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Their eyes met and locked. If Cumbria were to take the form of a man, here he stood. Half-tamed, and that half much in doubt, forbiddingly beautiful and dangerous to the unwary. A voice in the back of her head warned that she ought to keep her silence, but she plowed on. "You belong here." Without thought, she stepped toward him and touched his cheek, following the line back to his temple. His skin felt warm, the heat of him filled her. Inside her, in her heart and in her soul, she knew him. She knew everything about him that mattered. All of him was inside her right now, complete and right and heartbreaking because he was lost. He turned his head and for a moment, she felt the warmth of his breath against her gloved palm. "My poor, dear Captain Alexander. You are too young to feel such desolation. You think you've lost your heart, but you haven't. It's here at Pennhyll. It's in the ground and the air, the trees and the stone, everywhere you look. You have only to take it. Take what is yours. ↗
Twenty-two months are a long time and a lot of things can happen in them- there is time for new families to be formed, for babies to be born and even begin to talk, for a great house to rise where once there was only a field, for a beautiful woman to grow old and no one desire her any more, for an illness- for a long illness- to ripen (yet men live on heedlessly), to consume the body slowly, to recede for short periods as if cured, to take hold again more deeply and drain away the last hopes; there is time for a man to die and be buried, for his son to be able to laugh again and in the evening take the girls down the avenues and past the cemetery gates without a thought. But it seemed as if Drogo’s existence had come to a halt. The same day, the same things, had repeated themselves hundreds of times without taking a step forward. The river of time flowed over the Fort, crumbled the walls, swept down dust and fragments of stone, wore away the stairs and the chain, but over Drogo it passed in vain- it had not yet succeeded in catching him, bearing him with it as it flowed. ↗
It was 1976. It was one of the darkest days of my life when that nurse, Mrs. Shimmer, pulled out a maxi pad that measured the width and depth of a mattress and showed us how to use it. It had a belt with it that looked like a slingshot that possessed the jaw-dropping potential to pop a man's head like a gourd. As she stretched the belt between the fingers of her two hands, Mrs. Shimmer told us becoming a woman was a magical and beautiful experience. I remember thinking to myself, You're damn right it had better be magic, because that's what it's going to take to get me to wear something like that, Tinkerbell! It looked like a saddle. Weighed as much as one, too. Some girls even cried. I didn't. I raised my hand. "Mrs. Shimmer," I asked the cautiously, "so what kind of security napkins do boys wear when their flower pollinates? Does it have a belt, too?" The room got quiet except for a bubbling round of giggles. "You haven't been paying attention, have you?" Mrs. Shimmer accused sharply. "Boys have stamens, and stamens do not require sanitary napkins. They require self control, but you'll learn that soon enough." I was certainly hoping my naughty bits (what Mrs. Shimmer explained to us was like the pistil of a flower) didn't get out of control, because I had no idea what to do if they did. ↗
She heard him close the door. “I was going to impress you with my romantic eloquence, of course. I’d thought to wax philosophical about the beauty of your brow.” Lucy blinked. “My brow?” “Mmm. Have I told you that your brow intimidates me?” She felt his warmth at her back as he moved behind her, but he didn’t touch her. “It’s so smooth and white and broad, and ends with your straight, knowing eyebrows, like a statue of Athena pronouncing judgment. If the warrior goddess had a brow like yours, it is no wonder the ancients worshiped and feared her.” “Blather,” she murmured. “Blather, indeed. Blather is all I am, after all.” She frowned and turned to contradict him, but he moved with her so that she couldn’t quite catch sight of his face. “I am the duke of nonsense,” he whispered in her ear. “The king of farce, the emperor of emptiness.” Did he really see himself so? “But—” “Blathering is what I do best,” he said, still unseen. “I’d like to blather about your golden eyes and ruby lips.” “Simon—” “The perfect curve of your cheek,” he murmured close. She gasped as his breath stirred the hair at her neck. He was distracting her with lovemaking. And it was working. “What a lot of talk.” “I do talk too much. It’s a weakness you’ll have to bear in your husband.” His voice was next to her ear. “But I’d have to spend quite a bit of time outlining the shape of your mouth, its softness and the warmth within. -Simon to Lucy on their wedding night. ↗
Powerful winds that crack the boughs of November! - and the bright calm sun, untouched by the furies of the earth, abandoning the earth to darkness, and wild forlornness, and night, as men shiver in their coats and hurry home. And then the lights of home glowing in those desolate deeps. There are the stars, though! - high and sparkling in a spiritual firmament. We will walk in the windsweeps, gloating in the envelopment of ourselves, seeking the sudden grinning intelligence of humanity below these abysmal beauties. Now the roaring midnight fury and the creaking of our hinges and windows, now the winder, now the understanding of the earth and our being on it: this drama of enigmas and double-depths and sorrows and grave joys, these human things in the elemental vastness of the windblown world. ↗
The streets were full of destruction and rubble, and this town I'd never liked, with its stupid people, stupid streets, and stupid houses, was now unrecognisable, now it had a truly unique beauty, and scantily-clad women traversed it like ghosts. A twelve-storey building in the city centre had totally collapsed. Caught up in her bed sheets, a woman who had fallen from the top floor found herself alive and alone on the pavement. Her husband had been thrown out of bed. From now on she would sleep forever, since reality was now as extraordinary as dreams. ↗
It was growing dark on this long southern evening, and suddenly, at the exact point her finger had indicated, the moon lifted a forehead of stunning gold above the horizon, lifted straight out of filigreed, light-intoxicated clouds that lay on the skyline in attendant veils. Behind us, the sun was setting in a simultaneous congruent withdrawal and the river turned to flame in a quiet duel of gold....The new gold of moon astonishing and ascendant, he depleted gold of sunset extinguishing itself in the long westward slide, it was the old dance of days in the Carolina marshes, the breathtaking death of days before the eyes of children, until the sun vanished, its final signature a ribbon of bullion strung across the tops of water oaks. ↗
As you set out on your journey to Ithaca, pray that your journey be a long one, filled with adventure, filled with discovery. Laestrygonians and Cyclopes, the angry Poseidon--do not fear them: you'll never find such things on your way unless your sight is set high, unless a rare excitement stirs your spirit and your body. The Laestrygonians and Cyclopes, the savage Poseidon--you won't meet them so long as you do not admit them to your soul, as long as your soul does not set them before you. Pray that your road is a long one. May there be many summer mornings when with what pleasure, with what joy, you enter harbors never seen before. May you stop at Phoenician stations of trade to buy fine things, mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony, and voluptuous perfumes of every kind-- buy as many voluptuous perfumes as you can. And may you go to many Egyptian cities to learn and learn from those who know. Always keep Ithaca in your mind. You are destined to arrive there. But don't hurry your journey at all. Far better if it takes many years, and if you are old when you anchor at the island, rich with all you have gained on the way, not expecting that Ithaca will give you wealth. Ithaca has given you a beautiful journey. Without her you would never have set out. She has no more left to give you. And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not mocked you. As wise as you have become, so filled with experience, you will have understood what these Ithacas signify. ↗
We may see a Creature with forty-nine heads Who lives in the desolate snow, And whenever he catches a cold (which he dreads) He has forty-nine noses to blow. 'We may see the venomous Pink-Spotted Scrunch Who can chew up a man with one bite. It likes to eat five of them roasted for lunch And eighteen for its supper at night. 'We may see a Dragon, and nobody knows That we won't see a Unicorn there. We may see a terrible Monster with toes Growing out of the tufts of his hair. 'We may see the sweet little Biddy-Bright Hen So playful, so kind and well-bred; And such beautiful eggs! You just boil them and then They explode and they blow off your head. 'A Gnu and a Gnocerous surely you'll see And that gnormous and gnorrible Gnat Whose sting when it stings you goes in at the knee And comes out through the top of your hat. 'We may even get lost and be frozen by frost. We may die in an earthquake or tremor. Or nastier still, we may even be tossed On the horns of a furious Dilemma. 'But who cares! Let us go from this horrible hill! Let us roll! Let us bowl! Let us plunge! Let's go rolling and bowling and spinning until We're away from old Spiker and Sponge! ↗
#imagination #james-and-the-giant-peach #monsters #roald-dahl #beauty
