Wrapping Present Quotes

Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.

The difference between me and other people is that they all walk around with onion skins wrapped around them. Pre-meditations, pretentions, the faces that they present to the world, the faces that they present to themselves.. onion skins that come in layer after layer. They're on the inside of all that. And I... I am the inside of the onion skin walking around. I am only me.

I want to reach in my pants, pull out my virginity, wrap it up and put a bow on it. Or maybe stick it in a gift bag from Target and give it to him like a present with a nice card that says, "Thank you for being you! Just a little virginity to show you may gratitude!

Do you know, it's really hard to be a parent. I blame it on Santa Claus. You spend so long making sure your kid doesn't know he's fake that you can't tell when you're supposed to stop." "Mom, I found you and Calla wrapping my presents when I was, like, six." "It was a metaphor, Blue." "A metaphor's supposed to clarify by providing an example. That didn't clarify." "Do you know what I mean or not?" "What you mean is that you're sorry you didn't tell me about Butternut." Maura glowered at the door as if Calla stood behind it. "I wish you wouldn't call him that." "If you'd been the one to tell me about him, then I wouldn't be using what Calla told me." "Fair enough.

All of us fractured, awkward collages of experience wrapped tight to present a defensible face to the world. And what makes us human is that sometimes we snap. And in that moment of release we’re closer to gods than we know.

I want your babies, and your anger, and your cold blue eyes … “ I choke on my words and I am the one to look away. I bring my gaze back to her face and realize that if I can’t convince her now, I’m never going to be able to. “I want to go on anniversary dinners with you, I want to wrap Christmas presents with you. I want to fight with you about stupid things and then hold you down in my bed and make it up to you. I want to have more cake batter fights and camping trips. I want your future, Olivia. Please come back to me.

I'd felt obligated to get Ian a Christmas present. A chunk of coal sat in a brightly wrapped box under the tree, his name written in big bold letters on the front of it. Ian might be family, but he still had been a very naughty boy this year.

Here's to the bridge-builders, the hand-holders, the light-bringers, those extraordinary souls wrapped in ordinary lives who quietly weave threads of humanity into an inhumane world. They are the unsung heroes in a world at war with itself. They are the whisperers of hope that peace is possible. Look for them in this present darkness. Light your candle with their flame. And then go. Build bridges. Hold hands. Bring light to a dark and desperate world. Be the hero you are looking for. Peace is possible. It begins with us.

I wrap myself tight around the feelings I cannot share, an unopened present, a gift no one wants.

We get so wrapped up in numbers in our society. The most important thing is that we are able to be one-to-one, you and I with each other at the moment. If we can be present to the moment with the person that we happen to be with, that's what's important.

Then came the most exquisite moment of her whole life passing a stone urn with flowers in it. Sally stopped; picked a flower; kissed her on the lips. The whole world might have turned upside down! The others disappeared; there she was alone with Sally. And she felt that she had been given a present, wrapped up, and told just to keep it, not to look at it — a diamond, something infinitely precious, wrapped up, which, as they walked (up and down, up and down), she uncovered, or the radiance burnt through, the revelation, the religious feeling!

I want your babies, and your anger, and your cold blue eyes … I want to go on anniversary dinners with you, I want to wrap Christmas presents with you. I want to fight with you about stupid things and then hold you down in my bed and make it up to you. I want to have more cake batter fights and camping trips. I want your future, Olivia

The finished clock is resplendent. At first glance it is simply a clock, a rather large black clock with a white face and a silver pendulum. Well crafted, obviously, with intricately carved woodwork edges and a perfectly painted face, but just a clock. But that is before it is wound. Before it begins to tick, the pendulum swinging steadily and evenly. Then, then it becomes something else. The changes are slow. First, the color changes in the face, shifts from white to grey, and then there are clouds that float across it, disappearing when they reach the opposite side. Meanwhile, bits of the body of the clock expand and contract, like pieces of a puzzle. As though the clock is falling apart, slowly and gracefully. All of this takes hours. The face of the clock becomes a darker grey, and then black, with twinkling stars where numbers had been previously. The body of the clock, which has been methodically turning itself inside out and expanding, is now entirely subtle shades of white and grey. And it is not just pieces, it is figures and objects, perfectly carved flowers and planets and tiny books with actual paper pages that turn. There is a silver dragon that curls around part of the now visible clockwork, a tiny princess in a carved tower who paces in distress, awaiting an absent prince. Teapots that pour into teacups and minuscule curls of steam that rise from them as the seconds tick. Wrapped presents open. Small cats chase small dogs. An entire game of chess is played. At the center, where a cuckoo bird would live in a more traditional timepiece, is the juggler. Dress in harlequin style with a grey mask, he juggles shiny silver balls that correspond to each hour. As the clock chimes, another ball joins the rest until at midnight he juggles twelve balls in a complex pattern. After midnight, the clock begins once more to fold in upon itself. The face lightens and the cloud returns. The number of juggled balls decreases until the juggler himself vanishes. By noon it is a clock again, and no longer a dream.

Lowering his voice, he said, "In America we have a custom. When you're given presents for your birthday, you're supposed to open them and say thank you." Tatiana nervously looked down at the present. "Thank you." Gifts were not something she was used to. Wrapped gifts? Unheard of, even when they came wrapped only in plain brown paper. "No. Open first. Then say thank you." She smiled. "What do I do? Do I take the paper off?" "Yes. You tear it off." "And then what?" "And then you throw it away." "The whole present or just the paper?" Slowly he said, "Just the paper." "But you wrapped it so nicely. Why would I throw it away?" "It's just paper." "If it's just paper, why did you wrap it?" "Will you please just open my present?" said Alexander

One of those out-of-the-ordinary days that made sense of the slew of ordinary days. New York had a way of doing that. Every now and then the city shook its soul out. It assailed you with an image, or a day, or a crime, or a terror, or a beauty so difficult to wrap your mind around that you had to shake your head in disbelief. He had a theory about it. It happened, and re-happened, because it was a city uninterested in history. Strange things occurred precisely because there was no necessary regard for the past. The city lived in a sort of everyday present. It had no need to believe in itself as a London, or an Athens, or even a signifier of the New World, like a Sydney, or a Los Angeles. No, the city couldn’t care less about where it stood. He had seen a T-shirt once that said: NEW YORK FUCKIN’ CITY. As if it were the only place that ever existed and the only one that ever would. New York kept going forward precisely because it didn’t give a good goddamn about what it had left behind. It was like the city that Lot left, and it would dissolve if it ever began looking backward over its own shoulder. Two pillars of salt. Long Island and New Jersey.

We go on in her room, where we like to set. I get up in the big chair and she get up on me and smile, bounce a little. "Tell me bout the brown wrapping. And the present." She so excited, she squirming. She has to jump off my lap, squirm a little to get it out. Then she crawl back up. That's her favorite story cause when I tell it, she get two presents. I take the brown wrapping from my Piggly Wiggly grocery bag and wrap up a little something, like piece a candy, inside. Then I use the white paper from my Cole's Drug Store bag and wrap another one just like it. She take it real serious, the unwrapping, letting me tell the story bout how it ain't the color a the wrapping that count, it's what we is inside.

The Frays had never been a religiously observant family, but Clary loved Fifth Avenue at Christmas time. The air smelled like sweet roasted chestnuts, and the window displays sparkled with silver and blue, green and red. This year there were fat round crystal snowflakes attached to each lamppost, sending back the winter sunlight in shafts of gold. Not to mention the huge tree at Rockefeller Center. It threw its shadow across them as she and Simon draped themselves over the gate at the side of the skating rink, watching tourists fall down as they tried to navigate the ice. Clary had a hot chocolate wrapped in her hands, the warmth spreading through her body. She felt almost normal—this, coming to Fifth to see the window displays and the tree, had been a winter tradition for her and Simon for as long as she could remember. “Feels like old times, doesn’t it?” he said, echoing her thoughts as he propped his chin on his folded arms. She chanced a sideways look at him. He was wearing a black topcoat and scarf that emphasized the winter pallor of his skin. His eyes were shadowed, indicating that he hadn’t fed on blood recently. He looked like what he was—a hungry, tired vampire. Well, she thought. Almost like old times. “More people to buy presents for,” she said. “Plus, the always traumatic what-to-buy-someone-for-the-first-Christmas-after-you’ve-started-dating question.” “What to get the Shadowhunter who has everything,” Simon said with a grin. “Jace mostly likes weapons,” Clary sighed. “He likes books, but they have a huge library at the Institute. He likes classical music …” She brightened. Simon was a musician; even though his band was terrible, and was always changing their name—currently they were Lethal Soufflé—he did have training. “What would you give someone who likes to play the piano?” “A piano.” “Simon.” “A really huge metronome that could also double as a weapon?” Clary sighed, exasperated. “Sheet music. Rachmaninoff is tough stuff, but he likes a challenge.” “Now you’re talking. I’m going to see if there’s a music store around here.” Clary, done with her hot chocolate, tossed the cup into a nearby trash can and pulled her phone out. “What about you? What are you giving Isabelle?” “I have absolutely no idea,” Simon said. They had started heading toward the avenue, where a steady stream of pedestrians gawking at the windows clogged the streets. “Oh, come on. Isabelle’s easy.” “That’s my girlfriend you’re talking about.” Simon’s brows drew together. “I think. I’m not sure. We haven’t discussed it. The relationship, I mean.” “You really have to DTR, Simon.” “What?” “Define the relationship. What it is, where it’s going. Are you boyfriend and girlfriend, just having fun, ‘it’s complicated,’ or what? When’s she going to tell her parents? Are you allowed to see other people?” Simon blanched. “What? Seriously?” “Seriously. In the meantime—perfume!” Clary grabbed Simon by the back of his coat and hauled him into a cosmetics store that had once been a bank. It was massive on the inside, with rows of gleaming bottles everywhere. “And something unusual,” she said, heading for the fragrance area. “Isabelle isn’t going to want to smell like everyone else. She’s going to want to smell like figs, or vetiver, or—” “Figs? Figs have a smell?” Simon looked horrified; Clary was about to laugh at him when her phone buzzed. It was her mother. where are you? It’s an emergency.

Presently, out from the wrappings came a teapot, which caused her to clasp her hands with delight, for it was made in the likeness of a plump little Chinaman ... Two pretty cups with covers, and a fine scarlet tray, completed the set, and made one long to have a "dish of tea," even in Chinese style, without cream or sugar.

You can't screw up your own suicide and then expect the universe to give you presents wrapped in the skin of a wonderful boy. That's just not the way it works.

Guys hate anticipation. That’s why we all write about satisfaction. Why we never wrap presents. I notice you wrapped mine.” “I thought it was because you’re all too cheap to buy wrapping paper. Or too clueless to find it in the store.” “There’s that. But honestly, you go to the trouble of getting someone a present, something you think they’d like—why hide it and make them work for it? It’s coy.

He straightened and peered down at her, and Winnie, looking back into his face, saw an expression there that made her feel like an unexpected present, wrapped in pretty paper and tied with ribbons[.]

A poet is simply an artist whose medium is human emotions.  A poet chisels away at our own sensibilities, shaping our vision while molding our hearts.  A poet wraps words around our own feelings and presents them as fresh gifts to humanity.

Presently I went back to my Companions, and slept under the apple trees, wrapped in my cloak and with my head on Cabal's flank for a pillow. There is no pillow in the world so good as a hound's flank.

How he has patience for foreplay right now is beyond me. Then again, I was always the kid who peeked at my Christmas presents before they were wrapped, so … maybe when it comes to fun shit, I’m just overzealous.

Glen had a disability more disfiguring than a burn and more terrifying than cancer. Glen had been born on the day after Christmas. "My parents just combine my birthday with Christmas, that's all," he explained. But we knew this was a lie. Glen's parents just wrapped a couple of his Christmas presents in birthday-themed wrapping paper, stuck some candles in a supermarket cake, and had a dinner of Christmas leftovers.

She lay dying, wrapped in invisible robes of martyrdom, presenting her helplessness and passivity to him like adornments, and his dominant feeling was distaste.

At Christmas, for example, when you see a big, brightly wrapped package under the tree with your name on it, you’re interested. But it’s not the wrapping paper you’re looking forward to. It’s the present inside. Lingerie works the same way. It’s nice—but naked is always better. Except for this. This is the wet dream of every man born after 1975. It’s the elite of eroticism. The ultimate fantasy. Oh yeah—it’s the Princess Leia bikini.

My aunts were not cruel, you understand. They loved to talk, and at every available opportunity they gave away the neatly wrapped presents of their thoughts, confident that no one would refuse them.

And don't forget the presents," said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, as if reading off some internal list of gloom. "How...how full of potential they seem in all that paper, how pregnant with possibilities...and then you open them and basically the wrapping paper was more interesting and you have to say 'How thoughtful, that will come in handy.' It's not better to give than to receive, in my opinion, it's just less embarrassing.

Oh shit, oh shit, stupid shower present!” Now she did pull her hair as she made the dash to her office. Roarke sat in her visitor’s chair, comfortably involved with his PPC. He glanced up, let loose a regretful sigh. “You changed. And I didn’t have any time to ogle you in uniform.” “I have to go shopping!” Staring at her, Roarke pressed his fingertips to his temple. “I’m sorry, I believe I must have had a small stroke. What did you say?” “This isn’t funny.” She bent down, gripped him by the lapels. “I forgot to get a thing for the thing, and I don’t even know what the thing is supposed to be. Now I have to go out and hunt something down. Except—” Her eyes went from slightly mad to speculative. “We have all kinds of things around the house. Couldn’t I just wrap something up and—” “No.” “Crap!

If what it takes for you this year to be present in this sacred, thin place, to feel the breath and presence of a Holy God, is to forgo the cookies and the cards and the rushing and the lists, then we’ll be all right with cookies from the store and a few less gifts. It would be a great loss for you to miss this season, the soul of it, because you’re too busy pushing and rushing. And it would be a great loss if the people in your life receive your perfectly wrapped gifts, but not your love or your full attention or your spirit. This is my prayer for us, that we would give and receive the most important gifts this season—the palpable presence of a Holy God, the kindness of well-chosen words, the generosity of spirit and soul. My prayer is that what you’ve lost, and what I’ve lost this year, will fade a little bit in the beauty of this season, that for a few moments at least, what is right and good and worth believing will outshine all the darkness, within us and around us. And I hope that someone who loves you gives you a really cute scarf. Merry Christmas.

Dreams are like gift wraps, they make your present more attractive & beautiful.

The present is far from gift-wrapped.

That’s her favorite story cause when I tell it, she get two presents. I take the brown wrapping from my Piggly Wiggly grocery bag and wrap up a little something, like piece a candy, inside. Then I use the white paper from my Cole’s Drug Store bag and wrap another one just like it. She take it real serious, the unwrapping, letting me tell the story bout how it ain’t the color a the wrapping that count, it’s what we is inside.

I want your babies, and your anger, and your cold blue eyes … “ I choke on my words and I am the one to look away. I bring my gaze back to her face and realize that if I can’t convince her now, I’m never going to be able to. “I want to go on anniversary dinners with you, I want to wrap Christmas presents with you. I want to fight with you about stupid things and then hold you down in my bed and make it up to you. I want to have more cake batter fights and camping trips. I want your future, Olivia.

Many of the people who left the South never exactly sat their children down to tell them these things, tell them what happened and why they left and how they and all this blood kin came to be in this northern city or western suburb or why they speak like melted butter and their children speak like footsteps on pavement, prim and proper or clipped and fast, like the New World itself. Some spoke of specific and certain evils. Some lived in tight-lipped and cheerful denial. Others simply had no desire to relive what they had already left. The facts of their lives unfurled over the generations like an over-wrapped present, a secret told in syllables. Sometimes the migrants dropped puzzle pieces from the past while folding the laundry or stirring the corn bread, and the children would listen between cereal commercials and not truly understand until they grew up and had children and troubles of their own. And the ones who had half-listened would scold and kick themselves that they had not paid better attention when they had the chance.

She gave up her body to him, gave it up like a gift. And like a present, wrapped and given, he tore her open.

She lay there like a beautiful lace covered present for the troll with her sweet hands wrapped up in the red bow of Lilith’s red silk thong.

You wish to isolate fear. Ah, well, if only I'd realised your ambitions were so simple. Perhaps we can work up to it by capturing faith, bottling hope, and presenting love to the world as a commodity, available by the pound, wrapped in greaseproof paper and topped with a bow.

I peel—don’t rip—off the paper, because I know Mom likes to save a wrapping paper scrap from every present, and if I rip instead of peel, the paper won’t be as intact as she’d like it to be.

if the sublimest Truths of faith are still, for us, wrapped in impenetrable obscurity, the reason for this is because we have up to the present dissolved the connection between God, nature, and man.

Today is the winter solstice. The planet tilts just so to its star, lists and holds circling in a fixed tension between veering and longing, and spins helpless, exalted, in and out of that fleet blazing touch. Last night Orion vaulted and spread all over the sky, pagan and lunatic, his shoulder and knee on fire, his sword three suns at the ready-for what? I won’t see this year again, not again so innocent; and longing wrapped round my throat like a scarf. “For the Heavenly Father desires that we should see,” says Ruysbroeck, “and that is why He is ever saying to our inmost spirit one deep unfathomable word and nothing else.” But what is the word? Is this mystery or coyness? A cast-iron bell hung from the arch of my rib cage; when I stirred, it rang, or it tolled, a long syllable pulsing ripples up my lungs and down the gritty sap inside my bones, and I couldn’t make it out; I felt the voiced vowel like a sigh or a note but I couldn’t catch the consonant that shaped it into sense.

Education is like Christmas. We’re all just opening our gifts, one at a time. And it is a fact that each and every child has a bright shiny present with her name on it, waiting there underneath the tree. God wrapped it up, and he’ll let us know when it’s time to unwrap it. In the meantime, we must believe that our children are okay. Every last one of them. The straight-A ones and the ones with autism and the naughty ones and the chunky ones and the shy ones and the loud ones and the so-far-behind ones.

There are things you should learn. Your past is a skeleton walking one step behind you, and your future is a skeleton walking one step in front of you. Maybe you don’t wear a watch, but your skeletons do, and they always know what time it is. Now, these skeletons are made of memories, dreams, and voices. And they can trap you in the in-between, between touching and becoming. But they’re not necessarily evil, unless you let them be. What you have to do is keep moving, keep walking, in step with your skeletons. They ain’t ever going to leave you, so you don’t have to worry about that. Your past isn’t going to fall behind, and your future won’t get too far ahead. Sometimes, though, your skeletons will talk to you, tell you to sit down and take a rest, breathe a little. Maybe they’ll make you promises, tell you all the things you want to hear. Sometimes your skeletons will dress up as beautiful Indian women and ask you to slow dance. Sometimes your skeletons will dress up as your best friend and offer you a drink, one more for the road. Sometimes your skeletons will look exactly like your parents and offer you gifts. But, no matter what they do, keep walking, keep moving. And don’t wear a watch. Hell, Indians never need to wear a watch because your skeletons will always remind you about the time. See, it is always now. That’s what Indian time is. The past, the present, the future, all of it is wrapped up in the now. That’s how it is. We are trapped in the now.

This story is about people, secrets, and time. About people who, not unlike wrapped parcels, cover themselves with layers and layers until they present themselves to the right ones who can unwrap them and see inside.

A present. Wrapped in black crepe paper and tied with silver thread. And beside it, smiling down at me, was Rhys. He'd propped his head on a fist, his wings draped across the bed behind him. 'Happy birthday, Feyre darling.' I groaned. 'How are you smiling after all that wine?' 'I didn't have a whole bottle to myself, that's how.

There is no New Testament basis for a linking of church and state until Christ, the King returns. The whole "Constantine mentality" from the fourth century up to our day was a mistake. Constantine, as the Roman Emperor, in 313 ended the persecution of Christians. Unfortunately, the support he gave to the church led by 381 to the enforcing of Christianity, by Theodosius I, as the official state religion. Making Christianity the official state religion opened the way for confusion up till our own day. There have been times of very good government when this interrelationship of church and state has been present. But through the centuries it has caused great confusion between loyalty to the state and loyalty to Christ, between patriotism and being a Christian. We must not confuse the Kingdom of God with our country. To say it another way: "We should not wrap our Christianity in our national flag.

Much popular self-help literature normalizes sexism. Rather than linking habits of being, usually considered innate, to learned behavior that helps maintain and support male domination, they act as those these difference are not value laden or political but are rather inherent and mystical. In these books male inability and/or refusal to honestly express feelings is often talked about as a positive masculine virtue women should learn to accept rather than a learned habit of behavior that creates emotional isolation and alienation.... Self-help books that are anti-gender equality often present women's overinvestment in nurturance as a 'natural,' inherent quality rather than a learned approach to caregiving. Much fancy footwork takes place to make it seem that New Age mystical evocations of yin and yang, masculine and feminine androgyny, and so on, are not just the same old sexist stereotypes wrapped in more alluring and seductive packaging.

She was wearing pink gauze—was that possible? She seemed, anyhow, all light, glowing, like some bird or air ball that has flown in, attached itself for a moment to a bramble... Then came the most exquisite moment of her whole life passing a stone urn with flowers in it. Sally stopped; picked a flower; kissed her on the lips. The whole world might have turned upside down! The others disappeared; there she was alone with Sally. And she felt that she had been given a present, wrapped up, and told just to keep it, not to look at it—a diamond, something infinitely precious, wrapped up, which, as they walked (up and down, up and down) she uncovered, or the radiance burnt through, the revelation, the religious feeling!

What is important is that you get your house in order at each stage of the journey so that you can proceed. “If some day it be given to you to pass into the inner temple, you must leave no enemies behind.”—de Lubicz For example, if you never got on well with one of your parents and you have left that parent behind on your journey in such a way that the thought of that parent arouses anger or frustration or self-pity or any emotion . . . you are still attached. You are still stuck. And you must get that relationship straight before you can finish your work. And what, specifically, does “getting it straight” mean? Well, it means re-perceiving that parent, or whoever it may be, with total compassion . . . seeing him as a being of the spirit, just like you, who happens to be your parent . . . and who happens to have this or that characteristic, and who happens to be at a certain stage of his evolutionary journey. You must see that all beings are just beings . . . and that all the wrappings of personality and role and body are the coverings. Your attachments are only to the coverings, and as long as you are attached to someone else’s covering you are stuck, and you keep them stuck, in that attachment. Only when you can see the essence, can see God, in each human being do you free yourself and those about you. It’s hard work when you have spent years building a fixed model of who someone else is to abandon it, but until that model is superceded by a compassionate model, you are still stuck. In India they say that in order to proceed with one’s work one needs one’s parents’ blessings. Even if the parent has died, you must in your heart and mind, re-perceive that relationship until it becomes, like every one of your current relationships, one of light. If the person is still alive you may, when you have proceeded far enough, revisit and bring the relationship into the present. For, if you can keep the visit totally in the present, you will be free and finished. The parent may or may not be . . . but that is his karmic predicament. And if you have been truly in the present, and if you find a place in which you can share even a brief eternal moment . . . this is all it takes to get the blessing of your parent! It obviously doesn’t demand that the parent say, “I bless you.” Rather it means that he hears you as a fellow being, and honors the divine spark within you. And even a moment in the Here and Now . . . a single second shared in the eternal present . . . in love . . . is all that is required to free you both, if you are ready to be freed. From then on, it’s your own individual karma that determines how long you can maintain that high moment.

I sit in a room made up of four walls and no window, catching glances of myself from above. But I am not there — I’m here, on the floor, arms wrapped tight around myself, to comfort or shelter. I am sitting lonely in a room made up of four walls and no window.

I want to reach in my pants, pull out my virginity, wrap it up and put a bow on it. Or maybe stick it in a gift bag from Target and give it to him like a present with a nice card that says “Thank you for being you!  Just a little virginity to show you my gratitude!

The reason I suggest making some of this small meal yourself is because ritual hs an anticipatory relevance - we prepare for it, practically and psychologically; that’s part of its benefit. It’s about making your own raft of time. Your own doorway into Christmas. You can do this with family and friends, of course, if they’re in the zone. And yes, you could do it while wrapping presents, but it wouldn’t be as powerful. Ritual isn’t about multitasking. Ritual is time cut out of time. Done right it has profound psychological effects.

Chapter XIII "The Present Flame" The blunders I made have been etched on my sense over and over again, and have oftentimes blamed myself. Urge to wrap my face with embarrassment. Anything favorable, put into my mind is enfold and it is still thwarted by a pessimistic viewpoint. Moreover been imprisoned here in my cabin for one year. I like to always lie down extremely when the environment is cold. I invariably fall over senseless and that is one of the things that makes me delighted every day. I can blast. But I ain't a hero who saves the needy or battles harm humans.

It was like the moment before you open a present, still hidden inside its box and wrappings; while you're waiting to find out what it is, the eagerness and impatience and curiosity and anticipation grip you in an even stronger, more thrilling way than you feel after you find out what's inside.

Within Young Leaves Wrapped within young leaves: the sound of water. —SOSEKI This delicate observation by this Japanese poet is filled with the quiet hope that embedded in our nature, even as we begin, is our gift already unfolded. Embedded in the seed is the blossom. Embedded in the womb is the child fully grown. Embedded in the impulse to care is the peace of love realized. Embedded in the edge of risk and fear is the authenticity that makes life worth living.

From my words you will have reached the conclusion that the real Berenice is a temporal succession of different cities, alternately just and unjust. But what I wanted to warn you about is something else: all the future Berenices are already present in this instant, wrapped one within the other, confined, crammed, inextricable.

Jesus no longer belongs to the past but lives in the present and is projected toward the future; Jesus is the everlasting "today" of God. This is how the newness of God appears to the women, the disciples, and all of us: as victory over sin, evil, and death - over everything that crushes life and makes it seem less human. And this is a message meant for me and for you, dear sister, you, dear brother. How often does Love have to tell us, "Why do you look for the living among the dead?" Our daily problems and worries can wrap us up in ourselves, in sadness and bitterness...and that is where death is. That is not the place to look for the One who is alive!

How hard it was for me to find you the perfect gift. I had looked everywhere and considered every idea until I had an epiphany and felt as wise as the magi. For my gift would be simple. For my gift would be honest. How hard it was for me to wrap myself neatly and feign sobriety. Yet, how easy it was for you to pull the ribbon and uncover me. Exposing my fears. Exposing my desires. How hard it was for me to gift myself to you. Yet, how easy it was for you to make me undone.

Chasing your tale? Sometimes we relive past accomplishments, failures and or past relationships to the point of exhaustion. When we do this, I liken it to a dog chasing its tail, just spinning round and round and going nowhere fast. Constantly chasing our own tales has the same effect on us. It leaves us in a state of dizzying immobility. When we wrap our arms so firmly around our past we leave little room to embrace our present future and that, my friends, is a sad tale to tell. ~Jason Versey

There was another problem with Emma's father, difficult for a small child who already thought of herself as greedy - his way of trying to keep her attention, to bribe her, with gifts. On each vof her visits, he would appear with you presents, beautifully wrapped> And her confusion that she liked - and wanted - the presents, but not the man, was painful. He used 'sparkly Sellotape' and cut things into nice shapes and she wistfully writes: I wish he'd be able to translate that care into his treatment of me.

I take down the trash. I microwave the leftovers. I wrap myself tight around the feelings I cannot share, an unopened present, a gift no one wants.

What was the purpose of being wrapped like a present if you had no feelings for the person you were being given to?

Writing is taking human experience and wrapping it up into a package of your own ideas and hoping someone will pull the bow smiling on top to see what's hiding inside.

She sat with that chewed-in yet absentminded smile on her face as if she’d been given a present she knew she would like, even if she hadn’t got the wrapping off it yet.

A first edition of Peter Pan appeared gift-wrapped on my bed - Lucy admitted that Asher had drafted her to help deliver that present.

The nakedness of the presents on the floor was a sad premonition of their naked future, after the brief, false glory of being wrapped.

Love may sometimes be a gift, but you have to earn it to keep it. - Love Wrapped in The Present

Not all gifts are wrapped in a box. Some gifts are just being present. Being there when it matters.

The best gift you can present to Allah is your heart wrapped in repentance.

Ugh. Would that Christmas could just be, without presents. It is just so stupid, everyone exhausting themselves, miserably haemorrhaging money on pointless items nobody wants: no longer tokens of love but angst-ridden solutions to problems. [...] What is the point of entire nation rushing round for six weeks in a bad mood preparing for utterly pointless Taste-of-Others exam which entire nation then fails and gets stuck with hideous unwanted merchandise as fallout? If gifts and cards were completely eradicated, then Christmas as pagan-style twinkly festival to distract from lengthy winter gloom would be lovely. But if government, religious bodies, parents, tradition, etc. insist on Christmas Gift Tax to ruin everything why not make it that everyone must go out and spend £500 on themselves then distribute the items among their relatives and friends to wrap up and give to them instead of this psychic-failure torment?

Pregnancy had seemed a reasonable excuse for letting her metal-smithing tools languish, but that accounted for only eighteen months of the last twenty-six years. Motherhood wasn't the real problem, though it took him a long time to figure out what was. She needed resistance, the very quality that metal most demonstrably offered up. Suddenly Glynis had no difficulty to overcome, no hard artisan's life with galleries filching half the too-small price of a mokume brooch that had taken three weeks to forge. No, her husband made a good living, and if she slept late and dawdled the afternoon away reading Lustre, American Craft Magazine and Lapidary Journal, the phone bill would still get paid. For that matter, she needed need itself. She could overcome her anguish about embarking on an object that, once completed, might not meet her exacting standards only if she had no choice. In this sense, his helping had hurt her. By providing the financial cushion that should have facilitated making all the metal whathaveyou she liked, he had ruined her life. Wrapped in a slackening bow, ease was a poisonous present.

There is a myth to Christmas mornings. Snowy lawns and garland-wrapped banisters. Trees and presents and the sound of feet running down staircases, little voices crying out, “He came! He came!

So yeah, when you take an odd personality, sprinkle it with anxiety, wrap it in a shy exterior, and tape it all together with body image insecurity, the package presented to the world is Boring Nora.

They disembarked, and lifted from the ship Odysseus, wrapped up in sheets and blankets. They set him on the sand, still fast asleep. They unpacked all the presents he was given120 by the Phaeacian lords to take back home, thanks to Athena’s care. They heaped the things beside the olive tree, so no one passing would do them any damage while their owner was sleeping. Then they rowed away, back home.

He looks up. Our eyes lock,and he breaks into a slow smile. My heart beats faster and faster. Almost there.He sets down his book and stands.And then this-the moment he calls my name-is the real moment everything changes. He is no longer St. Clair, everyone's pal, everyone's friend. He is Etienne. Etienne,like the night we met. He is Etienne,he is my friend. He is so much more. Etienne.My feet trip in three syllables. E-ti-enne. E-ti-enne, E-ti-enne. His name coats my tongue like melting chocolate. He is so beautiful, so perfect. My throat catches as he opens his arms and wraps me in a hug.My heart pounds furiously,and I'm embarrassed,because I know he feels it. We break apart, and I stagger backward. He catches me before I fall down the stairs. "Whoa," he says. But I don't think he means me falling. I blush and blame it on clumsiness. "Yeesh,that could've been bad." Phew.A steady voice. He looks dazed. "Are you all right?" I realize his hands are still on my shoulders,and my entire body stiffens underneath his touch. "Yeah.Great. Super!" "Hey,Anna. How was your break?" John.I forget he was here.Etienne lets go of me carefully as I acknowledge Josh,but the whole time we're chatting, I wish he'd return to drawing and leave us alone. After a minute, he glances behind me-to where Etienne is standing-and gets a funny expression on hs face. His speech trails off,and he buries his nose in his sketchbook. I look back, but Etienne's own face has been wiped blank. We sit on the steps together. I haven't been this nervous around him since the first week of school. My mind is tangled, my tongue tied,my stomach in knots. "Well," he says, after an excruciating minute. "Did we use up all our conversation over the holiday?" The pressure inside me eases enough to speak. "Guess I'll go back to the dorm." I pretend to stand, and he laughs. "I have something for you." He pulls me back down by my sleeve. "A late Christmas present." "For me? But I didn't get you anything!" He reaches into a coat pocket and brings out his hand in a fist, closed around something very small. "It's not much,so don't get excited." "Ooo,what is it?" "I saw it when I was out with Mum, and it made me think of you-" "Etienne! Come on!" He blinks at hearing his first name. My face turns red, and I'm filled with the overwhelming sensation that he knows exactly what I'm thinking. His expression turns to amazement as he says, "Close your eyes and hold out your hand." Still blushing,I hold one out. His fingers brush against my palm, and my hand jerks back as if he were electrified. Something goes flying and lands with a faith dink behind us. I open my eyes. He's staring at me, equally stunned. "Whoops," I say. He tilts his head at me. "I think...I think it landed back here." I scramble to my feet, but I don't even know what I'm looking for. I never felt what he placed in my hands. I only felt him. "I don't see anything! Just pebbles and pigeon droppings," I add,trying to act normal. Where is it? What is it? "Here." He plucks something tiny and yellow from the steps above him. I fumble back and hold out my hand again, bracing myself for the contact. Etienne pauses and then drops it from a few inches above my hand.As if he's avoiding me,too. It's a glass bead.A banana. He clears his throat. "I know you said Bridgette was the only one who could call you "Banana," but Mum was feeling better last weekend,so I took her to her favorite bead shop. I saw that and thought of you.I hope you don't mind someone else adding to your collection. Especially since you and Bridgette...you know..." I close my hand around the bead. "Thank you." "Mum wondered why I wanted it." "What did you tell her?" "That it was for you,of course." He says this like, duh. I beam.The bead is so lightweight I hardly feel it, except for the teeny cold patch it leaves in my palm.

But what about "time"? After all it is not a bundle in which past, future and present are wrapped up together. Time is not a cage in which the "no longer now," the "not yet now," and the "now" are cooped up together. How do matters stand with "time"? They stand thus: time goes. And it goes in that it passes away. The passing of time is, of course, a coming, but a coming which goes, in passing away. What comes in time never comes to stay, but to go. What comes in time always bears beforehand the mark of going past and passing away. This is why everything temporal is regarded simply as what is transitory.

He wore red, white, and blue, but he didn’t look patriotic—he looked like a sloppily wrapped birthday present. But it’s not his fault. I tried to wrap him as tight as I could without restricting movement.

More importantly,” he said, directing his words more to her than to Daniel, “gift-wrapping shows a certain amount of care. It shows that you took time and effort with your present, that you thought of the recipient. That you wanted them to have that moment when their pulse quickens, right before they tear off the paper. Or maybe they open it carefully, undoing each piece of tape, savoring the anticipation of revealing what’s underneath.

For the next three seconds, he still dared to let himself hope. Perhaps she was making a grand entrance. Perhaps she would be carried in like Cleopatra, hidden in a roll of fine carpet. Perhaps— Three porters, grunting, pulled in a handcart. A crevasse opened before him and in fell his heart. No need to remove the tarpaulin wrapping. He recognized the stone slab by its size and weight. She had returned his present. She would have nothing more to do with him.

Roman Catholics believe a god sent his only son to save the worthy. Adina relates. Only instead of her people sending their only daughter they clipped a part of their toenail and sent it wrapped in a skin suit presenting as a girl.

He wrapped a pink scarf around my shoulders. It was misshapen, a bit wonky, and looked like a few stitches were out of place. But I loved it. Absolutely loved it for all its imperfections. Imperfect things were somehow still perfect.

It'll be like when your parents give you the biggest present at Christmas but you unwrap it and there's a smaller present inside and that keeps happening until you have a mountain o wrapping paper, some new socks, and a lot of unresolved anger.

Sid the sly, they call me. As bad as a boy. Only now do I realize that I might not be this way if it hadn't always been clear that there would be no story for me, no tale wrapped like a present that gets to be opened again and again to reveal the kind of love my parents have, the kind that everyone sighs over, because it is forever. The kind that makes a family. Who would I be, how would I have acted, what might I have said to Nirrim, if I had ever believed that kind of story could be mine?

Say!” Benedict exclaimed. “Why don’t you save her, Hastings?” Simon took one look at Lady Bridgerton (who at that point had her hand firmly wrapped around Macclesfield’s forearm) and decided he’d rather be branded an eternal coward. “Since we haven’t been introduced, I’m sure it would be most improper,” he improvised. “I’m sure it wouldn’t,” Anthony returned. “You’re a duke.” “So?” “So?” Anthony echoed. “Mother would forgive any impropriety if it meant gaining an audience for Daphne with a duke.” “Now look here,” Simon said hotly, “I’m not some sacrificial lamb to be slaughtered on the altar of your mother.” “You have spent a lot of time in Africa, haven’t you?” Colin quipped. Simon ignored him. “Besides, your sister said—” All three Bridgerton heads swung round in his direction. Simon immediately realized he’d blundered. Badly. “You’ve met Daphne?” Anthony queried, his voice just a touch too polite for Simon’s comfort. Before Simon could even reply, Benedict leaned in ever-so-slightly closer, and asked, “Why didn’t you mention this?” “Yes,” Colin said, his mouth utterly serious for the first time that evening. “Why?” Simon glanced from brother to brother and it became perfectly clear why Daphne must still be unmarried. This belligerent trio would scare off all but the most determined— or stupid— of suitors. Which would probably explain Nigel Berbrooke. “Actually,” Simon said, “I bumped into her in the hall as I was making my way into the ballroom. It was”— he glanced rather pointedly at the Bridgertons—“ rather obvious that she was a member of your family, so I introduced myself.” Anthony turned to Benedict. “Must have been when she was fleeing Berbrooke.” Benedict turned to Colin. “What did happen to Berbrooke? Do you know?” Colin shrugged. “Haven’t the faintest. Probably left to nurse his broken heart.” Or broken head, Simon thought acerbically. “Well, that explains everything, I’m sure,” Anthony said, losing his overbearing big-brother expression and looking once again like a fellow rake and best friend. “Except,” Benedict said suspiciously, “why he didn’t mention it.” “Because I didn’t have the chance,” Simon bit off, about ready to throw his arms up in exasperation. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Anthony, you have a ridiculous number of siblings, and it takes a ridiculous amount of time to be introduced to all of them.” “There are only two of us present,” Colin pointed out. “I’m going home,” Simon announced. “The three of you are mad.” Benedict, who had seemed to be the most protective of the brothers, suddenly grinned. “You don’t have a sister, do you?” “No, thank God.

Education is like Christmas. We’re all just opening our gifts, one at a time. And it is a fact that each and every child has a bright shiny present with her name on it, waiting there underneath the tree. God wrapped it up, and he’ll let us know when it’s time to unwrap it.

Tate gave me your birthday present when you were here before,” she confessed. “I put it on top of the cabinet in the dining room and forgot to give it to you. Here, I’ll fetch it!” Cecily felt as if she’d had the wind knocked out of her just at the sound of his name. She could almost taste him on her mouth, feel the fierce hunger of his body as he pressed her into the wall… “He remembered my birthday,” she said faintly, touched. “He always remembers it, but he said you weren’t speaking then.” She handed the small box to Cecily. “Go on,” she said when the younger woman hesitated. “Open it.” Cecily’s hands went cold and trembled as she tore off the wrappings. It was a jewelry box. I wasn’t a ring, of course, she told herself as she forced up the hinged lid. He certainly wouldn’t buy her a… “The beast!” she exclaimed. “Oh, how could he?” Leta looked over her shoulder at what was in the box and dissolved into gales of laughter. Cecily glared at her. “It isn’t funny.” “Oh, yes it is!” Cecily looked back down at the silver crab with its ruby eyes and pearl claws, and one corner of her mouth tugged up. “He is pretty, isn’t he?” She took the pin out of the box and studied it. It wasn’t silver. It was white gold. Those were real rubies and pearls, too. This hadn’t been an impulse purchase. He’d had this custom-made for her. Tears stung her eyes. It was the sort of present you gave to someone who meant something to you. She remembered his passionate kisses, and wished with all her heart that he’d meant those, too. She pinned the small crab onto the collar of her blouse and knew that she’d treasure it as long as she lived.

She tried to recall the cold, the silence, and that precious feeling of owning the world, of being twenty years old and having her whole life ahead of her, of making love slowly and calmly, drunk with the scent of the forest and their love, without a past, without suspecting the future, with just the incredible richness of that present moment in which they stared at each other, smelled each other, kissed each other, and explored each other's bodies, wrapped in the whisper of the wind among the trees and the sound of the nearby waves breaking against the rocks at the foot of the cliff, exploding in a crash of pungent surf, and the two of them embracing underneath a single poncho like Siamese twins, laughing and swearing this night would last forever, that they were the only ones in the whole world who had discovered love.

Some kids had blankets or stuffed animals they dragged around. Others got contentment from twirling their hair or sucking their thumbs. Owen had to have tape stuck to his shirt, the clear kind people used to wrap presents. For some reason, it brought him a peculiar satisfaction.

Ten thousand years ago, her husband, Abraham the Mage, had presented her with the weapons and armor. “To keep you safe,” he said, his speech a slurred mumble. “Now and always. When you wear it, think of me.” “I’ll think of you even when I’m not wearing it,” she promised, and never a day went by when she did not think of the man who had worked so hard and sacrificed so much to make and save the world. The memory of him was vivid. Abraham stood tall and slender in a darkened room at the top of the crystal tower, the Tor Ri. He was wrapped in shadow, turned away from her so she wouldn’t see the Change that had almost completely claimed his flesh, transforming it to solid gold. She remembered turning him to the light so she could look at him for what she knew might be the very last time. Then she had held him, pressing his flesh and metal against her skin, and wept against his shoulder. And when she looked into his face, a single tear, a solid bead of gold, rolled down his cheek. Rising up on her toes, she had kissed the tear off his face, swallowing it. Tsagaglalal pressed her hands to her stomach. It nestled within her still.

I peel—don’t rip—off the paper, because I know Mom likes to save a wrapping paper scrap from every present, and if I rip instead of peel, the paper won’t be as intact as she’d like it to be. Dustin says Mom’s a hoarder, but Mom says she just likes to preserve the memories of things. So I peel.

Methinks, Oh! vain ill-judging Book, I see thee cast a wishful look, Where reputations won and lost are In famous row called Paternoster. Incensed to find your precious olio Buried in unexplored port-folio, You scorn the prudent lock and key, And pant well bound and gilt to see Your Volume in the window set Of Stockdale, Hookham, or Debrett. Go then, and pass that dangerous bourn Whence never Book can back return: And when you find, condemned, despised, Neglected, blamed, and criticised, Abuse from All who read you fall, (If haply you be read at all Sorely will you your folly sigh at, And wish for me, and home, and quiet. Assuming now a conjuror’s office, I Thus on your future Fortune prophesy: — Soon as your novelty is o’er, And you are young and new no more, In some dark dirty corner thrown, Mouldy with damps, with cobwebs strown, Your leaves shall be the Book-worm’s prey; Or sent to Chandler–Shop away, And doomed to suffer public scandal, Shall line the trunk, or wrap the candle! But should you meet with approbation, And some one find an inclination To ask, by natural transition Respecting me and my condition; That I am one, the enquirer teach, Nor very poor, nor very rich; Of passions strong, of hasty nature, Of graceless form and dwarfish stature; By few approved, and few approving; Extreme in hating and in loving; Abhorring all whom I dislike, Adoring who my fancy strike; In forming judgements never long, And for the most part judging wrong; In friendship firm, but still believing Others are treacherous and deceiving, And thinking in the present aera That Friendship is a pure chimaera: More passionate no creature living, Proud, obstinate, and unforgiving, But yet for those who kindness show, Ready through fire and smoke to go. Again, should it be asked your page, ‘Pray, what may be the author’s age?’ Your faults, no doubt, will make it clear, I scarce have seen my twentieth year, Which passed, kind Reader, on my word, While England’s Throne held George the Third. Now then your venturous course pursue: Go, my delight! Dear Book, adieu!

Presents are made for the pleasure of the one who gives them, not for the merits of those who receive them,' said my father. 'Besides, it can't be returned. Open it.' I undid the carefully wrapped package in the dim light of dawn. It contained a shiny carved wooden box, edged with gold rivets. Even before opening it, I was smiling. The sound of the clasp when it unlocked was exquisite, like the ticking of a watch. Inside, the case was lined with dark blue velvet. Victor Hugo's fabulous Montblanc Meisterstuck rested in the centre. It was a dazzling sight. I took it and gazed at it by the light of the balcony. The gold clip of the pen top had an inscription. Daniel Sempere, 1950 I stared at my father, dumbfounded. I don't think I had ever seen him look as happy as he seemed to me at that moment. Without saying anything, he got up from his armchair and held me tight. I felt a lump in my throat and, lost for words, fell utterly silent.

I present Mr. and Mrs. Cole Bridge. You may kiss the bride.” Father Callahan gave Cole a nod of approval. Cole faced Kyle and wrapped her in his arms. He pulled her off her feet and closer to his face. Livia and Blake were the only ones close enough to hear Cole’s private vows. He kissed her once, gently and almost chastely. “For our past.” Cole kissed her again, just a breath of a kiss, lightly touching her lips. “For today.” The last kiss was deeper, but still maintained church decorum. It was the intimacy in his gaze that made the guests feel voyeuristic. “For the rest of our lives,” he said softly as he set her back on her feet.

the essence of Paris is lost if seen through the double glazing of a hotel room or from the top of a tour bus. You must be on foot, with chilled hands thrust into your pockets, scarf wrapped round your throat, and thoughts of a hot café crème in your imagination. It made the difference between simply being present and being there.

One for the past – what we were apart.” Moving to the middle cord, he gently smoothed it and attached a silver ring. “One for the present – what we are now.” His touch lingered on the topmost cord, and I saw the hesitation in his gaze. I wrapped my hands around his wrists and squeezed to reassure him. “One for the future – what we will become.

Here's the plan: We do everything, all the traditions, and we do it grander than anyone ever dreamed! Here are the houselights, which will require extra generators so we don't smash the power grid, the holiday music CDs that will need waterproof outdoor concert speakers, the train set with extra boxes of tracks to connect all the rooms of the house, the toys where we forget the batteries, several gingerbread house kits we'll combine to form a mansion, DVDs of all the classic Christmas specials to run nonstop, mistletoe for all the doorways, the manger scene with a little Jesus that glows in the dark to emphasize the Holy Spirit third of the Trinity because he's the shy one who gets the least press, and all the presents we'll wrap together and give each other as Secret Santas.

Just let me grab my thinking cap,” she told him, heading for her locker. The long floppy hat was required during midterms, designed to restrict Telepaths and preserve the integrity of the tests—not that anything could block Sophie’s enhanced abilities. But after the exams, the hats became present sacks, and everyone filled them with treats and trinkets and treasures. “I’ll need to inspect your presents before you open them,” Sandor warned as he helped Sophie lift her overstuffed hat. “That’s perfect,” Fitz said. “While he does that, you can open mine.” He pulled a small box from the pocket of his waist-length cape and handed it to Sophie. The opalescent wrapping paper had flecks of teal glitter dusted across it, and he’d tied it with a silky teal bow, making her wonder if he’d guessed her favorite color. She really hoped he couldn’t guess why. . . . “Hopefully I did better this year,” Fitz said. “Biana claimed the riddler was a total fail.” The riddle-writing pen he’d given her last time had been a disappointment, but . . . “I’m sure I’ll love it,” Sophie promised. “Besides. My gift is boring.” Sandor had declared an Atlantis shopping trip to be far too risky, so Sophie had spent the previous day baking her friends’ presents. She handed Fitz a round silver tin and he popped the lid off immediately. “Ripplefluffs?” he asked, smiling his first real smile in days. The silver-wrapped treats were what might happen if a brownie and a cupcake had a fudgey, buttery baby, with a candy surprise sunken into the center. Sophie’s adoptive mother, Edaline, had taught her the recipe

He cannot settle his mind. He does not miss her, since she seems so insistently present, in the yellow lichen wrapping the bare beech branches, in the kestrel he once saw skimming the oaks, quivering it's outspread tail. Coming to the green stair -faded now, the carpet muddied - he thinks of her impatient hand on her own shirt's hem and the taste of her, and he comes undone, of course he does ; but that is not the whole or peak of it.

I'm going to spend time and energy thinking and acting in a way that will increase my chances of feeling happy as often as possible. It's not about being happy just like that, here and now, whistling up happiness like a dog. But I can pave the way for happiness. I can open my eyes and my mind, in the same way that I make myself present when I'm walking in a forest, instead of remaining wrapped in my worries about yesterday and tomorrow.

It was not the presents laid out on the bed, or the airing of, the constant fussing over, his suit. Not the slow, deliberate polishing of his good shoes, and wrapping them, for safety, in a paper bag. She was only a little wary of these things. Suspicious. But what she feared most were his silences. The times when she felt him prepare to speak, but ultimately falter. Turn away. The leagues, which his eyes revealed at times, of what he did not say.

With a flourish she conjures the image of a rose into her hand. As you watch the flower becomes wrapped in gold then encrusted with a myriad of gems. "This is how most people fall in love," She explains. "They find someone to lust for, often someone who presents a challenge, then they build that one up in their mind into an effigy of perfection. Then, often when they have bound themselves to the object of their affections, they discover their folly.

If the body is no longer a site of otherness but of identification, then we have urgently to become reconciled with it, repair it, perfect it, turn it into an ideal object. Everyone treats their bodies the way men treat women in projective identification: they invest them as a fetish, making an autistic cult of them, subjecting them to a quasi-incestuous manipulation. And it is the body's resemblance to its model which becomes a source of eroticism and 'white' seduction -- in the sense that it effects a kind of white magic of identity, as opposed to the black magic of otherness. This is how it is with body-building: you get into your body as you would into a suit of nerve and muscle. The body is not muscular, but muscled. It is the same with the brain and with social relations or exchanges: body-building, brainstorming, word-processing. Madonna is the ideal specimen of this, our muscled Immaculate Conception, our muscular angel who delivers us from the weaknesses of the body (pity the poor shade of Marilyn!). The sheath of muscles is the equivalent of character armour. In the past, women merely wrapped themselves in their image and their finery -- Freud speaks of those people who live with a kind of inner mirror, in a fleshly, happy self-reference. That narcissistic ideal is past and gone; body-building has wiped it out and replaced it with a gymnastic Ego-Ideal -- cold, hard, stressed, artificial self-reference. The construction of a double, of a physical and mental identity shell. Thus, in `body simulation', where you can animate your body remotely at any moment, the phantasy of being present in more than one body becomes an operational reality. An extension of the human being. And not a metaphorical or poetic extension, as in Pessoa's heteronyms, but quite simply a technical one.

Out of all the other gangs that were around, you could always have come to the reasoning table of the Rebellions without being fearful and present your case, and whatever is decided at the reasoning table you know that is what it will be, whether it’s war or peace. Unlike the other gangs that were around, you didn’t even know who to talk to. Scrooge, former leader of the Rebellion Raiders street gang that once boasted of having some ten thousand members

Before I forget.’ Griffin reached into his coat, pulled out a wrapped parcel, and tossed it at Robin. ‘I got you something.’ Surprised, Robin pulled at the string. ‘A tool?’ ‘Just a present. Merry Christmas.’ Robin tore away the paper, which revealed a lovely, freshly printed volume. ‘You said you liked Dickens,’ said Griffin. ‘They’d just bound the serialization of his latest – you might have already read it, but I thought you’d like it all in one piece.

When the wind stops, the trees still move, the way my heart creaks long after it bends. Iam always surprised at the aftereffect of being moved deeply by something. I can be hurt or disappointed or feel the warmth of being loved or the gentle sway of being temporarily left, and then I'm ready to chew on something else, seldom allowing for the feelings to digest completely. In fact, I've come to see that much of my confusion in life comes from giving my attention to the next thing too soon, and then wrapping new experience in the remnants of feeling that are not finished with me. For example, the other day I felt sad because an old friend is ill. I addressed my sadness directly and thought I'd been with this mood enough, so I continued on my way. The next day I found myself in the usual frustration of traffic and shopping, and the indifferent reactions of waitresses and clerks were suddenly making me sad. Or so I thought. Though it seems obvious here in the telling, it wasn't in the happening, and I spent a good deal of misguided energy wondering if it was time to change my lifestyle. But really I was feeling ripples of sadness about my friend's illness. The deeper lesson involves nature's sway: its approach, its impact, and, especially, its echo. Everything living encounters it, especially us in the unseeable ripples of what we think and feel. Being alive takes time.

My dad, who looks pretty great for sixty-four, is fond of saying, “You just can’t fucking imagine, Lena.” He can see the big event in the distance (his belief in robotics not withstanding) and says things like “Bring it on. At this point, I’m fucking curious.” I get it: I know nothing. But I also hope that future me will be proud of present me for trying to wrap my head around the big ideas and also for trying to make you feel like we’re all in this together.

Before I forget.’ Griffin reached into his coat, pulled out a wrapped parcel, and tossed it at Robin. ‘I got you something.’ Surprised, Robin pulled at the string. ‘A tool?’ ‘Just a present. Merry Christmas.’ Robin tore away the paper, which revealed a lovely, freshly printed volume. ‘You said you liked Dickens,’ said Griffin. ‘They’d just bound the serialization of his latest – you might have already read it, but I thought you’d like it all in one piece.’ He’d

The air is crisp on my skin, and though my hands are wrapped under thick gloves, I shove my fists into my pockets anyway. The wind penetrates here through every layer, including skin. I’m dressed in fur so thick that walking feels like an exertion. It slows me down more than I would like, and even though I know there’s no imminent threat of attack, I still don’t like being unprepared in case one comes. It shakes me more than the cold ever could. When I turn to Lira, the ends of her hair are white with frost. “Try not to breathe,” I tell her. “It might get stuck halfway out.” Lira flicks up her hood. “You should try not to talk then,” she retorts. “Nobody wants your words being preserved for eternity.” “They’re pearls of wisdom, actually.” I can barely see Lira’s eyes under the mass of dark fur from her coat, but the mirthless curl of her smile is ever-present. It lingers in calculated amusement as she considers what to say next. Readies to ricochet the next blow. Lira pulls a line of ice from her hair, artfully indifferent. “If that is what pearls are worth these days, I’ll make sure to invest in diamonds.” “Or gold,” I tell her smugly. “I hear it’s worth its weight.” Kye shakes the snow from his sword and scoffs. “Anytime you two want to stop making me feel nauseated, go right ahead.” “Are you jealous because I’m not flirting with you?” Madrid asks him, warming her finger on the trigger mechanism of her gun. “I don’t need you to flirt with me,” he says. “I already know you find me irresistible.” Madrid reholsters her gun. “It’s actually quite easy to resist you when you’re dressed like that.” Kye looks down at the sleek red coat fitted snugly to his lithe frame. The fur collar cuddles against his jaw and obscures the bottoms of his ears, making it seem as though he has no neck at all. He throws Madrid a smile. “Is it because you think I look sexier wearing nothing?” Torik lets out a withering sigh and pinches the bridge of his nose. I’m not sure whether it’s from the hours we’ve gone without food or his inability to wear cutoffs in the biting cold, but his patience seems to be wearing thin. “I could swear that I’m on a life-and-death mission with a bunch of lusty kids,” he says. “Next thing I know, the lot of you will be writing love notes in rum bottles.” “Okay,” Madrid says. “Now I feel nauseated.

Among them, there is no lack of that most disgusting species of vain people, the lying monsters, who aim to present themselves as beautiful souls and who for example, carry off to market, their ruined sensuality wrapped up in verse and other swaddling clothes as purity of heart, the species of self-gratifying moral masturbators. The desire of sick people to present some form or other of superiority, their instinct for secret paths, leads to a tyranny over the healthy.

I swear to fuck, Alex. If you keep playing with your asshole I’m going to play with it for you.” “You were touching yourself.” “I creamed my jeans like a schoolgirl, Alex. You came with no touching. You looked like... You’re a natural.” “A natural,” Alex repeats, trying to wrap his mind around that. Natural porn performer? Natural bottom? Neither really sounds that prestigious, but Peter’s talking about it like he just won the World Series of Taking Big Cocks Up the Butt.

This sense of being shaken up is Advent good news. Christmas should be more than putting up the tree and wrapping the presents. It should give birth to something that shakes up the routine, something that gets us to see the world otherwise. That shaking up is what it means to follow Jesus. To love one’s enemies is scary; to take up one’s cross is terrifying. Yet at the same time, Luke reminds us, there is a legacy that carries us forward and a promise that God will remember the covenant and bring about eternal justice.

A husband looking for the perfect present is like a knight of the Round Table on a quest for the Holy Grail. He can saddle up his trusty steed and head off gamely into the Christmas chaos - with courage as his trusty companion. But as soon as leaves the comforts of his castle, he will find that his old pal, doubt, has saddled up the mule of confusion and is clip-clopping along at his side. and before he even gets to the malls, that old traitor, conviction, will have turned and fled. Deep in his anxious heart, our knight will begin to wonder if the thing he is looking for really exists. Oh, he has heard rumours. There was a man once, who said he heard of a fellow, who told a story about a guy, who found the perfect present. But no doubt that is just a legend. One of those stories people tell to promote hope among the recklessly faithful. If you ever tracked him down, you'd probably find out the man who found the perfect present was just another poor sod alone in his bedroom on Christmas Eve, with a roll of wrapping paper, some Scotch tape, and a waffle iron.

We sat on the floor, newspaper- wrapped presents in our laps, imagining all the wonderful things inside. We opened them carefully, peeling back layers of newsprint until we reached the boxes, sliced the Scotch tape with our fingernails, lifted the flaps, and each of us found . . . One MRE (Meal, Ready to Eat— turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce, in foil pouches); one Hershey bar; and a handful of bullet casings, because this is what my men are getting today. And one more thing: a scrap of paper with a hand-scrawled I love you, Dad.

Paul was an attorney. And this was what his as yet brief career in the law had done to his brain. He was comforted by minutiae. His mortal fears could be assuaged only by an encyclopedic command of detail. Paul was a professional builder of narratives. He was a teller of concise tales. His work was to take a series of isolated events and, shearing from them their dross, craft from them a progression. The morning’s discrete images—a routine labor, a clumsy error, a grasping arm, a crowded street, a spark of fire, a blood-speckled child, a dripping corpse—could be assembled into a story. There would be a beginning, a middle, and an end. Stories reach conclusions, and then they go away. Such is their desperately needed magic. That day’s story, once told in his mind, could be wrapped up, put aside, and recalled only when necessary. The properly assembled narrative would guard his mind from the terror of raw memory. Even a true story is a fiction, Paul knew. It is the comforting tool we use to organize the chaotic world around us into something comprehensible. It is the cognitive machine that separates the wheat of emotion from the chaff of sensation. The real world is overfull with incidents, brimming over with occurrences. In our stories, we disregard most of them until clear reason and motivation emerge. Every story is an invention, a technological device not unlike the very one that on that morning had seared a man’s skin from his bones. A good story could be put to no less dangerous a purpose. As an attorney, the tales that Paul told were moral ones. There existed, in his narratives, only the injured and their abusers. The slandered and the liars. The swindled and the thieves. Paul constructed these characters painstakingly until the righteousness of his plaintiff—or his defendant—became overwhelming. It was not the job of a litigator to determine facts; it was his job to construct a story from those facts by which a clear moral conclusion would be unavoidable. That was the business of Paul’s stories: to present an undeniable view of the world. And then to vanish, once the world had been so organized and a profit fairly earned.

Then came the most exquisite moment of her whole life passing a stone urn with flowers in it. Sally stopped; picked a flower; kissed her on the lips. The whole world might have turned upside down! The others disappeared; there she was alone with Sally. And she felt that she had been given a present, wrapped up, and told just to keep it, not to look at it—a diamond, something infinitely precious, wrapped up, which, as they walked (up and down, up and down), she uncovered, or the radiance burnt through, the revelation, the religious feeling!

Grated potato was added to the crepe batter, creating a thick and chewy Crepe Alsacienne! Yukihira realized this was meant as a wrap for the ingredients... ... and that spurred his idea to mix cheese, sliced potato and sardines together to make a crispy Galette de Pomme as a garnish to the dish! Look what that does to the dish! It gives it contrasting textures of crispy and chewy, along with the invigorating saltiness of seafood, none of which are present in the traditional recipe! *Galette de Pomme is a lightly fried cake of julienned potatoes.*

Lina was flawlessly impassive. A living, breathing Barbie doll with no greater purpose than to be played with and admired. It was a shame, in a way. Like opening a meticulously wrapped Christmas present to find nothing inside, and her packaging was nothing short of perfection. She reminded me of a 1950s pinup model—Marilyn Monroe with the most vibrant blue eyes I’d ever seen. And that voice. Jesus Christ, that voice. The natural huskiness made every word sound like something whispered naked in the dark. All together, it was enough to make a man forget his own name.

As we speak from a particular perspective, our words not only reveal something about our hemispheric vantage point, but they also go on to reinforce this way of seeing, wrapping us within a distinct perceptual slant. Then, because of our resonance with each other, we are simultaneously issuing an invitation for others to join us in this mode of attending. As we shift towards left dominance, we move internally out of relationship and into isolation, no matter how many people may be present, and we are inviting others into disconnection from themselves and others as well.

The earliest birthday I remember is my fourth; I remember blowing out the candles on my cake, the thrill of tearing the wrapping paper off the presents. There’s no video of the event, but there are snapshots in the family album, and they are consistent with what I remember. In fact, I suspect I no longer remember the day itself. It’s more likely that I manufactured the memory when I was first shown the snapshots, and over time, I’ve imbued it with the emotion I imagine I felt that day. Little by little, over repeated instances of recall, I’ve created a happy memory for myself.

He was power and heat and war wrapped up in a single being. He’d fight to the death to maintain what was his. And while we remained at this academy, we were a threat. But for the first time since I’d arrived here, watching him soar through the skies sparked something in me. It was like a primal ache to rise to the challenge he presented. I didn’t want his throne or his kingdom, but I did want something else from him. I wanted his respect. And with that knowledge I knew I’d never bow to him. So, if he was determined to see me fall, he was going to have to try and make me break.

To every captive soul and gentle heart into whose sight this present speech may come, so that they might write its meaning for me, greetings, in their lord¬?s name, who is Love. Already a third of the hours were almost past of the time when all the stars were shining, when Amor suddenly appeared to me whose memory fills me with terror. Joyfully Amor seemed to me to hold my heart in his hand, and held in his arms my lady wrapped in a cloth sleeping. Then he woke her, and that burning heart he fed to her reverently, she fearing, afterwards he went not to be seen weeping.

Now,' cried the fiend, 'follow me! You must understand that I cannot get out by the great gate - the porter will not suffer that. Once here, there is no retreat. Follow me, therefore: we will just go to your house, where you shall dress yourself; for you can hardly go to a ball in your present costume - especially as it is not a bal masque. Mind and wrap yourself well up in your winding-sheet, for the nights are cold, and you may feel unpleasantly touched by it.' As he said this, Satan laughed malignantly; and I continued silently to walk after him. 'I am sure,' continued he, 'that, in spite of the service I am doing you, you do not yet like me. You are always thus, you men - ungrateful to your friends. Not that I blame ingratitude; it is a vice upon which I pride myself, since I invented it myself; and I must say, that it is one most in vogue. But I do wish to see you a little more merry - it is the only thing I ask of you.' I answered not, but still followed my guide, white as a statue, and as cold. I was silent; but, at the pauses in the fiend's voice, I could hear my teeth chatter against each other, and my bones rattle in my body. ("The Dead Man's Story")

And there it is, proof if proof were needed, that though God may mould the clay and fashion some of us hale, some strong, some beautiful, inside we make ourselves, from foolish things, breakable, fragile things: the thorns, that dog, the hope that Katherine might make me better than I am. Even Rike’s blunt wants were born of losses he probably remembered only in dreams. All of us fractured, awkward collages of experience wrapped tight to present a defensible face to the world. And what makes us human is that sometimes we snap. And in that moment of release we’re closer to gods than we know.

Given our present physical reality and limited awareness, it is difficult to see how God is an integral and intimate portion of our being and how we are a portion of God’s being. God is with us, and this naturally showers us with God’s grace. Ezekiel revealed this when he searched for God, after he had gotten himself in trouble with the authorities and began to feel that he was alone in his quest, and grew weary of his mission. At first, Ezekiel searched for God in the things of power in the earth—thunder, lightning, fire, and earthquake—but not finding God in these, he became quiet and wrapped himself in his cloak, and there, within himself, he heard a “still, small voice.” At last, there was God’s presence. God had been with him the whole time. In Psalm 46 God instructed the psalmist to “be still, and know that I am God.” In Luke 17:11, Jesus taught, “the kingdom of God is within you.” In Exodus 3:14, when Moses asked God for His name, God replied, “I am that I am,” indicating that the great I AM is in that portion of us that has a sense of “I am.” The great I AM and the little I am are one. Our little consciousness is a portion of the vast Universal Consciousness that is God’s mind.

Word from the outside, whether it arrived in a mail sack or a news report, seldom overshadowed the facts of our lives. We talked in facts -- work and weather, the logistics of this fence, that field -- but stories were how we spoke. A good story rose to the surface of a conversation like heavy cream, a thing to be savored and served artfully. Stored in dry wit, wrapped in dark humor, tied together with strings of anecdote, these stories told the chronology of a family, the history of a piece of land, the hardships of a certain year or a span of years, a series of events that led without pause to the present. If the stories were recent, they filtered through the door to my room late at night, voices hushed around the kitchen table as they sorted out this day and held it against others, their laughter sharp and sad and slow to come. Time was the key. Remember the time...and something in the air caught like a whisper. Back when. Back before a summer too fresh and real to talk about, a year's work stripped in a twenty-minute hailstorm; a man's right hand mangled in the belts of a combine, first day of harvest; an only son buried alive in a grain bin, suffocated in a red avalanche of wheat.

We decided to attend to our community instead of asking our community to attend the church.” His staff started showing up at local community events such as sports contests and town hall meetings. They entered a float in the local Christmas parade. They rented a football field and inaugurated a Free Movie Night on summer Fridays, complete with popcorn machines and a giant screen. They opened a burger joint, which soon became a hangout for local youth; it gives free meals to those who can’t afford to pay. When they found out how difficult it was for immigrants to get a driver’s license, they formed a drivers school and set their fees at half the going rate. My own church in Colorado started a ministry called Hands of the Carpenter, recruiting volunteers to do painting, carpentry, and house repairs for widows and single mothers. Soon they learned of another need and opened Hands Automotive to offer free oil changes, inspections, and car washes to the same constituency. They fund the work by charging normal rates to those who can afford it. I heard from a church in Minneapolis that monitors parking meters. Volunteers patrol the streets, add money to the meters with expired time, and put cards on the windshields that read, “Your meter looked hungry so we fed it. If we can help you in any other way, please give us a call.” In Cincinnati, college students sign up every Christmas to wrap presents at a local mall — ​no charge. “People just could not understand why I would want to wrap their presents,” one wrote me. “I tell them, ‘We just want to show God’s love in a practical way.’ ” In one of the boldest ventures in creative grace, a pastor started a community called Miracle Village in which half the residents are registered sex offenders. Florida’s state laws require sex offenders to live more than a thousand feet from a school, day care center, park, or playground, and some municipalities have lengthened the distance to half a mile and added swimming pools, bus stops, and libraries to the list. As a result, sex offenders, one of the most despised categories of criminals, are pushed out of cities and have few places to live. A pastor named Dick Witherow opened Miracle Village as part of his Matthew 25 Ministries. Staff members closely supervise the residents, many of them on parole, and conduct services in the church at the heart of Miracle Village. The ministry also provides anger-management and Bible study classes.

I would expect such behavior from the children,not from their mother." She tsked at him, not even a little daunted. "Aren't you the least bit curious?" "Certainly,but I can wait until-" "But I can't wait," she cut in passionately. "Come with me, Warren. I'll be careful with it. And if it's nothing more'n a simple gift, albeit a mysterious one, then I'll have the box wrapped up again perfectly, so no one will know we tampered with it." "You're serious about this?" he asked. "You're actually going to sneak downstairs in the middle of the night like an errant schoolgirl-" "No,no,we are, like two perfectly sensible adults making a reasonable effort to solve a mystery that has been around far too long." He chuckled at that point, used to his wife's strange logic, and used to her ignoring any of his attempts at sternness.But then that was the magic of Amy.She was unlike any other woman he'd ever known. He gave in gracefully with a smile. "Very well,fetch our robes and some shoes.I would imagine the fire has been banked in the parlor, so it will be a mite chilly." It wasn't that long before they were standing next to The Present, Warren merely curious, Amy finding it hard to contain her excitement, considering what she expected to find beneath the pretty cloth wrapping.The parlor wasn't chilly at all,since whoever had lef the room last had closed the doors to contain the earlier warmth, and Warren had closed them again before he lit several of the lamps. But the doors opened once more, giving Amy quite a start since she was just reaching for The Present when it happened, and Jeremy said as he entered the room, "Caught in the act,eh? Amy,for shame." Amy,noticeably embarrassed despite the fact that Jeremy wasn't just her cousin, but one of her closest friends, said stiffly, "And what,pray tell, are you doing down here at this hour?" He winked at her and said dryly, "Same thing you are, I would imagine." She chuckled then. "Scamp. Close the door while you're at it." He started to,but stepped out of the way instead as Reggie sauntered in, barefoot and still in the process of tying her bed robe. When everyone else there just stared at her, she huffed indignantly, "I did not come down here to open The Present-well, maybe I did, but I would have chickened out before actually doing so." "What a whopper, Reggie," Derek said as he came in right behind her. "Nice try, though. Mind if I borrow that lame excuse? Better than having none a'tall.

And there’s that moment, which Hannah remembers since childhood. After all the weeks of anticipation, the preparation, meals planned and served, gifts purchased, wrapped, torn open, surprises revealed and enjoyed, the inevitable time comes when it’s all done. There are no more presents to give or to get, just the mess to clean up, the dishes to do. When she was little, she always felt this moment, its quiet, its subtle sadness, keenly. Now that she was older, she knew it for what it was—the flow of life. The calm after the storm where you were meant to recalibrate, reset before the onset of the next event—good or bad.

So Callie is a rake." She blushed. "I don't think so." Silence fell between them as he watched the wash of pink across her cheeks. He lifted her wounded arm in his hand, placing a soft kiss on the back of her hand. She breathed deeply at the feel of his lips on her skin, so warm and soft, and her eyes flew to his, intently focused on her. He held her gaze, and she felt a shock of liquid heat as his tongue circled one of her knuckles. He registered her surprise, smiling against her and turning her hand palm up, then setting his tongue and lips to work on the soft, sensitive spot at its center. Her breath quickened, and she closed her eyes to the sensation, unable to watch the erotic movement of his mouth across her skin. He lifted his lips from her hand and, when she opened her eyes again, it was to find him watching her, a wicked smile on his lips. Reaching out, he traced one finger along the line of her jaw, sending a shiver through her. When he spoke, his voice was thick and liquid, and it sent a shock of heat down her spine. "I shouldn't give up on that part of her just yet, Empress." She caught her breath at the endearment, which brought with it a hazy memory from long ago. He chased the vision away with the vivid present as he clasped her chin, bringing her face closer to his. "You forget, I've met the women several times... In carriages..." His lips hovered just above hers, sending a tremor of anticipation through her, "And in theatres..." She tried to close the distance between them and he pulled back just enough to drive her slightly mad. "And in bedchambers. In fact," he added, his words a caress along the sensitive skin of her lips, "I rather like the rakish side of her." And then he settled his lips upon hers, and she was lost. She was consumed by the softness of his mouth, the gentleness of the caress- so very different than the kisses they had shared before. This kiss consumed her, made her forget herself, their surroundings, everything but the magnificent pressure of his lips on hers. His thumb stroked her jaw as his mouth ate at hers, sending waves of pulsing pleasure through her. She gasped at the feeling, and he took advantage of her open lips to plunder her mouth with deep, drugging kisses that made her dizzy. She reached for him, her anchor in a sea of sensuality, wrapping her arms around his neck and plunging her fingers into his heavy, soft hair. He made a deep, satisfied sound at the feeling of her wrapped around him, and traced a path across her cheek and down the column of her throat with soft, moist kisses that sent explosions of pleasure through her.

The good part about these areas that we were taking over, was that all of them had parks where a lot of guys were just hanging out playing basketball. So I used those parks to make a good first impression with my gun, then I followed up with a speech presentation. At the end of the day, we were able to win over the entire park, and eventually their community….. It was as if these fellas from different areas were just waiting for this, because no one else was going around to them. No one else was telling them that they were needed, only us. Scrooge, former leader of the Rebellion Raiders street gang that once boasted of having some ten thousand members

The finished clock is resplendent. At first glance it is simply a clock, a rather large black clock with a white face and a silver pendulum. Well crafted, obviously, with intricately carved woodwork edges and a perfectly painted face, but just a clock. But that is before it is wound. Before it begins to tick, the pendulum swinging steadily and evenly. Then, then it becomes something else. The changes are slow. First, the color changes in the face, shifts from white to grey, and then there are clouds that float across it, disappearing when they reach the opposite side. Meanwhile, bits of the body of the clock expand and contract, like pieces of a puzzle. As though the clock is falling apart, slowly and gracefully. All of this takes hours. The face of the clock becomes a darker grey, and then black, with twinkling stars where the numbers had been previously. The body of the clock, which has been methodically turning itself inside out and expanding, is now entirely subtle shades of white and grey. And it is not just pieces, it is figures and objects, perfectly carved flowers and planets and tiny books with actual paper pages that turn. There is a silver dragon that curls around part of the now visible clockwork, a tiny princess in a carved tower who paces in distress, awaiting an absent prince. Teapots that pour into teacups and minuscule curls of steam that rise from them as the seconds tick. Wrapped presents open. Small cats chase small dogs. An entire game of chess is played. At the center, where a cuckoo bird would live in a more traditional timepiece, is the juggler. Dressed in harlequin style with a grey mask, he juggles shiny silver balls that correspond to each hour. As the clock chimes, another ball joins the rest until at midnight he juggles twelve balls in a complex pattern. After midnight the clock begins once more to fold in upon itself. The face lightens and the clouds return. The number of juggled balls decreases until the juggler himself vanishes. By noon it is a clock again, and no longer a dream. A

THE HOUSE SEEMED UTTERLY deserted. Compared to the Christmases of his childhood there was something unforgiving about Leyville now. Montignac’s aunt, Ann, had always made the house seem incredibly festive, with an enormous Christmas tree in the downstairs hallway that stretched halfway up the house, past the staircase, in the direction of the first-floor bedrooms. The mantelpieces were always covered with holly and cards; stockings were pinned by the fireplace. Wrapping paper and presents were to be found in every nook and cranny. There was nothing like that now, just the stark emptiness of the rest of the year and the echoing silence of generations that had passed through the house and died.

It was brightly wrapped, and the card on it read, “To Daddy from Jannie.” “It’s fine,” I said. “What is it?” “Not so loud,” Jannie said, whispering. “It’s a potholder.” “A potholder?” “Yes, we learned how to make potholders in Starlight 4-H Club. And this is for Sally.” “A potholder?” “Yes, and this is for Laurie, and this is for Barry.” “A potholder for Barry?” “Yes, because in the mornings when his cereal’s too hot. Oh, golly.” Hastily she snatched the bottom package from the box and put it under her pillow. “You weren’t supposed to see that,” she said. “I didn’t see it,” I told her. “I never even noticed it.” “Good,” she said, “because that’s a secret, that one. I won’t even tell you who it’s for.

Perhaps the shortest and most powerful prayer in human language is help. —FATHER THOMAS KEATING A hardness we can't see, cold and rigid, begins to form between us and the world, the longer we stay silent about what we need. It is not even about getting what we need, but about admitting, mostly to ourselves, that we do have needs. Asking for help, whether we get it or not, breaks the hardness that builds in the world. Paradoxically, asking even for the things that no one can give, we are relieved and blessed for the asking. For admitting our humanness lets the soul break surface, the way a dolphin leaps for the sun. One of the most painful barriers we can experience is the sense of isolation the modern world fosters, which can only be broken by our willingness to be held, by the quiet courage to allow our vulnerabilities to be seen. For as water fills a hole and as light fills the dark, kindness wraps around what is soft, if what is soft can be seen. So admitting what we need, asking for help, letting our softness show—these are prayers without words that friends, strangers, wind, and time all wrap themselves around. Allowing ourselves to be held is like returning to the womb. As you breathe, try to relax and soften your guard for these brief moments. Breathe slowly, and feel your pores open more fully to the world. Inhale deeply, and let the air and silence get closer. Inhale cleanly, and allow yourself to be held by what is.

The house is still standing on the banks of the lake in Zurich. Jung’s descendants manage it, but unfortunately it’s not open to the public, so people can’t view the interior. Rumor has it, though, that at the entrance to the original tower there is a stone into which Jung carved some words with his own hand. ‘Cold or Not, God Is Present.’ That’s what he carved into the stone himself.” Tamaru paused again. “ ‘Cold or Not, God Is Present,’ ” he intoned, quietly, once more. “Do you know what this means?” Ushikawa shook his head. “No, I don’t.” “I can imagine. I’m not sure myself what it means. There’s some kind of deep allusion there, something difficult to interpret. But consider this: in this house that Carl Jung built, piling up the stones with his own hands, at the very entrance, he found the need to chisel out, again with his own hands, these words. I don’t know why, but I’ve been drawn to these words for a long time. I find them hard to understand, but the difficulty in understanding makes it all the more profound. I don’t know much about God. I was raised in a Catholic orphanage and had some awful experiences there so I don’t have a good impression of God. And it was always cold there, even in the summer. It was either really cold or outrageously cold. One or the other. If there is a God, I can’t say he treated me very well. Despite all this, those words of Jung’s quietly sank deep into the folds of my soul. Sometimes I close my eyes and repeat them over and over, and they make me strangely calm. ‘Cold or Not, God Is Present.’ Sorry, but could you say that out loud?” “ ‘Cold or Not, God Is Present,’ ” Ushikawa repeated in a weak voice, not really sure what he was saying. “I can’t hear you very well.” “ ‘Cold or Not, God Is Present.’ ” This time Ushikawa said it as distinctly as he could. Tamaru shut his eyes, enjoying the overtones of the words. Eventually, as if he had made up his mind about something, he took a deep breath and let it out. He opened his eyes and looked at his hands. He had on disposable latex gloves so he wouldn’t leave behind any fingerprints. “I’m sorry about this,” Tamaru said in a low voice. His tone was solemn. He took out the plastic bag again, put it over Ushikawa’s head, and wrapped the thick rubber band around his neck. His movements were swift and decisive. Ushikawa was about to protest, but the words didn’t form, and they never reached anyone’s ears. Why is he doing this? Ushikawa thought from inside the plastic bag.

Because I love you, Mia Sharpe. You are my route to happiness. All of my routes to happiness lead to you, and I haven’t ever found anyone else that has even come close. I love that you are willing to sit in an empty apartment until you find just the right piece of antique furniture that speaks to you even if it takes months. I love the way you call me Beckett most of the time, and Ellie only when it really matters. I love the way you tell people what their gift is when you hand them a wrapped present. I love that you became a firefighter so that you can save people from suffering what you’ve suffered. And I love you so much, that I’ll love you through all of the times where you find it hard to love yourself. Every day. Because there isn’t a piece of you that’s ruined inside, no matter what you might think on your worst days.

Do you know what I did with that broken girl? The one who had been attempting to destroy every single defect of character for as long as she could remember, the one who was already in advanced talks with a God she didn’t believe in to “just take it away,” the one who had no idea of self beyond what was wrapped into the life she thought presented well, men who abused her, friends she didn’t like, and a career that ate her? The one who couldn’t look at herself in a mirror? I started to love her. I began telling her she was okay, that she was loved and that nothing was wrong with her. I told her she wasn’t fucked up beyond repair. I let her know we had lost our way a little bit, that we’d shut some doors along the way, and that I was going to stand next to her while we went around the house and reclaimed those disowned parts. “Especially the ugly ones,” I said.

Agitatedly she touched the heavy necklace at her throat, worrying the smooth emeralds between her fingers. "Give that to me," Joyce said sharply, watching her. "The necklace?" "Yes, take it off." Joyce watched as Sara unhooked the glittering treasure from her neck. "A peasant woman with a necklace fit for a queen," she sneered. "You don't have the grace or bearing to wear it properly. Give it to me." Her eager fingers wrapped around the necklace, and she snatched it away. Setting it on the seat beside her, she toyed lovingly with the web of emeralds and diamonds. "He gave me presents... a bracelet, a necklace, jeweled combs for my hair... but nothing as fine as this." She smiled at Sara tauntingly. "The day he gave me the combs, he said that he'd imagined making love to me wearing jewels in my golden hair and nothing else. He much prefers blond hair to dark, did you know that?

Because of all this, Aomame hated her parents and deeply despised both the world to which they belonged and the ideology of that world. What she longed for was an ordinary life like everybody else’s. Not luxury: just a totally normal little life, nothing more. She wanted to hurry up and become an adult so she could leave her parents and live alone—eating what and as much as she wanted, using the money in her purse any way she liked, wearing new clothes of her own choosing, wearing shoes that fit her feet, going where she wanted to go, making lots of friends and exchanging beautifully wrapped presents with them. Once she became an adult, however, Aomame discovered that she was most comfortable living a life of self-denial and moderation. What she wanted most of all was not to go out with someone all dressed up, but to spend time alone in her room dressed in a jersey top and bottom.

A man who is awake in the open field at night or who wanders over silent paths experiences the world differently than by day. Nighness vanishes, and with it distance; everything is equally far and near, close by us and yet mysteriously remote. Space loses its measures. There are whispers and sounds, and we do not know where or what they are. Our feelings too are peculiarly ambiguous. There is a strangeness about what is intimate and dear, and a seductive charm about the frightening. There is no longer a distinction between the lifeless and the living, everything is animate and soulless, vigilant and asleep at once. What the day brings on and makes recognizable gradually, emerges out of the dark with no intermediary stages. The encounter suddenly confronts us, as if by a miracle: What is the thing we suddenly see - an enchanted bride, a monster, or merely a log? Everything teases the traveller, puts on a familiar face and the next moment is utterly strange, suddenly terrifies with awful gestures and immediately resumes a familiar and harmless posture. Danger lurks everywhere. Out of the dark jaws of the night which gape beside the traveller, any moment a robber may emerge without warning, or some eerie terror, or the uneasy ghost of a dead man - who knows what may once have happened at that very spot? Perhaps mischievous apparitions of the fog seek to entice him from the right path into the desert where horror dwells, where wanton witches dance their rounds which no man ever leaves alive. Who can protect him, guide him aright, give him good counsel? The spirit of Night itself, the genius of its kindliness, its enchantment, its resourcefulness, and its profound wisdom. She is indeed the mother of all mystery. The weary she wraps in slumber, delivers from care, and she causes dreams to play about their souls. Her protection is enjoyed by the un-happy and persecuted as well as by the cunning, whom her ambivalent shadows offer a thousand devices and contrivances. With her veil she also shields lovers, and her darkness keeps ward over all caresses, all charms hidden and revealed. Music is the true language of her mystery - the enchanting voice which sounds for eyes that are closed and in which heaven and earth, the near and the far, man and nature, present and past, appear to make themselves understood. But the darkness of night which so sweetly invites to slumber also bestows new vigilance and illumination upon the spirit. It makes it more perceptive, more acute, more enterprising. Knowledge flares up, or descends like a shooting star - rare, precious, even magical knowledge. And so night, which can terrify the solitary man and lead him astray, can also be his friend, his helper, his counsellor.

How much farther?" Sammy asks. It will be dark soon, and the dark is the worst time. Nobody told him, but he just knows that when they finally cone it will be in the dark and it will be without warning, like the other waves, and there will be nothing you can do about it, it will just happen, like the TV winking out and the cars dying and the planes falling and mommy wrapped up in bloody sheets. When the others first came, his father told him the world had changed and nothing would be like before, and maybe they'd take him inside the mothership, maybe even take him on adventures in outer space. And Sammy couldn't wait to go inside the mothership and blast off into space just like Luke Skywalker in his X-Wing starfighter. It made every night feel like Christmas Eve. When morning came, he thought he would wake up to all the wonderful presents the Others brought would be there. But all the Others brought was death.

To development belongs fulfilment — every evolution has a beginning, and every fulfilment is an end. To youth belongs age; to arising, passing; to life, death. For the animal, tied in the nature of its thinking to the present, death is known or scented as something in the future, something that does not threaten it. It only knows the fear of death in the moment of being killed. But man, whose thought is emancipated from the fetters of here and now, yesterday and tomorrow, boldly investigates the “once” of past and future, and it depends on the depth or shallowness of his nature whether he triumphs over this fear of the end or not. An old Greek legend — without which the Iliad could not have been — tells how his mother put before Achilles the choice between a long life or a short life full of deeds and fame, and how he chose the second. Man was, and is, too shallow and cowardly to endure the fact of the mortality of everything living. He wraps it up in rose-coloured progress-optimism, he heaps upon it the flowers of literature, he crawls behind the shelter of ideals so as not to see anything. But impermanence, the birth and the passing, is the form of all that is actual — from the stars, whose destiny is for us incalculable, right down to the ephemeral concourses on our planet. The life of the individual — whether this be animal or plant or man — is as perishable as that of peoples of Cultures. Every creation is fore-doomed to decay, every thought, every discovery, every deed to oblivion. Here, there, and everywhere we are sensible of grandly fated courses of history that have vanished. Ruins of the “have-been” works of dead Cultures lie all about us. The hubris of Prometheus, who thrust his hand into the heavens in order to make the divine powers subject to man, carries with it his fall. What, then, becomes of the chatter about “undying achievements”?

When Ayatollah Khamenei needs to make a crucial decision about the Iranian economy, he will not be able to find the necessary answer in the Quran, because seventh-century Arabs knew very little about the problems and opportunities of modern industrial economies and global financial markets. So he, or his aides, must turn to Karl Marx, Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, and the modern science of economics to get answers. Having made up his mind to raise interest rates, lower taxes, privatize government monopolies, or sign an international tariff agreement, Khamenei can then use his religious knowledge and authority to wrap the scientific answer in the garb of this or that Quranic verse and present it to the masses as the will of Allah. But the garb matters little. When you compare the economic policies of Shiite Iran, Sunni Saudi Arabia, Jewish Israel, Hindu India, and Christian America, you just don’t see that much of a difference.

Happy birthday, Kya,” he said. “You’re fifteen.” A two-tiered bakery cake, tall as a hatbox and decorated with shells of pink icing, rose from the basket. Her name scripted on top. Presents, wrapped in colorful paper and tied with bows, surrounded the cake. She stared, flabbergasted, her mouth open. No one had wished her happy birthday since Ma left. No one had ever given her a store-bought cake with her name on it. She’d never had presents in real wrapping paper with ribbons. “How’d you know my birthday?” Having no calendar, she had no idea it was today. “I read it in your Bible.” While she pleaded for him not to cut through her name, he sliced enormous pieces of cake and plopped them on paper plates. Staring into each other’s eyes, they broke off bites and stuffed them in their mouths. Smacking loudly. Licking fingers. Laughing through icing-smeared grins. Eating cake the way it should be eaten, the way everybody wants to eat it.

The Vietnamese worshiped their ancestors as the source of their lives, their fortunes, and their civilization. In the rites of ancestor worship the child imitated the gestures of his grandfather so that when he became the grandfather, he could repeat them exactly to his grandchildren. In this passage of time that had no history the death of a man marked no final end. Buried in the rice fields that sustained his family, the father would live on in the bodies of his children and grandchildren. As time wrapped around itself, the generations to come would regard him as the source of their present lives and the arbiter of their fate. In this continuum of the family “private property” did not really exist, for the father was less of an owner than a trustee of the land to be passed on to his children. To the Vietnamese the land itself was the sacred, constant element: the people flowed over the land like water, maintaining and fructifying it for the generations to come.

Instinctively, my eyes clasped on Amar’s. He was shocked, his face pale. He grabbed me; his hands entangled in my hair even as my fingers were wrapped around the hilt that destroyed him. “I love you, jaani. My soul could never forget you. It would retrace every step until it found you.” He looked at me, his dark eyes dulling, as if all the love that had once lit them to black mirrors was slowly disappearing. “Save me.” The glow of the candles cast pools of light onto the ground, illuminating his profile. I knew, now, why Nritti begged me not to look at him. His gaze unlocked something in me. It was both visceral and ephemeral, like heavy light. The eyes of death revealed every recess of the soul and every locked-away memory of my past and present life converged into one gaze… I was weightless, my vison unfocused and hazy until the memory of the woman in the glass garden engulfed me. Slowly, the woman turned and a wave of shock shot through me--I was staring at myself.

But now, sitting on this airplane on my way back to the life I went on to fashion after she left, I think of her differently. I see her so many ways: sitting back on her heels at the side of the bathtub, singing softly as she washes Sharla and my backs; watching at the window for the six o’clock arrival of our father; wrapping Christmas presents on the wide expanse of her bed; biting her lip as she stood before the open cupboards, making out the grocery list; leaning out the kitchen window that last summer to call Sharla and me in for supper. Most clearly, though, I see her sitting at the kitchen table, in her old, usual spot. There is a cup of coffee before her, but she doesn’t drink it. Instead, she stares out the window. I see the sharp angle of her cheekbone, the beautiful whitish down at the side of face, illuminated by the sun. Her hands are quiet, resting in the cloth bowl of her apron. She sits still as a statue - waiting, I can see now; she was always waiting. -What We Keep

When I moved to the U.S. at six, I was unrecognizable to my mother. I was angry, chronically dissatisfied, bratty. On my second day in America, she ran out of the room in tears after I angrily demanded that she buy me a pack of colored pencils. You're not you! she sputtered between sobs, which brought me to a standstill. She couldn't recognize me. That's what she told me later, that this was not the daughter she had last seen. Being too young, I didn't know enough to ask: But what did you expect? Who am I supposed to be to you? But if I was unrecognizable to her, she was also unrecognizable to me. In this new country, she was disciplinarian, restrictive, prone to angry outbursts, easily frustrated, so fascist with arbitrary rules that struck me, even as a six-year-old, as unreasonable. For most of my childhood and adolescence, my mother was my antagonist. Whenever she'd get mad, she'd take her index finger and poke me in the forehead. You you you you you, she'd say, as if accusing me of being me. She was quick to blame me for the slightest infractions, a spilled glass, a way of sitting while eating, my future ambitions (farmer or teacher), the way I dressed, what I ate, even the way I practiced English words in the car..She was the one to deny me: the extra dollar added to my allowance; an extra hour to my curfew; the money to buy my friends' birthday presents, so that I was forced to gift them, no matter what the season, leftover Halloween candy. In those early days, we lived so frugally that we even washed, alongside the dishes in the sink, used sheets of cling wrap for reuse. She was the one to punish me, sending me to kneel in the bathtub of the darkened bathroom, carrying my father's Casio watch with an alarm setting to account for when time was up. Yet it was I who would kneel for even longer, going further and further, taking more punishment just to spite her, just to show that it meant nothing. I could take more. The sun moved across the bathroom floor, from the window to the door.

Today, I was reminded that family life is never perfect, it is almost a touch of confusion and chaos wrapped into these amazingly brilliant moments that make you feel loved from the tip of your toes right up to the last strand of hair on your head. Yet, that isn’t what defines a family. It’s the strength of the bonds that help us to find our centeredness even when the situation presents itself as having no center. In those cases, until you find your center, Peppermint Pull-Up cake is always recommended, as a type of a sugary meditation to seal the bonds between those you love, and to remind each other that the way back is always through the center of love. And it makes us realize the gift housed inside of the madness…when our bonds of family live up to the wisdom of an old African saying: “To get lost is to learn the way.” The way always points home…toward the direction of our family’s heart. That point that can break, heal, and break again just to lead us to where peace resides. The juncture called...family.

So, a few years ago, while I was presenting at a conference in Europe, my wife called and insisted that the walls of our laundry room were throbbing. That was the word she used. Pulsing, like the wall itself was alive. She described a hum, an energy, that she could feel as soon as she walked into the room. I suggested it was a wiring problem. She became … let’s just say, agitated at that point. Three days later, just before I was due to come back, she called again. The problem was getting worse, she said. There was an audible hum now, from the wall. She couldn’t sleep. She could hear it as soon as she walked in the house. She could feel it, the vibration, like something unnatural was ready to burst forth into our world. So, I flew home the next day, and found her extremely upset. I understood immediately why my suggestion of a wiring problem was so insulting—this was the sound of something alive. Something massive. So, even though I was exhausted, jet-lagged and just completely dead on my feet, I had no other thought than to go out to the garage, get my tools and peel off the siding. Guess what I found.” I didn’t answer. “Guess!” “I’m not sure I want to know.” “Bees. They had built an entire hive in the wall, sprawling from floor to ceiling. Tens of thousands of them.” His face was lighting up with the telling of his amusing anecdote. Why not? He was getting paid to tell it. “So I went and put on a hat and gloves and wrapped my wife’s scarf around my face and sprayed the hive, I killed them by the thousands. Only later did I realize that the bees are quite valuable and a local beekeeper actually came and carefully removed the hive itself at no charge. I think he’d have actually paid me if I hadn’t killed so many of them at the start.” “Hmm.” “Do you understand?” “Yeah, your wife thought it was a monster. Turned out to just be bees. So my little problem, probably just bees. It’s all bees. Nothing to worry about.” “I’m afraid you misunderstood. That was the day that a very powerful, very dangerous monster turned out to be real. Just ask the bees.

hold of people’s minds and actually control them. View a corporate stronghold like the giant squid that attacked Captain Nemo’s Nautilus in Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, waiting for people to swim near so it could wrap its tentacles about them. Whenever people begin to think in certain ways, principalities can maneuver appropriate corporate strongholds into position to clamp about them and actually rob them of the freedom to think. While individual strongholds serve as lodgings for local ruling demons, corporate strongholds offer a home to what Paul referred to: Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Ephesians 6:11–12, italics mine Corporate strongholds are wielded by principalities, rulers, demonic archangels that use them to imprison the minds and control the thoughts of entire peoples—nations, cities, denominations, local churches, political parties, even philanthropic groups. If you have ever asked, “How could principalities become world rulers of this present darkness?” the foremost answer lies here—by means of corporate strongholds. The function of a corporate stronghold is to imprison the minds of a people or group, to take away their freedom to think anything— including cold, hard facts and logic—contrary to the mindset of the stronghold. It hypnotizes whomever its spell overshadows, so that they cannot see portions of the Word of God (or even secular truths) that might set them free from its delusive grip. But their minds were hardened; for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remains unlifted, because it is removed in Christ. But to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart; but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. 2 Corinthians 3:14–16, italics mine That veil, to me, is a corporate stronghold of

Like addiction itself, anxiety will always find a target, but exists independently of its targets. Only when we become aware of it does it wrap itself in identifiable colours. More often we repress it, bury it under ideas, identifications, deeds, beliefs and relationships. We build above it a mound of activities and attributes that we mistake for our true selves. We then expend our energies trying to convince the world that our self-made fiction is reality. As genuine as our strengths and achievements may be, they cannot but feel hollow until we acknowledge the anxiety they cover up. Incompleteness is the baseline state of the addict. The addict believes — either with full awareness or unconsciously — that he is “not enough.” As he is, he is inadequate to face life’s demands or to present an acceptable face to the world. He is unable to tolerate his own emotions without artificial supports. He must escape the painful experience of the void within through any activity that fills his mind with even temporary purpose, be it work, gambling, shopping, eating or sexual seeking.

He carefully poured the juice into a bowl and rinsed the scallops to remove any sand caught between the tender white meat and the firmer coral-colored roe, wrapped around it like a socialite's fur stole. Mayur is the kind of cook (my kind), who thinks the chef should always have a drink in hand. He was making the scallops with champagne custard, so naturally the rest of the bottle would have to disappear before dinner. He poured a cup of champagne into a small pot and set it to reduce on the stove. Then he put a sugar cube in the bottom of a wide champagne coupe (Lalique, service for sixteen, direct from the attic on my mother's last visit). After a bit of a search, he found the crème de violette in one of his shopping bags and poured in just a dash. He topped it up with champagne and gave it a swift stir. "To dinner in Paris," he said, glass aloft. 'To the chef," I answered, dodging swiftly out of the way as he poured the reduced champagne over some egg yolks and began whisking like his life depended on it. "Do you have fish stock?" "Nope." "Chicken?" "Just cubes. Are you sure that will work?" "Sure. This is the Mr. Potato Head School of Cooking," he said. "Interchangeable parts. If you don't have something, think of what that ingredient does, and attach another one." I counted, in addition to the champagne, three other bottles of alcohol open in the kitchen. The boar, rubbed lovingly with a paste of cider vinegar, garlic, thyme, and rosemary, was marinating in olive oil and red wine. It was then to be seared, deglazed with hard cider, roasted with whole apples, and finished with Calvados and a bit of cream. Mayur had his nose in a small glass of the apple liqueur, inhaling like a fugitive breathing the air of the open road. As soon as we were all assembled at the table, Mayur put the raw scallops back in their shells, spooned over some custard, and put them ever so briefly under the broiler- no more than a minute or two. The custard formed a very thin skin with one or two peaks of caramel. It was, quite simply, heaven. The pork was presented neatly sliced, restaurant style, surrounded with the whole apples, baked to juicy, sagging perfection.

No, the most noticeable feature about the man was his clothes. In no way could it have been guessed of what his coat was made, for both its sleeves and its skirts were so ragged and filthy as to defy description, while instead of two posterior tails, there dangled four of those appendages, with, projecting from them, a torn newspaper. Also, around his neck there was wrapped something which might have been a stocking, a garter, or a stomacher, but was certainly not a tie. In short, had Chichikov chanced to encounter him at a church door, he would have bestowed upon him a copper or two (for, to do our hero justice, he had a sympathetic heart and never refrained from presenting a beggar with alms), but in the present case there was standing before him, not a mendicant, but a landowner — and a landowner possessed of fully a thousand serfs, the superior of all his neighbours in wealth of flour and grain, and the owner of storehouses, and so forth, that were crammed with homespun cloth and linen, tanned and undressed sheepskins, dried fish, and every conceivable species of produce. Nevertheless, such a phenomenon is rare in Russia, where the tendency is rather to prodigality than to parsimony.

It takes the better part of those months for Herr Thiessen to complete the clock. He works on little else, though the sum of money involved makes the arrangement more than manageable. Weeks are spent on the design and the mechanics. He hires an assistant to complete some of the basic woodwork, but he takes care of all the details himself. Herr Thiessen loves details and he loves a challenge. He balances the entire design on that one specific word Mr. Barris used. Dreamlike. The finished clock is resplendent. At first glance it is simply a clock, a rather large black clock with a white face and a silver pendulum. Well crafted, obviously, with intricately carved woodwork edges and a perfectly painted face, but just a clock. But that is before it is wound. Before it begins to tick, the pendulum swinging steadily and evenly. Then, then it becomes something else. The changes are slow. First, the color changes in the face, shifts from white to grey, and then there are clouds that float across it, disappearing when they reach the opposite side. Meanwhile, bits of the body of the clock expand and contract, like pieces of a puzzle. As thought clock is falling apart, slowly and gracefully. All of this takes hours. The face of the clock becomes a darker grey, and then black, with twinkling stars where the numbers had been previously. The body of the clock, which has been methodically turning itself inside out and expanding, is now entirely subtle shades of white and grey. And it is not just pieces, it is figures and objects, perfectly carved flowers and planets and tiny books with actually paper pages that turn. There is a silver dragon curls around part of the now visible clockwork, a tiny princess in a carved tower who paces in distress awaiting an absent prince. Teapots that our into teacups and minuscule curls of steam that rise from them as the seconds tick. Wrapped presents open. Small cats chase small dogs. An entire game of chess is played. At the center, where a cuckoo bird would live in a more traditional timepiece, is the juggler. Dressed in harlequin style with a grey mask, he juggles shiny silver balls that correspond to each hour. As the hour chimes, another ball joins the rest until at midnight he juggles twelve balls in a complex pattern. After midnight the clock begins once more to fold in upon itself. The face lightens and the colds return. The number of juggled balls decreases until the juggler himself vanishes. By noon it is a clock again, and no longer a dream.

For physical issues, we have an entire pharmacopoeia of pain medicine. For the actual pain of grief, we have . . . nothing. It’s always seemed so bizarre to me that we have an answer for almost every physical pain, but for this—some of the most intense pain we can experience—there is no medicine. You’re just supposed to feel it. And in a way, that’s true. The answer to pain is simply to feel it. Some traditions speak of practicing compassion in the face of pain, rather than trying to fix it. As I understand the Buddhist teaching, the fourth form of compassion in the Brahma Viharas, or the four immeasurables, describes an approach to the kinds of pain that cannot be fixed: upekkha, or equanimity. Upekkha is the practice of staying emotionally open and bearing witness to the pain while dwelling in equanimity around one’s limited ability to effect change. This form of compassion—for self, for others—is about remaining calm enough to feel everything, to remain calm while feeling everything, knowing that it can’t be changed. Equanimity (upekkha) is said to be the hardest form of compassion to teach, and the hardest to practice. It’s not, as is commonly understood, equanimity in the way of being unaffected by what’s happened, but more a quality of clear, calm attention in the face of immoveable truth. When something cannot be changed, the “enlightened” response is to pay attention. To feel it. To turn toward it and say, “I see you.” That’s the big secret of grief: the answer to the pain is in the pain. Or, as e. e. cummings wrote, healing of the wound is to be sought in the blood of the wound itself. It seems too intangible to be of use, but by allowing your pain to exist, you change it somehow. There’s power in witnessing your own pain. The challenge is to stay present in your heart, to your heart, to your own deep self, even, and especially, when that self is broken. Pain wants to be heard. It deserves to be heard. Denying or minimizing the reality of pain makes it worse. Telling the truth about the immensity of your pain—which is another way of paying attention—makes things different, if not better. It’s important to find those places where your grief gets to be as bad as it is, where it gets to suck as much as it does. Let your pain stretch out. Take up all the space it needs. When so many others tell you that your grief has to be cleaned up or contained, hearing that there is enough room for your pain to spread out, to unfurl—it’s healing. It’s a relief. The more you open to your pain, the more you can just be with it, the more you can give yourself the tenderness and care you need to survive this. Your pain needs space. Room to unfold. I think this is why we seek out natural landscapes that are larger than us. Not just in grief, but often in grief. The expanding horizon line, the sense of limitless space, a landscape wide and deep and vast enough to hold what is—we need those places. Sometimes grief like yours cannot be held by the universe itself. True. Sometimes grief needs more than an endless galaxy. Maybe your pain could wrap around the axle of the universe several times. Only the stars are large enough to take it on. With enough room to breathe, to expand, to be itself, pain softens. No longer confined and cramped, it can stop thrashing at the bars of its cage, can stop defending itself against its right to exist. There isn’t anything you need to do with your pain. Nothing you need to do about your pain. It simply is. Give it your attention, your care. Find ways to let it stretch out, let it exist. Tend to yourself inside it. That’s so different from trying to get yourself out of it. The way to come to pain is with open eyes, and an open heart, committed to bearing witness to your own broken place. It won’t fix anything. And it changes everything.

I’d never seen a Christmas tree so big in person. “Isn't she beautiful?” Deidra asked when she reached my side. I’d been so busy gawking I hadn't heard her approach. “It’s huge.” Again with the stating the obvious. “Where’d you get it?” “Gregory grows them at the edge of the property.” Sure, because getting a tree that big so far from the city was completely ludicrous. No wonder the entire house smelled of pine. “How’d you get it in here?” “Do you really want to know or do you want to help decorate it?” Deidra picked up my bags of presents and brought them toward the monster tree. They’d already wrapped it with white twinkle lights. “I think I saw a squirrel in there,” I teased, finally able to move. The closer I got the bigger the tree seemed.“Really?” one of the guys said, stopping mid-chorus while the others continued. A lock of gray hair fell over his forehead when he scanned the tree. “I could have sworn we’d checked to make sure none of the tenants were left over.” I chuckled at his consternation. “Chill. I didn't really see one.” Placing his hand at the center of his chest, he breathed a sigh of relief. Afterwards he rounded the tree, making sure the squirrel I’d joked about wasn't really there. Mental note:don’t tease the servants. They were way too dedicated.

Fate has a funny way of presenting love, sometimes delivering it in the most unexpected and seemingly contradictory of packages. When we spend years searching for our soulmate, hoping and praying for that perfect match, fate often surprises us by placing our destined love right in front of us, disguised as an adversary. The love of our life may not always arrive in the form we envision, wrapped in a neat, predictable package. Sometimes, our soulmate is the very person we're running from, the one we've labeled as our enemy. It's in these unexpected encounters that fate reveals its true humor, reminding us that love can blossom in the most unlikely of circumstances. If we allow ourselves to listen to the whispers of our heart, if we pay attention to the subtle signs that fate sends our way, we might just discover that the love we've been searching for has been there all along, hiding in plain sight. Social media and the abundance of love advice can often misguide us, creating unrealistic expectations and narrowing our perspectives. But true love doesn't conform to a formula; it's a unique and individual journey that unfolds in its own time and in its own way. Don't let the noise of the world drown out the voice of your heart. Embrace the unexpected, for it is often in the most surprising encounters that we discover the love of our lives.

The spicy tingle that prickles at the nose is from the alkaloid piperine that's present in abundance in black pepper! Together with the pyrazine that develops when paprika powder is heated, the two aromas meld together and form the strong base of the dish's overall scent! The primary herbs used to ameliorate the gamy smell of the bear meat is thyme! The strong, herby scent of thymol- the active component of thyme- beautifully erases any stink the meat had! Then, uh... there's the cayenne and the oregano... and... uh... The oregano, and... "Aaaah! I can't! I just can't! Anytime I try to think, my mind just screams that it wants more!" Exquisite! Every last wisp of the bear meat's scent has been transformed into a powerfully savory flavor! The delicate complexity of the fragrance and the deep layers of the umami flavor... there is no denying it. "This dish... surpasses Soma Yukihira's." "I rubbed the bear meat with salt, my Cajun spice blend and other spices. I made sure to wrap it in a nice, thick coat of batter when I fried it up too. Plus, when I marinated it before battering it, I used plenty of juniper berries in the marinade. I ground them in a spice grinder first to really bring out their scent. Waves of juicy flavor so rich and refined that they even have a hint of sweetness to them should gush out of the bear meat with every bite.

He was taller than Kay, which gave him just the geometric extent to wholly wrap her back. He could honestly say that he could not remember ever lying around her, beside her, or intertwined with her in a position that was slightly uncomfortable—that was, in fact, anything short of sumptuous. The earthy tones of his wife’s natural scent hit a descant note of sweetness, and featured the same subtle complexity that Kay savoured in red wine; thus he loved nothing better than nestling a cheek on her shoulder to inhale at the base of her neck, where the heady smell was distilled. She didn’t snore, but she did have an endearing habit of talking as she dreamt, which helped convey that the shifting and realigning of their bodies during the night were a form of conversation. Their sleep was best in winter and constituted the most winning aspect of the season (in comparison, sod Christmas), when they lowered the thermostat to 12°C and doubled the duvets, the air sharp and fresh in their lungs, their bodies in due course so indolently warm that it felt almost criminal. An instep cooled outside the duvet would slip bracingly against his calf; a hand warmed under the pillow would cup the side of his neck, making him feel not only safe and beloved, but more profoundly and perfectly present in the single beating moments of his life than he ever felt during the day.

The Greed of Faith A Run- up to the Smack- down of Paul T HERE IS a New Testament story in Acts 5 that is especially devoid of moral substance and bereft of any redeeming value. The ugly protagonist of the story–the heavy–is Peter. Yes, that Peter, the Rock upon which Jesus would build his church. According to Catholic piety, Peter was the first pope. Pretty high on the holiness scale, but, as it turns out, pretty low on the scale of human decency. Acts 5 presents a time when the church was proudly communistic: All members pooled their goods and cash so that everyone would have enough to get by. One couple, Ananias and Sapphira, were okay with giving their fair share but balked at turning over everything to the church. Ananias sold a field, with his wife’s consent, but “kept back some of the proceeds.” It seems that Peter could read people pretty well, and he was ready with his own theological spin on their deception: “Ananias,” Peter asked, “Why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the proceeds of the land? . . . How is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You did not lie to us but to God!” Now when Ananias heard these words, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard of it. The young men came and wrapped up his body, then carried him out and buried him. (Acts 5:3- 6) Instant death, for lying!

He placed our stuff on the table and then sat, straddling the bench. Patting the spot next to him, he grinned. I dropped my bag on the tan pavers and as I swung a leg over the bench, I stopped to look at him. He was watching me through thick lashes, head still tilted, grinning so that lone dimple was begging to be touched. I realized that this was the first moment Rider and I had been alone. No prying eyes. No adults watching over us. No one walking past us as there had been in the parking lot yesterday. We were alone, just him and me, like it had been so many times in the past. I don’t know why I did what I did next, but a decade of emotion swirled up inside me. Maybe it had to do with everything he’d done for me in the past. Maybe it was just because he was sitting right there and we were in the present. And I never felt more present than I did in that moment. Bending over, I wrapped my arms around his wide shoulders and I squeezed him. Probably the lamest hug in history, but it felt good. It felt magnificent when he rose up a little and circled his arms around my waist. His hug was better. When I pulled back, his hands slid off my waist, to my hips, and lingered for a moment. A strange sensation curled low in my stomach. He let go, but the heated awareness remained. “What was that for?” Shrugging, I sat, tucking both legs under the table. My face was hot. “I...I just wanted to.” “Well, you can do that whenever you want to. I don’t mind.

I took a shower after dinner and changed into comfortable Christmas Eve pajamas, ready to settle in for a couple of movies on the couch. I remembered all the Christmas Eves throughout my life--the dinners and wrapping presents and midnight mass at my Episcopal church. It all seemed so very long ago. Walking into the living room, I noticed a stack of beautifully wrapped rectangular boxes next to the tiny evergreen tree, which glowed with little white lights. Boxes that hadn’t been there minutes before. “What…,” I said. We’d promised we wouldn’t get each other any gifts that year. “What?” I demanded. Marlboro Man smiled, taking pleasure in the surprise. “You’re in trouble,” I said, glaring at him as I sat down on the beige Berber carpet next to the tree. “I didn’t get you anything…you told me not to.” “I know,” he said, sitting down next to me. “But I don’t really want anything…except a backhoe.” I cracked up. I didn’t even know what a backhoe was. I ran my hand over the box on the top of the stack. It was wrapped in brown paper and twine--so unadorned, so simple, I imagined that Marlboro Man could have wrapped it himself. Untying the twine, I opened the first package. Inside was a pair of boot-cut jeans. The wide navy elastic waistband was a dead giveaway: they were made especially for pregnancy. “Oh my,” I said, removing the jeans from the box and laying them out on the floor in front of me. “I love them.” “I didn’t want you to have to rig your jeans for the next few months,” Marlboro Man said. I opened the second box, and then the third. By the seventh box, I was the proud owner of a complete maternity wardrobe, which Marlboro Man and his mother had secretly assembled together over the previous couple of weeks. There were maternity jeans and leggings, maternity T-shirts and darling jackets. Maternity pajamas. Maternity sweats. I caressed each garment, smiling as I imagined the time it must have taken for them to put the whole collection together. “Thank you…,” I began. My nose stung as tears formed in my eyes. I couldn’t imagine a more perfect gift. Marlboro Man reached for my hand and pulled me over toward him. Our arms enveloped each other as they had on his porch the first time he’d professed his love for me. In the grand scheme of things, so little time had passed since that first night under the stars. But so much had changed. My parents. My belly. My wardrobe. Nothing about my life on this Christmas Eve resembled my life on that night, when I was still blissfully unaware of the brewing thunderstorm in my childhood home and was packing for Chicago…nothing except Marlboro Man, who was the only thing, amidst all the conflict and upheaval, that made any sense to me anymore. “Are you crying?” he asked. “No,” I said, my lip quivering. “Yep, you’re crying,” he said, laughing. It was something he’d gotten used to. “I’m not crying,” I said, snorting and wiping snot from my nose. “I’m not.” We didn’t watch movies that night. Instead, he picked me up and carried me to our cozy bedroom, where my tears--a mixture of happiness, melancholy, and holiday nostalgia--would disappear completely.

But the one piece of this dish that plays the biggest role of all... is this wrapping around the chicken breast... the Croûte!" Croûte! A base of bread or pie dough seasoned with savory spices, croûte can refer either to the dough itself or a dish wrapped in it. It's a handy addition that can boost the aroma, textures and presentation of a dish without overpowering its distinctive flavors! "You are correct. Therein lies the greatest secret of my dish. Given the sudden measurements to the original plan and my need to create an entirely different dish... ... the Croûte I had intended to use to wrap the chicken breast required two very specific additions. Those two ingredients were... FINELY MINCED SQUID LEGS... ... AND PEANUT BUTTER." "NO WAY! SQUID LEGS AND PEANUT BUTTER?!" "Yes! Squid legs and peanut butter! Appetizer and main dish! There is no greater tie that could bind our two dishes together!" Peanut butter's mild richness adds subtle depth to the natural body of the chicken, making it an excellent secret seasoning. And the moderately salty bitterness of the squid legs is extremely effective in tying the Croûte's flavor together with the meaty juiciness of the chicken! "Even an abominable mash-up that Yukihira has tinkered with for ages... ... can be transformed into elegant gourmet beauty when put in my capable hands. The Jidori chicken breasts and the squid and peanut butter Croûte... those are the two pillars of my dish! To support them, I revised all the seasonings for the sauces and garnishes... ... so that after you tasted Soma Yukihira's dish... ... the deliciousness of my own dish would ring across your tongues as powerfully as possible!

But then, as I’m leaving school, I see John parked out front. He’s standing in front of his car; he hasn’t seen me yet. In this bright afternoon light, the sun warms John’s blond head like a halo, and suddenly I’m struck with the visceral memory of loving him from afar, studiously, ardently. I so admired his slender hands, the slope of his cheekbones. Once upon a time I knew his face by heart. I had him memorized. My steps quicken. “Hi!” I say, waving. “How are you here right now? Don’t you have school today?” “I left early,” he says. “You? John Ambrose McClaren cut school?” He laughs. “I brought you something.” John pulls a box out of his coat pocket and thrusts it at me. “Here.” I take it from him, it’s heavy and substantial in my palm. “Should I…should I open it right now?” “If you want.” I can feel his eyes on me as I rip off the paper, open the white box. He’s anxious. I ready a smile on my face so he’ll know I like it, no matter what it is. Just the fact that he thought to buy me a present is so…dear. Nestled in white tissue paper is a snow globe the size of an orange, with a brass bottom. A boy and girl are ice-skating inside. She’s wearing a red sweater; she has on earmuffs. She’s making a figure eight, and he’s admiring her. It’s a moment caught in amber. One perfect moment, preserved under glass. Just like that night it snowed in April. “I love it,” I say, and I do, so much. Only a person who really knew me could give me this gift. To feel so known, so understood. It’s such a wonderful feeling, I could cry. It’s something I’ll keep forever. This moment, and this snow globe. I get on my tiptoes and hug him, and he wraps his arms around me tight and then tighter. “Happy birthday, Lara Jean.

And will I still be bound by this bargain at Nynsar, too?' Silence. I pushed. 'After- after what happened-' I couldn't mention specifics on what had occurred Under the Mountain, what he'd done for me during the fight with Amarantha, what he'd done after- 'I think we can agree that I owe you nothing, and you owe me nothing.' His gaze was unflinching. I blazed on. 'Isn't it enough that we're all free?' I splayed my tattooed hand on the table. 'By the end, I thought you were different, thought that it was all a mask, but taking me away, keeping me here...' I shook my head, unable to find the words vicious, clever enough to convince him to end this bargain. His eyes darkened. 'I'm not your enemy, Feyre.' 'Tamlin says you are.' I curled the fingers of my tattooed hand into a fist. 'Everyone else says you are.' 'And what do you think?' He leaned back in his chair again, but his face was grave. 'You're doing a damned good job of making me agree with them.' 'Liar,' he purred. 'Did you even tell your friends about what I did to you Under the Mountain?' So that comment at breakfast had gotten under his skin. 'I don't want to talk about anything related to that. With you or them.' 'No, because it's much easier to pretend it never happened and let them coddle you.' 'I don't let them coddle me-' 'They had you wrapped up like a present yesterday. Like you were his reward.' 'So?' 'So?' A flicker of rage, then it was gone. 'I'm ready to be taken home,' I merely said. 'Where you'll be cloistered for the rest of your life, especially once you start punching our heirs. I can't wait to see what Ianthe does when she gets her hands on them.' 'You don't seem to have a particularly high opinion of her.' Something cold and predatory crept into his eyes. 'No, I can't say that I do.

But the psychological change accompanying these technologies is more subtle, and perhaps more important. Consciously and unconsciously, we have gradually grown accustomed to experiencing the world through disembodied machines and instruments. As I stood in line to board an airplane recently, the young woman in front of me was primping in her mirror—straightening her hair, putting on lipstick, patting her checks with blush—a female ritual that has been repeated for several thousand years. In this case, however, her “mirror” was an iPhone in video mode, pointed at herself, and she was reacting to a digitized image of herself. I take walks in a federally protected wildlife preserve near my home in Massachusetts. A dirt trail winds for a mile around a lake teeming with beavers and fish, wild ducks and geese, aquatic frogs. Bulrushes and cattails wrap the perimeter of the pond, water lilies float here and there, rippling when a fish goes by. In the winter, the air is crisp and sharp, in the summer soft and aromatic. And a thick silence lies across the park, broken only by the honking of geese and the croaking of frogs. It is a place to smell, to see, to feel, to quietly let one’s mind wander where it wants. More and more commonly, I see people here talking on their cell phones as they walk around the trail. Their attention is focused not on the scene in front of them, but on a disembodied voice coming from a small box. And they are disembodied themselves. Where are their minds and bodies? Certainly not present in the park. Nor can they be located in the electromagnetic waves and digital signals flowing through cyberspace. Only their voices can be found at the other end of their conversations, in the offices and boardrooms and homes of the people they are talking to. They are attempting to be several places at once, like quantum waves. But I would argue that they are nowhere.

After dinner, as we had so many times during our months and months together, Marlboro Man and I adjourned to his porch. It was dark--we’d eaten late--and despite my silent five-minute battle with the reality of my reproductive system, there was definitely something special about the night. I stood at the railing, breathing in the dewy night air and taking in all the sounds of the countryside that would one day be my home. The pumping of a distant oil well, the symphony of crickets, the occasional moo of a mama cow, the manic yipping of coyotes…the din of country life was as present and reassuring as the cacophony of car horns, traffic sounds, and sirens had been in L.A. I loved everything about it. He appeared behind me; his strong arms wrapped around my waist. Oh, it was real, all right--he was real. As I touched his forearms and ran the palms of my hands from his elbows down to his wrists, I’d never been more sure of how very real he was. Here, grasping me in his arms, was the Adonis of all the romance-novel fantasies I clearly never realized I’d been having; they’d been playing themselves out in steamy detail under the surface of my consciousness, and I never even knew I’d been missing it. I closed my eyes and rested my head back on his chest, just as his impossibly soft lips and subtle whiskers rested on my neck. Romancewise, it was perfection--the night air was still--almost imperceptible. Physically, viscerally, it was almost more than I could stand. Six babies? Sure. How ’bout seven? Is that enough? Standing there that night, I would have said eight, nine, ten. And I could have gotten started right away. But getting started would have to wait. There’d be plenty of time for that. For that night, that dark, perfect night, we simply stayed on the porch and locked ourselves in kiss after beautiful, steamy kiss. And before too long, it was impossible to tell where his arms ended and where my body began.

This modesty in a sect is perhaps a singular instance in the history of mankind, every other sect supposing itself in possession of all truth, and that those who differ are so far in the wrong; like a man traveling in foggy weather, those at some distance before him on the road he sees wrapped up in the fog, as well as those behind him, and also the people in the fields on each side, but near him all appears clear, tho' in truth he is as much in the fog as any of them. To avoid this kind of embarrassment, the Quakers have of late years been gradually declining the public service in the Assembly and in the magistracy, choosing rather to quit their power than their principle. In order of time, I should have mentioned before, that having, in 1742, invented an open stove [84] for the better warming of rooms, and at the same time saving fuel, as the fresh air admitted was warmed in entering, I made a present of the model to Mr. Robert Grace, one of my early friends, who, having an iron-furnace, [85] found the casting of the plates for these stoves a profitable thing, as they were growing in demand. To promote that demand, I wrote and published a pamphlet, entitled "An Account of the new-invented Pennsylvania Fireplaces; wherein their Construction and Manner of Operation is particularly explained; their Advantages above every other Method of warming Rooms demonstrated; and all Objections that have been raised against the Use of them answered and obviated," etc. This pamphlet had a good effect. Gov'r. Thomas was so pleas'd with the construction of this stove, as described in it, that he offered to give me a patent for the sole vending of them for a term of years; but I declin'd it from a principle which has ever weighed with me on such occasions, viz., That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.

We had planned to spend Christmas morning with my family, and then head over to Phil and Kay’s for Christmas night. The whole family was there, including all the grandkids. Bella, Willie and Korie’s daughter, was the youngest and still an infant. We opened presents, ate dinner, and the whole evening felt surreal. Tomorrow morning I’ll have a baby in this world, I thought. When Jep and I left that night, I said, “I’m gonna go have a baby. See you all later!” For all the worry and concern and tears and prayers we’d spent on our unborn baby, when it came to her birth, she was no trouble at all. I went to the hospital, got prepped for the C-section, and within thirty minutes she was out. Lily was beautiful and healthy. I was overwhelmed with happiness and joy. I felt God had blessed me. He’d created life inside of me--a real, beautiful, breathing little human being--and brought her into this world through me. It was an unbelievable miracle. And the best part? Jep was in the delivery room. Unlike his dad, he wanted to be there, and he shared it all with me. I’ll never forget the sight of Jep decked out in blue scrubs, with the blue head cover, holding his baby girl for the first time. I’ll never forget how she nestled down in the crook of his arm, his hand wrapped up and around, gently holding her. He stared down at her, and I could see a smile behind his white surgical mask. He was already in love--I knew that look. After we admired the baby together, I fell asleep, and Jep took his newborn daughter out to meet the family. He told me later he bawled like a baby. Later, when she went to the hospital nursery, Jep kept going over there to stare at her. I think he was in shock and overwhelmed and excited. Lily had a light creamy complexion and little pink rosebud lips, and she was born December 26, 2002. Despite the rough pregnancy, she was perfect. God answered our prayers, and now we were a family of three. We’d been married just a little over a year.

Reaching into his sporran, he pulled out a small bundle wrapped in fine linen. “I want to give ye somethin’, somethin’I want ye to wear this day.”Carefully, he unfolded the linen and held his hand out to her. Josephine’s eyes widened with curiosity and joy. “’Tis beautiful, Graeme!” “It be a brooch that each MacAulay lad receives when he turns six and ten. I want ye to have it.” Josephine carefully took it and studied it closely. Made of pewter, in the center of the brooch were two hands, one decidedly masculine, the other feminine. The masculine hand held the feminine hand in his palm. In the center of her palm was a tiny ruby. To one side, the circle had been engraved to look like stars twinkling near a crescent moon. On the other were the words aeterna devotione. Eternal devotion. Tears filled her eyes as she looked into his. “Ye want me to have this?” “Aye, I do, Joie,”he said as he placed a kiss on her forehead. “Me great-great-great grandfather presented a brooch just like this to his wife, me great-great-great grandmum. But no’until the first anniversary of their weddin’day. ’Twas a symbol of the great love they had found with one another. ’Tis tradition for the MacAulay men to only give their brooch to a woman who has stolen their heart, a woman they love and trust above all else.” Tears trailed down her cheeks, her heart beating so rapidly she was certain it would burst through her breastbone at any moment. “I do no’quite understand how it happened, or how it happened so quickly, Joie, but it has. Amorem in corde meo ut arctius coccino colloeandus arctius ideo astra,”Graeme said first in Latin and then again in Gaelic, “Toisc go bhfuil do ghrá eitseáilte isteach i mo chroí i corcairdhearg, mar sin tá sé eitseáilte amonst na réaltaí.”He placed a tender kiss on her cheek. “As yer love be etched into me heart in crimson, so it be etched amongst the stars,”he told her. “As me grandda said those words to me grandmum all those many years ago, I say them to ye.

...there’s different ways of experiencing time. And one is the kind of time that you and I know really intimately, which is tragic time. And we know what it’s like to feel that heightened present where everything really matters because you have to make choices, because everything you love is so precious. And also, we know that we can’t live there forever, because we are just not — we’re not built to live that edge, that close to the edge all the time. And then there’s — he reminded me of ordinary time, or pastoral time. Anyone who’s a farmer knows there’s sowing and reaping time. And I was always, the more I was into tragic time, the more I was a little judgmental about that. I was like: It sounds very boring; it sounds very commonplace. But that’s the — who’s picking up your mom on Tuesday? Did you send that email? Have you made that phone call? It’s all the wonderful, stupid, ordinary stuff of day-to-day life. And like, that is also necessary and good. And then there is something that we’ve all experienced together, very recently, which is apocalyptic time. It’s the feeling that there’s a heightened — that we know that the future is not guaranteed and that there is a kind of lightness and darkness and — like binaries. We’re kind of wrapped up in binaries about how we’re seeing the world. And we experience apocalypticism with our environment: like wildfires and global warming… and fear of — and we see it and we feel it. We experience the apocalyptic time when we see the scope and magnitude of racial injustice, as we understand that structures are not just broken but that they collapse in on people, and that the weak are not sheltered, and that the poor are not cared for, and that far more people are not given the luxury of invulnerability, and can’t and won’t. And in all these forms of time, we have this feeling like we’re seeing things as they really are — like that feeling when you count your kid’s eyelashes and you think, “I see the whole world in just right now.” But the truth is, all of them are true, and we toggle between them all, all the time. And so we just can’t live in any one version for too long, frankly, without not really seeing the scope of — what the wholeness of our lives require.

He got himself dressed at last, and then, slowly, for he was sorely bruised and could not go fast, he proceeded to the stable, followed by all who were present, and going up to Dapple embraced him and gave him a loving kiss on the forehead, and said to him, not without tears in his eyes, "Come along, comrade and friend and partner of my toils and sorrows; when I was with you and had no cares to trouble me except mending your harness and feeding your little carcass, happy were my hours, my days, and my years; but since I left you, and mounted the towers of ambition and pride, a thousand miseries, a thousand troubles, and four thousand anxieties have entered into my soul;" and all the while he was speaking in this strain he was fixing the pack-saddle on the ass, without a word from anyone. Then having Dapple saddled, he, with great pain and difficulty, got up on him, and addressing himself to the majordomo, the secretary, the head-carver, and Pedro Recio the doctor and several others who stood by, he said, "Make way, gentlemen, and let me go back to my old freedom; let me go look for my past life, and raise myself up from this present death. I was not born to be a governor or protect islands or cities from the enemies that choose to attack them. Ploughing and digging, vinedressing and pruning, are more in my way than defending provinces or kingdoms. 'Saint Peter is very well at Rome; I mean each of us is best following the trade he was born to. A reaping-hook fits my hand better than a governor's sceptre; I'd rather have my fill of gazpacho' than be subject to the misery of a meddling doctor who me with hunger, and I'd rather lie in summer under the shade of an oak, and in winter wrap myself in a double sheepskin jacket in freedom, than go to bed between holland sheets and dress in sables under the restraint of a government. God be with your worships, and tell my lord the duke that 'naked I was born, naked I find myself, I neither lose nor gain;' I mean that without a farthing I came into this government, and without a farthing I go out of it, very different from the way governors commonly leave other islands. Stand aside and let me go; I have to plaster myself, for I believe every one of my ribs is crushed, thanks to the enemies that have been trampling over me to-night

What a wonderful crunch! And yet the char's meat was still hot and deliciously juicy! The breading perfectly contained inside its protective shell the savory flavor of the fish! The Kaki no Tane Crackers came already seasoned... ... so the breading itself had a solid, delicious taste. And the dipping sauce is perfect! The Ki no Me mixed with Tamago no Moto is wonderfully light and fluffy!" *Ki no Me: The young leaves of the Japanese pepper plant. Clapping one in your palm crushes the leaf's cells, releasing a distinctive scent.* TAMAGO NO MOTO. Mayonnaise without the vinegar, it is simply egg yolks and vegetable oil whisked into a creamy consistency. It's often used to bring ingredients together or to add flavor to a dish. Some salt and minced Ki no Me adds an overall refreshing taste to the fish... ... erasing any oiliness and giving it a refined flavor. "That wonderfully smooth creaminess hiding between the crispy crunchiness of the breading really spurs the appetite! The breaded and deep-fried mountain vegetables on the side cannot be ignored, either. They provide an eye-pleasing contrast when arranged side-by-side with the deep-fried fish. " "Soma, where on earth did you get the idea for this?" "In Japanese cooking, there's a type of tempura called Okakiage, right? When deep-frying things, use crushed-up Okaki Rice Crackers instead of panko to give the dish some uniqueness and kick. I made this at home once long ago with my dad. " "And that gave you the idea to use the Kaki no Tane Crackers in place of the Okaki Rice Crackers?" "Yep! I call it the Yukihira Style Okaki- YUKIHIRA STYLE OKAKI-NO-TANE-AGE CHAR!" "You just slapped the two names together!" On one hand, Takumi Aldini maintained a broad version that did not overlook potential ingredients, such as the duck. On the other, Soma Yukihira's rare ability to think outside the box... ... led him to create a dish that no one else even expected! Neither was intimidated by the time constraints or the limited ingredients. They instead focused on what they could do to create their dish. That is the spirit of a true professional! Hee hee! This is hardly the first time I've given this assignment. And students have made deep-fried items before... without breading. But he is the first one to find a way to present to me fish that is both breaded and deep-fried! The char, in season this spring... ... is snuggly wrapped in a protective shell of Kaki no Tane Cracker breading.

Hey Princess.” Good God I missed hearing his voice. “Chase,” I had to clear my throat to continue, “I didn’t think you were going to be here.” “I asked if you were coming to the house.” He replied hesitantly. “Right, I just figured you meant your house.” The room was thick with the tension that always followed us around. My heart started racing from his nearness and I silently cursed myself. I really didn’t want any kind of feelings for this guy, and here I was wishing he would try to kiss me again. We sat there watching each other for who knows how long before he walked over and sank down on the floor next to me, handing me a small wrapped box. “Merry Christmas Harper.” I picked it up and just stared at it, all I could say was “Why?” “Because you’re my favorite, remember?” he huffed and his lips tilted up a little, “When I saw it, there was no way I couldn’t get it for you. Please open it.” So slowly I probably drove him crazy, I took off the wrapping and opened the little leather box. I gasped when I saw the ring inside there. It was a silver band that wrapped into the trinity symbol on top. I’d always wanted that symbol as a tattoo. I looked up at Chase and shook my head in wonder. “How did you know?” “You doodle it on everything put in front of you.” He was right of course, if I had a pen and paper or napkin, it always ended up on there at some point. I just hadn’t realized anyone other than Brandon noticed that, especially him. “Chase …” I couldn’t hold them back any longer, tears started falling down my cheeks and I quickly dropped my head hoping he wouldn’t notice. He did. “Don’t cry Harper. If you don’t like it, or you don’t like that it’s from me I’ll take it back.” My laugh sounded more like a sob than anything else. “I love it, please don’t take it.” “Then what’s wrong?” He tilted my head up and brushed away a few tears with his thumbs. I had to force myself to not lean into his hands, it was the first time we’d had any type of physical contact in over a month. He was a whole new kind of Chase on Sundays, but I’d never seen him like this. So gentle and kind. It made my entire being crave him. “I’ve never had this before. Not just the presents … the love that your family has for me. I’ve never had it until now, and it’s so overwhelming. I don’t know what I did to deserve it and I don’t know if I show them that too.” “You do. Trust me.” He searched my face for a long time and wiped the remaining tears from my cheeks. “You’re special Harper, it’s not hard to love you.

Arya?” “Yes?” She drew the word out, her voice rising and falling with a faint lilt. “What do you want to do once this is all over?” If we’re still alive, that is. “What do you want to do?” He fingered Brisingr’s pommel as he considered the question. “I don’t know. I haven’t let myself think much past Urû-baen…It would depend on what she wants, but I suppose Saphira and I might return to Palancar Valley. I could build a hall on one of the foothills of the mountains. We might not spend much time there, but at least we would have a home to return to when we weren’t flying from one part of Alagaësia to another.” He half smiled. “I’m sure there will be plenty to keep us busy, even if Galbatorix is dead…But you still haven’t answered my question: what will you do if we win? You must have some idea. You’ve had longer to think about it than I have.” Arya drew one leg up onto the stool, wrapped her arms around it, and rested her chin on her knee. In the dim half-light of the tent, her face appeared to float against a featureless black background, like an apparition conjured out of the night. “I have spent more time among humans and dwarves than I have among the älfakyn,” she said, using the elves’ name in the ancient language. “I have grown used to it, and I would not want to return to live in Ellesméra. Too little happens there; centuries can slip by without notice while you sit and stare at the stars. No, I think I will continue to serve my mother as her ambassador. The reason I first left Du Weldenvarden was because I wanted to help right the balance of the world. As you said, there will still be much htat needs doing if we manage to topple Galbatorix, much that needs putting right, and I would be a part of it.” “Ah.” It was not exactly what he had hoped she might say, but at least it presented the possibility that they would not entirely lose contact after Urû’baen, and that he would still be able to see her now and then. If Arya noticed his discontent, she gave no sign of it. They talked for another few minutes, then Arya made her excuses and rose to leave. As she stepped past him, Eragon reached toward her, as if to stop her, then quickly drew back his hand. “Wait,” he said softly, unsure of what he hoped for, but hoping nevertheless. The beat of his heart increased, pounding in his ears, and his cheeks grew warm. Arya paused with her back to him by the entrance of the tent. “Good night, Eragon,” she said. Then she slipped out between the entrance flaps and vanished into the night, leaving him to sit alone in the dark.

One morning, a farmer knocked loudly on the door of a monastery. When Brother Porter opened the door, the farmer held out to him a magnificent bunch of grapes. “Dear Brother Porter, these are the finest grapes from my vineyard. Please accept them as a gift from me.” “Why, thank you! I’ll take them straight to the Abbot, who will be thrilled with such a gift.” “No, no. I brought them for you.” “For me? But I don’t deserve such a beautiful gift from nature.” “Whenever I knocked on the door, you opened it. When the harvest had been ruined by drought, you gave me a piece of bread and a glass of wine every day. I want this bunch of grapes to bring you a little of the sun’s love, the rain’s beauty and God’s miraculous power.” Brother Porter put the grapes down where he could see them and spent the whole morning admiring them: they really were lovely. Because of this, he decided to give the present to the Abbot, whose words of wisdom had always been such a boon to him. The Abbot was very pleased with the grapes, but then he remembered that one of the other monks was ill and thought: “I’ll give him the grapes. Who knows, they might bring a little joy into his life.” But the grapes did not remain for very long in the room of the ailing monk, for he in turn thought: “Brother Cook has taken such good care of me, giving me only the very best food to eat. I’m sure these grapes will bring him great happiness.” And when Brother Cook brought him his lunch, the monk gave him the grapes. “These are for you. You are in close touch with the gifts Nature gives us and will know what to do with this, God’s produce.” Brother Cook was amazed at the beauty of the grapes and drew his assistant’s attention to their perfection. They were so perfect that no one could possibly appreciate them more than Brother Sacristan, who had charge of the Holy Sacrament, and whom many in the monastery considered to be a truly saintly man. Brother Sacristan, in turn, gave the grapes to the youngest of the novices in order to help him understand that God’s work is to be found in the smallest details of the Creation. When the novice received them, his heart was filled with the Glory of God, because he had never before seen such a beautiful bunch of grapes. At the same time, he remembered the day he had arrived at the monastery and the person who had opened the door to him; that gesture of opening the door had allowed him to be there now in that community of people who knew the value of miracles. Shortly before dark, he took the bunch of grapes to Brother Porter. “Eat and enjoy. You spend most of your time here all alone, and these grapes will do you good.” Brother Porter understood then that the gift really was intended for him; he savoured every grape and went to sleep a happy man. In this way, the circle was closed; the circle of happiness and joy which always wraps around those who are in contact with the energy of love.

He crossed to the desk and took from a drawer a small package wrapped in black velvet. When he unfolded the cloth, Lyra saw something like a large watch or a small clock: a thick disc of brass and crystal. It might have been a compass or something of the sort. “What is it?” she said. “It’s an alethiometer. It’s one of only six that were ever made. Lyra, I urge you again: keep it private. It would be better if Mrs Coulter didn’t know about it. Your uncle –” “But what does it do?” “It tells you the truth. As for how to read it, you’ll have to learn by yourself. Now go – it’s getting lighter – hurry back to your room before anyone sees you.” He folded the velvet over the instrument and thrust it into her hands. It was surprisingly heavy. Then he put his own hands on either side of her head and held her gently for a moment. She tried to look up at him, and said, “What were you going to say about Uncle Asriel?” “Your uncle presented it to Jordan College some years ago. He might –” Before he could finish, there came a soft urgent knock on the door. She could feel his hands give an involuntary tremor. “Quick now, child,” he said quietly. “The powers of this world are very strong. Men and women are moved by tides much fiercer than you can imagine, and they sweep us all up into the current. Go well, Lyra; bless you, child; bless you. Keep your own counsel.” “Thank you, Master,” she said dutifully. Clutching the bundle to her breast, she left the study by the garden door, looking back briefly once to see the Master’s dæmon watching her from the windowsill. The sky was lighter already; there was a faint fresh stir in the air. “What’s that you’ve got?” said Mrs Lonsdale, closing the battered little suitcase with a snap. “The Master gave it me. Can’t it go in the suitcase?” “Too late. I’m not opening it now. It’ll have to go in your coat pocket, whatever it is. Hurry on down to the Buttery; don’t keep them waiting . . .” It was only after she’d said goodbye to the few servants who were up, and to Mrs Lonsdale, that she remembered Roger; and then she felt guilty for not having thought of him once since meeting Mrs Coulter. How quickly it had all happened! And now she was on her way to London: sitting next to the window in a zeppelin, no less, with Pantalaimon’s sharp little ermine-paws digging into her thigh while his front paws rested against the glass he gazed through. On Lyra’s other side Mrs Coulter sat working through some papers, but she soon put them away and talked. Such brilliant talk! Lyra was intoxicated; not about the North this time, but about London, and the restaurants and ballrooms, the soirées at Embassies or Ministries, the intrigues between White Hall and Westminster. Lyra was almost more fascinated by this than by the changing landscape below the airship. What Mrs Coulter was saying seemed to be accompanied by a scent of grown-upness, something disturbing but enticing at the same time: it was the smell of glamour.

Last year I had a very unusual experience. I was awake, with my eyes closed, when I had a dream. It was a small dream about time. I was dead, I guess, in deep blank space high up above many white stars. My own consciousness had been disclosed to me, and I was happy. Then I saw far below me a long, curved band of color. As I came closer, I saw that it stretched endlessly in either direction, and I understood that I was seeing all the time of the planet where I had lived. It looked like a woman’s tweed scarf; the longer I studied any one spot, the more dots of color I saw. There was no end to the deepness and variety of dots. At length I started to look for my time, but, although more and more specks of color and deeper and more intricate textures appeared in the fabric, I couldn’t find my time, or any time at all that I recognized as being near my time. I couldn’t make out so much as a pyramid. Yet as I looked at the band of time, all the individual people, I understood with special clarity, were living at that very moment with great emotion, in intricate, detail, in their individual times and places, and they were dying and being replaced by ever more people, one by one, like stitches in which wholly worlds of feeling and energy were wrapped in a never-ending cloth. I remembered suddenly the color and texture of our life as we knew it- these things had been utterly forgotten- and I thought as I searched for it on the limitless band, “that was a good time then, a good time to be living.” And I began to remember our time. I recalled green fields with carrots growing, one by one, in slender rows. Men and women in bright vests and scarves came and pulled the carrots out of the soil and carried them in baskets to shaded kitchens, where they scrubbed them with yellow brushes under running water. I saw white-faced cattle lowing and wading in creeks. I saw May apples in forests, erupting through leaf-strewn paths. Cells on the root hairs of sycamores split and divided, and apples grew spotted and striped in the fall. Mountains kept their cool caves and squirrels raced home to their nests through sunlight and shade. I remembered the ocean, and I seemed to be in the ocean myself, swimming over orange crabs that looked like coral, or off the deep Atlantic banks where whitefish school. Or again I saw the tops of poplars, and the whole sky brushed with clouds in pallid streaks, under which wild ducks flew with outstretched necks, and called, one by one, and flew on. All these things I saw. Scenes grew in depth and sunlit detail before my eyes, and were replaced by ever more scenes, as I remember the life of my time with increasing feeling. At last I saw the earth as a globe in space, and I recalled the ocean’s shape and the form of continents, saying to myself with surprise as I looked at the planet, “yes, that’s how it was then, that part there was called France.” I was filled with the deep affection of nostalgia- and then I opened my eyes. We all ought to be able to conjure up sights like these at will, so that we can keep in mind the scope of texture’s motion in time.

A box sat on top of Jade’s pillows, wrapped in green paper with a white bow. He frowned slightly. Who would’ve left a gift on Jade’s bed? “You have a present.” “What?” Jade turned her head when he gestured toward the box. Confusion filled her eyes. She sat up and reached for the box. “I don’t understand.” Zach sat by her again and wrapped his arm around her waist. “Maybe there’s a card.” After searching beneath the large white bow, Jade pulled out a small envelope. Zach looked over her shoulder as she withdrew the card and read it aloud. “‘To Mom and Zach. Have fun tonight. Bre.’” Zach chuckled, both at Breanna’s card and at Jade’s blush. “Your daughter has quite a sense of humor.” “My daughter deserves to be spanked.” She lifted the box onto her lap. “I’m afraid to open it.” “Would you like me to? It’s addressed to both of us.” “I’m even more afraid for you to open it.” “Go ahead. It can’t be that bad.” “You don’t know my daughter.” Untying the bow, Jade raised the lid and pulled apart the bright green tissue paper. Several sex toys lay in the box. She gasped. “Oh, my God. I can’t believe she did this!” She started to push the tissue paper back over the contents, but Zach held her hand to stop her. “Wait. Let’s see what she bought.” “I am going to kill her, after I beat her.” Chuckling, Zach dug through the box, lifting the different items as he came to them. “Cock ring. Chocolate body paint. Stay-hard gel.” He looked into Jade’s eyes. “I don’t think I’ll need that tonight.” Her cheeks turned a deep pink. He dropped a kiss on her lips before beginning to explore again. “Anal beads. Ben-Wa balls. Fur-lined handcuffs. Nipple clamps. Lemon-flavored nipple cream.” His gaze dipped to her breasts. “Interesting.” She huffed out a breath. “Can we close the box now?” “Not yet. I like it when you blush.” Zach grinned when Jade scowled at him. “This is completely spoiling the mood.” “I won’t have any problem getting hard again.” “Zach!” Ignoring her outraged tone, he continued to sift through the items. “Lifelike dildo.” He held it up to eye level. “Close, but not quite as big as I am.” Jade covered her eyes with one hand. “I don’t believe this,” she muttered. “Butt plug. Wait, I’m wrong. It’s a vibrating butt plug. Very interesting. I hope you have batteries. Never mind. Breanna included several packages.” “Okay, that’s enough.” Jade tried to jerk the box out of his reach, but Zach held on to the side. “There’re only a couple more items. We might as well see what they are.” “I don’t care what they are.” “You might care about one of them.” Zach held up a large box of condoms. “Oh.” He turned the box in his hand. “I’m flattered, but I don’t think I’ll be able to use one hundred of these tonight.” “One hundred?” “All different types, sizes, and colors.” Jade laughed. “Oh, Bre.” She pushed her hair behind one ear. “What’s the last thing?” “Cherry-flavored lubricant. It looks like she thought of everything.” “You must think my daughter is crazy.” “I think your daughter loves you very much and wants you to be happy.” “That’s true. But we won’t use all this…stuff.” “Who says we won’t?

A present without a future, or an eternal present, is precisely the definition of death, the living present is torn between a past that it takes up and a future that it projects. Thus, it is essential for the thing and for the world to be presented as 'open,' to send us beyond their determinate manifestations, and to promise us always 'something more to see.' This is what is sometimes expressed when it is said that the thing and the world are mysterious...They are even an absolute mystery, which admits of no elucidation, not through a temporary flaw in our knowledge--for then it would fall back to the status of a mere problem--but rather because it is not of the order of objective thought where there are solutions...The ideal of objective thought is simultaneously grounded upon and left in ruins by temporality. The world, in the full sense of the word, is not an object, it is wrapped in objective determinations, but also has fissures and lacunae through which subjectivities become lodged in it or, rather, which are subjectivities themselves. We understand now why things, which owe their sense to the world, are not significations presented to the intelligence, but are rather opaque structures, and why their final sense remains foggy. The thing and the world only exist as lived by me, or as lived by subjects like me, since they are the interlocking of our perspectives; but they also transcend all perspectives because this interlocking is temporal and incomplete. It seems to me that the world itself lives outside of me, just as absent landscapes continue to live beyond my visual field, and just as my past was previously lived prior to my present.

The fire was blazing, and in front of the fire guard were propped two bulging stockings. I could see bars of chocolate and fudge, packets of Turkish Delight, and tangerines in silver foil. Next to them were piles of presents, beautifully wrapped in tissue paper and ribbon. The room was festooned with green, spicy boughs, and breakfast was laid out on the low table next to the sofa: muffins and bread ready to be toasted, and eggs and bacon still steaming.

If you know how to create the right wrapping, the present will be your gift.

As the next page loaded with another set of 25 emails, his eyes were drawn to the bottom of the screen, where for the first time previously-read messages stood out beneath the bold-type unread ones.  There was something powerfully sentimental, almost tangible, about the realization that his dad had sat before a computer somewhere ten years earlier and had clicked on these same messages.  The most recent one, received just hours before his parents’ death, was from his mom with the subject line, “re: Li’l Ryan’s Bday”. With a lump developing in his throat, he clicked on the message.  His mom had written: “That’s something dads should talk to their sons about ;)”  Hmm.  Didn’t make sense without context. Below the end of the message he found the option to “show quoted text,”  which he clicked on to reveal the entire exchange in reverse chronological order.  She had been responding to his dad’s message: “I’m sure he’ll get it.  I like the idea, but you better be prepared to have a discussion about the birds and bees.  You know how his mind works.  He’ll want to know how that baby got in there.” Ryan’s palms grew sweaty as he began to infer what was coming next.  Not entirely sure he wanted to continue, but certain he couldn’t stop, he scrolled to the end. The thread had started with his mother’s message, “I’m already showing big-time.  Sweaters only get so baggy, and it’s going to be warming up soon.  I think tonight would be the perfect time to tell Ryan.  I wrapped up a T-shirt for him in one of his presents that says ‘Big Brother’ on it.  A birthday surprise!  You think he’ll get it?” Having trouble taking in a deep breath, he rose to a stand and slowly backed away from his computer.  It wasn’t his nature to ask fate “Why?” or to dwell on whether or not something was “fair.”  But this was utterly overwhelming – a knife wound on top of an old scar that had never sufficiently healed. ~~~ Corbett Hermanson peered around the edge of Bradford’s half-open door and knocked gently on the frame.  Bradford was sitting at his desk, leafing through a thick binder.  He had to have heard the knock, Corbett thought, peeking in, but his attention to the material in the binder remained unbroken. Now regretting his timid first knock, Corbett anxiously debated whether he should knock again, which could be perceived as rude, or try something else to get Bradford’s attention.  Ultimately he decided to clear his throat loudly, while standing more prominently in the doorway. Still, Bradford kept his nose buried in the files in front of him. Finally, Corbett knocked more confidently on the door itself. “What!” Bradford demanded.  “If you’ve got something to say, just say it!” “Sorry, sir.  Wasn’t sure you heard me,” Corbett said, with a nervous chuckle. “Do you think I’m deaf and blind?” Bradford sneered.  “Just get on with it already.” “Well sir, I’m sure you recall our conversation a few days back about the potential unauthorized user in our system?  It turns out...” “Close the door!” Bradford whispered emphatically, waving his arms wildly for Corbett to stop talking and come all the way into his office. “Sorry, sir,” Corbett said, his cheeks glowing an orange-red hue to match his hair.  After self-consciously closing the door behind him, he picked up where he’d left off.  “It turns out, he’s quite good at keeping himself hidden.  I was right about his not being in Indiana, but behind that location, his IP address bounces

Most people master the fundamentals of swaddling fairly quickly. However, your Baby Houdini might break free while swaddled. Don’t worry—this happens to the best of us. Babies are small and squirmy, you’re tired, it’s dark out. It’s like wrapping a Christmas present, only the present is an angry puppy and you’re all out of tape.

The Christmas tree was a dark pyramid in the living room corner. Presents hid beneath it, wrapping paper quicksilver in the moonlight. He absorbed the stillness. An electric hiss seemed to saturate the air.

Hundreds of people in this stadium wore my jersey tonight. Maybe thousands." Although he does have a point, even if he doesn't realize it. Bex is wearing my jersey because I gave it to her. I went to the bookstore on campus and picked out the one I liked best, and then I wrapped it up like a present and left it at her door. It's the one I wanted Darryl to see her in. The one I wanted to see her in.

A wrapped present can be even more enticing than an unwrapped one, my lady.

When Enrique had realized that Carolina might not be going home for Christmas Eve, he had snuck away to the gift shop in Carmel to get her a present. There hadn't been too many options, but he purchased a pretty butterfly necklace with matching earrings. Once they were alone in the room, he took out the small wrapped box. Her eyes lit up. "Enrique! You didn't have to get me anything." He grinned. "I know. But I wanted to. Open it." She carefully unwrapped the box. "Oh, mariposas! I love these. Gracias." "You know, the butterfly represents rebirth. Carolina, you can do anything. I know you are struggling with what is going on with your family, but I want you to know that you are amazing, and I believe in you.

He whom presently you scorn was once transcendent, over even you. He who is presently human was incomposite. He remained what he was; what he was not, he assumed. No “because” is required for his existence in the beginning, for what could account for the existence of God? But later he came into being because of something, namely for your salvation, yours, who insulted him and despised his Godhead for that very reason, because he took on your thick corporeality. Through the medium of the mind he had dealings with the flesh, being made that God on earth….He was carried in the womb, but acknowledged by a prophet yet unborn himself, who leaped for joy at the presence of the Word for whose sake he had been created. He was wrapped in swaddling bands, but at the Resurrection he unloosed the swaddling bands of the grave. He was laid in a manger, but was extolled by angels, disclosed by a star and adored by Magi. Why do you take offense at what you see, instead of attending to its spiritual significance?

now, deep in the folds of false flags wrapped around the Olympic malware, Soumenkov had found one flag that was provably false. It was now perfectly clear that someone had tried to make the malware look North Korean and only failed due to a slipup in one instance and through Soumenkov’s fastidious triple-checking. “It’s a completely verifiable false flag. We can say with 100 percent confidence this is false, so it’s not the Lazarus Group,” Soumenkov would later say in a presentation at the Kaspersky Security Analyst Summit, using the name for the hackers widely believed to be North Korean. Still,

I read a fable one day about the sun and the wind. They quarreled about which was the stronger and the wind said, "I'll prove I am. See the old man down there with a coat? I bet I can make him take his coat off quicker than you can." So the sun went behind a cloud and the wind blew until it was almost a tornado, but the harder it blew the tighter the old man wrapped his coat about him. Finally, the wind calmed down and gave up; and then the sun came out from behind the cloud and smiled kindly on the old man. Presently, he mopped his brow and pulled off his coat. The sun then told the wind that gentleness and friendliness were always stronger than fury and force.

You and your thoughts! The vagueness of the future, the memories of yesterday and the promises of today, Remind me of you, everyday, and whenever it is today, In the last moment of wakeful mind before falling asleep, It is you I think of and you I dream of when I am fast asleep, In the view of the busy and at times relaxed world and the perspectives thereof, I look for you in everything, in its corners, in its open spaces, and live off the memories thereof, In the mind’s silence and in the heart’s endless beatings to keep kissing life, I listen to them both while thinking of you in my every passing moment of life, In the present that rushes to meet the future and shorten my span of dreams and desires, I smile silently because it does not know my life is but an endless bloom of your memories and your desires, In this moment while I am thinking of you Irma and my mind weaves a tapestry of known feelings, I wish you knew, I wish you realised, that all of them are our feelings, those beautiful bygone feelings, In the moments when I exist and yet feel maybe I don’t at all belong in the present, I roll my memories, I wrap my desires, and I slumber in the past, where you and your feelings are the only present! In this state I never realise when it is midday, when it is night and when it is today, Because now you become my only dream, my only memory, my only feeling and an everlasting today!

Do not treat this as a time of introspective penitence. To the extent you must clean up, do it with the attitude of someone showering and changing clothes, getting ready for the best banquet you have ever been to. This does not include three weeks of meditating on how you are not worthy to go to banquets. Of course you are not. Haven’t you heard of grace? Celebrate the stuff. Use fudge and eggnog and wine and roast beef. Use presents and wrapping paper. Embedded in many of the common complaints you hear about the holidays (consumerism, shopping, gluttony, etc.) are false assumptions about the point of the celebration. You do not prepare for a real celebration of the Incarnation through thirty days of Advent Gnosticism. At the same time, remembering your Puritan fathers, you must hate the sin while loving the stuff. Sin is not resident in the stuff. Sin is found in the human heart—in the hearts of both true gluttons and true scrooges—both those who drink much wine and those who drink much prune juice. If you are called up to the front of the class, and you get the problem all wrong, it would be bad form to blame the blackboard. That is just where you registered your error. In the same way, we register our sin on the stuff. But—because Jesus was born in this material world, that is where we register our piety as well. If your godliness won’t imprint on fudge, then it is not true godliness. Some may be disturbed by this. It seems a little out of control, as though I am urging you to “go overboard.” But of course I am urging you to go overboard. Think about it—when this world was “in sin and error pining,” did God give us a teaspoon of grace to make our dungeon a tad more pleasant? No. He went overboard.

Happiness is your natural state, so if you don’t feel happy right now, then you have a negative feeling that is stopping that happiness from being present within you. This chapter has various practices that will help end negative feelings that have had you wrapped in their repetitive loop. When you are free from them, you will finally live your life in your natural state of sheer joy and happiness—a life more spectacular than anything you have lived up until now.

He tiptoed into the living room and set the wrapped present on the coffee table. Having been the first to meet his genmate, Chameleon had the most knowledge of human customs, and he had advised gifts must be wrapped. “In what?” Psy had asked. “Paper.” “Does it matter what kind?” “No. Paper is paper.” The only paper they had at the farmhouse was toilet paper, so Psy wound a whole roll around the gift and secured it with duct tape.

Eventually, he decided to stay in his house where there were fewer things to hate. This was okay for a while but then some noisy neighbours moved in. Guess what? He hated them. In fact, he hated everyone he ever met, so he packed his things and moved far way to a house on a cliff by the seaside where there were hardly any other people to hate. Every day he sat on the cliff, watching the ocean and trying not to hate it. A little girl lived nearby and saw the man sitting by himself every day. She thought he must be lonely and felt sorry for him so she decided to make him a special present. She planted a geranium seed in a pot and watered it and loved it every day for six weeks. As the geranium plant grew, she spoke to it in a kind voice. She told it all about the lonely man who sat everyday on the cliff. When the geranium plant grew a beautiful pink flower, the girl carefully wrapped the pot in soft pink tissue paper. She carried it up to the cliff-top and, smiling shyly, gave it to the man. He hated it and threw it off the cliff. The girl ran home, crying. The end (Well, what did you expect? I told you at the start that he wasn’t

This,” The Actor turns to indicate me, one arm casually wrapped around his good friend’s shoulder, “is the secret weapon I was telling you about. Amie Martine.” “Amie,” he takes my hand, “you look surprised.” “I’m sorry,” my smile’s so nonstop, it’s mechanically difficult to speak, “I guess, when he said ‘producer,’ I—” “—didn’t picture me?” “I’m guilty. Of thinking of you as an actor first.” “Me, too.” His smile antes mine, then wins the bet. “I’m always an actor at heart. That’s who I am. You got it absolutely right.” Compelling dark brown eyes with hints of golden amber. His body conducts such radiance, I’m sure the circuits in this room have all been blown by the solar flares in his present emanation.

I’m an extrovert, through and through, and a deeply loyal person. Because of those two qualities, I’ve made most of my biggest decisions by committee, choosing to believe that the people I love most will advise me well, and that their wisdom will prevail. That has been immensely helpful for so many decisions. And yet. This last round of decisions have been made in silence and solitude, and that’s been necessary and healing and challenging. I’ve wanted the committee, and at the same time, I’ve sensed that there are some seasons in which the only way through is alone, a solitary path of listening and learning. This is uncomfortable for me, and I’ve yearned to gather around my people at every point, for familiarity and safety. There are, though, certain passages you have to walk alone. When you arrive on the other side, the people you love most will be there to meet you, certainly, to wrap their arms around you and walk closely with you once again. But it’s only when we’re truly alone that we can listen to our lives and God’s voice speaking out from the silence. These last months have required more silence than any other season in my life. I’ve both craved it and avoided it, in equal turns, and finally realized that the craving is something to listen to, something to obey. These days I’m pursuing regular intervals of silence and solitude. It’s almost like training wheels, or like a cast. I’m so unfamiliar with listening deeply to my own life and desires that I can only do it in the context and confines of silence—I lose track of my own voice in a crowd very easily. In seasons of deep transformation, silence will be your greatest guide. Even if it’s scary, especially if it’s scary, let silence be your anchor, your sacred space, your dwelling place. It’s where you will become used to your own voice, your agency, your authority. It’s where you will nurture that fledgling sense of authority, like a newborn deer on spindly fragile legs. Silence will become the incubator for your newfound spirit, keeping it safe, growing it steadily. For the first time in my life, it’s when I’m alone and quiet that I feel my strength. I need more and more of it than I ever have, like a vitamin, like a safe house.