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What if one of the grime-covered kids from the MOTH decided to take it out on the "merely rich" "cosmopolitan class" without identifying Vera as a fellow downcast child, albeit one without a biological link to the colonial era?

The apartment was a combination of a two-bedroom apartment and a studio, which together formed three bed-rooms. The living room was called the Maginot Line by Daddy (a fine entry in the Things I Still Need to Know Diary).

"Fun never ends around here." She took Dylan by the hand and dragged him away into their side of the apartment while Vera enjoyed the extra moments she spent with Daddy alone even if he was mostly silent with his mouth open. (Looking at Social Media)

Scalp Hunters
Travel. They had been formed by Control on Bill Haydon's suggestion in the pioneer days of the cold war, when murder and kidnapping and crash blackmail were common currency, and their first commandant was Haydon's nominee. They were a small outfit, about a dozen men, and they were there to handle the hit-and-run jobs that were too dirty or too risky for the residents abroad.

Then, as the light was stronger, he could see the tops of the palms blowing in the gale and then, as the sun began to come up behind the hills, the palm trunks were whitish gray and their blowing branches a bright green and the grass of the hills was brown from the winter drought and the limestone tops of the far hills made them look as though they were crested with snow.

Then, astern of the boat and off to starboard, the calm of the ocean broke open and the great fish rose out of it, rising, shining dark blue and silver, seeming to come endlessly out of the water, unbelievable as his length and bulk rose out of the sea into the air and seemed to hang there until he fell with a splash that drove the water up high and white.

His life was built solidly on work and on the living by the Gulf Stream and on the island and it would stand up all right. The aids and the habits and the customs were all to handle the loneliness and by now he knew he had opened a whole new country for the loneliness to move into once the boys were gone.

Thomas’ three boys visit the island

…swam out in the green water, their bodies making shadows over the clear white sand, bodies forging along, shadows projected on the sand by the slight angle of the sun, the brown arms lifting and pushing forward, the hands slicing in, taking hold of the water and pulling it back, legs beating along steadily, heads turning for air, breathing easily and smoothly.

But he did not worry much about any of it. He had long ago ceased to worry and he had exorcized guilt with work insofar as he could, and all he cared about now was that the boys were coming over and that they should have a good summer. Then he would go back to work.
He had been able to replace almost everything except the children with work and the steady normal working life he had built on the island.

…just as he knew how many stairs there were to each flight of his own house and which way each of the twelve doors opened.
But Smiley had a second reason, which was fear, the secret fear that follows every professional to his grave. Namely, that one day, out of a past so complex that he himself could not remember all the enemies he might have made, one of them would find him and demand the reckoning.

Outside Context Paradox!

During a crisis, everyone was plunged into the animal fear that she frequented all year round. The only benefit of her generalized anxiety disorder was that it prepared Hope for the Worst-Case Scenario; she was never surprised when one materialized because the Worst-Case Scenario was where she spent most of her time.

Moses Blitz arrives in Vacca Vale

He sees no ventilation for air-conditioning, but the structure is chilly-either from strong insulation or supernatural forces, Moses concludes. He blesses himself with holy water, relieved when nothing happens, trying to clear his mother from the windshield of his psychology, thinking in social media posts. He is fifty three years old.

A Variable

Which was also enraging.
But the most enraging aspect of all the aspects is the Situation's banality. Blandine is thereafter cursed with the knowledge that one of the defining events of her life was nothing more than a solution to a tired equation.

Independence Workshop

Despite herself, Blandine feels affection for this man. Maybe it's pity. His optimism is embarrassing, yes, but she finds herself helplessly rooting for him. The course involves watching a lot of videos from the nineties about how to balance checkbooks and triumph by bending the truth in job inter-views.

Sometimes, Moses Robert Blitz— only child of Elsie Jane MeLoughlin Spite paints his entire body with the liquid of broken glow sticks, forcibly enters the house of an enemy, and wakes the enemy. Then he flails around in the dark, naked and aglow.
He doesn't mean any real harm. He just likes to fiddle with people.

No one has it easy in the Vacca Vale system, but Blandine had it the worst, being so smart and female. People want things from the Blandines of the system, and I'm sure her brain didn't help. Thinking too much can zap you dead, and Blandine-she just shuts herself in rooms und thinks. Thinks and thinks and thinks herself into all kinds of doom, and by sundown she's afraid of the doorknob.

Blandine, Apt C4
Alone, Blandine grips her forehead. She's certain that she has some kind of social impairment; she just doesn't know what it's called. Internet quizzes never know what to do with her. In general, she feels too much or too little, interacts too much or too little-never the proper amount.
It seems to her that she's spent her whole life sitting in a laundromat, freaking people out.

Soul catcher

They were weary, these two. Hunter and Hunted.

The People Speak

"Here, in America, we face an uphill struggle. Our victories can be taken away with a single stroke of the pen by men like former president Jefferson. He and others like him have always envisioned the United States as a white man's nation, irrespective of our deep and enduring contributions to its economy, its culture, and its precious Revolution.

The Plague
In that case of medicines I gave you, there are many potions and elixirs for curing the ailments of the flesh. I wish to God we could invent something for curing the sickness in the white soul."

Confession
Tiberius stared past his captors, his eyes narrowing a little, watching something only he could see. "I never thought about bein' free 'til then. Never saw how things could be different than they was until I listened to Jemmy. Everythin' looked changed after he spoke. Like I'd lived alla my life in a cave, believin' the shadows I seen were real until Jemmy held up a light and they all melted away.

The iron water distended enormously just beneath him and for an instant, knowing the brutal shock and the pain to which he had now inescapably committed himself, he felt the fatal exhilaration of a falling dream and had just time to dedicate within himself for Thee!, in a silent shout as deafening bright as a smiting of cymbals; then plunged into the smashing cold.

THEY WALKED DOWN the sandstone steps into an air so different from the striving candles and the expiring flowers that they were stopped flat-footed on the gravel. Morning had not yet begun but the night was nearly over. The gravel took all the light there was in the perishing darkness and shed it upward, and in the darkness among the trees below the outbuildings a blossoming dogwood flawed like winter breath.

Lydgate

It is curious what patches of hardness and tenderness lie side by side in men's dispositions. Bulstrode seems the most unsympathetic fellow I ever saw about some people, and yet he has taken no end of trouble, and spent a great deal of money, on benevolent objects. I suppose he has some test by which he finds out whom Heaven cares for—he has made up his mind that it doesn't care for me.'

Rosamond,' he said, turning his eyes on her with a melancholy look, 'you should allow for a man's words when he is disappointed and provoked. You and I cannot have opposite interests. I cannot part my happiness from yours. If I am angry with you, it is that you seem not to see how any concealment divides us. How could I wish to make anything hard to you either by my words or conduct?

On his daughters birthday

To buy a present would demonstrate he was not yet beaten, that he could do the surprising, lively thing. He would purchase his gift in joy rather than sorrow, in the spirit of loving extravagance, and in bringing it home and wrapping it up he would be making an offering to or a challenge - Look, I've brought the present, now you bring back the girl.

Mr Bulstrode

What, if the acts he had reconciled himself to because they made him a stronger instrument of the divine glory, were to become the pretext of the scoffer, and a darkening of that glory? If this were to be the ruling of Providence, he was cast out from the temple as one who had brought unclean offerings.

Mr Bulstrode
The terror of being judged sharpens the memory: it sends an inevitable glare over that long-unvisited past which has been habitually recalled only in general phrases. Even without memory, the life is bound into one by a zone of dependence in growth and decay; but intense memory forces a man to own his blameworthy past.