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.

Page 153 of 189 · 20 per page

• From Cultish (2021)

  Because Moreno’s aim is so transparently to teach her students to reclaim their own personal power, as opposed to asserting her power over them, she’s never felt the need to defend intenSati as not a “real cult.” To me, that lack of defensiveness speaks volumes. By and large, new religion experts are not terribly concerned that the drawbacks of cult fitness stack up to the likes of Scientology, either. “I definitely think some of these workouts are ‘culty,’ but I say that with scare quotes,” commented Stanford anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann. The main “cult” symptom Luhrmann finds in fitness buffs is the belief that if they attend classes regularly, their lives will dramatically improve overall. As long as they attend class five times a week and say the mantras, then that will change the way the world unfolds for them. It’s that sense of excess idealism again—that conviction that this group, this instructor, these rituals, have the power to accomplish more than they probably can. It is entirely possible to exploit that faith. However, what keeps me from roasting the cult fitness industry too dramatically is that ultimately, you’re in charge of your own experience. At Spin class, you control the resistance on your bike; if you want to ignore the “culty lady” at the front of the room (or onscreen) and slow down, you can. If you pray to a higher power, you can do that while chanting about divine inspiration. But if you just want to jump around and party, you can do that, too. And after six months, if things start to get toxic or you just want to try something else, you’re free to. If the bonds you built on the leaderboard are really that strong, they’ll last even after you decide to switch to surfboard Pilates. After all, the studio is not what singularly gives your life meaning. It very well might bring you fulfillment and connection for forty-five minutes at a time, but you’d still be you without it. You’re already blessed with all you need. Part 6 Follow for Follow i. It’s June 2020, one of the most contentious months in contemporary American history, and my Instagram algorithm is on the fritz. Amid posting about the global COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter, while keeping up with all the New Age swamis, MLM recruiters, and conspiracy theorists I’ve followed over the past year, my Explore page can’t seem to tell whether I’m a social justice warrior, a Plandemic truther, an antivaxxer, a witch, an Amway distributor, or just really obsessed with essential oils. There’s a smug satisfaction that comes with briefly allowing myself to believe I’ve confused the Instagram Eye, whose presence is so omniscient and mysterious (and indispensable to me), sometimes it feels like the only God I’ve ever known.

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  I bought a wedding card with a big white cake on the cover and a Starbucks gift card. I crossed out the sappy Hallmark congratulations to a blessed couple on your blessed day. I addressed the card to her and scribbled inside, “With my abiding affection and always in good thoughts, to the girl who had her cake and ate it too. XOXO.” Then I slipped the gift card in, licked the envelope slowly, sealed it and paid the postage, handed it over to the Next Day delivery counter. Outside the post office, I remember thinking it was a balmy summer already and it was only the start of July. Almost like Florida, I thought. She’d worn me out; I needed a nap. And I remember reminding myself that I was free and single, smack down in the middle of my life, and that, even though it was terribly quiet in my life just then, there was no real reason to be down. Being Bobby Donna George Storey It was no ordinary day. To begin with, Zoe woke up all on her own. Usually it was Bobby who roused her, his hard-on nudging her ass, but it was only six in the morning, and Bobby was still asleep. : Zoe glanced appreciatively at his long, dark curls spilling over the pillow, but she made no move to wake him. She knew the urgent tingling between her legs was less carnal desire than the legacy of last night’s beer. She slithered off the bottom of the bed and groped for her underwear in the tangle of clothing on the floor. College had its advantages. You could spend every night in your boyfriend’s bed, and your parents never had a clue. Then again, back home you didn’t have to climb down three flights of stairs to go to the bathroom in the freezing January dawn. ‘Teeth chattering, Zoe stepped into her panties and yanked them up over hips. Something was definitely unusual now. Overnight the fabric of her underwear had grown thicker, the fit in the ass snug, and the waistband rode suspiciously high. Zoe smiled. She’d put on Bobby’s briefs by mistake. She reached down to take them off. ‘That’s when things began to get very strange indeed. Instead of hooking themselves under the elastic, her fingers crept lower, as if some invisible hand were guiding them. Before she knew it, she was tracing the front seam, the one that led down to that secret opening, with languid, teasing strokes. Just the other night, Zoe had pulled Bobby’s stiff cock through the gap and sucked him. She remembered his red, swollen lollipop poking up from the white cloth and realized, with a grin, that Bobby was always hard when she saw him in his underwear. Maybe his underpants were enchanted, because she was getting rather turned on herself. She could feel her pussy lips swell, feel a Being Bobby =)

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  He half expected Valerie to react in some way, but she didn’t, to his great delight. She still didn’t move or do anything when he started to move in and out of her, took hold of her breasts with both hands, and pumped himself to a glorious, earth-shattering, way beyond wonderful, exhilarating and fantastic orgasm inside a real life, receptive, lubricated vagina. : He stayed on top of her motionless body, gasping and moaning with pleasure and unconcealed delight until he was able to catch his breath, and then rolled off her again. She still hadn’t moved at all. He wondered what the experience had been like for her since she hadn’t given him any indication at all. “Did you have an orgasm, too?” he asked, wanting to make sure the whole encounter hadn’t just been for his benefit as it was with the statues and the doll. “Of course, I did,” Valerie replied matter-of-factly. “I always do.” “I’m glad,” Bernard said. “I was worried that maybe you didn’t.” “You don’t have to worry about me,” Valerie said. “I know how to look after myself. Was what I was doing all right for you?” “More than all right,’ Bernard enthused. “It was absolutely perfect. You were absolutely perfect.” “Good,” Valerie said. “I was sure that’s what you wanted.” They lay quietly side by side for a while, enjoying the soothing afterglow of their union, lost in their own thoughts. “Do you think we could do this again?” Bernard finally broke the silence. “Of course, we will,” Valerie said without hesitation. “Next time, your turn!” On My Knees in Barcelona Kristina Lloyd This happened before the Olympics, a summer when the nights were so hot the city couldn’t sleep and everyone grew angry and crazy. Zero tolerance was just a rumor, so whores, thieves and smackheads skulked in narrow streets and everyone avoided the docks. I only went to Bar Anise in the hope they’d give me some ice. Had I known what kind of bar it was, I might have stayed away. It was nearly 2:00 a.m. and I was standing on my dinky balcony, feeling pretty zonked. The fuse had gone in my fan and the air in my apartment felt thick enough to slice. In the street below, a globe lamp hung like a moon on a bracket, adding a sheen of pearl to the facade of Bar Anise. I held a damp cloth to the back of my neck, arms resting on metal too hot to touch during the day. Earlier, the cloth had contained fast-melting ice and my mind returned to the cold rivulets trickling over my shoulders, collarbone and breasts. Like a tongue, [’d thought, the tongue of a lover making whoopee with my skin. How long had it been now? Oh, too many months to count.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  The results are by and large supporting our original findings though we have been able to sharpen them greatly. That is, the measures of the conditions (E, C, PR) continue to relate positively and significantly to positive student growth. Additionally, they relate negatively and significantly to student deterioration such as discipline problems and negative attitudes about school. For me, these studies offer adequate evidence that the more the psychological climate of the classroom is person-centered, the more are vital and creative learnings fostered. This statement holds for both elementary and secondary classes. It has yet to be investigated at the college level, but there is no reason to suppose the findings would be sharply different. So I trust it is clear from what I have said that I believe person-centered education can be defined, and that it is effective.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  So let us remain friends, as you were saying just now to my wife. And since we have always shared everything in common except our wives, let us share them as well.’ Zeppa having consented to this proposal, all four breakfasted together in perfect amity. And from that day forth, each of the ladies had two husbands, and each of the men had two wives, nor did this arrangement ever give rise to any argument or dispute between them.

• From Cultish (2021)

  In a cognitive analysis of QAnon for Psychology Today, Pierre noted that with QAnon, “the conflation of fantasy and reality isn’t so much a risk as a built-in feature.” Some of the psychological quirks thought to drive conspiracy theory belief in general, Pierre writes, include a craving for uniqueness, plus the needs for certainty, control, and closure that feel especially urgent during crisis-ridden times. With all their plot twists and good/evil binaries, conspiracy theories seize our attention, while supplying simple answers to unresolved questions. “Conspiracy theories offer a kind of reassurance that things happen for a reason, and can make believers feel special that they’re privy to secrets to which the rest of us ‘sheeple’ are blind,” Pierre explains. After platforms like Twitter and Instagram started catching on to the dangers of QAnon and cracking down, supporters had to get more creative with their language in order to communicate without getting deleted. This is part of why QAnon messages began appearing in the form of aesthetic quotegrams: graphically designed maxims that blend in with the “keep calm and manifest”– type self-care memes innocently populating most users’ Instagram feeds. This development soon became known as “Pastel QAnon.” Quotegrams—with their comely fonts and generic syntax—serve as a form of loaded language themselves, designed to yank on users’ heartstrings, to get them to like and repost without much thought. It’s what allowed one clever troll in 2013 to get away with Photoshopping Hitler quotes over images of Taylor Swift—obscure ones pulled from Mein Kampf (“The only preventable measure one can take is to live irregularly,” “Do not compare yourself to others. If you do so, you are insulting yourself”). The memer uploaded his creations to Pinterest and watched smugly as fans reposted them all over the web. The point was to prove the extreme devotion of impressionable young Swifties, and their eagerness to instantly and unquestioningly share all things Tay. There’s a religious power in quotegrams that far predates social media. Our love of a pithy adage in square form is connected to the needlepointed psalms on display in religious aunts’ powder rooms. But it even goes back further than that, to—can you guess the era?—the Protestant Reformation, when there was a big shift in focus away from religious imagery (stained glass, Last Supper frescoes) and onto text. “There was an increasing discomfort with the ambiguity you get from images,” commented Dr. Marika Rose, a Durham University research fellow in digital theology, in Grazia magazine. “So a Protestant valuing of the Bible made it a much more text-based religion.” Ever since, our culture has looked to snack-size proverbs for guidance and gospel, convinced that when it comes to written quotes, what you read is what you get.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  Let me move on to another area of my learnings. I find it very satisfying when I can be real, when I can be close to whatever it is that is going on within me. I like it when I can listen to myself. To really know what I am experiencing in the moment is by no means an easy thing, but I feel somewhat encouraged because I think that over the years I have been improving at it. I am convinced, however, that it is a lifelong task and that none of us ever is totally able to be comfortably close to all that is going on within our own experience. In place of the term “realness” I have sometimes used the word “congruence.” By this I mean that when my experiencing of this moment is present in my awareness and when what is present in my awareness is present in my communication, then each of these three levels matches or is congruent. At such moments I am integrated or whole, I am completely in one piece. Most of the time, of course, I, like everyone else, exhibit some degree of incongruence. I have learned, however, that realness, or genuineness, or congruence—whatever term you wish to give it—is a fundamental basis for the best of communication. What do I mean by being close to what is going on in me? Let me try to explain what I mean by describing what sometimes occurs in my work as a therapist. Sometimes a feeling “rises up in me” which seems to have no particular relationship to what is going on. Yet I have learned to accept and trust this feeling in my awareness and to try to communicate it to my client. For example, a client is talking to me and I suddenly feel an image of him as a pleading little boy, folding his hands in supplication, saying, “Please let me have this, please let me have this.” I have learned that if I can be real in the relationship with him and express this feeling that has occurred in me, it is very likely to strike some deep note in him and to advance our relationship. Let me give another example. It is often very hard for me, as for other writers, to get close to my self when I start to write. It is so easy to be distracted by the possibility of saying things which will catch approval or will look good to colleagues or make a popular appeal. How can I listen to the things that I really want to say and write? It is difficult. Sometimes I even have to trick myself to get close to what is in me. I tell myself that I am not writing for publication; I am just writing for my own satisfaction. I write on old scraps of paper so that I don’t

• From Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble (2014)

  I’m writing e-books aimed at venture capitalists and chief marketing officers, which isn’t as fun as being a columnist at Newsweek , but it’s better than explaining HTML to Marketing Mary. I’m also helping write an update to Inbound Marketing , the book that Halligan and Dharmesh published in 2009. On the side, I’ve started picking up some freelance work, writing articles for Newsweek Japan on topics like robotics and artificial intelligence. Sure, there are still days when I go home and tell Sasha about some astonishingly stupid thing that some bozo has done, but most of the time I can just tune things out. The best thing is that I no longer have to work with Marcia, Jan, and Ashley, the women on the blog team, or Wingman. The only person I deal with is Trotsky, and he and I are becoming pals. I like Trotsky so much that one weekend I invite him and his family to a cookout at my house. I cook steaks and our kids play together. At work, Trotsky sometimes swings by my desk just to talk. Apparently the women on the blog team have noticed that Trotsky and I are getting to be friends, and this bugs them. They don’t like Trotsky. Neither does Spinner, for that matter. Spinner complains to Cranium that Trotsky and I are getting too friendly. Cranium tells Trotsky that he needs to stop hanging out with me at work. That, anyway, is what Trotsky tells me. “The women on the blog team don’t like it,” he says. I can’t believe it. “What is this, middle school?” I say. “Well,” he says, “it’s not just that.” Spinner has told Cranium that some of our banter is making the women who sit near me uncomfortable. One woman who overheard one of our conversations felt it was inappropriate. Trotsky won’t say which woman complained, but he does tell me which conversation it was. We were talking about child care. Trotsky’s wife works full time. They’ve tried day care but are thinking about hiring a nanny. We’ve dealt with the same issue, and first hired a nanny and then resorted to getting au pairs to live with us and watch the kids. It turns out that having a nineteen-year-old German girl living in your house is maybe not the greatest idea. Nothing inappropriate ever happened, but it drove my wife nuts, I tell him. Trotsky says no way would his wife even entertain having an au pair live with them. This conversation has made someone uncomfortable. That person confided in Spinner, who reported us to Cranium. To me the whole thing seems stupid. But Trotsky takes it seriously. “You can get fired for almost anything and survive,” he says. “But the one thing you cannot survive is getting fired for sexual harassment. If that happens, you’ll never work again.” From then on I steer clear of Spinner and the women on the blog team.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  The first simple feeling I want to share with you is my enjoyment when I can really hear someone. I think perhaps this has been a long-standing characteristic of mine. I can remember this in my early grammar school days. A child would ask the teacher a question and the teacher would give a perfectly good answer to a completely different question. A feeling of pain and distress would always strike me. My reaction was, “But you didn’t hear him!” I felt a sort of childish despair at the lack of communication which was (and is) so common. I believe I know why it is satisfying to me to hear someone. When I can really hear someone, it puts me in touch with him; it enriches my life. It is through hearing people that I have learned all that I know about individuals, about personality, about interpersonal relationships. There is another peculiar satisfaction in really hearing someone: It is like listening to the music of the spheres, because beyond the immediate message of the person, no matter what that might be, there is the universal. Hidden in all of the personal

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  any of the usual senses what follows is not a demonstration. Yet I hope that in some sense this may be a demonstration of communication which is given, and also received, primarily at a feeling and experiential level. What I would like to do is very simple indeed. I would like to share with you some of the things I have learned for myself in regard to communication. These are personal learnings growing out of my own experience. I am not attempting at all to say that you should learn or do these same things but I feel that if I can report my own experience honestly enough, perhaps you can check what I say against your own experience and decide as to its truth or falsity for you. In my own two-way communication with others there have been experiences that have made me feel pleased and warm and good and satisfied. There have been other experiences that to some extent at the time, and even more so afterward, have made me feel dissatisfied and displeased and more distant and less contented with myself. I would like to convey some of these things. Another way of putting this is that some of my experiences in communicating with others have made me feel expanded, larger, enriched, and have accelerated my own growth. Very often in these experiences I feel that the other person has had similar reactions and that he too has been enriched, that his development and his functioning have moved forward. Then there have been other occasions in which the growth or development of each of us has been diminished or stopped or even reversed. I am sure it will be clear in what I have to say that I would prefer my experiences in communication to have a growth-promoting effect, both on me and on the other, and that I should like to avoid those communication experiences in which both I and the other person feel diminished.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  "The thing you ask of me is both difficult and useless. Although I have passed all my days in this place, I have neither counted the houses nor inquired into the number of the inhabitants; and as to what one person loads on his mules and the other stows away in the bottom of his ship, that is no business of mine. But, above all, as to the previous history of this city, God only knows the amount of dirt and confusion that the infidels may have eaten before the coming of the sword of Islam. It were unprofitable for us to inquire into it. "O my soul! O my lamb! seek not after the things which concern thee not. Thou camest unto us and we welcomed thee: go in peace. "Of a truth thou hast spoken many words and there is no harm done, for the speaker is one and the listener is another. After the fashion of thy people thou hast wandered from one place to another, until thou art happy and content in none. We (praise be to God) were born here, and never desire to quit it. Is it possible, then, that the idea of a general intercourse between mankind should make any impression on our understandings? God forbid! "Listen, O my son! There is no wisdom equal unto the belief in God! He created the world, and shall we liken ourselves unto Him in seeking to penetrate into the mysteries of His creation? Shall we say, Behold this star spinneth round that star, and this other star with a tail goeth and cometh in so many years! Let it go! He from whose hand it came will guide and direct it. "But thou wilt say unto me, Stand aside, O man, for I am more learned than thou art, and have seen more things. If thou thinkest that thou art in this respect better than I am, thou art welcome. I praise God that I seek not that which I require not. Thou art learned in the things I care not for; and as for that which thou has seen, I spit upon it. Will much knowledge create thee a double belly, or wilt thou seek Paradise with thine eyes? "O my friend! if thou wilt be happy, say, There is no God but God! Do no evil, and thus wilt thou fear neither man nor death; for surely thine hour will come! "The meek in spirit (El Fakir) ''IMAUM ALI ZADI." THE GENESIS OF THE PURE SCIENCES.

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  We take off from a back strip, away from the crowds. I’m already on the upper wing in my safety harness, securely fastened to the upright struts that protrude from the center of the plane’s structure. Surely, you didn’t think I’d do this without a harness? Some people used to, but they tended to have short careers. Wing Walker 143 We circle the air show once, up high. We’ll talk a little on the radio. Bob worries how long he can keep doing this. The maintenance on the old girl gets harder every year. Then we get the signal to go and we come in fast and low. I'll be in a pose: arm extended gracefully my long hair streaming behind me like Boadicea the warrior queen. Or Xena the warrior princess — I guess more people have heard of her. One leg cocked up. I'll hold the pose and wave to the crowd as Bob takes us up in a hard spiral. And for the next fifteen minutes or so, Bob will twirl with Buttercup, looping the loop, flying upside down, flipping her from side to side, always within sight of the crowds of course. And me? [ll be up there, posing, slow motion dancing, sometimes a handstand, although Bob has to keep her totally steady for that one, so I only do that when he’s been dry for a few days. The wind pummels the breath from my body, and moving a limb is like pushing against cement. The roar of the air and the rumble and creak of the plane beneath my feet fill my head. There’s a crowd? I honestly couldn’t tell you. It’s just me and Buttercup and Bob, flying - in our little space-time continuum. Evenings go something like this:* Me and Bob, in a Motel 6 somewhere, Buttercup in a hangar nearby. We get takeout and sit on one of the double beds, backs against the headboard watching HBO. I trade some of my sweet and sour for Bob’s lo-mein, and we wrangle over who ate the most prawn crackers. We compromise on the wine: he likes sweet, I like dry, so as usual we settle on a Riesling, one of those big double bottles and we'll finish the lot. “You need a man,” Bob says, eyes on Sigourney Weaver, her singlet tastefully ripped as she battles aliens. I grunt. “I can get one anytime I want.” “Not just a one night man,” says Bob. He knows about them. He’s obligingly asked for another room on a few occasions when I can’t go back to their place. “A real man.” “What man can compete with Buttercup?” I ask, adding hastily, “Apart from you.” “T’l] find you a man,” promises Bob. “One like Sigourney.” So far, he hasn't.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  Six Vignettes I tend to learn the most from small, intense experiences which illuminate for me different aspects of what I am doing. They also illustrate in a vivid fashion some of the more abstract concepts of a person-centered approach. Frequently I write them down in order to store them as memories or to provide them for the use of the people involved. I have assembled six of these experiences here, each very different, but each illustrating some point or points. They are all true stories, yet they also have something of the quality of fables. Each one has been, and is, quite precious for my own growth or for my confidence in what I am doing. The first, “I Began to Lose Me,” contains a young woman’s letter describing her experience in therapy. I do not know the woman, nor do I know the therapist. But her experience crams into one letter a whole gold mine of learnings about individual therapy. “The Cavern” is an intensely personal account, again by letter, of how the experiencing of the emptiness of a person—the inner void—can become a rich and fulfilling event, when it is accepted. It, too, is an account of a one-to-one therapy relationship. “Nancy Mourns” tells of an incident which will always remain fresh in my memory, involving my daughter and Nancy and several others in a large person- centered workshop, aimed both at facilitating personal growth and the building of community. “Being Together” is a particularly well-documented story of the long-range effects of an encounter group experience. I was discussing recently with colleagues the rich data we have, in personal letters and contacts, of the frequently far-reaching effects of even a weekend group. Here is a case in which those effects can be shown in a series of “snapshots,” starting with the original experience of one of the workshop participants, and ending with a letter I received from her nine years later. “The Security Guard” is one of several fascinating examples of the kind of energy that emanates from a community-building experience. We influence, in unknown ways, people who have no direct contact at all with the workshop. Here is a clear instance of that influence. “A Kids’ Workshop” brings us back to hard reality. In addition to a rewarding account of how young children respond to a person-centered climate, it clearly

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  the tidal waters of the ocean, dropping its muddy silt as it enters the boundless sea. So I consider death with, I believe, an openness to the experience. It will be what it will be, and I trust I can accept it as either an end to, or a continuation of life. CONCLUSION I recognize that I have been unusually fortunate in my health, in my marriage, in my family, in my stimulating younger friends, in the unexpectedly adequate income from my books. So I am in no way typical. But for me, these past ten years have been fascinating—full of adventuresome undertakings. I have been able to open my self to new ideas, new feelings, new experiences, new risks. Increasingly I discover that being alive involves taking a chance, acting on less than certainty, engaging with life. All of this brings change and for me the process of change is life. I realize that if I were stable and steady and static, I would be living death. So I accept confusion and uncertainty and fear and emotional highs and lows because they are the price I willingly pay for a flowing, perplexing, exciting life. As I consider all the decades of my existence, there is only one other, the period at the Counseling Center at the University of Chicago, which can be compared to this one. It too involved risk, learning, personal growth and enrichment. But it was also a period of deep personal insecurity and strenuous professional struggle, much more difficult than these past years. So I believe I am being honest when I say that, all in all, this has been the most satisfying decade in my life. I have been increasingly able to be myself and have enjoyed doing just that. As a boy, I was rather sickly, and my parents have told me that it was predicted I would die young. This prediction has been proven completely wrong in one sense, but has come profoundly true in another sense. I think it is correct that I will never live to be old. So now I agree with the prediction: I believe that I will die young. UPDATE—1979 I choose to fill out this chapter by concentrating on one very full year—1979— in which pain, mourning, change, satisfaction, and risk were all markedly present. Living the Process of Dying

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  Bob and I aren’t lovers. There’s a forty year age gap. I like men with hair above the neck and none below. Bob likes men who are the reverse of that. We get along like old friends, sharing a room with two beds in each of the cheap motels to save money. 144 Cheyenne Blue And so our evenings fill the space of a motel room and our mouths and hands follow the predictable routine of takeout and conversations we’ve had hundreds of times before. I wouldn’t change those conversations; I wouldn’t change Bob. Only the location of the Motel 6 changes. It teleports itself from Chino to Riverside to Prescott to Pueblo so that it’s there when Bob and I fly up in Buttercup to prepare for the next show. And one day, the conversation goes like this: “Got you a man,” says Bob, reaching over with a fork to snag a pork ball and dunk it in my sauce. “Can get my own.” “Not that sort of man. Got you a man on the wing tomorrow.” Now my interest is up. Not many men wing walk. It’s for the girls; the men are too chicken. Or too heavy. Can’t have a 200 Ib man moving across the wing. Bob couldn’t keep Buttercup steady if that happened. ““‘Name’s Leon. He’s a novice but he’s keen. Thought we could try out some fancy pants double act.” There’s a mild alarm that [ll have to split my cut with this Leon, but I’m intrigued. P’ve never wing walked with a man. Only girls and there’s always an element of competition in that. Whose tits can jut the furthest, whose leg can stay extended the longest, whose hair looks the best backswept and big as we leap lithely from the plane to greet the fans. “Where’d you find him?” “Came to the hangar when I was putting Buttercup to bed. We had a bit of a chat.” He must have been convincing. If I had a dollar for every person who says to me, “I did that once” or “I’d love to do what you do”, I’d be rich enough to buy Bob his Mexican island staffed by Sigourney Weaver clones in loincloths. With dicks. Leon is there the next morning. He’s lean, feline like his name, small and wiry, the same height as me. He wears some sort of tight pants and a thick clinging fleece. The pants show off his ass pretty well. I think that he’s probably gay. I’m wearing an old costume, stuff that is now not good enough for shows. There’s a smear of oil across the chest and there’s a couple of small holes: one a rip on the thigh where I caught it on the door catch, a small hole in the crotch where a seam gave when I did a handstand. “Jaye, Leon, Leon, Jaye.” Bob does the introductions and I check to see whether he’s watching Leon’s ass, but he’s already turned

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  I have found that for me interpersonal relationships best exist as a rhythm: openness and expression, and then assimilation; flow and change, then a temporary quiet; risk and anxiety, then temporary security. I could not live in a continuous encounter group For me, being transparently open is far more rewarding than being defensive. This is difficult to achieve, even partially, but enormously enriching to a relationship. It is necessary for me to stay close to the earthiness of real experience. I cannot live my life in abstractions. So real relationships with persons, hands dirtied in the soil, observing the budding of a flower, or viewing the sunset, are necessary to my life. At least one foot must be in the soil of reality. I like my life best when it faces outward most of the time. I prize the times when I am inward-looking—searching to know myself, meditating, and thinking. But this must be balanced by doing things—interacting with people, producing something, whether a flower or a book or a piece of carpentry. Finally, I have a deep belief, which can only be a hypothesis, that the philosophy of interpersonal relationships which I have helped to formulate, and which is contained in this paper, is applicable to all situations involving persons. I believe it is applicable to therapy, to marriage, to parent and child, to teacher and student, to persons with high status and those with low status, to persons of one race relating to persons of another. I am even brash enough to believe that it could be effective in situations now dominated by the exercise of raw power—in politics, for example, especially in our dealings with other nations. I challenge, with all the strength I possess, the current American belief, evident in every phase of our foreign policy, and especially in our insane wars, that “might makes right.” That, in my estimation, is the road to self-destruction. I go along with Martin Buber and the ancient Oriental sages: “He who imposes himself has the small, manifest might; he who does not impose himself has the great, secret might.” REFERENCES BUBER, M. Pointing the way. New York: Harper & Row, 1957. BYNNER, W. (Translator). The way of life according to Laotzu. New York: Capricorn Books, 1962. FRIEDMAN, M. Touchstones of reality. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1972. ROGERS, C. R. The necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality change. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 1957, 21, 95–103.

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  As ever, writers the width and breadth of the English-speaking world (and occasionally further afield), continue to fire up their wild imaginations and deliver stories that amaze me, tickle my senses and more and delight readers in myriad ways. The explosion of erotica writing and publishing marches on, despite the closure of some noted imprints, and 2009 saw a veritable florilege of new anthologies on specific themes (which made my selection tougher in so far as it would have been awkward to feature too many stories about, say, voyeurism, spanking, hotel rooms, vampires, swinging, BDSM, etc....) to which an avalanche of eBooks and further web magazines was added to complicate my editorial choices. There was truly an embarrassment of sexy possibilities, and I finally read almost 1,800 stories to reach the forty or so featured inside these pages. A personal sense of satisfaction this year comes from the fact that for the very first time there are almost as many male authors as there are female in the book, a rare occurrence in the world of erotica but one which I feel does better reflect the profile of readers from _ my own past observations. Sex, in all its manifestations, is an equal opportunity temptation and looking at it from both sides of the XIV Maxim Fakubowski gender divide proves a fascinating experience, which reflects real life and not just editorial presumptions. In addition, there are a couple of handfuls of new names, which I hope we will keep on seeing in contents pages, as well as a marked increase in the number of British authors. A milestone year indeed. So, why waste my time any longer praising the stories and their imaginative variations on a subject too many have always assumed was limited? Jump straight into the book and enjoy the luscious spread of erotic delights that lies in store, and keep your prejudices (and your clothes?) at the door. Savour, one story at a time! Maxim Jakubowski The Cavern Valerie Grey I. The Hotel Arensen sits atop a spacious island planted with formal gardens and hedgerow mazes, tall poplars and tangled strands of ancient oak. One view is more beautiful than the next, and the whole is a symphony of light and form and shadow. The island is connected to the shore of the lake by a macadam drive; when the sun slants low like this and the water burns red, the hotel and the island appear to be consumed by a lake of fire, attached to the mainland by a road of smoke. Where the drive connects with the island is a long causeway and at the end of this causeway are the statues of two angels, one on each side of the road; one looks towards the Hotel Arensen, the other looking away, so that one faces the traveller as he enters, and the other faces the guest as he leaves.

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  Valerie never made a single sound, just stood there motionlessly the way he had asked her to. He proceeded to undo her skirt and pull it down over her legs. She didn’t even lift her feet to step out of it. He knelt down on the floor, lifted one foot after the other, and pulled her skirt from underneath. Then he took hold of her panties and pulled them down the way he had done with her skirt, lifting her feet again to pull the panties from underneath them as well. She stood quietly before him, the first naked woman in his life, her pale skin looking almost white in the light of the bedside lamps. He looked at her for a while the way he looked at the statues, reveling in her pure femininity, admiring her shape and her curves, her quaint breasts, her barely concealed pussy between her slightly parted legs. Then he quickly undressed himself, took Valerie by the shoulders, and lowered her on to the bed. He rolled her towards the middle to make room for himself beside her. Spending quite a long time playing with her breasts, he delighted in the unique experience of touching real-life, soft, pliable breasts with his virgin hands. Valerie kept lying on the bed without moving once, without saying a word, without any suggestions or complaints. Bernard was in heaven. In all his fantasies, he had never pictured anything like this with a real woman. This was so much better than what he was able to do with his doll, and infinitely better than his encounters with the statues. This was real: real, warm, living flesh, In the Absence of Motion 107 trembling ever so slightly under his hands, responding to his touch, making him feel fuzzy and exceedingly pleased. He let go of one of the breasts and moved his freed hand down Valerie’s body until he reached her pussy with the light blond fluff. For the first time, he felt a woman’s genitals, felt the warmth and the freely flowing juices, felt the puffiness of the lips, the protruding clit. It was an incredible experience, especially since he didn’t have to worry at all about any of the things he had always fussed about. Valerie was a perfect statue, a perfect doll. She lay absolutely still, never made a sound or said a word, and just let him do whatever he wanted to do. Emboldened, he knelt beside her and spread her legs apart, then climbed on top of her and buried his by now throbbing and pulsatingly eager penis in the unbelievably wonderful, warm, soft, pliable cave.

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

  Every Sophist had his own school and party, which was attached to him with incredible zeal, and endeavored to gain every newly arriving student to its master. In these efforts, as well as in the frequent literary contests and debates of the various schools among themselves, there was not seldom much rude and wild behavior. To youth who were not yet firmly grounded in Christianity, residence in Athens, and occupation with the ancient classics, were full of temptation, and might easily kindle an enthusiasm for heathenism, which, however, had already lost its vitality, and was upheld solely by the artificial means of magic, theurgy, and an obscure mysticism.1941 Basil and Gregory remained steadfast, and no poetical or rhetorical glitter could fade the impressions of a pious training. Gregory says of their studies in Athens, in his forty-third Oration:1942 "We knew only two streets of the city, the first and the more excellent one to the churches, and to the ministers of the altar; the other, which, however, we did not so highly esteem, to the public schools and to the teachers of the sciences. The streets to the theatres, games, and places of unholy amusements, we left to others. Our holiness was our great concern; our sole aim was to be called and to be Christians. In this we placed our whole glory."1943 In a later oration on classic studies Basil encourages them, but admonishes that they should be pursued with caution, and with constant regard to the great Christian purpose of eternal life, to which all earthly objects and attainments are as shadows and dreams to reality. In plucking the rose one should beware of the thorns, and, like the bee, should not only delight himself with the color and the fragrance, but also gain useful honey from the flower.1944 The intimate friendship of Basil and Gregory, lasting from fresh, enthusiastic youth till death, resting on an identity of spiritual and moral aims, and sanctified by Christian piety, is a lovely and engaging chapter in the history of the fathers, and justifies a brief episode in a field not yet entered by any church historian. With all the ascetic narrowness of the time, which fettered even these enlightened fathers, they still had minds susceptible to science and art and the beauties of nature. In the works of Basil and of the two Gregories occur pictures of nature such as we seek in vain in the heathen classics. The descriptions of natural scenery among the poets and philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome can be easily compressed within a few pages. Socrates, as we learn from Plato, was of the opinion that we can learn nothing from trees and fields, and hence he never took a walk; he was so bent upon self-knowledge, as the true aim of all learning, that he regarded the whole study of nature as useless, because it did not tend to make man either more intelligent or more virtuous. The

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  I have always been better at caring for and looking after others than I have in caring for myself. But in these later years I have made progress. I have always been a very responsible person. If someone else is not looking after the details of an enterprise or the persons in a workshop, I must. But I have changed. In our 1976 Workshop on the Person Centered Approach in Ashland, Oregon, when I was not feeling well, and at the 1977 workshop in Arcozelo, Brazil, I shed all responsibility for the conduct of these complex undertakings and left it completely in the hands of others. I needed to take care of myself. So I let go of all responsibility except the responsibility—and the satisfaction—of being myself. For me it was a most unusual feeling: to be comfortably irresponsible with no feelings of guilt. And, to my surprise, I found I was more effective that way. I have taken better care of myself physically, in a variety of ways. I have also learned to respect my psychological needs. Three years ago a workshop group helped me to realize how harried and driven I felt by outside demands—“nibbled to death by ducks” was the way one person put it, and the expression captured my feelings exactly. So I did what I have never done before: I spent ten days absolutely alone in a beach cottage which had been offered me, and I refreshed myself immensely. I found I thoroughly enjoyed being with me. I like me. I have been more able to ask for help. I ask others to carry things for me, to do things for me, instead of proving that I can do it myself. I can also ask for personal help. When Helen, my wife, was very ill, and I was close to the breaking point from being on call as a 24-hour nurse, a housekeeper, a professional person in much demand, and a writer, I asked for help—and got it —from a therapist friend. I explored and tried to meet my own needs. I explored the strain that this period was putting on our marriage. I realized that it was necessary for my survival to live my life, and that this must come first, even though Helen was so ill. I am not quick to turn to others, but I am much more aware of the fact that I can’t handle everything by myself. In these varied ways, I do a better job of prizing and looking after the person that is me. Serenity?