Remember when your curiosity inspired your investigative mind to explore and learn… you weren’t bogged down with resentment, cynicism, and emotional baggage… just think about how great it would be to return to that mindset of unencumbered learning and adventurous living… you are just one choice away from that life… choose to let go of the infertile past… go live your adventure!

There is a word I have always avoided in my writing, my life, my thoughts. That word is love. What does it mean? How do you deal with it? If you find it and lose it, how do you get over it? Love is something you feel and when you feel it you can’t trust it or define it. How can you sustain love for a long time? A short time? You may love your family, your friends. But you don’t invite them inside your body.

Currents of cigarette fumes wafted through what passed for air. Attractive young women in bright-hued gowns glided through the streams of smoke, like tropical fish in an aquarium. Detecting the white uniforms and leathery faces, they promptly approached the Navy men. Very pretty, Ed thought, but hungry, a school of piranha. Just what the doctor ordered: fun and games with no complications. Right: no complications." pg. 27.

His three boats stove around him, and oars and men both whirling in the eddies; one captain, seizing the line-knife from his broken prow, had dashed at the whale, as an Arkansas duellist at his foe, blindly seeking with a six inch blade to reach the fathom-deep life of the whale. That captain was Ahab. And then it was, that suddenly sweeping his sickle-shaped lower jaw benieath him, Moby Dick had reaped away Ahab's leg.

Books. They are lined up on shelves or stacked on a table. There they are wrapped up in there jackets, lines of neat print on nicely bound pages. They look like such orderly, static things. Then you, the reader come along. You open the book jacket, and it can be like opening the gates to an unknown city, or opening the lid of a treasure chest. You read the first word and you're off on a journy of exploration and discovery.

I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep. You may have heard of me.

Elijah: You are a dangerous woman.Valeria: You do not know the half of it, but I suppose you are not one to always dabble in safe waters either. So, do you still want to work with me?Elijah: It will be my pleasure.Valeria: Is there anything I need to know about you?Elijah: No!Valeria: That is a lie.Elijah: Is there anything I need to know about you?Valeria: No!Elijah: That is also a lie.Valeria, smiling: Then we are a pair of liars.

These three children own the summer. They know the wood as surely as they know the micro landscapes of their own grazed knees; put them down blindfolded in any dell or clearing and they could find their way out without putting a foot wrong. This is their territory, and they rule it wild and lordly as young animals; they scramble through its trees and hide-and-seek in its hollows all the endless day long, and all night in their dreams.

You are one of us, one of those who knows without knowing, and one who will live and die in dreams that blend with this world. No, I am no gypsy, just one who has read a good many books. It is only through reading those great jewels of wisdom that one may see a story in a glint of sunlight, an epic unfold within one’s eyes. There are books all around us. Yet it takes reading a good many books by we mortals to be able to see them.

He held up a book then. “I'm going to read it to you for relax.”“Does it have any sports in it?”“Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True Love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest Ladies. Snakes. Spiders... Pain. Death. Brave men. Cowardly men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles.”“Sounds okay,” I said and I kind of closed my eyes.

IT IS SAID that time is unrelated to everything else. It goes on and on, unnoticing of our actions, our falls, our triumphs. Who’s to care then, if time does not remember us? It flies by, fleeting, inattentive and disinterested in any occupants of this earth. What are we, then, if time thinks so little of everyone it passes? Time is truly apathetic to the many to whom a little empathy would mean so much.~April~ Disarming Reign of Blood

I had never seen the view at this time before, at the very pinnacle of night when sunset was far behind us and dawn had not yet risen rosy-fingered from the horizon. The night was ashen, tones of granite and iron and heather in the ripples of the waves, which were calmer than earlier in the day. It was as if even the ocean was drowsy – a pale, weighty moon hung full and pregnant in the sky, its reflection floating lambent on the water.

…and yet, at the end of it all, a few very broad lines did seem to stick out, like the primary colors in a painting that explain all the confusing blends. And once I had understood my artificial convention, as one understands a convention of the theatre, it was surprising how many adventures did, with a squeeze, fit in their compartments- provided that I chuckled as I did the squeezing and reminded myself that it was all a game anyway.

His punch knocked her back a meter into the wall. His fist had moved of his own volition, carrying a rage and frustration all its own. To his dismay, she didn’t fall. People so small as her always fell.No tears pooled in her eyes; instead they flared golden amber as she rubbed her jaw and pushed off the wall to stand rigid straight. A peculiar smile danced across her lips as blood trickled from the corner of her mouth and down her chin.

He wanted to grind every Federation world into dust beneath his boot as his army blazed a trail of blood and corpses all the way to Seneca.He wanted to storm their inner sanctum and fire a laser into the skull of their Field Marshal while their Chairman watched, then fire a laser into the skull of their Chairman.He wanted to burn their bodies on a pyre and carry the ashes back to Deucali and spread them on his mother’s consecrated grave.