title: Shivers, Slaps and Silence: Building an Identity Out of Thin Air and Twigs
author:  Denis Glass 
description: Early personal identity and character are built, piece by piece, from childhood experiences that color our lives long after those events have faded from view. In cases of abuse, the deepest layers of the human self are thrown into chaos. Memory, academic focus, career choices get shredded under the pressure of just surviving.<br /><br />Inspiring, touching and scorchingly honest, 'Shivers, Slaps and Silence' is an intense, unforgettable journey, wildly paced and tinged with the sort of passion, unexpected humor and optimism that teenagers do best.
zlib_text: 
  
  
  H. P. LOVECRAFT
  
  
  COLLECTION
  
  
  
  
  
  COOL AIR
  
  
  You ask me to explain why I am afraid of a draught of cool air; why I shiver
  more than others upon entering a cold room, and seem nauseated and repelled
  when the chill of evening creeps through the heat of a mild autumn day. There
  are those who say I respond to cold as others do to a bad odour, and I am the
  last to deny the impression. What I will do is to relate the most horrible
  circumstance I ever encountered, and leave it to you to judge whether or not
  this forms a suitable explanation of my peculiarity.
  
  
  
  
  
  It is a mistake to fancy that horror is associated inextricably with darkness,
  silence, and solitude. I found it in the glare of mid-afternoon, in the
  clangour of a metropolis, and in the teeming midst of a shabby and commonplace
  rooming-house with a prosaic landlady and two stalwart men by my side. In the
  spring of 1923 I had secured some dreary and unprofitable magazine work in the
  city of New York; and being unable to pay any 