Anger

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.

Page 13 of 447 · 20 per page

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Do I?” “What do you think, Myrna?” “I don’t think so. And your opinion?” Unable to procrastinate indefinitely, or to lie, or to tell the truth, Ernest squirmed. “If by ‘whine’ you mean you tend to complain about your situation repetitively and unproductively—then, yes, I’ve heard you do that.” “An example, please.” “I promise to answer that,” said Ernest, deciding it was time for a process comment, “but let me say something first, Myrna. I’m struck by the change in you these last weeks. It’s been so fast. You aware of it?” “Change how?” “How? In almost every way. Look at what you’re doing—you’re direct, focused, challenging. Like you say, you’re keeping it in the room; you’re talking about what’s taking place between us.” “And that’s good?” “It’s great, Myrna. I’m delighted to see it. To be honest, there were times in the past when I felt you hardly noticed I was in the room with you. When I say it’s great, I mean you’re moving in the right direction. But still you seem so—what should I say? So one-sided, so—well, acerbic, as though you’re continually angry with me. Am I off base?” “I don’t feel angry with you, just frustrated with my whole life. But you said you’d give me examples of my whining.” Suddenly this woman who had been too slow for him was becoming almost too fast. Ernest had to concentrate all his attention on their discourse. “Not so fast. I’m not buying into that word, Myrna. I feel you’re trying to brand me with it. I said ‘repetitious,’ and I’ll give you an example of that: your feelings about your CEO. How he’s not efficient, how he should make the company leaner, how he should fire incompetent workers, how his softheartedness is going to cost you big money in your stock options—that’s the kind of thing I mean. You’ve discussed this over and over again, hour after hour. Just like your comments about the dating scene—you know what I mean. During those hours I’ve ended up feeling less engaged with you and less helpful as well.” “But those are the things that preoccupy me—you tell me to share what I’m thinking.” “You’re absolutely right, Myrna. I know it’s a dilemma, but it’s not what you say but how you say it. But I don’t want to detract from my earlier point. The mere fact that we’re talking so openly supports what I said a little while ago—that you’re different, working better and harder in therapy. “It’s time to stop for today, but let’s try to pick up from here next week.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Maximilien Robespierre, his main rival for power, noticed the change and began to spread the rumor that Danton had lost his revolutionary fervor and could no longer be trusted. Robespierre’s campaign had effect: when it came time to elect members to the highest governing body, the Committee of Public Safety, Danton did not receive enough votes and Robespierre packed it with his sympathizers. Danton now openly worked to put an end to the Terror, through speeches and pamphlets, but this only played into the hands of his rival. On March 30, 1794, Danton was arrested for treason and brought before the revolutionary tribunal. It seemed ironic that the tribunal he had formed now held his fate in its hands. The charges against him were based on pure innuendo, but Robespierre made certain he was found guilty and sentenced to death. Upon hearing the sentence, he yelled at his judges, “My name is engraved on every institution of the revolution—the army, the committees, the tribunal. I have killed myself!” That same afternoon he and other condemned men were put in carts and led to the Place de la Révolution. Along the way, Danton passed the residence where Robespierre lived. “You’re next,” Danton shouted in his booming voice, pointing his finger at Robespierre’s apartment. “You will follow me!” Danton was the last one to be executed that day. An enormous crowd had followed the cart, and now they were quiet as he was led up the stairs. He could not help but think of Louis, whom he had reluctantly sent to the guillotine, and the many former friends who had died during the Terror. It had taken a few months, but he had grown sick of all the bloodshed, and he could sense the crowd before him was feeling the same way. As he laid his neck on the block, he shouted to the executioner, “Make sure you show my head to the people. It is worth a look!” After the execution of Danton, Robespierre unleashed what became known as the Great Terror. During four tumultuous months, the tribunal sent close to twenty thousand French men and women to the guillotine. But Danton had anticipated the shift in mood: the French public had had enough of the executions, and they turned against Robespierre with remarkable speed. In late July, in a heated meeting at the assembly, its members voted to arrest Robespierre. He tried to defend himself, but the words came out haltingly. One member shouted, “It is the blood of Danton that chokes you!” The following morning, without a trial, Robespierre was guillotined, and days later the assembly abolished the revolutionary tribunal. — At around the time of Robespierre’s execution, the new leaders of the revolution were looking for ways to drum up funds for the various emergencies France was facing, and someone mentioned the recent rediscovery of Louis’s magnificent coronation carriage, the Sacre . Perhaps they could sell it.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  What makes anger toxic is the degree to which it is disconnected from reality. People channel their natural frustrations into anger at some vague enemy or scapegoat, conjured up and spread by demagogues. They imagine grand conspiracies behind simple inescapable realities, such as taxes or globalism or the changes that are part of all historical periods. They believe that certain forces in the world are to blame for their lack of success or power, instead of their own impatience and lack of effort. There is no thought behind their anger, and so it leads nowhere or it becomes destructive. You must do the opposite. Your anger is directed at very specific individuals and forces. You analyze the emotion—are you certain that your frustration does not stem from your own inadequacies? Do you really understand the cause of the anger and what it should be directed at? In addition to determining if it is justified and where the anger should be directed, you also analyze the best way to channel this emotion, the best strategy for defeating your opponents. Your anger is controlled, realistic, and targeted at the actual source of the problem, never losing sight of what initially inspired the emotion. Most people engage in some cathartic release of their anger, some giant protest, and then it goes away and they slip back into complacency or become bitter. You want to cool your anger, bring it more to a simmer than a boil. Your controlled anger will help give you the resolve and patience you will need for what might be a longer struggle than you had imagined. Let the unfairness or injustice lie in the back of your mind and keep you energized. The real satisfaction comes not in one spasm of emotion but in actually defeating the bully and exposing the narrow-minded for who they are. Do not be afraid to use your anger in your work, particularly if it is allied to some cause or if you are expressing yourself through something creative. It is often the sense of contained rage that makes an orator so effective; it was the source of much of the charisma of Malcolm X. Look at the most lasting and compelling works of art, and you can often read or feel the restrained anger behind them. We are all so careful and correct that when we feel the carefully channeled anger in a film or a book or wherever it is, it is like a fresh wind. It attracts all of our own frustrations and resentments and lets them out. We recognize that it is something real and authentic. In your expressive work, never shy away from anger but capture and channel it, letting it breathe into the work a sense of life and movement. In giving expression to such anger, you will always find an audience.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  187Lecture 19—Slave Religion in the Americas õAfter the white authorities executed Turner, his lawyer, a white man named Thomas Gray, published a pamphlet called The Confessions of N a t Tu r n e r. It’s unclear if these were actually the words of Turner or if Gray modified them. But even if Gray shaped the text, it gives a sense of how Turner claimed divine inspiration to rally his followers. Take this passage: While laboring in the field, I discovered drops of blood on the corn ... And now the Holy Ghost had revealed itself to me, and made plain the miracles it had shown me; for as the blood of Christ had been shed on this earth, and had ascended to heaven for the salvation of sinners, [it] was now returning to earth in the form of dew. õTurner said that he told a white man about these miracles, and nasty, bloody sores immediately appeared all over the man’s body. Consider the power that story would have on other slaves listening to Turner: It was likely an appealing message of divine justice. SLAVE WORSHIP õUntil the early 19 th century, evangelical groups allowed blacks to preach to people of their own race. The Baptists licensed and ordained black men, and Methodists allowed black lay preachers until state legislatures started outlawing it in the 1810s. õAs the years passed, the slave codes in the South restricting slave behavior became more and more oppressive. The codes made it illegal for blacks to gather in meetings for worship or education. õBy the 1820s, most black Christians in the South had to be under the authority of white congregations and denominations. In theory, black Christians in the South always had a white pastor and were under the discipline of a white church.

• From Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002)

  According to Leviticus 27:1–8, the value of men between the ages of twenty and sixty years was fifty silver shekels, while a woman was only worth thirty. If the men were over sixty years of age, then their worth dropped to fifteen shekels, while the worth of women dropped to ten. One is left questioning if these laws were indeed the will of God or if these were the laws of men who attributed the regulations to God in order to protect their power and privilege within patriarchy. If these regulations came from God, then God stands accused of sexism. It appears that the Bible advocates patriarchal structures. At the very least, it has been used to justify sexism. How can liberation be found in what feminist biblical scholar Phyllis Trible calls these texts of terror? We are told that King Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, had three hundred wives and six hundred concubines. Can a biblical case be made for polygamy and concubinage? Of course not—we automatically assume that these particular social structures are not relevant for the modern era. Additionally, we consciously or subconsciously make a distinction between the Bible advocating a particular social structure and the Bible simply describing the social practices of its time. Yet, how do we justify in our own minds the rejection of social structures such as polygamy and concubinage while still advocating the overall foundation of patriarchy? Is patriarchy also a structure that the liberating Good News of Jesus demands that his disciples flatly reject? To answer this question, we turn to the New Testament. Sexism from the Margins One of the regulations of the Law not mentioned above deals with divorce. According to Deuteronomy 24:1–2, a husband could dismiss his wife simply by serving her with a written bill of divorce. The grounds for divorce could be minor, based on something she did that was considered improper or even on a general dislike of her. By the time of Jesus, the practice had developed whereby a husband was able to divorce his wife for whatever reason he chose, yet no Levitical law existed that allowed women to initiate divorce procedures. Divorce was a male privilege. Matthew 19:3–9, however, provides a model for interpreting patriarchal passages like Deuteronomy 24:1–2, as well as the other biblical verses that contribute to the marginalization of women. The Matthew passage reads as follows: And the Pharisees approached [Jesus], tempting him by saying, “Is it lawful for a man to dismiss his wife for whatever reason?” And he answered them, “Did you not read that God made them male and female from the beginning? And God said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother, and be joined to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  I answer that, As stated above [1439](A[3]; Q[46], A[4]), anger both follows an act of reason, and hinders the reason: and in both respects it may cause taciturnity. On the part of the reason, when the judgment of reason prevails so far, that although it does not curb the appetite in its inordinate desire for vengeance, yet it curbs the tongue from unbridled speech. Wherefore Gregory says (Moral. v, 30): “Sometimes when the mind is disturbed, anger, as if in judgment, commands silence.” On the part of the impediment to reason because, as stated above [1440](A[2]), the disturbance of anger reaches to the outward members, and chiefly to those members which reflect more distinctly the emotions of the heart, such as the eyes, face and tongue; wherefore, as observed above [1441](A[2]), “the tongue stammers, the countenance takes fire, the eyes grow fierce.” Consequently anger may cause such a disturbance, that the tongue is altogether deprived of speech; and taciturnity is the result. Reply to Objection 1: Anger sometimes goes so far as to hinder the reason from curbing the tongue: but sometimes it goes yet farther, so as to paralyze the tongue and other outward members. And this suffices for the Reply to the Second Objection. Reply to Objection 3: The disturbance of the heart may sometimes superabound to the extend that the movements of the outward members are hindered by the inordinate movement of the heart. Thence ensue taciturnity and immobility of the outward members; and sometimes even death. If, however, the disturbance be not so great, then “out of the abundance of the heart” thus disturbed, the mouth proceeds to speak. TREATISE ON HABITS (QQ[49]-54) OF HABITS IN GENERAL, AS TO THEIR SUBSTANCE (FOUR ARTICLES)After treating of human acts and passions, we now pass on to the consideration of the principles of human acts, and firstly of intrinsic principles, secondly of extrinsic principles. The intrinsic principle is power and habit; but as we have treated of powers in the FP, Q[77], seqq., it remains for us to consider them in general: in the second place we shall consider virtues and vices and other like habits, which are the principles of human acts. Concerning habits in general there are four points to consider: First, the substance of habits; second, their subject; third, the cause of their generation, increase, and corruption; fourth, how they are distinguished from one another. Under the first head, there are four points of inquiry: (1) Whether habit is a quality? (2) Whether it is a distinct species of quality? (3) Whether habit implies an order to an act? (4) Of the necessity of habit.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  The internet has also created a new and powerful weapon—cyberwar. As they always have, criminals simply co-opt technology to become more creative and elusive. Human aggression simply adapts to the newest media and technological innovations, finding ways to express and vent itself through them. Whatever the new invention is in one hundred years for communication, it will likely suffer the same fate. As Gustave Flaubert put it, “Speak of progress as much as you want. Even when you take out the canines of a tiger, and he can only eat gruel, his heart remains that of a carnivore.” Human aggression in individuals and in groups tends to emerge or heat up when we feel helpless and vulnerable, when the impatience for control and effect rises. And as increasing numbers of people and groups are feeling this way, we can expect more of this and not less in the future. Wars will get dirtier. As insecurities rise, there will be more confrontations between political groups, between cultures, between generations, between men and women. And there will be even better and more sophisticated ways for humans to justify their aggression to themselves and to the world. The denial is stronger than ever—it is always the other person, the other side, the other culture that is more aggressive and destructive. We must finally come to terms with the fact that it is not the other but ourselves, all of us, no matter the time or the culture. We must own this fact of our nature before we can even begin to consider moving beyond it. It is only in our awareness that we can start to think of progress. Passive Aggression—Its Strategies and How to Counter Them Most of us are afraid of outright confrontation; we want to appear reasonably polite and sociable. But often it is impossible to get what we want without asserting ourselves in some way. People can be stubborn and resistant to our influence, no matter how congenial we are. And sometimes we need a release from all of the inner tension that comes from having to be so deferential and correct. And so all of us inevitably engage in behavior in which we assert ourselves indirectly, striving for control or influence as subtly as possible. Perhaps we take extra time to respond to people’s communications, to signal a slight bit of disdain for them; or we seem to praise people but insert subtle digs that get under their skin and instill doubts. Sometimes we make a comment that could be taken as quite neutral, but our tone of voice and the expression on our face indicate we are upset, stirring up some guilt. We can call this form of aggression passive, in that we give the appearance that we are merely being ourselves, not actively manipulating or trying to influence people. Nevertheless, a message is sent that creates the effect we desire.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  310The History of Christianity II õBut by this point, conservative Christians had realized that if they wanted to protect their vision of the traditional family, sexual ethics, gender roles, and the all-around authority of scripture as they interpreted it, then they had to get involved with the United Nations because it had enormous global inf luence. õOne of the founding principles of the UN charter is equality between men and women. Since the 1970s, the United Nations has convened periodic conferences to discuss the empowerment of women around the world, and in 1995, one of these happened in Beijing. õAs reports from the conference filtered out, some activists in the Christian right did not like what they heard, especially the call for national governments to treat men and women as socially equal, able to fill equivalent roles in the workplace, public sphere, and at home. õEvangelicals, Catholics, and Mormons got organized. At the United Nations’ follow-up conference on women’s issues in New York five years later, some people passed out f liers that warned of the spread of the “homosexual agenda” and “widespread abortion.” õOne of the leaders of this bloc of conservative Christian organizations was a man named Austin Ruse, who ran the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (now called the Center for Family and Human R ig hts). õRuse realized he could prevent the conference from reaching consensus on women’s issues by creating a “pro-family” voting bloc of conservative, religious countries that did not want to be bossed around by Westerners. That alliance included the Vatican—which sent a representative to the conference—and also Sudan, Iran, Libya, and Syria. õThese countries are not exactly renowned for their records on human rights—particularly the rights of Christians. But the American activists were pragmatists, and the strategy worked. They kept the New York conference stuck in debates over abortion and homosexuality, and prevented serious discussion of poverty and violence against women. 311Lecture 31—Culture Wars and the Christian Right õThe Christian right got a boost in this global alliance building when George W. Bush won the 2000 presidential election. Bush appointed conservative Christians to key leadership positions in government and at the United Nations. Conservative think tanks and ministries like Focus on the Family—which had started out only concerned about the American culture wars—started devoting money and time to building international networks of likeminded activists. SUGGESTED READING Butler, Born Again. Jenkins, The New Faces of Christianity. Kruse, One Nation Under God. QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER äWhen Americans use the phrase “the Christian right,” what do they mean? äWhy did conservative activists argue that liberals’ defense of women’s equality in foreign countries is a kind of cultural imperialism? äHow might the Christian right’s campaign to build international alliances inf luence America’s domestic culture wars? 312

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  In the final week, you go to the local bowling alley with her and her writer friends. You’d driven there in her car—a sleek, luxury thing gifted by her parents—and she was supposed to be the designated driver, for once. So you’d been drinking freely of the pitchers of pale beer, the sort you don’t drink, except you never get the chance to get drunk around her anymore and you’re eager for that looseness in your limbs. She has a single beer, sips it slowly, smiles at you. You bowl the way you always bowl; your turns generally ending with no pins down at all, because you get too excited and the gutter slurps up the ball. But then every so often, a strike; so beautiful and devastating a crash that you get the sensation of being good at something, a sliver of confidence. You turn the ball in your hand, pearlescent and peach, and whip it down with that beautiful thunk-whirr. She sits there, looking butch, and pats her lap. You sit. You haven’t had many boyfriends or girlfriends, and none of them—and certainly no flirtatious people in your past—have ever gestured to you like this. You feel calm, content, a little high. Just a girl sitting on her girl’s lap. Her hands are running up your breasts before you can do anything about it. You clasp them in your own and push them down gently. She puts them up again. When you move them a second time, you can feel her anger; you can’t see her but the smell of her changes, like a cheap dish towel left on a live electric burner. She snaps around you like a Venus flytrap, pinning your arms against your torso. She leans in to your ear. What are you doing, she says. It doesn’t sound like words, like a question; it sounds like a purr. “Don’t,” you say. She tightens her grip on your arms. “I fucking hate you,” she says. She sounds, suddenly, drunk, even though you’ve been watching her and you know she’s had only the one beer. But you’ve had beer, too, and you don’t know what to do. “I fucking hate you,” she says again. The sounds of the bowling alley are coming from very far away; you feel like your heart is going to stop. You are not a parent; no one has ever told you that they hated you. You stand up and look around wildly at the others, who are studiously looking elsewhere. “I think we need to go,” you say. “I think—”

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  Sort of like this.” Dwight slumped his shoulders and dropped his chin and simpered up from beneath his eyebrows. “So I came over to him and in this little scaredy-cat voice I say, Excuse me, what’s the problem? He of course starts in on me again, blah blah blah, and while he’s got his mouth open I jam a road apple into it! You should’ve seen the look on his face. Then I hit the sucker in the breadbasket, and down he goes. I sit on him for a while and hold my hand over his mouth until the road apple starts melting, then I get up and leave him there. I caught holy hell for it later on, but so what.” After dinner Dwight took me into the utility room and showed me some moves. He taught me how to stand and shuffle my feet and guard myself. He showed me how to throw a punch from the shoulder instead of winding up and leaving myself open. Then he showed me how to dry-gulch somebody. It wasn’t a thing I should do casually, Dwight said, but only if I had good reason to think that the other fellow might dry-gulch me. There were many techniques but Dwight didn’t want to confuse me, so he showed me two of the best. It was simple, really. You just walked up to someone and acted friendly or even scared, then you kicked him in the balls. That was the first technique. The second was almost exactly the same, except that instead of kicking the other guy in the balls you punched him in the windpipe. According to Dwight this worked best on tall guys. We practiced both moves. Dwight had me approach him nonchalantly, say “Hello,” and then kick or swing. At first I was afraid he would use these maneuvers as an excuse to cream me—all in the spirit of serious training, of course. But he didn’t. He caught my fist or foot almost gently, let go, spoke a few words of correction, and told me to try again. He was quick and strong, and enjoyed watching me realize it. Feet squeaking on the floor, faces shiny with sweat, we worked out until I had the moves down cold. Then we went back into the kitchen. Dwight had a drink and gave me tips about dealing with Arthur: how I should bide my time, and make sure we were alone, and not give him any warning, and so on. I saw that he considered this to be my right and my duty. Bide your time, he told me. A few people called that night to complain about their missing newspapers. Dwight took the calls and explained that the papers had been ruined in a fight, adding that his boy Jack had hung a real shiner on the Gayle kid. I HAD, TOO.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  185Lecture 19—Slave Religion in the Americas THE 19 TH CENTURY õIn the early 19 th century, planters started changing their minds about those trouble-making missionaries. Now they began welcoming the evangelists to preach to their slaves with open arms. õMissionaries and ministers became some of the most inf luential apologists for slavery. They actually built on Puritan covenant theology; they argued that slavery was a covenant between master and slave with mutual responsibilities. A master should be kind to their slave, but the slave must always obey their master. õIn 1857, the Presbyterian minister George Armstrong wrote that the church must work to make “good masters and good slaves,” and should have nothing to do “with the ultimate effect of this upon the civil and political condition of the slave.” In other words, emancipation might come one day if God willed it, but it was not the place of Christians to try to hurry it along. SLAVE RELIGION AND REBELLION õDuring the early 19 th century, many slaves in the Western hemisphere embraced the Bible. They developed a unique form of Christianity that focused on the message of Exodus, the story in the Hebrew Bible of the Israelites’ slavery and liberation. õSometimes prayer meetings provided cover for plotting rebellion. Take the revolt known as Gabriel’s Rebellion, which happened near Richmond, Virginia, in 1800. Gabriel’s brother Martin was a preacher, and he told their followers that their cause was just like the ancient Israelites’ pursuit of godly freedom. 186The History of Christianity II õPerhaps the most famous revolt was Nat Turner’s rebellion in 1831. Turner, a bit like Rebecca a century earlier, did an end-run around white church authority by claiming that he heard God’s voice and had miraculous visions. He led about 70 followers in an uprising that killed almost 60 white people. Roughly 200 black people were killed in the backlash that followed Turner’s capture.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  “Yet you see her request for a breather as rejection,” I respond. “You know, desire acts in weird ways. Here she is asking you to ignore her, not to want her, as a way for her to want you. I can see why this makes no sense. Why such detours? And I understand your reaction. But you see, she needs to separate the intimate from the erotic, and for that she needs space. She invited you into a scheme that would allow her to do just that. It wasn’t a rebuff; it was an invitation. You have to imagine it not literally, but as a form of sexual play. Play at not needing me. Play at ignoring me.” But Jimmy could not play, because he was caught in a struggle with Candace. He didn’t want to engage in such contortions to elicit her desire. He wanted her to want him his way. Jimmy had felt deprived and rejected for so many years that the main feeling that escorted him was anger. His bile only highlighted the extent of his longing and need. The way they neutralized the threat of rage was through massive affection. Their almost constant physicality acted like a sexual appetite suppressor. This kind of contact can sustain itself for years without turning into desire. Unconditional love does not drive unconditional want. That’s what we have with friends, and Jimmy and Candace were friends who wanted to be lovers. Knowing that Candace had already expressed a need for distance, I saw an opening to intervene. I sought to introduce a disruption into the cozy, affectionate touch that had come to replace sex. “Do you touch each other?” I asked, though I already knew the answer. “All the time,” she replied. “Do you cuddle?” “Yes,” Jimmy said. “A lot?” “Yes,” they said in unison. “Well, it’s got to stop.” They looked at me wide-eyed. Here they had been emphasizing one aspect of their relationship that they both cherished, and I was taking it away from them. But by the way Candace responded, I knew I was on to something. “You don’t know what you’re doing to me,” she said. “I’m so touch-sensitive. For me, it’s all about touch. I’ll take it from anyone, even a relative stranger. I’m a touch whore.” Jimmy added, “When we visited my family last week, my mother’s best friend was rubbing her shoulders. You know, now that I think about it, I remember wondering if it even mattered whether it was me or Mrs. Monahan.” “So, this is going to be the goal of therapy,” I interjected. “We’re going to differentiate between Jimmy and Mrs. Monahan.”

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  “What is she?” someone asks, pointing to your girlfriend. “A Dalek.” “What’s that?” “The most evil aliens in the entire Doctor Who universe. They committed genocide against the Time Lords, and the Time Lords against them. They basically destroyed each other.” You are definitely the most uncool person ever to attend this MFA program. The woman from the Dream House, as a Dalek, can barely move through the crowd. People keep knocking into her costume. 21 You want to tell her a joke—“Start yelling ‘Exterminate!’ People will move!”—but she wouldn’t get it. You watch her down one drink, then another. After an hour, she walks home drunk and furious. You follow her for blocks, watching her bump along ahead of you, not certain what to do because you have the keys to your house. She has a colander on her head, like a conspiracy theorist—a true tinfoil hat. You’d been angry with her before, but there is something so tender and vulnerable about a grown woman, in a disintegrating costume of a character from a show she does not watch, stumbling back to a house in drunken anger. You think, this will be a good story, one day. A wasted undergrad happens across your path. “A ghost,” he says, his eyes widening. “A ghost!” 22 He tries to touch you. You tell him to go fuck himself, dip away from his grasp, and unlike that time in Savannah, she does not rescue you. When you get to the house, she is kicking the door. The knobs of her Dalek costume are falling off into the grass. You approach her. “I have the keys,” you say, wearily. She jumps, and then begins to scream. “Why would you scare me like that? What the fuck is wrong with you?” She is still yelling as you go inside. “Why did you want to make such a fancy dinner?” she says. “You fucked everything up, this whole night you fucked up. We just have this weekend together and you have fucked everything up.” She is still yelling as you begin the laborious process of washing your face, your skin emerging in patches through the makeup. “What the fuck are you supposed to be, anyway?” She is still yelling as you stand in the shower, the temporary hair dye swirling creamily down the drain. She is still yelling as you put on your pajamas. In bed, she says, “I want to fuck,” and you say, “Maybe tomorrow,” and turn into your pillow. Maybe next Halloween will be better. 20 . Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature , Type C961.2, Transformation to stone for breaking taboo. 21 . One Halloween, when you were in middle school, you went as a stick of gum, a costume you built yourself from cardboard and tin foil and pink paint, with holes for your arms and your face. Your cheeks felt hermetically sealed in the face hole, which was a bit too small and resembled those child-sized photo boards at tourist attractions.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as Natural Disaster I get bad heartburn. It’s the Zoloft, which takes the edge off my anxiety but brings along a bunch of awful side effects, like a good friend who can’t shed a bad lover. Every so often, I take my nightly meds and within a few minutes feel as though a hot poker has been shoved down my esophagus. I chew antacids and walk to the bathroom. Often the pain, or the force of the neutralization, makes me vomit. I become, functionally, everyone’s favorite science fair project. When I bend over the toilet, I think a lot about how my heart is a volcano, like that quote from Kahlil Gibran. It’s dumb but it moved me—spoke to my shifting tectonic plates—and I wrote it down on a Post-it I stuck on my desk: “If your heart is a volcano how shall you expect flowers to bloom in your hands?” It stayed there until a bad day, working on this book, when I suddenly loathed the quote with every ember of my being and crumpled it up and threw it away. Reader, do you remember that ridiculous movie Volcano, the one with Tommy Lee Jones? Do you remember how they stopped eruption in the middle of downtown Los Angeles? They diverted it with cement roadblocks and pointed fire hoses at it, and rerouted the lava to the ocean, and everything was fine? Sweet reader, that is not how lava works. Anyone can tell you that. Here is the truth: I keep waiting for my anger to go dormant, but it won’t. I keep waiting for someone to reroute my anger into the ocean, but no one can. My heart is closer to Dante’s Peak of Dante’s Peak. My anger dissolves grandmas in acid lakes and razes quaint Pacific Northwest towns with ash and asphyxiates jet engines with its grit. Lava keeps leaking down my slopes. You should have listened to the scientist. You should have evacuated earlier. So, Kahlil Gibran. I know what he’s saying, but even rhetorically he is making exactly the wrong point. The fact is, people settle near volcanoes because the resulting soil is extraordinary, dense with nutrients from the ash. In this dangerous place their fruit is sweeter, their crops taller, their flowers more radiant, their yield more bountiful. The truth is, there is no better place to live than in the shadow of a beautiful, furious mountain.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  Then I stole money from them. At first I took only small change, to buy Cokes and ice cream, but later I stole fifty-cent pieces and even dollar bills. I stashed the money in an ammunition box under one of the barracks. My idea was to steal enough to run away. I was ready to do anything to get clear of Dwight. I even thought of killing him, shooting him down some night while he was picking on my mother. I not only carried newspapers, I read them, and reading them had taught me that you can kill a man and get away with it. You just had to appear in the right role, like Cheryl Crane when she stabbed Johnny Stampanato to death for threatening Lana Turner. Sometimes I took the Winchester down when I heard Dwight start in on my mother, but his abuse was more boring than dangerous. She didn’t respect him. She looked down on him. He was doing just fine until we came along. Who did she think she was? Mainly I wanted to shoot him just to quiet him down. Dwight wasn’t wrong when he called me a liar and a thief, but these accusations did not hurt me, because I did not see myself that way. Only one of his charges had stinging power—that I was a sissy. My best friend was a thoroughbred sissy, and because of our friendship I worried that others might think the same of me. To put myself in the clear I habitually mocked Arthur, always behind his back, imitating his speech and way of walking, even betraying his secrets. I also got into fights. I didn’t fight Arthur again, but I had learned from him the trick of going crazy when insulted. I had also learned that getting hit a few times wouldn’t kill me and that other people, even Dwight, would treat me with a certain deference for a few days after a fight. And of course it made other boys think twice about their words, to know that they were accountable for them. All of Dwight’s complaints against me had the aim of giving me a definition of myself. They succeeded, but not in the way he wished. I defined myself by opposition to him. In the past I had been ready, even when innocent, to believe any evil thing of myself. Now that I had grounds for guilt I could no longer feel it. WHILE PEARL AND I waited in the car we did our best to get on each other’s nerves. Pearl hummed. Her humming had nothing to do with music. It held to no pattern of melody or rhythm but spun itself out endlessly, moronic as me cracking my knuckles, which was what I did to get her goat. Crack. Crack. Crack. Crack. Crack. We could keep this up for quite a while.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  She’d spoken with the school nurse and immediately asked the vice-principal what he thought he was doing, hauling me around by the ears. He said that was beside the point, Mrs. Wolff, let’s not muddy the water here, but she said, No, to her it wasn’t beside the point at all. She faced him across his desk. She was erect, pale, and unfriendly. The point, he told her, was that I had violated school property and the law. Not to mention decency. My mother looked over at me. I saw how tired she was, and she must have seen the pain I was in. I shook my head. “You’re mistaken,” she told him. He laughed disagreeably. Then he set out his case, which consisted of eyewitness testimony by two boys who had been in the lavatory at the time the obscene words in question were inscribed on the wall. “What obscene words?” she asked. He hesitated. Then, demurely, he said, “Fuck you.” “That’s one obscene word,” my mother said. He pondered this. He said that, given the particular context, he considered you to be an obscene word as well. I said I didn’t do it. “If he says he didn’t do it, he didn’t do it,” my mother said. “He doesn’t lie.” “Well, I don’t either!” The vice-principal rocked forward onto his feet. He opened the door and beckoned to the weed fiends, who were waiting in the outer office. They came in together and after a hangdog glance in my direction serially mumbled their dismal narrative at the floor, while I looked at them with brazen incredulity. When they were done the vice-principal gave them passes and sent them out. He was acting very much in control now, very much on top of the situation. “They’re lying,” I said. His placidity fell off like a mask. “Why?” he asked. “Give me one reason.” “I don’t know,” I said, “but they are.” “We’re not getting anywhere,” my mother said. “I think I’d better talk to the principal.” The vice-principal said that he had been given full authority in this case. He was in charge. We’d better realize that what he said went. But my mother would not be moved. And in the end we got in to see the principal. The principal was a furtive, whey-faced man who feared children and avoided us by staying in his office all day. He was right to avoid us. He wore his weakness in a way that excited belligerence and cruelty. When my mother and I came into his office, he insisted on making small talk with her as if she had just dropped by to see how things were going. At one point he leaned over and peered at my fingers. “Is that nicotine?” he asked. “No sir.” “I hope not.” He leaned back. His jacket parted, revealing green suspenders. “Let me tell you a story,” he said. “Take it for what it’s worth.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  319Lecture 32—Liberation Theologies in Latin America õOne of the most interesting things they suggested was something they called small basic communities, or base ecclesial communities, to empower rural grassroots Catholics. Base communities had begun years earlier, particularly in Brazil, as a pragmatic solution to an old problem: How do you evangelize people and nurture Christians who live far away from the nearest church or priest? õIn Brazil, bishops had realized that their priest shortage was especially bad, so they encouraged laypeople to take a leading role in Catholic life. They formed small groups that were a combination of Bible study, adult education, child care, and so on. õBase communities jibed with one of the big themes of Vatican II, which was the promotion of laypeople’s role in the church. Yet many in the upper levels of the church hierarchy, especially in Rome, started to worry that base communities were actually undermining the church because they were linked with liberation theology. LIBERATION THEOLOGY õMost liberation theologians would say they’re simply putting into practice one of the oldest themes in the Bible: the idea that God is on the side of the oppressed and suffering. God wants justice, and God’s message challenges the corrupt powers of this world. In the late 19 th century, the Vatican took up this message and published encyclicals calling out the injustices of global capitalism’s robber barons. õBut in the 1960s and 1970s, a new generation of theologians took this very old idea and blended it with insights drawn from the Latin American context and the Marxist tradition of social criticism. One of these theologians was a Dominican priest from Peru named Gustavo Gutiérrez. 320The History of Christianity II õIn 1971, Gutiérrez published a book called A Theology of Liberation in which he lambasted the capitalist system as un-Christian—at least in its current form. He attacked the church’s role in holding up the structures of an unjust economy. õThe context here is the Cold War. Liberation theologians were not dogmatic Marxists—it would be more accurate to call them Marxian, since they drew on Marx’s ideas as a set of tools, but rejected his atheism. But they were certainly more critical of Western-style capitalism than they were of the Soviet command economy, since it was Western businesses and governments, particularly the United States, that were usually interfering in Latin American affairs. õTo conservatives, liberation theology was basically communist propaganda in disguise. In the 1980s, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger—who would later become Pope Benedict XVI—published some very stern words against the movement. He called it a “severe deviation” from orthodoxy that confused the Kingdom of God with worldly political movements, and called for hating “class enemies” rather than the universal love that Jesus advocated.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  His arms fell like leaves to his side, while his face softened from its angry glare. He quietly reflected. Placing his sword back into its sheath, he bowed to the teacher in reverence. “And this,” the master replied again with equal calm, “is heaven.” Here the samurai, his sword held high at the peak of feeling full of rage (and at the moment before executing the prepared-for action), learned to hold back and restrain his rage instead of mindlessly expressing it. In refraining (with the master’s quick guidance) from making his habitual emotional expression of attack, he transformed his “hell” of rage to a “heaven” of peace. One could also speculate on what unconscious thoughts (and images) were stirred when the master provoked the swordsman’s ire. Perhaps the samurai was startled and at first even agreed with the characterization that he was ugly and untalented. This strong reaction to this insult (we might hypothesize) derived from his parents, teachers and others who humiliated him as a child. Perhaps he had a mental picture of being shamed in front of his school classmates. And then the other micro-fleeting “counter thought”—that no one would dare to call him that again and make him feel small and worthless. This thought and associated (internal) picture, coupled with a momentary physical sensation of startle, triggered the rage that led him down the compulsive, driven road to perdition. That was, at least, until his “Zen therapist,” precisely at the peak of rage, kept him from habitually expressing this “protective” emotion (really a defense against his feelings of smallness and helplessness) and forced him to the ownership of his real power and peaceful surrender. In the examples of Pouncer and the Zen master, choice occurred at the critical moment before executing attack. With the Zen master’s critical intervention, the samurai held back and felt the preparation to strike with his sword. In this highly charged state he paused and was able to restrain and transmute his violent rage into intense energy and a state of clarity, gratefulness, presence and grace. It is the ability to hold back, restrain and contain a powerful emotion that allows a person to creatively channel that energy. Containment (a somatic rooting of Freud’s “sublimation”) buys us time and, with self-awareness, enables us to separate out what we are imagining and thinking from our physical sensations. And this fraction of a second of restraint, as we just saw, is the difference between heaven and hell. When we can maintain this “creative neutrality,” we begin to dissolve the emotional compulsion to react as though our life depends on responses that are largely inappropriate. The uncoupling of sensation from image and thought is what diffuses the highly charged emotions and allows them to transform fluidly into sensation-based gradations of feelings.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  The Flexible Mind—Self-strategies You find it frustrating when people resist your good ideas out of sheer stubbornness, but you are largely unaware of how the same problem—your own stubbornness—afflicts you and limits your creative powers. As children our minds were remarkably flexible. We could learn at a rate that far surpasses our adult capacities. We can attribute much of the source of this power to our feelings of weakness and vulnerability. Sensing our inferiority in relation to those older than us, we felt highly motivated to learn. We were also genuinely curious and hungry for new information. We were open to the influence of parents, peers, and teachers. In adolescence many of us had the experience of falling under the sway of a great book or writer. We became entranced by the novel ideas in the book, and because we were so open to influence, these early encounters with exciting ideas sank deeply into our minds and became part of our own thought processes, affecting us decades after we absorbed them. Such influences enriched our mental landscape, and in fact our intelligence depends on the ability to absorb the lessons and ideas of those who are older and wiser. Just as the body tightens with age, however, so does the mind. And just as our sense of weakness and vulnerability motivated the desire to learn, so does our creeping sense of superiority slowly close us off to new ideas and influences. Some may advocate that we all become more skeptical in the modern world, but in fact a far greater danger comes from the increasing closing of the mind that afflicts us as individuals as we get older, and seems to be afflicting our culture in general. Let us define the ideal state of the mind as one that retains the flexibility of youth along with the reasoning powers of the adult. Such a mind is open to the influence of others. And just as you use strategies to melt people’s resistance, you must do the same on yourself, working to soften up your rigid mental patterns. To reach such an ideal, we must first adopt the key tenet of the Socratic philosophy. One of Socrates’s earliest admirers was a young man named Chaerephon. Frustrated that more Athenians did not revere Socrates as he himself did, Chaerephon visited the Oracle of Delphi and posed a question: “Is there a wiser man than Socrates in all of Athens?” The oracle answered no. Chaerephon felt vindicated in his admiration of Socrates and rushed to tell his mentor the good news. Socrates, however, being a humble man, was not at all pleased to hear this and was determined to prove the oracle wrong. He visited many people, each eminent in their own field—politics, the arts, business—and asked them many questions. When they kept to knowledge of their field, they seemed quite intelligent. But then they would expatiate on all kinds of subjects about which they clearly knew nothing. On such subjects

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  My mother was with me again. The nuts were all husked and drying in the attic. What did I need trouble for? I was inclined to let it go. But I didn’t like being laughed at, and I didn’t like comments about my hands. Arthur had made other such comments. He was bigger than me, especially around the middle, but I factored out this weight as blubber. I could take him, I felt sure. I had provocation, and I had witnesses to carry the news. It seemed like a good time to make a point. I started things off by calling him Fatso. Arthur continued to smile at me. “Excuse me,” he said, “but has anyone ever told you that you look exactly like a pile of wet vomit?” We went on like this, and then I called him a sissy. The smile left his face. And at that moment it came to me that although everyone referred to Arthur as a sissy, I had never heard anyone actually use the word in front of him. And in the same moment, seeing how everything about him changed after the word was spoken, how suddenly red and awful his face became, I understood that there must be a reason for this. A crucial bit of history I should have known about, and didn’t. His first swing caught me dead on the ear. There was an explosion inside my head, then a continuous rustling sound as of someone crumpling paper. It lasted for days. When he swung again I turned away and took his fist on the back of my head. He threw punches the way he threw balls, sidearm, with a lot of wrist, but he somehow got his weight behind them before they landed. This one knocked me to my knees. He drew back his foot and kicked me in the stomach. The papers in my bag deadened the blow but I was stunned by the fact that he had kicked me at all. I saw that his commitment to this fight was absolute. His dog barked in my face. When I got up Arthur rushed me, arms flailing, fists raining on my shoulders. He almost knocked me down again but I surprised us both by landing one on his eye. He stopped and roared. The eye was already closing up, his face gone scarlet, his nostrils streaming gouts of snot. When I saw his eye I got worried. I was ready to stop, but he wasn’t. He flew at me again. I closed with him and got him in a hug to keep his arms still. We staggered over the road like drunken dancers, and then he hooked my leg and tripped me and we rolled off the shoulder and down the long muddy embankment, both of us flailing and kicking with our knees and screaming gibberish in each other’s ears.