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 Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Did you ever see a synthetic monster on the screen, a Frankenstein realized in flesh and blood? Can you imagine how he might be trained to pull a trigger and see pigeons flying at the same time? Frankenstein is not a myth: Frankenstein is a very real creation born of the personal experience of a sensitive human being. The monster is always more real when it does not assume the proportions of flesh and blood. The monster of the screen is nothing compared to the monster of the imagination; even the existent pathologic monsters who find their way into the police station are but feeble demonstrations of the monstrous reality which the pathologist lives with. But to be the monster and the pathologist at the same time—that is reserved for certain species of men who, disguised as artists, are supremely aware that sleep is an even greater danger than insomnia. In order not to fall asleep, in order not to become victims of that insomnia which is called “living,” they resort to the drug of putting words together endlessly. This is not an automatic process, they say, because there is always present the illusion that they can stop it at will. But they cannot stop; they have only succeeded in creating an illusion, which is perhaps a feeble something, but it is far from being wide awake and neither active nor inactive. I wanted to be wide awake without talking or writing about it, in order to accept life absolutely . I mentioned the archaic men in the remote places of the world with whom I was communicating frequently. Why did I think these “savages” more capable of understanding me than the men and women who surrounded me? Was I crazy to believe such a thing? I don’t think so in the least. These “savages” are the degenerate remnants of earlier races of man who, I believe, must have had a greater hold on reality. The immortality of the race is constantly before our eyes in these specimens of the past who linger on in withered splendor. Whether the human race is immortal or not is not my concern, but the vitality of the race does mean something to me, and that it should be active or dormant means even more. As the vitality of the new race banks down the vitality of the old races manifests itself to the waking mind with greater and greater significance. The vitality of the old races lingers on even in death, but the vitality of the new race which is about to die seems already nonexistent. If a man were taking a swarming hive of bees to the river to drown them . . . . That was the image I carried about in me. If only I were the man, and not the bee! In some vague, inexplicable way I knew that I was the man, that I would not be drowned in the hive, like the others.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  As in the pagan romances, the Acts reveal deep generic similarities in the treatment of sex, so that there is a sense in which the genre speaks collectively, or at least uses a shared syntax of conventions and symbols. Even in the apostolic traditions that rely least on the manipulation of sexual protocols, certain formulas recur. The Acts of Peter focus principally on the rivalry between the apostle Peter and the mountebank ur-heretic, Simon Magus. Sexual tropes are not, in the Petrine legends as we have them, a dominant thread. But they do suddenly play a commanding role when the story turns abruptly from the rivalry with Simon Magus toward the death of Peter. The fatal sequence begins when four concubines of the prefect Agrippa hear the “teaching about purity, and all the teachings of the Lord” and withdraw their sexual favors from the powerful official. Peter’s next triumph is a “a superlative beauty,” Xanthippe, the wife of a powerful man. Finally, “many other women” left their husbands, and husbands their wives, in the name of sexual purity. With so many marriage beds abandoned, Peter has put Rome in an epic stir of erotic frustration. Peter sneaks out of the city in disguise but, in a touching scene, encounters Christ and famously asks him, “Whither goest thou?” Peter marches back through the gates to his certain death. The apostle’s preaching on sexual chastity is the proximate cause of the most famous scene in apocryphal literature and the most hallowed martyrdom in Christian history (save one).32

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  I had a spittoon alongside of the desk, a big brass one from the same establishment, and I would spit in it now and then to remind myself that it was there. All the pigeonholes were empty and all the drawers were empty; there wasn’t a thing on the desk or in it except a sheet of white paper on which I found it impossible to put so much as a pothook. When I think of the titanic efforts I made to canalize the hot lava which was bubbling inside me, the efforts I repeated thousands of times to bring the funnel into place and capture a word, a phrase, I think inevitably of the men of the old stone age. A hundred thousand, two hundred thousand years, three hundred thousand years to arrive at the idea of the paleolith. A phantom struggle, because they weren’t dreaming of such a thing as the paleolith. It came without effort, born of a second, a miracle you might say, except that everything which happens is miraculous. Things happen or they don’t happen, that’s all. Nothing is accomplished by sweat and struggle. Nearly everything which we call life is just insomnia, an agony because we’ve lost the habit of falling asleep. We don’t know how to let go. We’re like a Jack-in-the-box perched on top of a spring and the more we struggle the harder it is to get back in the box. I think if I had been crazy I couldn’t have hit upon a better scheme to consolidate my anchorage than to install this Neanderthal object in the middle of the parlor. With my feet on the desk, picking up the current, and my spinal column snugly socketed in a thick leather cushion, I was in an ideal relation to the flotsam and jetsam which was whirling about me, and which, because they were crazy and part of the flux, my friends were trying to convince me was life. I remember vividly the first contact with reality that I got through my feet, so to speak. The million words or so which I had written, mind you, well ordered, well connected, were as nothing to me—crude ciphers from the old stone age—because the contact was through the head and the head is a useless appendage unless you’re anchored in midchannel deep in the mud. Everything I had written before was museum stuff, and most writing is still museum stuff and that’s why it doesn’t catch fire, doesn’t inflame the world. I was only a mouthpiece for the ancestral race which was talking through me; even my dreams were not authentic, not bona fide Henry Miller dreams. To sit still and think one thought which would come up out of me, out of the life buoy, was a Herculean task. I didn’t lack thoughts nor words nor the power of expression—I lacked something much more important: the lever which would shut off the juice.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  A Romantic WeekendShe was meeting a man she had recently and abruptly fallen in love with. She was in a state of ghastly anxiety. He was married, for one thing, to a Korean woman whom he described as the embodiment of all that was feminine and elegant. Not only that, but a psychic had told her that a relationship with him could cripple her emotionally for the rest of her life. On top of this, she was tormented by the feeling that she looked inadequate. Perhaps her body tilted too far forward as she walked, perhaps her jacket made her torso look bulky in contrast to her calves and ankles, which were probably skinny. She felt like an object unraveling in every direction. In anticipation of their meeting, she had not been able to sleep the night before; she had therefore eaten some amphetamines and these had heightened her feeling of disintegration. When she arrived at the corner he wasn’t there. She stood against a building, trying to arrange her body in the least repulsive configuration possible. Her discomfort mounted. She crossed the street and stood on the other corner. It seemed as though everyone who walked by was eating. A large, distracted businessman went by holding a half-eaten hot dog. Two girls passed, sharing cashews from a white bag. The eating added to her sense that the world was disorderly and unbeautiful. She became acutely aware of the garbage on the street. The wind stirred it; a candy wrapper waved forlornly from its trapped position in the mesh of a jammed public wastebasket. This was all wrong, all horrible. Her meeting with him should be perfect and scrap-free. She couldn’t bear the thought of flapping trash. Why wasn’t he there to meet her? Minutes passed. Her shoulders drew together.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  It seemed as though everyone who walked by was eating. A large, distracted businessman went by holding a half-eaten hot dog. Two girls passed, sharing cashews from a white bag. The eating added to her sense that the world was disorderly and unbeautiful. She became acutely aware of the garbage on the street. The wind stirred it; a candy wrapper waved forlornly from its trapped position in the mesh of a jammed public wastebasket. This was all wrong, all horrible. Her meeting with him should be perfect and scrap-free. She couldn’t bear the thought of flapping trash. Why wasn’t he there to meet her? Minutes passed. Her shoulders drew together. She stepped into a flower store. The store was clean and white, except for a few smudges on the linoleum floor. Homosexuals with low voices stood behind the counter. Arranged stalks bearing absurd blossoms protruded from sedate round vases and bristled in the aisles. She had a paroxysm of fantasy. He held her, helpless and swooning, in his arms. They were supported by a soft ball of puffy blue stuff. Thornless roses surrounded their heads. His gaze penetrated her so thoroughly, it was as though he had thrust his hand into her chest and begun feeling her ribs one by one. This was all right with her. “I have never met anyone I felt this way about,” he said. “I love you.” He made her do things she’d never done before, and then they went for a walk and looked at the new tulips that were bound to have grown up somewhere. None of this felt stupid or corny, but she knew that it was. Miserably, she tried to gain a sense of proportion. She stared at the flowers. They were an agony of bright, organized beauty. She couldn’t help it. She wanted to give him flowers. She wanted to be with him in a room full of flowers. She visualized herself standing in front of him, bearing a handful of blameless flowers trapped in the ugly pastel paper the florist would staple around them. The vision was brutally embarrassing, too much so to stay in her mind for more than seconds. She stepped out of the flower store. He was not there. Her anxiety approached despair. They were supposed to spend the weekend together. He stood in a cheap pizza stand across the street, eating a greasy slice and watching her as she stood on the corner. Her anxiety was visible to him. It was at once disconcerting and weirdly attractive. Her appearance otherwise was not pleasing.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  She felt like an object unraveling in every direction. In anticipation of their meeting, she had not been able to sleep the night before; she had therefore eaten some amphetamines and these had heightened her feeling of disintegration. When she arrived at the corner he wasn’t there. She stood against a building, trying to arrange her body in the least repulsive configuration possible. Her discomfort mounted. She crossed the street and stood on the other corner. It seemed as though everyone who walked by was eating. A large, distracted businessman went by holding a half-eaten hot dog. Two girls passed, sharing cashews from a white bag. The eating added to her sense that the world was disorderly and unbeautiful. She became acutely aware of the garbage on the street. The wind stirred it; a candy wrapper waved forlornly from its trapped position in the mesh of a jammed public wastebasket. This was all wrong, all horrible. Her meeting with him should be perfect and scrap-free. She couldn’t bear the thought of flapping trash. Why wasn’t he there to meet her? Minutes passed. Her shoulders drew together. She stepped into a flower store. The store was clean and white, except for a few smudges on the linoleum floor. Homosexuals with low voices stood behind the counter. Arranged stalks bearing absurd blossoms protruded from sedate round vases and bristled in the aisles. She had a paroxysm of fantasy. He held her, helpless and swooning, in his arms. They were supported by a soft ball of puffy blue stuff. Thornless roses surrounded their heads. His gaze penetrated her so thoroughly, it was as though he had thrust his hand into her chest and begun feeling her ribs one by one. This was all right with her. “I have never met anyone I felt this way about,” he said. “I love you.” He made her do things she’d never done before, and then they went for a walk and looked at the new tulips that were bound to have grown up somewhere. None of this felt stupid or corny, but she knew that it was. Miserably, she tried to gain a sense of proportion. She stared at the flowers. They were an agony of bright, organized beauty. She couldn’t help it. She wanted to give him flowers. She wanted to be with him in a room full of flowers. She visualized herself standing in front of him, bearing a handful of blameless flowers trapped in the ugly pastel paper the florist would staple around them. The vision was brutally embarrassing, too much so to stay in her mind for more than seconds. She stepped out of the flower store. He was not there. Her anxiety approached despair. They were supposed to spend the weekend together. He stood in a cheap pizza stand across the street, eating a greasy slice and watching her as she stood on the corner. Her anxiety was visible to him.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  We got out and everything was fine, but it rattled us. Every day we were out in the streets, hustling, trying to act as if we were in some way down with the gangs, but the truth was we were always more cheese than hood. We had created this idea of ourselves as a defense mechanism to survive in the world we were living in. Bongani and the other East Bank guys, because of where they were from, what they looked like—they just had very little hope. You’ve got two options in that situation. You take the retail job, flip burgers at McDonald’s, if you’re one of the lucky few who even gets that much. The other option is to toughen up, put up this facade. You can’t leave the hood, so you survive by the rules of the hood. I chose to live in that world, but I wasn’t from that world. If anything, I was an imposter. Day to day I was in it as much as everyone else, but the difference was that in the back of my mind I knew I had other options. I could leave. They couldn’t. [image file=image_rsrc2UT.jpg] Once, when I was ten years old, visiting my dad in Yeoville, I needed batteries for one of my toys. My mom had refused to buy me new batteries because, of course, she thought it was a waste of money, so I snuck out to the shops and shoplifted a pack. A security guard busted me on the way out, pulled me into his office, and called my mom. “We’ve caught your son shoplifting batteries,” he said. “You need to come and fetch him.” “No,” she said. “Take him to jail. If he’s going to disobey he needs to learn the consequences.” Then she hung up. The guard looked at me, confused. Eventually he let me go on the assumption that I was some wayward orphan, because what mother would send her ten-year-old child to jail? [image file=image_rsrc2UU.jpg] [image file=image_rsrc2UV.jpg] THE WORLD DOESN’T LOVE YOUMy mom never gave me an inch. Anytime I got in trouble it was tough love, lectures, punishment, and hidings. Every time. For every infraction. You get that with a lot of black parents. They’re trying to discipline you before the system does. “I need to do this to you before the police do it to you.” Because that’s all black parents are thinking from the day you’re old enough to walk out into the street, where the law is waiting. In Alex, getting arrested was a fact of life. It was so common that out on the corner we had a sign for it, a shorthand, clapping your wrists together like you were being put in handcuffs. Everyone knew what that meant. “Where’s Bongani?” Wrist clap. “Oh, shit. When?” “Friday night.” “Damn.”

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  How was it possible, when I sat down in the parlor at my prehistoric desk, to use this code language of rape and murder? I was alone in this great hemisphere of violence, but I was not alone as far as the human race was concerned. I was lonely amidst a world of things lit up by phosphorescent flashes of cruelty. I was delirious with an energy which could not be unleashed except in the service of death and futility. I could not begin with a full statement—it would have meant the strait jacket or the electric chair. I was like a man who had been too long incarcerated in a dungeon—I had to feel my way slowly, falteringly, lest I stumble and be run over. I had to accustom myself gradually to the penalties which freedom involves. I had to grow a new epidermis which would protect me from this burning light in the sky. The ovarian world is the product of a life rhythm. The moment a child is born it becomes part of a world in which there is not only the life rhythm but the death rhythm. The frantic desire to live, to live at any cost, is not a result of the life rhythm in us, but of the death rhythm. There is not only no need to keep alive at any price, but, if life is undesirable, it is absolutely wrong. This keeping oneself alive, out of a blind urge to defeat death, is in itself a means of sowing death. Every one who has not fully accepted life, who is not incrementing life, is helping to fill the world with death. To make the simplest gesture with the hand can convey the utmost sense of life; a word spoken with the whole being can give life. Activity in itself means nothing: it is often a sign of death. By simple external pressure, by force of surroundings and example, by the very climate which activity engenders, one can become part of a monstrous death machine, such as America, for example. What does a dynamo know of life, of peace, of reality? What does any individual American dynamo know of the wisdom and energy, of the life abundant and eternal possessed by a ragged beggar sitting under a tree in the act of meditation? What is energy? What is life? One has only to read the stupid twaddle of the scientific and philosophic textbooks to realize how less than nothing is the wisdom of these energetic Americans. Listen, they had me on the run, these crazy horsepower fiends; in order to break their insane rhythm, their death rhythm, I had to resort to a wave length which, until I found the proper sustenance in my own bowels, would at least nullify the rhythm they had set up.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  We think he would be very bad for the whole Detroit area. He has an awful reputation, Miss Roe—which may not surprise you.” There was another careful pause that I did not fill. “Miss Roe, are you still with me?” “Yes.” “What all this is leading up to is that we have reason to believe that you could reveal information about your ex-employer that would be damaging to him. This information would never be connected to your name. We would use a pseudonym. Your privacy would be protected completely.” The vacuum cleaner shut off, and silence encircled me. My throat constricted. “Do you want time to think about it, Miss Roe?” “I can’t talk now,” I said, and hung up. I couldn’t go through the living room without my mother asking me who had been on the phone, so I went downstairs to the basement. I sat on the mildewed couch and curled up, unmindful of centipedes. I rested my chin on my knee and stared at the boxes of my father’s old paperbacks and the jumble of plastic Barbie-doll cases full of Barbie equipment that Donna and I used to play with on the front porch. A stiff white foot and calf stuck out of a sky-blue case, helpless and pitifully rigid. For some reason, I remembered the time, a few years before, when my mother had taken me to see a psychiatrist. One of the more obvious questions he had asked me was, “Debby, do you ever have the sensation of being outside yourself, almost as if you can actually watch yourself from another place?” I hadn’t at the time, but I did now. And it wasn’t such a bad feeling at all. A Romantic Weekend She was meeting a man she had recently and abruptly fallen in love with. She was in a state of ghastly anxiety. He was married, for one thing, to a Korean woman whom he described as the embodiment of all that was feminine and elegant. Not only that, but a psychic had told her that a relationship with him could cripple her emotionally for the rest of her life. On top of this, she was tormented by the feeling that she looked inadequate. Perhaps her body tilted too far forward as she walked, perhaps her jacket made her torso look bulky in contrast to her calves and ankles, which were probably skinny. She felt like an object unraveling in every direction. In anticipation of their meeting, she had not been able to sleep the night before; she had therefore eaten some amphetamines and these had heightened her feeling of disintegration. When she arrived at the corner he wasn’t there. She stood against a building, trying to arrange her body in the least repulsive configuration possible. Her discomfort mounted. She crossed the street and stood on the other corner.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  We were all playing a game, only nobody knew we were playing it. When I walked in that first night, everyone was giving me this look: “I’m dangerous. Don’t fuck with me.” So I went, “Shit, these people are hardened criminals. I shouldn’t be here, because I am not a criminal.” Then the next day everything turned over quickly. One by one, guys left to go to their hearings, I stayed to wait for my lawyer, and new people started to pitch up. Now I was the veteran, doing my colored-gangster routine, giving the new guys the same look: “I’m dangerous. Don’t fuck with me.” And they looked at me and went, “Shit, he’s a hardened criminal. I shouldn’t be here, because I am not like him.” And round and round we went. At a certain point it occurred to me that every single person in that cell might be faking it. We were all decent guys from nice neighborhoods and good families, picked up for unpaid parking tickets and other infractions. We could have been having a great time sharing meals, playing cards, and talking about women and soccer. But that didn’t happen, because everyone had adopted this dangerous pose and nobody talked because everyone was afraid of who the other guys were pretending to be. Now those guys were going to get out and go home to their families and say, “Oh, honey, that was rough. Those were some real criminals in there. There was this one colored guy. Man, he was a killer.” Once I had the game sorted out, I was good again. I relaxed. I was back to thinking, I got this. This is no big deal. The food was actually decent. For breakfast they brought you these peanut butter sandwiches on thick slices of bread. Lunch was chicken and rice. The tea was too hot, and it was more water than tea, but it was drinkable. There were older, hard-time prisoners close to parole, and their detail was to come and clean the cells and circulate books and magazines for you to read. It was quite relaxing. There was one point when I remember eating a meal and saying to myself, This isn’t so bad. I hang around with a bunch of dudes. There’s no chores. No bills to pay. No one constantly nagging me and telling me what to do. Peanut butter sandwiches? Shit, I eat peanut butter sandwiches all the time. This is pretty sweet. I could do this. I was so afraid of the ass-whooping waiting for me at home that I genuinely considered going to prison. For a brief moment I thought I had a plan. “I’ll go away for a couple of years, come back, and say I was kidnapped, and mom will never know and she’ll just be happy to see me.” —

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  I knew very well I’d have to make a break some day; I knew very well I was pissing my time away. But I knew also that there was nothing I could do about it—yet . Something had to happen, something big, something that would sweep me off my feet. All I needed was a push, but it had to be some force outside my world that could give me the right push, that I was certain of. I couldn’t eat my heart out, because it wasn’t in my nature. All my life things had worked out all right—in the end . It wasn’t in the cards for me to exert myself. Something had to be left to Providence—in my case a whole lot. Despite all the outward manifestations of misfortune or mismanagement I knew that I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. And with a double crown, too. The external situation was bad, admitted—but what bothered me more was the internal situation. I was really afraid of myself, of my appetite, my curiosity, my flexibility, my permeability, my malleability, my geniality, my powers of adaptation. No situation in itself could frighten me: I somehow always saw myself sitting pretty, sitting inside a buttercup, as it were, and sipping the honey. Even if I were flung in jail I had a hunch I’d enjoy it. It was because I knew how not to resist, I suppose. Other people wore themselves out tugging and straining and pulling; my strategy was to float with the tide. What people did to me didn’t bother me nearly so much as what they were doing to others or to themselves. I was really so damned well off inside that I had to take on the problems of the world. And that’s why I was in a mess all the time. I wasn’t synchronized with my own destiny, so to speak. I was trying to live out the world destiny. If I got home of an evening, for instance, and there was no food in the house, not even for the kid, I would turn right around and go looking for the food. But what I noticed about myself, and that was what puzzled me, was that no sooner outside and hustling for the grub than I was back at the Weltanschauung again. I didn’t think of food for us exclusively, I thought of food in general, food in all its stages, everywhere in the world at that hour, and how it was gotten and how it was prepared and what people did if they didn’t have it and how maybe there was a way to fix it so that everybody would have it when they wanted it and no more time wasted on such an idiotically simple problem. I felt sorry for the wife and kid, sure, but I also felt sorry for the Hottentots and the Australian bushmen, not to mention the starving Belgians and the Turks and the Armenians.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  This particular Sunday, the Sunday I was hurled from a moving car, started out like any other Sunday. My mother woke me up, made me porridge for breakfast. I took my bath while she dressed my baby brother Andrew, who was nine months old. Then we went out to the driveway, but once we were finally all strapped in and ready to go, the car wouldn’t start. My mom had this ancient, broken-down, bright-tangerine Volkswagen Beetle that she picked up for next to nothing. The reason she got it for next to nothing was because it was always breaking down. To this day I hate secondhand cars. Almost everything that’s ever gone wrong in my life I can trace back to a secondhand car. Secondhand cars made me get detention for being late for school. Secondhand cars left us hitchhiking on the side of the freeway. A secondhand car was also the reason my mom got married. If it hadn’t been for the Volkswagen that didn’t work, we never would have looked for the mechanic who became the husband who became the stepfather who became the man who tortured us for years and put a bullet in the back of my mother’s head—I’ll take the new car with the warranty every time. As much as I loved church, the idea of a nine-hour slog, from mixed church to white church to black church then doubling back to white church again, was just too much to contemplate. It was bad enough in a car, but taking public transport would be twice as long and twice as hard. When the Volkswagen refused to start, inside my head I was praying, Please say we’ll just stay home. Please say we’ll just stay home. Then I glanced over to see the determined look on my mother’s face, her jaw set, and I knew I had a long day ahead of me. “Come,” she said. “We’re going to catch minibuses.” — My mother is as stubborn as she is religious. Once her mind’s made up, that’s it. Indeed, obstacles that would normally lead a person to change their plans, like a car breaking down, only made her more determined to forge ahead. “It’s the Devil,” she said about the stalled car. “The Devil doesn’t want us to go to church. That’s why we’ve got to catch minibuses.” Whenever I found myself up against my mother’s faith-based obstinacy, I would try, as respectfully as possible, to counter with an opposing point of view. “Or,” I said, “the Lord knows that today we shouldn’t go to church, which is why he made sure the car wouldn’t start, so that we stay at home as a family and take a day of rest, because even the Lord rested.” “Ah, that’s the Devil talking, Trevor.” “No, because Jesus is in control, and if Jesus is in control and we pray to Jesus, he would let the car start, but he hasn’t, therefore—”

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

  RABANUS. Otherwise; The sea is the turmoil of the world; the boat in which Christ is embarked is to be understood the tree of the cross, by the aid of which the faithful having passed the waves of the world, arrive in their heavenly country, as on a safe shore, whither Christ goes with His own; whence He says below, He that will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. (Mat. 16:24.) When then Christ was fixed on the cross, a great commotion was raised, the minds of His disciples being troubled at His passion, and the boat was covered by the waves. For the whole strength of persecution was around the cross of Christ, on which He died; as it is here, But he was asleep. His sleep is death. The disciples awaken the Lord, when troubled at His death; they seek His resurrection with earnest prayers, saying, Save us, by rising again; we perish, by our trouble at Thy death. He rises again, and rebukes the hardness of their hearts, as we read in other places. He commands the winds, in that He overthrew the power of the Devil; He commanded the sea, in that He disappointed the malice of the Jews; and there was a great calm, because the minds of the disciples were calmed when they beheld His resurrection. BEDE. (in loc.) Or; The boat is the present Church, in which Christ passes over the sea of this world with His own, and stills the waves of persecution. Wherefore we may wonder, and give thanks. 8:28–3428. And when he was come to the other side into the country of the Gergesenes, there met him two possessed with devils, coming out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man might pass by that way. 29. And, behold, they cried out, saying, What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? art thou come hither to torment us before the time? 30. And there was a good way off from them an herd of many swine feeding. 31. So the devils besought him, saying, If thou cast us out, suffer us to go away into the herd of swine. 32. And he said unto them, Go. And when they were come out, they went into the herd of swine: and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters. 33. And they that kept them fled, and went their ways into the city, and told every thing, and what was befallen to the possessed of the devils. 34. And, behold, the whole city came out to meet Jesus: and when they saw him, they besought him that he would depart out of their coasts.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  There were no other houses or stores around it, just a parking lot and some taut fir trees that looked like they had been brushed. My mother waited for me in the car. She smiled, took out a crossword puzzle and focused her eyes on it, the smile still gripping her face. The lawyer was a short man with dark, shiny eyes and dense immobile shoulders. He took my hand with an indifferent aggressive snatch. It felt like he could have put his hand through my rib cage, grabbed my heart, squeezed it a little to see how it felt, then let go. “Come into my office,” he said. We sat down and he fixed his eyes on me. “It’s not much of a job,” he said. “I have a paralegal who does research and leg-work, and the proofreading gets done at an agency. All I need is a presentable typist who can get to work on time and answer the phone.” “I can do that,” I said. “It’s very dull work,” he said. “I like dull work.” He stared at me, his eyes becoming hooded in thought. “There’s something about you,” he said. “You’re closed up, you’re tight. You’re like a wall.” “I know.” My answer surprised him and his eyes lost their hoods. He tilted his head back and looked at me, his shiny eyes bared again. “Do you ever loosen up?” The corners of my mouth jerked, smilelike. “I don’t know.” My palms sweated. — His secretary, who was leaving, called me the next day and said that he wanted to hire me. Her voice was serene, flat and utterly devoid of inflection. “That typing course really paid off,” said my father. “You made a good investment.” He wandered in and out of the dining room in pleased agitation, holding his glass of beer. “A law office could be a fascinating place.” He arched his chin and scratched his throat. Donna even came downstairs and made popcorn and put it in a big yellow bowl on the table for everybody to eat. She ate lazily, her large hand dawdling in the bowl. “It could be okay. Interesting people could come in. Even though that lawyer’s probably an asshole.” My mother sat quietly, pleased with her role in the job-finding project, pinching clusters of popcorn in her fingers and popping them into her mouth. That night I put my new work clothes on a chair and looked at them. A brown skirt, a beige blouse. I was attracted to the bland ugliness, but I didn’t know how long that would last. I looked at their gray shapes in the night-light and then rolled over toward the dark corner of my bed. My family’s enthusiasm made me feel sarcastic about the job—about any effort to do anything, in fact. In light of their enthusiasm, the only intelligent course of action seemed to be immobility and rudeness.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  No matter how often she and Deana swept, these animate-looking things slunk from corner to corner and left their residue on the cats’ whiskers. The late afternoon light filtered in, eerie and faded through the gauzy float of dust, and cast an odd perspective on the room, at least from where she lay, making it look elongated and stark. The splintery floor looked craggy and forsaken with its dead dustball vegetation. The cats, suddenly alert, ran to the door. There were footsteps, a key in the lock: Deana entered, encumbered by the cats. “Boy, the guy downstairs is going bananas today,” she said. She tossed her hair off her forehead with the usual nervous gesture. “Didn’t you feed these guys?” “Yeah, they just got their faces out of the dish two minutes ago.” Connie rolled up and out of the mattress as gracefully as possible and put her arms around Deana’s waist and her head on her shoulder. “What’s this?” Deana tenderly felt the lumps of Connie’s spine, lingering in the spaces between the bones. “Nothing. I was just spacing out and the room was beginning to look like a set for Giant Ants from Pluto or something.” “What?” “I was in a weird mood.” “I guess so.” Deana rubbed her briskly, let go and turned toward the refrigerator. “I’m starving. I have to have some carrots or something.” “What do you want for dinner?” Connie put one foot on the other knee and stood like an aborigine in a textbook photograph. “I was thinking that we could order Chinese food from Empire. I’m too cranky to cook. And you’re too weird to cook, apparently.” She got the bag of carrots out of the refrigerator’s vegetable bin and began scattering the sink with bright orange peels. “Why are you cranky?” “The same garbage. If I’d known I was going to work for a clone of my mother, I never would’ve taken the job.” Deana rinsed her three shaved carrots meticulously, then went into the bathroom to tear off a large piece of toilet paper, folded it on the counter and put the carrots on it to drain. (One of her idiosyncrasies, which still caused Connie a pang of tender amusement, was her aversion to eating wet vegetables or fruit; she routinely dried pieces of cut fruit before putting them in her cereal.) “So what’s your problem?” Connie shrugged and sank into the mattress again. “I ran into somebody…not somebody I dislike really, just somebody I associate with anxiety.” “Who?” “Somebody I haven’t seen in years. Do you remember me mentioning Franklin Weston?”

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  The monster is always more real when it does not assume the proportions of flesh and blood. The monster of the screen is nothing compared to the monster of the imagination; even the existent pathologic monsters who find their way into the police station are but feeble demonstrations of the monstrous reality which the pathologist lives with. But to be the monster and the pathologist at the same time —that is reserved for certain species of men who, disguised as artists, are supremely aware that sleep is an even greater danger than insomnia. In order not to fall asleep, in order not to become victims of that insomnia which is called “living,” they resort to the drug of putting words together endlessly. This is not an automatic process, they say, because there is always present the illusion that they can stop it at will. But they cannot stop; they have only succeeded in creating an illusion, which is perhaps a feeble something, but it is far from being wide awake and neither active nor inactive. I wanted to be wide awake without talking or writing about it, in order to accept life absolutely. I mentioned the archaic men in the remote places of the world with whom I was communicating frequently. Why did I think these “savages” more capable of understanding me than the men and women who surrounded me? Was I crazy to believe such a thing? I don’t think so in the least. These “savages” are the degenerate remnants of earlier races of man who, I believe, must have had a greater hold on reality. The immortality of the race is constantly before our eyes in these specimens of the past who linger on in withered splendor. Whether the human race is immortal or not is not my concern, but the vitality of the race does mean something to me, and that it should be active or dormant means even more. As the vitality of the new race banks down the vitality of the old races manifests itself to the waking mind with greater and greater significance. The vitality of the old races lingers on even in death, but the vitality of the new race which is about to die seems already nonexistent. If a man were taking a swarming hive of bees to the river to drown them. . . . That was the image I carried about in me. If only I were the man, and not the bee! In some vague, inexplicable way I knew that I was the man, that I would not be drowned in the hive, like the others.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  She was the world’s lying machine in microcosm, geared to the same unending, devastating fear which enables men to throw all their energies into creation of the death apparatus. To look at her one would think her fearless, one would think her the personification of courage and she was , so long as she was not obliged to turn in her traces. Behind her lay the calm fact of reality, a colossus which dogged her every step. Every day this colossal reality took on new proportions, every day it became more terrifying, more paralyzing. Every day she had to grow swifter wings, sharper jaws, more piercing, hypnotic eyes. It was a race to the outermost limits of the world, a race lost from the start, and no one to stop it. At the edge of the vacuum stood Truth, ready in one lightning-like sweep to recover the stolen ground. It was so simple and obvious that it drove her frantic. Marshal a thousand personalities, commandeer the biggest guns, deceive the greatest minds, make the longest detour—still the end would be defeat. In the final meeting everything was destined to fall apart—the cunning, the skill, the power, everything. She would be a grain of sand on the shore of the biggest ocean, and, worse than anything, she would resemble each and every other grain of sand on that ocean’s shore. She would be condemned to rocognize her unique self everywhere until the end of time. What a fate she had chosen for herself! That her uniqueness should be engulfed in the universal! That her power should be reduced to the utmost node of passivity! It was maddening, hallucinating. It could not be! It must not be! Onward! Like the black legions. Onward! Through every degree of the ever-widening circle. Onward and away from the self, until the last substantial particle of the soul be stretched to infinity. In her panic-stricken flight she seemed to bear the whole world in her womb. We were being driven out of the confines of the universe toward a nebula which no instrument could visualize. We were being rushed to a pause so still, so prolonged, that death by comparison seems a mad witches’ revel. In the morning, gazing at the bloodless crater of her face. Not a line in it, not a wrinkle, not a single blemish! The look of an angel in the arms of the Creator. Who killed Cock Robin? Who massacred the Iroquois? Not I, my lovely angel could say, and by God, who, gazing at that pure, blameless face, could deny her? Who could see in that sleep of innocence that one half of the face belonged to God and the other half to Satan? The mask was smooth as death, cool, lovely to the touch, waxen, like a petal open to the faintest breeze.

• From Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  Many cult groups have become so skilled at their public relations work that they have gained a high degree of social acceptance, even among prominent professionals. One ploy taken by wealthier groups is to lure respected professionals—scientists, lawyers, politicians, academicians, clergy—to speak at cult-sponsored conferences by offering them large honoraria, often at conferences held in exotic locations, with all expenses paid. These invited speakers may not know or even care about the cult involvement, but their mere presence at such conferences gives tacit approval to the cult. For instance, former British Prime Minister, Edward Heath, attended Moonie conferences. Sociologist Eileen Barker, who wrote The Making of a Moonie: Choice or Brainwashing and made her professional career saying my life work was mistaken, admits to attending 14 such conferences, but claims that this has not affected her objectivity! My concern about cults is broad and urgent. Their activities, if unchecked, will continue to wreak untold psychological and, at times, even physical damage, on many thousands, if not millions, of people who do not understand what constitutes unethical mind control. Unless legislative action is taken to make destructive cults accountable to society for violating the rights of their members, these groups will continue to deceive the general public into believing that they are doing nothing out of the ordinary. Speaking practically, I realize that many will be reluctant to add yet another issue to their list of serious concerns. Every day, when we read a newspaper or watch the TV news, we are confronted by the threat of nuclear war, global climate change, massive destruction of the earth’s natural resources, starvation in Africa, widespread political corruption, deadly microbes like the Ebola virus and so many other concerns. Why add another? Because like Ebola, the mind control viruses of cults sicken and drain life from human beings. Unless they are contained, they will continue to spread, infecting ever more people. Furthermore, like biological viruses, cults adapt to take advantage of human weaknesses. They exploit legal loopholes to escape prosecution. They manipulate and subvert Internet search engines to bury criticism that might alert people to their unethical behavior. They pour out scorn and disinformation about former members. They use social media to recruit new members. Thousands of stories about cults have appeared in the media in the past few years, yet few address the issue of mind control directly. They tend to be presented as stories about strange or controversial “religions” rather than about people who have been deceptively recruited and controlled through mind control. Media attention usually dies down after the big stories—Charles Manson, the Jonestown massacre, Waco, Heaven’s Gate, and the Tokyo subway sarin gassing by Aum Shinrikyo.195 It may seem that there are fewer cults because there have been fewer big stories, and as I’ve mentioned, many people with whom I come into casual conversation on the subject of destructive cults express surprise when I tell them that such groups are still a major problem in American society.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  “Teddy, this way!” I yelled. “No, it’s a dead end!” “We can get through! Follow me!” He didn’t. I turned and ran into the dead end. Teddy broke the other way. Half the mall cops followed him, half followed me. I got to the fence and knew exactly how to squirm through. Head, then shoulder, one leg, then twist, then the other leg—done. I was through. The guards hit the fence behind me and couldn’t follow. I ran across the field to a fence on the far side, popped through there, and then I was right on the road, three blocks from my house. I slipped my hands into my pockets and casually walked home, another harmless pedestrian out for a stroll. Once I got back to my house I waited for Teddy. He didn’t show up. I waited thirty minutes, forty minutes, an hour. No Teddy. Fuck. I ran to Teddy’s house in Linksfield. No Teddy. Monday morning I went to school. Still no Teddy. Fuck. Now I was worried. After school I went home and checked at my house again, nothing. Teddy’s house again, nothing. Then I ran back home. An hour later Teddy’s parents showed up. My mom greeted them at the door. “Teddy’s been arrested for shoplifting,” they said. Fuuuck. I eavesdropped on their whole conversation from the other room. From the start my mom was certain I was involved. “Well, where was Trevor?” she asked. “Teddy said he wasn’t with Trevor,” they said. My mom was skeptical. “Hmm. Are you sure Trevor wasn’t involved?” “No, apparently not. The cops said there was another kid, but he got away.” “So it was Trevor.” “No, we asked Teddy, and he said it wasn’t Trevor. He said it was some other kid.” “Huh…okay.” My mom called me in. “Do you know about this thing?” “What thing?” “Teddy was caught shoplifting.” “Whhaaat?” I played dumb. “Noooo. That’s crazy. I can’t believe it. Teddy? No.” “Where were you?” my mom asked. “I was at home.” “But you’re always with Teddy.” I shrugged. “Not on this occasion, I suppose.” For a moment my mom thought she’d caught me red-handed, but Teddy’d given me a solid alibi. I went back to my room, thinking I was in the clear. — The next day I was in class and my name was called over the PA system. “Trevor Noah, report to the principal’s office.” All the kids were like, “Ooooohhh.” The announcements could be heard in every classroom, so now, collectively, the whole school knew I was in trouble. I got up and walked to the office and waited anxiously on an uncomfortable wooden bench outside the door.

• From Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  I am not against research into mind control. To the contrary, as a mental health professional, I am heartily in favor of ethically conducted research, which increases our knowledge of ourselves and the workings of the mind.199 Nor, for that matter, am I opposed to the classification of some information in the interest of maintaining national security. But if the government has indeed been conducting research into mind control, then it has a responsibility to inform the American public that mind control exists. In the absence of recognition by the government that mind control exists and that unethical mind control is wrong, the government’s silence indirectly condones the practice of undue influence by unethical people and organizations on the rest of society. One only need look around to see the effects of that silence: mind control groups are proliferating at an unprecedented pace. The principles of freedom and democracy demand that the reality of mind control be exposed to full public scrutiny. Cults, Mind Control And The Mental Health Profession The U.S. government issues licenses to professionals who are responsible for restoring ailing people’s mental well-being. Mental health professionals do this by developing specific techniques and therapies to address the problem that a patient or client may have. One population that cannot count on having its mental health needs met is that of cult victims and other victims of undue influence. This is particularly strange because for years, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)—which is published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and is relied upon by clinicians, researchers, drug companies, health insurance companies, the courts and policy makers—has contained a designation for victims of cult brainwashing and thought reform. The most recent version, the DSM—5,200 identifies this group of patients under a special category: Other Specified Dissociative Disorder 300.15 (F44.9). If you go to page 305, number 2, you will read: “Identity disturbance due to prolonged and intense coercive persuasion: Individuals who have been subjected to intense coercive persuasion (e.g., brainwashing, thought reform, indoctrination while captive, torture, long-term political imprisonment, recruitment by sects/cults or by terror organizations) may present with prolonged changes in, or conscious questioning of, their identity.” I wish I could say that most mental health professionals have read it. To the contrary, it must be one of the DSM-5’s least known categories. Therapists and other practitioners are largely unaware that a diagnosis of mind control can even be made and are certainly unfamiliar with the specialized approaches that have been developed to address it. Meanwhile, a subset of their patients continue to suffer as a result of their cult involvement—that is, unless they turn to a relatively small handful of people who have recognized their needs and are willing to treat them.