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So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
The Profile Zanzibar Age. 39 Gender. Female Ethnicity. that of my father and his father before him Location Altadena, CA School. Other » More info. The Weather The World The Link To Zanzibar's Past
This is my page in the beloved art community that my sister got me into: Samarinda Extra points for people who know what Samarinda is. The Phases of the Moon Module CURRENT MOON Writings
Poetry The Tree and the Telephone Pole The Spider I Do Not Know Their Names The Mouse Blindness La Plante The Moon Today I am Young A Night Poem Celestial Wandering Siren of the Sea If I Were a Dragon To the Dreamers Leave the Sky The Honor of the Oyster Return From San Diego War My Study Defeat A Late Summer's Night Of Dragons and Men Erebus The Edge of the World The Race Dragon's Spirit The Snake's Terror Spirit Island Metaphysics Metaphysica Transponderae Metaphysics and the Middaymoon Of Adventures in Foreign Lands The Rogue Wave: The Unedited Version Adventures in the PRC Voyage of Discovery Drinking the Blood of Goats Ticket for a Phantom Bus Os peixes nadam o mar Three Villages Far Away The River Weser Children I Should Have Kidnapped, Part I Let's Get You Out of Those Clothes Radishes Three-Piece-Lawsuit If Underwear Could Speak Croc Hunter/Combat Wombat
My hero(s) Only My Favorite Baseball Player EVER Aw, Larry Walker, how I loved thee. The Schedule
M: Science and Exploration T: Cook a nice dinner W: PARKOUR! Th: Parties, movies, dinners F: Picnics, the Louvre S: Read books, go for walks, PARKOUR Su: Philosophy, Religion The Reading List
This list starts Summer 2006 A Crocodile on the Sandbank Looking Backwards Wild Swans Exodus 1984 Tales of the Alhambra (in progress) Dark Lord of Derkholm Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The Lost Years of Merlin Harry Potter a l'ecole des sorciers (in progress) Atlas Shrugged (in progress) Uglies Pretties Specials A Long Way Gone (story of a boy soldier in Sierra Leone- met the author! w00t!) The Eye of the World: Book One of the Wheel of Time From Magma to Tephra (in progress) Lady Chatterley's Lover Harry Potter 7 The No. 1 Lady's Detective Agency Introduction to Planetary Volcanism A Child Called "It" Pompeii Is Multi-Culturalism Bad for Women? Americans in Southeast Asia: Roots of Commitment (in progress) What's So Great About Christianity? Aeolian Geomorphology Aeolian Dust and Dust Deposits The City of Ember The People of Sparks Cube Route When I was in Cuba, I was a German Shepard Bound The Golden Compass Clan of the Cave Bear The 9/11 Commission Report (2nd time through, graphic novel format this time, ip) The Incredible Shrinking Man Twilight Eclipse New Moon Breaking Dawn Armageddon's Children The Elves of Cintra The Gypsy Morph Animorphs #23: The Pretender Animorphs #25: The Extreme Animorphs #26: The Attack Crucial Conversations A Journey to the Center of the Earth A Great and Terrible Beauty The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Dandelion Wine To Sir, With Love London Calling Watership Down The Invisible Alice in Wonderland Through the Looking Glass 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea The Host The Hunger Games Catching Fire Shadows and Strongholds The Jungle Book Beatrice and Virgil Infidel Neuromancer The Help Flip Zion Andrews The Unit Princess Quantum Brain The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks No One Ever Told Us We Were Defeated Delirium Memento Nora Robopocalypse The Name of the Wind The Terror Sister Tao Te Ching What Paul Meant Lao Tzu and Taoism Libyan Sands Sand and Sandstones Lost Christianites: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew The Science of God Calculating God Great Contemporaries, by Winston Churchill City of Bones Around the World in 80 Days, by Jules Verne Divergent Stranger in a Strange Land The Old Man and the Sea Flowers for Algernon Au Bonheur des Ogres The Martian The Road to Serfdom De La Terre � la Lune (ip) In the Light of What We Know Devil in the White City 2312 The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August Red Mars How to Be a Good Wife A Mote in God's Eye A Gentleman in Russia The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism Seneca: Letters from a Stoic | Parisian Bars Thursday. 1.10.13 8:31 am An excerpt from my most recent Nanowrimo novel (that is to say, only half true): He invited me to a bar. I resigned myself to spending the night pretending that I drank alcohol. Like all Parisian bars, it was small and crowded and authentic. Authentic Parisian bars had unbalanced my conception of authentic American bars. I started to realized that all of our authentic bars and restaurants and interior decor were actually imperfect European facsimiles. Not knowing what they had been based on, I had accepted the copies as originals, and only now was I discovering that the originals existed. For this reason it always shocked me to see wooden tables that were not artificially distressed, paper that was yellowed at the edges from time instead of tea, old magnifying glasses that were really made out of brass, and cast iron candelabras that were actually made out of cast iron. Thatched roofs that were actually made of thatch. The authenticity of everything shocked me. I had discovered everything in the world backwards, from the streets of the Paris: Las Vegas to the streets of Paris, France. This bar was no different. It was built of crumbling brick with low wooden beams. The whole building leaned slightly to the side over a small alleyway. If I had been a giant I would have straightened it out like a deck of cards. If I were a giant I would fix everything, and never knock anything down. As a kid I used to build towers out of blocks. Other kids used to always knock them over, but I would patiently collect all of the blocks back together and start building again. When I was really small they had a wall as school that was made of bricks. They had a bunch of big paintbrushes and a bucket full of water. I remember painting the wall with the water, painting and painting and painting, and when I reached the end of the wall the beginning of the wall would be dry again and I would have to start all over again. I guess that�s why I do so much computer programming. He met me out front and kissed me quickly on each cheek. I was still getting used to that� I was afraid that one day I would lose all control over myself and accidentally kiss somebody full on the mouth. Probably my boss, knowing me. Blushing, I followed him into the bar. He led me down an impossibly narrow staircase to a large brick cellar with arched pillars. A band was playing. The lead girl was playing the accordion. A young, unshaven boy behind her was playing bass, and a guy sitting on her right hand side was playing some kind of incredibly ethnic African percussion instrument. A reddish orange light on the stage bathed everything with a warm glow. The place was crowded and everyone was feeling the music. I always liked to squint my eyes when I was at concerts. Each light would become an eight-pointed star, and I would pretend like I was partying so hard that I was about to pass out. I called this exercise �Youth�. At least, this is what I imagined Youth was supposed to be like. A little blurry, lights flashing everywhere, the heat of other young bodies pressing in from every direction, music so loud that it filled your mind to the exclusion of everything else. Claude bought me a cider. I smiled brightly, glad to see that it was something that I would be able to choke down without too much awkward grimacing. I returned to my exercise of Youth, but he tapped me on the arm. He wanted to talk. If speaking a foreign language had a Master�s championship, this would be it. Low light, overwhelming background noise, a conversation that could go in any direction. I reeled my brain back from its rock-and-roll vacation and placed it back into its gears. We had to stand very close�of course we did. We had to speak directly into each others� ears, which required leaning towards each other just so. Occasionally his lips would brush the side of my face while he was speaking, and while it was all so contrived I could suddenly understand why other people did it. Whenever he looked away I squinted my eyes until he was blurry. If I looked at him like that he could be anyone. That was part of Youth, too, wasn�t it? I grabbed a straw from behind the bar and put it in my cider. With the straw in the back of my throat I could pull back most of the cider without actually tasting it. I took a long pull and turned back to Claude. The girl playing the accordion was sexiest accordion player I had ever seen. The fellow playing the African drum wasn�t so bad either. Everyone in the bar was getting sexier and sexier the blurrier they became. I don�t remember leaving the bar. One moment we were in the bar, my feet aching from standing for so long, awash with orange light and accordion music, Claude�s lips brushing my ear as he spoke in unintelligible French, and the next we were out in the blue night, walking along the maze of uneven cobble stones next to the marina of the Bastille. I dragged Claude to the locks on the canal. They were silent for the night, and I tried to explain how they worked but I did not have sufficient vocabulary. Instead we passed quickly through the tunnel from the canal to the edge of the Seine. No one ever came here; it was the one place along the Seine that was always deserted. We sat and looked out over the Seine. One time Abigail and I had seen a turtle in the river. I always told people about it but they never believed me. I told Claude, but he couldn�t understand what I was saying. He kissed me. He kissed me... and for the first time in my life, I didn�t feel anything. I had always heard people claim that this kiss or that kiss didn�t mean anything, and I never believed it could be true�after all, it was a kiss! But then there was Claude, and Claude could have been any boy in the world. But I kissed him back, poor fellow, I kissed him back and I kissed him all along the edge of the Seine until we reached the street again. �Here�s my metro station,� I said, as if I hadn�t known that it would be there. He kissed me goodnight. I knew it would be the last time. Is this how hearts get broken? Did French hearts break like American hearts? Could I have been any girl in the world to Claude? Did it matter to him? Was any girl in the world exactly what he was looking for? The metro home was blurry, but not for the same reason as before. 1 Comments. One day, I will find out what an authentic bar looks like so that I know how to differentiate between that and an "authentic" American bar. » LostSoul13 on 2013-01-12 12:18:42
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