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 History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  "I have no acquaintance with Luther, nor have I ever read his books, except perhaps ten or twelve pages, and that only by snatches. From what I then saw, I judged him to be well qualified for expounding the Scriptures in the manner of the Fathers,—a work greatly needed in an age like this, which is so excessively given to mere subtleties, to the neglect of really important questions. Accordingly, I have favored his good, but not his bad, qualities, or rather I have favored Christ’s glory in him. I was among the first to foresee the danger there was of this matter ending in violence, and no one ever hated violence more than I do. Indeed, I even went so far as to threaten John Froben the printer, to prevent him publishing his books. I wrote frequently and industriously to my friends, begging that they would admonish this man to observe Christian meekness in his writings, and do nothing to disturb the peace of the church. And when he himself wrote to me two years ago, I lovingly admonished him what I wished him to avoid; and I would he had followed my advice. This letter, I am informed, has been shown to your Holiness, I suppose in order to prejudice me, whereas it ought rather to conciliate your Holiness’s favor towards me." On Dec. 5, 1520, five days before the burning of the Pope’s bull, Erasmus, being asked for his opinion about Luther by the Elector Frederick of Saxony, whom he happened to meet at Cologne, hesitated a while, and looked blank; but being pressed by the Elector, who stood square before him and stared him in the face, he gave the well-known answer, – "Luther has committed two sins,—he has touched the Pope on the crown, and the monks on the belly."536 The Elector smiled, and remembered the expression shortly before his death. Returned to his lodgings, Erasmus wrote down some axioms rather favorable to Luther and disapproving of the "Pope’s unmerciful bull," and sent them to Spalatin, but concealed the manuscript from fear that Aleander might see it; but it had been already published. From a letter to a friend in Basel (Louis Berus), dated Louvain, May 14, 1521:–

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  When we learn to recognize these four components of the traumatic reaction, we are well on our way to recognizing trauma. All other symptoms develop from these four if the defensive energy mobilized to respond to a traumatic event is not discharged or integrated within a few days, weeks, or months following the experience. Hyperarousal During times of conflict or stress, most people experience symptoms such as increased heartbeat and breathing, agitation, difficulty in sleeping, tension, muscular jitteriness, racing thoughts, or perhaps an anxiety attack. Though not always indicative of traumatic symptoms, these signs are usually due to some form of hyperarousal. If hyperarousal, constriction, dissociation, and a sense of helplessness form the core of the traumatic reaction, then hyperarousal is the seed in that core. If you reflect back on the previous exercise, you will realize that it invoked at least a mild version of hyperarousal. Whenever this heightened internal arousal occurs, it is primarily an indication that the body is summoning its energetic resources to mobilize against a potential threat. When the situation is serious enough to threaten the organism’s very survival, the amount of energy mobilized is much higher than that mobilized for any other situation in our lives. Unfortunately, even when we know that we need to discharge the aroused energy, doing so is not always easy. Like many instinctual processes, hyperarousal cannot be voluntarily controlled. The following exercise is a simple way to experientially confirm this. Exercise During the three scenarios you experienced in the last exercise, did you imagine or create the responses in your body or were they produced by your body as an involuntary response to the scenarios you envisioned? In other words, did you make them happen or did they happen on their own? Now attempt to deliberately make your body have such a response without envisioning a threatening scenario. Use a direct approach and see if you can make your body produce responses similar to those you experienced in the three scenario s In your eyes. In your posture. In your muscles. In your level of arousal. Now try all the parts of the experience together at the same time. When you compare your experience in this exercise to your experience in the earlier one, how is it similar? How is it different?

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Stephen’s thoughts stopped abruptly. Some one had come in and was stumping down the room in squeaky trench boots. It was Blakeney holding the time-sheet in her hand—funny old monosyllabic Blakeney, with her curly white hair cropped as close as an Uhlan’s, and her face that suggested a sensitive monkey. ‘Service, Gordon; wake the kid! Howard—Thurloe—ready?’ They got up and hustled into their trench coats, found their gas masks and finally put on their helmets. Then Stephen shook Mary Llewellyn very gently: ‘It’s time.’ Mary opened her clear, grey eyes: ‘Who? What?’ she stammered. ‘It’s time. Get up, Mary.’ The girl staggered to her feet, still stupid with fatigue. Through the cracks in the shutters the dawn showed faintly. 2The grey of a bitter, starved-looking morning. The town like a mortally wounded creature, torn by shells, gashed open by bombs. Dead streets—streets of death—death in streets and their houses; yet people still able to sleep and still sleeping. ‘Stephen.’ ‘Yes, Mary?’ ‘How far is the Poste?’ ‘I think about thirty kilometres; why?’ ‘Oh, nothing—I only wondered.’ The long stretch of an open country road. On either side of the road wire netting hung with pieces of crudely painted rag—a camouflage this to represent leaves. A road bordered by rag leaves on tall wire hedges. Every few yards or so a deep shell-hole. ‘Are they following, Mary? Is Howard all right?’ The girl glanced back: ‘Yes, it’s all right, she’s coming.’ They drove on in silence for a couple of miles. The morning was terribly cold; Mary shivered. ‘What’s that?’ It was rather a foolish question for she knew what it was, knew only too well! ‘They’re at it again,’ Stephen muttered. A shell burst in a paddock, uprooting some trees. ‘All right, Mary?’ ‘Yes—look out! We’re coming to a crater!’ They skimmed it by less than an inch and dashed on, Mary suddenly moving nearer to Stephen. ‘Don’t joggle my arm, for the Lord’s sake, child!’ ‘Did I? I’m sorry.’ ‘Yes—don’t do it again,’ and once more they drove forward in silence. Farther down the road they were blocked by a farm cart: ‘Militaires! Militaires! Militaires!’ Stephen shouted. Rather languidly the farmer got down and went to the heads of his thin, stumbling horses. ‘Il faut vivre,’ he explained, as he pointed to the cart, which appeared to be full of potatoes.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  2On New Year’s Eve Mrs. Antrim gave a dance in order, or so she said, to please Violet, who was still rather young to attend the hunt balls, but who dearly loved gaiety, especially dancing. Violet was plump, pert and adolescent, and had lately insisted on putting her hair up. She liked men, who in consequence always liked her, for like begets like when it comes to the sexes, and Violet was full of what people call: ‘allure,’ or in simpler language, of sexual attraction. Roger was home for Christmas from Sandiest, so that he would be there to assist his mother. He was now nearly twenty, a good-looking youth with a tiny moustache which he tentatively fingered. He assumed the grand air of the man of the world who has actually weathered about nineteen summers. He was hoping to join his regiment quite soon, which greatly augmented his self-importance. Could Mrs. Antrim have ignored Stephen Gordon’s existence, she would almost certainly have done so. She disliked the girl; she had always disliked her; what she called Stephen’s ‘queerness’ aroused her suspicion—she was never quite clear as to what she suspected, but felt sure that it must be something outlandish: ‘A young woman of her age to ride like a man, I call it preposterous!’ declared Mrs. Antrim. It can safely be said that Stephen at eighteen had in no way outgrown her dread of the Antrims; there was only one member of that family who liked her, she knew, and that was the small, hen-pecked Colonel. He liked her because, a fine horseman himself, he admired her skill and her courage out hunting. ‘It’s a pity she’s so tall, of course—’ he would grumble, ‘but she does know a horse and how to stick on one. Now my children might have been brought up at Margate, they’re just about fitted to ride the beach donkeys!’ But Colonel Antrim would not count at the dance; indeed in his own house he very seldom counted. Stephen would have to endure Mrs. Antrim and Violet—and then Roger was home from Sandiest. Their antagonism had never quite died, perhaps because it was too fundamental. Now they covered it up with a cloak of good manners, but these two were still enemies at heart, and they knew it. No, Stephen did not want to go to that dance, though she went in order to please her mother. Nervous, awkward and apprehensive, Stephen arrived at the Antrims that night, little thinking that Fate, the most expert of tricksters, was waiting to catch her just round the corner. Yet so it was, for during that evening Stephen met Martin and Martin met Stephen, and their meeting was great with portent for them both, though neither of them could know it.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  2Anna worried continually over her daughter; for one thing Stephen was a social disaster, yet at seventeen many a girl was presented, but the bare idea of this had terrified Stephen, and so it had had to be abandoned. At garden parties she was always a failure, seemingly ill at ease and ungracious. She shook hands much too hard, digging rings into fingers, this from sheer automatic nervous reaction. She spoke not at all, or else gabbled too freely, so that Anna grew vague in her own conversation; all eyes and ears she would be as she listened—it was certainly terribly hard on Anna. But if hard on Anna, it was harder on Stephen who dreaded these festive gatherings intensely; indeed her dread of them lacked all proportion, becoming a kind of unreasoning obsession. Every vestige of self-confidence seemed to desert her, so that Puddle, supposing she happened to be present would find herself grimly comparing this Stephen with the graceful, light-footed, proficient young athlete, with the clever and somewhat opinionated student who was fast outstripping her own powers as a teacher. Yes, Puddle would sit there grimly comparing, and would feel not a little uneasy as she did so. Then something of her pupil’s distress would reach her, so that perforce she would have to share it and as like as not she would want to shake Stephen. ‘Good Lord,’ she would think, ‘why can’t she hit back? It’s absurd, it’s outrageous to be so disgruntled by a handful of petty, half-educated yokels—a girl with her brain too, it’s simply outrageous! She’ll have to tackle life more forcibly than this, if she’s not going to let herself go under!’ But Stephen, completely oblivious of Puddle, would be deep in the throes of her old suspicion, the suspicion that had haunted her ever since childhood—she would fancy that people were laughing at her. So sensitive was she, that a half-heard sentence, a word, a glance, made her inwardly crumble. It might well be that people were not even thinking about her, much less discussing her appearance—no good, she would always imagine that the word, the glance, had some purely personal meaning. She would twitch at her hat with inadequate fingers, or walk clumsily, slouching a little as she did so, until Anna would whisper: ‘Hold your back up, you’re stooping.’ Or Puddle exclaim crossly: ‘What on earth’s the matter, Stephen!’ All of which only added to Stephen’s tribulation by making her still more self-conscious.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  But Mary could see that she was far from all right; the warm weather was proving of little avail, even care and good food and sunshine and rest seemed unable to ease that incessant coughing. ‘You ought to see a specialist at once,’ she told Barbara rather sharply one morning. But Barbara shook her head yet again: ‘Don’t, Mary—don’t, please . . . you’ll be frightening Jamie.’ 2After their return to Paris in the autumn, Jamie sometimes joined the nocturnal parties; going rather grimly from bar to bar, and drinking too much of the crème-de-menthe that reminded her of the bull’s eyes at Beedles. She had never cared for these parties before, but now she was clumsily trying to escape, for a few hours at least, from the pain of existence. Barbara usually stayed at home or spent the evening with Stephen and Mary. But Stephen and Mary would not always be there, for now they also went out fairly often; and where was there to go to except the bars? Nowhere else could two women dance together without causing comment and ridicule, without being looked upon as freaks, argued Mary. So rather than let the girl go without her, Stephen would lay aside her work—she had recently started to write her fourth novel. Sometimes, it is true, their friends came to them, a less sordid and far less exhausting business; but even at their own house the drink was too free: ‘We can’t be the only couple to refuse to give people a brandy and soda,’ said Mary, ‘Valérie’s parties are awfully dull; that’s because she’s allowed herself to grow cranky!’ And thus, very gradually just at first, Mary’s finer perceptions began to coarsen. 3The months passed, and now more than a year had slipped by, yet Stephen’s novel remained unfinished; for Mary’s face stood between her and her work—surely the mouth and the eyes had hardened? Still unwilling to let Mary go without her, she dragged wearily round to the bars and cafés, observing with growing anxiety that Mary now drank as did all the others—not too much perhaps, but quite enough to give her a cheerful outlook on existence. The next morning she was often deeply depressed, in the grip of a rather tearful reaction: ‘It’s too beastly—why do we do it?’ she would ask. And Stephen would answer: ‘God knows I don’t want to, but I won’t let you go to such places without me. Can’t we give it all up? It’s appallingly sordid!’

• From The Decameron (1353)

  It seems you want to break my heart, but I shall break yours, so help me God, or have you hounded off the face of the earth.’ Whereupon she ran her hands through her hair, leaving it all rumpled and dishevelled, after which she tore open the front of her dress, at the same time calling out in a loud voice: ‘Help! Help! The Count of Antwerp is trying to ravish me!’ When he saw what was happening, the Count was far more concerned about the envious proclivities of the courtiers than reassured by his own clear conscience in the matter; and for this reason he feared that the lady’s wicked lies would carry greater conviction than his own protestations of innocence. He therefore hurried out of the room, got quickly away from the palace, and fled to his own house, whence, without pausing for further reflection, he took horse with his children and set off at breakneck speed in the direction of Calais. The lady’s caterwauling brought several people running, and when they saw her and heard what she was shouting about, they were convinced she was telling the truth, more especially because they now assumed that the Count had long been exploiting his charm and his elegant ways for no other purpose. There followed a wild rush to the Count’s residence, with the intention of placing him under arrest. But on finding that he was not at home, they ransacked the whole of the premises and then razed them to the ground. When the story, embroidered with various obscenities, reached the King and his son in the field, they were greatly distressed, and condemned the Count and his descendants to perpetual exile, promising huge rewards for his capture, dead or alive. Meanwhile the Count, full of misgivings for having turned his innocence into apparent guilt by his hurried departure, arrived at Calais with his children,

• From The Decameron (1353)

  But all their assistance was unavailing, because the good man, who was already advanced in years and had lived a disordered existence, was reported by his doctors to be going each day from bad to worse, like one who was suffering from a fatal illness. The two brothers were filled with alarm, and one day, alongside the room in which Ser Ciappelletto was lying, they began talking together. ‘What are we to do about the fellow?’ said one to the other. ‘We’ve landed ourselves in a fine mess on his account, because to turn him away from our house in his present condition would arouse a lot of adverse comment and show us to be seriously lacking in common sense. What would people say if they suddenly saw us evicting a dying man after giving him hospitality in the first place, and taking so much trouble to have him nursed and waited upon, when he couldn’t possibly have done anything to offend us? On the other hand, he has led such a wicked life that he will never be willing to make his confession or receive the sacraments of the Church; and if he dies unconfessed, no church will want to accept his body and he’ll be flung into the moat like a dog. 3 But even if he makes his confession, his sins are so many and so appalling that the same thing will happen, because there will be neither friar nor priest who is either willing or able to give him absolution; in which case, since he will not have been absolved, he will be flung into the moat just the same. And when the townspeople see what has happened, they’ll create a commotion, not only because of our profession which they consider iniquitous and never cease to condemn, but also because they long to get their hands on our money, and they will go about shouting: “Away with these Lombard dogs 4 that the Church refuses to accept”; and they’ll come running to our lodgings and perhaps, not content with stealing our goods, they’ll take away our lives into the bargain. So we shall be in a pretty fix either way, if this fellow dies.’ Ser Ciappelletto, who as we have said was lying near the place where they were talking, heard everything they were saying about him, for he was sharp of hearing, as invalids invariably are. So he called them in to him, and said: ‘I don’t want you to worry in the slightest on my account, nor to fear that I will cause you to suffer any harm. I heard what you were saying about me

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  I bumped and spilled my glass of water, which called even more attention to us. She, however, had grace as she carefully left change for a tip, and we walked back to her house. Soon thereafter I was summoned to my soon-to-be mother-in-law’s house. I was nervous. I had been warned by anyone who could take me aside that she was jealous, overprotective, and mean. They were right. What they didn’t say was how attractive she was, how she was still in good form despite the rough years, her dark hair thick and lightly curled. It was her dark eyes that told the other story. They took in the edges of things, the tatters, and left the good behind. My lively new daughter ran up to us as soon as she saw us. My new sister-in-law quietly drew pictures of horses at the table. I moved in with the family in my mother-in-law-to-be’s tiny one-bedroom house that afternoon, because, as she told her son, “You can’t stay there and live off your grandmother.” That much was true. But she also wanted to think she had some control of the gossip. If I was in her house, she would know my whereabouts and could be the authority. She was also pragmatic: I could watch the children. I adjusted. I had no choice. I hated the days when she was moody and critical. I could smell those days coming from far off, like the ozone in a storm front. She might start with “Why aren’t you with your mother?” meaning, why doesn’t your mother take care of you? She reproached me as I washed dishes after eating food bought with her hard-earned money. Or she would say, “Your mother is rich. Why can’t she send us money?” She assumed my mother was rich because she was a lighter-skinned Cherokee who passed for white and lived in Tulsa. I promised myself that as soon as the baby was born we would find our own place. I would swallow hard. I didn’t like being at the mercy of someone else’s kindness. I did everything I could to make myself useful around the house. “My mother isn’t rich,” I answered. During my last visit to the clinic at the Indian hospital I was given the option of being sterilized. It was explained to me that the moment of birth was the best time. I was handed the form but chose not to sign. I didn’t think much of it at the time. Many Indian women who weren’t fluent in English signed, thinking it was a form giving consent for the doctor to deliver their baby. Others were sterilized without even the formality of signing. My fluent knowledge of English saved me. As a child growing up in Oklahoma, I liked to be told the story of my birth. I begged for it while my mother cleaned and ironed. “You almost killed me,” she would say.

• From The World of Biblical Israel (2013)

  22 Lecture 3: ancestor Narratives in Genesis o The Israelite god repeatedly reveals himself to Abraham and to his descendants, Isaac and Jacob, and forms a covenant relationship with them. o God asks Abraham to “walk before me and be righteous.” In return, Abraham receives God’s promise that he will be the father of a “multitude of nations,” and he is granted an eternal landholding in Canaan. As a mark of the covenant, Abraham is asked to circumcise himself and his male descendants. • The rest of the book of Genesis narrates the history of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph—four generations. We often refer to the first three men as the “patriarchs.” o Each one experiences divine visitations, during which the terms of the Abrahamic covenant are reiterated. o At the same time, each of these men faces serious challenges that seem to make the promises of land, progeny, blessings, and great nations useless. Abraham, for example, must wait 25 years from the time that he is first told he will father a great nation to the birth of the son that God has promised him. The patriarchs also face threats to their lives, often coming from God himself. • Several of the recurring themes of the patriarchal narratives speak to the exilic reality of those preserving these stories. o These themes include the Israelite god’s presence and power, which transcend national boundaries; the covenantal relationship between Abraham’s descendants and the Israelite god; the eternal nature of the covenantal relationship; and the gift of the Promised Land as an everlasting bequest. o The stories also acknowledge tensions experienced by the exiles: wives who cannot conceive, children whose lives are threatened, a land prone to famine and war, and a god who does not always protect.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Father, as I shall explain to you presently, there is a certain matter about which I am compelled to seek your advice and assistance. Having already told you my name, I feel sure you will know my family and my husband. He loves me more dearly than life itself, and since he is enormously rich, he never has the slightest difficulty or hesitation in supplying me with every single object for which I display a yearning. Consequently, my love for him is quite unbounded, and if my mere thoughts, to say nothing of my actual behaviour, were to run contrary to his wishes and his honour, I would be more deserving of hellfire than the wickedest woman who ever lived. ‘Now, there is a certain person, of respectable outward appearance, who unless I am mistaken is a close acquaintance of yours. I really couldn’t say what his name is, but he is tall and handsome, his clothes are brown and elegantly cut, and, possibly because he is unaware of my resolute nature, he appears to have laid siege to me. He turns up infallibly whenever I either look out of a window or stand at the front door or leave the house, and I am surprised, in fact, that he is not here now. Needless to say, I am very upset about all this, because his sort of conduct frequently gives an honest woman a bad name, even though she is quite innocent. ‘I have made up my mind on several occasions to inform my brothers about him. But then it has occurred to me that men are apt to be tactless in their handling of these matters, and when they receive a dusty answer they start bandying words with one another and eventually somebody gets hurt. So in order to avoid unpleasantness and scandal, I have always held my tongue. Since, however, you appear to be a friend of his, I decided I would break my silence, for after all it is perfectly proper for you to censure people for this kind of behaviour, no matter whether they are your friends or total strangers. For the love of God, therefore, I implore you to speak to him severely and persuade him to refrain from his importunities. There are plenty of other women who doubtless find this sort of thing amusing, and who will enjoy being ogled and spied upon by him, but I personally have no inclination for it whatsoever, and I find his behaviour exceedingly disagreeable.’ And having reached the end of her speech, the lady bowed her head as though she were going to burst into tears.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  Do the exercise again to reinforce your ability to recognize dissociation when it happens. Remember, the point of these exercises is not to prevent dissociation from happening. The point is to be able to recognize it as it happens. It is possible to be dissociated and to simultaneously be aware of what is occurring around you. This dual consciousness is important for beginning the process of healing and re-association. If you feel resistant to learning about this dual consciousness, your organism may be sending you a signal that dissociation plays an important role in organizing your traumatic symptoms. If you do feel resistance, honor it and proceed slowly. Remind yourself from time to time that dual consciousness is possible, and occasionally attempt it. Dissociation, as it is presented here, occurs in a variety of ways, each having a common fundamental disconnection between either the person and the body, a part of the body, or a part of the experience. It may occur as a split between: 1. the consciousness and the body. 2. one part of the body, such as the head or the limbs and the rest of the body. 3. the self and the emotions, thoughts, or sensations. 4. the self and the memory of part or all of the event. The way dissociation occurs will influence the way that more complex symptoms develop. In addition, there seems to be evidence that the use of dissociation as a response to trauma is influenced by both genetics and personality structure. Spaciness and forgetfulness are among the more obvious symptoms that evolve from dissociation. However, there are other symptoms that are less easily recognized as originating from it. Among these are the following:  Denial is probably a lower-level energy form of dissociation. The disconnection is between the person and the memory of or feelings about a particular event (or series of events). We may deny that an event occurred, or we may act as though it were unimportant. For instance, when someone we love dies or when we are injured or violated, we may act as though nothing has happened because the emotions that come with truly acknowledging the situation are too painful. Then suddenly, we may be consumed with intense emotion. Denial gives way to fear, anger, sorrow, or shame as the feelings once again integrate and the energy that has been bound up in the denial is released. However, when the bound-up energy is too great and the feelings too painful, denial can become chroni c= a “set in stone” insistence that an event never happened.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  No one could see the force that wanted to kill me. Nor did anyone know how I had to coax each breath, each swallow. I had to count, so I could live. I had to make it home. For months I continued to will myself to walk and swallow. Vast holes of panic appeared to open in the atmosphere. Crossing streets was particularly difficult. As I came to a corner, I’d hold on to signs, lampposts, or grip the handle of the baby stroller. Then I’d cross in a blur of fear. One night I was driving back late from Acomita from visiting friends. Just as I started over the Laguna Pueblo overpass, the panic yanked the steering wheel toward the edge of the bridge. I fought to gain control of the car. Just before I was close to going over, I prayed for help. The panic let go and I was able to pull the car into the driving lane. I was introduced to a native woman who was a psychic. She helped police find the dead. Two of my concerned friends asked her to read me while she was having coffee in the student union. She agreed. She asked me to open my hands. She looked at my palms. I saw what she was seeing. I saw the wreckage of my life, what no one else could see when they looked at me. I appeared normal, as I took care of my children and went to school. She warned me, “Be careful. You are in great danger.” Then she gently closed my palms. [image "6706.jpg" file=Image00008.jpg] [image "6709.jpg" file=Image00009.jpg] [image "6711.jpg" file=Image00010.jpg] One night when the baby’s father was away in California teaching poetry, I felt a small island of peace. The children slept. I painted, listening to the song of the cricket who lived in the corner of the living room, near the front door. The cricket sang about the coming rain. It would be a light, misty rain. It was a day away. I turned on the television, the story box that changed the story field of the world. The commercial aspect of stories threatens the diversity of the world’s stories and manners of telling. The television stands in the altar space of most of the homes in America. It is the authority and the main source of stories for many in the world. Once when I was a student I had two televisions. In one the picture worked and not the sound. In the other the sound worked and not the picture. Together I had a working set—an Indian television set, I often joked. That night as I sat in the quiet house alone, I was taken in by a story. I was taken to somewhere in the Pacific; it could have been Indonesia, Malaysia, or New Guinea. I watched as a shaman was called to assist someone in need of healing. There was an exchange between the patient’s family and the shaman.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Without prior agreement but simply by chance, these seven ladies found themselves sitting, more or less in a circle, in one part of the church, reciting their paternosters. Eventually, they left off and heaved a great many sighs, after which they began to talk among themselves on various different aspects of the times through which they were passing. But after a little while, they all fell silent except for Pampinea, who said: ‘Dear ladies, you will often have heard it affirmed, as I have, that no man does injury to another in exercising his lawful rights. Every person born into this world has a natural right to sustain, preserve, and defend his own life to the best of his ability – a right so freely acknowledged that men have sometimes killed others in self-defence, and no blame whatever has attached to their actions. Now, if this is permitted by the laws, upon whose prompt application all mortal creatures depend for their well-being, how can it possibly be wrong, seeing that it harms no one, for us or anyone else to do all in our power to preserve our lives? If I pause to consider what we have been doing this morning, and what we have done on several mornings in the past, if I reflect on the nature and subject of our conversation, I realize, just as you also must realize, that each of us is apprehensive on her own account. This does not surprise me in the least, but what does greatly surprise me (seeing that each of us has the natural feelings of a woman) is that we do nothing to requite ourselves against the thing of which we are all so justly afraid. ‘Here we linger for no other purpose, or so it seems to me, than to count the number of corpses being taken to burial, or to hear whether the friars of the church, very few of whom are left, chant their offices at the appropriate hours, or to exhibit the quality and quantity of our sorrows, by means of the clothes we are wearing, to all those whom we meet in this place. And if we go outside, we shall see the dead and the sick being carried hither and thither, or we shall see people, once condemned to exile by the courts for their misdeeds, careering wildly about the streets in open defiance of the law, well knowing that those appointed to enforce it are either dead or dying; or else we shall find ourselves at the mercy of the scum of our city who, having scented our blood, call themselves sextons and go prancing and bustling all over the place, singing bawdy songs that add insult to our injuries. Moreover, all we ever hear is “So-and-so’s dead” and “So-and-so’s dying”; and if there were anyone left to mourn, the whole place would be filled with sounds of weeping and wailing.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  If you notice that you are using words that are usually thought of as emotions, take each one and ask yourself: How do I know that I feel emotion? Because emotions are based on connections with the past, the picture or memorabilia may bring memories of other events. Just notice the sensations that come with these memories in the same way. Keep reminding yourself to sense and to describe what you sense as sensations, not as emotions or thoughts. Turn to the next picture and repeat the process. Remember to go slowly enough to be able to notice the sensations that arise in response to the pictures. For each picture or page of your scrapbook, stay with the sensations that are evoked for a few minutes and see if they change. They may stay the same or disappear, but they may also become stronger. Whatever happens, just notice it. If the feelings or sensations become too intense or unpleasant, deliberately shift your attention to a pleasant experience that you have had, or that you can imagine having. Focus all your awareness on the bodily felt sensations of that experience instead. Shifting your attention to the other sensations will help the intensity of the uncomfortable feeling to subside. Remember that unresolved trauma can be a powerful force. If you continue to feel overwhelmed by the exercises or any of the material in the book, please stop for now, try again later, or, enlist the support of a trained professional. If an image of a horrifying scene shows up in your mind’s eye, ever so gently notice what sensations come with it. Sometimes, when sensations are intense, images come first. The sensation is ultimately what will help you move through the traum a- whatever it is. You may end up knowing what it is and you may not. For now, just be reassured that as you move through your reactions, the need to know whether it was real or not will loosen its grip. If there is an objective need to know whether it is true, such as to protect a child who may be at risk, you will be in a better position to handle the situation effectively.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  But he was sadly disappointed in his hope to escape sin and temptation behind the walls of the cloister. He found no peace and rest in all his pious exercises. The more he seemed to advance externally, the more he felt the burden of sin within. He had to contend with temptations of anger, envy, hatred and pride. He saw sin everywhere, even in the smallest trifles. The Scriptures impressed upon him the terrors of divine justice. He could not trust in God as a reconciled Father, as a God of love and mercy but trembled before him, as a God of wrath, as a consuming fire. He could not get over the words: "I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God." His confessor once told him: "Thou art a fool, God is not angry with thee, but thou art angry with God." He remembered this afterward as "a great and glorious word," but at that time it made no impression on him. He could not point to any particular transgression; it was sin as an all-pervading power and vitiating principle, sin as a corruption of nature, sin as a state of alienation from God and hostility to God, that weighed on his mind like an incubus and brought him at times to the brink of despair. He passed through that conflict between the law of God and the law of sin which is described by Paul (Rom. vii.), and which; ends with the cry: "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?" He had not yet learned to add: "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. There is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death." § 22. Luther and Staupitz. The mystic writings of Staupitz have been republished in part by Knaake in Johannis Staupitii Opera. Potsdam, 1867, vol. I. His "Nachfolge Christi" was first published in 1515; his book "Von der Liebe Gottes" (especially esteemed by Luther) in 1518, and passed through several editions; republ. by Liesching, Stuttgart, 1862. His last work "Von, dem heiligen rechten christlichen Glauben," appeared after his death, 1525, and is directed against Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith without works. His twenty-four letters have been published by Kolde: Die Deutsche Augustiner Congregation und Johann von Staupitz. Gotha, 1879, p. 435 sqq.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The topic for the Sixth Day is ‘those who, on being provoked by some verbal pleasantry, have returned like for like, or who, by a prompt retort or shrewd manoeuvre, have avoided danger, discomfort or ridicule’. The tricks played by women upon their husbands form the subject-matter of the Seventh Day, whilst the Eighth Day is given over to tales about ‘tricks that people in general, men and women alike, are forever playing upon one another’. This last topic is one which could cover a large number of the remaining stories in the Decameron , and tales of verbal pleasantries are by no means confined to the Sixth Day, so that, viewed in its entirety, the Decameron is abundantly stocked with illustrations of human ingenuity. There is nothing unusual in this. Other collections of short stories, like the anonymous Novellino that preceded the Decameron and Franco Sacchetti’s Trecentonovelle that followed it, could be described in similar terms, and indeed it would be a dull series of narratives that did not accord an important role to the workings of people’s intelligence. What is interesting about Boccaccio’s treatment of the theme is his elevation of intelligence to a position in the scale of human values which places it on a par with the highest of the traditional virtues. This celebration of intelligence for its own sake is largely responsible for the ambiguous moral tone of the Decameron , a feature which forms a notorious stumbling-block for those critics and commentators who seek to extract from the work a coherent and consistent system of ethics. 56 The tone of moral ambiguity is established in the very first of the hundred tales, which concerns the arch-villain Ser Cepperello, who by making a false confession to a holy friar on his death-bed is reputed to be a saint, and is thereafter revered as Saint Ciappelletto. Cepperello is hired by a rich Italian merchant to recover certain loans in Burgundy, a province notorious for the lawlessness of its inhabitants, but shortly after his arrival there he falls mortally ill in the house of two Florentine money-lenders, with whom he has taken up lodging. His hosts are faced with an awkward dilemma. Knowing of his thoroughly evil past, they are certain that no priest will give him absolution, and that his body will be refused burial in consecrated ground, in which case, being already unpopular because of their profession, they will incur the open hostility of the locals, possibly forfeiting their property and their lives. If on the other hand they turn a dying man out of the house, their prospects will be no less bleak, for Cepperello, prior to his illness, had done nothing to offend the Burgundians, on the contrary issuing his first demands ‘in a gentle and amiable fashion that ran contrary to his nature’. Their conversation is overheard by their guest, who, as Boccaccio puts it in a characteristically acute psychological aside, ‘was sharp of hearing, as invalids invariably are’.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  “It means you’ll marry a drunk.” Yet night after night after dinner she would drag my little chair to the sink and my dress would get soaked, no matter how hard I tried to keep from marrying a drunk. Every morning that I woke up with a hangover after trying to keep up with the poet with whom I was so in love, I’d remember the wet belly of my dress. I’d promise myself I’d let him go. I knew I could not save him, but to let him go felt unbearable. One morning he mentioned that his brother was coming into town from California and wanted to have dinner before heading out to the pueblo. He asked if I’d like to go to Jack’s for pizza with them. I knew that his brother was a hard drinker. I tried to ignore the premonition and remembered his words after the last binge, when he had promised that he was going to quit drinking. Jack’s, though it was also a pizza joint, was one of his favorite bars. They did make the best pizza. I decided to go. That night after cleaning the house for company, I took my son to the babysitter. When I handed him over with his pack of clothes, toys, and snacks, I hugged him close, savoring his freshly shampooed hair. When my son saw the babysitter’s new puppy, he wriggled free to go play with it. The babysitter was roasting green chilies and had just pulled out of the oven a fresh batch of little fruit pies that her people made. She offered me some. I wanted to stay put in her warm house, to wash dishes, set the table, and visit and forget the teeth of anxiety. If I followed it to the source, I would be slammed back into childhood, to my father staggering in drunk and beating my mother. The first time the poet hit me was on a Saturday night. We hadn’t been together long. We were in that amazed state of awe at finding each other in all the millions and billions of people in the world. We were partying at Okie Joe’s up the street. He was talking politics with his buddies while I played pool with some of the other native students in the back room. I kept feeding the jukebox quarters, playing the Rolling Stones, “Wild horses couldn’t drag me away,” over and over again. He was down about the anniversary of the death of his best friend, who had been his idol. He had been the only man from a pueblo to finish law school at the university, and he fought the U.S. legal system by any means possible, including his fists. But he couldn’t fight alcohol. He was taken down by drink, his body found in a field weeks after his death. His grieving brothers were honoring him that night at the bar by drinking themselves to oblivion. They were getting rowdy.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  By reason of these things I feel myself alike ill at ease here and abroad and at home, more by token that meseemeth none, who hath, as we have, the power and whither to go, is left here, other than ourselves; or if any such there be, I have many a time both heard and perceived that, without making any distinction between things lawful and unlawful, so but appetite move them, whether alone or in company, both day and night, they do that which affordeth them most delight. Nor is it the laity alone who do thus; nay, even those who are shut in the monasteries, persuading themselves that what befitteth and is lawful to others alike sortable and unforbidden unto them,[17] have broken the laws of obedience and giving themselves to carnal delights, thinking thus to escape, are grown lewd and dissolute. If thus, then, it be, as is manifestly to be seen, what do we here? What look we for? What dream we? Why are we more sluggish and slower to provide for our safety than all the rest of the townsfolk? Deem we ourselves of less price than others, or do we hold our life to be bounden in our bodies with a stronger chain than is theirs and that therefore we need reck nothing of aught that hath power to harm it? We err, we are deceived; what folly is ours, if we think thus! As often as we choose to call to mind the number and quality of the youths and ladies overborne of this cruel pestilence, we may see a most manifest proof thereof. [Footnote 17: This phrase may also be read "persuading themselves that that (_i.e._ their breach of the laws of obedience, etc.) beseemeth them and is forbidden only to others" (_faccendosi a credere che quello a lor si convenga e non si disdica che all' altre_); but the reading in the text appears more in harmony with the general sense and is indeed indicated by the punctuation of the Giunta Edition of 1527, which I generally follow in case of doubt.]

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  In the years after the session with Nancy, I began to piece together the puzzle of healing trauma. The key I found was being able to work in a gradual, gentle way with the powerful energies bound in the trauma symptoms. Marius: A Next Step The following description of a young man’s odyssey illustrates a refinement of the strategies for healing trauma. Marius is a slight, intelligent, shy, boyish- looking young Eskimo in his mid-twenties who was born and raised in a remote village in Greenland. When I asked him whether I could transcribe his session for a book, assuring him I would disguise his name and identity, his eyes opened wide. “No, pleas e ... It would be an honor,” he said, “but would you please use my full name, so that if my family and friends from my village read your book, they will know it is me you are talking about.” So this is Marius Inuusuttoq Kristensen’s story. As a participant in a training class in Copenhagen, Denmark, Marius reports his tendency towards anxiety and panic, particularly when he is with a man he ad-mires and whose approval he wants. This anxiety is “symptomized” in his body as a weakening of the legs and a stabbing ache on the side of his right leg, and is often accompanied by waves of nausea. As he conveys this experience, his head and face feel very warm and he becomes sweaty and flushed. In talking about these feelings, he relates the following story about an event that occurred when he was eight. While returning from a walk alone in the mountains, he was attacked by a pack of three wild dogs and bitten badly on his right leg. He remembers feeling the bite, waking up in the arms of a neighbor, and has an image of his father coming to the door and being annoyed with him. He feels bitter, angry, and hurt by his father’s rejection. He remembers, particularly, that his new pants were ripped and covered with blood. Describing this, he is visibly upset. I ask him to tell me more about the pants. They were a surprise from his mother that morning; she had made them of polar bear fur especially for him. His experience switches dramatically and transparently to pleasure and pride. Feeling excited, Marius holds his arms in front of himself as though feeling the soft fur and basking in the warmth of his new pants: “These are the same kind of pants that the men of the village, the hunters, wear.”