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 174 of 189 · 20 per page

• From The Girls (2016)

  deprivation tanks. They suggested E-meters, Gestalt, eating only high- mineral foods that had been planted during a full moon. I couldn’t believe my mother took their advice, but she listened to everyone. Eager for an aim, a plan, believing the answer could come from any direction at any time, if only she tried hard enough. She searched until there was only searching left. The astrologer in Alameda who made her cry, talking about the inauspicious shadow cast by her rising sign. The therapies that involved throwing herself around a padded room filled with strangers and whirling until she hit something. She came home with foggy tinges under the skin, bruises that deepened to a vivid meat. I saw her touch the bruises with something like fondness. When she looked up and saw me watching, she blushed. Her hair was newly bleached, stinking of chemicals and artificial roses. “Do you like it?” she said, grazing the sheared ends with her fingers. I nodded, though the color made her skin look washed by jaundice. She kept changing, day by day. Little things. She bought handcrafted earrings from women in her encounter group, came back swinging primitive bits of wood from her ears, enameled bracelets the color of after-dinner mints jittery on her wrists. She started lining her eyes with an eyeliner pencil she held over a lighter flame. Turning the point until it softened and she could draw slashes at each eye, making her look sleepy and Egyptian. She paused in my doorway on her way out for the night, dressed in a tomato-red blouse that exposed her shoulders. She kept pulling the sleeves down. Her shoulders were dusted with glitter. “You want me to do your eyes too, sweetheart?” But I had nowhere to be. Who would care if my eyes looked bigger or bluer? “I might get back late. So sleep well.” My mother leaned over to kiss the top of my head. “We’re good, aren’t we? The two of us?” She patted me, smiling so her face seemed to crack and reveal the full rush of her need. Part of me did feel all right, or I was confusing familiarity with happiness. Because that was there even when love wasn’t —the net of family, the purity of habit and home. It was such an unfathomable amount of time that you spent at home, and maybe that’s the best you could get—that sense of endless enclosure, like picking for

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  211 o The size of monastic houses also led to the specialization of activities, so that the delicate balance between work and prayer stressed by the Rule of Benedict could be lost. And the more monks were separated from the realities of hard manual labor, the more their existence could be seen—by others, as well as themselves—as privileged. o An unintended corollary of community size and noble patronage was a growth in material prosperity, which led to the paradox of “poor” monks who “called nothing their own” living in grand buildings with splendid ornament. The Abbey of Cluny • The founding of the Abbey of Cluny in Burgundy in the year 910 by William I, duke of Aquitaine, began a two- century period of influence for that monastery. • Cluny deliberately set out to initiate a reform movement, and it was, consequently, innovative in its approach to the Rule of Benedict. Duke William served as a generous patron to the monastery. This patronage liberated its first abbot, Benno, from any allegiance to secular powers and enabled him to establish a direct allegiance to Pope Sergius III. • Cluny served as the “mother house” of an extended organization of monasteries and nunneries subordinate to it, with only Cluny having an abbot. The purpose of this centralization was to ensure a uniform and strict observance of the Rule in all the houses. It also Cluny served as the “mother house” of a congregation of monasteries and nunneries that were subordinate to it; under abbot Hugh between 1049 and 1109, more than 1,000 Benedictine houses belonged to the Cluniac order. © iStockphoto/Thinkstock.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  My king is not in check!’ ‘The king is on square G-2,’ said Woland, without looking at the board. ‘Messire, I’m horrified!’ howled the cat, showing horror on his mug. ‘There is no king on that square!’ ‘What’s that?’ Woland asked in perplexity and began looking at the board, where the bishop standing on the king’s square kept turning away and hiding behind his hand. ‘Ah, you scoundrel,’ Woland said pensively. ‘Messire! Again I appeal to logic!’ the cat began, pressing his paws to his chest. ‘If a player announces that the king is in check, and meanwhile there’s no trace of the king on the board, the check must be recognized as invalid!’ ‘Do you resign or not?’ Woland cried in a terrible voice. ‘Let me think it over,’ the cat replied humbly, resting his elbows on the table, putting his paws over his ears, and beginning to think. He thought for a long time and finally said: ‘I resign.’ ‘The obstinate beast should be killed,’ whispered Azazello. ‘Yes, I resign,’ said the cat, ‘but I do so only because I am unable to play in an atmosphere of persecution on the part of the envious!’ He stood up and the chessmen climbed into their box. ‘Hella, it’s time,’ said Woland, and Hella disappeared from the room. ‘My leg hurts, and now this ball . . .’ he continued. ‘Allow me,’ Margarita quietly asked. Woland looked at her intently and moved his knee towards her. The liquid, hot as lava, burned her hands, but Margarita, without wincing, and trying not to cause any pain, rubbed it into his knee. ‘My attendants insist it’s rheumatism,’ Woland was saying, not taking his eyes off Margarita, ‘but I strongly suspect that this pain in my knee was left me as a souvenir by a charming witch with whom I was closely acquainted in the year 1571, on Mount Brocken, 5 on the Devil’s Podium.’ ‘Ah, can that be so!’ said Margarita. ‘Trifles! In another three hundred years it will all go away! I’ve been recommended a host of medications, but I keep to my granny’s old ways. Amazing herbs she left me, my grandam, that vile old thing! Incidentally, tell me, are you suffering from anything? Perhaps you have some sort of sorrow or soul-poisoning anguish?’ ‘No, Messire, none of that,’ replied the clever Margarita, ‘and now that I’m here with you, I feel myself quite well.’ ‘Blood is a great thing . . .’ Woland said gaily, with no obvious point, and added: ‘I see you’re interested in my globe.’ ‘Oh, yes, I’ve never seen anything like it.’ ‘It’s a nice little object. Frankly speaking, I don’t enjoy listening to the news on the radio. It’s always reported by some girls who pronounce the names of places inarticulately.

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  210 Lecture 29: monastic Reform life was ordered to “the four last things”: death, judgment, heaven, or hell. o A freely chosen modicum of deprivation and discipline during mortal existence seemed a small price to pay when compared to the cost of eternal misery caused by luxury and vice and far better than passing through an afterlife “purgatory.” o A life dedicated to God in such an explicit fashion prepared the monk for the only thing that really mattered: participation in eternal life in heaven. There was, for the medieval mind, nothing irrational in choosing sacrifice in this life in order to gain everlasting bliss in God’s presence. • Less explicit but no less real were the obvious material benefits that the monastic life made available, even to members of the nobility. o The cloister offered safety, security, and an orderly way of life rather than the chaos and struggle of secular existence. Diet in the monastery was better and more consistent, sleep more regular, days more meaningful, and therefore, health much improved. For women in nunneries, lack of sexual activity meant that the terrors of childbirth, infant mortality, and rapid aging were avoided. o For women and men alike, life within the cloister gave access to beauty through architecture, music, and the liturgy; the chance to practice the crafts of calligraphy and bookmaking, weaving, pottery, and gardening; the possibility of a genuine education; and the chance to hold positions of authority. • Precisely because of its great popularity during these centuries, the institution of monasticism also required constant reform. o Greater numbers in communities inevitably meant that some members were more dedicated to the implicit benefits of the life than to the explicit ideals. For some monks in every age, a comfortable pallet for sleep and meals on a regular basis trump any religious motivation.

• From Laura Middleton; Her Brother and Her Lover (1890)

  To my surprise, however, the entrance was much more difficult than I had expected and I soon found that I had overrated Master John's capacities and that the fortress, though not a maiden one, had not previously been entered by so large a besieging force. With some little exertion on my part, aided by every means in her power, though she winced a good deal at the pain I put her to, I at length succeeded in effecting my object and penetrated to a depth which from her exclamation of delight when she found me fairly imbedded within her, and from certain other symptoms, I felt certain had never been reached previously. Once fairly established within my new quarter we mutually exerted our utmost endeavours to gratify each other as well as ourselves, and the result of our efforts soon led, much to the satisfaction of both parties, in the temporary subjugation of both the contending forces. Gratified by finding that the issue had been much more satisfactory than I had expected, and not having had an opportunity for some time previously of indulging myself so agreeably, I, much to her surprise and joy, retained possession of the stronghold with my forces so slightly weakened by their late defeat as to give immediate promise of a renewed attack. Telling her to be still for a few minutes and that we should shortly enjoy ourselves again, I began to question her regarding the matters in which I felt interested. I thought it better at first not to allude to Laura, so I commenced by inquiring about John, and I soon found that the one subject led to the other. It appeared that John was the under-groom whose duty it was to attend upon Miss Laura when she rode out. John had courted Betsy for some time previously and had been admitted to all the privileges of a husband on condition that he should marry her as soon as he could obtain a situation which would enable him to support her.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  Mikala just looked at him. She’d never been anybody’s freak the way she had freaked for Kareem. He’d touched her heart and given her the best sex she’d ever had, and she damn sure didn’t regret the experience. “Me too,” she finally said, refusing to front. She had a real good feeling about Kareem, and wanted to see what the future held. Borne didn’t have to be her fantasy anymore, and she could leave that Bullet under the bed and let it gather dust. Who needed fantasies anyway? Mikala had a feeling she’d found herself a real live homey-lover-friend, and his name was Kareem. CHARGE IT TO THE GAME Jamise L. Dames Flame’s body pulsed. Tensing and relaxing her muscles, she made her succulent booty clap in the mark’s face as she bent down to touch her pedicured toes, then got low with it, butterflying her legs. Bringing her knees together, then apart, she allowed him brief glimpses of her perfectly waxed, milk-chocolate-covered cherry, then flowed her deliciousness into a bobble. Gyrating her firm, round onion, she backed that thang up until her ass jiggled a few centimeters in front of Robert’s nose, then swung it like a pendulum, hypnotizing him with her rhythm. Far away enough to make him beg for more, she closed in on him to tempt him with her juicy slit and iced-out clit ring. Magically, she worked her sweetness clockwise, then rolled her jelly counterclockwise while hooking her arms through the inside of her thighs, spreading herself further. Looking back at him, she knew it was only a matter of time before she’d get what she wanted: him to sign on the dotted line so she could make enough change to take care of her fifteen-year-old sister, Mercedes, and hopefully get Enrique off her back for good. Shaking papi chulo was going to be the hardest. He wasn’t the kind of brotha you could just blow off. He was a crazy-ass kingpin from Spanish Harlem who’d put more bodies in the ground than a cemetery. Fuckin’ Power. Snaking her body, she rolled in a deep grind, winding her hips and popping her coochie. Rubbing her perfectly rounded, toffee titties under the black light, she thought about her man. Power had fucked up royally, sticking Enrique for the couple of kilos he’d fronted him. Now Flame would have to dance and fuck their way out of it until Power surfaced from a major lick he was putting down somewhere in the Carolinas. Either that, or Flame hoped his gangstaazz homeboy Whiz came through with half of the bricks in exchange for her freedom, which was unlikely because he hadn’t touched base with her in a week. In the meantime, Enrique held Flame responsible for Power’s sins. A down-ass bitch always held her nigga down.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  Monique had wanted to scream with laughter at the look on Juicy’s face. The high-maintenance bitch looked terrified as shit. As if fuckin’ fifteen or twenty stank-breath niggahs with hard dicks was gonna kill her or something. “Here,” Monique said, taking some pity on her and passing her a pill from her personal stash. “After the first ten dirty-dicked niggahs screwing and slobbering all over you, you’re gonna need this to help you get through the rest. Later, hater!” • • • “What the fuck is going on around here?” Monique caught up with Honey Dew in the dressing room a couple of days later. “Pluto didn’t bring his fat ass home last night. Some shit is up, girl. I can feel it.” “I’on’t know,” Honey Dew whispered. She pulled her shirt over her head and her butterscotch titties with thick chocolate nipples stood straight out from her body. She cupped them in her hands and thumbed her stiff buds. Monique eyed them hungrily, but she’d already fucked Honey Dew more than once. The girl was a squirter and had some real soft pussy, but right now Monique was much more interested in whatever news Honey Dew might be able to put her up on than she was on tasting her juice. “I heard they did Gino, girl. I heard Moonie telling Greco that they took him out by the airport and deaded his fuckin’ ass.” Monique nodded and smiled. Good. With Gino gone, that meant the path was all the way clear for her and Pluto to slide right into position. G had already fronted almost half the money for the state business licenses and shit, and him and Pluto was gonna ride down there together in about a week so he could pay off the cops and the people who signed off on liquor licenses. After that G said he’d drop a bucket load of bank on Monique so she could hire some girls to work the stage and the back rooms too. Monique couldn’t wait till they were heading south on the Jersey Turnpike. She’d been fucking Pluto for years, even though he smelled like a dead man and beat her ass and treated her like shit whenever he felt like it. But so what. The niggah was a loyal soldier. He was way up there on G’s team, and rolling with funky power was better than rolling with a fragrant wankster. She’d stick close to Pluto and put up with his shit-streaked drawers and nasty breath until she could get with a strong niggah like G. Maybe she’d find herself one down in the B-More. She was damn sure gonna be looking around.

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  210 mrofeR citsanom :92 erutceL life was ordered to “the four last things”: death, judgment, heaven, or hell. A freely chosen modicum of deprivation and discipline during o mortal existence seemed a small price to pay when compared to the cost of eternal misery caused by luxury and vice and far better than passing through an afterlife “purgatory.” A life dedicated to God in such an explicit fashion prepared o the monk for the only thing that really mattered: participation in eternal life in heaven. There was, for the medieval mind, nothing irrational in choosing sacrifice in this life in order to gain everlasting bliss in God’s presence. • Less explicit but no less real were the obvious material benefits that the monastic life made available, even to members of the nobility. The cloister offered safety, security, and an orderly way of life o rather than the chaos and struggle of secular existence. Diet in the monastery was better and more consistent, sleep more regular, days more meaningful, and therefore, health much improved. For women in nunneries, lack of sexual activity meant that the terrors of childbirth, infant mortality, and rapid aging were avoided. For women and men alike, life within the cloister gave access o to beauty through architecture, music, and the liturgy; the chance to practice the crafts of calligraphy and bookmaking, weaving, pottery, and gardening; the possibility of a genuine education; and the chance to hold positions of authority. • Precisely because of its great popularity during these centuries, the institution of monasticism also required constant reform. Greater numbers in communities inevitably meant that some o members were more dedicated to the implicit benefits of the life than to the explicit ideals. For some monks in every age, a comfortable pallet for sleep and meals on a regular basis trump any religious motivation.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  Consciousness left him. CHAPTER 8: The Combat Between the Professor and the Poet, THE MASTER AND MARGARITA CHAPTER 8 The Combat Between the Professor and the Poet At the same time that consciousness left Styopa in Yalta, that is, around half past eleven in the morning, it returned to Ivan Nikolaevich Homeless, who woke up after a long and deep sleep. He spent some time pondering how it was that he had wound up in an unfamiliar room with white walls, with an astonishing night table made of some light metal, and with white blinds behind which one could sense the sun. Ivan shook his head, ascertained that it did not ache, and remembered that he was in a clinic. This thought drew after it the remembrance of Berlioz’s death, but today it did not provoke a strong shock in Ivan. Having had a good sleep, Ivan Nikolaevich became calmer and began to think more clearly. After lying motionless for some time in a most clean, soft and comfortable spring bed, Ivan noticed a bell button beside him. From a habit of touching things needlessly, Ivan pressed it. He expected the pressing of the button to be followed by some ringing or appearance, but something entirely different happened. A frosted glass cylinder with the word ‘Drink’ on it lit up at the foot of Ivan’s bed. After pausing for a while, the cylinder began to rotate until the word ‘Nurse’ popped out. It goes without saying that the clever cylinder amazed Ivan. The word ‘Nurse’ was replaced by the words ‘Call the Doctor’. ‘Hm . . .’ said Ivan, not knowing how to proceed further with this cylinder. But here he happened to be lucky. Ivan pressed the button a second time at the word ‘Attendant’. The cylinder rang quietly in response, stopped, the light went out, and a plump, sympathetic woman in a clean white coat came into the room and said to Ivan: ‘Good morning!’ Ivan did not reply, considering such a greeting inappropriate under the circumstances. Indeed, they lock up a healthy man in a clinic, and pretend that that is how it ought to be! The woman meanwhile, without losing her good-natured expression, brought the blinds up with one push of a button, and sun flooded the room through a light and wide-meshed grille which reached right to the floor. Beyond the grille a balcony came into view, beyond that the bank of a meandering river, and on its other bank a cheerful pine wood. ‘Time for our bath,’ the woman invited, and under her hands the inner wall parted, revealing behind it a bathroom and splendidly equipped toilet.

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  210 Lecture 29: monastic Reform life was ordered to “the four last things”: death, judgment, heaven, or hell. o A freely chosen modicum of deprivation and discipline during mortal existence seemed a small price to pay when compared to the cost of eternal misery caused by luxury and vice and far better than passing through an afterlife “purgatory.” o A life dedicated to God in such an explicit fashion prepared the monk for the only thing that really mattered: participation in eternal life in heaven. There was, for the medieval mind, nothing irrational in choosing sacrifice in this life in order to gain everlasting bliss in God’s presence. • Less explicit but no less real were the obvious material benefits that the monastic life made available, even to members of the nobility. o The cloister offered safety, security, and an orderly way of life rather than the chaos and struggle of secular existence. Diet in the monastery was better and more consistent, sleep more regular, days more meaningful, and therefore, health much improved. For women in nunneries, lack of sexual activity meant that the terrors of childbirth, infant mortality, and rapid aging were avoided. o For women and men alike, life within the cloister gave access to beauty through architecture, music, and the liturgy; the chance to practice the crafts of calligraphy and bookmaking, weaving, pottery, and gardening; the possibility of a genuine education; and the chance to hold positions of authority. • Precisely because of its great popularity during these centuries, the institution of monasticism also required constant reform. o Greater numbers in communities inevitably meant that some members were more dedicated to the implicit benefits of the life than to the explicit ideals. For some monks in every age, a comfortable pallet for sleep and meals on a regular basis trump any religious motivation.

• From Austerlitz (2001)

  pale and dark rose leaves, March violets, peach blossom, saffron, melissa, and eyebright, and indeed by immersing myself in the better world of this little book, whole passages of which I still know by heart, said Austerlitz, I regained my lost sense of myself and my memory, gradually mastering the crippling physical weakness which had overcome me after my visit to the veterinary museum, so that I could soon walk on Marie’s arm down the long corridors of the Salpétriere, through the diffuse, dusty gray light which pervades everything in that institution. After I had been discharged from the fortress-like hospital, which covers a site of thirty hectares and, with its four thousand patients, represents at any given time almost the entire range of disorders from which humanity can suffer, so Austerlitz continued, we resumed our walks in the city. Among the images I have retained in my memory from these excursions is one of a little girl with a rebellious mop of hair and green eyes the color of iced water who stumbled over the hem of her raincoat, which was much too long for her, as she was playing with her skipping rope in one of the lime-white squares in the Luxembourg Gardens and grazed her right knee, a scene regarded by Marie as a déja vu because, she said, over twenty years ago just the same accident had happened to her at exactly the same place, an incident which at the time seemed to her shameful and aroused in her the first premonitions of death. Not long afterwards, one Saturday afternoon when a cold mist hung low in the air, we wandered through the half-deserted area between the tracks of the gare d’Austerlitz and the quai d’Austerlitz on the left bank of the Seine, slowly finding our way among abandoned dockyards, boarded-up warehouses, goods depots, customs halls, and a few garages and car repair shops. In one of the empty spaces not far from the station itself, the Bastiani Traveling Circus had erected its small tent, much mended and wreathed in strings of orange electric lights. By tacit agreement, we entered just as the performance was coming to a close. A few dozen women and children were seated on low stools round the ring—not that it was really a ring, said Austerlitz, rather it was a vague sort of rondelle on which a few shovelfuls of sawdust had been thrown, so hemmed in by the front row of spectators that even a pony could hardly have trotted round it in a circle. We were just in time for the last number, featuring a conjuror in a dark blue cloak who produced from his top hat a bantam cockerel with wonderfully colored plumage, not much bigger than a magpie or a raven. This brightly hued bird, obviously completely tame, went over a kind of miniature show-jumping course consisting of all manner of little steps, ladders, and other obstacles which he had to negotiate, gave the right answer to sums such as two times three or four minus one by clattering his beak when the conjurer showed him cards with the figures written on them, at a whispered command lay down

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  Rasheeda stumbled into her bathroom, laughing as she went to wash her face. The fitted sheet had been pulled off the bed and her pillows, linen, and comforter were on the floor. I didn’t have the energy to make the bed, so I got on the floor and pulled the sheet over me. Rasheeda came out of the bathroom and straddled my body. She palmed my forehead with one hand and forced me to look up at her. “Wanna taste your dick, Daddy?” she asked me enticingly. My response was a long, sloppy kiss. Rasheeda got under the sheet behind me and hugged me around the waist. I pushed back closer to her and closed my eyes, cummed dry and ready to go to sleep. “Euftis?” “Yea.” “What took you so long getting over here tonight?” I thought about Kianna, the Gilbert Avenue ho, and grinned. Rasheeda just didn’t know. When it came to getting a nut off, my big Monster wasn’t just grimy. He was grimier. THUG LOVIN’ Andrea Blackstone “Damn, Daddy. How much longer I gotta suck this dick? How about some pussy now?My knees getting tired.” I snickered out loud. Some whore done been in my boss’s office for the last thirty minutes, sucking that fool off like a Hoover vacuum cleaner. I’d started hearing those steady slurping sounds when I went to knock on his door to ask him a quick question, and after I found out that Mr. Nasty was getting his “head delivered on heels,” I decided to press my ear to the door and listen to the action. I almost laughed as he started going off on her. “Your knees tired? Standing at five foot two you should stay on your knees! If I want to be hassled over pussy I’ll call that bitch I just divorced! What kind of whore are you anyway? Who in the hell did Butch send over here? If you want that quick money I better keep feeling all tongue and no teeth. Now keep this shit rock-hard like your life depends on it! I likes my head and today I wants my head! It’s been a stressful morning. Suck up! I don’t want no used-up, loose pussy on my dick neither. I want what I want, so stop the bullshit and get down to business like you know the rules! I don’t have all damned day!” “Don’t play so mean, Daddy. I don’t mind staying on my knees. I was just asking, that’s all,” the woman said. “I’m not paying you a hundred and fifty dollars for conversation, I’m paying you to suck! Don’t stop until you suck this dick bone-dry at least twice. I paid for multiple pops, so don’t act like you forgot! Just do what you said you do, or you and Butch will both be owing me some cake. Don’t let this corner office and suit and tie fool your ass. I’m still that brotha from the hood!”

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  Graduate school was not only relative freedom for me from my illness, but it was also freedom from the highly structured existence of undergraduate studies. […] I was married, too, by this point, to a French artist who not only was a talented painter but an exceedingly kind and gentle person. […] I was, at the time, painfully intense, rail thin, and, when not moribund, filled to the brim with a desire for an exciting life, a high-voltage academic career, and a pack of children. Photographs from that time show a tall, extraordinarily handsome, dark-haired, gentle, and brown-eyed man […] accompanied by a wildly variable woman in her midtwenties: in one picture laughing, in a floppy hat, with long hair flying; in another pensive, brooding. My hair, like my moods, went up and down […] The moods, the hair, the clothes all changed from week to week, month to month. My husband, on the other hand, was steady, and in most ways we ended up complementing one another’s temperaments. Within months of our meeting we were living together in a small apartment near the ocean. It was a quiet, normal sort of existence, filled with movies, friends, and trips to Big Sur, San Francisco, and Yosemite.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  So work went well and relatively smoothly. Much of my time was spent working on a textbook that I was coauthoring about manic-depressive illness, delighted with how much easier it was to read, analyze, and retain the medical literature, which, until only recently, had been a terrible struggle to comprehend. I found writing my sections of the textbook a satisfying mix of science, clinical medicine, and personal experience. I was concerned that these experiences might unduly influence—by content or emphasis—portions of what I wrote, but my coauthor was fully aware of my illness, and many other clinicians and scientists also reviewed what we wrote. Often, though, I found myself drawing upon certain aspects of what I had been through in order to emphasize a particular point of phenomenology or clinical practice. Many of the chapters I wrote—those about suicide, medication compliance, childhood and adolescence, psychotherapy, clinical description, creativity, personality and interpersonal behavior, thought disorder, perception, and cognition—were influenced by my strong belief that these were areas that had been relatively overlooked in the field. Others—such as epidemiology, alcohol and drug abuse, and assessment of manic and depressive states—were more straightforwardly a review of the existing psychiatric literature. For the clinical description chapter—the basic characterization of hypomanic and manic states, depressive and mixed states, as well as the cyclothymic features underlying these clinical conditions—I relied not only upon the work of classic clinicians such as Professor Emil Kraepelin, and the many clinical researchers who had conducted extensive data-based studies, but upon the writings of manic-depressive patients themselves. Many of the descriptions were from writers and artists who had given highly articulate and vivid descriptions of their manias, depressions, and mixed states. Most of the rest of the accounts were from my patients or passages taken from the psychiatric literature. In a few instances, however, I used my own descriptions of my experiences that I had written for teaching purposes over the years. So interspersed throughout clinical studies, symptom frequencies, and classic clinical descriptions from the European and British medical literature were excerpts from poems, novels, and autobiographical accounts written by individuals who had suffered from manic-depressive illness.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  He clutched his head and ran back to the group of waiting companions. ‘Well, then,’ Woland addressed him from the height of his steed, ‘is your farewell completed?’ ‘Yes, it’s completed,’ the master replied and, having calmed down, looked directly and boldly into Woland’s face. And then over the hills like a trumpet blast rolled Woland’s terrible voice: ‘It’s time!!’—and with it the sharp whistle and guffaw of Behemoth. The steeds tore off, and the riders rose into the air and galloped. Margarita felt her furious steed champing and straining at the bit. Woland’s cloak billowed over the heads of the cavalcade; the cloak began to cover the evening sky. When the black shroud was momentarily blown aside, Margarita looked back as she rode and saw that there not only were no multicoloured towers behind them, but the city itself had long been gone. It was as if it had fallen through the earth—only mist and smoke were left . . . CHAPTER 32: Forgiveness and Eternal Refuge, THE MASTER AND MARGARITA CHAPTER 32 Forgiveness and Eternal Refuge Gods, my gods! How sad the evening earth! How mysterious the mists over the swamps! He who has wandered in these mists, he who has suffered much before death, he who has flown over this earth bearing on himself too heavy a burden, knows it. The weary man knows it. And without regret he leaves the mists of the earth, its swamps and rivers, with a light heart he gives himself into the hands of death, knowing that she alone can bring him peace. The magical black steeds also became tired and carried their riders slowly, and ineluctable night began to overtake them. Sensing it at his back, even the irrepressible Behemoth quieted down and, his claws sunk into the saddle, flew silent and serious, puffing up his tail. Night began to cover forests and fields with its black shawl, night lit melancholy little lights somewhere far below—now no longer interesting and necessary either for Margarita or for the master—alien lights. Night was outdistancing the cavalcade, it sowed itself over them from above, casting white specks of stars here and there in the saddened sky. Night thickened, flew alongside, caught at the riders’ cloaks and, tearing them from their shoulders, exposed the deceptions. And when Margarita, blown upon by the cool wind, opened her eyes, she saw how the appearance of them all was changing as they flew to their goal. And when, from beyond the edge of the forest, the crimson and full moon began rising to meet them, all deceptions vanished, the unstable magic garments fell into the swamp, drowned in the mists.

• From Austerlitz (2001)

  curiously remote state of mind induced by the drugs I was being given; both desolate and weirdly contented I wandered, all through that winter, up and down the long corridors, staring out for hours through one of the dirty windows at the cemetery below, where we are standing now, feeling nothing inside my head but the four burnt-out walls of my brain. Later, when there had been some improvement in my condition, I looked through a telescope given to me by one of the nurses and watched the foxes running wild in the cemetery in the gray dawn. I would see squirrels dodging back and forth, or sitting quite still, arrested, as it were, in mid-motion. I studied the faces of those solitary people who visited the graveyard now and then, or I observed the slow wingbeats of an owl in its curving flight over the tombstones at nightfall. Occasionally I talked to one of the other hospital patients, a roofer, for instance, who said he could recollect with perfect clarity the moment when, just as he was about to fix a slate in place, something that had been stretched too taut inside him snapped at a particular spot behind his forehead, and for the first time he heard, coming over the crackling transistor wedged into the batten in front of him, the voices of those bearers of bad tidings which had haunted him ever since. While I was there I also thought quite often of Elias the minister lapsing into madness, and of the stone-built asylum in Denbigh where he died. But I found it impossible to think of myself, my own history, or my present state of mind. I was not discharged until the beginning of April, a year after returning from Prague. The last doctor whom I saw at the hospital advised me to look for some kind of light physical occupation, perhaps in horticulture, she suggested, and so for the next two years, at the time of day when office staff are pouring into the City, I went out the other way to Romford and my new place of work, a council- run nursery garden on the outskirts of a large park which employed, as well as

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  A few people might stare at the tall, scarred woman in her well-tailored clothes and black slouch hat. They would stare first at her and then at her companion: ‘ Mais regardez moi ¢a! Elle est belle, la petite; comme c’est rigolo! ° There would be a THE WELL OF LONELINESS 373 few smiles, but on the whole they would attract little notice — ils en ont vu bien d’autres — it was post-war Paris. Sometimes, having dined, they would saunter towards home through streets that were crowded with others who sauntered — men and women, a couple of women together — always twos — the fine nights seemed prolific of couples. In the air there would be the inconsequent feeling that belongs to the night life of most great cities, above all to the careless night life of Paris, where problems are apt to vanish with sunset. The lure of the brightly lighted boulevards, the lure of the dim and mysterious bystreets would grip them so that they would not turn homeward for quite a long while, but would just go on walking. The moon, less clear than at Orotava, less innocent doubtless, yet scarcely less lovely, would come sailing over the Place de la Concorde, staring down at the dozens of other white moons that had man- aged to get themselves caught by the standards. In the cafés would be crowds of indolent people, for the French who work hard know well how to idle; and these cafés would smell of hot coffee and sawdust, of rough, strong tobacco, of men and women. Be- neath the arcades there would be the shop windows, illuminated and bright with temptation. But Mary would usually stare into Sulka’s, picking out scarves or neck-ties for Stephen. ‘ That one! We’ll come and buy it to-morrow. Oh, Stephen, do wait — look at that dressing-gown! ° And Stephen might laugh and pretend to be bored, though she secretly nurtured a weakness for Sulka’s. Down the Rue de Rivoli they would walk arm in arm, until turning at last, they would pass the old church of St. Germain — the church from whose Gothic tower had been rung the first call to a most bloody slaying. But now that tower would be grim with silence, dreaming the composite dreams of Paris ~ dreams that were heavy with blood and beauty, with innocence and lust, with joy and despair, with life and death, with heaven and hell; all the curious composite dreams of Paris. Then crossing the river they would reach the Quarter and their house, where Stephen would slip her Jatchkey into the door 374 THE WELL OF LONELINESS and would know the warm feeling that can come of a union be- tween door and latchkey. With a sigh of contentment they would find themselves at home once again in the quiet old Rue Jacob. 3

• From Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) (1999)

  This approach to the Psalms set the pattern for many kinds of sermons. The complexity does not come so much from stretched analogies and learned ingenuity, as with Ambrose’s sermons, but from a need to make the text fit the community’s psychological participation in it. Augustine was learning to bring his high-flown theoretical aspirations down to the level of ordinary people. The man who was going to write only for “the few” now found himself addressing “the many” several times each week. Eventually he would see that this “fleshing” of ethereal abstraction reenacted the Word that became incarnate in Jesus: The word in my mind exists before it is put into language. I search for the right sound to carry it abroad. I need a way for it to reach you without leaving me. And even now you are hearing what I have in my heart, and it is in yours. It is in both of us, and you are now possessing it without my losing it. And just as my word had to take on sound in order to be heard, so God’s word took on flesh in order to be seen. (S 225.3) Even when he stopped writing dialogues, he was still teaching (and learning) by interchange with others. He taught catechism with the same alertness to each flicker of attention that he had shown with his students at Cassiciacum. Here is how he coaches other teachers in the skills demanded: It is hard to speak on to the end of what you planned to say if you see a listener is not responding—he might be afraid, in such sacred matters, to differ in words or bodily reaction, or he may not grasp or approve what he is being told. Since we cannot see into his mind, we must use words to get a response from that mind, to lure it from its hiding place. . . . We should wake him up, mentally, with some catchy witticism (fitted to the subject), or bring up something odd and astonishing, perhaps something scary and depressing, preferably having to do with him personally, so self-interest will stimulate him. Yet use no severity; ease him into candor. (Instruction 1.18.19) The need for catchy witticisms to hold an audience’s interest has subjected Augustine’s sermons to criticism from Gibbon and others. He uses puns, wordplay, jingles, all kinds of verbal fireworks, to drive home his point. He can deploy rhyming tags, like the modern preacher Jesse Jackson: “Faith must hold what it cannot yet behold” (S 230.7). Or, to show that the faithful, as the body of Christ, should care for their own members: “Where the sliver rends [one’s foot], the whole back bends” (S 162.A.5). Or, to study God’s revelation through Peter, a humble worker: “The fisherman’s scope is the rhetorician’s hope” (S 43.6). The military profession is not evil in itself, though soldiers often are: “The damage is not done by militianess but by maliciousness” (S 302.15).

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  However bizarre this new world seemed to me, and I to it, I actually grew to cotton to its ways. Once I got over the initial shocks, I found most of my remaining experiences in high school a remarkable sort of education. Some of it was even in the classroom. I found the highly explicit conversations of my new classmates spellbinding. Everyone seemed to have at least one, sometimes two or even three, stepparents, depending on the number of household divorces. My friends’ financial resources were of astonishing proportions, and many had a familiarity with sex that was extensive enough to provide me with a very interesting groundwork. My new boyfriend, who was in college, provided the rest. He was a student at UCLA, where I worked as a volunteer on weekends in the pharmacology department. He was also everything I thought I wanted at the time: He was older, handsome, pre-med, crazy about me, had his own car, and, like my first boyfriend, loved to dance. Our relationship lasted throughout the time I was in high school, and, in looking back on it, I think it was as much a way of getting out of my house and away from the turmoil as it was any serious romantic involvement. I also learned for the first time what a WASP was, that I was one, and that this was, on a good day, a mixed blessing. As best I could make out, having never heard the term until I arrived in California, being a WASP meant being mossbacked, lockjawed, rigid, humorless, cold, charmless, insipid, less than penetratingly bright, but otherwise—and inexplicably—to be envied. It was then, and remains, a very strange concept to me. In an immediate way all of this contributed to a certain social fragmentation within the school. One cluster, who went to the beach by day and partied by night, tended toward WASPdom; the other, slightly more casual and jaded, tended toward intellectual pursuits. I ended up drifting in and out of both worlds, for the most part comfortable in each, but for very different reasons. The WASP world provided a tenuous but important link with my past; the intellectual world, however, became the sustaining part of my existence and a strong foundation for my academic future.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  It was a high-pressure existence in many ways, but mostly I loved it. Academic medicine provides an interesting and varied lifestyle, lots of travel, and most of one’s colleagues are bright-eyed, bushy tailed, and generally thrive on the stresses of having to combine clinical practice with publishing papers and teaching. These stresses were compounded by the fluctuations in mood, however attenuated, that I continued to experience while on lithium. It took several years for them to truly even out. For me, when I was well, it was a wide-open opportunity to write, think, see patients, and teach. When I was ill, it was simply overwhelming: for days and weeks at a time, I would put up the DO NOT DISTURB sign on my door, stare mindlessly out the window, sleep, contemplate suicide, or watch my guinea pig—a memento of one of my manic buying sprees—furiously scurrying around in his cage. During those times I could not imagine writing another paper, and I was incapable of comprehending any of the journal articles that I would try to read. Supervising and teaching were ordeals. But it was a tidal existence: When I was depressed, nothing came to me, and nothing came out of me. When manic, or mildly so, I would write a paper in a day, ideas would flow, I would design new studies, catch up on my patient charts and correspondence, and chip away at the mindless mounds of bureaucratic paperwork that defined the job of a clinic director. Like everything else in my life, the grim was usually set off by the grand; the grand, in turn, would yet again be canceled out by the grim. It was a loopy but intense life: marvelous, ghastly, dreadful, indescribably difficult, gloriously and unexpectedly easy, complicated, great fun, and a no-exit nightmare. My friends, fortunately, were either a bit loopy themselves, or remarkably tolerant of the chaos that formed the basic core of my emotional existence. I spent a great deal of time with them during those assistant-professorship years. I also traveled frequently, for business and pleasure, and played squash with interns, friends, and colleagues. Sports were fun only up to a point, however, as lithium threw off my coordination. This was true not only for squash, but particularly for riding horses; I finally had to stop riding for several years, after falling off one too many times while jumping. I can look back now and think that perhaps all of that wasn’t so bad, but, in fact, each time I had to give up a sport I had to give up not only the fun of that sport, but also that part of myself that I had known as an athlete. Manic-depressive illness forces one to deal with many aspects of growing old—with its physical and mental infirmities—many decades in advance of age itself.