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 Between the World and Me (2015)

  I was admitted to Howard University, but formed and shaped by The Mecca. These institutions are related but not the same. Howard University is an institution of higher education, concerned with the LSAT, magna cum laude, and Phi Beta Kappa. The Mecca is a machine, crafted to capture and concentrate the dark energy of all African peoples and inject it directly into the student body. The Mecca derives its power from the heritage of Howard University, which in Jim Crow days enjoyed a near-monopoly on black talent. And whereas most other historically black schools were scattered like forts in the great wilderness of the old Confederacy, Howard was in Washington, D.C.—Chocolate City—and thus in proximity to both federal power and black power. The result was an alumni and professorate that spanned genre and generation—Charles Drew, Amiri Baraka, Thurgood Marshall, Ossie Davis, Doug Wilder, David Dinkins, Lucille Clifton, Toni Morrison, Kwame Ture. The history, the location, the alumni combined to create The Mecca—the crossroads of the black diaspora.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  An uncanny stillness had descended on the town; after many hours of intensive bombardment, the Germans were having a breathing space before training their batteries once more upon Compiègne. Stephen stared down at the girl who lay curled up at her feet in an army blanket. The girl slept the sleep of complete exhaustion, breathing heavily with her head on her arm; her pale and rather triangular face was that of some one who was still very young, not much more than nineteen or twenty. The pallor of her skin was accentuated by the short black lashes which curled back abruptly, by the black arched eyebrows and dark brown hair—sleek hair which grew to a peak on the forehead, and had recently been bobbed for the sake of convenience. For the rest her nose was slightly tip-tilted, and her mouth resolute considering her youth; the lips were well-modelled and fine in texture, having deeply indented corners. For more than a minute Stephen considered the immature figure of Mary Llewellyn. This latest recruit to the Breakspeare Unit had joined it only five weeks ago, replacing a member who was suffering from shell-shock. Mrs. Breakspeare had shaken her head over Mary, but in these harassed days of the German offensive she could not afford to remain short-handed, so in spite of many misgivings she had kept her. Still shaking her head she had said to Stephen: ‘Needs must when the Bodies get busy, Miss Gordon! Have an eye to her, will you? She may stick it all right, but between you and me I very much doubt it. You might try her out as your second driver.’ And so far Mary Llewellyn had stuck it . Stephen looked away again, closing her eyes, and after a while forgot about Mary. The events that had preceded her own coming to France, began to pass through her brain in procession. Her chief in The London Ambulance Column, through whom she had first met Mrs. Claude Breakspeare—a good sort, the chief, she had been a staunch friend. The great news that she, Stephen, had been accepted and would go to the front as an ambulance driver. Then Puddle’s grave face: ‘I must write to your mother, this means that you will be in real danger.’ Her mother’s brief letter: ‘Before you leave I should very much like you to come and see me,’ the rest of the letter mere polite empty phrases. The impulse to resist, the longing to go, culminating in that hurried visit to Morton. Morton so changed and yet so changeless. Changed because of those blue-clad figures, the lame, the halt and the partially blinded who had sought its peace and its kindly protection.

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

  innumerable definitions of God, because His manifestations are innumerable. They overwhelm me with wonder and awe and for a moment stun me. But I worship God as Truth only. I have not yet found Him, but I am seeking after Him. I am prepared to sacrifice the things dearest to me in pursuit of this quest. Even if the sacrifice demanded be my very life, I hope I may be prepared to give it. But as long as I have not realized this Absolute Truth, so long must I hold by the relative truth as I have conceived it. That relative truth must, meanwhile, be my beacon, my shield and buckler. Though this path is straight and narrow and sharp as the razor’s edge, for me it has been the quickest and easiest. Even my Himalayan blunders have seemed trifling to me because I have kept strictly to this path. For the path has saved me from coming to grief, and I have gone forward according to my light. Often in my progress I have had faint glimpses of the Absolute Truth, God, and daily the conviction is growing upon me that He alone is real and all else is unreal. Let those, who wish, realize how the conviction has grown upon me; let them share my experiments and share also my conviction if they can. The further conviction has been growing upon me that whatever is possible for me is possible even for a child, and I have sound reasons for saying so. The instruments for the quest of truth are as simple as they are difficult. They may appear quite impossible to an arrogant person, and quite impossible to an innocent child. The seeker after truth should be humbler than the dust. The world crushes the dust under its feet, but the seeker after truth should so humble himself that even the dust could crush him. Only then, and not till then, will he have a glimpse of truth. The dialogue between Vasishtha and Vishvamitra makes this abundantly clear. Christianity and Islam also amply bear it out. If anything that I write in these pages should strike the reader as being touched with pride, then he must take it that there is something wrong in my quest, and that my glimpses are not more than a mirage. Let hundreds like me perish, but

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

  The book struck me as one of priceless worth. The impression has ever since been growing on me with the result that I regard it today as the book par excellence for the knowledge of Truth. It has afforded me invaluable help in my moments of gloom. I have read almost all the English translations of it, and I regard Sir Edwin Arnold’s as the best. He has been faithful to the text, and yet it does not read like a translation. Though I read the Gita with these friends, I cannot pretend to have studied it then. It was only after some years that it became a book of daily reading. The brothers also recommended The Light of Asia by Sir Edwin Arnold, whom I knew till then as the author only of The Song Celestial, and I read it with even greater interest than I did the Bhagavadgita. Once I had begun it I could not leave off. They also took me on one occasion to the Blavatsky Lodge and introduced me to Madame Blavatsky and Mrs. Besant. The latter had just then joined the Theosophical Society, and I was following with great interest the controversy about her conversion. The friends advised me to join the Society, but I politely declined saying, ‘With my meagre knowledge of my own religion I do not want to belong to any religious body.’ I recall having read, at the brothers’ instance, Madame Blavatsky’s Key to Theosophy. This book stimulated in me the desire to read books on Hinduism, and disabused me of the notion fostered by the missionaries that Hinduism was rife with superstition. About the same time I met a good Christian from Manchester in a vegetarian boarding house. He talked to me about Christianity. I narrated to him my Rajkot recollections. He was pained to hear them. He said, ‘I am a vegetarian. I do not drink. Many Christians are meat- eaters and drink, no doubt; but neither meat- eating not drinking is enjoined by scripture. Do please read the Bible.’ I accepted his advice, and he got me a copy. I have a faint recollection that he himself used

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  It took one well-placed kick to take him down. Iduna was the only one who could follow the swiftness of that booted foot. Once down, he stayed down, and Kerry kicked him in the direction she wanted him to go. The pointed toe of her boot made a crunching noise when it hit his buttocks and ribs. She hustled him to the foot of a very large ladder that stood in one corner of the dance floor. Then she put her boot on the back of his neck and pushed him flat. She bent down to speak to him. What she told him made him keep very small, then shudder and hide his head beneath his arms. Eventually, she lifted him up off the floor—literally lifted him, with one hand— and hauled him up to face the whipping ladder. A revolving ball with mirrored facets spun a dizzy procession of colored lights over the scene. The ball was part of the special effects for the disco music played on other nights of the week. This club had a different name then, and catered to vanilla swingers. But Kerry, a master of her craft, was not distracted. She knew you must practice this despised art where you can, and disregard what is tawdry or unclean—or learn to love the dirt, the sleaze, because it represents your membership in the elite. Now she had him remove his shirt and grab a rung far above his head. He was stretched on his tiptoes in front of her. She asked him a question only he could hear. “Ah don’t want no bondage,” he said loudly. Iduna and Teddy shared a brief, unpleasant laugh. Planarians can learn. Howard sat up and took notice when Kerry began to work on Bill’s naked back with a short, suede flail. Hanging from her belt, it looked homemade, innocuous. In her hand, it was a weapon. She whirled it so quickly that there was no apparent difference between the sound it made swinging through the air and the sound it made striking skin. It was one continuous, ominous tone, a single voice that became a duet when the man began to scream. However, he did not let go. Gil leaned toward Howard and whispered that he had seen some people cut and run at this stage. Howard was still skeptical, but now he was keeping an open mind.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Tyre had unwound the rope from its cleat, and she slowly lowered her hands. Roxanne sank until she knelt in manacles at Alex’s boots. Alex took the rubber band out of her hair and spread the long, curly mass out with both hands. Roxanne had freckles and a turned-up, defiant nose. Her hazel eyes were clear and determined. She refused to look at anyone but Alex. The girl was no coward, but she was obviously relieved to find that her master was there. Tyre loved the look of her. She was the ultimate bar-femme, dressed up to play the whore for her butch. She might be a slave, but she was also tough. Try to separate her from Alex, and she’d go after you with a broken bottle. It wasn’t, Tyre realized from the set of that grim little jaw, Roxanne who doubted the nature and the quality of their relationship. It was Alex—who was explaining to Roxanne and all of them that she was giving them her “flashy piece of trash” for the evening, to do with as they liked. The pack stood in a small circle around the master and her property. Of course, Roxanne had an out. “All you have to do,” Alex whispered, kneeling to plunge her hand between Roxanne’s corset and her breasts, “is tell me you don’t belong to me, and you can walk.” She rubbed her nipples, producing a moan, and then stood, and moved right up to her. Roxanne knelt over her boot and wrapped her arms around Alex’s thigh. She stared defiantly at the women behind Alex, and openly rubbed her pussy against the steel toe of Alex’s engineer boot. “Put rings in me now,” she said. Her voice was high and clear. “I’m not going to change my mind. I belong to you and walking out wouldn’t change that any more than it would make water run uphill. Beat me. Brand me. Let these bitches wear themselves out on me if it will entertain you. But I belong to you, Daddy.” “Well, for now you belong to them,” Alex said, and the pack closed in as if on cue. Michael had taken her cock out again, and she finally got the blowjob she had been craving ever since Alex ran her fingers along the inseam. She worked her entire length back and forth in Roxanne’s throat until she made tears come, then pulled her off and handed her to Anne-Marie, who shooed the girl under her latex skirts. There, Roxanne’s tongue found a pair of salty, wet lips held between cool, smooth, chemical-tasting latex panties, and Anne-Marie kept her there until the taste of both was firmly imprinted in her mind. Kay made her kiss her boots, and only allowed her to rub her face over EZ’s denim crotch, although EZ ground her pubic bone into Roxanne’s face long enough and hard enough to reach a minor climax.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Yet in some curious way it was a visionary experience: it had hit her in the middle of the body. She saw the clumsy breeches slipping down over the pure, delicate, white loins, the bones showing a little, and the sense of aloneness, of a creature purely alone, overwhelmed her. Perfect, white, solitary nudity of a creature that lives alone, and inwardly alone. And beyond that, a certain beauty of a pure creature. Not the stuff of beauty, not even the body of beauty, but a lambency, the warm, white flame of a single life, revealing itself in contours that one might touch: a body! Connie had received the shock of vision in her womb, and she knew it; it lay inside her. But with her mind she was inclined to ridicule. A man washing himself in a backyard! No doubt with evil-smelling yellow soap!--She was rather annoyed; why should she be made to stumble on these vulgar privacies? So she walked away from herself, but after a while she sat down on a stump. She was too confused to think. But in the coil of her confusion, she was determined to deliver her message to the fellow. She would not be balked. She must give him time to dress himself, but not time to go out. He was probably preparing to go out somewhere. So she sauntered slowly back, listening. As she came near, the cottage looked just the same. A dog barked, and she knocked at the door, her heart beating in spite of herself. She heard the man coming lightly downstairs. He opened the door quickly, and startled her. He looked uneasy himself, but instantly a laugh came on his face. "Lady Chatterley!" he said. "Will you come in?" His manner was so perfectly easy and good, she stepped over the threshold into the rather dreary little room. "I only called with a message from Sir Clifford," she said in her soft, rather breathless voice. The man was looking at her with those blue, all-seeing eyes of his, which made her turn her face aside a little. He thought her comely, almost beautiful, in her shyness, and he took command of the situation himself at once. "Would you care to sit down?" he asked, presuming she would not. The door stood open. "No thanks! Sir Clifford wondered if you would ..." and she delivered her message, looking unconsciously into his eyes again. And now his eyes looked warm and kind, particularly to a woman, wonderfully warm, and kind, and at ease. "Very good, your Ladyship. I will see to it at once." Taking an order, his whole self had changed, glazed over with a sort of hardness and distance. Connie hesitated, she ought to go. But she looked round the clean, tidy, rather dreary little sitting-room with something like dismay. "Do you live here quite alone?" she asked. "Quite alone, your Ladyship." "But your mother...?" "She lives in her own cottage in the village."

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

  Christianity is primarily not merely doctrine, but life, a new moral creation, a saving fact, first personally embodied in Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word, the God-man, to spread from him and embrace gradually the whole body of the race, and bring it into saving fellowship with God. The same is true of Christianity as it exists subjectively in single individuals. It begins not with religious views and notions simply; though it includes these, at least in germ. It comes as a new life; as regeneration, conversion, and sanctification; as a creative fact in experience, taking up the whole man with all his faculties and capacities, releasing him from the guilt and the power of sin, and reconciling him with God, restoring harmony and peace to the soul, and at last glorifying the body itself. Thus, the life of Christ is mirrored in his people, rising gradually, through the use of the means of grace and the continued exercise of faith and love to its maturity in the resurrection. But the new life necessarily contains the element of doctrine, or knowledge of the truth. Christ calls himself "the way, the truth, and the life." He is himself the personal revelation of saving truth, and of the normal relation of man to God. Yet this element of doctrine itself appears in the New Testament, not in the form of an abstract theory, the product of speculation, a scientific system of ideas subject to logical and mathematical demonstration; but as the fresh, immediate utterance of the supernatural, divine life, a life-giving power, equally practical and theoretical, coming with divine authority to the heart, the will, and the conscience, as well as to the mind, and irresistibly drawing them to itself. The knowledge of God in Christ, as it meets us here, is at the same time eternal life.748 We must not confound truth with dogma. Truth is the divine substance, doctrine or dogma is the human apprehension and statement of it; truth is a living and life-giving power, dogma a logical formula; truth is infinite, unchanging, and eternal; dogma is finite, changeable, and perfectible.

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

  But in the place of these Synoptical records John gives us an abundance of new matter of equal, if not greater, interest and importance. Right at the threshold we are startled, as by a peal of thunder from the depths, of eternity: "In the beginning was the Word." And as we proceed we hear about the creation of the world, the shining of the true light in darkness, the preparatory revelations, the incarnation of the Logos, the testimony of the Baptist to the Lamb of God. We listen with increasing wonder to those mysterious discourses about the new birth of the Spirit, the water of life, the bread of life from heaven, about the relation of the eternal and only-begotten Son to the Father, to the world, and to believers, the mission of the Holy Spirit, the promise of the many mansions in heaven, the farewell to the disciples, and at last that sacerdotal prayer which brings us nearest to the throne and the beating heart of God. John alone reports the interviews with Nicodemus, the woman of Samaria, and the Greek foreigners. He records six miracles not mentioned by the Synoptists, and among them the two greatest—the changing of water into wine and the raising of Lazarus from the grave. And where he meets the Synoptists, as in the feeding of the five thousand, he adds the mysterious discourse on the spiritual feeding of believers by the bread of life which has been going on ever since. He makes the nearest approach to his predecessors in the closing chapters on the betrayal, the denial of Peter, the trial before the ecclesiastical and civil tribunals, the crucifixion and resurrection, but even here he is more exact and circumstantial, and adds, interesting details which bear the unmistakable marks of personal observation. He fills out the ministry of Christ in Judaea, among the hierarchy and the people of Jerusalem, and extends it over three years; while the Synoptists seem to confine it to one year and dwell chiefly on his labors among the peasantry of Galilee. But on close inspection John leaves ample room for the Galilaean, and the Synoptists for the Judaean ministry. None of the Gospels is a complete biography. John expressly disclaims, this (20:31). Matthew implies repeated visits to the holy city when he makes Christ exclaim: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem ... how often would I have gathered thy children together" (23:37; comp. 27:57). On the other hand John records several miracles in Cana, evidently only as typical examples of many (2:1 sqq.; 4:47 sqq.; 6:1 sqq.). But in Jerusalem the great conflict between light and darkness, belief and unbelief, was most fully developed and matured to the final crisis; and this it was one of his chief objects to describe. The differences between John and the Synoptists are many and great, but there are no contradictions. The Occasion.

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

  "The accession of the Emperor Diocletian is the era from which the Coptic Churches of Egypt and Abyssinia still date, under the name of the ’Era of Martyrs.’ All former persecutions of the faith were forgotten in the horror with which men looked back upon the last and greatest: the tenth wave (as men delighted to count it) of that great storm obliterated all the traces that had been left by others. The fiendish cruelty of Nero, the jealous fears of Domitian, the unimpassioned dislike of Marcus, the sweeping purpose of Decius, the clever devices of Valerian, fell into obscurity when compared with the concentrated terrors of that final grapple, which resulted in the destruction of the old Roman Empire and the establishment of the Cross as the symbol of the world’s hope."44 Diocletian (284–305) was one of the most judicious and able emperors who, in a trying period, preserved the sinking state from dissolution. He was the son of a slave or of obscure parentage, and worked himself up to supreme power. He converted the Roman republican empire into an Oriental despotism, and prepared the way for Constantine and Constantinople. He associated with himself three subordinate co-regents, Maximian (who committed suicide, 310), Galerius (d. 311), and Constantius Chlorus (d. 306, the father of Constantine the Great), and divided with them the government of the immense empire; thereby quadrupling the personality of the sovereign, and imparting vigor to provincial administration, but also sowing the seed of discord and civil war45. Gibbon calls him a second Augustus, the founder of a new empire, rather than the restorer of the old. He also compares him to Charles V., whom he somewhat resembled in his talents, temporary success and ultimate failure, and voluntary retirement from the cares of government.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Tue sprine they had left behind in Orotava overtook them quite soon, and one day there it was blowing softly along the old streets of the Quarter — the Rue de Seine, the Rue des Saints Pères, the Rue Bonaparte and their own Rue Jacob. And who can resist the first spring days in Paris? Brighter than ever looked the patches of sky when glimpsed between rows of tall, flat-bosomed houses. From the Pont des Arts could be seen a river that was one wide, ingratiating smile of sunshine; while beyond in the Rue des Petits Champs, spring ran up and down the Passage Choiseul, striking gleams of gold from its dirty glass roof — the roof that looks like the vertebral column of some prehistoric monster. All over the Bois there was bursting of buds — a positive orgy of growth and greenness. The miniature waterfall lifted its voice THE WELL OF LONELINESS 371 in an effort to roar as loud as Niagara. Birds sang. Dogs yapped or barked or bayed according to their size and the tastes of their owners. Children appeared in the Champs Elysées with bright coloured balloons which tried to escape and which, given the ghost of a chance, always did so. In the Tuileries Gardens boys with brown legs and innocent socks were hiring toy boats from the man who provided Bateaux de Location. The fountains tossed clouds of spray into the air, and just for fun made an occasional rainbow; then the Arc de Triomphe would be seen through an arc that was, thanks to the sun, even more triumphal. As for the very old lady in her kiosk — the one who sells bocks, groseille, limonade, and such simple food-stuffs as brioches and croissants —as for her, she appeared in a new frilled bonnet and a fine worsted shawl on one memorable Sunday. Smiling she was too, from ear to ear, in spite of the fact that her mouth was toothless, for this fact she only remembered in winter when the east wind started her empty gums aching. Under the quiet, grey wings of the Madeleine the flower- stalls were bright with the glory of God — anemones, jonquils, daffodils, tulips; mimosa that left gold dust on the fingers, and the faintly perfumed ascetic white lilac that had come in the train from the Riviera. There were also hyacinths, pink, red and blue, and many small trees of sturdy azalea.

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

  What, however, left a deep impression on me was the reading of the Ramayana before my father. During part of his illness my father was in Porbandar. There every evening he used to listen to the Ramayana. The reader was a great devotee of Rama,- Ladha Maharaj of Bileshvar. It was said of him that he cured himself of his leprosy not by any medicine, but by applying to the affected parts bilva leaves which had been cast away after being offered to the image of Mahadeva in Bileshvar temple, and by the regular repetition of Ramanama. His faith it, it was said, had made him whole. This may or may not be true. We at any rate believed the story. And it is a fact that when Ladha Maharaj began his reading of the Ramayana his body was entirely free from leprosy. He had a melodious voice. He would sing the Dohas (couplets) and Chopais (quatrains), and explain them, losing himself in the discourse and carrying his listeners along with him. I must have been thirteen at that time, but I quite remember being enraptured by his reading. That laid the foundation of my deep devotion to the Ramayana. Today I regard the Ramayana of Tulasidas as the greatest book in all devotional literature. A few months after this we came to Rajkot. There was no Ramayana reading there. The Bhagavat, however, used to be read on every Ekadashi [1] day. Sometimes I attended the reading, but the reciter was uninspiring. Today I see that the Bhagavat is a book which can evoke religious fervour. I have read it in Gujarati with intense interest. But when I heard portions of the original read by Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya during my twentyone day’s fast, I wished I had heard it in my childhood from such a devote as he is, so that I could have formed a liking for it at an early age. Impressions formed at that age strike roots deep down into one’s nature and it is my perpetual regret that I was not fortunate enough to hear more good books of this kind read during that period. In Rajkot, however, I got an early grounding in toleration for all branches of

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  2 England, the land of bountiful pastures, of peace, of mothering hills, of home. England was fighting for her right to existence. Face to face with dreadful reality at last, England was pouring her men into battle, her army was even now marching across France. Tramp, tramp; tramp, tramp; the tread of England whose men would defend her right to existence. Anna wrote from Morton. She wrote to Puddle, but now Stephen took those letters and read them. The agent had enlisted and so had the bailiff. Old Mr. Percival, agent in Sir Philip’s lifetime, had come back to help with Morton. Jim the groom, who had stayed on under the coachman after Raftery’s death, was now talking of going; he wanted to get into the cavalry, of course, and Anna was using her influence for him. Six of the gardeners had joined up already, but Hopkins was past the prescribed age limit; he must do his small bit by looking after his grape vines—the grapes would be sent to the wounded in London. There were now no men-servants left in the house, and the home farm was short of a couple of hands. Anna wrote that she was proud of her people, and intended to pay those who had enlisted half wages. They would fight for England, but she could not help feeling that in a way they would be fighting for Morton. She had offered Morton to the Red Cross at once, and they had promised to send her convalescent cases. It was rather isolated for a hospital, it seemed, but would be just the place for convalescents. The Vicar was going as an army chaplain; Violet’s husband, Alec, had joined the Flying Corps; Roger Antrim was somewhere in France already; Colonel Antrim had a job at the barracks in Worcester . Came an angry scrawl from Jonathan Brockett, who had rushed back to England post-haste from the States: ‘Did you ever know anything quite so stupid as this war? It’s upset my apple-cart completely—can’t write jingo plays about St. George and the dragon, and I’m sick to death of “Business as usual!” Ain’t going to be no business, my dear, except killing, and blood always makes me feel faint.’ Then the postscript: ‘I’ve just been and gone and done it! Please send me tuck-boxes when I’m sitting in a trench; I like caramel creams and of course mixed biscuits.’ Yes, even Jonathan Brockett would go—it was fine in a way that he should have enlisted. Morton was pouring out its young men, who in their turn might pour out their life-blood for Morton. The agent, the bailiff, in training already. Jim the groom, inarticulate, rather stupid, but wanting to join the cavalry—Jim who had been at Morton since boyhood. The gardeners, kindly men smelling of soil, men of peace with a peaceful occupation; six of these gardeners had gone already, together with a couple of lads from the home farm.

• From The Incendiaries (2018)

  While I talked, the mulled wine’s spiced heat coiled into me, melting caution, as on that first hot fall afternoon when I climbed three flights up Latham Hall, dragging bags. I’d found my suitemates in the living room, five men in polo shirts: about to go eat, they said, inviting me along. We shook hands. They were all sophomores, like me, but they’d been friends as freshmen. Jovial, polite, offering help with the luggage, they asked about my trip to Edwards: if I’d flown, or driven. I took the bus, I said. Well, multiple buses—from California— For a long instant, they looked alike, faces tight with surprise. By the time they rallied, I’d revised how I should be. My mother’s Pasadena family, rich but dissolute, had misspent the last of its fortune when she was still old enough to recall the luminous idyll she’d lost, and I could use the hacienda memories. Palm trees rising tall, June-night operas at the Hollywood Bowl. I drew on this inherited longing. I filled in peripheral details that helped me settle into who I was: that pool, for instance, the occasional fat plop as fruit from sunlit citrus trees ripens, drowns. In this life of blue honey, I don’t think of the waste. I lap; I crawl. Navel oranges shine from the tiles like medallions. A hired man whistles, fishing out the rot. No one lacks food, or falls ill. I tried to ask questions of Philip, as well. But he acted preoccupied, glancing past my head. The next time his eyes flicked up, I turned, too—I saw the figure at the doorsill, a clean white apron knotted around his waist. I saw him float; I looked again, and it was the filth, a half-inch of skin stained black at his soles, the heels split, flaking. Noticing I’d seen him, he nodded. He walked toward us, holding wine-glass bouquets in his fingers. He wasn’t tall, but his shoulder muscles strained against a plain white shirt. His wrist bulged where he’d tied a red string, letting it dig in. With his hair brushed to stand upright, a high plume, I had the sense of a surfeit of energy, not quite contained, like a child’s color-book illustration escaping its lines. He turned to me. It’s Will, right? he said, quietly. He set the glasses down, then he took my hand in both of his. I’m John Leal, he said. I’m late. I apologize. I had to supervise the rib eyes. Not such a good choice while having guests, or so I’m learning. You’re the first people we’ve had eat with us in a long time. I’m so glad you’re here. We all are. Let’s go in. –

• From The Decameron (1353)

  What and how many and how orderly disposed were the plants that grew in that place, it were tedious to recount; suffice it that there is none goodly of those which may brook our air but was there in abundance. Amiddleward the garden (what was not less, but yet more commendable than aught else there) was a plat of very fine grass, so green that it seemed well nigh black, enamelled all with belike a thousand kinds of flowers and closed about with the greenest and lustiest of orange and citron trees, the which, bearing at once old fruits and new and flowers, not only afforded the eyes a pleasant shade, but were no less grateful to the smell. Midmost the grass-plat was a fountain of the whitest marble, enchased with wonder-goodly sculptures, and thence,--whether I know not from a natural or an artificial source,--there sprang, by a figure that stood on a column in its midst, so great a jet of water and so high towards the sky, whence not without a delectable sound it fell back into the wonder-limpid fount, that a mill might have wrought with less; the which after (I mean the water which overflowed the full basin) issued forth of the lawn by a hidden way, and coming to light therewithout, encompassed it all about by very goodly and curiously wroughten channels. Thence by like channels it ran through well nigh every part of the pleasance and was gathered again at the last in a place whereby it had issue from the fair garden and whence it descended, in the clearest of streams, towards the plain; but, ere it won thither, it turned two mills with exceeding power and to the no small vantage of the lord. The sight of this garden and its fair ordinance and the plants and the fountain, with the rivulets proceeding therefrom, so pleased the ladies and the three young men that they all of one accord avouched that, an Paradise might be created upon earth, they could not avail to conceive what form, other than that of this garden, might be given it nor what farther beauty might possibly be added thereunto.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Now the good man was used to come whiles into Florence, where being succoured, according to his occasions, of the friends of God, he returned to his hut, and it chanced one day that, his son being now eighteen years old and Filippo an old man, the lad asked him whither he went. Filippo told him and the boy said, "Father mine, you are now an old man and can ill endure fatigue; why do you not whiles carry me to Florence and bring me to know the friends and devotees of God and yourself, to the end that I, who am young and better able to toil than you, may after, whenas it pleaseth you, go to Florence for our occasions, whilst you abide here?" The worthy man, considering that his son was now grown to man's estate and thinking him so inured to the service of God that the things of this world might thenceforth uneath allure him to themselves, said in himself, "The lad saith well"; and accordingly, having occasion to go thither, he carried him with him. There the youth, seeing the palaces, the houses, the churches and all the other things whereof one seeth all the city full, began, as one who had never to his recollection beheld the like, to marvel amain and questioned his father of many things what they were and how they were called. Filippo told him and he, hearing him, abode content and questioned of somewhat else.

• From The Incendiaries (2018)

  The waitress walked around offering tea, mulled wine. Tea, please, I said. Fine hair hung loose as she tipped the pot, biting her lip. Phoebe had a handbag at her side, partially zipped, and while they talked, I watched John Leal pick it up, open it, and put his hand inside. He rifled through it, still talking. I’d held that bag for Phoebe; I knew the feel of its plush, living calfskin. I thought of my mother’s handbag, the box-shaped satchel so private I’d seen its full contents just once in my life, while she was being held in the hospital. I had to sign for the possessions, initialing each item. Hand-sanitizing gel. Labeled pills. Fish oil, aspirin. Lipstick. Jojoba lotion. Rape whistle. I hadn’t admitted to what I couldn’t help seeing: she’d have hated the intrusion, but Phoebe, unperturbed, kept gazing at his face. He dipped his fingers into the bag’s opal slit. The bright satin lining showed. I’d have liked to stop him, but she let it happen. The bag might as well have been his. Ill at ease, I left to find a bathroom. I returned to find everyone standing while Philip rolled in an upright piano. He pushed it against the wall, lid open. Ian carried in a cushioned bench, and Phoebe walked toward the instrument. I asked Jo what was going on. She explained that Ian usually played the piano, but he’d injured his thumb. Phoebe had agreed to fill in. She—, I said, but I stopped. Phoebe sat at the bench. She twisted a knob, adjusting its height. Not long ago, we’d been walking past the grand piano in Wyeth Hall. It gleamed with disuse, and I said I’d never seen anyone touch it. Such a waste, I said. It’s not a good piano, though, she said. I asked if she played. Oh, she said. No. The first notes tolled. Phoebe’s hands moved, pressing out slow chords, but she sat up, torso rigid, as if she had nothing to do with the music. Fingers rippled, gaining speed. The solo line of Phoebe’s right hand jumped high. She came to life. Holding the note, she flexed toward the piano. She turned her head, listening. It echoed, and I could imagine the walls of this house falling down, Noxhurst flattened, the rest of the world blown to nothing until it was just Phoebe, still holding this single, light note. She swept a hand down across the keys, and she kept playing. – When the front door clicked shut behind us, Phoebe asked if I minded driving. I’m full of wine, she said, loud, through high wind. She pulled hair strands out of her mouth. Did you drink as much as I did? No, of course you didn’t. You exercised self-control. I used to know how to do such a thing, but I’ve lost the trick. I could call a taxi.

• From Understanding the Old Testament (2019)

  leCtUre 2 | the genesis Creation story 9 Unpacking the Words Another way to look at the text is to unpack actual Hebrew words. The word that’s translated as “image” is tselem. The word translated as “likeness” is demut. Demut is the easier word because it means “shadow,” and a person’s shadow is like the person. The term demut indicates that a human is a shadow of God. A human has traits like God, but not nearly to the extent as God. The other word, tselem, is trickier. That word means “idol,” which Israelites were not allowed to make. However, the idol here is not thought of as a picture of a god or as being the god themselves, but as the locus where a worshiper could encounter and truly worship that god. When Genesis 1 says that humanity is the tselem of God, it’s saying if you want to relate to God, relate to your fellow man. Understanding the old testament 10 The Seventh Day The creation story of Genesis 1 runs through the middle of chapter 2, verse 4: Heaven and the earth were finished, and all their array. On the seventh day, God finished the work that he had been doing, and he ceased on the seventh day from all the work he had on. And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because on it on ceased [or rested] from all the work of creation that he had done. The only thing God created on the seventh is the day itself. This is a creation not in space, but in time. For six days, God created in three dimensions, and on the seventh, God created in the fourth. He also made the seventh day holy. Judaism came to think of the Sabbath as a location in time. On Friday evening, as the Sabbath begins, a worshiper prepares to enter the Sabbath. Twenty-four hours later, the worshiper leaves it. Genesis was written at a time when Israel had already been practicing the Sabbath. The first Israelites to ever read this passage had been keeping the Sabbath all their lives. This wasn’t written to introduce a new holiday. Imagine that you’ve been practicing the Sabbath all your life, and for the first time, you encounter these verses. You realize that when you have kept the Sabbath, you have been emulating God. You have been imaging God. Authorship Genesis 1 was written certainly at a time when Israel had long been keeping the Sabbath and the other commandments. Additionally, Genesis goes through the creation story all over again: At the beginning of chapter 2, verse 5, there are no animals or humans. They are created again and in a completely different order. This time, humans come first and animals come second. These facts raise two questions: When was Genesis 1 written, and why are there two creation stories? The answers depend on an understanding of the authorship of Genesis.

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

  enabled me thoroughly to digest what I did read. Of these books, the one that brought about an instantaneous and practical transformation in my life was Unto This Last. I translated it later into Gujarati, entitling it Sarvodaya (the welfare of all). I believe that I discovered some of my deepest convictions reflected in this great book of Ruskin, and that is why it so captured me and made me transform my life. A poet is one who can call forth the good latent in the human breast. Poets do not influence all alike, for everyone is not evolved in a equal measure. The teaching of Unto This Last I understood to be: 1. That the good of the individual is contained in the good of all. 2. That a lawyer’s work has the same value as the barber’s inasmuch as all have the same right of earning their livehood from their work. 3. That a life of labour, i.e., the life of the tiller of the soil and the handicraftsman is the life worth living. The first of these I knew. The second I had dimly realized. The third had never occured to me. Unto This Last made it as clear as daylight for me that the second and the third were contained in the first. I arose with the dawn, ready to reduce these principles to practice. 98.

• From The Incendiaries (2018)

  I said I was going to Wyeth Hall for lunch. Did she want to meet me there? Yes, she said. She’d leave in ten minutes. I walked through the quadrangle. It was quiet here, the lawn isolated from the town’s noise. I’d first come upon Edwards after days of bus travel from California to upstate New York. I planned to walk the final mile to my hall, but when I left the Noxhurst station and saw the line of taxis, clean with sunlight, I lost all resolve. Minutes later, I paid for the ride. I pulled both suitcases to the curb— Then, I looked up. I forgot the wasted dollars. The tall, pronged gates stood wide. I rolled my bags through the entryway, a tunnel cored out of a thick wall, and the darkness opened into light. I was in the main quadrangle. Spires and belfries spun up from stone citadels. Frisbees soared. Bronze statues gazed forward, frozen in heroes’ poses. Sunlit paths crossed the green, lines in a giant palm, holding students who lazed on the grass. It was a lost garden, but I’d been allowed in. I still hadn’t known, though I soon would, how little I’d belong. I approached the dining hall. I’d been up since six, while she was in bed, idling. Lions in a cage. Had she petted them, and did she wake to find the tawny fur glinting on her skin? She might have rubbed the fur around as she slept. The coarse hairs strewn in Phoebe’s sheets, bijou rays of gold. But my step felt light. If I could be anyone, I’d ask to be the Will rushing to see more, again, of Phoebe. In the distance, an advertisement painted on the side of a brick building showed a young girl, lips pursed as if to send a wish. The suck and howl of a siren pierced the cold, and the fall wind smelled of reasons to live. 5.JOHN LEALThree months into his captivity, John Leal was shoved in the back of a truck, driven from the gulag to the frozen riverbank, and told to cross to China. He hesitated; a guard raised his gun, hit him with its butt. Bleeding from his temple, John Leal started walking. It was early March. Thin lines fissured the river’s ice. Each spring, the thawed waters were said to clog with all those shot while trying to escape, the bodies preserved, like fish, where they’d been killed.