Anxiety

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  It also involves the twice mentioned “saints” (5, 7). What makes this thanksgiving strikingly unusual is what comes immediately after it. What follows it turns the thanksgiving into what Latin rhetoric calls captatio benevolentiae (“capturing your benevolence”) and we might call “laying it on thick.” It is like the fulsome praise of a person’s generosity that precedes a request for a loan. For a moment think of yourself in Philemon’s place. You are first addressed as Paul’s “dear friend and co-worker,” then praised for “your love for all the saints and your faith toward the Lord Jesus,” and finally termed “my brother.” Then, as you bask among those accolades, you are hit with this: For this reason, though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do your duty, yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love—and I, Paul, do this as an old man, and now also as a prisoner of Christ Jesus. (8–9) First, notice that, whether Paul commands or appeals, it is a matter of Philemon’s duty. Whatever it is, Philemon should do it without any command or appeal from Paul or anyone else. Poor Philemon is forced—abruptly and tersely—to face these three words in this sequential relationship: command DUTY appeal It is not just a matter of Paul’s appeal or command but, before either option, a matter of Philemon’s duty. Ouch! Second, we now see—by its repetition (9)—why “prisoner” was Paul’s first mark of identification as the letter’s sender (1). How can Philemon possibly not do his duty, when Paul is so clearly doing his? Notice that, each time, Paul is not just a “prisoner,” but a “prisoner of Christ Jesus.” That phrase has a magnificent and deliberate ambiguity—does that Greek genitive case (“of” in English) mean a prisoner because of Jesus or by Jesus? Is Paul a prisoner of Jesus because of Rome or a prisoner of Rome because of Jesus? “Think about that, dear Philemon,” Paul is really saying. “And how, dear Philemon, can you refuse me who am not only a prisoner of Jesus Christ (1, 9), but also an old man (9)?” But we still do not know what it is—what is the “duty” Philemon must fulfill? What can he not refuse to do? So Paul continues his letter: I am appealing to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become during my imprisonment. Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful both to you and to me. (10–11) The link from 8–9 to 10–11 is very clear in Greek: “I would rather appeal to you” ( parakalō ) is the exact same word as “I am appealing to you” ( parakalō ). Paul is appealing to Philemon (to do his duty!) concerning somebody named Onesimus. We now—almost midway into the letter—hear his name for the first and only time. The relationship between Onesimus and Paul is described as “child” and “father,” a metaphor for convert and apostle.

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  Equality in the assembly. It is clear, from the opening verses of 1 Corinthians 7, that the Christian equality between husband and wife had created conflict when the wife but not the husband wished to observe that celibacy advocated by Paul. How did equality work in that situation? Paul’s advice is: “Do not deprive one another except perhaps by agreement for a set time, to devote yourselves to prayer, and then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control” (7:5). Good advice, to be sure, but, once again, how would equality work if a wife insisted on her right to celibacy even within marriage? There is absolutely no scholarly agreement about the problem Paul discusses in 1 Corinthians 11:1–16, but it clearly provoked him to acute rhetorical panic. But what was the problem that generated his very strong, but very strange, reaction? What is at stake when women lead the assembly—but only if their hair is veiled? Our best conjecture—and it can be no more—looks back from 11:1–16 to that preceding 7:1–7. Some married women were insisting on their right to marital celibacy and proclaiming their “virginal” status by removing their married, or matronal, veils. This was creating conflicts not only within the family, but also within the assembly. It was a case where equality and celibacy confronted one another within the marriage contract. Was divorce the only solution? Paul’s argument that married women should be veiled is based on creation (11:8–13) and nature (11:14–15). It even feints toward equality of obligation by adding that “if a man wears long hair, it is degrading to him, but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory.” Creation and nature should surely have clinched Paul’s argument, but then, as if recognizing its vacuity, he concludes with this anti-climax: “But if anyone is disposed to be contentious—we have no such custom, nor do the churches of God” (11:16). Is Paul’s argument based on creation and nature, or mere custom? In all of this, regardless of what the problem or solution is and regardless of how valid Paul’s arguments are, this is most important. From the very start of his discussion, it is explicitly clear that Paul presumes a Christian assembly that includes both “any man who prays or prophesies” and also “any woman who prays or prophesies” (11:4–5). That equality is taken for granted—female and male are equal in the communal Christian assembly just as in the private Christian family. Equality in the apostolate. The final area of equality is both the most important and the most climactic for Paul. Indeed, if women and men are equal in the Christian apostolate, it is hard to imagine them not already equal in the Christian assembly and the Christian home. Our main evidence is from Romans 16:1–16, and we emphasize how Paul mentions females and males as he greets Christians in Rome whom he knows either personally or at least by name.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  If he was satisfied with something he nodded at Franz, and Franz put it aside. A pile grew. Two jackets, one of Donegal, the other of Harris tweed. A blazer. A suit. Several pairs of pants in gabardine and twill. A dozen Oxford shirts. Ties. A raincoat. Corduroy pants and flannel shirts for “hacking around,” as Mr. Howard put it. A pair of Weejuns, a pair of dress shoes, and a pair of brogans—also for hacking around. Three sweaters. Then another pile of clothes for warm weather, and another for sports. It was decided that I should return to the shop in two weeks for a final fitting. Mr. Howard would collect the clothes when they were done and ship them to Hill in August so they’d be waiting for me when I got there. I still needed a dark suit for Sundays. Mr. Howard had me try on four or five, barely distinguishable to me, before he found one worth considering. He knelt beside me and set the length of the pant legs. Then he straightened up and inspected my reflection, prodding me and turning me around as he did so. By now I was limp as dough. Mr. Howard moved behind me. He knotted a tie around my neck and stood there, hands on my shoulders, looking pensively at the mirror. “He’s going to need an overcoat,” Mrs. Howard said. “Right!” Mr. Howard said. “An overcoat. I knew there was something else.” Franz walked over to a rack and took down some overcoats for Mr. Howard to look at. He went straight to a black one with a fine herringbone weave. “Try this,” he told me. I took it. It was silky to the touch, like cat’s fur. “Wait,” Mrs. Howard said when I began to put it on. She came over and held out her hands for the coat. With a feeling of bitterness I surrendered it. “Mmm,” she said. “Cashmere.” She turned me toward the mirror and settled the coat on my shoulders like a cape. She looked me up and down. She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she said, “A scarf.” “Something in navy,” Mr. Howard said. She shook her head. “He’d look like an undertaker. Claret.” Franz gave her a choice of three scarves. She moved her hand over them, wiggling her fingers like someone deciding on a chocolate, then picked one up and draped it around my neck. It had the same silky texture as the overcoat. Mrs. Howard arranged the scarf so it hung casually between the lapels of the overcoat. She glanced at me again and then stepped back so that I was alone before the mirror. The elegant stranger in the glass regarded me with a doubtful, almost haunted expression. Now that he had been called into existence, he seemed to be looking for some sign of what lay in store for him. He studied me as if I held the answer.

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

  I have referred to the negligence of the Municipality regarding the location. But it was wide awake so far as the health of its white citizens was concerned. It had spent large amounts for the preservation of their health and now it poured forth money like water in order to stamp out the plague. In spite of the many sins of omission and commission against the Indians that I had laid at the door of the Municipality, I could not help commending its solicitude for the white citizens, and I rendered it as much help as I could in its laudable efforts. I have an impression that, if I had withheld my co-operation, the task would have been more difficult for the Municipality, and that it would not have hesitated to use armed force and do its worst. But all that was averted. The Municipal authorities were pleased at the Indians’ behaviour, and much of the future work regarding plague measures was simplified. I used all the influence I could command with the Indians to make them submit to the requirements of the Municipality. It was far from easy for the Indians to go all that length, but I do not remember anyone having resisted my advice. The location was put under a strong guard, passage in and out being made impossible without permission. My co-workers and I had free permits of entry and exit. The decision was to make the whole location population vacate, and live under canvas for three weeks in an open plain about thirteen miles from Johannesburg, and then to set fire to the location. To settle down under canvas with provisions and other necessaries was bound to take some time, and a guard became necessary during the interval. The people were in a terrible fright, but my constant presence was a consolation to them. Many of the poor people used to hoard their scanty savings underground. This had to be unearthed. They had no bank, they knew none. I became their banker. Streams of money poured into my office. I could not possibly charge any fees for my labours in such a crisis. I coped with the work somehow. I knew my bank manager very well. I told him that I should have to deposit these moneys with him. The banks were by no means anxious to accept large amounts of copper and silver. There was also the fear of bank clerks refusing to touch money coming from a plague- affected area. But the manager accommodated me in every way. It was decided to disinfect all the money before sending it to the bank. So far as I can remember, nearly sixty thousand pounds were thus deposited. I advised such of the people as had enough money to place it as fixed deposit, and they accepted the advice. The result was some of them became accustomed to invest their money in banks.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  Millions of couples retain an allegiance to the ideal of monogamy even though they occasionally violate it. A smaller number openly reject the constraints of monogamy, forging agreements that allow for some degree of sexual or even emotional involvement outside the primary bond. In the freewheeling 1970s open marriage was widely discussed. Ultimately, most couples—even those who saw value in the concept—were unable to handle the inevitable jealousies and insecurities. In the 1980s, as concerns about AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases increased, nonmonogamy slipped further into disfavor. Nonetheless, some couples still find that nonmonogamy makes sense for a variety of reasons, including: • Two partners have a wide discrepancy in their desired frequency of sex. • One partner has specific sexual desires that can’t be met by the primary partner. • One or both partners feels bored and wants outside stimulation. • Circumstance requires partners to be apart for extended periods. • One or both partners is bisexual. Hardly any couples who venture beyond monogamy adopt an anything-goes attitude. Some work out tacit understandings without much talk. For example, discreet dalliances are acceptable when either partner is out of town. I’ve seen situations in which one or both partners pursued not altogether secret affairs for extended periods virtually without discussion, and with few obvious problems. Other couples engage in detailed, often stormy negotiations about outside sex. Sometimes a “night off” is established when both can do whatever they please as long as they’re home by a specified time. Some prefer not to hear details of outside sex while others want to know everything so they don’t have to wonder. Still others only want to be informed of an emotional involvement. Virtually all nonmonogamous couples—like monogamous ones—need comfort rather than ridicule when jealousies and insecurities arise, as well as reassurance that their relationship is still primary. As we have seen, most but by no means all gay male couples allow at least some outside sex, especially as an antidote for sexual boredom after years of monogamy. Although lots of gay men have just as much trouble making this transition as their lesbian and straight counterparts, two factors make it a little easier. In the gay male subculture there is social support for open relationships and role models for making them work. Another crucial factor among gay men is what Blumstein and Schwartz call the “trick mentality,” in which sex as recreation is separated from emotional involvement.7 Gay male couples who want nothing more than casual outside sex usually find the adjustment relatively painless, particularly if they are sensitive to each other’s feelings and continue to enjoy sex, at least occasionally, together. But many male couples face the same discrepancy as heterosexual couples: one partner seeks casual outside sex while the other can’t imagine avoiding deeper involvement. For them nonmonogamy is just as stormy—and often unworkable—as it is for most opposite-sex or lesbian couples.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  CLAIMING THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF FREEDOMTo discover your erotic potential you must be free to choose what is right for you. But this isn’t as easy as it sounds because each choice brings you face to face with the consequences of your actions. Whether you’re deciding what to do about birth control, developing a policy to avoid sexually transmitted diseases, or grappling with any of eros’s practical tasks, once you’ve made a choice, you are responsible for the outcome. Claiming ignorance—even though one person never possesses all the facts—isn’t an option. The key is to remain conscious of your actions and their consequences without becoming self-conscious, a state antithetical to emotional and sexual well-being. Learning to balance the thoughtfulness necessary for responsible behavior with the freedom from worry necessary for good sex takes effort. No wonder some people struggle with it constantly. In the age of AIDS, when the wrong kind of spontaneity invites disaster, we’re reminded in a dramatic way that smart ideas don’t count until they’re translated into behavior. The tension between perils and pleasures, however, is as old as humanity. The ability to accept responsibility while enjoying freedom is a hallmark of psychological maturity. Only a reasonably well-integrated person can simultaneously pursue these two sometimes contradictory objectives. But this is what we all must do. Erotically healthy people establish safe parameters within which to let themselves go. As important as it is to have a sensible plan for avoiding unwanted consequences from sex, also needed is the capacity to monitor one’s behavior, even during heights of passion, to make certain the plan is being followed. Those who practice this skill eventually learn to monitor themselves subliminally. Then they can be fully engaged in giving and receiving pleasure unless an internal alarm signals them to stop and think. Even those who find excitement on the dangerous edge can become amazingly adept at flirting with risks while taking the necessary steps to prevent actual damage. SELF-ASSESSMENTThe best way to clarify your values—or to become clear that you’re not yet clear—is to put them into words. You might begin by making a list of key principles that mean the most to you. Sometimes it’s even more beneficial to initiate a series of conversations with a trusted friend or lover. The give and take of intimate discussion has a way of pushing you to clarify how you truly feel. The goal of these talks isn’t agreement but mutual understanding.

• From Cultish (2021)

  “It made you feel superior, because you had these words that other people didn’t, and you did the work to understand them.” It’s not just religious cult leaders who use language to imbue followers with a false sense of elitism; I’ve noticed similar us-versus-them rhetoric in cultier areas of my own life. For a few years, I was employed as a writer at a cliquey online fashion magazine, and one of the first things I noticed about my chic new colleagues was how they spoke almost entirely in inscrutable abbreviations (or “abbrevs”). They even made up abbreviations that took exactly as long to say as the full-length words (for instance, they always referred to this one website called “The Ritual” as “T. Ritual”), simply because it sounded more exclusive—harder for “uncool people” to understand. To me, it was clear that this language served as a detection system to identify insiders and outsiders. And it was a way of gaining control, of coaxing underlings to learn the lingo, to conform, which they did eagerly, in hopes of being “chosen” for special opportunities and promotions. In Scientology, it was hard to see how a few fun acronyms could cause much harm. But under the surface, these word shortenings were deliberately working to obscure understanding. In any given professional field, specialized jargon is often necessary in order to exchange information more succinctly and specifically; it makes communication clearer. But in a cultish atmosphere, jargon does just the opposite: Instead, it causes speakers to feel confused and intellectually deficient. That way, they’ll comply. This confusion is part of the big trick. Feeling so disoriented that you doubt the very language you’ve been speaking your whole life can make you commit even more strongly to a charismatic leader who promises to show you the way. “We want to make sense of reality, and we use words to explain to ourselves what’s happening,” Steven Hassan explained. When your means of narration are threatened, it’s distressing. By nature, people are averse to such high levels of internal conflict. In states of bamboozlement, we defer to authority figures to tell us what’s true and what we need to do to feel safe. When language works to make you question your own perceptions, whether at work or at church, that’s a form of gaslighting. I first came across the term “gaslighting” in the context of abusive romantic partners, but it shows up in larger-scale relationships, too, like those between bosses and their employees, politicians and their supporters, spiritual leaders and their devotees. Across the board, gaslighting is a way of psychologically manipulating someone (or many people) such that they doubt their own reality, as a way to gain and maintain control. Psychologists agree that while gaslighters appear self-assured, they are typically motivated by extreme insecurity—an inability to self-regulate their own thoughts and emotions. Sometimes gaslighters aren’t even 100% aware that what they’re doing is manipulative.

• From Cultish (2021)

  Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.” You can hear Peale’s influence in Donald Trump’s speeches and social media posts half a century later. “Success tip: See yourself as victorious. This will focus you in the right direction. Apply your skills and talent—and be tenacious,” Trump tweeted in 2013. Upon launching his presidential campaign in 2016, Trump’s rants about self-reliance took a more paranoid turn. Early that year, when asked who he consults on foreign policy, he replied, “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things. I know what I’m doing. . . . My primary consultant is myself.” From this complex history, the MLM—the uncanny lovechild of Protestantism, capitalism, and corporatization—was conceived. The Protestant ethic remains very much a part of professional culture as a whole in the United States, and we all grow up internalizing its rhetoric—work hard, play hard; another day, another dollar. My partner and I have an extensive collection of coffee mugs embellished with little sayings, and the other day, I looked up and noticed for the first time that they all just shamelessly evangelize toxic productivity dogma: One mug says “Sleep is for the weak”; another reads “A yawn is just a silent scream for coffee.” A silent scream? Are we all so conditioned to believe it’s romantic to be overworked and exhausted, so terrified of leisure and “laziness,” that we print cute jokes about it on drinkware? In twenty-first-century America, apparently so. The language of Protestant capitalism is everywhere—all the way down to our coffee mugs—but it plays a starring role in the MLM industry, which at once indulges Americans’ most quixotic aspirations and their gravest fears. It’s especially pronounced in the way MLMs stress meritocracy, the idea that money and status are individually earned. Meritocracy is founded on the tenet that people can control their lives in big ways, that as long as they really try, they can pull themselves up by their proverbial bootstraps. Americans love the mythology that successful people deserve their success while struggling people are simply less worthy. MLM recruits, whose “success” is entirely based on commission from selling and recruiting, relish this notion even more. Per MLM ideology, no win is unearned, regardless of what or who is sacrificed to achieve it. And no failure is undeserved, either. The majority of direct sales propaganda I’ve read emphasizes the “blood, sweat, tears, heart, and soul” necessary to build a sales team, urging sellers to view their efforts as a badge of patriotic honor and to wear it with a smile. Countless MLMs invoke nationalistic slogans to reinforce the idea that enlisting to be a #bossbabe means signing up to serve your country. One diet supplement MLM is literally named American Dream Nutrition; another is called United Sciences of America, Inc.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  His face was sickly white and he rolled his eyes like a spooked horse at the people moving past—derelicts, sailors, Indians in cowboy hats, winos doing their wino shuffle and shouting at enemies they alone could see. I was skittish myself. But it took more than a boy with his arms full of firepower to get the attention of these citizens. No one gave us a second look. The pawnbroker ignored me as I went back and forth to the car. I lined everything up on the top of the cabinet and waited. “That it?” she said. I said that was it. She came from around back and locked the door. Then she went behind the counter again. She ran her eyes over the goods. She picked up the double-barreled shotgun, broke it open, held the barrels up to the light and squinted through each of them in turn. Then she snapped the gun shut again, hard, too hard. It was painful to watch. I knew that gun, as I knew the other gun and the rifles. I had used them all and felt respect for them, and something more than respect. I did not like to see them handled as this woman handled them, slapping them around, levering and pumping the actions as if she were trying to break them. But I said nothing. I was unnerved by her big competent hands and her doll’s face that never changed expression, and most of all by her refusal to look at me. The longer she didn’t look at me the more I wanted her to. She made me feel insubstantial, which gave her the edge. And she knew what she was doing. She tore down every gun and rifle without hesitation, checked its barrel, checked its firing mechanism, and put it together again as fast as I could have. Once she’d looked at them all she shrugged and said, “I don’t need this truck.” “But you said you’d look at them.” She turned to the shelf behind her and started lifting things again. “I looked at them.” I stared at her back. She said, “I might be able to take them as pawn.” “Pawn? How much can I pawn them for?” She shrugged. “Five apiece.” “Five dollars? But that’s not fair!” She didn’t answer. “Your sign says you buy guns.” “I’m not buying any now.” “They’re worth a lot more than that,” I said. “A lot more.” “Then go get more.” “Maybe I will,” I said, but I knew better now. I also knew that if Chuck saw me walk out the door with all these shooters in my hands he would leave without me. “I could sell them for twenty,” I said. “I already told you, I’m not buying. If you want to pawn, five’s the limit.” Then she said, “All right. Throw in those other whatnots and you got yourself a deal.” “You mean twenty apiece?” She hesitated, then said, “Ten. Sixty for everything.

• From The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014)

  These goals are not steps to be achieved, one by one, in some fixed sequence. They overlap, and some may be more difficult than others, depending on individual circumstances. In each of the chapters that follow, I’ll talk about specific methods or approaches to accomplish them. I have tried to make these chapters useful both to trauma survivors and to the therapists who are treating them. People under temporary stress may also find them useful. I’ve used every one of these methods extensively to treat my patients, and I have also experienced them myself. Some people get better using just one of these methods, but most are helped by different approaches at different stages of their recovery. I have done scientific studies of many of the treatments I describe here and have published the research findings in peer-reviewed scientific journals.[2] My aim in this chapter is to provide an overview of underlying principles, a preview of what’s to come, and some brief comments on methods I don’t cover in depth later on. A New Focus for RecoveryWhen we talk about trauma, we often start with a story or a question: “What happened during the war?” “Were you ever molested?” “Let me tell you about that accident or that rape,” or “Was anybody in your family a problem drinker?” However, trauma is much more than a story about something that happened long ago. The emotions and physical sensations that were imprinted during the trauma are experienced not as memories but as disruptive physical reactions in the present. In order to regain control over your self, you need to revisit the trauma: Sooner or later you need to confront what has happened to you, but only after you feel safe and will not be retraumatized by it. The first order of business is to find ways to cope with feeling overwhelmed by the sensations and emotions associated with the past. As the previous parts of this book have shown, the engines of posttraumatic reactions are located in the emotional brain. In contrast with the rational brain, which expresses itself in thoughts, the emotional brain manifests itself in physical reactions: gut-wrenching sensations, heart pounding, breathing becoming fast and shallow, feelings of heartbreak, speaking with an uptight and reedy voice, and the characteristic body movements that signify collapse, rigidity, rage, or defensiveness.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  But what happens to a group of writers who need money so badly that they devote themselves entirely to the erotic? How does this affect their lives, their feelings towards the world, their writing? What effect has it on their sexual life? Let me explain that I was the mother confessor for such a group. In New York everything becomes harder, more cruel. I had many people to take care of, many problems, and since I was in character very much like George Sand, who wrote all night to take care of her children, lovers, friends, I had to find work. I became what I shall call the Madame of an unusual house of literary prostitution. It was a very artistic “maison,” I must say, a one-room studio with skylights, which I painted to look like pagan cathedral windows.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  I was appalled and didn’t understand how she could/ would push me at him and vice versa, at the same time, I was torn between what I felt was wrong and the fact that my parents were advocating the “rightness” of such a thing. They were, after all, godlike in my eyes. They were all powerful, all knowing, and unable to do any wrong. My parents placed me in a situation where Bob had full access to me physically when I was only sixteen. He tried to have sex with me several times and I would lie there passively while he fondled me. I hated every minute of it, but lacked the ability to say no. Bob also repeatedly asked me to marry him. My mother was overjoyed and encouraged me to do so, saying she wanted me to be happy and settled, and that this would be the right thing for me to do. I was terribly unhappy. I was only sixteen and did not want to marry Bob. I felt trapped with nowhere to go. My U.S. visitor’s visa had expired, and I couldn’t leave the country if I wanted to come back. No one at the college or in my parents’ religious group would help. Even if they knew what was going on, they all believed that parents had the God-given right to choose their children’s life partners, and they apparently thought nothing of marrying off a sixteen-year-old to a man eighteen years her senior. I left the bible college and traveled to another offshoot group on the West Coast to work in the art department of an apocalyptic magazine. My mother began writing letters to me—ten-page, single-spaced religious diatribes about how a child should obey her parents in all things, and, in particular, with regard to Bob. These letters arrived two or three times a week. They upset me so much I began losing sleep and experiencing psychosomatic illnesses, such as unexplained and crippling pain in my joints, migraine headaches, and fatigue. Of course, I wasn’t taken to a medical doctor. These ailments were treated with natural remedies and prayer. … I stopped speaking to them at that point. I threw away their letters without reading them and refused to take their phone calls. I simply couldn’t handle the psychological pressure.

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  They spoke of the government pressuring them to deny Christ, of having 666 carved into their foreheads, of being thrown into jails and insane asylums for refusing to give up their faith. They spoke of Christian women strung up naked in public. Of children turning their parents in to the authorities. No one mentioned turning the speaker volume down. What began as a misdemeanor charge had escalated into the apocalypse. But then, that’s what we expected. Our lives became the twenty-four-hour prayer channel. When the grown-ups were not pacing and praying all night and in between services for the courage to stand up for Jesus, they were laying hands on Randall. His stomach had been swelling for months and now it was so large, he had to wear a man’s shirt to keep it covered. During the evening services, Brother Terrell called him to the front and had the congregation put their hands up and pray for him. After these prayers, Randall examined the profile of his body in the dresser mirror. “Hey, y’all, I b’lieve it’s gone down a little. Look.” Everyone said yeah, maybe he did look smaller, at least a little, when it was plain he looked the same or larger.

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  “Are you gonna take communion every thirty seconds before the flight?” Borman asked. “No, Frank. He’s just visiting,” Anders said. “Well, then, get rid of the guy!” Borman was sorry he said it, even sorrier when he saw that his remark had hurt Anders. But he thought the crew didn’t need distractions so close to launch. Anders had more visitors coming. One was his thesis adviser and head of the Department of Physics at the Air Force Institute of Technology; the other was the man’s brother, who was a Jesuit priest. He considered both to be very good friends. Around sunset, Anders took them to the parking lot outside crew quarters, where they all lay back on the hood of a car. By now, the sky had darkened, and the men picked out the slivered crescent of the Moon in the sky. Early that evening, his last night on Earth before launch, Lovell sneaked away from crew quarters to visit Marilyn. She’d been at a party, but when Jim called, she hurried away and met him for a rendezvous at the cottage where she and her children were staying. There he kissed his kids and pulled out a photograph. Taken by one of NASA’s unmanned lunar probes, it showed an angular mountain on the Moon. It was near the Sea of Tranquillity, one of the potential sites Apollo 8 would scout for a future landing mission. “I’m going to name it Mount Marilyn,” he said. —Wake-up would be at 2:30 A .M . The astronauts were to eat dinner, then go to sleep. Launch, at 7:21 A .M ., was just twelve hours away. After the meal, the men called their families to say good night and goodbye. Borman spoke first to his boys, then to Susan. “Everything’s going to be all right,” he told her. “I’ll be perfectly safe.” “I know,” Susan said. Before retiring, Borman knelt by his bedside to pray—the Lord’s Prayer, then a request for a successful mission, and finally that he, Lovell, and Anders do their jobs well. But he couldn’t sleep, not for hours. He and his crew had been given only four months to train for the flight, and he was concerned about everyone’s ability to perform flawlessly. More than anything, he dreaded the possibility of having to fly the backup mission—ten endless days in Earth orbit—if some anomaly was found after launch that spooked NASA into canceling the lunar part of the journey. He did not want to leave Susan a widow and his boys fatherless, but on this account, he didn’t worry too much; he believed in the rocket and spacecraft the crew would be flying, and especially in the people who’d built and designed them. As Borman saw it, he would be flying with thousands of the world’s best minds aboard. Around midnight, ground crews began to pump each of the three stages of the Saturn V with liquid oxygen, an oxidizer necessary for combustion.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  My mother pulled into the parking lot and turned off the engine. “I had to beg them,” she said. Then she told me what her begging had accomplished. Mr. Bolger had agreed to let me stay on after all, if I would put things right with the Welches by working on their farm after school. I said I would rather not do that. She ignored me. Looking over the steering wheel, she said that Mr. Bolger also wanted Father Karl to have a talk with me. Mr. Bolger hoped that Father Karl’s brand of religion might reach me, being closer to the one I was raised in than his own. My mother said I had a couple of choices: I could either go along with Mr. Bolger or pack up. Today. And if I did paok up, I’d better have a plan, because I couldn’t come home with her—Dwight wouldn’t let me in the door. It looked like she might have a job lined up in Seattle but it would be a while until she knew for sure, and then she would need time to get started and find a place. “Why didn’t you apologize to those people?” she said. I told her I couldn’t. She looked at me, then stared through the windshield again. She had never been so far away. If I had robbed a bank she would have stuck by me, but not for this. She said, “So what are you going to do.” She didn’t sound especially interested. I told her I would do whatever the Bolgers wanted. She started the car and took me back. After letting me out she drove away fast. MR. BOLGER WAS too busy that week to arrange my service with the Welches, but I did not know that. I came into the store after school each day expecting to be told to go back outside and get in the car. I came in, and hesitated, and when no one said anything I walked lightly into the back room and put my apron on and began to do my chores. Chuck and I used to work together, talking, joking around, snapping dust cloths and goosing each other with broom handles. Now we worked by ourselves, in silence. I dreamed. Sometimes I thought of the Welch farm and of myself there, drowning in mud, surrounded by accusing faces. Whenever this thought came to me I had to close my eyes and catch a breath. Toward the end of the week Father Karl came in. He talked to Mr. Bolger in the storeroom for a few minutes, then called me outside. “Let’s take a walk,” he said. We followed a footpath down to the river. Father Karl didn’t say anything until we were at the riverbank. He picked up a rock and threw it into the water.

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  “Hmm. You should come east for grad school. Gotta go. Do take extra precautions, won’t you?” When I put down the receiver, my heart was pounding. I thought it had gone all right. Hugo sounded cheerful when he hung up, but how could I know? I immediately phoned Anaïs. “That’s interesting Hugo called you so soon,” she said. At her request, I recounted my conversation with him, sentence by sentence. “You are a great actress, Tristine!” I felt triumphant, as when I’d won first place in a national high school acting competition. I started to ask Anaïs why Hugo believed I’d transferred from UCLA to USC, but she interrupted, “Can you come tomorrow evening to hear Rupert’s quintet?” Was she really inviting me? Or was she covering because Rupert had just walked in? I said uncertainly, “I’ll need your address.” “I’m going to put Rupert on the phone to give you directions,” she replied. “The music begins at six, but you should come earlier. You and I can go over some correspondence. Plan to stay for dinner before the music.” I was becoming a part of Anaïs’s life! “How long do you think it will take me to drive to Sierra Madre?” I asked. “Oh, we haven’t lived in Sierra Madre for two years!” “Did the forestry service relocate Rupert?” I asked. “No! He’s no longer with the Forest Service. He’s teaching secondary school in Hollywood, near our apartment here.” [image file=image_rsrc3R3.jpg] Anaïs’s faux Tudor building was in the flats near Fountain, a Nathanael West neighborhood: Swiss chalets next to Egyptian temples, Mediterranean terraces next to Moorish turrets. As I circled block after block for a parking space, I became increasingly disenchanted with Rupert for having left a cabin in nature for this congested grid of tired apartment buildings. Then it hit me—as I nearly hit an Impala pulling out of a parking space—Rupert was no longer a forest ranger. From what Anaïs had said, he hadn’t been one for several years, so he and Anaïs no longer needed to pretend they were married. Yet Rupert had introduced himself to me as Anaïs’s husband at Holiday House. Why? The only people who had heard him had been Christopher Isherwood, his boyfriend, Renate, and me. None of us would have cared that Anaïs and Rupert were shacking up. That’s what anyone who was cool was doing these days, according to Hugh Hefner. I added this to my list of things I wanted to ask her. After I parked and arrived at the apartment, Anaïs opened her cross-beamed door, wearing a long, embroidered caftan. “Please have a seat,” she said, indicating a nubby brown couch not unlike the one buried in my mother’s living room. “It’s awful, I know,” Anaïs apologized, “but Rupert refuses to part with it. He can be impossibly bullish.”

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  I thought about it. What would Anaïs want me to do? My instructions from her were to keep an eye on Rupert, so I agreed to meet him at their apartment and follow him in my car to the party at film director Curtis Harrington’s house. Later in my old Buick, I followed Rupert up a winding road, and when we arrived at Curtis’s driveway, valets ran into the street to take our cars. Rupert offered me his arm as I struggled up a steep incline in my high heels. A young woman wearing a minidress with pinwheel-patterned stockings passed us as she ran down the hill we’d just climbed, calling back, “Dennis Hopper just left! I’m on to another party! Merry Christmas!” “How do you know Curtis?” I asked Rupert. “Anaïs’s friend Renate Druks introduced us,” Rupert said. “They’re part of a Hollywood crowd we used to run with.” I wondered if Renate and her football star husband would be guests at the party and what she would think of my being there with Rupert. I had tried to phone her when I’d rushed home to change, to make sure that I was doing what Anaïs would want, but no one had answered. We entered the hall where a bust of Medusa, snakes sprouting from her head, glowed under a Tiffany lamp. As Rupert and I crossed into a high-ceilinged living room, I felt as if we were entering the House of Usher. There were thick velvet drapes over the windows, ornate Art Nouveau furnishings, porcelain masks, darkly erotic Aubrey Beardsley posters of Oscar Wilde’s Salome, and a stuffed, mounted raven sitting on an end table. I even saw a man dressed all in black and with a long cape like an Edwardian sorcerer. “Is that Curtis Harrington?” I whispered to Rupert. “No.” Rupert laughed. “That’s Samson de Brier. He’s at all these parties and always dresses like an aristocratic sorcerer. He was in Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, along with Renate and Curtis and Anaïs and me.” “The film Kenneth Anger directed!” I hadn’t seen it yet but remembered Renate telling me to catch a screening. “Will he be at this party?” I asked Rupert excitedly. “No, Curtis and Kenneth had a falling out,” Rupert said, moving toward a man who had the wide face of a Persian cat and a feline’s padded step. “Merry Christmas, Curtis!” Rupert boomed. For a man who lived in such a Gothic house, Curtis Harrington appeared remarkably congenial. “I brought a guest,” Rupert said, putting his hand on my back. “I’m Anaïs’s friend,” I added to clarify I wasn’t Rupert’s date. “Oh, well if you’re Anaïs’s friend”—Curtis took my hands, turning his back on Rupert, and winked at me—“you are welcome any time.” He turned back to Rupert. “So Anaïs told me she has a job in New York with a new magazine.” “Yes. It’s named Cue,” Rupert said proudly.

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

  I saw that brahmacharya, which is so full of wounderful potency, is by no means an easy affair, and certainly not a mere matter of the body. It begins with bodily restraint, but does not end there. The perfection of it precludes even an impure thought. A true brahmachari will not even dream of satisfying the fleshly appetite, and until he is in that condition, he has a great deal of ground to cover. For me the observance of even bodily brahmacharya has been full of difficulties. Today I may say that I feel myself fairly safe, but I had yet to achieve complete mastery over thought, which is so essential. Not that the will or effort is lacking, but it is yet a problem to me wherefrom undersirable thoughts spring their insidious invasions. I have no doubt that there is a key to lock out undersirable thoughts, but every one has to find it out for himself. Saints and seers have left their experiences for us, but they have given us no infallible and universal prescription. For perfection or freedom from error comes only from grace, and so seekers after God have left us mantras, such as Ramanama, hallowed by their own austerities and charged with their purity. Without an unreserved surrender to His grace, complete mastery over thought is impossible. This is the teaching of every great book of religion, and I am realizing the truth of it every moment of my striving after that perfect brahmacharya . But part of the history of that striving and struggle will be told in chapters to follow. I shall conclude this chapter with an indication of how I set about the task. In the first flush of inthusiasm, I found the observance quite easy. The very first change I made in my mode of life was to stop sparing the same bed with my wife or seeking privacy with her. Thus brahmacharya which I had been observing willynilly since 1900, was sealed with a vow in the middle of 1906.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  “Wait …” Caitlin said. “Let me guess … this is your first flight.” “Right. And don’t ask, How is it possible in this day and age .” Caitlin laughed. “You’re totally different,” she said, squeezing Vix’s arm. “I like that about you.” TawnyWHAT WAS SHE THINKING , packing a lunch for Victoria? It’s not like her to fuss over her children. They have to be prepared for life and life is hard, full of disappointments. She shouldn’t have listened to Ed, shouldn’t have agreed to let Victoria go to an island, of all places, when she can’t even swim. And telling her not to worry. Worry? She’s too tired to worry. She can’t remember what it’s like not to be tired. She closes her eyes and prays to God to protect her daughter. To keep her safe. But it will never be the same. Once Victoria gets a taste of another way of life, once she spends a summer with a girl like Caitlin Somers, she’ll be lost to them, sure as a dog chews a bone. She knows it even if Ed doesn’t. And now the other children are pulling on her, begging for money for the gumball machine. Only Nathan is still thinking of Victoria. She can see it on his face. She’s surprised herself that Victoria just up and left him. She counts on Victoria to help out over the summer. The other two are useless, cut from a different piece of cloth. But Victoria is more like her. She does what needs to be done. EdTAWNY EXPECTS TOO MUCH of the girl. Gives her too much responsibility. She’s still a kid, just turning twelve. The same age he was when his father died. For three years his mother’s neediness nearly suffocated him. My little man , she’d called him. Hell, he was no man. Never mind how hard he tried. And then one day, with no warning, she announces she’ll be getting married over the weekend, to a man he’s never met, a man he’s never even heard of, a widower with three children, all younger than him. Just like that. His stepfather hated his guts. That’s a useless kid you’ve got there, Maddy . And the kids, taking his lead, took pleasure in tormenting him. Is he shy? Nah, he’s just stupid . Cat got your tongue, Eddie? Nah, cat’s got his dick! For a while he quit talking at home. His mother said, We need him, Eddie. Try to understand. He’s got a good job. He’ll take care of us. You’ll see … But she was the one who took care of him and his three brats and the twins she had with him seven months after they were married. Worked herself into the grave before she hit fifty. Not that he’d hung around to watch. He’d enlisted at eighteen. Join Up … See the World . Sounded good to him. Anything to get away.

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  Curtis raised an eyebrow at me before guiding us over to Basil Rathbone and Florence Marly, whom he told us were committed for his next film, Queen of Blood. I was so excited to meet real movie stars that I would have waited an hour for them to finish their conversation, but when they continued for several minutes without making eye contact, Rupert directed me to the kitchen. A dour maid was replenishing a large bowl of spiked eggnog and handed us some in gargoyle-faced mugs. Taking our drinks, Rupert and I returned to the expansive living room. We settled on the corner of a burgundy velvet settee. I kept an eye out for Renate but never saw her, so Rupert and I socialized with some friendly nobodies like us. A fellow in embroidered jeans and a sloppy sweater who apparently knew Rupert came up and offered to fortify our eggnogs with the Remy Martin bottle in his hand. Staring down at me, he said, “Rupert, who’s your young friend?” Rupert responded politely, “This is Tristine. I’m sorry, I know your face. You work in New York a lot … off Broadway? I just can’t remember your name.” “Bruce Nigel. Nice to meet you, Christine.” Bruce winked at me, then asked Rupert, “Where’s Anaïs?” “She’s got a gig in New York. It’s going to keep her there through the holidays.” “Oh yeah? Where’s she staying?” “She stays in a friend’s apartment above the Sign of the Dancing Bear bookstore.” “Bullshit!” Bruce waved a dismissive hand at Rupert. “Anaïs really has you going, doesn’t she?” “What are you talking about?” Rupert bristled. “You don’t know where Anaïs stays, do you?” My antennae shot up, but Rupert seemed unfazed. “I know she stays with Maxwell, the bookstore owner. He isn’t into women.” “No, it’s Hugo something,” Bruce said. “Ian Hugo?” Rupert asked, and I could see a splotch of redness moving up his neck. “No. Hugo is his first name. Her husband, for Chrisakes. His last name starts with a g. They have parties at their Village apartment.” Rupert asked, “Hugo Guiler?” I couldn’t believe what was happening. “What plays have you been in, Bruce?” I tried to change the conversation. Ignoring me, he said smugly, “Hugo Guiler, that’s her husband.” “Well your info is about eight years old, Bruce,” Rupert retorted. “Hugo Guiler is Anaïs’s ex-husband. I’m her husband now.” Bruce waved a hand that said Rupert didn’t know shit, and carried his bottle back to the kitchen. “What a weird guy,” I said, and tried to engage Rupert in talking about the Warren Report on President Kennedy’s assassination. “Do you believe that Oswald and Ruby were both working alone?” Rupert began to expound on his latest Kennedy assassination theory, as I knew he would, just as Bruce reappeared with a slip of paper in his hand.