Your complaints, your drama, your victim mentality, your whining, your blaming, and all of your excuses have NEVER gotten you even a single step closer to your goals or dreams. Let go of your nonsense. Let go of the delusion that you DESERVE better and go EARN it! Today is a new day!
I'd heard of Evergreen Care Center before. Cass and I had always made fun of the stupid ads they ran on TV, featuring some dragged-out woman with a limp perm and big, painted-on circles under her eyes, downing vodka and sobbing uncontrollably. "We can't heal you at Evergreen", the very somber voiceover said. "But we can help you to heal yourself." It had become our own running joke, applicable to almost anything. "Hey Cass, "I'd say, "hand me that toothpaste." "Caitlin," she'd say, her voice dark and serious. "I can't hand you the toothpaste. But I CAN help you hand the toothpaste to yourself.
If by any chance a playwright wishes to express a political opinion or a moral opinion or a philosophy, he must be a good enough craftsman to do it with so much spice of entertainment in it that the public get the message without being aware of it.
Just becauseyou feel lostdoesn't meanthat you are.Sometimes youjust have to relax,breathe deep,and trust the pathyou're on.
Shout out to everyone transcendinga mindset, mentality, desire, belief,emotion, habit, behavior or vibration,that no longer serves them.
Not to sound like a jerk, but Jane isn't really my type. Her hair's kinda disastrously curly and she mostly hangs out with guys. My type's a little girlier. And honestly, I don't even like my type of girl that much, let alone other types. Not that I'm asexual or something - I just find Romance Drama unbearable.
The second he slipped inside of me, all I'd doubted, questioned, or feared evaporated, leaving me with one single, definite truth--I'd fallen in love with him in an all-consuming blaze that would blind me if I wasn't careful. We fit together like poorly cut puzzle pieces, but when the edges joined and were positioned just right, our scattered images came together to create a solid, deliberate piece of art, completely crystal clear and in focus. I was a goner.
Is there a problem, Ms. Parker? Something you want to say to me?" Reaching for his tie, he began to loosen it, unraveling it with his fingers, angry eyes still locked on mine."I'm not sure I like being your pet. Or science project, I don't know which.""You have a smart mouth.""You make smart observances.""You're going to make this invitation difficult, aren't you?""If you're dishonest with me, yes.""You'll regret it if you don't accept.""Is that a threat?""That's a promise.
Stumbling closer, I held up the manuscript, the pages flapping frantically in the wind. “I take it this is a murder mystery? You killed the ex-fiancée and thanked her in the dedication? Mighty dignified of you, I must say.”“Nah. It’s a horror novel. But yeah, the bimbo dies in the end. Bob Hall says it’s going to be a bestseller, so I figured I owed her some thanks for the inspiration.” He edged a few feet closer, his smile spread from ear to ear. The glimmer in his eyes flickered toward the ocean, breaking our connection. He hung his head, licked his lips, then returned his eyes to mine, restoring the connection with an intense smolder. “Are you gonna get over here, or what?”Letting out a soft chuckle, the tears began to blind me. “Make me.
I winked and locked my arm in Carter's, and we stood there, watching Dean stroll away."You know the guy's never gonna give up," Carter nudged me, letting out a sigh."We'd have really pretty babies, huh?""Yup. They'd be rad little Brangelinas, running around tearing the place up.""Yeah, you're right. My rejection is such a disservice to the world...
Hey Kate, you coming to our show Friday night?" He leaned in close and touched my shoulder. "The guys would love to see you there.""Yes. Yes, the guys would indeed." Carter rolled his eyes and smirked. I held back my grin, well aware that he was laughing inwardly at the same thing I was. When Dean spoke of 'the guys,' he mostly meant himself. With a body like a Ken doll and hair like Meredith's McDreamy, I couldn't figure out for the life of me what he wanted with me.
Stacy smiled proudly and he filed the image of her sweet face in the section of his heart he shared with no one else ~ Brian, Song of the Snowman"Mom said if you put ears on your snowman, he’ll hear the music of the angels and sing songs to you.” ~ Stacy, Song of the SnowmanThe sweet promise of her embrace cured the loneliness in him. In her arms, he was whole. ~ Brian, Song of the Snowman He composed music, dreamed of the future, and kept the situations he couldn’t change at bay to the rhythm of his feet drumming on the concrete. Brian, Song of the SnowmanThis was as simple as his life got rhythm, rhyme, and fingertips on cool keys. ~ Brian, Song of the Snowman
She was a ray of sunshine, a warm summer rain, a bright fire on a cold winter’s day, and now she could be dead because she had tried to save the man she loved.
Oh honey, someday a real man is going to make you see stars and you won't even be looking at the sky." Excerpt from Grace Willow's Last Minute Bride
You are enough to drive a saint to madness or a king to his knees.
You are enough to drive a saint to madness or a king to his kneesExcerpt from To Kiss a King by Grace WillowsComing this summer to Amazon Kindle and paperback.
I became an artist because I wanted to be an active participant in the conversation about art.
I care for you, darling, I love you,the only reason I fucked L. is because you fuckedZ. and then I fucked R. and you fucked N.and because you fucked N. I had to fuckY. But I think of you constantly, I feel youhere in my belly like a baby, love I'd call it,no matter what happens I'd call it love, and soyou fucked C. and then before I could moveyou fucked W., so I had to fuck D. ButI want you to know that I love you, I think of youconstantly, I don't think I've ever loved anybodylike I love you.
Drama is based on the Mistake. I think someone is my friend when he really is my enemy, that I am free to marry a woman when in fact she is my mother, that this person is a chambermaid when it is a young nobleman in disguise, that this well-dressed young man is rich when he is really a penniless adventurer, or that if I do this such and such a result will follow when in fact it results in something very different. All good drama has two movements, first the making of the mistake, then the discovery that it was a mistake.
You can turn every ugly and damaging drama into a genuine blessing by seeing it differently. No one is suffering on purpose. We learn to give up the pleasure we feel in self-righteously blaming others. Healing happens when we see things differently. The question is: do you want suffering or peace? It's that simple.
Breaking the circle”My eyes darken when I see my new lover. Fresh prey.My body doesn’t really react in a sexual way.It’s the devil inside me that celebrates next conquest.We exchange meaningless sweet words.His hungry gaze penetrates my breasts and ass.Another drink and laughter.And then another one.Sometimes I get very drunk or high.And then I don’t feel him between my legs.I don’t see his sweating face.I don’t hear his moans and questions if I came.I can’t stay sober when I cheat on you.I’m such a coward that I can’t even face this inner monster.It consumes me, it takes away my dignity. It makes me do horrible things.It hurts you, the only one who ever loved me.Who knows what I really am.No. It’s not the monster. It’s me. I am the whore.I dig my nails into your soft flesh until it bleeds.I am the one pushing you away, feasting on your kindness. I blame those hard punches of my past for my infidelity. Those cruel hands. Those hateful words. I try not to, I really do. I try to be a better person.But how can I if I am just nobody?You know why I leave. Yet you stay. You’re there when I’m back.With your sorrow and cry and resentment and wrath.Why?If I’m broken because of my pain what’s your excuse?Why do you keep letting me treat you like a stray dog?Don’t you have any respect for yourself?What the fuck is wrong with you?And just when I think I have my own slave for life you break the circle. You shut the door with a grimace of relief.You can’t look at me anymore. See, you’re finally free!My inner innocent girl is happy for you. But the monster inside kicks and laughs at me.I’m left alone.I dress up and go hunting.
If you walked away from atoxic, negative, abusive,one-sided, dead-endlow vibrationalrelationship or friendship — you won.
Don't hang out with people who are:UngratefulUnhelpfulUnrulyUnkindlyUnlovingUnambitiousUnmotivatedor make you feel...Uncomfortable
The greatest win is walking away and choosing not to engage in drama and toxic energy at all.
Theatres are curious places, magician's trick-boxes where the golden memories of dramtic triumphs linger like nostalgic ghosts, and where the unexplainable, the fantastic, the tragic, the comic and the absurd are routine occurences on and off the stage. Murders, mayhem, politcal intrigue, lucrative business, secret assignations, and of course, dinner.
How easily such a thing can become a mania, how the most normal and sensible of women once this passion to be thin is upon them, can lose completely their sense of balance and proportion and spend years dealing with this madness.
I wish I could run away,” Rudger told Jersey as they both rushed in and out of various patients’ rooms, darting around like little ants. “I can’t leave and be on my own though, not right now, anyway.”“Why?” asked Jersey, waving her flashlight in mid-air.Rudger froze for a second, a regretful haze emanating from his eyes. “It’d break her heart if I left.”“Ain’t that normal? For parents to have mixed feelings about their kids growin’ up?”“Not for me, it isn’t.”Jersey made a pitying face in his direction. “So, you wanna keep bein’ towed around with your mom, livin’ in a gross town like Danvers?”“Is there a choice?”“Yeah, there sure is. You can run away and try to be a whole person before it’s too late, or you can live with mommy dearest forever and turn into Norman Bates.
I don't believe everything happens for a reason. But I still search for reasons anyway. It's like I don't want to admit that maybe everything really is totally random...that people are just molecules in the air, bumping into each other and floating away again."-p150, NOTES TO SELF
It’s not the word that’s important, it’s the right to say any word you want to and to form any sentence you want to, that’s the point and once they start to legally restrict what we can say and what we can’t say then we are on a slippery slope to authoritarianism.” “We’re talking about racists,” said Karen. “No one should be allowed to be racist,” said Mark. “But that’s not down to the Government or the courts,” said Rob desperately, “that should be down to us, we should make it difficult for people to be racist, we should frown upon such language and activity, it should be by peer pressure that we stop people from being abusive and unpleasant, not down to the Government.” “Why not?” demanded Karen, “they make the laws so it’s down to them to make the punishments.” “It’s not about punishment,” pressed Rob, “it’s about morality and social conscience, it’s about standing up for what’s right versus moral laziness, it’s about courage versus cowardice.
A siege is always a hospital - a hospital where mad thoughts abound and where mad things are done; where, under the stimulus of an unnatural excitement, new beings are evolved, beings who, while having the outward shape of their former selves, and, indeed, most of the old outward characteristics, are yet reborn in some subtle way and are no longer the same....The salt of life! Is it true, or is it merely a mistake, such as life-loving man naturally makes? For it can be nothing but the salt of death which has lain for a brief instant on the tongue of every soldier - a revolting salt which the soldier refuses to swallow and only is compelled to with strange cries and demon-like mutterings. Sometimes, poor mortal, all his struggles and his oaths are in vain. The dread salt is forced down his throat and he dies. The very fortunate have only an acrid taste which defines analysis left them. Of these more fortunate there are, however, many classes. Some, because they are neurotic or have some hereditary taint, the existence of which they have never suspected, in the end succumb; others do not entirely succumb but carry traces to their graves; yet others do not appear to mind at all. It is a very subtle poison, which may lie hidden in the blood for many months and years. I believe it is a terrible thing....And yet even this nobody understands or cares to speak of... Englishmen are proud, and want to know if you were inside the British Legation, their Legation, and when they have heard yes or no their interest ceases. They little know what the Legation stood for. The Americans march up to the Tartar Wall, talk about "Uncle Sam's boys," and exclaim that it requires no guessing to tell who saved the Legations. The French are the same, so are the Germans, so even the Italians. Only the Japanese and the Russians say nothing....I am, therefore, tired of it all, inexpressibly tired. I wish to escape from my hospital, to go away to some clean land where they understand so little of such things that their indifference will in the end, perhaps, convince me and make me forget.Yet can one ever forget?
Even the world’s greatest actor cannot fake an erection.
Let’s de-bunk some of this, shall we? Myth 1– Kings and Queens are divine beings – rubbish. Kings and queens of old were murdering bastards who ruled with a rod of iron. Myth 2 – the rich prosper out of godliness – more rubbish. They gained their wealth by royal patronage and taxing and stealing from the masses. Myth 3 - the poor are poor because they’re depraved – yet more rubbish. They’re poor because of their naivety and childlike belief in, oh yes, Kings and Queens, the Church and the order of things. Finally, Myth 4 - women are evil and deliberately seductive – the biggest nonsense of all. Women are sexually attractive to men because they are the opposite sex to men; it’s not hard to see, is it? It’s the same for every species on the planet, you can see it in any mating ritual on the Discovery channel but this truth has been reversed and buried under the eternal lie fostered upon us by the church. That’s what the bible has achieved and that’s why our society is divided and divided again. That’s why we are never working as one, because religion was designed to divide and rule the masses,” she broke off and looked deliberately round the room, “but the big question is, for what purpose and by whom?
Would you not say that peace is the greatest desire of true soldiers? Do we not have the most to lose from war? And businesses, most of them except military and oil ones, most of them have a vested interest in peace and prosperity. You cannot sell a house to a war refugee living in a tent, can you? Really hard tto sell an iPhone to a shattered victim. Businesses and corporatoons run this country. So yuou have to approach them with logic. Emotional appeals to the hippies of this world will not change minds. Stick to logic.- Shane Gibson, candidate for Governor, THE PLATOS ASCENSION BRIEF.
It was held that the six great arts – visual art (including architecture and photography), drama, dance, music, film and literature – form a family of related, if largely autonomous, practices: they all work through the aesthetic, all address the imagination, and all are concerned with the symbolic embodiment of human meaning.
Music is the 'pure' art par excellence. It says nothing and has nothing to say. Never really having an expressive function, it is opposed to drama, which even in its most refined forms still bears a social message and can only be 'put over' on the basis of an immediate and profound affinity with the values and expectations of its audience. The theatre divides its public and divides itself. The Parisian opposition between right-bank and left-bank theatr, bourgeois theatre and avant-garde theatre, is inextricably aesthetic and political.
[The ruling class] sees people in the working class as being almost animals. It sees itself as being synonymous with civilization and its cultivation as coming from its natural abilities and not from its wealth and privileged opportunities. It doesn't see that the way in which it monopolizes these things distorts the culture it derives from them and that this makes its culture irrational and an enemy of civilization.
The artist tries to show reason in experience and appearance – and lyric is the daily appearance, the commonplace dress, of reason. It shows us the rational. It makes the epic pattern human. It's the footprint on the pathway. In the epic-lyric the individual and particular are no longer isolated but are placed in a historical, social, human pattern. That's why there's a political way of cutting bread or wearing shoes.
Once the egoism has gone (stopped), all the worldly ‘matter’ of the body-complex [pudgal] are renounced! Where there is egoism, there is my-ness and where there is my-ness, there is a hidden egoism. When ‘Knowledge of the Self’ is attained, egoism and my-ness goes away. Only the dramatic (discharge) ‘egoism’ and ‘my-ness’ will remain.
Terry took the silence as acquiescence, “The other way to make money is to exploit people, oh, no sorry, that’s the ‘only’ way to make money, exploit other people, that’s how the billionaires have acquired all their money by exploiting others… So how did they achieve it? You’re going to love this… they changed all the rules to accommodate what they wanted to do. How I hear you ask… easy, they own the politicians, they own the banks, they own industry and they own everything. They made it easier for themselves to invest in so called emerging markets. What once would’ve been considered treasonous was now considered virtuous. Instead of building up the nation state and its resources, all of its resources, including its people, they concentrated on building up their profits. That’s all they did. They invested in parts of the world where children could be worked for 12 hours a day 7 days a week, where grown men and women could be treated like slaves and all for a pittance and they did this because we here in the west had made it illegal to work children, because we’d abolished slavery, because we had fought for workers’ rights, for a minimum wage, for a 40 hr week, for pensions, for the right to retire, for a free NHS, for free education, all of these things were getting in the way of them making a quick and easy profit and worse …had been making us feel we were worth something.
God speaks to you all the time ~ Have you tuned in to the cosmic vibrations of love, harmony, peace, and truth? Unless you quieten that blabbering little mind of yours, you won’t be able to listen to the Divine music that plays on and on...Just for one heavenly second, shut your eyes, ears, and mind to the cacophonous noises of this physical, illusionary, temporary world. Exit all the drama.Just for that one heavenly second, stay quiet and simply listen. Listen to the ambrosial sound. It vibrates with joy.You can have more of this soulful peace in your life, if only you choose to align yourself with the Source of Love and Light. The more you stay attuned to "Home", the less you’d wander in-vain.
Though I'm not sure, I thought I saw women dressed in black, with her head and face covered by a black veil, duck behind a tree as we approached the road and parked car. Hiding so we wouldn't see her. But I caught a glimpse, enough to reveal the rope of lustrous pearls she wore. Pearls that were there for a thin white hand to lift and nervously, out of long habit, twist and untwist into a knot. Only one women I knew did that--and she was the perfect one to wear black, and should run to hide!Forever hide! Color all her days black! Every last one!
Believe in YourselfWhy must we see something to believe in its existence?The wind itself cannot be seen by man, but all have felt it's gentle touch and watched the mighty trees bow as it swept past.We cannot see love yet its nurturing warmth is the essence of our being and sorrow can touch our very soul. For remorse is like a ripple on the ocean, once given it remains only in the heart of the receiver.Yet all of these cannot be seen only felt. Why then do you doubt your self-worth? For though it cannot cast a reflection in the mirror you have only to look in the eyes of those you love toSee it clearly.Prologue To Kiss a KingTo Kiss a King Copyright © 2017 by Julie Brookshier and Robin WoodsAll rights reserved. Except for use in a review, the reproduction or use of this work in whole or in part in any form is forbidden without written permission of one or more of the authors.This is a fictional work. Names, characters, places, and events are merely the product of the authors' imaginations or used fictitiously, purely for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead, or undead or any business establishments, events or places past, present, or future, is entirely coincidental.
Nostalgia has a way of blocking the reality of the past.
Her gaze flickered to the balcony doors and back, her brows knitted in confusion. “My balcony doesn’t connect to yours.”“I jumped.” He grinned at the flash of concern he saw in “her eyes. “At dinner, your grandmother informed me that you’d be moving to the room beside mine. She also mentioned how close my balcony was to yours; so close that even an old lady like herself could leap between the two without the least effort.”Venetia’s cheeks heated and she pulled her nightgown closer. “Grandmama is anything but subtle.”“Almost as subtle as your mother.”“Oh, no! Not Mama, too.”Gregor paused beside a small table to pick up a silver tray holding a cut crystal decanter and matching glasses and set it on the table before Venetia. “Your mother was concerned I might be afraid of heights. She told me that if she were thinking of jumping between the balconies and couldn’t bring herself to make the leap, it might be possible to pick the lock on the connecting door with, say, a cravat pin.”Venetia blushed. “I’m surprised they aren’t in here now, throwing rose petals before you as you walk.”“I would never countenance petal tossing. Too showy.
Next to God, Family is the best thing.
I needed to realise my role in the drama and it was only then that I could learn and be better for it, and it was only then that I could move forward. I needed to move forward and had to look at each day as a way of becoming a better me. And when I got better, the people around me reciprocated.
A mistake is the name we give to any action in which we perceive a difference between what we intended and what has occurred. Intention fuels every dramatic action, including the writing of dramatic stories, which involves a series of dramatic actions. In the course of writing, or finding, the story that wants to get itself told, it behooves the writer to liberate the characters by finding the faith and courage necessary for setting aside one’s own conscious needs and expectations. Not to do so promotes ‘mistakes’ - i.e: confusion born of some incoherence in the emotional logic of the story). As the writer abandons his/her intentions - no matter how noble they may seem - only then does that most strange and ineffable quality we so casually refer to as ‘the magic’ have a chance of entering the story, and rendering even the ‘mistakes’ stimulating, daring and provocative.
The heavy rain dripped off his thick leather hat and sloshed on the dry hard ground. To someone with a soul, it might have been peaceful, pretty, even to watch the drops bounce and form graceful puddles before they disappeared into the cracks in the Earth.Daniel Marlin merely cursed. He only saw the weather as another delay before they could rescue their brother from jail. He turned the horse back into the copse of trees, hating to admit defeat.
Freaky kids like us can’t ever be normal- Tyler says smugly- Our generation is some new kind of “evolutionary development”, my shrink says- “Normal” is just “average”, not cool. My latest diagnosis is “A.P.M”, Acute Premature Melancholia”, usually an affliction of late middle age, they think is genetic since Ty Senoir has had it all his life, too.You look if you might be A.P.M, too, Sky: that kind of pissed-off mopey look in your face like you swallowed something really gross and can’t spit it out.
For in America this season is decreed “family season”. (Eat your hearts out, you pitiable loners who don’t have families!) Melancholy as Thanksgiving is, the Christmas-New year’s season is far worse and lasts far longer, providing rich fund of opportunities for self-medicating, mental collapse, suicide and public mayhem with firearms. In fact it might be argued that the Christmas-New year’s season which begins abruptly after Thanksgiving is now the core-sason of American life itself, the meaning of American life„ the brute existencial point of it. How without families must envy us who bask in parental love, in the glow of yule-logs burning in fireplaces stoked by our daddie’s robust pokers, we who are stuffed to bursting with our mummie’s frantic holiday cooking; how you wish you could be us, pampered/protected kids tearing expensive foil wrappings off too many packages to count, gathered about the Christmas tree on Christmas morning as Mummy gently chided: “Skyler! Bliss! Show Daddy and Mummy what you’ve just opened, please! And save the little cards, so you know who gave such nice things to you
For in America this season is decreed “family season”. (Eat your hearts out, you pitiable loners who don’t have families!) Melancholy as Thanksgiving is, the Christmas-New year’s season is far worse and lasts far longer, providing rich fund of opportunities for self-medicating, mental collapse, suicide and public mayhem with firearms. In fact it might be argued that the Christmas-New year’s season which begins abruptly after Thanksgiving is now the core-sason of American life itself, the meaning of American life„ the brute existencial point of it. How without families must envy us who bask in parental love, in the glow of yule-logs burning in fireplaces stoked by our daddie’s robust pokers, we who are stuffed to bursting with our mummie’s frantic holiday cooking; how you wish you could be us, pampered/protected kids tearing expensive foil wrappings off too many packages to count, gathered about the Christmas tree on Christmas morning as Mummy gently chided: “Skyler! Bliss! Show Daddy and Mummy what you’ve just opened, please! And save the little cards, so you know who gave such nice things to you”.
Did you ever think much about jobs? I mean, some of the jobs people land in? You see a guy giving haircuts to dogs, or maybe going along the curb with a shovel, scooping up horse manure. And you think, now why is the silly bastard doing that? He looks fairly bright, about as bright as anyone else. Why the hell does he do that for living?You kind grin and look down your nose at him. You think he’s nuts, know what I mean, or he doesn’t have any ambition. And then you take a good look at yourself, and you stop wondering about the other guy…You’ve got all your hands and feet. Your health is okay, and you make a nice appearance, and ambition-man! You’ve got it. You’re young, I guess: you’d call thirty young, and you’re strong. You don’t have much education, but you’ve got more than plenty of other people who go to the top. And yet with all that, with all you’ve had to do with this is as far you’ve got And something tellys you, you’re not going much farther if any.And there is nothing to be done about it now, of course, but you can’t stop hoping. You can’t stop wondering……Maybe you had too much ambition. Maybe that was the trouble. You couldn’t see yourself spending forty years moving from office boy to president. So you signed on with a circulation crew; you worked the magazines from one coast to another. And then you ran across a little brush deal-it sounded nice, anyway. And you worked that until you found something better, something that looked better. And you moved from that something to another something. Coffee-and-tea premiums, dinnerware, penny-a-day insurance, photo coupons, cemetery lots, hosiery, extract, and God knows what all. You begged for the charities, You bought the old gold. You went back to the magazines and the brushes and the coffee and tea. You made good money, a couple of hundred a week sometimes. But when you averaged it up, the good weeks with the bad, it wasn’t so good. Fifty or sixty a week, maybe seventy. More than you could make, probably, behind agas pump or a soda fountain. But you had to knock yourself out to do it, and you were standing stil. You were still there at the starting place. And you weren’t a kid any more.So you come to this town, and you see this ad. Man for outside sales and collections. Good deal for hard worker. And you think maybe this is it. This sounds like a right town. So you take the job, and you settle down in the town. And, of course, neither one of ‘em is right, they’re just like all the others. The job stinks. The town stinks. You stink. And there’s not a goddamned thing you can do about it. All you can do is go on like this other guys go on. The guy giving haircuts to dogs, and the guy sweeping up horse manute Hating it. Hating yourself.And hoping.
I sat down in a booth, and the waitress shoved a menu in front of me. There wasn’t anything on it that sounded good, and anyway, one look at her and my stomach turned flipflops… Every goddamned restaurant I go to, it’s always the same way… They’ll have some old bag on the payroll — I figure they keep her locked up in the mop closet until they see me coming. And they’ll doll her up in the dirtiest goddamned apron they can find and smear that crappy red polish all over her fingernails, and everything about her is smeary and sloppy and smelly. And she’s the dame that always waits on me.
In the beginning we start with roses. The king’s flower right? Only they wilt in less than a day, especially when exposed to the elements. But Carnations? Oh, what a beautiful flower. They come in every color. True, some are painted, but that doesn’t mean they are less beautiful, and they never wilt.
Listen to me you piece of shit, if you ever give the press information about me, my parents or even breathe a word about me to anyone ever again, I swear to god I will make it my mission to make your life a living hell. And, believe me I’ll do it with a smile on my face the whole time. You’re a worthless excuse for a Detective and everyone here knows it. You’ve screwed your way to the top and backstabbed Gena to get into your Captain’s good books. Well look around you honey, you’re a real star. No one stopped Gena or me taking you on. I’ve currently got you in a hold, where I could snap your neck if I wanted to, and not one person is stepping forward to help you. Yeah, you’ve really made it.” - Stephanie Carovella to Sandra Barton
From Chloe's Secret--coming soon“What are you saying?”“I’m saying I want to have a relationship with you. I want to love you.”“Is there a ‘but’ coming next?”“But the funny thing is, when I didn’t want to love you—it happened anyway.”He slipped his arms into my back pockets and hugged the breath out of me. I choked, my eyes stung. “I don’t know what to say.”He smiled. “Say whatever you want to. Just because I said it, you don’t have to.”He was right; I didn’t have to. He wasn’t asking anything of me.
. I felt the sun graze my face as I sped further and further from it all. The only negative part about running was that at some point I knew I’d have to stop. I’d have to turn around and go back. And whatever troubles had haunted me when I left, would be waiting upon my return.
His cell-phone rang. Dominic fumbled for it on the nightstand next to the couch, the dim lights not helping his endeavour. He had piercing, generic, banal fluorescent lights on his face all the time at work and at University, it was so bad it made him loathe even natural sunlight. Lucky this apartment’s living room light had a dimmer. He flipped open his phone and said hello. ‘Hey Dom, how you doin’?’ a voice boomed. It was Ben. They proceeded to talk about the upcoming exams, which were deceptively close as it was week 10 at the moment. Yes, they would be alright. Yes, they would meet up afterwards. No, he hadn’t studied more than Ben had. As he clapped the phone closed after the genial conversation reached its natural nadir, he had forgotten most of what had been said
He plunged into the foliage, and was swept into a humid, wet world of towering trees, animal chirps and thick ferns. After a few steps, he turned, and could barely make out the village. He walked a few more steps. He could see nothing now except for the thick trees and long ferns and grasses that surrounded him. He was enveloped into the confined space between trees, surrounded by the jungle heat and staccato chirps. He turned in the direction of the village, but could only see thick, dense trees. Hoping his sense of direction had not been muddled, he turned back around to the direction of the alleged ocean, and kept walking.Now the calls he heard sounded more and more strange. How far had he walked by now? The jungle, or rain forest, whatever it was, did not relent, and he kept on weaving into narrow gaps between the sturdy ferns and towering trees, pressing onwards. This continued for a seemingly oppressive amount of time, and he began to doubt his decision. To come to this place. To take a chance with his life, which was going in the right direction. Why couldn’t he be happy with the normal and mundane, he cursed, scolding his own stubbornness
Jack gave her a fierce look. “Your mother gave up the best thing she had in her life. I know you miss her, I know you’re confused and have all sorts of questions for her. But you’re better than her, Lola, you’re better than all of this. “She wronged you, not the other way around. You didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t deserve what happened to you. She’s the one that needs to feel bad, not you. “Sometimes there are no answers. You have to accept that. Maybe you’ll never know what you think you need to know, but do you really need to know all the details, really? You know she wasn’t there when you needed her, she still isn’t here when you need her, but look around, Lola.” Jack opened his arms wide. “You got me. You got your aunt. Jared. Sebastian. Rachel. Even Isabelle. “You need to realize that and move on, as best you can. I had to realize that myself. When you let go of the pain and hurt and unanswered questions, Lola, then you’ll be okay. You’re safe now.” Jack pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You’re safe now. Remember that. Believe that.
After the boy at the supermarket had called her those names, Evelyn Couch had felt violated. Raped by words. Stripped of everything. She had always tried to keep this from happening to her, always been terrified of displeasing men, terrified of the names she would be called if she did. She had spent her life tiptoeing around them like something lifting her skirt stepping through a cow pasture. She had always suspected that if provoked, those names were always close to the surface, ready to lash out and destroy her.
Magistrate: What do you propose to do then, pray?Lysistrata: You ask me that! Why, we propose to administer the treasury ourselvesMagistrate: You do?Lysistrata: What is there in that a surprise to you? Do we not administer the budget of household expenses?Magistrate: But that is not the same thing.Lysistrata: How so – not the same thing?Magistrate: It is the treasury supplies the expenses of the War.Lysistrata: That's our first principle – no War!
Magistrate: May I die a thousand deaths ere I obey one who wears a veil!Lysistrata: If that's all that troubles you, here take my veil, wrap it round your head, and hold your tounge. Then take this basket; put on a girdle, card wool, munch beans. The War shall be women's business.
All the girls stared at me with hatred in their eyes. It was a big drama that had to be acted out. But deep down, nobody really cared. The other girls didn't care about Jennifer. Jennifer didn't care about me. I didn't care about anything.Everyone was so full of crap.
He lay still, his bloodshot eyes staring blankly before him, and drifted into dreams of his problems, compulsively living out dialogues, summing up emotional scenes with his mother, Dot, and his friends. Repeatedly he chided himself to go to sleep, but it did no good, for he was hungry for these waking visions that depicted his dilemmas, yet he knew that such brooding did not help; in fact he was wasting his waning strength, for into these unreal dramas he was putting the whole of his ardent being. The long hours dragged on.
I always am in a role, lovely – for you, for them – even for myself. Yeah... Even when I’m alone, I am still in a role – and I myself am the most exacting audience I have ever had.
There comes a time in your life, when you walk away from all the drama and people who create it. You surround yourself with people who make you laugh. Forget the bad and focus on the good. Love the people who treat you right, pray for the ones who do not. Life is too short to be anything but happy. Falling down is a part of life, getting back up is living.
Emotions don’t interfere in my acting, nor in my life.
Let me here remind you that the essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things. This inevitableness of destiny can only be illustrated in terms of human life by incidents which in fact involve unhappiness. For it is by them that the futility of escape can be made evident in the drama. This remorseless inevitableness is what pervades scientific thought. The laws of physics are the decrees of fate.
The leap of faith is this: You have to believe, or at least pretend you believe until you really believe it, that you are strong enough to take life face on. Eating disorders, on any level, are a crutch. They are also an addiction and illness, but there is no question at all that they are quite simply a way of avoiding the banal, daily, itchy pain of life. Eating disorders provide a little drama, they feed into the desire for constant excitement, everything becomes life-or-death, everything is terribly grand and crashing, very Sturm and Drang. And they are distracting. You don't have to think about any of the nasty minutiae of the real world, you don't get caught up in that awful boring thing called regular life, with its bills and its breakups and its dishes and laundry and groceries and arguments over whose turn it is to change the litter box and bedtimes and bad sex and all that, because you are having a real drama, not a sitcom but a GRAND EPIC, all by yourself, and why would you bother with those foolish mortals when you could spend hours and hours with the mirror, when you are having the most interesting sado-machistic affair with your own image?
Kipster is a perfectly valid word,” Wendy argued, about to write down her score on the little notepad that had come with the game. “Okay, so what does it mean?” Mandy wanted to know. Wendy struggled to come up with an answer, and finally just changed the subject with school gossip. Mandy found herself just ignoring it… it always sounded the same, the same events, same rumors, same secrets, same affairs, but never anything of interest to her.“Well Sarah’s on drugs again and that’s why she did it in Mario’s backseat, but now she might be pregnant, oh, and that messed-up Seth kid’s been cutting himself again so he was sent away to Halifax last week, and there’s a festival in Wolfville but Kathy won’t go because Audrey-Rose is going to be there and they hate each other, and….”Mandy had learned two years ago to detach herself from gossip; she’d learned it from Jud’s death. Wendy may have been eighteen years old but she could be immature on the best of days.
When the person you love can't see your love for them beneath the painful things you say when they reject you, remember this: Love is blind.
There’s nothing.Nothing to hold on to while the current takes me.Whatever I might have had until today, I’ve lost.I feel my love for her, swelling; bloating into something that’s about to explode, like an abscess that’s been allowed to rot for too long, but the pain drowns it so completely I know I’m never coming back out. This feeling, that you’re choking and that your body is underwater, immersed in the ocean, a dense flood that overpowers your breathing abilities, and your will to survive gets drowned right along with it. And as I’m drowning I see her face and hear her voice—and it doesn’t give me hope, it terrifies me. I’m terrified because I know she’s going to be the death of me. I’m terrified because I know I won’t be able to cope. I’m terrified because the darkness is the only true friend I’ve ever had and if it wants to embrace me I don’t have the power to make it stop.
Answer the Call to Shine Your LightRight now there may be just few individuals who balance duality in unconditional love, but their unifying perception is very integrative. They live their lives in “Trinity” after they have expanded their understanding of “Duality”. There is no moral value judgment applied in their perceptions. The moral value judgment continually creates an illusion of separation and disconnection. A balanced consciousness, with no dual perception is very integrative and all inclusive. It expands at an enormous speed assisting others to perceive a myriad of different perspectives as different yet equally valid. Those individuals shine their light in the world as a sign of unity, harmony, and emotional balance. They are living witnesses to the reality of love, compassion, ease and joy. By their example others can choose to understand that life can be easy to live in one's preferred way without devaluing others' choices. They are those who lightened up carrying their bright match lit in a darkened room filled with fear and drama.
We dream — it is good we are dreaming —It would hurt us — were we awake —But since it is playing — kill us,And we are playing — shriek —What harm? Men die — externally —It is a truth — of Blood —But we — are dying in Drama —And Drama — is never dead —Cautious — We jar each other —And either — open the eyes —Lest the Phantasm — prove the Mistake —And the livid SurpriseCool us to Shafts of Granite —With just an Age — and Name —And perhaps a phrase in Egyptian —It's prudenter — to dream —
Not to be too dramatic about it, that night I slept the sleep of the damned. I dreamt of turrets and craggy ledges where the windswept rain blew in from the ocean with the odor of violets. A pale woman in Elizabethan dress stood beside my bed and whispered in my ear that the bells would ring. An old salt in an oilcloth jacket sat atop a piling, mending nets with an awl, while far out at sea a tine aeroplane winged its way towards the setting sun.
He stared at the corner of the yellowed ceiling, at the spider web and its solitary occupant. “Why here?” he asked the spider. “You could choose anywhere instead of this house. I know I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to be.” The spider said nothing. Come to think of it, Callum was sure the spider hadn’t moved even an inch in the last week. Maybe it was dead. Dead and crisp like the untouched wasp carcass on his window sill.
You have to understand your best. Your best isn't Barrymore's best or Olivier's best or my best, but your own. Every person has his norm. And in that norm every person is a star. Olivier could stand on his head and still not be you. Only you can be you. What a privilege! Nobody can reach what you can if you do it. So do it. We need your best, your voice, your body. We don't need for you to imitate anybody, because that would be second best. And second best is no better than your worst.
Once upon a time there was a child who had a golden brain. His parents only discovered this by chance when he injured his head and gold instead of blood flowed out. They then began to look after him carefully and would not let him play with other children for fear of being robbed. When the boy was grown up and wanted to go out into the world, his mother said: “We have done so much for you,we ought to be able to share your wealth.” Then her son took a large piece of gold out of his brain and gave it to his mother. He lived in great style with a friend who, however, robbed him one night and ran away. After that the man resolved to guard his secret and to go out to work, because his reserves were visibly dwindling. One day he fell in love with a beautiful girl who loved him too, but no more than the beautiful clothes he gave her so lavishly. He married her and was very happy, but after two years she died and he spent the rest of his wealth on her funeral, which had to be splendid. Once, as he was creeping through the streets,weak,poor, and unhappy, he saw a beautiful little pair of boots that would have been perfect for his wife. He forgot that she was dead- perhaps because his emptied brain no longer worked- and entered the shop to buy the boots. But in that very moment he fell, and the shopkeeper saw a dead man lying on the ground.This story sounds as though it were invented, but it is true from beginning to end. There are people who have to pay for the smallest things in life with their very substance and their spinal cord. That is a constantly recurring pain, and then when they are tired of suffering…Does not mother love belong to the ‘smallest’, but also indispensable, things in life, for which many people paradoxically have to pay by giving up their living selves?
One of the earliest and most vivid memories of Robin’s childhood was of the day that the family dog had been put down. She herself had been too young to understand what her father was saying; she took the continuing existence of Bruno, her oldest brother’s beloved Labrador, for granted. Confused by her parents’ solemnity, she had turned to Stephen for a clue as to how to react, and all security had crumbled, for she had seen, for the first time in her short life, happiness and comfort drain out of his small and merry face, and his lips whiten as his mouth fell open. She had heard oblivion howling in the silence that preceded his awful scream of anguish, and then she had cried, inconsolably, not for Bruno, but for the terrifying grief of her brother.
When my son speaks of playing sports, I've always told him: playing on the team is great, but aspire to be the guy who owns the team. I've always told my son: most of the guys on the team will end up bankrupt with bum knees, but not the guy who owns that franchise.
The moment that followed was one that would forever change the course of her life. She reflected on it later, and wondered how such a short matter of seconds could alter so permanently every part of her existence. Like an unstoppable line of dominoes, the moment was the flick that set everything into motion.
Uncouth thoughts can come take possession of the sweetest mind. That happens to you, you got to keep yourself alone a long time to heal of it. Mostly so you don’t pass it on. Thoughts, you see, or things, or folks that touch, go right on rubbing on each other, long after the actual touching is done and gone. That’s the Law Of Contagion.”-- Banjo Bartell
And as her voice carried in the darkness, he wasn’t sure where the borders between her story and his dream were. But he saw no more nightmares; he dreamed of a noble Sky Ghost and his little daughter, which he taught everything she needed to become a better warrior than he was.
Shadows ran all around her and someone was talking to her but it was all just white noise. Goodbye solo she would never perform. Goodbye perfect night that never got the chance to end in Garrett’s arms. Garrett, oh god. Goodbye love of her life, she had loved him and with the thought of never seeing him again her body gave up a single tear. It escaped her eye and coursed through the blood and dirt on her cheek making a single clean streak as the blackness took over.
So much better for you to long for what you can never have, than to get it and have to face the reality of it. I assure you, when you realize the reality of this situation, there wont be a hole deep enough for you to climb into to hide the mortification you're going to feel. - Eric to Camile in Pawn of Innocence.
Blake smiled while greeting him and turned to introduce me to his friend from Camp Lejeune. Blake made the formal introductions while I studied the two distinguished men. I liked the way they both carried themselves in a dignified manner with confidence, but not too much that they seemed arrogant. I was fascinated by them. Sleek. Forget eye candy. These two are like eye caffeine. I feel energized just looking at them.
FOXFIRE NEVER SAYS NEVER! By the time the kidnapped turquoise-and-chrome car overturns--turns and turns and turns!--in a snow-drifted field north of Tydeman's Corners Legs Sadovsky will have driven eleven miles from Eddy's Smoke Shop on Fairfax Avenue, six wild miles with the Highway Patrol cop in pursuit bearing up swiftly when the highway is clear and the girls are hysterical with excitement squealing and clutching one another thrown from side to side as Legs grimaces sighting the bridge ahead, it's one of those old-fashioned nightmare bridges with a steep narrow ramp, narrow floor made of planks but there's no time for hesitation Legs isn't going to use the brakes, she's shrewd, reasoning too that the cop will have to slow down, the fucker'll be cautious thus she'll have several seconds advantage won't she?--several seconds can make quite a difference in a contest like this so the Buick's rushing up the ramp, onto the bridge, the front wheels strike and spin and seem at first to be lifting in decorous surprise Oh! oh but astonishingly the car holds, it's a heavy machine of power that seems almost intelligent until flying off the bridge hitting a patch of slick part-melted ice the car swerves, now the rear wheels appear to be lifting, there's a moment when all effort ceases, all gravity ceases, the Buick a vessel of screams as it lifts, floats, it's being flung into space how weightless! Maddy's eyes are open now, she'll remember all her life this Now, now how without consequence! as the car hits the earth again, yet rebounds as if still weightless, turning, spinning, a machine bearing flesh, bones, girls' breaths plunging and sliding and rolling and skittering like a giant hard-shelled insect on its back, now righting itself again, now again on its back, crunching hard, snow shooting through the broken windows and the roof collapsing inward as if crushed by a giant hand upside-down and the motor still gunning as if it's frantic to escape, they're buried in a cocoon of bluish white and there's a sound of whimpering, panting,sobbing, a dog's puppyish yipping and a strong smell of urine and Legs is crying breathlessly half in anger half in exultation, caught there behind the wheel unable to turn, to look around, to see, "Nobody's dead--right?" Nobody's dead.
The Iraqi sun quickly heated the air to an unbearable onehundred twenty three degree’s, causing an unquenchable thirst toboil up in him. Thomas then dropped his rifle under his right arm,where it hung beneath his pit by a strap called a fast sling, there theweapon dangled under his sweat soaked uniform.
Hope, tell me how could it be possible that grief and happiness are scattered all over the world so unevenly? Why do some people get all the troubles and misfortunes while the others are intoxicated with the abundance of material belongings, fat bellies and money? Why is there such injustice? Or, maybe, we are mistaken it’s unfair!?
People! Please. Listen. Our life, our bodies are the most authentic clinical record ever! Why do you have to ask for any other one, alien, fake, distorted by illegible handwriting belonging to someone who has never been us and has never tried to understand us? Do you think that is right?
Sometimes it feels like you and I are at the movie theater, sitting next to each other and watching the same movie. People say something, argue incessantly, even fight, but this is all somewhere far away, on the other side of the screen, and we are just passive onlookers unable to affect the course of events.
And now, it turns out that our mother’s name means benevolence and generosity to people as objects of love! This is both a unique and beautiful name, Charity. “It was one of life’s cruel ironies,” I thought, “that a midwife, or whoever filled in the documents, must have known our mom’s name. I suppose she had a lot of fun naming us Hope and Faith! Or, on the contrary, she sympathized.
Oh, this tormenting concern that your neighbor’s life might be better than yours! And how great it feels when you realize that the truth is exactly the opposite; and we’re not so different after all. Nоthing brings true neighbors together like a little friendly competition.
All our life we had been dreaming to get through every little hole into this beautiful and unfamiliar world where parents and children love each other not for something but in spite of everything, to plunge into this fairy world entirely, settle down and live there. So why didn’t I feel happy when it happened for real?
People have no limits either in love or in hatred. But is it their fault? They despise us because they are afraid, for we remind them that getting crippled or sick might happen to anyone; or, perhaps, the true reason of their hatred lies much deeper inside, stemming from the hidden ugliness of their own souls?
Would he as well neglect the perishing person, wouldn’t he help to get up, would he turn away? I think I know the answer is obvious. He was flying so high above each of us that after falling down he got below everybody else. To be precise, he was simply knocked down. And we, none of us, just did nothing. Thus, with everybody’s silent acquiescence, the best of us were eliminated in order to let others decay.
What if initially they had named you Faith and me Hope, but afterwards they forgot who of us had which name and swapped them around by mistake? You always believe that everything is going to be all right, and your faith helps me.”“And you hope that it will be that way. We have this close bond between us,” and, after thinking a while, you added, “All people need hope, no one can live without it; and our hope is way stronger when it is warmed up by faith. So it isn’t really important who is Faith and who is Hope; the main thing is that we are connected together.
What is the point of living if we are going to die anyway? What difference does it make if it’s going to happen now or later? All we have to do is to take a step and jump off; that will resolve all problems, answer all questions at a time. And what if we are already flying down? We have jumped off, – perhaps, right after the birth, – not even knowing about it! The ground is already near; we just have the last moment to live and finally realize we are already dead for a long time.
Hope, what if initially they had named you Faith and me Hope, but afterwards they forgot who of us had which name and swapped them around by mistake? You always believe that everything is going to be all right, and your faith helps me.”“And you hope that it will be that way. We have this close bond between us,” and, after thinking a while, you added, “All people need hope, no one can live without it; and our hope is way stronger when it is warmed up by faith. So it isn’t really important who is Faith and who is Hope; the main thing is that we are connected together.
But nothing was said about chicken farming anymore. Once, long after it was too late for farming, he might catch her crying and pet her a bit. 'What's the matter, little baby? You got a fever? You want to take the night off?' She might murmur something about candling eggs, but he wouldn't be able to understand what she meant. And after a while she cried on without knowing what she meant either, as a girl cries over a bad dream long after the dream is forgotten.In time the tears dried. She could no longer cry over anything. All the tears had been shed, all the laughs had been had; all the long spent. Leaving nothing to do but to sit stupefied, night after night, under lights made soft beside music with a beat, to rise automatically when someone wearing pants pointed a finger and said 'that one there.
Tragedy's language stresses that whatever is within us is obscure, many faceted, impossible to see. Performance gave this question of what is within a physical force. The spectators were far away from the performers, on that hill above the theatre. At the centre of their vision was a small hut, into which they could not see. The physical action presented to their attention was violent but mostly unseen. They inferred it, as they inferred inner movement, from words spoken by figures whose entrances and exits into and out of the visible space patterned the play. They saw its results when that facade opened to reveal a dead body. This genre, with its dialectics of seen and unseen, inside and outside, exit and entrance, was a simultaneously internal and external, intellectual and somatic expression of contemporary questions about the inward sources of harm, knowledge, power, and darkness.
Becky was a weed. Nobody ever wanted them taking over the bigger, prettier plants. People went to all extremes to make them go away. They sprayed poison, pulled until the roots gave way. They felt only like their garden was complete when every tendril was extirpated. This was how she felt from birth.
Without direction, the respiratory technician goes to the head of the bed. She takes the tubing, attaches it to the oxygen, and turns it on as high as it will go. She provides a seal with her hand cupped over the plastic mask, over the nose and mouth of the toddler, and methodically provides oxygenated air. Doyle’s tiny chest rises and falls while I listen with my stethoscope. I am reaching for another breathing tube.“Fib!” Dr. Pedras feels for a pulse while another places gelled pads on her chest.
Your old tutor did you a great disservice, Mr. Kynaston. He taught you how to speak, and swoon, and toss your head but he never taught you how to suffer like a woman, or love like a woman. He trapped a man in a woman's form and left you there to die! I always hated you as Desdemona. You never fought! You just died, beautifully. No woman would die like that, no matter how much she loved him. A woman would fight!
In fact the "mask" theme has come up several times in my background reading. Richard Sennett, for example, in "The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism", and Robert Jackall, in "Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate managers", refer repeatedly to the "masks" that corporate functionaries are required to wear, like actors in an ancient Greek drama. According to Jackall, corporate managers stress the need to exercise iron self-control and to mask all emotion and intention behind bland, smiling, and agreeable public faces. Kimberly seems to have perfected the requisite phoniness and even as I dislike her, my whole aim is to be welcomed into the same corporate culture that she seems to have mastered, meaning that I need to "get in the face" of my revulsion and overcome it. But until I reach that transcendent point, I seem to be stuck in an emotional space left over from my midteen years: I hate you; please love me.
All drama is about lies. All drama is about something that’s hidden. A drama starts because a situation becomes imbalanced by a lie. The lie may be something we tell each other or something we think about ourselves, but the lie imbalances a situation. If you’re cheating on your wife the repression of that puts things out of balance; or if you’re someone you think you’re not, and you think you should be further ahead in your job, that neurotic vision takes over your life and you’re plagued by it until you’re cleansed. At the end of a play the lie is revealed. The better the play the more surprising and inevitable the lie is. Aristotle told us this
Even if we have ourselves so fully convinced that we are on the right track because we desperately want the specific direction we have chosen to be the correct one, if the universe disagrees with our choices, it will not be shy in telling us so.
Naturalists tell of a noble race of horses that instinctively open a vein with their teeth, when heated and exhausted by a long course, in order to breathe more freely. I am often tempted to open a vein, to procure for myself everlasting liberty. Cento volte ho impugnato una lama per conficcarmela nel cuore. Si dice di una nobile razza i cavalli,che quando si sentono accaldati e affaticati, si aprono istintivamente una vena, per respirare più liberamente. Spesso anche io vorrei aprirmi una vena che mi desse libertà eterna.
You’re always on time, aren’t you?” I said flirtatiously as he arrived.“My darling lady, when it’s you … yes I am.” He opened the car door and as I was securely inside, I reached over to unlock his door on the spur of the moment. I thought I shouldn’t tell him I did not want him to feel rejected or abandoned tonight. Still, I couldn’t just postpone my education. Quickly, I hid my concern from his eyes. They were thirsting to read every thought from my mind that appeared on my face. At the dinner table, I did my best to cover my frustrations, holding normal activities Amillo and I did on dates, every once in a while shifting my eyes away to daze off in thought. -Emerald Eyes Of The Sea
A sharp pain in her chest became more intoxicating with each breath she took. There it was. The reason she had forced herself to keep her distance from love. Why she had given up on trusting someone not to hurt her. Because a broken heart, no matter how figurative, was an unbearable pain to endure. And sometimes, no matter how much you want to be with someone, there’s never a guarantee that they want you back.
The guilt fell upon him like a hammer to a nail. He dropped onto his bed, grabbing the picture frame that sat next to it. I’m sorry were the words that repeatedly came out of his mouth. All he could think was, how could he do that to her? To the woman he vowed to spend the rest of his life with. His stomach hurt just from thinking about it.
CARDINAL WOLSEYSo farewell to the little good you bear me.Farewell! a long farewell, to all my greatness!This is the state of man: to-day he puts forthThe tender leaves of hopes; to-morrow blossoms,And bears his blushing honours thick upon him;The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surelyHis greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured,Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,This many summers in a sea of glory,But far beyond my depth: my high-blown prideAt length broke under me and now has left me,Weary and old with service, to the mercyOf a rude stream, that must for ever hide me.Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye:I feel my heart new open'd. O, how wretchedIs that poor man that hangs on princes' favours!There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to,That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin,More pangs and fears than wars or women have:And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,Never to hope again
Belize: Hell or heaven? [Roy indicates "Heaven" through a glance]Belize: Like San Francisco.Roy Cohn: A city. Good. I was worried... it'd be a garden. I hate that shit.Belize: Mmmm. Big city. Overgrown with weeds, but flowering weeds. On every corner a wrecking crew and something new and crooked going up catty corner to that. Windows missing in every edifice like broken teeth, fierce gusts of gritty wind, and a gray high sky full of ravens.Roy Cohn: Isaiah.Belize: Prophet birds, Roy. Piles of trash, but lapidary like rubies and obsidian, and diamond-colored cowspit streamers in the wind. And voting booths.Roy Cohn: And a dragon atop a golden horde.Belize: And everyone in Balencia gowns with red corsages, and big dance palaces full of music and lights and racial impurity and gender confusion. And all the deities are creole, mulatto, brown as the mouths of rivers. Race, taste and history finally overcome. And you ain't there.Roy Cohn: And Heaven?Belize: That was Heaven, Roy.
I gave you a few laughs and showed you a good time, but there was no future with me. So although it was fun while it lasted, you made up your mind to choose the stability and security a rich man can offer.”She shook her head. “No.”“No?”“If you look in your heart, you know that’s not true.”“So, what is it then, he went into a jealous rage and he threatenedyou?”“Yes.”“With your life?”“No.”“Well then...”“With yours.
And if I sit in that room at the top of the house and I think about my life and if I shut my eyes from time to time and imagine being warm in the summer and I hear the bees buzzing and for a moment I truly am Alice in Wonderland, do you have the heart to tell me I am not?
I look for John Proctor that took me from my sleep and put knowledge in my heart! I never knew what pretence Salem was, I never knew the lying lessons I was taught by all these Christian women and their covenanted men! And now you bid me tear the light out of my eyes! I will not, I cannot! You loved me, John Proctor, and whatever sin it is, you love me yet!
You know, when life presents you only good things and you idealize them to your way.And abruptly it comes up an avalanche of catastrophes and destroys all your beautiful dreams, as a war that destroys an entire country or a volcano that devastates forests.That's how I feel and I write in this diary 'How everything should have been' in my life.
What quantities evil - the amount of blood spilled the body count, the intentional destruction of innocent masses? Regardless of how evil is defined, there will always be those in power to discriminately judge it and their corrupt policing forces that enforce it.
The woman with the cat complex is named Mrs. Alice Plesher, but she doesn't reveal her first name to him and Sai only finds out by accident, later. Mrs. Plesher calls the paper and is put through to Sai. He has no idea why although he could guess the new guy gets all of the reporter-on-the-beat drudgery assignments until proven worthy. Alice speaks haltingly as if hardened by age and her voice reveals a rasp. Sai pictures her in a long house dress from the fifties, wide pink and white stripes fading with age---a smock of beige over the dress, a multitude of cats clinging to the fabric like stick-ons.
We all know that 97% of the money in the world doesn't exist and that's thanks to Fractional Reserve Banking, or should I say fictional reserve banking." He grinned at his own joke, his smile partly hidden by his hair, "Money is no longer attached to the Gold Standard, therefore, it isn't based on anything. So when it says, 'I promise to pay the bearer on demand ten pounds,' I have to ask, ten pounds of what?" Silence. "The world is owned by the rich shareholder, the rich superstar, the rich industrialist, the rich aristocracy." He was now marching around the stage, "It doesn't matter who or what they are, if they're rich then they own a part of the world, but they only own it because they've got lots of money. Which means they own part of the 97% of the world’s fictional money, the pretend money that only exists on a computer." He stopped abruptly and stared out at the audience, "Which means that if they cashed in their fictional nonexistent money they'd get something like this ten pound note offering to pay the bearer the sum of ten pounds of nothing." He held the note aloft, "Which means the rich have managed to buy the entire world with paper nothing that has a value of nothing and we've let them do it.
Chamberlain raised his saber, let loose the shout that was the greatest sound he could make, boiling the yell up from his chest: Fix bayonets! Charge! Fix bayonets! Charge! Fix bayonets! Charge! He leaped down from the boulder, still screaming, his voice beginning to to crack and give, and all around him his men were roaring animal screams, and he saw the whole Regiment rising and pouring over the wall and beginning to bound down through the dark bushes, over the dead and dying wounded, hats coming off, hair flying, mouths making sounds, one man firing as he ran, the last bullet, last round.
Aricles and I are married. The Greek god Apollo found out and he threatened to discredit and shame me before the other gods unless Aricles refused to fight. To protect my honor and name, he has allowed all of you to insult and attack him, and I will not stand for him to be hurt again. By anyone." Bathymaas
I recount as this journey begins where I rest to gather the tale from thissame old house resting on the hill, leaving me a view of a carnival once seen from just across the tracks. My pallet is dry now. The colors I see no more. The rain has washed away many of the signs that once stood for a prosperhome and family. My grave is waiting. The dreams once filled my head withimages of world unison, hope and companionship for all. The saga spokenthrough my canvas drew darker as the years went on to the bitter cold nights.All that comes to me now are glimpses of faces that graced my soul.
Wes sat in a cracked vinyl booth picking at his fries and listening to Amanda go on and on about the dress she'd found. '...and it has these little lavender bows. Oh, Wes, I can't wait 'til you see it.' She gesticulated wildly, and her only saving grace right now was her amazing rack that swayed and bounced with each movement. Sometimes he swore that was the only reason he ever looked crosswise at Amanda Price. That, and her daddy's checkbook. 'And I found these shoes--" 'Uh huh, that's nice,' he cut her off and slid free from the booth. He held out his hand. 'Got the card?' He waved the bill in the air at her questioning gaze. Was she a little cross-eyed, maybe? He thought so.
And Kate thought about a time, long ago, when she had witnessed an ongoing romance between two mental patients. As a teenager watching their unlikely relationship unfold in front of her, she had understood that people did whatever they needed to do to be happy, regardless of their unfortunate circumstances. She supposed her mother’s day care center was born out of the desire to feel needed, while making use of the skills that were practically all she had managed to acquire during decades of battling a debilitating illness.
There were formerly horizons within which people lived and thought and mythologized. There are now no more horizons. And with the dissolution of horizons we have experienced and are experiencing collisions, terrific collisions, not only of peoples but also of their mythologies. It is as when dividing panels are withdrawn from between chambers of very hot and very cold airs: there is a rush of these forces together. And so we are right now in an extremely perilous age of thunder, lightning, and hurricanes all around. I think it is improper to become hysterical about it, projecting hatred and blame. It is an inevitable, altogether natural thing that when energies that have never met before come into collision—each bearing its own pride—there should be turbulence. That is just what we are experiencing; and we are riding it: riding it to a new age, a new birth, a totally new condition of mankind—to which no one anywhere alive today can say that he has the key, the answer, the prophecy, to its dawn. Nor is there anyone to condemn here (”Judge not, that you may not be judged!”). What is occurring is completely natural, as are its pains, confusions, and mistakes.
You’re not leaving. I told you that.” She worked to keep the calm in her tone to counter his fury. “I’m going to shoot.” “It’s time to put your gun down, Noah.” “His blood will be on you.” Rook made eye contact with her and mouthed, Shoot. Him. She had no shot and said so with the smallest head shake.
Alannah?” He held her limp body waiting for a response. “Don’t do this.” He put his hand over the other cut whispering his words and healing it as well. “Alannah?” His voice begged, as he held her face in his hand Still no response. He looked at the ground she had laid on realizing that she had lost a lot of blood. Then from the corner of his eye he saw the rise and fall of her chest and let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. She still lives.
When Danny finally got off his knee, he took her by surprise again. He immediately began to tap a number on his mobile. Beth knew only too well who would be on the other end of the line. 'She said yes!' Danny announced triumphantly. Beth smiled as she held the diamond under the light and took a closer look.
Asif Ali maneuvers the gleaming Mercedes down the labyrinthine lanes of Old Kolkata with consummate skill, but his passengers do not notice how smoothly he avoids potholes, cows and beggars, how skilfully he sails through aging yellow lights to get the Bose family to their destination on time. This disappoints Asif only a little. In his six years of chauffeuring the rich and callous, he has realized that, to them, servants are invisible.
It was only a smile, nothing more. It didn't make everything all right. It didn't make ANYTHING all right. Only a smile. A tiny thing. A leaf in the woods, shaking in the wake of a startled bird's flight. But I'll take it. With open arms. Because when spring comes, it melts the snow one flake at a time, and maybe I just witnessed the first flake melting. - Amir
Today is your big moment. Moments, really. The life you’ve been waiting for is happening all around you. The scene unfolding right outside your window is worth more than the most beautiful painting, and the crackers and peanut butter that you’re having for lunch on the coffee table are as profound, in their own way, as the Last Supper. This is it. This is life in all its glory, swirling and unfolding around us, disguised as pedantic, pedestrian non-events. But pull of the mask and you will find your life, waiting to be made, chosen, woven, crafted. Your life, right now, today, is exploding with energy and power and detail and dimension, better than the best movie you have ever seen. You and your family and your friends and your house and your dinner table and your garage have all the makings of a life of epic proportions, a story for the ages. Because they all are. Every life is. You have stories worth telling, memories worth remembering, dreams worth working toward, a body worth feeding, a soul worth tending, and beyond that, the God of the universe dwells within you, the true culmination of super and natural. You are more than dust and bones. You are spirit and power and image of God. And you have been given Today.
Our lives drifts along with normal things happening. Some ups, some downs, but nothing to go down in history about. Nothing so fantastic or terrible that it'll be told for a thousand years.“But because we grew up surrounded by big dramatic story arcs in books and movies, we think our lives are supposed to be filled with huge ups and downs! So people pretend there is drama where there is none.”That's why people invent fights. That's why we're drawn to sports. That's why we act like everything that happens to us is such a big deal.We're trying to make our life into a fairy tale.
BOTTOMThere are things in this comedy of Pyramus and Thisby that will never please. First, Pyramus must draw a sword to kill himself; which the ladiescannot abide. How answer you that?SNOUTBy'r lakin, a parlous fear.STARVELINGI believe we must leave the killing out, when all is done.BOTTOMNot a whit: I have a device to make all well.Write me a prologue; and let the prologue seem tosay, we will do no harm with our swords, and thatPyramus is not killed indeed; and, for the morebetter assurance, tell them that I, Pyramus, am notPyramus, but Bottom the weaver: this will put themout of fear.QUINCEWell, we will have such a prologue; and it shall bewritten in eight and six.BOTTOMNo, make it two more; let it be written in eight and eight.
The basis of drama is ... is the struggle of the hero towards a specific goal at the end of which he realizes that what kept him from it was, in the lesser drama, civilization and, in the great drama, the discovery of something that he did not set out to discover but which can be seen retrospectively as inevitable. The example Aristotle uses, of course, is Oedipus.
……, but as I am a scholar I feel obliged to document what it is like here, most of the time, between the dramatic climaxes. In truth it is like this: You cannot imagine how time can be so still. It hangs. It weighs, and yet there is so little of it. It goes so slowly and it is so scarce. If I was writing this scene it would last a full 15 minutes. I would lie here and you would sit there.
They met me in the day of success: and I havelearned by the perfectest report, they have more inthem than mortal knowledge. When I burned in desireto question them further, they made themselves air,into which they vanished. Whiles I stood rapt inthe wonder of it, came missives from the king, whoall-hailed me 'Thane of Cawdor;' by which title,before, these weird sisters saluted me, and referredme to the coming on of time, with 'Hail, king thatshalt be!' This have I thought good to deliverthee, my dearest partner of greatness, that thoumightst not lose the dues of rejoicing, by beingignorant of what greatness is promised thee. Lay itto thy heart, and farewell.
Upon the publication of Goethe’s epic drama, the Faustian legend had reached an almost unapproachable zenith. Although many failed to appreciate, or indeed, to understand this magnum opus in its entirety, from this point onward his drama was the rule by which all other Faust adaptations were measured. Goethe had eclipsed the earlier legends and became the undisputed authority on the subject of Faust in the eyes of the new Romantic generation. To deviate from his path would be nothing short of blasphemy.
I grasped the mirror to look closer at the strange girl in the reflection. Yes, I could see some similarities. The shape of the face was the same, but with all the changes it looked unearthly. The reflection was beautiful ... extremely beautiful--small, pink lips ... pale and glowing skin ... fine white hair. But I couldn't stop focusing on the eyes. The bottomless blue was shocking in the midst of white. She could have competed against Lydia. No, she would have blown Lydia out of the water.
O, thou art fairer than the evening air Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars; Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter When he appear'd to hapless Semele; More lovely than the monarch of the sky In wanton Arethusa's azur'd armsExcerpt From: Christopher Marlowe. “The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus
- Ay! Thornton o' Marlborough Mill, as we call him.- He is one of the masters you are striving with, is he not? what sort of master is he? - Did yo' ever see a bulldog? Set a bulldog on hindlegs, and dress him up in coat and breeches, and yo'n just getten John Thornton.
At first, like a lot of trauma survivors, I was impatient and wanted immediate results. Once I caught myself in this behavior, I realized that it takes consistent commitment to heal patterns. After three or four months, I noticed a huge positive shift within myself. I felt a new level of happiness and contentment that I hadn't even known existed. I finally understood how my old trauma patterns had attracted drama in my present life. once I saw this dynamic, I made a conscious decision to "Drama Detox," and the patterns faded away.
My eyes filled with tears. Damn him for reeling me in and throwing me back like this. “Don’t,” he said softly. “Just go. You’ve humiliated me enough.” “You don’t know—” “Then tell me!” I clenched my hands into fists at my sides. “Fu**ing tell me or don’t, but stop playing these games.
The beauty of theatre was that it was a moving, changing art form—only those who watch the same performance night in after night out see the real naturalistic drama at work—the small changes, adjustments, changes in articulation or intonation, the addition of a cough or hiccup, a longer pause rife with more (or less) meaning, the character’s movement across the stage a step slower, a step closer to the audience, the change of a word here and there, an overall change in mood and tone, the actors becoming (or not) the characters more fully, blending in with them, losing themselves in the lines, in the characterizations, in a drama that is simultaneously unfolding and becoming more and more verisimilitudinous as time marches on. This is the real narrative—while the character changes on stage in an instant, the play changes slowly, unnoticeably (unnoticeable to those closest to it perhaps), like the face of a man in his thirties, like his beliefs about life, his motives, all slowly as if duplicating itself day by day, filling itself and becoming more and more itself, the rehearsal of Self, the dress rehearsal of Self, the performance of Self, the extended performance of Self, the encore…—it appears to be the same show, played over and over again with the same details to different crowds, and yet something happens. Something changes. It is not the same show.
We all got pushed into doing some bad stuff. And some people would blame all of that stuff on their circumstances. Maybe most people do. They come from shit and then do some shit. But you and I know better than that. It's not right. The stuff that's done to us is one thing. But the stuff we do because of it is a different story. There are very few things that are really beyond a person's control in life."-Caesar
I knew exactly when the fever had struck. I had been reading Hamlet in an English class at school. Everyone else stumbled, puzzling over the strange words. Then it had been my turn, and the language had suddenly woken in me, so that my heart and lungs and tongue and throat were on fire. Later, I understood that this was why people spoke of Shakespeare as a god. At the time, I felt like weeping. Somebody had released me from dumbness, from utter isolation. I knew that I could live inside these words, that they would give me a a shape, a shell. I had no idea, then, that I would never play Hamlet…. I’m an actor, and in a good year I earn eleven thousand pounds for dressing up as a carrot.
Survivors are often good at both resolving and generating crisis. While this capacity to handle crisis can make you a good emergency room worker or ambulance driver, it can also be a way for you to keep yourself from feeling. If you are addicted to intensity and drama...you may be running from yourself.
Women problems, huh?” Mac asked.“She’s more than a problem.” Adrian massaged his temples. “She’s…a virus, a lethal one. You know, there’s a rock song about her.” He sipped his whiskey and enjoyed the burning sensation as it trickled down his throat. “It’s called Poison.
Every culture that has lost myth has lost, by the same token, its natural healthy creativity. Only a horizon ringed about with myths can unify a culture. The forces of imagination and the Apollonian dream are saved only by myth from indiscriminate rambling. The images of myth must be the daemonic guardians, ubiquitous but unnoticed, presiding over the growth of the child's mind and interpreting to the mature man his life and struggles.
She never asked for that time yet she ended up getting it. He could not get away from her. Even if his feet moved at a hundred miles per hour, she was always right there, vividly imprinted in his mind. Calling him back to her. And he obediently responded to those calls. He was blindly being led by an all-consuming power that he had no control over.
When most dullards hear the words 'the theater,' they envision a twelve-screen multiplex where disaster porn entertains the culturally witless for 90 minutes at a time. Pfaugh. The word 'theater' has grandeur. Power. Back to its ancient Grecian origins, it means 'the seeing place.' A stage upon which actors and actresses use fiction to show us truths.
ANGELOFrom thee, even from thy virtue!What's this, what's this? Is this her fault or mine?The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?Ha!Not she: nor doth she tempt: but it is IThat, lying by the violet in the sun,Do as the carrion does, not as the flower,Corrupt with virtuous season. Can it beThat modesty may more betray our senseThan woman's lightness? Having waste ground enough,Shall we desire to raze the sanctuaryAnd pitch our evils there? O, fie, fie, fie!What dost thou, or what art thou, Angelo?Dost thou desire her foully for those thingsThat make her good? O, let her brother live!Thieves for their robbery have authorityWhen judges steal themselves. What, do I love her,That I desire to hear her speak again,And feast upon her eyes? What is't I dream on?O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,With saints dost bait thy hook! Most dangerousIs that temptation that doth goad us onTo sin in loving virtue: never could the strumpet,With all her double vigour, art and nature,Once stir my temper; but this virtuous maidSubdues me quite. Even till now,When men were fond, I smiled and wonder'd how.-- Measure for Measure, II, ii
You say your life is your own. But can you dare to ignore the chance that you are taking part in a gigantic drama under the orders of a divine Producer? Your cue may not come till the end of the play--it may be totally unimportant, a mere walking-on part, but upon it may hang the issues of the play if you do not give the cue to another player. The whole edifice may crumple. You as you, may not matter to anyone in the world, but you as a person in a particular place may matter unimaginably.
I would later discover it was a bad idea to gather more than two of these people in an enclosed area for any length of time. The stage was not only a physical place but also a state of mind, and the word audience was defined as anyone forced to suffer your company. We young actors were a string of lightbulbs left burning 24 hours a day, exhausting ourselves and others with our self-proclaimed brilliance.
The intoxication with the theatre, with its limelight, costumes, and masks, and with its passions and conflicts, accords well with the adolescence of a man who was to act his role with an intense sense of the dramatic, and of whose life it might indeed be said that its very shape had the power and pattern of classical tragedy.
Each of our lives is the sum of its parts. No ONE individual is the driving force. And no one person can stall its progression. If everyone plays their position, life evolves without drama, opportunities flourish and ultimately we ALL benefit. When you selfishly overstate your part you only weaken the whole.
Poets must be grounded in the education of the arts, drama, history, mysticism, esotericism, and philosophy. To gain knowledge and become learned of the above is easy - read. Poets should apply this knowledge to their work, so a poet will advance to the next level, to their next phase of their emotional, psychological and spiritual development, growing in years in a short space of time, in hours or months if he or she is an avid reader. This knowledge will birth work that is not meretricious but of noble parentage.
It was a relief to inhabit someone else's life for a while, to get her personal issues for a brief respite. In a play, she knew exactly how all her character's problems would be resolved. No matter how the cast performed, the end turned out the same. No questions, no worries, no unknowns.
The author relates that the word "OBSCENE" springs from the concept in Greek drama that certain actions would be performed outside the scene or off the stage. He clarifies that the Greeks did not shy away from shocking actions, but they knew that portraying them in the audience's view would drown out the emotional subtlety of the character development and ethical dilemmas.
It was a constant battle not to turn her head in his direction; but every time she did, he was looking over at her. Each time he’d smile, and Rylan would jerk her gaze away. She knew what that smile was capable of, and she was doing a good job avoiding it until it suddenly appeared over her shoulder.
Does it go away?" she asks. "Missing each other?" I think about how much I missed Maman. I still do, though it isn´t as acute as it once was. "A little bit," I whisper."Enough so that life continues. In a year you won´t even think about me. " She turns around in my arms and looks up at me, tugging at a strand of my hair. "don´t say stupid things, Sahar. You´re smarter than that.
I'm afraid Dr. Mondrick chose an unfortunate publicity device. After all, the theory of human evolution is no longer front page news. Every known detail of the origin of mankind is extremely important to such a specialist as Dr. Mondrick, but it doesn't interest the man in the street - not unless it's dramatized.
Tell me a truth, Senna.""I don't know how," I breath."Then tell me a lie.""I don't love you," I say. I sink beneath the weight of it all.Isaac stirs behind me, and then he is leaning over me, his elbows on either side of my head."The truth is for the mind," he says. "Lies are for the heart. So let's just keep lying.
Marianne would have thought herself very inexcusable had she been able to sleep at all the first night after parting from Willoughby. She would have been ashamed to look her family in the face next morning, had she not risen from her bed in more need of repose than when she lay down in it.
For eight years I dreamed of fire. Trees ignited as I passed them; oceansburned. The sugary smoke settled in my hair as I slept, the scent like a cloud left on my pillow as I rose. Even so, the moment my mattress started to burn, I bolted awake. The sharp, chemical smell was nothing like the hazy syrup of my dreams; the two were as different as Carolina and Indian jasmine, separation and attachment. They could not be confused. Standing in the middle of the room, I located the source of the fire. A neat row of wooden matches lined the foot of the bed. They ignited, one after the next, a glowing picket fence across the piped edging. Watching them light, I felt a terror unequal to the size of the flickering flames, and for a paralyzing moment I was ten years old again, desperate and hopeful in a way I had never been before and never would be again. But the bare synthetic mattress did not ignite like the thistle had in late October. It smoldered, and then the fire went out. It was my eighteenth birthday.
And do you know why we have not the power to attain this Stoic ideal? It is because we refuse to believe in our power. Nay, of a surety, there is something else which plays a part: it is because we are in love with our vices; we uphold them and prefer to make excuses for them rather than shake them off. We mortals have been endowed with sufficient strength by nature, if only we use this strength, if only we concentrate our powers and rouse them all to help us or at least not to hinder us. The reason is unwillingness, the excuse, inability.
Gage is waiting on the makeshift bed when she enters the room she’s been sleeping in. The small lantern in the corner barely lights his features. His shoulders are hunched, his hands clasped together before him, and when he looks up, his face is downcast. There are a number of reasons why he would look this way, but the worst possible thing comes to mind first.Someone is dead.
Over the years Breece had lectured that truth was liquid. That it evaporated in the heat of passion, froze in the cold of fear, and bent itself around virginous, unpurposeful fibs. It could churn and pull you under, drown you in itself, or let you ride upon it like a surf. But truth was always relfective. It showed blackheads and blemishes, fat rolls and sags, scabs and scars. Truth was fearful, angry and dangerous, and that was why so many people did their utmost to avoid it.
Do you know who W.H. Auden was, Mr. Iscariot? W.H. Auden was a poet who once said, “God may reduce you on Judgement Day to tears of shame reciting by heart the poems you would have written had your life been good”…She was my poem, Mr. Iscariot. Her and the kids. But mostly her. You cashed in for silver, Mr. Iscariot. But me? Me…I threw away gold. That’s a fact. That’s a natural fact.
Wow, Skye.” He kneels in front of me, ready to put one of his huge, strong hands on my knees. I recoil suddenly before I catch myself. Someone normal doesn’t react like that at the mere possibility of an innocent touch. “Okay, I’m going to sit on your friend’s bed.” He does just that, his eyes locked with mine. I have the sense I’m trapped and I don’t like it. I don’t want to ever feel like that again. “You should go,” I say, my voice wavering and barely above a whisper.He takes a sip of his coffee absentmindedly, his eyes never leaving my face. I don’t drink mine. I don’t even feel the mug between my hands. I feel nothing besides the hammering of my heart in my chest. I’m having difficulty breathing, and my forehead and neck are sweaty under my hair.“Can I say something before I go?” he asks me in a voice calmer than he must feel if I take into account his clenched fist and the shaking of his hand holding the mug of coffee. I just nod, not sure I’m able to mutter a word through the lump in my throat. “I’m not the enemy. I’m not the kind of guy who would try to hurt you more when I know you’re already hurting, but I’m someone willing to hear you and understand you. I want to be able to help.
As I stared into those crystalline eyes, I knew I had finally found what I was looking for, but it came with a price. Damien was everything I hated and it wasn't until that moment that I realized how lost I really was. My soul was drawn to his very aura, but the ache within my heart was the undeniable reminder that it could never be a reality. My pride and stubbornness had forever wrecked what Damien and I could have had. I was but a galaxy within a black hole, something so majestic and extraordinary, and it was irrevocably lost to me.
The television commercial has mounted the most serious assault on capitalist ideology since the publication of Das Kapital. To understand why, we must remind ourselves that capitalism, like science and liberal democracy, was an outgrowth of the Enlightenment. Its principal theorists, even its most prosperous practitioners, believed capitalism to be based on the idea that both buyer and seller are sufficiently mature, well informed and reasonable to engage in transactions of mutual self-interest. If greed was taken to be the fuel of the capitalist engine, the surely rationality was the driver. The theory states, in part, that competition in the marketplace requires that the buyer not only knows what is good for him but also what is good. If the seller produces nothing of value, as determined by a rational marketplace, then he loses out. It is the assumption of rationality among buyers that spurs competitors to become winners, and winners to keep on winning. Where it is assumed that a buyer is unable to make rational decisions, laws are passed to invalidate transactions, as, for example, those which prohibit children from making contracts...Of course, the practice of capitalism has its contradictions...But television commercials make hash of it...By substituting images for claims, the pictorial commercial made emotional appeal, not tests of truth, the basis of consumer decisions. The distance between rationality and advertising is now so wide that it is difficult to remember that there once existed a connection between them. Today, on television commercials, propositions are as scarce as unattractive people. The truth or falsity of an advertiser's claim is simply not an issue. A McDonald's commercial, for example, is not a series of testable, logically ordered assertions. It is a drama--a mythology, if you will--of handsome people selling, buying and eating hamburgers, and being driven to near ecstasy by their good fortune. No claim are made, except those the viewer projects onto or infers from the drama. One can like or dislike a television commercial, of course. But one cannot refute it.
The power of music, narrative and drama is of the greatest practical and theoretical importance. One may see this even in the case of idiots, with IQs below 20 and the extremest motor incompetence and bewilderment. Their uncouth movements may disappear in a moment with music and dancing—suddenly, with music, they know how to move. We see how the retarded, unable to perform fairly simple tasks involving perhaps four or five movements or procedures in sequence, can do these perfectly if they work to music—the sequence of movements they cannot hold as schemes being perfectly holdable as music, i.e. embedded in music. The same may be seen, very dramatically, in patients with severe frontal lobe damage and apraxia—an inability to do things, to retain the simplest motor sequences and programmes, even to walk, despite perfectly preserved intelligence in all other ways. This procedural defect, or motor idiocy, as one might call it, which completely defeats any ordinary system of rehabilitative instruction, vanishes at once if music is the instructor. All this, no doubt, is the rationale, or one of the rationales, of work songs.
Because you know that's all I needs, all I wants, is for you to try to run, to turn your back on me and run. I know you aint going to. Because all you got to beat is me. I got to beat old Carothers. Get your pistol.""No," the other said. "Go home. Get out of here. Tonight I will come to your house-----""After this?" Lucas said. "Me and you, in the same country, breathing the same air even? No matter what you could say, what you could even prove so I would have to believe it, after this? Get your pistol.
Em, you have a soul.”“How can you be so sure of that, Hayden? How many people die and come back?”“No one dies and comes back. You did because of your sister, and you have a gift. Maybe that played a role in your coming back, but you have a soul. You aren’t evil. There’s nothing you can say that will make me think that.” I looked up and our gazes locked. “And there’s nothing you can say to make me feel differently.” He lowered his eyes. Thick lashes fanned his cheeks. “I know you do, because I wouldn’t want to… to kiss you if you didn’t have a soul.” I froze.“You… you want to kiss me?
Ember, he’s not going to—” I pushed off the car. “Please. Hayden, please don’t tell him. I’m all Olivia really has. Please.” My voice cracked, and I looked away, embarrassed. “She’s all I have.” Hayden made a soft noise deep in his throat. Then he clasped my elbows and pulled me right up against him. His arms carefully snaked around my waist, trapping me in a hug. It could have been the bunny. Hell, it could’ve been the last two years that suddenly made me want to stay in Hayden’s embrace. Surely— surely not the way his heat thawed the ice encasing my entire body. Or how hard his chest felt under the sweater… or how perfectly I fit against him. And he was a chivalrous type of guy. Right? He wanted to help me control my gift, as ridiculous as that sounded. Comfort— he offered comfort, and I needed to remember that. His arms around my waist made it hard, really hard to keep that in mind, though. “Okay.” Hayden’s breath stirred the hair around my ear. “Even though I think I should tell him, I won’t. But I will figure out who did this.
Kat and I talked about Jacob in our own private code."Are you baking cookies yet?" she said. That was standard for : have you fucked?"Oh yeah. We've made a couple dozen by now.""What kind?" In other words, was Jacob any good."Chocolate-chip," I said. "And he not only likes to bake them, he likes to eat them, too.""Congratulations.
LARRY--(with increasing bitter intensity, more as if he were fighting with himself than with Hickey) I'm afraid to live, am I?--and even more afraid to die! So I sit here, with my pride drowned on the bottom of a bottle, keeping drunk so I won't see myself shaking in my britches with fright, or hear myself whining and praying: Beloved Christ, let me live a little longer at any price! If it's only for a few days more, or a few hours even, have mercy, Almighty God, and let me still clutch greedily to my yellow heart this sweet treasure, this jewel beyond price, the dirty, stinking bit of withered old flesh which is my beautiful little life! (He laughs with a sneering, vindictive self-loathing, staring inward at himself with contempt and hatred. Then abruptly he makes Hickey again the antagonist.) You think you'll make me admit that to myself?
So, what's the story?""No story. Just a nightmare.”“Meaning?”“Meaning, heavy compression lines in his cartilage, severe bruising on his kidneys, liver and lower intestines. Fracture marks on his collar bone, tibia, radius, humerus, scapular, femur and every single one of his ribs have been broken. Don't even get me started on the concussive damage to his skull and brain tissue. Twenty-three percent of this boys body is scared for life. And yet, every organ is functioning normally and his neurological activity is above average. He's eighteen years old and he weights about two bills but remove the scar tissue and he'd weigh about a buck-ten. All in all, I say he lived inside a hydraulic car press, went through the Napoleonic wars and was on board the Hindenburg when it went down in flame and yet he's okay...this boy just refuses to die.
No I am not okay. I've just been pulled out of play tryouts where I had to be the first to audition and everyone's trying out for the same parts, I just had a very bizarre conversation with the school secretary, Megan may be throwing up her cucumber sandwiches, I've broken five of the seven deadly sins in as many hours, a demon may be inside a girl in my world religions class, Grant Brawner called me by name, my license photo looks like a dead fish, I have to drive my friends all over town in two hours when I've never even driven without Dad before, none of my birthday wishes have come true yet, and now you're here with muffins like I'm in second grade? So, no, I am not ok.
Every reiteration of the idea that _nothing matters_ debases the human spirit.Every reiteration of the idea that there is no drama in modern life, there is only dramatization, that there is no tragedy, there is only unexplained misfortune, debases us. It denies what we know to be true. In denying what we know, we are as a nation which cannot remember its dreams--like an unhappy person who cannot remember his dreams and so denies that he does dream, and denies that there are such things as dreams.
I'm so much more scared of white guys than black guys. Like an angry black guys would pull out a gun and be like 'Yo, I'm coming back with my cousins and we're gonna funck you up' and a white guy would be like just 'BANG'!
What sort of attractions do you think lured our coreligionists out of the ghetto and into the mainstream of European culture? Was it the wit of Molière, or the ingenious stage mechanisms of Pixérécourt? Or was it simply the opportunity to cast an eye, without shame, upon the living, unclad human form?
But what the measured prose of psychiatrists and the carefully calculated statistics of social scientists rarely capture is the experience of inner struggle. These "significant changes" do not occur automatically. In fact, they must often fight against our resistance. In this sense, midlife is a drama more worthy of a playwright than a scholar. We are characters in the play, caught at the opening of the second act, and we do not know what will happen next.
I would like to curl up and become a small thing. About this big. And still. Very still. Have you ever become so melancholy, that you wanted to fit in the palm of your beloved’s hand? And lie there, for fortnights, or decades, or the length of time between stars? In complete silence?
We left the nursery in silence, Ma smoking a roll-up, looking like she hadn’t slept in a week or maybe like she had slept for a whole week. When the nursery was just a grubby finger smudge behind us Ma looked down at me and said in her poshed-up telephone voice: “Will you speak to Janie about swearing? Fuckin’ busybody!”I laughed and swung our linked hands.“Aye, fuckin’ busybody.”Pleas of laughter escaped us and spiraled up into the hot, blue Scottish sky. We laughed all the way home
The setting sunWith yellow radiance lighten'd all the vale;And as the warriors moved, each polish'd helm,Corslet or spear, glanced back his gilded beams.The hill they climbed, and halting at its top,Of more than mortal size, towering, they seem'dA host angelic, clad in burning arms.
He held me much closer than Carl had. His grip was firm and possessive. It left no doubt in anyone’s mind who I belonged to and that alone sent a thrill through me that I knew was wrong. He imprisoned me in the unwavering chains of his gaze, leaving me powerless to break away while he scrutinized my soul. I wondered what he was looking for.“You came.”The hand on my waist slid over the swell in my spine where it connected to the rise of my backside. His palm flattened against the spot and I was drawn even closer, eliminating what modicum of space there had been between us. My soft frame was cradled seamlessly into the unyielding length of his in all the places that counted, thighs, pelvis, stomach … breasts. I couldn’t even breathe without feeling the skim of my hardened nipples against his chest. I couldn’t move without feeling his cock reaching for me through miles of fabric to prod into my midsection. He was long and hard and I grew wet from that knowledge alone.“Gabriel…”“I couldn’t leave without having this dance with you.”My fingers tightened around his shoulder. “Why?”His quiet exhalation whispered over the curve of my cheeks, smelling of mint and despair. “Because the further away I got from you, the more it felt like if I kept driving, I would lose you for good and that scared me like nothing else.
I think a person has to believe in something,or search out some kind of faith;otherwise life is empty, nothing.How can you live not knowing why the cranes fly,why children are born, why there are stars in the sky...Either you know why you live,or it's all small, unnecessary bits.
Oh, where is it, where did my past go, when I was young, happy and intelligent, when my dreams and thoughts had some grace, and the present and future were lit up with hope? Why is it, that when we've just started to live, we grow dull, gray, uninteresting, lazy, useless, with flattened-out souls?
Tavi spent an eternity in misery, longing for death to bring sweet release from the unrelenting torment. The others gathered at the side of his bunk on the ship, keeping a deathwatch over him."I don't see what all the drama is about," Demos said, his quiet voice filled with habitual disinterst. "He's seasick. It will pass."~Captain's Fury
Of course, in my mind, violence would have been better, but since that wasn’t an option, I decided to play along. “It’s okay, handsome. I’ve only been here a few minutes. I’d like to introduce you to Dick.”“No, it’s…” Richard tried to correct me only to be interrupted by Drew.“Nice to meet you, Dick,” Drew retorted.
The accent was warm and soft and undeniably Northern. When I turned around, I was staring into a pair of beautiful crystal-blue eyes. “Wow,” I whispered. I scanned the paint swatches, wondering if such a shade of blue would look good on the exterior of my house. “Mr. Johnson said you might need help selecting paint.” “It’s impossible,” I muttered. “I just wanted to buy some blue paint. Why is this so complicated?” The handsome man stepped closer to my side. “It isn’t, really. Just pick what you like.” I like crystal-blue. Luckily, I didn’t say those words aloud.