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 199 of 447 · 20 per page

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Actually, at the level of mere speech and challenged as I was, I would have said anything. I couldn’t see immediately what this would all imply if acted out in life. Yes, I told them, I rejected everything that anyone wanted to impose upon me gratuitously; the vanity of these practices seemed to me quite obvious. Great problems, true values, and a serious philosophy of life were elsewhere; I found them each day at school, in books, in literature, philosophy, and politics. Were we heading toward a Socialist society? Is poetry rooted in mysticism? Would the machine age bring social justice? Are art and morality bound together? Here were problems that were far more noble than whether one should ride a streetcar on the Sabbath. It exasperated me that I must, in spite of myself, concern myself with absurdly small matters, be involved in sacred triviality. My mother put her finger to her forehead, rolled her eyes, and simulated intense joy. This signified that I was either joking or insane. That was clear. But it was wrong of me to have carried this thing so far on a Sabbath, especially in front of my father, a good but irritable man. “Shut up,” she said. “You’re beginning to get everything mixed up!” That was her final statement, meaning that I was delirious, that I couldn’t distinguish one thing from another, one value from the next. In her hierarchical universe, this was the worst folly. My father hesitated. Should I go on talking? What was there left to lose? Ignoring my mother’s sideplay and her efforts to save the situation, my father brought out his final test: “I suppose you wouldn’t even circumcise your sons!” I was unable to give tit for tat. I hesitated. Not that I didn’t want to shout: yes, yes, yes! But I was impressed by the gravity of their attitudes and an awareness of their horror. Deeply upset, my mother and the children were silent. My father waited, bewildered by the turn in the situation. “I don’t know,” I muttered at last. We stopped there, my father certainly regretting that he had pushed me so far, and I troubled by my temerity and my ambiguous compromise. My mother was relieved that the interlude was over. Nothing could destroy her animal attachment to her children; although she no longer understood me, this did not bother her, no more than if I had been deaf or blind or dumb. She felt I belonged to her as chicks do to the hen: I was an extension of her own body. The anger and sadness of my father were clear-sighted. We had other channels of communication, but he saw that more of them were being condemned each day.

• From White Oleander (1999)

  We listen to country music stations, we pick up Tijuana, Chicago, Atlanta, GA, and sleep in motels where the clerk never even looks up, just takes the money. On Barneburg B, my cellmate Lydia Guzman dreams of walking on Whittier Blvd. in summertime, a rush of roughly cut drugs throbbing salsa down her thighs slick with ten-dollar nylons. She stuns the vatos with her slow haunch-dripping stride, her skirt impossibly tight. Her laughter tastes like burnt sunshine, cactus, and the worm. But most of all, we dream of children. The touch of small hands, glinty rows of seed pearl teeth. We are always losing our children. In parking lots, in the market, on the bus. We turn and call. Shawanda, we call, Luz, Astrid. How could we lose you, we were being so careful. We only looked away for a moment. Arms full of packages, we stand alone on the sidewalk and someone has taken our children. Mother. They could lock her up, but they couldn’t prevent the transformation of the world in her mind. This was what Claire never understood. The act by which my mother put her face on the world. There were crimes that were too subtle to be effectively prosecuted. I sat up and the white cat flowed off me like milk. I folded the letter and put it back in its envelope, threw it onto the crowded coffee table. She didn’t fool me. I was the soft girl in Reception. She’d rob me of everything I had left to take. I would not be seduced by the music of her words. I could always tell the ragged truth from an elegant lie. Nobody took me away, Mother. My hand never slipped from your grasp. That wasn’t how it went down. I was more like a car you’d parked while drunk, then couldn’t remember where you’d left it. You looked away for seventeen years and when you looked back, I was a woman you didn’t recognize. So now I was supposed to feel pity for you and those other women who’d lost their own children during a holdup, a murder, a fiesta of greed? Save your poet’s sympathy and find some better believer. Just because a poet said something didn’t mean it was true, only that it sounded good. Someday I’d read it all in a poem for the New Yorker . Yes, I was tattooed, just as she’d said. Every inch of my skin was penetrated and stained. I was the original painted lady, a Japanese gangster, a walking art gallery. Hold me up to the light, read my bright wounds. If I had warned Barry I might have stopped her. But she had already claimed me. I wiped my tears, dried my hands on the white cat, and reached for another handful of glass to rub on my skin. Another letter full of agitated goings-on, dramas, and fantasies. I skimmed down the page. Somewhere in Ad Seg, a woman is crying.

• From The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014)

  The new generation of antipsychotics, such as Abilify, Risperdal, Zyprexa, and Seroquel, are the top-selling drugs in the United States. In 2012 the public spent $1,526,228,000 on Abilify, more than on any other medication. Number three was Cymbalta, an antidepressant that sold well over a billion dollars’ worth of pills,[25] even though it has never been shown to be superior to older antidepressants like Prozac, for which much cheaper generics are available. Medicaid, the government health program for the poor, spends more on antipsychotics than on any other class of drugs.[26] In 2008, the most recent year for which complete data are available, it funded $3.6 billion for antipsychotic medications, up from $1.65 billion in 1999. The number of people under the age of twenty receiving Medicaid-funded prescriptions for antipsychotic drugs tripled between 1999 and 2008. On November 4, 2013, Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay more than $2.2 billion in criminal and civil fines to settle accusations that it had improperly promoted the antipsychotic drug Risperdal to older adults, children, and people with developmental disabilities.[27] But nobody is holding the doctors who prescribed them accountable. Half a million children in the United States currently take antipsychotic drugs. Children from low-income families are four times as likely as privately insured children to receive antipsychotic medicines. These medications often are used to make abused and neglected children more tractable. In 2008 19,045 children age five and under were prescribed antipsychotics through Medicaid.[28] One study, based on Medicaid data in thirteen states, found that 12.4 percent of children in foster care received antipsychotics, compared with 1.4 percent of Medicaid-eligible children in general.[29] These medications make children more manageable and less aggressive, but they also interfere with motivation, play, and curiosity, which are indispensable for maturing into a well-functioning and contributing member of society. Children who take them are also at risk of becoming morbidly obese and developing diabetes. Meanwhile, drug overdoses involving a combination of psychiatric and pain medications continue to rise.[30] Because drugs have become so profitable, major medical journals rarely publish studies on nondrug treatments of mental health problems.[31] Practitioners who explore treatments are typically marginalized as “alternative.” Studies of nondrug treatments are rarely funded unless they involve so-called manualized protocols, where patients and therapists go through narrowly prescribed sequences that allow little fine-tuning to individual patients’ needs. Mainstream medicine is firmly committed to a better life through chemistry, and the fact that we can actually change our own physiology and inner equilibrium by means other than drugs is rarely considered.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  What was developing within me into affection then turned to spite, so that I unconsciously began to resort to aggressiveness. My compositions, which had always been very serious when the topic was one that pleased me, now became exaggeratedly bad when I had to make an effort. Why should I take any pains for this man who remained blind? I often gave vent to such obvious ill-humor that he was at last forced to express his reproaches openly. This only egged me on and I criticized him in front of the whole class, though with a sarcasm that was too heavy and forced. I knew his tastes and began to defend all that he disliked, systematically making out a case for content against form, a generous abundance of the whole as opposed to the dull and pompous artifice of the desiccated classics. He had experienced, until then, only the discouraging indifference of my classmates, but our little duels of words exasperated us both, without bringing us any nearer each other. I was still looking for a chance for a showdown, and I found it one morning, when I least expected it. He admired the prose of Pascal very much and, in spite of our curriculum and the fact that little time was left before our baccalaureate exams and that my classmates were all impatient and concerned only with these tests, he seemed to us to be wasting valuable time as he tried vainly to communicate to us a taste for the anguish that is contained in Pascal’s thought. That day, he was in a bad mood; we were not responding, our minds all preoccupied with a history composition for the following hour. In bitter tones, holding his head high, he expressed his contempt for us and reproached us with being morons. The whole class was hurt and pretended, for a while, to be interested in the tragic situation of a man who is situated exactly between the two infinites. To me, Marrou’s insults seemed particularly pointed. If he was incapable of recognizing his true disciples, then he had no reason to complain. So I chose the moment when he thought he had his class in hand to attack him again. Swinging backward and forward in my seat so that the steel framework strained and grated, I very ostentatiously sighed with boredom and stared at the ceiling, pretending to sympathize with all his misery. My mimicry was so obvious and so full of histrionics that it pierced his customary indifference to all such behavior. He stopped talking. One of his habits was to play around with a piece of chalk, throwing it up in the air gently and catching it again with a regular and unhurried motion. He had managed to bring the rhythm of this play into harmony with his own gait as he walked, so that he moved effortlessly, the one rhythm helping the other. Now, he stopped dead, but his hand continued its play. “What’s going on there?”

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  I took possession of the chair with aggressive satisfaction. Then, fixing my eyes on my audience, I began to speak, half-ironically but deeply moved, without any notes, without any aid, in fact, but from the poems I quoted. I was sure enough of myself to speak without a written text, but I wanted above all to prove that one could do an excellent job while speaking the language of the street. Unfortunately, my irreverence carried me away, as always, so that I soon slipped into slang. The teacher suspected an intention to provoke but was held back by my brutal sincerity; in spite of the outraged class, he allowed me to talk twenty minutes longer than the allotted time. I could indeed see his wrinkled brow, the start of a gesture of anger, and the agitation of the whole class; but I couldn’t stop, could only continue my role in the inarticulate tragedy I had begun. The other kids were burning with impatience, waiting for the climax, and approving in advance the inevitable punishment to be meted out to me by the all-powerful teacher. When I was at last silent, the teacher was still completely perplexed. He hesitated in the utter silence of the class and, wishing to be just, not to hurt me excessively but still to sanction my impertinence and avenge his own irritation, he said: “Your report has been most odd. I can add very little to what you’ve said about Vigny. But, in order to speak without notes, which in itself should merit approval, you’ve allowed yourself to slip into the language of a street urchin.” I could take it as I pleased. But I saw that the class was satisfied with the insult; they looked at one another, sneered, and repeated: “the language of a street urchin.” So I chose to be deeply hurt and, besides, the teacher’s reproach had cut deeper than I myself realized. Despite my efforts and my superior airs, I knew that what he said was true and, far worse, that I couldn’t expect to speak anything but the language of an urchin. So, because he had hit my sorest point, I could only hate him. Returning to my seat, I looked down into my notebook and did not raise my eyes again in that room until the end of the hour. In effect, the language I spoke was an amalgam, a dreadful mixture of literary or even precious expressions and of idioms translated word for word from our dialect, of schoolboy slang and of my own more or less successful inventions. I tried, for instance, to find names for certain sounds which had not yet, so far as I knew, been identified either in French or in our local dialect; or I attempted to create in French those verbs that existed only in dialect. My language was thus as wild and turbulent as I was; it had none of the quality of a clear and placid stream.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  My father became surly and silent. He began all solemn feasts with a glass of fig wine. He was then easily angered, and his moods were heralded by these stormy silences. My mother was aware of how heavy the atmosphere had grown and knew she had to act quickly, so she anticipated the hour when the grocery clerk had to be called and said now to Elisa: “Go tell Boubaker to come up and turn off the light! Go on! Hurry up!” Elisa forgot her tears and began snarling instead. She was always the one, it was always Elisa who was sent on errands! Why couldn’t Kalla ever go? Besides, she was cold and sleepy. The raising of Friday night’s ticklish question always delighted me. My ironic joy must have been evident as my father said, in a taunting manner: “Don’t go if you’re cold, Elisa. Mordekhai will turn the light off, since he’s not afraid of committing a sin!” I hadn’t expected this attack. Did he really think I wouldn’t dare? “As you wish,” I said drily. My mother sensed the challenge and wanted to avoid any open conflict between her husband and her son. Brutally, she repeated her order to Elisa; her firm tone put an end to any discussion, and Elisa was so dumfounded that she obeyed without a peep. But the atmosphere was charged, and we finished our chick-peas in a new silence broken only by the rhythmic sound of our chewing. The children were tired and uneasy and didn’t want to play games. Kalla was daydreaming. My mother cleared the table of all but the bread and the salt and covered these with another cloth: signs that the Sabbath was among us. When we were getting ready for bed, my father’s repressed anger was still simmering. In a nasty tone, he now forced the issue: “Why did you let Elisa go?” He thought he’d won. I said nothing, nor did I hesitate very long. I walked over to the switch, turned off the light, and left our flat in utter darkness. The children’s surprised voices became more subdued. No one protested. My parents groped around to find their bed. It took me a long time to fall asleep, and them too, for I heard them whispering. When Boubaker knocked at the door, my mother shouted to him, with some embarrassment, that the light was already out. The next morning, I rose very early, as I always did, and left the house for the school. My family pursued the Saturday tradition of staying in bed until fairly late. My mother had certainly earned these few hours of idleness; all week, she was out of bed at dawn, getting the children off to school and, on Sundays, getting them ready for outings. The children themselves were at home, as they went to the Alliance School that was closed on the Sabbath. My father, of course, didn’t go to his store.

• From The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014)

  Surveying the tableau he had created, Mark sat up straight, eyes wide open; clearly the fog had lifted. I said: “A witness can see how startled you are seeing what you had to deal with.” Mark nodded appreciatively and remained silent and somber for some time. Then, looking at his “father,” he burst out: “You asshole, you hypocrite, you ruined my life.” I invited Mark to tell his “father” all the things that he had wanted to tell him but never could. A long list of accusations followed. I directed the “father” to respond physically as if he had been punched, so that Mark could see that his blows had landed. It did not surprise me when Mark spontaneously said that he’d always worried that his rage would get out of control and that this fear had kept him from standing up for himself in school, at work, and in other relationships. After Mark had confronted his “father,” I asked if he would like Richard to assume a new role: that of his ideal father. I instructed Richard to look Mark directly in the eye and to say: “If I had been your ideal father back then, I would have listened to you and not accused you of having a filthy imagination.” When Richard repeated this, Mark started to tremble. “Oh my God, life would have been so different if I could have trusted my father and talked about what was going on. I could have had a father.” I then told Richard to say: “If I had been your ideal father back then, I would have welcomed your anger and you would have had a father you could have trusted.” Mark visibly relaxed and said that would have made all the difference in the world. Then Mark addressed the stand-in for his aunt. The group was visibly stunned as he unleashed a torrent of abuse on her: “You conniving whore, you backstabber. You betrayed your sister and ruined her life. You ruined our family.” After he was done, Mark started to sob. He then said he’d always been deeply suspicious of any woman who showed an interest in him. The remainder of the structure took another half hour, in which we slowly set up conditions for him to create two new women: the ideal aunt, who did not betray her sister but who helped support their isolated immigrant family, and the ideal mother, who kept her husband’s interest and devotion and so did not die of heartbreak. Mark ended the structure quietly surveying the scene he had created with a contented smile on his face.

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

  HILARY. (viii. de Trin. c. 5) The heretics, since they cannot gainsay these words, endeavour by an impious lie to explain them away. They maintain that this unity is unanimity only; a unity of will, not of nature; i. e. that the two are one, not in that they are the same, but in that they will the same. But they are one, not by any economy merely, but by the nativity of the Son’s nature, since there is no falling off of the Father’s divinity in begetting Him. They are one whilst the sheep that are not plucked out of the Son’s hand, are not plucked out of the Father’s hand: whilst in Him working, the Father worketh; whilst He is in the Father, and the Father in Him. This unity, not creation but nativity, not will but power, not unanimity but nature accomplisheth. But we deny not therefore the unanimity of the Father and Son; for the heretics, because we refuse to admit concord in the place of unity, accuse us of making a disagreement between the Father and Son. We deny not unanimity, but we place it on the ground of unity. The Father and Son are one in respect of nature, honour, and virtue: and the same nature cannot will different things. 10:31–3831. Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him. 32. Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me? 33. The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God. 34. Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? 35. If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; 36. Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God? 37. If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. 38. But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him. AUGUSTINE. (Tract. xlviii. 8) At this speech, I and My Father are one, the Jews could not restrain their rage, but ran to take up stones, after their hardhearted way: Then the Jews took up stones again to stone Him. HILARY. (vii. de Trin. c. 23) The heretics now, as unbelieving and rebellious against our Lord in heaven, shew their impious hatred by the stones, i. e. the words they cast at Him; as if they would drag Him down again from His throne to the cross. THEOPHYLACT. Our Lord remonstrates with them; Many good works have I shewed you from My Father, shewing that they had no just reason for their anger.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Nor was the woman dancing a simulator. That the musicians should be possessed in this manner was far from surprising: they were from some tribe of the deep South, a strange offshoot of Negro Africa sent out toward the Mediterranean. But the woman was a sensible housewife, with children who went to school; did she deserve my anger or my contempt for allowing herself to become hysterical, limp as a rag, a jointless doll tossed back and forth, without any conscience, in this manner?

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  " Assuredly, this was a wicked Cordelier," said Oisille. " A monk, a priest, and a preacher, to be guilty, on Christmas day, of such an infamy, and that in the house of God, and under the sacred veil of confession ! This was carrying impiety and villany to the very climax." 356 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE iNm<el .\\ "Why," said Hircan, "to hear you talk, one would think the Cordeliers should be angels, or more chaste than other men ; but they are quite the reverse, as you must know from many an example. As for this one, it appears to me that he was very excusable, finding him- self, as he did, shut up alone with a handsome girl." " Nay," said Oisille, "but it was Christmas night." " The very thing that makes him the more excus- able," said Simontault, "for being in Joseph's place, beside a beautiful virgin, he had a mind to try and beget a baby, in order to play the mystery of the Nativity to the life." " Truly," said Parlamente, " if he had thought of Joseph and the Virgin Mary, he would not have har- boured such a wicked purpose. At any rate, he was an audacious villain to make such a criminal attempt upon no encouragement." "The manner in which the countess had him casti- gated," said Oisille, " might serve, methinks, as a warn- ing to others like him." " I do not know if she did well," said Nomerfide, " thus to scandalise her neighbour, and if it would not have been better to remonstrate with him on his fault in private and gently, than thus to divulge it." " That I think would have been better," said Ge- buron, "for we are commanded to reprove our neighbour in secret, before we speak of his offence, not only to the Church, but to any person whatever. When a man is deprived of all motives on the side of honour, it is very hard for him to reform ; and the reason is, that shame keeps as many from sin as does conscience." "I think," said Parlamente, "that every one should practise the precepts of the Gospel, and it is very scan- dalous that those who preach them should do the re- Fifth day.\ QUEEN OF NAVARRE. x\l verse ; therefore we need have no fear of scandahsino- those who scandalise others. On the contrary, it ap- pears to me meritorious to make them known for what they are, so that we may be on our guard against their wiles with regard to the fair sex, who are not always wary and prudent. But to whom does Hircan give his voice ? " " Since you ask me," he replied, " I give it to you, to whom no sensible man could refuse it."

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  The next day, I announced this to all my friends. But a new disappointment awaited me on my return from school: as the twins were too weak, the mohel had asked for an additional delay to circumcise the boy. So my bar mitzvah, of course, was delayed too, until the child would be stronger. I would gladly have stuck my finger into the eye of this larval being. Fortunately, the delay was not long, and the great day soon came. Our apartment was already invaded at dawn by all the women of our family and of the building. There was work enough for all: food had to be prepared, furniture moved out, Mother and the babies to be looked after, our terrace to be decorated. But there were too many women around and they all got in each other’s way, took nasty cracks at each other, and then sulked, finally uttering sudden cries of joy. I was already aware of my own dignity as a man and despised these women who were all noisy and changing in their moods like children. Their pointless excitement was like that of hens, especially when, looking up and staring straight ahead, with the chin thrust forward, they suddenly uttered long and loud cries of joy in the Oriental manner. At first, I thought of trying to be useful, but they soon steered me away toward the street. I would never have obeyed them had I really thought that they had come together in my honor. Besides, the presence of all these strangers, busied with tasks that were normally my mother’s, irritated me considerably. The comings and goings of aunts, uncles, cousins, and neighbors, through the wide-open door, never ceased. I no longer felt at all at home. Because it was so public, my party seemed no longer to be so much my own. Toward the beginning of the afternoon, I had to go through the great ritual of washing and dressing. To avoid the expense of the public bath, to which I would have had to invite as my guests all the neighborhood boys, Aunt Noucha had allowed us to use her own bathroom. As none of our families had a private bathroom and none of us had ever seen one before, the mere use of this one gave the occasion a peculiar solemnity. But, to my great disappointment, it was on Aunt Rbiqua that the sacred honor of washing me was conferred, to compensate her never having had any children. I had never stood naked before anybody and now tied a towel securely around my loins while she went down on her knees because her sore back made it difficult for her to bend forward. Then she proceeded to rub my back and chest up and down and down and up with big sweeps of the sponge, as if she were a machine. Finally, she ordered me to remove the towel. I shook my head, without uttering an answer.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  A LORD of Grignaux, gentleman, of honour to Anne, Duchess of Brittany and Queen of France, returning home after an absence of more than two years, found his wife at another estate he had, not far from that in which he usually resided. He asked the reason of this, and was told that the house was haunted by a spirit, which made such a disturbance that no one could live in it. Monsieur de Grignaux, who was not a man to give credit to these fancies, replied that if it was the devil himself he should not fear him, and took his wife home with him to their usual abode. At night he had plenty of torches lighted, the better to see this spirit; but, after watching a long time without seeing or hearing anything, he at last fell asleep. No sooner had he done so than he was awakened by a sound box on the ears, after which he heard a voice crying, " Brenigne, Brenigne," which was the name of his deceased grandmother. He called to a woman who slept in the chamber to light a candle, for he had had all the torches put out, but she durst not rise. At the same time, Monsieur de Grignaux felt his bed-clothes pulled off, and heard a great noise of tables, trestles, and stools tumbled about the room with a din that lasted until day. But he never believed that it was a spirit ; he was not so frightened as vexed at losing his night's rest. On the following night, being resolved to catch Master Goblin, he had no sooner lain down than he pretended Fourth Jay. QUEEN OF NAVARRE. 34.1 to snore with all his might, keeping his open hand ovei his face. While thus awaiting the arrival of the spirit, he heard something approach, and began to snore louder than ever. The spirit, which by this time had become familiar, gave him a great thump, whereupon Monsieur de Grignaux seized its hand, crying out, " Wife, I have caught the spirit." His wife rose instantly, lighted a candle, and behold you, it turned out that the spirit was the girl who slept in their chamber. She threw herself at their feet, begging to be forgiven, and promised to tell them the truth, which was, that the love she long entertained for a domestic had made her play this trick in order to drive the master and mistress out of the house, and that they two, who had charge of it, might make good cheer, which they failed not to do when they were alone. Monsieur de Grignaux, who was not a man to be trifled with, had them both beaten in a manner they never forgot, and then turned them both out of doors. In this way he got rid of the spirits who had haunted his house for two years.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  Madame de Sedan, who was very choleric, hearing this speech, flew into such a passion that if her husband had not been there, she would have had the Cordelier roughly handled ; and she swore very decidedly he should never have the pig she had promised ; but Monseigneur de Sedan, seeing he had not disguised the truth, swore he should have two, and had them sent to his monastery. Thus it was, ladies, that the Cordelier, being sure that Fifth day. -\ QUEEN OF XAVARRE. 379 ladies' offerings could not fail him, contrived to have the favour and the alms of men for speaking the plain truth. Had he been a flatterer and dissembler, he would have been more pleasing to the ladies, but not so profitable to himself and his brethren. The novel was not ended without making the com- pany laugh, especially those of them who knew the lord and lady of Sedan. " The Cordeliers, then," said Hircan, " ought never to preach with a view to make women wise, since their folly serves them so well." " They do not preach to them to be wise," said Parla- mente, " but only to believe themselves so ; for those wo men who are wholly mundane and foolish, give them no great alms ; but those who by reason of frequenting their monasteries, and carrying paternosters marked with a death's head, and wearing their hoods lower than others, think themselves the wisest, are those who may well be called foolish; for they rest their salvation on the confi- dence they have in those unrighteous men whom, in con- sideration of a little seeming, they esteem demi gods." " But who can help believing them," said Ennasuite, " seeing that they are ordained by our prelates to preach the Gospel, and reprove us for our sins .-' " "Those can," replied Parlamente, " who have known their hypocrisy, and who know the difference between God's doctrine and the devil's." ■'Jesus!'* exclaimed Ennasuite, " can you suppose that those people would dare preach a bad doctrine .'' " " Suppose } ' returned Parlamente, " nay, I am sure there is nothing they believe less than the Gospel ; I mean ttie bad ones among them, for I know many good men who preach the Scriptures purely and simply, and live likewise without scandal, without ambition or covet- -So THE HEPTAMERON OE THE iNcwel 44. ousness, and in chastity that is neither feigned nor con- strained. But the streets are not so full of such men as of their opposites ; and the good tree is known by its fruits." " In good faith, I thought," said Ennasuite, "that we were bound under pain of mortal sin to believe all they tell us from the pulpit of truth, when they speak only of what is in Holy Writ, or adduce the expositions of holy doctors divinely inspired."

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  "O, by my faith!" exclaimed Nomerfide, raising her voice, " you may say what you will, but for my part I would rather be flung into the river than go to bed with a Cordelier." " You can swim, then," retorted Oisille, laughing. Nomerfide was piqued at this, and said with warmth, " There are those who have refused better men than Cordeliers, without making any flourish of trumpets about it, for all that." " Or yet beating the drum about what they have done and granted," rejoined Oisille, who laughed to see her vexed. " I perceive that Nomerfide has a mind to speak," said Geburon, " and I give my voice in her favour, that she may unburden her heart upon some good novel." "The remarks which have just been made," said I first day\ QUEEN OF NA VARRE. 4y Nomerfide, " concern me so little that they can give me neither pain nor pleasure. But as I have your voice, I beg you to hear mine, while I show you that, if one is sly for a good purpose, others are so for a bad one. We are vowed to speak the truth, and therefore I will not conceal it ; for just as the boatwoman's virtue is no honour to other women if they do not resemble her in it, so the vice of another cannot dishonour them. Listen, then." NOVEL VI. Stratagem Dy which a woman enabled her gallant to escape, when her husband, who was Ijlind of an eye, thought to surprise Ihem together. Charles, the last Duke of Alen^on, had an old valet-de-chambre who was blind of an eye, and who was married to a woman much younger than himself. The duke and duchess liked this valet better than any other domestic of that order in their household, and the conse- quence was that he could not go and see his wife as often as he could have wished, whilst she, unable to accommo- date herself to circumstances, so far forgot her honour and her conscience as to fall in love with a young gentleman of the neighbourhood. At last the affair got wind, and there was so much talk about it that it reached the ears of the husband, who could not believe it, so warm was the affection testified to him by his wife. One day, however, he made up his mind to know the truth of the matter, and to revenge himself, if he could, on the person who put this affront upon him. With this view he pre- tended to go for two or three days to a place at some 48 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE INcweld.

• From The Prophetic Imagination (1978)

  Oppressive Social Policy The Solomonic achievement was in part made possible by oppressive social policy . Indeed, this was the foundation of the regime and surely the source of the affluence just mentioned. That affluence was undoubtedly hierarchical and not democratic in its distribution. Obviously some people lived well off the efforts of others, for we are reminded that there were those “who built houses and did not live in them, who planted vineyards, and did not drink their wine.” Fundamental to social policy was the practice of forced labor, in which at least to some extent subjects existed to benefit the state or the political economy. It is not terribly important or helpful to determine if the forced labor policy included all subjects, as suggested in 1 Kgs 5:13-18, or if the people of Israel were exempted from the general levy of the empire, as contended in 1 Kgs 9:22. In any case, it was unmistakably the policy of the regime to mobilize and claim the energies of people for the sake of the court and its extravagant needs. As we know from our own recent past, such an exploitative appetite can develop insatiable momentum so that, no matter how much in the way of goods or power or security is obtained, it is never enough. The rebellion announced in 1 Kgs 11:28 and the dispute of 1 Kings 12 concerning the nature of government and the role of people and leaders both show the struggle with a new self- understanding. In that new consciousness on which the regime was built but which was also created by the regime, the politics of justice and compassion has completely disappeared. The order of the state was the overriding agenda, and questions of justice and freedom, the main program of Moses, were necessarily and systematically subordinated. Justice and freedom are inherently promissory; but this regime could not tolerate promises, for they question the present oppressive ordering and threaten the very foundations of current self-serving.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  Sometimes it’s therapy; other times it could be a day off, a good cry, a much-needed infusion of joy. It’s easy to get pissed off when you’re in a joy famine or you’ve been ignoring your own needs for too long. Don’t shoot the messenger, but in these cases, you’re probably most angry with yourself. Journal it out: Get your tumultuous thoughts out of your head and onto a piece of paper. What happened? How did it make you feel? What other feelings came up? How did you respond? How could you have responded instead? What will you do now to feel better? What can you do next time to avoid being in this situation or a situation like this? (Because, believe me, there will be a next time.) Freewrite whatever comes to mind. Too afraid someone will see your deepest, darkest thoughts? Lock them up. Put barbed wire around them. Set a solid boundary: “Don’t read my shit!” Channel your fury: Give your anger something constructive to do—a job, a project, a workout, an artistic outlet. Channel that energy into something that makes a positive difference. Protest. Volunteer. Donate. Write. Sing. Move. Make art. Basically, choose a healthy action to help move your big, intense feelings through and out of your body. Say you’re sorry: Sometimes our anger is 100 percent appropriate. Other times, we’ve messed up. If you made a mistake, or hurt someone, own up to it —without caveats. Sorry for calling you a dirtbag, but you were being a dirtbag. Nope. That’s not it. When you recognize that you were out of line, just say you’re sorry, full stop. Forgive yourself: Don’t beat yourself up, pal. It’s over. Let yourself off the hook. Give yourself the grace to move on, knowing that by being accountable you’ve acted with integrity. You’re doing the best you can during a shitty time. None of this is easy, but this work can actually make your relationships stronger. YOU’VE GOT THIS This is big stuff, and I’m superproud of you/us for exploring it. And guess what? You don’t have to continue this on your own. Work with a therapist, ask for help from a trusted friend, join a support group. There are so many outlets available to us now. Above all, make a promise to yourself (repeat after me): I will not punish myself for my feelings. I will release myself from torturing myself over past behaviors. I will remember that I am doing the best I can. I will move forward with love. Anger is healthy. If it wasn’t for anger, many of the freedoms we hold dear wouldn’t exist. Remember, when we have the courage to explore our unbecoming feelings, a world of healing opens up to us. We experience better health, deeper intimacy, and stronger connections, which opens the door to a whole lot more love.

• From White Oleander (1999)

  She shuddered. She still remembered my touch with revulsion. It made me dizzy with hatred. This was my mother. The woman who raised me. What chance could I ever have had. “How long were you gone?” My voice sounded flat and dead in my own ears. “A year,” she said quietly. “Give or take a few months.” And I believed it. Everything in my body told me that was right. All those nights, waiting for her to come home, listening for her key in the lock. No wonder. No wonder they had to tear me away from her when I started school. No wonder I always worried she was going to leave me one night. She already had. “But you’re asking the wrong question,” she said. “Don’t ask me why I left. Ask me why I came back.” A truck with a four-horse trailer rattled up the road toward the highway. We could smell the horses, see their sleek rumps over the rear gate, and I thought about that day at the races, Medea’s Pride. “You should have been sterilized.” Suddenly she was up, pinning me by my shoulders to the tree trunk. Her eyes were a sea in fog. “I could have left you there, but I didn’t. Don’t you understand? For once, I did the right thing. For you.” I was supposed to forgive her now, but it was too late. I would not say my line. “Bully. For. You,” I replied dryly. She wanted to slap me, but she couldn’t. They’d end the visit right now. I lifted my head, knowing the white scars were gleaming. She dropped her grip on my arms. “You were never like this before,” she said. “You’re so hard. Susan told me, but I thought it was just a pose. You’ve lost yourself, your dreaminess, that tender quality.” I stared at her, not letting her look away. We were the same height, eye to eye, but I was bigger-boned, I probably could have beaten her in a fair fight. “I would have thought you’d approve. Wasn’t that the thing you hated about Claire? Her tenderness? Be strong, you said. I despise weakness.” “I wanted you to be strong, but intact,” she said. “Not this devastation. You’re like a bomb site. You frighten me.” I smiled. I liked the idea that I frightened her. The tables were truly turned. “You, the great Ingrid Magnussen, goddess of September fires, Saint Santa Ana, ruler over life and death?” She reached out her hand, as if to touch my face, like a blind woman, but she couldn’t reach me. I would burn her if she touched me. The hand stayed in the air, hovering in front of my face. I saw, she was afraid. “You were the one thing that was entirely good in my life, Astrid. Since I came back for you, we’ve never been apart, not until this.” “The murder, you mean.” “No, this.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  Suddenly the true diagnosis came to light: she was suffering from a brain tumor. At once, with a mixture of anger and relief, the girl was sent to the specialist to start the appropriate treatment. Addressing the wrong problem wasn’t getting anywhere. Many theories about what the cross achieved, including some of the most popular and vocal, have made both of these mistakes. They have insisted, like the Boy Scouts with the old lady, that the human race really needed help to go to “heaven,” when all along the New Testament was insisting that the divine plan was “to sum up . . . everything in heaven and on earth” in the Messiah. And they have insisted on a particular diagnosis of the human plight and have treated that rather than the real disease. These two mistakes have reinforced one another. In most popular Christianity, “heaven” (and “fellowship with God” in the present) is the goal, and “sin” (bad behavior, deserving punishment) is the problem. A Platonized goal and a moralizing diagnosis—and together they lead, as I have been suggesting, to a paganized “solution” in which an angry divinity is pacified by human sacrifice. The zealous theological Boy Scouts have gotten it wrong. Humans are made not for “heaven,” but for the new heavens and new earth. And the equally zealous theological doctors have produced the wrong diagnosis. The human problem is not so much “sin” seen as the breaking of moral codes—though that, to be sure, is part of it, just as the headaches and blurry vision really were part of the medical problem—but rather idolatry and the distortion of genuine humanness it produces. These two mistakes go together, reinforcing the basic heaven-and-earth dualism that continues to haunt Western theology. They lead some to suppose that the human problem has to do, after all, with our “earthly” and “bodily” selves and that our ultimate aim is for our “souls” to escape this body and find rest in an existence outside space, time, and matter altogether. I have argued elsewhere, and will continue here, that this is highly misleading. The “goal” is not “heaven,” but a renewed human vocation within God’s renewed creation. This is what every biblical book from Genesis on is pointing toward. In particular, much thinking and preaching about the cross has assumed a tradition that, in the seventeenth century, came to be known by some as the “covenant of works.” This idea, enshrined in the famous 1646 Westminster Confession, is central to much popular belief.

• From White Oleander (1999)

  And I thought, prisoners probably traded just that glance, when they met on the outside. When I got home, Yvonne was in front of the TV on the figured green velvet couch, watching a talk show for teenagers. “This is the mother,” she told me, not taking her eyes from the screen. “She gave up the daughter when she was sixteen. They never saw each other before this second.” Big child’s tears dripped down her face. I didn’t know how she could stand to watch this, it was as phony as an ad. I couldn’t help thinking of the adopted mother who’d raised the girl, how sick it must make her feel to see her carefully raised daughter in the arms of a stranger, applauded by the talk show audience. But I knew Yvonne was imagining herself coming back into her baby’s life twenty years from now, slim, confident, dressed in a blue suit with high heels and perfect hair, her grown child embracing her, forgiving her everything. And what were the chances of that. I sat down next to Yvonne and looked through my mother’s letters, opened one. Dear Astrid, Why don’t you write? You cannot possibly hold me responsible for Claire Richards’s suicide. That woman was born to overdose. I told you the first time I saw her. Believe me, she’s better off now. On the other hand, I am writing from Ad Seg, prison within a prison. This is what is left of my world, an 8x8 cell shared with Lunaria Irolo, a woman as mad as her name. During the day, the crows caw, dissonant and querulous, a perfect imitation of the damned. Of course, nothing that sings would alight near this place. No, we are left quite alone with our unholy crows and the long-distance cries of the gulls. The buzz and slam of the gates reverberate in this great hollow chamber, roll across poured cement floors to where we crouch behind a chain-link fence, behind the slitted doors, plotting murder, plotting revenge. I am behind the fence, they say. They handcuff us even to shower. Well they should. I liked that idea, my mother behind the fence, handcuffed. She couldn’t hurt me from there. From the slitted window in the door, I can see the COs at their desks in the middle of the unit. Our janitors of penitence, eating doughnuts. Keys glitter important at their waists. It’s the keys I watch. I am hypnotized by keys, thick fistfuls of them, I can taste their acid galvanization, more precious than wisdom. Yesterday, Sgt. Brown decided my half hour in the shower counts as part of the hour I’m permitted out of my cell each day. I remember when I had hoped he would be a reasonable man, black, slender, well-spoken. But I should have known.

• From White Oleander (1999)

  She was wearing a silver-gray satin nightgown and peignoir. She’d been listening to the music I’d heard that first night, the woman with tears in her voice. Olivia sat on the couch and tugged at my hand but I resisted her. She could hardly look at me. Scarface, the kids said. Frank N. Stein. “Good God, what happened?” I wanted to think of something clever, something cool and sarcastic. I wanted to hurt her. She’d let me down, she’d abandoned me. She didn’t think twice. “Where were you?” I asked. “England. What happened to your face?” “Did you have a good time in England?” I picked up the CD box on the table, a black woman with a face full of light, white flower behind her ear. She sang something sad, about moonlight through the pines. Billie Holiday, it said. I could feel Olivia staring at my face, the scars on my arms where my sleeves crept up. I wasn’t beautiful anymore. Now I looked like what I was, a raw wound. She wouldn’t want me around. “Astrid, look at me.” I put the box down. There was a new paperweight, grainy French blue with white raised figures. It was heavy and cool in my hand. I wondered what she’d do if I dropped it on the stone tabletop, let it go smash. I was drunk but not drunk enough. I put it down. “Actually, it’s a dog’s world. Did you know that? They do anything they want. It was my birthday too. I’m fifteen.” “What do you want, Astrid?” she asked me quietly, beautiful as always, still elegant, that smooth unbroken face. I didn’t know what I wanted. I wanted her to hold me, feel sorry for me. I wanted to hit her. I wanted her not to know how much I needed her, I wanted her to promise never to go away again. “I’m so sorry.” “You aren’t really,” I said. “Don’t pretend.” “Astrid! What did I do, go out of town?” Her pink palms were cupped, what was she expecting, for me to fill them? With what? Water? Blood? She smoothed her satin skirt. “It’s not a crime. I’m sorry I wasn’t here, okay? But it’s not like I did something wrong.” I sat down on the couch, put my feet on the coffee table among the antiques. I felt like a spoiled child, and I liked it. She shifted toward me on the couch, I could smell her perfume, green and familiar. “Astrid, look at me. I am sorry. Why can’t you believe me?” “I don’t buy magic. I’m not one of your tricks. Look, you got something to drink? I want to get really drunk,” I said. “I was going to have a coffee and cognac, and I’ll let you have a small one.” She left me there listening to Billie Holiday sing while she made clicks and clatters in the kitchen. I didn’t offer to help.