Feeling at peace, however fragilely, made it easy to slip into the visionary end of the dark-sight. The rose shadows said that they loved the sun, but that they also loved the dark, where their roots grew through the lightless mystery of the earth. The roses said:
"Ah, i just know. That's my talent, if you were wondering. I just know things." She rolled her eyes, but she was grinning. "What a unique talent" "I know. I amaze myself"
A shadow is never created in darkness. It is born of light. We can be blind to it and blinded by it. Our shadow asks us to look at what we don't want to see
Here are the shadows left behind by a thousand moments, a thousand moods, of needs traced here on the wall by men who are gone. Here is the record of their being here.
There is shadow under this red rock // (Come in under the shadow of this red rock) // And I will show you something different from either // Your shadow at morning striding behind you // Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you // I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
"Shadows." The world seemed darker when he said it. "Every man who walks the earth casts a shadow on the world. Some are thin and weak, others long and dark."
We Orientals tend to seek our satisfactions in whatever surroundings we happen to find ourselves, to content ourselves with things as they are; and so darkness causes us no discontent, we resign ourselves to it as inevitable. If light is scarce, then light is scarce; we will immerse ourselves in the darkness and there discover its own particular beauty. But the progressive Westerner is determined always to better his lot. From candle to oil lamp, oil lamp to gaslight, gaslight to electric light--his quest for a brighter light never ceases, he spares no pains to eradicate even the minutest shadow.
He wasn't a hero. He wasn't the man who stepped forward and saved the innocent. He was lost himself. Shadows had invaded a long time ago and stolen his life. But he would give anything he had left to be the man who found a way to save Judith
Although I don't know much about anything, I know that I have a story. I know that it is not over. There are shades and shadows of adventures and people and wild new places. Whatever Paris might turn out to be, and whatever Dr. Epstein is able to do, I want to be there to find out.
After school the very next day, El Rey's mobile home was gone. I laid in bed and wondered what happens to people when they go, if they become like shadows, if they fade away when they disappear from your life. The only thing I could see was the broken picket fence. The only sound I could hear was the cry of birds being killed in the night.
"There was nothing the matter out there. It was in here, with me. I decided I'd better go to work, maybe that would exorcise me. I fled from the room almost as though it were haunted. It was too late to stop off at a breakfast counter now. I didn't want any, anyway. My stomach kept giving little quivers. In the end I didn't go to work, either. I couldn't, I wouldn't have been any good. I telephoned in that I was too ill to come, and it was no idle excuse, even though I was upright on my two legs. I roamed around the rest of the day in the sunshine. Wherever the sunshine was the brightest, I sought and stayed in that place, and when it moved on I moved with it. I couldn't get it bright enough or strong enough. I avoided the shade, I edged away from it, even the slight shade of an awning or of a tree. And yet the sunshine didn't warm me. Where others mopped their brows and moved out of it, I stayed - and remained cold inside. And the shade was winning the battle as the hours lengthened. It outlasted the sun. The sun weakened and died; the shade deepened and spread. Night was coming on, the time of dreams, the enemy. ("Nightmare")"
"He was a dim secondary social success -- and all with people who had truly not an idea of him. It was all mere surface sound, this murmur of their welcome, this popping of their corks -- just as his gestures of response were the extravagant shadows, emphatic in proportion as they meant little, of some game of 'ombres chinoises' [French: "shadow play"]."
Gregory of Nyssa points out that Moses's vision of God began with the light, with the visible burning bush, the bush which was bright with fire and was not consumed; but afterwards, God spoke to him in a cloud. After the glory which could be seen with human eyes, he began to see the glory which is beyond and after light. The shadows are deepening all around us.
But if you wish, you can imagine that the Shadow does wait for your return and that it does remember everything that has gone before and that it doesn't let you accept yourself as perfect until you let it. There is truth in that. That is why a child usually cries as soon as it's born. With its first breath, the Shadow returns.
Their gazes met. His eyes swept her in a velvet caress, uncertainty stamped on his features. The night loomed between them, as dark and impenetrable as his eyes. Rowena had to look away. She forced herself to remember how he had used his body and her need as weapons to weave a punishing net of pleasure.
There are no shadows in the Underdark. There is no room for imagination in the Underdark. It is a place for alertness, but not aliveness, a place with no room for hopes and dreams.
"When he placed a candle on the shelf across the room from him and lit its wick, he came to realize that in fact everything he saw was a flat surface, like a screen - that in fact dimension was an illusion. Everything was a flat surface and the pinpoints of light, whether from a candle on the shelf or a gaslamp above the street, were punctures in that surface - gashes made by somebody behind the screen. He realized then that beyond everything he saw there was an entire realm of blazing sunfire, and that colors were only the silhouettes of people in that realm - walking, eating, dancing, doing whatever they were doing behind the screen.
Alone in my room, I don't feel alone. It's as if I have two shadows instead of one, and this second shadow doesn't conform to my movements. It follows me, it gives the impression it will never leave me, but it does what it wants. I worry that in time I will do what it wants.
"Trez?" iAm whispered, suddenly worried that the poison had eaten that brain up. "Are you--" All at once those long, strong arms wrapped around him and jerked him off his feet. And his brother was holding him. And speaking. "I'm here, I'm here, I'm here ... for you, I am here..." At first the words didn't register, but then ... "I'm not leaving you," Trez said in a rough, scratchy voice. "I'm here and I'm not leaving you."