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.

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• 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 In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as Double Cross This, maybe, was the worst part: the whole world was out to kill you both. Your bodies have always been abject. You were dropped from the boat of the world, climbed onto a piece of driftwood together, and after a perfunctory period of pleasure and safety, she tried to drown you. And so you aren’t just mad, or heartbroken: you grieve from the betrayal. Dream House as Unreliable Narrator When I was a child, my parents—and then, learning from their example, my siblings—loved to refer to me as “melodramatic,” or, worse, a “drama queen.” Both expressions confused and then rankled me. I felt things deeply, and often the profound unfairness of the world triggered a furious, poetic response from me, but while that was cute when I was a toddler, neither thing—feeling, responding to feeling—aged well. Ferocity did not become me. Later, retelling stories about this dynamic to my wife, my therapist, the occasional friend, filled me with incandescent rage. “Why do we teach girls that their perspectives are inherently untrustworthy?” I would yell. I want to reclaim these words—after all, melodrama comes from melos , which means “music,” “honey”; a drama queen is, nonetheless, a queen—but they are still hot to the touch. This is what I keep returning to: how people decide who is or is not an unreliable narrator. And after that decision has been made, what do we do with people who attempt to construct their own vision of justice?

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

  She still hoped this marriage would work, was ready to put up with almost anything to make it work. The idea of another failure was abhorrent to her. But she may also have dreamed of flight and freedom—unencumbered, solitary freedom, freedom even from me. Like anyone else, she must have wanted different things at the same time. The human heart is a dark forest. After a week or so I announced at dinner that I had decided not to go to Paris. “The hell you aren’t,” Dwight said. “You’re going.” “He gets to choose,” Pearl said, on my side for once. “Doesn’t he, Rosemary?” My mother nodded. “That was the deal.” “The books aren’t closed on this one,” Dwight said. “Not yet they aren’t.” He looked at me. “Why do you think you aren’t going?” “I don’t want to change my name.” “You don’t want to change your name?” “No sir.” He put his fork down. His nostrils were flaring. “Why not?” “I don’t know. I just don’t.” “Well that’s a lot of crap, because you’ve already changed your name once. Right?” “Yes sir.” “Then you might as well change the other name too, make a clean sweep.” “But it’s my last name.” “Oh, for Christ’s sake. You think anybody cares what you call yourself?” I shrugged. “Don’t badger him,” my mother said. “He’s already made up his mind.” “We’re talking about Paris!” Dwight shouted. “It was his choice,” she said. Dwight jabbed his finger at me. “You’re going.” “Only if he wants to,” my mother said. “You’re going,” he repeated. EXCEPT FOR ARTHUR , people didn’t say much about my not going to Paris. They’d probably thought all along that it was just one of my stories. Arthur called me Frenchy for a while, then lost interest as I seemed to lose interest, while in secret I went on thinking of cobbled streets and green roofs, and cafés where fast, smoky-voiced women sang songs about their absolute lack of remorse. Dwight said that he had once seen Lawrence Welk in the dining car of a train. Dwight said that he’d walked right up to him and told him that he was his favorite conductor, and he probably did, for it was true that he loved the champagne music of Lawrence Welk better than any other music. Dwight had a large collection of Lawrence Welk records. When the Lawrence Welk show came on TV we were expected to watch it with him, and be quiet, and get up only during commercials. Dwight pulled his chair up close to the set. He leaned forward as the bubbles rose over the Champagne Orchestra and Lawrence Welk came onstage salaaming in every direction, crying out declarations of humility in his unctuous, brain-scalding Swedish kazoo of a voice. Dwight’s eyes widened at the virtuosity of Big Tiny Little Junior, who played ragtime piano while looking over his shoulder at the camera.

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

  298The History of Christianity II õIn the Netherlands, sphere sovereignty was actually meant to grant people more freedoms. That’s because in the Netherlands, those separate communities tended to break down along the lines of belief: Protestants, Catholics, atheists, socialists. The idea of sphere sovereignty was supposed to enhance civil liberties for each group. õBut in South Africa, the most obvious lines to white Afrikaners were racial. They drew on these Dutch Reformed ideas to create a powerful ideology of Christian nationalism. The result was a lot of freedom for whites and very little freedom for blacks. THE SOUTH AFRICAN LIBERATION TRADITION õBlack South African clergy and activists saw that many, if not most, white-dominated churches had decided to place themselves at the service of apartheid. But some South Africans looked to Christianity’s prophetic tradition. A number of anti-apartheid activists took the egalitarian, social justice strand of Christianity that inspired the American civil rights activists and combined it with African traditions. õOne man who spent most of his life trumpeting this prophetic call to South Africans was Desmond Tutu. Tutu was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1961 after he abandoned a career in education as a protest against a new law relegating black students to the worst schools. õHe combined the Christian notion that all humans are equal as creatures made in the image of God with the Bantu idea of ubuntu, which means “I am, because you are.” In other words: I deserve the same consideration as you, but we are also dependent on each other; we’re in this together. õIn the early years, the possibility that nonviolent protest could dismantle the apartheid regime probably seemed even more remote than its potential to end the Jim Crow laws in America. For example, bus boycotts in Johannesburg only won a small fare decrease and a vague promise that the government would take a look at low wages in the future. 299Lecture 30—The Gospel and Global Civil Rights õNonviolence seemed even more foolish after police gunned down 69 protestors at the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960—an event that led to a ban on the African National Congress, or ANC, which was the main organized voice of protest against apartheid. õThe ban on the ANC persuaded many anti-apartheid leaders, like Nelson Mandela, that nonviolent reform was a pipe dream. Mandela helped found a group called uMkhonto we Sizwe, meaning “Spear of the Nation” in the Xhosa language. This group carried out several bombings in the 1960s and 1970s. One killed 19 and wounded more than 200 people.

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

  3. Religious ought to resist their detractors because they strive not only to defame religious life, but to abolish it entirely. They strive to induce bishops to cause all men to avoid religious, and to refuse to assist them in their needs. This policy is represented by the following words from Isaiah (vii. 5), “Syria has taken counsel against you, unto the evil of Ephraim and the sons of Romelia, saying, ‘Let us go up to Judah and rouse it up, and draw it away to us,’ but the Lord God says: ‘It shall not stand, and this shall not be.’” The same description of plot is mentioned in Jeremiah (ii. 19): “They devised counsels against me, saying: ‘Let us... cut him off from the land of the living, and let his name be remembered no more.’” But, as Jacob said, “let not my soul go into their counsel” (Gen. xlix, 6). The cruelty of such detraction ought not to be tolerated; for religious may say with Esther (vii. 4), “We are given up, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be slain and to perish. And, it would be better we were sold as bondsmen and bondswomen. That evil might be borne with, and I would have mourned in silence.” In Sirach (iv. 26) we find this exhortation: “Accept no person against your own person, nor against your soul a lie.” In order that religious may effectually resist their detractors, we will note the four forms which detraction generally takes. If any evil exists among good men, (1) that evil will be exaggerated. (2) Doubtful facts will be given to the world as certainties. (3) Falsehoods will be invented. (4) Good deeds will be travestied to wear a bad appearance. CHAPTER 1 First of All by Exaggerating Any Evil That May Exist Among ThemNow any evil which may exist among religious can be exaggerated in three ways.

• From Paul and Matthew Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Terence L. Donaldson (2021)

  173 14 depicts well the violent wrath of this wild and chaotic “young man” who, inspired by the Lord’s spirit, repays his shame by wreaking violence on an Amorite village before he returns, his anger unabated, to his father’s house. 86 καὶ ἥλατο ἐπ’ αὐτὸν πνεῦμα κυρίου καὶ κατέβη εἰς Ἀσκαλῶνα καὶ ἐπάταξεν ἐξ αὐτῶν τριάκοντα ἄνδρας καὶ ἔλαβεν τὰ ἱμάτια αὐτῶν καὶ ἔδωκεν τὰς στολὰς τοῖς ἀπαγγείλασιν τὸ πρόβλημα καὶ ὠργίσθη θυμῷ Σαμψων καὶ ἀνέβη εἰς τὸν οἶκον τοῦ πατρὸς αὐτοῦ (14:19). 87 The language in fact graphically narrates the very kind of violence used by the Lord in the dispossession of that same land of the Amorites in Amos 2 in order to give it to Israel. 88 It may even echo the violence of Nazirites, like Samson, who played a significant role in that dispossession as recorded by Amos. Again, we suggest that it is not coincidental that this is the same kind of violent, anger-fueled, and divinely directed chaos that is prophetically announced in Mark 13, that is on display in the garden in Mark 14 including vv. 51–52, 89 and that continues through to the end of Mark’s gospel. True, the connection is not made explicit through logical rationales provided to connect the dots for unlearned readers, because the astute reader only needs a few choice intertexturally charged clues to “understand.” 90 86 Josephus’s rendering of the account of the birth of Samson also is suggestive in that Samson’s mother receives the announcement of Samson’s birth from an “angel” who is described in Ant. 5.8.2 as a νεανίας and in 5.8.3 as a νεανίσκος. See Collins, Mark, 795–6 n. 222. 87 In Amos 2:9–10 the Amorites are mentioned twice as those who kept the land from Israel and those whom God destroyed to give the land to Israel. It may not be clear from Judges that the peoples described in Amos are the same ones described in Judg 14; however, in Judg 14 the “Philistine” or “alien” woman that Samson proposes to marry hails from the Amorite-held town of Timnath, and the town that Samson massacres is likely not the Philistine fortress of Ashkelon on the Mediterranean coast but rather Khirbet ‘Asqal̈ūn in the same Amorite-held land and a city adjacent to Timnath. It is thus possible that the “young men” whom Samson calls to be his wedding party, the same young men who eventually shame him, are also Amorites. For an understanding of the ethnicities and towns in the Judges narrative, see George F. Moore, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Judges (The International Critical Commentary; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1958; orig. 1895), 338. Further exploration of Mark might reveal whether this connection to the Amorites is significant to the author of the Gospel.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Rewind and replay: Bob comes into the house. Faced with the chaos, he feels angry, but neither suppresses nor explodes. This time, supported by his wife’s centered, calm presence, he attends tentatively to his body. He notices his heart racing, while the muscles of his arms, shoulders, back, neck and jaw are tightening. After sharing his awareness with his wife, Bob has the fleeting glimpse of a bomb ready to explode. He feels the impulse to punch with his fists; his anger intensifies momentarily but then subsides. The vise grip in his tensed muscles begins to loosen. (These muscles had been engaged, as Nina Bull demonstrated, to inhibit the original urge to punch.) Bob sighs in relief as his legs begin, gently, to tremble. He “lets in” his wife’s supportive presence and then suddenly recalls, “Oh yeah, that’s what it was. Before I left the office, Alex, the supervisor, and I were discussing a marketing plan for the new widget. Alex and I had strongly differing opinions; we just couldn’t seem to agree. I felt competitive. We were combative, but in a good way. I felt forceful and clear. I suppose we could have hammered it out. Instead we stopped short of a solution when I remembered that Alex was dating the boss’s daughter. I stifled my power and ingenuity, and then, yes, that’s when I felt myself go into a rage. I wanted to throttle Alex but then retreated. I just wanted to leave and go home. The rest of the day I silently fumed. And then, when things were, well, the way they usually are at home, I wanted to explode. I felt the same seething rage I had felt at work. I guess I was triggered to blow when I set foot into the familiar mess at home; I just wanted to blow off steam. I was … well, really afraid that I could hurt you or the kids. So instead, I just went off to read the paper and simmered silently behind my paper fortress. I didn’t want to blow up at you and the kids. Really, what I wanted was the calm contact I am getting from you now.” This state of calm, unlike the temporary relief provided by the Valium in the first scenario, is a real shift in his perception of safety, an enduring one. It is achieved by a process of self-regulation and social engagement, rather than the temporary masking offered by a tranquilizer—though both act to relax the tight muscles. This collaborative experience is what brings Bob and Jane closer together.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as Meet the Parents In the car from New York, your girlfriend is high and quiet. She reeks of weed, and is about to meet your parents for the first time. You are angrier than you’ve ever been with her. “We’re gonna meet my parents in, like, an hour. I don’t understand why you would do this.” “You’ve never had to meet someone’s parents when you’re the first girlfriend ,” she snaps. “They look at you in this way and it’s unbearable.” You are silent. “They won’t be able to tell,” she says. “Now you can’t even help me drive,” you say. “I have to do this all on my own.” You inch through New York this way, the car filled with the silent, wavy heat of your respective angers. In Allentown, your parents are very nice to her. Dream House as Here Comes the Bride In DC, she meets your college friends, whose reactions to her range from sweet and excited to reserved. (Sam has gotten to them, you realize with a panic. You haven’t successfully contained the situation.) In Virginia, you ride horses through the woods and watch the sunrise over the Shenandoah mountains. The wedding is beautiful. At the reception, you all crowd into a photobooth. You don gloves. You hold a monocle over your eye. You cock a pipe against your lips. You drink, you dance. You love the way she bops on the dance floor, the dance of someone who has joy in her body. After the wedding you have to rip her little black dress off her body because the zipper is broken and you are both drunk and stoned and laughing. The next day, after you say good-bye to your friends, you sit in the car in the parking lot as she talks at you —your friends hate me, they’re jealous . An hour later you are still there, your head bent tearily against the window. The new bride walks by and notices you in your car. You see her slow down, her face crimped with puzzlement and concern. You shake your head ever so slightly, and she looks uncertain but mercifully she keeps walking so you can endure your punishment in peace. By the time you’ve wound out of the mountains and gotten back to a freeway, the bite of the fight has sweetened; whiskey unraveled by ice.

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

  And as if he knew how Dwight would describe the sight later on, Arthur, who despised him, smirked at Dwight, and wriggled and pranced every step of the way. When I got home from Concrete one night there was a big dog sleeping on the floor of the utility room. It was an ugly dog. Its short yellow coat was bare in patches, and one ear hung in pennant-like shreds. It had a pink, almost hairless tail. As I began to walk past, the dog came awake. Its eyes were yellow. At first it just looked at me, but when I moved again it gave a low growl. I yelled for someone to come. Dwight stuck his head through the doorway and the dog got up and started licking his hands. Dwight asked what the problem was and I told him the dog had growled at me. Dwight said, “Good, he’s supposed to. He doesn’t know you yet. Champion,” he said, “this is Jack. Let him smell your hands,” he told me. “Go on, he won’t bite.” I held my hand out and Champion sniffed it. “Jack,” Dwight said to him. “Jack.” I asked Dwight whose dog it was. He told me it was mine. “Mine?” “You said you wanted a dog.” “Not this one.” “Well, he’s yours. You paid for him,” he added. I asked what he meant, I paid for him, but Dwight wouldn’t tell me. I found out a few minutes later. Something was wrong in my room. Then I saw that my Winchester was gone. I stared at the pine rack I had made for it in shop. I stared at the rack as if I’d overlooked the rifle the first time, and only needed to look more carefully to see it. I sat on my bed for a while, then I stood up and walked out to the living room, where Dwight was watching television. I said, “My Winchester is gone.” “That dog is purebred weimaraner,” Dwight said, keeping his eyes on the TV. “I don’t want it. I want my Winchester.” “Then you’re shit out of luck, because your Winchester is on its way to Seattle.” “But that was my rifle!” “And Champ’s your dog! Jesus! I trade some old piece of crap for a valuable hunting dog and what do you do? Piss and moan, piss and moan.” “I’m not pissing and moaning.” “The hell you aren’t. You can just make your own deals from now on.” My mother was at a political conference. She had done some local organizing for the Democratic party in the last state election, and now they were trying to get her to work for Adlai Stevenson. When she got home the next day I met her outside and told her about the rifle. She nodded as if she’d already heard the story. “I knew he’d do something,” she said. They had it out after I went to bed.

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  “You heard me.” Trevor set the Sprite down on the carpet, tapped my chest, indicating we’re leaving. “You gonna talk like that now?” the old man sputtered, his eyes stuck on the screen. “The fuck you gonna do?” Trevor said. “Go ’head, do something, make me burn.” Trevor took a step toward the chair. He knew something I didn’t. “You done?” The old man breathed in place. The rest of the house was dark and still, like a hospital at night. After a moment he spoke, in a strange high-pitched whine. “I did good, baby.” His fingers fidgeted the armrest. The people in the sitcom danced off his slick hair. I thought I saw Trevor nod once or twice, but the TV could’ve been playing tricks. “You just like James. That’s right. I know. You a burner, you gonna burn them up.” His voice wobbled. “See that? That’s Neil Young. A legend. A warrior. You like him, Trev.” He motioned toward the poster by the hall as the door closed across him, clickless. We slipped into the frosted air, walked to our bikes, the old man droning on, muffled behind us. The pavement drifted out beneath our wheels. We said nothing as the maples, lit by sodium lamps, loomed red and windless above us. It felt good to be free of his old man’s presence. We rode along the Connecticut River as night broke into itself, the moon freshly high above the oaks, its edges hazed by an unseasonably warm autumn. The current churned with white froth to our right. Once in a while, after two or three weeks without rain, a body would float up from its depths, a bleached flash of a shoulder tapping the surface, and the families cooking out along the banks would stop, and a hush would come down along the children, and then someone would shout, “Oh god, oh god,” and someone else would call 911. And sometimes it’s a false alarm: a refrigerator rusted and lichen-stained to the shade of a brown face. And sometimes it’s the fish, gone belly-up in the thousands for no reason, the river-face iridescent overnight.

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

  I hear his voice in my own when I speak to my children in anger. They hear it too, and look at me in surprise. My youngest once said, “Don’t you love me anymore?” I left Chinook without a thought for the years I’d lived there. When we crossed the bridge out of camp, Chuck reached under his seat and brought out a jar of gorilla blood he’d mixed up for me. I worked on that while Chuck took sips from a pint of Canadian Club. I remember the wheat-colored label with the two big C’s, the way Chuck squinted when he tipped the bottle, the sloshing of the liquor when he lowered it again. I remember the glint of the liquor in the corner of his mouth. The Amen Corner____ Chuck got drunk almost every night. Some nights he was jolly. Other nights he went into silent rages in which his face would redden and swell, and his lips move to the words he was shouting inside his head. At the peak of his fury he threw himself against unyielding objects. He would ram his shoulder into a wall, then back up and do it again. Sometimes he just stood there, saying nothing, and pummeled the wall with his fists. In the morning he would ask me what he’d done the night before. I didn’t really believe that he had forgotten, but I played along and told him how wiped out he’d been, how totally out of control. He shook his head at the behavior of this strange other person. I could not keep up with him and I stopped trying. He never said anything, but I knew he was disappointed in me. Chuck’s father had run a dairy before he became a storekeeper and preacher. The family still owned the farm, though now they leased the pastures and barn to a neighbor. Mr. and Mrs. Bolger and their two young daughters lived in the main house. Chuck and I were off by ourselves in a converted storage shed a couple of hundred feet away. Mr. Bolger had the idea that a good dose of trust would rouse us to some adult conception of ourselves. It should have. It didn’t. The Bolgers went to bed at nine-thirty sharp. Around ten, if Chuck wasn’t already in the bag, we pushed his car down the drive a ways, then cranked it up and drove over to Veronica’s house. Arch and Psycho were usually there, sometimes Huff. They drank and played poker. I had no money, so I sat on the floor and watched the late show with Veronica. Veronica ruined the movies by telling me all about the stars. She had the inside track on Hollywood. She knew which actor, supposedly dead, was actually a drooling vegetable, and which actress could not be satisfied except by entire football teams. She was especially hard on the men.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Little did they know that Standard Oil had secretly set up and owned Republic Oil. With all of these practices Rockefeller had created a growing number of enemies, but none of them was as dogged and fanatical as George Rice, a man who had managed to maintain a small, independent refinery in Ohio. He tried to get lawmakers to investigate the company’s practices. He published a newsletter called Black Death , which compiled all the muckraking articles on Rockefeller. And to somehow find a way to make a profit and snub his nose at Rockefeller, he decided he would personally travel and sell his own oil in several towns, bypassing the new system that had cornered the market. It was hard to imagine that Standard Oil could possibly care about him; the amount of oil he was trying to sell was miniscule and his success was quite limited. But when he managed to sell a mere seventy barrels of kerosene to a retailer in Louisville, suddenly he learned that the railroad that had agreed, while he was on the road, to ship his oil to him now refused to carry his product. He knew who was behind this, but he managed to find other, more expensive means to get shipments of oil. He moved to another town near Louisville, only to find Standard Oil salesmen there who had anticipated his presence and carefully kept underselling him. He found himself pushed to ever-smaller towns farther south, but once again there were the Standard Oil men blocking his way, and soon he could not sell a drop of oil. It was as if they had spies everywhere and were tracking his progress. But more than anything, he felt the ubiquitous presence of Rockefeller himself, who clearly knew of his little campaign and was out to crush this tiniest of competitors at all costs. Finally realizing what he was truly up against, Rice gave up the fight and returned home. — In the early 1900s, after Rockefeller had resigned as head of Standard Oil, he began to fascinate the American public. He was by far the wealthiest man in the world, the first billionaire on the planet, but the stories of the way he had conducted his battles and the monopoly he had forged made them wonder about his character. He was a notorious recluse, and few knew anything concrete about him. Then some among his many enemies initiated a series of court cases to break up the Standard Oil monopoly. Rockefeller was forced to testify, and to the public’s amazement, he was not at all like the devil they had imagined. As one newspaper writer reported: “He seems the embodiment of sweetness and light. His serenity could not be disturbed. . . . At times his manner was mildly reproachful, at others tenderly persuasive, but never did he betray an ill temper or vexation.”

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  I suggest that she focus on the tightness and make the “voo” sound (see Chapter 6) to help her “open” her guts. “You’re always inside of me. I can never get away from you … Why are you there? I don’t understand … Hmm,” she intones, becoming curious as she goes along. After a few minutes, her legs begin to tremble again. The shaking intensifies and spreads—this time, with little jerks into her shoulders. A deep spontaneous breath emerges, and tears stream from her eyes. Miriam reaches out tentatively with her arms and quickly pulls them back. After another breath she speaks as if to her first husband: “Evan, I’m holding on to you. You’re in my guts. I won’t open to Henry … I just keep holding on to you.” She starts to cry, but then continues, “I think I’m mad at you. I can’t believe I’m saying it, but I’m mad at you for leaving. You left me alone. I hate that you died.” She clenches her hands and yells: “I hate you! I hate you! … Don’t leave me, damn it! … I hate you!” She begins to cry again, this time sobbing deeply. When she starts to talk, I suggest that she should “maybe just let things settle.” “Yeah, I think you’re right … There’s something I’m trying to get away from.” Some time passes, and Miriam cries gently, her legs trembling softly. “I haven’t opened to Henry. I’ve been pushing him away. No wonder we’re always in conflict. And when he tries to get physical, I just want to push him away … I felt guilty about that.” Her hands make a pushing movement again. Gradually, her movements become softer: her hands open out into a supine position, and she gently brings them toward her chest in a gesture of reaching and taking into the heart a tentative embrace. I don’t say anything, and Miriam continues, “I needed to protect myself … I felt so hurt and guilty.” “And how do you feel inside now?” I ask to keep her in the moment. “Well, actually I feel really good.” “And how do you know that?” “Well, it’s mostly that I feel a lot of space inside myself.” “Where do you feel that?” “I feel that in my belly and chest … My head feels like it’s got more room too, but mostly my belly and chest, they feel really open … It feels like a cool breeze is in my body. My legs feel really powerful, and I have a lot of … I feel shy to say it … I feel warm and tingling in my, in my … vagina … It feels like I really want Henry.” She pauses.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Be extra wary of sudden success and attention—they are not built on anything that lasts and they have an addictive pull. And the fall is always painful. Rising Pressure The people around you generally appear sane and in control of their lives. But put any of them in stressful circumstances, with the pressure rising, and you will see a different reality. The cool mask of self-control comes off. They suddenly lash out in anger, reveal a paranoid streak, and become hypersensitive and often petty. Under stress or any threat, the most primitive parts of the brain are aroused and engaged, overwhelming people’s reasoning powers. In fact, stress or tension can reveal flaws in people that they have carefully concealed from view. It is often wise to observe people in such moments, precisely as a way to judge their true character. Whenever you notice rising pressure and stress levels in your life, you must watch yourself carefully. Monitor any signs of unusual brittleness or sensitivity, sudden suspicions, fears disproportionate to the circumstances. Observe with as much detachment as possible, finding time and space to be alone. You need perspective. Never imagine that you are someone who can withstand rising stress without emotional leakage. It is not possible. But through self- awareness and reflection you can prevent yourself from making decisions you will come to regret. Inflaming Individuals There are people in the world who by their nature tend to trigger powerful emotions in almost everyone they encounter. These emotions range among the extremes of love, hatred, confidence, and mistrust. Some examples in history would include King David in the Bible, Alcibiades in ancient Athens, Julius Caesar in ancient Rome, Georges Danton during the French Revolution, and Bill Clinton. These types have a degree of charisma—they have the ability to express eloquently emotions they are feeling, which inevitably stirs parallel emotions in others. But some of them can also be quite narcissistic; they project their internal drama and troubles outward, catching other people up in the turmoil they create. This leads to profound feelings of attraction in some and repulsion in others. It is best to recognize these inflamers by how they affect others, not just yourself. No one can remain indifferent to them. People find themselves incapable of reasoning or maintaining any distance in their presence. They make you think of them continually when not in their presence. They have an obsessive quality, and they can lead you to extreme actions as a devoted follower or as an inveterate enemy. On either end of the spectrum—attraction or repulsion—you will tend to be irrational and you will desperately need to distance yourself. A good strategy to utilize is to see through the front they project. They inevitably try to cast a larger-than-life image, a mythic, intimidating quality; but in fact they are all too human, full of the same insecurities and weaknesses we all possess. Try to recognize these very human traits and demythologize them. The Group Effect

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Pavlov named the third and final chapter in the breakdown saga following unmitigated stress ultra-paradoxical but also referred to it as the transmarginal phase. In this final phase of “supramaximal” stimulation, a critical point was reached. Going beyond this apex would cause many of his dogs to just shut down; they became unresponsive for an extended period of time. Pavlov believed that this shutdown was a biological defense against neural overload. (In this way Pavlov set the stage for the study of conservation-withdrawal as investigated by Engle and later by Porges with the formation of his polyvagal theory.) In addition, as his animals “recovered” from being stunned, they exhibited extremely odd and inexplicable behaviors. The aggressive dogs became docile while the timid ones turned hyper-aggressive, as mentioned earlier. Similarly, trainers for whom the dogs had shown affection prior to the flood were now confronted with aggressive snarls and lunges. Other dogs, who had previously disliked their handlers, greeted them with showers of tail wagging and affection. These about-face counterintuitive behaviors are analogous to those of highly traumatized humans. The loving husband who attacks his wife upon returning from the Iraq War is one such possible example. Another involves hostages who exhibit the Stockholm syndrome. They are not only compliant but may behave as though they have fallen in love with their captors, even refusing to leave when their rescuers arrive. There are a multitude of examples where victims of kidnapping have regularly visited their previous attackers in prison for years and have even married them. Jill Carroll, the Christian Science Monitor reporter, described her Iraq abduction in almost cheerful terms but then, a day or two later, talked about being in seclusion because of her trauma. And then, hopefully back to equilibrium, she made the statement, “I finally feel like I am alive again.” In addition, traumatized individuals generally find themselves, as with Pavlov’s transmarginal phase, swinging wildly and unpredictably between being numb and shut down on the one hand and being flooded by emotions, including terror and rage, on the other. These bipolar swings are often erratic and capricious. With human posttraumatic stress disorder, chronic sufferers tend to gravitate, over time, toward shutdown. This shows up as symptoms of alexithymia (the inability to describe or elaborate feelings due to a deficiency in emotional awareness), depression and somatization.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  Maybe it was the same anger I felt, that hot thing that filled me up as I struck him again and again, I would shut him up, I thought, though I didn’t shut him up, he still spoke as I beat him, saying Yes after each stroke, yes, yes, and this made me angry, too, I can’t say why, it stoked the hot feeling that made me strike him harder. Shut up, I thought, though I didn’t speak the words, shut the fuck up, and it made me glad when he stopped saying yes, when he made other noises instead, inarticulate, animal, when he stopped giving me permission; maybe that was it, I didn’t want his permission, we had gotten past permission, I thought. I was hard again, beating him had made me hard; I didn’t know I could enjoy someone’s suffering that way but I did enjoy it, I wanted him to suffer more. When my arm was tired I raised it above my head, my right arm, and brought it down harder, not on his ass but on his back, which I struck three times very fast and with all my strength. He cried out sharply, a cry of real pain, pinched and high-pitched, but he didn’t break his position, he stayed crouched with his hands clasped beneath his head. Nor did he move when I dropped the belt and climbed onto the bed behind him. I had thought I wouldn’t fuck him but I wanted to fuck him now, I had to do it, it was a kind of compulsion, a necessary conclusion to what he had made me feel, I needed to be inside him. His ass was red from the beating, it was hot to the touch when I smacked him, which elicited another cry, more of surprise than of pain, I thought. I spit into the same hand and slicked my cock with it, just a little; I knew I was close, if I stroked myself too hard I would come too soon, and also I didn’t want to be too slick, I wanted him to feel it. I had opened him up already, he would still be wet from my hand, but I didn’t want it to be too easy for him, I wanted it to hurt.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I was there to join them, but something held me back. I stood scanning the crowd until I saw, among all the Bulgarian red and green and white, a little rainbow flag, then another, a whole group of five or six people waving them alongside their posterboard signs. I knew them, or most of them, they were activists I had met over the years, and I cut through the crowd toward them. S. greeted me first, tucking his posterboard under his arm to shake my hand. He was in his midtwenties, tall, with longish brown hair he frequently tossed out of his eyes, the gesture of an eighties pop star. He had come in from Varna, where he ran one of the only activist organizations I had heard of outside of Sofia. It had been in the news lately, they had tried to organize what he called an LGBT film festival, though it was really just a few chairs and a DVD player in a café. But even that was too much; on the second day a group of men barged in, they destroyed the television, they threatened anyone who came back. I mentioned this to him, saying it was terrible, outrageous, but he waved the words away. Those assholes, he said, it was just bullshit theater, the police were there the next day but they didn’t come back. He was more upset about the Pride parade in Sofia, which had been canceled; when the city had expressed concern about security during the protests, the organizers had put out a statement that they were postponing the event as an act of solidarity, that it was a time for Sofians to stand together. Obedineni sme, they said, we’re united as Bulgarians, which is total bullshit, S. said, what kind of message is that, it says we have to choose between being gay and being Bulgarian, fuck that, it’s so fucking homophobic. He winced as an air horn blew nearby. And fuck the city, he said, they can’t just decide not to protect us. If they want to be part of the EU they have to make it safe for us to march, it’s bullshit to give them permission not to try. He gestured to the rest of the group. So we’re doing Pride anyway, he said, they should know we’re here, they shouldn’t be able to ignore us. Even so, their posterboard signs were mostly discreet, one with the words NIE SME S VAS, we’re with you, with rainbows in the corner, another with TOLERANTNOST in thick black letters against the white. Only two of them carried signs that were more demonstrative: S., whose sign read NIE PROTESTIRAME BEZ HOMOFOBIYA, we’re protesting without homophobia, and K., a woman my age from Dobrich, a small city where she worked translating technical English but spent most of her time on message boards and chat rooms, often enough on the phone, counseling gay teenagers—she called them her children—sometimes talking to them through the night. This accounted for the harried look she always wore when I saw her, the dark circles under her eyes, the heaviness with which she moved. She was admirable, everything about her spoke of sacrifice, and something in me shied away from her, I didn’t doubt the good she did but I avoided her whenever I could. S. had been one of her children, years before, and he remained devoted to her; I had heard him say that she had saved his life, that she inspired the work he did. She nodded when I walked up, but didn’t offer to shake my hand. Hers was the largest sign, with the letters LGBT and beneath them I NIE SME BULGARI, we’re Bulgarians too.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I’m sorry, she said, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to diss your video—her English was the best in the class, she was a hair’s breadth from sounding like any American kid—I don’t mean to diss your video, but I’m so sick of this nostalgia bullshit. Sorry, she said, glancing at me, though she knew I didn’t care if they cursed in class, sorry, but all this men-on-horseback crap, what does that have to do with Bulgaria, I mean with Bulgaria now. The hair’s breadth made a difference; there’s a kind of uncanny valley in language, competency can overshoot the mark, so that however perfectly we speak a foreign language speaking it too casually feels like imposture, I don’t know why. I like horses, a boy interjected, getting a laugh, and she rolled her eyes. No, really, she said, this is the problem, when we want to be proud we think of the natsionalno vuzrazhdane , or we think of Bulgariya na tri moreta , we think of Tsarevets. She was right, I thought, though I didn’t say anything; they were at the core of what my students thought of as their national identity, the nineteenth-century liberation and Bulgaria’s medieval greatness, when its borders had touched three seas, tri moreta , a phrase the far right used to stoke nationalist feeling and that adorned tourist T-shirts at every cheap souvenir shop. But that doesn’t say anything about how we live now, she said, it’s all just Kill the Ottomans, it doesn’t tell us anything about what it means to be Bulgarian now. The temperature rose a little at this; some of the students leaned forward in their seats, which were situated around a group of desks we had pushed together to make a kind of conference table, I wanted them to look at each other as they spoke. What does, then, a boy asked, what do you think does tell us about Bulgaria now, and another boy said Berbatov, the soccer star, which made half of the class laugh and the other half groan. Nothing, my student said, raising her voice, nothing does, that’s our problem, that’s why the protests won’t go anywhere, we have no idea how to be Bulgarian in the real world, we have no idea how we should be. The temperature rose still further at this, a number of voices spoke at once, making noises of protest or skepticism, come on, I heard, and gluposti , nonsense, and then my student started to speak again in defense. I had let the reins go too slack, though I wanted to watch things play out the conversation was too hot, a couple of students were looking my way, I needed to intervene.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  It was about joy, the story he would tell me, but it wasn’t joy I saw as he moved back and forth between my cock and my hand, or not only joy. I had the sense that he was looking for something and not finding it, making his movements sharper and faster; he was asking a question I didn’t know how to answer, that I tried to answer by jabbing my hand and twisting it with each movement he made. But he was frustrated, I thought, and finally he stopped his motion, he forced himself down on my cock, taking me as deep as he could, shaking his head a little as if to work me in deeper, like a dog worrying a toy. I used my free hand to grab his head and fucked him as hard as I could, savagely, in a way meant to hurt him. I tilted slightly on my side and wrapped my legs around his head, trapping him and moving my hips very fast, as hard and as fast as I could, an uncontrolled motion, a kind of spasm to echo his own spasm as he choked on me, though even as he choked he locked his arms around my ass, to keep me from pulling away. I made a sound then too, loud and guttural, almost a shout, and it was only when I heard it that I realized it was anger I felt, hot and eager, I didn’t know where it came from but I would make him feel it too, I thought. I held him in place even as I felt him try to pull his head back, even after he started slapping my thighs again I held him down. I wanted to frighten him, I think, I wanted it not to be a game. You want it, I said as he struggled, you want it, take it then, I said, take it, you fucking whore, and it was the shock of the words that made me let him go, the words and what I felt as I said them.