If my love for cats were hydrogen, there’d be enough of it to give you skin cancer if you didn’t wear suntan lotion. The only sad part for me about getting a cat from the pound is that I can only choose one. If I could, I’d take home all of them. Actually, my view is why take them home? Why not just move in to an animal shelter? But my future wife wouldn’t go for that. Though I’m pretty sure she could move into a shoe store no problem.
Like all magical mysteries, the secrets of the Great Work have a triple meaning: they are religious, philosophical and natural. Philosophical gold in religion is the Absolute and Supreme Reason; in philosophy, it is truth; in visible nature, it is the sun: in the subterranean and mineral world, it is the purest and most perfect gold. Hence the search after the Great Work is called the Search for the Absolute, and this work itself is termed the operation of the sun.
The patter of tentative footfalls reached my ears. I flipped on my side to face the door and saw Ansel wander by. I rolled onto my back, rubbing sleep from my eyes. I'd crashed on my bed as soons as I'd gotten back from school, collapsing under the weight of the day. The floorboards squeaked as Ansel passed by my door again. I caught his nervous glance in my direction before he hurried down the hall. 'Ansel, I'm not the sun; stop orbiting and get in here,' I called.
The days were brief and attenuated and the season appeared to be fixed - neither summer nor winter, spring nor fall. A thermal haze of inexpressible sweetness, though bearing tiny bits of grit or mica, had eased into the Valley from the industrial region to the north and there were nights when the sun set at the western horizon as if it were sinking through a porous red mass, and there were days when a hard-glaring moon like bone remained fixed in a single position, prominent in the sky. ("Family")
Far over the Great River, and the Brown Lands, leagues upon grey leagues away, the dawn came, red as flame. Loud rang the hunting horns to greet it. The Riders of Rohan sprang suddenly to life. Horn answered horn again. Merry and Pippin heard, clear in the cold air, the neighing of war-horses, and the sudden singing of many men. The sun's limb was lifted, an arc of fire, above the margin of the world. Then with a great cry the riders charged from the East; the red light gleamed on mail and spear.
Far over the Great River, and the Brown Lands, leagues upon grey leagues away, the dawn came, red as flame. Loud rang the hunting horns to greet it. The Riders of Rohan sprang suddenly to life. Horn answered horn again. Merry and Pippin heard, clear in the cold air, the neighing of war-horses, and the sudden singing of many men. The sun's limb was lifted, an arc of fire, above the margin of the world. Then with as great cry the riders charged from the East; the red light gleamed on mail and spear.
The sky is blue today, Max, and there is a big long cloud, and it's stretched out, like a rope. At the end of it, the sun is like a yellow hole..." Max, at that moment, knew that only a child could have given him a weather report like that. On the wall, he painted a long, tightly knotted rope with a dripping yellow sun at the end of it, as if you could dive right into it. On the ropy cloud, he drew two figures-a thin girl and a withering Jew-and they were walking, arms balanced, toward that dripping sun.
Montag shook his head. He looked at a blank wall. The girl's face was there, really quite beautiful in memory: astonishing, in fact. She had a very thin face like the dial of a small clock seen faintly in a dark room in the middle of a night when you waken to see the time and see the clock telling you the hour and the minute and the second, with a white silence and a glowing, all certainty and knowing what it had to tell of the night passing swiftly on toward further darknesses, but moving also toward a new sun.
Champagne arrived in flûtes on trays, and we emptied them with gladness in our hearts... for when feasts are laid and classical music is played, where champagne is drunk once the sun has sunk and the season of summer is alive in spicy bloom, and beautiful women fill the room, and are generous with laughter and smiles... these things fill men's hearts with joy and remind one that life’s bounty is not always fleeting but can be captured, and enjoyed. It is in writing about this scene that I relive this night in my soul.
Watching someone you love… die? There are no words for how broken that makes a person. It’s like waking up from a bad dream only to find out that it’s you reality, it’s like watching sunlight fade from the sky, like watching death suck the one you love dry, and being powerless to stop it. You may as well try to stop the waves from rolling in, or the sun from rising.In the end, the waves will roll, the sun will set, and death will come. The only thing you have a choice in? How you deal with it…when it does.
As the station wagon pulled back onto the highway, the sun was slowly sinking below the horizon like a leaky boat. Well, except for that fact that boats are not generally round, orange and on fire. Hmm. Come to think of it, in no way whatsoever did the sun, in this instance, resemble a leaky boat. My apologies. That was a dreadful attempt at simile. Please allow me to try again. As the station wagon pulled back onto the highway, the sun was slowly sinking below the horizon like a self-luminous, gaseous sphere comprised mainly of of hydrogen and helium.
I thought about the earth then, really thought about it, the tsunami's and earthquakes and volcanoes, all the horrors I haven't witnessed but have changed my life, the lives of everyone I know, all the people I'll never know. I thought about life without the sun, the moon, stars, without flowers and warm days in May. I thought about a year ago and all the good things I'd taken for granted and all the unbearable things that had replaced those simple blessings. And even though I hated the thought of crying in from of Syl, tears streamed down my face.
Well you’re not scary.” He chuckled. Clover grinned at her feet. “I s’pose could be.” She said in a low voice. This took Bailey by surprise, and he stopped rubbing the stone. “Whaddaya mean? What’s scary about you?” He asked, chucking the stone far out of sight as he did. “I dunno.” She shrugged. “Everything’s gotta dark side. The Earth does, and so does the moon.” “The sun don’t.” “We don’t live on the sun.” “We don’t live on the moon neither.
I feel there will be a time. A time when there will be no agony. I will never cry. There will come a time when my smile will be genuine. You will be able to tell. I feel there will come a time when the winds will carry all the wrinkles away when the rain will bring beauty with it when the sun shine will carry the birds my way. When the flowers will be welcome in this world. The pain I feel will not stay forever. Nothing will last. The good brought bad with it. I know the bad has already begun. What I know more is that the good is hidden in it. It is never gone. It will never go. And I will wait!
Enlightenment, or Nirvana, is nothing other than the state beyond all obstacles, in the same way that from the peak of a very high mountain one always sees the sun. Nirvana is not a paradise or some special place of happiness, but is in fact the condition beyond all dualistic concepts, including those of happiness and suffering.When all our obstacles have been overcome, and we find ourselves in a state of total presence, the wisdom of enlightenment manifests spontaneously without limits, just like the infinite rays of the sun. The clouds have dissolved, and the sun is finally free to shine once again.
