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 Fear of Flying (1973)

  It was built in 1934 or ‘35 by the Youth Labor Corps (I could just imagine them: blond, shirtless, singing Deutschland über Alles, lifting the pink sandstone rocks of the Neckar Valley while blowsy Rhine maidens brought steins of piss-dark beer), and it was nestled in the crotch of the Heiligenberg, or Holy Mountain, where a shrine to Odin had reputedly once stood. I would reach the amphitheater by driving across the river from the old town, down a wide street which led to the suburbs, then up the Holy Mountain, following the signs to the ruins of St. Michael’s Basilica. The amphitheater itself was not, sinisterly enough, marked. The road wound upward through the woods, the light filtered down between the black-green pines, and I was Gretel in a huffing, puffing Volkswagen, but no one was dropping bread crumbs behind me. As I wound my way up the hill, thinking of all those cruel German fairy tales featuring frightened little girls and dark woods, the car would stall in third gear. Afraid of rolling backward down the hill, I’d shift into second and stall again. Finally, I would have to climb in first gear. At the top of the Heiligenberg was a smallish tower built of red sandstone, with mossy, worn-down steps winding to a lookout on top. I’d climb the slippery steps for a view of the city—and there it would be: the gleaming river, the dappled woods, the pinkish hulk of the castle. Why did chroniclers of the Third Reich say everything about Germany except that it was beautiful? Was that too morally ambiguous? The beauty of the countryside and the ugliness of the people. Couldn’t we cope with such irony? Descending from the tower, I’d walk deeper into the woods past a small restaurant called Waldschenke (or, forest tavern) which featured fat-bottomed burghers drinking beer outside in summer, mulled wine inside in winter. There I had to leave the car and continue up through the forest (leaves crunching underfoot, pines drooping overhead, sun obliterated by foliage). Since the tiers of seats were cut into the hillside, the entrance to the amphitheater was from above. Suddenly the theater gaped beneath you—row after row of weedy seats, littered with bottle glass, condoms, candy wrappers. At the base was an apron stage flanked by flagpoles for the swastika or the German Eagle. And on either side were entrances for speakers to appear surrounded by brown-shirted bodyguards. But the most astonishing part was the setting: a gigantic pine-rimmed bowl nestled in the unearthly quiet of those fairy-tale woods. The ground was sacred. Odin had been worshipped, then Christ, then Hitler. I would dash down the hill over the tiers of seats and stand in the dead center of the stage reciting my own poetry to an audience of echoes. One day I told Horst that I wanted to write about the amphitheater. “Why?” he asked. “Because everyone pretends it isn’t there.” “Do you think that’s enough of a reason?” “Yes.”

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Before we came to Heidelberg, the setting for the first two months of our marriage was as strange as our reason for getting married. There we were, two terrified, transplanted Manhattanites, plunked down in San Antonio, Texas. Bennett was shorn of his hair, stuffed into army greens, forced to sit through hour after hour of army propaganda on how to be an army doctor—something he detested with his whole heart. I stayed “home” in a sterile motel outside San Antonio, watched television, tinkered with my poems, felt enraged and powerless. Like most native New York girls, I had never learned to drive. I was twenty-four and stranded in a Texas motel facing a sun-parched strip of highway between San Antonio and Austin. I slept until ten-thirty, awoke and watched television while I carefully made up my face (for whom?), went downstairs and gorged myself on a Texas brunch of pancakes, sausages, and grits, put on my bathing suit (which was growing tighter and tighter), and baked in the sun for two hours or so. Then I swam in the pool for five minutes and went back upstairs to confront my “work.” But I found it nearly impossible to work. The loneliness of writing terrified me. I looked for every excuse to escape. I had no sense of myself as a writer and no faith in my ability to write. I could not see then that I had been writing all my life. I had begun composing and illustrating little stories when I was eight. I had kept a journal from the age of ten. I was an avid and ironic letter-writer from age thirteen, and I consciously aped the letters of Keats and G.B.S. throughout my adolescence. At seventeen, when I went to Japan with my parents and sisters, I dragged along my Olivetti portable and spent every evening recapitulating the day’s observations into a loose-leaf notebook. I began to publish poems in small literary magazines during my senior year in college (where I won most of the poetry prizes and edited the literary magazine). And yet despite the obvious fact that I was obsessed with writing, despite publications and despite letters from literary agents asking whether I was “working on a novel,” I didn’t really believe in the seriousness of my commitment at all. Instead, I had allowed myself to be shunted into graduate school. Graduate school was supposed to be safe. Graduate school was supposed to be the thing that you got “under your belt” (like a baby?) before you settled down to writing. What an obvious swindle it now seems! But then it seemed prudent, wise, and responsible.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  You slept with Jerome .’ Victoria sat up in bed and touched his face. ‘Look, I hate to be cheesy, but it’s true: Jerome’s lovely, but he’s a boy , Howard. I need a man right now.’ ‘Vee – please,’ said Howard, grabbing her hand by the wrist and passing her the shirt she had been wearing. ‘We need to go downstairs.’ ‘All right, all right – keep your hair on.’ Together they got dressed, Howard hurriedly and Victoria languidly, with Howard taking a moment to marvel at the fact that the dream of many weeks – to see this girl naked – was now replaying in dramatic reverse. He’d do absolutely anything to see her with all her clothes on. Finally, after they had both fully dressed, Howard found his boxer shorts tucked in a pillowcase. These he stuffed into his pocket. At the door, Victoria stopped him by putting a hand to his chest. She breathed deeply and encouraged him to do the same. She unlocked the door. Slicked his cowlick down with a finger and straightened his tie. ‘Just try not to look like you love tomatoes,’ she said.  on beauty and being wrong  In the early years of the last century, Helen Keller embarked on a lecture tour of New England, enthralling audiences with her life story (and occasionally surprising them with her socialist views). En route she made a stop at Wellington College, and there named a library, planted a tree and found herself the recipient of an honorary degree. Hence the Keller Library: a long, draughty room on the ground floor of the English Department with a green carpet, red walls and too many windows – it is impossible to heat. On one wall hangs a life-sized portrait of Helen dressed in academic cap and gown, sitting in an armchair, her blind eyes demurely directed into her lap. Her companion Annie Sullivan stands behind her, a hand resting tenderly on her friend’s shoulder. It is in this chilly room that all faculty meetings for the Humanities are conducted. Today is January tenth. The first faculty meeting of the year is due to begin in five minutes. As when an especially important vote comes up in the House of Lords, even the most reluctant college members are present this morning, including the octogenarian tenured hermits. It’s a full house, although nobody hurries; they arrive in staggered fashion, scarves stiff and wet with the snow, with salty tide marks on their leather shoes, with handkerchiefs and ostentatious coughs and wheezes.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  It was almost like abjuring God, country, and flag. “But you’re such an excellent student, Mrs. Stollerman, what else could you do?” (What else indeed? What else might there be in life but Aesthetic Implications in the Dialectic of Satire?) “Well, er, I think I want to write.” I said it as apologetically as if it were: “I think I want to kill my mother.” Professor Stanton looked troubled. “Oh that,” he said, vexed. Students were probably always coming to him with futile ambitions like wanting to write. “You see, Professor Stanton, I started studying eighteenth-century English literature because I love satire, but I think I want to write satire not criticize it. Criticism doesn’t seem very satisfying somehow.” “Satisfying!” he exploded. I gulped. “What makes you think graduate school is supposed to be satisfying? Literature is work, not fun,” he said. “Yes,” I said meekly. “You come to graduate school because you love to read, because you love literature—well, literature is hard work! It’s not a game!” Professor Stanton seemed to have found his true subject. “Yes, but if you’ll excuse me, Professor Stanton, it does seem that all this criticism is out of keeping with the spirit of Fielding or Pope or Swift. I mean I always imagine them lying there in their graves and laughing at us all. This is just the sort of thing they’d find funny. I mean I read Pope or Swift or Fielding and it makes me want to write. It starts my mind going on poems. The criticism seems sort of silly to me. I’m sorry to say this, but it does.” “Who made you the guardian of the spirit of Pope? Or Swift? Or Fielding?” “No one.” “Then what the hell are you complaining about?” “I’m not complaining. I just think I may have made a mistake. I think I really want to write.” “Mrs. Stollerman, you’ll have plenty of time to write after you get your Ph.D. under your belt. And then you’ll always have something to fall back on just in case you’re not Emily Dickinson.” “I suppose you’re right,” I said, and went home to sleep. Brian woke me up with a bang in June. I’m not exactly sure when the onset of it was, but sometime in mid-June, I noticed that he had become more manic than usual. He had stopped sleeping entirely. He wanted me to sit up all night with him and discuss heaven and hell. Not that this was so unusual for Brian. He’d always been extraordinarily interested in heaven and hell. But now he began talking about the Second Coming quite a lot and he talked about it in a new way. What if (he asked) Christ came back to earth as an obscure market research executive?

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  As soon as the seat-belt sign goes off and people begin moving about the cabin, I glance around nervously to see who’s on board. There’s a big-breasted mama-analyst named Rose Schwamm-Lipkin with whom I recently had a consultation about whether or not I should leave my current analyst (who isn’t, mercifully, in evidence). There’s Dr. Thomas Frommer, the harshly Teutonic expert on Anorexia Nervosa, who was my husband’s first analyst. There’s kindly, rotund Dr. Arthur Feet, Jr., who was the third (and last) analyst of my friend Pia. There’s compulsive little Dr. Raymond Schrift who is hailing a blond stewardess (named “Nanci”) as if she were a taxi. (I saw Dr. Schrift for one memorable year when I was fourteen and starving myself to death in penance for having finger-fucked on my parents’ living-room couch. He kept insisting that the horse I was dreaming about was my father and that my periods would return if only I would “ackzept being a vohman.”) There’s smiling, bald Dr. Harvey Smucker whom I saw in consultation when my first husband decided he was Jesus Christ and began threatening to walk on the water in Central Park Lake. There’s foppish, hand-tailored Dr. Ernest Klumpner, the supposedly “brilliant theoretician” whose latest book is a psychoanalytic study of John Knox. There’s black-bearded Dr. Stanton Rappoport-Rosen who recently gained notoriety in New York analytic circles when he moved to Denver and branched out into something called “Cross-Country Group Ski-Therapy.” There’s Dr. Arnold Aaronson pretending to play chess on a magnetic board with his new wife (who was his patient until last year), the singer Judy Rose. Both of them are surreptitiously looking around to see who is looking at them—and for one moment, my eyes and Judy Rose’s meet. Judy Rose became famous in the fifties for recording a series of satirical ballads about pseudointellectual life in New York. In a whiny and deliberately unmusical voice, she sang the saga of a Jewish girl who takes courses at the New School, reads the Bible for its prose, discusses Martin Buber in bed, and falls in love with her analyst. She has now become one with the role she created.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  When I started going to his high-ceilinged, badly heated office in Heidelberg and lying on the couch four times a week, I was twenty-four and totally panicked. I was afraid of riding on streetcars, afraid of writing letters, afraid of putting words on paper. I could scarcely believe that I had published some poems and gotten a B.A. and M.A. with all sorts of honors. Though my friends envied me because I always seemed so cheerful and confident, I was secretly terrified of practically everything. I used to search all the closets before I stayed alone at night. And even then couldn’t sleep. I used to lie awake nights wondering if I was driving my second husband crazy too—or if it just seemed that way. One of my most ingenious little self-tortures was the way I wrote letters. Or rather, failed to write them, especially letters concerning my work. If (as happened once or twice) some editor or agent wrote me asking to see some of my poems, my response was utter despair. What would I say? How could I answer such a difficult request? How could I phrase the letter? One of these requests sat in a drawer for two years while I deliberated. I tried writing various drafts. “Dear Mrs. Jones,” I began. But was that too presumptuous? Perhaps I should say “Mrs. Jones”; the “Dear” might be seen to be currying favor. How about no heading? Just launch into the letter? No. That was too stern. If I had this much trouble with the greeting, you can imagine what agonies I went through with the text. Thank you for your kind letter asking me to submit material. However… All wrong! It was too servile. Her letter wasn’t “kind” and why should I toady to her by thanking her? Better be self-confident and assertive: I have just received your letter asking me to submit poems for consideration… Too egotistical! (I crumpled up another sheet of paper.) Never, I once read, begin a letter with the personal pronoun. Besides, how could I say I had “just received” her letter when I had been holding it for a year? Try again. Your letter of November 12, 1967, has been on my mind for a long time. I am sorry to be such a poor correspondent but… Too personal. Does she want you to cry on her shoulder about your neurotic letter-writing problems? Does she care?

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Meanwhile Pierre’s English Uncle Gavin—a displaced Cockney who married Aunt Françoise back in 1923 (and has been in Karkabi regretting it ever since)—produced a rabbit he’d shot that morning and started cleaning it. Inside the house, there were only about four rooms, with whitewashed walls and crucifixes over all the beds (Pierre’s family are Maronite Catholics) and kissed-over pictures of various saints ascending to heaven on slick magazine paper. There were also numerous tattered magazine photos of the Royal Family of England; and then there was Jesus Himself, wearing a toga, his face barely visible under a hail of kiss-prints. While supper was being made, Pierre led us out to show us “his domain.” Randy insisted on staying in the house with her feet up, but the rest of us trooped obediently over the rocks (followed by an entourage of barefoot cousins who kept pointing enthusiastically to the electricity tower). Pierre snapped at them in Arabic; he was after something more pastoral. And he found it, just over the next rocky hill, where a real live shepherd was guarding real live sheep under a wormy apple tree. That was all Pierre needed to see. He began spouting “poetry” as if he were Kahlil Gibran and Edgar Guest rolled into one. A shepherd! Sheep! An apple tree! It was charming. It was pastoral. It was Homer and Virgil and the Bible. So we walked over to the shepherd—a pimply kid of about fifteen—and found him listening to a little Japanese transistor radio which played Frank Sinatra followed immediately by a bunch of singing commercials in Arabic. Then saftig seventeen-year-old Chloe took out one of her menthol cigarettes and offered him one—which he accepted, trying to look as cool and sophisticated as possible. And then this charming shepherd reached into his charming pocket and pulled out a charming butane lighter. When he lit Chloe’s cigarette, you just knew he had spent practically his whole life at the movies. After supper, all the relatives in town (i.e. practically the whole town) came over. A lot of them came over to watch TV (since Pierre’s aunt is one of the few people in Karkabi who has one) but that night they came over to watch us too. Mostly they stood around and stared at us and looked embarrassed, but sometimes they’d touch my hair (or Chloe’s or Lalah’s) and make noises to indicate that they were really crazy about blondes. Or else they’d pat us everywhere as if they were blind. God—there’s nothing to compare with being patted by a dozen two-hundred-pound Lebanese women with mustaches. I was panicky. Could they tell by patting that we were Jewish? I was sure they could. But I was wrong.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Howard ordered a minicab and went outside to wait for it. When it arrived, the driver’s door opened and a young Turk in the literal sense leaned out and asked Howard a rather metaphysical question: ‘ Is it you? ’ Howard stepped forward from the pub wall. ‘Yes, it’s me.’ ‘Where you go?’ ‘Queen’s Park, please,’ said Howard, and walked unsteadily round the car to get into the front seat. As soon as he sat down he realized that this was not the usual procedure. It was surely uncomfortable for a driver to have a passenger sitting so close to him, wasn’t it? Or was it? They drove in silence, a silence that Howard experienced as unbearably fraught with homoerotic, political and violent implications. He felt he must say something. ‘I’m not trouble, you know, I’m not one of those English thugs – I’m a bit pissed, that’s all.’ The young driver looked at him with a defensive, uncertain air. ‘You trying to be funny?’ he said in his thick accent, which yet possessed a fluency that made You trying to be funny? sound like a Turkish homily. ‘Sorry,’ said Howard, blushing. ‘Ignore me. Ignore me.’ He put his hands between his knees. The cab swung by the tube station where Howard had first met Michael Kipps.  on beauty and being wrong ‘Straight down, I think,’ said Howard very quietly. ‘Then maybe a left at the main road – yes, and then over the bridge and then it’s on your right, I think.’ ‘You talk quiet. I can’t hear.’ Howard repeated himself. His driver turned and looked at him incredulously. ‘You don’t know name of street ?’ Howard had to admit he did not. The young Turk grumbled something furiously in Turkish, and Howard felt one of those English minicab tragedies coming on in which customer and cabbie drive round and round, and the fare rises and rises, finally you reach the ugliness of being sworn at and cast out on to the street, further from your destination than ever. ‘There! That’s it! We just passed it!’ cried Howard and opened the door while the cab was still moving. A minute later, the young Turk and Howard parted on frosty terms, not much warmed by Howard’s twenty-pence tip, the only extra change he had in his pocket. It is on journeys like this – where one is so horribly mis-understood – that you find yourself longing for home, that place where you are entirely understood, for better or for worse. Kiki was home. He needed to find her.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  This was when my online purchasing of lingerie and designer jeans began in earnest. It seemed that while I was sleeping, some superficial part of me was taking aim at a life of beauty and sex appeal. I made appointments to get waxed. I booked time at a spa that offered infrared treatments and colonics and facials. One day, I cancelled my credit card in the hope that doing so might deter me from filling my nonexistent datebook with the frills of someone I used to think I was supposed to be. A week later, a new credit card showed up in the mail. I cut it in half. My stress levels rose. I couldn’t trust myself. I felt as though I had to sleep with one eye open. I even considered installing a video camera to record myself while I was unconscious, but I knew that would only prove to be a document of my resistance to my project. It wouldn’t stop me from doing anything since I’d be unable to watch it until I woke up for real. So I was in a state of panic. I doubled my Xanax dosage in an attempt to counteract my anxiety. I lost track of the days, and as a result, missed my visit to Dr. Tuttle in November. She called and left me a message. “I’ll have to charge you for the missed appointment. Let me remind you, you did sign the agreement to my office policy. There’s a twenty-four-hour cutoff for cancellations. Most doctors in the area require you to cancel thirty-six or forty-eight hours before the scheduled appointment, so I think I’m being pretty generous. And it concerns me that you’d be so flip about your mental health. Call me to reschedule. The ball is in your basket.” She sounded stern. I felt terrible. But when I called to apologize and make another appointment, she was back to normal. “See you Thursday,” she said. “Toodle-oo.” Halfway through the month, my Internet use began to rise even more. I woke up with my laptop screen filled with AOL chat-room conversations with strangers in places like Tampa and Spokane and Park City, Utah. In my waking hours, I rarely thought of sex, but in my medicated blackouts, I guess my lusts arose. I scrolled through the transcripts. They were surprisingly polite. “How are you?” “I’m fine, thanks, how are you? Horny much?” It went on from there. I was relieved I never gave anyone my real name. My AOL screen name was “Whoopigirlberg2000.” “Call me Whoopi.” “Call me Reva,” I once wrote. The photos men sent of their genitals were all banal, semierect, nonthreatening. “Your turn,” they’d write. Usually I changed the subject. “What’s your favorite movie?”

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  perfumed with balm, whereby I was readily prepared for the purpose. But nothing grieved me so much as to think how I should with my huge and great legs embrace so fair a matron, or how I should touch her fine, dainty, and silken skin made of milk and honey with my hard hoofs, or how it was possible to kiss her soft, her pretty and ruddy lips with my monstrous great mouth and stony teeth, or how she, who was so young and tender, could receive my love. And I verily thought if I should hurt the woman by any kind of means, I should be thrown out to the wild beasts : but in the mean season she spoke gently to me, kissing me oft, and looked on me with burning eyes, saying : *I hold thee my cony, I hold thee my nops, my sparrow," and therewithal she shewed me that all my fear was vain, for she oft-times embraced my body round about, and had her pleasure with me, whereby I thought the mother of Minotaurus did not causeless quench her inordinate desire with a bull! When night was passed, with much joy and small sleep, the matron went away, avoiding the light of day, so that she might not be seen, and bargained with my keeper for another. night: which he willingly granted, partly for gain of money, and partly to find new pastime for my master. He, after he was informed of all the history of my luxury, was right glad, and rewarded my keeper well for his pains, minding to shew in the public theatre what I could do; but because they would not suffer that noble wife of mine to abide such shame, by reason of her dignity, and because they could find no other that 1 [n a note referring to the whole of this passage Adlington writes: ‘Herel have left out certain lines propter honestatem, " in which his modesty is much to be commended, and will here be followed. o1 LUCIUS APULEIUS inveniri potuerat grandi praemio, vilis anquiritur aliqua sententia praesidis bestiis addicta, quae mecum incoram publicam populi caveam frequentaret. Eius poenae talem cognoveram fabulam : Maritum habuit, cuius pater peregre proficiscens mandavit uxori suae, matri eiusdem iuvenis (quod enim sarcina praegnationis oneratam eam relinquebat) ut si sexus sequioris edidisset fetum, protinus quod 'esset editam necaretur. At illa, per absentiam mariti nata puella, insita matribus pietate praeventa, descivit ab obsequio mariti, eamque prodidit vicinis alumnan- dam, regressoque iam marito natam necatamque nuntiavit. Sed ubi flos aetatis nuptialem virgini diem flagitabat, nec ignaro marito dotare filiam ;pro natalibus quibat, quod solum potuit, filio suo tacitum secretum aperuit: nam 'et oppido verebatur ne quo . casu caloris iuvenalis impetu lapsus nescius nesciam sororem incurreret. Sed pietatis spectatae iuvenis et matris obsequium et'sororis officium religiose dis- pensat et, arcanis domus venerabilis silentii custodiae

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  11] lbi complurium iumentorum multivii circuitus in- torquebant molas ambage varia; nec die tantum, verum perpeti etiam nocte prorsus instabili machina- rum vertigine lucubrabant pervigilem farinam. Sed mihi, ne rudimentum servitii perhorrescerem scilicet, novus dominus loca lautia prolixe praebuit: nam et diem primum illum feriatum dedit et cibariis abun- danter instruxit praesepium. Nec tamen illa otii saginaeque beatitudo duravit ulterius, sed die se- quenti molae, quae maxima videbatur, matutinus adstituor et illico velata facie propellor ad incurva spatia flexuosi canalis, ut in orbe termini circum- fluentis reciproco gressu mea recaleans vestigia vagarer errore certo. Nec tamen sagacitatis ac prudentiae meae prorsus oblitus facilem me tiro- cinio disciplinae praebui sed, quamquam frequenter cum inter homines agerem, machinas similiter cir- cumrotari vidissem, tamen, ut expers et ignarus operis, stupore mentito defixus haerebam, quod enim rebar ut minus aptum et huiusmodi ministerio 416 2 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK IX carried back to the town and put in prison by the inhabitants, who, taking the cup of gold and the image of the goddess which I bare, did put and con- secrate them amongst the treasure of the temple. The next day I was carried to the market to be sold by the voice of the crier, and again my price was set ; but I was sold at seven pence more than Philebus gave for me. There fortuned to pass by a baker of the next village, who, after that he had bought a great deal of corn, bought me likewise to carry it home, and when he had well laded me therewith, he drove me through a stony and dangerous way to his ' bakehouse. There I saw a great company of horses that went round and round in the mill turning the stones and grinding of corn : and not by day only, but at night also they must needs still work at the mill and make flour in those engines that never stood still: but lest I should be discouraged at the first, my master enter- tained me well in a luxurious place; for the first day I had a holiday and did nothing but fare daintily at a full manger. Howbeit, such mine ease and felicity did not long endure; for the next day following I was tied to the greatest mill (as it seemed to me) betimes in the morning with my face covered, and placed in a small path of a circle to the end in turn- ing and winding so often one way I might keep a certain course and tread in my own path again and again. But I forgat not my wisdom and careful prudence so as to lend myself too easily to the new labour, for although when I was a man I had seen many such horse-mills, and knew well enough how they should be turned, yet feigning myself ignorant of such kind of toil I stood still and would not go, whereby I thought I should be taken 2D 417 12

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  Haee et huiusmodi mutuo blaterantes praesepio me proximum deligant. Erat quidam iuvenis satis corpulentus, choraula doctissimus, collaticia stipe de mensa paratus, qui foris quidem circumgestantibus deam cornu canens adambulabat, domi vero promiscui operis partiarius agebat concubinus. Hic me simul domi conspexit libenter, appositis largiter cibariis, gaudens alloquitur : “Venisti tandem miserrimi laboris vicarius: sed diu vivas et dominis placeas et meis defectis iam lateribus consulas." Haec audiens iam meas futuras novas cogitabam aerumnas. Die sequenti variis coloribus indusiati et deformiter quisque for- mati, facie caenoso pigmento delita et oculis obunctis graphice prodeunt, mitellis et crocotis et carbasinis et bombycinis iniecti, quidam tunicas albas in modum 388 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK VIII thought verily that he had brought home a fit and convenient servant for their purpose. But when they perceived that it was not even an hind ! instead of a maiden, but rather a makeshift ass for a man, they began to reprove him with great scorn, saying that he had not brought a servant for them, but rather a stalling ass for himself. “ Howbeit," quoth they, “Keep this pretty beast not wholly for your _own delight, but let us, your darling doves, likewise have him at commandment.” Therewithal babbling in this wise, they led me into the stable, and tied me to the manger; and there was a certain stout young man with a mighty body, well skilled-in playing on flutes, whom they had bought in a market with the money they had collected ; and he walked before their procession, playing the horn when they carried round their goddess, and at home he shared in all their labours and they made great useof him. Now he, as soon as he espied me, entertained me very well, for he filled my rack and manger with meat, and spake merrily, saying: “O master ass, you are welcome; now you shall take my office in hand: you are come to supply my room, and to ease me of my miserable labour: I pray God thou mayest long live and please my master well, to the end thou mayest continually deliver my weary sides from so great pain and labour.” When I heard his words, I did prognosticate my new misery to come. The day following I saw them apparelled in divers colours, and hideously tricked out, having their faces ruddled with paint, and their eyes tricked out with grease, mitres on their heads, vestments coloured like saffron, surplices of silk and linen ; and some ware white tunics painted with purple stripes ‘4 The usual reference to the story of Iphigenia. 3 389 LUCIUS APULEIUS

• From On Beauty (2005)

  ‘I really appreciate that, man. I’m dry and dusty right now.’ ‘What about that job , for God’s sake?’ Levi squirmed a little before confessing. Howard listened with his head on the table. ‘Levi, that was a good job.’ ‘I got another one! But it’s more . . . irregular. And I’m not doing it right now, ’cos I got other things cooking, but imma go back to it soon, ’cos it’s like – ’ ‘Don’t tell me,’ insisted Howard, closing his eyes. ‘Just don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.’ Levi put the dollars in his back pocket. ‘Anyway, so in the meantime I got a bit of a cash flow situation . I pay you back, though.’ ‘With other money I’ll have given you.’  on beauty and being wrong ‘I got a job, I told you! Chill. OK? Will you chill? You gonna give yo’self a heart attack, man. Chill .’ Sighing, he kissed his father on his sweaty forehead and closed the door softly on his way out. Levi did his funky limp through the department and out into the main lobby of the Humanities Faculty building. He stopped here to select a tune that would fit the experience of stepping out of this building and facing the freeze outside. Somebody called his name. He couldn’t see at first who it was. ‘Yo – Levi . Over here! Hey, man! I ain’t seen your ass in the longest time, man. Put it there.’ ‘ Carl? ’ ‘Yeah, Carl. Don’t you even know me now?’ They touched fists, but with Levi frowning all the time. ‘What you doing here, man?’ ‘Damn – didn’t you know?’ said Carl, smiling cheesily and popping his collar. ‘I be a college man now!’ Levi laughed. ‘No, seriously, bro – what you doing here?’ Carl stopped smiling. He tapped the knapsack on his back. ‘Didn’t your sister tell you? I’m a college man now. I’m working here.’ ‘ Here? ’ ‘Black Studies Department. I just started – I’m an archivist.’ ‘A what ?’ Levi transferred his weight to the opposite foot. ‘Man, you screwing with me?’ ‘Nope.’ ‘You work here. I don’t get it – you cleaning?’ Levi didn’t mean this the way it came out. It was just that he had met a lot of Wellington cleaners on the march yesterday, and it was the first thing that came to his mind. Carl was offended. ‘No, man, I manage the archives – I don’t clean shit. It’s a music library – I’m in control of the hip-hop and some R & B and modern urban black music. It’s an amazing resource – you should come check it out.’  On Beauty Levi shook his head, disbelieving. ‘Carl, bro, I’m tripping . . . you gotta run this past me again. You’re working here? ’

• From On Beauty (2005)

  I don’t really follow any of it any more, it’s too fast . . . cut, cut cut , everything so hysterical and loud . . . but Monty says that even Channel Four can’t compete with the kind of liberal programming you find on PBS. He can’t bear PBS. He sees through it terribly – the way they promote all the usual liberal ideas and pretend it’s progress for minorities. He hates all that. Did you know most of the donors live  On Beauty in Boston? Monty says that tells you all you need to know. And yet this Lincoln documentary was really very good.’ ‘And . . . that was on . . . PBS?’ said Kiki despondently. She had lost her grip on her clip-on smile. Carlene pressed her fingers to her brow. ‘Yes. Didn’t I say that? Yes. It was very good.’ They were not getting very far, and whatever had moved so felicitously between them three weeks ago appeared to have vanished. Kiki wondered how soon she could make her excuses without seeming rude. As if in response to this silent speculation, Carlene leaned back in her chair and lowered her hand from her forehead to place it over her eyes. A pained murmur, lower than her speaking voice, came from her. ‘Carlene? Honey, are you OK?’ Kiki moved to stand, but with her other hand Carlene waved her off. ‘It’s a little thing. It’ll pass.’ Kiki stayed on the edge of her piano stool, in mid action, looking from Carlene to the door and back. ‘Are you sure I can’t get you any – ’ ‘It’s interesting to me,’ said Carlene slowly, removing her hand. ‘You were worried too, about their meeting again. Jerome and my Vee.’ ‘Worried? No ,’ said Kiki, laughing casually. ‘No, not really.’ ‘But you were. I was too. I was very glad to hear Jerome avoided her at your party. It’s a silly thing, but I knew I didn’t want them to meet again. Why was that?’ ‘Well,’ said Kiki and looked down, preparing to say something evasive. Glancing up into the woman’s serious eyes, she once more found herself speaking the truth. ‘For me, I guess I worry about Jerome taking things hard, you know? He’s inexperienced – very. And Vee – she’s so incredibly lovely – I’d never say it to him, but she was a little out of his league. A lot . She’s what my youngest son would call bootylicious .’ Kiki laughed, but, seeing that Carlene was following her words as if they were vital, she stopped. ‘Jerome always tends to aim a little high . . . You know what the bottom  the anatomy lesson line is? It just looked like broken-heart territory to me. I mean, the kind of broken heart that keeps on getting broke .

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

  Who has time to revamp their eating and sleeping habits and get more exercise, let alone learn new concepts, practice categorizing, and occasionally step back from the fiction of the self ? We all have jobs and schoolwork and time constraints and all sorts of personal and home situations. Also, some of these suggestions require an investment of time or money, which might be in short supply for the people who could benefit most. But . . . everyone can find something they can try in this chapter, even if it’s just taking walks or combining some emotion concepts before you go to sleep. Or giving up potato chips. (Okay, maybe not completely.) Emotion concepts and body budgeting can improve your health and well-being, as you’ve just seen, but they can also be a catalyst for illness. Emotions are said to influence a variety of debilitating medical disorders like depression, anxiety, and unexplained chronic pain, as well as metabolic dysfunctions that lead to type-2 diabetes, heart disease, and even cancer. At the same time, new discoveries about the nervous system are dissolving the sacred boundary between what we think of as physical and mental illness, in the same way that the theory of constructed emotion blurs the boundary between the physical and the social. That is the next topic we’ll visit. 10 Emotion and Illness Think about the last time you had a cold. You probably had a runny nose, cough, fever, and other diverse symptoms. Most people attribute colds to a single cause, namely, a cold virus. And yet, when scientists place a cold virus into the noses of one hundred people, only 25–40 percent get sick. So a cold virus cannot be the essence of a cold—something more complex must be going on. The virus is necessary but not sufficient. 1 The diverse set of symptoms that you collectively call “a cold” involves not just your body but also your mind. For example, if you are an introverted or negative-minded person, you’re more likely to develop a cold from a noseful of germs. 2 Our new view of human nature, inspired by the theory of constructed emotion, dissolves the boundaries between the mental and physical, including where illness is concerned. Old, essentialist thinking, in contrast, keeps those dividing lines sharp. Having a problem with your brain? Then see a neurologist. If the problem is with your mind, well, you need a psychiatrist. A more modern view integrates mind and brain and offers guidance on how better to understand human illness. For example, if you look at the diverse symptoms found in illnesses like anxiety, depression, chronic pain, and chronic stress, they don’t fit into a handful of neat compartments, like a silverware drawer.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  My Lo, without granting her new surroundings one glance, unseeingly turned on the radio to which instinct led her and lay down on the living room sofa with a batch of old magazines which in the same precise and blind manner she landed by dipping her hand into the nether anatomy of a lamp table. I really did not mind where to dwell provided I could lock my Lolita up somewhere; but I had, I suppose, in the course of my correspondence with vague Gaston, vaguely visualized a house of ivied brick. Actually the place bore a dejected resemblance to the Haze home (a mere 400 miles distant): it was the same sort of dull gray frame affair with a shingled roof and dull green drill awnings; and the rooms, though smaller and furnished in a more consistent plush-and-plate style, were arranged in much the same order. My study turned out to be, however, a much larger room, lined from floor to ceiling with some two thousand books on chemistry which my landlord (on sabbatical leave for the time being) taught at Beardsley College. I had hoped Beardsley School for girls, an expensive day school, with lunch thrown in and a glamorous gymnasium, would, while cultivating all those young bodies, provide some formal education for their minds as well. Gaston Godin, who was seldom right in his judgment of American habitus, had warned me that the institution might turn out to be one of those where girls are taught, as he put it with a foreigner’s love for such things: “not to spell very well, but to smell very well.” I don’t think they achieved even that. At my first interview with headmistress Pratt, she approved of my child’s “nice blue eyes” (blue! Lolita!) and of my own friendship with that “French genius” (a genius! Gaston!)—and then, having turned Dolly over to a Miss Cormorant, she wrinkled her brow in a kind of recueillement and said: “We are not so much concerned, Mr. Humbird, with having our students become bookworms or be able to reel off all the capitals of Europe which nobody knows anyway, or learn by heart the dates of forgotten battles. What we are concerned with is the adjustment of the child to group life. This is why we stress the four D’s: Dramatics, Dance, Debating and Dating. We are confronted by certain facts. Your delightful Dolly will presently enter an age group where dates, dating, date dress, date book, date etiquette, mean as much to her as, say, business, business connections, business success, mean to you, or as much as [smiling] the happiness of my girls means to me. Dorothy Humbird is already involved in a whole system of social life which consists, whether we like it or not, of hot-dog stands, corner drugstores, malts and cokes, movies, square-dancing, blanket parties on beaches, and even hair-fixing parties!

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  This technique implied the existence of garages specializing in “stage-automobile” operations, but I never could discover the remises he used. He seemed to patronize at first the Chevrolet genus, beginning with a Campus Cream convertible, then going on to a small Horizon Blue sedan, and thenceforth fading into Surf Gray and Driftwood Gray. Then he turned to other makes and passed through a pale dull rainbow of paint shades, and one day I found myself attempting to cope with the subtle distinction between our own Dream Blue Melmoth and the Crest Blue Oldsmobile he had rented; grays, however, remained his favorite cryptochromism, and, in agonizing nightmares, I tried in vain to sort out properly such ghosts as Chrysler’s Shell Gray, Chevrolet’s Thistle Gray, Dodge’s French Gray ... The necessity of being constantly on the lookout for his little moustache and open shirt—or for his baldish pate and broad shoulders— led me to a profound study of all cars on the road—behind, before, alongside, coming, going, every vehicle under the dancing sun: the quiet vacationist’s automobile with the box of Tender-Touch tissues in the back window; the recklessly speeding jalopy full of pale children with a shaggy dog’s head protruding, and a crumpled mudguard; the bachelor’s tudor sedan crowded with suits on hangers; the huge fat house trailer weaving in front, immune to the Indian file of fury boiling behind it; the car with the young female passenger politely perched in the middle of the front seat to be closer to the young male driver; the car carrying on its roof a red boat bottom up ... The gray car slowing up before us, the gray car catching up with us. We were in mountain country, somewhere between Snow and Champion, and rolling down an almost imperceptible grade, when I had my next distinct view of Detective Paramour Trapp. The gray mist behind us had deepened and concentrated into the compactness of a Dominion Blue sedan. All of a sudden, as if the car I drove responded to my poor heart’s pangs, we were slithering from side to side, with something making a helpless plap-plap-plap under us. “You got a flat, mister,” said cheerful Lo. I pulled up—near a precipice. She folded her arms and put her foot on the dashboard. I got out and examined the right rear wheel. The base of its tire was sheepishly and hideously square. Trapp had stopped some fifty yards behind us. His distant face formed a grease spot of mirth. This was my chance. I started to walk towards him—with the brilliant idea of asking him for a jack though I had one. He backed a little. I stubbed my toe against a stone—and there was a sense of general laughter. Then a tremendous truck loomed from behind Trapp and thundered by me—and immediately after, I heard it utter a convulsive honk. Instinctively I looked back—and saw my own car gently creeping away.

• From The Boys of My Youth (1998)

  We sit in the darkening living room, smoking and sipping our cups of whiskey. Inside my head I keep thinking Uh-oh , over and over. I’m in a rattled condition; I can’t calm down and figure this out. “I think we should brace ourselves in case something bad has happened,” I say to Mary. She nods. “Just in case. It won’t hurt to be braced.” She nods again. I realize that I don’t know what braced means. You hear it all the time but that doesn’t mean it makes sense. Whiskey is supposed to be bracing but what it is is awful. I want either tea or beer, no whiskey. Mary nods and heads into the kitchen. Within an hour there are seven women in the dim living room, sitting. Switching back and forth between CNN and the special reports by the local news. There is something terrifying about the quality of the light and the way voices are echoing in the room. The phone never stops ringing, ever since the story hit the national news. Physics, University of Iowa, dead people. Names not yet released. Everyone I’ve ever known is checking in to see if I’m still alive. California calls, New York calls, Florida calls, Ohio calls twice. All the guests at a party my husband is having call, one after the other, to ask how I’m doing. Each time, fifty times, I think it might be Chris and then it isn’t. It occurs to me once that I could call his house and talk to him directly, find out exactly what happened. Fear that his mother would answer prevents me from doing it. By this time I am getting reconciled to the fact that Shan, Gang Lu, and Dwight were killed. Also an administrator and her office assistant. The Channel 9 newslady keeps saying there are six dead and two in critical condition. They’re not saying who did the shooting. The names will be released at nine o’clock. Eventually I sacrifice all of them except Chris and Bob; they are the ones in critical condition, which is certainly not hopeless. At some point I go into the study to get away from the terrible dimness in the living room, all those eyes, all that calmness in the face of chaos. The collie tries to stand up but someone stops her with a handful of Fritos. The study is small and cold after I shut the door, but more brightly lit than the living room. I can’t remember what anything means. The phone rings and I pick up the extension and listen. My friend Michael is calling from Illinois for the second time. He asks Shirley if I’m holding up okay. Shirley says it’s hard to tell. I go back into the living room. The newslady breaks in at nine o’clock, and of course they drag it out as long as they can. I’ve already figured out that if they go in alphabetical order Chris will come first.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  269Lecture 27—Rebellion and Reform in Latin America õBergoglio came of age during the regime of Colonel Juan Domingo Perón. Perón came to power in 1946 and convinced many Argentinians that he (and his charismatic wife, Evita) embodied the soul of the Argentinian people and always acted with the common people’s values and desires at heart. Many Catholics protested the Perón regime, and he retaliated by forbidding all public religious demonstrations and by cracking down on Catholic political activists. õIn 1955, a military junta overthrew Perón, but the generals were just as fond of oppressing dissent and bossing around the bishops as Perón had been. Bergoglio grew up in a church that swung between two extremes, sometimes defying state power and suffering dearly for it, and at other times struggling with the temptations of complicity and political corruption. Bergoglio lost a cousin to the army’s firing squad in 1956. A PRIEST’S DILEMMA õBergoglio was a Jesuit, and when he became head of the Argentinian Jesuits in 1973, he was worried that too many of his colleagues had become infatuated with secular ideologies like Marxism. In these years, leftist priests across Latin America had begun criticizing their more conservative colleagues and politicians who advocated letting foreign investors further develop Latin America’s economy and natural resources. õThe leftists thought these practices simply extracted the continent’s wealth and made the poor more miserable. Maybe the days of direct colonial rule were over, but this was a new kind of soft imperialism. õLeftists adopted a view of the Christian message known as liberation theology. They saw the church as an agent for socioeconomic and political liberation in this world, not just spiritual liberation in the next. Bergoglio understood their concerns, but he worried that they had begun to look down on the faith of the common people as a so- called opiate of the masses that helped keep the poor from rising up against oppression.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  I was wide awake now and could hear birds making a racket in the garden behind the hotel. At first they comforted me. Then I remembered that they were German birds and I got depressed. Secretly, I hate traveling. I’m restless at home, but the minute I get away I feel the threat of doom hanging over my most trivial actions. Why had I come back to Europe anyway? My whole life was in pieces. For two years I had lain in bed with Bennett and thought of other men. For two years I had debated whether to get pregnant or strike out on my own and see some more of the world before settling down to anything that permanent. How did people decide to get pregnant, I wondered. It was such an awesome decision. In a way, it was such an arrogant decision. To undertake responsibility for a new life when you had no way of knowing what it would be like. I assumed that most women got pregnant without thinking about it because if they ever once considered what it really meant, they would surely be overwhelmed with doubt. I had none of that blind faith in chance which other women seemed to have. I always wanted to be in control of my fate. Pregnancy seemed like a tremendous abdication of control. Something growing inside you which would eventually usurp your life. I had been compulsively using a diaphragm for so long that pregnancy could never be accidental for me. Even during the two years I took the pill, I never missed a day. Slob that I was about everything else, I had never messed up on that score. I was virtually the only one of my friends who’d never had an abortion. What was wrong with me? Was I unnatural? I just hadn’t the normal female compulsion to get knocked up. All I could think of was me with my restlessness, with my longings for zipless fucks and strangers on trains—being tied down with a baby. How could I wish that on a baby? “If it weren’t for you, I’d have been a famous artist,” my furious redheaded mother used to say. She had studied art in Paris, learned anatomy and cast-drawing, water color and graphics, and even how to grind her own pigments. She had met famous artists and famous writers and famous musicians and famous hangers-on (she said). She had danced naked in the Bois de Boulogne (she said), sat in Les Deux Magots in a black velvet cloak (she said), driven through the streets of Paris on the fenders of Bugattis (she said), gone to the Greek islands three and a half decades before Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (she said), and then she had come home, married a Catskill Mountains comedian who was about to make a killing in the tzatzka business, and had had four daughters all of whom received the most poetic names: Gundra Miranda, Isadora Zelda, Lalah Justine, and Chloe Camille.