Despair

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 Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Sexual desire does not obey the laws that maintain peace and contentment between partners. Reason, understanding, compassion, and camaraderie are the handmaidens of a close, harmonious relationship. But sex often evokes unreasoning obsession rather than thoughtful judgment, and selfish desire rather than altruistic consideration. Aggression, objectification, and power all exist in the shadow of desire, components of passion that do not necessarily nurture intimacy. Desire operates along its own trajectory. The Flannel Nightgown My first meeting with Jimmy and Candace was a powerful illustration of this all too common story. Jimmy and Candace are young musicians in their early thirties who’ve been married for seven years. They are a biracial couple: she is African-American; he is of Irish descent. She exudes confidence in her boy jeans and aquamarine nails; he has the Quiksilver signature all over him. They’re attractive, spunky, and on the go—and they are in despair over what’s happening to them. “We’re not having sex, and this has been going on for years,” Candace explains. “We are terrified about it and so upset. And I think we each have a deep-rooted fear that we’re going to find out it’s unfixable.” Like John, Candace has experienced what feels like an inescapable loss of desire in every relationship she has been in; and what emerges from our conversation is that she understands her pattern. “My problem, my side of it, doesn’t have to do with Jimmy,” she explains. “When I’m intimate with someone, when I’m in love and he loves me, I suddenly lose interest sexually. I feel like there’s something missing and I can’t get close to my partner on a sexual level. I had a number of long-term relationships before I met Jimmy, and it happened each time.” Candace knows who Jimmy is for her. He’s reliable, thoughtful, and intelligent. They share a rich partnership. And while she wants these characteristics in a man, their collateral consequences are counter-erotic for her. Faced with Jimmy’s kindness, she isn’t able to experience her own sexual energy. “What I can tell you,” she says, “is that his kindness makes me feel safe, but when I think about who I want to sleep with, safe is not what I look for.” “Because it’s not what?” I ask her. “It’s not transgressive enough? It’s not aggressive enough?” “It’s not aggressive enough.” “And he is in some way too much of a conscientious lover?” “Yeah.” “And he’s constantly paying attention to you?” “Which is very thoughtful.” “Very thoughtful indeed, but not exciting.” I add. “It’s all very affectionate, very cozy; it’s just not sexual. You’ve replaced sensual love with something else. It’s what the sex therapist Dagmar O’Connor calls comfort love.” Candace nods, “Like a flannel nightgown.”

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Yet we balk at the idea of establishing distance within the relationship itself—the very place that grants us the delicious togetherness in the first place. We can tolerate space anywhere but there. Sexual desire does not obey the laws that maintain peace and contentment between partners. Reason, understanding, compassion, and camaraderie are the handmaidens of a close, harmonious relationship. But sex often evokes unreasoning obsession rather than thoughtful judgment, and selfish desire rather than altruistic consideration. Aggression, objectification, and power all exist in the shadow of desire, components of passion that do not necessarily nurture intimacy. Desire operates along its own trajectory. The Flannel Nightgown My first meeting with Jimmy and Candace was a powerful illustration of this all too common story. Jimmy and Candace are young musicians in their early thirties who’ve been married for seven years. They are a biracial couple: she is African-American; he is of Irish descent. She exudes confidence in her boy jeans and aquamarine nails; he has the Quiksilver signature all over him. They’re attractive, spunky, and on the go—and they are in despair over what’s happening to them. “We’re not having sex, and this has been going on for years,” Candace explains. “We are terrified about it and so upset. And I think we each have a deep-rooted fear that we’re going to find out it’s unfixable.” Like John, Candace has experienced what feels like an inescapable loss of desire in every relationship she has been in; and what emerges from our conversation is that she understands her pattern. “My problem, my side of it, doesn’t have to do with Jimmy,” she explains. “When I’m intimate with someone, when I’m in love and he loves me, I suddenly lose interest sexually. I feel like there’s something missing and I can’t get close to my partner on a sexual level. I had a number of long-term relationships before I met Jimmy, and it happened each time.” Candace knows who Jimmy is for her. He’s reliable, thoughtful, and intelligent. They share a rich partnership. And while she wants these characteristics in a man, their collateral consequences are counter-erotic for her. Faced with Jimmy’s kindness, she isn’t able to experience her own sexual energy. “What I can tell you,” she says, “is that his kindness makes me feel safe, but when I think about who I want to sleep with, safe is not what I look for.” “Because it’s not what?” I ask her. “It’s not transgressive enough? It’s not aggressive enough?” “It’s not aggressive enough.” “And he is in some way too much of a conscientious lover?” “Yeah.” “And he’s constantly paying attention to you?” “Which is very thoughtful.” “Very thoughtful indeed, but not exciting.” I add. “It’s all very affectionate, very cozy; it’s just not sexual.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  The result was the same as on our previous trial two years before. Three different drugs were not only ineffective but resulted in unpleasant side effects: severe somnolence; alien and frightening dreams; loss of all sexuality and sensuality; a frightening sense of nothing mattering, of being removed from herself and her concerns. When I suggested that she consult a psychopharmacologist, she flatly refused. Desperate, I finally laid down an ultimatum: “You must see the consultant and follow his recommendations or I will not continue to work with you.” Irene looked at me unblinkingly. As usual, precise and constrained, she gave nothing extra in speech or movement. “I’ll consider it and give you my answer next session,” she said. But at our next meeting she did not respond directly to the ultimatum. Instead she handed me an issue of the New Yorker, open to an article by the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky titled “On Grief and Reason.” “In this,” she said, “you’ll find the key to what’s gone wrong in therapy. If not, if you read it and find no answer, then I’ll see your consultant.” Patients often ask me to read something of interest to them—some self-help book, an article about a new treatment or theory, a piece of literature that strikes close to their own situation. More than one writer-patient has handed me a long manuscript, saying, “You’ll learn a great deal about me by reading this.” This proposition has never proved valid: the patient could always have delivered the material verbally in far less time. Nor do they want an honest opinion of the writing from me—I generally loom too important to the patient to have the freedom to offer an objective commentary. Obviously they seek something else—my approval and admiration—and a therapist has far more direct and effective ways of dealing with that need than spending long hours reading a manuscript. I generally search for a gracious way to decline such requests—or at most agree to a quick skim. I value and protect my personal reading time. Yet I did not feel burdened as I began reading the article Irene had given me. I had great respect not only for her taste but for her clarity of mind, and if she believed this article contained the key to our impasse, I was confident that the time invested would be well spent. Of course, I would have preferred more direct communication, but I was learning to be receptive to Irene’s oblique and often poetic mode of discourse—a language she had learned from her mother. Unlike her father, a paragon of lucid rationality who had taught science in a small Midwestern high school, her mother, an artist, had communicated subtly.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  They mean something different as a result. So what happens if we understand the human vocation as bearing God’s image, of reflecting God’s wise authority into the world and the glad praises of creation back to God? What happens if we see “sin” in that context? Within that story, “sin” becomes the refusal of humans to play their part in God’s purposes for creation as a whole. It is a vocational failure as much as what we call a moral failure. This vocational failure, choosing to worship the creature rather than the Creator, is the choice of death over life. This is why “sin” and “death” are so inextricably intertwined in biblical thinking. The former is not the breaking of arbitrary rules; the latter is not the inflicting of arbitrary punishment. To be sure, they can often be spoken of, not least in the prophets, as a legal code to which appropriate penalties are attached. That is a natural way, on the surface, to refer to the whole sorry state of affairs. But deep down underneath there is nothing arbitrary about sin or death. Choose the one, and you choose the other. Worship idols, and you’ll go into exile. Obey the serpent’s voice, and you will forfeit the right to the Tree of Life. You can’t have it both ways. When, therefore, the biblical writers see the story of Israel as Adam and Eve writ large, they are making the same point on a grand, historical scale. Despite repeated warnings, Israel as a whole commits apostasy, worships idols, and copies the lifestyles of the non-Israelite nations all around. The result, predicted in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28, is exile. Genesis 3 is inscribed into the pages of history. Again and again Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel insist on the point: exile has come about because of sin , the sin that fundamentally consists in and then grows out of idolatry. The people’s sins have been stacked up higher and higher, and they have finally paid the price. Exile is therefore to be understood as a kind of corporate national death . Leaving the land is leaving the garden; leaving the ruined Temple means being debarred from the Tree of Life. Israel is, after all, no better than the pagan nations. This is made abundantly, embarrassingly clear in Deuteronomy 32, the great “Song of Moses,” predicting the ways in which Israel would spurn the covenant God and behave like the nations all around. (It is significant for understanding the first century that both the apostle Paul and the historian Josephus seem to have thought that Deuteronomy 32 was coming true in their own day.) If, therefore, exile is eventually undone—whatever precisely that will mean—this will be both a “forgiveness of sins” and a new life the other side of death —and the restoration of the life-giving divine Presence. A resurrection, in fact. Ezekiel 37 makes exactly this point, using resurrection as a glorious, if somewhat lurid, picture for Israel’s rescue from Babylon.

• From Story of O (1954)

  The scene had taken place in the little oval room with the inlaid floor, in which the only piece of furniture was a table encrusted with mother-of-pearl, the room adjoining the yellow and gray living room. René remained only long enough to betray O and hear Sir Stephen’s reply. Then he shook hands with him, smiled at O, and left. Through the window, O saw him crossing the courtyard; he did not turn around; she heard the car door slam shut, the roar of the motor, and in a little mirror imbedded in the wall she caught a glimpse of her own image: she was white with fear and despair. Then, mechanically, when she walked past Sir Stephen, who opened the living-room door for her and stood back for her to pass, she looked at him: he was as pale as she. In a flash, she was absolutely certain that he loved her, but it was a fleeting certainty that vanished as fast as it had come. Although she did not believe it and chided herself for having thought of it, she was comforted by it and undressed meekly, on a mere signal from him. Then, and for the first time since he had been making her come two or three times a week, and using her slowly, sometimes making her wait for an hour naked without coming near her, listening to her entreaties without ever replying, for there were times when she did beg and beseech, enjoining her to do the same things always at the same moments, as in a ritual, so that she knew when her mouth was supposed to caress him and when, on her knees, her head buried in the silken sofa, she should offer him only her back, which he now possessed without hurting her, for the first time, for in spite of the fear which convulsed her—or perhaps because of that fear—she opened to him, in spite of the chagrin she felt at René’s betrayal, but perhaps too because of it, she surrendered herself completely. And for the first time, so gentle were her yielding eyes when they fastened on Sir Stephen’s pale, burning gaze, that he suddenly spoke to her in French, employing the familiar tu form with her: “I’m going to put a gag in your mouth, O, because I’d like to whip you till I draw blood. Do I have your permission?” “I’m yours,” O said.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  One can make a mess of one’s childhood or of one’s whole life. Slowly, painfully, I understood that I had made a mess of my own birth by choosing the wrong city. Bissor was a strong boy, all muscles and big bones, like a ploughhorse. Healthy as a peasant, robust, vigorous, thickset — he was a miracle within the ghetto’s rotten heart. A mop of jungle-wild red hair stressed his primitive appearance. Yet, for all this, he had within him the fears, humiliations, and resentments of all those born and still living in the ghetto. At the age of eleven, he had begun to deliver evening newspapers after school and had thus come to know the city. I was not self-conscious in his presence, and once I even told him about my father’s terrors and hatreds. But he interrupted me at once: “Your father’s right. You don’t yet know what it’s like.” His own father’s store, he explained, had been burned in a pogrom, and his old man had then died of grief. Although Bissor’s schooling was paid for by the community, he worried constantly about his mother and sisters, fearing that they might not be able to support themselves without his help. (He was right about this, for even though he left school before graduating, he was unable to prevent one of his sisters from becoming a prostitute.) He used to describe to me his daily rounds: the distrust and innuendoes, the perfect imperviousness of others. In Bissor, I caught echoes of my father’s despair, but I still refused to accept it. Constantly, I heard him talk of his hatred of the city, of his horror of having been born there, of the impossibility of ever finding normal opportunities there. I was ironical when the city seemed to stir but he would then race home, put up a supply of food, and barricade the doors and windows, terrified by the unpredictable. Other people’s misfortunes could force me to retreat, but could never convince me; they had bungled the situation, I thought, through awkwardness or prejudice. If the same thing happened to me, I was sure I would come out better.

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  Furthermore, when Paul says that “a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart—it is spiritual and not literal” (2:29), a contemporary Jew like Philo of Alexandria would have responded, “Of course, but you should have both circumcisions, with the inward manifested by the outward.” All in all, 1:16–3:18 is a fairly shallow indictment of universal sinfulness, but rather than dismissing it as superficial we might ponder its deeper accuracy. There seems to be something profoundly wrong and seriously askew, if not with human nature then at least with the normalcy of human civilization, with what Paul and we have also called the “wisdom of this world.” It is true, as Paul says, that we have laws and declarations that we do not follow and that thereby bear witness to our insincerity, if not hypocrisy. Think, for example, of a great nation that pledges “liberty and justice for all,” but seems somewhat unmoved by its failure to achieve it. Or, even worse, think about how humanity has, in a horrible evolution, moved from nineteenth-century imperialism through twentieth-century totalitarianism into twenty-first-century terrorism. We are now forced to wonder about the normalcy of civilization itself, and that makes us reread Paul’s accusation of global sin today on a deeper level than when he first wrote it. Maybe, of course, he just saw the same global flaw, but expressed it in the only language available to him from his past and present tradition, while we must do the same now in the more radical language of our past and present experience. THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD HAS BEEN DISCLOSED What, then, is the solution to the global failure, cosmic sinfulness, or universal human chasm between the declared ideal and its actual accomplishment? Here is Paul’s answer—and his first three foundational terms: the righteousness of God is granted for the justification of humanity through the sacrifice of Christ (3:25–26). Each of those terms has been profoundly misunderstood and has thereby rendered Paul’s theology incomprehensible. Righteousness: distribution, not retribution. Recall, from above, that God’s righteousness means exactly the same as God’s justice. But, unfortunately, for us, justice has come to mean primarily retributive justice, that is, punishment. Not, however, for Paul—and that is where we start to misunderstand him. For Paul, first, God’s justice is distributive rather than retributive; second, distributive justice is the very nature, essence, and character of God; and, third, divine distributive justice is above all else God’s very being as distributed freely to us to transform God’s world into a place of that same justice. If, however, you misread Paul as announcing that God is a God of retributive justice, you will need theological contortions to explain how that could possibly be “good news” (gospel), especially for that universal human sinfulness described in Romans 1–3. Paul’s actual good news, however, is that God’s own character of distributive justice is available for anyone willing to accept it—without prior merits or conditions.

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  Is that final consummation to come as peace through violent victory and pacification or as peace through nonviolent justice and justification? We ourselves might not consider the distinction between Gentiles and Jews the or even a major division of the global family. We might think of the haves and the have-nots, of the First World and the Third World, of those who have more than they need and those who can barely survive. But, in any case, it is and always will be about the world. So Paul concludes this section with a magnificent hymn not just to our freedom but to that of creation itself: For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. (Rom. 8:19–23) Paul mentions “creation” five times in those five verses. Hear, then, the voices of God and Bible, Jesus and Paul as they whisper insistently against the chorus of our narcissistic individualism: “It’s about the world, dummy. It’s about the world.” THE UNITY OF JEWS AND CHRISTIANS Paul moves next to a narrower division within that world separated into Gentiles and Jews. He focuses on the division within Judaism between non-Christian Jews and Christian Jews, between Jews who have not accepted Jesus as their Messiah and those who have. Paul had originally hoped that a unified community of non-Christian Jews and Christian Jews would be the future of Judaism. God would create that unity “not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles” (9:24) so that “there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him” (10:12). But by the mid-50s when he wrote to the Romans, he already knew that something had gone seriously wrong with that expected unity. It was not happening and already looked like it would not happen. Hence this stricken cry: “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people, my kindred according to the flesh” (9:2–3). For Paul, however, this was not just a human problem to be solved, but a divine “mystery” (11:25) to be pondered. So his first focus is on God and how or why God has permitted this to occur. Divine purpose.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  The modern evangelists come right back with their theories, diagrams, and homely illustrations. The ancient writers eventually explode: “You’re just not listening!” “Yes, we are,” reply the modern preachers (who are, after all, committed to “believing in the Bible”), “but you guys just aren’t saying the right stuff!” Of course, modern readers and preachers have invented ways of making them say the “right stuff” despite what is actually on the page. We have become adept at picking out a verse here and a phrase there that will fit into our schemes even if it means ignoring the context. Thus, as we have seen, Mark 10:45 (“The son of man . . . came . . . to give his life ‘as a ransom for many’”) is taken as warrant for invoking Isaiah 53, which is then itself read in the decontextualized way I described earlier . John 19:30, the last shout of Jesus from the cross, is sometimes translated “It is finished” or “It’s all done!” This is then turned into a statement about a bill being paid or an account being settled to fit in with a particular atonement theology rather than being allowed to make John’s point, which is the completion of Jesus’s vocation in parallel with the completion of creation itself in Genesis 2:2 (see also John 17:4). One hears less often the quotation of Jesus’s words over the cup at the Last Supper, even though the idea of Jesus’s blood being shed “for the forgiveness of sins” might be thought relevant to the “normal” story. Perhaps the problem there is that preachers in the Protestant or evangelical tradition have sometimes been anxious about any focus on the Last Supper, lest they find themselves being drawn into a more sacramental world of meaning than they had intended. In any case, when people preach or teach about the “meaning of the cross” in modern Western churches, they seldom if ever consider taking seriously the larger stories the four evangelists are telling—stories about the kingdom, the Temple (including Jesus’s supposed threat to destroy it), Pontius Pilate, Jesus’s followers, or the mocking crowds at the foot of the cross. Part of my purpose in this book is to persuade people who normally talk over the evangelists because they don’t seem to be “saying the right stuff” to be quiet for a bit and listen to the story (and the stories, plural) they are actually telling. The present chapter is not trying to provide an exhaustive account of all that—as if that would be possible within a single volume—but to offer some clues as to the direction these four great books are taking us as they move toward their own answers to the question, “What exactly happened on the first Good Friday?”

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  In a private session with Charles a few weeks later, Charles gives me his take on things. “Sex with Rose is nice, but it’s always been kind of flat. Sometimes I can deal with the low intensity; other times it’s been unbearable. I’ve gone online, I’ve gone outside of the marriage, I’ve gone to Rose. Mostly I tried to squelch it, because there doesn’t seem to be room for this between us. But I don’t want to do that anymore. Life is too short. I’m getting older. When I feel erotically alive, as you call it, I don’t worry about death and I don’t worry about my age, at least for a few moments. “Frankly, I’m surprised at her reaction,” he continues. “It’s been years since she was interested in sex. This may sound strange, but I honestly didn’t think she’d feel so strongly about my being involved with other women. Even though I’m not exclusive any longer, I’m as emotionally faithful and committed as I’ve always been. I don’t want to hurt her, and I certainly don’t want to leave her, but something had to change for me.” Charles isn’t behaving according to the script, but then neither is Rose. She is fragile and afraid, not the invincible woman Charles needs her to be. Just as they had banished his seductiveness, they had also suppressed her vulnerability. They have outgrown their respective roles, and they are in a crisis. Unbeknownst to them, this may be the greatest opportunity for expansion they’ve had in years, for it allows them to express parts of themselves that have long been denied. It’s tiresome to have to be in control all the time, and Rose was due for a break. It’s equally draining to feel erotically impoverished, and Charles’s refusal to tolerate this situation was his first step in bringing more authentic parts of himself to Rose. Ironically, in the midst of this emotional turmoil they began making love again after many years apart. Rose’s desire for Charles came back to life in tandem with his interest in other women. The more he eludes her, the more she wants him. And for his part, seeing her care so much about what he does has a profound erotic appeal. For a long time their relationship operated on a contract of mutuality. They were not to express feelings or needs that exceeded what they had been allocated. They were not to be irrational, insensitive, or greedy. Now, however, they both were making strong claims. They made demands on each other that they didn’t want to give up on. There was a lot of pain, but at the same time there was a vibrancy that neither could deny. “I haven’t felt this lousy in years,” Rose tells me. “But underneath, I can see it needed to happen.

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  Of this, there was plenty. The major reason was an economic policy of the Roman Empire: agriculture was being systematically commercialized. Once, families had worked a small piece of their own land to provide for their needs, but that was changing as land increasingly passed into the hands of large landowners who employed workers to produce crops for commercial sale. The result was a virtually forced migration to cities. Thousands from rural areas who had become landless, whose labor was no longer needed, or who were unable to produce enough income for their families to live on moved to cities. A majority of the urban working class were thus newcomers and strangers to each other. Moving to a city meant the loss of traditional communities of support provided by extended families and lifelong residency in a village. Moreover, because of the high death rates within cities, many who moved there with families soon found themselves without family. Migration to cities also involved people of many different linguistic and ethnic groups. Antioch, with its population of 150,000 on 2 square miles, included eighteen ethnic quarters. Misunderstanding, rivalry, and enmity were endemic and often resulted in riots. Thus, as Stark concludes, the cities of Paul were places of “misery, danger, fear, despair and hatred,” 5 despite the glory suggested by the last remains of their monumental structures. This is the setting in which Paul conducted his urban mission. He was able to do so in part because he practiced an urban trade: he was a tentmaker. We should not think of tents in the modern sense of what campers use or even in the premodern sense of what nomads lived in. Nomads did not come to cities to buy tents. Rather, a tentmaker was an awning maker, using cloth or skins or both. Tents as awnings were in considerable demand in Paul’s world of the Mediterranean sun, and his skill gave him mobility. His tools were light and could be carried with him, and he could find employment in virtually any city. We find him working, for example, in the shop of Aquila and Priscilla at Corinth: “Because he was of the same trade, he stayed with them, and they worked together—by trade they were tentmakers” (Acts 18:3). Paul’s audiences. What did Paul do in those predominantly capital cities? Who were his primary or focal audience? We must, once again, read Luke’s account in Acts very carefully to distinguish information from interpretation.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  They can work themselves into a frenzy over something that is not themselves. What is required of us? That we express the balanced opinions of our examiners and the impersonal ideas of the university concerning John Stuart Mill and Condillac? They would then be able to choose the twenty essays that are most alike because they reflect most slavishly the university’s ideal version. I am no longer able to forget myself and to think of something else. Nothing can distract me now from this basic quest. Anything else would be a luxury. As if my life were on the same pattern as all the others, clear and comfortable and without any mystery or contradiction, I tried to organize it quietly on the same model as any other man. I am poor; so I shall get a lucrative job and forget all my humiliations. I cannot pay for my studies; so I will coach other students and work my way through school, studying only in the evenings. My memory is full of superstitions and Djnouns and strange anxieties; so I vigorously opt for Western culture and try to ignore all that is barbarian. I saw, of course, that I was simplifying a great deal and that I would have to hack my way with an ax; still, I believed that it was only a matter of effort and will power. But my life has again risen like a vomit in my throat; I cannot be simplified. Every event proves this, every move brings me back to myself. Perhaps I would not give up if I still had some strength. I have already proved myself, but I have now come to the end of my tether. Perhaps it is best as it is.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  He reminded me of his own father’s death and of their shop that had been looted and burned. The whole of Bissor’s face, his hard and energetic jaw and his big and bright hazelnut eyes expressed complete refusal and an incomprehension that was almost despair. “We would only be polite to each other until the day when they will inevitably fall upon us again. I cannot forget it,” he said darkly. Yet it was necessary to forget and to pull down those old walls. I too knew some nasty tales and had even had one or two experiences of my own. One day, in Tarfoune Street, in the middle of a game, a little Jewish boy had caught at a Moslem girl’s earring. The violence of the children’s movements had caused the jewel to split the lobe of her ear. For three days the street had been in an uproar while the Moslems besieged the Jewish home, refusing all offers of a money indemnity and demanding that the little boy be handed over so that his ear could be torn off. Another time, after a quarrel between the local Jewish carpenter and a Moslem customer, the latter, having exhausted all his patience, had thrown the carpenter flat on the floor and tried to saw his throat. The victim had been saved only thanks to the screams of his womenfolk, all crazed with fear. But one had to forget and act. Only action could deliver both sides from their mutual isolation. It was then only a few weeks before our school certificate examinations, and soon we would be distracted from these problems by reviewing. Ben Smaan was again on duty with me as a boarding-school prefect. I decided to go with him the day Poinsot, in his endless curiosity, wanted to find out the difference between a Jew and a non-Jew. He thought he had found the answer, but his curiosity made me angry. I had too much confidence in his intelligence and, as Poinsot was well-meaning and incapable of prejudice, there surely existed a gulf between us, if he saw one.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Yet we balk at the idea of establishing distance within the relationship itself—the very place that grants us the delicious togetherness in the first place. We can tolerate space anywhere but there. Sexual desire does not obey the laws that maintain peace and contentment between partners. Reason, understanding, compassion, and camaraderie are the handmaidens of a close, harmonious relationship. But sex often evokes unreasoning obsession rather than thoughtful judgment, and selfish desire rather than altruistic consideration. Aggression, objectification, and power all exist in the shadow of desire, components of passion that do not necessarily nurture intimacy. Desire operates along its own trajectory. The Flannel Nightgown My first meeting with Jimmy and Candace was a powerful illustration of this all too common story. Jimmy and Candace are young musicians in their early thirties who’ve been married for seven years. They are a biracial couple: she is African-American; he is of Irish descent. She exudes confidence in her boy jeans and aquamarine nails; he has the Quiksilver signature all over him. They’re attractive, spunky, and on the go—and they are in despair over what’s happening to them. “We’re not having sex, and this has been going on for years,” Candace explains. “We are terrified about it and so upset. And I think we each have a deep-rooted fear that we’re going to find out it’s unfixable.” Like John, Candace has experienced what feels like an inescapable loss of desire in every relationship she has been in; and what emerges from our conversation is that she understands her pattern. “My problem, my side of it, doesn’t have to do with Jimmy,” she explains. “When I’m intimate with someone, when I’m in love and he loves me, I suddenly lose interest sexually. I feel like there’s something missing and I can’t get close to my partner on a sexual level. I had a number of long-term relationships before I met Jimmy, and it happened each time.” Candace knows who Jimmy is for her. He’s reliable, thoughtful, and intelligent. They share a rich partnership. And while she wants these characteristics in a man, their collateral consequences are counter-erotic for her. Faced with Jimmy’s kindness, she isn’t able to experience her own sexual energy. “What I can tell you,” she says, “is that his kindness makes me feel safe, but when I think about who I want to sleep with, safe is not what I look for.” “Because it’s not what?” I ask her. “It’s not transgressive enough? It’s not aggressive enough?” “It’s not aggressive enough.” “And he is in some way too much of a conscientious lover?” “Yeah.” “And he’s constantly paying attention to you?” “Which is very thoughtful.” “Very thoughtful indeed, but not exciting.” I add. “It’s all very affectionate, very cozy; it’s just not sexual.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  They stare and gloat over me; they divide my clothes among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots. . . . (22:1–2, 6–7, 16–18) And then, in a dramatic change, the mood suddenly gives way to a shout of triumph: I will tell of your name to my brothers and sisters; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you; You who fear YHWH, praise him! All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him; stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel! . . . All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to YHWH; And all the families of the nations shall worship before him. For dominion [malkuth, “kingdom”] belongs to YHWH, And he rules over the nations. (22:22–23, 27–28) This theme receives full, detailed, and highly personal expression in the Servant Songs in Isaiah: The sovereign YHWH has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward. I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. (50:5–6) He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account. Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. . . . He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By a perversion of justice he was taken away. Who could have imagined his future? For he was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people. They made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. (53:3–4, 7–9) And the “servant” goes on to “divide the spoil with the strong” (v. 12): this is clearly a victory as well as the forgiveness of sins, and following 52:7– 12 we should have no difficulty in seeing the latter as the key to the former. In any case, as far as I can tell, within Israel’s scriptures it is only in Isaiah 53 that the intense suffering is the means, and not simply the context, of the expected deliverance, of the forgiveness of sins. This is all the more striking in view of what we saw earlier, that such an idea—one person suffering to redeem many—was widespread in the ancient non-Jewish world, turning up in Homer, Euripides, and many other famous non-Jewish writers as well as in reported speeches from heroes in battle. Did the great poet who penned Isaiah 53 intend to allude to that pagan tradition? It seems unlikely.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  And I remind you again that you’re stupid too if you think you’ll redress the wrong by courting my stomach.” “No, Merges, I don’t think that. But I fully understand why you’d be suspicious of me or anyone who approaches you in a friendly fashion. You haven’t been treated well in your life.” “ Lives —not life. I’ve had eight of them, and every one, without exception, has ended the same way—in unspeakable cruelty and murder. Look at the last one! Artemis murdered me! Threw me into a cage and nonchalantly tossed it into the river and watched me sink slowly until the filthy water of the Danube covered my nostrils. The last thing I saw in that life was her triumphant leer as my final breath bubbled out of me. And do you know what my crime was? ” Ernest shook his head. “My crime was that I was being a cat.” “Merges, you’re not any ordinary cat. You are an unusually intelligent cat. I hope I may speak frankly to you.” Merges, who was licking the sides of the empty Rolling Chicken container, growled assent. “Two things I must say. First, of course, you realize it was not Artemis who drowned you. It was her grandmother, Klara, now long dead. Secondly—” “She smells the same to me—Artemis is Klara in a later life. Didn’t you know that?” Ernest was thrown off guard. Needing time to ponder that notion, he merely continued, “Secondly, Klara did not hate cats. In fact, she loved a cat. She was no murderer: it was in an effort to save the life of Cica, her own dear cat, that she acted against you.” No answer. Ernest could hear Merges breathing. Am I, he wondered, being too confrontational, not showing enough empathy? “But,” he said gently, “perhaps this is all beside the point. I think we should stick to what you said a minute ago—that your only crime was being a cat.” “Right! I did what I did because I am a cat. Cats protect their turf, they attack other, threatening cats, and the best of the cats—those bursting with catness—let nothing, nothing, stand in their way when they whiff the sweet muskiness of a cat in heat. I was doing nothing more than fulfilling my catness.” Merges’s comment gave Ernest pause. Wasn’t Merges being true to Ernest’s favorite of Nietzsche’s maxims: “Become he who you are?” Wasn’t Merges right? Wasn’t he simply fulfilling his own feline potential? “There was once a famous philosopher,” Ernest began, “that is, a wise man or a thinker—” “I know what a philosopher is,” the cat broke in crossly. “In one of my first lives, I lived in Freiburg and made nighttime visits to Martin Heidegger’s home.” “You knew Heidegger?” said Ernest, amazed . “No, no. Heidegger’s cat, Xanthippe.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  But in spite of this interview with the principal, I did not realize how close at hand was utter despair. I went on getting my papers in order for my departure. The momentum of the old machine still carried me ahead. The situation in the city, at this time, was still disturbing. At the victory parade, an onlooker who was pushed around by a policeman had answered too violently. There was much loud talk about the new Rights of Man saved from barbarism, and the man had let himself go too far. But the policeman had been more influenced by racial propaganda, so he fired on the onlooker and killed him. As the victim was a Jew, the murderer was acquitted. The indignant Jews inferred that nothing had changed. The Moslems too, as a matter of fact, for not longer after this, their nationalist leaders were arrested. Some thought that order was being restored. Lastly, the French Constituent Assembly definitely rejected the law on conscription. Things got organized, merchants started going back to business as usual, and the politicians returned to cheating. In short, all was once more in hand. After all, I too had gone back to normal, I believed. I decided to resume my interrupted studies again and even thought I had once more found the rhythm and the pleasure of productive work. The French Revue de Philosophie appeared again in Algiers, the temporary capital, and I sent in my subscription. I bought new notebooks and went back to keeping a diary. Six weeks before the exams, I turned up in Algiers, like every other serious student, to verify my transcripts, sit in on a few lectures, and get inside dope by means of the grapevine. This morning I got up before the alarm clock rang. I washed my face with cold water and bathed my smarting eyes in my cupped hands. When I finished dressing, the window was still dark. I was well ahead of the first streetcar, with its load of sleepy grocers on their way to market. In the examination hall I took the seat that was marked with my name and made the acquaintance of my neighbors. The boy to my left is small and dark with black eyes under heavy brows; his name is Bounin. On my right, my neighbor’s name is Ducamps. When the supervisors with their expressionless faces and ritual gestures deposited the examination papers on the end of the table, I read the little square of yellow paper like the others. Soon silence reigned. Not a breath in the vast hall with its hundreds of students. Each has identified himself with his work, each is alone for the next seven hours. It is then that it dawns on me, with the white paper in front of me, that all this no longer concerns me at all.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  I soon had to admit to myself that I regretted this trip. My loneliness, the lack of any affection, perhaps also the silence of the forest and the howling of the jackals, the unaccustomed food too — all these weighed on my mind. I hesitated to write to my family and remembered with bitterness how much I had insisted on leaving home. I tried to maintain my dignity by writing reasonable letters to my parents, but my unhappiness must have been quite obvious because, without much skill, they tried, in their replies, to encourage me to be more patient. When I understood that they had seen through my defenses, I lost all self-control and wrote to them about my despair at the mere thought of so many more days of camp ahead of me. Although I could easily imagine my life beyond this intervening barrier of dead time, and although I knew that there was something after it, a period in which time would regain its accustomed rhythm and flavor, this yet remained one of my first childish panics. Deprived of the protection of my parents and of their physical presence, I found myself, for the first time, cast alone on the world. Still, I remained sure of one thing: if I begged him without any pretense, my all-powerful father would come and help me. This last possibility set a limit to my despair and gave me enough assurance for me to refrain, for the time being, from falling back on it.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  You said that each time your life ended, there was a brief interval before the next life began.” “Yes, that’s right.” “What do you remember of those brief moments?” “Absolutely nothing.” “But isn’t that the point, Merges? Much of what you fear about death is how you imagine it might feel to be dead and yet to know that you can no longer be among the living. But when you’re dead, you have no consciousness. Death is the extinguishing of consciousness.” “Is that supposed to be reassuring?” Merges growled. “You asked me how I can stand it? That’s one of my answers. I’ve also always gotten comfort from the maxim of another philosopher, who lived a long, long time ago: ‘Where death is, I am not; where I am, death is not.’” “Is that any different from ‘When you’re dead, you’re dead’?” “A big difference. In death there is no ‘you.’ ‘You’ and ‘dead’ cannot coexist. ” “Heavy, heavy stuff,” Merges said, his voice barely audible, his head almost touching the floor. “Let me tell you about another perspective that helps me, Merges, something I learned from a Russian writer—” “Those Russians—this isn’t going to be cheery.” “Listen. Years, centuries, millennia passed before I was born. Right?” “No denying that.” Merges nodded wearily. “And millennia will pass after I’m dead. Right?” Merges nodded again. “Thus, I picture my life as a brilliant spark between two vast and identical pools of darkness: the darkness existing before my birth and the darkness following my death.” That seemed to strike home. Merges was listening hard, his ears pricked up. “And doesn’t it astound you, Merges, how much we dread the latter darkness and how indifferent we are to the first?” Suddenly Merges stood and opened his mouth in an enormous yawn, his fangs gleaming faintly in the moonlight streaming through the window. “Guess I’ve got to be shuffling along,” he said and trudged toward the window with a heavy, uncatlike gait. “Wait, Merges, there’s more!” “Enough for today. A lot to ponder, even for a cat. Next time, Ernest, the roast crab. And more of that green-grass chicken.” “Next time? What do you mean, Merges, next time? Haven’t I redressed the wrong?” “Maybe yes, maybe no. I told you, too much to think about all at once. I’m out of here!” Ernest plopped back into his chair. He was spent, his patience exhausted. Never before had he had a more nerve-wracking and fatiguing session. And now to see it all go for naught! Watching Merges trudge off, Ernest muttered to himself, “Go! Go!” And then added, “Geh Gesunter Heit” —that mocking Yiddish phrase of his mother’s. At the words, Merges stopped dead in his tracks and turned back. “I heard that. I can read minds.”

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  “Heavy, heavy stuff,” Merges said, his voice barely audible, his head almost touching the floor. “Let me tell you about another perspective that helps me, Merges, something I learned from a Russian writer—” “Those Russians—this isn’t going to be cheery.” “Listen. Years, centuries, millennia passed before I was born. Right?” “No denying that.” Merges nodded wearily. “And millennia will pass after I’m dead. Right?” Merges nodded again. “Thus, I picture my life as a brilliant spark between two vast and identical pools of darkness: the darkness existing before my birth and the darkness following my death.” That seemed to strike home. Merges was listening hard, his ears pricked up. “And doesn’t it astound you, Merges, how much we dread the latter darkness and how indifferent we are to the first?” Suddenly Merges stood and opened his mouth in an enormous yawn, his fangs gleaming faintly in the moonlight streaming through the window. “Guess I’ve got to be shuffling along,” he said and trudged toward the window with a heavy, uncatlike gait. “Wait, Merges, there’s more!” “Enough for today. A lot to ponder, even for a cat. Next time, Ernest, the roast crab. And more of that green-grass chicken.” “Next time? What do you mean, Merges, next time? Haven’t I redressed the wrong?” “Maybe yes, maybe no. I told you, too much to think about all at once. I’m out of here!” Ernest plopped back into his chair. He was spent, his patience exhausted. Never before had he had a more nerve-wracking and fatiguing session. And now to see it all go for naught! Watching Merges trudge off, Ernest muttered to himself, “Go! Go!” And then added, “Geh Gesunter Heit”—that mocking Yiddish phrase of his mother’s. At the words, Merges stopped dead in his tracks and turned back. “I heard that. I can read minds.” Uh-oh, thought Ernest. But he held his head high and faced the oncoming Merges. “Yes, I heard you. I heard your, ‘Geh Gesunter Heit.’ And I know what that means—didn’t you know that I speak good German? You blessed me. Even though you didn’t imagine I would hear, you wished me to go in good health. And I am moved by your blessing. Very moved. I know what I’ve put you through. I know how much you want to liberate this woman—not only for her sake but also for yours. And yet even after your tremendous effort, and after your not knowing whether you were successful in redressing the wrong, even then you still had the grace and the loving-kindness to wish for my good health. That may be the most generous gift I have ever received. Good-bye, my friend.” “Good-bye, Merges,” said Ernest, watching Merges stroll away, more perky now and with a graceful cat gait. Is it my imagination, he thought, or has Merges grown appreciably smaller? “Perhaps we’ll meet again,” said Merges, without breaking stride. “I’m considering settling in California.”