Contentment

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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

  Taine, who writes (on Intelligence, i. 50, 58) that often in the daytime, when fatigued and seated in a chair; it is sufficient for him to close one eye with a handkerchief when, "by degrees, the sight of the other eye becomes vague, and it closes. All external sensations are gradually effaced, or cease, at all events, to be remarked; the internal images, on the other hand, feeble and rapid during the state of complete wakefulness, become intense, distinct, colored, steady, and lasting : there is a sort of ecstasy, accompanied by a feeling of expansion and of comfort. Warned by frequent experience, I know that sleep is coming on, and that I must not disturb the rising vision; I remain passive, and in a few minutes it is complete. Architecture, landscapes, moving figures, pass slowly by, and sometimes remain, with incomparable clearness of form and fulness of being; sleep comes on, and I know no more of the real world I am in. Many times, like M. Maury, I have caused myself to be gently roused at different moments of this state, and have thus been able to mark its characters.—The intense image which seems an external object is hut a more forcible continuation of the feeble image which an instant before I recognized as internal some scrap of a forest, some house, some person which I vaguely imagined on closing my eyes, has in a minute become present to me with full bodily details, seas to change into a complete hallucination. Then, waking up on a hand touching me, I feel the figure decay, lose color and evaporate; what had appeared a substance is reduced toe shadow. ... In such a case, I have often seen, for a passing moment, the image grow pale, waste away and evaporate; sometimes, on opening the eyes, a fragment of landscape or the skirt of a dress appears still to float over the fire-irons or on the black hearth." This persistence of dream objects for a few moments after the eyes are opened seems to be no extremely rare experience. Many cases of it have been reported to me directly Compare Müller's Physiology, Baly's tr., p. 945 [136] I say the 'normal 'paths, because hallucinations are not incompatible with some paths of association being left. Some hypnotic patients will not only have hallucinations of objects suggested to them, but will amplify them and act out the situation. But the paths here seem excessively narrow, and the reductions which ought to make the hallucination incredible do not occur to the subject's mind. In general, the narrower a train of 'ideas' is, the wider the consciousness is of each. Under ordinary circumstances, the entire brain probably plays a part in draining any centre which may be ideationally active. When the drainage is reduced in any way it probably makes the active process more intense. [137] M. A. Maury gives a number: op. cit. pp. 126-8. [138] M.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  we are fully open—first to one another, and later to the whole group; we are prepared to explore new and unknown areas of our own lives; we are truly acceptant of our own differences; we are open to the new learnings we will receive from our fresh inward journeys, all stimulated by our staff and group experiences. Thus it can be said that we now prepare ourselves, with much less emphasis on plans or materials. We value our staff process and want that to be available to the group. We have found that by being as fully ourselves as we are able— creative, diverse, contradictory, present, open, and sharing—we somehow become tuning forks, finding resonances with those qualities in all the members of the workshop community. In the relationships we form with the group and its members, the power is shared. We let ourselves “be”; we let others “be.” At our best, we have little desire to judge or manipulate the other’s thoughts or actions. When persons are approached in this way, when they are accepted as they are, we discover them to be highly creative and resourceful in examining and changing their own lives. While we do not persuade, interpret, or manipulate, we are certainly not laissez-faire in our attitude. Instead we find that we can share ourselves, our feelings, our potentialities, and our skills in active ways. We are each free to be as much of ourselves as it is possible for us to be. Part of that way of being has become ingrained: it is our desire to hear. During periods of chaos, or criticism of staff, or expression of deep feelings, we listen intently, acceptantly, occasionally voicing our understanding of what we have heard. We listen especially to the contrary voices, the soft voices, those that are expressing unpopular or unacceptable views. We make a point of responding to a person if he or she spoke openly, but no one responded. We thus tend to validate each person. We do not stop here. We as a staff are continually exploring new facets of our own experience as individuals. Recently, this has meant uncovering the learnings we are gaining from our intimate relationships in our differing lifestyles. It has meant facing openly the increasingly intuitive and psychic aspects of our lives. As we push on into these unknown inner areas, we seem better able to help each new workshop community—individually and collectively—to probe more deeply into their own worlds of shadow and mystery. In turn, each workshop has brought us learnings we did not anticipate.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  that you will accept them as mine regardless of the lack of style, format, or academic expression. . . . My real concern is to try to communicate with myself so that I might better understand myself. I guess what I am really saying is that I am writing not for you, nor for a grade, nor for a class, but for me. And I feel especially good about that, for this is something that I wouldn’t have dared to do or even consider in the past. . . . (Rogers, 1969, p. 84) It seems clear that he had learned a great deed at the affective and experiential level, for the first time in twenty years of education. He has grown as a person. However, one might well question whether this change would really make him a different kind of administrator or teacher. Here is another small portion of his report: My staff meeting Tuesday was truly significant as I was able to relate to the staff how I really felt. Many told me afterwards that they were very surprised and impressed and wanted to applaud, not because I had said anything different, but it was the way I said it. I have had various teachers in my office daily who have wanted to relate to me and state they now find me more accepting than ever. . . . I feel that life has so much more meaning, (p. 89) This has been my experience: when inner changes take place in the attitudes and self-concept of the person, then changes begin to show up in his or her interpersonal behavior. A Program of Change in Teacher Training I should like to turn now to the more difficult question of whether it would be possible to change the teacher-training institutions. I am bold and brash enough to say that if I were given a free hand, and if I had the energy and ample funding (say the equivalent of the cost of a half dozen B-52 bombers), I think that in one year I could introduce such a ferment into schools of education that it would initiate a revolution. Since I am sure that must sound like an arrogant statement, I would like to state as precisely as I can what I would do. Much of the plan would change, of course, as obstacles were encountered and as the participants desired to move in somewhat different directions. First, I would enlist the aid of a large number of skilled facilitators, who are familiar with small-group process. This would be entirely feasible. Then, since it is necessary to begin somewhere, I would in each institution indicate that task-

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  No birds were singing in the trees by the roadside, but a silence prevailed, more lovely than bird song; the thoughtful and holy silence of winter, the silence of trustfully waiting furrows. For the soil is the greatest saint of all ages, knowing neither impatience, nor fear, nor doubting; knowing only faith, from which spring all blessings that are needful to nurture man. Sir Philip said: ‘Are you happy, my Stephen?’ And she answered: ‘I’m dreadfully happy, Father. I’m so dreadfully happy that it makes me feel frightened, ’cause I mayn’t always last happy—not this way.’ He did not ask why she might not last happy; he just nodded, as though he admitted of a reason; but he laid his hand over hers on the bridle for a moment, a large, and comforting hand. Then the peace of the evening took possession of Stephen, that and the peace of a healthy body tired out with fresh air and much vigorous movement, so that she swayed a little in her saddle and came near to falling asleep. The pony, even more tired than his rider, jogged along with neck drooping and reins hanging slackly, too weary to shy at the ogreish shadows that were crouching ready to scare him. His small mind was doubtless concentrated on fodder; on the bucket of water nicely seasoned with gruel; on the groom’s soothing hiss as he rubbed down and bandaged; on the warm blanket clothing, so pleasant in winter, and above all on that golden bed of deep straw that was sure to be waiting in his stable. And now a great moon had swung up very slowly; and the moon seemed to pause, staring hard at Stephen, while the frost rime turned white with the whiteness of diamonds, and the shadows turned black and lay folded like velvet round the feet of the drowsy hedges. But the meadows beyond the hedges turned silver, and so did the road to Morton. 6 It was late when they reached the stables at last, and old Williams was waiting in the yard with a lantern. ‘Did you kill?’ he inquired, according to custom; then he saw Stephen’s trophy and chuckled.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  When the chaste and joyful greetings had been repeated three or four times A direct quotation from the opening lines of canto VII of Dante’s Purgatorio (‘Poscia che l’accoglienze oneste e liete/furo iterate tre e quattro volte’). The text of the Decameron contains many such examples of the insertion of familiar quotations from earlier poets, especially Dante, a practice later commended by the stylistic theorists of the Renaissance.10. Lerici A port in Lunigiana near the mouth of the River Magra, where travellers from Genoa and other ‘distant’ parts were accustomed to disembark en route to Tuscany and Emilia.Seventh Story1. Beminedab Thought to be based on the biblical Amminadab fleetingly mentioned in the Book of Numbers and in Saint Matthew’s Gospel, this fictitious name is used by other medieval writers to indicate an oriental ruler of an indeterminate epoch. The name has mildly humorous associations.2. Alatiel Like Beminedab, the name is fictitious, but it happens to be an anagram of La Lieta (‘The Happy Woman’), offering a possible clue to the way in which the story is intended to be read.3. the King of Algarve Algarve, from the Arabic al-Gharb, meaning ‘the West’, was a much more extensive region than the area of that name in modern Portugal. It corresponded roughly to northern Morocco, including a long stretch of the African Mediterranean coast, and the south-western part of the Iberian peninsula. Its wool was greatly prized in European markets. B.’s employers, the Compagnia dei Bardi, imported wool from Algarve via a trading post on the island of Majorca, where Alatiel’s sexual odyssey begins.4. neither he nor they could understand what the other party was saying A recurrent feature of Alatiel’s sexual encounters is her inability to communicate verbally with her various abductors. In an absorbing analysis of this particular novella, Guido Almansi argues that ‘Alatiel is not “a beautiful woman”. She is a superhuman figure; mythic, or at least closely related to a myth. Even her linguistic isolation can be read as an ambivalent sign… On the one hand, her complete ignorance of West European languages is convincing from a narrative standpoint, and serves to give special emphasis to the gesticulations of the characters… Yet her non-communication is also… a sign standing for Alatiel’s isolation, which is due to her superhuman features. Any mating with a mythic character must take place in silence, because there can exist no dialogue, no normative vocabulary, for the relationship between man and myth.’ (The Writer as Liar, p. 124.)5. Alexandrian fashion Presumably the Egyptian danse du ventre, which would explain the boosting of Pericone’s expectations.6. Corinth in the Pelopponese The Italian text reads ‘Chiarenza in Romania’. It was customary to refer to the whole of the Eastern Roman Empire as Romania. Chiarenza is an italianized form of Corinth.7. Saint Stiffen-in-the-Hand The Italian text reads ‘santo Cresa in Mari (‘Saint Grow-in-Hand’), an equivocal phallic metaphor of which the variant ‘san Cresa in Val Cava’ (‘Saint-Grow-in-Hollow-Vale’) turns up towards the end of the story (p.

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  HAVING SOLVED HER IRS CRISIS, Anaïs expected that I should also be able to manifest my desires. Whenever I saw her she’d ask, “What about your Don Juan?” grousing that I was doing something wrong by not having seduced Don. I’d come to the opposite conclusion, though. If he and I had violated our house incest taboo, it would have destabilized our commune family, and I would have missed the best two years of my life. I would have missed having genuine friendships with men and the experience of being part of a functioning family. We had embraced the ideal of community devoid of capitalism, and it had worked. Money was never a problem; we each paid less for food and shelter than before. We had the usual roommate disagreements about decorating and cleaning, and our political discussions occasionally led to shouting, especially about sexism, but I always felt a real equality and trust with the guys. I never had a steady boyfriend during my years in the Georgina house, but I never felt lonely. It was enough to be part of this intelligent, hip family with whom I shared meals and our earnest political ideals. We kept track of each other at anti-war demonstrations, boycotted grapes and Coors beer, harbored Berkeley Free Speech orator Mario Savio after his psychotic breakdown, and threw huge holiday parties that were the hot invite among the Westside’s liberal chic. On academic breaks the five of us would pile our sleeping bags into Bob’s van, bring along some joints, and take off on camping trips to Death Valley, the Santa Barbara hot springs, and the High Sierras. We rented a cabin at Lake Arrowhead where we tried acid together, confident that we would all be safe in each other’s company. We hiked, and swam in our birthday suits, and talked deep into the night under the open sky. For a latchkey kid who’d eaten alone in front of the TV and didn’t go on vacations, these were days of heaven. Then one evening I was upstairs in the ballroom working on my doctoral dissertation, which I’d changed three times already from Renaissance tragedy to Restoration comedy to women’s diaries. Actually, I had wanted to write about Anaïs’s Diaries, but my dissertation chair had objected that she was neither important enough, nor dead. He recommended I write about all women’s diaries, from the tenth-century Japanese diarists on through to the present, so I would have enough material for a “proper” PhD dissertation.

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

  can’t help staring at the strange, shrouded lump that is my body as Eric signs the check. “Is your wife all right?” he asks. “My wife couldn’t be better,” Eric replies. I hear an edge in his voice that the waiter probably misses. “We’re just playing a little game.” “Hide and seek?” Eric tries hard not to laugh. “Not exactly ... There you go. Thank you.” “Sure thing. Have a nice lunch.” “Oh, we will.” I’m laughing too, in relief and in joy at being alone again. I should have known that he wouldn’t risk exposing me that way. Then I think of some of our past encounters, and ’m not so sure. “I’m always torn,” says Eric as he works at undoing my bonds. “Between showing the world what a delicious slut you are, and keeping you all to myself.” I stretch out my legs and groan at the stiffness. “Sorry to keep you tied up so long. Maybe I got a bit carried away.” “T’m out of shape. Not used to this stuff anymore.” “T’]l get you whipped into shape in no time.” He hands me my sandwich with a grin. “Here. You’ve got to keep your strength up. “You know, it was so hard to decide what to take with me this time. I thought about bringing my laptop and some recent videos. We could watch them together — there’s nobody I can really share that sort of kinky stuff with except you. But then I thought we wouldn’t have the time ... One idea I had was to make a ginger fig for you — you know, a little present after not seeing you for so long. I’d love to see how you react to a spicy plug of raw ginger up your ass. But then . .” I realized that it would dry out on the trip, wouldn’t be effective . He talks on between bites of his hamburger. I’m content just to sit here in his presence, my sex still humming from my orgasms, listening to my master, face to face with him at last. After a while, though, both his food and his conversation run out, and we're there, looking at each other, wondering what comes next. “T want to see you naked,” I say finally. “Well, I want to try out that wooden ruler.” So he does, and of course, I like it. Pve always been willing to let him experiment on my body. It turns me on like nothing else, to put myself in his hands, to let him investigate the effects of various implements, positions and techniques. Sometimes the sensations are pleasurable. Even if Reunion 343 they’re not, giving myself to him sends me flying. When we’re apart I miss his voice, his hands, his humor, his intelligence, but most of all I miss the roller-coaster thrill of his taking control and his outrageous sexual imagination.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  THE NOW—AND THE FUTURE I should stop here, but I cannot. It is always a strain for me to look backward. It is still the present and the future that concern me most. I cannot close without a quick overview of my current interests and activities. I am no longer actively engaged in individual therapy or empirical research. I am finding that after one passes the age of seventy, there are physical limitations on what one can do. I continue to engage in encounter groups when I believe they might have significant social impact. For example, I am involved in a program for the humanizing of medical education. Up to the present, more than two hundred high-status medical educators have been involved in intensive group experiences which appear to be more successful in facilitating change than we had dared hope. Perhaps more humanly sensitive physicians will be the result. Such group experiences certainly represent a new area of possible impact. I have also helped to sponsor, and have taken some part in, interracial and intercultural groups, believing that better understanding between diverse groups is essential if our planet is to survive. The most difficult group was composed of citizens of Belfast, Northern Ireland. Represented in the group were militant and less militant Catholics, militant and less militant Protestants, and English. The film of that encounter portrays the participants’ difficult and partial progress toward better understanding—a first step on a long road. I see this encounter group as a small test-tube attempt, which might be utilized in greater depth and much more widely. I continue to write. I recognize that while my whole approach to persons and their relationships changes but slowly (and very little in its fundamentals), my interest in its application has shifted markedly. No longer am I primarily interested in individual therapeutic learning, but in broader and broader social implications. As I say this, the question arises in my mind, as it often has in the past, “Am I spreading myself too thin?” Only the judgment of others can answer that question at some future date. And then I garden. Those mornings when I cannot find time to inspect my flowers, water the young shoots I am propagating, pull a few weeds, spray some destructive insects, and pour just the proper fertilizer on some budding plants, I feel cheated. My garden supplies the same intriguing question I have been trying to meet in all my professional life: What are the effective conditions for growth? But in my garden, though the frustrations are just as immediate, the results, whether success or failure, are more quickly evident. And when, through patient, intelligent, and understanding care I have provided the conditions that result in the production of a rare or glorious bloom, I feel the same kind of satisfaction that I have felt in the facilitation of growth in a person or in a group of persons.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  WHAT ARE THE RESEARCH RESULTS? It has been truly fascinating to see research evidence pile up over the years indicating that there is some validity to the hypotheses that I so tentatively presented years ago. I wish to dwell on the evidence from education, but first, one small finding from the field of therapy. In a study of therapist-client relationships, Barrett-Lennard (1962) found that those clients who eventually showed more therapeutic change perceived more of these therapist qualities at the time of the fifth interview than did those who eventually showed less change. This finding has been corroborated in a larger group of cases by Reinhard Tausch (1978), who found that prediction could be made after only the second interview. I feel certain that this finding would hold in the classroom world as well. If we measured the teacher’s attitudes during the first five days of the school year—the attitudes as they exist in the teacher and as they are perceived by the students—we could predict which classrooms would contain learners, and which would contain prisoners. To the degree that these attitudes were held and perceived, we could predict the classrooms in which learning would be by the whole person, with its accompanying involvement and excitement. We could also predict the classrooms in which students would be passive, restless, or rebellious, in which mostly rote learning would be going on. The research that has endeavored to discover specific relationships between these attitudinal conditions and various elements of the learning process has come about largely through the efforts of Dr. David Aspy and his colleagues, although others have also contributed. There is not the space here to describe the details of the researches, but I will discuss very briefly some of the findings. To give some samples: The levels of these interpersonal conditions can be measured with reasonable objectivity. It has been shown that they are significantly and positively related to a greater gain in reading achievement in third-graders (Aspy, 1965). They are positively related to grade point average (Pierce, 1966); similarly, to cognitive growth (Aspy, 1967; Aspy, 1969; Aspy & Hadlock, 1967); to an increase in creative interest and productivity (Moon, 1966); to levels of cognitive thinking and to the amount of student-initiated talk (Aspy & Roebuck, 1970). They are related to a diffusion of liking and trust in the classroom, which in turn is related to the students’ better utilization of their abilities and greater confidence in themselves (Schrnuck, 1966).

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  The crucial figure in enriching the options within asceticism was Jerome, who in terms of Eastern Christian asceticism can be described as a failed monk: after a couple of solitary years in the mid-370s, he fled his effort at eremitical life in a rural area south of Antioch (not quite so much of a wilderness as he later liked to make out) and returned to Rome and to what proved a much more congenial role as secretary to Pope Damasus and chaplain to the ultra-rich. [72] As we have seen, his career in Rome also came to an abrupt, unplanned end, at which point he relocated to Jerusalem, alongside a number of Roman self-exiles in Palestine led by such exalted figures as his friend the Lady Paula (mother of the late Blesilla), who now presided over a distinctly aristocratic Latin-speaking monastery in Bethlehem. Jerome joined Paula’s community (despite his rudeness towards her); it was a perfect setting for continuing the biblical research that had already begun to fascinate him during his unhappy Syrian venture. Jerome was a pioneer in suggesting that the demands that scholarship made on him and like-minded monks – those congenial hours spent in his chamber sifting words to craft his great new version of the Bible – were just as much a sacrifice of self as the spiritual athleticism of a pillar-saint. This self-serving thought was the spark and justification for subsequent centuries of monastic scholarship that had not previously been a significant part of ascetic life. Henceforth the monastery was a vital conduit for conveying the imperial knowledge and culture of the Mediterranean forward to transformed societies. The sheer variety of ascetic experience that so proliferated between the fourth and sixth centuries has continued to give it vitality and appeal amid the choices

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  THE PHYSICAL SIDE I do feel physical deterioration. I notice it in many ways. Ten years ago I greatly enjoyed throwing a frisbee. Now my right shoulder is so painfully arthritic that this kind of activity is out of the question. In my garden I realize that a task which would have been easy five years ago, but difficult last year, now seems like too much, and I had better leave it for my once-a-week gardener. This slow deterioration, with various minor disorders of vision, heartbeat, and the like, informs me that the physical portion of what I call “me” is not going to last forever. Yet I still enjoy a four-mile walk on the beach. I can lift heavy objects, do all the shopping, cooking, and dishwashing when my wife is ill, carry my own luggage without puffing. The female form still seems to me one of the loveliest creations of the universe, and I appreciate it greatly. I feel as sexual in my interests as I was at thirty-five, though I can’t say the same about my ability to perform. I am delighted that I am still sexually alive, even though I can sympathize with the remark of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes upon leaving a burlesque house at age eighty: “Oh to be seventy again!” Yes, or sixty-five, or sixty! So, I am well aware that I am obviously old. Yet from the inside I’m still the same person in many ways, neither old nor young. It is that person of whom I will speak. ACTIVITIES New Enterprises

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  decorous construction of a common life. Within that framework, many radicals created communities where resources were shared, but on the basis of monogamous families – the sort of Hutterite village that sheltered the dying Ochino in Moravia. Their leadership remained male: a Hutterite community was called the Court of Brothers (Bruderhof). The radical Peter Riedemann, in drawing up one of the most prominent Hutterite confessional statements in 1540, set the tone of his discussion of the role of women by sounding an utterly traditional note: ‘We say, first, that since woman was taken from man, and not man from woman, man hath lordship but woman weakness, humility and submission, therefore she should be under the yoke of man and obedient to him.’ [43] Hutterite communities nevertheless boasted one distinctive feature: a reversal of the medieval Western trend to emphasize a couple’s initiative in marriage. Arrangements were taken out of the hands of a prospective couple and given to the community elders (men, naturally), so it broadened out from the ancient dynastic principle that marriages should be arranged by the fathers of bride and groom. The elders would choose a small group of eligible young people from among those of suitable age and bring together those selected; thus suitably supervised they then chose their partner, avoiding ‘the inclinations of the flesh’. Hutterite marriage custom proved one of the greatest points of internal contention in their determinedly peaceable communities. In the seventeenth century, one of their most distinguished bishops had to put a stop to widespread blatant fraud, as young lovers schemed to gerrymander the chosen group for particular wedding occasions. The dispute rumbled on until the mid-nineteenth century, when the Church authorities finally admitted defeat and gave up their prerogatives. [44] Matters were different in the Magisterial Protestant Churches, which hearkened to the Pauline epistles in emphasizing a couple’s individual choice. No doubt a consideration in this was the aspiration of clerical families to heroic marital partnerships, together with early Reformation uncertainties for Protestants in dealing with unsympathetic Catholic parents. The Reformed Protestant Church of Scotland has seldom boasted a reputation for sentimentality, but right away during the revolutionary birth of ‘the Kirk’ in 1560, when making official provision for marriage in the First Book of Discipline, it emphatically declared that the attraction between young people was ‘a work of God’ which trumped the admitted desirability of parental consent. If parents stood in the way of their children’s happiness for ‘no other cause than the common sort of men have, to wit lack of goods and because they are not so high-born as they require’, then the minister should try to win the parents round – but if that did not work, he should overrule them and go ahead with a marriage. ‘For the work of God ought not to be hindered by the corrupt affections of worldly men’: one in the eye for patriarchy, echoed elsewhere in the Reformed Protestant world.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  imperial official in Basel, she was first widow to the Basel humanist artist Ludwig Keller (Cellarius) before wedding in succession three prominent clerical Reformers: the former monk Johannes Oecolampadius (Hussgen), the first Protestant pastor of Basel; another former monk Wolfgang Capito (Köpfel), pastor in Strassburg; and finally one of the Reformation’s most eloquent propagandists for happy companionate marriage, the former friar Martin Bucer, chief pastor of Strassburg and finally Regius Professor in Cambridge. Wibrandis had been recommended to Bucer by his dying first wife Elisabeth. Oecolampadius gave her a rave review: ‘what I always wanted...She is not contentious, garrulous, or a gadabout, but looks after the household.’ Bucer wanted a little more pepper – ‘My first wife felt somewhat more free to admonish me and now I realize that that freedom of hers was not only useful but necessary.’ Many clergy were to discover that a frank but affectionate wifely perspective was helpful preparation for the inevitable critics outside the parsonage door. [21] Only gradually, as in the 1530s and 1540s Protestantism began winning the allegiance of more and more territories in and beyond the Empire, did the clergy wife begin to reflect what the new emerging Church authorities wanted in the marriages of pastors, in the manner of Fraulein Rosenblatt: a solidly respectable background in families among the middle layers of urban society. It took time for social attitudes to reflect changing realities beyond the ranks of men and women who championed clerical marriage as an ideological statement (Plate 24). In the Holy Roman Empire, it was not till 1555 that military defeat of the Habsburg Emperor and his Catholic allies and the resulting Peace of Augsburg forced the Habsburgs grudgingly to grant secure legal status to Lutheran clergy marriages and their children within the Empire. [22] In England, where a truly Protestant Reformation rapidly gained in momentum after 1547 through a regime acting in the name of the young Edward VI, the one part of their legislative programme that met prolonged obstruction from conservative nobility and bishops in Parliament was the full legalization of clerical marriage; that legislation did not finally pass till 1549. Then when a version of the Edwardian Protestant Church was restored in 1559 after the death of Catholic Queen Mary, her half-sister Queen Elizabeth showed herself untypical of Protestants in her lack of enthusiasm for clerical wives (but then Elizabeth had problems with most people’s wives). This personal idiosyncrasy could not withstand the Protestant tide even for the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, but it had one curious long-term effect that outlasted Elizabeth’s own capacity to choose her bishops; after the death of her happily married first Archbishop of Canterbury Matthew Parker in 1575, no occupant of the see of Canterbury had a wife until John Tillotson in 1691. [23] It is not surprising that an initially uncertain place in Western society encouraged clergy and their children to stick together socially, resulting in a great deal of intermarriage among clergy families.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  In the nick of time for me the war broke out between Chili and Peru: Chilian bonds dropped from 90 to 60: I saw Hamilton and assured him that Chili if left alone, could beat all South America: he advised me to wait and see. A little later Bolivia threw in her lot with Peru and Chilian bonds fell to 43 or 44. At once I went to Hamilton and asked him to buy Chilians for all I possessed on a margin of three or four. After much talk he did what I wished on a margin of ten: a fortnight later came the news of the first Chilian victory and Chilians jumped to 60 odd and continued to climb steadily: I sold at over 80 and thus netted from my first five hundred pounds over two thousand pounds and by Christmas was free once more to study with a mind at case. Hamilton told me that he had followed my lead a little later but had made more from a larger investment. The most important happening at Brighton I must now relate. I have already told in a pen-portrait of Carlyle published by Austin Harrison in the “English Review” some twelve years ago how I went one Sunday morning and called upon my hero, Thomas Carlyle in Chelsea. I told there, too, how on more than one Sunday I used to meet him on his morning walk along the Chelsea embankment, and how once at least he talked to me of his wife and admitted his impotence. I only gave a summary of a few talks in my portrait of him; for the traits did not call for strengthening by repetition; but here I am inclined to add a few details, for everything about Carlyle at his best, is of enduring interest! When I told him how I had been affected by reading Emerson’s speech to the students of Dartmouth College and how it had in a way forced me to give up my law-practice and go to Europe to study, he broke in excitedly: “I remember well reading that very page to my wife and saying that nothing like it for pure nobility had been heard since Schiller went silent. It had a great power with it.... And so that started you off and changed your way of life?... I don’t wonder ... it was a great Call.” After that Carlyle seemed to like me. At our final parting too, when I was going to Germany to study and he wished me “God speed and Goodspeed! on the way that lies before ye”, he spoke again of Emerson and the sorrow he had felt on parting with him, deep, deep sorrow and regret, and he added, laying his hands on my shoulders, “sorrowing most of all that they should see his face no more forever.” I remembered the passage and cried:

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

  The times were favorable for the development of monastic communities. If our own is the age of the laic, the mediaeval period was the age of the monk. Society was unsettled and turbulent. The convent offered an asylum of rest and of meditation. Bernard calls his monks "the order of the Peaceful." Feud and war ruled without. Every baronial residence was a fortress. The convent was the scene of brotherhood and co-operation. It furnished to the age the ideal of a religious household on earth. The epitaphs of monks betray the feeling of the time, pacificus, "the peaceful"; tranquilla pace serenus, "in quiet and undisturbed repose"; fraternae pacis amicus, "friend of brotherly peace." The circumstances are presented by Caesar of Heisterbach under which a number of monks abandoned the world, and were "converted"—that is, determined to enter a convent. Now the decision was made at a burial.538 Now it was due to the impression made by the relation of the wonderful things which occurred in convents. This was the case with a young knight, Gerlach,539 who listened to an abbot who was then visiting a castle, as he told his experiences within cloistral walls. Gerlach went to Paris to study, but could not get rid of the seed which had been sown in his heart, and entered upon the monastic novitiate. Sometimes the decision was made in consequence of a sermon.540 Caesar of Heisterbach himself was "converted" by a description given by Gerard of Walberberg, abbot of Heisterbach, while they were on the way to Cologne during the troublous times of Philip of Swabia and Otto IV. Gerard described the appearance of the Virgin, her mother Anna, and St. Mary Magdalene, who descended from the mountain and revealed themselves to the monks of Clairvaux while they were engaged in the harvest, dried the perspiration from their foreheads, and cooled them by fanning. Within three months Caesar entered the convent of Heisterbach.541 There were in reality only two careers in the Middle Ages, the career of the knight and the career of the monk. It would be difficult to say which held out the most attractions and rewards, even for the present life. The monk himself was a soldier. The well-ordered convent offered a daily drill, exercise following exercise with the regularity of clockwork; and though the enemy was not drawn up in visible array on open field, he was a constant reality.542 Barons, counts, princes joined the colonies of the spiritual militia, hoping thereby to work out more efficiently the problem of their salvation and fight their conflict with the devil. The Third Lateran, 1179, bears witness to the popularity of the conventual life among the higher classes, and the tendency to restrict it to them, when it forbade the practice of receiving motley as a price of admission to the vow.543 The monk proved to be stronger than the knight and the institution of chivalry decayed before the institution of monasticism which still survives.

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

  I plan to write to the company that makes my spanking machine praising them, and suggesting some additions for future models. I hope that with advances in technology, new versions will be able to speak to the user and tell her what a naughty girl she’s been, along with reading her body temperature and movements and sensing when she needs a stronger spanking, even if she’s not quite ready to request it. For now, though, I have a daily date with my spanking machine. I usually use it in the morning, when others are going to the gym to use other, slightly more masochistic machines. I walk out of my building with a grin that has everything to do with my blushing bottom and being able to’afford the best spankings money can buy. Raw Adam Berlin I craved raw fish. And like an addict, from the first time I ate perfect sushi, carefully cut, colorfully presented, dark soy sauce, green wasabi and white rice highlighting the delicate pink and pale and red fish flesh, I was smitten. It was like love. All of my money went to eating sushi. I worked and I went out to eat. I worked to go out to eat. I ate sushi until I was full and then I rested and ate more sushi until I was beyond full. Unlike other foods, the craving was back the next day and, as I plodded through my nine-to-five, I dreamed of sushi, all kinds of sushi. Plain sushi and sushi rolls, simple rolls wrapped in seaweed and inside-out rolls rolled in sesame or roe, maki tuna and yellowtail and salmon and eel and combination rolls, exotic, innovative rolls. And the more sushi J ate, the better the sushi needed to be. A ten-dollar hand of blackjack becomes dull with time and so the player bets twenty-five dollars and then a hundred dollars a hand and when he wins, he bets more, thousands of dollars just to keep the high going. A gambler who bets six figures a hand is called a whale. Fish and addiction. The addiction of fish.