This here is your inheritance, says the senior partner. Yes, he says, Ludwig, I know, and stows the plan for the bathing house (5.5m long, 3.8m wide, outer wall construction: wood, roof construction: thatch), stows both the plan and the mosquito in h...
The vivid memory of the woods had blossomed into a visceral longing for the Ridge, so immediate that I felt the ghost of my vanished house rise around me, a cold mountain wind thrumming past its walls, and thought that, if I reached down, I could fee...
Someone could cut through the mess in our house and look at it like one might look at rings on a tree or layers of sediment. They'd find the black-and-white hairs of a dog we had when I was six, the acid-washed jeans my mother once wore, the seven bl...
I remember thinking about how mothers were prepared to run into burning buildings to save their children's lives. I thought I should be able to go through a bit more suffering, a bit more inconvenience to give my children life. It made me feel noble....
Her love of words is a private passion - one she would rather not share. In the house of her childhood though everything had to be shared. If she tried to hold anything back, they would search and find the hidden places. Her written words, discovered...
I did not realize that when money becomes a core value, then education drives towards utility or that the life of the mind will not be counted as good unless it produces measurable results. That public services will no longer be important. That an al...
This was a great magic. Festin had no more performed it than has any man who in exile or danger longs for the earth and waters of his home, seeing and yearning over the doorsill of his house, the table where he has eaten, the branches outside the win...
When I get this feeling, this compulsion, I always do what it tells me. I can't explain where it comes from or how I get it, and it doesn't happen very often. But I obey it. And this afternoon I had a feeling that I must come over to the haunted hous...
I had a dream about you, you were at your old house walking around. When I asked what you were doing you explained to me that you were planning out your heaven, this was the happiest you had ever been and when you passed you where going to come back ...
As a young child I had Santa and Jesus all mixed up. I could identify Coke or Pepsi with just one sip, but I could not tell you for sure why they strapped Santa to a cross. Had he missed a house? Had a good little girl somewhere in the world not rece...
Why travel to the Moon or Mars if we only continue our wars there with Russia or China or Africa? Why build rockets at all? For fun? For adventure? Or is this the same process that sends the salmons back upstream year after year to spawn and die - a ...
God doesn't expect us to be a walking encyclopedia of biblical knowledge. He wants us to know Him, to be in a relationship with Him. This means not only hearing but allowing our understanding of God to change the way we live. Like the wise builder wh...
And you would know so much about women, locked up in your castle." "Locked up with eight wives. And sometimes I make house calls for my bargainers. There's many a lovely woman desperate enough to bargain with me." This idea had never occurred to me b...
As you know, the International Poker Tour, by its own admission, knows very little about poker games, one of which ended tragically last week when an IPT-sanctioned tournament aboard a yacht in Australia accidentally used tarot cards instead of playi...
We grab handfuls of bottles and climb up onto the roof of the house. She stumbles and her foot slips into the gutter sopped with dead leaves. I grab her wrists and pull her clear – sure, she's not the person I'd choose to do this with, but she's my...
Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled— to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world. I want to believe I am looking into the white fire of a great mystery. I want to believe th...
Street culture is a culture of containment. Most young people do not realize that it all too often leads to a “dead end”. “Street culture,” as I am using the term, is a counterforce to movement culture. Street culture in contemporary urban re...
I want an avowed atheist in the White House. When time comes to push that button, I want whoever's making the decision to understand that once it's pushed, it's over. Finito. They're not gonna have lunch with Jesus. Won't be deflowering 72 virgins on...
Man continues to return to Lust for his vats to overflow with pleasure. If he tries to flee, my husband, Death has guaranteed methods of surveillance and return. He is very punctual and ensures that employees arrive and depart at an appointed time. I...
In truth I suspect that merely slowing down is not a very satisfying answer. What I need has less to do with my pace of life than my peace of life. At any speed, I crave a deep and lasting inner peace. And if it's solace I'm after, I don't need to pa...
From my spirit's gray defeat, From my pulse's flagging beat, From my hopes that turned to sand Sifting through my close-clenched hand, From my own fault's slavery, If I can sing, I still am free. For with my singing I can make A refuge for my spirit'...
