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 I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  In this chapter, I’m going to walk you through some essential self-care basics. (Clearly, I could use a reminder, too.) But let’s get one thing clear: no one is expecting you to embark on a full-blown lifestyle makeover. Setting the bar that high is not only a recipe for burnout, it will likely backfire. Instead, just let my words soak in. When you’re ready, I encourage you to choose one simple action you can take to help yourself feel better. Just one. After you’ve got some consistency under your belt, add another. Above all, let it be easy. You’re already doing enough hard stuff. This is meant to nourish you, not send you over the edge. DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DOFor me, cleaning is a contact sport. When life feels groundless, I grab some Windex and wipe the shit out of it. Cleaning with gusto makes me feel accomplished. There’s a clear beginning, middle, and end. No mystery. No uncertainty. No “better luck next time.” Only a satisfying sense of completion. The floor was dirty. The floor is now clean. Cue the trumpets! A year after Dad died, I decided that my staycation was the perfect time to “tackle” my back-burner to-do list. Not the doctors’ appointments I’d neglected to make or the teeth cleaning that was long overdue. Instead, I went for the unimportant stuff that eats at you in the early-morning hours when you’re trying to get back to sleep but can’t because you own expired spices, socks with no mates, and piles of rotting paperwork. How are you expected to rest? And what about those freaky Halloween decorations that Mom keeps sending you, or your collection of VHS tapes? The ’90s called and they want their VCR back—get rid of them! (Well, except for the Buns of Steel workout video. That’s a classic.) So, you must attack these offensive objects. Seize your few-and-far-between moments of energy, throw your hair into a struggle bun, and vigorously declutter your environment—channeling all your anxiety, stress, and hopelessness into the organization of stuff. I was barely a few hours into my compulsive purgea-thon when . . . crunch! My back went out. Brian had tried to stop me: “Babe, be careful, that’s really heavy. Let me help you.” No. I insisted on lifting it myself, because why accept help (or your own limitations) when you can push and force? Why not lift heavy things by yourself? It’s what you’ve done emotionally most of your life, taking everything on with a cheery smile. (You should have I’m fine, damn it tattooed on your forehead.) And for the love of God, why remember that you are a couch potato, and tubers like you have no business impersonating CrossFit champs? Sigh. Unfortunately, I am still unable to answer most of those questions.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  Madame Oisille failed not to administer to them in the morning the wholesome pasture she drew from the reading of the acts and virtuous deeds of the glorious knights and apostles of Jesus Christ, and told them that those narratives were enough to fill one with the wish to have lived in such times, and make one deplore the de- formity of this age compared with that. After readmg and explaining to them the beginning of that excellent book, she begged them to go to church in the union with which the apostles addressed their prayers to Heaven, and solicit the grace of God, who never refuses it to those who ask for it with faith. Everyone thought the advice very good, and they arrived in church just as the mass of the Holy Ghost was beginning. This was so a propos that they listened to the service with great de- votion. Again at dinner the conversation turned on the lives of the blessed apostles, and the subject was so pleasing that the company had nearly forgotten to return to the rendezvous for the novels. Nomerfide, who was the youngest of them, observed this, and said : " Madame Oisille has put us so much upon devotion that the time for relating novels is passing away without our thinking of retiring to prepare our novels." Thereupon the com- pany rose, went for a short while to their respective chambers, and then repaired to the meadow as they had done the day before. When all were comfortably seated, Madame Oisille said to Saif redent, " Though I am quite sure you will Sc' enlh dny.\ QUEEN OF NA VARKE. 4S I say nothing to the advantage of women, yet I must re- mind you that you promised us a novel yesterday even- ing. " I stipulate, madam," replied Saffredent, " that I shall not pass for an evil speaker in speaking the truth, nor lose the good-will of virtuous ladies by relating what M:intons do. Experience has taught me what it is to be deprived of their presence, and if I were likewise de- prived of their good graces, I should not be alive at this moment." So saying, he cast his eyes on the opposite side to that where sat she who was the cause of his weal and woe ; but at the same time he looked at Ennasuite, and made her blush as if what he had said was meant for her. However, he was not the less understood by the right person. Madame Oisille having then assured him he might fairly speak the truth at the cost of whom it concerned, he began as follows. NOVEL LXI. A husband became reconciled to his wife after she had liv^ed four- teen or fifteen years with a canon.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  After the resounding crashes of the empty garbage cans being dropped to the ground, the cart would move heavily away, stumbling with all its loosely joined boards over the uneven street-paving. I would then fall asleep again until morning. My mother was always the first to rise, always in a hurry to begin her daily life at once; and soon the odor of Turkish coffee would fill the kitchen and overflow into our room. My mornings of hope are still perfumed with Turkish coffee. We lived at the bottom of the Impasse Tarfoune, in a little room where I was born one year after my sister Kalla. With the Barouch family we shared the ground floor of a shapeless old building, a sort of two-room apartment. The kitchen, half of it roofed over and the rest an open courtyard, was a long vertical passage toward the light. But before reaching this square of pure blue sky, it received, from a multitude of windows, all the smoke, the smells, and the gossip of our neighbors. At night, each locked himself up in his room; but in the morning, life was always communal, running along the tunnel of a kitchen, mingling the waters from the kitchen sinks, the smells of coffee, and the voices still muffled with sleep. We took turns with the Barouch family to go into the kitchen to the only washbasin with its single faucet. We came there fully dressed so as not to catch cold while crossing the little yard, and we had to be content with spreading a lather of soap over our faces as far as our ears while taking care not to wet the collars of our shirts. But it was forbidden for us, whether for reasons of self-esteem, hygiene, or religious belief, to sit down to a meal without first washing our faces. In our alley, the goatherd would announce his impatience with long blows on his horn. My mother would remove the two iron bars that protected our front door against thieves and pogroms. I never dared follow her as she pushed through the compact herd of goats that stared at her without blinking their insolent and surprised eyes. The Maltese goatherd wore a thick red flannel sash around his loins, and he would squat down against the wall, on his patched boots. He would take the brown earthenware pot and grab a goat at random to draw from her the sudden spurts of foaming milk. Angry infants, always numerous in our part of town, cried sourly. The street, seeming to awaken with regret, grumbled from all its open windows, shaking itself free from the sluggishness of a light mist that slowly settled on the damp paving stones. The sun was still benevolent.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  BEDE. Rightly does He lead the disciples, about to be instructed in the mysteries of His Body, to the mount of Olives, that He might signify that all who arc baptized in His death should be comforted with the anointing of the Holy Spirit. THEOPHYLACT. Now after supper our Lord betakes Himself not to idleness or sleep, but to prayer and teaching. Hence it follows, And when he was at the place, he said unto them, Pray, &c. BEDE. It is indeed impossible for the soul of man not to be tempted. Therefore he says not, Pray that ye be not tempted, but, Pray that ye enter not into temptation, that is, that the temptation do not at last overcome you. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. But not to do good by words only, He went forward a little and prayed; as it follows, And he was withdrawn from them about a stone’s cast. You will every where find Him praying apart, to teach you that with a devout mind and quiet heart we should speak with the most high God. He did not betake Himself to prayer, as if He was in want of another’s help, who is the Almighty power of the Father, but that we may learn not to slumber in temptation, but rather to be instant in prayer. BEDE. He also alone prays for all, who was to suffer alone for all, signifying that His prayer is as far distant from ours as His Passion. AUGUSTINE. (de Qu. Evang. lib. ii. qu. 50.) He was torn from them about a stone’s cast, as though He would typically remind them that to Him they should point the stone, that is, up to Him bring the intention of the law which was written on stone. GREGORY OF NYSSA. But what meaneth His bending of knees? of which it is said, And he kneeled down, and prayed. It is the way of men to pray to their superiors with their faces on the ground, testifying by the action that the greater of the two are those who are asked. Now it is plain that human nature contains nothing worthy of God’s imitation. Accordingly the tokens of respect which we evince to one another, confessing ourselves to be inferior to our neighbours, we have transferred to the humiliation of the Incomparable Nature. And thus He who bore our sicknesses and interceded for us, bent His knee in prayer, by reason of the man which He assumed, giving us an example, that we ought not to exalt ourselves at the time of prayer, but in all things be conformed to humility; for God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble. (James 4:6, 1 Pet. 5:5.)

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  A mysterious sense of communion was thus born among us. All the races of our city were represented there. Sicilian workers in patched blue overalls, with their tools at their feet, were arguing noisily; a French housewife, conscious of her own dignity, was on her way to the market; in front of me a Mohammedan sat with his son, a tiny little boy wearing a miniature fez and with his hands all stained with henna; to my left, a Djerban grocer from the South, off to restock his store, with his basket between his legs and a pencil over his ear. The rain was sweeping against the panes of the car, opaque with steam, and the drops of water fell against them like the blows of a whip. The Djerban, under the influence of the warmth and the calm of the car, became restless. He smiled at the little boy, whose eyes twinkled as he turned to look at his father. The latter, flattered by this attention and grateful, reassured the child and smiled at the Djerban. “How old are you?” the grocer asked the boy. “Two and a half years old,” the father replied. “Did the cat gobble it up?” the grocer asked the child. “No,” the father answered. “He isn’t circumcised yet, but some day soon...” “Ah, ah!” The grocer had indeed found a theme which was rich in conversational possibilities with the child. “Will you sell me your tiny little animal?” “No!” the child replied with horror. Quite obviously, the boy knew this whole routine and had already heard the same proposition before. I too, knew it all, and had myself played the game some years ago, attacked by other aggressors and feeling the same emotions of shame, curiosity, and complicity. The child’s eyes sparkled with the pleasure of his awareness of his own growing virility, and with the shock of his revolt against such an unwarranted attack. He looked toward his father, but the latter only smiled: this was an accepted game. All our neighbors in the car took a friendly interest in the scene which was traditional and earned their approval. In this warm and human car, pr otected as we were against nature’s aggressiveness, we were like one happy family. “I offer you ten francs for it,” the Djerban proposed. “No!” the child protested. A Bedouin pushed the sliding door open and hesitated as he entered. The stink of a stable and of stale cooking fats spread throughout the car, as well as of something else that I was unable to identify. Through the still open door an unpleasant draft reached us. “Close the door!” the Sicilian masons shouted, though apparently without any hostility or clannish animosity. The Mohammedans in the car all pricked their ears up. For a while, the little game stopped. But the Sicilians had really intended no harm and we were quite clearly, one and all, a big family of Mediterraneans.

• From White Oleander (1999)

  After I’d unpacked, I crossed the narrow hall to the kitchen, where Rena sat with another girl, her dark-rooted hair dyed magenta. Each had an open Heineken bottle and they shared a filthy glass ashtray. The counters were all dirty dishes and takeout debris. “Astrid. This is other one, Niki.” Rena turned to the magenta-haired girl. This girl sized me up more carefully than the pregnant girl. Brown eyes weighed me to the tenth of an ounce, patted me down, checked the seams of my clothing. “Who hit you?” I shrugged. “Some girls at Mac. It’s going away.” Niki sat back in her mismatched dinette chair, skinny arms behind her head. “Sisters don’t like white girls messing with their men.” Tilted her head back to sip from her beer, but didn’t take her eyes off me. “They give you that haircut too?” “What, you’re Hawaii 5-0?” Rena said. “Leave her be.” She got up and fished another beer out of the battered refrigerator, covered with stickers from rock bands. A glimpse of the interior didn’t look promising. Beer, takeout cartons, some lunch meat. Rena held a beer up. “Want one?” I took it. I was here now. We drank beer, we smoked black cigarettes. I wondered what else we did on Ripple Street. Rena searched for something in the cabinets, opening and slamming the chipped beige doors. There wasn’t anything but a bunch of dusty old pots, odd glasses and plates. “You eat chips I buy?” “Yvonne,” Niki said, drinking her beer. “Eat for two,” Rena said. Niki and Rena went off somewhere in the van. Yvonne lay on one side, asleep on the couch, sucking her thumb. The white cat curled against her back. There was an empty bag of Doritos on the table. The TV was still on, local news. A helicopter crash on the 10. People crying, reporters interviewing them on the shoulder of the freeway. Blood and confusion. I went out onto the porch. The rain had stopped, the earth smelled damp and green. Two girls my age walked by with their kids, one on a tricycle, the other in a pink baby carriage. They stared at me, plucked eyebrows rendering their faces expressionless. A powder-blue American car from the sixties, somebody’s pride and joy, all shining chrome and white upholstery, roared by, the engine deep and explosive, and we watched it rise to the top of Ripple Street. A crack opened in the clouds to the west, and a golden light washed over the distant hills. Down here, the street was dark already, it would get dark early here, the hillside across the freeway blocked the light, but there was sunlight at the high end of the street and on the hills, gilding the domes of the observatory, which perched on the edge of the mountain like a cathedral.

• From The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014)

  Nonetheless, medications such as Prozac and related drugs like Zoloft, Celexa, Cymbalta, and Paxil, have made a substantial contribution to the treatment of trauma-related disorders. In our Prozac study we used the Rorschach test to measure how traumatized people perceive their surroundings. These data gave us an important clue to how this class of drugs (formally known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs) might work. Before taking Prozac these patients’ emotions controlled their reactions. I think of a Dutch patient, for example (not in the Prozac study) who came to see me for treatment for a childhood rape and who was convinced that I would rape her as soon as she heard my Dutch accent. Prozac made a radical difference: It gave PTSD patients a sense of perspective[21] and helped them to gain considerable control over their impulses. Jeffrey Gray must have been right: When their serotonin levels rose, many of my patients became less reactive. The Triumph of PharmacologyIt did not take long for pharmacology to revolutionize psychiatry. Drugs gave doctors a greater sense of efficacy and provided a tool beyond talk therapy. Drugs also produced income and profits. Grants from the pharmaceutical industry provided us with laboratories filled with energetic graduate students and sophisticated instruments. Psychiatry departments, which had always been located in the basements of hospitals, started to move up, both in terms of location and prestige. One symbol of this change occurred at MMHC, where in the early 1990s the hospital’s swimming pool was paved over to make space for a laboratory, and the indoor basketball court was carved up into cubicles for the new medication clinic. For decades doctors and patients had democratically shared the pleasures of splashing in the pool and passing balls down the court. I’d spent hours in the gym with patients back when I was a ward attendant. It was the one place where we all could restore a sense of physical well-being, an island in the midst of the misery we faced every day. Now it had become a place for patients to “get fixed.”

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  When Henry at last put down his bow, I already felt much better. So I asked him to allow me to stay, and he granted my request as a matter of course. We spent the whole afternoon studying; he, his algebra, I, my Latin theme. The air was peaceful and heavy, as before a storm. A few autumn flies, on the verge of dying, insisted on finding some human warmth, in spite of our blows that sometimes managed to crush them. The park was motionless, as if ill at ease, watching out for the storm that threatened. But the storm didn’t burst, and the window remained open, while the whole room seemed to be seized by this absolute calm. Soon, it was six o’clock, and I had meanwhile forgotten my problems completely, as always when at work. I then left Henry, who returned to his violin. I was fifteen minutes away from home but in no hurry, and dawdled along the boulevard. Suddenly, night fell prematurely, as if made heavier by the sky that was opaque and nervous, still full of the storm of which it had not yet been delivered. When I reached the entrance to our street, I noted at once the wild music of tambourines and flutes, which meant that this dreadful ceremony was still in full swing. That was, I felt, too bad; so I climbed the stairs four at a time, rushing past the first floor, where I was met by a violent cacophony of cymbals that sounded strangely explosive in the sudden silence of all the other instruments. I knocked in vain at our own door; the show seemed to have attracted everyone, and the children, I was sure, were now staring wide-eyed at the unwholesome display. To get the key to our door, I would now have to go there myself. So I went downstairs again. The whole band was in a frenzy, in response to the clashing cymbals that never ceased sounding. The door was literally vibrating as I knocked on it, at first with my fists, then with my feet too. They must all have become quite deaf, if not insane, from this awful music. At last, someone opened the door for me and the din was at once unbelievably louder, swelling to fill the whole staircase, right up to the glass roof at the top. I dived into this weird mixture of hysterical flutes, wild cymbals, tom-tom drums, and darbouka bagpipes, all seasoned with the babble of excited women. The air seemed tropical, damp and warm, heavy with human breath and incense. With great difficulty, I forced my way through the throng of women, all of them familiar faces, aunts, cousins, neighbors, but each one of them now a stranger under the spell that had overcome her. They stood there motionless, their hair disheveled, their eyes aglow, rigid as statues, or perhaps like stupid cows that I had to push aside, as if they couldn’t understand me.

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  I remember Diana eating a chicken wing off one of them, a fleck of rosemary from the chicken the only blemish on her otherwise immaculate manicure. The perfect baby slept in one of her two long white christening dresses (she had two long white christening dresses because she had been given two long white christening dresses, one batiste, the other linen, another homage) in the Saks bassinette. John’s brother Nick took photographs. I look at those photographs now and am struck by how many of the women present were wearing Chanel suits and David Webb bracelets, and smoking cigarettes. It was a time of my life during which I actually believed that somewhere between frying the chicken to serve on Sara Mankiewicz’s Minton dinner plates and buying the Porthault parasol to shade the beautiful baby girl in Saigon I had covered the main “motherhood” points. 15 T here was a reason why I told you about Arcelia and the sixty dresses. I was not unaware as I did so that a certain number of readers (more than some of you might think, fewer than the less charitable among you will think) would interpret this apparently casual information (she dressed her baby in clothes that needed washing and ironing, she had help in the house to do this washing and ironing) as evidence that Quintana did not have an “ordinary” childhood, that she was “privileged.” I wanted to lay this on the table. “Ordinary” childhoods in Los Angeles very often involve someone speaking Spanish, but I will not make that argument. Nor will I even argue that she had an “ordinary” childhood, although I remain unsure about exactly who does. “Privilege” is something else. “Privilege” is a judgment. “Privilege” is an opinion. “Privilege” is an accusation. “Privilege” remains an area to which—when I think of what she endured, when I consider what came later—I will not easily cop. I look again at the photographs Nick took at the christening. In fact the afternoon these photographs were taken, the afternoon at St. Martin of Tours and Sara Mankiewicz’s house, the afternoon when Quintana wore the two christening dresses and I wore one of the pastel linen Donald Brooks dresses I had bought under the misunderstanding that they would be needed in Saigon, was never what I considered her “real” christening. (One question: would you have called buying pastel linen dresses for Saigon a mark of “privilege”? Or would you have called it more a mark of bone stupidity?) Her “real” christening had taken place in a tiled sink at the house in Portuguese Bend, a few days after we brought her home from the nursery at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica. John had christened her himself, and told me only after the fact.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  Allendy pressed me to admit that since the last analysis I had complete confidence in him and that I had become very fond of him. All is well, then, as this is necessary for the success of the analysis. At the end of the session he could use the word “frigidity” without offending me. I was even laughing. One of the things he observed was that I was dressing more simply. I have felt much less the need of original costuming. I could almost wear ordinary tailored clothes now. Costume, for me, has been an external expression of my secret lack of confidence. Uncertain of my beauty, Allendy said, I designed striking clothes which would distinguish me from other women. “But,” I said, laughing, “if I become happy and banal, the art of costuming, which owes its existence purely to a sense of inferiority, will be mortally affected.” The pathological basis of creation! What will become of the creator if I become normal? Or will I merely gain in strength, so as to live out my instincts more fully? I will probably develop different and more interesting illnesses. Allendy said that what was important was to become equal to life. My happiness hangs in suspense, and what happens now is determined by June’s next move. Meanwhile I wait. I am overcome with a superstitious fear of starting another journal. This one is so full of Henry. If I should have to write on the first page of the new one, “June is here,” I will know that I have lost my Henry. I will be left with only a small purple-bound book of joy, that is all, so quickly written, so quickly lived. Love reduces the complexity of living. It amazes me that when Henry walks towards the café table where I wait for him, or opens the gate to our house, the sight of him is sufficient to exult me. No letter from anyone, even in praise of my book, can stir me as much as a note from him. When he is drunk, he becomes sentimental in such a human, simple way. He begins to visualize our life together, I as his wife: “You will never seem as beautiful as when I see you roll up your sleeves and work for me. We could be so happy. You would fall behind in your writing!” Oh, the German husband. At this, I laugh. So, I fall behind in my writing and I become the wife of a genius. I had wanted this, among other things, but no housework. I would never marry him. Oh, no. I know that he is delighted with the liberty I give him but that he is extremely jealous and would not let me act as freely. Yet when I see him so childishly happy with my love, I hesitate at playing the game of worrying him, deceiving him, tormenting him. I do not even want to arouse his jealousy too painfully.

• From Aquinas's Summa Theologiae (Critical Essays on the Classics Series) (2006)

  Fourth (and perhaps a welcome point given what I have just said), the Summa Theologiae is very much a “reader-friendly” text. Yes, it comes from an age long ago. And, yes, it draws on sources and ideas unknown to, or disapproved of by, many people today. Yet Aquinas in general, and the Summa Theologiae in particular, is relatively easy to read. Aquinas writes with great conciseness and clarity. His style is simple and fluent, and, once one has mastered some of his technical terms, his train of thought is readily apparent. He continually succeeds in making it evident where he is coming from, where he is now, and where he is going. As Anthony Kenny has said, “The ability to write philosophical prose easily comprehensible to the lay reader is a gift which Aquinas shares with Descartes.”32 This gift, alas, has not been given to all philosophers, but students of philosophy should be aware that Aquinas had it and that he can therefore be approached as someone able to communicate even to readers today. So one should not be afraid of confronting his texts firsthand. The present volume provides important secondary literature on Aquinas, but it will not leave you face-to-face with him. The point I am stressing now is that, regardless of how you end up evaluating his thinking, a direct encounter with Aquinas is pleasurable rather than painful. And the pleasure factor is at its peak when it comes to the Summa Theologiae. This is definitely one of Aquinas’s most accessible writings.

• From Aquinas's Summa Theologiae (Critical Essays on the Classics Series) (2006)

  Note that someone who regards the Christian life as a matter of beliefs, hopes, and motivations, with no observable effect on behavior other than prayer and church attendance, would not be acutely concerned about the influence of faith on people’s everyday lives. Christianity would be mostly a private relationship between the individual conscience and God—chiefly a matter of one’s heart and mind, so that one’s everyday behavior might be hard to distinguish from the behavior of non-Christians. Thomas, however, expects Christianity to have a significant influence on people’s day-to-day conduct. In describing (for example) infused temperance as different in kind from acquired temperance, he at once acknowledges and counters likely objections to the way Christians live. A pagan who chose to avoid all sexual activity might appropriately be suspected of finding sex repugnant, or of trying to awe others with his powers of self-control, or otherwise running to an extreme instead of observing the mean; however, for Christians, Thomas argues, with their own distinctive ends and motivations, reason will dictate a mean more exacting than that revealed by natural reason unaided by grace (Ia IIae, q. 63, a. 4; Ia IIae, q. 64, a. 1, ad 3; Ia IIae, q. 65, a. 3). What would be prudent for a Christian might thus appear, and even be, imprudent for a non-Christian.33 At the same time, Thomas has a healthy respect for human nature and the happiness attainable through people’s natural resources in human society. His steadfast defense of pagan virtues as genuine virtues attests to this. But in insisting on the two ends of humankind, he sees more at stake than the moral credit that Christians should award non-Christians. The earthly happiness of Christians themselves deserves attention. Thomas firmly resists any attempt to reduce life to some dreary waiting room on the train route to heaven—as if its value were purely instrumental to salvation, or as if the loves, friendships, and work Christians enjoy here and now were so many false goods. Purely human goods are still genuine goods, for Christians no less than other people.

• From Aquinas's Summa Theologiae (Critical Essays on the Classics Series) (2006)

  Note that someone who regards the Christian life as a matter of beliefs, hopes, and motivations, with no observable effect on behavior other than prayer and church attendance, would not be acutely concerned about the influence of faith on people’s everyday lives. Christianity would be mostly a private relationship between the individual conscience and God—chiefly a matter of one’s heart and mind, so that one’s everyday behavior might be hard to distinguish from the behavior of non-Christians. Thomas, however, expects Christianity to have a significant influence on people’s day-to-day conduct. In describing (for example) infused temperance as different in kind from acquired temperance, he at once acknowledges and counters likely objections to the way Christians live. A pagan who chose to avoid all sexual activity might appropriately be suspected of finding sex repugnant, or of trying to awe others with his powers of self-control, or otherwise running to an extreme instead of observing the mean; however, for Christians, Thomas argues, with their own distinctive ends and motivations, reason will dictate a mean more exacting than that revealed by natural reason unaided by grace (Ia IIae, q. 63, a. 4; Ia IIae, q. 64, a. 1, ad 3; Ia IIae, q. 65, a. 3). What would be prudent for a Christian might thus appear, and even be, imprudent for a non-Christian.33 At the same time, Thomas has a healthy respect for human nature and the happiness attainable through people’s natural resources in human society. His steadfast defense of pagan virtues as genuine virtues attests to this. But in insisting on the two ends of humankind, he sees more at stake than the moral credit that Christians should award non-Christians. The earthly happiness of Christians themselves deserves attention. Thomas firmly resists any attempt to reduce life to some dreary waiting room on the train route to heaven—as if its value were purely instrumental to salvation, or as if the loves, friendships, and work Christians enjoy here and now were so many false goods. Purely human goods are still genuine goods, for Christians no less than other people.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  The street was lazy and relaxed like a young girl’s rose-colored vision of dawn. We had long given up going to the synagogue on Saturdays and visited our suppliers instead, but Saturday was still a holy day. We felt pure and clean and had the assurance of the well-dressed who enjoy leisure. Besides, we usually met the faithful on their way back from Temple, walking daintily in the soft sunshine, holding with the tips of their fingers their book and the little bag that contained their taleth. Fat and happy, their faces quite unresponsive, they went along unhurriedly, as sure of the absolute harmony of the universe as they were of finding their home full of flowers perfuming the air, with a white cloth on the heavily laden table. Toward eleven o’clock there would appear, at the end of our walk and impressing my gaze with their great pomp, the huge stores of Bodineau. They dominated this whole part of town, both by their location and their proportions and by their wealth of window space and nickel fixtures. One reached the main entrance up a flight of rather high steps on either side of which a large showcase, each as big as our room, triumphantly reflected the sunlight on the town. The showcase on the right was the home of a fabulous beast that shared the enchantment of Sabbath: a whole horse, all harnessed with brand-new leather that was studded with gold, its eyes blazing, its reddish and white-haired chest borne proudly aloft. I admired it each time for a long while, though without coming too close to it and always clutching my father’s hand. Later, I was surprised to learn that there are people who dislike the odor of tanner’s bark; for me, it remains one of my basic experiences of smell. Beneath our big family bed we always had a store of skins of all kinds, and during the long summer siestas I often slept in our shop on improvised beds of leather that imposed their character on my dreams. I can reconstruct the whole world and find my way about it like a fox, guiding myself by the warm and masculine scent of the leathers from France, by the tart, heavy and greasy odor of white skins, the stink of stables that clings to fresh skins as they rot, the almond bitterness of blackened calfskins.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  I was fond of Henry, but even he was but charmingly whimsical when it came to any matter that deserved serious attention. He was the son of a French mother and of an Italian-Jewish father; himself a British subject because his father came originally from Malta, he belonged nowhere. There was too great a diversity about him and he felt no urge to solve any particular problem. When his parents began to quarrel and finally separated, it left him free to lead an utterly airy life, without roots of any kind. I tried several times to convert him, in turn, to each one of my successive views; but politics left him cold and he slithered between my fingers, so to speak, and answered my arguments with talk about his guitar, about painting, about summer camps. In the Italian high school where he studied, Fascism discouraged, in those years, all serious thought and was producing a whole generation of lightheaded boys who actually knew nothing thoroughly, only a smattering of mathematics, of doctored history, and a lot of poetry, music, drama, and drawing. So I ended up by accepting Henry just as he was, enjoying in his presence, as if by a clear spring of water, a kind of repose that did me good. It helped me relax and I would then allow him to dream away as I listened to him grow enthusiastic about imaginary projects: miraculous fishing expeditions off the shores of Southern Tunisia, with millions to be made there, or the building of a monstrous theater in the ruins of the ancient one in Carthage. Then he would vanish for a couple of weeks and, when he reappeared to meet me at the gates of our high school, all absent-minded and with his hair ruffled, he would already have forgotten his theater project in favor of a fabulous voyage to the South Sea Isles. I was fond of Henry because life, in his company, seemed less drearily serious, and I have often wished it were indeed less serious!

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  THE SABBATH ~ At first, I wanted to write a whole book about the even tenor of happiness of my earliest years, but in spite of my nostalgia for this period, I have barely managed to scribble these few pages about it, as though I were trying to avoid its very memory. Still, I would like to add something now about our Friday nights and our Saturday mornings, so wonderfully joyful and peacefully holy. Friday was always born in an excited dawn, and it blossomed majestically into a triumphant Sabbath that made us stiff and solemn in our holiday attire, all lit up by the solemn candles. Kalla and I had no new duties, but we enjoyed the happy excitement of the household. Mother and Joulie, our neighbor, assisted by the latter’s daughter Touira, hurried all day at their chores, with twice as many fires in their earthenware hearths, for they had to set out, all over the rooms, the meals for two whole days. They only just managed to get everything done by the time the first star appeared to announce the Sabbath. At five o’clock, the darkness that was beginning in our room discovered a new order: the laden table spread with an embroidered white cloth, the chest of drawers bearing a bowl of yellow narcisssus, the bed and the sofa covered with white sheets. The great brass candlestick and two Phoenician lamps replaced the oil lamp. The olive oil sizzled as it burned, with an occasional sputter, and cast trembling shadows that were soft and unfamiliar on our walls. For the Sabbath, even the light seemed unusual. Scrubbed in warm water, combed and dressed in our best, we waited for Father to come home earlier than usual. But on his way he had stopped at the barber’s so that when he appeared he was well shaven and combed, already Sabbatical in spite of his working clothes. He dropped his heavy keys on the marble top of our chest of drawers and drew oranges, sweet lemons, or dates and nuts from the depths of his coat pockets, or else a big bag of roasted chick-peas and a smaller one of pistachio nuts, all of which he handed to Mother. One after another, our Friday evening friends then began to arrive: Didakh the cobbler, Hmaïnou the watchmaker, sometimes Joule, the landlady’s son who felt happier with us than with his own mother. My father, with everything about him clean, his hair carefully brushed flat, and a sprig of jasmine tucked over his ear, was happy and relaxed, seated Turkish style on the divan as on a throne. The men would then drink their little glasses of araki as they ate force-meat balls, chick-peas, and strongly seasoned pickled carrots and squash.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  My father was in no hurry to finish dressing and took unusual pains, letting a few drops of eau de Cologne fall on his shining hair. I always demanded the same ritual for myself, but immediately protested when the alcohol made my eyes and my scalp smart. But it was already too late: “Let it be and don’t be silly, it’s good for the skin.” Mother would hasten to dress me and always ask my father: “Will you be taking your son along?” My father would ask me: “Do you want to come along?” as if it were possible for me to refuse the greatest joy of the whole week. Then we would wait for the faithful Joseph. Ten years earlier my father’s only workman had renounced his Italian origin and had changed his name from Giuseppe to Joseph so as to become part of our family. My father trusted him fully in the shop and chose him also as his companion for all holiday pleasures. When, one day, Joseph talked of getting married, my father opposed this project so violently that we were all astonished. Obscurely, my father sensed that Joseph would then belong to his wife and become Giuseppe again; his opposition was so successful that Joseph remained an old bachelor. So he still turned up every Saturday, looking ungainly and odd in his best suit — the “Sunday best” of the careful poor — pants and a jacket of fawn-colored cloth and a white artificial silk scarf that bore the marks of having been pressed with too hot an iron. Our housewives, in North Africa, seem to press clothes badly: they are either in a hurry or try to do the job too well, laboring at the iron as if to give what they are pressing a sheen of newness that it has long since lost, as if care could somehow compensate for wear and tear. Whenever Joseph happened to turn up late, my father would be upset, but Joseph allowed him to grumble without answering back, staring at his shoes that were always of a light spring or fall model and well aware of the fact that he was at fault. We had to go to Bodineau’s store to choose some leather and to Sarfati’s to renew our stock of whip-thongs. Joseph never objected that my father’s store did not belong to him or that Saturday was a holiday and he was free to spend his time as best suited him. Like my father, he was part and parcel of the store, and it was the store that kept us all alive.

• From Bluets (2009)

  223. A few months later, back at home, I read somewhere else that this result was in error, due to a computer glitch. The real color of the universe, this new article says, is light beige. 224. Recently I found out that “les bluets” can translate as “cornflowers.” You might think I would have known this all along, as I have been calling this book “Bluets” (mispronounced) for years. But somehow I had only ever heard, “a small blue flower with a yellow center that grows abundantly in the countryside of France.” I thought I’d never seen it. 225. Shortly after finding out about the bluets, I have a dream in which I am sent an abundance of cornflowers. In this dream it is perfectly all right that that is their name. They do not need to be bluets any longer. They are American, they are shaggy, they are wild, they are strong. They do not signify romance. They were sent by no one in celebration of nothing. I had known them all along. 226. As I collected blues for this project—in folders, in boxes, in notebooks, in memory—I imagined creating a blue tome, an encyclopedic compendium of blue observations, thoughts, and facts. But as I lay out my collection now, what strikes me most is its anemia —an anemia that seems to stand in direct proportion to my zeal. I thought I had collected enough blue to build a mountain, albeit one of detritus. But it seems to me now as if I have stumbled upon a pile of thin blue gels scattered on the stage long after the show has come and gone; the set, striked. 227. Perhaps this is as it should be. Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus—the first and only book of philosophy he published in his lifetime—clocks in at sixty pages, and offers a grand total of seven propositions. “As to the shortness of the book I am awfully sorry for it; but what can I do? ” he wrote to his translator. “If you were to squeeze me like a lemon you would get nothing more out of me.” 228. My injured friend is now able to write letters via voice-recognition software to keep her friends abreast of changes in her condition, of which there have been many. “My life can change, does change,” she asserts—and it has, and does, often in astonishing ways. Nonetheless, near the end of these letters, she usually includes a short paragraph that acknowledges her ongoing physical pain, and her intense grief for all she has lost, a grief she describes as bottomless. “If I did not write of the difficulties under which I labor, I would fear to be misrepresenting the grinding reality of quadriplegia and spinal cord injury,” she says. “So here it is, the paragraph that roundly asserts that I continue to suffer.” 229. I am writing all this down in blue ink, so as to remember that all words, not just some, are written in water.

• From Bluets (2009)

  (Is writing spared this phenomenon?) 155. It does not really bother me that half the adults in the Western world also love blue, or that every dozen years or so someone feels compelled to write a book about it. I feel confident enough of the specificity and strength of my relation to it to share. Besides, it must be admitted that if blue is anything on this earth, it is abundant . 156. “Why is the sky blue?”—A fair enough question, and one I have learned the answer to several times. Yet every time I try to explain it to someone or remember it to myself, it eludes me. Now I like to remember the question alone, as it reminds me that my mind is essentially a sieve, that I am mortal. 157. The part I do remember: that the blue of the sky depends on the darkness of empty space behind it. As one optics journal puts it, “The color of any planetary atmosphere viewed against the black of space and illuminated by a sunlike star will also be blue.” In which case blue is something of an ecstatic accident produced by void and fire. 158. God is truth; truth is light; God is light; etc.: the chain of syllogisms goes on and on. See John 1:5: “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” (As if darkness, too, had a mind.) 159. A good many have figured God as light, but a good many have also figured him as darkness. Dionysius the Areopagite, a Syrian monk whose work and identity are themselves shrouded in obscurity, would seem to be one of the first serious Christian advocates of the idea of a “Divine Darkness.” The idea is a complicated one, as the burden falls to us to differentiate this Divine Darkness from other kinds of darknesses—that of a “dark night of the soul,” the darkness of sin, and so on. “We pray that we may come unto this Darkness which is beyond light, and, without seeing and without knowing, to see and to know that which is above vision and knowledge through the realization that by not-seeing and unknowing we attain to true vision and knowledge,” Dionysius wrote, as if clarifying the matter. 160. Equally complicated: the idea of agnosia , or unknowing , which is what one ideally finds, or undergoes, or achieves, within this Divine Darkness. Again: this agnosia is not a form of ignorance, but rather a kind of undoing . (As if one knew once, then forgot? But what did one know?) 161. Philosopher Bertrand Russell was a fan of Wittgenstein’s early work in logic, but he complained that the later Wittgenstein “seems to have grown tired of serious thinking and to have invented a doctrine which would make such an activity unnecessary.”

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  For the Sabbath, even the light seemed unusual. Scrubbed in warm water, combed and dressed in our best, we waited for Father to come home earlier than usual. But on his way he had stopped at the barber’s so that when he appeared he was well shaven and combed, already Sabbatical in spite of his working clothes. He dropped his heavy keys on the marble top of our chest of drawers and drew oranges, sweet lemons, or dates and nuts from the depths of his coat pockets, or else a big bag of roasted chick-peas and a smaller one of pistachio nuts, all of which he handed to Mother. One after another, our Friday evening friends then began to arrive: Didakh the cobbler, Hmaïnou the watchmaker, sometimes Joule, the landlady’s son who felt happier with us than with his own mother. My father, with everything about him clean, his hair carefully brushed flat, and a sprig of jasmine tucked over his ear, was happy and relaxed, seated Turkish style on the divan as on a throne. The men would then drink their little glasses of araki as they ate force-meat balls, chick-peas, and strongly seasoned pickled carrots and squash. As for me, I greedily accepted the little drop of alcohol that they often offered me; and as the feast went on, my eyelids began to grow heavy and I was already slightly drunk by the time we got around to eating dinner. I cannot remember ever having gone to bed on a Friday night; I suppose I used to fall asleep while still at table, as I have often seen Kalla fall asleep, her white face disappearing beneath her beautiful black hair. Sleep, when one has no worries, tastes like honey. We woke up without haste, and found ourselves in a morning filled with an unusual happiness. We stayed longer in bed, where Father helped us perform complicated acrobatics. Then, once we had annoyed Father and driven him out of bed, we stared at the world upside down, with our heads down and our legs propped against the wall, enjoying the exquisite vertigo that made us dizzy. Oh, these Saturday mornings! In our room, through the wide-open window, the blue stretches of sky with their slow white clouds and the streaming sunlight, the sun swimming in the limitless universe as in those dreams where I felt myself rise and rise in the open sky, my heart and my breast so brimful... So far away, I still suffer whenever I think of Saturday mornings.