Titian The Fall of Man painting

Titian The Fall of Man paintingJohn William Godward Nu Sur La Plage paintingJohn William Godward Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder painting
course it is! What on campus --"
"And. . . she's your mother?" I leaned against the cardfile for support.
"Ourmother, I hope!" She drew me hubwards. "Let's find out for sure, before she goes off somewhere."
But I held back yet a moment, flabbergast with memory and surprise. Poor dear Creamie! How I understood now your unwillingness to meet my keeper, or tell me your name; how I trembled at your old interest in me, your yen to pluck me from the herd, and -- Founder, Founder! -- your appall at my lust to Be, that drove you watchless from the grove!
"Anastasia. . ." I could scarcely speak. It was the empty Scroll-case now I leaned on, and drew her to me. Dutifully she resisted -- until assured that it was a brotherly embrace. "I won't explain now, but. . . I've known that lady before, and I -- I really think that you and Imight be twins."
She hugged me enthusiastically -- confounding my poor blood, which knew no longer what permissibly might rouse it. I suggested then that the shock of seeing me after so many terms might do her mother --our mother! -- more harm than good unless properly prepared for; we agreed that Anastasia would go to her at first alone, draw her out upon

John William Waterhouse Gather Ye Rosebuds while ye may painting

John William Waterhouse Gather Ye Rosebuds while ye may paintingLeonardo da Vinci Leda and the Swan paintingLeonardo da Vinci Head of Christ painting
said. "We EAT them; they EAT us; or we all link arms and singWir wollen unseren alten Dekan Siegfried wiederhaben. But WESCAC maybe knows another way. . ."
"So do I," I replied. The lift came. I assured Dr. Eierkopf I wasn't angry, requested him at least to relay to Croaker, if possible, my sentiments and advice about Bray's Certification, and thanked him for teaching me, intentionally or otherwise, the relevance to my Assignment of his lens-principle, which I'd already been applying unawares in my criticisms of Max, Peter Greene, himself, and even Maurice Stoker.
He waggled his head. "You're a wonder, Goat-Boy! Maybe WESCAC tells me what to make of you. You don't want me to ask it anything?"
I replied that while I no longer regarded WESCAC as essentially Trollish (on the contrary, I rather respected it now as the embodiment of Differentiation, which I'd come to think the very principle of Passage), nevertheless I trusted myself to find my own Answers. I wished him success with his great oölogical treatise, promised to consult it on the day of its appearance to find out whether chicken or egg had paleoontological priority, and pressed theDown -button.

Rembrandt Belshazzar's Feast painting

Rembrandt Belshazzar's Feast paintingLord Frederick Leighton Leighton Flaming June paintingRaphael La Belle Jardiniere painting
privileges, scheduled more than the normal credit-load, or stayed awake all night reading; third, those who read and researched but would neither teach nor publish, and contrariwise those who spent so much time publishing and lecturing that none was left over for reading and research; and fourth, professors who browbeat their students and students who circulated angry petitions against their professors. The second subterranean floor was divided into three cell-blocks, smaller than the ones above but like them containing chambers for both students and instructors: one block was reserved for anti-intellectuals, insubordinates, and those who refused to sign the loyalty-oath; a second was for textbook writers who published revised editions to undercut the used-book market, padders of essay examinations, prolrators of unnecessary footnotes and research, and

Edward Hopper Morning Sun painting

Edward Hopper Morning Sun paintingAmedeo Modigliani Reclining Nude paintingClaude Monet Venice Twilight painting
question of Anastasia's paternity I briefly described.
"Why, that's interesting!" he exclaimed. Indeed (as I'd rather hoped) the little mystery so intrigued him that he gave over his heavy-breathed inspection of my sigmoid colon. "I didn't dream they were still quarreling over that old Even Stacey's never mentioned it."
The fact was, he declared, he could say confidently that neither Max nor Eblis Eierkopf was lying; he would have been glad to verify their innocence from the GILES-flles if only it had occurred to anyone to ask, or to him that the dispute had never been settled.
"All of us who worked under Spielman had half a dozen specialties, you know -- he inspired us that way -- and I'd already moved on from genetics to psychiatry and anatomy before the Cum Laude scandal broke. I never did have any use for that project; put it out of mind as soon as we'd programmed the GILES, and haven't really thought of it since. GILES indeed!"
His objections to the Cum Laude Project had been theoretical and practical, rather than moral: he'd thought Eierkopf's sampling inherently biased by the fact that

Salvador Dali The Transparent Simulacrum of the Feigned Image painting

Salvador Dali The Transparent Simulacrum of the Feigned Image paintingWassily Kandinsky Red Oval paintingVincent van Gogh Two Cypresses painting
Bray would turn up next, and in what capacity; his poems, paintings, and scholarly articles became collector's items; everyone agreed that he was in his counterfeit way as considerable a genius as the encyclopedic giants of the Rematriculation, and in some quadrangles it was to claim for his productions a legitimate intrinsic value.
"So if anybody can mimic a Grand Tutor, it's Bray," Dr. Eierkopf concluded. "No telling what he's got up his sleeve; the curious thing is that he's posing without disguise. He's using one of the names he's known by instead of making up a new one, and the face is the same face he used as a psychotherapist." In consequence, it was already being suggested by some news commentators that this time he wasn't posing at all; that his former impostures had been in the nature of preparatory omens, or deliberate challenges to faith, as who should say, "I dare you to believe in me!" That thousands were ready to accept the challenge was evident: what Eierkopf was interested in seeing was how many actual Passages Bray could effect; how he would comport himself as an accepted Grand Tutor

Rembrandt Diana Bathing with the Stories of Actaeon and Callisto painting

Rembrandt Diana Bathing with the Stories of Actaeon and Callisto paintingRembrandt Christ Driving The Money Changers From The Temple paintingGuido Reni St Joseph painting
MAILMAN: Come on! It's me you used to gripe
about your boss to, every time the two
of us would split a jug of Mountain Dew.

SHEPHERD: Okay, so we're old pals. Congratulations.
So what?

MAILMAN: Remember our negotiations
about a kid one day? You guaranteed
it was in perfect shape and wouldn't need
repairs before I sold it, flunk your eyes!

SHEPHERD: So sue me. I don't take back merchandise
after thirty years.

MAILMAN: That's not the point.
Tha kid was Taliped, who runs this joint.

SHEPHERD: What are you --some kind of nut?

TALIPED: I warn
you, Shep: this is the Deanery, not the barn.
There's more than one way to squeeze out facts
from shankers like yourself. We break their backs
and screw their thumbs and stretch 'em on the wheel
and do things to their privates till they squeal.
It's lots of fun, and gets results, too. Break
one finger for him, boys.

SHEPHERD: For Founder

Federico Andreotti Discretion, The Better Part Of Valour painting

Federico Andreotti Discretion, The Better Part Of Valour paintingDirck Bouts Resurrection paintingDirck Bouts The Gathering of the Manna painting
: after an orgy of self-inspection he became so persuaded that it was some sort of mirror he'd smashed on the midway that he now smashed his own (by hurling it out the window), not to have to see himself any further. And though since the critical night of the sleeping-capsules the question had largely ceased to torment him, he still had, in his phrase, "a thing" about any sort of glass near his face: he shaved and tied his necktie by feel, and refused to wear lenses to correct his faulty vision.attitude), to see whether the strange new feeling would persist -- an acceptance of himself, as I took it, and of the student condition, based on the refusal to concern himself further with their unacceptability -- and whether unassisted it would have lifted him from his
"How about windows?" I wondered, for we had huge ones all about us.
"They don't bother me somehow," Greene laughed. "Anyway, to wind up my story. . ." I was relieved to think him nearly done, as we had distance yet to travel.
He had not had opportunity, he said (returning to the subject of his post-capsular

William Blake Songs of Innocence painting

William Blake Songs of Innocence paintingVincent van Gogh Red vineyards paintingVincent van Gogh Mulberry Tree painting
theAnchisides or imitated it was not Maro, any more than the Graduate was the Grand Tutor. And as the poet might transcend the conventions of his art and with his talent make beautiful what in lesser hands would be ugly, so the Grand Tutor in His passèdness stood beyond ordinary Truth and Falsehood. Maios drank the night long and let young men fall in love with Him; Sakhyan in His youth had a herd of mistresses, and in His Tutorship never lent a helping hand to anyone (any more than His descendant -- temper on several occasions, and contradicted not only the teachings of the Old Syllabus but even His ownobiter dicta -- and had passed both Carpo the Fool and Gaffer McKeon the Perfect Cheat.
To be sure, there were questions for which I could not yet feel clear answers. Could Enos have murdered as well as railed? Could Sakhyan have taken a mistress during His Tutorship as well as before? Could Maios have practiced outright pederasty? And CarpoI was stirred to recall -- had tried to rescue G. Herrold); Enos Enoch Himself had once railed against the Founder, lost

Titian Sacred and Profane Love [detail] painting

Titian Sacred and Profane Love [detail] paintingTitian Bacchus and Ariadne paintingLorenzo Lotto St Catherine of Alexandria painting
Moreover, as the lift began to rise he farted loudly, perhaps by way of preliminary demonstration of his potency. I helped myself to another sip of liquor and grinned, pleased to have got such a rise out of him, but I was ready enough to quit that compartment when the door reopened.
The room we now stepped into (our stone-faced companions remaining for some reason in the elevator) was low-ceilinged, brilliantly lit, and quiet. The walls were smooth and gleaming white, undecorated but for one large photograph of a smiling, handsome young man not familiar to me. The floor was laid with heavy carpeting. A dozen or more men, clean-shaved and sootless, stood intent before great dialed and buttoned consoles, upon which flickered sundry-colored lights; their uniforms, I noted, were immaculate and truly uniform, unlike the motley of the guards downstairs. One wall was a grating of heavy steel mesh, through which I saw a second room quite like ours, the only noticeable difference being in the cut and color of the attendants' garb: rhododendron-green on our side, rust-red on theirs. Other than a muffled click of switches and the whirr of tape-spools from

Frida Kahlo Diego and Frida painting

Frida Kahlo Diego and Frida paintingRembrandt Christ In The Storm paintingPino pino color painting
that an examination of the sayings of Grand Tutors would reveal the quality of their insights to be not so much a complex subtlety as a profound and transcendently powerfulsimplicity, which the flunkèd sophistication of modern intelligences might confused with naïveté.
"Iwould've," she admitted. "That shows how naïveI am."
She went on with her story: "It was about this time that Maurice Stoker began coming to the house to see Uncle Ira -- it was during the election campaign and just after, when Grandpa Reg had been defeated, and everybody was wondering what would happen to Uncle Ira's I thought Maurice was the mostinteresting man I'd ever seen: I liked the strong way he laughed, and I used to find excuses for coming into the study while they were talking, so I could see his black beard and those eyes of his, and I told Uncle Ira I

Fabian Perez Man in Black Suit painting

Fabian Perez Man in Black Suit paintingFabian Perez Lucy paintingFabian Perez Flamenco painting
supremely human. Rather, they chose some single activity ofsuch as watching stars or strove for excellence there exclusively, ignoring the rest. This notion ofmajors andvocations was not easy for me to understand: Brickett Ranunculus had been a stud -- that is, a major as it were in the impregnation of nannies -- but his excellence in this line was a feature of his goatly magnificence in general, just as Mary Appenzeller's record milk-yield was of hers; neither virture was a matter of election, and neither was developed at the expense of other merits. On the contrary. Why needed the case be different with humans, I wanted to know; was not an un-athletic scientist as inconceivable as a barren milch-goat?
Alas, you see, I was not always a ready and tractable student. My grand-Gruffian resolve I still officially subscribed to, but as much to spite Max as to do him honor, for he himself most gently pointed out, as did the passing years, its boyishness. WESCAC was no troll, I came to understand, unless metaphorically, and with figurative monsters one did not do literal battle -- the only sort I had a taste for. It was as evident to me as to him that the real task before us was the unglamorous one of making up for the lost years of

Amedeo Modigliani the Reclining Nude painting

Amedeo Modigliani the Reclining Nude paintingAmedeo Modigliani Seated Nude paintingAmedeo Modigliani Red Nude painting
seraglio of nannies (though his appetites in this line have been much exaggerated, as has his prowess) and named them after leading members of the Faculty Women's Club -- but there was no malice in the voice that summoned Helen to his stall, or Maude, or Shirley; and the respect he showed Mary V. Appenzeller, my own dear dam, any boy might wish for his lady mother. But the most revealing evidence that Max still bore some love for men is the thing most often scored to his discredit: I mean my own appearance in the goat-barn and my rearing with the other kids of the West Campus herd. I know now that I am not Max and Mary's kid: that much he told me on the day I learned I was a man. Let those who pity my childhood mark this well: I wept as much to know the one as to know the other. What a fair and sprightly thing my kidship was! Sweet Mary Appenzeller neglected the rest of her family to nurse me; thanks be to her splendid udder, whose twin founts flowed at my least beck, I grew from strapping infancy into a boyhood such as human males may dream of.

Steve Hanks Interior View painting

Steve Hanks Interior View paintingTamara de Lempicka Women at the Bath painting
Then suddenly he remembered the Colonel's instructions. He cleared his throat and spoke drowsily into the mouthpiece, his head still resting against his arms. "This is Bundle Three calling Bundle Able. This is Bundle Three calling Bundle Able. This is Bundle Three calling Bundle Able. Do you hear me? Over . . ." He paused for a moment, waiting. There was no answer. He repeated: "This is Bundle Three calling Bundle Able, this is Bundle Three calling Bundle Able, this is. . . ." And he snapped abruptly erect, thinking of Mannix, thinking: to hell with it: simply because the words made him feel juvenile and absurd, as if he were reciting Mother Goose.
He would stay awake. And he thought of Mannix. Because Mannix would laugh. Mannix appreciated the idiocy of those radio words, just as in his own crazy way he managed to put his finger on anything which might represent a symbol of their predicament. Like the radio code. He had a violent contempt for the gibberish, the boy-scout passwords which replaced ordinary conversation in the military

Steve Hanks Sunshine After the Rain painting

Steve Hanks Sunshine After the Rain paintingSteve Hanks Country Comfort painting
," Mannix had whispered out of the shadows then. He seemed to have snapped fully awake and, following the lecture intently, he appeared to address his whispers not to Culver, or the colonel, but to the air. "You bet grandiose," he said, "even if you don't know what grandiose means. I'll bet you'd sell your soul to be able to drop a bomb on somebody." And then, aping the colonel's instructions to the corporal—one of the enlisted flunkies who, after each lecture, passed out the reams of printed and mimeographed tables and charts and resumes, which everyone promptly, when out of sight, threw away—he whispered in high, throaty, lilting mockery: "Corporal, kindly pass out the atom bombs for inspection." He smacked the arm of his seat, too hard; it could be heard across the auditorium, and heads turned then, but the colonel had not seemed to have noticed. "Jesus," Mannix rumbled furiously, "Jesus Christ almighty," while the colonel droned on, in his countrified voice: "Our group destiny," he said, "amphibiously integrated, from any force thrown against us by Aggressor enemy."

Gustav Klimt dancer painting

Gustav Klimt dancer paintingGustav Klimt Adam and Eve painting
shied and reared, Jack saying “Wo! Wo!” and Ennis’s bay dancing and snorting but holding. Jack reached for the .30-.06 but there was no need; the startled bear galloped into the trees with the lumpish gait that made it seem it was falling apart.
The tea-colored river ran fast with snowmelt, a scarf of bubbles at every high rock, pools and setbacks streaming. The ochre-branched willows swayed stiffly, pollened catkins like yellow thumbprints. The horses drank and Jack dismounted, scooped icy water up in his hand, crystalline drops falling from his fingers, his mouth and chin glistening with wet.
“Get beaver fever doin that,” said Ennis, then, “Good enough place,” looking at the level bench above the river, two or three fire-rings from old hunting camps. A sloping meadow rose behind the bench, protected by a stand of lodgepole. There was plenty of dry wood. They set up camp without saying much, picketed the horses in the meadow. Jack broke the seal on a bottle of whiskey, took a long, hot swallow, exhaled forcefully, said, “That’s one a the two things I need right now,” capped and tossed it to Ennis.

Peter Paul Rubens Woman with a Mirror painting

Peter Paul Rubens Woman with a Mirror paintingPeter Paul Rubens The Crucified Christ paintingPeter Paul Rubens Samson and Delilah painting
Eeyore was sitting with his tail in the water when they all got back to him. "Tell Roo to be quick, somebody," he said. "My tail's getting cold. I don't want to mention it, but I just mention it. I don't want to complain, but there it is. My tail's cold." "Here I am!" squeaked Roo. "Oh, there you are." "Did you see me swimming?" Eeyore took his tail out of the water, and swished it from side to side. "As I expected," he said. "Lost all feeling. Numbed it. That's what it's done. Numbed it. Well, as long as nobody minds, I suppose it's all right." "Poor old Eeyore! I'll dry it for you," said Christopher Robin, and he took out his handkerchief and rubbed it up. "Thank you, Christopher Robin. You're the only one who seems to understand about tails. They don't think--that's what's the matter with some of these others. They've no imagination. A tail isn't a tail to them, it's just a Little Bit Extra at the back."

William Bouguereau The Virgin with Angels painting

William Bouguereau The Virgin with Angels painting
Unknown Artist Heighton After Hours painting
little, but he never moved. The sound of the Bull grew louder as the horns went down.
Then Schmendrick stepped into the open and said a few words. They were short words, undistinguished either by melody or harshness, and Schmendrick himself could not hear them for the Red Bull's dreadful bawling. But he knew what they meant, and he knew exactly how to say them, and he knew that he could say them again when he wanted to, in the same way or in a different way. Now he spoke them gently and with joy, and as he did so he felt his immortality fall from him like armor, or like a shroud.
At the first word of the spell, the Lady Amalthea gave a thin, bitter cry. She reached out again to Prince Lir, but he had his back to her, protecting her, and he did not hear. Molly Grue, heartsick, caught at Schmendrick's arm, but the magician spoke on. Yet even when the wonder blossomed
where she had been—sea-white, sea-white, as boundlessly beautiful as the Bull was

Amedeo Modigliani the Reclining Nude painting

Amedeo Modigliani the Reclining Nude paintingAmedeo Modigliani Seated Nude paintingAmedeo Modigliani Red Nude painting
You are an idiot," Molly Grue said fiercely. "Do you hear me? You're a magician, all right, but you're a stupid magician." But the girl was trying to wake, her hands opening and closing, and her eyelids beating like birds' breasts. As Molly and Schmendrick looked on, the girl made a soft sound and opened her eyes.
They were farther apart than common, and somewhat deeper set, and they were as dark as the deep sea; and illuminated, like the sea, by strange, glimmering creatures that never rise to the surface. The unicorn could have been transformed into a lizard, Molly thought, or into a shark, a snail, a goose, and somehow still her eyes would have given the change away. To me, anyway. I would know.
The girl lay without moving, her eyes finding herself in Molly's eyes, and in Schmendrick's. Then, in one motion, she was on her feet, the black cloak falling back across Molly's lap. For a moment she turned in a circle, staring at her hands, which she held high and useless, close to her breast. She bobbed and shambled like an ape doing a trick, and her face was the silly, bewildered face of a joker's victim. And yet she
could make no move that was not beautiful

Claude Monet Monet's Garden at argenteuil painting

Claude Monet Monet's Garden at argenteuil paintingGeorges Seurat The Models paintingVincent van Gogh Village at Sunset painting
looked at her again he had managed to pull his face together, but it was still struggling to escape from him. "Where will you go now?" he asked. "Where were you going when she took you?"
"I was looking for my people," the unicorn said. "Have you seen them, magician? They are wild and sea-white, like me."
Schmendrick shook his head gravely. "I have never seen anyone like you, not while I was awake. There were supposed to be a few unicorns left when I was a boy, but I knew only one man who had ever seen one. They are surely gone, lady, all but you. When you walk, you make an echo where they used to be."
"No," she said, "for others have seen them." It gladdened her to hear that there had still been unicorns as recently as the magician's childhood. She said, "A butterfly told me of the Red Bull, and the witch spoke of King Haggard. So I am going wherever they are to learn whatever they know. Can you tell me where Haggard is king?"
The magician's face almost got away, but he caught it and began to smile very slowly, as though his mouth had turned to iron. He bent it into the proper shape in time, but it was an iron smile. "I can tell you a poem," he said.
"Where all the hills are lean as knives, And nothing grows, not leaves nor lives; Where

Edward Hopper Second Story Sunlight painting

Edward Hopper Second Story Sunlight paintingEdward Hopper Route 6 Eastham paintingEdward Hopper Queensborough Bridge painting
Because some of the people there are immortal."
"They don't die?" I asked, never quite sure of the accuracy of my translatomat.
"They don't die," she said indifferently. "Now, the Prinjo Archipelago is a lovely place for a restful fortnight." Her pencil moved southward across the map of the Great Sea of Yendi. My gaze remained on the large, lonely Island of the Immortals. I pointed to it.
"Is there a hotel—there?"
"There are no tourist facilities. Just cabins for the diamond hunters."
"There are diamond mines?"
"Probably," she said. She had become dismissive.
"What makes it dangerous?"
"The flies."
"Biting flies? Do they carry disease?"
"No." She was downright sullen by now.
"I'd like to try it for a few days," I said, as winningly as I could. "Just to find out if I'm brave. If I get scared, I'll come right back. Give me an open flight back."
"No airport."

Winslow Homer The Herring Net painting

Winslow Homer The Herring Net paintingWinslow Homer The Fog Warning paintingWinslow Homer Rowing Home painting
once I was through with the fever and delirium and had made peace with the whole painful, wasteful process—if I had ever thought of flying, once I was married, once we had a child, nothing, nothing could induce me to yearn for even a taste , to consider it even for a moment. The utter irresponsibility of it, the arrogance—the arrogance of it is very distasteful to me."
We then talked for some time about his law practice, which was an admirable one, devoted to representing poor people against swindlers and profiteers. He showed me a charming portrait of his two children, eleven and nine years old, which he had drawn with one of his own quills. The chances that either child would grow wings was, as for every Gyr, a thousand to one.
Shortly before I left, I asked him, "Do you ever dream of flying?"
Lawyerlike, he was slow to answer. He looked away, out the window. "Doesn't everyone?" he said.

Gustav Klimt Pear Tree painting

Gustav Klimt Pear Tree paintingSalvador Dali Venus and Sailor paintingSalvador Dali The Temptation of St. Anthony painting
know, I think I won't go back there again? I shouldn't. It's greedy. I should just wait for Christmas to come to me. But it's so long between Decembers..."

THERE ARE OTHER holiday isles on the Great Joy Corporation plane. Cousin Sulie has visited only Easter Island. She didn't like it much, perhaps because she had a cold coming on and was worried about her flight out of Denver to Seattle. She had, rather riskily, changed planes while actually sitting in the plane while it was sitting on the ground being de-iced for the third time in a snowstorm. "It just wasn't a very good time to travel," she said.
The cover of the brochure shows a sand dune crowned with a row of the familiar frowning monoliths of the South Sea Easter Island. My cousin seems to have missed these or ignored them. "I guess I was looking for something a little more on the sacred side?" she said. "I did enjoy the display of those Russian Emperors' eggs. The rubies and gold and all. They were pretty. But you wonder why

Thomas Kinkade Hometown Christmas painting

Thomas Kinkade Hometown Christmas paintingThomas Kinkade Golden Gate Bridge San Francisco paintingThomas Kinkade Evening on the Avenue painting
Since the beginning of time things had gone along in this fas, with raids once or twice a year, both sides celebrating victory. Word of a raid was usually leaked well in advance, and the raiding party sang war songs very loudly as they came; so the battles were fought on the battlefields, the villages were unharmed, and the villagers had only to mourn their fallen heroes and declare their undying hatred of the vile Hoa, or the vile Farim. It was all satisfactory, until the Black Dog appeared.
The Farim got word that Hoa was sending out a large war party. All the Farim warriors stripped naked, seized their swords, lances, and shields, and singing war songs loudly, rushed down the forest trail to the battlefield known as By Bird Creek. There they met the men of the Hoa just running into the clearing, naked, armed with lance, sword, and shield, singing war songs loudly.

William Bouguereau paintings

William Bouguereau paintings
Yvonne Jeanette Karlsen paintings

Avtandil paintings
of the time belligerently maintaining distance and independence. This is one reason they find it so easy to ignore us "ghosts"—they ignore one another most of the time. It's unwise for a Veksi ever to come closer than arm's length to another Veksi without a clear invitation. It's dangerous for anybody, sister or stranger, to approach a solitary's house. If they have to do so, they stand at a distance and shout various ritual statements of warning and appeasement. Even so the solitary may ignore them, or come out with a scowl and a short sword to run them off. Women solitaries are notoriously even more short-tempered and dangerous than the men.
Despite their irritability with one another, the Veksi can and do work together. Most of their highly effective agriculture is communal, pursued according to efficient and unvarying custom. Fierce arguments and quarrels arise unceasingly over details of the customs, but the work goes on.

Salvador Dali Apparition of the Town of Delft painting

Salvador Dali Apparition of the Town of Delft paintingSalvador Dali Living Still Life paintingMontague Dawson The Americas Cup Race painting
noisy, germy, alarming, and boring, and they serve unusually nasty food at utterly unreasonable intervals. Airports, though larger, share the crowding, vile air, noise, and relentless tension, while their food is often even nastier, consisting entirely of fried lumps of something; and the places one has to eat it in are suicidally depressing. On the airplane, everyone is locked into a seat with a belt and can move only during very short periods when they are allowed to stand in line waiting to empty their bladders until, just before they reach the toilet cubicle, a nagging loudspeaker harries them back to belted immobility. In the airport, luggage-laden people rush hither and yon through endless corridors, like souls to each of whom the devil has furnished a different, inaccurate map of the escape route from

Edward Hopper Western Motel painting

Edward Hopper Western Motel paintingEdgar Degas Rehearsal on the Stage paintingEdgar Degas Dancers in Pink painting
Real Karezza requires preparatory mental exercise. It requires first the understanding and conviction that the spiritual, the caressive, the tender side of the relation is much more important, much more productive of pleasure in fact, than the merely sexual, and that throughout the whole relation the sexual is to be held subordinate to this love side as its tool, its agent, its feeder. Sex is indeed required to furnish all it has to the feast, but strictly under the leadership of and to the glory of love.
It requires, second, the understanding and profound conviction that in this kind of love-feast the orgasm is a marplot, a kill-joy, an awkward and clumsy accident, and the end of everything for the time, therefore most undesired.
It requires, third, an understanding of the psychological law that all emotions are to a considerable extent capable of being "sublimated," that is expressed in a different direction and with reference to another object than that first intended. We have all seen orators or actors first arouse an audience to emotional intensity and then direct that emotion at pleasure to laughter or tears, to love or hate, revenge or pity, lust

Montague Dawson The Americas Cup Race painting

Montague Dawson The Americas Cup Race paintingFord Madox Brown Work paintingFord Madox Brown Romeo and Juliet painting
Symphony of sex of nerve, heart, thought, and soul in touch, at-one-ing.
Absolute peace, realized heaven, the joy that never disappoints, that exceeds imagination, that cannot be described.
The love ineffable, the inspiration of brain, the energizing of muscle, the illumination of feature, the healing of body, the expression of soul.
Spiritual sex-exchanging; the masculine in her uttering, the feminine in him receiving, positive and negative alternating at will.
p. 6
Spiritual sex-begetting; the impregnation of each by the other with beautiful thoughts, divine dreams, high hopes, noble ambitions, pure aspirations, clairvoyant vision, the birth-bed of genius.
The giving of each to the other to the uttermost impulse of blessing, the receiving of each by the other to the uttermost nerve terminal of body, to the uttermost fine filament of spirit.
Not followed by exhaustion, but by days of genius, clear and exalted vision, buoyant and happy health.

Lord Frederick Leighton Solitude painting

Lord Frederick Leighton Solitude paintingLord Frederick Leighton Return of Persephone paintingLord Frederick Leighton Perseus on Pegasus Hastening to the Rescue of Andromeda painting
churning below him. He glanced over his shoulder. A towering cliff stood behind them, a sheer drop, black and faceless. A few large chunks of rock, such as the one upon which Harry and Dumbledore were standing, looked as though they had broken away from the cliff face at some point in the past. It was a bleak, harsh view, the sea and the rock unrelieved by any tree or sweep of grass or sand.
"What do you think?" asked Dumbledore. He might have been asking Harry's opinion on whether it was a good site for a picnic.
"They brought the kids from the orphanage here?" asked Harry, who could not imagine a less cozy spot for a day trip.
"Not here, precisely," said Dumbledore. "There is a village of sorts about halfway along the cliffs behind us. I believe the orphans were taken there for a little sea air and a view of the waves. No, I think it was only ever Tom Riddle and his youthful victims who visited this spot. No Muggle could reach this rock unless they were uncommonly good mountaineers, and boats cannot approach the cliffs, the waters around them are too dangerous. I imagine that Riddle climbed down; magic would have served better than ropes. And he brought two small children with him, probably for

Albert Bierstadt Yosemite Valley Yellowstone Park painting

Albert Bierstadt Yosemite Valley Yellowstone Park paintingAlbert Bierstadt Sacramento River Valley painting
Slipping and staggering, Harry got to his feet and plunged toward Malfoy, whose face was now shining scarlet, his white hands scrabbling at his blood-soaked chest.
"No — I didn't —"
Harry did not know what he was saying; he fell to his knees beside Malfoy, who was shaking uncontrollably in a pool of his own blood. Moaning Myrtle let out a deafening scream: "MURDER! MURDER IN THE BATHROOM! MURDER!"
The door banged open behind Harry and he looked up, terrified: Snape had burst into the room, his face livid. Pushing Harry roughly aside, he knelt over Malfoy, drew his wand, and traced it over the deep wounds Harry's curse had made, muttering an incantation that sounded almost like song. The flow of blood seemed to ease; Snape wiped the residue from Malfoy's face and repeated his spell. Now the wounds seemed to be knitting.
Harry was still watching, horrified by what he had done, barely aware

Vincent van Gogh Still Life with Iris painting

Vincent van Gogh Still Life with Iris paintingVincent van Gogh Harvest Landscape painting
transfixed. "I had to pay an arm and a leg for it, but I couldn't let it pass, not a real treasure like that, had to have it for my collection. Burke bought it, apparently, from a ragged-looking woman who seemed to have stolen it, but had no idea of its true value —"
There was no mistaking it this time: Voldemort's eyes flashed scarlet at the words, and Harry saw his knuckles whiten on the locket's chain.
"— I daresay Burke paid her a pittance but there you are. . . . Pretty, isn't it? And again, all kinds of powers attributed to it, though I just keep it nice and safe. . . ."
She reached out to take the locket back. For a moment, Harry thought Voldemort was not going to let go of it, but then it had slid through his fingers and was back in its red velvet cushion.
“So there you are, Tom, clear, and I hope you enjoyed that!”

Frida Kahlo My Dress Hangs There painting

Frida Kahlo My Dress Hangs There paintingFrida Kahlo Fruits of the Earth painting
more than six visitors at a time!" said Madam Pomfrey, hurrying out of her office.
"Hagrid makes six," George pointed out.
"Oh . . . yes. .." said Madam Pomfrey, who seemed to have been counting Hagrid as several people due to his vastness. To cover her confusion, she hurried off to clear up his muddy foot prints with her wand.
"I don' believe this," said Hagrid hoarsely, shaking his great shaggy head as he stared down at Ron. "Jus' don' believe it... Look at him lyin' there. . . . Who'd want ter hurt him, eh?"
"That's just what we were discussing," said Harry. "We don't know."
"Someone couldn’ have a grudge against the Gryfinndor Quidditch team, could they?" said Hagrid anxiously. "Firs' Katie, now Ron . . ."
"I cant see anyone trying to bump off a Quidditch team," said

Edwin Austin Abbey Hamlet Play Scene painting

Edwin Austin Abbey Hamlet Play Scene paintingEdward Hopper Room in Brooklyn painting
But," said Harry, "just say — just say Dumbledores wrong about Snape —"
"People have said it, many times. It comes down to whether or not you trust Dumbledore’s judgment. I do; therefore, I trust Severus."
"But Dumbledore can make mistakes," argued Harry. "He says it himself. And you" — he looked Lupin straight in the eye — "do you honestly like Snape?"
"I neither like nor dislike Severus," said Lupin. "No, Harry, I am speaking the truth," he added, as Harry pulled a skeptical expres-sion. "We shall never be bosom friends, perhaps; after all that hap-pened between James and Sirius and Severus, there is too much bitterness there. But I do not forget that during the year I taught at Hogwarts, Severus made the Wolfsbane Potion for me every month, made it perfectly, so that I did not have to suffer as I usu-ally do at the full moon."
"But he 'accidentally' let it slip that you're a werewolf, so you had to leave!" said Harry angrily.
Lupin shrugged. "The news would have leaked out anyway. We both know

Bartolome Esteban Murillo Annunciation painting

Bartolome Esteban Murillo Annunciation paintingSteve Hanks Reflecting paintingGuan zeju Reflecting painting
better than encouragement; Ron went to bed as dejected and hopeless as ever.
Harry lay awake for a very long time in the darkness. He did not want to lose the upcoming match; not only was it his first as Cap-tain, but he was determined to beat Draco Malfoy at Quidditch even if he could not yet prove his suspicions about him. Yet if Ron played as he had done in the last few practices, their chances of winning were very slim. . . .
If only there was something he could do to make Ron pull him-self together . . . make him play at the top of his form . . . some-thing that would ensure that Ron had a really good day. . . .
And the answer came to Harry in one, sudden, glorious stroke of inspiration.
Breakfast was the usual excitable affair next morning; the Slytherins hissed and booed loudly as every member of the Gryffindor team entered the Great Hall. Harry glanced at the ceiling and saw a clear, pale blue sky: a good omen.