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 Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Now it is manifest that a religious order established for the purpose of contemplating and of giving to others the fruits of one’s contemplation by teaching and preaching, requires greater care of spiritual things than one that is established for contemplation only. Wherefore it becomes a religious order of this kind to embrace a poverty that burdens one with the least amount of care. Again it is clear that to keep what one has acquired at a fitting time for one’s necessary use involves the least burden of care. Wherefore a threefold degree of poverty corresponds to the three aforesaid degrees of religious life. For it is fitting that a religious order which is directed to the bodily actions of the active life should have an abundance of riches in common; that the common possession of a religious order directed to contemplation should be more moderate, unless the said religious be bound, either themselves or through others, to give hospitality or to assist the poor; and that those who aim at giving the fruits of their contemplation to others should have their life most exempt from external cares; this being accomplished by their laying up the necessaries of life procured at a fitting time. This, our Lord, the Founder of poverty, taught by His example. For He had a purse which He entrusted to Judas, and in which were kept the things that were offered to Him, as related in Jn. 12:6. Nor should it be argued that Jerome (Super Matth. xvii, 26) says: “If anyone object that Judas carried money in the purse, we answer that He deemed it unlawful to spend the property of the poor on His own uses,” namely by paying the tax—because among those poor His disciples held a foremost place, and the money in Christ’s purse was spent chiefly on their needs. For it is stated (Jn. 4:8) that “His disciples were gone into the city to buy meats,” and (Jn. 13:29) that the disciples “thought, because Judas had the purse, that Jesus had said to him: But those things which we have need of for the festival day, or that he should give something to the poor.” From this it is evident that to keep money by, or any other common property for the support of religious of the same order, or of any other poor, is in accordance with the perfection which Christ taught by His example. Moreover, after the resurrection, the disciples from whom all religious orders took their origin kept the price of the lands, and distributed it according as each one had need (Acts 4:34,35).

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Ariel had been around the longest. He was six feet three inches tall and had round, demure shoulders, big hips and square fleshy breasts that embarrassed him. He had a small head, a long, bumpy nose and large brown eyes that were by turns sweetly candid or forlorn, but otherwise had a disturbing blank quality. He had enjoyed a brief notoriety in punk rock circles for his electric piano music. He talked about his past success in a meek, wistful voice, and showed people old pictures of himself dressed in black, wearing black wing-tipped sunglasses. He was terribly sensitive, and Tommy took advantage of his sensitivity to make fun of him. “Ariel is the spirit of the typing pool,” Tommy would chatter as he ran from clerk to clerk with stacks of papers. “Whenever any of you are craving inspiration, just gaze on Ariel.” “Please, Tom, I’m on the verge of tears,” Ariel would answer funereally. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about!” Tommy would scream. — When Joey first noticed Daisy, he wondered why this pretty young woman had chosen to work in a filthy, broken-down store amid unhappy homosexuals. As time went on, it seemed less and less inappropriate. She was comfortable in the typing pool. She was happy to listen to the boys talk about their adventures in leather bars, where men got blow jobs in open wooden booths or pissed on other men. She told jokes about Helen Keller and sex. She talked about her boyfriends and her painting. She was always crouching at Evelyn’s desk, whispering and laughing about something, or looking at Evelyn’s back issues of True Detective magazine. She wore T-shirts with pictures of cartoon characters on them, and bright-colored pants. Her brown hair was bobbed in a soft curve that ended on either side of her high cheekbones. When she walked, her shoulders and long neck were erect in a busy, almost ducklike way, but her hips and waist were fluid and gently mobile. The heterosexual men were always coming to stand by her desk and talk to her about their poetry or political ideas while she looked at them and nodded. Even the gay men developed a certain bravado in her presence. Tommy kept on reassuring her that her prince was just around the corner. “I can feel it, Daisy,” he would say exultantly. “You’re on a collision course with Mr. Right!” “Do you really think so, Tom?” “It’s obvious! Aren’t you excited?” Then Ariel would get up from his desk and lumber over to her and, bending from the waist, would put his large fleshy arms around her shoulders. Joey could see her small white hand emerge on Ariel’s broad flank as she patiently patted him. And, as if it weren’t enough to be the heartthrob of the basement crowd, she was kind to helpless, repulsive people.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  Tuesday nights, the prayer meeting came to my grandmother’s house, and I was always excited, for two reasons. One, I got to clap along on the beat for the singing. And two, I loved to pray. My grandmother always told me that she loved my prayers. She believed my prayers were more powerful, because I prayed in English. Everyone knows that Jesus, who’s white, speaks English. The Bible is in English. Yes, the Bible was not written in English, but the Bible came to South Africa in English so to us it’s in English. Which made my prayers the best prayers because English prayers get answered first. How do we know this? Look at white people. Clearly they’re getting through to the right person. Add to that Matthew 19:14. “Suffer little children to come unto me,” Jesus said, “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” So if a child is praying in English? To White Jesus? That’s a powerful combination right there. Whenever I prayed, my grandmother would say, “That prayer is going to get answered. I can feel it.” Women in the township always had something to pray for—money problems, a son who’d been arrested, a daughter who was sick, a husband who drank. Whenever the prayer meetings were at our house, because my prayers were so good, my grandmother would want me to pray for everyone. She would turn to me and say, “Trevor, pray.” And I’d pray. I loved doing it. My grandmother had convinced me that my prayers got answered. I felt like I was helping people. — There is something magical about Soweto. Yes, it was a prison designed by our oppressors, but it also gave us a sense of self-determination and control. Soweto was ours. It had an aspirational quality that you don’t find elsewhere. In America the dream is to make it out of the ghetto. In Soweto, because there was no leaving the ghetto, the dream was to transform the ghetto. For the million people who lived in Soweto, there were no stores, no bars, no restaurants. There were no paved roads, minimal electricity, inadequate sewerage. But when you put one million people together in one place, they find a way to make a life for themselves. A black-market economy rose up, with every type of business being run out of someone’s house: auto mechanics, day care, guys selling refurbished tires.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Virginia loaded the dishwasher in the dimly lit kitchen, scraping the bones and greasy napkins into big black garbage bags. There was TV noise from the den, and the low rasping sound that Jarold made when he moved the newspaper. Charles came in, his face distant, his light jacket flapping. She circled his head with her arm, brought it to her shoulder and held it there to kiss before he broke from her and went away down the hall. She sometimes sat on the couch with a pile of vinyl photo albums. One album opened on her lap to show a glanceful of red snowsuits, Christmas trees, armloads of grinning dolls, and beautiful tall children who smiled, drew pictures and were happy. Holding Easter baskets full of grass and chocolate. Raking the leaves. Winning trophies. The weddings and the graduations. The long-ribboned corsages. She had to remind herself that Anne and Betty had families that were nice in other ways, that one of Betty’s daughters was a certified genius and went to a school for advanced children. — She wrote to Anne and told her, “We’re getting fat and sassy.” — It was winter when Camille called. She asked how Virginia was doing and waited while Virginia told her. She asked about Magdalen and the boys. Then she said, “Mother, I’m having an abortion.” Virginia stifled a choking noise. “Were you raped?” she managed to ask. Camille began to cry. “No,” she said. Virginia waited as Camille controlled her voice. “No,” said Camille. “Kevin doesn’t want to have children. I let myself get pregnant without telling him. I thought he would change his mind, but he didn’t. He’s really mad. He says if I don’t have an abortion, he’ll divorce me.” Virginia left the phone feeling very unlike herself. She made a cup of tea and went into the den with it. She sat on the couch with one gray-socked foot propped up on the coffee table. She wondered why Kevin didn’t want to have children. She did not tell Jarold about the abortion. — Camille came home to visit. She walked around the house in her old snakeskin jumpsuit, her little hips twitching briskly. She told stories about being a corporate lawyer and teased “Daddy.” Virginia admired her. But she noticed the stiff grinning lines around her mouth. Camille visited Magdalen too. She stayed with her for two days before flying back to New York. She wrote Virginia a letter shortly afterward and told her that she felt something strange was happening between John and Magdalen. Magdalen was brittle, she said. John ordered her around a lot, in a very nasty way. She said that late one night she woke up and heard the sound of someone being rhythmically and repeatedly slapped. It went on for about five minutes. Magdalen looked fine the next day, and Camille had been too embarrassed to say anything.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  When I first went into Alex, I was drawn by the electricity and the excitement of it, but more important, I was accepted there, more so than I’d been in high school or anywhere else. When I first showed up, a couple of people raised an eyebrow. “Who’s this colored kid?” But the hood doesn’t judge. If you want to be there, you can be there. Because I didn’t live in the hood I was technically an outsider in the hood, but for the first time in my life I didn’t feel like one. The hood is also a low-stress, comfortable life. All your mental energy goes into getting by, so you don’t have to ask yourself any of the big questions. Who am I? Who am I supposed to be? Am I doing enough? In the hood you can be a forty-year-old man living in your mom’s house asking people for money and it’s not looked down on. You never feel like a failure in the hood, because someone’s always worse off than you, and you don’t feel like you need to do more, because the biggest success isn’t that much higher than you, either. It allows you to exist in a state of suspended animation. The hood has a wonderful sense of community to it as well. Everyone knows everyone, from the crackhead all the way through to the policeman. People take care of one another. The way it works in the hood is that if any mom asks you to do something, you have to say yes. “Can I send you?” is the phrase. It’s like everyone’s your mom, and you’re everyone’s kid. “Can I send you?” “Yeah, whaddya need?” “I need you to go buy milk and bread.” “Yeah, cool.” Then she gives you some money and you go buy milk and bread. As long as you aren’t busy and it doesn’t cost you anything, you don’t say no. The biggest thing in the hood is that you have to share. You can’t get rich on your own. You have money? Why aren’t you helping people? The old lady on the block needs help, everyone pitches in. You’re buying beer, you buy beer for everyone. You spread it around. Everyone must know that your success benefits the community in one way or another, or you become a target. The township polices itself as well. If someone’s caught stealing, the township deals with them. If someone’s caught breaking into a house, the township deals with them. If you’re caught raping a woman, pray to God the police find you before the township does. If a woman is being hit, people don’t get involved. There are too many questions with a beating. What’s the fight about? Who’s responsible? Who started it? But rape is rape. Theft is theft. You’ve desecrated the community.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  “You remind me of black stiletto heels,” Leisha had said. “I used to picture you all in black, in stretch pants and spike-heeled shoes.” “Oh, brother,” said Susan. But she was flattered. — The apartment Susan was staying in belonged to an old friend named Bobby, who was in Europe for the month and hadn’t bothered to arrange a sublet for so short a time. It was located in the Village only a few blocks from the apartment she had lived in for most of her time in Manhattan. It was much larger than her old apartment, and brighter. Her apartment in Chicago was even larger than Bobby’s. It had high ceilings and large windows; it was fashionably decorated with soft colors and spare-limbed furnishings. It was kept clean by a weekly maid. She had attractive kitchen accessories in matching colors. She remembered Leisha visiting her tiny Manhattan studio and laughing at her, incredulous that after four months Susan’s utensils were still limited to two forks, a knife and a spoon. She went into Bobby’s bedroom and looked at herself in the long mirror, a plump woman wandering calmly toward middle age, standing with one arm wrapped around her waist and a drink in her hand. She had never thought she would be plump or calm. Ten years ago, even six years ago, she never gained weight, no matter how much she ate. Her sudden plumpness was such a novelty that she enjoyed it rather than fighting it, as did most women her age. “You’ve finally come into your real…look,” her mother said approvingly. “You’re not a skinny kid anymore.” This late maternal acceptance had pleased her to such an extent that she found it somewhat sad; just a few years earlier she would’ve rejected it as the words of a woman glad to see the last of an unreasonable reminder of youth and insouciance in the form of her unusually slender daughter.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  AFTER NORMA GRADUATED from Concrete High she moved down to Seattle. She worked in an office where she met a man named Kenneth who took her for long drives in his Austin Healey sports car and tried to talk her into getting married. Norma called my mother all the time and asked for advice. What should she do? She still loved Bobby Crow, but Bobby wasn’t going anywhere. He didn’t even have a job. Kenneth was ambitious. On the other hand, nobody liked him. He had very strong opinions about everything and was also a Seventh-day Adventist. But that wasn’t it, exactly. Kenneth just didn’t have a very good personality. Then Norma called up and said she’d decided to marry Kenneth. She refused to explain her decision, but insisted it was final. Naturally, she wanted to invite Kenneth to Chinook to meet the family, and it was finally settled that he should come up during Christmas, when Skipper would also be home. Dwight got the spirit that year. He made a wreath for the door and hung pine boughs all over the living room. A couple of weeks before Christmas he and I drove up into the mountains to get a tree. It was early afternoon, a cold light rain falling. Dwight drank from a pint bottle as we scouted the woods. We found a fine blue spruce growing all by itself in the middle of a clearing, and Dwight let me cut it down while he took nips off his bottle and squinted up at the misty peaks all around us. Once I got the tree down we started wrestling it through the dense growth, back toward the fire road where we’d left the car. We had walked a good distance and the going was rough. I could hear Dwight laboring for breath and muttering when he stumbled. I kept waiting for him to bark at me, but he never did. He was that pleased about Norma coming home. After dinner that night Dwight went into the living room with a can of spray paint and began to shake it. He was very thorough when it came to painting, and if he was using spray paint he always followed the directions to the letter and shook the can well. The agitator rattled loudly as he swung the can back and forth. Pearl and I were doing our homework at the dining-room table. We pretended not to watch. My mother was out somewhere or else she would’ve asked him what he thought he was doing, and possibly even stopped him. When he finished shaking the can, Dwight pulled the tree into the middle of the living room and walked around it two or three times. Then, starting at the top and working his way down, he proceeded to spray it with white paint. I thought he meant to put a few splashes here and there to suggest snow, but he sprayed the whole thing—trunk and all. The needles drank up the paint and turned faintly

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  The next place was a tax information office in a slab of building with green trim. They gave me an intelligence test that was mostly spelling and “What’s wrong with this sentence?” The woman came out of her office holding my test and smiling. “You scored higher than anyone else I’ve interviewed,” she said. “You’re really overqualified for this job. There’s no challenge. You’d be bored to death.” “I want to be bored,” I said. She laughed. “Oh, I don’t think that’s true.” We had a nice talk about what people want out of their jobs and then I left. “Well, I hope you weren’t surprised that you had the highest score,” said my mother. We went to the French bakery on Eight-Mile Road and got cookies called elephant ears. We ate them out of a bag as we drove. I felt so comfortable, I could have driven around in the car all day. Then we went to a lawyer’s office on Telegraph Road. It was a receding building made of orange brick. There were no other houses or stores around it, just a parking lot and some taut fir trees that looked like they had been brushed. My mother waited for me in the car. She smiled, took out a crossword puzzle and focused her eyes on it, the smile still gripping her face. The lawyer was a short man with dark, shiny eyes and dense immobile shoulders. He took my hand with an indifferent aggressive snatch. It felt like he could have put his hand through my rib cage, grabbed my heart, squeezed it a little to see how it felt, then let go. “Come into my office,” he said. We sat down and he fixed his eyes on me. “It’s not much of a job,” he said. “I have a paralegal who does research and leg-work, and the proofreading gets done at an agency. All I need is a presentable typist who can get to work on time and answer the phone.” “I can do that,” I said. “It’s very dull work,” he said. “I like dull work.” He stared at me, his eyes becoming hooded in thought. “There’s something about you,” he said. “You’re closed up, you’re tight. You’re like a wall.” “I know.” My answer surprised him and his eyes lost their hoods. He tilted his head back and looked at me, his shiny eyes bared again. “Do you ever loosen up?” The corners of my mouth jerked, smilelike. “I don’t know.” My palms sweated. — His secretary, who was leaving, called me the next day and said that he wanted to hire me. Her voice was serene, flat and utterly devoid of inflection. “That typing course really paid off,” said my father. “You made a good investment.” He wandered in and out of the dining room in pleased agitation, holding his glass of beer. “A law office could be a fascinating place.” He arched his chin and scratched his throat.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  He backed off. “Oh, I forgot, you like that. I keep telling you it kills your brain cells, but if you want it—” He swiveled violently away. “Carla! Carla, get me some nitrous in here, will you?” Carla, a dark, small-nosed girl with mascara-crusted eyelashes, entered pushing the familiar gray machine, and a cool rubber, none-too-clean mask was placed over Connie’s nose. “There we go,” said Dr. Fangelli. “Crank her up, Carla. We’ll let you get nice and relaxed. Carla, get the cream two-six base.” Connie closed her eyes. A balloon of warm air slowly expanded in her head. She thought of the commercials for Wonder Bread that she’d seen as a kid, in which a lucky little boy was borne by friendly butterflies to Wonder Bread Land, a place full of flowers and clouds and loaves of bread. “So, Connie, are you married yet?” asked Dr. Fangelli. “No.” “No? I’m surprised. How old are you?” She lay in the chair like a starfish and imagined the sound of his voice, the clink of the instruments and the squeak of chairs penetrating her body with thin rays of light, piercing through her bones and traveling gaily up and down her skeleton. She imagined the very life force of the universe, in all its horrific complexity, penetrating her every pore, charging her body with millions of tiny beams. She sighed and inhaled deeply; she loved nitrous oxide. “Okay, we’ve really got you flying now. Feel pretty good, don-cha, Connie?” Connie tried to surmount the saliva in her mouth and managed to make an affirmative noise. She could tell from the little oil slick on Dr. Fangelli’s voice that he enjoyed seeing his patients helpless and openmouthed in his chair, that it made him feel powerful, and in fact, at this moment he was sort of powerful. Well, that was all right. The universe needed spaces for power to move into. It liked those spaces and valued them. “Just a little pinch…there we go.” He grabbed her lip and wriggled it. “You feel great, don’t you? I bet we could take all your teeth out today and that would be fine with you. But of course, we’re not going to do that.” He patted Connie’s shoulder. “It’s just a small job that won’t take a minute.”

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  There was the Scotch Gambit! An amazing expression which had nothing to do with chess. It came to me always in the shape of a man on stilts, page 2,498 of Funk and Wagnall’s Unabridged Dictionary. A gambit was a sort of leap in the dark with mechanical legs. A leap for no purpose—hence gambit! Clear as a bell and perfectly simple, once you grasped it. Then there was Andromeda, and the Gorgon Medusa, and Castor and Pollux of heavenly origin, mythological twins, eternally fixed in the ephemeral stardust. There was lucubration, a word distinctly sexual and yet suggesting such cerebral connotations as to make me uneasy. Always “midnight lucubrations,” the midnight being ominously significant. And then arras. Somebody some time or other had been stabbed “behind the arras.” I saw an altar cloth made of asbestos and in it was a grievous rent such as Caesar himself might have made. It was very quiet thinking, as I say, the kind that the men of the Old Stone Age must have indulged in. Things were neither absurd nor explicable. It was a jigsaw puzzle which, when you grew tired, you could push away with two feet. Anything could be put aside with ease, even the Himalaya mountains. It was just the opposite kind of thinking from Mahomet’s. It led absolutely nowhere and was hence enjoyable. The grand edifice which you might construct throughout the course of a long fuck could be toppled over in the twinkling of an eye. It was the fuck that counted and not the construction work. It was like living in the Ark during the Flood, everything provided for down to a screwdriver. What need to commit murder, rape or incest when all that was demanded of you was to kill time? Rain, rain, rain, but inside the Ark everything dry and toasty, a pair of every kind and in the larder fine Westphalian hams, fresh eggs, olives, pickled onions, Worcestershire sauce and other delicacies. God had chosen me, Noah, to establish a new heaven and a new earth. He had given me a stout boat with all seams caulked and properly dried. He had given me also the knowledge to sail the stormy seas. Maybe when it stopped raining there would be other kinds of knowledge to acquire, but for the present a nautical knowledge sufficed. The rest was chess in the Café Royal, Second Avenue, except that I had to imagine a partner, a clever Jewish mind that would make the game last until the rains ceased. But, as I said before, I had no time to be bored; there were my old friends, Logos, Bucephalus, arras, lucubration and so on. Why play chess? Locked up like that for days and nights on end I began to realize that thinking, when it is not masturbative, is lenitive, healing, pleasurable.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Just one thing after another. But this isn’t a root canal. Just a deep, nasty filling.” He jabbed her tooth with an instrument and she gasped with pain. “I’m surprised that it hasn’t hurt you before. It’s practically into your navel.” He jabbed her again; she groaned and tried to close her mouth. “Don’t worry, though, we caught it in time.” He swiveled robustly in his chair and began to manipulate his precise, needle-nosed implements. Dr. Fangelli had very large forearms heavily strewn with hair; his hands seemed weirdly placed on his wrists, and his unevenly spaced fingers suggested undue activity in impossibly varied directions. He wasn’t a big man, but when he walked his arms and shoulders rolled like a tank tread, and he seemed to suddenly require a lot of space. “Okay, now, we’re going to inject you with a little—” His face zoomed at her, and she had the disturbing thought that its happy, porous proximity could unhinge her jaw with the projected, exuberant desire that she open wide. “What about the nitrous?” she asked. He backed off. “Oh, I forgot, you like that. I keep telling you it kills your brain cells, but if you want it—” He swiveled violently away. “Carla! Carla, get me some nitrous in here, will you?” Carla, a dark, small-nosed girl with mascara-crusted eyelashes, entered pushing the familiar gray machine, and a cool rubber, none-too-clean mask was placed over Connie’s nose. “There we go,” said Dr. Fangelli. “Crank her up, Carla. We’ll let you get nice and relaxed. Carla, get the cream two-six base.” Connie closed her eyes. A balloon of warm air slowly expanded in her head. She thought of the commercials for Wonder Bread that she’d seen as a kid, in which a lucky little boy was borne by friendly butterflies to Wonder Bread Land, a place full of flowers and clouds and loaves of bread. “So, Connie, are you married yet?” asked Dr. Fangelli. “No.” “No? I’m surprised. How old are you?” She lay in the chair like a starfish and imagined the sound of his voice, the clink of the instruments and the squeak of chairs penetrating her body with thin rays of light, piercing through her bones and traveling gaily up and down her skeleton. She imagined the very life force of the universe, in all its horrific complexity, penetrating her every pore, charging her body with millions of tiny beams. She sighed and inhaled deeply; she loved nitrous oxide. “Okay, we’ve really got you flying now. Feel pretty good, don-cha, Connie?” Connie tried to surmount the saliva in her mouth and managed to make an affirmative noise. She could tell from the little oil slick on Dr. Fangelli’s voice that he enjoyed seeing his patients helpless and openmouthed in his chair, that it made him feel powerful, and in fact, at this moment he was sort of powerful. Well, that was all right. The universe needed spaces for power to move into.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  “Wouldn’t you know it?” said Anne. “She probably did it to shock you. She couldn’t have Camille getting all the attention.” “It’s what she wanted all along,” said Betty. “A daddy.” John was ten years older than Magdalen. He was broad-shouldered and slow-moving, with lazy gray eyes. Magdalen cuddled against him, her hand quiet on his lapel. Jarold watched them with deep approval. It relaxed him to talk about them or look at them. Virginia was happy that Magdalen had found someone normal to take care of her. She was proud of her daughter’s wedding beauty and of her successful husband. She enjoyed a smug feeling of vindication now that Magdalen had come to such a conventional end. The couple moved to John’s farm in North Carolina. Magdalen baked bread and kept house. She had a baby, a fat boy named Griffin. Virginia took snapshots of Magdalen holding Griffin in a ball of blankets, her eyes startled and glistening wildly above her grin. John stood over her, his chin held high, smiling his slow-eyed smile. Magdalen asked her for advice in a meek, thrilled voice. Virginia called Anne. “I love it,” she said. “He doesn’t let her get away with anything. If she gets high-toned, he puts her right in her place. And she loves it.” Daniel graduated from high school and then went to college to study engineering. He went with heavy sweaters, socks and boxes of records. Virginia took a picture of him standing at the train station in a huge cream-colored sweater. His tennis-shoed feet were tight together, his shoulders were hunched. He smiled tolerantly into space as a long strand of blond hair blew across his forehead and licked the lashes of one eye. — Virginia stood in the kitchen and did the dishes in the afternoon. She wore a sweatshirt and loose slacks and fat gray socks. Her hair was in a high, wispy ponytail. The sun was warm and her hands were warm in the lightly food-flecked water. The radio was on, playing love songs, songs about babies and homes. Virginia sang as she washed, about roses and bluebirds and tears of joy. She knew they were stupid songs, but they made her feel exalted. They were notations for things too important and mysterious to describe accurately in radio songs. — They had barbecues in the evenings. They ate steak and potatoes and oily salad with flowery leaves. They ate regally in their lawn chairs, looking out into their big back yard and all the trees. Charles and Jarold argued about what Charles should do after high school, or whether New York was ugly or not. Charles usually said, “Oh, never mind,” and kept eating. When he was finished, he got up to walk to the stream that ran in the wooded area behind their house. Virginia and Jarold sat alone, full and splendid, their jackets around their shoulders.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Everyone who sat in the waiting room looked random and unwelcome. They all fidgeted. The elegant old armchairs and puffy upholstered couch were themselves disoriented in the stiff modernity of the waiting room. My heavy oak desk was an idiot standing against a wall covered with beige plaster. The brooding plants before me gave the appearance of weighing a lot for plants, even though one of them was a slight, frondy thing. I was surprised that a person like the lawyer, who seemed to be mentally organized and evenly distributed, would have such an office. But I was comfortable in it. Its jumbled nature was like a nest of available rags gathered tightly together for warmth. My first two weeks were serene. I enjoyed the dullness of days, the repetition of motions, the terms, polite interactions between the lawyer and me. I enjoyed feeling him impose his brainlessly confident sense of existence on me. He would say, “Type this letter,” and my sensibility would contract until the abstractions of achievement and production found expression in the typing of the letter. I was useful. My mother picked me up every day. We would usually stop at the A&P before we went home to get a loaf of white French bread, beer and kielbasa sausage for my father. When we got home I would go upstairs to my room, take off my shirt and blouse, and throw them on the floor. I would get into my bed of jumbled blankets in my underwear and panty hose and listen to my father yelling at my mother until I fell asleep. I woke up when Donna pounded on my door and yelled, “Dinner!” I would go down with her then and sit at the table. We would all watch the news on TV as we ate. My mother would have a shrunken, abstracted look on her face. My father would hunch over his plate like an animal at its dish. After dinner, I would go upstairs and listen to records and write in my diary or play Parcheesi with Donna until it was time to get ready for bed. I’d go to sleep at night looking at the skirt and blouse I would wear the next day. I’d wake up looking at my ceramic weather poodle, which was supposed to turn pink, blue or green, depending on the weather, but had only turned gray and stayed gray. I would hear my father in the bathroom, the tumble of radio patter, the water, the clink of a glass being set down, the creak and click as he closed the medicine cabinet. Donna would be standing outside my door, waiting for him to finish, muttering “shit” or something. Looking back on it, I don’t know why that time was such a contented one, but it was.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  It was a jigsaw puzzle which, when you grew tired, you could push away with two feet. Anything could be put aside with ease, even the Himalaya mountains. It was just the opposite kind of thinking from Mahomet’s. It led absolutely nowhere and was hence enjoyable. The grand edifice which you might construct throughout the course of a long fuck could be toppled over in the twinkling of an eye. It was the fuck that counted and not the construction work. It was like living in the Ark during the Flood, everything provided for down to a screwdriver. What need to commit murder, rape or incest when all that was demanded of you was to kill time? Rain, rain, rain, but inside the Ark everything dry and toasty, a pair of every kind and in the larder fine Westphalian hams, fresh eggs, olives, pickled onions, Worcestershire sauce and other delicacies. God had chosen me, Noah, to establish a new heaven and a new earth. He had given me a stout boat with all seams caulked and properly dried. He had given me also the knowledge to sail the stormy seas. Maybe when it stopped raining there would be other kinds of knowledge to acquire, but for the present a nautical knowledge sufficed. The rest was chess in the Café Royal, Second Avenue, except that I had to imagine a partner, a clever Jewish mind that would make the game last until the rains ceased. But, as I said before, I had no time to be bored; there were my old friends, Logos, Bucephalus, arras, lucubration and so on. Why play chess? Locked up like that for days and nights on end I began to realize that thinking, when it is not masturbative, is lenitive, healing, pleasurable. The thinking that gets you nowhere takes you everywhere; all other thinking is done on tracks and no matter how long the stretch, in the end there is always the depot or the roundhouse. In the end there is always a red lantern which says STOP! But when the penis gets to thinking there is no stop or let: it is a perpetual holiday, the bait fresh and the fish always nibbling at the line. Which reminds me of another cunt, Veronica something or other, who always got me thinking the wrong way. With Veronica it was always a tussle in the vestibule. On the dance floor you’d think she was going to make you a permanent present of her ovaries, but as soon as she hit the air she’d start thinking, thinking of her hat, of her purse, of her aunt who was waiting up for her, of the letter she forgot to mail, of the job she was going to lose—all kinds of crazy, irrelevant thoughts which had nothing to do with the thing in hand. It was like she had suddenly switched her brain to her cunt—the most alert and canny cunt imaginable.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  But she was flattered. — The apartment Susan was staying in belonged to an old friend named Bobby, who was in Europe for the month and hadn’t bothered to arrange a sublet for so short a time. It was located in the Village only a few blocks from the apartment she had lived in for most of her time in Manhattan. It was much larger than her old apartment, and brighter. Her apartment in Chicago was even larger than Bobby’s. It had high ceilings and large windows; it was fashionably decorated with soft colors and spare-limbed furnishings. It was kept clean by a weekly maid. She had attractive kitchen accessories in matching colors. She remembered Leisha visiting her tiny Manhattan studio and laughing at her, incredulous that after four months Susan’s utensils were still limited to two forks, a knife and a spoon. She went into Bobby’s bedroom and looked at herself in the long mirror, a plump woman wandering calmly toward middle age, standing with one arm wrapped around her waist and a drink in her hand. She had never thought she would be plump or calm. Ten years ago, even six years ago, she never gained weight, no matter how much she ate. Her sudden plumpness was such a novelty that she enjoyed it rather than fighting it, as did most women her age. “You’ve finally come into your real...look,” her mother said approvingly. “You’re not a skinny kid anymore.” This late maternal acceptance had pleased her to such an extent that she found it somewhat sad; just a few years earlier she would’ve rejected it as the words of a woman glad to see the last of an unreasonable reminder of youth and insouciance in the form of her unusually slender daughter. Her life in New York had been erratic and unconnected. She had lived hand to mouth most of the time, working a series of menial jobs that made her feel isolated and unseen, yet strangely safe. She ate dinners of rice and beans or boxes of Chinese takeout food on the floor. She stayed up until seven or eight in the morning working on her manuscripts, and then slept all day. She went to Harlem to interview voodoo practitioners. She went to nightclubs and after-hours bars, standing on the periphery of scene after scene with Leisha or some other, less central girlfriend. She took long walks late at night, especially in winter, loving the sound of her own muted footfalls, the slush-clogged city noises, and the sight of the bundled, shuffling drunks staggering home, looking up in surprise to see a young woman walking alone at 4:00 A.M.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  It liked those spaces and valued them. “Just a little pinch...there we go.” He grabbed her lip and wriggled it. “You feel great, don’t you? I bet we could take all your teeth out today and that would be fine with you. But of course, we’re not going to do that.” He patted Connie’s shoulder. “It’s just a small job that won’t take a minute.” The problem was, if you’re lying there like a starfish letting the universe seep through your pores, all kinds of stuff can get in. How do you keep out the bad things? “Don’t be such a Christian,” said Franklin. “Things aren’t good or bad; they just are.” Well, that was a whole other line of thought. She pictured it as a wriggly, purple organism entering her space, and brusquely pushed it away. She tried to imagine a selective gray force field coming down at the various points on her body where the bad things were trying to enter. She became confused. Franklin wasn’t altogether wrong. Buddhists and other people agreed with him. Anyway, even if you didn’t agree with him, how could you tell for sure which things were bad? The tiny rubber hose sucking the spit from her mouth felt bad to her, as did the sound of the drill. But they weren’t inherently bad, they were just dry and shrill. How did dryness and shrillness translate in terms of the universe? Surely these elements were affecting her nitrous oxide experience, but how? Dr. Fangelli put some good, solid pressure on her tooth. “Carla, could you pass me the other drill?” Then there were the basic things. She thought of Deana’s soft, slightly fleshy embrace, the pale skin, the severe mouth, the tilt-eyed, heavy-framed glasses that made the composed, dignified face almost ludicrous. This was also one of the basic things: to lie in the dark under a blanket in an embrace with a tender lover, to have the sensations and their emotional entourage that came under the heading “sex.” This was something that she contemplated with a feeling almost like relief, similar to how an exhausted person would view a vast, infinitely trustworthy pillow. You know what this is, everybody does. Like everybody knows what “job” and “success” mean. People who struggle for success are doing a primal thing. She had read something once about lab rats fighting for dominance, even under conditions where cooperation was needed for survival. She thought of herself at her desk reviewing manuscripts. She saw herself on the phone, talking to the editor of a piece that she’d recently completed. She felt detached as she viewed these images, which seemed more abstract than snapshots in a slide projector. They were like reminders scrawled on the square white days of a calendar.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  My grandmother treated me like I was white. My grandfather did, too, only he was even more extreme. He called me “Mastah.” In the car, he insisted on driving me as if he were my chauffeur. “Mastah must always sit in the backseat.” I never challenged him on it. What was I going to say? “I believe your perception of race is flawed, Grandfather.” No. I was five. I sat in the back. There were so many perks to being “white” in a black family, I can’t even front. I was having a great time. My own family basically did what the American justice system does: I was given more lenient treatment than the black kids. Misbehavior that my cousins would have been punished for, I was given a warning and let off. And I was way naughtier than either of my cousins. It wasn’t even close. If something got broken or if someone was stealing granny’s cookies, it was me. I was trouble. My mom was the only force I truly feared. She believed if you spare the rod, you spoil the child. But everyone else said, “No, he’s different,” and they gave me a pass. Growing up the way I did, I learned how easy it is for white people to get comfortable with a system that awards them all the perks. I knew my cousins were getting beaten for things that I’d done, but I wasn’t interested in changing my grandmother’s perspective, because that would mean I’d get beaten, too. Why would I do that? So that I’d feel better? Being beaten didn’t make me feel better. I had a choice. I could champion racial justice in our home, or I could enjoy granny’s cookies. I went with the cookies. — At that point I didn’t think of the special treatment as having to do with color. I thought of it as having to do with Trevor. It wasn’t, “Trevor doesn’t get beaten because Trevor is white.” It was, “Trevor doesn’t get beaten because Trevor is Trevor.” Trevor can’t go outside. Trevor can’t walk without supervision. It’s because I’m me; that’s why this is happening. I had no other points of reference. There were no other mixed kids around so that I could say, “Oh, this happens to us.” Nearly one million people lived in Soweto. Ninety-nine point nine percent of them were black—and then there was me. I was famous in my neighborhood just because of the color of my skin. I was so unique people would give directions using me as a landmark. “The house on Makhalima Street. At the corner you’ll see a light-skinned boy. Take a right there.”

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  I was useful. My mother picked me up every day. We would usually stop at the A&P before we went home to get a loaf of white French bread, beer and kielbasa sausage for my father. When we got home I would go upstairs to my room, take off my shirt and blouse, and throw them on the floor. I would get into my bed of jumbled blankets in my underwear and panty hose and listen to my father yelling at my mother until I fell asleep. I woke up when Donna pounded on my door and yelled, “Dinner!” I would go down with her then and sit at the table. We would all watch the news on TV as we ate. My mother would have a shrunken, abstracted look on her face. My father would hunch over his plate like an animal at its dish. After dinner, I would go upstairs and listen to records and write in my diary or play Parcheesi with Donna until it was time to get ready for bed. I’d go to sleep at night looking at the skirt and blouse I would wear the next day. I’d wake up looking at my ceramic weather poodle, which was supposed to turn pink, blue or green, depending on the weather, but had only turned gray and stayed gray. I would hear my father in the bathroom, the tumble of radio patter, the water, the clink of a glass being set down, the creak and click as he closed the medicine cabinet. Donna would be standing outside my door, waiting for him to finish, muttering “shit” or something. Looking back on it, I don’t know why that time was such a contented one, but it was. The first day of the third week, the lawyer came out of his office, stiffer than usual, his eyes lit up in a peculiar, stalking way. He was carrying one of my letters. He put it on my desk, right in front of me. “Look at it,” he said. I did. “Do you see that?” “What?” I asked. “This letter has three typing errors in it, one of which is, I think, a spelling error.” “I’m sorry.” “This isn’t the first time either. There have been others that I let go because it was your first few weeks. But this can’t go on. Do you know what this makes me look like to the people who receive these letters?” I looked at him, mortified. There had been a catastrophe hidden in the folds of my contentment for two weeks and he hadn’t even told me. It seemed unfair, although when I thought about it I could understand his reluctance, maybe even embarrassment, to draw my attention to something so stupidly unpleasant. “Type it again.” I did, but I was so badly shaken that I made even more mistakes. “You are wasting my time,” he said, and handed it to me once again.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  If, however, out of sheer obstinacy, I managed to remain aware of my immediate surroundings, then I generally found that the music didn’t afford me enough pleasure. My untutored mind enjoyed only those pieces that have a fast rhythm, where the pace is more important than the intellectual content, so that I found myself carried away by the muscular tension. I thus enjoyed music when, far from encouraging me to meditate, it invited me to dance. Still, Henry’s violin acted on me as a wise moderator, a mathematician of sounds, the expression of a civilization of men who had become masters of the world; together with Henry’s discreet politeness, all this allowed me to relax immediately from the darkness of our Passage, from the dance ceremony dedicated to the Djnoun, and from my mother’s childish enthusiasm. 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.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  When you shit, as you first sit down, you’re not fully in the experience yet. You are not yet a shitting person. You’re transitioning from a person about to shit to a person who is shitting. You don’t whip out your smartphone or a newspaper right away. It takes a minute to get the first shit out of the way and get in the zone and get comfortable. Once you reach that moment, that’s when it gets really nice. It’s a powerful experience, shitting. There’s something magical about it, profound even. I think God made humans shit in the way we do because it brings us back down to earth and gives us humility. I don’t care who you are, we all shit the same. Beyoncé shits. The pope shits. The Queen of England shits. When we shit we forget our airs and our graces, we forget how famous or how rich we are. All of that goes away. You are never more yourself than when you’re taking a shit. You have that moment where you realize, This is me. This is who I am. You can pee without giving it a second thought, but not so with shitting. Have you ever looked in a baby’s eyes when it’s shitting? It’s having a moment of pure self-awareness. The outhouse ruins that for you. The rain, the flies, you are robbed of your moment, and nobody should be robbed of that. Squatting and shitting on the kitchen floor that day, I was like, Wow. There are no flies. There’s no stress. This is really great. I’m really enjoying this. I knew I’d made an excellent choice, and I was very proud of myself for making it. I’d reached that moment where I could relax and be with myself. Then I casually looked around the room and I glanced to my left and there, just a few feet away, right next to the coal stove, was Koko. It was like the scene in Jurassic Park when the children turn and the T. rex is right there. Her eyes were wide open, cloudy white and darting around the room. I knew she couldn’t see me, but her nose was starting to crinkle—she could sense that something was wrong. I panicked. I was mid-shit. All you can do when you’re mid-shit is finish shitting. My only option was to finish as quietly and as slowly as I could, so that’s what I decided to do. Then: the softest plop of a little-boy turd on the newspaper. Koko’s head snapped toward the sound. “Who’s there? Hallo? Hallo?!” I froze. I held my breath and waited. “Who’s there?! Hallo?!” I kept quiet, waited, then started again. “Is somebody there?! Trevor, is that you?! Frances? Hallo? Hallo?” She started calling out the whole family. “Nombuyiselo? Sibongile? Mlungisi? Bulelwa? Who’s there? What’s happening?”