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 163 of 267 · 20 per page

• From Post Office (1971)

  11 But then it began raining again. The Stone had me out on a thing called Sunday Collection, and if you’re thinking of church, forget it. You picked up a truck at West Garage and a clipboard. The clipboard told you what streets, what time you were to be there, and how to get to the next pickup box. Like 2:32 p.m., Beecher and Avalon, L3 R2 (which meant left three blocks, right two) 2:35 p.m., and you wondered how you could pick up one box, then drive five blocks in three minutes and be finished cleaning out another box. Sometimes it took you over three minutes to clean out a Sunday box. And the boards weren’t accurate. Sometimes they counted an alley as a street and sometimes they counted a street as an alley. You never knew where you were. It was one of those continuous rains, not hard, but it never stopped. The territory I was driving was new to me but at least it was light enough to read the clipboard. But as it got darker it was harder to read (by the dashboard light) or locate the pickup boxes. Also the water was rising in the streets, and several times I had stepped into water up to my ankles. Then the dashboard light went out. I couldn’t read the clipboard. I had no idea where I was. Without the clipboard I was like a man lost in the desert. But the luck wasn’t all bad—yet. I had two boxes of matches and before I made for each new pickup box, I would light a match, memorize the directions and drive on. For once, I had outwitted Adversity, that Jonstone up there in the sky, looking down, watching me. Then I took a corner, leaped out to unload the box and when I got back the clipboard was GONE! Jonstone in the Sky, have Mercy! I was lost in the dark and the rain. Was I some kind of idiot, actually? Did I make things happen to myself? It was possible. It was possible that I was subnormal, that I was lucky just to be alive. The clipboard had been wired to the dashboard. I figured it must have flown out of the truck on the last sharp turn. I got out of the truck with my pants rolled up around my knees and started wading through a foot of water. It was dark. I’d never find the god damned thing! I walked along, lighting matches—but

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

  Inside a single-use life, there are no second chances. That’s a lie but we live it. We live anyway. That’s a lie but the boy opens his eyes. The room a grey-blue smear. There’s music coming through the walls. Chopin, the only thing she listens to. The boy climbs out of bed and the corners of the room tilt on an axis, like a ship. But he knows this too is a trick he’s making of himself. In the hallway, where the spilled lamp reveals a black mess of broken vinyl 45s, he looks for her. In her room, the covers on the bed are pulled off, the pink lace comforter piled on the floor. The night-light, only halfway in its socket, flickers and flickers. The piano drips its little notes, like rain dreaming itself whole. He makes his way to the living room. The record player by the love seat skips as it spins a record long driven to its end, the static intensifying as he approaches. But Chopin goes on, somewhere beyond reach. He follows it, head tilted for the source. And there, on the kitchen table, beside the gallon of milk on its side, the liquid coming down in white strings like a tablecloth in a nightmare, a red eye winking. The stereo she bought at Goodwill, the one that fits in her apron pocket as she works, the one she slides under her pillowcase during rainstorms, the Nocturnes growing louder after each thunderclap. It sits in the pool of milk, as if the music was composed for it alone. In the boy’s single-use body, anything’s possible. So he covers the eye with his finger, to make sure he’s still real, then he takes the radio. The music in his hands dripping milk, he opens the front door. It is summer. The strays beyond the railroad are barking, which means something, a rabbit or possum, has just slipped out of its life and into the world. The piano notes seep through the boy’s chest as he makes his way to the backyard. Because something in him knew she’d be there. That she was waiting. Because that’s what mothers do. They wait. They stand still until their children belong to someone else. Sure enough, there she is, standing at the far end of the little chain-link yard, beside a flattened basketball, her back to him. Her shoulders are narrower than he remembers from hours ago, when she tucked him into bed, her eyes glazed and pink. Her nightgown, made from an oversized T-shirt, is torn in the back, exposing her shoulder blade, white as a halved apple. A cigarette floats to the left of her head. He walks up to her. He walks up to his mother with music in his arms, shaking. She’s hunched, distorted, tiny, as if crushed by the air alone. “I hate you,” he says.

• From Branded: Brainwashed Inside NXIVM (2020)

  467 00:22:17,202 --> 00:22:20,806 If you are not uncomfortable, you are not working on anything. 468 00:22:20,906 --> 00:22:24,576 Your lives should be a life of discomfort if you want to grow. 469 00:22:24,676 --> 00:22:27,946 If you don't want to grow, hey, satiate away, your choice. 470 00:22:29,715 --> 00:22:31,917 [Narrator] The classes are named intensives-- 471 00:22:32,017 --> 00:22:34,052 for good reason. 472 00:22:34,152 --> 00:22:35,420 [Kelly] Show up at 8:00, 473 00:22:35,520 --> 00:22:37,155 you may not leave until 8 or 9 o'clock at night. 474 00:22:37,255 --> 00:22:40,959 So it's an intense amount of time with very few breaks. 475 00:22:43,428 --> 00:22:46,064 You were just head down in the curriculum. 476 00:22:46,164 --> 00:22:48,934 I felt great. Everyone around me was excited. 477 00:22:49,034 --> 00:22:49,768 They all felt great. 478 00:22:49,868 --> 00:22:51,737 We all felt like we were learning. 479 00:22:51,837 --> 00:22:53,205 [Narrator] But the members don't realize 480 00:22:53,305 --> 00:22:57,809 there's a secret purpose behind these marathon sessions. 481 00:22:57,909 --> 00:23:01,446 When you force human beings to sit in a room for hours, 482 00:23:01,546 --> 00:23:05,584 doing tasks that are psychologically burdensome, 483 00:23:05,684 --> 00:23:07,419 you're breaking them down. 484 00:23:07,519 --> 00:23:10,122 You mess with their sense of reality, 485 00:23:10,222 --> 00:23:11,823 with their sense of time. 486 00:23:11,923 --> 00:23:15,660 And they start to lose willpower. 487 00:23:15,761 --> 00:23:18,296 They stop feeling as if they're individuals, 488 00:23:18,397 --> 00:23:21,466 and they start feeling as if they're not that important, 489 00:23:21,566 --> 00:23:22,834 that they're less than human, 490 00:23:22,934 --> 00:23:26,872 so that you can ultimately control them. 491 00:23:26,972 --> 00:23:29,074 [Narrator] One of NXIVM's most effective techniques 492 00:23:29,174 --> 00:23:33,779 is called Exploration of Meaning, or EM. 493 00:23:33,879 --> 00:23:36,314 Basically, an EM is to help you 494 00:23:36,415 --> 00:23:39,317 look at a bad habit that you wanna break 495 00:23:39,418 --> 00:23:42,888 and figure out where it came from, and break that belief. 496 00:23:44,956 --> 00:23:47,926 [Narrator] But some find the EM technique extremely dangerous 497 00:23:48,026 --> 00:23:51,062 if not administered by a mental health professional. 498 00:23:53,465 --> 00:23:59,237 [Rick] What Raniere did is he cobbled together his program. 499 00:23:59,337 --> 00:24:01,306 He wasn't an original thinker. 500 00:24:01,406 --> 00:24:05,844 In fact, Scientology was a major source 501 00:24:05,944 --> 00:24:08,246 for what he called the Exploration of Meaning, 502 00:24:08,346 --> 00:24:09,781 or the EM's. 503 00:24:09,881 --> 00:24:13,819 That was very much like what Scientology calls auditing, 504 00:24:13,919 --> 00:24:19,157 where there's this kind of Q&A, to dig down and identify issues. 505 00:24:19,257 --> 00:24:21,560 It's a way of knowing all 506 00:24:21,660 --> 00:24:24,796 the vulnerabilities of an individual. 507 00:24:24,896 --> 00:24:29,668 And it can be a very practical tool of control. 508 00:24:29,768 --> 00:24:34,773 Making them feel very broken and very open to

• 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. I walked into the street, breathing in the fresh air and setting off in what I hoped was the direction of the Nevsky Cathedral, from which I was sure I could find my way home. As I walked I remembered other times I had felt impatience or exasperation with my students’ private lives, with their outsized passions and griefs, and I felt this even as I knew that the perspective they lacked couldn’t be willed, that it came only and inevitably with time. He would be all right, I thought again, comforting myself by thinking it, though I thought too that he wasn’t altogether mistaken in what he had said, that there would be loss in loving another, that the perspective that limited his grief would also limit his love, which, having taken the measure of its bounds, he could never again imagine as boundless. And I had thought this before, too, how much we lose in gaining this truer vision of ourselves, the vision I had urged upon my student, the vision it was my obligation to urge, though it carried us away from our dreams of ourselves, from the grandeur of novels and poems which it was also my obligation to impart.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  But I didn’t let him kiss me, I would kiss him later but it wasn’t the right way to begin, I grabbed his throat to stop him. He had closed his eyes but they opened now in surprise, and I held his gaze as I tightened my grip, not much, not to hurt him or frighten him but to assert something, to chastise him a little for having made the first move, though he had had to, we both knew, it had given me permission to begin. There was a kind of negotiation as we looked at each other, a question, and then he moaned low in his throat and closed his eyes again, and I knew that it would work between us. I turned his head a little, tilting it first to the left and then the right, as if I were examining him, but really I was examining myself, my willingness to master him as much as his willingness to be mastered. And then I pushed him away and dropped my hand and told him brusquely to get undressed. He took another step back and lifted his hand to the zipper of his hoodie, which he drew down slowly, glancing at me and then looking away, seductive or shy. His chest was boyish, slender and almost hairless, his nipples small and dark and already tight with excitement. He was slow with his belt, too, and with the zipper of his jeans, not quite performing for me as he undid them and pushed his jeans and his briefs down to reveal his cock, which was already hard and sprang out, eager and comic. He posed for a moment, showing it off. It was thickish and hooded, the long foreskin even though he was hard drawn over the head. He pulled it back now, stroking himself two or three times before I told him to stop and he dropped his hand. I had spoken sternly, but I was glad to see it, that he was so eager, that he was enjoying himself. I wouldn’t touch it, it was part of my role almost to pretend it wasn’t there; I want to be a hole, he had typed in our chat, I want to be nothing but a hole. It was important to seem like I didn’t care about his pleasure but I did care about it, very much, I wanted him to be hard. I took a step toward him, claiming ground and coming too close; I could feel his heat through the fabric of my shirt. We looked at each other, and before he dropped his eyes I felt an upwelling of tenderness for him.

• From The History of World Literature (2007)

  172 Lecture 40: Brecht’s The Good Woman of Setzuan Brecht’s The Good Woman of Setzuan Lecture 40 Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Woman of Setzuan … was written between 1938 and 1940, while Brecht was living in many places. … Brecht is another of the theatricalists, or the anti-illusionists. … He uses many of the same techniques as Pirandello to explode the Realist play … but … for … social purposes. T he plot of Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Woman of Setzuan involves the gods giving Shen Te money in exchange for her hospitality—money which she uses to buy a tobacco shop, hoping to use the pro ¿ ts for more charity. Shen Te is so overwhelmed by needy people that she has to invent a ruthless cousin, Shui Ta (herself in disguise), who runs the shop so successfully that he eventually turns it into a sweatshop, employing many people. Shen Te still hopes to use the pro ¿ ts for good, but there are so many needs that she is forced to bring Shui Ta back more and more often for longer periods of time, until at length Shui Ta is tried for the murder of Shen Te. At the trial she reveals herself and confesses that all she has done she did to help her neighbors, love her lover, and keep her unborn child from want. She tells the gods, who are acting as judges at the trial, that they have created an impossible situation in which it is too dif ¿ cult to be both good and successful. The gods, however, declare themselves satis ¿ ed with their experiment and sail off, telling Shen Te to be good. She turns to the audience to ask them what can be done. Brecht, like Pirandello, is a theatricalist, using similar techniques to explode Realism in the theater. A. Where Pirandello uses his techniques to raise Existential questions, Brecht uses his for social purposes. Brecht had become a Marxist in the 1920s and from then on used his plays to point up contradictions in the capitalist system. In the process, he effectively reinvented the techniques of modern theater. Brecht’s plays are didactic; beyond that, he wants us to leave the theater wanting to do something, to put our new knowledge into action. Traditional plays using Aristotelian formulae invite emotional identi ¿ cation with

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

  In a world myriad as ours, the gaze is a singular act: to look at something is to fill your whole life with it, if only briefly. Once, after my fourteenth birthday, crouched between the seats of an abandoned school bus in the woods, I filled my life with a line of cocaine. A white letter “I” glowed on the seat’s peeling leather. Inside me the “I” became a switchblade—and something tore. My stomach forced up but it was too late. In minutes, I became more of myself. Which is to say the monstrous part of me got so large, so familiar, I could want it. I could kiss it. The truth is none of us are enough enough. But you know this already. The truth is I came here hoping for a reason to stay. Sometimes those reasons are small: the way you pronounce spaghetti as “bahgeddy.” It’s late in the season—which means the winter roses, in full bloom along the national bank, are suicide notes. Write that down. They say nothing lasts forever but they’re just scared it will last longer than they can love it. Are you there? Are you still walking? They say nothing lasts forever and I’m writing you in the voice of an endangered species. The truth is I’m worried they will get us before they get us. Tell me where it hurts. You have my word. — Back in Hartford, I used to wander the streets at night by myself. Sleepless, I’d get dressed, climb through the window—and just walk. Some nights I would hear an animal shuffling, unseen, behind garbage bags, or the wind unexpectedly strong overhead, a rush of leaves clicking down, the scrape of branches from a maple out of sight. But mostly, there were only my footsteps on the pavement steaming with fresh rain, the scent of decade-old tar, or the dirt on a baseball field under a few stars, the gentle brush of grass on the soles of my Vans on a highway median. But one night I heard something else. Through the lightless window of a street-level apartment, a man’s voice in Arabic. I recognized the word Allah. I knew it was a prayer by the tone he used to lift it, as if the tongue was the smallest arm from which a word like that could be offered. I imagined it floating above his head as I sat there on the curb, waiting for the soft clink I knew was coming. I wanted the word to fall, like a screw in a guillotine, but it didn’t. His voice, it went higher and higher, and my hands, they grew pinker with each inflection. I watched my skin intensify until, at last, I looked up—and it was dawn. It was over. I was blazed in the blood of light. Salat al-fajr: a prayer before sunrise. “Whoever prays the dawn prayer in congregation,” said the Prophet Muhammad, “it is as if he had prayed the whole night long.”

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

  blue again. Dwight put on another coat. It took him three cans before he was done, but the tree stayed white. By the next day, when we decorated the tree, the needles had already begun to drop off. Every time you touched a limb it set off a little cascade of them. No one said anything. My mother hung a few balls, then sat down and stared at the tree. The needles kept falling, pattering softly down on the white crepe paper spread around the trunk. By the time Norma and Skipper arrived the tree was half bare. They had driven up together from Seattle; Kenneth had to work, but he was all set to join us the following day. Norma must have told Bobby Crow she was coming. He showed up just after dinner that night, restless and grim, silent when Skipper tried to banter with him. He took Norma somewhere, then drove her back a couple of hours later. But she didn’t get out of the car. The rest of us sat around in the living room, and watched the lights blink on the tree, and talked about anything but the fact that Norma was still outside with Bobby Crow. The lights didn’t blink at different times like twinkling stars but all at once, flashing on and off like a neon sign outside a roadhouse. I was in bed when Norma finally came inside and ran to her room, giving long ululating cries that appalled me and made me cringe in anticipation. I heard Pearl try to soothe her, then my mother joined them and I heard her voice too, lower than Pearl’s, the two of them speaking sometimes in turn and sometimes together so that their voices formed one murmurous braid of sound. Skipper shifted in his bed but slept on, and in time, as Norma’s keening subsided, I lay back and went to sleep myself. KENNETH PULLED UP the next afternoon and by dinnertime we all hated him. He knew it, and relished it, even sought it out. As soon as he stepped out of his Austin Healey, he started complaining about the remoteness of the camp and the discomfort of the drive and the imprecision of the directions Norma had left behind for him. He had a fussy, aggrieved voice and thin disappointed lips. He wore a golf cap and perforated leather gloves that snapped across the wrist. He removed one of his gloves as he complained, tugging delicately at each finger, then going on to the next until the glove came free. He took off the other just as slowly and carefully, then turned to Norma. “Don’t I get a kiss?”

• From Branded: Brainwashed Inside NXIVM (2020)

  1229 01:00:48,177 --> 01:00:51,047 [Narrator] The story of one alleged grooming in particular 1230 01:00:51,147 --> 01:00:53,016 is chilling. 1231 01:00:53,116 --> 01:00:56,986 [Armando] Daniela and her family were members of NXIVM in Mexico. 1232 01:00:57,086 --> 01:00:58,821 And they were able to rise through the ranks, 1233 01:00:58,921 --> 01:01:00,823 so much so that eventually, 1234 01:01:00,923 --> 01:01:03,026 Keith decided that they were worthy 1235 01:01:03,126 --> 01:01:06,763 and told them that they should move and relocate to Albany, 1236 01:01:06,863 --> 01:01:09,966 where the NXIVM headquarters were. 1237 01:01:10,066 --> 01:01:14,270 Keith has this family wrapped around his finger. 1238 01:01:14,370 --> 01:01:18,441 Anything that Keith says is taken as gospel. 1239 01:01:20,076 --> 01:01:24,847 [Narrator] At the time, Daniela is just 17 years old. 1240 01:01:24,947 --> 01:01:27,917 And Keith Raniere is in his forties. 1241 01:01:29,185 --> 01:01:31,721 Then, one Daniela turns 18, 1242 01:01:31,821 --> 01:01:34,924 allegedly, Raniere forces himself on her. 1243 01:01:35,792 --> 01:01:37,727 In some states, there's the age of consent. 1244 01:01:37,827 --> 01:01:39,429 Some states it's 17. 1245 01:01:39,529 --> 01:01:41,097 Some parts of the world it's 12. 1246 01:01:41,197 --> 01:01:42,765 Some parts of the world it's--right? 1247 01:01:42,865 --> 01:01:45,501 So what's abuse in one area is not abuse in another. 1248 01:01:45,601 --> 01:01:46,936 But what is it, really? 1249 01:01:47,036 --> 01:01:49,605 Abuse is does the person... 1250 01:01:49,706 --> 01:01:50,973 Is the person a child? 1251 01:01:51,074 --> 01:01:53,409 Or is the person adult-like? 1252 01:01:54,444 --> 01:01:55,945 [Narrator] But Raniere's abuse against the teen 1253 01:01:56,045 --> 01:01:58,715 doesn't end there. 1254 01:01:58,815 --> 01:02:03,186 Daniela's story is heartbreaking. 1255 01:02:03,286 --> 01:02:07,590 She's kept in a room with no windows, no interaction, 1256 01:02:07,690 --> 01:02:10,927 no books, no phones, no TVs, nothing. 1257 01:02:11,027 --> 01:02:14,564 She is occasionally fed, but Keith likes thin women, 1258 01:02:14,664 --> 01:02:16,566 and so she is not fed nearly enough, 1259 01:02:16,666 --> 01:02:18,801 especially for a growing girl. 1260 01:02:18,901 --> 01:02:20,369 [Narrator] In addition to sex, 1261 01:02:20,470 --> 01:02:24,474 Keith uses other weapons, like so-called readiness drills, 1262 01:02:24,574 --> 01:02:28,411 to keep his followers off balance and in check. 1263 01:02:28,511 --> 01:02:29,979 [Robert] Readiness drill was a text message 1264 01:02:30,079 --> 01:02:31,781 that was sent from Keith Raniere 1265 01:02:31,881 --> 01:02:33,616 to the first line masters in DOS. 1266 01:02:33,716 --> 01:02:35,418 Could be 3:00 in the afternoon. 1267 01:02:35,518 --> 01:02:37,453 It could be 3:00 in the morning. 1268 01:02:37,553 --> 01:02:38,855 Any time during the day. 1269 01:02:38,955 --> 01:02:40,289 Keith Raniere sends that out, 1270 01:02:40,389 --> 01:02:42,792 and they all have to respond, everyone. 1271 01:02:42,892 --> 01:02:46,129 The low slaves to their masters, and ultimately back to Keith, 1272 01:02:46,229 --> 01:02:47,196 'cause if you didn't respond, you know, 1273 01:02:47,296 --> 01:02:48,798 that's gonna be a breach, you know? 1274 01:02:48,898 --> 01:02:51,734 You're going to be subjected to, uh, punishment.

• From Branded: Brainwashed Inside NXIVM (2020)

  And many of them go on to say that they didn't think they had a choice. DOS does turn into sex trafficking, almost immediately, too. Keith is identifying women that he wants and likes, and then some of the women in DOS are then procuring those women. And he then isolates them and brings them into the fold. In some cases, it's women from over the Canadian border and Mexican border, which is trafficking. Some of them he identifies when they're underage, but then waits for them to come of age before starting a sexual relationship to, quote unquote, "be legal." [Narrator] The story of one alleged grooming in particular is chilling. [Armando] Daniela and her family were members of NXIVM in Mexico. And they were able to rise through the ranks, so much so that eventually, Keith decided that they were worthy and told them that they should move and relocate to Albany, where the NXIVM headquarters were. Keith has this family wrapped around his finger. Anything that Keith says is taken as gospel. [Narrator] At the time, Daniela is just 17 years old. And Keith Raniere is in his forties. Then, one Daniela turns 18, allegedly, Raniere forces himself on her. In some states, there's the age of consent. Some states it's 17. Some parts of the world it's 12. Some parts of the world it's--right? So what's abuse in one area is not abuse in another. But what is it, really? Abuse is does the person... Is the person a child? Or is the person adult-like? [Narrator] But Raniere's abuse against the teen doesn't end there. Daniela's story is heartbreaking. She's kept in a room with no windows, no interaction, no books, no phones, no TVs, nothing. She is occasionally fed, but Keith likes thin women, and so she is not fed nearly enough, especially for a growing girl. [Narrator] In addition to sex, Keith uses other weapons, like so-called readiness drills, to keep his followers off balance and in check. [Robert] Readiness drill was a text message that was sent from Keith Raniere to the first line masters in DOS. Could be 3:00 in the afternoon. It could be 3:00 in the morning. Any time during the day. Keith Raniere sends that out, and they all have to respond, everyone. The low slaves to their masters, and ultimately back to Keith, 'cause if you didn't respond, you know, that's gonna be a breach, you know? You're going to be subjected to, uh, punishment. [Robin] Punishment could range anywhere from taking a cold shower to standing outside in the snow to paddling with leather handles. And Keith tried to make sure the paddling was done severely. [Narrator] Other punishments restricting members' food and sleep. [Paige] Keith prefers very skinny women, so they were regimented to 800 calories or less a day, which is starvation level, workouts five days a week. They usually only got four to five hours of sleep.

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

  I answer that, In using the keys, the priest acts as the instrument and minister of God. Now no instrument can have an efficacious act, except in so far as it is moved by the principal agent. Wherefore, Dionysius says (Hier. Eccl. cap. ult.) that “priests should use their hierarchical powers, according as they are moved by God.” A sign of this is that before the power of the keys was conferred on Peter (Mat. 16:19) mention is made of the revelation vouchsafed to him of the Godhead; and the gift of the Holy Ghost, whereby “the sons of God are led” (Rom. 8:14), is mentioned before power was given to the apostles to forgive sins. Consequently if anyone were to presume to use his power against that Divine motion, he would not realize the effect, as Dionysius states (Hier. Eccl., cap. ult.), and, besides, he would be turned away from the Divine order, and consequently would be guilty of a sin. Moreover, since satisfactory punishments are medicinal, just as the medicines prescribed by the medical art are not suitable to all, but have to be changed according to the judgment of a medical man, who follows not his own will, but his medical science, so the satisfactory punishments appointed by the canons are not suitable to all, but have to be varied according to the judgment of the priest guided by the Divine instinct. Therefore just as sometimes the physician prudently refrains from giving a medicine sufficiently efficacious to heal the disease, lest a greater danger should arise on account of the weakness of nature so the priest, moved by Divine instinct, some times refrains from enjoining the entire punishment due to one sin, lest by the severity of the punishment, the sick man come to despair and turn away altogether from repentance. Reply to Objection 1: This judgment should be guided entirely by the Divine instinct. Reply to Objection 2: The steward is commended also for having done wisely. Therefore in the remission of the due punishment, there is need for discretion. Reply to Objection 3: Christ had the power of “excellence” in the sacraments, so that, by His own authority, He could remit the punishment wholly or in part, just as He chose. Therefore there is no comparison between Him and those who act merely as ministers. OF THE MINISTERS OF THE KEYS (SIX ARTICLES)We must now consider the ministers and the use of the keys: under which head there are six points of inquiry: (1) Whether the priest of the Law had the keys? (2) Whether Christ had the keys? (3) Whether priests alone have the keys? (4) Whether holy men who are not priests have the keys or their use? (5) Whether wicked priests have the effective use of the keys? (6) Whether those who are schismatics, heretics, excommunicate, suspended or degraded, have the use of the keys?

• From The History of World Literature (2007)

  203 someone who will probably never show up. In Endgame, four characters wait in an enclosed room while outside there is only death; three are going blind, one is deaf, one is half-crippled, and one has only stumps for limbs. We are at the end of some road here. The metaphor in the title is from chess, a game of attrition. By the end of the play, the board is nearly bare: endgame. As a game of chess is self-contained—referring only to itself and not to something outside it—the title reinforces the idea that drama, too, is a game, a “play” which is self-contained and reÀ exive. Happy Days shows a couple: the wife (buried up to her waist in sand in Act I and up to her neck in Act 2) who ¿ lls up her time with ritual acts like combing her hair or brushing her teeth while keeping up a steady stream of chatter to Willie, her inattentive husband. Her talk seems designed to ward off the hopelessness of her situation, in which there is not even night and day—only a bell to signal time for sleep and time to wake. As in absurdist drama, the stage pictures are perhaps more important than the words spoken by the characters. What these characters do is repetitive, and all of them seem dimly aware that they are in a play which repeats itself night after night. Frequently they use the language of theater; in Endgame, Hamm even says that he is making an “aside” and is warming up for his ¿ nal “soliloquy.” Winnie breaks her mirror, and she says that she does this every time, but when the bell rings there is always a new unbroken one—perhaps put there by a stage hand. One of the points made would seem to be that as chess is only a game, so is a play. In an absurd world a game or play is what we do to pass the time, to keep from thinking. The windows out of which one can see nothing and Hamm’s blindness in Endgame perhaps suggest solipsistic isolation. When Hamm asks whether his father—who lives in the dustbin—is still alive, he is told, “He’s crying.” To live is to weep, and to wait for the end of the game and the play. All That Fall is a radio drama which may be a perfect vehicle for Beckett: words surrounded by silence. The story is about a woman going to meet her [All That Fall] has some humor … [and] some charm in it, but it’s also probably in part also Beckett’s own sense of outrage at the entire universe.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Only when I commented that I had never known anyone who didn’t wish to change something about herself did she tentatively offer that she was too often cowed by the anger of others, especially her parents, who tried to force her to eat. Accordingly, she posited, with little conviction, an agenda: “I’ll try to be assertive here in the meeting.” Rosa too had no wish to improve her relationships; she too wanted to stay apart. She didn’t trust anyone: “People always misunderstand me and try to change me.” “Would it be helpful,” I inquired, trying to add a here-and-now dimension to the agenda, “for you to be understood in this group, today?” “It might,” she said but warned me that it was hard for her to talk much in groups: “I’ve always felt that others are better, more important than me.” Dorothy, spittle dripping from her mouth, head deeply bowed to avoid any eye contact, spoke in a despairing whisper and gave me nothing. She said she was too depressed to participate in the group and that the nurses had told her it would be enough for her simply to listen. Nothing there to work with, I realized, and turned to the other two patients. “I have no hope of anything good ever happening to me again,” Martin said. His body was being relentlessly whittled away; his wife, along with everyone else from his past, had died; years had passed since he had last spoken to a friend; his son was sick to death of nursing him. “Doctor, you’ve got better things to do. Don’t waste your time,” he said to me. “Let’s face it—I’m beyond help. Once I was a good sailor. I could do everything on a boat. Should’ve seen me scamper to the crow’s nest. Nothing I couldn’t do there; nothing I didn’t know. But now what can anyone give me? What can I give anyone?” Magnolia put forward this agenda: “Ah’d like to learn to listen better in this group. Don’ you think dat would be a good thing, Doctah? Mah momma always tol’ me it was important to be a good listener.” Good God! It was going to be a long, long session. How was I going to fill the rest of the time? As I tried to keep my composure, I could feel the edge of panic seeping in. A fine demonstration for the residents this was going to be! Look what I had to work with: Dorothy was not going to talk at all.

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

  Clover. Sassafras. Douglas fir. Scottish myrtle. The boy. The motor oil. The body, it fills up. And your thirst overflows what holds it. And your ruin, you thought it would nourish him. That he would feast on it and grow into a beast you could hide in. But every box will be opened in time, in language. The line broken, like Trevor, who stared too long into your face, saying, Where am I? Where am I? Because by then there was blood in your mouth. By then the truck was totaled into a dusked oak, smoke from the hood. Trevor, vodka-breathed and skull-thin, said, It feels good. Said, Don’t go nowhere as the sun slid into the trees. Don’t this feel good? as the windows reddened like someone seeing through shut eyes. Trevor who texted you after two months of silence— writing please instead of plz. Trevor who was running from home, his crazy old man. Who was getting the fuck out. Soaked Levi’s. Who ran away to the park because where else when you’re sixteen. Who you found in the rain, under the metal slide shaped like a hippopotamus. Whose icy boots you took off and covered, one by one, each dirt-cold toe, with your mouth. The way your mother used to do when you were small and shivering. Because he was shivering. Your Trevor. Your all-American beef but no veal. Your John Deere. Jade vein in his jaw: stilled lightning you trace with your teeth. Because he tasted like the river and maybe you were one wing away from sinking. Because the calf waits in its cage so calmly to be veal. Because you remembered and memory is a second chance. Both of you lying beneath the slide: two commas with no words, at last, to keep you apart. You who crawled from the wreck of summer like sons leaving their mothers’ bodies. A calf in a box, waiting. A box tighter than a womb. The rain coming down, its hammers on the metal like an engine revving up. The night standing in violet air, a calf shuffling inside, hoofs soft as erasers, the bell on its neck ringing and ringing. The shadow of a man growing up to it. The man with his keys, the commas of doors. Your head on Trevor’s chest. The calf being led by a string, how it stops to inhale, nose pulsing with dizzying sassafras. Trevor asleep beside you. Steady breaths. Rain. Warmth welling through his plaid shirt like steam issuing from the calf’s flanks as you listen to the bell across the star-flooded field, the sound shining like a knife. The sound buried deep in Trevor’s chest and you listen. That ringing. You listen like an animal learning how to speak. III

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  One of the ducks says, “Quack,” and the other duck responds, “I was going to say that.” It was indeed the “k” sound heard in “quack” and “duck” that was experienced as especially funny. Once again it may have been the facial feedback (as the pencil experiment) that made the people feel particular mirth. Nikolaas Tinbergen, in his Nobel acceptance speech titled “Ethology and Stress Disease,” 161 described and extolled the beneficial effects of a method of postural reeducation called the Alexander method . Both he and his family, in undergoing Alexander’s treatment process, had experienced dramatic improvement in sleep, blood pressure, cheerfulness, alertness and resilience to general stress. Other prominent scientists and educators had also written of the benefit of this treatment. These included John Dewey, Aldous Huxley and scientists like G. E. Coghill, Raymond Dart, and even the great doyen of physiology and earlier Nobel Prize recipient, Sir Charles Sherrington. While admiration from such prominent individuals is provocative, it hardly constitutes rigorous scientific proof. On the other hand, it is unlikely that men of such intellectual rigor had all been duped. F. M. Alexander and Nina Bull had each recognized the intimate role of bodily tension patterns in behavior. Alexander, an Australian-born Shakespearean actor, had made his discovery quite accidentally. One day, while performing Hamlet, he lost his voice. He sought help from the finest doctors in Australia. Getting no relief, and desperate, he pursued assistance from the most influential physicians in England. Without a cure, and given that acting was his only profession, Alexander returned home in great despair . As the story goes, his voice returned spontaneously, only to elusively vanish again. Alexander took to observing himself in the mirror, hoping that he might notice something that correlated with his erratic vocal capacity. He did. He observed that the return of his voice was related to his posture. After numerous observations, he made the startling discovery that there were distinctly different postures—one associated with voice and another with no voice. To his surprise, he discovered that the posture associated with the strong and audible voice felt wrong, while the posture of the weak or absent voice felt right. Alexander pursued this observational approach for the good part of nine years. He came to the realization that the mute posture felt good merely because it was familiar, while the postural stance supporting voice felt bad only because it was unfamiliar. Alexander discovered that certain muscular tensions could cause a compression of the head-neck-spine axis, resulting in respiratory problems and consequently the loss of voice.

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

  By then I was addicted to morphine, which the nurses had given me freely because when I didn’t get it I disturbed the ward with my screams. At first I wanted it for the pain; the pain was terrible. Then I wanted it for the peace it gave me. On morphine I didn’t worry. I didn’t even think. I rose out of myself and dreamed benevolent dreams, soaring like a gull in the balmy updraft. The doctor gave me some tablets when I left the hospital, but they had no effect. I was hurting in two ways now, from my finger and from narcotic withdrawal. Though it must have been a mild episode of withdrawal it did not seem mild to me, especially since I didn’t know what it was, or that it would come to an end. Knowing that everything comes to an end is a gift of experience, a consolation gift for knowing that we ourselves are coming to an end. Before we get it we live in a continuous present, and imagine the future as more of that present. Happiness is endless happiness, innocent of its own sure passing. Pain is endless pain. If I had lived in a place where drugs were bought and sold, I would have bought them. I would have done anything to get them. But nobody I knew used drugs. The possibility didn’t even occur to us. The marijuana scare films that might have sparked our interest never made it to Concrete, and heroin use was understood to be unique to the residents of New York City. I was all through being a good sport. Everything was a grievance to me. I complained about school, I complained about the uselessness of my medicine, I complained about how hard it was to eat and dress myself. I begged for comfort and then despised it. I talked back and found fault, especially with Dwight. From behind my wound I said things to Dwight I never would have said to him before. It occurred to me that alcohol might make me feel better. I stole some of Dwight’s Old Crow but the first drink made me choke, so I replenished the bottle with water and put it back. A few nights later Dwight asked me if I had been into his whiskey. It was watery, he said. He seemed more curious than anything else. He probably would have let me off with a warning if I’d admitted it, but I said, “I’m not the drinker in this house.” “Don’t talk to me like that, mister,” he said, and jabbed his fingers against my chest. He didn’t push all that hard, but he caught me off balance. I stumbled backward, tripping on my own feet, and as I went down I threw my hands out behind me to break the fall. All this seemed to happen very slowly, until the moment I landed on my finger. I forgot who I was.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  The person is in a fundamental way stuck in the horrific imprint of the past and thus cannot imagine a future different from the past. ‖ This is an effect of dissociation. It is as though Sharon is describing what happened to another person; it is as though she is outside of her body, observing, but not really being present. She lives back at the moment of shock where dissociation is what allowed her to survive the unimaginable horror and terror. In the Hollywood, Hitchcock version of trauma, the sufferer is barraged by flashbacks. In real life, though, the numbing or shutting-down phase is often more significant and is generally characteristic of severe and/or chronic trauma. These are the people who become the “walking dead.” a Frequently, people will make exaggerated gestures as a way of avoiding feeling the underlying sensations. b I believe that this is because these very slow (“intrinsic”) movements, when done mindfully, operate through the gamma efferent system. This system is intimately connected to the brain stem–autonomic nervous system and involves the extra pyramidal motor system. Voluntary movement, on the other hand, is controlled by the alpha motor system and is independent of the autonomic nervous system. Gamma-mediated movements tend to “re-set” the nervous system away from extremes of activation. c Returning to these positive, expansive sights is not an avoidance, but rather an integral part of trauma resolution. d This is similar to the widely accepted principle of reciprocal inhibition discovered by the Nobel Prize–winning physiologist Sir Charles Sherrington. e This is the inherent capacity to pendulate (to rhythmically shift between states of distress/contraction and pleasure/expansion; see Step 3 in Chapter 5 ). Pendulation is an essential ingredient in the alchemy of transformation—it is what brings people into present time. f To the nervous system, being overwhelmed by an event is really little different than being overwhelmed by similar sensations and emotions that are internally generated. g Until this was done, Sharon still experienced herself as being stuck in the stairwell. All of her thoughts had revolved around this deeply imprinted belief. By having the (new) physical sensation of running at a heightened level of arousal, Sharon contradicts her previous, bodily, experience of helpless freezing. h The exuberance of ghetto kids joyfully flying such improvised kites is portrayed in the classic film Black Orpheus (Orfeu Negro) , a reworking of the Greek myth set in Rio de Janeiro. i At this point I did not want to ask Adam to try to feel something (this would only lead to frustration and failure), but rather to interest him in initiating exploration (in “finding the picture inside”). j This is done to amplify figure ground perception and presence. k It is important to take a little piece of new internal experience like this and connect it to external perceiving.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  DECENT PEOPLEBut it isn’t serious, he said, waving his hand at the snarl of traffic on the boulevard leading into the center, of course not, if it were serious we would be part of it, nie shofyorite, taxi drivers he meant, we would blockade the streets like we did during the Changes, everyone would be on strike. You could be proud in those days, he said, meaning 1989, when Communism fell, we were proud, we were organized. I was young then, it was a wonderful time. I could have left, he said, I could have gone anywhere, Europe, America, but I didn’t want to go anywhere, I wanted to stay here. We thought it was the most exciting place to be, we thought we would make something out of our country, we had so much hope, do you understand, we felt so much hope because finally we were free. Free, he said, then sucked hard on his cigarette, turning to the window to blow the smoke away from me, we thought we would make something new but we didn’t. It was the same assholes, he said—the word he used was neshtastnitsi, the literal meaning is something like unhappy or unlucky, the unfortunate ones—it was the same assholes who took over. It was still hot though it was the end of the afternoon, people were heading home from work, heading home or to the center, as we were, where already protesters were gathering as they had all week, in the hundreds and thousands. I had been watching them on the news but wanted to be among them in person, it felt like something remarkable was happening or about to happen in this country where so little happens, really, which is usually so quiescent. I wanted to see it for myself though it had nothing to do with me, of course, it wasn’t my country, would never be my country, I was leaving at the end of the term. But it had been my home, as close to home as anywhere else, and I wanted the demonstrations to be more than a momentary spasm, I felt the hope that some of my students felt, my colleagues, I wanted it to be real. What does it matter which party takes over, he went on, vse edno, they’re all the same, they’re all thieves, look what they’ve done to my country. The traffic moved a little finally, he gripped the steering wheel again, the cigarette burned almost to the filter between the first and second fingers of his left hand. I could have gone away but I didn’t, he said, prostak, idiot, I’ve fucked my life. He was still a young man, I thought, or at least he wasn’t old, maybe a few years older than I was, too young to talk the way he was talking. Too young by American time, I mean, different times pertain in different places.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  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. I tried to stand again, lifting myself a few inches before I dropped back down. I heard a sound then and looked up, and saw coming up the path toward me the fat shape of Mama Dog, her tail beating in the dark. She was the only dog allowed on campus; for years she had kept other dogs away, but now she was too old to guard anything, and she spent most of the day sleeping, on the porches of our houses or beside the guards where they sat in the shade. She was always happy to see me, I gave her treats sometimes, but I didn’t have anything for her now, and I told her this, Nyamam nishto , opening my empty hands. She cocked her head, that look of understanding dogs give, or of wanting to understand, their demand for attention. Obicham te , I said to her, I love you, but tonight I don’t have anything, go away, I said, mahai se , and I made a shooing motion with my hand.

• 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.