Word: gazing
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...swims in the White House pool. Instead of the relaxing Cutty Sark and soda, he now sips root beer or a no-calorie orange drink in his Oval Office. There are deep, dark circles beneath his eyes, and his voice is hoarse. Last week he paused briefly to gaze at a White House bust of another wartime President - Abraham Lincoln -and compassion was stamped on his own weary features...
Grazed Lip. Typically, the Shah glanced warily from side to side, and it was well that he did. His gaze met that of a young conscript named Reza Bakhshabadi, who held his submachine gun at a level lower than usual. The Shah, trained in arms, was well aware of the technique of firing an automatic weapon: start shooting low and then raise your aim-if you take dead aim the kick of recoil makes shots go too high for accuracy...
...pounded out of stone with a mallet as if hacked from timelessness by human persistence. The pose may be stiff, but the archaic smile on the ancient Egyptian's lips reflects an implicit belief that he has found a house for his soul and that his eyes gaze toward eternity. Yet without patient scholarship, he would only have added to the historic rubble of mankind...
...ceremonial washing of the genitals in public before prayers." He ponders four sweepers whose ritual effort only makes a hotel staircase dirtier than before "They are not required to clean. That is a subsidiary part of their function, which is to be sweepers, degraded beings." In Gorakhpur his critical gaze falls on the bazaar: "The sweetshops are required to have glass cases; the cases accordingly stand, quite empty, next to the heaps of exposed sweets." Naipaul's candid view of India is attenuated, unfortunately, by a slightly patronizing air. The squalid, unpleasant truths are trotted out for their shock...
...minutes before curtain time, he enters the wings and begins exercising again. Then, as the curtain ascends, his forehead glistening with sweat, his chest heaving, he steps out into a halo of white light. Turning slowly, deliberately, he fixes his enigmatic gaze on the audience for one hypnotic moment, then begins to dance. And, like the sound of the sea, there comes the great rushing gasp of an audience enchanted...