“You used to come out here and feed your fairies,” he said. “You believed in something you couldn’t see, something you couldn’t grasp. I did too, once. Boulevard du Temple, Paris. 1755. There was a young man with a violin and fire in his heart. I believed, with such certainty, he would be mine. And I was young. So much imagination.” He shook his head. “Humans grow old so quickly. Your lives are the blink of an eye when you see all eternity stretched out before you. Yet I kept bringing honey to something I couldn’t hold, I couldn’t possess. He died.” He nodded, as if to remind himself that it was true. “His fire was gone. So easily. And then my name was called by strangers, to Cairo. By the time I’d freed myself, and went back to France…” He fluttered his hand. “I never found his grave. I searched. I haunted the cemeteries so long they began to tell stories of me. Zane found me there.” He shook his head. “He dragged me back to Hell. Told me I was mad. Mad for a human whose soul I could never possess.”
“Leon…” I didn’t know what to say. It had been centuries, but his voice was still rough with pain. So many years, and a single human death haunted him.
Ironic that a killer would be tortured by a death.
“I’ve spent enough time haunting graveyards,” he said. “If you gave me your soul, neither gods nor men could take you from me. And that frightens you.”
Rae-Leon.Kitabı okudu
If I Must Die
If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings
(make it white with a long tail).
So that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye,
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze —
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself —.
Sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above,
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love.
If I must die
let it bring hope,
let it be a story.
Rıfat el-Arir
about to answer…but something gold caught my eye.
On his dick.
“What the—” I leaned forward, sure my eyes were playing tricks. Was that a ring attached to the tip of cock? And not just a ring...the smooth gold of it really resembled a…
“Like my wedding ring?” he said proudly, swinging his dick around like a fucking helicopter. “Got it on our wedding night. Seemed fitting, don’t you think?” He thrusted his hips forward so I could get a better look.
“You have a wedding ring pierced through the tip of your cock,” I said slowly, because really, it wasn’t something you saw everyday. Or ever, actually.
“Yep. Now I've always got my ring with me. And judging by the way you were just screaming as I fucked your perfect little asshole…it feels good too. I got the “pleasure for her” ring, so I’ll have to leave a good review.”
I didn’t know whether I wanted to laugh, or jump him. Something about it was weirdly hot, even when he swung it around like an elephant’s trunk.
Blake-Ari.Kitabı okudu
This default win-lose mode can sometimes work for the short term; however, as a strategy for how companies and organizations operate, it can have grave consequences over the longer term.
The results of this default mindset are all too familiar: an- nual rounds of mass layoffs to meet arbitrary projections, cut- throat work environments, subservience to the shareholder over the needs of employees and customers, dishonest and un- ethical business practices, rewarding high-performing toxic team members while turning a blind eye to the damage they are doing to the rest of the team and rewarding leaders who seem to care a lot more about themselves than those in their charge. All things that contribute to a decline of loyalty and engagement and an increase of insecurity and anxiety that too many of us feel these days. This impersonal and transac- tional approach to business seems to have accelerated in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution and seems to be accel- erating even more in our digital age. Indeed, our entire un- derstanding of commerce and capitalism seems to have fallen under the sway of short-term, finite-minded thinking.
Sayfa 12Kitabı okuyor
A real smile appears primarily because of the action of two muscles: the zygornaticus major, which stretches from the corner of the mouth to the cheekbone, and the orbicularis oculi, which surrounds the eye. When working together bilaterally, these draw the corners of the mouth up and crinkle the outer edges of the eyes, causing the crow's
Negative emotions—displeasure, disgust, antipathy, fear, and anger—make us tense. That tension manifests in many ways in and on the body. Our faces may show a constellation of tension-revealing cues simultaneously: tightening of jaw muscles, flaring of nose wings (naral wing dilation), squinting of the eyes, quivering of the mouth, or lip occlusion (in which lips seemingly disappear). On closer examination, you might note that eye focus is fixed, the neck is stiff, and head tilt is nonexistent. An individual might not say anything about being tense, but if these manifestations are present there is no doubt that he is upset and that his brain is processing some negative emotional issue. These negative emotional cues are displayed similarly throughout the world, and there is real value in looking for them.
“Eye-blocking” is a nonverbal behavior that can occur when we feel threatened and/or don’t like what we see. Squinting (…) and closing or shielding our eyes are actions that have evolved to protect the brain from “seeing” undesirable images and to communicate our disdain toward others. As an investigator, I used eye-blocking behaviors to assist in
“He walks backward into the church, where Kelvin’s casket glows in the dusky light. Mothers and grandmas with heads bowed. But what he wants, or rather, what I want for him, doesn’t happen: underneath Kelvin’s button- up, the stitched pink eye in his chest, just above his right lung, doesn’t open, the .45-caliber shell doesn’t come out, won’t suspend itself in Sunday’s air, won’t make an obedient return to the barrel, splinter into lead, polymer, iron, elements, the ash of a star ejected from a cosmos into this one.”
Sayfa 71Kitabı okudu
The guard, the tall one, had stopped walking—and now moved back in Ta’roga’s direction, holding its bow in both hands, an arrow resting between the curved wood and the string.It heard me.Ta’roga didn’t move. A minute passed, and then the man took off its head covering, a thick animal skin with metal stitched around the eyes, and set it gently on the ground before standing again, looking directly at the tree where Ta’roga sat. It moved closer, but didn’t seem to be searching for anything. Rather, it turned its hairy face from side to side, slowly. Listening.Ta’roga had never seen one so closely, and felt, for the first time, that perhaps One Eye was right to speak so respectfully of these creatures. It wasn’t charging to attack, or shouting for help, or deciding to ignore the small sound; it was thinking. Presented with evidence by its senses, it was searching for the source of what it had heard.Ta’roga’s mask blocked the sound of his breathing, but his heart beat quickly.
Then he saw movement out the corner of his right eye. He thought it was a man, but when he turned, there was no one there. Still, he watched as a bush moved, then another, then a tripod of rifles fell. He didn’t see who it was, and there wasn’t even a whisper of a wind, but it looked like the passage of a man.He let out a cry, pulled his pistol from his belt, and ran to the fallen rifles.Men leaped from their positions, grabbing at their weapons, looking around. The whole camp awoke and they searched for an hour, until it was clear that no one was there.
I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven, for nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
Sayfa 6Kitabı okudu
“What do you think they're going to do to us when they find us guilty?" she says after a few minutes of silence have passed.
"Honestly?"
"Does now seem like the time for honesty?"
I look at her from the corner of my eye. "I think they're going to force us to eat lots of cake and then take an unreasonably long nap.”
I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.
...
The world is so exquisite, with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there is little good evidence. Far better, it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look Death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.
