Was haig the butcher of the somme free essay sample

Field Marshall Douglas Haig was president in The Battle of the Somme. The bleeding fight occurred along a 30-kilometer front between the first July and the eighteenth November 1916 by the River Somme, in France. On the principal day alone around 19,240 British and realm power officers were killed, with losses coming to right around 35,493. The enormous mass of men that had been killed come about in practically 20% of the whole British battling power having been killed in one day of the fight. The loss of such a large number of troopers prompted Haig building up the title of ‘the butcher of the Somme’. Be that as it may, I can't help contradicting the name of ‘butcher’ that Haig got. A butcher is an individual who slaughters creatures. In any case, in Haig’s case he was viewed as a butcher of different people, not creatures. This implied he was somebody who butchered or killed different people mercilessly. This was the general feeling on Haig when the fight was finished. We will compose a custom article test on Was haig the butcher of the somme? or on the other hand any comparable theme explicitly for you Don't WasteYour Time Recruit WRITER Just 13.90/page The shock was because of the numerous misfortunes of lives. Another factor which angered the individuals at home was that the papers depicted the circumstance far superior to it really was all through the fight, deluding loved ones back at home. I accept that despite the fact that Haig’s poor authority and disappointment of plan added to the passings of many, I feel that most of individuals couldn't have been spared as nobody is sheltered in a fight. Moreover, some may state Haig’s expectations were just centered around winning the war. Haig took order when the British Army was secured impasse with the Germans along the Western Front; whichever way the impasse would have must be broken and individuals would have been executed to arrive at a definitive objective of triumph. In any case, I believe that Haig ought to have permitted more control to the men in the front and had been less tireless to seek after his thought as strategies were old and innovation should have been modified to be totally proficient. In general, the powers included endured more than one million passings, making it the bloodiest military activity ever. Haig drove such a significant number of men to their demises without an enormous outcome from the start, however the ultimate result was achievement. In spite of the fact that I concur that it was for the most part Haig’s issue that such a large number of men were slaughtered, I figure he assisted the British to at last win and he doesn't merit the name of ‘butcher of the Somme’.

Unipolarism

Unipolar is a framework with just a solitary significant entertainer, which is generally a solitary express that commands the various littler states in the worldwide political framework. As it were to talk about the possibility of Unipolar in the contemporary International framework, I would quickly follow the advert of present day International framework in the perspective on polarization. The advert of the cutting edge worldwide framework could be followed back to the tranquility of Westphalia in 1648, which mean the finish of the 30 years war in Europe.This settlement built up the state as the fundamental entertainer in the worldwide governmental issues and proclaimed that the sovereign head of every country †state could do as she/he wished inside the border’s. During this period numerous extraordinary forces existed in Europe, this is a framework allude to as Multipolar. Multipolar is a framework, with different force communities. By the late nineteenth century. The f ramework has changed for multi †polar to what a few researchers allude to as a tight Bipolar framework, wherein the force in Europe unified in two adversary bunches before the first World War, which is the triple collusion and the triple entente.By the finish of the first World War, the tight Bi-polar framework has debilitated. Before the start of second World War the world has become enraptured again into another tight Bi â€polar comprising of the associated and hub power. Following the second universal war, a concise Unipolar framework developed, where United States of America was the main force in Europe with the Nuclear Power, and other European Power were frail in light of the pulverization of the war. Be that as it may, this was fleeting, in light of the fact that the framework got Bipolar with US and USSR has the two superpower power with Nuclear weapons.This period was allude to as the Cold War Era. With the fall of USSR and the conclusion to the Cold War, unmistakab ly the Bipolar framework is no more. What isn't sure is the means by which to described the current, despite everything developing framework. A few researchers contended that we are in a Unipolar framework in light of the fact that just a single super force remain, while a few researchers contended or marked the new global framework as Multipolar bringing up to the expanding financial intensity of some European and Asian States.To some degree the two terms areâ accurate, the US has the world’s amazing military, which bolsters the Unipolar view, yet the US economy isn't as ground-breaking, comparative with the remainder of the world , loaning trustworthiness to the Multipolar see. The new framework is then alluded to as Multipolar or Unipolar, contingent upon which side of the contention researchers favor. This is contention in the early post Cold War Era. To portray the contemporary framework as a Unipolar or Multipolar framework is somewhat preposterous on the grounds that the contemporary universal framework is a touch of both.The contemporary worldwide framework can't fittingly be depicted a Unipolar, since that recommend the presence of one single prevailing force and numerous little powers, and there are obviously various â€Å"major power† in contemporary world legislative issues, for example, Russia, China, Japan and the European Union, along with various littler however no less significant territorial forces, for example, India, Brazil and South Africa. Nor can the framework be depict as Multipolar for the hole between the United States and the different significant forces is just excessively huge. Dissimilar to a genuine Mutipolar framework, where there are various similarly measured powers.The present framework includes a solitary force looking for authority over all other, and various significant forces which want to oppose the domineering motivations of the United States, yet neither the quality nor the craving to challenge the Unite d States legitimately and countless little powers. While the US would obviously incline toward a Unipolar framework in which it would be the authority, significant force then again would favor a multipolar framework. With my examination, and in relations with circumstance of occasions in the worldwide framework I would state we are a long way from being in a Unipolar framework and what we have by and by is a Multipolar system.Thou we have US has the authority. The future design of world forces is troublesome, past the sure thing forecast that US authority like that of each other incredible force ever, will end. In end thusly, I would state that what we have by and by in the universal framework is certainly not a Unipolar framework. It could in this manner be known as a mulltipolar framework, yet a legitimate Multipolar framework will advance when the United States turns into a â€Å"ordinary major Power†.

35 Superfoods for Your Heart

35 Superfoods for Your Heart Your heart’s health should be a primary concern for you, just as your general health is. Your heart is the organ responsible for getting your blood to flow. With a good flow of blood, oxygen and important nutrients reach your body as required.But things don’t always work as expected, especially with worsening eating habits. Bad eating habits and unhealthy lifestyles are fueled by busy schedules which seem to be trapping many. But does that mean you cannot do anything about it?In the United States, 610,000 people die of heart disease annually. 735,000 people suffer a heart attack every year. These facts paint a very grim picture of the state of the health of many people’s hearts.Certainly, prevention is better than cure. And this is the route this article wants you to take in regards to your heart’s health.If you are still alive and either have never suffered a heart attack or have survived one, then you should embark on a serious journey of ensuring you prioritize your heartâ €™s health.Despite the busy schedule you may have, avoid the temptation of going for dietary supplements. Eating the right food is better than taking supplements. To help you in this, we put together 35 superfoods to help you get your heart in good shape.This list provides you with a lot of options so that you cannot get stuck due to food availability or taste preferences. Read through and start building a stronger heart today.1. STRAWBERRYThese fruits are not only delicious but full of nutrients that help you stay healthy in many ways. According to research, a consistent consumption of strawberries reduces total cholesterol by around 9%, LDL (bad) cholesterol by about 13% and triglycerides by about 21%.Eating these fruits also leads to lower levels of C-reactive protein, a biomarker for inflammation in the body. They also reduce oxidative stress, the imbalance between the production of free radicals and your body’s ability to counter them.2. GRAPEFRUITEating grapefruits will grea tly increase your heart’s health due to the nutrients it contains. With potassium, choline, vitamin C and lycopene, grapefruits are a common fruit used for a healthy diet. While potassium helps reduce blood pressure through vasodilation, lycopene helps fight off heart disease as it is an antioxidant.However, you should not take grapefruits if taking heart medications. This is because it stops your body from metabolizing heart medication. This results in high levels of the medication inside your body. Your body can only assume these high levels to be an overdose, something that would pose a danger.3. OILY FISH (tuna, sardine and salmon)Oily fish should have a permanent and very important place in your diet. Apart from being sources of protein, some B vitamins and selenium, their great importance is the Omega-3 fatty acids. These fish provide us with the Omega-3 fatty acids called EPA and DHA which are essential for your body.Some of the best sources are tuna, sardines and salmon. F or every 100g (3.5 ounce) of these, you will get 1.6g, 1.5g and 1.5g of the fatty acid respectively. Some of the fish like mackerel have higher amounts of Omega-3 but also contain high levels of mercury. You can still eat them but not very often. You can see more fish and their Omega-3 content here.4. LEAFY GREEN VEGETABLES (kales, spinach, broccoli, parsley)You probably know these as good sources of vitamin k, which helps in blood clotting. You are very right. It however appears that there is more to this vitamin than previously known. This study found that vitamin k reduces the risk of hemorrhage.Deficiencies in this vitamin in your diet could lead to a condition called left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH), which basically means that your heart’s left ventricle could become dangerously enlarged. With LVH, an enlarged heart becomes ineffective at pumping blood.With an ineffective blood pump, all sorts of health problems can occur. That’s not something you would want to experience .5. ASPARAGUSThis is another super vegetable that is full of nutrients. Apart from having vitamin k like kales and spinach, it has B vitamins which help lower homocysteine. High levels of homocysteine can lead to plaque formation in arteries. This is one of the ways a heart attack and stroke come about.At the same time, asparagus contain saponins which have anti-inflammatory benefits. They also help regulate blood pressure.6. ORANGESOranges are more commonly known for their vitamin C content, something that is vital for your immune system. More than that, they contain a lot of fiber which help reduce cholesterol. This study showed that taking orange juice reduced the levels of bad cholesterol.These fruits also have potassium which helps reduce blood pressure as well as prevent irregular heartbeats. Oranges also contain folates which help reduce levels of homocysteine.7. POTATOESPotatoes are a good source of potassium, like many other foods in this list. Any food that gives you potas sium is good for your heart as it reduces blood pressure through vasodilation (widening of the blood vessels).They also contain vitamin C which protects arteries from the damaging effects of cholesterol. When taken with the skin, the potassium which is higher than in bananas goes a long way in reducing the risk of high blood pressure. Also, potatoes have no cholesterol or saturated fat. You also get magnesium and fiber.8. BASILBasil has a good combination of nutrients which secure it a place in our list of superfoods for your heart. Some of them are iron, calcium, folate, manganese, potassium, vitamins A and K. As seen with some foods already, potassium and vitamin k are great for your heart.That’s not all though. It has Omega-3 fatty acids and also has antioxidant benefits. It has magnesium which helps relax muscles and blood vessels, leading to reduced high blood pressure. There are many ways to use basil and to get started, watch the below video for a chicken recipe from Thaila nd.9. POMEGRANATESThese are arguably one of the best superfoods for your heart. With vitamins B5, B6, E and K, potassium and folate, you really get a lot of health benefits in one serving. Pomegranates reduce blood pressure and help fight atherosclerosis by reducing the size of the atherosclerotic lesions.These fruits also improve the flow of blood to the heart while reducing the cholesterol build-up in the blood vessels. Since LDL oxidation forms plaque in the arteries, the antioxidant power of pomegranates works against the oxidation, thereby minimizing the narrowing of arteries.10. NON-FAT/LOW-FAT MILKWhole milk is certainly nutritious but so are the low-fat and non-fat alternatives. Although fat-soluble vitamins are lost during the removal of fat from milk, low-fat milk is usually fortified with vitamins A and D. For your heart’s health, the very low levels of fat are key.More than that, low-fat milk has magnesium, folate and potassium, all of which help in your heart’s heal th. It helps lower the risk of atherosclerosis and reduce the levels of LDL from people who used to take whole milk.11. YOGURTYogurt is delicious, whether plain or flavored. While touted for its benefits on your gut, enjoy the super benefits of this great drink that also ranks highly among weight lifters for protein intake.By itself, yogurt consumption has been linked with reduced levels of high blood pressure. In this study, the benefits of taking yogurt were seen when hypertensive people took two or more servings of yogurt a day. When taken while maintaining a healthy diet, it reduced their risks of developing heart diseases.12. OLIVE OILFor a long time, the Mediterranean diet has been praised for helping lower the risks of heart attacks. And the reason has been traced to among others, the fact that olive oil is the main oil used in those diets.With different qualities of the oil, the benefits come from the monounsaturated fats. This oil has anti-inflammatory compounds as well as antioxidants. Using olive oil has been shown to not only benefit your heart but also fight dementia, depression and even obesity.For all the benefits however, ensure you buy extra virgin olive oil.13. WHEAT GERMMuch of the wheat consumed today is processed. Although manufacturers process wheat to give it a longer shelf life, a negative effect is compromised health. You can however improve your heart’s health greatly by adding wheat germ to smoothies and yogurt.Wheat germ is the embryo of the wheat kernel. As such, it is loaded with vitamins and minerals which are key for your heart. With potassium, it helps lower your blood pressure by countering the effects of sodium in your blood. Too much sodium raises blood pressure but potassium counters this.Wheat germ also has antioxidants in the form of vitamin E which help prevent chronic heart disease.14. DARK CHOCOLATEDo you find it hard to resist chocolates? Well, now you have a reason to justify the desire. But just to be sure about i t, we are talking about dark chocolate. The difference between dark and other chocolates is that the ‘dark’ version has higher amounts of cocoa solids and cocoa butter.The benefits behind dark chocolates being good for your health have been based on the abundant levels of flavonoids in cacao beans. Flavonoids are powerful antioxidants and have among others, anti-inflammatory benefits.Taking dark chocolate, you lower blood pressure, prevent blood clots and improve the flow of blood to your heart. So, kick away the guilt and have some chocolateâ€"dark chocolate.15. WHOLE GRAIN CEREALSAll whole grains offer serious benefits to your health. This is simply because they have not undergone the process of refining which removes the bran (outer covering) and germ (embryo). These two hold the key to much of the nutrients needed for your heart’s well-being.The fiber in whole cereals lowers cholesterol by binding to it before it is absorbed into your body. This ensures it is removed throu gh normal excretion. Fiber also helps in lowering blood pressure and reduce the risk of heart disease.Whole grains are also high in B vitamins which reduce the levels of Homocysteine in the blood. Homocysteine is an amino acid which when in excess, leads to inflammation in the arteries.16. OATMEALDon’t we all love oats. Or at least we have heard a lot about them and think they are good. Well, yes they are. And they come in different forms. But the good thing is that all the different forms have the same nutritional value.Oatmeal however goes beyond making you feel full, the work of fiber. This fiber also helps combat LDL (bad) cholesterol. More than that, oatmeal has been shown to have doses of antioxidants which curb inflammation. Though the amounts are not much, consistently eating oatmeal will put you on the right path towards achieving the benefits.17. NUTSNuts are a wholesome option for many who desire to snack the healthy way. And they serve this purpose well. With fiber, th ey reduce the need to eat a lot and consequently, prevent you from taking attractive but unhealthy foods.On top of that, nuts have vitamin E which helps in many ways including fighting plaques in your arteries. The build up of plaque often leads to coronary artery disease and heart attacks.Nuts also have Omega-3 which is essential to your heart’s health. They have L-arginine too and that helps in making your blood vessels relax and ease blood flow.18. FLAXSEEDFlaxseed (Linseed) is the plant with the highest amounts of plant-based Omega-3 fatty acids called alpha-linolenic acid (ALA). This is necessary for fighting the bad cholesterol and is available either from the seed or oil derived from the seed.With around 73% polyunsaturated fat, 18% monounsaturated fat and only 9% saturated fat, flaxseed is a very healthy food. It helps reduce blood triglycerides, reduces blood pressure and inflammation while having no effect on the good cholesterol.You can get tips on how to include it in your diet here.19. LENTILSThese legumes are a good source of fiber. More than that, they have folate and magnesium. Folate helps regulate your homocysteine levels thus helping you prevent heart disease.As a source of magnesium, you will appreciate this small legume once you know that magnesium is needed for the proper functioning of many enzymes. Lower levels of magnesium in your body increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. This mineral also helps regulate blood pressure.Watch the below video to know more on how magnesium helps your cardiac system and how to detect a deficiency.20. GARLICThis vegetable has been known to provide many health benefits plus of course, a great taste when added to food. For your heart’s health, garlic does many things to ensure a smooth flow of your blood. One way it does this is by strengthening your arteries and lowering your blood pressure.Garlic also helps you recover from heart attack, lowers triglycerides and reduces the formation of plaque i n your arteries.21. RED WINERed wine has for a long time been rumored to be good for your heart’s health. There have been studies done and many of them indicate that there is indeed a connection between taking red wine and lower risks of heart diseases. This has made red wine more popular.It is however important to note that you should not just start gulping on this red drink. Positive effects have been observed in people who take it as part of a meal. Meaning, you form a habit of taking just a glass or two while adding other healthy foods to your diet.At the same time, a professor has found that the antioxidants in red wine can help in the coronary angioplasty procedure. This is the procedure of widening narrow or blocked coronary arteries. So, red wine can help both prevent and cure heart disease.22. ALMONDSThese nuts are high in fats. But the good thing is that the fat is the good typeâ€"monounsaturated fat. Native to the Mediterranean climate, almonds are one of the common way s to snack healthily with benefits reaching your heart.The fat helps lower bad cholesterol while increasing the good cholesterol. They also contain calcium, fiber, vitamins E and B. The vitamins help in fighting free radicals in your body.23. BLUEBERRIESIf there is one food high in antioxidants, then it is the fruit blueberry. Though tiny, blueberries are great for fighting free radicals. More than that, the anthocyanin in blueberries is believed to aid in heart health.These fruits have also been shown to lower blood pressure thus reducing the risk of heart disease. At the same time, they have the ability to fight inflammation and prevent the arteries from becoming stiff.24. SOYHigh in proteins, soy foods provide protection from the damaging effects of high levels of cholesterol in your blood. Soy foods contain 12% saturated fat, 29% monounsaturated fat and 59% polyunsaturated fat. The fatty acid ALA in soy beans has been shown to have positive effects against coronary heart disease .    Soy foods also help lower blood pressure as well as facilitate vasodilation and reduce triglyceride levels.25. TOMATOESYou may not know it, but tomatoes are not vegetables as commonly presumed. They are fruits, according to science. They contain many beneficial nutrients among them fiber, folate, vitamins A, B, C and E.The most important nutrients however are lycopene and potassium. Potassium helps lower blood pressure and relax your blood vessels. Lycopene on the other hand, is an antioxidant that does more than fight free radicals. It also helps lower bad cholesterol.For optimum benefit, it is best to consume tomatoes which have either been processed or cooked as opposed to fresh ones. This way, lycopene can be absorbed more easily.26. GREEN TEAThis tea is known to be loaded with antioxidants. This explains the many benefits of adding green tea to your diet. One study found that people who took more than five cups of green tea daily reduced risks of heart attacks and stroke by 26%.Green tea is also good at lowering the levels of LDL cholesterol and triglycerides. More than this, the tea helps in vasodilation, prevent the buildup of plaque, aid in recovering from a heart attack and reduce the risk of abdominal artery explosion.27. AVOCADOAvocados are a rich source of healthy monounsaturated fats which help in fighting the bad cholesterol. They contain vitamin B6 and folate which help regulate the levels of homocysteine in your blood. High levels of this amino acid increase your risk of getting a heart attack.They also provide you with the potassium which helps lower blood pressure. With vitamin E in avocados, you can expect a lower risk of atherosclerosis, the narrowing of arteries due to plaque sticking on the arterial walls. Avocados also give you dietary fiber.28. APPLESAn apple a day keeps heart disease away. A study done at Ohio State University found that eating one apple a day for one month lowered the levels of bad cholesterol by 40%. The apple intake prevented LDL oxidation, the culprit of atherosclerosis.The active ingredient shown to produce these results is polyphenol. This is also available in supplement form but the study showed that the apples do a better job than supplements.Reason? Possible better absorption or the presence of other helpful compounds. So, instead of rushing to buy the supplements, just go for the real thingâ€"it’s better.29. CARROTSCarrots have three vitamins which help it become one of the heart’s superfoods you cannot ignore. Contrary to what many people think, carrots don’t provide you with vitamin A. They have lots of beta-carotene, the compound which your body converts to vitamin A.In your body, vitamin A helps prevent hypertrophy (the thickening of ventricular walls) as well as suppress the processes which cause heart failure due to stress. Carrots also have vitamin B6 as well as vitamin K which is essential in blood clotting to prevent excessive bleeding.The vitamin C in carrots help s prevent coronary heart disease. One cup of chopped carrots provides you with around 7.6mg of vitamin C (10% of daily requirement for women and 8% for men). You also get 16.9 micrograms of vitamin K (14% daily requirement for men and 19% for women).30. LEAN BEEFThis is beef that does not have any visible fat. As such, it does not increase the risk of higher cholesterol levels in your body. In fact, research has shown that lean beef can actually have some great benefits for your heart.With Omega-3 fatty acids, you can at least rest assured that lean beef is good company. It has vitamin B12 which helps lower the levels of homocysteine thus reduce the risk of heart disease while also maintaining the nervous system.31. KIDNEY BEANSKidney beans have good amounts of various minerals as well as fiber. Fiber in the beans is helpful in lowering cholesterol in the blood. The folate in kidney beans comes in to help lower the levels of homocysteine.They also contain some manganese, a mineral w hich helps fight inflammation. They have magnesium which helps regulate blood pressure while providing other minerals important for your heart’s health like potassium and vitamin K.32. WALNUTSWalnuts, like other nuts, are high in nutritional value. They contain the plant-based Omega-3 fatty acid ALA which is essential for your body’s functioning. Folate is also present in walnuts as well as vitamin E.Many studies have been done and proved the positive effects of including walnuts into your diet. Walnuts have been shown to lower the levels of bad cholesterol and improve the functioning of the endothelial cells. These are the cells which line the inside of your blood vessels.33. WATERMELONThirsty? No need to take soda. Indulge in the freshness of this fruit and your heart will thank you for it. With lycopene and beta-carotene, watermelon is a great antioxidant which fights heart disease as well as cancer.Providing you with vitamins A and C, watermelon consumption provides a health y dose of antioxidants. With higher levels of lycopene than tomatoes, watermelon is one of the best fruits for fighting hear attack as well as lowering your blood pressure.Instead of just eating the fruit plain (nothing wrong with that), you can also get more creative. Watch the below video for a watermelon smoothie idea.34. BEETROOTBeetroot has been shown to help people who have heart failure increase their muscle power by 13% just two hours after drinking beetroot juice. This juice also improves your stamina when exercising.The dark color of beetroot comes from the water-soluble antioxidants called betalains which greatly help your heart health. Beetroot also contains folate, manganese and magnesium, all of which have their place in improving your heart’s health.A word of caution: find out if you are prone to calcium oxalate kidney stones or have low blood pressure. If you do, then stay away from beetroot as the conditions may worsen. Seek to get the indicated nutrients from any of the other sources listed here.35. BANANASWidely available, bananas are known mostly for their potassium content. But there is more to bananas than potassium. For example, they have vitamin C, manganese and magnesium. Bananas also have good levels of fiber to help in cholesterol control.Still, that’s not all. Ever wondered why bananas are loved by weight lifters? Bananas are often included in both pre-workout and post-workout meals because they provide a quick boost of energy.Since you know that your heart’s health is not just pegged on food alone but also on exercise, bananas help you have better results in this.CONCLUSIONWith such a list of great foods for your heart’s health, you have no reason not to have a happy and healthy heart.

William Hazlitts On Going a Journey

Its fortunate that William Hazlitt enjoyed his own company, for this talented British essayist was not, by his own admission, a very pleasant companion: I am not, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, a good-natured man; that is, many things annoy me besides what interferes with my own ease and interest. I hate a lie; a piece of injustice wounds me to the quick, though nothing but the report of it reach me. Therefore I have made many enemies and few friends; for the public know nothing of well-wishers, and keep a wary eye on those that would reform them.(On Depth and Superficiality, 1826) The Romantic poet William Wordsworth echoed this assessment when he wrote that the miscreant Hazlitt ... is not a proper person to be admitted into respectable society. Yet the version of Hazlitt that emerges from his essays -- witty, passionate, plain speaking -- continues to attract devoted readers. As the writer Robert Louis Stevenson observed in his essay Walking Tours, Hazlitts On Going a Journey is so good that there should be a tax levied on all who have not read it. Hazlitts On Going a Journey  originally appeared in the New Monthly Magazine  in 1821 and was published that same year in the first edition of  Table-Talk. On Going a Journey One of the pleasantest things in the world is going a journey, but I like to go by myself. I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, Nature is company enough for me. I am then never less alone than when alone. The fields his study, Nature was his book. I cannot see the wit of walking and talking at the same time. When I am in the country I wish to vegetate like the country. I am not for criticising hedgerows and black cattle. I go out of town in order to forget the town and all that is in it. There are those who for this purpose go to watering-places, and carry the metropolis with them. I like more elbow-room and fewer encumbrances. I like solitude when I give myself up to it for the sake of solitude; nor do I ask for --a friend in my retreat,Whom I may whisper solitude is sweet. The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do, just as one pleases. We go a journey chiefly to be free of all impediments and of all inconveniences; to leave ourselves behind much more than to get rid of others. It is because I want a little breathing-space to muse on indifferent matters, where Contemplation May plume her feathers and let grow her wings,That in the various bustle of resortWere all too ruffled, and sometimes impaird, that I absent myself from the town for a while, without feeling at a loss the moment I am left by myself. Instead of a friend in a postchaise or in a tilbury, to exchange good things with, and vary the same stale topics over again, for once let me have a truce with impertinence. Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours march to dinner--and then to thinking! It is hard if I cannot start some game on these lone heaths. I laugh, I run, I leap, I sing for joy. From the point of yonder rolling cloud, I plunge into my past being and revel there as the sun-burnt Indian plunges headlong into the wave that wafts him to his native shore. Then long-forgotten things, like sunken wrack and sumless treasuries, burst upon my eager sight, and I begin to feel, think, and be myself again. Instead of an awkward silence, broken by attempts at wit or dull common-places, mine is that undisturbed silence of the heart which alon e is perfect eloquence. No one likes puns, alliteration, alliterations, antitheses, argument, and analysis better than I do; but I sometimes had rather be without them. Leave, oh, leave me to my repose! I have just now other business in hand, which would seem idle to you, but is with me the very stuff o the conscience. Is not this wild rose sweet without a comment? Does not this daisy leap to my heart set in its coat of emerald? Yet if I were to explain to you the circumstance that has so endeared it to me you would only smile. Had I not better then keep it to myself, and let it serve me to brood over, from here to yonder craggy point, and from thence onward to the far-distant horizon? I should be but bad company all that way, and therefore prefer being alone. I have heard it said that you may, when the moody fit comes on, walk or ride on by yourself, and indulge your reveries. But this looks like a breach of manners, a neglect of others, and you are thinking all the time that you o ught to rejoin your party. Out upon such half-faced fellowship, say I. I like to be either entirely to myself, or entirely at the disposal of others; to talk or be silent, to walk or sit still, to be sociable or solitary. I was pleased with an observation of Mr. Cobbetts, that he thought it a bad French custom to drink our wine with our meals, and that an Englishman ought to do only one thing at a time. So I cannot talk and think, or indulge in melancholy musing and lively conversation by fits and starts. Let me have a companion of my way, says Sterne, were it but to remark how the shadows lengthen as the sun declines. It is beautifully said: but, in my opinion, this continual comparing of notes interferes with the involuntary impression of things upon the mind, and hurts the sentiment. If you only hint what you feel in a kind of dumb show, it is insipid: if you have to explain it, it is making a toil of a pleasure. You cannot read the book of Nature without being perpetually put to the trouble of translating it for the benefit of others. I am for the synthetical method on a journey in preference to the analytical. I am content to lay in a stock of ideas then and to examine and anatomise them afterward. I want to see my vague notions float like the down of the thistle before the breeze, and not to have them entangled in the briars and thorns of controversy. For once, I like to have it all my own way; and this is impossible unless you are alone, or in such company as I do not covet. I have no objection to  argue  a point with  any one  for twenty miles of measured road, but not for pleasure. If you remark the scent of a bean-field crossing the road, perhaps your fellow-traveller has no smell. If you point to a distant object, perhaps he is short-sighted and has to take out his glass to look at it. There is a feeling in the air, a tone in the  colour  of a cloud, which hits your fancy, but the effect of which you are unable to account for. There is then no sympathy, but an uneasy craving after it, and a dissatisfaction which pursues you on the way, and in the end probably produces ill-humour. Now I never quarrel with  myself and take all my own conclusions for granted till I find it necessary to defend them against objections. It is not merely that you may not be of accord on the objects and circumstances that present themselves before you--they may recall a number of ideas, and lead to associations too delicate and refined to be possibly communicat ed to others. Yet these I love to cherish, and sometimes still fondly clutch  them when I can escape from the throng to do so. To give way to our feelings before  company seems extravagance or affectation; on the other hand, to have to unravel this mystery of our being at every turn, and to make others take an equal interest in it (otherwise the end is not answered) is a task to which few are competent. We must give it an understanding, but no tongue. My old friend C-- [Samuel Taylor Coleridge], however, could do both. He could go on in the most delightful explanatory way over hill and dale, a summers day, and convert a landscape into a didactic poem or a Pindaric ode. He talked far above singing. If I could so clothe my ideas in sounding and flowing words, I might perhaps wish to have  someone  with me to admire the swelling theme; or I could be more content, were it possible for me still to bear his echoing voice in the woods of All-Foxden. They had that fine madness in th em which our first poets had; and if they could have been caught by some rare instrument, would have breathed such strains as the following --Here be woods as greenAs any, air likewise as fresh and sweetAs when smooth Zephyrus plays on the fleetFace of the curled streams, with flowrs as manyAs the young spring gives, and as choice as any;Here be all new delights, cool streams and wells,Arbours oergrown with woodbines, caves and dells:Choose where thou wilt, whilst I sit by and sing,Or gather rushes to make many a ringFor thy long fingers; tell thee tales of love,How the pale Phoebe, hunting in a grove,First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyesShe took eternal fire that never dies;How she conveyd him softly in a sleep,His temples bound with poppy, to the steepHead of old Latmos, where she stoops each night,Gilding the mountain with her brothers light,To kiss her sweetest.—Faithful Shepherdess Had I words and images at  command  like these, I would attempt to wake the thoughts that lie slumbering on golden ridges in the evening clouds: but at the sight of Nature my fancy, poor as it  is droops  and closes up its leaves, like flowers at sunset. I can make nothing out on the spot: I must have time to collect myself. In general, a good thing spoils out-of-door prospects: it should be reserved for Table-talk. L-- [Charles Lamb]  is, for this reason, I take it, the worst company in the world out of doors; because he is the best within. I grant, there is one subject on which it is pleasant to talk on a journey; and that is, what one shall have for supper when we get to our inn at night. The open air improves this sort of conversation or friendly altercation, by setting a keener edge on appetite. Every mile of the road heightens the  flavour  of the viands we expect at the end of it. How fine it is to enter some old town, walled and turreted, just at approach of nightfall, or to come to some straggling village, with the lights streaming through the surrounding gloom; and then, after inquiring for the best entertainment that the place affords, to take ones ease at ones inn! These eventful moments in our lives are in fact too precious, too full of solid,  heart-felt  happiness to be frittered and dribbled away in imperfect sympathy. I would have them all to myself, and drain them to the last drop: they will do to talk of or to write about  afterwards. What a delicate speculation it is, after drinking whole goblets of tea, The cups that cheer, but not inebriate and letting the fumes ascend into the brain, to sit considering what we shall have for supper--eggs and a rasher, a rabbit smothered in  onions or an excellent veal-cutlet! Sancho in such a situation once fixed on cow heel; and his choice, though he could not help it, is not to be disparaged. Then, in the intervals of pictured scenery and Shandean contemplation, to catch the preparation and the stir in the kitchen--  Procul, O  procul  este  profani!  These hours are sacred to silence and to musing, to be treasured up in the memory, and to feed the source of smiling thoughts hereafter. I would not waste them in idle talk; or if I must have the integrity of fancy broken in upon, I would rather it were by a stranger than a friend. A stranger takes his hue and character from the time and place:  his  is a part of the furniture and costume of an inn. If he is a Quaker, or from the West Riding of Yorkshire, so much the better. I do not even try to  sympathise  with him , and  he breaks no squares. I associate nothing with my  travelling  companion but present objects and passing events. In his ignorance of me and my affairs, I in a manner forget myself. But a friend reminds one of other things, rips up old grievances, and destroys the abstraction of the scene. He comes in ungraciously between us and our imaginary character. Something is dropped in the course of conversation that gives a hint of your profession and pursuits; or from having  someone  with you that knows the less sublime portions of your history, it seems that other people do. You are no longer a citizen of the  world; but  your unhoused free condition is put into circumspection and confine. The  incognito  of an inn is one of its striking privileges--lord  of ones self,  uncumbered  with a name. Oh! it is great to shake off the trammels of the world and of public opinion--to lose our importunate, tormenting, ever-lasting personal identity in the elements of nature, and become the creature of the moment, clear of all ties--to hold to the universe only by a dish of  sweet-breads, and to owe nothing but the score of the evening--and no longer seeking for applause and meeting with contempt, to be known by no other title than  the Gentleman in the  parlour! One may take ones choice of all characters in this romantic state of uncertainty as to ones real pretensions, and become indefinitely respectable and negatively right-worshipful. We baffle prejudice and disappoint conjecture; and from being so to others, begin to be objects of curiosity and wonder even to ourselves. We are no more those hackneyed commonplaces that we appear in the world; an inn restores us to the level of Nature, and quits scores with society! I have certainly spent some enviable hours at inns--sometimes when I have been left entirely to myself and have tried to solve some metaphysical problem, as once at Witham-common, where I found out the proof that likeness is not a case of the association of ideas--at other times, when there have been pictures in the room, as at St Neots (I think it was) where I first met with Gribelins engravings of the Cartoons, into which I entered at once; and at a little inn on the borders of Wales, where there happened to be hanging some of Westalls drawings, which I compared triumphantly (for a theory that I had, not for the admired artist) with the figure of a girl who had ferried me over the Severn, standing up in a boat between me and the fading twilight--at other times I might mention luxuriating in books, with a peculiar interest in this way, as I remember sitting up half the night to read Paul and Virginia, which I picked up at an i nn at Bridgewater, after being drenched in the rain all day; and at the same place I got through two volumes of  Madam  DArblays Camilla. It was on the 10th of  April 1798, that I sat down to a volume of the New Eloise, at the inn at Llangollen, over a bottle of sherry and cold chicken. The letter I chose was that in which St. Preux describes his feelings as he first caught a glimpse from the heights of the Jura of the Pays de Vaud, which I had brought with me as a  bon  bouche  to crown the evening with. It was my birthday, and I had for the first time come from a place in the  neighbourhood  to visit this delightful spot. The road to Llangollen turns off between Chirk and Wrexham; and on passing a certain point you come all at once upon the valley, which opens like an amphitheatre, broad, barren hills rising in majestic state on either side, with green upland swells that echo to the bleat of flocks below, and the river Dee babbling over its stony bed in the midst o f them. The valley at this time glittered green with sunny showers, and a budding ash-tree dipped its tender branches in the chiding stream. How proud, how glad I was to walk along the high road that overlooks the delicious prospect, repeating the lines which I have just quoted from  Mr. Coleridges poems! But besides the prospect which opened beneath my feet, another also opened to my inward sight, a heavenly vision, on which were written, in letters large as Hope could make them, these four words, Liberty, Genius, Love, Virtue; which have since faded in the light of common day, or mock my idle gaze. The Beautiful is vanished, and returns not. Still, I would return some time or other to this enchanted  spot; but  I would return to it alone. What other self could I find to share that influx of thoughts, of regret, and delight, the traces of which I could hardly conjure up myself, so much have they been broken and defaced! I could stand on some tall rock and overlook the precipice of years that separates me from what I then was. I was at that time going shortly to visit the poet whom I have above named. Where is he now? Not only I myself have changed; the world, which was then new to me, has become old and incorrigible. Yet will I turn to thee in thought, O sylvan Dee, as then thou wert, in joy, in youth and gladness; and thou shalt always be to me the river of Paradise, where I will drink the waters of life freely! There is hardly anything that shows the short-sightedness or capriciousness of the imagination more than  travelling  does. With  change  of place we change our ideas; nay, our opinions and feelings. We can by an effort indeed transport ourselves to old and long-forgotten scenes, and then the picture of the mind revives  again; but  we forget those that we have just left. It seems that we can think but of one place at a time. The canvas of the fancy is but of a certain extent, and if we paint one set of objects upon it, they immediately efface every other. We cannot enlarge our conceptions, we only shift our point of view. The landscape bares its bosom to the enraptured eye; we take our fill of  it; and  seem as if we could form no other image of beauty or grandeur. We pass on and think no more of it: the horizon that shuts it from our  sight,  also blots it from our memory like a dream. In  travelling  through a wild, barren country, I can form no idea of a w oody and cultivated one. It appears to me that all the world must be barren, like what I see of it. In the  country, we forget the town and in the  town, we despise the country. Beyond Hyde Park, says Sir Fopling Flutter, all is a desert. All that part of the map which we do not see before  us  is a blank. The world in our conceit of it is not much bigger than a nutshell. It is not one prospect expanded into another,  country  joined to  country, kingdom to kingdom, lands to seas, making an image voluminous and vast; the mind can form  no  larger idea of space than the eye can take in at a single glance. The rest is a name written on a map, a calculation of arithmetic. For instance, what is the true signification of that immense mass of territory and population, known by the name of China to us? An inch of paste-board on a wooden globe, of no more account than a China orange! Things near us are seen of the size of life; things at a distance are diminished to the si ze of the understanding. We measure the universe by  ourselves and even comprehend the texture of our own being only piece-meal. In this way, however, we remember an infinity of things and places. The mind is like a mechanical instrument that plays a great variety of tunes, but it must play them in succession. One idea recalls another, but it at the same times excludes all others. In trying to renew old recollections, we cannot as it  were unfold  the whole web of our existence; we must pick out the single threads. So in coming to a place where we have formerly lived and with which we have intimate associations,  every one  must have found that the feeling grows more vivid the nearer we approach the spot, from the mere anticipation of the actual impression: we remember circumstances, feelings, persons, faces, names, that we had not thought of for years; but for the time all the rest of the world is forgotten! -- To return to the question I have quitted above. I have no objection to  go  to see ruins, aqueducts, pictures, in company with a friend or a party, but rather the contrary, for the former reason reversed. They are intelligible  matters and will bear talking about. The sentiment here is not tacit, but communicable and overt. Salisbury Plain is barren of criticism, but Stonehenge will bear a discussion antiquarian, picturesque, and philosophical. In setting out on a party of pleasure, the first consideration always is where we shall go to: in taking a solitary ramble, the question is what we shall meet with by the way. The mind is its own place; nor are we anxious to arrive at the end of our journey. I can myself do the  honours  indifferently well to works of art and curiosity. I once took a party to Oxford with no mean  Ãƒ ©clat--shewed  them that seat of the Muses at a distance, With glistening spires and pinnacles adornd descanted on the learned air that breathes from the grassy quadrangles and stone walls of halls and colleges--was at home in the  Bodleian; and  at Blenheim quite superseded the powdered Cicerone that attended us, and that pointed in vain with his wand to commonplace beauties in matchless pictures. As another exception to the above reasoning, I should not feel confident in venturing on a journey in a foreign country without a companion. I should want at intervals to hear the sound of my own language. There is an involuntary antipathy in the mind of an Englishman to foreign manners and notions that  requires  the assistance of social sympathy to carry it off. As the distance from home increases, this relief, which was at first a luxury, becomes a passion and an appetite. A person would almost feel stifled to find himself in the deserts of Arabia without friends and countrymen: there must be allowed to be something in the view of Athens or old Rome that claims the utterance of  speech; and  I own that the Pyramids are too mighty for any single contemplation. In such situations, so opposite to all ones ordinary train of ideas, one seems a species by ones self, a limb torn off from society, unless one can meet with instant fellowship and support. Yet I did not feel this wan t or craving very pressing  once when I first set my foot on the laughing shores of France. Calais was peopled with novelty and delight. The confused, busy murmur of the place was like oil and wine poured into my ears; nor did the  mariners hymn, which was sung from the top of an old crazy vessel in the  harbour, as the sun went down, send an alien sound into my soul. I only breathed the air of general humanity. I walked over the vine-covered hills and gay regions of France, erect and satisfied; for the image of man was not cast down and chained to the foot of arbitrary  thrones: I was at no loss for language, for that of all the great schools of painting was open to me. The whole  is vanished  like a shade. Pictures, heroes, glory, freedom, all are fled: nothing remains but the Bourbons and the French people! There is undoubtedly a sensation in  travelling  into foreign parts that  is  to be had nowhere  else; but  it is more pleasing at the time than lastin g. It is too remote from our habitual associations to be a common topic of discourse or reference, and, like a dream or another state of existence, does not piece into our daily modes of life. It is an animated but a momentary hallucination. It demands an effort to exchange our actual for our ideal identity; and to feel the pulse of our old transports revive very keenly, we must jump all our present comforts and connections. Our romantic and itinerant character is not to be domesticated, Dr. Johnson remarked how little foreign travel added to the facilities of conversation in those who had been abroad. In fact, the time we have spent there is both delightful and in one sense instructive; but it appears to be cut out of our substantial, downright existence, and never to join kindly on to it. We are not the same, but another, and perhaps more enviable individual, all the time we are out of our own country. We are lost to ourselves, as well as to our friends. So the poet somewhat quain tly sings: Out of my country and myself I go. Those who wish to forget painful thoughts, do well to absent themselves for a while from the ties and objects that recall them; but we can be said only to  fulfil  our destiny in the place that gave us birth. I should on this account like well enough to spend the whole of my life in  travelling  abroad, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend  afterwards  at home!

The Chronicles of Is Digital Communication Good or Bad Essay Topics

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Bag of Bones CHAPTER SIX Free Essays

string(22) " taken a single bite\." On July 3rd of 1998, I threw two suitcases and my Powerbook in the trunk of my mid-sized Chevrolet, started to back down the driveway, then stopped and went into the house again. It felt empty and somehow forlorn, like a faithful lover who has been dropped and cannot understand why. The furniture wasn’t covered and the power was still on (I understood that The Great Lake Experiment might turn out to be a swift and total failure), but 14 Benton Street felt deserted, all the same. We will write a custom essay sample on Bag of Bones CHAPTER SIX or any similar topic only for you Order Now Rooms too full of furniture to echo still did when I walked through them, and everywhere there seemed to be too much dusty light. In my study, the VDT was hooded like an executioner against the dust. I knelt before it and opened one of the desk drawers. Inside were four reams of paper. I took one, started away with it under my arm, then had a second thought and turned back. I had put that provocative photo of Jo in her swimsuit in the wide center drawer. Now I took it, tore the paper wrapping from the end of the ream of paper, and slid the photo halfway in, like a bookmark. If I did perchance begin to write again, and if the writing marched, I would meet Johanna right around page two hundred and fifty. I left the house, locked the back door, got into my car, and drove away. I have never been back. I’d been tempted to go down to the lake and check out the work which turned out to be quite a bit more extensive than Bill Dean had originally expected on several occasions. What kept me away was a feeling, never quite articulated by my conscious mind but still very powerful, that I wasn’t supposed to do it that way; that when I next came to Sara, it should be to unpack and stay. Bill hired out Kenny Auster to shingle the roof, and got Kenny’s cousin, Timmy Larribee, to ‘scrape the old girl down,’ a cleansing process akin to pot-scrubbing that is sometimes employed with log homes. Bill also had a plumber in to check out the pipes, and got my okay to replace some of the older plumbing and the well-pump. Bill fussed about all these expenses over the telephone; I let him. When it comes to fifth- or sixth-generation Yankees and the expenditure of money, you might as well just stand back and let them get it out of their systems. Laying out the green just seems wrong to a Yankee, somehow, like petting in public. As for myself, I didn’t mind the outgo a bit. I live frugally, for the most part, not out of any moral code but because my imagination, very lively in most other respects, doesn’t work very well on the subject of money. My idea of a spree is three days in Boston, a Red Sox game, a trip to Tower Records and Video, plus a visit to the Wordsworth bookstore in Cambridge. Living like that doesn’t make much of a dent in the interest, let alone the principal; I had a good money manager down in Waterville, and on the day I locked the door of the Derry house and headed west to TR-90, I was worth slightly over five million dollars. Not much compared to Bill Gates, but big numbers for this area, and I could afford to be cheerful about the high cost of house repairs. That was a strange late spring and early summer for me. What I did mostly was wait, close up my town affairs, talk to Bill Dean when he called with the latest round of problems, and try not to think. I did the Publishers Weekly interview, and when the interviewer asked me if I’d had any trouble getting back to work ‘in the wake of my bereavement,’ I said no with an absolutely straight face. Why not? It was true. My troubles hadn’t started until I’d finished All the Way from the Top; until then, I had been going on like gangbusters. In mid-June, I met Frank Arlen for lunch at the Starlite Cafe. The Starlite is in Lewiston, which is the geographical midpoint between his town and mine. Over dessert (the Starlite’s famous strawberry shortcake), Frank asked if I was seeing anyone. I looked at him with surprise. ‘What are you gaping at?’ he asked, his face registering one of the nine hundred unnamed emotions this one of those somewhere between amusement and irritation. ‘I certainly wouldn’t think of it as two-timing Jo. She’ll have been dead four years come August.’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not seeing anybody.’ He looked at me silently. I looked back for a few seconds, then started fiddling my spoon through the whipped cream on top of my shortcake. The biscuits were still warm from the oven, and the cream was melting. It made me think of that silly old song about how someone left the cake out in the rain. ‘Have you seen anybody, Mike?’ ‘I’m not sure that’s any business of yours.’ ‘Oh for Christ’s sake. On your vacation? Did you ‘ I made myself look up from the melting whipped cream. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I did not.’ He was silent for another moment or two. I thought he was getting ready to move on to another topic. That would have been fine with me. Instead, he came right out and asked me if I had been laid at all since Johanna died. He would have accepted a lie on that subject even if he didn’t entirely believe it men lie about sex all the time. But I told the truth . . . and with a certain perverse pleasure. ‘No.’ ‘Not a single time?’ ‘Not a single time.’ ‘What about a massage parlor? You know, to at least get a ‘ ‘No.’ He sat there tapping his spoon against the rim of the bowl with his dessert in it. He hadn’t taken a single bite. You read "Bag of Bones CHAPTER SIX" in category "Essay examples" He was looking at me as though I were some new and oogy specimen of bug. I didn’t like it much, but I suppose I understood it. I had been close to what is these days called ‘a relationship’ on two occasions, neither of them on Key Largo, where I had observed roughly two thousand pretty women walking around dressed in only a stitch and a promise. Once it had been a red-haired waitress, Kelli, at a restaurant out on the Extension where I often had lunch. After awhile we got talking, joking around, and then there started to be some of that eye-contact, you know the kind I’m talking about, looks that go on just a little too long. I started to notice her legs, and the way her uniform pulled against her hip when she turned, and she noticed me noticing. And there was a woman at Nu You, the place where I used to work out. A tall woman who favored pink jog-bras and black bike shorts. Quite yummy. Also, I liked the stuff she brought to read while she pedalled one of the stationary bikes on those endless aerobic trips to nowhere not Mademoiselle or Cosmo, but novels by people like John Irving and Ellen Gilchrist. I like people who read actual books, and not just because I once wrote them myself. Book-readers are just as willing as anyone else to start out with the weather, but as a general rule they can actually go on from there. The name of the blonde in the pink tops and black shorts was Adria Bundy. We started talking about books as we pedalled side by side ever deeper into nowhere, and there came a point where I was spotting her one or two mornings a week in the weight room. There’s something oddly intimate about spotting. The prone position of the lifter is part of it, I suppose (especially when the lifter is a woman), but not all or even most of it. Mostly it’s the dependence factor. Although it hardly ever comes to that point, the lifter is trusting the spotter with his or her life. And, at some point in the winter of 1996, those looks started as she lay on the bench and I stood over her, looking into her upside-down face. The ones that go on just a little too long. Kelli was around thirty, Adria perhaps a little younger. Kelli was divorced, Adria never married. In neither case would I have been robbing the cradle, and I think either would have been happy to go to bed with me on a provisional basis. Kind of a honey-bump test-drive. Yet what I did in Kelli’s case was to find a different restaurant to eat my lunch at, and when the YMCA sent me a free exercise-tryout offer, I took them up on it and just never went back to Nu You. I remember walking past Adria Bundy one day on the street six months or so after I made the change, and although I said hi, I made sure not to see her puzzled, slightly hurt gaze. In a purely physical way I wanted them both (in fact, I seem to remember a dream in which I had them both, in the same bed and at the same time), and yet I wanted neither. Part of it was my inability to write my life was quite fucked up enough, thank you, without adding any additional complications. Part of it was the work involved in making sure that the woman who is returning your glances is interested in you and not your rather extravagant bank account. Most of it, I think, was that there was just too much Jo still in my head and heart. There was no room for anyone else, even after four years. It was sorrow like cholesterol, and if you think that’s funny or weird, be grateful. ‘What about friends?’ Frank asked, at last beginning to eat his strawberry shortcake. ‘You’ve got friends you see, don’t you?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Plenty of friends.’ Which was a lie, but I did have lots of crosswords to do, lots of books to read, and lots of movies to watch on my VCR at night; I could practically recite the FBI warning about unlawful copying by heart. When it came to real live people, the only ones I called when I got ready to leave Derry were my doctor and my dentist, and most of the mail I sent out that June consisted of change-of address cards to magazines like Harper’s and National Geographic. ‘Frank,’ I said, ‘you sound like a Jewish mother.’ ‘Sometimes when I’m with you feel like a Jewish mother,’ he said. ‘One who believes in the curative powers of baked potatoes instead of matzo balls. You look better than you have in a long time, finally put on some weight, I think ‘ ‘Too much.’ ‘Bullshit, you looked like Ichabod Crane when you came for Christmas. Also, you’ve got some sun on your face and arms.’ ‘I’ve been walking a lot.’ ‘So you look better . . . except for your eyes. Sometimes you get this look in your eyes, and I worry about you every time I see it. I think Jo would be glad someone’s worrying.’ ‘What look is that?’ I asked. ‘Your basic thousand-yard stare. Want the truth? You look like someone who’s caught on something and can’t get loose.’ I left Derry at three-thirty, stopped in Rumford for supper, then drove slowly on through the rising hills of western Maine as the sun lowered. I had planned my times of departure and arrival carefully, if not quite consciously, and as I passed out of Motton and into the unincorporated township of TR-90, I became aware of the heavy way my heart was beating. There was sweat on my face and arms in spite of the car’s air conditioning. Nothing on the radio sounded right, all the music like screaming, and I turned it off. I was scared, and had good reason to be. Even setting aside the peculiar cross-pollination between the dreams and things in the real world (as I was able to do quite easily, dismissing the cut on my hand and the sunflowers growing through the boards of the back stoop as either coincidence or so much psychic fluff), I had reason to be scared. Because they hadn’t been ordinary dreams, and my decision to go back to the lake after all this time hadn’t been an ordinary decision. I didn’t feel like a modern fin-de-mill? ¦naire man on a spiritual quest to face his fears (I’m okay, you’re okay, let’s all have an emotional circle-jerk while William Ackerman plays softly in the background); I felt more like some crazy Old Testament prophet going out into the desert to live on locusts and alkali water because God had summoned him in a dream. I was in trouble, my life was a moderate-going-on-severe mess, and not being able to write was only part of it. I wasn’t raping kids or running around Times Square preaching conspiracy theories through a bullhorn, but I was in trouble just the same. I had lost my place in things and couldn’t find it again. No surprise there; after all, life’s not a book. What I was engaging in on that hot July evening was self-induced shock therapy, and give me at least this much credit I knew it. You come to Dark Score this way: 1-95 from Derry to Newport; Route 2 from Newport to Bethel (with a stop in Rumford, which used to stink like hell’s front porch until the paper-driven economy pretty much ground to a halt during Reagan’s second term); Route 5 from Bethel to Waterford. Then you take Route 68, the old County Road, across Castle View, through Motton (where downtown consists of a converted barn which sells videos, beer, and second-hand rifles), and then past the sign which reads TR-90 and the one reading GAME WARDEN IS BEST ASSISTANCE IN EMERGENCY, DIAL 1-800-555-GAME OR * 72 ON CELLULAR PHONE. To this, in spray paint, someone has added FUCK THE EAGLES. Five miles past that sign, you come to a narrow lane on the right, marked only by a square of tin with the faded number 42 on it. Above this, like umlauts, are a couple of. 22 holes. I turned into this lane just about when I had expected to it was 7:16 P.M., EDT, by the clock on the Chevrolet’s dashboard. And the feeling was coming home. I drove in two tenths of a mile by the odometer, listening to the grass which crowned the lane whickering against the undercarriage of my car, listening to the occasional branch which scraped across the roof or knocked on the passenger side like a fist. At last I parked and turned the engine off. I got out, walked to the rear of the car, lay down on my belly, and began pulling all of the grass which touched the Chevy’s hot exhaust system. It had been a dry summer, and it was best to take precautions. I had come at this exact hour in order to replicate my dreams, hoping for some further insight into them or for an idea of what to do next. What I had not come to do was start a forest fire. Once this was done I stood up and looked around. The crickets sang, as they had in my dreams, and the trees huddled close on either side of the lane, as they always did in my dreams. Overhead, the sky was a fading strip of blue. I set off, walking up the right hand wheelrut. Jo and I had had one neighbor at this end of the road, old Lars Washburn, but now Lars’s driveway was overgrown with juniper bushes and blocked by a rusty length of chain. Nailed to a tree on the left of the chain was NO TRESPASSING. Nailed to one on the right was NEXT CENTURY REAL ESTATE, and a local number. The words were faded and hard to read in the growing gloom. I walked on, once more conscious of my heavily beating heart and of the way the mosquitoes were buzzing around my face and arms. Their peak season was past, but I was sweating a lot, and that’s a smell they like. It must remind them of blood. Just how scared was I as I approached Sara Laughs? I don’t remember. I suspect that fright, like pain, is one of those things that slip our minds once they have passed. What I do remember is a feeling I’d had before when I was down here, especially when I was walking this road by myself. It was a sense that reality was thin. I think it is thin, you know, thin as lake ice after a thaw, and we fill our lives with noise and light and motion to hide that thinness from ourselves. But in places like Lane Forty-two, you find that all the smoke and mirrors have been removed. What’s left is the sound of crickets and the sight of green leaves darkening toward black; branches that make shapes like faces; the sound of your heart in your chest, the beat of the blood against the backs of your eyes, and the look of the sky as the day’s blue blood runs out of its cheek. What comes in when daylight leaves is a kind of certainty: that beneath the skin there is a secret, some mystery both black and bright. You feel this mystery in every breath, you see it in every shadow, you expect to plunge into it at every turn of a step. It is here; you slip across it on a kind of breathless curve like a skater turning for home. I stopped for a moment about half a mile south of where I’d left the car, and still half a mile north of the driveway. Here the road curves sharply, and on the right is an open field which slants steeply down toward the lake. Tidwell’s Meadow is what the locals call it, or sometimes the Old Camp. It was here that Sara Tidwell and her curious tribe built their cabins, at least according to Marie Hingerman (and once, when I asked Bill Dean, he agreed this was the place . . . although he didn’t seem interested in continuing the conversation, which struck me at the time as a bit odd). I stood there for a moment, looking down at the north end of Dark Score. The water was glassy and calm, still candy-colored in the afterglow of sunset, without a single ripple or a single small craft to be seen. The boat-people would all be down at the marina or at Warrington’s Sunset Bar by now, I guessed, eating lobster rolls and drinking big mixed drinks. Later a few of them, buzzed on speed and martinis, would go bolting up and down the lake by moonlight. I wondered if I would be around to hear them. I thought there was a fair chance that by then I’d be on my way back to Derry, either terrified by what I’d found or disillusioned because I had found nothing at all. ‘You funny little man, said Strickland.’ I didn’t know I was going to speak until the words were out of my mouth, and why those words in particular I had no idea. I remembered my dream of Jo under the bed and shuddered. A mosquito whined in my ear. I slapped it and walked on. In the end, my arrival at the head of the driveway was almost too perfectly timed, the sense of having re-entered my dream almost too complete. Even the balloons tied to the SARA LAUGHS sign (one white and one blue, both with WELCOME BACK MIKE! carefully printed on them in black ink) and floating against the ever-darkening backdrop of the trees seemed to intensify the d? ¦j? ¤ vu I had quite deliberately induced, for no two dreams are exactly the same, are they? Things conceived by minds and made by hands can never be quite the same, even when they try their best to be identical, because we’re never the same from day to day or even moment to moment. I walked to the sign, feeling the mystery of this place at twilight. I squeezed down on the board, feeling its rough reality, and then I ran the ball of my thumb over the letters, daring the splinters and reading with my skin like a blind man reading braille: S and A and R and A; L and A and U and G and H and S. The driveway had been cleared of fallen needles and blown-down branches, but Dark Score glimmered a fading rose just as it had in my dreams, and the sprawled hulk of the house was the same. Bill had thoughtfully left the light over the back stoop burning, and the sunflowers growing through the boards had long since been cut down, but everything else was the same. I looked overhead, at the slot of sky over the lane. Nothing . . . I waited . . . and nothing . . . waiting still . . . and then there it was, right where the center of my gaze had been trained. At one moment there was only the fading sky (with indigo just starting to rise up from the edges like an infusion of ink), and at the next Venus was glowing there, bright and steady. People talk about watching the stars come out, and I suppose some people do, but I think that was the only time in my life that I actually saw one appear. I wished on it, too, but this time it was real time, and I did not wish for Jo. ‘Help me,’ I said, looking at the star. I would have said more, but I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what kind of help I needed. That’s enough, a voice in my mind said uneasily. That’s enough, now. Go on back and get your car. Except that wasn’t the plan. The plan was to go down the driveway, just as I had in the final dream, the nightmare. The plan was to prove to myself that there was no shroud-wrapped monster lurking in the shadows of the big old log house down there. The plan was pretty much based on that bit of New Age wisdom which says the word ‘fear’ stands for Face Everything And Recover. But, as I stood there and looked down at that spark of porch light (it looked very small in the growing darkness), it occurred to me that there’s another bit of wisdom, one not quite so good-morning-starshine, which suggests fear is actually an acronym for Fuck Everything And Run. Standing there by myself in the woods as the light left the sky, that seemed like the smarter interpretation, no two ways about it. I looked down and was a little amused to see that I had taken one of the balloons untied it without even noticing as I thought things over. It floated serenely up from my hand at the end of its string, the words printed on it now impossible to read in the growing dark. Maybe it’s all moot, anyway; maybe I won’t be able to move. Maybe that old devil writer’s walk has got hold of me again, and I’ll just stand here like a statue until someone comes along and hauls me away. But this was real time in the real world, and in the real world there was no such thing as writer’s walk. I opened my hand. As the string I’d been holding floated free, I walked under the rising balloon and started down the driveway. Foot followed foot, pretty much as they had ever since I’d first learned this trick back in 1959. I went deeper and deeper into the clean but sour smell of pine, and once I caught myself taking an extra-big step, avoiding a fallen branch that had been in the dream but wasn’t here in reality. My heart was still thudding hard, and sweat was still pouring out of me, oiling my skin and drawing mosquitoes. I raised a hand to brush the hair off my brow, then stopped, holding it splay-fingered out in front of my eyes. I put the other one next to it. Neither was marked; there wasn’t even a shadow of scar from the cut I’d given myself while crawling around my bedroom during the ice storm. ‘I’m all right,’ I said. ‘I’m all right.’ You funny little man, said Strickland, a voice answered. It wasn’t mine, wasn’t Jo’s; it was the UFO voice that had narrated my nightmare, the one which had driven me on even when I wanted to stop. The voice of some outsider. I started walking again. I was better than halfway down the driveway now. I had reached the point where, in the dream, I told the voice that I was afraid of Mrs. Danvers. ‘I’m afraid of Mrs. D.,’ I said, trying the words aloud in the growing dark. ‘What if the bad old housekeeper’s down there?’ A loon cried on the lake, but the voice didn’t answer. I suppose it didn’t have to. There was no Mrs. Danvers, she was only a bag of bones in an old book, and the voice knew it. I began walking again. I passed the big pine that Jo had once banged into in our Jeep, trying to back up the driveway. How she had sworn! Like a sailor! I had managed to keep a straight face until she got to ‘Fuck a duck,’ and then I’d lost it, leaning against the side of the Jeep with the heels of my hands pressed against my temples, howling until tears rolled down my cheeks, and Jo glaring hot blue sparks at me the whole time. I could see the mark about three feet up on the trunk of the tree, the white seeming to float above the dark bark in the gloom. It was just here that the unease which pervaded the other dreams had skewed into something far worse. Even before the shrouded thing had come bursting out of the house, I had felt something was all wrong, all twisted up; I had felt that somehow the house itself had gone insane. It was at this point, passing the old scarred pine, that I had wanted to run like the gingerbread man. I didn’t feel that now. I was afraid, yes, but not in terror. There was nothing behind me, for one thing, no sound of slobbering breath. The worst thing a man was likely to come upon in these woods was an irritated moose. Or, I supposed, if he was really unlucky, a pissed-off bear. In the dream there had been a moon at least three quarters full, but there was no moon in the sky above me that night. Nor would there be; in glancing over the weather page in that morning’s Derry News, I had noticed that the moon was new. Even the most powerful d? ¦j? ¤ vu is fragile, and at the thought of that moonless sky, mine broke. The sensation of reliving my nightmare departed so abruptly that I even wondered why I had done this, what I had hoped to prove or accomplish. Now I’d have to go all the way back down the dark lane to retrieve my car. All right, but I’d do it with a flashlight from the house. One of them would surely still be just inside the A series of jagged explosions ran themselves off on the far side of the lake, the last loud enough to echo against the hills. I stopped, drawing in a quick breath. Moments before, those unexpected bangs probably would have sent me running back up the driveway in a panic, but now I had only that brief, startled moment. It was firecrackers, of course, the last one the loudest one maybe an M-80. Tomorrow was the Fourth of July, and across the lake kids were celebrating early, as kids are wont to do. I walked on. The bushes still reached like hands, but they had been pruned back and their reach wasn’t very threatening. I didn’t have to worry about the power being out, either; I was now close enough to the back stoop to see moths fluttering around the light Bill Dean had left on for me. Even if the power had been out (in the western part of the state a lot of the lines are still above ground, and it goes out a lot), the gennie would have kicked in automatically. Yet I was awed by how much of my dream was actually here, even with the powerful sense of repetition of reliving departed. Jo’s planters were where they’d always been, flanking the path which leads down to Sara’s little lick of beach; I suppose Brenda Meserve had found them stacked in the cellar and had had one of her crew set them out again. Nothing was growing in them yet, but I suspected that stuff would be soon. And even without the moon of my dream, I could see the black square on the water, standing about fifty yards offshore. The swimming float. No oblong shape lying overturned in front of the stoop, though; no coffin. Still, my heart was beating hard again, and I think if more firecrackers had gone off on the Kashwakamak side of the lake just then, I might have screamed. You funny little man, said Strickland. Give me that, it’s my dust-catcher. What if death drives us insane? What if we survive, but it drives us insane? What then? I had reached the point where, in my nightmare, the door banged open and that white shape came hurtling out with its wrapped arms upraised. I took one more step and then stopped, hearing the harsh sound of my respiration as I drew each breath down my throat and then pushed it back out over the dry floor of my tongue. There was no sense of d? ¦j? ¤ vu, but for a moment I thought the shape would appear anyway here in the real world, in real time. I stood waiting for it with my sweaty hands clenched. I drew in another dry breath, and this time I held it. The soft lap of water against the shore. A breeze that patted my face and rattled the bushes. A loon cried out on the lake; moths battered the stoop light. No shroud-monster threw open the door, and through the big windows to the left and right of the door, I could see nothing moving, white or otherwise. There was a note above the knob, probably from Bill, and that was it. I let out my breath in a rush and walked the rest of the way down the driveway to Sara Laughs. The note was indeed from Bill Dean. It said that Brenda had done some shopping for me; the supermarket receipt was on the kitchen table, and I would find the pantry well stocked with canned goods. She’d gone easy with the perishables, but there was milk, butter, half-and-half, and hamburger, that staple of single-guy cuisine. I will see you next Mon., Bill had written. If I had my druthers I’d be here to say hello in person but the good wife says it’s our turn to do the holiday trotting and so we are going down to Virginia (hot!!) to spend the 4th with her sister. If you need anything or run into problems . . . He had jotted his sister-in-law’s phone number in Virginia as well as Butch Wiggins’s number in town, which locals just call ‘the TR,’ as in ‘Me and mother got tired of Bethel and moved our trailer over to the TR.’ There were other numbers, as well the plumber, the electrician, Brenda Meserve, even the TV guy over in Harrison who had repositioned the DSS dish for maximum reception. Bill was taking no chances. I turned the note over, imagining a final P.S.: Say, Mike, if nuclear war should break out before me and Yvette get back from Virginia Something moved behind me. I whirled on my heels, the note dropping from my hand. It fluttered to the boards of the back stoop like a larger, whiter version of the moths banging the bulb overhead. In that instant I was sure it would be the shroud-thing, an insane revenant in my wife’s decaying body, Give me my dust-catcher, give it to me, how dare you come down here and disturb my rest, how dam you come to Manderley again, and now that you’re here, how will you ever get away? Into the mystery with you, you silly little man. Into the mystery with you. Nothing there. It had just been the breeze again, stirring the bushes around a little . . . except I had felt no breeze against my sweaty skin, not that time. ‘Well it must have been, there’s nothing there,’ I said. The sound of your voice when you’re alone can be either scary or reassuring. That time it was the latter. I bent over, picked up Bill’s note, and stuffed it into my back pocket. Then I rummaged out my keyring. I stood under the stoop light in the big, swooping shadows of the light-struck moths, picking through my keys until I found the one I wanted. It had a funny disused look, and as I rubbed my thumb along its serrated edge, I wondered again why I hadn’t come down here except for a couple of quick broad daylight errands in all the months and years since Jo had died. Surely if she had been alive, she would have insisted But then a peculiar realization came to me: it wasn’t just a matter of since Jo died. It was easy to think of it that way never once during my six weeks on Key Largo had I thought of it any other way but now, actually standing here in the shadows of the dancing moths (it was like standing under some weird organic disco ball) and listening to the loons out on the lake, I remembered that although Johanna had died in August of 1994, she had died in Derry. It had been miserably hot in the city . . . so why had we been there? Why hadn’t we been sitting out on our shady deck on the lake side of the house, drinking iced tea in our bathing suits, watching the boats go back and forth and commenting on the form of the various water-skiers? What had she been doing in that damned Rite Aid parking lot to begin with, when during any other August we would have been miles from there? Nor was that all. We usually stayed at Sara until the end of September it was a peaceful, pretty time, as warm as summer. But in ’93 we’d left with August only a week gone. I knew, because I could remember Johanna going to New York with me later that month, some kind of publishing deal and the usual attendant publicity crap. It had been dog-hot in Manhattan, the hydrants spraying in the East Village and the uptown streets sizzling. On one night of that trip we’d seen The Phantom of the Opera. Near the end Jo had leaned over to me and whispered, ‘Oh fuck! The Phantom is snivelling again!’ I had spent the rest of the show trying to keep from bursting into wild peals of laughter. Jo could be evil that way. Why had she come with me that August? Jo didn’t like New York even in April or October, when it’s sort of pretty. I didn’t know. I couldn’t remember. All I was sure of was’ that she had never been back to Sara Laughs after early August of 1993 . . . and before long I wasn’t even sure of that. I slipped the key into the lock and turned it. I’d go inside, flip on the kitchen overheads, grab a flashlight, and go back for the car. If I didn’t, some drunk guy with a cottage at the far south end of the lane would come in too fast, rear-end my Chevy, and sue me for a billion dollars. The house had been aired out and didn’t smell a bit musty; instead of still, stale air, there was a faint and pleasing aroma of pine. I reached for the light inside the door, and then, somewhere in the blackness of the house, a child began to sob. My hand froze where it was and my flesh went cold. I didn’t panic, exactly, but all rational thought left my mind. It was weeping, a child’s weeping, but I hadn’t a clue as to where it was coming from. Then it began to fade. Not to grow softer but to fade, as if someone had picked that kid up and was carrying it away down some long corridor. . . not that any such corridor existed in Sara Laughs. Even the one running through the middle of the house, connecting the central section to the two wings, isn’t really long. Fading . . . faded . . . almost gone. I stood in the dark with my cold skin crawling and my hand on the lightswitch. Part of me wanted to boogie, to just go flying out of there as fast as my little legs could carry me, running like the gingerbread man. Another part, however the rational part was already reasserting itself. I flicked the switch, the part that wanted to run saying forget it, it won’t work, it’s the dream, stupid, it’s your dream coming true. But it did work. The foyer light came on in a shadow-dispelling rush, revealing Jo’s lumpy little pottery collection to the left and the bookcase to the right, stuff I hadn’t looked at in four years or more, but still here and still the same. On a middle shelf of the bookcase I could see the three early Elmore Leonard novels Swag, The Big Bounce, and Mr. Majestyk that I had put aside against a spell of rainy weather; you have to be ready for rain when you’re at camp. Without a good book, even two days of rain in the woods can be enough to drive you bonkers. There was a final whisper of weeping, then silence. In it, I could hear ticking from the kitchen. The clock by the stove, one of Jo’s rare lapses into bad taste, is Felix the Cat with big eyes that shift from side to side as his pendulum tail flicks back and forth. I think it’s been in every cheap horror movie ever made. ‘Who’s here?’ I called. I took a step toward the kitchen, just a dim space floating beyond the foyer, then stopped. In the dark the house was a cavern. The sound of the weeping could have come from anywhere. Including my own imagination. ‘Is someone here?’ No answer . . . but I didn’t think the sound had been in my head. If it had been, writer’s block was the least of my worries. Standing on the bookcase to the left of the Elmore Leonards was a long-barrelled flashlight, the kind that holds eight D-cells and will temporarily blind you if someone shines it directly into your eyes. I grasped it, and until it nearly slipped through my hand I hadn’t really realized how heavily I was sweating, or how scared I was. I juggled it, heart beating hard, half-expecting that creepy sobbing to begin again, half-expecting the shroud-thing to come floating out of the black living room with its shapeless arms raised; some old hack of a politician back from the grave and ready to give it another shot. Vote the straight Resurrection ticket, brethren, and you will be saved. I got control of the light and turned it on. It shot a bright straight beam into the living room, picking out the moosehead over the fieldstone fireplace; it shone in the head’s glass eyes like two lights burning under water. I saw the old cane-and-bamboo chairs; the old couch; the scarred dining-room table you had to balance by shimming one leg with a folded playing card or a couple of beer coasters; I saw no ghosts; I decided this was a seriously fucked-up carnival just the same. In the words of the immortal Cole Porter, let’s call the whole thing off. If I headed east as soon as I got back to my car, I could be in Derry by midnight. Sleeping in my own bed. I turned out the foyer light and stood with the flash drawing its line across the dark. I listened to the tick of that stupid cat-clock, which Bill must have set going, and to the familiar chugging cycle of the refrigerator. As I listened to them, I realized that I had never expected to hear either sound again. As for the crying . . . Had there been crying? Had there really? Yes. Crying or something. Just what now seemed moot. What seemed germane was that coming here had been a dangerous idea and a stupid course of action for a man who has taught his mind to misbehave. As I stood in the foyer with no light but the flash and the glow falling in the windows from the bulb over the back stoop, I realized that the line between what I knew was real and what I knew was only my imagination had pretty much disappeared. I left the house, checked to make sure the door was locked, and walked back up the driveway, swinging the flashlight beam from side to side like a pendulum like the tail of old Felix the Krazy Kat in the kitchen. It occurred to me, as I struck north along the lane, that I would have to make up some sort of story for Bill Dean. It wouldn’t do to say, ‘Well, Bill, I got down there and heard a kid bawling in my locked house, and it scared me so bad I turned into the gingerbread man and ran back to Derry. I’ll send you the flashlight I took; put it back on the shelf next to the paperbacks, would you?’ That wasn’t ‘any good because the story would get around and people would say, ‘Not surprised. Wrote too many books, probably. Work like that has got to soften a man’s head. Now he’s scared of his own shadow. Occupational hazard.’ Even if I never came down here again in my life, I didn’t want to leave people on the TR with that opinion of me, that half-contemptuous, see-what-you-get-for-thinking-too-much attitude. It’s one a lot of folks seem to have about people who live by their imaginations. I’d tell Bill I got sick. In a way it was true. Or no . . . better to tell him someone else got sick . . . a friend . . . someone in Derry I’d been seeing . . . a lady-friend, perhaps. ‘Bill, this friend of mine, this lady-friend of mine got sick, you see, and so . . . ‘ I stopped suddenly, the light shining on the front of my car. I had walked the mile in the dark without noticing many of the sounds in the woods, and dismissing even the bigger of them as deer settling down for the night. I hadn’t turned around to see if the shroud-thing (or maybe some spectral crying child) was following me. I had gotten involved in making up a story and then embellishing it, doing it in my head instead of on paper this time but going down all the same well-known paths. I had gotten so involved that I had neglected to be afraid. My heartbeat was back to normal, the sweat was drying on my skin, and the mosquitoes had stopped whining in my ears. And as I stood there, a thought occurred to me. It was as if my mind had been waiting patiently for me to calm down enough so it could remind me of some essential fact. The pipes. Bill had gotten my go-ahead to replace most of the old stuff, and the plumber had done so. Very recently he’d done so. ‘Air in the pipes,’ I said, running the beam of the eight-cell flashlight over the grille of my Chevrolet. ‘That’s what I heard.’ I waited to see if the deeper part of my mind would call this a stupid, rationalizing lie. It didn’t . . . because, I suppose, it realized it could be true. Airy pipes can sound like people talking, dogs barking, or children crying. Perhaps the plumber had bled them and the sound had been something else . . . but perhaps he hadn’t. The question was whether or not I was going to jump in my car, back two tenths of a mile to the highway, and then return to Derry, all on the basis of a sound I had heard for ten seconds (maybe only five), and while in an excited, stressful state of mind. I decided the answer was no. It might take only one more peculiar thing to turn me around probably gibbering like a character on Tales from the Crypt but the sound I’d heard in the foyer wasn’t enough. Not when making a go of it at Sara Laughs might mean so much. I hear voices in my head, and have for as long as I can remember. I don’t know if that’s part of the necessary equipment for being a writer or not; I’ve never asked another one. I never felt the need to, because I know all the voices I hear are versions of me. Still, they often seem like very real versions of other people, and none is more real to me-or more familiar than Jo’s voice. Now that voice came, sounding interested, amused in an ironic but gentle way . . . and approving. Going to fight, Mike? ‘Yeah,’ I said, standing there in the dark and picking out gleams of chrome with my flashlight. ‘Think so, babe.’ Well, then that’s all right, isn’t it? Yes. It was. I got into my car, started it up, and drove slowly down the lane. And when I got to the driveway, I turned in. There was no crying the second time I entered the house. I walked slowly through the downstairs, keeping the flashlight in my hand until I had turned on every light I could find; if there were people still boating on the north end of the lake, old Sara probably looked like some weird Spielbergian flying saucer hovering above them. I think houses live their own lives along a time-stream that’s different from the ones upon which their owners float, one that’s slower. In a house, especially an old one, the past is closer. In my life Johanna had been dead nearly four years, but to Sara, she was much nearer than that. It wasn’t until I was actually inside, with all the lights on and the flash returned to its spot on the bookshelf, that I realized how much I had been dreading my arrival. Of having my grief reawakened by signs of Johanna’s interrupted life. A book with a corner turned down on the table at one end of the sofa, where Jo had liked to recline in her nightgown, reading and eating plums; the cardboard cannister of Quaker Oats, which was all she ever wanted for breakfast, on a shelf in the pantry; her old green robe hung on the back of the bathroom door in the south wing, which Bill Dean still called ‘the new wing,’ although it had been built before we ever saw Sara Laughs. Brenda Meserve had done a good job a humane job-of removing these signs and signals, but she couldn’t get them all. Jo’s hardcover set of Sayers’s Peter Wimsey novels still held pride of place at the center of the living-room bookcase. Jo had always called the moosehead over the fireplace Bunter, and once, for no reason I could remember (certainly it seemed a very un-Bunterlike accessory), she had hung a bell around the moose’s hairy neck. It hung there still, on a red velvet ribbon. Mrs. Meserve might have puzzled over that bell, wondering whether to leave it up or take it down, not knowing that when Jo and I made love on the living-room couch (and yes, we were often overcome there), we referred to the act as ‘ringing Bunter’s bell.’ Brenda Meserve had done her best, but any good marriage is secret territory, a necessary white space on society’s map. What others don’t know about it is what makes it yours. I walked around, touching things, looking at things, seeing them new. Jo seemed everywhere to me, and after a little while I dropped into one of the old cane chairs in front of the TV. The cushion wheezed under me, and I could hear Jo saying, ‘Well excuse yourself, Michael!’ I put my face in my hands and cried. I suppose it was the last of my mourning, but that made it no easier to bear. I cried until I thought something inside me would break if I didn’t stop. When it finally let me go, my face was drenched, I had the hiccups, and I thought I had never felt so tired in my life. I felt strained all over my body partly from the walking I’d done, I suppose, but mostly just from the tension of getting here . . . and deciding to stay here. To fight. That weird phantom crying I’d heard when I first stepped into the place, although it seemed very distant now, hadn’t helped. I washed my face at the kitchen sink, rubbing away the tears with the heels of my hands and clearing my clogged nose. Then I carried my suitcases down to the guest bedroom in the north wing. I had no intention of sleeping in the south wing, in the master bedroom where I had last slept with Jo. That was a choice Brenda Meserve had foreseen. There was a bouquet of fresh wildflowers on the bureau, and a card: WELCOME BACK, MR. NOONAN. If I hadn’t been emotionally exhausted, I suppose looking at that message, in Mrs. Meserve’s spiky copperplate handwriting, would have brought on another fit of the weeps. I put my face in the flowers and breathed deeply. They smelled good, like sunshine. Then I took off my clothes, leaving them where they dropped, and turned back the coverlet on the bed. Fresh sheets, fresh pillowcases; same old Noonan sliding between the former and dropping his head onto the latter. I lay there with the bedside lamp on, looking up at the shadows on the ceiling, almost unable to believe I was in this place and this bed. There had been no shroud-thing to greet me, of course . . . but I had an idea it might well find me in my dreams. Sometimes for me, at least there’s a transitional bump between waking and sleeping. Not that night. I slipped away without knowing it, and woke the next morning with sunlight shining in through the window and the bedside lamp still on. There had been no dreams that I could remember, only a vague sensation that I had awakened sometime briefly in the night and heard a bell ringing, very thin and far away. How to cite Bag of Bones CHAPTER SIX, Essay examples