The fourth part of Chapter 29 of Women in Love. It happened in the afternoon that Ursula sat in the rayonian zaal talking to Lurka. The letter had seemed unhappy lately. He was lively and full of mischievous humour, as usual. But Ursula had thought he was sulky about something. His partner, too, the big, fair, good-looking youth, was ill at ease, going about as if he belonged to nowhere, and was kept in some sort of subjection against which he was rebelling. Lurka had hardly talked to Gudrun. His associate, on the other hand, had paid her constantly a soft, over-deferential attention. Gudrun wanted to talk to Lurka. He was a sculptor, and she wanted to hear his view of his art. And his figure attracted her. There was the look of a little wastrel about him that intrigued her, and an old man's look that interested her, and then, beside this, an uncanny singleness, a quality of being by himself, not in contact with anybody else, that marked out an artist to her. He was a chatterer, a magpie, a maker of mischievous word-jokes that were sometimes very clever, but which often were not. And she could see in his brown gnome's eyes the black look of inorganic misery which lay behind all his small buffoonery. His figure interested her. The figure of a boy, almost a street-arab. He made no attempt to conceal it. He always wore a simple loaden suit with knee-breaches. His legs were thin, and he made no attempt to disguise the fact, which was of itself remarkable in a German. And he never ingratiated himself anywhere, not in the slightest, but kept to himself for all his apparent playfulness. Lightner, his companion, was a great sportsman, very handsome with his big limbs and his blue eyes. Lerker would go to boggling or skating in little snatches, but he was indifferent. And his fine, thin nostrils, the nostrils of a pure-bred street-arab would quiver with contempt at Lightner's splothering gymnastic displays. It was evident that the two men who had travelled and lived together sharing the same bedroom had now reached the stage of loathing. Lightner hated Lerker with an injured, rising, impotent hatred, and Lerker treated Lightner with a fine quivering contempt and sarcasm. Soon the two would have to go apart. Already they were rarely together. Lightner ran attaching himself to somebody or other, always deferring. Lerker was a good deal alone.  His face was brown-red with a dry bright skin that seemed to crinkle with his mobile expressions.  Whenever Gudrun had tried to talk to him he had shied away unresponsive, looking at her with his watchful, dark eyes, but entering into no relation with her. He had made her feel that her slow French and her slower German were hateful to him. As for his own inadequate English he was much too awkward to try it at all, but he understood a good deal of what was said nevertheless, and Gudrun peaked, left him alone. This afternoon, however, she came into the lounge as he was talking to Ursula. Its fine black hair somehow reminded her of a bat, thin as it was on his full, sensitive-looking head, and worn away at the temples. He sat hunched up as if his spirit were bat-like, and Gudrun could see he was making some slow confidence to Ursula, unwilling, a slow, grudging, scanty self-revelation. She went and sat by her sister. He looked at her, then looked away again, as if he took no notice of her, but as a matter of fact she interested him deeply. Isn't it interesting, Prune? said Ursula, turning to her sister. Her lurker is doing a great freeze for a factory in Cologne, for the outside, the street. She looked at him, at his thin, brown, nervous hands that were prehensile, and somehow like talons, like grief, inhuman. What in, she asked? Asfars repeated Ursula. Granit, he replied. It had become immediately a laconic series of question and answer between fellow craftsmen. What is the relief? asked Gudrun. Actor il lievol. And at what height? It was very interesting to Gudrun to think of his making the great granite freeze for a great granite factory in Cologne. She got from him some notion of the design. It was a representation of a fair, with peasants and artisans in an orgy of enjoyment, drunk and absurd in their modern dress, whirling ridiculously in roundabouts, gaping at shows, kissing and staggering and rolling in knots, swinging in swing-boats, and firing down shooting galleries, a frenzy of chaotic motion. There was a swift discussion of technicalities. Gudrun was very much impressed. But how wonderful to have such a factory! cried Ursula. Is the whole building fine? Oh, yes, he replied. The freeze is part of the whole architecture. Yes, it is a colossal thing. Then he seemed to stiffen, shrugged his shoulders, and went on. Sculpture and architecture must go together. The day for irrelevant statues as for wall pictures is over. As a matter of fact, sculpture is always part of an architectural conception. And since churches are all museum stuff, since industry is our business now, then let us make our places of industry our art, our factory area our path and on echo. Ursula pondered. I suppose, she said, there is no need for our great works to be so hideous. Instantly he broke into motion. There you are, he cried. There you are. There is not only no need for our places of work to be ugly, but their ugliness ruins the work in the end. Men will not go on submitting to such intolerable ugliness. In the end it will hurt too much, and they will wither because of it. And this will wither the work as well. And they will think the work itself is ugly, the machines the very act of labour, whereas the machinery and the acts of labour are extremely maddeningly beautiful. But this will be the end of our civilisation when people will not work because work has become so intolerable to their senses, it nauseates them too much they would rather starve. Then we shall see the hammer used only for smashing, then we shall see it. Yet here we are. We have the opportunity to make beautiful factories, beautiful machine houses. We have the opportunity... Gudrun could only partly understand she could have cried with vexation. What does he say? She asked Ursula. And Ursula translated, stammering and brief. Lurker watched Gudrun's face to see her judgement. And do you think then, said Gudrun, that art should serve industry? Art should interpret industry, as art once interpreted religion, he said. But does your fair interpret industry? She asked him. Certainly. What is man doing when he is at a fair like this? He is fulfilling the counterpart of labour. The machine works him. Instead of he, the machine, he enjoys the mechanical motion in his own body. But is there nothing but work, mechanical work? said Gudrun. Nothing but work, he repeated, leaning forward, his eyes to darknesses with needle-points of light. No, it is nothing but this, serving a machine or enjoying the motion of a machine. Motion, that is all. You have never worked for hunger or you would know what God governs us. Gudrun quivered and flushed. For some reason she was almost in tears. No, I have not worked for hunger, she replied, but I have worked. Travailler, l'avorato, he asked. Que lavoro, que lavoro? Que travail es que vous avez fait? He broke into a mixture of Italian and French, instinctively using a foreign language when he spoke to her. You have never worked as the world works, he said to her with sarcasm. Yes, she said, I have, and I do. I work now for my daily bread. He paused, looked at her steadily, then dropped the subject entirely. She seemed to him to be trifling. But have you ever worked as the world works? Ursula asked him. He looked at her untrustful. Yes, he replied with a surly bark, I had known what it was to lie in bed for three days because I had nothing to eat. Gudrun was looking at him with large grave eyes that seemed to draw the confession from him as the marrow from his bones. All his nature held him back from confessing, and yet her large grave eyes upon him seemed to open some valve in his veins, and involuntarily he was telling. My father was a man who did not like work, and we had no mother. We lived in Austria, Polish Austria. How did we live? Ha! Somehow. Mostly in a room with three other families, one set in each corner, and the WC in the middle of the room a pan with a plank on it. Ha! I had two brothers and a sister, and there might be a woman with my father. He was a free being in his way, would fight with any man in the town, a garrison town, and was a little man too, but he wouldn't work for anybody, set his heart against it and wouldn't. And how did you live then? asked Ursula. He looked at her, then suddenly at Gudrun. Do you understand? he asked. Enough, she replied. Their eyes met for a moment. Then he looked away. He would say no more. And how did you become a sculptor? asked Ursula. How did I become a sculptor? he paused. So he resumed in a changed manner, and beginning to speak French. I became old enough. I used to steal from the marketplace. Later I went to work, imprinted the stamp on clay bottles before they were baked. It was an earthenware bottle factory. There I began making models. One day I had had enough. I lay in the sun and did not go to work. Then I walked to Munich. Then I walked to Italy, begging, begging everything. The Italians were very good to me. They were good and honourable to me. From Boson to Rome, almost every night I had a meal and a bed, perhaps of straw, with some peasant. I loved the Italian people with all my heart. Don Que Adesso, Manteno, I earn a thousand pounds in a year, or I earn two thousand. He looked down at the ground, his voice tailing off into silence. Gudrun looked at his fine, thin, shiny skin, reddish-brown from the sun, drawn tight over his full temples, and at his thin hair, and at the thick coarse brush-like moustache cut short about his mobile rather shapeless mouth. How old are you? she asked. He looked up at her with his full, elfin eyes startled. Vialte, he repeated, and he hesitated. It was evidently one of his reticences. How old are you? he replied, without answering. I am twenty-six, she answered. Twenty-six, he repeated, looking into her eyes. He paused. Then he said, Who asked Gudrun? Your husband, said Ursula, with a certain irony. I haven't got a husband, said Gudrun, in English. In German, she answered, he is thirty-one. But Lurker was watching closely, with his uncanny, full, suspicious eyes. Something in Gudrun seemed to accord with him. He was really like one of the little people who have no soul, who has found his mate in a human being. But he suffered in his discovery. She, too, was fascinated by him, fascinated as if some strange creature, a rabbit, or a bat, or a brown seal, had begun to talk to her. But also she knew what he was unconscious of, his tremendous power of understanding, of apprehending her living motion. He did not know his own power. He did not know how, with his full, submerged, watchful eyes, he could look into her, and see her, what she was, see her secrets. He would only want her to be herself. He knew her, verily, with a subconscious, sinister knowledge devoid of illusions and hopes. To Gudrun there was in Lurker the rock-bottom of all life. Everybody else had their illusion, must have their illusion, there before and after. But he, with a perfect stoicism, did without any before and after, dispensed with all illusion. He did not deceive himself in the last issue. In the last issue he cared about nothing, he was troubled about nothing. He made not the slightest attempt to be at one with anything. He existed a pure, unconnected will, stoical and momentaneous. There was only his work. It was curious, too, how his poverty, the degradation of his earlier life, attracted her. There was something insipid and tasteless to her in the idea of a gentleman, a man who had gone the usual course through school and university. A certain violent sympathy, however, came up in her for this mud-child. He seemed to be the very stuff of the underworld of life. There was no going beyond him. Ursula, too, was attracted by Lurker. In both sisters he commanded a certain homage. But there were moments when, to Ursula, he seemed indescribably inferior, false, a vulgarism.  Birkin exasperated. What do the women find so impressive in that little brat? Gerald asked. God alone knows, replied Birkin, unless it's some sort of appeal he makes to them which flatters them and has such a power over them. Gerald looked up in surprise. Does he make an appeal to them? he asked. Oh, yes, replied Birkin. He is the perfectly subjected being, existing almost like a criminal, and the women rush towards that, like a current of air towards a vacuum. Funny they should rush to that, said Gerald. Makes one mad, too, said Birkin. But he has the fascination of pity and repulsion for them. A little obscene monster of the darkness that he is. Gerald stood still, suspended in thought. What do women want at the bottom? he asked. Birkin shrugged his shoulders. God knows, he said, some satisfaction in basic repulsion, it seems to me. They seemed to creep down some ghastly tunnel of darkness and will never be satisfied till they'd come to the end. Gerald looked out into the mist of fine snow that was blowing by. Everywhere was blind today, horribly blind. And what is the end? he asked. Birkin shook his head. I've not got there yet, so I don't know. Ask Lurker, he's pretty near. He has a good many stages further than either you or I can go. Yes, but stages further in what? cried Gerald, irritated. Birkin sighed and gathered his brows into a knot of anger. Stages further in social hatred, he said. He lives like a rat in the river of corruption, just where it falls over into the bottomless pit. He's further on than we are. He hates the ideal more acutely. He hates the ideal utterly, yet it still dominates him. I expect he is a Jew or part Jewish. Probably, said Gerald.  But why does anybody care about him? cried Gerald. Because they hate the ideal also in their souls. They want to explore the sewers, and he's the wizard rat that swims ahead. Still Gerald stood and stared at the blind haze of snow outside. I don't understand your terms, really, he said in a flat, doomed voice. But it sounds a rum sort of desire. I suppose we want the same, said Birkin, only we want to take a quick jump downwards in a sort of ecstasy, and he ebbs with the stream, the sewer stream. Meanwhile Gudrun and Ursula waited for the next opportunity to talk to Lurka. It was no use beginning when the men were there. Then they could get into no touch with the isolated little sculptor. He had to be alone with them, and he preferred Ursula to be there as a sort of transmitter to Gudrun. Do you do nothing but architectural sculpture? Gudrun asked him one evening. Not now, he replied. I have done all sorts, except portraits. I never did portraits, but other things. What kind of things? asked Gudrun. He paused a moment, then rose and went out of the room. He returned almost immediately with a little roll of paper which he handed to her. She unrolled it. It was a photograph your reproduction of a statuette, signed F. Lurka. That is quite an early thing, not mechanical, he said, more popular. The statuette was of a naked girl, small, finely made, sitting on a great naked horse. The girl was young and tender, a mere bud.  Her hair, which was short and must be flaxen, fell forward, divided, half covering her hands. Her limbs were young and tender, her legs scarcely formed yet, the legs of a maiden just passing towards cruel womanhood, dangled childishly over the side of the powerful horse, Percetically the small feet folded one over the other as if to hide, but there was no hiding, there she was exposed, naked, on the naked flank of the horse. The horse stood stock still, stretched in a kind of start. It was a massive, magnificent stallion, rigid with pent-up power. Its neck was arched and terrible, like a sickle, its flanks were pressed back, rigid with power.  She looked up with a certain supplication, almost slave-like. He glanced at her and jerked his head a little. How big is it, she asked, in a toamless voice, persisting in appearing casual and unaffected. How big, he replied, glancing again at her. Without pedestal so high, he measured with his hand, with pedestal so. He looked at her steadily. There was a little brusque, turgid contempt for her in his swift gesture, and she seemed to cringe a little. And what is it done in, she asked, throwing back her head and looking at him with affected coldness. He still gazed at her steadily, and his dominance was not shaken. Bronze, green bronze. Green bronze, repeated Gudrun, coldly accepting his challenge. She was thinking of the slender, immature, tender limbs of the girl, smooth and cold in green bronze. Yes, beautiful, she murmured, looking up at him with a certain dark homage. He closed his eyes and looked aside, triumphant. Why, said Ursula, did you make the horse so stiff? It is as stiff as a block. Stiff? he repeated in arms at once.  Horse is as sensitive, quite delicate and sensitive, really. He raised his shoulders, spread his hands in a shrug of slow indifference, as much as to inform her she was an amateur and an impertinent nobody. Fish and sea, he said, with an insulting patience and condescension in his voice. That horse is a certain form, part of a whole form. It is part of a work of art, a piece of form. It is not a picture of a friendly horse to which you give a lump of sugar, do you see? It is part of a work of art. It has no relation to anything outside that work of art. Ursula, angry at being treated quite so insultingly, do oh, en barre, from the height of esoteric art to the depth of general exoteric amateurism, replied hotly, flushing and lifting her face. But it is a picture of a horse, nevertheless. He lifted his shoulders in another shrug, as you like. It is not a picture of a cow, certainly. Here Gudrun broke in, flushed and brilliant, anxious to avoid any more of this, any more of Ursula's foolish persistence in giving herself away. What do you mean by it is a picture of a horse? She cried at her sister. What do you mean by a horse? You mean an idea you have in your head and which you want to see represented. There is another idea altogether, quite another idea. Call it a horse, if you like, or say it is not a horse. I have just as much right to say that your horse isn't a horse, that it is a falsity of your own makeup. Ursula wavered, baffled. Then her words came. But why does he have this idea of a horse? She said, I know it is his idea. I know it is a picture of himself, really. Lurka snorted with rage. A picture of myself! He repeated in derision. This and seek, Nediga Frau, that is a Kunstwerk, a work of art. It is a work of art. It is a picture of nothing, of absolutely nothing. It has nothing to do with anything but itself. It has no relation with the everyday world of this and other. There is no connection between them, absolutely none. There are two different and distinct planes of existence. And to translate one into the other is worse and foolish. It is a darkening of all counsel and making confusion everywhere. Do you see? You must not confuse the relative work of action with the absolute world of art. That you must not do. That is quite true, cried Gudrun, let loose in a sort of rhapsody. The two things are quite and permanently apart. They have nothing to do with one another. I and my art. They have nothing to do with each other. My art stands in another world. I am in this world." Her face was flushed and transfigured.  Ursula was silent after this outburst. She was furious.  It isn't a word of it true, of all this harangue you have made me, she replied, flatly.   He would not trouble to answer this last charge. Gudrun, too, was silent in exasperated contempt. Ursula was such an insufferable outsider, rushing in where angels would fear to tread. But then fools must be suffered, if not gladly. But Ursula was persistent, too. As for your world of art and your world of reality, she replied, you have to separate the two, because you can't bear to know what you are.  So you say it's the world of art. The world of art is only the truth about the real world, that's all. But you are too far gone to see it. She was white and trembling, intent. Gudrun and Lurka sat in stiff dislike of her. Gerald, too, who had come up in the beginning of the speech, stood looking at her in complete disapproval and opposition. He felt she was undignified. She put a sort of vulgarity over the esotericism which gave man his last distinction. He joined his forces with the other two. They all three wanted her to go away. But she sat on in silence, her soul weeping, throbbing violently, her fingers twisting her handkerchief. The others maintained a dead silence, letting the display of Ursula's obtrusiveness pass by. Then Gudrun asked, in a voice that was quite cool and casual, as if resuming a casual conversation, was the girl a model? An art student replied Gudrun. And how the situation revealed itself to her. She saw the girl art student, unformed and of pernicious recklessness, too young, her straight flaxen hair cut short, hanging just into her neck, curving inward slightly because it was rather thick. And Lurka, the well-known master sculptor, and the girl probably well brought up and of good family, making herself so great to be his mistress. Oh, how well she knew the common callousness of it all. Dresden, Paris or London, what did it matter? She knew it. Where is she now? Ursula asked. Lurka raised his shoulders to convey his complete ignorance and indifference. That is already six years ago, he said. She will be twenty-three years old, no more good. Gerald had picked up the picture and was looking at it. It attracted him also. He saw on the pedestal that the piece was called Lady Godiva. But this isn't Lady Godiva, he said, smiling good-humidly. She was the middle-aged wife of some Earl or other who covered herself with her long hair. Alla Maud Allen, said Gudrun with a mocking grimace. Why Maud Allen? he replied. Isn't it so? I always thought the legend was that. Yes, Gerald dear, I'm quite sure you've got the legend perfectly.  To be sure, I'd rather see the woman than the hair. He laughed in return. Wouldn't you just mocked Gudrun? Ursula rose and went away, leaving the three together. Gudrun took the picture again from Gerald and sat looking at it closely. Of course, she said, turning to tease Lurka now, you understood your little Marle Shulerin. He raised his eyebrows and his shoulders in a complacent shrug. The little girl asked Gerald, pointing to the figure. Gudrun was sitting with the picture in her lap. She looked up at Gerald full into his eyes so that he seemed to be blinded. Didn't he understand her, she said to Gerald in a slightly mocking, humorous playfulness. You've only to look at the feet, aren't they, darling, so pretty and tender. Oh, they're really wonderful.  His soul was filled with her burning recognition. He seemed to grow more upish and lordly. Gerald looked at the small, sculptured feet.  He looked at them a long time, fascinated. Then, in some pain, he put the picture away from him. He felt full of barrenness. What was her name? Gudrun asked Lurka. Annette von Weck, Lurka replied, reminiscent. Yes, Eva Hübsch. She was pretty, but she was tiresome. She was a nuisance. Not for a minute would she keep still, not until I had slapped her hard and made her cry. Then she'd sit for five minutes. He was thinking over the work, his work, the all-important to him. Did you really slap her? asked Gudrun, coolly. He glanced back at her, reading her challenge.  I had to. I had to. It was the only way I got the work done. Gudrun watched him with large, dark-filled eyes for some moments. She seemed to be considering his very soul. Then she looked down in silence. Why did you have such a younger diver, then? asked Gerald.   Yes, he said, I don't like them any bigger, any older. Then they are beautiful at sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. After that they are no use to me. There was a moment's pause. Why not? asked Gerald. Lurka shrugged his shoulders. I don't find them interesting or beautiful. They are no good to me for my work. Do you mean to say a woman isn't beautiful after she is twenty? asked Gerald. For me, no. Before twenty she is small and fresh and tender and slight. After that, let her be what she likes, she has nothing for me. The Venus of Milo is a bourgeois, so are they all. And you don't care for women at all after twenty? asked Gerald. They are no good to me, they are of no use in my art. Lurka repeated impatiently, I don't find them beautiful. Here you are in Epicure, said Gerald, with a slight sarcastic laugh. And what about men? asked Gudrun suddenly. Yes, they are good at all ages, replied Lurka. A man should be big and powerful, whether he is old or young is of no account.  This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Ruth Golding. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence, the fifth part of Chapter 29, Continental. Ursula went out alone into the world of pure new snow. But the dazzling whiteness seemed to beat upon her till it hurt her. She felt the cold was slowly strangling her soul. Her head felt dazed and numb. Suddenly she wanted to go away.  She had felt so doomed up here in the eternal snow as if there were no beyond. Now suddenly, as by a miracle, she remembered that a way beyond below her lay the dark, fruitful earth. That towards the south there were stretches of land dark with orange trees and cypress, grey with olives. That Ilex trees lifted wonderful, plumy tufts in shadow against a blue sky. Miracle of miracles. This utterly silent, frozen world of the mountaintops was not universal. One might leave it and have done with it. One might go away. She wanted to realise the miracle at once. She wanted at this instant to have done with the snow world the terrible, static, ice-built mountaintops. She wanted to see the dark earth, to smell it earthy for cundity, to see the patient wintry vegetation, to feel the sunshine touch a response in the buds. She went back gladly to the house full of hope. Birkin was reading, lying in bed. "'Rupert!' she said, bursting in on him. "'I want to go away!' he looked up at her slowly. "'Do you?' he replied mildly. She sat by him and put her arms round his neck. It surprised her that he was so little surprised. "'Don't you?' she asked, troubled. "'I hadn't thought about it,' he said. "'But I'm sure I do.' She sat up, suddenly erect. "'I hate it!' she said. "'I hate the snow and the unnaturalness of it, the unnatural light it throws on everybody, the ghastly glamour, the unnatural feelings it makes everybody have.' He lay still and laughed, meditating. "'Well,' he said, "'we can go away. We can go to Morrow. "'We'll go to Morrow to Verona and find Romeo and Juliet, and sit in the amphitheatre, shall we?' Suddenly she hid her face against his shoulder, with perplexity and shyness. He lay so untrammeled. "'Yes,' she said softly, filled with relief. She felt her soul had new wings. Now he was so uncaring. "'I shall love to be Romeo and Juliet,' she said, "'my love.' "'Though a fearfully cold wind blows in Verona,' he said, "'from out of the Alps, we shall have the smell of the snow in our noses.' She sat up and looked at him. "'Are you glad to go?' she asked, troubled. His eyes were inscrutable and laughing.  Don't laugh at me!' "'Why, how's that?' he laughed, putting his arms round her. "'Because I don't want to be laughed at,' she whispered. He laughed more as he kissed her delicate, finely perfumed hair. "'Do you love me?' she whispered in wild seriousness. "'Yes,' he answered, laughing. Suddenly she lifted her mouth to be kissed. Her lips were taut and quivering and strenuous. His were soft, deep, and delicate. He waited a few moments in the kiss. Then a shade of sadness went over his soul. "'Your mouth is so hard,' he said, in a faint reproach. "'And yours is so soft and nice,' she said gladly. "'But why do you always grip your lips?' he asked, regretful. "'Never mind,' she said swiftly. "'It is my way.' She knew he loved her. She was sure of him, yet she could not let go a certain hold over herself. She could not bear him to question her. She gave herself up in delight to being loved by him. She knew that, in spite of his joy when she abandoned herself, he was a little bit saddened, too. She could give herself up to his activity, but she could not be herself. She dared not come forth quite nakedly to his nakedness, abandoning all adjustment, lapsing in pure faith with him. She abandoned herself to him, or she took hold of him and gathered her joy of him, and she enjoyed him fully. But they were never quite together at the same moment. One was always a little left out. Nevertheless, she was glad in hope, glorious and free, full of life and liberty, and he was still and soft and patient for the time. They made their preparations to leave the next day. First they went to Gudrun's room, where she and Gerald were just dressed ready for the evening indoors. "'Proon,' said Ursula, "'I think we shall go away to-morrow. I can't stand the snow any more. It hurts my skin and my soul.' "'Does it really hurt your soul, Ursula?' asked Gudrun in some surprise. "'I can believe quite it hurts your skin. It is terrible, but I thought it was admirable for the soul.' "'No, not for mine. It just injures it,' said Ursula. "'Really?' cried Gudrun. There was a silence in the room, and Ursula and Birkin could feel that Gudrun and Gerald were relieved by their going. "'You will go south,' said Gerald, a little ring of uneasiness in his voice. "'Yes,' said Birkin, turning away. There was a queer, indefinable hostility between the two men lately. Birkin was on the whole dim and indifferent, drifting along in a dim, easy flow, unnoticing and patient since he came abroad, whilst Gerald, on the other hand, was intense and gripped into white light, agonisties. The two men revoked one another. Gerald and Gudrun were very kind to the two who were departing, solicitous for their welfare as if they were two children. Gudrun came to Ursula's bedroom with three pairs of the coloured stockings for which she was notorious, and she threw them on the bed. But these were thick silk stockings for million cornflower blue and grey bought in Paris. The grey ones were knitted, seamless and heavy. Ursula was in raptures. She knew Gudrun must be feeling very loving to give away such treasures. I can't take them from you, prune, she cried. I can't possibly deprive you of them, the jewels. Aren't they jewels? cried Gudrun, eyeing her gifts with an envious eye. Aren't they real lands? Yes, you must keep them, said Ursula. I don't want them. I've got three more pairs. I want you to keep them. I want you to have them. They're yours there." And with trembling, excited hands she put the coveted stockings under Ursula's pillow. One gets the greatest joy of all out of really lovely stockings, said Ursula. One does, replied Gudrun, the greatest joy of all. And she sat down in the chair. It was evident she had come for a last talk. Ursula, not knowing what she wanted, waited in silence. Do you feel, Ursula, Gudrun began rather skeptically, that you are going away forever never to return, sort of thing? Oh, we shall come back, said Ursula. It isn't a question of train journeys. Yes, I know, but spiritually, so to speak, you are going away from us all. Ursula quivered. I don't know a bit what is going to happen, she said. I only know we're going somewhere. Gudrun waited. And you are glad, she asked. Ursula meditated for a moment. I believe I am very glad, she replied. But Gudrun read the unconscious brightness on her sister's face, rather than the uncertain tones of her speech. But don't you think you'll want the old connection with the world, father and the rest of us and all that it means, England and the world of thought? Don't you think you'll need that, really, to make a world? Ursula was silent, trying to imagine. I think, she said at length involuntarily, that Rupert is right. One wants a new space to be in, and one falls away from the old. Gudrun watched her sister with impassive face and steady eyes. One wants a new space to be in, I quite agree, she said. But I think that a new world is a development from this world, and that to isolate oneself with one other person isn't to find a new world at all, but only to secure oneself in one's illusions. Ursula looked out of the window. In her soul she began to wrestle, and she was frightened. She was always frightened of words, because she knew that mere word-force could always make her believe what she did not believe. Perhaps, she said, full of mistrust of herself and everybody. But, she added, I do think that one can't have anything new whilst one cares for the old. Do you know what I mean? Even fighting the old is belonging to it. I know one is tempted to stop with the world just to fight it, but then it isn't worth it. Gudrun considered herself. Yes, she said. In a way one is of the world if one lives in it, but isn't it really an illusion to think that you can get out of it? After all, a cottage in the Abruzzi, or wherever it may be, isn't a new world. No, the only thing to do with the world is to see it through. Ursula looked away. She was so frightened of argument. But there can be something else, can't there? She said. One can see it through in one's soul long enough before it sees itself through in actuality. And then, when one has seen one's soul, one is something else. Can one see it through in one's soul? asked Gudrun. If you mean that you can see to the end of what will happen, I don't agree. I really can't agree. And anyhow, you can't suddenly fly off onto a new planet because you think you can see to the end of this. Ursula suddenly straightened herself. Yes, she said. Yes, one knows. One has no more connections here. One has a sort of other self that belongs to a new planet, not to this. You've got to hop off. Gudrun reflected for a few moments. Then a smile of ridicule, almost of contempt, came over her face. And what will happen when you find yourself in space? she cried in derision. After all, the great ideas of the world are the same there. You above everybody can't get away from the fact that love, for instance, is the supreme thing in space as well as on earth. No, said Ursula. It isn't. Love is too human and little. I believe in something inhuman of which love is only a little part. I believe what we must fulfil comes out of the unknown to us. And it is something infinitely more than love. It isn't so merely human. Gudrun looked at Ursula with steady balancing eyes. She admired and despised her sister so much, both. Then suddenly she averted her face, saying coldly, uglyly, Well, I've got no further than love yet. Over Ursula's mind flashed the thought, Because you never have loved, you can't get beyond it. Gudrun rose, came over to Ursula and put her arm round her neck. Go and find your new world dear, she said, her voice clanging with false benignity. After all, the happiest voyage is the quest of Rupert's blessed aisles. Her arm rested around Ursula's neck, her fingers on Ursula's cheek for a few moments. Ursula was supremely uncomfortable, meanwhile. There was an insult in Gudrun's protective patronage that was really too hurting. Feeling her sister's resistance, Gudrun drew awkwardly away, turned over the pillow and disclosed the stockings again. Ha! Ha! She laughed rather hollily. How we do talk, indeed, new worlds and old! And they passed to the familiar worldly subjects. Gerald and Birkin had walked on ahead, waiting for the Sledge to overtake them, conveying the departing guests. How much longer will you stay here? asked Birkin, glancing up at Gerald's very red, almost blank face. Oh, I can't say! Gerald replied. Till we get tired of it! You're not afraid of the snow melting first? asked Birkin. Gerald laughed. Does it melt? he said. Things are all right with you, then? said Birkin.  All right, he said. I never know what those common words mean. All right and all wrong, don't they become synonymous somewhere? Yes, I suppose. How about going back? asked Birkin. Oh, I don't know. We may never get back. I don't look before and after, said Gerald. Nor pine for what is not, said Birkin. Gerald looked into the distance with the small pupil's abstract eyes of a hawk. No, there's something final about this, and Gudrun seems like the end to me. I don't know, but she seems so soft, her skin like silk, her arms heavy and soft, and it withers my consciousness somehow, it burns the pith of my mind. He went on a few paces, staring ahead, his eyes fixed, looking like a mask used in ghastly religions of the barbarians. It blasts your soul's eye, he said, and leaves you cyclous. Yet you want to be cyclous, you want to be blasted, you don't want it any different. He was speaking as if in a trance, verbal and blank. Then suddenly he braced himself up with a kind of rhapsody, put Birkin with vindictive, cowed eyes, saying, Do you know what it is to suffer when you are with a woman? She's so beautiful, so perfect, you find her so good. It tears you like a silk, and every stroke and bit cuts hot. Ha! That perfection, when you blast yourself, you blast yourself. And then he stopped on the snow and suddenly opened his clenched hands. It's nothing. Your brain might have gone charred as rags, and he looked round into the air with a queer, histrionic movement. It's blasting. You understand what I mean? It is a great experience, something final. And then you're shriveled as if struck by electricity. He walked on in silence. It seemed like bragging, but like a man in extremity bragging truthfully. Of course, he resumed, I wouldn't not have had it. It's a complete experience, and she's a wonderful woman.  It's curious. Birkin looked at him, at his strange, scarcely conscious face. Gerald seemed blank before his own words. But you've had enough now, said Birkin. You have had your experience. Why work on an old wound? Oh, said Gerald. I don't know. It's not finished. And the two walked on. I've loved you, as well as Gudrun. Don't forget, said Birkin bitterly. Gerald looked at him, strangely, abstractedly. Have you, he said, with icy scepticism? Or do you think you have? He was hardly responsible for what he said. The sledge came. Gudrun dismounted, and they all made their farewell. They wanted to go apart, all of them. Birkin took his place, and the sledge drove away, leaving Gudrun and Gerald standing on the snow, waving. Something froze Birkin's heart, seeing them standing there in the isolation of the snow, growing smaller and more isolated. End of Chapter 29. Recording by Ruth Golding Chapter 30 of Women in Love When Ursula and Birkin were gone, Gudrun felt herself free in her contest with Gerald. As they grew more used to each other, he seemed to press upon her more and more. At first she could manage him, so that her own will was always left free. But very soon he began to ignore her female tactics. He dropped his respect for her whims and her privacies. He began to exert his own will blindly, without submitting to hers. Already a vital conflict had set in which frightened them both. But he was alone, whilst already she had begun to cast ground for external resource. When Ursula had gone, Gudrun felt her own existence had become stark and elemental. She went and crouched alone in her bedroom, looking out of the window at the big flashing stars. In front was the faint shadow of the mountain knot. That was the pivot. She felt strange and inevitable, as if she were centred upon the pivot of all existence. There was no further reality. Presently Gerald opened the door. She knew he would not be long before he came. She was rarely alone. He pressed upon her like a frost, deadening her. Are you alone in the dark? he said, and she could tell by his tone he resented it. He resented this isolation she had drawn round herself. Yet feeling static and inevitable, she was kind towards him. Would you like to light the candle? she asked. He did not answer, but came and stood behind her in the darkness. Look, she said, at that lovely star up there, do you know its name? He crouched beside her to look through the low window. No, he said, it is very fine. Isn't it beautiful? Do you notice how it darts different coloured fires? It flashes really superbly. They remained in silence. With a mute, heavy gesture, she put her hand on his knee and took his hand. Are you regretting Ursula? he asked. No, not at all, she said. Then in a slow mood she asked, how much do you love me? He stiffened himself further against her. How much do you think I do? he asked. I don't know, she replied. But what is your opinion? he asked. There was a pause. At length in the darkness came her voice, hard and indifferent. Very little indeed, she said, coldly, almost flippant. His heart went icy at the sound of her voice. Why then I love you? he asked, as if admitting the truth of her accusation, yet hating her for it. I don't know why you don't. I've been good to you. You were in a fearful state when you came to me. Her heart was beating to suffocate her, yet she was strong and unrelenting. When was I in a fearful state? he asked. When you first came to me, I had to take pity on you, but it was never love. It was that statement, it was never love, which sounded in his ears with madness. I must you repeat it so often that there is no love. He said in a voice strangled with rage. Well, you don't think you love, do you? she asked. He was silent with cold passion of anger. You don't think you can love me, do you? she repeated, almost with a sneer. No, he said. You know you never have loved me, don't you? I don't know what you mean by the word love, he replied. Yes, you do. You know all right that you have never loved me.  No, he said, prompted by some barren spirit of truthfulness and obstinacy. And you never will love me, she said, finally. Will you? There was a diabolic coldness in her. Too much to bear. No, he said. Then she replied, what have you against me? He was silent in cold, frightened rage and despair. If only I could kill her. His heart was whispering repeatedly, if only I could kill her, I should be free. It seemed to him that death was the only severing of this Gordian knot. Why do you torture me, he said. She flung her arms round his neck. I don't want to torture you, she said, pityingly, as if she were comforting a child. The impertinence made his veins go cold. He was insensible. She held her arms round his neck in a triumph of pity. And her pity for him was as cold as stone. Its deepest motive was hate of him and fear of his power over her, which she must always counter-foil. Say you love me, she pleaded. Say you will love me forever. Won't you? Won't you? But it was her voice only that coaxed him. Her senses were entirely apart from him, cold and destructive of him. It was her overbearing will that insisted. Won't you say you love me always, she coaxed. Say it, even if it isn't true. Say it, Gerald, do. I will love you always, he repeated, in real agony, forcing the words out. She gave him a quick kiss. Fancy your actually having said it, she said, with a touch of railery. He stood as if he had been beaten. Try to love me a little more, and to want me a little less, she said, in a half-contemptuous, half-coaxing tone. The darkness seemed to be swaying in waves across his mind, great waves of darkness plunging across his mind. It seemed to him he was degraded at the very quick, made of no account. You mean you don't want me, he said.   It is horrible to me. Horrible to you, he repeated. Yes. Don't you think I might have a room to myself? No, Ursula has gone. You can say you want a dressing room. You do as you like. You can leave altogether if you like. He managed to articulate. Yes, I know that, she replied. So can you. You can leave me whenever you like, without notice even. The great tides of darkness were swinging across his mind. He could hardly stand upright. A terrible weariness overcame him. He felt he must lie on the floor. Dropping off his clothes he got into bed, and lay like a man suddenly overcome by drunkenness, the darkness lifting and plunging as if he were lying on a black, giddy sea.  At length she slipped from her own bed and came over to him. He remained rigid, his back to her. He was all but unconscious. She put her arms round his terrifying, insentient body, and laid her cheek against his hard shoulder. Gerald! she whispered. Gerald! There was no change in him. She caught him against her. She pressed her breasts against his shoulders. She kissed his shoulder through the sleeping jacket. Her mind wandered over his rigid, unliving body. She was bewildered and insistent. Only her will was set for him to speak to her. Gerald! my dear! She whispered, bending over him, kissing his ear. Her warm breath, playing, flying rhythmically over his ear, seemed to relax the tension. She could feel his body gradually relaxing a little, losing its terrifying unnatural rigidity. Her hands clutched his limbs, his muscles, going over him spasmodically. The hot blood began to flow again through his veins, his limbs relaxed. Turn round to me, she whispered, forlorn with insistence and triumph. So at last he was given again warm and flexible. He turned and gathered her in his arms, and feeling her soft against him, so perfectly and wondrously soft and recipient. His arms tightened on her. She was, as if crushed, powerless in him.  There was no resisting him. His passion was awful to her. Tense and ghastly and impersonal, like a destruction ultimate.  She was being killed. My God! My God! She cried in anguish in his embrace, feeling her life being killed within her. And when he was kissing her, soothing her, her breath came slowly, as if she were really spent dying. Shall I die? Shall I die? She repeated to herself. And in the night and in him there was no answer to the question. And yet, next day, the fragment of her which was not destroyed remained intact and hostile. She did not go away. She remained to finish the holiday admitting nothing. He scarcely ever left her alone, but followed her like a shadow. He was like a doom upon her, a continual thou shalt, thou shalt not. Sometimes it was he who seemed strongest, whilst she was almost gone, creeping near the earth like a spent wind. Sometimes it was the reverse. But always it was this eternal seesaw, one destroyed that the other might exist, one ratified because the other was nulled. In the end, she said to herself, I shall go away from him. Can be free of her, he said to himself in his paroxysms of suffering, and he set himself to be free. He even prepared to go away to leave her in the lurch, but for the first time there was a flaw in his will. Where shall I go? he asked himself. Can't you be self-sufficient? he replied to himself, putting himself upon his pride. Self-sufficient! he repeated. It seemed to him that Gudrun was sufficient under herself, closed round, and completed like a thing in a case. In the calm, static reason of his soul he recognised this, and admitted it was her right to be closed round upon herself self-complete without desire. He realised it, he admitted it. It only needed one last effort on his own part to win for himself the same completeness. He knew that it only needed one convulsion of his will for him to be able to turn upon himself also to close upon himself as a stone fixes upon itself and is impervious, self-completed, a thing isolated. This knowledge threw him into a terrible chaos because however much he might mentally will to be immune and self-complete the desire for this state was lacking and he could not create it. He could see that to exist at all he must be perfectly free of Gudrun, leave her if she wanted to be left, demand nothing of her, have no claim upon her. But then to have no claim upon her he must stand by himself in sheer nothingness and his brain turned to naught at the idea it was a state of nothingness. On the other hand he might give in and fawn to her or finally he might kill her or he might become just indifferent purposeless, dissipated, momentaneous.  A strange rent had been torn in him like a victim that is torn open and given to the heavens so he had been torn apart and given to Gudrun. How should he close again? This wound, this strange infinitely sensitive opening of his soul where he was exposed like an open flower to all the universe and in which he was given to his complement the other, the unknown. This wound, this disclosure, this unfolding of his own covering leaving him incomplete, limited, unfinished like an open flower under the sky. This was his cruelest joy. Why then should he forego it? Why should he close up and become impervious, immune like a partial thing in a sheath when he had broken forth like a seed that has germinated to issue forth in being embracing the unrealised heavens? He would keep the unfinished bliss of his own yearning even through the torture she inflicted upon him. A strange obstinacy possessed him. He would not go away from her whatever she said or did. A strange deathly yearning carried him along with her. She was the determining influence of his very being though she treated him with contempt, repeated rebuffs and denials. Still he would never be gone since in being near her even he felt the quickening, the going forth in him, the release, the knowledge of his own limitation and the magic of the promise as well as the mystery of his own destruction and annihilation. She tortured the open heart of him even as he turned to her. And she was tortured herself. It may have been her will was stronger. She felt with horror as if he tore at the bud of her heart, tore it open like an irreverent, persistent being. Like a boy who pulls off a fly's wings or tears open a bud to see what is in the flower, he tore at her privacy, at her very life. He would destroy her as an immature bud torn open is destroyed. She might open towards him a long while hence in her dreams when she was a pure spirit but now she was not to be violated and ruined. She closed against him fiercely. They climbed together at evening up the high slope to see the sunset. In the finely breathing keen wind they stood and watched the yellow sun sink in crimson and disappear. Then in the east the peaks and ridges glowed with living rose incandescent like immortal flowers against a brown-purple sky, a miracle. Whilst down below the world was a bluish shadow and above like an annunciation hovered a rosy transport in mid-air. To her it was so beautiful. It was a delirium.  He saw them, saw they were beautiful but there arose no clamour in his breast only a bitterness that was visionary in itself. He wished the peaks were grey and un-beautiful so that she should not get her support from them. Why did she betray the two of them so terribly in embracing the glow of the evening? Why did she leave him standing there with the ice-wind blowing through his heart like death to gratify herself among the rosy snow-tips? What does the twilight matter? He said. Why do you grovel before it? Is it so important to you? She winced in violation and in fury. Go away! she cried, and leave me to it. It is beautiful, beautiful! she sang in strange, rhapsodic tones.  Don't try to come between it and me. Take yourself away, you are out of place.  Already the rose was fading, large white stars were flashing out. He waited. He would forgo everything but the yearning. That was the most perfect thing I have ever seen. She said in cold, brutal tones when at last she turned round to him. It amazes me that you should want to destroy it. If you can't see it yourself, why try to debar me? But in reality he had destroyed it for her. She was straining after a dead effect.  There was a soft, voluptuous promise to himself in the words. She was chilled but arrogant. Ha! she said, I am not afraid of your threats. She denied herself to him. She kept her room rigidly private to herself. But he waited on in a curious patience, belonging to his yearning for her. In the end he said to himself with real voluptuous promise when it reaches that point I shall do away with her. And he trembled delicately in every limb in anticipation as he trembled in his most violent accesses of passionate approach to her, trembling with too much desire. She had a curious sort of allegiance with lurker all the while now, something insidious and traitorous. Gerald knew of it. But in the unnatural state of patience and the unwillingness to harden himself against her in which he found himself he took no notice. Although her soft kindliness to the other man whom he hated as a noxious insect made him shiver again with an access of the strange shuddering that came over him repeatedly. He left her alone only when he went skiing a sport he loved and which she did not practice. Then he seemed to sweep out of life to be a projectile into the beyond. And often when he went away she talked to the little German sculptor. They had an invariable topic in their art. They were almost of the same ideas. He hated Mestrovitch, was not satisfied with the futurists. He liked the West African wooden figures, the Aztec art, Mexican and Central American. He saw the grotesque and a curious sort of mechanical motion intoxicated him, a confusion in nature. They had a curious game with each other, Gudrun and Lurker, of infinite suggestivity, strange and leering, as if they had some esoteric understanding of life they alone were initiated into the fearful central secrets that the world dared not know. Their whole correspondence was in a strange, barely comprehensible suggestivity. They kindled themselves at the subtle lust of the Egyptians or the Mexicans. The whole game was one of subtle inter-suggestivity and they wanted to keep it on the plane of suggestion. From their verbal and physical nuances they got the highest satisfaction in the nerves from a queer interchange of half-suggested ideas, looks, expressions and gestures which were quite intolerable, though incomprehensible to Gerald. He had no terms in which to think of their commerce. His terms were much too gross. The suggestion of primitive art was their refuge and the inner mysteries of sensation their object of worship. Art and life were to them the reality and the unreality. Of course, said Gudrun, life doesn't really matter. It is one's art which is central. What one does in one's life has per de rapport. It doesn't signify much. Yes, that is so exactly, replied the sculptor. What one does in one's art, that is the breath of one's being. What one does in one's life, that is a bagatelle for the outsiders to fuss about. It was curious what a sense of elation and freedom Gudrun found in this communication she felt established for ever. Of course Gerald was bagatelle. Love was one of the temporal things in her life except insofar as she was an artist. She thought of Cleopatra. Cleopatra must have been an artist. She reaped the essential from a man. She harvested the ultimate sensation and threw away the husk. And Mary's Stuart and the great Rachel panting with her lovers after the theatre were the exoteric exponents of love. After all, what was the lover but fuel for the transport of this subtle knowledge for a female art? The art of pure, perfect knowledge in sensuous understanding. End of the first part of chapter 30 Recording by Ruth Golding


20 minutes one of the reports authors Nancy Limburg who's the president of the United States Institute of Peace Nancy Thanks very much for coming and I have you here on this day So I do want to ask you whether the recommendations that you make in your report might have helped prevent the kind of attack We've seen in Sri Lanka, you know, there will always be Hate and the kind of hate that provokes the terror that you saw in Sri Lanka I think the question is will the recommendations enable Sri Lanka to prevent That ideology taking root and spreading and turning into cycles of even greater hatred The the task force that Congress directed US Institute of Peace to conduct is looking at how to prevent Extremism in fragile states by looking at the conditions of fragility of fragile states where you have poor governance and a lack of a functioning State society compact because those are the conditions that enable that kind of ideology to take root and gain recruits and even whole territory Are you optimistic that we can do it? I mean we've spent billions as dollars as we said since 9 11 people have been looking at this for nearly two decades now Through a microscope trying to understand how we can root out how we can root out the causes of of these kinds of attacks We haven't managed to do it. Do you think we can? Well, I think we have to keep trying and what this approach Articulates is that we need to really have a shared understanding because often what happens is our our military our diplomatic and our development efforts are not Aligned and they in fact can undercut one another and that what the three recommendations do is create that alignment have Potential for creating longer-term engagement more sustained that's in partnership with these fragile areas and more iterative Programming understanding these problems will not be solved in a couple of years. These are often generational What's encouraging is that similar to these recommendations? There are two bills moving through the US House and Senate right now So there is a convergence that's starting to happen that says we've got to try a different way Nancy the third of your recommendations that we read out there was the US needs to pool international resources I wonder how you envisage that working with the current administration in the White House which Seems to be less than multilateral in its thinking Well, the good news is that as I said, there's congressional action on this this initiative also builds on Something called the strategic or the stabilization assistance review that is already picket picked up some of these recommendations Across state aid and DoD, you know, it enables for more cost effective More efficient action and that's of great interest to this administration Understanding the importance of burden sharing Okay, Nancy limbo from the US Institute of Peace. Thanks very much for coming to join us. Nice to be here In two days time Kim Jong-un will have made history by traveling to Russia for his first ever meeting with Russian


What the Narcissist Regrets Most There is something the Narcissist may regret There is something they may feel disappointed over Which is the result of something they have done or failed to do And that is when they see that you have reached your goals When you have taken back control of your life When you have become successful They don't regret losing you as a person They miss the lifestyle They miss your tolerance of the abuse They miss how you treated them Because it made them feel relevant and important But they took you for granted They didn't appreciate you Both the grass was greener on the other side But it wasn't greener on the other side They end up in a worse situation While you moved on to become more successful To become happier and healthier The Narcissist is always scanning the environment for threats And they see your success as a threat to their self-image So they're very aware of what you're doing and achieving They know when you're doing better without them Although they may not know how you got there And it will shock and surprise them Because they never expected you to become anything better or greater If they expected that They wouldn't have left They expected you to deteriorate over time And that is why they had to get out Because it was like a sinking ship And they weren't going to go down with you But they will be shocked to see that you're doing better without them They will wonder how it was possible for you Because when they were with you You remained the same or things got worse Because they were the cause of your failures or lack of success So of course Once they're out of the picture you're going to do better But when they see that They get very envious and jealous It doesn't mean that they want you They just desire to have what you have So they will become very bitter and resentful Because you found happiness and fulfillment in your life They will feel like it's unfair Because they were with you before you came up It will eat away at them Because they thought the grass was greener on the other side But they got it wrong It just lucked that way in the beginning Because their new situation didn't have any problems It was still new Because there wasn't enough time for them to affect it They thought they could move on to another situation Without changing themselves and there wouldn't be any issues But after some time They're going through the same things again And that's when they regret leaving you They regret not being able to partake in everything that you could be providing to them Because they know what they've lost It makes them very envious and jealous It makes them very bitter and resentful Because they've burnt the bridge They've done so many things that can't be undone You can't accept them You don't even want them around you You can't even be friends with them You don't want anything to do with them And they know it They hate it Because they have a strong sense of entitlement They see you as their property They see you as an object that belongs to them But you don't want to be around them You don't even want them to breathe the same air as you And it really gets to them Because you used to give everything to them You were there for them whenever they needed you But then you cut them off You treat them like a stranger You treat them like they don't even exist You have no concern for them After they used to have so much power and control over you It destroys them They will try to find new supply They will look somewhere else But they won't find fulfillment in anything Because they're so full of envy and hatred After they've seen you move on and become successful While they're still stuck in the same condition And that is why they stalk you That is why they're constantly watching what you're doing Because they thought you would have lost your relevance by now But you're still continuing to be healthy and successful And you may want revenge Because you were trying to make things right While they were playing games While they were messing with you But you can't let it slow you down You can't let this situation define you You can't let it determine who you're going to become And they're not going to like it Because they used to fool and deceive you And you would deal with it But now they can't do that anymore Because now you'll say no Now you'll stand up for yourself Because they've been taken from you Without giving anything back to you in return They didn't have any concern for you They took advantage of you They were only there for what you were giving to them They weren't there for you Thank you for watching I hope this video resonates with you Please like, comment, share and subscribe If you would like to donate My PayPal link is in the video description Coaching Inquiries You can email me at coachingatnaqsurfiver.co.uk Thank you for watching And I'll talk to you soon


so are we good to start great so thanks for coming everyone my name is Dmitri I'm an engineer for Red Hat and I'm a core team member of Ironic and Ironic inspector and this wonderful Monday afternoon I'll be talking about Ironic inspector and bare metal inspection and what is happening there what happened during the Mitaika cycle what will probably happen in the Newton cycle and yeah this is for today I'll talk about bare metal inspection we'll explain how Ironic inspector works for those who don't know yet and I will talk about a few things that are not as obvious and not all people are aware of but they're very useful which we support and future plans of course future plans so bare metal inspection or introspection we can't agree on which work to use to be honest what is it okay I have a bare metal machine it has a lot of properties it's not like a VM which is mostly controlled by you you create how many CPUs how much memory and so on so on bare metal machine has a soul so to say hard-coded and some of these properties we actually have to know for the work and this is CPU architecture a number of CPUs memory size hard disk size and hardware addresses MAC addresses of network cards this is a bare minimum you have to put all this information in Ironic database if you want first three if you want scheduling to work the last one actually if you want deployment to work but the things are fixed and we can't figure out it from the machine itself so as the inspection process involves going there and figuring out these properties and maybe many more for other use cases Ironic separate inspection process via inspect provisioning warp and we essentially have two types of inspection first is out of band how we call it it's vendor specific it's use vendor BMC features for example HPA a law or Dell drag their management interface to figure out all this data so it's essentially it's one network request maybe a couple of requests to their API and that's all quick reliable the problem it's yeah it's very vendor specific and unfortunately the IPMI protocol doesn't really support doesn't really has support for these things it's gonna change with the redfish specification we include some of inspection as supposed to become a new IPMI but it's not yet there so the second option we have an invent inspection which involves actually booting some code on the machine you take a RAM disk boots as a machine with this RAM disk it collects information post it back you process it it works nearly for everything but at least for all enterprise hardware definitely for majority of non enterprise hardware just as well as minimum requirements unfortunately it's of course longer so boot time of a modern machine is several minutes at least sometimes not that reliable because of big C booting and so on but yeah we essentially have to support both and this second case is implemented by a project called ironic inspector which I'll be talking about in this talk a quick summary so ironic inspector project is under the bare metal project umbrella with ironic itself it's a separate service with its own API own client library and so on and here are a few stats we'll have relatively diverse community a lot of what happened by the way this numbers are from the mitaka cycle I forgot to write it here so it's not overall what we have how it all works on high level we have ironic Python agent that's a generic RAM disk for when it deployment is done by it as well so nothing surprising here it works for both inspection and deployment we set up a static DHCP server and most of our recommendations in Piper's support and in Dev Stack plug-in it's DNS mask but we're pretty server agnostic in this case it instructs all hosts that are not on deployment to boot IPA for inspection so it provides specific kernel arguments to say okay this boot will be for inspection please inspect the hardware then we have our service it which has its own HTTP API as I already said it manages success to the DHCP server essentially with IP tables and processes the data itself and as I mentioned we have our own client library in addition to what is provided by ironic how it actually works we require node to be created in most cases I'll be talking about more cases a bit later you only have to know power credentials it's IPMI address IPMI username IPMI password or in case of render technology like again draco I love it's I love password and I love address and so on then you start the in-band inspection you can use ironic API with inspect verb or you can use ironic inspector API directly ironic inspector API is used by ironic so it's kind of the same right now then what happens we configure for a vote to ensure that this node can boot from our DNS mask server that have some tricky magic to avoid clashes with Newton actually there set boot device issue power on request IPA boots IPA collects hardware information post it back we process this information we update ironic databases everything we fetched and optionally we store the whole data from the RAM disk in swift that's something not everyone knows but yeah we can actually store this data so that was the basics right inspection in ironic requires these four things to be discovered and we really discover them again CPU number CPU architecture memory disk make addresses five things actually but that can be more when you put a RAM disk on the machine you can figure out essentially everything that can be figured out from within it you can even benchmark it right why not do that so what we have the first thing is as a whole process is pluggable we have plugins on the server side where data processing happens and have plugins on the RAM disk site where that is collected so you can so usually if you want to do something smart you plug into both pieces so on the server side we can write plugins in Python we call them processing hooks you have to hook points first just after receiving the information so we can validate it second when we are making changes to the node itself why two parts well between two parts there is one more tricky piece we actually have to find a node in ironic database by the data so imagine put a lot of nodes they get introspection data they put big gson objects back but they don't contain node you ID so there is a lookup process which takes MAC addresses take IPMI address that we figured out from within the machine and tries to match so the first hook runs before that the second runs after that's the important difference so the first hook cannot update their own a node because we don't know the node but it can do validation in including it can help actually as a lookup process and the remt exercise we call them collectors they yeah by the way I didn't talk about the example right this is a simple example which extracted from our standard plug-in set it just if RAM disk reported error rise it during introspection the real one is a bit more complex but the idea is like that collectors okay collectors are built into the API image to fetch more information and unfortunately adding a collector involves a rebuilding your image what can be done we nibble in disabled collectors via the kernel command line once they are built in and here is the example the Python function it's updates the data record with something that's not a real thing actually I just made it up when building this presentation so if you try it and it doesn't work blame me just an example of one of plugins that we have at people usually are not aware of we have extra hardware plugins on both RAM disk site and service site it uses a hardware Python library and it collects some enormous amount of information I think people counted it was around 1,000 facts from the node as and we can then store it in Swift and then you can do something with it and that's what people actually do this is how you enables it enable a collector norm disk size in a processing hook and I was talking about benchmarking this thing can run benchmarks and add this to data the results of these benchmarks you can be smart CPU size memories output disk operations again we require one more configuration option to enable that because this benchmarking usually takes like two to three minutes and the more CPUs you have the more disks you have it will go linear but I have a very helpful thing you can use it next thing that people don't quite know about and it's very cool so everything I was talking about before is extending introspection by an operator so you'll install some plugins you configure your ironic inspector service to use them but what about the user what if you give a user of our API ability to extend the process and here is how we have API for things called introspection rules you essentially define a small snippets in JSON based domain specific language like that which will be run on every introspection so again the difference is this is user driven this can be created via API deleted edited and so on so no operator intervention is required I install wise simple example I know people actually use something like that if you find out that memory is too low fails introspection why not a bit more complex example it's again a bit made up but still can show some you are we can inspect the current system or board manufacturer and for example figure out if all disks are rotational are not rotational and set some capability on ironic node then after the capability is said it can be used by Nova for scheduling so this capability discovery is a big topic in ironic inspector we're really interesting in having more of that and actually triple is using it very heavily for process called profile matching that's how we call it is essentially is take creating these rules and adding a profile capability to a node which then is used for scheduling if you look in triple documentation that it actually is there with examples of such rules this one a lot of people are asking me okay introspection is good but what if I don't have to create a node before introspection this is something that people call discovery I was resisting it for quite some time due to numerous reasons but here it is in the Metaika cycle we actually added that the difference is you don't have to create a node record it will be created so you combine and rolling process with introspection process how it works very very high level you power on the node maybe manually just go to the server and press the button maybe via some CMDB IP my tool directly and next steps essentially the same IPA is booted data is collected data is sent back to ironic inspector then ironic inspector tries to find a node if it fails it creates a node that's not owned by default you have to enable that behavior actually and then for example you can use introspection rules to populate power credentials you can if you know the defaults for example I know the default credentials for Dell machines probably a lot of people here know them right if it if it detects that manufacturer contains Dell and this auto discovered flag is set by the discovery process always so we don't touch nodes that were not discovered that are already existing then we can set a driver ironic to most specific one we can set from inventory we can take BMC address and set it a drag cost and set the default credentials so with this introspection rule in place you can actually just use this node for deployment right after discovery for more generic cases of course you might want to go there manually to the node to populate IP my credentials or to use your CMDB for example to fetch them there's another interesting topic which you don't quite support yet and they brings me to future plans CMDB integration I know there are a bunch of folks who are really interested to be able after discovery or after introspection to go to CMDB with for example is a PMI address always MAC address which we detected and fetch all the remaining data from it and combine it as all whole process especially useful for discovery we come back with discovered data we need IP my credentials we need everything like that you go to CMDB you combine what is discovered in the band with what you have in CMDB and as a result you have a node ready for deployment essentially next ironic inspector is not H.A. ready as the current moment it can run only in one instance at least safely run if you run it or several machines several ironic inspector instances there are DHCP supportive clash and so on so big topic for Newton we wanted to become H.A. at least in the sense of you can have several instances of ironic inspector running in your cloud one is cute as a working introspection rules as I said we have big interest in the capability discovery using introspection rules and without introspection rules there are even talks about making introspection rules in a full featured programming language which a lot of people hate but maybe that's it it was it was not really short but I have plenty of time for questions if you have any thank you yes please what hardware has given you the most problems every hardware well our big problems is hardware it doesn't have reliable IP my access or something like that for some hardware IP my address cannot be discovered from inside the machine it also happens so yeah sometimes we have to apply workarounds here as some hardware have doesn't have a unique IP my address so we can't use it for low cup it's pretty a lot of hard actually of this kind so yeah we have workarounds in place for this particular case by the way so it's IP my bridging for example is using great somehow work around that any more questions yes please for the combination of a discovery with introspection how do you match when you have heterogeneous hardware you look for what you've discovered in ironic to see if it's already enrolled but how if they're all the same how can you differentiate between what you've discovered and if you know if it's already been enrolled or if you create a new ironic record for it so two things the same two things that we use for look up first make addresses ironic note should have make addresses in the ports database second thing is AP my address if it can reliably detect that also with the exception of some cases like I mentioned about it above it should be unique question yeah so do you have any plugins developed already that would allow you to pull hardware out of your open stack cluster run it through a bunch of burning tests and then reintegrate it back in so if you wanted to say run your cluster on repurposed hardware and then just continually test for performance or for any sort of failures that you might be able to detect through memory tasks or other hardware burning tests great question thank you that's one of the topic I should have put on the future plans probably ironic has a cleaning process despite its name it's just a generic set of operations that are run before deployments so my personal plan hopefully from Newton is maybe to have an inspector running in this cleaning process so when you decommission the note it runs through inspection maybe comparison formation is what we have in ironic maybe do benchmarks and fail something if you see benchmarks are too low you can create an inspection rule right to fail in respect of if these corporations is too low so yeah we don't have it there right now it's not too hard to actually make it happen so someone just has to do that okay this is a follow-on to just the previous question that was on this side so when you have a bare metal machine and you do some kind of work on it it could be just repair work but it could actually maybe they threw in some new drives or something or added another Nick how is that handled by ironic or ironic inspector and and what's the best practice for doing that sorry I think quite good particular like hardware upgrades like you add something so you've already you've already got this node in ironic but you need you add another let's say you add a bunch more RAM or you add another disk or you add another Nick how do you handle that and ironic because you've already got it in your database by it's like it's primary Nick or something it's indexed by something how do you how do you manage that change yeah it's not happening automatically so we don't have real-time update of that you can rerun introspection on the node just in the same fashion as in previous question right between deployments for example but yeah so yes the question was whether inspection can update existing records yes it will update the records if you were running the same node so I've got a specific problem I'm trying to solve where I don't know what I've got hundreds of machines and I'm trying to figure out which switch ports are connected to it the only way to figure that out is to turn the machine on can I use ironic sort of outside the scope of open stack where I can fire it up and maybe extra like bond a couple of ports so I can look at it from a switch side you know what I'm talking about instead of instead of using it to stage you know my open stack bare metal but can I use it just for the inspector well inspectors pretty bound to ironic you can use ironic and inspector standalone independent of the whole reminding of that stack that's true even without keystone authentication so ironic plus inspector are pretty much independent as to what you're asking about switch port discovery yes it's a big topic in a ironic right now we're working on tenant separation and for that task specifically we need to be able to detect which switch ports node is connected to it's not there yet I hope to land it in Newton cycle yep I think there is one proposed it needs to be updated but yeah yep so we just have to wire them in hopefully we can do it pretty soon anything else a couple more yeah I think we have time okay can I put my own tests in ironic can I extend it so you know you were talking about running a benchmark or whatever this back kind of the switch thing but can I run my own inspector function yeah this is these parts yeah for example this one is running on the RAM disk right I'm doing a pretty simple thing but you can actually the benchmarks are implemented the same way as a separate plug-in so we can run benchmark here this part goes to the RAM disk so built-in the IP a RAM disk this Python snippet and it will do everything you want yes please how do you need anything helps you deal with pools of MAC addresses that can move around and be dynamic on your host so we use a Cisco UCS right we have MAC IDs going all over the place yeah we don't quite deal with it right now probably should ask Cisco for more details on how it works I mean I've seen in some tools like this is kind of goes back but form and right you get MAC IDs will get caught up in your your fact tables you have to delete them manually you know if you recycle a MAC ID or something yeah I can imagine ironic doesn't deal with it I think just as well I have a fixed port database it's an interesting topic to consider I know some folks we're asking about what to do with it's not only about MAC addresses actually our other resources can be allocated on demand for such systems so it's not there yet please use the microphone one of the one of the options for inspector is what to do when it reruns on the same node and recognizes the max of changed yes so that might answer your question yeah thanks for reminding that actually we have a lot of configuration options one is controlling whether the overwrite information we can prevent overwriting of information so it's only adds new information but never removes existing one and yeah we have several options for how to deal with MAC with MAC addresses whether to remove ports that we didn't find which ports to add at all ports or all ports that got IP addresses only ports we use for PXC booting for example this all kind of thing can be tuned in the configuration file for an inspector yeah thank you yes please question here is do you actually support like in the multi-naked or nick bounding etc and also how do you do with like a multi-tenants network to make sure the network at isolation for VMSI we can use SDM for bare metal is there any way out there to do the same thing the great questions think I'll start with the second one because well it's the first one I'm not quite sure that's an answer about nick bonding we don't do it but for the second question yes for the second question it's a bit more interesting so the tenant separation is not ongoing work and ironic and inspector wants to support that but with one problem to be able to switch networks you have to know MAC address knowing MAC address is not a requirement for an inspector but then network switch won't happen so two options here first well you manually switch the node to provisioning network before before running inspection and second the second option if you have for example out-of-bend inspection support in your hardware but you need some additional features from inspector you start with out-of-bend inspection just to figure out MAC addresses then it's then you probably feel in switch configuration manually then you can use inspector this is not landed yet the support I have a spec up for that so probably again Newton is a goal for this work so yeah both answer to both questions is not yet sorry yeah yeah so what Jimmy is saying we have a session on a tenant's switching topic cross-project session when tomorrow so we can go ask us some questions there on this topic anything else okay thank you very much


much time on the bar. Here's a sports mixup moment and it came rather early. The first goal of the encounter, this one by Leon Brown getting by the defensive line and fine pass goalkeeper Jerevin Wall. His first of the afternoon, Leon Brown. That was 1-0 for Stats at the time, the sports mixup moment. Don't miss the next time when there is a schoolboy football on the sports mixup. Download from the App Store or the Google Play.


I like when you're talking about the other four billion, and I have a question about exchanges. In your opinion, what is the best practice to build exchanges in the knowledge of the world? Personally, I love Bitcoin, but I'm not comfortable with this central bank of Bitcoin that we call exchanges. Yeah, so this question is about supporting the other six billion depending on how you count. What is the issue? Exchanges are very centralized. They're custodial, which means they hold Bitcoin for people. That represents a significant risk for Bitcoin users, not Bitcoin itself, but Bitcoin users who can lose their money. We don't have too many perfect solutions right now. There are a few small-scale decentralized systems. BitSquare, for example, is one. It's still in beta. It's still very small-scale. There are some more decentralized systems, local Bitcoins, which allow you to do person-to-person cash transactions. The one thing that cash has that's similar to Bitcoin is that it can be verified upon presentation. It doesn't depend on any counterparty. You hold it, you own it. So exchanging cash for Bitcoin is the most secure way to get Bitcoin. But actually, the best way to get Bitcoin is not to buy it. The best way to get Bitcoin is to earn it by the expenditure of your labor. So dedicate your labor to Bitcoin, and you achieve two goals at the same time. One, you're earning Bitcoin from the people who can pay you in Bitcoin. And two, you have removed your labor from the machinery of the state, which was using your labor to build bombs. That's my personal philosophy. So two birds, one stone. I'm in on the good side, I'm out on the bad side.


In this video I want to give you a bit of an overview of geometry nodes in Blender. What are they, how do they work, why are they great and what can I do with them.  What it means that these tools are procedural is basically that you can create your own fully custom geometry operations that you can run automatically on any object to very easily create complex results from a simple input. This means that you can build your own modifiers with settings and parameters that you can integrate into your workflow, share with others or simply have an accessible way to interface with geometry data on a more fundamental level. And with geometry nodes, all of that is made possible using a node system that is directly integrated into Blender. Geometry nodes directly hook up to the familiar modifier stack that you can use to procedurally modify an object's geometry. You can simply add a geometry nodes modifier just like you would any other. That modifier can then be instructed to do anything you want by selecting a node tree that defines exactly what it does. Just like other modifiers, it takes the geometry from the previous one in the stack. But now you get full control over what happens with that geometry using the node tree before it is passed back out to the next one. Once you have picked what node tree the modifier uses, you can also get a bunch of custom parameters which define settings of the modifier that you can adjust from the outside. But when you want to actually get full control over the modifier, you have to go to the node editor. And this is where the real magic happens. Here you can, by making node links, pass around geometry data between the nodes, process and change the data, split off branches and merge them back together up to the final point where you pass the geometry through the output to the next modifier in the stack. With that, you are entirely free in what you do with the geometry and only limited by the nodes that are available and your creativity of how to use them. You can even make use of the benefits of different types of geometry and convert them on the fly. For example, you can draw a curve as an input, create a mesh from that, scatter a bunch of points on the mesh, and turn that point cloud into a volume to get a simple setup that creates nice little puffy cartoon clouds just from a simple doodled curve and a handful of nodes. And that's the power of procedural systems. You can take very simple inputs that you can iterate over very quickly and let the node system do the rest to generate a more complex result on top of it. Another strength of procedural systems comes into play once you introduce randomization. With random elements in your procedural generation, you can very easily and quickly generate a large number of random variations simply by changing the seed value of your random input. This is great for assets that you need a lot of without caring enough to handcraft them individually or to generate a bunch of random variations as an inspiration in your design process. You never know what you might get. I want to encourage you to take the ideas that I presented in this video as an inspiration and pick up geometry nodes just to play around and try to achieve something that peaks your interest. Some examples would be a system to scatter objects on a surface, a more advanced custom array modifier, or a little random spaceship generator. I brushed over some of the more complex concepts of geometry nodes very quickly in this video. If you want to get a deeper understanding of how these things work, you can head over to studio.blender.org and check out our most recent course, Geometry Nodes from Scratch, where I walk you through all the concepts you will need to know with both a theoretical and a more hands-on approach. Take care.


What's up everybody, Jason here for jaspyscasebreaks.com. We just sold out this last filler to unlock Immaculate Football Round and Teens Break, number six with this 10-spot giveaway with 2021 Prestige Football Hangar. This is a one-box hangar break around in teams number 30. And first we're gonna do the break. We're gonna randomize the customer names and teams should be the hits out. And at the end of the break, we'll take all 32 customer names that bought in, re-randomize it with a de-dice roller, top 10 out of 32 GetSpots in Immaculate Football, which will be coming up next. So here we go, let's roll it and do the break first. Two and a five, seven times, good luck. One, two, three, four, five, six, and seven. Mark, down and branded. Seven times, one, two, three, four, five, six, five, six, and seven. Giants out of the Steelers. All right guys, well, no trades of course, quick little hangar. All right, so these are just base cards we'll skip to. Carson Wiens, Drew Locke, Malcolm Jenkins, Joey Bosa, Elijah Moore, little hometown heroes, or not hometown heroes, Prestige heroes, I should say. Deandre Hopkins, way to pay, Keva Fordist, Marcia Deandre Hopkins, way to pay, Keva Fordist, Marcia Deandre Brown, Travis Etienne, and some more base. All righty, let it go. Switch scenes, here we go. Here's the dice roll, here's the guns and grenades, and we're top 10, get in, roll. Four and a five, nine times, good luck. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. All right, so sad times from Nicholas, just missing God down to Steve, but congrats to Foud, Joe, Foud, Jacob, Sean, Sean Breen, Sean Matic, Matthew, Mark, Nicholas, and Alex. There you go. Top 10, get in. Congratulations guys, coming up next is the break itself. Good luck everybody.