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.

Page 43 of 112 · 20 per page

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  I kept wondering—why on earth had I come back to them for a rest? I was raring to get away again. I felt like a human Ping-Pong ball. I kept finding men to escape from my family and then running back to my family to escape from the men. Whenever I was home, I wanted to get away, and whenever I got away I wanted to go home again. What do you call that? An existential dilemma? The oppression of women? The human condition? It was unbearable then and it’s unbearable now: back and forth I go over the net of my own ambivalence. As soon as I touch ground, I want to bounce up and fly right back. So what do I do? I laugh. It only hurts when I laugh—though nobody knows that but me. My parents only stuck around for a week or so and then they were off to Italy to check up on an ice-bucket factory. Fortunately, they have an import-export business which permits them to pick up and fly away whenever the internecine family warfare escalates to the bombing level. They fly in full of gifts and good feelings and fly out when the shit hits the fan. The whole process takes about a week. The rest of the year they pine for their far-flung children and wonder why most of them live so far from home. During the years I was in Germany and Randy was in Beirut, my mother wondered wistfully why two of her brood had chosen to live (as she put it) “in enemy territory.” “Because it seemed more hospitable than home,” I said, winning her everlasting enmity. It was a bitchy remark—I’ll grant that—but what have I ever had to protect me against my mother except words? It was still pretty crowded after my parents left: four sisters, Pierre, six kids (there were only six in 1965), a nursemaid, and a cleaning lady. It was so hot that we scarcely left the air-conditioned apartment. I kept wanting to go sightseeing, but the family lethargy was contagious. Tomorrow, I thought, I’ll leave for Cairo, but I was really scared to go to Cairo alone and neither Lalah nor Chloe would go with me. Things went on in this depressing vein for another week. On one occasion, we all went to a cabana club where the beach was rocky and Pierre poeticized about the blue Mediterranean until you felt like puking. (He was always lecturing us about the good life in Beirut and how he had come to get away from “the commercialism of America.”) At the club he introduced us to one of his friends as his “four wives,” and I had such a creepy feeling that I wanted to go home then and there. But where was home? With my family? With Pia? With Charlie?

• From On Beauty (2005)

  He was skinny, with shoulders no broader than a girl’s; you could rest an egg between each knob of his spine. He had a big natural afro, a small, feathery moustache, and an Adam’s apple bigger than his nose. Levi imagined him to be in his mid twenties, maybe as old as twenty-eight. He wore a cheap orange acrylic sweater rolled up to his elbows, despite the chill, and down his right arm there was this knockout  On Beauty scar, rose-pink against his black skin, beginning in a point and then spreading out down his forearm like the wake of a ship. ‘That’s your name?’ asked Levi, as they crossed the street. ‘Like a train ?’ ‘What does this mean?’ ‘You know, like a train , like, choo choo! Train coming through! Like a train .’ ‘It’s Haitian. C-H-O-U-C – ’ ‘Yeah, yeah – I see . . .’ Levi considered the problem. ‘Well, I can’t call you that, man. How about just Choo – that works, actually. It works. Levi and Choo.’ ‘It’s not my name.’ ‘No, I get that, man – but it just runs better to my ear – Choo. Levi and Choo. You hear that?’ No answer came. ‘Yeah, it’s street. Choo . . . The Choo. That’s cool. Put it there – no, not there – like this. That’s the way.’ ‘Let’s get on with it, shall we?’ said Choo, freeing his hand from Levi’s and looking both ways down the street. ‘We need to weigh everything down in this wind. I have some stones from the churchyard.’ Such an extended piece of grammatically correct English was not what Levi had been expecting. In silent surprise he helped Choo untie his bundle, releasing a pile of colourful handbags on to the sidewalk. He stood on the sheet to fight the wind, while Choo placed stones on the handles of the bags. Then Levi began to clip his own DVDs to a similarly weighted bed-sheet with clothes-pegs. He tried to make conversation. ‘Bottom line is, Choo, the only thing you got to worry about really is keeping an eye out for the cops and just giving me the holler when you see them. A holler and a hoot. And you got to see them before they even there – you got to get that street sense so you can smell a cop eight blocks away. That takes time, that’s an art. But you got to acquire it. That’s street .’ ‘I see.’ ‘I lived on these streets all my life, so it’s like second nature to me.’  the anatomy lesson ‘Second nature.’ ‘But don’t worry – you’ll pick all this shit up in time.’ ‘I’m sure I will. How old are you, Levi?’ ‘Nineteen,’ said Levi, sensing the older the better. But it didn’t seem better.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  so I seemed to be smitten by reflected light in front of me, wherefore mine eyes were swift to flee. “What is that, sweet Father, from which I cannot screen my sight so that it may avail me,” said I, “and seems to be moving towards us?” “Marvel thou not if the heavenly household yet dazes thee,” he answered me, “ ’tis a messenger that cometh to invite us to ascend. Soon will it be that to behold these things shall not be grievous to thee, but shall be a joy to thee, as great as nature hath fitted thee to feel.” When we had reached the blessed angel, with gladsome voice, he said: “Enter here to a stairway far less steep than the others.” We were mounting, already departed thence, and “Beati misericordes” was sung behind, and “Rejoice thou that overcomest.”3 My Master and I, alone we two, were mounting up, and I thought while journeying to gain profit from his words; and I directed me to him thus asking: “What meant the spirit from Romagna by mentioning ‘exclusion’ and ‘partnership’?”4 Whereupon he to me: “He knoweth the hurt of his greatest defect, and therefore let none marvel it he reprove it, that it be less mourned for. Forasmuch as your desires are centered where the portion is lessened by partnership, envy moves the bellows to your sighs. But if the love of the highest sphere wrested your desire upwards, that fear would not be at your heart; for by so many more there are who say ‘ours,’ so much the more of good doth each possess, and the more of love burneth in that cloister.” “I am more fasting from being satisfied,” said I, “than if I had kept silent at first, and more perplexity I amass in my mind. How can it be that a good, when shared, shall make the greater number of possessors richer in it, than if it is possessed by a few?” And he to me: “Because thou dost again fix thy mind merely on things of earth, thou drawest darkness from true light. That infinite and ineffable Good, that is on high, speedeth so to love as a ray of light comes to a bright body. As much of ardour as it finds, so much of itself doth it give, so that how far soever love extends, eternal goodness giveth increase upon it; and the more people on high who comprehend each other, the more there are to love well, and the more love is there, and like a mirror one giveth back to the other. And if my discourse stays not thy hunger, thou shalt see Beatrice, and she will free thee wholly from this and every other longing. Strive only that soon, even as the other two are, the five wounds may be rased out, which are healed by our sorrowing.”

• From On Beauty (2005)

  The lady had managed to move forward now. She took two steps and then supported herself with both hands, gripping the porch fence. Her knuckles were grey and dusty. You could pluck bass notes on those veins. ‘I knew it. You live near here, don’t you?’ ‘Excuse me?’ ‘I feel sure I know your brother. I can’t be mistaken, at least I don’t think so,’ she said. Her head wobbled slightly as she spoke. ‘No, I’m not mistaken. Your faces are the same underneath. You have exactly the same cheekbones.’ Her accent, to Levi’s ears, was a shameful, comic thing. To Levi, black folk were city folk. People from the islands, people from the country, these were all peculiar to him, obstinately historical – he couldn’t quite believe in them. Like when Howard took the family to Venice and Levi could not shift the idea that the whole place and everybody in it were having him on. No roads? Water taxis? He felt the same way about farmers, anybody who wove anything and his Latin teacher. ‘Right . . . OK, well, I gotta go, man . . . got stuff to do . . . So . . . Don’t you stand up any more, sister, you’ll fall – I’m out now.’ ‘Wait!’ ‘Aw, man . . .’ Levi approached her and she did the weirdest thing: she clasped his hands. ‘I am interested to know what your mother is like.’ ‘My moms? What? Look, sister – ’ said Levi, releasing his hands from hers, ‘I think you got the wrong guy.’ ‘I will call on her, I think,’ she said. ‘I feel that she must be nice, from what I have seen of her family. Is she very glamorous? I don’t know why it is that I always imagine her to be very busy and glamorous.’  On Beauty The thought of a busy and glamorous Kiki made Levi smile. ‘You must be thinking of someone else. My mom’s big like this’ – he stretched his hands wide across the length of the fence – ‘and bored out of her mind .’ ‘Bored . . .’ she repeated, as if this were the most interesting thing anyone had ever told her. ‘Yeah, kinda like you – going a little insane in the membrane,’ he muttered, low enough so as not to be heard. ‘Well, I must confess I am a little bored myself. They are all unpacking inside – but I’m not allowed to help! Of course, I’m not terribly well,’ she confided, ‘and the pills I take . . . they make me feel strange. It’s boring for me – I’m used to being involved .’ ‘Uh-huh . . . well, my mom’s having a party later – maybe you should check it out, man, shake your money-maker . . . Look, OK, sister, nice talking to you, but I gotta go now – you stay cool for me now. Stay out the sun.’ 

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Hence general confusion and incompetency.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  And she had said that a small percentage of people taking the kind of medications she prescribed for me reported having hallucinations during their waking hours. “They’re mostly pleasant visions, ethereal spirits, celestial light patterns, angels, friendly ghosts. Sprites. Nymphs. Glitter. Hallucinating is completely harmless. And it happens mostly to Asians. What, may I ask, is your ethnic background?” “English, French, Swedish, German.” “You’ll be fine.” The LIRR wasn’t exactly celestial, but I wondered if I might be lucid dreaming. I looked down at my hands. It was hard to move them. They smelled like cigarettes and perfume. I blew on them, petted the cool white fur of the coat, made fists and punched down at my thighs. I hummed. It all felt real enough. I took stock of myself. I wasn’t bleeding. I hadn’t pissed myself. I wasn’t wearing any socks. My teeth felt gummy, my mouth tasted like peanuts and cigarettes, though I found no cigarettes in my coat pockets. My debit card and keys were in the back pocket of my jeans. At my feet was a Big Brown Bag from Bloomingdale’s. Inside the bag, a size two Theory black skirt suit and a Calvin Klein matching nude bra and panty set. A small velveteen jewelry box contained an ugly topaz pendant necklace set in fake gold. On the seat beside me was an enormous bouquet of white roses. A square envelope was tucked beneath it, my handwriting on the front: “For Reva.” Beside the flowers, there was a People magazine, a half-empty water bottle, and the wrappers from two Snickers bars. I took a sip from the water bottle and discovered it was filled with gin. Out the window, the sun throbbed pale and yellow on the horizon. Was the sun coming up, or was it setting? Which way was the train headed? I looked at my hands again, at the gray line of dirt under my chewed-up fingernails. When a man in uniform passed, I stopped him. I was too shy to ask the important questions—“What day is it? Where am I going? Is it night or morning?”—so I asked him what the next stop on the train would be instead. “Bethpage coming up. Yours is the station after.” He plucked my ticket from where it was stuck on the seat back in front of me. “You can sleep for a few more minutes,” he winked.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  Your whole face,” she held out her pen and squinted, measuring me, “is at approximately negative ten degrees. That’s counterclockwise to me, but clockwise to you when you go home and look in the mirror. A very minor slant. Really only a trained eye could pick it up. But it’s a significant deviation from when we started your treatment. So it makes sense that you’re having extra trouble sleeping now. You’re having to work that much harder just to hold your mind centered. It’s effort wasted, I’m afraid. If you let your mind drift, you’d find you can adapt quite easily to the deviated reality. But the instinct for self-correction is powerful. Oh, is it powerful. Proper medication should soften the impulse. You had no idea about your facial deviation?” “No,” I answered, and raised my hands to touch my eyes. She reached down into a paper shopping bag and pulled out four sample bottles of Infermiterol. “Double your dosage. These are ten milligram tablets. Take two,” she said, and slid the boxes across her desk. “If vanity is going to keep you up at night, let me just say, it’s a very minor slant.” • • • IN THE CAB HOME, I looked at myself in the reflection of the tinted windows. My face was perfectly aligned: Dr. Tuttle was obviously crazy. In the gold-tone doors of the elevator up to my apartment, I still looked good. I looked like a young Lauren Bacall the morning after. I’m a disheveled Joan Fontaine, I thought. Unlocking the door to my apartment, I was Kim Novak. “You’re prettier than Sharon Stone,” Reva would have said. She was right. I went to the sofa, clicked the TV on. George Walker Bush was taking his oath of office. I watched him squint and give his monologue. “Encouraging responsibility is not a search for scapegoats; it is a call to conscience.” What the hell did that mean? That Americans should take the blame for all the ills of the world? Or just our own world? Who cared? And then, as though I’d summoned her with my mundane cynicism, Reva was knocking on my door once again. I answered somewhat gratefully. “Well, I scheduled the abortion,” she said, rushing past me into the living room. “I need you to tell me I’m doing the right thing.” “I ask you to be citizens: Citizens, not spectators; citizens, not subjects; responsible citizens building communities of service and a nation of character.” “This Bush is so much cuter than the last. Isn’t he? Like a rascal puppy.” “Reva, I’m not feeling well.” “Well, neither am I,” she said. “I just want to wake up and it all be over, and I never have to think about this again. I’m not going to tell Ken. Unless I feel like I should. But only after. Do you think he’ll feel bad? Oh, I feel sick. Oh, I feel terrible.” “Do you want something to take the edge off?” “God, yes.”

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Some of us trying to sleep!’ ‘Sorry!’ whispered Howard. He sat down, picked up his glass and brought it to his mouth, still laughing, hoping to hold her, but at the same moment Kiki stood up, agitated, like a woman reminded of a task she hadn’t completed. She was also still laughing, but not  on beauty and being wrong happily, and, as the laughter slowed, it became a kind of groan, and then a wispy sigh, and then nothing. She wiped her eyes. ‘Well,’ she said. Howard put his glass down on the table, ready to say something, but she was already at the doorway. She told him there was a clean sheet for the divan to be found in the upstairs closet.  Levi needed his sleep. He had to get up early in order to pay a call in Boston and be back in school by midday. By eight thirty he was in the kitchen, keys in his pocket. Before leaving, he stopped by the larder, not quite sure what he was looking for. As a child he had accompanied his mother as she paid calls in Boston neighbourhoods, visiting sick or lonely people she knew from the hospital. She would always arrive with food. But Levi had never paid this kind of call before, not as an adult. He looked blankly into the larder. He heard a door open upstairs. He grabbed three packets of Asian noodle soup and a box of rice pilaf, stuffed them in his knapsack and left the house. The uniform of the streets comes into its own during the January freeze. While others shivered, Levi was cosy in his sweatshirts and hoods, wrapped up in there with his music. He stood by the bus stop, unconsciously reciting, listening to a tune that really called for a girl to be right in front of him, moving when he moved, fitting her curves into his sculpted crevices, bouncing. But the only female in sight was the stone Virgin Mary behind him in the courtyard of St Peter’s. She was, as ever, missing both her thumbs. Her hands were full of snow. Levi studied her pretty, sorrowful face, familiar to him from so many waits at this bus stop. He always liked to have a look at what she was holding. In late spring she held flower petals, which had rained down from the trees above her. When the weather grew less volatile, people put all kinds of weird stuff in her mutilated hands – little chocolates, photos, crucifixes, a teddy bear, once – or  On Beauty sometimes they tied a silk ribbon round her wrist. Levi had never put anything in her hands. He didn’t feel it was his place to do so, not being a Catholic. Not being an anything. The bus approached. Levi did not notice it. At the last minute he stretched out his hand. The bus screeched and stopped a few feet ahead of him.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  The bonds of wedlock are so heavy that it takes two to carry them—sometimes three. —Alexandre Dumas From then on the merry-go-round began. I would go to meetings with Bennett, fully expecting to stay, swearing to myself that I’d never see Adrian again, that it was over, that I’d had my fling and it was finished—then I’d see Adrian and fall apart. I found myself acting out the vocabulary of popular love songs, the clichés of the worst Hollywood movies. My heart skipped a beat. I got misty whenever he was near. He was my sunshine. Our hearts were holding hands. If he was in a room with me, I was in such a state of agitation that I could hardly sit still. It was a kind of madness, a total absorption. I forgot the article I was supposed to write. I forgot everything but him. None of the ploys I had used on myself in the past seemed to work anymore. I tried to keep myself away from him by using con words like “fidelity” and “adultery,” by telling myself that he would interfere with my work, that if I had him I’d be too happy to write. I tried to tell myself I was hurting Bennett, hurting myself, making a spectacle of myself. I was. But nothing helped. I was possessed. The minute he walked into a room and smiled at me, I was a goner. — After lunch on that first day of the Congress, I told Bennett I was taking off to go swimming and I cut out with Adrian. We drove to my hotel where I got my bathing suit, put on my diaphragm, took my other gear, and then left with Adrian for his pension. In his room, I stripped naked in one minute flat and lay on the bed. “Pretty desperate, aren’t you?” he asked. “Yes.” “For God’s sake, why? We have plenty of time.” “How long?” “As long as you want it,” he said, ambiguously. If he left me, in short, it would be my fault. Psychoanalysts are like that. Never fuck a psychoanalyst is my advice to all you young things out there. Anyway, it was no good. Or not much. He was only at half-mast and he thrashed around wildly inside me hoping I wouldn’t notice. I wound up with a tiny ripple of an orgasm and a very sore cunt. But somehow I was pleased. I’ll be able to get free of him now, I thought; he isn’t a good lay. I’ll be able to forget him. “What are you thinking?” he asked. “That I’ve been well and truly fucked.” I remembered having used the same phrase with Bennett once, when it was much more true. “You’re a liar and a hypocrite. What do you want to lie for? I know I haven’t fucked you properly. I can do much better than that.”

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  wherefore is one born Solon and one Xerxes, one Melchizedek,11 and one the man who, soaring through the welkin, lost his son.12 That which in circling hath its nature,13 and is the seal upon the mortal wax, plieth aright its art, but maketh not distinction between one or other tenement. Wherefore it cometh that Esau severeth himself in seed from Jacob, and Quirinus cometh of so base father that he is assigned to Mars. The begotten nature would ever take a course like its begetters, did not divine provision overrule. Now that which was behind thee is before; but that thou mayst know that I delight in thee, I will have a corollary wrap thee round. Ever doth nature, if she find fortune unharmonious with herself, like any other seed out of its proper region, make an ill essay. And if the world down there took heed to the foundation nature layeth, and followed it, it would have satisfaction in its folk. But ye wrench to a religious order him born to gird the sword, and make a king of him who should be for discourse; wherefore your track runneth abroad the road.”

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  But maybe I was already a hostage. The hostage of my fantasies. The hostage of my fears. The hostage of my false definitions. What did it mean to be a woman, anyway? If it meant being what Randy was or what my mother was, then I didn’t want it. If it meant seething resentment and giving lectures on the joys of childbearing, then I didn’t want it. Far better to be an intellectual nun than that. But the intellectual nun was no fun either. She had no juice. And what were the alternatives? Why didn’t someone show me some alternatives? I looked up and grazed my chin on the hem of my mother’s sable coat. “Isadora!” “OK. I’m coming.” I walked out of the closet and confronted Pierre. “Apologize to Randy!” he demanded. “What for?” “For all the bitchy disgusting things you said about me!” Randy yelled. “Apologize!” “I only said that you deny who you are and that I don’t want to be like you. Why does that require an apology?” “Apologize!” she screamed. “Why?” “Since when do you care so fucking much about being Jewish? Since when are you so goddamned holy?” “I’m not so holy,” I said. “Then why are you making such an issue?” Pierre was now using his sweetest Middle-Eastern French accent. “I never started this holy crusade to multiply the true believers—you did. I’m not trying to convert you to anything. I’m just trying to lead my own fucking life if I can manage to find it in all this confusion.” “But Isadora,” Pierre wheedled, “that’s exactly it—we’re trying to help you.” FOURNear the Black Forest Children of tender years were invariably exterminated since by reason of their youth they were unable to work…. Very frequently women would hide their children under their clothes, but of course when we found them we would send the children in to be exterminated. We were required to carry out these exterminations in secrecy, but of course the foul and nauseating stench from the continuous burning of bodies permeated the entire area and all of the people living in the surrounding communities knew that exterminations were going on at Auschwitz. —Affidavit of S.S.-Oberstürmführer Rudolph Hoess, April 5, 1946, Nürnberg The 8:29 to Frankfurt Europe is dusty plush, first-class carriages with first-class dust. And the conductor resembles a pink marzipan pig and goose-steps down the corridor. fräulein! He says it with four umlauts and his red patent-leather chest strap zings the air like a snapped rubber band. And his cap peaks and peaks, a papal crown reaching heavenward to claim an absolute authority, the divine right of Bundesbahn conductors. fräulein! E pericoloso sporgersi. Nicht hinauslehnen. Il est dangereux… the wheels repeat. But I am not so dumb. I know where the tracks end and the train rolls on into silence. I know the station won’t be marked. My hair’s as Aryan as anything. My name is heather. My passport, eyes bluer than Bavarian skies. But he can see

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Hey! ’ But there was no name to put on the end of Hey and a six foot two athletic black man shouting Hey in a dense crowd does not create easiness wherever he goes. ‘She’s got my Discman, this girl, this lady – just up there – sorry, ’scuse me, man – yeah, can I just get by here – Hey! Hey, sister! ’ ‘ZORA – wait up!’ came a voice loud by the side of him, and the girl he’d been trying to stop turned around and gave somebody the finger. The white people near by looked about themselves anxiously. Was there going to be trouble? ‘Aw, fuck you too,’ said the voice resignedly. The young man turned and saw a boy a little shorter than him, but not much, and several shades lighter. ‘Hey, man – is that your girl?’ ‘ What? ’ ‘The girl with the glasses you was just calling? Is she your girl?’ ‘ Hell , no – that’s my sister, bro.’ ‘Man, she’s got my Discman, my music – she must have picked it up by mistake. See, I got hers. I been trying to call her, but I didn’t know her name.’ ‘For real?’ ‘This is hers, right here, man. It ain’t mine.’ ‘Wait here – ’ Few among Levi’s pastoral circle of family and teachers would have believed Levi could launch so promptly into action after an instruction as he did for this young man he had never met before. He pushed swiftly through the crowd, caught his sister by the arm and began to talk to her animatedly. The young man approached more slowly, but got there in time to here Zora say: ‘Don’t be ridiculous – I’m not giving some friend of yours my player – get off me – ’ ‘You’re not listening to me – it’s not yours, it’s his – his ,’ repeated  On Beauty Levi, spotting the young man and pointing at him. The young man smiled weakly under the brim of his baseball cap. Even so small a glimpse of his smile told you that his were perfect white teeth, superbly arranged. ‘Levi, if you and your friend want to be gangstas , piece of advice: you’ve got to take, not ask.’ ‘Zoor – it’s not yours – it’s this guy’s.’ ‘I know my Discman – this is my Discman.’ ‘Bro – ’ said Levi, ‘you got a disc in here?’ The young man nodded. ‘Check the CD, Zora.’ ‘Oh, for God’s sake – see? It’s a recordable disc. Mine.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  I didn’t answer. I spat the rice out and carried all the containers of Chinese food to the garbage. Then I opened each pint of melted ice cream and poured the contents down the drain. I imagined Reva would gasp if she saw all the food I was throwing out, as if eating it all and vomiting it back up wasn’t just as wasteful. I took the garbage out into the hallway and threw it down the trash chute. Having a trash chute was one of my favorite things about my building. It made me feel important, like I was participating in the world. My trash mixed with the trash of others. The things I touched touched things other people had touched. I was contributing. I was connecting. I took a Xanax and an Infermiterol, pulled my soggy coat out of the tub, and ran a hot bath. Then I went to the bedroom to find clean pajamas so that I could put them on right away and fall asleep to Jumpin’ Jack Flash. The furniture in my bedroom had been reorganized. My bed had been turned around so the head of it faced the wall. I pictured myself, in a drugged blackout, assessing my home environs, and using my mind—what part of it, I’m not sure—to make decisions for how to strategically improve the spatial ambiance. Dr. Tuttle had predicted this kind of behavior. “Some activity in sleep is fine just as long as you don’t operate heavy machinery. You don’t have children, do you? Stupid question.” Sleepwalking, sleeptalking, sleep-online-chatting, sleepeating—that was to be expected, especially on Ambien. I’d already done a fair amount of sleepshopping on the computer and at the bodega. I’d sleepordered Chinese delivery. I’d sleepsmoked. I’d sleeptexted and sleeptelephoned. This was nothing new. But my experience with the Infermiterol was different. I remember pulling out a pair of leggings and a thermal shirt from my dresser drawer. I remember listening to the rumble of the water filling the tub while I brushed my teeth. I remember spitting bloody suds into the crusty sink. I even remember testing the temperature of the bath water with my toe. But I don’t remember getting into the water, bathing, washing my hair. I don’t remember leaving the house, walking around, getting into a cab, going places, or doing anything else I may have done that night or the next day or the day after that. As if I’d just blinked, I woke up on an LIRR train wearing jeans and my old running shoes and a long white fur coat, the theme from Tootsie running through my head. Four DR. TUTTLE HAD WARNED ME of “extended nightmares” and “clock-true mind trips,” “paralysis of the imagination,” “perceived space-time anomalies,” “dreams that feel like forays across the multiverse,” and “trips to ulterior dimensions,” et cetera.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  OK, it can mean something , but why everything? Why do thirty years have to  On Beauty go down the toilet because I wanted to touch somebody else? Am I missing something? Is this what it comes down to? Why does the sex have to mean everything ? ‘I have a question.’ The voice, an English voice like his own, came from his left. He turned – she had been hidden by a taller boy sitting right in front of her. The first thing to note were two spots of radiant highlights on her face – maybe the result of the same cocoa butter Kiki used in the winter. A pool of moonlight on her smooth forehead, and another on the tip of her nose; the kind of highlights, it occurred to Howard, that would be impossible to paint without distorting, without misrepresenting, the solid darkness of her true complexion. And her hair had changed again: now it was wormy dreadlocks going every which way, although none was longer than two inches. The tips of each were coloured a sensational orange, as if she had dipped her head into a bucket of sunshine. Because he was not drunk this time he knew now for certain that her breasts were indeed a phenomenon of nature and not of his imagination, for here were the spirited nipples again, working their way through a thick green ribbed woollen jumper. It had a stiff polo neck, several inches from her own skin, through which her neck and head emerged like a plant from its pot. ‘Victoria, yes. I mean – is it Vee? Victoria? Go on.’ ‘It’s Vee.’ Howard could feel the class thrill to this new piece of information – a freshman who was already known to the professor! Of course, the more committed Googlers in this class probably already knew the deal between Howard and the celebrity Kipps, and maybe had gone further and knew that this girl was Kipps’s daughter, and that girl over there, Howard’s. Maybe they even knew something of the culture war shaping up on the campus. Two days ago Kipps had argued strongly against Howard’s Affirmative Action committee in the Wellington Herald . He had criticized not only its aims but challenged its very right to existence. He accused Howard and ‘his supporters’ of privileging liberal perspectives over conservative ones; of suppressing right-wing discussion and debate on campus.  the anatomy lesson The article had been a sensation, as such things are in college towns. Howard’s e-mail in-box this morning was full of missives from outraged colleagues and students pledging their support. An army rushing to fight behind a general who could barely get on his horse. ‘It’s just a small question,’ said Victoria, shrinking a little from all the student eyes upon her. ‘I was just – ’ ‘No, go on, go on,’ said Howard, over her attempts to speak. ‘Just . . . what time is the class?’

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  I remembered a diet column in a medical journal of Bennett’s. It seemed that Miss X had been on a strict diet of 600 calories a day for weeks and weeks and was still unable to lose weight. At first her puzzled doctor thought she was cheating, so he had her make careful lists of everything she ate. She didn’t seem to be cheating. “Are you sure you have listed absolutely every mouthful you ate?” he asked. “Mouthful?” she asked. “Yes,” the doctor said sternly. “I didn’t realize that had calories,” she said. Well, the upshot, of course (with pun intended) was that she was a prostitute swallowing at least ten to fifteen mouthfuls of ejaculate a day and the calories in just one good-sized spurt were enough to get her thrown out of Weight Watchers forever. What was the calorie count? I can’t remember. But ten to fifteen ejaculations turned out to be the equivalent of a seven-course meal at the Tour d’Argent, though of course, they paid you to eat instead of you paying them. Poor people starving from lack of protein all over the world. If only they knew! The cure for starvation for India and the cure for the overpopulation—both in one big swallow! One swallow doesn’t make a summer, but it makes a pretty damn good nightcap. Was it possible that I was really making myself laugh? “Ho ho ho,” I said to my naked self. And then, on the momentum gained from that little burst of false humor, I dug into my suitcase and pulled out my notebooks and worksheets and poems. “I am going to figure out how I got here,” I said to myself. How had I wound up naked and roasted like a half-done chicken, in a seedy dump in Paris? And where the hell was I going next? I sat down on the bed, spread all my notebooks and poems around me, and started flipping through a fat spiral binder which went back almost four years. There was no particular system. Journal jottings, shopping lists, lists of letters to be answered, drafts of irate letters never sent, pasted-in newspaper clippings, ideas for stories, first drafts of poems—everything jumbled together, chaotic, almost illegible. The entries were written in felt-tipped pens of all colors. But again, there was no system of color-coding. Shocking pink, Kelly green, and Mediterranean blue seemed to be the preferred colors, but there was also quite a lot of black and orange and purple. There was scarcely any somber blue-black ink at all. And never pencil. I needed to feel the flow of ink beneath my fingers as I wrote. And I wanted my ephemera to last.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  ipse cogitationes exercitius agitabam, quorsus nova haec et inaudita se caelestium porrigeret intentio, quid subsecivum quamvis iteratae iam traditioni remansisset: nimirum perperam vel minus plene consuluerunt in me sacerdos uterque!: et Hercule iam de fide quoque eorum opinari coeptabam sequius. Quo me cogitationis aestu fluctuantem ad insta insaniae percitum sic instruxit nocturna divinatione clemens imago : “ Nihil est" inquit * Quod numerosa serie religionis, quasi quicquam sit prius omissum, terreare. Quin assidua ista numinum dignatione laetum capesse gaudium, et potius exulta ter futurus quod alii vel semel vix conceditur, teque de isto numero merito praesume semper beatum. Ceterum futura tibi saerorum traditio pernecessaria est, si tecum nunc saltem reputaveris exuvias deae, quas in provincia sumpsisti, in eodem fano depositas per- severare, nec te Romae diebus sollemnibus vel supplicare iis vel, cum praeceptum fuerit, felici illo amictu illustrari posse. Quod felix itaque ac faustum salutareque tibi sit, animo gaudiali rursum sacris initiare diis magnis auctoribus." 30. Hactenus divini somnii suada maiestas, quod usus foret, pronuntiavit. Nec deinceps postposito vel in supinam procrastinationem reiecto negotio, statim sacerdoti meo relatis quae videram, inanimae pro- 1 The words nimirum . . . uterque are Lucius’ actual thoughts, and therefore in Oratio Recta. 592 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK XI not tell what this new vision signified, or what the intent of the celestial gods was, or how anything could remain yet lacking, seeing that twice already I had entered the holy orders, And I doubted lest the former priests had given me ill counsel or not enough, and fearing that they had not faithfully entrusted me, being in this manner as it were incensed. Then while I was in this great doubt and consideration, being driven almost unto mad- ness, the gentle image appeared to me the night following, and giving me admonition said: “There is no occasion why thou shouldest be afraid with so often order of religion, as though there were some- what omitted: but thou shouldest rather rejoice because the gods have found thee so worthy, since as it hath pleased them to call thee three times, when as it is hardly given to any other person to achieve to the order but once; and from that number thou mayst think thyself ever most happy for so great benefits. And know thou that the religion which thou must now receive is right necessary, if thou do but consider that the garment of the goddess which thou tookest in the province doth still remain in the temple there, and so that thou canst not persevere in the worshipping of her in Rome and in making solemnity of the festival day with thy blessed habit. Let then this thing be a glory and -blessing and health to thee, and once more, the great gods being thy helpers, be initiate with glad mind into holy orders."

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  And if thy idle thoughts had not been Elsan waters about thy mind, and their pleasantness a Pyramus to the mulberry, by so many circumstances alone thou wouldst recognize in the tree morally, God’s justice in the ban. But because I see thy mind turned to stone and, stonelike, such in hue that the light of my word dazes thee,12 I also will that thou bear it away within thee, and if not written at least outlined, for the reason that the pilgrim’s staff is brought back wreathed with palm.”13 And I: “Even as wax under the seal, that the imprinted figure changeth not, my brain is now stamped by you. But why doth your longed-for word soar so far beyond my sight, that the more it straineth the more it loses it?” “That thou mayst know,” she said, “that School which thou hast followed, and see how its teaching can keep pace with my word; and mayst see your way so far distant from the divine way, as the heaven which highest speeds is removed from earth.” Wherefore I answered her: “I remember not that I e’er estranged me from you, nor have I conscience thereof that gnaws me.” “And if thou canst not remember it,” smiling she answered, “now bethink thee how thou didst drink of Lethe this very day; and if from smoke fire is argued, this forgetfulness clearly proves fault in thy desire otherwhere intent.14 But now my words shall be naked, so far as shall be meet to discover them to thy rude vision.” Both more refulgent, and with slower steps, the sun was holding the meridian circle, which varies hither and thither as positions vary,15 when did halt, even as he halts who goes for escort before folk, if he finds aught that is strange or the traces thereof, those seven ladies at the margin of a pale shadow, such as beneath green leaves and dark boughs, the Alp casts over its cool streams.16 In front of them I seemed to behold Euphrates and Tigris welling up from one spring, and parting like friends that linger.17 “O light, O glory of human kind, what water is this that here pours forth from one source, and self from self doth wend away?” At such prayer was said to me: “Pray Matilda that she tell it thee”; and here made answer, as he doth who frees him from blame, the fair Lady: “This and other things have been told him by me,18 and sure am I that Lethe’s water hid them not from him.” And Beatrice: “Haply a greater care that oft bereaves of memory hath dimmed his mind’s eyes. But behold Eunoë, which there flows on; lead him to it, and as thou art wont, requicken his fainting virtue.” As a gentle soul that maketh no excuse, but makes her will of the will of another, soon as it is disclosed by outward sign,

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  It was Dr. Tuttle. I cleared my throat and tried to sound like a normal person. “Good morning, Dr. Tuttle,” I said. “It’s four in the afternoon,” she said. “I’m sorry it took me so long to return your call. My cats had an emergency. Are you feeling better? The symptoms you described in your message, frankly, puzzle me.” I realized I was wearing a hot pink Juicy Couture sweat suit. A tag from the Jewish Women’s Council Thrift Shop dangled from the cuff. There were new used VHS tapes stacked on the bare floor in the hallway, all Sydney Pollack movies: Three Days of the Condor, Absence of Malice, The Way We Were. Tootsie. Out of Africa. I had no memory of ordering Chinese food or going to the thrift store. And I had no memory of what I’d said in any message. Dr. Tuttle said she’d been “baffled by the emotional intensity” in my voice. “I’m concerned for you. I’m very, very, very concerned.” She sounded like she always sounded, her voice a breathy, high-pitched hoot. “When you say you’re questioning your own existence,” she asked, “do you mean you’re reading philosophy books? Or is this something you thought up on your own? Because if it’s suicide, I can give you something for that.” “No, no, nothing like suicide. I was just philosophizing, yes,” I said. “Just thinking too much, I guess.” “That’s not a good sign. It could lead to psychosis. How are you sleeping?” “Not enough,” I said. “I suspected as much. Try a hot shower and some chamomile tea. It should settle you down. And give the Infermiterol a try. Studies have shown it wipes out existential anxiety better than Prozac.” I didn’t want to admit that I’d already tried it, and it had resulted in this strange mess of food and thrift store purchases, at the very least. “Thank you, doctor,” I said. I hung up the phone and found a voice mail from Reva giving me the details for her mother’s funeral and reception in Long Island later that week. She sounded soft, sad, and a little scripted. “Things are moving forward. I guess time is like that—it just keeps going. I hope you can come to the funeral. My mom really liked you.” I’d met her mother once when she’d visited Reva at school senior year, but I’d completely forgotten it. “We set the date for New Year’s Eve. If you could come up early to the house, that would be good,” she said. “The train leaves from Penn Station every hour.” She gave me specific instructions for how to buy my train ticket, where to stand on the platform, which car to sit in, where to get off. “You’ll finally meet my dad.” I almost deleted the message, but then I thought I’d better keep it, and let my mailbox fill back up, so nobody could leave me any more voice mails.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  This choir is the heavenly host and simultaneously the devil’s army. It is also every person who has changed you during your time on this earth: your many lovers; your family; your enemies, the nameless, faceless woman who slept with your husband; the man you thought you were going to marry; the man you did. The job of this choir is judgement. The men sing first, and their judgement is very severe. And when the women join in there is no respite, the debate only grows louder and sterner. For it is a debate – you realize that now. The judgement is not yet decided. It is surprising how dramatic the fight for your measly soul turns out to be. Also surprising are the mermaids and the apes that persist on dancing around each other and sliding down an ornate staircase during the Kyrie , which, according to the programme notes, features no such action, even in the metaphorical sense. Kyrie eleison . Christe eleison . Kyrie eleison .  On Beauty That is all that happens in the Kyrie . No apes, just Latin. But for Kiki, it was apes and mermaids all the same. The experience of listening to an hour’s music you barely know in a dead language you do not understand is a strange falling and rising experience. For minutes at a time you are walking deep into it, you seem to understand. Then, without knowing how or when exactly, you discover you have wandered away, bored or tired from the effort, and now you are nowhere near the music. You refer to the programme notes. The notes reveal that the past fifteen minutes of wrangling over your soul have been merely the repetition of a single inconsequential line. Somewhere around the Confutatis , Kiki’s careful tracing of the live music with the literal programme broke down. She didn’t know where she was now. In the Lacrimosa or miles ahead? Stuck in the middle or nearing the end? She turned to ask Howard, but he was asleep. A glimpse to her right revealed Zora concentrating on her Discman, through which a recording of the voice of a Professor N. R. A. Gould carefully guided her through each movement. Poor Zora – she lived through footnotes. It was the same in Paris: so intent was she upon reading the guide book to Sacre´-Cœur that she walked directly into an altar, cutting her forehead open.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  “Tell me about one of them, just so I can update my file,” Dr. Tuttle said, pulling out a folder. She seemed harried and hot, but she was not disorganized. “Well . . .” I mined my mind for something disturbing. All I could recall were the plots of the terrible movies I’d recently seen. “I had this one nightmare where I moved to Las Vegas and met a seamstress and gave lap dances. Then I ran into an old friend who gave me a floppy disk full of government secrets and I became a suspect in a murder case and the NSA chased me, and instead of getting a Porsche for Christmas, a football team left me stranded in the desert.” Dr. Tuttle scribbled dutifully, then lifted her head, waiting for more. “So I started eating sand to try to kill myself instead of dying of dehydration. It was awful.” “Very troubling,” Dr. Tuttle murmured. I wobbled against the bookshelf. It was difficult to stay upright—two months of sleep had made my muscles wither. And I could still feel the trazodone I’d taken that morning. “Try to sleep on your side when possible. There was recently a study in Australia that said that when you sleep on your back, you’re more likely to have nightmares about drowning. It’s not conclusive, of course, since they’re on the opposite side of the Earth. So actually, you might want to try sleeping on your stomach instead, and see what that does.” “Dr. Tuttle,” I began, “I was wondering if you could prescribe something a little stronger for bedtime. When I’m tossing and turning at night, I get so frustrated. It’s like I’m in hell.” “Hell? I can give you something for that,” she said, reaching for her prescription pad. “Mind over matter, people say. But what is matter, anyway? When you look at it under a microscope, it’s just tiny bits of stuff. Atomic particles. Subatomic particles. Look deeper and deeper and eventually you’ll find nothing. We’re mostly empty space. We’re mostly nothing. Tra-la-la. And we’re all the same nothingness. You and me, just filling the space with nothingness. We could walk through walls if we put our minds to it, people say. What they don’t mention is that walking through a wall would most likely kill you. Don’t forget that.” “I’ll keep it in mind.” Dr. Tuttle handed me the prescriptions. “Here, have some samples,” she said, pushing a basket of Promaxatine toward me. “Oh no, wait, these are for impotent obsessive compulsives. They’d keep you up at night.” She pulled the basket back. “See you in a month.” I took a cab home, filled the new prescriptions and refilled the old ones at Rite Aid, bought a pack of Skittles, and went home and ate the Skittles and a few leftover primidone and went back to sleep. • • •