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 Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  best. The women and girls wear ankle-length dresses in pastel shades of pink, lavender, and blue that could be straight out of the nineteenth century; their hair, pulled back into long, chaste braids, first rises from their foreheads in fabulous crests, painstakingly arranged, that bring to mind breaking surf. Above the grieving throngs, the cliffs of Canaan Mountain glow in the angled sunlight, profiled against a blue autumn sky. Uncle Rulon, who was three months shy of his ninety-third birthday when he passed on, left behind an estimated seventy-five bereft wives and at least sixty- five children. There is much uncertainty about how the next of kin and the rest of his followers will cope in his absence. An air of vague anxiety hangs over the community. The same kind of apprehension gripped Colorado City in 1986, when the prophet who preceded Uncle Rulon—LeRoy Johnson, the much adored Uncle Roy—perished at the age of ninety-eight. Uncle Roy was also supposed to live forever. After his death, Uncle Rulon assumed leadership of the sect, but his right to claim Uncle Roy’s mantle was furiously contested by those loyal to a prominent bishop named Marion Hammon. Hammon’s followers, amounting to nearly a third of the community, left the fold en masse, moved onto a swath of desert just across the highway, and founded their own fundamentalist church— which became known as the Second Ward (the original church was called the First Ward). Each congregation accused the other of being godless apostates and issued impassioned warnings about the eternal damnation that would surely be the other’s fate. Which is pretty much how things still stand today. Now, following Uncle Rulon’s demise, the First Ward is threatened by further rifts, even though forty-six-year-old Warren Jeffs—the second son of Rulon’s fourth wife—moved swiftly to take the reins of the church. Because his father had been seriously ailing for several years, Warren had already been running things, and had long functioned as prophet in everything but name. But Warren —a tall, bony man with a bulging Adam’s apple, a high-pitched voice, and a frightening sense of his own perfection in the eyes of God—has never received anything remotely close to the kind of affection lavished on Uncle Rulon or Uncle Roy by the people of Colorado City and Bountiful, British Columbia. Almost nobody in either town refers to Warren Jeffs as “Uncle Warren.” “My father, and especially Uncle Roy, were warm, loving prophets who

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  They were all of that type known as "honor students," of unimpeachable deportment, and—as was so often the case at my school—correspondingly prudish. Their shocked disapproval of my words was clear from their half-joking remarks:"Ugh! You know all about it, don't you?" "Nobody'd dream of such a thing unless he'd been doing a lot he shouldn't." "Hey, you're really awful, aren't you?" Encountering such naïve, excited criticism, I feared my medicine had been a bit too effective. I reflected that I could probably have shown my profundity off to better advantage if, even in saying the same thing, I had used a little less sophisticated and startling way of speaking, that I ought to have been more reserved. When a boy of fourteen or fifteen discovers that he is more given to introspection and consciousness of self than other boys his age, he easily falls into the error of believing it is because he is more mature than they. This was certainly a mistake in my case. Rather it was because the other boys had no such need of understanding themselves as I had: they could be their natural selves, whereas I was to play a part, a fact that would require considerable understanding and study. So it was not my maturity but my sense of uneasiness, my uncertainty, that was forcing me to gain control over my consciousness. Because such consciousness was simply a steppingstone to aberration, and my present thinking was nothing but uncertain and haphazard guesswork. My uneasiness was the same as that of which Stephan Zweig speaks when he says that "what we call evil is the instability inherent in all mankind which drives man outside and beyond himself toward an unfathomable something, exactly as though Nature had bequeathed to our souls an ineradicable portion of instability from her store of ancient chaos." This legacy of unrest produces strain and "attempts to resolve itself back into super-human and super-sensory elements." So then, it was this same instability that drove me on, while the other boys, having no need for self-awareness, could dispense with introspection. Bus conductresses possessed not the slightest sexual attraction for me, and yet I saw that my words, spoken deliberately both because of the analogy and the other considerations I have mentioned, had not only actually shocked my friends and made them blush with embarrassment, but had also played upon their adolescent susceptibility to suggestive ideas and produced an obscure sexual excitement in them. At this sight, a spiteful feeling of superiority naturally arose in me. But my feelings did not stop there. Now it was my own turn to be deceived. I sobered up from my feeling of superiority, but distortedly, one-sidedly.

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  As though each of us feared what the other might say at any moment, we capped joke upon joke. Even though her sun tan introduced a tiny note of discord, there beneath her fashionable upswept coiffure the same tranquillity as always was overflowing from her softly moist eyes, her youthful eyebrows, her slightly heavyish lips. Whenever other women passed our table they always noticed Sonoko. A waiter was moving about the room, carrying a silver tray on which iced desserts were arranged on a large block of ice carved in the shape of a swan. Sonoko was softly jingling the clasp of her plastic handbag, and a ring glittered on her finger. "Are you bored with this?" I asked. "Don't say that." Her tone of voice sounded full of a weariness that was somehow strange. It could even have been called charming. She had turned her head and was looking out the window at the summer street. When she spoke again her words came slowly: "Sometimes I become confused. I wonder why we're meeting like this. And yet in the end I always meet you again." "Probably because at least it's not a meaningless minus. Even if it certainly is a meaningless plus." "But I have something called a husband, remember. Even if the plus is meaningless, there oughtn't to be room for any plus at all.""It's tiresome arithmetic, isn't it?" I perceived that Sonoko had finally arrived at the doorway to doubt. She had begun to feel that the door that opened only halfway could not be left as it was. Perhaps by now this sort of sensitivity to disorder had come to absorb the largest part of the feelings Sonoko and I shared in common. I too was still far from the age when one is willing to accept things the way they are. And yet it seemed as though I had suddenly been confronted with clear proof that my nameless fear had infected Sonoko unawares and, moreover, that the sole possession we shared in common was the sign of fear. Sonoko again gave voice to this fear. I tried not to listen. But my mouth made flippant replies. "If we go on like this," she said, "what do you think will happen? Won't we be driven into some corner we can't escape from?" "I think that I respect you and that there's nothing to be ashamed of before anybody. Why is it wrong for two friends to meet?" "That's the way it's been up to now. It's been just like you say. I think you've acted very honorably. But I don't know about the future. Even though we don't do the slightest thing to be ashamed of, I still somehow have terrible dreams. Then I feel as though God is punishing me for future sins."

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  Added to the gloomy irritation that always threatened me when I was alone, the grief that had so shaken the foundations of my existence this morning when I had seen Sonoko was now revived still more poignantly within my heart. It proclaimed that every word I had spoken and every act I had performed that day had been false: having discovered that it was less painful to decide a thing was false in its entirety than to torture myself with doubts as to which part might be true and which false, I had already become gradually familiar with this way of deliberately unmasking my falseness to myself. And even as I lay thinking, my tenacious uneasiness concerning what I called the basic condition of being a human being, concerning what I called the positive human psychology, did nothing but lead me around in endless circles of introspection. How would I feel if I were another boy? How would I feel if I were a normal person? These questions obsessed me. They tortured me, instantly and utterly destroying even the one splinter of happiness I had thought I possessed for sure.My "act" has ended by becoming an integral part of my nature, I told myself. It's no longer an act. My knowledge that I am masquerading as a normal person has even corroded whatever of normality I originally possessed, ending by making me tell myself over and over again that it too was nothing but a pretense at normality. To say it another way, I'm becoming the sort of person who can't believe in anything except the counterfeit. But if this is true, then my feeling of wanting to regard Sonoko's attraction for me as sheer counterfeit might be nothing but a mask to hide my true desire of believing myself genuinely in love with her. So maybe I am becoming the sort of person who is incapable of acting contrary to his true nature, and maybe I do really love her. . . . With such thoughts as these weaving circles inside my head I was finally almost on the point of going to sleep when suddenly, borne on the night air, there came that wailing sound which was always ominous but still somehow fascinating. "Isn't that the alarm?" the banker said immediately. I was startled by the lightness of his sleep. "I wonder," I answered vaguely. The sirens continued sounding faintly for a long time. As the hours for visiting the regiment began early in the morning, we all arose at six o'clock. Sonoko was in the washroom when I went in. After exchanging good mornings with her, I said:"The sirens blew last night, didn't they?"

• From Post Office (1971)

  15 On the elevator up, I was the only white man there. It seemed strange. They talked about the riots, not looking at me. “Jesus,” said a coal black guy, “it’s really something. These guys walking around the streets drunk with fifths of whiskey in their hands. Cops driving by but the cops don’t get out of their cars, they don’t bother the drunks. It’s daylight. People walking around with t.v. sets, vacuum cleaners, all that. It’s really something ...” “Yeah, man.” “The black-owned places put up signs, ‘BLOOD BROTHERS.’ And the white-owned places too. But they can’t fool the people. They know which places belong to Whitey ...” “Yeah, brother.” Then, the elevator stopped at the fourth floor and we all got off together. I felt that it was best for me not to make any comment at that time. Not much later the postmaster of the city came on over the intercoms; “Attention! The southeast area has been barricaded. Only those with proper identification will be allowed through. There is a 7 p.m. curfew. After 7 p.m. nobody will be allowed to pass. The barricade extends from Indiana Street to Hoover Street, and from Washington Boulevard to 135th Place. Anybody living in this area is excused from work now.” I got up and reached for my timecard. “Hey! Where you going?” the supervisor asked me. “You heard the announcement?” “Yeah, but you’re not—” I slipped my left hand into my pocket. “I’m not WHAT? I’m not WHAT?” He looked at me. “What do you know, WHITEY?” I said. I took my timecard, walked over and punched out.

• From Post Office (1971)

  3 But, there were still bits of action. One guy was caught on the same stairway that I had been trapped on. He was caught there with his head under some girl’s skirt. Then one of the girls who worked in the cafeteria complained that she hadn’t been paid, as promised, for a bit of oral copulation she had supplied to a general foreman and three mailhandlers. They fired the girl and the three mailhandlers and busted the general foreman down to supervisor. Then, I set the post office on fire. I had been sent to third-class papers and was smoking a cigar, working a stack of mail off of a hand truck when some guy came by and said, “HEY, YOUR MAIL IS ON FTRE!” I looked around. There it was. A small flame was starting to stand up like a dancing snake. Evidently part of a burning cigar ash had fallen in there earlier. “Oh shit!” The flame grew rapidly. I took a catalogue and, holding it flat, I beat the shit out of it. Sparks flew. It was hot. As soon as I put out one section, another caught up. I heard a voice: “Hey! I smell fire!” “YOU DON’T SMELL FIRE,” I yelled, “YOU SMELL SMOKE!” “I think I’m going to get out of here!” “God damn you, then,” I screamed, “GET OUT!” The flames were burning my hands. I had to save the United States mail, third-class junkmail! Finally, I got it under control. I took my foot and pushed the whole pile of papers onto the floor and stepped on the last bit of red ash. The supervisor walked up to say something to me. I stood there with the burned catalogue in my hand and waited. He looked at me and walked off. Then I resumed casing the third-class junkmail. Anything burned, I put to one side. My cigar had gone out. I didn’t light it again.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The hour of vespers come and the doctor being about to go to the patient in question, there came to him a messenger from certain very great friends of his at Malfi, charging him fail not for anything to repair thither incontinent, for that there had been a great fray there, in which many had been wounded. Master Mazzeo accordingly put off the tending of the leg until the ensuing morning and going aboard a boat, went off to Malfi, whereupon his wife, knowing that he would not return home that night, let fetch Ruggieri, as of her wont, and bringing him into her chamber, locked him therewithin, against certain other persons of the house should be gone to sleep. Ruggieri, then, abiding in the chamber, awaiting his mistress, and being,--whether for fatigue endured that day or salt meat that he had eaten or maybe for usance,--sore, athirst, caught sight of the flagon of water, which the doctor had prepared for the sick man and which stood in the window, and deeming it drinking water, set it to his mouth and drank it all off; nor was it long ere a great drowsiness took him and he fell asleep. The lady came to the chamber as first she might and finding Ruggieri asleep, nudged him and bade him in a low voice arise, but to no effect, for he replied not neither stirred anywhit; whereat she was somewhat vexed and nudged him more sharply, saying, 'Get up, slugabed! An thou hadst a mind to sleep, thou shouldst have betaken thee to thine own house and not come hither.' Ruggieri, being thus pushed, fell to the ground from a chest whereon he lay and gave no more sign of life than a dead body; whereupon the lady, now somewhat alarmed, began to seek to raise him up and to shake him more roughly, tweaking him by the nose and plucking him by the beard, but all in vain; he had tied his ass to a fast picket.[257] At this she began to fear lest he were dead; nevertheless she proceeded to pinch him sharply and burn his flesh with a lighted taper, but all to no purpose; wherefore, being no doctress, for all her husband was a physician, she doubted not but he was dead in very deed. Loving him over all else as she did, it needeth no asking if she were woebegone for this and daring not make any outcry, she silently fell a-weeping over him and bewailing so sore a mishap. [Footnote 257: A proverbial way of saying that he was fast asleep.]

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  of critical peril that loomed. As distinguished historian D. Michael Quinn noted in his book The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power, “Institutionally, Mormonism faced a dilemma of paramount consequence at Smith’s death in June 1844: Can the church survive without the founding prophet? Like the removal of a keystone from an arch, would the entire structure collapse?” Joseph had neglected to provide his followers with a clear mechanism for determining his successor. Indeed, over the years he had hinted at various conflicting criteria for the transfer of power. The result, owing to his untimely demise, was a leadership vacuum that several would-be prophets scrambled to fill. Among the leading claimants were: • Joseph’s eldest son, Joseph Smith III, who was only eleven years old when his father was killed and whom the prophet probably intended to be his successor when the boy became an adult. • Joseph’s younger brother Samuel H. Smith. • Sidney Rigdon, the influential theologian whom Joseph had picked as his vice-presidential running mate in his 1844 campaign for the United States presidency—despite the fact that Rigdon, who suffered from “nervous spasms and swoonings,” was emotionally erratic and unreliable. • Brigham Young, the stalwart, ambitious president of the church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. The contenders fell into two camps: those bitterly opposed to polygamy, who saw Joseph’s death as an opportunity to eradicate the practice before it gained traction, and those who had already taken plural wives and regarded polygamy as a divinely ordained principle that must be sustained. Joseph had first come forward with his covert revelation sanctioning celestial marriage scarcely a year before his martyrdom—and even after he’d documented the revelation in writing, only a select group of his most trusted cronies had been let in on the secret. During the bleak, chaotic days that followed Joseph’s murder, 95 percent of Mormons still had no clue that their prophet had married more than one wife and had declared plural marriage to be one of the most crucial keys to gaining entry to the Kingdom of Heaven. Emma Smith, Samuel Smith, Sidney Rigdon, William Law, and others who despised polygamy—committed Mormons who were convinced that it would be

• From Post Office (1971)

  “Yeh,” I said to the pre-med student, “what do you want with me?” “I am going to be your own personal physician.” “All right, doctor, the first thing I want you to do is to take that god damned human heart out of here!” “Uh uh.” “What?” “The heart stays here.” “Look, man, I don’t know your name—” “Wilbert.” “Well, Wilbert, I don’t know who you are or how you got here but you take ‘Francis’ with you!” “No, it stays with you.” Then he got his little playbag and the rubber wraparound for the arm and he squeezed the ball and the rubber inflated. “You’ve got the blood pressure of a 19-year-old,” he told me. “Fuck that. Look, isn’t it against the law to leave human hearts laying around?” “I’ll be back to get it. Now breathe in!” “I thought the post office was driving me crazy. Now you come along.” “Quiet! Breathe in!” “I need a good young piece of ass, doctor. That’s what’s wrong with me.” “Your backbone is out of place in 14 areas, Chinaski. That breeds tension, imbecility, and, often, madness.” “Balls!” I said … I don’t remember the gentleman leaving. I awakened on my couch at 1:10 p.m., death in the afternoon, and it was hot, the sun ripping through my torn shades to rest on the jar in the center of the coffeetable. “Francis” had stayed with me all night, stewing in alcoholic brine, swimming in the mucous extension of the dead diastole. Sitting there in the jar. It looked like fried chicken. I mean, before you fried it. Exactly. I picked it up and put it in my closet and covered it with a torn shirt. Then I went to the bathroom and vomited. I finished, stuck my face against the mirror. There were long black hairs sticking out all over my face. Suddenly I had to sit down and shit. It was a good hot one. The doorbell rang. I finished wiping my ass, got into some old clothes and went to the door. “Hello?” There was a young guy out there with long blonde hair hanging down around his face and a black girl who just kept smiling as if she were crazy. “Hank?” “Yeh. Who you two guys?” “She is a woman. Don’t you remember us? From the party? We brought a flower.” “Oh balls, come on in.” They brought in the flower, some kind of red-orange thing on a green stem. It made a lot more sense than many things, except that it had been murdered. I found a bowl, put the flower in, brought out a jug of wine and put it on the coffeetable. “You don’t remember her?” the kid asked. “You said you wanted to fuck her.” She laughed. “Very nice, but not now.” “Chinaski, how are you going to make it without the post office?” “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll fuck you. Or let you fuck me.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  My vocabulary on the subject was still in process of formation. I found that I could not bring home of the Samskrit equivalent for non- violent. I therefore asked Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad to give me some other equivalent for it. He suggested the word ba-aman; similarly for non-co-operation he suggested the phrase tark-i- mavalat. Thus, while I was still busy devising suitable Hindi, Gujarati and Urdu phraseology for non-co- operation, I was called upon to frame the non-co-operation resolution for that eventful Congress. In the original draft the word ‘non-violent’ had been left out by me. I had handed over the draft to Maulana Shaukat Ali who was travelling in the same compartment, without noticing the omission. During the night I discovered the error. In the morning I sent Mahadev with the message that the omission should be made good before the draft was sent to the press. But I have an impression that the draft was printed before the insertion could be made. The Subjects Committee was to have met the same evening. I had therefore to make the necessary correction in the printed copies of the draft. I afterwards saw that there would have been great difficulty, had I not been ready with my draft. None the less my plight was pitiable indeed. I was absolutely at sea as to who would support the resolution and who would oppose it. Nor had I any idea as to the attitude that Lalaji would adopt. I only saw an imposing phalanx of veteran warriors assembled for the fray at Calcutta, Dr. Besant, Pandit Malaviyaji, Sjt. Vijayaraghavachari, Pandit Motilalji and the Deshabandhu being some of them. In my resolution non-co-operation was postulated only with a view to obtaining redress of the Punjab and the Khilafat wrongs. That, however, did not appeal to Sjt. Vijayaraghavachari. ‘If non- co- operation was to be declared, why should it be with reference to particular wrongs ? The absence of Swaraj was the biggest wrong that the non-co-operation should be directed,’ he argued. Pandit Motilalji also wanted the demand for Swaraj to be included in the resolution. I readily accepted the suggestion and incorporated the demand for Swaraj in my resolution, which was passed after an exhaustive, serious and somewhat stromy discussion. Motilalji was the first to join the movement. I still remember the sweet discussion that I had with him on the resolution. He suggested some changes in its phraseology which I adopted. He undertook to win the Deshabandhu for the movement. The he felt sceptical as to the capacity of the people to carry out the programme. It was only at the Nagpur Congress that he and Lalaji accepted it whole heartedly. I felt the loss of the late Lokamanya very deeply at the special session. It has been my firm faith to this day that, had the Lokamanya been then alive, he would have given his benedictions to me on that occasion.

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  But the photograph she sent me was so large that it would only barely have fitted into a brief case. As I could not get it in my pocket, I carried it wrapped in a carrying-cloth. Fearing the factory might burn down with the picture in it, I took it with me whenever I went home. One night I was on the train returning to the arsenal when the sirens suddenly sounded and the lights were put out. In a few minutes there came the signal to take shelter. I searched in the luggage-rack with groping hands, but the large bundle that I had put there had been stolen, and with it went the carrying-cloth containing Sonoko's picture. Being inherently given to superstition, from that moment I became obsessed with the idea that I must go to see Sonoko quickly. That air raid of the night of May the twenty-fourth, as destructive as the midnight raid of March the ninth had been, brought me to a final decision. Perhaps my relationship with Sonoko required the miasmal air exhaled by this accumulation of calamities; perhaps that relationship was a sort of chemical compound that could be produced only through the agency of sulphuric acid. We left the train and took shelter in the many caves that had been dug along a line where the foothills opened onto the plain, and from our shelter we watched the sky over Tokyo turn crimson. From time to time something would explode, throwing a reflection against the sky, and suddenly between the clouds we could see an eerie blue sky, as though it were midday. It was a sliver of blue sky appearing for an instant in the dead of night.The futile searchlights seemed more like beacons welcoming the enemy planes. They would catch the glittering wings of an enemy plane exactly in the middle of two beams that had crossed momentarily and would then beckon the plane courteously, handing it on from one baton of light to the next, each time nearer Tokyo. Nor was the antiaircraft fire very heavy in those days. The B-29's reached the skies over Tokyo in comfort. From where we were it was unlikely that anyone could actually distinguish friend from foe in the air battles that were taking place above Tokyo. And yet a chorus of cheers would rise from the crowd of watchers whenever they spotted, against the crimson backdrop, the shadow of a plane that had been hit and was falling. The young workmen were particularly vociferous. The sound of hand-clapping and cheering rang out from the mouths of the scattered tunnels as though in a theater. So far as the spectacle seen from this distance was concerned, it seemed to make no essential difference whether the falling plane was ours or the enemy's.

• From Post Office (1971)

  “Won’t you come in?” Fay had asked. “Maybe next week …” Fay put another chocolate into her mouth. “Robby’s worried. He lost his job on the delivery truck. He says he can’t write without a job. He needs a feeling of security. He says he won’t be able to write until he finds another job.” “Oh hell,” I said, “I can get him another job.” “Where? How?” “They are hiring down at the post office, right and left. The pay’s not bad.” “THE POST OFFICE! ROBBY’S TOO SENSITIVE TO WORK AT THE POST OFFICE!” “Sorry,” I said, “thought it was worth a try. Good night.” Fay didn’t answer me. She was angry. 8I had Fridays and Saturdays off, which made Sunday the roughest day. Plus the fact that on Sunday they made me report at 3:30 p.m. instead of my usual 6:18 p.m. This Sunday I went in and they put me in the station papers section, as usual per Sundays, and this meant at least eight hours on my feet. Besides the pains, I was beginning to suffer from dizzy spells. Everything would whirl, I would come very close to blacking out, then I would grab myself. It had been a brutal Sunday. Some friends of Fay’s had come over and sat on the couch and chirped, how they were really great writers, really the best in the nation. The only reason they didn’t get published was that they didn’t—they said—send their stuff out. I had looked at them. If they wrote the way they looked, drinking their coffee and giggling and dipping their doughnuts, it didn’t matter if they sent it out or jammed it. I was sticking in the magazines this Sunday. I needed coffee, two coffees, a bite to eat. But all the soups were standing out front. I hit out the back way. I had to get straight. The cafeteria was on the second floor. I was on the fourth. There was a doorway down by the men’s crapper. I looked at the sign. WARNING! DO NOT USE THIS STAIRWAY! It was a con. I was wiser than those mothers. They just put the sign up to keep clever guys like Chinaski from going down to the cafeteria. I opened the door and went on down. The door closed behind me. I walked down to the second floor. Turned the knob. What the fuck! The door wouldn’t open! It was locked. I walked back up. Past the third floor door. I didn’t try it. I knew it was locked. As the first floor door was locked. I knew the post office well enough by then. When they laid a trap, they were thorough. I had one slim chance. I was at the fourth floor. I tried the knob. It was locked. At least the door was near the men’s crapper. There was always somebody going in and out of the men’s crapper. I waited. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. Twenty minutes!

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The good simple man, hearing this, was like to swoon and said, 'How so?' 'O husband mine,' answered Agnesa, 'there took him but now of a sudden a fainting-fit, that methought he was dead, and I knew not what to do or say; but just then Fra Rinaldo our gossip came in and taking him in his arms, said, "Gossip, these be worms he hath in his body, the which draw near to his heart and would infallibly kill him; but have no fear, for I will conjure them and make them all die; and ere I go hence, you shall see the child whole again as ever you saw him." And for that we had need of thee to repeat certain orisons and that the maid could not find thee, he caused his comrade say them in the highest room of our house, whilst he and I came hither and locked ourselves in, so none should hinder us, for that none other than the child's mother might be present at such an office. Indeed, he hath the child yet in his arms and methinketh he waiteth but for his comrade to have made an end of saying the orisons and it will be done, for that the boy is already altogether restored to himself.' The good simple man, believing all this, was so straitened with concern for his child that it never entered his mind to suspect the cheat put upon him by his wife; but, heaving a great sigh, he said, 'I will go see him.' 'Nay,' answered she, 'thou wouldst mar that which hath been done. Wait; I will go see an thou mayst come in and call thee.' Meanwhile, Fra Rinaldo, who had heard everything and had dressed himself at his leisure, took the child in his arms and called out, as soon as he had ordered matters to his mind, saying, 'Harkye, gossip, hear I not my gossip your husband there?' 'Ay, sir,' answered the simpleton; whereupon, 'Then,' said the other, 'come hither.' The cuckold went to him and Fra Rinaldo said to him, 'Take your son by the grace of God whole and well, whereas I deemed but now you would not see him alive at vespers; and look you let make a waxen image of his bigness and set it up, to the praise and glory of God, before the statue of our lord St. Ambrose, through whose intercession He hath vouchsafed to restore him unto you.' The child, seeing his father, ran to him and caressed him, as little children used to do, whilst the latter, taking him, weeping, in his arms, no otherwise than as he had brought him forth of the grave, fell to kissing him and returning thanks to his gossip for that he had made him whole.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  And her face would grow blotched with anxiety and fear as she glanced towards Mrs. Bingham. But at night, when the child lay lonely and wakeful, these acts that had proved a consolation in the morning, having sprung from a desperate kind of loyalty to Collins—these acts would seem trivial and silly and useless, since Collins could neither know of them nor see them, and the tears that had been held in check through the day would well under Stephen’s eyelids. Nor could she, in those lonely watches of the night- time, pluck up courage enough to reproach the Lord Jesus, who, she felt, could have helped her quite well had He chosen to accord her a housemaid’s knee. She would think: ‘He loves neither me nor Collins—He wants all the pain for Himself; He won’t share it!’ And then she would feel contrite: ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Lord Jesus, ’cause I do know You love all miserable sinners!’ And the thought that perhaps she had been unjust to Jesus would reduce her to still further tears. Very dreadful indeed were those nights spent in weeping, spent in doubting the Lord and His servant Collins. The hours would drag by in intolerable blackness, that in passing seemed to envelop Stephen’s body, making her feel now hot and now cold. The grandfather clock on the stairs ticked so loudly that her head ached to hear its unnatural ticking—when it chimed, which it did at the hours and the half-hours, its voice seemed to shake the whole house with terror, until Stephen would creep down under the bed-clothes to hide from she knew not what. But presently, huddled beneath the blankets, the child would be soothed by a warm sense of safety, and her nerves would relax, while her body grew limp with the drowsy softness of bed. Then suddenly a big and most comforting yawn, and another, and another, until darkness and Collins and tall clocks that menaced, and Stephen herself, were all blended and merged into something quite friendly, a harmonious whole, neither fearful nor doubting—the blessèd illusion we call sleep. 2 In the weeks that followed on Collins’ departure, Anna tried to be very gentle with her daughter, having the child more frequently with her, more diligently fondling Stephen. Mother and daughter would walk in the garden, or wander about together through the meadows, and Anna would remember the son of her dreams, who had played with her in those meadows. A great sadness would cloud her eyes for a moment, an infinite regret as she looked down at Stephen; and Stephen, quick to discern that sadness, would press Anna’s hand with small, anxious fingers; she would long to inquire what troubled her mother, but would be held speechless through shyness. The scents of the meadows would move those two strangely—the queer, pungent smell from the hearts of dog-daisies; the buttercup smell, faintly green like the grass; and then meadowsweet that grew close by the hedges.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  Taylor prophesied that “in the time of the seventh president of this Church, the Church would go into bondage both temporally and spiritually, and in that day the One Mighty and Strong spoken of in the 85th Section of The Doctrine and Covenants would come.” And thus were the seeds of Mormon Fundamentalism sown. Four years later, when the LDS Church voted to sustain the Manifesto and end polygamy, Mormon society began to take its first tentative steps toward joining the American mainstream—slowly and ambivalently at first, and then with stunning determination. But the fundamentalists refused to have any part of it. They remained dedicated to the doctrines of Joseph Smith—to his doctrine of plural marriage, in particular. They vowed to uphold John Taylor’s covenant with ferocious resolve, regardless of the course taken by the rest of Mormondom or the rest of the world. Today, that same vow has been taken up by the fundamentalists’ twenty-first-century brethren, and their fervor is no less resolute. To Mormon Fundamentalists—to the likes of Dan Lafferty, and the inhabitants of Colorado City, and Brian David Mitchell (the abductor of Elizabeth Smart)—September 27, 1886, is a sacred date. From that moment forward, faithful polygamists have been eagerly anticipating the arrival of the “one mighty and strong,” who will, as Joseph prophesied, “set in order the house of God.” PART IV Both revelation and delusion are attempts at the solution of problems. Artists and scientists realize that no solution is ever final, but that each new creative step points the way to the next artistic or scientific problem. In contrast, those who embrace religious revelations and delusional systems tend to see them as unshakeable and permanent. . . . Religious faith is an answer to the problem of life. . . . The majority of mankind want or need some all-embracing belief system which purports to provide an answer to life’s mysteries, and are not necessarily dismayed by the discovery that their belief system, which they proclaim as “the truth,” is incompatible with the beliefs of other people. One man’s faith is another man’s delusion. . . . Whether a belief is considered to be a delusion or not depends partly upon the intensity with which it is defended, and partly upon the numbers of people subscribing to it. * ANTHONY STORR, FEET OF CLAY

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  The house was frigid, wet, and dark. In his perturbation, Hood recalled a lecture he had received from his own father about burst pipes. Like any paternal lecture this one was probably full of half-truths, digressions, polemics, and nostalgic anecdotes from the past. Still, one point stood out. Sometimes a leak skips a whole floor. Sometimes the leak is on the whole other side of the house from where the problem originates. And pipes, he remembered, usually split lengthways. He didn’t know what to do next, whether to try to find his children, whether to presume they had been spirited away by his wife, who had reached the end of her tolerance, whether to try to shut off the water somehow, whether to further inspect the damage, or whether to do something about Mike, the son of his former mistress. Each time he passed through the front hall, Mike seemed to have moved. A strangulated yelp punctuated the silence at the front hall. The dog was back. Scratching at the door. —Jesus, Hood said to Daisy Chain, letting him in. I have a lot on my plate here. Could you look after yourself for a little while? Hood fished out a pair of galoshes from the hall closet. He descended into the basement, where the washer and dryer were located. The water in the basement grazed his kneecaps. It seemed to flow out one end of the basement into the Silvermine River, as if Hood’s house had now become a part of the river itself, part of that topographical movement from the Appalachian foothills to the Long Island Sound. The river had reached out to incorporate the Hoods and their residence into itself. A sort of gushing also issued forth—there in the basement—from a particularly damaged line against one wall. Hood stepped down into that river just the same. It was only because of its motion, Hood thought, that the water wasn’t yet frozen. He shuddered as he waded across to where the washer and dryer protruded—craggy water hazards in that dank loch. He stepped on a pair of roller skates and fell, yelping, against the banister. Drenched to the waist. No theory of the flood, of its origin, would satisfy him now. He wasn’t going to think reasonably any longer. He would abandon all thinking about causes. He decided instead just to take the sheet he saw on top of the dryer up to cover Mikey. The sheet—a blue, floral print that usually covered Wendy’s bed—was drenched. But what were his options? Hood waded through the oily water and up into the front hall again. It was the least he could do. When he reached the top of the stairs he found that the dog was now preoccupied with Mike. Vigorously, Daisy Chain circulated around the body, sniffing and licking, tail oscillating. The dog seized Mike’s sleeve in its mouth and began to wrestle with it.

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  Although outwardly scornful of such childish playground equipment as the swinging-log, the second-year students still had a lingering affection for it in their hearts, and by forcibly driving the freshmen away, they were able to adopt the face-saving pretense of indulging in the amusement half-derisively, without any seriousness. The freshmen had formed a circle at a distance around the log and were watching the rough play of the upperclassmen, who, in turn, were quite conscious of having an audience. The log, suspended on chains, swung back and forth rhythmically, with a battering-ram motion, and the contest was to make each other fall off the log. Omi was standing with both feet planted firmly at the mid-point of the log, eagerly looking around for opponents ; it was a posture that made him look exactly like a murderer brought to bay. No one in our class was a match for him. Already several boys had jumped up onto the log, one after another, only to be cut down by Omi's quick hands; their feet had trampled away the frost on the earth around the log, which had been glittering in the early morning sunlight.After each victory Omi would clasp his hands together over his head like a triumphant boxer, smiling profusely. And the first-year students would cheer, already forgetting he had been a ringleader in driving them away from the log. My eyes followed his white-gloved hands. They were moving fiercely, but with marvelous precision, like the paws of some young beast, a wolf perhaps. From time to time they would cut through the winter-morning's air, like the feathers of an arrow, straight to the chest of an opponent. And always the opponent would fall to the frosty ground, landing now on his feet, now on his buttocks. On rare occasions, at the moment of knocking an opponent off the log, Omi himself would be on the verge of falling; as he fought to regain the equilibrium of his careening body, he would appear to be writhing in agony there atop the log, made slippery by the faintly gleaming frost. But always the strength in his supple hips would restore him once again to that assassin-like posture. The log was moving left and right impersonally, swinging in unperturbed arcs. . . . As I watched, I was suddenly overcome with uneasiness, with a racking, inexplicable uneasiness. It resembled a dizziness such as might have come from watching the swaying of the log, but it was not that.

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  Both for my sake and because of her bad leg, my grandmother had persuaded the neighborhood firemen to arrange for the festival processions of the district to pass along the street before our gate. Originally there had been another prescribed route for the festivals, but the chief fireman took it upon himself to arrange some slight detour each year, and it had become a custom to pass our house. On this particular day I was standing in front of the gate with other members of the household. Both leaves of the vine-patterned iron gate had been thrown open, and water had been sprinkled neatly on the paving stones outside the gate. The hesitant sound of drums was drawing near.The plaintive melody of a chant, in which individual words only gradually became distinguishable, pierced through the confused tumult of the festival, proclaiming what might be called the true theme of this outwardly purposeless uproar—a seeming lamentation for the extremely vulgar mating of humanity and eternity, which could be consummated only through some such pious immorality as this. In the tangled mass of sound I could gradually distinguish the metallic jingle of the rings on the staff carried by the priest at the head of the procession, the stuttering roar of the drums, and the medley of rhythmic shouts from the youths shouldering the sacred shrine. My heart was beating so suffocatingly that I could scarcely stand. (Ever since then violent anticipation has always been anguish rather than joy for me.) The priest carrying the staff was wearing a fox mask. The golden eyes of this occult beast fastened themselves too intently upon me, as though to bewitch me, and the procession passing before my eyes aroused in me a joy akin to terror. Before I knew it, I felt myself grab hold of the skirt of whoever it was from our house that was standing beside me: I was ready to run away at the first excuse. (Ever since those days this has been the attitude with which I have always confronted life: from things too much waited for, too much embellished with anticipatory daydreams, there is in the end nothing I can do but run away.) Behind the priest came a group of firemen, carrying on their shoulders the offertory chest, festooned with sacred garlands of twisted straw, and then a crowd of children carrying a tiny, frivolously bouncing shrine. Finally the principal shrine of the procession drew near, the majestic black and gold omikoshi.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  And before that I’d snapped and taken over an hour to go for a walk. I went down to the Gap and browsed a little. So it’s really around ten o’clock at night for me.” “You must be starving,” said Joyce. “I know I am. Some bread?” “Thanks.” Chewing, she regarded me. “Do you have more to say?” “Yes.” I had felt confident, even cocky, moments before, but I now noticed that my hands were unsteady as I stuffed a piece of bread in my mouth. “I’ve never told anyone what I’m telling you,” I said. “I tried to tell someone obliquely, but it wasn’t a success.” Joyce said, “Why are you telling me, then? I mean, I’m delighted that you are—I think. But don’t you want to continue to keep all this to yourself if you’ve kept it to yourself for this long?” I said, “I’m tired of having this big secret life and not being able to tell anyone.” And suddenly I did feel enormously tired of it. I felt as if I was going to get slightly weepy, but fortunately I didn’t. “I like you and I just want to tell you. I’ve written about it in the memoiry thing that I’ve been working on, and though I haven’t shown that to anyone, having done that, gone public on the page, I seem able to accept more easily the fact that people will know. It feels inevitable now, though of course it isn’t. It’s the next step. Also, I’ve used the Fold to do things that might make you uncomfortable, if you knew about them, and if they are going to make you uncomfortable, I’d rather that happened now and not later.” “The Told’?” I went into the terminology in some detail. We ordered. I told her about the equation with the garment-care symbols, and about colliding with the parking meter and stealing two shrimp. I gave her a bowdlerized account of my experience in the electromagnet. Finally I worked up the nerve to mention that at selected times in the past I had used the Fold to take off women’s clothes without their knowledge. “Ah— now I see where we’re going,” Joyce said. “That’s not so good. That is not so hot.” “I know, I know, I know, I know,” I said, shaking my head. “But when I’m doing it it doesn’t seem bad. It seems wonderful, good, positive—it seems like the most constructive thing I could possibly be doing. I just don’t understand why it should be so bad and wrong for me to take a woman’s clothes off, as long as she doesn’t know about it.

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  You know how it works. Social anxiety can jump out in an instant, like a bogeyman in a Halloween haunted house. In just a few seconds, it’s all systems go. You’re hit with the urge to leave, to dart the long way around to avoid being spotted, or to pull out your phone so you don’t have to make eye contact. And avoidance works—sort of. When we avoid, the anxiety magically dissipates, leaving us with not only a sense of relief but also the unfortunate confirmation that whatever we just avoided—small talk with your kid’s classmate’s mom, a break room discussion of last night’s game with your co-workers, or a conversation on a park bench with a 1940s cutie—was really and truly a danger. What’s more, avoidance leaves us with the nagging feeling that we couldn’t have handled it anyway. [image file=image_rsrc2GD.jpg] By contrast, take a look at what happens in the second graph. This is what happens when we hang in there—when we’re brave for the few seconds it takes to join the group at the party, raise our hand in class, or for young Albert to sit down on the bench. The anxiety shoots up, but then, when we stick with it, after we reach the summit of the mountain it’s all downhill from there. What goes up must come down. When we go over the summit instead of avoiding, we learn a very different lesson. Rather than reinforcing the idea that the girl on the bench is a threat to be avoided, we learn she’s polite, even if she already has a boyfriend. We learn that while we’re uncomfortable, sitting there doesn’t kill us—we can handle this, even if what we blurt out isn’t exactly smooth and witty. Of course, the anxiety goes down more slowly than if we ducked out, but the trip down that long, slow slide teaches us exactly what Brandon Stanton and Albert Ellis figured out: one, we are much safer than our imaginations would have us believe, and two, we can handle it. [image file=image_rsrc2GE.jpg] [image file=image_rsrc2GF.jpg] Now let’s zero in on the hardest part—the tippy-top of that peak. This is where Jim hid behind a bush. This is when Aisha faked her phone call. This is where I may or may not have crossed the street to avoid well-meaning but aggressive nonprofit sidewalk fundraisers with their clipboards and smiles, even if it meant forgoing the taco salad I’d been craving. I’ll never tell. That peak might be high, but it’s actually a skinny little thing. To climb the peak and go over the top doesn’t actually take that long—maybe ten seconds to a minute. So commit to being brave for one minute. Once you do that, it’s all downhill from there. As we stay with it, it gets easier. Plus we get a taco salad.