Anxiety

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 Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Suddenly we start a conversation on some most commonplace subject, and directly she finds herself disagreeing with me upon matters concerning which we have been generally in accord. And furthermore I see that, without any necessity therefor, she is becoming irritated. I think that she has a nervous attack, or else that the subject of conversation is really disagreeable to her. We talk of something else, and that begins again. Again she torments me, and becomes irritated. I am astonished and look for a reason. Why? For what? She keeps silence, answers me with monosyllables, evidently making allusions to something. I begin to divine that the reason of all this is that I have taken a few walks in the garden with her cousin, to whom I did not give even a thought. I begin to divine, but I cannot say so. If I say so, I confirm her suspicions. I interrogate her, I question her. She does not answer, but she sees that I understand, and that confirms her suspicions. “‘What is the matter with you?’ I ask. “‘Nothing, I am as well as usual,’ she answers. “And at the same time, like a crazy woman, she gives utterance to the silliest remarks, to the most inexplicable explosions of spite. “Sometimes I am patient, but at other times I break out with anger. Then her own irritation is launched forth in a flood of insults, in charges of imaginary crimes and all carried to the highest degree by sobs, tears, and retreats through the house to the most improbable spots. I go to look for her. I am ashamed before people, before the children, but there is nothing to be done. She is in a condition where I feel that she is ready for anything. I run, and finally find her. Nights of torture follow, in which both of us, with exhausted nerves, appease each other, after the most cruel words and accusations. “Yes, jealousy, causeless jealousy, is the condition of our debauched conjugal life. And throughout my marriage never did I cease to feel it and to suffer from it. There were two periods in which I suffered most intensely. The first time was after the birth of our first child, when the doctors had forbidden my wife to nurse it.

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

  You cannot begin a conversation but little Pierre comes running in with an anxious air to ask if he may eat an apple, or what jacket he shall put on, or else it is the servant who enters with a screaming baby. “Regular, steady family life does not exist. Where you live, and consequently what you do, depends upon the health of the little ones, the health of the little ones depends upon nobody, and, thanks to the doctors, who pretend to aid health, your entire life is disturbed. It is a perpetual peril. Scarcely do we believe ourselves out of it when a new danger comes: more attempts to save. Always the situation of sailors on a foundering vessel. Sometimes it seemed to me that this was done on purpose, that my wife feigned anxiety in order to conquer me, since that solved the question so simply for her benefit. It seemed to me that all that she did at those times was done for its effect upon me, but now I see that she herself, my wife, suffered and was tortured on account of the little ones, their health, and their diseases. “A torture to both of us, but to her the children were also a means of forgetting herself, like an intoxication. I often noticed, when she was very sad, that she was relieved, when a child fell sick, at being able to take refuge in this intoxication. It was involuntary intoxication, because as yet there was nothing else. On every side we heard that Mrs. So-and-so had lost children, that Dr. So-and-so had saved the child of Mrs. So-and-so, and that in a certain family all had moved from the house in which they were living, and thereby saved the little ones. And the doctors, with a serious air, confirmed this, sustaining my wife in her opinions. She was not prone to fear, but the doctor dropped some word, like corruption of the blood, scarlatina, or else—heaven help us— diphtheria, and off she went. “It was impossible for it to be otherwise. Women in the old days had the belief that ‘God has given, God has taken away,’ that the soul of the little angel is going to heaven, and that it is better to die innocent than to die in sin. If the women of to-day had something like this faith, they could endure more peacefully the sickness of their children. But of all that there does not remain even a trace. And yet it is necessary to believe in something; consequently they stupidly believe in medicine, and not even in medicine, but in the doctor. One believes in X, another in Z, and, like all believers, they do not see the idiocy of their beliefs.

• From The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (1967)

  6. Secularization and the Problem of Plausibility ONE OF THE MOST obvious ways in which secularization has affected the man in the street is as a “crisis of credibility” in religion. Put differently, secularization has resulted in a widespread collapse of the plausibility of traditional religious definitions of reality. This manifestation of secularization on the level of consciousness (“subjective secularization,” if one wishes) has its correlate on the social-structural level (as “objective secularization”). Subjectively, the man in the street tends to be uncertain about religious matters. Objectively, the man in the street is confronted with a wide variety of religious and other reality-defining agencies that compete for his allegiance or at least attention, and none of which is in a position to coerce him into allegiance. In other words, the phenomenon called “pluralism” is a social-structural correlate of the secularization of consciousness. This relationship invites sociological analysis (1). Such analysis affords a very nice opportunity to show in concreto the dialectical relationship between religion and its infrastructure that has previously been developed theoretically. It is possible to analyze secularization in such a way that it appears as a “reflection” of concrete infrastructural processes in modern society. This is all the more convincing because secularization appears to be a “negative” phenomenon, that is, it seems to be without causal efficacy of its own and continually dependent upon processes other than itself. Such an analysis, however, remains convincing only if the contemporary situation is viewed in isolation from its 147

• From The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (1967)

  the circles of secular intellectuals that today form the principal reference group for most theologians. Specifically, liberal theology means to take with utmost seriousness the historicity of religion, without such theoretical subterfuges as differentiating between Historie and Geschichte, and thereby to take seriously the character of religion as a human product. This, it seems to me, must be the starting point. Only after the theologian has confronted the historical relativity of religion can he genuinely ask where in this history it may, perhaps, be possible to speak of discoveries —discoveries, that is, that transcend the relative character of their infrastructures. And only after he has really grasped what it means to say that religion is a human product or projection can he begin to search, within this array of projections, for what may turn out to be signals of transcendence. I strongly suspect that such an inquiry will turn increasingly from the projections to the projector, that is, will become an enterprise in anthropology. An “empirical theology” is, of course, methodologically impossible. But a theology that proceeds in a step-by-step correlation with what can be said about man empirically is well worth a serious try. It is in such an enterprise that a conversation between sociology and theology is most likely to bear intellectual fruits. It will be clear from the above that this will require partners, on both sides, with a high degree of openness. In the absence of such partners, silence is by far the better course. 214 Notes 1. RELIGION AND WORLD-CONSTRUCTION (1) The term “world” is here understood in a phenomenological sense, that is, with the question of its ultimate ontological status remaining in brackets. For the anthropological application of the term, cf. Max Scheler, Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos (Munich, Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, 1947). For the application of the term to the sociology of knowledge, cf. Max Scheler, Die Wissensformsn und die Gesellschaft (Bern, Francke, 1960); Alfred Schutz, Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt (Vienna, Springer, 1960), and Collected Papers, Vols. I–II (The Hague, Nijhoff, 1962-64). The term “dialectic” as applied to society is here understood in an essential Marxian sense, particularly as the latter was developed in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. (2) We would contend that this dialectic understanding of man and society as mutual products makes possible a theoretical synthesis of the Weberian and Durkheimian approaches to sociology without losing the fundamental intention of either (such a loss having occurred, in our opinion, in the Parsonian synthesis). Weber’s understanding of social reality as ongoingly constituted by human signification and Durkheim’s of the same as having the character of choseité as against the individual are both correct. They intend, respectively, the subjective foundation and the objective facticity of the societal phenomenon, ipso facto pointing toward the dialectic relationship of subjectivity and its objects. By the same token, the two understandings are only correct together. A quasi-Weberian emphasis on 215

• From The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (1967)

  Objectivity in Judaism has always been more a question of practice than of theory (more precisely, of halachah than of dogma), so that de-objectivation manifests itself more significantly in the disintegration of religious practice than in doctrinal heterodoxy. Also, of course, the peculiarity of Judaism as a religious tradition and an ethnic entity means that the problem of its plausibility ipso facto entails the so- called “crisis of Jewish identity.” The Zionist attempt to redefine Jewishness in terms of a national identity thus has the ambivalent character of, on the one hand, re-establishing an objective plausibility structure for Jewish existence while, on the other hand, putting in question the claim of religious Judaism to being the raison d’être of Jewish existence—an ambivalence manifested in the ongoing difficulties between “church” and state in Israel. Nevertheless, the fundamental option between resistance and accommodation must be faced by Judaism, particularly in America, in terms that are not too drastically different from those in which it is faced by the Christian churches. Specifically, the option is between defensively maintaining a Jewish subculture (which may be defined in primarily religious or primarily national terms) and playing the pluralistic game along with everyone else. It is highly indicative of this dilemma that, just when American Jewish leaders became increasingly alarmed about the threat of religious intermarriage to the continuity of the Jewish community, an important spokesman of Reform Judaism advocated that his denomination should “evangelize” among Gentiles. In other words, even in a tradition as foreign to the spirit of pluralism as the Jewish one, the logic of the market imposes itself at the point where the “social engineering” of subcultural defensiveness becomes too difficult. It would take us too far afield to discuss even briefly the problems posed by secularization for non-Western religions. 196 Suffice it to emphasize once more that modernization is today a worldwide phenomenon and that the structures of modern industrial society, despite great modifications in different areas and national cultures, produce remarkably similar situations for the religious traditions and the institutions that embody these. Indeed, because of this the experience of the Western religious traditions in modern times is of great interest if one wishes to project the future of religion in non-Western countries, regardless of whether their development takes place under socialist or non-socialist political auspices. It would be foolhardy to make detailed predictions regarding this future in any particular country. All the same, it is safe to predict that the future of religion everywhere will be decisively shaped by the forces that have been discussed in this and the preceding chapters— secularization, pluralization, and “subjectivization”—and by the manner in which the several religious institutions will react to these. 197 Appendices 198

• From Manhunt (2022)

  The bolt took the thing high in the throat, just under the jaw, and the man fell thrashing to the ground. Blood spurted from his straining mouth. His heels dug furrows in the rich black soil and filled the air with the aromatic scent of crushed pine needles. He clutched at the steel-headed bolt protruding from his neck. A quarrel, Robbie remembered out of nowhere. That was what you called them, like they were a way to end an argument. Sam walked up to the flailing creature and put her own bolt through his eye. The thrum of the crossbow’s steel wire as it released echoed through the trees. It wasn’t until later, as he was stuffing a Ziploc full of blood-slimed balls into Sam’s little red lunch box while she heaved the dead man over onto his stomach to cut through his back for his kidneys, that Robbie thought to wonder what had happened to the Screw’s last doctor. From the TERFs standing guard outside the town hall—two middle-aged white women, head to toe in riot gear, with an unmistakably suburban aura—they learned that the council was meeting up at the Shaw house, that Fallingwater knockoff on the hill overlooking Indi’s house. Town hall was closed for renovation. It felt strange to drive past Indi’s without saying anything. Strange to see its windows dark and empty. There were paving crews out on Main, patching potholes and using pickaxes to break up buckled pavement. Open barrels of hot asphalt smoked in the sultry air. A few workers watched them pass and each time Fran felt a light frisson of anxiety, a conviction that they would see her and know ; that her ever so slight Adam’s apple, the single speck of razor burn under her jaw, the length of her nose would give her away. But they didn’t, or if they did then no one cared. How many of them would turn me in, if they did know? They turned onto the sloping driveway that wound its way up toward the Shaw house’s garage, Nam-joo throwing the truck into second as they climbed. Cut stone rose sheer to their either side. They parked in front of the big segmented metal doors with their glazed windows. There were no other cars out front. Fran looked back through the cab’s rear window at the street below. How many times had she walked and biked it? I’m not selling balls anymore, she told herself. I’m not some dirty fucking nobody. A set of stone steps cut into the rock curled up to a wide concrete porch in the shadow of the house’s bulk. Below, Indi’s place looked tiny and forlorn.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  Jim set out from Nova Scotia for the nine-hour drive to the airport. Rathbun got the message that Annie had fled the base about an hour and a half after she left. He was panicked. Annie knew as well as anyone the inside story of the secret money transfers to Hubbard, the offshore accounts, the shredding of incriminating documents. She could torpedo the church’s application for tax-exempt status. She also knew the true circumstances of Hubbard’s last days. She might even reunite with Pat Broeker, and the two of them could pose a challenge to Miscavige. Rathbun saw Annie as a potential “ doomsday machine.” According to Gary Morehead, the hulking chief of security at Gold Base at the time, a “ blow drill” went into effect immediately. Morehead had refined the process to a model of Sea Org efficiency. Each year, a minimum of a hundred people attempted to escape from Gold, but few got away cleanly. Morehead’s security team kept files on members, containing bank account and credit card numbers, family contacts, even hobbies and predilections. When one senior executive fled in 1992, for instance, Morehead knew he was a baseball fan. He caught him a week later in the parking lot of the San Francisco Giants stadium. Morehead’s team was aided by the isolation of the base—Gold was in a narrow valley in the middle of the desert, seven miles from the village of Hemet. There was a single highway, easy to patrol; mountain ranges enclosed the base on either side, and the rocky slopes were copiously supplied with cactus and rattlesnakes. Many of the Sea Org members had neither the resources nor the skills to get very far. There was an ingrained distrust of the non-Scientology “wog” world and its system of justice, as well as a fatalistic view of the reach of the church, especially among Sea Org members who, like Annie, had grown up in Scientology. Those who had cell phones used them mainly as walkie-talkies for communication on the base; phone records were monitored and the phones would be taken away if they were used to make outside calls. Few of them had cars of their own, or even driver’s licenses, so the best they could do was to try to get to the bus station before they were discovered missing. By the time the bus made its next stop, however, there was usually a member of Morehead’s team waiting for them. If that failed, Morehead’s security squad would stake out the houses of the blown member’s family and friends, using scanners that could listen in on cordless phones and cell phones, and running the license plates of everyone who came and went. When the team finally confronted their prey, they would try to talk them into returning to the base voluntarily. If that failed, occasionally they would use force.3 Most of those who fled were torn by conflicting emotions. On the one hand, they were often frightened, humiliated, and angry.

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

  "My heart was beating strongly, I felt a choking feeling as if something was griping my throat. "'Why should he be telling me this?' said I to myself. "'Did you not smell a scent just then?' "'A scent,—when?' "'When I was playing the gavotte; you have forgotten perhaps." "'Let me see, you are right, what scent was it?' "'Lavande ambrée.' "'Exactly.' "'Which you do not care for, and which I dislike; tell me, which is your favourite scent?' "'Heliotrope blanc.' "Without giving me an answer, he pulled out his handkerchief and gave it to me to smell. "'All our tastes are exactly the same, are they not?' And saying this, he looked at me with such a passionate and voluptuous longing, that the carnal hunger depicted in his eyes made me feel faint. "'You see, I always wear a bunch of white heliotrope; let me give this to you, that its smell may remind you of me to-night, and perhaps make you dream of me.' "And taking the flowers from his button-hole, he put them into mine with one hand, whilst he slipped his left arm round my waist and clasped me tightly, pressing me against his whole body for a few seconds. That short space of time seemed to me an eternity. "I could feel his hot and panting breath against my lips. Below, our knees touched, and I felt something hard press and move against my thigh. "My emotion just then was such that I could hardly stand; for a moment I thought he would kiss me—nay, the crisp hair of his moustache was slightly tickling my lips, producing a most delightful sensation. However, he only looked deep into my eyes with a demoniac fascination. "I felt the fire of his glances sink deep into my breast, and far below. My blood began to boil and bubble like a burning fluid, so that I felt my——, (what the Italians call a 'birdie,' and what they have portrayed as a winged cherub) struggle within its prison, lift up its head, open its tiny lips, and again spout one or two drops of that creamy, life-giving fluid. "But those few tears—far from being a soothing balm—seemed to be drops of caustic, burning me, and producing a strong, unbearable irritation. I was tortured. My mind was a hell. My body was on fire. "'Is he suffering as much as I am?' said I to myself. "Just then he unclasped his arm from round my waist, and it fell lifeless of its own weight like that of a man asleep. "He stepped back, and shuddered as if he had received a strong electric shock. He seemed faint for a moment, then wiped his damp forehead, and sighed loudly. All the colour had fled from his face, and he became deathly pale. "'Do you think me mad?' said he.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  Roger the Giant was strong and fast and could dunk. I tried to stay out of way. I figured I’d die if he ran me over. But he just smiled all the time, played hard, and slapped me hard on the back. We all shot basketballs for a while. And then Coach stepped onto the court. Forty kids IMMEDIATELY stopped bouncing and shooting and talking. We were silent, SNAP, just like that. “I want to thank you all for coming out today,” Coach said. “There are forty of you. But we only have room for twelve on the varsity and twelve on the junior varsity.” I knew I wouldn’t make those teams. I was C squad material, for sure. “In other years, we’ve also had a twelve-man C squad,” Coach said. “But we don’t have the budget for it this year. That means I’m going to have to cut sixteen players today.” Twenty boys puffed up their chests. They knew they were good enough to make either the varsity or the junior varsity. The other twenty shook their heads. We knew we were cuttable. “I really hate to do this,” Coach said. “If it were up to me, I’d keep everybody. But it’s not up to me. So we’re just going to have to do our best here, okay? You play with dignity and respect, and I’ll treat you with dignity and respect, no matter what happens, okay?” We all agreed to that. “Okay, let’s get started,” Coach said. The first drill was a marathon. Well, not exactly a marathon. We had to run one hundred laps around the gym. So forty of us ran. And thirty-six of us finished. After fifty laps, one guy quit, and since quitting is contagious, three other boys caught the disease and walked off the court, too. I didn’t understand. Why would you try out for a basketball team if you didn’t want to run? I didn’t mind. After all, that meant only twelve more guys had to be cut. I only had to be better than twelve other guys. Well, we were good and tired after that run. And then Coach immediately had us playing full-court one-on-one. That’s right. FULL-COURT ONE-ON-ONE. That was torture. Coach didn’t break it down by position. So quick guards had to guard power forwards, and vice versa. Seniors had to guard freshmen, and vice versa. All-stars had to guard losers like me, and vice versa. Coach threw me the ball and said, “Go.” So I turned and dribbled straight down the court. A mistake. Roger easily poked the ball away and raced down toward his basket. Ashamed, I was frozen. “What are you waiting for?” Coach asked me. “Play some D.” Awake, I ran after Roger, but he dunked it before I was even close. “Go again,” Coach said. This time, Roger tried to dribble down the court.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  I was angry and jealous and absolutely terrified. “I can go! I can go!” Penelope said, ran back to me, and hugged me hard. An hour later, about twenty of us were sitting in a Denny’s in Spokane. Everybody ordered pancakes. I ordered pancakes for Penelope and me. I ordered orange juice and coffee and a side order of toast and hot chocolate and French fries, too, even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to pay for any of it. I figured it was my last meal before my execution, and I was going to have a feast. Halfway through our meal, I went to the bathroom. I thought maybe I was going to throw up, so I kneeled at the toilet. But I only retched a bit. Roger came into the bathroom and heard me. “Hey, Arnie,” he said. “Are you okay?” “Yeah,” I said. “I’m just tired.” “All right, man,” he said. “I’m happy you guys came tonight. You and Penultimate are a great couple, man.” “You think so?” “Yeah, have you done her yet?” “I don’t really want to talk about that stuff.” “Yeah, you’re right, dude. It’s none of my business. Hey, man, are you going to try out for basketball?” I knew that practice started in a week. I’d planned on playing. But I didn’t know if the Coach liked Indians or not. “Yeah,” I said. “Are you any good?” “I’m okay.” “You think you’re good enough to play varsity?” Roger asked. “No way,” I said. “I’m junior varsity all the way.” “All right,” Roger said. “It will be good to have you out there. We need some new blood.” “Thanks, man,” I said. I couldn’t believe he was so nice. He was, well, he was POLITE! How many great football players are polite? And kind? And generous like that? It was amazing. “Hey, listen,” I said. “The reason I was getting sick in there is—” I thought about telling him the whole truth, but I just couldn’t. “I bet you’re just sick with love,” Roger said. “No, well, yeah, maybe,” I said. “But the thing is, my stomach is all messed up because I, er, forgot my wallet. I left my money at home, man.” “Dude!” Roger said. “Man, don’t sweat it. You should have said something earlier. I got you covered.” He opened his wallet and handed me forty bucks. Holy, holy. What kind of kid can just hand over forty bucks like that? “I’ll pay you back, man,” I said. “Whenever, man, just have a good time, all right?” He slapped me on the back again. He was always slapping me on the back. We walked back to the table together, finished our food, and Roger drove me back to the school. I told them my dad was going to pick me up outside the gym. “Dude,” Roger said. “It’s three in the morning.” “It’s okay,” I said. “My dad works the swing shift. He’s coming here straight from work.”

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  Christians in the late 2nd century, it was a religion of women and slaves. • As we have already seen, although formal state persecutions were sporadic and interspersed with relatively long periods of neglect, they were direct attempts to suppress the movement by violence and even death. The very uncertainty of the breakout of persecution was a o contributing factor to the tension felt by Christians during these centuries. It could happen suddenly and without warning. The actual number of Christians killed is not the whole story; o the oppression of believers included the expropriation of property, economic marginalization, exile, and social ostracism. • Two responses to this context of tribulation characterize the 2nd and 3rd centuries: martyrdom and apologetic. Both had roots in Judaism, and each developed in distinctive ways during these centuries when Christians endured repression. The Tradition of Martyrdom • The term “martyr” (martys) means “witness,” and the ideal of witnessing to one’s convictions even to the point of death arose within Judaism; for Christ-believers, martyrdom found its perfect realization in the innocent suffering and death of Jesus. • In the early 2nd century B.C.E., the Maccabees resisted efforts by the Syrian king Antiochus IV Epiphanes to impose syncretistic worship, symbolized by the eating of pork forbidden by Torah. The elderly Eleazar and seven sons with their mother publicly o refused to submit, even when threatened by death, and were executed one after the other. Their witness to Torah was also a witness to the fidelity of God o and to faith in a future resurrection: God will reward those who honor him. The fourth son cries out before his execution, “It is my choice to die at the hands of men with the God-given hope 55

• From Manhunt (2022)

  It was warm inside. A space heater stood by the wall not far from where they sat, and hissed faintly as the girl brought their tea and poured it. The gentle sounds of chopping and the hiss of steam echoed from the kitchen, underscored by quiet conversation. The other customers avoided looking at their table. Teach seemed content to sit in silence, sipping at her tea. Ramona wondered what her real name was, and which rumors were true. Had she really broken Al-Qaeda operatives, working up through their chain of command with jumper cables and looped tapes and bodies held in place by rope and polished wood until blood pooled in burning joints and anything she asked for slipped from trembling lips? Had she been Janice Raymond’s lover, sucking on those bony convent toes in the dark stacks of UMass Amherst? She rode a motorcycle and fired a gun like someone brought up to do both, but her voice was as accentless as a newscaster’s. She might have come from anywhere. The girl returned. A bowl of steaming rice. Bok choy in melted butter. Moo shu pork, Mandarin pancakes, and a little jar of plum sauce, the scent of which made her instantly sick. Other dishes followed. The tired woman by the door had brought her elderly companion up onto her feet. She was helping her into a worn coat, a slow and evidently frustrating process which so engrossed Ramona that she didn’t realize Teach had left their table until the woman cut across her field of vision in a swish of black and approached the two. Ramona caught only a few snatches of the conversation. Teach had her coat, which she must have retrieved without Ramona noticing, folded over one arm, and with serene confidence she helped the old woman out of her threadbare camel hair and into sleek black wool, which she then buttoned herself with deft fingers. Belatedly, Ramona stood, but no one took any notice of her. “… and tell her she’s to take you home.” The weary-looking woman took the other—who, Ramona supposed in a sudden needle’s stab of grief, must have been her mother or grandmother—by the arm, gave Teach a tearful thank-you and goodbye, and led her out through the front door, the bell above it ringing as it swung. They shuffled down the steps toward the driver, who dropped her cigarette and crushed it under the heel of her shoe. In the span of a few moments both women were tucked safely into the back seat and the town car had pulled away, leaving Molly alone in the drab, dirty rain. Teach hung the dirty coat over her seat back.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  [image file=Image00022.jpg] Priscilla Presley, John Travolta, and Kelly Preston at the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre’s thirty-seventh-anniversary gala, Hollywood, August 2006 The following Monday, when Schulman came into the production office, she found Haggis there, alone. “What are you doing?” she asked. “I’m prepping the movie.” Yari agreed to keep the office open for one more week, and then another, as each Monday Schulman would find Haggis at work preparing for a movie that now had no budget at all. Gradually, other people began working with him, for no pay. “If you get Sandy Bullock, you got a green light,” Schulman told him. Haggis got Sandra Bullock for the role of the district attorney’s wife, a brittle, racist socialite, a role far from the plucky gamines she had played in the past. In the movie, she’s the one who gets carjacked at gunpoint. But the producers wanted one more name: Brendan Fraser. Haggis thought he was much too young for the part, as did Fraser, but he agreed to do it. The movie was finally green-lit, just four weeks before the shooting started. Only now, the ten million dollars had shrunk to six and a half. For Haggis, everything was riding on this film. He mortgaged his house three times; he also used it as a set, in order to save on his location budget. He canceled many of the exterior scenes and borrowed the set of the television show Monk to film interiors. He was eating carelessly and smoking constantly. He lost weight. He desperately needed more time. When he finished shooting a scene in Chinatown, Cathy Schulman caught up with him to ask about the next day’s shoot. “You look like you’re clutching your chest,” she observed. Haggis admitted that he was having some pains. “Sharp pains?” Schulman urged him to see a doctor. He didn’t want to hear that. He went home. He woke the next morning in agony. He called his doctor, who told him it was probably stress but agreed to see him just to set his mind at ease. By now, Paul was short of breath, so Deborah drove him to the doctor’s office. The doctor did a few tests and said yes, it was stress and muscle fatigue. “But we’ll do an electrocardiogram just in case.” A few moments later the doctor returned. His face was snow white. “Don’t stand up!” he said in a professionally measured voice. “You’ve had a heart attack!” That night in the hospital, Haggis suffered another cardiac failure. He received three stents in the arteries to his heart in an emergency operation. He was able to watch the entire procedure on the monitor. It was really like an out-of-body experience, watching his own fragile heart being repaired. The movie he was making didn’t seem so important anymore. That changed as soon as the operation was over. Schulman arrived with some more bad news. “I talked to your doctor,” she told Haggis.

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

  Children, it is needless to say, are a serious consideration; but all ought to live, and in our days parents can no longer live. Regular life does not exist for them. The whole life of the family hangs by a hair. What a terrible thing it is to suddenly receive the news that little Basile is vomiting, or that Lise has a cramp in the stomach! Immediately you abandon everything, you forget everything, everything becomes nothing. The essential thing is the doctor, the enema, the temperature. You cannot begin a conversation but little Pierre comes running in with an anxious air to ask if he may eat an apple, or what jacket he shall put on, or else it is the servant who enters with a screaming baby. “Regular, steady family life does not exist. Where you live, and consequently what you do, depends upon the health of the little ones, the health of the little ones depends upon nobody, and, thanks to the doctors, who pretend to aid health, your entire life is disturbed. It is a perpetual peril. Scarcely do we believe ourselves out of it when a new danger comes: more attempts to save. Always the situation of sailors on a foundering vessel. Sometimes it seemed to me that this was done on purpose, that my wife feigned anxiety in order to conquer me, since that solved the question so simply for her benefit. It seemed to me that all that she did at those times was done for its effect upon me, but now I see that she herself, my wife, suffered and was tortured on account of the little ones, their health, and their diseases. “A torture to both of us, but to her the children were also a means of forgetting herself, like an intoxication. I often noticed, when she was very sad, that she was relieved, when a child fell sick, at being able to take refuge in this intoxication. It was involuntary intoxication, because as yet there was nothing else. On every side we heard that Mrs. So-and-so had lost children, that Dr. So-and-so had saved the child of Mrs. So-and-so, and that in a certain family all had moved from the house in which they were living, and thereby saved the little ones. And the doctors, with a serious air, confirmed this, sustaining my wife in her opinions.

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

  If one questions them upon the matter, they mumble unintelligibilities, sometimes responding negatively, sometimes in the affirmative; what is certain is that not one of those who has left, despite the promises she made us to denounce these men to the authorities and to strive to procure our liberation, not one, I say, has ever kept her word.... Once again: do they placate us, dissuade us, or do they eliminate the possibility of our preferring charges? What we ask those who arrive for news of them who have gone, they never have any to communicate. What becomes of these wretches? That is what torments me, Therese, that is the fatal incertitude which makes for the great unhappiness of our existence. I have been in this house for eighteen years, I have seen more than two hundred girls depart from it.... Where are they? All of them having sworn to help us, why has not one kept her vow ? "Nothing, furthermore, justifies our retirement; age, loss of looks, this is not what counts: caprice is their single rule. They will dismiss today the girl they most caressed yesterday, and for ten years they will keep another of whom they are the most weary: such is the story of this chamber's superintendent; she has been twelve years in the house, and to preserve her I have seen them get rid of fifteen-year-old children whose beauty would have rendered the very Graces jealous. She who left a week ago was not yet sixteen; lovely as Venus herself, they had enjoyed her for less than a year, but she became pregnant and, as I told you Therese, that is a great sin in this establishment. Last month they retired one of sixteen, a year ago one of twenty, eight months pregnant; and, recently, another when she began to feel the first pangs of childbirth.

• From Manhunt (2022)

  He saw the way they looked at him. He always felt like a rat when he went out into the main passage, scurrying from shadow to shadow. They were trying to puzzle out whether he was white or not, whether his deep tan was just that—a tan—or evidence of something else, and then whether they wanted to fuck him. Their stares ran like a phrenologist’s fingers over his high cheekbones, his strong nose and auburn hair. He knew his father was Taos Pueblo, from somewhere near the ancient city, but not how he’d died, though he thought probably that it had been his mother’s brothers. He wondered if he had cousins out there somewhere in the baked arroyos of New Mexico and Arizona. Aunts. A grandmother. Maybe even a half sister with his dark eyes and long, narrow face. Dead needles carpeted the forest floor. Squirrels watched them from the branches, black eyes shining like buttons. The pines were tall here, ancient and scaly, their lower limbs dead, their tops waving in the sultry wind. Some lay fallen across the path, moss climbing their roots. Brackish pools lay still under slowly drifting nebulae of pollen. “How long have you been in the bunker?” he asked. They’d stopped by a narrow stream to fill their canteens and rest their feet. Clean water chuckled over mossy stones. In another life he might have hunted in a place like this, might have had someone like him to show him how to be something other than white people’s version of a man. He pushed the thought away and buried it. Sam, knocking dirt and little stones out of one of her boots, paused a moment. Her brow furrowed. “A little over a year, I guess. The last estro doc wanted more manhunters. Before that I was in the camp.” She gave her boot a final thump before tugging it back over her decaying sock. “Which sucked exactly as bad as you’re thinking.” She sounded uncomfortable. Defensive. “I didn’t say anything.” Sam shrugged, frowning. Robbie felt uncomfortable; he’d never been good at small talk, the minutiae of navigating what you should or shouldn’t say. Childhood had taught him silence was safest, his two years in Seattle a thousand different ways to split hairs and dissect language in pursuit of proving who was good and who was problematic , but at the first sign of tension he froze like a frog with a flashlight shining in its eyes. He’d done it on the walk to Dr. Varma’s house, tiptoeing around the crackling charge of frustration and pain between Beth and Fran. It made him feel like he was small again, and like the outcome of that tension rested somehow on his shoulders. “My friend’s not doing so well,” he offered after a while had passed and Sam showed no signs of getting up from her rock. “Was it hard for you? Adjusting?” “We should get moving,” said Sam.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  Yep, even the weird boys are afraid of their emotions. My Sister Sends Me a Letter [image file=image_rsrc4RJ.jpg] Dear Junior, I am still looking for a job. They keep telling me I don’t have enough experience. But how can I get enough experience if they don’t give me a chance to get experience? Oh, well. I have a lot of free time, so I have started to write my life story. Really! Isn’t that crazy? I think I’m going to call it HOW TO RUN AWAY FROM YOUR HOUSE AND FIND YOUR HOME. What do you think? Tell everybody I love them and miss them! Love, your Big Sis! P.S. And we moved into a new house. It’s the most gorgeous place in the world! [image "An illustration of a vintage trailer with various text elements, including ‘Indian Pride’ and ‘My other car is a broom, ‘surrounded by illustrations of a fork, spoon, knife, and beer can." file=image_rsrc4SW.jpg] Reindeer Games [image file=image_rsrc4RJ.jpg] I almost didn’t try out for the Reardan basketball team. I just figured I wasn’t going to be good enough to make even the C squad. And I didn’t want to get cut from the team. I didn’t think I could live through that humiliation. But my dad changed my mind. “Do you know about the first time I met your mother?” he asked. “You’re both from the rez,” I said. “So it was on the rez. Big duh.” “But I only moved to this rez when I was five years old.” “So.” “So your mother is eight years older than me.” “And there’s a partridge in the pear tree. Get to the point, Dad.” “Your mother was thirteen and I was five when we first met. And guess how we first met?” “How?” “She helped me get a drink from a water fountain.” “Well, that just seems sort of gross,” I said. “I was tiny,” Dad said. “And she boosted me up so I could get a drink. And imagine, all these years later and we’re married and have two kids.” “What does this have to do with basketball?” “You have to dream big to get big.” “That’s pretty dang optimistic for you, Dad.” “Well, you know, your mother helped me get a drink from the water fountain last night, if you know what I mean.” And all I could say to my father was, “Ewwwwwwwwww.” That’s one more thing people don’t know about Indians: we love to talk dirty. Anyway, I signed up for basketball. On the first day of practice, I stepped onto the court and felt short, skinny, and slow. All of the white boys were good. Some were great. I mean, there were some guys who were 6 foot 6 and 6 foot 7. Roger the Giant was strong and fast and could dunk.

• From The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (1967)

  furnishing a set of positive values both for the individual and for culture, the latter aspect serving as the basis of what was aptly called Kulturprotestantismus—a liaison between Protestant liberalism and the liberal culture of the bourgeoisie that already indicates the infrastructural roots of the theological phenomenon. In all of this should be noted the attitude of defensiveness vis-à-vis what are taken to be definitive truths of philosophy and science, that is of secular reason, outside the Christian sphere. In other words, the theological enterprise now takes place with constant regard for a reference group of secular intellectuals—precisely the “culture despisers” of religion to whom Schleiermacher addressed his famous lectures in 1799. They, rather than the sources of his own tradition, now serve the Protestant theologian as arbiters of cognitive acceptability. It is with them that the necessary intellectual compromises are “negotiated.” This defensive attitude (“apologetic” in the modern sense of the word, as against the classical meaning of “apologetics” in the church) continued as a crucial characteristic of the “liberal century” that followed Schleiermacher in Protestant theology. This theology can, indeed, be described as an immense bargaining process with secular thought—“we’ll give you the miracles of Jesus, but we’ll keep his ethics”; “You can have the virgin birth, but we’ll hold on to the resurrection”; and so on. Figures like Kierkegaard, who were unwilling to follow these lines, remained marginal to the theological situation and only came into their own after the end of the “Schleiermachian era.” We cannot possibly try to discuss the development of Protestant liberal theology in its (often fascinating) historical details. We would only point to what, pretty much beyond doubt, can be regarded as the infrastructural foundation of Protestant liberalism—the period of capitalist triumphs in 183

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

  Pish, d'ye know, it's all the same to me if you fancy yourself a princess. To my consideration you have the look and more or less the costume of a servant, and as such you may enter my hire, if it suits you. However," the hard-hearted man continued, "your welfare, your happiness Ä they are your concern, they depend on your performance: a little patience, some discretion, and in a few years you will be sent forth in a way to avoid further service." Then he took one after the other of my arms, rolled my sleeves to the elbows, and examined them attentively while asking me how many times I had been bled. "Twice, Monsieur," I told him, rather surprised at the question, and I mentioned when and under what circumstances it had happened. He pressed his fingers against the veins as one does when one wishes to inflate them, and when they were swollen to the desired point, he fastened his lips to them and sucked. From that instant I ceased to doubt libertinage was involved in this dreadful person's habits, and tormenting anxieties were awakened in my heart. "I have got to know how you are made," continued the Count, staring at me in a way that set me to trembling; "the post you are to occupy precludes any corporeal defects; show me what you have about you." I recoiled; but the Count, all his facial muscles beginning to twitch with anger, brutally informed me that I should be ill-advised to play the prude with him, for, said he, there are infallible methods of bringing women to their senses. "What you have related to me does not betoken a virtue of the highest order; and so your resistance would be quite as misplaced as ludicrous." Whereupon he made a sign to his young boys who, approaching immediately, fell to undressing me. Against persons as enfeebled, as enervated as those who surrounded me, it is certainly not difficult to defend oneself; but what good would it have done? The cannibal who had cast me into their hands could have pulverized me, had he wished to, with one blow of his fist. I therefore understood I had to yield: an instant later I was unclothed; 'twas scarcely done when I perceived I was exciting those two Ganymedes to gales of laughter. "Look ye, friend," said the younger, "a girl's a pretty thing, eh ? But what a shame there's that cavity there."

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

  What need has he of a third woman ? I asked myself, and why does he wish them all to be pretty? Assuredly, I continued, there is something in all this that little conforms with the regular manners from which I wish never to stray; we'll see. In consequence, I besought Monsieur Rodin to allow me to extend my convalescence at his home for yet another week, declaring that, at the end of this time, he would have my reply to what he had very kindly proposed. I profited from this interval by attaching myself more closely to Rosalie, determined to establish myself in her father's house only if there should prove to be nothing about it whence I might be obliged to take umbrage. With these designs, I cast appraising glances in every direction, and, on the following day, I noticed that this man enjoyed an arrangement which straightway provoked in me furious doubts concerning his behavior. Chapter 16 Monsieur Rodin kept a school for children of both sexes; during his wife's lifetime he had obtained the required charter and they had not seen fit to deprive him of it after he had lost her. Monsieur Rodin's pupils were few but select: in all, there were but fourteen girls and fourteen boys: he never accepted them under twelve and they were always sent away upon reaching the age of sixteen; never had monarch prettier subjects than Rodin. If there were brought to him one who had some physical defect or a face that left something to be desired, he knew how to invent twenty excuses for rejecting him, all his arguments were very ingenious, they were always colored by sophistries to which no one seemed able to reply; thus, either his corps of little day students had incomplete ranks, or the children who filled them were always charming. These youngsters did not take their meals with him, but came twice a day, from seven to eleven in the morning, from four to eight in the afternoon. If until then I had not yet seen all of this little troupe it was because, having arrived at Rodin's during the holidays, his scholars were not attending classes; toward the end of my recovery they reappeared. Rodin himself took charge of the boys' instruction, his governess looked after that of the girls, whom he would visit as soon as he had completed his own lessons; he taught his young pupils writing, arithmetic, a little history, drawing, music, and for all that no other master but himself was employed.