For I am—or I was—one of those people who pride themselves in on their willpower, on their ability to make a decision and carry it through. This virtue, like most virtues, is ambiguity itself. People who believe that they are strong-willed and th...
Her mind moved around and around the subject, moving with a kind of fuzzy firmness. With no coherent thought process, she arrived at a conviction - a habit with the basically insecure; an insecurity whose seeds are invariably planted earlier, in unde...
I had a few good professors in my painting and drawing classes, but all my graphic design classes tried to teach us how to use Photoshop and Illistrator by showing the class demonstration video clips. You know, exactly like the kind you can watch for...
I decide to scope out craigslist to see all the vibrant economic employment opportunities available to me in this depression. Oh, I’m sorry, I mean “recession.” No matter how many millions of jobs are lost, how much debt our country accrues, or...
The steel door of the incinerator went up and the muted hum of the eternal fire became a red roaring. The heat lunged out at them like a famished beast. Then Rahel's Ammu was fed to it. Her hair, her skin, her smile. Her voice. They way she used Kipl...
I…God, I don’t even know where to start. I’m here. I’m here for you, okay? No matter what. You can scream and you can yell and be as mean and self-destructive as you want. Because I know you’re going to be here for me when it’s my turn to...
It's only when we dare to experience the full anxiety of knowing that life doesn't go on forever that we can experience transcendence and get in touch with the infinite. To use an analogy from gestalt psychology, Non-Being is the necessary ground for...
You are telling me that I did something because I was going to do something.” “Well, didn’t you? You were there.” “No, I didn’t—no… well, maybe I did, but it didn’t feel like it.” “Why should you expect it to? It was something t...
This was all very well: Columbanus's success indicates the appeal of his mission. But his activities, for the first time, brought the nature of Celtic monasticism firmly to the attention of the Church authorities -- to western bishops in general, and...
Besides stage magic props and settings, ritually abusing groups use technology, such as that described by Katz and Fotheringham. Military/political groups have the most sophisticated technologies, and much training or programming is now done with vir...
How could I explain why I'd acted that way? How could I explain how scary it was, to find out that I needed her so much? Was I supposed to tell her how she'd changed everything? Like how U hadn't even realized how bad I felt until she'd made it bette...
Every morning I wake up to have the same hope, that mankind had survived its own greed, its own desire to self-destruct, its own monopoly to destroy the environment regardless of the consequences, its own religious and ideological dogma that kept it ...
A while back, when Dick & Barry & I agreed that what really matters is what you like, not what you *are* like, Barry proposed the idea of a questionnaire for potential partners, a 2 or 3 page multiple-choice document that covered all the music/film/T...
What came first, the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person? People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers ...
In the street below, a posh-looking drunk man is reading the card of a prostitute, Blue-Tacked up by a doorbell. He’s examining it with all the forensic care I presume he puts into reading a wine list. ‘What are you looking for?’ I ask him, in ...
And then a silver hare, a boar, and a fox soared past Harry, Ron, and Hermione's heads: The dementors fell back before the creatures' approach. Three more people had arrived out of the darkness to stand beside them, their wands outstretched, continui...
Ibn al-Arabi gave this advice: Do not attach yourself to any particular creed exclusively, so that you may disbelieve all the rest; otherwise you will lose much good, nay, you will fail to recognize the real truth of the matter. God, the omnipresent ...
We are all made from the same seeds. It makes sense to say that compassion, love sunshine, water and nourishing seeds will grow into healthy, happy, fulfilled plants. You don’t have to like a certain kind of bread or be a bread maker to have faith....
But as much as this is a soldier's reason d'etre, it is not often that you hear a soldier explicitly talk about 'killing'. The k-word as a verb is instead often disguised and supplanted by any number of other euphemisms. In precise and technical mili...
Cocky little king. You assume you're the only one that gives me satisfaction?" His smile widens as he lifts one of my arms and kisses the sensitive skin of my wrist. "If there is something in this world that can please you more than me," he says, his...
When the meat platter was passed to me, I didn't even know what the meat was; usually, you couldn't tell, anyway-but it was suddenly as though _don't eat any more pork_ flashed on a screen before me. I hesitated, with the platter in mid-air; then I p...
