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 Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  course you start to see the contradictions in what you’ve been taught. You start to realize that something doesn’t feel right and doesn’t look right. Something starts to stink. . . . I used to refer to myself as a religious fanatic, but I realize I was kicked out of the LDS Church because I was really a truth fanatic. I have the need to resolve contradictions, which is what got me excommunicated.” All modern religions are fraudulent, Dan contends, not just the LDS Church. “Organized religion is hate masquerading as love. Which inevitably leads you back to the religion as it originally existed, before it was corrupted. It leads you to become a fundamentalist. You can see where the Church lost the answers by giving up its fundamental principles. So you find your beliefs evolving toward fundamentalism. “But then I found out that there weren’t answers in fundamentalism, either. You see some of the same contradictions. Fortunately for me, I saw this about the time I came here to the monastery. That’s when everything started to slowly distill and come together.” At the core of Dan’s transmogrified faith is his newfound conviction that he is Elijah, the biblical prophet known for his solitary ways and unyielding devotion to God. And as Elijah, Dan is certain, it will be his job to announce the Second Coming of Christ in the Final Days. According to Dan, “In my role as Elijah, I’m like John the Baptist. Elijah means ‘forerunner,’ the one who prepares the way. John the Baptist prepared the way for the First Advent of Christ. I’m here to prepare the way for the return of the Son of Man.” Dan believes, as he did when he was a fundamentalist Mormon, that the most salient fact of existence is the immutable division of humankind into those who are inherently righteous and those who are inherently evil. “Some people were chosen to be children of God,” Dan explains, “and others became children of the devil. Either you’re a brother—a child of God—or an asshole—a child of the devil. And you can’t do anything to change it. “There are two fathers, God and the devil. And all the children of God possess something none of the children of the devil possess, which is the gift of love. The devil could not program love into his children because love is something he doesn’t possess or understand. It’s beyond his knowledge. All the children of the devil possess is greed, hatred, envy, and jealousy.”

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  What could she do but leave it alone...? So she left it alone. Miss Chatterley came sometimes, with her aristocratic thin face, and triumphed, finding nothing altered. She would never forgive Connie for ousting her from her union in consciousness with her brother. It was she, Emma, who should be bringing forth the stories, these books, with him; the Chatterley stories, something new in the world, that _they_, the Chatterleys, had put there. There was no other standard. There was no organic connection with the thought and expression that had gone before. Only something new in the world: the Chatterley books, entirely personal. Connie's father, when he paid a flying visit to Wragby, said in private to his daughter: As for Clifford's writing, it's smart, but there's nothing in it. It won't last!... Connie looked at the burly Scottish knight who had done himself well all his life, and her eyes, her big, still-wondering blue eyes became vague. Nothing in it! What did he mean by _nothing in it_? If the critics praised it, and Clifford's name was almost famous, and it even brought in money ... what did her father mean by saying there was nothing in Clifford's writing? What else could there be? For Connie had adopted the standard of the young: what there was in the moment was everything. And moments followed one another without necessarily belonging to one another. It was in her second winter at Wragby her father said to her: "I hope, Connie, you won't let circumstances force you into being a _demi-vierge_." "A _demi-vierge_!" replied Connie vaguely. "Why? Why not?" "Unless you like it, of course!" said her father hastily. To Clifford he said the same, when the two men were alone: "I'm afraid it doesn't quite suit Connie to be a _demi-vierge_." "A half-virgin!" replied Clifford, translating the phrase to be sure of it. He thought for a moment, then flushed very red. He was angry and offended. "In what way doesn't it suit her?" he asked stiffly. "She's getting thin ... angular. It's not her style. She's not the pilchard sort of little slip of a girl, she's a bonny Scotch trout." "Without the spots, of course!" said Clifford. He wanted to say something later to Connie about the _demi-vierge_ business ... the half-virgin state of her affairs. But he could not bring himself to do it. He was at once too intimate with her and not intimate enough. He was so very much at one with her, in his mind and hers, but bodily they were non-existent to one another, and neither could bear to drag in the _corpus delicti_. They were so intimate, and utterly out of touch.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  We live in this world, and escapist fantasies about other worlds where we dominate or are the exclusive inhabitants can keep us entertained and in high spirits, but when we open our eyes, reality will still be here, and it cries out for comment, criticism, rearrangement, a mirror. None of the stories that include men describe the exchange of body fluids because of Alyson Publications’ policy against eroticizing high-risk sex. After overcoming my inhibitions about putting the smell and taste of male sexuality on paper, it gave me a bad case of cognitive dissonance to go back and write it out. I hope I managed to retain the highly charged emotional content of these stories without cum touching taste buds or mucous membranes. Porn can be a valuable way to teach people how to have hot and satisfying “safer sex.” But I don’t believe “unsafe” porn causes AIDS any more than I think “violent” porn causes rape. Nobody ever caught a disease from or got assaulted by a book. Images and descriptions are forever getting confused with live acts. It seems a shame to me if people must relinquish fantasizing about all the aspects of their partners’ bodies as well as experiencing them directly. Keeping these stories in this book was so important to me that I was willing to rewrite them, but I also need to say that it feels like a form of bowdlerization, even censorship, and if it were my choice, I would have left them in their original, sleazy form. Safe sex porn (or guidelines) written for gay men aren’t much use to lesbians. Most of the lesbian stories in Macho Sluts were written prior to the AIDS epidemic, and all of them include sexual activities that could transmit disease. I wouldn’t want any of my readers to think that lesbians are magically exempt from AIDS. Please read “A note on Lesbians, AIDS, and Safer Sex” which follows. The title of this book was a piece of graffiti that had been spray-painted by an anonymous street artist above the Broadway tunnel in San Francisco. I don’t know the gender or the sexual orientation of the person who coined this phrase, but if the shoe fits, I’ll go dancing. In Pornography: Men Possessing Women (Perigee/G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1981, pp. 199-202), Andrea Dworkin writes: The word pornography , derived from the ancient Green porne and graphos , means ‘writing about whores.’ Porne means … the lowest class of whore, which in ancient Greece was the brothel slut available to all male citizens … The word pornography does not mean ‘writing about sex’ or ‘depictions of the erotic’ … or any other such euphemism. It means the graphic depiction of women as vile whores … In the male system, women are sex; sex is the whore. Buying her is buying pornography. Having her is having pornography … Seeing her sex, especially her genitals, is seeing pornography … Wanting her means wanting pornography. Being her means being pornography.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Once in her room, however, she felt still vague and confused. She didn't know what to think. What sort of a man was he, really? Did he really like her? Not much, she felt. Yet he was kind. There was something, a sort of warm naive kindness, curious and sudden, that almost opened her womb to him. But she felt he might be kind like that to any woman. Though even so, it was curiously soothing, comforting. And he was a passionate man, wholesome and passionate. But perhaps he wasn't quite individual enough; he might be the same with any woman as he had been with her. It really wasn't personal. She was only really a female to him. But perhaps that was better. And after all, he was kind to the female in her, which no man had ever been. Men were very kind to the _person_ she was, but rather cruel to the female, despising her or ignoring her altogether. Men were awfully kind to Constance Reid or to Lady Chatterley; but not to her womb they weren't kind. And he took no notice of Constance or of Lady Chatterley; he just softly stroked her loins or her breasts. She went to the wood next day. It was a grey, still afternoon, with the dark-green dogs'-mercury spreading under the hazel copse, and all the trees making a silent effort to open their buds. Today she could almost feel it in her own body, the huge heave of the sap in the massive trees, upwards, up, up to the bud-tips, there to push into little flamey oak-leaves, bronze as blood. It was like a tide running turgid upward, and spreading on the sky. She came to the clearing, but he was not there. She had only half expected him. The pheasant chicks were running lightly abroad, light as insects, from the coops where the yellow hens clucked anxiously. Connie sat and watched them, and waited. She only waited. Even the chicks she hardly saw. She waited. The time passed with dream-like slowness, and he did not come. She had only half expected him. He never came in the afternoon. She must go home to tea. But she had to force herself to leave. As she went home, a fine drizzle of rain fell. "Is it raining again?" said Clifford, seeing her shake her hat. "Just drizzle." She poured tea in silence, absorbed in a sort of obstinacy. She did want to see the keeper today, to see if it were really real. If it were really real. "Shall I read a little to you afterwards?" said Clifford. She looked at him. Had he sensed something? "The spring makes me feel queer--I thought I might rest a little," she said. "Just as you like. Not feeling really unwell, are you?" "No! Only rather tired--with the spring. Will you have Mrs. Bolton to play something with you?" "No! I think I'll listen in."

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

  All of us recognized the immorality of war.If I was not prepared to prosecute my assailant, much less should I be willing to participate in a war, especially when I knew nothing of the justice or otherwise of the cause of the combatants. Friends of course knew that I had previously served in the Boer War, but they assumed that my views had since undergone a change. As a matter of fact the very same line of argument that persuaded me to take part in the Boer War had weighed with me on this occasion. It was quite clear to me that participation in war could never be consistent with ahimsa . But it is not always given to one to be equally clear about one’s duty. A votary of truth is often obliged to grope in the dark. Ahimsa is a comprehensive principle. We are helpless mortals caught in the conflagration of himsa . The saying that life lives on life has a deep meaning in it. Man cannot for a moment live without consciously or unconsciously committing outward himsa . The very fact of his living eating, drinking and moving about necessarily involves some himsa , destruction of life, be it ever so minute. A votary of ahimsa therefore remains true to his faith if the spring of all his actions is compassion, if he shuns to the best of his ability the destruction of the tiniest creature, tries to save it, and thus incessantly strives to be free from the deadly coil of himsa . He will be constantly growing in self-restraint and compassion, but he can never become entirely free from outward himsa . Then again, because underlying ahimsa is the unity of all life, the error of one cannot but affect all, and hence man cannot be wholly free from himsa . So long as he continues to be a social being, he cannot but participate in the himsa that the very existence of society involves. When two nations are fighting, the duty of a votary of ahimsa is to stop the war. He who is not equal to that duty, he who has no power of resisting war, he who is not qualified to resist war, may take part in war, and yet whole-heartedly try to free himself, his nation and the world from war. I had hoped to improve status and that of my people through the British Empire. Whilst in England I was enjoying the protection of the British Fleet, and taking shelter as I did under its armed might, I was directly participating in its potential violence.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  There was silence. He sat staring out of the window, with a faint grin, half mockery, half bitterness, on his face. She hated his grin. "You've not taken any precautions against having a child then?" he asked her suddenly. "Because I haven't." "No," she said faintly. "I should hate that." He looked at her, then again with the peculiar subtle grin out of the window. There was a tense silence. At last he turned to her and said satirically: "That was why you wanted me then, to get a child?" She hung her head. "No. Not really," she said. "What then, _really_?" he asked rather bitingly. She looked up at him reproachfully, saying: "I don't know." He broke into a laugh. "Then I'm damned if I do," he said. There was a long pause of silence, a cold silence. "Well," he said at last. "It's as your Ladyship likes. If you get the baby, Sir Clifford's welcome to it. I shan't have lost anything. On the contrary, I've had a very nice experience, very nice indeed!" and he stretched in a half suppressed sort of yawn. "If you've made use of me," he said, "it's not the first time I've been made use of; and I don't suppose it's ever been as pleasant as this time; though of course one can't feel tremendously dignified about it." He stretched again, curiously, his muscles quivering, and his jaw oddly set. "But I didn't make use of you," she said, pleading. "At your Ladyship's service," he replied. "No," she said. "I liked your body." "Did you?" he replied, and he laughed. "Well then, we're quits, because I liked yours." He looked at her with queer darkened eyes. "Would you like to go upstairs now?" he asked her, in a strangled sort of voice. "No, not here. Not now!" she said heavily, though if he had used any power over her, she would have gone, for she had no strength against him. He turned his face away again, and seemed to forget her. "I want to touch you like you touch me," she said. "I've never really touched your body." He looked at her, and smiled again. "Now?" he said. "No! No! Not here! At the hut. Would you mind?" "How do I touch you?" he asked. "When you feel me." He looked at her, and met her heavy, anxious eyes. "And do you like it when I feel you?" he asked, laughing at her still. "Yes, do you?" she said. "Oh, me!" Then he changed his tone. "Yes," he said. "You know without asking." Which was true. She rose and picked up her hat. "I must go," she said. "Will you go?" he replied politely. She wanted him to touch her, to say something to her, but he said nothing, only waited politely. "Thank you for the tea," she said. "I haven't thanked your Ladyship for doing me the honours of my teapot," he said.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  “It was an exciting, stormy life, and I could enjoy the ups and downs only because there was an eye in the storm: my older sister, Berenice. She was the one who packed my trunk, found my missing glove, somehow got me dinner if we arrived late and the hotel kitchen was closed, nursed me when I was ill, taught me my alphabet and my embroidery stitches, and petted my little cunny when I could not sleep. Mamma would often talk of hiring a governess, but our circumstances were too irregular to make it practical. We had sporadic lessons from a series of tutors, usually hired and fired by Berenice. “In the beginning, Berenice would report me to Mamma when I was bad, and Mamma would punish me. Even as a child, I realized that Berenice would sometimes set traps for me and present false evidence of sins I had never committed. She would always arrange to be present when I was corrected. I could not understand why the sister I loved and trusted found pleasure in this sort of injustice. I was further confused because when Mamma heard that I had been misbehaving, her reactions were completely unpredictable. If a suitor were in the room, she might want to get rid of me as quickly as possible, so she would scold me a little, give me an indulgent kiss of forgiveness, and send me back to Berenice, who would be enraged and treat me coldly for days. If she had just read a sarcastic review or had lost a lover to a rival, she might come at me with her fan or a slipper and leave me devastated. “I finally went to Berenice and implored her to spare me from this round of false accusations, cruel punishments for small faults, and undeserved forgiveness for grave errors. I pleaded that I was dependent upon her love and justice to make my life bearable, and that without her I would sink into despair. Then I burst into tears. She listened to me weep for a very long time before she raised me to my feet, dried my tears, and told me she had a solution to propose. I stammered that I would agree to anything, but she forbade me to agree before I heard her out. She put me on the hassock at her feet while she sat in a big, overstuffed chair, and she offered me the following terms. I listened raptly, staring at the high black boots she insisted on wearing regardless of the fashions of the moment.” Elise opened the waffle iron, removed the crisp, brown square, and popped it onto the plate Clarissa held out. The greedy girl smacked her lips. “You start eating now,” Elise said. “I’ll have one myself, then make you another. The whipped cream is in the icebox.” “More story,” Clarissa insisted, her mouth full.

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

  All these things created in me a dislike for Christianity. But the fact that I had learnt to be tolerant to other religions did not mean that I had any living faith in God. I happened, about this time, to come across Manusmriti[2] which was amongst my father’s collection. The story of the creation and similar things in it did not impress me very much, but on the contrary made me incline somewhat towards atheism. There was a cousin of mine, still alive, for whose intellect I had great regard. To him I turned with my doubts. But he could not resolve them. He sent me away with this answer: ‘When you grow up, you will be able to solve these doubts yourself. These questions ought not to be raised at your age.’ I was silenced, but was not comforted. Chapters about diet and the like in Manusmriti seemed to me to run contrary to daily practice. To my doubts as to this also, I got the same answer.’With intellect more developed and with more reading I shall understand it better,’ I said to myself. Manusmriti at any rate did not then teach me ahimsa. I have told the story of my meat-eating. Manusmriti seemed to support it. I also felt that it was quite moral to kill serpents, bugs and the like. I remember to have killed at that age bugs and such other insects, regarding it as a duty. But one thing took deep root in me the conviction that morality is the basis of things, and that truth is the substance of all morality. Truth became my sole objective. It began to grow in magnitude every day, and my definition of it also has been ever widening. A Gujarati didactic stanza likewise gripped my mind and heart. Its Precept-return good for evil-became my guiding principle. It became such a passion with me that I began numerous experiments in it. Here are those (for me) wonderful lines: For a bowl of water give a goodly meal: For a kindly greeting bow thou down with zeal: For a simple penny pay thou back with gold: If thy life be rescued, life do not withhold. Thus the words and actions of the wise regard; Every little service tenfold they reward. But the truly noble know all men as one, And return with gladness good for evil done. Eleventh day of the bright and the dark half of a lunar month ↵ Laws of Manu, a Hindu law-giver. They have the sanction of religion. ↵ 13PREPARATION FOR ENGLANDI passed the matriculation examination in 1887. It then used to be held at two centres, Ahmedabad and Bombay. The general poverty of the country naturally led Kathiawad students to prefer the nearer and the cheaper centre. The poverty of my family likewise dictated to me the same choice. This was my first journey from Rajkot to Ahmedabad and that too without a companion.

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

  I shared this mental churning with my Christian friends whenever there was an opportunity, but their answers could not satisfy me. Thus if I could not accept Christianity either as a perfect, or the greatest religion, neither was I then convinced of Hinduism being such. Hindu defects were pressingly visible to me. If untouchability could be a part of Hinduism, it could but be a rotten part or an excrescence. I could not understand the raison d’etre of a multitude of sects and castes. What was the meaning of saying that the Vedas were the inspired Word of God? If they were inspired, why not also the Bible and the Koran? As Christian friends were endeavouring to convert me, even so were Musalman friends. Abdulla Sheth had kept on inducing me to study Islam, and of course he had always something to say regarding its beauty. I expressed my difficulties in a letter to Raychandbhai. I also corresponded with other religious authorities in India and received answers from them. Raychandbhai’s letter somewhat pacified me. He asked me to be patient and to study Hinduism more deeply. One of his sentences was to this effect: ‘On a dispassionate view of the question I am convinced that no other religion has the subtle and profound thought of Hinduism, its vision of the soul, or its charity.’ I purchased Sale’s translation of the Koran and began reading it. I also obtained other books on Islam. I communicated with Christian friends in England. One of them introduced me to Edward Maitland, with whom I opened correspondence. He sent me The Perfect Way, a book he had written in collaboration with Anna Kingsford. The book was a repudiation of the current Christian belief. He also sent me another book, The New Interpretation of the Bible. I liked both. They seemed to support Hinduism. Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You overwhelmed me. It left an abiding impression on me. Before the independent thinking, profound morality, and the truthfulness of this book, all the books given me by Mr. Coates seemed to pale into insignificance. My studies thus carried me in a direction unthought of by the Christian friends. My correspondence with Edward Maitland was fairly prolonged, and that with Raychandbhai continued until his death. I read some of the books he sent me. These included Panchikaran, Maniratnamala, Mumukshu Prakaran of Yogavasishtha, Haribhadra Suri’s Shaddarshana Samuchchaya and others. Though I took a path my Christian friends had not intended for me, I have remained for indebted to them for the religious quest that they awakened in me. I shall always cherish the memory of their contact. The years that followed had more, not less, of such sweet and sacred contacts in store for me. 43MAN PROPOSES, GOD DISPOSESThe case having been concluded, I had no reason for staying in Pretoria. So I went back to Durban and began to make preparations for my return home.

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

  Thus on one and the same day I was faced with two contradictory positions. When danger to life had been no more than imaginary, Mr. Laughton advised me to launch forth openly. I accepted the advice. When the danger was quite real, another friend gave me the contrary advice, and I accepted that too. Who can say whether I did so because I saw that my life was in jeopardy, or because I did not want to put my friend’s life and property or the lives of my wife and children in danger? Who can say for certain that I was right both when I faced the crowd in the first instance bravely, as it was said, and when I escaped from it in disguise? It is idle to adjudicate upon the right and wrong of incidents that have already happened. It is useful to understand them and, if possible, to learn a lesson from them for the future. It is difficult to say for certain how a particular man would act in a particular set of circumstances. We can also see that judging a man from his outward act is no more than a doubtful inference, inasmuch as it is not based on sufficient data. Be that as it may, the preparations for escape made me forget my injuries. As suggested by the Superintendent, I put on an Indian constable’s uniform and wore on my head a Madrasi scarf, wrapped round a plate to serve as a helmet. Two detectives accompanied me, one of them disguised as an Indian merchant and with his face painted to resemble that of an Indian. I forget the disguise of the other. We reached a neighbouring shop by a by-lane and, making our way through the gunny bags piled in the godown, escaped by the gate of the shop and threaded our way through the crowd to a carriage that had been kept for me at the end of the street. In this we drove off to the same police station where Mr. Alexander had offered me refuge a short time before, and I thanked him and the detective officers. Whilst I had been thus effecting my escape Mr. Alexander had kept the crowd

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  "That's right. But you're as much a Miss Dainty as ever, aren't you? Why can't you think about things more cheerfully and casually?" (What lies I was telling!) "That's all right for a man. But not for a married woman. You'll understand all right when you have a wife. I don't think it's possible to be too careful about such things." "Now you're sounding like somebody's elder sister giving advice. . . ." Just then Kusano returned and our conversation was broken off. Even during our conversation my mind had been filled with an endless swarm of doubts. I swore by God that my mood of wanting to meet Sonoko was a genuine one. But in it there was clearly not the slightest sexual desire. So then, what kind of desire was it that made me want to meet her so? Might it not be only self-deception again, this passion that so obviously was not sexual desire? In the first place, can there be such a thing as love that has no basis whatsoever in sexual desire? Isn't that a clear and obvious absurdity? But then another thought occurred to me: if we grant that human passion has the power to rise above all absurdity, how can it be argued that it does not have the power to rise above the absurdities of passion itself? Since that decisive night I had cleverly managed to avoid women. Since that night I had not touched the lips of a single woman—much less the ephebic lips that so genuinely called to my desire—not even if I found myself in a situation in which it was rude not to do so. . . . So then, the advent of summer threatened my solitude even more than the spring had done. And full summer lashed the galloping horses of my sexual desire. It consumed and tortured my flesh. To endure it I had to resort to my bad habit sometimes as much as five times in one day. My ignorance had been enlightened by reading the theories of Hirschfeld, who explains inversion as a perfectly simple biological phenomenon. I realized now that even that decisive night had been a natural consequence and that there was no cause for shame. My imaginative lust for the ephebe, although never once turning to pederasty, had taken a well-defined form, which the investigators have shown to be almost equally prevalent. It is said that the same impulse as this I was feeling is not uncommon among Germans. The diary of Count von Platen provides a most representative example.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Once in her room, however, she felt still vague and confused. She didn't know what to think. What sort of a man was he, really? Did he really like her? Not much, she felt. Yet he was kind. There was something, a sort of warm naive kindness, curious and sudden, that almost opened her womb to him. But she felt he might be kind like that to any woman. Though even so, it was curiously soothing, comforting. And he was a passionate man, wholesome and passionate. But perhaps he wasn't quite individual enough; he might be the same with any woman as he had been with her. It really wasn't personal. She was only really a female to him. But perhaps that was better. And after all, he was kind to the female in her, which no man had ever been. Men were very kind to the _person_ she was, but rather cruel to the female, despising her or ignoring her altogether. Men were awfully kind to Constance Reid or to Lady Chatterley; but not to her womb they weren't kind. And he took no notice of Constance or of Lady Chatterley; he just softly stroked her loins or her breasts. She went to the wood next day. It was a grey, still afternoon, with the dark-green dogs'-mercury spreading under the hazel copse, and all the trees making a silent effort to open their buds. Today she could almost feel it in her own body, the huge heave of the sap in the massive trees, upwards, up, up to the bud-tips, there to push into little flamey oak-leaves, bronze as blood. It was like a tide running turgid upward, and spreading on the sky. She came to the clearing, but he was not there. She had only half expected him. The pheasant chicks were running lightly abroad, light as insects, from the coops where the yellow hens clucked anxiously. Connie sat and watched them, and waited. She only waited. Even the chicks she hardly saw. She waited. The time passed with dream-like slowness, and he did not come. She had only half expected him. He never came in the afternoon. She must go home to tea. But she had to force herself to leave. As she went home, a fine drizzle of rain fell. "Is it raining again?" said Clifford, seeing her shake her hat. "Just drizzle." She poured tea in silence, absorbed in a sort of obstinacy. She did want to see the keeper today, to see if it were really real. If it were really real. "Shall I read a little to you afterwards?" said Clifford. She looked at him. Had he sensed something? "The spring makes me feel queer--I thought I might rest a little," she said. "Just as you like. Not feeling really unwell, are you?" "No! Only rather tired--with the spring. Will you have Mrs. Bolton to play something with you?" "No! I think I'll listen in."

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

  shake, and heavy throbbing would start on an attempt to speak standing for any length of time. I have ever felt at home in the south. Thanks to my South African work I felt I had some sort of special right over the Tamils and Telugus and the good people of the south have never belied my belief. The invitation had come over the signature of the late Sjt. Kasturi Ranga Iyengar. But the man behind the invitation, as I subsequently learnt on my way to Madras, was Rajagopalachari. This might be said to be my first acquaintance with him; at any rate this was the first time that we came to know each other personally. Rajaagopalachari had then only recently left Salem to settle down for legal practice in Madras at the pressing invitation of friends like the late Sjt. Kasturi Ranga Iyengar, and that with a view to taking a more active part in public life. It was with him that we had put up in Madras. This discovery I made only after we had stayed with him for a couple of days. For, since the bungalow that we were staying in belonged to Sjt. Kasturi Ranga Iyengar. I was under the impression that we were his guests. Mahadev Desai, however, corrected me. He very soon formed a close acquaintance with Rajagopalachari, who, from his innate shyness, kept himself constantly in the background. But Mahadev put me on my guard. ‘you should cultivate this man’ he said to me one day. And so I did. We daily discussed together plans of the fight, but beyond the holding of public meetings I could not then think of any other programme. I felt myself at a loss to discover how to offer civil disobedience against the Rowlatt Bill if it was finally passed into law. One could disobey it only if the Government gave one the opportunity for it. Failing that, could we civilly disobey other laws? And if so, where was the line to be drawn? These and a host of similar questions formed the theme of these discussions of ours.

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

  ON THE WAY TO PRETORIA I soon came in contact with the Christian Indians living in Durban. The Court Interpreter, Mr. Paul, was a Roman Catholic. I made his acquaintance, as also that of the late Mr. Subhan Godfrey, then a teacher under the Protestant Mission, and father of James Godfery who as a member of the South African Deputation, visited India in 1924. I likewise met the late Parsi Rustomji and the late Adamji Miyakhan about the same time. All these friends, who up to then had never met one another except on business, came ultimately into close contact, as we shall see later. Whilst I was thus widening the circle of my acquaintance, the firm received a letter from their lawyer saying that preparations should be made for the case, and that Abdulla Sheth should go to Pretoria himself or send representative. Abdulla Sheth gave me this letter to read, and asked me if I would go to Pretoria. ‘I can only say after I have understood the case from you,’ said I. ‘At present I am at a loss to know what I have to do there.’ He thereupon asked his clerks to explain the case to me. As I began to study the case, I felt as though I ought to begin from the A B C of the subject. During the few days I had had at Zanzibar, I had been to the court to see the work there. A Parsi lawyer was examining a witness and asking him question regarding credit and debit entries in account books. It was all Greek to me. Book-keeping I had learnt neither at school nor during my stay in England. And the case for which I had come to South Africa was mainly about accounts. Only one who knew accounts could understand and explain it. The clerk went on talking about this debited and that credited, and I felt more and more confused. I did not know what a P. Note meant. I failed to find the word in the dictionary. I

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  That's probably the reason you have such peace of mind. It's enough to make me afraid." "Why?" she asked, looking up at me with wise black eyes. I was caught between her glance and her innocent question, both as free of doubt as is the dew, and I was overcome with confusion. I could think of no answer to make. Until now I had felt a strong desire to shake this girl, who seemed to have gone to sleep within her peace of mind, to shake her till she awakened. But instead it was the gaze of her eyes that had awakened something that had been sleeping within me. . . . It was time for Sonoko's younger sisters to go to school and they came to take their leave. The smallest sister barely touched my palm with her hand as she said good-bye, and then fled outdoors, carrying a crimson lunch box with a gold-colored buckle. Just at that moment the sun happened to shine through the trees and I saw her wave her lunch box high over her head. Both the grandmother and mother had come along to see me off, so my parting with Sonoko at the station was casual and innocent. We jested with each other and acted nonchalant. The train came soon and I took a seat by a window. My only thought was a prayer that the train would leave quickly. . . . A clear voice called to me from an unexpected direction. It was certainly Sonoko's voice, but accustomed as I had become to it, I was startled to hear it as a fresh, distant cry. The realization that it was Sonoko's voice streamed into my heart like morning sunlight. I turned my eyes in the direction from which it came. Sonoko had slipped in through the porters' gate and was clinging to the black wooden railing bordering the platform. A mass of lace on her blouse overflowed from her checked bolero and fluttered in the breeze. Her vivacious eyes stared widely at me. The train began to move. Her slightly heavy lips seemed to be forming words, and in just that way she passed out of my view. Sonoko! Sonoko! I repeated the name to myself with each sway of the train. It sounded unutterably mysterious. Sonoko! Sonoko! With each repetition my heart felt heavier, at each throb of her name a cutting, punishing weariness grew deeper within me. The pain I was feeling was crystal clear, but of such a unique and incomprehensible nature that I could not have explained it even if I had tried. It was so far off the beaten path of ordinary human emotions that I even had difficulty in recognizing it as pain.

• From Between the World and Me (2015)

  I took a survey of Europe post-1800. I saw black people, rendered through “white” eyes, unlike any I’d seen before—the black people looked regal and human. I remember the soft face of Alessandro de’ Medici, the royal bearing of Bosch’s black magi. These images, cast in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, were contrasted with those created after enslavement, the Sambo caricatures I had always known. What was the difference? In my survey course of America, I’d seen portraits of the Irish drawn in the same ravenous, lustful, and simian way. Perhaps there had been other bodies, mocked, terrorized, and insecure. Perhaps the Irish too had once lost their bodies. Perhaps being named “black” had nothing to do with any of this; perhaps being named “black” was just someone’s name for being at the bottom, a human turned to object, object turned to pariah. This heap of realizations was a weight. I found them physically painful and exhausting. True, I was coming to enjoy the dizziness, the vertigo that must come with any odyssey. But in those early moments, the unceasing contradictions sent me into a gloom. There was nothing holy or particular in my skin; I was black because of history and heritage. There was no nobility in falling, in being bound, in living oppressed, and there was no inherent meaning in black blood. Black blood wasn’t black; black skin wasn’t even black. And now I looked back on my need for a trophy case, on the desire to live by the standards of Saul Bellow, and I felt that this need was not an escape but fear again—fear that “they,” the alleged authors and heirs of the universe, were right. And this fear ran so deep that we accepted their standards of civilization and humanity. But not all of us. It must have been around that time that I discovered an essay by Ralph Wiley in which he responded to Bellow’s quip. “Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus,” wrote Wiley. “Unless you find a profit in fencing off universal properties of mankind into exclusive tribal ownership.” And there it was. I had accepted Bellow’s premise. In fact, Bellow was no closer to Tolstoy than I was to Nzinga. And if I were closer it would be because I chose to be, not because of destiny written in DNA. My great error was not that I had accepted someone else’s dream but that I had accepted the fact of dreams, the need for escape, and the invention of racecraft.

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

  me that the Hindus greatly surpassed the Christians. It was impossible for me to regard Christianity as a perfect religion or the greatest of all religions. I shared this mental churning with my Christian friends whenever there was an opportunity, but their answers could not satisfy me. Thus if I could not accept Christianity either as a perfect, or the greatest religion, neither was I then convinced of Hinduism being such. Hindu defects were pressingly visible to me. If untouchability could be a part of Hinduism, it could but be a rotten part or an excrescence. I could not understand the raison d’etre of a multitude of sects and castes. What was the meaning of saying that the Vedas were the inspired Word of God? If they were inspired, why not also the Bible and the Koran? As Christian friends were endeavouring to convert me, even so were Musalman friends. Abdulla Sheth had kept on inducing me to study Islam, and of course he had always something to say regarding its beauty. I expressed my difficulties in a letter to Raychandbhai. I also corresponded with other religious authorities in India and received answers from them. Raychandbhai’s letter somewhat pacified me. He asked me to be patient and to study Hinduism more deeply. One of his sentences was to this effect: ‘On a dispassionate view of the question I am convinced that no other religion has the subtle and profound thought of Hinduism, its vision of the soul, or its charity.’ I purchased Sale’s translation of the Koran and began reading it. I also obtained other books on Islam. I communicated with Christian friends in England. One of them introduced me to Edward Maitland, with whom I opened correspondence. He sent me The Perfect Way, a book he had written in collaboration with Anna Kingsford. The book was a repudiation of the current Christian belief. He also sent me another book, The New Interpretation of the Bible. I liked both. They seemed to support Hinduism. Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You overwhelmed me. It left an abiding impression on me. Before the independent thinking, profound morality, and the truthfulness of this book, all the books given me by Mr. Coates seemed to pale into insignificance. My studies thus carried me in a direction unthought of by the Christian friends. My correspondence with Edward Maitland was fairly prolonged, and that with Raychandbhai continued until his death. I read some of the books he sent me. These included Panchikaran, Maniratnamala, Mumukshu Prakaran of Yogavasishtha, Haribhadra Suri’s Shaddarshana Samuchchaya and others. Though I took a path my Christian friends had not intended for me, I have remained for indebted to them for the religious quest that they awakened in me. I shall always cherish the memory of their contact. The years that followed had more, not less, of such sweet and sacred contacts in store for me. 43.

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  And yet I never forgot the feeling of that luxurious weight pressing for a moment upon my thigh. It was not a sexual feeling, but somehow simply an extremely luxurious pleasure, like that feeling produced by the weight of a decoration hanging on the breast. I often encountered an anemic young lady on the buses I took to school. Her cold attitude caught my interest. She always stared disinterestedly out the window as though very bored with everything, and as she did so, the willfulness of her slightly pouting lips was striking. When she was not on the bus, something seemed to be missing, and before I realized it I was breathlessly hoping to see her every time I got on the bus. I wondered if this could be what was called love. I simply did not know. I had not the faintest idea that there was any connection between love and sexual desire. Needless to say, during the time of my infatuation with Omi I had made no effort to apply the word love to that diabolical fascination he exercised over me. And now again, even while I was wondering if the vague emotion I was feeling toward the girl on the bus could be love, at the same instant I could feel attracted to the rough young bus-driver, his hair gleaming with heavy pomade. My ignorance was so profound that I did not perceive the contradiction involved here. I did not see that in my way of looking at the profile of the young bus-driver there was something inevitable, suffocating, painful, oppressive, whereas it was with rather studied, artificial, and easily tired eyes that I regarded the anemic young lady. So long as I remained unaware of the difference in these two viewpoints, both of them lived together within me without bothering each other, without any conflict. For a boy of my age I seem to have been singularly uninterested in what is called "moral cleanliness" or, to use another phrase, to have been lacking the talent for "self-control." Even if I could explain this tact by saying that my excessively intense curiosity did not naturally dispose me toward an interest in morality, there would still remain the fact that this curiosity of mine both resembled the hopeless yearnings of a bedridden invalid for the outside world and was also somehow inextricably tangled up with a belief in the possibility of the impossible. It was this combination—one part unconscious belief, one part unconscious despair—that so quickened my desires that they appeared to be desperate ambitions. Even though still young, I did not know what it was to experience the clear-cut feeling of platonic love. Was this a misfortune? But what meaning could ordinary misfortune have for me?

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  What could she do but leave it alone...? So she left it alone. Miss Chatterley came sometimes, with her aristocratic thin face, and triumphed, finding nothing altered. She would never forgive Connie for ousting her from her union in consciousness with her brother. It was she, Emma, who should be bringing forth the stories, these books, with him; the Chatterley stories, something new in the world, that _they_, the Chatterleys, had put there. There was no other standard. There was no organic connection with the thought and expression that had gone before. Only something new in the world: the Chatterley books, entirely personal. Connie's father, when he paid a flying visit to Wragby, said in private to his daughter: As for Clifford's writing, it's smart, but there's nothing in it. It won't last!... Connie looked at the burly Scottish knight who had done himself well all his life, and her eyes, her big, still-wondering blue eyes became vague. Nothing in it! What did he mean by _nothing in it_? If the critics praised it, and Clifford's name was almost famous, and it even brought in money ... what did her father mean by saying there was nothing in Clifford's writing? What else could there be? For Connie had adopted the standard of the young: what there was in the moment was everything. And moments followed one another without necessarily belonging to one another. It was in her second winter at Wragby her father said to her: "I hope, Connie, you won't let circumstances force you into being a _demi-vierge_." "A _demi-vierge_!" replied Connie vaguely. "Why? Why not?" "Unless you like it, of course!" said her father hastily. To Clifford he said the same, when the two men were alone: "I'm afraid it doesn't quite suit Connie to be a _demi-vierge_." "A half-virgin!" replied Clifford, translating the phrase to be sure of it. He thought for a moment, then flushed very red. He was angry and offended. "In what way doesn't it suit her?" he asked stiffly. "She's getting thin ... angular. It's not her style. She's not the pilchard sort of little slip of a girl, she's a bonny Scotch trout." "Without the spots, of course!" said Clifford. He wanted to say something later to Connie about the _demi-vierge_ business ... the half-virgin state of her affairs. But he could not bring himself to do it. He was at once too intimate with her and not intimate enough. He was so very much at one with her, in his mind and hers, but bodily they were non-existent to one another, and neither could bear to drag in the _corpus delicti_. They were so intimate, and utterly out of touch.

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  Thus, at long last, I admitted to myself that I could never become an Omi and, upon further consideration, that my desire to become like Omi had in fact been love for Omi. And yet I was still convinced that I was in love with Nukada's sister. Acting exactly like any other inexperienced higher-school student of my age, I hung about the neighborhood of her house, patiently passing long hours at a nearby bookshop, hoping for a chance of stopping her if she should pass; I hugged a cushion and imagined the feeling of embracing her, drew countless pictures of her lips, and talked to myself as though out of my mind. And what was the good of it all? Those artificial efforts only inflicted some strange, numbed tiredness upon my mind. The realistic portion of my mind sensed the artificiality in the eternal protestations with which I persuaded myself that I was in love with her, and it fought back with this spiteful fatigue. There seemed to be some terrible poison in this mental exhaustion. Between the intervals of these mental efforts I was making toward artificiality I would sometimes be overwhelmed with a paralyzing emptiness and, in order to escape, would turn shamelessly to a different sort of daydream. Then immediately I would become quick with life, would become myself, and would blaze toward strange images. Moreover, the flame thus created would remain in my mind as an abstract feeling, divorced from the reality of the image that had caused it, and I would distort my interpretation of the feeling until I believed it to be evidence of passion inspired by the girl herself. . Thus once again I deceived myself. If there are those who would reproach me, saying that what I have been describing is too much of a generalization, too abstract, I can only reply that I have had no intention of giving a tedious description of a period of my life whose outward aspects differed in no way from those of normal adolescence. Excepting the shameful portion of my mind, my adolescence was, even in its inner aspects, altogether ordinary, and during that period I was exactly like any other boy. The reader need only picture to himself a fairly good student, not yet twenty; with average curiosity and average appetite for life; of a retiring disposition probably for no other reason than that he is too much given to introspection; quick to blush at the slightest word; and, lacking the confidence that comes from being handsome enough to appeal to girls, clinging perforce only to his books. It will be quite enough to picture to oneself how that student yearns for women, how his breast is afire, and how he is in useless agony. Can there be anything more prosaic or easy to imagine?