Windy Evening Quotes

It is so rare in this world to meet a trustworthy person who truly wants to help you, and finding such a person can make you feel warm and safe, even if you are in the middle of a windy valley high up in the mountains.

Gilbert darling, don't let's ever be afraid of things. It's such dreadful slavery. Let's be daring and adventurous and expectant. Let's dance to meet life and all it can bring to us, even if it brings scads of trouble and typhoid and twins!

I will love you with no regard to the actions of our enemies or the jealousies of actors. I will love you with no regard to the outrage of certain parents or the boredom of certain friends. I will love you no matter what is served in the world’s cafeterias or what game is played at each and every recess. I will love you no matter how many fire drills we are all forced to endure, and no matter what is drawn upon the blackboard in blurry, boring chalk. I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table. I will love you no matter what your locker combination was, or how you decided to spend your time during study hall. I will love you no matter how your soccer team performed in the tournament or how many stains I received on my cheerleading uniform. I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday. I will love you if you cut your hair and I will love you if you cut the hair of others. I will love you if you abandon your baticeering, and I will love you if you if you retire from the theater to take up some other, less dangerous occupation. I will love you if you drop your raincoat on the floor instead of hanging it up and I will love you if you betray your father. I will love you even if you announce that the poetry of Edgar Guest is the best in the world and even if you announce that the work of Zilpha Keatley Snyder is unbearably tedious. I will love you if you abandon the theremin and take up the harmonica and I will love you if you donate your marmosets to the zoo and your tree frogs to M. I will love you as a starfish loves a coral reef and as a kudzu loves trees, even if the oceans turn to sawdust and the trees fall in the forest without anyone around to hear them. I will love you as the pesto loves the fettuccini and as the horseradish loves the miyagi, as the tempura loves the ikura and the pepperoni loves the pizza. I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you as the doctor loves his sickest patient and a lake loves its thirstiest swimmer. I will love you as the beard loves the chin, and the crumbs love the beard, and the damp napkin loves the crumbs, and the precious document loves the dampness in the napkin, and the squinting eye of the reader loves the smudged print of the document, and the tears of sadness love the squinting eye as it misreads what is written. I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat, and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms. i will love you as a child loves to overhear the conversations of its parents, and the parents love the sound of their own arguing voices, and as the pen loves to write down the words these voices utter in a notebook for safekeeping. I will love you as a shingle loves falling off a house on a windy day and striking a grumpy person across the chin, and as an oven loves malfunctioning in the middle of roasting a turkey. I will love you as an airplane loves to fall from a clear blue sky and as an escalator loves to entangle expensive scarves in its mechanisms. I will love you as a wet paper towel loves to be crumpled into a ball and thrown at a bathroom ceiling and as an eraser loves to leave dust in the hairdos of people who talk too much. I will love you as a cufflink loves to drop from its shirt and explore the party for itself and as a pair of white gloves loves to slip delicately into the punchbowl. I will love you as the taxi loves the muddy splash of a puddle and as a library loves the patient tick of a clock.

If the mind's not strong, the body acts weak, even if it's not. If the mind says it's too cold or too rainy or too windy to run, the body will be more than happy to agree. If the mind says it would be better to rest or recover or cut practice, the body will be glad to oblige.

But now she loved winter. Winter was beautiful "up back" - almost intolerably beautiful. Days of clear brilliance. Evenings that were like cups of glamour - the purest vintage of winter's wine. Nights with their fire of stars. Cold, exquisite winter sunrises. Lovely ferns of ice all over the windows of the Blue Castle. Moonlight on birches in a silver thaw. Ragged shadows on windy evenings - torn, twisted, fantastic shadows. Great silences, austere and searching. Jewelled, barbaric hills. The sun suddenly breaking through grey clouds over long, white Mistawis. Ice-grey twilights, broken by snow-squalls, when their cosy living-room, with its goblins of firelight and inscrutable cats, seemed cosier than ever. Every hour brought a new revalation and wonder.

Gabrielle was insulted and didn't even bother to hide it. 'Oh, and I suppose you think your dad was alone when he free-climbed the Kyoto Banking Tower on a windy day last September.

Read poetry every day of your life. Poetry is good because it flexes muscles you don’t use often enough. Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition. It keeps you aware of your nose, your eye, your ear, your tongue, your hand. And, above all, poetry is compacted metaphor or simile. Such metaphors, like Japanese paper flowers, may expand outward into gigantic shapes. Ideas lie everywhere through the poetry books, yet how rarely have I heard short story teachers recommending them for browsing. What poetry? Any poetry that makes your hair stand up along your arms. Don’t force yourself too hard. Take it easy. Over the years you may catch up to, move even with, and pass T. S. Eliot on your way to other pastures. You say you don’t understand Dylan Thomas? Yes, but your ganglion does, and your secret wits, and all your unborn children. Read him, as you can read a horse with your eyes, set free and charging over an endless green meadow on a windy day.

Indy, I’m not blind, but even if I were, I’m pretty sure I could touch your face and understand just how fucking stunning you are, but it’s not the first thing I see anymore.

I’ve found her crying, laughing, or even crossing her legs during certain scenes, and it’s beyond endearing that the love between fictional characters can bring her so much joy.

But tonight is a gusty, hurrying night . . . even the clouds racing over the sky are in a hurry and the moonlight that gushes out between them is in a hurry to flood the world.

I’m a girl standing in a tornado, pretending like it isn’t even windy,

Silence is a mirror. So faithful, and yet so unexpected, is the relection it can throw back at men that they will go to almost any length to avoid seeing themselves in it, and if ever its duplicating surface is temporarily wiped clean of modern life's ubiquitous hubbub, they will hasten to fog it over with such desperate personal noise devices as polite conversation, hummin, whistling, imaginary dialogue, schizophrenic babble, or, should it come to that, the clandestine cannonry of their own farting. Only in sleep is silence tolerated, and even there, most dreams have soundtracks. Since meditation is a deliberate descent into deep internal hush, a mute stare into the ultimate looking glass, it is regarded with suspicion by the nattering masses; with hostility by buisness interests (people sitting in silent serenity are seldom consuming goods); and with spite by a clergy whose windy authority it is seen to undermine and whose bombastic livelihood it is perceived to threaten.

Mills, you already are mine. Even if I haven’t been allowed to show you, you’ve always been mine.

Indy is not the type of woman you can simply flush from your system after a single night. She’s the kind to seep into your veins and rewire your brain, making you do and say things you swore you never would. Whether she believes it or not, Indigo Ivers is the type of woman you keep forever, and even though I can pretend to be her boyfriend, there’s no way in hell I could pretend that one night with her wouldn’t completely fuck me up.

Ever hear the phrase ‘she’s not like other girls’?” He gives a small nod of his head. “Yeah, that’s not me. I’m just like every other chick. As basic as they come. I had an Uggs phase. I had a skinny jeans phase. I like my books with romance, my coffee with more creamer than caffeine, and I even take aesthetic pictures of my food anytime I’m at a restaurant.

The weather here is windy, balmy, sometimes wet. Desert springtime, with flowers popping up all over the place, trees leafing out, streams gushing down from the mountains. Great time of year for hiking, camping, exploring, sleeping under the new moon and the old stars. At dawn and at evening we hear the coyotes howling with excitement - mating season. And lots of fresh rabbit meat hopping about to feed the young ones with.

It is lucky that it is not windy today. Strange, how in some way one always has the impression of being fortunate, how some chance happening, perhaps infinitesimal, stops us crossing the threshold of despair and allows us to live. It is raining, but it is not windy. Or else, it is raining and it is also windy: but you know that this evening it is your turn for the supplement of soup, so that even today you find the strength to reach the evening. Or it is raining, windy and you have the usual hunger, and then you think that if you really had to, if you really felt nothing in your heart but suffering and tedium - as sometimes happens, when you really seem to lie on the bottom - well, even in that case, at any moment you want you could always go and touch the electric wire-fence, or throw yourself under the shunting trains, and then it would stop raining.

I want you, Indy. I want us. I want our little life we’ve built even when we thought we were pretending. I want you in our house because you’ve made it a home. I want your mess and your chaos. I want your genuine smiles, the ones you wear when you’re around my sister, the hockey team, and me. I want you happy, and I want to be the reason you are. I want you to choose me.

Then suddenly it was gray and windy and cold and rainy and then the sleet and snow came and even if you could find the sun it seemed to have lost its warmth. From time to time Marion fiddled with a sketch pad, but her hand seemed to be moving the pencil while the rest of her was completely detached from the action. Occasionally they would attempt to resurrect their enthusiasm for the coffee house, and their other plans, but for the, most part they spent their time shooting dope and watching television or listening to music occasionally.

Grim evening at Gabès (windy, black clouds, hideous bungalows, “folklore” performance in the Hotel Chems bar): I can no longer take refuge in my thoughts: neither in Paris nor traveling. No escape.

Be the day short or be the day long, at last it weareth to evening song.

Because they’re your family and you’re mine, and the fact you even have to ask is mind-blowing to me. Learning to communicate with your family is the bare minimum, Ind.

Life has a funny way of fulfilling you, even when it isn't in the way you assumed it'd be

He didn’t even try to deny it! I am going to be the only single one left. I’m going to have to move into my best friend’s house and grow old with Ryan freaking Shay.

Perfect.” He gives it a squeeze. “I like holding your hand in public.” He doesn’t even try to lower his voice when he adds, “And I like holding your throat in private.

I closed my eyes and I thought of the lash of her skirt snapping around her as she danced one evening in a bar on the South Side to a jukebox that was playing “Barefootin’,” of the downy slope of her neck and the declivity in her nightgown as she bent to wash her face in the bathroom sink, of a tuna salad sandwich she’d handed me one windy afternoon as we sat at a picnic table in Lucia, California, and looked out for the passage of whales, and I felt that I loved Emily insofar as I loved those things – beyond reason, and with a longing that made me want to hang my head – but it was a love that felt an awful lot like nostalgia.

God, I love you so much,” she says, snaking her hands around my neck, intertwining her fingers. “I missed you. Thank you for understanding my fears and treating them with patience. You make me feel deserving of all the things I want in life. I don’t know where you came from or how I got so lucky to be loved by you, but Ryan, I adore you.” “You are. You deserve every little thing you manage to dream for yourself. I hated being away from you, Ind, but I loved seeing you stand up for the things you want. Don’t stop doing that. Even if it’s me you’re facing off with, don’t settle for less.

Why?” “Why what, baby?” “Why are you learning sign?” “Because they're your family and you're mine, and the fact you even have to ask is mind blowing to me. Learning to communicate with your family is the bare minimum, Ind. And because I love you and when I tell your dad that, I'll be the one to say it.

The day you and I met.” His words are soft against my skin as he speaks. “I was hiding in the women’s restroom because that was the same date my mom died. I was having a bad day, and I didn’t want anyone to see me like that. I’m always having a bad day on that date, but for the first time in a long time, while I was talking to you, I felt this spark of genuine joy that I couldn’t ignore. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t have to fake it. So, it’s your fault, Kenny. You’re the reason I’ve been hooked from day one.”  My throat feels small. My nose and eyes prick with heat.  I’ve been a bargaining piece. A second-choice fiancée and even an unwanted employee, but I’ve never been someone’s joy.  I bury my face in his neck so he can’t see me. “Isaiah?” “Yeah?” “We got married on that date.” He curls into me, lips dusting the skin of my neck before placing a soft kiss there. “I know.

..the heart is a hell of a machine. Even when it's broken, it still finds a way to carry on.

And it’s okay to change directions even when you’ve spent your entire life headed on a one-way street.

Life has a funny way of fulfilling you, even when it isn't in the way you assumed it's be.

I want her, and even though she’s made it clear she’s got nothing left to give, I find myself desperate to take even the scraps if they’re offered.

It's so windy even the trees are having a bad-hair day.

Blue, I’m not great with words, so I’ll keep this short. I love you. I will love you as long as you'll allow me the privilege, and even longer after that. I have every intention to give you the life you want. I hope you’ll let me. You can even add this promise to the fridge when you get home. -Ryan

Because they’re your family and you’re mine, and the fact you even have to ask is mind-blowing to me. Learning to communicate with your family is the bare minimum, Ind.” I guess it is, but I didn’t know the bar was on the floor until Ryan Shay walked into my life and quietly raised it to the fucking moon.

Indy squeezes my leg. "It's okay for the important things in your life to change, you know?" Stevie nods. "And it's okay to change directions even when you've spent your entire life headed on a one-way street.

I thought I had loved someone once, but if this is what it's supposed to feel like, now I know my heart was never fully invested before. I loved the idea of the life I thought I was going to have, but with Indy, even if we spend the rest of our days just the two of us in this apartment, I'd die a happy man with an abundantly fulfilled life.

I died but I did not leave them. Benia sat beside me, and I stayed in his eye and in his heart. For weeks and months and years, my face lived in the garden, my scent clung to the sheets. For as long as he lived, I walked with him by day and lay down with him at night. When his eyes closed for the last time, I thought perhaps I would finally leave the world. But even then, I lingered. Shif-re sang the song I taught her and Kiya moved with my motions. Joseph thought of me when his daughter was born. Gera named her baby Dinah. Re-mose married and told his wife about the mother who had sent him away so that he would not die but live. Re-mose's children bore children unto the hundredth generation. Some of them live in the land of my birth and some in the cold and windy places that Werenro described the light of my mothers' fire. Egypt loved the lotus because it never dies. It is the same for people who are loved.

That ride was perhaps the most wonderful thing that happened to them in Narnia. Have you ever had a gallop on a horse? Think of that; and then take away the heavy noise of the hoofs and the jingle of the bit and imagine instead the almost noiseless padding of the great paws. Then imagine instead of the black or grey or chestnut back of the horse the soft roughness of golden fur, and the mane flying back in the wind. And then imagine you are going about twice as fast as the fastest racehorse. But this is a mount that doesn't need to be guided and never grows tired. He rushes on and on, never missing his footing, never hesitating, threading his way with perfect skill between tree trunks, jumping over bush and briar and the smaller streams, wading the larger, swimming the largest of all. And you are riding not on a road nor in a park nor even on the downs, but right across Narnia, in spring, down solemn avenues of beech and across sunny glades of oak, through wild orchards of snow-white cherry trees, past roaring waterfalls and mossy rocks and echoing caverns, up windy slopes alight with gorse bushes, and across the shoulders of heathery mountains and along giddy ridges and down, down, down again into wild valleys and out into acres of blue flowers.

I will love you with no regard to the actions of our enemies or the jealousies of actors. I will love you with no regard to the outrage of certain parents or the boredom of certain friends. I will love you no matter what is served in the world’s cafeterias or what game is played at each and every recess. I will love you no matter how many fire drills we are all forced to endure, and no matter what is drawn upon the blackboard in a blurring, boring chalk. I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table. I will love you no matter what your locker combination was, or how you decided to spend your time during study hall. I will love you no matter how your soccer team performed in the tournament or how many stains I received on my cheerleading uniform. I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday. I will love you if you cut your hair and I will love you if you cut the hair of others. I will love you if you abandon your baticeering, and I will love you if you retire from the theater to take up some other, less dangerous occupation. I will love you if you drop your raincoat on the floor instead of hanging it up and I will love you if you betray your father. I will love you even if you announce that the poetry of Edgar Guest is the best in the world and even if you announce that the work of Zilpha Keatley Snyder is unbearably tedious. I will love you if you abandon the theremin and take up the harmonica and I will love you if you donate your marmosets to the zoo and your tree frogs to M. I will love you as the starfish loves a coral reef and as kudzu loves trees, even if the oceans turn to sawdust and the trees fall in the forest without anyone around to hear them. I will love you as the pesto loves the fetuccini and as the horseradish loves the miyagi, as the tempura loves the ikura and the pepperoni loves the pizza. I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you as the doctor loves his sickest patient and a lake loves its thirstiest swimmer. I will love you as the beard loves the chin, and the crumbs love the beard, and the damp napkin loves the crumbs, and the precious document loves the dampness in the napkin, and the squinting eye of the reader loves the smudged print of the document, and the tears of sadness love the squinting eye as it misreads what is written. I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat, and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms. I will love you as a child loves to overhear the conversations of its parents, and the parents love the sound of their own arguing voices, and as the pen loves to write down the words these voices utter in a notebook for safekeeping. I will love you as a shingle loves falling off a house on a windy day and striking a grumpy person across the chin, and as an oven loves malfunctioning in the middle of roasting a turkey. I will love you as an airplane loves to fall from a clear blue sky and as an escalator loves to entangle expensive scarves in its mechanisms. I will love you as a wet paper towel loves to be crumpled into a ball and thrown at a bathroom ceiling and an eraser loves to leave dust in the hairdos of the people who talk too much. I will love you as a taxi loves the muddy splash of a puddle and as a library loves the patient tick of a clock. I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes. I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong.

The value of Greek prose composition, he said, was not that it gave one any particular facility in the language that could not be gained as easily by other methods but that if done properly, off the top of one's head, it taught one to think in Greek. One's thought patterns become different, he said, when forced into the confines of a rigid and unfamiliar tongue. Certain common ideas become inexpressible; other, previously undreamt-of ones spring to life, finding miraculous new articulation. By necessity, I suppose, it is difficult for me to explain in English exactly what I mean. I can only say that an incendium is in its nature entirely different from the feu with which a Frenchman lights his cigarette, and both are very different from the stark, inhuman pur that the Greeks knew, the pur that roared from the towers of Ilion or leapt and screamed on that desolate, windy beach, from the funeral pyre of Patroklos. Pur: that one word contains for me the secret, the bright, terrible clarity of ancient Greek. How can I make you see it, this strange harsh light which pervades Homer's landscapes and illumines the dialogues of Plato, an alien light, inarticulable in our common tongue? Our shared language is a language of the intricate, the peculiar, the home of pumpkins and ragamuffins and bodkins and beer, the tongue of Ahab and Falstaff and Mrs. Gamp; and while I find it entirely suitable for reflections such as these, it fails me utterly when I attempt to describe in it what I love about Greek, that language innocent of all quirks and cranks; a language obsessed with action, and with the joy of seeing action multiply from action, action marching relentlessly ahead and with yet more actions filing in from either side to fall into neat step at the rear, in a long straight rank of cause and effect toward what will be inevitable, the only possible end. In a certain sense, this was why I felt so close to the other in the Greek class. They, too, knew this beautiful and harrowing landscape, centuries dead; they'd had the same experience of looking up from their books with fifth-century eyes and finding the world disconcertingly sluggish and alien, as if it were not their home. It was why I admired Julian, and Henry in particular. Their reason, their very eyes and ears were fixed irrevocably in the confines of those stern and ancient rhythms – the world, in fact, was not their home, at least the world as I knew it – and far from being occasional visitors to this land which I myself knew only as an admiring tourist, they were pretty much its permanent residents, as permanent as I suppose it was possible for them to be. Ancient Greek is a difficult language, a very difficult language indeed, and it is eminently possible to study it all one's life and never be able to speak a word; but it makes me smile, even today, to think of Henry's calculated, formal English, the English of a well-educated foreigner, as compared with the marvelous fluency and self-assurance of his Greek – quick, eloquent, remarkably witty. It was always a wonder to me when I happened to hear him and Julian conversing in Greek, arguing and joking, as I never once heard either of them do in English; many times, I've seen Henry pick up the telephone with an irritable, cautious 'Hello,' and may I never forget the harsh and irresistible delight of his 'Khairei!' when Julian happened to be at the other end.

If I could…” he continues, shaking his head. “I’d chase you. I’d spend every free day on an airplane to get to you, even if that meant I only got to kiss you once before I had to fly back to Chicago. I’d spend my off-season living out of a hotel or out of your fucking van just to be close to you, but it’s not only me I’m making decisions for anymore. And because of that, I don’t want you to say anything. Don’t tell me if you love me, and fuck,” he exhales a painful laugh. “Please don’t tell me if you don’t. But especially don’t give me any hope because if you do, I have a feeling I’d chase you across the country until you were

I bet she’d know how to make him feel better when he’s sick. I’m sure she would’ve been able to get him to stop crying in the parking lot. She’s most likely a lawyer or a doctor. Even worse, she’s probably a pediatrician who owns a lot of cardigans and comes from a giant family who would love to welcome those two into their fold.

Eyes Fastened With Pins" How much death works, No one knows what a long Day he puts in. The little Wife always alone Ironing death's laundry. The beautiful daughters Setting death's supper table. The neighbors playing Pinochle in the backyard Or just sitting on the steps Drinking beer. Death, Meanwhile, in a strange Part of town looking for Someone with a bad cough, But the address somehow wrong, Even death can't figure it out Among all the locked doors... And the rain beginning to fall. Long windy night ahead. Death with not even a newspaper To cover his head, not even A dime to call the one pining away, Undressing slowly, sleepily, And stretching naked On death's side of the bed.

Even so, I was feeling a little uneasy, and before we headed out into that dark and windy night, I thought I’d have a stiff drink—for Dutch courage, you could say.

Because it’s her dream, and I care about her too much to not help her chase it, even if that means I won’t be there when she gets everything she’s worked for.

Ryan, my guy, you’re so completely fucked, and you can’t even see it.

I nod against him. “You can play everyone else, but not me. Screw it. I’ll even support your made-up persona as long as you’re not that guy with me.

I’ve been a bargaining piece. A second-choice fiancée and even an unwanted employee, but I’ve never been someone’s joy.

Rodriguez, in addition to the pleasant glow in the mind that comes from a generous action, had another feeling that gives all of us pleasure, a feeling of increased safety; for while he had the ring upon his finger and Morano went unpaid the thought could not help occurring, even to a generous mind, that one of these windy nights Morano might come for his wages.

I know loving someone is scary, and letting someone love you, especially after everything we’ve been through, is even scarier. But I promise you, with the right person, it’s worth it.

Fuck my life.” Rio pounds back his drink before going into the kitchen for another. “I’m going to be the only single one left, and that was so fucking adorable that I don’t even mind it.

I’m sorry someone let you believe you were hard to love, because, Blue, it’s the easiest thing I’ve ever done.” I shake my head. “God, I love you. I think in a way, I’ve loved you since our first breakfast together. You brought me back to life, Ind, and I will love you as long as you’ll let me.”  “Promise?” Pulling her in, I take her lips with mine. “I’ll even add it to the fridge.

Gilbert darling, don't let's ever be afraid of things. It's such dreadful slavery. Let's be daring and adventurous and expectant. Let's dance to meet life and all it can bring to us, even if it brings scads of trouble and typhoid and twins!

Maybe he should loosen up every once in a while. He’s got a cute-ass kid and an even cuter smile when he shows it.” She lifts her Corona to me before chugging the rest and exiting the elevator. “Thanks for the ride, Baby Daddy. It was…interesting.”  That it was.

You think Monty is scary when it comes to his kid?” I chuckle condescendingly. “You don’t even want to know what I’ll be like if you fuck with mine, and messing with Miller, or anyone who is watching my son, is the same thing as messing with Max, so don’t fucking try it.

The first lifelong friend I made at Oxford was A. K. Hamilton Jenkin, since known for his books on Cornwall. He continued (what Arthur had begun) my education as a seeing, listening, smelling, receptive creature. Arthur had had his preference for the Homely. But Jenkin seemed able to enjoy everything; even ugliness. I learned from him that we should attempt a total surrender to whatever atmosphere was offering itself at the moment; in a squalid town to seek out those very places where its squalor rose to grimness and almost grandeur, on a dismal day to find the most dismal and dripping wood, on a windy day to seek the windiest ridge. There was no Betjemannic irony about it; only a serious, yet gleeful, determination to rub one’s nose in the very quiddity of each thing, to rejoice in its being (so magnificently) what it was.

Last month, on a very windy day, I was returning from a lecture I had given to a group in Fort Washington. I was beginning to feel unwell. I was feeling increasing spasms in my legs and back and became anxious as I anticipated a difficult ride back to my office. Making matters worse, I knew I had to travel two of the most treacherous high-speed roads near Philadelphia – the four-lane Schuylkill Expressway and the six-lane Blue Route. You’ve been in my van, so you know how it’s been outfitted with everything I need to drive. But you probably don’t realize that I often drive more slowly than other people. That’s because I have difficulty with body control. I’m especially careful on windy days when the van can be buffeted by sudden gusts. And if I’m having problems with spasms or high blood pressure, I stay way over in the right hand lane and drive well below the speed limit. When I’m driving slowly, people behind me tend to get impatient. They speed up to my car, blow their horns, drive by, stare at me angrily, and show me how long their fingers can get. (I don't understand why some people are so proud of the length of their fingers, but there are many things I don't understand.) Those angry drivers add stress to what already is a stressful experience of driving. On this particular day, I was driving by myself. At first, I drove slowly along back roads. Whenever someone approached, I pulled over and let them pass. But as I neared the Blue Route, I became more frightened. I knew I would be hearing a lot of horns and seeing a lot of those long fingers. And then I did something I had never done in the twenty-four years that I have been driving my van. I decided to put on my flashers. I drove the Blue Route and the Schuylkyll Expressway at 35 miles per hour. Now…Guess what happened? Nothing! No horns and no fingers. But why? When I put on my flashers, I was saying to the other drivers, “I have a problem here – I am vulnerable and doing the best I can.” And everyone understood. Several times, in my rearview mirror I saw drivers who wanted to pass. They couldn’t get around me because of the stream of passing traffic. But instead of honking or tailgating, they waited for the other cars to pass, knowing the driver in front of them was in some way weak. Sam, there is something about vulnerability that elicits compassion. It is in our hard wiring. I see it every day when people help me by holding doors, pouring cream in my coffee, or assist me when I put on my coat. Sometimes I feel sad because from my wheelchair perspective, I see the best in people. But those who appear strong and invulnerably typically are not exposed to the kindness I see daily. Sometimes situations call for us to act strong and brave even when we don't feel that way. But those are a few and far between. More often, there is a better pay-off if you don't pretend you feel strong when you feel weak, or pretend that you are brave when you’re scared. I really believe the world might be a safer place if everyone who felt vulnerable wore flashers that said, “I have a problem and I’m doing the best I can. Please be patient!

An even, straight path is attractive. Its predictable routine perpetuates with no extra effort required. It becomes autopilot that leads to endless same old thing. An uneven, windy path is unavoidable to many. Its unforeseen, exciting adventures require balance, adjustment, alertness and attention. A path that leads to a rewarding dream of your life.

Do you have someone worth following?” he softly asks.  I let out a sharp breath. “Yeah. I think I do.”  “Do you love them?”  I nod, unable to speak. “Then don’t let them go, Evan. I know loving someone is scary, and letting someone love you, especially after everything we’ve been through, is even scarier. But I promise you, with the right person, it’s worth it.

I know him, that man walking- toward me up the crowded street of the city, I have lived with him seven years now, I know his fast stride, his windy wheatfield hair, his hands thrust deep in his jacket pockets, hands that have known my body, touched its softest part, caused its quick shudders and slow releasings, I have seen his face above my face, his mouth smiling, moaning his eyes closed and opened, I have studied his eyes, the brown turning gold at the centers, I have silently watched him lying beside me in the early morning, I know his loneliness, like mine, human and sad, but different, too, his private pain and pleasure I can never enter even as he comes closer, past trees and cars, trash and flowers, steam rising from the manhole covers, gutters running with rain, he lifts his head, he sees me, we are strangers again, and a rending music of desire and loss— I don’t know him—courses through me, and we kiss and say, It’s good to see you, as if we haven’t seen each other in years when it was just a few hours ago, and we are shy, then, not knowing what to say next.

THE order of God’s Providence maintains a perpetual vicissitude in the material being of this world; day is continually turning to night, spring to summer, summer to autumn, autumn to winter, winter to spring; no two days are ever exactly alike. Some are foggy, rainy, some dry or windy; and this endless variety greatly enhances the beauty of the universe. And even so precisely is it with man (who, as ancient writers have said, is a miniature of the world), for he is never long in any one condition, and his life on earth flows by like the mighty waters, heaving and tossing with an endless variety of motion; one while raising him on high with hope, another plunging him low in fear; now turning him to the right with rejoicing, then driving him to the left with sorrows; and no single day, no, not even one hour, is entirely the same as any other of his life. All this is a very weighty warning, and teaches us to aim at an abiding and unchangeable evenness of mind amid so great an uncertainty of events; and, while all around is changing, we must seek to remain immoveable, ever looking to, reaching after and desiring our God.

At first it had no name. It was the thing itself, the vivid thing. It was his friend. On windy days it danced, demented, waving wild arms, or in the silence of evening drowsed and dreamed, swaying in the blue, goldeny air. Even at night it did not go away. Wrapped in his truckle bed, he could hear it stirring darkly outside in the dark, all the long night long. There were others, nearer to him, more vivid still than this, that came and went, talking, but they were wholly familiar, almost a part of himself, while it, steadfast and aloof, belonged to the mysterious outside, to the wind and the weather and the goldeny blue air. It was a part of the world, and yet it was his friend. Look, Nicolas, look! See the big tree! Tree. That was its name. And also: the linden. They were nice words. He had known them a long time before he knew what they meant. They did not mean themselves, they were nothing in themselves, they meant the dancing singing thing outside. In wind, in silence, at night, in the changing air, it changed and yet it was changelessly the tree, the linden tree. That was strange. The wind blew on the day that he left, and everything waved and waved. The linden tree waved. Goodbye!

I love it here,” I say to her quietly. “Chicago.”  She simply nods her agreement.  “Do you?” I ask, because that’s what I really need to know. Can she stay here? Can she be happy here even though staying wasn’t her first choice?  “I didn’t think much of it before, but it’s grown on me recently.” “Are you talking about me or the city?” “They go hand in hand, in my opinion. It’s kind of a package deal.

A few of my teammates are on the couch, even more sitting on the floor with their eyes glued to the television screen where another baseball game is playing. But they’re not who I’m looking at. I’m watching Max with my wife.  Whatever I’m feeling for Kennedy is far more serious than the once superficial crush I had on the girl. I didn’t know her then, but now that I’m learning exactly who she is, I more than like what I see.

At one-thirty in the deep dark morning, the cooking odors blew up through the windy corridors of the house. Down the stairs, one by one, came women in curlers, men in bathrobes, to tiptoe and peer into the kitchen- lit only by fitful gusts of red fire from the hissing stove. And there in the black kitchen at two of a warm summer morning, Grandma floated like an apparition, amidst bangings and clatterings, half blind once more, her fingers groping instinctively in the dimness, shaking out spice clouds over bubbling pots and simmering kettles, her face in the firelight red, magical, and enchanted as she seized and stirred and poured the sublime foods. Quiet, quiet, the boarders laid the best linens and gleaming silver and lit candles rather than switch on electric lights and snap the spell. Grandfather, arriving home from a late evening's work at the printing office, was startled to hear grace being said in the candlelit dining room. As for the food? The meats were deviled, the sauces curried, the greens mounded with sweet butter, the biscuits splashed with jeweled honey; everything toothsome, luscious, and so miraculously refreshing that a gentle lowing broke out as from a pasturage of beasts gone wild in clover. One and all cried out their gratitude for their loose-fitting night clothes.

I mean it, Stevie. I need you at home. I want you to move in with me.”  She looks up at me, brows furrowed. “Even if we’re only here for the summer, I want you to move in. And when we leave Chicago, I want to live together. If I can’t have you on the road next season, I need you every second of every day while I’m home.” A blush rushes up to her freckled cheeks, and an excited smile spreads across her lips that she tries to suppress. “I’d like that.

Within twenty years at the most, he reflected, the huge and simple question, “Was life better before the Revolution than it is now?” would have ceased once and for all to be answerable. But in effect it was unanswerable even now, since the few scattered survivors from the ancient world were incapable of comparing one age with another. They remembered a million useless things, a quarrel with a workmate, a hunt for a lost bicycle pump, the expression on a long-dead sister’s face, the swirls of dust on a windy morning seventy years ago; but all the relevant facts were outside the range of their vision. They were like the ant, which can see small objects but not large ones. And when memory failed and written records were falsified—when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested.

This exercise of unfreezing something in time is not hard to do. If you want to see time that isn’t fungible, just pick a point in space—a branch, a yard, a sidewalk square, a webcam—and simply keep watch. A story is being written there. Like the larger and larger wind patterns on Windy.com, this story is inseparable from the story of all life, even yours. This story is, finally, the signature of “it”: the restless, unstoppable, constantly overturning thing that makes it all go.

But soon the house will fill with their shouting and laughter. What does any of it mean to me? When all human ties are severed, what is left? I have not uttered a single true word in ten years. But now, how desperately I need a confidant. What else is there left for me, but to spill out these words and then drown in them? Oh, Maria, why can’t we sit by the window and talk? Why can’t we open our hearts and souls to each other, as we walk together in silence on a windy autumn evening?

Visual over-stimulation is a distraction from concentration and evokes the same sort of reactions as over-stimulation from noise. But the source might surprise you. Even fussy clothing moving around can be a visual distraction, or too many people in the room, or too many machines with moving parts. For those who work outside, a windy day is a triple-threat—with sound, sight, and touch all being affected. Cars moving, lights, signs, crowds, all this visual chaos can exhaust the AS person. Back in the office, too many computer screens, especially older ones with TV-style monitors, and sickly, flickering, unnatural fluorescent lighting were both high on the trigger list. The trouble with fluorescent light is threefold: Cool-white and energy-efficient fluorescent lights are the most commonly used in public buildings. They do not include the color blue, “the most important part for humans,” in their spectrum. In addition to not having the psychological benefits of daylight, they give off toxins and are linked to depression, depersonalization, aggression, vertigo, anxiety, stress, cancer, and many other forms of ill health. It’s true. There’s an EPA report to prove it (Edwards and Torcellini 2002). Flickering fluorescent lights, which can trigger epileptic seizures, cause strong reactions in AS individuals, including headaches, confusion, and an inability to concentrate. Even flickering that is not obvious to others can be perceived by some on the spectrum.

But, once in the open air, she paused. Some emotion - pity, terror, love, but the emotion was strong - seized her, and she was aware of autumn. Summer was ending, and the evening brought her odours of decay, the more pathetic because they were reminiscent of spring. That something or other mattered intellectually? A leaf, violently agitated, danced past her, while other leaves lay motionless. That the earth was hastening to re-enter darkness, and the shadows of those trees over Windy Corner?

Do you think I’m pretty?” He rolls his eyes.  “Do you?” Ryan levels me with a look, serious and stoic. “I think you’re smart.” Oh. “Kind. Chaotic. A bit of a smartass and too charming for your own good.”  Oh, wow. I like that answer much more than the one I was expecting, but I divert because his response is far too detailed and knowing of who I am. “So, you don’t think I’m pretty, then.” He chuckles. “Indy, I’m not blind, but even if I were, I’m pretty sure I could touch your face and understand just how fucking stunning you are, but it’s not the first thing I see anymore.”  Well, fuck me.

My mum all those years ago sensed a child who had been adopted was also a child who could feel terribly hurt. And no matter how much she loved me, no matter how much my dad loved me, there is still a windy place right at the core of my heart. The windy place is like Wuthering Heights, out on open moors, rugged and wild and free and lonely. The wind rages and batters at the trees. I struggle against the windy place. I sometimes even forget it. But there it is. I am partly defeated by it. You think adoption is a story which has an end. But the point about it is that it has no end. It keeps changing its ending.

It will be long before everyone is wiped out. People live in war time, they always have. There was terror down through history - and the men who saw the Spanish Armada sail over the rim of the world, who saw the Black death wipe out half of Europe, those men were frightened, terrified. But though they lived and died in fear, I am here; we have built again. And so I will belong to a dark age, and historians will say "We have few documents to show how the common people lived at this time. Records lead us to believe that a majority were killed. But there were glorious men." And school children will sigh and learn the names of Truman and Senator McCarthy. Oh, it is hard for me to reconcile myself to this. But maybe this is why I am a girl - - - so I can live more safely than the boys I have known and envied, so I can bear children, and instill in them the biting eating desire to learn and love life which I will never quite fulfill, because there isn't time, because there isn't time at all, but instead the quick desperate fear, the ticking clock, and the snow which comes too suddenly upon the summer. Sure, I'm dramatic and sloppily semi-cynical and semi-sentimental. But in leisure years I could grow and choose my way. Now I am living on the edge. We all are on the brink, and it takes a lot of nerve, a lot of energy, to teeter on the edge, looking over, looking down into the windy blackness and not being quite able to make out, through the yellow, stinking mist, just what lies below in the slime, in the oozing, vomit-streaked slime; and so I could go on, into my thoughts, writing much, trying to find the core, the meaning for myself. Perhaps that would help, to synthesize my ideas into a philosophy for me, now, at the age of eighteen, but the clock ticks, ah yes, "At my back I hear, time's winged chariot hovering near." And I have too much conscience, too much habit to sit and stare at snow, thick now, and evenly white and muffling on the ground. God, I scream for time to let go, to write, to think. But no. I have to exercise my memory in little feats just so I can stay in this damn wonderful place which I love and hate with all my heart. And so the snow slows and swirls, and melts along the edges. The first snow isn't good for much. It makes a few people write poetry, a few wonder if the Christmas shopping is done, a few make reservations at the skiing lodge. It's a sentimental prelude to the real thing. It's picturesque & quaint.

Somehow Jason and I ended up on the very last seat. Maybe everyone else was just too tired to walk that far. Jason put his arm around me and drew me up against his side. Once the coach called the roster and everyone was accounted for, we headed home. It was really dark on the bus. It didn’t seem as windy. Maybe because Jason was holding me close. Then he kissed me. A really long, slow, deep kiss. A kiss that made me see fireworks. When he pulled back, I could see him grinning, even in the darkness. “I love the flavor of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.” “You know where you can always get a taste,” I said. He kissed me again.

How’s the spaghetti?” I ask. “So good.” She takes another bite, talking with her mouth full in the most un-Kennedy-like way. “I think I might want a second bowl.”  “I’m a fairly shit cook, but I have about three solid recipes in my arsenal and that’s one of them.” “Are you going to make me the other two someday?” “I’m sure you could talk me into that. But the spaghetti is my favorite. My mom taught me how to make the sauce when I was a kid.”  Kennedy takes her time chewing as she watches me. “She did a good job.” “She was a great teacher.” “She did a good job with you too.”  Fuck me. I’ve got my handle on snarky Kennedy, shy Kennedy, and even drunk Kennedy, but sweet and honest Kennedy? I’m a goner already.

Looking up occasionally to see rare cars crossing the high bridge and wondering what they'd see on this drear foggy night if they knew a madman was down there a thousand feet below in all that windy fury sitting in the dark writing in the dark - Some sort of sea beatnik, tho anybody wants to call me a beatnik for THIS better try it if they dare - The huge black rocks seem to move - The bleak awful roaring isolateness, no ordinary man could do it I'm telling you - I am a Breton! I cry and the blackness speaks back "Les poissons de la mer parlent Breton" (the fishes of the sea speak Breton) - Nevertheless I go there every night even tho I dont feel like it, it's my duty (and probably drove me mad), and write these sea sounds, and all the whole insane poem "Sea”.

You’re a grown-up, these days. You don’t wear a kamikaze pilot’s rising sun headband and a tee-shirt that screams DEBUG THIS! and you don’t spend your weekends competing in extreme programming slams at a windy campsite near Frankfurt, but it’s generally difficult for you to use any machine that doesn’t have at least one compiler installed: In fact, you had to stick Python on your phone before you even opened its address book because not being able to brainwash it left you feeling handicapped, like you were a passenger instead of a pilot. In another age you would have been a railway mechanic or a grease monkey crawling over the spark plugs of a DC-3. This is what you are, and the sad fact is, they can put the code monkey in a suit but they can’t take the code out of the monkey.

RENEWABLE ENERGY REVOLUTION: SOLAR + WIND + BATTERIES In addition to AI, we are on the cusp of another important technological revolution—renewable energy. Together, solar photovoltaic, wind power, and lithium-ion battery storage technologies will create the capability of replacing most if not all of our energy infrastructure with renewable clean energy. By 2041, much of the developed world and some developing countries will be primarily powered by solar and wind. The cost of solar energy dropped 82 percent from 2010 to 2020, while the cost of wind energy dropped 46 percent. Solar and onshore wind are now the cheapest sources of electricity. In addition, lithium-ion battery storage cost has dropped 87 percent from 2010 to 2020. It will drop further thanks to the massive production of batteries for electrical vehicles. This rapid drop in the price of battery storage will make it possible to store the solar/wind energy from sunny and windy days for future use. Think tank RethinkX estimates that with a $2 trillion investment through 2030, the cost of energy in the United States will drop to 3 cents per kilowatt-hour, less than one-quarter of today’s cost. By 2041, it should be even lower, as the prices of these three components continue to descend. What happens on days when a given area’s battery energy storage is full—will any generated energy left unused be wasted? RethinkX predicts that these circumstances will create a new class of energy called “super power” at essentially zero cost, usually during the sunniest or most windy days. With intelligent scheduling, this “super power” can be used for non-time-sensitive applications such as charging batteries of idle cars, water desalination and treatment, waste recycling, metal refining, carbon removal, blockchain consensus algorithms, AI drug discovery, and manufacturing activities whose costs are energy-driven. Such a system would not only dramatically decrease energy cost, but also power new applications and inventions that were previously too expensive to pursue. As the cost of energy plummets, the cost of water, materials, manufacturing, computation, and anything that has a major energy component will drop, too. The solar + wind + batteries approach to new energy will also be 100-percent clean energy. Switching to this form of energy can eliminate more than 50 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, which is by far the largest culprit of climate change.

Sunday Morning V She says, "But in contentment I still feel The need of some imperishable bliss." Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her, Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams And our desires. Although she strews the leaves Of sure obliteration on our paths, The path sick sorrow took, the many paths Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love Whispered a little out of tenderness, She makes the willow shiver in the sun For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet. She causes boys to pile new plums and pears On disregarded plate. The maidens taste And stray impassioned in the littering leaves. VI Is there no change of death in paradise? Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs Hang always heavy in that perfect sky, Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth, With rivers like our own that seek for seas They never find, the same receding shores That never touch with inarticulate pang? Why set the pear upon those river-banks Or spice the shores with odors of the plum? Alas, that they should wear our colors there, The silken weavings of our afternoons, And pick the strings of our insipid lutes! Death is the mother of beauty, mystical, Within whose burning bosom we devise Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly. VII Supple and turbulent, a ring of men Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn Their boisterous devotion to the sun, Not as a god, but as a god might be, Naked among them, like a savage source. Their chant shall be a chant of paradise, Out of their blood, returning to the sky; And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice, The windy lake wherein their lord delights, The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills, That choir among themselves long afterward. They shall know well the heavenly fellowship Of men that perish and of summer morn. And whence they came and whither they shall go The dew upon their feet shall manifest. VIII She hears, upon that water without sound, A voice that cries, "The tomb in Palestine Is not the porch of spirits lingering. It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay." We live in an old chaos of the sun, Or old dependency of day and night, Or island solitude, unsponsored, free, Of that wide water, inescapable. Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail Whistle about us their spontaneous cries; Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness; And, in the isolation of the sky, At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make Ambiguous undulations as they sink, Downward to darkness, on extended wings

The fire started inside a barn. It was tiny at first, a glowing dot, some wisps of white smoke. But then flames reached up. They grabbed hold of a pile of hay. Crackle! Pop! And then, Boom! Towers of flame shot up, higher, higher, punching through the roof, reaching for the sky. Voices screamed out. “Fire! Fire! Fire!” Alarm bells clanged. Firefighters readied their horses and raced their pumpers through the streets. But it was too late. The flames blasted a shower of fiery sparks into the windy sky. Like a swarm of flaming wasps, they flew through the air, starting fires wherever they landed. Shops and homes erupted in flames. Warehouses exploded. Mansions burned. Crowds of panicked people fled their houses and rushed through the streets and along the wooden sidewalks. They screamed and pushed and knocked one another down, desperate to get away from the choking smoke and broiling flames. But there was no escape. The winds blew harder. Flames shot hundreds of feet in the air, spreading across miles and miles. And in the middle of it all was eleven-year-old Oscar Starling. Oscar had never felt so terrified, not even two years ago, when a killer blizzard hit his family’s Minnesota farm. He was trapped inside a burning house, fighting for his life. He’d made it down the stairs, desperate to escape. And then, Crash! A ball of fire and cinders crashed through the window, and the house exploded in flames. And suddenly, Oscar was in the fire’s ferocious grip. The flames clawed at him, seared him, threw him to the ground. Smoke gushed up his nose and into his mouth. But the worst was the blistering heat, the feeling of being roasted alive. Was this the end? Oscar had never wanted to come to this city. And now he was sure he was going to die here.

This was rural Mexico, almost as impoverished and ignored as the worst of what I had seen when reporting on Haiti. It infuriated me to know that the Mexican political party that had run the nation for most of this century had called itself something like the People’s Revolutionary Party and had loudly preached social justice for all, winning election after election on that windy promise, but when installed, had proved itself to be a callous oligarchy. A small group of buddies had passed the presidency from one to another, each coming into office with modest means and leaving after six years with hundreds of millions, usually hidden in Swiss banks. The so-called revolutionaries stole the country blind, allowing or even forcing the peasants to sink deeper and deeper into abject poverty. Few nations had been ruled so cynically, which was why so many peasants wanted to escape to the good jobs, houses and food in the United States. I was not proud of what my country had accomplished during my lifetime.

The ducks of Mackinac Island are apparently not easily taken down. “Found a portion of the Lungs as large as a turkey’s egg protruding through the external wound, lacerated and burnt, and below this another protrusion resembling a portion of the Stomach, what at first view I could not believe possible to be that organ in that situation with the subject surviving, but on closer examination I found it to be actually the Stomach, with a puncture in the protruding portion large enough to receive my forefinger, and through which a portion of his food that he had taken for breakfast had come out and lodged among his apparel.” Thus reads Beaumont’s somewhat windy account of the injury. Through that puncture—and in the slop of half-digested meat and bread suddenly visible in the folds of St. Martin’s wool shirt—lay Beaumont’s ticket to the spotlight of national renown. Italian digestion experimenters had pulled food in and out of live animal stomachs, soaked it up in sponges on strings, even regurgitated their own dinners, but St. Martin’s portal presented an unprecedented opportunity to document the human juices and processes in vivo.

how difficult it is to say, “Boy, did I mess up,” without the protective postscript of self-justification—to say “I dropped a routine fly ball with the bases loaded” rather than “I dropped the ball because the sun was in my eyes” or “because a bird flew by” or “because it was windy” or “because a fan called me a jerk.” A friend returning from a day in traffic school told us that as participants went around the room, reporting the violations that had brought them there, a miraculous coincidence had occurred: Not one of them had broken the law! They all had justifications for speeding, ignoring a stop sign, running a red light, or making an illegal U-turn. He became so dismayed (and amused) by the litany of flimsy excuses that, when his turn came, he was embarrassed to give in to the same impulse. He said, “I didn’t stop at a stop sign. I was entirely wrong and I got caught.” There was a moment’s silence, and then the room erupted in cheers for his candor. There are plenty of good reasons for admitting mistakes, starting with the simple fact that you will probably be found out anyway—by your family, your company, your colleagues, your enemies, your biographer. But there are more positive reasons for owning up. Other people will like you more. Someone else may be able to pick up your fumble and run with it; your error might inspire someone else’s solution. Children will realize that everyone screws up on occasion and that even adults have to say “I’m sorry.” And if you can admit a mistake when it is the size of an acorn, it will be easier to repair than if you wait until it becomes the size of a tree, with deep, wide-ranging roots.

She pulled her small Ray-Ban sunglasses partway out of her shoulder bag and took three thousand-yen bills from her wallet. Handing the bills to the driver, she said, 'I'll get out here. I really can't be late for this appointment.' The driver nodded and took the money. 'Would you like a receipt?' 'No need. And keep the change.' 'Thanks very much,' he said. 'Be careful, it looks windy out there. Don't slip.' 'I'll be careful,' Aomame said. 'And also,' the driver said, facing the mirror, 'please remember: things are not what they seem.' Things are not what they seem, Aomame repeated mentally. 'What do you mean by that?' she asked with knitted brows. The driver chose his words carefully: 'It's just that you're about to do something out of the ordinary. Am I right? People do not ordinarily climb down the emergency stairs of the Metropolitan Expressway in the middle of the day - especially women.' 'I suppose you're right.' 'Right. And after you do something like that, the everyday look of things might seem to change a little. Things may look different to you than they did before. I've had that experience myself. But don't let appearances fool you. There's always only one reality.' Aomame thought about what he was saying, and in the course of her thinking, the Janáček ended and the audience broke into immediate applause. This was obviously a live recording. The applause was long and enthusiastic. There were even occasionally calls of 'Bravo!' She imagined the smiling conductor bowing repeatedly to the standing audience. He would then raise his head, raise his arms, shake hands with the concertmaster, turn away from the audience, raise his arms again in praise of the orchestra, face front, and take another deep bow. As she listened to the long recorded applause, it sounded less like applause and more like an endless Martian sandstorm. 'There is always, as I said, only one reality,' the driver repeated slowly, as if underlining an important passage in a book.

I look back now and can see how much my father also found his own freedom in the adventures we did together, whether it was galloping along a beach in the Isle of Wight with me behind him, or climbing on the steep hills and cliffs around the island’s coast. It was at times like these that I found a real intimacy with him. It was also where I learned to recognize that tightening sensation, deep in the pit of my stomach, as being a great thing to follow in life. Some call it fear. I remember the joy of climbing with him in the wintertime. It was always an adventure and often turned into much more than just a climb. Dad would determine that not only did we have to climb a sheer hundred-and-fifty-foot chalk cliff, but also that German paratroopers held the high ground. We therefore had to climb the cliff silently and unseen, and then grenade the German fire position once at the summit. In reality this meant lobbing clumps of manure toward a deserted bench on the cliff tops. Brilliant. What a great way to spend a wet and windy winter’s day when you are age eight (or twenty-eight, for that matter). I loved returning from the cliff climbs totally caked in mud, out of breath, having scared ourselves a little. I learned to love that feeling of the wind and rain blowing hard on my face. It made me feel like a man, when in reality I was a little boy. We also used to talk about Mount Everest, as we walked across the fields toward the cliffs. I loved to pretend that some of our climbs were on the summit face of Everest itself. We would move together cautiously across the white chalk faces, imagining they were really ice. I had this utter confidence that I could climb Everest if he were beside me. I had no idea what Everest would really involve but I loved the dream together. These were powerful, magical times. Bonding. Intimate. Fun. And I miss them a lot even today. How good it would feel to get the chance to do that with him just once more. I think that is why I find it often so emotional taking my own boys hiking or climbing nowadays. Mountains create powerful bonds between people. It is their great appeal to me. But it wasn’t just climbing. Dad and I would often go to the local stables and hire a couple of horses for a tenner and go jumping the breakwaters along the beach. Every time I fell off in the wet sand and was on the verge of bursting into tears, Dad would applaud me and say that I was slowly becoming a horseman. In other words, you can’t become a decent horseman until you fall off and get up again a good number of times. There’s life in a nutshell.

So it was always at night, like a werewolf, that I would take the thing out for an honest run down the coast. I would start in Golden Gate Park, thinking only to run a few long curves to clear my head. . . but in a matter of minutes I'd be out at the beach with the sound of the engine in my ears, the surf booming up on the sea wall and a fine empty road stretching all the way down to Santa Cruz. . . not even a gas station in the whole seventy miles; the only public light along the way is an all-​night diner down around Rockaway Beach. There was no helmet on those nights, no speed limit, and no cooling it down on the curves. The momentary freedom of the park was like the one unlucky drink that shoves a wavering alcoholic off the wagon. I would come out of the park near the soccer field and pause for a moment at the stop sign, wondering if I knew anyone parked out there on the midnight humping strip. Then into first gear, forgetting the cars and letting the beast wind out. . . thirty-​five, forty-​five. . . then into second and wailing through the light at Lincoln Way, not worried about green or red signals, but only some other werewolf loony who might be pulling out, too slowly, to start his own run. Not many of these. . . and with three lanes on a wide curve, a bike coming hard has plenty of room to get around almost anything. . . then into third, the boomer gear, pushing seventy-​five and the beginning of a windscream in the ears, a pressure on the eyeballs like diving into water off a high board. Bent forward, far back on the seat, and a rigid grip on the handlebars as the bike starts jumping and wavering in the wind. Taillights far up ahead coming closer, faster, and suddenly -- zaaapppp -- going past and leaning down for a curve near the zoo, where the road swings out to sea. The dunes are flatter here, and on windy days sand blows across the highway, piling up in thick drifts as deadly as any oil-​slick. . . instant loss of control, a crashing, cartwheeling slide and maybe one of those two-​inch notices in the paper the next day: “An unidentified motorcyclist was killed last night when he failed to negotiate a turn on Highway I.” Indeed. . . but no sand this time, so the lever goes up into fourth, and now there's no sound except wind. Screw it all the way over, reach through the handlebars to raise the headlight beam, the needle leans down on a hundred, and wind-​burned eyeballs strain to see down the centerline, trying to provide a margin for the reflexes. But with the throttle screwed on there is only the barest margin, and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right. . . and that's when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and vibrates along your arms. You can barely see at a hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they vaporize before they get to your ears. The only sounds are wind and a dull roar floating back from the mufflers. You watch the white line and try to lean with it. . . howling through a turn to the right, then to the left and down the long hill to Pacifica. . . letting off now, watching for cops, but only until the next dark stretch and another few seconds on the edge. . . The Edge. . . There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others -- the living -- are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later. But the edge is still Out there. Or maybe it's In. The association of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definitions.

On October 15, 1959, the day after we arrived at Western Shore, we rented a boat to get over to the island. It was a raw, windy day and by the time we reached the dock, my husband closed the throttle with a firm twist. It snapped clean off. “That’s a good start,” I thought. An omen? Well we were here, so off we went to see the pits. It had been four years since I last saw the pits, and standing there looking down at them I was shocked at their condition. One pit had partially collapsed, leaving broken and twisted timbers around; you could no longer see the water (at the bottom of the pit). In the other, the larger of the two, rotting cribbing was visible, as all the deck planking had been ripped off, exposing it to the weather. Even my son’s face fell momentarily. Looking across the slate grey sea at the black smudges of other islands, I felt utterly wretched. I don’t think I have ever seen a place so bleak and lonely as that island, that day. I just wanted to go home. Soon Bobby’s eyes began to sparkle as he and his dad walked around, talking. They walked here, they walked there, son asking questions, my husband answering…all about the history of the place. I trailed after them, ignored and unnoticed. Finally Bob said it was time for us to go back. Catching sight of my face with its woebegone expression, he started to laugh, “Look,” he said to Bobby, pointing to me, “The reluctant treasure hunter.” They both thought that was hilarious and went off down the hill, roaring with laughter.

She said she had been teaching them the art of reframing: thinking their way toward victory instead of toward defeat. She had been teaching them about the effect that anxiety had on their performance. Diaphragmatic breathing and positive self-talk were two tools the sports psychologist had given the runners to control their anxiety. “If they are saying to themselves, ‘I won’t get a good time,’ I try to teach them to say, ‘Oh, those are just thoughts, it doesn’t mean it will happen,’ ” she explained. “Or if it’s windy, like today, and they are worried about that, they should remind themselves that the wind will help on one side of the track, even as it will hurt on the other side, so the net effect might be inconsequential.” I could see how those tools might

He made up his mind to see Kate, and with this view he went down to Westmoreland; and took himself to a small wayside inn at Shap among the fells, which had been known to him of old. He gave his sister notice that he would be there, and begged her to come over to him as early as she might find it possible on the’ morning after his arrival. He himself reached the place late in the evening by train from London. There is a station at Shap, by which the railway company no doubt conceives that it has conferred on that somewhat rough and remote locality all the advantages of a refined civilization; but I doubt whether the Shappites have been thankful for the favour. The landlord at the inn, for one, is not thankful. Shap had been a place owing all such life as it had possessed to coaching and posting. It had been a stage on the high road from Lancaster to Carlisle, and though it lay high and bleak among the fells, and was a cold, windy, thinly-populated place, – filling all travellers with thankfulness that they had not been made Shappites, nevertheless, it had had its glory in its coaching and posting. I have no doubt that there are men and women who look back with a fond regret to the palmy days of Shap.

When he got out of the car to do his business, my mother stared straight ahead. But I turned to watch. There was always something wild and charismatically uncaring about my father’s demeanor in these moments, some mysterious abandonment of his frowning and cogitative state that already meant a lot to me, even though at that age I understood almost nothing about him. Paulie had long ago stopped whispering 'perv' to me for observing him as he relieved himself. She of course, kept her head n her novels. I remember that it was cold that day, and windy but that the sky had been cut from the crackling blue gem field of a late midwestern April. Outside the car, as other families sped past my father stepped to the leeward side of the open door then leaning back from the waist and at the same time forward the ankles. His penis poked out from his zipper for this part, Bernie always stood up at the rear window. My father paused fo a moment rocking slightly while a few indistinct words played on his lips. Then just before his stream stared he tiled back his head as if there were a code written in the sky that allowed the event to begin. This was the moment I waited for, the movement seemed to be a marker of his own private devotion as though despite his unshakable atheism and despite his sour, entirely analytic approach to every affair of life, he nonetheless felt the need to acknowledge the heavens in the regard to this particular function of the body. I don't know perhaps I sensed that he simply enjoyed it in a deep way that I did. It was possible I already recognized that the eye narrowing depth of his physical delight in that moment was relative to that paucity of other delights in his life. But in any case the prayerful uplifting of his cranium always seemed to democratize him for me, to make him for a few minutes at least, a regular man. Bernie let out a bark. ‘’Is he done?’’ asked my mother. I opened my window. ‘’Almost.’’ In fact he was still in the midst. My father peed like a horse. His urine lowed in one great sweeping dream that started suddenly and stopped just as suddenly, a single, winking arc of shimmering clarity that endured for a prodigious interval and then disappeared in an instant, as though the outflow were a solid object—and arch of glittering ice or a thick band of silver—and not (as it actually approximated) a parabolic, dynamically averaged graph of the interesting functions of gravity, air resistance, and initial velocity on a non-viscous fluid, produced and exhibited by a man who’d just consumed more than a gallon of midwestern beer. The flow was as clear as water. When it struck the edge of the gravel shoulder, the sound was like a bed-sheet being ripped. Beneath this high reverberation, he let out a protracted appreciative whistle that culminated in a tunneled gasp, his lips flapping at the close like a trumpeters. In the tiny topsoil, a gap appeared, a wisp entirely unashamed. Bernie bumped about in the cargo bay. My father moved up close to peer through the windshield, zipping his trousers and smiling through the glass at my mother. I realized that the yellow that should have been in his urine was unmistakable now in his eyes. ‘’Thank goodness,’’ my mother said when the car door closed again. ‘’I was getting a little bored in here.

An hour later we were pulling into the hospital parking lot. Sparkly and shiny from my hair and makeup job, I had to stop and bend over six times between the car and the front door of the hospital. I literally couldn’t take a step until each contraction ended. Within an hour after checking in, I was writhing on a hospital bed in all-encompassing pain and wishing once again that I’d gone ahead and moved to Chicago. It had become my default response when things got rough in my life: morning sickness? I should have moved to Chicago. Cow manure in my yard? Chicago would have been a better choice. Contractions less than a minute apart? Windy City, come and get me. Finally, I reached my breaking point. It’s an indescribable feeling, the throes of hard labor--that mind-numbing total body cramp whose origin you can’t even begin to wrap your head around. After trying to be strong and tough in front of Marlboro Man, I finally gave up and gripped the bedsheet and clenched my teeth. I groaned and moaned and pushed the nurse button and whimpered to Marlboro Man, “I can’t do this anymore.” When the nurse came into the room moments later, I begged her to put me out of my misery. My salvation arrived five minutes later in the form of an eight-inch needle, and when the medicine hit I nearly began to cry. The relief was indescribably sweet. I was so blissfully pain-free, I fell asleep. And when I woke up confused and disoriented an hour later, a nurse named Heidi was telling me it was time to push. Almost immediately, Dr. Oliver entered the room, fully scrubbed and wearing a mask. “Are you ready, Mama?” Marlboro Man asked, standing near my shoulders as the nurse draped my legs and adjusted the fetal monitor, which was strapped around my middle. I felt like I’d woken up in the middle of a party. But the weirdest party ever--one where the hostess was putting my feet in stirrups. I ordered Marlboro Man to remain north of my belly button as nurses scurried into place. I’d made it clear beforehand: I didn’t want him down there. I wanted him to continue to get to know me the old-fashioned way--and besides, that’s what we were paying the doctor for. “Go ahead and push once for me,” Dr. Oliver said. I did, but only hard enough to ensure that nothing accidental or embarrassing would slip out. I could think of no greater humiliation. “Okay, that’s not going to work at all,” Dr. Oliver scolded. I pushed again. “Ree,” Dr. Oliver said, looking up at me through the space between my legs. “You can do way better than that.” He’d watched me grow up in the ballet company in our town. He’d watched me contort and leap and spin in everything from The Nutcracker to Swan Lake to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He knew I had the fortitude to will a baby from my loins. That’s when Marlboro Man grabbed my hand, as if to impart to me, his sweaty and slightly weary wife, a measure of his strength and endurance. “Come on, honey,” he said. “You can do it.” A few tense moments later, our baby was born. Except it wasn’t a baby boy. It was a seven-pound, twenty-one-inch baby girl. It was the most important moment of my life. And more ways than one, it was a pivotal moment for Marlboro Man.

When the folks first left, and the evening of the first day came, the hunting cats slouched in from the fields and mewed on the porch. And when no one came out, the cats crept through the open doors and walked mewing through the empty rooms. And then they went back to the fields and were wild cats from then on, hunting gophers and field mice, and sleeping in ditches in the daytime. When the night came, the bats, which had stopped at the doors for fear of light, swooped into the houses and sailed about through the empty rooms, and in a little while they stayed in dark room corners during the day, folded their wings high, and hung head-down among the rafters, and the smell of their droppings was in the empty houses. And the mice moved in and stored weed seeds in corners, in boxes in the backs of drawers in the kitchens. And weasels came in the hunt the mice, and the brown owls flew shrieking in and out again. Now there came a little shower. The weeds sprang up in front of the doorstep, where they had not been allowed, and grass grew up through the porch boards. The houses were vacant, and a vacant house falls quickly apart. Splits started up the sheathing from the rusted nails. A dust settled on the floors, and only mouse and weasel and cat tracks disturbed it. On a night the wind loosened a shingle and flipped it to the ground. The next wind pried into the whole where the shingle had been, lifted off three, and the next, a dozen. The midday sun burned through the hole and threw a glaring spot on the floor. The wild cats crept in from the fields at night, but they did not mew at the doorstep any more. They moved like shadows of a cloud across the moon, into the rooms to hunt the mice. And on windy nights the doors banged, and the ragged curtains fluttered in the broken windows.

Loving someone doesn’t ensure that sentiment is reciprocated, but even though I’ve tried and failed, I hope one day I find it again.

You are. You deserve every little thing you manage to dream for yourself. I hated being away from you, Ind, but I loved seeing you stand up for the things you want. Don’t stop doing that. Even if it’s me you’re facing off with, don’t settle for less.

knowing of who I am. “So, you don’t think I’m pretty, then.” He chuckles. “Indy, I’m not blind, but even if I were, I’m pretty sure I could touch your face and understand just how fucking stunning you are, but it’s not the first thing I see anymore.

Come home with me, Blue.”  Apparently, half a second is too long to hesitate because Ryan continues. “And let me make this perfectly clear, even if you say no, I will throw you over my shoulder and take you with me. But I’m working with a knee injury here and would rather you come on your own free will.

Not so fast. If I’m going to even consider taking you to this wedding, I’m going to need to turn you into one of my book boyfriends first.”  That earns a raised brow.  “Oh, come on. If we’re going to be acting, we may as well go all in. Do you know how to flare your nostrils in anger?” My breakfast almost comes back up. “What?”  “If you see me across the room, talking to another man, I need you to stare intently then flare your nostrils. Or grind your molars together and tic your jaw.”  “Blue—” “Do you know how to growl?” “What?” “Yeah, I don’t really know what that’s supposed to sound like, but every one of my book boyfriends is big into growling. Oh! And can you darken your eyes?”  “Darken my eyes?