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.

Page 135 of 267 · 20 per page

• From Cleanness (2020)

  He raised his hand then, signaling for the waitress and signaling too that our talk was over, that he had exhausted all hope of my helpfulness; and I was both relieved and exasperated by this, and exasperated too by what he had said. But this is a story you’re telling yourself, I said, a story you’ve made up that will make you unhappy. There’s nothing inevitable about it, it’s a choice you’ve made, you can choose a different story. But he was already gone, though he was still with me at the table; he was taking out his wallet to pay the check, which I covered with my hand as the waitress laid it down. I’ve got it, I said, and he thanked me, for the coffee and for the talk, as he said. He stood up and put on his coat while I was still counting out bills, and though he stood there willing to wait for me he was clearly relieved when I let him go, saying I would wait for my change. I watched him as he left, walking hunched over just slightly, carrying away the despair he held on to so tightly, and I told myself he would grow out from under it, that he would go to university and discover a new life in England or America, new freedoms and possibilities, a greater scope for love, and with it room in himself for other feelings. The pain he felt now would become a story he told to others, I thought, and of course he couldn’t believe this, of course it seemed impossible, I told myself, of course I had failed to make him see it.

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  The ambulances came, the boy, hoisted to his grandmother’s hip, watched the officers approach his father with guns drawn, how his father waved a bloody twenty-dollar bill, the way he did back in Saigon where the cops would take the money, tell the boy’s mother to calm down and take a walk, then leave as if nothing happened. The boy watched as the American officers tackled his father, the money slipping out in the tussle and landing on the sidewalk lit by sulfur lights. Focused on the brown-and-green money-leaf on the pavement, half expecting it to fly up, back onto a winter tree, the boy did not see his father cuffed, dragged up to his feet, his head pushed into the patrol car. He saw only the crumpled money, until a neighbor girl in pigtails swiped it when no one was looking. The boy looked up to find his mother being carried out by paramedics, her broken face floating past him on the stretcher. — In his backyard, an empty dirt field beside a freeway overpass, I watched Trevor aim his .32 Winchester at a row of paint cans lined on an old park bench. I did not know then what I know now: to be an American boy, and then an American boy with a gun, is to move from one end of a cage to another. He tugged at the visor of his Red Sox cap, his lips scrunched. A porch light reflected on the barrel a small white star in the faraway-dark, which rose and fell as he aimed. This is what we did on nights like this, a Saturday with no sound for miles. I sat on a milk crate sipping Dr Pepper and watched him empty one cartridge after another into metal. Where the rifle’s butt recoiled against his shoulder, his green Whalers T-shirt wrinkled, the creases grabbing with each shot. The cans leaped one by one off the bench. I watched, recalling a story Mr. Buford told us back on the farm. Years ago, hunting in Montana, Buford found a moose in his trap. A male. He spoke slowly, rubbing his white stubble, describing how the trap had cut off the moose’s hind leg—a sound like a wet stick snapping, he said—save for a few stringy pink ligaments. The animal groaned against its body, which, bleeding and torn, was suddenly a prison. It raged, fat tongue lolling out a voice. “Almost like a man’s,” Buford said, “like you and me.” He glanced at his grandson, then at the ground, his plate of beans speckled with ants. He put down his rifle, he explained, and took out the double barrel holstered to his back and steadied. But the buck noticed him and charged, tearing its leg clean off. It ran right at him before he could aim, then veered toward a clearing and broke through the trees, hobbling on what was left of itself. Like you and me, I said to no one.

• From The History of World Literature (2007)

  102 Lecture 24: Voltaire’s Candide While this last chapter can be read in a variety of ways, several items need to be kept in mind. The mice-in-the-galley metaphor suggests that the universe was not made for us; therefore any speculations we make about its purpose and nature will be as foolish as mice speculating on the purpose or nature of the galley in which they happen to be. Work can keep us from speculating too much and getting ourselves tangled up in useless hypotheses about why we are here and what we are supposed to be doing. “Cultivating our garden” is the metaphor for whatever work we do, and it will prevent us from worrying too much about good and evil or whether this is the best of all possible worlds. Beyond natural disasters, Candide contains a lot of human cruelty and indifference to others’ suffering, the origins of which are a little harder to pin down. About midway through the book, Candide and his servant discover Eldorado, a utopia in South America. Candide, however, is not content there, and he leaves to return to Europe with the wealth from Eldorado. Candide brings up the question of whether a hostile environment— like the one in Europe—produces the cruel, greedy, prideful human nature we meet there, while a friendlier environment produces kinder people, as it seems to do in Eldorado. On the other hand, the work suggests, human nature may be as ¿ xed as the predatory habits of a hawk, as Martin suggests. Much of the suffering in the book is produced not by nature’s attacks on people, but by people’s attacks on each other. This spurs readers to question who is at fault in this situation and what, if anything, can be done to improve it. Questions like these remind us that Candide is really a debate about ideas—a philosophical tale in which the intellectual debate is more important than characters or plot. These questions still resonate today. Ŷ V oltaire, Candide. This is a very small book with a lot of big ideas. … Really … a philosophical tale whose ideas are more important than characters, setting, or events. Essential Reading 103 Adams, Candide, or, Optimism. Mason, Candide. 1. Some of Candide’s lowest points in the book are caused not by natural events but by human cruelty and/or indifference. In what way is that a separate theme from that of Optimism? To what extent is it integrated into the questions about the nature of the universe we live in? 2. What, exactly, do you understand Candide to mean when he says that “We must cultivate our garden”? If he means it as a metaphor (and not as a literal garden), how would it translate into your life? Supplementary Reading Questions to Consider

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  In one campaign King led in Albany, Georgia, to desegregate the city, the mayor and police chief made a show of exaggerated calmness, making it seem as if King and the SCLC were the unreasonable group, just stirring up trouble from the outside. The campaign in Albany was largely a failure, and it left King depressed and exhausted. It was now the pattern in his life that in such moments he yearned for the simpler, easier days of the past— his happy childhood, his pleasant years at the university, the first year and a half at Dexter. Perhaps he should retire from the leadership role and devote his time to preaching, writing, and lecturing. Such thoughts tugged him at him with greater frequency. Then, toward the end of 1962, he received yet another request for his services: Fred Shuttlesworth, one of the leading black activists in Birmingham, Alabama, begged King and the SCLC to help him in his efforts to desegregate stores in the downtown area. Birmingham was one of the most fiercely segregated cities in the country. Rather than comply with federal laws to desegregate public places, such as swimming pools, they merely closed them down. Any form of protest against the segregation practices was met with powerful violence and terrorism. The city had come to be known as “Bombingham.” And overseeing this bastion of the segregated South was the police chief, Bull Connor, who seemed to relish the chance to use force— whips, attack dogs, high-pressure fire hoses, billy clubs. This would certainly be the most dangerous campaign so far. Everything inside King leaned toward turning it down. The old doubts and fears returned to him. What if people were killed, and the violence touched him and his family? What if he failed? He suffered more sleepless nights as he agonized over this. Then the voice from seven years before returned to him, as loud and clear as ever: he had been tasked to stand up for justice, not to think of himself but to think of the mission. How foolish to be afraid again. Yes, it was his mission to go to Birmingham. But as he mulled this over, he could not help thinking more deeply about what the voice had told him. Standing up for justice meant bringing it about in some real and practical way, not talking or settling for useless compromises. His fears of disappointing people and failing had made him too cautious. He would have to be more strategic and more courageous this time. He would have to raise the stakes and he would have to win. No more fears or doubts. He accepted Shuttlesworth’s offer, and as he planned the campaign with his team, he made it clear to them they would need to learn from past mistakes. King laid out to them the nature of the predicament they faced.

• From The History of World Literature (2007)

  198 Lecture 45: Achebe’s Things Fall Apart When Okonkwo returns, he sees violence as the only possible response; when his people fail to join him after he has killed the messenger, he kills himself. He dies representing what he sees as the values of his society—values which he thinks have been betrayed. What he does not see is the À exibility built into his culture, a À exibility illustrated in many of its proverbs. Okonkwo is in many ways like the ¿ gures in Greek tragedy: someone who is neither entirely right nor entirely wrong and whose weaknesses are the reverse of his strengths. Okonkwo is not inherently a cruel man, as we see when he decides that he must kill Ikemefuna with his own hands, and on the night the priestess carries his daughter through the nine villages. It is simply that because of the weakness of his father, he cannot express the gentler sides of his nature and of his culture. His tragedy is also that of his people, who cannot manage to deal with Okonkwo and the missionaries at once, as they could have had they not coincided so disastrously. The title of the novel comes from Yeats’s “The Second Coming,” and the poem’s vision of history is used to explain the confrontation between Igbo and British cultures. According to Yeats’s poem, every civilization is a construct which excludes as it de ¿ nes and hence pushes what is unacceptable outside its parameters. Over time, the excluded values gather strength until they overwhelm the civilization itself, replacing its values with their reverse. The ¿ rst two-thirds of the book portrays the Igbo culture which, among its many values, asserts that the community is always more important than the individual. This culture’s values are courage, self-reliance, strength, and success, and while other virtues can be tolerated, they are not honored. They are, in Yeats’s terms, the values which the de¿ nition of Igbo culture excludes. When the Christians arrive, they give expression to the values excluded by Igbo culture: kindness, gentleness, and above all personal relationships, and they inevitably appeal to the outcasts of the community. These values beat on the walls of Igbo civilization, and when some village members become Christian, the community is for the ¿ rst time divided against itself. The second missionary to arrive, Mr. Smith, is far less tolerant than the ¿ rst and less À exible than the Igbo people; when Okonkwo returns home, spoiling for a ¿ ght, the disaster is precipitated.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I followed the path through the wooded part of campus, the trees that separate the main buildings from the faculty houses. The two floors of my cottage had been divided into apartments, of which mine was the loveliest, I thought, on the ground floor with windows facing into the trees. I had moved in less than a year before, tired of taking the bus each morning from my apartment off campus. I hadn’t known how soon I would be leaving, not just Sofia but teaching altogether, it had become unbearable, the drudgery and routine of it, earlier that spring I had realized I couldn’t face another year. A short set of stairs led to my door, four or five steps, and as I began to climb them I stumbled, catching myself with my hands and then falling onto my side against the concrete, where I lay or half lay for a moment before sitting upright on the bottom step. I swallowed hard against a wave of nausea, of nausea and something else, they were indistinguishable, seven years, I thought, seven years undone, a betrayal of vocation. But I rejected this even as I thought it, it wasn’t my vocation, it was just something I had done, a way I had passed the time; don’t be so pious, something said in me, and something else cringed away. I swallowed again, I couldn’t be sick here, everyone would see it, if I was going to be sick I had to get inside. But though I willed myself to stand I remained where I was, barely upright, my hands buttressed at my sides and my torso leaning forward, swaying a little. I was exaggerating or making excuses, it wasn’t so bad or it was worse. You can’t know tonight, I thought, in the morning you’ll know, and I feared what I would feel, how my actions would look in the light of day, those were the words I used, the light of day, I was thinking in old phrases.

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  Back in the barn that first night we touched, the Patriots game at halftime through the radio, I heard him. The air was thick or thin or not there. Maybe we even drifted off for a bit. The commercials were on, crackling and buzzing through the receiver, but I heard him. We were just staring at the rafters, and then he said, casually, as if naming a country on a map, “Why was I born?” His features troubled in the waning light. I pretended not to hear. But he said it again. “Why was I even born, Little Dog?” The radio hissed beneath his voice. And I spoke to the air. I said, “I hate KFC,” responding to the commercial, on purpose. “Me too,” he said without skipping a beat. And we cracked up. We cracked open. We fell apart like that, laughing. — Trevor and his daddy lived alone in an Easter-yellow mobile home behind the interstate. That afternoon his old man was out laying redbrick walkways for a commercial park out in Chesterfield. The white door frames in the mobile home were stained pink with fingerprints: a house colored with work, which meant a house colored with exhaustion, disrepair. The rug uprooted “so no one gotta clean,” but the hardwood never waxed and polished, and you could feel the hammered-down nails through your socks. The cabinet doors were torn off “to make it easy.” There was a cinder block under the sink to hold the pipes. In the living room, above the couch, was a duct-taped poster of Neil Young, guitar in hand, grimacing into a song I’ve never heard. In his room, Trevor turned on a Sony car stereo hooked to two speakers set on a dresser, and bobbed his head as a hip-hop beat intensified through the amp. The beats were interspersed with recordings of gunshots, men shouting, a car peeling off. “Have you heard this yet? It’s this new dude 50 Cent.” Trevor smiled. “Pretty dope, huh?” A bird flew past the window, making the room seem to blink. “I’ve never heard of him,” I lied—why I’m not quite sure. Maybe I wanted to give him the power of this small knowledge over me. But I’d heard it before, many times, as it was played that year through endless passing cars and opened apartment windows back in Hartford. The entire album, Get Rich or Die Tryin’, was burned bootleg on hundreds of blank CDs bought in forty packs for cheap from Walmart or Target—so that the whole northside echoed with a kind of anthem of Curtis Jackson’s voice fading in and out of intelligibility as you rode your bike through the streets. “I walk the block with the bundles,” he recited, his hands gestured in front of him, fingers splayed. “I’ve been knocked on the humble, swing the ox when I rumble, show your ass what my gun do.”

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

  Finally, they required that I take a prep-school version of the Scholastic Aptitude Test, to be administered in January at the Lakeside School in Seattle. I was stumped. Whenever I looked at the forms I felt despair. Their whiteness seemed hostile and vast, Saharan. I had nothing to get me across. During the day I composed high-flown circumlocutions, but at night, when it came to writing them down, I balked at their silliness. The forms stayed clean. When my mother pressed me to send them off, I transferred them to my locker at school and told her everything was taken care of. I did not trouble my teachers for praise they could not give me, or bother to have my collection of C’s sent out. I was giving up— being realistic , as people liked to say, meaning the same thing. Being realistic made me feel bitter. It was a new feeling, and one I didn’t like, but I saw no way out. MY FATHER CALLED . He called on a night when both Dwight and Pearl were out of the house, and that was a lucky thing, because my mother took the call and everything about her immediately changed. She became girlish. I realized who it was and stood beside her, straining to hear words in the rumble of my father’s voice. He did most of the talking. My mother smiled and shook her head. Now and then she laughed skeptically and said, “We’ll have to see,” and “I don’t know about that.” Finally she said, “He’s right here,” and handed the receiver over to me. “Hi, Chum,” he said, and I could feel him there. His bearish bulk, his tobacco smell. I said hello. “Your brother tells me you’re thinking of Choate,” he said. “Personally, I think you’d be happier at Deerfield.” “Well, I just applied,” I said. “Maybe I won’t get in.” “Oh, you’ll get in all right, boy like you.” He recited back to me the things I had told Geoffrey. “I don’t know. They get a lot of applications.” “You’ll get in,” he said sternly. “The question is, which school to choose. I’m simply suggesting that Deerfield may be on a more congenial scale than Choate. Let’s face it, you’re used to being a big fish in a small pond—you might get lost at Choate. But it’s your choice to make. If you want to go to Choate, for Christ’s sake go to Choate! It’s a fine school. A damn fine school.” “Yes sir.” He asked me where else I’d applied and I went through the list. He gave his approval, then added, “Mind you, Andover’s something of a factory. I’m not sure I’d send a boy of mine there, but we can talk about that when the time comes. Now here’s the plan.” The plan was that I should come down to La Jolla as soon as school was over.

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

  Finally, they required that I take a prep-school version of the Scholastic Aptitude Test, to be administered in January at the Lakeside School in Seattle. I was stumped. Whenever I looked at the forms I felt despair. Their whiteness seemed hostile and vast, Saharan. I had nothing to get me across. During the day I composed high-flown circumlocutions, but at night, when it came to writing them down, I balked at their silliness. The forms stayed clean. When my mother pressed me to send them off, I transferred them to my locker at school and told her everything was taken care of. I did not trouble my teachers for praise they could not give me, or bother to have my collection of C’s sent out. I was giving up— being realistic , as people liked to say, meaning the same thing. Being realistic made me feel bitter. It was a new feeling, and one I didn’t like, but I saw no way out. MY FATHER CALLED . He called on a night when both Dwight and Pearl were out of the house, and that was a lucky thing, because my mother took the call and everything about her immediately changed. She became girlish. I realized who it was and stood beside her, straining to hear words in the rumble of my father’s voice. He did most of the talking. My mother smiled and shook her head. Now and then she laughed skeptically and said, “We’ll have to see,” and “I don’t know about that.” Finally she said, “He’s right here,” and handed the receiver over to me. “Hi, Chum,” he said, and I could feel him there. His bearish bulk, his tobacco smell. I said hello. “Your brother tells me you’re thinking of Choate,” he said. “Personally, I think you’d be happier at Deerfield.” “Well, I just applied,” I said. “Maybe I won’t get in.” “Oh, you’ll get in all right, boy like you.” He recited back to me the things I had told Geoffrey. “I don’t know. They get a lot of applications.” “You’ll get in,” he said sternly. “The question is, which school to choose. I’m simply suggesting that Deerfield may be on a more congenial scale than Choate. Let’s face it, you’re used to being a big fish in a small pond—you might get lost at Choate. But it’s your choice to make. If you want to go to Choate, for Christ’s sake go to Choate! It’s a fine school. A damn fine school.” “Yes sir.” He asked me where else I’d applied and I went through the list. He gave his approval, then added, “Mind you, Andover’s something of a factory. I’m not sure I’d send a boy of mine there, but we can talk about that when the time comes. Now here’s the plan.” The plan was that I should come down to La Jolla as soon as school was over.

• From Enchanted: Erotic Bedtime Stories for Women (Erotic Fiction) (2006)

  One morning, as the queen’s expiration date was getting perilously near, the unfortunate woman once again found herself standing before the large mirror in her bedchamber. Soon she was uttering the same pitiful plea: “Mirror, mirror, on the wall. How much longer ’til I fall? Was my beauty all in vain? Advise me please, to end this pain!” The mirror had been waiting patiently for her return, and this time it responded with an even more chilling direction: “Your beauty, once beyond compare, Soon will be no longer there. Snow White is one like you once were. Take and eat the heart of her!” The queen whirled from the mirror in a rage and grabbed a nearby chair with the intention of hurling it at the offending mirror and shattering it once and for all. But she stopped short; partly because she believed the mirror offered her the only real hope, and partly because, in her undernourished state, she hadn’t the strength to throw the chair. She sat down on the chair instead. She knew that she would indeed eat Snow White’s heart if that was the only way to regain her beauty. With this realization, the queen resolved to get it over quickly, and immediately sent for her most trusted servant to help her. This servant, however, was really a handsome prince disguising himself as the queen’s servant in order to be closer to her, for he was secretly in love with her and waiting for the opportunity to win her heart. The prince listened to the queen’s request in shocked silence, staring at her with disbelief in his handsome blue eyes. Since true love was the only antidote to the sorcerer’s evil spell, the prince had been completely unaware that the queen was nearing her expiration date. Indeed, in his eyes she was becoming more beautiful with each passing day. But the prince could not refuse the queen anything, his love for her was so great, and so he readily agreed to help her. Recognizing this as the opportunity he had been waiting for, he added the condition that the queen spend that very evening with him, away from the castle. Desperate to have Snow White’s heart, the queen agreed to the arrangement. The prince found Snow White working in the kitchen, but the kind and gentle man had no intention of harming her. Instead, he took her deep into the woods to hide in safety; and then, coming upon a small lamb, he slaughtered it and carefully wrapped its heart. Content that he had done the right thing, he returned to the queen and presented the counterfeit heart to her. The queen wasted no time in cooking the heart in low-calorie, non-saturated, high-omega oil and then tentatively took a bite of it. She could detect nothing unpleasant in the taste, but it nevertheless took every bit of her willpower to swallow it. The cruel spell that held her forced her onward until every last drop was consumed.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  might well have set fire toa village, that tall column of flame was probably the church; and the Boches were punishing Compiégne again, to judge from the heavy sounds of bombardment. Yet by now there was nothing real in the world but that thick and almost impenetrable darkness, and the ache of the eyes that must stare and stare, and the dreadful, patient pain of the wounded — there had never been anything else in the world but black night shot through with the pain of the wounded. 4 On tHE following morning the two ambulances crept back to their base at the villa in Compiégne. It had been a tough job, long hours of strain, and to make matters worse the reliefs had been late, one of them having had a breakdown. Moving stiffly, and with red rimmed and watering eyes, the four women swallowed large cups of coffee; then just as they were they lay down on the floor, wrapped in their trench coats and army blankets. In less than a quarter of an hour they slept, though the villa shook and rocked with the bombardment. CHAPTER 36 I flees is something that mankind can never destroy in spite of an unreasoning will to destruction, and this is its own idealism, that integral part of its very being. The ageing and the cynical may make wars, but the young and the idealistic must fight them, and thus there are bound to come quick reactions, blind impulses not always comprehended. Men will curse as they kill, yet accomplish deeds of self-sacrifice, giving their lives for others; poets will write with their pens dipped in blood, yet will write not of death but of life eternal; strong and courteous friend- ships will be born, to endure in the face of enmity and destruc- tion. And so persistent is this urge to the ideal, above all in the presence of great disaster, that mankind, the wilful destroyer of beauty, must immediately strive to create new beauties, lest it perish from a sense of its own desolation; and this urge touched the Celtic soul of Mary. For the Celtic soul is the stronghold of dreams, of longings come down the dim paths of the ages; and within it there dwells a vague discontent, so that it must for ever go questing. And now as though drawn by some hidden attraction, as though stirred by some irresistible impulse, quite beyond the realms of her own un- derstanding, Mary turned in all faith and all innocence to Stephen. Who can pretend to interpret fate, either his own fate or that of another? Why should this girl have crossed Stephen’s path, or indeed Stephen hers, if it came to that matter ? Was not the world large enough for them both? Perhaps not — or perhaps the event of their meeting had already been written upon tablets of stone by some wise if relentless recording finger.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  STEPHEN left Cornwall without a regret; everything about it had seemed to her depressing. Its rather grim beauty which at any other time would have deeply appealed to her virile nature, had but added to the gloom of those interminable weeks spent apart from Angela Crossby. For her perturbation had been growing apace, she was constantly oppressed by doubts and vague fears; bewildered, uncertain of her own power to hold; uncertain, too, of Angela’s will to be held by this dangerous yet bloodless loving. Her defrauded body had been troubling her sorely, so that she had tramped over beach and headland, cursing the strength of the youth that was in her, trying to trample down her hot youth and only succeeding in augmenting its vigour. But now that the ordeal had come to an end at last, she began to feel less despondent. In a week’s time Angela would get back from Scotland; then at least the hunger of the eyes could be ap- peased — a terrible thing that hunger of the eyes for the sight of the well-loved being. And then Angela’s birthday was drawing near, which would surely provide an excuse for a present. She had sternly forbidden the giving of presents, even humble keepsakes, en account of Ralph — still, a birthday was different, and in any case Stephen was quite determined to risk it. For the impulse to THE WELL OF LONELINESS 185 give that is common to all lovers, was in her attaining enormous proportions, so that she visualized Angela decked in diadems worthy of Cleopatra; so that she sat and stared at her bank book with eyes that grew angry when they lit on her balance. What was the good of plenty of money if it could not be spent on the person one loved? Well, this time it should be so spent, and spent largely; no limit was going to be set to this present! An unworthy and tiresome thing money, at best, but it can at least ease the heart of the lover. When he lightens his purse he lightens his heart, though this can hardly be accounted a virtue, for such giving is perhaps the most insidious form of self- indulgence that is known to mankind. 4 STEPHEN had said quite casually to Anna: * Suppose we stay three or four days in London on our way back to Morton? You could do some shopping.’ Anna had agreed, thinking of her house linen which wanted renewing; but Stephen had been thinking of the jewellers’ shops in Bond Street.

• From Branded: Brainwashed Inside NXIVM (2020)

  552 00:26:31,222 --> 00:26:32,857 You're--you're missing this part. 553 00:26:32,958 --> 00:26:34,759 It's kind of like a hamster in the wheel, 554 00:26:34,859 --> 00:26:37,062 where you're never gonna get the cheese. 555 00:26:39,531 --> 00:26:41,967 [Dr. Joseph] It really is a psychological manipulation 556 00:26:42,067 --> 00:26:45,904 because you can devote your entire life, your resources, 557 00:26:46,004 --> 00:26:47,606 your time, your family, 558 00:26:47,706 --> 00:26:50,909 and you'll never get what you came for. 559 00:26:51,009 --> 00:26:53,712 [Robin] They were being pressured to move up 560 00:26:53,812 --> 00:26:56,014 with the sashes, with the levels. 561 00:26:56,114 --> 00:26:58,717 And they had to keep feeding money into it 562 00:26:58,817 --> 00:27:00,151 to take more workshops. 563 00:27:00,251 --> 00:27:04,055 And these workshops were 8,000, 10,000. 564 00:27:04,155 --> 00:27:07,626 You wanna change your life? That's not gonna come cheap. 565 00:27:07,726 --> 00:27:08,927 [Narrator] Both members and coaches 566 00:27:09,027 --> 00:27:12,597 are encouraged to bring others into the fold. 567 00:27:12,697 --> 00:27:15,133 [Kelly] It was a constant conversation 568 00:27:15,233 --> 00:27:16,134 about getting people in. 569 00:27:16,234 --> 00:27:18,436 And we didn't use the word "recruit." 570 00:27:18,536 --> 00:27:20,672 We used the word "enroll." 571 00:27:20,772 --> 00:27:23,141 Never use the word "recruit," we were told. 572 00:27:24,909 --> 00:27:26,344 [Narrator] And while recruiters are promised 573 00:27:26,444 --> 00:27:28,780 a commission for new members, 574 00:27:28,880 --> 00:27:32,217 the money never seems to materialize. 575 00:27:32,317 --> 00:27:34,052 I had enrolled nine people, you know? 576 00:27:34,152 --> 00:27:36,655 But I didn't get any money from that at all, 577 00:27:36,755 --> 00:27:38,356 because the only way you could get money from it 578 00:27:38,456 --> 00:27:40,525 is if you had enrolled the right amount of people 579 00:27:40,625 --> 00:27:43,695 within the first... 30 to 45 days. 580 00:27:43,795 --> 00:27:46,364 So only a small amount of people would get paid. 581 00:27:46,464 --> 00:27:48,299 [Kelly] Everybody at the top needed to get paid. 582 00:27:48,400 --> 00:27:50,869 Nobody at the bottom was getting paid. 583 00:27:50,969 --> 00:27:53,471 So we were all working for free. 584 00:27:53,571 --> 00:27:58,943 [Rick] In my view, it was at best a Ponzi scheme financially. 585 00:27:59,044 --> 00:28:03,114 They thought they were buying into something really positive. 586 00:28:03,214 --> 00:28:06,317 They were given, um, very misleading information. 587 00:28:06,418 --> 00:28:07,686 They were deceived. 588 00:28:07,786 --> 00:28:10,221 It was very much like a bait-and-switch con. 589 00:28:12,090 --> 00:28:15,994 [Narrator] NXIVM's reach even extends to Hollywood. 590 00:28:16,094 --> 00:28:18,930 There was a very small center in Los Angeles, 591 00:28:19,030 --> 00:28:21,766 where the teachings would happen. 592 00:28:21,866 --> 00:28:25,537 That's where they'd recruit people from. 593 00:28:25,637 --> 00:28:28,506 [Paige] They targeted actors, actresses, musicians, 594 00:28:28,606 --> 00:28:31,710 people who are looking for an in into the industry 595 00:28:31,810 --> 00:28:33,578 that requires a lot of networking.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  The constriction of sensation obliterates shades and textures in our feelings. It is the unspoken hell of traumatization. In order to intimately relate to others and to feel that we are vital, alive beings, these subtleties are essential. And sadly, it is not just acutely traumatized individuals who are disembodied; most Westerners share a less dramatic, but still impairing disconnection from their inner sensate compasses. In contrast, various eastern spiritual traditions have acknowledged the “baser instincts” not as something to be eliminated, but rather as a force available for transformation. In one book describing Vipassana meditation, a quote reads that the goal is in “purifying the mind of its baser instincts so that one begins to manifest the truly human spiritual qualities of universal goodwill, kindness, humility, love, equanimity and so on.”134 What I believe the author means is that rather than renouncing the body, spiritual transformation emerges from a “refining” of the instincts. The essence of embodiment is not in repudiation, but in living the instincts fully, while at the same time harnessing their primordial raw energies to promote increasingly subtle qualities of experience. In the book of Job it is said, “For in my flesh I shall see God.” The degree to which we cannot deeply feel our body’s interior is the degree to which we crave excessive external stimulation. We seek titillation, overexertion, drugs and sensory overload. It is difficult to find a movie these days that is without over-the-top special effects and multiple car crashes. As a culture, we have so negated the capacity to feel the subtlety of the life of the body that we have become habituated to a seemingly endless barrage of violence, horror and explosive, body-vibrating noise. On the wane are films of engaging dialogue and affective nuance. Instead, we are continually bombarded with jumbles of disconnected, incoherent and meaningless images or sentimental mush. There is the paucity of time we have for ourselves to quietly reflect. Rather, these precious free moments we have are spent online, in chat rooms substituting for real human contact, creating avatars in virtual space or watching TV on our cell phones. I’m not against having a good time or unappreciative of our technological strides. It is simply that while the media reflects our sorry state of insensitivity, it is also contributing, in a significant fashion, to our addiction to overstimulation.

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  Once, the anklebone of a blond boy underwater. There was a greenish light in that line and you saw it. The truth is we can survive our lives, but not our skin. But you know this already. — I never did heroin because I’m chicken about needles. When I declined his offer to shoot it, Trevor, tightening the cell phone charger around his arm with his teeth, nodded toward my feet. “Looks like you dropped your tampon.” Then he winked, smiled—and faded back into the dream he made of himself. Using a multimillion-dollar ad campaign, Purdue sold OxyContin to doctors as a safe, “abuse-resistant” means of managing pain. The company went on to claim that less than one percent of users became addicted, which was a lie. By 2002, prescriptions of OxyContin for noncancer pain increased nearly ten times, with total sales reaching over $3 billion. What if art was not measured by quantity but ricochets? What if art was not measured? The one good thing about national anthems is that we’re already on our feet, and therefore ready to run. The truth is one nation, under drugs, under drones. The first time I saw a man naked he seemed forever. He was my father, undressing after work. I am trying to end the memory. But the thing about forever is you can’t take it back. Let me stay here until the end, I said to the lord, and we’ll call it even. Let me tie my shadow to your feet and call it friendship, I said to myself. — I woke to the sound of wings in the room, as if a pigeon had flown through the opened window and was now thrashing against the ceiling. I switched on the lamp. As my eyes adjusted, I saw Trevor sprawled on the floor, his sneaker kicking against the dresser as he rippled under the seizure. We were in his basement. We were in a war. I held his head, foam from his lips spreading down my arm, and screamed for his old man. That night, in the hospital, he lived. It was already the second time. Horror story: hearing Trevor’s voice when I close my eyes one night four years after he died. He’s singing “This Little Light of Mine” again, the way he used to sing it—abrupt, between lulls in our conversations, his arm hanging out the window of the Chevy, tapping the beat on the faded red exterior. I lay there in the dark, mouthing the words till he appears again—young and warm and enough. The black wren this morning on my windowsill: a charred pear. That meant nothing but you have it now.

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

  Argument was the only kind of sound he knew how to make. And if you didn’t give in to him he smirked and offered you his pity for being so ignorant and misled. He wasn’t reluctant to get personal. Soon enough Dwight and Skipper got personal back, and then Pearl and I put our oars in. Insulting this man was a profound pleasure, and a pleasure not only for us; a flush of excitement came into his pallid face as the words got meaner and harder to take back. He kept our blood up by saying, “If you think that bothers me, you’re sadly mistaken,” and “Sorry, try again,” and “I’ve had worse than that.” This went on for some time. As we baited him Kenneth smiled in a secretive way and sucked on an empty Yellow-Bole pipe with which, he later told me, he strengthened his will power by tempting himself to smoke. Norma was mute. She sat next to Kenneth on the sofa and stared at the floor while he absently rubbed his hand up and down her back. Every time he touched her I felt despair. At last my mother came in from the kitchen and suggested that Norma take Kenneth out and show him around Chinook. Norma nodded and stood up, but Kenneth said he didn’t want to leave now, just when things were getting interesting. Norma implored him with her eyes. Finally he left with her. In the wake of his going we exchanged looks of exultation and shame. A fidgety silence came upon us. One by one we drifted away to other parts of the house. But at dinner it started up again. Kenneth couldn’t stop himself. Even when he was quiet you could feel him preparing his next charge. The only thing that could shut him up was the TV. When the TV came on Kenneth went silent, staring and still as an owl in a tree. Over the next couple of days my mother talked each of us into spending some time alone with him so we could get to know one another as individuals. This proved a mistake. Some people are better left unknown. Our walks and drives with Kenneth ended early and culminated in shouts and slamming doors. Years later my mother told me he’d made a pass at her. WE COULD ALL see that Norma didn’t love Kenneth. But she stayed next to him, and submitted to his demonstrations of passion, and refused to say a word against him. She even, in the end, married him. But not before Dwight had nearly killed himself trying to stop her. He drove down to Seattle almost every weekend, sometimes bringing us along, more often by himself, always with some new scheme for luring her away from Kenneth. Nothing worked. He returned late Sunday night or early Monday morning, eyes bloodshot from the long drive, too tired and baffled even to quarrel.

• From Branded: Brainwashed Inside NXIVM (2020)

  777 00:37:55,473 --> 00:37:57,508 35-year-old environmental consultant 778 00:37:57,608 --> 00:38:00,378 Kristin Marie Snyder pays $7,000 779 00:38:00,478 --> 00:38:04,615 to enroll in a 16-day personal development course 780 00:38:04,715 --> 00:38:07,251 hosted by NXIVM cofounder Nancy Salzman 781 00:38:07,351 --> 00:38:11,522 in Anchorage, Alaska. 782 00:38:11,622 --> 00:38:14,525 Two months later, Snyder travels to NXIVM's headquarters 783 00:38:14,625 --> 00:38:17,895 to meet with Keith Raniere and other members of the group. 784 00:38:20,798 --> 00:38:23,467 When Snyder returns to her home in Alaska, 785 00:38:23,567 --> 00:38:26,837 those closest to her claim her personality has been... 786 00:38:26,937 --> 00:38:28,272 altered. 787 00:38:28,372 --> 00:38:31,609 [Paige] She started behaving strangely. 788 00:38:31,709 --> 00:38:34,545 She started to believe that she was responsible for 789 00:38:34,645 --> 00:38:36,347 the Challenger explosion, 790 00:38:36,447 --> 00:38:38,082 which of course she was not. 791 00:38:38,182 --> 00:38:40,217 She had no connection to it. 792 00:38:40,318 --> 00:38:42,286 That's a delusion. 793 00:38:42,386 --> 00:38:46,057 But she believed it wholeheartedly. 794 00:38:47,024 --> 00:38:48,259 [Narrator] Kristin then signs up for 795 00:38:48,359 --> 00:38:52,363 a second 16-day NXIVM course. 796 00:38:52,463 --> 00:38:54,565 But these new sessions seemingly only increase 797 00:38:54,665 --> 00:38:58,102 her mental health issues. 798 00:38:58,202 --> 00:39:01,505 [Paige] NXIVM, for all that it purports to be about wellness, 799 00:39:01,605 --> 00:39:04,175 and emotional wellness and personal wellness, 800 00:39:04,275 --> 00:39:06,410 is not equipped to help someone 801 00:39:06,510 --> 00:39:08,913 having a true mental health crisis. 802 00:39:09,013 --> 00:39:12,049 And that's where groups like that are the most dangerous, 803 00:39:12,149 --> 00:39:14,585 where people need actual help, 804 00:39:14,685 --> 00:39:18,589 and they are instead feeding them craziness 805 00:39:18,689 --> 00:39:21,092 that will make things worse. 806 00:39:21,192 --> 00:39:24,862 [Narrator] And the situation does get worse. 807 00:39:24,962 --> 00:39:27,498 On February 6, 2003, 808 00:39:27,598 --> 00:39:29,433 following an all-day NXIVM seminar 809 00:39:29,533 --> 00:39:31,936 at an Anchorage hotel, 810 00:39:32,036 --> 00:39:37,408 Kristin gets into her SUV and just...drives away. 811 00:39:37,508 --> 00:39:42,880 She drove 120 miles into the Alaskan wilderness. 812 00:39:42,980 --> 00:39:46,584 [Armando] In her truck, they did find a suicide note 813 00:39:46,684 --> 00:39:49,320 that expressed that she had been brainwashed. 814 00:39:49,420 --> 00:39:51,589 That, uh, she had no feeling anymore. 815 00:39:51,689 --> 00:39:53,491 That her insides were rotting. 816 00:39:53,591 --> 00:39:58,095 Just really horrific stuff. 817 00:39:58,195 --> 00:39:59,363 [Narrator] "I attended a course 818 00:39:59,463 --> 00:40:01,332 "called Executive Success Programs, 819 00:40:01,432 --> 00:40:03,067 "aka NXIVM, 820 00:40:03,167 --> 00:40:06,504 "based out of Anchorage, Alaska and Albany, New York. 821 00:40:06,604 --> 00:40:08,205 "I was brainwashed, 822 00:40:08,305 --> 00:40:12,143 "and my emotional center of the brain was killed/turned off. 823 00:40:12,243 --> 00:40:14,712 "I still have feeling in my external skin, 824 00:40:14,812 --> 00:40:17,615 "but my internal organs are rotting. 825 00:40:17,715 --> 00:40:21,819 "Please contact my parents if you find me or this note!

• From Branded: Brainwashed Inside NXIVM (2020)

  [Paige] NXIVM, for all that it purports to be about wellness, and emotional wellness and personal wellness, is not equipped to help someone having a true mental health crisis. And that's where groups like that are the most dangerous, where people need actual help, and they are instead feeding them craziness that will make things worse. [Narrator] And the situation does get worse. On February 6, 2003, following an all-day NXIVM seminar at an Anchorage hotel, Kristin gets into her SUV and just...drives away. She drove 120 miles into the Alaskan wilderness. [Armando] In her truck, they did find a suicide note that expressed that she had been brainwashed. That, uh, she had no feeling anymore. That her insides were rotting. Just really horrific stuff. [Narrator] "I attended a course "called Executive Success Programs, "aka NXIVM, "based out of Anchorage, Alaska and Albany, New York. "I was brainwashed, "and my emotional center of the brain was killed/turned off. "I still have feeling in my external skin, "but my internal organs are rotting. "Please contact my parents if you find me or this note! "I am sorry, life, I didn't know I was already dead. May we persist into the future." [music] [Rick] Kristin Snyder had a master's degree. She was in her thirties, highly accomplished, and she ended up dead because of NXIVM, in my opinion. [Dr. Joseph] She was psychologically broken down to the point where she didn't know reality anymore, and it's believed that she likely committed suicide. [Narrator] "No need to search for my body." Kristin Snyder disappeared off the face of the earth. In a group as shadowy as NXIVM, there's always going to be questions about what happened here. Did she commit suicide? Was she killed? The Kristin Marie Snyder story is horrifying. Someone who went to NXIVM to improve her life, and then, unfortunately, decided to end it. [Narrator] It won't be long before an old NXIVM foe lifts the veil of death and deceit clouding the cult for all the world to see. [Narrator] In 2003, news of NXIVM's notoriety hits the radar of Forbes magazine. The publication reaches out to Keith Raniere and his cofounder, Nancy Salzman. [Armando] Keith and Nancy think that they're getting interviewed for a very flattering article on their Executive Success Programs, 'cause, I mean... you're helping so many people, right? This is obviously their time to shine. What they maybe didn't know was that Forbes was also talking to a couple of former members, and also Edgar Bronfman. [Narrator] Edgar Bronfman, the billionaire head of Seagram's Liquor, who feels his daughters have been conscripted into a cult and swindled of millions. That October, the growing chorus of suspicion surrounding Raniere and NXIVM reaches a crescendo when Forbes publishes this explosive cover story entitled "Cult of Personality." [Armando] The article comes out, and it's not the glowing review that they were expecting. There are a lot of things that are being alleged.

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

  These errors seem to have arisen from a twofold source: first from not knowing the nature of true Penance. For since true Penance requires charity, without which sins are not taken away, they thought that charity once possessed could not be lost, and that, consequently, Penance, if true, could never be removed by sin, so that it should be necessary to repeat it. But this was refuted in the [4730]SS, Q[24], A[11], where it was shown that on account of free-will charity, once possessed, can be lost, and that, consequently, after true Penance, a man can sin mortally. Secondly, they erred in their estimation of the gravity of sin. For they deemed a sin committed by a man after he had received pardon, to be so grave that it could not be forgiven. In this they erred not only with regard to sin which, even after a sin has been forgiven, can be either more or less grievous than the first, which was forgiven, but much more did they err against the infinity of Divine mercy, which surpasses any number and magnitude of sins, according to Ps. 50:1,2: “Have mercy on me, O God, according to Thy great mercy: and according to the multitude of Thy tender mercies, blot out my iniquity.” Wherefore the words of Cain were reprehensible, when he said (Gn. 4:13): “My iniquity is greater than that I may deserve pardon.” And so God’s mercy, through Penance, grants pardon to sinners without any end, wherefore it is written (2 Paral 37 [*Prayer of Manasses, among the Apocrypha. St. Thomas is evidently quoting from memory, and omits the words in brackets.]): “Thy merciful promise is unmeasurable and unsearchable . . . (and Thou repentest) for the evil brought upon man.” It is therefore evident that Penance can be repeated many times. Reply to Objection 1: Some of the Jews thought that a man could be washed several times in the laver of Baptism, because among them the Law prescribed certain washing-places where they were wont to cleanse themselves repeatedly from their uncleannesses. In order to disprove this the Apostle wrote to the Hebrews that “it is impossible for those who were once illuminated,” viz. through Baptism, “to be renewed again to penance,” viz. through Baptism, which is “the laver of regeneration, and renovation of the Holy Ghost,” as stated in Titus 3:5: and he declares the reason to be that by Baptism man dies with Christ, wherefore he adds (Heb. 6:6): “Crucifying again to themselves the Son of God.” Reply to Objection 2: Ambrose is speaking of solemn Penance, which is not repeated in the Church, as we shall state further on ([4731]XP, Q[28], A[2]).

• From The History of World Literature (2007)

  258 Biographical Notes for Lectures 25–36 write a series of plays which scandalized Europe and which most theaters refused to produce: A Doll’ s House (1879), Ghosts (1881), An Enemy of the People (1882), The Wild Duck (1884), and Hedda Gabler (1890), among others. Toward the end of his life, now recognized as a great writer, Ibsen returned to Norway and wrote a series of haunting symbolic plays which have received ambivalent response from audiences, readers, and critics. Proust, Marcel (1871–1922): The older son of a doctor who practiced just outside of Paris and had a brilliantly educated mother, with whom Proust was to live until the time of their deaths; Proust was diagnosed with asthma when he was nine. Despite his illness, he graduated and spent a year in the military before he began writing for magazines and attending social events in the fashionable Faubourg Saint-Germain. In about 1905, following the deaths of his parents and a serious turn for the worse in his health, he withdrew from his glittering social life to retreat into a cork-lined room which was kept in semi-darkness, where he spent the last years of his life devoted to writing Remembrance of Things Past, emerging only rarely (and then usually to verify a detail of some event that was going into his book). The ¿ rst volume was published in 1913, and they continued at intervals until his death—and after: The last three volumes were published posthumously. Pushkin, Alexander (1799–1837): Of aristocratic heritage, he spent his youth in dissipation and poetry, very much as his literary model, Lord Byron, had done. Like Byron, he was always on the edge of trouble because of his liberal political views, which eventually led to his dismissal from his position at the Foreign Of ¿ ce. His early poems earned him instant fame, which he consolidated with his long romantic-satiric poem, Eugene Onegin, and a historical tragedy, Boris Godunov. He wrote much during his short life and much of his work has been revered by the Russian people ever since. He married a dazzling and much-sought-after beauty in 1831 (by his own count, she was the 113 th woman in his life), but the marriage was not a happy one; Pushkin was killed in a duel at the age of 38, fought either over his wife’s in¿ delities or over another man’s improper advances toward his wife. His dying words were presumably in French, an indication of the extent to which Western culture dominated Russia during his lifetime—a domination which provided Pushkin with both models and ideas to push against in his own work.