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 H Is for Hawk (2014)

  The Goshawk is the book of a young man. It was written before White’s better-known works, and before he was famous. It ‘would be about the efforts of a second-rate philosopher’, he explained sadly, ‘who lived alone in a wood, being tired of most humans in any case, to train a person who was not human, but a bird’. When I read it again, years after that first childhood encounter, I saw more in it than bad falconry. I understood why people considered it a masterpiece. For White made falconry a metaphysical battle. Like Moby-Dick or The Old Man and the Sea, The Goshawk was a literary encounter between animal and man that reached back to Puritan traditions of spiritual contest: salvation as a stake to be won in a contest against God. That older, wiser me decided that White’s admissions of ignorance were brave rather than stupid. But I was still angry with him. First, because his hawk had suffered terribly as he tried to train it. And second, because his portrayal of falconry as a pitched battle between man and bird had hugely influenced our notions of what goshawks are and falconry is. Frankly, I hated what he had made of them. I didn’t think falconry was a war, and I knew hawks weren’t monsters. That small girl lying crossly on her bed was still cross. That is what I thought as I sat there staring at the open book on my desk, four months after my father died. I read on, and as I did, there was a tiny jolt that was a realisation of why my eyes had spurned the book for weeks. I knew that part of why I was cross was that I felt, for the first time, that my urge to train a hawk was for reasons that weren’t entirely my own. Partly they were his. 4 Mr White It is 16 March 1936. On the east side of the great Palladian palace that is Stowe School, jackdaws fuss in the sweet chestnut trees, water drips from the roof of the block of rooms that used to be the stables, and inside them, Mr White, Head of English, blankets bunched up against his shins, is balancing a notebook on his knees and writing fast in a small, clear hand. He wonders if this is the most important book he’s ever written. Not because it will make his fortune. But because it will save him.

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  story of Micaiah ben Imlah in 1 Kings 22). He is a freelancer, so to speak, and therefore he is not beholden to the king and does not care whether Bethel is a royal temple. He was also probably a person of independent means. We do not know how extensive his flocks or trees were, but he is evidently not in the service of anyone else, and he seems to be well informed on the affairs of Israel, and to some extent on international events. The translation “I am not a prophet” is somewhat misleading. Amos certainly claims to be a spokesman for YHWH. The issue is what kind of prophet he is. The style of Amos’s prophecy is in the tradition of Elijah rather than that of Nathan. He is confrontational and abrasive. There is no attempt to win over the people he condemns. The prophecy that Amaziah’s wife would become a prostitute could only enrage the priest. It may also have functioned as a curse that was intended not only to predict but to bring about what was predicted. We do not know what happened to Amaziah. It is unlikely that he lived long enough to be taken into exile. Jeroboam certainly did not die by the sword. That this prophecy was not fulfilled argues strongly for its authenticity. Why would a later editor have ascribed to Amos a prophecy that was manifestly incorrect? The editors may have felt, however, that Amos’s prophecies were substantially fulfilled by the Assyrian conquest, and may have added the references to the exile of Israel to clarify the point, or interpreted them in this light. The Oracles of Amos The book of Amos can be divided into three parts. After the introductory verses, the book begins with a series of oracles against various nations, concluding with Israel (1:3—2:16). The middle part of the book (chaps. 3–6) contains a collection of short oracles. The last part (chaps. 7–9) consists of a series of vision reports, with the account of the confrontation with Amaziah. The Oracles against the Nations Oracles against foreign nations were the stock in trade of ancient Israelite

• From Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions (1939)

  1 Lewin, Vorsata, Wille und Bedurtnis, Psy. Forschurtg, VII, 1926. 2 Dembo, Das Aerger als dynamisches Problem. Psy. Forschung, 1931, pp. 1-144. 3 (Bib. de Philosophic Scientifique), pp. 138-42. [image file=image_rsrcD3.jpg] Escape is a merely barbarous solution, for it means breaking through the barrier and accepting a diminution of the self. Falling back upon one's self (encystment) which erects a protective barrier between the hostile field of action and oneself, is another, equally mediocre solution. Prolongation of the ordeal may end in emotional disorders, or in other and still more primitive ways of liberating tensions. The fits of anger, sometimes very violent, which supervene in certain persons have been capably studied in the work of T. Dembo. The situation undergoes a structural simplification. In anger, and doubtless in all the emotions, there is a weakening of the barriers that separate the deeper from the more superficial levels of the self which normally ensure the regulation of action by the deep personality and maintain the self-control: a weakening of the barriers between the real and the unreal. On the other hand, because the path to action is blocked, tensions between the external and the internal continue to augment: a negative character extends uniformly to all the objects in the field, they lose their proper value. . . . The privileged way towards the goal having vanished, the differentiated structure that the problem had imposed upon the field is destroyed. The particular facts, notably the various physiological reactions which we are pleased to describe by attaching particular meanings to them, are not intelligible unless we start from this integral conception of the topology of emotion ...'

• From Open (2009)

  He already is, I tell her. And yet that word doesn’t cut it. That word isn’t adequate to what he is. Gil guards my body, my head, my game, my heart, my girlfriend. He’s the one immovable object in my life. He’s my life guard. I particularly enjoy when people—reporters, fans, kooks—ask Gil if he’s my bodyguard. A smile always plays across his lips as he says, Touch him and find out. AT THE 1991 FRENCH OPEN I batter my way through six rounds and reach the final. My third slam final. I’m facing Courier, and I’m favored. Everyone says I’ll beat him. I say I’ll beat him. I need to beat him. I can’t imagine what it would feel like to make three slam finals in a row and not win. The good news is, I know how to beat Courier. I beat him just last year at this same tournament. The bad news is, it’s personal, which makes me tight. We began in the same place, in the same barracks at the Bollettieri Academy, our bunk beds a few feet apart. I was so much better than Courier, so much more favored by Nick, that losing to him in the final of a slam will feel like the hare losing to the tortoise. Bad enough that Chang has won a slam before me. And Pete. But Courier too? I can’t let that happen. I come out playing to win. I’ve learned from my mistakes at the last two slams. I cruise through the first set, winning 6–3, and in the second set, leading 3–1, I have break point. If I win this point I’ll have a choke hold on the set and match. Suddenly the rain starts to fall. Fans cover themselves and run for shelter. Courier and I retreat to the locker room, where we both pace like caged lions. Nick comes in and I look to him for advice, encouragement, but he says nothing. Nothing. I’ve known for some time that I continue with Nick out of habit and loyalty, and not for any real coaching. Still, in this moment, it’s not coaching I need but a show of humanity, which is one of the duties of any coach. I need some recognition of the adrenaline-charged moment in which I find myself. Is that too much to ask? After the rain delay, Courier stations himself farther behind the baseline, hoping to take some of the steam off my shots. He’s had time to rest, and reflect, and recharge, and he storms back to keep me from breaking, then wins the second set. Now I’m angry. Furious. I win the third set, 6–2. I establish in Courier’s mind, and in my own, that the second set was a fluke. Up two sets to one, I can feel the finish line pulling me. My first slam. Six little games away.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  where both sides were strong and organized, and toleration was the only alternative to war. The best example was France, where civil war led to the Colloquy of Poissy in 1561, and the following year to the first of the toleration edicts. Castellio commented: ‘I think that the aim and decisive cause of this illness – this insurrection and war which torment France – is the forcing of consciences.’ He blamed both sides: ‘Either the victim resists, and you murder his body, or he yields and speaks against his conscience, and you murder his soul.’ But though sensible men in France were struggling towards some system of toleration, they were often in a small minority, at any rate among the educated and influential. Beza, on behalf of the Geneva Calvinists, denounced toleration in 1570 as ‘a purely diabolical doctrine’. To support freedom of conscience was sinful. In 1588, at the States Assembly at Blois, the Bishop of Le Mans tried to maintain that ‘heretics should be loved and brought back by instruction and good example’, but the Assembly ‘shouted with indignation’ and ‘was so angry that they made noises with their hands and feet and did not allow him to say a word’. When the Edict of Nantes was signed in 1598 it was promptly denounced by Pope Clement VIII as ‘the worst thing in the world’. Nevertheless, during the late sixteenth century, burnings for heresy as such began to decline. Most of the victims of the Reformation were killed aimlessly, in the course of religious warfare. Was there any way of ending the fighting, men asked, by finding a middle ground of belief? Here was the second of the two ways in which liberal opinion tried to exert itself. Among the Lutherans, the followers of Melanchthon broke away to form the ‘Philippist’ branch of the Church, which believed an arrangement with Rome was still possible. In Cologne, the Catholic humanist George Cassander put forward, in the 1560s, the idea of Fundamental Articles: ‘In essentials, unity; in inessentials, liberty; in everything, charity.’ Protestants used Catholic works, such as Thomas à Kempis’ Imitation of Christ, and works by Melanchthon, Bucer and even Calvin circulated in Catholic countries; but in virtually every case the name of the author was suppressed and the books were edited. Below the surface, we can detect a ‘third force’ at work. To some extent it was connected with the Renaissance discoveries of lost texts and especially the cabalistic and Hermetic philosophies. This led to the belief, quite common among sixteenth- century liberal intellectuals, that there was a complete and final system of knowledge to be discovered, which embraced all the arts and sciences, and revolved around Christianity. When, in due course, this system was completely unveiled, it would

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

  According to Soraya Chemaly, writer and social activist, women in particular are more likely to stuff their anger down than to express it. We’re socialized to use minimizing language, keep the peace, and be deferential. But no one can be an emotional shock absorber forever. Denying our stronger emotions is likely one of the reasons our bodies break down and get sick. Men don’t exactly have a cake walk when it comes to expressing themselves, either. They’re commonly punished for behaviors and emotions that are deemed too feminine. Fear, sadness, or anything considered “weak.” On the flip side, they’re often praised for showing emotions associated with masculinity, regardless of whether it’s toxic or not. Think: staying stoic in the face of deep pain, hauling off and hitting someone to “defend” their honor, or needing to be overly independent, as if asking for help (or directions!) is a sin. It’s a hot mess, y’all! Without question, anger was at the very top of Grandma’s “unbecoming” list. Anger is another taboo, especially misunderstood and vilified for women. But according to psychologist and anger researcher Dr. Ryan Martin, it’s good that we feel angry. When bad things happen, we hurt deeply. When we witness or experience injustice, anger is appropriate, damn it! The more I researched anger, the more I realized how pervasive it was. Our culture is riddled with rage. (Case in point: any online comment section on the Internet.) And yet, like grief, we don’t talk about it. Instead, we’re quick to point fingers, get outraged, and find fault with others. We’re afraid to look at our own anger. Research from the University of California–Berkeley illustrates that we usually learn how to experience and deal with anger from our families of origin. In some families, emotions are expressed regardless of the consequences, while other families can’t tolerate any show of emotion at all. Some members may be allowed to express certain emotions, while others aren’t. Double standards like these only heap on the resentment and generate more dysfunction. No wonder we’ve got trunks of baggage to unpack. Anger is especially common in the face of loss. We act out instead of crying out, because anger feels powerful, while grief feels powerless. Until I started doing this work, I had no idea how intertwined my grief and anger had become. I’d stuff, suppress, and contain my feelings until they migrated and mutated beyond my control. All that energy had to go somewhere. What follows are the messy stories of where it went. THE GOLDEN YEARS ARE FOR SHITIn the last year or so of his life, Dad began dropping wisdom bombs. Big life lessons like “Always keep the promises you make to yourself,” or “Tell people you love them. If you feel it, say it, because life is too precious to hold back.”

• From Escape (2007)

  The next time Merril had visitation, he didn’t bring the children back. I called my attorney on Sunday night, and she called Rod Parker. He said Merril was too sick to drive. I knew this was a game. I was also told my father was too busy. When I called him he said he couldn’t bring the kids back that week and he was sorry. I didn’t believe him, but I let it go. The next day I called the schools and explained why my children were absent. My van wasn’t in good enough shape to make the trip. Mitzi said she and her husband would drive down to Colorado City. I couldn’t thank her enough. Merril went nuts when he found out Mitzi would be driving his children back to Salt Lake. I had called his bluff. Moments later, my father called. He said he’d drop everything and drive the children back. I told him to forget it. Merril had already broken the court order by not returning the kids on Sunday, so I’d made arrangements for their safe return. Merril’s family went ballistic. No one knew who Mitzi was, and they tried to claim they had no way of knowing if the children would be safe with her. My father returned with the children after all. Mitzi and her husband had made the six-hundred-mile round-trip for nothing. But Merril never tried this trick again. Word found its way back to me that Merril had married five more wives since I’d left. Each had been married to someone else until Warren Jeffs had ordered her to marry Merril Jessop. I knew that some of the families who had joined Merril’s had a history of physical and sexual abuse among their children. I told my attorney that I didn’t feel safe sending Merrilee into that environment. She was too young and too vulnerable. I feared she’d be molested by one of the older boys that were now part of her “family.” We moved to get the case back into court as soon as possible. Lisa agreed with me that the situation for Merrilee was too dangerous. My children’s therapists were frustrated by Merril’s behavior. They were trying to help them heal, but after every visit to Colorado City they came back injured and lost ground. The violence was always reported to Merril’s attorney. Rodney Parker began pushing to keep the case out of court and got three postponements. When he tried for a fourth, my attorney objected and stood her ground. A date was set. Parker said he had a conflict, and another conference call was scheduled among the lawyers and judge. But Parker wasn’t in his office, so the judge said the date would stand: June 24, 2004.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  With the dramatic reveal of Rachel Frederickson, the Season 15 winner of The Biggest Loser, those of us who watch finally had an unimpeachable reason to be visibly outraged about the show and its practices, even though the show has been on the air and offering a damaging narrative about weight loss since 2004. When her season began, Frederickson weighed 260 pounds. At her final weigh-in, on live television, she weighed 105, a 60 percent loss in mere months. During this reveal, even trainers Bob Harper and Jillian Michaels gaped at Frederickson’s gaunt body. She had disciplined her body the way she’d been asked to, but apparently, she had disciplined her body a bit too much. The biggest loser, we now know, should lose, but only so much. There are so many rules for the body—often unspoken and ever-shifting. In an interview, Harper would later say, “I was stunned. That would be the word. I mean, we’ve never had a contestant come in at 105 pounds.” There was a wide range of responses in the press and on social media in the wake of seeing Rachel Frederickson’s new body. Her body, like most women’s bodies, instantly became a public text, a site of discourse, only now because she had taken her weight loss too far. She had disciplined her body too much. As of late, several former contestants have leveled many accusations against the show, alleging that producers used forced dehydration, severely restricted caloric intake, and encouraged the use of weight-loss drugs and more to help contestants reach their goals, to make for better television. Even more damning was a medical study of one season’s participants, led by metabolism expert Kevin Hall. The study found that thirteen of the fourteen contestants’ metabolisms continued slowing even after their significant weight loss. This slowed metabolism contributed to the contestants gaining back most, if not all or more, of the weight they had lost on the show. The results are a stark reminder that weight loss is a challenge that the medical establishment has not yet overcome. It is certainly not a challenge a reality television show has overcome. It’s no wonder that so many of us struggle with our bodies. In the two months after her big reveal, Frederickson gained twenty pounds and reached, apparently, a more acceptable but still appropriately disciplined size. She explained that she lost so much weight because she was trying to win the $250,000 prize, but those of us who deny ourselves and try so hard to discipline our bodies know better. Rachel Frederickson was doing exactly what we asked of her, and what too many of us would, if we could, ask of ourselves.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  Each episode has a very familiar narrative arc, in which we meet the subject and learn about their life, the seemingly miserable limitations of it. Then they meet Dr. Now, who chastises them and their loved ones for letting things get so out of hand. He tends to be palpably distressed by his patient and their family. Dr. Now often requires that these people go on a 1,200-calorie-a-day diet so they can lose fifty pounds before he will perform the weight-loss surgery. He does the surgery and it always goes well and then the subject sees a therapist and stumbles along trying to live and eat differently. This show loves to gratuitously display the fat body, all the excess, the mounds of flesh. The surgeries are graphic, and we see insides, globules of fat being shoved aside by medical instruments, as the obese body is medically brought to heel. Through medical intervention, the show offers redemption or, at least, a chance at redemption. Each episode tries to end on a hopeful note, but sometimes, even with medical intervention, there is no happy ending, which for the show is a drastically thinner body. In that, My 600-lb Life offers some truth. I hate these shows, but clearly I watch them. I watch them even though sometimes they enrage me and sometimes they break my heart and all too often they reveal painfully familiar experiences of loneliness, depression, and genuine suffering born of living in a world that cannot accommodate overweight bodies. I watch these shows because even though I know how damaging and unrealistic they are, some part of me still yearns for the salvation they promise. 36It’s not just reality TV that is obsessed with weight. If you watch enough daytime television, particularly on “women’s networks,” you are treated to an endless parade of commercials about weight-loss products and diet foods—means of disciplining the body that will also fatten the coffers of one corporation or another. These commercials drive me crazy. They encourage self-loathing. They tell us, most of us, that we aren’t good enough in our bodies as they are. They offer us the cruelest aspiration. In these commercials, women swoon at the possibility of satisfying their hunger with somewhat repulsive foods while also maintaining an appropriately slim figure. The joy women express over fat-free yogurt and 100-calorie snack packs is not to be believed. Every time I watch a yogurt commercial I think, My god, I want to be that happy. I really do. It is a powerful lie to equate thinness with self-worth. Clearly, this lie is damn convincing because the weight-loss industry thrives. Women continue to try to bend themselves to societal will. Women continue to hunger. And so do I.

• From Escape (2007)

  The surgeon called Ruth and explained how serious his condition was. While his vital signs were good, he still was not stable. Ruth called Merril and asked if she could go to the hospital. She wanted to do what was right for Luke. Merril ripped into her and told her he had everything under control. Her only concern, he pointed out, should be to do the will of her husband. After Ruth called, Merril called his oldest son, Fred. Fred’s second wife, Josette, was in the hospital with her sick baby. She went to check on Luke and asked him how he was doing. He said he felt better. While they were chatting, the surgeon arrived and mistook Josette for Luke’s mother. “I’m so glad you finally found a way to get to the hospital,” she said. “I’ve been doing everything I can to get ahold of you!” “How do you think he’s doing?” Josette asked out of genuine curiosity. The surgeon went through a detailed explanation of Luke’s condition, explaining that even though he was holding his own, there was still a possibility that his spleen could rupture, which might require emergency surgery. After she’d finished explaining Luke’s status, the surgeon told Josette that she didn’t look young enough to have a seventeen-year-old son. “Oh, I’m not old enough to be Luke’s mother. I’m not his mother.” The surgeon looked stricken. “Then who are you?” Josette didn’t want to say she was the second wife of Luke’s half brother. So she said she was just a friend from Colorado City who was in the hospital with her sick baby and had dropped in to say hello. The surgeon nearly lost it at this point. She was angry and frustrated that she couldn’t connect with one of Luke’s parents. It compromised her ability to ensure that he got the best care. She saw it as a matter of life and death. Luke was less concerned. He was getting hungry. Because he might need to have surgery, he was only getting IV fluids. Merril and Barbara decided at the end of the day in Las Vegas that they were too tired to make the trip to see Luke and postponed it for another day. Merril called Leroy and asked him to go back to the hospital. When he did, he found his brother watching TV. “I’m so hungry I could die,” Luke said. “Well, a man can’t live on no food. Let’s go out and get you something to eat.” Leroy helped Luke get up and disconnected his IV. He fished his clothes out of the plastic bag in the closet and the two boys walked past the nursing station and out of the hospital. Leroy bought a big steak dinner for the two of them.

• From Open (2009)

  SOMETIMES A WORKOUT WITH GIL is actually a conversation. We don’t touch a single weight. We sit on the free benches and free-associate. There are many ways, Gil says, of getting strong, and sometimes talking is the best way. When he’s not teaching me about my body, I’m teaching him about tennis, the life on tour. I tell him how the game is organized, the circuit of minor tournaments and the four majors, or Grand Slams, that all players use as yardsticks. I tell him about the tennis calendar, how we start the year on the other side of the world, at the Australian Open, and then just chase the sun. Next comes clay season, in Europe, which culminates in Paris with the French Open. Then comes June, grass season, and Wimbledon. I stick out my tongue and make a face. Then come the dog days, the hard-court season, which concludes with the U.S. Open. Then the indoor season—Stuttgart, Paris, the World Championships. It’s all very Groundhog Day. Same venues, same opponents, only the years and scores are different, and over time the scores all run together like phone numbers. I try to tell Gil about my psyche. I start at the beginning, the central truth. He laughs. You don’t actually hate tennis, he says. I do, Gil, I really do. He gets a look on his face, and I wonder if he’s thinking he might have quit his job at UNLV too soon. If that’s true, he says, why play? I’m not suited for anything else. I don’t know how to do anything else. Tennis is the only thing I’m qualified for. Also, my father would have a fit if I did anything different. Gil scratches his ear. This is a new one on him. He’s known hundreds of athletes, but he’s never known one who hated athletics. He doesn’t know what to say. I reassure him that there’s nothing to be said. I don’t understand it myself. I can only tell him how it is. I also tell Gil about the Image Is Everything debacle. I feel, somehow, that he needs to know, so he’ll understand what he’s got himself into. The whole thing still makes me angry, but now the anger has seeped down deep. Hard to talk about, hard to reach. It feels like a spoonful of acid in the pit of my stomach. Hearing about it, Gil feels angry too, but he has less trouble accessing his anger. He wants to act on it, right now. He wants to punch out an advertising exec or two. He says: Some slap-dick on Madison Avenue puts together a silly ad campaign, and gets you to say a line into a camera, and it means something about you? Millions of people think so. And say so. And write so.

• From Escape (2007)

  Ruth spoke softly. “Yes, Father, I have learned to never question you again. Thank you for your forgiveness.” I heard this in Merril’s office because he had sent for me. Merril was giving me a “correction.” If I would be as obedient to his will as Ruth, God’s love would allow Harrison to get better. What Merril was able to manipulate—as if he needed an excuse—was that there was no apparent medical reason doctors could offer to explain why Harrison wasn’t coming out of his spasms. The doctors had said that there was a possibility that Harrison could emerge from the spasms and be completely normal again. This was the kindling that Merril used to stoke the fires of his accusations toward me about the consequences of my rebellion. Luke was discharged the next day. His brothers picked him up and he walked out of the hospital without signing any papers. This created yet another uproar. The hospital called and insisted that Ruth come back, sign the discharge papers, and talk to his doctor about Luke’s follow-up care. Ruth explained the situation to Merril. He attacked her for her impudence and warned her that he might not be so forgiving of her behavior if she couldn’t learn to leave well enough alone. Ruth was practically shaking when she left Merril’s office. I witnessed endless episodes of this kind of behavior. Merril would berate her over almost anything, as he did the rest of us. What was different about Ruth was that she was less capable of outsmarting him and defending herself. The hospital called several days later, this time about the bill. Ruth told them to speak to Merril. He informed her that Luke’s bill was her responsibility. “The way I see it,” Merril said, “is that you are a single mother with sixteen children and I don’t give you any money. So I think the hospital will work with you and help you out.” Child Protective Services informed Merril several weeks later that he was being investigated because of Luke’s hospitalization. Merril was warned that he could lose his children if he was found to be abusing them. Merril screamed at the investigator over the phone, “Who do you think you are, calling and questioning me about my parenting? The way I parent my children is nobody’s business.” He told the man from CPS to go to hell. But the next day, the investigator showed up at our house. This was a rare occurrence. Child Protective Services rarely came into the community and hardly ever took children away from their abusive parents. Victims were so routinely sent back to perpetrators that people stopped making reports. My experience was that for the most part, Child Protective Services looked the other way at the endemic abuse that was happening in our community because it was easier than investigating large polygamous families.

• From Escape (2007)

  The minute Merril saw the man from CPS show up, he started screaming at him and told him to leave at once. The man insisted on talking to Luke. Merril refused. Luke heard all the shouting and went outside. He convinced Merril to allow him to talk to the man, and the three of them met in Merril’s office. Then the investigator talked to Luke alone. Luke said that his parents didn’t understand the rules at the hospital and that there had never been any ill intent on their part. The investigator promised to write a full report. No one ever heard from him again. I was not surprised. What did surprise me was that Luke’s surgeon, who also took care of Harrison, had a completely different attitude toward Harrison and me when she saw us the next time. The pediatrician felt strongly that Harrison’s port should come out because the infection hadn’t cleared. But the surgeon disagreed and refused. Her concern was that if this port came out there wouldn’t be a way to put another one in. That’s because there are only several veins large enough to hold a port. Once those accesses are exhausted, there are no other options. She finally agreed to take it out but made it very clear to me that she would never do another surgery on Harrison and that she was the only surgeon in the area capable of doing a procedure like this. If we ever needed to attempt something like this again, we would have to take Harrison back to Phoenix. Her attitude toward me seemed harsh. I suspected that she’d put two and two together and realized Harrison and Luke had the same father. She had always been friendly toward me. Now she acted as though she didn’t want to have anything to do with us. I was so upset that Merril put his children at risk through medical neglect. I hated that the surgeon thought I was as neglectful of my children as Ruth and Merril were. Neither she nor my pediatrician knew anything about the polygamous lifestyle that I was living. We never talked about polygamy to outsiders. We lived in fear of outsiders. Even when I had a long relationship with physicians, as I did with Harrison’s doctors, I had no way of really knowing if I could trust them. I could not take any risks because if Merril ever found out that I had told the truth about my life to anyone outside the community I would have been sentenced to hell in the afterlife and shunned by my community in this life. Warren Becomes the Prophet By springtime in 2002, it felt like I’d been given a reprieve. Harrison’s staph infections stopped once his port was removed, and Bryson emerged from his first fragile months into a sturdy and healthy baby. He was nursing so steadily that I had extra milk. This gave me an idea.

• From The Spiritual Works of Leo Tolstoy (selected nonfiction) (2016)

  Millions of workingmen submit "because one man has usurped the factory, another the land, and a third the taxes collected from the workmen." Were the millions, who now slave for the rich, to get their food from the soil, the rich, to keep alive, would be obliged to raise their own food, and the double redemption would have begun. It is because the number of workers who produce the prime necessities of life is diminishing that the number of those who use luxuries is increasing. Under such conditions, the health of society, wrote he, is as little possible as is the health of that person, whose body is continually growing heavier in weight, and his legs are continually growing thinner and weaker. When the support vanishes the body must fall.[4] His Remedy. As a bitter opponent of violent measures, he saw but one way for righting the wrongs of society, and that is in the well-to-do descending to the lowly and starting life anew with them on a common level, and rising with them step by step to the higher planes. And to prevent a relapse to the old iniquitous state, he advocated the eradication of capital, which he held responsible for many of the inequalities and tyrannies and miseries of society. Let the rich, said he, convert their money into land and parcel it out among the poor, and claim for themselves no more than an equal share with the others. Merely wishing the poor well, and yet continuing the old state of affairs, is like sitting on a man's neck and crushing him down, yet all the time assuring him and others that we are sorry for him, and wish to ease his condition by every means in our power except by getting off his back. Or it is like entering an orchard, and barring the door behind, and gathering its fruit for ourselves, and wishing others might have as much yet continuing to keep the door barred and gathering for ourselves alone.[5] If we really wish to see the lot of the poor improved, said he, we must not look for a miracle to effect it nor trust to some future age to bring it about. We must do it ourselves, and we must do it now. And we must do it at the cost of self-sacrifice. If people really wish to improve the condition of their brother men, and not merely their own, they must be ready not only to alter the way of life to which they are accustomed, but they must be ready for an intense struggle with themselves and their families.[6] Society will never be at peace, said he, until man will have learned the service of sacrifice. And man will never be happy until he will have learned to find his happiness in making others happy.[7] My Visit to Tolstoy (Concluded. )A Discourse, at Temple Keneseth Israel, by Rabbi Joseph Krauskopf, D. D. Philadelphia, January 8th, 1911.

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

  AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xlix. 27.) We learn hence that even bad men may foretell things to come by the spirit of prophecy, which power the Evangelist ascribes to a divine sacrament, he being Pontifex, i. e. High Priest. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxv. 1) See the great virtue of the Holy Spirit, in drawing forth a prophecy from a wicked man. And see too the virtue of the pontifical office, which made him, though an unworthy High Priest, unconsciously prophesy. Divine grace only used his mouth; it touched not his corrupt heart. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xlix. 27) Caiaphas prophesied of the Jewish nation alone; in which nation were the sheep, of which our Lord says, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. (Matt. 15:34) But the Evangelist knew that there were other sheep, not of this fold, which were to be brought in, and therefore adds, And not for that nation only, but also that He should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad; i. e. those who were predestined to be so: for as yet there were neither sheep, nor children of God. GREGORY. (vi. Moral.) His persecutors accomplished this wicked purpose, and put Him to death, thinking to extinguish the devotion of His followers; but faith grew from the very thing which these cruel and unbelieving men thought would destroy it. That which human cruelty had executed against Him, He turned to the purposes of His mercy. ORIGEN. (tom. xxviii. c. 17.) Inflamed by the speech of Caiaphas, they determined on killing our Lord: Then from that day forth they took counsel together to put Him to death. Was this then the work of the Holy Spirit, as well as the former, or was it another spirit which did both first speak by the mouth of a wicked man, and then excite others like him to kill Christ? Answer: It is not necessary that both should be the work of the same spirit. As some turn the Scriptures themselves, which were given for our good, to the support of bad doctrines; so this true prophecy respecting our Saviour was understood in a wrong sense, as if it were a call to put Him to death. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxv. 1) They sought before to kill Him; now their resolution was confirmed. 11:54–5754. Jesus therefore walked no more openly among the Jews; but went thence unto a country near to the wilderness, into a city called Ephraim, and there continued with his disciples. 55. And the Jews’ passover was nigh at hand: and many went out of the country up to Jerusalem before the passover, to purify themselves. 56. Then sought they for Jesus, and spake among themselves, as they stood in the temple, What think ye, that he will not come to the feast?

• From My People (2022)

  Also, they are responsible for the removal of the segregated bathroom signs. Penny Mickelbury, a striking dark-skinned girl from Atlanta with a Kathleen Cleaver–style Afro, said that she and “a group of the brothers and sisters” went into a university cafeteria “determined that those signs were going to come down.” They walked to the head of the food lines, she said, and simply refused to move. I marveled at the story, even up to this point, since this was a cafeteria frequented by many of the Bulldogs. In my day, Bulldogs were known for their pugnacious character. At any rate, a few of these types, according to Penny, took exception, and although there’s some question as to who actually landed the first blow, it wasn’t long before the cafeteria was in an uproar. Most of the whites and a few of the blacks left. Penny and a “few of the brothers,” including Pie, remained to do battle. “I climbed up on top of a table and started throwing forks and knives and trays,” she recalled. “Anything I could get my hands on. That’s one of the reasons they leave us alone. They think we’re crazy. Imagine. Thirty black kids got eighteen thousand honkies scared to death.” Because at least a few of the black students make no secret of their readiness to retaliate “much of the harassment,” they say, “has all but disappeared.” And despite the fact that the average black student does not participate in the BSU, many have benefited from their protests. Bendelle Love, a young resident adviser in an all-white dorm, is there as a result of BSU demands. She says she works nearly forty hours a week advising others on their problems and that, because of the time consumed between that and her studies, she just doesn’t have time for meetings. Of her own situation, she says: “There’s static.” Others, I think, feel there are some benefits. Pie and Floyd Williams, a graduate student in art, debated the point one evening. Pie said that all he wants to be is a soldier in the revolution. But Floyd argued that the revolution needs professionals—doctors, lawyers, technicians, even sociologists. The struggle, he said, benefits from those who know well their opposition. But even the most militant of the black students say that things have improved “a little bit.” Some say that the number of whites they can talk to is increasing.

• From Three Women (2019)

  Maggie quits. This is how Maggie handles adversity. If someone criticizes her in the wrong way, not taking the time to tell her that she is still worth something, she doesn’t try to do better. She just says, Fuck it, fuck yourself. She forsakes what she loves. She doesn’t have advisers telling her to relax, to hang back and think it over. To work hard on JV and prove the coaches wrong. Her old man is strong, but drunk. He has been trying to get a new job since being laid off from the one he’s held his whole life, but he doesn’t take the right steps. She knows the two new coaches think she’s uppity. They think she doesn’t know her place. Fargo doesn’t like one of its own to get out of line. America wants you to pay your dues. Maggie sees only the unfairness, everywhere. Then there are teachers like Mr. Knodel, who know how to talk to her. There are people out there who are like the trains in the distance, glorious and forward-moving and unswerving, and she wants to be one of these. But sometimes she falls on the sword of her own desire. And lies there, and repents too late, and too incorrectly, for anyone to want to save her. Did you continue to confide in Mr. Knodel as you went through high school after having had him as a freshman English teacher and then being in speech and debate and service learning and those sorts of things? You think Hoy’s bushy mustache is decrepit. Skinny old people freak you out. They remind you of your dad’s mom. When you were a kid you always felt her turning a corner to find you in the middle of something sinful. Similarly, Hoy catches you off guard often. He looks at you like you are an underperformer. You gained weight since high school. Maybe he knows his client is guilty. Probably he does. In any case he looks at you like he is surprised that Aaron went for you. Sometimes you want to pull out pictures of yourself from back then. Show people your smile, your little body. You want to tell Hoy he is an old creep. His wife has probably had more sex-time headaches than any other woman in the history of evanesced desire. I’m sorry, did I— Did you continue to confide in him about your experiences with an adult male in Hawaii over your junior— The prosecutor, Jon Byers, says, I’m going to object to that on relevance and rape shield. It is a terrible thing when you feel grateful that someone who is supposed to defend you finally begins to defend you. Rape shield means you can’t ask an alleged rape victim about other sexual encounters. It means you can’t try to prove that whore is her baseline.

• From The Spiritual Works of Leo Tolstoy (selected nonfiction) (2016)

  He depicted the Duma as the laughing stock of the world, as composed of people so stupid as not even to recognize what fools they were making of themselves. In his "Resurrection " he held up to the view of the world Russia's courts of law, and her iniquitous prison-system, the blocking of justice, the shocking judicial indifference and laxities in cases involving life-long sentences to penal servitude, the "lives that are shed like water upon the ground" during the transport to Siberia, and the crimes and rebellions that are systematically bred by such crying injustice. Little wonder that the government had no love for Tolstoy, and that it suppressed publication after publication of his, and maintained a special corps of censors and spies to watch him. Little wonder that it prohibited demonstrations of sorrow at the announcement of his death, and made use of the church as a cat's paw for holding him up as the Anti-Christ, and arch-fiend, as the enemy of the Czar, Church and people.[2] His demands of the people. Plain and fearless as was his speech to the government it was yet more so to the people. Not a wrong in society, public or private, which he did not know, and which he did not castigate as only he knew how to castigate. Louder and louder, as he grew older, he preached the Law of God against the law of degenerate society. Art and science, commerce and industry were to him as nothing in comparison with the Moral Law, without which he saw no future for mankind. His views respecting marriage and society. The sanctity of the marriage tie, the sobriety and industry of the husband, the domesticity of the wife, were among the most constant of his themes. He loathed the self-exhibiting society woman; in his eyes she was no better than the street-woman. Great to him was the womanly woman, greater the domestic wife, greatest of all the mother, and so many more times greater the more times she was mother.[3] His views respecting labor and capital.

• From Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (1988)

  While granting that the imperial system preserves social order, he charges that it tolerates—or, worse, even enforces—injustice, immorality, and inequality. Roman laws, John says, are, “for the most part, corrupt, useless, and ridiculous.” They expose to torture or execution the man who steals clothes or money, but they ignore worse crimes: “Who would be considered wiser, by most people, than the persons considered worthy to legislate for the cities and nations? But yet to these wise men sexual immorality is unworthy of punishment; at least, none of the pagan laws … bring men to trial for this reason.”14 Chrysostom explains specifically what kind of case he has in mind: “If a married man has intercourse with a female slave, it seems to be nothing to pagan laws, nor to people in general.”15 Most people, he admits, would laugh at anyone who tried to bring such a case to court, and the judge would dismiss it. The same is true for a married man involved with an unmarried woman or with a prostitute. Roman law protects only the man’s rights in such cases, but, Chrysostom declares, “we are punished, though not by the Roman laws, yet by God.”16 Roman laws, John continues, allow dealers to enslave children and to train them in sexual specialties for sale as prostitutes. And pagan tradition praises the legislators as “common benefactors of the city” for instituting public entertainment that features, in the theaters, prostitutes and prostituted children and, in the sports arena, contests between men and wild animals: Those places, too, being full of all senseless excitement, train the people to acquire a merciless and savage and inhuman kind of temperament, and give them practice in seeing people torn in pieces, and blood flowing, and the viciousness of wild beasts upsetting everything. Now all these our wise lawgivers introduced from the beginning—so many plagues—and our cities applaud and admire them.17 So much for the masses; but what about the few who, chastened by the example of Adam’s sin, and recovered from sin through baptism, exercise appropriate restraint over themselves? Such persons, Chrysostom declares, remain exempt from the punishment that falls upon the corrupt majority—exempt, in fact, from the constraints of human government as a whole: “For those who live in a state of piety require no correction on the part of the magistrates, for ‘the law was not made for a righteous man.’ But the more numerous, if they had no fear of these hanging over them, would fill the cities with innumerable evils.”18

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

  All these permutations of power stumble into our adult intimacies, and gender does matter. Boys and girls undergo a radically different initiation in wielding power. Men become adept at direct expressions of power, women at indirect expressions; and these differences are discernible in our sexual scripts. As adults, we seek control in part as a defense against the vulnerability inherent in love. When we put our hopes on one person, our dependence soars. So do our frustrations and disappointments. The greater our helplessness, the more dangerous the threat of humiliation. The more we need, the angrier we are when we don’t get. Kids know this; lovers do, too. No one can bring us to the boiling point as quickly as our partner (except maybe our parents, the original locus of dependent rage). Love is always accompanied by hate. While we fear the depth of our dependence, many of us are even more frightened by the depth of our rage. We resort to intricate relational contortions in order to keep all this combustion in check. Yet the couples who most successfully implement this model of placidity are rarely passionate lovers. When we confuse assertion with aggression, neutralize otherness, adjust our longings, and reason away our hostility, we assemble a calmness that is reassuring but not very exciting. Stephen Mitchell makes the point that the capacity to contain aggression is a precondition for the capacity to love. We must integrate our aggression rather than eradicate it. He explains, “The degradation of romance, the waning of desire, is due not to the contamination of love by aggression, but to the inability to sustain the necessary tension between them.” Jed and Coral Jed is unassuming. He is a clean-shaven, mild-mannered architect, brilliant and well-spoken. He is kind, never the sort of person to get in your face about anything. But sexually, he’s another man. Jed discovered S-M (sadomasochism) as a teenager, and for years he has used eroticism as a venue for aggression. He loves leather, hard surfaces, chains, handcuffs. “I used to be shy, and it was hard for me to assert myself. But at the same time I was angry a lot, and I didn’t know where to go with it. I was too afraid of hurting people, so I kept it all inside.” “I can see why S-M was so attractive to you,” I reply. “You could make demands and not fear hurting anyone. The unambiguous codes, the negotiating beforehand, made it safe for you. Emotionally, you tend to put other people first. Sexual domination is a way for you to override the other person’s supremacy. It’s a clever answer to your more typical emotional subordination.” “Exactly,” he says. “But at the same time, you know, it’s all about their needs. I’m pleasing them—that’s the key piece. They want it. They have to be really into it, or it’s a no-go for me.”