"Write this down. Terrorism is not an expression of rage. Terrorism is a political weapon. Remove a government's facade of infallibility, and you remove its people's faith."
Loss of faith ...
Is that what this was all about? Langdon wondered how Christians of the world would react to cardinals being laid out like mutilated dogs, If the faith of a priest did not protect him from the evils of Satan, what hope was there for the rest of us?
A Dead womans Dairies
“This is who I am, Julian.” I try to keep my breathing even, try to sound like a king. The words make sense as I think them, but they come out wrong. Stumbling, unsure. “It’s everything I’ve ever known, the only path I’ve ever wanted or been made to want.”
My uncle tightens his grip on my shoulders. “Your brother could say the same, and where did that lead him?”
I bristle at that, glaring at him. “We’re not the same.”
“No, you aren’t,” he replies hastily. Then his attitude changes, a strange look coming over him. Julian narrows his eyes, lips pressing into a thin, grim line. “You haven’t read the diary, have you?”
Again I drop my gaze. Ashamed of how afraid I am of a simple, small book. “I don’t think I can,” I whisper, barely audible.
Julian offers no quarter, no comfort. He stands back, crossing his arms. He doesn’t need many words to scold me.
“Well, you need to,” he says simply, taking on the air of a teacher again. “Not just for yourself. But for the rest of us. All of us.”
“I don’t see how the diary of a dead woman can be any help right now.”
“Well, hopefully you summon the courage to find out.”
Reading it feels like pushing a stone through mud. Sluggish, difficult, foolish. The words pull at me with inky fingers, trying to hold me back. Each page is heavier than the last. Until they aren’t. Until the stone is rolling down a hill, and the voice I give my mother rings in my head, speaking as quickly as my mind allows. Sometimes my eyes blur. I don’t stop to wipe the tears from the pages, letting them mark the hours as the night passes. Sometimes I find myself smiling. My mother liked to tinker with things. Repair and build. Just like me.
Sometimes I even laugh. The way she talks about Julian, their kind rivalry, how he gave her books she would never read. I can
“Kötü bir anıyı unutmanın en iyi yolu güzel bir tanesiyle değişmektir.”
One of my notebooks is my Table of Tides. In it I set down the Times and Volumes of High and Low Tides and make calculations of the Tides to come. Another notebook is my Catalogue of Statues. In the others I keep my Journal in which I write my thoughts and memories and make a record of my days. So far my Journal has filled nine notebooks; this is the tenth. All are numbered and most are labelled with the dates to which they refer.
A Marrige Proposel with a Man you just MET
It gave her the burst of courage to say, “I thought you were only asking
one lady to dance tonight.”
“I wouldn’t have even done that, but there’s an unfortunate law that says
I had to ask at least one girl.” Another swallow, and then his voice went a
little deeper. “I would have asked you, but I knew that if you were in my
arms, I wouldn’t get through an entire dance before doing this.”
Apollo went down on one knee.
Evangeline abruptly forgot how to breathe.
He could not be doing what she thought he was doing. She didn’t even
want to think about what she thought he was doing—not after how she’d
made such a fool of herself earlier.
But all the people she was trying to ignore must have been thinking the
thing that she was trying not to think. The whispers were starting up again,
and the crowd around them was increasing, caging Evangeline and Apollo
in a circle of ball gowns, silk doublets, and shocked faces. She could see
Marisol among them, grinning widely. Evangeline didn’t spy Jacks, but she
wondered what he was thinking of this. She still didn’t know what he
wanted. But if Jacks was Apollo’s rival, she couldn’t have imagined Jacks
had planned for this turn.
Apollo took both of her hands in his warm grip. “I want you,
Evangeline Fox. I want to write ballads for you on the walls of Wolf Hall
and carve your name on my heart with swords. I want you to be my wife
and my princess and my queen. Marry me, Evangeline, and let me give you
everything.”
He brought her hand to his lips again, and this time, when he looked
down at Evangeline, it was as if the rest of the celebration didn’t exist. His
eyes said a thousand exquisite words. But the word she felt most was
wanted. Apollo wanted her more than anyone else in the ballroom.
No one had ever looked at Evangeline like this
Song of Myself (II)
40
Flaunt of the sunshine I need not your bask—lie over!
You light surfaces only, I force surfaces and depths also.
Earth! you seem to look for something at my hands,
Say, old top-knot, what do you want?
Man or woman, I might tell how I like you, but cannot,
And might tell what it is in me and what it is in you, but cannot,
And might tell that pining I have, that pulse of my nights and days.
Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity,
When I give I give myself.
You there, impotent, loose in the knees,
Open your scarf’d chops till I blow grit within you,
Spread your palms and lift the flaps of your pockets,
I am not to be denied, I compel, I have stores plenty and to spare,
And any thing I have I bestow.
I do not ask who you are, that is not important to me,
You can do nothing and be nothing but what I will infold you.
To cotton-field drudge or cleaner of privies I lean,
On his right cheek I put the family kiss,
And in my soul I swear I never will deny him.
But even if the original apostles had been forward-looking and concerned about the needs of posterity (or at least the longings of twenty-first-century historians), they would not have been able to write a Gospel. The only way they could pass on the story of Jesus was by word of mouth. And so they told the stories to one another, to their converts, and to their converts' converts. This happened year after year, until some decades later, in different parts of the world, highly educated Greek-speaking Christians wrote down the traditions they had heard, thereby producing the Gospels we still have.
