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 Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  But there is wrestling, of course. There always was. And it is what draws them together, now as it has drawn them for years. It brings them together now because of what they are after, because going for four state titles, as each of them is, is such a profoundly lonely thing to do. They both could succeed; they certainly both could fail. And that success or that failure will be played out in front of a state’s worth of people who know their sport almost as well as they do, and who don’t mind passing immediate judgment upon it. It is a pressure none but the two of them will feel, and that’s the part about being brothers. “Put it this way,” Dan says. “It’s a lot better going through something like this with someone you feel like you’ve known your whole life.” Only Jay and Dan can understand. This is no ordinary quest. One cannot be an ordinary person and attempt it. There are many ways by which to measure oneself as successful in Iowa, but only a couple by which to be loved. In the eighty-plus-year existence of the Iowa State High School Wrestling Tournament, easily the largest event of its kind in the United States, there had by the winter of 2005 been exactly fourteen people who, through a combination of determined will, outrageous fortune and the ability to go for years without enjoying an anxiety-free meal, somehow found themselves in the possession of four individual state championships—four titles, all to themselves. Only once during that eight-decade span had two wrestlers achieved “four-time” status in the same year. Consider the odds; they’re astounding even by athletic standards. In the late fall of each year, somewhere north of 8,600 wrestlers begin the journey that will take them around the state and right on through hell, an extended stay replete with wind sprints and projectile vomiting and blood and contortionist acts and stinging, salty sweat. By February, 632 of these wrestlers will have earned the most sought-after placement in Iowa, a spot in the four-day State Tournament. In the end, the tournament will produce a winner in each of the sport’s fourteen weight-class winners, and it will do so in each of Iowa’s three high school wrestling classifications, Class 1A, 2A and 3A. That makes for a total of forty-two state champs, or roughly .005 percent of those who began the season. That is the math behind doing the unimaginable, taking your school and the town or the rural communities that surround it on a wild, emotional ride, and winning it all—one time. Now factor in the truth of the adolescent body, which is that no matter what you do (and wrestlers have pretty much tried everything), it more or less refuses to stop growing and changing shape. Factor injuries and luck.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  He hadn’t pressed the buzzer from the street below, which would have given me some warning and a moment to prepare; he must have thought surprise would be to his advantage, I thought, and I imagined him waiting for someone to come in or out of the building’s locked front door, sheltering as best he could against the wind, a cigarette tight at his lips. There was no need for any of it; I would have buzzed him in as quickly as I opened my apartment door, which I unlatched without even drawing aside the little cover of the peephole, though I did pause briefly with my hand on the knob, drawing a steadying breath. It was almost two years to the day since I had last seen Mitko. When I returned from Varna I did everything I could to ensure I wouldn’t see him again; I blocked him on Facebook and Skype, I scrubbed him from my e-mail and phone. These were measures against myself, really, I wanted to make it more difficult for me to find him in a spasm of remorse; and though I thought of him often, though he appeared in dreams from which I woke more excited than I was by anything in my waking life, I didn’t regret what I had done. I had missed him, but more than missing him I had been relieved that he was gone. The corridor was dark when I opened the door. The light was set to a timer, which must have run out since he pressed the switch at the bottom of the stairs, if he had; or maybe he thought darkness, too, was to his advantage. I could only see him thanks to the light from my own apartment, which barely reached him where he leaned against the opposite wall, as though he had waited a long time for me to answer, or been prepared to wait. He straightened up, coming farther into the light, and I could see he wasn’t dressed at all for the cold; he was wearing a thin jacket and torn jeans, and his canvas shoes were soaked through. He was unshaved and unkempt, thinner than he had been, though he had always been thin; it was as if he had been worn away somehow in the months since I had seen him. He stood with his shoulders slumped, his hands—which I remembered in constant motion, always seeking some occupation—shoved firmly in his pockets.

• From Science and Religion (2006)

  46 Lecture 11: Fundamentalism and Creationism rise to many apocalyptic beliefs and movements, including the continuing fundamentalist obsession with the New Testament Book of Revelation. Thus, naïve literalism and biblical inerrancy became a natural consequence of millenarianism, given its preoccupation with calculating dates from speci ¿ c biblical passages. Fundamentalism is as much a social as a religious movement; its views are group-de ¿ ning. It is also a reactionary movement. Key stimuli are social anxiety over the loss of the old order (a religiously oriented Anglo- Saxon Protestant America) and fear of perceived foes: urban and learned culture, modernity, intellectuals, industrialization, immigration, and so on. Accordingly, its origins overlap those of the second Ku Klux Klan. The fundamentalists’ “hot-button” issues have changed over time. Initial opposition was largely to higher criticism; even evolution was treated benignly in The Fundamentals . The explosion of fundamentalist belligerency dates from the period of World War I and its aftermath. The enormous growth of public high schools in the period 1900–1920 exposed rural populations to modern science; thus, evolution became a key issue. Since that time, other reactionary issues have been added, for example, opposition to the civil rights movement, women’s rights, and so on. Fundamentalists gained wide exposure in the famous Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. Contrary to dramatic depictions in ¿ lm and on stage ( Inherit the Wind ), the trial was actually a setup. Tennessee, under fundamentalist pressures, passed a law (the Butler Act) in 1925 banning the teaching of evolution. The ACLU sought a test case. The town leaders of Dayton asked a teacher, John T. Scopes, if he was willing to stand as a defendant in order to provide a case; High school biology teacher John Scopes was accused of violating Tennessee’s Butler Act. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-86099.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  Of course I have dealt with snake bites & so on several times before, & managed to master my sympathy & anxiety & present an impassive doctorly face. The poor boy was still sitting, but half lying back, in the kitchen doorway, motionless with fright or caution, but breathing heavily, salivating, sweat on his upper lip. He knew enough to be holding his leg tight in both hands just below the knee. I shd have gone straight to the house, & darted over to it now to get my medicine case, fumbled to check it & close it, bounded out across the yard. My change of role made it possible for me to push him around, to enter with brusque disinterest into a kind of closeness to him that otherwise wd have remained unattainable—though it beckoned & was approached through a thousand hints & formalities. I tugged him, & he half slithered, to the step’s edge, & tugged at his hands too which were locked with desperate tightness around his leg. The sting was some way below, on the shallow, boyish incline of the calf—just where one would have stung, I thought—& looking pretty nasty. I whipped out the tourniquet & drew it to its tightest notch around his upper leg (I was severe as a matron with that stiff rubber strap). And fussily, necessarily, I shoved back the gathered folds of his djellaba, baring his thighs, glancing at them as well—though with a curiosity almost annulled by the ethical transfiguration I was enabled for a few minutes to undergo. Not so Hassan, however, who had been hovering excitedly behind me, in a state somewhere between despair & delight, & leant forward all helpfully at this point to draw the djellaba up tidily and expose the child’s private parts to his greedy glance—though after a second or two Taha brushed the folds of cloth forward again & gave Hassan, I noticed, a pained, abstracted look. As well he might, for the old lecher had hardly chosen the best moment—indeed it was a prurient piece of advantage-taking, & since it also satisfied a curiosity of my own I admonished him & sent him back indoors, before (& all this was only the matter of seconds) taking my scalpel to the boy’s inflamed leg and cutting out the sting with such delicate suddenness & firmness that he was amazed when I showed it to him between my fingers, & when he sat up & saw the blood trickling down his calf. I squeezed & cleaned & dressed the thing as best I could. Though I had been quick enough, some damage had been done & he was already a little feverish; so I picked him up—he was quite heavy & hung on to my neck with both arms, like a child not fully awoken—& took him in & laid him on the camp-bed in the room next to mine.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  THE XXIX POLYCLINIC , she had written, the numbers in block Roman numerals, and beneath it GOTSE DELCHEV , the name of a district where I had never been. As I took this paper, I imagined having to find my way to an unfamiliar part of the city, to a public clinic where no one would speak English, and I thought of all I had heard about such places, the long lines and poor facilities, the incompetence or disregard of doctors. She must have seen how I felt, and as if taking pity, she said One of the buses that stops outside will take you there, I think, I’m sorry I don’t know which one. She started walking toward the reception area again, having done everything she could, and I followed obediently behind her. That was why I hated clinics and examinations, I thought, the indignity they inflict, the way they let doctors and nurses deliver a sentence and then wash their hands of it, so that however they change one’s life they remain unchanged themselves. You will have to go on Monday, she said, they will be closing soon for the weekend. Tell me, I said, as we neared the glass doors of the entrance, once I have the results from the second test, can I get the treatment here? I had spoken this in what must have been a hopeful tone, or a tone of entreaty, and it seemed to me she replied with pleasure as she opened the door for me and said again Oh no, it’s best that they take care of everything from there. I stepped outside, and then half turned back to raise my hand in goodbye. But it was a wasted gesture; she had already moved on to other tasks, letting the door swing shut behind her. On Sunday night Mitko appeared again. He buzzed up from the street this time, confident I would answer; or maybe he had gotten tired of waiting for someone to open the door. It was late, I was already in bed with a book in my hand. It had been a long, anxious weekend, and I had hardly needed to exaggerate when I wrote to my department chair that I was too ill to come in, freeing the next day for the clinic. I was caught up again in the poetry of the illness, as it were, that aura or miasma of shame; I felt unclean, I wanted to hide myself away, feeling, for all I had learned of the disease, that even touching someone might contaminate them. I washed my hands compulsively, and made obsessive use of the little bottles of antiseptic gel that most teachers keep close by.

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  But the reality is not only that the school needs its athletes to play multiple sports, but that the kids can enjoy the relative luxury of being able to make the team in whatever sport happens to be in season. For many schools at all different levels, of course, football often flows naturally into a winter wrestling schedule for some of the stronger players. But from wrestling to golf? That’s a kind of a Class 1A thing to do, and it’s very cool. Still, injuries don’t always heal on schedule. After resting over the summer before his junior year, Ben went out and did what was expected of him (and, to be fair, what he wanted to do himself ) and jumped back onto the football team, hoping for the best and taking care of himself as well as he could. He nursed his back through most of the season, but he knew he wasn’t completely right; and, sure enough, the bulging disk finally went on a rampage of its own, a little bodily mutiny. Ben’s football season ended late in the fall, on the spot. His wrestling season was a complete cancellation. He was going to have to shut things down, because the disk was going to have to be dealt with. Ben went into physical therapy and intense rehab, and waited. And slowly, with difficulty, his patience tested straight down the line, he got better. He went back onto the football field in the late summer of 2004, because he was a senior and it’s football. “The doctors told me the deal,” Ben says quietly, standing just off the wrestling mat after winning his first match of the day. “If I hurt it again, I might be done with all contact sports—and I might not be able to play golf.” And on the other hand, this is the North-Linn school district in small-town Iowa in sports-honoring America. There is an unspoken code at play. You don’t quit in high school when your teams need you just because your back hurts, and especially not if this is probably the best opportunity of your life to be so involved in so many different ventures. Iowa State won’t be offering Ben a wrestling or football scholarship, put it that way. Add to this the traditional wrestler ethos, which is that you’re not hurt even when you are (and even then not so much), and it is easy to comprehend Ben getting himself back out there. It worked out—as of this minute. Ben went back on the football field, resumed his spots as a running back and cornerback and kicker, and got through his senior season more or less whole. He will win his weight class in Midland on this day. And he will go on with a straight shot at making the State Tournament, because he is a good wrestler, and because the State Tournament is the place to be.

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  Still, there is more than one aspect to his pacing, the back and forth and the serious effort to control his emotions. Dan knows that the people at North-Linn don’t just want him to win, they already have banked on his winning. Dan is their sure thing. They have marked him down in the book as their four-time champion. Now it is left to Dan to take care of the details, the actual wrestling. Is it harder in sports to do something that no one expects you to, or something that everyone already assumes you will? By the time of his match, Dan has spent about thirty-five minutes pacing back and forth, all but wearing grooves into the wood floor of the gym. It is almost thirty-four minutes longer than he will be on the mats themselves. As he storms after his opponent, Dan is all arms. He waves them in a constant motion, as if searching for the opening that will allow him to find a grip and make something happen. After a few seconds, he finds just such an opening, and it takes no more than an eyeblink for him to close in on the kid and slam him down. In the stands, Mary looks on expectantly; she knows the other boy on the mat isn’t in Dan’s class and that this should be over quickly. At the same time, she has seen enough wrestling to understand that nothing in the sport is safe. Even very good wrestlers have been known to inexplicably let up in the middle of a match, perhaps thinking they had things under control. An upset is always one significant screwup away. Of all Dan’s traits, this may be the most admirable: He virtually never supplies that opportunity to an opponent who doesn’t deserve it. He won’t supply one now. Once he gets the boy down onto the mat, Dan battles furiously for the kill. It’s an electrifying kind of physical domination, and as Dan wriggles his hand in between his opponent’s arm and the boy’s side, the North-Linn fans come to their feet—not to shout or scream, yet, but to see the finish more clearly. Once his hand is through, Dan nearly shoves the rest of his arm into the small space, then uses the leverage and his pure upper-body strength to turn the boy over. Seventy seconds after it has begun, the match finishes. Dan has another pin, and a spot in the finals. And now the North-Linn fans have something to scream about. Now it is Nick’s turn, and judging strictly by his presence at this moment, you’d never guess he has spent most of this season hurt. As Doug and Dan both sit in his corner on the mat, Nick engages North Cedar’s Luke Bader in a taut, physical semifinal. It’s no surprise; coming into the tournament, Nick’s weight class was considered perhaps the most loaded four-man set in the entire state.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  About twenty minutes had passed, and I had started to worry about making it to my class on time, when the door opened and a woman ushered me in. Dobur den , I said, nodding at her, and she pointed to the large chair in the corner, telling me to sit. The room was full of instruments and machines, many of them working away, and the surfaces were crowded with trays of red vials arranged meticulously in rows. She was working at one of these trays, wrapping an adhesive label around a vial before sliding it into place. Sega , she said, now, as she turned toward me and took from a table what I assumed was the page specifying my tests. She studied it briefly and then took a number of empty vials, a dismaying number, of different sizes gathered from various trays. She arranged them on the little table to my right and then sat on a stool beside me. Now, she said again, looking at me for the first time, are we going to have any problems? I looked at her uncomprehendingly and she went on, Will you be all right, will you be—and she used the word muzhki , manly; people say it all the time here, Druzh se muzhki , act like a man, and I always resented it when someone said it to me, it felt like a challenge they weren’t sure I could meet. And anyway it was the kind of doctorly banter I hated most, a chummy preliminary to unpleasantness. She looked much the same as my earlier guide, older and formless and with short, thinning hair, though hers had been dyed the alarming shade of red inexplicably popular in Sofia. I’ll be fine, I said, pulling my arm from its sleeve, and then opening and closing my hand as she tied a rubber tourniquet around my bicep. I wasn’t troubled by needles, but I hated the pressure of the tourniquet, the slow rising of my veins against the skin. Ah, the woman said in appreciation, here’s a nice one, and she told me to squeeze hard as she quickly swabbed it with alcohol. I turned away then, as I always do, looking at the little square of window with its glimpse of sky, and then I closed my eyes as I felt the metal on my skin, the sharp prick and then the unsettling dull ache of the needle in the vein. She knew what she was doing, I thought, as she snapped the first tube in place with one hand and untwisted the tourniquet with the other, telling me at the same time to relax my grip; I had certainly had worse, though I was taken aback to notice, as I looked at my arm again, strangely alien to me now as it did its work, vigorously pumping blood, that she was doing all of this without gloves.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  Some returned his envious and plaintive gaze, took in his distraught appearance and smiled. He was beside himself with that smile. What were they thinking and how did these fearless ones judge the situation? It's based on rudeness, he might have shouted at them, Your smile, gentlemen! You might consider The persistent ringing of the bell, the signal for the beginning of the Monday service, hit his ear when he was still twenty paces from the long red wall, broken by two cast-iron gates, which separated the front schoolyard from the street. Without having any strength left to stride and run, he simply let his upper body fall forward, whereby his legs had to prevent the fall for better or worse by also moving forward, stumbling and shaking, and thus reached the first gate, when the ringing had stopped. Herr Schlemiel, the custodian, a stocky man with a rough-bearded working- class face, was about to lock it. "Well..." he said, letting the student Buddenbrook slip through... Maybe, maybe he was saved. It was a matter of slipping unseen into the classroom, secretly waiting for the end of the service that was being held in the gymnasium, and pretending everything was all right. And panting for breath, exhausted and frozen in a cold sweat, he dragged himself across the courtyard paved with red bricks and through one of the pretty folding doors with stained glass panes... Everything was new, clean and beautiful here in the institution. Time had done its justice, and the gray and decrepit parts of the former monastery school, in which the fathers of the present generation had practiced science, were leveled to the ground so that new, airy, magnificent buildings could arise in their place. The style of the whole was preserved, and the Gothic vaults stretched solemnly over corridors and cloisters. But as far as the lighting and heating, the spaciousness and brightness of the classes, the comfort of the teachers’ rooms, the practical furnishings of the halls for chemistry, physics and drawing lessons were concerned, the fullest comfort of modern times prevailed ... The exhausted Hanno Buddenbrook pressed himself against the wall and looked around... No, praise God, nobody saw him. From distant corridors echoed the throng of students and faculty rolling toward the gymnasium for a little religious refreshment for the week's work. Up here everything lay dead and still, and the way up the broad, linoleum-covered stairs was also clear. Cautiously, on tiptoe, holding his breath and listening intently, he crept upstairs.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  We went back towards Phil, who had been left in the middle of the pavement. I grinned at his fidelity, his cleanness, the plump relief of his … copper’s helmet. Rupert shook hands with both of us and made off, looking about like anything. When he was out of view Phil and I walked up the short flagged path to the front door of Staines’s house; it was the left-hand portion of a spacious 1830s villa, with a woody privet hedge (the kind with rooms inside it large enough for a child to hide in) round the garden, and curtains at the downstairs windows drawn in a degenerate way suggestive of late rising and afternoon TV. Staines came to the door and welcomed the two of us with the air of a man who has a good appetite. As I thought when I had met him before at Wicks’s, there was someone strangely passionate and slavish holed up inside his immaculate clothes—today an almost transparent suit of sour cream Indian silk. ‘I’m so glad Charles got you,’ he said. ‘Thank you,’ I replied. ‘Do you mean there have been others?’ ‘Oh, there was a frightfully old young man with bad breath who ran a printing press. He was around a lot last year, looking at everything. Happily Charles got rid of him, for being too snobbish.’ We went through into a drawing room with heavy theatrical curtains held back by tasselled cords, and floor-length windows open onto a terrace; a lawn and a huge weeping beech were visible beyond. A zealous sense of good taste pervaded the room: unread classics in the bookcase showed the uniform gilding of their spines, and the flowers could have graced a wedding of minor royalty. On a Sheraton side-table lay a vast, tooled portfolio; a crowd of framed photographs surmounted a mahogany writing-desk and gave the impression of a glamorous and sentimental past. Phil, trained to accommodate the whims of guests, seemed uncomfortable to be a guest himself. He hung back awkwardly, unable to get his hands in his pockets. ‘And what do you do?’ Staines asked him. ‘I’m a waiter.’ ‘Ooh.’ There was a peculiar silence. ‘Well, I’m sure you won’t have to wait very long,’ he said encouragingly, appraising Phil’s physique with an artful glance. ‘Are you a friend of Charles’s too?’ ‘Oh, no—I’m just a friend of Will’s.’ It became clear to me that Staines did not know why he had come, but was, as I had expected, glad that he had. ‘Quite so! Well, please, make yourself absolutely at home. I’m afraid there isn’t a pool—but you may like to sunbathe outside with Bobby’—he gestured tritely towards the garden—‘or whatever!’

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

  Whether solicitude belongs to prudence?Objection 1: It would seem that solicitude does not belong to prudence. For solicitude implies disquiet, wherefore Isidore says (Etym. x) that “a solicitous man is a restless man.” Now motion belongs chiefly to the appetitive power: wherefore solicitude does also. But prudence is not in the appetitive power, but in the reason, as stated above [2746](A[1]). Therefore solicitude does not belong to prudence. Objection 2: Further, the certainty of truth seems opposed to solicitude, wherefore it is related (1 Kings 9:20) that Samuel said to Saul: “As for the asses which were lost three days ago, be not solicitous, because they are found.” Now the certainty of truth belongs to prudence, since it is an intellectual virtue. Therefore solicitude is in opposition to prudence rather than belonging to it. Objection 3: Further, the Philosopher says (Ethic. iv, 3) the “magnanimous man is slow and leisurely.” Now slowness is contrary to solicitude. Since then prudence is not opposed to magnanimity, for “good is not opposed to good,” as stated in the Predicaments (viii) it would seem that solicitude does not belong to prudence. On the contrary, It is written (1 Pet. 4:7): “Be prudent . . . and watch in prayers.” But watchfulness is the same as solicitude. Therefore solicitude belongs to prudence. I answer that, According to Isidore (Etym. x), a man is said to be solicitous through being shrewd [solers] and alert [citus], in so far as a man through a certain shrewdness of mind is on the alert to do whatever has to be done. Now this belongs to prudence, whose chief act is a command about what has been already counselled and judged in matters of action. Hence the Philosopher says (Ethic. vi, 9) that “one should be quick in carrying out the counsel taken, but slow in taking counsel.” Hence it is that solicitude belongs properly to prudence, and for this reason Augustine says (De Morib. Eccl. xxiv) that “prudence keeps most careful watch and ward, lest by degrees we be deceived unawares by evil counsel.” Reply to Objection 1: Movement belongs to the appetitive power as to the principle of movement, in accordance however, with the direction and command of reason, wherein solicitude consists. Reply to Objection 2: According to the Philosopher (Ethic. i, 3), “equal certainty should not be sought in all things, but in each matter according to its proper mode.” And since the matter of prudence is the contingent singulars about which are human actions, the certainty of prudence cannot be so great as to be devoid of all solicitude.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  Here he stood and looked a little out of the window, moving his outstretched index finger, on which was a large signet ring, back and forth between his collar and his neck. He was a man of medium height, with thinning graying hair, a frizzy Jovian beard, and nearsighted bulging sapphire blue eyes that gleamed behind sharp spectacles. He was clad in an open frock coat of gray soft cloth, which he loved to touch gently in the waist area with his short-fingered and wrinkled hand. As with all teachers, except for the fine doctor Goldener, his trousers were too short and revealed the shafts of an extraordinarily wide pair of boots waxed to a glossy marble finish. Suddenly he turned his head away from the window, let out a small, friendly sigh while looking into the silent class, said "Yes, yes!" and smiled trustingly at several students. He was in a good mood, it was obvious. A movement of relief went through the room. So much happened, it all depended on whether Doctor Mantelsack was in a good mood or not, for one knew that he was unconscious of his moods and without them left the slightest self-criticism. He was of a most exceptional, boundlessly naive injustice, and his favor was sweet and fickle like luck. He always had a couple of favourites, two or three, whom he called "du" and by their first names, and who had it as good as in paradise. They could say almost what they liked and it was still right; and after the lesson Dr. Mantelsack chatted with them in the most humane way. One day, however, perhaps after the holidays, God alone knew why, one was overthrown, destroyed, abolished, rejected, and another was called by his first name... He used to mark the mistakes in the extratemporaries very lightly and delicately for these blessed ones, so that their work retained a clean aspect even when it was very defective. In other notebooks, however, he drove about with a broad and angry pen and flooded them with red, so that they made a forbidding and neglected impression. And since he did not count the mistakes, but gave the grades according to the amount of red ink, his favorites came out of it with great advantage. He did not think the least about this procedure, but found it completely in order and suspected nothing of partisanship. If anyone had had the sad courage to protest against this, they would have lost the prospect of ever being called first-names and on the first-name basis. And nobody gave up that hope... but gave the grades according to the amount of red ink, his favorites came out of it with great advantage. He did not think the least about this procedure, but found it completely in order and suspected nothing of partisanship.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  There was a perceptible conflict of claims on me as Charles, seated monumentally on the sofa, slower on the uptake, half turned to see me and then reached out his left hand for his unconventional and friendly greeting. ‘Ah, William. Let me see the worst. Let me see what they’ve done to my Boswell.’ He wore an elderly, Aschenbachish cream linen suit, not unstained. I went and sat beside him, and he took my hand again as he searched my face, appraised it as he had before. He offered no verdict, except ‘Well, at least I saw it before they spoilt it.’ ‘Is it really so bad?’ But he only patted my hand and then threw it away. ‘How’s the great work?’ he wanted to know. Staines, unprepared for Charles’s possessiveness, cut in here with instructions that we must drink. ‘And then there’s Aldo,’ he said, swivelling with extended hand and producing a small, curly-haired young man in graphic jeans from behind his armchair. As I walked round I saw that he had been looking through a pile of photographs on the floor. I shook his surprisingly large red hand, and he gave a privileged sort of smirk. ‘Aldo’s my bummaree,’ said Staines, ‘my John the Baptist.’ He had a nice, alert little body, and I realised he must be a part of the planned vulgarity. The martinis were extremely, almost disagreeably, strong on an empty stomach, and gave me a light head at once. We talked frothily for a while—Aldo, however, saying nothing at all, although Staines spoke for him in a supercilious way: ‘Oh Aldo doesn’t care for that, do you, Aldo?’ or, to suggest that under other circumstances the Italian might be a desirable conversationalist, ‘That’s what Aldo always says.’ Then Staines would touch some part of him and Bobby would nod and raise his eyebrows, as if to say there was no limit to what these queens would do. I was some way through my second drink when Staines asked us all to go through—not to the dining-room (‘We will have a special meal later’) but to the studio. I got an unpleasant feeling that we were all going to watch a sex film, and that with this company it would be most embarrassing and anaphrodisiac. Charles took my arm, more to connect me to himself than as a prop: he was clipping us together and hardly leant on me at all. There was an odd and rather revolting attitude of suppressed expectancy on everyone’s face, and I saw that I was the only one who did not know for sure what was going on.

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  They’re essentially an elaborate first round, out of which only the top two wrestlers in each weight class are advanced to the district tournaments, the events that will determine who gets to book passage to State. It’s a device set in place to reduce some of the overwhelming numbers of 1A schools before the district competition begins for all the classes in Iowa, a brutal thinning of the herd. This is, after all, a state full of small towns and small schools. So, while wrestlers at the higher school classifications are able to push hard and then enjoy one open, recuperative weekend before attempting to qualify for the state tourney, Dan LeClere and Ryan Morningstar, among others, must go through the conference, sectional, district and state tournaments on successive weekends. It’s a hell of a month’s work, a grand tradition of pain and elimination. And, this winter, Dan won’t be the only member of the North-Linn team trying to cover that distance. He is the undisputed headliner, but there are several other Lynx wrestlers who, even in a tough district, have a shot at finishing in the top two and moving on to State. The Predicament , an Iowa-based publication more or less considered the Bible of area wrestling, has at this point installed the Lynx as the No. 2 team in 1A overall, behind only powerhouse Don Bosco High of Gilbertville. Brad Bridgewater, never one to overreach, understands that he has got a roster with some real possibilities. There’s Ben Morrow, who despite being very young may have a shot at making some noise at 103 pounds. Ben is a ninth-grader on the upswing, and he has been wrestling well lately—and confidence, for a young wrestler, sometimes outstrips savvy and technique. Madison Sackett, from a wrestling family, has a shot at 112 pounds. Ryan Mulnix, also from a wrestling family, is healthy enough to go at 125 and has a high state ranking despite dealing with a balky shoulder that keeps popping out of joint, even after a surgery that was supposed to fix it. The thing finally has become so chronic that Ryan wears an interlocking series of Velcro-secured stretch wraps to hold the uncooperative appendage more or less in place. And then there is Ben Fisher, the most fragile good wrestler imaginable. By the time of the Midland tournament, Ben has already compiled a 24-1 record as a senior at 135 pounds, has achieved a state ranking, and is considered even by his tough-to-please coaches as a strong candidate to see Des Moines for the first time since going there as a freshman. But all of that assumes that he won’t self-destruct along the way—and that, really, stands as an open question. Ben is dark-haired, compact, muscled from top to bottom.

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

  I answer that, Solicitude denotes an earnest endeavor to obtain something. Now it is evident that the endeavor is more earnest when there is fear of failure, so that there is less solicitude when success is assured. Accordingly solicitude about temporal things may be unlawful in three ways. First on the part of the object of solicitude; that is, if we seek temporal things as an end. Hence Augustine says (De Operibus Monach. xxvi): “When Our Lord said: ‘Be not solicitous,’ etc . . . . He intended to forbid them either to make such things their end, or for the sake of these things to do whatever they were commanded to do in preaching the Gospel.” Secondly, solicitude about temporal things may be unlawful, through too much earnestness in endeavoring to obtain temporal things, the result being that a man is drawn away from spiritual things which ought to be the chief object of his search, wherefore it is written (Mat. 13:22) that “the care of this world . . . chokes up the word.” Thirdly, through over much fear, when, to wit, a man fears to lack necessary things if he do what he ought to do. Now our Lord gives three motives for laying aside this fear. First, on account of the yet greater favors bestowed by God on man, independently of his solicitude, viz. his body and soul (Mat. 6:26); secondly, on account of the care with which God watches over animals and plants without the assistance of man, according to the requirements of their nature; thirdly, because of Divine providence, through ignorance of which the gentiles are solicitous in seeking temporal goods before all others. Consequently He concludes that we should be solicitous most of all about spiritual goods, hoping that temporal goods also may be granted us according to our needs, if we do what we ought to do. Reply to Objection 1: Temporal goods are subjected to man that he may use them according to his needs, not that he may place his end in them and be over solicitous about them. Reply to Objection 2: The solicitude of a man who gains his bread by bodily labor is not superfluous but proportionate; hence Jerome says on Mat. 6:31, “Be not solicitous,” that “labor is necessary, but solicitude must be banished,” namely superfluous solicitude which unsettles the mind. Reply to Objection 3: In the works of mercy solicitude about temporal things is directed to charity as its end, wherefore it is not unlawful, unless it be superfluous.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  There were only a few more stops before we entered Gotse Delchev and turned onto residential streets, and since I was unfamiliar with the route now I moved to be near the door, where I leaned out to read the name of each station that we passed. But I needn’t have worried; the polyclinic had its own stop and several people got off there, leaving the bus almost empty as we stepped down into the snow. It was a broad gray concrete structure of four or five stories, much larger than the clinic near the school, nearly a hospital. The steps leading up to the entrance were perilous, packed with ice, as was the unusable wheelchair ramp to my left. I climbed up carefully, planting both feet on a single stair before chancing another, feeling how easily I could lose my footing, feeling elderly, and wondering how the genuinely infirm could possibly manage. The ground floor of the building was a large, echoing space that seemed unfinished; the floors were untreated, little more than concrete, the walls coated in bare plaster. There was no reception or information desk, only a large notice board with the departments organized by floor, the doctors’ names on long plastic strips that could be taken out and replaced. I had the page with the name of the department I needed, but the woman from the clinic had written in a quick cursive hand I couldn’t quite make out. Some of the words on the board were familiar, ophthalmology, gynecology, but the transliterations were awkward, I had to sound them all out, and there were several I couldn’t make any sense of at all. As I looked around in confusion, I saw a woman in a white coat coming down the large central stairs, holding a plastic cup of coffee and clearly on her way out for a break, though the day had hardly begun. Excuse me, I said, using the politest form, proshtavaite , forgive me, as I held my page out to her, can you help me find this? She took it from me, and then her eyes flicked up once, from the paper to my face, almost without expression. She pointed me toward a far corner, where there was a sign that read Dermatologiya i Venerologiya . I recognized the first word, but the second took me a moment; we say venereal disease in English, of course, but I had never heard of a venereology department, and I wondered whether the word was used in the States. By its Latin roots it should have meant the study of love, and I wondered too how often that made it the right word for the people who came here, and whether it was the right word for my own predicament. I pulled open the door and stepped into a long bare hallway of offices, lined at intervals with benches bolted to the walls.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  Have you waited so long...” "Not another day, my dear! Yes, let's say eight days, but not an hour longer! Does anyone still rely on...” "No name, Kesselmeyer!" “No name... fine. Does anyone still rely on your laudable Herr Schw...” “No designation...! Almighty God, don't be silly!' 'Fine, no designation! Does anyone still rely on the conscious company that your credit stands and falls with, dear? How much did she lose in the bankruptcy in Bremen? Fifty thousand? seventy thousand? hundred thousand? Even more? The sparrows on the roofs know that she was involved, enormously involved... It's a matter of mood. Yesterday was... nice, no name! Yesterday the company you knew was good and unconsciously protected you completely from distress... Today it's dull, and B. Grünlich is duller-most dull...isn't that clear? Don't you notice? You're the first to feel such fluctuations... How are you met? How are you looking at? Bock and Goudstikker are probably extremely courteous and trusting? How is the credit bank behaving?” "She's prolonging." »Ah? are you lying? I know she kicked you yesterday? A most, most encouraging kick?... Now look!... But don't be ashamed. It is of course in your best interest to make me believe that the others are still calm and secure ... Well – hey, my dear! Write to the consul. I'll wait a week." "A down payment, Kesselmeyer!" »Deduction amount back and forth! Advance payments can be shot in order to convince oneself of someone's ability to pay! Do I feel the need to experiment with this ? I know wonderfully well how it is with your ability to pay! Ha-ahah ... I find the deduction amount highly, highly amusing ..." “Moderate your voice, Kesselmeyer! Don't keep laughing like that goddamn it! My position is so grave...yes, I confess it is grave; but I have so many deals in the balance... Anything may turn out well. Look, look, roll over and I'll sign you 20 percent..." 'Nothing there, nothing there... highly ridiculous, my dear! Hey, I'm a timely seller! They offered me 8 percent and I extended. They offered me 12 and 16 percent, and I renewed each time. Now you could offer me 40, and I wouldn't think of prolongation, not even think of it, my dear!... Ever since the Westfahl brothers fell flat on their faces in Bremen, everyone is trying for the moment to unwind their interests from the company in question and to secure themselves... As I said, I'm for timely sale. I kept your signatures as long as Johann Buddenbrook was no doubt good... meanwhile I could capitalize on the arrears of interest and increase your percentage! But you only keep a thing for so long "Kesselmeyer, you are shameless!" "A-aha, I find shameless most amusing!... What do you want, anyway? You'll have to contact your father-in-law anyway! The credit bank is raging, and besides, you're not exactly spotless..." »No, Kesselmeyer...

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  Ben’s family lived in Nebraska until 1997, when it moved first to Marion and then finally out to the country, about fifteen minutes beyond Troy Mills. In Nebraska, he says, they wrestle, and they’re not bad at it at all, and pretty much nobody ever follows along, and that’s that. But Iowa is different. “In Iowa, if you’re on the football team, you’ll get some attention for sure,” Ben says. “But if you’re a wrestler and you go to the State Tournament, the whole town will go there to follow you. That’s the way they treat it. They all want to be there.” So Ben is out there, working past the alternating senses of thrill and concern; and he is taking his risks being there and asking his body to contort into shapes that only the most nimble of human beings could even ponder. Even then, it doesn’t always look quite possible. And some days Ben feels good at it, and some days Ben feels like the most worthless fool to ever pull on a singlet. Some days the doubt crushes him, and you can see him backing off in the middle of a match. Some days he rolls through the competition and looks like he’ll never lose again. “When he wrestles the way he can,” says his father, Mike, “he can be very hard to beat.” But you can’t depend on that. It’s a provisional life in wrestling for Ben Fisher. With Nick still injured, Dan will move up and wrestle at 145 pounds in Wyoming. If you’re a knucklehead about the sport—if, in other words, you are me—then you look at the brackets and see that, theoretically at least, Dan could have moved up one more weight class to 152 and wrestled in this tournament against Morningstar, a match that would’ve had the mat community clucking for weeks. LeClere versus Morningstar is the stuff of Iowa wrestling dreams, just as Borschel versus Morningstar was the most talked-about match of 2004. Had Dan shifted up one more weight class, he could have had that shot. That’s the knucklehead train of thought, though. In reality, doing so would knock Tyler Burkle out of his spot at 152, and that makes no sense for North-Linn as a team. Together, Dan, Nick and Tyler—when all are healthy and all are wrestling—make for one hell of a tough middle of the order for Bridgewater. In fact, Brad can go from Ben Fisher to Dan to Nick to Tyler in four successive weight classes, with Mulnix just two weights below Ben at 125 pounds, and there aren’t many schools who can boast of five potential State entrants in such short succession. But that presumes the health and vitality of each wrestler. Dan is by now a given. Burkle has been good all year. Ben’s hanging in there.

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  It may save his life this week. By Thursday evening, the storylines are falling into place. Dan and Jay have found their way into the newspapers, their quest formally announced to the masses, and Dan has responded by winning his first match handily. Under the 1A system, he will wrestle twice on Friday and need those two wins—one earlier in the day, one later—to vault him into the finals. Jay, meanwhile, wrestles his second match of the tournament Thursday evening against Robbie Kramer, the Cedar Rapids Prairie kid whom Jay has dominated at points earlier in the season. This time, though, Kramer takes a different tack entirely. Standing upright, refusing to lean too far in and get yanked into a low tussle, the Prairie wrestler stays a pace away from Jay and spends his time trying to anger and annoy Jay to the point that Jay might make a mistake based on emotion. When the two boys get close enough to one another to reach in, Kramer uses the proximity to slap the sides of Jay’s headgear with his heavy hands, jerking Jay’s head around in the process. The rest of the time, he uses his strength to push away Jay’s arm every time Jay tries to reach under Kramer’s midsection and find a hold on the side. It’s an interesting strategy, coming on a day in which Jay still feels horrible and might be tempted to try and shortcut his way through a match. Jay absorbs the blows and keeps on coming, but at a low hum. He is working with a cautious referee who disallows one of Jay’s signature moves, in which he wrenches his opponent’s hand behind his back in an effort to get him turned over and ready to pin. The official blows his whistle and re-sets the wrestlers, saying Jay’s move is too close to being a physically dangerous one, just as Jay is about to apply it and try to finish off Kramer. But it might not matter anyway; Jay looks, sounds and wrestles as though trapped in a fog. The weight on his chest simply will not lift. He hacks, heaves, blows out his nostrils, spits some more; and though he is still dangerous enough to score points, he cannot finish. From his corner, Doug Streicher is again riding Jay verbally, trying as he did on Wednesday to help his wrestler snap back into form. But, just as he did the day before, Jay already has come to understand that he is in a survival mode. “Cut him! Cut him!” Doug screams, meaning he wants Jay to turn Kramer loose so that he can take him down again and pile up extra points for the Linn-Mar team. But Jay already has made his decision: conserve and move on. He clings to Kramer down the stretch, again monitoring the clock. “This is fun,” he deadpans during one break.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  Hanno Buddenbrook sat leaning back and slumped and stared at the Book of Job with a slack mouth and swimming, hot eyes, the lines and letters of which blurred into a blackish swarm. Sometimes, when he remembered the motif of the Grail or the walk to the Minster, he slowly lowered his eyelids and felt an inward sob. And his heart prayed that it might be possible that this safe and peaceful morning hour would never come to an end. propped his head on his aristocratic and not entirely clean hand. Hanno Buddenbrook sat leaning back and slumped and stared at the Book of Job with a slack mouth and swimming, hot eyes, the lines and letters of which blurred into a blackish swarm. Sometimes, when he remembered the motif of the Grail or the walk to the Minster, he slowly lowered his eyelids and felt an inward sob. And his heart prayed that it might be possible that this safe and peaceful morning hour would never come to an end. when he remembered the motif of the Grail or the walk to the minster, he slowly lowered his eyelids and felt an inward sob. And his heart prayed that it might be possible that this safe and peaceful morning hour would never come to an end. when he remembered the motif of the Grail or the walk to the minster, he slowly lowered his eyelids and felt an inward sob. And his heart prayed that it might be possible that this safe and peaceful morning hour would never come to an end. And yet it came, as was the order of things, and the shrill wailing sound of the custodian's bell, which rang and echoed through the corridors, roused the twenty-five brains from their warm slumbers. "So far!" said Herr Ballerstedt and asked for the class register to certify with his signature that he was in charge of this hour of office. Hanno Buddenbrook closed his Bible and stretched, trembling and yawning nervously; but when he lowered his arms and tensed his limbs, he had to breathe quickly and laboriously in order to bring his heart, which for a moment weak and faltering, stopped working, a little. Now came the Latin ... He threw a sideways glance at Kai for help, who didn't seem to have noticed the end of the lesson and was still absorbed in his private reading, pulled the Ovid bound in marbled cardboard out of his portfolio and opened the verses, to be memorized for today... No, there was no hope, those black lines lined up, penciled, dead straight and numbered in fives, staring at him so hopelessly dark and unknown, to familiarize yourself a little. He could scarcely understand their meaning, let alone recite one of them off the top of his head. And he did not unravel a single sentence of those who followed suit and who had to be prepared for today.