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 White Oleander (1999)

  “Astrid, are you still there?” Claire called out to me, peering into the darkness. “Just thinking,” I said, pulling a sprig of mint from under the hose bib, crushing it in my hand. Thinking that tonight they would lie together in the pine bed with the rose sheets, and I would be alone again. Women always put men first. That’s how everything got so screwed up. AFTER MY WEEK alone with Claire, I reluctantly returned to school, to finish out tenth grade at Fairfax High. I was happy enough not to have to go back to Hollywood, where they had seen me eating out of the garbage. This was a whole new start. At Fairfax I was blissfully invisible again. I came home from school each day to find Claire waiting for me with a sandwich and a glass of iced tea, a smile, questions. At first it seemed weird and unnecessary. I had never come home to someone waiting for me before, someone looking forward to the sound of my key in the door, not even when I was a child. It felt like she was going to accuse me of something, but that wasn’t it. She wanted to know about my composition on Edgar Allan Poe and my illustrations on the chambers of the heart and the circulation of the blood. She was sympathetic when I got a D on an algebra test. She asked about the other kids, but I didn’t have much to tell. At the best of times, I was never very sociable. School was a job, I did it and left. I had no intention of joining the Spanish club or Students Against Drunk Driving. I even passed by the stoner crowd without a glance. I had Claire now, waiting for me. She was all I needed. “Did you have a nice day at school?” she’d ask, drawing up a chair at the little red-and-white kitchen table. She had some mistaken notion that Fairfax was like high school where she grew up in Connecticut, despite the clear presence of metal detectors at every entrance. I didn’t tell her about the free-for-alls on the school yard, muggings on the bus. A girl burned a cigarette hole into the back of another girl’s shirt at nutrition, right in front of me, looking at me, as if daring me to stop her. I saw a boy being threatened with a knife in the hallway outside my Spanish class. Girls talked about their abortions in gym class. Claire didn’t need to know about that. I wanted the world to be beautiful for her. I wanted things to work out. I always had a great day, no matter what. ON SATURDAY , Ron mowed the lawn, cutting the heads off the primroses, and then settled into reading some scripts. We had lox and bagels for breakfast, and Claire went to her ballet class. I sat with my paints next to Ron at the table.

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

  The Rate of Brainwave Firing is related to our state of arousal [image "A chart illustrating brainwave frequencies and their associated mental states. Delta waves, under 4 cps, are linked to sleep and conditions like depression, ADD, and seizures. Theta waves, 4–8 cps, indicate drowsiness and hypnotic states. Alpha waves, 8–12 cps, represent relaxed focus. SMR waves, 12–15 cps, are associated with relaxed thought. Beta waves, 15–18 cps, signify active thinking, while high beta waves, over 19 cps, correspond to excitement. The chart notes that neurofeedback can help train the brain to modify symptoms of depression, ADD, and seizures." file=image_rsrc784.jpg] Dreaming speeds up brain waves. Theta frequencies (5–8 Hz) predominate at the edge of sleep, as in the floating “hypnopompic” state I described in chapter 15 on EMDR; they are also characteristic of hypnotic trance states. Theta waves create a frame of mind unconstrained by logic or by the ordinary demands of life and thus open the potential for making novel connections and associations. One of the most promising EEG neurofeedback treatments for PTSD, alpha/theta training, makes use of that quality to loosen frozen associations and facilitate new learning. On the downside, theta frequencies also occur when we’re “out of it” or depressed. Alpha waves (8–12 Hz) are accompanied by a sense of peace and calm.[13] They are familiar to anyone who has learned mindfulness meditation. (A patient once told me that neurofeedback worked for him “like meditation on steroids.”) I use alpha training most often in my practice to help people who are either too numb or too agitated to achieve a state of focused relaxation. Walter Reed National Military Medical Center recently introduced alpha-training instruments to treat soldiers with PTSD, but at the time of this writing the results are not yet available. Beta waves are the fastest frequencies (13–20 Hz). When they dominate, the brain is oriented to the outside world. Beta enables us to engage in focused attention while performing a task. However, high beta (over 20 Hz) is associated with agitation, anxiety, and body tenseness—in effect, we are constantly scanning the environment for danger. Helping the Brain to FocusNeurofeedback training can improve creativity, athletic control, and inner awareness, even in people who already are highly accomplished.[14] When we started to study neurofeedback, we discovered that sports medicine was the only department in Boston University that had any familiarity with the subject. One of my earliest teachers in brain physiology was the sports psychologist Len Zaichkowsky, who soon left Boston to train the Vancouver Canucks with neurofeedback.[15]

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  We used to mix water with the black earth in order to make sorghum paste, or with yellow sand to make halva, or with crushed apricot stones to make milk. In old tin cans in which tobacco was sold we put the semolina we made from chalky plaster we scraped from between loose stones in the walls. Measuring and mixing very seriously, I played the part of the grocer while Kalla was the housewife: as among grown-ups, I benefited from the masculine privileges. We also had seasonal games: fruit pits in summer, buttons in winter, in spring we hunted green caterpillars that were born spontaneously, we thought, of the morning dew. We also believed that they headed for cooking pots in order to poison our food. We used to throw handfuls of coarse salt on the poor things to see them suddenly shrink and then melt, soon leaving but a small spot of yellowish liquid on the cold pavement of the yard. We even had our secret pleasures, the first expressions of an inner life that was independent of our parents. In winter, once night had fallen, Mother used to light the oil lamp. The flame would hesitate, reddish and exhaling a malodorous black smoke, and the furniture seemed to dance in the struggle of light and shadows. Of this uncertain strife the room as we knew it by night was born, mysterious and welcoming, with planes of yellow light, shadows with hard edges, and impenetrable voids. We then abandoned the passage that had grown too cold, and climbed into bed, to slip as fast as we could beneath the heavy blankets with their warm colors, the red of embers, the green of cactus, the purple of eggplant. We would disappear completely, alone in the heart of the darkness. Whispering and groping, we helped our hands to find each other. Mother, awaiting Father’s return, busied herself with some sewing, her head almost touching the lamp. Sometimes, she would ask us: “What are you up to?” Half-stifled, raising the blankets with difficulty, we thought that we gave, from the outside, the appearance of a small tent, and announced our alibi: “We’re playing at housekeeping.” I doubt whether she ever suspected what we were actually doing and I do not remember experiencing any deep feelings of shame about it. One evening, however, the harsh sound of the needle piercing the stuff in the warm silence of the room suddenly stopped. We heard a strange voice speaking. Inquisitive, we stuck our heads out. Catarina, the wife of the Maltese goatherd, was there to collect for the morning milk. Imprudently, when she saw us, she exclaimed to my mother: “Fancy that! You already have two children, and I thought you had only one.” Mother’s expression changed, her mouth drawn tight and hostile in the face of this appeal to the Evil Eye.

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

  Bill’s third treatment started five years later, when he developed a serious neurological illness at age fifty-three. He had suddenly started to experience episodic paralysis in several parts of his body, and he was beginning to accept that he would probably spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. I thought his problems might be due to multiple sclerosis, but his neurologists could not find specific lesions, and they said there was no cure for his condition. He told me how grateful he was for his wife’s support. She already had arranged to have a wheelchair ramp built to the kitchen entrance to their house. Given his grim prognosis, I urged Bill to find a way to fully feel and befriend the distressing feelings in his body, just as he had learned to tolerate and live with his most painful memories of the war. I suggested that he consult a body worker who had introduced me to Feldenkrais, a gentle, hands-on approach to rearranging physical sensations and muscle movements. When Bill came back to report on how he was doing, he expressed delight with his increased sense of control. I mentioned that I’d recently started to do yoga myself and that we had just opened up a yoga program at the Trauma Center. I invited him to explore that as his next step. Bill found a local Bikram yoga class, a hot and intense practice usually reserved for young and energetic people. Bill loved it, even though parts of his body occasionally gave way in class. Despite his physical disability, he gained a sense of bodily pleasure and mastery that he had never felt before. Bill’s psychological treatment had helped him put the horrendous experience of Vietnam in the past. Now befriending his body was keeping him from organizing his life around the loss of physical control. He decided to become certified as a yoga instructor, and he began teaching yoga at his local armory to the veterans who were returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, ten years later, Bill continues to be fully engaged in life—with his children and grandchildren, through his work with veterans, and in his church. He copes with his physical limitations as an inconvenience. To date he has taught yoga classes to more than 1,300 returning combat veterans. He still regularly suffers from the sudden weakness in his limbs that requires him to sit or lie down. But, like his memories of childhood and Vietnam, these episodes do not dominate his existence. They are simply part of the ongoing, evolving story of his life. Chapter 14Language: Miracle and Tyranny Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o’er wrought heart and bids it break. —William Shakespeare, Macbeth

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

  “In our last month of therapy, I asked my psychiatrist why he did not try to fix me as all other therapists had attempted, yet had failed. He told me that he assumed, given what I had been able to accomplish with my children and career, that I had sufficient resiliency to heal myself, if he created a holding environment for me to do so. This was an hour each week that became a ref-uge where I could unravel the mystery of how I had become so damaged and then re-construct a sense of myself that was whole, not fragmented, peaceful, not tormented. Through Pilates, I found a stronger physical core, as well as a community of women who willingly gave acceptance and social support that had been distant in my life since the trauma. This combination of core strengthening—psychological, social, and physical—created a sense of personal safety and mastery, relegating my memories to the distant past, allowing the present and future to emerge.” Part FivePaths to Recovery Chapter 13Healing from Trauma: Owning Your Self I don’t go to therapy to find out if I’m a freak I go and I find the one and only answer every week And when I talk about therapy, I know what people think That it only makes you selfish and in love with your shrink But, oh how I loved everybody else When I finally got to talk so much about myself —Dar Williams, What Do You Hear in These Sounds Nobody can “treat” a war, or abuse, rape, molestation, or any other horrendous event, for that matter; what has happened cannot be undone. But what can be dealt with are the imprints of the trauma on body, mind, and soul: the crushing sensations in your chest that you may label as anxiety or depression; the fear of losing control; always being on alert for danger or rejection; the self-loathing; the nightmares and flashbacks; the fog that keeps you from staying on task and from engaging fully in what you are doing; being unable to fully open your heart to another human being. Trauma robs you of the feeling that you are in charge of yourself, of what I will call self-leadership in the chapters to come.[1] The challenge of recovery is to reestablish ownership of your body and your mind—of your self. This means feeling free to know what you know and to feel what you feel without becoming overwhelmed, enraged, ashamed, or collapsed. For most people this involves (1) finding a way to become calm and focused, (2) learning to maintain that calm in response to images, thoughts, sounds, or physical sensations that remind you of the past, (3) finding a way to be fully alive in the present and engaged with the people around you, (4) not having to keep secrets from yourself, including secrets about the ways that you have managed to survive.

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

  Our goal in all these efforts is to translate brain science into everyday practice. For example, calming down enough to take charge of ourselves requires activating the brain areas that notice our inner sensations, the self-observing watchtower discussed in chapter 4. So a teacher might say: “Shall we take some deep breaths or use the breathing star?” (This is a colorful breathing aid made out of file folders.) Another option might be having the child sit in a corner wrapped in a heavy blanket while listening to some soothing music through headphones. Safe areas can help kids calm down by providing stimulating sensory awareness: the texture of burlap or velvet; shoe boxes filled with soft brushes and flexible toys. When the child is ready to talk again, he is encouraged to tell someone what is going on before he rejoins the group. Kids as young as three can blow soap bubbles and learn that when they slow down their breathing to six breaths per minute and focus on the out breath as it flows over their upper lip, they will feel more calm and focused. Our team of yoga teachers works with children nearing adolescence specifically to help them “befriend” their bodies and deal with disruptive physical sensations. We know that one of the prime reasons for habitual drug use in teens is that they cannot stand the physical sensations that signal fear, rage, and helplessness. Self-regulation can be taught to many kids who cycle between frantic activity and immobility. In addition to reading, writing, and arithmetic, all kids need to learn self-awareness, self-regulation, and communication as part of their core curriculum. Just as we teach history and geography, we need to teach children how their brains and bodies work. For adults and children alike, being in control of ourselves requires becoming familiar with our inner world and accurately identifying what scares, upsets, or delights us. Emotional intelligence starts with labeling your own feelings and attuning to the emotions of the people around you. We begin very simply: with mirrors. Looking into a mirror helps kids to be aware of what they look like when they are sad, angry, bored, or disappointed. Then we ask them, “How do you feel when you see a face like that?” We teach them how their brains are built, what emotions are for, and where they are registered in their bodies, and how they can communicate their feelings to the people around them. They learn that their facial muscles give clues about what they are feeling and then experiment with how their facial expressions affect other people.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  The husband, glad to be let off so cheaply, promised that for the future he would never give her cause for sorrow. The wife gladly believed him, and with his consent turned away the servant who offended her. They lived so happily afterwards that even past faults were for them a source of increased satisfaction, in con- sequence of the good that resulted from them. If God gives you such husbands, ladies, do not despair, I entreat you, before you have tried all means to reclaim them. There are four-and-twenty hours in the day, and there is not a moment in which a man may not change his mind. A wife ought to esteem herself happier in having regained her husband by her patience, than if fortune and her relations had given her one more fault- less.* " There," said Oisille, " is an example for all married women to follow." " Follow it who will," said Parlamente ; " but for my * The subject of this novel is the same as that of the story of the Dame de Langaher, related by the Seigneur de Latour-Landry to his daughters, in the book he wrote for their instruction. (See Leroux de Lincy, Femmes Celdbre de rAncienne France, i. 350.) 234 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE {I^evd yj. part it would be impossible for me to be so patient. Although in every condition in which one is placed, patience is a fine virtue, it seems to me, nevertheless, that in matrimonial matters it at last produces enmity. The reason is that, suffering from one's mate, one is constrained to keep aloof from the offender as much as possible. From this alienation springs contempt for the faithless one, and this contempt gradually diminishes love ; for one loves a thing only in proportion as one esteems it." "But it is to be feared," said Ennasuite, "that the impatient wife would meet with a furious husband, who, instead of patience, would cause her sorrow," " And what worse could a husband do than we have just heard } " said Parlamente. "What could he do.!*' rejoined Ennasuite. "Beat liis wife soundly, make her sleep on the little bed, and put her he loves into the best bed." * " I believe," said Parlamente, " it would be less painful to a right-minded woman to be beaten in a fit of passion than to be despised by a husband who was not worthy of her. After the rupture of wedded affection, the hus- band could do nothing which could be more painful to the wife. Accordingly, the tale states that the lady took pains to bring back the truant only for the sake of her children — a fact I can readily believe." " Do you think it a great proof of patience in a woman," said Nomerfide, " to kindle a fire on the floor of a room in which her husband is sleeping .-•"

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  My mother gave me a glass of sugar and water and told me to go and urinate. “But I don’t feel like it.” “One always feels like making pee-pee. Go ahead and do it, or else you’ll catch jaundice.” I pissed and didn’t catch jaundice. But my mother attributed to this scare an abscessed gum that I developed later. In all the history of my early childhood, this incident stands out as one of the few unpleasant ones that I remember. And the few small dangers that ever dared disturb my day-to-day happiness were immediately dispelled by the all-powerful appearance of my parents. After breakfast, my father used to slip into his oldest jacket, his work jacket, then his only overcoat, which he carefully folded inside out when he reached his shop, and took his two heavy Arab keys, each of them weighing a full pound. Before leaving the house, he piously kissed the mezuzah on our door, which contained the name of God in a small glass tube, and then he departed, leaving us in peace, and with his own mind at rest. Once my father had gone to the store and my mother had settled down to her work in our kitchen, we children took possession of the alley. Narrow as it was, it seemed huge to me. Closed at one end by the wall of the cemetery, the other opened onto the narrow rue Tarfoune, useless and deserted. This double bottleneck that led into the heart of the noisy and crowded Arab neighborhood followed two sudden turns so that it seemed to be defending a hollow of silence. And we defended it, too, against the few children who ever dared venture there, until the day when a howling gang of rough and nasty boys picked this out-of-the- way place in which to play their forbidden games. We were insulted, pushed around, even beaten; and our dead end, no longer safe for us, ceased to play so important a part in our imagination for it became just another alley in this sordid city. Soon after that, I began to go to school and lost the dead end for good. But before this catastrophe and ever since my birth, my mother’s breast and our one room seemed to extend into a soft and unreal world that submitted patiently to our play like a good-natured old dog. Immediately after breakfast, Mother used to send us out so that she could do her household chores in peace. We would still be acting out our undisturbed dream when the sun, rising straight ahead in the sky, filled the alley to the brim with a blinding light that dispelled every fold of shadow. We used to play at trades, at being doctor, tailor, saddler, above all, grocer. Our plump little fingers transformed old matches, stuck into holes in the wall, into the spigots for drawing olive and peanut oil.

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

  I remember being surprised to hear this distinguished old Harvard professor confess how comforted he was to feel his wife’s bum against him as he fell asleep at night. By disclosing such simple human needs in himself he helped us recognize how basic they were to our lives. Failure to attend to them results in a stunted existence, no matter how lofty our thoughts and worldly accomplishments. Healing, he told us, depends on experiential knowledge: You can be fully in charge of your life only if you can acknowledge the reality of your body, in all its visceral dimensions. Our profession, however, was moving in a different direction. In 1968 the American Journal of Psychiatry had published the results of the study from the ward where I’d been an attendant. They showed unequivocally that schizophrenic patients who received drugs alone had a better outcome than those who talked three times a week with the best therapists in Boston.[3] This study was one of many milestones on a road that gradually changed how medicine and psychiatry approached psychological problems: from infinitely variable expressions of intolerable feelings and relationships to a brain-disease model of discrete “disorders.” The way medicine approaches human suffering has always been determined by the technology available at any given time. Before the Enlightenment aberrations in behavior were ascribed to God, sin, magic, witches, and evil spirits. It was only in the nineteenth century that scientists in France and Germany began to investigate behavior as an adaptation to the complexities of the world. Now a new paradigm was emerging: Anger, lust, pride, greed, avarice, and sloth—as well as all the other problems we humans have always struggled to manage—were recast as “disorders” that could be fixed by the administration of appropriate chemicals.[4] Many psychiatrists were relieved and delighted to become “real scientists,” just like their med school classmates who had laboratories, animal experiments, expensive equipment, and complicated diagnostic tests, and set aside the wooly-headed theories of philosophers like Freud and Jung. A major textbook of psychiatry went so far as to state: “The cause of mental illness is now considered an aberration of the brain, a chemical imbalance.”[5]

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  The young people swept the street, repainted the backs of the houses, and planted flowers all the way along, which encouraged the residents to take control of their own environment instead of handing it over to bullies. And I have seen it in the cheerful campaigning of large groups of churches for the dropping of the unpayable debt in Africa and elsewhere; nobody else was making a noise about this, and the bankers (soon to face their own unpayable debts, which were then written off!) were eager to stifle such a protest. But the churches persisted, pointing out the realities of the present situation and the highly beneficial results of debt remission. In some cases, not all as yet, the debts were remitted. All this can happen and often does. Sometimes it gets the church into trouble. “Keep out of things you don’t understand!” we are told. “Teach people how to pray and don’t meddle in public affairs!” But followers of Jesus have no choice. A central part of our vocation is, prayerfully and thoughtfully, to remind people with power, both official (government ministers) and unofficial (backstreet bullies), that there is a different way to be human. A true way. The Jesus way. This doesn’t mean “electing into office someone who shares our particular agenda”; that might or might not be appropriate. It means being prepared, whoever the current officials are, to do what Jesus did with Pontius Pilate: confront them with a different vision of kingdom, truth, and power. The Jesus way, launched in his public career, won through his sin-forgiving death on the cross and bursting upon the wider world in his resurrection, resonates with the ancient prophecies of scripture, including the glorious vision of how power was meant to be exercised. This is one expression among many of the standard we must never tire of repeating: Give the king your justice, O God , and your righteousness to a king’s son. May he judge your people with righteousness , and your poor with justice. . . . May he defend the cause of the poor of the people , give deliverance to the needy , and crush the oppressor. . . . May all kings fall down before him , all nations give him service. For he delivers the needy when they call , the poor and those who have no helper. He has pity on the weak and the needy , and saves the lives of the needy. From oppression and violence he redeems their life; and precious is their blood in his sight.

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

  However, that realization may help you to start exploring other ways to connect in relationships—both for your own sake and in order to not pass on an insecure attachment to your own children. In part 5 I’ll discuss a number of approaches to healing damaged attunement systems through training in rhythmicity and reciprocity.[44] Being in synch with oneself and with others requires the integration of our body-based senses—vision, hearing, touch, and balance. If this did not happen in infancy and early childhood, there is an increased chance of later sensory integration problems (to which trauma and neglect are by no means the only pathways). Being in synch means resonating through sounds and movements that connect, which are embedded in the daily sensory rhythms of cooking and cleaning, going to bed and waking up. Being in synch may mean sharing funny faces and hugs, expressing delight or disapproval at the right moments, tossing balls back and forth, or singing together. At the Trauma Center, we have developed programs to coach parents in connection and attunement, and my patients have told me about many other ways to get themselves in synch, ranging from choral singing and ballroom dancing to joining basketball teams, jazz bands and chamber music groups. All of these foster a sense of attunement and communal pleasure. Chapter 8Trapped in Relationships: The Cost of Abuse and Neglect The “night sea journey” is the journey into the parts of ourselves that are split off, disavowed, unknown, unwanted, cast out, and exiled to the various subterranean worlds of consciousness.…The goal of this journey is to reunite us with ourselves. Such a homecoming can be surprisingly painful, even brutal. In order to undertake it, we must first agree to exile nothing. —Stephen Cope Marilyn was a tall, athletic-looking woman in her midthirties who worked as an operating-room nurse in a nearby town. She told me that a few months earlier she’d started to play tennis at her sports club with a Boston fireman named Michael. She usually steered clear of men, she said, but she had gradually become comfortable enough with Michael to accept his invitations to go out for pizza after their matches. They’d talk about tennis, movies, their nephews and nieces—nothing too personal. Michael clearly enjoyed her company, but she told herself he didn’t really know her.

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

  On a more positive note, however, I would conclude by observing that each of the five ways does contribute something to our understanding of God, although the different perspectives which they offer do not, of course, point to any real distinctions within God himself. From our standpoint, however, to recognize God as the unmoved mover, the uncaused cause, the absolutely necessary being, the maximumly perfect being, and the source of finality within the universe enriches our effort to arrive at some fuller understanding of him. And this, together with the historical sources which were available to Thomas, his critical evaluation of their philosophical power, and his customary method of offering more than one argument for a given conclusion, should suffice to explain why he offered more than one way in ST I, q. 2, a. 3, and, for that matter, more than one argument for God’s existence elsewhere in his writings. NotesThis chapter was previously published as John Wippel, “The Five Ways” (chapter 12 of John Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas, The Catholic University of America Press, Washington, DC, 2000). Used with permission of The Catholic University of America Press.

• 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.