Wind Chime Quotes

When she talks to Tripp, something nice happens inside of her: a vibration, a thrum. It's as if a tiny wind chime is suspended inside her soul, she thinks, and his words are the wind that makes it ring.

The tinkle of wind chimes announcing the return of our fairy guests made us both look up. Our chance to be alone was going to be shorter than either of us had hoped. I sighed and brushed an errant dragon scale from Eadric’s tunic. “Someday when we have lots of time, remind me to tell you what you mean to me.” Eadric tilted my head back so he could gaze into my eyes. “I can tell you what you mean to me with just one word.” Let me guess,” I said, smiling up at him. “Maybe I make you happy because you no longer have to enter kissing contests to find the best kisser? Do I bring excitement into your life because I can wisk you away to exotic lands on my magic carpet? Or do you find me delightful because I can conjure food whenever you’re hungry?” No, that’s not. . . Wait, what was that last one?” I laughed and shook my head. “Never mind. So tell me in one word, what do I mean to you?” That’s easy,” said Eadric. “Everything!

Girls should be strong together. Strong like steel, merry like the tinkling of chimes dancing in the wind.

Listen,’ she whispered and pointed towards the window. ‘Whenever the wind blows from the east and the wind chimes dance in the moonlight, there is magic in the air.

Must love decorating for holidays, mischief, kissing in cars, and wind chimes. No specific height, weight, hair color, or political affiliation required but would prefer a warm spirited non racist. Cynics, critics, pessimists, and “stick in the muds” need not apply. Voluptuous figures a plus. Any similarity in look, mind set, or fashion sense to Mary Poppins, Claire Huxtable, Snow White, or Elvira wholeheartedly welcomed. I am dubious of actresses, fellons and lesbians but dont want to rule them out entirely. Must be tolerant of whistling, tickle torture, James Taylor, and sleeping late. I have a slight limp, eerily soft hands, and a preternatural love of autumn. I once misinterpreted being called a coal-eyed dandy as a compliment when it was intended as an insult. I wiggle my feet in my sleep, am scared of the dark, and think the Muppets Christmas Carol is one of the greatest films of all time. All I want is butterfly kisses in the morning, peanut butter sandwiches shaped like a heart, and to make you smile until it hurts.

The tinkle of a wind chime stirred from over a window. Purple and white phlox cascaded cheerfully over the top of a nearby stone wall. Sunlight sifted through the weave of her straw hat, casting freckles of light on her nose and cheeks that shifted, out of focus, as she walked.

But the wind does not stop for my thoughts. It whips across the flooded gravel pits drumming up waves on their waters that glint hard and metallic in the night, over the shingle, rustling the dead gorse and skeletal bugloss, running in rivulets through the parched grass - while I sit here in the dark holding a candle that throws my divided shadow across the room and gathers my thoughts to the flame like moths. I have not moved for many hours. Years, a lifetime, eddy past: one, two, three: into the early hours, the clock chimes. The wind is singing now

In bleakest times In darkest climbs When wind blows cold in skies above When suns won't shine And True Dark chimes Still I'll return to thee, my love Ever return to thee, true love

Love is the colour of spring sunshine muted through old windows. Love has a taste, a texture - dark chocolate with pistachios; a sound - wind chimes echoing from a distant hill; a rhythm - the tango, obviously.

Winds shook me apart piecemeal, flung a bone here, a bone there. My eyes became snow, my hair turned to ice; I heard it chime against my shoulders like wind-blown glass. If I spoke, words would fall from me like snow, pour out of me like black wind.

As exhausted as I was, it took time for me to settle in. The curtains in my room let in too much light, the humming of bugs and the clanging of my wind chime collection were too loud. I flipped my pillow over twice. The sheet was too heavy. I was too cold without it. I got up and shut the window. The room became stuffy. I gave up and decided to watch some television.

If Madrina’s basement is where the tamboras, los espíritus, and old ancestral memories live, then the roof is where wind chimes, dreams, and possibilities float with the stars, where Janae and I share our secrets and plan to travel all over the world, Haiti and the Dominican Republic being our first stop.

And if you wish to receive of the ancient city an impression with which the modern one can no longer furnish you, climb--on the morning of some grand festival, beneath the rising sun of Easter or of Pentecost--climb upon some elevated point, whence you command the entire capital; and be present at the wakening of the chimes. Behold, at a signal given from heaven, for it is the sun which gives it, all those churches quiver simultaneously. First come scattered strokes, running from one church to another, as when musicians give warning that they are about to begin. Then, all at once, behold!--for it seems at times, as though the ear also possessed a sight of its own,--behold, rising from each bell tower, something like a column of sound, a cloud of harmony. First, the vibration of each bell mounts straight upwards, pure and, so to speak, isolated from the others, into the splendid morning sky; then, little by little, as they swell they melt together, mingle, are lost in each other, and amalgamate in a magnificent concert. It is no longer anything but a mass of sonorous vibrations incessantly sent forth from the numerous belfries; floats, undulates, bounds, whirls over the city, and prolongs far beyond the horizon the deafening circle of its oscillations. Nevertheless, this sea of harmony is not a chaos; great and profound as it is, it has not lost its transparency; you behold the windings of each group of notes which escapes from the belfries.

Her laughter changed her voice from wind chimes to the jingling of sleigh bells.

If your neighbor has wind chimes, you have wind chimes.

I was seeing whispers and wind chimes — not solid wind chimes dangling, which would have been all right; I was seeing the sound of wind chimes, and don’t ask me to describe it.

She destroyed his dreams, and he made her wind chimes.

She laughs. A clean, bright, and silver sound, like wind chimes.

Am I staring? Forgive me. It's only that I adore the way you laugh." Pandora blushed up to her hairline. She went to the nearest target and began to jerk out arrows. "Please don't compliment me." Gabriel went to the next target. "You don't like compliments?" "No, they make me feel awkward. They never seem true." "Perhaps they don't seem true to you, but that doesn't mean they're not." After sliding his arrows into a leather quiver, Gabriel came to help collect hers. "In this case," Pandora said, "it's definitely not true. My laugh sounds like a serenading tree frog swinging on a rusty gate." Gabriel smiled. "Like silver wind chimes in a summer breeze." "That's not at all how it sounds," Pandora scoffed. "But thats how it makes me feel." The intimate note in his voice seemed to vibrate along the network of fine, taut nerves strung all through her.

Water, wind and birdsong were the echoes in this quiet place of a great chiming symphony that was surging around the world. Knee-deep in grasses and moon daisies, Stella stood and listened, swaying a little as the flowers and trees were swaying, her spirit voice singing loudly, though her lips were still, and every pulse in her body beating its hammer strokes in time to the song.

A breeze lifted off the ocean and several hundred notes from the wind chimes tinkled like ice shaken in silver cups. They altered the mood of the forest the way an orchestra does a theater when it begins tuning up its instruments.

Kindness begins in the heart of a willing mind.

Love Song My own dear love, he is strong and bold And he cares not what comes after. His words ring sweet as a chime of gold, And his eyes are lit with laughter. He is jubilant as a flag unfurled— Oh, a girl, she’d not forget him. My own dear love, he is all my world,— And I wish I’d never met him. My love, he’s mad, and my love, he’s fleet, And a wild young wood-thing bore him! The ways are fair to his roaming feet, And the skies are sunlit for him. As sharply sweet to my heart he seems As the fragrance of acacia. My own dear love, he is all my dreams,— And I wish he were in Asia. My love runs by like a day in June, And he makes no friends of sorrows. He’ll tread his galloping rigadoon In the pathway of the morrows. He’ll live his days where the sunbeams start, Nor could storm or wind uproot him. My own dear love, he is all my heart,— And I wish somebody’d shoot him.

When winds are raging o'er the upper ocean, And billows wild contend with angry roar, 'Tis said, far down beneath the wild commotion, That peaceful stillness reigneth evermore. Far, far beneath, the noise of tempest dieth, And silver waves chime ever peacefully, And no rude storm, how fierce soe'er it flieth, Disturbs the Sabbath of that deeper sea. So to the heart that knows Thy love, O Purest, There is a temple sacred evermore, And all the babble of life's angry voices Dies in hushed silence at its peaceful door. Far, far away, the roar of passion dieth, And loving thoughts rise calm and peacefully, And no rude storm, how fierce soe'er it flieth, Disturbs the soul that dwells, O Lord, in Thee.

Trees of ice grow blue fruits the size of peaches, encased in a frozen crust. Some have fallen and split open like candy apples. The scent is that of honey and spice and sap. The leaves of the trees give off a haunting sound not unlike wind chimes when the air blows through the branches.

You will turn yourself inside out. Your sadness will know no bounds. Ladybugs will flee you, wolves run wild in you. You will hear the wind chimes like shattering. The sun will drip ichor. Whatever peace you find will be taken from you. Nothing will be the same. Nothing has ever been the same. “Past performance does not guarantee future results,” you will whisper to the rising moon, as you hear several foxes fleeing your vicinity.

You tell your daughter everything?” “Yes.” “Everything?” “Yes.” Will leaned in and brushed his lips over hers. Before she could react, before she could do anything, he eased back and winked. “Let me know what she has to say about that.

Usually, the murmur that rises up from Paris by day is the city talking; in the night it is the city breathing; but here it is the city singing. Listen, then, to this chorus of bell-towers - diffuse over the whole the murmur of half a million people - the eternal lament of the river - the endless sighing of the wind - the grave and distant quartet of the four forests placed upon the hills, in the distance, like immense organpipes - extinguish to a half light all in the central chime that would otherwise be too harsh or too shrill; and then say whetehr you know of anything in the world more rich, more joyous, more golden, more dazzling, than this tumult of bells and chimes - this furnace of music - these thousands of brazen voices, all singing together in flutes of stone three hundred feet high, than this city which is but one orchestra - this symphony which roars like a tempest.

& remember, loneliness is still time spent with the world. Here’s the room with everyone in it. Your dead friends passing through you like wind through a wind chime. Here’s a desk with the gimp leg & a brick to make it last. Yes, here’s a room so warm & blood-close, I swear, you will wake— & mistake these walls for skin.

derelict. my voice cracked and yolk poured out. wind chimes rigid, no breeze, no song. my wings found hidden in your suitcase. pleas for help mistaken for a swan song. i'm stuffing pages from my journal down my throat as kindling. hoping the smoke will get the taste of you out of my mouth. he looks at me from across the room and all i want is to push him against the wall. ravage. ravage. carnage has never been more vogue. is it still art if it doesn't bring you to your knees? lover, let me prey at your altar. let me bare my fangs in praise. don't i look so pretty in a funeral shroud? i keep time with the click of my creaking bones. dance with me under the milky translucence of a world suffocating. how did you find me? i buried myself beneath the cicadas. is a girl trapped in glass still a prize? let me get under your skin. i want to know what your fears taste like. i want to consume.

Faith Alive is Faith in Practice EVERYDAY

What's the most beautiful thing you've ever heard? Your heart breaking. Quick and delicate and beautiful, like wind chimes.

I think of your wind chime brain the low hanging indifferent sky a frame for loneliness just beginning— — Susan Rich, from “The Lost Thing,” diode (vol. 13, no. 3, Fall 2020)

The town was, except for the chirr and whisper of small animals and the tinkle of Tony Leominster’s wind chimes, silent. And silent. And silent.

My wishing star glowed slightly and winked back at me. I could almost hear its voice, tinkling like wind chimes and church bells, reassuring me that everything would return to normal.

It is not fashionable anymore, I suppose, to have a regard for one's mother in the way my brother and I had then, in the mid-1950s, when the noise outside the window was mostly wind and sea chime.

And saying it--the first time we say it and mean it-- we cross over into that other world that has so far been no more than a suspicion or a dream. Saying it, we enter the golden realm where the old structures of doubt and the agony of incompleteness disappear, and the utterance itself is the first bright rung on the ladder of new possibility. What a relief! What a joyous relief from the distinctive weight of your own soul, to be able to look unguardedly into the eyes of another and say it, meaning it and heady with knowing you mean it: "I love you." If the wind had blown through me at that moment, my body would have sung like a chime.

Eiffel Tower" To Robert Delaunay Eiffel Tower Guitar of the sky Your wireless telegraphy Attracts words As a rosebush the bees During the night The Seine no longer flows Telescope or bugle EIFFEL TOWER And it's a hive of words Or an inkwell of honey At the bottom of dawn A spider with barbed-wire legs Was making its web of clouds My little boy To climb the Eiffel Tower You climb on a song Do re mi fa sol la ti do We are up on top A bird sings in the telegraph antennae It's the wind Of Europe The electric wind Over there The hats fly away They have wings but they don't sing Jacqueline Daughter of France What do you see up there The Seine is asleep Under the shadow of its bridges I see the Earth turning And I blow my bugle Toward all the seas On the path Of your perfume All the bees and the words go their way On the four horizons Who has not heard this song I AM THE QUEEN OF THE DAWN OF THE POLES I AM THE COMPASS THE ROSE OF THE WINDS THAT FADES EVERY FALL AND ALL FULL OF SNOW I DIE FROM THE DEATH OF THAT ROSE IN MY HEAD A BIRD SINGS ALL YEAR LONG That's the way the Tower spoke to me one day Eiffel Tower Aviary of the world Sing Sing Chimes of Paris The giant hanging in the midst of the void Is the poster of France The day of Victory You will tell it to the stars

Oh, don'tleave now, little bird," Sarren crooned, licking blood from one long bony finger. "It's just getting interesting. You can't fly away just yet." "I wasn't leaving," I snarled. "I'm not about to let you spread your superplague or virus or whatever you want to call it. You might have given up on this world, but I'm not ready to die yet. I don't need your brand of salvation." The katana shook as I raised it in front of me, but I gripped the hilt and forced my arms to be steady. "So, come on, you psycopath. Let's do this. I'm not tied to a table anymore." Sarren's grin widened, making him even more frightening. " I still owe you for this, love," he said, gesturing to his left eye, cloudy and blind. "An eye for an eye, a tooth for tooth. Perhaps, I will pluck out both your eyes, then remove all your teeth, and make a necklace from them. Or maybe a wind chime. I do love wind chimes, don't you, little bird?

I lie awake in bed until way past midnight, fervently hoping Ky is going make an appearance at any moment to explain his behavior. But as the clock chimes two, I have no choice but to face facts. He isn’t coming. And it feels ominous. Like the winds are changing, and destiny is altering. His absence is more than telling. It has a finality to it that scares me half to death.

The town was its green suburban lawns, sure, but it was also its secrets. The kind of place where people double-checked the locks at night or pulled their kids closer in the grocery store. They hung horseshoes over their front doors and put up bells instead of wind chimes. They wore crosses made from stainless steel instead of gold because gold couldn't protect them from people like me.

Listen O’ westward winds,chime a requiem for my languid thoughts,for they are fruitless by the lone hours,and count not my tears, O’ streams in my stupor;and these low melancholy strings, the soul shall tune!

Pericles, he reflected, was a sad case. He'd been a postman all his life, a solid, reliable worker, until one Christmas when he had stolen all the gifts he was meant to deliver: wind-chimes, scented candles, Belgian chocolates, cowbells from the Bernese Oberland. Most of the haul had been lavished on his elderly mother; the rest he had stashed in his bedroom, which the old lady, being too frail to climb the stairs, no longer cleaned.

But if you could just pay her some small attention-or better yet, escort her yourself-it would be ever so helpful, and I would be grateful forever.” “Alex, if you were married to anyone but Jordan Townsende, I might consider asking you how you’d be willing to express your gratitude. However, since I haven’t any real wish to see my life brought to a premature end, I shall refrain from doing so and say instead that your smile is gratitude enough.” “Don’t joke, Roddy, I’m quite desperately in need of your help, and I would be eternally grateful for it.” “You are making me quake with trepidation, my sweet. Whoever she is, she must be in a deal of trouble if you need me.” “She’s lovely and spirited, and you will admire her tremendously.” “In that case, I shall deem it an embarrassing honor to lend my support to her. Who-“ His gaze flicked to a sudden movement in the doorway and riveted there, his eternally bland expression giving way to reverent admiration. “My God,” he whispered. Standing in the doorway like a vision from heaven was an unknown young woman clad in a shimmering silver-blue gown with a low, square neckline that offered a tantalizing view of smooth, voluptuous flesh, and a diagonally wrapped bodice that emphasized a tiny waist. Her glossy golden hair was swept back off her forehead and held in place with a sapphire clip, then left to fall artlessly about her shoulders and midway down her back, where it ended in luxurious waves and curls that gleamed brightly in the dancing candlelight. Beneath gracefully winged brows and long, curly lashes her glowing green eyes were neither jade nor emerald, but a startling color somewhere in between. In that moment of stunned silence Roddy observed her with the impartiality of a true connoisseur, looking for flaws that others would miss and finding only perfection in the delicately sculpted cheekbones, slender white throat, and soft mouth. The vision in the doorway moved imperceptibly. “Excuse me,” she said to Alexandra with a melting smile, her voice like wind chimes, “I didn’t realize you weren’t alone.” In a graceful swirl of silvery blue skirts she turned and vanished, and still Roddy stared at the empty doorway while Alexandra’s hopes soared. Never had she seen Roddy display the slightest genuine fascination for a feminine face and figure. His words sent her spirits even higher: “My God,” he said again in a reverent whisper. “Was she real?” “Very real,” Alex eagerly assured him, “and very desperately in need of your help, though she mustn’t know what I’ve asked of you. You will help, won’t you?” Dragging his gaze from the doorway, he shook his head as if to clear it. “Help?” he uttered dryly. “I’m tempted to offer her my very desirable hand in marriage!

Appeasements and manifest prayers in the shape of carved figurines and small stacks of peat, so the fire could dance and burn, and chimes made of fishing line and glass beads, so the wind could hear its own breath when it passed by.

Then I wanted to take a bath so I ran water into the big sunken tub and poured in some bath salts and lit the candles in the square glass holders around the rim of the tub. There were big windows overlooking the garden. I opened them and smelled the jasmine and the wet earth. There was a little warm breeze and the garden tinkled and chimed like stars falling. I called you. I wanted a refill on my wine. I wanted to give you the jasmine and the wind chime stars. I’m sorry.

But I no longer hear the gushing sound of the wind or the rubbing noise of the leaves. It is really, really silent here. Hark! I hear the chiming of a far-away bell. Did you hear it as well? It tells me that we have been boundless so far, so long… but now, what next?

God, no,” Monty says. “Isn’t it bad luck to see the bride before the wedding? Wait—am I the bride or the groom?” “You’re both the grooms,” Felicity says. “And that’s a silly superstition. It doesn’t mean anything.” As if on cue, Percy appears behind her in the doorway, his dark suit freshly pressed and noticeably free of holes. “Are you ready?” Felicity shrieks and throws her arms up in front of him. The wine glasses she’s holding tinkle against each other like wind chimes. “What are you doing? It’s bad luck for you to see each other!

Whenever the sadness got too much, I would hire a rickshaw and go to the Upper Bazaar. Those little rickshaw trips to the market and back, shopping for lipsticks and imitation Gucci bags and wind-chimes and what not, are some of my happiest memories today. You know, one day, during one of those trips, I sold all my well-thumbed copies of ‘Inside Outside’ to the Tibetan guy who ran the old book store on Netaji Road for seventy rupees, six Tintins and a disarming smile. And all of a sudden, that moment, standing at the corner of Netaji road, I found out who I was.’ ('Left from Dhakeshwari')

He must notice that I’m not understanding. He dips a finger beneath the surface of the water and pulls up; with a vibrant pulse of his majick, the aqua raises him up until he’s on something similar to a pillar and face to face with me. Then despite the language barrier, he speaks slowly and adds hand gestures. Like I’m the lake simpleton. The look on my face must pass along how I feel about it because he stops and laughs, reminding me of the sound wooden wind chimes make on a breezy day. It’s deep, peaceful, and resonates with my power; my heart stutters from a mini overload, similar to having drunk too much caffeine.

Josey was a different person than she was even a month ago. She reminded Margaret so much now of Marco's cousins from Italy. They'd shown up in Bald Slope without warning once, early in Marco and Margaret's wedding. They were magical women, with their long curly hair, large breasts and movements like dancers. Their bracelets sounded like wind chimes when they walked. Margaret had been fascinated by them. Marco had ushered them out within hours of their arrival and taken them to Asheville for their stay. He was ashamed of them, their earthiness and sensuality, of their provincial ways. No one from Italy ever visited again.

HEART ACTION Think about when you are silent about God's activity in your life. Look for a chance this week to speak out about God's goodness. Giving and gratitude go together like humor and laughter, like having one's back rubbed and the sigh that follows, like a blowing wind and the murmur of wind chimes. Gratitude keeps alive the rhythm ofgrace given andgrace grateful, a lively lilt that lightens a heavy world. LEWIS B. SMEDES Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. -MATTHEW 6:9-13 The "Lord's Prayer" is a model for our prayers. It begins with adoration of God (verse 9), acknowledges subjection to His will (verse 10), asks of Him (verses 11-13), and ends with an offering of praise (verse 13). The fatherhood of God toward His children is the basis for Jesus' frequent teaching about prayer. "Your Father knows what you need," Jesus told His disciples, "before you ask Him" (Matthew 6:8). Jesus presents a pattern that the church has followed throughout the

Picture a summer stolen whole from some coming-of-age film set in the small-town 1950s. This is none of Ireland's subtle seasons mixed for a connoisseur's palate, watercolor nuances within a pinch-sized range of cloud and soft rain; this is summer full-throated and extravagant in a hot pure silkscreen blue. This summer explodes on your tongue tasting of chewed blades of long grass, your own clean sweat, Marie biscuits with butter squirting through the holes and shaken bottles of red lemonade picnicked in tree houses. It tingles on your skin with BMX wind in your face, ladybug feet up your arm; it packs every breath full of mown grass and billowing wash lines; it chimes and fountains with birdcalls, bees, leaves and football-bounces and skipping-chants, One! two! three! This summer will never end. It starts every day with a shower of Mr. Whippy notes and your best friend's knock at the door, finishes it with long slow twilight and mothers silhouetted in doorways calling you to come in, through the bats shrilling among the black lace trees. This is Everysummer decked in all its best glory.

At the top was a delightful alpine heath with short golden-green grass and scads of beautiful pink and purple flowers that Alice decided not to study more closely. Even though at second glance it became obvious that the glorious sunlight wasn't sparkling off their dew but the petals themselves: each blossom was a jewel, or maybe glass, and chimed gently in the wind.

Most of what we got was crockery: from exotic crystal bowls to ceramic anomalies. Then, a cross-section of rugs- from a beautiful Kashmiri original to a memorable one with printed dragons and utterly incomprehensible hieroglyphics. Dibyendu (typically) gave us a scrabble set and Runai Maashi: that rocking chair. Yuppie work friends, trying to be unique and aesthetically offbeat, went for wind-chimes but there were really far too many of them by the end. We also got a fantastic number of white and off-white kurtas, jamdani sarees with complementary blouses, no less than nine suitcases, suit pieces, imported condoms, bed-sheets, bed-covers, coffee makers, coffee tables, coffee-table books, poetry books, used gifts (paintings of sunsets and other disasters), three nights and four days in Darjeeling, along with several variations of Durga, Ganesh and all the usual suspects in ivory, china, terracotta, papier-mâché, and what have you. Someone gave us a calendar that looking back, I think, was laudably sardonic. Others gave us money, in various denominations: from eleven to five hundred and one. And in one envelope, came a letter for her that she read in tears in the bathroom.’ ('Left from Dhakeshwari')

There were stalls nestled around the castle the way the lights were, not in rows but in odd spots, as if the stalls had grown there or alighted on random places like birds. There was one stall with ringing chimes that was set halfway up a ruined wall, so the customers had to climb sliding pieces of slate to get to it. There were more stalls set in the grassy hollows among the stones and nestled into the corners of the walls. One woman had actually turned a ruined wall into her stall, brightly colored jars arranged on the jagged, protruding shards of stone. All through the fragments of a lost castle lit by magic moved the people of the Goblin Market. There was a man hanging up knives alongside wind chimes, which made dangerous and beautiful music as they rang together in the sea breeze. There was a boy who looked about twelve stirring something in a cauldron with a rich-smelling cloud handing over it, and bark cups ranged along his stall.

She listened to the soft splashing sound when the water met the bank. It took just a few moments before she was able to completely fade out the smell of pollution and inhaled the salty air. The soft breeze mingled with the swooshing and splashing of the waves, with the rustling of grass, the tictac as long undressed twigs of the tree met each other, composing a gentle melody like wooden wind-chimes. The whole concert of nature calmed her down like nothing had ever been able to.

She was so good at stopping to notice life. At any given moment, she’d say, “Do you smell that?” Or, “Do you hear that?” Or, “Do you see that?” They’d go for a walk and she’d see a dog she’d never seen before and be totally captivated. She could watch this dog forever, it seemed. Or she could pick a flower and hold it in her hands for an hour. She found magic in the littlest things: the sound of her chimes on the deck blowing in the wind, the shapes of the clouds, the shimmer of the morning.

The roof. We order a bunch of food, grab some blankets, and head up to the roof for a picnic. A daylong picnic in the flower garden that tinkles with wind chimes. We eat. We lie in the sun. I snap off hanging vines and use my newfound knowledge from training to practice knots and weave nets. Peeta sketches me. We make up a game with the force field that surrounds the roof — one of us throws an apple into it and the other person has to catch it. No one bothers us. By late afternoon, I lie with my head on Peeta’s lap, making a crown of flowers while he fiddles with my hair, claiming he’s practicing his knots. After a while, his hands go still. “What?” I ask. “I wish I could freeze this moment, right here, right now, and live in it forever,” he says. Usually this sort of comment, the kind that hints of his undying love for me, makes me feel guilty and awful. But I feel so warm and relaxed and beyond worrying about a future I’ll never have, I just let the word slip out. “Okay.” I can hear the smile in his voice. “Then you’ll allow it?

Noon. In the middle of Knoll Road. In it up to your waist, wearing your father’s old reindeer sweater, your mother’s fur-lined gloves. Squinting across an infinite ocean of white. Shivering. Breathing. Listening. To nothing. There are no cars, no mailboxes, no traffic islands, no sound. The triple-deckers are now double-deckers and everything’s muffled and buried and gone. You yell and you are the only one yelling. The only one breathing. The only one there. The faint chime of a city plow in the distance. The wail of one of Schoerner’s penned-up hounds. But no one is with you. No one to contradict you. And you dare to close your eyes and fill up your lungs with winter, your destiny before you like a map of the world. And the wind seems to whisper promises, and you, with arms outstretched and chin to the heavens, swear oaths back to the wind - little things, like fulfilling prophecies and charting new courses and going forth from this time and this place to do great and wondrous things. But first, of course, it will be necessary to get high.

It was long past midnight. Laura's music played on. It was composed in the language of stars, tinkling in a crystal pool suspended from constellations. She used chimes now and then, the chimes that characterized every patio in Arizona, the piano, the trees combed by wind. A prelude to a storm. It was like discovering the secret room in a dream of your house that holds all the magic. It was music I wished I lived inside. Around us, cactus, hills filled with jumping cholla, the heat of August like another animal heaving over us.

Victoria sighed deeply as the clock tower bell chimed midnight. Light snowflakes, almost weightless, began drifting down from the sky. Tiny, white butterflies danced in the wind among the bare trees. The two young people turned their eyes up towards the dark sky. "The fairies are weeping," she whispered. "What?" asked Ted, looking back at her. Victoria turned her grey eyes back at him and smiled. "In the lands of the north they say that when snowflakes fall at midnight, they are the tears of fairies falling on the ground. The fairies are weeping.

His guess was confirmed when they approached the well-built harbour of a prosperous town and saw the banners flying from the bastions of the citadel. After the sultry heat of Zarzis, the sailors’ hearts were lifted and refreshed by the airy music reaching their ears as they pulled in towards the marble wharf. Only when they docked did they realise that they were listening to the sound of the breeze strumming through countless wind-harps and chiming among webs and lattices of translucent shell. It felt as though the wind that had blown them there was now celebrating their arrival.

The rain rapped the roof like mallets. The thunder was a tympani drum. Downstairs the raiders set fire to the refectory and the flames crackled like a hundred castanets. Those few who had not fled the church were screaming, high, pleading shrieks, met by lower barking orders of those committing the atrocities. The low and high voices, the crackling fire, whipping wind, drumming rain and crashing thunder created an angry symphony, swirling to a crescendo, and just as the invaders threw open the tomb of Saint Pascual, ready to desecrate his bones, the bells above the basilica began to chime, causing all to look up. At that precise moment, Frankie Presto was born.

A Forge, and a Scythe" One minute I had the windows open and the sun was out. Warm breezes blew through the room. (I remarked on this in a letter.) Then, while I watched, it grew dark. The water began whitecapping. All the sport-fishing boats turned and headed in, a little fleet. Those wind-chimes on the porch blew down. The tops of our trees shook. The stove pipe squeaked and rattled around in its moorings. I said, "A forge, and a scythe." I talk to myself like this. Saying the names of things -- capstan, hawser, loam, leaf, furnace. Your face, your mouth, your shoulder inconceivable to me now! Where did they go? It's like I dreamed them. The stones we brought home from the beach lie face up on the windowsill, cooling. Come home. Do you hear? My lungs are thick with the smoke of your absence.

Hunger became an ally. My metabolism changed and my understanding of this land changed with it. On the night the wind howled, our tents rattled like bones. We were camped by a string lake. Pans of ice made of bunched crystals floated by. Pale green on top, the clear sides looked like see-through rows of teeth. When the sun came, the bunched stalks disintegrated: deconstructed chandeliers. I heard music—not Dennis’s but candle-ice tinkling. The whole lake chimed. Lying on top of my sleeping bag by the water, I lost track of my body. I wasn’t floating—there was nothing mysterious going on—but something had let go inside me. The weight of my boots, my abraded heels, ankles, and toes ceased to hurt and no longer impeded my journey. I had entered a trance state. The equation was this: hunger + beauty = movement. I wanted only to keep going.

Mindy runs to the DVD player and delicately places the disk in the holder and presses play. “Will you sit in this chair, please, Princess Mindy?” I ask, bowing deeply at the waist. Mindy giggles as she replies, ”I guess so.” After Mindy sits down, I take a wide-tooth comb and start gently combing out her tangles. Mindy starts vibrating with excitement as she blurts, “Mr. Jeff, you’re gonna fix my hair fancy, ain’t you?” “We’ll see if a certain Princess can hold still long enough for me to finish,” I tease. Immediately, Mindy becomes as still as a stone statue. After a couple of minutes, I have to say, “Mindy, sweetheart, it’s okay to breathe. I just can’t have you bouncing, because I’m afraid it will cause me to pull your hair.” Mindy slumps down in her chair just slightly. “Okay Mr. Jeff, I was ascared you was gonna stop,” she whispers, her chin quivering. I adopt a very fake, very over-the-top French accent and say, “Oh no, Monsieur Jeff must complete Princess Mindy’s look to make the Kingdom happy. Mindy erupts with the first belly laugh I’ve heard all day as she responds, “Okay, I’ll try to be still, but it’s hard ‘cause I have the wiggles real bad.” I pat her on the shoulder and chuckle as I say, “Just try your best, sweetheart. That’s all anyone can ask.” Kiera comes screeching around the corner in a blur, plunks her purse on the table, and says breathlessly, “Geez-O-Pete, I can’t believe I’m late for the makeover. I love makeovers.” Kiera digs through her purse and produces two bottles of nail polish and nail kit. “It’s time for your mani/pedi ma’am. Would you prefer Pink Pearl or Frosted Creamsicle? Mindy raises her hand like a schoolchild and Kiera calls on her like a pupil, “I want Frosted Cream toes please,” Mindy answers. “Your wish is my command, my dear,” Kiera responds with a grin. For the next few minutes, Mindy gets the spa treatment of her life as I carefully French braid her hair into pigtails. As a special treat, I purchased some ribbons from the gift shop and I’m weaving them into her hair. I tuck a yellow rose behind her ear. I don my French accent as I declare, “Monsieur Jeffery pronounces Princess Mindy finished and fit to rule the kingdom.” Kiera hands Mindy a new tube of grape ChapStick from her purse, “Hold on, a true princess never reigns with chapped lips,” she says. Mindy giggles as she responds, “You’re silly, Miss Kiera. Nobody in my kingdom is going to care if my lips are shiny.” Kiera’s laugh sounds like wind chimes as she covers her face with her hands as she confesses, “Okay, you busted me. I just like to use it because it tastes yummy.” “Okay, I want some, please,” Mindy decides. Kiera is putting the last minute touches on her as Mindy is scrambling to stand on Kiera’s thighs so she can get a better look in the mirror. When I reach out to steady her, she grabs my hand in a death grip. I glance down at her. Her eyes are wide and her mouth is opening and closing like a fish. I shoot Kiera a worried glance, but she merely shrugs. “Holy Sh — !” Mindy stops short when she sees Kiera’s expression. “Mr. Jeff is an angel for reals because he turned me into one. Look at my hair Miss Kiera, there are magic ribbons in it! I’m perfect. I can be anything I want to be.” Spontaneously, we all join together in a group hug. I kiss the top of her head as I agree, “Yes, Mindy, you are amazing and the sky is the limit for you.

There once was a town. It was a quaint little town, in a quiet valley, where life moved at the pace of snails and the only road in was the only way out, too. There was a candy store that sold the sweetest honey taffy you ever tasted, and a garden store that grew exotic, beautiful blooms year-round. The local café was named after a possum that tormented its owner for years, and the chef there made the best honey French toast in the Northeast. There was a bar where the bartender always knew your name, and always served your burgers slightly burnt, though the local hot sauce always disguised the taste. If you wanted to stay the weekend, you could check-in at the new bed-and-breakfast in town--- just as soon as its renovations were finished, and just a pleasant hike up Honeybee Trail was a waterfall there, rumor had it, if you made a wish underneath it, the wish would come true. There was a drugstore, a grocer, a jewelry store that was open only when Mercury was in of retrograde--- And, oh, there was a bookstore. It was tucked into an unassuming corner of an old brick building fitted with a labyrinthine maze of shelves stocked with hundreds of books. In the back corner was a reading space with a fireplace, and chairs so cozy you could sink into them for hours while you read. The rafters were filled with glass chimes that, when the sunlight came in through the top windows, would send dapples of colors flooding across the stacks of books, painting them in rainbows. A family of starlings roosted in the eaves, and sang different songs every morning, in time with the tolls of the clock tower. The town was quiet in that cozy, sleepy way that if you closed your eyes, you could almost hear the valley breathe as wind crept through it, between the buildings, and was sighed out again.

But I have thought of you often during these holidays and imagined how quiet you must be in your lonely fort among the empty hills, upon which those big southerly winds precipitate themselves as though they would devour them in great pieces. The stillness must be immense in which such sounds and movements have room, and when one thinks that to it all the presence of the far-off sea comes chiming in as well, perhaps as the inmost tone in that prehistoric harmony, then one can only wish for you that you are confidently and patiently letting that lofty solitude work upon you which is no more to be stricken out of your life; which in everything there is ahead of you to experience and to do will work as an anonymous influence, continuously and gently decisive, much as in us blood of ancestors ceaselessly stirs and mingles with our own into that unique, not repeatable being which at every turning of our life we are.

She’s smart, but it’s not just that she’s smart. She works harder than anyone I know, yet she’s too hard on herself. Everyone likes Mia. From the geeks to the jocks to the stoners, every single group of kids in our class has nothing but the best to say about her because she never judges. She’s not petty like other people. She doesn’t gossip, but instead, she gives people the benefit of the doubt. I’ve seen her put others first, one too many times because she hates confrontation. Unless it’s with me, of course, and then she’s brutal.” Carson’s voice grew soft as he turned me around in his arms to face him. “But she puts too much pressure on herself to be perfect. And I hate that. It eats away at me when I see it.” My heart pounded like a drum in my chest until I thought it might burst. All I could do was stare up at him, my lashes fluttering as I blinked away my shock. He reached up to my hair and smoothed a hand through my locks, and for a moment, I wondered if he remembered we weren’t alone, that there was someone—a stranger—standing only feet away from us, but he just continued, dragging his fingers through the length of my locks as he said, “Her hair. . .it reminds me of the sunset—both orange, and fiery pink, and pale yellow at the same time. She’s a good friend—loyal to the core and trustworthy, the kind who will be on your side through anything. And her laugh. . .She has this laugh. The one where she doesn’t think someone’s funny, but she’s pretending anyway. That laugh doesn’t reach her eyes. But her real laugh, now that’s something to see because her whole face gets into it. It’s uncontrollable. It sounds like wind chimes, and she crinkles her nose and eyes.” Reaching up, he touched the bridge of my nose, making me gasp. “And every time I hear it, I think, I want to be the one to make her laugh like that because it’s impossible to hear and not smile. It pulls you in, that laugh.

They’re all okay, then?” I grin like an idiot. What is wrong with me? She rises from her chair, fluid and vaguely shimmering. Her grace is legendary. I’m agile and strong, but I’d rather move like sunbeams on water, like Selena. “In good health and arguing incessantly with Desma and Aetos. Those two are under the impression the Sintans abducted you.” She’s asking a question. I owe her an answer. “They did. Sort of.” Her sculpted lips purse. “Help me understand a ‘sort of’ abduction,” Selena says, pouring me a cup of water. Well, it sounds stupid when you say it like that. My throat is parched, so I drink before answering. “He’s Beta Sinta. He said he’d have you all arrested if I didn’t come.” “And you believed him?” It’s a loaded question coming from Selena. I nod. After nearly a month with him, I also know he would have done it because he felt he had to, not because he wanted to. “He needs a powerful Magoi to help him and his precious Alpha sister, Egeria.” Egeria is no Alpha. She sounds more like a buttercup. Beta Sinta on the other hand, he’s Alpha material. Fierce on the battlefield, bloody, focused, ruthless…fair? “Plus, he had a magic rope.” Selena laughs, and the sound is like wind chimes on a spring breeze. “You? Caught by a magic rope?” I flush. “Don’t remind me.” She clears her throat, taming more laughter, and asks, “Will you help him?” Selena may not know who I am, but I’m certain she knows what I am—the Kingmaker—even if we’ve never discussed it. “My abilities can be valuable in diplomatic situations,” I say carefully. “He came here to save you. He looked like he cared.” I shrug, glancing down. “I’m a weapon he doesn’t want to lose.” “I think there’s more.” My eyes snap back up. “Don’t infer something that isn’t there. We’re both monsters.” Her dark-blue gaze flicks over me, unnerving. “Monsters still mate.” I choke on my own spit and then cough. A faint smile curves her lips. “Why didn’t you just escape?” “The rope.” That stupid, infuriating enchanted rope that led me to make a binding vow to stay with Beta Sinta until his—or my, if it comes first—dying day. She looks incredulous. “You couldn’t find a way out?” “It was a bloody good rope!

Child of the pure unclouded brow And dreaming eyes of wonder! Though time be fleet, and I and thou Are half a life asunder, Thy loving smile will surely hail The love-gift of a fairy-tale. I have not seen thy sunny face, Nor heard thy silver laughter; No thought of me shall find a place In thy young life’s hereafter – Enough that now thou wilt not fail To listen to my fairy-tale. A tale begun in other days, When summer suns were glowing – A simple chime, that served to time The rhythm of our rowing – Whose echoes live in memory yet, Though envious years would say “forget.” Come, hearken then, ere voice of dread, With bitter tidings laden, Shall summon to unwelcome bed A melancholy maiden! We are but older children, dear, Who fret to find our bedtime near. Without, the frost, the blinding snow, The storm-wind’s moody madness – Within, the firelight’s ruddy glow, And childhood’s nest of gladness. The magic words shall hold thee fast: Thou shalt not heed the raving blast. And though the shadow of a sigh May tremble through the story, For ‘happy summer days’ gone by, And vanish’d summer glory – It shall not touch with breath of bale The pleasance of our fairy-tale.

After the Grand Perhaps” After vespers, after the first snow has fallen to its squalls, after New Wave, after the anorexics have curled into their geometric forms, after the man with the apparition in his one bad eye has done red things behind the curtain of the lid & sleeps, after the fallout shelter in the elementary school has been packed with tins & other tangibles, after the barn boys have woken, startled by foxes & fire, warm in their hay, every part of them blithe & smooth & touchable, after the little vandals have tilted toward the impossible seduction to smash glass in the dark, getting away with the most lethal pieces, leaving the shards which travel most easily through flesh as message on the bathroom floor, the parking lots, the irresistible debris of the neighbor’s yard where he’s been constructing all winter long. After the pain has become an old known friend, repeating itself, you can hold on to it. The power of fright, I think, is as much as magnetic heat or gravity. After what is boundless: wind chimes, fertile patches of the land, the ochre symmetry of fields in fall, the end of breath, the beginning of shadow, the shadow of heat as it moves the way the night heads west, I take this road to arrive at its end where the toll taker passes the night, reading. I feel the cupped heat of his left hand as he inherits change; on the road that is not his road anymore I belong to whatever it is which will happen to me. When I left this city I gave back the metallic waking in the night, the signals of barges moving coal up a slow river north, the movement of trains, each whistle like a woodwind song of another age passing, each ambulance would split a night in two, lying in bed as a little girl, a fear of being taken with the sirens as they lit the neighborhood in neon, quick as the fire as it takes fire & our house goes up in night. After what is arbitrary: the hand grazing something too sharp or fine, the word spoken out of sleep, the buckling of the knees to cold, the melting of the parts to want, the design of the moon to cast unfriendly light, the dazed shadow of the self as it follows the self, the toll taker’s sorrow that we couldn’t have been more intimate. Which leads me back to the land, the old wolves which used to roam on it, the one light left on the small far hill where someone must be living still. After life there must be life.

So she closed her eyes and swung high, with the wind pushing her hair back and the scent of the day in her lungs. Her feet kicked toward the sun, and she imagined her anger was a fire that could scour everything clean, leaving nothing behind but a single solitary truck buried in the sand. She’d swung like this as a little girl. Back when she’d still thought she could fly. She’d fought gravity and thrown her little body against the chains until the swing arced so high the chains started to go slack, and she got that little excited twist of fear in the pit of her stomach when it felt like nothing was holding her up. She’d always thought she would rip loose from the seat, and wings would sprout from her back and carry her away. She’d laughed until she was dizzy, then screamed happily as the earth dragged her back down in a plunging descent—and she’d always waited for just that perfect moment to thrust her legs out and saw them against the air so she could fight coming to ground for just a few seconds longer. Just a few seconds while her nanny shouted that she’d hurt herself. Seconds when the giggles of the other children sounded like wind-chime music, and she’d felt like she’d had the sky in her veins.

It had had a fragrant element, reminding him of a regular childhood experience, a memory that reverberated like the chimes of a prayer bell inside his head. For a few moments, he pictured the old Orthodox church that had dominated his remote Russian village. The bearded priest was swinging the elaborate incense-burner, suspended from gold-plated chains. It had been the same odour. Hadn’t it? He blinked, shook his head. He couldn’t make sense of that. He decided, with an odd lack of enthusiasm, that he’d imagined it. The effects of the war played tricks of the mind, of the senses. Looking over his shoulder, he counted all seven of his men as they emerged from the remnants of the four-storey civic office building. A few muddied documents were scattered on the ground, stamped with the official Nazi Party eagle, its head turned to the left, and an emblem he failed to recognize, but which looked to him like a decorative wheel, with a geometrical design of squares at its centre. Even a blackened flag had survived the bomb damage. Hanging beneath a crumbling windowsill, the swastika flapped against the bullet-ridden façade, the movement both panicky and defiant, Pavel thought. His men were conscripts. A few still wore their padded khaki jackets and mustard-yellow blouses. Most, their green field tunics and forage caps. All the clothing was lice-ridden and smeared with soft ash. Months of exposure to frozen winds had darkened their skins and narrowed their eyes. They’d been engaged in hazardous reconnaissance missions. They’d slept rough and had existed on a diet of raw husks and dried horsemeat. Haggard and weary now, he reckoned they’d aged well beyond their years.

The crowd as silent,holding their breaths.Hot wind rustled in the trees as the ax gleamed in the sun.Luce could feel that the end was coming,but why? Why had her soul dragged her here? What insight abouther past,or the curse, could she possibly gain from having her head cut off? Then Daniel dropped the ax to the ground. "What are you doing?" Luce asked. Daniel didn't answer.He rolled back his shoulders, turned his face toward the sky, and flung out her arms. Zotz stepped forward to interfere,but when he touched Daniel's shoulder,he screamed and recoiled as if he'd been burned. And then- Daniel's white wings unfurled from his shoulders.As they extended fully from his sides,huge and shockingly bright against the parched brown landscape, they sent twenty Mayans hurtling backward. Shouts rang out around the cenote: "What is he?" "The boy is winged!" "He is a god! Sent to us by Chaat!" Luce thrashed against the ropes binding her wrists and her ankles.She needed to run to Daniel.She tried to move toward him,until- Until she couldn't move anymore. Daniel's wings were so bright they were almost unbearable. Only, now it wasn't just Daniel's wings that were glowing. It was...all of him. His entire body shone.As if he'd swallowed the sun. Music filled the air.No,not music, but a single harmonious chord.Deafening and unending,glorious and frightening. Luce had heard it before...somewhere. In the cemetery at Sword&Cross, the last night she'd been there,the night Daniel had fought Cam,and Luce hadn't been allowed to watch.The night Miss Sophia had dragged her away and Penn had died and nothing had ever been the same.It had begun with that very same chord,and it was coming out of Daniel.He was lit up so brightly,his body actually hummed. She swayed where she stood,unable to take her eyes away.An intense wave of heat stroked her skin. Behind Luce,someone cried out.The cry was followed by another,and then another,and then a whole chorus of voices crying out. Something was burning.It was acrid and choking and turned her stomach instantly. Then,in the corner of her vision,there was an explosion of flame, right where Zotz had been standing a moment before. The boom knocked her backward,and she turned away from the burning brightness of Daniel,coughing on the black ash and bitter smoke. Hanhau was gone,the ground where she'd stood scorched black.The gap-toothed man was hiding his face,trying hard not to look at Daniel's radiance.But it was irresistible.Luce watched as the man peeked between his fingers and burst into a pillar of flame. All around the cenote,the Mayans stared at Daniel.And one by one,his brilliance set them ablaze.Soon a bright ring of fire lit up the jungle,lit up everyone but Luce. "Ix Cuat!" Daniel reached for her. His glow made Luce scream out in pain,but even as she felt as if she were on the verge of asphyxiation, the words tumbled from her mouth. "You're glorious." "Don't look at me," he pleaded. "When a mortal sees an angel's true essence, then-you can see what happened to the others.I can't let you leave me again so soon.Always so soon-" "I'm still here," Luce insisted. "You're still-" He was crying. "Can you see me? The true me?" "I can see you." And for just a fraction of a second,she could.Her vision cleared.His glow was still radiant but not so blinding.She could see his soul. It was white-hot and immaculate,and it looked-there was no other way to say it-like Daniel. And it felt like coming home.A rush of unparalleled joy spread through Luce.Somewhere in the back of her mind,a bell of recognition chimed. She'd seen him like this before. Hadn't she? As her mind strained to draw upon the past she couldn't quite touch,the light of him began to overwhelm her. "No!" she cried,feeling the fire sear her heart and her body shake free of something.

Chris- the one who wrote the halfway creepy thing about missing me so much when I didn't post and thinking I was dead- found it mind-boggling that before the Julie/Julia Project began, I had never eaten an egg. She asked, "How can you have gotten through life without eating a single egg? How is that POSSIBLE???!!!!!" Of course, it wasn't exactly true that I hadn't eaten an egg. I had eaten them in cakes. I had even eaten them scrambled once or twice, albeit in the Texas fashion, with jalapeños and a pound of cheese. But the goal of my egg-eating had always been to make sure the egg did not look, smell, or taste anything like one, and as a result my history in this department was, I suppose, unusual. Chris wasn't the only person shocked. People I'd never heard of chimed in with their awe and dismay. I didn't really get it. Surely this is not such a bizarre hang-up as hating, say, croutons, like certain spouses I could name. Luckily, eggs made the Julia Child way often taste like cream sauce. Take Oeufs en Cocotte, for example. These are eggs baked with some butter and cream in ramekins set in a shallow pan of water. They are tremendous. In fact the only thing better than Oeufs en Cocotte is Ouefs en Cocotte with Sauce au Cari on top when you've woken up with a killer hangover, after one of those nights when somebody decided at midnight to buy a pack of cigarettes after all, and the girls wind up smoking and drinking and dancing around the living room to the music the boy is downloading from iTunes onto his new, ludicrously hip and stylish G3 Powerbook until three in the morning. On mornings like this, Oeufs en Cocotte with Sauce au Cari, a cup of coffee, and an enormous glass of water is like a meal fed to you by the veiled daughters of a wandering Bedouin tribe after one of their number comes upon you splayed out in the sands of the endless deserts of Araby, moments from death- it's that good.

And if you wish to receive of the ancient city an impression with which the modern one can no longer furnish you, climb—on the morning of some grand festival, beneath the rising sun of Easter or of Pentecost—climb upon some elevated point, whence you command the entire capital; and be present at the wakening of the chimes. Behold, at a signal given from heaven, for it is the sun which gives it, all those churches quiver simultaneously. First come scattered strokes, running from one church to another, as when musicians give warning that they are about to begin. Then, all at once, behold!—for it seems at times, as though the ear also possessed a sight of its own,—behold, rising from each bell tower, something like a column of sound, a cloud of harmony. First, the vibration of each bell mounts straight upwards, pure and, so to speak, isolated from the others, into the splendid morning sky; then, little by little, as they swell they melt together, mingle, are lost in each other, and amalgamate in a magnificent concert. It is no longer anything but a mass of sonorous vibrations incessantly sent forth from the numerous belfries; floats, undulates, bounds, whirls over the city, and prolongs far beyond the horizon the deafening circle of its oscillations. Nevertheless, this sea of harmony is not a chaos; great and profound as it is, it has not lost its transparency; you behold the windings of each group of notes which escapes from the belfries. You can follow the dialogue, by turns grave and shrill, of the treble and the bass; you can see the octaves leap from one tower to another; you watch them spring forth, winged, light, and whistling, from the silver bell, to fall, broken and limping from the bell of wood; you admire in their midst the rich gamut which incessantly ascends and re-ascends the seven bells of Saint-Eustache; you see light and rapid notes running across it, executing three or four luminous zigzags, and vanishing like flashes of lightning. Yonder is the Abbey of Saint-Martin, a shrill, cracked singer; here the gruff and gloomy voice of the Bastille; at the other end, the great tower of the Louvre, with its bass. The royal chime of the palace scatters on all sides, and without relaxation, resplendent trills, upon which fall, at regular intervals, the heavy strokes from the belfry of Notre-Dame, which makes them sparkle like the anvil under the hammer. At intervals you behold the passage of sounds of all forms which come from the triple peal of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Then, again, from time to time, this mass of sublime noises opens and gives passage to the beats of the Ave Maria, which bursts forth and sparkles like an aigrette of stars. Below, in the very depths of the concert, you confusedly distinguish the interior chanting of the churches, which exhales through the vibrating pores of their vaulted roofs. Assuredly, this is an opera which it is worth the trouble of listening to. Ordinarily, the noise which escapes from Paris by day is the city speaking; by night, it is the city breathing; in this case, it is the city singing. Lend an ear, then, to this concert of bell towers; spread over all the murmur of half a million men, the eternal plaint of the river, the infinite breathings of the wind, the grave and distant quartette of the four forests arranged upon the hills, on the horizon, like immense stacks of organ pipes; extinguish, as in a half shade, all that is too hoarse and too shrill about the central chime, and say whether you know anything in the world more rich and joyful, more golden, more dazzling, than this tumult of bells and chimes;—than this furnace of music,—than these ten thousand brazen voices chanting simultaneously in the flutes of stone, three hundred feet high,—than this city which is no longer anything but an orchestra,—than this symphony which produces the noise of a tempest.

Chimes at the Edge of Hearing (2011) Chimes in the heavens sound so fine, Whither does it go; how it chimes the time. Tumultuous river of colored tinselly sounds, Their music brasses forth, it has no bounds. Tinkle clackle tinke koo, How infinite the melody with notes so few. Chimes clanging silent at the edge of hearing, Does it not sound so jingly and endearing? Klankle ping chinkle cree, Quite the sound of discordant harmony. Pakkle kikkle ringly kat, Chimes echo out; they drift cackling back. A cacophony of clingles, pims and tinkle-ets, Chimes shinkle loud at the crescendo of their octets. Pakickle tamtankle jjingling kites, They fly into darkness on the clatter of midnight. Chimes symphonic at the coming black storm, Upon the shrieks their shimmering rrrings are born. Sounds and silences; the glistening chimes adorn, Haunting images of sounds so distant and forlorned. Cymbal they together; the sound of crackly glass, They remind of the times and rattles of the past. Metals on metals trinklelink clapping down the time, Their clittering rhythms broke, raw and refined. Concerto of jangles jinkles and dings, See their sound, how pleasant they dream. Off they go, winds klickle on smooth breeze, And chinkle and pinkle through my melodic tree. dlaurent

With tinny drumbeats, the rain pounds the roof My teary eyes compete They can't keep up Breathe Let it go Breathe The vice on my chest tightens its razoring grip I gasp No relief If only tears could soothe the pain Then, I would look upon the tidal waves against these walls without fear Crush and roll me, I'd plead, Mold my body anew But with these tears come no healing, Just death, slow and determined This old girl, this old woman, this old soul lives here inside A tortoise outgrowing this hare's body This youthful skin encasing a crumbling frame I smooth the matted web of curls off my sweaty neck And roll my eyes at the clock How slowly the time squeaks by here in this room, In this comfortless bed I abandon the warmth from under my blanket tower and shiver The draft rattles my spine One by one, striking my vertebrae Like a spoon chiming empty wine glasses, Hitting the same fragile note till my neck shakes the chill away I swipe along the naked floor with a toe for the slippers beneath the bed Plush fabric caresses my feet Stand! Get up With both hands, Gravity jerks me back down Ugh! This cursed bed! No more, I want no more of it I try again My legs quiver in search of my former strength Come on, old girl, Come on, old woman, Come on, old soul, Don't quit now The floor shakes beneath me, Hoping I trip and fall To the living room window, I trudge My joints grind like gravel under tires More pain no amount of tears can soothe away Pinching the embroidered curtain between my knuckles, I find solace in the gloom The wind humming against the window, Makes the house creak and groan Years ago, the cold numbed my pain But can it numb me again, This wretched body and fractured soul? Outside I venture with chants fluttering my lips, Desperate solemn pleas For comfort, For mercy For ease, For health I open the plush throw spiraled around my shoulders And tiptoe around the porch's rain-soaked boards The chilly air moves through me like Death on a mission, My body, an empty gorge with no barriers to stop him, No flesh or bone My highest and lowest extremities grow numb But my feeble knees and crippling bones turn half-stone, half-bone Half-alive, half-dead No better, just worse The merciless wind freezes my tears My chin tumbles in despair I cover myself and sniffle Earth’s scent funnels up my nose: Decay with traces of life in its perfume The treetops and their slender branches sway, Defying the bitter gusts As I turn to seek shelter, the last browned leaf breaks away It drifts, it floats At the weary tree’s feet, it makes its bed alongside the others Like a pile of corpses, they lie Furled and crinkled with age No one mourns their death Or hurries to honor the fallen with thoughtful burials No rage-filled cries echo their protests at the paws trampling their fragile bodies, Or at the desecration by the animals seeking morning relief And new boundaries to mark Soon, the stark canopy stretching over the pitiful sight Will replace them with vibrant buds and leaves Until the wasting season again returns For now, more misery will barricade my bones as winter creeps in Unless Death meets me first to end it

The ShadowClan leader looked down at Cloverfoot. She shifted on the oak root as she sat beside the other deputies. “Cloverfoot will be ShadowClan’s deputy now. Like Juniperclaw, she once turned her back on the Clans . . . But I believe that, like Juniperclaw, she is ready to serve her Clan honestly and in good faith.” “Cloverfoot!” Scorchfur was the first ShadowClan cat to call her name. Snowbird chimed in. “Cloverfoot.” “Cloverfoot.” Her name rang through the clearing as her Clanmates yowled their approval and their yowling spread among the other Clans. Alderheart dipped his head to her, pleased that she’d been chosen. She puffed out her chest proudly, and her eyes reflected moonlight as she looked back at him. Bramblestar lifted his muzzle. “Twigbranch led a patrol of cats from ThunderClan, RiverClan, and WindClan to find SkyClan and persuade them to return to the lake.” Twigbranch glanced at her paws as the Clans turned to look at her. Finleap moved closer to her as Bramblestar went on. “Despite the storm, the patrol managed to bring SkyClan back—” He broke off as cheers erupted from the watching cats. Surprise showed in his eyes. He pricked his ears, clearly delighted, and waited for the yowling to die away. “We still must settle on where they will live, but we know that their place is beside the lake with the other Clans.” Strikestone called from among the ShadowClan cats, “Land must be given equally.

I first imagined each moment separate, inspired, consecutive. I could have cast the film—myself the female lead, you the star. I wore color—magenta. lavender, lime. You were in white, something textured that moved with your body. The music was sensuous, full orchestra scored for harp, piccolo, twelve double basses, a chime. The premiere, well-attended, prices high. Those who didn't like it find little to like in this world. The critics, through careful eyes, decided our performance was fresh, the location on the cliff above the ocean a splendid choice on someone's part, the humor warm. But time extracts. After the blast, the slow boil, the few grains cupped in the palm. The orchestra was really scored for wind and pelican, the dry flick of lizard. The lily, with petals like white tongues, appeared from nowhere, and the gull remained stone-still. as gulls do not do. The costumes were too simple: sun and salt on skin, and the actors kept changing roles, crawling into one another’s lines, saying the wrong words when they spoke at all, finding it hard to think in vertigo, their love clouded with a retinue of men and women, former actors who wanted the parts. The critics made no sense of the film, double-exposed, sprocket holes on either side and a garbled sound track that wove ‘always’ and ‘never’ into one word. The beginning appeared in the last scene, and the climax was a whorl of color, like looking too long at the sun through closed eyelids. One thing someone found to praise: a clear shot of a shining feather lying on a stone in the path.

The white picket trellis was covered in climbing vines, and the soft, brown weedless soil was covered with winter squash peeking out from underneath velvety dark-green leaves. The island breeze carried the scent of Gran's rosemary plants. I went into the potting shed, grabbed the scissors, and snipped a bunch of rosemary. I could use it in the butter for the mashed potatoes that would be served with the fried chicken. I looked around at her herbs and listened to the tinkle of the wind chimes' sand dollars. I snipped some parsley and thyme. Those herbs would add depth or brightness to any dish. I also plucked a half-dozen bright-yellow lemons to add to the fish dishes.

Absent was the persistent cacophony of traffic, street vendors, pedestrians, construction, and the buzz of streetlights that filled every space of our tight living quarters both in Kuwait and in Amman. Instead, I awoke to the songs of birds and wind chimes, and I was lulled at night by the orchestras of crickets and the calls of jackals and wolves.

Life throws these things at us, we might crumble for a while but with each other, we survive.

became

biking while intoxicated with spring chicks in the nest dappled with the sunrise wind chimes Carrie Ann Thunell

A deep, booming chime echoed through the square. It throbbed in the stones under my feet. Children cried, covering their ears. And I started screaming as I ran. ‘Marcel!’ I screamed, knowing it was useless. The crowd was too loud, and my voice was breathless with exertion. All the same and all, I couldn't stop screaming. The clock tolled again. I ran past a nude young girl child in her mother's arms as her hair was almost white in the dazzling sunlight. A circle of tall men, all wearing red blazers, called out warnings as I barreled through them. The clock tolled again and again. On the other side of the men in blazers, there was a break in the throng, space between the sightseers who milled aimlessly around me. My eyes peered over the vast dark narrow passage to the right of the wide square edifice under the tower. I couldn't see the street level there were still too many kids and teens in the way. The clock tolled again, and the rings cried out. Part: 2 Thrashed Just like me, this is not here anymore… It was hard to see now, more than ever. Without the kids, teens, and tweens, to break the wind, it whipped at my face and burned my eyes. -And- I for one at that moment could not be one hundred present certain if that was the reason behind my tears, or if I was crying in defeat as the clock hands rounded the face again, and the bell grew hazier. A big family of ten stood nearest to the alley's opening. The two girls wore blue dresses, with matching ribbons tying their dark hair back. The father wasn't small or big. It seemed like I could see something bright in the shadows, just over his shoulder. I rushed toward them, trying to see past the stinging tears. The clock hands spun, and the littlest girl clamped her fingers around one of the boy's long fingers.

It was summer, so the sun appeared in the bottom left-hand corner of the big window at quarter past six. Ish. It was hard to tell exactly until the sun rose just a little bit more, enough to send his beams through the holes carefully bored through a piece of wood, above which the hours were marked off in beautifully painted flourishes. This simple timepiece hung from the ceiling off a stick hammered sturdily in, because a string would have let it spin and therefore fail its task of tracking the sun. The wind chimes, however, assembled from more bits of wood, and pieces of metal, and shaped and dried bits of pottery, were free to swing and tinkle as they pleased. These were surrounded by celestial bric-a-brac that also dangled from the ceiling and spun with abandon when the breeze found them: paper-mâché stars, comets of hoarded glass shards and mirror, a very carefully re-created (and golden) replica of the constellation Orion, a quilted and embroidered cloth model of the sun, and several paintings on rectangular panels hung such that they faced straight down. So that the viewer, in bed, might look up at them and pretend they were windows or friends, depending on whether the subject was landscapes or faces.

Otah rode slowly, the clack of his mount’s hooves on pavement giving order to the idiot, tuneless wind chimes.

All of us glanced at the market clock, whose face was illuminated by lanternlight. Three minutes remained, and they dragged by like years. I fought the temptation to pace, to fidget. I made myself stand like stone, just as the two upstarts did, and waited for the clock to strike nine. Finally, the chime sounded. And the mountain wind blew through the streets, sweet and dark and full of magic.

It’s like life, we all drift around, spinning in circles, watched by others, thinking we have control until, bam, we’re hit with something unexpected. Yet somehow we keep on dancing through our lives, drifting around the ballroom at the lunatics’ ball.

No man can hold his head high if he tries to pretend he is the master over a magnificent beast. We are lower than them in every sense and these great creatures must be treated with deference.

You do not have to share everything you think or feel with those around you; in fact, it is sensible if you don’t.

The rough, home-made furniture had far more character than the castle’s and Bethel’s oddities—a half-knitted sock on the table, a speckled chicken pecking around the open front door, a wind chime made of woodland knickknacks—gave the cottage a far more endearing personality too.

She laughs and it’s so pretty. Like chimes in the wind. One of the first things I noticed about her that day in the coffee shop.

A burst of florals hypnotizes me towards the cottage. Sweet peas and moonflowers press through the porch's warped wood panels. I make my way up the whitewashed steps, and a velvet orchid wrapped around the banister tickles my hand. Twinkling sea glass wind chimes wreathed with roses send a shiver down my spine as I grip the tarnished doorknob, hopeful that this place will become familiar soon. After all, it is my home now.

All of you gotta protect our town. The name they gave us is Bofurin. The chime of the wind breaker. Live up to that name. Protect the people, the things, the memories... protect everything that's important to you.

Her grandmother and Angharad had gone shopping. She had felt too tired to join them, which was a shame as Angharad was having a dress fitting and she had wanted to be there to share her friend’s excitement.

Our trip today must remain a secret,” said Penny. “You are not lying to anyone, Osyth. You are merely making an adult choice to keep your business to yourself. It is a lesson and a skill that will serve you well if you’re able to master the technique. You do not have to share everything you think or feel with those around you; in fact, it is sensible if you don’t.

She destroyed his dreams, and he made her wind chimes. When he came in, she served him supper. I love you, Michael Hosea. I love you so much I’m dying of it. The breeze stirred the wind chimes, filling the cabin with pleasant ringing.

The next morning I awoke and saw the morning sun peeking through my open window. The sound of wind chimes murmured their random melody, and I was glad to be at home resting in my comfortable bed, my wife curled by my side. Life is like poetry. It has a rhythm and a meter, which, when allowed to flow, will sing a song. Sometimes that song is happy, sometimes it is sad, oftentimes it is both. Whatever its nature, we should all enjoy hearing our own melody. Someday, perhaps before we are ready, the song of this life will face into the ethers. All too soon.

The twelve burros crane their scrawny necks in his direction when Brady emerges from the merc. He reaches into his greatcoat, pulls out a tin of Star Navy tobacco, and shoves a chaw between lips and gums gone blackish purple in the last year. “What the hell?” he whispers. When he delivered supplies two weeks ago, this little mining town was bustling. Now Abandon looms listless before him in the gloom of late afternoon, streets empty, snow banked high against the unshoveled plank sidewalks, no tracks as far as he can see. The cabins scattered across the lower slopes lie buried to their chimneys, and with not a one of them smoking, the air smells too clean. Brady is a man at home in solitude, often spending days on the trail, alone in wild, quiet places, but this silence is all wrong—a lie. He feels menaced by it, and with each passing moment, more certain that something has happened here. A wall of dark clouds scrapes over the peaks, and snowflakes begin to speck the sleeves of his slicker. Here comes the wind. Chimes clang together over the doorway of the merc. It will be night soon.

The mall looked deserted, and there was only one bulb on the ground floor to guide him to the winding staircase that led, past beauty-supply stores that looked dead, up to the top floor, where a sign read: “DANGER. BOOKSTORE IS OPEN.” Laurence hesitated, then pushed open the doorway to Danger Bookstore, with a jangle of chimes.

When you accept the survival signal as a welcome message and quickly evaluate the environment or situation, fear stops in an instant. Thus, trusting intuition is the exact opposite of living in fear. In fact, the role of fear in your life lessens as your mind and body come to know that you will listen to the quiet wind-chime, and have no need for

And now a look at the financial markets. You will turn yourself inside out. Your sadness will know no bounds. Ladybugs will flee you; wolves run wild in you. You will hear the wind chimes like shattering. The sun will drip ichor. Whatever peace you find will be taken from you. Nothing will be the same. Nothing has ever been the same.

As he spoke, the sound of a church clock, muffled by the snow, came borne upon the wind; it chimed the first quarter. ‘Thank God!’ said Wimsey. ‘Where there is a church, there is civilisation.

Her laugh sounds like wind chimes.

Calling to Measure It’s an obsession now, this matching And measuring, comparing, for instance, The coral-violet of the inner lip Of a queen conch to the last rim of dusk On the purple-flowering raspberry To the pure indigo of the bird-voiced Tree frog’s twittering tongue, then converting The result to an accepted standard Of rose-scarlet gradations. It’s difficult to say which is greater- The brevity of the elk’s frosty bellow Or the moments of fog sun-lifted Through fragrances of blue spruce Or the fading flavor in one spoonful Of warm chocolate rum. I mark out space by ten peas Strung on a string. The pane perimeter Of my window, for instance, is twenty-eight Lengths, twelve lengths over. Seventy pea-strings stretch from bed To door, Four go round my neck. My longing for you is more painful Than the six-times folding, doubling And doubling, of a coyote’s Most piercing cry, more inconsolable Than a whole night of moonlight blinded By thunderclouds, more constant Than black at the center of a cavern Stone below leagues of granite. I gauge my cold by the depth Of stillness in the pod heart of a frozen Wren. I time my breath by the faltering Leaves of aspen in wind. I count the circles Of my dizziness by the spreading rings Of rain-lassos on the pond, by the repeating Bell chimes of the corridor clock, By the one unending ring of the horizon. Where is the tablet, where the rule, where The steel weights, the balance, the book, Properly to make measure of a loss So grand and deep I can spread and stitch it To every visible star I name- Arcturus, Spica, Vega, Regulus- in this dark Surrounding dark surrounding dark?

I remember the rain, the lightning across the sky and the thunder that followed, pounding against the glass windows of the inn. The smell of mint and beeswax candles, the ringing of wind chimes spinning with the storm. The hollow sensation of loneliness, of broken illusions and dreams disappearing rapidly, like a bucket of water upturned into the sea.

For you, anything.” And as I did as I was instructed, I realized it was no different than playing a wind instrument. There were other musicians behind other curtains, and I swore I could hear them chiming in, the group of us forming God’s own horn section. I’m not sure how long I lay there, blissed-out and farting.

He chuckled

How quiet it is,' Danny said, digging in his knapsack for the canteen full of water he had brought. 'You don’t realize how scary it is, having a whole mountain on top of you, until you’re in the dark as I was in that tunnel, or when you begin hearing the silence.' 'I didn’t know you could hear silence,' said Irene. 'Then just listen.' They sat still, and Danny added, 'Put out the flashlights for a minute.' In the dark, they understood what he meant. All the familiar noises of the upper world were gone: the wind, the rustle of branches or leaves, the chirping of birds, the sounds of automobiles and doors slamming, and people laughing. There was nothing but the faint tinkle of droplets of water, each drop like a distant musical chime, and each one pursued by tiny echoes. Then, after such a note had sounded there would be a long and empty quiet in which they could hear their own breathing and the steady beating of their hearts. They found themselves straining their eyes to see something, anything — the slightest sign of light, but they could not even tell the difference between opening their eyes and shutting them. Irene burst out suddenly, 'Put on the lights!' Danny let out his breath with a whoosh. They all snapped on their lamps, and as the welcome light flooded the chamber, he said, 'It’s — it’s like being buried alive.' 'Don’t let’s try that experiment again,' Irene said, with a shiver. 'I just hope we get out of here before our flashlights give out.

All of them were shriveled, desiccated, bone-thin and skeletal, every jaw cruelly broken, opening and closing in mute entreaty, the teeth clacking together like macabre wind chimes as they pendulated in the lurching trees.

Each palace, with its chimes, drums, pipes, and vertical flutes,     Releases its boudoir sorrows and springtime griefs.     There are in the forbidden courtyard     Young, fresh faces like flowers bedewed;     There are on the palace moat     Slender waists like willows dancing in the wind.

Does she ever feel lonely as I do? The silence is dead in the rooms of our house, made up of impoverished ghosts, their voices clanging like the sailing song of a wind chime in the wind through orphaned autumn leaves grounded in my head. She frustrates me like a blue fly I cannot swat, gut or trap. I cannot pull its wings off, disguise my frustration in a plume of smoke like my younger brother and his friends. My father and I have retreated to the room that we now share. I lay sprawled out on the single bed watching him sleep. My mother sleeps in my sister's room now. She sleeps enshrouded in the dark under the dense cover of blankets over her head. Her door is closed.

Meridith.” The sound of Jake’s voice startled her, made her heart jump into the next gear. Why was he always sneaking up on her? She turned, glaring. “Sorry, I—” He stopped a car’s length from her. She realized belatedly how she must look. Her eyes still burned, were no doubt red. She faced the shore, cleared the knot from her throat. “I—checked out the smoke detectors,” he said. “Batteries are old.” The wind whistled through the budding trees, stirred the wind chimes on the front porch. “Great. Thanks.” She rubbed her arms. “The ones upstairs are working.” His voice was closer. “Need to run to the store and get more nine-volts and some other things.” “Okay.” She wished he’d leave, go get the stupid batteries. She drew in a deep cleansing breath. Salt, grass, and Jake’s woodsy scent filled her nostrils. “Sorry if I was out of line in there,” he said. “I get testy sometimes—was having trouble with the porch spindles, shouldn’t have taken it out on you.” He thought she was teary-eyed because he’d snapped at her. If she were that sensitive, Noelle would have her in tears on a daily basis. She waved away his apology. “Don’t worry about it.” The

I’ll bet you were a handful,” she said. “Got myself into a few scrapes.” “I knew it. You were a rule breaker.” “What do you mean, ‘were’?” He shrugged. “I was good at not getting caught, made the most of it.” “I’ll just bet you did.” Jake felt a smile pull his lips. She was almost flirting, but he wasn’t going to point it out. The moment he did, it would be over. He scanned the crowd for people he might know and need to avoid. “What turned you around?” “Who says I turned around?” She laughed, and the sound reminded him of the wind chimes on the porch, bright and happy. “All

I even hung mobiles, banners, and wind chimes from the ceiling in any wide open space.”  In an aside she commented, “Moving objects especially mess with their ability to pull themselves together.” “Is that so?  Now you’re the expert on ghost prevention?” “I guess so.  It worked.

Your heart is pure, but my every line is poor. Every second I write to you, I suddenly begin to hear the creaking floor boards. As the wind chimes, time goes by. Waiting, for that one moment to arrive. As I stand gaurd, I'll know it will get hard. But in the end, it will work out just like a deck of playing cards.

Around me, a seemingly transfinite number of leaves chimed in a space without a wind.

The tree laughed like crystal wind chimes. The sound crawled along my nerves and the nape of my neck in an unpleasant frisson.

The child was happiest left to play alone, entering a world of her own creation where fairies sang, waited on by fleets of magical servants.

Even the winds that usually screamed across the mountains had gone quiet, dulled by the walls of the valley. The dwarf guide did not attempt any jokes or spouting of trivia, perhaps sensing the general mood that had settled over the Envoy’s company. Will our sacrifice be accepted? The worries rushed over him before he could stop them. Has it been accepted at all in these five dark years? Or have the Dracodei turned away from us? He had no way of knowing. For the moment, there was only the steady march of man, dwarf, and deer, the chime of clinking treasures, and the silent sky uninterrupted by the beat of dragon’s wings.

Charlie obviously liked her jewellery; both wrists displayed a collection of silver bangles that jingled as she walked, making her sound like a human wind chime.

Teased by a brisk breeze, the wind chimes sang, and she wondered if her mother was up there watching her, shaking her head.

Neighborhood What do I care that they’re tearing down the nice old houses and putting up brutal ones? Before very long, I’ll be just a breeze blowing around town, trying to avoid all the wind chimes.

and the wind-chime laugh that

An Aussie January by Stewart Stafford Dead air in the fallen forest, The black goat circled silently, Three hillside crosses sombre, January, warm as an Aussie winter. Boy brandishing a thin, red worm, Cheerful march on raspberry feet, Turning left at the silver potatoes, Leftovers from the gnome’s feast. 4 a.m. wind a rolling bandmaster, Whipping a flagpole cord to a beat, Tingling every wind chime around, The hibernating squirrel missed it. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

She loved the sound of wind chimes and the smells of essential oils. These were her people; this was her thing. (“Hippies with money,” Julia would say.)

I frown, glancing at the ice-coated forest to the south. Though the wind is blowing and knife-edged boughs scrape against one another, there isn’t a hint of the tortured groaning/chiming sound they were making the last time I was here. To the west, the frozen river that gurgles and leaps beneath two feet of ice and shrieks with the voices of countless tortured humans who were abducted over millennia and sealed beneath the surface, their all-too-aware frozen souls permanently entombed, is as silent as the dead should be. It’s almost as if all sound has been forbidden, Barrons muses. I glance at him sharply. Yes, I say and abruptly realize what I was too distracted to notice before. Since we’ve arrived, Barrons hasn’t spoken a single word aloud.

When the wind is whooshing, it sounds like wind chimes. When the breeze offers its sweet gestures, it opens my heart and soul to be still and let everything—just be. The sky looks like a painting. It is a limitless portrait! When the streams collide, you can see the reflection of the sea of clouds.

Dear Secrets of the Earth, You are a place beyond belief. You are home to many, but only a few are able to understand you. When the wind is whooshing, it sounds like wind chimes. When the breeze offers its sweet gestures, it opens my heart and soul to be still and let everything—just be. The sky looks like a painting. It is a limitless portrait! When the streams collide, you can see the reflection of the sea of clouds. When the wind is whistling, it calms the meadow of the thoughts that form in my mind. The night air has such a deep definition of the earthbound because everything is asleep as it is firmly attached to the earth without movement—just resting to prepare for the next day. I always wondered how a wildflower can be so soft when it is stepped on and covered by weeds. It is because the earth has covered it in boundless, endless love. I am a wildflower; there is no such thing as being tamed; we take what is given and somehow find our way. I’ve been to thirteen homes in all. Yet, I still somehow and somewhere let love shine through the darkest hours, which lead to days. However, just like the wildflower, I am still here. Dear Secrets of the Earth, what are your golden rules? Is it to just go with the flow? Love endlessly without regret? Live and learn from your mistakes? Or is it something simple, such as continue to have faith while we reach for the stars? If so, could you give me a boost? Thank you for your company.

beautiful one. Emily was

There are mornings in the cabin, even in summer, when the lake seems to have been possessed by a different spirit, the air cold, wind whistling through the screens and whipping the Chinese wind chimes into a frenzy. Instead of blue water, the lake is grey, the islands hunched against the wind, the waves white-capped even in our channel, banging the boat against the dock or heaving it away to strain against its ropes. On days like these, the sounds of other lives are lost in the rush of air and water. Everything seems farther away, and few people venture out if they don’t have to. Yet this is not when drownings occur. The lake captures people when they least expect it.

It's not about carrying heavy things, it's about your attitude. Do you hear what I'm saying? Willingness to help, that's all I'm looking for. Moral support.” Little Blue raised her arms in the air and gave a cheer that sounded like wind chimes. “See, that's all I wanted.

The chimes were clinging in the wind. Or were they clanging, and clinging to hope?

The wind chime sounded like a spoon clanging against a cereal bowl, and I was glad I was having soup for breakfast.

i went looking for our bridge to burn. & a river bank to drown the flames, stifle the heat. Kentucky was hot; all bare foot & blue flame. i wouldn't say i could see the music, but the music could see me; bare bone wind chime. bare skin dunked in: swimming pool day dreams. full moon feelings. that can't take my eyes off of you. the sticky hands of lust tip-toeing earthquake. it was always & never the right time.

The man who best drew the contrast between Kiev and Ukraine was the novelist Mikhail Bulgakov. Son of a theology professor, he was brought up in a small house on Andriyivsky Uzviz, the steep cobbled lane that winds down from the High City to Podil. His Kiev, immortalised in The White Guard, is the middle-class city of the years just before the revolution – the Kiev of the La Marquise confectioner’s and the Fleurs de Nice flower shop, of chiming clocks and Dutch-tiled stoves, of sugar tongs and the green-shaded lamp in his father’s study. Writing from the inflation-wracked Moscow of the early 1920s, Bulgakov turned these vanished comforts into something rich and strange:

Herd mentality is evident in both the orthodox and liberal camps, as every ludicrous proposition finds supporters, like a puff of air sweeping across a land of wind chimes.

Each door she passed held an offering on its threshold for the spirits. Appeasements and manifest prayers in the shape of carved figurines and small stacks of peat, so the fire could dance and burn, and chimes made of fishing line and glass beads, so the wind could hear its own breath when it passed by. There were small bannnoks and cups of milk for the spirits of the earth, and salted herring and jewelry strung with shells for the water.

(Death and Life) The time gets closer all the time. This life is fleeting like a chime you hear outside on the porch when the wind blows out the torch. It’s handsomely earie, and gorgeously bizarre how close we can get to something so far. Oh, the lesson to learn from nighttime flowers. Such beautiful blossoms in fields at those hours near the sunrise and a new dawn soon to reveal that they aren’t gone. Though darkness exists, it doesn’t remain, and all that it hides, it does so in vain. The cycles continue on their routine course, and the brightness in life stays true to its Source. The waters still flow, and the seasons still pass and all the memories we lived to amass. The torch is still lit near a sunrise and dawn in a time yet seen that will never be gone.

Let’s go, ladies,” said Dolores, her long face grim as she turned from the scene. “Let’s see what Obiryn can tell us about trapping this devil.” We had no need to stay here. We’d be much more productive back at Davenport House with glasses of wine between our hands. We did our best thinking and planning that way. Red wine is a superfood. I fell into step with Marcus as we all followed Dolores down the alleyway toward the Volvo station wagon parked at the curb. Beverly and Ruth walked in silence behind us. I felt a vibration chime through me just as the light faded as though storm clouds had suddenly covered the sky—just a little too fast. Curious, I halted and looked up into the sky. “What the hell is that?” I asked no one in particular. We’d come to the crime scene under a blue sky, a speckling of clouds, and a warm morning. But now a cold wind rose with a green horizon

My dear, I've found 'em! They're here, every one of these nine Azores. Little islands full of prayers and shrines and vesper chimes, strung on a thread of water, like the decades in the windings of a Rosary of the Sea.

When I step inside, it feels like I’ve just wandered into a maze, all the breezes, wind chimes, and bird chatter going quiet at once, that warm cedar-and-sunned-paper smell folding around

It was the sort of home designed to be seen on a summer morning with the lawns freshly mown, the flowers in full bloom, the hammock swaying beneath the trees and so on. It must have been a hundred years old and even without going in I knew there would be exposed beams and open fireplaces, comfy nooks and ceilings where you would have to be careful not to bang your head. It wasn’t particularly beautiful: the roof had been badly repaired with tiles that changed colour halfway across, and an ugly modern conservatory had been added to one side. But it was a house that was completely comfortable with itself. It must have had five or six bedrooms, two of them tucked up in the eaves. A set of wind chimes hung from a tree, tinkling meditatively in the breeze.

I blinked and realized that there was a young woman waiting behind the counter. She was tiny and dressed in orange capri pants and a purple T-shirt with a scorpion printed on the front. I couldn’t tell if she was mixed race or Portuguese or something like that, but she had a straight nose and hair and light brown skin. And black eyes, and a disturbingly unwavering gaze. “What’ll it be?” she said in an old-fashioned cockney accent. I introduced myself as Detective Constable Peter Grant—because I’m allowed to do that now. “Yeah, you’re the Starling, ain’t you?” she said, and managed to work an improbable glottal stop into the word “starling.” I figured, if we were going to play it that way . . . “That’s me,” I said. “So who are you, then, when you’re at home?” “Where do you think you’re standing?” she said. “From a topographical point of view?” The answer was, well, in the shallow valley carved by the second most important river in London. “So, you’re the Walbrook?” “You can call me Lulu,” she said. “I know your mum. And a couple of your sisters.” A hush fell all around me and there was a sound like wind chimes—the bottles along the back of the bar tinkling into each other. “If you want to stay on my good side,” said Lulu, “you might not want to be name-dropping in this pub—especially not those names.

Though she is poor, like us, she has a sharp fashion sense, matching unusual colors and patterns in ways that somehow make sense. She makes outfits from the flea market look good on her. She smells like vanilla, and her laugh reminds me of wind chimes. I always thought Angie would grow up to be something awesome, like a designer or an artist, but it turned out she was another Mexican daughter who didn’t want to leave home. She works downtown and still lives with her parents.

It was a peaceful place, as was the case with most small communities situated on desert worlds. Despite the desolation that was apparent at first glance, it boasted its characteristic assortment of indigenous life-forms. Regardless of the absence of much in the way of visible vegetation, the distant isolated hoots and mewlings of nocturnal native animals indicated that life was present even where none could readily be seen. A single wind chime yodeling in the occasional breeze provided a tinkling counterpoint to the yelps of hidden sand-dwellers.

Instantly, who knows from where, angels small in stature, followed by swifts, flitted out and started tracing patterns above Brother Mocius while chiming in. Eagles, their white beards loosed to the wind, stooped, screeching. Swarms of fierce bees streaked by, obedient and humming; diverse butterflies swishes, vipers crawled from their dens, whistling, and hyenas leapt out, sobbing and weeping. Howl, peep, roar, flutter. Everything was keening. Even the humble gentian and saxifrage, customarily dumb, as is meet for plants, contributed a barely audible squeak, not to mention the slender lizards, darting in with their hatchlings

The wind chimes for a farewell,the sand scatters the mind,yet silence,why still undefeated?

Her voice was soft and layered, like a wind chime in the breeze before it rains.

After work the following Monday Larry sat on his porch not reading but waiting in his usual company of bats and birds and insects, the tinkling of his mother's chime each time the earth breathed its wind. He was disappointed but not surprised when the night stole the far trees and the fence across the road and then the road itself and finally the sky, Larry's truck gone too in the dark and stars beginning to wink in the sky like nail holes in the roof of a barn.

He looked out across the field. He seemed to have forgotten where he was, and for a while Larry rocked, bats fluttering over his view and crickets chirping in the monkey grass along the edge of the porch and his mother's wind chime jingling, delicate notes too tender to be metal, more like soft bone on wire; he'd always thought the chime sounded like a skeleton playing a guitar, and for a time they sat together on the porch and watched the sun scald the sky red and the trees black.

don’t help you, you’ll still help me? Free of charge?” She laughed, and the sound reminded me of wind chimes—bright and beautiful. “Nothing is ever free, Violet. I would, of course, ask you to accompany Owen on any expedition to steal the equipment needed, but I assume you would want to go along anyway.” I frowned. Again, that blunt information, freely given with an intense sincerity. For good or for bad, she didn’t pull a punch. “Why are you so…” I waved my hand, trying to pick a good word that wouldn’t insult her. “Blunt?” she offered, a small smile playing at her lips. I nodded and she shrugged. “Honesty is an undervalued commodity. Keeping secrets is the cancer that is slowly killing Matrus and Patrus. Given enough time, and lies, both places would fail, and the last vestiges of humanity would disappear from this earth. I don’t have time for it. And also, I have found that honesty can inspire people. I won’t let my people go into any situation against their will, and I won’t lie to spare them uncomfortable truths about what they are getting into. It builds trust, and separates me from Matrus and Patrus. I don’t have time to

Some utopias become purer, harder, and harsher as they diminish, like an evaporating lake growing more saline every year in its shores of crystalline salt: think of the theorist-revolutionary Guy Debord, ostracizing and expelling people from the Situationist International movement until you could fit the future of artsy council communism around the back table of a Parisian bar. Some utopias dilute into the surrounding society that gives them context - the well-lit, spare, clean, glass-and-steel spaces of the Bauhaus are now the default settings for expensive apartments and bank lobbies, their mystic-visionary content reduced to homeopathic doses. Some die all at once with their founder or settle into a second act as businesses: silverware from the Oneida Perfectionists, hammocks from the Skinnerian behaviorist community Twin Oaks, or wind chimes from Arcosanti, which was once the be the germ of anthill arcologies honeycombing the planet. Of all these ways to end, a handful of utopian projects -perhaps the most successful - evaporate in practice but produce a persistent icon of the future for a group or a subculture, a shared arrangement of visions, a magnetic field by which other people unknowingly set their compasses. Extropy was one of these.

I pause as the clocks from Mother’s collection sound the hour. From every room come staggered chimes, cuckoos calling out. A moment later, the sound of ticking. The house a metronome. We are empty, as if our insides have been carved out. That is what death does, I think. It makes us into ticking clocks, in need of winding, hollow and mechanized.

Erika laughed, a sound like wind chimes in a light breeze.

Tragedy! You finally make it to camp alive – only to discover that you forgot your toothbrush! You could Iris-message your mortal parent for a new one. But do you really want to walk around with drakon breath until it arrives? Instead, hit the camp store! While you’re there, be sure to check out the latest line of wind chimes – available in Celestial bronze, silver and seashell – perfect for interpreting the voices of prophecy-spouting trees! If hanging bling in branches isn’t your thing, how about the new Mythomagic expansion pack, Dual Deity Duel? The cards feature holographic images that change the gods’ aspects from Greek to Roman and back. He’s Ares! No, he’s Mars! No, he’s Ares again! Hours of dizzying head-to-head play! From tees to totes, whatever your needs, the camp store is your perfect one-stop shop.

walked in under the orange legs of the three-story Calder designed for Chicago’s Federal Building. We pride ourselves in Chicago on our outdoor sculptures by famous artists. My favorite is the bronze wind chimes in front of the Standard Oil Building, but I have a secret fondness for Chagall’s mosaics in front of the First National Bank. My artist friends tell me they are banal.

Outside, a brisk wind churned the wind chimes on the porch into a forbidding cacophony of discontent.

bustling. Now Abandon looms listless before him in the gloom of late afternoon, streets empty, snow banked high against the unshoveled plank sidewalks, no tracks as far as he can see. The cabins scattered across the lower slopes lie buried to their chimneys, and with not a one of them smoking, the air smells too clean. Brady is a man at home in solitude, often spending days on the trail, alone in wild, quiet places, but this silence is all wrong—a lie. He feels menaced by it, and with each passing moment, more certain that something has happened here. A wall of dark clouds scrapes over the peaks, and snowflakes begin to speck the sleeves of his slicker. Here comes the wind. Chimes clang together over the doorway of

working in Elspeth’s craft shop in Relton three days a week in exchange for the use of the pottery wheel and kiln in the back. But Elspeth was hardly an ordinary person; she was a kindly old silver-haired lesbian who had been living in Relton with her companion, Dottie, for over thirty years. She affected the tweedy look of a country matron, but the twinkle in her eyes told a different story. Mara loved both of them very much, but Dottie was rarely to be seen these days. She was ill – dying of cancer, Mara suspected – and Elspeth bore the burden with her typical gruff stoicism. At twelve o’clock, Rick knocked and came in through the back door, interrupting Mara’s wandering thoughts. He looked every inch the artist: beard, paint-stained smock and jeans, beer belly. His whole appearance cried out that he believed in himself and didn’t give a damn what other people thought about him. ‘All quite on the western front?’ he asked. Mara nodded. She’d been half listening for the sound of a police car above the wind chimes. ‘They’ll be here, though.’ ‘It’ll probably

Several minutes passed. A robin sang, its flock of looping crotchets ducking under the half-open window. Downstairs, the cups clinked against the sink as the kettle ceased its whistling. The cries of the revellers fell quiet and the wind dropped to a whispering breeze. Unaware. All so unaware. Finally, some minutes later, there was that last flicker of sunlight on the floorboards, one last gust of wind, a last scuffle of footsteps and the last chime of birdsong that coincided with Eilidh MacNeil’s time on this earth. And all the spirit, passion and longing that accompanied her body on this mortal coil slipped away and were no more.

Wind chimes hang from the low black branches

LOVE SONG My own dear love, he is strong and bold And he cares not what comes after. His words ring sweet as a chime of gold, And his eyes are lit with laughter. He is jubilant as a flag unfurled— Oh, a girl, she’d not forget him. My own dear love, he is all my world,— And I wish I’d never met him. My love, he’s mad, and my love, he’s fleet, And a wild young wood-thing bore him! The ways are fair to his roaming feet, And the skies are sunlit for him. As sharply sweet to my heart he seems As the fragrance of acacia. My own dear love, he is all my dreams,— And I wish he were in Asia. My love runs by like a day in June, And he makes no friends of sorrows. He’ll tread his galloping rigadoon In the pathway of the morrows. He’ll live his days where the sunbeams start, Nor could storm or wind uproot him. My own dear love, he is all my heart,— And I wish somebody’d shoot him.

In that moment, when the harp had been silenced, arose the songs of birds, the chiming of brooks, the humming of wind through grass and leaves; and all these voices took up the strands of melody, more beautiful than before. And the Lord of Death fled in terror of life.

Her Darkness A woman's darkness in graceful. It wraps around her like a silk dress and breathes thunder into her alter ego. It holds close her smirks & sorrows, and is her most loyal playmate. On stormy nights, You can hear her chimes blowing in the wind.

The lady replied in a voice holding all the magic of the winter solstice. Her voice drew him in, chiming softly in the wind.

Chime. Harken to the chime in the Wood. There, the wind tells us how to feel what we cannot see. Only the wind can say what is to come.

I used to talk to Nick and the kids when I was writing my etiquette column—I’d read aloud the dilemmas and we’d discuss our thoughts. The questions were all over the place. What do I do about my neighbor’s unbearable wind chimes

Ingrid stomped on his chest until his ribs sang like glass wind chimes.

She destroyed his dreams, and he made her wind chimes.

I used to talk to Nick and the kids when I was writing my etiquette column -- I'd read aloud the dilemmas and we'd discuss our thoughts. The questions were all over the place, What do I do about my neighbor's unbearable wind chimes, my mother-in-law's suffocating myrrh body wash . . .. But every individual question was really a version of the same existential one: People are different from me. How do I survive it. "With as much grace as possible: was our answer, every time. What else is there? . . . If you're not careful, you'll end up mistaking difference for loss -- which is how you lose everything.

I used to talk to Nick and the kids when I was writing my etiquette column -- I'd read aloud the dilemmas and we'd discuss our thoughts. The questions were all over the place, What do I do about my neighbor's unbearable wind chimes, my mother-in-law's suffocating myrrh body wash . . .. But every individual question was really a version of the same existential one: People are different from me. How do I survive it? "With as much grace as possible: was our answer, every time. What else is there? . . . If you're not careful, you'll end up mistaking difference for loss -- which is how you lose everything.

Wide cobbled roads and slanted structures merge into the next. Each tall house is made from mismatched bricks and wood; the buildings there are the oldest of the city, and they too are worn by time. Sagging into the old stonework as if their old wooden bones can no longer hold the weight. Though the splintered beams remain, chunks of plaster chip away from rough brickwork and the old tiles wriggle restless beside lopsided chimneys. On the narrow streets below, vendors set up wooden stalls down the centre, cover themselves with slender awnings, and call out to passing customers. The gentle clop of stallion hooves draws along a rickety carriage; its tender huffs drown by the chattering of voices and whispers of lost tales. Of gossip told at noonday and secrets shared at vigil when the night is upon them. The smell of baked breads and sweet honey tea permeates the air as the wind hisses along. Bells chime as doors open and footprints mark out routes between shops.