She wanted to remind him, whether his family was there or not. She wanted. And wanted. And endured in her wanting: the damp seat, the dry chicken, more champagne, the headache the champagne brought, the midges, the chat, his failure, no refusal, to look, look at me, I caused a thunderstorm with my passion and I sit here shaking under my skin and you don't notice because you're trying so hard not to notice, but all the people at the table there are really only you and me and you know it, the air is charged with it, it's a heat, a hot wind, and Marina and Seely are a sham next to it, Annabel ceases to exist, is simply obliterated in the gale of it, this isn't a fantasy, not my imagination, I can tell by the way you lift your fork, by the set of your jaw, by that sixth cigarette you are smoking me, or would if you could; but how long can we sustain it, how long till eruption, till the storm returns again and they can all see what it is, what it really is?

Drake: "I know it;s love because I think of you night and day. I miss you when you are sitting right next to me. When I look at you my heart races and my stomach turns in the best and worst way possible. When I'm with you I feel complete, I feel whole. When I'm away from you it;s hard to breathe. When I think of my life without you I panic and tears fill my eyes. Before I met you, I didn't think I had much of a future besides being CEO at Baylor. I look at you, Morgan, and am filled with beautiful optimism at all of the things my future could have, and that is because i see you right there with me. I want to marry you, Morgan, I want to have children with you. You are my best friend, my confidant, my everything. To me that's love. You say you love me, Morgan, is that how you feel?" I ask hopefully."Yes," Morgan says, as a confident smile crosses her face and tears fill her eyes. "Yes, that is exactly how I feel. I love you, Drake, you are my everything,

My Serinity,Thee, my serenity, one can not bear, Seeing thee befuddled, bereaved,Dimmed like the midnight, secluded, darkened,Thee, my serenity,A window to my eyes, A window to laughter, and peace of mind,Thee, my serenity, one can not bear,Seeing thee wail, whine, cry,Like a gloomy, mourning brume,Thee, my serenity,Soared through fervor and delight,To the crown of heavens, the Almighty Myth,One can not bear, Seeing thee prostrate, razed, demure,Upon the dimmed streets, crawling, for a sight of the lune,Thee, my birdy in love, What befall to thy song, The very chant of my life, Cut short, stopped, along with all I gasp,Thee, my serenity, one can not bear,Seeing thee, caged in thy own night, Encumbered, through thy own heart,Lean on my shoulders now,My beautiful, wonderful Lily,That thee shall not fear, the sorrow of,Of being lonely, apart, not having a peer,As I promise, to my most dear,The girl to my heart, always near,Come what may, don’t age a year,That I will be, forever here,

leaving is not enough; you muststay gone. train your heart like a dog. change the lockseven on the house he’s nevervisited. you lucky, lucky girl. you have an apartment just your size. a bathtubfull of tea. a heart the size of Arizona, but not nearlyso arid. don’t wish away your cracked past, your crooked toes, your problemsare papier mache puppetsyou made or bought because the vendorat the market was so compelling you justhad to have them. you had to have him.and you did. and now you pull down the bridge between your houses,you make him call before he visits, you take a loverfor granted, you take a lover who looks at youlike maybe you are magic. makethe first bottle you consumein this place a relic. place it on whatever altar you fashionwith a knife and five cranberries.don’t lose too much weight.stupid girls are always trying to disappear as revenge. and you are not stupid. you loved a manwith more hands than a parade of beggars, and here you stand. heartlike a four-poster bed. heart like a canvas. heart leaking something so strong they can smell it in the street.

Should I stop?” he said.I heard voices from far away and he stopped moving his fingers. I grabbed his wrist and pressed his hand into me.“Please,” I said, “please don’t stop.”“Oh, so I shouldn’t?” he said and chuckled. “That would be cruel of me, wouldn’t it?”I felt such pressurized pain, the tingle turned to a cold numb that made me shake.“Yes,” I said and stared into his eyes, “and you’re not cruel, are you?”He bit the side of my neck and nibbled on my earlobe as he breathed heavily into my ear.“I am the cruelest man you will ever meet, Beth,” he said into my ear, “but, I will make you feel so good, you will not care.”I stared into Declan’s eyes and knew that he told the truth. And just like he said, I did not care.His fingers went back to work and I felt as if I was being dragged out to sea by this incredible undertow. It did not matter that I was drowning or in the company of the cruelest man in the world. I only cared how he made me feel and, at that moment, I never felt better.

Gauguin was a stockbroker in Paris, married, had five kids. One day he came home from work and told his wife he was leaving, that he was through supporting the family, that he had had enough. Just like that he fucking took off. He said he had always felt that he was a painter, so he moved to a rat-infested shithole and started painting. His wife begged him to come back, his bosses told him he was insane, he didn't care, he was following his heart. He left Paris, moved to Rouen, went from Rouen to Arles, from Arles to Tahiti. He was searching for peace, contentment, trying to fill that fucking hole he felt inside, and he believed he could fill it. He died in Tahiti, blind and crazy from syphilis, but he did it. He filled his fucking hole, made beautiful work, made beautiful, beautiful work... It takes a brave man to walk away, to care so much that he doesn't care about anything else, to be willing to obey what he feels inside, to be willing to suffer the consequences of living for himself. Every time I stand before his work it makes me cry, and I cry because I'm proud of him, and happy for him, and because I admire him.

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--Not in lone splendour hung aloft the nightAnd watching, with eternal lids apart,Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,The moving waters at their priestlike taskOf pure ablution round earth's human shores,Or gazing on the new soft-fallen maskOf snow upon the mountains and the moors--No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,And so live ever--or else swoon to death. Glanzvoller Stern! wär ich so stet wie du,Nicht hing ich nachts in einsam stolzer Pracht!SchautŽ nicht mit ewigem Blick beiseite zu,Einsiedler der Natur, auf hoher WachtBeim Priesterwerk der Reinigung, das die See,Die wogende, vollbringt am Meeresstrand;Noch starrt ich auf die Maske, die der SchneeSanft fallend frisch um Berg und Moore band.Nein, doch unwandelbar und unentwegtMöchtŽ ruhn ich an der Liebsten weicher Brust,Zu fühlen, wie es wogend dort sich regt,Zu wachen ewig in unruhiger Lust,Zu lauschen auf des Atems sanftes Wehen -So ewig leben - sonst im Tod vergehen!

That was the real secret of the Tarahumara: they'd never forgotten what it felt like to love running. They remembered that running was mankind's first fine art, our original act of inspired creation. Way before we were scratching pictures on caves or beating rhythms on hollow trees, we were perfecting the art of combining our breath and mind and muscles into fluid self-propulsion over wild terrain. And when our ancestors finally did make their first cave paintings, what were the first designs? A downward slash, lightning bolts through the bottom and middle--behold, the Running Man.Distance running was revered because it was indispensable; it was the way we survived and thrived and spread across the planet. You ran to eat and to avoid being eaten; you ran to find a mate and impress her, and with her you ran off to start a new life together. You had to love running, or you wouldn't live to love anything else. And like everyhing else we ove--everything we sentimentally call our 'passions' and 'desires' it's really an encoded ancestral necessity. We were born to run; we were born because we run. We're all Running People, as the Tarahumara have always known.

I’m sure you remember our first encounter, the morning in the kitchen in North Carolina, and what a disaster it turned out to be,” Carmine said.“What you don’t know, though, is that as we sat like idiots in that puddle of juice, all I could think about was how beautiful you were. How beautiful you are. You were scared and confused, and I know I wasn’t helping that, but underneath it all you were just beautiful, Haven. You had me the very first time I laid eyes on you. I remember thinking later that morning you were going to complicate my life.” He paused as he laughed to himself. “And complicate it you did. Everything I knew, everything I believed . . . all of it went out the window. You turned me upside down and made me feel again. You saved my life, even though I didn’t realize it needed to be saved. I thought I was fine, that I didn’t need anyone else, but I was wrong, because I do. I need you. Christ, I—”He grasped her chin gently and leaned forward, her eyes drifting closed as their lips came together. His kiss was sweet but there was passion behind it . . . passion she looked forward to feeling for the rest of her life.

Lovers are not at their best when it matters. Mouths dry up, palms sweat, conversation flags and all the time the heart is threatening to fly from the body once and for all. Lovers have been known to have heart attacks. Lovers drink too much from nervousness and cannot perform. They eat too little and faint during their fervently wished consummation. They do not stroke the favoured cat and their face-paint comes loose. This is not all. Whatever you have set store by, your dress, your dinner, your poetry, will go wrong.How is it that one day life is orderly and you are content, a little cynical perhaps, but on the whole just so, and then without warning you find the solid floor is a trapdoor and you are now in another place whose geography is uncertain and whose customs are strange?Travellers at least have a choice. Those who set sail know that things will not be the same as at home. Explorers are prepared. But for us, who travel along the blood vessels, who come to the cities of the interior by chance, there is no preparation. We who were fluent find life is a foreign language. Somewhere between the swamp and the mountains. Somewhere between fear and sex. Somewhere between God and the Devil passion is and the way there is sudden and the way back is worse.

The first time you asked me to marry you was three years ago. You told me it didn’t have to be that day, or the next day, or even that year. You just wanted me to swear I would when I was ready. I said yes, of course, and I meant it with everything in me. We were young and maybe we were naïve, thinking we had it all figured out, but one thing I never doubted was that we were meant to be. “Haven paused to wipe her cheeks as more tears spilled from her eyes. “When I first met you I wasn’t sure what to think. You were nothing like anyone I’d ever met before. The things you made me feel were scary, and I wanted nothing more than to stay away from you, but I couldn’t. I was drawn to you. You gave me hope. You believed in me and helped me, and most of all, you loved me. Me. Out of all he people in the world, you picked me. I was used to being overlooked, used to being invisible, but you saw me. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without you. I love you, Carmine Marcello DeMarco, and I want you to know I’m ready now. I’m ready to spend the rest of my life with you.”“Sempre,” he whispered, choking on the word.“Sempre.” Haven meant it with every fiber of her being. He was hers forever.

Так необычайна и явна была сумасшедшая их связь, так исступлённо горели они бесстыдным полымем, людей не совестясь и не таясь, худея и чернея в лицах на глазах у соседей, что теперь на них при встречах почему-то стыдились люди смотреть.

The Lover ReconsidersWait... You. Come hither come closer come here,shrug and wriggle your way out of those clothes, shed them like baby teeth, like snakeskin, like feathers from the molt of a phoenixcome here let me hold you let my arms draw you closer come hither let me be suffused with your scent come here now. I want to kiss you, I want to kiss you, I want to kiss my way down your body and back up again give me your guided tour, teach me of your landmarks those hips of yours are strangers to my touch but I mean to make their acquaintance so yes there here I want to kiss you I want to learn what you whisper when you kiss with your heart’s shutters openI want to nip at your lower lip I want the rush of blood to make that mouth tingle I want to talk in quiet tones to all of you come hither come closer come hereNow, bolt the door, now, unplug the phone, now warn the neighbors to ignore the racket I do not want fifteen minutes of your time I want the whole fucking night. Now let me see the smile you save for special occasions Now don’t pick a favorite position pick five Now I want to bathe myself in you Now now now like the Ganges, like the Red Sea, like the Amazon I want to follow you down to your ocean Now I want to savor you, lover, come to memake time and I will make you breakfastI want to become overfamiliar with your tastes come hither come closer come here come now you.

Was it a moment of indecision or was it a moment of redemption. Redemption long overdue and long unacknowledged? They didn’t know. He suddenly went at her mouth and she claimed it as if it was never supposed to be elsewhere. It was stormy. It was fierce. His manhood shafted through his loose night pajamas challenging her even beyond the thickness of her bath robe, which was cast aside in one unsparing sweep of his hand, revealing the quavering ripeness of her fulsome breasts. After a moment of awe, he went at them with unquenched ferocity.First he devoured her there itself, against the wall, on the carpet. Within moments their frenzied hands tore away each other’s underpants with unapologetic fury and then in one smooth motion of a dancer’s lucidity, he lifted her and like a great performer of an opera, placed her on the bed. The inviting altar of desire and passion and longing. Now as they claimed each other, there was unhurried fluidity in their motion. Tears of pain and love in their eyes. Ecstasy of carnal compatibility in their fusion. Symphony of sensuality in their strokes and when he finally exploded inside her, she had gone aflame with matching uncontrollability. It was a heavenly union which in one go had robbed them of their beings, their earth, their universe, their past, their present, their future. In one instant, they had undone what was done and had done what was ‘not done’.

بغير الشغف بالحياة فلا حياة بل بغير الرغبة في إستطلاع الطبيعة والقدرة النفسية على الدهشة والتعجب لكل ما تبديه الطبيعة من كائنات فلا ثقافة فليس المثقف مكتبة متنقلة خزنت في جمجمة الرأس إنما المثقف رجل حي يقف من الدنيا موقف المشترك في تطورها ونموها والمستطلع لسرها وخبيثها