The Tao Te Ching is partly in prose, partly in verse; but as we define poetry now, not by rhyme and meter but as a patterned intensity of language, the whole thing is poetry. I wanted to catch that poetry, its terse, strange beauty. Most translations...
I’ve heard it said many times when talking about going to heaven, ‘You can’t take it with you.’ It’s true that you cannot take with you your house, car, money, or other things you have valued here on earth, but how about your husband, wife,...
Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense his o...
So, what do you do when you know you have two days to live? Eat an entire Bitter Chocolate Death cake all by myself. Reread my favorite novel. Buy eight dozen roses from the best florist in town--the super expensive ones, the ones that smell like ros...
Vanilla has become too genericized. It’s become standard, which is good. Vanilla is a household name. But the same standardization that’s made it so popular has taken the novelty out of it. Being the vanguard of ice cream has vanquished its radic...
I didn’t think you were real for a long time,” I confess. “I thought you were someone I’d dreamed up.” “A dream worth reliving every night for ten years?” he asks, chuckling and slowly loosening his hold. “For eternity,” I whisper, ...
You know what I want? I just want you to be open to the fact that I am a woman. I’ve got emotions. I’ve got expectations. I cry. I laugh. And I was drawn to you because, first, you are a handsome man. But, secondly, after spending the time that w...
Good gods, you look like cold shit.” Ghleanna gazed at her brother and again wondered why she hadn’t smashed his bloody egg when she had the chance. Her mother would have eventually forgiven her. “Thank you, brother. And you look fat and happy....
Then one woman looked directly at her husband. "Is our place gone?" "I'm afraid so, girl," he said. "There isn't much left up there. But we're alive. We're all lucky to be alive. We'd have been dead if we'd stayed up above." "Oh, what a mercy we didn...
One of the greatest tragedies of growing up is the discovery that your parents- and your teachers, and your sports heroes, and your favorite actors, singers, YouTube sensations- are fallible. Adults don't know all, and what they do know, they often w...
All that remains of the garden city in our own day are traffic-free enclaves, islands in a sea of traffic where the pedestrian leads a legally protected by languishing existence, comparable to that of the North American Indians on their reservations....
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of...
Reading's ability to beam you up to a different world is a good part of the reason why people like me do it in the first place---because dollar for dollar, hour per hour, it's the most expedient way to get from our proscribed little "here" to an imag...
Jason glanced at the creature. It remained the same distance away as before, still as a statue. "What do you want?" Jason asked. No answer. "Are you the thing that followed Tark? You should keep following him. He's the real mastermind. Shoo. Go hide....
Mercy is to care, and care very deeply about one another. It is to care to the point where we are prepared to be involved with the sufferings and adversities of others. It implies that I am prepared to put myself in the other person's place. It means...
The problem of unmet expectations in marriage is primarily a problem of stereotyping. Each and every human being on this planet is a unique person. Since marriage is inevitably a relationship between two unique people, no one marriage is going to be ...
Becoming drunk is a journey that generally elates him in the early stages—he's good company, expansive, mischievous and fun, the famous old poet, almost as happy listening as talking. But once the destination is met, once established up there on th...
He smiles sadly. "Now I know my destiny." "What is it?" "This." He draws me in to him in a kiss. His lips are warm. He pulls me tighter in his embrace. The roots sigh and release their hold on my waist and the wound in my side is healed. "Kartik," I ...
Sometimes I try to erase myself. And then, if I've done a good job, I'm erased. I'm nothing. And then the world is free to flow into me like water into an empty bowl. And I see. I hear. But not with eyes and ears. I'm not outside my world anymore, an...
For myself I can say that, having had every good thing that money can buy, an experience like another, I could part without a pang with every possession I have. We live in uncertain times and our all may yet be taken from us. With enough plain food t...
I've always wished that spring would come...because I was so afraid of the cold world, cloaked in white. It did nothing but make me curl myself into a ball. I had always kept myself curled up, but never once really tried to take a good look at winter...
