In these days before antiseptics, doctors themselves also suffered high mortality rates. Florence Nightingale, a nurse during the Crimean War (1853-1856), watched one particularly inept surgeon cut both himself and, somehow, a bystander while blunder...
She had not had the relief of amnesia. She had suffered longer, and she had suffered more. Each second was agony in the first weeks. She was like an amputee in the days before anesthesia, half crazed with pain, astounded that the human body could fee...
The passenger door was wide open, nobody was around, and a purse was inside. Was this a trap? It seemed too good to be true. Temptation overtook me, so I reached in the car, popped the trunk, and closed myself in. Boy, the owner of the car was sure i...
But Harry . . . even if we had met and married three years ago, you’d still say it wasn’t enough time.” “You’re right. I can’t think of a single day of my life that wouldn’t have been improved with you in it.” “Darling,” she whisp...
Everything necessary to understand my grandfather lies between two stories: the story of the tiger’s wife, and the story of the deathless man. These stories run like secret rivers through all the other stories of his life – of my grandfather’s ...
If there was a God he reasoned it would have the same relation to us as we have to blades of grass. Do we make them grow? Yes in the sense that we water the lawn. Do we care for them and worry over them? Again as a lawn but not as individual blades. ...
When a man touches a woman's body, he is not just touching her body. It goes MUCH DEEPER than that for a woman. He is touching parts of her soul-parts as diverse as how she feels about being a grandmother some day, to what is her favorite ice cream, ...
Nobody ever talks about the pyramids that weren't built, the books that weren't written, the songs that weren't sung. Stop letting your fear condemn you to mediocrity. Get out of your own way. Your dreams are a poetic reflection of your soul's wishes...
One of the rocks in my soulbag, a little grey rock that I had picked up on a certain day in a certain place in the hills above the river in the Silver Time, a little piece of my world, that became my world. |Every night I took it out and held it in m...
The Los Angeles parade would begin in Griffith Park, where a large crowd would assemble and the speeches would be given. Every politician of consequence would be there. There was no way they would miss a chance to publicly praise the troops and honor...
Those deep set eyes that look like they could tell stories for days, and that wavy brown hair that feels soft between my fingers. I try to memorize the angles of his jaw and the lines of his lips, because I know. I know this may be the last time I ev...
God lives in my soul, and I must spend my life scrubbing my soul clean of any trace of sin so that it derserves to host his presence. Repentance is a daily chore; at each morning prayer session we repent in advance for the sins we will commit that da...
If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don't bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to ...
The earth will always be the same - only cities and history will change, even nations will change, governments and governors will go, the things made by men's hands will go, buildings will always crumble - only the earth will remain the same, there w...
When we truly fear God, our fear of other things and other people begins to wane. Big fears make little fears go away. We can spend our days worrying about a host of daily challenges, but let the word cancer be mentioned in the same sentence with our...
This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don’t. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit ...
And oh, how she pitched herself into things. She would draw pictures all day long for weeks on end, then throw out the pencils and never draw another thing. Then it was embroidery with her, she had to learn it, and she'd make the most beautiful thing...
Two days ago, Tuesday at 10:10 am, I gave birth to a bagel. And God commanded me to slice up my only begotten bagel in two, and who am I to argue with God? So I did it. Then I ate it. I’m not proud of the last part, but at the time it seemed like t...
Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For ...
I delight to come to my bearings,—not walk in procession with pomp and parade, in a conspicuous place, but to walk even with the Builder of the universe, if I may,—not to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century, but s...
Oh, she was okay, just tired, tired of trying to be the one you wanted, the one you couldn't live without, the one you found yourself reaching out an arm for as she teetered from crisis to crisis to crisis only to collapse in your bed at the end of t...
