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 172 of 267 · 20 per page

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  Job 17 Job Says He Has Become a Byword 1 “M Y SPIRIT is broken, my days are extinguished, The grave is ready for me. 2 “Surely there are mockers and mockery with me, And my eye gazes on their obstinacy and provocation. 3 “Give me a pledge (guarantee, promise) with Yourself [acknowledge my innocence before my death]; Who is there that will a be my guarantor and give security for me? 4 “But You [Lord] have closed their hearts to understanding, Therefore You will not exalt them [by giving a verdict against me]. 5 “He who denounces and informs against his friends for a share of the spoil, The eyes of his children will also languish and fail. 6 “But He has made me a byword and mockery among the people, And I have become one in whose face people spit. 7 “My eye has grown dim (unexpressive) because of grief, And all my [body’s] members are [wasted away] like a shadow. 8 “The upright will be [astonished and] appalled at this, And the innocent will stir himself up against the godless and polluted. 9 “Nevertheless the righteous will hold to his ways, And he who has clean hands will grow stronger and stronger. [Ps 24:4 ] 10 “But as for all of you, come back again, Even though I do not find a wise man among you. 11 “My days are past, my purposes and plans are frustrated and torn apart; The wishes of my heart [are broken]. 12 “These [thoughts try to] make the night into the day; ‘The light is near,’ they say in the presence of darkness [but they pervert the truth]. 13 “But if I look to Sheol (the nether world, the place of the dead) as my home, If I make my bed in the darkness, 14 If I call out to the pit (grave), ‘You are my father’; And to the worm [that feeds on decay], ‘You are my mother and my sister [because I will soon be closest to you],’ 15 Where now is my hope? And who regards or considers or is even concerned about my hope? 16 “Will my hope go down with me to Sheol (the nether world, the place of the dead)? Shall we go down together in the dust?” Job 18 Bildad Speaks of the Wicked 1 T HEN BILDAD the Shuhite answered and said, 2 “How long will you hunt for words and continue these speeches? Do some clear thinking and show understanding and then we can talk. 3 “Why are we regarded as beasts, As if [we are] stupid (senseless) in your eyes? 4 “You who tear yourself apart in anger, Is the earth to be abandoned for your sake, Or the rock to be moved out of its place? 5 “Indeed, the light of the wicked will be put out, And the flame of his fire will not shine.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  Stay here and stay awake and keep watch with Me.” 39 And after going a little farther, He fell face down and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it is possible [that is, consistent with Your will], let this cup q pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.” 40 And He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, “So, you men could not stay awake and keep watch with Me for one hour? 41 “Keep actively watching and praying that you may not come into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the r body is weak.” 42 He went away a second time and prayed, saying, “My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, Your will be done.” 43 Again He came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. 44 So, leaving them again, He went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words once more. 45 Then He returned to the disciples and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Listen, s the hour [of My sacrifice] is at hand and the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners [whose way and nature is to oppose God]. 46 “Get up, let us go. Look, My betrayer is near!” Jesus’ Betrayal and Arrest 47 As Jesus was still speaking, Judas [Iscariot], one of the twelve [disciples], came up accompanied by a large crowd with swords and clubs, [who came as representatives] from the chief priests and elders of the people. [Mark 14:43–50 ; Luke 22:47–53 ; John 18:3–11 ] 48 Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, “Whomever I kiss, He is the one; seize Him.” 49 Immediately Judas went to Jesus and said, “Greetings (rejoice), Rabbi!” And he t kissed Him [in a deliberate act of betrayal]. 50 Jesus said to Judas, “Friend, do what you came for.” Then they came and seized Jesus and arrested Him. 51 And u one of those who were with Jesus reached out and drew his sword, and struck [Malchus] the slave of the high priest and cut off his ear. [Mark 14:47 ; Luke 22:50 ; John 18:10 ] 52 Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back in its place; for all those who habitually draw the sword will die by the sword. [Gen 9:6 ] 53 “Do you think that I cannot appeal to My Father, and He will immediately provide Me with more than twelve v legions of angels? 54 “How then will the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must happen this way?” 55 At that moment Jesus said to the crowds, “Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest Me as you would against a robber? Day after day I used to sit in the porches and courts of the temple teaching, and you did not arrest Me.

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  One of the examples that Williams gave of Black women’s peculiar experience as citizen-women was their continual struggle to secure employment. The difficulty of finding work was a direct result of Americans’ poor opinion of Black women’s moral stature: “[T]aught everywhere in ethics and social economy that merit always wins, colored women carefully prepare themselves for all kinds of occupations only to meet with stern refusal, rebuff, and disappointment.”44 Understanding themselves to be disadvantaged both by the labor dictates of the Peculiar Institution and the meritocratic myth of American exceptionalism, Black women frequently invoked what I term a discourse of American peculiarity. This discourse is exemplified in Williams’s question, “[A]re we not justified in a feeling of desperation against that peculiar form of Americanism that shows respect for our women as servants and contempt for them when they become women of culture?”45 By highlighting Black female desperation, Williams continued to place Black women’s emotions front and center in her political discourse, a move that humanized them and that demonstrates the variety of anxiety-producing encounters Black women had with racist and sexist discrimination. In another case, during her struggle with the Lady Managers for Black female representation on the board and at the fair, elocutionist and Wilberforce Professor Hallie Quinn Brown wrote in a letter to one of the members, “[C] onsidering the peculiar relation that the Negro sustains in this county [sic], is it less than fair to request for him a special representation?”46 Through reference to America’s peculiarity, Black women highlighted the fact that the American nation-state is defined not by its stated ideals of liberty, equality, or freedom, but rather by its racist practices toward its African American citizenry. Like most race women of her day, Williams firmly believed that colored women were “as thoroughly American in all the circumstances of citizenship as the best citizens of our country.”47 They were thus entitled to the rights and protections of American identity. To invoke the language of peculiarity was to challenge the presupposed benevolence of slavery, by interrogating the euphemism most often used to describe it: “The Peculiar Institution.” White racial claims about the inferior morality of the Black race were deeply gendered and typically characterized Black women as sexually lascivious, cunning, devious, and therefore incapable of victimization. Although Williams could “appreciate the offensiveness of all references to American slavery,” she believed that calling attention to slavery’s actual impact on African American women mattered more than preserving white racial mythologies of benevolence.48 Her use of the term peculiarity referred not only to the particularity of Black and female experience, but also to a kind of studied bewilderment at the utter illogic of American racism, the refusal to come to terms with the level of devastation that it had heaped upon Black people, and the deep investments of white people in maintaining white supremacy despite the progress of African Americans.

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  That’s my way of saying that a low fire, a pilot light, burned under that glove-smooth skin, and that he smelled excitingly of that foul fermented cabbage the Koreans like to snack on. The minute it was over he’d dress and leave, his eyebrows raised in painful doubt as though he didn’t quite understand what had just happened. He had the whitest teeth. And then, after I closed and locked the door, I was alone. I had a record player and twelve records, which I played over and over again, especially the Bartók violin concerto, its harmonies edgy enough to make me feel modern but its sweep romantic enough to hurl me back on the bed in a flood of ardor. Until then I’d always wanted to write, but when I did, I wrote down nothing but the time and key signatures of my feelings or the chords. Most of the melody, as it were, remained in my head, and all the orchestration. Endless scenes of he said-she said poured forth from my pen, the automatic transcription of what I was currently living through, but my characters remained voices in the dark. I never described them or said what I was feeling. I took a creative writing course from a published novelist, who told me during a private conference, “You should arrange the nouns in each paragraph like the heads in a painting by Uccello.” “Utrillo?” I said brightly. He turned away in disgust. But now I read a collection of short stories by new writers, and I saw they did something I can only call “braiding,” the interlacing of phrases, details, snatches of dialogue. Until now I’d written mindless confession in a desperate effort to keep my head above the rising waters of despair and confusion, which could also be called the flood of circumstantiality. Nothing had ever seemed more important to me than who said what first, what she said back, and where it happened, but now I was toying with the idea, gleaned from my recent reading, that a design of sorts, not a stencil but a weave, could be teased out of all these balls of yarn. I’d drag men back to my room, one after another, guiding them up the fire escape into my window; they didn’t want to be seen by the other boarders any more than I wanted them seen. Afterward they’d smile awkwardly, dress, stand on tiptoe to comb their hair in my pointlessly high desk mirror, say, “Well, see you ’round,” and duck out the window and back down the rusting metal steps that boomed faintly with each step. Once the man was gone, I’d return to my story. I’d switch on my record of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut or Bartók’s violin concerto and pour myself a shot of Drambuie, a liqueur I didn’t realize was meant to be a sort of liquid dessert, not a steady drink.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  14 For when those riches are lost in bad investments and he becomes the father of a son, then there is nothing in his hand [for the support of the child]. 15 As he came naked from his mother’s womb, so he will return as he came; and he will take away nothing from all his labor that he can carry in his hand. [Job 1:21 ; 1 Tim 6:7 ] 16 This also is a grievous evil—exactly as he was born, so he shall die. So what advantage has he who labors for the wind? [1 Tim 6:6 ] 17 All of his life he also eats in darkness [cheerlessly, without sweetness and light], with great frustration, sickness, and anger. 18 Behold, here is what I have seen to be good and fitting: to eat and drink, and to find enjoyment in all the labor in which he labors under the sun during the few days of his life which God gives him—for this is his [allotted] reward. [1 Tim 6:17 ] 19 Also, every man to whom God has given riches and possessions, He has also given the power and ability to enjoy them and to receive [this as] his [allotted] portion and to rejoice in his labor—this is the gift of God [to him]. 20 For he will not often consider the [troubled] days of his life, because God keeps him occupied and focused on the joy of his heart [and the tranquility of God indwells him]. Ecclesiastes 6 The Futility of Life 1 T HERE IS an evil which I have seen under the sun, and it weighs heavily on men: 2 a man to whom God has given riches and wealth and honor, so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires, yet God has not given him the power or capacity to enjoy them [all those things which are gifts from God], but a stranger [in whom he has no interest succeeds him and] enjoys them. This is vanity and it is a [cause of] great distress. [Luke 12:20 ] 3 If a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years, however many they may be, but his soul is not satisfied with good things and he is not respected and is not given a proper burial [he is not laid to rest in the sepulcher of his fathers], then I say, “Better the miscarriage than he, [Job 3:16 ] 4 for the miscarriage comes in futility (in vain) and passes into obscurity; and its name is covered in obscurity. 5 “It has not seen the sun nor had any knowledge; yet it has more rest and is better off than he.

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  Kristie Dotson argues that Williams’s theorization of Black women’s “unknowability” refers to “the negative, socio-epistemic space Black women exist in within US social imaginaries.” 51 Williams returned to this idea of Black women being “not known” in a 1905 essay called “The Colored Girl”: “That the term ‘colored girl’ is almost a term of reproach in the social life of America is all too true; she is not known and hence not believed in, she belongs to a race that is best designated by the term ‘problem’ and she lives beneath the shadow of that problem which envelops and obscures her.” 52 Here, Williams points to the myriad negative impacts of the epistemic subjugation of Black women and girls. Because she is not known, she is not “believed in,” which is to say both that Black women and girls are not believed, and their claims about their lives are found lacking in credibility; and that they are not believed in, which means there is limited communal investment in Black women’s and girls’ lives as a site of possibility. Like Cooper, Williams tries to rewrite Black women’s and girls’ lives as a space of possibility, rather than as a space of impossibility beckoned by having one’s existence confined, “enveloped,” and “obscured” by existence in a negative socio-epistemic space. Since Frances Watkins Harper’s publication of Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted in 1892, race women had argued that Black women occupied an umbral position with regard to broader public discourses on race. They existed in the shadowy contours of discussions of the race problem, their problems remaining obscure to the “light” of broader discourses. Thus, here Williams makes clear that there are other facets to Du Bois’s 1903 formulation about the problematization of race. To the extent that Black men labored under the construction of the race as a social problem, Black women existed, as Williams noted above, “beneath the shadow of that problem, which envelops and obscures her.” Williams and other race women sought to remedy this epistemic subjugation by transforming the public discourse about Black womanhood and by creating viable models of respectable womanhood for Black women. After evaluating the social impact of America’s peculiar relations of power on Black women, Williams came to the same conclusion as many of her contemporaries: Black women had a unique and public role to play in reshaping America’s public discourse on Black women. In fact, questions about the operation of public opinion and about the power of organized women to reshape public opinion emerged over and over again in Williams’s thought.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  22 “Then [Lord,] call, and I will answer; Or let me speak, and then reply to me. 23 “How many are my iniquities and sins [that so much sorrow should come to me]? Make me recognize and understand my transgression and my sin. [Rom 8:1 ] 24 “Why do You hide Your face [as if offended] And consider me Your enemy? 25 “Will You cause a windblown leaf to tremble? Will You pursue the chaff of the dry stubble? 26 “For You write bitter things against me [in Your indictment] And make me inherit and suffer for the iniquities of my youth. 27 “You also put my feet in the stocks [as punishment] And [critically] observe all my paths; You set a circle and limit around the soles of my feet [which I must not overstep], 28 While I waste away like a rotten thing, Like a garment that is moth-eaten. Job 14 Job Speaks of the Finality of Death 1 “M AN, WHO is born of a woman, Is short-lived and full of turmoil. 2 “Like a flower he comes forth and withers; He also flees like a shadow and does not remain. 3 “You also open Your eyes upon him And bring him into judgment with Yourself. 4 “Who can make a clean thing out of the unclean? No one! [Is 1:18 ; 1 John 1:7 ] 5 “Since his days are determined, The number of his months is with You [in Your control], And You have made his limits so he cannot pass [his allotted time]. 6 “[O God] turn your gaze from him so that he may rest, Until he fulfills his day [on earth] like a hired man. 7 “For there is hope for a tree, If it is cut down, that it will sprout again, And that the shoots of it will not cease nor fail, [but there is no such hope for man]. 8 “Though its roots grow old in the earth And its stump dies in the dry soil, 9 Yet at the scent of water [the stump of the tree] will flourish And bring forth sprigs and shoots like a seedling. 10 “But [the brave, strong] man must die and lie face down; Man breathes his last, and where is he? 11 “As water evaporates from the sea, And a river drains and dries up, 12 So man lies down and does not rise [again]. Until the heavens are no longer, The dead will not awake nor be raised from their sleep. 13 “Oh, that You would hide me in Sheol (the nether world, the place of the dead), That You would conceal me until Your wrath is past, That You would set a definite time and then remember me [and in Your lovingkindness imprint me on your heart]! 14 “If a man dies, will he live again? I will wait all the days of my struggle Until my change and release will come.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  A didactic or reflective poem of Heman the Ezrahite. 1 O LORD , the God of my salvation, I have cried out [for help] by day and in the night before You. [Luke 18:7 ] 2 Let my prayer come before You and enter into Your presence; Incline Your ear to my cry! 3 For my soul is full of troubles, And my life draws near the grave (Sheol, the place of the dead). 4 I am counted among those who go down to the pit (grave); I am like a man who has no strength [a mere shadow], 5 a Cast away [from the living] and abandoned among the dead, Like the slain who lie in a [nameless] grave, Whom You no longer remember, And they are cut off from Your hand. 6 You have laid me in the lowest pit, In dark places, in the depths. 7 Your wrath has rested heavily upon me, And You have afflicted me with all Your waves. [Ps 42:7 ] Selah. 8 You have put my friends far from me; You have made me an b object of loathing to them. I am shut up and I cannot go out. 9 My eye grows dim with sorrow. O LORD , I have called on You every day; I have spread out my hands to You [in prayer]. 10 Will You perform wonders for the dead? Shall the departed spirits arise and praise You? Selah. 11 Will Your lovingkindness be declared in the grave Or Your faithfulness in Abaddon (the underworld)? 12 Will Your wonders be known in the darkness? And Your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness [where the dead forget and are forgotten]? 13 But I have cried out to You, O LORD , for help; And in the morning my prayer will come to You. 14 O LORD , why do You reject me? Why do You hide Your face from me? [Matt 27:46 ] 15 I was afflicted and close to death from my youth on; I suffer Your terrors; I am overcome. 16 Your fierce wrath has swept over me; Your terrors have destroyed me. 17 They have surrounded me like flood waters all day long; They have completely encompassed me. 18 Lover and friend You have placed far from me; My familiar friends are in darkness. Psalm 89 The LORD ’s Covenant with David, and Israel’s Afflictions. A skillful song, or a didactic or reflective poem, of Ethan the Ezrahite. 1 I WILL sing of the goodness and lovingkindness of the LORD forever; With my mouth I will make known Your faithfulness from generation to generation.

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  Huge blocks—particularly the dream parts—came to me just as they appear in print and without any effort on my part, except that of equating my own rhythm with that of the mysterious dictator who had me in his thrall. In retrospect I wonder about this period, for the reason that every morning on entering my little studio I had first to quell the surge of anger, disgust and loathing which the daily drama inevitably aroused. Quieting myself as best I could, reproving and admonishing myself aloud, I would sit before the machine—and strike the tuning fork. Bang! Like a sack of coal it would spill out. I could keep it up for three or four hours at a stretch, interrupted only by the arrival of the mailman. At lunch more wrangling. Just sufficient to bring me to the boil. Then back to my desk, where I would again tune in and race on until the next interruption. When I had finished the book, a rather long one, I was so keyed up that I confidently expected to write two more books—pronto . However, nothing worked out as I had expected. The world went to smash about me. My own little world, I mean. For three years thereafter I was unable to advance more than a page at a time, with long intervals between these spurts. The book which I was endeavoring to write—getting up the courage to write, would be better!—I had been thinking and dreaming about for over twenty-five years. My despair reached such a point that I was almost convinced my writing days were over. To make matters worse, my intimate friends seemed to take pleasure in insinuating that I could write only when things were bad for me. It was true that seemingly I had no longer anything to fight. I was only fighting myself, fighting the venom which I had unconsciously stored up. To come back to the Voice…. There was The World of Lawrence , to take another instance. Begun at Clichy, continued in Passy and abandoned after the writing of some seven to eight hundred pages. A misfire. A flop. Yet what a grand affair it was! Never had I been so possessed. In addition to the finished pages, I piled up a mountain of notes and a staggering heap of citations, taken not only from Lawrence’s writings but from dozens of other writers, all of which I strove unsuccessfully to weave into the book. Then there were the charts and diagrams—the ground plan—with which I decorated the doors and walls of the studio (Villa Seurat), waiting for inspiration to continue the task and praying for a solution to the dilemma in which I found myself. It was the “dictation” which got me down. It was like a fire which refused to be extinguished. For months it went on, without let-up. I couldn’t take a drink, even standing at a bar, without being forced to whip out pad and pencil.

• From Paul and Palestinian Judaism (40th Anniversary Edition) (2017)

  And so it goes on. As we noted above, Billerbeck's work, with its thousands of quotations and citations, appears to provide hard proof that someone held the view which Billerbeck himself called 'Pharisaic soteriology'. Quibbling over terms (he should have said Rabbinic) and dates (the material is mostly after 70 c.e.) does not really help. 81 The view is there in Billerbeck (=Rabbinic literature); it was held by the Rabbis of some period or other; they did not make it up de novo; therefore it may be safely applied to some group or other of Jews around the time of Jesus, give or take a few decades. Nor is it responsive to the situation of New Testament scholarship to dismiss the view of Judaism which we have been describing as resting on 'pseudo scholarship' 82 or as being 'beneath criticism'. 83 Such opinions are accurate and the attitude is understandable, but they will in no way deflect the continuation of the view in New Testament criticism, since they do not refute the evidence on which the dominant Christian assessment of Rabbinic Judaism rests. The perception of New Testament scholars who hold some variant of Weber's view is that they hold the only view of Rabbinic Judaism which is permitted by the evidence before them, and they regard. their position as well-founded, frequently tested and widely consented to. As we saw in discussing Lohse's foreword to the current edition of Bousset, the view is that Bousset's view has been steadily confirmed and further elabora- ted, and even Moore can be worked into that picture. Since the Weber/ Bousset/Billerbeck view can now be cited without opposition, Lohse's view of the situation seems to be widespread. Their view is perceived to rest on solid evidence, and this perception will not be altered by sarcasm, however justified. The early 'apologists' for Judaism, who were critical of the theological construction which lies behind Billerbeck's Kommentar, stated that it was not right and provided different constructions, but they did not directly refute the construction on its own terms or in a polemical way. Moore hid his polemics in an article and wrote his three-volume work with virtually no 81 Neusner's criticism that the dominant Christian view of Pharisaism does not rest on evidence about Pharisaism (Rabbinic Traditions III, pp. 361, 363) is correct, but it will not arrest the view. The scholars do have in mind certain Rabbinic passages, and Weber's description of legalistic Judaism can readily be switched from the Pharisees to their presumed successors, the Rabbis. 82 Sandmel, above, n. 63. Sandmel elsewhere and more usually recognizes, however, the need 'not to retort in pique, but rather to set the record straight in terms of responsible and tenable scholarship' (Tht First Christian Century, p. 4; cf. n. 17 above). 83 Neusner, Rabbinic Traditions Ill, p.

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  “That’s because you’ve gotten so chubby, Dumpling, that your legs rub together when you walk.” Until now I’d always eaten just as much as I liked whenever it suited me and I’d always been slender. Although I’d hated gym class and gladly avoided exercise, normal campus comings and goings had sufficed to burn off the huge quantities of food I devoured. Of course, at my fraternity house we’d been given roast beef; now I was too poor to eat anything but spaghetti. The calamity of having gone to fat shocked me, first because I hadn’t noticed it, second because it seemed irreversible. I couldn’t imagine dieting. A grim fatalism settled over me that was too anxious to be called resignation. Every morning I’d stand on the toilet to inspect my body in the only mirror in the apartment, the tiny one above the sink, but I could never tell if I was thinner or fatter. I refused to buy a scale and enter the realm of fact; I preferred to conjure my fictions, bloat in despair, dwindle in joy, stay constant to that mild anxiety Freud had termed “boredom.” And then there was something stubborn in me that didn’t want to lose weight to attract a man. If the right man came along, he’d be able to see my virtues magically. Once he kissed me, the frog would turn into a prince. I had become a trick question, a heavy disguise, but behind the disobliging exterior was the welcoming child I would always be. Of course, what I’d forgotten was that a lover was not Parsifal and I was not the Grail; the medievalism of my imagination was not sufficiently up-to-date to recognize that the lover was a shopper and I a product.

• From Another Country (1962)

  He passed Cornelia Street. Eric had once lived there. He saw again the apartment, the lamplight in the corners, Eric under the light, books falling over everything, and the bed unmade. Eric——and he was on Sixth Avenue, traffic lights and the lights of taxis blazing around him. Two girls and two boys, white, stood on the opposite corner, waiting for the lights to change. Half a dozen men, in a heavy gleaming car, rolled by and shouted at them. Then there was someone at his shoulder, a young white boy in a vaguely military cap and a black leather jacket. He looked at Rufus with the greatest hostility, then started slowly down the Avenue away from him, waving his rump like a flag. He looked back, stopped beneath the marquee of a movie theater. The lights changed. Rufus and the two couples started toward each other, came abreast in the middle of the avenue, passed—only, one of the girls looked at him with a kind of pitying wonder in her eyes. All right, bitch. He started toward Eighth Street, for no reason; he was simply putting off his subway ride. Then he stood at the subway steps, looking down. For a wonder, especially at this hour, there was no one on the steps, the steps were empty. He wondered if the man in the booth would change his five-dollar bill. He started down. Then, as the man gave him change and he moved toward the turnstile, other people came, rushing and loud, pushing past him as though they were swimmers and he nothing but an upright pole in the water. Then something began to awaken in him, something new; it increased his distance; it increased his pain. They were rushing—to the platform, to the tracks. Something he had not thought of for many years, something he had never ceased to think of, came back to him as he walked behind the crowd. The subway platform was a dangerous place—so he had always thought; it sloped downward toward the waiting tracks; and when he had been a little boy and stood on the platform beside his mother he had not dared let go her hand. He stood on the platform now, alone with all these people, who were each of them alone, and waited in acquired calmness, for the train.

• From Another Country (1962)

  Then she was silent. She sipped her drink nervously and lit a cigarette. “I guess it’s about Richard and me,” she said at last. “I don’t know what’s going to become of us. There doesn’t seem to be anything between us any more.” She spoke in an odd, breathless way, almost like a schoolgirl, and as though she did not believe what she was saying. “Or I guess that’s not right. There’s a hell of a lot between us, there must be. But none of it seem to work. Sometimes—sometimes I think he hates me—for being married, for the children, for the work he does. And other times I know that isn’t true, that can’t be true.” She bit her lower lip and stubbed out her cigarette and tried to laugh. “Poor Vivaldo. I know you’ve got troubles of your own and don’t know what to do about the maunderings of a middle-aged, self-centered matron.” “Now that you mention it,” he said, “I guess you are practically decrepit.” He tried to smile; he did not know what to say. Ida and Ellis, thrust hastily to the back of his mind, were, nevertheless, dimly accomplishing their unspeakable violations of his manhood. “It really just sounds like a kind of summer storm—don’t all married people have them?” “I really don’t know anything about all married people. I’m not sure I know anything about marriage.” She sipped her drink again, saying, irrelevantly, “I wish I could get drunk.” Then she giggled, her proud face suddenly breaking. “I wish I could get drunk and go out and pick up a truck driver or a taxi driver or anybody who’d touch me and make me feel like a woman again.” She hid her face with one bony hand and her tears dripped through her fingers. Keeping her head down, she searched fiercely through the absurd straw handbag and finally came up with a small bit of Kleenex. With this, miraculously, she managed to blow her nose and dry her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I’ve just been sitting around brooding too long.”

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  If I found something beautiful, perhaps it was merely decorative; if I regarded a couple as happy, admirable, I was sure to have chosen the wrong example, the people most likely to confirm my neurosis and lead me deviously back to my illness. If I argued a point, I was being over-intellectual (a sin I’d already become aware of from the painters and which Dr. O’Reilly considered the most serious impediment to my mental health). The mind as its own enemy. The mind desperate to outwit itself. The mind claiming virtue but intent on preserving its own viciousness. The mind a boat at sea rebuilding itself while under sail. The mind a rotting meat under expensive spices. The mind a pure spirit (the unsuspecting wife) under the sway of a murderous will (Bluebeard). Perhaps that’s why Buddhism appealed to me. It denied the existence of the soul, the will, and even the self and sought to show that only illusion lends a spurious unity and dynamism to so many separate, detachable sentiments. For me, Buddhism was the welcome prediction of cosmic collapse, spiritual entropy.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  Do not try to comfort me over the destruction of the daughter of my people.” 5 For the Lord GOD of hosts has a day of panic and of tumult, of trampling, of confusion In the Valley of Vision, A [day of] breaking down walls And a crying [for help] to the mountain. 6 Elam took up the quiver With the chariots, infantry and horsemen; And Kir uncovered the shield. 7 And it came to pass that your choicest valleys were full of chariots, And the horsemen took their fixed positions [in an offensive array] at the gate [of Jerusalem]. [2 Chr 32 ; Is 36 ] 8 Then God removed the [protective] covering of Judah; And in that day you looked to the weapons of the House of the Forest (Solomon’s armory). [1 Kin 7:2 ; 10:17 , 21 ] 9 You saw that the breaches In the wall of the City of David [the citadel of Zion] were many; You collected [within the city’s walls] the waters of the Lower Pool (Siloam). 10 Then you counted the houses of Jerusalem And you tore down the houses [to get materials] to fortify the city wall [by extending it]. 11 You also made a reservoir between the two walls For the waters of the b Old Pool, But you did not look to its Maker, Nor did you recognize Him who planned it long ago. 12 Therefore in that day the Lord GOD of hosts called you to weeping, to mourning, To shaving the head and to wearing sackcloth [in humiliation]. 13 Instead, there is joy and jubilation, Killing of oxen and slaughtering of sheep, Eating meat and drinking wine, saying, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we may die.” 14 But the LORD of hosts revealed Himself in my ears, “This sin absolutely will not be forgiven you Until you die,” says the Lord GOD of hosts. 15 For the Lord GOD of hosts says this, “Go to this [contemptible] steward, To c Shebna, who is in charge of the royal household [but is building himself a tomb worthy of a king, and say to him], 16 ‘What business do you have here? And whom do you have here, That you have hewn out a tomb here for yourself, You who hew a sepulcher on the height, You who carve a resting place for yourself in the rock? 17 ‘Listen carefully, the LORD is about to hurl you away violently, O man; And He is about to grasp you firmly 18 And roll you up tightly like a ball And toss you into a vast country; There you will die And there your splendid chariots will be, You shame of your master’s house.’ 19 “I will depose you from your office, And you will be pulled down from your position [of importance]. 20 “Then it will come to pass in that day That I will summon My servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah.

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  We talk about reality as if it were something commensurable, a piano exercise, or a lesson in physics. The Black Death came with the return of the Crusaders. Syphilis came with the return of Columbus. Reality will come too! Reality prime , says my friend Cronstadt. From a poem written on the ocean floor … To prognosticate this reality is to be off either by a millimeter or by a million light years. The difference is a quantum formed by the intersection of streets. A quantum is a functional disorder created by trying to squeeze oneself into a frame of reference. A reference is a discharge from an old employer, that is to say, a muco-pus from an old disease. These are thoughts born of the street, genus epileptoid . You walk out with the guitar and the strings snap—because the idea is not embedded morphologically. To recall the dream one must keep the eyes closed and not budge. The slightest stir and the whole fabric falls apart. In the street I expose myself to the destructive, disintegrating elements that surround me. I let everything wreak its own havoc with me. I bend over to spy on the secret processes, to obey rather than to command. There are huge blocks of my life which are gone forever. Huge blocks gone, scattered, wasted in talk, action, reminiscence, dream. There was never any time when I was living one life, the life of a husband, a lover, a friend. Wherever I was, whatever I was engaged in, I was leading multiple lives. Thus, whatever it is that I choose to regard as my story is lost, drowned, indissolubly fused with the lives, the drama, the stories of others. I am a man of the old world, a seed that was transplanted by the wind, a seed which failed to blossom in the mushroom oasis of America. I belong on the heavy tree of the past. My allegiance, physical and spiritual, is with the men of Europe, those who were once Franks, Gauls, Vikings, Huns, Tartars, what not. The climate for my body and soul is here where there is quickness and corruption. I am proud not to belong to this century. For those star-gazers who are unable to follow the act of revelation I append herewith a few horoscopic brush-strokes in the margin of my Universe of Death… . I am Chancre, the crab, which moves sideways and backwards and forwards at will. I move in strange tropics and deal in high explosives, embalming fluid, jasper, myrrh, smaragd, fluted snot and porcupines’ toes. Because of Uranus which crosses my longitudinal I am inordinately fond of cunt, hot chitterlings, and water bottles. Neptune dominates my ascendant. That means I am composed of a watery fluid, that I am volatile, quixotic, unreliable, independent and evanescent. Also quarrelsome.

• From Lost Christianities: Christian Scriptures and the Battles over Authentication (2002)

  78 Lecture 18: The Apocalypse of Peter This new worldview of apocalypticism was dualistic (there are two forces in the world: good and evil, God and the Devil) and pessimistic (things are going to get worse in this world until, literally, all hell breaks out), yet it af¿ rmed the ultimate sovereignty of God (he would soon enter into judgment with the forces of evil to bring in his good kingdom on earth). One of the ways apocalyptic thinkers expressed their views was through a kind of writing called an “apocalypse.” In general, this genre consisted of pseudonymous writings that narrated a revelation given by God through a heavenly mediator (e.g., an angel), in which the mundane realities of earth (e.g., current sufferings and future vindication) were explained in light of the ultimate truths of heaven. In some of these apocalypses, a prophet is shown a symbolic vision that mysteriously describes the future fate of the earth, when the forces of evil will be overthrown and God’s kingdom will come (such as in the Book of Daniel in the Hebrew Bible). In others, a prophet is taken up into heaven to see the heavenly realities that foreshadowed the ultimate triumph of God on earth (such as in the Book of Revelation). Originally, these apocalypses were concerned with the fate of the earth and of people on it. God had created this world, and he would redeem it. These books, in other words, were theodicies, attempts to explain how evil and suffering could exist in a world created and maintained by an all-powerful and loving God. But Christians who later adopted this apocalyptic worldview became, over time, less concerned with the salvation of this world and more concerned with the salvation of each person’s soul. This is a shift away from the teachings of Jesus, who appears to have thought that there was to be a real physical overturn of the forces of evil here on earth when God brought in a good kingdom for his people. When this never happened, Christians began to transmute the original apocalyptic message of a future kingdom on earth into a spiritual kingdom in heaven. In other words, when the original expectation of the overthrow of forces of evil here in this world never occurred, Gospel of Saint Peter. Das Evangelium und die Apokalypse des Petrus by Oscar von Gebhardt, 1893.

• From Lost Christianities: Christian Scriptures and the Battles over Authentication (2002)

  29 Many scholars attribute the work to a famous gnostic Christian, Valentinus. Valentinus was from Alexandria, Egypt, but moved to Rome sometime around the year 130 A.D. He was active as a Christian writer, orator, and leader over the course of the next thirty years or so. According to Tertullian, he turned on the church only after his bid to become bishop failed. We have some fragments of his writings. If the Gospel of Truth does go back to him, it shows that his opponents were right to attribute to him unusual poetic powers, as can be seen even in the Coptic translation of this text (it was originally in Greek). The book discusses many central issues for Christians in the second century: the nature of God, the character of this world, the person of Christ, and the work of salvation he brought and how one should respond to it. Strikingly, its views stand diametrically opposed to those that eventually became dominant in Christianity and have been handed down to the present. Eventually, Christianity maintained that this world was the intentional creation of the one true God and, as such, was made good (even if sin later came into the world). The gnostic Gospel of Truth claims that the material world came about by a con À ict in the divine realm, resulting in ignorance, anguish, terror, and error. Christianity also eventually claimed that Christ was the one who died for the sins of the world and that his death and resurrection are what bring salvation. The Gospel of Truth maintains that Jesus brought salvation by delivering the truth that could set the soul free; it was out of anger for his deliverance of this knowledge that the ignorant rulers of this world put him to death, in error. Christianity insisted that people are made right with God by faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection. The gnostic Gospel of Truth maintains that people are saved by receiving the correct knowledge of who they really are. When they do so, they are like a drunk person becoming sober or a sleeping person coming awake. Christianity understood that God would redeem this sinful world, creating it anew as a utopian place of eternal life. The Gospel of Truth states that once saving knowledge comes to souls entrapped in this world, the world of ignorance will pass away. The gnostic Gospel of Truth maintains that people are saved by receiving the correct knowledge of who they really are.

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  Pure annihilation , as distinguished from lesser, muddier annihilations. Nothing to be mopped up afterwards. A wheel of light rolling up to the precipice—and over into the bottomless pit. I, Beethoven, I created it! I, Beethoven, I destroy it! From now on, ladies and gentlemen, you are entering Mexico. From now on everything will be wonderful and beautiful, marvelously beautiful, marvelously wonderful. Increasingly marvelously beautiful and wonderful. From now on no more washlines, no suspenders, no flannel underwear. Always summer and everything true to pattern. If it’s a horse it’s a horse for all time. If it’s apoplexy it’s apoplexy, and not St. Vitus’ Dance. No early morning whores, no gardenias. No dead cats in the gutter, no sweat and perspiration. If it be a lip it must be a lip that trembles eternally. For in Mexico, ladies and gentlemen, it’s always high noon and what glows is fuchsia and what’s dead is dead and no feather-dusters. You lie on a cement bed and you sleep like an acetylene torch. When you strike it rich it’s a bonanza. When you don’t strike it rich it’s misery, worse than misery . No arpeggios, no grace notes, no cadenzas. Either you hold the clue or you don’t hold the clue. Either you start with pure melody or you start with listerine. But no Purgatory—and no elixir. It’s Fourth Eclogue or Thirteenth Arrondissement! Peace! It’s Wonderful!—The Cosmological EyeIt was only the other night while entertaining an American writer who had come to visit France after a long absence that I realized poignantly what has happened to me since I left my native land. Like all my compatriots who come to see me he asked quite naturally what it was that had kept me here so long. (It is seven years since I am living in Paris.) I felt that it was useless to answer him in words. I suggested instead that we take a stroll through the streets. We started out from the corner of the Rue de la Gaîté and the Avenue du Maine where we had been sitting; I walked him down the Rue de l’Ouest to the Rue du Château, then over the railroad bridge back of the Gare Montparnasse down the Boulevard Pasteur to the Avenue de Breteuil and thence to a little café facing the Invalides where we sat in silence for a long while. Perhaps that silence which one finds in the streets of Paris at night, perhaps that alone was a sufficient answer to his query. It is something difficult to find in a big American city. At any rate, it was not chance which had directed my footsteps. Walking with my friend through the deserted streets I was reliving my first days in Paris, for it was in the Rue de Vanves that my new life really began. Night after night without money, without friends, without a language I had walked these streets in despair and anguish.

• From Paul and Palestinian Judaism (40th Anniversary Edition) (2017)

  Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha [III Scrolls). This exhortation corresponds to the constant exhortations not to walk 'in the paths of wickedness' (94.3). The wicked are consistently said to be paid according to their deeds: Woe to you who requite your neighbour with evil; For you shall be requited according to your works. (95.5) Woe to you, sinners [Greek: 'unrighteous'], on the day of strong anguish, Ye who afflict the righteous and burn them with fire: Ye shall be requited according to your works. (100.7) 20 While the righteous are also said to be recompensed in the final judgment for their labours (103.3), 21 the author characteristically thinks that the reward of the righteous in the resurrection will not be earned by works, but be given by the mercy of God; even the righteous man's continuing uprightness in the new life will be by grace: He [God] will be gracious to the righteous and give him eternal uprightness, And He will give him power so that he shall be (endowed) with goodness and righteousness, And he shall walk in eternal light. And sin shall perish in darkness for ever, And shall no more be seen from that day for evermore. (92.4f.) On the other hand the wicked, being paid strictly according to their works, will receive no mercy, nor is there atonement ('ransom') for them: And for your fall there shall be no compassion, And your Creator will rejoice at your destruction. ( 94. 1 o) Woe to you who fulminate anathemas which cannot be reversed: Healing shall therefore be far from you because of your sins. (95.4) Woe to you, ye fools, for through your folly shall ye perish: and ye transgress against the wise, and so good hap shall not be your portion. And now, know ye that ye are prepared for the day of destruction: wherefore do not hope to live [Greek: 'be saved'], 22 ye ~inners, but ye shall depart and die; for ye know no ransom; for ye are prepared for the day of the great judgement, for the day of tribulation and great shame for your spirits. (98.9f.; so also 98.12, 14) Despite this hard view, the author apparently thinks it possible for the sinners to tum and repent, although the word is not used. Thus he addresses to them this appeal: 20 According to 98.5, a 'measure for measure' punishment is sometimes meted out on earth: a woman who dies childless does so because of her own sins. 21 Cf. also 104.13: all the righteous who learn the paths of uprightness from 'the books' will be recompensed. 22 Bonner (The Last Chapters of Enoch in Greek, p. 39) notes that the Ethiopic translator regularly used 'live' and 'life' for siitlzesthai and siitiria.