Contentment

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 Real Sex for Real Women (2008)

  Sweet nightsMake your bed and bedroom a sexy, relaxing part of your home. This is crucial for setting a romantic mood and will make your bedroom a place where you and your man want to spend time. Make sure the mattress is supportive and comfortable, and has good bounce. Higher beds are better for helping you achieve different positions than low-slung beds, but you can always improvise. Choose silky high-thread-count sheets in luxurious fabrics so that when you and your partner head to bed, you will both be enveloped in soft touches. Once you’ve set the bedroom scene and bedded down, think about touching him in a more primal way. For example, you could start things off by curling your fingers loosely in his hair or trailing your nails gently along his back. Light it upBefore you actually get down to touching each other, think about just looking first. The sight of naked flesh is incredibly erotic to both men and women, and simply baring all can really make you feel like getting tactile. If you feel self-conscious, think dim lighting—candles and firelight will give your skin a warm glow. Bathe in the soft light and set about arousing each other’s senses. Try out different thingsTouch is a vital part of human affection and bonding, and it can have healing powers when used often and well. Spend time thinking about opportunities for sensation in your relationship—this will lead you to be more touchy-feely. Find new ways to use gestures that convey warmth and love each day. Experiment with sensations of hot, cold, smooth, and rough. Try rubbing a piece of ice across your partner’s bare torso, or heat things up by placing warmed stones on his back. These sensual experiments will naturally lead you to rethink and reinvent the sexual touches you use in your relationship. Relearning erotic touchInvite your lover to worship your body with different types of touch. Try out the three tantalizing techniques explained here and see where they take you. Experiment with new sensations to evoke all the senses, try hug love for sweet intimacy, and use touchy-feely foreplay to get you both in the mood for some deliciously hot sex. New sensations Make his world melt away when you kiss him, by evoking all his senses. Look deeply into his eyes, wrap your arms around his neck, and press your body against his. Lick your lips. Kiss his lower then his upper lip. Open your mouth and run your tongue around the inside of his lips. Give him a little tongue and use your mouth to invite him to kiss you back. Now it’s his turn.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  I am in a midnight blue room. A writing room. With a blood red desk. A room with rituals and sanctuaries. I made it for myself. It took me years. I reach down below my desk and pull up a bottle of scotch. Balvenie. 30 year. I pour myself an amber shot. I drink. Warm lips, throat. I close my eyes. I am not Virginia Woolf. But there is a line of hers that keeps me well: Arrange whatever pieces come your way. I am not alone. Whatever else there was or is, writing is with me. V. The Other Side of Drowning Run On IT’S YOUR SECOND EX-HUSBAND’S BIRTHDAY, YOU KNOW, the one you divorced because he slept with not one but about five gazillion different women, and he calls you at 2:00 a.m. all drunk from Paris where you two used to rent apartments and make art because it’s his birthday and he tells you he’s fallen in love with a woman who reminds him of you at 23 - By the way, I’m switching to second person because if I say “I,” in your head you’ll just picture Heather Locklear or something so-YOU. You are 37 on your way to the big 4-0. You are divorced for the sad sad second time. You are in SoCal. Living alone. Making sure your blonde is blonde. Waxed.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  This is exactly the reason so many return to the polygamist environment they grew up in. The leaders have designed it this way to maintain control over people. This is something I hope to resolve. When I do, I will have truly won over their sick theologies. This is my lifetime process and commitment. I want to find a way to be comfortable in my own skin, with my own experiences, and just be ordinary. That, to me, is success. [image file=img/img0024.jpg] Nori Muster is the author of Betrayal of the Spirit: My Life Behind the Headlines of the Hare Krishna Movement (University of Illinois Press) and Cult Survivor's Handbook: How to Live in the Material World Again (www.surrealist.org). One of the most colorful and aggressive guru cults of the 196os was the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). Better known as the Hare Krishna movement, its members danced in the streets to the beat of Indian drums and solicited donations in airports. Thousands joined ISKCON seeking truth from the organization's Hindu roots in India. Their motto was "chant and be happy," but the organization also had a dark side. After a ten-year stint in ISKCON, my husband and I moved to Oregon. I went back to school and in i99i earned a master's degree in youth counseling. A few years later, I visited an ISKCON temple in southern California and met some of the young adults who had grown up in the group. They had been through the organization's school system, called gurukula, which is Sanskrit for "school of the guru." I told them about my graduate work using art therapy to help juvenile sex offenders, and they told me about the emotional, physical, and sexual abuse they had endured in the ISKCON-run school system. I wanted to learn more, so in 1995 I rented an apartment in Los Angeles and spent most of my time with the children of Krishna who came to the Los Angeles temple. I learned that most of the abuse occurred between 1971 and 1986 in gurukula boarding schools in Texas, West Virginia, and India. During those years, the organization required parents to send their children to the schools once they reached the age of five. Some children were enrolled as young as three or four. The leadership (the Governing Body Commission, GBC, and all levels of the administration) claimed that the schools were safe environments for children and denied any knowledge of abuse until 1996. At first, it was difficult for me to believe that ISKCON had perpetrated violent child abuse for fifteen years and then covered it up for an additional ten years, particularly considering that I had been a member during those years of abuse and did not know about it. However, looking back now, all the symptoms were there: blind obedience to authority, a paranoid fear of sex and all touching, negative attitudes toward women and children, and isolation of children in the schools.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  Just the idea of how clean this beach towel was, how fast it had spun for me in the laundromat’s washing machine a few days earlier so that I could lie on it now, was more than enough for me. I recalled John Lennon announcing to the world that he could get high just looking at a flower. I didn’t need big breasts, big jeroboams of titflesh, big hot fleshpots shaking in their self-serve tit-boosting black breastiers—no, I could get high just lying on a towel. Towels, though, were unfortunately not an entirely uncharged subject for me: they were closely associated with my second successful fermation, a year after I had employed the time-transformer in Miss Dobzhansky’s class—and perhaps I should describe that early episode for the record right now. (I have to say, as I spring around this way, that I can’t understand how real autobiographers like Maurice Baring or Robert Graves do it. How are they able to move so smoothly and so casually from a to b to c ? I’m humbled by the difficulty of presenting one’s life truly without seeming to be a proponent of overfamiliar nonlinear orthodoxies. It isn’t that I think my disorder so far is in any way swanky or artistic; it’s that when I try to be a responsible memoirist and arrange my experiences in their proper places on a timeline, my interest in them dies and they altogether refuse to allow themselves to be told. I find that I have to submit to every anecdotal temptation just as it arises, regardless of temporal priority, in order for it, for me, to flower adequately into words.) So: chronofugation. The summer after fifth grade I used to go down the clothes-strewn stairs to the basement (the basement stairway was our dirty-clothes hamper) and spend major portions of the afternoon observing my family’s sheets and towels and clothes toil and spin. There was a safety interlock, a hinged inward-swinging tab, that cut the motor if the lid was opened during the spin cycle, but it was a simple matter to disable it: I just jammed it open with a pen. I stood at the washing machine for many hours, refining my appreciation of centrifugal force.

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

  MOVEMENT The following ways to pray have more to do with your posture or location than the words you say. Sitting in your favorite chair with a Bible and a weighted blanket might be the ideal way to pray for some people, but for others, that’s just a clever way of saying “nap.” Regardless of your personality, try adding movement to your prayer times and see what happens. Remember, we are wholistic beings. Our bodies and brains are linked in ways we don’t often realize. Involving ourselves physically in prayer is natural and delightful. Walking or pacing while praying helps with alertness and burns a few calories at the same time. If you’re the fidgety type, it also helps direct your energy so that it doesn’t distract you. Kneeling, lying down, or raising your hands in prayer can be surprisingly powerful postures. When you feel in awe of God or sense a deep hunger to understand His sovereignty and power, try kneeling, lying prostrate, or raising your hands. Hiking or camping in the silence and beauty of God’s creation are life- giving, soul-healing ways to commune with God. Go outside the city at night and find somewhere you can see the stars, then just meditate on God: His power, beauty, faithfulness, and love for His creation (which includes you). Going for a walk or a drive is a creative way to expand your prayers. Pray as you travel—for yourself, your neighborhood, your town. For the neighbor you see on the street. For the homeless person on the corner. For the passing strangers who are facing their own share of fears. For the guy who just cut you off, because that’s what Jesus would do. For your world. CREATIVITY Many people express themselves better through art or through building something than they do through conversational speaking. If that’s you, try using your art and your talents to communicate with God. Write a poem. Poetry uses form and rhythm to communicate more than what words alone can say. Psalms and other sections of the Bible are poetry, and they still resonate with us thousands of years later. Pray with your music. If you are musical, you may naturally reach for your guitar or sit down at a keyboard when you pray. Write a song or play one

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

  Start and end with prayer In this hectic, random, noisy life, peace is not an impossible dream. It’s a promise. It’s a gift from God, one we both long for and desperately need. I’m not talking about the peace that comes from having everything figured out and under control, but the peace that descends from heaven itself. The peace of God that passes understanding. The peace we experience when we cast our cares upon the one who cares for us. It’s a peace that starts and ends with prayer. Are you worried about everything because you pray about nothing? It’s time to flip the script. Be worried for nothing because you pray about everything. That’s the lifestyle of peace and joy that God is calling you into through prayer. It’s your future as a child of God. Jesus says, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me” (Revelation 3:20). Sometimes people use that verse to describe salvation, but the words were actually written to believers. Jesus wants to be with us. Not as a judge putting us on trial, or a boss doing an employee review, or an emperor berating a servant. As a friend. Jesus wants to stroll through the door of our hearts, sit down next to us with the drink of His choice, and just hang out. He wants to hear what’s on our hearts and minds. He wants us to express what is worrying us or inspiring us or challenging us. And He wants to share with us the peace, perspective, and power of God. I know we’ve just spent a couple hundred pages doing a deep dive into the intricacies of prayer, but the bottom line is that prayer is not hard. It’s natural. It flows unforced from authentic relationship. You can’t really “do it wrong,” and you can’t be “bad at it.” Yes, you can get better, but nobody is grading your progress or judging the eloquence of your prayers. Least of all God. He’s just happy to hear from you, to be honest. And excited about partnering with you for the future. So, just pray! However you want. Wherever you’re at. Whenever you feel like it. For whatever you need. It really is that simple.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  And later, when the song came on again, he looked up at her and smiled and then went back to planting—and Marian noticed that his ears were quite red. She watered the bulbs in and forgot about them. The ground began to look cold—three long beds of very cold bulbs. As winter hit, Marian became caught up in a battle with a developer who wanted to build another mall outside of town. It was going to be enormous and in its own way wonderful—but there was already a shopping center with a discount chain in it that was working under chapter eleven, and the downtown would suffer, as it always did. She went out on several dates with a man she met at the mall meetings, and while she enjoyed talking to him (he was one of those men who have a passionate interest in some particular writer which at first seems sincere, and then finally ends up seeming almost arbitrary—in his case it was Rilke: he seemed to be getting things from Rilke that he could have gotten from any number of poets, while missing whatever it was that Rilke had uniquely), she nonetheless didn’t want to do anything more than kiss him cordially in her driveway. When spring finally came, she went out every day to her tulip beds to watch for activity. It was an unusually dry hot spring, and she felt that she should water to give her beds a good start, but she despaired at her hose. The faucet still leaked tiresomely. The sprayer was rusty. What would make her bulbs really happy, it suddenly occurred to her, was if she could get a plumber to adapt her own Pollenex showerhead so that it would fit on the end of the hose. She needed a very light, very delicate but insistent spray for her tulips—no garden sprayer could offer that. She also thought that the hose water was much too cold—she felt that the bulbs would do better with warmer water. She realized that she wasn’t thinking all that rationally, but her idea nonetheless was: hook up the garden hose to the shower-pipe, run the hose out the bathroom window, and fix the Pollenex showerhead onto the terminal end. Other ideas of interest followed on this one; she called a plumber. The plumber was a thin derisive man with the usual plumber body-smell who rolled his eyes at her plan, told her she could have done it herself, but agreed, since he was there, to do it for her.

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

  Julia and I love to go out together. Date nights are our happy place. But if we don’t put some serious planning and work into organizing those nights out, they’ll never happen. Similarly, we need to plan for prayer. Planning doesn’t diminish the beauty or authenticity of prayer any more than scheduling a date removes its romance. If anything, planning ahead makes our prayer life (and our dating life) more special. It gives us something to look forward to. I’m not going to tell you when to pray or how long to pray. That’s up to you. Your prayer times will change over the course of your life. There will be seasons you just have to squeeze in moments of prayer between the craziness of day-to-day schedules, and there will be times when you have long, uninterrupted talks with God. That’s okay. Don’t frustrate yourself by trying to meet some artificial, subjective, legalistic ideal of what your prayer life should look like. In case you’re curious, here is what my prayer schedule looks like now. It could change without warning, but this arrangement is working for me pretty well. I read my Bible every morning, then I spend a few minutes—maybe five or so—praying. I usually write out my prayers, but that’s just me.I pray quick prayers throughout the day as needed: for a need, for a person, for a problem, for strength. These are lightning prayers that last a few seconds and often are not spoken out loud.I pray nightly with my boys when they go to bed. I pray specifically for them: what I feel for them, what they are going through, what they are concerned about.We have a weekly prayer meeting at our church on Saturdays at 6:00 p.m. that I usually lead or attend.Every Sunday I pray throughout the morning, and we also spend a few minutes praying with the volunteer team for the services.During our Sunday services, right after worship, we pray together as a church for needs people have.As you can see from the above list, for me, prayer is not about quantity. These are not long prayer times, for the most part. I don’t time my prayers. I pray frequently, though. I pray about everything, so I’m anxious about nothing. That’s not just a book title. It’s the way I live. Remember, I have a full-time job, four children, and a couple of hobbies, so it’s not like I sit around all day with nothing to do. On the other hand, my full-time job includes prayer, so I get paid to pray, in a sense. Those things are unique to me. So please don’t compare yourself to me. You don’t have my life, and I don’t have yours. I’m not your example of prayer. Jesus is.

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

  greatest thing since avocado toast. That isn’t God either. Both of those are likely reflections of our own self-image. I remember another old preacher saying, “God comes to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.” That sounds about right. God’s voice will often say what you don’t expect. It will reassure you but challenge you. It will give you inner peace but propel you outside your comfort zone. It will pat you on the back and kick your butt at the same time. In a good way. 5. God’s voice is considerate and loving toward others. James gives us a useful description of God’s voice when he says, “But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere” (3:17). Notice how many of those words relate to our social behavior: considerate, submissive, full of mercy, impartial, sincere. God cares about how we treat people. He loves them just as much as He loves us. When we pray, we need to filter what we hear through the list above. If my words start with “God told me . . .” and are followed by my demanding my rights, that’s a red flag. Not that I don’t have rights. I do. But I rarely need God to remind me of them. More often, I need Him to remind me that the way of the cross is one of sacrificial love and service. When you think God may be speaking to you, run it through the “wisdom from above” test. If it doesn’t pass, go back to praying and listening. God has more to say. 6. God’s voice is confirmed in multiple ways. In the Old Testament, testimony in court was only considered valid if it was confirmed by two or three witnesses (Deuteronomy 19:15). The principle is repeated in a spiritual context in the New Testament (2 Corinthians 13:1).

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

  Everything about her person is honey-gold and warm in tone; the fair, crisply-trimmed hair which she wears rather long at the back, knotting it simply at the downy nape of her neck. This focuses the candid face of a minor muse with its smiling grey-green eyes. The calmly disposed hands have a deftness and shapeliness which one only notices when one sees them at work, holding a paint-brush perhaps or setting the broken leg of a sparrow in splints made from match-ends. I should say something like this: that she had been poured, while still warm, into the body of a young grace: that is to say, into a body born without instincts or desires. To have great beauty; to have enough money to construct an independent life; to have a skill — these are the factors which persuade the envious, the dispirited to regard her as undeservedly lucky. But why, ask her critics and observers, has she denied herself marriage? She lives in modest though not miserly style, inhabiting a comfortable attic-studio furnished with little beyond an iron bed and a few ragged beach chairs which in the summer are transferred bodily to her little bathing cabin at Sidi Bishr. Her only luxury is a glittering tiled bathroom in the corner of which she has installed a minute stove to cope with whatever cooking she feels inclined to do for herself; and a bookcase whose crowded shelves indicate that she denies it nothing. She lives without lovers or family ties, without malices or pets, concentrating with single-mindedness upon her painting which she takes seriously, but not too seriously. In her work, too, she is lucky; for these bold yet elegant canvases radiate clemency and humour. They are full of a sense of play — like children much-beloved.

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

  It’s not a relaxation technique. Prayer is such a powerful channel of peace because it brings us into the presence of a real, present, caring, active, sovereign God. When we pray, we are interacting with the God of peace. That title—“God of peace”—appears several times in the Bible, and it’s one of my favorites. “The God of peace be with you all. Amen” (Romans 15:33). “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” (Romans 16:20). “The God of peace will be with you” (Philippians 4:9). “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through” (1 Thessalonians 5:23). In this crazy world, we long for peace on all levels. We want internal peace and external peace. We want financial peace, physical peace, emotional peace, spiritual peace, family peace, and world peace. We won’t fully find that peace, though, if we are seeking it in our own strength. The world is simply too big, too far outside our control. That’s where prayer really shines. Prayer leads us to a God whose ways are higher than ours and whose power is greater than ours. It doesn’t bypass our abilities, resources, strength, or wisdom, but it does go beyond them. Prayer reminds us that we don’t have to rely on ourselves to make it through the messiness of life. We are not alone. We are never alone. PEACE > ANSWERS The passage that inspired this book is Philippians 4:6–7: Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything . Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. (NLT , emphasis added) Notice the direct connection between taking our worries to God in prayer and receiving His peace, which is a peace that “exceeds anything we can understand,” a peace that “will guard [our] hearts and minds.” Paul says that when you feel anxious, that’s a sign you need to pray. And when you pray, you receive peace. I often go to prayer thinking I need results—but I come away from prayer with peace. And that is far better. Why? Because answered prayer only produces temporary peace and momentary relief. It’s wonderful when it happens, but if we’re honest with ourselves, we know that more problems are around the corner. The peace of God, however, supersedes my circumstances. It assures me that even if my immediate situation hasn’t changed, God is bigger than that situation, and He is worthy of my trust. Maybe I’ll get the answer I want from my prayer, maybe I won’t. But I have peace. And that peace is enough. I still pray for what I need and want, of course, but I don’t try to get my peace from answered prayer. I get my peace from God . He is the source of the answers.

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

  But I see that I have foolishly spoken of her as ‘denying herself marriage’. How this would anger her: for I remember her once saying: ‘If we are to be friends you must not think or speak about me as someone who is denying herself something in life. My solitude does not deprive me of anything, nor am I fitted to be other than I am. I want you to see how successful I am and not imagine me full of inner failings. As for love itself — cher ami — I told you already that love interested me only very briefly — and men more briefly still; the few, indeed the one, experience which marked me was an experience with a woman. I am still living in the happiness of that perfectly achieved relationship: any physical substitute would seem today horribly vulgar and hollow. But do not imagine me as suffering from any fashionable form of broken heart. No. In a funny sort of way I feel that our love has really gained by the passing of the love-object; it is as if the physical body somehow stood in the way of love’s true growth, its self-realization. Does that sound calamitous?’ She laughed. We were walking, I remember, along the rainswept Corniche in autumn, under a darkening crescent of clouded sky; and as she spoke she put her arm affectionately through mine and smiled at me with such tenderness that a passer-by might have been forgiven for imagining that we ourselves were lovers. ‘And then’ she went on ‘there is another thing which perhaps you will discover for yourself. There is something about love — I will not say defective for the defect lies in ourselves: but something we have mistaken about its nature. For example, the love you now feel for Justine is not a different love for a different object but the same love you feel for Melissa trying to work itself out through the medium of Justine. Love is horribly stable, and each of us is only allotted a certain portion of it, a ration. It is capable of appearing in an infinity of forms and attaching itself to an infinity of people. But it is limited in quantity, can be used up, become shopworn and faded before it reaches its true object. For its destination lies somewhere in the deepest regions of the psyche where it will come to recognize itself as self-love, the ground upon which we build the sort of health of the psyche. I do not mean egoism or narcissism.’

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

  You can always find someone “worse” at prayer (whatever that means) if you want to feel superior, but you can also find someone “better” if you want to feel discouraged. But that all seems a little pointless, doesn’t it? How about if we stop looking at everyone else, and instead we pray however and whenever we can? How about if we develop a personal relationship with God and let that relationship grow and shift organically, rather than trying to impress anyone else? I need prayer, and you do too! We need more prayer, not less prayer. Just get started. Pray a little, then pray a little more. Don’t let ignorance, inexperience, boredom, discouragement, shame, flesh, disorganization, or even a line of adorable ducks block your prayers. Go around the obstacles. Dodge the ducks. Once you experience the peace and the power of prayer, you’ll never stop. ELEVEN These prayers are a waste of timeJulia and I have moved to a new city or a new house several times in our marriage. That is a test of both mental and marital strength, if we’re being honest here. There’s one thing in particular that amazes me every time we move: how much junk we’ve managed to collect. We’re not hoarders. We’re the opposite of hoarders, whatever that is. Anti-hoarders? Clutter-haters? Enemies of all the things? I don’t know. My point is, we consider ourselves relatively neat, orderly, and efficient, yet we still have massive amounts of useless things crammed into cupboards and corners and cubbyholes, all because we “might need that someday.” Single socks, for example. We have an entire collection of them. Why are we stockpiling single socks? Do we really have faith that their partners are going to return for them? Do we expect to someday lose a leg? It’s probably not going to happen. They are useless socks. Ironically, one of our greatest sources of clutter is storage containers. That’s right—storage solutions are actually creating storage problems in the Veach household. Julia loves Netflix shows about tidying up, so she’ll get inspired to organize things in a new and better way. That naturally means purchasing more bins. The Holy Laws of Decluttering state that bins have to match each other, though, so she buys multiple bins at once. But since the old bins still hold some emotional promise of helping reduce clutter, she doesn’t throw those out. So we now have approximately five thousand plastic bins of assorted sizes, shapes, and colors. An empty storage bin is a double curse: It takes up lots of space without reducing any clutter.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  If there were dirty dishes or laundry, the chores waited, sometimes until two or three in the morning, until after I spent time with the boys and their homework, music lessons, sports, games, books, favorite television programs, dinner, and so forth. As you might imagine, the negative side of this closeness was that I became too dependent on them for my emotional support. I felt pulled to extremes. Fortunately I recognized this dependency and realized I had to plan some sort of life or career for myself. At some point, the boys would be grown and leave home, and if I didn't have any identity for myself, I knew I would be devastated and lost again. The cult experience caused me to view all of life from a different perspective. Priorities and values changed and magnified. My children learned that truth and honesty come first, that without these as a foundation, everything else is an illusion. One of the truths I taught them was that I am not perfect, either as a person or a parent. They got to see me cry and hurt, fall in and out of love, be happy, angry, confused, abused, and simply trying to get us all through to the next day, week, year. We didn't have much money given that my job was at minimum wage, and it seemed as though there were major expenses all the time. We agreed that one night a week the boys would fix dinner. We had a "No TV" night when we read books, played games, or did jigsaw puzzles together. I taught the boys to be open and ask questions. They have rights, and one of them is being able to question everything. I had and have respect for them as the persons they are and for their feelings. Because they were initially so young, only four, five, and seven when I got out, I had to give them bits and pieces of information about the cult experience. Along with my own processing of the information and post-trauma issues, I was able to explain to them some of the effects of the experience on us all. This past spring, fifteen years later, the four of us were able to attend the American Family Foundation [now ICSA] conference for ex-members, where much of the boys' past was put into perspective for them. Their understanding of cults and mind control is greatly increased, plus they have a more accurate picture of how and why I made certain decisions. One thing that worried me was that there might be consequences for them as students if friends and/orteachers found out that I had been in a cult. Indeed there were, mostly positive. The negative reactions can be chalked up to people's lack of understanding of the whole cult phenomenon anyway, so we learned to "consider the source," as it were.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  As pagan pleasures wracked her body, she did indeed make a huge grimacing smiley face. It was Marian’s turn now. She allowed the idea of Kevin’s squirting dick in Sylvie’s ass to merge with the sensation of Armande Klockhammer, Jr.’s in her own. She conjured up the sight of the dollar bills stuffed in his asscheeks as he danced with his back to the audience. She thought of the shouting women; the whomping music; the sight of him turning on the stage and tossing his heavy live meat around inside its black silk pouch as he looked out at all his women. All these memories were up her ass . She opened her eyes and said evenly, “Please watch me come, now, you two. Watch my asshole and cunt come around these huge horny cocks!” Then she threw herself back on the wet grass and lifted her legs and rested her feet on Sylvie’s back; she let them watch whatever they wanted while the brutish, hunky orgasm ennobled her body. “Oh nice … so nice … so nice …” she sighed as the clit-twitching ebbed. When the three of them had recovered a little, Marian rinsed off Kevin’s softening cock and lifted herself off the Klockhammer and sprayed it fresh. “Can we pick some more of your tulips sometime?” said Sylvie sweetly before she and Kevin, dressed once again in their matching outfits, left for the fish hatchery. “Anytime you want,” said Marian. “I love young love.” Naked, replete, she put her toys and her abandoned book on the tray and went indoors. Over the next year, with Kevin and Sylvie’s weekend help weeding and planting and mowing, her back yard became the envy of her neighbors. The Fermata 15 T HAT WAS WHAT I-FINALLY RECORDED ON THE CASSETTE THAT I put in the tape-player in Adele Junette Spacks’s Ford Escort in place of Suzanne Vega’s Solitude Standing . It—Part Two—was sixteen single-spaced pages long, and it took, in addition to the twelve long hours and two fiercely snuffling orgasms I devoted to its composition, another two hours to record on tape. (I let both of my comeshots hop out directly onto the hazily indeterminate Mass Turnpike, my bottom scooched forward on the hood of my car so that my richard made a sort of hood ornament. Unable to endure the physically paradoxical contact of a surface going sixty miles an hour faster than they were, the sperm-drops began to sizzle on the roadway after a few minutes; they had vaporized completely in less than half an hour.) When I was done recording I didn’t feel exhausted—I felt exhilarated.

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

  By the time we had reached the outskirts of the Arab quarter, however, he had all but shed these mannerisms. He relaxed, tipped his tarbush up to mop his brow, and gazed around him with the affection of long familiarity. Here he belonged by adoption, here he was truly at home. He would defiantly take a drink from the leaden spout sticking out of a wall near the Goharri mosque (a public drinking fountain) though the White Man in him must have been aware that the water was far from safe to drink. He would pick a stick of sugar-cane off a stall as he passed, to gnaw it in the open street: or a sweet locust-bean. Here, everywhere, the cries of the open street greeted him and he responded radiantly. ‘Y’alla, effendi, Skob’ ‘Naharak said, ya Skob’ ‘Allah salimak.’ He would sigh and say ‘Dear people’; and ‘How I love the place you have no idea!’ dodging a liquid-eyed camel as it humped down the narrow street threatening to knock us down with its bulging sumpters of bercim, the wild clover which is used as fodder. ‘May your prosperity increase’ ‘By your leave, my mother’ ‘May your day be blessed’ ‘Favour me, O sheik.’ Scobie walked here with the ease of a man who has come into his own estate, slowly, sumptuously, like an Arab. Today we sat together for a while in the shade of the ancient mosque listening to the clicking of the palms and the hooting of sea-going liners in the invisible basin below. ‘I’ve just seen a directive’ said Scobie at last, in a sad withered little voice ‘about what they call a Peddyrast. It’s rather shaken me, old man. I don’t mind admitting it — I didn’t know the word. I had to look it up. At all costs, it says, we must exclude them. They are dangerous to the security of the net.’ I gave a laugh and for a moment the old man showed signs of wanting to respond with a weak giggle, but his depression overtook the impulse, to leave it buried, a small hollowness in those cherry-red cheeks. He puffed furiously at his pipe. ‘Peddyrast’ he repeated with scorn, and groped for his matchbox. ‘I don’t think they quite understand at Home’ he said sadly. ‘Now the Egyptians, they don’t give a damn about a man if he has Tendencies — provided he’s the Soul of Honour, like me.’ He meant it. ‘But now, old man, if I am to work for the … You Know What … I ought to tell them — what do you say?’ ‘Don’t be a fool, Scobie.’ ‘Well, I don’t know’ he said sadly. ‘I want to be honest with them. It isn’t that I cause any harm. I suppose one shouldn’t have Tendencies — any more than warts or a big nose. But what can I do?’ ‘Surely at your age very little?’

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I said, ‘Don’t think me rude, but - whenever do you spent it?’‘I am saving it, miss!’ she said. ‘I aim to emigrate. My friend says, in the colonies a girl with twenty pounds can set up as a landlady of a rooming-house, with girls of her own.’‘Is that so?’ She nodded. ‘And you’d like to run a rooming-house?’‘Oh yes! They will always need rooming-houses in the colonies, you see, for the people coming in.’‘Well, that’s true. And, how much have you saved?’She flushed again. ‘Seven pounds, miss.’I nodded. Then I thought and said: ‘But the colonies, Blake! Could you bear the journey? You should have to live in a boat - suppose there were storms?’She picked up the scuttle of coal. ‘Oh, I shouldn’t mind that, miss!’I laughed; and so did she. We had never chatted so freely before. I had grown used to calling her only ‘Blake’ as Diana did; I had grown used to her curtseys; I had grown used to having her see me as I was now: swollen-eyed and swollen-mouthed, naked in a bed with the sheet at my bosom, and the marks of Diana’s kisses at my throat. I had grown used to not looking at her, not seeing her at all. Now, as she laughed, I found myself gazing at her at last, at her pinking cheeks and at her lashes, which were dark, and thinking, Oh! — for she was really rather handsome.And, as I thought it, there came the old self-consciousness between us. She hoisted her scuttle of coal a little higher, then came to take my tray and ask me, ‘Would there be anything else?’ I answered that she might run me a bath; and she curtseyed.And when I lay soaking in the bathroom I heard the slam of the front door. It was Diana. She came to find me. She had been to the Cavendish, but only to take a letter that must be signed by another lady.‘I didn’t like to wake you,’ she said, dipping her hand into the water.I forgot about Blake, then, and how handsome she was. I forgot about Blake, indeed, for a month or more. Diana gave dinners, and I posed and wore costumes; we made visits to the club, and to Maria’s house in Hampstead. All went on as usual.

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

  The Egyptian Government, with the typical generous quixotry the Levant lavishes on any foreigner who shows a little warmth and friendliness, had offered him a means to live on in Alexandria. It is said that after his appointment to the Vice Squad vice assumed such alarming proportions that it was found necessary to up-grade and transfer him; but he himself always maintained that his transfer to the routine C.I.D. branch of the police had been a deserved promotion — and I for my part have never had the courage to tease him on the subject. His work is not onerous. For a couple of hours every morning he works in a ramshackle office in the upper quarter of the town, with the fleas jumping out of the rotten woodwork of his old-fashioned desk. He lunches modestly at the Lutetia and, funds permitting, buys himself an apple and a bottle of brandy for his evening meal there. The long fierce summer afternoons are spent in sleep, in turning over the newspapers which he borrows from a friendly Greek newsvendor. (As he reads the pulse in the top of his skull beats softly.) Ripeness is all. The furnishing of his little room suggests a highly eclectic spirit; the few objects which adorn the anchorite’s life have a severely personal flavour, as if together they composed the personality of their owner. That is why Clea’s portrait gives such a feeling of completeness, for she has worked into the background the whole sum of the old man’s possessions. The shabby little crucifix on the wall behind the bed, for example; it is some years since Scobie accepted the consolations of the Holy Roman Church against old age and those defects of character which had by this time become second nature. Nearby hangs a small print of the Mona Lisa whose enigmatic smile has always reminded Scobie of his mother. (For my part the famous smile has always seemed to me to be the smile of a woman who has just dined off her husband.) However this too has somehow incorporated itself into the existence of Scobie, established a special and private relationship. It is as if his Mona Lisa were like no other; it is a deserter from Leonardo.

• From Wild (2012)

  I believed I was going to Golden Oak Springs, but by seven o’clock it was still nowhere in sight. I didn’t care. Too tired to be hungry, I skipped dinner again, thus saving the water I’d have used to make it, and found a spot flat enough to pitch my tent. The tiny thermometer that dangled from the side of my pack said it was 42 degrees. I peeled off my sweaty clothes and draped them over a bush to dry before I crawled into my tent. In the morning, I had to force them on. Rigid as boards, they’d frozen overnight. I reached Golden Oak Springs a few hours into my third day on the trail. The sight of the square concrete pool lifted my spirits enormously, not only because at the springs there was water, but also because humans had so clearly constructed it. I put my hands in the water, disturbing a few bugs that swam across its surface. I took out my purifier and placed its intake tube into the water and began to pump the way I’d practiced in my kitchen sink in Minneapolis. It was harder to do than I remembered it being, perhaps because when I’d practiced I’d only pumped a few times. Now it seemed to take more muscle to compress the pump. And when I did manage to pump, the intake tube floated up to the surface, so it took in only air. I pumped and pumped until I couldn’t pump anymore and I had to take a break; then I pumped again, finally refilling both my bottles and the dromedary bag. It took me nearly an hour, but it had to be done. My next water source was a daunting nineteen miles away. I had every intention of hiking on that day, but instead I sat in my camp chair near the spring. It had warmed up at last, the sun shining on my bare arms and legs. I took off my shirt, pulled my shorts down low, and lay with my eyes closed, hoping the sun would soothe the patches of skin on my torso that had been worn raw by my pack. When I opened my eyes, I saw a small lizard on a nearby rock. He seemed to be doing push-ups. “Hello, lizard,” I said, and he stopped his push-ups and held perfectly still before disappearing in a flash.

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

  I have dabbled in these matters before in Paris, conscious that in them I might find a pathway which could lead me to a deeper understanding of myself — the self which seemed to be only a huge, disorganized and shapeless society of lusts and impulses. I regarded this whole field of study as productive for my inner man, though a native and inborn scepticism kept me free from the toils of any denominational religion. For almost a year I had studied under Mustapha, a Sufi, sitting on the rickety wooden terrace of his house every evening listening to him talk in that soft cobweb voice. I had drunk sherbet with a wise Turkish Moslem. So it was with a sense of familiarity that I walked beside Justine through the twisted warren of streets which crown the fort of Kom El Dick, trying with one half of my mind to visualize how it must have looked when it was a Park sacred to Pan, the whole brown soft hillock carved into a pine-cone. Here the narrowness of the streets produced a sort of sense of intimacy, though they were lined only by verminous warrens and benighted little cafés lit by flickering rush-lamps. A strange sense of repose invested this little corner of the city giving it some of the atmosphere of a delta village. Below on the amorphous brown-violet meidan by the railway station, forlorn in the fading dusk, little crowds of Arabs gathered about groups of sportsmen playing at single-stick, their shrill cries muffled in the fading dusk. Southward gleamed the tarnished platter of Mareotis. Justine walked with her customary swiftness, and in silence, impatient of my tendency to lag behind and peer into the doorways on those scenes of domestic life which (lighted like toy theatres) seemed filled with a tremendous dramatic significance. The Cabal met at this time in what resembled a disused curator’s wooden hut, built against the red earth walls of an embankment, very near to Pompey’s Pillar. I suppose the morbid sensitivity of the Egyptian police to political meetings dictated the choice of such a venue. One crossed the wilderness of trenches and parapets thrown up by the archaeologist and followed a muddy path through the stone gate; then turning sharply at right angles one entered this large inelegant shack, one of whose walls was the earth side of an embankment and whose floor was of tamped earth. The interior was strongly lit by two petrol lamps and furnished with chairs of wicker.