“Simple Happiness”
“Against this outlook, Skylar took his stand. Whether through the fairy tales he had been exposed to as a child or the literature he had read as a youth, through the lessons he had learned from films or from simply watching adults in his environment, the seeker knew that happiness and peace could not be […]
Continue reading“Adolescent Daydreams”
“Once his mother left the room, he flounced toward the bed and dropped himself down onto it with the dead weight of a falling dumb bomb. Horizontal, eyes closed, arms extended along his sides: this was the position he assumed as he wrestled with the nymphs, wolves, and ghosts of adolescence. In the background, the […]
Continue reading“The Magic of Music”
“Music had always, since his early childhood, shown Skylar the transfiguring power of art. Music possessed a facility for communicating directly with one’s soul and, once in communication, an ability to extract from it a fine and delicate feeling. From this feeling, music could shake off all excrescences and dross, leaving a filament which it […]
Continue reading“The End of Exams”
“It was about two o’clock in the afternoon on the day after Skylar’s last final examination. A cylinder of yellow sunlight passed through the narrow casement window in the sophomore’s bedroom, inflaming a golden aureole around Artus’ head. The rectangular lights of the mullioned window had been refashioned, all luminous, stretched and laid flat on […]
Continue reading“Genuine Happiness”
“When one has gained inner stability, then a quiet joy constantly fills one’s life. One no longer depends on external developments to bring happiness; one is already happy. The sun may shine or the rain may fall; the stock market may rise or it may drop; wrinkles, gray hair, and illness may come, but the […]
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