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 Anna Karenina (1877)

  Vronsky and Anna spent the whole summer and part of the winter in the country, living in just the same condition, and still taking no steps to obtain a divorce. It was an understood thing between them that they should not go away anywhere; but both felt, the longer they lived alone, especially in the autumn, without guests in the house, that they could not stand this existence, and that they would have to alter it. Their life was apparently such that nothing better could be desired. They had the fullest abundance of everything; they had a child, and both had occupation. Anna devoted just as much care to her appearance when they had no visitors, and she did a great deal of reading, both of novels and of what serious literature was in fashion. She ordered all the books that were praised in the foreign papers and reviews she received, and read them with that concentrated attention which is only given to what is read in seclusion. Moreover, every subject that was of interest to Vronsky, she studied in books and special journals, so that he often went straight to her with questions relating to agriculture or architecture, sometimes even with questions relating to horse-breeding or sport. He was amazed at her knowledge, her memory, and at first was disposed to doubt it, to ask for confirmation of her facts; and she would find what he asked for in some book, and show it to him.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Vassenka was extremely delighted with the left horse, a horse of the Don Steppes. He kept praising him enthusiastically. “How fine it must be galloping over the steppes on a steppe horse! Eh? isn’t it?” he said. He had imagined riding on a steppe horse as something wild and romantic, and it turned out nothing of the sort. But his simplicity, particularly in conjunction with his good looks, his amiable smile, and the grace of his movements, was very attractive. Either because his nature was sympathetic to Levin, or because Levin was trying to atone for his sins of the previous evening by seeing nothing but what was good in him, anyway he liked his society. After they had driven over two miles from home, Veslovsky all at once felt for a cigar and his pocketbook, and did not know whether he had lost them or left them on the table. In the pocketbook there were thirty-seven pounds, and so the matter could not be left in uncertainty. “Do you know what, Levin, I’ll gallop home on that left trace-horse. That will be splendid. Eh?” he said, preparing to get out. “No, why should you?” answered Levin, calculating that Vassenka could hardly weigh less than seventeen stone. “I’ll send the coachman.” The coachman rode back on the trace-horse, and Levin himself drove the remaining pair. Chapter 9 “Well, now what’s our plan of campaign? Tell us all about it,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch. “Our plan is this. Now we’re driving to Gvozdyov. In Gvozdyov there’s a grouse marsh on this side, and beyond Gvozdyov come some magnificent snipe marshes where there are grouse too. It’s hot now, and we’ll get there—it’s fifteen miles or so—towards evening and have some evening shooting; we’ll spend the night there and go on tomorrow to the bigger moors.” “And is there nothing on the way?” “Yes; but we’ll reserve ourselves; besides it’s hot. There are two nice little places, but I doubt there being anything to shoot.” Levin would himself have liked to go into these little places, but they were near home; he could shoot them over any time, and they were only little places—there would hardly be room for three to shoot. And so, with some insincerity, he said that he doubted there being anything to shoot. When they reached a little marsh Levin would have driven by, but Stepan Arkadyevitch, with the experienced eye of a sportsman, at once detected reeds visible from the road. “Shan’t we try that?” he said, pointing to the little marsh. “Levin, do, please! how delightful!” Vassenka Veslovsky began begging, and Levin could but consent. Before they had time to stop, the dogs had flown one before the other into the marsh. “Krak! Laska!...” The dogs came back. “There won’t be room for three. I’ll stay here,” said Levin, hoping they would find nothing but peewits, who had been startled by the dogs, and turning over in their flight, were plaintively wailing over the marsh.

• From Querelle (1953)

  129 I QUERELLE Bretons are naive and the girls vain and easily taken in by a basket full of odds and ends of machine-made lace. The masonry of the old rampart walls is solid. The wall running along the city side is thick and intact save for a few stones that have been dislodged by trees growing in the interstices. On this sloping bank thick with trees, not far from the hospital or the old penitentiary, the buglers of the 28th Regiment of Colonial Infantry hold their practice every day. On the day following the murder, Querelle before going to La Feria took a walk along the old fortifications, taking care not to pass too close to the scene of his crime in case the police had posted a guard. He was looking for a suitable place to hide his jewels. In various spots around the world he had such secret caches, carefully noted down on papers which he kept in his kit bag. China, Syria, Morocco, Belgium. The notebook containi ng these directions were not unlike a "Register of Massacres" kept by the police. Shanghai, Maison de la France. Garden. Baobab tree by the gate. Beirut, Damascus. Lady at the Piano. Wall to left. Casa, Alphand Bank. Antwerp, Cathedral. Bell tower. Querelle retained very clear memories of these storehouses of his treasures. He knew the details and the surroundings with scrupulous precision, using as mnemonic all the circumstances that had led to the discovery and choice of each spot. He was able to recall every crack in the stone, each root, the insects, the smell, the weather, the triangles of shadow or light; and every time he evoked them, these minuscule scenes appeared to him in precise detail, in the light of an exact memory, all of a piece and festively illuminated. Thus, in one Bash and all together, the details of each hiding place would leap to mind. Querelle took care to remember his caches, but forced himself to forget their contents, in order to later savor the joys of surprise when he would make a world tour expressly to collect them. This i�mprecise idea of buried wealth was like a nimbus shining out

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “I’ll do it,” said Dolly, and getting up, she carefully passed the spoon over the frothing sugar, and from time to time shook off the clinging jam from the spoon by knocking it on a plate that was covered with yellow-red scum and blood-colored syrup. “How they’ll enjoy this at tea-time!” she thought of her children, remembering how she herself as a child had wondered how it was the grown-up people did not eat what was best of all—the scum of the jam. “Stiva says it’s much better to give money.” Dolly took up meanwhile the weighty subject under discussion, what presents should be made to servants. “But....” “Money’s out of the question!” the princess and Kitty exclaimed with one voice. “They appreciate a present....” “Well, last year, for instance, I bought our Matrona Semyenovna, not a poplin, but something of that sort,” said the princess. “I remember she was wearing it on your nameday.” “A charming pattern—so simple and refined,—I should have liked it myself, if she hadn’t had it. Something like Varenka’s. So pretty and inexpensive.” “Well, now I think it’s done,” said Dolly, dropping the syrup from the spoon. “When it sets as it drops, it’s ready. Cook it a little longer, Agafea Mihalovna.” “The flies!” said Agafea Mihalovna angrily. “It’ll be just the same,” she added. “Ah! how sweet it is! don’t frighten it!” Kitty said suddenly, looking at a sparrow that had settled on the step and was pecking at the center of a raspberry. “Yes, but you keep a little further from the stove,” said her mother. “_À propos de Varenka_,” said Kitty, speaking in French, as they had been doing all the while, so that Agafea Mihalovna should not understand them, “you know, mamma, I somehow expect things to be settled today. You know what I mean. How splendid it would be!” “But what a famous matchmaker she is!” said Dolly. “How carefully and cleverly she throws them together!...” “No; tell me, mamma, what do you think?” “Why, what is one to think? He” (_he_ meant Sergey Ivanovitch) “might at any time have been a match for anyone in Russia; now, of course, he’s not quite a young man, still I know ever so many girls would be glad to marry him even now.... She’s a very nice girl, but he might....” “Oh, no, mamma, do understand why, for him and for her too, nothing better could be imagined. In the first place, she’s charming!” said Kitty, crooking one of her fingers. “He thinks her very attractive, that’s certain,” assented Dolly. “Then he occupies such a position in society that he has no need to look for either fortune or position in his wife. All he needs is a good, sweet wife—a restful one.” “Well, with her he would certainly be restful,” Dolly assented.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  In spite of its _cafés chantants_ and its omnibuses, Moscow was yet a stagnant bog. Stepan Arkadyevitch always felt it. After living for some time in Moscow, especially in close relations with his family, he was conscious of a depression of spirits. After being a long time in Moscow without a change, he reached a point when he positively began to be worrying himself over his wife’s ill-humor and reproaches, over his children’s health and education, and the petty details of his official work; even the fact of being in debt worried him. But he had only to go and stay a little while in Petersburg, in the circle there in which he moved, where people lived—really lived—instead of vegetating as in Moscow, and all such ideas vanished and melted away at once, like wax before the fire. His wife?... Only that day he had been talking to Prince Tchetchensky. Prince Tchetchensky had a wife and family, grown-up pages in the corps, ... and he had another illegitimate family of children also. Though the first family was very nice too, Prince Tchetchensky felt happier in his second family; and he used to take his eldest son with him to his second family, and told Stepan Arkadyevitch that he thought it good for his son, enlarging his ideas. What would have been said to that in Moscow? His children? In Petersburg children did not prevent their parents from enjoying life. The children were brought up in schools, and there was no trace of the wild idea that prevailed in Moscow, in Lvov’s household, for instance, that all the luxuries of life were for the children, while the parents have nothing but work and anxiety. Here people understood that a man is in duty bound to live for himself, as every man of culture should live. His official duties? Official work here was not the stiff, hopeless drudgery that it was in Moscow. Here there was some interest in official life. A chance meeting, a service rendered, a happy phrase, a knack of facetious mimicry, and a man’s career might be made in a trice. So it had been with Bryantsev, whom Stepan Arkadyevitch had met the previous day, and who was one of the highest functionaries in government now. There was some interest in official work like that. The Petersburg attitude on pecuniary matters had an especially soothing effect on Stepan Arkadyevitch. Bartnyansky, who must spend at least fifty thousand to judge by the style he lived in, had made an interesting comment the day before on that subject. As they were talking before dinner, Stepan Arkadyevitch said to Bartnyansky: “You’re friendly, I fancy, with Mordvinsky; you might do me a favor: say a word to him, please, for me. There’s an appointment I should like to get—secretary of the agency....”

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  And I: “Master, thy discourse proceeds most clearly, and excellently distinguishes this gulf,6 and the people that possess it. But tell me: Those of the fat marsh; those whom the wind leads, and whom the rain beats; and those who meet with tongues so sharp,— why are they not punished in the red city,6 if God’s anger be upon them? and if not, why are they in such a plight?” And he said to me: “Wherefore errs thy mind so much beyond its wont? or are thy thoughts turned somewhere else? Rememberest thou not the words wherewith thy Ethics treat of the three dispositions7 which Heaven wills not, incontinence, malice, and mad bestiality? and how incontinence less offends God,8 and receives less blame? If thou rightly considerest this doctrine, and recallest to thy memory who they are that suffer punishment above, without, thou easily wilt see who they are separated from these fell spirits, and why, with less anger, Divine Justice strikes them.” “O Sun! who healest all troubled vision, thou makest so glad when thou resolvest me, that to doubt is not less grateful than to know. Turn thee yet a little back,” I said, “to where thou sayest that usury offends the Divine Goodness, and unravel the knot.” He said to me: “Philosophy, to him who hears it, points out, not in one place alone, how Nature takes her course from the Divine Intellect, and from its art; and if thou note well thy Physics,9 thou wilt find, not many pages from the first, that your art, as far as it can, follows her, as the scholar does his master; so that your art is, as it were, the grand-child of the Deity.10 By these two, if thou recallest to thy memory Genesis at the beginning, it behoves man to gain his bread and to prosper.11 And because the usurer takes another way, he contemns Nature in herself and in her follower, placing elsewhere his hope. But follow me now, as it pleases me to go: for the Fishes are quivering on the horizon, and all the Wain lies over Caurus,12 and yonder far onwards we go down the cliff.”

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  He had a ready appreciation of art, and probably, with a taste for imitating art, he supposed himself to have the real thing essential for an artist, and after hesitating for some time which style of painting to select—religious, historical, realistic, or genre painting—he set to work to paint. He appreciated all kinds, and could have felt inspired by anyone of them; but he had no conception of the possibility of knowing nothing at all of any school of painting, and of being inspired directly by what is within the soul, without caring whether what is painted will belong to any recognized school. Since he knew nothing of this, and drew his inspiration, not directly from life, but indirectly from life embodied in art, his inspiration came very quickly and easily, and as quickly and easily came his success in painting something very similar to the sort of painting he was trying to imitate. More than any other style he liked the French—graceful and effective—and in that style he began to paint Anna’s portrait in Italian costume, and the portrait seemed to him, and to everyone who saw it, extremely successful. Chapter 9 The old neglected palazzo, with its lofty carved ceilings and frescoes on the walls, with its floors of mosaic, with its heavy yellow stuff curtains on the windows, with its vases on pedestals, and its open fireplaces, its carved doors and gloomy reception rooms, hung with pictures—this palazzo did much, by its very appearance after they had moved into it, to confirm in Vronsky the agreeable illusion that he was not so much a Russian country gentleman, a retired army officer, as an enlightened amateur and patron of the arts, himself a modest artist who had renounced the world, his connections, and his ambition for the sake of the woman he loved. The pose chosen by Vronsky with their removal into the palazzo was completely successful, and having, through Golenishtchev, made acquaintance with a few interesting people, for a time he was satisfied. He painted studies from nature under the guidance of an Italian professor of painting, and studied mediæval Italian life. Mediæval Italian life so fascinated Vronsky that he even wore a hat and flung a cloak over his shoulder in the mediæval style, which, indeed, was extremely becoming to him. “Here we live, and know nothing of what’s going on,” Vronsky said to Golenishtchev as he came to see him one morning. “Have you seen Mihailov’s picture?” he said, handing him a Russian gazette he had received that morning, and pointing to an article on a Russian artist, living in the very same town, and just finishing a picture which had long been talked about, and had been bought beforehand. The article reproached the government and the academy for letting so remarkable an artist be left without encouragement and support.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  Though I had imagined my life would be that of a journalist and observer, sure that I didn’t want to be responsible for the welfare of others as I had been for my mother, I found myself committed to colleagues and a magazine that made me lie awake at night wondering if we could make the payroll. Yet this responsibility had become a community, not a burden. I had wanted to escape my traveling childhood, yet I was traveling and making the discovery that ordinary people are smart, smart people are ordinary, decisions are best made by the people affected by them, and human beings have an almost infinite capacity for adapting to the expectations around us—which is both the good and the bad news. Finally, I could see that the love of independence and possibilities that I absorbed from my father now had a purpose. All movements need a few people who can’t be fired. When you’re dependent, it’s very hard not to be worried about the approval of whoever and whatever you’re dependent on. For me, a mix of freedom and insecurity felt like home and allowed me to become an itinerant organizer. This is not a calling you will learn about from a career counselor, or get recruited for, or even see in a movie. It’s unpredictable and often means patching together a livelihood from speaking fees, writing, foundations, odd jobs, friends, and savings. But other than becoming a rock musician or a troubadour, nothing else allows you to be a full-time part of social change. It satisfies my addiction to freedom that came from my father, and my love of community that came from seeing the price my mother paid for having none. That’s why, if I had to name the most important discovery of my life, it would be the portable community of talking circles; groups that gather with all five senses, and allow consciousness to change. Following them has given me a road that isn’t solitary like my father’s, or unsupported like my mother’s. They taught me to talk as well as listen. They also showed me that writing, which is solitary, is fine company for organizing, which is communal. It just took me a while to discover that both can happen wherever you are. II.In 1963 I was making a living as a freelance journalist, writing profiles of celebrities and style pieces—not the kind of reporting I had imagined when I came home from India. I read that Martin Luther King, Jr., was leading a March on Washington, a massive campaign for jobs, justice, new legislation, and federal protection for civil rights marchers who were being beaten, jailed, and sometimes murdered in the South, all with police collusion. However, I couldn’t get an assignment to write about it. True, I did have a long-sought assignment to write a profile of James Baldwin—who would be speaking at the march—but following him around amid multitudes seemed impossible, intrusive, or both.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “I’ll show you,” Lionel said. • • • In the morning, Lionel left Charles in bed. He rinsed out their cups from last night. Then the French press, which he took apart and cleaned piece by piece and put in the rack to dry. He pushed up the window and propped it open with an old ruler. The cold would help air out the apartment, that stale smell from having left it shut up for almost two weeks. Lionel could still feel Charles’s hands all over him, the sureness of his grip and the grinding pressure of their bodies coming together. He went to the bathroom to brush his teeth, to brush the taste of Charles out of his mouth. By the time he got to the front of the apartment, Charles had rolled over onto his back and was lying there naked, on full display. His body was magnificent. Edges and lines and clear definition. A thatch of pubic hair. His cock was uncut and of medium length, but very thick. Everything about him was proportional. Lionel made more coffee, waiting for Charles to get up, wondering where he’d go after he left, wondering what had brought him here. But as he stood waiting for the coffee to bloom, staring down into its brown mass, the ruler snapped in half. He had used it for years with no problem. He’d had it since he was a kid, when he’d gotten it as a gift from his math camp counselor. All the lines were worn off. Now it had snapped, and for a moment the window hung suspended, as if its mechanism had magically repaired itself or gravity had ceased to function. Then it fell, slamming shut with such force that the glass broke. In cartoonish escalation, the shards fell down into the sink, shattering further. He felt something old and powdery land on his lip, but it was only a bit of dust, a flake of paint perhaps, from the windowsill. “What are you doing over there?” Charles had come into the kitchen. Lionel turned to him. “It’s a mess,” he said. “What?” “I don’t know,” Lionel said, but his heart was beating fast, and his hands shook. He could hardly hold himself still. “Oh, shit.” “I’m fine.” “Sure.” “No, don’t! There’s glass,” Lionel said. Charles had made to cross the room. He was still naked, barefoot. At Lionel’s warning, he drew up short. Then he put on his boots, still naked, collected a dustpan and broom, and swept a few glass fragments from the floor. Then he leaned down to inspect what was in the sink, and whistled. “You better get a new one,” he said. With the glass gone, cold air was swirling into the apartment. Lionel saw the air raise goose bumps down Charles’s back and thighs, little ridges of flesh. “Thanks,” he said. “Do you think you got it all?”

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “It’ll be all the better, Agafea Mihalovna, it won’t mildew, even though our ice has begun to thaw already, so that we’ve no cool cellar to store it,” said Kitty, at once divining her husband’s motive, and addressing the old housekeeper with the same feeling; “but your pickle’s so good, that mamma says she never tasted any like it,” she added, smiling, and putting her kerchief straight. Agafea Mihalovna looked angrily at Kitty. “You needn’t try to console me, mistress. I need only to look at you with him, and I feel happy,” she said, and something in the rough familiarity of that _with him_ touched Kitty. “Come along with us to look for mushrooms, you will show us the best places.” Agafea Mihalovna smiled and shook her head, as though to say: “I should like to be angry with you too, but I can’t.” “Do it, please, by my receipt,” said the princess; “put some paper over the jam, and moisten it with a little rum, and without even ice, it will never go mildewy.” Chapter 3 Kitty was particularly glad of a chance of being alone with her husband, for she had noticed the shade of mortification that had passed over his face—always so quick to reflect every feeling—at the moment when he had come onto the terrace and asked what they were talking of, and had got no answer. When they had set off on foot ahead of the others, and had come out of sight of the house onto the beaten dusty road, marked with rusty wheels and sprinkled with grains of corn, she clung faster to his arm and pressed it closer to her. He had quite forgotten the momentary unpleasant impression, and alone with her he felt, now that the thought of her approaching motherhood was never for a moment absent from his mind, a new and delicious bliss, quite pure from all alloy of sense, in the being near to the woman he loved. There was no need of speech, yet he longed to hear the sound of her voice, which like her eyes had changed since she had been with child. In her voice, as in her eyes, there was that softness and gravity which is found in people continually concentrated on some cherished pursuit. “So you’re not tired? Lean more on me,” said he. “No, I’m so glad of a chance of being alone with you, and I must own, though I’m happy with them, I do regret our winter evenings alone.” “That was good, but this is even better. Both are better,” he said, squeezing her hand. “Do you know what we were talking about when you came in?” “About jam?” “Oh, yes, about jam too; but afterwards, about how men make offers.”

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  Wilma said many Native people believed that the earth as a living organism would just one day shrug off the human species that was destroying it—and start over. In a less cataclysmic vision, humans would realize that we are killing our home and each other, and seek out The Way. That’s why Native people were guarding it. This seemed impossibly generous. It also seemed just plain impossible. Too many Native people have themselves forgotten or forsaken The Way, with too few chances to relearn it. This worldview has more layers than I know, but it seems to start with a circle in which all living things are related, and with a goal of balance, not dominance, which upsets balance. In our weeks of talk, movies, and friendship, I watched as Wilma turned a medical ordeal into one more event in her life, but not its definition. I believe she was teaching me an intimate form of The Way. In her words, “Every day is a good day—because we are part of everything alive.” That wasn’t Wilma’s only gift to me. Often over the last dozen years, I’ve joined her in Oklahoma at the end of the summer for the Cherokee National Holiday: days filled with ceremonial dances, feasting on traditional and not-so-traditional foods, buying creations of artists and craftspeople in booths that ring the campground, and meeting members of other nations who come as dancers and guests. It was there that I finally fulfilled the dancing prophecy of the women who gave me that ceremonial red shawl in Houston so many years before. —ON A HUGE GRASSY FIELD surrounded by low bleachers and tall klieg lights, dozens of traditional dancers were circling slowly in the summer night. Each participant or group was dressed and dancing in a traditional style of a tribe and a part of the country, but each person was unique, too. There was no program to explain the order of the dancers. Each seemed focused internally, not on the audience. Prizes would be given out eventually, but no one seemed aware of being judged. This balance between tribe and individuality, community and uniqueness, was a surprise in a world that makes us think we have to make a choice between them. After this public Holiday, Wilma and Charlie invited me to join them in the all-night Cherokee Stomp Dance that follows. Even after 1978, when the American Indian Religious Freedom Act finally lifted the legal ban on sacred rituals, this ceremony, which had gone on for millennia, remained safe and secret, or at least private. Outsiders had to be invited to go—or even to know where to go. We drove down dark rural roads with no signs or lights to mark their twists and turns, then parked in an unmarked field amid dozens of cars and pickup trucks.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  This balance between making camp and following the seasons is both very ancient and very new. We all need both. My father did not have to trade dying alone for the joys of the road. My mother did not have to give up a journey of her own to have a home. Neither do I. Neither do you. [image "At home in New York City, 2010. Courtesy of Annie Leibovitz" file=Image00024.jpg] AT HOME IN NEW YORK CITY, 2010. COURTESY OF ANNIE LEIBOVITZ THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO: Dr. John Sharpe of London, who in 1957, a decade before physicians in England could legally perform an abortion for any reason other than the health of the woman, took the considerable risk of referring for an abortion a twenty-two-year-old American on her way to India. Knowing only that she had broken an engagement at home to seek an unknown fate, he said, “You must promise me two things. First, you will not tell anyone my name. Second, you will do what you want to do with your life.” Dear Dr. Sharpe, I believe you, who knew the law was unjust, would not mind if I say this so long after your death: I’ve done the best I could with my life. This book is for you. [image "Notes of Gratitude" file=Image00025.jpg] W hen a book has taken shape over two decades, there are a lot of people to thank. Ann Godoff at Random House was the first to believe in an on-the-road book by a traveling feminist organizer. Then Kate Medina became my editor, and if there were an Olympics for kindness, support, and patience, she would win it. Hedgebrook, the women writers’ retreat on Whidbey Island, Washington, gave me solitude, a magical cabin, and time to discover and write the story of my father. Because I depended on memory as a curator of stories—the road is way too intense for journal keeping—I turned to the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College to supply places and times, and to Google to deliver everything my memory did not. I was lucky to have houseguests who volunteered as readers—especially Lenedra Carroll, who read it all, and also Agunda Okeyo. New York friends Kathy Najimy and Debra Winger read chapters. My friend Irene Kubota Neves, a journalist and an age peer, read and commented on every word, and even rescued some from the cutting-room floor. Through all of this, Robert Levine, my friend and literary agent, kept his faith that a book would get done, and gave the publishers faith, too. As the years stretched on, I could devote time each summer to writing, then I was traveling the rest of the year and starting over again the next summer. Stories were soon creating more than one book. Though I was often rescued by my colleague Amy Richards, who read and gave me advice, there was still way too much. Finally, Suzanne Braun Levine, the first editor of Ms.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  My driver and the waitress exchange news about who’s still working, who’s still married, who jackknifed a semi on black ice, and who was driving a rig that got blown over in a tornado. At least, I think that’s what they’re saying. Words like anteater, which is a kind of rig, and bear, which means a law enforcement officer, need translation. A bearded driver in cowboy boots sits down next to me. He orders lemon meringue pie, a side of chocolate ice cream, a pot of tea, and a can of motor oil. The waitress slides each item down the Formica counter to exactly the right spot in front of him, all with the skill of a great pool player. I compliment her. From there we get to talking about women truck drivers. She says there are a few more these days. Fleet owners have begun to hire them because they listen to their trainers and have better safety records. Still, women get ribbed and talked dirty to on CB radio. She respects them for hanging in there, and even driving eighteen-wheelers. What started as husband-and-wife teams, the pioneers of job sharing—one sleeping in the back of the cab while the other drove—has now become a crack in the glass ceiling of jobs with good pay. Over by the booths, one older white guy and two young black men are feeding coins into an old-fashioned jukebox and arguing about the relative merits of rappers versus classics like Stevie Wonder and Sam Cooke. They seem to agree that Brook Benton’s “Rainy Night in Georgia” is the truckers’ anthem, and play it three times straight. “Just wait,” my driver says. “The next place has real truckers’ music.” Back on the shining highway, he explains that truck stops aren’t chains of sameness like McDonald’s; they’re more like idiosyncratic relatives. Each one offers down-home food, talk, music, and timelessness, plus trucker necessities, from motor oil to mosquito spray, all sold over the counter. When we turn off again and head into another warm, tacky, welcoming world, the jukebox features such songs as “Girl on the Billboard,” “A Tombstone Every Mile,” and “18 Wheels and a Dozen Roses,” the last being the ode of a trucker coming home to his wife. Truckers are such constant listeners that they dictate pop music hits. Also, Nashville produces specialty truckers’ songs as a profitable category. Who knew? At our third stop, I sit next to a truck-driving wife. She started teaming up with her husband as a defensive measure. “Pimps work the truck stops,” she explains. “They drop off girls to work the cabs as they pull up, then take them to the next stop. I know because I had a niece who got caught up with drugs, and her pimp beat her to death for trying to get out. I used to hate the girls.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  area again unless I was in real bad shape. And besides, the thought of a doctor opening my legs and examining me chilled me to the bone. “Thanks for listening,” I told her. “Almost nobody hears me anymore.” She squeezed my arm. “You can make an appointment at the front desk on your way out. Don’t put it off too long.” I could still feel her hand on my arm after she’d walked away. I suddenly realized I didn’t know her name. I might need to come back someday. I started down the hall after her. Roz came out of the examining room and blocked my way. “What’s her name?” I asked Roz. “I forgot to ask.” Roz’s voice was cold. “You got what you wanted, now leave.” “You're wrong, Roz,” I corrected her. “I got 29 what I needed. You have no idea how much I want. Hog Every time I got a paycheck I used part of it on my apartment. I spent one whole weekend spackling the cracks in my walls and ceilings. As I applied paint to each room with broad strokes my spirits lifted. On my most ambitious weekend I sanded all the wood floors. Then I started from the furthest corner of the apartment and polyurethaned myself out the door. That night I slept at a 42° Street theater again—yjust for one more night! The floors were dazzling, It added a new dimension underfoot, as though the ceilings were raised, or the apartment had grown in size. I found a black Guatemalan rug at a flea market. It had tiny flecks of white in it. I unrolled it in my living room and stood back to look. It reminded me of the night sky filled with stars. Gradually I bought furniture—a sturdy couch and reading chair, a mahogany kitchen table and chairs. At the Salvation Army I found a bed—the head and footboards were ovals carved out of cherry. I went crazy buying sheets at Macy’s. As my house came together, I suddenly wanted things that made my body feel good. I threw out my old jeans and bought new chinos, underwear, shirts, and two pairs of sneakers, so that I didn’t have to pound the pavement in the same pair every day. I bought thick, soft towels and fragrances for my bath that pleased me. And then one day I looked around at my apartment and realized I’d made a home. Stone Butch Blues 259

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  Drivers from that country were proud of their independence fighters in the mountains, yet I never met an Ethiopian driver who wanted to fight for Emperor Haile Selassie or for the militaristic governments that followed. On the other hand, Eritrean drivers told me with pride that a third of their army was made up of women, some of them generals; that fighters had built schools and a hospital in mountain caves that were invulnerable to bombs; and that musicians in their “cultural troops,” as they called them, performed for the fighters and even toured Europe. “When an Ethiopian general is killed, the troops are in disarray,” one Eritrean driver explained to me. “When an Eritrean general is killed, every fighter becomes a general.” Tiny Eritrea did win the war. However, its revolutionary leaders broke the hearts of taxi drivers from Eritrea by taking over all the media and otherwise betraying the revolution. When another border war broke out between those two countries, I noticed that neither side wanted to go home and fight. Recently, an Ethiopian and several Kenyan drivers have sounded a bigger alarm. As one said, “I never thought I would see a second wave of colonialism, but there is one and it’s Chinese. Our countries are becoming wholly owned subsidiaries of China.” Maybe U.S. policy makers should talk to taxi drivers. II.As my father’s daughter, I know that being one’s own boss is the reason taxi driving attracts free spirits, philosophers, and people who are too independent to do anything else. The hours are flexible enough for students and even the occasional homemaker, though women drivers are still rare. Whenever I have one, I tell her how glad I am to see her. Altogether, getting to know the human being inside the driver is an adventure, too. • I’m glad to get a lifetime taxi driver in Manhattan. This one tells me he’s been at it so long that he’s writing a book called Behind My Back. I tell him it’s an inspired title. His book has already made him the rare American who feels equal to the rich and famous, and he spends the ride telling me about his subjects. “Robert Redford is much shorter than you think….Cher is down-to-earth and a big tipper, but she’s had too much plastic surgery….Donald Trump has such an ego, he even tried to impress me….Toni Morrison is more queenly than Queen Elizabeth….I told Caroline Kennedy she should run for office….Just from listening to bankers, I knew the subprime mortgage market would crash….” I can’t decide whether I like this guy or not. He’s so celebrity-obsessed that I wonder about his attitude toward ordinary passengers. Just then a homeless woman wheeling a shopping cart—probably holding all her life’s possessions—darts out in front of us, and the driver almost sideswipes a bus while trying not to hit her.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  She takes a tall glass of cold water to the back patio, where she sometimes smokes at night and sometimes drinks the father’s beer with the mother while they talk about the twins, about Sylvia’s life, about the easiness of youth and no attachments. It’s not a conversation, not really. It’s a monologue on the mother’s part, delivered from a cashmere throw and the blurry edge of late middle age. Sometimes, the mother gets drunk and waxes philosophical about her geriatric pregnancy and how utterly sexist the terminology is, running through the litany of grievances she’s stored up at the world these past few years, returning to them again and again like treasured anecdotes of some far-off life. Reliving the trauma of maternity leave the way some people relive the horrors of the Great Depression or the Jim Crow South. The house, like all of the other houses on their street, is not old but has been made to look that way. Pseudo-Victorian splendor meant to communicate— what, exactly, Sylvia wonders. Comfort? Material establishment. It’s a street of doctors and white-collar serfs. The father works at a tech company down on the square. The mother works in pharma. She synthesized some sort of filament as a graduate student. Did some kind of molecular geometric voodoo, and now they have this house and they have Sylvia, and due to modern technology, they have the twins. They split the cost of Sylvia with Mac and Jill Ngost next door. For slightly too little money—it would be more in Manhattan, but what can she do about Wisconsin—she cooks meals and looks after the twins. The Ngosts don’t have children, and don’t expect Sylvia to clean, only to cook. Mac and Jill are in their early forties. Jill is attractive, a brunette. She is funny, and she tells stories that always turn in unexpected places. She keeps her lips over her teeth because she is insecure about a gray, misshapen canine. There is no reason that this tooth should have emerged as it did from her gums. All of her other teeth are beautiful and white. Mac is tall and dense with what is either muscle or fat or both. He runs up and down the street for an hour or two in the mornings. Sylvia watches him from her bedroom. He likes sweet things, and is always willing to let Sylvia experiment on him with her desserts. Last night, she served a berry crumble with a jam she’d made herself. Tonight, for the Ngosts, she is making some sort of soup. Lots of shredded chicken breast, a stock from the bones and marrow, a thick cream base, some herbs. French bread from the market. She can see the soup in her mind, the way it goes from clear to creamy white.

• From Escape (2007)

  But I came into the world as a feisty seven-pound baby, my mother’s second daughter. My father said she could name me Carolyn or Annette. She looked up both names and decided to call me Carolyn because it meant “wisdom.” My mother always said that even as a baby, I looked extremely wise to her. I was born into six generations of polygamy on my mother’s side and started life in Hildale, Utah, in a fundamentalist Mormon community known as the FLDS, or the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Polygamy was the issue that defined us and the reason we’d split from the mainstream Mormon Church. My childhood memories really begin in Salt Lake City. We moved there when I was about five. Even though my parents believed in polygamy, my father had only one wife. He owned a small real estate business that was doing well and decided it made sense to use Salt Lake as a base. We had a lovely house with a porch swing and a landscaped yard and trees. This was a big change from the tiny house in Colorado City with dirt and weeds in the yard and a father who was rarely home. But the biggest difference in moving to Salt Lake City was that my mother, Nurylon, was happy. She loved the city and delighted in having my father home every night after work. My dad was doing well, and Mom had enough money to buy plenty of groceries when we went to the store and even had some extra for toys. There were soon four of us. I had two sisters, Linda and Annette. I was in the middle—Linda was eighteen months older than I and Annette two years younger. My baby brother Arthur arrived a few years after Annette. My mother was thrilled to finally have a son because in our culture, boys have more value than girls. Linda and my mother were very close. But my mother always seemed very irritated by me, in part, I think, because I was my father’s favorite. I adored my dad, Arthur Blackmore. He was tall and thin, with large bones and dark, wavy hair. I remember that whenever we were around other families I thought I had the best-looking father in the entire world. I saw him as my personal protector and felt safe when I was in his presence. His face lit up when I entered the room; I was always the daughter he wanted to introduce when friends visited our house. My mother complained that he didn’t discipline me as much as he did my sister Linda, but he ignored her and didn’t seem to care.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  He does just that. — IT IS NOW FIVE YEARS AFTER Wilma’s death, and I’m more than ever learning from and about original cultures—on my own continent, in India, and in countries of Africa, where we all came from. Our current plight is not made inevitable by human nature. What once was could be again—in a new way. I once asked Wilma if one day my ashes could be with hers, and she said yes. In the future they will be. Even though my ancestors were forced to escape their homes and come here, I feel I’ve found my land. If I could say one thing to Wilma, it would be this: We’re still here. Coming Home As I write this, I’m fifteen years older than my father was when he died. Only after fifty did I begin to admit that I was suffering from my own form of imbalance. Though I felt sorry for myself for not having a home, I was always rescued by defiance and a love of freedom. Like my father for instance, I’d convinced myself that I wasn’t earning enough money as a freelancer to file income tax returns, something I had to spend months with an accountant to make up for. Like him, I’d saved no money, so there was a good reason for my fantasy of ending up as a bag lady. I handled it just by saying to myself, I’ll organize the other bag ladies. Finally, I had to admit that I too was leading an out-of-balance life, even if it was different in degree from my father’s. I needed to make a home for myself; otherwise it would do me in, too. Home is a symbol of the self. Caring for a home is caring for one’s self. Gradually, the rooms that I had used mostly as an office and a closet were filled with things that gave me pleasure when I opened the door. I had a kitchen that worked, a real desk to spread papers on, and a welcoming room where visiting friends could stay, something I’d always wanted as a child when I was living with my mother in places too sad to invite anyone. Though it was a little late after fifty, I even began to save money. After months of nesting—and shopping for such things as sheets and candles with a pleasure that bordered on orgasmic—an odd thing happened: I found myself enjoying travel even more. Now that being on the road was my choice, not my fate, I lost the melancholy feeling of Everybody has a home but me. I could leave—because I could return. I could return—because I knew adventure lay just beyond an open door.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  And as the sound taketh its form in the lute-neck, or at the opening of the pipes the wind that entereth, so, delay of expectation done away, that murmuring of the eagle rose up through its neck as it were hollow; there it became a voice and issued thence, out from its beak, in form of words, such as the heart awaited, whereon I wrote them. “That part in me which seeth and which doth endure the sun in mortal eagles,” it began to me, “must now fixedly be gazed upon, for of the fires wherefromout I make my figure, those with which the eye sparkleth in my head, of all their ranks are chief. He who shineth midmost, as the pupil, was the singer of the Holy Spirit who bore the ark from city unto city; now knoweth he the merit of his song, in so far as ’twas the effect of his own counsel, 3 by the remuneration like unto it. Of the five who make the eyebrow’s arch, he who doth neighbour closest on the beak consoled the widow for her son; 4 now knoweth he how dear it costs Christ not to follow, by his experience of this sweet life and of the opposite. And he who followeth on the circumference whereof I tell, upon the upper arch, death did delay by his true penitence; 5 now knoweth he that the eternal judgment is not transmuted when a worthy prayer giveth unto to-morrow upon earth what was to- day’s. The next who followeth, with the laws and me, with good intention that bore evil fruit, to give place to the pastor, made himself a Greek; now knoweth he that the ill deduced from his good deed hurteth not him though the world be destroyed thereby. 6 And him thou seest on the down-sloping arch was William, whom that land deploreth which weepeth for that Charles and Frederick live; now knoweth he how heaven is enamoured of the righteous king, and by the semblance of his glow he maketh it yet seen. 7 Who would believe, down in the erring world, the Trojan Ripheus 8 in this circle to be the fifth of the holy lights? now knoweth he right much of the divine grace that the world hath no power to see, albeit his sight discerneth not the bottom.” Like to the lark who soareth in the air, first singing and then silent, content with the last sweetness that doth sate her, so seemed to me the image of the imprint of the eternal pleasure, by longing for whom each thing becometh what it is. 9 And albeit there I was to my questioning like glass unto the colour which it clothes, yet would it not endure to bide its time in silence; 10 but from my mouth: “What things 11 are these?” it thrust by force of its own weight, whereat I saw great glee of coruscation.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  Gradually, the rooms that I had used mostly as an office and a closet were filled with things that gave me pleasure when I opened the door. I had a kitchen that worked, a real desk to spread papers on, and a welcoming room where visiting friends could stay, something I’d always wanted as a child when I was living with my mother in places too sad to invite anyone. Though it was a little late after fifty, I even began to save money. After months of nesting—and shopping for such things as sheets and candles with a pleasure that bordered on orgasmic—an odd thing happened: I found myself enjoying travel even more. Now that being on the road was my choice, not my fate, I lost the melancholy feeling of Everybody has a home but me. I could leave—because I could return. I could return—because I knew adventure lay just beyond an open door. Instead of either/or, I discovered a whole world of and. Long before all these divisions opened between home and the road, between a woman’s place and a man’s world, humans followed the crops, the seasons, traveling with their families, our companions, our animals, our tents. We built campfires and moved from place to place. This way of traveling is still in our cellular memory. Living things have evolved as travelers. Even migrating birds know that nature doesn’t demand a choice between nesting and flight. On journeys as long as twelve thousand miles, birds tuck their beaks under wings and rest on anything from ice floes to the decks of ships at sea. Then, once they arrive at their destination, they build a nest and select each twig with care. I wish the road had spared my father long enough to show him the possibilities of and instead of either/or. If he’d been around when I finally created a home, I might have had something to teach him, as well as time to thank him for the lessons he taught me. I wish my mother hadn’t lived an even more polarized life of either/or. Like so many women before her—and so many even now—she never had a journey of her own. With all my heart, I wish she could have followed a path she loved. I pause for a moment as I write these words. My hand, long-fingered like my father’s, rests on my desk where I do work I love, in rooms that were my first home—and probably will be my last. I’m surrounded by images of friends and chosen objects that knew someone’s touch before mine—and will know others after I am gone. I notice that my middle finger lifts and falls involuntarily, exactly as my father’s did. I recognize in myself, as I did in him, a tap of restlessness. It’s time to leave—there is so much out there to do and say and listen to. I can go on the road—because I can come home. I come home—because I’m free to leave.