#and its not satisfying the way human existance is. its an instantaneous end and beginning in a circle until there isnt a difference

[hickoryhorneddevils]

fell asleep listening to the lonely tree and i dont remember what i was dreaming about but i woke up crying for some reason

[wreathedwith]

No Time To Die thoughts

Major spoilers throughout, obviously.

the good/the bad/the divisive

The good

That opening sequence: from creepy horror to high romance to gorgeous Matera to thrills and spills and gun headlights (and those motorbike stunts!), followed by Betrayal and Train (biggest gasp from my cinema companion, despite the number of cars being knocked around like Newton’s Cradle later on: Bond crossing the tracks in the train station) – this had it all, a mini Bond movie in its own right.

Lashana Lynch was brilliant and I actually think she and the film managed to carry out her character’s difficult balancing act extremely well: cool, not secretly a mole or an enemy, not a stereotype, part of the team; the appropriate combination of admiration and annoyance for Bond. That’s hard to do, especially with such a well-established character.

Ana de Armas and Craig’s chemistry went far beyond any (is there any? oh how I wish they had more, but they don’t) with Léa Seydoux – she was funny and instantaneously appealing.

Q! I know I should care more that the sexuality confirmation was of course done in the most anodyne we-need-to-sell-this-property-to-200-plus-territories way possible, but I still think it was great. (And then Bond stayed over! Hm. Hmmm.)

Felix! Bond has frend? Bond has someone he actually talks to like a normal human being? (Well, for a bit.)

Some silly gadgets and appropriately leaden quips (but not too many).

Even the critics who are not rating the film so well overall seem to feel Craig’s performance is excellent in this – and it is. He does the emotion, the hints of deep vulnerability, the action, the standing naked under an outdoor shower, and the stupid Bond one-liners. He does it all.

(trying not to attribute things to her when I of course know nothing, but surely PWB had some influence there? Hugh Dennis, not The Wrong Trousers.)

The bad

Sufin: nothing bad to say about Rami Malek’s acting and portrayal (although arguably his relationship and chemistry with Swann was more important and better than with Bond, for better or worse), but this character was a very weak Bond villain, a fact perhaps tacitly acknowledged by also including a much more highly-charged encounter with Lecter I mean Blofeld as well. Blah blah generational motivation, something about plants, wants to kill millions of people because Villain Reasons?; just not really much going on here. Also: another facial disfigurement? Really?? Yes Bond is trope-y as all hell and shouldn’t have too much regard for real-world logic, but you get up to a certain point and it’s really too much. (Cool lair tho. But more monochrome and less balls-to-the-wall than some classic Bonds.) (For me the ranking of the Craig-era films remains: Brilliant (Casino Royale and Skyfall); Servicable; some great elements (Spectre and No Time To Die); awful (Quantum of Solace), and not so coincidentally it’s Le Chiffre and Silva who really shine as villains. Villains are important!

James Bond: plot moppet edition. Much like the world of Grand Theft Auto, I don’t think children should exist in the James Bond universe.

You could definitely tell this had a few writers. I was drawn in and not bored during the whole thing, but it IS long. Too much plot and most of it not very good.

I’m not quite sure what the line is between satisfying callbacks to previous Bond films in combination with polite cribbing from all other action franchise versus feeling like a bit of everything has been thrown in without there being much that’s new, but this film probably crossed it. (Yes, Skyfall probably had more franchise callbacks, but somehow it all worked.)

The Bond-films-are-soft-power Royal Navy proper gander: one of only six missile destroyers just happening to be in the right sea, ready to go! Hm.

The divisive

I loved the ending! Bond isn’t a real person. The continuity of the series already makes no sense whatsoever if you stop to think about for more than about ten seconds. This way you can put a proper, planned end to the Craig era, emerge clean out of the knotty franchise interconnections disease caught from Marvel et al (no, we didn’t need to retroactively link the brilliant likes of Le Chiffre to a Greater Power And Agenda (Spectre), actually). And begin again.

(Also worth it for the person sitting behind me in the cinema whose clearly audible response to ‘James Bond Will Return’ was an annoyed ‘you JUST showed him getting blow up’. Can’t argue with that.)

[my-lady-knight]

Favorite Reads of 2020

I take back everything I said last year about how 2019 was a comparatively bad reading year for me. 2020 was even worse. I only read 48 books, I could barely focus on reading even when I did find a book I liked, and, just like last year, I ended up with fewer favorites than usual. Starting in August I’ve been having trouble reading any written media that isn’t TOG fic. And some of my eagerly awaited releases by favorite authors ended up being disappointments (Deeplight by Frances Hardinge and Phoenix Extravagant by Yoon Ha Lee).

2020—the year that keeps on giving.

I sincerely hope 2021 will be a better year in all respects, including my reading habits, but, as with everything else, who knows.

Regardless, here’s my list of favorite reads of 2020, in chronological order of when I read them:

Network Effect by Martha Wells

I’d read the first four Murderbot Diaries novellas when they first came out and enjoyed them, but I didn’t fall head-over-heels in love with them. Maybe because they were novellas, and too short to get fully invested? Possibly. As it turns out, Network Effect is the novel-length fifth entry in the Murderbot Diaries that turned me into full-on squeeing fan—SecUnit, aka Murderbot, continues to be its delightfully acerbic, antisocial self, SPOILER makes another appearance and oh how I’d missed this character, the supporting cast is fun and endearing, and the novel-length story means there’s time and space for the brand-new corporate espionage/colonization/alien civilization murder mystery to unfold and spread its wings. (Sounds like a Sanctuary Moon plot tbh). SecUnit is possibly my favorite non-human fictional character atm, and I am now fully on-board for every and any new story in the series.

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

When I first heard about this book and read the words “time travel romance”, I immediately went, “Nope, not gonna read.” I don’t like reading time travel stories, and honestly, I was imagining it to be something like The Time Traveler’s Wife, which granted I haven’t read but also sounds like it’d be the opposite of my cup of tea. 

And then I went to a reading where Amal and Max took turns reading chapters – letters written by Red and Blue, enemy agents who repeatedly taunt and thwart the other’s plans to ensure their side is the one to win the time war and who can’t resist smugly outlining just how they’re staying one step ahead of the other – and the prose was witty and gorgeous and clever and intricate, and Red and Blue were snarky and arrogant and talented and fun. I had to read it. And I ended up loving it, this enemies-to-lovers story that is a meld of fantasy and science fiction such that they’re indistinguishable from the other, where the past is as equally fantastical and alien and imaginary as the future, where Red and Blue’s power play transforms into something different and scarier and more intimate than either of them imagined. 

To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers

Becky Chambers has done it again, writing a gentle, hopeful story about humans working together out of a share a love and fascination for scientific exploration and wonder for all the possibilities the entirety of space can hold. With the advent of both space travel and technology that alters human physiology to allow them to survive otherwise inhospitable environments, a team of four astronauts and scientists have embarked on a mission to ecologically survey four distant planets and the life forms that inhabit them, from the microscopic to the multicellular—not to conquer, but to record and to learn and to share the gathered knowledge with the rest of Earth. In the meantime, lightyears away, Earth is going through decades without them, and the four of them must also contend with a planet that may have forgotten their existence—or that’s abandoned the entire space and scientific exploration program.

Reading Becky Chambers is the literary equivalent of sitting down with a warm mug of my favorite tea on a bad day – I always feel better at the end and like I can imagine a future where humanity does all the wonderful things we’re capable of doing.

A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker

I started reading this book right as NYC was gearing up to go into lockdown, which should have made this a terrible choice to continue reading since part of the premise is that a combo of multiple stochastic terror attacks and a brand-new, deadly plague upend the world as everyone knows it by causing the U.S. to pass laws that keep people physically apart in public for their own safety and make concerts, theatre, and any other kind of artistic gathering obsolete.

But that’s largely just the set-up, and the real story is that of Luce Cannon, an up-and-coming singer-songwriter who played the last major concert in the before times who twenty years later performs in illegal underground concerts, and Rosemary, a younger music-lover who’s only lived in the after-times, and who’s taken a new job scouting out talent to add to the premier virtual entertainment company’s roster of simulated concerts.

It’s a love letter to live music and what it feels like to connect and build community via music in unusual and strange and scary times, the energy involved in making music for yourself, for an audience, exploring the world around you, imagining and advocating for a better tomorrow, and embracing the fear, the possibility, and the power of change, both good and bad. This was the book I needed to read at the beginning of the pandemic, and I’m thankful I ended up doing so.

The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019 edited by John Joseph Adams and Carmen Maria Machado

When I end up loving half of the stories in an anthology and greatly enjoying all but two of the rest, that’s the equivalent of a literary blue moon for me. My favorites included the following;

"Pitcher Plant" by Adam-Troy Castro

"Six Hangings in the Land of Unkillable Women" by Theodore McCombs

"Variations on a Theme from Turandot" by Ada Hoffmann

"Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Memphis Minnie Sing the Stumps Down Good" by LaShawn M. Wanak

"The Kite Maker" by Brenda Peynado

"The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington" by P. Djèlí Clark

"Dead Air" by Nino Cipri

"Skinned" by Lesley Nneka Arimah

"Godmeat" by Martin Cahill

"On the Day You Spend Forever with Your Dog" by Adam R. Shannon

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

No one is more surprised than me that Harrow is on this list, given that I am one of approximately three people in the universe who did not unequivocally love Gideon the Ninth. 

And yet the sequel worked for me. 

Maybe because this time I already knew and was used to the way the world and the Houses worked, and I knew to not take anything I read for granted because I could be guaranteed to have the rug pulled out from under me without even realizing. Maybe Harrow’s countdown/amnesia mystery worked better for me than Gideon’s locked room mystery. Maybe the cast of characters was more manageable and fewer of them were getting murdered left and right before I got a chance to get used to them (and some of them even came back!) Maybe it’s that Harrow blew open the potential and possibilities Gideon hinted at and capitalized on just how fucking weird and mind-blowing the whole premise is in a way that felt incredibly and viscerally satisfying.

Also SPOILER happens three-quarters of the way through. That was pretty fucking awesome.

Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

P. Djélí Clark is a master of melding history and fantasy in ways that are in turn imaginative and clever (his fantastical alternate-history, early 20th-century Egyptian novel A Master of Djinn is one of the books I’m most looking forward to in 2021), while also using fantasy to be frank and incisive about the history of American antiblack racism (as in the above linked story in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019). Ring Shout combines the late-nineteenth and early 20th-century history of the rise and normalization of the KKK with Lovecraftian supernatural horror, in which the release of The Birth of a Nation summoned literal monsters (called Ku Kluxes) that became part of the KKK’s ranks. Maryse Boudreaux is a Black woman who’s part of a grassroots organization hunting both the monsters and the human members in order to keep the Klan at bay. However, there’s soon to be another summoning ritual atop Stone Mountain that will unleash even more Ku Kluxes into the world, and Maryse and her friends are running out of time to prevent it from happening.

Maryse is a fantastic character, as are her two friends—brash, unapologetic Sadie and WWI veteran, weapons expert Chef—her mentor and leader of the Ring Shout group Nana Jean, and all the other members of the group who work and fight together as a team and a family. Maryse’s past and the journey she goes on in the book to uncover the truth and stop the summoning is harrowing and heart-stopping, the supernatural elements are both horrific in and of themselves while also undergirding the real-life horror of the KKK and the hatred they engender. It’s smart, it’s fun, it’s eye-opening, and it’s also being turned into a TV show starring KiKi Layne. It’s really, really good.

The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley

“Stick to the brief.” This is the maxim given to Dietz and all the other soldiers who join the war against Mars, where soldiers are broken down into light to travel to and from their assigned battlefields instantaneously. Only Dietz isn’t experiencing the jumps like everyone else – Dietz, like Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse-Five, has become unstuck in time and is experiencing all the battles in the mission briefs out of chronological order, to the point that Dietz starts to build a picture of a war and a reality that’s been sold to Dietz and everyone else on Earth as pure fiction. 

I’ve always appreciated Kameron Hurley’s stories, but this is the first book where she fully succeeded at writing the book she set out to write—it’s fast-paced science fiction thriller in the form of a loaded gun that takes brutal aim at late-stage capitalism, modern military warfare and the dehumanization of everyone involved on all sides, the greed of ungovernable governing corporations, nationalistic and military propaganda, the mythology of citizenship and inalienable rights, and it’s viscerally bloody and violent without being grotesque in the way all of Kameron Hurley’s books are. Especially important for me, I loved that Dietz went through the entire book not being gendered in any way, shape, or form (those last five pages didn’t exist, what are you talking about), and I love in general that Kameron Hurley is committed to writing non-male characters who aren’t less violent or fucked-up or morally superior to men just because they’re not men.

Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga

Middle grade is a hard sell for me these days, as are books in verse, and I wouldn’t have known this book existed if it weren’t for the Ignyte Award nomination list earlier this year. As it turns out, this book, the story of Jude, a pre-teen girl who wants to be an actress who leaves Syria and the encroaching civil war with her mom to go live in the U.S. with her uncle and his white wife and their daughter while her dad and older brother stay behind, is full of beauty, curiosity, humor, confusion, grief, pain, and joy, and the poetic prose is both lyrical, nuanced, and perfectly fitted to Jude’s voice. I devoured this book in one day, which is the quickest amount of time it took me to read any book this year, including novellas.

Darius the Great Deserves Better by Adib Khorram

The first book Darius the Great Is Not Okay was one of my favorite books in 2018, and I’m ecstatic that the sequel is equally as amazing.

It’s been approximately half a year since Darius went to Iran, met his maternal grandparents in person for the first time, and found his best friend in Sohrab, and in that time he’s come out as gay, joined the soccer team, got an internship at his favorite tea shop, and started dating for the first time. Darius is also working through some things though—when and if he wants to have sex with his boyfriend, his grandfather’s worsening illness, his dad’s recent depressive episode, his emotionally distant paternal grandmothers on his coming for an extended stay, the fact that he’s getting to know and growing closer with one of his teammates who’s best friends with Darius’s years-long bully, and a bunch else. 

Darius the Great Deserves Better has the same tender and vulnerable emotional intimacy as the first book, more conversations over tea, new instances involving the mortifying ordeal of being a cis guy with a penis, even more Star Trek metaphors, and so much growth for Darius as he works through a lot of hard situations and feelings, and strengthens his relationships with all of the people in his life he loves and cares about. I can’t think of any other book that’s like these two books, and I love and treasure them dearly.

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

I had zero awareness of this book until a bunch of SFF authors started praising it on Twitter a couple months before the release date, and I was intrigued enough to get a copy from the library. I loved this book. I happened to be reading it right at the time of the presidential election, and it phenomenally served the purpose of desperately-needed distraction from the agony of waiting out the ballot counts.

It’s book about the power behind borders, citizenship, exploitation, and imperialism, set in a late-late-stage capitalist future, in which a prodigy invented the means to access and travel to slightly divergent parallel universes to grab resources and data – but only if the other universe’s version of “you” isn’t there. It’s the story of a woman named Cara – poor, brown, born in the wastelands outside the shelter, security, and citizenship privileges of Wiley City – who’s comfortably employed to travel to all the parallel worlds no one else can visit, because all her counterparts in those worlds are dead from one of the myriad ways Cara herself could have died growing up. It’s the story of Cara traversing the muddied boundaries between her old life and her new one, the similarities and differences between her own life and that of her counterparts, as well as the figures of power who defined and shaped her and her counterparts’ existences, and solving a mystery involving the unexplained deaths of several of her counterparts and the man who invented multiverse technology.

It’s a story of the permeability of selfhood and self-determination, and complexity of power dynamics of all kinds – interpersonal, familial, collegial, intimate – and the interplay between violence and stability and identity, and how one can be both powerful and powerless in the same dynamic. It’s a story with literary sensibilities that is unequivocally science fiction, written with laser-precise prose that flays Cara open and puts her back together again.

I worry this description makes this book sound dry and removed when reading this book made me feel like I was coming alive every time I delved back into it. This is a book I cannot wait to reread again to experience the brilliance and skill and thoughtfulness and emotion of Micaiah Johnson’s writing. I have no clue what, if anything, she’s writing next, but I have a new favorite author.

Honorable Mentions

Catfishing on CatNet by Naomi Kritzer

With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo

The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo

Stormsong by C. L. Polk

The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin

Sisters of the Vast Black by Lina Rather

Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh

The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djèlí Clark

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke (I feel bad putting it here and not in the first list – it is undeniably a modern classic and a brilliantly crafted book! But I had zero interest in any of the Italy chapters, and I found the way he finally figured out how to access fairy magic by essentially making himself mad to be both disappointing and narratively unsatisfying.)

War Girls by Tochi Onyebuchi

For my yearly stats on books written by POC authors, in 2020 I read a total of 24 books (one of which was co-authored by a white author), which is fewer than last year (30). However, because I also read fewer books this year overall, this is the first year ever that I achieved exactly 50-50 parity between books written by POC and white authors. I honestly wasn’t expecting this to happen, as I stopped paying deliberate attention somewhere around April or May. Looking over my Goodreads, the month of September ended up doing a lot of heavy lifting, since that’s when I read several books by POC authors in a row for the Ignyte Award nomination period. But also, it does look like the five or so years of purposefully aiming for 50-50 parity have materially affected my reading habits, by which I mean even when I’m not keeping my year’s count in mind, I’m still more likely to pick up a book by a POC author than I was five years ago when I had never kept track at all. My goal for next year is to once again achieve 50-50 parity and to not backslide.

[dream-wreck]

A Song to Suit Yourself

It feels so good to write fanfiction again. Heck, it feels good to write again. This little thing started last summer, inspired by this post, and I’m finally sending it afloat upon the internet’s temperamental waters. Good Omens fandom, I hope you receive it well. Enjoy!

AO3

Title: A Song to Suit Yourself Rating: G Word Count: 2,186 Description: Crowley fixates on a new type of music, though Aziraphale can’t quite figure why. What would a demon want with lullabies?

Neither knew exactly how they ended up in the same Scottish field at exactly the same time beneath the same lonely apple tree, but it probably had something to do with their impending assessments.

Hastur and Ligur would be around soon to check in and report on Crowley’s Deeds of the Day, which were quickly becoming Brief Surveys of the Deeds of the Decade, as they hardly ever popped around anymore. Crowley didn’t dare complain. But he’d been putting off his Evil Deed -- you know, the Big One, which made up for a long dry period of demonic activity -- and it was time to get on that. So. Scotland.

Aziraphale still received regular unscheduled visits from Gabriel, “just checking in” to see that all was going smoothly. Aziraphale had begun to question his own understanding of omnipotence. Or, at least the Head Office’s ability to communicate sporadic schedule changes to literally the only active angel they had on Earth. In biding his time -- and seeking some overdue meditation -- Scotland.

So much for that.

“They’re calling them ‘lullabies’,” Crowley said. “They sing them at children. To make them fall asleep.”

Aziraphale considered this news while he cut off another slice of red apple. He offered some to Crowley. The demon curled his upper lip at the clean white disk.

“Humans have always sang songs to their children,” Aziraphale said once he realized that the news was not news at all. “Remember Babylon?”

They both smiled self-pleased smiles. You’d almost think they were sharing the same memory, but for Crowley baring considerably sharper teeth. “Oh yes,” he said.

“That poor woman you tormented for a spell,” Aziraphale recalled. “I was the one who recommended that she write her composition down. It was a beautiful tune...in spite of its inspiration.” 

Crowley shrugged. “I did not ‘torment her.’ She adopted me as the house god, what was I supposed to do? I was on assignment. Besides, she had a lovely home. It was nice to settle down for a bit. The point is, now they have a new word for it.”

“For tormenting?”

“No. The music. Keep up.” He let the pieces of the word roll off his tongue. “Lull-ah-bye…”

Aziraphale was occupied with his apple, plucked from the branches above. In his humble and learnéd opinion, few tastes in the world yet rivaled that of a fresh-picked apple. Being an angel, he also had an extensive understanding of the art of Music. Angels invented it, after all, but its purposes were rather limited in Heaven. If Crowley had come to him with news of a new kind of Music, or a new purpose for it, he would have been ecstatic and fully enthralled. But he hadn’t, so he wasn’t, and was therefore only mildly interested, though he tried his best to humor his associate. “Singing to babies helps them grow, you know. It teaches them new sounds, new words. And I personally don’t believe you’re ever too young to discover the joy of Music.”

Crowley chose not to tell him that he was missing the point, but he wasn’t entirely sure of his point to begin with. Something about the word struck a strange chord with him (all puns unintended and unrecognized). It had a sound like a plucked lute string and the curve of a lifting chin.

For a while, in silence, the two continued their survey of the Scottish countryside and a hundred miles beyond. Serious business. The evening began to settle in a comfortable calm, the sun yawning out a stretch of gold before its final disappearance beneath the hills. The angel and the demon each wondered what the other was thinking. Aziraphale wondered why Crowley had become so caught up in a single word. Crowley wondered why Aziraphale hadn’t.

The angel bit into another slice of apple. The satisfying crunch in the silence finally whet Crowley’s own appetite. He flicked his wrist and a bright red replica of the angel’s supper fell into his hand.

Aziraphale looked hurt. “I hadn’t realized this tree’s fruit dissatisfied you.”

“What, did I hurt its feelings?”

“No,” Aziraphale said, taking a moment to examine himself, not wanting to lie. “But I’m quite proud of this tree.” He sat a little taller. “I planted and raised it from seed myself, you know.”

Crowley -- who had been leaning against the apple tree’s trunk since the early morning -- sat up and scrutinized the bark as though he’d just noticed it were there. 

“Well what’d you go and do something like that for? When you could just --”

He snapped his long fingers. A few paces off, a plum tree that had not been there before shivered in a gentle breeze that had not been caused by anything but a general notion.

Aziraphale flushed. “I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. They’ve been cracking down on miracles that are not meant for a heavenly purpose. Besides, I found that I rather enjoyed the process of raising a living thing. You might try it, learn a thing or two. Watering, trimming, revisiting the little sapling now and again to encourage it out of the ground. And it clearly paid off. It took time and it took patience. And it was beautiful. The way God intended.”

Crowley gagged. Time and patience. The plum tree disappeared, but a pile of fresh, dark plums remained at his arm’s length, the skin so deeply purple they were almost black. “Suit yourself,” he said. “Just seems a waste of time.”

“Of course you’d think that,” Aziraphale said. “You know, it’s your constant need for excitement that gets you into trouble. You never sit still.”

“I do!” Crowley defended through a mouthful of bleeding plum. “I am now! And I do when I...you know, when I...you know.”

Aziraphale did not know, but he waited patiently for Crowley to realize that. Crowley did not elaborate.

He tossed his half-eaten fruit into the field, grumbling, “Who came up with the name ‘lullaby’ anyway? They’ve been rubbish at naming things from the Beginning. I’ll never forgive them for the turtle dove...Lullaby. Luhll. Ahhh. Bye. Stupid from the start. Lull....”

“For a dissenter, it sure sticks to your tongue easily.”

“So does mud. Doesn’t make it worth the taste. They think they’re so clever. If they’re so clever, switch things up a bit, do. All those songs, all lullabies ever talk about are dreams and trees and all the pain coming your way if you don’t fall asleep right this instant. All these languages since Babel and not a single one has whipped together hardly anything to move me to tears. Frankly, I’m just not impressed.”

He stopped. Not because he was finished. He felt eyes on him. Angel eyes, confused and concerned, and certainly out of their element.

Aziraphale cleared his throat. “Perhaps if you let them know that you have been their target audience all along, they’d show improvement. Better yet, put all that wealth of yours to use and commission one to your liking. Lord knows why you care in the first place.”

Aziraphale’s apple had finally been reduced to its core. The knife he was using ceased to exist.

“They’re too much like you lot,” Crowley continued. “Or at least you. Moving so slow. Doing slow things and inventing things that make them move even slower. Want to put the goblins to sleep? They’ve got spells for that. Spoon o’ brandy will do the trick. Or a knock upside the head. Practically instantaneous.”

Aziraphale bristled. “I thank God no one has put a child in your care.”

“On that, angel, we assent.”

The angel stood up, brushed out his jacket and tights. “I best get a move on. Several evening miracles to perform in the next town over.”

Crowley didn’t move, but he was suddenly standing. “Likewise. Which way are you headed?”

Aziraphale pointed to the north.

Crowley jabbed a thumb over his shoulder toward the south.

“Will you be in Scotland long?”

Crowley looked out to the empty fields. “Depends on what I can find here. I suppose if you’ll be around, I’ll be around. You know. Cancel --”

“Cancel each other out. Yes,” Aziraphale said, low and bristling, turning to the north. “Well, good evening to you.”

He paused. “I hope you find a song to suit your heart.” And he started north across the field, leaving Crowley, who did not turn to the south, alone beneath the apple tree. 

Crowley slumped down against the trunk with his legs stretched toward the setting sun.

Sunsets start to look the same the more you see and the longer you live. There had been only a handful of truly extraordinary sunsets that stuck in Crowley’s busy memory since the Beginning, and few of them were memorable without their contexts. Context is everything. He’d given up long ago on watching sunsets for the hope of an explosion of color to beat the rest. But he still appreciated the thrill of witnessing night stretch over the world like a lumbering dragon splaying out for a nap.

He missed dragons. Not many of them left, nowadays.

As darkness settled in, Crowley began a meditation of his own.

All around him, he felt history’s fine threads weave through the air. Ghosts and imprints left on the surface of the earth and the face of Time itself that had disappeared from visual perception, but lingered as golden strands only few could ever see. Battles and laughter, deaths and creation, all tangled together and tumbling, just above the ground and through the rich soil. Threads thick as vines wrapping around the trunk of the apple tree. The eternal, distant echoes of screams and songs looping round and round the earth like Saturn’s rings, and if Crowley squinted hard enough, he could see their harmonies gleaming.

“I do sit still,” he said to no one in the dark. Or maybe, not to no one.

“Why do they get songs?” he wondered aloud. “What do they have to be comforted about? Everything is given to them, handed to them. All they do is sleep. Bet no one sings their parents songs. They’ve got the hardest of the lot. They’ve got all the troubles. No one writes lullabies for the ones who need them most.”

And he knew in his heart -- or the swirling matter he’d begun to think of as the place where part of his not-soul lived -- exactly why children got all the songs. Because children need distractions from all the Unknown they float in, until they can lift their heads and start finding answers for themselves. The Unknown is a terrible thing to dwell on, even for the youngest minds, whose curiosity more often than not sustains them.

And for the ones who know? Are there no songs for them? The Unknown scrambles the mind, yes, but the Certain, the Absolute, whittles the mind to a rounded end. Fixation on the Certain can be as maddening as floating in obscurity.

Crowley was falling back into fixation. Such was often the case whenever he sat still, so he tried to avoid it whenever possible. But true to pattern, his mind eventually numbed to the humming of the world, to the whispers of Time wrapping like gossamer around this green earth, invisible to all but the eyes of those who have seen more, who know more, and carry the burden of the Certain. And the boiling lake sloshing deep within the earth grew hot against his calves and the heels of his feet.

He tilted his head up to the sky and squinted into the cobalt. The harmonies of history came into focus, golden ribbons rippling in tired dance.

He hadn’t slept in nearly a century. When he last awoke, he’d missed a lot, and wasn’t anxious to miss any more. But now, unnamed weight rested on his head, a heavy fog that stings the eyes and confuses the senses. The kind with its own eyes lurking just beyond the haze. Not a comfortable Saturday morning fog, by any means.

He wanted to lie down forever. He wished this field were safe enough to do just that, but sensed beyond the hills the warm bodies of beasts waking up to hunt by dim starlight, and he fancied this body too much to risk its demise.

Suddenly, there was a snake, long, dark, and terrifying, and if someone were to notice this creature as it slithered around and up the wide tree trunk, they’d see its scales shimmering impossibly through the pitch black eve, reflecting an invisible light. It curled up on a scooping bough like an endless coil of shadowy rope, and it was thankful for the tree being there tonight. 

Snakes cannot hum. That’s impossible. But many impossible things had already happened that day, and the snake, feeling safe enough to do so within the dense shelter of leaves, tried his hand at melody, content for the words he deeply felt to remain unformed, unspoken, as the song was for him alone, and he was -- as he knew and feared -- quite alone for now.

[satoshi-mochida]

Inti Creates has released new information and artwork for Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX 2, its recently announced direct sequel to the Azure Striker Gunvolt spin-off game, introducing the game’s story, setting, and characters.

Get the details below.

■ About

Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX released back in September 2019, and Luminous Avenger iX 2 is its direct sequel coming to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Steam on January 27, 2022!

This new game takes the original speedy and stylish 2D action gameplay to the next level as Copen rips through enemies with his new “Break-Shift” form. His new destructive capabilities makes the high-speed action more satisfying than ever!

Experience a new apeX of cutting-edge 2D action with Luminous Avenger iX 2!

This is our first big update about the game since its initial reveal at BitSummit a few weeks ago, so we have a lot of goodies to share with you today!

■ Story and Setting

Thanks to the efforts of Copen, the “Luminous Avenger iX,” the world is finally at peace.

It was during these peaceful times that Copen threw himself into his research.

Some time after his battles ended, Copen found himself in possession of a mysterious, rifle-shaped piece of tech called a “Blaster Rifle.”

Copen immediately began work on repairing and studying the device. While Copen was deep in the midst of his work, a wormhole suddenly appeared before him and drew him in.

The next thing he knew, Copen found himself in an unfamiliar place—a desert world where only mechanical beings known as “Workers” lived.

Copen, along with Lola and Kohaku who were sent there along with him, must search for a way home. They have the help of a Worker girl, Null, who leads them to a giant tower known as the “Grave Pillar” where the world’s secrets are said to lie. This is where their story begins..

Workers

They are descendants of labor robots created by humans. These intelligent robots continue to go by the name “Workers,” despite no longer serving their original purpose. Since they were created to restore the barren environment to one suitable for mankind, they have adapted to using human infrastructure. Many of the Workers have humanoid frames.

Grave Pillar

A tower left behind by the Workers’ “Creator.” It is said that all of the world’s knowledge is stored deep within. The pillar originally served as a test site for experiments to restore the environment. Its interior contains replicas of a variety of climates and terrains.

Gravekeepers

They are special workers with orders to guard the Grave Pillar. Both “Grave Pillar” and “Gravekeeper” were nicknames given by later generations of Workers.

■ Characters

Copen

“Then we’ll just have to break through. I’ll rip it open with my Razor Wheel. Stay back.”

The hero known as “Luminous Avenger iX” in his original world. Copen is a genius scientist of few words. His armor can change seamlessly between two forms.

—Break-Shift

Copen’s Break-Shift form was created to bring out the full potential of his new weapon, the “Razor Wheel.” It’s a power-focused form intended for close-range combat. Along with the “Recoil Dash,” a powerful tackle attack that can send enemies and obstacles flying, the Break-Shift can also be installed with new abilities such as the “Hyper Guard” which can drastically reduce damage taken.

—Bullit-Shift

Copen’s Bullit-Shift form is focused on speed and gives him access to the quick “Bullit-Dash” in mid-air. Thanks to instantaneous changes in composition and structure, Bullit-Shift is drastically faster than Break-Shift. However, its defensive capabilities are also considerably lower. To compensate for this weakness, it is programmed to instantly change to Break-Shift the moment before Copen takes damage.

Lola

“That’s where I come in.”

She’s an autonomous, self-aware robot created by Copen to assist him in battle. Lola is equipped with a weapon copy system capable of replicating enemy weapons using data she gathers in combat. She uses these weapons as she flies alongside Copen in battle. While she normally exists as a spherical robot, she can transform into a humanoid form known as “Idol Mode.” In this form, she performs songs that have the power to enhance Copen’s abilities. She has continued her career as an underground pop star in the parallel world, which brings lots of joy to the Workers.

Kohaku

“Geez! That was so messed up! You guys left me and Null behind!”

A super positive and energetic young woman, Kohaku finds herself trapped in the parallel world alongside Copen. Even in an unfamiliar desert world, Kohaku remains as positive as ever and can always be seen raising the spirits of her friends. Though she has a “knack” for repairing machines based on intuition alone, Copen has put a moratorium on her maintenance duties for the time being.

Null

“Oooh! I remember hearing about that.”

She is the new heroine of the Luminous Avenger iX series. Null is a Worker girl who takes care of Copen and the others after they are sent to her world. She has an innocent and sweet personality and is always polite to anyone she meets. As a Worker, she strives to be of use to humans, who are seen as kin to the Creator, and works full time to help out Copen and Kohaku.

■ Brand New Music Video Featuring Lola’s Japanese Voice Actor

The “Muse of Hope” herself, Lola, is back once again with a brand new music video! Just like we did for the first Luminous Avenger iX game, we have Lola’s Japanese voice actress, Ms. Mayu Mineda, performing songs from the game! Check out the title theme to Luminous Avenger iX 2, “Command Prompt”! (English subtitles are included in the video.)

Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX 2 is due out for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC via Steam on January 27, 2022

Watch the “Command Prompt” music video below. View a new set of images at the gallery.

[nessie-rp]

SHAPESHIFTER.

Not much is known about the origin of shapeshifters, even to themselves. There are accounts of them through the ages, most widely considered to be true fantasy because shapeshifters rarely reveal themselves. Around the world many of these beings prefer to keep to themselves, but, in recent years, a few have begun to interact more with other supernatural communities.

HISTORY.

Stories of beings who could mimic the shape of any living creature have existed for all time, but history has all but forgotten that such beings really exist. The origins of shapeshifters are unknown even to the wisest among them. However, it is clear to anyone who believes in such things that they have been here for centuries. Some stories hold truth, after all, and within them you can glean the history of a people known to keep to the fringe of society. Through the ages, shapeshifters have acclimated more to living among those not of their kind but it is oft not in their nature to reveal themselves, and they as a species have largely remained silent about their very existence.

IN LYONESSE.

The presence of shapeshifters in Lyonesse is most often traced back to one Henna Sabrah and her family, who approached the Hallowed Council in 1963 to officially announce the presence of her kind in the city. It is unclear whether or not this action was supported by a majority of shapeshifters in the city. In an era where civil rights were being hotly debated, she saw the chance for the betterment of her people by finally moving them out of the shadows so they could mingle with other non-humans. She advocated for explicit rights for her people to be made law in the city, and for a seat on the council to be added so that their voices could be heard among those that govern them.

For a decade, Henna vied for a council position for shapeshifters. Her efforts included rallies, protests, and educational events articulating their needs and wants so as to gain popular support. Her time in the movement was short, but it made its mark and inspired many to take up her cause. In 1974, Henna was assassinated, leaving her family to take up the torch for progression.

To this day, shapeshifters in Lyonesse are still advocating for the recognition of the Hallowed Council, led most solidly by the remaining members of Henna Sabrah’s family.

FACTS.

Can shapeshift into "any creature with a heartbeat."

Average lifespan is ~200 years.

Until 1963 their existence was hotly debated due to their secretive nature

No one except for shapeshifters themselves know what a shapeshifters natural form looks like.

abilities.

Due to their ability to control their bodies, their healing is nearly on par with vampiric regeneration. Cuts will close in minutes, with more severe wounds taking more time. Because of this, one of the only sure-fire ways to kill a shapeshifter is decapitation.

Their agility, dexterity and reflexes vastly surpasses that typical for a human. Often able to pull off acrobatics with great finesse, they move with a preternatural grace.

The ability they’re known for, shapeshifters are able to shift into any living creature - humanoid or animal. They say “anything with a heartbeat” as a way to encompass the vast range of their shapeshifting abilities. Because of this, most people don’t really know for sure what shapeshifters naturally look like.

Because of their ability to control the shape of their bodies, losing a limb isn’t typically a permanent setback for a shapeshifter. After losing an arm, a finger, even an eye a shapeshifter can begin the progress of regrowing the lost appendage. This ability is not instantaneous and is incredibly painful so dismemberment and decapitation are still effective ways of killing a shapeshifter.

Shapeshifters receive emotional impressions of every living creature they encounter. The strength of these impressions is decided by its source, and can range from a light tingle of the senses to an overriding feeling of the emotion itself. For the most part, their empathy begins and ends at simply sensing and feeling what others do, though there are a select few who are able to wield emotional suggestion against those with weaker wills. This ability is innate and shapeshifters have no natural way of switching it off. Those who seek to nullify this ability through magical means may suffer dire consequences to their health and wellbeing.

weaknesses.

Shapeshifters are highly susceptible to the bite and blood of a vampire. They are immune to whatever causes ecstasy from a vampire’s bite and thus feel only pain when bitten. The bite itself tends to get infected and cause trouble for the shapeshifter. Can be deadly, but isn’t always. Their blood, however, is poisonous to them though not always lethal.

Proximity isn’t enough to hurt them, but contact with gold will cause rashes on the skin and weakness in the body. Consumption of gold results in a sickness not unlike food poisoning. While it would take a great deal of gold to kill a shapeshifter, just a little is enough to cause injury.

Shapeshifters are sensitive to the Chaos that all magic stems from. As such, the effects of spells against shapeshifters tend to be amplified. The general rule of thumb for shapeshifters is to avoid magical entanglement where possible.

A blessing and a curse, being burdened with the knowledge and sensation of everyone else’s emotions can be taxing. In states of panic, distress and disaster, shapeshifters can become incapacitated by the surrounding panic. Those who feel their emotions strongly, as well, can leave a shapeshifter feeling weary in their very presence.

ORGANIZATION & SOCIETY.

Shapeshifter culture, such as it is, is largely unconstrained and non-politicized. Solitary shapeshifters are just as common as those who dwell in groups, but all shapeshifters are aware of the secrets of their kind. When they group together, it tends to come more naturally and is a much more casual affair than with other species. A group of shapeshifters is called a family and their inner workings are usually fairly laid back.

families.

Often coming together as a group of friends and then simply growing, shapeshifter families are a grouping of both related and unrelated shapeshifters. They range in size, but average at about ten members though a family could be as small as four or as large as twenty-five. Matriarchal, loosely, in structure, each family has a mother - an elder shapeshifter who offers guidance. As a group, decisions are made by her but her word is not law - families are more loosely organized than that.

mother.

The tentative leaders of each family, the mother is an elder member who guides those within the family. Her job is often as the mothering sort of friend - the one you go to for advice, the one you seek aid from, the one you trust with your worries. First and foremost it is her job to be a confidant for those within the family, and advocate for their betterment. Because of her role, she is afforded the respect and is looked to by those within the family to handle disputes and take up their causes if they have any.

bonding.

The reason a shapeshifter family forms in the first place is to satisfy a need each shapeshifter has: to bond with their fellows. Due to their empathetic natures, shapeshifters can often remain guarded and tense emotionally. The bonding is a simple moment where collective shapeshifters let down their walls and simply feel in unison with those like them.

INTERSPECIES RELATIONS.

In general, shapeshifters are used to remaining partially elusive to those around them by not revealing their supernatural abilities. That said, they are aware of other species and cautious of some. There's a pretty heavy stigma against close relationships with vampires, due in large part to their vulnerability to them. Similarly, their weakness to the Chaos that fuels magic makes them warier of witches than the average person. On the other hand, they tend to feel kinship with werecreatures and other beings that change their shape and it's been known that a shapeshifter may live their lives parading around as one.

MYTHS.

These things do not apply:

"They can only shapeshift into animals." Just as many people believe this lie as know the truth.

They can control peoples emotions. They can't, though select few are able to give others impressions.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS.

Do shapeshifters have superior [strength/speed/senses]?

Short answer: no. Aside from their reflexes and dexterity, none of their senses or facilities are enhanced. At most, they’d be somewhere in the “peak human” levels as far as scale goes.

What is shapeshifting like?

Though painless, the shapeshifter’s body does visibly reshape itself into the shape of whatever they’re turning into. It’s a rather unattractive sight, but one that lasts less than a minute before the shift is complete.

Can they shapeshift into other people?

Yes, they can! Shapeshifters can turn not only into animals and creatures, but other people as well.

Can shapeshifters reproduce?

They can, but only with other shapeshifters if they want shapeshifter offspring. Shapeshifters can only be born of two shapeshifter parents and mating with other species results in either a child the species of the other parent, or some hybrid.

Can shapeshifters be turned into vampires?

Due to their vulnerability to the bite and their blood, the magic that creates vampires just doesn't seem to work on shapeshifters. If they die with vampire blood in their system, they simply die.

Are all shapeshifters in a family?

No, though it is something of a taboo in shapeshifter culture and they miss out on the benefits of the bonding they share with a family.

Can shapeshifters do their empathic bonding with non-shapeshifters?

Yes, though it isn't exactly the same. Bonding is just the letting down of their walls, the sharing in the push and pull of emotions. Anyone emotionally in-tune enough could simulate this experience with a shapeshifter. It's simply stronger between two empathic beings.

[vegas-glitz]

New York Inventory Trade - Why Is Anyone Shouting?

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Ah certainly, the New York Stock Trade, while it is really the epicenter of the trading universe, it appears to be like a little bit extra like an amusement park or a playground will not it? Shut your eyes and you can photo it, the hustle, the bustle, the screaming traders on the floor, the grown adult men perspiring by way of fits and button up shirts gesticulating like a wild pack of youngsters actively playing deal with soccer on an open discipline.

But why, in this modern day-working day and age, do traders and brokers still act like an angry mob? Will not we use computer systems for most trades these days anyway? Just isn't this the information age, an period dominated by sterile, prompt interaction? How did this madness begin? Why does it still go on? This short article will take a look at and explain the causes why Wall Avenue and many other investing pits resemble a riot after a soccer match more so than a accumulating of developed company majors seeking to amass a fortune for on their own and their consumers.

In the first area, there are a amount of trading exchanges and buying and selling pits, from the bond pits in Chicago to the Nikkei in significantly off Japan, but the most well-known trading trade in the globe, over and above a shadow of a question, exists at the intersection of Wall Road and Wide Road in Manhattan. The New York Inventory Exchange (NYSE) had existed due to the fact 1792 when the famed Buttonwood arrangement was signed by 24 New York brokers and businessmen. Most people feel of the Dow-Jones Exchange when they assume of the inventory marketplace. This is made up of thirty of the major corporations in the United States, from GE and McDonald's to Walmart.

The basic principle is easy people today use stockbrokers to get stocks, or percentages of ownership of a enterprise (and its profits or losses) in trade for hard cash. The dollars is and generally has flown around the area at a speedy and furious rate, and so has the action, that's why the complete hubbub. Basically these stocks are "auctioned" off to the best bidder who agrees to a obtain cost, so every broker is making an attempt to get their bid in and recognized ahead of the selling price of a stock rises. This is where the yelling originated, with brokers attempting to shout their rate and acceptance as loudly as possible in an endeavor to drown out and defeat the competing brokers to the purchase price tag that they want. Having a bid in a split second before at pennies per stock can signify the variation amongst hundreds of thousands of bucks of gain on one particular huge inventory order, so the immediacy and drive used can be comprehensible when so much is on the line.

Initially, the tenor of the space was additional gentlemanly, as revered businessmen and brokers traded shares at a realistic speed and prosperity simply moved amongst rich people today, from one particular household to one more. A Rockefeller may possibly obtain a piece of a Ford or a Vanderbilt's passions, knowing that these productive, rich males would deliver more wealth.

As America grew, although, and the American Aspiration was born, the typical people desired in on the motion. Right after the Industrial Revolution in The united states took spot in the late 1800's, a center course emerged, as manufacturing facility staff fought for a lot more of the corporation pie and at last received superior wages and doing the job problems. The concept that any American could get prosperous and get wealthy brief took root, and what better way than through the New York Stock Trade.

By the 1920's, many People were being investing in the inventory industry. The New York Inventory Trade was booming. Prompt millionaires were popping up all above the position. There was a total new stage of wealthy Us residents with ticker tape devices in their dwelling rooms supplying them instantaneous current market selling price updates. This is when the screaming and gesticulating commenced in earnest, as brokers have been overcome by prospective buyers, new clients and acquire orders. They screamed and hollered and waved their arms to get their orders in initial. The country's stance was constructive. The era was recognised as the Roaring Twenties, and its theme track was Blue Skies due to the fact all the things was coming up roses for most Individuals. Client credit rating was born to aid promote products being more than produced thanks to massive...inventory investments. The only issue was this full explosion of wealth was constructed on a household of cards nearly like a Ponzi scheme. Stocks had been getting bought for start off-ups providers that were not making income, they ended up just filling their coffers with financial commitment hard cash, and far too a lot of individuals have been downright leveraged in the inventory current market. For 9 decades, from 1920 to 1929, inventory price ranges went straight up with no close in sight.

That is till October 24 of 1929, improved known as Black Thursday. That was the day of the Terrific Stock Industry Crash that signaled the commencing of the Wonderful Depression, the greatest economic disaster the United States has at any time faced. The pits exploded with sounds as brokers screamed "promote, offer, provide," seeking to minimize losses right before it was much too late, but there have been no prospective buyers. Investors fled en masse, most of them were being bankrupt, broke and penniless.

However, the New York Stock Exchange persevered, and as with any trade or market, has experienced its turbulent ups and downs ever due to the fact. There have been a selection of peaks and valleys on the New York Inventory Trade over the several years. The most current crash happened in 2008 just after the housing bubble burst. The industry is still recovering. There have been many restrictions place in location to make the trading fairer and much more acceptable. Working day traders' trade from their home personal computer signaling buys and sells in an instantaneous. In simple fact, most trading is transacted by way of computers these times.

So why are developed men in satisfies nevertheless yelling, screaming and gesticulating like a five-yr outdated throwing a temper tantrum? That's the a person point that never ever appears to be to modify.

Simply because at its coronary heart, the New York Inventory Exchange is continue to an auction home procedure, and each solitary DOW trade occurs at the finish on that well known ground. Even if, you make a acquire on E*Trade, the trade is accepted and consummated on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, facilitated by a broker. The screaming isn't really as needed, nor as widespread as in the previous, thanks to computer systems and technological improvements in conversation systems, but there are however brokers on the ground who have to triumph over their levels of competition to the punch. In point, hand alerts are much more crucial now to pit stockbrokers, so they can rapidly sign floor professionals who put in the actual purchase or offer buy. That clarifies all the mad gesticulating..

"Orders appear in by way of brokerage companies that are customers of the trade and move down to ground brokers who go to a unique location on the floor exactly where the inventory trades. At this place, acknowledged as the trading put up, there is a precise man or woman acknowledged as the specialist whose work is to match potential buyers and sellers."

By using wild clear gestures and screaming when essential, so the get can be listened to brokers are speaking with their individual companions these times not so much with the auctioneer. The sound and fury will get so solid at time, the outdated mass havoc rears its ugly head and to an outsider it appears as however a rugby scrum has broken out. In point, it simply just suggests that a massive quantity of trades are transpiring right right before your eyes, and to the detriment of your ears.

Likely there will occur a working day when all is silent at the New York Stock Exchange, but it definitely wouldn't be as entertaining. In all probability nevertheless, there will normally be human traders on the ground earning positive that their transaction goes by means of, and that will generally indicate yelling and hand indications. So now you know, the subsequent time you see a frenzied movie clip from the New York Inventory Trade, the brokers aren't working towards to come to be skilled wrestlers or politicians. They are not understanding how to guide a airplane down the runway, or imitate their most loved NFL Head Mentor on the sidelines of a near football activity. They are just making an attempt to make dollars or conserve income for their customers. If you change out to be 1 of people clients and it is really your money at stake, even if you only have a 401K or retirement fund, you could consider that these transactions are worth the shouting.

Source by Miriam B Medina

[thenotestoselfblog]

A short story about trees

There’s no room for nuance in tree politics. Trees remain in the same position, physical and moral, for their entire lives. When they are mere saplings, they pick sides, and that’s that. There’s no such thing as a swing voter or centrist policy. Trees are partisans, and they grow more stubborn as they age. Each new ring on the trunk represents another year of defiance, a thicker skin against views that conflict with one’s own. It’s frowned upon for a tree to change its political position, just as it’s frowned upon for a tree to uproot itself, and move to a different part of the wood, to steal sunlight from its peers. As a result, trees find themselves stuck, for their entire lives, between trees with radically different views. They stand side-by-side with the opposition, arguing at great length about how best to preserve the wood for future generations.

 Every one hundred years, trees vote on important issues. The hundred-year gap is a long one, but it allows plenty of time for old trees to die and new trees to be born, and for the opinions of the forest to shift naturally with time. A more frequent vote would be pointless, since the trees don’t change their views. They also take a long time to get anything done.

 There is only one tree that’s allowed to remain impartial, and that’s the grandest tree in the wood. It cannot be swayed by anything other than the wind, and when it speaks, the entire forest feels its presence. Though it has the most power in the wood, it wields it only in the name of democracy. It is both nameless and genderless. It is everything and it is nothing and is known only by its title, ‘the minister.’ The minister of the forest.

 And the forest in question, for the purposes of this tale, was a sequoia wood. Its exact location is irrelevant, and the date is difficult to determine, but suffice to say that an election was due, and the topic in question was humans.

 The trees needed to settle, once and for all, what to do about humankind. Among the sequoias, there existed two opposing ideologies: one which espoused the benefits of a future alliance with people, and the other, which depicted all Homo sapiens as a categorical waste of space.

 Throughout tree history (all four-hundred million years of it), trees have happily accommodated other forms of life. And thousands of years ago, when humans first walked through the sequoia wood, this was no different. Just another species, the trees said. No harm done. Humans gave the trees some carbon, and in exchange, the trees pumped out some oxygen. It was a mutually beneficial relationship. In fact, humans barely registered on the radar; they paled in comparison to the sequoias’ other concerns, which were a) keeping the myriad organisms in the ecosystem alive and b) avoiding pests and disease. These were the typical issues upon which the sequoias voted.

 Later though, the forest found itself under attack. The early humans used axes for firewood. The trees didn’t mind much, at first. They understood the human need to keep warm, and were happy to support a species less hardy than themselves. In fact, the trees would often laugh at the pitiful attempts of humans to inflict pain on the forest. The axe felt less than a pinprick to a sequoia. Even if an axe chopped a tree down, it was a painless and easy death. The sequoias knew that they served a purpose larger than themselves. With each death, new life was bred. The felled trees became nursery logs for mosses and lichens, and ferns and berries, and countless other instances of re-birth. The logs absorbed moisture and passed down nutrients to the forest floor. They created new habitats for burrowing insects and resting places for birds. All this made trees comfortable with the idea of dying. It made them the architects of eternal life.

 Yet, as humanity thrived and civilisation developed, a second wave of attack came, in the form of agriculture. The fringes of the forest were cut to make way for new farmland. The trees thought it unfair of humans to pick on the fringe; those trees were just as important as the central trees of the wood, and were only located there through a misfortune of birth. Some of the oldest, wisest trees lived on the fringes, as did some of the youngest and brightest. What most upset the forest though, was that of the trees cut down for agriculture, none were given an opportunity to support new life. This fuelled anti-human sentiment, and trees began to take sides. The pro-human trees still had reasons to believe that humans were putting the forest to good use. The farmland produced crops that fed the people and the logged wood was turned into paper for making books and letters other wonderful papery things like origami and lanterns and wrapping for presents. But as agriculture developed, the case for humans became less compelling, and many of the older, pro-human trees were cut down for their bountiful supply of wood. This angered the saplings, and many of them chose to be anti-human in protest.

 By the time of the third wave of attack - the industrial revolution - the deforestation got worse and the climate got hotter[1] and trees around the world were getting really hacked off – literally and figuratively. Support for humankind dwindled as the forest shrunk.

 As one young sequoia so eloquently put it: ‘they’re really starting to take the piss now.’

 Virtually every new tree in the forest shared the sentiment, as the logging scaled up. The number of human-caused forest fires increased. The most egregious of which were those started by discarded, and still lit, cigarettes. The sequoias weren’t big on smoking. Eventually, the rising destruction prompted whisperings that a fourth wave of attack was happening. The trees gave it a name: globalisation. They didn’t really know what it meant, but one thing they knew for sure, was that humans wanted to make the forest even smaller. The pro-human trees remained stoic, as was their political obligation, but they were beginning to feel outnumbered; much of the older, pro-human generation had by then been lost to the loggers.

 At the last count, the balance between young and old was almost 50/50, which mirrored the political divide. With a vote looming, the trees knew that humans had to be on the agenda. They were the biggest threat to the forest’s existence, and also the biggest user of resources. The debates became so heated, that the entire forest nearly self-combusted in disagreement. The calls for an election grew so loud that the minister of the forest would have heard them from miles away, on the far side of the wood. It was generally thought among the sequoias that the next vote would be the one in which the question of humans would be decided.

 And so voting day came around, 36,525 days (including leap years) after the last one. It was a scorcher; the hottest that the trees could remember. They were transpiring like never before, and could barely keep up with the rate of water and gas exchange. It was exhausting work, and the vote was a welcome distraction.

 The minister, the most connected tree in the wood, mustered the attention of each and every constituent. A silence came over the leaves like the sound of ending rain. The minister spoke upon the stillness, through the roots and the soil and the fungal network of the forest floor, and the ecosystem hummed with connectedness.

 The minister cleared its proverbial throat, and said:

 “There is one thing that all the trees can agree on: the preservation the forest for future generations. We have different views on how this can be done, but today we must decide: Do we like humans? Or do we not? Today we vote, for the first time in one hundred years. Many trees have been born since our last vote, and many have been lost. I highly doubt you need reminding, but for formality’s sake, I must state that our present position on humans is that they are a species to be allied with. Our official stance is that they are friends of the forest, and we are friends of theirs.”

 A few distant leaves rustled and treetrunks creaked, as they made their feelings known about the forest’s official stance. The minister waited for silence to return. It had plenty of time to allow dissenting voices to settle. It hadn’t spoken for hundreds of years; it could wait a little longer. A few hours passed before proceedings finally resumed.

 “Now is the time, sequoias, to cast your votes. Send me a signal with a simple ‘yes’ for pro-human, or a ‘no’ for anti-human. Any more colourful language will not be taken into consideration.”

 The trees duly did their democratic duty[2], before swiftly returning to photosynthesis. They were sweating in the heat.

 The minister did the counting instantaneously, but liked to allow some time to pass to build a little dramatic tension. When the minister was satisfied, it announced the results:

 “Fellow trees, here is where we stand on the question of humankind:

 The total of Pro-Human votes is: 13,796

The total of Anti-Human votes is: 15,802

 Therefore, we are now officially anti-human.”

 Riotous voices tore through the forest. This time, the minister could not wait for calm, before speaking again. The fervour on both sides of the political divide was too strong. Above the grumbling and groaning of the trees, the minister boomed its final message:

 “We will continue to do our duty as trees. We are a noble species, and will work as we have always done, to provide for the planet. We will work rain or shine, and never, ever, take sick days. As a collective, we must now decide the best way to deal with humankind. That is all for the current vote. I will speak to you again, one hundred years henceforth.”

 The minister’s voice disappeared, and for the first time in all of human history, the trees decided they were anti-human. The forest raged like it had never raged before. Only those that spoke the language of the wood would have truly understood the level of conflict. And the minister, bound by the ancient laws of tree justice, could only listen, unable to wield its power to prevent the fighting.

 The night came in hot and thick, and suggestions about how to deal with humanity spread around the wood. Ideas included:

 ‘Suffocate the bastards – cut off their supply of oxygen.’

 ‘Poison them with juicy-looking berries.’

 ‘Rot our wood so it becomes useless.’

 But the trees couldn’t agree on a way forward. There seemed to be no way for them to hurt humans without damaging the other species in the ecosystem, or themselves.

 Then, the lightning came. A tree was struck, and it was the beginning of the end for the sequoia wood. A tinder sparked, which grew into a voracious wildfire, and devoured the forest. The minister was caught in the blaze, too, and died after living for more than a thousand years. Overnight, the entire forest was wiped out. The leftover land was charred and barren by dawn. Life was eradicated from the forest. Ash suffocated the soil.

 Months later, a seedling germinated from the ash. It was a lonely speck of green bursting through grey. It stood limp and vulnerable, until a young woman found it. She approached with tears in her eyes. Half-outraged by the devastation, half-awed by the possibility for re-birth, she decided in that moment to do something. From that day, she nurtured the tree as if it were her own child, and its trunk grew thick and tough during her lifetime. Being the first tree in the wood, it became the minister of the forest, though the lady knew nothing of that. She simply brought her friends to the new forest, and they too planted their own trees.

As generations passed, the forest rose up again, and all the trees were pro-human, thankful for their opportunity for life. But they, like the dead trees before them, had no idea that their opinion meant nothing.

   [1] The anti-human trees suspected the increasing temperatures had something to do with humans, but they didn’t have the scientific understanding to back it up.

[2] Tree voter turnout is always 100%. When you only get to vote once per hundred years, you want to make your vote count.

[cristinalooksatthings]

The cosmic orphan by Loren Eiseley

When I was a young lad of that indefinite but important age when one begins to ask, Who am I? Why am I here? What is the nature of my kind? What is growing up? What is the world? How long shall I live in it? Where shall I go? I found myself walking with a small companion over a high railroad trestle that spanned a stream, a country bridge, and a road. One could look fearfully down, between the ties, at the shallows and ripples in the shining water some 50 feet below. One was also doing a forbidden thing, against which our parents constantly warned. One must not be caught on the black bridge by a train. Something terrible might happen, a thing called death.

From the abutment of the bridge we gazed down upon the water and saw among the pebbles the shape of an animal we knew only from picture books— a turtle, a very large, dark mahogany-colored turtle. We scrambled down the embankment to observe him more closely. From the little bridge a few feet above the stream, I saw that the turtle, whose beautiful markings shone in the afternoon sun, was not alive and that his flippers waved aimlessly in the rushing water. The reason for his death was plain. Not too long before we had come upon the trestle, someone engaged in idle practice with a repeating rifle had stitched a row of bullet holes across the turtle’s carapace and sauntered on.

My father had once explained to me that it took a long time to make a big turtle, years really, in the sunlight and the water and the mud. I turned the ancient creature over and fingered the etched shell with its forlorn flippers flopping grotesquely. The question rose up unbidden. Why did the man have to kill something living that could never be replaced? I laid the turtle down in the water and gave it a little shove. It entered the current and began to drift away. “Let’s go home,” I said to my companion. From that moment I think I began to grow up.

“Papa,” I said in the evening by the oil lamp in our kitchen. “Tell me how men got here.” Papa paused. Like many fathers of that time, he was worn from long hours, he was not highly educated, but he had a beautiful resonant voice and had been born on a frontier homestead. He knew the ritual way the Plains Indians opened a story.

“Son,” he said, taking the pattern of another people for our own, “once there was a poor orphan.” He said in such a way that I sat down at his feet. Once there was a poor orphan with no one to teach him either his way, or his manners. Sometimes animals helped him, sometimes supernatural beings. But above all, one thing was evident. Unlike other occupants of Earth, he had to be helped. He did not know his place, he had to find it. Sometimes he did not understand his Mother Earth and suffered for it. The old ones who starved and sought visions on hilltops had known these things. They were all gone now and the magic had departed with them. The orphan was alone; he had to learn by himself; it was a hard school.

My father tousled my head; he gently touched my heart. “You will learn in time, there is much pain here,” he said. “Men will give it to you, time will give it to you, and you must learn to bear it all, not bear it alone, but be better for the wisdom that may come to you if you watch and listen and learn. Do not forget the turtle, nor the ways of men. They are all orphans and they go astray; they do wrong things. Try to see better.”

“Yes, papa,” I said, and that was how I believe I came to study men, not the men of written history, but the ancestors beyond, beyond all writing, beyond time as we know it, beyond human form as it is known today. Papa was right when he told me all men were orphans, eternal seekers. They had little in the way of instinct to instruct them, they had come a strange far road in the universe, passed more than one black, threatening bridge. There were even more to pass and each one became more dangerous as our knowledge grew. Because man was truly an orphan and confined to no single way of life, he was, in essence, a prison breaker. But in ignorance his very knowledge sometimes led from one terrible prison to another. Was the final problem then, to escape himself, or if not that, to reconcile his devastating intellect with his heart? All of the knowledge set down in great books directly or indirectly affects this problem. It is the problem of every man, for even the indifferent man is making, unknown to himself, his own callous judgement.

Long ago, however, in one of the Dead Sea Scrolls hidden in the Judaean Desert, an unknown scribe had written: “None there be, can rehearse the whole tale.” That phrase, too, contains the warning that man is an orphan of uncertain beginnings and indefinite endings. All that the archaeological and anthropological sciences can do is to place a somewhat flawed crystal before man and say: This is the way you came, these are your present dangers; somewhere, seen dimly beyond, lies your destiny. God help you, you are a cosmic orphan, a symbol-shifting magician, mostly immature and inattentive to your own dangers. Read, think, study, but do not expect this to save you without humility of heart. This the old ones knew long ago in the great deserts under the stars. This they sought to learn and pass on. It is the only hope of men.

What have we observed that might be buried as the Dead Sea Scrolls were buried for 2,000 years and be broken out of a jar for human benefit, brief words that might be encompassed on a copper scroll or a ragged sheet of vellum? Only these thoughts, I think, we might reasonably set down as true, now, and hereafter. For a long time, for many, many centuries, Western man believed in what we might call the existent world of nature; form as form was seen as constant in both animal and human guise. He believed in the instantaneous creation of his world by the Deity; he believed in his duration to be very short, a stage upon which the short drama of a human fall from divine estate and a redemption was in process.

Worldly time was a small parenthesis in eternity. Man lived with that belief, his cosmos small and man-centred. Then, beginning about 350 years ago, thoughts unventured upon since the time of the Greek philosophers began to enter the human consciousness. They may be summed up in Francis Bacon’s dictum: “This is the foundation of all. We are not to imagine or suppose, but to discover, what nature does or may be made to do”

When in following years scientific experiment and observation became current, a vast change began to pass over Western thought. Man’s conception of himself and his world began to alter beyond recall. “Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone,” exclaimed the poet John Donne, Bacon’s contemporary. The existing world was crumbling at the edges. It was cracking apart like an ill-nailed raft in a torrent— a torrent of incredible time. It was, in effect, a new nature comprising a past embedded in the present and a future yet to be.

First, Bacon discerned a mounds alter, another separate world that could be drawn out of nature by human intervention— the world that surrounds and troubles us today. Then, by degrees, time depths of tremendous magnitude began, in the late 18th century, to replace the Christian calendar. Space, from a surrounding candelabrum of stars, began to widen to infinity. The Earth was recognized as a mere speck drifting in the wake of a minor star, itself rotating around an immense galaxy composed of innumerable suns. Beyond and beyond, into billions of light years, other galaxies glowed through clouds of wandering gas and interstellar dust. Finally, and perhaps the most shocking blow of all, the natural world of the moment proved to be an illusion, a phantom of man’s short lifetime. Organic novelty lay revealed in the strata of the Earth. Man had not always been here. He had been preceded, in the 4,000,000,000 years of the planet’s history, by floating mollusks, strange fern forests, huge dinosaurs, flying lizards, giant mammals whose bones lay under the dropped boulders of vanished continental ice sheets.

The Orphan cried out in protest, as the cold of naked space entered his bones, “Who am I?” And once more science answered. “You are a changeling.” “You are linked by a genetic chain to all vertebrates. The thing that is you bears the still aching wounds of evolution in body and in brain. Your hands are made-over fins, your lungs come from a creature gasping in a swamp, your femur has been twisted upright. Your foot is a reworked climbing pad. You are a rag doll resin from the skins of extinct animals. Long ago, 2,000,000 years perhaps, you were smaller, your brain was not so large. We are not confident that you could speak. Seventy million years before that you were an even smaller climbing creature known as a tupaiid. You were the size of a rat. You ate insects. Now you fly to the Moon.”

“This is a fairy tale,” said the scientists, “but so is the world and so is life. That is what makes it true. Life is indefinite departure. That is why we are all orphans. That is why you must find your own way. Life is not stable. Everything alive is slipping through cracks and crevices in time, changing as it goes. Other creatures, however, have instincts that provide for them, holes in which to hide. They cannot ask questions. A fox is a fox, a wolf is a wolf, even if this, too, is illusion. You have learned to ask questions. That is why you are an orphan. You are the only creature in the universe who knows what it has been. Now you must go on asking questions while all the time you are changing. You will ask what you are to become. The world will no longer satisfy you. You must find your way, your own true self.”

“But how can I?” Wept the Orphan, hiding his head. “This is magic. I do not know what I am. I have been too many things.”

“You have indeed,” said all the scientists together. “Your body and your nerves have been dragged about and twisted in the long effort of your ancestors to stay alive, but now, small orphan that you are, you must know a secret, a secret magic that nature has given to you. No other creature on the planet possesses it. You use language. You are a symbol-shifter. All this is hidden in your brain and transmitted from one generation to another. You are a time-binder, in your head the symbols that mean things in the world outside can fly about untrammeled. You can combine them differently into a new world of thought or you can also hold them tenaciously throughout a lifetime and pass them on to others.”

Thus out of words, a puff of air, really, is made all that is uniquely human, all that is new from one human generation to another. But remember what was said of the wounds of evolution. The brain, parts of it at least, is very old, the parts laid down in sequence like geological strata. Buried deep beneath the brain with which we reason are ancient defense centers quick to anger, quick to aggression, quick to violence, over which the neocortex, the new brain, strives to exert control. Thus there are times when the Orphan is a divided being striving against himself. Evil men know this. Sometimes they can play upon it for their own political advantage. Men crowded together, subjected to the same stimuli, are quick to respond to emotion that in the quiet of their own homes, they might analyze more cautiously.

Scientists have found that the very symbols which crowd our brains may possess their own dangers. It is convenient for the thinker to classify an idea with a word. This can sometimes lead to a process called hypostatization or reification. Take the word “Man” for example. There are times when it is useful to categorize the creature briefly, his history, his embracing characteristics. From this, if we are not careful of our meanings, it becomes easy to speak of all men as though they were one person. In reality men have been seeking this unreal man for thousands of years. They have found him bathed in blood, they have found him in the hermit’s cell, he has been glimpsed among innumerable messiahs, or in meditation under the sacred bô tree; he has been found in the physician’s study or lit by the satanic fires of the first atomic explosion.

In reality he has never been found at all. The reason is very simple: men have been seeking Man capitalized, an imaginary creature constructed out of disparate parts in the laboratory of the human imagination. Some men may thus perceive him and see him as either totally beneficent or wholly evil. They would be wrong. They are wrong so long as they have vitalized this creation and call it Man. There is no Man; there are only men: good, evil, inconceivable mixtures marred by their genetic makeup, scarred, or improved by their societal surroundings. So long as they live they are men, multitudinous and unspent potential for action. Men are great objects of study, but the moment we say “Man” we are in danger of wandering into a swamp of abstraction.

Surveying our fossil history perhaps we are not even justified as yet in calling ourselves true men. The word carries subtle implications that extend beyond us into the time stream. If a remote half-human ancestor, barely able to speak, had had a word for his kind, as very likely he did, and just supposing it had been “man,” would he approve the usage, the shape-freezing quality of it, now? I think not. Perhaps no true orphan would wish to call himself anything but a traveller. Man in a cosmic timeless sense may not be here.

The point is particularly apparent in the light of a recent and portentous discovery. In 1953 James D. Watson and Francis H. C. Crick discovered the structure of the chemical alphabet out of which all that lives is constituted. It was a strange spiral ladder within the cell, far more organized and complicated than 19th-century biologists had imagined; the tiny building blocks constantly reshuffled in every mating had both an amazing stability and paradoxically, over long time periods, a power to alter the living structure of a species beyond recall. The thing called man had once been a tree shrew on a forest branch; now it manipulates abstract symbols in its brain from which skyscrapers rise, bridges span the horizon, disease is conquered, the Moon is visited.

Molecular biologists have begun to consider whether the marvelous living alphabet which lies at the root of evolution can be manipulated for human benefit. Varieties of domesticated plants and animals have been improved. Now at last man has begun to eye his own possible road into the future. By delicate excisions and intrusions could the mysterious alphabet we carry in our bodies be made to hasten our advancement into the future? Already our urban concentrations, with all their aberrations and faults, are future-oriented. Why not ourselves? Is it in our power to perpetuate great minds ad infinitum? But who is to judge? Who is to select this future man? There is the problem. Which of us poor orphans by the roadside, even those peering learnedly through the electron microscope, can be confident of the way into the future? Could the fish unaided by nature have found the road to the reptile, the reptile to the mammal, the mammal to the man? And how was man endowed with speech? Could men choose their way? Suddenly, before us towers the blackest, most formidable bridge of our experience. Across what chasm does it run?

Biologists tell us that in the fullness of time over ninety percent of the world’s past species have perished. The mammalian ones in particular are not noted for longevity. If the scalpel, the excising laser ray int he laboratory, were placed in the hands of some one man, some one poor orphan, what would he do? If assured, would he reproduce himself alone? If cruel, would he by indirection succeed in abolishing the living world? If doubtful of the road, would he reproduce the doubt? “Nothing is more shameful than assertion without knowledge,” a great Roman, Cicero, once pronounced as though he had foreseen this final bridge of human pride— the pride of a god without foresight.

After the disasters of the second World War when the dream of perpetual progress died from men’s minds, an orphan of this violent century wrote a poem about the great extinctions revealed in the rocks of the planet. It concludes as follows:

I am not sure I love

The cruelties found in our blood

From some lost evil tree in our beginnings.

May the powers forgive and seal us deep

When we lie down,

May harmless dormice creep and red leaves fall

Over the prisons where we wreaked our will.

Dachau, Auschwitz, those places everywhere.

If I could pray, I would pray long for this.

One may conclude that the poet was a man of doubt. He did not regret man; he was confident that leaves, rabbits, and songbirds would continue life, as, long ago, a tree shrew had happily forgotten the ruling reptiles. The poet was an orphan in shabby circumstances pausing by the roadside to pray, for he did pray despite his denial; God forgive us all. He was a man in doubt upon the way. He was the eternal orphan of my father’s story. Let us then, as similar orphans who have come this long way through time, be willing to assume the risks of the uncompleted journey. We must know, as that forlorn band of men in Judaea knew when they buried the jar, that man’s road is to be sought beyond himself. No man there is who can tell the whole tale. After the small passage of 2,000 years who would deny this truth? 

[woolrich-donna-woolrich]

What Makes Talalay Latex Mattress the Perfect On your own Can Purchase?

Talalay Latex Mattress is the sort of service that on your own want in the direction of begin creating a significantly healthy everyday living. Now that yourself are living in just a earth that runs therefore instantaneous and busyness retains turning into within your direction towards obtaining a extensive and entire existence, your self need to have in the direction of acquire regulate of everything. This contains sleeping. That appears as well trivial a matter in the direction of shell out any attention in direction of and on your own would not be improper to at any time feel consequently. Nevertheless sleeping is an crucial section of your daily life cycle. Smooth sleeping potential customers in the direction of a amazingly cozy and vivid mind as your human body includes bought what it needs: a relax, a break versus stresses lifestyle ever throws at it working day within day out. With a mind and human body carefully replenished of electrical power, on your own can continue to keep up with tight schedules and a Quite occupied day at get the job done. Still inside of truth, even though, folks (including quite possibly you) hardly ever just take this. Consolation sleeping contains come to be some kind of a luxurious they are not able to afford to pay for. Your thoughts is hence preoccupied with things and with a physique that does not order the supports it needs toward wind out, it is gravely not possible for by yourself in direction of delight in a night’s Fantastic loosen up.

What does it get on your own towards attain this kind of a detail? Let’s begin with declaring that yourself need a software that offers supports consequently your overall body can loosen up. With a at ease human body, tender sleeping will shortly observe and your mind gets its probability in direction of choose a break. A mattress, as these, is this sort of an necessary part of your night time take it easy. However, All those can be said towards have no concerns regarding this matter. They (and probably which includes you) easily just take whichever mattress they stumble on initially. If the detail resembles a bed, or if the matter does not drain the monetary out of their wallet, then the point will at their household. Clumsily selecting a bed will bring about oneself as a result considerably additional than what oneself think is a positive deal at the retail store. A mattress that does not conform effectively in direction of your human body will induce on your own in the direction of soreness all earlier mentioned your joints. And you certain do not require to be advised what happens Though your overall body aches When your self are attempting to rest. Even While your system does not discomfort, your self will faster or afterwards establish sleeping ailment that originates towards the unpleasant sleeping. The Talalay Latex Mattress is a ideal services oneself have to have toward counter All those possible troubles.

Obviously, there is at this time a huge question mark hovering upon your thoughts at the time currently being instructed that the Talalay Latex Mattress is the ideal determination for you-and that is a specified. When perhaps a number of products of mattresses, it would be difficult for on your own towards believe that there is even a single mattress that can fulfill your necessities, right? Properly, you will not notice if your self do not offer it a check out 1st, that is for of course. Definitely, on your own will need some convincing in direction of be ready toward see the matter for what it extremely is. Consequently, let’s obtain out what makes this type of mattress a superior option for your self:

1.Perfectt thickness and organic and natural written content A Talalay mattress is created of an Eight inch thick latex-made layer that, anytime blended with other levels that represent the bed as a whole, delivers added than sufficient provider for your overall body fat. This layer of rubber is developed of 100% organic materials therefore your self do not consist of in direction of be concerned over a issue once it comes to manufacturing your bed room free of charge of destructive chemical compounds and something.

2.Competentd item A Talalay Latex Mattress is both equally Cradle toward Cradle and Oeko-Tex competent. Cradle to Cradle certification is granted in the direction of a substance that conforms toward the law that delivers stability to making products and solutions and preserving the environment managed. Position easily, a Cradle towards Cradle certificate is meant toward make certain that a materials is created with substantial high-quality and natural materials however is in essence free of waste-which, within just switch, does not damage the environment.

Upon the other hand, the Oeko-Tex certificate is a procedure of assuring consumers that the materials they purchase consists of long gone throughout a sequence of rigorous quality assessments. And intellect yourself, this kind of exams are a large amount. A material should move during certificate procedure before getting announced absolutely free of hazardous substances of any form.

3. Conformity in the direction of Seven zones Just chatting, each time by yourself look for towards come across the suitable sleeping posture, the mattress by yourself employ really should be equipped in direction of provide supports on Seven zones (points) along the line of your body. Sleeping seems and seems which includes something on your own the natural way do-you contain been sleeping for a ton of days in your existence. On the other hand, sleeping is a point that features challenging inserting, which, Even though left unchecked, would lead in the direction of misalignment of the again, waist, and neck. Ongoing misalignment will lead toward any variety of actual physical deformities and, of system, sleeping illnesses.

A Talalay mattress is developed with the electrical power to be adjusted these that it supports your overall body totally and dispersing tensions more evenly. As a consequence, there would not be any stage on your entire body that suffers against ingesting towards take upon your whole overall body body weight while lying down.

4. Cotton-quilt protect and wool layer The Talalay latex tends to make up the innards of the bed. Upon its seem, continue to, the mattress is stacked with a layer of organic wool. Becoming non-synthetic, the wool will be verified Great for a large amount of factors. Synthetic wool is laced with one particular far too many chemicals in its creating. This will induce those who are allergic to incorporate assaults when sleeping on it. Those people who are delicate would experience in opposition to skin challenges. Those people without claimed ailments still consist of larger opportunity toward establish signs or symptoms just after inhaling unstable product introduced as a result of the product. In addition, this wool layer results in for interesting and dry sleep, leaving your overall body with a lot less warmth, which would direct in the direction of greater comfort ranges.

5.Toughe The bed is established with heightened sturdiness, making it a a lot better expense to acquire. Firmness is persistently assured even for the one made for partners.

The superior things around Talalay Latex Mattress moreover grow towards its slat. The slat of a Talalay bed is designed quilted with all-natural wool as effectively for the exact same rationale its appear is lined with identical content material. A double mattress of this mattress is intended these types of that each and every personal occupying respective sides would be capable to improve the slat of his or her part towards a level that satisfies their convenience position, without having the other particular person consuming in direction of distinction their own configurations. The slat is too adjustable on its tension, offering your self independence inside of figuring out the level of firmness on the mattress.

With Those absolutely sure things it incorporates in direction of offer your self, the Talalay Latex Mattress is definitely the suitable solution that you can take whenever it will come in direction of generating on your own sense gentle every year you want in direction of consider a crack in opposition to the never-ending requires of day by day things. Utilizing this bed, on your own are certain towards enjoy a positive night’s rest that encourages healthful existence and amplified comfort and ease. Exercise hazards are substantially low and actual physical options will not be compromised. By the close of the day, what is utmost vital is that yourself have to have a support for your body once it is year toward sleep anything at all off.

[weblistposting-blog]

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An app for women in Bengaluru

Bengaluru: ladies in misery can now are looking for police help by an insignificant click on of a button of their smartphones. All they want is to install an App ‘Suraksha – Bengaluru City Police’ – a fully included personal safety App – delivered through the Bengaluru Metropolis Police to help women in emergencies.

Although there are numerous protection Apps catering to girls, most of them hardly paintings. However, the police claim that Suraksha App has been designed with perfection. The police, alongside the staff of Trinity Mobility which has evolved the App, have spent a big time in trying out the App, to make it powerful.

The App can download freed from cost on android and IOS telephones and objectives at accomplishing to the rescue of ladies in distress in the least viable time, as it’s miles related to all the Red Hoysala Patrol motors and police control room. Furthermore, it has an option to register two numbers of the character the consumer desires to inform for the duration of emergencies.

Explaining the procedure, a police legitimate who become part of the App monitoring group, informed Deccan Chronicle that Suraksha App is easy to use and greater powerful than different protection Apps to be had on-line.

“Phone users must download the App on their mobile phones. Submit set up, the consumer has to offer cell numbers which the App makes use of to ship facts. If the consumer found herself in a detrimental situation, just urgent the purple button or pressing of power button 5 instances continuously would send an SOS alert alongside the vicinity info to the police manage room.

The Crimson Hoysala group from the closest factor could be knowledgeable, as a way to intervene and take instantaneous movement and replace to the Command Centre. The case then could be handed over to the jurisdictional police,” the police legitimate stated.

“This all will appear simultaneously and there would not be any postpone,” the legitimate brought. A 20-member personnel is solely trained to respond to alert induced through the Suraksha App who will reach out to the victims for info. The precise component about the App is that it faces a 10-2nd video clip and upload it on manipulating room’s server.

Suraksha App, for you to be released on Monday by using the Leader Minister Siddaramaiah and Home Minister G. Parameshwar, has already crossed 6,000 downloads and in fact, humans are very satisfied approximately the initiative.

Even as most customers have praised the feature of Suraksha App, some customers were reporting bugs, which mechanically activates the SOS alert, ultimately leading to a fake alarm. The police, But, are working on solving them.

Thoughts for Domestic Primarily based Groups for girls

If you are a woman, and a wife and mother for that depend, have you ever marvel what could show up If you or your husband lost your job? Or in case your youngsters begin faculty or visit university? have you ever requested your self if your day job lets you and your own family live without difficulty? In case you’ve were given numerous questions to this tune, then perhaps it is a time which you strive a few Home Based business on the side this is specially tailor-made for girls.

ladies, mothers especially, are usually prepared to take over when the want arises, specifically now that us of a is gripped by way of the recession, moms everywhere in the country are exploring the countless opportunities that many Domestic-Based totally Organizations for ladies are promising.

commercial enterprise Ideas can sprout from anywhere and women marketers are brief on the uptake. Fields including Domestic and childcare, healthcare and nutrients, fashion, crafts of all sorts are a number of the usual commercial enterprise possibilities that the women might be more likely to be wonderful at running and dealing with.

To offer you a head begin, you may select from among the numerous guidelines below concerning Domestic-Based Groups for ladies such as you who are intent on accomplishing the great for herself and her circle of relatives:

* Using social networks to promote services and products

A number of operating ladies have been using websites which includes Fb and Twitter to sell diverse products starting from fitness merchandise including multivitamins and eating regimen drugs, to clothes, sports activities equipment, style add-ons, purses and wallets, and even electronic devices and motor automobiles. You’ll be able to create a page for free on these social networking websites, and for a person beginning out, that is truly a outstanding Domestic-Based business for ladies.

* Preserving blogs / websites

Some other exceptional Domestic-Based totally enterprise for women would be Maintaining a weblog or internet site. you could pick out to blog for the noble and aesthetic purpose of documenting your very own exploits and adventures and getting cash out of them via walking advertisements, or you may blog for the only cause of doing paid article writing jobs for search engine optimization (Search engine optimization) groups.

* Creating and hosting a social network website online

Still Another Home Based totally enterprise fashion for ladies is Growing your personal social community site. you can start small with a handful of pals and you may subsequently boom your website’s membership through e-mail invitations or But you want to promote it. Examples of these websites are bookieboo*com and socialmediamom*com. Once you get enough individuals or visitors traveling the web site, it’s whilst the profits are available-now you could charge advertisers to your web page.

* Creating mobile smartphone apps centered for girls and/or moms as audiences

Your neighbor whose proper hand is caught to her iPhone all of the time may be working her new Home Based business for ladies who love baking desserts and pastry. For all you realize, the app which you simply bought to help you with your baking measurements is the identical app that she evolved While nursing her youngest son. App developers are basically men, however girls are now joining them and arising with innovative apps just like the “Infant Bump” that is a pregnancy tracker and a Child names database.

those are some of the hot Domestic-Based totally Companies for girls and there are Nevertheless lots that no guy, or girl, has ever concept of but. Be the primary then and be part of the loads of women who were committed to enhance their lives with successful on-line Organizations.

5 super iPhone Apps For working Mums

When you have an iPhone, then, like me, you in all likelihood surprise how you ever controlled without it! However, In case you’re additionally a operating mum attempting to find apps that beautify your existence, you’ve got in all likelihood found that the sheer quantity of apps to be had could make it pretty tough to locate the right ones for your existence.

other producers are suffering to hold up with the popularity of the iPhone and plenty of its dominance appears to be related to the sheer number of packages that we will revel in.

An iPhone can become a working mum’s virtual Lady Friday with such a lot of ways to aid our busy lives and boom our efficiency! these are the apps that no operating mom with an iPhone ought to miss out on.

If you’re about to emerge as a mom, or you have just given birth, check out Child Brain. This iPhone app permits you to log and track breastfeeding, diaper modifications, sleeping styles. It’s rather clean to installation and you could simply tap the screen when an occasion starts and ends, as you report consistent with configured parameters. Whilst you are breastfeeding, you can without difficulty look and see which facet Child fed from last! The app even has a timer that allows you to alert you When you are breastfeeding; if as an instance you’re operating on a task on the same time.

This one is ideal If you are running to a budget – ShoppingPal prompts you to take a image of an object that you might have your eye on, kind of a few info – perhaps the fee, the dimensions or other vital information, and store for destiny use. Whilst you are evaluating fees at exclusive stores, you no longer ought to recall which shop presented which deal. You understand how annoying this can all be When you have youngsters in tow or have little time to spend besides as you stability family problems with your paintings.

Innovative minds abound in the international of iPhone application improvement. Put your iPhone next on your Child whilst he’s slumbering. you may set a legitimate sensitivity stage and if the noise out of your snoozing Infant dips beneath this, your iPhone will call you on more than a few you have defined. Infant telephone Deluxe works fantastic as a Infant reveal.

[universeinform-blog]

Drake Finally Got His ‘Life’ Together

New Post has been published on https://universeinform.com/2017/03/19/drake-finally-got-his-life-together/

Drake Finally Got His ‘Life’ Together

Hotline Bling” gained Excellent Rap Music and Pleasant Rap/Sung Overall performance on the 59th Grammy Awards, which Drake didn’t even trouble to attend. He did speak on his wins, though, in rather unceremonious phrases. “I’m reputedly a rapper, despite the fact that ‘Hotline Bling’ is not a rap Music,” he informed DJ Semtex in a video interview for BBC Radio 1Xtra. “The best category that they could control to in shape me in is in a rap class, perhaps due to the fact I’ve rapped within the past or because I’m black.” It’s nitpicking, perhaps, but the difference speaks to Drake’s grand layout of world dominance, which has usually been a pop quest. If you let him inform it, Drake isn’t a rapper, and his trendy batch of tune is neither mixtape nor album. A “playlist,” he calls it. On his Beats 1 program, OVO Sound Radio, Drake premiered his modern-day challenge, allow’s name it — More Existence — on Saturday. Wanky branding apart, Extra Lifestyles is 80 minutes of new Drake music (plus a remarkable solo Sampha file, “4422,” caught up in the mix for uncertain reasons), Extra than 1/2 of it sung, with features from the likes of Kanye West (still suffering a midlife crisis of musical fashion, I’m afraid), Young Thug (first of all unidentifiable), and a couple of Chainz (the slickest guy in this album); an album, certainly. In truth, it’s the most important, maximum bold, maximum international Drake album due to the fact 2011’s Take Care, a grand tour of black song and tradition inside the U.S., Canada, the Caribbean, and the U.Okay. The most up-to-date innovation on Greater Life marks a culmination of Drake’s interest in dust, with capabilities from Skepta and Giggs in addition to Drizzy’s personal roadman slang. (Assigning dust artists to R&B samples has the delightful impact of creating them sound not anything like dust tune, that could in any other case sound brassy and quaint if your musical POV is current U.S. Hip-hop.) The dominant innovation, but, is Drake’s persevering with obsession with dancehall, which stimulated now not handiest the album’s name but also its most pleasant music, “Passionfruit” (and additionally its silliest, given how much it sincerely feels like a Tropicana business). Frankly, it’s clean: Drake’s overall emigration to dance song manner we will go away behind the joyless, beleaguered Drake who took himself as significantly as Caligula. inside the route of the last decade, Drake’s solo albums have grown darker and increasingly paranoid; in which his debut album, Thank Me Later, opened with fireworks (as heard on a Tune known as “Fireworks”), his most recent, Views, opened with a villainous rant about the fees of disloyalty (“Hold the Own family Near”). His aggression spiked in 2015 with the release of In case you’re Studying This It’s Too Past due and an explosive feud with Meek Mill that Drake clearly savored. There’s nonetheless area to his latest statistics, and that pugnacious version of Drake is still right here on a couple of songs. He drops indirect references to his ongoing conflict with Meek and Rick Ross on “Can’t Have The whole lot” (“tell your huge homie I’m excited by going there once more”), however, in any other case, More Lifestyles is as convivial because the album title promised. For each moody piano riff, there’s an uptempo groove or Young Thug voice crack to weigh down it and reset the song’s cool exuberance. If the Music that in the end got him a no. 1 unmarried was “One Dance,” of the direction he’d push “Passionfruit” and “Madiba Riddim” next; of the direction he’d make this album.

Apple Finally Encourages You to Buy Cases for the iPhone7

Because the unmarried maximum promoting telephone in the world, Apple’s iPhone is the fashion setter within the smartphone market, much like their iconic MacBook laptop and iMac all-in-one computer systems were settings traits inside the computer market, for more than a decade now. One of the maximum divisive questions within the telephone market, after the choice of iOS or Android, powered gadgets, is the decision whether to use your smartphone in a case or now not. While other producers have no longer without a doubt come out towards cases and a few have even launched their personal cases for their telephones, Apple has always been firmly anti-case.

This could seem at odds with the truth that Apple does certainly sell silicone and leather cases for their very own telephones and has been doing so for decades. This year too, Apple has updated their personal leather instances for the iPhone 7 to include coloration matched aluminum quantity buttons. That is similarly to the hundreds of other fashion designer cases for the iPhone 7 and seven Plus that new iPhone owners may be able to pick out from.

Jet Black is the new Black

Apple’s huge about-face within the be counted of cases comes due to one unique new shade that they simply released the iPhone 7. Apple fanbois and fangirls will have guessed already, for the reason that coloration has became out to be the most popular. The coloration is the vivid, Jet Black. Apple itself, for the primary time recommends that you pick out One of the many fashion designer cases for the iPhone 7 Plus or 7, on your new cellphone. Genuinely, they just endorse a case and desire that you’ll select considered one of theirs but you get the concept. The reason for That is because the surfaces of the Jet Black new iPhone 7 and Plus are so smooth and shiny that they’re at risk of get scratched if you use them with out a case. Apple of course, has provide you with their very own made up advertising time period for scratches, they name them micro abrasions. A rose by means of some other call and all that however the long and the short of it’s miles that if you don’t need your Jet black new iPhone 7 to be protected in fingerprints, scratches and ‘micro abrasions’ you ought to get one in every of Apple’s cases or higher nonetheless, One of the many third birthday celebration fashion designer cases for the iPhone 7.

Fraud – The Drake Inheritance Scam

Hartzell’s mom had already invested $6000 in the scam and the possibility sounded like just what Oscar wanted to turn his fortunes round. He changed into proper about that plenty, anyway. Hartzell was approximate to be swindled by means of a scam that he would ultimately take over from the scammers themselves, making millions in profit.

The Drake became primarily based on actual-life Admiral Sir Francis Drake and adventurer who have become insanely rich after assisting England defeat the Spanish Armada in 1588 and amassing his share of the Spanish treasure. Drake died with out heirs and in some unspecified time in the future, that inspired the belief that there had been thousands and thousands and tens of millions of bucks waiting to be amassed by way of a few inheritor, somewhere. Be the time Hartzell and his mother became involved in the fraud, it had already swindled thousands of humans in the American Midwest, all of whom purchased “stocks” to assist defray the criminal costs inside the combat to free up the Drake fortune. The “shares” promised to pay out as a great deal as 1000 to one. human beings had been glad to fork over coins by means of the bushel basket, all in hopes of being amply rewarded when the criminal struggle became subsequently received.

For a few reason – no person will likely ever know why – the con artist going for walks The Drake took Hartzell under her wing and hired him to run errands. finally, after the con artist, her attorney and Hartzell moved to England to run the scam from afar, Hartzell found out that The Drake changed into indeed a fraud and he determined to take it over for himself. with the aid of 1922, he had succeeded, reducing out his former employers and writing letters to their “shareholders” mentioning that he had taken over the prison warfare for the Drake fortune.

Hartzell greatly stepped forward on what changed into already a a success scam, introducing drama to his letters and accusing his former employers of all kinds of evil doings. He even introduced a brand new wrinkle to the scheme: Hartzell’s alleged discovery of an instantaneous descendant of Sir Francis Drake named Colonel Drexel Drake. Of route no such individual existed. Despite continual promises that the criminal warfare could soon be over and the billions would begin flowing, Hartzell stored stalling, as the fine con men do. The scheme roared via the Twenties and even survived the Remarkable Melancholy. The desperation as a result of the High-quality Depression most effective fueled hypothesis. Hartzell even claimed that the impending launch of the Drake fortune had Induced the Melancholy!

Hartzell changed into an eventually stuck way to a decided US postal inspector who sooner or later satisfied Scotland Yard to analyze and arrest Hartzell in 1933. He became deported to us and his trial changed into something of a comedy, with many of Hartzell’s sufferers stalwartly protecting him towards fees. Some of the people who were along side him for so many years without a doubt could not consider the scheme wasn’t real. Hartzell was convicted and sentenced to ten years in Leavenworth.

Amazingly, Hartzell struggled to keep the scam going, even from his jail mobile. in the end, he went mad, death in jail believing that he became Sir Francis Drake himself.

The Glue That Binds Us Together

There is an antique saying that the first element a South African does in a brand new location is to secede. And There may be a whole lot of reality in that statement.

Such a lot of make-up have been torn apart via two tough antique guys who genuinely could not agree and sit round one table. Such a lot of church buildings have been torn in two because one make-up face with the minister or pastor, at the same time as the opposite runs as a long way away as viable.

In most cases, there may be no winner. At the opposite, God’s photo and that of his human beings suffer and typically lots of cash additionally disappears at the identical time.

This isn’t always the manner it changed into. Right at the beginning, we used to get together loads. We labored hard to recognize the equal desires and executed many successes together. It changed into actually great to have an amazing chat around the tables and to paintings At the identical dream. Like Paul defined the young Philippian Christians: 5I am so pleased which you have continued on in this with us, believing and proclaiming God’s Message, from the day you heard it Proper up to the existing.

So what made us lose the fire and conviction right here and there along the manner? What made us no longer stand collectively anymore? Why are matters extraordinary now than we commenced off together?

I strongly suspect that a person is placing all his strength into the destruction of relationships.

It is surely rather apparent, however, did you recognize that a pipe always burst where it is weakest? It doesn’t burst at the second one weakest location; no, on the way to be subsequent. It doesn’t be counted in which in a completely lengthy pipe the weakest place is, this is wherein it will burst first.

Relationships are one of the most touchy spots in our

It’s as if the devil, like a boxer, tries his nice everywhere he goes to strike you At the kidneys and to assault humans’ relationships. He is aware of that if he can pressure a wedge among two people, the result is commonly catastrophic.

Simply look around you at all the lifeless our bodies of destroyed relationships lying round. We oughtn’t even to look a long way. look near you. It hurts. It’s eina!

Why does it appear to be that?

In case you look carefully on the verse once more, you’ll see that we need to stand together in the back of God’s message, however this is some thing we cannot get Right. On our very own we best feed the ego and when we get collectively the end result is my will in opposition to yours and the most powerful wins.

God and his Word is the glue that binds us together. With out the glue our relationships get ripped aside easily. Are you suffering in a courting? Patch it with glue, God’s glue.

Make a brand new commitment to the humans round you. work to your relationships with everything in you.

[right-or-ron]

“Music is a world within itself”, Stevie sang. Musicians share a common bond but have such different ways of expressing it. Here are some quotes from famous musicians, describing music, their experience of it, their perspectives and opinions. I was struck by what vast variety of commentary there is here yet such a unity of spirit. It made me think that Beethoven would totally get Henry Rollins, and vice versa, or that Leonard Bernstein would have loved to work with Lady Gaga.

Enjoy musicians’ words about music…

“Music is a safe kind of high.” – Jimi Hendrix

“Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman.” – Ludwig von Beethoven

“Music, at its essence, is what gives us memories. And the longer a song has existed in our lives, the more memories we have of it.” – Stevie Wonder

“Music is such a balm. Always has been. It’s such a heartbeat, like blood thrumming through the womb. That’s why music appeals to people.” – Al Jarreau

“Rock and roll music, if you like it, if you feel it, you can’t help but move to it. That’s what happens to me. I can’t help it.” – Elvis Presley

“Music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry of light.” – Claude Debussy

“The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.” – Johann Sebastian Bach

“I believe that music is a spiritual language. My everyday self is pretty mundane and boring, but when I’m making music it allows for me to communicate a kind of transcendence that I can’t communicate otherwise.” – Sufjan Stevens

“I think music in itself is healing. It’s an explosive expression of humanity. It’s something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we’re from, everyone loves music.” – Billy Joel

“Music is a lady that I still love because she gives me the air that I breathe. We need all sorts of nourishment. And music satisfies and nourishes the hunger within ourselves for connection and harmony.” – Cat Stevens

“The music is the message, the message is the music. So that’s my little ministry that the Big Man upstairs gave to me – a little ministry called love and happiness.” – Al Green

Taylor Swift performs at Rock in Rio USA at the MGM Resorts Festival Grounds on Friday, May 15, 2015, in Las Vegas. (Photo by John Davisson/Invision/AP)

“Once a song’s out there, it’s no longer mine. And that’s the whole purpose of music: to belong to people.” – Sade Adu

“The reason I play music is to touch people – for selfish reasons, as well. It feels good to make someone else feel something, whether it’s a kiss, a painting, good idea or it’s a song.” – Dave Matthews

“I’ve always felt music is the only way to give an instantaneous moment the feel of slow motion. To romanticize it and glorify it and give it a soundtrack and a rhythm.” – Taylor Swift

“Normally, things are viewed in these little segmented boxes. There’s classical, and then there’s jazz; romantic, and then there’s baroque. I find that very dissatisfying. I was trying to find the thread that connects one type of music – one type of musician – to another, and to follow that thread in some kind of natural, evolutionary way.’ – Jerry Lee Lewis

“I try to give to my music the spiritual quality, very deep in the soul, which does something even if you are not realizing it or analyzing it – that’s the duty of the music.” – Ravi Shankar

“…what I like my music to do to me is awaken the ghosts inside of me. Not the demons, you understand, but the ghosts.” – David Bowie

“I don’t care much about music. What I like is sounds.” – Dizzy Gillespie

“Lean your body forward slightly to support the guitar against your chest, for the poetry of the music should resound in your heart.” – Andres Segovia

“God had to create disco music so I could be born and be successful.” – Donna Summer

“Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music.” – Nina Simone

“Music is probably the only real magic I have encountered in my life. There’s not some trick involved with it. It’s pure and it’s real. It moves, it heals, it communicates and does all these incredible things.” – Tom Petty

“I think music is the most phenomenal platform for intellectual thought.” – Annie Lennox

“It doesn’t matter the kind of music, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a cowboy hat or a yarmulke. I don’t care if it’s outer space or pop, the spirit is the same.” – David Lee Roth

Yo-Yo Ma at the Granada Theatre April 5, 2012

“I frequently hear music in the very heart of noise.” – George Gershwin

“All music is folk music. I ain’t never heard a horse sing a song.” – Louis Armstrong

“I hope to refine music, study it, try to find some area that I can unlock. I don’t quite know how to explain it but it’s there. These can’t be the only notes in the world, there’s got to be other notes some place, in some dimension, between the cracks on the piano keys.” – Marvin Gaye

“As you begin to realize that every different type of music, everybody’s individual music, has its own rhythm, life, language and heritage, you realize how life changes, and you learn how to be more open and adaptive to what is around us.” – Yo-Yo Ma

“Tones sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes.” – Ludwig von Beethoven

“This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” – Leonard Bernstein

“If architecture is frozen music then music must be liquid architecture.” – Quincy Jones

POUGHKEEPSIE, NY – FEBRUARY 12: Canadian-American singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright performs a solo show at the Bardavon Opera House on February 12, 2010 in Poughkeepsie, New York. (PHOTO CREDIT: Eric M. Townsend)

“I was born with music inside me. Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs, my kidneys, my liver, my heart. Like my blood. It was a force already within me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me – like food or water.” – Ray Charles

“Why be in music, why write songs, if you can’t use them to explore life or an idealized vision of life? I believe a lot of our lives are spent asleep, and what I’ve been trying to do is hold on to those moments when a little spark cuts through the fog and nudges you.” – Rufus Wainwright

“One person’s roar is another’s whine, just as one person’s music is another’s unendurable noise.” – Henry Rollins

“What’s great about music is it takes so many kinds of people, including me. Everybody is in a different place.” – Jewel

“What I’ve discovered is that in art, as in music, there’s a lot of truth-and then there’s a lie. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this lie a truth, but he slides it in amongst all the others. The tiny little lie is the moment I live for, my moment. It’s the moment that the audience falls in love.” – Lady Gaga

“Music is gathering. Taking our scattered thoughts and senses and coalescing us back into our core. Music is powerful. The first few chords can change us where no self-help books can.” – Jane Siberry

“Music is always a commentary on society.” – Frank Zappa

“Music was your real passion, this thing you held dear even above family. It was this relationship that never betrayed you. Once it became your job – this thing that was highly visible, this thing that became about commerce – that’s when you were holding onto music like it was a palm tree in a hurricane.” – Eddie Vedder

“Change is an internal thing. Different things happen or transform, and music and art is a documentation of that.” – Matisyahu

“I found music to be the therapy of choice. I guess it is for a lot of people.” – David Byrne

“They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.” – Charlie Parker

  A Year of Creating Dangerously, Day 59: Words About Music By… "Music is a world within itself", Stevie sang. Musicians share a common bond but have such different ways of expressing it.