Cordelia loved his explanations. She loved knowing words that belonged to things she'd never seen, even to things you couldn't see at all. She remembered those words carefully. "Magic," George had said, "is something unnatural, something that doesn't really exist. If I snap my fingers and Othello suddenly turns white, that's magic. If I fetch a bucket of paint and paint him white, it isn't." He laughed, and for a moment it looked as if he felt like snapping his fingers or fetching that bucket. Then he went on, "Everything that looks like magic is really a trick. There's no such thing as magic." Cordelia grazed with relish. "Magic" was her favorite word - for something that didn't exist at all.

Not only do we all have magic, it's all around us as well. We just don't pay attention to it. Every time we make something out of nothing, that's an act of magic. It doesn't matter if it's a painting or a garden, or an abuelo telling his grandchildren some tall tale. Every time we fix something that's broken, whether it's a car engine or a broken heart, that's an act of magic.And what makes it magic is that we *choose* to create or help, just as we can choose to harm. But it's so easy to destroy and so much harder to make things better. That's why doing the right thing makes you stronger.If we can only remember what we are and what we can do, nobody can bind us or control us.

[On Chopin's Preludes:]"His genius was filled with the mysterious sounds of nature, but transformed into sublime equivalents in musical thought, and not through slavish imitation of the actual external sounds. His composition of that night was surely filled with raindrops, resounding clearly on the tiles of the Charterhouse, but it had been transformed in his imagination and in his song into tears falling upon his heart from the sky. ... The gift of Chopin is [the expression of] the deepest and fullest feelings and emotions that have ever existed. He made a single instrument speak a language of infinity. He could often sum up, in ten lines that a child could play, poems of a boundless exaltation, dramas of unequalled power.

[On Chopin's Preludes:]"His genius was filled with the mysterious sounds of nature, but transformed into sublime equivalents in musical thought, and not through slavish imitation of the actual external sounds. His composition of that night was surely filled with raindrops, resounding clearly on the tiles of the Charterhouse, but it had been transformed in his imagination and in his song into tears falling upon his heart from the sky. ... The gift of Chopin is [the expression of] the deepest and fullest feelings and emotions that have ever existed. He made a single instrument speak a language of infinity. He could often sum up, in ten lines that a child could play, poems of a boundless exaltation, dramas of unequalled power.

And as if by magic - and it may have been magic, for I believe America is the land of magic, and that we, we now past Americans, were once the magical people of it, waiting now to stand to some unguessable generation of the future as the nameless pre-Mycenaean tribes did to the Greeks, ready, at a word, each of us now, to flit piping through groves ungrown, our women ready to haunt as laminoe the rose-red ruins of Chicago and Indianapolis when they are little more than earthen mounds, when the heads of the trees are higher than the hundred-and-twenty-fifth floor - it seemed to me that I found myself in bed again, the old house swaying in silence as though it were moored to the universe by only the thread of smoke from the stove.

Nobody can tell you about that sword all that there is to be told of it; for those that know of those paths of Space on which its metals once floated, till Earth caught them one by one as she sailed past on her orbit, have little time to waste on such things as magic and so cannot tell you how the sword was made, and those who know whence poetry is, and the need that man has for song, or know any one of the fifty branches of magic, have little time to waste on such things as science, and so cannot tell you whence its ingredients came. Enough that it was once beyond our Earth and was now here amongst our mundane stones; that it was once but as those stones, and now had something in it such as soft music has; let those that can define it.

Nobody can tell you about that sword all that there is to be told of it; for those that know of those paths of Space on which its metals once floated, till Earth caught them one by one as she sailed past on her orbit, have little time to waste on such things as magic and so cannot tell you how the sword was made, and those who know whence poetry is, and the need that man has for song, or know any one of the fifty branches of magic, have little time to waste on such things as science, and so cannot tell you whence its ingredients came. Enough that it was once beyond our Earth and was now here amongst our mundane stones; that it was once but as those stones, and now had something in it such as soft music has; let those that can define it.

I’d pulled my unruly blond hair out of its usual ponytail for the occasion, loaded on some makeup to play up my teal eyes, and poured myself into a little black skirt, short enough to show off my legs while not offending Lafitte’s nineteenth-century sensibilities. It must have worked, because the pirate was giving me that head-to-toe appraisal guys do on instinct, like they’re assessing a juicy slab of beef and deciding whether they want it rare, medium, or well-done. “You really are lovely, Drusilla.” The timbre of Lafitte’s voice shivered down my spine, and I fought the urge to check out the biceps underneath that linen shirt. Holy crap. This was just wrong. I should not be absorbing his lust.

Zeena believes that the breaking of taboos creates access to blocked energy that is let loose in a forceful way. The left-hand path is about consciously breaking with a ‘sleepwalker orthodoxy’ to be able to act as a fully awaken and conscious individual. In her book, George Orwell (1984) is quoted: “Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.” At the same time she notes that the left-hand path is the ‘way of action’. It is not about intellectual contemplation, or worse, just reading about action.'About Zeena Schreck by Malin Fitger from: Contemporary notions of Kundalini, its backgroundand role within new Western religiosity, University of Stockholm, 2004

Zeena believes that the breaking of taboos creates access to blocked energy that is let loose in a forceful way. The left-hand path is about consciously breaking with a ‘sleepwalker orthodoxy’ to be able to act as a fully awaken and conscious individual. In her book, George Orwell (1984) is quoted: “Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.” At the same time she notes that the left-hand path is the ‘way of action’. It is not about intellectual contemplation, or worse, just reading about action.'About Zeena Schreck by Malin Fitger from: Contemporary notions of Kundalini, its backgroundand role within new Western religiosity, University of Stockholm, 2004

The last great bat­tle,” said the Queen, “raged for three days here in Charn it­self. For three days I looked down upon it from this very spot. I did not use my power till the last of my sol­diers had fallen, and the ac­cursed woman, my sis­ter, at the head of her rebels was halfway up those great stairs that lead up from the city to the ter­race. Then I waited till we were so close that we could see one an­other’s faces. She flashed her hor­ri­ble, wicked eyes upon me and said, ‘Vic­tory.’ ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘Vic­tory, but not yours.’ Then I spoke the De­plorable Word. A mo­ment later I was the only liv­ing thing be­neath the sun.

The last great bat­tle,” said the Queen, “raged for three days here in Charn it­self. For three days I looked down upon it from this very spot. I did not use my power till the last of my sol­diers had fallen, and the ac­cursed woman, my sis­ter, at the head of her rebels was halfway up those great stairs that lead up from the city to the ter­race. Then I waited till we were so close that we could see one an­other’s faces. She flashed her hor­ri­ble, wicked eyes upon me and said, ‘Vic­tory.’ ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘Vic­tory, but not yours.’ Then I spoke the De­plorable Word. A mo­ment later I was the only liv­ing thing be­neath the sun.

If you could possibly understand how precious and powerful your experience of this one lifetime as yourself is, you wouldn't be trying to go anywhere else.If you could know the perfection of time and space,You would slow each moment downTo drain every possible nuance of juice and flavor from it.When you leave this place, your body and mind and the earth which holds you, you will look back and only wish you had known the immense richness that you hurried through trying to find other better states of being.But this is the best bite.Heaven is here.Nirvana is now.As soon as you know that for sureYour life will never be the same again.In fact, in every way it seeks to get your attention. begs you to awaken to the magic right before your eyes.

So why hadn’t he confronted me? Why hadn’t he torn through my lies and forced me to own up that I’d caught him in a Binding? It wasn’t like he could just brush this off. And that smile before he left, as if he’d been pulling my leg to see my reaction…I shook my head. Ryan was certainly providing his fair share of riddles. There was the tiny possibility he was still clueless and was just teasing me, but I doubted anyone could be that naïve. Even him. My mind began to tick over, desperate for an answer. Only one other thing stuck out in his behaviour. Maybe he was going for a fair exchange strategy. He wouldn’t question my secrets, in the hope I wouldn’t question his.Now that was naïve.

So why hadn’t he confronted me? Why hadn’t he torn through my lies and forced me to own up that I’d caught him in a Binding? It wasn’t like he could just brush this off. And that smile before he left, as if he’d been pulling my leg to see my reaction…I shook my head. Ryan was certainly providing his fair share of riddles. There was the tiny possibility he was still clueless and was just teasing me, but I doubted anyone could be that naïve. Even him. My mind began to tick over, desperate for an answer. Only one other thing stuck out in his behaviour. Maybe he was going for a fair exchange strategy. He wouldn’t question my secrets, in the hope I wouldn’t question his.Now that was naïve.