TERMS STARTING WITH
headache ::: n. --> Pain in the head; cephalalgia.
Headaches arc not due !o Ihc pressure or produecd by it, but produced by a resUtancc.
Headache
HEADACHE. ::: Sometimes when one has pulled or strained, there is a headache or a sensation as if of headache, or if one pulls down too much Force then there may be a giddiness, but one has only to remain quiet and that sets itself right by an assimilation of what has come down or otherwise.
TERMS ANYWHERE
Adhyatmika-duhkha (Sanskrit) Ādhyātmika-duḥkha [from adhi above + ātman self; duḥkha trouble, difficulty from dush to be defiled] The first of the three kinds of klesa (affliction) or worldly pain (cf VP 6:5). Those arising from oneself, generally classed as bodily ailments (headaches, fevers, diseases, etc.), but more properly those pains or troubles originating from mental and other inner causes such as weakness of will, vagrant and misleading emotions, and imperfect mentation, which lead to physical ailments. The other two klesas are adhibhautika and adhidaivika.
attributional biases: in attribution theory, common faults in attributing causes to behaviour such that mistakes are made and the causes of behaviour are misunderstood. An example is self-serving bias in which we attribute our own good and worthy behaviours to personality factors (I gave my mum a bunch of flowers because I am kind) and any bad or unworthy behaviours to situational factors (I shouted at mum because I've got a headache).
headache ::: n. --> Pain in the head; cephalalgia.
can't happen ::: (programming) The traditional program comment for code executed under a condition that should never be true, for example a file size computed as faulty algorithm; it is almost always handled by emitting a fatal error message and terminating or crashing, since there is little else that can be done.Some case variant of can't happen is also often the text emitted if the impossible error actually happens. Although can't happen events are them habitually are often surprised at how frequently they are triggered during development and how many headaches checking for them turns out to head off.See also firewall code, professional programming.[Jargon File] (1996-05-10)
can't happen "programming" The traditional program comment for code executed under a condition that should never be true, for example a file size computed as negative. Often, such a condition being true indicates data corruption or a faulty {algorithm}; it is almost always handled by emitting a fatal error message and terminating or crashing, since there is little else that can be done. Some case variant of "can't happen" is also often the text emitted if the "impossible" error actually happens. Although "can't happen" events are genuinely infrequent in production code, programmers wise enough to check for them habitually are often surprised at how frequently they are triggered during development and how many headaches checking for them turns out to head off. See also {firewall code}, {professional programming}. [{Jargon File}] (1996-05-10)
cephalalgic ::: a. --> Relating to, or affected with, headache. ::: n. --> A remedy for the headache.
cephalalgy ::: n. --> Pain in the head; headache.
cephalic ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the head. See the Note under Anterior. ::: n. --> A medicine for headache, or other disorder in the head.
deuteropathy ::: n. --> A sympathetic affection of any part of the body, as headache from an overloaded stomach.
galea ::: n. --> The upper lip or helmet-shaped part of a labiate flower.
A kind of bandage for the head.
Headache extending all over the head.
A genus of fossil echini, having a vaulted, helmet-shaped shell.
The anterior, outer process of the second joint of the maxillae in certain insects.
guarana ::: n. --> A preparation from the seeds of Paullinia sorbilis, a woody climber of Brazil, used in making an astringent drink, and also in the cure of headache.
Headaches arc not due !o Ihc pressure or produecd by it, but produced by a resUtancc.
Headache
HEADACHE. ::: Sometimes when one has pulled or strained, there is a headache or a sensation as if of headache, or if one pulls down too much Force then there may be a giddiness, but one has only to remain quiet and that sets itself right by an assimilation of what has come down or otherwise.
headachy ::: a. --> Afflicted with headache.
megrim ::: n. --> A kind of sick or nevrous headache, usually periodical and confined to one side of the head.
A fancy; a whim; a freak; a humor; esp., in the plural, lowness of spirits.
A sudden vertigo in a horse, succeeded sometimes by unconsciousness, produced by an excess of blood in the brain; a mild form of apoplexy.
The British smooth sole, or scaldfish (Psetta arnoglossa).
neuralgic ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to, or having the character of, neuralgia; as, a neuralgic headache.
patch ::: (software) 1. A temporary addition to a piece of code, usually as a quick-and-dirty remedy to an existing bug or misfeature. A patch may or may not directly to the binary executable of a program originally written in an HLL. Compare one-line fix.2. To insert a patch into a piece of code.3. [in the Unix world] A diff.4. A set of modifications to binaries to be applied by a patching program. IBM systems often receive updates to the operating system in the form of absolute on top of them (patches were said to grow scar tissue). The result was often a convoluted patch space and headaches galore.There is a classic story of a tiger team penetrating a secure military computer that illustrates the danger inherent in binary patches (or, indeed, any patches installation manager very shortly thereafter learned something about proper procedures.5. Larry Wall's patch utility, which automatically applies a patch to a set of source code or other text files. Patch accepts input in any of the four forms to those on which the diffs were based, patch uses heuristics to determine how to proceed.Diff and patch are the standard way of producing and applying updates under Unix. Both have been ported to other operating systems. .[Jargon File](2005-05-16)
patch "software" 1. A temporary addition to a piece of code, usually as a {quick-and-dirty} remedy to an existing {bug} or {misfeature}. A patch may or may not work, and may or may not eventually be incorporated permanently into the program. Distinguished from a {diff} or {mod} by the fact that a patch is generated by more primitive means than the rest of the program; the classical examples are instructions modified by using the front panel switches, and changes made directly to the binary executable of a program originally written in an {HLL}. Compare {one-line fix}. 2. To insert a patch into a piece of code. 3. [in the Unix world] A {diff}. 4. A set of modifications to binaries to be applied by a patching program. {IBM} systems often receive updates to the {operating system} in the form of absolute {hexadecimal} patches. If you have modified your OS, you have to disassemble these back to the {source code}. The patches might later be corrected by other patches on top of them (patches were said to "grow scar tissue"). The result was often a convoluted {patch space} and headaches galore. There is a classic story of a {tiger team} penetrating a secure military computer that illustrates the danger inherent in binary patches (or, indeed, any patches that you can't - or don't - inspect and examine before installing). They couldn't find any {trap doors} or any way to penetrate security of IBM's OS, so they made a site visit to an IBM office (remember, these were official military types who were purportedly on official business), swiped some IBM stationery, and created a fake patch. The patch was actually the trapdoor they needed. The patch was distributed at about the right time for an IBM patch, had official stationery and all accompanying documentation, and was dutifully installed. The installation manager very shortly thereafter learned something about proper procedures. 5. {Larry Wall}'s "patch" {utility program}, which automatically applies a patch to a set of {source code} or other text files. Patch accepts input in any of the four forms output by the {Unix} {diff} utility. When the files being patched are not identical to those on which the diffs were based, patch uses {heuristics} to determine how to proceed. Diff and patch are the standard way of producing and applying updates under {Unix}. Both have been ported to other {operating systems}. {Patch Home (http://gnu.org/software/patch/patch.html)}. [{Jargon File}] (2005-05-16)
sick ::: superl. --> Affected with disease of any kind; ill; indisposed; not in health. See the Synonym under Illness.
Affected with, or attended by, nausea; inclined to vomit; as, sick at the stomach; a sick headache.
Having a strong dislike; disgusted; surfeited; -- with of; as, to be sick of flattery.
Corrupted; imperfect; impaired; weakned.
Upāyakausalyasutra. (T. Thabs la mkhas pa'i mdo; C. Dasheng fangbian hui; J. Daijo hoben'e; K. Taesŭng pangp'yon hoe 大乘方便會). In Sanskrit, "Skillful Means Sutra," an early MAHĀYĀNA sutra included in the RATNAKutASuTRA collection, where it is also known as the JNānottarabodhisattvaparipṛcchā. (In addition to the recension embedded in the 410 CE Chinese translation of the Ratnakuta, as transcribed above, there are also two other Chinese translations, one made in 285 CE, the other c. 980.) The first part of the sutra extols the virtues of the practice of "skillful means" (UPĀYAKAUsALYA), generally understood in this context to refer to the dedication of the merit from a virtuous deed, such as offerings made for the welfare and ultimate enlightenment of all beings. The sutra goes on to explain how apparently nonvirtuous acts, such as sexual misconduct, become virtues when performed by a bodhisattva with skillful means, noting, "Something that sends other sentient beings to hell sends the bodhisattva who is skilled in means to rebirth in the world of BRAHMĀ." Also recounted is the famous story of the Buddha's previous life as a ship captain, when he kills a potential murderer in order to save others' lives. In the second part of the sutra, the Buddha recounts the events of his life (see BAXIANG), from his entry into his mother's womb to his decision to teach the dharma as instances of his skillful means; none of these events are presented as the consequences of his own past nonvirtuous actions or indeed of any fault whatsoever on his part. For example, after his enlightenment, the Buddha has no hesitation to teach the dharma; nonetheless, he compels the god BRAHMĀ to descend from his heaven to implore the Buddha to teach. He forces this act so that beings who worship Brahmā will have faith in the Buddha and so that the myriad forms of the god Brahmā will generate BODHICITTA. The sutra concludes with a discussion of ten cases in the life of the Buddha in which he apparently undergoes suffering (such as a headache, backache, and being pierced by a thorn) that had previously been ascribed to his nonvirtuous deeds in a past life; in each case, these are instead explained as being examples of the Buddha's skillful means.
withdrawal: physically painful and unpleasant symptoms (such as vomiting, shaking, headaches and convulsions) suffered by a physically dependent drug user as the effects of a drug wears off.
KEYS (10k)
1 Francois Pinard
1 Sri Ramana Maharshi
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
10 Anonymous
6 Kelley Armstrong
5 Douglas Adams
5 Dorothy Dunnett
5 Cassandra Clare
4 Stephen King
4 Seanan McGuire
3 Tim Tigner
3 Timothy Ferriss
3 Terry Pratchett
3 S J Scott
3 Sherrilyn Kenyon
3 Robert A Heinlein
3 Marjorie Pay Hinckley
3 Louise L Hay
3 Liane Moriarty
3 Kiersten White
3 J R Ward
3 John Green
3 Frederick Lenz
1:If concentration is made with the brain, sensations of heat and even headache ensue.
Concentration has to be made in the heart, which is cool and refreshing.
Relax and your meditation will be easy.
Keep your mind steady by gently warding off all intruding thoughts, but without strain - soon you will succeed. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Guru Ramana II. XI,#KEYS
2:Sometimes one cannot distinguish adverse forces from other forces.
That happens when one is quite unconscious. There are only two cases when this is possible: you are either very unconscious of the movements of your being - you have not studied, you have not observed, you do not know what is happening within you - or you are absolutely insincere, that is, you play the ostrich in order not to see the reality of things: you hide your head, you hide your observation, your knowledge and you say, "It is not there." But indeed the latter I hope is not in question here. Hence it is simply because one has not the habit of observing oneself that one is so unconscious of what is happening within.
Have you ever practised distinguishing what comes from your mind, what comes from your vital, what comes from your physical?... For it is mixed up; it is mixed up in the outward appearance. If you do not take care to distinguish, it makes a kind of soup, all that together. So it is indistinct and difficult to discoveR But if you observe yourself, after some time you see certain things, you feel them to be there, like that, as though they were in your skin; for some other things you feel you would have to go within yourself to find out from where they come; for other things, you have to go still further inside, or otherwise you have to rise up a little: it comes from unconsciousness. And there are others; then you must go very deep, very deep to find out from where they come. This is just a beginning.
Simply observe. You are in a certain condition, a certain undefinable condition. Then look: "What! how is it I am like that?" You try to see first if you have fever or some other illness; but it is all right, everything is all right, there's neither headache nor fever, the stomach is not protesting, the heart is functioning as it should, indeed, all's well, you are normal. "Why then am I feeling so uneasy?"... So you go a little further within. It depends on cases. Sometimes you find out immediately: yes, there was a little incident which wasn't pleasant, someone said a word that was not happy or one had failed in his task or perhaps did not know one's lesson very well, the teacher had made a remark. At the time, one did not pay attention properly, but later on, it begins to work, leaves a painful impression. That is the second stage. Afterwards, if nothing happened: "All's well, everything is normal, everything usual, I have nothing to note down, nothing has happened: why then do I feel like that?" Now it begins to be interesting, because one must enter much more deeply within oneself. And then it can be all sorts of things: it may be precisely the expression of an attack that is preparing; it may be a little inner anxiety seeking the progress that has to be made; it may be a premonition that there is somewhere in contact with oneself something not altogether harmonious which one has to change: something one must see, discover, change, on which light is to be put, something that is still there, deep down, and which should no longer be there. Then if you look at yourself very carefully, you find out: "There! I am still like that; in that little corner, there is still something of that kind, not clear: a little selfishness, a little ill-will, something refusing to change." So you see it, you take it by the tip of its nose or by the ear and hold it up in full light: "So, you were hiding! you are hiding? But I don't want you any longer." And then it has to go away.
This is a great progress.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953, 102-104, [T4],#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:My wife gives good headache. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 2:A hooker once told me she had a headache. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 3:I don't take the movies seriously, and anyone who does is in for a headache. ~ bette-davis, @wisdomtrove 4:If I don't have a woman every three days or so I get a terrible headache. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 5:I'm very brave generally,' he went on in a low voice: & 6:This is how we are with wine and beautiful food... we want and we get drunk with wanting, then the headache and bitterness afterward. ~ rumi, @wisdomtrove 7:Sometimes people start to meditate and they get a headache. It's because they're trying too hard. You're pulling in too much energy. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 8:I used to drink wine. This girl asked me, "Doesn't wine give you a headache?" "Yeah, eventually, but the first and the middle part are amazing!" ~ mitch-hedberg, @wisdomtrove 9:That I be not as those are who spend the day in complaining of headache and the night in drinking the wine which gives the headache! ~ johann-wolfgang-von-goethe, @wisdomtrove 10:I don't want to die now!" he yelled. "I've still got a headache! I don't want to go to heaven with a headache, I'd be all cross and wouldn't enjoy it! ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 11:When I grew up, the Devil was a reason why I had a headache or the Devil was the reason I got mad today. We always blamed the Devil. I think today when I say the Enemy, I like to make it broader. Sometimes the Enemy can be our own thoughts. ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove 12:I am obsessed at nights with the idea of my own worthlessness, and if it were only to turn a light on to save my life I think I would not do it. These are the last footprints of a headache I suppose. Do you ever feel that? - like an old weed in a stream. What do you feel, lying in bed? ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 13:I realize now that people are not thinking about you and me or caring what is said about us. They are thinking about themselves-before breakfast, after breakfast, and right on until ten minutes past midnight. They would be a thousand times more concerned about a slight headache of their own than they would about the news of your death or mine. ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 14:The promise, made when I am in love and because I am in love, to be true to the beloved as long as I live, commits me to being true even if I cease to be in love. A promise must be about things that I can do, about actions: no one can promise to go on feeling in a certain way. He might as well promise to never have a headache or always to feel hungry. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 15:Do what you love, but be damned sure it's profitable. If you do work you love, but it doesn't generate income, your business will fail. If you do work you hate, but it generates income, your health will fail... and your business along with it. If you can't do what you love and make it profitable, you've either got a hobby or a headache, not a sustainable business. Don't settle for anything less than passion and profit. ~ steve-pavlina, @wisdomtrove 16:Above all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gaze from the foundations of the world - the figure of the sharp female called La Guillotine. It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure for headache, it infallibly prevented hair from turning gray, it imparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor which shaved close: who kissed La Guillotine looked through the little window and sneezed into the sack. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 17:Psychiatrists declare that most of our fatigue derives from our mental and emotional attitudes... What kinds of emotional factors tire the sedentary (or sitting) worker? Joy? Contentment? No! Never! Boredom, resentment, a feeling of not being appreciated, a feeling of futility, hurry, anxiety, worry-those are the emotional factors that exhaust the sitting worker, make him susceptible to colds, reduce his output, and send him home with a nervous headache. Yes, we get tired because our emotions produce nervous tensions in the body. ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Goody’s headache powder. ~ Scott Nicholson, #NFDB
2:Love was a bloody, fucking headache. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
3:My wife gives good headache. ~ Rodney Dangerfield, #NFDB
4:I have a terrific headache. ~ Franklin D Roosevelt, #NFDB
5:Popularity can be a real headache. ~ Michele Jaffe, #NFDB
6:One epidural for my headache, please. ~ Liane Moriarty, #NFDB
7:Life is a long headache in a noisy street. ~ John Masefield, #NFDB
8:― Why does toothpaste give me headache? ~ Alexandra Adornetto, #NFDB
9:A hooker once told me she had a headache. ~ Rodney Dangerfield, #NFDB
10:The bigger the headache, the bigger the pill. ~ George Clinton, #NFDB
11:You've got a real headache of a boyfriend, kid. ~ Reki Kawahara, #NFDB
12:Anybody who tries to pass me will have a headache. ~ David Morrell, #NFDB
13:You're mixing your metaphors. It gives me a headache. ~ Holly Black, #NFDB
14:More smiling. Fierce. I was getting a headache. I smiled. ~ Megan Hart, #NFDB
15:What can money do to console a man with a headache? ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
16:The two-headed boy in the circus never had such a headache. ~ W C Fields, #NFDB
17:Sometimes knowledge is not worth the headache it brings. ~ Kristi Charish, #NFDB
18:Am I giving you a headache? I think.
“You are a headache. ~ Kiersten White,#NFDB
19:It gives me a headache just trying to think down to your level. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
20:It gives me my headache just trying to think down to your level ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
21:Privilege is a headache, that you don't know that you don't have. ~ Ani DiFranco, #NFDB
22:Heavy booze is a big time vacation, but you come back with a headache. ~ Padgett Powell, #NFDB
23:my headache finally dissipating as the mathematics rose in ghostly shadows, ~ S L Huang, #NFDB
24:Arguments about Scripture achieve nothing but a stomachache and a headache. ~ Tertullian, #NFDB
25:Damn. Not even joined yet and you're already using the headache excuse. ~ Jacquelyn Frank, #NFDB
26:Emma, okay, enough with the singing. Mommy's getting a three-pill headache. ~ Jeff Abbott, #NFDB
27:You really want to get a headache? Try to understand Internet advertising. ~ Barry Diller, #NFDB
28:I don't take the movies seriously, and anyone who does is in for a headache. ~ Bette Davis, #NFDB
29:If I don't have a woman every three days or so I get a terrible headache. ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
30:The makers of aspirin wish you had a headache right now,' says the graffiti. ~ William Blum, #NFDB
31:The next morning, I had a dry headache and my mouth was a horrible, lonely place. ~ Roxane Gay, #NFDB
32:His headache was still sitting over his right eye as if it had been nailed there. ~ Ian Fleming, #NFDB
33:I guess the thing that is giving me this headache is life - and nothing else but. ~ Betty Smith, #NFDB
34:As human beings are also animals, to manage one million animals gives me a headache. ~ Terry Gou, #NFDB
35:If a man sits down to think, he is immediately asked if he has a headache. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
36:Laughter is just like champagne -- only without the headache afterwards. ~ Elizabeth Jane Howard, #NFDB
37:You'll tell me next that the best way to cure a man's headache is to cut off his head. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
38:A great wind is blowing, and that gives you either imagination or a headache. ~ Catherine the Great, #NFDB
39:Some pain you can distance yourself from, but a headache sits right where you live. ~ Mark Lawrence, #NFDB
40:paralyzing humiliation was a chemical sequel to getting drunk, like the headache. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
41:She already had a headache-she didn't want to add 'get tortured' to today's to-do list. ~ C C Hunter, #NFDB
42:Tell them I have the headache--no, the plague! I need something nice and contagious. ~ Lauren Willig, #NFDB
43:While it sounds interesting, it was really only a headache pressed between covers. ~ Patrick Rothfuss, #NFDB
44:I realize now that taking drugs was like taking an aspirin without having a headache. ~ Paul McCartney, #NFDB
45:A headache, I get the kind of headache God would smote you with in the Old Testament. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
46:When Quoyle leaned forward the twin spears of the headache threatened to dislodge his eyes. ~ Annie Proulx, #NFDB
47:I do not envy the headache you will have when you awake. In the meantime, dream of large women. ~ Cary Elwes, #NFDB
48:Her headache wouldn’t budge no matter how she ODed on caffeine, but never call her a quitter. ~ Thea Harrison, #NFDB
49:I rubbed my head trying to fend off the headache I was sure this conversation would bring me. ~ Hilary Grossman, #NFDB
50:This is a tremendous assest for the club, a tremendous headache lifted from our shoulders, really. ~ Elton John, #NFDB
51:Aspirin is perfectly legal, but if you take 13 of them motherf***ers, it'll be your last headache. ~ Katt Williams, #NFDB
52:They would glue the wig to the front of my forehead, and after a while it would give me a headache. ~ Cesar Romero, #NFDB
53:Please make the pain go away, he thought, uncertain whether he was referring to her or to the headache. ~ Susan May, #NFDB
54:King Solomon, who said to his thousand wives, Who doesn't have a headache tonight? Never got a dinner! ~ Red Buttons, #NFDB
55:His most frequent ailment was the headache which he used to relieve by inhaling the steam of coffee. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
56:I am Mardrae. Even dead Mardrae will speak their minds. Now go away. You are giving me a headache. ~ Jonathan Renshaw, #NFDB
57:I’m getting a headache. Usually when I get a headache, it’s time to stop talking and attack something. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
58:She had a massive headache and there was blood running down her face, but she seemed to be otherwise OK. ~ Derek Landy, #NFDB
59:Well," Francie decided, "I guess the thing that is giving me this headache is life-and nothing else but. ~ Betty Smith, #NFDB
60:If you have a headache, do what it says on the aspirin bottle: take two, and keep away from children. ~ Janice Thompson, #NFDB
61:It's a huge headache - the more money you have, the more hassles. I find money very uncomfortable. ~ Upamanyu Chatterjee, #NFDB
62:She seemed like the type of woman who'd help you forget about your headache by setting your bed on fire. ~ Tiffany Reisz, #NFDB
63:Well' Francie decided, 'I guess the thing that is giving me this headache is life - and nothing else but'. ~ Betty Smith, #NFDB
64:What else have either of you got for me besides the promise of a splitting headache? - Uncle Wadsworth ~ Kerri Maniscalco, #NFDB
65:At least my headache was almost gone. I always deal better with emergencies when I’m not actively in pain. ~ Seanan McGuire, #NFDB
66:I'm very brave generally,' he went on in a low voice: 'only today I happen to have a headache.' (Tweedledum) ~ Lewis Carroll, #NFDB
67:On a bad day, he could only remember Justin Bieber songs, which didn't do anything except give me a headache. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
68:I just sobbed myself out until I had too much of a headache to go on crying, and after that I was cold and stiff ~ Naomi Novik, #NFDB
69:I have a suggestion in that case,’ said Lymond. ‘You two have the orgy, and I’ll keep the drinker’s headache. ~ Dorothy Dunnett, #NFDB
70:The sickness began with chills, headache, and a painful aching in the back, arms, and legs. A high fever developed ~ Jim Murphy, #NFDB
71:What happened?"
"You fell."
"Really? What did I fall into?"
"My fist."
"That explains the headache. ~ Ilona Andrews,#NFDB
72:Being out felt great. Felt like freedom. Like all my life I’d had a slight headache. Not noticing until it was gone. ~ Lee Child, #NFDB
73:You can give yourself a headache trying to decipher the tattoos on a naked man who’s leaping up and down on a bed. ~ John Irving, #NFDB
74:You didn’t tell me he had a headache!” “I didn’t know!” “What kind of nurse are you?” “The kind who plays hockey! ~ Sarina Bowen, #NFDB
75:As Nigerians say,
Don't drink Panadol for another
person's headache.
Drink water and mind your business. ~ Sahndra Fon Dufe,#NFDB
76:I close my eyes, rub my thumb against the bridge of my nose to ward off the headache. Well, Rome wasn't built in a day. ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
77:Meth may cause “paranoia, delusions, hallucinations, which may trigger a tension headache.” Jesus, not a tension headache. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
78:Some people spend the day in complaining of a headache, and the night in drinking the wine that gives it. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
79:Her headache pounded painfully, the demons inside hitting their sharp fists against her skull, demanding to be set free. ~ Lisa Jackson, #NFDB
80:Are you really a Texan? I mean, really? Riley, if I have a headache,
I'd put bacon around an aspirin before I take it. ~ R J Scott,#NFDB
81:Around Pershing Square, there’s a peculiar algorithm: return on invested brain damage. As in, is this deal worth the headache? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
82:Good girl, Rachel. Now, let’s get the hell out of here. Your mother has a headache that won’t quit until you’re twenty-one ~ David Sedaris, #NFDB
83:The headache that had started as a low thrum had worked its way up to miniature elves Riverdancing on her frontal lobe. ~ Brianna Labuskes, #NFDB
84:In California virtually everyone has had their teeth whitened. If they all smiled at once, they would give us a headache. ~ Garrison Keillor, #NFDB
85:Revolutionary ideas may be wonderful, but revolutions are nasty. You can't cure a headache by cutting off the patients head. ~ Joel Shepherd, #NFDB
86:The best remedy for people who have become your headache is to take a 'chill pill' from your willingness to endure their misery. ~ T F Hodge, #NFDB
87:Oh, honey, don’t waste your time trying to figure out the inner workings of the male brain. You’ll just give yourself a headache. ~ Siobhan Davis, #NFDB
88:There is a trouble called Twitter, the finest lies are here. Nowadays, social media is actually the headache of societies. ~ Recep Tayyip Erdogan, #NFDB
89:I've never actually seen a 3-D movie. I've seen some dailies in 3-D and it kind of gives me a headache. But it looks really cool. ~ Milla Jovovich, #NFDB
90:My ears are bleeding. I have a nasty headache. I'm trapped in a room with a murderous faery and I blame you."
"That's fair. ~ Elizabeth May,#NFDB
91:I don't want to die now! I've got a headache! I don't want to go to heaven with a headache, I'd be all cross and wouldn't enjoy it! ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
92:A headache looped around my temples, squeezing with heavy questions. I don’t know anything anymore. I’m tired. I’m lost. I’m alone. ~ Pepper Winters, #NFDB
93:Did you love well what you very soon left? Come home and take me in your arms and take away this stomach ache, headache, heartache. ~ Marilyn Hacker, #NFDB
94:Sometimes people start to meditate and they get a headache. It's because they're trying too hard. You're pulling in too much energy. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
95:He wore the headdress of a Red Indian and was making the sounds to match, a terrible howling that would have given a deaf man a headache. ~ John Boyne, #NFDB
96:I don't care about sex anymore. It's a headache. It's hard to trust people. You talk to a girl, and then she screenshots a text message. ~ Danny Brown, #NFDB
97:I could never say in the morning, "I have a headache and cannot do thus and so". Headache or no headache, thus and so had to be done. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt, #NFDB
98:At least he could turn on the shower, stand beneath the hot needles, face thrust near the spray head, feeling the headache move back a little. ~ Annie Proulx, #NFDB
99:Jerott stared up through his headache. ‘I can manage,’ he said.
‘Yes. I think you’ll manage better tied to your horse,’ said Lymond. ~ Dorothy Dunnett,#NFDB
100:Do you know why we still have a headache after taking a one-cent aspirin, but why that same headache vanishes when the aspirin costs 50 cents? Do ~ Dan Ariely, #NFDB
101:Then Piglet saw what a Foolish Piglet he had been, and he was so ashamed of himself that he ran straight off home and went to bed with a headache. ~ A A Milne, #NFDB
102:Two and two, four; four and three, something else. Something into something, more; some more into less. Oh, God, numbers did give me a headache. ~ R K Narayan, #NFDB
103:It was far too cold. The second I got out I had this incredible headache, I'm just not used to it. The last time I saw snow was years and years ago. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
104:They sound like the philosophy of a man who, having a headache, beats himself on the head with a hammer so that he cannot feel the ache. ~ Alcoholics Anonymous, #NFDB
105:I used to drink wine. This girl asked me, "Doesn't wine give you a headache?" "Yeah, eventually, but the first and the middle part are amazing!" ~ Mitch Hedberg, #NFDB
106:Adulthood is like looking both ways to cross a street only to get hit by a falling object. Unpredictable and headache inducing." - fact of life. ~ Lani Lynn Vale, #NFDB
107:Mason groaned. “Clinton, you’re so dumb it gives me a headache. You heard Cora. She said keep Damon from eating people, not feed people to him.” “Who ~ T S Joyce, #NFDB
108:It’s none of my business, and I have no idea if he’d be good for you. Probably bring you ten kinds of headache. But I think you’d be good for him. ~ Leigh Bardugo, #NFDB
109:Next came, as near as I could tell, the journal of a madman. While it sounds interesting, it was really only a headache pressed between covers. ~ Patrick Rothfuss, #NFDB
110:The grief came in waves: sometimes so intense it almost kept him from functioning; other times lurking in the background, like a dull headache. ~ Karen McQuestion, #NFDB
111:There’s something magical about a departed headache. It’s a shame the joy fades and you can’t appreciate not having one every moment of your life. ~ Mark Lawrence, #NFDB
112:Got a headache, huh?” Allan nodded. “Severe.” “Why don’t you use what doctors recommend most?” “Oh, God …” “Electroshock therapy! It really works! ~ Chet Williamson, #NFDB
113:A chronic headache muttered in her temples, but like Barrett said, no one ever died from pain. True, but some days you didn't much enjoy living either. ~ Ilsa J Bick, #NFDB
114:But it's not so much a headache as possession, my head an occupied territory, and my normal self, a disenfranchised native populace, driven underground. ~ Andrew Levy, #NFDB
115:I don't want to die now!" he yelled. "I've still got a headache! I don't want to go to heaven with a headache, I'd be all cross and wouldn't enjoy it! ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
116:Special Agent Jack Randall already felt the headache coming on. The call from his office had arrived about the same time as the story had aired on CNN. ~ Randall Wood, #NFDB
117:I'd developed such an unbearably bad headache that I now had an escape plan. I'd simply wait to my head to explode, and then use the distraction to flee. ~ Jeff Strand, #NFDB
118:Do not undervalue the headache. While it is at its sharpest it seems a bad investment; but when relief begins, the unexpired remainder is worth $4 a minute. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
119:The only way to get through life is to laugh your way through it. You either have to laugh or cry. I prefer to laugh. Crying gives me a headache. ~ Marjorie Pay Hinckley, #NFDB
120:They believed that if a mouse found your hair clippings and built a nest with them you got a headache. If the nest was big enough, you might go mad. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
121:It’ll make you feel better.”
"By making me dead?” I asked. “I mean, I’m sure that would make my headache go away, but that’s a heck of a side effect. ~ Rachel Hawkins,#NFDB
122:When I'm in an interview with someone who is not intelligent, but flat-out ignorant, idiotic and stupid, or just an ass, it really gives me a headache. ~ Karrine Steffans, #NFDB
123:...the only way to get through life is to laugh your way through it. you either have to laugh or cry. I prefer to laugh. Crying gives me a headache. ~ Marjorie Pay Hinckley, #NFDB
124:His books distracted him for a while. They were like the aspirins you take when you've got a headache. They kill the pain for two hours and then it comes back. ~ Barbara Vine, #NFDB
125:I would feel so guilty about lying that I would try to stress myself out and work up a headache so I wouldn't have the guilt of not having a bit of the symptom. ~ Justin Long, #NFDB
126:I need to shop because generally, I really do style myself. It's easier to wear clothes that are true to who you are. But if it's a headache, I'll ask for help. ~ Cassie Ventura, #NFDB
127:Gratitude is the best food to start and sustain you. Hankering creates hunger, unhappiness, bellyache, headache and heartache - and often leaves a bitter taste ~ Rasheed Ogunlaru, #NFDB
128:When you are lying awake with a dismal headache, and repose is tabooed by anxiety, I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in without impropriety. ~ W S Gilbert, #NFDB
129:Today is my sixteenth birthday. I am wearing a gown I can barely walk in, my artfully styled hair is giving me a headache, and I feel like I am going to throw up. ~ Bethany Wiggins, #NFDB
130:My life is singing. I don't plan on retiring. I plan to die on a stage. I can have a headache but when it's time to sing and I step on that stage there is no more headache. ~ Celia Cruz, #NFDB
131:Long weekends at festivals, short weeks at home, all summer long: now that is surely preferable to the immense cost and headache of the nuclear family holiday in the sun? ~ Tom Hodgkinson, #NFDB
132:Stupid thing, crying. It changed absolutely nothing about the circumstances, but it made your eyes burn, made your face puffy and blotchy, and gave you a headache. She ~ Melanie Dickerson, #NFDB
133:Up!” Mimi said sharply. “Lying there howling never gives you anything but a headache, and the only good reason to get a headache is because you’ve drunk too much champagne. ~ Sarah Morgan, #NFDB
134:She punched the end button on her phone and longed for the days when you could slam a receiver down in the cradle and give the obnoxious person on the other end a headache. ~ Kassandra Lamb, #NFDB
135:My headache was worse than ever. I groaned, raising my right hand to my temple, and the last of the comfortable darkness dissolved, leaving me inarguably awake. Damn. “Toby? ~ Seanan McGuire, #NFDB
136:The third day, Matrona awoke with bones of iron instead of lead, a headache that tapped instead of pounded, and clear vision that only spotted when she moved too quickly. ~ Charlie N Holmberg, #NFDB
137:When I'm singing at the piano and I'm having a really nice fun day singing, if I have a headache, the headache will immediately dissipate just the notes going through my head. ~ Gino Vannelli, #NFDB
138:He was a simple, animal hunger, and he didn't care what he was eating or how it tasted .
It was like taking aspirin to make a headache go away.
You don't enjoy the aspirin ~ Stuart Woods,#NFDB
139:Living in New York is like being at some terrible late-night party. You're tired, you've had a headache since you arrived, but you can't leave because then you'd miss the party. ~ Simon Hoggart, #NFDB
140:The documents were in English—sort of—but the language was so convoluted that it was beginning to give her a headache. It made for even duller reading than her chemistry text. ~ Francine Pascal, #NFDB
141:He had done amazingly well for a man who had once found it impossible to write if he was out of cigarettes or if he had a backache or a headache a degree or two above a low drone. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
142:Morning didn’t arrive gracefully. It slapped me in the face with an open palm, or at least it felt like that on account of the massive headache reverberating through my skull. ~ Rebecca Hamilton, #NFDB
143:The cop looks annoyed, like we're giving him a headache. I want to explain everything to him that its really not as screwed up as it all sounds, but then I remember that it is. ~ Jonathan Tropper, #NFDB
144:The Apple III was kind of like a baby conceived during a group orgy, and later everybody had this bad headache, and there’s this bastard child, and everyone says, ‘It’s not mine. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
145:Depression is like a headache or true love or any of those indefinable concepts. If you've never been there, you don't know what it's like until you're too far in to stop the process. ~ Tim Sandlin, #NFDB
146:Welcome to the wonderful world of jealousy, he thought. For the price of admission, you get a splitting headache, a nearly irresistible urge to commit murder, and an inferiority complex. ~ J R Ward, #NFDB
147:Magozzi tried to grimace away a growing headache. He wanted to curl up in a ball in the corner, but when Gino was on a fishing expedition for mermaids, you had to throw in a courtesy line. ~ P J Tracy, #NFDB
148:Accepting circumstances as they are, because if there are circumstances that you cannot change, then it’s no use beating your head against a brick wall; that just gives you a headache. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
149:Nothing has ever been so painful or delicious as being so close to him and being unable to do anything about it: like eating ice cream so fast on a hot day you get a splitting headache. ~ Lauren Oliver, #NFDB
150:A friend understands what you’re going through enough and can help you through it. A best friend Understands what you’re going through too much and ,frankly, it’s giving them a headache. ~ Rebecca Brown, #NFDB
151:The retail industry has its own headache: it loses $16 billion a year to customers who buy clothes, wear them with the tags tucked in, and return these secondhand clothes for a full refund. ~ Dan Ariely, #NFDB
152:Why do people drink? I mean seriously, what's the catch? It makes us crazy, we do stupid things and then we wake up the next day with a headache, a sore stomach and quite possibly, an STD. ~ Bella Jewel, #NFDB
153:Women, like cheap wine, can give you a headache,” Jett offers his two cents. “They also, like cheap wine, can make you drunk and horny,” Juice adds. I rub my temples. These two are not helping. ~ M Never, #NFDB
154:I get a headache when I hear supporters of this endless warfare complaining about the federal budget deficits. They're like arsonists complaining about the smell of smoke in the neighborhood. ~ Bob Herbert, #NFDB
155:Welcome to the wonderful world of jealousy, he thought. For the price of admission, you get a splitting headache, a nearly irresistable urge to commit murder, and an inferiority complex. Yippee. ~ J R Ward, #NFDB
156:Welcome to the wonderful world of jealousy, he thought. For the price of admission, you get a splitting headache, a nearly irresistible urge to commit murder, and an inferiority complex. Yippee. ~ J R Ward, #NFDB
157:The cop looks annoyed, like we’re giving him a headache. I want to explain everything to him, show him that it’s really not as screwed up as it all sounds, but then I remember that it is. ~ Jonathan Tropper, #NFDB
158:They awoke hours later to a battering-ram headache and upended chairs and shattered glassware and a large lurking pocket of nothingness where the memory of the night before ought to have been. ~ Julia Keller, #NFDB
159:We sort of understand how painkillers work. You take one, and it reduces your headache. We don't understand how photographs work. And that, to me, is an essential problem as a practitioner. ~ Stuart Franklin, #NFDB
160:Holding on to anger, resentment and hurt only gives you tense muscles, a headache and a sore jaw from clenching your teeth. Forgiveness gives you back the laughter and the lightness in your life. ~ Joan Lunden, #NFDB
161:I wonder what I’ve married into,” Morgan Williams says. But really, this is just something Morgan says; some men have a habitual sniffle, some women have a headache, and Morgan has this wonder. ~ Hilary Mantel, #NFDB
162:How rude. Many who have gazed upon me have compared the experience to gazing at the radiance of the sun." Jem still had his eyes closed. "If they mean it gives you a headache, they aren't wrong. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
163:I'm a woman of a certain age who doesn't have kids and never really settled down ... I enjoy kids but not for long periods. I think they're adorable and funny and sweet, and then I have a headache. ~ Kim Cattrall, #NFDB
164:Marijuana is like sex. If I don't do it every day, I get a headache. I think marijuana should be recognized for what it is, as a medicine, an herb that grows in the ground. If you need it, use it. ~ Willie Nelson, #NFDB
165:[On her husband:] The other day he woke up with a headache. I felt sorry for him. I would like to help him but I can't. I told him so many times. When he jumps out of bed - it should be feet first. ~ Jean Carroll, #NFDB
166:She wants to drink that man too, and then she can forget forever the cheap wine that you gulp down and that makes you feel drunk, but always leaves you with a headache and an empty space in your soul. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
167:If you try to sleep on the floor I'll just get down there with you. Which will make you feel guilty and then you'll end up in the bed anyway. So just give in now and save yourself -- and me -- a headache. ~ Katie Reus, #NFDB
168:She always forgot how pain was so upsetting. Cruel. It hurt your feelings. You just wanted it to stop, please, right now. Epidurals were the way to go. One epidural for my headache, please. Thank you. ~ Liane Moriarty, #NFDB
169:She had practically taken ownership of his kitchen and arguing with her over it only left him with a raging headache. She could cook, thank fucking God, but she was still crazy.
And not in a fun way. ~ Bethany Kris,#NFDB
170:How rude. Many who have gazed upon me have compared the experience to gazing
at the radiance of the sun."
Jem still had his eyes closed. "If they mean it gives you a headache, they aren't wrong. ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB
171:My headache, almost gone before, had blossomed anew like some perverse flower, spreading to fill my entire skull. I groaned as I forced myself to turn toward the bed, squinting against the candlelight. ~ Seanan McGuire, #NFDB
172:I wish you had a 'little missus' who could pet you as I used to pet papa when he had a headache. I should like to be your 'little missus' myself, poor dear! Good night-good night. God bless you! ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett, #NFDB
173:Have a headache? Submerge your feet and hands in hot water and put a bag of frozen peas on the back of your head. The heat on your extremities pulls the blood from your head, relieving your head pains. 474 ~ Keith Bradford, #NFDB
174:Why don't you come with me?"
"Why? Where are you going?"
"Home. I've had enough. I hate England."
"Hate England?" It was too much to grasp, with a head full of searing headache. ~ Geraldine McCaughrean,#NFDB
175:Her headache began to fade, replaced with the strength of his heartbeat and the way she felt almost delicate when she was pressed up against him like this. Almost fragile. Almost safe. Almost like a princess. ~ Marissa Meyer, #NFDB
176:She always forgot how pain was so upsetting. Cruel. It hurt your feelings. You just wanted it to stop, please, right now. Epidurals were the way to go. One epidural for my headache, please. Thank you. “Alice, ~ Liane Moriarty, #NFDB
177:We’ll talk on the way,” he said. “We really need to get going, and if Corey’s getting a headache--”
“It’s not bad,” Corey interjected. “I’ll be--”
“You won’t be fine. We need to look after that first. ~ Kelley Armstrong,#NFDB
178:Come home with me, Acheron. I’ll make it well worth your while. (Artemis) I have a headache. (Acheron) You’ve had a headache for two hundred years! (Artemis) And you’ve had PMS for eleven thousand. (Acheron) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
179:Getting punched in the face with a padded glove doesn't really hurt your face. It doesn't hurt your skull. The only thing it hurts is your brain. You can feel the brain injury happening. It's an instant headache. ~ Jonathan Gottschall, #NFDB
180:Come home with me, Acheron. I’ll make it well worth your while. (Artemis)
I have a headache. (Acheron)
You’ve had a headache for two hundred years! (Artemis)
And you’ve had PMS for eleven thousand. (Acheron) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,#NFDB
181:Never forget that there are only two philosophies to rule your life: the one of the cross, which starts with the fast and ends with the feast. The other of Satan, which starts with the feast and ends with the headache. ~ Fulton J Sheen, #NFDB
182:If you are a physician and someone comes to see you with an absolutely incapacitating headache or a swollen arm, you don't tell them, "Come back in 10 years when I've completed my study and I'll see what I can do for you." ~ Devra Davis, #NFDB
183:I was cut out of The Doors. I was Okie Girl, a groupie. The powers that be thought that my character made Jim Morrison look too sleazy, if you can imagine. I saw the movie-it was so loud I had a headache for three days. ~ Jennifer Tilly, #NFDB
184:Lugh's decided to stick with bein mad at me. It's like traveling with a storm cloud. One of them that hangs low an heavy. The kind that builds an broods an keeps on buildin an brood in till everybody's got a sick headache. ~ Moira Young, #NFDB
185:How are you feeling?" Charlie asked, adding a small bottle of V-8 juice to the bedside table.
"Like I just sat through an entire Justin Bieber concert."
"Headache and nausea?
"And an overwhelming desire to die. ~ Tammy Blackwell,#NFDB
186:So what's the use of a headache, a heartache? What am I being warned against, or told what to do? Don't let your incestuous uncle and mother poison your father. Don't waste your precious days idle and inverted. Get born and act! ~ Ian McEwan, #NFDB
187:Like cheap wine, long paper documentation ages rapidly and leaves you with a bad headache if you try to use it a year after it was created. On the other hand, maintaining a system without any documentation also causes headaches. ~ Gojko Adzic, #NFDB
188:My job is making money, helping other people make money. I am spending money, trying to make sure more people get rich, because you cannot spend a lot of money, right? So my job is spending money, helping others. This is a headache. ~ Jack Ma, #NFDB
189:At the house, the gathering broke up quickly. Sarai announced that she had a headache and needed to lie down. Without her to hold them together, the young nobles chose to go home. The gloss had been stripped from the afternoon. ~ Tamora Pierce, #NFDB
190:If it had been touch, it might have been pressure-not an uncomfortable pressure, but one that swept away all the pain of her headache. Like a river rushing through her mind, clearing out everything stagnant and clotted and decayed. ~ L J Smith, #NFDB
191:In a hundred years, medical practitioners will probably shake their heads over the methods used today. After all, nobody would treat a headache by drilling a hole in a patient's head, but that was the practice in the Dark Ages. ~ Chris Kresser, #NFDB
192:Where is my human pillow? Where are my clothes? Why am I alone in this bed? Do I smell coffee? Do I have a headache because I drank too much tequila or because someone hit me over the head while I was sleeping when I got frisky? ~ Jessica Park, #NFDB
193:Concern washes over Jess’s brown eyes. Followed by the heat of accusation as she spins toward Blake again. “You didn’t tell me he had a headache!”
“I didn’t know!”
“What kind of nurse are you?”
“The kind who plays hockey! ~ Sarina Bowen,#NFDB
194:I wondered if all of us churchgoers were just exhausted by grief. For the dying priest and us, I thought, "God" always refused to become glorious, instead stubbornly remaining plain, a headache, a sorrowful knot of language. ~ Virginia Heffernan, #NFDB
195:your culture has become sophisticated, like a computer, or a drug that you take for a headache. You can use it, but you cannot explain how it works. Certainly not to girls who stack up their firewood against the side of the house. ~ Chris Cleave, #NFDB
196:Drake. He liked dangerous pies."
"Why did he join you?"
"Who would eat pie that could take over your life? Why risk it?"
"Focus. Why did he join you?"
"Say no to death pies. Another good motto. I'm getting a headache." p. 432 ~ Brandon Mull,#NFDB
197:I woke up the next afternoon cotton-mouthed with a splitting, and I do mean splitting, headache. When I raised my head, I half expected to leave large chunks of it on my pillow, like a broken melon.
Sorry. It was a really bad headache. ~ Cate Tiernan,#NFDB
198:I'm interested in directing, but it's a real headache. Directing can be a real pain in the ass, because you not only have to worry about yourself, but all these other people coming to you with their problems. I like just worrying about myself. ~ Ray Wise, #NFDB
199:Suicide is a symptom of depression. That struck me as odd. I think of a sore throat as a symptom, or a headache, but death? Death as a symptom is too final. You're obviously not going to recover - the symptom is bigger than the disease. ~ Marshall Thornton, #NFDB
200:Having been bred amongst mountains I am always unhappy when in a flat country. Whenever the skirts of the horizon come on a level with myself I feel myself quite uneasy and generally have a headache.
(Letter to Sir Walter Scott, 25 July 1802) ~ James Hogg,#NFDB
201:I still have a headache,” said
Charlotte, without looking up from the
floor.
“There, you see?” Aunt Glenda gave
a venomous smile.
“I have a headache too,” said Mum.
“But that doesn’t mean I’m about to start traveling in time. ~ Kerstin Gier,#NFDB
202:I was crying when I was editing [Beacher] but I stopped all the screenings years ago because I had a headache but then I had seen it again... Well I always cry at the same place, when they play that song "Wind Beneath My Wings". It gets you. ~ Garry Marshall, #NFDB
203:My daughter is a real migraine sufferer; the minute she has a handful of Haribo sweets, she gets a headache. Theres a connection between what the liver cant break down with what goes on to trigger a headache. You just have to be aware. ~ Sheherazade Goldsmith, #NFDB
204:I think wisdom is over-rated. Wisdom is just cleverness, with all the guts kicked out of it. I'd rather be clever than wise, any day. Most of the wise people I know give me a headache, but I never met a clever man or woman I didn't like. ~ Gregory David Roberts, #NFDB
205:Kit stares at me, and I stare back. Eye contact usually feels like an ice headache. Just too much, too fast. Sharp and unpleasant. With Kit it feels like the first few seconds on a roller coaster, all gravitational force, no escape, pure thrill. ~ Julie Buxbaum, #NFDB
206:The acts of daily forbearance, the headache, or toothache, or heavy cold; the tiresome peculiarities of husband or wife, the broken glass...all of these sufferings, small as they are, if accepted lovingly, are most pleasing to God's Goodness. ~ Francis de Sales, #NFDB
207:Jack Coffey shrugged, and this was akin to waving a white flag of surrender. Sometimes losing was a good idea. Failure could be so restful. His tension headache was gone even before his two detectives had been dispatched uptown to Central Park. ~ Carol O Connell, #NFDB
208:Barack Obama won a second term but no mandate. Thanks in part to his own small-bore and brutish campaign, victory guarantees the president nothing more than the headache of building consensus in a gridlocked capital on behalf of a polarized public. ~ Ron Fournier, #NFDB
209:I don't want to do an action movie, because I've acted in them, and they're so boring to do, because they're so technical. The headache of that is daunting. But, if it were an action movie with really interesting characters, how great would that be? ~ Tony Goldwyn, #NFDB
210:Normally seven minutes of another person's company was enough to give her a headache so she set things up to live as a recluse. She was perfectly content as long as people left her in peace. Unfortunately society was not very smart or understanding. ~ Steig Larsson, #NFDB
211:Normally seven minutes of another person's company was enough to give her a headache so she set things up to live as a recluse. She was perfectly content as long as people left her in peace. Unfortunately society was not very smart or understanding. ~ Stieg Larsson, #NFDB
212:what are you supposed to do if you are a manically depressed robot? No, don’t bother to answer that, I’m fifty thousand times more intelligent than you and even I don’t know the answer. It gives me a headache just trying to think down to your level. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
213:What’s up with you two?” Dane asked. “It’s complicated,” was Truck’s informative reply. “It sounds like it.” “But I’ll tell you this…she’s worth it. She’s worth every second of sleep I’ve lost, every moment of worry, and every headache she’s given me. ~ Susan Stoker, #NFDB
214:It hurts to imagine stuff. It can give you a headache. Probably doesn't hurt physically, but it hurts mentally. But the more that you can do it, the more you're able to get out of it. Everybody has that capacity, but I don't think everyone develops it. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
215:The acts of daily forbearance, the headache, or toothache, or heavy cold; the tiresome peculiarities of husband or wife, the broken glass...all of these sufferings, small as they are, if accepted lovingly, are most pleasing to God's Goodness. ~ Saint Francis de Sales, #NFDB
216:I like being a consumer. I'll do collabs with brands I like, only because I would like something free to wear. But I don't want people to dress like me, which is what you're asking when you create a brand. The fashion industry's just a super-duper headache. ~ Kid Cudi, #NFDB
217:Doctor, what could you prescribe for Charlemund?”
The doctor looked down his nose at the unconscious form of the arch-diocel.
“Arsenic?”
“Now, really. Something to give him a quality headache and a great deal of memory loss.”
“Cyanide. ~ Brian McClellan,#NFDB
218:If you have a headache every Monday morning when it is time for you to go to work, perhaps you're driving the wrong car, perhaps you're taking the wrong route, or you may be in the wrong line of work. Obviously, only you can figure out the message. ~ Christiane Northrup, #NFDB
219:Only a madman would try to market headache medicine today under the name John's Headache Pills. This would be insufficiently techno-marvelous. No, the name must sound like it carne out of a laboratory yesterday ... Zantistat 100, or something like that. ~ Douglas Wilson, #NFDB
220:If you want to resolve a dispute, or come out from conflict, the very first thing is to speak the truth. If you have a headache, and tell the doctor you have a stomach ache, how can the doctor help? You must speak the truth. The truth will abolish fear. ~ Malala Yousafzai, #NFDB
221:I find that in the course of the day when I'm writing, after three or four hours of intense work, I have a splitting headache, and I have to stop. Because the involvement, which is both creative and self-critical, is so intense that I've got to stop doing it. ~ Edward Albee, #NFDB
222:TROY AWOKE to the sound of screaming. That was not unusual for a combat surgeon, but hearing soprano was. He opened his eyes to utter blackness and a monster headache. What the hell was going on? His memory was failing him and he felt oddly unsure of … anything. ~ Tim Tigner, #NFDB
223:Okay, we’ll go tomorrow. That way I can be sure you’re not sneaking to see your addiction.”
“I’m not addicted.”
“One time I tried to give up caffeine,” she said, ignoring my statement. “I got a headache. I wonder if you’re going to get a headache this week. ~ Kasie West,#NFDB
224:"Hello, Max," he said quietly, searching my face. "How do you feel?" Which was a ten on the 'imbecilic question' scale of one to ten. "Why, I feel fine, Jeb," I said brightly. "How about you?" "Any nausea? Headache?" "Yep. And it's standing here talking to me." ~ James Patterson, #NFDB
225:I woke with a terrible headache and wobbled around 'till I fell out the window."
"You what?"
"Fell out the window. That one over there." She [Edwina] gestured to the curtain behind her. "I broke my back. My spine is all wobbly now, but it doesn't hurt. ~ Megan Whalen Turner,#NFDB
226:You Are My Drunkenness
You are my drunkenness...
I did not sober up, as if I can do that;
I don't want to anyway.
I have a headache, my knees are full of scars
I am in mud all around
I struggle to walk towards your hesitant light. ~ N z m Hikmet Ran,#NFDB
227:Mental tensions, frustrations, insecurity, aimlessness are among the most damaging stressors, and psychosomatic studies have shown how often they cause migraine headache, peptic ulcers, heart attacks, hypertension, mental disease, suicide, or just hopeless unhappiness. ~ Hans Selye, #NFDB
228:All this to say of course Gallo wants to get into your Little Mermaid panties. And if you don't get that, you're dumber than I ever thought, which gives me such a headache to even contemplate. The massive amount of your dumbness. It hurts me,' he whined. ~ MaryJanice Davidson, #NFDB
229:The conversations were miles beyond Jo's comprehension, but she enjoyed it, though Kant and Hegel were unknown gods, the Subjective and Objective unintelligible terms, and the only thing 'evolved from her inner consciousness' was a bad headache after it was all over. ~ Louisa May Alcott, #NFDB
230:People give me such a headache. Everybody wants to nickel-and-dime. Ten bags of mulch for, like, four thousand square feet. Jesus.' His hands dropped and he looked at her. 'You know that's crazy, right?' How the hell would she know? Mom was lucky she could work the mower. ~ Brigid Kemmerer, #NFDB
231:At that comfortable tavern on Pontchartrain we had a bouillabaisse than which a better was never eaten at Marseilles; and not the least headache in the morning, I give you my word; on the contrary, you only wake with a sweet refreshing thirst for claret and water. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray, #NFDB
232:What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whit- man, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon. In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations! ~ Allen Ginsberg, #NFDB
233:As far as he could tell, he’d stopped one small bunch of bad guys killing a big bunch of bad guys and as a result the good guys got chucked out of their homes by another bunch of bad guys. Did that make him good or bad? James only knew that thinking about it gave him a headache. ~ Robert Muchamore, #NFDB
234:It was the old psychosomatic side-step. Everyone in my family dances it at every opportunity. You've given me a splitting headache! You've given me indigestion! You've given me crotch rot! You've given me auditory hallucinations! You've given me a heart attack! You've given me cancer! ~ Erica Jong, #NFDB
235:Left with an oncoming headache, went home, and that's verified, to his wife and six-month-old baby. He's three weeks into a big, fat raise and promotion. He doesn't fit for me."
"Lucky for Whistler, and likely his mother?"
"What? Why?"
"Weak joke. So back to your corporate trio. ~ J D Robb,#NFDB
236:My life has been fucked up this way ever since that night with Sarabelle. I woke up the next morning stark naked, sprawled out on my back, with a splitting headache, a killer case of dry-mouth, and a lipstick heart drawn around my left nipple. When I sat up, the room tilting around me… ~ Ella James, #NFDB
237:They are simply numbers and cannot thus be right or wrong [...] What I trust that I am saying is that all numbers are by their nature correct. Well, except for Pi, of course. I can't be doing with Pi. Gives me a headache just thinking about it, going on and on and on and on and on.... ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
238:it is because mental states depend on what goes on in the brain that it is possible to intervene in the mental goings-on. To ease your headache, you take aspirin—the only way you can affect the headache is to alter the neural base on which it supervenes. There apparently is no other way. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
239:Upstairs, later. I’ve had too much to drink, I can’t see the computer screen properly, everything doubles, trebles. I can read if I hold my hand over one eye. It gives me a headache. Cathy is home, she called out to me and I told her I was in bed, unwell. She knows that I’m drinking. ~ Paula Hawkins, #NFDB
240:Rubbing the place where a headache was brewing, Toby said, “You may keep whatever parts of the goat you wish. I just want this farm boy’s heart.”
“So the rest of him is up for grabs?”
“The rest of the goat?”
“No, the rest of the…yeah, the goat. The goat. Good eating, goat. ~ Delilah S Dawson,#NFDB
241:Elder Neal A. Maxwell once said, "We are here in mortality, and the only way to go is through; there isn't any around!" I would add, the only way to get through life is to laugh your way through it. You either have to laugh or cry. I prefer to laugh. Crying gives me a headache. ~ Marjorie Pay Hinckley, #NFDB
242:I am obsessed at nights with the idea of my own worthlessness, and if it were only to turn a light on to save my life I think I would not do it. These are the last footprints of a headache I suppose. Do you ever feel that? - like an old weed in a stream. What do you feel, lying in bed? ~ Virginia Woolf, #NFDB
243:Rule, she's always been an Archer. Putting a rock on her finger is just a formality. No one doubts how much you care about her, or that you are committed to her and her alone. Screw her obnoxious family and whatever headache Mom and Dad might want to cause, your want her forever, ask her. ~ Jay Crownover, #NFDB
244:There is a constant suspicion that headache and giddiness are to be ascribed to philosophy, and hence all practising or making trial of virtue in the higher sense is absolutely stopped; for a man is always fancying that he is being made ill, and is in constant anxiety about the state of his body. ~ Plato, #NFDB
245:I don’t mind crack,” I said. “I like crack as much as the next man. But it’s not doing a thing for my nerves, and I already have a splitting headache— I say, I don’t suppose those heroin dealers carry Anadin or acetaminophen or anything like that, do they?” “I think they just have heroin, Charlie. ~ Paul Murray, #NFDB
246:The headache from this emotional roller coaster known as Marcus DeLuca seemed to get worse. Seriously, it was so bad I could actually hear a knocking sound at this moment. I looked up at Jeremy; his eyes trailed to the front door. The knocking happened again. Oh, it wasn’t me; it was the actual door. ~ E L Montes, #NFDB
247:And that was, finally, why I loved him -- because he never complained when I had a headache or changed my mind about something. He never shut down when I revealed my fears, my worries. He never tried to make me feel less, weaker, than he was -- because he shared his own emotions with me, as well. ~ Melanie Benjamin, #NFDB
248:I had, bluntly, the worst fucking headache I had ever had in my life. I’m trying to think of the best way to describe it. Try this. Imagine a migraine, on top of a hangover, while sitting in a kindergarten of thirty screaming children, who are all taking turns stabbing you in the eye with an ice pick. ~ John Scalzi, #NFDB
249:Gwen “Gwen.” I wake up with a throbbing headache and a pain in my hip. As soon as I’m conscious, I shift into my wolf. It’s a protective instinct, my wolf taking over and wanting to be ready if there’s an attack. Spending so many years in the woods gave my wolf more control. So when he pushes forward, I don’t fight ~ Alexa Riley, #NFDB
250:She writes that one of the moments that she felt most useful was when her mother had a headache, and she would stroke her head and rub her forehead. And I think Eleanor Roosevelt's entire life was dedicated to two things: (one) making it better for all people, people in trouble and in need, like her family. ~ Blanche Wiesen Cook, #NFDB
251:English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear, has no words for the shiver and the headache... The merest schoolgirl, when she falls in love, has Shakespeare or Keats to speak her mind for her, but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry. ~ John Green, #NFDB
252:One of the first affirmations to use is: “I am willing to release the NEED for the resistance, or the headache, or the constipation, or the excess weight, or the lack of money or whatever.” Say: “I am willing to release the need for. . .” If you are resisting at this point, then your other affirmations cannot work. ~ Louise L Hay, #NFDB
253:No, you’re not getting it. You see… never mind. Listen, I want you to get a headache at nine-forty-five.” “You’re giving me a headache now.” She added, “And why do I always have to get a headache? People are beginning to think I have a terminal disease. Why don’t you say your hemorrhoids are acting up at nine-forty-five? ~ Nelson DeMille, #NFDB
254:One further factor, possibly the most crucial, was inherent to the way SARS-CoV affects the human body: Symptoms tend to appear in a person before, rather than after, that person becomes highly infectious. The headache, the fever, and the chills—maybe even the cough—precede the major discharge of virus toward other people. ~ David Quammen, #NFDB
255:So make sure that before you start rebuking them your own heart is in order. Thank God for the headache. Thank Him for these prime opportunities to teach. Thank Him for the scuffle that your children are currently having over who unbuckled who and why. And then, after your own heart has been sorted out, move on to theirs. ~ Rachel Jankovic, #NFDB
256:Big Government depends on going around the country stirring up apathy—creating the sense that problems are so big, so complex, so intractable that even attempting to think about them for yourself gives you such a splitting headache it’s easier to shrug and accept as given the proposition that only government can deal with them. ~ Mark Steyn, #NFDB
257:You know,” I said one day, smiling, “that you’ve given her the name of my doll?”
“What doll?”
“Tina, you don’t remember?”
She touched her forehead as if she had a headache, and said:
“It’s true, but I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“She was a beautiful doll—I was attached to her.”
“My daughter is more beautiful. ~ Elena Ferrante,#NFDB
258:He saw the role of the serious writer as both lofty and practical in the same instant. He used to say that literature was one of the first indications of civilization. He used to say that a fine piece of prose could not only cure a depression, it could clear up a sinus headache. Like many great healers, he meant to heal himself. ~ John Cheever, #NFDB
259:My mom told me once that money problems sort of sneak up on you. She said it’s like catching a cold. At first you just have a tickle in your throat, and then you have a headache, and then maybe you’re coughing a little. The next thing you know, you have a pile of Kleenexes around your bed and you’re hacking your lungs up. ~ Katherine Applegate, #NFDB
260:Severin sighed—the sound more guttural than he meant for it to be. The girl was a headache he didn’t want to deal with. His servants acted as if she were a visiting empress, which wouldn’t have bothered Severin if they ceased their tendency to pepper him with irksome questions about the girl’s health, treatment, and illiteracy. “One ~ K M Shea, #NFDB
261:It could be anything. It could be Jesus and it could be the Furby and it could be the lint that lives in my navel, but it's probably not. Whatever it is, I doubt we as humans on Earth could have any perception of it while we're here. So, why give yourself a headache thinking about it. Just be a good person. That's what an ethicist is. ~ Bill Maher, #NFDB
262:The headache’s coming on and my thoughts begin to tangle. I shut my eyes and start to recite silently. My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am seventeen years old. My home is District 12. I was in the Hunger Games. I escaped. The Capitol hates me. Peeta was taken prisoner. He is alive. He is a traitor but alive. I have to keep him alive. ~ Suzanne Collins, #NFDB
263:TROY AWOKE to the sound of screaming. That was not unusual for a combat surgeon, but hearing soprano was. He opened his eyes to utter blackness and a monster headache. What the hell was going on? His memory was failing him and he felt oddly unsure of … anything. He self-diagnosed a concussion, but sensed that it was the least of his woes. ~ Tim Tigner, #NFDB
264:It is so nice to go to church,” said Lizzie. Since her widowhood had commenced, she had compromised matters with the world. One Sunday she would go to church, and the next she would have a headache and a French novel and stay in bed. But she was prepared for stricter conduct during at least the first months of her newly-married life. ~ Anthony Trollope, #NFDB
265:Higher pricing means that we can sell fewer units—and thus manage fewer customers—and fulfill our dreamlines. It’s faster. Higher pricing attracts lower-maintenance customers (better credit, fewer complaints/questions, fewer returns, etc.). It’s less headache. This is HUGE. Higher pricing also creates higher profit margins. It’s safer. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
266:Gilles made up his mind, and snapped, 'D'you write Latin?'
Sometimes Jerott forgot that the blazon of chivalry, with all the status it once had carried, was no longer his. In any case, he had an incredible headache. He stared at this enormous, round-shouldered old man in the filthy nightgown and buskins, and snapped back. 'Of course. ~ Dorothy Dunnett,#NFDB
267:Greed and desire
Not peace, but fire
Coveting creation
Created damnation
Pulled alongside
A gate thrown too wide
Now our home calls
And darkness fall
"I rubbed my temples, feeling a headache coming on."A for effort, ladies, but F for clarity. You do realise that your wierd poem things never explain anything", ~ Kiersten White,#NFDB
268:Because that's the ugly truth about heroism: the tests don't start when you're ready or stop when you're tired. You don't get time-outs, warm-ups, or bathroom breaks. You may have a headache or be wearing the wrong pants or find yourself—the way Norina did—in a skirt and low heels in a school hallway becoming slick with your own blood. ~ Christopher McDougall, #NFDB
269:I realize now that people are not thinking about you and me or caring what is said about us. They are thinking about themselves-before breakfast, after breakfast, and right on until ten minutes past midnight. They would be a thousand times more concerned about a slight headache of their own than they would about the news of your death or mine. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
270:I realize now that people are not thinking about you and me or caring what is said about us. They are thinking about themselves—before breakfast, after breakfast, and right on until ten minutes past midnight. They would be a thousand times more concerned about a slight headache of their own than they would about the news of your death or mine. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
271:How bad is it?” “I have a headache,” he said irritably. “It’s probably just a minor skull fracture with brain damage.” She struggled not to smile. “Did you have that x-rayed?” she asked, indicating his hand with her eyes. “Sprain. It’s bruised and sore, that’s all. You’ll probably be very disappointed to know I’m going to completely recover.” “Hm. ~ Robyn Carr, #NFDB
272:I want the good, I want the bad, and in the end I want
nothing.
I toss in bed, uncomfortable on my right side, on my left
side,
And on my consciousness of existing,
I'm universally uncomfortable, metaphysically
uncomfortable,
But what's even worse is my headache.
That's more serious than the meaning of the universe. ~ Fernando Pessoa,#NFDB
273:If concentration is made with the brain, sensations of heat and even headache ensue.
Concentration has to be made in the heart, which is cool and refreshing.
Relax and your meditation will be easy.
Keep your mind steady by gently warding off all intruding thoughts, but without strain - soon you will succeed. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Guru Ramana II. XI,#NFDB
274:modeling a realistic human face was beyond his ability. This is because when a light beam hits the human face, it scatters in all directions, depending on its texture. Each particle of light has to be tracked by computer. Hence, each point of skin on a person’s face has to be described by a complex mathematical function, which is a real headache for a ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
275:The promise, made when I am in love and because I am in love, to be true to the beloved as long as I live, commits me to being true even if I cease to be in love. A promise must be about things that I can do, about actions: no one can promise to go on feeling in a certain way. He might as well promise to never have a headache or always to feel hungry. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
276:The morning after I heard the gospel, however, I woke up with what felt like a hangover. Little would I know it was of the spiritual kind that accompanies the inevitable dawn of realization that life is not perhaps, what we previously thought it was. And we cannot go back to pretending. What a headache to be caught in that liminal space! Literally. ~ Carolyn Weber, #NFDB
277:I know where I came from—but where did all you zombies come from?
I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take. I did once—and you all went away.
So I crawled into bed and whistled out the light.
You aren’t really there at all. There isn’t anybody but me—Jane—here alone in the dark.
I miss you dreadfully! ~ Robert A Heinlein,#NFDB
278:I would go to newsstands and buy paperbacks they were selling for tourists, usually bestsellers and mass market paperbacks. In the beginning, it was like going to the Rosetta Stone--I didn?t understand anything, I'd get a headache--but I began to figure it out, and I'd read a lot of Stephen King paperbacks. I've always said he was my English professor. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon, #NFDB
279:Especially with a magazine like Lampoon, which was very dependent on newsstand sales. Our readers didn't usually occupy the same address long enough to get a subscription, because they were in college, or they were hippies. So it was very up-and-down, and we had to calculate how many to print, which was always sort of a headache from a business point of view. ~ P J O Rourke, #NFDB
280:She always had a headache, or it was too hot, always, or she pretended to be asleep, or she had her period again, her period, always her period. So much so that Dr. Urbino had dared to say in class, only for the relief of unburdening himself without confession, that after ten years of marriage women had their periods as often as threes times a week. ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez, #NFDB
281:She always had a headache, or it was too hot, always, or she pretended to be asleep, or she had her period again, her period, always her period. So much so that Dr. Urbino had dared to say in class, only for the relief of unburdening himself without confession, that after ten years of marriage women had their periods as often as threes times a week. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez, #NFDB
282:All I expect are wins and to get pleasure from the game. And if someone thinks something about me, if someone's dissatisfied with something... that's not my headache. I hope someday I'll become World Champion - and I'll make all these people happy. But even if for some reason that doesn't happen it won't stop me getting pleasure from chess. I'm sure of that. ~ Magnus Carlsen, #NFDB
283:I groan as I flip on the lights and rush into the bathroom. I need a shower. That’s it. A good hot shower will stop the pounding headache. I look at the mirror over the sink, grimacing at my smeared eye makeup. Then, just to make sure, I pull down my skirt, turn around, and bam. Tattooed TARDIS, right square over my ass. My Whovian heart has led me astray at last . ~ Lila Monroe, #NFDB
284:I want to share something Virginia Woolf wrote: ‘English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear, has no words for the shiver and the headache. . . . The merest schoolgirl, when she falls in love, has Shakespeare or Keats to speak her mind for her; but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry. ~ John Green, #NFDB
285:There's no thrilling anticipation of the day's first cup of coffee...nor the eye-closing delight of that first swallow of sauvignon blanc in the evening. We cats have no access to everyday mood-enhancing substances. Apart from humble catnip, there is no pharmaceutical refuge if we're suffering from boredom, depression, existential crisis, or even an everyday headache. ~ David Michie, #NFDB
286:Every mistake I’ve made, every wrong I’ve repeated, every unhealed headache: I feel it all and more as the weight of my old world crushes me. If you looked inside me, I bet you’d find two different hearts beating for two different people, like the sun and moon up at the same time, a terrible eclipse I’m the only witness to.
My worlds collided and I can’t get up. ~ Adam Silvera,#NFDB
287:Wait. Like an art museum, or are we talking a history museum? I could tolerate the dinosaur bones and war relics, but modern art will just give me a headache. A red dot on a white canvas isn’t ‘a representation of a woman’s struggle in a male dominated society;’ it’s a red freakin’ circle!” Michael and Ryan nodded their heads in agreement with Jack’s artistic tirade. ~ Victoria Michaels, #NFDB
288:I always get a headache the first time I watch a movie I'm in. Because you're staring at the screen so hard, your brain is doing all this work trying to put things in context of what the day-to-day experience of making it was. And the timeline that's in your head of when it was made, and on what day, how you felt. And then you're also trying to grasp what it's been edited into. ~ John C Reilly, #NFDB
289:I walked toward her office,lost in thought about Lish, and poor Steve,and all the other souls I'd sent out of this life,some quite literally. Where did they go?Did Steve go the same place as Lish?And was it vampire Steve ir normal Steve? What exactly happened to the souls when their human bodies died and became vampires?And then when the vampire bodies died?
Hello,headache. ~ Kiersten White,#NFDB
290:You don't need meat at every meal," Riley offered, forking another bite of salad into his mouth and inwardly agreeing with Jack that it was certainly lacking something. Jack was quiet for all of ten seconds, and then he couldn't hold in his opinion one second more. "Are you really a Texan? I mean, really? Riley, if I have a headache, I'd put bacon around an aspirin before I take it. ~ R J Scott, #NFDB
291:Gu was a worrier, a neurotic curmudgeon. If he had a headache, it was a brain tumor; if it looked like rain, this year’s harvest was ruined. This was his way of controlling the situation, his lifelong strategy for always coming out ahead. Now, when reality looked more dire than any of his fatalistic predictions, he had no choice but to turn tail and charge in the opposite direction. ~ Max Brooks, #NFDB
292:Gu was a worrier, a neurotic curmudgeon. If he had a headache, it was a brain tumor; if it looked like rain, this year's harvest was ruined. This was his way of controlling the situation, his lifelong strategy for always coming out ahead. Now, when reality looked more dire than any of his fatalisitic predictions, he had no choice but to turn tail and charge in the opposite direction. ~ Max Brooks, #NFDB
293:George got out his banjo after supper, and wanted to play it, but Harris objected: he said he had got a headache, and did not feel strong enough to stand it. George thought the music might do him good—said music often soothed the nerves and took away a headache; and he twanged two or three notes, just to show Harris what it was like. Harris said he would rather have the headache. ~ Jerome K Jerome, #NFDB
294:I'll talk to Mortimer and see what he thinks, and then get back to you tomorrow. In the meantime, you should really get to sleep and get those shared dreams going."
Cale grimaced at the suggestion, and reminded him, "She has a splitting headache, Bricker."
"I thought that was a married woman's complaint?" Bricker responded quickly, and then laughed at his own joke as he hung up. ~ Lynsay Sands,#NFDB
295:At around the same time, the coffee house owner Thomas Garraway published a broadsheet entitled ‘An Exact Description of the Growth, Quality and Vertues of the Leaf TEA’, in which he claimed that it could cure ‘Headache, Stone, Gravel, Dropsy, Liptitude Distillations, Scurvy, Sleepiness, Loss of Memory, Looseness or Griping of the Guts, Heavy Dreams and Collick proceeding from Wind’. ~ Niall Ferguson, #NFDB
296:Just promise me this isn't going to be a problem." "What?" Neil asked. "I can't tell if you're being obtuse to fuck with me or if you're really that dumb," Wymack said. When Neil just stared blankly at him, Wymack rubbed his temples as if warding off a headache. "I would pity you, but Andrew's right. I don't get paid enough to get involved in this. Figure it out yourself—on your own time. ~ Nora Sakavic, #NFDB
297:After a while I rubbed my temples and said, “Man, I’ve got a headache. Lydia, don’t you ever worry about what breathing all this alcohol is doing to our lungs?” Lydia had a cigarette hanging out of her mouth at the time, and the look she gave me showed that she now had proof that I was terminally stupid. She took a long, long drag and then answered while exhaling. “What do you think?” Right ~ Hope Jahren, #NFDB
298:George got out his banjo after supper, and wanted to play it, but Harris objected: he said he had got a headache, and did not feel strong enough to stand it. George thought the music might do him good - said music often soothed the nerves and took away a headache; and he twanged two or three notes, just to show Harris what it was like.
Harris said he would rather have the headache. ~ Jerome K Jerome,#NFDB
299:This daily headache in the opaque air of this tombal jail is disturbing, but I must persevere. Have written more than a hundred pages and not got anywhere yet. My Calender is getting confused. That must have been around August 15, 1947. Don't think I can go on. Heart, head--everything. Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita. Repeat til page is full, printer. ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
300:Nothing seems crueler--or more ironic--than these upper crusters who never pay a dime for their high-priced shrinks or reflexology sessions to call those who just want that tumor removed from their uterus a bunch of commies. Well, the revolution is at hand and let's hope all those uninsured commies give the rich such a headache that a whole bottle of Advil won't be enough to take the pain way. ~ Michael Moore, #NFDB
301:Maddie had pleaded a headache and excused herself to lie down the second they walked into his house, and he’d been acting like a lunatic ever since. He’d left things to chance today and fate had dealt him the winning hand. He wasn’t going to let anything fuck it up, and that included making sure his do-gooder neighbor didn’t offer Maddie any alternatives. She stayed here with him. Period. Gracie ~ Jennifer Dawson, #NFDB
302:She sat down, grinned—and made her lip throb again. “I love you.”
“Excellent news. You can prove it with lots of sex.”
“We had sex a few hours ago.”
“No, we made love a few hours ago—angels surely wept. I want sex for this job, as it’s given me a buggering headache trying to straddle your far-famed line. I want mad sex, with costumes—maybe props—and an intriguing story line.”
“Milking it, pal. ~ J D Robb,#NFDB
303:Well, you've done it now," was her sisterly
opening shot.
Jaine rubbed between her eyebrows; a definite headache was forming. After the exchange with
David, she waited to see where this one was going.
"I won't be able to hold up my head in church."
"Really? Oh, Shelley, I'm so sorry," Jaine said sweetly. "I didn't realize you have the dreaded
Limp Neck disease. When were you diagnosed? ~ Linda Howard,#NFDB
304:Shaw is Shaw. She's so freaking beautiful it hurts to look at her sometimes, but she doesn't even know it. She's still untouchable because she's always going to be richer and smarter than we are, but she doesn't care about any of that. She's cool, she doesn't care that you're just you, and honestly, Rule, any chick who can put up with the headache that is you, well I'd put a goddamn diamond on her finger ~ Jay Crownover, #NFDB
305:The headache’s coming on and my thoughts begin to tangle. I shut my eyes and start to recite silently. My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am seventeen years old. My home is District 12. I was in the Hunger Games. I escaped. The Capitol hates me. Peeta was taken prisoner. He is alive. He is a traitor but alive. I have to keep him alive. . . . The list. It still seems too small. I should try to think bigger, ~ Suzanne Collins, #NFDB
306:Those who imagined him as sounds, spinning him, straightening him, reorganizing him in the air, and ordering him to sing to himself. Those who would lie in bed at night, imagining him hovering above them as abstract numbers and complex geometric forms that intricately converged into each other, giving him the worst headache ever, and he suffered in silence for the sake of their sense of mathematical harmony. ~ Yoav Blum, #NFDB
307:"And suddenly they came out of the woodwork. I don't actually know what that expression means. What come out of the wood work? Cockroaches maybe. Mice? Are these rhetorical questions, like I just learned about on one of my rare visits to school? Was that a rhetorical question? Is it a paradox when you ask rhetorically if a rhetorical question is a rhetorical question? I think I'd better stop before I get a headache. ~ John Marsden, #NFDB
308:Sarah turned her narrow-eyed gaze on him, making me glad once more that Antimony's comic books got it wrong, and telepaths can't actually kill you with their brains. Give you a whopping headache and earworm you with annoying jingles, yes; kill you, no. (Although sometimes, when she's managed to stick "The Happy Banana Song" in my head for a week, I sort of wish she could kill people with her brain. It would be kinder.) ~ Mira Grant, #NFDB
309:Time, which shows so vacant, indivisible, and divine in its coming, is slit and peddled into trifles and tatters. A door is to bepainted, a lock to be repaired. I want wood, or oil, or meal, or salt; the house smokes, or I have a headache; then the tax; and an affair to be transacted with a man without heart or brains; and the stinging recollection of an injurious or very awkward word,--these eat up the hours. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
310:Yeah, well, if you want to be my sugar daddy,” she said, “you’re going to have to get me clothes, books, my own personal TV—” “So you can break it just like the last one?” I asked incredulously. “If I wish to, yes. And I want it to have HBO, because that channel’s got all the good shows. And I want movies, and make-up, and shoes, and bags, and—” “Woman, you are giving me a headache,” I said. “My name is not ‘woman. ~ Laura Thalassa, #NFDB
311:The album ends with “Slammin’,” which has no words and it’s just a lot of horns that quite frankly, if you turn it up really loud, can give you a fucking big headache and maybe even make you feel a little sick, though it might sound different on an album or on a cassette though I wouldn’t know anything about that. Anyway it set off something wicked in me that lasted for days. And you cannot dance to it very well. ~ Bret Easton Ellis, #NFDB
312:Sarah turned her narrow-eyed gaze on him, making me glad once more that Antimony's comic books got it wrong, and telepaths can't actually kill you with their brains. Give you a whopping headache and earworm you with annoying jingles, yes; kill you, no. (Although sometimes, when she's managed to stick "The Happy Banana Song" in my head for a week, I sort of wish she could kill people with her brain. It would be kinder.) ~ Seanan McGuire, #NFDB
313:Her hand jerked, leaving an angry slash in the middle of the canvas. A headache drummed to life in the back of her skull. It’s not going to happen today. She ignored the shiver that skipped down her spine. This is a normal day. I’m painting a normal composition. But it was too late. It was happening already. She squeezed her eyes shut against the images flooding her brain, but no resistance would help now. She couldn’t escape. ~ Dana Marton, #NFDB
314:Don’t park. Do not park. Drive on. I just got a really bad headache, period cramps and I think that French toast gave me food poisoning. I’ll text Mom. She’ll understand.” Ren didn’t listen to me. He swung into the spot, and while looking over his shoulder to reverse closer to the bumper of the Acadia, he spoke to me. “Of all that, I really hope you’re kidding about the period cramps.” Like I’d have sex during a bout of food poisoning. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
315:Then I glanced at the ring on my finger. The Snake That Eats Its Own Tail, Forever and Ever. I know where I came from—but where did all you zombies come from? I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take. I did once—and you all went away. So I crawled into bed and whistled out the light. You aren’t really there at all. There isn’t anybody but me—Jane—here alone in the dark. I miss you dreadfully! ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
316:My worst day, worst fall, worst headache, worst bruise, worst cramp, worst mean thing anyone could say has always been nothing compared to what August has gone through. This isn't me being noble, by the way: it's just the way I know it is.
And this is the way it's always been for me, for the little universe of us. But this year there seems to be a shift in the cosmos. The galaxy is changing. Planets are falling out of alignment. ~ R J Palacio,#NFDB
317:Wonder why we can do this,' he called out with his mind. The mental effort of speaking to her was already straining—he felt a headache forming like a bulge in his brain. 'Maybe we were lovers,' Teresa said. Thomas tripped and crashed to the ground. Smiling sheepishly at Minho, who’d turned to look without slowing, Thomas got back up and caught up to him. 'What?' he finally asked. He sensed a laugh from her, a watery image full of color. ~ James Dashner, #NFDB
318:He was trying to conjure up a succubus." It should be impossible to leer when all you've got is a beak, but the parrot managed it. "That's a female demon what comes in the night and makes mad passionate wossn-"
"I've heard of them," said Rincewind. "Bloody dangerous things."
The parrot put its head on one side. "It never worked. All he ever got was a neuralger."
"What's that?"
"It's a demon that comes and has a headache at you. ~ Terry Pratchett,#NFDB
319:I'm glad you and Ash came to my rescue," I replied, leaning into his arms.
"Anytime." Only it wasn't Josh who said it, it was Ash. I saw her standing next to us and realised I was sitting half in Josh's lap. Our arms were still tight around each other. Blushing, I scooted into my own chair.
"Can we go now?" she asked. "Whilst you were snogging, I developed the most spectacular headache. Surely the two events are unrelated, nevertheless... ~ Tracy Banghart,#NFDB
320:[98]. How is it that a lame man does not annoy us while a lame mind does? Because a lame man recognizes that we are walking straight, while a lame mind says that it is we who are limping. But for that we should feel sorry rather than angry. Epictetus goes much further when he asks: Why do we not lose our temper if someone tells us that we have a headache, while we do lose it if someone says there is anything wrong with our arguments or our choice? ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
321:Is he dead? Blue asked, staring down at the prostrate body.
kitterick shook his head.'No,but he will remain in a coma for several hours.And there will be a substantial headache when he wakes up. And tremors.Something of a limp.Blurred vision.Impaired hearing.A few facialtics.Some nausea,loss of appetite, occasional hallucinations,flatulence,a weakness in the back. The nerve damage will repair itself in a few years.Providing he rests of course. ~ Herbie Brennan,#NFDB
322:She’d mopped the floors that morning; they were shiny and everything smelled like lemons and clean house. The phone was ringing in the kitchen, she came running in to answer it, and she slipped. She hit her head on the floor, and she was unconscious, but then she woke up and she was fine. That was her lucid interval. That’s what they call it. A little while later she said she had a headache, she went to lie down on the couch, and then she didn’t wake up. ~ Jenny Han, #NFDB
323:Someone pried open his eyelid and rudely flashed a light in his eye that made his headache pound even harder. Groaning, he flinched, moving his head away. Gently, the doctor turned his head back and held it in place while he continued to test the dilation of his eye. Good thing Caillen’s arms were strapped down or the man would be bleeding over the intrusion and that light would be shining out of an orifice the gods had never meant to hold it. “He’s ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
324:The first step of any therapy is a little self-awareness. I want you to think about the ways your habits, your belief systems, your personality quirks have been developed to help you and protect you. Then ask yourself if they are truly working or if they’re hurting you. For instance, when you feel a headache coming on, focus on something in front of you. Something real, like your hand, to keep you in the moment. It sounds small, but it helps, I promise. ~ Sara Shepard, #NFDB
325:From her pocket Karamander took a vial of black liquid labelled: "Headbanger. Maximum strength." With a long pipette she dropped the liquid into Oraton-Marr's mouth, then she held his nose closed until he swallowed it... "He is asleep. He will sleep for seven days. And when he wakes he will have the worst headache imaginable. I have something that will cure it if he wishes to ask me. But he will have to come to me in person and ask very, very nicely indeed. ~ Angie Sage, #NFDB
326:[Meditation] trains us to be with a painful experience in the moment, without adding imagined distress and difficulty. If we look closely at it, the pain is bound to change, and that's as true of a headache as it is of a heartache: the discomfort oscillates; there are beats of rest between moments of unpleasantness. When we discover firsthand that pain isn't static, that it's a living, changing system, it doesn't seem as solid or insurmountable as it did at first. ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
327:Then I glanced at the ring on my finger.
The Snake That Eats Its Own Tail, Forever and Ever. I know where I came from—but where did all you zombies come from?
I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take. I did once—and you all went away.
So I crawled into bed and whistled out the light.
You aren’t really there at all. There isn’t anybody but me—Jane—here alone in the dark.
I miss you dreadfully! ~ Robert A Heinlein,#NFDB
328:In the end he realizes there's only one thing to do. He grabs her under the arms and drags her towards the stairs. By the time he gets her there, her pajama pants have slid down, revealing what she sometimes calls (called, he reminds himself) her winky. Once, when he was in bed with her, and she was giving him relief for a particularly bad headache, he tried to touch her winky and she slapped his hand away. Hard. Don't you ever, she had said. That's where you came from. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
329:EMMY WATCHED the man’s face pale as he studied a document from the dead cop’s wallet. “Will you kindly tell me what it is?” she repeated. He continued to ignore her, even though she was the one holding the gun. She was holding the gun, Emmy repeated to herself. What was going on? Ten minutes ago she had awoken in the front seat of a cop car with the worst headache of her life, a huge silver pistol in her lap, blood spatter all over her blouse, and no idea what had happened. ~ Tim Tigner, #NFDB
330:Water. He craved water. He had a headache, a backache, his entire body ached. He had been fasting for over thirty days now, he couldn’t remember exactly how many. He had lost track. Dizziness finally brought him to the ground, his knees stinging on the gravelly desert floor. “Had enough?” The whisper penetrated him with a sweet malice. He ingested dust from a gust of wind and coughed. It stuck in his dry throat and he suffered a coughing fit that made the burning even worse. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
331:Above all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gaze from the foundations of the world - the figure of the sharp female called La Guillotine. It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure for headache, it infallibly prevented hair from turning gray, it imparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor which shaved close: who kissed La Guillotine looked through the little window and sneezed into the sack. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
332:Professor Kikunae Ikeda of Tokyo Imperial University isolated umami as glutamic acid while studying kombu, giant Japanese sea kelp. He commercialized this finding as monosodium glutamate (MSG), but you need not eat headache powder to taste the wonder (and healthfulness, when organic) of umami. Tomatoes, parmesan, and chicken broth all have high glutamate content. There are also mimics: shiitake mushrooms have umami-like nucleotides that allow them to impart a similar taste. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
333:Above all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gaze from the foundations of the world - the figure of the sharp female called La Guillotine.
It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure for headache, it infallibly prevented hair from turning gray, it imparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor which shaved close: who kissed La Guillotine looked through the little window and sneezed into the sack. ~ Charles Dickens,#NFDB
334:Now, let's never talk about you being related to her again. Because I'm technically still engaged to her, and that's really weird."
Cinder couldn't help laughing, even exhaustedly, even just to cover up the screaming inside, as he bound her up in his arms again. Her headache began to fade, replaced with the strength of his heartbeat and the way she felt almost delicate when she was pressed up against him like this.
Almost fragile.
Almost safe.
Almost like a princess. ~ Marissa Meyer,#NFDB
335:I had gone through several crazy headache bouts, and I realized that part of the reason I was having them was because I wasn't smoking marijuana. When my daughter gave me a vape pen, I realized that I could relegate it to where I needed it to be. And I would talk to my older grandkids in their 20s, and they'd say they use weed to stop cramps. That's when I really started to investigate and asked the question, "Is anybody doing this?" And they gave me that horrifying answer: "niche market". ~ Whoopi Goldberg, #NFDB
336:Gmorning.
Consider the headache that waits for caffeine.
Consider the silence that waits for music.
Consider the shoreline that waits for the tide to come in.
Now consider what YOU’RE waiting for,
And what simply won’t wait anymore.
Gnight.
Consider the heartbreak that waits for relief.
Consider the treasure that waits for discovery.
Consider the crops that wait for rain.
Now consider what YOU’RE waiting for,
And what waits for you while you wait. ~ Lin Manuel Miranda,#NFDB
337:As to the German measles–will you think me affected if I number a small illness among the minor pleasures of life? The early stages are unpleasant but at least they bring you to a point at which the mere giving up and going to bed is a relief. Then after twenty four hours the really high temperature and the headache are gone: one is not well enough to get up, but then one is ill enough not to want to get up. Best of all, work is impossible and one can read all day for mere pleasure with a clear conscience. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
338:I can't believe you lied about chocolate," Mallory said. "Lying about chocolate is...sanctimonious. Do you remember all those bad girl lessons you gave me?"
Amy rubbed the spot between her eyes where a headache was starting. "You mean the lessons that landed you the sexy hunk you're currently sleeping with?"
"Well, yes. But my point is that maybe you need good girl lessons. And good girl lesson number one is never tease when it comes to chocolate."
-Amy and Mallory ~ Jill Shalvis,#NFDB
339:Both formality and dinner forgotten we sat on the floor of the little library, choosing. Sometimes Dr Portman read passages aloud and turned his own memories with their dark side to face the light. And it was late afternoon when, with a headache of happiness, I returned to the ward. And from that day I felt in myself a reserve of warmth from which I could help myself, like coal from the cellar on a winter’s day, if the snow came or if the frost fell in the night to blacken the flowers and wither the new fruit. ~ Janet Frame, #NFDB
340:Wanting to get out of pain is the pain; it is not the “reaction” of an “I” distinct from the pain. When you discover this, the desire to escape “merges” into the pain itself and vanishes. Discounting aspirin for the moment, you cannot remove your head from a headache as you can remove your hand from a flame. “You” equals “head” equals “ache.” When you actually see that you are the pain, pain ceases to be a motive, for there is no one to be moved. It becomes, in the true sense, of no consequence. It hurts—period. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
341:If she cried about little things now and then, and he supposed she did, he did not know what it was and certainly did not want to find out. If he himself felt sunk he didn’t want anybody asking what was the matter with him, and Mary, even if she noticed, did not ask questions. If he suspected she disapproved of something he said or did-he was forever doing something wrong about her aunt and uncle-all she did was to stay in her room with a headache for a couple of days. It couldn’t have been a more agreeable relationship. ~ Dawn Powell, #NFDB
342:Fred, in the light from the window above, looked for a moment like a newly hatched chick, with his twitchy little head and blinking dark eyes and face open to the world. Birdie felt something like fear then, something ragged and dark lurking just out of sight. Fred could die just like Eleanor did, just like the Wallace boy who’d gone to bed with a headache and died in the night when a blood vessel exploded in his brain. The slimmest margin separated life from not-life. Pastor Hardy boomed on and on. “We must be overcomers ~ Rae Meadows, #NFDB
343:Poetry is cathartic only for the unserious, for in front of the rush of expressive need stands the barrier of form, and when the hurdler's scissored legs and outstretched arms carry him over the bars, the limp in his life, the headache in his heart, the emptiness he's full of, are as absent as his street-shoes, which will pinch and scrape his feet in all the old leathery ways once the race is over and he has to walk through the front door of his future like a brushman with some feckless patter and a chintzy plastic prize. ~ William H Gass, #NFDB
344:Psychiatrists declare that most of our fatigue derives from our mental and emotional attitudes... What kinds of emotional factors tire the sedentary (or sitting) worker? Joy? Contentment? No! Never! Boredom, resentment, a feeling of not being appreciated, a feeling of futility, hurry, anxiety, worry-those are the emotional factors that exhaust the sitting worker, make him susceptible to colds, reduce his output, and send him home with a nervous headache. Yes, we get tired because our emotions produce nervous tensions in the body. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
345:One of the challenges with pain - physical or psychic - is that we can really only approach it through metaphor. It can't be represented the way a table or a body can. In some ways, pain is the opposite of language (...) English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear, has no words for the shiver and the headache... The merest schoolgirl, when she falls in love, has Shakespeare or Keats to speak her mind for her; but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry. ~ John Green, #NFDB
346:The sign above the door to the Hypocras Club read PROTEGO RES PUBLICA, engraved into white Italian marble. Miss Alexia Tarabotti, gagged, trussed, bound, and carried by two men—one holding her shoulders, the other her feet—read the words upside down. She had a screaming headache, and it took her a moment to translate the phrase through the nauseating aftereffects of chloroform exposure.
Finally she deduced its meaning: to protect the commonwealth.
Huh, she thought. / do not buy it. I definitely do not feel protected. ~ Gail Carriger,#NFDB
347:It's late, I'm tired, and your cigarettes are giving me a headache," I growled. "I suppose that's fair." He drew in on the cigarette and let out the smoke. "Some women think they make me look sexy." "I think you smoke them so you have something to do while thinking up your next witty line." He choked on the smoke, caught between inhaling and laughing. "Rose Hathaway, I can't wait to see you again. If you're this charming while tired and annoyed and this gorgeous while bruised and in ski clothes, you must be devastating at your peak. ~ Richelle Mead, #NFDB
348:To Leuconoee
Seek not, Leuconoee, to know how long you're going to live yet,
What boons the gods will yet withhold, or what they're going to give yet;
For Jupiter will have his way, despite how much we worry,-Some will hang on for many a day, and some die in a hurry.
The wisest thing for you to do is to embark this diem
Upon a merry escapade with some such bard as I am.
And while we sport I'll reel you off such odes as shall surprise ye;
To-morrow, when the headache comes,--well, then I'll satirize ye!
~ Eugene Field,#NFDB
349:She had collided with an elk and died...At twenty-four minutes to eleven her heart had stopped pumping the blood around her body.
One single muscle in a single person's body. A speck of dust in time. And the world was dead. David stood next to her bed with his arms by his sides, the headache burning behind his forehead.
Here lay his whole future, everything good that he could even imagine would come from life. Here lay the last twelve years of his past. Everything gone; and time shrank to a single unbearable now. ~ John Ajvide Lindqvist,#NFDB
350:The essence of life is that it’s challenging. Sometimes it is sweet, and sometimes it is bitter. Sometimes your body tenses, and sometimes it relaxes or opens. Sometimes you have a headache, and sometimes you feel 100 percent healthy. From an awakened perspective, trying to tie up all the loose ends and finally get it together is death, because it involves rejecting a lot of your basic experience. There is something aggressive about that approach to life, trying to flatten out all the rough spots and imperfections into a nice smooth ride. ~ Pema Ch dr n, #NFDB
351:The conversations were miles beyond Jo's comprehension, but she enjoyed it, though Kant and Hegel were unknown gods, the Subjective and Objective unintelligible terms, and the only thing "evolved from her inner consciousness" was a bad headache after it was all over. It dawned upon her gradually that the world was being picked to pieces, and put together on new and, according to the talkers, on infinitely better principles than before, that religion was in a fair way to be reasoned into nothingness, and intellect was to be the only God. ~ Louisa May Alcott, #NFDB
352:IGNATIUS MARTIN PERRISH SPENT the night drunk and doing terrible things. He woke the next morning with a headache, put his hands to his temples, and felt something unfamiliar, a pair of knobby pointed protuberances. He was so ill--wet-eyed and weak--he didn't think anything of it at first, was too hungover for thinking or worry.
But when he was swaying above the toilet, he glanced at himself in the mirror over the sink and saw he had grown horns while he slept. He lurched in surprise, and for the second time in twelve hours he pissed on his feet. ~ Joe Hill,#NFDB
353:Torvalds decided to use the GNU General Public License, not because he fully embraced the free-sharing ideology of Stallman (or for that matter his own parents) but because he thought that letting hackers around the world get their hands on the source code would lead to an open collaborative effort that would make it a truly awesome piece of software. “My reasons for putting Linux out there were pretty selfish,” he said. “I didn’t want the headache of trying to deal with parts of the operating system that I saw as the crap work. I wanted help.”136 ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
354:Headache, hmm?" His expression went serious. "Do you know what's the best cure for that?"
"What?"
"Orgasm."
He said it so matter-of-factly I had to sputter a laugh.
"Multiple, if possible," he continued. "It's a proven medical fact that one physiologic event, like orgasm, can cancel out the effects of another physiological process, such as a headache."
His expression was perfectly serious, but I said, "You're full of shit."
"Perhaps. If so, you should call my bluff. Just open the door and we'll test it out. ~ Kelley Armstrong,#NFDB
355:It's late, I'm tired, and your cigarettes are giving me a headache," I growled.
"I suppose that's fair." He drew in on the cigarette and let out the smoke. "Some women think they make me look sexy."
"I think you smoke them so you have something to do while thinking up your next witty line."
He choked on the smoke, caught between inhaling and laughing. "Rose Hathaway, I can't wait to see you again. If you're this charming while tired and annoyed and this gorgeous while bruised and in ski clothes, you must be devastating at your peak. ~ Richelle Mead,#NFDB
356:Okay, so we still go back--” Corey began.
He stopped, wincing.
“Headache?” I said.
“Yeah, just hold--” He doubled over with a sharp intake of breath.
I grasped his arm. “Corey?”
“Bad one,” he panted. “Okay, just--”
He let out a howl, his head dropping forward, his hands clutching it. Then he retched. Another heave, and a geyser of Coke sprayed the bushes.
I gripped his arm and tugged him until he was sitting, knees up, head between them, panting hard.
“Well, that’s new,” Corey muttered between gasps. “And I don’t think I like it. ~ Kelley Armstrong,#NFDB
357:Nellie Gomez awoke to a splitting headache. Worse, she was still hungry.
"Where's my croissant?" she demanded of the person leaning over her.
"Dear child," came a strangely familiar voice.
"Don't 'dear child' me!" she snapped. The twenty-two-year-old punk rocker ran black-polished fingernails through black-and-orange-dyed hair, which did nothing to soothe the pounding behind her black-shaded eyes. "Give me my croissant or I'll–"
It was then that she suddenly realized she was threatening the venerable Alistair Oh. "Alistair, what are you doing here? ~ Gordon Korman,#NFDB
358:It works like this: Reseller A sells the product for your recommended advertised price of $50, then reseller B sells it for $45 to compete with A, and then C sells it for $40 to compete with A and B. In no time at all, no one is making profit from selling your product and reorders disappear. Customers are now accustomed to the lower pricing and the process is irreversible. The product is dead and you need to create a new product. This is precisely the reason why so many companies need to create new product after new product month after month. It’s a headache. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
359:Must you go? I was rather hoping you'd stay and be a ministering angel, but if you must go, you must." "I'll stay," Will said a bit crossly, and threw himself down in the armchair Tessa had just vacated. "I can minister angelically." "None too convincingly. And you're not as pretty to look at as Tessa is," Jem said, closing his eyes as he leaned back against the pillow. "How rude. Many who have gazed upon me have compared the experience to gazing at the radiance of the sun." Jem still had his eyes closed. "If they mean it gives you a headache, they aren't wrong. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
360:Tea is still believed, by English people of all classes, to have miraculous properties. A cup of tea can cure, or at least significantly alleviate, almost all minor physical ailments and indispositions, from a headache to a scraped knee. Tea is also an essential remedy for all social and psychological ills, from a bruised ego to the trauma of a divorce or bereavement. This magical drink can be used equally effectively as a sedative or stimulant, to calm and soothe or to revive and invigorate. Whatever your mental or physical state, what you need is ‘a nice cup of tea’. ~ Kate Fox, #NFDB
361:Veikko was waiting as they’d arranged by a waste pile from the old Eclipse Union mine. Webb, who could judge from a hundred yards away how crazy the Finn was apt to be feeling on a given day, noticed a two-gallon canteen sure to be full of that home-brewed potato spirits they all tended to go for, hung from the pommel of his saddle. There also seemed to be flames issuing out of his head, but Webb put that down to some trick of the light. From the look on his face, Webb could see signs of an oncoming dynamite headache after hanging around too long snorting nitro fumes. ~ Thomas Pynchon, #NFDB
362:Why are we not angry if we are told that we have a headache, and why are we angry if we are told that we reason badly, or choose wrongly?" The reason is that we are quite certain that we have not a headache, or are not lame, but we are not so sure that we make a true choice. So having assurance only because we see with our whole sight, it puts us into suspense and surprise when another with his whole sight sees the opposite, and still more so when a thousand others deride our choice. For we must prefer our own lights to those of so many others, and that is bold and difficult. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
363:Did you love well what very soon you left? Come home and take me in your arms and take away this stomach ache, headache, heartache. Never so full, I never was bereft so utterly. The winter evenings drift dark to the window. Not one work will make you, where you are, turn in your day, or wake from your night toward me. The only gift I got to keep or give is what I've cried, floodgates let down to mourning for the dead chances, for the end of being young, for everyone I loved who really died. I drank our one year out in brine instead of honey from the seasons of your tongue. ~ Marilyn Hacker, #NFDB
364:That’s right,’ said Morin smoothly. ‘We had better just let Marfa Timofeyevna finish keeping us on the straight and narrow.’ Somehow his tone as he said this managed to suggest both that censorship was silly, and that it was silly to mind it. Galich conceded Morin a small internal round of (Applause), his headache whispering in his temples. He was highly accomplished himself at finding pleasure-giving, urbane descriptions of what couldn’t be helped, but Morin, moreover, had hit the precise note of the moment, liberally-minded yet unchallenging, ironic yet inoffensive. The ~ Francis Spufford, #NFDB
365:We can also monitor signals coming from within our body. This is, again, the foundation of Damasio’s somatic marker hypothesis (see Chapter 5). The most specific of these are signals from the somatosensory system, which transmits information about touch, temperature, irritation, and pain from skin and muscles to cortical processing areas, much like the visual or auditory systems do. When you have a headache, backache, sore muscles, an itch, feel warmth or cool air on your skin, or are feverish, you become aware of somatosensory information being processed in cortical areas. ~ Joseph E LeDoux, #NFDB
366:Why are we not angry if we are told that we have a headache, and why are we angry if we are told that we reason badly, or choose wrongly?" The reason is that we are quite certain that we have not a headache, or are not lame, but we are not so sure that we make a true choice. So having assurance only because we see with our whole sight, it puts us into suspense and surprise when another with his whole sight sees the opposite, and still more so when a thousand others deride our choice. For we must prefer our own lights to those of so many others, and that is bold and difficult. ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
367:He eyed her warily. “Did Pearl give you coffee?”
“Yes.”
“How many cups?”
“Just three. It’s quite good with cream and sugar.”
“Have you ever had it before?”
“No. Why? What does that have to do with anything? I don’t see what that has to do with anything. Why are my knees shaking?”
“Pearl!”
Pearl peeked around the wall. “Well! She had a headache. I didn’t think she’d act like a squirrel. And I didn’t know she had three cups.”
“A headache?” Maximillion murmured. He turned to Isadora, pointing to the nearest chair. “Sit down.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Sit. Down. ~ Katie Cross,#NFDB
368:If we think we have twenty-four hours to achieve a certain purpose, today will become a means to attain an end. The moment of chopping wood and carrying water is the moment of happiness. We do not need to wait for these chores to be done to be happy. To have happiness in this moment is the spirit of aimlessness. Otherwise, we will run in circles for the rest of our life. We have everything we need to make the present moment the happiest in our life, even if we have a cold or a headache. We don't have to wait until we get over our cold to be happy. Having a cold is a part of life. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
369:Must you go? I was rather hoping you'd stay and be a ministering angel, but if you must go, you must."
"I'll stay," Will said a bit crossly, and threw himself down in the armchair Tessa had just vacated. "I can minister angelically."
"None too convincingly. And you're not as pretty to look at as Tessa is," Jem said, closing his eyes as he leaned back against the pillow.
"How rude. Many who have gazed upon me have compared the experience to gazing at the radiance of the sun."
Jem still had his eyes closed. "If they mean it gives you a headache, they aren't wrong. ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB
370:The basic discounter’s idea was to attract customers into the store by pricing these items—toothpaste, mouthwash, headache remedies, soap, shampoo—right down at cost. Those were what the early discounters called your “image” items. That’s what you pushed in your newspaper advertising—like the twenty-seven-cent Crest at Springdale—and you stacked it high in the stores to call attention to what a great deal it was. Word would get around that you had really low prices. Everything else in the store was priced low too, but it had a 30 percent margin. Health and beauty aids were priced to give away. As ~ Sam Walton, #NFDB
371:to say that they have learning difficulties or that they have special needs. But this is stupid because everyone has learning difficulties because learning to speak French or understanding Relativity is difficult, and also everyone has special needs, like father who has to carry a little packet of artificial sweetening tablets around with him to put in his coffee to stop him getting fat, or Mrs peters who wears a beige-coloured hearing aid, or Siobhan who has glasses so thick that they give you a headache if you borrow them, and none of these people are Special Needs, even if they have special needs. ~ Mark Haddon, #NFDB
372:There is no one to speak to about my headache and stomachache when I leave my bedroom and encounter this beautiful prison that my parents have built, when I see pictures of me on the walls and side tables that bear no resemblance to the me they cannot see. Sometimes I stare at the family that owns me and I wish I were a different person, with white skin and the ability to tell my mother and my father, especially my father, to fuck off without consequence, and sometimes I stare at the white cards of the Bible verses Reverend Olumide has gifted me and think that there is still a chance to change my ways. ~ Uzodinma Iweala, #NFDB
373:Jem gave her a wistful look. “Must you go? I was rather hoping that you’d stay and be a ministering angel, but if you must go, you must.”
“I’ll stay,” Will said a bit crossly, and threw himself down in the armchair Tessa had just vacated. “I can minister angelically.”
“None too convincingly. And you’re not as pretty to look at as Tessa is,” Jem said, closing his eyes as he leaned back against the pillow.
“How rude. Many who have gazed upon me have compared it to gazing at the radiance of the sun.”
Jem still had his eyes closed. “If they mean that it gives you a headache, they aren’t wrong. ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB
374:He realised at once that a mistake had been made: he had been sent the wrong hangover. Somewhere in northern Rhodesia there was a bull elephant who had got drunk on fermented marula fruit, rampaged through a nearby village, and fallen asleep in a ditch, and was now pleasantly surprised to find itself greeting the day with only the mild headache that follows a couple of bottles of good red wine… Perhaps if he got in touch with the relevant authorities he could get this unfortunate little mix-up corrected, but he would have to do so without moving his head or opening his eyes. Otherwise he would die from the pain. ~ Ned Beauman, #NFDB
375:Her soft voice played over his senses like it always had, her English accent more pronounced than ever. Or was that because his ears had become acclimatized to the Australian accents around him again?
He didn’t know.
He pulled in a slow breath, headache forgotten, the subtle scent of Emily’s perfume filtering into his body. His stomach knotted, his balls grew harder, that delicate fragrance flooding him with memories too haunting to bear. She’d cured him of anaplastic astrocytoma, and in the process inflicted him with something else. Something powerful and—he was discovering all too quickly—inescapable. ~ Lexxie Couper,#NFDB
376:You wish the light would turn red or a police siren would go off so you could slam on the brakes, slam into the car ahead of you, fly forward so quickly both your faces would suddenly be exposed to the wind.
As usual, you drive straight through the moment with the expected backing off of what was previously said. It is not only that confrontation is headache-producing; it is also that you have a destination that doesn't include acting like this moment isn't inhabitable, hasn't happened before, and the before isn't part of the now as the night darkens and the time shortens between where we are and where we are going. ~ Claudia Rankine,#NFDB
377:I did feel something the next time I regained consciousness. I had, bluntly, the worst fucking headache I had ever had in my life. I’m trying to think of the best way to describe it. Try this. Imagine a migraine, on top of a hangover, while sitting in a kindergarten of thirty screaming children, who are all taking turns stabbing you in the eye with an ice pick. Times six. That was the good part of my headache. It was the sort of headache where the best possible course of action is to lie there motionless and quiet, eyes closed, and pray for death. Which is why I think it took me longer than it should have to figure out a few things. ~ John Scalzi, #NFDB
378:You do know that as a small child, they actually carried me around on a pillow? I had a custom-made helmet that I had to wear until I was four. (Chris)
That’s because you banged your head every time you got angry. I was afraid you were going to get brain damage from it. (Wulf)
The brain is fine. It’s my ego and social life in the toilet. I shudder at what you’re going to do to the kid. (Chris dropped his voice and imitated Wulf’s lilting Norse accent.) Don’t move, you might get bruised. Oops, a sneeze, better call in specialists from Belgium. Headache? Odin forbid, it might be a tumor. Quick, rush him for a CAT scan. (Chris) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,#NFDB
379:Why wouldn’t it be a good idea?” she asked.
Because the sight of you so delicately perched on your sidesaddle makes my blood heat and my hands itch to touch you.
“If you go missing, everyone will worry.”
She snorted. “First of all, it’s barely an hour after dawn. ‘Everyone’ will be asleep for another several hours. Secondly, my maid Gillie knows to say that I’m sleeping off a headache, as she always does when I’m target shooting.” She flashed him a sheepish smile. “Gran doesn’t approve of the shooting, you know. So I get a lot of headaches.”
He gritted his teeth. Of course Celia did what she must to get her own way. ~ Sabrina Jeffries,#NFDB
380:And finally they offered that heart-breaking pair of ball busters, George Herman Ruth and Henry Louis Gehrig. Did you ever see them play? Brother, you saw a ball team. You also saw as grand and mad and wild, and goofy a collection of baseball ivory as was ever collected together under one tent. This isn’t designed particularly as a Sunday School take for tiny tots, so I’ll tell you with considerable joy in the telling that the Yanks of those years were a drinking ball club. They like their likker. And they gave Miller Huggins many a headache. But drinks or no drinks, they won those pennants and those world series games, and they patted that apple. ~ Paul Gallico, #NFDB
381:hairpin sticking into her scalp, and it took every bit of her willpower not to poke at it. Her dark hair was too long, thick and wavy to be confined into a chic little bun, but it was part of the dress code. And going home with a headache every night was just part of the job. “Ten bucks says if I wait three minutes, then pop that same plate in the microwave for fifteen seconds and take it out to her, she’ll gush over how the sear is so perfect now.” “If I see you microwaving scallops, I’ll make sure the only food you ever get to touch in this city again is fast food.” Lydia rolled her eyes, having heard that threat many times before, and accepted ~ Shannon Stacey, #NFDB
382:... I should wish to add, as a tribute to the great merits of your lordship's cellar, that, although I was obliged to drink a somewhat large quantity both of the Cockburn '68 and the 1800 Napoleon I feel no headache or other ill effects this morning.
Trusting that your lordship is deriving real benefit from the country air, and that the little information I have been able to obtain will prove satisfactory, I remain,
With respectful duty to all the family, their ladyships,
Obediently yours,
MERVYN BUNTER.
"Y'know," said Lord Peter thoughtfully to himself, "I sometimes think Mervyn Bunter's pullin' my leg. ~ Dorothy L Sayers,#NFDB
383:Headache!" Zeus bellowed. "Bad. bad headache!"
As if to prove his point, the lord of the universe slammed his face into his pancakes, which demolished the pancakes and the plate and put a crack in the table, but did nothing for his headache.
"Aspirin?" Apollo suggested. (he was the god of healing)
"Nice cup og tea?" Hestia suggested
"I could split your skull open," offered Hephaestus, the blacksmith god
"Hephaestus!" Hera cried. "Don't talk to your father that way!"
"What?" Hephaestus demanded "Clearly he's got a problem in there. I could open up the hood and take a look. Might relieve the pressure. Besides, he's immortal. It won't kill him ~ Rick Riordan,#NFDB
384:Sometimes life is intensely interesting and meaningful, and this meaning seems to be an objective fact, like sunlight. At other times it's as meaningless and futile as the wind. We accept this eclipse of meaning as we accept changes in the weather. If I wake up with a bad cold or a headache, I seem to be deaf to meaning. Now if I woke up physically deaf or half-blind, I'd feel there was something wrong and consult a doctor. But when I'm deaf to meaning, I accept it as something natural. Esmond didn't accept it as natural. And he also noticed that every time we're sexually stimulated, meaning returns. We can hear again. So he pursued sex as a way of recovering meaning. ~ Colin Wilson, #NFDB
385:Why would I wish my senses to be dulled when they could be sharpened? Why would I wish to mumble when I could scintillate? Why would I wish to forget when I could remember? Of course, since even in those days I was a loquacious workaholic who liked to stay up late, you might think I’d pick a drug that would nudge me closer to the center of the bell curve instead of pushing me farther out on the edge—but of course I didn’t. Who does? Don’t we all just keep doing the things that make us even more like ourselves? As I lay in bed with a godawful headache, sunlight streamed through the open window, and so did the smell of good French coffee from the hotel kitchen downstairs. ~ Anne Fadiman, #NFDB
386:Even in the weak morning light trickling through the bakery’s window, Wylan could see how weary Colm looked. “I made some big mistakes.”
Wylan drew a line on the floor with his finger. “You gave him someone to run to. No matter what he did or what went wrong. I think that’s bigger than the big mistakes.”
“See now? That’s why he likes you. I know, I know—it’s none of my business, and I have no idea if he’d be good for you. Probably bring you ten kinds of headache. But I think you’d be good for him.”
Wylan’s face heated. He knew how much Colm loved Jesper, had seen it in every gesture he’d made. It meant something that he thought Wylan was good enough for his son. ~ Leigh Bardugo,#NFDB
387:He sang “I wish I weren’t me” over and over again just flat of the key of love until he forgot the words and could only hum along. Everyday was the same. The same stupid smile on the same stupid boy. Until the days blurred into a haze and the boy dropped into a depression. Not a cool dark room and cigarette depression like the songs he loved, but one that felt like he was being smothered by a safe, suburban, monotonous blanket. Everything felt like a headache to the boy. Every face, every stupid stuttered sentence all wrapped up into the biggest headache ever. So the boy took an aspirin. And another and another and then went to sleep, lullabyed by hopes he would never wake up to. ~ Pete Wentz, #NFDB
388:She was on her back staring up at a yellowed ceiling she didn’t recognise, tracing the innocuous dark damp stain with her eyes, a map drawn in disrepair in a room she was unfamiliar with. She waded through the soup that had replaced her mind and in doing so had discarded all rational thought and memory. Recollection was as unfamiliar as the room, and so, for now, she would have to focus on what she knew. This situation wasn’t unfamiliar to her. Waking up in a strange house after a drink fuelled one night stand was standard practice, one that no matter how many times she regretted it would not shake itself. She didn’t remember going out, and wasn’t entirely sure the headache that pulsed ~ Matt Shaw, #NFDB
389:Walking to the door, I stare into Johnny Depp’s eyes and my gut sinks. “I’m sorry. You’ve been a good imaginary boyfriend, but I’m a grown-up now. There’s no room in my life for a boyfriend. Not even an imaginary one.” But he just stares at me. “Don’t look at me like that.” But he does. He’s torturing me.
I sigh tiredly and rub at my forehead. “Don’t make this any harder than it has to be. Please, Johnny. It’s over.” I’m getting a headache. I take my time pulling him down with the utmost care, rolling him up and putting a rubber band around him. I hold him in my hands and walk him over to the recycling bin. I lift the lid and put him in. I slowly close the lid and turn around. ~ Belle Aurora,#NFDB
390:Italy is the currency bloc's biggest long-term headache because of its chronic stagnation ever since joining the euro and failure to recover from a deep slump since the global financial crisis. Italian GDP contracted in 2008-09 and again in 2011-13. Even if growth returns in the coming months, it is expected to be meager. Mr. Renzi, a 39-year-old political maverick, came to power early this year promising to break the political deadlock that has held back economic overhauls for years, even decades. But he has become bogged down in a struggle to streamline Italy's electoral law and unwieldy bicameral legislature, seen as prerequisites for passing major economic reforms in subsequent steps. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
391:It wasn’t just other writers who weighed in. The comments section of Shawna’s article blew up. “I might need a whole day to myself to recharge after a party, and I really feel like I was hung over: headache, nausea, fatigue, the whole shebang,” one reader comments. Another agrees: “I often need the next day to recover, which is why I try really hard to never schedule two days of socializing back to back.” And: “I definitely become physically unwell if I overextend.” When Shawna wrote about her experiences, she had no idea she would hit on a topic that resonated so deeply with many introverts. It turns out Shawna was not alone in her introvert hangover. The introvert hangover is real. ~ Jenn Granneman, #NFDB
392:In the folklore of science, there is the often-told story of the moment of discovery: the quickening of the pulse, the spectral luminosity of ordinary facts, the overheated, standstill second when observations crystallize and fall together into patterns, like pieces of a kaleidoscope. The apple drops from the tree. The man jumps up from a bathtub; the slippery equation balances itself.
But there is another moment of discovery—its antithesis—that is rarely recorded: the discovery of failure. It is a moment that a scientist often encounters alone. A patient’s CT scan shows a relapsed lymphoma. A cell once killed by a drug begins to grow back. A child returns to the NCI with a headache. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee,#NFDB
393:Autocrats can avoid the technical difficulties of gathering and redistributing wealth by authorizing their supporters to reward themselves directly. For many leaders, corruption is not something bad that needs to be eliminated. Rather it is an essential political tool. Leaders implicitly or sometimes even explicitly condone corruption. Effectively they license the right to extract bribes from the citizens. This avoids the administrative headache of organizing taxation and transferring the funds to supporters. Saddam Hussein’s sons were notorious for smuggling during the 1990s when Iraq was subject to sanctions. They made a fortune from the sanctions that were supposed to harm the regime. ~ Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, #NFDB
394:she started asking me all kinds of personal questions – how many girls had I slept with? Where I was from? Which university did I go to? What kind of music did I like? Had I ever read any novels by Osamu Dazai? Where would I like to go if I could travel abroad? Did I think her nipples were too big? I made up some answers and went to sleep, but next morning she said she wanted to have breakfast with me, and she kept up the stream of questions over the tasteless eggs and toast and coffee. What kind of work did my father do? Did I get good marks at school? What month was I born? Had I ever eaten frogs? She was giving me a headache, so as soon as we had finished eating I said I had to go to work. . . ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
395:That’s not wise, Lin. I think wisdom is very over-rated. Wisdom is just cleverness, with all the guts kicked out of it. I’d rather be clever than wise, any day. Most of the wise people I know give me a headache, but I never met a clever man or woman I didn’t like. If I was giving wise advice—which I’m not—I’d say don’t get drunk, don’t spend all your money, and don’t fall in love with a pretty village girl. That would be wise. That’s the difference between clever and wise. I prefer to be clever, and that’s why I told you to surrender, when you get to the village, no matter what you find when you get there. Okay. I’m going. Come and see me when you get back. I look forward to it. I really do. ~ Gregory David Roberts, #NFDB
396:He didn't like to fly--the noise and vibration gave him a headache--but, as with anything new, he was excited by the strangeness of it. The disjuncture intrigued him: stepping through a door in one place, sitting still for a few hours, then stepping out a thousand miles away. It seemed to him a very American mode of travel, even more so than the car, not simply going farther faster, but eliminating any temporal experience of the journey, skipping over whole sections of the country, the sole focus on arriving, with the help of expensive and arcane technologies, at one's destination, except of course, when one didn't--a thought brought on by his own instinctive disbelief and the bumpiness of the flight. ~ Stewart O Nan, #NFDB
397:Very low. It’s going to be one of the cast or crew, one of the people who worked with her, one of the people she pushed, insulted, threatened.”
“Who pushed back.” He got to his feet. “Celebrity murders,” he muttered. “They’ll probably make another goddamn vid.” At Eve’s stunned, slightly horrified expression, he smiled. “You could make book on it,” he said. “Keep me updated. And don’t be late for the media conference.”
“Shit,” Eve said when he’d gone out. “Shit. He could be right.”
“Who’d play me in this one? I mean, it’s really wild, isn’t it? Somebody playing me investigating the murder of somebody who was playing me. And then there’s—”
“Don’t. You’re giving me a headache. Get those runs done. ~ J D Robb,#NFDB
398:I saw [Chennai]. It had the usual Indian elements like autos, packed public buses, hassled traffic cops and tiny shops that sold groceries, fruits, utensils, clothes or novelty items. However, it did feel different. First, the sign in every shop was in Tamil. The Tamil font resembles those optical illusion puzzles that give you a headache if you stare at them long enough. Tamil women, all of them, wear flkowers in their hair. Tamil men don't believe in pants and wear lungis even in shopping districts. The city is filled with film posters. The heroes' pictures make you feel even your uncles can be movie stars. The heroes are fat, balding, have thick moustaches and the heroine next to them is a ravishing beauty. ~ Chetan Bhagat, #NFDB
399:In reality, a doctor doesn’t diagnose the flu just based on whether you have a fever; she takes a whole bunch of symptoms into account, including whether you have a cough, a sore throat, a runny nose, a headache, chills, and so on. So what we really need to compute is P(flu | fever, cough, sore throat, runny nose, headache, chills, … ). By Bayes’ theorem, we know that this is proportional to P(fever, cough, sore throat, runny nose, headache, chills, …| flu). But now we run into a problem. How are we supposed to estimate this probability? If each symptom is a Boolean variable (you either have it or you don’t) and the doctor takes n symptoms into account, a patient could have 2n possible combinations of symptoms. ~ Pedro Domingos, #NFDB
400:A word about Hope House: there are places in the world where so many desperate people have lived and so many bad things have happened that the places themselves have become desperately bad. They're damp and weird and smell like foot fungus. The windows are never clean, and the linoleum curls up at the edges because it can't stand the floor. Every corner is sprayed with cobwebs and quivering shadows. When you walk into those bad places, you can feel a headache brewing between your eyebrows, a churning in your gut, a cold prickle at the back of your neck. You feel sad and angry and helpless, all at the same time. These bad places seem to hate you but, they also seem to want to keep you there very very much. ~ Laura Ruby, #NFDB
401:Ah —" he gave a rueful, bland little smile — "I see that you, too, think I'm cruel and heartless. But Andrew cannot focus his mind, and attentions, on a single project. He has an annoying and unproductive habit of hitting upon an idea, then failing to follow it through." He took a sip of his coffee and smiled benignly at Juliet. "If I do not mock and challenge him, he will never design his flying machine." "You're a very manipulative man, Your Grace. Do you always employ such methods to get others to behave as you would wish?" Again, that derisive little smile. "Only when it is necessary, Miss Paige. Now, be a good girl and take those letters up to Gareth, would you? I find that the scent of them is giving me a headache. ~ Danelle Harmon, #NFDB
402:She had moved to Los Angeles from the Midwest, lured by a job with a publisher. But the publisher was bought by another soon after, and she was left without a job. Turning to freelance writing, an erratic marketplace, she found herself either swamped with work or unable to pay her rent. She often had to ration phone calls, and for the first time was without health insurance. This lack of coverage was particularly distressing: she found herself catastrophizing about her health, sure every headache signaled a brain tumor, picturing herself in an accident whenever she had to drive somewhere. She often found herself lost in a long reverie of worry, a medley of distress. But, she said, she found her worries almost addictive. Borkovec ~ Daniel Goleman, #NFDB
403:We live in incredibly violent times. The domestic terrorism rate, international terrorism acts and violent crime rates are at historical highs. When a police situation gets exceptionally violent, a tactical team is called in. If there is going to be a shooting, it is usually done by them, although in the vast majority of cases they do not have to shoot. When they do, there is a tendency to blame the killing on the tactical team, though blaming them for having to use deadly force is like blaming a headache on the aspirin. The tactical team is the solution, not the problem. The NTOA has powerful data demonstrating that if not for these highly trained teams, the number of people killed in the line of duty would be vastly higher than it is. ~ Dave Grossman, #NFDB
404:I won't say I'm sorry." He lifted his hand, skimmed his fingers over her cheek. "I wouldn't mean it. But I will say I love you. I've never meant anything more."
He drew her into his arms. She pressed her face to his shoulder and held on. "I've been so messed up."
"So have I." He brushed his lips over her hair, felt his world balance again. "I've missed you, Eve."
"I won't let the job screw this up."
"It doesn't. We manage that on our own." He drew her back, touched his lips gently to hers. "But it keeps things lively, doesn't it?"
She sighed, stepped back. "It's gone."
"What is?"
"I've had this low-grade headache for a couple of days. It's gone. I guess you were my headache."
"Darling. That's so sweet. ~ J D Robb,#NFDB
405:Dabbling in the sandbox gives Rabbit a small headache. Over at the pavilion the rubber thump of Roofball and the click of checkers call to his memory, and the forgotten smell of that narrow plastic ribbon you braid bracelets and whistlechains out of and of glue and of the sweat on the handles on athletic equipment is blown down by a breeze laced with children's murmuring. He feels the truth: the thing that has left his life has left irrevocably; no search would recover it. No flight would reach it. It was here, beneath the town, in these smells and these voices, forever behind him. The fullness ends when we give Nature her ransom, when we make children for her. Then she is through with us, and we become, first inside, and then outside, junk. Flower stalks. ~ John Updike, #NFDB
406:What constitutes a problem is not the thing, or the environment where we find the thing, but the conjunction of the two; something unexpected in a usual place (our favorite aunt in our favorite poker parlor) or something usual in an unexpected place (our favorite poker in our favorite aunt). I knew that my sampler was absolutely right in Elsie Norris's front room, but absolutely wrong in Mrs. Virtue's sewing class. Mrs. Virtue should either have had the imagination to commend me for my effort in context, or the farsightedness to realize there is a debate going on as to whether something has an absolute as well as a relative value; given that, she should have given me the benefit of the doubt.
As it was, she got upset and blamed me for her headache. ~ Jeanette Winterson,#NFDB
407:...TV was entertainment of the last resort. There was nothing on during the day in the summer other than game shows and soap operas. Besides, a TV-watching child was considered available for chores: take out the trash, clean your room, pick up that mess, fold those towels, mow the lawn... the list was endless. We all became adept at chore-avoidance. Staying out of sight was a reliable strategy. Drawing or painting was another: to my mother, making art trumped making beds. A third choir-avoidance technique was to read. A kid with his or her nose in a book is a kid who is not fighting, yelling, throwing, breaking things, bleeding, whining, or otherwise creating a Mom-size headache. Reading a book was almost like being invisible - a good thing for all concerned. ~ Pete Hautman, #NFDB
408:Look I have somewhere I have to be and I don’t particularly love that I have to go, but you freaking out and making a scene is not going to do anything other than piss me off. I hope you had a good time last night and you can leave your number but we both know the chances of me calling you are slim to none. If you don’t want to be treated like crap maybe you should stop going home with drunken dudes you don’t know. Trust me we’re really only after one thing and the next morning all we really want is for you to go quietly away. I have a headache and I feel like I’m going to hurl, plus I have to spend the next hour in a car with someone that will be silently loathing me and joyously plotting my death so really can we just save the histrionics and get a move on it? ~ Jay Crownover, #NFDB
409:Sophia…” He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to push back the tension headache that was pulsing in his temples. “I don’t know why it happened either. I don’t know why my fangs have suddenly come out twice in the past—” “Three times,” she said faintly. “What?” He opened his eyes and stared at her. “You…they came out in the sacred grove, too. When you were, um, rescuing me from that priestess.” Sylvan nearly groaned. This is not good. The fact that his fangs were coming out in response to his lust for her was one thing. But to know that they were also coming out when his protective instincts were aroused was something else again. I’m acting like we’re already mated and I have to protect her! What in the seven hells is wrong with me? “I’m ~ Evangeline Anderson, #NFDB
410:Let’s face it: life is pretty overwhelming for most people, even those who don’t have ADHD. If, like most people with ADHD, you’re notoriously poor at self-observation, you may not notice when stress is creeping up on you and you’re on the threshold of feeling overwhelmed. Learning to recognize this before the feeling of being overwhelmed sabotages you requires ongoing vigilance and being proactive. The first step is to notice the signs. Tune in to how you’re feeling physically: Does being overwhelmed show up as a nauseous feeling in your stomach? Maybe you feel dizzy or anxious. You might have a headache or tend to sweat. Observe your mental state: Are you worrying? Confused? Anxious? What thoughts do you have before you’re enveloped by the feeling of being overwhelmed? ~ Zoe Kessler, #NFDB
411:Drink this.”
“Um, how ‘bout no,” I replied, staring at the dark green contents. Whatever the liquid was, it smelled like pine trees and dirt, and seeing how this woman was Izzy’s mom, I figured it was poisoned.
But Aislinn just shrugged. “Don’t, then. No skin off my nose if your head hurts.”
“It’s okay,” Mom said, never taking her eyes off Aislinn. “It’ll make you feel better.”
“By making me dead?” I asked. “I mean, I’m sure that would make my headache go away, but that’s a heck of a side effect.”
“Sophie,” Mom murmured, a warning tone in her voice.
But Aislinn just regarded me shrewdly, a tiny smile playing on her lips. “She’s got a mouth on her, that’s for sure,” she said. Her eyes flicked to Mom. “Must’ve gotten that from him. You were always quiet. ~ Rachel Hawkins,#NFDB
412:As iAm cracked the door to his brother’s room, the poor bastard’s suffering stained the very air, making it hard to breathe—and even see properly.
Then again, everything was dark by design.
“Trez?”
The moaned answer was nothing good, a combination of wounded animal and sore throat from throwing up.
iAm lifted his wrist into the light streaming in from behind and cursed at his Piaget.
By this time, the SOB should have been solidly in recovery, his body digging itself out of the headache hole that had swallowed him. Not the case.
“You want something for your stomach?”
Mumble, mumble, groan, mumble?
“Okay, I’m sure they’ve got some.”
Mumble, moan, moan. Mutter, mutter.
“Yeah, that, too. You want some Milanos?”
Mmmmmmmmmoan.
“Roger that. ~ J R Ward,#NFDB
413:At least we’ll sail off with a memory of how happy you look tonight.”
“I am happy. You-know-who isn’t here.” I rolled my eyes in the direction of Medea’s empty chair. “I hear she’s got a headache. It must be a big one, to keep her away from seeing Lord Aetes honor her precious hero.”
“Orpheus tells me she approached him about making a praise-song recounting how Jason won the Golden Fleece. You should have heard the wild ideas she wanted him to include! Fire-breathing oxen with bronze hooves, dragon’s teeth that sprout into hosts of fully armed men, an unsleeping monster guarding the Fleece--”
“As if he needs her help with making imaginary monsters!” I smiled. “The closest thing I saw to a sleeping monster was one old priest, napping near the temple to Ares. ~ Esther M Friesner,#NFDB
414:Parody Of “uncle Ned”
DERE was an old nigger, and him name was Uncle Tom,
And him tale was rather slow;
Me try to read de whole, but me only read some,
Because me found it no go.
Den hang up de auther Mrs. Stowe,
And kick de volume wid your toe—
And dere's no more public for poor Uncle Tom,
He am gone whar de trunk—lining go.
Him tale dribbles on and on widout a break,
Till you hab no eyes for to see;
When I reached Chapter 4 I had got a headache,
So I had to let Chapter 4 be.
Den hang up, etc.
De demand one fine morning for Uncle Tom died,
De tears down Mrs. Stowe's face ran like rain;
For she knew berry well, now dey'd laid him on de shelf,
Dat she'd neber get a publisher again.
Den hang up, etc.
~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti,#NFDB
415:Ryodan finished filling the gas tank, opens the door, and gets back in.
"Ow! If you sit on me one more time." I growl at him, "I'm going to kill you."
"Good luck with that. Don't fucking move every time I get out. You're on my side of the seat again."
"Watch out for my indent," I say crossly.
"Hummer, Mac. Nothing causes indents. Except grenades."
"I have several of those," Jada says. "Persist with your pointless bickering, I'll share one. Pin out."
I ignore her. "I'm cramped. I need to stretch."
"So, get out when I do."
"I'm afraid you'll leave me behind since you can't see me."
"I'd leave you behind if I could see you."
"Christ, would the two of you just shut up?" Dageus growls. You've been at it for hours. I think I have a headache. ~ Karen Marie Moning,#NFDB
416:We judge ourselves by our intentions but others by their actions. We tend to think other people's mistakes are caused by character flaws while our mistakes are due to situational factors.
"I had a headache on the day of the examine, but he's not very smart."
Then we have the opposite. Our good behavior is attributable to fundamental traits while other people's is temporary and situational.
"I'm returning this wallet to lost and found because I'm a moral and ethical person. Others do so only if they're seen picking it up."
Thus we own our strengths and disavow our weaknesses. This is a big obstetrical to overcoming self-destruction behavior, it justifies all our attempts to deny or put off our need to change and rationalizes the consequences of our actions. ~ Richard O Connor,#NFDB
417:Like an attack this melancholy comes from time to time. I don't know at what intervals, and slowly covers my sky with clouds. It begins with an unrest in the heart, with a premonition of anxiety, probably with my dreams at night. People, houses, colors, sounds that otherwise please me become dubious and seem false. Music gives me a headache. All my mail becomes upsetting and contains hidden arrows. At such times, having to converse with people is torture and immediately leads to scenes... Anger, suffering, and complaints are directed at everything, at people, at animals, at the weather, at God, at the paper in the book one is reading, at the material of the very clothing one has on. But anger, impatience, complaints and hatred have no effect on things and are deflected from everything, back to myself. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
418:The more I stare at it, the more the popcorn ceiling above me resembles an exquisite mosaic. Yellow rings from a leaky roof add pizazz to the imperfect white mounds; the reflection of a parked car outside the hotel room highlights the design in a brilliant, abstract pattern. I try to find a name for this provocative image and decide on “Cottage Cheese, Glorified.”
And that’s when it becomes obvious that I’m distracting myself from thinking about the U-turn my life just took. I wonder if Galen is back yet. I wonder what he’s thinking. I wonder if Rayna is okay, if she has a killer headache like I do, if chloroform affects a full-blooded Syrena the way it affects humans. I bet that now she really will try to shoot my mom with her harpoon, which reminds me again of the past twenty-four hours of craziness. ~ Anna Banks,#NFDB
419:You’ve arrived!” Katsa grinned up at him. Then she looked closer—stood on her toes, for he was so very tall. She grabbed a handful of his hair. “Raff, what’ve you done to yourself? Your hair is positively blue.” “I’ve been trying a new remedy for headache,” he said, “to be massaged into the scalp. Yesterday I thought I felt a headache coming on, so I tried it. Apparently it turns fair hair blue.” She smiled. “Did it cure the headache?” “Well, if I had a headache, then it did, but I’m not convinced I had one to begin with. Do you have a headache?” he asked, hopefully. “Your hair’s so dark; it wouldn’t turn nearly as blue.” “I don’t. I never do. What does the king think of your hair?” Raffin smirked. “He’s not speaking to me. He says it’s appalling behavior for the son of the king. Until my hair is normal again I’m not his son. ~ Kristin Cashore, #NFDB
420:The only way to get through life is to laugh your way through it. You either have to laugh or cry. I prefer to laugh. Crying gives me a headache.”
“I don't want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully, tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails.
I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp.
I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbors children.
I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someone's garden.
I want to be there with children's sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder.
I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived. ~ Marjorie Pay Hinckley,#NFDB
421:Hmmm. Odd. Okay.” He took Nick’s hand.
Nick pulled back. “Dude, don’t touch me.”
“Why not?”
Why not? Really? He had to explain stranger-danger and personal space? Where did this guy live that he didn’t understand grabbing another dude’s body parts without an invitation was a first class ticket to a major butt-whipping event.
“Look, I don’t know you, and we’re not dating. So keep your hands off me.”
Again with the annoyed noise. “Then how can I lead you if I can’t touch you when you can’t see?”
“How ’bout you don’t lead me anywhere?” Nick was beginning to like the darkness. Unlike Asmodeus, it was quiet and rather peaceful. And it definitely didn’t give him a headache.
“But you said you couldn’t see.”
Nick was aghast at the way this guy’s mind worked. “That doesn’t mean you can touch me.”
“I’m so confused. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,#NFDB
422:One further factor, possibly the most crucial, was inherent to the way SARS-CoV affects the human body: Symptoms tend to appear in a person before, rather than after, that person becomes highly infectious. The headache, the fever, and the chills—maybe even the cough—precede the major discharge of virus toward other people. Even among some of the superspreaders, in 2003, this seems to have been true. That order of events allowed many SARS cases to be recognized, hospitalized, and placed in isolation before they hit their peak of infectivity. The downside was that hospital staff took the first big blasts of secondary infection; the upside was that those blasts generally weren’t emitted by people still feeling healthy enough to ride a bus or a subway to work. This was an enormously consequential factor in the SARS episode—not just lucky but salvational. ~ David Quammen, #NFDB
423:
I loved Vincent and he loved me in the abiding way most couples in good marriages love each other, that way in which every once in a while there is a longing for someone you haven't yet met. A longing that comes upon you while you are loading the dishwasher or weeding the garden or sitting in front of the television or turning out the light to go to sleep, and you don't even know what it is, this longing, and you think maybe you're in need of a vacation or maybe you are dying because the ache of it hurts so fucking much…That ache, it went away when I met Henry; it went away as if it had been a headache instead of located nowhere precisely. Its not that I *wanted* to fall in love with Henry, but I did just the same because you can't keep from falling in love any more than you can keep snow from falling from the sky in winter. Gravity is gravity.
~ Binnie Kirshenbaum,#NFDB
424:It's late, I'm tired, and your cigarettes are giving me a headache," I growled.
"I suppose that's fair." He drew in on the cigarette and let out the smoke. "Some women think they make me look sexy."
"I think you smoke them so you have something to do while thinking up your next witty line."
He choked on the smoke, caught between inhaling and laughing. "Rose Hathaway, I can't wait to see you again. If you're this charming while tired and annoyed and this gorgeous while bruised and in ski clothes, you must be devastating at your peak.” "If by 'devastating' you mean that you should fear for your life, then yeah. You're right." I jerked open the door. "Good night, Adrian."
"I'll see you soon."
"Not likely. I told you, I'm not into older guys."
I walked into the lodge. As the door closed, I just barely heard him call behind me, "Sure, you aren't. ~ Richelle Mead,#NFDB
425:The way we react to the Indian will always remain this nation’s unique moral headache. It may seem a smaller problem than our Negro one, and less important, but many other sections of the world have had to grapple with slavery and its consequences. There’s no parallel for our treatment of the Indian. In Tasmania the English settlers solved the matter neatly by killing off every single Tasmanian, bagging the last one as late as 1910. Australia had tried to keep its aborigines permanently debased—much crueler than anything we did with our Indians. Brazil, about the same. Only in America did we show total confusion. One day we treated Indians as sovereign nations. Did you know that my relative Lost Eagle and Lincoln were photographed together as two heads of state? The next year we treated him as an uncivilized brute to be exterminated. And this dreadful dichotomy continues. ~ James A Michener, #NFDB
426:--Your headache--
I am trying to imagine it
Your head is in your hands
The nurse is pouring pills onto a plate
November again
Too late
Your headache
It is a bird
Wounded, in leaves
Its sweet bird’s nest is full of pain in a distant place
November
There are daisies
In the ruined garden, still blooming strangely
And in a manic yellow hat, the old lady
And the old man, dead in his bed
And their daughter, the saint:
Her dark, religious hair gets tangled in the branches
She is screaming, grabbing
While the nurses play Mozart in another room
While the bats fly over the roof
Snatch the black notes from the blackness
Laughing
You cry
I am going to die
I can see them through this window
Their little black capes
The touching ugliness of their little faces ~ Laura Kasischke,#NFDB
427:Help for PMS—Low progesterone is often one of the culprits of PMS symptoms. Progesterone cream used during the last week of a woman’s cycle is often helpful. I also recommend a combination of supplements to balance the brain, especially 400–500 mg calcium citrate twice a day, 200–300 mg chelated magnesium twice a day, vitamin A, B complex with 50 mg B6, and 500 mg evening primrose oil twice a day. I also suggest 50–100 mg 5-HTP (5-hydroxytryptophan) twice a day to help to boost serotonin and decrease anxiety and worry. If focus is a problem, try green tea or 500 mg L-tyrosine two to three times a day. Chaste-berry, 20–40 mg a day, can also help for PMS symptoms of especially breast pain or tenderness, swelling, constipation, irritability, depressed mood or mood alterations, anger, and headache in some women. Boost exercise in the last week of your cycle, and hold the sugar and alcohol. ~ Daniel G Amen, #NFDB
428:Toasted almond pancakes. Sweet soft 'okays'. Makin' me laugh more in a few weeks than I have in decades. 'Yes, Daddys' I feel in my dick. The first voicemail you left me, babe. I saved it and I listen to it once a day. If I lose focus, I see you on your back, knees high, legs wide, offering your sweet, wet pussy to me. You smile at me in bed every time you wander outta my bedroom in my shirts, my tees, or your work clothes and honest to Christ, it sets me up for the day. And no matter what shit goes down, I get through it knowin' whichever bed I climb into at night, you're in it ready to snuggle into me or give me what I wanna take. Your girl, a headache. You, never. And in a life that's been full of headaches, babe, having that, there is no price tag. You gotta get it and do it fuckin' now that there's a lotta different kinds of give and take. And you give as good as you get, baby, trust me. ~ Kristen Ashley, #NFDB
429:throwing a few more bodies on the blaze, if only to convince the world the Guard was made of monsters. He’ll kill Julian too, and Sara. They’re probably dead already. I can’t think of them at all. It’s too painful. Now my thoughts turn back to Maven himself, to cold blue eyes and the moment I realized his charming smile hid a beast. The bunk beneath me is hard, the blankets thin, with no pillow to speak of, but part of me wants to lie back down. Already my headache returns, throbbing with the electric pulse of this miracle boat. It is a firm reminder—there is no peace for me here. Not yet, not while so much more must be done. The list. The names. I must find them. I must keep them safe from Maven and his mother. Heat spreads across my face, my skin flushing with the memory of Julian’s little book of hard-won secrets. A record of those like me, with the strange mutation that gives us Red blood and Silver abilities ~ Victoria Aveyard, #NFDB
430:Do you mind not intoning the responses, Jeeves?" I said. "This is a most complicated story for a man with a headache to have to tell, and if you interrupt you'll make me lose the thread. As a favour to me, therefore, don't do it. Just nod every now and then to show that you're following me."
I closed my eyes and marshalled the facts.
"To start with then, Jeeves, you may or may not know that Mr Sipperley is practically dependent on his Aunt Vera."
"Would that be Miss Sipperley of the Paddock, Beckley-on-the-Moor, in Yorkshire, sir?"
"Yes. Don't tell me you know her!"
"Not personally, sir. But I have a cousin residing in the village who has some slight acquaintance with Miss Sipperley. He has described her to me as an imperious and quick-tempered old lady. ... But I beg your pardon, sir, I should have nodded."
"Quite right, you should have nodded. Yes, Jeeves, you should have nodded. But it's too late now. ~ P G Wodehouse,#NFDB
431:I want to share something Virginia Woolf wrote: 'English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear, has no words for the shiver and the headache...The merest schoolgirl when she falls in love, has Shakespeare or Keats to speak her mind for her; but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry.' And we're such language-based creatures that to some extent we cannot know what we cannot name. And so we assume it isn't real. We refer to it with catch-all terms, like crazy or chronic pain, terms that both ostracize and minimize. The term chronic pain captures nothing of the grinding, constant, ceaseless,inescapable hurt. And the term crazy arrives at us with none of the terror and worry you live with. Nor do either of those terms connote the courage people in such pains exemplify, which is why I'd ask you to frame your mental health around a word other than crazy. ~ John Green, #NFDB
432:Slowly, even though I thought it would never happen, New York lost its charm for me. I remember arriving in the city for the first time, passing with my parents through the First World's Club bouncers at Immigration, getting into a massive cab that didn't have a moment to waste, and falling in love as soon as we shot onto the bridge and I saw Manhattan rise up through the looks of parental terror reflected in the window. I lost my virginity in New York, twice (the second one wanted to believe he was the first so badly). I had my mind blown open by the combination of a liberal arts education and a drug-popping international crowd. I became tough. I had fun. I learned so much.
But now New York was starting to feel empty, a great party that had gone on too long and was showing no sign of ending soon. I had a headache, and I was tired. I'd danced enough. I wanted a quiet conversation with someone who knew what load-shedding was. ~ Mohsin Hamid,#NFDB
433:You think I like this?” I say defensively. “Trust me, I don’t need this headache in my life.” I swallow a mouthful of beer. “Hey. You know Twilight?” He blinks. “Excuse me?” “Twilight. The vampire book.” His wary eyes study my face. “What about it?” “Okay, so you know how Bella’s blood is extra special? Like how it gives Edward a raging boner every time he’s around her?” “Are you fucking with me right now?” I ignore that. “Do you think it happens in real life? Pheromones and all that crap. Is it a bullshit theory some horndog dreamed up so he could justify why he’s attracted to his mother or some shit? Or is there actually a biological reason why we’re drawn to certain people? Like goddamn Twilight. Edward wants her on a biological level, right?” “Are you seriously dissecting Twilight right now?” God, I am. This is what Allie has reduced me to. A sad, pathetic loser who goes to a bar and forces his friend to participate in a Twilight book club. ~ Elle Kennedy, #NFDB
434:How is Life Full of Choices? When we eat too much, we make a choice to be overweight. When we drink too much, we make a choice to have a headache the next day. If we drink and drive, we choose to risk being killed or killing someone in an accident. When we ill-treat people, we choose to be ill-treated in return. When we don’t care about other people, we choose not to be cared for by them. When we light up a cigarette, we choose to invite cancer. Choices have consequences. The most important thing to understand is that we are all free to the point of making choices. but, after we make a choice, the choice controls the chooser. We have no more choices. What is success? Series of positive choices is called success and series of negative choices is called failure. We have an equal opportunity to be unequal. The choice is ours. Life can be compared to a pottery maker who shapes clay in any form he wants. Similarly we can mould our lives into any shape we want. ~ Shiv Khera, #NFDB
435: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? ~ Claire Messud, #NFDB
436:So her heart was more drawn to him than before. When she was sent out at night she used sometimes to feel quite glad, because there was always a chance that the curtains of the house next door might not yet be closed and she could look into the warm room and see her adopted friend. When no one was about she used sometimes to stop, and, holding to the iron railings, wish him good night as if he could hear her.
“Perhaps you can feel if you can’t hear,” was her fancy. “Perhaps kind thoughts reach people somehow, even through windows and doors and walls. Perhaps you feel a little warm and comforted, and don’t know why, when I am standing here in the cold and hoping you will get well and happy again. I am so sorry for you,” she would whisper in an intense little voice. “I wish you had a ‘Little Missus’ who could pet you as I used to pet papa when he had a headache. I should like to be your ‘Little Missus’ myself, poor dear! Good night good night. God bless you! ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett,#NFDB
437:Normally death came at night, taking a person in their sleep, stopping their heart or tickling them awake, leading them to the bathroom with a splitting headache before pouncing and flooding their brain with blood. It waits in alleys and metro stops. After the sun goes down plugs are pulled by white-clad guardians and death is invited into an antiseptic room.
But in the country death comes, uninvited, during the day. It takes fishermen in their longboats. It grabs children by the ankles as they swim. In winter it calls them down a slope too steep for their budding skills, and crosses their skies at the tips. It waits along the shore where snow met ice not long ago but now, unseen by sparkling eyes, a little water touches the shore, and the skater makes a circle slightly larger than intended. Death stands in the woods with a bow and arrow at dawn and dusk. And it tugs cars off the road in broad daylight, the tires spinning furiously on ice or snow, or bright autumn leaves. ~ Louise Penny,#NFDB
438:To cut a long story short, coaching by Charlotte and Mr. Giordano was even worse than I’d expected. That was mainly because they were trying to teach me everything at the same time. While I was struggling to learn the steps of the minuet (rigged out in a hooped skirt with cherry-red stripes, not very chic worn with my school uniform blouse, which was the color of mashed potato), I was also supposed to be learning how greatly the political opinions of the Whigs and the Tories differed, how to hold a fan, and the difference between “Your Highness,” “Your Royal Highness,” “Your Serene Highness,” and even “Your Illustrious Highness.” After only an hour plus seventeen different ways of opening a fan, I had a splitting headache, and I couldn’t tell left from right. My attempt to lighten the atmosphere with a little joke—“Couldn’t we stop for a rest? I’m totally, serenely, illustriously exhausted”—went down like a lead balloon.
“This is not funny,” said Giordano in nasal tones. “Stupid girl. ~ Kerstin Gier,#NFDB
439:Of what use is my going to Kasi any more? At Mother's feet lie Gaya, Ganga and Kasi. I swim in the ocean of bliss while I meditate on Her in my heart lotus. O Kali's feet are red lotuses wherein lie heaps of holy places. All sins are destroyed by Kali's name as heaps of cotton are burnt by fire. How can a headless man have a headache? People think, they will discharge their debts to forefathers by offering them pinda at Gaya! But, O! I laugh at him who meditates on Kali and still goes to Gaya! Shiva assures: Death at Kasi leads to salvation. But devotion is the root of all; O mind! Salvation is its maid. Of what use is nirvana? Water mingles in water. O mind! becoming sugar is not desirable; I am fond of eating sugar. Bemused, Ramprasad says, By the strength of gracious Mother, O! Meditation on Her, the wearer of disheveled hair, puts four goods into the palm of our hands. [1008.jpg] -- from Kali: The Black Goddess of Dakshineswar, by Elizabeth U. Harding
~ Ramprasad, Of what use is my going to Kasi any more?
,#NFDB
440:So I’ve gotten used to not complaining, and I’ve gotten used to not bothering Mom and Dad with little stuff. I’ve gotten used to figuring things out on my own: how to put toys together, how to organize my life so I don’t miss friends’ birthday parties, how to stay on top of my schoolwork so I never fall behind in class. I’ve never asked for help with my homework. Never needed reminding to finish a project or study for a test. If I was having trouble with a subject in school, I’d go home and study it until I figured it out on my own. I taught myself how to convert fractions into decimal points by going online. I’ve done every school project pretty much by myself. When Mom or Dad ask me how things are going in school, I’ve always said “good”—even when it hasn’t always been so good. My worst day, worst fall, worst headache, worst bruise, worst cramp, worst mean thing anyone could say has always been nothing compared to what August has gone through. This isn’t me being noble, by the way: it’s just the way I know it is. ~ R J Palacio, #NFDB
441:True, Mama, but he’ll find it a difficult job to govern the country with nothing but the High Tories to support him. And whatever you think of their politics, Huskisson and Palmerston are very able men the country can ill afford to lose. William Lamb was doing a good job in Ireland, too.’ ‘Poor William Lamb,’ Lucy said — his name always seemed to couple itself with the epithet quite automatically. ‘He needs office to keep his mind from his domestic troubles.’ ‘Sendin’ him to Ireland was goin’ rather too far, though,’ Theakston commented solemnly. ‘No good cuttin’ off a man’s head to cure him of a headache.’ ‘Well, he’d have been back soon enough anyway,’ said Lucy. ‘That drunken ruin of a father of his can’t last much longer, and then he’ll be taking his seat in the Lords as Lord Melbourn.’ ‘His sister thinks he’ll be Prime Minister one day,’ said her husband. ‘Said so to Mrs Arbuthnot yesterday.’ Lucy was dismissive. ‘She would say something like that! I can’t bear Emily Cowper at any price,’ she said impatiently; and then, ‘Where did you see Mrs Arbuthnot? ~ Cynthia Harrod Eagles, #NFDB
442:Most writers who are beginners, if they are honest with themselves, will admit that they are praying for a readership as they begin to write. But it should be the quality of the craft not the audience, that should be the greatest motivating factor. For me, at least, I can declare that when I wrote THINGS FALL APART I couldn't have told anyone the day before it was accepted for publication that anybody was going to read it. There was no guarantee; nobody ever said to me, Go and write this, we will publish it and we will read it; it was just there. But my brother-in-law who was not a particularly voracious reader, told me that he read the novel through the night and it gave him a terrible headache the next morning. And I took that as an encouraging endorsement!
The triumph of the written word is often attained when the writer achieves union and trust with the reader, who then becomes ready to be drawn deep into unfamiliar territory, walking in borrowed literary shoes so to speak, toward a deeper understanding of self or society, or of foreign peoples, cultures and situations. ~ Chinua Achebe,#NFDB
443:The captain put his fingers to his temples as if he had a headache. “So, let me get this straight. Edgar, an immortal, who I assume is as unscrupulous as his sisters, tried to take that bracelet from you…”
“He did take it,” she corrected.
“I thought you said Zmey kept him from doing so.”
“No. Edgar did snatch it from me at first, but Zmey made him give it back. I guess because King Wennergren gifted it to me. That means no one else is allowed to have it—that is, unless I give it away.”
“So it’s good that you had Zmey there to help.”
“Well….not exactly,” she hemmed again.
“Not exactly, again?” Derian’s face tightened with frustration. He pressed harder on his temples.
“Zmey protects the bracelet because he has to, but he doesn’t care much for me.” She hesitated before uttering the next sentence. “He actually tried to kill me.”
“What? What! Why? Eena!”
“It’s okay, really, I’m fine! Naga protects me from those other dragons.”
“Other dragons? For criminy’s sake, how many more are there?! ~ Richelle E Goodrich,#NFDB
444:But this latter knowledge was based more on his reading of The Sun Also Rises in high school than in his real-life venturings into the district, which had mostly been lonely and footsore. He had admired the ancient delicacy of the buildings and the way the street lamps made soft explosions of light green in the trees at night, and the way each long, bright café awning would prove to reveal a sea of intelligently walking faces as he passed; but the white wine gave him a headache and the talking faces all seemed, on closer inspection, to belong either to intimidating men with beards or to women whose eyes could sum him up and dismiss him in less than a second. The place had filled him with a sense of wisdom hovering just out of reach, of unspeakable grace prepared and waiting just around the corner, but he’d walked himself weak down its endless blue streets and all the people who knew how to live had kept their tantalizing secret to themselves, and time after time he had ended up drunk and puking over the tailgate of the truck that bore him jolting back into the army. Je suis, he practiced to himself ~ Richard Yates, #NFDB
445:issue is clear. It’s the difference between building brands and milking brands. Most managers want to milk. “How far can we extend the brand? Let’s spend some serious research money and find out.” Sterling Drug was a big advertiser and a big buyer of research. Its big brand was Bayer aspirin, but aspirin was losing out to acetaminophen (Tylenol) and ibuprofen (Advil). So Sterling launched a $116-million advertising and marketing program to introduce a selection of five “aspirin-free” products. The Bayer Select line included headache-pain relief, regular pain relief, nighttime pain relief, sinus-pain relief, and a menstrual relief formulation, all of which contained either acetaminophen or ibuprofen as the core ingredient. Results were painful. The first year Bayer Select sold $26 million worth of pain relievers in a $2.5 billion market, or about 1 percent of the market. Even worse, the sales of regular Bayer aspirin kept falling at about 10 percent a year. Why buy Bayer aspirin if the manufacturer is telling you that its “select” products are better because they are “aspirin-free”? Are consumers stupid or not? ~ Al Ries, #NFDB
446:The issue is clear. It’s the difference between building brands and milking brands. Most managers want to milk. “How far can we extend the brand? Let’s spend some serious research money and find out.” Sterling Drug was a big advertiser and a big buyer of research. Its big brand was Bayer aspirin, but aspirin was losing out to acetaminophen (Tylenol) and ibuprofen (Advil). So Sterling launched a $116-million advertising and marketing program to introduce a selection of five “aspirin-free” products. The Bayer Select line included headache-pain relief, regular pain relief, nighttime pain relief, sinus-pain relief, and a menstrual relief formulation, all of which contained either acetaminophen or ibuprofen as the core ingredient. Results were painful. The first year Bayer Select sold $26 million worth of pain relievers in a $2.5 billion market, or about 1 percent of the market. Even worse, the sales of regular Bayer aspirin kept falling at about 10 percent a year. Why buy Bayer aspirin if the manufacturer is telling you that its “select” products are better because they are “aspirin-free”? Are consumers stupid or not? ~ Al Ries, #NFDB
447:KILL YOUR VICTIM Place an Obituary in the paper you know the victim reads. Place the ad on a Saturday morning. Anonymously spread a rumor that the victim died in an email to the victim’s co-workers, and send a link to the article in the paper. Obtain a blank death certificate and fill it out in your victim’s name. Send it to as many government agencies as possible. You definitely want to make sure you send it to the social security office and the victim’s financial institutions. If the government and banks think the victim is dead they will freeze the accounts for the probation process. Make sure to kill your victim on paper every year. This will cause a huge headache and the jerk will be buried by paperwork just trying to prove he’s alive. Because of the Social Security Department’s incompetence, they will continue to let you kill the victim over and over. This is a very nasty revenge idea that could possibly screw with the victim for the rest of their life. Call a local funeral home and the victim’s pastor and ask them to send someone over to the victim’s house to discuss burial arrangements with their spouse. ~ Tarrin P Lupo, #NFDB
448:What better way to lose that hangover headache than get drunk again? Oh, the joys of being Canadian with socialized health care and legal drinking age of nineteen. After a year (officially) honing that skill, I imbibed at an Olympic level. The red wine on the modular coffee table gleamed in a shaft of sunlight like its position had been ordained by the gods. I snatched up the crystal decanter, sloshing the liquid into the glass conveniently placed next to it. Once in a while, a girl could actually catch a break. I fanned myself with one hand. The myriad of lit candles seemed a bit much for Ari’s romantic encounter, but wine drinking trumped curiosity so I chugged the booze back. My entire body cheered as the cloyingly-sweet alcohol hit my system, though I hoped it wasn’t Manischewitz because hangovers on that were a bitch. I’d slugged back half the contents when I saw my mom on the far side of the room clutch her throat, eyes wide with horror. Not her usual, “you need an intervention” horror. No, her expression indicated I’d reached a whole new level of fuck-up. “Nava Liron Katz,” she gasped in full name outrage. ~ Deborah Wilde, #NFDB
449:For John Dillinger
In hope he is still alive
Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 1986
In hope he is still alive
Thanks for the wild turkey and the Passenger Pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts; thanks for a Continent to despoil and poison; thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger; thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin, leaving the carcass to rot; thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes; thanks for the American Dream to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lies shine through; thanks for the KKK; for nigger-killing lawmen feeling their notches; for decent church-going women with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces; thanks for Kill a Queer for Christ stickers; thanks for laboratory AIDS; thanks for Prohibition and the War Against Drugs; thanks for a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business; thanks for a nation of finks—yes, thanks for all the memories all right, lets see your arms; you always were a headache and you always were a bore; thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams. ~ William S Burroughs,#NFDB
450:Alexander the Magnus was once called to solve the following challenge in the Phrygian city of Gordium (as usual with Greek stories, in modern-day Turkey). When he entered Gordium, he found an old wagon, its yoke tied with a multitude of knots, all so tightly entangled that it was impossible to figure out how they were fastened. An oracle had declared that he who would untie the knot would rule all of what was then called “Asia,” that is, Asia Minor, the Levant, and the Middle East. After wrestling with the knot, the Magnus drew back from the lump of gnarled ropes, then made a proclamation that it didn’t matter for the prophecy how the tangle was to be unraveled. He then drew his sword and, with a single stroke, cut the knot in half. No “successful” academic could ever afford to follow such a policy. And no Intellectual Yet Idiot. It took medicine a long time to realize that when a patient shows up with a headache, it is much better to give him aspirin or recommend a good night’s sleep than do brain surgery, although the latter appears to be more “scientific.” But most “consultants” and others paid by the hour are not there yet. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
451:Why do writers use symbolism?” Okay, so let’s say you have a headache and you wanna tell someone about it and you say, “I have a headache!” and other people are like, “Yeah, whatever. Everybody gets headaches.” But your headache is not a regular headache, it’s a serious headache, so you say, “My brain is on fire!” to try to help these people understand that this is a headache that needs attention! That’s a metaphor, right? And you use it so that you can be understood. Now let’s say you want to take those same imagistic principles but apply them to a much more complex idea than having a headache, like, for instance, the yearning that one feels for one’s dreams. And you can see the dream but you can’t cross the bay to get to the green light that embodies your dream. And you want to talk about how socio-economic class in America is a barrier – a bay-like barrier, some would say – that stands between you and the green light and makes that gap unbridgeable. Now, you can just talk about that stuff directly, but when you talk about it symbolically, it becomes more powerful, because instead of being abstract it becomes kind of observable…. So I think that’s why. ~ John Green, #NFDB
452:Guy goes to the doc, and he says, ‘Doc, you gotta help me. I got this terrible headache. It feels like somebody is pounding a nail through my forehead. Like I got a big pair of pliers squeezing behind my ears. It’s tension from my job. I can’t stop working right now, but the headache’s killing me. You gotta help.’ So the doc says, ‘You know, I do have a cure. Exactly the same thing happened to me—I was working too much, and I got exactly the same headache. Then one night I was performing oral sex on my wife, and her legs were squeezing my head really tight, really hard, and the pressure must have done something, because the headache was a lot better. So I did this every night for two weeks, and at the end of two weeks, the headache was gone.’ And the guy says, ‘I’m desperate, Doc, I’ll try anything.’ The doc said, ‘Well, then, I’ll see you in two weeks.’ So the guy goes away, and two weeks later he comes back for his appointment and he’s the most cheerful guy in the world. And he says, ‘Doc, you’re a miracle worker. I did just what you told me, and the headache’s gone. Vanished. I feel great. I think it’s got to be the pressure, and—by the way, you’ve got a beautiful home. ~ John Sandford, #NFDB
453:By the time I got down there, Bird was standing to the left of the backstop, near the warm-up area, smiling at Brandon. It was obvious he was trying not to get caught smiling at her, that he was supposed to focus on the game.
I scooted over until I was standing behind the dugout. Jason was still messing with his gloves. I was surprised the Velcro still worked, that it hadn’t worn down until all the tiny sticky teeth were gone.
“Hey, Jason,” I said. “Awesome no-hitter.”
I was vaguely aware of someone gasping and someone else moaning, as Jason came up off the bench fast, spun around, and stared at me like I’d morphed into something from The X-Files.
The guy who’d gasped, Chase, put one knee on the bench, so he could talk to me in a low voice and still be heard. “You’d better go.”
“Why? What did I do?”
“You never talk to the pitcher when…” He shook his head. “You just never talk to the pitcher when--”
“I just wanted to congratulate him on a good game--”
“It’s not over ’til it’s over,” Chase said.
“You jinxed me,” Jason said, crouching down in the corner, pressing his palms against his forehead, like he’d been struck with a migraine headache. ~ Rachel Hawthorne,#NFDB
454:Justin Case and women do not mix. Man boobs, a love of Kings and Castles, and being tight with the "nerd" crowd certainly don't win him any points either. After rescuing Katie, his crush, it turns out she might not be the girl he thought she was, while Elyssa, the school's Goth Girl, turns out to be more. Can high school get any more confusing? Determined to improve himself, he joins a gym and meets a sexy girl that just oozes a "come hither, Justin" vibe. Until she attacks him in the parking lot, and Justin realizes she's no ordinary girl but a being with supernatural speed and strength. After a narrow escape and an excruciating migraine headache, he wakes up with supernatural abilities all his own: speed, strength, and the ability to seduce every woman he sees. While that might sound like the perfect combo for any hormonal teen, Justin is a hopeless romantic who wants his first time to be special. Is that too much to ask for? But he doesn't know what he is or how to stop his carnal urges. One thing is clear: If he doesn't find answers there are other more sinister supernaturals who would like nothing better than to make him their eternal plaything and do far worse than kill him. ~ John Corwin, #NFDB
455:I’ve learned that for every condition in our lives, there’s a need for it. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have it. The symptom is only an outer effect. We must go within to dissolve the mental cause. This is why willpower and discipline don’t work. They’re only battling the outer effect. It’s like cutting down the weed instead of getting the root out. So before you begin the New Thought Pattern affirmations, work on the willingness to release the need for the cigarettes, the headache, the excess weight, or whatever. When the need is gone, the outer effect must die. No plant can live if the root is cut away. The mental thought patterns that cause the most dis-ease in the body are criticism, anger, resentment, and guilt. For instance, criticism indulged in long enough will often lead to dis-eases such as arthritis. Anger turns into things that boil, burn, and infect the body. Resentment long held festers and eats away at the self and ultimately can lead to tumors and cancer. Guilt always seeks punishment and leads to pain. It’s so much easier to release these negative thinking patterns from our minds when we’re healthy than to try to dig them out when we’re in a state of panic and under the threat of the surgeon’s knife. ~ Louise L Hay, #NFDB
456:Look, I never meant to get involved with Lock and Deep in the first place and now everything is all messed up and my whole life feels out of control! I can feel their emotions filling me up until I think I’m drowning. Can you help me block them? Lock said you might be able to.” Mother L’rin shook her head. “Only with a full bond is mind privacy possible.” Kat’s heart sank. “So you’re saying in order to have any kind of peace I’d have to tie myself to them for life?” The wise woman nodded solemnly. “Bonded to them you must be.” “But I can’t be. I don’t want to be,” Kat protested. “Until you are, weak you will be.” Mother L’rin poked a finger at her. “The pain…return it will.” “It will?” Kat felt sick. Come to think of it, she hadn’t felt anything like the symptoms she’d had while she was aboard the Mother ship since she woke up. But just the thought of enduring that splitting headache again was hideous. “You must touch them—one at least. Both is better.” Mother L’rin nodded sagely. “As greater your weakness grows, the more deeply must you touch.” “You mean like a…” Kat cleared her throat. “Like a sexual touch?” “Yes, yes.” Mother L’rin nodded vigorously. “The bond it strengthens. Your pain will ease.” “But ~ Evangeline Anderson, #NFDB
457:If I’ve got to take down a couple of rogue city girls for you to get your happily ever after, I’ll do it.” Shane scrubbed a hand over his jaw and gave her a slow once-over. “She might actually be able to take them on.” “She’s very persistent,” James added dryly. Gracie scowled. “You’re not still mad about that, are you?” “I don’t get mad,” James said, but a muscle in his cheek jumped, belying his words. Gracie snorted, waving a hand. “Whatever, Professor. I still think you’re being a baby.” James cocked his head to the side and studied her. “You just don’t know when to shut up, do you?” Mitch glanced at Shane, who shook his head. “It’s been a fun drive.” “Hey—” Gracie started to speak, but Mitch cut her off. “Can you save it for another time?” The front door flew open and Sophie came storming out. “What is all the racket out here?” “Hey, Soph,” Shane said. “It’s three in the fucking morning and I’m not in the mood.” Penelope wandered out, much more slowly. “This is giving me a headache.” Shane shifted his gaze on her. “We’re coming in.” Penelope smirked. “I don’t take orders after work hours.” Maddie’s mom crowded onto the porch. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—get in here or the neighbors are going to have a fit.” Mitch ~ Jennifer Dawson, #NFDB
458:chest. Everything looked strange and slow. Vernon bent over him. He felt him give his chest a big shove, and he felt his arms being raised. All at once the pressure seemed to break, and he coughed violently. Vernon rolled him to his side. He coughed, coughed again, felt a blinding icy headache take hold. Reality returned with a vengeance. Tom struggled to sit up. Vernon put his arms under his shoulders and supported him. “What happened?” “This foolish brother of yours, this Vernito, jumped into that river and pulled you out from under those logs. I have never seen such craziness in my life.” “He did?” Tom turned and looked at Vernon. He was soaked, and his forehead was cut. Blood and water ran together into his beard. Vernon grasped him, and he stood up. His head cleared a little more, and the pounding headache began to subside. He look down into the roaring chute of water ripping into the frenzied pool jammed full of broken tree trunks and branches. He looked at Vernon again. It finally sank in. “You,” he said incredulously. Vernon shrugged. “You saved my life.” “Well, you saved mine,” he said, almost defensively. “You decapitated a snake for me. All I did was jump.” Don Alfonso said, “By the Virgin Mary, I still cannot ~ Douglas Preston, #NFDB
459:Why would someone scream at a soiree?” Annandale persisted, scowling.
Christopher maintained a bland expression. Since it most likely involved one of the Hathaways, it could have been anything.
“Shall I go and find out?” Audrey asked, clearly desperate to escape her grandfather-in-law.
“No, you may stay here, in case I need something.”
Audrey suppressed a sigh. “Yes, my lord.”
Beatrix entered the parlor and made her way through the clustered guests. Reaching Christopher, she said in a low tone, “Your mother just met Medusa.”
“My mother was the one who screamed?” Christopher asked.
“What was that?” Annandale demanded, remaining seated on the settee. “My daughter screamed?”
“I’m afraid so, my lord,” Beatrix said apologetically. “She encountered my pet hedgehog, who had escaped from her pen.” She glanced at Christopher, adding brightly, “Medusa’s always been too plump to climb the walls of her box before. I think her new exercise must be working!”
“Were any quills involved, love?” Christopher asked, repressing a grin.
“Oh, no, your mother wasn’t stuck. But Amelia is taking her to one of the upstairs rooms to rest. Unfortunately Medusa gave her a headache.”
Audrey glanced heavenward. “Her head always aches. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
460:You were happy last night. This morning is a different story."
"You think I have a hangover. I don't. Well a little headache, but not much. Just let this be a warning to you if you keep me from sleeping again tonight."
"I kept you from sleeping? I kept you from sleeping?" he repeated incredulously. "You are the same woman who shook me out of a sound sleep at two a.m. yesterday morning, aren't you?"
"I didn't shake you. I kind of bounced on you, but I didn't shake you."
"Bounced," he repeated.
"You had a hard-on. I couldn't let it go to waste, could I?"
"You could have woke me up before you started not to let it go to waste."
"Look," she said exasperated, "If you don't want used, don't lie on your back with it sticking up like that. If that isn't an invitation, I don't know what is."
"I was asleep. It does that on its own." It was doing it on its own right know, as a matter of fact. It poked her in the stomach.
She looked down... and smiled. It was a smile that made his testicles draw up in fear.
With a sniff, she turned her back on him and ignored him as she finished showering.
"Hey!" he said, to get her attention. Alarm was in his tone. "You aren't going to let this one go to waste are you? ~ Linda Howard,#NFDB
461:Look, I never meant to get involved with Lock and Deep in the first place and now everything is all messed up and my whole life feels out of control! I can feel their emotions filling me up until I think I’m drowning. Can you help me block them? Lock said you might be able to.” Mother L’rin shook her head. “Only with a full bond is mind privacy possible.” Kat’s heart sank. “So you’re saying in order to have any kind of peace I’d have to tie myself to them for life?” The wise woman nodded solemnly. “Bonded to them you must be.” “But I can’t be. I don’t want to be,” Kat protested. “Until you are, weak you will be.” Mother L’rin poked a finger at her. “The pain…return it will.” “It will?” Kat felt sick. Come to think of it, she hadn’t felt anything like the symptoms she’d had while she was aboard the Mother ship since she woke up. But just the thought of enduring that splitting headache again was hideous. “You must touch them—one at least. Both is better.” Mother L’rin nodded sagely. “As greater your weakness grows, the more deeply must you touch.” “You mean like a…” Kat cleared her throat. “Like a sexual touch?” “Yes, yes.” Mother L’rin nodded vigorously. “The bond it strengthens. Your pain will ease.” “But I don’t want to be bonded to them,” Kat said, feeling like a broken record. ~ Evangeline Anderson, #NFDB
462:A maiden? Out here? And scented with festering carcasses?” Vladamir searched the forest that surrounded his castle. The hum of insects was quite clear on the morning air, and he noticed that the red bristled pigs grazing just beyond his walls were undisturbed. Nor could he detect movement within the barren limbs of the trees. Finally satisfied that the girl was alone, he turned his attention back to Ulric. He refused to show any interest in the maiden.
“Wake her and send her on her way.” He kept his voice passionless and made no effort to help the woman. “If she is dead, burn her, for I won’t tolerate that wretched smell in my bailey.”
“Should we not try to find out who she is first? Mayhap there are those who search fer her even now. Would you deny her kinsmen a proper burial?” Ulric protested quietly.
“Do as I command!” Vladamir insisted in a low growl. Even as he did so, he saw the knights that manned the wall look over the girl with curious stares. He heard their whispering as it drifted down, though he couldn’t make out their hasty words. He didn’t need to. The woman was more than likely a Saxon wench and they would wish to know whom, for none in the manor were missing. If she was dead, there was nothing he could do for her. He didn’t need this headache. His life was stressed enough. ~ Michelle M Pillow,#NFDB
463:What did those people teach you?" he asked me one night, mystified. "What exactly do Catholics believe?"
I'd been preparing my whole life for this question. "First of all, blood. BLOOD. Second of all, thorns. Third of all, put dirt on your forehead. Do it right now. Fourth of all, Martin Luther was a pig in a cloak. Fifth of all, Jesus is alive, but he's also dead, and he's also immortal, but he's also made of clouds, and his face is a picture of infinite peace, but he also always looks like one of those men in a headache commercial, because you'rec causing him so much suffering whenever you cuss. He is so gentle that sheep seem like demented murderers in his presence, but also rays of sunlight shoot out of his face so hard they can kill people. In fact, they do kill people, and one day they will kill you. He has a tattoo of a daisy on his lower back and he gets his hair permed every eight weeks. He's wearing a flowing white dress, but only because people didn't know about jeans back then. He's holding up two fingers because his dad won't let him have a gun. If he lived on earth, he would have a white truck, plastered with bumper stickers of Calvin peeing on a smaller Calvin who is not a Catholic."
Jason was aghast. "Thorns?" he whispered. "But that's the most dangerous part of the rose. ~ Patricia Lockwood,#NFDB
464:All the other children at my school are stupid. Except I'm not meant to call them stupid, even though this is what they are. I'm meant to say that they have learning difficulties or that they have special needs. But this is stupid because everyone has learning difficulties because learning to speak French or understanding relativity is difficult and also everyone has special needs, like Father, who has to carry a little packet of artificial sweetening tablets around with him to put in his coffee to stop him from getting fat, or Mrs. Peters, who wears a beige-colored hearing aid, or Siobhan, who has glasses so thick that they give you a headache if you borrow them, and none of these people are Special Needs, even if they have special needs.
But Siobhan said we have to use those words because people used to call children like the children at school spaz and crip and mong, which were nasty words. But that is stupid too because sometimes the children from the school down the road see us in the street when we're getting off the bus and they shout, "Special Needs! Special Needs!" But I don't take any notice because I don't listen to what other people say and only sticks and stones can break my bones and I have a Swiss Army knife if they hit me and if I kill them it will be self-defense and I won't go to prison. ~ Mark Haddon,#NFDB
465:That night Serena dressed to meet Zahi. She used a metallic green eye shadow on the top lids and the outer half of the bottom lids so that her eyes looked like a jungle cat's. Two coats of black mascara completed them, and then she smudged a light gold gloss on her lips.
She took a red skirt from the closet. The material was snakelike, shimmering black, then red. She slipped it on and tied the black strings of a matching bib halter around her neck and waist. She painted red-and-black glittering flames on her legs and rubbed glossy shine on her arms and chest.
Finally, she took the necklace she had bought at the garage sale and fixed it in her hairline like the headache bands worn by flappers back in the 1920's. The jewels hung on her forehead, making her look like an exotic maharani.
She sat at her dressing table and painted her toenails and fingernails gold, then looked in the mirror. A thrill jolted through her as it always did. No matter how many times she saw her reflection after the transformation, her image always astonished her. She looked supernatural, a spectral creature, green eyes large, skin glowing, eyelashes longer, thicker. Everything about her was more forceful and elegant- an enchantress goddess. She couldn't pull away from her reflection. It was as if the warrior in her had claimed the night. ~ Lynne Ewing,#NFDB
466:The Kettle
There’s many a house of grandeur,
With turret, tower and dome,
That knows not peace or comfort,
And does not prove a home.
I do not ask for splendour
To crown my daily lot,
But this I ask – a kitchen
Where the kettles always hot.
If things are not all ship-shape,
I do not fume or fret,
A little clean disorder
Does not my nerves upset.
But one thing is essential,
Or seems so in my thought,
And that’s a tidy kitchen
Where the kettle’s always hot.
In my Aunt Hattie’s household,
Though skies outside are drear,
Though times are dark and troubled,
You’ll always find good cheer.
And in her quaint old kitchen –
The very homiest spot –
The kettle’s always singing,
The water’s always hot.
And if you have a headache,
Whate’er the hour may be,
There is no tedious waiting
To get your cup of tea.
I don’t know how she does it –
Some magic she has caught –
For the kitchen’s cool in summer,
Yet the kettle’s always hot.
Oh, there’s naught else so dreary
In household kingdom found
As a cold and sullen kettle
606
That does not make a sound.
And I think that love is lacking
In the hearts in such a spot,
Or the kettle would be singing
And the water would be hot.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,#NFDB
467:She wobbled, steadying herself against the pale blue walls. “You’ve been going out alone?”
“Yes.” He reached out for her arm, but she tore it away from him. “Beth—”
She yanked open the door. “Don’t touch me.”
The thing clapped shut behind her.
Rage at himself had Wrath spinning toward his desk, and the instant he saw all the papers, all the requests, all the complaints, all the problems, it was like someone hooked jumper cables up to his shoulder blades and hit him with a charge.
He shot forward, swept his arms across the top, and sent the shit flying everywhere. As papers fluttered down like snow, he took off his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes, a headache spearing into his frontal lobe.
Robbed of breath, he stumbled around, finding his chair by feel and collapsing into the damn thing. With a ragged grunt, he let his head fall back.
These stress headaches were becoming a daily occurrence lately, wiping him out and lingering like a flu that refused to be cured.
Beth. His Beth…
When he heard a knock, he gave the f-word a workout. The knock came again. “What,” he barked.
Rhage put his head around the jamb, then froze. “Ah…”
“What.”
“Yeah, well…Ah, going by the door slamming—and, wow, the stiff wind that clearly just blew by your desk—do you still want to meet with us?”
-Beth, Wrath, & Rhage ~ J R Ward,#NFDB
468:You won’t tell her I told you about not being able to read, will you? She hides it really well.” He inhales deeply. “I already knew. I’ve seen her read to Hayley.” He looks into my face. “Is that why you spoke to her?” I went eight years without saying a word. And she made me want to talk again. I nod. “She couldn’t read what I wrote down.” “You talked to her all along didn’t you?” He smiles, but it’s only a half-smile. “Pretty much from the day that I met her,” I admit. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.” I feel bad now. I went years without speaking. “You guys all made it really easy for me to retreat and not speak since you all learned to sign.” “You’re fucking deaf, dumbass. What else were we going to do?” A lot of deaf families never learn sign language. “I’m sorry,” I repeat. “It was easier being quiet.” “She doesn’t make anything easy for you, does she?” “What? She makes everything easy for me. I didn’t even choose to talk. It just happened.” I smile. She turns me inside out. “I love her so fucking much.” “I know you want to be a man about this, but her father’s going to fight you the whole way.” “I know.” I wish that wasn’t the case. “But I feel like I need to be open with him.” “You’re going to get a fat fucking headache from banging your head against that wall.” “She had to wear a scarf to school today to cover up her neck.” “Fucker,” Paul swears. ~ Tammy Falkner, #NFDB
469:The angels came up to Jesus carrying Gabriel and Uriel. Raphael said, “Mikael is on his way to Tartarus with Ba’al.” Saraqael and Raguel approached from out of the black. Saraqael said, “Pan got away. He is a slippery scoundrel, that one.” Mary smiled broadly. “I know where he went.” They looked to her for more. She said, “He went to Gaia, the Mother Earth Goddess.” Gabriel said, “Well, isn’t that convenient. That old gnarly tree was next on our list. We can kill two gods with one battle axe.” He still had his wit through his wounds. Uriel croaked through his migraine headache. “Wrong, Gabriel. Three gods.” They all remembered that the Earth Goddess carried within her tangled roots of evil another demoness long worthy of punishment. Gabriel gave a lighthearted laugh, “Well, Uriel, I do defer. You have bested me verbally while suffering a worse handicap.” They both looked to Jesus for approval and they got it in the form of a very subtle smirk of acceptance. Uriel was not done. “Jesus, would you say that ‘little buddy’ remark from Gabriel constituted a putdown?” “That was a term of affection,” complained Gabriel. Jesus broke into a broad smile. “Do not start again, or I won’t bring you to find Gaia.” The two angels groaned simultaneously through their pains. Uriel said, “Our tongues will heal as quick as our wounds.” Jesus smiled. Mary said to Jesus, “I know where she hides. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
470:Hopefully not another employee stealing credit cards, Brooke mused. Or any sort of headache-inducing “oops moment,” like the time one of the restaurant managers called to ask if he could fire a line cook after discovering that the man was a convicted murderer.
“Jeez. How’d you learn that?” Brooke had asked.
“He made a joke to one of the waiters about honing his cooking skills in prison. The waiter asked what he’d been serving time for, and he said, ‘Murder.’”
“I bet that put an end to the conversation real fast. And yes, you can fire him,” Brooke had said.
“Obviously, he lied on his employment application.” All of Sterling’s employees, regardless of job position, were required to answer whether they’d ever been convicted of a crime involving “violence, deceit, or theft.” Pretty safe to say that murder qualified.
Ten minutes later, the manager had called her back.
“Um . . . what if he didn’t exactly lie? I just double-checked his application, and as it turns out, he did check the box for having been convicted of a crime.”
Brooke had paused at that. “And then the next question, where we ask what crime he’d been convicted for, what did he write?”
“Uh . . . ‘second-degree murder.’”
“I see. Just a crazy suggestion here, Cory, but you might want to start reading these applications a little more closely before making employment offers.”
“Please don’t fire me. ~ Julie James,#NFDB
471:Invisible Work
Because no one could ever praise me enough,
because I don't mean these poems only
but the unseen
unbelievable effort it takes to live
the life that goes on between them,
I think all the time about invisible work.
About the young mother on Welfare
I interviewed years ago,
who said, "It's hard.
You bring him to the park,
run rings around yourself keeping him safe,
cut hot dogs into bite-sized pieces fro dinner,
and there's no one
to say what a good job you're doing,
how you were patient and loving
for the thousandth time even though you had a headache."
And I, who am used to feeling sorry for myself
because I am lonely,
when all the while,
as the Chippewa poem says, I am being carried
by great winds across the sky,
thought of the invisible work that stitches up the world day and night,
the slow, unglamorous work of healing,
the way worms in the garden
tunnel ceaselessly so the earth can breathe
and bees ransack this world into being,
while owls and poets stalk shadows,
our loneliest labors under the moon.
There are mothers
for everything, and the sea
is a mother too,
whispering and whispering to us
long after we have stopped listening.
I stopped and let myself lean
a moment, against the blue
shoulder of the air. The work
of my heart
is the work of the world's heart.
There is no other art.
~ Alison Luterman,#NFDB
472:In the pixel promises of satellites it could be the Grand Canyon, its awesome chasms and spires, its photogenic strata, our great empty, where so many of us once stood feeling so compressed against all that vastness, so dense, wondering if there wasn’t a way to breathe some room between the bits of us, where we once stood feeling the expected smallness a little, but also a headache where our eyeballs scraped against the limits of our vision, or rather of our imagination, because it was a painting we were seeing though we stood at the sanctioned rim of the real deal. Instead we saw a photograph, blue mist hanging in the foreground, snow collars around the thick rusty trestles. Motel art, and it made us wonder finally how we could have been so cavalier with photography, how we managed a scoff when warned that the cloaked box would swallow a part of the soul. Although in this instance the trouble was not, strictly speaking, the filching of the subject’s soul, for while our souls are meager, nature has surplus. Yet something of the mechanism’s subject was indeed dissolved in that silver chloride, flattened then minted as those promiscuous postcards we saw now, which we could not now unsee, for we had accepted unawares a bit of the Canyon each time we saw a photograph of it, and those pieces, filtered and diluted, had accumulated in us, so that we never saw anything for the first time. Perhaps the ugliest of our impulses, to shove the sublime through a pinhole. ~ Claire Vaye Watkins, #NFDB
473:The Children
The children are all crying in their pens
and the surf carries their cries away.
They are old men who have seen too much,
their mouths are full of dirty clothes,
the tongues poverty, tears like puss.
The surf pushes their cries back.
Listen.
They are bewitched.
They are writing down their life
on the wings of an elf
who then dissolves.
They are writing down their life
on a century fallen to ruin.
They are writing down their life
on the bomb of an alien God.
I am too.
We must get help.
The children are dying in their pens.
Their bodies are crumbling.
Their tongues are twisting backwards.
There is a certain ritual to it.
There is a dance they do in their pens.
Their mouths are immense.
They are swallowing monster hearts.
So is my mouth.
Listen.
We must all stop dying in the little ways,
in the craters of hate,
in the potholes of indifferencea murder in the temple.
The place I live in
is a maze
and I keep seeking
the exit or the home.
Yet if I could listen
to the bulldog courage of those children
and turn inward into the plague of my soul
with more eyes than the stars
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I could melt the darknessas suddenly as that time
when an awful headache goes away
or someone puts out the fireand stop the darkness and its amputations
and find the real McCoy
in the private holiness
of my hands.
~ Anne Sexton,#NFDB
474:When was the last contact you had with him?” Oscar asked.
Ira took a long swig from his canteen, replaced the cap, and scrunched up his nose. “Five years ago,” he answered, then let out a wet burp. “’Scuse me, love.”
Camille grimaced and sipped water from her own canteen.
“Then you can’t be sure he’s still in Port Adelaide,” Oscar continued.
Ira placed a hunk of salt pork in a pot with a few handfuls of small white beans and water. “Sure I can. Old Monty would’ve sent word if he packed up.” But Ira’s face darkened and his hand covered his stubbled beard. “Course, not if Stella went and told him ‘bout that time in Sydney.”
Camille closed her eyes and knitted her fingers to keep them from forming fists. Oscar sat with his head in his large hands, as though he had an unbearable headache. Looking back at Ira, she figured he probably did.
“Who is Stella and what happened in Sydney?” she asked.
“Monty’s wife and an act I can’t describe with a lady present,” Ira crowed.
“Well, aren’t you a gentleman,” Oscar said under his breath.
“Don’t worry, mate. Stella’s conscience is buried so far under her folds of skin, she’s bound never to find it.”
Ira stoked the small flames and showed them his toothy grin. “She’s a lot of woman to love, that Stella.”
Camille’s eyes watered with shock.
“I don’t think you could bluff your way out of that one,” Oscar said. Ira jumped into a crouch, bobbing up and down.
“Wait till you see me bluff. It’s like an art. ~ Angie Frazier,#NFDB
475:The Ogre Slam-The-Door
There is a certain castle that is beautiful and fair,
And plants, and birds, and pretty things, fill every room and hall,
But alas! for the unhappy folks who make their dwelling there,
A dreadful ogre haunts the house and tries to kill them all.
Some day I fear will find them dead and stretched out in their gore
The victims of this ogre grim, this wicked Slam-the-door!
He's a very tiny ogre just about as tall as you!
He never carries hidden arms, or plays with guns and knives.
And yet he almost splits the heads of people thro' and thro.'
And I think him very dangerous to comfort and to lives.
And he often shakes the castle from the ceiling to the floor.
This awful, awful ogre known as little Slam-the-door.
He gets up bright and early, and he's, oh, so wide awake!
And wo! to all the sleepy heads and invalids who doze,
They dream the sky is caving in, or that a vast earthquake
Has suddenly convulsed the world and ended their repose,
As to and fro, and up and down, still noisier than before,
They hear the hurrying, flurrying feet of ogre Slam-the-door.
Though the Princess of the Castle has a headache, and is ill,
Though the Prince is in his study and wants quiet for an hour,
This wicked little ogre won't be quiet-or keep still
I almost think he sometimes knows he has them in his power.
Alas, alas for all the folks, their sorrows I deploreThe folks shut in that castle with the ogre Slam-the-door.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,#NFDB
476:He felt as my papa felt,” Sara thought. “He was ill as my papa was; but he did not die.”
So her heart was more drawn to him than before. When she was sent out at night she used sometimes to feel quite glad, because there was always a chance that the curtains of the house next door might not yet be closed and she could look into the warm room and see her adopted friend. When no one was about she used sometimes to stop, and, holding to the iron railings, wish him good night as if he could hear her.
“Perhaps you can feel if you can’t hear,” was her fancy. “Perhaps kind thoughts reach people somehow, even through windows and doors and walls. Perhaps you feel a little warm and comforted, and don’t know why, when I am standing here in the cold and hoping you will get well and happy again. I am so sorry for you,” she would whisper in an intense little voice. “I wish you had a ‘Little Missus’ who could pet you as I used to pet papa when he had a headache. I should like to be your ‘Little Missus’ myself, poor dear! Good night--good night. God bless you!”
She would go away, feeling quite comforted and a little warmer herself. Her sympathy was so strong that it seemed as if it must reach him somehow as he sat alone in his armchair by the fire, nearly always in a great dressing gown, and nearly always with his forehead resting in his hand as he gazed hopelessly into the fire. He looked to Sara like a man who had a trouble on his mind still, not merely like one whose troubles lay all in the past. ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett,#NFDB
477:During her time at Miss Porter’s School in Farmington she had often become depressed and was hobbled by fatigue. In 1887, when she was twenty, she wrote in her diary, “Tears come without any provocation. Headache all day.” The school’s headmistress and founder, Sarah Porter, offered therapeutic counsel. “Cheer up,” she told Theodate. “Always be happy.” It did not work. The next year, in March 1888, her parents sent her to Philadelphia, to be examined and cared for by Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, a physician famous for treating patients, mainly women, suffering from neurasthenia, or nervous exhaustion. Mitchell’s solution for Theodate was his then-famous “Rest Cure,” a period of forced inactivity lasting up to two months. “At first, and in some cases for four or five weeks, I do not permit the patient to sit up or to sew or write or read,” Mitchell wrote, in his book Fat and Blood. “The only action allowed is that needed to clean the teeth.” He forbade some patients from rolling over on their own, insisting they do so only with the help of a nurse. “In such cases I arrange to have the bowels and water passed while lying down, and the patient is lifted on to a lounge at bedtime and sponged, and then lifted back again into the newly-made bed.” For stubborn cases, he reserved mild electrical shock, delivered while the patient was in a filled bathtub. His method reflected his own dim view of women. In his book Wear and Tear; or, Hints for the Overworked, he wrote that women “would do far better if the brain were very lightly tasked. ~ Erik Larson, #NFDB
478:Speaking of chocolate, what kind of cake are we having for the shower?”
“I don’t know.”
Sincerely shocked, Peabody jerked around in her seat. “You didn’t get cake?”
“I don’t know. Probably.” Because the idea of the shower, what she had to do, hadn’t done, should do, made her stomach jitter, Eve squirmed. “Look, I called the caterer, okay? I did it myself. I didn’t dump it on Roarke, I didn’t ask—God forbid—Summerset to handle it.”
“Well, what did you ask for? What’s the theme?”
The jitters escalated into a roiling. “What do you mean, theme?”
“You don’t have a theme? How can you have a baby shower without a theme?”
“Jesus Christ, I need a theme? I don’t even know what that means. I called the caterer. I did my job. I told her it was a baby shower. I told her how many people, more or less. I told her when and where. She started asking me all kinds of questions, which gives me a fucking headache, and I told her not to ask me all kinds of questions or she was fired. Just to do whatever needed doing. Why isn’t that enough?”
Peabody’s sigh was long and heartfelt. “Give me the caterer’s info, and I’ll check in with her. Does she do the decorations, too?”
“Oh, my God. I need decorations?”
“I’m going to help you, Dallas. I’m going to run interference with the caterer. I’m going to come over early on the day and help get it set up.”
Eve narrowed her eyes and tried to ignore the joy and relief bubbling in her breast. “And what’s this going to cost me?”
“Nothing. I like baby showers.”
“You’re a sick, sick woman. ~ J D Robb,#NFDB
479:1.The moment you realize that the person you cared for has nothing intellectually or spiritually to offer you, but a headache.
2. The moment you realize God had greater plans for you that don’t involve crying at night or sad Pinterest quotes.
3. The moment you stop comparing yourself to others because it undermines your worth, education and your parent’s wisdom.
4. The moment you live your dreams, not because of what it will prove or get you, but because that is all you want to do. People’s opinions don’t matter.
5. The moment you realize that no one is your enemy, except yourself.
6. The moment you realize that you can have everything you want in life. However, it takes timing, the right heart, the right actions, the right passion and a willingness to risk it all. If it is not yours, it is because you really didn’t want it, need it or God prevented it.
7. The moment you realize the ghost of your ancestors stood between you and the person you loved. They really don't want you mucking up the family line with someone that acts anything less than honorable.
8. The moment you realize that happiness was never about getting a person. They are only a helpmate towards achieving your life mission.
9. The moment you believe that love is not about losing or winning. It is just a few moments in time, followed by an eternity of situations to grow from.
10. The moment you realize that you were always the right person. Only ignorant people walk away from greatness.”
― Shannon L. Alder ~ Shannon L Alder,#NFDB
480:Dignity
/ˈdignitē/ noun
1. The moment you realize that the person you cared for has nothing intellectually or spiritually to offer you, but a headache.
2. The moment you realize God had greater plans for you that don’t involve crying at night or sad Pinterest quotes.
3. The moment you stop comparing yourself to others because it undermines your worth, education and your parent’s wisdom.
4. The moment you live your dreams, not because of what it will prove or get you, but because that is all you want to do. People’s opinions don’t matter.
5. The moment you realize that no one is your enemy, except yourself.
6. The moment you realize that you can have everything you want in life. However, it takes timing, the right heart, the right actions, the right passion and a willingness to risk it all. If it is not yours, it is because you really didn’t want it, need it or God prevented it.
7. The moment you realize the ghost of your ancestors stood between you and the person you loved. They really don't want you mucking up the family line with someone that acts anything less than honorable.
8. The moment you realize that happiness was never about getting a person. They are only a helpmate towards achieving your life mission.
9. The moment you believe that love is not about losing or winning. It is just a few moments in time, followed by an eternity of situations to grow from.
10. The moment you realize that you were always the right person. Only ignorant people walk away from greatness. ~ Shannon L Alder,#NFDB
481:In times of distress everyone calls for help; in times of toothache, and earache, in doubt, fear and insecurity. In secret everyone calls out hoping that One will hear and grant their requests. Privately, secretly, people perform good deeds to ward off weakness and restore their strength, trusting that Life will accept their gifts and efforts. When they are restored to health and peace of mind, then suddenly their faith leaves, and the phantom of anxiety soon returns.
“O God,” they cry again, “we were in such a terrible state when, with all sincerity, we called upon you from our prison corner. For a hundred prayers you granted our requests. Now, freed of the prison, we are still as much in need. Bring us out of this world of darkness into that world of the prophets, the world of light. Why can freedom not come without prisons and pain? A thousand desires fill us, both good and deceitful, and the conflict of these phantoms brings a thousand tortures that leave us weary. Where is that sure faith that burns up all phantoms?”
God answers, “The seeker of pleasure in you is your enemy and My enemy. When your pleasure-seeking self is imprisoned, filled with trouble and pain, then your freedom arrives and gathers strength. A thousand times you have proved that freedom comes to you out of toothache, headache and fear. Why then are you chained to bodily comfort? Why are you always occupied with tending the flesh? Do not forget the end of that thread: unravel those bodily passions till you have attained your eternal passion, and find freedom from the prison of darkness. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
482:Ronan was waiting in his family’s stables. He played with the gloves in his hands as he stood watching Kestrel and Arin ride toward him.
“I thought you would take the carriage,” Ronan said to Kestrel.
“To go riding? Really, Ronan.”
“But your escort.” His eyes cut to Arin sitting easily on the stallion. “I didn’t think any of your slaves rode.”
Kestrel watched Ronan tug at the gloves’ fingers. “Is there a problem?”
“Now that you are here, certainly not.” Yet his voice was strained.
“Because if you don’t like the way in which I have come, you may ride to my house the next time you invite me, then escort me back to your estate, then see me safely home again, and go back the way you came.”
He responded to her words as if they had been flirtatious. “It would be my pleasure. Speaking of pleasure, let’s take some together.” He mounted his horse.
“Where is Jess?”
“Sick with a headache.”
Somehow Kestrel doubted that. She said nothing, however, and let Ronan lead the way out of the stables. She turned to follow, and Arin did the same.
Ronan glanced back, blond hair brushing over his shoulder. “Surely you don’t intend for him to join us.”
Arin’s horse, perfectly calm up until this point, began to shift and balk. It was sensing the tension Kestrel couldn’t see in its rider, who looked impassively at her, waiting for her to translate Ronan’s words into Herrani so that he could pretend it was necessary. “Wait here,” she told him in his language. He wheeled the horse back toward the stables.
“You should vary your escorts,” Ronan told Kestrel as Arin rode away. “That one stays too close to your heels. ~ Marie Rutkoski,#NFDB
483:Parting
A man is standing in the hall
His house not recognizing.
Her sudden leaving was a flight,
Herself, maybe, surprising.
The chaos reigning in the room
He does not try to master.
His tears and headache hide in gloom
The extent of his disaster.
His ears are ringing all day long
As though he has been drinking.
And why is it that all the time
Of waves he keeps on thinking?
When frosty window-panes blank out
The world of light and motion,
Despair and grief are doubly like
The desert of the ocean.
She was as dear to him, as close
In all her ways and features,
As is the seashore to the wave,
The ocean to the beaches.
As over rushes, after storm
The swell of water surges,
Into the deepness of his soul
Her memory submerges.
In years of strife, in times which were
Unthinkable to live in,
Upon a wave of destiny
To him she had been driven,
Through countless obstacles, and past
All dangers never-ended,
The wave had carried, carried her,
Till close to him she'd landed.
110
And now, so suddenly, she'd left.
What power overrode them?
The parting will destroy them both,
The grief bone-deep corrode them.
He looks around him. On the floor
In frantic haste she'd scattered
The contents of the cupboard, scraps
Of stuff, her sewing patterns.
He wanders through deserted rooms
And tidies up for hours;
Till darkness falls he folds away
Her things into the drawers;
And pricks his finger on a pin
In her unfinished sewing,
And sees the whole of her again,
And silent tears come flowing.
~ Boris Pasternak,#NFDB
484:Archer's necklace thing may have spared us the crushing headache and loss of breath, but it didn't make the landing any more graceful. We were tossed into a thick copse of trees as we came out of the blackness, and I immediately tripped over a huge exposed root, scraping my elbow on a branch as I went down.
Unfortunately, since the necklace was looped around both our necks, that meant Archer fell too. On top of me.
In another lifetime,that might have been kind of pleasant. And yeah, he still smelled nice, and as I grabbed his shoulders to push him away, I remembered that he was a lot stronger than his thin frame would suggest.
But none of that mattered. I didn't get to notice those things about him anymore.
The ground I was lying on was muddy, and I had a feeling I'd be pulling leaves and twigs out of my hair for all eternity. "Get off of me!" I mumbled against his collarbone, shoving at him. He rolled over onto his back, his sword clanging against a rock or exposed root, but thanks to the necklace, that just pulled me half on top of him.
"And here I thought you were playing hard to get," he whispered. Moonlight glinted in his eyes, and he sounded a little out of breath. I told myself it was just from the fall.
I thwacked his chest with the palm of my hand, then ducked my head underneath the necklace. Once I was free, I scooted away from him. "Let me guess," I hissed, nodding at the chain. "Something else you stole from Hex Hall."
He pushed himself to his feet. "Guilty."
"Where the heck was I while you were playing Grand Theft Cellar?"
"I only took a few things, and most of those I grabbed during those last few weeks when you weren't talking to me. ~ Rachel Hawkins,#NFDB
485:37. Be Kind
Enthusiasm, ability and aptitude all have to be on someone’s CV before I’ll take them into a life or death situation, but when I am putting a team together for an expedition, there’s one other quality I’m always looking out for - kindness.
Expeditions into jungles or across deserts or raging oceans are never easy. However much we might romanticize the lives of explorers, when you are in the middle of an inflatable boat with 50-foot waves all around, you haven’t slept for three days, or you have been struggling with an injury in silence for a week, it is the little things that count.
What you really want from the people you are with is that they are kind - to know that they are on your side when the chips are down.
Let me give you a couple of examples: once you get above 25,000 feet (7,500 metres) on a mountain, and the temperature drops to minus 45°, if you don’t get a headache - the kind that grips your head like a nut in a pair of pliers - then you’re not human. Part of this is the altitude, part is the inevitable dehydration that comes from the thin air. So working hard 24/7 to keep hydrated is essential.
The only way to get water, though, is to melt the ice. But at that height, at that temperature, melting enough snow and ice to drink can take hours. The good expedition member is the one who gives their buddies the first sip or the last swig of that precious water. In the extremes it is the little things that stand out.
So try and look at all those sorts of moments as chances to distinguish yourself - and it is the kind, unselfish mountaineer who is loved and is often the real bedrock of a great team. ~ Bear Grylls,#NFDB
486:And after?”
“As we discussed. Honor the Covenant. No more forced levies; tax reform; trade reestablished with the outside, minus the tariffs that went into the Merindar personal fortune. That’s to start.”
Bran shrugged, rubbed his hands from his jaw to through his hair, then he turned to me. “Mel?”
“I would prefer to discuss it later,” I said.
“What’s to discuss?” Bran said, spreading his hands.
“The little matter of the crown,” Shevraeth said dryly. “If we are finished, I propose we withdraw for the evening. We are all tired and would do the better for a night’s sleep.”
I turned to him. “You said to Bran we can leave, whatever we decide.”
He bowed.
“Good. We’ll leave in the morning. First light.”
Bran’s jaw dropped.
“I want to go home,” I said fiercely.
The Prince must have given some signal undiscernible to me, for suddenly a servant stood behind my chair, to whom Prince Alaerec said, “Please conduct the Countess to the chamber prepared for her.”
I got up, said to Bran, “I’ll need something to wear on the ride home.”
He slewed around in his chair. “But--“
I said even more fiercely than before, “Do you really think I ought to wear this home--even if it were mine, which it isn’t?”
“All right.” Branaric rubbed his eyes. “Curse it, I can’t think for this headache on me. Maybe I’d better turn in myself.”
He fell in step beside me and we were led out. I walked with as much dignity as I could muster, holding that dratted skirt out away from my feet. My shoulder blades itched; I imagined the two Renselaeuses staring, and I listened for the sound of their laughter long after we’d traversed the hall and gone up a flight of stairs. ~ Sherwood Smith,#NFDB
487:It’s like I have this demon inside of me, and I want it gone, but the idea of removing it via pill is . . . I don’t know . . . weird. But a lot of days I get over that, because I do really hate the demon.” “You often try to understand your experience through metaphor, Aza: It’s like a demon inside of you; you’ll call your consciousness a bus, or a prison cell, or a spiral, or a whirlpool, or a loop, or a—I think you once called it a scribbled circle, which I found interesting.” “Yeah,” I said. “One of the challenges with pain—physical or psychic—is that we can really only approach it through metaphor. It can’t be represented the way a table or a body can. In some ways, pain is the opposite of language.” She turned to her computer, shook her mouse to wake it up, and then clicked an image on her desktop. “I want to share something Virginia Woolf wrote: ‘English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear, has no words for the shiver and the headache. . . . The merest schoolgirl, when she falls in love, has Shakespeare or Keats to speak her mind for her; but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry.’ And we’re such language-based creatures that to some extent we cannot know what we cannot name. And so we assume it isn’t real. We refer to it with catch-all terms, like crazy or chronic pain, terms that both ostracize and minimize. The term chronic pain captures nothing of the grinding, constant, ceaseless, inescapable hurt. And the term crazy arrives at us with none of the terror and worry you live with. Nor do either of those terms connote the courage people in such pains exemplify, which is why I’d ask you to frame your mental health around a word other than crazy. ~ John Green, #NFDB
488:A Supermarket In California
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the
streets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit
supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles
full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! --- and you,
Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the
meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price
bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and
followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting
artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does
your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel
absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to
shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in
driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you
have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and
stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?
~ Allen Ginsberg,#NFDB
489:Romantic retrospect aside, the night spent in the truck is distinctly unpleasant. We are cramped and cold. The much-vaunted heating of the truck is ineffectual. The wind prises through the cracks in the sides of the windows, and penetrates us to the bone. My feet are moist in my shoes, yet to take my socks off is to chill my feet even further. We take every warm item of clothing out of our bags and swaddle ourselves into immobility. The sheepskin on the seat cuts out a bit of the cold rising from below. We share a blanket and Sui, before he goes off to sleep, makes sure I get a generous part of this. He then drops off to sleep, and tugs it away. He jockeys for space, and I am forced to lean forward. He begins to snore. To make it all worse, both he and Gyanseng sleeptalk. They have told me before tat I do, too, but I've never noticed it. What I do notice, however, late at night, with my two territorially acquisitive companions wedging me forwards, is that I have started talking to myself: naming the constellations I can see move across the mud-stained windscreen, interviewing myself, reciting odd snatches of poetry. I also notice that I am hungry, which is curious, because during the day I was not; and itchy, which is to be expected after so much unwashed travel; and sleepy, though I cannot sleep for cold and headache and discomfort; and alas, bored out of my mind.
When things get really bad, I imagine myself in a darkened room, up to my shoulders in a tub of hot water, with a glass of Grand Marnier beside me and the second movement of Mozart's Clarinet Quintet sounding gently in my ears. This voluptuous vision, rather than making my present condition seem even more insupportable, actually enables me to escape for a while from the complaints of my suffering body. ~ Vikram Seth,#NFDB
490:You never talk to the pitcher when…” He shook his head. “You just never talk to the pitcher when--”
“I just wanted to congratulate him on a good game--”
“It’s not over ’til it’s over,” Chase said.
“You jinxed me,” Jason said, crouching down in the corner, pressing his palms against his forehead, like he’d been struck with a migraine headache.
“You don’t really believe that superstitious--”
His head came up so fast, and his stare was so hard that I stopped. He did believe. He really did believe. And judging by the way the other guys were looking at me, they all believed.
I backed away, not knowing what to say. I’d just felt sorry for him because he was being ignored. The guy at bat struck out, and Brandon was next. Bird had her fingers crossed while clutching the wire of the fence.
“I think I just made a big mistake,” I said, my voice low.
“Yeah, I heard you. According to Brandon, you’re never supposed to use the term no-hitter in the dugout.”
“Well, I wasn’t technically in the dugout.”
“But your words traveled into the dugout. Close enough.”
“Great. You don’t really think I jinxed them, do you?”
Brandon struck out, the first time he’d struck out since playing for the Rattlers. When he walked by and glared at me, I found myself wishing Harry Potter was real, sitting in the stands, and could turn me into a rabbit’s foot. I didn’t really believe in bad luck. I believed we made our own luck, but I also understood the power of positive or negative thinking. If you think you’ll lose, you’ll lose.
The next inning, when six batters in a row got base hits off Jason, the coach put in a relief pitcher.
By that time, even people in the stands were looking at me like it was my fault. Someone suggested I sit behind the dugout of the visiting team. ~ Rachel Hawthorne,#NFDB
491:What’s your name?” he asked again. She pursed her lips tight, shaking her head. Her eyes welled up again. “It’s okay,” he said softly. “Really.” “Paige,” she whispered, a tear running down her cheek. “Paige,” she repeated in a small voice. “Yeah, that’s good. That’s a pretty name. You can say your name around here without being afraid.” “Your name?” “John,” he said, then wondered why he had done that. Something about her, he guessed. “John Middleton. No one calls me John, though. I’m known as Preacher.” “You’re a preacher?” “No,” he said with a short laugh. “Way far from it. The only one ever to call me John was my mother.” “What did your father call you?” she asked him. “Kid,” he said, and smiled. “Hey, kid,” he emphasized. “Why do they call you Preacher?” “Aw,” he said, ducking shyly. “I don’t know. I got the nickname way back, when I was just a kid in the Marine Corps. The boys said I was kinda straitlaced and uptight.” “Really? Are you?” “Nah, not really,” he said. “I never used to curse at all. I used to go to mass, when there was a mass. I grew up around priests and nuns—my mother was real devout. None of the boys ever went to mass, that I remember. And I kind of hung back when they went out to get drunk and look for women. I don’t know...I never felt like doing that. I’m not good with women.” He smiled suddenly. “That should be obvious right away, huh? And getting drunk never really appealed to me.” “But you have a bar?” she asked. “It’s Jack’s bar. He watches over people real good. We don’t let anybody out of here if they’re not safe, you know? I like a shot at the end of the day, but no reason to get a headache over it, right?” He grinned at her. “Should I call you John?” she asked him. “Or Preacher?” “Whatever you want.” “John,” she said. “Okay?” “If you want. Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I like that. Been a while since anyone called me that.” She ~ Robyn Carr, #NFDB
492:He pulled me toward him so that I was resting on my side. I coughed up some more water. He took off his wet shirt and folded it. Then he gently lifted me and placed it under my sore head, which hurt too much to appreciate his…bronzed…sculpted…muscular…bare chest.
Well I guess I must be okay if I can appreciate the view, I thought. Sheesh, I’d have to be dead not to appreciate it.
I winced as Ren’s hand brushed against my head, shaking me from my reverie.
“You’ve got a major bump here.”
I reached up to feel the giant lump on the back of my skull. I gingerly touched it and recalled the source of my headache. I must have lost consciousness when the rock hit me. Ren saved my life. Again.
I looked up at him. He was kneeling next to me with a look of desperation on his face, and his body was shaking. I realized that he must have changed to a man, dragged me out of the pool, and then remained by my side until I woke up. Who knows how long I’ve been laying here unconscious.
“Ren, you’re in pain. You’ve been in this form too long today.”
He shook his head in denial, but I saw him grit his teeth.
I pressed my hand on his arm. “I’ll be okay. It’s just a bump on the head. Don’t worry about me. I’m sure Mr. Kadam has some aspirin tucked away in the backpack. I’ll just take that and lie down to rest for a while. I’ll be alright.”
He trailed his finger slowly from my temple to my cheek and smiled softly. When he pulled back, his whole arm shook and tremors rippled under the surface of his skin. “Kells, I-“
His face tightened. He threw his head to the side, snarled angrily, and morphed to a tiger again. He softly growled, then quieted, and drew close beside me. He lay down next to me and watched me carefully with his alert blue eyes. I stroked his back, partly to reassure him and partly because it soothed me too. ~ Colleen Houck,#NFDB
493:Squealing, Ashley threw her arms around Miranda, while Gage ducked swiftly out of the way.
“You’ll get used to her, Miranda,” Parker sighed, pulling Ashley back.
But Ashley broke free at once. “Miss Dupree loved your idea! She can’t wait to see how we put it all together. She says it’s the most original and creative topic in the whole class!”
“Make that the most ridiculous,” Parker mutter.
Miranda tried valiantly to resist Ashley’s hug. “Hey. It wasn’t my idea--”
“Don’t be so modest! Of course it was!” Giving Miranda one last squeeze, Ashley got down to business. “Okay. So we’ll all meet at the library later and start our planning. You can come, can’t you, Miranda?”
“Well, I--”
Parker’s loud groan cut her off. “Oh please, not the library. All that whispering gives me a headache.”
“You are a headache.” Roo yawned.
“Let’s just go to The Tavern. I need background music.”
“Too crowded. Too noisy.” Shaking his head, Gage leaned in toward Miranda. “It’s a restaurant,” he explained. “Not much to look at, but the food’s great. Everybody hangs out there.”
Roo did a thumbs-down. “Two no votes for The Tavern. It won’t get dark for a while--why don’t we just go to the Falls?”
Looks passed from one to another, followed by nods all around.
“Have you seen the bayou yet, Miranda?” Gage asked, while she fumbled for an excuse.
“Not exactly. I mean, sort of, from a distance. But really, I don’t think I can--”
“Then this’ll be a first for you!” Ashley was delighted. “We’ll be right on the bayou.”
Parker nodded, deadpan. “Alligators and water moccasins, up close and personal.”
“Oh, Parker, for heaven’s sake. Don’t listen to him, Miranda. I’ve never seen any nasty things around there.”
“Except for Roo,” Parker added. “She can be pretty nasty.”
Roo pointedly ignored him. The boys grinned, and Ashley chattered on. ~ Richie Tankersley Cusick,#NFDB
494:Echoes From The Sabine Farm
TO THE FOUNTAIN OF BANDUSIA
O FOUNTAIN of Bandusia!
Whence crystal waters flow,
With garlands gay and wine I ’ll pay
The sacrifice I owe;
A sportive kid with budding horns
I have, whose crimson blood
Anon shall dye and sanctify
Thy cool and babbling flood.
O fountain of Bandusia!
The Dog-star’s hateful spell
No evil brings into the springs
That from thy bosom well;
Here oxen, wearied by the plow,
The roving cattle here
Hasten in quest of certain rest,
And quaff thy gracious cheer.
O fountain of Bandusia!
Ennobled shalt thou be,
For I shall sing the joys that spring
Beneath yon ilex-tree.
Yes, fountain of Bandusia,
Posterity shall know
The cooling brooks that from thy nooks
Singing and dancing go.
TO LEUCONÖE
WHAT end the gods may have ordained for me,
And what for thee,
Seek not to learn, Leuconöe,—we may not know.
Chaldean tables cannot bring us rest.
’T is for the best
To bear in patience what may come, or weal or woe.
122
If for more winters our poor lot is cast,
Or this the last,
Which on the crumbling rocks has dashed Etruscan seas,
Strain clear the wine; this life is short, at best.
Take hope with zest,
And, trusting not To-morrow, snatch To-day for ease!
TO LEUCONÖE
II
SEEK not, Leuconöe, to know how long you ’re going to live yet,
What boons the gods will yet withhold, or what they ’re going to give yet;
For Jupiter will have his way, despite how much we worry:—
Some will hang on for many a day, and some die in a hurry.
The wisest thing for you to do is to embark this diem
Upon a merry escapade with some such bard as I am.
And while we sport I ’ll reel you off such odes as shall surprise ye;
To-morrow, when the headache comes,—well, then I ’ll satirize ye!
~ Eugene Field,#NFDB
495:Jane tried to keep the despondency to herself, though Mr. Nobley seemed to be keeping a pretty good eye on her, as usual. She took another bite of…poultry of some sort?...and decided she’d pull the headache excuse out of the bag and dismiss herself to bed as soon as the dinner torture was over. She hated to waste a single moment of her last days, but she felt pulled inside out and couldn’t figure out how to right herself.
She returned Mr. Nobley’s gaze. His eyebrows raised, he leaned forward slightly, his mannerisms asking, “Are you all right?” She shrugged. He frowned.
When the women stood to leave the gentlemen to their port and tobacco, Mr. Nobley rose as well and made his unapologetic way to Jane’s side.
“Miss Erstwhile, too long have you been asked to walk alone. May I accompany you to the drawing room?”
Her heart jigged.
“It’s not proper,” she whispered, the fear of Wattlesbrook in her. She didn’t want to be sent home, not before the ball.
“Proper be damned,” he said, low enough for just her ears.
Jane could feel all eyes on them. She took Mr. Nobley’s arm and walked across that negligible distance, stately as a bride. He found her a seat on a far sofa and sat beside her, and except for the fact that she couldn’t kick off her shoes and tuck her feet up under her, all felt pleasantly snug.
“How is the painting going?” he asked.
Of course it had been him (the paints). And of course it hadn’t been him (Colonel Andrews’s unseen smoking companion). Jane sighed happily.
“How do you do it? How do you make me feel so good? I don’t like that you can affect me so much, and I find you much more annoying than ever. But what I mean is, thank you for the paints.”
He wouldn’t acknowledge the thanks and pressed her for details instead, so she told him how it felt to manipulate color again, real color, real paint, not pixels and RGBs, like the joy in her muscles stretching after a long plane ride. ~ Shannon Hale,#NFDB
496:Fritz.”
The butler rushed over from the crudité arrangement he was working on. “Yes, master! I am eager to be of aid.”
“Take this.” iAm peeled the cat off himself, prying both of its front claws out of his fleece. “And do whatever it is you do with it.”
As he turned away, he felt like glancing back and making sure G*dd*mn was okay.
But why the fuck would he do that?
He had to get to Sal’s and check on his staff. Usually he hit the restaurant in the early afternoon, but shit had not been “usual,” what with that migraine: Every time his brother had one, they both got a headache. Now, though, with Trez rebounding and no doubt soon to be on the grind with that Chosen, it was time to get back on his own track. If only to keep himself from going psychotic.
Jesus Christ, Trez was now going to fuck that female. And God only knew where that was going to land them all.
Just as he hit the exit, he called out over his shoulder, “Fritz.”
Through the din of First Meal prep, the doggen answered back, “Yes, master?”
“I never find any seafood in this place. Why is that?”
“The King does not favor any manner of fin.”
“Would he allow it in here?”
“Oh, yes, master. Just not upon his table, and certainly never upon his plate.”
iAm stared at the panels of the door in front of him. “I want you to get some fresh salmon and poach it. Tonight.”
“But of course. I will not have it ready afore First Meal for you—”
“Not for me. I hate fish. It’s for G*dd*mn Cat. I want him served that regularly.” He pushed the door open. “And get him some fresh veggies. What kind of cat food does he eat?”
“Only the best. Hill’s Science Diet.”
“Find out what is in his food—and then I want everything hand-prepared. Nothing out of the bag for him from now on.”
Approval bloomed in the old doggen’s voice: “I’m sure Master Boo will appreciate your special interest.”
“I’m not interested in that bag of fur.”
-iAm, Fritz, & Boo ~ J R Ward,#NFDB
497:Our situation is much like that of a little girl who was taken by her mother to visit a chiropractor friend of mine. Her mother said, “I think something is wrong with my daughter. She is a very quiet little girl and always well behaved, but never once have I heard her laugh. In fact, she rarely even smiles.” My friend examined her and discovered a spinal misalignment that, she judged, would give the girl a terrific headache all the time. Fortunately, it was one of those misalignments that a chiropractor can correct easily and permanently. She made the adjustment—and the girl broke into a big laugh, the first her mother had ever heard. The omnipresent pain in her head, which she had come to accept as normal, was miraculously gone. Many of you might doubt that we live in a “sea of pain.” I feel pretty good right now myself. But I also carry a memory of a far more profound state of well-being, connectedness, and intensity of awareness that felt, at the time, like my birthright. Which state is normal? Could it be that we are bravely making the best of things? How much of our dysfunctional, consumptive behavior is simply a futile attempt to run away from a pain that is in fact everywhere? Running from one purchase to another, one addictive fix to the next, a new car, a new cause, a new spiritual idea, a new self-help book, a bigger number in the bank account, the next news story, we gain each time a brief respite from feeling pain. The wound at its source never vanishes though. In the absence of distraction—those moments of what we call “boredom”—we can feel its discomfort. Of course, any behavior that alleviates pain without healing its source can become addictive. We should therefore hesitate to cast judgment on anyone exhibiting addictive behavior (a category that probably includes nearly all of us). What we see as greed or weakness might merely be fumbling attempts to meet a need, when the true object of that need is unavailable. In that case the usual prescriptions for more discipline, self-control, or responsibility are counterproductive. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
498:Things I worried about on the bus: a snapshot of an anxious brain . . . Is that car slowing down? Is someone going to get out and kidnap me? It is slowing down. What if someone asks for directions? What if—Oh. They’re just dropping someone off. The bus is late. What if it doesn’t arrive? What if I’m late getting to school? Did I turn my straighteners off ? What if the bus isn’t running today and no one told me? Where’s the—oh. There’s the bus. Oh crap is that Rowan from Biology? What if he sees me? What if he wants to chat? Hide. Okay, he hasn’t seen me. He hasn’t seen me. What if he did see me and now he thinks I’m weird for not saying hi? Did I remember to clean out Rita’s bowl properly? What if she gets sick? One day Rita will die. One day I’ll die. One day everyone will die. What if I die today and everyone sees that my bra has a hole in it? What if the bus crashes? Where are the exits? Why is there an exit on the ceiling? What if that headache Dad has is a brain tumor? Would I live with Mum all the time if Dad died? Why am I thinking about my living arrangements instead of how horrible it would be if Dad died? What’s wrong with me? What if Rhys doesn’t like me? What if he does? What if we get together and we split up? What if we get together and don’t split up and then we’re together forever until we die? One day I’ll die. Did I remember to turn my straighteners off ? Yes. Yes. Did I? Okay my stop’s coming up. I need to get off in about two minutes. Should I get up now? Will the guy next to me get that I have to get off or will I have to ask him to move? But what if he’s getting off too and I look like a twat? What if worrying kills brain cells? What if I never get to go to university? What if I do and it’s awful? Should I say thank you to the driver on the way off ? Okay, get up, move toward the front of the bus. Go, step. Don’t trip over that old man’s stick. Watch out for the stick. Watch out for the—shit. Did anyone notice that? No, no one’s looking at me. But what if they are? Okay, doors are opening, GO! I didn’t say thank you to the driver. What if he’s having a bad day and that would have made it better? Am I a bad person? ~ Sara Barnard, #NFDB
499:The Tomorrow Man theory. It’s pretty basic. Today, right here, you are who you are. Tomorrow, you will be who you will be. Each and every night, we lie down to die, and each morning we arise, reborn. Now, those who are in good spirits, with strong mental health, they look out for their Tomorrow Man. They eat right today, they drink right today, they go to sleep early today–all so that Tomorrow Man, when he awakes in his bed reborn as Today Man, thanks Yesterday Man. He looks upon him fondly as a child might a good parent. He knows that someone–himself–was looking out for him. He feels cared for, and respected. Loved, in a word. And now he has a legacy to pass on to his subsequent selves…. But those who are in a bad way, with poor mental health, they constantly leave these messes for Tomorrow Man to clean up. They eat whatever the hell they want, drink like the night will never end, and then fall asleep to forget. They don’t respect Tomorrow Man because they don’t think through the fact that Tomorrow Man will be them. So then they wake up, new Today Man, groaning at the disrespect Yesterday Man showed them. Wondering why does that guy–myself–keep punishing me? But they never learn and instead come to settle for that behavior, eventually learning to ask and expect nothing of themselves. They pass along these same bad habits tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, and it becomes psychologically genetic, like a curse. Looking at you now, Maven, I can see exactly where you fall on this spectrum. You are a man constantly trying to fix today what Yesterday Man did to you. You make up your bed, you clean those dirty dishes from the night before, and pledge not to start drinking until six, thinking that’s the way to keep an even keel. But in reality you’re always playing catch-up. I know this because I’ve been there. The thing is–you can’t fix the mistakes of Yesterday. Yesterday Man is dead, he’s gone forever, and blame and atonement aren’t worth a damn. What you can do is help yourself today. Eat a vegetable. Read a book. Cut that hair of yours. Leave Tomorrow Man something more than a headache and a jam-packed colon. Do for Tomorrow Man what you would have wanted Yesterday Man to do for you. ~ Chuck Hogan, #NFDB
500:Things I worried about on the bus: a snapshot of an anxious brain . . . Is that car slowing down? Is someone going to get out and kidnap me? It is slowing down. What if someone asks for directions? What if—Oh. They’re just dropping someone off. The bus is late. What if it doesn’t arrive? What if I’m late getting to school? Did I turn my straighteners off ? What if the bus isn’t running today and no one told me? Where’s the—oh. There’s the bus. Oh crap is that Rowan from Biology? What if he sees me? What if he wants to chat? Hide. Okay, he hasn’t seen me. He hasn’t seen me. What if he did see me and now he thinks I’m weird for not saying hi? Did I remember to clean out Rita’s bowl properly? What if she gets sick? One day Rita will die. One day I’ll die. One day everyone will die. What if I die today and everyone sees that my bra has a hole in it? What if the bus crashes? Where are the exits? Why is there an exit on the ceiling? What if that headache Dad has is a brain tumor? Would I live with Mum all the time if Dad died? Why am I thinking about my living arrangements instead of how horrible it would be if Dad died? What’s wrong with me? What if Rhys doesn’t like me? What if he does? What if we get together and we split up? What if we get together and don’t split up and then we’re together forever until we die? One day I’ll die. Did I remember to turn my straighteners off ? Yes. Yes. Did I? Okay my stop’s coming up. I need to get off in about two minutes. Should I get up now? Will the guy next to me get that I have to get off or will I have to ask him to move? But what if he’s getting off too and I look like a twat? What if worrying kills brain cells? What if I never get to go to university? What if I do and it’s awful? Should I say thank you to the driver on the way off ? Okay, get up, move toward the front of the bus. Go, step. Don’t trip over that old man’s stick. Watch out for the stick. Watch out for the—shit. Did anyone notice that? No, no one’s looking at me. But what if they are? Okay, doors are opening, GO! I didn’t say thank you to the driver. What if he’s having a bad day and that would have made it better? Am I a bad person? Yeah but did I actually turn my straighteners off ? ~ Sara Barnard, #NFDB
501:When Franz returned to himself, he seemed still to be in a dream. He thought himself in a sepulchre, into which a ray of sunlight in pity scarcely penetrated. He stretched forth his hand, and touched stone; he rose to his seat, and found himself lying on his bournous in a bed of dry heather, very soft and odoriferous. The vision had fled; and as if the statues had been but shadows from the tomb, they had vanished at his waking. He advanced several paces towards the point whence the light came, and to all the excitement of his dream succeeded the calmness of reality. He found that he was in a grotto, went towards the opening, and through a kind of fanlight saw a blue sea and an azure sky. The air and water were shining in the beams of the morning sun; on the shore the sailors were sitting, chatting and laughing; and at ten yards from them the boat was at anchor, undulating gracefully on the water. There for some time he enjoyed the fresh breeze which played on his brow, and listened to the dash of the waves on the beach, that left against the rocks a lace of foam as white as silver. He was for some time without reflection or thought for the divine charm which is in the things of nature, specially after a fantastic dream; then gradually this view of the outer world, so calm, so pure, so grand, reminded him of the illusiveness of his vision, and once more awakened memory. He recalled his arrival on the island, his presentation to a smuggler chief, a subterranean palace full of splendor, an excellent supper, and a spoonful of hashish. It seemed, however, even in the very face of open day, that at least a year had elapsed since all these things had passed, so deep was the impression made in his mind by the dream, and so strong a hold had it taken of his imagination. Thus every now and then he saw in fancy amid the sailors, seated on a rock, or undulating in the vessel, one of the shadows which had shared his dream with looks and kisses. Otherwise, his head was perfectly clear, and his body refreshed; he was free from the slightest headache; on the contrary, he felt a certain degree of lightness, a faculty for absorbing the pure air, and enjoying the bright sunshine more vividly than ever. ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
502:Here I am!” Captain East was cantering his mount toward them. He rode beautifully, confidently. Molly’s family spent their summers in the country, and she used to say that the way a man rides a horse could give you a pretty good idea how he would do something else. Jane eyed Mr. Nobley on his mount, noted that he was a smooth, gentle rider. The surprise of thinking this while wearing a bonnet made Jane choke. Her breath snarled in her throat, and she laughed.
Mr. Nobley’s eyes widened. “What’s funny? You often have some secret laugh, Miss Erstwhile.”
“The way you have some secret displeasure?”
“No, not displeasure,” he said, and she realized he was right. Sadness, or heartbreak, or grief that there was nothing to give him hope, perhaps. She was pretty sure now that he was Henry Jenkins, poor sop.
Captain East reined in beside Jane. “Miss Heartwright had a headache and went inside. So sorry to neglect you, Miss Erstwhile. You must tell me what I missed.”
“I’ve discovered that Miss Erstwhile is an artist,” Mr. Nobley said.
“Is that so?”
“It’s been years since I picked up a paintbrush.” She glared at Mr. Nobley, and zing, there was his smile again, brief, urgent. When his lips relaxed she wanted it to come back.
“That is a shame,” said Captain East.
That evening when Jane retired from the drawing room, she found a large package on her side table wrapped in brown paper. She ripped open the paper and out tumbled neat little tubes of oil paints and three paintbrushes. She saw now that an easel waited by the window with two small canvases. She felt very Jane Eyre as she smelled the paints and ticked her palm with the largest brush.
Who was her benefactor? It could be Captain East. Maybe he still liked her best, even after his tete-a-tete with Miss Heartwright. It could happen. Even so, she found herself hoping it was Mr. Nobley. Instinct urged her to stomp on the hope. She ignored it. She was firmly in Austenland now, she reminded herself, where hoping was allowed.
Did Austen herself feel this way? Was she hopeful? Jane wondered if the unmarried writer had lived inside Austenland with close to Jane’s own sensibility--amused, horrified, but in very real danger of being swept away.
Ten days to go. ~ Shannon Hale,#NFDB
503:There are blondes and blondes and it is almost a joke word nowadays. All blondes have their points, except perhaps the metallic ones who are as blond as a Zulu under the bleach and as to disposition as soft as a sidewalk. There is the small cute blonde who cheeps and twitters, and the big statuesque blonde who straight-arms you with an ice-blue glare. There is the blonde who gives you the up-from-under look and smells lovely and shimmers and hangs on your arm and is always very tired when you take her home. She makes that helpless gesture and has that goddamned headache and you would like to slug her except that you are glad you found out about the headache before you invested too much time and money and hope in her. Because the headache will always be there, a weapon that never wears out and is as deadly as the bravo’s rapier or Lucrezia’s poison vial. There is the soft and willing and alcoholic blonde who doesn’t care what she wears as long as it is mink or where she goes as long as it is the Starlight Roof and there is plenty of dry champagne. There is the small perky blonde who is a little pal and wants to pay her own way and is full of sunshine and common sense and knows judo from the ground up and can toss a truck driver over her shoulder without missing more than one sentence out of the editorial in the Saturday Review. There is the pale, pale blonde with anemia of some non-fatal but incurable type. She is very languid and very shadowy and she speaks softly out of nowhere and you can’t lay a finger on her because in the first place you don’t want to and in the second place she is reading The Waste Land or Dante in the original, or Kafka or Kierkegaard or studying Provençal. She adores music and when the New York Philharmonic is playing Hindemith she can tell you which one of the six bass viols came in a quarter of a beat too late. I hear Toscanini can also. That makes two of them. And lastly there is the gorgeous show piece who will outlast three kingpin racketeers and then marry a couple of millionaires at a million a head and end up with a pale rose villa at Cap Antibes, an Alfa-Romeo town car complete with pilot and co-pilot, and a stable of shopworn aristocrats, all of whom she will treat with the affectionate absent-mindedness of an elderly duke saying goodnight to his butler. ~ Raymond Chandler, #NFDB
504:Can you just imagine the two of them next year at the Phi Delta Carnation Ball?” Laura Grace asks, clapping her hands together.
Daddy looks confused. “The two of who?”
“Why, Ryder and Jemma, of course.” Mama pats him on the hand. “You remember the Carnation Ball--it’s the first Phi Delta party of the year. They have to go together, right, Laura Grace?”
She nods. “We’ve been waiting all our lives for this.”
Mama finally glances my way and sees my scowl. “Aw, honey. We’re just teasing, that’s all.”
This sort of teasing has been going on my entire life--second verse, same as the first. It’s gotten real old, real fast.
“May I be excused?” I ask, pushing back from the table.
“You go on and finish your dinner,” Laura Grace says, entirely unperturbed. “We’ll stop teasing. I promise.”
“It’s okay. I’m done. It was delicious, thanks. I just need to get some air, that’s all. I’m getting a bit of a headache.”
Laura Grace nods. “It’s this heat--way too hot for September.” She waves a hand in my direction. “Go on, then. Ryder, why don’t you go get Jemma some aspirin or something.”
I glance over at Ryder, and our eyes meet. I shake my head, hoping he gets the message. “No, it’s fine. I’m…uh…I’ve got some in my purse.”
“Go with her, son,” Mr. Marsden prods. “Be a gentleman, and get her a bottle of water to take outside with her.”
Ugh. I give up. My escape plot is now ruined.
Wordlessly, Ryder rises from the table and stalks out of the dining room. I follow behind, my sandals slapping noisily against the hardwood floor.
“Do you want water or not?” he asks me as soon as the door swings shut behind us.
“Sure. Fine. Whatever.”
He turns to face me. “It is pretty hot out there.”
“I near about melted on the drive over.”
His lips twitch with the hint of a smile. “Your dad refused to turn on the AC, huh?”
I nod as I follow him out into the cavernous marble-tiled foyer. “You know his theory--‘no point when you’re just going down the road.’ Must’ve been a thousand degrees in the car.”
He tips his head toward the front door. “You wait out on the porch--I’ll bring you a bottle of water.”
“Thanks.” I watch him go, wondering if we’re going to pretend like last night’s fight didn’t happen. I hope that’s the case, because I really don’t feel like rehashing it. ~ Kristi Cook,#NFDB
505:Unlike classically spinning bodies, such as tops, however, where the spin rate can assume any value fast or slow, electrons always have only one fixed spin. In the units in which this spin is measured quantum mechanically (called Planck's constant) the electrons have half a unit, or they are "spin-1/2" particles. In fact, all the matter particles in the standard model-electrons, quarks, neutrinos, and two other types called muons and taus-all have "spin 1/2." Particles with half-integer spin are known collectively as fermions (after the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi). On the other hand, the force carriers-the photon, W, Z, and gluons-all have one unit of spin, or they are "spin-1" particles in the physics lingo. The carrier of gravity-the graviton-has "spin 2," and this was precisely the identifying property that one of the vibrating strings was found to possess. All the particles with integer units of spin are called bosons (after the Indian physicist Satyendra Bose). Just as ordinary spacetime is associated with a supersymmetry that is based on spin. The predictions of supersymmetry, if it is truly obeyed, are far-reaching. In a universe based on supersymmetry, every known particle in the universe must have an as-yet undiscovered partner (or "superparrtner"). The matter particles with spin 1/2, such as electrons and quarks, should have spin 0 superpartners. the photon and gluons (that are spin 1) should have spin-1/2 superpartners called photinos and gluinos respectively. Most importantly, however, already in the 1970s physicists realized that the only way for string theory to include fermionic patterns of vibration at all (and therefore to be able to explain the constituents of matter) is for the theory to be supersymmetric. In the supersymmetric version of the theory, the bosonic and fermionic vibrational patters come inevitably in pairs. Moreover, supersymmetric string theory managed to avoid another major headache that had been associated with the original (nonsupersymmetric) formulation-particles with imaginary mass. Recall that the square roots of negative numbers are called imaginary numbers. Before supersymmetry, string theory produced a strange vibration pattern (called a tachyon) whose mass was imaginary. Physicists heaved a sigh of relief when supersymmetry eliminated these undesirable beasts. ~ Mario Livio, #NFDB
506:I’ve forgotten how to pay courtly compliments,” said Amar. “For instance, etiquette demands I tell you that you look lovely and compliment your demure. But that wouldn’t be the truth.”
Heat rose to my cheeks and I narrowed my eyes. “What, then, would be the truth?”
“The truth,” said Amar, taking a step closer to me, “is that you look neither lovely nor demure. You look like edges and thunderstorms. And I would not have you any other way.”
My breath gathered in a tight knot and I looked away, only to catch sight of the tapestry. The threads throbbed behind my eyes, sharp as any headache. My vision blurred, swallowing the room around me. I blinked rapidly, squinting at the threads.
All I could see were that all the threads were out of place. Some had either skipped a stitch or poked out altogether. I walked toward the tapestry in a daze, my hands outstretched.
I could feel the tapestry’s pull, sharp as hunger, dry as thirst. Nothing would sate or slake me. All I wanted was to adjust the threads, tuck them back into place. There was an order, a pattern, like a stitching trick. I could feel it like a word balancing on the tip of my tongue and all I had to do was--
Amar’s hand closed around my wrist. He moved before me, blocking the tapestry.
“Stop!”
I blinked, my head woolly. His hands were around my shoulders, drawing me to a wobbly stand.
“Did I fall?”
“That sounds ungraceful,” he said, a smile playing at his lips. He was trying to joke with me, to ward off whatever happened as though it were nothing. But his hands were tight at my shoulders and there was the slightest tremble in his fingers.
“A graceful tumble, then?” I suggested, stepping out of the circle of his arms.
I didn’t need any help keeping myself upright.
“I should’ve explained the tapestry before showing it to you. It can be overwhelming.”
Amar led me to the throne and I sank into it wearily. There was a new ache tethered inside my bones. In the haze, the pressure of Amar’s hand against my arm was warm, comforting even. I closed my eyes, concentrating on the warm pulse in his fingers.
When I finally felt strong enough to speak, I opened my eyes to find Amar’s face mere inches from mine. I could count the immaculate stitching of his emerald hood, the stubble along his chin and the veins raised along his hand. His eyes, as always, lay hidden. But he was so close that if I wanted, and I did, I might be able to peek--
Amar jerked backward, his jaw tightening. ~ Roshani Chokshi,#NFDB
507:The Sinsar Dubh popped up on my radar, and it was moving straight toward us.
At an extremely high rate of speed.
I whipped the Viper around, tires smoking on the pavement. There was nothing else I could do.
Barrons looked at me sharply. “What? Do you sense it?”
Oh, how ironic, he thought I’d turned us toward it. “No,” I lied, “I just realized I forgot my spear tonight. I left it back at the bookstore. Can you believe it? I never forget my spear. I can’t imagine what I was thinking. I guess I wasn’t. I was talking to my dad while I was getting dressed and I totally spaced it.” I worked the pedals, ripping through the gears.
He didn’t even try to pat me down. He just said, “Liar.”
I sped up, pasting a blushing, uncomfortable look on my face. “All right, Barrons. You got me. But I do need to go back to the bookstore. It’s . . . well . . . it’s personal.” The bloody, stupid Sinsar Dubh was gaining on me. I was being chased by the thing I was supposed to be chasing. There was something very wrong with that. “It’s . . . a woman thing . . . you know.”
“No, I don’t know, Ms. Lane. Why don’t you enlighten me?”
A stream of pubs whizzed by. I was grateful it was too cold for much pedestrian traffic. If I had to slow down, the Book would gain on me, and I already had a headache the size of Texas that was threatening to absorb New Mexico and Oklahoma. “It’s that time. You know. Of the month.” I swallowed a moan of pain.
“That time?” he echoed softly. “You mean time to stop at one of the multiple convenience stores we just whizzed past so you can buy tampons? Is that what you’re telling me?”
I was going to throw up. It was too close. Saliva was pooling in my mouth. How far behind me was it? Two blocks? Less? “Yes,” I cried. “That’s it! But I use a special kind and they don’t carry it.”
“I can smell you, Ms. Lane,” he said, even more softly. “The only blood on you is from your veins, not your womb.”
My head whipped to the left and I stared at him. Okay, that was one of the more disturbing things he’d ever said to me. “Ahhh!” I cried, letting go of both the wheel and the gearshift to clutch my head. The Viper ran up on the sidewalk and took out two newspaper stands and a streetlamp before crashing to a stop against a fire hydrant.
And the blasted, idiotic Book was still coming. I began foaming at the mouth, wondering what would happen if it passed within a few feet of me. Would I die? Would my head really explode? ~ Karen Marie Moning,#NFDB
508:The first mile was torture. I passed beneath the massive stone arch at the entrance to the school, pulled off the road and threw up. I felt better and ran down the long palm-lined drive to the Old Quad. Lost somewhere in the thicket to my left was the mausoleum containing the remains of the family by whom the university had been founded. Directly ahead of me loomed a cluster of stone buildings, the Old Quad. I stumbled up the steps and beneath an archway into a dusty courtyard which, with its clumps of spindly bushes and cacti, resembled the garden of a desert monastery. All around me the turrets and dingy stone walls radiated an ominous silence, as if behind each window there stood a soldier with a musket waiting to repel any invader. I looked up at the glittering facade of the chapel across which there was a mosaic depicting a blond Jesus and four angels representing Hope, Faith, Charity, and, for architectural rather than scriptural symmetry, Love. In its gloomy magnificence, the Old Quad never failed to remind me of the presidential palace of a banana republic. Passing out of the quad I cut in front of the engineering school and headed for a back road that led up to the foothills. There was a radar installation at the summit of one of the hills called by the students the Dish. It sat among herds of cattle and the ruins of stables. It, too, was a ruin, shut down for many years, but when the wind whistled through it, the radar produced a strange trilling that could well be music from another planet. The radar was silent as I slowed to a stop at the top of the Dish and caught my breath from the upward climb. I was soaked with sweat, and my headache was gone, replaced by giddy disorientation. It was a clear, hot morning. Looking north and west I saw the white buildings, bridges and spires of the city of San Francisco beneath a crayoned blue sky. The city from this aspect appeared guileless and serene. Yet, when I walked in its streets what I noticed most was how the light seldom fell directly, but from angles, darkening the corners of things. You would look up at the eaves of a house expecting to see a gargoyle rather than the intricate but innocent woodwork. The city had this shadowy presence as if it was a living thing with secrets and memories. Its temperament was too much like my own for me to feel safe or comfortable there. I looked briefly to the south where San Jose sprawled beneath a polluted sky, ugly and raw but without secrets or deceit. Then I stretched and began the slow descent back into town. ~ Michael Nava, #NFDB
509:The word is pure magic — the most powerful gift we have as humans — and we use it against ourselves. We plan revenge. We create chaos with the word. We use the word to create hate between different races, between different people, between families, between nations. We misuse the word so often, and this misuse is how we create and perpetuate the dream of hell. Misuse of the word is how we pull each other down and keep each other in a state of fear and doubt. Because the word is the magic that humans possess and misuse of the word is black magic, we are using black magic all the time without knowing that our word is magic at all. There was a woman, for example, who was intelligent and had a very good heart. She had a daughter whom she adored and loved very much. One night she came home from a very bad day at work, tired, full of emotional tension, and with a terrible headache. She wanted peace and quiet, but her daughter was singing and jumping happily. The daughter was unaware of how her mother was feeling; she was in her own world, in her own dream. She felt so wonderful, and she was jumping and singing louder and louder, expressing her joy and her love. She was singing so loud that it made her mother’s headache even worse, and at a certain moment, the mother lost control. Angrily she looked at her beautiful little girl and said, “Shut up! You have an ugly voice. Can you just shut up!” The truth is that the mother’s tolerance for any noise was nonexistent; it was not that the little girl’s voice was ugly. But the daughter believed what her mother said, and in that moment she made an agreement with herself. After that she no longer sang, because she believed her voice was ugly and would bother anyone who heard it. She became shy at school, and if she was asked to sing, she refused. Even speaking to others became difficult for her. Everything changed in the little girl because of this new agreement: She believed she must repress her emotions in order to be accepted and loved. Whenever we hear an opinion and believe it, we make an agreement, and it becomes part of our belief system. This little girl grew up, and even though she had a beautiful voice, she never sang again. She developed a whole complex from one spell. This spell was cast upon her by the one who loved her the most: her own mother. Her mother didn’t notice what she did with her word. She didn’t notice that she used black magic and put a spell on her daughter. She didn’t know the power of her word, and therefore she isn’t to blame. She did what her own mother, father, and others had done to her in many ways. They misused the word. How ~ Miguel Ruiz, #NFDB
510:Deanna lifted her hand to the back of her neck, stretching it from side to side. Now that he thought about it, she’d been doing that a lot today.
“Do you have a headache?” he asked.
She sighed. “Yeah. I haven’t been sleeping that well, and when we were doing drills yesterday, I tweaked my neck carrying equipment the wrong way.”
Lucky saw a way to get this conversation back on track, so he steered them towards it. “I can help you with that.”
“That’s okay,” she dismissed him. “I don’t want a massage, but thanks.”
“I wasn’t offering a massage, but you’re welcome.”
“But you said you could help me…”
“Yeah, I did. And I can. But I didn’t say anything about a massage,” he corrected her.
“Oh, no, I don’t want to take anything. I try not to take medicine unless I absolute—”
“Ehhh,” he interrupted her, making the sound of a buzzer. “Wrong again. Do you want to try door number three, or should I just tell you what I was offering?”
She chuckled, and his heart swelled with pride. The fact that he had made her laugh so easily made him feel like Leo on the Titanic—like he was the king of the world.
“Fine. Tell me,” she replied, her tone in full sass mode.
“Well, since you asked soooo nicely,” he overemphasized. “I was going to say that I could get rid of your headache if you wanted me to.”
Sounding more than a little skeptical, she asked, “How?”
“By going down on you,” he stated plainly and confidently.
“What!?” she shrieked. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about me between your legs for a good thirty minutes or so. You’ll feel the scratch of my stubble on the side of your thighs, and all you’ll see is the top of my head. I’m talking about touching and kissing and licking you—”
“Okay,” she cut in. “I get the point.”
“Well.” He shrugged. “You asked what I was talking about, so I figured I should be clear.”
Laughter filled her voice as she asked, “How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Say those….things… and make them sound so casual? Normal? Not dirty?”
“It’s part of my charm, really. I can make the most innocent things sound dirty and the dirtiest things sound completely innocent,” he explained.
“I believe you.” She was shaking her head and looking out the window, but with the moonlight streaming in, he could see that her face was flushed with what he was going to believe was arousal.
“Just think about it. The offer’s on the table.” With that he turned up the music, which happened to be R&B. He figured a little Marvin Gaye couldn’t do anything but help his cause. ~ Melanie Shawn,#NFDB
511:At The Window
Every morning, as I walk down
From my dreary lodgings, toward the town,
I see at a window, near the street,
The face of a woman, fair and sweet,
With soft brown eyes and chestnut hair,
And red lips, warm with the kisses left there.
And she stands there as long as she can see
The man who walks just ahead of me.
At night, when I come from my office down town,
There stands a woman with eyes of brown,
Smiling out through the window blind
At the man who is walking just behind.
This fellow and I resemble each other At least so I'm told by one and another,
(Though I think I'm the handsomer by far, of the two,)
I don't know him at all, save to 'how d'ye do, '
Or nod when I meet him. I think he's at work
In a dry-goods store as a salaried clerk.
And I am a lawyer of high renown,
Having a snug bank account and an office down town, Yet I feel for that fellow an envious spite,
(it had no other name, so I speak it outright.)
There were symptoms before; but it's grown I believe,
Alarmingly fast, since one cloudy eve,
When passing the little house close by the street,
I heard the patter of two little feet,
And a figure in pink fluttered down to the gate,
And a sweet voice exclaimed, 'Oh, Will, you are late!
And, darling, I've watched at the window until Sir, I beg pardon! I thought it was Will! '
I passed on my way, with such a strange feeling
Down in my heart. My brain seemed to be reeling;
For, as it happens, my name, too, is Will,
And that voice crying 'darling, ' sent such an odd thrill
Throughout my whole being! 'How nice it would be, '
Thought I, 'If it were in reality me
98
That she's watched and longed for, instead of that lout! '
(It was envy that made me use that word, no doubt,)
For he's a fine fellow, and handsome! -(ahem!)
But then it's absurd that this rare little gem
Of a woman should stand there and look out for him
Till she brings on a headache, and makes her eyes dim,
While I go to lodgings, dull, dreary and bare,
With no one to welcome me, no one to care
If I'm early of late. No soft eyes of brown
To watch when I go to, or come from the town.
This bleak, wretched, bachelor life is about
(If I may be allowed the expression) played out.
Somewhere there must be, in the wide world, I think,
Another fair woman who dresses in pink,
And I know of a cottage, for sale, just below,
And it has a French window in front and - heigho!
I wonder how long, at the longest, 'twill be
Before, coming home from the office, I'll see
A nice little woman there, watching for me.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,#NFDB
512:I must have fallen asleep on a rock. It’s digging into my shoulder blade. I scrunch up and start to roll over, but then freeze.
It’s not just a single rock. It’s a giant one. Like concrete.
I go numb as I realize what this means. It can’t be…I ease open my eye, and then in an instant I’m sitting upright and looking around. And all I see are cars. And people in blue jeans. And street signs. And I smell smog and I hear radios crackling in the passing cabs.
I close my eyes for at least ten seconds and then open them again, but it’s all still there.
The twenty-first century.
I can’t stop my face from falling. I’m back. Just when I’d realized I don’t want this at all, I’m back. My shopping bags are strewn around me. I’m wearing jeans. A T-shirt. My heels.
I glance back to realize the Prada shop is still a few yards behind me, just where I’d left it. I’m sitting in the exact spot I’d fallen down.
I never left at all.
I stay put for a few moments as a pounding headache fades.
Alex. Emily. Even Victoria.
They were all make-believe. Some figment of my banged-up brain. That means the kiss…God, I made it all up! Every single thing!
I want to lie back down, close my eyes, and go back. I want horrible soup and stiff corsets and lump mattresses. I’ll trade it all to see Alex again. To go to Emily’s wedding.
A man trips on my foot and then has the nerve to glare at me, even though he basically kicked me in the shin.
Yes, I’m definitely in the twenty-first century.
I scramble to my feet and wipe the dirt off my jeans and lean over to pick up my bags. And then I notice them.
My heels. My beautiful, damaged heels. I glance over my shoulder. Yes, the Prada shop is definitely still behind me. I’ve gone maybe four steps from the door. Nowhere near enough to ruin the heels like this. They’re scuffed, dented, and scratched.
I gather up the rest of my bags, my grin in full-force. It wasn’t fake. It wasn’t make-believe or a dream or anything.
It happened. As sure as the mud on the heels, it happened. There’s even a dent where the front door of Harksbury bounced off the toe.
I don’t know how or why or anything, but somehow, I was there. I danced with Alex and helped Emily. I played a piano for a duke and a countess, and I ate more exotic animals than I ever wanted to.
But it happened. I don’t understand it; I only know that the last month was real, and it was the best of my life.
I sling the bags over my shoulder and practically skip down the block. No matter what happens next, no matter what happens for the rest of my life, I have something no one else will ever have. An adventure to rival Indiana Jones. A crazy month that can never be replicated. ~ Mandy Hubbard,#NFDB
513:They seemed so right together-both of them sophisticated, dark-haired, and striking; no doubt they had much in common, she thought a little dismally as she picked up her knife and fork and went to work on her lobster.
Beside her, Lord Howard leaned close and teased, “It’s dead, you know.”
Elizabeth glanced blankly at him, and he nodded to the lobster she was still sawing needlessly upon. “It’s dead,” he repeated. “There’s no need to try to kill it twice.”
Mortified, Elizabeth smiled and sighed and thereafter made an all-out effort to ingratiate herself with the rest of the party at their table. As Lord Howard had forewarned the gentlemen, who by now had all seen or heard about her escapade in the card room, were noticeably cooler, and so Elizabeth tried ever harder to be her most engaging self. It was only the second time in her life she’d actually used the feminine wiles she was born with-the first time being her first encounter with Ian Thornton in the garden-and she was a little amazed by her easy success. One by one the men at the table unbent enough to talk and laugh with her. During that long, trying hour Elizabeth repeatedly had the strange feeling that Ian was watching her, and toward the end, when she could endure it no longer, she did glance at the place where he was seated. His narrowed amber eyes were leveled on her face, and Elizabeth couldn’t tell whether he disapproved of this flirtatious side of her or whether he was puzzled by it.
“Would you permit me to offer to stand in for my cousin tomorrow,” Lord Howard said as the endless meal came to an end and the guests began to arise, “and escort you to the village?”
It was the moment of reckoning, the moment when Elizabeth had to decide whether she was going to meet Ian at the cottage or not. Actually, there was no real decision to make, and she knew it. With a bright, artificial smile Elizabeth said, “Thank you.”
“We’re to leave at half past ten, and I understand there are to be the usual entertainments-sopping and a late luncheon at the local inn, followed by a ride to enjoy the various prospects of the local countryside.”
It sounded horribly dull to Elizabeth at that moment. “It sounds lovely,” she exclaimed with such fervor that Lord Howard shot her a startled look.
“Are you feeling well?” he asked, his worried gaze taking in her flushed cheeks and overbright eyes.
“I’ve never felt better,” she said, her mind on getting away-upstairs to the sanity and quiet of her bedchamber. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have the headache and should like to retire,” she said, leaving behind her a baffled Lord Howard.
She was partway up the stairs before it dawned on her what she’d actually said. She stopped in midstep, then gave her head a shake and slowly continued on. She didn’t particularly care what Lord Howard-her fiance’s own cousin-thought. And she was too miserable to stop and consider how very odd that was. ~ Judith McNaught,#NFDB
514:He bows to the two of us, and when he speaks, his voice fills the room, far louder and more booming than a voice should be before noon. “I intend to ride the estate today, if you two would like to join me.”
I open my mouth to give him a quick, No thanks, I’d rather pull out my own hair, but Emily beats me to it.
“How kind of you to offer! We would love to.”
Huh? I can’t figure out why Emily doesn’t hate Alex. He’s a jerk and he’s done nothing to help her out of her engagement. And now she’s volunteering to hang out with him?
An excuse…I need some kind of excuse to get out of this.
Alex walks to the window and looks out, offering a rather flattering view of the back of his riding pants. “Did you enjoy the dance last evening?”
Is he making small talk? That’s a first. “Yes, very much so,” Emily says. “It was delightful.”
I nod. “Yeah. I guess so.” I won’t say I had fun because I don’t want him to get the wrong idea. I don’t want him to know dancing with him was the most exciting part of my evening and the most agonizingly long half hour of my life.
Alex looks at me for a long silent moment. You’d think he’d bring up the big “lady” versus “miss” debacle. Or just that we’d danced. But he doesn’t.
“Yes, I rather enjoyed myself as well,” he says.
Seriously, what does that mean? I was the only girl he danced with. The entire night. Is he trying to tell me something? Ha. Right. He probably means that it was all sorts of fun to insult me.
And that’s when Emily starts rubbing her temple. She sets her needlepoint down and frowns, massaging in circular motions on the side of her face.
Oh, no, she’s not--
“Dear cousin, I am coming down with a headache. Perhaps you and Rebecca ought to ride without me.”
I get a twinge when I hear Rebecca. Every day it feels more like we’re friends--and more like I’m betraying her.
And then she turns to me, knowing Alex can’t see her, and winks.
“Oh, no, I--” I start to say, because I suddenly realize what she’s trying to do. This can not happen. A horseback ride alone with Alex? No thank you!
But Alex cuts in before I can stop her. “Yes, I would not have you overexerting yourself. We shall check on you when we return.”
Okay, this is not how I want to spend my afternoon. Alone with Alex? I’d rather get a root canal.
But…maybe it’s my chance to talk to him about Emily. Maybe he doesn’t know about Trent. Emily said Trent was wealthy, right? He’s not titled, but he has money. If Alex knew about him…maybe he would get Emily off the hook with Denworth.
Maybe that’s why Emily is trying to arrange for me to spend time with Alex. She so owes me after this.
I can do this. I can hang out with him for a couple hours--long enough to talk him into helping us.
Emily jumps up from her chair far too quickly for someone with a headache and leaves the room before I can do anything.
I rub my eyes. It’s going to be a long afternoon. ~ Mandy Hubbard,#NFDB
515:When I woke the air was hot and stuffy, and I was immediately aware of being shut up in a small painted-canvas box. But before I could react with more than that initial flash of distress, I realized that the carriage had stopped. I struggled up, wincing against a thumping great headache, just as the door opened.
There was the Marquis, holding his hand out. I took it, making a sour face. At least, I thought as I recognized an innyard, he looks as wind tousled and muddy as I must.
But there was no fanfare, no groups of gawking peasants and servants. He picked me up and carried me through a side door, and thence into a small parlor that overlooked the innyard. Seated on plain hemp-stuffed pillows, I looked out at the stable boy and driver busily changing the horses. The longshadows of late afternoon obscured everything; a cheap time-candle in a corner sconce marked the time as green-three.
Sounds at the door brought my attention around. An inn servant entered, carrying a tray laden with steaming dishes. As she set them out I looked at her face, wondering if I could get a chance to talk to her alone--if she might help a fellow-female being held prisoner?
“Coffee?” the Marquis said, splintering my thoughts.
I looked up, and I swear there was comprehension in those gray eyes.
“Coffee?” I repeated blankly.
“A drinkable blend, from the aroma.” He tossed his hat and riding gloves onto the cushion beside him and leaned forward to pour a brown stream of liquid into two waiting mugs. “A miraculous drink. One of the decided benefits of our world-hopping mages,” he said.
“Mages.” I repeated that as well, trying to marshal my thoughts, which wanted to scamper, like frightened mice, in six different directions.
“Coffee. Horses.” A careless wave toward the innyard. “Chocolate. Kinthus. Laimun. Several of the luxuries that are not native to our world, brought here from others.”
I could count the times we’d managed to get ahold of coffee, and I hadn’t cared for its bitterness. But as I watched, honey and cream were spooned into the dark beverage, and when I did take a cautious sip, it was delicious. With the taste came warmth, a sense almost of well-being. For a short time I was content to sit, with my eyes closed, and savor the drink.
The welcome smell of braised potatoes and clear soup brought my attention back to the present. When I opened my eyes, there was the food, waiting before me.
“You had probably better not eat much more than that,” said the Marquis. “We have a long ride ahead of us tonight, and you wouldn’t want to regret your first good meal in days.”
In weeks, I thought as I picked up a spoon, but I didn’t say it out loud--it felt disloyal somehow.
Then the sense of what he’d said sank in, and I almost lost my appetite again. “How long to the capital?”
“We will arrive sometime tomorrow morning,” he said.
I grimaced down at my soup, then braced myself up, thinking that I’d better eat, hungry or not, for I’d need my strength. ~ Sherwood Smith,#NFDB
516:When at last he sprang to his feet, she retreated a step, lifting her chin so the lapping water couldn’t reach her mouth. He bent to retrieve the buffalo robe and beckoned for her.
“Keemah.”
She knew by now that the word meant “come.” She shuddered and looked longingly at the fur he held.
“Keemah,” he repeated. When she made no move to obey, he sighed.
Sinking lower into the water, Loretta accidentally took a mouthful and choked.
He glanced skyward, clearly exasperated. “This Comanche is not stupid. You would run like the wind if I took my eyes from you.”
She shook her head. Frowning, he studied her for a long moment.
“This is not pe-nan-de taquoip, the honey talk. It is a promise you make?”
She nodded, her teeth chattering.
“And you will not make a lie of it?”
When he assured him she wouldn’t with another shake of her head, he dropped the fur to the ground and pivoted on one foot. She could scarcely believe he truly meant to keep his back to her. She stared at the broad expanse of his shoulders, at the curve of his spine, at his long, leather-clad legs. Like the wild animals he hunted, he was lithe and lean, his large frame padded with sleek, powerful muscle. If she tried to run, he would be upon her before she had gone more than a few steps.
Plowing her way through the water to shore, she kept her eyes riveted to his back. A small rock cut into the sole of her foot as she scrambled up the bank. She bit her lip and kept going, afraid to hesitate even for a second. By the time she reached him, her heart was slamming. She grabbed up the fur and slung it around her shoulders, clasping the edges tightly to her chest.
Standing this close to him, she could see the sheen of oil on his skin, the dark hair that dusted the crease of his armpits. She didn’t want to touch him. The seconds ticked past. Was his hearing so keen that he knew she was still behind him? She sensed he was waiting her out, testing her in some way she couldn’t fathom, proving his mastery over her. She worked one hand free from the heavy robe. So fast that she scarcely felt her fingertips graze his skin, she tapped his shoulder and snatched her hand back.
He turned to look at her, his gaze lingering a moment on her bare feet and legs. Humiliation scorched her cheeks. He stepped toward her, stooping as he did to catch her behind the knees and toss her over his shoulder. As Loretta grabbed his belt for support, she realized two things: the cold water had eased her headache, and the hilt of the Comanche’s knife was within her reach…
Without stopping to think of the possible consequences, she reached out, imagining how it would feel to bury the blade into his back, to be free of him. Just as her fingers curled around the knife handle, he spoke.
“Kill me, Yellow Hair, and my friends will avenge me. The blood of your loved ones will be spilled as slowly as sap drips from a wounded tree.” He kept walking and made no move to grab her hand. “My friends know the way to your wooden walls, eh? Make no grief behind you. It is wisdom. ~ Catherine Anderson,#NFDB
517:Some gifted people have all five and some less. Every gifted person tends to lead with one. As I read this list for the first time I was struck by the similarities between Dabrowski’s overexcitabilities and the traits of Sensitive Intuitives. Read the list for yourself and see what you identify with: Psychomotor This manifests as a strong pull toward movement. People with this overexcitability tend to talk rapidly and/or move nervously when they become interested or passionate about something. They have a lot of physical energy and may run their hands through their hair, snap their fingers, pace back and forth, or display other signs of physical agitation when concentrating or thinking something out. They come across as physically intense and can move in an impatient, jerky manner when excited. Other people might find them overwhelming and they’re routinely diagnosed as ADHD. Sensual This overexcitability comes in the form of an extreme sensitivity to sounds, smells, bright lights, textures and temperature. Perfume and scented soaps and lotions are bothersome to people with this overexcitability, and they might also have aversive reactions to strong food smells and cleaning products. For me personally, if I’m watching a movie in which a strobe light effect is used, I’m done. I have to shut my eyes or I’ll come down with a headache after only a few seconds. Loud, jarring or intrusive sounds also short circuit my wiring. Intellectual This is an incessant thirst for knowledge. People with this overexcitability can’t ever learn enough. They zoom in on a few topics of interest and drink up every bit of information on those topics they can find. Their only real goal is learning for learning’s sake. They’re not trying to learn something to make money or get any other external reward. They just happened to have discovered the history of the Ming Dynasty or Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and now it’s all they can think about. People with this overexcitability have intellectual interests that are passionate and wide-ranging and they study many areas simultaneously. Imaginative INFJ and INFP writers, this is you. This is ALL you. Making up stories, creating imaginary friends, believing in Santa Claus way past the ordinary age, becoming attached to fairies, elves, monsters and unicorns, these are the trademarks of the gifted child with imaginative overexcitability. These individuals appear dreamy, scattered, lost in their own worlds, and constantly have their heads in the clouds. They also routinely blend fiction with reality. They are practically the definition of the Sensitive Intuitive writer at work. Emotional Gifted individuals with emotional overexcitability are highly empathetic (and empathic, I might add), compassionate, and can become deeply attached to people, animals, and even inanimate objects, in a short period of time. They also have intense emotional reactions to things and might not be able to stomach horror movies or violence on the evening news. They have most likely been told throughout their life that they’re “too sensitive” or that they’re “overreacting” when in truth, they are expressing exactly how they feel to the most accurate degree. ~ Lauren Sapala, #NFDB
518:Elizabeth glanced up as Ian handed her a glass of champagne. “Thank you,” she said, smiling up at him and gesturing to Duncan, the duke, and Jake, who were now convulsed with loud hilarity. “They certainly seem to be enjoying themselves,” she remarked. Ian absently glanced the group of laughing men, then back at her. “You’re breathtaking when you smile.”
Elizabeth heard the huskiness in his voice and saw the almost slumberous look in his eyes, and she was wondering about its cause when he said softly, “Shall we retire?”
That suggestion caused Elizabeth to assume his expression must be due to weariness. She, herself, was more than ready to seek the peace of her own chamber, but since she’d never been to a wedding reception before, she assumed that the protocol must be the same as at any other gala affair-which meant the host and hostess could not withdraw until the last of the guests had either left or retired. Tonight, every one of the guest chambers would be in use, and tomorrow a large wedding breakfast was planned, followed by a hunt. “I’m not sleepy-just a little fatigued from so much smiling,” she told him, pausing to bestow another smile on a guest who caught her eye and waved. Turning her face up to Ian, she offered graciously, “It’s been a long day. If you wish to retire, I’m sure everyone will understand.”
“I’m sure they will,” he said dryly, and Elizabeth noted with puzzlement that his eyes were suddenly gleaming.
“I’ll stay down here and stand in for you,” she volunteered.
The gleam in his eyes brightened yet more. “You don’t think that my retiring alone will look a little odd?”
Elizabeth knew it might seem impolite, if not precisely odd, but then inspiration struck, and she said reassuringly, “Leave everything to me. I’ll make your excuses if anyone asks.”
His lips twitched. “Just out of curiosity-what excuse will you make for me?”
“I’ll say you’re not feeling well. It can’t be anything too dire though, or we’ll be caught out in the fib when you appear looking fit for breakfast and the hunt in the morning.” She hesitated, thinking, and then said decisively, “I’ll say you have the headache.”
His eyes widened with laughter. “It’s kind of you to volunteer to dissemble for me, my lady, but that particular untruth would have me on the dueling field for the next month, trying to defend against the aspersions it would cause to be cast upon my…ah…manly character.”
“Why? Don’t gentlemen get headaches?”
“Not,” he said with a roguish grin, “on their wedding night.”
“I can’t see why.”
“Can you not?”
“No. And,” she added with an irate whisper, “I don’t see why everyone is staying down here this late. I’ve never been to a wedding reception, but it does seem as if they ought to be beginning to seek their beds.”
“Elizabeth,” he said, trying not to laugh. “At a wedding reception, the guests cannot leave until the bride and groom retire. If you look over there, you’ll notice my great-aunts are already nodding in their chairs.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed, instantly contrite. “I didn’t know. Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“Because,” he said, taking her elbow and beginning to guide her from the ballroom, “I wanted you to enjoy every minute of our ball, even if we had to prop the guests up on the shrubbery. ~ Judith McNaught,#NFDB
519:Table of Contents Your Free Book Why Healthy Habits are Important Healthy Habit # 1: Drink Eight Glasses of Water Healthy Habit #2: Eat a Serving of Protein and Carbohydrates Healthy Habit #3: Fill Half Your Plate with Vegetables Healthy Habit #4: Add Two Teaspoons of Healthy Oil to Meals Healthy Habit #5: Walk for 30 Minutes Healthy Habit #6: Take a Fish Oil Supplement Healthy Habit #7: Introduce Healthy Bacteria to Your Body Healthy Habit #8: Get a “Once a Month” Massage Healthy Habit #9: Eat a Clove of Garlic Healthy Habit #10: Give Your Sinuses a Daily Bath Healthy Habit #11: Eat 25-30 Grams of Fiber Healthy Habit #12: Eliminate Refined Sugar and Carbohydrates Healthy Habit #13: Drink a Cup of Green Tea Healthy Habit #14: Get Your Vitamin D Levels Checked Yearly Healthy Habit #15: Floss Your Teeth Healthy Habit #16: Wash Your Hands Often Healthy Habit #17: Treat a Cough or Sore Throat with Honey Healthy Habit #18: Give Your Body 500 mg of Calcium Healthy Habit #19: Eat Breakfast Healthy Habit #20: Sleep 8-10 Hours Healthy Habit #21: Eat Five Different Colors of Food Healthy Habit #22: Breathe Deeply for Two Minutes Healthy Habit #23: Practice Yoga Three Times a Week Healthy Habit #24: Sleep On Your Left Side Healthy Habit #25: Eat Healthy Fats Healthy Habit #26: Dilute Juice with Sparkling Water Healthy Habit #27: Slow Alcohol Consumption with Water Healthy Habit #28: Do Strength Training Healthy Habit #29: Keep a Food Diary Healthy Habit #30: Exercise during TV Commercials Healthy Habit #31: Move, Don’t Use Technology Healthy Habit #32: Eat a Teaspoon of Cinnamon Healthy Habit #33: Use Acupressure to Treat Headache and Nausea Healthy Habit #34: Get an Eye Exam Every Year Healthy Habit #35: Wear Protective Eyewear Healthy Habit #36: Quit Smoking Healthy Habit #37: Pack Healthy Snacks Healthy Habit #38: Pack Your Lunch Healthy Habit #39: Eliminate Caffeine Healthy Habit #40: Finish Your Antibiotics Healthy Habit #41: Wear Sunscreen – Over SPF 15 Healthy Habit #42: Wear a Helmet for Biking or Rollerblading Healthy Habit #43: Wear Your Seatbelt Healthy Habit #44: Get a Yearly Physical Healthy Habit #45: Maintain a First Aid Kit Healthy Habit #46: Eat a Banana Every Day Healthy Habit #47: Use Coconut Oil to Moisturize Healthy Habit #48: Pay Attention to Hunger Cues Healthy Habit #49: Eat a Handful of Nuts Healthy Habit #50: Get a Flu Shot Each Year Healthy Habit #51: Practice Daily Meditation Healthy Habit #52: Eliminate Artificial Sweeteners Healthy Habit #53: Sanitize Your Kitchen Healthy Habit #54: Walk 10,000 Steps a Day Healthy Habit #55: Take a Multivitamin Healthy Habit #56: Eat Fish Twice a Week Healthy Habit #57: Add Healthy Foods to Your Diet Healthy Habit #58: Avoid Liquid Calories Healthy Habit #59: Give Your Eyes a Break Healthy Habit #60: Protect Yourself from STDs Healthy Habit #61: Get 20 Minutes of Sunshine Healthy Habit #62: Become a Once a Week Vegetarian Healthy Habit #63: Limit Sodium to 2,300 mg a Day Healthy Habit #64: Cook 2+ Home Meals Each Week Healthy Habit #65: Eat a Half Ounce of Dark Chocolate Healthy Habit #66: Use Low Fat Salad Dressing Healthy Habit #67: Eat Meals at the Table Healthy Habit #68: Eat an Ounce of Chia Seeds Healthy Habit #69: Choose Juices that Contain Pulp Healthy Habit #70: Prepare Produce After Shopping ~ S J Scott, #NFDB
520:Sometimes one cannot distinguish adverse forces from other forces.
That happens when one is quite unconscious. There are only two cases when this is possible: you are either very unconscious of the movements of your being - you have not studied, you have not observed, you do not know what is happening within you - or you are absolutely insincere, that is, you play the ostrich in order not to see the reality of things: you hide your head, you hide your observation, your knowledge and you say, "It is not there." But indeed the latter I hope is not in question here. Hence it is simply because one has not the habit of observing oneself that one is so unconscious of what is happening within.
Have you ever practised distinguishing what comes from your mind, what comes from your vital, what comes from your physical?... For it is mixed up; it is mixed up in the outward appearance. If you do not take care to distinguish, it makes a kind of soup, all that together. So it is indistinct and difficult to discoveR But if you observe yourself, after some time you see certain things, you feel them to be there, like that, as though they were in your skin; for some other things you feel you would have to go within yourself to find out from where they come; for other things, you have to go still further inside, or otherwise you have to rise up a little: it comes from unconsciousness. And there are others; then you must go very deep, very deep to find out from where they come. This is just a beginning.
Simply observe. You are in a certain condition, a certain undefinable condition. Then look: "What! how is it I am like that?" You try to see first if you have fever or some other illness; but it is all right, everything is all right, there's neither headache nor fever, the stomach is not protesting, the heart is functioning as it should, indeed, all's well, you are normal. "Why then am I feeling so uneasy?"... So you go a little further within. It depends on cases. Sometimes you find out immediately: yes, there was a little incident which wasn't pleasant, someone said a word that was not happy or one had failed in his task or perhaps did not know one's lesson very well, the teacher had made a remark. At the time, one did not pay attention properly, but later on, it begins to work, leaves a painful impression. That is the second stage. Afterwards, if nothing happened: "All's well, everything is normal, everything usual, I have nothing to note down, nothing has happened: why then do I feel like that?" Now it begins to be interesting, because one must enter much more deeply within oneself. And then it can be all sorts of things: it may be precisely the expression of an attack that is preparing; it may be a little inner anxiety seeking the progress that has to be made; it may be a premonition that there is somewhere in contact with oneself something not altogether harmonious which one has to change: something one must see, discover, change, on which light is to be put, something that is still there, deep down, and which should no longer be there. Then if you look at yourself very carefully, you find out: "There! I am still like that; in that little corner, there is still something of that kind, not clear: a little selfishness, a little ill-will, something refusing to change." So you see it, you take it by the tip of its nose or by the ear and hold it up in full light: "So, you were hiding! you are hiding? But I don't want you any longer." And then it has to go away.
This is a great progress.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953, 102-104, [T4],#NFDB
521:Are you falling asleep before midnight?" Cassie leaned over the edge of the couch to look at Jack. He was stretched out on the floor, his head resting against a pillow near the center of the couch, his eyes closed. She was now wide awake and headache free. He wasn't in so good a shape. "The new year is eighteen minutes away."
"Come kiss me awake in seventeen minutes."
She blinked at that lazy suggestion, gave a quick grin, and dropped Benji on his chest.
He opened one eye to look up at her as he settled his hand lightly on the kitten. "That's a no?"
She smiled. She was looking forward to dating him, but she was smart enough to know he'd value more what he had to work at.
He sighed. "That was a no. How much longer am I going to be on the fence with you?"
"Is that a rhetorical question or do you want an answer?" If this was the right relationship God had for her future, time taken now would improve it, not hurt it. She was ready to admit she was tired of being alone.
He scratched Benji under the chin and the kitten curled up on his chest and batted a paw at his hand. "Rhetorical. I'd hate to get my hopes up."
She leaned her chin against her hand, looking down at him. "I like you, Jack."
"You just figured that out?"
"I'll like you more when you catch my mouse."
"The only way we are going to catch T.J. is to turn this place into a cheese factory and help her get so fat and slow that she can no longer run and hide."
Or you could move your left hand about three inches to the right right and catch her."
Jack opened one eye and glanced toward his left. The white mouse was sitting motionless beside the plate he had set down earlier. "Let her have the cheeseburger. You put mustard on it."
"You're horrible."
He smiled. "I'm serious."
"So am I."
Jack leaned over, caught Cassie's foot, and tumbled her to the floor. "Oops."
"That wasn't fair. You scared my mouse."
Jack set the kitten on the floor. "Benji, go get her mouse."
The kitten took off after it.
"You're teaching her to be a mouser."
"Working on it. Come here. You owe me a kiss for the new year."
"Do I?" She reached over to the bowl of chocolates on the table and unwrapped a kiss. She popped the chocolate kiss into his mouth. "I called your bluff."
He smiled and rubbed his hand across her forearm braced against his chest. "That will last me until next year."
She glanced at the muted television. "That's two minutes away."
"Two minutes to put this year behind us." He slid one arm behind his head, adjusting the pillow.
She patted his chest with her hand. "That shouldn't take long." She felt him laugh. "It ended up being a very good year," she offered.
"Next year will be even better."
"Really? Promise?"
"Absolutely." He reached behind her ear and a gold coin reappeared. "What do you think? Heads you say yes when I ask you out, tails you say no?"
She grinned at the idea. "Are you cheating again?" She took the coin. "This one isn't edible," she realized, disappointed. And then she turned it over. "A real two-headed coin?"
"A rare find." He smiled. "Like you."
"That sounds like a bit of honey."
"I'm good at being mushy."
"Oh, really?"
He glanced over her shoulder. "Turn up the TV. There's the countdown."
She grabbed for the remote and hit the wrong button. The TV came on full volume just as the fireworks went off. Benji went racing past them spooked by the noise to dive under the collar of the jacket Jack had tossed on the floor. The white mouse scurried to run into the jacket sleeve.
"Tell me I didn't see what I think I just did."
"I won't tell you," Jack agreed, amused. He watched the jacket move and raised an eyebrow. "Am I supposed to rescue the kitten or the mouse? ~ Dee Henderson,#NFDB
522:Have no anxiety about anything,' Paul writes to the Philippians. In one sense it is like telling a woman with a bad head cold not to sniffle and sneeze so much or a lame man to stop dragging his feet. Or maybe it is more like telling a wino to lay off the booze or a compulsive gambler to stay away from the track.
Is anxiety a disease or an addiction? Perhaps it is something of both. Partly, perhaps, because you can't help it, and partly because for some dark reason you choose not to help it, you torment yourself with detailed visions of the worst that can possibly happen. The nagging headache turns out to be a malignant brain tumor. When your teenage son fails to get off the plane you've gone to meet, you see his picture being tacked up in the post office among the missing and his disappearance never accounted for. As the latest mid-East crisis boils, you wait for the TV game show to be interrupted by a special bulletin to the effect that major cities all over the country are being evacuated in anticipation of a nuclear attack. If Woody Allen were to play your part on the screen, you would roll in the aisles with the rest of them, but you're not so much as cracking a smile at the screen inside your own head.
Does the terrible fear of disaster conceal an even more terrible hankering for it? Do the accelerated pulse and the knot in the stomach mean that, beneath whatever their immediate cause, you are acting out some ancient and unresolved drama of childhood? Since the worst things that happen are apt to be the things you don't see coming, do you think there is a kind of magic whereby, if you only can see them coming, you will be able somehow to prevent them from happening? Who knows the answer? In addition to Novocain and indoor plumbing, one of the few advantages of living in the twentieth century is the existence of psychotherapists, and if you can locate a good one, maybe one day you will manage to dig up an answer that helps.
But answer or no answer, the worst things will happen at last even so. 'All life is suffering' says the first and truest of the Buddha's Four Noble Truths, by which he means that sorrow, loss, death await us all and everybody we love. Yet "the Lord is at hand. Have no anxiety about anything," Paul writes, who was evidently in prison at the time and with good reason to be anxious about everything, 'but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.'
He does not deny that the worst things will happen finally to all of us, as indeed he must have had a strong suspicion they were soon to happen to him. He does not try to minimize them. He does not try to explain them away as God's will or God's judgment or God's method of testing our spiritual fiber. He simply tells the Philippians that in spite of them—even in the thick of them—they are to keep in constant touch with the One who unimaginably transcends the worst things as he also unimaginably transcends the best.
'In everything,' Paul says, they are to keep on praying. Come Hell or high water, they are to keep on asking, keep on thanking, above all keep on making themselves known. He does not promise them that as a result they will be delivered from the worst things any more than Jesus himself was delivered from them. What he promises them instead is that 'the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.'
The worst things will surely happen no matter what—that is to be understood—but beyond all our power to understand, he writes, we will have peace both in heart and in mind. We are as sure to be in trouble as the sparks fly upward, but we will also be "in Christ," as he puts it. Ultimately not even sorrow, loss, death can get at us there.
That is the sense in which he dares say without risk of occasioning ironic laughter, "Have no anxiety about anything." Or, as he puts it a few lines earlier, 'Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say, Rejoice! ~ Frederick Buechner,#NFDB
523:Mom?” Then again, louder. “Mom?”
She turned around so quickly, she knocked the pan off the stove and nearly dropped the gray paper into the open flame there. I saw her reach back and slap her hand against the knobs, twisting a dial until the smell of gas disappeared.
“I don’t feel good. Can I stay home today?”
No response, not even a blink. Her jaw was working, grinding, but it took me walking over to the table and sitting down for her to find her voice. “How—how did you get in here?”
“I have a bad headache and my stomach hurts,” I told her, putting my elbows up on the table. I knew she hated when I whined, but I didn’t think she hated it enough to come over and grab me by the arm again.
“I asked you how you got in here, young lady. What’s your name?” Her voice sounded strange. “Where do you live?”
Her grip on my skin only tightened the longer I waited to answer. It had to have been a joke, right? Was she sick, too? Sometimes cold medicine did funny things to her.
Funny things, though. Not scary things.
“Can you tell me your name?” she repeated.
“Ouch!” I yelped, trying to pull my arm away. “Mom, what’s wrong?”
She yanked me up from the table, forcing me onto my feet. “Where are your parents? How did you get in this house?”
Something tightened in my chest to the point of snapping.
“Mom, Mommy, why—”
“Stop it,” she hissed, “stop calling me that!”
“What are you—?” I think I must have tried to say something else, but she dragged me over to the door that led out into the garage. My feet slid against the wood, skin burning. “Wh-what’s wrong with you?” I cried. I tried twisting out of her grasp, but she wouldn’t even look at me. Not until we were at the door to the garage and she pushed my back up against it.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way. I know you’re confused, but I promise that I’m not your mother. I don’t know how you got into this house, and, frankly, I’m not sure I want to know—”
“I live here!” I told her. “I live here! I’m Ruby!”
When she looked at me again, I saw none of the things that made Mom my mother. The lines that formed around her eyes when she smiled were smoothed out, and her jaw was clenched around whatever she wanted to say next. When she looked at me, she didn’t see me. I wasn’t invisible, but I wasn’t Ruby.
“Mom.” I started to cry. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be bad. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry! Please, I promise I’ll be good—I’ll go to school today and won’t be sick, and I’ll pick up my room. I’m sorry. Please remember. Please!”
She put one hand on my shoulder and the other on the door handle. “My husband is a police officer. He’ll be able to help you get home. Wait in here—and don’t touch anything.”
The door opened and I was pushed into a wall of freezing January air. I stumbled down onto the dirty, oil-stained concrete, just managing to catch myself before I slammed into the side of her car. I heard the door shut behind me, and the lock click into place; heard her call Dad’s name as clearly as I heard the birds in the bushes outside the dark garage.
She hadn’t even turned on the light for me.
I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees, ignoring the bite of the frosty air on my bare skin. I launched myself in the direction of the door, fumbling around until I found it. I tried shaking the handle, jiggling it, still thinking, hoping, praying that this was some big birthday surprise, and that by the time I got back inside, there would be a plate of pancakes at the table and Dad would bring in the presents, and we could—we could—we could pretend like the night before had never happened, even with the evidence in the next room over.
The door was locked.
“I’m sorry!” I was screaming. Pounding my fists against it. “Mommy, I’m sorry! Please!”
Dad appeared a moment later, his stocky shape outlined by the light from inside of the house. I saw Mom’s bright-red face over his shoulder; he turned to wave her off and then reached over to flip on the overhead lights. ~ Alexandra Bracken,#NFDB
524:Lord Walter's Wife
'But where do you go?' said the lady, while both sat under the yew,
And her eyes were alive in their depth, as the kraken beneath the sea-blue.
II
'Because I fear you,' he answered;--'because you are far too fair,
And able to strangle my soul in a mesh of your golfd-coloured hair.'
III
'Oh that,' she said, 'is no reason! Such knots are quickly undone,
And too much beauty, I reckon, is nothing but too much sun.'
IV
'Yet farewell so,' he answered; --'the sunstroke's fatal at times.
I value your husband, Lord Walter, whose gallop rings still from the limes.
'Oh that,' she said, 'is no reason. You smell a rose through a fence:
If two should smell it what matter? who grumbles, and where's the pretense?
VI
'But I,' he replied, 'have promised another, when love was free,
To love her alone, alone, who alone from afar loves me.'
VII
'Why, that,' she said, 'is no reason. Love's always free I am told.
Will you vow to be safe from the headache on Tuesday, and think it will hold?
VIII
'But you,' he replied, 'have a daughter, a young child, who was laid
In your lap to be pure; so I leave you: the angels would make me afraid."
64
IX
'Oh that,' she said, 'is no reason. The angels keep out of the way;
And Dora, the child, observes nothing, although you should please me and stay.'
At which he rose up in his anger,--'Why now, you no longer are fair!
Why, now, you no longer are fatal, but ugly and hateful, I swear.'
XI
At which she laughed out in her scorn: 'These men! Oh these men overnice,
Who are shocked if a colour not virtuous is frankly put on by a vice.'
XII
Her eyes blazed upon him--'And you! You bring us your vices so near
That we smell them! You think in our presence a thought 'twould defame us to
hear!
XIII
'What reason had you, and what right,--I appel to your soul from my life,-To find me so fair as a woman? Why, sir, I am pure, and a wife.
XIV
'Is the day-star too fair up above you? It burns you not. Dare you imply
I brushed you more close than the star does, when Walter had set me as high?
XV
'If a man finds a woman too fair, he means simply adapted too much
To use unlawful and fatal. The praise! --shall I thank you for such?
XVI
'Too fair?--not unless you misuse us! and surely if, once in a while,
You attain to it, straightaway you call us no longer too fair, but too vile.
65
XVII
'A moment,--I pray your attention!--I have a poor word in my head
I must utter, though womanly custom would set it down better unsaid.
XVIII
'You grew, sir, pale to impertinence, once when I showed you a ring.
You kissed my fan when I dropped it. No matter! I've broken the thing.
XIX
'You did me the honour, perhaps, to be moved at my side now and then
In the senses--a vice, I have heard, which is common to beasts and some men.
XX
'Love's a virtue for heroes!--as white as the snow on high hills,
And immortal as every great soul is that struggles, endures, and fulfils.
XXI
'I love my Walter profoundly,--you, Maude, though you faltered a week,
For the sake of . . . what is it--an eyebrow? or, less still, a mole on the cheek?
XXII
'And since, when all's said, you're too noble to stoop to the frivolous cant
About crimes irresistable, virtues that swindle, betray and supplant.
XXIII
'I determined to prove to yourself that, whate'er you might dream or avow
By illusion, you wanted precisely no more of me than you have now.
XXIV
'There! Look me full in the face!--in the face. Understand, if you can,
That the eyes of such women as I am are clean as the palm of a man.
XXV
'Drop his hand, you insult him. Avoid us for fear we should cost you a scar-You take us for harlots, I tell you, and not for the women we are.
66
XXVI
'You wronged me: but then I considered . . . there's Walter! And so at the end
I vowed that he should not be mulcted, by me, in the hand of a friend.
XXVII
'Have I hurt you indeed? We are quits then. Nay, friend of my Walter, be mine!
Come, Dora, my darling, my angel, and help me to ask him to dine.'
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning,#NFDB
525:On The Road
October, and eleven after dark:
Both mist and night. Among us in the coach
Packed heat on which the windows have been shut:
Our backs unto the motion—Hunt's and mine.
The last lamps of the Paris Station move
Slow with wide haloes past the clouded pane;
The road in secret empty darkness. One
Who sits beside me, now I turn, has pulled
A nightcap to his eyes. A woman here,
Knees to my knees—a twenty-nine-year-old—
Smiles at the mouth I open, seeing him:
I look her gravely in the jaws, and write.
Already while I write heads have been leaned
Upon the wall,—the lamp that's overhead
Dropping its shadow to the waist and hands.
Some time 'twixt sleep and wake. A dead pause then,
With giddy humming silence in the ears.
It is a Station. Eyes are opening now,
And mouths collecting their propriety.
From one of our two windows, now drawn up,
A lady leans, hawks a clear throat, and spits.
Hunt lifts his head from my cramped shoulder where
It has been lying—long stray hairs from it
Crawling upon my face and teazing me.
Ten minutes' law. Our feet are in the road.
A weak thin dimness at the sky, whose chill
Lies vague and hard. The mist of crimson heat
Hangs, a spread glare, about our engine's bulk.
I shall get in again, and sleep this time.
A heavy clamour that fills up the brain
Like thought grown burdensome; and in the ears
Speed that seems striving to o'ertake itself;
And in the pulses torpid life, which shakes
As water to a stir of wind beneath.
Poor Hunt, who has the toothache and can't smoke,
Has asked me twice for brandy. I would sleep;
But man proposes, and no more. I sit
With open eyes, and a head quite awake,
But which keeps catching itself lolled aside
196
And looking sentimental. In the coach,
If any one tries talking, the voice jolts,
And stuns the ear that stoops for it.
Amiens.
Half-an-hour's rest. Another shivering walk
Along the station, waiting for the bell.
Ding-dong. Now this time, by the Lord, I'll sleep.
I must have slept some while. Now that I wake,
Day is beginning in a kind of haze
White with grey trees. The hours have had their lapse.
A sky too dull for cloud. A country lain
In fields, where teams drag up the furrow yet;
Or else a level of trees, the furthest ones
Seen like faint clouds at the horizon's point.
Quite a clear distance, though in vapour. Mills
That turn with the dry wind. Large stacks of hay
Made to look bleak. Dead autumn, and no sun.
The smoke upon our course is borne so near
Along the earth, the earth appears to steam.
Blanc-Misseron, the last French station, passed.
We are in Belgium. It is just the same:—
Nothing to write of, and no good in verse.
Curse the big mounds of sand-weed! curse the miles
Of barren chill,—the twentyfold relays!
Curse every beastly Station on the road!
As well to write as swear. Hunt was just now
Making great eyes because outside the pane
One of the stokers passed whom he declared
A stunner. A vile mummy with a bag
Is squatted next me: a disgusting girl
Broad opposite. We have a poet, though,
Who is a gentleman, and looks like one;
Only he seems ashamed of writing verse,
And heads each new page with “Mon cher Ami.”
Hunt's stunner has just come into the coach,
And set us hard agrin from ear to ear.
Another Station. There's a stupid horn
Set wheezing. Now I should just like to know
—Just merely for the whim—what good that is.
These Stations for the most part are a kind
Of London coal-merchant's back premises;
Whitewashed, but as by hands of coal-heavers;
197
Grimy themselves, and always circled in
With foul coke-loads that make the nose aroint.
Here is a Belgian village,—no, a town
Moated and buttressed. Next, a water-track
Lying with draggled reeds in a flat slime.
Next, the old country, always all the same.
Now by Hans Hemmling and by John Van Eyck,
You'll find, till something's new, I write no more.
(4 HOURS)
There is small change of country; but the sun
Is out, and it seems shame this were not said:
For upon all the grass the warmth has caught;
And betwixt distant whitened poplar-stems
Makes greener darkness; and in dells of trees
Shows spaces of a verdure that was hid;
And the sky has its blue floated with white,
And crossed with falls of the sun's glory aslant
To lay upon the waters of the world;
And from the road men stand with shaded eyes
To look; and flowers in gardens have grown strong,
And our own shadows here within the coach
Are brighter; and all colour has more bloom.
So, after the sore torments of the route:—
Toothache, and headache, and the ache of wind,
And huddled sleep, and smarting wakefulness,
And night, and day, and hunger sick at food,
And twentyfold relays, and packages
To be unlocked, and passports to be found,
And heavy well-kept landscape;—we were glad
Because we entered Brussels in the sun.
~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti,#NFDB
526:'The Old Leaven'
Mark:
So, Maurice, you sail to-morrow, you say?
And you may or may not return?
Be sociable, man! for once in a way,
Unless you're too old to learn.
The shadows are cool by the water side
Where the willows grow by the pond,
And the yellow laburnum's drooping pride
Sheds a golden gleam beyond.
For the blended tints of the summer flowers,
For the scents of the summer air,
For all nature's charms in this world of ours,
'Tis little or naught you care.
Yet I know for certain you haven't stirred
Since noon from your chosen spot;
And you've hardly spoken a single wordAre you tired, or cross, or what?
You're fretting about those shares you bought,
They were to have gone up fast;
But I heard how they fell to nothing-in short,
They were given away at last.
Maurice:
No, Mark, I'm not so easily cross'd;
'Tis true that I've had a run
Of bad luck lately; indeed, I've lost;
Well! somebody else has won.
Mark:
The glass has fallen, perhaps you fear
A return of your ancient stitchThat souvenir of the Lady's Mere,
Park palings and double ditch.
Maurice:
You're wrong. I'm not in the least afraid
Of that. If the truth be told,
When the stiffness visits my shoulder-blade,
I think on the days of old;
261
It recalls the rush of the freshening wind,
The strain of the chestnut springing,
And the rolling thunder of hoofs behind,
Like the Rataplan chorus ringing.
Mark:
Are you bound to borrow, or loth to lend?
Have you purchased another screw?
Or backed a bill for another friend?
Or had a bad night at loo?
Maurice:
Not one of those, you're all in the dark,
If you choose you can guess again;
But you'd better give over guessing, Mark,
It's only labour in vain.
Mark:
I'll try once more; does it plague you still,
That trifle of lead you carry?
A guest that lingers against your will,
Unwelcome, yet bound to tarry.
Maurice:
Not so! That burden I'm used to bear,
'Tis seldom it gives me trouble;
And to earn it as I did then and there,
I'd carry a dead weight double.
A shock like that for a splintered rib
Can a thousand-fold repayAs the swallow skims through the spider's web,
We rode through their ranks that day!
Mark:
Come, Maurice, you sha'n't escape me so!
I'll hazard another guess:
That girl that jilted you long ago,
You're thinking of her, confess!
Maurice:
Tho' the blue lake flush'd with a rosy light,
Reflected from yonder sky,
262
Might conjure a vision of Aphrodite
To a poet's or painter's eye;
Tho' the golden drop, with its drooping curl,
Between the water and wood,
Hangs down like the tress of a wayward girl
In her dreamy maidenhood:
Such boyish fancies seem out of date
To one half inclined to censure
Their folly, and yet-your shaft flew straight,
Though you drew your bow at a venture.
I saw my lady the other night
In the crowded opera hall,
When the boxes sparkled with faces bright,
I knew her amongst them all.
Tho' little for these things now I reck,
I singled her from the throng
By the queenly curves of her head and neck,
By the droop of her eyelash long.
Oh! passionless, placid, and calm, and cold,
Does the fire still lurk within
That lit her magnificent eyes of old,
And coloured her marble skin?
For a weary look on the proud face hung,
While the music clash'd and swell'd,
And the restless child to the silk skirt clung
Unnoticed tho' unrepelled.
They've paled, those rosebud lips that I kist,
That slim waist has thickened rather,
And the cub has the sprawling mutton fist,
And the great splay foot of the father.
May the blight-Mark: Hold hard there, Maurice, my son,
Let her rest, since her spell is broken;
We can neither recall deeds rashly done,
Nor retract words hastily spoken.
Maurice:
Time was when to pleasure her girlish whim,
In my blind infatuation,
I've freely endangered life and limb;
Aye, perilled my soul's salvation.
263
Mark:
With the best intentions we all must work
But little good and much harm;
Be a Christian for once, not a Pagan Turk,
Nursing wrath and keeping it warm.
Maurice:
If our best intentions pave the way
To a place that is somewhat hot,
Can our worst intentions lead us, say,
To a still more sultry spot?
Mark:
'Tis said that charity makes amends
For a multitude of transgressions.
Maurice:
But our perjured loves and our faithless friends
Are entitled to no concessions.
Mark:
Old man, these many years side by side
Our parallel paths have lain;
Now, in life's long journey, diverging wide,
They can scarcely unite again;
And tho', from all that I've seen and heard,
You're prone to chafe and to fret
At the least restraint, not one angry word
Have we two exchanged as yet.
We've shared our peril, we've shared our sport,
Our sunshine and gloomy weather,
Feasted and flirted, and fenced and fought,
Struggled and toiled together;
In happier moments lighter of heart,
Stouter of heart in sorrow;
We've met and we've parted, and now we part
For ever, perchance, to-morrow.
She's a matron now; when you knew her first
She was but a child, and your hate,
Fostered and cherished, nourished and nursed,
Will it never evaporate?
264
Your grievance is known to yourself alone,
But, Maurice, I say, for shame,
If in ten long years you haven't outgrown
Ill-will to an ancient flame.
Maurice:
Well, Mark, you're right; if I spoke in spite,
Let the shame and the blame be mine;
At the risk of a headache we'll drain this night
Her health in a flask of wine;
For a castle in Spain, tho' it never was built;
For a dream, tho' it never came true;
For a cup, just tasted, tho' rudely spilt,
At least she can hold me due.
Those hours of pleasure she dealt of yore,
As well as those hours of pain,
I ween they would flit as they flitted before,
If I had them over again.
Against her no word from my lips shall pass,
Betraying the grudge I've cherished,
Till the sand runs down in my hour-glass,
And the gift of my speech has perished.
Say! why is the spirit of peace so weak,
And the spirit of wrath so strong,
That the right we must steadily search and seek,
Tho' we readily find the wrong?
Mark:
Our parents of old entailed the curse
Which must to our children cling;
Let us hope, at least, that we're not much worse
Than the founder from whom we spring.
Fit sire was he of a selfish race,
Who first to temptation yielded,
Then to mend his case tried to heap disgrace
On the woman he should have shielded.
Say! comrade mine, the forbidden fruit
We'd have plucked, that I well believe,
But I trust we'd rather have suffered mute
Than have laid the blame upon Eve.
Maurice (yawning):
265
Who knows? not I; I can hardly vouch
For the truth of what little I see;
And now, if you've any weed in your pouch,
Just hand it over to me.
~ Adam Lindsay Gordon,#NFDB
527:The Homecoming
Phatik Chakravorti was ringleader among the boys of the village. A new mischief got into his head. There was a heavy log lying on the mud-flat of the river waiting to be shaped into a mast for a boat. He decided that they should all work together to shift the log by main force from its place and roll it away. The owner of the log would be angry and surprised, and they would all enjoy the fun. Every one seconded the proposal, and it was carried unanimously.
But just as the fun was about to begin, Makhan, Phatiks younger brother, sauntered up, and sat down on the log in front of them all without a word. The boys were puzzled for a moment. He was pushed, rather timidly, by one of the boys and told to get up but he remained quite unconcerned. He appeared like a young philosopher meditating on the futility of games. Phatik was furious. Makhan, he cried, if you dont get down this minute Ill thrash you!
Makhan only moved to a more comfortable position.
Now, if Phatik was to keep his regal dignity before the public, it was clear he ought to carry out his threat. But his courage failed him at the crisis. His fertile brain, however, rapidly seized upon a new maneuver which would discomfit his brother and afford his followers an added amusement. He gave the word of command to roll the log and Makhan over together. Makhan heard the order, and made it a point of honor to stick on. But he overlooked the fact, like those who attempt earthly fame in other matters, that there was peril in it.
The boys began to heave at the log with all their might, calling out, One, two, three, go, At the word go the log went; and with it went Makhans philosophy, glory and all.
All the other boys shouted themselves hoarse with delight. But Phatik was a little frightened. He knew what was coming. And, sure enough, Makhan rose from Mother Earth blind as Fate and screaming like the Furies. He rushed at Phatik and scratched his face and beat him and kicked him, and then went crying home. The first act of the drama was over.
Phatik wiped his face, and sat down on the edge of a sunken barge on the river bank, and began to chew a piece of grass. A boat came up to the landing, and a middle-aged man, with grey hair and dark moustache, stepped on shore. He saw the boy sitting there doing nothing, and asked him where the Chakravortis lived. Phatik went on chewing the grass, and said: Over there, but it was quite impossible to tell where he pointed. The stranger asked him again. He swung his legs to and fro on the side of the barge, and said; Go and find out, and continued to chew the grass as before.
But now a servant came down from the house, and told Phatik his mother wanted him. Phatik refused to move. But the servant was the master on this occasion. He took Phatik up roughly, and carried him, kicking and struggling in impotent rage.
When Phatik came into the house, his mother saw him. She called out angrily: So you have been hitting Makhan again?
Phatik answered indignantly: No, I havent; who told you that?
His mother shouted: Dont tell lies! You have.
Phatik said suddenly: I tell you, I havent. You ask Makhan! But Makhan thought it best to stick to his previous statement. He said: Yes, mother. Phatik did hit me.
Phatiks patience was already exhausted. He could not hear this injustice. He rushed at Makban, and hammered him with blows: Take that he cried, and that, and that, for telling lies.
His mother took Makhans side in a moment, and pulled Phatik away, beating him with her hands. When Phatik pushed her aside, she shouted out: What I you little villain! would you hit your own mother?
It was just at this critical juncture that the grey-haired stranger arrived. He asked what was the matter. Phatik looked sheepish and ashamed.
But when his mother stepped back and looked at the stranger, her anger was changed to surprise. For she recognized her brother, and cried: Why, Dada! Where have you come from? As she said these words, she bowed to the ground and touched his feet. Her brother had gone away soon after she had married, and he had started business in Bombay. His sister had lost her husband while he was In Bombay. Bishamber had now come back to Calcutta, and had at once made enquiries about his sister. He had then hastened to see her as soon as he found out where she was.
The next few days were full of rejoicing. The brother asked after the education of the two boys. He was told by his sister that Phatik was a perpetual nuisance. He was lazy, disobedient, and wild. But Makhan was as good as gold, as quiet as a lamb, and very fond of reading, Bishamber kindly offered to take Phatik off his sisters hands, and educate him with his own children in Calcutta. The widowed mother readily agreed. When his uncle asked Phatik If he would like to go to Calcutta with him, his joy knew no bounds, and he said; Oh, yes, uncle! In a way that made it quite clear that he meant it.
It was an immense relief to the mother to get rid of Phatik. She had a prejudice against the boy, and no love was lost between the two brothers. She was in daily fear that he would either drown Makhan some day in the river, or break his head in a fight, or run him into some danger or other. At the same time she was somewhat distressed to see Phatiks extreme eagerness to get away.
Phatik, as soon as all was settled, kept asking his uncle every minute when they were to start. He was on pins and needles all day long with excitement, and lay awake most of the night. He bequeathed to Makhan, in perpetuity, his fishing-rod, his big kite and his marbles. Indeed, at this time of departure his generosity towards Makhan was unbounded.
When they reached Calcutta, Phatik made the acquaintance of his aunt for the first time. She was by no means pleased with this unnecessary addition to her family. She found her own three boys quite enough to manage without taking any one else. And to bring a village lad of fourteen into their midst was terribly upsetting. Bishamber should really have thought twice before committing such an indiscretion.
In this world of human affairs there is no worse nuisance than a boy at the age of fourteen. He is neither ornamental, nor useful. It is impossible to shower affection on him as on a little boy; and he is always getting in the way. If he talks with a childish lisp he is called a baby, and if he answers in a grown-up way he is called impertinent. In fact any talk at all from him is resented. Then he is at the unattractive, growing age. He grows out of his clothes with indecent haste; his voice grows hoarse and breaks and quavers; his face grows suddenly angular and unsightly. It is easy to excuse the shortcomings of early childhood, but it is hard to tolerate even unavoidable lapses in a boy of fourteen. The lad himself becomes painfully self-conscious. When he talks with elderly people he is either unduly forward, or else so unduly shy that he appears ashamed of his very existence.
Yet it is at this very age when in his heart of hearts a young lad most craves for recognition and love; and he becomes the devoted slave of any one who shows him consideration. But none dare openly love him, for that would be regarded as undue indulgence, and therefore bad for the boy. So, what with scolding and chiding, he becomes very much like a stray dog that has lost his master.
For a boy of fourteen his own home is the only Paradise. To live in a strange house with strange people is little short of torture, while the height of bliss is to receive the kind looks of women, and never to be slighted by them.
It was anguish to Phatik to be the unwelcome guest in his aunts house, despised by this elderly woman, and slighted, on every occasion. If she ever asked him to do anything for her, he would be so overjoyed that he would overdo it; and then she would tell him not to be so stupid, but to get on with his lessons.
The cramped atmosphere of neglect in his aunts house oppressed Phatik so much that he felt that he could hardly breathe. He wanted to go out into the open country and fill his lungs and breathe freely. But there was no open country to go to. Surrounded on all sides by Calcutta houses and walls, be would dream night after night of his village home, and long to be back there. He remembered the glorious meadow where he used to By his kite all day long; the broad river-banks where he would wander about the livelong day singing and shouting for joy; the narrow brook where he could go and dive and swim at any time he liked. He thought of his band of boy companions over whom he was despot; and, above all, the memory of that tyrant mother of his, who had such a prejudice against him, occupied him day and night. A kind of physical love like that of animals; a longing to be in the presence of the one who is loved; an inexpressible wistfulness during absence; a silent cry of the inmost heart for the mother, like the lowing of a calf in the twilight;-this love, which was almost an animal instinct, agitated the shy, nervous, lean, uncouth and ugly boy. No one could understand it, but it preyed upon his mind continually.
There was no more backward boy in the whole school than Phatik. He gaped and remained silent when the teacher asked him a question, and like an overladen **** patiently suffered all the blows that came down on his back. When other boys were out at play, he stood wistfully by the window and gazed at the roofs of the distant houses. And if by chance he espied children playing on the open terrace of any roof, his heart would ache with longing.
One day he summoned up all his courage, and asked his uncle: Uncle, when can I go home?
His uncle answered; Wait till the holidays come. But the holidays would not come till November, and there was a long time still to wait.
One day Phatik lost his lesson-book. Even with the help of books he had found it very difficult indeed to prepare his lesson. Now it was impossible. Day after day the teacher would cane him unmercifully. His condition became so abjectly miserable that even his cousins were ashamed to own him. They began to jeer and insult him more than the other boys. He went to his aunt at last, and told her that he bad lost his book.
His aunt pursed her lips in contempt, and said: You great clumsy, country lout. How can I afford, with all my family, to buy you new books five times a month?
That night, on his way back from school, Phatik had a bad headache with a fit of shivering. He felt he was going to have an attack of malarial fever. His one great fear was that he would be a nuisance to his aunt.
The next morning Phatik was nowhere to be seen. All searches in the neighborhood proved futile. The rain had been pouring in torrents all night, and those who went out in search of the boy got drenched through to the skin. At last Bisbamber asked help from the police.
At the end of the day a police van stopped at the door before the house. It was still raining and the streets were all flooded. Two constables brought out Phatik in their arms and placed him before Bishamber. He was wet through from head to foot, muddy all over, his face and eyes flushed red with fever, and his limbs all trembling. Bishamber carried him in his arms, and took him into the inner apartments. When his wife saw him, she exclaimed; What a heap of trouble this boy has given us. Hadnt you better send him home ?
Phatik heard her words, and sobbed out loud: Uncle, I was just going home; but they dragged me back again,
The fever rose very high, and all that night the boy was delirious. Bishamber brought in a doctor. Phatik opened his eyes flushed with fever, and looked up to the ceiling, and said vacantly: Uncle, have the holidays come yet? May I go home?
Bishamber wiped the tears from his own eyes, and took Phatiks lean and burning hands in his own, and sat by him through the night. The boy began again to mutter. At last his voice became excited: Mother, he cried, dont beat me like that! Mother! I am telling the truth!
The next day Phatik became conscious for a short time. He turned his eyes about the room, as if expecting some one to come. At last, with an air of disappointment, his head sank back on the pillow. He turned his face to the wall with a deep sigh.
Bishamber knew his thoughts, and, bending down his head, whispered: Phatik, I have sent for your mother. The day went by. The doctor said in a troubled voice that the boys condition was very critical.
Phatik began to cry out; By the mark! three fathoms. By the mark four fathoms. By the mark-. He had heard the sailor on the river- steamer calling out the mark on the plumb-line. Now he was himself plumbing an unfathomable sea.
Later in the day Phatiks mother burst into the room like a whirlwind, and began to toss from side to side and moan and cry in a loud voice.
Bishamber tried to calm her agitation, but she flung herself on the bed, and cried: Phatik, my darling, my darling.
Phatik stopped his restless movements for a moment. His hands ceased beating up and down. He said: Eh?
The mother cried again: Phatik, my darling, my darling.
Phatik very slowly turned his head and, without seeing anybody, said: Mother, the holidays have come.
4
~ Rabindranath Tagore, The Homecoming
,#NFDB
528: V - AUERBACH'S CELLAR IN LEIPZIG
CAROUSAL OF JOLLY COMPANIONS
FROSCH
Is no one laughing? no one drinking?
I'll teach you how to grin, I'm thinking.
To-day you're like wet straw, so tame;
And usually you're all aflame.
BRANDER
Now that's your fault; from you we nothing see,
No beastliness and no stupidity.
FROSCH
(Pours a glass of wine over BRANDER'S head.)
There's both together!
BRANDER
Twice a swine!
FROSCH
You wanted them: I've given you mine.
SIEBEL
Turn out who quarrelsout the door!
With open throat sing chorus, drink and roar!
Up! holla! ho!
ALTMAYER
Woe's me, the fearful bellow!
Bring cotton, quick! He's split my ears, that fellow.
SIEBEL
When the vault echoes to the song,
One first perceives the bass is deep and strong.
FROSCH
Well said! and out with him that takes the least offence!
Ah, tara, lara da!
ALTMAYER
Ah, tara, lara, da!
FROSCH
The throats are tuned, commence!
(Sings.)
The dear old holy Roman realm,
How does it hold together?
BRANDER
A nasty song! Fie! a political song
A most offensive song! Thank God, each morning, therefore,
That you have not the Roman realm to care for!
At least, I hold it so much gain for me,
That I nor Chancellor nor Kaiser be.
Yet also we must have a ruling head, I hope,
And so we'll choose ourselves a Pope.
You know the quality that can
Decide the choice, and elevate the man.
FROSCH
(sings)
Soar up, soar up, Dame Nightingale!
Ten thousand times my sweetheart hail!
SIEBEL
No, greet my sweetheart not! I tell you, I'll resent it.
FROSCH
My sweetheart greet and kiss! I dare you to prevent it!
(Sings.)
Draw the latch! the darkness makes:
Draw the latch! the lover wakes.
Shut the latch! the morning breaks
SIEBEL
Yes, sing away, sing on, and praise, and brag of her!
I'll wait my proper time for laughter:
Me by the nose she led, and now she'll lead you after.
Her paramour should be an ugly gnome,
Where four roads cross, in wanton play to meet her:
An old he-goat, from Blocksberg coming home,
Should his good-night in lustful gallop bleat her!
A fellow made of genuine flesh and blood
Is for the wench a deal too good.
Greet her? Not I: unless, when meeting,
To smash her windows be a greeting!
BRANDER (pounding on the table)
Attention! Hearken now to me!
Confess, Sirs, I know how to live.
Enamored persons here have we,
And I, as suits their quality,
Must something fresh for their advantage give.
Take heed! 'Tis of the latest cut, my strain,
And all strike in at each refrain!
(He sings.)
There was a rat in the cellar-nest,
Whom fat and butter made smoother:
He had a paunch beneath his vest
Like that of Doctor Luther.
The cook laid poison cunningly,
And then as sore oppressed was he
As if he had love in his bosom.
CHORUS (shouting)
As if he had love in his bosom!
BRANDER
He ran around, he ran about,
His thirst in puddles laving;
He gnawed and scratched the house throughout.
But nothing cured his raving.
He whirled and jumped, with torment mad,
And soon enough the poor beast had,
As if he had love in his bosom.
CHORUS
As if he had love in his bosom!
BRANDER
And driven at last, in open day,
He ran into the kitchen,
Fell on the hearth, and squirming lay,
In the last convulsion twitching.
Then laughed the murderess in her glee:
"Ha! ha! he's at his last gasp," said she,
"As if he had love in his bosom!"
CHORUS
As if he had love in his bosom!
SIEBEL
How the dull fools enjoy the matter!
To me it is a proper art
Poison for such poor rats to scatter.
BRANDER
Perhaps you'll warmly take their part?
ALTMAYER
The bald-pate pot-belly I have noted:
Misfortune tames him by degrees;
For in the rat by poison bloated
His own most natural form he sees.
FAUST AND MEPHISTOPHELES
MEPHISTOPHELES
Before all else, I bring thee hither
Where boon companions meet together,
To let thee see how smooth life runs away.
Here, for the folk, each day's a holiday:
With little wit, and ease to suit them,
They whirl in narrow, circling trails,
Like kittens playing with their tails?
And if no headache persecute them,
So long the host may credit give,
They merrily and careless live.
BRANDER
The fact is easy to unravel,
Their air's so odd, they've just returned from travel:
A single hour they've not been here.
FROSCH
You've verily hit the truth! Leipzig to me is dear:
Paris in miniature, how it refines its people!
SIEBEL
Who are the strangers, should you guess?
FROSCH
Let me alone! I'll set them first to drinking,
And then, as one a child's tooth draws, with cleverness,
I'll worm their secret out, I'm thinking.
They're of a noble house, that's very clear:
Haughty and discontented they appear.
BRANDER
They're mountebanks, upon a revel.
ALTMAYER
Perhaps.
FROSCH
Look out, I'll smoke them now!
MEPHISTOPHELES (to FAUST)
Not if he had them by the neck, I vow,
Would e'er these people scent the Devil!
FAUST Fair greeting, gentlemen!
SIEBEL
Our thanks: we give the same.
(Murmurs, inspecting MEPHISTOPHELES from the side.)
In one foot is the fellow lame?
MEPHISTOPHELES
Is it permitted that we share your leisure?
In place of cheering drink, which one seeks vainly here,
Your company shall give us pleasure.
ALTMAYER
A most fastidious person you appear.
FROSCH
No doubt 'twas late when you from Rippach started?
And supping there with Hans occasioned your delay?
MEPHISTOPHELES
We passed, without a call, to-day.
At our last interview, before we parted
Much of his cousins did he speak, entreating
That we should give to each his kindly greeting.
(He bows to FROSCH.)
ALTMAYER (aside)
You have it now! he understands.
SIEBEL
A knave sharp-set!
FROSCH
Just wait awhile: I'll have him yet.
MEPHISTOPHELES
If I am right, we heard the sound
Of well-trained voices, singing chorus;
And truly, song must here rebound
Superbly from the arches o'er us.
FROSCH
Are you, perhaps, a virtuoso?
MEPHISTOPHELES
O no! my wish is great, my power is only so-so.
ALTMAYER
Give us a song!
MEPHISTOPHELES
If you desire, a number.
SIEBEL
So that it be a bran-new strain!
MEPHISTOPHELES
We've just retraced our way from. Spain,
The lovely land of wine, and song, and slumber.
(Sings.)
There was a king once reigning,
Who had a big black flea
FROSCH
Hear, hear! A flea! D'ye rightly take the jest?
I call a flea a tidy guest.
MEPHISTOPHELES (sings)
There was a king once reigning,
Who had a big black flea,
And loved him past explaining,
As his own son were he.
He called his man of stitches;
The tailor came straightway:
Here, measure the lad for breeches.
And measure his coat, I say!
BRANDER
But mind, allow the tailor no caprices:
Enjoin upon him, as his head is dear,
To most exactly measure, sew and shear,
So that the breeches have no creases!
MEPHISTOPHELES
In silk and velvet gleaming
He now was wholly drest
Had a coat with ribbons streaming,
A cross upon his breast.
He had the first of stations,
A minister's star and name;
And also all his relations
Great lords at court became.
And the lords and ladies of honor
Were plagued, awake and in bed;
The queen she got them upon her,
The maids were bitten and bled.
And they did not dare to brush them,
Or scratch them, day or night:
We crack them and we crush them,
At once, whene'er they bite.
CHORUS (shouting)
We crack them and we crush them,
At once, whene'er they bite!
FROSCH Bravo! bravo! that was fine.
SIEBEL
Every flea may it so befall!
BRANDER
Point your fingers and nip them all!
ALTMAYER
Hurrah for Freedom! Hurrah for wine!
MEPHISTOPHELES
I fain would drink with you, my glass to Freedom clinking,
If 'twere a better wine that here I see you drinking.
SIEBEL
Don't let us hear that speech again!
MEPHISTOPHELES
Did I not fear the landlord might complain,
I'd treat these worthy guests, with pleasure,
To some from out our cellar's treasure.
SIEBEL
Just treat, and let the landlord me arraign!
FROSCH
And if the wine be good, our praises shall be ample.
But do not give too very small a sample;
For, if its quality I decide,
With a good mouthful I must be supplied.
ALTMAYER (aside)
They're from the Rhine! I guessed as much, before.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Bring me a gimlet here!
BRANDER
What shall therewith be done?
You've not the casks already at the door?
ALTMAYER
Yonder, within the landlord's box of tools, there's one!
MEPHISTOPHELES (takes the gimlet)
(To FROSCH.)
Now, give me of your taste some intimation.
FROSCH
How do you mean? Have you so many kinds?
MEPHISTOPHELES
The choice is free: make up your minds.
ALTMAYER (to FROSCH)
Aha! you lick your chops, from sheer anticipation.
FROSCH
Good! if I have the choice, so let the wine be Rhenish!
Our Fatherl and can best the sparkling cup replenish.
MEPHISTOPHELES
(boring a hole in the edge of the table, at the place where
FROSCH sits)
Get me a little wax, to make the stoppers, quick!
ALTMAYER
Ah! I perceive a juggler's trick.
MEPHISTOPHELES (to BRANDER)
And you?
BRANDER
Champagne shall be my wine,
And let it sparkle fresh and fine!
MEPHISTOPHELES
(bores: in the meantime one has made the wax stoppers, and
plugged the holes with them.)
BRANDER
What's foreign one can't always keep quite clear of,
For good things, oft, are not so near;
A German can't endure the French to see or hear of,
Yet drinks their wines with hearty cheer.
SIEBEL
(as MEPHISTOPHELES approaches his seat)
For me, I grant, sour wine is out of place;
Fill up my glass with sweetest, will you?
MEPHISTOPHELES (boring)
Tokay shall flow at once, to fill you!
ALTMAYER
Nolook me, Sirs, straight in the face!
I see you have your fun at our expense.
MEPHISTOPHELES
O no! with gentlemen of such pretence,
That were to venture far, indeed.
Speak out, and make your choice with speed! With what a vintage can I serve you?
ALTMAYER
With anyonly satisfy our need.
(After the holes have been bored and plugged)
MEPHISTOPHELES (with singular gestures)
Grapes the vine-stem bears,
Horns the he-goat wears!
The grapes are juicy, the vines are wood,
The wooden table gives wine as good!
Into the depths of Nature peer,
Only believe there's a miracle here!
Now draw the stoppers, and drink your fill!
ALL
(as they draw out the stoppers, and the wine which has been
desired flows into the glass of each)
O beautiful fountain, that flows at will!
MEPHISTOPHELES
But have a care that you nothing spill!
(They drink repeatedly.)
ALL (sing)
As 'twere five hundred hogs, we feel
So cannibalic jolly!
MEPHISTOPHELES
See, now, the race is happyit is free!
FAUST
To leave them is my inclination.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Take notice, first! their bestiality
Will make a brilliant demonstration.
SIEBEL
(drinks carelessly: the wine spills upon the earth, and turns to
flame)
Help! Fire! Help! Hell-fire is sent!
MEPHISTOPHELES (charming away the flame)
Be quiet, friendly element!
(To the revellers)
A bit of purgatory 'twas for this time, merely.
SIEBEL
What mean you? Wait!you'll pay for't dearly!
You'll know us, to your detriment.
FROSCH
Don't try that game a second time upon us!
ALTMAYER
I think we'd better send him packing quietly.
SIEBEL
What, Sir! you dare to make so free,
And play your hocus-pocus on us!
MEPHISTOPHELES
Be still, old wine-tub.
SIEBEL
Broomstick, you!
You face it out, impertinent and heady?
BRANDER
Just wait! a shower of blows is ready.
ALTMAYER
(draws a stopper out of the table: fire flies in his face.)
I burn! I burn!
SIEBEL
'Tis magic! Strike
The knave is outlawed! Cut him as you like!
(They draw their knives, and rush upon MEPHISTOPHELES.)
MEPHISTOPHELES (with solemn gestures)
False word and form of air,
Change place, and sense ensnare!
Be here and there!
(They stand amazed and look at each other.)
ALTMAYER
Where am I? What a lovely land!
FROSCH
Vines? Can I trust my eyes?
SIEBEL
And purple grapes at hand!
BRANDER
Here, over this green arbor bending,
See what a vine! what grapes depending!
(He takes SIEBEL by the nose: the others do the same reciprocally,
and raise their knives.)
MEPHISTOPHELES (as above)
Loose, Error, from their eyes the band,
And how the Devil jests, be now enlightened!
(He disappears with FAUST: the revellers start and separate.)
SIEBEL
What happened?
ALTMAYER
How?
FROSCH
Was that your nose I tightened?
BRANDER (to SIEBEL)
And yours that still I have in hand?
ALTMAYER
It was a blow that went through every limb!
Give me a chair! I sink! my senses swim.
FROSCH
But what has happened, tell me now?
SIEBEL
Where is he? If I catch the scoundrel hiding,
He shall not leave alive, I vow.
ALTMAYER
I saw him with these eyes upon a wine-cask riding
Out of the cellar-door, just now.
Still in my feet the fright like lead is weighing.
(He turns towards the table.)
Why! If the fount of wine should still be playing?
SIEBEL
'Twas all deceit, and lying, false design!
FROSCH
And yet it seemed as I were drinking wine.
BRANDER
But with the grapes how was it, pray?
ALTMAYER
Shall one believe no miracles, just say!
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, AUERBACHS CELLAR
,#NFDB
59 Integral Yoga
7 Yoga
3 Poetry
3 Philosophy
3 Occultism
1 Mysticism
1 Islam
1 Hinduism
1 Fiction
37 The Mother
23 Satprem
18 Sri Aurobindo
3 Swami Krishnananda
3 Sri Ramakrishna
2 Sri Ramana Maharshi
2 James George Frazer
2 Friedrich Nietzsche
2 Aleister Crowley
2 A B Purani
8 Record of Yoga
7 Letters On Yoga IV
4 Talks
4 Agenda Vol 10
4 Agenda Vol 03
3 The Study and Practice of Yoga
3 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
3 Some Answers From The Mother
3 Questions And Answers 1956
3 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
3 Agenda Vol 02
2 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
2 The Golden Bough
2 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
2 Questions And Answers 1953
2 Liber ABA
2 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
2 Agenda Vol 09
2 Agenda Vol 08
2 Agenda Vol 05
2 Agenda Vol 04
0.02 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(The sadhak suffered a headache after contact with a
fellow-worker.) I don't understand these two completely
--
without getting a headache, Sweet Mother?
It may be the contradiction between these two movements which
is the cause of the headache. No. 1 wants peace with a minimum
of effort. No. 2 wants to conquer the difficulty, not run away
0.05 - Letters to a Child, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I am worried because you always have a headache and because
you are tired.
--
is not always reasonable and that is why he has a headache and
a stomachache.
--
The best thing for your headache is to take plenty of physical
exercise (such as gardening for example).
--
I feel very tired. I also have a slight headache.
My dear child,
I don't need to tell you where your headache comes from; I
suppose you know. Only when you become absolutely regular
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
only result is that I get a headache, a kind of dizziness,
but as soon as I open my eyes everything becomes normal
0 1960-09-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
When I got there, I felt a moment of anguish; my feeling was that nothing could be done. Not for him in particular, but universally, for all those in his categoryit seemed hopeless.6 If that was perfection, then nothing more could be done. This lasted only a second, but it was painful. And then I tried that is, I wanted to bring my consciousness down into the highest cubethis eternal, universal and infinite consciousness which is the first and foremost expression of the manifestation but nothing doing. It was impossible. I tried for several minutes and saw that it was absolutely impossible. So I had to make a curious movement (I couldnt get through it, it was impassable), I had to come back down into the so-called lower consciousness (not lower, actuallyit was vast and impersonal), and from there I came out and regained my equilibrium. This is what gave me that splitting headache I told you about. I came out of there as if I were carrying the weight the weight of an irreducible absoluteit was dreadful. Unfortunately, I was unable to rest afterwards, and as people were waiting to see me, I had to talkwhich is very tiring for me. And this produced a bubbling in my head, like a this dark blue light of power in matter was there, shot through with streaks of white and gold, and all this was flashing back and forth in my head, this way and that way I thought I was going to have a stroke! (Mother laughs)
This lasted a good half hour before I could calm it down, make it quiet, quiet. And I saw that this came from the fact that he wanted to bring the Power down, to transmit the Power into the physical mind! But as soon as Im put in contact with the Power, you understand, it makes everything explode! (Mother laughs) It felt exactly like my head was going to explode!
0 1961-10-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Words dont convey anything; it was the experience. I made contact. It was very interesting. It lasted a long time, some two or three days. Since it was also linked to a state of healtha headache that had to be curedit bore its consequences: a crystal clear explanation of illness came. But I must again add something that preceded this.
This concentration on finding the mechanism sprang from the fact that there were disorders in the body which were vanishing and then reappearingpermanent cure seemed impossible. So I told myself, Somewhere, probably in the subconscient, something must be justifying their presence. Then, after concentrating and searching and concentrating some more, suddenly a memory rose up from the subconscient (a memory which is a kind of continued existence under a certain form), the memory of a particular set of movements and actions (not physical movements, but attitudes) that go back many years and had never attracted my attention. None of it had ever been included in the general clearing-out because, like so many other things, it all seemed to be due to normal, ongoing circumstances. But thats just where I saw (what to call it?) the hue, the taint of Falsehood. Its very subtle. These are very subtle things. But suddenly, oh! It caught hold of me and created a revolution in the whole being. All those vibrations were cast up and transformedan extraordinary thing. It stirred up much more commotion and revolution than I had ever expected. And ah! A relief. Something was clarified, bringing a brilliant, new comprehension, and then quite interesting physical results. Before this, I was really feeling rather poorly, extremely tired, with the impression of a decline into decrepituderelatively speaking! (It was in a very superficial part of the being, but it was enough to be disagreeable.) And all of itpfft! Gone in a single stroke.
0 1961-10-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But whats interesting is that it produced neither headache, nor malaise, nor anything of the kind; yet neither was there any great joy or satisfaction. It is the words we use always take on a pejorative tone and spoil it, but the difference between our habitual way of functioning and this new way is something so tremendous and overwhelming that an adaptation is evidently required. And he always said that the adaptation would at first be a diminution, and that only gradually could one regain the original purity. Thats just how it is.
But its not the time to say all this, mon petit!
0 1961-11-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo was telling me, Satprem has a headache and is tired because hes trying to do an unnecessary work.
No, its not me, I didnt think that myself, but it came to me several times. So I wondered if inspiration was coming, after all, but you Were fighting against it. That would be more than enough to make you tired!
0 1962-02-24, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But instead of doing equal amounts of time, it might be better to do less for inhaling and more for holding the breath. The holding part is extremely interesting! When the air is inside, lets say you have a headache or a sore throat or a pain in your arm, anything then you take the air (Mother demonstrates) and direct it to the unwell part very, very helpful and pleasant and interesting. You see the force go to the spot, settle in and stay there, all sorts of things.
Ah, its funny, because just this morning. Did you come for the balcony?
0 1962-09-05, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But one has to. Look, its the same as for japa. Your japa is given to you, isnt it? You receive it (unless you find it on your own, but thats harder and already requires another level of realization); you receive your japa along with the power to do it but you have to learn how to do it, right? For a long while you dont fully succeed; all sorts of things happenyou forget it right in the middle or fall asleep or grow tired, get a headache, all sorts of things; or even outer circumstances interfere and disturb you. Well, here its the same: you tell yourself, Ill do it, and you will do it, even if. You have to go at it just like a mule: everything blocks the way but you keep going. You said youd do it and you will do it. There are no results I dont care. Everything is against me I dont care. I said Id do it and I will I said Id do it and I will. And you keep on going like that.
Its the same thing in your case. It depends on what you want to achieve. Simply what I told you about sleep or resting, for example, ought to be enough. On that, you base your own disciplineor on words that were uttered, or gestures that were made, or ideas youve received. You establish your own discipline. And once you have chosen your discipline, you keep on with it.
0 1962-10-12, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theres a person I wont name who has read Sri Aurobindos books and thought he understood them. He has been following a yogic discipline (anyway, he thought he was doing yoga) and he pulled down the Force. The Force responded (Mother laughs). He wound up with a headache! He got frightened and wrote to me in these exact words: This Force is the Lords Force (which is true, quite true), and it has turned into fear. So (Mother laughs) fear is the Lords principal perversion. There you have it. He read in books that the Lord is behind everything, that there is nothing that isnt the Lord; so its the Lord who has become perverted in His manifestation, naturally. The Force of the Lord came to help him and was changed into fear, so the Lords principal perversion is fear!
If you read that, youd say he was going off his rocker.
--
Oh, all this frightful toil, this effort of the mind to understand! Struggling, giving itself headachesphew! Absolutely useless, absolutely useless. It leads nowhere, except to more confusion.
You find yourself facing a so-called problem: What am I to say? What am I to do? How should I act? There is nothing to do! Nothing but to say to the Lord, You see, heres the situation. Thats all. And then keep very still. And spontaneously, without thinking about it, without reflecting, without calculating, without doing anything, anything whatsoever, without the slightest effort you do what must be done. But its the Lord who does it, its no longer you. He does it, He arranges the circumstances, He arranges the people, He puts the words in your mouth or under your penHe does it all, all, all, all, and you have nothing more to do, nothing but let yourself live in bliss.
--
No, I am incapable of speaking, I cant say anything publishable; its impossible, impossible. It seems so artificial to me, so artificial. And besides, it gives me a headache.
So youre the one who has to do the work. You can condense a littlea sentence here, a sentence there.
0 1962-12-25, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Otherwise you give yourself a headache.
All right, I am listening; read what youve brought.
0 1963-04-16, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
My experience, you see, is that his mental silence is rigidrigid, closed but the mental substance, the brains physical substance really rests, his silence can rid you of a headache, for instance.
Its a very, very material vibration, he has some mastery there.
0 1963-10-16, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mentally, I know. When I am with him, if I happen to listen to what he says for just two minutes, I get a headache, I cant bear it. I can stay with him only when I am above or outside, then its quite all right. But if I listen to him mentally, I get a headache.
Yes, I told you, the day when I entered his mind, it was frightful!
0 1964-09-26, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are two things. One, for instance, which I have often observed: an illness is triggered, or a disorder is triggered, and there is a kind of it isnt a contagion (how can I explain it?), it would almost be like an imitation, but thats not quite it. Lets say that a certain number of cells give way; for some reason or other (there are countless reasons), they submit to the disorderobey the disorder and a particular point becomes ill according to the ordinary view of illness. But that intrusion of Disorder makes itself felt everywhere, it has repercussions everywhere: wherever there is a weaker point which doesnt resist the attack so well, it manifests. Take someone who is in the habit of getting headaches, or toothaches, or a cough, or neuralgic pains, whatever, a host of little things of that sort that come and go, increase and decrease. But if there is an attack of Disorder somewhere, a serious attack, all those little troubles reappear instantly, here, there, there. Its a fact I have observed. And the opposite movement follows the same pattern: if you are able to bring to the attacked spot the true Vibration the Vibration of Order and Harmony and you stop the Disorder all the other things are put back in order, as if automatically.
And that doesnt happen through contagion, you see; it isnt that, for instance, the blood carries the illness here or there, thats not it: it is almost like a spirit of imitation.
0 1964-09-30, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But if we look at it from another point of view, I had noticedor rather WE [Mother and Satprem] had noticed that Xs presence or contact always brought conflicts, difficulties, a sort of struggle with Nature (personal or surrounding Nature). But judging by the effect of his mantras, that would correspond to his line of action; and because of what he is himself, his line of action is located in a relatively very material domain: the physical, the immediate vital and the physical mindnot the higher, speculative or intellectual mind, no: the physical mind, the one that has an action on Matter, then the vital with all the vitals entities (he always mentions them, and he also gives the ways of mastering them, of overcoming them), and then the physical. And when people around him complained about headaches or difficulties, as he once said to me (he himself said it to me, it was downstairs, I remember), I put them in contact with the nonhabitual Nature. Therefore, its part of his mode of action. And it struck me, I remember, it struck me, because several times when I felt a pressure, a discomfort, something unpleasant, I asked myself, Is it because the bodys cells arent accustomed to the force thats acting? So I would do a work of opening, of broadening, and indeed it always succeeded: the discomfort always stopped.
Sri Aurobindo said that all the Tantrics start from below; they start right down below, and so right down below, thats how things must be, obviously. While with him, you went from above downward, so that you dominated the situation. But if you start right down below, its obvious that, right down below, thats how things are: anything thats a little stronger or a little vaster or a little truer or a little purer than ordinary Nature brings about a reaction, a revolt, a contradiction and a struggle.
0 1966-03-26, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yesterday evening, after I had written that message (I wrote it in the evening, not in comfort but that was the only time I had; the light wasnt good, but anyway I did it), after I had written, I felt a strong pain here, in my temples. Ah, I said, now I know! Now and then, after having listened to lots of people and especially after having written lots of birthday cards, answers to letters there is a sort of strange heaviness in my temples (and Ive never had headaches in my life, thats not like me!), and I say to myself, Whats this new decrepitude?! Then I noticed it wasnt that: its my eyes. Its because I havent yet found the secret of how to use my eyes. As I said just before, at times I see with extraordinary precision: things seem to come towards me to show themselves its so clear that the minutest detail is perceived. Thats one extreme. The other extreme is what I have already told several times: a sort of veil. I know things, they are in my consciousness, but I see just clearly enough not to bump against them or knock them over; everything, everything seems to be behind a veil; only I know where things are, so I find them, or I dont bump against them or break them, but thats not because I see I see a picture behind a veil, as it were. Thats the other extreme. In between the two, there are all sorts of gradations. And I am convinced its to show me that my eyes are still capable of seeing accurately the instrument is still very good, but I dont know how to use it. I dont know how to use it, because previously I used it as everyone uses his eyes, his hands, his feet, out of a sort of habit, more or less consciously I was very proud of my consciousness! ([Laughing] We are always very proud!) Very proud to have such conscious hands; in the past, for instance, I would sometimes say, I want twelve sheets of paper, then I would stop bothering about itmy hand would go and take, and there were twelve of them. That had been happening for a long, a very long time, but it would happen AT CERTAIN TIMES: when I was in the required state, that is, when there wasnt the intrusion of an arbitrary will. So all this is a field of experiment and study in very small details, absolutely insignificant in themselves, but very instructive. And it goes on all the time, twenty-four hours a day, night and day (at night its on other planes), but all this takes place in the physical, a more or less subtle physical.
This morning, there was a very amusing story. I was rinsing my eyes and mouth; I do it before daybreak, that is, with electric light. And in my bathroom there is an emergency light. Its one of the latest inventions: its connected to the power and as long as there is power, the light remains off and a battery inside gets charged; as soon as the power fails, the light turns on and the battery is discharged to keep the light on. Its very well made, they invented it for hospitals and other places where any power failure must be avoided: as soon as the power goes, the light turns on instantaneously, and when the power returns, it goes off and gets recharged for the next time. They installed it for me in the bathroom. And this morning while I was washing my teeth, poff! the light went off. I continued, naturally, since I had that emergency light. But then, I did a study. The lights in C.s room (and everywhere) were on, it was only here, in this group of rooms. That was an odd phenomenon to begin with. Then I looked, and while I looked I noticed something I hadnt taken note of all these last few days: a will to disorganize all my personal life. And causing power failures is one of the known occult methods (I dont know how its done, in fact, but that man who wrote books and came here a very long time ago, Brunton, said it was one of the tricks known to those who practice occultism: a sudden failure of the lights). There are lots of other such tricks designed to disorganize peoples lives with the idea of frightening them or announcing catastrophes to them (I have always found this very childish). But then, I saw that there was (I think I know where, here, it comes from) a will for disorganization, and I saw the path it followed (winding gesture as if Mother were going back to the source). It had begun last night, in the middle of the night: when I got up around midnight, I saw a will wanting to preoccupy me with thoughts of money! And it was insisting: the thought that everything was going wrong, and so on. I saw that in the middle of the night. I was busy with other things, but I saw that will: formations; and naturally I dealt with them as they deserved. But I saw that it went on, trying to disturb people, to make them uncomprehending, and then to turn the power off, all sorts of silly things. Its not the first time it has happenedits not always the same people because generally, when they have tried and got a good knock in return, they dont try a second time, theyve had enough! But there are others who think they are very clever and want to prove to me (laughing) that they are right and I am wrongbecause ultimately it always comes to that! So I spent half an hour this morning, before they restored the power and I resumed my usual activities, half an hour having huge fun following the thread (same winding gesture going back to the source) wherever there was mischief, and then I very kindly answered.
0 1967-07-26, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At home, my brother was studying advanced mathematics (it was to enter Polytechnique2), and he found it difficult, so my mother had engaged a tutor to coach him. I was two years younger than my brother. I used to look on, and everything would become clear: the why, the how, it all was clear. So the teacher was working hard, my brother was working hard, when suddenly I said, But its like this! Then I saw the teachers face! It seems he went and told my mother, Its your daughter who should be learning! (Mother laughs) And it was all like a picture, you understand, so funny, so funny! So I know, I remember, I know the reactions, the habits. Thats why I didnt want to look after the School here because I thought it would be a headache and everyone would fall on me! Then I was forced to because of that copying affair. But now I find it funny! (Laughing) And I tell them outrageous things!
Its so amusing, so amusing!
0 1967-08-02, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Actually, there are, inside oneself naturally (and consequently around oneself), forces that oppose ones realization, and the system of those [Tantric] mantras is to look for the support of those Overmind beings against those forces, which are much more powerful than they (the gods)the proof is that despite all their goodwill, they (the Overmind gods) have never been able to make the earth a harmonious place. We cant help noting the fact. So I told him it was a direct fight, all those mantras are a direct fight against the difficulty, whereas (and thats what gave him the terrible headache he complains about: its dangerous, of course, it can unsettle the whole functioning). I told him to stop and use that (Mothers Mantra). I explained it all to him yesterday. I told him he shouldnt wage a direct fight: one must try to find the support in the force one has inside oneself, which is everywhere and can overcome the difficulty: Instead of fighting, live in the other consciousness. But I saw he was closedlocked inwith a hard look. He didnt want to understand. So
For half an hour he kept me here. It was half past twelve!
0 1968-09-21, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But Mother, almost every night I wake up with headaches.1 My nights are tiring, very tiring.
And with me, every time I go into an inner state of peace and tranquillity, something PULLS me like that, as if out of malice, and shakes me as though a catastrophe had happened!
0 1968-09-28, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I am very much bothered. I have a sort of constant brain fatigue with headaches, aching eyes, and everything seems veiled.
Ah, mon petit, its those animals. It was the same thing with me during that so-called illness: I was as if wrapped inside a cloak of gray cotton wool. And it hasnt gone, its there, at a distance. It presses all around.
--
Do you have headaches?
No, but as soon as I want to work, it gets veiled, as if something were cutting me off: I cant catch the inspiration, its blocked. Then if I insist, I get headaches and aching eyes.
Youve caught my disease!
0 1969-04-02, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Since the previous year, Satprem had complained of headaches and eyeaches, which, strangely, would come during the night. Recently, Mother ordered him to stop reading and writing for a month.)
How are your nights?
--
If I do anything, I soon get a headache.
But you shouldnt do anything! (Mother laughs)
0 1969-04-05, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mother, Sujata has noticed that whenever I get a letter from P.L., I always have a headache afterwards.
Oh!
--
Yes, I wonder if there isnt some connection. Sujata has noticed it, she told me, Every time you get a letter from P L., you have a headache the following night.
Thats it. For the eye too.
0 1969-04-09, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I think thats what was affecting me for the past year [i.e., those occult schemings]. Because it was always at night that those headaches and eyeaches used to comealways.
At night its disgusting!
0 1969-04-26, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It doesnt give you a headache?!
No! But I feel something relentless.
1.007 - Initial Steps in Yoga Practice, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
A fixed place, a fixed time, and a fixed method of concentration are called for. In one of the aphorisms of the sutras of Patanjali, which is very relevant to this point, it is said that the practise should be for a long period: sa tu drghakla nairantarya satkra sevita dhabhmi (I.14). If we want to establish ourselves in yoga, some conditions are to be fulfilled. One condition he mentions is that the practice should be for a protracted period I said at least five years, and not less than five years. It should be repeatedly done every day, without missing even a single day. Even if we have a temperature, fever or a headache, we should not miss it, because these are obstacles. The more we try to exert our will in the practice of concentration, the more will the body also try to revolt. It will create all kinds of complications we will have indigestion, we will have a stomachache, we will have a headache, we will have fever all sorts of things will come. As a matter of fact, it is specifically mentioned in the Yoga Sutras that we will fall sick. It will be an obstacle, and we should not think, "Today I am sick; I will not meditate." That is what it wants, and then it has succeeded. So, first of all, a little guarded way of living may be called for to see, as far as possible, that we do not become so ill that we cannot even sit for a few minutes of meditation. By a regulation of diet and living in a climate that is not too extreme, etc., one can be somewhat free from the anxiety of falling ill to the extent that it would prevent us from doing anything at all in the spiritual field.
Dirghakala is a protracted period of practice. Nairantarya is practice without remission of effort; that means to say, it has to be done every day at the same time. The third condition is that we must have great love for it. We must have immense affection for our practice. We know how much affection a novelist has for his own work; how much affection an artist has for the painting that he does; how much affection a musician has for his ragas. Every artisan, every engineer, every artist, and every professional has immense affection for his own or her own profession. One cannot have disgust for a profession and then succeed in it; nor should one take to it as a kind of suffering or pain. Suppose an artist feels, "Oh, this painting is a great torture and suffering for me," then a good painting will not come forth, because there is no love for it. So, the practice of yoga will yield fruits only if we have a real love for the practice; and if we have love for it, it will also have love for us. When we protect it, it will protect us. It is said in the yoga shastras that yoga will protect us like a mother it will feed us and take care of us, protect us in every direction at all times, visibly as well as invisibly. Sa tu drghakla nairantarya satkra sevita dhabhmi (I.14) then we get established. .
1.01 - MASTER AND DISCIPLE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"Suppose there is an error in worshipping the clay image; doesn't God know that through it He alone is being invoked? He will he pleased with that very worship. Why should you get a headache over it? You had better try for knowledge and devotion yourself."
This time M. felt that his ego was completely crushed. He now said to himself: "Yes, he has spoken the truth. What need is there for me to teach others? Have I known God?
1.01 - The First Steps, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
The result of this branch of Yoga is to make men live long; health is the chief idea, the one goal of the Hatha-Yogi. He is determined not to fall sick, and he never does. He lives long; a hundred years is nothing to him; he is quite young and fresh when he is 150, without one hair turned grey. But that is all. A banyan tree lives sometimes 5000 years, but it is a banyan tree and nothing more. So, if a man lives long, he is only a healthy animal. One or two ordinary lessons of the Hatha-Yogis are very useful. For instance, some of you will find it a good thing for headaches to drink cold water through the nose as soon as you get up in the morning; the whole day your brain will be nice and cool, and you will never catch cold. It is very easy to do; put your nose into the water, draw it up through the nostrils and make a pump action in the throat.
After one has learned to have a firm erect seat, one has to perform, according to certain schools, a practice called the purifying of the nerves. This part has been rejected by some as not belonging to Raja-Yoga, but as so great an authority as the commentator Shankarchrya advises it, I think fit that it should be mentioned, and I will quote his own directions from his commentary on the Shvetshvatara Upanishad: "The mind whose dross has been cleared away by Pranayama, becomes fixed in Brahman; therefore Pranayama is declared. First the nerves are to be purified, then comes the power to practice Pranayama. Stopping the right nostril with the thumb, through the left nostril fill in air, according to capacity; then, without any interval, throw the air out through the right nostril, closing the left one. Again inhaling through the right nostril eject through the left, according to capacity; practicing this three or five times at four hours of the day, before dawn, during midday, in the evening, and at midnight, in fifteen days or a month purity of the nerves is attained; then begins Pranayama."
1.037 - Preventing the Fall in Yoga, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
In the list Patanjali mentions, the first obstacle is physical disease. His sutra runs thus: vydhi styna saaya pramda lasya avirati bhrntidarana alabdhabhmikatva anavasthitatvni cittavikepa te antary (I.30). The antarayah or impediments which cause distraction of the mind are ninefold, of which physical illness is the first. When we have a splitting headache, we will not know why it has come; we may attri bute it to heat of the sun, or wrong diet, or sleeplessness, and so on and so forth, which ordinarily are the usual causes. But when the practice becomes intense, the physical body may not be able to tolerate the intensity of the practice and there can be a revolutionary condition set up in the physical system, in the whole anatomy and the physiological functions, and painful illnesses may become the result thereof. I myself have seen some of these sincere students of yoga suffering from peculiar types of physical illness which cannot be cured by ordinary medicines. No medicine will work at that time, because the illness is not caused merely by certain physical causes; the causes are very deep-rooted. They are thrown out by the pranamaya kosha, or even something deeper than that, we may say; and the remedy is yoga practice itself.
We have to cure these reactions of yoga only through yoga. Drugs will not cure these illnesses. If a headache is caused by intense meditation, it cannot be cured by an aspirin tablet, because it is a result of an intense pressure that we have exerted upon the mind, the nerves and the pranas, and that pressure can be lifted up only by another type of meditation, of which we have to gain the knowledge only through the Guru who has initiated us. It is not an easy thing to understand. Sometimes there can be such disturbance of the digestive system that we will have diarrhoea for days or months, and we cannot stop it with medicine. headache, giddiness and diarrhoea are generally supposed to be the immediate reactions of intense concentration of the mind. We will feel as if the mountains are revolving when we stand up. This is giddiness, and we cannot easily know why this is happening. Sometimes we may be under the impression that we are practising a wrong type of meditation, due to which these reactions are set up. It is not necessarily so. Our meditation may be correct, and yet the reactions can be there.
When there is a physical condition of the type of painful illness, the practice should not be diminished. Generally, when we have a little fever, we will not be able to sit for meditation; and of course when there is a headache, it is out of the question. But knowing that these are the necessary and expected consequences of practice, one should not become diffident, and the practice of meditation should not be brought down to a lower level, either in quantity or quality, merely because of these obstacles. They will be there for some days, and sometimes even for months, but they will pass away. Just as when we clean a room with a broom there is a rise of dust, and it may look as if we are worsening the condition in the room rather than cleaning it, that is not the truth, because afterwards all of the dust will vanish and the whole room will be clean. Likewise, in the beginning it may look as if there is something worse happening to us than what has occurred earlier, but it is not true. We are getting cleaned up, and a day will come when the storm will cease and we shall be happy.
When there is intense pain an intolerable physical condition which prevents sitting for meditation one can split up the sessions for meditation into one, two, three, four or five sittings, but the total quantity should not be diminished. If we are in the habit of sitting for three hours meditation, and it is not possible to do so when we have got a headache, we may split it into six parts. But it should not be completely given up on the plea that we are ill and therefore cannot do the practice, because if we miss the practice its intensity will come down, and then the reaction produced by non-practice will really be disadvantageous - more disadvantageous than the pains we feel due to the rise of reactions by correct practice.
Sometimes it so happens that these impediments persist for a long time. They do not cease after a few days. We should not worry if they continue even for a few years, in the case of certain people. Then it happens that we get fed up. There is a feeling of dullness, and a sense of having had enough with the practice. This is what Patanjali refers to as styana, which follows vyadhi; vyadhi is illness and styana is dullness. The enthusiasm comes down and all our vigour goes. The ardour that we felt for the practice vanishes because we have been suffering and suffering for months and years, and who would like that pain or agony? Then, naturally, the alternative for the mind would be to slow down the intensity of the practice, and slow down even the feeling and the longing that it had earlier. But the trouble will not end merely with this arising of dullness.
1.04 - The Silent Mind, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
we start noticing a phenomenon that will have enormous consequences over the entire course of our yoga. We feel around the head, and particularly in the nape of the neck, a kind of unusual pressure, which may give the sensation of a false headache. At the beginning we cannot bear it for very long, and we try to shake it off,
distract ourselves or "think of something else." Gradually, this pressure takes on a more definite form, and we actually begin to feel a descending current, a current of force that does not resemble an unpleasant electric current but rather a flowing mass. We then begin to realize that the "pressure" or false headache was caused simply by our own resistance to the descent of this Force, and that the obvious thing to be done is not to obstruct the passage by blocking the current in the head, but to allow it to flow through all the levels of our being, from head to toe. This current is at first rather spasmodic, irregular; a slight,
conscious effort is required of us to reconnect with it when it vanishes;
1.056 - The Inevitable, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
19. Causing them neither headache, nor intoxication.
20. And fruits of their choice.
1.05 - AUERBACHS CELLAR, #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
And if no headache persecute them,
So long the host may credit give,
1.05 - Dharana, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
10:Soon, however, the control will improve faster than the observation. When this occurs the improvement will become apparent in the record. Any variation will probably be due to accidental circumstances; for example, one night your may be very tired when you start; another night you may have headache or indigestion. You will do well to avoid practising at such times.
11:We will suppose, then, that you have reached the stage when your average practice on one subject is about half an hour, and the average number of breaks between ten and twenty. One would suppose that this implied that during the periods between the breaks one was really concentrated, but this is not the case. The mind is flickering, although imperceptibly. However, there may be sufficient real steadiness even at this early stage to cause some very striking phenomena, of which the most marked is one which will possibly make you think that you have gone to sleep. Or, it may seem quite inexplicable, and in any case will disgust you with yourself. You will completely forget who you are, what you are, and what you are doing. A similar phenomenon sometimes happens when one is half awake in the morning, and one cannot think what town one is living in. The similarity of these two things is rather significant. It suggests that what is really happening is that you are waking up from the sleep which men call waking, the sleep whose dreams are life.
1.060 - Tracing the Ultimate Cause of Any Experience, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
This is the etiology, the diagnosis, or we may call it the pathological investigation of a psychological condition that has arisen. No event takes place by a single cause. Many causes come together to produce an effect, just as it is in anything that we see in life. Even a headache does not come due to a single reason. There is a susceptibility of the system the season or the climate that is pervading outside, the mental condition, the social status, the function or the work that one performs, and so on. These become various factors that are contri butory to a single phenomenon which is experienced.
To bring an effect back to its cause is a difficult thing because the cause cannot be easily discovered. If there is a single cause for a single effect, and they work in a mathematical fashion absolutely, we may be able to revert the effect into the cause at once, by turning on a switch. But, the cause and effect relationship is not as arithmetical as it may appear. They do not follow any logic in the way we understand it. Suddenly, a phenomenon can arise. Though it is a very logical consequence of certain causes, it will remain outside the purview of our understanding because the logical deductions that we make are linear in their fashion and not organic in their structure. But, the world is organic. Everything is organic in life, which means to say there is an interrelatedness of causes mutually determining one another, so that anything can be called a cause if it is pinpointed exclusively.
1.08 - Attendants, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
Mulshankar, youngest of the group, was the brother of Esculape, alias Dayashankar, at one time in charge of the Ashram Dispensary. He also worked as an assistant in the Dispensary after Esculape's retirement and came to serve Sri Aurobindo as a medical aid. An excellent worker, he had the privilege of massaging Sri Aurobindo's body for a certain period. He was no masseur and in fact knew nothing about it, but he picked it up from some casual lessons and was gifted with the natural lightness and suppleness of finger movements. During the short interval that Sri Aurobindo had to wait for the Mother to come, before he started walking, Mulshankar would sit behind and apply a good massage to his back. It was really as if an expert masseur was at work; his hands moved so lightly and fast, up and down the back and spine; sometimes using delicate finger strokes or the edge of the palms and swinging and bending the body as the various movements demanded and then finishing off with very gentle touches of the fingertips. One was tempted to take a photograph of his agile figure and beaming face visibly moved beyond measure by the unique privilege of touching the Lord's body, while Sri Aurobindo kept on sitting like a statue looking downwards as the massage proceeded, or in front, sometimes smiling by himself, perhaps oblivious of all the hundred kinds of fleeting, fluttering, striking movements being made on his back. Both the figures supplied us food for a good deal of merriment, the Guru sitting on the edge of the bed, the shishya briskly massaging his back. But the poor fellow had to miss his service because of an intractable headache that crippled him often. And every time that happened we would report to Sri Aurobindo; his comment would be: "Again?", or an exclamatory expression; we could feel at the same time that the inner help was being given.
What could be more heart-rending than that he lost his life at the hands of an assassin during the riot of 1947? When the news was brought to Sri Aurobindo that he had been fatally stabbed, the air was filled with gloom. Sri Aurobindo listened quietly and his face bore a grave and serious expression that we had not seen before. The dark forces seemed to have achieved a perilous victory in snatching away one of the personal attendants of the Divine. Such is the grim occult struggle between the forces of Light and the forces of Darkness. For days we were under a pall of gloom and none of us referred to the incident in our talks.
1.08 - Independence from the Physical, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
Independence from the Senses Matter is the starting point of our evolution. It is confined in Matter that consciousness has gradually evolved; therefore the more consciousness emerges, the more it will recover its sovereignty and assert its independence. This is the first step (not the last, as we will see). We are, however, almost totally subservient to the needs of the body for our survival, and to the bodily organs for perceiving the world; we are very proud, and rightly so, of our machines, but when our machine gets a little headache everything becomes a blur, and when we are denied our array of telegraphs, telephones, televisions,
etc., we become incapable of knowing what is happening next door or of seeing beyond the end of our noses. We are hypercivilized beings who have not physically gone beyond the condition of the savage.
1.09 - SKIRMISHES IN A WAY WITH THE AGE, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
preserved himself against sickness and headaches: heavy marches,
the simplest mode of living, uninterrupted sojourns in the open
1.13 - On despondency., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
8. At the third hour the demon of despondency produces shivering, headache, and even colic. At the ninth hour the sick man gathers his strength. And when the table is laid he jumps out of bed. But the hour of prayer has come; again the body is weighed down. He had begun to pray, but it steeps him in sleep, and tears his response to shreds with untimely yawns.5
9. Each of the other passions is destroyed by some particular virtue. But despondency for the monk is a general death.
1.21 - Tabooed Things, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
with it, the person will suffer from headache; sometimes it is
thought that he will have an eruption on the head. The same
1.240 - Talks 2, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
At 5-30 p.m. the Swiss lady complains to Sri Bhagavan that she gets a headache if meditation be prolonged for some time.
M.: If the meditator and meditation be understood to be the same there will be no headache or similar complaints.
D.: But they are different. How shall we consider them to be the same?
--
The lady recalled to her mind how Sri Ramana was suffering from headache for several days together.
Sri Bhagavan said: Yes, yes! It was the month before I left Madura. It was not headache, but an inexpressible anguish which I suppressed at the time; these were however the outward symptoms which, I said, were due to headache. I remember how anxious you grew on account of my headache. You used to rub some ointment on my forehead every day.
My anguish continued until I left Madura and reached this place.
1.2.4 - Speech and Yoga, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The headache and the fatigue is always a sign that the consciousness no longer wants this outward-going thought and speech and is even physically strained by it. But it is the subconscient habit that wants to continue. Mostly human speech and thought go on mechanically in certain grooves that always repeat themselves and it is not really the mind that controls or dictates them. That is why this habit can go on for some time even after the conscious mind has withdrawn its support and consent and resolved to do otherwise. But if one perseveres, this subconscious mechanical habit runs down like all machinery that is not kept wound up to go on again. Then one can form the opposite habit in the subconscient of admitting only what the inner being consents to think or speak.
***
1.27 - AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
The Master looked at the figures for a minute and said: "Stop, please! It gives me a headache."
Presently the tide came up the Ganges. They heard the sound of the rushing water. The tide struck the bank of the river and flowed toward the north. Sri Ramakrishna looked at it intently and exclaimed like a child: "Look at that boat! I wonder what is going to happen to it."
1.300 - 1.400 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
At 5-30 p.m. the Swiss lady complains to Sri Bhagavan that she gets a headache if meditation be prolonged for some time.
281
--
M.: If the meditator and meditation be understood to be the same there will be no headache or similar complaints.
D.: But they are different. How shall we consider them to be the same?
1.400 - 1.450 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
The lady recalled to her mind how Sri Ramana was suffering from headache for several days together.
Sri Bhagavan said: Yes, yes! It was the month before I left Madura. It was not headache, but an inexpressible anguish which I suppressed at the time; these were however the outward symptoms which, I said, were due to headache. I remember how anxious you grew on account of my headache. You used to rub some ointment on my forehead every day.
My anguish continued until I left Madura and reached this place.
1.439, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
in you? If headache was natural to human beings no one would
try to get rid of it. But everyone that has a headache tries to get rid
of it, because he has known a time when he had no headache. He
desires only that which is natural to him. So too he desires happiness
1.55 - The Transference of Evil, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
transferring the evil. When a Moor has a headache he will sometimes
take a lamb or a goat and beat it till it falls down, believing that
the headache will thus be transferred to the animal. In Morocco most
wealthy Moors keep a wild boar in their stables, in order that the
1929-06-16 - Illness and Yoga - Subtle body (nervous envelope) - Fear and illness, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are physical movements, effects of the pressure of the Yoga, which sometimes create ungrounded fears that may do harm if the fear is not rejected. There is, for instance, a certain pressure in the head of which there has been question and which is felt by many, especially in the earlier stages, when something that is still closed has to open. It is a discomfort that comes to nothing and can easily be got over, if you know that it is an effect of the pressure of the forces to which you are opening, when they work strongly on the body to produce a result and to hasten the transformation. Taken quietly, it can turn into a not unpleasurable sensation. But if you get frightened, you are sure to contract a very bad headache; it may even go as far as a fever. The discomfort is due to some resistance in the nature; if you know how to release the resistance, you are immediately free of the discomfort. But get frightened and the discomfort may turn into something much worse. Whatever the character of the experience you have, you must give no room to fear; you must keep an unshaken confidence and feel that whatever happens is the thing that had to happen. Once you have chosen the path, you must boldly accept all the consequences of your choice. But if you choose and then draw back and choose again and again draw back, always wavering, always doubting, always fearful, you create a disharmony in your being, which not only retards your progress, but can be the origin of all kinds of disturbance in the mind and vital being and discomfort and disease in the body.
***
1951-02-12 - Divine force - Signs indicating readiness - Weakness in mind, vital - concentration - Divine perception, human notion of good, bad - Conversion, consecration - progress - Signs of entering the path - kinds of meditation - aspiration, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If you fight, if you are restless, if you struggle, you will get nothing at all; and if you become irritable you will only get a headache, that is all.
Yes, it is that. To gather together all your power of aspiration, make of it something intensely concentrated, in an absolute tranquillity, to be conscious of your inner flame and throw into it all you can that it may burn ever higher and higher, and then call with your consciousness and, slowly, push. You are sure to succeed one day.
1951-02-26 - On reading books - gossip - Discipline and realisation - Imaginary stories- value of - Private lives of big men - relaxation - Understanding others - gnostic consciousness, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is a state in which a simple conversation which obliges you to remain on the level of ordinary life gives you a headache, turns your stomach and, if it continues, may give you a fever. I am speaking of course about the gossip-type of conversations. I believe that apart from a few exceptions, everybody indulges in this exercise and talks of things about which he should keep silent or chatters about other things. It becomes so natural that you are not troubled by it. But if you continue in this way, you hinder your consciousness completely from rising up; you bind yourself with iron chains to the ordinary consciousness and the work in the subconscious is not done or has not even begun. Those who want to rise up have already enough difficulties without looking for encouragements outside.
Naturally, the effort to keep the consciousness at a high level is tiring in the beginning, like the exercises you do to develop your muscles. But you do not give up gymnastics because of that! So mentally also you must do the same thing. You must not allow your mind to stoop low: gossiping degrades you and, if you want to do Yoga, you must abstain from it, thats all.
1951-03-31 - Physical ailment and mental disorder - Curing an illness spiritually - Receptivity of the body - The subtle-physical- illness accidents - Curing sunstroke and other disorders, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The method of relaxing the contraction may be different in the mind, the vital or the body, but logically it is the same thing. Once you have relaxed the tension, you see first if the disagreeable effect ceases, which would prove that it was a small momentary resistance, but if the pain continues and if it is indeed necessary to increase the receptivity in order to be able to receive what is helpful, what should be received, you must, after having relaxed this contraction, begin trying to widen yourselfyou feel you are widening yourself. There are many methods. Some find it very useful to imagine they are floating on water with a plank under their back. Then they widen themselves, widen, until they become the vast liquid mass. Others make an effort to identify themselves with the sky and the stars, so they widen, widen themselves, identifying themselves more and more with the sky. Others again dont need these pictures; they can become conscious of their consciousness, enlarge their consciousness more and more until it becomes unlimited. One can enlarge it till it becomes vast as the earth and even the universe. When one does that one becomes really receptive. As I have said, it is a question of training. In any case, from an immediate point of view, when something comes and one feels that it is too strong, that it gives a headache, that one cant bear it, the method is just the same, you must act upon the contraction. One can act through thought, by calling the peace, tranquillity (the feeling of peace takes away much of the difficulty) like this: Peace, peace, peace tranquillity calm. Many discomforts, even physical, like all these contractions of the solar plexus, which are so unpleasant and give you at times nausea, the sensation of being suffocated, of not being able to brea the again, can disappear thus. It is the nervous centre which is affected, it gets affected very easily. As soon as there is something which affects the solar plexus, you must say, Calm calm calm, become more and more calm until the tension is destroyed.
In thought also. For instance, you are reading something and come across a thought you dont understandit is beyond you, you understand nothing and so in your head it lies like a brick, and if you try to understand, it becomes more and more like a brick, a stiffening, and if you persist it gives you a headache. There is but one thing to do: not to struggle with the words, remain just like this (gesture, stretched out, immobile), create a relaxation, simply widen, widen. And dont try to understand, above all, dont try to understandlet it enter like that, quite gently, and relax, relax, and in this relaxing your headache goes away. You no longer think of anything, you wait for a few days and after some days you see from inside: Oh! How clear it is! I understand what I had not understood. It is as easy as that. When you read a book which is beyond you, when you come across sentences which you cannot understandone feels that there is no correspondence in the headwell, you must do this; one reads the thing once, twice, thrice, then remains calm and makes the mind silent. A fortnight later, one takes up the same passage again and it is clear as daylight. Everything has been organised in the head, the elements of the brain which were wanted for the understanding have been formed, everything has been done gradually and one understands. I knew many people who, when I used to tell them something, argued,they did not understand anything at all. They were shut up in their mind which could not catch the thought, which threw it out, refused it violently. You have said something, you dont insist; you have said it, thats all; if need be you say it a second time, but you dont insist. A week, a month later, those very people come looking for you and tell you with strong conviction, But things are like that, you dont understand, things are like that! It is exactly what you have told them, you know. But they tell you, I thought about it, now I know, it is this, it is truly this. If you have the misfortune to tell them, But this is exactly what I had told you, they pull a long face! And they dont understand any longer.
Illnesses enter through the subtle body, dont they? How can they be stopped?
1953-06-10, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Simply observe. You are in a certain condition, a certain undefinable condition. Then look: What! how is it I am like that? You try to see first if you have fever or some other illness; but it is all right, everything is all right, theres neither headache nor fever, the stomach is not protesting, the heart is functioning as it should, indeed, alls well, you are normal. Why then am I feeling so uneasy? So you go a little further within. It depends on cases. Sometimes you find out immediately: yes, there was a little incident which wasnt pleasant, someone said a word that was not happy or one had failed in his task or perhaps did not know ones lesson very well, the teacher had made a remark. At the time, one did not pay attention properly, but later on, it begins to work, leaves a painful impression. That is the second stage. Afterwards, if nothing happened: Alls well, everything is normal, everything usual, I have nothing to note down, nothing has happened: why then do I feel like that? Now it begins to be interesting, because one must enter much more deeply within oneself. And then it can be all sorts of things: it may be precisely the expression of an attack that is preparing; it may be a little inner anxiety seeking the progress that has to be made; it may be a premonition that there is somewhere in contact with oneself something not altogether harmonious which one has to change: something one must see, discover, change, on which light is to be put, something that is still there, deep down, and which should no longer be there. Then if you look at yourself very carefully, you find out: There! I am still like that; in that little corner, there is still something of that kind, not clear: a little selfishness, a little ill-will, something refusing to change. So you see it, you take it by the tip of its nose or by the ear and hold it up in full light: So, you were hiding! you are hiding? But I dont want you any longer. And then it has to go away.
This is a great progress.
1953-06-24, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If it is a work that you are doing for the collectivity and not for yourself personally, then you must do it, whatever happens. It is an elementary discipline. You have undertaken to do this work or have been given the work and have taken it up, therefore you have accepted it, and in that case you must do it. At all times, unless you are absolutely ill, ill in the last degree and unable to move, you must do it. Even if you are rather ill, you must do it. An unselfish work always cures you of your petty personal maladies. Naturally, if you are really compelled to be in bed without being able to move, with a terrible fever or a very serious illness, then thats quite different. But otherwise, if you are just a little indisposed: I am not feeling quite well, I have a little headache or I have indigestion, or I have a bad cold, I am coughing, things like that then doing your work, not thinking of yourself, thinking of the work, doing it as well as you can, that puts you right immediately.
In reality illness is only disequilibrium; if then you are able to establish equilibrium, this disequilibrium disappears. An illness is simply, always, in every case, even when the doctors say that there are microbesin every case, a disequilibrium in the being: a disequilibrium among the various functions, disequilibrium among the forces.
--
I knew a doctor who was a neurologist and treated illnesses of the stomach. He used to say that all illnesses of the stomach came from a more or less bad nervous state. He was a doctor for the rich and it was the rich and unoccupied people who went to him. So they used to come and tell him: I have a pain in the stomach, I cannot digest, and this and that. They had terrible pains, they had headache, they had, well, all the symptoms! He used to listen to them very seriously. I knew a lady who went to him and to whom he said: Ah! your case is very serious. But on which floor do you live? On the ground floor? All right. This is what you have to do to cure your illness of the stomach. Take a bunch of fully ripe grapes (do not take your breakfast, for breakfast upsets your stomach), take a bunch of grapes; hold it in your hand, like this, very carefully. Then prepare to go outnot by your door, never go out by your door! You must go out by the window. Get a stool. And go out by the window. Go out in the street, and there you must walk while eating one grape every two stepsnot more, yes, not more! You will have stomach-ache! One single grape every two steps. You must take two steps, then eat one single grape and you should continue till there are no more grapes. Do not turn back, go straight on till there are no more grapes. You must take a big bunch. And when you have finished, you may return quietly. But do not take a conveyance! Come back on foot, otherwise the whole trouble will return. Come back quietly and I give you the guarantee that if you do that every day, at the end of three days you will be cured. And in fact this lady was cured!
(A child) Sometimes there is a lot of work. One does not know what to do.
1954-09-08 - Hostile forces - Substance - Concentration - Changing the centre of thought - Peace, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But I can also tell you that when I was in Japan I met a man who had formed a group, for It cant be said that it was for sadhana, but for a kind of discipline. He had a theory and it was on this theory that he had founded his group: that one can think in any part of ones being whatever if one concentrates there. That is to say, instead of thinking in your head, you can think in your chest. And he said that one could think here (gesture) in the stomach. He took the stomach as the seat of pra, you see, that is, the vital force. He used certain Sanskrit words, you know, half-digested, and all that But still, this does not matter, he was full of goodwill and he said that most human miseries come from the fact that men think in their heads, that this makes the head ache, tires you and takes away your mental clarity. On the other hand, if you learn how to think here (gesture indicating the stomach), it gives you power, strength and calmness. And the most remarkable thing is that he had attained a kind of ability to bring down the mental power, the mental force exactly here (gesture); the mental activity was generated there, and no longer in the head. And he had cured a considerable number of people, considerable, some hundreds, who used to suffer from terrible headaches; he had cured them in this way.
I have tried it, it is quite easy, precisely because, as I told you a while ago, the mental force, mental activity is independent of the brain. We are in the habit of using the brain but we can use something else or rather, concentrate the mental force elsewhere, and have the impression that our mental activity comes from there. One can concentrate ones mental force in the solar plexus, here (gesture), and feel the mental activity coming out from there.
--
There now! But mark that there was something very true, in the see that if ever you have a headache I advise you to do this: to take the thought-force, the mental force and even if you can draw a little of your vital force, that tooand make it come down, like this (gesture of very slowly sliding both hands from the top of the head downwards). Well, if you have a headache or a congestion, if you have caught a touch of the sun, for instance, indeed if anything has happened to you, well, if you know how to do this and bring down the force here, like this, here (showing the centre of the chest), or even lower down (showing the stomach), well, it will disappear. It will disappear. You will be able to do this in five minutes. You can try, the next time you have a headache I hope you wont have a headache but the next time you have it, try this. Sit upright, like this (movement showing an sana posture). The Japanese say you should sit on your heels but that might disturb your meditation, sitting like thatthey call it sitting at ease. The Indian fashion is like this (gesture), otherwise you must sit like this (gesture); this is harder when you are not accustomed to it.
So, sit quite at ease and then take all your force as though you were taking, you see all the energy in your head, take it and then make it come down, down, down, like this, slowly, very carefully, right down here, down to the navel. And you will see that your headache will disappear. I have made the experiment many times It is a very good remedy, very easy; there is no need to take pills or injection; it gets cured in this way. So there you are!
Any other questions? Yes!
1955-05-04 - Drawing on the universal vital forces - The inner physical - Receptivity to different kinds of forces - Progress and receptivity, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I knew young people who had always lived in citiesin a city and in those little rooms one has in the big cities in which everyone is huddled. Now, they had come to spend their holidays in the countryside, in the south of France, and there the sun is hot, naturally not as here but all the same it is very hot (when we compare the sun of the Mediterranean coasts with that of Paris, for example, it truly makes a difference), and so, when they walked around the countryside the first few days they really began to get a terrible headache and to feel absolutely uneasy because of the sun; but they suddenly thought: Why, if we make friends with the sun it wont harm us any more! And they began to make a kind of inner effort of friendship and trust in the sun, and when they were out in the sun, instead of trying to bend double and tell themselves, Oh! How hot it is, how it burns!, they said, Oh, how full of force and joy and love the sun is! etc., they opened themselves like this (gesture), and not only did they not suffer any longer but they felt so strong afterwards that they went round telling everyone who said It is hottelling them Do as we do, you will see how good it is. And they could remain for hours in the full sun, bare-headed and without feeling any discomfort. It is the same principle.
It is the same principle. They linked themselves to the universal vital force which is in the sun and received this force which took away all that was unpleasant to them.
1956-02-15 - Nature and the Master of Nature - Conscious intelligence - Theory of the Gita, not the whole truth - Surrender to the Lord - Change of nature, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This is very convenient, it may be done very rapidlyat least one could claim that its done. As I said, in practice one is rarely consistent with ones theory; if you have a bad throat or a headache or have grazed your foot, you begin to cry out or plain, to groan, and so you are not detached, you are altogether attached and tightly bound. This is a very human fact.
Or else, when someone says something unpleasant to you, you get quite upset. It is like thatbecause you are closely attached to your nature, although you have declared you are not. Thats all.
1956-06-27 - Birth, entry of soul into body - Formation of the supramental world - Aspiration for progress - Bad thoughts - Cerebral filter - Progress and resistance, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If you know how to rise to a higher level, simply into a region of the speculative mind which is not quite the ordinary physical mind, you can see all this play and all this struggle, all this conflict, all these contradictions as a curiosity which does not touch or affect you. If you rise a step higher still and see the goal towards which you want to go, you will gradually come to discern between ideas favourable to your progress which you will keep, and ideas opposed to this progress which harm and impair it; and from above you will have the power to set them aside, calmly, without being otherwise affected by them. But if you remain there, at that level in the midst of that confusion and conflict, well, you risk getting a headache!
The best thing to do is to occupy yourself with something practical which will compel you to concentrate specially: studies, work or some physical occupation for the body which demands attentionanything at all that forces you to concentrate on what you are doing and no longer be a prey to these ramblings. But if you have the misfortune to remain there and look at them, then surely, as I said, you will get a headache. For it is a problem which must be resolved either by a descent into practical life and a concentration on some practical effort or else by rising above and looking from above at all this chaos so as to be able to bring some order into it and set it right.
But one must never remain on the same plane, it is a plane which is no good either for physical or moral health.
1956-12-12 - paradoxes - Nothing impossible - unfolding universe, the Eternal - Attention, concentration, effort - growth capacity almost unlimited - Why things are not the same - will and willings - Suggestions, formations - vital world, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But if we go back to the beginning, then it becomes extremely practical, concrete and very encouraging. For we say this: in order to have the idea of the impossible, that something is impossible, you must attempt it. For example, if at this moment you feel that what I am telling you is impossible to understand (laughing), this means that you are trying to understand it; and if you try to understand it, this means it is within your consciousness, otherwise you could not try to understand itjust as I am in your consciousness, just as my words are in your consciousness, just as what Sri Aurobindo has written is also in your consciousness, otherwise you would have no contact with it. But for the moment it is impossible to understand, for want of a few small cells in the brain, nothing else, it is very simple. And as these cells develop through attention, concentration and effort, when you have listened attentively and made an effort to understand, well, after a few hours or a few days or a few months, new convolutions will be formed in your brain, and all this will become quite natural. You will wonder how there could have been a time when you did not understand: It is so simple! But so long as these convolutions are not there, you may make an effort, you may even give yourself a headache, but you will not understand.
It is very encouraging because, fundamentally, the only thing necessary is to want it and to have the necessary patience. What is incomprehensible for you today will be quite clear in a short time. And note that it is not necessary that you should give yourself a headache every day and at every minute by trying to understand! One very simple thing is enough: to listen as well as you can, to have a sort of will or aspiration or, you might even say, desire to understand, and then thats all. You make a little opening in your consciousness to let the thing enter; and your aspiration makes this opening, like a tiny notch inside, a little hole somewhere in what is shut up, and then you let the thing enter. It will work. And it will build up in your brain the elements necessary to express itself. You no longer need to think about it. You try to understand something else, you work, study, reflect, think about all sorts of things; and then after a few monthsor perhaps a year, perhaps less, perhaps moreyou open the book once again and read the same sentence, and it seems as clear as crystal to you! Simply because what was necessary for understanding has been built up in your brain.
So, never come to me saying, I am no good at this subject, I shall never understand philosophy or I shall never be able to do mathematics or It is ignorance, it is sheer ignorance. There is nothing you cannot understand if you give your brain the time to widen and perfect itself. And you can s from one mental construction to another: this corresponds to studies; from one subject to another: and each subject of study means a language; from one language to another, and build up one thing after another within you, and contain all that and many more things yet, very harmoniously, if you do this with care and take your time over it. For each one of these branches of knowledge corresponds to an inner formation, and you can multiply these formations indefinitely if you give the necessary time and care.
1958-01-08 - Sri Aurobindos method of exposition - The mind as a public place - Mental control - Sri Aurobindos subtle hand, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You see, all those who have done ordered and organised physical exercises, have the knowledge, for instance, of the various muscles which must be moved to obtain a particular movement, and the best way to move them and how to obtain the maximum result with the minimum loss of energy. Well, it is the same thing with thought. When you train yourself methodically, there comes a time when you can follow a train of reasoning quite objectively, as you would project a picture on a screenyou can follow the logical deduction of one idea from another, and the normal, logical, organised movement, with the minimum loss of time, from a proposition to its conclusion. Once you have acquired the habit of doing that, just as you have the habit of methodically moving the muscles which must be moved to obtain a certain result, your thought becomes clear. Otherwise, movements of thought, intellectual movements, are vague, imprecise, elusive; all of a sudden something rises up, one doesnt know why, and something else comes to contradict it, one doesnt know why either. And if one tries to organise this clearly in order to become aware of the exact relation between ideas, the first few times one does it, one gets a fine headache! And one has the feeling of trying to find ones way in a very dark virgin forest.
The speculative mind needs discipline for its development. If it is not disciplined methodically, one is always in a sort of a cloud. The vast majority of human beings can harbour the most contradictory ideas in their brains without being in the least troubled by them.
1962 10 12, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All this oh, this tremendous labour of the mind striving to understand, toiling and giving itself headaches! It is absolutely useless, absolutely useless, no use at all, it merely increases the confusion.
You are faced with a so-called problem: what should you say, what should you do, how should you act? There is nothing to do, nothing, you only have to say to the Lord, There, You see, it is like that thats all. And then you stay very quiet. And then quite spontaneously, without thinking about it, without reflection, without calculation, nothing, nothing, without the slightest effortyou do what has to be done. That is to say, the Lord does it, it is no longer you. He does it, He arranges the circumstances, He arranges the people, He puts the words into your mouth or your penHe does everything, everything, everything, everything; you have nothing more to do but to allow yourself to live blissfully.
1.A - ANTHROPOLOGY, THE SOUL, #Philosophy of Mind, #unset, #Zen
The form of habit applies to all kinds and grades of mental action. The most external of them, i.e. the spatial direction of an individual, viz. his upright posture, has been by will made a habit - a position taken without adjustment and without consciousness - which continues to be an affair of his persistent will; for the man stands only because and in so far as he wills to stand, and only so long as he wills it without consciousness. Similarly our eyesight is the concrete habit which, without an express adjustment, combines in a single act the several modifications of sensation, consciousness, intuition, intelligence, etc., which make it up. Thinking, too, however free and active in its own pure element it becomes, no less requires habit and familiarity (this impromptuity or form of immediacy), by which it is the property of my single self where I can freely and in all directions range. It is through this habit that I come to realize my existence as a thinking being. Even here, in this spontaneity of self-centred thought, there is a partnership of soul and body (hence, want of habit and too-long-continued thinking cause headache); habit diminishes this feeling, by making the natural function an immediacy of the
soul. Habit on an ampler scale, and carried out in the strictly intellectual range, is recollection and memory, whereof we shall speak later.
1f.lovecraft - The Trap, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
for it. By evening I had acquired a bad headache, and ate a light
supper accordingly. Then, after a brisk walk around the massed
1.rmpsd - Of what use is my going to Kasi any more?, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
How can a headless man have a headache?
People think, they will discharge their debts
1.rt - The Homecoming, #Tagore - Poems, #Rabindranath Tagore, #Poetry
That night, on his way back from school, Phatik had a bad headache with a fit of shivering. He felt he was going to have an attack of malarial fever. His one great fear was that he would be a nuisance to his aunt.
The next morning Phatik was nowhere to be seen. All searches in the neighborhood proved futile. The rain had been pouring in torrents all night, and those who went out in search of the boy got drenched through to the skin. At last Bisbamber asked help from the police.
2.1.3 - Wrong Movements of the Vital, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
I asked you to look for the cause of the abatement of energy or zeal (utsha), because it is evident that there must be some resistance somewhere, otherwise there would not be these constant headaches and this less intense condition. If the physical consciousness is open the headaches should disappear or at least diminish in frequency and force, and if the lower vital is all right, the intensity ought to continue.
***
2.17 - December 1938, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
( Then we began to talk about headaches, either due to physical cause or resistance.)
Disciple: I have seen many times my headache start after Mother's touch at Pranam.
Sri Aurobindo: That may be because you passed from one state of consciousness to another.
2.18 - January 1939, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Disciple: X told us once that she used to have a headache which was just above the head and it was very severe. We laughed at it because we could not believe that a headache could be above the head.
Sri Aurobindo: How do you know there can't be such a headache? If the consciousness can be lifted above the head and remain there why not the headache?
The body is a mere mass of responsive vibrations; everything comes from outside and finds a response in the body.
2.18 - SRI RAMAKRISHNA AT SYAMPUKUR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER (to the devotees): "How strange! It is like saying that a man has an acid stomach because he passed, in his coach, under a tamarind tree." (All laugh.) DOCTOR (with a smile): "Let me tell you another. The captain of a ship had a bad headache. After consultation, the doctors on board had a blister applied to the side of the boat." (All laugh.)
MASTER (to the doctor): "For the seekers of God the constant company of holy men is necessary. The disease of worldly people has become chronic, as it were. They should carry out the instruction of holy men. What will they gain by merely listening to their advice? They must not only take the prescribed medicine, but also follow a strict diet.
2.3.04 - The Mother's Force, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
I had a terrible headache today. What is this all about? If it is Yogic in origin, I will have some comfort. Is the Mother breaking some resistances inside?
No. To make people ill in order to improve or perfect them is not Mother's method. But sometimes things like headache come because the brain either tries too much or does not want to receive or makes difficulties. But these Yogic headaches are of a special kind and after the brain has found out the way to receive
20 June 1935 or respond, they don't come at all.
2.3.08 - The Mother's Help in Difficulties, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
If meditation brings a headache, you should not meditate. It is a mistake to think that meditation is indispensable to the sadhana. There are so many who do not do it, but they are near to the Mother and progress as well as those who have long meditations.
The one thing necessary is to be turned to the Mother and that is all that is needed. Do not fear or be sad, but let the
3.1.2 - Levels of the Physical Being, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Sometimes when these forces cannot have a success in attacking the vital directly because the psychic rejects the attack, they try to fall on the physical consciousness and the body (the emptiness, headache, disturbance in the chest were that) so as to weaken, if possible, the resistance to their pressure. At such times you must be as quiet as possible and call the Mother. After a time the attacks will not come or will not last.
***
3.1.3 - Difficulties of the Physical Being, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is inevitable that in the course of the sadhana all sorts of conditions should come through which one is led towards the fullness of the true consciousness. You are now, as are most, in the physical consciousness and its principal difficulty is externalisation and this covering up of the active experience so that one does not know what is going on inside or feels as if nothing were going on. When that happens, it means that something has come up, some part or layer of the physical, which needs to be worked on and, when that has been done,it may take longer or shorter,the conscious active inner experience recommences. The muteness in the mind is not a bad thing in itself, it is a favourable condition for the working. Also what you describe as taking place in the head, must be the working of the Force there,it sometimes gives the impression of a headache. There must be a working in the physical mind to get rid of some difficulty or else to prepare it better for the admission of what comes from above.
It is necessary to have a great patienceso as to go through these conditions and not get apprehensive or restlessand a confidence that all difficulties will be overcome.
3.18 - Of Clairvoyance and the Body of Light, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
aware of this through the occurrence of headache, bad dreams, or
even more serious signs such as hysteria, fainting fits, possibly
33.06 - Alipore Court, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now I am going to divulge to you yet another secret, perhaps the most important of all, concerning our life in jail. I have said that I had Sri Aurobindo's essays on the bomb slipped out of jail by handing them over to a friend. But how was this done? By what means did we carry on this kind of secret interchange with the outside world? How we could manage to import pistols into jail remained a major headache for the police. The police invented so many theories and there was no end to the conjectures indulged in by the public.
They must have been packed in biscuit tins, or in the bellies of fish, or in jack-fruit, and what not. Finally, the Police Chief could contain himself no longer and decided to ask Kanai. Kanai was already under sentence of death and was biding his time. "Now that all is over," said the Police Chief "where is the harm if you confess it? Why not show some courage and tell us where you found the pistol?" Kanai grew serious and said in measured tones, "It is the spirit of Khudiram who gave me the revolver." Khudiram had been hanged for his attempt on the life of Kingsford.
3.3.1 - Illness and Health, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
You ought not to allow the physical illnesses to interfere with your sadhana or affect your mindthese illnesses are nothing compared with what many others have had to pass throughyou have some constipation, headaches, rheumatic pains, that ought not to be so difficult to bear. You have to separate yourself from the body consciousness and not allow yourself to be overpowered by it.
***
--
A descent [of the force] cannot possibly produce nausea and vomiting etc. There can, if one pulls down too much force, be produced a headache or giddiness; both of these go if one keeps quiet a little, ceases pulling and assimilates. A descent cannot produce blood pressure, madness or apoplexy or heart failure or any other illness.
***
4.01 - Sweetness in Prayer, #The Interior Castle or The Mansions, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
6.: My own experience of this delight and sweetness in meditation was that when I began to weep over the Passion I could not stop until I had a severe headache;9' the same thing occurred when I grieved over my sins: this was a great grace from our Lord. I do not intend to inquire now which of these states of prayer is the better, but I wish I knew how to explain the difference between the two. In that of which I speak, the tears and good desires are often partly caused by the natural disposition, but although this may be the case, yet, as I said, these feelings terminate in God. Sensible devotion is very desirable if the soul is humble enough to understand that it is not more holy on account of these sentiments, which cannot always with certainty be ascribed to charity, and even then are still the gift of God.
7.: These feelings of devotion are most common with souls in the first three mansions, who are nearly always using their understanding and reason in making meditations. This is good for them, for they have not been given grace for more; they should, however, try occasionally to elicit some acts such as praising God, rejoicing in His goodness and that He is what He is: let them desire that He may be honoured and glorified. They must do this as best they can, for it greatly inflames the will. Let them be very careful, when God gives these sentiments, not to set them aside in order to finish their accustomed meditation. But, having spoken fully on this subject elsewhere,10' I will say no more now. I only wish to warn you that to make rapid progress and to reach the mansions we wish to enter, it is not so essential to think much as to love much: therefore you must practise whatever most excites you to this. Perhaps we do not know what love is, nor does this greatly surprise me. Love does not consist in great sweetness of devotion, but in a fervent determination to strive to please God in all things, in avoiding, as far as possible, all that would offend Him, and in praying for the increase of the glory and honour of His Son and for the growth of the Catholic Church. These are the signs of love; do not imagine that it consists in never thinking of anything but God, and that if your thoughts wander a little all is lost.11
4.04 - Weaknesses, #Words Of The Mother II, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mother I feel terribly ill at ease, there are doubts about the Power and all sorts of troublesome things. I feel as if I were suffocating little by little, I have a headache that drifts here and there, it is terrible; I feel bound
242
4.1.1 - The Difficulties of Yoga, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The headache if it comes is only a result of the body not being accustomed to the pressure or else to some resistance there. The difficulties of course rise up, but it is not always in the beginning. Sometimes the first effect is such that one feels as if there were no difficulties,they rise afterwards when the exultation wanes and the normal consciousness has a chance to assert itself against the flood of power or light from above. There is a resistance that has to be fought out or worked outfought out if the nature is unsteady or resists violently, worked out if the will is steady and the nature moderate in its reactions. On the other hand if there has been a long preparation and the resistances of the nature have been already largely dealt with by the psychic or by the enlightened mental will, then there are no primary or later aggravations but a steady and quiet pulsing of the change, the remaining difficulties falling away of themselves as the new consciousness develops, or else there may be no difficulties at all, only a necessary readjustment and change.
***
4.3.4 - Accidents, Possession, Madness, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is quite impossible for the descent of the Divine Grace to produce nausea and nervousness and a general disturbance like thatto think so is self-contradictory and foolish. Sometimes when one has pulled or strained, there is a headache or sensation as if of headache or if one pulls down too much force, then there may be a giddiness but one has only to remain quiet and that sets itself right by an assimilation of what has come down or otherwise. There is never any adverse or troublesome afterconsequence. What seems to have happened is that Xs finding the Force he had called down much more than what he was accustomed to, got nervous and went from nervousness into a panicwith the result of an upsetting of his stomach and circulation. If it is not that, then it must have been an attack of illness which he associated with the descent, but the attack seems to be of a nervous character. Probably if he had had the experience of this increased descent some time ago, he would not have been frightened and nothing would have happened, but the madness of Y following on the death of Z has created a panic and at the least thing each person thinks he is going to go mad or die. As nothing upsets the organism more than fear, they create by this general atmosphere of panic danger where there was none.
The idea that Y was sent mad by a descent of Divine Force is an absurdity and an irrational superstition. People go mad because they have a physical predisposition due either to heredity (as in the case of Y and A) or to some kind of organic cause or secret illness, like syphilis gone to the head or colon bacillus similarly misdirected or brain lesion or other material cause, the action being often brought up by some psychological factor (ambition turning to megalomania, hypochondria, melancholia etc.) or on the contrary itself bringing these to the surface. All that happens in ordinary life and not only in Yoga; the same causes work here. The one thing is that there may be an invasion of an alien Force bringing about the upsetting, but it is not the Divine Force, it is a vital Force that invades. The Divine Force cannot by its descent be the cause of madness any more than it can be of apoplexy or any other physical illness. If there is no predisposition one may have all kinds of attacks from vital or other forces or from ones own movements of the lower nature, as violent as possible, but there will be no madness.
Conversations with Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
It is not useful to make these efforts. It is rather through a calm will that this separation comes about. When one makes efforts, often headaches or other little disorders appear.
The mind will not be always calm but there will be one region perpetually peaceful, inaccessible to movements which reach only the outer part.
Liber 71 - The Voice of the Silence - The Two Paths - The Seven Portals, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
helpful or hurtful to himself. If the Magician cures his headache, or
gives him a good tip on the Stock Exchange, he is a White Magician. If
r1912 12 23, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Yesterday a special test was applied to the arogya in the stomach. There was an attempt at roga, but it failed & ended only in a copious visrishti this morning, the first of its kind after three weeks. Health was strongly attacked and a vague tendency to headache established for some hours & phlegm in the nose for some minutes. These were got rid of by Will, but the sore throat persists, although it is extremely slight. There are movements towards the perfect ananda of cold, but neither the mukti there nor the bhukti are finally confirmed,the confirmation being postponed until the health in that respect is perfectly assured. Physical activity 4 in the morning; 2 hours in the afternoon. There is a certain tendency to lassitude today due probably to the diminution of sleep & the strain on the health. The improvement in the trikaldrishti has been confirmed and a corresponding generalisation of the Aishwarya has begun. Ishita is becoming very powerful & the hold of Aishwarya & Ishita on karma is gaining in all directions except the equipment, healing and immediate work. Other siddhis are still moving forward without establishing definitely a fresh advance, eg in the rupadrishti stable ghana & developed forms of the lower intensity are becoming more frequent & today one perfect developed rupa was stable for a few seconds. Physical activity finally amounted to 11 hours only owing to interruptions. Sleep over 7 hours.
***
r1913 01 01, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
3) The health, still much afflicted, tends slowly to reassert itself. There are still no movements of roga outside the survivals of phlegm, occasional neuralgic touches, imperfect digestive assimilation, eruption, headache and defect of the chakra. All the symptoms are slight and fragmentary, but in some of them there is a strong persistence.
4) In the primary utthapana there is still the persistence of a vague defect of anima which sometimes grows in force for a while, but cannot hold the body, although it encourages the adhogati. Secondary utthapana is emerging.
r1913 09 13, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The physical siddhi is always resisted & put back in utthapana & saundarya; in ananda & arogya it is progressive with occasional retrocessions. Habituality of kamananda and frequency of the other physical anandas has considerably increased; also to a certain extent their intensity. A serious effort is being made to get rid of the obstinate fragments of eruption, headache, cold & stomach complaint which still recur needlessly in the system. headache usually occurs only by vyapti from other adharas.
One great result of the weeks progress has been the completion & permanent possession in perception of the fourfold Brahman. The only defect is a tendency to fall back from the jnanam element, thereby losing the lilamaya personality of the Brahman. Otherwise vismriti is now only an inert & ineffective suspension of the siddhi, which has no longer to be reconstituted on resumption of the minds apramattata.
r1914 04 19, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In the later part of the afternoon an attack of fever. In the morning a touch of headache was felt in the pranakosha which afterwards attempted to materialise, a tendency of cough, as also a touch of chill, but all were expelled. In the afternoon the fever suddenly manifested without being heralded by any other previous symptoms. There was then a struggle between the Arogyashakti in the pranic system & the Roga from outside; the latter seeking by an appeal to the habitual memory in the bodily molecules to overpower the mind of the body & compel it to accept the laws of fever, the former refusing. Rice was eaten, the body exposed to draught; the fever ejected rapidly left behind it an intermittent heat, a sense of feverish pain in the back, though much more in the nervous body than in the physical, a trouble in that body & therefore a corresponding trouble in the physical nervous system & a sense of weakness, as also a certain sensitiveness of the nervecurrents to cold. In a subdued form these remained in the night. Before the fever there was some activity of antardrishta rupa which was, as usual, stimulated by the feverish excitement. There was also a tendency to constipation.
MS there might be
r1914 04 23, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Later on the fever, by a farther resolute denial of its causes & effects, was expelled at its usual time for increased incidence under strong exposure to chill etc. Relics of it still remain in tendencies of headache etc. Better kriti today.
***
r1914 10 24, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Roga now attacks chiefly the stomach (mucous looseness), the teeth and the kamic centre. At other points it is usually ineffective. There is a tendency to dull headache, but this materialises badly.
***
r1914 12 02, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Dregs of toothache, headache, cold & fever still hang about the system & seek to touch it when there is exposure or other provocation. But they do not seriously materialise.
The only other roga is the weakness of the chakra which as yet shows no apparent signs of yielding.
r1919 06 27, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Attack of roga on digestive functions suppressed by tapas after a struggle with a residue in bhava. This is only part of the general attack of vague recurrence and attempted restoration (fever, headache, cold etc); it materialises in the digestive functioning, because that is still immediately capable of brief sthula recurrence. The others are only potentially capable, except for fragmentary touches. This fragmentary recurrence has been attacked and is in process of slow diminution, but is not yet got rid of. The two constant rogas, as well as the imperfect process of evacuation still continue.
Telepathy has been purified in regard to the tendencies and forces immediately affecting the adharas in action; that is to say, the insistence of a perceived tendency, force or intention on its fulfilment, the choice of one to be favoured and fulfilled without reference to the real ideality and the claim of telepathy or present trikaldrishti to figure as future drishti, of tendency, force, intention, possibility and probability to masquerade as certain result, is being eliminated from T. The same movement is being rapidly applied to the forces of the vital rajasic and mental sattwic planes which stand behind the mechanism of forces of the physical plane. This will complete the present trikaldrishti, except for the right perception of the states of unseen objects which is still backward.
Talks 600-652, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
M.: The desire for happiness (sukha prema) is a proof of the everexisting happiness of the Self. Otherwise how can desire for it arise in you? If headache was natural to human beings no one would
602
Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi try to get rid of it. But everyone that has a headache tries to get rid of it, because he has known a time when he had no headache. He desires only that which is natural to him. So too he desires happiness because happiness is natural to him. Being natural, it is not acquired.
Man's attempts can only be to get rid of misery. If that be done the ever-present bliss is felt. The primal bliss is obscured by the non-self which is synonymous with non-bliss or misery. Duhkha nasam = sukha prapti. (Loss of unhappiness amounts to gain of happiness.)
Talks With Sri Aurobindo 1, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
CHAMPAKLAL: X told me once how she used to have a headache which remained just above the head and it was very severe. We used to laugh at her
because we couldn't believe in a headache of that nature.
SRI AUROBINDO: How do you know there can't be such a headache? If the consciousness can be lifted above the head and remain there, why not a
headache? The body is a mere means of responsive vibrations. Everything
--
if his headache remained uncured.
(After some time) Dr. Kantilal has two questions to ask. First, can one
--
dal (lentil) to be poured on the head. It will cure headache and blood-pressure.
After the sponging of Sri Aurobindo had begun, Dr. Manilal started the talk.
--
been given by a Rishi through the planchette. It will cure Manilal's headache
and blood-pressure.
The Act of Creation text, #The Act of Creation, #Arthur Koestler, #Psychology
level do we accept it as part of ourselves we 'have' a headache or 'are'
under the weather at the same time admitting that nothing can be
The Anapanasati Sutta A Practical Guide to Mindfullness of Breathing and Tranquil Wisdom Meditation, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
else, they will develop a headache due to the "wrong
concentration". Whenever a meditator holds tightly onto the
Thus Spoke Zarathustra text, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
is lacking in this dreadful pandemonium of sickness: headaches, deafening, hammering headaches, which knock out
the reeling Nietzsche for days and prostrate him on sofa
--
raging headaches and a nervous overcharge; at night, when
the body has long become weary, it does not permit itself
--
so high a price and rebels. And now--vicious circlespasmodic vomiting, new headaches which require new
medicines, an inexorable, insatiable, passionate conflict of
--- Overview of noun headache
The noun headache has 2 senses (first 2 from tagged texts)
1. (5) concern, worry, headache, vexation ::: (something or someone that causes anxiety; a source of unhappiness; "New York traffic is a constant concern"; "it's a major worry")
2. (3) headache, head ache, cephalalgia ::: (pain in the head caused by dilation of cerebral arteries or muscle contractions or a reaction to drugs)
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun headache
2 senses of headache
Sense 1
concern, worry, headache, vexation
=> negative stimulus
=> stimulation, stimulus, stimulant, input
=> information
=> cognition, knowledge, noesis
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 2
headache, head ache, cephalalgia
=> ache, aching
=> pain, hurting
=> symptom
=> evidence, grounds
=> information
=> cognition, knowledge, noesis
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun headache
2 senses of headache
Sense 1
concern, worry, headache, vexation
=> bugaboo
=> burden, load, encumbrance, incumbrance, onus
=> business
Sense 2
headache, head ache, cephalalgia
=> histamine headache, cluster headache
=> migraine, megrim, sick headache, hemicrania
=> sick headache
=> sinus headache
=> tension headache
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun headache
2 senses of headache
Sense 1
concern, worry, headache, vexation
=> negative stimulus
Sense 2
headache, head ache, cephalalgia
=> ache, aching
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun headache
2 senses of headache
Sense 1
concern, worry, headache, vexation
-> negative stimulus
=> annoyance, bother, botheration, pain, infliction, pain in the neck, pain in the ass
=> aversive stimulus
=> concern, worry, headache, vexation
=> grief, sorrow
Sense 2
headache, head ache, cephalalgia
-> ache, aching
=> toothache, odontalgia
=> backache
=> headache, head ache, cephalalgia
=> stomachache, stomach ache, bellyache, gastralgia
=> earache, otalgia
--- Grep of noun headache
cluster headache
headache
headache powder
histamine headache
sick headache
sinus headache
tension headache
Wikipedia - American Headache Society
Wikipedia - Cephalalgiaphobia -- Fear of headaches
Wikipedia - Cluster headache -- Neurological disorder
Wikipedia - Headaches
Wikipedia - Headache -- Pain in head or neck
Wikipedia - Love Is a Headache -- 1938 film by Richard Thorpe
Wikipedia - Migraine headaches
Wikipedia - Migraine headache
Wikipedia - Migraine -- Disorder resulting in recurrent moderate-severe headaches
Wikipedia - Post-dural-puncture headache -- Common side effect of lumbar puncture or spinal anaesthesia
Wikipedia - Rizatriptan -- A medication used for the treatment of migraine headaches
Wikipedia - Tension-type headache
Wikipedia - The Journal of Headache and Pain -- Medical journal
Wikipedia - Thunderclap headache -- Severe and sudden-onset headache
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11568073-headache
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11568073.Headache__Bellyache___2_
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12810832-tracking-your-headache-and-migraine-triggers
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20096052-migraine-headaches-and-the-foods-you-eat
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/213198.How_Does_Aspirin_Find_a_Headache_
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24263955-brett-s-little-headaches
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/324590.The_Ice_Cream_Headache_Other_Stories
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4405177-headache-and-depression
Psychology Wiki - Headache
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Fanfic/AFrozenHeadache
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeadacheOfDoom
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Webcomic/NeonIceCreamHeadache
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/HeadacheJohn
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/IHaveAHeadAche
Ice Cream Man(1995) - When you hear the happy jingle of the ice cream truck driving down your neighborhood street, lock your doors and pray to the Dairy Queen that the Ice Cream Man doesn't stop to bring you a conebecause a soft-serve headache is nothing compared to the pain that this dairy demon will make you feel! As...
Nirvana(1997) - A computer virus endows Solo, the hero of a virtual reality game, with human consciousness thereby creating all kinds of headaches for his creator Jimi. The trouble begins in the futuristic metropolis of Northern Agglomerate three days before Christmas. With little time left, video-game designer Jim...
https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/Skullsplitting_Headache
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Casket_Cracking_101_by_Headache
https://grimm.fandom.com/wiki/Headache
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Headache
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Tension_headache
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Headache
Hoozuki no Reitetsu 2nd Season -- -- Studio Deen -- 13 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Demons Fantasy Seinen Supernatural -- Hoozuki no Reitetsu 2nd Season Hoozuki no Reitetsu 2nd Season -- Just as in this life, the afterlife needs a calm troubleshooter to deal with the bureaucratic headaches that come from keeping things in order. Enter Hozuki: a cool and collected demon who’s badly in need of a vacation. -- -- (Source: HIDIVE) -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 37,100 7.88
Ongaku Shoujo -- -- Studio Deen -- 1 ep -- Original -- Music Slice of Life -- Ongaku Shoujo Ongaku Shoujo -- On her way to her first day of high school, Eri Kumagai is captivated by a girl's singing. Her song is beautiful but ends abruptly when the girl steps on a cat's tail and disrupts the moment. Eri pushes this out of her mind until that same girl rushes into her class late, cat in hand, and claims that the name on the attendance list—Chiharu Yuzuka—is her "false name" and she is actually called Haru Chitose. -- -- Much to Eri's distaste, she cannot escape the eccentric Haru, as the two happen to share the same dormitory room. Haru causes one headache after another, but when she snoops around in Eri's laptop and discovers that she is an online composer, Eri is furious. Haru, enamored by Eri's music, desperately wants to sing with Eri, but Eri is dead set against it. Will the two be able to find common ground? -- -- Movie - Mar 22, 2015 -- 11,441 6.23
2013 Goody's Headache Relief Shot 500
Cluster headache
Cold-stimulus headache
Current Pain and Headache Reports
Genetics of migraine headaches
Goody's Headache Powder 200
Headache
Headache attributed to a substance or its withdrawal
Headache (game)
Headache (journal)
Hypnic headache
International Classification of Headache Disorders
International Headache Society
Management of chronic headaches
Medication overuse headache
My Favourite Headache
My Kids Give Me a Headache
New daily persistent headache
Organization for Understanding Cluster Headaches
Post-dural-puncture headache
Red wine headache
Royal Headache
Sexual headache
Tension headache
The Journal of Headache and Pain
Thunderclap headache
Vascular headache
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