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 Querelle (1953)

  the shop fronts were lit up. The Rue de Siam glimmered faintly. Gil walked on for a while, on the almost deserted Cours Dajot. He had not decided anything, not yet. He had no very clear idea of what would be happening an hour later, but a feeling of anguish darkened his entire vision of the world. He 104 I JEAN GENET was walking in a universe where the forms were still larval. To rise to that other, luminous world, where one dared to assume the function of thinking, one would, or so it seemed, have to wield a dagger. Parenthetically, and by your leave : if murder with an implement that is· sharp, pointed, or simply heavy enough, seems to give the murderer a measure of solace by bursting a kind of murky wineskin in which he had felt himself imprisoned, poison, on the other hand, cannot provide the same deliverance. Gil was choking. The fog, in conferring invisibility on him, gave him some comfort, but it was not capable of isolating him from the day before nor, certainly not, from the day to come. Given some powers of imagination Gil would have been able to rid himself of what had happened, but as the nature of his resenbnent was arid, . it deprived him of that possibility. The next day, and the days after the next_ day, he was doomed to live on in shame . .,Why the hell didn't I bust his head back then." Furiously he repeated this phrase that wasn't a question in any sense. He saw Thea's mean and sarcastic face. In his pockets, his fists clenched, his fingernails biting into the palms. As he was unable to question himself, let alone giye answers, he could only pursue his desolate line of thought so thoroughly that when he reached the balustrade in the emptiest comer of the square his spirit had reached down to rock-bottom humiliation. He turned his head toward the sea; in a loud voice, but choking. it back, he uttered a raucous cry: (4Aarrghh !" It was a relief, for a few seconds. After two strides, his dark pain was upon him again. HWhy oh why didn't I sock him in the teeth, that dirty sonofabitch? The others, the hell with them . . Let 'em think what they please, fuck'em. But him, I should of . . ." When Gil had first arrived in the yards, Thea had demonstrated a kind of paternal comradeship. Little by little, accepting a drink now and then, the young man came to accept the 105 I QUERELLE mason's authority. Not consciously : simply submitting to the fact that Thea did order, and did pay, for those rounds. Querelle was able to treat his officer with a fair amount of insolence, merely because they did not speak the same language.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  This boy was more often than anyone else a check upon their freedom. When he was present, both Vronsky and Anna did not merely avoid speaking of anything that they could not have repeated before everyone; they did not even allow themselves to refer by hints to anything the boy did not understand. They had made no agreement about this, it had settled itself. They would have felt it wounding themselves to deceive the child. In his presence they talked like acquaintances. But in spite of this caution, Vronsky often saw the child’s intent, bewildered glance fixed upon him, and a strange shyness, uncertainty, at one time friendliness, at another, coldness and reserve, in the boy’s manner to him; as though the child felt that between this man and his mother there existed some important bond, the significance of which he could not understand. As a fact, the boy did feel that he could not understand this relation, and he tried painfully, and was not able to make clear to himself what feeling he ought to have for this man. With a child’s keen instinct for every manifestation of feeling, he saw distinctly that his father, his governess, his nurse,—all did not merely dislike Vronsky, but looked on him with horror and aversion, though they never said anything about him, while his mother looked on him as her greatest friend. “What does it mean? Who is he? How ought I to love him? If I don’t know, it’s my fault; either I’m stupid or a naughty boy,” thought the child. And this was what caused his dubious, inquiring, sometimes hostile, expression, and the shyness and uncertainty which Vronsky found so irksome. This child’s presence always and infallibly called up in Vronsky that strange feeling of inexplicable loathing which he had experienced of late. This child’s presence called up both in Vronsky and in Anna a feeling akin to the feeling of a sailor who sees by the compass that the direction in which he is swiftly moving is far from the right one, but that to arrest his motion is not in his power, that every instant is carrying him further and further away, and that to admit to himself his deviation from the right direction is the same as admitting his certain ruin. This child, with his innocent outlook upon life, was the compass that showed them the point to which they had departed from what they knew, but did not want to know.

• From Querelle (1953)

  Nevertheless, as soon as Roger vanished, he became for Querelle a "mysterious link," more precious than he had realized until then. It was his absence that gave the boy such a rare quality and sudden importance. Querelle smiled, but could not help being worried by the fact that the boy was the go-between of two murderers, and, it seemed, a quick and lively one. He was now running along the imaginary connecting line whose very spirit he was, and he could choose to extend or shorten it, at his pleasure. Roger was, in fact, walking briskly. His separation from Querelle made him feel more solemn than before, because he knew that he was bringing Gil the essence of Querelle, in other words that in Querelle which he vaguely understood to be the motive force that propelled Querelle in Gil's direction. He knew that in him, a mere boy in short pants whose cuffs had been turned up over the solid thighs, now was vested all the pomp and circumstance due to ambassadors-and seeing the child's serious demeanor one could well understand why such delegates are always more heavily decorated than their masters. On his frail person, laden down .with a thousand ceremonial chains, converged Gil's almost haggard attention, as he sat there in his lair, and Querelle's patience, as he stood waiting by the gateway to the domain. Querelle took out a cigarette and lit it, then stuck both his hands back in the 161 I QUERELLE pockets of his pcacoat. He wasn't thinking at all. Nothing stirred in his imagination. His consciousness was attentive, soft and shapeless, though still a little troubled by the sudden importance of the boy he was waiting for. ''It's me. Roger." Quite close to him Gil's voice came in a whisper: "Is he beret' "Yes. I told him to wait for me. You want me to go and get him?" Sounding somewhat tense, Gil replied : "Yup. Bring him here. Get going." \Vhen Querelle arrived in front of the den, Roger prcr claimed, in a loud and clear voice: "This is it, we're here. Gil, we're here." The boy was overwhelmed by misery at the sudden feeling that his life was coming to an end with those very words. He felt himself shrinking, losing his raison d' etre. All the treasures with which he had been entrusted for a couple of minutes were now melting away, very quickly. He fully knew, now, the vanity of mankind, and how it melteth away like wax. He had labored faithfully to bring about a meeting that would abolish him. His whole life had been involved in this giant task of ten minutes' duration, and now his glory dimmed, almost disappeared, taking with it the high proud sense of joy that had made him swell up: to a size great enough to accommodate Querelle, whom he had described, whose words he had reported, and Gil, whom he had conveyed to Querelle. "Here, brought you some ciggies."

• From Querelle (1953)

  There's no way one could be just a sailor; that, that's a function, for others to believe in; but if you want to be somebody, you have to be what does not meet the eye." It was the same gratitude Gilbert Turko felt when he thought of his hemor- 137 I QUERELLE rhoids. \Vhen Querelle left one of the gardens of Alexandria, it was too late to throw the broken.aff branches into the street and then nervously cower behind some shrub, waiting for the favorable moment to vault across the garden wall. Where was there one could throw them, at all? Any beggar hunkered down in the dust, any Arab street kid would certainly notice a French sailor engaged in the process of getting rid of a whole load of tangerines still on the branch . It appeared best to hide them on his person . Querelle wanted to avoid any bizarre gesture that would ca11 attention to him, and thus he moved in plain view from garden to ship, in uninterrupted motion, simply slipping those branches into the neck opening of his sailor's jacket, letting some leaves and fruit stick out, turning h is chest, in honor of his star, into a living repository for them. But back on board he sensed the danger he was still running, would be running for quite a while, although it did not have the insistent quality of fear following a true crime : one foot sti11 on the gangway, the other suspended in air, he addressed a bewitching smile to the deity of his secret night. In his pants pocket he carried the necklace of gold coins and the two h2nds of Fatmah he had stolen in the villa of that tangerine garden. The gold lent him weight, terrestrial security. When he had distributed the foliage and the fruit to the other crewmen, languorous with hea t and boredom, and feeling suddenly pure, he experienced such a powerful sense of his own limpidity, in fact, that he had to watch hin1sel f every second while walking along the deck to his quarters, so as not to pull out the stolen treasures from his pocket in plain view of everybody. The same feeling of lightheartedness, confounding his single-minded belief in his star and his certainty of being a lost man, had uplifted him (his heart, light, like a balloon ) during h is walk on the road along the city ramparts \�hen-flashing into his mind with piercing clarity-a certain fact had become clear to him : the police had discovered a cigarette lighter in the vicinity of the murdered 138 I JEAN GENET

• From Querelle (1953)

  He laughed, but this time with some embarrassment. He felt nervous, what with the copper's paw on his shoulder and all. Querelle still did not understand that Mario had a crush on him, but his emotions were stirred by those questions, precise as those in an interrogation, by their urgency, by the insinuating tone of voice, by the method that seemed to be pushing for a confession, never mind what it would be. Querelle was aware of the strangeness of the surroundings and of the density of fog and night, further uniting the cop and his victim, together in this solitude that seemed to create a feeling of complicity. "I can't stand talking about it too much, it gives me a hardon." "Wow! No kidding." Querelle realized that this exclamation (as well as his previous admission that "it didn't disgust him" ) was only one more move in an entire game that would inevitably lead to an act he had begun tq suspect and that would put an end to his sense of freedom. He did not regret that he had agreed to head 204 I JEAN GENET this narrow path, but he was amazed at his own cunning, in going along with it, yet being so successful in concealing his own secret desire. At least he felt a slight sense of shame at performing with a real be-man, without recourse to the pretext of superior strength, an act which he might have dared to try out with, or on, a pederast without letting himself down, or with any manbut then only with the aid of some irresistible pretext. (4So you don't believe me?" Now Querelle could have simply replied ''Yes, I do," thus stopping the game right there. He smiled : (4Horseshit! Tell that to the Marines." ''I swear, it's true." "You're nuts. I don't believe you. It's too cold." "Why don't you see for yourself. Put your hand there." "No . . . I'm telling you, no. You don't even have one, it must've frozen off." They had stopped again. They looked at each other, smiling, defying their smiles. Mario raised his eyebrows in an exaggerated fashion, wrinkling his forehead, attempting the expression of a young boy totally astonished by the fact of having an erection at such an hour, in such a spot, and for so little reason. (4T h ouc 't 1 , '11 you see . . " . Querelle did not move. By slowly relaxing his smile, which made his upper lip tremble, he caused it to appear more subtle, more mocking than before. "No, I won't. I'm telling you, it's impossible." Querelle stretched out his hand, extended his fingers and hesitantly touched Mario's crotch, but only the material of his trousers. (That hesitation made both of them shiver with anticipation. )

• From Querelle (1953)

  79 I QUERELLE police force whose conduct must always be quite beyond re proach. (Those propositions appear contradictory. We shall see how that contradiction resolves itself in actuality.) Up to their necks in work we refuse even to admit, the police live under a curse, particularly the plainclothes men, who, when seen in the middle of (and protected by) the dark blue uniforms of the straight coppers, appear like thin-skinned, translucent lice, small fragile things easily crushed with a fingernail, whose very bodies have become blue from feeding off that other, the dark blue. That curse makes them immerse themselves in their efforts with a vengeance. Whenever the occasion arises, they then bring up the notion of pederasty-in itself, and fortunately, a mystery they are unable to unravel. The inspectors had a vague feeling that the murder of that sailor over by the ramparts was not quite run-of-the-mill: what they should have found there was some "sugar daddy," assassinated, abandoned on the grass, picked clean of his money and valuables. Instead of which they had found the body of the most likely type of suspect, with his money in his pockets. No doubt this anomaly worried them a little, and interfered with the progress of their ruminations, but it did not really bother them overmuch. Mario had not been given any specific orders to participate in the investigation of this case. Thus, at first, he paid only cursory attention to it, being more preoccupied with the danger he was in after Tony's discharge. Had he taken time to interest himself in the case, he would have been no more able than anyone else to explain it in terms of homosexual goings-on. Indeed, neither Mario nor any of the heroes of this book (excepting Lieutenant Seblon, bu t then Seblon is not in the book) is a pederast; for Mario, those people were of hvo kinds-those who wanted to get laid and paid for it and were known as sugar daddies, and, well, the others who catered to them. But then, quite suddenly, Mario became engrossed in the case. He felt a keen desire to unravel the plot, which he imagined carefully and tightly organized and

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  This sort of thinking isn’t limited to Silicon Valley. A BBC report from September 2003 reported, “Well-off is the new poor.” Dr. Clive Hamilton, a visiting scholar at Cambridge University, set out to study the “suffering rich” and found that four of every ten people earning over £50,000 (roughly $80,000 at the time) felt “deprived.” Hamilton concluded, “The real concerns of yesterday’s poor have become the imagined concerns of today’s rich.” Another recent survey in the United States found that 45 percent of those with a net worth (excluding their home) over $1 million were worried about running out of money before they died. Over one-third of those with more than $5 million had the same concern.18 “Affluenza” (a.k.a. luxury fever) is not an eternal affliction of the human animal, as some would have us believe. It is an effect of wealth disparities that arose with agriculture. Still, even in modern societies, we sometimes find echoes of the ancient egalitarianism of our ancestors. In the early 1960s, a physician named Stewart Wolf heard about a town of Italian immigrants and their descendants in northeast Pennsylvania where heart disease was practically unknown. Wolf decided to take a closer look at the town, Roseto. He found that almost no one under age fifty-five showed symptoms of heart disease. Men over sixty-five suffered about half the number of heart problems expected of average Americans. The overall death rate in Roseto was about one-third below national averages. After conducting research that carefully excluded factors such as exercise, diet, and regional variables like pollution levels, Wolf and sociologist John Bruhn concluded that the major factor keeping folks in Roseto healthier longer was the nature of the community itself. They noted that most households held three generations, that older folks commanded great respect, and that the community disdained any display of wealth, showing a “fear of ostentation derived from an ancient belief among Italian villagers relating to maloccio (the evil eye). Children,” Wolf wrote, “were taught that any display of wealth or superiority over a neighbor would bring bad luck.” Noting that Roseto’s egalitarian social bonds were already breaking down in the mid-1960s, Wolf and Bruhn predicted that within a generation, the town’s mortality rates would start to shift upward. In follow-up studies they conducted 25 years later, they reported, “The most striking social change was a widespread rejection of a long standing taboo against ostentation,” and that “sharing, once typical of Roseto, had given way to competition.” Rates of both heart disease and stroke had doubled in a generation.19

• From Querelle (1953)

  "I'd like that, sir . . . It's just that I wouldn't be getting any hardship money, then." It was a straightfonvard reservation, added on to a straightfonvard acceptance of the offer. Without knowing that it was love that had inspired them, Querelle was now witnessing, in his mind's eye, the sudden and simultaneous transformation of all potential and actual punishments meted out by the Lieutenant : he saw them lose their primary meaning and take on the nature of "encounters," which, and that for quite some time, were pointing toward a union, an understanding between the two men. They held memories in common. Their relationship, as from that day, had its own past history. "But why not? I'll take care of that. Don't you worry, you won't stand to lose any pay." The Lieutenant cherished his belief that he had never revealed his love one little bit, while hoping (at the same time) that he had made it abundantly clear. As soon as the picture became comprehensible to Querelle-the following day, in fact, when he found, in a place where logically it should never have been, in an old croc-skin briefcase, his own handkerchiefstained with axle grease and further starched with some other fluid-he found such games of hide and seek most amusing, 84 I JEAN GENET being able to see through them perfectly well. And that day, when he emerged from the coal bunkers, he felt certain that his surprisingly black face, looking more massive than usual under its light coating of coal dust, would appear beautiful enough for the Lieutenant to lose his cool. Perhaps he would even have 41a confession to make"? ''Well, we'll see. Maybe he hasn't even heard . . . " Within his body, his anxiety was gi�ing rise to a most exquisite sensation. Querelle called his star: his smile. And the star appeared. Querelle kept on moving forward, planting his wide feet firmly on the deck. He gave a slight roll to his hips, narrow as they were!-to provide a little action there in the midriff region, where an inch of his white underpants showed above the wide, plaited leather belt, buckled at the back. He had of course registered, and not without spite, that the Lieutenant's gaze often dwelt on that region of his physique, and he had a natural awareness of his own seduc�ive points. He thought of them in a serious manner, sometimes with a smile, that habitual, sad smile of his. He also swung his shoulders a little, but the motion, like that of his hips and his arms, was more discreet than usual, closer to himself, more internalized, one might say. He was hugging himself: or one might say, he was playing at being huggable. As he approached the Lieutenant's cabin he was hoping that the officer would have noticed the abortive theft of his watch. He longed to be taken up on that. "I'll handle it. I'll sock him in the 1nouth . . ."

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  The draft took the unlucky when college deferments ran out; enlistment took those who were patriotic or rebellious. By 1973 there were thirty-two names on the city’s plaque. 157 Because new names were added to the plaque each year, every Memorial Day between 1967 and 1973 included unveiling the plaque and reading all the names again. By 1977, when I began to work for the city, the reason for unveiling the plaque and reading the names was forgotten. There were no new names to add. Each Memorial Day, city council members took down a black drape that covered the Vietnam plaque and read the names. The audience of veterans and their wives had seen the city council members do the same for years. [image "Image" file=Image00012.jpg] 158 The Vietnam plaque, with its names attached by aluminum rivets, was next to a playground. Sometimes, someone would pry a name off. City council members, reading the names aloud during Memorial Day ceremonies, would notice the gap. Later, the city’s purchasing office would order a replacement. The list of names became increasingly inaccurate. One name was missing for years. Another name was repeated. When council members read that name a second time on Memorial Day, they did not ask why one man was named twice. Finally in 1982, I had the plaque taken down and replaced with one cast in solid bronze. The thirty-two names would not change. One name is now permanently misspelled; another name is still missing. City council members read them that way on Memorial Day. 159 Of those who have received the Medal of Honor since 1941, only 194 men are still living. Mr. C is not one of them. He never received the Medal of Honor. He wears one, however, at meetings of the veterans’ organizations to which he belongs. He says he earned the Medal of Honor on his seventeenth birthday—on March 18, 1945—aboard the carrier Franklin . He says he has a book with the whole story in it, which he cannot find among the stacks of war memorabilia that fill his house. 160 My job at city hall occasionally involves listening to the complaints of residents. The street light across from their house is burned out, or the city’s parkway tree needs to be trimmed. Before they complain, callers often begin by telling me how long they have lived here. 161 Some residents tell me the year they moved into their house because they think the city should take better care of original property owners. Some tell me how long they have lived here because they think the city owes them something for persistence. Most callers tell me out of habit. 162 A woman calls repeatedly about her Christmas tree. The city’s trash hauler picks up the discarded trees. If a tree is taller than four feet, it must be cut in half before the trash hauler will pick it up. The woman’s tree is over four feet.

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  The men use a handful of lug nuts threaded on a cord to throw the free end of the coaxial cable from yard to yard. Perhaps they did hit Mrs. A’s roof. She comes before the members of the city’s cable television commission and demands restitution. The commissioners agree, and the company pays. 40 Mr. H has covered his yard, a few blocks over from mine, with junk. There may be as many as ten tons or as few as six. The city cannot tell. The mix of dead machinery and used building supplies changes over time. City inspectors routinely go over to look. Mr. H’s front and back yards teem with equipment that no longer works, with his own castoffs and with other people’s. Mr. H protests that he needs all of it. He has construction plans. He is working on a room addition. He is an advocate of recycling. He also claims that people bring him their junk against his will. Can he help it if they leave their broken washers and used lumber on his lawn? Mr. H operates construction equipment during the day. He drives a pickup truck late at night. The tons of junk gather without effort. The lonely debris of the city finds a home at Mr. H’s house. He starts to call himself a landscape consultant. 41 After a while, Mr. H’s neighbors complain. They have hesitated years before they call city hall. The neighbors say they don’t want to “make trouble.” They see a ripple on the surface of their neighborhood, a defection from predictability. On their behalf, the city’s building department spends the next ten years looking into Mr. H’s yard. Assistant planners, code enforcement officers, and department directors visit. They take photographs and arrange meetings with Mr. H and, later, with his wife and other members of his family. Mr. H is counseled. He is offered help. He is given options. He is warned that he has broken several laws. In the municipal code book in the city clerk’s office are fifteen pages of ordinances about property maintenance, nuisance abatement, clearing sidewalks, and covering garbage cans. The city with its codes cannot make Mr. H a good citizen. 42 In the suburbs, a manageable life depends on a compact among neighbors. The unspoken agreement is an honest hypocrisy. Pages of ordinances in the municipal code are never enforced. They are, in fact, unenforceable. You do not need a law to keep your neighbor from walling his yard with used refrigerators. When he does, what law would have restrained him? 43 This suburb was thrown up on plowed-under bean fields beginning in early 1950. No theorist or urban planner had the experience then to gauge how thirty thousand former GIs and their wives would take to frame and stucco houses on small, rectangular lots next to hog farms and dairies. In Long Beach, some businessmen assumed the result would be a slum. Others wondered if it would be a ghost town.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  He talked and looked at her laughing eyes, which frightened him now with their impenetrable look, and, as he talked, he felt all the uselessness and idleness of his words. “You’re always like that,” she answered, as though completely misapprehending him, and of all he had said only taking in the last phrase. “One time you don’t like my being dull, and another time you don’t like my being lively. I wasn’t dull. Does that offend you?” Alexey Alexandrovitch shivered, and bent his hands to make the joints crack. “Oh, please, don’t do that, I do so dislike it,” she said. “Anna, is this you?” said Alexey Alexandrovitch, quietly making an effort over himself, and restraining the motion of his fingers. “But what is it all about?” she said, with such genuine and droll wonder. “What do you want of me?” Alexey Alexandrovitch paused, and rubbed his forehead and his eyes. He saw that instead of doing as he had intended—that is to say, warning his wife against a mistake in the eyes of the world—he had unconsciously become agitated over what was the affair of her conscience, and was struggling against the barrier he fancied between them. “This is what I meant to say to you,” he went on coldly and composedly, “and I beg you to listen to it. I consider jealousy, as you know, a humiliating and degrading feeling, and I shall never allow myself to be influenced by it; but there are certain rules of decorum which cannot be disregarded with impunity. This evening it was not I observed it, but judging by the impression made on the company, everyone observed that your conduct and deportment were not altogether what could be desired.” “I positively don’t understand,” said Anna, shrugging her shoulders—“He doesn’t care,” she thought. “But other people noticed it, and that’s what upsets him.”—“You’re not well, Alexey Alexandrovitch,” she added, and she got up, and would have gone towards the door; but he moved forward as though he would stop her. His face was ugly and forbidding, as Anna had never seen him. She stopped, and bending her head back and on one side, began with her rapid hand taking out her hairpins. “Well, I’m listening to what’s to come,” she said, calmly and ironically; “and indeed I listen with interest, for I should like to understand what’s the matter.” She spoke, and marveled at the confident, calm, and natural tone in which she was speaking, and the choice of the words she used.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  The horses who had run in the last race were being led home, steaming and exhausted, by the stable-boys, and one after another the fresh horses for the coming race made their appearance, for the most part English racers, wearing horsecloths, and looking with their drawn-up bellies like strange, huge birds. On the right was led in Frou-Frou, lean and beautiful, lifting up her elastic, rather long pasterns, as though moved by springs. Not far from her they were taking the rug off the lop-eared Gladiator. The strong, exquisite, perfectly correct lines of the stallion, with his superb hind-quarters and excessively short pasterns almost over his hoofs, attracted Vronsky’s attention in spite of himself. He would have gone up to his mare, but he was again detained by an acquaintance. “Oh, there’s Karenin!” said the acquaintance with whom he was chatting. “He’s looking for his wife, and she’s in the middle of the pavilion. Didn’t you see her?” “No,” answered Vronsky, and without even glancing round towards the pavilion where his friend was pointing out Madame Karenina, he went up to his mare. Vronsky had not had time to look at the saddle, about which he had to give some direction, when the competitors were summoned to the pavilion to receive their numbers and places in the row at starting. Seventeen officers, looking serious and severe, many with pale faces, met together in the pavilion and drew the numbers. Vronsky drew the number seven. The cry was heard: “Mount!” Feeling that with the others riding in the race, he was the center upon which all eyes were fastened, Vronsky walked up to his mare in that state of nervous tension in which he usually became deliberate and composed in his movements. Cord, in honor of the races, had put on his best clothes, a black coat buttoned up, a stiffly starched collar, which propped up his cheeks, a round black hat, and top boots. He was calm and dignified as ever, and was with his own hands holding Frou-Frou by both reins, standing straight in front of her. Frou-Frou was still trembling as though in a fever. Her eye, full of fire, glanced sideways at Vronsky. Vronsky slipped his finger under the saddle-girth. The mare glanced aslant at him, drew up her lip, and twitched her ear. The Englishman puckered up his lips, intending to indicate a smile that anyone should verify his saddling. “Get up; you won’t feel so excited.”

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  My view is that some major illnesses considered distinct and “mental” are all rooted in a chronically unbalanced body budget and unbridled inflammation. We categorize and name them as different disorders, based on context, much like we categorize and name the same bodily changes as different emotions. If I’m correct, then questions like, “Why do anxiety and depression frequently co-occur?” are no longer mysteries because, like emotions, these illnesses do not have firm boundaries in nature. I present more justification for this view as we discuss the details of stress, pain, depression, and anxiety. … Let’s begin with stress. You might think that stress is something that happens to you, like when you try to juggle five tasks at once, or your boss tells you that tomorrow’s work was due yesterday, or you lose a loved one. But stress doesn’t come from the outside world. You construct it. Some stress is positive, like the challenge of learning a new subject in school. Some is negative but tolerable, like having a fight with your best friend. And some is toxic, like the chronic stress of prolonged poverty, abuse, or loneliness. In other words, stress is a population of diverse instances. It is a concept, just like “Happiness” or “Fear,” that you apply to construct experiences from an imbalanced body budget.11 You construct instances of “Stress” via the same brain mechanisms that construct emotion. In each case, your brain issues predictions about your body budget in relation to the outside world and makes meaning. These predictions issue from your interoceptive network and descend along the same pathways from the brain to the body. In the opposite direction, the ascending pathways that carry sensory inputs from the body to the brain are also the same for stress and emotion. And the same pair of networks, interoceptive and control, play their same roles. (Emotion and stress researchers rarely recognize these similarities, and tend to ask how stress influences emotion and vice versa, as if stress and emotion are independent.) From the viewpoint of construction, what differs is the end result, whether your brain categorizes your sensations as stressful or emotional.12 Why does the predicting brain construct instances of stress or emotion in a given situation? No one knows. Maybe the longer your body budget is out of whack, the more likely you are to categorize with the concept “Stress,” but this is pure speculation. If your body budget is unbalanced for a long time, you may experience chronic stress. (Chronic misbudgeting is often diagnosed as stress, which is why people think stress causes illness.) Chronic stress is dangerous to your physical health. It literally eats away at your interoceptive and control networks, causing them to atrophy, as your chronically imbalanced body budget remodels the very brain circuitry that regulates the budget. So much for the classical division between mental and physical illness.13

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Tell him or not tell him?” she thought, looking into his quiet, affectionate eyes. “He is so happy, so absorbed in his races that he won’t understand as he ought, he won’t understand all the gravity of this fact to us.” “But you haven’t told me what you were thinking of when I came in,” he said, interrupting his narrative; “please tell me!” She did not answer, and, bending her head a little, she looked inquiringly at him from under her brows, her eyes shining under their long lashes. Her hand shook as it played with a leaf she had picked. He saw it, and his face expressed that utter subjection, that slavish devotion, which had done so much to win her. “I see something has happened. Do you suppose I can be at peace, knowing you have a trouble I am not sharing? Tell me, for God’s sake,” he repeated imploringly. “Yes, I shan’t be able to forgive him if he does not realize all the gravity of it. Better not tell; why put him to the proof?” she thought, still staring at him in the same way, and feeling the hand that held the leaf was trembling more and more. “For God’s sake!” he repeated, taking her hand. “Shall I tell you?” “Yes, yes, yes....” “I’m with child,” she said, softly and deliberately. The leaf in her hand shook more violently, but she did not take her eyes off him, watching how he would take it. He turned white, would have said something, but stopped; he dropped her hand, and his head sank on his breast. “Yes, he realizes all the gravity of it,” she thought, and gratefully she pressed his hand. But she was mistaken in thinking he realized the gravity of the fact as she, a woman, realized it. On hearing it, he felt come upon him with tenfold intensity that strange feeling of loathing of someone. But at the same time, he felt that the turning-point he had been longing for had come now; that it was impossible to go on concealing things from her husband, and it was inevitable in one way or another that they should soon put an end to their unnatural position. But, besides that, her emotion physically affected him in the same way. He looked at her with a look of submissive tenderness, kissed her hand, got up, and, in silence, paced up and down the terrace. “Yes,” he said, going up to her resolutely. “Neither you nor I have looked on our relations as a passing amusement, and now our fate is sealed. It is absolutely necessary to put an end”—he looked round as he spoke—“to the deception in which we are living.” “Put an end? How put an end, Alexey?” she said softly. She was calmer now, and her face lighted up with a tender smile. “Leave your husband and make our life one.” “It is one as it is,” she answered, scarcely audibly. “Yes, but altogether; altogether.”

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “I don’t know. It depends upon you,” he said, and was immediately horror-stricken at his own words. Whether it was that she had heard his words, or that she did not want to hear them, she made a sort of stumble, twice struck out, and hurriedly skated away from him. She skated up to Mlle. Linon, said something to her, and went towards the pavilion where the ladies took off their skates. “My God! what have I done! Merciful God! help me, guide me,” said Levin, praying inwardly, and at the same time, feeling a need of violent exercise, he skated about describing inner and outer circles. At that moment one of the young men, the best of the skaters of the day, came out of the coffee-house in his skates, with a cigarette in his mouth. Taking a run, he dashed down the steps in his skates, crashing and bounding up and down. He flew down, and without even changing the position of his hands, skated away over the ice. “Ah, that’s a new trick!” said Levin, and he promptly ran up to the top to do this new trick. “Don’t break your neck! it needs practice!” Nikolay Shtcherbatsky shouted after him. Levin went to the steps, took a run from above as best he could, and dashed down, preserving his balance in this unwonted movement with his hands. On the last step he stumbled, but barely touching the ice with his hand, with a violent effort recovered himself, and skated off, laughing. “How splendid, how nice he is!” Kitty was thinking at that time, as she came out of the pavilion with Mlle. Linon, and looked towards him with a smile of quiet affection, as though he were a favorite brother. “And can it be my fault, can I have done anything wrong? They talk of flirtation. I know it’s not he that I love; but still I am happy with him, and he’s so jolly. Only, why did he say that?...” she mused. Catching sight of Kitty going away, and her mother meeting her at the steps, Levin, flushed from his rapid exercise, stood still and pondered a minute. He took off his skates, and overtook the mother and daughter at the entrance of the gardens. “Delighted to see you,” said Princess Shtcherbatskaya. “On Thursdays we are home, as always.” “Today, then?” “We shall be pleased to see you,” the princess said stiffly. This stiffness hurt Kitty, and she could not resist the desire to smooth over her mother’s coldness. She turned her head, and with a smile said: “Good-bye till this evening.”

• From Querelle (1953)

  "It's never locked. We'll both go into the hallway. 'Cau'se there's a hallway, and a staircase. You sneak up the stairs, very quiet, all the way to the top. I'll go into the joint. If anything happens, if the owner opens the door at the top of the stairs, down you come, and fast. I'll take off at the same time, heading back toward the Hospital. But if everything goes right, I'll call you, soon as I've finished. Got it?" "Sure!" 2.l6 I JEAN GENET Gil had never stolen anything._ It surprised him how difficult yet easy it was. After looking up and down the fog-shrouded street Querelle, without a sotind, opened the door and went into the hallway. Gil followed him. Querelle took his hand and put it on the staircase banister. "Go," he whispered in his ear, then turned away and quickly slid into the space below the stairs. When he estimated that Gil had reached the second-Boor landing he began to make a series of very quiet scratching noises. Gil was listening. 'What he heard was the rumbling of a stagecoach he and the other guys were getting ready to hold up. A shot rang out in the lonely forest, an axletree broke, young girls were raising their veils, and Marie Taglioni went off dancing under the rain-soaked trees, on carpets unrolled by the happy bandits. He pricked up his ears. He heard a hissing whistle in the dark. He understood the message: "Gil, come on, Gil." Slowly, his heart beating loudly, he descended the staircase. Querelle shut the door quietly behind them. Returning the way they had come they walked along in silence. Gil was anxious to know and finally whispered : "Did you get it?" "Yup. Let's keep goin' ." They passed through the same masses of fog and darkness. Gil felt the old prison drawing closer, the sense of security returning, calming him down. In his cave they lit the candle and Querelle pulled the loot out of his pocket. Two thousand six-hundred francs. He handed half of it over to Gil. "It ain't no fortune, but what can you do? It's the day's takings." "But listen, that ain't bad at alii I can get by on that." "Boy, are you nuts. Where would that get you? You don't even have any threads. No, kiddo, there's more work to do." "Well, all right. Count on me. But the next time I want to be the one does the job. No use your getting messed up because of me." "We'll see. Now why don't you just stash that dough." 221 I QUERELLE

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  By 1951, the construction bosses had hired more than four thousand workmen. They were mostly unskilled veterans still in their twenties. They learned how to lay rafters—or they didn’t learn—in a day or two. The men who put up with the pace and the monotony stayed on. They earned about a dollar an hour. 19 According to Mr. F, the speed of the work depended on a gimmick called a “scaffold jack.” The jack made it possible for two men to begin laying rafters with no time wasted in setting up a freestanding scaffold. Instead, braces cut from channel iron, each fitted with two bars of sawteeth that bit into the wood stud, could be nailed up quickly on the skeletal frame of the house. Each jack held a short length of two-by-four. On these projecting arms the roofers laid the planks on which they stood to work. The jacks transmitted the weight of the cantilevered scaffold planks to the studs of the house frame. The planks and the men themselves made the jack bite securely into the wood. Simple forces supported the planks, the men, and the scaffold jacks hanging about six feet above the ground. 20 The scaffold jacks were ingenious and economical. A pair could be cut and welded together from a single, eighteen-inch length of channel iron. The process of setting the jacks up on the studs and laying the scaffold planks took the men only a few minutes. The jack let each completed house supply the support for the next construction step. It was like lifting yourself by your bootstraps, Mr. F said. The scaffold jack didn’t last. In the 1960s, the standard two-by-four stud was pared down to reduce lumber costs. Today, a two-by-four is one-and-a-half inches by three-and-a-half inches. Mr. F says a scaffold jack would snap one of these new studs in two. [image "Image" file=Image00003.jpg] 21 If the workmen looked up from laying rafters, they saw a row of houses with bundles of shingles being lifted by conveyor belts to shinglers on the roof. Beyond them was a row of house frames being sheathed in tar paper and chicken wire. Beyond them was another row of houses gray with new stucco. Beyond that row would be another row of houses, only a few days older, being painted. Behind them, nearly out of sight, would be a street of finished houses, forty-six to a block. To the workmen, suspended on the scaffold, these finished houses must have seemed out of place and very still. 22 The Los Angeles Daily News described the construction of the houses as a huge assembly line. 23 Mr. F made the city a detailed scale model of a garage being framed. He wanted to show school children, who sometimes tour city hall, how efficiently he had laid rafters as a young man. His model includes a set of full-size scaffold jacks mounted on two uprights with a short length of scaffold plank between them.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  At the same time as the traveler there was announced a provincial marshal of nobility on a visit to Petersburg, with whom Alexey Alexandrovitch had to have some conversation. After his departure, he had to finish the daily routine of business with his secretary, and then he still had to drive round to call on a certain great personage on a matter of grave and serious import. Alexey Alexandrovitch only just managed to be back by five o’clock, his dinner-hour, and after dining with his secretary, he invited him to drive with him to his country villa and to the races. Though he did not acknowledge it to himself, Alexey Alexandrovitch always tried nowadays to secure the presence of a third person in his interviews with his wife. Chapter 27 Anna was upstairs, standing before the looking-glass, and, with Annushka’s assistance, pinning the last ribbon on her gown when she heard carriage wheels crunching the gravel at the entrance. “It’s too early for Betsy,” she thought, and glancing out of the window she caught sight of the carriage and the black hat of Alexey Alexandrovitch, and the ears that she knew so well sticking up each side of it. “How unlucky! Can he be going to stay the night?” she wondered, and the thought of all that might come of such a chance struck her as so awful and terrible that, without dwelling on it for a moment, she went down to meet him with a bright and radiant face; and conscious of the presence of that spirit of falsehood and deceit in herself that she had come to know of late, she abandoned herself to that spirit and began talking, hardly knowing what she was saying. “Ah, how nice of you!” she said, giving her husband her hand, and greeting Sludin, who was like one of the family, with a smile. “You’re staying the night, I hope?” was the first word the spirit of falsehood prompted her to utter; “and now we’ll go together. Only it’s a pity I’ve promised Betsy. She’s coming for me.” Alexey Alexandrovitch knit his brows at Betsy’s name. “Oh, I’m not going to separate the inseparables,” he said in his usual bantering tone. “I’m going with Mihail Vassilievitch. I’m ordered exercise by the doctors too. I’ll walk, and fancy myself at the springs again.” “There’s no hurry,” said Anna. “Would you like tea?” She rang. “Bring in tea, and tell Seryozha that Alexey Alexandrovitch is here. Well, tell me, how have you been? Mihail Vassilievitch, you’ve not been to see me before. Look how lovely it is out on the terrace,” she said, turning first to one and then to the other. She spoke very simply and naturally, but too much and too fast. She was the more aware of this from noticing in the inquisitive look Mihail Vassilievitch turned on her that he was, as it were, keeping watch on her. Mihail Vassilievitch promptly went out on the terrace.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “What if she does not love me? What if she’s marrying me simply to be married? What if she doesn’t see herself what she’s doing?” he asked himself. “She may come to her senses, and only when she is being married realize that she does not and cannot love me.” And strange, most evil thoughts of her began to come to him. He was jealous of Vronsky, as he had been a year ago, as though the evening he had seen her with Vronsky had been yesterday. He suspected she had not told him everything. He jumped up quickly. “No, this can’t go on!” he said to himself in despair. “I’ll go to her; I’ll ask her; I’ll say for the last time: we are free, and hadn’t we better stay so? Anything’s better than endless misery, disgrace, unfaithfulness!” With despair in his heart and bitter anger against all men, against himself, against her, he went out of the hotel and drove to her house. He found her in one of the back rooms. She was sitting on a chest and making some arrangements with her maid, sorting over heaps of dresses of different colors, spread on the backs of chairs and on the floor. “Ah!” she cried, seeing him, and beaming with delight. “Kostya! Konstantin Dmitrievitch!” (These latter days she used these names almost alternately.) “I didn’t expect you! I’m going through my wardrobe to see what’s for whom....” “Oh! that’s very nice!” he said gloomily, looking at the maid. “You can go, Dunyasha, I’ll call you presently,” said Kitty. “Kostya, what’s the matter?” she asked, definitely adopting this familiar name as soon as the maid had gone out. She noticed his strange face, agitated and gloomy, and a panic came over her. “Kitty! I’m in torture. I can’t suffer alone,” he said with despair in his voice, standing before her and looking imploringly into her eyes. He saw already from her loving, truthful face, that nothing could come of what he had meant to say, but yet he wanted her to reassure him herself. “I’ve come to say that there’s still time. This can all be stopped and set right.” “What? I don’t understand. What is the matter?” “What I have said a thousand times over, and can’t help thinking ... that I’m not worthy of you. You couldn’t consent to marry me. Think a little. You’ve made a mistake. Think it over thoroughly. You can’t love me.... If ... better say so,” he said, not looking at her. “I shall be wretched. Let people say what they like; anything’s better than misery.... Far better now while there’s still time....” “I don’t understand,” she answered, panic-stricken; “you mean you want to give it up ... don’t want it?” “Yes, if you don’t love me.”

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Chapter 9 Anna came in with hanging head, playing with the tassels of her hood. Her face was brilliant and glowing; but this glow was not one of brightness; it suggested the fearful glow of a conflagration in the midst of a dark night. On seeing her husband, Anna raised her head and smiled, as though she had just waked up. “You’re not in bed? What a wonder!” she said, letting fall her hood, and without stopping, she went on into the dressing-room. “It’s late, Alexey Alexandrovitch,” she said, when she had gone through the doorway. “Anna, it’s necessary for me to have a talk with you.” “With me?” she said, wonderingly. She came out from behind the door of the dressing-room, and looked at him. “Why, what is it? What about?” she asked, sitting down. “Well, let’s talk, if it’s so necessary. But it would be better to get to sleep.” Anna said what came to her lips, and marveled, hearing herself, at her own capacity for lying. How simple and natural were her words, and how likely that she was simply sleepy! She felt herself clad in an impenetrable armor of falsehood. She felt that some unseen force had come to her aid and was supporting her. “Anna, I must warn you,” he began. “Warn me?” she said. “Of what?” She looked at him so simply, so brightly, that anyone who did not know her as her husband knew her could not have noticed anything unnatural, either in the sound or the sense of her words. But to him, knowing her, knowing that whenever he went to bed five minutes later than usual, she noticed it, and asked him the reason; to him, knowing that every joy, every pleasure and pain that she felt she communicated to him at once; to him, now to see that she did not care to notice his state of mind, that she did not care to say a word about herself, meant a great deal. He saw that the inmost recesses of her soul, that had always hitherto lain open before him, were closed against him. More than that, he saw from her tone that she was not even perturbed at that, but as it were said straight out to him: “Yes, it’s shut up, and so it must be, and will be in future.” Now he experienced a feeling such as a man might have, returning home and finding his own house locked up. “But perhaps the key may yet be found,” thought Alexey Alexandrovitch. “I want to warn you,” he said in a low voice, “that through thoughtlessness and lack of caution you may cause yourself to be talked about in society. Your too animated conversation this evening with Count Vronsky” (he enunciated the name firmly and with deliberate emphasis) “attracted attention.”