From Darkness to Light...

~●~Jiddu Krishnamurti~●~         (1929)

Neither time nor space exists for the man who knows the eternal.

Space and time are real for the man who is yet imperfect and space is divided for him into dimensions, time into past, present and future. He looks behind him and sees his birth, his acquisitions, all that he has rejected. That past is being continually modified by the future which is ever being added to it. From the past man turns his eyes to the future where death, the unknown, the darkness, the mystery, await him.

Fascinated by these he can no longer detach himself from them. The mystery of the future holds for him the fulfillment of all his desires, which the past has denied to him, and in his dreams he flies to that brilliant horizon where happiness must exist, where he must seek it.

No one will ever pierce the infinite mystery of the future - impenetrable in its evanescent illusion - neither magician, prophet nor God! But on the contrary it will be the mystery which will engulf man, which will not let him escape, which will break the mainspring of his life.

Life is not to be approached through the past, nor through the mirage of the future. Life cannot be approached through intermediaries, nor conquered for another.

That discovery can only be made in the immediate present - by the individual for himself and not for others - by the individual who has become the eternal 'I'. That eternal 'I' is created by the perfection of the self - perfection in which all things are contained, even human imperfections. Man, not yet having achieved that condition of life in the present, lives in the past which he regrets, lives in the future where he hopes, but never in the present which he ignores. This is the case with all men.

Balanced between the past and the future, the 'I' is poised as a tiger ready to spring, as an eagle ready to fly, as the bow at the moment of releasing the arrow.

This moment of equilibrium, of high tension, is 'creation.' It is the fullness of all life, it is immortality.

The wind of the desert sweeps away all trace of the traveller.

The sole imprint is the footstep of the present.
The past, the future... sands blown by the wind

Babies

Babies are soft. Anyone looking at them can see the tender, fragile skin and know it for the rose-leaf softness that invites a finger's touch. But when you live with them and love them, you feel the softness going inward, the round-cheeked flesh wobbly as custard, the boneless splay of the tiny hands. Their joints are melted rubber, and even when you kiss them hard, in the passion of loving their existence, your lips sink down and seem never to find bone. Holding them against you, they melt and mold, as though they might at any moment flow back into your body.

But from the very start, there is that small streak of steel within each child. That thing that says "I am," and forms the core of personality.

In the second year, the bone hardens and the child stands upright, skull wide and solid, a helmet protecting the softness within. And "I am" grows, too. Looking at them, you can almost see it, sturdy as heartwood, glowing through the translucent flesh.

The bones of the face emerge at six, and the soul within is fixed at seven. The process of encapsulation goes on, to reach its peak in the glossy shell of adolescence, when all softness then is hidden under the nacreous layers of the multiple new personalities that teenagers try on to guard themselves.

In the next years, the hardening spreads from the center, as one finds and fixes the facets of the soul, until "I am" is set, delicate and detailed as an insect in amber.
[Diana Gabaldon, Dragonfly in Amber]

The handless maiden

The father meets the Devil in the woods. The Devil says give me what is behind your barn and I will make you wealthy and privileged for life. The father thinks, there's only an old apple tree behind the barn, and agrees to the bargain. Yet, since time out of mind, the fruiting tree has also represented the talent, sexuality, life-giving force of women: the maiden, the mother and the old woman, all in one.
Outside the father's awareness, who is also ‘out back' behind the storing place for the harvest, is his daughter.... She who is fertile, she who brings forth, she who - even when having gathered many years - still brings forth sweetest fruits imaginable ... and in abundance rather than only vaguely.

As he is rushing home to tell his wife, his rough clothes are magically replaced by rich velvets and silks. As his wife comes running to meet him, her plain scarf is replaced by a diamond tiara and her rags turn into a gown befitting a queen.

The man explains what a good bargain he has made. But the wife shrieks a death cry, "No! Behind the barn today stood our daughter. You have consigned our daughter to hell!"
And, in a few days' time, the devil shows up to claim the girl. The devil knew all along the father wasn't paying attention and did not register or cherish his daughter's true worth.

The girl's purity of heart continually repels the devil so he cannot take her: He says her hands are too clean. That she must not bathe and she must allow herself to become dirty. But even then, she cries tears and her arms are made clean again. Thus she repels the Devil again as though a force field surrounds her.

So, the devil tells the father that he has to cut off his daughter's arms so that the devil can take her.

The father is horrified, but he follows through, for the devil threatens to take the father's life if he will not sacrifice his daughter. And thus, in one of the most horrendous episodes in ancient tales, the father hoists his sharp axe and severs his daughter's arms.

Still and yet, the devil is unable to take the girl. Her innate feminine depth repels him for the final time.
In the tale, the girl, who has just burst into fruiting with her many talents in life, is disparaged and offered up for lucre, ease of life and material gain. She and the apple tree behind the father's barn are not protected even though each is fully filled with gifts.
They are instead seen as nothings, present only to serve. It can be said, her gifts, not appreciated or seen, are thereby forfeited. She is not allowed to grasp or live her own deep and pure reality as a force of the feminine. The daughter's gifts are left to spoil on the ground
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To murder a woman by cutting is a theme of many tales. But this Devil is more than a murderer, he is a mutilator. He requires mutilation, not decorative or simple initiatory scarification, but the kind that intends to disable a woman forever. When we say a woman's hands are cut off, we mean she is bound away from self-comfort, from immediate self-healing, so very helpless to do anything accept follow the age-old path. So it is proper that we continue to weep during this time. It is our simple and powerful protection against a demon so hurtful that none of us can fully comprehend its motive or reason d'etre.

[ Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes……… From the tale "The Handless Maiden"]

Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

…too much domestication is like forbidding the vital essence to dance. In its proper and healthy state, the wild self is not docile or vacuous. It is alert and responsive to any given movement or moment. It is not locked into an absolute and repetitive pattern for any and all circumstances. It has creative choice. The instinct injured woman has no choice. She just stays stuck.
There are many ways to be stuck. The instinct-injured woman usually gives herself away because she has a difficult time asking for help or recognising her own needs. Her natural instincts to fight or flee are drastically slowed or extincted. Recognition of the sensations of satiation, off-taste, suspicion, caution, and the drive to love fully and freely are inhibited or exaggerated.
…It is play, not properness that is the central artery, the core, the brain stem of creative life. Be good, no creative life. Sit still, no creative life. Speak, think, act only demurely, little creative juice. Any group, society, institution, or organization that encourages women to revile the eccentric; to be suspicious of the new and unusual; to avoid the fervent, the vital, the innovative; to impersonalise the personal, is asking for a culture of dead women.
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Most of us would do better if we became more adept at watching the fire under our work, if we watched more closely the cooking process for nourishing the wild Self. Too often we turn away from the pot, from the oven. We forget to watch, forget to add fuel, and forget to stir. We mistakenly think the fire and the cooking are like one of those feisty houseplants that can go without water for eight months before the poor thing keels over. It is not so. The fire bears, requires watching, for it is easy to let the flame go out.
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The time with Wild Woman is hard at first. To repair injured instinct, banish naivete, and over time to learn the deepest aspects of psyche and soul, to hold on to what we have learned, to not turn away, to speak out for what we stand for...all this takes a boundless and mystical endurance. When we come up out of the underworld after one of our undertakings there, we may appear unchanged outwardly, but inwardly we have reclaimed a vast and womanly wildness. On the surface we are still friendly, but beneath the skin, we are most certainly no longer tame.
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Search

"All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself."
[Ralph Ellison]

Catherine and Her Destiny

Long ago there lived a rich merchant who, besides possessing more treasures than any king in the world, had in his great hall three chairs, one of silver, one of gold, and one of diamonds.  But his greatest treasure of all was his only daughter, who was called Catherine.

One day as Catherine was sitting in her own room, the door flew open and in came a tall, beautiful woman holding a little wheel. 
“Catherine, which would you rather have – a happy youth or a happy old age?”

Catherine was surprised but then thought that it would be better to bear her troubles now than when she was older, so she said, “Give me a happy old age.”

“So be it,” said the Lady, turning the wheel as she spoke.  Then she vanished as suddenly as she had come.

This beautiful Lady was the Destiny of poor Catherine.

A few days later, the merchant heard news that he had lost everything at sea and was now no better than a beggar.  He was so despondent that he took to his bed and soon died.

So poor Catherine was left all alone in the world without a penny or a creature to help her.  But she was brave and full of spirit, and so she set out for the next town to become a servant.  There she met a woman who hired her and all was well for a while.

But one day Catherine’s mistress took a long journey and told Catherine that she was locking up the house so no thieves could rob her.  As Catherine sat at the window working, suddenly the door flew open and there stood her Destiny. 

“Oh, so this is where you are, Catherine!  Did you really think I was going to leave you in peace?”  And with that, her Destiny tore up all the linens and broke all the plate and threw them on the floor.  Catherine wrung her hands and wept and didn’t know what to do, for she knew that her mistress would blame her.  And so she gathered her few belongings and fled.

And her Destiny restored everything to its rightful shape and place, and tidied up before she left.  When the mistress returned home, she had no idea why Catherine had left her.   She checked to see if she had been robbed, but everything was there.  And so after a few days, she found another to take Catherine’s place.

Well, Catherine wandered on and on, not knowing what to do.  But whenever she found a new mistress, her Destiny would come and destroy her peace and force her to leave again.

And so for seven years Catherine moved from place to place, always chased by her Destiny.  But after seven years, her Destiny seemed to get tired of persecuting her, and a time of peace set in for Catherine.  And she found a new position that she liked well.

Now, one of her daily chores for her new mistress was to walk up a mountain and lay on the ground some loaves of freshly baked bread, and to cry with a loud voice,  “O Destiny, my mistress” three times.  And then her lady’s Destiny would come and take away the offering.

After many years, Catherine found that she was happy, although sometimes she would weep, remembering her father and her old life.  One day her mistress found her crying, and when Catherine told her story, her mistress had an idea.

“Catherine, you must ask my Destiny to entreat your Destiny to leave you in peace.”

And when Catherine did just that, her lady’s Destiny answered, “Oh, my poor girl, did you not know that your Destiny lies buried under seven coverlids, and can hear nothing? But if you will come tomorrow, I will bring her with me.”  And the lady’s Destiny found her sister and asked her, “Hasn’t Catherine suffered enough?  It is surely time for her good days to begin.”

The next morning Catherine hurried up the mountain, and her lady’s Destiny took her to her sister, who lay under the seven coverlids.  And her Destiny held out a ball of silk to Catherine and said, “Keep this – it may be useful someday.”  And then pulled the coverings over her head again!

But Catherine walked sadly down the mountain, and went straight to her mistress and showed her the ball of silk, which was the end of all her high hopes.

“What shall I do with it?  It is not worth sixpence, and it is no good to me!”  said Catherine.

But her mistress told her to take care of it, for who knew how useful it might be.

Now soon after this, preparations began for the marriage of the king.  All the tailors in the kingdom were busy embroidering fine clothes for the king, but when it was almost finished, the tailor found that he had run out of thread.  The color was very rare, and so the king made a proclamation that if anyone happened to possess any of this thread, they should bring it to court and he would give them a large sum.

Catherine’s mistress recognized that her ball of silk matched the king’s wedding suit exactly, and urged her to bring it to the king.  So putting on her best clothes, she went to court and looked more beautiful than any woman there.  When she presented the ball of silk to the king, it matched exactly, and the king ordered that she be given its weight in gold.

And so a pair of scales were brought out, and a handful of gold was placed on one scale and the silken ball on the other.  But lo! No matter how much gold the king ordered placed on the scale, the silk was always heavier still.  And the king took larger scales and heaped up all his treasures on one side, but the silk on the other side still outweighed them all.  Finally, the only thing left to place on the scale was his golden crown, and at last the scale moved and the ball had found its balance.

When the king demanded to know where Catherine got her ball of silk, she told him her story and how she had once been as rich as he was.

Now there lived at court a wise old woman, and she said to Catherine, “You have suffered much, my poor girl, but now your luck has turned and I know by the weighing of the scales through the crown that you will die a queen.”

And the king heard the wise woman and cried out, “So she shall, for I shall marry her myself, for she is more beautiful than all the ladies of my court.”  And the king sent back his intended bride to her own country and married Catherine, who lived happy and content for the rest of her life.

The story of Catherine’s destiny is a Libra story in that it is a story about a woman’s worth to the kingdom- to her society.  I feel this story speaks to those women who choose to live life on their own terms, leaving behind the privilege of birth and education, stepping out of the corporate success model to forge a real identity that grows out of life experience and spiritual growth.  At this moment in history, it is these women – and those few men who have chosen a similar path -  who will bring the silken threads of their lives back into the cultural tapestry to enrich and enhance everyone’s lives

[ Archetypal Story Consultant:Cathy Pagano]

LA LOBA

There is an old woman who lives in a hidden place that everyone knows in their souls but few have ever seen. As in the fairy tales of Eastern Europe, she seems to wait for lost or wandering people and seekers to come to her place.
She is circumspect, often hairy, always fat, and especially wishes to evade most company. She is both a crower and a cackler, generally having more animal sounds than human ones.
I might say she lives among the rotten granite slopes in Tarahumara Indian territory. Or that she is buried outside Phoenix near a well. Perhaps she will be seen travelling south to Monte Alban in a burnt-out car with the back window shot out. Or maybe she will be spotted standing by the highway near El Passo, or riding shotgun with truckers to Morelia, Mexico, or walking to market above Oaxaca with strangely formed boughs of firewood on her back. She calls herself by many names: La Huesera, Bone Woman; La Trapera, The Gatherer; and La Loba, Wolf Woman.

The sole work of La Loba is the collecting of bones. The collects and preserves especially that which is in danger of being lost to the world. Her cave is filled with the bones of all manner of desert creatures: the deer, the rattlesnake, the crow. But her specialty is wolves.
She creeps and crawls and sifts through the montanas, (mountains), and arroyos, (dry riverbeds), looking for the wolf bones, and when she has assembled the entire skeleton, when the last bone is in place and the beautiful white sculpture of the creature is laid out before her she sits by the fire and thinks about what song she will sing.
And when she is sure, she stands over the creatura, raises her arms over it, and sings out. This is when the rib bones and leg bones of the wolf begin to flesh out and the creature becomes furred. La Loba sings some more and more of the creature comes into being; its tail curls upward, shaggy and strong. And La Loba sings more and the wolf creature begins to breathe. And still La Loba sings so deeply that the floor of the desert shakes, and as she sings, the wolf opens its eyes, and leaps up, and runs away down the canyon.
Somewhere in its running, whether by the speed of its running, or by splashing its way into a river, or by way of a ray of sunlight or moonlight hitting it right in the side, the wolf is suddenly transformed into a laughing woman who runs free toward the horizon.
So remember, if you wonder the desert, and it is near sundown, and you are perhaps a little bit lost, and certainly tired, that you are lucky, for La Loba may take a liking to you and show you something - something of the soul

[Women Who Run With the Wolves ]
♥Clarissa Pinkola Estes♥

Kindness....

Kindness...

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, you must travel where the
Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept
him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow
as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day
to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

{¶[[Naomi Shihab Nye]]¶}

Dare....

Contemplate human nature is the most emotional event I can have a human being, it is the art of emotions to the surface , is a Pandora's box wrapped in pearl necklaces ! Where the idiosyncrasies of people stained the firmament of this beautiful sunrise light zooming every thinking person ! , awakening the inner musical sound expressing a wealth of emotions leading them through different internal roads ! , leading to the death ! symbolic ! of being! or to eternal life be! Walking into the pit of the abyss! only internal compass ! , driven by the understanding itself and its inner flame danced ! , that magic power ! the power to choose which way to go ! , how beautiful is to feel the sun dancing within it , how beautiful is this divine breath express the essence of love! , illuminating ! nourishing ! that transforms ! , which transports ! , which channels ! , embellishing ! , driving! awakening! thinking this stuff! this sound matter ! , this divine stuff! , this cosmic consciousness! wrapped in the flesh ! sustained by these bones ! fueled by this energy dancing inside my communicating the breath of God ! father! mother! imbibing in full ! your inspiration ! , in every breath ! in every bite of its essence taking me to where you want without resist! a second internal to its external mandates I am driven to full consciousness to universal love, without objection a second of my humble human existence ! I give myself wraps his will ! by complete ! without action! without resistance 'm yours! into body! , in soul , in mind! in heart! hugging her glow ! I by joining the sun, forming a single molecule of life! We 're two in one! a blessed ! everything! , awakening to his will ! , Waking up to their power ! waking up at will ! waking his unconditional love ! awakening to this great wave of love! leaving it on the leading wave me and take me to love beautiful places ! forming a beautiful rainbow of colors ever seen ! by human eyes ! blessed awakening of love! permeating the bone! expressing this awakening with genuine feeling light ! , this awakening peace ! , this awakening of love! , timeless ! , across the big blue house of this great warrior magna " gaia " sigh to the winds ! echo the sigh of God made song ! feeling his melody within each humble heart ! , feeling his magic within every free soul , feeling the reflection of God! , goddess ! within me .. penetrating my senses ! love this flower ! internal and external ! unify my universe to his universe all ! are one! , so be it done this ! shalom om om om Namaskar!
[ Magdalena Alejandra Moyano]

Blueprint of a Predator

“You're going to meet many people with domineering personalities: the loud, the obnoxious, those that noisily stake their claims in your territory and everywhere else they set foot on. This is the blueprint of a predator. Predators prey on gentleness, peace, calmness, sweetness and any positivity that they sniff out as weakness. Anything that is happy and at peace they mistake for weakness. It's not your job to change these people, but it's your job to show them that your peace and gentleness do not equate to weakness. I have always appeared to be fragile and delicate but the thing is, I am not fragile and I am not delicate. I am very gentle but I can show you that the gentle also possess a poison. I compare myself to silk. People mistake silk to be weak but a silk handkerchief can protect the wearer from a gunshot. There are many people who will want to befriend you if you fit the description of what they think is weak; predators want to have friends that they can dominate over because that makes them feel strong and important. The truth is that predators have no strength and no courage. It is you who are strong, and it is you who has courage. I have lost many a friend over the fact that when they attempt to rip me, they can't. They accuse me of being deceiving; I am not deceiving, I am just made of silk. It is they who are stupid and wrongly take gentleness and fairness for weakness. There are many more predators in this world, so I want you to be made of silk. You are silk.”
~●~ C. JoyBell C ~●~

"The Red Room: Hysterectomy"

"The Red Room:   Hysterectomy" poem by dr.cpe.

Dear Souls:

I think, as many of you might too, about whether and what and how much to say in public places about one's private life. Yet, on this private subject and others, I weigh that against asking who will go untaught, unhelped; who will suffer if I do not say my life out loud?

If women and men do not tell the truth about lives, if they do not crack the shell of propriety as taught by family and overculture... and at last step out, not only to be free, but to free others as well... then what would become of all of us on Earth?

So, thus...

Many decades ago, having devoted myself to the fullest and most fierce family and creative life I could ... when I was 33 years old, because of a life and death situation, I became an old woman overnight...

without cradle-uterus, without ovaries bearing the millions of eggs I was born with, without fallopian tubes to fan and wave the little ones in the right direction...

I awoke from a devastating surgery having been severed from the so delicate barometers and beautiful rhythms of ' call and response ' of my bodily organs that were once strung like lights within my soul's one precious body on Earth.

I was weak unto death, but shocked the entire hospital and doctors' worlds by insisting in a morphine stupor that I must be given my severed body to bring home to bury with honor.

I did explain this need in several ways in my pleadings to the medics, standing on love of the children this body had borne, insisting on sacerdotal duty, and the traditions of the old believers I come from.

I wound up blessing the very ones who were so quick with radical and brutal surgeries in those times, for they did grant me back my own poor body to lay to rest in proper ritual and burial.

After months in hospital, when I could finally come back home, I made a ritual of prayer and gratitude for my life. Then I opened for the first time, the containers of what they then called 'surgical waste,' that is, the parts of me that had so protectively filled with blood and love to bring my two children safely to Earth...

I was shocked to see they had cut, dissected it is called, my tender body parts into halves, to biopsy, they told me later

I was devastated to see this, and grief suddenly hit as a purely visceral 'ghost of longing' inside my seeming now 'empty' body.

Yet, soul can often work in wondrous ways. After a long time sorrowing about all the life that would never come through me, the new smiles and first words not to be... I dreampt a vivid dream: I was wearing my own halved uterus on my head as earphones and I could hear deeply and clearly the most amazing things both in and across the worlds.

I was surprised and heartened, and also impressed with the wild creativity of the dream-maker; it had made me laugh, in more ways than one... oddly to me at first, I laughed in joyous-sadness.

As I grew in understanding, though I knew many people who said they 'resigned' themselves to certain difficult matters in life, I felt there was a diagonal path... another choice ... something else, and that is, reconciling... reuniting oneself with what is most meaningful and useful to the soul in the matter, regardless of sad or bad or inexplicable circumstances.

And this I labored through then, literally laying los descansos (the resting places marking where a death has occurred) on a timeline of my life... and gradually I found that the work of reconciliation can also sometimes and in some part, replace lost treasure with newly found odds and ends and wires and springs, that turn out to be treasure too, but in ways one never expected.

Thus a bounty began to burgeon, not right away, but in time, beginning with the dream above... and I proceeded, fully dressed in my progenative senses a la uteri 'receivers', as in that dream... listening, hearing, sensing, seeing far, farther than ever before.

It came clear that the creative works of making children once focussed within my body, was becoming a far more global endeavor and not tied only to my body, but to the outer world, to others, mind and soul.

Blood was still rythmically nourishing 'the new' but now, the child was the inspiratus. I was quickened vastly in conceiving and giving birth in new and different ways than ever before. It was as though my blood was being saved back for a whole different kind of bearing of life.

Thus, this poem about outcomes in early loss of childbearing ability, written in 1978.

RED ROOM— HYSTERECTOMY
by Dr. CP Estés

Gone is the tiny room they came to.
From far star roofs
they once jumped, giggling.
Parachuting, tiny travelers with no baggage
came here,
hoping to find
all they needed.

I brought some home safely.
Now, the waiting room is gone.
This station is closed.

But a thousand other rooms inside me
that once seemed sealed with steel bands,
I find these now held shut with
only cellophane.
I find there are 'rooms between rooms'
inside me,
and they can fan fully open to receive.

If, as in the days of my childbearing years,
I let this ancient rope
with ideas attached,
develop inside me, then when ready,
let them slip through and from me into life outside—
if I do not hold too tight, but rather loosen
all the bracelets of my body,
letting these new child-lettes
come in their own times,
just let what I know to be so
to have its ways with me,
--as always before—
then it will be so, as before,
new life will be brought down
to earth again, whole.

The red room is gone.
But the runway lights are still lit
fully blue and glowing
in this darkness.
The landing strip is still here
welcoming all newlings
blazing for new life
elbowing to be born
through this mother
who once grew dear childen
but now grows simple revolution.

“The Red Room: Hysterectomy”, © 1978, 1979, All rights reserved. Dr. C.P. Estés, poem from La Pasionaria/ The Bright Angel: Collected Poems of Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés 1960-2010” This particular work may be used non-commercially as long as it is kept entirely intact, not added to nor taken from, and this complete notice including usage, author’s name and copyright notice are clearly printed upon it. Other permissions ngandelman@aol.com

Trails...and Shadows

“A trail made of pine needles and thistles leads you into the green darkness. The canopy casts shadows on old oaks and dogwoods, and you think you can smell the sour breath of a witch behind you. The wind sighs like a sleeping girl, carrying her bittersweet dreams along the paths to attract any man willing to look for thorn-covered castles. A wolf darts between fallen, rotted wood; maybe he’s the one who can tell you where your heart is, how you’re still breathing.”  [Kimberly Karalius, Pocket Forest]