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 139 of 267 · 20 per page

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  The city, Paris, which I loved so much, was absolutely silent. There seemed to be almost no one on the streets, although it was still very early in the evening. Nevertheless, beneath me— along the river bank, beneath the bridges, in the shadow of the walls, I could almost hear the collective, shivering sigh—were lovers and ruins, sleeping, embracing, coupling, drinking, staring out at the descending night. Behind the walls of the houses I passed, the French nation was clearing away the dishes, putting little Jean Pierre and Marie to bed, scowUng over the eternal problems of the sou, the shop, the church, the unsteady State. Those walls, those shuttered windows held them in and protected them against the darkness and the long moan of this long night. Ten years hence, little Jean Pierre or Marie might find themselves out here beside the river and wonder, like me, how they had fallen out of the web of safety. What a long way, I thought, I've come— to be de- stroyed! Yet it was true, I recalled, turning away from the river down the long street home, I wanted children. I wanted to be inside again, with the light and safety, with my manhood unques- tioned, watching my woman put my children to bed. I wanted the same bed at night and the same arms and I wanted to rise in the morning, knowing where I was. I wanted a women to be for me a steady ground, like the earth itself, James Baldwin 138 where I could always be renewed. It had been so once; it had almost been so once. I could make it so again, I could make it real. It only demanded a short, hard strength for me to be- come myself again. I saw a light burning beneath our door as I walked down the corridor. Before I put my key in the lock the door was opened from within. Giovanni stood there, his hair in his eyes, laugh- ing. He held a glass of cognac in his hand. I was struck at first by what seemed to be the merri- ment on his face. Then I saw that it was not merriment but hysteria and despair. I started to ask him what he was doing home, but he pulled me into the room, holding me around the neck tightly, with one hand. He was shaking. 'Where have you been?' I looked into his face, pulling slightly away from him. 1 have looked for you everywhere.' Didn't you go to work?' I asked him. TS[o,' he said. 'Have a drink. I have bought a bottle of cognac to celebrate my freedom.' He poured me a cognac. I did not seem to be able to move. He came toward me again, thrusting the glass into my hand.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  How was I to get free? Where should I go? What should I do? One day in an illustrated paper in ’68, I read of the discovery of the diamonds in the Cape, and then of the opening of the Diamond fields. That prospect tempted me and I read all I could about South Africa, but one day I found that the cheapest passage to the Cape cost fifteen pounds and I despaired. Shortly afterwards I read that a steerage passage to New York could be had for five pounds; that amount seemed to me possible to get; for there was a prize of ten pounds for books to be given to the second in the Mathematical scholarship exam that would take place in the summer: I thought I could win that, and I set myself to study Mathematics harder than ever. The result was—but I shall tell the result in its proper place. Meanwhile I began reading about America and soon learned of the buffalo and Indians on the Great Plains and a myriad entrancing romantic pictures opened to my boyish imagining. I wanted to see the world and I had grown to dislike England; its snobbery, though I had caught the disease, was loathsome and worse still, its spirit of sordid self-interest. The rich boys were favored by all the Masters, even by Stackpole; I was disgusted with English life as I saw it. Yet there were good elements in it which I could not but see, which I shall try to indicate later. Towards the middle of this winter term it was announced that at Midsummer, besides a scene from a play of Plautus to be given in Latin, the trial scene of “The Merchant of Venice” would also be played—of course, by boys of the Fifth and Sixth form only, and rehearsals immediately began. Naturally I took out “The Merchant of Venice” from the school library and in one day knew it by heart. I could learn good poetry by a single careful reading: bad poetry or prose was much harder. Nothing in the play appealed to me except Shylock and the first time I heard Fawcett of the Sixth recite the part, I couldn’t help grinning: he repeated the most passionate speeches like a lesson in a singsong, monotonous voice. For days I went about spouting Shylock’s defiance and one day, as luck would have it, Stackpole heard me. We had become great friends: I had done all Algebra with him and was now devouring trigonometry, resolved to do Conic Sections afterwards, and then the Calculus. Already there was only one boy who was my superior and he was Captain of the Sixth, Gordon, a big fellow of over seventeen, who intended to go to Cambridge with the eighty Pound Mathematical Scholarship that summer.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  I’m all broken up with visions of what it might have been here, with you, for instance. How satisfied I have been, Henry.” “And now, only with me,” says Henry, “you would blossom so quickly that you would soon exhaust all I can give and pass on to another. There are no limits to what your life could be. I have seen how you can swim in a passion, in a large life. Listen, if anybody else did the things you have done, I would call them foolish, but somehow or other you make them seem so terribly right. This journal, for instance, is so rich, so terribly rich. You say my life is rich but it is only full of events, incidents, experiences, people. What is really rich are these pages on so little material.” “But think what I would make of more material,” I say. “Think of what you said about my novel, that the theme [faithfulness] was an anachronism. That stung me. It was like a criticism of my own life. Yet I cannot commit a crime, and to hurt Hugo would be a crime. Besides, he loves me as nobody has ever loved me.” “You haven’t given anybody else a real chance.” I am remembering this while Hugo is gardening. And to be with him now seems as if I were living in the state of being I was in at twenty. Is it his fault, this youthfulness of our life together? My God, can I ask about Hugo what Henry asks about June? He has filled her. Have I filled Hugo? People have said there is nothing in him but me. His great capacity for losing himself, for love. That touches me. Even last night he talked about his inability to mix with other people, saying that I was the only one he was close to, happy with. This morning in the garden he was in bliss. He wanted me there, near him. He has given me love. And what else? I love the past in him. But all the rest has seeped away. After what I revealed to Henry about my life, I was in despair. It was as if I were a criminal, had been in jail, and were at last free and willing to work honestly and hard. But as soon as people discover your past they will not give you work and expect you to act like a criminal again. I am finished with myself, with my sacrifices and my pity, with what chains me. I am going to make a new beginning. I want passion and pleasure and noise and drunkenness and all evil. But my past reveals itself inexorably, like a tattoo mark. I must build a new shell, wear new costumes.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  will drown out the screams of our bloody and releasing testament to a last chance or hope of change. But hope is counter-revolutionary. Pressure cooks but we have not exploded flowing in and out instead each day like a half-digested mass for a final stake impales our dreams and watering down each trip’s fury is the someday foolish hope that at the next stop some door will open for us to fresh air and light and home. When we realize how much of us is spent in rush hour subways underground no real exit it will matter less what token we pay for change. The Workers Rose On May Day Or Postscript To Karl Marx Down Wall Street the students marched for peace Above, construction workers looking on remembered how it was for them in the old days before their closed shop white security and daddy pays the bills so they climbed down the girders and taught their sons a lesson called Marx is a victim of the generation gap called I grew up the hard way so will you called the limits of a sentimental vision. When the passion play was over and the dust had cleared on Wall Street 500 Union workers together with police had mopped up Foley Square with 2000 of their striking sons who broke and ran before their fathers chains. Look here Karl Marx the apocalyptic vision of amerika! Workers rise and win and have not lost their chains but swing them side by side with the billyclubs in blue securing Wall Street against the striking students. Cables to Rage or I’ve Been Talking on This Street Corner a Hell of a Long Time This is how I came to be loved by loving myself loveless. One day I slipped in the snowy gutter of Brighton Beach and the booted feet passing me by on the curb squished my laundry ticket into the slush and I thought oh fuck it now I’ll never get my clean sheet and I cried bitter tears into the snow under my cheek in that gutter in Brighton Beach Brooklyn where I was living because it was cheap In a furnished room with cooking privileges and there was an old thrown-away mama who lived down the hall a yente who sat all day long in our common kitchen weeping because her children made her live with a schwartze and while she wept she drank up all my Cream Soda every day before I came home. Then she sat and watched me watching my chicken feet stewing on the Fridays when I got paid and she taught me to boil old corn in the husk to make it taste green and fresh. There were not many pleasures in that winter and I loved Cream Soda there were not many people in that winter and I came to hate that old woman. The winter I got fat on stale corn on the cob

• From Henry and June (1986)

  I also know that if June comes back, she would not choose me in preference to Henry. So I can only lose both ways. And I am risking this. Everything pushes me into it. (Allendy tells me it is masochism.) I again seek pain. If I should give up Henry now, of my own free will, it would only be to suffer less. I feel two impulses: one masochistic-and resigned, the other seeking escape. I yearn to find a man who will save me from Henry and this situation. Allendy listens and broods on this. One evening in Henry’s kitchen—he and I alone—we talk ourselves empty. He takes up the subject of my red journal, tells me what faults I have to beware of, and then says, “Do you know what baffles me? When you write about Hugo, you write wonderful things, but at the same time they are unconvincing. You do not tell anything that would cause your admiration or love. It sounds strained.” I immediately become distressed, as if it were Allendy questioning me. “It isn’t for me to be asking questions, Anaïs,” Henry continues, “but listen, I am not being personal now. I myself like Hugo. I think he is fine. But I am just trying to understand your life. I imagine that you married him when your character was not yet formed, or for the sake of your mother and brother.” “No, no, not for that. I loved him. For my mother and brother I should have married in Havana, in society, richly, and I couldn’t do that.” “That day Hugo and I went out for a walk, I tried to grasp him. The truth is, if I had seen only him in Louveciennes, I would have come once, said here’s a nice man, and forgotten all about it.” “Hugo is inarticulate,” I said. “It takes time to know him.” And all the while my old, secret, immense dissatisfaction wells up like a poison, and I keep saying foolish things about the bank subduing him, and how different he is on vacations. Henry curses. “But it’s so obvious that you are superior to him.” Always that hateful phrase—from John, too. “Only in intelligence,” I say. “In everything,” says Henry. “And listen, Anaïs, answer me. You are not just making a sacrifice. You’re not really happy, are you? You want to run away from Hugo at times?” I cannot answer. I bow my head and cry. Henry comes and stands over me. “My life is a mess,” I say. “You’re trying to make me admit something I will not even admit to myself, as you could see by the journal. You sensed how much I want to love Hugo and in just what way I do.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  My original dream was to be married to a genius and serve him, not to be one. When I wrote my book on Lawrence, I wanted Eduardo to collaborate with me. Even now I know he could have written a better one, only it is I who have the energy, the impulse.” Allendy: “You know about the Diana complex, the woman who envies man his sexual power.” “I have felt that, yes, sexually. I would have liked to have been able to possess June and other beautiful women.” There are ideas which Allendy abandons, as though he were sensing my susceptibility. Every time he touches upon my lack of confidence I suffer. I suffer when he touches on my sexual potency, my health, or my feeling of solitude, because there is no one man in whom I could confide entirely. I lie back and I feel an inrush of pain, despair. Allendy has hurt me. I cry. I cry also with shame, with self-pity. I feel weak. I don’t want him to see me cry and I turn away. Then I stand up and face him. His eyes are very soft. I want him to think me a superior woman. I want him to admire me. I like it when he says, “You have suffered a great deal.” When I leave him, I am in a dream, relaxed, warm, as if I had traversed fantastic regions. Eduardo says I am like a hen sitting on her eggs. Allendy: “Why, exactly, were you upset last time?” “I felt that some of the things you said were true.” I would like simply to talk to him about the days I have spent with Henry. After Henry, analysis is distasteful to me. I begin with docility but I feel a growing resistence. I admit to Allendy that I do not hate him but that I enjoyed, in a female way, his having succeeded in making me cry. “You proved stronger than I. I like that.” However, as the hour progresses I begin to feel that he is arousing difficulties which I could easily live down, that he reawakens my fears and doubts. For that, I hate him. As he reads my dreams he notes that they are written with a more than masculine directness. Now I find him probing the masculine elements in me. Do I love Henry because I identify myself with him and his love and possession of June? No, this is false. I think of the night Henry taught me to lie over him and how I disliked it. I was happier when I lay under him, passively. I think of my uncertainty with women, not being sure of the role I want to play.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  'Oh. Tomorrow, maybe?' Xook, Sue. I hate to make dates. I'll just sur- prise you.' She finished her drink. 1 doubt that,' she said. She got up and walked away from me. Til just put on some clothes and come down with you.' GIOVANNrS ROOM 135 She disappeared and I heard the water run- ning. I sat there, still naked, but with my socks on, and poured myseK another brandy. Now I was afraid to go out into that night which had seemed to be calling me only a few mo- ments before. When she came back she was wearing a dress and some real shoes, and she had sort of fluffed up her hair. I had to admit she looked better that way, really more like a girl, like a school- girl. I rose and started putting on my clothes. *You look nice,' I said. There was a great many things she wanted to say, but she forced herself to say nothing. I could scarcely bear to watch the struggle occur- ring in her face, it made me so ashamed. "Maybe youTl be lonely again,' she said, finally. 1 guess I won't mind if you come looking for me.' She wore the strangest smile I had ever seen. It was pained and vindictive and humiliated, but she inexpertly smeared across this grimace a bright, girlish gaiety— as rigid as the skeleton beneath her flabby body. If fate ever allowed Sue to reach me, she would kill me with just that smile. TCeep a candle,' I said, *in the window'—and she opened her door and we passed out into the streets. Chapter Three. I left her at the nearest corner, mumbling some schoolboy excuse, and watched her stolid figure cross the boulevard towards the cafes. I did not know what to do or where to go. I found myself at last along the river, slowly go- ing home. And this was perhaps the first time in my life that death occurred to me as a reality. I thought of the people before me who had looked down at the river and gone to sleep beneath it. I wondered about them. I wondered how they had done it— it, the physical act. I had thought of suicide when I was much younger, as, pos- sibly, we all have, but then it would have been for revenge, it would have been my way of in- forming the world how awfully it had made me suffer. But the silence of the evening, as I wandered home, had nothing to do vnth that storm, that far-off boy. I simply wondered about the dead because their days had ended and I GIOVANNI'S ROOM did not know how I would get through mine. 137

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  mitted, and told her that if she did not regard the for- tunes of the family for her husband's sake, she ought at least to consider her jjoor children. This argument struck her ; she rallied her spirits, and resolved to try by every means to regain her husband's love. Next night, perceiving that he rose from beside her, she also got up, put on her night-wrapper, had her bed made, and sat down to read for hours until his return. When he entered the room, she went up and kissed him, and presented a basin and water to him to wash his hands. Her husband, astonished at this extraordinary behaviour, told her that he had only been to the privy, and that he had no need to wash. She replied, that although it was no great matter, still it was decent to wash one's hands when one came from so nasty a place, thereby wishing to make him know and hate his wicked way of life. As this did not produce any amendment in him, she continued the same course of proceeding for a year, but still without success. This being the case, one night, when she was wait- ing for her husband, who stayed away longer than usual, she took it into her head to go after him. She did so, and looking for him in chamber after chamber, she at last found him in a back lumber-room in bed with the ugliest and dirtiest servant wench about the house. To teach him to quit so handsome and so cleanly a wife for so ugly and frousy a servant, she took some straw and set it on fire in the middle of the room. But seeing that the smoke would as soon smother her husband as awake him, she pulled him by the arm, crying out " Fire ! fire ! " If the husband was ashamed and confounded at being found by so worthy a wife with such a swinish bedfel- low, it was not without great reason. " For more than a year, sir," said his wife, " have I been endeavouring by Fourth Day. \ QUEEN OF NAVARRE. ZZZ gentleness and patience to withdraw you from such a wicked life, and make you comprehend that, while waslv ing the outside, you ought to make the inside clean also ; but when I saw that all my efforts were useless, I be- thought me of employing the element which is to put an end to all things. If this does not correct you, sir, I know not if I shall be able another time to withdraw you from the danger as I have done now. I pray you to consider that there is no greater despair than that of slighted love, and that if I had not had God before my eyes, I could not have been patient so long."

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  Despair weighs down her voice like Pearl River mud caked around the edges her pale eyes scanning the camera for help or explanation unanswered she shifts her search across the watered street, dry-eyed “hard, but not this hard.” Two tow-headed children hurl themselves against her hanging upon her coat like mirrors until a man with ham-like hands pulls her aside snarling “She ain’t got nothing more to say!” and that lie hangs in his mouth like a shred of rotting meat. III I inherited Jackson, Mississippi. For my majority it gave me Emmett Till his 15 years puffed out like bruises on plump boy-cheeks his only Mississippi summer whistling a 21 gun salute to Dixie as a white girl passed him in the street and he was baptized my son forever in the midnight waters of the Pearl. [image file=image_rsrc6HF.jpg] His broken body is the afterimage of my 21st year when I walked through a northern summer my eyes averted from each corner’s photographies newspapers protest posters magazines Police Story, Confidential, True the avid insistence of detail pretending insight or information the length of gash across the dead boy’s loins his grieving mother’s lamentation the severed lips, how many burns his gouged out eyes sewed shut upon the screaming covers louder than life all over the veiled warning, the secret relish of a black child’s mutilated body fingered by street-corner eyes bruise upon livid bruise and wherever I looked that summer I learned to be at home with children’s blood with savored violence with pictures of black broken flesh used, crumpled, and discarded lying amid the sidewalk refuse like a raped woman’s face. A black boy from Chicago whistled on the streets of Jackson, Mississippi testing what he’d been taught was a manly thing to do his teachers ripped his eyes out his sex his tongue and flung him to the Pearl weighted with stone in the name of white womanhood they took their aroused honor back to Jackson and celebrated in a whorehouse the double ritual of white manhood confirmed. IV “If earth and air and water do not judge them who are we to refuse a crust of bread?” Emmett Till rides the crest of the Pearl, whistling 24 years his ghost lay like the shade of a raped woman and a white girl has grown older in costly honor (what did she pay to never know its price?) now the Pearl River speaks its muddy judgment and I can withhold my pity and my bread. “Hard, but not this hard.” Her face is flat with resignation and despair with ancient and familiar sorrows a woman surveying her crumpled future as the white girl besmirched by Emmett’s whistle never allowed her own tongue without power or conclusion unvoiced she stands adrift in the ruins of her honor and a man with an executioner’s face pulls her away. Within my eyes the flickering afterimages of a nightmare rain a woman wrings her hands beneath the weight of agonies remembered

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “Come upstairs”, I coaxed and she came, and we went to bed: I found her mad with desire; but after I had brought her in an hour to hysteria and she lay in my arms crying, she suddenly said: “he promised to come home early this afternoon and I said I’d have a surprise for him. When he finds us together like this, it’ll be a surprise, won’t it?” “But you’re mad!” I cried, getting out of bed in a flash, “I shall never be able to visit you in Denver if we have a row here!” “That’s true”, she said as if in a dream, “that’s true: it’s a pity: I’d love to have seen his foolish face stretched to wonder; but you’re right. Hurry!” she cried and was out of the room in a twinkling. When she returned, I was dressed. “Go downstairs and wait for me”, she commanded, “on our sofa. If he knocks, open the door to him; that’ll be a surprise, though not so great a one as I had planned”, she added, laughing shrilly. “Are you going without kissing me?” she cried when I was at the door, “Well, go, it’s all right, go! for if I felt your lips again, I might keep you.” I went downstairs and in a few moments she followed me. “I can’t bear you to go!” she cried, “how partings hurt!” she whispered. “Why should we part again, love mine?” and she looked at me with rapt eyes. “This life holds nothing worth having but love; let us make love deathless, you and I, going together to death. What do we lose? Nothing! This world is an empty shell! Come with me, love, and we’ll meet Death together!” “Oh, I want to do such a lot of things first”, I exclaimed, “Death’s empire is eternal; but this brief taste of life, the adventure of it, the change of it, the huge possibilities of it beckon me—I can’t leave it.” “The change!” she cried with dilating nostrils while her eyes darkened, “the change!” “You are determined to misunderstand me,” I cried, “is not every day a change?” “I am weary”, she cried, “and beaten: I can only beg you not to forget your promise to come—ah!” and she caught and kissed me on the mouth: “I shall die with your name on my lips”, she said, and turned to bury her face in the sofa cushion. I went: what else was there to do? I saw them off at the station: Lorna had made me promise to write often, and swore she would write every day and she did send me short notes daily for a fortnight: then came gaps ever lengthening: “Denver society was pleasant and a Mr. Wilson, a student, was assiduous: he comes every day”, she wrote. Excuses finally, little hasty notes, and in two months her letters were formal, cold; in three months they had ceased altogether.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  205 GIOVANNI'S ROOM But his friends tell him how rich Guillaume is, how he is a silly old queen, how much he can get out of Guillaume if he will only be smart. No one appears on the boulevards to speak to him, to save him. He feels that he is dying. Then the hour comes when he must go back to Guillaume's bar. He walks there alone. He stands outside awhile. He wants to turn away, to run away. But there is no place to run. He looks up the long, dark, curving street as though he were looking for someone. But there is no one there. He goes into the bar. Guillaume sees him at once and discreetly motions him up- stairs. He climbs the stairs. His legs are weak. He finds himself in Guillaume's rooms, sur- rounded by Guillaimie's silks, colors, perfumes, staring at Guillaume's bed. Then Guillaume enters and Giovanni tries to smile. They have a drink. Guillaume is pre- cipitate, flabby, and moist, and, with each touch of his hand, Giovanni shrinks further and more furiously away. Guillaume disappears to change his clothes and comes back in his theatrical dressing gown. He wants Giovanni to undress Perhaps at this moment Giovanni realizes that he cannot go through with it, that his will cannot carry him through. He remembers the job. He tries to talk, to be practical, to be rea- sonable, but, of course, it is too late. Guillaume seems to surround him Uke the sea itself. And I think that Giovanni, tortured into a state Uke madness, feels himself going under, is over- — James Baldwin 206 come, and Guillaume has his will. I think if this had not happened, Giovanni would not have killed htm.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  James Baldwin 152 work, it was insane work, but I did not have the energy or the heart to stop him. In a way he was doing it for me, to prove his love for me. He wanted me to stay in the room with him. Perhaps he was trying, with his own strength, to push back the encroaching walls, without, how- ever, having the walls fall down. Now—now, of course, I see something very beautiful in those days, which were such tor- ture then. I felt, then, that Giovanni was drag- ging me with him to the bottom of the sea. He could not find a job. I knew that he was not really looking for one, that he could not. He had been bruised, so to speak, so badly that the eyes of strangers lacerated him like salt. He could not endure being very far from me for very long. I was the only person on God's cold, green earth who cared about him, who knew his speech and silence, knew his arms, and did not carry a knife. The burden of his salvation seemed to be on me and I could not endure it. And the money dwindled—it went, it did not dwindle, very fast. Giovanni tried to keep panic out of his voice when he asked me each morn- ing, 'Are you going to American Express today?* 'Certainly,* I would answer. T)o you think your money will be there to- day?' 1 don't know.' What are they doing with your money in New York?' Still, still I could not act. I went to Jacques GIOVANNI'S ROOM 153 and borrowed ten thousand francs from him again. I told him that Giovanni and I were going through a difficult time but that it would be over soon. 'He was very nice about it/ said Giovanni. Tie can, sometimes, be a very nice man/ We were sitting on a terrace near Odeon. I looked at Giovanni and thought for a moment how nice it would be if Jacques would take him off my hands. *What are you thinking?* asked Giovanni. For a moment I was frightened and I was also ashamed. 1 was thinking/ I said, 'that I'd like to get out of Paris.' *Where would you like to go?' he asked. *0h, I don't know. Anywhere. Fm sick of this city/ I said suddenly, with a violence that sur- prised us both. Tm tired of this ancient pile of stone and all these goddam smug people. Every- thing you put your hands on here comes to pieces in your hands.' That/ said Giovanni gravely, 'is true.' He was watching me with a terrible intensity. I forced myself to look at him and smile. 'Wouldn't you like to get out of here for awhile?' I asked.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  I stand at the window of this great house in the south of France as night falls, the night which is leading me to the most terrible morning of my life. I have a drink in my hand, there is a bottle at my elbow. I watch my reflection in the darkening gleam of the window pane. My reflec- tion is tall, perhaps rather like an arrow, my blond hair gleams. My face is like a face you have seen many times. My ancestors conquered a continent, pushing across death-laden plains, until they came to an ocean which faced away from Europe into a darker past. I may be drunk by morning but that will not do any good. I shall take the train to Paris any- way. The train will be the same, the people, struggling for comfort and, even, dignity on the straight-backed, wooden, third-class seats will be the same, and I will be the same. We will ride through the same changing countryside northward, leaving behind the olive trees and James Baldwin 8 the sea and all of the glory of the stormy south- em sky, into the mist and rain of Paris. Some- one will offer to share a sandwich with me, some- one will offer me a sip of wine, someone will ask me for a match. People will be roaming the corridors outside, looking out of windows, look- ing in at us. At each stop, recrxiits in their baggy brown uniforms and colored hats will open the compartment door to ask Complet? We will all nod Yes, like conspirators, smiling faintly at each other as they continue through the train. Two or three of them will end up before our compartment door, shouting at each other in their heavy, ribald voices, smoking their dread- ful army cigarettes. There will be a girl sitting opposite me who will wonder why I have not been flirting with her, who will be set on edge by the presence of the recruits. It will all be the same, only I will be stiller. And the countryside is still tonight, this coun- tryside reflected through my image in the pane. This house is just outside a small summer resort —which is still empty, the season has not yet begun. It is on a small hill, one can look down on the lights of the town and hear the thud of the sea. My girl, Hella, and I rented it in Paris, from photographs, some months ago. Now she has been gone a week. She is on the high seas now, on her way back to America. I can see her, very elegant, tense, and glit- tering, surrounded by the light which fills the salon of the ocean liner, drinking rather too

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  It rips us open, dislodging a backlog of old grief in the process. Together, the old aches and fresh despair feel like a tsunami of emotions that will drain our very life force if we don’t protect ourselves. But there’s no real protection from painful feelings, and as we’ve been exploring, the act of holding them back is equally painful and draining. It also takes an enormous amount of work—energy that’s far better spent healing rather than resisting. Plus, as the Star Trek wisdom goes, “resistance is futile.” One way or another, the waves of pain will eventually hit you. Managing those waves one at a time is far easier. Grief isn’t just about death, either. The litany of losses we each face in a lifetime is too numerous to count. We endure abuse. Friendships end. We get divorced, lose our jobs and identities. We’ll lose our connection to self and wonder why we’re even here in the first place. We become chronically or gravely ill—even when we do our best not to. We mess up in unimaginable ways because unimaginable things happen to us. The shades of loss are many, and we need to mourn it all—big and small. The point is, no one gets out of life scratch-free or stain resistant. If we’re lucky enough to be alive, good times and bad times are inevitable. Expecting only the good times makes us emotionally unprepared for the ever-changing, uncertain nature of life. And as Carole, my therapist, would say, “It is what it is, and you don’t have to like it.” Fantastic! I don’t. But in our perfection-driven and grief-phobic society, few of us are taught how to respond to loss. Instead, we’re taught how to avoid pain. The thing that makes it such a big, unwieldy emotion is that, similar to anger, grief encapsulates so many other emotions, too (anxiety, guilt, rage, shame—basically a bunch of the “unbecoming” stuff). We don’t avoid grief just because it’s grief; we avoid it because of everything associated with it—the hysterical, the historical, and the downright horrifying. Believe it or not, this avoidance is as natural as the sun rising. We’re biologically wired to behave this way. From an evolutionary perspective, part of our development was to learn which situations to avoid in order to survive—stuff like poisonous berries and venomous snakes, but also emotional pain (danger) and isolation (exile from the community we needed to stay alive). So there’s a part of this behavior that comes from an essential place: survival. Avoidance has another jagged silver lining, beyond primal instincts: burying the source of our suffering in chaos often creates dramatic fires that feel easier to extinguish. That way, we can channel our pain into situational soap operas that, weirdly, also serve us.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  I hate you! Stop it, Kris. Don’t ruin his birthday with your hysterics. Pull yourself together. I ran the sink and submerged my hands in ice-cold water to shock my system back into submission. Still no composure. I prayed to the God who had clearly forgotten me, but that only made me wail more. I tried deep breathing. The air refused to fill my lungs. With each sob, I felt like I was being ripped apart from seam to seam. Something had to save me before total annihilation. That’s when rage kicked in. Before I knew what hit me, my hand was slapping my face. What the hell are you doing? Finally, the pain from my stinging cheeks overtook the anguish in my heart. At last, relief. Field note from grief: always carry a good tube of concealer and some powder. You’ll need it. I fixed my makeup and returned to the table. Shocked, stunned, but pulled together. I acted like nothing happened. I made light conversation. How good is this lightly floured zucchini blossom? I laughed when appropriate and drank wine (but not too much, fearing I might lose it again). Despite the disturbing interlude of self-abuse, I even enjoyed much of the remaining evening. Grandma wouldn’t have approved of my methods, but at least she’d give me points for carrying cover-up and getting on with a grand old time. A COCKTAIL OF SHAME The next morning I woke up with a big AR (agonizing reappraisal) hangover. Even though I was the only one who witnessed my unhinged spectacle, I was sick with shame. Why couldn’t I be the type of person who didn’t do insane things like that? Instead, I felt like Annette Bening’s character in the film American Beauty. A positive-thinking, obsessed Realtor who breaks down in a self-slapping fit when she fails to sell a house. “You big baby! Stop it!” she screams, before collecting herself and silently walking out. But like Annette’s character, this house was my everything, too. At least no one saw me, I thought. I can keep this pathetic meltdown to myself. Lock it up. Throw away the key. Smile. Yeah, right. Who was I kidding? A few weeks later, our Bucket List Tour brought us all to Newport, to celebrate my birthday. By this time, I really thought I could keep a lid on any outbursts. I’d talked about it in therapy. Did a bunch of energy work, yada yada. In my mind, I was all set. After a lovely dinner (with no interludes), I was standing outside the restaurant waiting for the valet to bring the car around. My parents were using the restroom; Brian was searching through his pockets for a tip. I’m so grateful we’re here together, I thought. And bonus points for not losing my shit. Clearly, I believed I was growing. Not so fast, Speed Racer. As the car pulled up, three drunk dudes tumbled out of the lobby.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  It was easy to see that the boom and inflation period had been based at first on the extraordinary growth of the country through the immigration and trade that had followed the Civil War. But the Franco-German war had wasted wealth prodigiously, deranged trade too, and diverted commerce into new channels. France and then England first felt the shock: London had to call in monies lent to American railways and other enterprises. Bit by bit even American optimism was overcome for immigration in 1871 and 1872 fell off greatly and the foreign calls for cash exhausted our banks. The crash came in 1873; nothing like it was seen again in these States till the slump of 1907 which led to the founding of the Federal Reserve Bank. Willie’s fortune melted almost in a moment: this mortgage and that, had to be met and could only be met by forced sales with no buyers except at minimum values. When I talked to him, he was almost in despair; no money: no property: all lost; the product of three years’ hard work and successful speculation all swept away. Could I help him? If not, he was ruined. He told me then he had drawn all he could from my father: naturally I promised to help him; but first I had to pay the Gregorys and to my astonishment he begged me to let him have the money instead. “Mrs. Gregory and all of ’em like you”, he pleaded, “they can wait, I cannot; I know of a purchase that could be made that would make me rich again!” I realised then that he was selfish through and through, conscienceless in egotistic greed. I gave up my faint hope that he would ever repay me: henceforth he was a stranger to me and one that I did not even respect, though he had some fine, ingratiating qualities. I left him to walk across the river and in a few blocks met Rose. She looked prettier than ever and I turned and walked with her, praising her beauty to the skies and indeed she deserved it; short green sleeves, I remember, set off her exquisite, plump, white arms. I promised her some books and made her say she would read them; indeed I was astonished by the warmth of her gratitude: she told me it was sweet of me, gave me her eyes and we parted the best of friends, with just a hint of warmer relationship in the future. That evening I paid the Gregorys, Willie’s debt and my own and—did not send him the balance of what I possessed as I had promised; but instead, a letter telling him I had preferred to cancel his debt to the Gregorys.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  James Baldwin 208 this. Jacques, who was in constant touch with Giovanni's lawyer and in constant touch with me, had seen Giovanni once. He told me what I knew already, that there was nothing I, or anyone, could do for Giovanni anymore. Perhaps he wanted to die. He pleaded guilty, with robbery as the motive. The circumstances under which Guillaume had fired him received great play in the press. And from the press one received the impression that Guillaume had been a good-hearted, a perhaps somewhat er- ratic philanthropist who had had the bad judg- ment to befriend the hardened and ungrateful adventurer, Giovanni. Then the case drifted downward from the headlines. Giovanni was taken to prison to await trial. And Hella and I came here. I may have thought— I am sure I thought in the begin- ning— that, though I could do nothing for Gio- vanni, I might, perhaps, be able to do some- thing for Hella. I must have hoped that there would be something Hella could do for me. And this might have been possible if the days had not dragged by, for me, like days in prison. I could not get Giovanni out of my mind, I was at the mercy of the bulletins which sporadically arrived from Jacques. All that I remember of the autumn is waiting for Giovanni to come to trial. Then, at last, he came to trial, was found guilty, and placed under sentence of death. All winter long I counted the days. And the night- mare of this house began. GIOVANNI'S ROOM 209 Much has been written of love turning to hatred, of the heart growing cold with the death of love. It is a remarkable process. It is far more terrible than anything I have ever read about it, more terrible than anything I will ever be able to say.

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

  GREGORY. (Hom. 39. in Ev.) Or else; The evil spirits lay siege to the soul, as it goes forth from the body, for being seized with the love of the flesh, they caress it with delusive pleasures. They surround it with a trench, because bringing all its wickedness which it has committed before the eyes of its mind, they close confine it to the company of its own damnation, that being caught in the very extremity of life, it may see by what enemies it is blockaded, yet be unable to find any way of escape, because it can no longer do good works, since those which it might once have done it despised. On every side also they inclose the soul when its iniquities rise up before it, not only in deed but also in word and thought, that she who before in many ways greatly enlarged herself in wickedness, should now at the end be straitened every way in judgment. Then indeed the soul by the very condition of its guilt is laid prostrate on the ground, while its flesh which it believed to be its life is bid to return to dust. Then its children fall in death, when all unlawful thoughts which only proceed from it, are in the last punishment of life scattered abroad. These may also be signified by the stones. For the corrupt mind when to a corrupt thought it adds one more corrupt, places one stone upon another. But when the soul is led to its doom, the whole structure of its thoughts is rent asunder. But the wicked soul God ceases not to visit with His teaching, sometimes with the scourge and sometimes with a miracle; that the truth which it knew not it may hear, and though still despising it, may return pricked to the heart in sorrow, or overcome with mercies may be ashamed at the evil which it has done. But because it knows not the time of its visitation, at the end of life it is given over to its enemies, that with them it may be joined together in the bond of everlasting damnation. 19:45–4845. And he went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold therein, and them that bought; 46. Saying unto them, It is written, My house is the house of prayer: but ye have made it a den of thieves. 47. And he taught daily in the temple. But the Chief Priests and the Scribes and the chief of the people sought to destroy him, 48. And could not find what they might do: for all the people were very attentive to hear him. GREGORY. (ut sup.) When He had related the evils that were to come upon the city, He straightway entered the temple, that He might cast out them that bought and sold in it. Shewing that the destruction of the people arose chiefly from the guilt of the priests.

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

  I answer: it is rightly said that God predestines men. We have shown that all things are ruled by divine providence (Q. 22, Art. 4), and that providence ordains things to their end (Q. 22, Arts. 1 and 2). Now the end to which God ordains creatures is twofold. There is, first, the end which exceeds the proportion and the capacity of created nature. This is eternal life, which consists in the vision of the divine essence, which is beyond the nature of any creature, as we said in Q. 12, Art. 4. There is, secondly, the end which is proportionate to created nature, which a created thing may attain by means of its own natural power. Now when a thing cannot attain something by its own natural power, it must be directed to it by another, as an arrow is directed to its mark by an archer. Properly speaking, then, although a rational creature is capable of eternal life, he is brought to this life by God. The reason why he is brought to eternal life must therefore pre-exist in God, since the reason why anything is ordained to its end lies in God, and we have said that this is providence. The reason which exists in the mind of an agent is, as it were, a pre-existence in him of the the thing which he intends to do. We give the name of “ predestination ” to the reason why a rational creature is brought to eternal life, because to destine means to bring. It is plain, then, that predestination is a part of providence, if we consider it in relation to its objects. On the first point: by predetermination the Damascene means the imposition of a necessity such as occurs in natural things predetermined to a single end. His next words make this clear —“ God does not will malice, nor compel virtue. ” This does not make predestination impossible. On the second point: irrational creatures are not capable of the end which exceeds the capacity of human nature. Hence they are not properly said to be predestined, although we do speak loosely of predestination in relation to other ends. On the third point: predestination applies to angels as well as to men, even though they have never known misery. A movement is defined by its terminus ad quem, not by its terminus a quo. To be made white means the same thing whether one who is made white was formerly black, pale, or red. Predestination also means the same thing whether or not one is predestined to eternal life from a state of misery. On the fourth point: their predestination is revealed to some by special privilege. But to reveal it in every case would be improvident. Those who are not predestined would despair, and security would engender negligence in those who are. ARTICLE TWO

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  It was easy to see that the boom and inflation period had been based at first on the extraordinary growth of the country through the immigration and trade that had followed the Civil War. But the Franco-German war had wasted wealth prodigiously, deranged trade too, and diverted commerce into new channels. France and then England first felt the shock: London had to call in monies lent to American railways and other enterprises. Bit by bit even American optimism was overcome for immigration in 1871 and 1872 fell off greatly and the foreign calls for cash exhausted our banks. The crash came in 1873; nothing like it was seen again in these States till the slump of 1907 which led to the founding of the Federal Reserve Bank. Willie’s fortune melted almost in a moment: this mortgage and that, had to be met and could only be met by forced sales with no buyers except at minimum values. When I talked to him, he was almost in despair; no money: no property: all lost; the product of three years’ hard work and successful speculation all swept away. Could I help him? If not, he was ruined. He told me then he had drawn all he could from my father: naturally I promised to help him; but first I had to pay the Gregorys and to my astonishment he begged me to let him have the money instead. “Mrs. Gregory and all of ’em like you”, he pleaded, “they can wait, I cannot; I know of a purchase that could be made that would make me rich again!” I realised then that he was selfish through and through, conscienceless in egotistic greed. I gave up my faint hope that he would ever repay me: henceforth he was a stranger to me and one that I did not even respect, though he had some fine, ingratiating qualities. I left him to walk across the river and in a few blocks met Rose. She looked prettier than ever and I turned and walked with her, praising her beauty to the skies and indeed she deserved it; short green sleeves, I remember, set off her exquisite, plump, white arms. I promised her some books and made her say she would read them; indeed I was astonished by the warmth of her gratitude: she told me it was sweet of me, gave me her eyes and we parted the best of friends, with just a hint of warmer relationship in the future. That evening I paid the Gregorys, Willie’s debt and my own and—did not send him the balance of what I possessed as I had promised; but instead, a letter telling him I had preferred to cancel his debt to the Gregorys.