Confusion

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 Girls (2016)

  his plate. “You cooked,” I said. Sasha made a peep of thanks when I added her plate to the stack. Zav’s phone lit up, shivering across the surface of the table. Someone was calling: a blurry photograph of a woman in underwear flashed on the screen. “Is that Lexi?” Julian asked. Zav nodded, ignoring the call. A look passed between Julian and Zav: I didn’t want to notice it. Zav belched. They both laughed. I could smell the memory of chewed meat. “Benny is doing computer shit now,” Zav said, “you know that?” Julian hit the table. “No fucking way.” I walked the dishes to the sink, gathering the balled paper towels from the counter. Sweeping crumbs into my hand. “He’s fat as fuck,” Zav said, “it’s hilarious.” “Is Benny the guy from your high school?” Sasha asked. Julian nodded. I let the sink fill with water. Watching Julian swivel his body to mirror Sasha’s, knocking his knees into hers. He kissed her on the temple. “You guys are too fucking much,” Zav said. His tone had a tricky bite. I sank the dishes in the water. A scummy network of grease formed on the surface. “I just don’t get it,” Zav went on, addressing Sasha, “why you stay with Julian. You’re too hot for him.” Sasha giggled, though I glanced back and saw her labor to calculate a response. “I mean, she’s a babe,” Zav said to Julian, “am I right?” Julian smiled what I thought of as the smile of an only son, someone who believed he would always get what he wanted. He probably always had. The three of them were lit like a scene from a movie I was too old to watch. “But Sasha and I know each other, don’t we?” Zav smiled at her. “I like Sasha.” Sasha held a basic smile on her face, her fingers tidying the pile of torn

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  More like a freight station, with bills of lading and rubber stamps everywhere, and pasty-faced clerks scribbling away with broken pens in huge, cumbersome ledgers. My dole of coal and wood portioned out, off we marched, the hunchback and I, with a wheelbarrow, toward the dormitory. I was to have a room on the top floor, in the same wing as the pions. The situation was taking on a humorous aspect. I didn’t know what the hell to expect next. Perhaps a spittoon. The whole thing smacked very much of preparation for a campaign; the only things missing were a knapsack and rifle— and a brass slug. The room assigned me was rather large, with a small stove to which was attached a crooked pipe that made an elbow just over the iron cot. A big chest for the coal and wood stood near the door. The windows gave out on a row of forlorn little houses all made of stone in which lived the grocer, the baker, the shoemaker, the butcher, etc.—all imbecilic-looking clodhoppers. I glanced over the rooftops toward the bare hills where a train was clattering. The whistle of the locomotive screamed mournfully and hysterically. After the hunchback had made the fire for me I inquired about the grub. It was not quite time for dinner. I flopped on the bed, with my overcoat on, and pulled the covers over me. Beside me was the eternal rickety night table in which the piss pot is hidden away. I stood the alarm on the table and watched the minutes ticking off. Into the well of the room a bluish light filtered in from the street. I listened to the trucks rattling by as I gazed vacantly at the stove pipe, at the elbow where it was held together with bits of wire. The coal chest intrigued me. Never in my life had I occupied a room with a coal chest. And never in my life had I built a fire or taught children. Nor, for that matter, never in my life had I worked without pay. I felt free and chained at the same time—like one feels just before election, when all the crooks have been nominated and you are beseeched to vote for the right man. I felt like a hired man, like a jack-of-all- trades, like a hunter, like a rover, like a galley slave, like a pedagogue, like a worm and a louse. I was free, but my limbs were shackled. A democratic soul with a free meal ticket, but no power of locomotion, no voice. I felt like a jellyfish nailed to a plank. Above all, I felt hungry. The hands were moving slowly. Still ten more minutes to kill before the fire alarm would go off. The shadows in the room deepened.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  He goes on shaving. Suddenly, apropos of nothing at all, he begins to talk—disconnectedly at first, and then more and more clearly, emphatically, resolutely. It’s a struggle to get it out, but he seems determined to relate everything; he acts as if he were getting something off his conscience. He even reminds me of the look he gave me as he was going up the elevator shaft. He dwells on that lingeringly, as though to imply that everything were contained in that last moment, as though, if he had the power to alter things, he would never have put foot outside the elevator. She was in her dressing sack when he called. There was a bucket of champagne on the dresser. The room was rather dark and her voice was lovely. He gives me all the details about the room, the champagne, how the garçon opened it, the noise it made, the way her dressing sack rustled when she came forward to greet him—he tells me everything but what I want to hear. It was about eight when he called on her. At eight-thirty he was nervous, thinking about the job. “It was about nine when I called you, wasn’t it?” he says. “Yes, about that.” “I was nervous, see. …” “I know that. Go on. …” I don’t know whether to believe him or not, especially after those letters we concocted. I don’t even know whether I’ve heard him accurately, because what he’s telling me sounds utterly fantastic. And yet it sounds true too, knowing the sort of guy he is. And then I remember his voice over the telephone, that strange mixture of fright and jubilation. But why isn’t he more jubilant now? He keeps smiling all the time, smiling like a rosy little bedbug that has had its fill. “It was nine o’clock,” he says once again, “when I called you up, wasn’t it?” I nod my head wearily. Yes, it was nine o’clock. He is certain now that it was nine o’clock because he remembers having taken out his watch. Anyway, when he looked at his watch again it was ten o’clock. At ten o’clock she was lying on the divan with her boobies in her hands. That’s the way he gives it to me—in driblets. At eleven o’clock it was all settled; they were going to run away, to Borneo. Fuck the husband! She never loved him anyway. She would never have written the first letter if the husband wasn’t old and passionless. “And then she says to me: ‘But listen, dear, how do you know you won’t get tired of me?’” At this I burst out laughing. This sounds preposterous to me, I can’t help it. “And you said?” “What did you expect me to say?

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  A few feet away, removed by incalculable eons of time, lies the prone and mummy-swathed ghost of Baudelaire, of a whole world that will belch no more. In the dusky corners of cafés are men and women with hands locked, their loins slather-flecked; nearby stands the garçon with his apron full of sous, waiting patiently for the entr’acte in order to fall upon his wife and gouge her. Even as the world falls apart the Paris that belongs to Matisse shudders with bright, gasping orgasms, the air itself is steady with a stagnant sperm, the trees tangled like hair. On its wobbly axle the wheel rolls steadily downhill; there are no brakes, no ball bearings, no balloon tires. The wheel is falling apart, but the revolution is intact. … Out of a clear sky there comes one day a letter from Boris whom I have not seen for months and months. It is a strange document and I don’t pretend to understand it all clearly. “What happened between us—at any rate, as far as I go—is that you touched me, touched my life, that is, at the one point where I am still alive: my death. By the emotional flow I went through another immersion. I lived again, alive. No longer by reminiscence, as I do with others, but alive.” That’s how it began. Not a word of greeting, no date, no address. Written in a thin, pompous scrawl on ruled paper torn out of a blank book. “That is why, whether you like me or not—deep down I rather think you hate me—you are very close to me. By you I know how I died: I see myself dying again: I am dying. That is something. More than to be dead simply. That may be the reason why I am so afraid to see you: you may have played the trick on me, and died. Things happen so fast nowadays.” I’m reading it over, line by line, standing by the stones. It sounds nutty to me, all this palaver about life and death and things happening so fast. Nothing is happening that I can see, except the usual calamities on the front page. He’s been living all by himself for the last six months, tucked away in a cheap little room—probably holding telepathic communication with Cronstadt. He talks about the line falling back, the sector evacuated, and so on and so forth, as though he were dug into a trench and writing a report to headquarters. He probably had his frock coat on when he sat down to pen this missive, and he probably rubbed his hands a few times as he used to do when a customer was calling to rent the apartment. “The reason I wanted you to commit suicide…” he begins again. At that I burst out laughing.

• From Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  Each member of the group had an assigned partner and was told never to be alone. These measures were taken “to keep [members] in the mindset.” Communication was often limited to simply saying “Yes,” “No,” or “I don’t know.”572 “Emotional Control” Conway and Siegelman succinctly explain in their first book, Snapping: America’s Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change , how the mind can be stymied, sidetracked, and potentially subjugated by what it sees as “information disease.” In their second book, Holy Terror: The Fundamentalist War on America’s Freedoms in Religion, Politics, and Our Private Lives , they discuss the interlocking emotional control that controlling groups and leaders often use. Conway and Siegelman write, “Because as human beings, beyond all differences of faith and culture, our feelings are our most important resource, our most complex and fully integrated and universal communication capacity. They may also be our most accurate monitor of personal morality—of what is right and wrong for each of us as individuals—and of the fairness of our conduct in relation to one another. When at that intimate level the wisdom of our feelings is stilled, distorted or thrown into confusion, our greatest strength may quickly be turned into our greatest vulnerability.”573 The authors explain that such emotional control is achieved through “the reduction of individual response to basic emotions such as love, guilt, fear, anger, hatred, etc.” This is accomplished by “means of suggestion” through “the indirect use of cues, code words, symbols, images and myths.” For example, Bible-based groups may use the images of Jesus and Satan to emotionally manipulate members. In his book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism , Robert Jay Lifton correlates the use of such imagery to the category of “ultimate terms” or “God terms” and “devil terms.”574 This means of manipulation allows its practitioners to assign any action or feeling they perceive as negative or challenging to their authority in the category of “satanic” or “demonic” while simultaneously using the image of Jesus or God as a facade for their own authority. Within this box, whenever disobedience occurs or doubts surface, they are consigned to the devil or dark forces. Obedience to the leadership is correspondingly characterized as compliance to the will of God and heavenly authority. In the family cult Marcus Wesson led, his children were taught that he was “God’s messenger” and that the “end times” were “close at hand.” One son said, “He was God. That’s just the way it was.”575 Within the confines of this construct to obey Wesson was to obey God. Disobedience was, therefore, defiance of God. Those who opposed Wesson, such as the authorities, were characterized as “Satan.”576 Caught within this world of polarized imagery, one of Wesson’s daughters said she felt “trapped.” But religious imagery isn’t the only way such ultimate terms can be used. Secular symbols can easily be used, such as the popular principles and corresponding icons of business, art, philosophy, nationalism, political theory, psychology, philosophy, or virtually any field of interest.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  The spectators applaud but he does not hear. The drama, he thinks, is going on inside the cage. The cage, he thinks, is the world. Standing there alone and helpless, the door locked, he finds that the lions do not understand his language. Not one lion has ever heard of Spinoza. Spinoza? Why they can’t even get their teeth into him. “Give us meat!” they roar, while he stands there petrified, his ideas frozen, his Weltanschauung a trapeze out of reach. A single blow of the lion’s paw and his cosmogony is smashed. The lions, too, are disappointed. They expected blood, bones, gristle, sinews. They chew and chew, but the words are chicle and chicle is indigestible. Chicle is a base over which you sprinkle sugar, pepsin, thyme, licorice. Chicle, when it is gathered by chicleros , is O.K. The chicleros came over on the ridge of a sunken continent. They brought with them an algebraic language. In the Arizona desert they met the Mongols of the North, glazed like eggplants. Time shortly after the earth had taken its gyroscopic lean—when the Gulf Stream was parting ways with the Japanese current. In the heart of the soil they found tufa rock. They embroidered the very bowels of the earth with their language. They ate one another’s entrails and the forest closed in on them, on their bones and skulls, on their lace tufa. Their language was lost. Here and there one still finds the remnants of a menagerie, a brain plate covered with figures. What has all this to do with you, Moldorf? The word in your mouth is anarchy. Say it, Moldorf, I am waiting for it. Nobody knows, when we shake hands, the rivers that pour through our sweat. Whilst you are framing your words, your lips half parted, the saliva gurgling in your cheeks, I have jumped halfway across Asia. Were I to take your cane, mediocre as it is, and poke a little hole in your side, I could collect enough material to fill the British Museum. We stand on five minutes and devour centuries. You are the sieve through which my anarchy strains, resolves itself into words. Behind the word is chaos. Each word a stripe, a bar, but there are not and never will be enough bars to make the mesh. In my absence the window curtains have been hung. They have the appearance of Tyrolean tablecloths dipped in lysol. The room sparkles. I sit on the bed in a daze, thinking about man before his birth. Suddenly bells begin to toll, a weird, unearthly music, as if I had been translated to the steppes of Central Asia. Some ring out with a long, lingering roll, some erupt drunkenly, maudlinly. And now it is quiet again, except for a last note that barely grazes the silence of the night—just a faint, high gong snuffed out like a flame.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  She was in her dressing sack when he called. There was a bucket of champagne on the dresser. The room was rather dark and her voice was lovely. He gives me all the details about the room, the champagne, how the garçon opened it, the noise it made, the way her dressing sack rustled when she came forward to greet him—he tells me everything but what I want to hear. It was about eight when he called on her. At eight-thirty he was nervous, thinking about the job. “It was about nine when I called you, wasn’t it?” he says. “Yes, about that.” “I was nervous, see. ...” “I know that. Go on. ...” I don’t know whether to believe him or not, especially after those letters we concocted. I don’t even know whether I’ve heard him accurately, because what he’s telling me sounds utterly fantastic. And yet it sounds true too, knowing the sort of guy he is. And then I remember his voice over the telephone, that strange mixture of fright and jubilation. But why isn’t he more jubilant now? He keeps smiling all the time, smiling like a rosy little bedbug that has had its fill. “It was nine o’clock,” he says once again, “when I called you up, wasn’t it?” I nod my head wearily. Yes, it was nine o’clock. He is certain now that it was nine o’clock because he remembers having taken out his watch. Anyway, when he looked at his watch again it was ten o’clock. At ten o’clock she was lying on the divan with her boobies in her hands. That’s the way he gives it to me—in driblets. At eleven o’clock it was all settled; they were going to run away, to Borneo. Fuck the husband! She never loved him anyway. She would never have written the first letter if the husband wasn’t old and passionless. “And then she says to me: ‘But listen, dear, how do you know you won’t get tired of me?’” At this I burst out laughing. This sounds preposterous to me, I can’t help it. “And you said?” “What did you expect me to say? I said: ‘How could anyone ever grow tired of you?”’ And then he describes to me what happened after that, how he bent down and kissed her breasts, and how, after he had kissed them fervidly, he stuffed them back into her corsage, or whatever it is they call these things. And after that another coupe of champagne. Around midnight the garçon arrives with beer and sandwiches—caviar sandwiches. And all the while, so he says, he has been dying to take a leak.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  I was so bewildered that I tipped my hat also. It was the regular thing to do, I soon found out. Whenever you pass a prof, or even M. l’Econome, you doff the hat. Might pass the same guy a dozen times a day. Makes no difference. You’ve got to give the salute, even though your hat is worn out. It’s the polite thing to do. Anyway, I had found the refectory. Like an East Side clinic it was, with tiled walls, bare light, and marble-topped tables. And of course a big stove with an elbow pipe. The dinner wasn’t served yet. A cripple was running in and out with dishes and knives and forks and bottles of wine. In a corner several young men conversing animatedly. I went up to them and introduced myself. They gave me a most cordial reception. Almost too cordial, in fact. I couldn’t quite make it out. In a jiffy the room began to fill up; I was presented from one to the other quickly. Then they formed a circle about me and, filling the glasses, they began to sing L’autre soir l’idée m’est venue Cré nom de Zeus d’enculer un pendu; Le vent se lève sur la potence, Voilà mon pendu qui se balance, J’ai dû l’enculer en sautant, Cré nom de Zeus, on est jamais content. Baiser dans un con trop petit, Cré nom de Zeus, on s’écorche le vit; Baiser dans un con trop large, On ne sait pas où l’on décharge; Se branler étant bien emmerdant, Cré nom de Zeus, on est jamais content. With this, Quasimodo announced the dinner. They were a cheerful group, les surveillants . There was Kroa who belched like a pig and always let off a loud fart when he sat down to table. He could fart thirteen times in succession, they informed me. He held the record. Then there was Monsieur le Prince, an athlete who was fond of wearing a tuxedo in the evening when he went to town; he had a beautiful complexion, just like a girl, and never touched the wine nor read anything that might tax his brain. Next to him sat Petit Paul, from the Midi, who thought of nothing but cunt all the time; he used to say every day—“à partir de jeudi je ne parlerai plus de femmes.” He and Monsieur le Prince were inseparable. Then there was Passeleau, a veritable young scallywag who was studying medicine and who borrowed right and left; he talked incessantly of Ronsard, Villon and Rabelais. Opposite me sat Mollesse, agitator and organizer of the pions , who insisted on weighing the meat to see if it wasn’t short a few grams. He occupied a little room in the infirmary. His supreme enemy was Monsieur l’Econome, which was nothing particularly to his credit since everybody hated this individual. For companion Mollesse had one called Le Pénible, a dour-looking chap with a hawklike profile who practiced the strictest economy and acted as moneylender.

• From Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  MOVE’s interaction with the outside world slipped away until its members became largely socially isolated, and they were “limited to the physical space of a 15-foot wide Philadelphia row house.”253 This little row house became the equivalent of a compound. Neighbors complained to authorities about MOVE, who used bullhorns to preach the group’s political message and reportedly lived in “unsanitary” conditions.254 Some MOVE members were criminals wanted for crimes ranging from parole violations and possession of illegal firearms to terrorist threats.255 MOVE behaved in a way that would historically repeat itself as the essential root cause of “cult standoffs” with authorities. That is, Africa and his followers largely refused to acknowledge the authority of virtually anyone other than their leader and saw law enforcement as an unwarranted intrusion. When warrants were served on MOVE members in 1985, the group opened fire on police officers. In response to the group’s resistance and intransigence, a police helicopter dropped a “percussion” or “concussion” bomb on the house, which the mayor of Philadelphia referred to as a “stun device,”256 hoping to end the standoff. The explosion started a fire, which destroyed sixty-one houses. Within the MOVE row house, five children and six adults were found dead.257 The city of Philadelphia spent $42 million in the aftermath of the MOVE tragedy through settlements, investigation, and rebuilding efforts.258 MOVE continues to be a controversial group in Philadelphia. In 2002 a former member, thirty-four-year-old John Gilbride, was found dead in his car. Gilbride had been locked in a contentious custody battle with John Africa’s widow, Alberta Wicker Africa. Two weeks before his death, a court had granted Gilbride time with his son. But just hours before the unsupervised visit would have taken place, Gilbride was found dead. The murder remains unsolved.259 1989—Jeffrey Lundgren Murders In the spring of 1989, cult leader Jeffrey Lundgren murdered Dennis and Cheryl Avery and their three teenage daughters. But their bodies weren’t found until January 1990 when they were discovered buried in a barn. Lundgren recruited his followers primarily from the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, an offshoot of Mormonism. The cult leader had once been a tour guide at the denomination’s historic, original temple. Lundgren claimed that God wanted him to lead a revolution in Kirtland, a small town twenty miles from Cleveland, Ohio. Like Charles Manson, Jeffrey Lundgren convinced his followers that they were fulfilling a special and chosen role in human history. God’s plan was for the group to seize the historic temple in Kirtland. Eventually Lundgren changed the plan and said the Avery family must be murdered to satisfy God as a sacrifice. After the killings Lundgren’s followers seemed mystified by their cult experience. “We were supposed to help the hungry. We were supposed to help the poor. Of course, none of that happened. I still don’t know what happened…something went terribly wrong,” said former cult member Susan Luff.260 At times Lundgren demanded money from his followers at gunpoint.

• From Austerlitz (2001)

  eM a ae eles Par ad ‘ Fe: ae ; ast ie “y F Se 7 “eM I thought I could make out a stone quarry in a rather lighter patch on the steep slope of the mountain over to the right, and I seemed to see a railway track in the regular curve of the lines below it. But my mind dwelt chiefly on the fenced square in the middle and the tent-like building at the far end, with a cloud of white smoke above it. Whatever may have been going on inside me at the time, the children of Israel’s camp in the wilderness was closer to me than life in Bala, which I found more incomprehensible every day, or at least, said Austerlitz, that is how it strikes me now. That evening in the bar of the Great Eastern Hotel Austerlitz also told me that there was no wireless set or newspaper in the manse in Bala. I don’t know that Elias and his wife, Gwendolyn, ever mentioned the fighting on the continent of Europe, he said. I couldn’t imagine any world outside Wales. Only after the end of the war did this state of affairs begin to change. A new epoch seemed to dawn with the victory celebrations, when even in Bala there was dancing in the streets, which were decked with brightly colored bunting. For me, it began when I first broke the ban on going to the cinema, and after that I used to watch the newsreel from the cubbyhole occupied by the film projectionist Owen, one of the three sons of the visionary Evan. Around the same time Gwendolyn’s state of health deteriorated, almost imperceptibly at first but then with increasing speed. She, who had always kept everything in the most painfully neat order, began to neglect first the house and then herself. She simply stood in the kitchen, looking helpless, and when Elias prepared a meal as best he could she would eat almost nothing.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Her mind would go groping about for a reason, and would find no reason—unless it were Collins—but Collins would refuse to fit into these pictures; even love must admit that she did not belong there any more than the brushes and buckets and slop-cloths belonged in that dignified study. Presently Stephen must go off to her tea, leaving the two grown-up children together; secretly divining that neither of them would miss her— not even her father. Arrived in the nursery she would probably be cross, because her heart felt very empty and tearful; or because, having looked at herself in the glass, she had decided that she loathed her abundant long hair. Snatching at a slice of thick bread and butter, she would upset the milk jug, or break a new tea-cup, or smear the front of her dress with her fingers, to the fury of Mrs. Bingham. If she spoke at such times it was usually to threaten: ‘I shall cut all my hair off, you see if I don’t!’ or, ‘I hate this white dress and I’m going to burn it—it makes me feel idiotic!’ But once launched she would dig up the grievances of months, going back to the time of the would-be young Nelson, loudly complaining that being a girl spoilt everything—even Nelson. The rest of the evening would be spent in grumbling, because one does grumble when one is unhappy— at least one does grumble when one is seven—later on it may seem rather useless. At last the hour of the bath would arrive, and still grumbling, Stephen must submit to Mrs. Bingham, fidgeting under the nurse’s rough fingers like a dog in the hands of a trimmer. There she would stand pretending to shiver, a strong little figure, narrow-hipped and wide-shouldered; her flanks as wiry and thin as a greyhound’s and even more ceaselessly restless. ‘God doesn’t use soap!’ she might suddenly remark. At which Mrs. Bingham must smile, none too kindly: ‘Maybe not, Miss Stephen—He don’t ’ave to wash you; if He did He’d need plenty of soap, I’ll be bound!’ The bath over, and Stephen garbed in her nightgown, a long pause would ensue, known as: ‘Waiting for Mother,’ and if mother, for some reason, did not happen to arrive, the pause could be spun out for quite twenty minutes, or for half an hour even, if luck was with Stephen, and the nursery clock not too precise and old-maidish. ‘Now come on, say your prayers;’ Mrs. Bingham would order, ‘and you’d better ask the dear Lord to forgive you—impious I calls it, and you a young lady! Carrying on because you can’t be a boy!’ Stephen would kneel by the side of the bed, but in such moods as these her prayers would sound angry. The nurse would protest: ‘Not so loud, Miss Stephen! Pray slower, and don’t shout at the Lord, He won’t like it!’ But Stephen would continue to shout at the Lord in a kind of impotent defiance.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  The gossip had reached the minister, Jamie’s white-haired and gentle old father. He had looked at the girl with bewildered eyes—he had always been bewildered by his daughter. A poor housewife she was, and very untidy; if she cooked she mucked up the pots and the kitchen, and her hands were strangely unskilled with the needle; this he knew, since his heels suffered much from her darning. Remembering her mother he had shaken his head and sighed many times as he looked at Jamie. For her mother had been a soft, timorous woman, and he himself was very retiring, but their Jamie loved striding over the hills in the teeth of a gale, an uncouth, boyish creature. As a child she had gone rabbit stalking with ferrets; had ridden a neighbour’s farmhorse astride on a sack, without stirrup, saddle or bridle; had done all manner of outlandish things. And he, poor lonely, bewildered man, still mourning his wife, had been no match for her. Yet even as a child she had sat at the piano and picked out little tunes of her own inventing. He had done his best; she had been taught to play by Miss Morrison of the next-door village, since music alone seemed able to tame her. And as Jamie had grown so her tunes had grown with her, gathering purpose and strength with her body. She would improvise for hours on the winter evenings, if Barbara would sit in their parlour and listen. He had always made Barbara welcome at the manse; they had been so inseparable, those two, since childhood—and now? He had frowned, remembering the gossip. Rather timidly he had spoken to Jamie. ‘Listen, my dear, when you’re always together, the lads don’t get a chance to come courting, and Barbara’s grandmother wants the lass married. Let her walk with a lad on Sabbath afternoons—there’s that young MacGregor, he’s a fine, steady fellow, and they say he’s in love with the little lass. . . .’ Jamie had stared at him, scowling darkly. ‘She doesn’t want to walk out with MacGregor!’ The minister had shaken his head yet again. In the hands of his child he was utterly helpless. Then Jamie had gone to Inverness in order the better to study music, but every week-end she had spent at the manse, there had been no real break in her friendship with Barbara; indeed they had seemed more devoted than ever, no doubt because of these forced separations. Two years later the minister had suddenly died, leaving his little all to Jamie. She had had to turn out of the old, grey manse, and had taken a room in the village near Barbara. But antagonism, no longer restrained through respect for the gentle and child-like pastor, had made itself very acutely felt—hostile they had been, those good people, to Jamie.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  Jesus was the one person who gave access to reality and access to God. That is the key thought of this letter. The Riddle of the New Testament So much is clear; but, when we turn to the other questions of introduction, Hebrews is wrapped in mystery. The New Testament scholar E. F. Scott wrote: ‘The Epistle to the Hebrews is in many respects the riddle of the New Testament.’ When it was written, to whom it was written, and who wrote it are questions at which we can only guess. The very history of the letter shows how its mystery is to be treated with a certain reserve and suspicion. It was a long time before it became an unquestioned New Testament book. The first list of New Testament books, the Muratorian Canon, compiled about AD 170, does not mention it at all. The great Alexandrian scholars of the second and third centuries, Clement and Origen, knew it and loved it but agreed that its place as Scripture was disputed. Of the great African fathers of the same period, Cyprian never mentions it and Tertullian knows that its place was disputed. Eusebius, the early church historian, says that it ranked among the disputed books. It was not until the time of Athanasius, in the middle of the fourth century, that Hebrews was definitely accepted as a New Testament book, and even the founder of the Reformation, Martin Luther, was not too sure about it. It is strange to think how long this great book had to wait for full recognition. When was it Written? The only information we have comes from the letter itself. Clearly, it is written for what we might call second-generation Christians (2:3). The story was transmitted to its recipients by those who had heard the Lord. The members of the community to whom it was written were not new to the Christian faith; they ought to have been mature (5:12). They must have had a long history, for they are called to look back on the former days (10:32). They had a great history behind them and heroic martyr figures on which they ought to look back for inspiration (13:7). The thing that will help us most in dating the letter is its references to persecution. It is clear that at one time their leaders had died for their faith (13:7). It is clear that they themselves had not yet suffered persecution, for they had not yet resisted to the point of shedding their blood (12:4). It is also clear that they have had ill-treatment to suffer, for they have had to undergo the looting of their goods (10:32– 4). And it is clear from the outlook of the letter that there is a risk of persecution about to come. From all that, it is safe to say that this letter must have been written between two persecutions, in days when Christians were not actually persecuted but were nonetheless unpopular.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  A bigger house had been set on our roof and was imperceptibly pushing us into the ground. Momma asked, in her nice-folks voice, “What who said, Brother Taylor?” She knew the answer. We all knew the answer. “Florida.” His little wrinkled hands were making fists, then straightening, then making fists again. “She said it just last night.” Bailey and I looked at each other and I hunched my chair closer to him. “Said ‘I want some children.’” When he pitched his already high voice to what he considered a feminine level, or at any rate to his wife's, Miz Florida's, level, it streaked across the room, zigzagging like lightning. Uncle Willie had stopped eating and was regarding him with something like pity. “Maybe you was dreaming, Brother Taylor. Could have been a dream.”

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  All the same, she had made him feel very welcome, for to her it had been any port in a storm just then—she would gladly have welcomed the devil himself, had she thought that he might rouse Stephen. But Stephen was never able to decide whether Jonathan Brockett attracted or repelled her. Brilliant he could be at certain times, yet curiously foolish and puerile at others; and his hands were as white and soft as a woman’s—she would feel a queer little sense of outrage creeping over her when she looked at his hands. For those hands of his went so ill with him somehow; he was tall, broad-shouldered, and of an extreme thinness. His clean-shaven face was slightly sardonic and almost disconcertingly clever; an inquisitive face too—one felt that it pried into everyone’s secrets without shame or mercy. It may have been genuine liking on his part or mere curiosity that had made him persist in thrusting his friendship on Stephen. But whatever it had been it had taken the form of ringing her up almost daily at one time; of worrying her to lunch or dine with him, of inviting himself to her flat in Chelsea, or what was still worse, of dropping in on her whenever the spirit moved him. His work never seemed to worry him at all, and Stephen often wondered when his fine plays got written, for Brockett very seldom if ever discussed them and apparently very seldom wrote them; yet they always appeared at the critical moment when their author had run short of money. Once, for the sake of peace, she had dined with him in a species of glorified cellar. He had just then discovered the queer little place down in Seven Dials, and was very proud of it; indeed, he was making it rather the fashion among certain literary people. He had taken a great deal of trouble that evening to make Stephen feel that she belonged to these people by right of her talent, and had introduced her as ‘Stephen Gordon, the author of The Furrow.’ But all the while he had secretly watched her with his sharp and inquisitive grey eyes. She had felt very much at ease with Brockett as they sat at their little dimly lit table, perhaps because her instinct divined that this man would never require of her more than she could give—that the most he would ask for at any time would be friendship. Then one day he had casually disappeared, and she heard that he had gone to Paris for some months, as was often his custom when the climate of London had begun to get on his nerves. He had drifted away like thistledown, without so much as a word of warning. He had not said good-bye nor had he written, so that Stephen felt that she had never known him, so completely did he go out of her life during his sojourn in Paris.

• From How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian (2015)

  Notice, for example, how those twin trees are described rather awkwardly and unevenly when first introduced in Genesis 2:9: Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst [in the middle] of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Those two trees are presented with unusual syntactical awkwardness in Hebrew—as in English—although the difficulty is often smoothed over by using the vaguer “in the midst” rather than “in the middle” of the garden. The problem of one or two trees “in the middle” of the garden reappears again when Eve tells the serpent, “God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die’” (3:3). The second tree gets the middle now, and there is no mention of the first tree. Why not simply say, if such were intended, that the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil were both in the middle of the garden? It is almost as if that second tree was an add-on to a first tree that was already securely planted “in the middle of the garden.” That “almost as if” is exactly how I think this biblical story was creatively adapted in Genesis 2–3 by Israelite scholars working within the general intellectual matrix of the Fertile Crescent. Ever since Sumer, Mesopotamian tradition held that divinity was immortal and humanity was not—a nice, clear, permanent distinction. Only the human hero of the flood (and his wife) had been raised to divine status and thereby granted eternal life. But that was a unique privilege for his unique salvific action of preserving life on Earth. He was, however, the exception that proved the rule. After-life was merely after-death in Kur—Mesopotamian Sheol, or Hades—a place of spectral ghosts and shadowy figures. As its doorman asks in “Inana’s Descent to the Nether World”: “Why have you travelled to the land of no return? How did you set your heart on the road whose traveler never returns?” (ETCSL 1.4.1). As I focus, first, on that tree of eternal life in Genesis 2–3, I see spectral images from Mesopotamia hovering all around it. Behind the primordial domestic pair of Adam and Eve is the primordial heroic pair of Gilgamesh and Enkidu; behind the serpent-spoiler in the garden is the serpent-spoiler by the pool; and behind the tree of eternal life is the plant of eternal life. Israel knew, as did the entire Fertile Crescent, that the Epic of Gilgamesh and Enkidu was not a tragic tale of “if only” Gilgamesh had not taken that cool swim, he would have been immortal. They also knew that Genesis 2–3 was not a tragic tale of “if only” Adam had not taken that first bite, humanity would have been immortal.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  I pulled my mind apart. Who? Who was Tommy Valdon? Finally a face dragged itself from my memory. He was the nice-looking brown-skinned boy who lived across the pond. As soon as I had pinned him down, I began to wonder, Why? Why me? Was it a joke? But if Tommy was the boy I remembered he was a very sober person and a good student. Well, then, it wasn't a joke. All right, what evil dirty things did he have in mind? My questions fell over themselves, an army in retreat. Haste, dig for cover. Protect your flanks. Don't let the enemy close the gap between you. What did a Valentine do, anyway? Starting to throw the paper in the foul-smelling hole, I thought of Louise. I could show it to her. I folded the paper back in the original creases, and went back to class. There was no time during the lunch period since I had to run to the Store and wait on customers. The note was in my sock and every time Momma looked at me, I feared that her church gaze might have turned into X-ray vision and she could not only see the note and read its message but would interpret it as well. I felt myself slipping down a sheer cliff of guilt, and a second time I nearly destroyed the note but there was no opportunity. The take-up bell rang and Bailey raced me to school, so the note was forgotten. But serious business is serious, and it had to be attended to. After classes I waited for Louise. She was talking to a group of girls, laughing. But when I gave her our signal (two waves of the left hand) she said good-bye to them and joined me in the road. I didn't give her the chance to ask what was on my mind (her favorite question); I simply gave her the note. Recognizing the fold she stopped smiling. We were in deep waters. She opened the letter and read it aloud twice. “Well, what do you think?” I said, “What do I think? That's what I'm asking you? What is there to think?” “Looks like he wants you to be his valentine.” “Louise, I can read. But what does it mean?” “Oh, you know. His valentine. His love.” There was that hateful word again. That treacherous word that yawned up at you like a volcano. “Well, I won't. Most decidedly I won't. Not ever again.” “Have you been his valentine before? What do you mean never again?” I couldn't lie to my friend and I wasn't about to freshen old ghosts. “Well, don't answer him then, and that's the end of it.” I was a little relieved that she thought it could be gotten rid of so quickly. I tore the note in half and gave her a part. Walking down the hill we minced the paper in a thousand shreds and gave it to the wind.

• From How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian (2015)

  There at least we had clearly distinct letters that could be separated into three groups that depicted a sequence from radical through conservative to reactionary. Assertion and subversion almost jumped out at you there even if all those letters were explicitly attributed to Paul. All of that biblical tradition, however, from Old Testament through New Testament, from Torah and Prophecy through Jesus and Paul, portrays the same process repeated throughout the Christian Bible as the radicality of God is brought back into the normalcy of civilization. At the end, the Roman Empire is no more and no less than the normalcv of civilization robed in a toga. EPILOGUETo Outsoar the Shadow of Our NightFirst, I find the center point. HUGH OF SAINT VICTOR , The Mystic Ark (1125–1130) THE PROBLEM OF THE Christian Bible is that its God is portrayed both nonviolently and violently; its Christ, proclaimed as the human image of that God, is also portrayed both nonviolently and violently; and therefore Christians are called to a life of political confusion at best, or religious hypocrisy at worst. (Suspect the peace donkey, expect the warhorse.) The solution offered in this book is not one invented externally by a clever author but one discovered internally from within that Christian Bible itself. In fact, nobody has ever deconstructed the Christian Bible externally as well as it deconstructs itself internally. Here, in summary, are the steps by which I finally recognized what was there all along. MatrixI BEGIN BY REPEATING the fundamental supposition I brought to both that problem and its solution in this book. Like any presupposition, it must be judged by whether it explains more than it obfuscates, and whether it is ultimately adequate to ancient intentions and respectful of past purposes. My foundational presupposition, a very general but very basic one, concerns how to read anything, ancient or modern, biblical or nonbiblical. That process demands awareness of matrix; that is, anything spoken or written must first be understood within its own time and place. Matrix is the background you cannot skip, the context you cannot avoid. (For example, as mentioned at the beginning of this book, the matrix for Gandhi is British imperialism, and that for Martin Luther King Jr. is American racism.) The cross-haired coordinates of matrix are communal tradition and individual vision as well as specific time and particular place. And, whether we like it or not, matrix is destiny, for speaker and writer as for hearer and reader. The alternative to matrix meaning is Rorschach reading or inkblot interpretation, which is when an ancient text means whatever your modern mind decides it means. But under matrix discipline we should never respond with either agreement or disagreement, belief or disbelief, until we know what was intended in its original situation then, as we understand that situation now. This concept of matrix is neither new nor esoteric. It is simply common sense.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  A major reason the act of gendering remains invisible to most people is that, in the vast majority of cases, our assessment of a person’s gender tends to be in agreement with that person’s gender identity and the gender assignments made by other people. (If the genders we assigned to individuals regularly differed from the assignments made by other people, the guesswork inherent in gendering would become far more obvious to us.) However, as a transsexual, I have been in numerous situations (particularly during my transition) where two or more people simultaneously came to different conclusions regarding my perceived gender—that is, one person assumed that I was female, while another assumed that I was male. Such instances demonstrate the speculative nature of gendering. I have also found that people’s experiences and preconceptions around gender dramatically affect the way they gender other people. For example, back when I identified as a male crossdresser, I found that I could “pass” as a woman rather easily in suburban areas, but in cities (where people were presumably more aware of the existence of gender-variant people) I would often be “read” as a crossdressed male. Most cissexuals remain oblivious to the subjective nature of gendering, primarily because they themselves have not regularly had the experience of being misgendered—i.e., mistakenly assigned a gender that does not match one’s identified gender. Unfortunately, this lack of experience usually leads cissexuals to mistakenly believe that the process of gendering is a matter of pure observation, rather than the act of speculation it is. Cissexual Assumption The second process that enables cissexual privilege is cissexual assumption. This occurs when a cissexual makes the common, albeit mistaken, assumption that the way they experience their physical and subconscious sexes (i.e., the fact that they do not feel uncomfortable with the sex they were born into, nor do they think of themselves as or wish they could become the other sex) applies to everyone else in the world. In other words, the cissexual indiscriminately projects their cissexuality onto all other people, thus transforming cissexuality into a human attribute that is taken for granted. There is an obvious analogy to heterosexual assumption here: Most cissexuals assume that everyone they meet is also cissexual, just as most heterosexuals assume that everyone they meet is also heterosexual (unless, of course, they are provided with evidence to the contrary).

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  “I gotta talk to you, Ritie.” He pulled off his shorts that had fallen to his ankles, and went into the bathroom. It was true the bed was wet, but I knew I hadn't had an accident. Maybe Mr. Freeman had one while he was holding me. He came back with a glass of water and told me in a sour voice, “Get up. You peed in the bed.” He poured water on the wet spot, and it did look like my mattress on many mornings. Having lived in Southern strictness, I knew when to keep quiet around adults, but I did want to ask him why he said I peed when I was sure he didn't believe that. If he thought I was naughty, would that mean that he would never hold me again? Or admit that he was my father? I had made him ashamed of me. “Ritie, you love Bailey?” He sat down on the bed and I came close, hoping. “Yes.” He was bending down, pulling on his socks, and his back was so large and friendly I wanted to rest my head on it. “If you ever tell anybody what we did, I'll have to kill Bailey.” What had we done? We? Obviously he didn't mean my peeing in the bed. I didn't understand and didn't dare ask him. It had something to do with his holding me. But there was no chance to ask Bailey either, because that would be telling what we had done. The thought that he might kill Bailey stunned me. After he left the room I thought about telling Mother that I hadn't peed in the bed, but then if she asked me what happened I'd have to tell her about Mr. Freeman holding me, and that wouldn't do. It was the same old quandary. I had always lived it. There was an army of adults, whose motives and movements I just couldn't understand and who made no effort to understand mine. There was never any question of my disliking Mr. Freeman, I simply didn't understand him either. For weeks after, he said nothing to me, except the gruff hellos which were given without ever looking in my direction. This was the first secret I had ever kept from Bailey and sometimes I thought he should be able to read it on my face, but he noticed nothing. I began to feel lonely for Mr. Freeman and the encasement of his big arms. Before, my world had been Bailey, food, Momma, the Store, reading books and Uncle Willie. Now, for the first time, it included physical contact. I began to wait for Mr. Freeman to come in from the yards, but when he did, he never noticed me, although I put a lot of feeling into “Good evening, Mr. Freeman.”