year-old leather couch, the same one his parents had bought when they were a newly married couple. We’d already watched enough movies together to last a lifetime. Giant with James Dean, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Reservoir Dogs, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, All Quiet on the Western Front, and, more than a handful of times, Gone With the Wind. I was continually surprised by the assortment of movies Marlboro Man loved to watch--his taste was surprisingly eclectic--and I loved discovering more and more about him through the VHS collection in his living room. He actually owned The Philadelphia Story. With Marlboro Man, surprises lurked around every corner. We were already a married couple--well, except for the whole “sleepover thing” and the fact that we hadn’t actually gotten hitched yet. We stayed in, like any married couple over the age of sixty, and continued to get to know everything about each other completely outside the realm of parties, dates, and gatherings. All of that was way too far away, anyway--a minimum hour-and-a-half drive to the nearest big city--and besides that, Marlboro Man was a fish out of water in a busy, crowded bar. As for me, I’d been there, done that--a thousand and one times. Going out and panting the town red was unnecessary and completely out of context for the kind of life we’d be building together. This was what we brought each other, I realized. He showed me a slower pace, and permission to be comfortable in the absence of exciting plans on the horizon. I gave him, I realized, something different. Different from the girls he’d dated before--girls who actually knew a thing or two about country life. Different from his mom, who’d also grown up on a ranch. Different from all of his female cousins, who knew how to saddle and ride and who were born with their boots on. As the youngest son in a family of three boys, maybe he looked forward to experiencing life with someone who’d see the country with fresh eyes. Someone who’d appreciate how miraculously countercultural, how strange and set apart it all really is. Someone who couldn’t ride to save her life. Who didn’t know north from south, or east from west. If that defined his criteria for a life partner, I was definitely the woman for the job.

In the meantime, I tried my best to acclimate to my new life in the middle of nowhere. I had to get used to the fact that I lived twenty miles from the nearest grocery store. That I couldn’t just run next door when I ran out of eggs. That there was no such thing as sushi. Not that it would matter, anyway. No cowboy on the ranch would touch it. That’s bait, they’d say, laughing at any city person who would convince themselves that such a food was tasty. And the trash truck: there wasn’t one. In this strange new land, there was no infrastructure for dealing with trash. There were cows in my yard, and they pooped everywhere--on the porch, in the yard, even on my car if they happened to be walking near it when they dropped a load. There wasn’t a yard crew to clean it up. I wanted to hire people, but there were no people. The reality of my situation grew more crystal clear every day. One morning, after I choked down a bowl of cereal, I looked outside the window and saw a mountain lion siting on the hood of my car, licking his paws--likely, I imagined, after tearing a neighboring rancher’s wife from limb to limb and eating her for breakfast. I darted to the phone and called Marlboro Man, telling him there was a mountain lion sitting on my car. My heart beat inside my chest. I had no idea mountain lions were indigenous to the area. “It’s probably just a bobcat,” Marlboro Man reassured me. I didn’t believe him. “No way--it’s huge,” I cried. “It’s seriously got to be a mountain lion!” “I’ve gotta go,” he said. Cows mooed in the background. I hung up the phone, incredulous at Marlboro Man’s lack of concern, and banged on the window with the palm of my hand, hoping to scare the wild cat away. But it only looked up and stared at me through the window, imagining me on a plate with a side of pureed trout. My courtship with Marlboro Man, filled with fizzy romance, hadn’t prepared me for any of this; not the mice I heard scratching in the wall next to my bed, not the flat tires I got from driving my car up and down the jagged gravel roads. Before I got married, I didn’t know how to use a jack or a crowbar…and I didn’t want to have to learn now. I didn’t want to know that the smell in the laundry room was a dead rodent. I’d never smelled a dead rodent in my life: why, when I was supposed to be a young, euphoric newlywed, was I being forced to smell one now? During the day, I was cranky. At night, I was a mess. I hadn’t slept through the night once since we returned from our honeymoon. Besides the nausea, whose second evil wave typically hit right at bedtime, I was downright spooked. As I lay next to Marlboro Man, who slept like a baby every night, I thought of monsters and serial killers: Freddy Krueger and Michael Myers, Ted Bundy and Charles Manson. In the utter silence of the country, every tiny sound was amplified; I was certain if I let myself go to sleep, the murderer outside our window would get me.

the ten thousand things To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things. – Eihei Dogen If one is very fortunate indeed, one comes upon – or is found by – the teachings that match one’s disposition and the teachers or mentors whose expression strikes to the heart while teasing the knots from the mind. The Miriam Louisa character came with a tendency towards contrariness and scepticism, which is probably why she gravitated to teachers who displayed like qualities. It was always evident to me that the ‘blink’ required in order to meet life in its naked suchness was not something to be gained in time. Rather, it was clear that it was something to do with understanding what sabotages this direct engagement. So my teachers were those who deconstructed the spiritual search – and with it the seeker – inviting one to “see for oneself.” I realised early on that I wouldn’t find any help within traditional spiritual institutions since their version of awakening is usually a project in time. Anyway, I’m not a joiner by nature. I set out on my via negativa at an early age, trying on all kinds of philosophies and practices with enthusiasm and casting them aside –neti neti – equally enthusiastically. Chögyam Trungpa wised me up to “spiritual materialism” in the 70s; Alan Watts followed on, pointing out that whatever is being experienced is none other than ‘IT’ – the unarguable aliveness that one IS. By then I was perfectly primed for the questions put by Jiddu Krishnamurti – “Is there a thinker separate from thought?” “Is there an observer separate from the observed?” “Can consciousness be separated from its content?” It was while teaching at Brockwood Park that I also had the good fortune to engage with David Bohm in formal dialogues as well as private conversations. (About which I have written elsewhere.) Krishnamurti and Bohm were seminal teachers for me; I also loved the unique style of deconstruction offered by Nisargadatta Maharaj. As it happened though, it took just one tiny paragraph from Wei Wu Wei to land in my brain at exactly the right time for the irreversible ‘blink’ to occur. I mention this rather august lineage because it explains why the writing of Robert Saltzman strikes not just a chord but an entire symphonic movement for me. We are peers; we were probably reading the same books by Watts and Krishnamurti at the same time during the 70s and 80s. Reading his book, The Ten Thousand Things, is, for me, like feeling my way across a tapestry exquisitely woven from the threads of my own life. I’m not sure that I can adequately express my wonderment and appreciation… The candor, lucidity and lack of jargon in Robert’s writing are deeply refreshing. I also relish his way with words. He knows how to write. He also knows how to take astonishingly fine photographs, and these are featured throughout the book. It’s been said that this book will become a classic, which is a pretty good achievement for someone who isn’t claiming to be a teacher and has nothing to gain by its sale. (The book sells for the production price.) He is not peddling enlightenment. He is simply sharing how it feels to be free from all the spiritual fantasies that obscure our seamless engagement with this miraculous thing called life, right now.

Like,” he repeats with distaste. “How about I tell you what I don’t like? I do not like postmodernism, postapocalyptic settings, postmortem narrators, or magic realism. I rarely respond to supposedly clever formal devices, multiple fonts, pictures where they shouldn’t be—basically, gimmicks of any kind. I find literary fiction about the Holocaust or any other major world tragedy to be distasteful—nonfiction only, please. I do not like genre mash-ups à la the literary detective novel or the literary fantasy. Literary should be literary, and genre should be genre, and crossbreeding rarely results in anything satisfying. I do not like children’s books, especially ones with orphans, and I prefer not to clutter my shelves with young adult. I do not like anything over four hundred pages or under one hundred fifty pages. I am repulsed by ghostwritten novels by reality television stars, celebrity picture books, sports memoirs, movie tie-in editions, novelty items, and—I imagine this goes without saying—vampires. I rarely stock debuts, chick lit, poetry, or translations. I would prefer not to stock series, but the demands of my pocketbook require me to. For your part, you needn’t tell me about the ‘next big series’ until it is ensconced on the New York Times Best Sellers list. Above all, Ms. Loman, I find slim literary memoirs about little old men whose little old wives have died from cancer to be absolutely intolerable. No matter how well written the sales rep claims they are. No matter how many copies you promise I’ll sell on Mother’s Day.” Amelia blushes, though she is angry more than embarrassed. She agrees with some of what A.J. has said, but his manner is unnecessarily insulting. Knightley Press doesn’t even sell half of that stuff anyway. She studies him. He is older than Amelia but not by much, not by more than ten years. He is too young to like so little. “What do you like?” she asks. “Everything else,” he says. “I will also admit to an occasional weakness for short-story collections. Customers never want to buy them though.” There is only one short-story collection on Amelia’s list, a debut. Amelia hasn’t read the whole thing, and time dictates that she probably won’t, but she liked the first story. An American sixth-grade class and an Indian sixth-grade class participate in an international pen pal program. The narrator is an Indian kid in the American class who keeps feeding comical misinformation about Indian culture to the Americans. She clears her throat, which is still terribly dry. “The Year Bombay Became Mumbai. I think it will have special int—” “No,” he says. “I haven’t even told you what it’s about yet.” “Just no.” “But why?” “If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll admit that you’re only telling me about it because I’m partially Indian and you think this will be my special interest. Am I right?” Amelia imagines smashing the ancient computer over his head. “I’m telling you about this because you said you liked short stories! And it’s the only one on my list. And for the record”—here, she lies—“it’s completely wonderful from start to finish. Even if it is a debut. “And do you know what else? I love debuts. I love discovering something new. It’s part of the whole reason I do this job.” Amelia rises. Her head is pounding. Maybe she does drink too much? Her head is pounding and her heart is, too. “Do you want my opinion?” “Not particularly,” he says. “What are you, twenty-five?” “Mr. Fikry, this is a lovely store, but if you continue in this this this”—as a child, she stuttered and it occasionally returns when she is upset; she clears her throat—“this backward way of thinking, there won’t be an Island Books before too long.

(p.112-114) This past, the Negro's past, of rope, fire torture, castration, infanticide, rape; death and humiliation; fear by day and night, fear as deep as the marrow of the bone; doubt that he was worthy of life, since everyone around him denied it; sorrow for this women, for his kinfolk, for his children, who needed his protection, and whom he could not protect; rage, hatred, and murder, hatred for white men so deep that it often turned against him and his own, and made all love, all trust, all joy impossible - this past, this endless struggle to achieve and reveal and confirm a human identity, human authority, yet contains, for all its horror, something very beautiful. I do not mean to be sentimental about suffering - enough is certainly as good as a feast - but people who cannot suffer can never grow up, can never discover who they are. That man who is forced each day to snatch manhood, his identity, out of the fire of human cruelty that rages to destroy it knows, if he survives his effort, and even if he does not survive it, something about himself and human life that no school on earth - and indeed, no church - can teach. He achieves his own authority, and that is unshakable. This is because, in order to save his life, he is forced to look beneath appearances, to take nothing for granted, to hear the meaning behind the words. If one is continually surviving the worst that life can bring, one eventually ceases to be controlled by a fear of what life can bring; whatever it brings must be borne. And at this level of experience one's bitterness begins to be palatable, and hatred becomes too heavy a sack to carry. The apprehension of life here so briefly and inadequately sketched has been the experience of generations of Negroes, and it helps to explain how they have endured and how they have been able to produce children of kindergarten age who can walk through mobs to get to school. It demands great force and great cunning continually to assault the mighty and indifferent fortress of white supremacy, as Negroes in this country have done so long. It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate. The Negro boys and girls who are facing mobs today come out of a long line of improbable aristocrats - the only genuine aristocrats this country has produced. I say "this country" because their frame of reference was totally American. They were hewing out of the mountain of white supremacy the stone of their individuality. I have great respect for that unsung army of black men and women who trudged down back lanes and entered back doors, saying "Yes, sir" and "No, Ma'am" in order to acquire a new roof for the schoolhouse, new books, a new chemistry lab, more beds for the dormitories, more dormitories. They did not like saying "Yes, sir" and "No Ma'am", but the country was in no hurry to educate Negroes, these black men and women knew that the job had to be done, and they put their pride in their pockets in order to do it. It is very hard to believe that they were in anyway inferior to the white men and women who opened those back doors. It is very hard to believe that those men and women, raising their children, eating their greens, crying their curses, weeping their tears, singing their songs, making their love, as the sun rose, as the sun set, were in any way inferior to the white men and women who crept over to share these splendors after the sun went down. ... I am proud of these people not because of their color but because of their intelligence and their spiritual force and their beauty. The country should be proud of them, too, but, alas, not many people in this country even know of their existence.

Reader's Digest (Reader's Digest USA) - Clip This Article on Location 56 | Added on Friday, May 16, 2014 12:06:55 AM Words of Lasting Interest Looking Out for The Lonely One teacher’s strategy to stop violence at its root BY GLENNON DOYLE MELTON  FROM MOMASTERY.COM PHOTOGRAPH BY DAN WINTERS A few weeks ago, I went into my son Chase’s class for tutoring. I’d e-mailed Chase’s teacher one evening and said, “Chase keeps telling me that this stuff you’re sending home is math—but I’m not sure I believe him. Help, please.” She e-mailed right back and said, “No problem! I can tutor Chase after school anytime.” And I said, “No, not him. Me. He gets it. Help me.” And that’s how I ended up standing at a chalkboard in an empty fifth-grade classroom while Chase’s teacher sat behind me, using a soothing voice to try to help me understand the “new way we teach long division.” Luckily for me, I didn’t have to unlearn much because I’d never really understood the “old way we taught long division.” It took me a solid hour to complete one problem, but I could tell that Chase’s teacher liked me anyway. She used to work with NASA, so obviously we have a whole lot in common. Afterward, we sat for a few minutes and talked about teaching children and what a sacred trust and responsibility it is. We agreed that subjects like math and reading are not the most important things that are learned in a classroom. We talked about shaping little hearts to become contributors to a larger community—and we discussed our mutual dream that those communities might be made up of individuals who are kind and brave above all. And then she told me this. Every Friday afternoon, she asks her students to take out a piece of paper and write down the names of four children with whom they’d like to sit the following week. The children know that these requests may or may not be honored. She also asks the students to nominate one student who they believe has been an exceptional classroom citizen that week. All ballots are privately submitted to her. And every single Friday afternoon, after the students go home, she takes out those slips of paper, places them in front of her, and studies them. She looks for patterns. Who is not getting requested by anyone else? Who can’t think of anyone to request? Who never gets noticed enough to be nominated? Who had a million friends last week and none this week? You see, Chase’s teacher is not looking for a new seating chart or “exceptional citizens.” Chase’s teacher is looking for lonely children. She’s looking for children who are struggling to connect with other children. She’s identifying the little ones who are falling through the cracks of the class’s social life. She is discovering whose gifts are going unnoticed by their peers. And she’s pinning down—right away—who’s being bullied and who is doing the bullying. As a teacher, parent, and lover of all children, I think this is the most brilliant Love Ninja strategy I have ever encountered. It’s like taking an X-ray of a classroom to see beneath the surface of things and into the hearts of students. It is like mining for gold—the gold being those children who need a little help, who need adults to step in and teach them how to make friends, how to ask others to play, how to join a group, or how to share their gifts. And it’s a bully deterrent because every teacher knows that bullying usually happens outside her eyeshot and that often kids being bullied are too intimidated to share. But, as she said, the truth comes out on those safe, private, little sheets of paper. As Chase’s teacher explained this simple, ingenious idea, I stared at her with my mouth hanging open. “How long have you been using this system?” I said. Ever since Columbine, she said. Every single Friday afternoon since Columbine. Good Lord. This brilliant woman watched Columbine knowing that all violence begins with disconnection. All

Thank you for having us here," Carmen said. She had put on makeup, which Franny found distasteful. After all, it was only the family, and they were only having dinner. She would just have to wash it off in a few hours. Putting on makeup for this crowd, at this hour, smacked of deep-seated insecurity, which Franny had little patience for, both as a host and as Carmen's boyfriend's mother, on his behalf. Of course, Franny didn't trust anyone whose life's work was shaping other people's altoids anyway. No, Altoids for the mints. Deltoids. Still, it was nice that she was making an effort.

As it stands now we are all told that breastfeeding is the ONLY option for feeding your child, if you actually love that child and ever want them to have more than a third-grade level reading ability. If you don’t breastfeed your baby you might as well just drop it off immediately at your local prison, because that is where it’s going to end up anyway, with such a horrible start to its life. Breastfeeding is beautiful and natural and the best and only socially acceptable way to nourish your baby. It is the most natural thing on the planet, you see. Fast-forward to a severely sleep-deprived, hormone-riddled new mom whose baby is not latching on correctly. If maybe perhaps she had been warned that breastfeeding would not necessarily be easy-peasy, then maybe perhaps she wouldn’t have to add “severe guilt” and “feelings of extreme failure as a woman and mother” to her already long list of postpartum difficulties. So say it with me now: “Breastfeeding is really f’n hard.” Repeat it to yourself, even as you attend classes and read books.

The Deliverator does not know for sure what happens to the driver in such cases, but he has heard some rumors. Most pizza deliveries happen in the evening hours, which Uncle Enzo considers to be his private time. And how would you feel if you bad to interrupt dinner with your family in order to call some obstreperous dork in a Burbclave and grovel for a late fucking pizza? Uncle Enzo has not put in fifty years serving his family and his country so that, at the age when most are playing golf and bobbling their granddaughters, he can get out of the bathtub dripping wet and lie down and kiss the feet of some sixteenyear- old skate punk whose pepperoni was thirty-one minutes in coming. Oh, God. It makes the Deliverator breathe a little shallower just to think of the idea. But he wouldn't drive for CosaNostra Pizza any other way. You know why? Because there's something about having your life on the line. It's like being a kamikaze pilot. Your mind is clear. Other people -- store clerks, burger flippers, software engineers, the whole vocabulary of meaningless jobs that make up Life in America -- other people just rely on plain old competition. Better flip your burgers or debug your subroutines faster and better than your high school classmate two blocks down the strip is flipping or debugging, because we're in competition with those guys, and people notice these things. What a fucking rat race that is. CosaNostra Pizza doesn't have any competition. Competition goes against the Mafia ethic. You don't work harder because you're competing against some identical operation down the street. You work harder because everything is on the line. Your name, your honor, your family, your life. Those burger flippers might have a better life expectancy -- but what kind of life is it anyway, you have to ask yourself. That's why nobody, not even the Nipponese, can move pizzas faster than CosaNostra. The Deliverator is proud to wear the uniform, proud to drive the car, proud to march up the front walks of innumerable Burbclave homes, a grim vision in ninja black, a pizza on his shoulder, red LED digits blazing proud numbers into the night: 12:32 or 15:15 or the occasional 20:43.

Her life was here with her, along with all her earlier lives and the memories of her earliest life. A life she had spent within strange walls, among strange odors and strange objects whose history she could not have known, or anyway whose remaining traces simply had no historical context for her.

Precious to the Lord are the death of His saints." DEATH IS NOT FINAL. God has set eternity in the hearts of men. Why would you want there to be nothing at the end of life? DEATH IS A MYSTERY. Death is not a secret but a mystery. Solomon asked so long ago if animals will be in heaven. And how do people get there. NO ONE KNOWS WHEN THEY WILL DIE. We should then live everyday to God's glory. So make haste to be right with God. DEATH IS THE ULTIMATE LEVELER. Mourning makes people think about mortality. It helps reveal what is important in life more than a party ever could. The king and the pawn go back in the same box. Rich or poor - are we ready to meet God? Do we have faith in Him and His son whose very name is love? Without Him, without love what else matters? We need to love others and love God. The importance of this can become clear in mourning. Are you ready? WE TAKE NOTHING WITH US. Except that done in love for the glory of Jesus. Though these things won't save us, it is His merit alone that can do that, these things give an abundant entry into eternity. Solomon in the end hated what he couldn't take with him. He was the richest man on earth leading a vast empire, surrounded by wives and servants. Jesus asks what good would it do to gain the whole world and lose ones own soul? Therefore store up treasures in heaven. AFTER DEATH COMES JUDGEMENT. It is uncomfortable to think on, but needed. Will we be with Christ on that day or lost in sin? Even if you are a follower of Jesus consider that if we do the things Jesus told us in secret and it comes out it will be nice, but the bad stuff we shouldn't do that we did anyway coming out would be unpleasant. Therefore walk in the light as He is in the light. Shine like the stars in the heavens. Love Him who first loved us. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." John 3:16 KJV (Refs: Eccl 2:18, Eccl 12:13, Ps 115, Eccl. 3:11, Eccl 3:21, Eccl 8:7,8, Eccl 7:2).

Part 3: The Between; Chapter 16: The Weight Nate realized that he lacked the time he'd need to scrutinize a dozen plus pages at the moment ‒ nor had he spotted an available pen ‒ but his curiosity got the better of him. So he settled down upon his usual barstool to begin anyway. Introduction: The Burden When the blossom of a dream is given an opportunity to thrive, it embraces the sunshine and rain with equal fervor ‒ while reveling in the chorus sung by spring songbirds celebrating its promise. Yet if it perseveres, this budding creation ultimately matures into a far weightier burden. Like an apple tree whose branches droop ever noticeably amidst the season's wane; or as an expectant mother waddles and shuffles with increasing effort toward the looming moments in which she is fated to deliver new life; nurturing a fanciful idea to fruition will ultimately transform into a progressively more dutiful task ‒ with sporadic flashes of lightning which recall its genesis as a splendidly creative one. As with any labor of love, it is this toil which brings it meaning. That which has been created then ushers forward, towards its own purpose ‒ as its creator proceeds anew. Thus the act of willful creation itself revolves within a perpetual cycle of collaborative nascence. Likewise all stories are tragedies ‒ authored in sweat; in tears and in blood ‒ yet each begins long before its introduction and will too continue beyond its final page. Just as the same sun which illuminates every voyager’s pathway has unfailingly risen and set in the breaking dawns and dusks of ere will assuredly repeat its ritual ergo. Perhaps this helps to shed light on why fairy tales so often begin and end with abstractions. Once upon a time's are merely chosen moments in which their telling resumes while Happily ever after's offer a cheerful auger of adventures hence ‒ a yet told volume patiently awaiting beyond its transitory resolution. If but a single teller of a solitary story endeavored to detail all which precedes, or proceeds from it; there would not be enough paper upon this earth to document those efforts. More so, the "before" after its "after" must likewise persevere this same mix of happy and unhappy realities which give rise to the conflicts that imbue each story with its purpose. This lack of adventure ‒ rather than any presumptions of finality ‒ best embodies the rationale as to why no tale ever begins with such promises of everlasting bliss. Where there is no wretchedness to inspire tension, neither can a hero or heroine arise to prevail over it, or to ‒ at barest minimum ‒ make a courageous effort in its failure.

Nate realized that he lacked the time he'd need to scrutinize a dozen plus pages at the moment ‒ nor had he spotted an available pen ‒ but his curiosity got the better of him. So he settled down upon his usual barstool to begin anyway. Introduction: The Burden When the blossom of a dream is given an opportunity to thrive, it embraces the sunshine and rain with equal fervor ‒ while reveling in the chorus [sung by] of spring songbirds celebrating its promise. Yet if it perseveres, this budding creation ultimately matures into a far weightier burden. Like an apple tree whose branches droop ever noticeably amidst the season's wane; or as an expectant mother waddles and shuffles with increasing effort toward the looming moments in which she is fated to deliver new life; nurturing a fanciful idea to fruition will ultimately transform into a progressively more dutiful task ‒ with sporadic flashes of lightning which recall its genesis as a splendidly creative one. As with any labor of love, it is this toil which brings it meaning. That which has been created then ushers forward, towards its own purpose ‒ as its creator proceeds anew. Thus the act of willful creation itself revolves within a perpetual cycle of collaborative nascence. Likewise all stories are tragedies ‒ authored in sweat; in tears and in blood ‒ yet each begins long before its introduction and will too continue beyond its final page. Just as the same sun which illuminates every voyager’s pathway has unfailingly risen and set in the breaking dawns and dusks of ere will assuredly repeat its ritual ergo. Perhaps this helps to shed light on why fairy tales so often begin and end with abstractions. Once upon a time's are merely chosen moments in which their telling resumes while Happily ever after's offer a cheerful auger of adventures hence ‒ a yet told volume patiently awaiting beyond its transitory resolution. If but a single teller of a solitary story endeavored to detail all which precedes, or proceeds from it; there would not be enough paper upon this earth to document those efforts. More so, the "before" after its "after" must likewise persevere this same mix of happy and unhappy realities which give rise to the conflicts that imbue each story with its purpose. This lack of adventure ‒ rather than any presumptions of finality ‒ best embodies the rationale as to why no tale ever begin with such promises of everlasting bliss. Where there is no wretchedness to inspire tension, neither can a hero or heroine arise to prevail over it, or to ‒ at barest minimum ‒ make a courageous effort in its failure. Similarly without rot there will be no renewal and absent sorrow one cannot find solace.

War’ might not be quite the word for an expedition whose purpose wasn’t to conquer and occupy territory but to punish the tribesmen by burning their villages, destroying their crops, filling in their wells, and otherwise depriving them of food and water. ‘Financially it is ruinous, morally it is wicked,’ Churchill told his mother, ‘but we can’t pull up now.’ The Pashtuns ‘recognise superiority of race’. And anyway, ‘it was all very exciting and for those who did not get killed or hurt, very jolly

I’m not suggesting that you juggle a dozen different guys and put your heart on the line, emotionally attaching yourself to every single one of them—far from it. You can play the field without trying to date the whole team! All I’m suggesting is that you try a bit to ease off the frantic search for happily ever after and start being happy right now. Allow yourself to date some “wrong” people. Spend time with people whose company you happen to enjoy, even if you don’t see yourself marching down the aisle with them tomorrow. Maintain a healthy perspective on dating and stop setting your heart, your soul, your emotions, and especially your self-worth out on the line with every single person you encounter. When the time is right, you will know, and the safeguards you’ve put in place will fall away naturally. But until then—relax! Have fun! Be yourself in an outfit you didn’t go out and buy specifically for the date. I have found, oddly enough, that most men tend to think women look a lot cuter in sweats and a ponytail than in a little black dress and Louboutins, anyway. (But ultimately, you should always dress for you and not for someone who may or may not end up becoming a significant part of your life.) Most of all, no more letting the swipe rule your life. Stop looking for any dating app or anyone you might meet on a dating app to bring you the happiness and completeness you should be giving yourself. Engage, converse, get out of your safe little comfort zone, and just get to know people with no other agenda than getting to know people. Approach dating from a place of, Do I like him? instead of always obsessing over, Does he like me? Sometimes we get so caught up in trying to make a good impression on someone we don’t even stop to ask ourselves if we are impressed with them. Finally, stop looking to every person to be the great love of your life, and allow dating to be a great adventure in your life. You’ll likely make some amazing friends out of it, you’ll definitely get some great stories out of it, and, who knows . . . having the time of your life just might lead you to the love of your life.

Once again they had laid waste the lone worker's farm; they are always the same from century to century, for the simple reason that the lone worker remains the same from century to century. A war on the Continent may bring some relief, for a year or so, but it is only a seeming help, and illusion. The lone worker will never escape from his life of poverty for ever and ever; he will go on existing in affliction as long as man is not man's protector, but his worst enemy. The life of the lone worker, the life of the independent man, is in its nature a flight from other men, who seek to kill him. From one night-lodging into another even worse. A peasant family flits, four generations of the thirty that have maintained life and death in this country for a thousand years - for whom? Not for themselves anyway, nor for anyone of theirs. They resembled nothing so much as fugitives in a land devastated by year after year of furious warfare; hunted outlaws - in whose land? Not in their own at least.

Stars from the last night It was a vast and endless desert, Of sand, of dust, of the unforgiving sun, Life crawled on its belly and ever effort hurt, Yet life ventured to fulfil what yesterday was left undone, The sand storm blew from every end, Life was caught in its middle, It had nowhere to go, though it had a universe to defend, I watched life pitted against all forces that prevented it from solving the riddle, The dust, the storm, connived with the hot Sun, And they all held life in its cage of atrocities, While life only thought of the universe whose affairs it had to run, So, it heaved its chest and breathed in all the adversities, And blew it at these forces evil, In seconds the dust settled, the storm turned calm and the Sun shone humbly, Because if life wishes to be; it can be the meanest devil, But that is not what it fancies for it has universe to manage and it wants to do so proudly, Life that deals with million adversities, sees storms of dust as nature’s vanities, Because life that thrives everywhere cannot be contained in cages of temporary storms, Life shall always reward the victor who fulfils his/her duties, And is never scared of anything no matter how loud the alarms, That is why it lives in the desert of dust and sand too, Where everything is against its existence, But life shall do what it has to do, while the desert of savagery will do what it has to do, And there shall be neither any hand nor any role of providence, For life that believes in love and equality of all sorts, Will surmount every peak of resistance no matter how high, And shoot itself at the the desert, at the storm, like brave darts, That only love one thing, one purpose, that to fly, So, I saw life wrestling with storm, with dust, with the desert, and even the Sun, They all held her down like an animal of sacrifice to be offered to the God’s of vanity, Yet life resisted and cast all these forces away, one by one, And I witnessed desert’s travesty of life’s magnanimity, Whenever you are in the desert and you see the storm coming closer to you, Remember the actual fact, the life is always on your side, As long as you do not believe it is the desert that favours you, Because it takes some wisdom to realise that in the day sky the bright stars of yesternight still reside! Just like in my eyes her dreams, her thoughts are as fresh as ever, That no storm, no time can fade away, Because I love her like life, that is in love forever, And it shall be so, even in the tempest of all sorts, anyhow and anyway! So you brave soldiers of life and love, If you love someone, love her true love her the same in the desert and in the beautiful summer, And do not wait for the providence from above, Life of love is not always calm because in the desert of life, you shall witness a storm that ceases never!

Stars from the last night It was a vast and endless desert, Of sand, of dust, of the unforgiving sun, Life crawled on its belly and every effort hurt, Yet life ventured to fulfil what yesterday was left undone, The sand storm blew from every end, Life was caught in its middle, It had nowhere to go, though it had a universe to defend, I watched life pitted against all forces that prevented it from solving the riddle, The dust, the storm, connived with the hot sun, And they all held life in its cage of atrocities, While life only thought of the universe whose affairs it had to run, So, it heaved its chest and breathed in all the adversities, And blew it at these forces evil, In seconds the dust settled, the storm turned calm and the Sun shone humbly, Because if life wishes to be; it can be the meanest devil, But that is not what it fancies for it has the universe to manage and it wants to do so proudly, Life that deals with million adversities, sees storms of dust as nature’s vanities, Because life that thrives everywhere cannot be contained in cages of temporary storms, Life shall always reward the victor who fulfils his/her duties, And is never scared of anything no matter how loud the alarms, That is why it lives in the desert of dust and sand too, Where everything is against its existence, But life shall do what it has to do, while the desert of savagery will do what it has to do, And there shall be neither any hand nor any role of providence, For life that believes in love and equality of all sorts, Will surmount every peak of resistance no matter how high, And shoot itself at the the desert, at the storm, like brave darts, That only love one thing, one purpose, that to fly, So, I saw life wrestling with storm, with dust, with the desert, and even the Sun, They all held her down like an animal of sacrifice to be offered to the God’s of vanity, Yet life resisted and cast all these forces away, one by one, And I witnessed desert’s travesty of life’s magnanimity, Whenever you are in the desert and you see the storm coming closer to you, Remember the actual fact, the life is always on your side, As long as you do not believe it is the desert that favours you, Because it takes some wisdom to realise that in the sky of the day the bright stars of yesternight still reside! Just like in my eyes her dreams, her thoughts are as fresh as ever, That no storm, no time can fade away, Because I love her like life, that is in love forever, And it shall be so, even in the tempest of all sorts, anyhow and anyway! So you brave soldiers of life and love, If you love someone, love her true love her the same in the desert and in the beautiful summer, And do not wait for the providence from above, Life of love is not always calm because in the desert of life, you shall witness a storm that ceases never!

Naskar is made by Naskar alone, not an industry or benefactor - or more importantly, by family wealth. I had a roof over my head, food on the table, and clothes on my back - that was more than enough. I started writing with literally zero dollar in my pocket. Let me tell you how it began, because for some reason, I completely forgot a crucial event of my life when I wrote my memoir Love, God & Neurons. I once met an American tourist at a local train in Calcutta. The first thing he asked me was, had I lived in the States? I said, no. Then how come you have an American accent - he asked. Watching movies - I said. We got chatting and he told me about a book he had recently published, a memoir. I believe, this was the cosmic event that planted the thought of writing my own books in my head - I had already started my self-education in Neurology and Psychology, and I was all determined to publish research papers on my ideas, but not books. Meeting the person somehow subconsciously shifted my focus from research papers to books. So the journey began. And for the first few years, I made no real money from my books. Occasionally some of my books would climb the bestsellers list on amazon, like my very first book did, and that would keep the bills paid for several months. Then the invitations for talks started coming, but they too were not paid in the beginning. The organizers made all the travel arrangements, and I gave the talks for free. It's ironic and super confusing really - I remember flying business class, but I didn't have enough money to even afford a one way flight ticket, because I had already used up my royalties on other expenses. Today I can pick and choose which speaking invitations to accept, but back then I didn't have that luxury - I was grateful for any speaking gig and interview request I received, paid or not. One time, I gave an interview to this moderately popular journalist for her personal youtube channel, only to find out, she never released the video publicly - she posted an interview with a dog owner instead - whose dog videos had gained quite a following on social media. You could say, this was the first time I realized first hand, what white privilege was. Anyway, the point is this. Did I doubt myself? Often. Did I consider quitting? Occasionally. But did I actually quit? Never. And because I didn't quit, the world received a vast never-before seen multicultural humanitarian legacy, that you know me for today. There is no such thing as overnight success. If you have a dream, you gotta work at it day in, day out - night after night - spoiling sleep, ruining rest, forgetting fun. Persist, persist, and persist, that's the only secret - there is no other. Remember this - the size of your pocket does not determine your destiny, the size of your dedication does.

We need other women who know what it feels like to split into a thousand pieces as they give small pieces of themselves to their family, their job, their friends, and their neighbors, women who see our suffering and resist the natural impulse to shrink away, who meet it instead with an ear, a shoulder, an embrace, a meal. Women to teach us to stop apologizing for what we are not sorry for and to love ourselves enough to say no. Women who have taken their bodies back and learned to love the soft places. Women whose scars and stretch marks map a story of survival and strength for them to consult whenever they are feeling lost. And we need the women who create: babies or art or sustenance or beauty or words, worship, a testament of our feminine belief that yes, still, even now, the world is worth making better. Women who carry themselves and their babies through a world that still sometimes scares them with heads held high and shoulders back because they are the truest kind of warriors, those who are afraid and do it anyway.

This attitude — that the inner guru is enough — is often adopted by those whose intellectual orientation is slightly nihilistic or who are from very controlling, high- achieving families and resent the idea of yet another powerful person breathing down their necks. Then there are others who like to be led. Even when it comes to mundane issues, they don’t trust their own judgment or inner voice. They can barely go to the grocery store without being full of doubt. They also tend to be a little bit lazy, asking the guru for advice on every little thing that pops into their heads. These types of people have to learn to trust themselves and rely less on the outer guru. They might find that the more they trust the inner and secret gurus, the more they rely on and love the outer guru. Ultimately, the question of whether the inner guru is enough for you is irrelevant if your spiritual aim is to attain enlightenment. But there is an easy way to find the answer. If you can overcome any and all external circumstances, then maybe you don’t need the outer guru, because by then all appearance and experience arise as the guru anyway. On the other hand, if a practitioner is not able to control circumstances and situations, then all kinds of mind training are necessary. Therefore, one needs to be led, to be poked, to be spoon-fed. To find out whether or not you are controlled by circumstances and situations, there are myriad things you can do, such as skip lunch. If you are a man, wear a bra and walk around in public. If you are a woman, go to a fancy party in your bedroom slippers. If you are married, see if you can tolerate someone pinching your spouse’s bottom. See if you are swayed by praise, criticism, being ignored, or being showered with attention. If you get agitated, embarrassed, or infuriated, then more than likely you are still under the spell of the conditions of habit and culture. You are still a victim of causes and conditions. When a loved one dies or the life you are trying to build collapses, it’s likely that your understanding of the inner and secret gurus will not ease the pain. Nor will your understanding of “form is emptiness and emptiness is form” provide solace. In this case, you need to insert a new cause to counter these conditions. Because your understanding of the inner and secret gurus is only intellectual, you cannot call upon them. This is where the outer, physical, reachable guru is necessary. As long as you dwell in a realm where externally existing friends and lovers are necessary, as long as you are bothered by externally existing obstacles like passions and moral judgments, you need a guru. Basically, as long as you have a dualistic mind, don’t kid yourself by thinking that an inner guru is enough. When you reach a point where you can actually communicate with your inner guru, you will have little or no more dualism. You will no longer be repelled by or attracted to an outer guru. Therefore, the outer guru is necessary until you at least have the gist of the inner and secret gurus. When you realize the inner and secret gurus, you won’t even be able to find the outer guru anymore.

Faith,” she replied. “The invisible belief that life will expand until it fills up the Universe.

Midwest Book Full Review It's unusual to find a political and supernatural thriller so intrinsically woven into current issues about the fabric of American society that its fiction bleeds into a cautionary nonfiction tale, but Robert Hamilton's Crux: A Country That Cannot Feed Its People and Its Animals Will Fall represents such an achievement. Its saga of race, food security, violence and prejudice from religious and social circles alike, and the vulnerability of the American food supply chain provides a powerful story that holds many insights, perspectives, and warnings for modern-day readers concerned about this nation's trajectory. Readers who choose the story for its political and supernatural thriller elements won't be disappointed. The tale adopts a nonstop staccato, action-filled atmosphere as a series of catastrophes force veterinarian Dr. Thomas Pickett to move beyond his experience and objectives to become an active force in effecting change in America. How (and why) does a vet become involved in political scenarios? As Dr. Pickett becomes entangled in pork issues, kill pens, and a wider battle than that against animal cruelty, readers are carried into a thought-provoking scenario in which personal and environmental disasters change his upward trajectory with his new wife and their homestead. As Dr. Pickett is called on stage to testify about his beliefs and the Hand of God indicates his life and involvements will never be the same, readers receive a story replete in many social, spiritual, and political inquiries that lead to thought-provoking reflections and insights. True miracles and false gods are considered as he navigates unfamiliar territory of the heart, soul, and mind, coming to understand that his unique role as a vet and a caring, evolving individual can make a difference in the role America plays both domestically and in the world. From the Vice President's involvement in a national security crisis to the efforts to return the country to "its true Christian foundations," Robert Hamilton examines the crux of good intentions and beliefs gone awry and the true paths of those who link their personal beliefs with a changing political scenario. Whose side is God on, anyway? These and other questions make Crux not just a highly recommended read for its political thriller components, but a powerful social and spiritual examination that contains messages that deserve to be inspected, debated, and absorbed by book clubs and a broad audience of concerned American citizens. How do you reach hearts and minds? By producing a story that holds entertainment value and educational revelations alike. That's why libraries need to not only include Crux in their collections, but highlight it as a pivot point for discussions steeped in social, religious, and political examination. There is a bad storm coming. Crux is not just a riveting story, but a possible portent of a future America operating in the hands of a dangerous, attractive demagogue.

There are people whose wellbeing and survival depends on your wellbeing and longevity. Live a productive and fulfilling life, while you acknowledge those who need you the most. It doesn't matter the number or type of mountains you have to climb. This journey of life is made of hills, mountains and valleys anyway. Keep going! Look ahead to the joy of being at the mountaintop. Choose to celebrate your life and recognize the value in you. Let nothing stop you from greatness. You are created by a Majestic God.

There are people whose well-being and survival depends on your well-being and longevity. Live a productive and fulfilling life, while acknowledging those who need you the most. It doesn't matter the number or type of mountains you have to climb. This journey of life is made of hills, mountains and valleys anyway. Keep going! Look ahead to the joy of being at the mountaintop. Choose to celebrate your life and recognize the value in you. Let nothing stop you from greatness. You are created by a Majestic God.

She held her hand out to him. He hesitated for a moment and then reached across the table and took it. “We could be dead tomorrow, both of us,” she said. “Or the next day, or next week. That’s war.” She thought of the other Fi, whose life had ebbed away in her arms. “And I don’t want to die without telling you that I missed you every day since you left, and that I love you, and that I don’t believe what I was taught about attachment any more than you should believe that you were bred only to die for the Republic.” This was breaking all the rules. But the war had broken all the rules of peacekeeping Jedi and a civilized Republic anyway. The Force wouldn’t be thrown into turmoil if a mediocre Jedi and a cloned soldier who had no rights broke just one more. “I never stopped thinking about you, either,” said Darman. “Not for a moment.

Tank crews were bound together by the threat of a collective death. After the infantry, whose service was almost guaranteed to end in invalidity or death – or, as they would quip, in ‘the department of health [zdravotdel] or the department of the earth [zemotdel]’ – armoured and mechanized troops faced the most certain danger. Of the 403,272 tank men (including a small number of tank women) who were trained by the Red Army in the war, 310,000 would die. Even the most optimistic soldiers knew what would happen when a tank was shelled. The white-hot flash of the explosion would almost certainly ignite the tank crew’s fuel and ammunition. At best, the crew – or those, at least, who had not been decapitated or dismembered by the shell itself – would have no more than ninety seconds to climb out of their cabin. Much of that time would be swallowed up as they struggled to open the heavy, sometimes red-hot, hatch, which might have jammed after the impact anyway. The battlefield was no haven, but it was safer than the armoured coffin that would now begin to blaze, its metal components to melt. This was not simply ‘boiling up’; the tank would also torch the atmosphere around it. By then, there could be no hope for the men inside. Not unusually, their bodies were so badly burned that the remains were inseparable. ‘Have you burned yet?’ was a common question for tank men to ask each other when they met for the first time.

Stop accepting invitations to dine at tables where the condition for being seated is that your dignity be left behind. You know that you deserve better!

When a situation no longer uplifts you, supports your growth, or brings you joy ... respect yourself enough to let it go.

Have you had enough of subjugating your needs and desires to the needs and desires of others? Are you ready to own your power unapologetically? Are you up for the challenge of starring in your own life? Yes? Wonderful!

Sometimes we get caught dreaming dreams that were never designed to bring us peaceful rest. In fact, these dreams weren't designed for us at all. When this happens, it's imperative that we muster the courage to dream a new dream.

Wise women don't turn away from the uncomfortable and uneven places that leave us searching for steady ground. We do not give in to despair. Or hatred. Or indifference. Wise women go within to access the wisdom and courage needed to transform the conditions around us.

Living a Spirit-filled life doesn't exonerate you from the experiences that are common to humanity. Rather it empowers and equips you to meet those challenges, come what may, with renewed strength and the assurance that everything will be okay in the end.

Believe in your own wonder.