Admiration

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Comander, aided by his younger colleague, Blasius, and afterwards by Gallicius, continued to maintain the Reformed faith against Papists, Anabaptists, and also against foreign pensioners who had their headquarters at Coire, and who punished him for his opposition by a reduction of his scanty salary of one hundred and twenty guilders. He was at times tempted to resign, but Bullinger urged him to hold on.224 He stood at the head of the Reformed synod till his death in 1557. He was succeeded by Fabricius, who died of the pestilence in 1566. Philip Gallicius (Saluz) developed a more extensive activity. He is the Reformer of the Engadin, but labored also as pastor and evangelist in Domleschg, Langwies, and Coire. He was born on the eastern frontier of Graubünden in 1504, and began to preach already in 1520. He had an irresistible eloquence and power of persuasion. When he spoke in Romansh, the people flocked from every direction to hear him. He was the chief speaker at two disputations in Süs, a town of the Lower Engadin, against the Papists (1537), and against the Anabaptists (1544).225 He also introduced the Reformation in Zuz in the Lower Engadin, 1554, with the aid of John Travers, a distinguished patriot, statesman, soldier, and lay-preacher, who was called "the steelclad Knight in the service of the Lord." Gallicius suffered much persecution and poverty, but remained gentle, patient, and faithful to the end. When preaching in the Domleschg he had not even bread to feed his large family, and lived for weeks on vegetables and salt. And yet he educated a son for the ministry at Basel, and dissuaded him from accepting a lucrative offer in another calling. He also did as much as he could for the Italian refugees. He died of the pestilence with his wife and three sons at Coire, 1566. He translated the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed, and the Ten Commandments, and several chapters of the Bible, into the Romansh language, and thus laid the foundation of the Romansh literature. He also wrote a catechism and a Latin grammar, which were printed at Coire. He prepared the Confession of Raetia, in 1552, which was afterwards superseded by the Confession of Bullinger in 1566. Ulrich Campell (b. c. 1510, d. 1582) was pastor at Coire and at Süs, and, next to Gallicius, the chief reformer of the Engadin. He is also the first historian of Raetia and one of the founders of the religious literature in Romanic Raetia. His history is written in good Latin, and based upon personal observation, the accounts of the ancient Romans, the researches of Tschudi, and communications of Bullinger and Vadian. It begins A.D. 100 and ends about 1582.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Like the rest of the audience, we were discriminating. We had our favourite turns - artistes we watched and shouted for; songs we begged to have sung and re-sung again and again until the singer’s throat was dry, and she - for more often than not it was the lady singers whom Alice and I loved best - could sing no more, but only smile and curtsey. And when the show was over, and we had paid our respects to Tony in his stuffy little office behind the ticket-seller’s booth, we would carry the tunes away with us. We would sing them on the train to Whitstable - and sometimes others, returning home from the same show as merry as we, would sing them with us. We would whisper them into the darkness as we lay in bed, we would dream our dreams to the beat of their verses; and we would wake next morning humming them still. We’d serve a bit of music-hall glamour, then, with our fish suppers - Alice whistling as she carried platters, and making the customers smile to hear her; me, perched on my high stool beside my bowl of brine, singing to the oysters that I scrubbed and prised and bearded. Mother said I should be on the stage myself. When she said it, however, she laughed; and so did I. The girls I saw in the glow of the footlights, the girls whose songs I loved to learn and sing, they weren’t like me. They were more like my sister: they had cherry lips, and curls that danced about their shoulders; they had bosoms that jutted, and elbows that dimpled, and ankles - when they showed them - as slim and as shapely as beer-bottles. I was tall, and rather lean. My chest was flat, my hair dull, my eyes a drab and an uncertain blue. My complexion, to be sure, was perfectly smooth and clear, and my teeth were very white; but these - in our family, at least - were counted unremarkable, for since we all passed our days in a miasma of simmering brine, we were all as bleached and blemishless as cuttlefish. No, girls like Alice were meant to dance upon a gilded stage, skirted in satin, hailed by cupids; and girls like me were made to sit in the gallery, dark and anonymous, and watch them. Or so, anyway, I thought then. The routine I have described - the routine of prising and bearding and cooking and serving, and Saturday-night visits to the music hall - is the one that I remember most from my girlhood ; but it was, of course, only a winter one.

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  What a difference. Even though he still got a no (a triumph—his goal, remember, was to get rejected), he doesn’t feel the panic he felt with the security guard. The way you ask makes a big difference, Jia discovered. Even though he was still anxious, without his safety behaviors Jia appeared as if he were not anxious. He stood up straight, looked directly at the guy instead of at the floor or over his head, smiled, and used his normal volume and speed. He slowed down and took his time. And lo and behold, this looked the same as confidence. After just two experiences, one with safety behaviors and one without, Jia had discovered a major secret: you set the tone. Act as if you were not anxious, drop your safety behaviors, and not only will you feel better; you’ll also get a better response. And guess what? No one can tell you’re acting. Guess what else? Eventually, you won’t be. When I talked to Jia about this discovery, he said, “I realized that what I was asking was out of the realm of the social norm, but the way I was asking was not. I didn’t blow a horn or do a dance. I came in being very respectful. And people usually respond in kind.” * * * My first inkling of how this worked occurred in college. My junior year, I was a “Resident Counselor,” an upperclassman who lived in a freshman dorm, not necessarily to enforce rules but to act as a resource for first-years as they transitioned to college life. As a public health measure, all Resident Counselors had help-yourself envelopes of safer-sex supplies—condoms, lube, dental dams—taped to the outside of our doors. I was usually conscientious about refilling them, but in the late spring I got caught up in the rush of finals, leaving wilting, empty envelopes hanging sadly on my door. At the very end of the year, on move-out day, I was packing books in boxes in my room. My door was open—I was hoping friends would pop in to distract me. But then a student I didn’t recognize—glasses, spiky hair—knocked and stuck his head in my doorway. “Hey, do you have any condoms?” he asked. I was impressed with his boldness. “No, sorry, I’m out—but there’s another counselor’s door down the hall and to the right. Try there.” “Thanks,” he said, and trotted off. Almost twenty years later, I still remember this guy’s chutzpah with admiration. He needed a condom, urgently, which implied what he planned to do as soon as he found one. But he wasn’t afraid to reveal all this to a stranger and ask for help—two things that are usually one-way tickets to social anxiety. He could have easily thought, She’s going to think I’m creepy/weird/perverted, and snuck away, but instead he knocked, showed his face, and asked like it was no big deal.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  At first Constantine, like his father, in the spirit of the Neo-Platonic syncretism of dying heathendom, reverenced all the gods as mysterious powers; especially Apollo, the god of the sun, to whom in the year 308 he presented munificent gifts. Nay, so late as the year 321 he enjoined regular consultation of the soothsayers5 in public misfortunes, according to ancient heathen usage; even later, he placed his new residence, Byzantium, under the protection of the God of the Martyrs and the heathen goddess of Fortune;6 and down to the end of his life he retained the title and the dignity of a Pontifex Maximus, or high-priest of the heathen hierarchy.7 His coins bore on the one side the letters of the name of Christ, on the other the figure of the Sun-god, and the inscription "Sol invictus." Of course there inconsistencies may be referred also to policy and accommodation to the toleration edict of 313. Nor is it difficult to adduce parallels of persons who, in passing from Judaism to Christianity, or from Romanism to Protestantism, have so wavered between their old and their new position that they might be claimed by both. With his every victory, over his pagan rivals, Galerius, Maxentius, and Licinius, his personal leaning to Christianity and his confidence in the magic power of the sign of the cross increased; yet he did not formally renounce heathenism, and did not receive baptism until, in 337, he was laid upon the bed of death. He had an imposing and winning person, and was compared by flatterers with Apollo. He was tall, broad-shouldered, handsome, and of a remarkably vigorous and healthy constitution, but given to excessive vanity in his dress and outward demeanor, always wearing an oriental diadem, a helmet studded with jewels, and a purple mantle of silk richly embroidered with pearls and flowers worked in gold,8 His mind was not highly cultivated, but naturally clear, strong, and shrewd, and seldom thrown off its guard. He is said to have combined a cynical contempt of mankind with an inordinate love of praise. He possessed a good knowledge of human nature and administrative energy and tact. His moral character was not without noble traits, among which a chastity rare for the time,9 and a liberality and beneficence bordering on wastefulness were prominent. Many of his laws and regulations breathed the spirit of Christian justice and humanity, promoted the elevation of the female sex, improved the condition of slaves and of unfortunates, and gave free play to the efficiency of the church throughout the whole empire. Altogether he was one of the best, the most fortunate, and the most influential of the Roman emperors, Christian and pagan.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  "As the German Reformation is connected with Martin Luther, and the Swiss with Ulrich Zwingli, that of the Romanic and Western European nations is connected with John Calvin, the most remarkable personage of the time. He was not equal either to Luther or Zwingli in general talent, mental vigor, or tranquility of soul; but in logical acuteness and talent for organization he was at least equal, if not superior, to either. He settled the basis for the development of many states and churches. He stamped the form of the Reformation in countries to which he was a stranger. The French date the beginnings of their literary development from him, and his influence was not restricted to the sphere of religion, but embraced their intellectual life in general; no one else has so permanently influenced the spirit and form of their written language as he. "At a time when Europe had no solid results of reform to allow, this little State of Geneva stood up as a great power; year by year it sent forth apostles into the world, who preached its doctrines everywhere, and it became the most dreaded counterpoise to Rome, when Rome no longer had any bulwark to defend her. The missionaries from this little community displayed the lofty and dauntless spirit which results from stoical education and training; they bore the stamp of a self-renouncing heroism which was elsewhere swallowed up in theological narrowness. They were a race with vigorous bones and sinews, for whom nothing was too daring, and who gave a new direction to Protestantism by causing it to separate itself from the old traditional monarchical authority, and to adopt the gospel of democracy as part of its creed. It formed a weighty counterpoise to the desperate efforts which the ancient Church and monarchical power were making to crush the spirit of the Reformation. "It was impossible to oppose Caraffa, Philip II., and the Stuarts, with Luther’s passive resistance; men were wanted who were ready to wage war to the knife, and such was the Calvinistic school. It everywhere accepted the challenge; throughout all the conflicts for political and religious liberty, up to the time of the first emigration to America, in France, the Netherlands, England, and Scotland, we recognize the Genevan school." Dr. Karl Rudolf Hagenbach (1801–1874). Swiss Reformed, of Basel. Geschichte des Reformation, 5th ed. edited by Nippold, Leipzig, 1887, p. 605.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Never was a man more loudly called by government and people, never did a man more reluctantly accept the call, never did a man more faithfully and effectively fulfil the duties of the call than John Calvin when, in obedience to the voice of God, he settled a second time at Geneva to live and to die at this post of duty. "Of all men in the world," says one of his best biographers and greatest admirers,629 "Calvin is the one who most worked, wrote, acted, and prayed for the cause which he had embraced. The coexistence of the sovereignty of God and the freedom of man is assuredly a mystery; but Calvin never supposed that because God did all, he personally had nothing to do. He points out clearly the twofold action, that of God and that of man. ’God,’ said he, ’after freely bestowing his grace on us, forthwith demands of us a reciprocal acknowledgment. When he said to Abraham, "I am thy God," it was an offer of his free goodness; but he adds at the same time what he required of him: "Walk before me, and be thou perfect." This condition is tacitly annexed to all the promises. They are to be to us as spurs, inciting us to promote the glory of God.’ And elsewhere he says, ’This doctrine ought to create new vigor in all your members, so that you may be fit and alert, with might and main, to follow the call of God.’ "630 § 96. The First Years after the Return. Calvin entered at once upon his labors, and continued them without interruption for twenty-three years—till his death, May 27, 1564. The first years were full of care and trial, as he had anticipated. His duties were more numerous and responsible than during his first sojourn. Then he was supported by the older Farel; now he stood at the head of the Church at Geneva, though yet a young man of thirty-two. He had to reorganize the Church, to introduce a constitution and order of worship, to preach, to teach, to settle controversies, to conciliate contending parties, to provide for the instruction of youth, to give advice even in purely secular affairs. No wonder that he often felt discouraged and exhausted, but trust in God, and a sense of duty kept him up. Viret was of great service to him, but he was called back to Lausanne in July, 1542. His other colleagues—Jacques Bernard, Henri de la Mare, and Aimé Champereau—were men of inferior ability, and not reliable. In 1542 four new pastors were appointed,—Pierre Blanchet, Matthias de Greneston, Louis Trappereau, and Philippe Ozias (or Ozeas). In 1544 Geneva had twelve pastors, six of them for the county Churches. Calvin gradually trained a corps of enthusiastic evangelists. Farel and Viret visited Geneva on important occasions. For his last years, he had a most able and learned colleague in his friend Theodore Beza.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  —Te tomaré la palabra —digo, un poco divertido por su emoción—. Esta camioneta era de mi padre. Esas son sus cintas. Simplemente nunca llegué a sacarlas después que… falleció hace unos años. Se me ocurre que es la primera en tocar la cinta de Guns N'Roses desde que él la puso en el reproductor. Mira de nuevo a la colección. —Bueno, eso está bien, supongo —murmura—. Claramente no sabes lo que tienes aquí y estos habrían terminado en el fondo de un basurero, por el amor de Dios. Tu padre era un tipo genial. Sonrío, estoy de acuerdo. Coloca cuidadosamente la cinta Guns en su estuche y saca la cinta Def Leppard. —¿Puedo? —pregunta, haciendo un gesto hacia la casetera. Me río entre dientes y cambio de velocidad cuando salimos a la carretera. —Adelante. Escuchamos dos canciones de camino a casa, entramos al pueblo y tomamos un atajo más allá del puente del ferrocarril sobre el río a nuestra derecha. —Vaya, mira eso —dice. Bajo la velocidad y sigo su mirada hacia la derecha, por la ventanilla del lado del pasajero, y veo que el río ha aumentado considerablemente. En lugar del metro ochenta normal de espacio libre entre el puente y el agua, ahora el agua corre como una amenaza justo debajo del fondo del puente. Afortunadamente, la lluvia se ha ralentizado, por lo que no debería subir más. Piso de nuevo el acelerador, llevándonos a casa. —Eso fue divertido —comenta—. Hoy, quiero decir. Arqueó las cejas y la miro. —Quiero decir… —Parpadea, corrigiéndose—. No me refiero a que fue divertido. Quiero decir, espero que no te retrases ni pierdas dinero, pero… —Inhala y exhala, moviendo sus ojos a la ventana—. Un par de veces casi sentí que mi vida estaba en peligro. También parece estar demasiado complacida con eso, y puedo decir por su tono que está sonriendo. —¿Y eso es divertido? —cuestiono. Vuelve a mirar por el parabrisas y se encoge de hombros, la diversión tira de la esquina de su boca. Me río. —Sí, fue divertido. Gracias por ayudar. Me aseguraré de avisarte cuando la próxima tormenta esté a punto de llegar, para que puedas entrar en acción. —Genial. Continúo conduciendo por la carretera hacia nuestra tranquila ciudad, girando a la izquierda y luego a la derecha hacia mi vecindario, contento por primera vez hoy. Es una buena niña. Espero que Cole no lo arruine, porque ya puedo decir que este es el tipo de chica que sería una buena madre y que trabajaría a tu lado, construyendo una vida en lugar de dejarte seco. Y por alguna razón me agrada que haya disfrutado el día. Nadie en mi familia se interesó mucho, ni se enorgulleció, de lo que hago para ganarme la vida. Mi madre me ama, por supuesto, al igual que mi papá antes de morir, pero presionaron tanto para que fuera a la universidad, y ese fue el plan hasta que llegó Cole.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Cramer estaba mirándote lascivamente, y fue espeluznante. Me molesté. ―Y luego aclara―: Me molesté con él, quiero decir. Siento haberme desahogado contigo. ―Trabajo en un bar ―recalco―. Estoy acostumbrada a las miradas lascivas. Puedo manejarlo. En realidad, puedo levantarme y luchar por mi honor. Y también Cole. Si alguna vez se le ocurre. Pike no necesita sentirse responsable por mí. No soy suya para cuidar. ―Bueno, me iré ―le digo y comienzo a retroceder. Pero me detiene. ―¿Quieres ver? ―ofrece―. ¿Un pequeño recorrido? Ya he visto gran parte del lugar, después que estuve aquí haciendo bolsas de arena la semana pasada, pero asiento de todos modos. ―Sí, seguro. Me lleva hacia la parte trasera del edificio, y me pregunto si se supone que debería estar usando un casco, pero él tampoco está usando uno, así que no pregunto. ―Se supone que este es el lugar de las oficinas para ese barco casino que vendrá al área ―explica―. Habrá un pabellón en el muelle, con restaurantes y espacio para eventos, pero manejarán todo desde aquí. Contrataciones, finanzas, publicidad… Me lanza una sonrisa, y aparto la mirada. ―Es como un esqueleto ―comento―. ¿Cuándo construirán las paredes? ―Una vez que los plomeros y los electricistas tengan todo resuelto ―responde―. Instalo el aislamiento y luego comenzamos a construir. Verás habitaciones en lugar de huesos. Entramos a un gran espacio en la esquina trasera del edificio, y a diferencia de las otras habitaciones, hay una pared entera sin vigas. Como si fuera solo una enorme ventana panorámica. Entro en el pequeño espacio adyacente y miro sobre la viga frente a mi rostro. ―¿Qué es este espacio? Me mira. ―Es un baño privado para esta oficina. Debe ser agradable. Camino de regreso a la oficina con él y me acerco al borde, contemplando la tierra verde y no desarrollada en la distancia. ―Linda vista. ―Sonrío y muevo mi cabello, caminando alrededor de mi falsa oficina como si fuera dueña del lugar―. Sí, Christopher, ¿podrías poner a Japón en la línea? Necesitamos discutir la línea de producción en Malasia ―bromeo Se ríe. ―¿Tienes un secretario? ―Un hombre puede ser cualquier cosa ―respondo―. No dejes que tu sexo te detenga. Sacude la cabeza, la diversión curvando sus labios. Volvemos a la tranquilidad que tuvimos la otra noche cuando miramos televisión y comimos pizza, y lo sigo alrededor del edificio, dejándolo explicar el proceso de meses, o posiblemente años, de construir un edificio desde cero. Comenzó a hacer este trabajo antes que Cole naciera, y eventualmente creó su propia compañía, capaz de hacer sus propias reglas y tener más control sobre el tipo de proyectos que tomaba. Sin embargo, tiene que ser mucha responsabilidad, saber que estás a cargo de dos docenas de trabajadores y los cheques con el pago que mantienen a sus familias. Pero aun así… está ayudando a construir nuestro pueblo, aportando trabajo y dando empleos por sí mismo. ―Debes estar muy orgulloso de construir cosas que puedas ver todos los días

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  champagne. Now Abby could paddle off her anxieties in the pond. On their way down to the dock Abby said, “You know, Vix ... I’d like to think if I had a daughter she’d be a lot like you.” She took off her sunglasses and wiped the lenses with her T-shirt. “That’s a compliment. I hope you take it as one.” Vix stammered. “I do ... absolutely.” “I consider you a person of real values and ethics.” She paused, then added, “That’s a compliment, too.” Real values and ethics? She wondered what Abby would say if she knew how Vix used to dream about changing places with Caitlin, of just walking out on her family to live with them in Cambridge. God, had she ever been so young, so naive? Now Abby tried to talk to her about drinking, drugs, sex, about herpes. Vix listened politely, then assured Abby she didn’t like the taste of beer, let alone the hard stuff, that she’d promised her parents she’d stay away from drugs, which were more plentiful in Santa Fe than the Vineyard, and as for sex, she was still a virgin and intended to remain one. She just didn’t say for how long. Abby handed her a stack of college catalogs left over from the Chicago Boys and urged her to study them. “You know there’s a scholarship waiting.” She felt as if she were fourteen again, with Abby encouraging her to plan for her future. But this time the only future she was interested in was that night and the next night and the night after that, with Bru.

• From City of Night (1963)

  For a long while we spoke about many things—but not about the homosexual scene. I was beginning to think he was straight, despite his roommate. Then he said: “That malenurse you were with that night, he just likes hustlers.” He was obviously trying to find out about me. I said nothing. “I cant see just going to bed with a lot of people—different ones every night,” he said. “I mean, a person, whether hes queer or not, hes got to find someone.... Nothing like a lonely fairy,” he said smiling. I liked him right away. And for that reason—resisting the temptation to say no (I had known immediately that he was not a score—and I sensed, although I dismissed it, that sexually he would be attracted only to someone who would be equally attracted to him, and I sensed, too, that he would look in that person for more than a night-long partner)—I went to his apartment with him when be asked me if I felt like talking some more. In the apartment, when he touched me, I told him quickly I had to leave. He looked at me steadily. Then he smiled. “Sure,” he said. “Maybe youll want to go to Arrowhead with me tomorrow.” Surprisingly, he was not annoyed that I had put him off. “It’s Sunday. I’ll pick you up if you want to.” I said yes, suddenly anxious to leave. As he drove me to the hotel on Hope Street, I felt certain I wouldnt be there when he came by. But I was. And after that, I saw him more and more often. When he wasnt working or going to school, we would drive out of the city.... And I began to discover in him an honesty that constantly amazed me, an integrity and decency rare in the world of the bars and streets: It pleased me strangely that soon after I met him, he moved into another apartment, this time alone. Although he openly acknowledged his interest in other youngmen, when it was a mutual interest—and he was a very desirable member of that group—I could tell that his was not the furious hunger that it very often is with others. Since that first night, he hadnt attempted to come on with me, and we rarely ever spoke about that scene. He told me about himself: about the stone-cold woman who was his mother; the ranting father, consumed in flames one nightmare night: a cigarette dropped drunkenly on the bed. He told me this without selfpity, merely as the recitation of his life. And I found that I was revealing myself to him, letting slide off more than ever before the mask I had protectively cultivated for the streets and bars. At times, I felt he knew even more about me than I told him, which alternately pleased and disturbed me.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  damned foolhardy thing that your old man has done, but this one was harebrained even for a crazy sonofabitch like Rex Walls.” And then he’d tell us about how, when he was in the air force and his plane’s engine conked out, he made an emergency landing in a cattle pasture and saved himself and his crew. Or about the time he wrestled a pack of wild dogs that had surrounded a lame mustang. Then there was the time he fixed a broken sluice gate on the Hoover Dam and saved the lives of thousands of people who would have drowned if the dam had burst. There was also the time he went AWOL in the air force to get some beer, and while he was at the bar, he caught a lunatic who was planning to blow up the air base, which went to show that occasionally, it paid to break the rules. Dad was a dramatic storyteller. He always started out slow, with lots of pauses. “Go on! What happened next?” we’d ask, even if we’d already heard that story before. Mom giggled or rolled her eyes when Dad told his stories, and he glared at her. If someone interrupted his storytelling, he got mad, and we had to beg him to continue and promise that no one would interrupt again. Dad always fought harder, flew faster, and gambled smarter than everyone else in his stories. Along the way, he rescued women and children and even men who weren’t as strong and clever. Dad taught us the secrets of his heroics—he showed us how to straddle a wild dog and break his neck, and where to hit a man in the throat so you could kill him with one powerful jab. But he assured us that as long as he was around, we wouldn’t have to defend ourselves, because, by God, anyone who so much as laid a finger on any of Rex Walls’s children was going to get their butts kicked so hard that you could read Dad’s shoe size on their ass cheeks. When Dad wasn’t telling us about all the amazing things he had already done, he was telling us about the wondrous things he was going to do. Like build the Glass Castle. All of Dad’s engineering skills and mathematical genius were coming together in one special project: a great big house he was going to build for us in the desert. It would have a glass ceiling and thick glass walls and even a glass staircase. The Glass Castle would have solar cells on the top that would catch the sun’s rays and convert them into electricity for heating and cooling and running all the appliances. It would even have its own water-purification system. Dad had worked out the architecture and the floor plans and most of the mathematical calculations. He carried around the blueprints for the Glass Castle wherever we went, and sometimes he’d pull them out

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  Now we’re going to kill them.” “We gave them a little extra time on the planet,” Mom said. “They should be grateful for that.” • • • Dad finally got a job in the gypsum mine, digging out the white rocks that were ground into the powder used in drywall and plaster of paris. When he came home, he’d be covered with white gypsum powder, and sometimes we’d play ghost and he’d chase us. He also brought back sacks of gypsum, and Mom mixed it with water to make Venus de Milo sculptures from a rubber cast she ordered through the mail. It grieved Mom that the mine was destroying so much white rock—she said it was real marble and deserved a better fate and that, by making her sculptures, she was at least immortalizing some of it. Mom was pregnant. Everyone hoped it would be a boy so Brian would have someone to play with other than me. When it got time for Mom to give birth, Dad’s plan was for us to move to Blythe, twenty miles south, which was such a big town it had two movie theaters and two state prisons. In the meantime, Mom devoted herself to her art. She spent all day working on oil paintings, watercolors, charcoal drawings, pen-and-ink sketches, clay and wire sculptures, silk screens, and wood blocks. She didn’t have any particular style; some of her paintings were what she called primitive, some were impressionistic and abstract, some were realistic. “I don’t want to be pigeonholed,” she liked to say. Mom was also a writer and was always typing away on novels, short stories, plays, poetry, fables, and children’s books, which she illustrated herself. Mom’s writing was very creative. So was her spelling. She needed a proofreader, and when Lori was just seven years old, she would go over Mom’s manuscripts, checking for errors. While we were in Midland, Mom painted dozens of variations and studies of the Joshua tree. We’d go with her and she’d give us art lessons. One time I saw a tiny Joshua tree sapling growing not too far from the old tree. I wanted to dig it up and replant it near our house. I told Mom that I would protect it from the wind and water it every day so that it could grow nice and tall and straight. Mom frowned at me. “You’d be destroying what makes it special,” she said. “It’s the Joshua tree’s struggle that gives it its beauty.” I NEVER BELIEVED IN Santa Claus. None of us kids did. Mom and Dad refused to let us. They couldn’t afford expensive presents, and they didn’t want us to think we weren’t as good as other kids who, on Christmas morning, found all sorts of fancy toys under the tree that were supposedly left by Santa Claus.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  The scholar answered him very gently. ‘Dear brother, both of you acted with honour and magnanimity. You are a squire. He is a knight. I hope to God that a scholar can act just as wisely. A magician can also be a gentleman, you know. So, sir, I acquit you of the thousand pounds. It will be as if we had never met or made an agreement. You are as new to me as that flower, rising out of the earth. I won’t take a penny from you for my work. You have paid me for my meat and drink. That is enough. So farewell. Good day to you!’ And, with that, he mounted his horse and went on his way. Now, fellow pilgrims, answer this riddle. Which one of these gentlemen was the most generous? Let me know before we ride any further, will you? Heere is ended the Frankeleyns Tale The Physician’s Tale Heere folweth the Phisiciens Tale There was, a Roman historian tells us, a knight called Virginius. He was a worthy and honourable man, with plenty of money and plenty of friends. He had only one daughter, however, a beautiful girl without equal in the whole world. Dame Nature had formed and moulded her with such care that it was as if she were ready to proclaim, ‘Look at my work here. I, Nature, have created a perfect creature in exactly the manner I wished. Who could counterfeit this beauty? Who could possibly imitate it? Pygmalion himself could do no better, even though he laboured at his forge or at his easel. Apelles and Zeuxis would do a whole lot worse, however well they tried to use their pen or brush. No sculptor could match me, either. God above has given me the power to make and unmake all the creatures of the world. I am His representative on earth. I can paint and play just as I please. All things under the moon are susceptible to my sway. I ask nothing for my work, of course. I am in perfect agreement with my superior in heaven. I do all things in honour of Him above. That is why I made this perfect beauty.’ That, I imagine, is what the dame would say.

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  These are the worst possible things for a reader to become. You must assume that we, your readers, are bright and attentive, even if we have lost the tiniest bit of ground in the last few years. So we are going to catch you if you try to fake it. If you realize that you have done this, you need to stop and look at your characters again. You’ve got to go into these people, and since you don’t know them, this means that you need to go into you, wonderful you, who has so many problems and idiosyncrasies—you, who will be able to figure out what is true for these people and hence, what they would or would not do in a given situation. I read a wonderful passage in an interview with Carolyn Chute, the author of The Beans of Egypt, Maine , who was discussing rewriting: “I feel like a lot of time my writing is like having about twenty boxes of Christmas decorations. But no tree. You’re going, Where do I put this? Then they go, Okay, you can have a tree, but we’ll blindfold you and you gotta cut it down with a spoon.” This is how I’ve arrived at my plots a number of times. I would have all these wonderful shiny bulbs, each self-contained with nothing to hang them on. But I would stay with the characters, caring for them, getting to know them better and better, suiting up each morning and working as hard as I could, and somehow, mysteriously, I would come to know what their story was. Over and over I feel as if my characters know who they are, and what happens to them, and where they have been and where they will go, and what they are capable of doing, but they need me to write it down for them because their handwriting is so bad. Some writers claim to know what the climax is early on, well before they get anywhere near it. The climax is that major event, usually toward the end, that brings all the tunes you have been playing so far into one major chord, after which at least one of your people is profoundly changed. If someone isn’t changed, then what is the point of your story? For the climax, there must be a killing or a healing or a domination. It can be a real killing, a murder, or it can be a killing of the spirit, or of something terrible inside one’s soul, or it can be a killing of a deadness within, after which the person becomes alive again. The healing may be about union, reclamation, the rescue of a fragile prize. But whatever happens, we need to feel that it was inevitable, that even though we may be amazed, it feels absolutely right, that of course things would come to this, of course they would shake down in this way.

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  And over and over, they say in effect, “I will not be silenced again.” They were good children, who often felt invisible and who saw some awful stuff. But at some point they stopped telling what they saw because when they did, they were punished. Now they want to look at their lives—at life—and they don’t want to be sent to their rooms for doing so. But it is very hard to find their own voice and it is tempting to assume someone else’s. Every time Isabel Allende has a new book out, I’m happy because I will get to read it, and I’m unhappy because half of my students are going to start writing like her. Now, I love Ms. Allende’s work, as I love a number of South and Central American writers. When I read their books, I feel like I’m sitting around a campfire at night where they are spinning their wild stories—these crazy Rube Goldberg clocks, with lots of birds and maidens and gongs and bells and whistles. I understand why this style is so attractive to my students: it’s like primitive art. It’s simple and decorative, with rich colors, satisfying old forms, and a lot of sophistication underneath that you feel but don’t really see. I always feel like I’m watching a wild theater piece with lots of special effects—so many lives falling apart! But, more important, this style offers the nourishment of imagination and wonder. I love to enter into these fantastical worlds where we feel like we’re looking through the wrong end of the binoculars, where everything is tiny and pretty and rich, because real life is so often big and messy and hurtful and drab. But when someone like Allende polishes and turns and twists her people and their lives and their families and their ghosts into universal curves and shapes, then the writing resonates in such a way that you think, Yes, yes, that’s exactly what life is like. I love for my students to want to have this effect. But their renditions never ring true, any more than they ring true a few months later when Ann Beattie’s latest book arrives and my students start submitting stories about shiny bowls and windowpanes. We do live our lives on surfaces, and Beattie does surfaces beautifully, burnishing them, bringing out the details. But when my students do Beattie, their stories tend to be lukewarm, and I say to them, Life is lukewarm enough! Give us a little heat!

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  —Sí. —Suspira Teresa, meciéndose de izquierda a derecha con la música que suena desde un altavoz en una de las casas—. Alguien tenía que ser el adulto, y Lindsay... —se voz se desvanece y luego se endereza, aclarando su garganta—, lo siento. No pretendo ser una chismosa. —Está bien —le digo—. Evidentemente es muy reservado. He visto a la madre de Cole aquí y allá, y es difícil imaginarla con Pike. Es bastante ostentosa, y siento que el Pike que conozco sufriría un latigazo tratando de seguirle el ritmo. Al menos, por lo que Cole me ha dicho, sé que el asunto entre sus padres no duró mucho tiempo, y si él no tuviera los mismos rasgos de su padre, me pregunto si Pike estaría seguro que Cole es su hijo. Ella ha tenido al menos cuatro novios a quienes he visto en los últimos años. Teresa exhala y baja la voz. —Pike es una prueba de que aprendemos cuando nos vemos obligados a hacerlo y la madurez es más el resultado de la experiencia que de la edad —me dice—. Era el único chico de veinte años que sabía que trabajaba en dos empleos, sin siquiera pensar un segundo en todos los amigos que estaba perdiendo porque nunca podía salir. Miro hacia ella, queriendo repentinamente saberlo todo. Quiero saber cualquier información sobre quién era antes de conocerlo. —Todos sus amigos estaban comprando autos de moda —continúa—, pero él ha estado conduciendo la vieja camioneta de su padre desde que lo conozco. Nunca fue un sacrificio para él, y nunca tuvo dudas sobre cuidar a Cole. Se necesita convicción para hacer lo que sabes que se supone que debes hacer, independientemente de lo que quieras. Sus palabras me golpean, y dejo caer mi mirada. Convicción para hacer lo que sabes que se supone que debes hacer... Y de repente me siento como una mierda. Me deseaba la otra noche. Y si no fuera por Cole, no tengo dudas que hubiéramos dormido juntos. Pero Cole está allí, entre nosotros, y no podemos cambiarlo. Jamás. Está mal, y no importa cuánto lo deseo, solo se odiaría después. Su hijo siempre será más importante que cualquier otra cosa. —Es un buen hombre —dice.

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  Other days, though, my writing is like a person to me—the person who, after all these years, still makes sense to me. It reminds me of “The Wild Rose,” a poem Wendell Berry wrote for his wife: Sometimes hidden from me in daily custom and in trust , so that I live by you unaware as by the beating of my heart , Suddenly you flare in my sight , a wild rose blooming at the edge of thicket, grace and light where yesterday was only shade , and once again I am blessed, choosing again what I chose before . Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve thought that there was something noble and mysterious about writing, about the people who could do it well, who could create a world as if they were little gods or sorcerers. All my life I’ve felt that there was something magical about people who could get into other people’s minds and skin, who could take people like me out of ourselves and then take us back to ourselves. And you know what? I still do. So now I teach. This just sort of happened. Someone offered me a gig teaching a writing workshop about ten years ago, and I’ve been teaching writing classes ever since. But you can’t teach writing, people tell me. And I say, “Who the hell are you, God’s dean of admissions?” If people show up in one of my classes and want to learn to write, or to write better, I can tell them everything that has helped me along the way and what it is like for me on a daily basis. I can teach them little things that may not be in any of the great books on writing. For instance, I’m not sure if anyone else has mentioned that December is traditionally a bad month for writing. It is a month of Mondays. Mondays are not good writing days. One has had all that freedom over the weekend, all that authenticity, all those dreamy dreams, and then your angry mute Slavic Uncle Monday arrives, and it is time to sit down at your desk. So I would simply recommend to the people in my workshops that they never start a large writing project on any Monday in December. Why set yourself up for failure? Interviewers ask famous writers why they write, and it was (if I remember correctly) the poet John Ashbery who answered, “Because I want to.”

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  One of the gifts of being a writer is that it gives you an excuse to do things, to go places and explore. Another is that writing motivates you to look closely at life, at life as it lurches by and tramps around. Writing taught my father to pay attention; my father in turn taught other people to pay attention and then to write down their thoughts and observations. His students were the prisoners at San Quentin who took part in the creative-writing program. But he taught me, too, mostly by example. He taught the prisoners and me to put a little bit down on paper every day, and to read all the great books and plays we could get our hands on. He taught us to read poetry. He taught us to be bold and original and to let ourselves make mistakes, and that Thurber was right when he said, “You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backwards.” But while he helped the prisoners and me to discover that we had a lot of feelings and observations and memories and dreams and (God knows) opinions we wanted to share, we all ended up just the tiniest bit resentful when we found the one fly in the ointment: that at some point we had to actually sit down and write. I believe writing was easier for me than for the prisoners because I was still a child. But I always found it hard. I started writing when I was seven or eight. I was very shy and strange-looking, loved reading above everything else, weighed about forty pounds at the time, and was so tense that I walked around with my shoulders up to my ears, like Richard Nixon. I saw a home movie once of a birthday party I went to in the first grade, with all these cute little boys and girls playing together like puppies, and all of a sudden I scuttled across the screen like Prufrock’s crab. I was very clearly the one who was going to grow up to be a serial killer, or keep dozens and dozens of cats. Instead, I got funny. I got funny because boys, older boys I didn’t even know, would ride by on their bicycles and taunt me about my weird looks. Each time felt like a drive-by shooting. I think this is why I walked like Nixon: I think I was trying to plug my ears with my shoulders, but they wouldn’t quite reach. So first I got funny and then I started to write, although I did not always write funny things. The first poem I wrote that got any attention was about John Glenn. The first stanza went, “Colonel John Glenn went up to heaven / in his spaceship, Friendship Seven .” There were many, many verses. It was like one of the old English ballads my mother taught us to sing while she played the piano.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  This girl, in which Nature took such delight, was just fourteen years old. Just as the dame can paint the lily white, and bestow the blush of pink upon the rose, so did she apply her skill to the little limbs of the infant before she was born. The sun turned her hair golden, like the rays of the morning. Even so, she was a thousand times more virtuous than she was beautiful. There was nothing lacking in her, nothing I cannot praise. She was chaste in body and in soul. She was a virgin in spirit as well as in flesh; she was humble and patient, never straying from the path of virtue. She was always sober and respectful in conversation, too, and although she may have been as wise as Pallas Athene she was measured in her speech. She did not put on airs and graces. She never tried to be clever. She was the perfect female, in other words, always evincing modesty and grace. She busied herself with her womanly tasks, hating sloth and idleness before all else. She did not pay homage to Bacchus, either. She knew well enough that wine, as well as youth, can provoke excitement. You do not throw oil or fat upon the fire. There were times, in fact, when she feigned illness in order to escape vain company; she was uneasy at feasts and parties and dances, where there were bound to be intrigues and amours. Those are occasions when youths, little more than children, grow up too fast. It is dangerous for them, as all experience tells us. She will be mature enough when she becomes a woman and a wife. Not before then. There may be some of a certain age among you here, who are governesses to young girls. Don’t take anything amiss. I am only telling you the truth. You have been chosen to instruct the daughters of noble families for two reasons, as you well know. Either you have kept your chastity and set a good example, or you have fallen into sin and know all the signs of frailty. You know the old dance, and have forsaken it for ever. So, for God’s sake, teach your charges to stay out of trouble. A poacher is the best gamekeeper, after all. A thief knows how to secure his own house. So keep them safe. You know best how to do it. Do not wink at any vice, lest you yourself be damned for wickedness. Then you would be a traitor to the whole household. Of all the sins in the world, the worst is the betrayal of innocence. It is unforgivable.

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  We like certain characters because they are good or decent—they internalize some decency in the world that makes them able to take a risk or make a sacrifice for someone else. They let us see that there is in fact some sort of moral compass still at work here, and that we, too, could travel by this compass if we so choose. In good fiction, we have one eye on the hero or the good guys and a fascinated eye on the bad guys, who may be a lot more interesting. The plot leads all of these people (and us) into dark woods where we find, against all odds, a woman or a man with the compass, and it still points true north. That’s the miracle, and it’s astonishing. This shaft of light, sometimes only a glimmer, both defines and thwarts the darkness. Think of a medieval morality play as the model. We love to hear that goodness will triumph over evil, that the fragile prize—humanity, life—will be saved. In formula fiction, evil wins out until the very end, and then against all odds goodness prevails and the hero gets to kiss the girl with the big bosoms. Life is somewhat more complicated than it was in the Middle Ages, but in many ways it is so much the same—violent, terrifying, full of chaos and plague, murderers and thieves. So the acknowledgment that in the midst of ourselves there is still a good part that hasn’t been corrupted and destroyed, that we can tap into and reclaim, is most reassuring. When a more or less ordinary character, someone who is both kind and self-serving, somehow finds that place within where he or she is still capable of courage and goodness, we get to see something true that we long for. This is what helps us connect with your characters and with your book. This is what makes it a book we will foist on our friends, a book we will remember, that will accompany us through life. But you have to believe in your position, or nothing will be driving your work. If you don’t believe in what you are saying, there is no point in your saying it. You might as well call it a day and go bowling. However, if you do care deeply about something—if, for instance, you are conservative in the great sense of the word, if you are someone who is trying to conserve the landscape and the natural world—then this belief will keep you going as you struggle to get your work done. To be a good writer, you not only have to write a great deal but you have to care. You do not have to have a complicated moral philosophy.