classes ::: place, noun,
children ::: the Crossroads (vg)
branches ::: the Crossroads
see also ::: the_World

Instances - Definitions - Quotes - Chapters - Wordnet - Webgen


object:the Crossroads
object:TXR
class:place
word class:noun

--- NOTES
rather than the RL crossroads, or seen from otherside instead,
the imagined crossroads that lead to all the places I want to visit.
The Inside of the Tower of MEM, the Universe, is all contained inside that one Tower. And that Tower is a thought of God or something.

--- PLACES


see also ::: the World


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OBJECT INSTANCES [0] - TOPICS - AUTHORS - BOOKS - CHAPTERS - CLASSES - SEE ALSO - SIMILAR TITLES

TOPICS

AUTH

BOOKS
18000_books_ranked

IN CHAPTERS TITLE

IN CHAPTERS CLASSNAME

IN CHAPTERS TEXT
03.04_-_The_Body_Human
10.24_-_Savitri
1.03_-_A_Parable
1.04_-_SOME_REFLECTIONS_ON_PROGRESS
1.05_-_2010_and_1956_-_Doomsday?
1.07_-_Hui_Ch'ao_Asks_about_Buddha
1962-02-03
1962_02_03
1.jlb_-_Limits
1.tr_-_Begging
1.tr_-_The_Way_Of_The_Holy_Fool
2.07_-_I_Also_Try_to_Tell_My_Tale

PRIMARY CLASS

place
SEE ALSO

the_World
SIMILAR TITLES
the Crossroads
the Crossroads (vg)

DEFINITIONS



QUOTES [1 / 1 - 125 / 125]


KEYS (10k)

   1 Taigu Ryokan

NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

   5 Sherwood Smith
   5 Anonymous
   3 Taigu Ryokan
   3 Rainer Maria Rilke
   3 Haruki Murakami
   2 Shannon L Alder
   2 Seanan McGuire
   2 Rosa Luxemburg
   2 Rick Riordan
   2 Raven Grimassi
   2 Paul Kalanithi
   2 Lang Leav
   2 Jacqueline Carey
   2 Henry Beston
   2 G K Chesterton
   2 Elise Kova
   2 Courtney Milan
   2 Ann Patchett

1:The Way Of The Holy Fool ::: At the crossroads this year, after
begging all day
I lingered at the village temple.
Children gather round me and
whisper,
"The crazy monk has come back
to play."
~ Taigu Ryokan,

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:Lares of the Crossroads ~ Colleen McCullough
2:Texas is the crossroads of the world. Everything here is big. ~ Bobby Lee
3:beings of the crossroads are ambivalent; they are capricious. ~ Gordon White
4:Our world is at the crossroads. We have a choice, right and wrong. ~ LL Cool J
5:We're at the crossroads, ... where we need to win to stay alive. ~ Randy Johnson
6:Stand at the crossroads if you will, but if you'll not choose, I'll move on without you ~ Jacqueline Carey
7:If a novel was a map of a country, a story was the bright silver pin that marked the crossroads. ~ Ann Patchett
8:The crossroads may not be of your own seeking, but at least the road you choose will be your own. ~ Dorothy Dunnett
9:Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism. ~ Rosa Luxemburg
10:Earth is the crossroads of every possible alien. We're the McDonald's next to the highway of the galaxy. ~ Katherine Applegate
11:we are at the crossroads, my little outlaw,
and this is the map of my heart, the landscape
after cruelty ~ Richard Siken
12:Night was falling across the trampled rye. Nine thousand men had been killed or wounded in the fight for the crossroads, ~ Bernard Cornwell
13:The sacrifice to Legba was completed; the Master of the Crossroads had taken the loas' mysterious routes back to his native Guinea. ~ Jacques Roumain
14:Every journey taken always includes the path not taken, the detour through hell, the crossroads of indecision and the long way home. ~ Shannon L Alder
15:Be entirely tolerant or not at all; follow the good path or the evil one. To stand at the crossroads requires more strength than you possess. ~ Heinrich Heine
16:And having once chosen, never to seek to return to the crossroads of that decision-for even if one chooses wrongly, the choice cannot be unmade. ~ Jacqueline Carey
17:Brevis arrived at the crossroads tugging at a rope. The rope was attached to a bearded, horned, evil-eyed billy goat which Brevis was taking to market to sell. ~ Neil Gaiman
18:When well told, a story captured the subtle movement of change. If a novel was a map of a country, a story was the bright silver pin that marked the crossroads. ~ Ann Patchett
19:He would still be that man with whom she had sat on a rooftop at the Crossroads. A man who would have been hers if the stars constellated a different design for her heart. ~ Elise Kova
20:Prisons! Prisons! Prisons, dungeons, blessed places where evil is impossible since they are the crossroads of all the malediction in the world. One cannot commit evil in evil. ~ Jean Genet
21:Homecomer, hitcher, phantom rider,
White lady wants what’s been denied her,
Gather-grim knows what you fear the most,
But best keep away from the crossroads ghost. ~ Seanan McGuire
22:The Civil War defined us as what we are and it opened us to being what we became, good and bad things... It was the crossroads of our being, and it was a hell of a crossroads. ~ Shelby Foote
23:The Vatican remained the crossroads in the plot to kill Hitler: all roads truly led to Rome, to the desk with a simple crucifix overlooking the fountains on St. Peter’s Square. ~ Mark Riebling
24:They stand at the crossroads, and one hates all the roads and the other likes all the roads. The result is--well, some things are not hard to calculate. They stand at the cross-roads. ~ G K Chesterton
25:Here at the edges, in the cracks and at the crossroads, stepping from shadow to shadow in the river of darkness that runs through the heart of Wink, he feels much more at home. ~ Robert Jackson Bennett
26:This is what the LORD says: “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, a nd you will find rest for your souls.” JEREMIAH 6:16 NIV ~ Anonymous
27:When the early Europeans first met Africans, at the crossroads of history, it was a respectful meeting and the Africans were not slaves. Their nations were old before Europe was born. ~ John Henrik Clarke
28:The crossroads where government meets enterprise can be an exciting crossroads. It can also be a corrupt crossroads. It requires moral rectitude to separate public service from private gain. ~ David Brooks
29:with a mouth of lush church grass I stand at the crossroads drinking the light of faith on the shores of eternity I lead my body, on like a dun horse in the dusk toward the forest somewhere ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd
30:The crossroads of trade are the meeting place of ideas, the attrition ground of rival customs and beliefs; diversities beget conflict, comparison, thought; superstitions cancel one another, and reason begins. ~ Will Durant
31:Main Street, U.S.A. is America at the turn of the century--the crossroads of an era. The gas lamps and the electric lamp--the horse-drawn car and auto car. Main Street is everyone's hometown- the heart line of America. ~ Walt Disney
32:Our nation stands at the crossroads of liberty. Crushing national debt, rampant illegal immigration, insane business regulations and staggering national unemployment are pushing our nation into unchartered territory. ~ James Lankford
33:What Tengo would have to do, it seemed, was take a hard, honest look at the past while standing at the crossroads of the present. Then he could create a future, as thought he were rewriting the past.It was the only way ~ Haruki Murakami
34: today's begging is finished; at the crossroads
  i wander by the side of hachiman shrine
  talking with some children.
  last year, a foolish monk;
  this year, no change!
  
~ Taigu Ryokan, Begging

35:What Tengo would have to do, it seemed, was take a hard, honest look at the past while standing at the crossroads of the present. Then he could create a future, as though he were rewriting the past. It was the only way. ~ Haruki Murakami
36:The Way Of The Holy Fool ::: At the crossroads this year, after
begging all day
I lingered at the village temple.
Children gather round me and
whisper,
"The crazy monk has come back
to play."
~ Taigu Ryokan,
37:It was a kind love, a selfless love. I was a dreamer, and you were a raveler. We met at the crossroads. I saw love in your smile, and I recognized it for the firs time in my life. But you had a plane to catch, and I was already home. ~ Lang Leav
38:It was a kind love, a selfless love. I was a dreamer, and you were a traveler. We met at the crossroads. I saw love in your smile, and I recognized it for the first time in my life. But you had a plane to catch, and I was already home. ~ Lang Leav
39:Treacherous are the Crossroads; by which direction you seek May not be the course intended. Either path will bring about a selection of self-deliberated anguish.’ ~ Kathryn Le Veque Chronicles of Christian St. John Vl. IV, p. CCII ~ Kathryn Le Veque
40:No one dreamed them up. No one needed to. The vampire clawing at the window, the werewolf prowling the moor, the hags at the crossroads – they lurked here already. Some nightmares are ancient, as old as civilization. Some are older still. ~ Robert Dunbar
41:We're at the crossroads. Down one road is a European centralized bureaucratic socialist welfare system in which politicians and bureaucrats define the future. Down the other road is a proud, solid, reaffirmation of American exceptionalism. ~ Newt Gingrich
42:If we do nothing...and turn our backs now, in future generations, when rank corruption masquerades as libery, it will be upon our shoulders. True patriots will then ask why we who were there to witness our nation at the crossroads did nothing. ~ David Liss
43:The Way Of The Holy Fool
At the crossroads this year, after
begging all day
I lingered at the village temple.
Children gather round me and
whisper,
"The crazy monk has come back
to play."

~ Taigu Ryokan, The Way Of The Holy Fool

44:Does not  l wisdom call?         Does not  m understanding raise her voice? 2    On  n the heights beside the way,         at the crossroads she takes her stand; 3    beside  o the gates in front of  p the town,         at the entrance of the portals she ~ Anonymous
45:Literally sold his soul? Like, ‘Devil Went Down to Georgia,’ Robert Johnson at the crossroads—” “Like Mephistopheles and your namesake, or the violinist Niccolò Paganini, or the Rolling Stones, yes, exactly.” She paused. “Forget I said that last one. ~ Craig Schaefer
46:Janus and his doorways. He would have you believe that all choices are black or white, yes or no, in or out. In fact, it's not that simple. Whenever you reach the crossroads, there are always at least three ways to go...four if you count going backward. ~ Rick Riordan
47:Markets are as old as the crossroads. But capitalism, as we know it, is only a few hundred years old, enabled by cooperative arrangements and technologies, such as the joint-stock ownership company, shared liability insurance, double-entry bookkeeping. ~ Howard Rheingold
48:Man is born as a seed; he can become a flower, he may not. It all depends on you, what you do with yourself; it all depends on you whether you grow or you don´t. It is your choice- and each moment the choice has to be faced; each moment you are on the crossroads. ~ Rajneesh
49:Reaper came for all of us Jerked us up from the brine Slipped out from his bony fingers Landed on our feet just fine Took four steps to Freedom Took four souls to the line Spat at the Devil at the Crossroads Drank our sins with sweet, sweet wine —Death, Devil and Sin ~ Rhys Ford
50:I'm standing at a crossroads. I'm not entirely sure what the future holds ... I'm at a crossroads, but it's a little bit different than the crossroads I've been at before because I'm doing what I do because I love it, and doing what I do because it's pure passion. ~ Billy Ray Cyrus
51:Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else ... Fiction depends for its life on place. Place is the crossroads of circumstance, the proving ground of, What happened? Who's here? Who's coming? ~ Eudora Welty
52:Standing at the crossroads where I should have been able to see and follow the footprints of the countless patients I had treated over the years, I saw instead only a blank, a harsh, vacant, gleaming white desert, as if a sandstorm had erased all trace of familiarity. ~ Paul Kalanithi
53:I know you're supposed to set goals for yourself. I see all that motivational stuff on television. Think about the future, what's next! But I'm all into the journey. It's fascinating to me. So if I make certain what I want moment to moment, I'm cool at the crossroads. ~ Cassandra Wilson
54:The cross is the crux, the crossroads, the twisted knot at the center of reality, to which all previous history leads and from which all subsequent history flows. By it we know all reality is cruciform—the love of God, the shape of creation, the labyrinth of human history. ~ Peter J Leithart
55:Mathematics in itself, as I say, is independent of experience. It begins with the free choice of symbols, to which are freely assigned properties, and it then proceeds to deduce the necessary rational implications of those properties. ~ Herbert Dingle, Science at the Crossroads (1972), p. 84.
56:What I love about design is the artistic and scientific complexity that also becomes useful . . . Great designers also pursue a mission. Great designers design with mankind in mind . . . The crossroads of science and art, innovation and inspiration are what I love about design. ~ Michelle Obama
57:The freedom of this place, the ease of it—it feels like none of it is for me or my people. All this belongs to others, to those who do not abide at the crossroads of uncertainty and despair. It belongs to people so used to living free that they cannot imagine a world in which they are not. ~ Sabaa Tahir
58:There comes to everyone a turning point in their lives, M. Poirot. They stand at the crossroads and have to decide. My profession interests me enormously; it is a sorrow - a very great sorrow - to abandon it. But there are other claims. There is, M. Poirot, the happiness of a human being. ~ Agatha Christie
59:He pressed his lips to her forehead. “Take care, lest I have to burn the Crossroads to the ground in a rage.”
Vhalla laughed softly, very well realizing that it may not entirely be a jest. She grinned up at him playfully. “Take care yourself, lest I have to blow the Crossroads away in a rage. ~ Elise Kova
60:No one answered him and he said no more. When we reached the crossroads, he looked hopefully at us as if we might relent and say good-bye. But we did not relent and as I glanced back at him standing alone in the middle of the crossing, he looked as if the world itself was slung around his neck. (3.48) ~ Mildred D Taylor
61:A lot of courageous noes make for some beautifully brave yeses. And I guess we never know which ones come first until we are standing at the crossroads, right? It may be easier to determine the yes route, knowing it means saying no. Or maybe it is the no you are sure of, so that tell you where to say yes. ~ Annie F Downs
62:I am not african.
Africa is in me, but I cannot return.
I am not taina.
Taino is in me, but there is no way back.
I am european.
Europe lives in me, but I have no home there.

I am new. History made me. My first language is Spanglish.
I was born at the crossroads
and I am whole. ~ Aurora Levins Morales
63:Man is always at the crossroads: each step and there is a choice, each step and you can go wrong or right. When sadness and cheerfulness confront you, always choose cheerfulness. When seriousness and playfulness confront you, always choose playfulness. And remember: we become whatsoever we choose. It is simply a question of choice. ~ Osho
64:Indecent Theology is a theology which problematises and undresses the mythical layers of multiple oppression in Latin America, a theology which, finding its point of departure at the crossroads of Liberation Theology and Queer Thinking, will reflect on economic and theological oppression with passion and imprudence. An ~ Marcella Althaus Reid
65:Our civilization has fallen out of touch with night. With lights, we drive the holiness and beauty of night back to the forests and the sea; the little villages, the crossroads even, will have none of it. Are modern folk, perhaps, afraid of night? Do they fear that vast serenity, the mystery of infinite space, the austerity of stars? ~ Henry Beston
66:In a way, it's a great thing that I have the opportunity to stand at the crossroads of Los Angeles and Indianapolis, and stay right here, ... People say that reality is in the footsteps, and not the words. That, as much as anybody, gives you a chance to show your sincerity and commitment, and what you're all about as far as leaving a legacy. ~ Jim Irsay
67:You may not remember the time you let me go first.
Or the time you dropped back to tell me it wasn't that far to go.
Or the time you waited at the crossroads for me to catch up.
You may not remember any of those, but I do and this is what I have to say to you:

Today, no matter what it takes,
we ride home together. ~ Brian Andreas
68:Can one be passionate about the just, the ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit no labor in its cause? I don't think so. All summations have a beginning, all effect has a story, all kindness beings with the sown seed. Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of light is the crossroads of - indolence, or action. Be ignited or be gone. ~ Mary Oliver
69:ADIEU

The glimmer farther away than the head
The heart-skip
On the slope where the air rolls its voice
The spokes of the wheel
the sun in the rut
At the crossroads
near the embankment
a prayer
Some words that are not heard
Nearer the sky
And on its steps
the last square of light

("Adieu") ~ Pierre Reverdy
70:Victory, speedy and complete, awaits the side which first employs air power as it should be employed. Germany, entangled in the meshes of vast land campaigns, cannot now disengage her air power for a strategically proper application. She missed victory through air power by a hair's breadth in 1940. . . . We ourselves are now at the crossroads. ~ Sir Arthur Harris 1st Baronet
71:They had emerged, abruptly and conclusively, from Glenwood Canyon and come out into a more open valley containing the crossroads town of Glenwood Springs. From here a highway doubled back east toward the elite paradise of Aspen. Travelers who, like them, chose to continue west toward Utah were confronted by an animated mushroom cloud rising from the interstate’s median. ~ Neal Stephenson
72:Down the street the dogs are barking And the day is getting dark. As the night comes in a-falling, The dogs´ll lose their bark And the silent night will shatter From the sounds inside my mind, For I´m one to many mornings And a thousand miles behind. From the crossroads of my doorstep, My eyes they start to fade, As I turn my head back to the room Where my love and I have laid. ~ Bob Dylan
73:I never had, and still do not have, the perception of feeling my personal identity. I appear to myself as the place where something is going on, but there is no ‘I’, no ‘me.’ Each of us is a kind of crossroads where things happen. The crossroads is purely passive; something happens there. A different thing, equally valid, happens elsewhere. There is no choice, it is just a matter of chance. ~ Anonymous
74:Why don’t you just leave? Leave and live your life the way you want to. You’re free to make your own choices.” “No,” he said. “Freedom is an illusion. We are bound by restraints on every turn. Family, clan, religion, morals, duties; all those are restraints. For someone on the crossroads of worlds, you’re naive.” “If you can’t have your freedom, then what’s the point of all this?” “Give ~ Ilona Andrews
75:When others hurt us in ways we don't deserve, at some point we will come to the crossroads of decision. We will have to look our pain square in the face and ask, "Am I going to hang on to my anger and do violence to myself, or am I going to forgive those who have wounded me? Am I going to allow bitterness to poison and putrefy my soul, or am I going to invite God to empower me to let the anger go?" ~ Pam W Vredevelt
76:Homecomer, hitcher, phantom rider,
White lady wants what’s been denied her,
Gather-grim knows what you fear the most,
But best keep away from the crossroads ghost.

Talk to the poltergeist, talk to the haunt,
Talk to the routewitch if it’s what you want.
Reaper’s in the parlor, seizer’s in a host,
But you’d best keep away from the crossroads ghost.

- common clapping rhyme among the ever-lasters of the twilight ~ Seanan McGuire
77:It would have been easy to shut her eyes and let him kiss her. To have the choice taken from her in one heated, passive moment, with nothing for her to do but comply. But he was asking for more than her artless submission. Not deference, not docility, but...defiance.
'I want you to choose me,' he said, 'well and truly choose me of your own accord. I don't want you to wait at the crossroads in the hopes that I will force the choice upon you. ~ Courtney Milan
78:It would have been easy to shut her eyes and let him kiss her. To have the choice taken from her in one heated, passive moment, with nothing for her to do but comply. But he was asking for more than her artless submission. Not deference, not docility, but...defiance.

"I want you to choose me," he said, "well and truly choose me of your own accord. I don't want you to wait at the crossroads in the hopes that I will force the choice upon you. ~ Courtney Milan
79:It's a strange feeling, holding someone's life in your hands, and it affects people in different ways. Some hate it; they can't stand the burden and get away as quick as they can. Others revel in power. You can think of it as a choice, and it is, but the truth is that for most of the big things, the choice was made long ago. It's only when you reach the crossroads that you discover what it was. It was nothing new to me; I'd been there before. But the others... ~ Benedict Jacka
80:Some people can’t be in your life because they don’t have the power to help you improve it. That doesn’t mean you don’t wish them well, it just means that you are on Chapter ten of your life, when they are on Chapter five. Maybe, it is just enough to meet at the crossroads in life and agree to take separate paths, then with a cheshire grin you both look back and shout, “Beat you to the top of the mountain”, followed by the funnest sprint of both of your lives. ~ Shannon L Alder
81:our day is a green apple cut in two
i look at you you dont see me
between us is the blind sun
on the steps our torn embrace
you call me i dont hear you between us is the deaf air
in the shop windows my lips are seeking your smile
at the crossroads our trampled kiss
i have given you my hand you dont feel it
emptiness has embraced you
in the squares your tear is seekinng my eyes
in the evening my day dead meets with your dead day
only in sleep we walk the same paths ~ Vasko Popa
82:The rain accompanied Faolan as he travelled inland to the crossroads where he must at last make a choice of ways. He tried to fix his mind on the decision ahead, but thoughts of Deord intruded: Deord strong and serene as guard to a solitary, gifted captive; Deord devoting all he had left, after Breakstone, to keeping that wrongly imprisoned man safe from his own brother and from himself. Deord, at the end, fighting one last, heroic battle and dying so Faolan and Ana and the remarkable Drustan could go free. ~ Juliet Marillier
83:Quiet friend who has come so far, feel how your breathing makes more space around you. Let this darkness be a bell tower and you the bell. As you ring, what batters you becomes your strength. Move back and forth into the change. What is it like, such intensity of pain? If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine. In this uncontainable night, be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses, the meaning discovered there. And if the world has ceased to hear you, say to the silent earth: I flow. To the rushing water, speak: I am. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
84:Nineteenth-century Russian literature, swooning with compassion for the suffering brother, had created for Nerzhin, and for everyone reading it for the first time, the image of a haloed, silvery-haired People, embodying all wisdom, moral purity, and spiritual grandeur.
But that was far away, on bookshelves; it was somewhere else, in the villages and fields at the crossroads of the nineteenth century. The heavens unfolded, the twentieth century came, and those places had long since ceased to exist under Russian skies. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
85:Obi-Wan's young face clouded. "Some secrets are best left concealed, Master." He shook his head. "Besides, why must you always be the one to do the uncovering? You know how the Council feels about these... detours. Perhaps, just once, the uncovering should be left to someone else."

Qui-Gon looked suddenly sad. "No, Obi-Wan. Secrets must be exposed when found. Detours must be taken when encountered. And if you are the one who stands at the crossroads or the place of concealment, you must never leave it to another to act in your place. ~ Terry Brooks
86:Friedrich Engels once said: "Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism." What does "regression into barbarism" mean to our lofty European civilization? Until now, we have all probably read and repeated these words thoughtlessly, without suspecting their fearsome seriousness. A look around us at this moment shows what the regression of bourgeois society into barbarism means. This world war is a regression into barbarism. The triumph of imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization. ~ Rosa Luxemburg
87:I know I grew up in the time when a young man in a baggy suit and slicked-down hair stood spraddle-legged in the crossroads of history and talked hot and mean about the colored, giving my poor and desperate people a reason to feel superior to somebody, to anybody. I know that even as the words of George Wallace rang through my Alabama, the black family who lived down the dirt road from our house sent fresh-picked corn and other food to the poor white lady and her three sons, because they knew their daddy had run off, because hungry does not have a color. ~ Rick Bragg
88:The Jews might have had Uganda, Madagascar, and other places for the establishment of a Jewish Fatherland, but they wanted absolutely nothing except Palestine, not because the Dead Sea water by evaporation can produce five trillion dollars of metaloids and powdered metals; not because the sub-soil of Palestine contains twenty times more petroleum than all the combined reserves of the two Americas; but because Palestine is the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa, because Palestine constitutes the veritable center of world political power, the strategic center for world control. ~ Nahum Goldmann
89:No matter how passionately or minutely he might attempt to rewrite the past, the present circumstances in which he found himself would remain generally unchanged. Time had the power to cancel all changes wrought by human artifice, overwriting all new revisions with further revisions, returning the flow to its original course. A few minor facts might be changed, but Tengo would still be Tengo.
What Tengo would have to do, it seemed, was take a hard, honest look at the past while standing at the crossroads of the present. Then he could create a future, as though he were rewriting the past. ~ Haruki Murakami
90:Cursed graze that burns; cursed mind that never stops thinking. Mirrors that don’t lie; doubts that torment; dictators who torture every hope on the rack. The crossroads approach, and it makes my head spin; we choose the path that allows us to sleep; we reject the tempting loophole. Lose yourself within the eyes of the one who deceives, or find yourself within those of the one who still loves you. The uncertainty of what hasn’t been experienced versus the certainty of the already expired. Merge the experiences; the game is as controlled as a fire. Feel the heat; feel the cold. Wager, then, on your own defeat. ~ Eva Garc a S enz
91:Making The Lion For All It's Got -- A Ballad
I came home and found a lion in my room...
[First draft of "The Lion for Real" CP 174-175]
A lion met America
in the road
they stared at each other
two figures on the crossroads in the desert.
America screamed
The lion roared
They leaped at each other
America desperate to win
Fighting with bombs, flamethrowers,
knives forks submarines.
The lion ate America, bit off her head
and loped off to the golden hills
that's all there is to say
about america except
that now she's
lionshit all over the desert.
~ Allen Ginsberg
92:She was coming over to my place and instead of us hanging with my knucklehead boys—me smoking, her bored out of her skull—we were seeing movies. Driving out to different places to eat. Even caught a play at the Crossroads and I took her picture with some bigwig black playwrights, pictures where she’s smiling so much you’d think her wide-ass mouth was going to unhinge. We were a couple again. Visiting each other’s family on the weekends. Eating breakfast at diners hours before anybody else was up, rummaging through the New Brunswick library together, the one Carnegie built with his guilt money. A nice rhythm we had going. ~ Junot D az
93:I must tell vou, Gavril Ardalionovitch,” Mvshkin said suddenly, “that I was once so ill that I really was almost an idiot; but I’ve got over that long ago, and so I rather dislike it when people call me an idiot to my face. Though I can excuse it in you in consideration of your ill-luck, but in your vexation you’ve been abusive to me twice already. I don’t like that at all, especially so suddenly at first acquaintance; and so, as we are just at the crossroads, hadn’t we better part? You go to the right to your home, and I go to the left. I’ve got twenty-five roubles, and I shall be sure to find some lodging-house. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky
94:LET THIS DARKNESS BE A BELLTOWER

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
95:Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
96:The magic is unleashed as Tam Lin writhes in the grip of the Fairy Queen’s power. He is translated into a lion, a bear, a serpent and a red-hot band of iron, a burning gleed! But Janet, alone at midnight on the crossroads, clings fast to the man she loves.   ‘Again they’ll turn me in your arms To a red het gaud of airn; But hold me fast, and fear me not, I’ll do to you nae harm.   And last they’ll turn me in your arms Into the burning gleed; Then throw me into well water, O throw me in wi speed.   And then I’ll be your ain true-love, I’ll turn a naked knight; Then cover me wi your green mantle, And cover me out o’ sight. ~ Patricia Duncker
97:In asking for a relic of Descartes, the chevalier de Terlon was standing at the crossroads of the ancient and modern. He was applying to a modern thinker - the inventor of analytic geometry, no less - a primitive tradition that extends back not only to the institutionalization of Christianity in the fourth century, when Christians first broke into the tombs of saints to gather relics, but farther still, beyond the horizon of recorded history. The request is all the stranger for the fact that the man whose remains were treated in this quasisaintlike way would go down in history as the progenitor of materialism, rationalism, and a whole tradition that looked on such veneration as nonsense. ~ Russell Shorto
98:I think my sense of right and wrong, my feeling of noblesse oblige, and any thought I may have against the oppressor and for the oppressed came from [Le Morte d'Arthur]....It did not seem strange to me that Uther Pendragon wanted the wife of his vassal and took her by trickery. I was not frightened to find that there were evil knights, as well as noble ones. In my own town there were men who wore the clothes of virtue whom I knew to be bad....If I could not choose my way at the crossroads of love and loyalty, neither could Lancelot. I could understand the darkness of Mordred because he was in me too; and there was some Galahad in me, but perhaps not enough. The Grail feeling was there, however, deep-planted, and perhaps always will be. ~ John Steinbeck
99:It was all a mistake,” he pleaded, standing out of his ship, his wife slumped behind him in the deeps of the hold, like a dead woman. “I came to Mars like any honest enterprising businessman. I took some surplus material from a rocket that crashed and I built me the finest little stand you ever saw right there on that land by the crossroads—you know where it is. You’ve got to admit it’s a good job of building.” Sam laughed, staring around. “And that Martian—I know he was a friend of yours—came. His death was an accident, I assure you. All I wanted to do was have a hot-dog stand, the only one on Mars, the first and most important one. You understand how it is? I was going to serve the best darned hot dogs there, with chili and onions and orange juice.” The ~ Ray Bradbury
100:The wild worship of lawlessness and the materialist worship of law end in the same void. Nietzsche scales staggering mountains, but he turns up ultimately in Tibet. He sits down beside Tolstoy in the land of nothing and Nirvana. They are both helpless—one because he must not grasp anything, and the other because he must not let go of anything. The Tolstoyan’s will is frozen by a Buddhist instinct that all special actions are evil. But the Nietzscheite’s will is quite equally frozen by his view that all special actions are good; for if all special actions are good, none of them are special. They stand at the crossroads, and one hates all the roads and the other likes all the roads. The result is—well, some things are not hard to calculate. They stand at the cross-roads. ~ G K Chesterton
101:Heimdallr, from Norse Mythology, is present on the ancient Egyptian circular zodiac and is represented by the Ram; as the watcher and the guardian of the bridge between heaven and earth. His head measures the crossroads of the ecliptic and the vernal equinox as also expressed on the zodiac. Heimdallr was born and raised by the blood of a sacrificial boar which is portrayed on the zodiac at the exact position and right before the bridge (i.e., entrance to Asgard). The Marsian stride starts at the front leg of Capricon marking the nine realms of Asgard thereby - which are unified by the world tree: Yggdrasil. He was born by nine goddesses who turn the mill and was identified as Mars, the hopping one. He is Vindler, the turner, who is the personification of fire who twists and turns the mill. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim
102:life had been building potential, potential that would now go unrealized. I had planned to do so much, and I had come so close. I was physically debilitated, my imagined future and my personal identity collapsed, and I faced the same existential quandaries my patients faced. The lung cancer diagnosis was confirmed. My carefully planned and hard-won future no longer existed. Death, so familiar to me in my work, was now paying a personal visit. Here we were, finally face-to-face, and yet nothing about it seemed recognizable. Standing at the crossroads where I should have been able to see and follow the footprints of the countless patients I had treated over the years, I saw instead only a blank, a harsh, vacant, gleaming white desert, as if a sandstorm had erased all trace of familiarity. The ~ Paul Kalanithi
103:The Triformis entity known as the Three Daughters of Night is an aspect of She of the Crossroads. However, in practice, they are most effective when called upon individually or as a triple natured entity not equated with She of the Crossroads. The Three Daughters of Night are known separately as the Lady of Shadow, the Lady of Blood, and the Lady of Bones. Each one holds a sacred object in respective order: a serpent, a heart, a femur bone. These represent their inner mystery connection to the realm of Shadow. When called together, three black candles are lighted side by side at the crossroads. A small cauldron, a bottle of red wine, and a handful of white flour are placed in order from left to right in front of the candles. With these items in place, begin your call to the Three Daughters of Night: I ~ Raven Grimassi
104:Learning Urdu
From a district near Jammu,
(Dogri stumbling through his Urdu)
he comes, the victim of a continent broken
in two in nineteen forty-seven.
He mentions the minced air he ate
while men dissolved in alphabets
of blood, in syllables of death, of hate.
'I only remember half the word
that was my village. The rest I forget.
My memory belongs to the line of blood
across which my friends dissolved
into bitter stanzas of some dead poet.'
He wanted me to sympathize. I couldn't,
I was only interested in the bitter couplets
which I wanted him to explain. He continued,
'And I who knew Mir backwards, every
couplet from the Diwan-e-Ghalib saw poetry
dissolve into letters of blood.' He
Now remembers nothing while I find Ghalib
at the crossroads of language, refusing
to move to any side, masquerading
as a beggar to see my theatre of kindness.
~ Agha Shahid Ali
105:her all the way to the crossroads, and I think it more than adequate.” Everyone gaped at her like she was mad. “Our goal,” she continued, “was to distract the king, was it not? To distract the king and those who serve him, to send them on a merry chase. It would have been nice to meet the lady, and to use her captivity to our advantage, but our first intention was to empty the tombs of its guards, yes?” Immerez calmed and nodded, and Sarge let out a breath of relief. Karigan’s own thoughts were awhirl. They kidnapped Estora just to distract the king? To empty the tombs? What were they up to? “Who are you?” she asked the woman. The woman did not answer, but withdrew a pendant from beneath her chemise. It was crudely made of iron, but shaped into a design Karigan knew well: a dead tree. “Second Empire,” she whispered. She glanced at the onlookers. “You’re all Second Empire?” Some drew out pendants like the woman’s, and others raised their hands, palms outward, to show the tattoo of the dead tree. The old woman smiled kindly ~ Kristen Britain
106:There was no point in saying it again. Either he believed me, and--I swallowed painfully--I’d given him no particular reason to, or he didn’t. Begging, pleading, arguing, ranting--none of them would make any difference, except to make a horrible situation worse.
I should have made amends from the beginning, and now it was too late.
He took a deep breath. I couldn’t breathe, I just stared at him, waiting, feeling sweat trickle beneath my already soggy clothing.
Then he smiled a little. “Brace up. We’re not about to embark on a duel to the death over the dishes.” He paused, then said lightly, “Though most of our encounters until very recently have been unenviable exchanges, you have never lied to me. Eat. We’ll leave before the next time-change, and part ways at the crossroads.”
No “You’ve never lied before.” No “If I can trust you.’” No warnings or hedgings. He took all the responsibility--and the risk--himself. I didn’t know why, and to thank him for believing me would just embarrass us both. So I said nothing, but my eyes prickled. I looked down at my lap and busied myself with smoothing out my mud-gritty, wet gloves. ~ Sherwood Smith
107:Our fantastic civilization has fallen out of touch with many aspects of nature, and with none more completely than with night. Primitive folk, gathered at a cave mouth round a fire, do not fear night; they fear, rather, the energies and creatures to whom night gives power; we of the age of the machines, having delivered ourselves of nocturnal enemies, now have a dislike of night itself. With lights and ever more lights, we drive the holiness and beauty of night back to the forests and the sea; the little villages, the crossroads even, will have none of it. Are modern folk, perhaps, afraid of night? Do they fear that vast serenity, the mystery of infinite space, the austerity of stars? Having made themselves at home in a civilization obsessed with power, which explains its whole world in terms of energy, do they fear at night for their dull acquiescence and the pattern of their beliefs? Be the answer what it will, to-day's civilization is full of people who have not the slightest notion of the character or the poetry of night, who have never even seen night. Yet to live thus, to know only artificial night, is as absurd and evil as to know only artificial day. ~ Henry Beston
108:The Time For Brotherhood
When a fellow's feeling blue,
And is troubled, through and through
With a melancholy feeling
That he cannot seem to shake,
When his plans have gone astray
And his hopes have slipped away
And he's standing at the crossroads
Wondering which one to take,
That's the time to grab his hand
And to make him understand
That he's grieving over trifles
And his worries aren't worth while;
That's the time to slap his back
With a good old friendly whack,
That's the time he needs your friendship
And the time he wants your smile.
When he's deep down in the dumps
And has known life's rocky bumps,
When he's got the kill-joy notion
That his work no longer counts;
That's the time a word of cheer
Sweetly whispered in his ear
Sets the heart of him to beating
'Till his spirit proudly mounts.
That's the time a glad 'Hello!'
Means far more than you may know,
That's the time a sign of friendship
Really does a brother good;
That's the time a word of praise
Lifts a fellow up for days,
Sends him on his way, rejoicing,
That's the time for brotherhood.
~ Edgar Albert Guest
109:crazed mother her dead child. One day, I don’t know which, I found myself in this world, having lived unfeelingly from the time I was evidently born until then. When I asked where I was, everyone misled me, and they contradicted each other. When I asked them to tell me what I should do, they all spoke falsely, and each one said something different. When in bewilderment I stopped on the road, everyone was shocked that I didn’t keep going to no one knew where, or else turn back – I, who’d woken up at the crossroads and didn’t know where I’d come from. I saw that I was on stage and didn’t know the part that everyone else recited straight off, also without knowing it. I saw that I was dressed as a page, but they didn’t give me a queen, and blamed me for not having her. I saw that I had a message in my hand to deliver, and when I told them that the sheet of paper was blank, they laughed at me. And I still don’t know if they laughed because all sheets are blank, or because all messages are to be guessed. Finally I sat down on the rock at the crossroads as before the fireplace I never had. And I began, all by myself, to make paper boats with the lie they’d given me. No one would believe in me, not even as a liar, and there was no pond where I could try out my truth. ~ Fernando Pessoa
110:There was no point in saying it again. Either he believed me, and--I swallowed painfully--I’d given him no particular reason to, or he didn’t. Begging, pleading, arguing, ranting--none of them would make any difference, except to make a horrible situation worse.
I should have made amends from the beginning, and now it was too late.
He took a deep breath. I couldn’t breathe, I just stared at him, waiting, feeling sweat trickle beneath my already soggy clothing.
Then he smiled a little. “Brace up. We’re not about to embark on a duel to the death over the dishes.” He paused, then said lightly, “Though most of our encounters until very recently have been unenviable exchanges, you have never lied to me. Eat. We’ll leave before the next time-change, and part ways at the crossroads.”
No “You’ve never lied before.” No “If I can trust you.’” No warnings or hedgings. He took all the responsibility--and the risk--himself. I didn’t know why, and to thank him for believing me would just embarrass us both. So I said nothing, but my eyes prickled. I looked down at my lap and busied myself with smoothing out my mud-gritty, wet gloves.
“Why don’t you set aside that cloak and eat something?”
His voice was flat. I realized he probably felt even nastier about the situation than I did. ~ Sherwood Smith
111:A Twig to Rest On This is what the LORD says: “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, a nd you will find rest for your souls.” JEREMIAH 6:16 NIV The day was so long and stressful that Tracey didn’t get out to her front porch until late at night to water her flowers. Recent days had been so unusually hot and dry in the Midwest, draining both Tracey and her once-luscious hanging petunia baskets into a weary state. She breathed a calming sigh to be out in the cool of the evening, hearing a few last birds coo while the crickets took the next singing shift. But as she reached up to water one thirsty pot, something fluttered furiously out through the stream of water. Frightened, Tracey jumped back and tried to determine what it was. The small creature flew directly into a rose of sharon bush next to the porch, where Tracey could now see it was a baby sparrow. Maybe it’s injured, she thought, as it fell asleep on the tiny twig, swaying with the gentle breeze of the night. In the morning she found the bird still resting in the same place and slowly approached it. The sparrow flew off with strength into the sunshine. Lord, thank You for giving me the rest I need along the journey. Just like You do for the tiny sparrow, so much more You do for me. Amen. ~ Anonymous
112:We stand at the crossroads, each minute, each hour, each day, making choices. We choose the thoughts we allow ourselves to think, the passions we allow ourselves to feel, and the actions we allow ourselves to perform. Each choice is made in the context of whatever value system we have selected to govern our lives. In selecting that value system, we are, in a very real way, making the most important choice we will ever make.

Those who believe there is one God who made all things and who governs the world by this providence will make many choices different from those who do not. Those who hold in reverence that being who gave them life and worship Him through adoration, prayer, and thanksgiving will make choices different from those who do not. Those who believe that mankind are all of a family and that the most acceptable service of God is doing good to man will make many choices different from those who do not. Those who believe in a future state in which all that is wrong here will be made right will make many choices different from those who do not. Those who subscribe to the morals of Jesus will make many choices different from those who do not.

Since the foundation of all happiness is thinking rightly, and since correct action is dependent on correct opinion, we cannot be too careful in choosing the value system we allow to govern our thoughts and actions.

And to know that God governs in the affairs of men, that He hears and answers prayers, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him, is, indeed, a powerful regulator of human conduct. ~ Benjamin Franklin
113:Of all the streets that blur in to the sunset,
There must be one (which, I am not sure)
That I by now have walked for the last time
Without guessing it, the pawn of that Someone

Who fixes in advance omnipotent laws,
Sets up a secret and unwavering scale
for all the shadows, dreams, and forms
Woven into the texture of this life.

If there is a limit to all things and a measure
And a last time and nothing more and forgetfulness,
Who will tell us to whom in this house
We without knowing it have said farewell?

Through the dawning window night withdraws
And among the stacked books which throw
Irregular shadows on the dim table,
There must be one which I will never read.

There is in the South more than one worn gate,
With its cement urns and planted cactus,
Which is already forbidden to my entry,
Inaccessible, as in a lithograph.

There is a door you have closed forever
And some mirror is expecting you in vain;
To you the crossroads seem wide open,
Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus.

There is among all your memories one
Which has now been lost beyond recall.
You will not be seen going down to that fountain
Neither by white sun nor by yellow moon.

You will never recapture what the Persian
Said in his language woven with birds and roses,
When, in the sunset, before the light disperses,
You wish to give words to unforgettable things.

And the steadily flowing Rhone and the lake,
All that vast yesterday over which today I bend?
They will be as lost as Carthage,
Scourged by the Romans with fire and salt.

At dawn I seem to hear the turbulent
Murmur of crowds milling and fading away;
They are all I have been loved by, forgotten by;
Space, time, and Borges now are leaving me. ~ Jorge Luis Borges
114:And no one else knows of this?” he asked gently.
I shook my head slowly, unable to remove my gaze from his faze. “Azmus discovered it by accident. Rode two days to reach me. I did send him…”
There was no point in saying it again. Either he believed me, and--I swallowed painfully--I’d given him no particular reason to, or he didn’t. Begging, pleading, arguing, ranting--none of them would make any difference, except to make a horrible situation worse.
I should have made amends from the beginning, and now it was too late.
He took a deep breath. I couldn’t breathe, I just stared at him, waiting, feeling sweat trickle beneath my already soggy clothing.
Then he smiled a little. “Brace up. We’re not about to embark on a duel to the death over the dishes.” He paused, then said lightly, “Though most of our encounters until very recently have been unenviable exchanges, you have never lied to me. Eat. We’ll leave before the next time-change, and part ways at the crossroads.”
No “You’ve never lied before.” No “If I can trust you.’” No warnings or hedgings. He took all the responsibility--and the risk--himself. I didn’t know why, and to thank him for believing me would just embarrass us both. So I said nothing, but my eyes prickled. I looked down at my lap and busied myself with smoothing out my mud-gritty, wet gloves.
“Why don’t you set aside that cloak and eat something?”
His voice was flat. I realized he probably felt even nastier about the situation than I did. I heard the scrape of a bowl on the table and the clink of a spoon. The ordinary sounds restored me somehow, and I untied my cloak and shrugged it off. At once a weight that seemed greater than my own left me. I made a surreptitious swipe at my eyes, straightened my shoulders, and did my best to assume nonchalance as I picked up my spoon. ~ Sherwood Smith
115:Of all the streets that blur in to the sunset,
There must be one (which, I am not sure)
That I by now have walked for the last time
Without guessing it, the pawn of that Someone

Who fixes in advance omnipotent laws,
Sets up a secret and unwavering scale
for all the shadows, dreams, and forms
Woven into the texture of this life.

If there is a limit to all things and a measure
And a last time and nothing more and forgetfulness,
Who will tell us to whom in this house
We without knowing it have said farewell?

Through the dawning window night withdraws
And among the stacked books which throw
Irregular shadows on the dim table,
There must be one which I will never read.

There is in the South more than one worn gate,
With its cement urns and planted cactus,
Which is already forbidden to my entry,
Inaccessible, as in a lithograph.

There is a door you have closed forever
And some mirror is expecting you in vain;
To you the crossroads seem wide open,
Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus.

There is among all your memories one
Which has now been lost beyond recall.
You will not be seen going down to that fountain
Neither by white sun nor by yellow moon.

You will never recapture what the Persian
Said in his language woven with birds and roses,
When, in the sunset, before the light disperses,
You wish to give words to unforgettable things.

And the steadily flowing Rhone and the lake,
All that vast yesterday over which today I bend?
They will be as lost as Carthage,
Scourged by the Romans with fire and salt.

At dawn I seem to hear the turbulent
Murmur of crowds milling and fading away;
They are all I have been loved by, forgotten by;
Space, time, and Borges now are leaving me.

~ Jorge Luis Borges, Limits

116:The Pitiful Young Prince
Hooded crows fly at night
over the walls of Chang'an,
uttering harsh cries
above Welcoming Autumn Gate,
then head for people's houses,
pecking at the lofty roofs,
roofs beneath which high officials
scurry to escape barbarians.
The golden whip is broken in two,
the nine horses are run to death,*
but it is still not possible
for all of royal blood to flee together...
In plain sight below his waist
a precious ornament of blue coral,
the pitiful prince stands weeping
at the corner of the road.
When I ask, he refuses to tell
either name or surname;
he only speaks of his desperation,
and begs to become my slave.
For a hundred days now
he has lain hidden in brambles;
there is no whole skin left
on his entire body.
But the sons and grandsons of Gao-zu
all have the same nosesthe dragon-seed, naturally,
differs from that of ordinary men.
Jackals and wolves in the city,
dragons lurking in the wilds,
the prince had better take care
of that thousand-tael body!*
I don't dare talk long here
in plain view by the crossroads,
but for the sake of my prince
I will stay for a moment.
Last night the east wind
64
blew in the stench of blood,
and camels from the east
filled the former Capital.*
The Shuo-fang veterans
were known as skilled warriors,
they always seemed so fierce,
but now how foolish they look!
It is rumored that the Son of Heaven
has already abdicated,
but also that the Khan
is lending his support,
that the men of Hua gashed their faces
and begged to wipe out this disgrace.
Say nothing! Someone else
may be hiding and listening.
Alas, Prince, you must be careful,
stay on guard,
and may the spirits of the Five Tombs*
watch over you always.
~ Du Fu
117:You of all boys should know that Man is the Storytelling Animal, and that in stories are his identity, his meaning and his lifeblood. Do rats tell tales? Do porpoises have narrative purposes? Do elephants ele-phantasise? You know as well as I do that they do not. Man alone burns with books.’ ‘But still, the Fire of Life … it is just a fairy tale,’ insisted Dog the bear and Bear the dog, together. Nobodaddy drew himself up indignantly. ‘Do I look,’ he demanded, ‘like a fairy to you? Do I resemble, perhaps, an elf? Do gossamer wings sprout from my shoulders? Do you see even a trace of pixie dust? I tell you now that the Fire of Life is as real as I am, and that only that Unquenchable Blaze will do what you all wish done. It will turn bear into Man and dog into Dog-Man, and it will also be the End of Me. Luka! You little murderer! Your eyes light up at the very thought! How thrilling! I am amongst assassins! What are we waiting for, then? Are we starting now? Let’s be off! Tick, tock! There is no time to lose!’ At this point Luka’s feet began to feel as if somebody was gently tickling their soles. Then the silver sun rose above the horizon, and something quite unprecedented began to happen to the neighbourhood, the neighbourhood that wasn’t Luka’s real neighbourhood, or not quite. Why was the sun silver, for one thing? And why was everything too brightly coloured, too smelly, too noisy? The sweetmeats on the street vendor’s barrow at the corner looked like they might taste odd, too. The fact that Luka was able to look at the street vendor’s barrow at all was a part of the strange situation, because the barrow was always positioned at the crossroads, just out of sight of his house, and yet here it was, right in front of him, with those oddly coloured, oddly tasting sweetmeats all over it, and those oddly coloured, oddly buzzing flies buzzing oddly all around it. How was this possible? Luka wondered. After all, he hadn’t moved a step, and there was the street vendor asleep under the barrow, so the barrow obviously hadn’t moved either; and how did the crossroads arrive as well, um, that was to say, how had he arrived at the crossroads? ~ Anonymous
118:The rose is a symbol of the inner mysteries of Witchcraft. A red rose symbolizes the mysteries as they reside in Nature, within the living things. The white rose symbolizes the Otherworld and the mysteries hidden in secret places. When a single rose appears with white petals in the center of red petals, this represents the mysteries joined together within one reality. Thorns appearing with the rose represent challenges and the dedication required to fully grasp the enlightenment of the rose. One of the symbolisms associated with the rose reveals the covenant between the Witch and the Faery. In this, we find that both are stewards of the portal that opens to the inner mysteries. The Faery holds the celestial key, and the Witch bears the terrestrial key. When the two are joined together, they form an X—the sign of the crossroads. In this formation, where the keys cross we find a third point, the in-between place at the center. This is where the portal exists, and this is where it opens between the worlds. Look at the shape of the X and you can see four pointed tip markers (the V shapes). The upper half of the X points down, and the lower half points up. On the sides of the X, you can see that the left and right halves point to the center. This shows us that when the celestial and terrestrial realms join, they pull together the left ways and the right ways. These are occult terms for esoteric and exoteric modes of consciousness. In the fusion, everything briefly loses its distinction, its ability to mask the opposite reality, and in doing so, the secret third reality emerges in the center of it all. If this sounds confusing or nonsensical, then the guardian of that portal is doing its job well. The material in this book will connect you with an entity connected to the rose and its mystery. This is the previously mentioned She of the Thorn-Blooded Rose. With her guidance, you can be directed to the portal, and through it you can meet a variety of beings and entities. However, her primary task is to connect you with the Greenwood Realm and the plant spirits within it. In your journey to encounter these spirits, you will pass through the organic memory of the earth. You'll walk upon roads of mystical concepts and be accompanied by the Old Ones of ~ Raven Grimassi
119:Where are you?” she shouted. “Don’t you see us?” taunted the woman’s voice. “I thought Hecate chose you for your skill.” Another bout of queasiness churned through Hazel’s gut. On her shoulder, Gale barked and passed gas, which didn’t help. Dark spots floated in Hazel’s eyes. She tried to blink them away, but they only turned darker. The spots consolidated into a twenty-foot-tall shadowy figure looming next to the Doors. The giant Clytius was shrouded in the black smoke, just as she’d seen in her vision at the crossroads, but now Hazel could dimly make out his form—dragon-like legs with ash-colored scales; a massive humanoid upper body encased in Stygian armor; long, braided hair that seemed to be made from smoke. His complexion was as dark as Death’s (Hazel should know, since she had met Death personally). His eyes glinted cold as diamonds. He carried no weapon, but that didn’t make him any less terrifying. Leo whistled. “You know, Clytius…for such a big dude, you’ve got a beautiful voice.” “Idiot,” hissed the woman. Halfway between Hazel and the giant, the air shimmered. The sorceress appeared. She wore an elegant sleeveless dress of woven gold, her dark hair piled into a cone, encircled with diamonds and emeralds. Around her neck hung a pendant like a miniature maze, on a cord set with rubies that made Hazel think of crystallized blood drops. The woman was beautiful in a timeless, regal way—like a statue you might admire but could never love. Her eyes sparkled with malice. “Pasiphaë,” Hazel said. The woman inclined her head. “My dear Hazel Levesque.” Leo coughed. “You two know each other? Like Underworld chums, or—” “Silence, fool.” Pasiphaë’s voice was soft, but full of venom. “I have no use for demigod boys—always so full of themselves, so brash and destructive.” “Hey, lady,” Leo protested. “I don’t destroy things much. I’m a son of Hephaestus.” “A tinkerer,” snapped Pasiphaë. “Even worse. I knew Daedalus. His inventions brought me nothing but trouble.” Leo blinked. “Daedalus…like, the Daedalus? Well, then, you should know all about us tinkerers. We’re more into fixing, building, occasionally sticking wads of oilcloth in the mouths of rude ladies—” “Leo.” Hazel put her arm across his chest. She had a feeling the sorceress was about to turn him into something unpleasant if he didn’t shut up. “Let me take this, okay? ~ Rick Riordan
120:The Horned Master governs the generative powers of the kingdom of the beasts, the raw forces of life, death and renewal which sustains the natural world.” Nigel A Jackson. The Call of the Horned Piper: 38 The Art and Craft of the Witches is found at the crossroad, where this world and the other side meets and all possibility become reality. This simple fact is often forgotten as one rushes to the Sabbath or occupies oneself with formalities of ritual. The cross marks the four quarters, the four elements, the path of Sun, Moon and Stars. The cross was fused or confused with the Greek staurus, meaning ‘rod’, ‘rood’ or ‘pole’. Various forms of phallic worship are simply, veneration for the cosmic point of possibility and becoming. It is at the crossroads we will gain all or lose all and it is natural that it is at the crossroads we gain perspective. The crossroad is a place of choice, the spirit-denizens of the crossroads are said to be tricky and unreliable and it is of course where we find the Devil. One of the most famous legends of recent times concerns the blues-man Robert Johnson (1911– 1938). He claimed that, one night, just before midnight he had gone to the crossroads. He took out his guitar and played, whereupon a big black guy appeared, tuned his guitar, played a song backwards and handed it back.2 This incident altered Johnson’s playing and his finest and most everlasting compositions were the fruit of the few years of life left to him. This legend tells us how he needed to bury himself at the crossroads, offering himself to the powers dwelling there. Business done with the Devil is said to give him the upper hand. The ill omens and malefica associated with such deals is present in Johnson’s story. He got fame and women, but he died less than three years later before he reached thirty. His body was found poisoned at a crossroads, the murderer’s identity a mystery. Around the Mississippi no less than three tombs carry the name of Robert Leroy Johnson. The image of the Devil remains one of threat, blessing, beauty and opportunity. Where we find the Devil we find danger, unpredictability and chaos. If he offers a deal we know we are in for a complicated bargain. The Devil says that change is good, that we need movement in order to progress. His world is about cunning and ordeal entwined like the serpents of past and future on the pole of ascent. It is to the crossroads we go to make decisions. It is at the crossroads we set the course for the journey. It is at the crossroads we confront ourselves and realize our ~ Nicholaj de Mattos Frisvold
121:And no one else knows of this?” he asked gently.
I shook my head slowly, unable to remove my gaze from his faze. “Azmus discovered it by accident. Rode two days to reach me. I did send him…”
There was no point in saying it again. Either he believed me, and--I swallowed painfully--I’d given him no particular reason to, or he didn’t. Begging, pleading, arguing, ranting--none of them would make any difference, except to make a horrible situation worse.
I should have made amends from the beginning, and now it was too late.
He took a deep breath. I couldn’t breathe, I just stared at him, waiting, feeling sweat trickle beneath my already soggy clothing.
Then he smiled a little. “Brace up. We’re not about to embark on a duel to the death over the dishes.” He paused, then said lightly, “Though most of our encounters until very recently have been unenviable exchanges, you have never lied to me. Eat. We’ll leave before the next time-change, and part ways at the crossroads.”
No “You’ve never lied before.” No “If I can trust you.’” No warnings or hedgings. He took all the responsibility--and the risk--himself. I didn’t know why, and to thank him for believing me would just embarrass us both. So I said nothing, but my eyes prickled. I looked down at my lap and busied myself with smoothing out my mud-gritty, wet gloves.
“Why don’t you set aside that cloak and eat something?”
His voice was flat. I realized he probably felt even nastier about the situation than I did. I heard the scrape of a bowl on the table and the clink of a spoon. The ordinary sounds restored me somehow, and I untied my cloak and shrugged it off. At once a weight that seemed greater than my own left me. I made a surreptitious swipe at my eyes, straightened my shoulders, and did my best to assume nonchalance as I picked up my spoon.
After a short time, he said, “Don’t you have any questions for me?”
I glanced up, my spoon poised midway between my bowl and my mouth. “Of course,” I said. “But I thought--” I started to wave my hand, realizing too late it still held the spoon, and winced as stew spattered down the table. Somehow the ridiculousness of it released some of the tension. As I mopped at the mess with a corner of my cloak, I said, “Well, it doesn’t matter what I thought. So you knew about the plot all along?”
“Pretty much from the beginning, though the timing is new. I surmised they would make their move in the fall, but something seems to have precipitated action. My first warning was from Elenet, who had found out a great deal from the Duke’s servants. That was her real reason for coming to Court, to tell me herself.”
“What about Flauvic?”
“It would appear,” he said carefully, “that he disassociated with this plan of his mother’s.”
“Was that the argument he alluded to?”
He did not ask when. “Perhaps. Though that might have been for effect. I can believe it only because it is uncharacteristic for him to lend himself to so stupid and clumsy a plan.”
“Finesse,” I drawled in a parody of a courtier’s voice. “He’d want finesse, and to make everyone else look foolish.”
Shevraeth smiled slightly. “Am I to understand you were not favorably impressed with Lord Flauvic?”
“As far as I’m concerned, he and Fialma are both thorns,” I said, “though admittedly he is very pretty to look at. More so than his sour pickle of a sister. Anyway, I hope you aren’t trusting him as far as you can lift a mountain, because I wouldn’t.”
“His house is being watched. He can’t stir a step outside without half a riding being within earshot.”
“And he probably knows it,” I said, grinning. “Last question, why are you riding alone? Wouldn’t things be more effective with your army?”
“I move fastest alone,” he said. “And my own people are in place, and have been for some time. ~ Sherwood Smith
122:Tell me where you got your information,” he said.
“Azmus. Our old spy.” My lips were numb, and I started to shiver. Hugging my arms against my stomach, I said, “My reasons were partly stupid and partly well-meaning, but I sent him to find out what the Marquise was after. She wrote me during winter--but you knew about that.”
He nodded.
“And you even tried to warn me, though at the time I saw it as a threat, because--well, because.” I felt too sick inside to go on about that. Drawing a shaky breath, I said, “And again. At her party, when she took me into the conservatory. She tried again to get me to join her. Said I hadn’t kept my vows to Papa. So I summoned Azmus to help me find out what to do. The right thing. I know I can’t prove it,” I finished lamely.
He pulled absently at the fingers of one glove, then looked down at it, and straightened it again. Unnecessary movements from him were so rare, I wondered if he too was fighting for clear thought.
He lifted his gaze to me. “And now? You were riding to the border?”
“No,” I said. “To Orbanith.”
Again he showed surprise.
“It’s the other thing that Azmus found out,” I said quickly. “I sent him to tell you as soon as I learned--but there’s no way for you to know that’s true. I realize it. Still, I did. I have to go because I know how to reach the Hill Folk.”
“The Hill Folk?”
“Yes,” I said, leaning forward. “The kinthus. The Merindars have it stowed in wagons, and they’re going to burn it up-slope. Carried on the winds, it can kill Hill Folk over a full day’s ride, all at once. That’s how they’re paying Denlieff, with our woods, not with money at all. They’re breaking our Covenant! I have to warn the Hill Folk!”
“Orbanith. Why there, why this road?”
“Mora and the servants told me this was the fastest way to Orbanith.”
“Why did you not go north to Tlanth where you know the Hill Folk?”
I shook my head impatiently. “You don’t know them. You can’t know them. They don’t have names, or if they do, they don’t tell them to us. They seem to be aware of each other’s concerns, for if you see one, then suddenly others will appear, all silent. And if they act, it’s at once. Some of the old songs say that they walk in one another’s dreams, which I think is a poetic way of saying they can speak mind to mind. I don’t know. I must get to the mountains to warn them, and the mountains that source the Piaum River are the closest to Remalna-city.”
“And no one else knows of this?” he asked gently.
I shook my head slowly, unable to remove my gaze from his faze. “Azmus discovered it by accident. Rode two days to reach me. I did send him…”
There was no point in saying it again. Either he believed me, and--I swallowed painfully--I’d given him no particular reason to, or he didn’t. Begging, pleading, arguing, ranting--none of them would make any difference, except to make a horrible situation worse.
I should have made amends from the beginning, and now it was too late.
He took a deep breath. I couldn’t breathe, I just stared at him, waiting, feeling sweat trickle beneath my already soggy clothing.
Then he smiled a little. “Brace up. We’re not about to embark on a duel to the death over the dishes.” He paused, then said lightly, “Though most of our encounters until very recently have been unenviable exchanges, you have never lied to me. Eat. We’ll leave before the next time-change, and part ways at the crossroads.”
No “You’ve never lied before.” No “If I can trust you.’” No warnings or hedgings. He took all the responsibility--and the risk--himself. I didn’t know why, and to thank him for believing me would just embarrass us both. So I said nothing, but my eyes prickled. I looked down at my lap and busied myself with smoothing out my mud-gritty, wet gloves. ~ Sherwood Smith
123:My favourite quotes, Part Two
-- from Michael Connelly's "Harry Bosch" series

The Black Box

On Bosch’s first call to Henrik, the twin brother of Anneke -

Henrik: "I am happy to talk now. Please, go ahead.”

“Thank you. I, uh, first want to say as I said in my email that the investigation of your sister’s death is high priority. I am actively working on it. Though it was twenty years ago, I’m sure your sister’s death is something that hurts till this day. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you, Detective. She was very beautiful and very excited about things. I miss her very much.”

“I’m sure you do.”

Over the years, Bosch had talked to many people who had lost loved ones to violence. There were too many to count but it never got any easier and his empathy never withered.


The Burning Room 2

Grace was a young saxophonist with a powerful sound. She also sang.

The song was “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” and she produced a sound from the horn that no human voice could ever touch. It was plaintive and sad but it came with an undeniable wave of underlying hope.

It made Bosch think that there was still a chance for him, that he could still find whatever it was he was looking for, no matter how short his time was.

----------------

He grabbed his briefcase off his chair and walked toward the exit door. Before he got there, he heard someone clapping behind him. He turned back and saw it was Soto, standing by her desk. Soon Tim Marcia rose up from his cubicle and started to clap. Then Mitzi Roberts did the same and then the other detectives. Bosch put his back against the door, ready to push through. He nodded his thanks and held his fist up at chest level and shook it. He then went through the door and was gone.



The Burning Room 3

“What do you want to know, Bosch?”

Harry nodded. His instinct was right. The good ones all had that hollow space inside. The empty place where the fire always burns. For something. Call it justice. Call it the need to know. Call it the need to believe that those who are evil will not remain hidden in darkness forever.

At the end of the day Rodriguez was a good cop and he wanted what Bosch wanted. He could not remain angry and mute if it might cost Orlando Merced his due.

------------

“I have waited twenty years for this phone call . . . and all this time I thought it would go away. I knew I would always be sad for my sister. But I thought the other would go away.”


“What is the other, Henrik?” Though he knew the answer.

“Anger . . . I am still angry, Detective Bosch.”

Bosch nodded. He looked down at his desk, at the photos of all the victims under the glass top. Cases and faces. His eyes moved from the photo of Anneke Jespersen to some of the others. The ones he had not yet spoken for.

“So am I, Henrik,” he said. “So am I.”


Angle of Investigation

1972

They were heading south on Vermont through territory unfamiliar to him. It was only his second day with Eckersly and his second on the job.

Now

He knew that passion was a key element in any investigation. Passion was the fuel that kept his fire burning. So he purposely sought the personal connection or, short of that, the personal outrage in every case. It kept him locked in and focused. But it wasn’t the Laura syndrome. It wasn’t the same as falling in love with a dead woman. By no means was Bosch in love with June Wilkins. He was in love with the idea of reaching back across time and catching the man who had killed her.


The Scarecrow

At one time the newsroom was the best place in the world to work. A bustling place of camaraderie, competition, gossip, cynical wit and humor, it was at the crossroads of ideas and debate. It produced stories and pages that were vibrant and intelligent, that set the agenda for what was discussed and considered important in a city as diverse and exciting as Los Angeles. ~ Michael Connelly
124:Paris
First, London, for its myriads; for its height,
Manhattan heaped in towering stalagmite;
But Paris for the smoothness of the paths
That lead the heart unto the heart's delight. . . .
Fair loiterer on the threshold of those days
When there's no lovelier prize the world displays
Than, having beauty and your twenty years,
You have the means to conquer and the ways,
And coming where the crossroads separate
And down each vista glories and wonders wait,
Crowning each path with pinnacles so fair
You know not which to choose, and hesitate --
Oh, go to Paris. . . . In the midday gloom
Of some old quarter take a little room
That looks off over Paris and its towers
From Saint Gervais round to the Emperor's Tomb, --
So high that you can hear a mating dove
Croon down the chimney from the roof above,
See Notre Dame and know how sweet it is
To wake between Our Lady and our love.
And have a little balcony to bring
Fair plants to fill with verdure and blossoming,
That sparrows seek, to feed from pretty hands,
And swallows circle over in the Spring.
There of an evening you shall sit at ease
In the sweet month of flowering chestnut-trees,
There with your little darling in your arms,
53
Your pretty dark-eyed Manon or Louise.
And looking out over the domes and towers
That chime the fleeting quarters and the hours,
While the bright clouds banked eastward back of them
Blush in the sunset, pink as hawthorn flowers,
You cannot fail to think, as I have done,
Some of life's ends attained, so you be one
Who measures life's attainment by the hours
That Joy has rescued from oblivion.
II
Come out into the evening streets. The green light lessens in the west.
The city laughs and liveliest her fervid pulse of pleasure beats.
The belfry on Saint Severin strikes eight across the smoking eaves:
Come out under the lights and leaves
to the Reine Blanche on Saint Germain. . . .
Now crowded diners fill the floor of brasserie and restaurant.
Shrill voices cry "L'Intransigeant," and corners echo "Paris-Sport."
Where rows of tables from the street are screened with shoots of box and bay,
The ragged minstrels sing and play and gather sous from those that eat.
And old men stand with menu-cards, inviting passers-by to dine
On the bright terraces that line the Latin Quarter boulevards. . . .
But, having drunk and eaten well, 'tis pleasant then to stroll along
And mingle with the merry throng that promenades on Saint Michel.
54
Here saunter types of every sort. The shoddy jostle with the chic:
Turk and Roumanian and Greek; student and officer and sport;
Slavs with their peasant, Christ-like heads,
and courtezans like powdered moths,
And peddlers from Algiers, with cloths
bright-hued and stitched with golden threads;
And painters with big, serious eyes go rapt in dreams, fantastic shapes
In corduroys and Spanish capes and locks uncut and flowing ties;
And lovers wander two by two, oblivious among the press,
And making one of them no less, all lovers shall be dear to you:
All laughing lips you move among, all happy hearts that, knowing what
Makes life worth while, have wasted not the sweet reprieve of being young.
"Comment ca va!" "Mon vieux!" "Mon cher!"
Friends greet and banter as they pass.
'Tis sweet to see among the mass comrades and lovers everywhere,
A law that's sane, a Love that's free, and men of every birth and blood
Allied in one great brotherhood of Art and Joy and Poverty. . . .
The open cafe-windows frame loungers at their liqueurs and beer,
And walking past them one can hear fragments of Tosca and Boheme.
And in the brilliant-lighted door of cinemas the barker calls,
And lurid posters paint the walls with scenes of Love and crime and war.
But follow past the flaming lights, borne onward with the stream of feet,
Where Bullier's further up the street is marvellous on Thursday nights.
55
Here all Bohemia flocks apace; you could not often find elsewhere
So many happy heads and fair assembled in one time and place.
Under the glare and noise and heat the galaxy of dancing whirls,
Smokers, with covered heads, and girls dressed in the costume of the street.
From tables packed around the wall the crowds that drink and frolic there
Spin serpentines into the air far out over the reeking hall,
That, settling where the coils unroll, tangle with pink and green and blue
The crowds that rag to "Hitchy-koo" and boston to the "Barcarole". . . .
Here Mimi ventures, at fifteen, to make her debut in romance,
And join her sisters in the dance and see the life that they have seen.
Her hair, a tight hat just allows to brush beneath the narrow brim,
Docked, in the model's present whim, `frise' and banged above the brows.
Uncorseted, her clinging dress with every step and turn betrays,
In pretty and provoking ways her adolescent loveliness,
As guiding Gaby or Lucile she dances, emulating them
In each disturbing stratagem and each lascivious appeal.
Each turn a challenge, every pose an invitation to compete,
Along the maze of whirling feet the grave-eyed little wanton goes,
And, flaunting all the hue that lies in childish cheeks and nubile waist,
She passes, charmingly unchaste, illumining ignoble eyes. . . .
But now the blood from every heart leaps madder through abounding veins
56
As first the fascinating strains of "El Irresistible" start.
Caught in the spell of pulsing sound, impatient elbows lift and yield
The scented softnesses they shield to arms that catch and close them round,
Surrender, swift to be possessed, the silken supple forms beneath
To all the bliss the measures breathe and all the madness they suggest.
Crowds congregate and make a ring. Four deep they stand and strain to see
The tango in its ecstasy of glowing lives that clasp and cling.
Lithe limbs relaxed, exalted eyes fastened on vacancy, they seem
To float upon the perfumed stream of some voluptuous Paradise,
Or, rapt in some Arabian Night, to rock there, cradled and subdued,
In a luxurious lassitude of rhythm and sensual delight.
And only when the measures cease and terminate the flowing dance
They waken from their magic trance and join the cries that clamor "Bis!" . . .
Midnight adjourns the festival. The couples climb the crowded stair,
And out into the warm night air go singing fragments of the ball.
Close-folded in desire they pass, or stop to drink and talk awhile
In the cafes along the mile from Bullier's back to Montparnasse:
The "Closerie" or "La Rotonde", where smoking, under lamplit trees,
Sit Art's enamored devotees, chatting across their `brune' and `blonde'. . . .
Make one of them and come to know sweet Paris -- not as many do,
Seeing but the folly of the few, the froth, the tinsel, and the show --
57
But taking some white proffered hand that from Earth's barren every day
Can lead you by the shortest way into Love's florid fairyland.
And that divine enchanted life that lurks under Life's common guise -That city of romance that lies within the City's toil and strife --
Shall, knocking, open to your hands, for Love is all its golden key,
And one's name murmured tenderly the only magic it demands.
And when all else is gray and void in the vast gulf of memory,
Green islands of delight shall be all blessed moments so enjoyed:
When vaulted with the city skies, on its cathedral floors you stood,
And, priest of a bright brotherhood, performed the mystic sacrifice,
At Love's high altar fit to stand, with fire and incense aureoled,
The celebrant in cloth of gold with Spring and Youth on either hand.
III
Choral Song
Have ye gazed on its grandeur
Or stood where it stands
With opal and amber
Adorning the lands,
And orcharded domes
Of the hue of all flowers?
Sweet melody roams
Through its blossoming bowers,
Sweet bells usher in from its belfries the train of the honey-sweet hour.
A city resplendent,
58
Fulfilled of good things,
On its ramparts are pendent
The bucklers of kings.
Broad banners unfurled
Are afloat in its air.
The lords of the world
Look for harborage there.
None finds save he comes as a bridegroom, having roses and vine in his hair.
'Tis the city of Lovers,
There many paths meet.
Blessed he above others,
With faltering feet,
Who past its proud spires
Intends not nor hears
The noise of its lyres
Grow faint in his ears!
Men reach it through portals of triumph, but leave through a postern of tears.
It was thither, ambitious,
We came for Youth's right,
When our lips yearned for kisses
As moths for the light,
When our souls cried for Love
As for life-giving rain
Wan leaves of the grove,
Withered grass of the plain,
And our flesh ached for Love-flesh beside it with bitter, intolerable pain.
Under arbor and trellis,
Full of flutes, full of flowers,
What mad fortunes befell us,
What glad orgies were ours!
In the days of our youth,
In our festal attire,
When the sweet flesh was smooth,
When the swift blood was fire,
And all Earth paid in orange and purple to pavilion the bed of Desire!
59
~ Alan Seeger
125:The Family Saga
How unpleasant are those names, and yet
their bitter strength is splendid, splendid
too the human love that lighted the seven wicks
every nightfall. Wasn't it they that reared them all?
Laachi had planted the pomegranate of desire
in the south-eastern corner where it grew splendid;
and Uppali had a mantara in the north-east side.
Thus they grew, the pomegranate and the mantara,
fresh creepers always winding up the branches,
and fresh flowers blossoming on the creepers.
Flowers, even while withering in the dusk
or going off to eternity, guarded their pollen,
and were disinclined to sever connections. They
turned into fruit and ripened and grew sweet;
thus grew the pomegranate and the mantara
as the dusk turned into darkness, darkness into day,
day into darkness again, and again came the day seven wicks into five, five into three, and then one,
and again one into three into five into seven.
Black clouds fostered and fondled by summer
shed their tears, the shores of the lagoons
swayed, while there stood the brave one,
his mind unperturbed by the thunder-storm,
his feet unswerving in the wild roaring billows,
his hands unwearied; the brave one stood there
invoking with magic chants the lord of grains,
who would shower plenty on the virgin land,
rousing her and filling her with grain and gold.
His orders became dams and dykes, his thoughts
manifested as a thousand farmhands; with brushwood
and brambles they erected the dykes, the lagoons
drew back and yielded the fertile land, saying,
as the sea once said to a Rama long ago:
O Kesava, may your hands be fruitful, be fruitful;
Immortal thoughts are indeed the glory of the earth;
make you this earth rich with grain and fruit!
O Kesava, may your hands be fruitful!
37
II
The month of the Virgin passed, and the dewy sweetness
of Libra arrived, as earthen dykes arose, and lifting
the watery skirt, the lagoon told the farmhand Kunjan:
Go now, and whisper into your master's ears,
and tell him, the land is ready to receive the seed;
the sowing must be done with a full harvest in view.
The Pleiades festival of lights, and the Betelgeuse
festival of song and dance passed by; rich manure
flowed down from the hills; hundreds of workers
in country-boats; the spell of monsoon brought
the season of replanting the seedlings. No one
seems to have noticed how in two days' time
the seeds had sprouted, how two and three and four
leaves unfurled, how the flowers got fertilised
and turned yellowish. While the eyes kept a busy watch,
the emeralds of Capricorn arrived, promising pots of plenty;
the sprouted seeds blossomed and ripened to harvest.
The measuring baskets overflowed; half-filled bellies
got overfilled; the festival of harvest sang
of fullness at the new year!
III
The tale of a family with promises
yet to be fulfilled lengthens in many ways,
Recall now the splendour that crossed
the seas, the country and the city
made fragrant by a full moon in spring,
the light-hearted jokes and little acts of goodness;
recall the royal houses, the ministerial abodes,
paved with courage of diplomacy or
simple cleverness, the leadership of universities,
the life at the embassies; recall also
another figure, a figure that is cut up
like shadows into fragments in broken dream or sleep,
like a pledge unredeemed, like a sobbing whisper,
like a wisp of moist memory that makes you restless,
like the scent of a flower moaning through the breeze:
O Kesava, did your hands disappear
into an autumnal night of the dark moon?
On the pomegranate, the eight-petalled flower
blossomed abruptly, fell off its stalk into grief.
38
How many springs have come and gone, and yet'
they do return with fresh flowers;
how many flowers wither away, and yet
the gardens return to life; recall the mother
who rocked you in her lap and told stories
to entertain you and sang lullabies,
and fed you on the elixir of her breasts.
Recall again the promises, old times
that were brought home for confinement,
with the future yet to be born, families
that came together only to part, candle flames
that burn in the blaze of parting; the tale
of a family with many a pledge unredeemed yet
lengthens in many ways, many ways...
IV
Time is spacious indeed, my love,
let us give up the weeping habit.
From what great depths emerge
even our gentlest smiles!
Don't we see, as we sit together
on the seashore, don't we see
the moon disc slowly unfold
and turn into the purple of
mango leaves and then into white,
tickling the sea into wakefulness,
and a thousand peacocks dance
with spread wings over the billows
rising from the depths? Don't we see
the innocence in the eyes of
guideless children disappear
as they get up and stretch
their hands and legs and emerge
into a shyness that petitions love
through a lotus leaf, and burst into
a Shakuntala, her accusing finger
pointed at the king, and then at the end
dissolve into a serenity, entrusting
the son with the father under the Kashyapa
shade. Bereaved are we all, separated
for long are the earth and heaven,
melting and rolling under the heat
39
of a grief, caused by an old separation;
melting and rolling and flowing are
these stringed stars and rivers and evenings all are bereaved and in isolation for ever,
in the heart of the jungle the granite rocks
melt, and in their springs there drip
the nights that rock the ocean; they too
are bereaved. Once during the night
I walked among the underworlds,
and there I saw, seated at a table,
one recording the history of man;
birth, birth = death, the birth of death,
and death meant the death of birth.
He too was slowly dying ...
So shall we end this lamentation.
Spacious indeed is Time, and my beloved,
this weeping habit we have to give up.
Tales that please must be told;
That's what human life is for,
If the poet's tongue matches in length
the ears of those that listen,
it will not bore; the tellers and
hearers will be of one string.
The tale of the bud on the temple tree,
rocked to sleep by the beatings
of bats' wings is not exactly a new one.
The clock with its eyes on the midday sun
striking eight, which startled
the village girl, is an absurd tale.
At the crossroads the hussy spits out
her betel roll, stretching her tongue:
unable to retell her tale of abuse,
the puranas have remained eighteen till now,
There is hunchback Janaki in the neighbourhood;
her hump was straightened by Kittan, but
it was Raman's name that was dragged into it;
his manners do not reveal it, though,
Where that hunchback neighbour is gone
is not quite known, nor do we know
how she got her bow-style ear-rings,
40
Raman perhaps knows it, but how can
we ask him, for he too is eager
to find out who really bit off his earlobes.
Many such tales fester in my village,
but they won't be very pleasing to you;
they will fill your ears with discomfort.
Once I was walking on the bank of backwaters,
my eyes ploughing the rice-fields, and I saw
and heard around endless tragedies, with a few
light comedies thrown in, all turning into
farces and riddles. The eyes were drawn in,
the ears rolled up; lengthening nights
stretched themselves over the rivers.
``Sweet rose, fold yourself; you are not
meant to bloom in this sultry daylight;
your scent and honey shouldn't be wasted
on this dry sand''; whose lament is that?
How did this song some to be heard
here on this earth where river sand
is spread over thick layers of mud?
The elders stand - tall palm trees of old
with wrinkled leaves and broken ribs;
their long penance has come to an end.
Time-fostered beetles and insects and vermin
have taken their place to gnaw at the leaf
and spine and trunk and roots and all.
Over the mud flows the river,
over the river flows darkness,
above the darkness are the blue heavens;
all is dark, all; but there is light
even in this darkness; dark is itself light;
to assert that is the task of man.
As a child I had one great sorrow;
it was that my village had no hill in it;
but now that sorrow is gone, for I see
hills of wickedness all around,
I see the social man is the source
of all power, and not the individual,
I see the bridge across the river of sin
built by the Panchayat. Gone is my grief;
holy and divine is the glory of man!
41
VI
Sing to the glory of man, O
sing to the glory of man!
To the neighbourhood girl
whose belly is empty
he gives a full belly;
sing to the glory of man, O
sing to the glory of man!
Picking up the songbird
shot down in game,
the woodsman comes singing
of anger and grief and compassion.
Sing to the glory of man, O
sing to the glory of man
who pierces that woodsman
with another arrow.
Liberty, equality,
co-operation, fraternity;
truths are indeed of many kinds;
so sing to the glory of man, O
sing to the glory of man,
who roasts and fries
a generous spirit
and serves it for dinner.
~ Ayyappa Paniker

IN CHAPTERS



   5 Integral Yoga
   3 Poetry
   2 Zen
   1 Science
   1 Philosophy
   1 Christianity


   2 The Mother
   2 Taigu Ryokan
   2 Nolini Kanta Gupta


   2 Ryokan - Poems


03.04 - The Body Human, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
  
   The human frame is the abode of the gods; it is a temple of God, as we all know. But the most significant thing about it is that the gods alone do not dwell there: all being, all creatures crowd there, even the ungodly and the undivine. The Pashu (the animal), the Pishacha (the demon), the Asura (the Titan), and the Deva (the god), all find comfortable lodging in itthere are many chambers indeed in this mansion of the Lord. Man was made after the image of God and yet Lucifer had access into that tabernacle and all his entire host with him. This duality of the divine and the undivine, the characteristic mark of human nature as it is, presents a field and a labour through which man's progress has to be worked out. The soul, the divine flame, has, been placed in Ignorance, that is to say, what is apparent Ignorance, the frame of Matter, just because this Matter in Ignorance is to be smelted, purified, given its original and intrinsic substance, shape and character. The human person in its actual form is not obviously something absolutely perfect and divine. The type, the norm it represents is divine, but it has been overlaid with all obscure and base elementsit has to be washed and cleaned thoroughly, smelted and reconditioned. The dark ungodly elements mar and vitiate; they must be removed on the one hand, but on the other, they point out and test the salvaging work that has to be done and is being done. Man is always at the Crossroads. This is his especial difficulty and this is also his unique opportunity. His consciousness has a double valency, in contradistinction to the animal's which is, it can be said, monovalent, in that it is amoral, has not the sense of divided loyalty and hence the merit of choice. The movements of the animal follow a fixed stereotyped pattern; it has not got to deviate from the beaten track of its instincts. But man with his sense of the moral, of the good, of the progressive is at every step of his life faced with a dilemma, has to pause at a parting of the ways, always looks before and after and is puzzled at a cas de conscience. That, we have said, has been made for him the condition of growth, of a conscious and willed change with an ever-increasing tempo towards perfect perfection. That furnishes the occasion and circumstance by which he rises to divinity itself, becomes the Divine. He becomes the Divine thus not merely in the own home of the Divine, but on all the levels of the manifestation: all the planes of consciousness with all the hierarchy of beingspowers and personalitiesfind a new play of harmony, a supreme and global fulfilment in the transfigured human vehicle. The frame itself that encases the human consciousness acts as a living condenser: the very contour in its definiteness seems to exert a pressure towards an ever larger and higher synthesis, it may be compared to a kind of field office (Einsteinian, for example) that controls, regulates, moves and configurates all elements within its range. The human frame even as a frame possesses a magic virtue.
  

10.24 - Savitri, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
  
   Thus a crisis very similar to that which Ashwapati had to face now confronts Savitri also. Both of them were at the Crossroads away from the earth in the pure delights of the heavens or in the world labouring on earth's soil. Savitri's soul was now revealed to her in its fullness. She viewed the mighty destiny for which she had come down and the great work she had to achieve here upon earth, not any personal or individual human satisfaction or achievement but a cosmic fulfilment, a global human realisation. The godhead in Savitri is now fully awake, established in its plenitude the Divinity incarnate in the human frame. All the godheads, all the goddess-emanations now entered into her and moulded the totality of her mighty stature.
  

1.03 - A Parable, #The Lotus Sutra, #Anonymous, #Various
  Had escaped from the burning house
  And were standing at the Crossroads,
  Sat down on his lion seat.

1.04 - SOME REFLECTIONS ON PROGRESS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  
  9. the Crossroads
  
  --
  the tension and interior dislocation of Mankind shaken to its roots
  as it stands at the Crossroads, faced by the need to decide upon its
  future?

1.05 - 2010 and 1956 - Doomsday?, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #unset
  Ervin Laszlo: The Reenchanted Cosmos Welcome Home in the Universe
  (2005), The Chaos Point The World at the Crossroads (2006), and Worldshift
  2012: Making Green Business, New Politics & Higher Consciousness Work

1.07 - Hui Ch'ao Asks about Buddha, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen
  the way these people did, then someday you will let down your
  hand for people in the Crossroads, and won't consider it a dif
  ficult thing, either.

1962-02-03, #Agenda Vol 03, #unset, #Kabbalah
  
   He was a professor at Montpellier University and lived nearby. And there were several roads leading to his house. This man would leave the university and come to the crossing where all those roads branched out, all eventually leading to his house, one this way, one that way, one from this side. So he himself used to explain how every day he would stop there at the Crossroads and deliberate, Which one shall I take? Each had its advantages and disadvantages. So all this would go through his head, the advantages and disadvantages and this and that, and he would waste half an hour choosing which road to take home!
  

1962 02 03, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  
   You know the story of the philosopher who lived in the south of France I do not remember his name, a very well-known man who was a professor at the University of Montpellier and who lived on the outskirts of the city? There were several roads leading to his house. Every day this man would leave his university and arrive at the Crossroads where all the roads leading to his house branched outthis way, that way, another way. And every day he would stop and ask himself, Which one shall I take? Each one had its advantages and disadvantages. And all this went on in his head, the advantages and disadvantages, and this and that, and he would waste half an hour choosing his way home.
  

1.jlb - Limits, #Borges - Poems, #Jorge Luis Borges, #Poetry
  And some mirror is expecting you in vain;
  To you the Crossroads seem wide open,
  Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus.

1.tr - Begging, #Ryokan - Poems, #Taigu Ryokan, #Buddhism
  
    today's begging is finished; at the Crossroads
    i wander by the side of hachiman shrine

1.tr - The Way Of The Holy Fool, #Ryokan - Poems, #Taigu Ryokan, #Buddhism
  The Way Of The Holy Fool
  At the Crossroads this year, after
  begging all day

2.07 - I Also Try to Tell My Tale, #The Castle of Crossed Destinies, #Italo Calvino, #Fiction
  In this case the man who writes can only try to follow an unattainable model: the Marquis so diabolical as to be called divine, who impelled the word to explore the black frontiers of the thinkable. (And the story we should try to read in these tarots will be that of the two sisters who could be the Queen of Cups and the Queen of Swords, one angelic and the other perverse. In the convent where the former has taken the veil, as soon as she turns around a Hermit flings her down and takes advantage of her charms from behind; when she complains, the Abbess, or Popess, says: "You do not know the world, Justine: the power of money (coins) and of the sword chiefly enjoys making objects of other human beings; the varieties of pleasure have no limits, like the combinations of conditioned reflexes; it is all a matter of deciding who is to condition the reflexes. Your sister Juliette can initiate you into the promiscuous secrets of Love; from her you can learn that there are those who enjoy turning the Wheel of tortures and those who enjoy being Hanged by their feet.")
  All this is like a dream which the word bears within itself and which, passing through him who writes, is freed and frees him. In writing, what speaks is what is repressed. And then the white-bearded Pope could be the great shepherd of souls and interpreter of dreams Sigismund of Vindobona, and for confirmation, the only thing is to see if somewhere in the rectangle of tarots it is possible to read that story which, according to the teachings of his doctrine, is hidden in the warp of all stories. You take a young man, Page of Coins, who wants to drive from himself a dark prophecy: patricide and marriage to his own mother. You send him off at random on a richly adorned Chariot. The Two of Clubs marks a crossroads on the dusty highway, or, rather, it is the Crossroads, and he who has been there can recognize the place where the road that comes from Corinth crosses the one that leads to Thebes. The Ace of Clubs reports a street-or, rather, road-brawl, when two chariots refuse to give way and remain with the axles of their wheels locked, and the drivers leap to the ground enraged and dusty, shouting exactly like truckdrivers, insulting each other, calling each other's father and mother pig and cow, and if one draws a knife from his pocket, the consequences are likely to be fatal. In fact, here there is the Ace of Swords, there is The Fool, there is Death: it is the stranger, the one coming from Thebes, who is left on the ground; that will teach him to control his nerves; you, Oedipus, did not do it on purpose, we know that; it was temporary insanity; but meanwhile you had flung yourself on him, armed, as if all your life you had been waiting for nothing else. Among the next cards there is The Wheel of Fortune, or Sphinx, there is the entrance into Thebes like a triumphant Emperor, there are the cups of the feast of the wedding with Queen Jocasta, whom we see here portrayed as the Queen of Coins, in widow's weeds, a desirable if mature woman. But the prophecy is fulfilled: the plague infests Thebes, a cloud of germs falls on the city, floods the streets and the houses with miasmas, bodies erupt in red and blue buboes and drop like flies in the streets, lapping the water of the muddy puddles with parched lips. In these cases the only thing to do is consult the Delphic Sibyl, asking her to explain what laws or taboos have been violated: the old woman with the tiara and the open book, tagged with the strange epithet of Popess, is she. If you like, in the Arcanum called Judgment or The Angel you can recognize the primal scene to which the Sigismundian doctrine of dreams harks back: the tender little angel who wakes at night and among the clouds of sleep sees the grownups doing something, he does not know what, all naked and in incomprehensible positions, Mummy and Daddy and other guests. In the dream fate speaks. We can only make note of it. Oedipus, who knew nothing about it, tears out the light of his eyes: literally, the Hermit tarot shows him as he takes a light from his eyes, and sets off on the road to Colonus with the pilgrim's cloak and staff.
  

WORDNET


































IN WEBGEN [10000/19]

https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Hecate#Goddess_of_the_crossroads
Integral World - Derrida and Wilber at the Crossroads of Metaphysics, Gregory Desilet
Wikipedia - America at the Crossroads -- Book by Francis Fukuyama
Wikipedia - At the Crossroads (film) -- 1943 film by Paul Guevremont
Wikipedia - Beyond the Crossroads -- 1922 film
Wikipedia - Church of the Crossroads
Wikipedia - Man at the Crossroads
Wikipedia - Night at the Crossroads -- 1932 film
Wikipedia - ReMastered: Devil at the Crossroads -- 2019 documentary film
Wikipedia - The Crossroads (1960 film) -- 1960 film
Wikipedia - The Crossroads of New York -- 1922 film
Maigret: Night at the Crossroads (2017) ::: 7.5/10 -- 1h 28min | Crime, Drama, Mystery | TV Movie 16 April 2017 -- Maigret: Night at the Crossroads tells a complex tale of murder, deceit and greed set in an isolated country community. Director: Sarah Harding Writers: Stewart Harcourt (screenplay by), Georges Simenon (from the novel by) Stars:
https://allods.fandom.com/wiki/The_Crossroads
https://allthetropes.fandom.com/wiki/At_the_Crossroads
https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/The_Crossroads
https://gameofthrones.fandom.com/wiki/Inn_at_the_Crossroads
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Lawdog_/_Grimrod:_Terror_at_the_Crossroads_Vol_1
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/The_Crossroads_of_Time_(comic_story)
https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/The_Crossroads


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