Awe

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 Chronology of Water (2011)

  I believe in art the way other people believe in god. I say that because books and paintings and music and photography gave me an alternate world to inhabit when the one I was born into was a dead zone. I say it because if you, even inside whatever terror itches your skin, pick up a pen or a paintbrush, a camera or clay or a guitar, you already have what you are afraid to choose. Volition. It was already in you. Just be that-what moves inside you. It’s already there, waiting: Hush for the line Crouched like the touch of dreams in your fingertips She is coming with a vengeance. Copyright ©2010 Lidia Yuknavitch Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hawthorne Books & Literary Arts All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and-retrieval systems, without prior permission in writing from the Publisher, except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Yuknavitch, Lidia. The chronology of water : a memoir / Lidia Yuknavitch. p. cm. eISBN : 978-0-983-30490-6 1. Yuknavitch, Lidia. I. Title PS3575.U35Z46 2011 813’.546 - DC22 [B] 2010041860 9 2201 Northeast 23rd Avenue 8 3rd Floor 7 Portland, Oregon 97212 6 hawthornebooks.com 5 Form: 4 Adam McIsaac, Bklyn, NY 3 2 d_r0 [image file=image_rsrc26B.jpg]

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  God’s greatest delight is to be with you and me, with us, His children. And we have a need hardwired into our soul to be with Him. Amid the worries and the hustle of life, we sometimes forget the healing power of simply being with God. When we sense His closeness, everything changes. Our fears fade away, our minds clear, our hearts become calm. THE FELT PRESENCE OF GOD The idea of God’s presence is found throughout the Bible. God is, of course always present. He’s omnipresent, meaning He is everywhere, all the time. Paul, writing about Jesus, says, “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17). God is the life-force that keeps the universe humming. On a more personal level, the author of Hebrews, speaking for God, says, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (13:5). God doesn’t just hold all of creation together; He holds us in His arms. He remains with us no matter what. God’s presence in the universe and in our lives never changes. But there is another element of His presence that we find in the Bible and in our walk with Him. It’s His “felt presence,” for lack of a better term. It’s that sudden, unexplainable, thrilling awareness that He is, quite literally, in the room. You can’t explain it. It might include emotion, but it’s deeper than any human feeling. It might cause goosebumps or tears or laugher, but it’s more than superficial reactions. It might be specific words or thoughts that drop into your heart, but it goes beyond mere imagination. You just know that God showed up. And His presence changes everything. Prayer facilitates this felt presence of God. It opens your mind and spirit to receive from God. I’m not saying you’ll have some dramatic experience every time you pray, but you’ll often feel or sense something. You should expect it, look for it, and welcome it. Don’t make experience the goal of prayer, but don’t reduce prayer to a mental exercise either. Prayer is both an act of faith and an experience. It is both words and emotions. It is both talking and listening. It is mind and spirit and will and body together, experiencing God in a tangible way. God can show up whenever and however He wants. He loves to interact with us. He wants to be found by us. As He told Israel, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13). He’s here with us all the time, after all, and He loves us deeply—doesn’t it make sense that He would want to reveal himself to us? Speak to us? Comfort us? Lead us?

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  But the real Jesus didn’t look like a Caucasian mystic on weed. Jesus was strong, active, and present. He was a blue-collar worker, comfortable hanging out with fishermen and laborers and people who were rough around the edges. He was blunt, edgy, even sarcastic at times. He made people laugh and He made them squirm. Jesus healed people, and raised the dead, and cast out demons. He brought heaven down to earth in such a real way that it scared people at times. Yes, there is security in Jesus. He is a safe place in the sense of being strong, faithful, and trustworthy. But if your idea of safety is a god you can keep on a leash, then no, Jesus is not safe, any more than taking a lion on a walk would be. And prayer isn’t either. In prayer, we interact with the untamed and untamable God who created the universe, who sent Jesus to die in our place, who can and does do miracles, who knows us better than we know ourselves, and who has absolutely no problem getting all up in our business. In this chapter, I want to look at a few prayers that I call dangerous prayers. These are prayers such as commitment, surrender, dedication, repentance, transparency, and prayer for your enemies. They are dangerous because they will take you places you might not have anticipated—but you won’t regret them. Prayer isn’t safe. But it is good. 1. NOT MY WILL, BUT YOURS. Remember that iconic line in The Princess Bride that Wesley would repeat to the princess: “As you wish”? The last time he said the phrase, it was more like, “AS YOU WIIIIIIIIIISH,” because Wesley was shouting it while he tumbled down a hillside into the fire swamp. This was the climactic moment where the princess realized her true love had returned. And she had pushed him off a cliff. True love hurts, apparently. True love also surrenders itself to another. Not in a toxic, blind, codependent way, but in a faithful way. A covenant way. A trusting way. It says, “As you wish,” as part of a mutual surrender.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  Moses conversed with God in front of a burning bush and again on a mountaintop. (Exodus 3–4; 33) Israel experienced God’s presence in a pillar of fire and cloud. (Exodus 13:21–22) Deborah received marching orders from God and delivered Israel. (Judges 4–5) Solomon consecrated the temple and God’s glory filled it. (2 Chronicles 5–7) Elijah heard God’s voice as a whisper while he was hiding in a cave. (1 Kings 19:12–13) Daniel was accompanied by an angel, who shut the mouth of lions. (Daniel 6:22) Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were joined by God in the fiery furnace. (Daniel 3) Mary was visited by an angel announcing the birth of Jesus. (Luke 1:26–38) Peter, James, and John saw Jesus transfigured and glorious on a mountain. (Matthew 17:1–2) Mary Magdalene encountered Jesus in a garden the morning of the resurrection. (John 20) Paul was knocked to the ground and his life changed on the way to Jerusalem. (Acts 9) John had a series of apocalyptic dreams that reveal God’s ultimate victory. (Revelation) I could go on, but you get the picture. God has a long history of visiting humanity in very creative ways. And He hasn’t stopped. Apparently, He likes being with us. CHOOSING WHAT IS BETTER In the chaos and craziness and pain and pressure of life, prayer helps us slow down. It creates a space for us to listen to God’s voice. One day, Jesus stopped by the house of two sisters named Mary and Martha. This is probably the same Mary and Martha whose brother Lazarus was later raised from the dead by Jesus. Luke tells us that Mary “sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said” (10:39). Martha, on the other hand, was “distracted by all the preparations that had to be made” (verse 40). Martha needed help in the kitchen, and she expected Mary to do her part. I can imagine Martha gesturing to Mary when Jesus wasn’t watching. Coughing and sighing loudly from the kitchen. Whispering menacingly into Mary’s ear. Dropping passive-aggressive hints every time she hurried in with another bowl of snacks about “how hot it is in the kitchen” and “how much work there is left to do.” Mary blissfully ignored her. At some point, Martha couldn’t take it anymore, and she lost it. She complained to Jesus: “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” (verse 40). Gently but firmly, Jesus refused. “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her” (verses 41–42). Notice the two postures contrasted here: sitting versus serving . Sitting at a teacher’s feet was the customary place of a disciple.

• From The Lives of Great Christians (2007)

  G. Although some monks live in large monasteries, others live in groups of small houses of two or three monks, while still others live as hermits. 1. There is no equivalent in the East to the Rule of St. Benedict. 2. There is a greater variety of lifestyles—or, as we might better say, monastic vocations—in the East than in the West. V. The most important and influential idea to come from the Athonite monks is that of hesychasm, a form of mystical prayer. A. Although its origins predate the monastic communities, we associate hesychasm primarily with monks. B. Hesychasm was the quest for spiritual ascent to God. 1. One of the most common hesychast practices is the repetition of the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” 2. Some hesychasts also use physical positions and even rhythmic breathing as part of their spiritual exercises. 3. This form of prayer is largely a matter of stripping away or leaving behind what the senses record in order to bask in the uncreated light of God. 4. The most widely used texts for those who practice hesychasm are found in a collection called the Philokalia, written beginning in the 4 th century. C. In the 14th century, a Western-trained abbot in Constantinople condemned hesychasm. 1. He objected to certain theological presuppositions of hesychasm. 2. Being trained in Scholastic thought, he believed that knowledge of God came from more intellectual activity. D. The great defender of hesychasm was the 14th-century monk of Mount Athos, St. Gregory Palamas. 1. Two councils held in Constantinople ultimately gave official sanction to hesychasm, which remains an important element of the Orthodox faith today. 2. This way of prayer to God is best known today in the West through The Way of the Pilgrim, the writing of an anonymous 19th-century Russian monk. ©2007 The Teaching Company. 88 Essential Reading: Graham Speake, Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise. Supplementary Reading: Gregory Palamas, The Triads. Basil Pennington, The Monks of Mount Athos: A Western Monk’s Extraordinary Spiritual Journey on Eastern Holy Ground. Questions to Consider: 1. Why would anyone today leave the world in such a radical way in order to seek God as a monk on Mount Athos? 2. Is monastic life an escape from the world and its problems or a beacon of light and hope to Christians who live thoroughly “in the world”? 3. Can people not living the monastic life benefit from the kinds of prayer developed and written about by the monks of Mount Athos? ©2007 The Teaching Company. 89 Lecture Twenty Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Maximilian Kolbe

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  It was Cavafy who wrote of Alexandria “There’s no new land, my friend, no/ New sea; for the city will follow you, /In the same streets you’ll wander endlessly.… One of this work’s narrators goes further still: “man is only an extension of the spirit of place”, says Nessim (I think it is) in Justine. The several narrators of the Quartet are certainly enslaved by Alexandria’s genii loci, and readers are likely to be entrapped too, because the work, so opaque in other contexts, is clear enough when it deals with the city. We soon learn the geography of the place, from the handsome Rue Fuad to the meshed Arab backstreets, from the elegance of L’Etoile or the Cecil Hotel to the hashish-cafés of the slums or the sandy approaches to the Western Desert. We see inside the mansions of rich cosmopolitans and diplomats, we visit stifling attic bedrooms, brothels and pleasure pavilions by the sea. Much of all this is factual. Durrell based much of his fiction upon personal experience, reminiscence and tittle-tattle, which gave the Quartet, for his contemporaries, something of the allure of a roman-à-clef, not least in its sexual allusions. In fact a general sensuality is the most Alexandrine aspect of the Quartet, but it does shows itself, too, in somewhat hazy illustrations of individual sex – “modern love”, as Durrell put it. These “dark blue tides of Eros” are far from pornographic. Sometimes, it is true, we are unsure who is loving whom, and now and then there are homosexual and cross-dressing deviations, but mostly the love elements are straightforward and moving, and really do dominate, as Durrell implied, the devious goings-on of the plot. Which are full of surprises. Some, I dare say, really are Freudian or Einsteinian in origin, or metaphysically intercultural, but they often seem to me like twists in a skilful thriller, closer to Le Carré than to James Joyce, and sometimes embroiled in melodrama – “the slime of plot and counterplot”, as another of Durrell’s characters defines it. He was particularly admired for his descriptive writing, and these books are rich in masterly set-pieces, but he was also a fine story-teller, adept in techniques of suspense and deception. Reader, watch out! Shocks are always around the dusty corner, in the Alexandria Quartet. * * * The four books of the tetralogy originally appeared separately – Justine in 1957, Balthazar and Mountolive in 1958, Clea in 1960. They were immediately recognized as remarkable works of art, but the verdict on the whole work, while always respectful, was mixed. French critics adored it. Americans lapped it up. English reviewers were not so sure. Lawrence Durrell, a lifelong expatriate, never was an admirer of English culture, and his elaborate prose did not greatly appeal to more austere littérateurs like Angus Wilson, who called it floridly vulgar. Its pretensions were mocked, its avant garde excesses parodied, and although the books were commercial triumphs, he wrote nothing so publicly successful again.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  Mark recounts that Jesus was asleep in the back, peacefully resting on a pillow while His disciples nearly lost their minds. Finally, they woke Him up. “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?” (4:38). Jesus woke up, yawned, stretched, looked around, yawned again, then casually told the wind and the waves to knock it off. Instant calm. The disciples, Mark writes, were now terrified of Him , not the storm. In a good way. “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!” (verse 41). They had a perspective change. Rather than being in awe of the elements, they were in awe of the one who created and controlled the wind and the waves. Prayer reminds us that all obstacles are small next to the omnipotent creator of the universe. 6. Material things We invest so much of ourselves trying to make money and build wealth. But the one who dies with the most toys . . . still dies. Maybe you’ve heard the Biggie Smalls song “Juicy.” I know I’m dating myself here, since it first came out in 1994, but it’s a classic, and it’s one of the greatest hip-hop songs of all time. It’s about Biggie’s rags-to-riches journey, and it’s mostly an in-your-face message to the haters who never thought he’d make it. There are so many great lines in the song that point out just how far he had come, like, “Now we sip champagne when we thirsty.”3 That’s what we’ve all been taught, right? That success looks like fancy cars and tastes like champagne? But with all due respect to the late Christopher Wallace, that kind of success can’t bring lasting contentment. It beats poverty, for sure—but we have to get our perspective on success from God, not from rap artists. Prayer gives us perspective on money and success because it brings heavenly values to bear on our earthly pursuits. It reminds us that what lasts longer is what is worth the most. And what lasts the longest is what is eternal. Mostly, that means people . Material things don’t go to heaven, but people do. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t care about your job, house, car, or espresso machine. It just means you should care more about people. 7. People People matter more than anything, and praying for individuals in your life will always change your perspective about them. This might mean praying for your enemies, as we saw above. But more often, it means praying for friends and loved ones. Every relationship in your life could benefit from prayer. Are you dating someone? Pray for your significant other. Are you recently married? Pray for your spouse. Are you a parent? Pray for your kids. Are you a boss? Pray for your employees. Are you a pet owner? Okay, pray for your pets too.

• From Wild (2012)

  I walked east along a lush green corridor, the roadbed of the long-abandoned Columbia River Highway, which had been made into a trail. I could see patches of concrete in places, but the road had mostly been reclaimed by the moss that grew along the rocks at the road’s edge, the trees that hung heavy and low over it, the spiders who’d spun webs that crossed its expanse. I walked through the spiderwebs, feeling them like magic on my face, pulling them out of my hair. I could hear but not see the rush of automobiles on the interstate to my left, which ran between the river and me, the ordinary sound of them, a great whooshing whine and hum. When I emerged from the forest, I was in Cascade Locks, which unlike so many towns on the trail was an actual town, with a population of a little more than a thousand. It was Friday morning and I could feel the Friday morningness emanating from the houses I passed. I walked beneath the freeway and wended my way along the streets with my ski pole clicking against the pavement, my heart racing when the bridge came into view. It’s an elegant steel truss cantilever, named for a natural bridge that was formed by a major landslide approximately three hundred years ago that had temporarily dammed the Columbia River. The local Native Americans had called it the Bridge of the Gods. The human-made structure that took its name spans the Columbia for a little more than a third of a mile, connecting Oregon to Washington, the towns of Cascade Locks and Stevenson on either side. There’s a tollbooth on the Oregon side and when I reached it the woman who worked inside told me I could cross the bridge, no charge. “I’m not crossing,” I said. “I only want to touch it.” I walked along the shoulder of the road until I reached the concrete stanchion of the bridge, put my hand on it, and looked down at the Columbia River flowing beneath me. It’s the largest river in the Pacific Northwest and the fourth largest in the nation. Native Americans have lived on the river for thousands of years, sustained by its once-bountiful salmon for most of them. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark had paddled down the Columbia in dugout canoes on their famous expedition in 1805. One hundred and ninety years later, two days before my twenty-seventh birthday, here I was. I had arrived. I’d done it. It seemed like such a small thing and such a tremendous thing at once, like a secret I’d always tell myself, though I didn’t know the meaning of it just yet. I stood there for several minutes, cars and trucks going past me, feeling like I’d cry, though I didn’t.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  Joan of Arc’s burning scene is on page 341. Instead of a crown of thorns they placed a tall paper cap on her head. She did not die until the fire reached her head. People saw all kinds of things - one person saw a dove leaving her skull. Despite the oil, sulphur and fuel used, her entrails and heart would not go to ash. The executioner had to throw them in the Seine. I could see her. How it looked. How it smelled. How her hair went to flame. How the bone form of her skull appeared, until her jaw and teeth shown, a terrible smile or a scream, before she burned to crap. I’m 13 reading that. Honor thy father. It is wicked to make up stories. I’m the rest of my life a burning girl. That image of Joan of Arc burning up in a fire burned inside me like a new religion. Her face skyward. Her faith muscled up like a holy war. And always the voice of a father in her head. Like me. Jesus. What is a thin man pinned to wood next to the image of a burning woman warrior ablaze? I took the image of a burning woman into my heart and left belief to the house of father forever. I didn’t hate the fire. I hated the people who did not believe her. And I hated the father that let her burn. And I hated the men who… I think I hated men. The more I was around them, the more I came close to spontaneously combusting. Drawing them dangerously close to the flame. The Hairy Girls GIRL SWIMMERS ARE HAIRY. I don’t know how much you know about these things, but competition swimmers don’t shave their legs unless they are preparing for the big meet, Regionals, State, Senior Nationals, for instance. So when I was a girl who barely had any hairs looking up at the towering corpus of Nancy Hogshead from the puny viewpoint of the pool, their leg hair was downright scary. And they had pube hair sticking out of their suits up at the top of their thighs and going into their business. Boy. Talk about terrifying. OK that’s a lie. It wasn’t terrifying. It was mesmerizing. I couldn’t stop staring. It made me into a mouth breather. When Jo Harshbarger showered in the locker rooms, all I saw was her legs as something I longed to pet, and her stuff as a little furry special place, especially since as a girl I was afraid to look at tits or twats or even faces. That’s a lie too. I stared at tits and coochie as hard as a drunk eyeballing a fifth of vodka.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Raise that too! Above all, raise your voices, as I give to you, direct from the Phoenix Theatre, Dover, our very own Kentish swell, our diminutive Faversham masher ... Miss Kitty’ - clack! -‘Butler!’There was a burst of handclapping and a few damp whoops. The orchestra struck up with some jolly number, and I heard the creak and whisper of the rising curtain. All unwillingly I opened my eyes - then I opened them wider, and lifted my head. The heat, my weariness, were quite forgotten. Piercing the shadows of the naked stage was a single shaft of rosy limelight, and in the centre of this there was a girl: the most marvellous girl - I knew it at once! - that I had ever seen.Of course, we had had male impersonator turns at the Palace before; but in 1888, in the provincial halls, the masher acts were not the things they are today. When Nelly Power had sung ‘The Last of the Dandies’ to us six months before she had worn tights and bullion fringe, just like a ballet-girl - only carried a cane and a billycock hat to make her boyish. Kitty Butler did not wear tights or spangles. She was, as Tricky had billed her, a kind of perfect West-End swell. She wore a suit - a handsome gentleman’s suit, cut to her size, and lined at the cuffs and the flaps with flashing silk. There was a rose in her lapel, and lavender gloves at her pocket. From beneath her waistcoat shone a stiff-fronted shirt of snowy white, with a stand-up collar two inches high. Around the collar was a white bow-tie; and on her head there was a topper. When she took the topper off - as she did now to salute the audience with a gay ‘Hallo!’ - one saw that her hair was perfectly cropped.It was the hair, I think, which drew me most. If I had ever seen women with hair as short as hers, it was because they had spent time in hospital or prison; or because they were mad. They could never have looked like Kitty Butler. Her hair fitted her head like a little cap that had been sewn, just for her, by some nimble-fingered milliner. I would say it was brown; brown, however, is too dull a word for it. It was, rather, the kind of brown you might hear sung about - a nut-brown, or a russet.

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  But here at least in the oasis one had the illusion of a beatitude which eluded one in town life. We rose early and worked on the chapel until the heat of the day began, when Nessim retired to his business papers in the little observatory and Justine and I rode down the feathery dunes to the sea to spend our time in swimming and talking. About a mile from the oasis the sea had pushed up a great coarse roundel of sand which formed a shallow-water lagoon beside which, tucked into the pectoral curve of a dune, stood a reed hut roofed with leaves, which offered the bather shade and a changing-place. Here we spent most of the day together. The news of Pursewarden’s death was still fresh, I remember, and we discussed him with a warmth and awe, as if for the first time we were seriously trying to evaluate a character whose qualities had masked its real nature. It was as if in dying he had cast off from his earthly character, and taken on some of the grandiose proportions of his own writings, which swam more and more into view as the memory of the man itself faded. Death provided a new critical referent, and a new mental stature to the tiresome, brilliant, ineffectual and often tedious man with whom we had had to cope. He was only to be seen now through the distorting mirror of anecdote or the dusty spectrum of memory. Later I was to hear people ask whether Pursewarden had been tall or short, whether he had worn a moustache or not: and these simple memories were the hardest to recover and to be sure of. Some who had known him well said his eyes had been green, others that they had been brown.… It was amazing how quickly the human image was dissolving into the mythical image he had created of himself in his trilogy God is a Humorist. Here, in these days of blinding sunlight, we talked of him like people anxious to capture and fix the human memory before it quite shaded into the growing myth; we talked of him, confirming and denying and comparing, like secret agents rehearsing a cover story, for after all the fallible human being had belonged to us, the myth belonged to the world. It was now too that I learned of him saying, one night to Justine, as they watched Melissa dance: ‘If I thought there were any hope of success I would propose marriage to her tomorrow. But she is so ignorant and her mind is so deformed by poverty and bad luck that she would refuse out of incredulity.’ But step by step behind us Nessim followed with his fears. One day I found the word ‘Beware’ [image file=image_rsrc1AU.jpg] written in the sand with a stick at the bathing-place. The Greek word suggested the hand of Panayotis but Selim also knew Greek well.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  I thought, this is how writing is supposed to be. I thought, man oh man, she’s good. I thought, I want that. Literally. I wanted that chapter. See the protocol at workshop is that we bring in pages, hand them out, read them out loud, and then go around the table for comments. After that, we collect the pages, which by then are theoretically covered with highly useful notes. Work does not leave the room. We never take home anyone’s pages. They don’t let scientists take home uranium in their pockets after a day at Los Alamos. That’s the deal. But I wanted that chapter. I wanted to take it home so I could read it again and again. I’d never felt like that about anyone else’s work, ever. I considered stealing it. I could pretend to put it in the stack as the pages were collected, but then palm it off the table onto my lap and slip it onto the floor into my open purse. I didn’t want to ask her for it. She already thought we were all perverts, the way we kept checking out her chest. I decided to play it cool. We went around the table, all of us giving feedback, happy, exhausted, delighted that she didn’t suck. I tried not to blather, counting on the fact that there would be more, more writing, more Lidia. It worked. She came back. The next week. Amazing! She workshopped that book, and this memoir. And the more I’ve learned about her, the more in awe I am. To start, she isn’t really from Texas. She just went to college there, which is a totally different thing. She does have nice knockers. For the other stuff, you’ll have to read the book. I’m just looking forward to getting a copy I can keep. Tell all the Truth but tell it slant - - EMILY DICKINSON Happiness? Happiness makes crappy stories. - KEN KESEY Here lies one whose name was writ in water. -JOHN KEATS I. Holding Breath The Chronology of Water THE DAY MY DAUGHTER WAS STILLBORN, AFTER I HELD the future pink and rose-lipped in my shivering arms, lifeless tender, covering her face in tears and kisses, after they handed my dead girl to my sister who kissed her, then to my first husband who kissed her, then to my mother who could not bear to hold her, then out of the hospital room door, tiny lifeless swaddled thing, the nurse gave me tranquilizers and a soap and sponge. She guided me to a special shower. The shower had a chair and the spray came down lightly, warm. She said, That feels good, doesn’t it. The water. She said, you are still bleeding quite a bit. Just let it. Ripped from vagina to rectum, sewn closed. Falling water on a body.

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  He walked slowly down through the arches towards them. The marble stones were barred with moonlight and shadow like a zebra. They were sitting on a marble sarcophagus-lid while somewhere in the remorseless darkness of the outer court someone was walking up and down on the springy turf lazily whistling a phrase from an aria of Donizetti. The gold cigales at Justine’s ears transformed her at once into a projection from one of his dreams and indeed he saw them both dressed vaguely in robes carved heavily of moonlight. Balthazar in a voice tortured by the paradox which lies at the heart of all religion was saying: ‘Of course in one sense even to preach the gospel is evil. This is one of the absurdities of human logic. At least it is not the gospel but the preaching which involves us with the powers of darkness. That is why the Cabal is so good for us; it posits nothing beyond a science of Right Attention.’ They had made room for him on their marble perch but here again, before he could reach them the fulcrum of his vision was disturbed and other scenes gravely intervened, disregarding congruence and period, disregarding historic time and common probability. He saw so clearly the shrine the infantry built to Aphrodite of the Pigeons on that desolate alluvial coast. They were hungry. The march had driven them all to extremities, sharpening the vision of death which inhabits the soldier’s soul until it shone before them with an unbearable exactness and magnificence. Baggage-animals dying for lack of fodder and men for lack of water. They dared not pause at the poisoned spring and wells. The wild asses, loitering so exasperatingly just out of bowshot, maddened them with the promise of meat they would never secure as the column evolved across the sparse vegetation of that thorny coast. They were supposed to be marching upon the city despite the omens. The infantry marched in undress though they knew it to be madness. Their weapons followed them in carts which were always lagging. The column left behind it the sour smell of unwashed bodies — sweat and the stale of oxen: Macedonian slingers-of-the-line farting like goats.

• From Wild (2012)

  We played it while planting and maintaining a garden that would sustain us through the winter in soil that had been left to its own devices throughout millennia, and while making steady progress on the construction of the house we were building on the other side of our property and hoped to complete by summer’s end. We were swarmed by mosquitoes as we worked, but my mother forbade us to use DEET or any other such brain-destroying, earth-polluting, future-progeny-harming chemical. Instead, she instructed us to slather our bodies with pennyroyal or peppermint oil. In the evenings, we would make a game of counting the bites on our bodies by candlelight. The numbers would be seventy-nine, eighty-six, one hundred and three. “You’ll thank me for this someday,” my mother always said when my siblings and I complained about all the things we no longer had. We’d never lived in luxury or even like those in the middle class, but we had lived among the comforts of the modern age. There had always been a television in our house, not to mention a flushable toilet and a tap where you could get yourself a glass of water. In our new life as pioneers, even meeting the simplest needs often involved a grueling litany of tasks, rigorous and full of boondoggle. Our kitchen was a Coleman camp stove, a fire ring, an old-fashioned icebox Eddie built that depended on actual ice to keep things even mildly cool, a detached sink propped against an outside wall of the shack, and a bucket of water with a lid on it. Each component demanded just slightly less than it gave, needing to be tended and maintained, filled and unfilled, hauled and dumped, pumped and primed and stoked and monitored. Karen and I shared a bed on a lofted platform built so close to the ceiling we could just barely sit up. Leif slept a few feet away on his own smaller platform, and our mother was in a bed on the floor below, joined by Eddie on the weekends. Every night we talked one another to sleep, slumber-party style. There was a skylight window in the ceiling that ran the length of the platform bed I shared with Karen, its transparent pane only a few feet from our faces. Each night the black sky and the bright stars were my stunning companions; occasionally I’d see their beauty and solemnity so plainly that I’d realize in a piercing way that my mother was right. That someday I would be grateful and that in fact I was grateful now, that I felt something growing in me that was strong and real. It was the thing that had grown in me that I’d remember years later, when my life became unmoored by sorrow. The thing that would make me believe that hiking the Pacific Crest Trail was my way back to the person I used to be.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  A second cue is the frequency with which you each use open and friendly hand gestures to refer to each other, like your outstretched palm. (Hostile hand gestures, like pointing or finger-wagging, are by definition excluded from this category of gestures.) A third cue is how often you each lean in toward each other, literally bringing your hearts closer together. The fourth cue is how often you each nod your head, a sign that you affirm and accept each other. Taken together, these four nonverbal cues—smiles, gestures, leans, and nods—both emanate from a person’s inner experiences of love and are read by others as love. Love, displayed in this way, also matters. It has force. It forecasts not only the social support people feel in their relationships but also how they deliver direct criticism, which (as I describe in a later section) has been found to predict the long-term stability of loving relationships. These four nonverbal gestures are thus a dependable and consequential sign of love. Other nonverbal gestures can also reveal love—literally if the timing is right. For instance, when people come together and connect, their actions often come into sync, so that their hand movements and facial expressions mirror each other to a certain degree. Spontaneously synchronized gestures like these can make two separate individuals come to look like one well-orchestrated unit. This phenomenon extends beyond pairs: Just as birds migrate in flocks and fish swim in schools, large groups of people at times spontaneously move in synchronized ways. You can begin to appreciate how a football game or a concert can trigger positivity resonance on a grand scale. Through intense synchronized cheers, chants, marches, or dance, these and other ways of keeping in time together forge deep feelings of group solidarity—even throughout an entire arena. I experienced this powerfully when I attended my first major college football game, late in August 1995, in one of the world’s largest outdoor stadiums, the University of Michigan’s beloved “Big House,” which seats more than one hundred thousand. I was new to the University of Michigan faculty and not a sports fan of any sort. Even so, a colleague of mine urged my husband and me to attend the opening game of the football season, because “that’s what we do here.” So we went, not expecting anything in particular. The game—the Pigskin Classic against the University of Virginia and debut for new head coach Lloyd Carr—turned out to be one for the record books. Although Michigan had been favored, well into the fourth quarter, the Virginia Cavaliers had the Wolverines shut out at 0–17.

• From The Confessions of Saint Augustine (354)

  And Thou, O God, sawest every thing that Thou hadst made, and, behold, it was very good. Yea we also see the same, and behold, all things are very good. Of the several kinds of Thy works, when Thou hadst said “let them be,” and they were, Thou sawest each that it was good. Seven times have I counted it to be written, that Thou sawest that that which Thou madest was good: and this is the eighth, that Thou sawest every thing that Thou hadst made, and, behold, it was not only good, but also very good, as being now altogether. For severally, they were only good; but altogether, both good, and very good. All beautiful bodies express the same; by reason that a body consisting of members all beautiful, is far more beautiful than the same members by themselves are, by whose well-ordered blending the whole is perfected; notwithstanding that the members severally be also beautiful. And I looked narrowly to find, whether seven, or eight times Thou sawest that Thy works were good, when they pleased Thee; but in Thy seeing I found no times, whereby I might understand that Thou sawest so often, what Thou madest. And I said, “Lord, is not this Thy Scripture true, since Thou art true, and being Truth, hast set it forth? why then dost Thou say unto me, ‘that in Thy seeing there be no times’; whereas this Thy Scripture tells me, that what Thou madest each day, Thou sawest that it was good: and when I counted them, I found how often.” Unto this Thou answerest me, for Thou art my God, and with a strong voice tellest Thy servant in his inner ear, breaking through my deafness and crying, “O man, that which My Scripture saith, I say: and yet doth that speak in time; but time has no relation to My Word; because My Word exists in equal eternity with Myself. So the things which ye see through My Spirit, I see; like as what ye speak by My Spirit, I speak. And so when ye see those things in time, I see them not in time; as when ye speak in time, I speak them not in time.”

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  He smiles and points his finger. “I know that look of yours; you squeeze your eyes, I know, it’s like you have a question mark on your forehead.” “A big question mark,” I say, amused. “I’m glad that you didn’t miss it.” “Let me tell you what happened,” he explains. “I was riding my bike here and suddenly I heard people screaming and running away from something. I came closer and saw a big guy hitting another, smaller guy. I thought he was going to kill him. And then suddenly the big guy grabbed the smaller one and held a knife to his throat. It all happened fast. It looked like they were fighting over a parking spot and it got out of control. I didn’t think and just jumped right in to try to help.” I keep silent. “It’s my instinct, you know what I mean?” Ben is trying to explain. “People shouldn’t fight like that; it’s crazy. I came toward the big guy and said, ‘Man, give me the knife, you don’t want to kill someone over a parking spot, believe me, I’m helping you here, give me the knife.’ The guy dropped the knife and I quickly stood between them and told the smaller guy, ‘Get right into your car. Now!’ That guy knew I had saved his life and he ran to the car and drove away as fast as he could. ‘Stay safe,’ I said to the bigger guy and got on my bike and left. I’m sorry I was late.” I take a deep breath. “That’s a good excuse, what can I tell you?” I say, half joking but in fact very serious. “It’s hard to argue with a dramatic incident like that. I can see that something made you go right in and not back off. You said this hadn’t happened to you for years. Is it possible that it happened now because it is somehow related to getting closer to something emotional here, in therapy? Is it related to us ‘getting there’?” Ben doesn’t look surprised or even irritated by my questions. He nods. “I think you are right. I went there because I was looking for something. ” I don’t fully know yet what we are talking about, but I understand that Ben needs to get closer to some unprocessed emotional experience filled with aggression, danger, maybe even murder. “I needed to get in touch with something that I’d rather forget,” he says, “but it’s haunting me. During the last few nights, I’ve woken up frightened. Suddenly, I’m having flashbacks.” I look at him and realize that there is still much I don’t know about his army operations. Ben covers his face. I see him thinking, and then he says, “You were right, Doctor, I remember you once telling me that pride is our enemy.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  I was stunned by the coincidence. How did she know that this was the fairy tale I had chosen for my research and that I had gotten the approval to start only the week before? The more experience I have with patients, the more I learn how unconsciously connected we are to the people around us. With Lara, it was the first time I’d experienced that, but it wouldn’t be the last. Since then I have had many uncanny coincidences with my patients. Through our dreams, reveries, and synchronicities we realize that we know more about one another than we are aware of. Lara smiled. “You are the daughter and I am the mother,” she said. I opened the closet. There were the new puppets I had just gotten: a girl with a red dress, a mother, a grandmother, and a wolf. “What about the grandmother and the wolf?” I asked. “Who plays them?” Lara paused. “We don’t need a wolf,” she said. “There are no wolves in our story.” A FEW WEEKS before my first session with Lara, I had met with her parents, Hanna and Jed. When working with children I always meet first with the parents, to gather information about the child and the family and to discuss the goals and process of therapy. Although the child is the one in therapy, very often it is the parents who need the most help. Children frequently express the reality of the family and become what we call the “identified patient,” which means the one who seems like the “sick” member of the family. Those children usually carry and express the problems of the whole family as a unit. Most families have one member who is unconsciously assigned to carry the symptoms, that is, the family member on whom the family projects the pathology. That person, often one of the children, will be the one sent to therapy. When treating families as a system, we explore the role of the child as the symptom carrier for the family. Lara was the “identified patient” in her family. She was in second grade and would wake up in the mornings nauseous, holding her stomach and crying that she didn’t want to go to school. Her parents believed she suffered from social anxiety. After meeting with Lara, I understood her anxiety a little differently, realizing that she was worried about her mother, and therefore it was hard for her to separate from her. It wasn’t that Lara didn’t want to go to school, but rather that she wanted to stay home with Hanna, whom she experienced as distressed and felt she needed to protect.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  I owe this to myself and to all of us.” Rachel had planned the trip for mid-April, without realizing she was going to be there for Holocaust Remembrance Day. She was going to look for traces of her family history and try to put a narrative to the disturbing images she has carried inside her since she was a child. NAMES ARE A significant part of one’s identity. In first sessions, I usually ask people about the meaning of their names, inquire who chose the names for them and why, and wonder if there are specific meanings or stories associated with their names. Names are connected to emotions, the hopes parents have for their child, who they think the child will become or want the child to become. A name reflects the parents’ feelings about having that child. It contains remembrances from the past as well as a vision of the future. Babies are often named after relatives or others who passed away. A child might be given the name of a person the parents loved, admired, or attributed certain characteristics to. The child’s name might reflect certain expectations, responsibilities, or roles. For example, one of my patients was named after his mother’s father, who died just before my patient was born. In therapy we connected his name to the role he was assigned at birth, as his mother’s caretaker. His mother described him as a mature and responsible baby, wise from a young age, whom she turned to for advice. Another patient was given a name by his mother that meant “mine.” It turned out that his father was ambivalent about having a child; she felt this baby was hers alone. As I describe in Part II, there is a profound meaning in naming a baby after a person who died in tragic circumstances, for example, a child or a person who died by suicide or was murdered. Doing so is often an expression of a wish not only to revive what was lost but also to repair the past and heal trauma. In mid-April Rachel, Marc, and baby Ruth go to Israel—to look for their future, to search for the past, to find out who Ruth was. What they discover is unbelievable but in fact also quite believable. Suddenly everything makes sense. In Jerusalem, Rachel, Marc, and Ruth meet the family of her grandfather’s friend from Auschwitz. His friend had died years earlier, but the man’s daughter and granddaughter are happy to see them. They invite them to the daughter’s house in Jerusalem. “We met them on a Sunday morning,” Rachel tells me. “I had never felt such a breeze as on that day in Jerusalem.

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  These are the moments which possess the writer, not the lover, and which live on perpetually. One can return to them time and time again in memory, or use them as a fund upon which to build the part of one’s life which is writing. One can debauch them with words, but one cannot spoil them. In this context too, I recover another such moment, lying beside a sleeping woman in a cheap room near the mosque. In that early spring dawn, with its dense dew, sketched upon the silence which engulfs a whole city before the birds awaken it, I caught the sweet voice of the blind muezzin from the mosque reciting the Ebed — a voice hanging like a hair in the palm-cooled upper airs of Alexandria. ‘I praise the perfection of God, the Forever existing’ (this repeated thrice, ever more slowly, in a high sweet register). ‘The perfection of God, the Desired, the Existing, the Single, the Supreme: the perfection of God, the One, the Sole: the perfection of Him who taketh unto himself no male or female partner, nor any like Him, nor any that is disobedient, nor any deputy, equal or offspring. His perfection be extolled.’ The great prayer wound its way into my sleepy consciousness like a serpent, coil after shining coil of words — the voice of the muezzin sinking from register to register of gravity — until the whole morning seemed dense with its marvellous healing powers, the intimations of a grace undeserved and unexpected, impregnating that shabby room where Melissa lay, breathing as lightly as a gull, rocked upon the oceanic splendours of a language she would never know. * * * * * Of Justine who can pretend that she did not have her stupid side? The cult of pleasure, small vanities, concern for the good opinion of her inferiors, arrogance. She could be tiresomely exigent when she chose. Yes. Yes. But all these weeds are watered by money. I will say only that in many things she thought as a man, while in her actions she enjoyed some of the free vertical independence of the masculine outlook. Our intimacy was of a strange mental order. Quite early on I discovered that she could mind-read in an unerring fashion. Ideas came to us simultaneously. I remember once being made aware that she was sharing in her mind a thought which had just presented itself to mine, namely: ‘This intimacy should go no further, for we have already exhausted all its possibilities in our respective imaginations: and what we shall end by discovering, behind the darkly woven colours of sensuality, will be a friendship so profound that we shall become bondsmen forever.’ It was, if you like, the flirtation of minds prematurely exhausted by experience which seemed so much more dangerous than a love founded in sexual attraction.