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 Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  Judea had been a temple state since the Persian period, so the temple had long been an instrument of imperial control, and the tribute was stored there—although the high priests’ collaboration with Rome had recently brought the institution into such disrepute that peasants were refusing to pay the temple tithes. 45 But neither did Jesus’s preoccupation with imperial misrule mean that he was “confusing” religion with politics. As he upturned the tables, he quoted the prophets who had severely castigated those who ignored the plight of the poor but whose religious observance was punctilious. Oppression, injustice, and exploitation had always been religiously charged issues in Israel. The idea that faith should not involve itself in such politics would have been as alien to Jesus as it had been to Confucius. It is not easy to assess Jesus’s attitude to violence, but there is no evidence that he was planning military insurrection. He forbade his disciples to injure others and to retaliate aggressively. 46 He did not resist his arrest and rebuked the disciple who cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant. 47 But he could be verbally abusive: he fulminated against the rich; 48 cruelly lambasted those “scribes and Pharisees” who served as retainers; 49 and called down God’s vengeance on villages that rejected his disciples. 50 As we have seen, the Jewish peasants of Palestine had a tradition of nonviolent opposition to imperial rule, and Jesus knew that any confrontation with either the Jewish or the Roman ruling class—he did not distinguish the two—would be dangerous. Any disciple, he warned, must be ready to “take up his cross.” 51 It seems that, like Judas of Galilee, Jesus may have relied on God to intervene. While she was pregnant with him, his mother had predicted that God had already begun to create a more just world order: He has shown the power of his arm He has routed the proud of heart. He has pulled down princes from their thrones and exalted the lowly. The hungry he has filled with good things; the rich sent empty away. He has come to the help of Israel his servant. 52 Like Judas the Galilean, Jesus may have believed that if his disciples did not shrink “from the slaughter that would come upon them” and took the first step, God would overthrow the rich and powerful. One day the Pharisees and Herodian retainers asked Jesus a trick question: “Is it permissible to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Should we pay, yes or no?” Taxation was always an inflammable issue in Roman Palestine, and if Jesus said no, he risked arrest.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  Meanwhile, the revolutionary leaders were waging a holy war against the nonrevolutionary regimes of Europe.78 After the Peace of Westphalia, the continent had known nearly two hundred years of relative peace. A balance of power kept the sovereign states in harmony. Brutality on the battlefield was no longer acceptable; moderation and restraint were the new watchwords.79 Armies were now adequately provisioned so soldiers no longer had to terrorize the peasant population by foraging for themselves.80 There was greater emphasis on drill, discipline, and correct methods of procedure, and between 1700 and 1850 there were no significant developments in military technology.81 But this peace was shattered when first the revolutionary armies and then Napoleon threw these restraints to the wind. The French state had certainly not become more irenic after eliminating the Church from government. On August 16, 1793, the National Convention issued the levée en masse: for the first time in history, an entire society was mobilized for war. All Frenchmen are permanently requisitioned for service into the armies. Young men will go forth into battle; married men will forge weapons and transport munitions; women will make tents and clothing and serve in the hospitals; children will make lint from old linen; and old men will be brought into the public squares to arouse the courage of the soldiers, while preaching the unity of the Republic and hatred against Kings.82 Some 300,000 volunteers, aged between eighteen and twenty-five, brought the French army up to a record-breaking million strong. Hitherto peasants and artisans had been tricked or press-ganged into the military, but in this “Free Army” soldiers were well paid and for the first year officers were elected from the ranks on merit. In 1789 over 90 percent of French officers had been aristocrats; by 1794 a mere 3 percent were of noble birth. Even though over a million young men died in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, more were willing to volunteer. These soldiers fought not with professional decorum but with the raw violence they had learned in the revolution’s street battles, and they probably relished the ecstasy of warfare.83 Because they had to feed themselves, they committed the same kind of atrocities as the mercenaries in the Thirty Years’ War.84 For nearly twenty years, the French armies seemed unstoppable, overrunning Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany and effortlessly brushing aside the Austrian and Prussian armies that tried to halt this triumphant progress.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I feel everything on my skin. I’m boiling over. I want to attack her, and sob and scream, and die all at once. “You’re sick,” I hiss. I raise the hand with the knife, and she makes no move to stop me or step away. I drop my arm to my side. Save Isaac and die here. “Yes. If that’s my only choice, yes. Take him. He’s sick and we don’t have any more medicine.” I grab her arm. I need her to take him with her. “Now! Get him to a hospital.” Where did she come from? Maybe if I can overpower her I can get to her car. Get help. But even as I think this, I know I am too weak, and I know she did not come alone. She watches my struggle with interest. I’m so cold. I have so many things to ask: the box, my mother … the Why? Why? Why? But I am too cold to speak. “Why?” I ask again. She laughs. Her breath blows snow away from her mouth. I watch the flakes shoot horizontally and then continue their dance to the ground. “Senna,” she says. “You are in love with Isaac.” I don’t know it until the words are out of her mouth. Then I know it, and it feels like someone has sucker punched me. I’m in love with Isaac. I’m in love with Isaac. I’m in love with Isaac. What happened to Nick? I try to pull up my feelings for Nick. The feelings that imprisoned me for a decade, chaining me to a rotting corpse of a relationship. All I did for years was punish myself for not being what he needed. For failing the person I loved the most. But out in the freezing cold, with the blizzard swirling around me, and my kidnapper’s liquid eyes probing my face, I can’t remember the last time I thought of Nick. Isaac happened to Nick. But when? How? Why didn’t I know it was happening? How could my heart switch allegiances without me knowing? Doctor—no, I won’t call her a doctor after what she’s done—Saphira looks smug. I’m so cold I can’t be anything but cold. I can’t even muster anger. I rest my hand on the outside of my pocket where my inhaler is. I don’t want to have to use it again. “Take him,” I say again. “Please. He’s very sick. Take him now.” My voice is frantic. The wind is picking up. When I turn my head I can’t see the house anymore. I’ll do anything she says, so long as she saves Isaac. She takes a syringe out of her pocket and hands it to me. “Go say goodbye to him. Then use this.” I take the syringe and nod, though I don’t think she can see me through the snow. “What if I put this in your neck right now?” I can feel her grinning.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  But listen, all this is nothing... I make allowance for his imagination. It’s what happened after that that drives me crazy. All night long I’ve been tossing about, playing with these images he left in my mind. I can’t get it out of my head. It sounds so real to me that if it didn’t happen I could strangle the bastard. A guy has no right to invent things like that. Or else he’s diseased. ... “What I’m getting at is that moment when, he says, he got down on his knees and with those two skinny fingers of his he spread her cunt open. You remember that? He says she was sitting there with her legs dangling over the arms of the chair and suddenly, he says, he got an inspiration. This was after he had given her a couple of lays already... after he had made that little spiel about Matisse. He gets down on his knees—get this!—and with his two fingers... just the tips of them, mind you... he opens the little petals... squish-squish... just like that. A sticky little sound... almost inaudible. Squish-squish! Jesus, I’ve been hearing it all night long! And then he says—as if that weren’t enough for me—then he tells me he buried his head in her muff. And when he did that, so help me Christ, if she didn’t swing her legs around his neck and lock him there. That finished me! Imagine it! Imagine a fine, sensitive woman like that swinging her legs around his neck! There’s something poisonous about it. It’s so fantastic that it sounds convincing. If he had only told me about the champagne and the ride in the Bois and even that scene on the balcony I could have dismissed it. But this thing is so incredible that it doesn’t sound like a lie any more. I can’t believe that he ever read anything like that anywhere, and I can’t see what could have put the idea into his head unless there was some truth in it. With a little prick like that, you know, anything can happen. He may not have fucked her at all, but she may have let him diddle her... you never know with these rich cunts what they might expect you to do. ...” When he finally pulls himself out of bed and starts to shave the afternoon is already well advanced. I’ve finally succeeded in switching his mind to other things, to the moving principally. The maid comes in to see if he’s ready—he’s supposed to have vacated the room by noon. He’s just in the act of slipping into his trousers. I’m a little surprised that he doesn’t excuse himself, or turn away.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  It was raining and so we covered ourselves with newspapers. Weren’t there more than a half hour, I imagine, when a cop came along and, without a word of warning, gave us such a sound fanning that we were up and on our feet in a jiffy, and dancing a bit too, though we weren’t in any mood for dancing. I felt so goddamned sore and miserable, so dejected, so lousy, after being whacked over the ass by that half-witted bastard, that I could have blown up the City Hall. The next morning, in order to get even with these hospitable sons of bitches, we presented ourselves bright and early at the door of a Catholic priest. This time I let Joe do the talking. He was Irish and he had a bit of a brogue. He had very soft, blue eyes, too, and he could make them water a bit when he wanted to. A sister in black opened the door for us; she didn’t ask us inside, however. We were to wait in the vestibule until she went and called for the good father. In a few minutes he came, the good father, puffing like a locomotive. And what was it we wanted disturbing his likes at that hour of the morning? Something to eat and a place to flop, we answered innocently. And where did we hail from, the good father wanted to know at once. From New York. From New York, eh? Then ye’d better be gettin’ back there as fast as ye kin, me lads, and without another word the big, bloated turnip-faced bastard shoved the door in our face. About an hour later, drifting around helplessly like a couple of drunken schooners, we happened to pass by the rectory again. So help me God if the big, lecherous-looking turnip wasn’t backing out of the alley in a limousine! As he swung past us he blew a cloud of smoke into our eyes. As though to say—“That for you!” A beautiful limousine it was, with a couple of spare tires in the back, and the good father sitting at the wheel with a big cigar in his mouth. Must have been a Corona Corona, so fat and luscious it was. Sitting pretty he was, and no two ways about it. I couldn’t see whether he had skirts on or not. I could only see the gravy trickling from his lips—and the big cigar with that fifty-cent aroma. All the way to Dijon I got to reminiscing about the past. I thought of all the things I might have said and done, which I hadn’t said or done, in the bitter, humiliating moments when just to ask for a crust of bread is to make yourself less than a worm. Stone sober as I was, I was still smarting from those old insults and injuries.

• From Between Us

  A New Culture Honest authenticity is a Dutch virtue. This is well illustrated by the lyrics of a famous Dutch song (partially represented as): Life is a wonderful thing But spread your wings and don’t get trapped in a cage Have the courage to live life to the fullest . . . Don’t give a damn what others may think . . . Be a prince on your own square meter! By doing as you like and showing your true feelings, even if others may not like them or even if they cast you in an unfavorable light, you are true to yourself and honest in the relationship. I embodied this special Dutch form of “intellectual autonomy” when I left the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, you do what you feel like, but you also dig in your heels when you do not like what is happening. By feeling and expressing indignation and anger, you go against the grain, but this does not mean that you are antisocial. To the contrary, anger and indignation provide the opportunity for “real” connection, as they show you authentically. During my ten years in North Carolina, I gradually shed some of the “honest” anger and indignation. I shed them because they conflicted with the relationship goals of respect and politeness in my North Carolinian environment. In a Southern culture of honor, anger and strong indignation marked discord and were reserved for occasions where others had challenged your reputation or had treated you without due respect. Being angry and indignant were a last resort to help you avoid becoming a laughingstock. They were not signs of being merely opinionated and authentic, as they had been in the Netherlands; they certainly did not help to authentically connect with others, as they had helped me back in Europe. I also shed these emotions because no one else around me focused on self-expression the way I did, and because self-expression of this kind did not get positive responses. With help of subtle and not-so-subtle feedback, I came to see my Dutch way of self-expression as too forceful and unnecessarily impolite. There was the clearly written feedback on my teaching evaluations: “She is blunt at times” or “Professor Mesquita tried to impose her beliefs.” But there must have been more subtle signs as well—from colleagues, friends, my children’s schoolteachers—that I came to interpret as disapproval. A journalist from my university’s monthly magazine nodded politely when, during an interview, I volunteered my criticism on the university’s research policy. He seemed in a hurry to leave the topic behind us.

• From Between Us

  Yet, in other cultures where your position is less assured, and where social regard is subject to continuous negotiation, shame is the marker of losing ground. This is the case in honor cultures, when insults threaten the very thing that is important: the positive image that others have of you. Shame is “right” under these circumstances because it keeps you focused on your social position, but the social dynamics are very different from the cultures where your position is assured. During the interviews in the Netherlands (chapter 2), it struck me that many Turkish participants reportedly ended the relationship with whomever offended them. A forty-seven-year-old Turkish college-educated man, Omer, told us how his friend Mehmet falsely accused him of having seized some of the valuable possessions of a recently deceased shared friend. In truth, Omer added, it was Mehmet himself who appropriated these possessions. Mehmet’s accusations did not remain without consequences for Omer’s social image: for a while, other people stopped trusting Omer. When Omer first learned about Mehmet’s accusations, he was “sad” and his “confidence in his friend shocked.” This happened back in Turkey and in the years since, he has remained “angry,” and he never talked to Mehmet again. Similarly, a fifty-year-old high-school-educated Turkish woman, Emine, stopped talking to her stepsister, Pelin, after the latter had eavesdropped on Emine’s confidential conversation with her friend Duygu—all the while Pelin was pretending to sleep. After that happened, Emine’s world collapsed: she felt so angry. If today Pelin would drop dead, Emine would not care; in Emine’s eyes, Pelin was “nothing.” When they were offended by a close other, almost all Turkish respondents told us they ended the relationship, but even Turkish respondents who told us about insults by neighbors and colleagues reported to have been extremely angry, to the point of severing all contact. Aslan, a twenty-nine-year-old Turkish man who had moved to the Netherlands at the age of nineteen, reported that he was “the angriest [he] had ever been” when his Dutch neighbor threatened to hit his son. In response, Aslan hit the neighbor and also broke the neighbor’s windows with his bare fists. Aslan’s wife and friend witnessed it all, and tried to calm Aslan down, but to no avail. His wife ended up calling the police, who came and intervened between the two. Aslan describes the police as “very understanding that he was as angry as he was with the neighbor,” even as they required him to reimburse the neighbor for the window—which he did. He hated to have to go to his neighbor and deliver the cash, but he refrained from beating the neighbor a second time. He never again talked to the neighbor. All Aslan’s friends agreed that the neighbor’s behavior was completely out of line.

• From Between Us

  In puberty, it helps the adolescent to gain independence. And it may also highlight societal wrongdoings, sparking movements for justice (nonacceptance of the current situation). Measured anger is considered right and healthy in European American contexts. This is not true everywhere. Especially in tightly knit communities, anger is often considered wrong (examples were described in more length in chapter 4). Utku Inuit shared with Jean Briggs that anger is a dangerous emotion that threatens equanimity and generosity—valued qualities. Similarly, Buddhist Tibetans regard lung lang (“being angry”) as “a fundamentally destructive sentiment, equally harmful to self and others . . . as arising from an intrinsically flawed motivational state (a desire to harm another sentient being) and generative of ultimately bad results.” The Ifaluk, the Polynesian group that hosted anthropologist Catherine Lutz, also condemned everyday anger. The irritability that accompanies sickness, frustration building up over the succession of minor unwanted things, or the annoyance at relatives not living up to their obligations, all of these varieties of anger were perceived to be immoral and undignified. Similarly, anger in Japan is considered a destructive emotion, better to be avoided. Where relational harmony is prioritized over individual autonomy, anger is considered wrong. Importantly, where the concept of anger has undesired outcomes, it may have helped to write emotion stories as well—away from anger. Some languages have concepts that seem to be in place for the very reason of retaining some elements of anger without having to engage in the whole story: concepts that re-route the urge of action. The Samoan emotion of musu “expresses a person’s reluctance to do what is required of him or her,” but without blaming anyone. It is typically reported in the context of unreasonable demands made by one’s parents, and semantic similarity tests confirm a close association between musu and the word for anger in Samoan, ita. The word allows actions of nonacceptance without implying the unthinkable of criticizing the parents’ demands. Something analogous may be true for shame in Western cultures. Sociologist Thomas Scheff suggests that shame in contemporary American society is taboo, as it stands for real and/or imagined rejection by others. And, if acknowledged as shame, such rejection would end in low self-esteem, shrinking, and withdrawing from contact. But since these acts are all undesirable in a culture where self-esteem is key and the goal is to be independent from others, shame is avoided.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Were he supreme, were he mighty, were he just, were he good, this God you tell me about, would it be through enigmas and buffooneries he would wish to teach me to serve and know him? Sovereign mover of the stars and the heart of man, may he not instruct us by employing the one or convince us by graving himself in the other? Let him, one of these days, upon the Sun indite the law, writ out in letters of fire, the law as he wants us to understand it, in the version that pleases him; then from one end of the universe to the other, all mankind will read it, will behold it at once, and thereafter will be guilty if they obey it not. But to indicate his desires nowhere but in some unknown corner of Asia; to select for witnesses the craftiest and most visionary of people, for alter ego the meanest artisan, the most absurd, him of the greatest rascality; to frame his doctrine so confusedly it is impossible to make it out; to limit knowledge of it to a small group of individuals; to leave the others in error and to punish them for remaining there.... Why, no, Therese, no, these atrocities are not what we want for our guidance; I should prefer to die a thousand deaths rather than believe them. When atheism will wish for martyrs, let it designate them; my blood is ready to be shed. Let us detest these horrors, Therese; let the most steadfast outrages cement the scorn which is patently their due.... My eyes were barely open when I began to loathe these coarse reveries; very early I made it a law unto myself to trample them in the dust, I took oath to return to them never more; if you would be happy, imitate me; as do I, hate, abjure, profane the foul object of this dreadful cult; and this cult too, created for illusion, made like him to be reviled by everyone who pretends to wisdom." Chapter 13 "Oh! Monsieur," I responded, weeping, "you would deprive an unfortunate of her fondest hope were you to wither in her heart this religion which is her whole comfort. Firmly attached to its teachings, absolutely convinced that all the blows leveled against it are nothing but libertinage's effects and the passions', am I to sacrifice, to blasphemies, to sophistries horrible to me, my heart's sweetest sustenance ?" I added a thousand other arguments to this one, they merely caused the Count to laugh, and his captious principles, nourished by a more male eloquence, supported by readings and studies I, happily, had never performed, daily attacked my own principles, without shaking them.

• From Between Us

  The German mothers in this study were not nearly as patient with their disobedient children as the Japanese mothers had been. Rather than accepting their children’s behavior as immature, as the Japanese mothers had done, the German mothers were quick to infer that their disobedient child had been acting on purpose. Remarks such as “he wants to make me angry” were not uncommon, and many German mothers reacted to their child’s disobedience with their own anger. As an unintended side effect, the German interactions often escalated, with the child and the mother both being angry. My reading is that German mothers treated the disobedience of their children as a power conflict between two individuals with different interests (whereas the Japanese mothers felt responsible for their children and the relationship). Notably, the anger that German five-year-old kids showed during these interactions with their mother, predicted their aggression nine years later (and also explained that, nine years later, the same German children were more aggressive than the Japanese children who had participated in the study). The German mothers may not have so much wanted their children to be angry, but by assuming their child’s individuality and intention, and by showing anger themselves, they created the circumstances for anger. Psychologists Peggy Miller and Linda Sperry followed three working-class mothers who lived in South Baltimore, each with a two-and-a-half-year- old daughter. The mothers also encouraged anger, but not completely in the same way as the German mothers. The South Baltimore mothers wanted to teach their girls to “be strong, to suppress hurt feelings, and to defend themselves when wronged.” When narrating their own lives, the Baltimore mothers described experiences in which they themselves had a great deal of anger and aggression. The girls were not protected from hearing about these incidents. The mothers seemed to want their children to know how to respond to the harsh realities of life in which they might find themselves one day (as their mothers had). Tells one of the mothers: He started that shit, he was embarrassed to walk down the street with me ’cause my stomach was startin’ to get big and all that. I said, “Well get the hell out then.” The morale of this story was: If you want to stand your ground, you have to show anger. This was exactly what the Baltimore mothers wanted to convey to their girls: “Don’t be a sissy!” When their child was hurt or wronged, these moms encouraged their child’s anger, and helped them “not being a sissy.” One mother helped her little girl by explaining to an older child: “She ain’t got no . . . blanket. That’s why she’s yelling.”

• From Between Us

  Grief is also his go-to emotion in situations with equals: A woman starts some malicious gossip about him, and he is “in some greefe” about it. Lowe does not see himself as angry, because anger was not “right.” God could be angry, but ordinary citizens could not. Entitlement and nonacceptance were not acceptable relationship acts. Instead, Roger Lowe and his contemporaries pray to the Lord to help them “walk humbly.” In many contemporary cultures remote from our own, especially in tightly knit communities and societies, anger is also considered “wrong.” It would be nearly impossible to play the anger card if you were an Utku Inuit, a Buddhist Tibetan, an Ifaluk, or even a Japanese individual. In these cultures, communal and relational harmony prevail over individual goals and rights. Entitlement and nonacceptance conflict with the central goals of keeping relationships smooth. Anger is barely seen in any of these cultures, and also much less reported. The Utku Inuit, the same who were “never in anger,” valued equanimity and generosity, and disruptions thereof were considered childish and dangerous (see chapter 3 ). Similarly, Buddhist Tibetans consider lung lang (roughly translated as “being angry”) to be an extremely destructive emotion, harmful to both self and others. Anger is motivated by a desire to harm another sentient being, and therefore at odds with the Buddhist emphasis on compassion and the ethical code of speaking, acting, and living in non-harmful ways. The Ifaluk, the Polynesian group that hosted anthropologist Catherine Lutz, also condemned anger in their everyday lives. The irritability that accompanies sickness, the frustration that builds up over the succession of minor unwanted things, or the annoyance at relatives not living up to their obligations: all of these varieties of anger were perceived to be immoral and undignified. When relational harmony is prioritized over individual autonomy, entitlement and nonacceptance are wrong. As a result, interpersonal anger is not much seen. Philosopher Owen Flanagan contrasts the acceptance of many types of anger in Western traditions to the complete condemnation of anger by, for instance, Buddhist and Stoic traditions. In Buddhist psychology anger (that I do not get what I want) is a poison in human nature—as despicable as the illusion that I am entitled to get what I want and that the world ought to give it to me (from which anger springs). In this worldview, anger harms others, but is equally harmful to the self, because it chains you to worldly attachments and delusions that cause your suffering. When anger is “right” it is more prevalent in everyday life; when anger is wrong it is rare. Survey research finds that U.S. American college students have more anger in their daily lives than their Japanese counterparts—so do middle-aged American men and women, compared to middle-aged Japanese counterparts. When caught in a traffic jam, overloaded with schoolwork, or having problems with family members, U.S.

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

  His violent end was the beginning of a long interregnum of violence. The close of the ninth century gave a foretaste of the greater troubles of the tenth. After the downfall of the Carolingian dynasty the popes were more and more involved in the political quarrels and distractions of the Italian princes. The dukes Berengar of Friuli (888–924), and Guido of Spoleto (889–894), two remote descendants of Charlemagne through a female branch, contended for the kingdom of Italy and the imperial crown, and filled alternately the papal chair according to their success in the conflict. The Italians liked to have two masters, that they might play off one against the other. Guido was crowned emperor by Stephen VI. (V.) in February, 891, and was followed by his son, Lambert, in 894, who was also crowned. Formosus, bishop of Portus, whom John VIII. had pursued with bitter animosity, was after varying fortunes raised to the papal chair, and gave the imperial crown first to Lambert, but afterwards to the victorious Arnulf of Carinthia, in 896. He roused the revenge of Lambert, and died of violence. His second successor and bitter enemy, Stephen VII. (VI.), a creature of the party of Lambert, caused his corpse to be exhumed, clad in pontifical robes, arraigned in a mock trial, condemned and deposed, stripped of the ornaments, fearfully mutilated, decapitated, and thrown into the Tiber. But the party of Berengar again obtained the ascendency; Stephen VII. was thrown into prison and strangled (897). This was regarded as a just punishment for his conduct towards Formosus. John IX. restored the character of Formosus. He died in 900, and was followed by Benedict IV., of the Lambertine or Spoletan party, and reigned for the now unusual term of three years and a half.273 § 63. The Degradation of the Papacy in the Tenth Century. Sources. Migne’s Patrol. Lat. Tom. 131–142. These vols. contain the documents and works from Pope John IX.–Gregory VI.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  “Why would you do that?” I cry. That was so cruel. I grab the only thing I see—a dishtowel—and I hold it against the cut that we made together. He has blood running down his chest, I have it running down my arm. It’s morbid and confusing. When I look up for his answer he is looking at me intently. “What did you feel?” he asks. I shake my head. I don’t know what he’s asking me. Does he need stitches? There must be a needle somewhere around here … thread. “What did you feel when that happened?” He’s trying to catch my eyes, but I can’t take my eyes from his blood. I don’t want the life to bleed out of Isaac. “You need stitches,” I say. “At least two…” “Senna, what did you feel?” It takes me a minute to focus. He really wants me to answer that? I open and close my mouth. “Hurt. I don’t want you to hurt. Why would you do that?” I am so angry. Confused. “Because that’s what I feel when you hurt yourself.” I drop the dishtowel. Nothing dramatic—it’s just become too heavy to hold along with my understanding. I look down at where it lies between my feet. There is a bright red stain on one side of it. Isaac bends to pick it up. He also picks up the knife and places it back in my hand. Grabbing my wrist, he leads me back to the table and firmly plants me in front of it. “Write,” he says, gesturing to the wood. “What?” He grabs the hand that’s holding the knife. I try to pull away again, but his eyes still me. “Trust me.” I stop fighting. He presses the tip into the wood this time. Carves a straight line. “Write here,” he says. I know what he’s telling me, but it’s not the same. “I don’t write on my body. I cut it.” “You write your pain on your skin. With a knife. Straight lines, deep lines, jagged lines. It’s just a different kind of word.” I get it. All at once. I feel grief for everything that I am. Landscape is playing in the background, a strange soundtrack, a constant soundtrack.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  Christmas comes. Isaac is very quiet. But I was wrong; we don’t eat beans. He cooks us a feast over our little makeshift stove in the attic: canned corn, spam, green beans and, to top it all off, a can of pumpkin pie filling. For breakfast. For a moment, we are happy. Then Isaac looks at me and says, “When I first opened my eyes and saw you standing over me, I felt like I took my first breath in three years.” I grind my teeth. Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! “We only knew each other for three months before this,” I say. “You don’t know me.” But, even as I say it, I know it’s not true. “You were just my doctor…” He’s wearing the expression of someone being slapped over and over again. I slap him once more to put an end to this. “You took things too far.” He walks out before I can say any more. I bury my face. “Fuck you, Isaac,” I say into my pillow. At noon the lights turn on. Isaac’s head appears through the trapdoor a minute later. I wonder where he’s been. My bet is on the carousel room. He takes one look at my face and says, “You knew.” I knew. “I suspected.” He looks incredulous. “That the power would come back?” “That something would happen,” I correct him. I knew that the power would come back. He disappears again, and I hear his steps pounding down the stairs. Clomp, clomp, clomp. I count them until he reaches the bottom. Then I hear the front door hit the wall as he swings it wide. I flinch at all the cold air he’s letting in, then remember that the power is back. HEAT! LIGHT! A WORKING TOILET! I feel impassive. This is a game. The zookeeper gave us light. As a gift. On Christmas Day. It’s symbolic. He thinks light came into my life on Christmas Day when I met Isaac. “You’re just a badly written character,” I say out loud. “I’ll kill you off, my darling.” When Isaac comes back his face is ashen. “The zookeper was here,” he says. I get chills. They skitter up my legs and arms like little spiders. “How do you know?” He holds out his hand. “We have to go downstairs.”

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  The police come next. All official looking. I tell them I want to speak to Saphira before I speak to them. They want my statement; they’re clicking the little buttons on the ends of their pens and pushing tape recorders at me, but I stare at them tight lipped until I can speak to Saphira. “You can speak to her when you’re well enough to come in to the station,” they tell me. A chill runs through my body. They have her. Here. “That’s when I’ll speak to you, then,” I tell them. A day before I am discharged I am visited by two doctors; one is an oncologist and the other an orthopedic surgeon. The ortho guy holds up the x-rays they took of my leg. “The bone didn’t heal straight, which is why you have pain when you put too much pressure on it. I’ve scheduled you for—” “No,” I tell him. He brings his eyes to my face. “No?” “I’m not interested in fixing it. I’ll leave it how it is.” I open the magazine on my lap to signal that the conversation is over. “Ms. Richards, with all due respect, the irregular fusion of your bone that was caused by the accident will be something that pains you for the rest of your life. You will want to have the surgeries needed to repair it.” I close my magazine. “I like pain. I like when it lingers. It reminds a person of what they’ve lived through.” “That’s a very unique perspective,” he says. “But not practical.” I fling the magazine across the room. It flies with surprising force and hits the door with a healthy thud. Then I pull down my hospital gown—all the way—until the scars on my chest are exposed. He looks like he might pass out. “I like my scars,” I say. “I earned them. Now, get out.” As soon as the door shuts behind him, I scream. The nurses come rushing in, but I throw my water jug at them. At the rate I’m going they’re going to put me in the psych ward. “Get out!” I scream at them. “Stop telling me how to live my life!” I am much nicer to the oncologist. She got my file from the hospital in Seattle and ran the yearly tests that I’d missed during my imprisonment. When she gives me the results she sits on the edge of my bed. It reminds me so much of Isaac that I feel overwhelmed. When she is finished she tells me that I am built to fight; emotionally and physically. I actually smile.

• From Between Us

  Yet, middle-class European and white American parents raise their children to feel as well as show anger, both by modeling the feeling and by cultivating independence. Psychologist Pamela Cole and her colleagues compared the anger feelings and expressions in U.S. American and Tamang Nepali pre- and early adolescents (nine to eleven years old), and came to a similar conclusion: faced with similar situations, U.S. children from a farming community in the northeastern United States projected more anger than did Tamang children from a Buddhist Nepali community. All participants read vignettes of “difficult situations,” and saw a graphical depiction of the situation. One of the situations read: You are doing your homework. Your father is sitting next to you. You want to use the eraser and you see it by his hand. You take the eraser and your father slaps your hand and says, “Don’t grab things—wait until I am finished!” The eraser story was one of several in which either the father or a friend figured. After reading the story and seeing the picture, children were interviewed about their emotions. The U.S. children reported they would feel anger (as opposed to feeling happy, ashamed, or okay) in more than half of the “difficult” situations, and that they would communicate their anger. Compared to younger children, older children in the U.S. were more likely to show their anger, suggesting that in full development anger is shown. U.S. children thought that showing anger would help deal with the problem, and influence the situation. A typical U.S. child’s reply was to communicate anger to their father “so that he would realize it was only a mistake,” and to tell him “you can have the eraser, but you do not need to hit me.” Cole and her colleagues suggest that in a society that emphasized self-reliance and self-assertion, children have learned that feeling and communicating anger is acceptable and effective. How very different were the emotions of Tamang children, whose community valued egalitarianism, tolerance, and minimization of psychological distress! In keeping with their values, the Tamang children often blamed themselves for the unfortunate turn of events: “I snatched the eraser,” they might say. Whereas the U.S. kids felt and showed anger (and blamed their father or friend) with the objective of changing the situation to their benefit, Tamang children blamed themselves to maintain harmony. Parents and other caregivers may play a larger role than they imagine in socializing anger. The observational study of German and Japanese mothers and their five-year-old disobedient children (described above) suggested that mothers play a significant role in socializing their children’s anger.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  But let us ignore ethics for a moment, since it's theology you want. Be advised then, young innocent, that the religion you fall back upon, being nothing but the relationship between man and God, nothing but the reverence the creature thinks himself obliged to show his creator, is annihilated instantly this creator's existence is itself proven illusory. "Primitive man, terrified by the phenomena which harried him, had necessarily to believe that a sublime being unknown to him had the direction of their operation and influence; it is native to weakness to suppose strength and to fear it; the human mind, then too much in its infancy to explore, to discover in Nature's depths the laws of motion, the unique springs of the entire mechanism that struck him with awe, found it simpler to fancy a motor in this Nature than to view Nature as her own mover, and without considering that he would have to go to much more trouble to edify, to define this gigantic master, than through the study of Nature to find the cause of what amazed him, he acknowledged this sovereign being, he elaborated rituals to worship it: from this moment each nation composed itself an overlord in conformance with its peculiar characteristics, its knowledge, and its climate; soon there were as many religions on earth as races and peoples and not long after, as many Gods as families; nevertheless, behind all these idols it was easy to recognize the same absurd illusion, first fruit of human blindness. They appareled it differently, but it was always the same thing. Well, tell me, Therese, merely because these idiots talk drivel about the erection of a wretched chimera and about the mode of serving him, must it follow that an intelligent man has got to renounce the certain and present happiness of life; like Aesop's dog, must he abandon the bone for the shadow and renounce his real joys for hallucinations? No, Therese, no, there is no God, Nature sufficeth unto herself; in no wise hath she need of an author; once supposed, that author is naught but a decayed version of herself, is merely what we describe in school by the phrase, a begging of the question. A God predicates a creation, that is to say, an instant when there was nothing, or an instant when all was in chaos. If one or the other of these states was evil, why did your God allow it to subsist? Was it good ? Then why did he change it ? But if all is now good at last, your God has nothing left to do; well, if he is useless, how can he be powerful? And if he is not powerful, how can he be God?

• From Between Us

  They also told us how angry (or ashamed) they would have been. There was agreement among participants that anger does not feel the same whether you walk in Joshua, Matthew’s, Anthony’s, or Richard’s shoes. But how exactly individuals described these different instances of anger varied across two sets. Interestingly, the same sets did occur in all cultures, but cultures differed with respect to the most common sets. For shame we found three sets, and here too, shame sets occurred in all three cultures, but their respective prevalence was different. The first set of anger experiences was reported by the great majority of Japanese students, and only by a small part of U.S. and Belgian students. It was characterized by blaming distant others most. For example, individuals in this set thought that Richard’s roommate’s behavior was much more inappropriate and unfair than were Joshua’s friend’s and Matthew’s dad’s. Furthermore, individuals in this first set were not so preoccupied when friends or relatives were offensive, especially not when friends or relatives had acted intentionally, such as was the case for Matthew’s dad. The second set of anger was most common in the U.S. and Belgium. It was characterized by blaming close others who did not meet relational norms. In this set, individuals blamed Joshua’s friend and Matthew’s dad more than Richard’s roommate. The friend and the dad were seen to be more unfair and behaving more inappropriately than a group of strangers. These same individuals reported that they would be very preoccupied in Joshua’s or in Matthew’s situation, where it involved a friend or a relative, but much less when strangers were either inconsiderate or purposefully offensive, as was the case for Anthony and Richard, respectively. In Joshua’s and Matthew’s place only, would they feel unable to concentrate on anything else and paralyzed. This second set of anger instances was found in the majority of American and Belgian students, but only in a very small minority of Japanese students. The different sets appear to be consistent with the dominant cultural concerns: whereas Japanese are primarily concerned with protecting their close relationships (and thus refrain from other-blame in these instances), Americans and Western Europeans are more concerned with protecting their autonomy, and this concern plays a more central role in close relationships, where relational norms ensure good treatment while allowing for autonomy. At one point in my career I would have told you that people’s emotional lives are different, but emotions themselves are the same. But what would it mean that emotions are the same? What if the episodes of emotions are the emotions?

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I see only the wood at first. Then he reaches over me with a pink Zippo and holds it as close to the inner wall as he can. Strange, I think, at first—there is writing on the walls. Some of the wood is obscuring it. I reach inside and move a couple of the logs over. I start shaking. He wraps his arms around my torso and squeezes, then leads me backwards to the sofa where I sit. Part of me wants to break away to go look some more, but I feel. I feel too much. If I don’t stop feeling I’m going to explode. Pages of my book—over and over—wall-papered on the inside of the closet like a slap in the face. “What does it mean?” I ask Isaac. He shakes his head. “A fan? I don’t know. It’s someone playing games.” “How did we never notice that before?” I want to press my fingers into the sides of his face and force him to look at me. I want him to tell me that he hates me, because for some reason he is here as a result of me. But he doesn’t. Nothing he does is encumbered by blame or anger. I wish I could be like that. “We weren’t looking,” he says. “What else are we not seeing because we aren’t looking?” “I have to read what’s in there.” I stand up, but Isaac pulls me back. “It’s Chapter Nine.” Chapter Nine? I reach for it in my mind. Then I let it go. Chapter Nine hurts. I wish I hadn’t written it. I tried to get the publishers to take it out of the manuscript before the book went to print. But they felt it was necessary to the story. The day the book hit shelves, I sat in my white room, holding back my vomit, knowing that everyone was reading Chapter Nine and living my pain. I don’t want to read it, so I stay sitting. “Chapter Nine is—” I cut him off. “I know what it is,” I snap. “But why is it there?” “Because someone is obsessed with you, Senna.” “No one knew that was real! Who did you tell?” I am screaming; so angry I want to throw something large. But the zookeeper didn’t give us anything large to throw. Everything is bolted, sewn into the walls and floors like this is a dollhouse. “Stop it!” He grabs me, tries to slow me down. His voice is getting loud. I release mine, too. If he’s going to yell I’m going to yell louder. “Then why are you here?” I punch his chest with both of my fists. He sits down abruptly. It throws me off. I was all geared up to fight.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  Where were you when someone stole me away in the middle of the night and starved me in the middle of the goddamn arctic tundra?” I cut off the space between us and pound three hard times on his chest. “Where. Did. You. Go.” He’s shaking. I’m dropping things on him like a hailstorm, but I don’t give a fuck. I even say things like fuck now, because I don’t want to waste another second on the white room way I lived my life. He’s here now. But, Isaac was here then … and then … and then … and then. “I was so hung up on you that I missed it,” I say. I’m shaking so bad. I’m shaking worse than Nick, who looks like the weak, trembling leaf he’s always been. I want to crush him between my fingertips. “What did you miss, Brenna?” I don’t like the way he says my name. “Ahhh … agh…” I bend at the waist. Succulent, heavy tears drop right out of my eyes and onto the floor. Splat. I cry now, I think. All the time. And it’s so much fun. “I missed my chance,” I say, standing up straight and crushing the tears with the toe of my shoe. “With my soulmate.” Nick looks confused, then it comes. He sees his replacement, the guy locked in a house with his ex-muse. “The doctor?” he asks, narrowing his eyes. “Isaac. His name is Isaac.” “ I’m your soulmate. I wrote that book for you.” He looks like he’s trying to convince himself, bobbing Adam’s apple and all. “You don’t know the first thing about what it is to have a soulmate.” I feel such a pull toward Isaac I wonder if he’s having this same fight with Daphne. “It’s time for you to leave,” I say. It feels so good to say it. Because this time, I’m not even going to cry. Before I shower, before I eat, before I crawl into bed and sleep off my fourteen-month nightmare, I call a cab. I have him pull into my garage, then I stand next to his window and check him out. Small guy, early twenties, bald by choice. I can see the shadows of where his hair should be. He’s fighting that receding hairline with a shaved head. Defiant and a little ballsy, because we can all see why he’s doing it. His eyes are wide and shifty; either the news vans freaked him out, or he’s having withdrawals. He’ll do, I think. I climb into the front seat. “Do you mind?” I ask. But I don’t really care if he says no. I buckle my seatbelt. “Take me to one of those stores with the lumber and the tools.” He spits out a couple options and I shrug. “Whatever.”