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 The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  The blue was water. Mom was painting a picture of a woman drowning in a stormy lake. When she was finished, she sat for a long time in silence, staring at the picture. “So what are we going to do?” I finally asked. “Jeannette, you’re so focused it’s scary.” “You didn’t answer my question,” I said. “I’ll get a job, Jeannette,” she snapped. She threw her paintbrush into the jar that held her turpentine and sat there looking at the drowning woman. QUALIFIED TEACHERS were so scarce in McDowell County that two of the teachers I’d have at Welch High School had never been to college. Mom was able to land a job by the end of the week. We spent those days frantically trying to clean the house in anticipation of the return of the child-welfare man. It was a hopeless task, given all the stacks of Mom’s junk and the hole in the ceiling and the disgusting yellow bucket in the kitchen. However, for some reason he never came back. Mom’s job was teaching remedial reading in an elementary school in Davy, a coal-mining camp twelve miles north of Welch. Since we still had no car, the school’s principal arranged for Mom to get a ride with another teacher, Lucy Jo Rose, who had just graduated from Bluefield State College and was so fat she could barely squeeze behind the steering wheel of her brown Dodge Dart. Lucy Jo, whom the principal had more or less ordered to perform this service, took an instant dislike to Mom. She refused to say much during the trip, instead playing Barbara Mandrell tapes and smoking filter-tip Kools the entire time. As soon as Mom got out of the car, Lucy Jo made a big show of spraying Mom’s seat with Lysol. Mom, for her part, felt that Lucy Jo was woefully uninformed. When Mom mentioned Jackson Pollock once, Lucy Jo said that she had Polish blood and therefore did not appreciate Mom using derogatory names for Polish people. Mom had the same problems she’d had in Battle Mountain with organizing her paperwork and disciplining her students. At least one morning a week, she’d throw a tantrum and refuse to go to work, and Lori, Brian, and I would have to get her collected and down to the street where Lucy Jo waited with a scowl, blue smoke chugging up out of the Dart’s rusted-through tailpipe. But at least we had money. While I’d been bringing in a little extra cash babysitting, Brian was cutting other people’s weeds, and Lori had a paper route, it didn’t add up to much. Now Mom got paid about seven hundred dollars a month, and the first time I saw her gray-green pay-check, with its detachable stub and automated signatures, I thought our troubles were over. On paydays, Mom took us kids down to the big bank across from the courthouse to cash the check.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  That two-room squat was cramped, and Maureen and Dad would get into the worst screaming fights, with Maureen calling Dad a worthless drunk and Dad calling Maureen a sick puppy, the runt of the litter, who should have been drowned at birth. Maureen even stopped reading and slept all day, leaving the apartment only to buy cigarettes. I called and persuaded her to come up to see me and discuss her future. When she arrived, I scarcely recognized her. She’d bleached her hair and eyebrows platinum and was wearing dark makeup as thick as a Kabuki dancer’s. She lit one cigarette after another and kept glancing around the room. When I brought up some career possibilities, she told me that the only thing she wanted to do was help fight the Mormon cults that had kidnapped thousands of people in Utah. “What cults?” I asked. “Don’t pretend you don’t know,” she said. “That just means you’re one of them.” Afterward, I called Brian. “Do you think Maureen’s on drugs?” I asked. “If she’s not, she should be,” he said. “She’s gone nuts.” I told Mom that Maureen should get professional help, but Mom kept insisting that all Maureen needed was fresh air and sunshine. I talked to several doctors, but they told me that since it sounded like Maureen would refuse to seek help on her own, she could be treated only on the order of a court, if she proved she was a danger to herself or others. • • • Six months later, Maureen stabbed Mom. It happened after Mom decided it was time for Maureen to develop a little self-sufficiency by moving out and finding a place of her own. God helps those who help themselves, Mom told Maureen, and so for her own good, she would have to leave the nest and make her way in the world. Maureen couldn’t bear the idea that her own mom would kick her out onto the street, and she snapped. Mom insisted Maureen had not actually been trying to kill her—she’d just become confused and upset, she said—but the wounds required stitches, and the police arrested Maureen. She was arraigned a few days later. Mom and Dad and Lori and Brian and I were all there. Brian was fuming. Lori looked grief-stricken. Dad was half potted and kept trying to pick fights with the security guards. But Mom acted like her normal self—nonchalant in the face of adversity. As we sat waiting on the courtroom benches, she hummed tunelessly and sketched the other spectators. Maureen shuffled into the courtroom, shackled and wearing an orange jumpsuit. Her face was puffy, and she looked dazed, but when she saw us, she smiled and waved. Her lawyer asked the judge to set bail. I had borrowed several thousand dollars from Eric and had the cash in my purse.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  ‘Who is it?’ ‘It’s me. Don’t you think you ought to eat something, Peter? How much time are you going to spend with all your sums and calculations? Let the devil take all these account books! Surely you have enough of God’s blessings without having to count them all? Come out. Forget your bags of money for a while. Are you not ashamed that dear John has not had a meal all day? Let us go to mass. And then eat.’ ‘My wife,’ the merchant replied, ‘you know nothing about men’s business. It is too complicated for you to understand, I suppose. But let me explain this to you. Take a group of twelve merchants. Only two of them will succeed and prosper. Only two will make a good profit in the course of their careers. We put on a brave face, of course, and make ourselves busy in the world. But we have to keep our affairs secret - until we are dead. The only alternative is to go on a pilgrimage. Or just disappear. That is the reason I pore over my books. I have to know how to master the tricks of the world. I am always in dread of failure, bankruptcy, and all the other hazards of business life. ‘I am going to Bruges tomorrow, as you know, but I will be back as soon as I can. While I am away I want you to be modest and courteous with everyone. Look after our property as carefully as you can. Keep the house neat and tidy. You have enough provisions, I am sure of that, so don’t overspend. You don’t lack meat or wine. You have all the clothes you need. But I’m feeling generous. Here is some silver for your purse.’ And with that he closed the door of the counting house and went down with his wife for luncheon. He had done enough work for the day. So they attended a quick mass and, as fast as they could, they sat down to eat. The tables were laid, the dishes come and gone in an instant. No one ate more than the monk. Then, after the meal was over, John took the merchant to one side and spoke to him very seriously. ‘Dear cousin Peter,’ he said, ‘I know that you are about to take horse and travel to Bruges. God be with you and speed you on your journey. Ride carefully. And be careful of what you eat. Your health may be at risk in this hot weather. Be temperate in all things. What am I saying? There is no need for elaborate courtesies between cousins like ourselves. Farewell. God protect you! That’s all I need to say. If there is anything I can do for you, by day or night, just let me know. I am always here to help you.’ He was much affected, and put the sleeve of his habit to his eyes. ‘Oh. There is one other thing.

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  Maybe she is not ready for the deadness to be killed, or maybe, against all odds, she is. Maybe you can give her something from deep within to find or do or fight for that will break the trance for her. You’ll have to find this first within you, though. And then you’ll have it to give away. This woman may get to wake up. And then she will have something to give, a song to sing. Maybe it won’t be a song exactly, but maybe just a little tune, a calliope tune, the tune of survival. PublicationAll right, let’s talk about publication. Let’s talk about the myth of publication. Say you’ve finished your book, or a draft of the book, or a whole lot of stories, and you send them off to your agent, if you have one, or to a friend’s agent, or to an agent you’ve found listed in the Yellow Pages or in the Literary Market Place . Say you actually already have an editor somewhere, or an editor who once wrote you an admiring rejection letter, so you send your book or stories to him or her and to a couple of friends. As I’ve mentioned, I’m one of those people who feels beside herself the day after I’ve stuck the manuscript in the mail. It can’t have even arrived and already I’m feeling bitter and resentful about what cold, lazy, sadistic slime I’m surrounded by. There are other writers, and you may be one of them, who just push back their sleeves and get to work on the next piece. I could never be close to a person like this, but I know they exist. Anyway, if you are like me, you wait and wait and check your mail ten times each day, and feel devastated and rejected every hour that there is no response. Finally, if you are lucky, a week later you get a note from your agent’s assistant that the manuscript has in fact arrived, and maybe one of the friends has called to say that he or she has read part of it and that it is just terrific and not to worry, but you go ahead and have a small breakdown anyhow, waiting for your agent and editor to call and tell you that it’s brilliant. Every time the phone rings, you sing, “Let it please be him, oh, dear God, it must be him.” But it’s not him, and then you die and go on a massive eating binge and think about what phonies most of your friends are. And then you calm down. You go for a walk.

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  I asked. They nodded and I told them all about my airline fears and how many moving parts there were to this trip east. They nodded again. They seemed to believe that between Jesus and a travel agent, things could probably be worked out. I sighed. My meeting was starting in another room, so I trudged off. My mind spun with images of the talk show, the airplane crash, and the madman with the Uzi at Dallas–Fort Worth. I was having a little trouble concentrating. The meeting ended, and on my way out, a little book on prayer caught my eye. I picked it up and stuck it in my purse, figuring I could look at it over dinner and then return it the next Sunday. All the way to the hamburger joint, I worried that I would be involved in a car accident and the book would be found on me. My survivors would know I had finally snapped, that I had become one of those fundamentalists who think the world is going to end tomorrow right after lunch. I made it to the restaurant, though, and when I sat down, I took out the little book. I opened it before I got it out of my purse so the cover wouldn’t show, as if it were the rankest sort of pornography, like Big Beautiful Butts or something. I started to read and within a page came upon this beautiful passage: “The Gulf Stream will flow through a straw provided the straw is aligned to the Gulf Stream, and not at cross purposes with it.” To make a long story short, I flew to New York and everything went fine. I didn’t have to stop in Dallas-Fort Worth, and I got home in time to teach my class. So now I always tell my students about the Gulf Stream: that what it means for us, for writers, is that we need to align ourselves with the river of the story, the river of the unconscious, of memory and sensibility, of our characters’ lives, which can then pour through us, the straw. When KFKD is playing, we are at cross purposes with the river. So we need to sit there, and breathe, calm ourselves down, push back our sleeves, and begin again. JealousyOf all the voices you’ll hear on KFKD, the most difficult to subdue may be that of jealousy.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  When the rising sun had roused the messenger, he took the shortest route to the castle. He presented the letter to the governor of that place who, on reading its contents, burst into lamentation. ‘Lord Christ,’ he said, ‘what is this world? It is a place of evil and of sin. Almighty God, why is it Your wish and will that the innocent should suffer? You are the judge of righteousness. Why do You allow the wicked to prosper? Oh Constance. I must now be your executioner or die a shameful death. There is no alternative.’ The old and the young of the castle wept at the news of Constance’s banishment. They could not believe that the king had sent such a cursed letter. Yet Constance remained calm. She accepted the will of Christ. She went down to the ship, looking deathly pale, and kneeled upon the shore. ‘Almighty Lord,’ she prayed, ‘I accept your command. He who saved me from false blame, when I lived in this land, will now protect me from harm. He will comfort me on the wild ocean. I do not know His means, but He is as strong now as He has always been. In Him I trust. Blessed be the Lord God and the Virgin Mother. They are my rudder and my sail.’ Her little child lay wailing in her arms. She cradled him and soothed him. ‘Peace, my son,’ she whispered to him. ‘I will never harm you.’ She took off the scarf she had been wearing and placed it over his eyes and hair. Then she rocked the child in her arms, praying softly all the while. ‘Mother Mary, bright queen of heaven, it is true that humankind fell through the sin of Eve. Through the fault of the first woman, your blessed son was nailed to the cross. Your own eyes witnessed His torment. Your woe was greater than the weight of all the world. There is no comparison between your suffering and my affliction. ‘You saw your son tortured and slain before your eyes. My little son is yet in life. Now, blessed lady to whom all pray in this vale of tears, glory of womanhood and fairest maid. You are a haven of refuge, and the bright star of day. In your gentleness you take pity on all those in distress. Take pity on my infant son. ‘Oh little child. You are innocent, without sin or guilt. Why does your cruel father wish to kill you?’ Then she turned to the governor of the castle. ‘Have mercy on him,’ she said. ‘Let my little son dwell with you here.’ He shook his head. ‘But if you dare not save him, for fear of punishment, then kiss him once in his father’s name.’

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft—you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft—you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it’s loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy. What I’ve learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head. First there’s the vinegar-lipped Reader Lady, who says primly, “Well, that’s not very interesting, is it?” And there’s the emaciated German male who writes these Orwellian memos detailing your thought crimes. And there are your parents, agonizing over your lack of loyalty and discretion; and there’s William Burroughs, dozing off or shooting up because he finds you as bold and articulate as a houseplant; and so on. And there are also the dogs: let’s not forget the dogs, the dogs in their pen who will surely hurtle and snarl their way out if you ever stop writing, because writing is, for some of us, the latch that keeps the door of the pen closed, keeps those crazy ravenous dogs contained. Quieting these voices is at least half the battle I fight daily. But this is better than it used to be. It used to be 87 percent. Left to its own devices, my mind spends much of its time having conversations with people who aren’t there. I walk along defending myself to people, or exchanging repartee with them, or rationalizing my behavior, or seducing them with gossip, or pretending I’m on their TV talk show or whatever. I speed or run an aging yellow light or don’t come to a full stop, and one nanosecond later am explaining to imaginary cops exactly why I had to do what I did, or insisting that I did not in fact do it. I happened to mention this to a hypnotist I saw many years ago, and he looked at me very nicely. At first I thought he was feeling around on the floor for the silent alarm button, but then he gave me the following exercise, which I still use to this day. Close your eyes and get quiet for a minute, until the chatter starts up. Then isolate one of the voices and imagine the person speaking as a mouse. Pick it up by the tail and drop it into a mason jar. Then isolate another voice, pick it up by the tail, drop it in the jar.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  We danced to a second song, and when we sat down again on the stools facing the pool table, our backs against the bar, he slid his arm behind me. That arm made me tense but not entirely unhappy. No one had flirted with me since Billy Deel, unless you counted Kenny Hall. Still, I knew what Robbie was after. I was going to tell him I wasn’t that sort of girl, but then I thought he would say I was getting ahead of myself. After all, the only thing he’d done was dance me slow and put his arm around me. I caught Dad’s eye. I expected him to come barreling across the room and whock Robbie with a pool cue for getting fresh with his daughter. Instead, he hollered to Robbie, “Do something worthwhile with those damned hands of yours. Get over here and play me a game of pool.” They ordered whiskeys and chalked their cues. Dad held back at first and lost some money to Robbie, then started upping the stakes and beating him. After every game, Robbie wanted to dance with me again. It went on that way for a couple of hours, with Robbie getting sloppy drunk, losing to Dad, and groping me when we danced or sat at the bar between games. All Dad said to me was “Keep your legs crossed, honey, and keep ’em crossed tight.” After Dad had taken him for about eighty bucks, Robbie started muttering angrily to himself. He snapped down the cue chalk, sending up a puff of blue powder, and missed a final shot. He flung his cue on the table and announced he’d had enough, then sat down next to me. His eyes were bleary. He kept saying he couldn’t believe that old fart had beat him out of eighty bucks, as if he couldn’t decide whether he was pissed off or impressed. Then he told me he lived in an apartment over the bar. He had a Roy Acuff record that wasn’t on the jukebox, and he wanted us to go upstairs and listen to it. If all he wanted to do was dance some more and maybe kiss a little, I could handle that. But I had the feeling he thought he was entitled to something in return for losing so much money. “I’m not sure,” I said. “Aw, come on,” he said and shouted at Dad, “I’m going to take your girl upstairs.” “Sure,” Dad said. “Just don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” He pointed his pool cue at me. “Holler if you need me,” he said and winked at me as if to say he knew I could take care of myself, that this was just a part of my job. So, with Dad’s blessing, I went upstairs. Inside the apartment, we pushed through a curtain made from strands of beer-can pull tabs linked together. Two men sat on a couch watching wrestling on television.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Paso mi mano a través de mi cabello, listo para salir de mi maldita piel. ¿Cómo no pudo al menos enviar un mensaje de texto? Entiendo si él no me habla, pero tiene que saber que estaría preocupado. Por dejarme durante meses con todas estas preguntas… Me siento en la camioneta, pasando la siguiente media hora buscando sitios web y blogs de padres, tratando de descubrir cómo puedo hablar con él. No se le permite un teléfono celular durante el entrenamiento, y no puedo llamarlo a menos que haya una emergencia, e incluso entonces tengo que pasar por la Cruz Roja para localizarlo. Mierda. Siento que estoy en Twilight Zone en este momento. Él se fue. Sin forma de contactarlo inmediatamente durante ocho semanas. No hemos pasado mucho tiempo juntos los últimos años, pero todavía estaba a solo una llamada de distancia. No puedo dejar que las cosas se queden así durante dos meses. Busco la estación local de reclutamiento en el área y llamo a la oficina. Podría conseguir su dirección una vez que reciba su asignación. No hay respuesta, así que lo rastrearé mañana y descubriré cómo encontrarlo. Maldita sea. —¡Mierda! Me siento tan impotente. Sabiendo que su teléfono celular probablemente ha sido confiscado por ahora, lo llamo de todos modos y sostengo el teléfono en mi oreja. Va inmediatamente al correo de voz. —Cole —digo, tragando algunas veces para mojarme la garganta—. Yo... yo... Sacudo mi cabeza, cerrando los ojos. —Te amo —le digo—, y siempre estaré aquí para ti. Sé que... sé que no tengo excusa. Yo solo… —Lágrimas brotan de mis ojos y no sé qué más decir, excepto la verdad—. Traté de no enamorarme de ella. Lo intenté. Lo siento. Cuelgo y tiro el teléfono, sintiéndome vacío. No quiero a ninguno de los dos fuera sin que sepan que los amo. Estoy solo otra vez, y solo los quiero de vuelta. Ellos son todo. Jordan tenía razón. Debí habérselo contado, acabar con ello y procurar que lo aceptara. Yo nunca iba a dejarla de buen grado. ¿Cuánto tiempo pensaba mentirle? Incluso si ella y yo no terminamos las cosas, habría tenido que decírselo en algún momento. Enciendo el motor y cambio a reversa, retrocediendo fuera del estacionamiento y saliendo a toda velocidad. Volviendo a la carretera, me dirijo a la ciudad, revisando periódicamente mi teléfono en busca de mensajes. Jordan dejó casi todo en mi casa. Tomó algunas ropas, sus libros y algunas cosas personales, pero sus modelos, su cama, muebles y la pintura todavía están allí. Volverá por esas cosas, ¿verdad? No toda la esperanza está perdida todavía. La veré de nuevo Pero no la he visto en ninguna parte de la ciudad, no ha estado en el trabajo, y no he visto su auto. ¿Dónde está? Estaba tan tranquila la otra noche. Misteriosamente calmada, en realidad. Como si ya no le importara.

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  As you learn who your characters are, compassion for them will grow. There shouldn’t be just a single important character in your work for whom you have compassion. You need to feel it even for the villain—in fact, especially for the villain. Life is not like formula fiction. The villain has a heart, and the hero has great flaws. You’ve got to pay attention to what each character says, so you can know each of their hearts. Only in the comics and formula movies do we get any pleasure from destroying totally evil and sinister villains, because in those cases they’ve been systematically depersonalized. They commit only acts of atrocity and sociopathology, and they say terribly evil things, and then we get to ritually kill them. There can be, at the end of the book, the relief that comes with justice. You can’t write down your intellectual understanding of a hero or villain and expect us to be engaged. You probably have got to find these characters within the community of people who live in your heart. For instance, just to mix media for a moment, if Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs hadn’t had an emotional understanding of Hannibal Lector’s heart, his mannerisms would not have rung so true or been so terrifying. The first time we see him, he’s simply standing there, expressionless, with his arms by his side. It is just chilling. I felt like I might break out in welts from sheer anxiety. I felt like my neck had developed a life of its own and was going to wait for me out in the lobby. To have this effect on us, Hopkins must have sympathized with something inside Lector, must have understood something about his heart. The writer needs to try to understand each of his or her characters in this way. The only thing to do when the sense of dread and low self-esteem tells you that you are not up to this is to wear it down by getting a little work done every day. You really can do it, really can find these people inside you and learn to hear what they have to say. For example, let’s say you have a main character whose feelings can be hurt if he’s spoken to sharply—unlike you, ha-ha-ha. Say he is also a little like you in the sense that when he gets a bit depressed or tense, he heads for a rib joint to eat a pound of burned, fatty meat. So he is perhaps also a little overweight—not that you are overweight. I’m sure your weight is just fine.

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  I had come to see it as a sort of showcase. For me. Funny how that happens. I finally smiled, remembering something I heard Ram Dass say on the radio once, about somebodyism—how most of us are raised to be somebodies and what a no-win game that is to buy into, because while you may turn out to be much more somebody than somebody else, a lot of other people are going to be a lot more somebody than you. And you are going to drive yourself crazy. One more thing about publication: when this book of mine came out, the one that did pretty well, the one that necessitated the buying of a new dress, I found myself stoned on all the attention, and then lost and derailed, needing a new fix every couple of days and otherwise going into withdrawal. My insides became completely uninhabitable, as if I’d wandered into a penny arcade with lots of bells ringing and lights flashing and lots of junk food, and I’d been there too long. I wanted peace, peace and quiet, but at the same time I didn’t want to leave. I was like one of the bad boys in “Pinocchio” who flock to the island of pleasure and grow donkey ears. I knew my soul was sick and that I needed spiritual advice, and I knew also that this advice shouldn’t be terribly sophisticated. So I went to see the pastor of my son’s preschool. The pastor is about fifteen. We talked for a while. It turns out he just looks young. I said that I was all over the place, up and down, scattered, high, withdrawing, lost, and in the midst of it all trying to find some elusive sense of serenity. “The world can’t give that serenity,” he said. “The world can’t give us peace. We can only find it in our hearts.” “I hate that,” I said. “I know. But the good news is that by the same token, the world can’t take it away.” Part FiveThe Last Class There are so many things I want to tell my students in our last class, so many things I want to remind them of. Write about your childhoods, I tell them for the umpteenth time. Write about that time in your life when you were so intensely interested in the world, when your powers of observation were at their most acute, when you felt things so deeply. Exploring and understanding your childhood will give you the ability to empathize, and that understanding and empathy will teach you to write with intelligence and insight and compassion.

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist’s true friend. What people somehow (inadvertently, I’m sure) forgot to mention when we were children was that we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here—and, by extension, what we’re supposed to be writing. School LunchesI know I set out to tell you every single thing I know about writing, but I am also going to tell you every single thing I know about school lunches, partly because the longings and dynamics and anxieties are so similar. I think this will also show how taking short assignments and then producing really shitty first drafts of these assignments can yield a bounty of detailed memory, raw material, and strange characters lurking in the shadows. So: sometimes when a student calls and is mewling and puking about the hopelessness of trying to put words down on paper, I ask him or her to tell me about school lunches—at parochial schools, private schools, twenty years earlier than mine, or ten years later, in Southern California or New York. And they always turn out to be similar to my middle-class Northern California public school lunches. But in important ways they are different, too, and this is even more interesting, for the obvious reason that when we study the differences, we see in bolder relief what we have in common. And for some strange reason, when my students start to jam with me about school lunches, they get off the phone feeling more enthusiastic and in better shape. One time, in one of my classes, I asked my students to write about lunches for half an hour, and I sat down with them and wrote: Here is the main thing I know about public school lunches: it only looked like a bunch of kids eating lunch. It was really about opening our insides in front of everyone. Just like writing is. It was a precursor of the showers in seventh- and eighth-grade gym, where everyone could see your everything or your lack of everything, and smell the inside smells of your body, and the whole time you just knew you were going to catch something. The contents of your lunch said whether or not you and your family were Okay. Some bag lunches, like some people, were Okay, and some weren’t. There was a code, a right and acceptable way. It was that simple . But in half an hour there was already too much material for me and some of the people in class, and it threatened to immobilize us.

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  Published in 1929, Joan Riviere’s essay, “Womanliness as a Masquerade,”21 introduces the notion of femininity as masquerade in terms of a theory of aggression and conflict resolution. This theory appears at first to be far afield from Lacan’s analysis of masquerade in terms of the comedy of sexual positions. She begins with a respectful review of Ernest Jones’s typology of the development of female sexuality into heterosexual and homosexual forms. She focuses, however, on the “intermediate types” that blur the boundaries between the heterosexual and the homosexual and, implicitly, contest the descriptive capacity of Jones’s classificatory system. In a remark that resonates with Lacan’s facile reference to “observation,” Riviere seeks recourse to mundane perception or experience to validate her focus on these “intermediate types”: “In daily life types of men and women are constantly met with who, while mainly heterosexual in their development, plainly display strong features of the other sex” (35). What is here most plain is the classifications that condition and structure the perception of this mix of attributes. Clearly, Riviere begins with set notions about what it is to display characteristics of one’s sex, and how it is that those plain characteristics are understood to express or reflect an ostensible sexual orientation.22 This perception or observation not only assumes a correlation among characteristics, desires, and “orientations,”23 but creates that unity through the perceptual act itself. Riviere’s postulated unity between gender attributes and a naturalized “orientation” appears as an instance of what Wittig refers to as the “imaginary formation” of sex. And yet, Riviere calls into question these naturalized typologies through an appeal to a psychoanalytic account that locates the meaning of mixed gender attributes in the “interplay of conflicts” (35). Significantly, she contrasts this kind of psychoanalytic theory with one that would reduce the presence of ostensibly “masculine” attributes in a woman to a “radical or fundamental tendency.” In other words, the acquisition of such attributes and the accomplishment of a heterosexual or homosexual orientation are produced through the resolution of conflicts that have as their aim the suppression of anxiety. Citing Ferenczi in order to establish an analogy with her own account, Riviere writes: Ferenczi pointed out … that homosexual men exaggerate their heterosexuality as a “defence” against their homosexuality. I shall attempt to show that women who wish for masculinity may put on a mask of womanliness to avert anxiety and the retribution feared from men. (35)

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  She had picked out all the hymns and prayers, chosen her favorite funeral home, ordered a lavender lace nightgown from JCPenney that she wanted to be buried in, and selected a two-toned lavender casket with shiny chrome handles from the mortician’s catalog. Erma’s death brought out Mom’s pious side. While we were waiting for the preacher, she took out her rosary and prayed for Erma’s soul, which she feared was in jeopardy since, as she saw it, Erma had committed suicide. She also tried to make us kiss Erma’s corpse. We flat out refused, but Mom went up in front of the mourners, genuflected with a grand sweep, and then kissed Erma’s cheek so vigorously that you could hear the puckering sound throughout the chapel. I was sitting next to Dad. It was the first time in my life I’d ever seen him wearing a necktie, which he always called a noose. His face was tight and closed, but I could tell he was distraught. More distraught than I’d ever seen him, which surprised me, because Erma had seemed to have some sort of an evil hold over Dad, and I thought he’d be relieved to be free of it. As we walked home, Mom asked us kids if we had anything nice to say about Erma now that she had passed. We took a couple of steps in silence, then Lori said, “Ding-dong, the witch is dead.” Brian and I started snickering. Dad wheeled around and gave Lori such a cold, angry look that I thought he might wallop her. “She was my mother, for God’s sake,” he said. He glared at us. “You kids. You make me ashamed. Do you hear me? Ashamed!” He turned down the street to Junior’s bar. We all watched him go. “You’re ashamed of us ?” Lori called after him. Dad just kept walking. • • • Four days later, when Dad still hadn’t come home, Mom sent me to go find him. “Why do I always have to get Dad?” I asked. “Because he likes you the best,” she said. “And he’ll come home if you tell him to.” The first step in tracking down Dad was going next door to the Freemans, who let us use their phone if we paid a dime, and calling Grandpa to ask if Dad was there. Grandpa said he had no idea where Dad was. “When y’all gonna get your own telephone?” Mr. Freeman asked after I hung up. “Mom disapproves of telephones,” I said as I placed the dime on his coffee table. “She thinks they’re an impersonal means of communication.” My first stop, as always, was Junior’s. It was the fanciest bar in Welch, with a picture window, a grill that served hamburgers and french fries, and a pinball machine. “Hey!” one of the regulars called out when I walked in. “It’s Rex’s little girl. How ya doin’, sweetheart?” “I’m fine, thank you.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  I INVITED MOM and Dad up to the apartment. Dad said he’d feel out of place, and never did come, but Mom visited almost immediately. She turned over dishes to read the manufacturer’s name and lifted the corner of the Persian rug to count the knots. She held the china to the light and ran her finger along the antique campaign chest. Then she went to the window and looked out at the brick and limestone apartment buildings across the street. “I don’t really like Park Avenue,” she said. “The architecture is too monotonous. I prefer the architecture on Central Park West.” I told Mom she was the snootiest squatter I’d ever met, and that made her laugh. We sat down on the living room couch. I had something I wanted to discuss with her. I now had a good job, I said, and was in a position to help her and Dad. I wanted to buy them something that would improve their lives. It could be a small car. It could be the security deposit and a few months’ rent on an apartment. It could be the down payment on a house in an inexpensive neighborhood. “We don’t need anything,” Mom said. “We’re fine.” She put down her teacup. “It’s you I’m worried about.” “You’re worried about me?” “Yes. Very worried.” “Mom,” I said. “I’m doing very well. I’m very, very comfortable.” “That’s what I’m worried about,” Mom said. “Look at the way you live. You’ve sold out. Next thing I know, you’ll become a Republican.” She shook her head. “Where are the values I raised you with?” • • • Mom became even more concerned about my values when my editor offered me a job writing a weekly column about what he called the behind-the-scenes doings of the movers and shakers. Mom thought I should be writing exposés about oppressive landlords, social injustice, and the class struggle on the Lower East Side. But I leaped at the job, because it meant I would become one of those people who knew what was really going on. Also, most people in Welch had a pretty good idea how bad off the Walls family was, but the truth was, they all had their problems, too—they were just

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  And they also want refunds. Almost all of them have been writing at least for a little while, some of them all of their lives. Many of them have been told over the years that they are quite good, and they want to know why they feel so crazy when they sit down to work, why they have these wonderful ideas and then they sit down and write one sentence and see with horror that it is a bad one, and then every major form of mental illness from which they suffer surfaces, leaping out of the water like trout—the delusions, hypochondria, the grandiosity, the self-loathing, the inability to track one thought to completion, even the hand-washing fixation, the Howard Hughes germ phobias. And especially, the paranoia. You can be defeated and disoriented by all these feelings, I tell them, or you can see the paranoia, for instance, as wonderful material. You can use it as the raw clay that you pull out of the river: surely one of your characters is riddled with it, and so in giving that person this particular quality, you get to use it, shape it into something true and funny or frightening. I read them a poem by Phillip Lopate that someone once sent me, that goes: We who are your closest friends feel the time has come to tell you that every Thursday we have been meeting , as a group , to devise ways to keep you in perpetual uncertainty frustration discontent and torture by neither loving you as much as you want nor cutting you adrift . Your analyst is in on it , plus your boyfriend and your ex-husband; and we have pledged to disappoint you as long as you need us . In announcing our association we realize we have placed in your hands a possible antidote against uncertainty indeed against ourselves . But since our Thursday nights have brought us to a community of purpose rare in itself with you as the natural center , we feel hopeful you will continue to make unreasonable demands for affection if not as a consequence of your disastrous personality then for the good of the collective . They stare at me like the cast of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest . Only about three of them think this poem is funny, or even a good example of someone taking his own paranoia and shaping it into something artistic and true. A few people look haunted. The ones who most want to be published just think I’m an extremely angry person. Some of them look emotionally broken, some look at me with actual disgust, as if I am standing there naked under fluorescent lights. Finally someone will raise his or her hand. “Can you send your manuscript directly to a publisher, or do you really need an agent?”

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  And they also want refunds. Almost all of them have been writing at least for a little while, some of them all of their lives. Many of them have been told over the years that they are quite good, and they want to know why they feel so crazy when they sit down to work, why they have these wonderful ideas and then they sit down and write one sentence and see with horror that it is a bad one, and then every major form of mental illness from which they suffer surfaces, leaping out of the water like trout—the delusions, hypochondria, the grandiosity, the self-loathing, the inability to track one thought to completion, even the hand-washing fixation, the Howard Hughes germ phobias. And especially, the paranoia. You can be defeated and disoriented by all these feelings, I tell them, or you can see the paranoia, for instance, as wonderful material. You can use it as the raw clay that you pull out of the river: surely one of your characters is riddled with it, and so in giving that person this particular quality, you get to use it, shape it into something true and funny or frightening. I read them a poem by Phillip Lopate that someone once sent me, that goes: We who are your closest friends feel the time has come to tell you that every Thursday we have been meeting , as a group , to devise ways to keep you in perpetual uncertainty frustration discontent and torture by neither loving you as much as you want nor cutting you adrift . Your analyst is in on it , plus your boyfriend and your ex-husband; and we have pledged to disappoint you as long as you need us . In announcing our association we realize we have placed in your hands a possible antidote against uncertainty indeed against ourselves . But since our Thursday nights have brought us to a community of purpose rare in itself with you as the natural center , we feel hopeful you will continue to make unreasonable demands for affection if not as a consequence of your disastrous personality then for the good of the collective . They stare at me like the cast of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest . Only about three of them think this poem is funny, or even a good example of someone taking his own paranoia and shaping it into something artistic and true. A few people look haunted. The ones who most want to be published just think I’m an extremely angry person. Some of them look emotionally broken, some look at me with actual disgust, as if I am standing there naked under fluorescent lights. Finally someone will raise his or her hand. “Can you send your manuscript directly to a publisher, or do you really need an agent?”

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  So the boy eagerly ran up the stairs, and came to a halt outside Nicholas’s chamber. Then he knocked on the door like a madman and shouted out, very loudly, ‘Hey! Where are you, master Nicholas? How can you sleep all day? It isn’t right!’ He might as well have saved his breath. There was no response. But he knew there was a hole in the skirting board, which the cat used as a passage. So he got down on his knees and peered through this hole. What do you think he saw? There was Nicholas sitting upright in his bed, with his mouth open, motionless, gaping at the ceiling. He might have been struck by the new moon. So Robin rushed downstairs, in a state of great excitement, and relayed the strange news to the carpenter. The old man blessed himself and said, ‘By the patron saint of Oxford, Frydeswyde, no man knows what will happen next! Our young friend has been affected by all this astronomy business. He has fallen into a fit. Or he may have gone mad. I knew this would happen all along. No man should try to seek out God’s secrets! Blessed are the ignorant who know only how to say their prayers! It happened to another scholar, you know. Did you hear about him? He was walking in the fields one night, gazing up at the stars to find the future, when he fell into a clay pit. He didn’t see that, did he? And yet I do feel sorry for young Nicholas. If I get the chance, and pray God I do, I will scold him for all his studying. Get me a long staff, Robin, and I will lever it under his door while you tear it off its hinges. That will get his attention.’ So they climbed upstairs, and stood outside Nicholas’s room. Robin was a strong boy, and managed to get the door off without much difficulty. It fell down on the floor with a clatter. Yet Nicholas did not move a muscle. He was completely motionless, his mouth open, staring into space. The carpenter thought that he might be paralysed by despair, and shook him violently by the shoulders. Then he shouted at him, ‘Nicholas! Look at me! Wake up! Think of the passion of Christ!’ He made the sign of the cross over him. ‘Look!’ he said. ‘I am expelling the elves and wicked fairies that torment you.’ He went to the four corners of the chamber and muttered the night spell. Then he crossed the threshold and recited the same charm: ‘Jesus Christ and Benedict, Keep us from heaven’s interdict, Against the spirits of the night Protect us from the evil blight.’ Now at this moment Nicholas began to stir. He sighed very deeply. He groaned. He began to talk to himself. ‘Alas,’ he said. ‘Is it true? Is the world about to end?’

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  This is not something that I remember to do very often, and I do not normally like to hang around people who talk about slow conscious breathing; I start to worry that a nice long discussion of aromatherapy is right around the corner. But these slow conscious breathers are on to something, because if you try to follow your breath for a while, it will ground you in relative silence. So. You sit down to work at nine in the morning, and do the prayer or the small-animal sacrifice or whatever, and then breathe for a moment, and try to focus on where your characters are, only to discover that your mind has begun to wander just a little. Typically, you may find yourself wondering how some really awful writer you know is doing, and why he is doing so much better than you, and what it will be like to be on David Letterman’s show, and whether he will mock you or laugh at all your jokes and let you be his new best friend, and what you should eat for lunch, and what it would feel like for your hair to be on fire or for someone—like a critic or something—to stick a sharp object into your eye. Not to worry. Gently bring your mind back to your work. Let’s say your character is sitting with his grown son beneath a cypress tree on a lion-colored hillside, chewing over in the sourest possible voice the few ecstatic moments of his life, and all you are going to do this morning is to squint along with him, and listen, and possibly find out what some of those moments might have been. After a minute, you begin to see your man in someone’s grassy backyard, not long ago, playing Ping-Pong with a younger man, a hippie, and they are not competing, just hitting together, and you begin to capture this on paper, and after two sentences you begin to worry about complete financial collapse, what it will be like to live in a car, and then your mother calls joyfully to tell you that something fantastic just happened to someone who was mean to you in the eighth grade. You get off the phone, and your mind has become a frog brain that scientists have saturated with caffeine. You may need another minute to bring it back to the man’s moment in that grassy backyard. Close your eyes. Breathe. Begin again. I’m sorry, I wish that there were a sharper, slicker way to do this, but this seems to be the only solution. Believe me, I hate natural solutions, or at any rate they are the last ones I turn to.

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  Two nights ago I showed up to teach my class with a raw chest and a raging sore throat, the kind that feels like cancer of the trachea. I happen to have two doctors in this class, and one of them tried to assure me that it probably wasn’t tracheal cancer, that in fact the viral cloud of mid-autumn had descended and many people were having similar symptoms. The other doctor recommended drinking really, really hot water. “Hot water?” I said. “Hot water? I should be home hooked up to an epidural, drinking codeine cough syrup, and you’re prescribing hot water?” Then I threatened to lower his grade. (Of course, this is not a graded workshop, so my students tend to roll their eyes when I threaten them.) At the break, that doctor brought me a cup of boiling water, as though for tea but without the tea bag, and I drank it. My throat and chest stopped aching about twenty seconds later. I hate that. Still, breathing calmly can help you get into a position where the workings of your characters’ hearts and the things people say on the streets of your story can be heard above the sound of KFKD. When you are in that position, you will know. I am struggling very hard not to use the word harmony here. So let me tell you a quick story. Last summer I got a call from a producer in New York who wanted me to fly east two days later, stay in town overnight, do her TV talk show, and fly home. I thought long and hard about whether I should—for about thirty seconds. Of course I wanted to go. But I would have to make arrangements for Sam to stay overnight with his grandparents, and I needed to catch a return flight that would get me back in time to teach my workshop the next night, and the only one that could do that involved a layover at Dallas–Fort Worth. A layover at Dallas–Fort Worth is something for which, believe me, I am not remotely well enough. So I shared all this with the producer and took off for a committee meeting I had at church. I was a mess. Out of the right speaker, KFKD was playing a dress rehearsal of the TV talk show and of subsequent appearances with Dave and Arsenio. Out of the left speaker was a call-in program on airplane crashes, with descriptions of what happens to the body on impact. I got to church and my committee had not yet assembled, but four of the church’s elders—all women—three African Americans and one white, were having a prayer meeting. They were praying for homeless children. “Can we discuss my personal problems for a moment?”